I am taking up the matter at the point which we
have reached - the bringing in of the collective and corporate means for the
carrying on of the testimony of Life. We ought to be impressed with the simple
fact that the Lord in a definite heavenly system and order, in a spiritual
movement, did make that transition from the number of individuals who had come
into a very real and very deep knowledge of Himself under His own dealings with
them, but who still remained individuals. The Lord did make that movement from
such individuals definitely to the collective and the corporate. It was in the
foreknowledge of God. It was not just something in the way of an evolution, a
development, something that came about.
Everything that we know from the
Scriptures about Israel's existence, election and history, makes it perfectly clear
that it was in the sovereign foreknowledge and purpose of God that Israel was
chosen, elect, and in a very definite sense. So that when we come to the point of
transition from Genesis to Exodus, we are only moving in a clearly arranged and
fore-intended plan of God. It is all foreshadowing, of course. While it has its
own meaning and value on the earth in an earthly way, it is foreshadowing that
movement which is so clearly marked and discernible in the New Testament from a
number of individuals who were very individual - their individualism, not their
individuality, was often a great difficulty with the Lord - but they had been
brought into some very real association with the Lord and knowledge of Him. But
then we note a very distinct movement from the individualistic to the corporate
according to plan. And there again what we are made to know from the later New
Testament in the revelation that comes out through Paul and Peter and John is
that this was in the eternal counsels of God, that this corporate company called
the ecclesia, the church, was elect according to the foreknowledge of God the
Father.
You are familiar with that, and it need not be
argued out. We simply point out the fact of a distinct transition. It is a thing
to be noticed in both connections of Israel and the church, that it was the
outworking of this great principle: this law of death and resurrection, that
issued in the reality of corporate Life. I do hope you have got that. The very
application of the principle, the working out of the principle of death and
resurrection, spontaneously issued in corporate Life.
That, of course, in itself contains a law that
individualism as such; separateness, independence, scatteredness, detachment,
and all such things were the result of a scattering work which was evil. It was
the result of death. Now death in every realm, death in all its forms, is a
disintegrating thing. Through death you disintegrate, you fall apart, you go to
pieces. It is true in the body, it is true in every organism, it is true in
every realm, that the fruit of death is separation, is detachment, is the
destruction of relatedness. Life is limited by the measure of our detachment. It
works both ways. Death works to detachment, to disintegration, to division.
Division, separation, detachment, means the limitation of Life, which, of
course, means the opposite - that Life works towards oneness, unity and corporate
Life, and relatedness means more Life. That is simple and quite clear. It can be
proved in any realm where there is any life. God knew what He was doing.
The full testimony then, of Life triumphant
over death, is not to be found in so many individuals as such, apart from others.
That testimony is limited by our independence or our detachment and our unrelatedness, but that testimony of
Life triumphant comes to its fulness in a
full corporate body, in full adjustment, fellowship and relatedness. And so it was
quite in keeping with the very law of Life that this movement should
spontaneously and inevitably take place from so many God-fearing individuals and God-loving individuals, to one corporate whole, one Body.
Did you notice how in the case of the death of
the Lord Jesus, when the death took place the effect was scattering: "I will
smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad"
(Matt. 26:31). "Ye shall be scattered, every man to
his own, and shall leave me alone" (John 16:32), and how scattered they
were, how detached. There was nothing whatever of a corporate representation in
those hours of the death. But did you notice how, immediately the fact of His
resurrection is brought to light, the opposite begins to take place? Steadily,
progressively, the bits are brought together. There are two here, there is one
there, there is another one out there, and there is even one who, isolating
himself, says he will not come in. Poor Thomas! So they are scattered, in
different places, unrelated, a disintegrated company, and then the very presence
of the living Lord begins this reverse movement, and these bits, these parts,
these bones begin to come together, and at last they are all together, about
five hundred at once. They are all together, but it has been a progressive
movement. It is very wonderful. Steadily this detachment, this isolation, this
refusal to come in with all its reasons is overcome. There is a gravitation
together on the basis of Life, and so it proceeds. A corporate vessel is in
existence to take up the great testimony of Life.
