I would ask you to turn to God's picture book, the Old
Testament, in two places: "And thou shalt make
the robe of the ephod all of blue" (Exodus
28:31).
"Speak unto the
children of Israel, and bid them that they make them
fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their
generations, and that they put upon the fringe of each
border a cord of blue" (Numbers 15:38).
Now let us turn over to
that part of the Word of which those passages are the
illustrations.
"Having then a
great high priest, who hath passed through the heavens,
Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.
For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with
the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in
all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews
4:14,15).
"...else must
he often have suffered since the foundation of the world:
but now once at the end of the ages hath he been
manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of
himself" (Hebrews 9:26).
I referred to the Old
Testament as 'God's picture book', for indeed it is full
of pictures, illustrations, representations of all kinds,
of Divine, spiritual, heavenly realities. The
illustrations pass, but that which they illustrate
remains. God took hold of the picturesque Oriental mind,
that kind of mentality which just must have pictures and
illustrations and figures of speech, and turned it to
very great account in setting forth the eternal realities
which are the interpretation of them. So we have in the
Old Testament a great number of things - names, people,
places, colours, and so on - all used to illustrate some
Divine, eternal truth; and, in the midst of that galaxy
of symbolism, we find this one, in its two aspects.
"And thou shalt make... the ephod all of blue"
(the ephod was the high priest's main garment); and then:
'Speak to the children of Israel, that throughout their
generations they make them fringes upon their garments,
and a cord of blue.'
So that here you have a
reflection, in every individual comprising the people of
God, of what was true of the high priest's main garment.
You look at his robe, the robe of the ephod, as it is
called, and you see that it is of blue throughout, and
you look at every man, woman and child of the people of
God, and you find they all have as it were a bit of the
priest's robe somewhere on their garment. It all
corresponds.
Blue
a Symbol of Heaven
Now, blue has quite a
large place in the Old Testament. Blue is a symbol of
that which belongs to Heaven. There are two or three
places where that is made quite clear. For instance, in
Exodus 24, we read that Moses and Aaron and seventy of
the elders of Israel went up into the mountain where God
was, "and they saw the God of Israel; and there was
under his feet as it were a paved work of sapphire
stone" (vs. 10). Sapphire, of course, is blue. And
then we come to the prophecies of Ezekiel. In the very
first chapter, the same thing is said again. The prophet
had a vision of the throne in Heaven, "as the
appearance of a sapphire stone" (vs. 26). We find
the sapphire mentioned again right at the end of the New
Testament, in the twenty-first chapter of the Revelation.
Blue, then, sets forth what is of Heaven, what is
heavenly. So that this high priest, with his robe all of
blue, is meant, in the thought of God, to point to that
One of whom we read later - Jesus Christ, who is our
"great high priest, who has passed through the
heavens" (Heb. 4:14) - our heavenly High Priest, who
is in Heaven.
And He has entered
there on the ground, and only on the ground, that He has
made a complete and full atonement. The high priest in
the Old Testament could never go into the Most Holy Place
except on the Day of Atonement with the precious blood of
atonement, and that is a figure. The Lord Jesus made a
full atonement by His Cross for all sin and sins, and has
passed into the very presence of God: not into a symbolic
presence, as in the Old Testament, but into the real
presence, the actual presence, of God; and there, as this
letter to the Hebrews says, "he ever liveth to make
intercession" (Heb. 7:25). He is fulfilling His
high-priestly work there on our behalf. Aaron, then, the
high priest of old, was a type or figure of Christ, our
High Priest who is now in Heaven. The emphasis is upon
the heavenly nature and heavenly work of the Lord Jesus
now.
Let us consider this
robe all of blue.
A
People in Harmony With Heaven
First of all, this
correspondence that we have noted between the robe of the
high priest, and the cord on the people's garments, sets
forth the glorious fact that they were in harmony with
Heaven, that there was a harmoniousness between them and
Heaven; and that is something. It is a wonderful thing to
have no discord with Heaven, and for Heaven to have no
discord with you. That is not our natural state; we know
it right well. That is not the state of men who have not
entered into the wonderful, redeeming, atoning work of
the Lord Jesus Christ by His Cross. They know, as we all
knew at one time, that they have no harmony with Heaven.
