Let us
remind ourselves of the basic word of our previous
meditations as found in the First Letter to the
Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 9: "God is
faithful, through Whom ye were called into the fellowship
of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord." - called
unto the fellowship of His (God's) Son Jesus Christ
our Lord.
We have
been occupied with the Person of the fellowship and the
call, God's Son. We have been saying that we shall never
get anywhere at all in the Christian life as the Lord's
people, and we shall certainly never get through to the
end and at the end, unless we have an adequate
apprehension of the greatness of Christ. Over against all
the littleness of what is presented as Christianity,
there stands this immensity of that into which we are
called when we are called into fellowship with God's Son.
We could
have dwelled longer upon speaking of the Person, the
great, eternal, matchless Person of Jesus Christ, as this
is foundational to everything. I say again that you will
never get very far if you have only a small apprehension,
a small understanding of the One into Whose fellowship we
are called. Seeing that many of you are Christians on the
way, well on the way, and some far on the way, let me say
to you that this understanding of Christ, Himself, is not
just an initial need. We are only going to get through at
the end, through all the trials, the adversities, the
difficulties, the sufferings, the afflictions, the
perplexities, and the problems of mature, spiritual life,
we are only going to get through under the increasing
pressure and the forces of evil, on the ground of an
adequate apprehension of the Lord Jesus. It is He alone
Who can measure up to our need and Who can take the
measure and meet it.
Well,
having said that, we have to pass on and come next to the
people of the fellowship, and I hope to be able to get as
far as the purpose of the fellowship. These two really go
together. "God is faithful, through Whom ye were
called." "Ye were called into the
fellowship of His (God's) Son" (ASV). Forgive me
for being slowly emphatic and underlining every word. We
must move carefully together, not just hearing words, but
weighing them. Weigh them because, you see, God always
weighs things. The famous Dr. Parker, of the City Temple
London, used to have a great midweek service in the
Temple. People used to speak about the great number who
attended, but Dr. Parker said, "I never measure my
congregation: I weigh it." And that is it: God
weighs us. God is weighing us all the time. God is not
looking on the outside: He is weighing us on the inside.
So we want to be "weighted" with every word.
People Of The Call
In a
word, "ye were called" just seems to be the
whole matter to us, but what "whole matter"
does it bring to us? Of course, these words were
addressed to the Corinthians. Yes, this statement that
"ye," here in Corinth, "were called"
was brought to the Corinthians; but it did not begin with
the Corinthians. This call was the long, long thought of
God that reached right back into the past eternity where
the Divine Counsels were framing what Paul called the "eternal
purpose." Concerning this purpose, Paul
will say in another letter, ye are called according to
the "eternal purpose."
This
call that came to the Corinthians was in the way, in the
line, of this counsel from eternity, the God and Father
Who "worketh all things after the counsel of
His Own will." This call reached right back:
it did not begin at Corinth with these people, but they
were called into those goings of God from eternity. It
was as though God, moving from eternity down through the
ages came by way of Corinth; and as He came by way of
Corinth, He cried, "Ye here are called, called into
the fellowship of My Son. Come along: join in with all
those who have responded to the call through the ages,
and go with Us to Our end, Our predestined end concerning
My Son." That call had been sounding then right
through the ages reaching back before the world was. It
goes on. They have heard it of old: they have made their
decision. Some responded and went on with God. Some have
heard and made a response and turned aside, but God has
gone on. Some have hesitated by weighing things up and
deciding that it was too costly. They could not go on,
but God has gone on; and there through history, the ages
are strewn with people who heard the call, who God
called, but who have missed all that was involved in it.
God has
slowly collected, shall I say, a people of the call
through the ages; and He is still doing that, gathering a
people into the fellowship of His Son. We might note by
way of collecting a few lessons that this call can be
likened unto "mountain peaks" and their
adjacent valleys. There have been the valleys, and in the
valleys the ordinary people have been hearing and making
their decision, but there are these "mountain
peaks" of the call through history which in a
special, particularly interesting, and instructive way
embody the meaning of this call. God chose certain ones
to shine forth in this way: one, for example, is Abraham.
We are not going to stay with these people, but we will
just lift out some things in their lives that indicate
what the call meant.
