There is one other announcement of which I
have been reminded.
Now we come to the close of this
time, in which we have been circling round
the question in the first verse of the
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah's prophecies, whom is
the arm of the Lord revealed?
We have been seeking, exploring the ground upon
which the Lord will commit himself, to which
he will commit himself, where he will really
show his power, his presence, his support.
This evening I'm going to strip the whole
thing of a very great deal that gathers
around it, not even taking you back very
much to Isaiah's prophecies, just by way of
review with a little extra word trying to
sum up this whole matter.
And I think perhaps the most helpful way
would be for you to draw a mental
picture.
That is, first of all, lay down the
letter to the Romans as a background and
superimpose upon it a figure of the cross.
We have seen that the letter to the
Romans sets forth the cross as God's instrument
for clearing the ground for his building.
That is, providing a place for the foundation
for the great building which has ever been
in his thought and intention, the church.
The letter to the Romans finds at the
beginning the ground covered with very much upon
which God will not build, he cannot build.
The condition of things so tangled and so
evil and so false and wrong, God surveys
it with a view to laying the foundation
for his church, his glorious church.
He says, I cannot lay it on that.
We must clear all that out of the
way.
We must set fire to that and consume
it, make a great clearing for this foundation.
And so in the letter to the Romans,
the cross is superimposed there as that which
on the one side disposes of that whole
state of things and what a state it
is.
Those of you who are familiar with the
letter and its early chapters know what a
terrible condition is presented.
And the cross is placed there to deal
with it all, to get rid of it
all, to consume it all.
It is like the great brazen altar with
its consuming fire bringing everything to judgment and
clearing the ground of it all, leaving nothing
but a clearing, an emptiness, a barrenness.
And then on the other side, God having
his foundation laid, a new prospect comes into
view with the remaining chapters of that letter.
Everything now is possible for God.
And we find in chapter 8 so much
said about God's eternal thoughts and counsels and
conceptions, his wonderful ideas in election, in foreknowledge,
in predestination, in adoption, in conformity to the
image of his Son, the creation redeemed from
corruption, the children of God delivered from bondage.
Everything now seems to come in for realization
since the cross has cleared the way.
So that is where we begin.
Cross as securing the foundation for everything.
That is your first figure.
And then you draw lines radiating from death.
And the first line reaches to the letter,
to the first letter to the Corinthians where
the cross is applied to conditions not in
the world now, not outside of Christ, but
conditions amongst believers that do not tally with
the cross.
The natural man, the carnal man, with all
his works and the result of his presence
amongst the Lord's people, divisions.
And all that horrible situation in the first
letter which has come into the church amongst
the Lord's people and the apostle brings the
meaning of the cross to bear upon that,
as he said, when I came to you,
I determined to know nothing among you save
Jesus Christ and him crucified.
You see, the first radiation from Romans is
to all conditions inside the church that are
not in agreement with the meaning of the
cross.
God cannot build, get on with the building
until those things are dealt with.
So in that first letter, the apostle tells
us the foundation is laid, I laid a
foundation as a wise master builder, but others
build thereon, but let every man take heed
what he builds thereon.
And these things, as we have pointed out,
that we find in that letter are the
things to which God says, no, you must
not put those on my foundation.
My foundation is worthy of something better than
that.
You can't have those things in our clearing.
That's only to clutter up things again and
make it necessary for us to do the
whole business over again of consuming because every
man's work that is not according to the
cross is going up in flames and in
smoke with nothing left.
That is what the apostle says there.
And that is the first outreach of the
cross as from Romans to touch conditions amongst
the Lord's people that are not in accordance
with what God means by the cross.
God says no to all that.
I'm not going to use that on my
foundation.
I'm not going to build with that.
You'll get rid of that and then we'll
get on with the building.
Those things being dealt with, as we saw
this morning, by the Corinthians themselves.
Oh yes, the fire did burn amongst them.
Fire of repentance.
Fire of self-judgment.
Fire of clearing.
