Just the briefest possible word, by way of
retrospect to the gatherings
and hours which now lie behind us, and
the specific matter which the Lord has laid
upon us for this time as we believe,
we have been seeing that in all the
great and many-sided significance of the Lord
Jesus Christ, not least by any means is
that aspect of his standing vitally related to
an eternal heavenly order.
That he is the center and the embodiment,
the full content of an eternal divine order.
He was that in creation, he is that
in redemption.
He is shown to be that in the
ages to come.
Great, wonderful order.
And by that we mean orderliness, not just
the system.
Marvellous ordered system, where we spend much time
on that, showing how he being the expression
of God in that respect reveals God as
a God of order.
Then we went further to spend not a
little time seeing that the whole universe as
we know it now, which is so far,
far removed from the idea of order, is
the result of an interference with that order,
a breaking in on it to disrupt the
order of God, firstly by displacing God's Son
from his position in relation to the creation.
So we have as the result of that
interference, the disruption, dislocation, confusion
and chaos in this universe.
It's all evil.
And as we said last night, it is
something which on the one hand all men
are aware of and confronted with.
On the other hand, all their efforts from
age to age to rectify it, by their
councils and confederations, institutions and every means in
every realm, all their efforts break down, are
proved hopeless.
There never was a time in the history
of this world when men were more conscious
of this conflict in the whole system of
things, this disruption and disunity.
Perhaps there never was a time when men
were striving with greater effort and utilizing more
resources to try and overcome this.
And it defeats them and defies them at
every turn and in every effort.
Confusion only grows.
Today, men are almost brought to a standstill
in their efforts to bring about something like
a composure of the world and an order
which will bring rest to this troubled earth.
No, it cannot be.
Because there is a ruler of this world.
Because there is a whole evil system which
is determined that God's order shall not be
and whose success in defeating God is ever
and always along the lines of confusion and
disruption.
It is not only that they objectively walk
as from the outside it has come into
the very nature and constitution of men and
things.
It's in us.
It's in us and it's in all.
Well, we have spent a lot of time
on that.
Now today we are coming to put our
finger upon some of the major causes of
this situation with a view to finding out,
seeing what is the remedy or what are
the remedies in particular.
We have seen that the remedy in general
is the cross of the Lord Jesus.
There is the focal point.
There is the uniting center, Christ crucified.
But that encloses quite a lot of things.
It is on just very few of those
that we are going to spend our time.
But it is very necessary again at the
outset that we should have present to mind,
have it brought clearly before us as the
background that disorder exists and disorder always
means weakness and loss and frustration wherever it
is found.
Not only in the cosmic realm but in
the individual life and in the church of
God and in the local expressions of the
church of God and in homes in every
realm where there is disorder.
It spells loss.
It spells weakness.
It spells frustration.
It means arrested progress.
You just cannot go straight on where there
is chaos.
You just cannot do anything where there is
confusion.
You are brought to a standstill and the
whole prospect is covered with hopelessness until you
have got things straightened out.
That is where God began with the chaos
at the beginning.
In order to move toward his ultimate purpose
in his Son he had to deal with
the chaos and out of it bring order.
That is not only a fact.
In history there is a great truth, spiritual
truth for the church.
Paul tells us that because of that disturbance
and upsetting of the divine order at the
beginning God pronounced something upon this whole creation.
He pronounced what Paul calls vanity.
Vanity.
The creation itself was subjected to vanity.
Vanity is written large over the whole creation.
Vanity is not our modern idea.
Vanity in the Bible means that all efforts,
all inventions, all that is called progress will
not cure or remove some fatal lack, deficiency.
In the constitution of things.
You are so familiar with one simple historical
illustration of that.
You remember that a curse was pronounced upon
Jericho and the curse worked in this way.
That nothing came through to perfection.
It just went so far and then stopped
and dropped into death.
Many years afterward in the days of the
prophet, sons of the prophet came to him
from Jericho.
And they said there are many good things
here.
Many things that are pleasant.
But there is one thing that is wrong
and that spoils everything.
The waters, the waters are deficient in some
quality so that we do our digging, our
planting, our cultivating.
We give our energy and our time to
seeking to produce fruit.
And things begin to grow and there seems
to be a prospect and a promise.
And just when it looks as though we
can expect the fruit, it all falls off
the trees.
Never ripens.
It all falls to the ground.
There is a fatal deficiency in the waters
of Jericho.
Remember how the prophet dealt with it.
Bring me a new cruise and put meal
therein.