Stephen,
in Acts 7, said, "The God of Glory appeared unto
our father Abraham," when he was in Ur of the
Chaldees, "and said... 'Get thee out.'" We
will see in a moment what that implied. This call
gripped Abraham there in Ur of the Chaldees: there with
his one thousand or two thousand deities, he met the One
Deity or was met by the One Deity, the One God, the God
of Glory. Amidst all the deities of the Chaldees, Abraham
distinguished a Voice, a Person; and, isolating this
whole matter of divine relationship from all the other
deities of worship to which Abraham was accustomed, he
was drawn to one focus, to the God of Glory. The God of
Glory, not just meaning, God Who is in glory, but the God
Who has glory at the end as His object.
The God
of Glory appears, and Abraham heard the Voice, the call
of the God of Glory; and somehow in some mystic way, some
strange, inexplicable way, Abraham came to understand
that his call was related to God's Son. We do want to
study his life, of course, do we not? We want to find the
place of the Lord Jesus in the life of Abraham. There is
no doubt about it: you cannot mistake His place in the
life of Abraham as you go on. "Take now thy son,
thine only son... whom thou lovest...." Abraham
has come right into the very heart of God, right into
the very heart of Calvary. I do not know, I cannot
explain it all, but somehow, somehow Abraham himself came
into the fellowship of God's Son; and this can be marked
again and again in his life, right up to that mighty,
inclusive crisis of offering his only begotten son.
Abraham
came into the heart of God. The Lord Jesus Himself put
His finger upon this strange, mystic something - this
something being a relationship with the Son of God - He
put His finger upon this relationship right back there in
the life of Abraham when He said, "Yes, your father,
Abraham, saw My day, and he rejoiced to see it." I
do not know how, but Abraham heard the call into
fellowship with God's Son and, at the cost of everything,
said, "Yes, I will go." And he went. He stands
as one of those "mountain peaks" of the call
because of that response. At great cost in the beginning
and all the way along, he made that response, and see
what his name represents in history! But let us leave
that and pass on from Abraham to Moses.
Here is
Moses in the silent desolation of the wilderness with all
that is going on inside of him as he is looking at his
life and looking at himself. He is looking at his
deep-seated consciousness of standing in relationship to
this God, Jehovah. There he is in the wilderness for his
forty years of aloneness with God. Then one day, not the
burning bush, but the "non-burning" bush
appeared. The bush that never did come to an end
appeared: it held a fire that did not go out. He noticed
that while all other bushes flared up and flamed up and
died, this one never did. The undying bush was holding
the secret of the Life which is eternal, the Life which
is never extinguished, the power of His resurrection.
Moses said, "I will draw near: I will turn aside and
see this great wonder." He drew near, and from the
bush there came a Voice, "Take off thy shoes from
off thy feet: the place whereon thou standest is holy
ground."
Then
came the call and the commission, the challenge and the
command. Moses heard the call, and he tried to argue with
God. He tried to enter into a controversy with God. -
Very good, very good! - If your controversies with God
and your arguments with God are of the same kind as that
of Moses, it is very good. Really there is nothing wrong
about that. Some controversies with God do not get you
anywhere, but this one thrust him along the way because
it was a controversy on the basis of what God had been
doing in his own life to bring him to the place of
suitability to answer the call. Moses would never be able
really to enter into this fellowship, (as one of our
brothers said), "until the bottom's been knocked out
of you," and then you are able to say truly, "I
have had a devastating experience." Even as with
Moses, you say, "I cannot, I cannot." Ah, but
you thought you could once. "No, I cannot."
That is
all right: he heard the call and argued with God, but
when it is on that ground, there is no use arguing with
God. You are having to deal with God, no use arguing,
because here God is going to have the end in His Own
Hand. Moses heard the call. He eventually, after arguing
and after having to have a certain amount of
accommodation made by the Lord to his situation, he went:
he obeyed. The call is out - "Moses, Moses."
Oh, what God can do and will do when our response is
from the brokenness which God Himself has brought about
through the emptying.
Where
shall we go next? We might go on to David. Here we have a
young man who is tending his father's sheep far away from
the city, away from the world, out there, living a life
in secret with God. "The Lord who delivered me: the
Lord who delivered me from the lion and the bear."