Fire of brokenness of heart.
Something happened.
They dealt with those things.
And then you get the second radiating line
coming in the second letter to the Corinthians
where the testimony that had been marred and
spoiled by those things can now be recovered
and have the great restoration of testimony in
the church, in Corinth, in the location, in
the city, and in the world.
God can get on with things now in
relation to testimony in the world that he
can now build when he has that state
of heart, that state of spirit, broken, humble,
contrite, trembling at his word, very low before
him.
When he has that, then things begin to
happen outwardly.
They happen outwardly.
Doesn't require a great effort.
They just do happen.
Because here is the expression of a mighty
dynamic power of God in the midst.
You know how the apostle puts that in
that letter, God, God, who said, light shall
shine in darkness, or let light be in
the first creation, has shined into our hearts
to give the light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ.
And then the apostle says, we beholding as
in a mirror the glory of the Lord,
we also are transformed into the same image
from glory to glory.
That's the testimony, that's the outshining when things
inwardly have been dealt with.
It's quite spontaneous.
It's just the work, the result of a
deep but very quiet work of God.
I don't think that when God first said
in the chaos, let light be, that there
was a very great noise about it.
You know, there never needs to be a
great deal of noise when God puts forth
his power.
There is the hiding of his power.
You remember that phrase, don't you?
The hiding of his power.
But that's not the minimizing of his power.
Oh, God can only speak, only needs to
speak, and immense things can happen.
He only said let light be, but look
at the force and power of light in
this creation.
How terrific is the light.
But just from a word, just from a
word, I think it's real and it's symbolic
to see here at Corinth, the light shines
out when God has right conditions.
It will be like that.
What I'm meaning is this, there need not
be the great noise of publicity, of advertisement,
of organization, of tremendous excitement and feverish activity.
If the testimony is there, people will know
it.
People will feel it.
If it's there, it's there.
If the conditions are right, well, something will
happen.
If there's nothing happening, we'd better look to
our conditions.
Well, that is second letter to the Corinthians,
the second radiating line from the cross.
Then the third line radiating from the cross,
as we saw this afternoon, is what we
have in the letter to the Galatians.
The resultant life in the spirit.
From the cross, the cross producing a life
in the spirit and bringing about a true
spiritual kind of Christianity as distinct from a
merely professional, formal, ritualistic kind of Christianity that
is all on the outside.
So, this mighty thing, a true spiritual Christianity.
A life in the spirit.
How real, how effective that is.
That's what we reach when we come to
the letter to the Galatians.
It says the cross works out in a
life in the spirit like that.
And that is true Christianity, a spiritual thing.
Now, the additional word for just a few
minutes, we come to the twin letters.
The twin letters so called to the Ephesians
and the Colossians.
I need not say, I think with technical
data about that, I say so called because
evidently it was not, it was not directly
to the Ephesians.
Someone tacked that on later on.
There's a lot inside the letter that shows
that it was not directly to the Ephesians
although probably it went in circle to the
Ephesians.
Well, I leave all that because after all
it is only technical.
But when we come to these twin letters,
because they are twin letters, you can't read
them without recognizing that you're covering the same
ground very largely only with a distinctive emphasis
in each.
And you come there.
You come to some tremendous things.
You must notice of course that here in
these letters as in all the others, the
cross is the foundation.
This so called letter to the Ephesians, you
begin with the cross.
That is, we who were dead in trespasses
and sins did he quicken and raise together
with him.
The cross is there.
You come to the letter to the Colossians.
You have the circumcision of Christ, the putting
away of the body of the flesh in
baptism.
Here you've got the cross.
You've got the cross.
The cross is basic.
That's the point.
It is the carry over from Romans of
the foundation.
Then when you recognize that, you come upon
two, the two greatest things that have ever,
ever been disclosed by God.
Wonderful things.
Things that if you really did see, really
did see, not as in the Bible to
be read, but if you saw them in
your heart, I'm perfectly sure that you, or
something would happen to you.
