"For
they that dwell in Jerusalem, and their rulers, because
they knew him not, nor the voices of the prophets which
are read every sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning
him" (Acts 13:27).
We were
taking note, in our last chapter, of a contrast which is
marked between the old dispensation and the new: of how
much there is to be missed if there is a continuing in
the fixed order of the old, and how much there is to be
gained by moving into the essential nature of the new.
This is found focused for us in the passage we have read.
Without
repeating too much of our previous meditation, may I just
say that it is perfectly clear in the New Testament, from
the Book of the Acts onwards, that the people in the new
dispensation, the dispensation of the Holy Ghost, were
required to keep completely free from everything set,
from everything of a conclusive position, excepting
fundamental facts of the faith. So far as
their mentality was concerned - yes, their religious,
traditional mentality, the mentality which had been
formed by their very birth into Israel, by all that they
had received through training and teaching from their
infancy upward - they were to be always open to the Lord
even for the revolutionary. They were called upon to come
into a place where that no longer held them, but where
the Lord was perfectly free to do the revolutionary thing
in them and make them revise all their thinking - in the
light, not of anything contradictory, but of God's fuller
meaning in all that they knew of the Word of God; where
they acknowledged that the Lord really had 'more light
and truth to break forth from His Word' - indeed, so much
more as to make all that they already knew seem as
nothing.
You
find, therefore, that this necessity precipitated crises
in their spiritual course, and sometimes brought them to
a standstill, where a tremendous conflict was set up; but
the Holy Spirit was sufficiently in possession to win,
and to be able to carry them further. That happened with
Peter, on the housetop at Joppa. It happened with Saul of
Tarsus. There is no doubt about it that, in acting as he
did, Saul was acting upon the basis of the Old Testament
Scriptures. He thought he had the full support of the
Word of God for what he was doing. When he met Jesus of
Nazareth out from heaven as he went to Damascus, although
he capitulated there and then and acknowledged Jesus as
his Lord, his great problem was, 'How am I going to
reconcile my Old Testament with this?' He went away into
Arabia, and probably for two years he was occupied there
with the reconciliation of the Old Testament with the
fact of Jesus as Christ and Lord. And he got well
through, came back from his desert, and, caught in the
resistless stream of the Spirit, became a mighty servant
of God.
We want
to go on a little further now. We are saying that here,
in this new dispensation as represented in the Book of
the Acts, the prophets are being re-interpreted, or their
inner meaning is being brought to light, with all that
that inner meaning implies. We know that the inauguration
of the dispensation on the day of Pentecost was
accompanied by a quoting of the prophets. It began with
Joel - "This is that which hath been spoken through
the prophet Joel" (Acts 2:16) - and went on with
other Old Testament quotations pointing to that time.
Now, either by direct citation or fulfilment (as clearly
seen in the case of the Joel prophecy) or by an
unmistakable implication, the prophets are here brought
in in many connections.
CHRIST ALONE THE MEASURE OF WHAT
IS OF GOD
You pass
from chapter 2 of the Book of the Acts, and go on to
chapter 5 - the very terrible, dark story of Ananias and
Sapphira. Where did the prophets come in in that?
In the
first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, you have what was
introduced spiritually on the day of Pentecost. There you
have that wonderful, though difficult, vision of the
living creatures, the wheels full of eyes, the Spirit in
the wheels, the Spirit of life going, always going: the
Spirit, life, eyes, and the irresistible movement from
heaven in relation to the Man upon the throne.
"Acts" begins there. The Lord Jesus was
received up, out of this world; and in relation to that
Man in the throne there is this going on here, touching
the earth and yet detached from it; touching, but not
fixed here; a heavenly thing. And that is moving with
tremendous directness and deliberation. That is like the
second chapter of "Acts". The Man in the
throne; the wheels, the eternal counsels of God, the
goings of God from eternity; the living creatures, the
Church ; the life within, the Spirit of life there, with
His perfect vision - "full of eyes". Is that
not what is here?
Yes; but
that is the beginning of "Ezekiel". At the
other end of his prophecy you have this - away, up from
the earth - a vision, a picture, of a temple, a spiritual
house, very fully depicted and defined, with every detail
marked. The man who leads the prophet round goes
measuring, measuring, giving the measure of every detail.