This lad had a life with the Lord, drawing his strength
from the Lord. Later he will say, "The Lord, He
called me from following the sheep." God called him
from following the sheep. Out there in a simple way, the
sovereign God called him, and you know the story. A
vindication of David was that his response to God was so
complete, so utter. With everything we may say about
David's life, some of those things in his later life, we
can yet say here is a man whose heart has been captured
by God. The call meant that for David.
We go on
meeting many in the Word who heard the call; and we come
to the great prophet whom we all love so much, and
perhaps who we can understand better than we can
understand most of the others, the prophet Isaiah. You
know the story, the account of chapter 6 of his
prophecies, "The day that Uzziah died, I saw the
Lord, high, lifted up: His train filled the temple."
At His presence, the foundations did shake.
Then there was the overwhelming consciousness of his own
uncleanness and unfitness that always comes when you have
come into the true presence of God. Isaiah said,
"Woe is me! Woe is me! I am undone, I am
undone."
Here we
have again the background of a great life of service and
usefulness to the Lord. Again, he said, "I heard the
Voice of the Lord, saying, Who will go for Us: Whom shall
I send?" The call came to Isaiah in those
circumstances: the day when everything else had become a
mere illusion, the day of disillusionment. Uzziah,
Uzziah, that great king in Israel. Yes, Isaiah
undoubtedly had fastened his eyes upon King Uzziah. He
was his ideal, and he was his hope and expectation for
Israel. He was the man who answered to all Isaiah's
desires, hopes, and expectations; and then, as you know,
Uzziah broke down. He broke down, failed; and by his act
in the Temple, he was smitten by God with leprosy and was
a leper until the day of his death. Poor Isaiah! But when
all the glory of this world faded, in that day Isaiah
said, "I saw the Lord, high and lifted
up." Here the course of God is going on - on
with His call into the fellowship of His Son, and Isaiah
more than any other prophet has the place for the Son of
God. We know that, do we not? Why, chapter 53 alone has
that, but there is so much more. The Son of God is in
view, and Isaiah has been called into the fellowship of
God's Son, Jesus Christ.
On we
go. Shall we take one big leap right over to the
apostles? Here are these apostles by the lakeside
involved in their daily vocation, fishing; and Jesus
passes that way. God passes that way and just calls this
one and that one, "Come, follow Me."
And they left their nets and followed. The account is
very simple, but a lot was involved. Yet, they heard the
call, and that is the point. As one of the hymns, fairly
known to you, simply puts it, "I heard the call,
'Come follow,' that was all. I arose and followed."
But, how tremendous was the involvement, the response to
the call.
Outstandingly
the Apostle Paul gives the account of his call three
times. He gives what was contained in it and what it was
unto on the day that he heard the call, "Saul, Saul,
why persecutest thou Me? Who art Thou, Lord? What wilt
Thou have me to do, Lord?" Then we have all that
follows because as he says, "I was not
disobedient unto the heavenly vision." I am
just giving these instances of the one who heard the call
of God as God was moving on through the ages. He was
passing this one and passing this way, and as He passed
He just called; and after that call, immense things
issued. God is calling.
Now what
I want to say, and I have got young people continually in
mind about this as we go on, is that this call
undoubtedly brought a crisis in the life of every one of
these people who heard it. And so it is today in the life
of everyone who hears it, along whose way the Lord comes
and leaves this impression that something has happened.
You may not hear a call from heaven, and it may not come
to you as it came to some of these; but somehow or other
God has come your way, and He has left an impression that
you have come to a crisis. There is a crisis bound up
with this; and if you have come to this crisis, you will
realize, one way or the other as you go on, it was a day
of destiny.
Destiny
was bound up with this encounter with God, or God's
encounter with you. It was the day, and we older
Christians know this whether it was some particular day,
twelve or twenty-four hours, but it was a time, a time
appointed in our life, when everything became involved in
this that I have called an encounter with God - when we
met the Lord - put it how you will. The Lord passed our
way: He came into the realm of our life. Something
happened, and everything to us was involved. Paul himself
described it as being apprehended by Christ Jesus, laid
hold of, arrested - the day that everything was involved.
And you know that the passing of the Lord Jesus our way
is always like that - it is everything now. It is
everything. - For or not - Everything is gained or lost
when He comes our way.
