We have tried to impart
to you something of our strong feeling that we are at a
very critical point in the spiritual history of this
universe. To anyone who is observing the movement of
these times, very little argument or evidence is needed
to be brought to them that the movement is a very ominous
one. So far as the work of God on this earth is
concerned, it is a very serious situation. In different
forms, under different names, and in varying degrees of
intensity, the whole system of evil - that which is
opposed to God - is becoming greatly accentuated; and it
is perfectly clear that the effort is greatly increasing
to press God out of this world. The place of God, so far
as these things are concerned, is to be lessened here;
even in those countries which have been called Christian,
paganism is gaining the upper hand rapidly, and the
mention of God is greatly decreasing. That of course we
can see in other parts of the world in very much more
intensified forms. What was once an innate tendency, more
or less passive, has now become positive and is
increasingly so. All this is a tremendous moving together
of the one kingdom behind all, to raise the final issue -
who is going to be the reigning lord of this creation? I
could follow that very much more closely, raising many
questions such as that of religious liberty, the freedom
of mankind, and so on. But you see the direction of
things, and the evil activity, by whatever name it goes.
The one upshot of it all is this question of world
dominion. We can see clearly that it is resolving itself,
not into a number of issues but into one issue - which
kingdom is going to prevail? That is a more pressing
matter today than ever it was in the history of this
world.
All the Lord's people
on the earth today stand related to that great issue. So
far as we are concerned, we are being brought by the Lord
to face it, and it is in that connection that all that
has been said and will yet be said in these meditations
has its significance.
The
Kingdom of God God's Domain
So we stand back from
the details to try and focus this thing; and we note that
we are set in no less a realm than that of the Divine
purpose in creation. What is that? We can only speak of
it in very broad terms. We say, then, that it is all
gathered up into one phrase - the kingdom of God. We are
so familiar with the phrase that I think we may have
failed really to grasp what it means. Well, to begin
with, the kingdom of God is God's domain; and
the domain of God expresses Himself. It must be that. The
principle running through the whole Bible is that.
Wherever God will be, that sphere must be conformed to
Himself, it must take its character from Him, it must
express His own mind, it must express what He is Himself.
The kingdom of God is God's domain which is expressive of
Himself, which takes its character from Him, in which
everything to the smallest detail speaks of God, shows
what God is like.
The
Blessedness of the Kingdom
It speaks
of God, and therefore, taking its character from Him and
becoming expressive of Him, it is filled with the
blessedness of God; I know of no better word than that.
You know there is a little fragment, which unfortunately
is mistranslated in our version, "the gospel of the
blessed God" (1 Tim. 1:11), which is, literally,
'the gospel of the happy God.' You can retranslate what
is called the Sermon on the Mount in that way, not,
"Blessed are..." these and those and those, but
"Happy..." The Sermon on the Mount is, as you
know, the setting forth of the moral foundation of the
Kingdom, and it all represents a very blessed state of
things, so that, when God's kingdom is really established
and spread over all, it is full of the blessedness of
God. It is not just an imperious, despotic reign and rule
of God the All-Terrible. The kingdom of God is a very
blessed kingdom, and everybody in it is a very blessed, a
very happy, person; and that lies back of the very
existence of creation - the intention of God to extend
His kingdom.
The
Extension of the Kingdom on this Earth
This may,
in part, be a speculation, because we do not know the
condition of other planets and worlds. It may be that
that very blessed state always exists there, seeing that
God created all. It may be that this planet is the
prodigal, that it has swung out of its spiritual orbit
and lost the Kingdom and has to be restored. That is
speculation because we do not know, therefore we have to
use this phrase 'the extension of the Kingdom' with a
certain amount of reservation; but I think we are not
wrong in using it in this way - that God, so far as this
world was concerned, was set upon extending His kingdom;
that this world is the extension of the kingdom of God
which we have just defined, and that God created it to be
in some particular way a representation and expression of
His kingdom; in its spiritual character, to give a
manifestation of Himself. There is a great deal gathered
into that, of course, which we cannot stay to speak
about. The very fact that it was upon this earth that God
became incarnate - with all that followed, God being in
Christ reconciling the world unto Himself - and all the
wonderful revelation that has been given to us as to what
God is going to do on and by means of and toward this
earth, does at least suggest that the kingdom of God has
some particular and peculiar application to the world in
which you and I live.
But our
present purpose is to indicate the intention of God which
has been made unmistakably clear by revelation - that the
kingdom of God is the object and motive lying behind
this creation; and the kingdom of God is that of which we
have spoken - His domain, taking its character from Him,
and filled therefore with the blessedness of God Himself.
