Reading: Acts 13:27,
15; II Corinthians 3:14-18; Isaiah 53:1.
The prophets were read,
as Paul points out here, every Sabbath. It was the fixed
custom to read the law and the prophets every Sabbath,
and it may be pointed out that it was not just at one
particular time in the day that this was done, but all
through the Sabbath day the law and the prophets were
being read in the synagogues. And yet it says that
although the very rulers themselves, as well as the
dwellers in Jerusalem who attended the temple, heard that
reading of the prophets so continuously, they never heard
the voices of the prophets. And because they
failed to hear that inner something, which was more than
just the audible reading of what the prophets had said,
they lost everything that was intended for them, as this
thirteenth chapter of Acts shows. The Apostles left them
and turned to the Gentiles, who had an ear ready to hear.
That is a matter of no
small consequence and seriousness. It is evident that it
behoves us to seek to hear the voices of the
prophets, really to know what the prophets were saying.
Let us again look at the statement: "...because they
knew him not, nor the voices of the prophets." Why
did they not know? Why did they not hear? There is one
basic answer to that enquiry which is going to occupy us
just now, and which brings us down to foundations, really
to the root of things.
THE
OFFENCE OF THE CROSS
(a) A Suffering
Messiah
The answer to that
enquiry is this - because they were not willing to accept
the Cross. That is what went to the root of the whole
matter. Firstly, they were not willing to admit of a
suffering Messiah. They had their own minds well made up,
both as to what kind of Messiah their Messiah would be,
and as to what He would do, and as to the results of His
advent; and anything that ran counter to that fixed
mentality was not only not accepted - it was an offence.
They could not admit into the realm of their
contemplation that their coming Messiah would be a
suffering Messiah. Yet the prophets were always speaking
about the suffering Messiah. Isaiah, at that point in his
prophecies which we know as chapter 53, presents the
classic on the suffering Messiah, and yet he opens by
saying: "Who hath believed our message?"
I think we need not stay
to gather further evidence that that was their attitude.
Right the way through it was just that. Paul, in his
letter to the Galatians, was dealing with that very
thing. Towards the end of the letter he spoke about the
offence of the Cross, and he set that over against the
Judaizers, who were dogging his steps everywhere and
seeking to prejudice his ministry, and at whose hands he
was suffering. He 'bore branded on his body the marks of
the Lord Jesus' (Galatians 6:17). Why? Because of his
message of the Cross. He said, 'If I were willing to drop
that, I could escape all this suffering; it is the
offence of the Cross which is the cause of all the
trouble' (Galatians 5:11). And all the way through we see
the Jews' unwillingness to admit of a suffering Messiah.
(b) The Way of
Self-Emptying
But then it went further
than that. It became not only a national issue but a
personal one. They would not accept the principle of the
Cross in themselves. You find that representative
individuals of the nation, who came to the Lord Jesus
from time to time, were presented with the offence of the
Cross - and off they went again, not prepared to accept
it. Nicodemus was very interested in the kingdom which
the Messiah was going to set up, which he was expecting
and anticipating, but it became a personal matter of the
Cross. Before the Lord was through with Nicodemus, He had
brought into his full view the serpent lifted up in the
wilderness. That was an offence.
Another man, who has
become known to us as the rich young ruler, went away
very sorrowful because of the offence of the Cross. It
was no use for the Lord, at that time, before the Cross
had actually taken place, to speak in precise terms about
it to other than His disciples, but He applied the
principle, which is the same thing. He applied the
principle to this young man. 'If, as you say, you are
interested in the Kingdom and in eternal life, this is
the way: the way of emptying - utter self emptying.'
"He went away sorrowful: for he was one that had
great possessions" (Matthew 19:22). The Lord said,
"How hardly (with what difficulty) shall they that
have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" (Luke
18:24). The offence of the Cross finds them out.
