As we renew our occupation with the message
of Isaiah chapter 60, there are just two
preliminary words I want to say at this
point.
First of all, if there are any who
were not with us this morning, let me
say, lest they should be a little mystified,
that we sought to make it very clear
that in a great deal of the Old
Testament scriptures there is a double meaning.
There is that which is historical and therefore
largely related to Israel and their future, and
there is that which lies behind the message
to Israel and is the larger message for
the people of God in a spiritual way
for now and for the future.
We are not going to argue that out
again, but we are this afternoon occupied with
the second of those interpretations.
We are not spiritualizing everything historical out of
existence, but we are seeing that the historical
has most certainly a spiritual meaning, which is
not historical, but which is eternal.
Then the other thing that I want to
say is just a following up of the
last word this morning.
We are going again to use the word
church, and we are going to point out
that the things being said concern and relate
to the church.
Now here in this quite small company there
are those who come from many places, some
from very far off, you will be probably
going back there, others from points nearer or
farther between those distant places, and you in
your places are scattered, and many of you
are just individuals or two or three, and
you might just have somewhere undefined in the
back of your mind you are speaking.
Well, that is for the church.
He is talking about the church.
All that is concerning the church, but then
I am just one, lonely one, somewhere, or
we are only just two or three in
some remote place.
We can't be regarded as the church, and
therefore to some degree all this can hardly
apply to us.
Now I am quite sure it is necessary
to say a corrective word about that, and
the best way of doing it is to
remind you that when Paul wrote his final
letters, mainly to and about the church, he
did not write them to any one collection
of Christians in any one place, nor did
he write them just to several large companies
of Christians.
They were for all Christians, whether in companies
or scattered and alone, and they have remained
that ever since.
And Paul thought comprehensively and inclusively of all
believers, and just called them the church, that's
all.
They may have been just here and there
or in many places just one or two
or a little group, or they may have
been the larger assemblies, but they were all
the church where he was concerned, and what
he had to say applied to them all.
For this reason, as we shall emphasize presently,
he never at that time thought of them
finally as on this earth.
He had got completely away from earth conditions,
so far as geography and time were concerned,
from the merely physical, and he was seeing
the church as one thing from the standpoint
of God and heaven.
And so this whole matter of scatteredness and
individual place and position didn't come into the
thing at all, only in this way that
every fragment, wherever it was, was a part
of a whole as in heaven, so that
everything applied to every fragment.
And the practical value of that, dear friends,
is this, that as I said this morning,
we are all, wherever we are and however
alone we may be, involved in all that
the church is involved in, and that you
may be in a remote place alone, and
that you are bound up with all that
relates to the church, that is happening to
the church, that the church is knowing, that
the church is suffering, that the church is
called to, you're bound up with it, you're
in it, you're not apart from it wherever
you may be.
Necessary for you to grasp this and take
that back with you, and say, I am
here as though alone or with another in
this remote place as much a part of
the whole, and the church is that group
of honor over any other group.
That's what it means.
And in the spirit and in the heavenly,
you are always in the whole congregation of
the church.
You may not see them, you may not
have perhaps the extra benefits of those personal
fellowships and association with all the others on
the earth, but you are in the whole
church wherever you are, a part of the
congregation.
You see, we are come to the general
assembly and church of the firstborn ones, and
that was not, that we was not just
a few somewhere in one place or a
big crowd in one place.
That is all the children of God.
We are all come to the general assembly,
church of the firstborn ones.
So what we say this afternoon is not
to be regarded as something said to an
imaginary body called the church meeting somewhere.
It is said to us all wherever we
are.
Now having said that, let us come back
to the message which we get through Isaiah
chapter 60.
Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and
the glory of the Lord is risen upon
thee.
We have said quite a bit about the
ground and the nature of this light.
And now we go on to ask and
in brief seek to answer the question, What
is this light?
What is the light which is come?
And the glory which is risen.
And I have no hesitation in saying inclusively
that it is that which has peculiarly and
particularly come through the instrumentality of the apostle
Paul.