But the
kingdom of God is the sphere which is ruled by God - not
under delegated government, but under His own personal
government; and therefore infinite wisdom, infinite love
and infinite power are the governing factors of His
kingdom.
Infinite
wisdom is a governing factor in the kingdom of God; wisdom
far, far outstripping all the accumulated wit and
understanding and knowledge of man to fathom; yes,
infinite wisdom. Infinite love, for God is love; and
infinite power. Well, that lies behind. That is the
kingdom of God in the meaning of this creation.
The
Kingdom on Earth Entrusted and Betrayed
(a) The First Adam
But we
move to that terrible scene when that kingdom, for its
realisation, had to be entrusted to man. Seeing that it
is a moral kingdom - not just a mechanical one, not
something brought about by the sovereign determination of
God irrespective of man's response - man had to
co-operate by his own free will. We know how God
committed the interests of His kingdom to man - in a
sense, made man the custodian of His great purposes; and
then the tragedy of the great betrayal, where man failed
Him and betrayed His interests into the hands of a
hostile one of whom we have spoken in our previous
meditations, who had purposed in his heart to usurp God's
place, and who, finding that that did not work,
determined that he would have a counter kingdom to God's.
Man betrayed the trust into the hands of that rival, so
that, for the time being, the kingdom of God, so far as
this creation is concerned, was suspended. But God did
not abandon His intention because of the betrayal; so
that, although the whole race which should have been the
sphere of the realization of that Divine kingdom had been
betrayed into those other hands, God moved in relation to
His intention to take out of that race a people.
(b)
Israel
We know
the movement of God - first one man, then a family, a
tribe, a nation; an elect nation in which all the meaning
of the kingdom of God was to be illustrated in principle.
It is a very wonderful thing to recognise fully the
significance of that elect nation, that chosen people,
that nation out from the nations but not reckoned among
the nations. Why did God choose Israel? - in order to
give in the midst of the nations a demonstration, an
illustration, of the kingdom of God; a temporal and
partial, but nevertheless a very true, expression of the
kingdom of God, where the government is theocratic, and
where God, having things according to His own mind and
being able to express Himself, shows what a blessed thing
it is for man to live under that government; for there is
that side of Israel's history which is a wonderful, even
if imperfect, expression of what God means His whole
domain to be. You hear of a land flowing with milk and
honey and all that there was therein; you see that people
really settled in the great days of their national
history with overflowing wealth, with prosperity, with
everything abounding unto them in that Divinely-chosen
land of unexampled productiveness. It was indeed the
centre of the earth, selected by God because it could, in
a temporal way, set forth something of what things could
be like if God were all. In the greatest days of Israel's
history - the time of Solomon - the land was overflowing
with wealth. Read those chapters telling of the gold and
the silver and the precious stones and all the fulness
that there was in that kingdom. It is a wonderful story.
Why? Simply because God is seeking to show in temporal
and imperfect terms, but in such a way as to be better
than anything else known in the history of this world,
what the whole domain of God will be when His kingdom is
established; and so He chose a nation, in order that in
that nation - as far as could be in conditions such as
those which exist spiritually in this universe - there
should be some faint reflection and indication of what
the kingdom of God is, where God is all in all.
But that
nation failed; they too betrayed God - and into the hands
of the same enemy; for the cry of the prophets throughout
was against the idolatry of Israel, and idolatry is, in
principle and background, control by the evil powers in
this universe. God was betrayed again; but He was not
defeated, He did not give up. He was moving in relation
to His original intention.
The
Kingdom Secured Spiritually in the Last Adam
We go on
through His movements to the greatest event of all - the
advent of His Son. "The final Adam to the... rescue
came"; with Him and in Him the Kingdom. And He was
not now dealing with temporal things, with earthly
conditions. In the first place He was going to the root
of the matter, to the primary causes, not the secondary,
as we saw in our previous meditation; getting right back
behind everything, in His Cross dealing with
principalities and powers and the whole world system of
evil rulership. We have yet to see more about that.
But from
that point we find the new movement in relation to the
Kingdom. It is not merely temporal and earthly; that is,
it is not just a matter of time and of things here. It is
that ultimate realm of the Kingdom. The new movement from
that time is a spiritual one in relation to the Kingdom.
The kingdom of God has come. Where has it come? It has
come in Christ. And where is Christ? He has come into a
Body, a spiritual Body, the Church which is His Body.
That is the new elect, and yet the eternally elect,
nation for this purpose; not an earthly thing, not a
thing of time, not a thing now of temporal matters such
as gold and silver and precious stones. Let the religious
systems, whether called by Christian titles or not, be
interested in what is ornate and luxurious on this earth,
to make an impression; that is not the kingdom of God.