Now here, with the Jews
as a whole, they were making the kingdom of God an
earthly thing on the principles of this world - and do
not let us blame them without blaming ourselves. This is
our battle right up to date. It is a matter that finds us
all out at heart. Oh, you may not be expecting that
through your preaching of Christ a temporal kingdom will
be set up and you will get a literal crown to wear and a
throne to sit upon - that may not be your outlook or
mentality; but are we not, almost every day of our lives,
in trouble because the Lord hides from us everything that
He is doing and starves our souls of their ambition to
see things, to have things? Is that not the basis of a
great deal of our trouble? We want to see, we want to
have, we want the proofs and the evidences. We do really,
after all, want a kingdom that can be appraised by our
senses of sight and hearing and feeling - a palpable
kingdom, the answer in tangible form to all our efforts
and labours; and the opposite of that is a tremendous
strain upon faith, and sometimes even brings us to a
serious crisis.
Why does not the Lord do
this and that, which we think He ought to do? It is
simply this soul-craving to have proof and demonstration;
and this is why, if there is anything built up in
Christian work which is obvious, big, impressive, where
there is a great thing being organized and a great
movement on foot and all is in the realm of something
that can be seen, crowds of Christians flock after it; or
if there are manifestations, things that seem to be clear
proofs, the crowds will be found there. The enemy can
carry away multitudes by imitation works of the Holy
Ghost in the realm of demonstrations and proofs. We are
so impressionable, we must possess; and that is
exactly the same principle as that which governed the
rulers. They were not prepared for the principle of the
Cross to be applied in this way - an utter self-emptying,
being brought to an end of everything but the Lord
Himself.
THE
PROPHETS' THEME - KNOWING THE LORD
Now you see that does
bring us to the matter of the voices of the prophets.
What was the one thing the prophets were always talking
about? It was about knowing the Lord. The thing
that was lacking amongst the Lord's people in the days of
the prophets was the knowledge of the Lord. There were
plenty of people who were prepared to have the Lord for
what He could do for them, but as for the Lord Himself...
ah, that was another matter.
What is the Lord after
with you and with me? Is He first of all wanting us to do
things? The idea of what is of God today is chiefly
associated with the things which are being done for Him,
the work we are engaged in, and so on - that is, with
what is objective and outward. But the Lord is not first
of all concerned about how much we do. He is far more
concerned that, whether we do little or much, every bit
of it should come out of a knowledge of Himself. Any
amount can be done for the Lord in Christian work and
activities, just as you do other work, but it may not
proceed from your own deep knowledge of God. The Lord is
concerned above all else that we should know Him.
"Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither
let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich
man glory in his riches; but let him that glorieth glory
in this, that he hath understanding, and knoweth me"
(Jeremiah 9:23,24, A.R.V.).
May that not explain the
very principle of the Cross that is being applied to us?
The Lord does not satisfy and gratify; along many lines
He seems again and again to be saying 'No' to quite a lot
that we crave for; and, being denied, we often come to
the point where we would almost give up everything and
allow the biggest questions as to our relationship with
the Lord. And yet what He is after all the time, by His
denials and withholdings or delays, is to deepen our
knowledge of Himself. What matters with the Lord before
anything and everything else is not that we should be in
any given place doing a lot of Christian work (do not let
that stop you serving the Lord!), but that we should be
there as one who knows the Lord. Our opportunities
for serving Him will spring out of our knowledge of Him;
He will see to that. The Lord the Spirit is arranging His
own work. He knows where need exists, and when He sees
someone who can meet that need He can make contact.
KNOWLEDGE
OF THE LORD BASIC TO ALL USEFULNESS
That is the principle in
the New Testament. We see it in the life of the Lord
Jesus Himself. That meeting between Christ and the woman
of Samaria was not just a casual happening, a pretty
story. No, you have principles. The Holy Ghost wrote
those narratives, and involved principles in every
incident. Here is One who has water to give that the
world knows not of, and here is a thirsty woman. God sees
to it that the one in need is brought into touch with the
One who has the supply. That is a law. If you have not
got the supply, it is very largely empty work that is
done for the Lord.
The principle of the
Cross works out along many lines, in many ways - testing,
trying, emptying us, in order to bring us to the
place where we know the Lord, and where our joy in the
Lord and our enthusiasm and our Christian life are the
result of something deeper than the mere momentum
produced by doing many things, running about from meeting
to meeting, giving addresses, being occupied on the crest
of a wave of engagements in Christian work. The Lord does
not want it to be like that. I am not saying that you
will never be on the crest of a wave, that you will never
have your hands full; but the Lord's way of making us
useful servants is so to deal with us as to make us know
Him, so that, whether occupied in Christian work in an
outward way or not, we are there with a knowledge of the
Lord. What is so necessary for us is an increasing
measure of the preciousness of the Lord to our own
hearts; that, whether we are able to do anything or not,
He should still remain very precious to us. That is what
He wants.
