Reading: Luke 2:25-38; 1 Cor. 10:11;
Heb. 8:13, 9:26.
We are
being led at this time to take note of the fact that we
are at an end-time, and that God does a peculiar work at
such a time. Things become very strange and very
difficult at an end-time; everything seems to be thrown
into a state of disturbance, upheaval, intense pressure
and conflict. The great conflicting forces in this
universe register very terribly and intensely upon that
which is of God and upon those who are of account to Him,
so that there often arises the sense that this is an
actual end, and a question as to what more is possible.
Inwardly we feel that the way is becoming exceedingly
hedged up: 'frustration' is the word which seems to
prevail, and outwardly everything is in a state of
serious and great question as to the future. Indeed, it
becomes more persistently the experience of the true
people of God that they could give up and abandon
everything. The ways in which this works out are
numerous, but the whole effect is to paralyse and put out
of commission that which is of God and bring it to a
complete standstill. It is this, then, that will govern
our consideration at this time - that we are in an
end-time and that in end-times the work of God takes a
particular form and is of a peculiar nature. It obviously
becomes supremely important and necessary for the Lord's
people to know the time in which they live, what the
portents are, and what it is that God would do at such a
time.
I
suggest to you that that constitutes a real reason for
getting together in serious and solemn conference, for it
is not something that we can take just as a part of a
sequence of meditations. Our consideration of it may be
supremely crucial and in a peculiar way related to a time
in the history of this world, and of God's work in this
world, which is of tremendous importance and will not be
repeated.
Now,
this matter of the end-time and God's work therein is
brought very fully and clearly into view by Simeon and
Anna. There is no doubt that they represent firstly an
end-time - an end-time dispensationally and an end-time
with regard to their own age, for they were both advanced
in years. And then they also represent God's service at
such a time. Simeon used the word of himself - "Now
lettest thou thy servant (bondservant, the word
is) depart, Lord, according to thy word, in
peace." "Thy servant." Anna was found
continuing in the temple in fastings and supplications
day and night, not leaving it, a prophetess thus occupied
in the house of God; and if that is not a picture of
service, what is?
FULLNESS OF RIPE AGE CARRIED ON IN
FRESHNESS OF NEW LIFE
I am, in the first place, going to take up
the age factor. Let me say at once that, although I am
going to talk about old age, my message is mainly to
young people. If that sounds hardly kind and fair to
others, let me put it in this way: age is not a matter of
years at all. You may be young in years and yet be far
beyond your years, or you may be old in years and far
behind your years. This is a spiritual matter. This age
factor, as represented by Simeon and Anna, corresponds to
the word in Hebrews 8, "He hath made the first
old. But that which is becoming old and waxeth aged is
nigh unto vanishing away"; and again, to the
words in 1 Cor. 10, "upon whom the ends of the
ages are come." That makes us very old, does it
not?
Well now, what have we as the picture
before us? We have an aged man with a babe in his arms,
at once bringing an end and a beginning together, an end
handed on to a beginning, a beginning taking up all the
fullness represented by the old. It is the old passing
over into and giving place to the new. If we get the
Divine idea, the spiritual thought, about this - an aged
man with a babe in his arms - we at once see that from
the Divine standpoint that is the Divine principle. Age
is not diminution, contraction, declension, depreciation.
That is not God's mind about old age. There is a passage
in Isaiah which says, "The child shall die a
hundred years old" (Isa. 65:20). There is a
state, a condition, a realm in which a child shall die
one hundred years old. It means there is a principle here
- that there is a realm in which age has the child
present, has the babe there in its arms. At one hundred
years old the child has not gone, it is still the child.
The Divine thought about old age is rather that of
fullness, fullness unto the enrichment of what is yet to
be, and which is about to come in; to provide a heritage;
not to pass out and take everything with it and for that
to be the end, but to have something very full and rich
to be taken up and carried on and expressed in newness,
freshness, youthfulness; all the values of a long history
brought out in new ways. That is what is here.
You know the instances in the Bible of
infancy linked with old age. How much is made of this
spiritual principle in relation to Abraham and Isaac!
When Abraham was old, Isaac was born. The fact is taken
up to express this - that when there is a great
accumulation of history and spiritual knowledge, God will
reproduce that, He will give it form again and yet again.
"In Isaac shall thy seed be called" (Gen.