"The kingdom of God is not meat and drink"
(Rom. 14:17). This kingdom is spiritual, and it is now
embodied in the Christ corporate; He Himself being Head
of His Body the Church, the eternally elect Body. This is
not some after-thought of God, something that has arisen
because everything else has failed. God is not a God of
dispensations, a God of then and now, but He is in the
eternal Now. With Him a million years hence are as
yesterday. He, from the beginning, foresaw, foreknew,
foredetermined, predestinated. Those are the great words
we come upon when we come to this particular vessel of
His eternal purpose. So, in the fulness of time, Christ
personally comes, and then constitutes for Himself a
Body, and in that Body the kingdom of God from eternity
is constituted.
God
All in All
How? On
what ground? That is God's first sphere of domain where
He is all in all, where the devil has no place, nor man
as such. That is the great meaning of the Cross at which
we are trying to get, where no systems of men are the
ruling things, where God is all in all. You must remember
that that is the end toward which everything is moving.
It is moving through and by Christ in the first instance,
and then through Christ through His Church, back to God
complete. "...he shall deliver up the kingdom to
God, even the Father;... that God may be all in all"
(1 Cor. 15:24-28).
That is
the setting in which we are found. God is all in all, to
begin with. Is He? Well, that is the whole battleground
of our inner life. It was that point which we reached in
our previous meditation. There we shall resume later on,
if He wills. But it is the question, first of all, of God
being all in all, the Lord being Lord, and there being no
other lordship - the lordship of our will, our likes, our
dislikes, our preferences, our prejudices, our
selectivenesses, and all that belongs to us - that rises
up and disputes the place and way and will of God. No
other feature must have lordship, but He must be Lord of
all. I do not expect literally to see Jesus Christ riding
on a white horse with a name written on His garment,
"King of Kings, and Lord of Lords." I believe
that is a symbol of the great spiritual truth that He
will ride in majesty as Lord of Lords; He will trample
down every other lordship and bring it into subjection to
Himself, and - metaphorically, but none the less very
truly - ride forth triumphantly as King. That is the end,
and that absolute supremacy which He has attained He will
hand up to the Father, for the Father's ultimate
satisfaction in accordance with the purpose which He
purposed before the foundation of the world. The whole
question of the kingdom of God is resolved in the very
first instance into an inward matter in the case of every
believer, as to whether He is Lord.
I said
just now that that is the battleground in which we find
ourselves continually; but, blessed be God, it is not all
defeat! There is the mighty energy of the Spirit of God
that makes it possible for us to cry - "when I fall,
I shall arise" (Micah 7:8). That is not the
assertion of self-assurance and self-sufficiency, but of
faith that knows there is a power that worketh in us. The
mighty energy of the Spirit of God is working the powers
of the Kingdom in us, the powers of a coming age.
The
Kingdom of God Within and in the Midst
And those
powers are firstly spiritual, to bring this about. You
and I, in this terrible conflict between the two kingdoms
which is focused in our very souls - you and I, frail,
faulty, a thousand times failing and slipping and
blundering and erring - are nevertheless being carried on
by a power and an energy that is not our own, that will
bring us finally to the place of absolute ascendancy over
the powers that are set against us. God is working that
out in us; it is His kingdom. The kingdom of God, the
kingdom of heaven, is within you. It is an inward matter;
that is where it begins. And it is in the midst of you -
which expresses the corporate setting of the Kingdom; in
the midst of the Church, a people secured and constituted
by God and in whom first of all His absolute lordship
shall be established.
I must add
a word about the other aspect - that the Church is a
people in whom the blessedness of God is known. Well,
there is a sense in which that is true, but not true
enough of us yet. The pressure and the intensity of this
great spiritual warfare does register upon us, it does
take its toll. This persistent determination of the enemy
to wear us out leaves its mark, and we are not too
characterised by the blessedness of God's kingdom. But it
does break out sometimes. We sing some of those songs of
Zion together, we speak of the great day of Christ's soon
appearing, we remind ourselves of all the wonders of His
Cross - 'Oh, the sweet wonders of that Cross' - and when
we dwell upon these things the glory of His kingdom does
well up; it shows itself from time to time. Perhaps that
is one of the great blessednesses of Christian
fellowship. We gather in meetings and in the Spirit, and
the real nature of the Kingdom does come up and show
itself. It is there, and more or less it is abidingly
there, consciously there, all the time; but we are
conscious too that we are up against things, we are in a
grim fight. Yet in this kingdom we have to know more and
more of the blessedness of God, the happiness of God. We
must rebuke ourselves for what contradicts that and
remind ourselves that, after all, we are a very happy
people. "Happy is the people whose God is the
Lord" (Ps. 144:15).