I wonder if ever you have had something
in the word of God that has just
overwhelmed you and carried you away.
There are some rather humorous little incidents in
the ministry in the Far East recently.
On more than one occasion, I said something.
Well, I thought I wasn't saying anything extraordinary,
or that is anything that would occasion or
cause what it did occasion.
But when I said these things, my dear
brother, Witness Lee, who was interpreting for me
in Chinese, suddenly went off into almost roars
of laughter.
My side, there he was.
He lost all control of himself.
He just could not stop laughing.
And the people caught him.
That great, great mass of people all caught
and went off into this laughing.
Well, he couldn't, he couldn't get back.
He had tried and struggled, but the more
he struggled, the more he seemed to lose
his control.
I had to wait and wonder what it
was all about.
I thought, well, what on earth have I
said?
What on earth have I said that caused
this?
And even a little later on, evidently while
we got away from that, the film came
back to him and he suddenly went off
again.
That has happened more than once.
So I thought, well, I don't know about
this.
I'll find out afterwards what it's all about.
So I, afterward I, when I got him
in the room, I said, look here, brother.
What on earth did I say?
What did I say to cause you to
go off like that and all the people
you are?
Did I say something so outrageous, so terrible,
so funny to you?
What was it?
He said, no, brother, no.
We've never seen that before.
That's all.
It was something we'd never seen before.
That's all.
Well, what I mean, dear friend, you see,
the point is this, that it's possible to
see something in the Word of God that
just takes you right, carries you right away.
It's something so absolutely fresh.
And you, that's how it ought to be,
surely?
Oh, the Lord deliver us from that kind
of familiarity with His Word that we know
it all and it never provokes anything, it
never stirs anything in us.
It ought to be like that, although I'm
not wanting you to do that.
Now, by the way, you see, when you
come to these letters, really, if you had
your eyes open, you'd come to things that
are calculated to take your breath away, really,
to carry you right out of yourself, for
they are very wonderful things indeed.
Perhaps when I say them to you, they'll
be so familiar to you that they won't
stir you at all, but I cannot at
any time reflect upon them without being tremendously
moved by them.
These two things, two things, the language is
so well known to you, but oh, that
the Lord would bring you again into something
of the real impact and meaning of these
words.
Let us look at what is really the
key to and the sum of this letter
called the Letter to the Ephesians.
There is, in all the wonderful fullness that's
in this letter, and it is a very,
very full letter, isn't it?
Almost every clause carries you out of your
depth, but there is something in the letter,
a small fragment, which gathers the whole of
the letter into itself, which just tells you
what it is all about, what it all
means.
It's always very helpful to be able to
get a hold of something like that, which
contains everything.
If you see it, you see everything in
it.
And so we have it in chapter 1
and verse 10, unto a dispensation of the
fullness of the times to sum up all
things in Christ, the things in the heavens,
the things upon the earth.
In him, I say, in the fullness of
the times to sum up all things in
Christ.
That phrase, sum up, is not fully or
truly explanatory of what the Apostle really meant
and was saying.
It goes as far as it can, but
it would be better to say to gather
together all things in Christ.
To gather together all things in Christ.
Now, when sin came in through Adam,
a great process of disintegration commenced.
First of all, it began in the man
himself.
The man himself was no longer a single
entity.
He was a divided personality.
And every child and son of Adam is
a divided personality.
There's civil war in his very nature, in
his very constitution.
There's conflict.
He is a divided man and a man
who in himself is in conflict.
Isn't that true of all of us?
We all know enough about ourselves to know
that there is nothing that speaks of complete
harmony in our natures, in our makeup, in
our constitution.
There's war within us.
War in our makeup.
War in our temperament.
War in our whole constitution.
We are broken.
We are divided.
We are disintegrated.
That happened with the man himself.
And then it happened between the first two,
the only two, the man and his wife.
You can discern and trace the elements of
disintegration, of disruption between them.
The man blames the woman.