That is very simple, but
it is basic to everything. You are there in some place
where you cannot be always talking about the Lord, where
you can do very little; but if the Lord is precious to
you, that is service to Him, and in you He has available
a vessel for anything more that He wants. I am sure the
Lord will never bring us out and entrust us with
responsibilities until He has become very precious to us
in the place where we are, even though many other things
that we would like are being denied to and withheld from
us. It is the principle of the Cross.
Nicodemus comes with all
his 'fullness'. He is a man with a great fullness - a
ruler of the Jews, in high standing, in a place of
influence, and much more. He represents a fullness of a
religious kind. Then the Lord virtually says to him: 'You
have to let it all go, and start all over again like a
newborn babe. You are concerned about the Kingdom of
Heaven, but you cannot bring any of that into the
Kingdom.' To the rich young ruler He says, in effect,
'You cannot bring your riches in here.' You may have a
lot of natural wealth - intellectual, financial,
influential, positional, but that does not give you any
standing in the Kingdom of Heaven at all. The wealthiest,
the fullest, the biggest here in this world receives no
more of the glance of the Lord in their direction than
the poorest and the weakest. All are brought down here -
you must be born again, you must start from zero in this
matter of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom is not a
matter of eating and drinking, it is a matter of
spiritual measure; and you start spiritual measure by
being born of the Spirit. The new life is utterly
spiritual from the very first breath - something that was
not before, something new.
Spiritual measure is
just knowing the Lord; that is all. Our standing
in the Kingdom of Heaven is simply a matter of knowing
the Lord, and if we are going to gain higher place it is
not going to be at all by preferences, but by the
increase of our spiritual measure. People who count in
heaven are spiritual people, and what counts is the
degree of their spirituality; and spirituality is knowing
the Lord. We may take it that the Lord applies Himself
utterly to this matter of bringing us to know Him. That
is the thing that really does count.
THE
CROSS BASIC TO ALL KNOWLEDGE OF THE LORD
They could not hear the
voices of the prophets because the prophets were talking
about a suffering Messiah, and there was something inside
the people which had closed the door; they were
predisposed against anything like that, and so they could
not hear. Even the disciples of the Lord Jesus were in
that position. When He began to refer to His Cross they
said, "Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall never
be unto thee" (Matthew 16:22). A suffering Messiah?
Oh, no! But they did come to the place where the Cross
had its very deep application, where it meant an end of
everything for them. The Lord precipitated that whole
question, and you see them after His crucifixion - they
have lost their Messianic Kingdom, they have lost
everything, they are stripped and emptied. And then what
happened? They began then to know, just began to
know, and their knowledge grew and grew; but it was of
another order entirely. So you find, in the rest of the
New Testament, that, in their own history and in their
instruction of others, two things go together. They are
like the negative and the positive in an electrical
circuit - there can be no current without both. The
negative is the application of the principle of the
Cross, which says No, No, No: an end: death to yourself,
death to the world, death to all your own natural life.
But the positive is the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God,
mightily present, but always hand in hand with the Cross.
With those two acting always together, the negative and
the positive - the Cross, and heavenly purpose and
heavenly power and effectiveness - you find that there is
movement and an ever-growing knowledge of the Lord.
We cannot have the
knowledge of the Lord - the most important thing in the
mind of God for us - except on the ground of the
continuous application of the Cross, and that will go
right on to the end. Do not imagine that there will come
a day when you have done with the Cross, when the
principle of the Cross will no longer be necessary and
when you have graduated from the school where the Cross
is the instrument of the Lord. Such a day never will be!
More and more you will come to recognise the necessity
for that Cross. If you are going on into greater fullness
of knowledge - I mean spiritual knowledge of the Lord -
and therefore greater fullness of usefulness to Him, you
must take it as settled that that principle of the Cross
is going to be applied more and more deeply as you go on.
