Eighth Meeting
(February 6, 1964 P.M.)
We will
read again the Gospel by Matthew, chapter thirteen,
verses one through three:
"The
same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea
side. And great multitudes were gathered together unto
Him, so that He went into a ship, and sat; and the whole
multitude stood on the shore. And He spake many things
unto them in parables, saying, 'Behold, a sower went
forth to sow.'"
And
verses fifty-one and fifty-two:
"Jesus
saith unto them, 'Have ye understood all these things?'
They say unto Him, 'Yea, Lord.' Then said He unto them,
'Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the
kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an
householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure
things new and old.'"
When we
read these parables of the Kingdom as given by the Lord
Jesus and the many other things which He taught, we are
in danger of looking upon them as something in
themselves. For instance, we take these parables of Jesus
and teach them to the children in the Sunday school, just
as stories told by Jesus, and perhaps that is how we read
them ourselves. They are very interesting stories.
In
Matthew thirteen there are seven of them. Seven very
interesting stories, and in other places in the Gospels,
there are many more. We are all familiar with the three
stories in the fifteenth chapter of Luke. The story of
the ninety and nine sheep and the one that went astray.
That is a very interesting story. We have heard many
sermons on that. Then the story of the woman who had a
necklace with ten pieces of silver on it. It was given to
her by her husband, when they were married. And one day
one of the pieces of silver fell off the necklace. She
lit the lamp and swept the house to find it - very
interesting story. Then the story of what is called the
prodigal son, everybody knows that story. And so with all
these teachings of Jesus, we read them as something in
themselves, and we forget the most important thing of
all.
The
teaching of Jesus was given in a day of very great
crisis, perhaps the greatest crisis in the history of
this world. That is until the day when Jesus comes again.
That will be the greatest crisis of all, but Jesus was
giving His teaching in a day of very great crisis. The
crisis was this: there had been a people in this world
who had been the center of everything for thousands of
years. That people had been the center of God's interest
in this world. All the other nations of the world were
watching that people. There was a sense in which that
nation was the center of all the nations. What happened
to that nation affected all the nations. God had chosen
that nation. God had revealed Himself to that nation. God
had given to that nation all the wonderful truth that is
in the Old Testament. God had raised up the greatest
leaders in history to lead that nation. He had given them
the greatest prophets that men have ever had. He had
given to them the greatest king that ever nations had
had. What a lot God had done for the nation of
Israel. From the day when He put His hand upon Abraham in
Ur of the Chaldees, and had said to Abraham, "I
will make of thee a great nation.... And in thy
seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Gen.
12:2, 22:18). What a wonderful history it was from that
day right up to the day when Jesus Christ came into this
world.
And now
with the coming of Jesus Christ, all that is brought to
an end; that nation is being set aside by God. God is
rejecting Israel. It will not be long now before Israel
ceases to be a nation. Their city will be destroyed.
Their great temple will be overthrown. Their priests will
be killed and scattered. And from that day until now,
they would have no city, no king, no temple, no priest,
no altar, no sacrifice. That all has happened, and Jesus
knew that that was going to happen. And all these
parables were prophecies in relation to that, and He was
giving them in connection with that great crisis. He was
saying, 'Now the end of your whole history is coming. All
that which has made up your life is going to be brought
to an end, and an entirely new order of things is going
to be brought in and put in its place.'
So the
parables, as they are called the parables of the Kingdom,
related to the passing of one kingdom and the bringing in
of another to take its place. With the passing of that
one kingdom and the destruction of all that had to do
with it, John the Baptist came on the scene, a voice
crying in the wilderness, a great multitude going out to
hear what he had to say, and what did he say? "Repent
ye: for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" (Matt.
3:2). That was the message of the forerunner of Christ.
When Jesus came from the Jordan, having been baptized,
and began to preach, He said the same thing. He said,
"The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." And that
was the message of the apostles. As Jesus was about to go
from this world back to the Father, He spoke to His
disciples after His resurrection, and it says that He was
speaking to them about the things of the Kingdom. On the
day of Pentecost, the great message was the message of
the Kingdom. And when the apostles went away over all the
world they were preaching the Kingdom. When the Apostle
Paul was at the end of his life in prison in Rome, a
number of people came to see him in his prison room, and
it says he spoke to them concerning the Kingdom.