You can
go through the Lord's life while here on this earth,
during those three years, a little over, and see how He
is passing along. He is just passing along precipitating
life's issues and destinies for those by whose way He
came. Something is precipitated, and everything is in the
balances now. Did He heed His enemies? Their destiny and
doom is settled because He has just passed their way. He
heeded the needy ones who cried out, "Lord, have
mercy upon us." What a day that was when He passed
by Jericho.
The Lord
happened to come, shall we say happened, no, not mere
happed, in the Divine eternal counsels of sovereignty, He
came to Jericho. Here a little man, who could not see
over the heads of the other people, climbed a tree to
have a look at Him and got the shock and surprise of his
life when Jesus looked up and said, "Little man,
Zacchaeus, come down: I must abide at your house
today." A day of destiny, was it not? Tremendous!
That man did not get up that morning thinking or
imagining for a moment how he would go to bed that night.
His destiny had been settled because Jesus passed through
Jericho.
What means this eager, anxious throng,
Which pressed to Him as He hasted along?
An eager voice thereupon replied,
"Jesus of Nazareth passeth by."
He is
passing by. The eternal destiny registered on this one
and that one until He even comes to Pontius Pilate.
Pontius Pilate knows one thing, even if he does not
recognize all the issues, he knows that his destiny is in
the balances of this Man, Jesus of Nazareth. He wriggles
and writhes to get out of this predicament. He makes his
decision and has gone down in history as wrong. Jesus
passed this way. It was an eternal crisis with Pilate and
with all these. So it is that He is still passing on. He
is still coming on. He is still in that course from
eternity with God and is precipitating this issue of
fellowship with Himself.
Involvement Of The Call
Now a
word about the involvement of the call. If you go over
again these lives that I have mentioned, Abraham, Moses,
and the others to the apostles and on since then to
ourselves, you will see the involvement of the call. What
is the involvement? What is involved with any kind of
contact with the Lord Jesus? At this period of time, we
ask, shall we believe that He has come this way? I cannot
but believe that the devil tries to prevent it. Oh, what
a battle! Is it because Jesus of Nazareth is passing by?
God from eternity is moving and taking us in His stride.
Is that it? Will you believe it? If so, there is an
involvement in this contact with His Son; and if you look
at these lives, you will see that the involvement worked
out in this way - it was first of all a demand for
changing position. What of Abram? - "Get thee
out." - a change of position, a change of course.
And in every other case, it is a changed position. With
Isaiah it was a change from the earthly, from the earthly
kingdom, the earthly Uzziah, the earthly glory, the
earthly expectation to a heavenly one. "I saw
the Lord, high and lifted up..." It is a
heavenly position now for Isaiah.
I do
want to say to you, dear friends, that if you go the way
of this call, do be true to the initial encounter of the
Christian life, and do remember that this encounter
involves a CHANGE OF POSITION. This fellowship
with God's Son does not begin and end there. It goes on
right through our lives; and will you believe me when I
say to you that if you have been going on with the Lord
for sixty or more years, you will still have encounters
with the Lord which involve a change of position? You are
up against that all the time: I am. How many, many times
I have had to change position, and I thought my position
was quite sound, right and true. I was convinced of it,
and in measure it may have been true because in the
sovereignty of God I was there. I came to discover that
that order was not all that fellowship with God's Son
meant: fellowship with Him meant some very big changes of
position.
Now you
are wondering what I am talking about. How can I
illustrate it? Well, you know, I was a fully accredited
minister of two denominations at the same time, two of
the biggest denominations in the country, and I know that
was of God. I know He did it that I might have an
insight, a thorough insight into the whole of that
system. He did it so that I would understand it and know
all that "ministerialism" is, all that
"churchianity" is, all that the whole system of
organized Christianity is; and now I have an insight that
is unusual.
Strangely
enough, I have preached in some of the most important
churches in London, and I have got a further knowledge of
the whole thing. Tremendously valuable to have it from
the inside - to know it, through and through, to get its
measure; and then the Lord just as deliberately took me
right out of the whole thing, out of the whole system.
You see
what I mean? And I look back, and I say, "If that
was really not God's thought concerning His Church, and
it is not, if that is not what we have in the New
Testament as the Body of Christ, the heavenly Body of
Christ, why did the Lord lead me in?" Just to show
me the difference. The Lord would say to me, "Now
you know, and you can talk out of knowledge. You have not
got a theory about churches and ministries and ministers
and all that sort of thing: you know from the inside how
far all these things will take you and leave you."