Oh, God write that in
our hearts! for surely we all know the need of the Cross;
and those who have known most about it are conscious most
of its need still. We have seen the terrible tragedy of
people who knew the message of the Cross in fullness, and
who after many years have been a positive contradiction
to that very message - marked by self-assertiveness,
self-importance, impatience, irritability, so that other
people have been unable to live with them. Are you one of
those habitually irritable people? I do not mean one of
those persons who sometimes is overtaken in a fault. The
Lord is patient with the upsets that come here and there
along the way, but are we habitually irritable,
short-tempered, difficult to live with? That is a denial
of the Cross, and that has wrecked the life and work of
many a missionary.
The Cross will be
applied right on to the end, and, altogether apart from
our faults and the things in our constitution and nature
which have to be dealt with, in this coming to know the
Lord for still greater usefulness we go from death to
death on that side of things. We think of some known to
us. We marvel at the way the Lord has been able to use
them, the large place into which He has put them, what
riches He has given them; but of late they have been
plunged into depths of death never known before. It is
evidently unto something more, something greater still.
It is like that; the knowledge of the Lord requires it in
an ever-growing way.
KNOWLEDGE
AND USEFULNESS SAFEGUARDED BY THE CROSS
But furthermore, there
is no safe place, apart from the constant
application of the principle of the Cross. Safety
absolutely demands it. Nothing is safe in our hands. The
more the Lord blesses, the more peril there is. The
greatest peril comes when the Lord begins to use us. You
may say, 'That does not say very much for our
sanctification.' It certainly does not say very much for
'eradication'! Well, here is Paul. Did that man know
anything about the Cross? Would you say he was a
crucified man? If he was not, who was? Did he know the
Lord? And with all that he knew of the Cross and the
Lord, did he know that he needed the Cross to be applied
right on to the end? He will definitely place it on
record - "... that I should not be exalted overmuch,
there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger
of Satan to buffet me." "That I should not be
exalted overmuch"! (II Cor. 12:7). And mark you, he
is saying that because of the great revelation that had
been given him. He was caught up into heaven. It is a
most perilous thing to be entrusted with Divine riches,
so far as our flesh is concerned. The only safe place is
where the Cross is still at work, touching all that is
ourselves, touching all our independence of action.
Take all these Apostles
- take Peter, a man who would act so independently, who
liked to do things on his own and do what he wanted to
do. We find it cropping up constantly. He is the man who
acts without stopping to ask anybody. We have no hint
that he ever got into fellowship with his brother
disciples and said, 'I am thinking of doing so and so; I
would very much like you to pray with me about it, and to
tell me what you think; I have no intention of going on
unless there is one mind among us.' Peter never did that
sort of thing. He got an idea, and off he went. The Lord
summed him up very well when He said: "When thou
wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither
thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt
stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and
carry thee whither thou wouldest not" (John 21:18).
That was Peter before the Cross was in-wrought in him.
But see him afterwards. Why, in those early chapters of
Acts, do we read "Peter and John", "Peter
and John", "Peter and John"? Well, they
are moving together now, there is relatedness. Is it an
acknowledgment that Peter felt his need of co-operation
and fellowship, that he had seen the perils and disasters
into which independent action led him, even when his
intentions and motives were of the best? These are just
glimpses of how the Cross touches us in our impulsive,
independent nature, our self-will, our self-strength. The
Cross has to deal with all that to make things safe for
God, and to keep us moving in the way of increasing
knowledge of the Lord, which, as we have said, lies
behind all our value to the Lord, all our usefulness, all
our service.
THE
CROSS OPENS THE WAY TO FULL KNOWLEDGE OF THE LORD
The Cross is the only
way to spiritual knowledge. Important as study of the
Word of God may be in its own realm, as laying a
foundation for the Holy Spirit to work upon, you never
come to a knowledge of the Lord simply by studying the
Bible. The Holy Spirit may use what you know of the Bible
to teach you much, to explain your experiences, to enable
you to understand what the Lord is doing, but you never
get this kind of spiritual knowledge by study and by
teaching.
You must be prepared to
let the Cross be so applied to your life that you are
broken and emptied and fairly ground to powder - so that
you are brought to the place where, if the Lord does not
do something, you are finished. If you are prepared for
that way, you will get to know the Lord. That is the only
way. It cannot be by addresses or lectures. They have
their value, but you do not know the Lord spiritually
along those lines.