At the
end of that great letter to the Hebrews, everything is
gathered up into this. All that the writer has been
saying in that wonderful letter is gathered up into this
statement, "Wherefore, receiving a Kingdom that
cannot be shaken." The literal tense of the word is
this: "Wherefore, being in process of receiving a
Kingdom, which cannot be shaken." And the great
triumphant cry at the end of the Bible in the Book of the
Revelation is this: when all the story is told the cry
goes out, "Now is come the Kingdom of
our God, and of His Christ" (Rev. 12:10). See
what a large and important place this matter of the
Kingdom has in the Word of God. What a great thing it is
to be in the Kingdom of God. What a terrible thing it is
to miss the Kingdom of God.
Israel,
as a nation, missed the Kingdom of God. Jesus said a most
terrible thing about them, that the children of the
Kingdom would go into outer darkness. There would be
weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I ask you, is
not that true for the last two thousand years where
Israel is concerned? Israel has been in the outside
darkness for two thousand years. Israel's history for
that time has been one of weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth. We know the terrible stories of
Israel's history right up to recent time. Oh! how Israel
is hated. Their city is divided in two, and on one side
of their own city is a people who hate them and want to
destroy them. All this, because they lost the Kingdom of
God. It is a terrible thing to miss the Kingdom of God.
But on the other hand, it is therefore a wonderful thing
to be in the Kingdom of God. Now we come back to where we
started last night. May I remind you of what we said
then: If the Kingdom of God is a very great and important
thing, if it is a terrible thing to miss it, and if it is
a glorious thing to be in it, we must have the secret of
getting into the Kingdom of God. You notice how these two
things are always put together by the Lord Jesus. Here is
the Kingdom of God, and the way into the Kingdom of God
is by SPIRITUAL UNDERSTANDING. Because they had
not spiritual understanding, Israel lost the Kingdom.
They could have had spiritual understanding. It was not
because it was not possible for them to have it, they
could have had it just as well as anybody else, but they
were unbelieving and disobedient. And because of their
disobedience of unbelief, their spiritual eyes were
closed, and they could not see. They lost the Kingdom,
because they did not see.
Now keep
that in your head for a few minutes. Jesus spoke these
parables, all seven of them, and then He challenged His
disciples, "Have you understood all these
things?" Everything to do with the Kingdom hangs
upon this matter of SPIRITUAL UNDERSTANDING.
Now let
us move over to a very familiar part of God's Word. The
Gospel by John, chapter three. You know it is a very
convenient thing to have the New Testament divided up
into chapters. However, sometimes it is a very
unfortunate thing, and here we have an instance of that
unfortunate division. Chapter three really ought to begin
at verse twenty-three of chapter two. I am glad to see
that you have got your Bible, that helps me so much. Now,
verse twenty-three of chapter two, "Now when He was
in Jerusalem at the passover, during the feast, many
believed on His name, because they beheld the signs which
He did." Before we go on, let us ask this question:
Do you think that that is true faith? They believed
because they saw His signs. Is that good enough? All
right, we will leave it there.
Let us
go on. "But Jesus did not trust Himself unto them,
for that He knew all men, and because He needed not that
any one should bear witness concerning man; for He
Himself knew what was in man." Now note: 'now there
was a man... He knew what was in man, and He did not
trust Himself to man.' "Now there was a man of the
Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: the same
came unto Him by night, and said unto Him, Rabbi, we know
that Thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do
these signs that Thou doest, except He be from God."
But Jesus did not trust Himself to him, for He knew what
was in man. But what did He say? Jesus answered and said
unto him, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 'Except
a man be born anew, he cannot see the Kingdom of
God."'
Now we
will see whether Nicodemus was seeing or not.
"Nicodemus saith unto Him, 'How can a man be born
when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his
mother's womb, and be born?'" And Jesus did not
answer his question or explain anything to him. He did
not commit Himself to him. Jesus answered,
"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 'Except a man be
born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the
Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh;
and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit'"
(John 3:4-6). All right, now Nicodemus, who is he?
What is he? He is a representative of all Israel. In the
person of Nicodemus, that night all Israel was
represented. And to all Israel, in the person of
Nicodemus, Jesus said, "You cannot, you cannot. You
cannot see and you cannot enter. Flesh and blood cannot
inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. In order to see, and in
order to enter the Kingdom, you must be born from above.
