The seed plot of our consideration and meditation
at this time is a little fragment at
the end of the Letter to the Galatians.
The Letter to the Galatians, chapter six, in
verse sixteen, it is the last clause.
And I read the whole verse.
And as many as shall walk by this
rule, peace be upon them, and mercy, and
upon the Israel of God.
That last clause, the Israel of God.
I want to bring alongside of that some
other fragments, going back to the prophecies of
Isaiah, chapter fifty-three, verses
ten and eleven.
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him.
He hath put him to grief.
When thou shalt make his soul an offering
for sin, he shall see his seed.
He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure
of the Lord shall prosper in his hands.
He shall see of the travail of his
soul, and shall be satisfied.
In chapter sixty-six of the same prophecies,
at verse eight, who hath heard such a
thing?
Who hath seen such things?
Shall a land be born in one day?
Shall a nation be brought forth at once?
For as soon as Zion travails, she brought
forth her children.
The prophecies of Micah, chapter five, verse
three.
Therefore will he give them up until the
time that she who travails hath brought forth.
Then the residue of his brethren shall return
unto the children of Israel.
The letter to the Romans, chapter eight, verse
twenty-two.
For we know that the whole creation groaneth
and travaileth in pain together until now, waiting
for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
In the gospel by John, gospel by John,
chapter sixteen, at
verse twenty, Verily, verily, I say unto you,
ye shall weep and lament, the world shall
rejoice.
Ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall
be turned into joy.
The woman, when she is in travail, hath
sorrow, because her hour is come.
When she is delivered of the child, she
remembereth no more the anguish, but the joy
the man is born into the world.
And then again to the letter to the
Galatians, chapter four, verse nineteen.
My little children, of whom I am again
in travail, until Christ be born in you.
Now let us bring together particularly the fragment
from Galatians 6.16, the Israel of God,
and the fragment in Isaiah 53.10 and
11.
He shall see his seed, he shall see
the travail of his soul, and to abbreviate
that, his seed, the travail of his.
It's a very full, deep and far-reaching
matter the Lord is bringing before us at
this time.
This whole matter of producing, securing, training, using
a spiritual seed, a new spiritual Israel.
This afternoon we begin this whole matter with
a brief consideration of this particular principle which
is found in the word which has been
in every passage that we have read, excepting
one.
This principle of travail.
We go back to remind ourselves that this
is a law which God established in the
creation.
There is an established law of travail.
You will recall what the Lord said first
to the woman and then to the man
as we have it in Genesis 3.16
-19.
To the woman he said, and then to
the man he said.
And he there linked this law in two
realms with production and reproduction.
One connection with children and the other connection
with the elf.
And in these two connections of the law
of travail we find three things.
First of all, the matter of the justification
of life.
The very justification of life is in reproduction,
in a seed, in multiplication.
Never intended to be an end in itself.
The only justification for life according to God's
law and principle is that it reproduces.
And so the law of travail is linked
with reproduction.
That runs through the whole realm of nature
and of grace.
The natural and the spiritual.
There is no reproduction anywhere without travail.
That's God's law.
But there is no reproduction without travail.
And the travail becomes the basis of the
justification of existence.
That is something much deeper than perhaps appears.
And one might say like this quite bluntly,
if we are without travail there is no
justification for our existence.
To put that round the other way, travail
is God's way and ground of justifying our
existence.
We come back to that stated as we
go on.
That is to what he said to the
woman.
Then he turned to the man, and spoke
about the travail of his labor, the ground,
the ring, form, form, and breath, and that
it would be by the sweat of his
brow that the ground produced.
And this was the preservation and sustentation of
life.
The justification of life, the preservation and sustentation
of life on the principle of travail.
And then of course in both cases the
issue is a triumph.
It's made perfectly clear in both connections.
Paul puts his finger upon that, you remember
in his letter to Timothy.
Yes, travail is a triumph.
God will see you through in spite of
it.
It's the triumph of life in both connections,
children and the earth.
That which issues as a testimony to something
having been overcome.
It's a testimony to a victory over forces
at work which would prevent, which would make
it infinitely difficult.
It's a testimony of triumph.
And travail, you see, is God's law by
which he is not defeated.
That is where the test comes, always for
us.
He is not defeated, but out of the
adversity, out of the difficulty, out of the
suffering, something stands as a great testimony to
triumph, to victory.
I'm only just touching on something or on
some things that run all the way through
the word of God and are so true
to the spiritual life.
We shall speak more about those very things.
Now note, the implication of this principle of
travail.