The full knowledge of
the Lord is reserved to us who live in this dispensation,
because the latter is governed by the Cross. Peter
himself had something to say about this:-
"Concerning which
salvation prophets sought and searched diligently; who
prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:
searching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of
Christ which was in them did point unto, when it
testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the
glories that should follow them. To whom it was revealed,
that not unto themselves, but unto you, did they minister
these things, which now have been announced unto you...;
which things angels desire to look into" (I Peter
1:10-12).
There you have two
orders - prophets and angels - who did not know certain
things which are revealed to us. The prophets knew much,
but they were searching diligently to know something they
could not discover. 'What does this mean?' they must have
asked themselves. 'The Spirit of God is making us say
these things, but what do they mean?' They sought
diligently to know that which was reserved for us. Why
could they not know? Because full knowledge is based upon
the Cross, and the Cross had not taken place then. And
angels, too, desire to look into these things. Can it be
true? We thought angels knew everything! Surely angels
have far more knowledge and intelligence than we have
about these things? They do not know. "Which things
angels desire to look into." Why do they not know?
Angels have had no need of the Cross; the Cross has no
meaning for them personally. It is on the basis of the
Cross that full knowledge is entered into. Does that need
any further argument?
THE
CROSS SECURES POSITIVE, NOT ONLY NEGATIVE, RESULTS
So then, the Holy
Spirit, in order to bring us to the full knowledge of the
Lord and by means of that growing knowledge to make us
useful to the Lord, must constantly work by means of the
Cross in principle; and my closing word is this. The work
is not all negative; the Lord works on a positive basis.
You may think that the Lord is always saying No, that He
is always against you, that the Cross is suppressive; but
no, it is a positive instrument in the hands of the
Spirit of God. God is working on a positive line. The
fact is that, if ever the Holy Spirit brings us into a
new knowing of the meaning of the Cross, He is after
something more. That is the law of the Spirit of life.
You must remember that
the Lord Jesus, in His resurrection, was not left just
where He was before. Before He died He was on this earth,
and then He died; and Paul refers to His raising from
that death in these words: "the exceeding greatness
of his power to us-ward who believe, according to that
working of the strength of his might which he wrought in
Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made him to
sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above
all" (Ephesians 1:19-21). The resurrection carries
Him through to the "far above all," and the
principle of resurrection is always that of rebound - we
may go down very deep, more deeply than ever we have
known before, but the Spirit of God is intending that
that shall issue in our being higher than ever before. So
do not be afraid when you are feeling very empty, very
finished, very much at the end. Ask the Lord that if this
is truly the working of His Cross it shall be successful
in what He intends for you; and if it is successful, you
will be on higher ground afterward than ever you were
before.
THE
NEED FOR A DEFINITE TRANSACTION WITH THE LORD
We have said from time
to time that the Cross does involve a crisis. For some
this may be an overwhelming experience, the biggest thing
that has happened in your life, even bigger than your
conversion. It was so for some of us as we moved from the
apprehension of the substitutionary aspect of the Cross,
where we saw only what Christ had done for us, to
the apprehension of our union with Christ in death,
burial and resurrection. Whether or not you have a big
crisis which divides your life in two, you must have a
point of transaction with the Lord where you recognise
that the Cross is in principle an utter, all-inclusive
reality that, sooner or later, is going to run to earth
the last vestige of that self-life which is the ground of
Satan's power. It is best at some point to have this
understanding: 'I rejoice in the fact of Thy death for
me, and I am saved on the ground of that death and my
faith in it. But I died in Thee - that was Thy thought
about me as a son of Adam. I could not bear to have all
that that means brought to me at once, but I recognise
that it has to be worked out as grace enables, and
that sooner or later I have to come to an utter end; and
I therefore commit myself to all Thou dost mean by the
Cross.'
A transaction of that
kind is necessary. Do not begin to kick when the Lord
begins to work it out. He takes you at your word, but He
is doing it with the definite object in view of getting
you to a higher and fuller knowledge of Himself. Out of
that growing knowledge of Him, the growing preciousness
of the Lord, all real service will issue. It is not what
we do, but what we have, that is the secret
of service.