That's the beginning of a domestic system.
And so on.
They are divided.
There was a wonderful unity and harmony.
They were one flesh, it says.
One flesh.
But now something's come in and they're no
longer like that.
Division has come there between them and a
strain in life.
No doubt when they were driven out of
the garden they were blaming one another.
I don't think there's any doubt about it.
This is all your fault.
Well, we know that sort of thing, don't
we?
So on.
And then we find in the family which
came through them.
You have Cain and Abel, two first children,
schism, division, disintegration even to the point of
murder.
And out from the family the thing grew
to a race till you come to the
great scattering of the race and dividing of
it up into its many, many parts as
we have it today.
Diversity of languages where the whole race is
broken to pieces and is in this condition
of disharmony.
Disharmony.
The race.
You pursue that through and before you're out
of the Old Testament you've got the whole
race divided into two irreconcilable sections, Jew and
Gentile.
Hating each other.
Jew will have nothing to do with Gentile.
Calls the Gentiles a dog or dogs and
have nothing to do with them.
Unclean things.
And the Gentile reacting to the Jews as
we know the Gentile nations have done all
along and do today.
Here are all this state of things.
Brokenness, scatteredness, discord, quarrelling and strife and conflict
and war and hatred.
That's the fate of the creation, isn't it?
Am I exaggerating?
Well, surely not.
It's like that today everywhere from center to
circumference of this creation it's all broken to
pieces and all the pieces are against each
other.
There is no harmony, no unity and no
integration in this creation.
God had a secret.
He knew all about that.
He knew what would happen, He knew what
would come and He devised His own way
of meeting it and had a secret in
His own heart as to how He would
meet it and solve that problem, that terrible
problem.
That is what Paul calls the mystery in
this letter.
How would He do it?
He would sum up.
He would gather together all things in Christ.
He would make His Son the integrating center
and sphere of a new creation, a new
order in which all these diversities and conflicts
would never again be found.
That is the sum of this letter to
the Ephesians.
To gather together all things in Christ.
I say that surely seems a thrill to
us.
And so two things come into view in
that connection.
First of all, I might say three things.
First of all, the cross of Christ.
Because you notice here it is in the
cross that Paul says, the enmity, chapter 2,
verse 17, the enmity was destroyed.
That is an idea about the cross.
We have many conceptions and teachings on the
cross, but here is one wonderful thing, that
in the cross this enmity was taken hold
of and destroyed.
Where there is a true work of the
cross in any of us, that kind of
national or international or personal or social or
even Christian division ceases.
It does.
The cross is the instrument for dealing with
all that sort of thing, and it will
deal with it.
It will deal with it.
If the cross really gets down into the
depths of our being, the whole situation in
ourselves and between ourselves and others will change.
Well, of course, here in this very gathering
tonight we have a demonstration of it, haven't
we?
How many nationalities are there here in this
place tonight?
How many mother tongues are there?
Well, if you come on to the natural,
you would find you were all in pieces.
If all you dear brothers and sisters from
Switzerland, Germany, France and the Far East and
others would begin to speak in your own
language, what confusion there would be.
That is if you did it all audibly
all at the same time.
Oh, what bits and pieces we should be
in.
And it might be like that if we
met one another on our own natural ground.
But here we are.
Here we are.
We're having a good time together.
Real love, real fellowship, real joy.
And I say, we don't want to go
away.
We'd like to perpetuate this.
We have perfect sympathy with Peter.
Let us build big tabernacles.
But it's true, isn't it?
We have got above and over our national
and international and personal and social and every
other kind of disintegrating element, we're above it.
We're enjoying wonderful fellowship in love.
Well, it's good to see that the thing
does work.
Here is a little demonstration of it.
There are much bigger examples of it in
this world.
Yes, it's happened.
First of all, the cross has done something
so that we do not meet one another
on natural grounds at all.
We meet one another on heavenly ground, on
spiritual ground, on the ground of Christ.
The cross is the instrument toward that.