And it is so after many years. See what I mean: I am
illustrating.
Do not
take this up and begin to say, "Well, then, I must
leave my denominational church." But no, that is not
the point. It is what God does with you that matters. My
point is that as we go on with God, and as we come more
and more to know the meaning of fellowship with His Son,
He demands a changed position. I have repeatedly changed
and continue to change because we have not got to the end
yet. I do not know what the next change is for me, if
there is another one, but I am having to date to change
position.
However,
this whole matter of the call goes on. "Come follow.
Come follow. Where I go thou knowest not now, but thou
shalt know afterwards." The explanation and the
vindication do come, but the call to "follow"
was a crisis of position. With the call comes the
involvement unto all that God has at the end. Perhaps
some of you are going to find a new position, and you
will change course. You will come up against this issue
over and over again: it is that you are as sure as anyone
can be that you are right about something today, and then
tomorrow you have a question about that.
Oh, how
many men I have known in the course of my long life, in
the whole realm of things, and it has been a very wide
realm from far east to far west throughout all these
years. I have known many dear, dear men, whom God had
used, who came to a crisis like this, a crisis which
required a changed position, and they have said,
"No." - Gone away sorrowfully because they had
great possessions.
I
remember one such man with a very honored name. You would
know the name perhaps because he was greatly used of the
Lord. He was occupying a position of influence in the
Anglican Church, and he got hold of a little book of
mine: "The Centrality and Universality of The
Cross." He read it, and he said to me, "I want
to talk to you." So we went to lunch and coffee. He
said, "I read your book. I know you are right. I
know that it represents a tremendous challenge to my
position. It involves everything for me." In the
course of the meeting, he said, "I cannot. I cannot.
I have found a good place to preach out of, and I think
that I had better stay there." What happened? - the
name faded out, the position faded out - he just went on:
he lost so much. Oh, what a tremendous thing he might
have had, not by coming to accept this book, but by
coming to accept the challenge of God. God came his way
and gave a challenge to change position: the man refused,
and God moved on and left him there.
On
another occasion I was in India at a church. Right in the
front there were two fine, young Indian men, fine
specimens of men. In front of them was the Lord's table,
and the loaf and the cup were brought in. I paused and
said, "Do you know what this means? This means
everything for the Lord. You are taking these symbols of
the Lord and saying that He only and altogether is your
life, your days, your future, your everything." They
both looked very serious. Then one of them said
"Yes" and partook. These two young men had come
together. Presently, they looked at each other, and then
the second young man said the last good-bye. The Lord met
one, and he said "yes:" the other said, "I
cannot - too costly." I do not know about them. I
cannot tell you the issues in their history, but this is
how it was for them.
Any
encounter with the Lord does involve this change of
position. It did with Abraham. It did with Moses. It did
with David. It did with Isaiah. It did with the apostles.
It did with Paul, and it is like that right on to the
end. Do not think that you have reached the end or that
your present position is final. This is where the trouble
sets in, is it not?
Oh, be
careful on any matter whatsoever of thinking and saying
that you have got the final answer and that your position
is "it." "There is no more to it,"
some say, and people are also saying in groups today that
they have "the truth." My word - what a
history! I have followed such a position. True, there are
some things about which we can be quite sure. We can be
sure of the Lord, of our salvation, and so on, but our
knowledge of the Lord's ways is different. No, we have
got to go on hearing the call and having a change of
position and a change of object.
A change
of object - what is your object? You can follow a change
of object in the lives of these men mentioned. You can
follow the change of object for which they were living,
as we illustrated in the life of Isaiah. A change of
object - what is your object? What have you now in
heaven? What a radical change it was with the Apostle
Paul. Think of the apostles: they had to change their
object from an earthly kingdom to a heavenly one.
"Wilt Thou at this time restore the Kingdom to
Israel?" They were looking for an earthly kingdom
and their place in it, asking to be on the right hand and
on the left, "when Thou comest into Thy kingdom."
- This "kingdom come set" - this position
proved to be utterly false, and, afterward, they had to
have a revolution as to the object for which they were
living and working.
I did
want so much to say something about the purpose of the
fellowship, and so far all that we have said has been on
the way to that. Would you suffer me a few minutes on
this because this is really what I want to get to; and I
think that this is probably all that is necessary at this
time as far as I am concerned.
