We have been considering the greatness and glory of Jesus Christ,
and have been looking at this matter through the ark of the
testimony in the tabernacle of old. We have seen the glory and
greatness in the materials of the ark, and in relation to the
mercy-seat over the ark. Now we shall begin to look at the
history of the ark.
The ark began at the time when
Israel was formed into a nation. They were constituted a distinct
nation at Mount Sinai. Of course, they were a chosen seed before
that, and as Hebrews they began with Abraham, but there is always
a difference between the Hebrews and Israel. Israel is the
national name for the people. So it was at Mount Sinai that they
were constituted a distinct nation with their own national
constitution, and it was then and there that the ark was made by
direction of God. And that ark goes right through their national
history, from the beginning until at last it comes to rest in the
fulness of the kingdom under David and Solomon. It had a long
journey, and a very varied history.
We have been seeing that the
ark is the Old Testament means of revealing the Lord Jesus
Christ, and what we have now is that very varied and long journey
that the testimony of Jesus has to take. How many different
situations the ark came into! How many strong forces it had to
contend with! All the way through the wilderness, and all through
the battles in the Promised Land, the ark was governing
everything until at last it came to the end of its journeys in
the house of God. There the staves were drawn out, the journeys
were all over, and the testimony had reached its end.
The Letter to the Hebrews takes
up all these things and translates them from the Old Testament to
the New. It tells us that what was true in a material and literal
way in the Old Testament is now true in a spiritual and heavenly
way. So the Letter begins with the statement that God, having of
old times spoken in many different ways, has gathered up all
those different times and ways into His Son, and He has spoken
fully and finally in His Son, so that everything led on to the
Lord Jesus, and we have the explanation of all that was through
those times in Jesus Christ.
This Letter to the Hebrews has
two sides. On the one side it tells us that the end has already
been reached in Jesus Christ. In Christ all the journeys have
come to an end. He has come to His rest in the heavenly House,
and personally the Lord Jesus has no more journeys to take. He
has sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens,
and, so far as He Himself is concerned, He will remain sitting
down. He has reached the end in fulness. That is what this Letter
teaches. Fulness and finality have been reached in the person of
Jesus Christ. He has no more work to do for Himself, no more
journeys to take Himself, and He has nothing to add to Himself -
He is perfectly full. In Him all the fulness dwells and He has
reached the end of all His journeys. That is one side of this
Letter to the Hebrews.
The other side is that what is
true about Him has to be made true in His new Israel. He is now
forming a new heavenly Israel. The kingdom has been taken away
from the earthly Israel and, as Jesus Himself said, it has been
given to "a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof"
(Matthew 21:43). The true vine is that which is bringing forth
the fruits of Jesus Christ, and if we are in Jesus Christ we
belong to the new heavenly Israel which He is forming. That is
what is going on in us now. What is true and final of Jesus
Christ in heaven is now being made true in His Israel on earth.
I expect you are familiar with
the truth that the New Testament teaches. It looks as though
there is a contradiction, and almost as though Paul and Peter do
not agree. Paul says: "(God) made us to sit with him in the
heavenly places, in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:6), while
Peter says: "I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims"
(1 Peter 2:11). Paul says: 'You are in heaven', and Peter says:
'You are on earth', but there is no contradiction. You see, Paul
says that we are in the heavenlies in Christ. It is a
spiritual position. In Christ all the work has been done for us,
and we are already sanctified and perfected. That is the great
spiritual truth, but we know very well that we are still on the
earth. The other side is that what is true of our position in
Christ is being made true of our position in this world.
That brings us back to the
journeys of the ark, that is, that what is true concerning Jesus
Himself has got to be made true in our experience. What we have
to see clearly is that the journeys of the ark were not only
literal, material, earthly journeys, but were spiritual journeys.
It was the journey from what the ark was in itself to what it had
to become in the life of the people.
You see, I can take up this
Bible and say: 'Now, that is a very literal book. It is something
that I can see. It is something that I can feel and move about.'