I know of course that much light has
come through others.
But the full light concerning and for the
church, the spiritual Israel has come through Paul.
And it is gathered into or stored up
in his full and concentrated ministry through his
last letters.
The final letters of Paul, that is his
church letters, are undoubtedly the light which God
has given concerning and for the church.
That is the light which has risen.
And that is the glory which has come.
Those two words are characteristic of those final
letters.
Light and glory.
Not only are the words themselves there but
the truth is there.
What light!
You find no such light anywhere else in
the Bible.
Indeed you are amazed at what this man
came to see.
Light shining right back into eternity Paul.
Light shining right on into eternity to be.
Light shining right down onto this dispensation.
How great is the light!
And as for the glory, again it is
a characteristic word but it is a characteristic
feature, isn't it?
Unto him be the glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus.
What glory has arisen through that ministry?
Let me safeguard this by saying that it
is not all the light that has come,
nor all the glory, but in its fullness,
its meridian, it has come through this channel.
Well, let us look at it.
First of all, it is light and glory
concerning the church's calling to be the resurrection
vessel of the Lord.
That is an early statement of the Ephesian
letters.
Remember, here Paul is dealing with the church.
In other places he deals with the individual
and refers to the individual's union with Christ
in death and resurrection.
That is the peculiar message to Corinthians, for
instance, because there it has to do so
much with personal conduct and personal character.
But when you come here to these last
great letters, especially Ephesians and Colossians, the idea
of Paul is all the time connected.
And when he refers to our being quickened
together and raised together, he means that's the
church.
It is a quickened and raised church.
And as such, it is the vessel of
the resurrection, the vessel of the resurrection of
Christ, the vessel of the resurrection power.
Now, of course, there can be no church
without individuals.
Therefore, these things have their personal application.
So then the apostle says that this light
which has come, which has risen upon us,
this glory which has appeared concerning the church
is to make us know that we might
know the exceeding greatness of his power according
to that working of the strength of his
might which he wrought in Christ when he
raised him from the dead.
That is for the church, inclusive of all
individuals, but the church itself is a resurrection
vessel to be the embodiment of the exceeding
greatness of his power.
No one of us individually, nor any number
of us, just as detached and unrelated individuals,
can know the exceeding greatness of his power
more than we can know any other aspect
of his fullness.
But it is easier to realize how the
church, the great company of the elect right
through all the ages, its pilgrimage and its
warfare, with all that it has had to
encounter and does have to encounter, with all
that is set against it, how necessary the
exceeding greatness of his power is to get
that church up and out and clear and
emancipated and heavenly established people.
But here it is, here is the light
which has come, the glory which has arisen,
that the church, my dear friends, you and
I, wherever we may be as a part
of that whole, are by this illumination told
that we are of the vessel of the
resurrection, that is, of the exceeding greatness of
his power.
I don't know how much that comforts you.
I don't think that it's comforting you very
much because you all look very miserable.
But if you had been with me during
recent six weeks and seen the terrible, heartbreaking
state of Christians in spiritual limitation and weakness
and all that is set to keep themselves
and how little there is that can make
it otherwise, you would get very near to
where I've got the point of despair over
this matter.
May I say here that this conference is
coming out of my experience, the whole of
it.
This is not just the subject brought up
for the conference.
Every bit of this conference is very near
to my own experience borne of the past
months.
And this, I say again, that if you
really did know the state of the Church
in this world, the state of Christians and
the desperate situation, the need, the limitation and
the lack of that which would bring them
into greater fullness, you might despair.
You might even raise the major question, does
God really mean to have His Church in
fullness?
Are we not really attempting something impossible?
Have we not committed ourselves to something that
cannot be?
Is it not going to break us, shatter
us?
Is it right, after all, that this is
what God wants?
The answer is, the life has been given.
The life has been given.
It has come, this life, that this is
what God wants.
And, blessed be God, because He wants it,
the power is there for it.
And it is the power of resurrection.
Perhaps we are wanting too much all at
once.