Indeed, the one quest, the one longing and craving, the
one thing disturbing their peace all the time, is this -
How can we get into harmony with Heaven? How can we be so
adjusted to God, to Heaven, and to all that belongs
there, that the discord and strain in life ceases? Oh, to
be freed from this state of strain and unrest and
conflict, this disappointment and dissatisfaction and
discontent! There is something wrong somewhere; things
are out of joint. But here, you see, is set forth a
wonderful harmony with Heaven. If the high priest
represents Jesus Christ in Heaven, this touch of blue on
the garments signifies that all the people are
participating in that. That is the very first fruit and
value of the great high-priestly work of the Lord Jesus
in offering Himself for our sins.
Now we know that, when
we come by simple, precise faith, to accept the atoning,
redemptive work of the Lord Jesus by His Cross, the
discord in our hearts ceases. The strain has gone out;
something has happened that has adjusted us to Heaven.
Beautiful harmony has come about between us and God. This
is put in many different ways in the Bible. One of them
is this: "We have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:1). Or again: "having
made peace through the blood of his cross" (Col.
1:20). It is a wonderful inheritance, an inheritance to
which multitudes can testify. There came a crisis in our
lives - something happened - and it was just as though
bones that had been out of joint were suddenly put right
- they clicked together, and the ache has gone. Oh, how
wonderful! Have you ever suffered the ache of a
dislocated joint, that has bothered you night and day,
disturbed your rest, robbed you of sleep, a constant
nagging pain - and then you have got it put right? How
you breathe again - life is worth living now!
That is exactly what
happens to the sinner who by faith accepts Jesus as
Saviour. Things click into joint; harmony takes the place
of discord. Why? Simply because all the cause of, and
reason for, the discord has been dealt with. What is the
cause? What is the reason? In the words of a prophet:
"your iniquities have separated between you and your
God" (Isa. 59:2). Sin is at the bottom of it. I am
not talking about sins; I am talking about sin.
Sin is a thing which is native to every child of
Adam. It is our nature - it is what we are. You know
that. Try to stop doing certain things, and you find you
have got to stop living in order to stop doing them.
Somehow or other you have got to get rid of yourself in
order to get rid of that. Sin is in our very nature. The
Lord Jesus in His Cross took on Himself our sin and our
sinfulness and dealt with it - dealt with the cause of
all the discord and the trouble; and because the cause is
dealt with, the effect follows quite naturally.
A little girl once
heard read that passage from the book of the Revelation:
"God... shall wipe away every tear from their eyes;
and death shall be no more; neither shall there be
mourning, nor crying, any more" (Rev. 21:3,4) and
she said, 'God must have a very big handkerchief'! Well,
that is a childish way of putting it. But you see, when
God wipes away tears, He does not use a handkerchief. He
gets behind the tears to why you cry, to the cause of the
tears, and deals with the thing right at its source. All
our trouble is dealt with at its source by the Lord
Jesus. "Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our
behalf" (2 Cor. 5:21). "He bare our sins in his
body upon the tree" (1 Pet. 2:24).
And so, having dealt
with the source and root of the trouble, He brings us
into union with Himself as the Redeemer, the great
Atoner, the great Saviour, and we participate in His
heavenly blue. Speaking now illustratively, if He is
there wearing this robe all of blue, and we are here with
a bit of that blue on us, it means not only that we are
related to Him, but that our place in Heaven is secured.
If you ask an unsaved person if they are going to Heaven,
the answer, more often than not, is, 'Well, I hope so.'
Now, it may happen that there is one reading these lines
to whom that question might be addressed: 'Are you going
to Heaven? are you expecting to go to Heaven?' You might
in some uncertainty reply: 'Well, I want to', or 'I hope
so.' I want to tell you that there is a way provided by
God, whereby you need have no question about it: that
there can come right into your life the witness of
Heaven, you can now share what is true of the Lord Jesus
in Heaven and you can have your place secured in Heaven
here and now, all on the ground of the work which Christ
has done for you. We will come back to that again in
another way in a minute.
Let us go further with
this gospel, this good news, of the heavenly blue. What
does this mean for Christians, when once they are the
Lord's, this blue cord on the garment of the Lord's
people?
A
People Distinct from all Others
First of all, it marks
them off as different and distinct from all other people.