The
Church to Administer and Manifest the Kingdom
But then
the matter does not end there. Israel were a chosen
nation, not to be an end in themselves, but to display to
all the nations what the kingdom of God is, and to
administer that kingdom in the midst of the nations.
There were times when other nations got the benefits of
Israel. When they were not against Israel, when they were
amenable or favourable, great blessings came to them
because of Israel, and so it has been since then. I am
not at all sure that we have not derived a great deal of
blessing in this country because of the attitude in past
years toward that nation - even in their rejection.
"I will bless them that bless thee, and him that
curseth thee will I curse" (Gen. 12:3); and that
holds good. But in a very direct way, when Israel were
according to God's mind, in line with Him, people were
blessed because of them. And the Church is not an end in
itself. We find in "Revelation" the end - the
city is in its place of administration, and it is the
nations that are deriving the benefit. The light of the
nations, the leaves for the health of the nations, the
water for the life of the nations, issue from that city.
The Church, then, is to be so constituted as to be God's
instrument of administration and manifestation of His
kingdom.
The
Practical Issue - Ascendancy over the Kingdom of
Darkness
But while we are set in
that as the ultimate, and all the practical questions and
challenges and issues bound up with that have to be
brought home to our hearts, the whole matter resolves
itself for the time being into one of registering all
that is meant by the kingdom of God, the mighty
sovereignty of God in Jesus Christ, not now so much upon
kings and rulers of this earth as upon those
principalities and powers and world rulers of this
darkness, those spiritual hosts of wickedness in the
heavenlies. That is where we are brought to, and if I
were to gather into one statement what I believe to be
the Divine intention in our present meditations it is
this - to seek to bring us, as amongst that people, to
the place where we count infinitely more in the spiritual
realm than we now do, where we have to be reckoned with
by the powers of evil back of this world system. It is
there that value to God is decided in this dispensation.
Now you can reject all
that we are saying and still be saved. In order to be
saved, all that you need is to "believe on the Lord
Jesus, and thou shalt be saved" (Acts 16:31). With
that you can go to heaven, you can be delivered from
condemnation and from hell, without having any of this
that we are talking about. Well, if that is all you want,
you can have it. But I ask you this, are you as concerned
to be useful to God as you are to be saved? That is
another question. The matter of your value to God is
decided here - what account are you to Him in the realm
of the spiritual forces in this universe which are
opposed to Him? How much account does the devil take of
you? How much are you a menace to his kingdom? Not, how
many services and meetings are you taking, how many
addresses are you giving, how much running about are you
doing; not all those etceteras in Christian activity; but
how much impact do you register upon that dark, evil
kingdom? It is just there that your value to God is
decided. Well, if the devil gives you a very bad time and
has made you know you are a marked man, a marked woman,
take comfort; it shows you are of some value to God. But
we do not always remember that. We have terribly bad
times under the hand of the devil and get under them, we
think how terrible and wicked he is, we get occupied with
that, and forget - perhaps it is a kind of humility -
that we must mean something, after all. That is where
things count with God in this dispensation. It is not how
many structures you can put up nor how big an
organisation you can create on this earth, it is not
anything in the temporal realm at all. It is, in all,
through all, by all, how much is counting against the
kingdom which is opposed to the kingdom of God? That is
the challenge which we must seriously f ace.
The
Kingdom Present in Principle Now
The kingdom of God is
something very much more vital than we have realised. Oh,
what a pity that men have so systematized this thing as
to rob it of its real spiritual value! Some tell us, for
instance, that the Kingdom is for a coming age, that this
is not the Kingdom age. That is not true. The kingdom of
God is a present issue, the supreme issue of this whole
creation; and it is concerning that that all the forces
of darkness, under whatever name they may be working on
this earth, are converging under one evil, spiritual
government and overlord - to make it impossible for the
kingdom of God to be established and extended in this
creation. Well, Christian people know it. The big
question in missionary magazines now is whether we can go
on with our work in many places, whether we must
withdraw, whether there is any prospect for extending in
the future. Doors are closing. But what about God's
kingdom? Is He Lord? Is He going to be pushed out of His
universe? Well, the picture that the Word of God gives at
the end is not that, but just the opposite. That is the
battle we are in. It is a spiritual one, after all. The
Lord bring home to our hearts the seriousness of the
challenge, and help us to see that now it is a personal
matter; the kingdom of God is a personal matter.