Purpose Of The Call
The PURPOSE
of the fellowship with the Son of God - what is it?
At this point I am not thinking of the purpose in the
ages to come: we will come to that when we speak about
the Prospect of the Call, but I am thinking of the
present purpose, which includes the present up to the
time that the Lord Jesus returns. And what is it? Now if
you forget everything else, get hold of this. Let us
widen out and get the immense setting of it. As we go
back to the Book of Genesis, we see that God created the
heaven and the earth and next the earth in all of its
detail. Then at a certain point in His progress and
creation, He finished and rested from His labours. God
looked on all things and said, "It is very good. It
is very good."
God
rested, and what exactly does this mean? God came into
the garden. He had said, "It is very good." God
delighted to come into the garden, and He walked in the
garden in the evening time. He had made this world, and
the garden was a symbol of everything else in creation.
He had made this world to be a place for Himself where He
could be satisfied, perfectly satisfied, and have a place
to which He could come. It was like that: this is where
you begin your Bible.
How do
you end your Bible? Revelation 21: "Behold, the
tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with
them... and be their God." The Bible is bounded
by a place for God. God is present, in satisfaction, in
rest. Between Genesis and Revelation, what have you?
Almost immediately the great forces of evil disputed
God's right to have a place here; and so you have all
through the ages these two things: firstly, God ever and
always seeking a place where He can be satisfied and at
rest, a place where He can " presence'' Himself
without any controversy; and, secondly, there is a great
cosmic conflict that is raging through the ages. The
Bible is just full, packed full of this dispute of God's
right to have a place here, of this challenge to God's
rights here as the place of the inheritance of His Son, a
place where it speaks of His glories. The battle rages
right through history: it rages today, and the battle
comes to get God out, to force Him out, to cause
everything that is of God to quit this earth. The enemy
forces persist in this because they desire to live here,
to possess it and have this place. This conflict of the
ages is over the presence of God in His creation.
Now,
dear friends, this is the call; and this is the purpose
of the call and the fellowship of God's Son that there be
a place here for the presence of God. Oh, you have got to
get rid of a lot of ideas concerning this. We hear so
much about forming churches. The apostles never set out
to form churches: they came into being, but they went out
of being. God only looked upon those things, whether it
be in Ephesus, or Laodicea, or Philadelphia, or Thyatira,
or Smyrna, or Jerusalem, or anywhere else in this world,
He only looked upon them as perhaps providing some ground
for His presence and being supremely characterized by
this one thing - a place where the Lord is. There the
Lord is, there the Lord can be found, and there the Lord
can be met. There you will meet the Lord and find the
Lord. It is a place for Him: He is there.
Now,
these believers, what are they? What am I? What are you,
as believers? Well, call yourself by any name that you
like, but there is only one thing that justifies your
being in fellowship with God's Son, only one thing, and
that is, is the Lord there? There is only one thing that
justifies the existing of what I have called churches, or
anything at all like that, movements and groups of
Christian title, of Christian name, and that
justification is, is the Lord there? If not, then, like
Shiloh of old, it is an empty shell: the Lord is gone.
It, the thing, may go on, but the Lord has forsaken it.
Look now at the seven churches in Asia. Where are they?
Was God jealous for the thing? Never, He was never
jealous for the thing, whether you call it a church or
anything else. He was not jealous for that, but He was
jealous for His Son.
God's
eye from eternity to eternity has had one object in view
throughout. His eye has been focused upon one thing only,
not on other things. He has used these other things in a
related way; but when they ceased to fulfill that
purpose, He has left them. He has forsaken them. Time may
have destroyed them, they may have ceased to exist, and
some may have continued; but God is out of them if His
Son is not in them. God's focus from eternity to eternity
is His Son. He is jealous for Him, and He is always
saying, "How much of My Son is there in your
life?" - not all your doing, but "How much of
My Son is in the doing?"
There
are many gatherings, meeting places, filling the earth
with what are called churches. Oh, the Lord deliver us! I
want to know when I go into this place and that place, do
I meet the Lord here and does the Lord meet me here? Do I
go away or come away and say, "The Lord was in that
place: I met the Lord. I met the Lord," not other
things, not people, not men, not the assertiveness of
autocratic leaders, and so on and so on, no. "I met
the Lord."