I expect that if the other nations round about Israel
knew about this, and if ever an Israelite went out
amongst them, they would say, 'Oh, we know where you come
from! That bit of blue gives you away, that marks you off
from everybody, that distinguishes you from everyone
else.' A true Christian is something different and
something distinct from all others, and the feature which
makes him so is that there is in him another life, which
is a heavenly life. Jesus said, 'I am come down from
heaven for the life of the world' (John 6:33). "I am
the living bread which came down out of heaven: if any
man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever" (John
6:51). Here is another life, a heavenly life, in Jesus
Christ, which those who receive Him receive in Him.
This is a test of our
Christianity, but it is also a testimony to its reality.
We know, when we have come on to this ground of Christ's
atoning, redemptive work, that we have received into our
very being another life, a different life. And this new
life always gravitates back to its source in Heaven, that
is, it is always pulling us up out of this world, it is
always drawing us upward. It is a life of elevation, of
uplift, a life which gravitates towards Heaven, like
water in a pipe from a reservoir, always seeking its own
level. Paul put it in this way. "If then ye were
raised together with Christ, seek the things that are
above, where Christ is" (Col. 3:1). The great
characteristic of a true Christian is that he is living
in touch with Heaven, in the light of Heaven, in
communion with Heaven, and always feeling the mighty
magnetism of Christ in Heaven.
Our natural life always
gravitates downwards. It does not matter what you do:
leave it for a minute, and down it goes. Take restraints
away, and down it goes. Remove the props, and down it
goes. Its whole gravitation is downward. It does not
matter how far you advance in developments -
intellectual, social, and so on. Take people out of their
wretched hovels, and put them into nice new dwellings:
after a time you will see deterioration setting in, and
soon it will be another slum district. You cannot stop
it. That is the way of things. It is true of everything
in this life and in this world.
But here is something
that comes in and counteracts, takes another course. It
is a wonderful thing. When a man or woman accepts Christ
and becomes possessed of this heavenly life, they begin
spontaneously, without any instruction, to change their
behaviour. From uncouth, they become polite. From being
careless in their manner and dress and so on, they become
conscious of something. They change, and it goes on like
that. I am afraid it must be said that some Christians
have forgotten. Something has happened to check the life
of Christ, the heavenly life, and they have become
careless, slovenly, indifferent, unwatchful as to
behaviour, as to courtesy, and so on. But when this life
is not hindered by wilfulness, it is a transforming life,
and that is the great distinguishing mark of a Christian.
People
Belonging to Another World
Christians have got
another world. It goes by the name of Heaven. I do not
know where Heaven is, but I know what Heaven is. It does
not matter so very much where it is, so long as we know
what it is, and I am content to know that Heaven is a
state. Christians are marked off as belonging to another
world. This world knows quite well that, as soon as a man
or a woman becomes a Christian, it has lost a citizen.
They are lost to the world. Yes, we have got another
world. It a very much better one, a much more wonderful
one, an entirely new world.
People
With Another Goal
And we have another
goal. This is true to the illustration of the Old
Testament. Israel in the wilderness was not limited to
the resources of the wilderness. A wilderness is no place
in which to try to live by the produce of the land, and
yet they went forty years in the wilderness without
starving. They had heavenly resources when there were
none in their surroundings. They drew everything from
another world. It is an illustration again. The survival
of Christians under pressure, under trial, under
suffering - the triumph of Christians through all
sorts of adversities - is a testimony to the fact that
they have another world from which they are drawing their
resources. Thank God, this 'wilderness' is not the end
for the Christian. We have another goal; we are people
with an objective, people for whom there is something
ahead. Death is not our goal; the grave is not our goal.
All that this world may offer of prizes is not our goal.
The goal of the Christian is something very much better
and more glorious.
The
Unity of the People of God
Let us note one other
thing about these people. It is quite obvious that the
blue cord on their garments, corresponding with the high
priest's, indicates the unity of the people of God, not
only with Christ as the High Priest in Heaven, but with
one another. There was something about every one of them,
as those who belonged to the Lord, which was the same,
something about them that united them. They were not all
the colours of the rainbow, as Christendom is now. No,
there was one conspicuous mark about them which made them
all alike, all one. There was a unity of the people of
God amongst themselves.
The
Fact of Unity
Now, first of all, that
is factual. We have got to realize this and stand upon it
deliberately and persistently, that everyone who is truly
a child of God is our brother, our sister, belongs to our
family; we have the one life shared amongst us. That is
the fact of the unity of Christians, of children
of God. Our unity rests in the first place upon nothing
but the oneness of life which we share in Christ. The
approximation to that in expression may vary, but that
depends upon how far God's people live upon the fact of
another life. Its expression will never come about by our
trying to bring together all the sects, denominations,
churches, departments, and so on, and setting up a unity.