Travail in every connection, remember.
And when I say that, I mean more
than the two connections of which I've spoken.
You go through the Bible and you see
the great number of connections where this principle,
this law of struggle and conflict and pain
and anguish is the law of some tremendous
new thing of God, the emergence of something
of God.
We'll leave that for the moment, but note
the implication of such a law.
What did God mean by this?
Well, I think simply this, perhaps much more
about this, that nothing was going to be
easy and cheap.
To put that another way, that God was
really establishing the tremendous value of
everything.
Saving man from regarding things as being of
little concern or value.
Forcing him and forcing her to recognize that
this thing is costly because it is valuable.
Now you see, it's the opposite to the
whole tendency of man's nature to get things
easily, to get them cheaply, not to pay
a price for them, to escape suffering, to
escape labor, to get it all without any
cost or price.
And God has written in the whole universe,
this law, that anything that is of Him
in creation or in grace has a price
attached to it.
It's a costly thing.
It is infinitely precious and valuable and worth
suffering for.
Note, it is intended to bring the soul
in, travail of His soul.
My soul is exceeding even unto death.
To bring the soul into relation with things.
And when we say that, we mean love,
what we get cheaply and easily, we don't
really love.
But that which costs, binds our heart to
become a matter of the heart of love.
And so by traveling, you see, the soul
is saved from lightness, carelessness, frivolity, cheapness.
I'm brought to recognize something here that is
infinitely precious.
How far-reaching is that truth and that
law?
What a lot of ground it covers, doesn't
it?
God is not going to let the creation
off in this matter.
This is the explanation of so much.
A nation and people that give themselves up
to frivolity, to cheapness, to escapism, and all
that sort of thing, that nation or people
is on the high road to a bad
time in its history.
Won't be too long before it passes through
some fiery ordeal to bring back the preciousness
and the seriousness of things.
And if this is true in the realm
of nature and the world, what a lot
it explains in the realm of God's spiritual
things.
Oh, the tragedy, the infinite tragedy of trying
to make things of God cheap and easy,
even salvation, the Christian life cheap and easy,
appealing always to the pleasure side of things,
trying to eliminate the cost.
Lord Jesus never did that.
He never did.
Salvation is something of infinite cost, and everything
to do with salvation is infinitely precious.
And there is not one fragment of all
that is of God which is not of
surpassing and transcendent value.
Not just going to be had willy-nilly
through much tribulation, and that's only another English
word for travail.
We must enter the kingdom.
Suffering is attached to anything of any value,
and that is particularly true of spiritual things.
At that very point, you and I, dear
friends, do need to have our minds converted.
That's where we need a tremendous change of
mind.
You cannot understand some things in the Bible
unless you recognize that.
And unless that has become true, they sound
flippant, garrulous, they sound as though they're just
words, words, words.
Listen, our life affliction which is but for
a passing moment.
He's talking about Paul.
I like it.
Well, listen to his catalog of suffering.
Listen to him.
He tells us of all that he had
to go through for the gospel, and read
the much more that Luke tells us that
Paul never mentioned personally.
For that beloved servant of God went through
for the gospel.
He talks like this, our life affliction which
is for a passing moment.
Can't talk like that in the presence of
suffering.
Unless you have seen the infinite preciousness of
that toward which God is working and bringing
you.
Though now for a season we are in
heaviness through many old trials, yet though
we see him not, we rejoice with joy
unspeakable, full of glory.
Now look at the context of it.
Fiery trials, fiery trials.
Can't just go through understanding.
Endure the travail unless, unless you have some
sense of the value of things.
Now this law is carried through from nature
to the purpose of God, to the divine
purpose.
And it's seen in the scriptures to be
the principle or law of all divine realization.
If you look again, you will see that
in all new beginnings, the initiation of God,
this law, is ever present.
Everything of God emerges from some agony, from
some convulsion, from some death struggle.
Put your Bible again like that all the
way through.
Without or within some tremendous having marks
every new beginning of God.
Can you, can you put your finger in
the Bible upon any instance where God began
again and there was no association with the
principle of travail?
You'll have difficulty.
The law of birth, you see, and it
relates to the spiritual world, the purpose of
God just as matters to any other realm.
And what is true of God's beginnings and
initiations is true of every enlargement.
Whenever God sets himself for increase or enlargement,
to get something more in that which he
has already got, it seems that he plunges
that thing anew into travail.
Yes.
In nature, every springtime, which is to see
nature enlarge, growing beyond what it was before,
every springtime in its increase is a new
travel, a new travel.