Perhaps we are impatient.
But God is going to have it.
The vision has been given of a Church
filled with glory at the end.
The life has come.
That is how it's going to be, spiritual
fullness at last.
God is not going to be defeated.
And the Church is the very vessel or
sphere of the power of resurrection You and
I will know that in so far as
we apprehend this truth by faith that we
are a part of that and we are
on that ground.
We stand there.
We shall come into the good of this
power of resurrection.
And it will operate in us wherever we
are.
It's the life that has been given, the
calling of the Church to be the vessel
of resurrection, life and power.
Therefore, arise, shine.
Thy light has come.
Glory of the Lord has risen upon thee.
Now that, as you recognize, was the first
thing we said this morning about this light.
That here in Isaiah 60 we have the
other side of the captivity.
The other side, so to speak, of the
grave of Israel.
Their grave of exile having been opened and
they having been called out on resurrection ground.
The word is, thy light has come.
So, you see, it's bound up with resurrection,
this light.
And so Paul's letter to the Ephesians begins
with that.
You hath he quickened and hath raised us
together with him.
And unto us is the exceeding greatness of
his power as in the resurrection of the
Lord Jesus.
Then, the second thing about this Isaiah message
which finds its spiritual fulfillment in this ministry
of Paul is the Church called to be
the vessel of light.
The light for all.
Unto the nations.
This morning we saw what that light meant,
how it worked out, how effective it was
or is shown to be in this chapter.
What tremendous impact it registered unto the ends
of the earth and how the nations began
to flow toward that light or are pictured
as flowing toward that light.
How effective it is.
Now, it is perfectly clear, if not from
this ministry of Paul, that that is the
vocation of the Church to be the vessel
and the vehicle of this light.
The light which all need.
Paul's great prayer for the saints here is
for light.
The eyes of their heart being enlightened.
They might know.
Then you know the gradual unfolding of that
light what a wonderful fullness it is.
How many beams there are to that light
in his prayer.
What is to be known by the spirit
of revelation opening the eyes of the heart.
The Church is definitely called to be and
that means you and me.
The vessel of light.
That if people are wanting to see and
wanting to know well the Lord transmits knowledge
through us.
They will find it amongst the Lord's people.
Now, that is not generally true but this
is the calling of the Church.
That wherever people are really seeking to know
the truth to know the Lord to come
into the light the Lord has a vessel
where that light can be found.
It's a challenge as well as a statement
of faith.
It is something that we must quite definitely
lay hold of, I think.
You see it is God's intention therefore it
must be possible.
Therefore the Lord provides for what he wants.
And it is not necessary for any one
of you dear children of God if you
are standing by faith in the good of
the heavenly calling and vocation it is not
necessary for any one of you not to
be a vehicle of light to others.
Indeed it is a failure in your calling
if you are not such.
Others are not seeing the light through you.
I am not now thinking specifically in terms
of your moving about with your Bible trying
to give people light but being the light.
The Church is to be the light which
is given.
We are to be all light in the
Lord.
And the enemy's great work is to try
and bring in darkness and shadows.
The darkness and the shadows coming by anything
that he can build to eclipse the light
that the Church is called to be.
He has greatly succeeded in a very large
degree in doing that and he's always at
it.
It's strange, isn't it?
But as soon as there comes anything of
difference disagreement division lack of love there's a
shadow.
There's a shadow.
There's darkness.
So the enemy is very busy to destroy
the Church's testament in this way as a
testimony of light.
Although, dear friends it's a very blessed thing
for us to really contemplate to consider and
to apprehend that given the conditions required there
can be light which radiates as in this
chapter to the ends of the earth and
people flow to it.
He said this morning the flowing the flowing
is because there's something to which to flow.
Something that answers a need.
Oh, the Lord put us in that position
where need is being met all the time
right out to the uttermost bound.
And then the next thing in this chapter
as we pointed out is the wealth to
which reference is made.
You have probably or possibly looked through the
chapter again in this connection and have recognized
what a lot is said here about wealth.