It will not happen. It will always prove in the long run
to be like the tower of Babel. Something will happen, and
it will all go wrong again.
But if only we would
live upon the great fact that we have received, through
faith in Jesus Christ, His own life, that is the basis
upon which we are to proceed. I meet you, not upon any
mechanical ground, but upon the ground that you belong to
the same Lord, you share the same life. Let us forget the
other things as far as we can. Let us not allow the other
things that divide to affect us more than we can possibly
help. Let us cling to this, that, if you and I are truly
children of God, born from Heaven, we have one life. It
is a fact upon which we need persistently to live, and
for which we must fight.
A
Unity of Interest
And then it means that
we have a unity of interest. The real people of God have
only one interest, and they are a unity because of this
particular interest. What is the interest of Christians?
Paul put it in this way: "To me to live is
Christ" (Phil. 1:21). 'My sole interest in life is
the furtherance of the interests of Jesus Christ, the
glory of Jesus Christ.' That Apostle sought unceasingly
to further the interests of Jesus Christ and to make Him
glorious wherever he went. We have one interest, and we
put it in that one word - Christ. That is the unifying
factor. If we have other things - private things,
personal things, things in this world - upon which our
hearts are mainly set; if we have sectarian interests:
very well, we shall not be one. We are one by this
all-captivating passion - Jesus Christ.
And that springs up
immediately this great thing happens in us. Is it not
true, that as soon as we receive the Lord Jesus in virtue
of His saving work for us, immediately we want to tell
people about Him, we want to talk about Jesus Christ? You
cannot keep us quiet on this matter. We must be
talking about Christ. He has become the one all-absorbing
interest for us, in our very being. It comes out in
business, it comes out in our social circle, it comes out
everywhere: we are miserable if we cannot talk about
Jesus Christ, if there is no place for Him. That is our
unity, a unity of interest.
Now I go back where we
began. Do you belong to the people of God? Have you
received this Divine life? Do you know harmony with
Heaven, or do you go on hoping, maybe praying, maybe
longing, but... you are not sure? Heaven is something
that makes you long, but you do not know. I want to say
to anyone who has not peace with God, who has not perfect
assurance that it is well between themselves and Him,
that God has nothing more to do to provide you with the
ground for it. God has done everything - everything that
God Almighty could do - to bring you into that blessed
experience of peace with Himself, harmony with Heaven; to
give you another life than the one that you have, as a
power drawing you upward, drawing you onward, giving you
a great motive, a great interest, altogether beyond this
poor world. Here it is all available.
What then? It rests
with you. You have not got to work for it, or work it
out; you have not got to try and fit yourself for it, by
trying to be better than you are. You are only prolonging
the misery if you say, 'Oh, it is not for me, I am not
good enough for that.' What about Israel - what kind of
people were they, as to themselves? Well, the Bible story
of Israel is not a very pleasant one, as to the people,
but I believe it was written for the very purpose of
showing up what kind of people they were. If ever there
was a difficult people on this earth, it was Israel! Yet
that did not prevent them from coming into what God had
provided for them. It is not what we are - good, bad or
indifferent. God will no more accept the good person than
the bad person. God is not waiting for you to change
anything in your manner of life. Everything has been done
in Christ, and all He says now is: 'Look, I have made a
full provision - I ask nothing from you but that you
believe it and accept it. Recognize your need, bow before
Me, and say: "I am one in need: You have the
provision. By faith I receive all Your provision in
Christ."'
Does that sound far too
easy and too simple? If it does, remember that, while we
get it so simply, like that, it cost God and His Son
infinitely to provide it. The greatest suffering and
sacrifice that this universe has ever witnessed was the
cost of your salvation and mine. If we say, 'Only believe
and receive by faith', that does not mean that it is
cheap. It is very, very costly to God. But He waits for
you. You think you are waiting for something - perhaps
for Him, or for a change in yourself. You will wait. God
has done it all. Christ is now in Heaven, the seal of the
fact that the work on earth for men is done. In the words
of the great Apostle: "We beseech you on behalf of
Christ, be ye reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 5:20).