Salt therein.
Salt is the great element, isn't it?
Put salt therein.
He cast it into the waters and the
waters were healed.
Now there you have a very simple parable
of this great truth from the day when
God subjected the whole creation to vanity that
it just goes so far.
And how true that is, isn't it?
For every step forward, and they seem to
be very big steps forward, very big steps
forward, every step forward in history has only
produced new problems of its own.
And very often fatal.
You have a disease or a malady and
someone through research finds what is expected to
be a remedy.
Well it does seem to touch that particular
trouble but it raises a lot of others.
Penicillin is not the remedy for everything.
It creates its own problems.
You know what I mean.
It doesn't clear up everything.
Something else has got to be faced now
by the very employment of it.
And what is true in that is true
in everything.
And we can see it probably in this
atomic age more than ever.
Progress, advance, invention, development, discovery, yes, but what
problems.
What threats, what perils.
And men are holding their breath at their
own discoveries and inventions.
Their hearts are in the grip of a
terrible fear because of what they themselves have
brought to light.
It's like that.
Creation, the whole creation, however far it goes,
is caught in a terrible vicious circle.
Now this is a fact which of course
is clear, demonstrated on every side.
Man is building a mighty tower to reach
unto a heaven but he's holding his breath
for his tower because the bigger the tower
the greater the threat of disaster.
He is feverishly harassed into buttressing up his
tower with conferences and defense programs and what
not.
It's like that.
No, we are not moving farther away from
fear and dread.
The whole creation is subjected to vanity.
Well, that's the situation.
But what's the cause?
We are not thinking that in a little
time and company like this we are going
to solve the world's problems.
But these things come very near all the
time.
They are pressing into our lives and they
are pressing into the church of God.
We are confronted continually in the realm of
the Christian life in its various aspects, individual
and collective.
We are confronted with this matter of disorder
as the way, the means of frustrating God's
purpose.
Will you dear friends take this, listen to
this, that God can only reach his full
end on his own order, by his own
order.
He has an order.
He has an order for your life, for
mine.
He has an order for our local companies
as expressions of the whole company of the
church.
He has an order for the church and
that order has to come into our localities
and into our local expressions of the church.
And the word order or what it stands
for in the mind of God governs our
progress, governs our fruitfulness, governs the realization of
the divine purpose.
God is not going to get there willingly.
Neither are we.
That's a very important thing and if this
conference serves one purpose alone, it should serve
that, bringing us face to face with that.
If there is frustration, if there is unrest,
if there is sinking of heart, if there
is a sense of despair or if we
find ourselves in weakness, helplessness, we should ask,
we should seek, is this because in some
particular or particulars the divine order is violated.
Maybe sin in other ways, I know, which
has the same effect, but this is one
thing that has always been a most fruitful
work of the devil, to disrupt the people
of God.
Their relationships, their fellowship and their harmonious going
on together to bring in the discordant note
again and spoil the music.
We must look then to this matter of
order.
Now what we who are concerned with God's
purpose have to be sure of is what
on the one hand are the grounds of
insecurity and on the other hand what are
the essentials to strength, to progress and to
final triumph.
In other words, what was responsible for the
disruption which is in the universe with such
a sinister, frustrating power everywhere.
There are several major things.
We put our finger upon one this morning.
We'll just read one or two passages of
scripture.
Firstly as inclusive, in principle, from the book
of Proverbs, chapter 9, verse 1.
Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn
out her seven pillars.
Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn
out her seven pillars.
Now pause for a minute before we read
more.
You know two things about that.
That pillars are the supports of any building.
The safety and the duration of the building
rests with its pillars.
You will recall to mind the end of
the life of the Judge Samson when the
Philistines gathered and crowded that mighty hall, filled
it to capacity and climbed upon its roof.
And for their holiday they wanted some entertainment.
So they called for the blind Samson to
be brought that they might make sport of
him.
And they brought him.
And there he stood in his blindness, everybody
making their sport of him.
He said to the lad who brought him
in, just lead me to the pillows upon
which the house rests.
And he prayed to the Lord, just this
once Lord, just this once, vindicate.
And he took hold on the two pillars
and bowed himself with all his might.
And the house fell.
And greater were the number of the slain
in the day of his death than all
his life.
Matter of the tremendous importance of pillars in
a building.
That's just by the way.
The other thing, if you know so well,
is that wisdom is always connected with building
in the Bible.
Solomon was the man of proverbial wisdom.