You can almost hear the trees traveling at
certain times, you walk in the woods.
Only if our ears were more attuned to
that realm, there are sounds to which our
ears are not attuned and they're sounds, real
sounds, which you hear the groaning in the
creation.
And Paul just says this to us, the
whole creation groaneth and travails.
Before, it is pent up, it is held
back, it is under arrest, it is groaning
for its expansion, its enlargement, its liberation.
Liberation.
That's a law and spiritual thing, dear friends.
Every fresh measure of Christ every bit of
spiritual increase is brought with a fresh baptism
into his passion.
Well, we should recognize that so often we
don't understand why, dear friends, when we ask
for spiritual increase and enlargement, we immediately are
plunged into a bad time.
It comes that way, some of us have
learned that so much that we say these
things to the Lord with our tongue in
our cheek.
We are very, very careful what we say
to the Lord.
Learn that the way of enlargement is at
cost through fresh travel.
It's true, you can't get away from it.
Yes, there are successive baptisms into the passion
of Christ.
The law, the law of his universality is
the law of his passion.
I came to scatter fire in the earth.
How am I to read them until it
be accomplished?
But I have a baptism to be baptized
with.
By the travail of his foes, the passion
of his cross, the straightening was removed, the
fire was scattered, and the enlargement took place.
But that is equally true of the church
as of himself.
Church has never expanded and been released without
some compulsion.
That's history, isn't it?
And it's spiritual truth.
And again, what is true of God's beginnings
and God's continuations and enlargements is true of
the final, in the finality of things, one
great, tremendous, you like to change the word,
travail.
Not sure that the church has not entered
upon that already.
It's spreading, it's coming, it will be at
the end, it's the explanation.
You look again at the word, it's quite
true to the word.
Here it is.
God is going to bring out that ultimate
and final, intrinsic thing of glory and precious.
It comes out of fiery ordeal.
At the end, fiery ordeal.
Yes, the travail of the church at the
end will issue in the final emergence of
the church in glory and in the consummation
of the divine purpose.
Bible sees a great travail in the church
and in the creation out of which the
kingdom will finally come in fullness.
When you see these things, lift up your
head, know that your way out draws nigh,
your escape, your exit, your redemption.
Now this principle of course is comprehensively, fully
gathered up in Christ himself and in his
cross.
Christ's passion, Christ's cross is central to the
whole universe and central in this particular respect.
It's travail through which the universe is redeemed.
Yes, the heavens and the earth the cross
of the Lord Jesus affects the whole range
of things in the earth and beyond the
earth.
His travail is of universal significance.
It's such a far-reaching thing.
And into every experience of true spiritual travail,
there is something that is of far-reaching
significance and account.
Here is this one little man, Paul, thought
very little of by the world in his
day, to size and through centuries.
A great man in his own eyes calls
him the insignificant little Jew.
All the time.
Well, that's the world's estimate of him.
Here he is saying, I feel up.
Well, that's the world's estimate of him.
Here he is saying, I feel up in
my body, that which is lacking in the
suffering of Christ, for his body's sake which
is the truth.
In other words, I touched his cup, and
in so doing, I touched the whole body
of Christ.
Tremendous thing, isn't it?
But was it true?
Was it true?
Has history proved that it was true?
I would like to stop here with a
parenthesis on that historic side of things.
You know, 50 years ago, whole realm of
biblical scholarship, as it was called, hinged Paul.
They hinged him.
They wrote him off.
They decided that Paul was not Christ.
It was another realm of teaching altogether.
It wasn't Christian.
So they wrote him off.
That's Paul finished, as they thought.
My brother, he had a mighty resurrection.
And the remarkable thing is that the whole
realm of scholarship, biblical scholarship, is now anew,
giving Paul his place.
Seeing the immense significance of this matter, it's
one of the most fascinating things to follow
the course of biblical interpretation, and to be
able to see today exactly what has happened,
exactly what has happened, the tremendous comeback by
Paul.
We know, and they are all going to
be made to know, that this man, because
he shared the sufferings of Christ, had a
universal significance for the whole body of Christ.
And it is true.
Now, in saying that, while it's interesting, I
could add so much more to it.
The point is this.
Here's the principle.
If you and I really do, do share
the spiritual travail of Christ, we are lifted
out of anything that is local, and small,
and placed right in the universal.
It's a value secured for the body of
Christ, beyond anything merely earthly and parochial.
That is the principle of this travail, placed
at the center of the universe, and to
share that does mean such enlargement, enlargement, such
release.
We come back to it again.