Christ himself is the focal center and sphere
of that we meet in Christ.
That's the great word to sum up all
things in Christ.
In Christ, notice how often that little phrase
is, in Christ, in Christ, it's all in
Christ.
He is the center and sphere of this
wonderful new integration.
In one spirit, says the apostle, were we
all baptized into one body, one spirit, one
and then the third thing.
The church, the church is the vessel of
this.
That's what comes out in this letter.
God's secret was that his son would be
the focal center, but that the church would
be the vessel in which this unity should
be displayed.
Oh, tragedy that it is not more so.
And yet, and yet, as I have said,
where you get a true expression of the
church, this is what you find.
This is what you have.
These disintegrating things are outside and this mighty
integration of divine love is on the inside.
You get a real testimony to what the
cross has done.
A true testimony to the body of Christ.
The church is the vessel in which it
is to be.
Very simple, I say.
You're familiar with the phrases and terminology, but
oh, it's a wonderful thing that that, in
the fullness of the times, we haven't yet
reached the fullness of the times.
I think we're getting very near the fullness
of the times, but in the fullness of
the times, to gather together, gather together, not
geographically and physically, but into that one glorious
unity of spirit.
All things in Christ.
It'll be a wonderful day when that happens.
When that is realized.
But God has determined to do that.
Slaying the enmity by the cross.
Slaying the enmity.
Oh, brothers and sisters, do listen to this.
If there's any enmity between you and another
brother or sister in Christ, that enmity is
a denial of the cross.
It is a denial of Christ.
And it is a denial of the Church.
That's very solemn.
Any enmity.
Have you got any enmity with another brother
or another sister?
Have you?
Listen then, it says here that in the
cross enmity was destroyed.
Where's the cross then?
Where is the Christ then?
Where is the Spirit then?
Where is the Church then?
If there is still that that the cross
is opposed, ah yes, and in reality did
put away, it has no place here.
This letter Paul prays as you see in
the third chapter his great prayer.
He says, I bow my knees unto the
Father.
Unto the Father.
Now you've got the heart.
Unto the Father.
Then we're a family.
We're a family.
And what is the chief characteristic of a
true fatherhood and a true family?
It is what Paul says here.
It is love.
Now listen.
Listen to what he says.
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through
faith to the end that ye being rooted
and grounded in love may be strong to
apprehend with all saints.
Get it?
With all saints strong to apprehend with all
saints what is the breadth and length and
height and depth and to know the love
of Christ which passeth knowledge.
Oh there's a love in such dimensions that
can do this thing, that can achieve this
end of gathering together all the broken mess
in Christ.
It's only going to be done by that
mighty, mighty love with its breadth and its
length and its height and its depth.
It's great enough to do it.
But you and I have got to be
strong to apprehend with all saints that love.
Apprehend that love and God gets his end.
What about the letter to the Colossians, the
other half of this one thing?
Well everybody knows what the great word or
phrase in that letter is.
It is this.
It pleased the Father that in him should
all the fullness dwell and ye are made
full in him.
Well, what has happened?
Well you can get the pictures.
First of all God made so to speak
a beautiful vessel.
The great potter at the beginning of the
creation created molded, fashioned, shaped, produced a beautiful
vessel.
And as he stood back and looked at
it he said it is very good.
And he filled that vessel with his fullness.
What fullness?
He filled into the vessel of this creation.
Oh how full is this creation.
Even now in its present condition how full
of the beauty and glory of God.
What fullness?
He filled into the vessel of this creation.
Oh how full is this creation.
Even now in its present condition how full
of the beauty and glory of God.
But he filled it with unsullied beauty and
glory at the beginning.
And then a great enemy came in and
struck a blow at that vessel and shattered
it to pieces.
Disintegrated the whole thing and all that divine
spiritual fullness leaked away.
He found desolation and emptiness.
It's gone.
The great potter comes back to make it
again another vessel as it pleases him to
make it.
Here is the vessel, the church.