And as ever it was in the old, so it is in the
new and has ever been through the ages, the one focal point of all adverse activity
from the powers of evil is that oneness. The testimony of the Christ, the
testimony of His great victory over death, the testimony in the existence of a
death-conquering Life in this universe and in this world has got to be destroyed
if possible, and the key to the whole situation is the corporate oneness of the
people of God. In literally countless ways, great and small, from great divisive
movements - strangely enough all backed up by Scripture, making Scripture
contradict itself - to mere details. Here there is nothing 'mere', that we might
call little things, but enough to bring a shadow, enough to let in something of
the arresting power of spiritual death: question, some suspicion, some fear,
something just to get in, and the Life is checked and the vessel's ministry
suspended. It is like that.
The Relation of the
Individual to the Whole
Well, that is the situation as a whole. It is
not new truth to many of you, but pray that we may never pass from the time when
we realise very keenly the necessity for this. When this becomes a mere bit of
our accepted teaching, that may be one of the enemy's successes to nullify the
reality of it. Immediately the thing becomes a cold creed or a mere tradition
and a
bit of our doctrine, we have lost the very meaning of it. Now let us follow
that.
You notice that in the case of Israel, as now in the case of the Lord's
people, no individual was ever regarded by God as a separate detached
individual. It worked in both ways, good and bad. Every individual had to be baptised into the meaning of the whole. I expect there were many in the
multitudes of Israel - the people that we call nowadays the rank and file, the
ordinary people, the people of the crowd, the people of the multitude, of the
whole - who wondered why it was that they, ordinary people, holding no
conspicuous place, having no special name or designation or office, but just
lost in the crowd, why it was that they had to suffer with all the rest and go
through the experiences through which they were going with all the rest. They
might have felt that they were not responsible, they had no responsibility for
this matter and they were caught in something for which they were not liable. They
might often have asked themselves that question, as doubtless you ask nowadays
sometimes - Why should it come to me? I am just an ordinary person, I am not in
the forefront of the battle, I am not making any real mighty assault upon the
powers of darkness, I am just in the crowd, I really do not count very much, why
should I be involved in it all? You are having your personal bad times and you
are inclined to turn it on to the personal and wonder why you, a person
of no great responsibility or measure, should go this way and have this or that
difficult experience. You see, Paul explains that quite definitely, and you
ought to know that. But here is the fact, that when God is seeking to have that
fuller thing of a corporate vessel, every bit that constitutes that vessel is
baptised into the meaning of the whole. It is brought into the responsibility of
the whole. The least member of that Body is involved in the significance of the
whole Body. The whole Body is affected by that least member for good or ill.
It was not long before this relatedness was
brought out in Israel as a nation, both in the wilderness and in the land. One
person defaulted, rebelled, one person disobeyed, one person opened the avenue
for death, and the whole nation was affected. When that happened, as on some
occasions, the order was not - 'Bring that person to the door of the tent', but,
'Gather all Israel.' Then you can bring the persons, single them out, but
'Gather all Israel.' All the tribes had to come out of their tents to this thing
which was a public and inclusive matter, and all Israel were affected. Over in
the land - one man, Achan. Well, why not deal with Achan and have done with it,
deal with this thing in secret - he is the guilty
party, let us deal with Achan and leave the rest. No - gather all Israel! God
works to His principle both ways, for good and for ill.
We are a part of a Body. Many of our sufferings
are not on our own account at all. Many of the sufferings of the children of God
have nothing whatever to do with their own faults or their own failing. They are
suffering in a related way, they are suffering for the Body's sake, they are
entering into the battle; the conflict of this one great testimony. Sometimes it
is almost uncanny when the Lord has something in view in relation to His
testimony of Life, how for no reason whatever, on no account at all, we discover
that we are involved and ours is not an isolated experience. All sorts of people
all over the place are having the same kind of experience - a terrific sense of
pressure, upset, annoyance, anything to frustrate - it is happening all round,
testifying that in the spiritual realm, in the realm of the Spirit, there is a
fine, sensitive oneness which matters to the Lord, and therefore matters to the
enemy. Do not always take your sufferings as some controversy that the Lord has
with you. That is the twist the enemy often gives. Be open to the Lord to be
checked up on anything, but do not always take it that the things which are
happening to you and causing you trouble and suffering are due to your own
failure or wrong. You are involved in something very much more than that.