He who built the great temple, it was
by that God given wisdom that he built
something that was the wonder and marvel of
all who saw it.
The apostle Paul speaks of himself as a
wise master builder.
According to the wisdom given, he laid a
foundation.
A wise master builder.
And so we could go on.
Wisdom associated with building.
Wisdom hath builded her house.
She hath hewn out her seven pillars.
This divine house which Paul speaks, the church
of God, the pillar and ground of the
truth, has a seven-fold support.
This house of God, this marvelous house of
God, his church rests upon seven pillars.
Take them away, and the house falls.
The creation was built upon these pillars.
When they were interfered with, the creation collapsed
and disintegrated.
Seven, of course, is a symbolic number.
That which is spiritually complete.
We leave those details.
I'm not thinking that we'll be able to
speak of the seven pillars.
But we can, I think, speak of two
or three of them today.
And undoubtedly, the first of these pillars is
the pillar of truth.
Pillar of truth.
Now we can go over and read one
or two other passages.
Take the gospel by John.
The gospel by John, chapter 8, verse 44.
For ye are of your father the devil,
and the lusts of your father it is
your will to do.
He was a murderer from the beginning, and
stood not in the truth, because there is
no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of
his own, for he is a liar, and
the father thereof.
In John's first letter, chapter 2, verse
4.
He that saith, I know him, and keepeth
not his commandments, is a liar, and the
truth is not in him.
The book of the Revelation, chapter 21, verse
27.
There shall in no wise enter into it
anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination,
and a lie.
John, chapter 22, verse 15.
Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and
the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters,
and every one that loveth and maketh a
lie.
Sooner or later, dear friends, everything will stand
or fall according to whether it rests upon
truth.
Perhaps there was never a truer thing said,
a thing more true in its history.
Anything and everything false has its own doom
within its own self.
God has given a very large place to
this matter.
He himself is the God of truth.
Declaration is, in him is no lie.
In him is no lie.
Word of God is a mighty revelation of
the fact that God is intensely jealous over
truth, burningly jealous for truth.
Psalmist cries, thou desirest truth in the inward.
He holds a lie in abomination.
We have seen he consigns all liars to
the lake of fire.
He excludes from the new Jerusalem every one
that loveth and maketh a lie.
All liars shall have their part in the
lake which burneth.
That is expressive of the burning hatred of
God for what is not true, and of
his love for the truth.
Jesus Christ himself called himself the truth.
I am the truth.
He is called the faithful and true witness.
The Holy Spirit is called by him the
spirit of truth.
When he, the spirit of truth, is come.
And the church, the fourth of these great
magnitudes, is the pillar and ground of the
truth.
On the other hand, as we have seen,
Satan is called the liar and the father
of lies.
Now this whole beautiful creation, its whole structure
collapsed when the lie entered in.
The lie disintegrated everything.
And that lie runs through the constitution of
this world order as it is.
It's in man.
Man is a lie.
He is not what God meant him to
be or made him to be.
He is a contradiction, a denial.
That is not the truth.
When you look at man, as God meant
and means man to be, and he knows
quite well that there is something in his
very constitution that is not true.
In the world itself, the whole world system,
there is this lie.
It's in commerce.
How rare, downright transparent honesty is in business
and in commerce.
What a problem that is for anybody who
really wants to be straight and honest.
Difficult to get on in this world if
you're going to be like that.
In society, quite a lot of falsehood there
is.
Make-believe, pretense, acting, exaggeration,
imitation.
All these things are forms or expressions of
something false.
They call it make-up.
It's really make-believe.
It's not true.
Pretending to be something that is not true.
Society is like that.
The world is like that.
Mixture.
Oh, how artificial and false it all is.
It's only the Christians who really sense that,
I suppose.
We, when we were in the world, had
some sense of how artificial and
unreal it all is.
Keeping up, keeping up a show, keeping up
a pretense, keeping up a make-believe, making
an impression without the substance behind.
It's unreal.
That's the world.
Like that.
There's a lie at the heart of the
whole world system.
Ah, yes, but in religion it can be
like that.
Pretense, make-believe, show, making an impression without
reality behind.
The Lord Jesus, the truth, the fiery, scorching
truth looked upon.
The leaders of religion in his day, scribes
and Pharisees, and he said, hypocrites, play-actors,
pretending what is not true.
Yes, it's all like that everywhere and everything.
And that, that is the cause of the
disintegration, of the confusion and disruption of everything.
That's the first cause.
And nothing can stand, nothing can stand and
abide which is not true.