I can say that that Bible is a real thing, and I can also say
that I believe in the reality of the Bible. I can do all those
things with the Bible as I hold it away from myself and look at
it. In that way the Bible is objective, but for that Bible to be
really a power in my life, it has to take a journey. It has to
take a spiritual journey, and that journey is from the objective
to the subjective. It has to get inside me somehow. I must have
what is written in this book written in my heart, and what is
written in this book has to be an experience in my life. Now I
ask you, does that happen in half an hour? Does that happen in
one day, one week, one month, one year? Well, I would not like to
tell you how many years ago it is that I took the Bible in my
hand, but all through these years of my life this spiritual
journey has been taking place, and I am not at the end of the
journey yet. I have a long way to go for all that is in this book
to be made true in my experience.
The
Journey from the Objective to the Inward
That is how it was with the ark
in Israel. There was the ark, a material thing. The people knew
that it was there as a definite object. They knew what it was
made of and what was in it, and they could see it being carried
on the journeys in front of them, but what was the real history
of that ark? It was not just the history of the movement of an
objective thing. God was making them know that that ark was a
power in their lives. God was saying something to them through
the ark, from place to place and from time to time, and through
all their difficult experiences they were learning something
about the meaning of that ark. They were learning that what was
true of the ark in itself had got to be made true in their own
lives, and that was never accomplished by preaching about the
ark. Neither Moses, nor Aaron, nor the priests just gave them
daily expositions on the ark. It was only as they came into
situations that they learned by experience the meaning of that
ark. Experience is the only school in which we truly learn.
I expect the experience of many
of you has been similar to my own. You see, for some years at the
beginning of my ministry I was occupied with Bible teaching. I
took all the books of the Bible, analysed them, and put the
outline on a blackboard. By that method I got to know what was
written in the Bible. Well, of course, that is of some value, for
it is a good thing to know what is in the Bible, but after some
years of doing that kind of work, God took me personally in hand
and through deep, deep experience He brought me to know the meaning
of the Bible. Well, I could tell you that the Gospel by John
has mainly to do with life, and I took my coloured pencil and put
a coloured line under every occurrence of the word 'life'. This
matter of eternal fife was a wonderful thing - in the Gospel by
John. Then the Lord began to work in my life in such a way that
the only thing I needed was divine life. Spiritually I came into
a situation of death. In my ministry I came into a situation of
death, and physically, too, and it was then that this whole
question of life became a very serious matter for me. My whole
future, spiritually, physically, and in ministry, depended upon
whether God gave me new spiritual life. And through that deep
experience the Gospel by John was no longer in a book. It got
inside me. Divine life moved from the position of teaching in the
Bible to become a reality in myself. If that were not true I
should not be talking to you now.
And so I could go on. I could
have given quite a good analysis and outline of the Letter to the
Ephesians, and could tell you on a blackboard all that that
Letter has to say. It is the great Letter about the Church as the
Body of Christ. Well, I thought I knew all about that. And then
God took me in hand, and through a very deep experience He
brought me to see the real heavenly nature of the Body of Christ,
and all this other idea of the Church seemed to me to be like
nonsense. Putting up buildings and calling them 'The Church';
going to services and saying 'I am going to Church'. That whole
system became empty. I had come to see that the Church is, after
all, only an earthly expression of the heavenly Lord Jesus.
Now, I did not start out to
speak about the Church, but I am just emphasising one thing: We
only come into spiritual reality through spiritual experience,
and it is in experiences that we come to know what Christ
is.
That was the history of the ark
in Israel. It was not only going from Mount Sinai to the next
place... to the next place... and so on, to the Land. It was
going more and more from the objective into the very life of the
people as a power, and we are going to see, as we go on this
journey of the ark, that when the people put those two things
apart - that is, when the ark was only something objective and
separated from spiritual reality - then they got into trouble.
There were times when Israel used the ark only as a superstition.
They thought that if they took the ark into battle against the
Philistines, then it would work like magic for them, but it did
not do so - the Philistines captured the ark and Israel were
defeated. You see, they had separated between the ark as an
object and the ark as a spiritual reality.
But I have gone a long way
ahead. Our great lesson for now is that the work of the Holy
Spirit is to make true in us what is true in Christ, and things
will go all wrong in our lives if we separate those two things.