This house is all of the Holy Ghost. It is all a measure
of Christ, in every part. This thing is not on the earth;
it is heavenly measurement. Before you can have the river
issuing from the sanctuary, flowing on in increasing
volume, deepening and widening, making everything on its
banks to live, and swallowing up death in victory as it
proceeds, you have to have the house utterly according to
God; and then the one overall statement about it is:
"the whole limit thereof round about shall be most
holy" (Ezekiel 43:12). It is all of God; it is all
of Christ, His risen, exalted Son. It is out from Him,
through a Church constituted on a heavenly pattern, that
the life flows; and it is flowing here in
"Acts".
HOLINESS THE LAW OF WHAT IS OF GOD
Now
Ananias and his wife violate the very governing law of
that house - holiness; and what happens? That is where
Israel failed to hear the voices of the prophets. We
said, in our previous meditation, that they carried on
the external formalities of the temple, the daily
services, the ritual and the liturgy, adopted the forms
and the vestments, but the inner life did not correspond.
It was the cry of the prophets that a system was being
maintained and preserved out of relation to the inner
life of the people. The prophets throughout are crying
for holiness. The trouble lay there. And what does this
matter of holiness really mean? When you really get to
the heart of it, what is it? "Why hath Satan filled
thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?" (Acts 5:3).
That is the unholiness. The act of Ananias and Sapphira
implies something deeper - that sinister mind behind;
Satan finding an opportunity of getting into these holy
precincts, this heavenly realm, corrupting and polluting,
and establishing his lie. "He is a liar, and the
father thereof", said the Lord (John 8:44). A lie
right in the presence of the Holy Ghost! The life of the
Spirit and the Spirit of life do not just go on ignoring
conditions. They require that first of all everything
shall be constituted on God's heavenly pattern; that is
only saying, constituted on the pattern of Christ His
Son; that it shall be really an expression and
representation of the Lord Jesus by the Holy Spirit.
THE SPIRIT SPONTANEOUSLY
REPRODUCES THE NATURE OF CHRIST
Now, I
am not going back behind what I said earlier. I am not
saying that we must take the Bible in its letter and
phrases and make a mould, a scriptural mould, which we
think is the New Testament order. That is not the point
at all. Development did not come about in the beginning
in that way. Every fresh reproduction of the Church, in
any part of the Roman Empire or beyond, in the days of
the Apostles, came about, not by taking thither a fixed
mould and trying to pour people into that mould and to
reproduce the shape of things that existed somewhere
else. It began with life - life from heaven - "the
Holy Ghost sent forth from heaven" (1 Peter 1:12).
And wherever the believers went, two things were
imperative: firstly, baptism, as a testimony to the fact
that an old order was finished, and that everything now
had to have as new a beginning as anybody must have who
has died and been buried; and secondly, the gift of the
Holy Ghost, the Spirit of life, coming to take up
residence within those concerned.
When the
Holy Spirit comes in and has His way, He relieves you of
all the responsibility of New Testament order; you have
no more burden and responsibility about that than a tree
has in producing leaves and fruit. No tree ever spends
hours and hours worrying and fretting, 'How can I bring
forth some leaves? how can I develop my fruit?' It just
lives - it yields to the life process; and the rest
happens. That was the glorious spontaneity of New
Testament churches - they just came about. And the Lord
must have them like that - constituted from heaven by the
Holy Ghost; not man bringing his form of church and
church government, his mould, his conception of things,
and saying, 'This is our conception of a Bible church.'
No, it is the product of life. As that Spirit of life was
allowed to work, things took a certain course and a
certain form, and that was the form of Christ. The Holy
Spirit took responsibility. "I will build my
church", the Lord Jesus had said (Matthew 16:18),
and He meant it; and He is found doing it here.
THE NATURE OF CHRIST IS UTTER
HOLINESS
But
remember: Christ, in the innermost expression of what He
is, is very holy. "The holy thing which is
begotten", said the angel to Mary, "shall be
called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35, A.R.V.). He
"offered himself without blemish unto God"
(Hebrews 9:14). He was "... in all points tempted
like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15). Christ
was and is without sin. He is infinitely holy. The great
antagonist of Christ, that unholy one, is always seeking
to destroy what is of Christ, by introducing a
contradiction, a lie, giving the lie to the holiness of
Christ; and that is what happened here.
I do
feel that this is a very solemn matter for us all. I have
not said this without a very great deal of exercise in my
own heart. It is not an easy thing to say. Some of us are
not ignorant of Satan's devices. Who has a right to talk
about holiness? Who is sufficient in holiness to talk to
other people about it? Holiness is what Christ is. Who of
us could say we are like that?