Naturally, you are a man of the flesh. Only spiritual
people can enter a spiritual kingdom. Only spiritual
people can see that kingdom." And it is true for
Nicodemus.
When
Jesus had said these things, Nicodemus said, "Oh,
how can these things be? I do not understand this. I do
not see what you are talking about. How can these things
be?" Jesus said, "Art thou the teacher of
Israel and understandest not these things?" There
was nothing of all the history and all the teaching of
Israel for thousands of years that Nicodemus did not
know. He knew all the Old Testament. He knew all that
Moses had taught and written. He knew all that was in the
Psalms. He knew all that prophets had written. He knew it
all. You could not have taught Nicodemus anything about
Israel's history, and Israel's doctrine, and yet this man
had no ability or capacity for seeing the Kingdom of
Heaven.
I am
going to stop there for a minute. That is a very solemn
thing. It lies behind why I am here in Manila in these
days. I have not come with the idea that I can give you
any new teaching, I expect whatever I might say, somebody
here would be able to say, 'Well, we have heard that
before.' Somebody would say, 'Well, that is not new.'
That is not the point, dear friends. There is all the
difference in the world between knowing it all here, and
seeing it with your spiritual eyes. Now I say this is the
most solemn thing. One of the most tragic and sad things
that has come into my life has been this: I have known
people to come and accept all the teaching that we could
give, and to profess to believe it, and then to go out
and preach it, teaching it in various parts of the world.
And if you had seen them and heard them, you would have
believed that they knew it all, and then afterward they
have so acted as to deny it all. Just to repudiate it all
by their conduct and their behavior and by their way of
life. I have known that to happen in more than one case,
and it leaves you asking very big questions. They seem to
have taken it all. They seem to have believed it all.
They talk to other people about it everywhere. And then
they have taken a course in life which denies the whole
thing. And their whole position and teaching afterward is
a contradiction of all that they profess to believe.
What is
the trouble? You can only conclude that after all, they
did not see it. They saw it in their intellect. They
accepted it with their mind. They taught it with their
natural ability. But they never really saw it. You know,
if you have once really heard the voice of the Son of
God, you are never the same again. Many believed on His
name, because they saw the signs. But they were like
Nicodemus. They thought they understood. They would have
said that they understood, but Jesus did not commit
Himself unto them. He knew what was in man.
Let us
look at this man Nicodemus very closely. He is a very
intellectual man. He has a fine brain, he is a highly
educated man, he is a devoutly religious man, he is a
teacher of other people, and he is a lot more than that.
Everybody thinks that Nicodemus is a wonderful man. But
Nicodemus did not see the Kingdom of God. It is not a
matter of intellectual power at all. That may be very
useful in other matters. It is not a matter of education.
It is not a matter of being very religious. Nicodemus was
all that and much more. What is he?
Now we
come to this thing that Jesus said to Nicodemus,
"The wind bloweth where it listeth, thou hearest the
sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and
whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the
Spirit." What does that mean? What did that mean to
Nicodemus? What does it mean to us? Have you been in a
great storm of wind, on the land or on the sea? Have you
been in a hurricane? A really bad one? When the wind
really blows, what can you do about it? Can you withstand
it? Can you resist it? Can you say to it? 'Oh, I am not
going to be moved by you?' Can you say to the wind, 'Oh,
who are you? You are nothing?' What can you do about it?
You cannot do anything. You are utterly helpless. You are
just weak before the power of the wind. You are as
nothing before that mighty storm. What is the only thing
that you can do? Surrender, let go, you say, 'It is no
good, I cannot do anything with this. I must just let the
wind have its way.'
So is
everyone that is born of the Spirit. The wind bloweth
where it likes. You cannot say, 'Today wind you blow this
way, and tomorrow wind you blow the other way.' The wind
takes things into its own hands and blows where it likes.
And you can talk to the wind as much as you like, but it
will take no notice of you. So is everyone that is born
of the Spirit. What has Nicodemus got to learn? What have
you and I got to learn? That the Spirit of God is the
Sovereign Spirit of God. And the only thing to do is to
let go to the Holy Spirit. You will never see the
Kingdom, or enter into the Kingdom, until you have
surrendered to the Sovereignty of the Holy Spirit.