It is therefore most important that we really understand the
spiritual nature of the ark, or the spiritual nature of Jesus
Christ. We are dealing with the true testimony of Jesus in the
Church, in the people of God, and for the present I will just put
my finger upon one thing.
By
Revelation of Jesus Christ
In the beginning
the ark was made as the result of revelation and inspiration. In
other words, God allowed no man to think of this, and to make it
according to his own ideas. The ark was the first thing in all
that belonged to the tabernacle, and therefore, right at the
beginning, this thing had to come from God Himself. This is not
man's idea. God did not say: 'I just want you to make Me a box
and you can make it of whatever materials you like. You can
choose just what size it is, and you can decide what shall be in
it.' God never did anything like that. He did not leave one thought
about this to man. In a very meticulous and particular way He
revealed what this ark was to be made of, its shape, its size,
and everything to do with it, and, having given the pattern, He
divinely inspired the men who made it. It says that the Spirit of
God came upon Bezalel and Aholiab, and it was made by revelation
from heaven and by inspiration of God. The testimony of Jesus is not
something that man makes. Man has nothing to do with this in
the first place. It comes by revelation and inspiration from
heaven.
Do you know that in
Christianity there are a number of different kinds of arks? Do
you understand what I mean? Man's interpretation of Jesus Christ,
man's ideas of what to preach, and man's conception of the
Church. Nearly all the hundreds of different bodies of the Lord's
people have a differently shaped ark. You see, the Baptists say:
'It must be like this', the Methodists say: 'It must be like this',
and the Lutherans say: 'No, it must be like this.' There
are hundreds of different arks in Christianity. No, God never,
never meant that. We shall only come to oneness, to unity, as we
have it straight from God, that is, as the Holy Spirit Himself
reveals Christ in our hearts.
There was no greater
denominationalist or sectarian in this world than Saul of Tarsus.
Indeed, he was a bigoted sectarian. He had no room for any other
denomination, and so strong was his sectarianism that he would
persecute to the death anyone who did not agree with him. What a
mighty miracle it was that that man became the Apostle to
the Gentiles! That that man could say: 'Now the Church is
not just a Jewish Church, but whether it be Jew or Gentile,
whether it be barbarian, Scythian, bondman or freeman, in Christ
Jesus we are all one man!' I say, what a mighty miracle! What
brought that miracle about? Only one thing that he says explains
it: "It was the good pleasure of God... to reveal his Son in
me" (Galatians 1:15,16). He no longer spoke of 'Jesus of
Nazareth, that false prophet', or 'those heretics called
Christians'. He would say: 'I have seen Jesus. I have seen God's
Son, and that has worked the miracle', and he could speak of all
those who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity as being 'my
brethren'.
I am just saying that, when
this spiritual journey takes place, the movement from the
objective, even Jesus, to the inward Son of God, everything
changes. Man cannot make that! He may have all his committees and
his conferences on Christian unity. He may get all his own ideas
about Jesus Christ, but in the end it gets nowhere. The true
testimony of Jesus is not of man, nor of this world. It is by the
Holy Spirit revealed in our hearts.
From
Creed to Reality
If I said to you: 'Do you
believe in the Holy Spirit?', I am sure that most of you would
say: 'Yes, certainly I believe in the Holy Spirit.' If any of you
belong to the State Church, every time you go you recite the
Creed and say: 'I believe in the Holy Ghost.' But whether you
belong to the State Church or not, you believe in the Holy
Spirit. But, really, do you? Do you believe in the Holy Spirit
objectively or subjectively? Do you realize that the very coming
of the Holy Spirit was to make Christ, in all that He is, real
inside us? Jesus said: "He shall guide you into all the
truth: for he shall not speak from himself; but what things
soever he shall hear, these shall he speak... he shall take of
mine and declare it unto you" (John 16:13,14). The Holy
Spirit shall cause you to take this spiritual journey from the
objective to the subjective. What a wonderful inheritance we have
in the Holy Spirit!
May the Lord show us the
meaning of this spiritual pilgrimage! It is going to be a longer
or a shorter journey according to the openness of our hearts.
Israel could have got into the Land in eleven days, but it took
them forty years, and that was because their hearts were not
wholly over for the Lord. We shall come on to that again later.