Sooner or later it's going to be found
out by that very thing there.
It will collapse.
It will go to pieces.
It has the very seeds of its disruption
in itself if it is not absolutely true.
So here is this revealed fact.
God's building, God's building has in the very
first place the pillar of truth erected.
I am the truth, I will build my
church.
Those things go together.
Now, with that as the whole background, dear
friends, it's touching and it's got to be
applied and we've to apply it.
Our position, our position must be true.
Our personal position must be a true one.
We'll never, never stand, never go through unless
our position is a true one.
If there can be any doubt, any question,
any uncertainty, any contradiction in our position, we're
not safe.
We're not safe.
The Lord, in
his gracious sovereignty, which often seems so hard
and so unkind, has allowed to come into
the order of things, such things as storms
and blizzards and hurricanes.
And when they pass, you see their effect.
There are many, many things laid flat on
the earth.
Trees lying there, uprooted.
There are things that stood and gone through
and are going to face the next one,
the stronger for this.
And it's a parable again.
You and I, individually and collectively, in our
local companies and the church as a whole,
God knows how true it is today, are
allowed to pass into terrible, shaking storms.
Storms that threaten our existence, our continuance.
And when they've passed, there are those who
haven't stood up to it, who've been carried
uprooted by the trial, the testing, the storm,
the duress.
You go to some of those trees and
say, you see, the reason for this is
you were too superficial.
It wasn't reality in your position, in your
position.
Your position was not true.
Therefore, the Lord has brought to light a
false position.
He does that, dear friends.
I say it's hard, it's very hard.
No one likes that kind of experience.
No company likes that.
But in his gracious sovereignty, it's necessary.
It's necessary.
He must have what he does have.
Truth.
Something that proves the truth of God in
its very being.
That God is unmovable, unshakable.
God endures forever.
And something of that has got to be
produced in everything that is of God.
And in the final issue, the company that
will be there around the throne will be
the company that have come up out of
much tribulation, washed their robes and made them
white in the blood of the Lamb.
Therefore are they before the throne, that eternal
everlasting throne.
Into them has been wrought something of the
steadfastness.
Trying to do that.
But here do believe me that we'll not
stand unless our position is true.
We have to look into our position from
time to time.
Indeed, the Lord forces us to it.
We have to say now, is my position
as I am, where I am, a true
one?
A right one?
Is it of God?
Or are there other elements in this?
Search our hearts over this.
Find out why we are where we are.
Why we believe what we say we believe.
What lies behind it?
Our position must be a true one.
Our life must be a true life.
Not carried on by emotion, by other people,
by system and order around us, even church
order.
But we stand on the ground of a
life with God of our own.
A life with God of our own does
not depend for its continuance and its strength
upon anything outside.
It's between us and God.
That's the only true and safe position.
Our testimony must be true.
Not just true in the Bible.
Not true as in the company of people
who believe it and hold it and teach
it.
And in every part true of us, if
the testimony is the power of His resurrection,
that has got to be true in us,
in you, in me.
You and I have got to embody the
power of His resurrection in our life, day
by day.
If the testimony is the unity of the
saints in Christ, it's got to be in
us.
It's got to be that testimony.
Our testimony has got to be like that.
True.
Real.
I speak with solemnity and I would not
resort to likeness, but I read a little
while ago of a good man who had
had a very wonderful conversion.
A very wonderful conversion.
Come right out, as we say, of the
blue into something very wonderful and very real.
And he had had it printed that he
could distribute it to everybody.
His testimony.
The years had gone on.
He tried to keep up this thing of
the past, but it had lost its reality.
His life was no longer aglow with that
testimony.
Indeed, there was a good deal more that
spoiled the testimony.
But he tried to keep it up, living
on the past.
After some years, a Christian man called on
him, or came into the home, and began
to speak about the Lord.
And he asked this good man in the
house whether he knew the Lord.
Oh, yes, I know the Lord.
Wife, go up and get my testimony.
It's up in the attic.
And up she went, and a lot of
noise, and turning over up there for a
long time.
Then she came slowly down and she said,
Daddy, the rats have eaten your testimony.
It's got to be real, up to date.
Not of the past.
Not something on paper.
But right here, now, today, our testimony has
got to be real, in the truth.
Our fellowship must be true.
That little word you know, it's a very
searching word of the Apostle, in unfeigned love
of the presence.
In unfeigned love.
It's so easy for us to pretend in
this matter, and to be sentimental, or to
use sentimental language about one another.