Enlargement, release, expansion, fullness, reproduction.
Use what words you will.
The law of it all is the law
of travail.
The Lord allows travail.
Indeed, he not only allows it, but appoints
it to find out, to find out whether
really there is a heart relationship to his
things.
You walk across the road outside of this
hall this afternoon, you will find a tree
lying at the side of the road.
It's a poor girl.
It was upright and growing, and it looked
like all the other trees.
It had all the leaves of propassion, all
the proximity of association with the other trees,
and outwardly it could pass off as being
the real thing.
The storm came.
It's lying there.
You look at it, and you'll find it
has no heart.
It is a completely hollow thing with only
a framework.
Don't look at it.
That's what happens.
What is going to happen, what God will
cause to happen everywhere, the travail will come,
the suffering, the persecution, the trial, whatever it
may be, and whatever may be its form,
whether it be within or without, it's going
to come to discover whether there's a heart
there for God, or whether after all it's
hollow.
It's propassion.
It's simply association on the outside, but it's
not real on the inside.
It must be.
God must expose what is not real, and
God must test everything to prove it.
Look at the others.
What has happened to them?
Well, they survived the storm, and they're standing.
Is that all?
No, that's it.
The next storm that comes, you'll probably find
that it's got a little more hard work
than the last time to move this one.
Ah, yes, you know that those roots have
felt the strain, and they've reached down and
taken a tighter hold, got a grip on
things.
They realize that storms are realities, and that
it's a matter of life and death whether
they stand.
So easy, dear friends, when things get difficult,
they're difficult to walk out, isn't it?
You know, so easy.
Oh, how we pray the Lord will protect,
protect from difficulty and trouble, but the Lord
never answers a prayer like that.
Comes to us personally.
It comes to us in our little company.
Storms, shaking storms, things calculated to devastate and
scatter, destroy and finish.
What is there?
The Lord doesn't protect, but what is he
doing?
On one side, he is finding out whether
there is a heart, and whether that thing
is real in every member, but whether it's
on the outward following side.
On the other side, he is seeking to
bring out the expression of preciousness, but this
thing is too precious to let go easily.
This thing means far too much for us
to abandon at the first onset of adversity
and trial.
That's the meaning of it.
Very true.
Explains a lot, doesn't it?
Now, I'm closing with this moment for the
time being, but this comprehends God's whole conception
of a spiritual Israel.
Why we've taken that fragment or been led
to it.
The Israel of God.
You know, Paul was almost envious when he
used it.
Don't know what I mean by that.
You look at the letters of the Galatians,
you will see that he's dealing with two
Israels, and in that phrase he's saying there's
a true and there's a false Israel.
I think Philip, in his letters to young
churches, has put in the word, which while
it is not in the text, is what
is generally believed to be the meaning of
Paul.
He has said to the true Israel of
God.
The true Israel of God, and that is
exactly what Paul meant.
You know the letters of the Galatians, don't
you?
The one Israel, he's also saying let not
it.
Those who walk by this rule, this measure,
this standard.
What standard?
Well, look at the letter, you'll see.
My little children, for whom I am again
in trouble, till Christ be fully formed in
you.
Many has walked by this measure.
They are the true Israel of God.
The measure of Christ He made complete through
travail.
Truth.
That is the theme which is of the
travel, of giving.
Well, we perhaps should come back to that.
But there's enough here in what we've said
to instruct, perhaps to reduce, to correct, perhaps
encourage.
No getting away from it, like it or
not like it.
It's an established law.
You do all sorts of things you like
artificially to get rid of the travel, but
thank you that God's law means there is
something, something that comes out of preciousness when
you suffer for it.
When you suffer for it.
Oh may we never get to the place
where we try to make the Christian life
cheap and easy.
A perpetual holiday while there's the joy, and
it should be there, while there should be
the deep worship, thanksgiving, and praise to God.
I feel that the reality even of the
joy is that it comes from deep experience
through suffering.
Is that not true?
The truest joy is born out of suffering,
not the superficial, little, frivolous kind of Christian
that really knows the Lord most.
So we rejoice and call in all our
significance to something precious.
The Lord binds up with suffering.
You and I have to face that, to
face it.
So I might add this as I close.
I have just received about from China a
message which was given by our brother Watson
Lee just before he was put into about
four years ago.
You know what that message is on?
The necessity for the breaking of the vessel
in order to reveal the preciousness of the
treasure within.
He said it.
He's knowing it.
It's true.
He shall feel the treasure.
He shall see the treasure and shall be
happy.