21:12). Or again, Jacob and Benjamin, the
child of his old age; and what a lot Benjamin represents
spiritually. Then we have the case of Eli, who was very
old, and the child Samuel. It is not only a beautiful
picture, but it is a very significant one, that child
alongside of the aged Eli. God started there again, right
in the presence of something that was in itself about to
pass out, but taking up all its spiritual values to
reproduce them and bring out all their intrinsic worth.
Here again are the aged Simeon and Anna, - by certain
computations we arrive at the conclusion that Anna was
106 years old at this point - these two with a babe. It
is not an end with God; it is something very much more
than that.
ALL FORMER SPIRITUAL VALUES NOW
CENTRED IN CHRIST
So the inclusive thing represented by
Simeon and Anna is fullness by fulfilment. Firstly, it
was the completing of a phase, the gathering up of all
past spiritual values, as represented in these two, into
a new and wholly spiritual order, the order of Christ.
Simeon so clearly speaks of that
transition mentioned in the first chapter of the letter
to the Hebrews: "God, having of old time spoken
unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and
in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken
unto us in his Son." It is a transition from the
fragmentary, the partial, the occasional, the diverse, to
the complete, to the inclusiveness of the unified, and to
the final. That is the transition here represented. The
bringing in of the Babe, the Christ, holding Him in his
arms, was in figure, simply the gathering up of all that
had been of God in the past, and centering it in Christ,
and seeing how He takes it up and is the fulfilment of it
and transcends it.
See
Simeon, then, as to the past. Something was happening now
with the coming in of this Babe, the coming in of the
Christ. It is not without a certain significance that
Matthew's Gospel has been put out of chronological order
and put into the first place in our New Testament. In
that Gospel, again and again Matthew uses this phrase,
"that the scriptures might be fulfilled,"
or, "that it might be
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet." It
is characteristic of Matthew's Gospel. It pointed
backward to all the Scriptures which were looking toward
this Christ in Whom they were to find their fulfilment,
their realisation, their finality and their
transcendence. All the hopes, all the expectations, all
the promises, all the foreshadowings and all the
forecastings, were gathered into the hands of Simeon that
day as he held that Babe. The Hope Of Israel was in his
hands. What a long hope, what a chequered hope! Even
through all their failure when black and dark despair
seemed sometimes to have settled down upon them and they
cried that their way was hidden from the Lord and their
judgment passed away from their God, still they cherished
a hope. Through all their failure, through all their
sufferings, they still held to the hope that there was
something yet to be. Through all the judgments which were
poured upon them from heaven for their sins, they still
clung to the promises and believed that they would one
day see the salvation of the Lord. Oh, here it is all in
the hands of Simeon! All that past is here present in
those arms. That Little One answers to it all. The Hope
of Israel!
This
expectation and hope has reached its consummation in
these very two who, with others, were looking for the
consolation of Israel, the redemption of Jerusalem. They
were looking; and what a day it was of little prospect,
of seeming hopelessness! and yet there were those who
were still hoping, still believing, still clinging. And
there that day stood Simeon, holding in his arms the
fulfilment of all the hopes and expectations and promises
- holding the complete embodiment of the full thought of
God. Simeon held all that in his hands, and by his words
and attitude and spirit you can see him projecting that
into the future, holding it forth. "This child is
set for..." - the whole future is going to be
affected by Him. It was a tremendous moment.
ALL TYPES AND SYSTEMS TRANSCENDED BY
CHRIST IN PERSON
Ah, but
note, it carried with it a stripping of all framework of
earthly systems. It was no longer that which encased
Christ, it was Christ Himself. All the encasements of
Christ were finished at that moment. What a moment it
was! The encasing in types and figures, symbols and
prophecies and the whole system of Judaism, that whole
framework was shattered and stripped off that day, and
the manifest reality of all that had been inherent and
intrinsic in the past was in Simeon's hands, to be handed
on to the future. It was a crisis, a turning of the
dispensations. It was a passing from all that was merely
of earthly systems in relation to Christ, to the Christ
Himself: and that is no small thing, and that is the mark
of the end-time.