I am
going to close with this point. You know the disciples
were men who had a lot of self-confidence. When Jesus
said to them, 'All of you will be offended because of
Me.' And Peter, "this night, before the cock crow,
thou shalt deny Me." Peter pulled himself up
straight. He said, 'Though all should be offended with
Thee, yet will I not be offended. I will go with Thee
even to death.' Now note what the writer puts there, the
writer puts this in, "Likewise also said
all the disciples" (Matt. 26:31, 34, 35).
They
were all people with a good deal of self-confidence. They
believed that they could do wonderful things. And if they
were put to the test, they would come through it all
right. But look at the sad story, when Jesus was taken
into the judgment hall, even before He got to the
judgment hall in the garden, when Judas betrayed Him, and
the soldiers took hold of Him, it says they all forsook
Him, and fled. Now Jesus is crucified. What a poor lot of
men they are.
We hear
two of them speaking as they walk to Emmaus. And the
stranger draws near, and hearing what they were saying,
He said: "What manner of conversation is this that
you have as you walk, and are sad?" And they stood
still, and looked at Him, "Are you only a visitor in
Jerusalem? Do you not know what has happened there in
these days?" And He said, "What things?"
And they said, "The things concerning Jesus the
Nazarene, He was a prophet mighty in Word and in deed
before God. We had hoped that it was He Who should redeem
Israel, but our rulers condemned Him and crucified Him!'
I think we could take it that those two represented all
the others.
What had
happened? All their expectations had gone. All their
hopes were disappointed. All that they thought they
believed had broken down. We say, 'the bottom had gone
out of everything.' Dear friends, that had to happen. The
Holy Spirit could never come until that had happened.
Until these men had entirely lost all confidence in
themselves. Until these men had come to see that what was
in their heads was not in their hearts. They had heard it
with their ears, and seen it with their eyes, but they
had no spiritual understanding. They had to come to that
position before the Holy Spirit could come.
There
always has to be the devastation of the natural man,
before the spiritual man can be born. Before we can have
the spiritual understanding that leads us into the
Kingdom, we have got to have our own understanding
brought to an end. Many of you here tonight are thinking
that because you have got a good brain and a good
education, and that you are very religious, that is a
guarantee of your seeing the Kingdom. You are suffering
from a great illusion. Only spiritual men and women can
see and enter the Kingdom of God. "That which is
born of the flesh is flesh; but that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I say unto you, 'You
must be born anew.'" What is true about the
beginning of the Christian life, that is, entering into
the Kingdom, is also true about everything in the Kingdom
when we are there. We can know nothing of what is in this
Kingdom, only as we are growing spiritually. Very often
our intellectual life goes ahead of spiritual life, and
when that happens, we have to come back a long way and
start again. We sometimes think we know a great deal more
than we really do know. Only a life in the power of the
Holy Spirit learns the things of the Kingdom.
Now, I
am going to stop. I told you I was not going to give you
any new truth, everybody here could say, 'We know all
that', but how do you know it? Do you know it because
other people have said it? Do you know it because you
read it in the Bible? Do you know it because you have
studied it as you study other subjects? Or, can you say,
'Truly the Spirit of God has revealed in my heart what is
in that Book?' And can you go further and say, 'The
Spirit of God is continuously revealing in my heart the
things of the Kingdom?' Now, I must say one more
important thing, and it is this: We are in just as big a
crisis as Israel was in the days of Jesus. It may be that
the Lord knows what is coming on us very soon. We are so
often in danger of saying, 'Oh, it may happen there, but
it will never happen to us.' What has happened in China,
of course, will not happen in the Philippines. I beg to
suggest to you that it has happened once in the
Philippines. It can happen again. It can happen anywhere
in the world.
There is
a great unrest in all the nations. Men's hearts are
failing them for fear. Anything can happen almost any
day. It could come this way much more quickly than you
would believe. If all the outward forms of Christianity
were removed, what have you got left? If you could not
have your lovely meetings and enjoy your beautiful
spiritual fellowship, what have you got left? If you
could have no more teachers, what have you got left? That
is the mark of the crisis. The crisis is, what have we
got in our heart? What has really been revealed to us by
the Holy Spirit? What has become so much a part of our
life that you cannot take it away without taking our life
away? The end of this dispensation is going to be marked
by crisis like that. And that is the big question. How
much have we got by the Holy Spirit? "Have you
understood all these things?" Make sure that you
have spiritual understanding.