The Testimony of Life in the
Church
Now, if this is true and if it is in this way
that the Lord is going to fully answer this great thing that has arisen in His
universe, this invasion of death, if it is by means of the church, the Body of
Christ, that He is going to answer it (and, mark you, He is) although He has
answered it in the Person and work of His Son, the full answer and the full
outworking of that is to be through His Body. Surely that is the only
explanation of the church's history in conflict and pressure, the only
explanation of those final scenes of the Bible where wars against the Lamb and
the followers of the Lamb are set before us. The only explanation, the only
logical explanation, is that His full vindication has to be in a new creation
where death has been swallowed up.
Now, if that is the truth, then ought it not to
affect us very much in our entire mentality and outlook? Is it not just
on this very matter that Christianity has deviated? When we begin with the risen
Lord, we see this integrating movement of new Life,
this drawing together and consolidating into one organic whole. That is the
beginning of the working of this life in relation to Christ. We see that
develop, we see that established, we see that manifested on the day of Pentecost
and for some time afterwards. And what a power it was, what a record of world
conquest! In spite of tremendous forces against and many difficulties within and
without, oh, what a record!
It has been said that if things had continued just a
little longer as they commenced, world evangelisation would have been completed
in two generations. Where are we now, in that matter alone? But, you see, it
stopped. It came under arrest. Why? For this very reason - the great
revelation of the heavenly nature and corporate oneness of the church was lost
and Christianity became an earthly system and quickly began to disintegrate and to
divide up into sections and sects. The denominational movement very soon set in,
and oh, how it has grown and how it is still growing.
I picked up a book in
America recently - it was quite a book, which contained only the names of the
known sects and denominations of Christianity. It ran into hundreds, into
thousands, and it is going on. Are you surprised, should we be surprised that
that first mighty impact upon this world ceased so soon and is not even now?
When Israel was one and focused upon that great central object of the ark of
the testimony - in that, held by that - they were one people. There was not a nation,
however great, that could stand before them in all the earth - but again it is
the type. There was no nation able to stand before the church at its beginning.
They went down and down, and when the mightiest nation in history up to that
time challenged the church with a determination to blot it out, it was that
nation, Rome, that went down. Yes, it ought to affect us in our mentality and
our outlook. I am not asking you to go and denounce denominations and denounce as
heartily as you can denominationalism and denominations - well, leave them alone,
there are true people of God in all of them. But oh, that they recognized that
and lived on that, that they were much bigger than their section; their section, if it
must be, well it is, after all, of very little account in itself - the thing is
the people of God.
We ought to be affected by the great eternal
truth, the great divine facts and God's thoughts, and if we are we shall find that
there is Life and the testimony will be unmistakable. It will not be the testimony
in phraseology, in terminology, or necessarily in interpretation of doctrine. I
do not know what many of you people mean when you talk about the testimony. Are
you talking about or thinking about this Life which is death destroying? Is that
what you mean, when you say you are in the testimony? I hope you mean that, that
you are in the reality and the experience and the manifestation of the Life
which destroys death. That is the testimony of the Christ and there is no other.
Let us be very clear about that. The testimony, being the testimony of Life and
not of form or of expression, not all the components of doctrine, although the
doctrine, of course, will have to be true; the impact, the registration, the
effect, will be Life. That is the answer. Oh, it is true that we can be so
orthodox, so correct, so absolutely precise in terms of teaching and
doctrine in the utterness of our fundamental position on the verities of Bible
truth, and to be dead as anything can be. And that is not the testimony. It does
not mean that we can be other than correct and right in doctrine, but there is a
plus without which the testimony is not there. The testimony is that plus when
God gets things as He designed - that is, a people in the true organic oneness
of this Life and living on that basis, with their whole mentality adjusted and
governed by it. And when God gets a people like that, you meet those people and
you find that somehow there is Life, even if you may not understand what they
are talking about! The answer to your spirit is Life, it satisfies you before
you understand. The answer is Life. The criterion of everything is Life in the
risen Lord expressed in His Body.
A New Creation
Just now I used the words "in a new creation".