See what
we come to. Christ Himself emerges from the framework of
things, from all the scaffolding of past ages, from all
the figurative and typological and symbolical, and
transcends the things by His own Person. There is all the
difference between Himself and His things. Right up to
that time, God's people had been occupied with the things
concerning the Christ: now they were to be occupied with
the Christ Himself. It was a tremendous moment. This is
what will be at an end-time. That is the point. An
end-time is transition from a lot that has had to do with
Christ to Christ Himself, transition from frameworks to
the essential and the intrinsic, transition from all the
works and the things related to Christ to that which is
known of Him personally. All the other is going to be
stripped off, and we are in the day when that stripping
off has seriously commenced. The issue is going to be -
may I put it this way? - how much we have actually in our
hands of the very Christ Himself, how much we are
occupied with the things concerning Him, the encasement
of Christ.
This
work of transition is going to be done, for this is an
end-time movement. I see it here so clearly, the
pre-figuring of the prophesying of that other end-time
which we have in the book of the Revelation, when the man
child is brought forth, and the ultimate things are in
view. At such a time everything will be tested and
challenged by the forces that will be let loose from
hell. There started, with the bringing in of this first
man child, the Lord Jesus, a loosing of Satanic and
hellish forces which has gone on and on, right through
this dispensation. Herod heard, and loosed his sword,
occasioning a terrible massacre, in an endeavour to
compass the death of this One; and from that time onward
hell was out (and has continued to be out) not against a
system but against a living Person. So here we see the
man child presented and the tremendous reactions that are
immediately provoked.
Pass right on to Revelation 12, and there
you see a corporate company called the man child. (It is
corporate because the language is "and they
overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb.") This
is the corporate counterpart of the individual, of the
personal. When that corporate expression of the man child
is presented in the book of the Revelation, what have
you? - a most violent release of evil forces for the
destruction of everything that speaks of Christ.
GOD'S END-TIME WORK - EVERYTHING
ESSENTIALLY SPIRITUAL
Well now, what is the service of God at an
end-time? As far as we have gone, surely we are able to
see one or two things. The particular work of God at an
end-time is, to begin with, the constituting of a new and
spiritually inclusive dispensation, a new age of an
essentially and wholly spiritual kind. In Heb. 12:27 we
have, "And this word, Yet once more, signifieth
the removing of those things that are shaken, as of
things that have been made, that those things which are
not shaken may remain." That word 'removing'
really means the transferring or the transposing on to
another and different basis. The fact that that comes at
the end of the letter to the Hebrews is significant, for
that letter is just full of that earthly system of
Judaism with all its forms, its ritual, its make-up and
constitution. All that is earthly, even in relation to
God, is going to be removed, and everything is going to
be transferred to another basis - a spiritual, a heavenly
basis; and when things begin to happen on the ground of
an end-time, that is the character of what is taking
place. The earthly is now going to be forced to give way
to the heavenly, the temporal to the spiritual, the
outward to the inward. Then it will be proved just how
much we have that can be transferred, for there are many
things that are not going to be transferred. "Flesh
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor.
15:50). That signifies and implies that there is a
whole order of creation which is not going to constitute
that eternal order; it is to pass away. Everything is
going to be transferred to another basis, and this kind
of thing intensifies at an end-time. Do you see that?
Let me put that more simply. What God will
see to, by sheer force of conditions, is that anything
that is only temporal will go and that which is spiritual
alone will remain. There must therefore be intensifying
processes to bring out the spiritual. Is not that where
we are? I do not know what your experience is, but
touching one and another here and there I find there is
some real understanding of this. We never knew such
spiritual conflict, pressure and difficulty as we are
knowing now; things seem to be getting beyond measure.
May this not be the explanation? The Lord seems to be
concentrating upon bringing out spiritual values, making
spiritual men and women, and if I am not mistaken (and I
claim no gift of prophecy, in the foretelling sense), we
are going to see, and are already seeing, the removal of
so much, the external things, upon which Christians have
been relying as though these things constituted their
Christian life. We are going to be forced back to the
place where the one question that faces us is, After all,
what have I got of the Lord Himself? Not, What can I do,
where can I go? but, What have I got? I believe that is a
very present and appropriate question in many parts of
the world just now, and it will be increasingly so as
everything outward is brought to an end. Now is the test
- What have I got in my hands?