Wealth.
So much wealth that the whole world seems
to be enriched by it.
Everywhere.
And this is no fanciful imagination.
No, dear friends, this is something that the
Lord really has provided for because he has
called to it to have a people here
on this earth wherever they are who are
the channels of the enrichment of others in
all directions.
There shall go out through them spiritual riches.
Now you see how true that is in
Paul's ministry, don't you?
What riches have been disclosed to us through
him.
A man who himself was overwhelmed with the
wealth into which he had been brought.
He would cry all the depth of the
riches.
He would speak of the unsearchable riches of
Christ.
And he has given us a life concerning
a great deal of that wealth, hasn't he?
Look again into his ministry from that standpoint
with that thought in mind what wealth there
is here.
Ought we to be poor?
Ought we to be in a state of
spiritual penury?
Ought we to be living so that it's
difficult to make ends meet?
Ought that to be our state or the
state of the church as sadly enough it
is largely the case.
Ought it to be in the light of
all this wealth?
This unsearchable, inexhaustible wealth that has come to
life through this man alone Look at it
again.
Surely you are familiar enough with these vessels
of light in his letters.
Realize that you have been taken out of
your depth.
The phrase in this chapter in Isaiah the
60th chapter the abundance of the sea shall
be turned unto thee.
The abundance of the sea shall be turned
unto thee.
It's a phrase which intimates as perhaps nothing
else might intimate how vast are the resources
that God has uncovered.
If you read this week about the return
of the fishers on the east coast of
our own country so great, so immense was
the haul that a whole fleet of fishing
boats had to wait for hours because there
were no berths for them.
So many had come in already they just
could not cope with this and the fear
was a great haul our fish would have
had to be pulled back into the sea
well that's only a little spot on this
earth after all mere microcosm of the whole
you can't cope with the content of the
sea or the abundance of the sea but
well but well and is that exaggerating?
Is that exaggerating?
Well I've been trying to cope with it
for upward of forty years and I'm conscious
yet that I'm well nigh drowned in this
sea I mean every time you come here
in the spirit you realize that this is
still beyond you.
I can't cope with the wonderful light as
to the counsels of God before this world
was.
Can you cope with that?
Can you cope with all that is said
here about what is going to be in
the ages of the ages?
It's beyond us all together but out of
that fullness out of that fullness you and
I are called to be enriched for the
sake of others.
Church is called into this wealth how wealthy
should we should be?
Ask the Lord if you don't understand this
to open your eyes to your inheritance in
Christ.
The church is called to be the vessel
of resurrection the vessel of the light which
has come the vessel of the wealth that
has been disclosed.
And here again both in Isaiah 60 and
in these letters of Paul it is a
matter of government government.
There's something here just catch the picture King
shall come to the brightness of thy shining
you shall in a word you shall have
power authority government here are the kings here
are the rulers here are all these people
who are supposed to be in the place
of authority and government and they're all bowing
at your feet they're all bowing at your
feet they're all going down before you surely
that is superior authority is there anything about
that in Paul's letters?
Well there is isn't there?