Luke, at the end of this chapter with which we have been occupied, leads the
company who have been gathered and regathered, out as far as Bethany. There the
Lord blesses them, and, as He is blessing, He is taken up from them. John gives
an extra fact. John says "He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive
ye the Holy Spirit" (John 20:22). What has He done? He has gathered a Body
and put the Life of new creation in it in figure. I believe it was potential, it
was prophetic, not actual. He was securing them unto the day of Pentecost, it
was as good as done. The symbolic act was that He brought the corporate new Man
into being. That was, of course, fully done on the day of Pentecost and the church
was born. But figuratively He did it then. He breathed on them. We can say He
breathed into them typically: "Receive ye the Holy Spirit" He is the
Spirit of Life. And He did not go from one to another doing it. He did it on the
company. It was a company on the day of Pentecost that received the breath from
heaven as it was with that company at Bethany. The new creation is a company, it is a
Body indwelt by the Holy Spirit, actuated by the Holy Spirit, actually made one
by the Holy Spirit. "In one Spirit were we all baptised into one body" (1
Cor. 12:13). The oneness is the oneness of the Holy Spirit. "Giving diligence
to keep the unity of the Spirit" (Eph. 4:3), not to make it but to keep it.
A new creation.
Well now, of course that is just the key that
opens the door to everything when you see what new creation Life means. And with
that you introduce the whole matter of the proper order, the proper regulated
order, of heavenly Life. Heavenly Life is according to heavenly law. It is not
lawless. Each member of this body is not a law unto himself or herself. We are
bound by this integrating, regulating law, that we are not allowed to be
independent. Here the Holy Spirit forbids it. We are not allowed to take the law
into our own hands. We are not allowed to act as individuals; the Holy Spirit
will not allow it. There is a regulating order with this Life. This Life expresses
itself according to its own laws, as life does in every part of the organic
creation. It follows its own lines. That part of the creation follows the laws
of the life which it possesses, and this is the Life of the Spirit, and you have
not to organise or systematize this. Immediately you begin to do it, you bring
death in. It is as fatal to try and make a New Testament church after the New
Testament pattern as it is to have no pattern at all! It can be deathly to do
that. The thing happens if the Life has its way. We have learned this, yet, much
as we know about the truth, we are still so much governed by our own natural
life, even in our spiritual activities. There is disorder and running before the
Spirit. However, we are all in the school, and we are just stating the laws, the
principles and the truth that here you have no need to go and organize something on
a New Testament basis. It will come about if the Holy Spirit is really having
His way in terms of Life.
How do you test it? You can test this in many
ways. So often when somebody just acts in their own life, off their own bat,
everybody feels bad. That is not right, that is out of order. They have not a
written code of laws and regulations by which they are governed, and they do not
say, 'That is not according to the Blue Book of our rules and regulations for the
procedure in public worship', but it is inside, something inside feels bad. You
feel, 'There is something wrong about it, that is out of order, that is out of
place; my feeling about that in my spirit, as I seek to understand what Life
with the Lord is, is that there is something not quite right about that.' There
is the law of Life at work. Is it not the best way? Far better than drawing up
our Blue Book of regulations and throwing it at the head of the delinquents.
God's Sovereign Beginnings
You can see all this that I am saying, and very
much more, in the government of the life of Israel. You have only to take this
phrase that the Lord used in resurrection, or that He spoke after His
resurrection, as to what He had said before; dividing the Scriptures into Moses,
the psalms and the prophets. You have only to take this first phrase - Moses,
meaning the books of Moses, and in those very books and their titles you have what I
have been saying. Genesis - the book of beginnings... "In the beginning God". And
Paul, many centuries afterwards, understanding the spiritual
significance lying behind the natural creation, said, "If any man is in
Christ, he is a new creature" (there is a new creation - A.R.V) (2 Cor.
5:17). "If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation: old things are
passed away; behold, they are become new. But all things are of (out from) God".
In the new creation, all things are out from God. "In the beginning God..."
and that is being applied. It is not just some static fact that lies back there
at some remote beginning. Look at it being applied. Whenever things deviate from
God's thought, He begins again out from Himself. Each one of those men of whom
we have been speaking - Abel, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, represent an
intervention of God at a certain point to start again; if you like, an
innovation from heaven, God steps in. Abraham away there in Ur of the Chaldees -
the God of glory appeared. The initiative is with God. "In the beginning God".