Our dear sister, our dear brother.
Is it true?
Unfeigned love of the presence.
Fellowship must be true.
Our positions with one another must be true.
They must rest upon the truth.
Not the strength of our own convictions, which
may be falling, but the strength of what
is actually true.
Prove your convictions.
We can have tremendous convictions, you know, and
be quite sure that we are absolutely right
in our judgments, and our conclusions, and our
positions, in this matter and that matter, with
this one and that.
So positive, and yet it may be utterly
false.
Utterly false.
It's just possible like that.
I could give you some illustrations of that
very thing, but it's not necessary, perhaps, and
wouldn't help.
But, dear friends, our ears have got to
test what they hear.
So easily we hear things said about people,
about places, individuals and companies, and we take
it at once, and are affected by it.
And we are put on an utterly false
position with the Lord.
The Lord's not with us in that.
Sooner or later there's going to be an
exposure of the falsehood in that, and we
are going to be ashamed.
Our ears must test what we hear, coming
from whatever source it may.
We may think the most reliable and trustworthy.
Nevertheless, let us pause and wonder if that
really is true.
We must make sure, because this thing is
going to affect and influence us, make a
difference in our attitudes and in our conduct.
Let's be quite sure about it.
All the God's people would do
that.
And do what it is said.
Jesus never judged after the hearing of his
ears.
Our eyes must verify what we see.
We can be so misled by taking things
as they appear.
I'm going to borrow something here, and my
brother there won't mind if I illustrate what
I mean.
Because I know that other people might not.
We are at prayer.
I happen to open my eyes, and I
see my brother, with his eyes open, looking
at the one who is praying.
And looking intently.
Almost it would appear critically.
Now, I could, if I didn't know, and
you would, not knowing, say, why isn't that
brother entering into the prayer?
Why hasn't he his eyes closed?
Why is he weighing every word like that?
Seemingly so critical.
See how you could misjudge a brother if
you didn't know that he was deaf and
was reading.
Entering into the prayer by following the very
movements of the lips, and the only way
in which he could enter into the prayer.
You see the possibility of a terrible misunderstanding?
Judging after the sight of the eyes?
No, fondue.
We must verify what we see.
Did it really mean that?
Is that the truth about it, or did
it only appear like that?
We are constantly misjudging one another in that
way.
Putting a motive or a reason to somebody's
behavior that was never meant at all is
not true.
And how everything is spoiled, and the building
is either broken up or arrested.
We must be on the ground of the
truth.
In every way our homes must be on
a true basis.
Our business, as far as we have any
power for whatever, must be true.
True business.
I had a friend who was the head
of a business, and he put up on
his desk these words, God first, and all
the travelers came into his office.
Again and again the traveler made some suggestion
of how he could get business and do
business, but it wasn't quite straight.
It just had something in it that was
not quite square and clear.
And he said always to the traveler, you
see there, if you have anything to propose
that is out of harmony with it, our
business ceases at this point.
Now I know what that's going to do
for business, but you can't build even a
business for permanence and the blessing of God,
which is important, on a false foundation.
It's something that is not true.
And when we have said all, dear friends,
our spirit must be true.
Our spirit must be true.
It is, after all, a matter of what
the eyes of flame see, isn't it?
His eyes were as a flame of fire.
He came to the church.
The eyes of flame were looking things through
and through, and lighting upon the false, the
untrue, the inconsistent, the contradictory, and challenging the
whole existence of that church on the basis
of faith.
Of the truth.
The truth.
Now truth can be a very beautiful thing.
It is a beautiful thing.
But truth can be a very terrible thing.
In this house which he is building, and
in which you and I are fellow builders,
there can be no painted pillars, no imitation
marble.
It's got to be true.
Right true.
But wherever you probe it, and however deeply
you get into it, you'll find it's the
same.
It's the same.
It stands up to the test.
See, the issue, the issue is whether it
will stand for eternity, whether it will go
on to the end, whether it will fulfill
God's purpose in its existence.
That's the test of everything, isn't it?
Who wants it to be otherwise?
However, much of passing, of transient glory might
come to us by compromise, by mixture, by
misrepresentation, by pretense, by a show, by anything
that impresses the natural man.
It isn't worth it if God doesn't put
his seal upon it.
The seal of life.
How good, we've had it quoted this morning,
how good a thing it is to see
brethren dwelling together in unity.
There the Lord commanded the blessing, even life
forevermore, something genuine.
The Lord established us in the truth, the
truth in us.