This is the vessel, the Lord.
Beautiful vessel.
A glorious church.
Not a heavy spot or wrinkle or any
such thing.
As he looks at it according to his
own thought and his own ideal and what
he intends and what he will realize he
says, a glorious church.
A glorious church.
It is very good.
And then this letter to Colossians says the
vessel brought into being as in Ephesians now
filled again with all the fullness.
The vessel is mended, shall we say.
Gathered together all the fragments, gathered together.
You can't now trace with the cracks and
the joints but a beautiful hole this church
as we have it here and then he
fills it again with all his fullness.
That you may be filled unto all the
fullness of God the apostle says.
You are made full in him in whom
all the fullness dwells.
That is how it is to be.
Now dear friends that's all I'm really going
to say this evening but what I do
want to underline is this.
That while this is a process God is
seeking to work out an end to which
he is laboring.
We must remember that the achievement of this
great and glorious thing this gathering together interrogation
of all things in Christ this filling with
all his fullness of that gathered together vessel
it requires, it must have a continuous work
of the cross.
That's the challenge of this conference.
It's the challenge of the cross in everything
in relation to the great purpose of God.
Now I could have shown you all that
in Isaiah if it had been our time
for doing it but we can leave that.
Here it is so so patently in the
New Testament I've not exaggerated I've not given
you anything that is not in the word.
This is it.
The cross leads on leads on to this.
It leads on to a reintegration.
If it has its way it will do
it.
If there is anything contrary to integration to
oneness it will always be traceable to something
that has withstood or is withstanding the cross.
You take that into your own life.
Take it back into your fellowships, into your
assemblies, into your companies.
If there is something that still represents disintegration,
dividedness, schism, use what language you like that
means that things are broken, they're in pieces,
they're not one entity, one whole.
If there's that condition you can trace it
or it can be traced to the failure
of the cross to have done its work
in some direction or other.
There's only one explanation.
Believe me dear friends that if the cross
really does its work, this integration will spontaneously
result.
It will.
The way of unity is not the way
of patching things up from the outside.
The way of unity is the work of
the cross in the night.
When the church really gets the cross at
work in its very constitution you'll find the
problem of division solved.
It's like that.
And if there's poverty, if there is scarcity,
if there is spiritual penury, if there is
limitation in our spiritual resources and we are
not knowing this filling, this fullness.
Same reason.
The cross works, you'll find that the measure
increases.
It always does increase quite spontaneously as soon
as you get things out of the way
that are contrary to Christ.
Well that's a simple message but simplicity doesn't
necessarily mean that it's not important.
It's a very important word.
So we finish where we began.
To whom is the arm of the Lord
revealed?
We have any interest, whatever, or concern in
this matter of knowing God with us and
for us in power, in support, in protection,
in deliverance, in succor.
This is the way.
Forgive me repeating it.
You see that question, that question was raised
right at the beginning of Isaiah 53.
To whom is the arm of the Lord
revealed?
The answer is found in that chapter.
It is revealed to this one who goes
to the cross.
It is revealed to this one who suffers
the cross, who let all go in the
cross, who goes down into shame and dishonor
in the cross, who loses all his own
in the cross.
To him the arm of the Lord is
revealed and history is the great proof of
it.
Oh, God's arm has been bared for his
son through history and it ever will be.
And for those, for those who are with
his son, crucified men and women, crucified churches,
a crucified church.
There's a passage that we are very fond
of, very fond of, the eyes of the
Lord run to and through throughout the whole
earth to show himself mighty in the behalf
of him whose heart is perfect towards him.
The cross is the instrument of testing whether
our hearts are perfect towards the Lord or
whether we've got personal interests or worldly interests
or dividedness of interest in any way, whether
our heart is perfect.
The word perfect means complete, whole.
Show himself mighty in the behalf of him
whose heart is complete towards the Lord.
And is not the Lord Jesus on that
cross the very embodiment of our heart that
is holy for God?
May we find the arm of the Lord.