All the way along, be it individuals, be it the world, be it Israel deviating,
going away and moving off of God's basis - all right, let them, God will begin
again. Again and again He reacts to these deviations by "in the beginning God",
and this is God's new beginning.
It is in the history of the church. Christendom
as a whole deviates and God begins again. Look down these Christian ages and see
the new beginnings. And God, again and again when the church as a whole has
deviated, see God's movement... with Moravians, Waldensians, with Luther, Wesley,
and so God steps in and starts again where there has been deviation. That is
God's new beginning where things have gone wrong. He is doing that now. Genesis
- the principle continually applied, not something back there so many thousands
of years ago, but now - Genesis: all things out from God, nothing out from man,
nothing conceived by man or brought into being by man. God the Source, the Spring,
the Beginning of everything - an abiding principle.
Exodus - here is the principle carried over to
a nation. "In the beginning God." How does Exodus begin? "Now these are the
names of the sons of Jacob"? No, "Israel". Was that God intervening and
bringing to an end something - Jacob, and beginning again - Israel? Exodus
begins with something that God has brought into view, and then the story of the
Exodus is God taking the initiative. If it says one thing more than another, it
is that God is doing this, even in spite of the weakness of the people with whom
He is doing it and for whom He is doing it; God is doing this. In spite of
Pharaoh and all the evil powers, God is doing this. This people is produced by
God. The exodus is out from God. So He constitutes now a nation, a corporate
body, by His own initiative, created of God.
Leviticus - what is it? it is the centralizing,
the focusing, the coordinating of this whole people in a priest, in a High
Priest, as a priestly people focused in the Ark, the Holy of Holies, and the
High Priest. That governs everything. They are made one, they are gathered
around that. They are the corporate whole because of that centre, that High
Priestly centre.
Numbers - what is that? Well, is it not the
ordering, the putting into right order, of this people with a view to action? It
is not just to have a beautiful order. While it is good to have that and God
wants to have beautiful order, perhaps for its own sake, but here God is saying
that the next step unto effectiveness of testimony must be an ordered people.
There they are numbered, there they are arranged. There they are brought into a
regulated and coordinated life for war and for service and progress, because
progress, real progress, can never be by a rabble, a mere crowd, a mob.
Real progress, real development, real advance - and now we must speak in
spiritual terms - spiritual advance, spiritual progress, spiritual fulness,
spiritual enlargement, demands spiritual order, heavenly order. Get out of that
heavenly order and your spiritual progress is arrested.
Deuteronomy - what is that? The reaffirmation
of the whole, God coming back, and saying, as it were, 'You must not just take
this as something done, something that lies back there in the past; this is
something to be ratified and confirmed right up to the end.' It leads to the
death of Moses; the end of God in that particular economic. The last thing is
ratification and confirmation of the testimony. Deuteronomy is the confirmation of
the testimony in all its terms. That is where we get in the book of the
Revelation - a confirmation of the testimony in the churches being reminded that
this is not static doctrine which belongs to the past and has become a tradition. It
is right up to date in relation to Him that lives and was dead and is alive for
evermore. It is the testimony of Life ratified.
Well, you see how much ground I have tried to
cover, and what a lot there is bound up with this. It could take us on for a
long time. But what is the point of emphasis now? It is this after all, that God
has set His heart upon and is still seeking to have an expression of this
corporate testimony, this vessel, this corporate vessel of testimony. He is
still set upon it, He is still wanting it. It does not mean that all Christians
from all over the world and all connections are going to form themselves into
one body under one designation. That would not last long, it would very quickly
become not corporate but composite, a poor show and pretence and an imitation of
something. But in the Spirit, in heart, in our minds, in our activities, our
relationships, we keep this fact dominant: though there may be things with which
we cannot agree or do not agree with the position to which we have come,
wherever there are children of God they are related to us by one Life and we to
them. And that is going to be a secret of strength, a secret of fulness.
We
would that we should all come to the full knowledge of the truth, we should all
come to see the same way. Would to God that that could be, but we must leave the
whole matter of the measure of that with the Lord. The point for us is to recognise what the Lord wants, how it is to be brought about and for what He
wants it - the testimony of His Son, the power of a mighty Life which is going
ultimately to vanquish death entirely, that there shall be that in the earth
which holds that testimony. The Lord help us!