GOD'S END-TIME WORK INCLUSIVE OF
ALL FORMER VALUES
Yes, the constituting of a new and
spiritual dispensation. But I also used the word
inclusive - that is, the heritage of all the values that
God has ever given. This is, mark you, a dispensation
principle. Spiritual history returns upon itself, it goes
back to the last point of fullness. Perhaps you do not
grasp what I mean by that. If there has come about a
decline, whether in our own spiritual life or in the life
of the Church, sooner or later we shall be forced back to
the point where we left the full measure of God. Cannot
you see that happening? We see it in various connections
today. Take the matter of literature. There is an
increasing demand for the old works. Publishers are
finding a great demand for something of years ago, and it
is coming into the market. The shelves have been full of
cheap, superficial Christian stuff with gaudy wrappers
and all that, and times have come when people are aware
that this is not meeting the need, and the demand for
something more is arising. The call is for some of the
books which former generations had. That is happening.
History is returning upon itself. There has been decline,
loss, superficiality, frivolity, cheapness, in
Christianity, and the Church is going to perish for want
of solid food unless it is provided. Thus the cry is,
'Let us get back to what there was before.' That is
happening in many ways. It is a dispensation principle.
If God has really given anything, that will never be
lost. Time will vindicate it. Sooner or later we shall
have to come back to it. We shall be thrown back for our
very lives on what God has given. This is where the new
takes up the old.
It is a
sorry and a superficial day, and one which will not stand
up to things, when you think you can dispense with
experience. If young people suppose they can think
lightly of those who have gone through the fires and
grown grey-headed in the service of God, in learning to
know the Lord, and that such can be set aside as back
numbers, that is a sorry day for the future. With all
that is needed of the new generation, do not let us think
they can produce all the past in their own lifetime. God
will throw them back upon what has gone before. Do not
count the past servants of God as back numbers. They are
very much up to date. Simeon was very much up to date
when he brought all the wealth, fullness, richness of the
past in his hands, and, so to speak, transferred it to
the new, to the Babe, Who took it all up, and Who later
confessed that He did take it all up. "Think not
that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came
not to destroy, but to fulfil" (Matt.
5:17). There are always, sooner or later,
reactions from cheapness and superficiality, and that
usually under duress and compulsion and a sense of being
unable to go on without something fuller.
Infancy
in the arms of age. Yes, and infancy depends upon those
arms. I think I am not going too far in saying that here,
in the holding of the infant Christ in these arms, there
is this signification, that for the fulfilment of His
life and ministry the Christ depended very much upon the
past, upon all that God had done before. The only Bible
He had was the Old Testament. How He lived on it! When He
said, "Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
God," He was talking about the only Bible He
had, the Word of God, the Old Testament. You see how the
Old Testament is used in the New. It is but another
aspect of this. One of the richest studies and most
profitable lines of inquiry is to mark where the Old
Testament is found in the New and why it is found there,
the use made of it. Yes, it is a tremendous fact that
which is new depends upon that which has gone before.
THE ABIDING VALUE OF EVERY WORKING OF
GOD
We come
to a close for the present by noting this. We must live
and we must work with our eye upon the after value of our
lives. Thank God that can be. Life would be an enigma and
intolerable if all that we have learned through suffering
and discipline passed out with us and there was nothing
more for it. No, it is not like that at all. There is an
after value, and we ought to live, I say, and work, with
our eye upon that heritage which we are to give beyond
our own time. On the principle that God vindicates
everything that He Himself has done and given, and makes
it necessary, then He is making necessary for His new
dispensation what He is doing in you and in me now. That
new dispensation is going to be constituted on the basis
of what He is doing in his saints now. That is a New
Testament principle. What He is doing in the Church now
is to be the good of the coming ages. What He is doing in
us, it is not presumption to say, is going to be the very
life of some beyond our time. So we should not think of
this life as something to be got through, to be lived
through to ourselves, something in itself. It is
something that is to be found again to the glory of God
in that which is to be - the passing on of that which has
been of God, which can never die but is conserved by Him
forever, and will be necessary. I wonder if that is a new
thought to you? What the Lord is doing in you by way of
increasing the measure of Christ in you is going to be
necessary long after you have gone. It is a principle, a
law, that anything that God does is forever and will be
necessary.
We will
leave it there for the time being and ask the Lord to
exercise us quite strongly about this matter of the
intrinsic value of the knowledge of Himself for the time
that is to be, through this transition upon which we have
now so seriously entered.