Let us and his own right hand part
above all rules and authority every name is
named yes even over principalities and powers and
world rulers of this darkness and spiritual host
of wicked men the church is called to
that position we have a lot to learn
yet about that place and power of government
ruling of ascendancy spiritually but here we are
saying what the light has shown and brought
to us is that that is the church's
place according to God's mind that is our
place the place of spiritual government ascendancy power
in Christ oh that we did actually know
more about it in practice but here it
is may we be moved tremendously realize this
is not something to which we are to
climb by struggling we have been brought there
by Christ he hath seated us together with
him in the heavens he hath raised us
set us far above all that is our
place by right and I think one thing
that you and I need to learn though
we've got to be very careful about this,
a lot of people have got themselves into
trouble in this very matter and have developed
a phraseology and what not nevertheless we are
not to be put off by that sort
of thing one thing we have to learn
is how in prayer together in our prayer
times whether we be two or three or
larger companies, how to really stand in our
place of authority of government we are all
the time beseeching and imploring and entreating and
reaching out and striving and struggling to get
somewhere and we very rarely take the position
that is ours in Christ to govern situations
and spiritual forces here we are called to
that, to rulership in a spiritual way and
it doesn't call for love and stride and
language and phrases and voices, it's a spiritual
position but it's a definite and positive exercise
that is to be made by us together
as the church authority over other authorities that
are at work in this universe and then
one other thing as we close for the
present you notice the universality of things in
this 60th chapter of Isaiah how far reaching
it all is, how comprehensive thy son shall
come from far thy daughters from the ends
of the earth, the nations the nations of
the earth it's very comprehensive and extensive it's
universal isn't it this ministry the value of
this life so far reaching and when you
turn to Paul's ministry well, there we are
this is not something just a little few
in some corner or a number of corners
this is something for all something for all,
oh God deliver us from exclusiveness God deliver
us from tying up what he has given
to us, to ourselves and to just little
companies here and there God make us know
that he has planted us right in the
midst of the universe, right in the midst
of the nations and that he has given
us enough for all his people we do
constantly need to watch this matter lest we
should preserve things unto certain people who like
this sort of thing no no, this life
has been given for all we must watch
carefully against everything and everything that stops us
from seeing that all are in the way
of heaven and that it is available for
all for the church's life is universal that
is for everyone and everywhere and there is
enough of it enough of it, dear friends
we are not going to lose anything certainly
we are not going to run out of
resources if we enlarge ourselves to all the
Lord's people the real way of our own
enlargement is the enlargement of our hearts to
the Lord's people.
Be careful then and watchful against all that
which is ever the propensity of people who
get light to reserve it for certain narrow
circles hold it into those limited realms.
Oh do always remember that it is not
only for people who have seen it and
responded to it, to be precise we're always
many of the Lord's people are in danger
of interpreting things in this way but you
see we've seen the light we've got the
light and we've come out by the light
that we've received and these other people well
they're where they are they're in this and
they're in that well they're not in the
light and the effect of that is pernicious.
It is destructive to the very thing for
which the church exists no the light is
for all as the love is for all
it is for all and keep the open
heart, keep the open heart and the open
mind it's amazing how many really hungry and
longing people there are just shut up where
there is no light you've got to be
always watchful that the light is available for
them all I think it's a warning note
that is very necessary.
Oh let us be enlarged because the Lord
does not make his sun to shine upon
the good only and the light you see,
the light does good to very bad people
very evil people are getting good from the
sun the Lord doesn't say only the good
people are going to have my sun have
the light, have the sun no, no, it's
available for all and we must keep it
there if the light has come, the glory
has arisen and it's like the sun it's
like the sun for everyone and we get
surprises don't we oh we get surprises I,
with shame say that I've had some startling
surprises some people some dear woman with make
believers thick as pink and everything that would
set you back make you keep away and
yet contact beginning speed and a heart that
is hungry and ready that's not exaggeration that's
not fiction, that's true surprises how hungry heart
and ready heart hidden behind things that would
repair, we must keep the light available for
all and never be put off I've spoken
of physical things but even other you see
ecclesiastical things religious things denominational things, anything you
like don't be put off don't be put
off don't allow your life to be held
from anybody because of these complexes what perhaps
you think does not the Lord's full cause,
nevertheless keep open to all you will be
in the way of surprises and you will
find that there will be wonderful responses to
the light if only you make it available
from very unexpected quarters oh, the light the
light is for all it's a universal light
this light that is, it is to be
available for everyone it's a large thing a
large thing so the sun shall no more
be thy light, nor the moon the Lord
shall be thy light that's something very much
bigger than natural bodies of light isn't it,
how great is the Lord how great is
the Lord, if our sun is great through
the illumination and the warming of the whole
earth sometimes capable of doing it at any
rate how much more so the Lord the
glory of the Lord is risen upon thee
don't keep it to yourself don't tie it
up in any compartment arise shine for thy
light is glory of the Lord