The
Bible, you see, circles around this circumference always.
The Tabernacle, the Lord was there, but where is the
Tabernacle? The Temple, the Lord was there, but where is
the Temple? He was here: He was there. Men met Him in
these places; but, friend, when God saw that it was no
longer a place where He could be at rest and satisfied,
He passed on. Our countries are strewn with empty shells
that once had something of the Lord. All the
disappointments! I had been greatly helped by the
ministry of a brother of Boston. So when I came to
America for the first time and was going to have a
conference in Boston, the first thing afterwards, I made
it my business to go see the place of my friend who had
helped me so much. Oh, brothers, the servant of the Lord
was gone, and the Lord was gone. It was an empty shell.
From this place there had been a ministry to the Lord's
people all over the world, but not now. The thing goes
on, but the Lord has gone.
And
that's the story of so much; but, oh, God grant that it
may not be my story and your story. Once we met the Lord
in that man, in that woman. Once when we met them, you
see, we met something of the Lord, but now... may I say
to you coming here that in my contacts with you
individually, I am always feeling, "What is there of
the Lord here that I can touch, that we can live upon and
have fellowship with?" Not where do you come from,
not all these thousand things about your life, but the
Lord. Are you making an impression of the Lord?
I say
that is the purpose of our being here. It is the
testimony of Jesus, and that testimony is that He is the
Divinely appointed Heir to this world; and we are here
where God has sovereignly put us. Whether it is in a
living fellowship or not, in a Christian country or in a
Mohammedan country, where God has sovereignly put us, we
are there to put both feet down and say, "I claim
this place for Jesus Christ. He is Lord." Hell will
rage: hell will do anything to get you out immediately.
Be careful how you get moved and what arguments are
brought to bear on you. Oh, how many of our young people,
who are in a living place with the Lord, get married and
look for a nice home somewhere in the country; and in
doing so, they go out into a wilderness spiritually and
lose their spiritual life. What was the argument brought
to bear upon them? A nice home?!! Oh, be careful.
We are
here to claim this lentil patch for God, as Shammah did;
and if we have got to fight until our hand cleaves to the
hilt of our sword as Eleazar's did, and we go onto the
end of this day, may we come out at the end with the
Philistines worsted. The enemies intimate differently. We
stand. So Paul in this battle, this cosmic battle, says, "stand,"
"withstand," and "having done
all, stand."
See, the
purpose of the fellowship is to claim a foothold for the
Rightful Owner?! Christ said that this gospel of the
kingdom must be preached in all the nations. Do you stop
there? No, it is to be a testimony. Do we hold all those
for Christ? - As a testimony, in those nations - you are
there as a testimony that "Here are the rights of
the Lord Jesus Christ, and I am here for them." That
is all. That can be enlarged upon as you see, but the
question is what are we here for: why are we Christians?
To "presence" the Lord, we are here to
"presence" the Lord. This is the battle, and it
was the battle of the Lord Jesus Himself Who brought God
in and declared God's rights. And the devil said,
"Out you go, if I can have a say in the
matter."
But we
know that the end is with Him. We have got the vision.
"The knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as
the waters cover the sea." It is going to be! We are
heading up, fast heading up, to the great climax when the
one issue will become universal. "Who is going to
have this world?" And there is every facility and
every means now available for deciding that in a very
cataclysmic way. "A new heaven and a new
earth" - "wherein dwelleth righteousness."
Well, I
do not know how to stop with such a thing, but I did want
to get this to you, why are we here on this earth? Things
will be taken from us: men will turn against us,
repudiate us, reject us. They will discredit us: they did
it to the Lord. Why are we here? For self-vindication?
Not at all. We are here to hold the ground for the Lord,
to be a "patch" for the Lord in
this world. That is the purpose of our being called into
fellowship with Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Let
us pray: Lord, do cover all the faults. Take
responsibility for the imperfections of thy servants, but
do register in us what is the truth, "as the truth
is in Jesus." Oh, convict us of this: we are
interested in a lot of things, making, forming, all this,
Lord; but do show us today, there is only one thing that
matters to Thee, and that is the place that Thou doest
have and how much of a place Thou doest have. Do bring
this upon us in a new way. Hear our prayer: answer us,
for Thine Own Name and satisfaction's sake. Amen.