THE SPIRIT ARRESTED BY CONSCIOUS
UNHOLINESS
Unholiness
is that which is not consistent with Christ. It is the
opposite of what Christ is; it is a contradiction of
Christ. The mighty purpose of God, the mighty course of
the Spirit of God - all that has come in with this
dispensation - can be suddenly brought under arrest, and
a tragedy occur, if you or I knowingly dabble with
unholiness. "His wife also being privy to it"
(Acts 5:2) means that this was conscious. I am not
speaking of the unholiness which is ours in general -
though we are not going to condone or make light of it.
What I am speaking about now is deliberate sin in the
very presence of the Holy Spirit. Ananias and Sapphira
deliberately planned to give to the Lord only a part of
the proceeds of their sale, but to represent it as being
the whole. If they had been really in the good of the
regime of the Holy Spirit, they would have known the
Spirit saying to them: 'That is not right - it is a
contradiction of Christ.' And may we not confidently
conclude that the Holy Spirit did warn them? Were there
not two voices which, though perhaps not audible, yet
spoke in them, the one warning from evil, the other
suggesting this deceit - the voice of the Spirit and the
voice of Satan? They were disposed to listen to the
tempter's voice, and Satan 'filled their hearts'. That is
the kind of unholiness we are speaking about.
We are
in the dispensation of the Spirit. If we are really in
the good of this dispensation, that is, if the Holy
Spirit is in us, He will tell us - He does tell us. If we
will, we can know the mind of the Spirit on all issues of
right and wrong. But until we yield to the Spirit,
everything is in suspense. The whole life of the Spirit
is brought under arrest. The Lord was very positive in
laying down the principles for the dispensation. He left
us in no doubt as to what His attitude is toward this
sort of thing. If He does not act in the same way every
time, and if we do not fall down dead, it does not mean
that something just as tragic does not take place in us.
The Spirit is arrested, and spiritual death comes in, and
there is no going on from that time. There is a sense in
which, spiritually, we also are 'carried out'.
Yes,
this is a solemn matter. Forgive me if I seem to be
oppressive, but this matter of holiness is so very
pertinent, and so very much bound up with all that we are
seeking to see - all the wonderful meaning of the
Spirit's being here and of His being able to go right on;
life and fullness, growing depth, increasing vitality,
ever fuller knowledge, the swallowing up of death in
victory. That is to be the spiritual existence of the
Church, but that can all be arrested by some unholiness,
known to be such and not dealt with before God,
repudiated and refused. Whatever that may mean to you in
its particular application, remember that it is a
very dangerous thing to have an unsettled controversy
with the Holy Ghost - dangerous not only for you, but
perhaps for many others who will be affected.
THE PERIL OF PERSISTING IN
UNHOLINESS
Oh, the
tragedy of a controversy with the Lord not cleared up!
Surely, seeing the setting of a matter like this, we must
face the specific things from the standpoint of the great
background. You have not an adequate motive for dealing
with particular points of outstanding unholiness unless
you see this whole matter in its great setting. If it is
merely something personal, relating only to us, we may or
we may not feel it is worth clearing up. But look! The
whole course of God's eternal counsels, coming down our
way and gathering us in: the mighty purpose of God to be
realised in and through us: the far-reaching range of
those purposes of God which would find us as their
vehicle and channel: all that God would do of making
Himself known to us for the sake of others: all brought
under arrest because of that! Yes, a personal ministry, a
great ministry which might be very far-reaching, may all
be set aside - the Lord, in keeping with His own nature,
would have to set it aside - if there were a persistence
in something about which He had spoken but which was not
dealt with. It is a tremendous background.
The
psalmist said: "I know, 0 Lord, that thy judgments
are righteous, and that in faithfulness thou hast
afflicted me" (Psalm 119:75). What did he mean?
Evidently he had gone through some severe handling by the
Lord, and as he looked at what his wrong involved for the
Lord's people - how many were affected and how it touched
the Lord's honour - he said: 'Only the faithfulness of
God lies behind His dealing with me: He has to be
faithful to Himself and faithful to me, and not let me
off; and He has to be faithful to His own nature, His own
righteousness, because so much is bound up with it.' May
the Lord show us just what that means, and give us grace.
Oh, we need protecting, we need safeguarding in this
matter of a holy walk with God; we need to clear up every
controversy with Him because there is so much bound up
with it.
We see
that those that dwelt in Jerusalem, and their rulers and
those whom they represented, would not clear up the
controversy which God had with them, and they were set
aside, and another nation bringing forth the fruits of
the Kingdom was brought in. What a loss! And do you think
that the Lord will deal with us differently? It may not
be our salvation that will go, but surely our vocation is
of some consequence! The Lord give us grace!