We just continue in consideration of the pathway
of the glory.
We have traced the glory through the book
of the Acts up to a certain point,
more especially in the life of the Apostle
Paul.
When we come to the end of that
book, we find ourselves in the presence of
a consummate and inclusive revelation, expression,
manifestation of the glory at the end of
the earthly course of the Lord's servant Paul.
It is impressive to note on the one
side what an accumulation of opposing forces is
represented in the last chapter of that book.
Way back there in Palestine, the imprisonment
in Caesarea for two years, the tremendous uprising
of the whole Jewish regime and hierarchy, and
Gentile cooperation as in the case of the
Lord Jesus, bitter animosity and hatred
and scheming to destroy him, leading at last
to his being sent to Rome for the
final judgment, and putting into effect of all
that uniting of earth and hell to have
this man and what he represented done away,
finished.
In the midst of it, when everything seemed
so threatening, particularly threatening to the one ambition
of his life, to preach the word in
the great imperial center of the world, Rome,
every circumstance seemed to say, that will not
be, that cannot be, you never will realize
that life desire.
The Lord just stood by him and said,
fear not, Paul, as thou hast testified of
me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness
in Rome.
And through it all, the storms naturally and
the storms spiritually, the little word is, and
so we came to Rome.
But in Rome, a prisoner, all
the adverse forces, spiritual, satanic and human, determined
to bring that ministry to an end by
bringing that man to an end.
Over the wide area, things moved toward that.
In churches in Asia, which owed their existence
instrumentally to this man, and owed all that
they had spiritually to him under the Lord,
they turned against him.
All they which be in Asia, they turned
from him.
False brethren betrayed him.
What an accumulation of things gathered and focused
upon that prison in Rome.
All saying with their own meaning, limitation, curtailment,
shortening of tenure, of influence in life.
That's the natural satanic situation very imperfectly described
and set out.
On the human side, looked at just purely
as a natural situation.
Everything in that prison and those chains seems
to say what the enemy meant and what
men meant.
This is an end.
And this is a curtailment in every way.
And yet, looked at from heaven's standpoint and
from history's standpoint, it is the most glorious
chapter of the whole book.
They said limitation.
Heaven said enlargement.
They said narrowing down, curtailment.
Heaven said expansion.
They said death and an end.
Heaven said a new beginning.
Not only of the man in heaven, but
of his ministry.
For it was out of that prison, imprisoned.
And all that which was set for the
ending of that ministry, out of that has
come the greatest ministry that he fulfilled.
These letters from that prison embrace a fullness
of divine revelation that can be found nowhere
else.
An enrichment for the church beyond, beyond our
telling.
An expansion of ministry far, far beyond the
whole range of his missionary journeys, personally.
Today, in every country of this world, Paul
is known.
Perhaps not in every spot in every country,
but in every country.
From far east to far west, far north
to far south, that man is known.
And his ministry has gone.
And today, through all the battle and the
controversy over what is called Paulinism, the theological
world, through all the battle of the years,
Paul is on top, you know.
They just cannot cope with this man.
They cannot silence him.
They cannot account for him.
You probably will not know a great deal
of that battle.
Those of us who have read and studied
through many years this conflict of ideologies and
philosophies, theologies, focusing upon this man, Paul, know
how at one point the whole thing became
just this issue.
Away from Paul, back to Christ.
Back to Christ.
Or back to Jesus, they put it.
Away from Paul.
Paul has betrayed Christianity.
This sort of thing.
Terrific battle on that ground.
But today, the very schools that were represented
by that position are saying Paul is the
interpreter of Christ, the supreme interpreter.
That is, just by the way, as thrown
into the whole situation.
You see, this man's life started in a
blaze of glory.
Glory descended and struck him.
As we said earlier, that glory went right
through his life.
He never got away from that.
Never got away from that.
He had seen the glory of the Lord.
And although the end of his earthly cost
seemed naturally to be so inglorious, so much,
speaking for apparent triumph of the forces which
were against him, two thousand years, had not
quenched that glory.
He shines with it today.
We, a little minute fragment of a very
great worldwide whole, are here at this time
glorying in the glory which has come through
that man.
So I say that the last chapter of
the book of the Acts is just the
consummate and inclusive setting forth of the whole
book, showing the pathway of the glory.
And just on that, I want to close
this time.
What is the pathway of the glory?
It has two sides.
The one side is the reduction of the
natural human element.
It demands that.
It will always work that way.
The reduction, the nullifying, the weakening, the emptying,
the undoing of the natural human element, man.
Running alongside of that, the positive increase of
Christ.
The pathway of the glory is on the
one side and an increasing, ever increasing setting
aside of the natural man, even as a
Christian, and in the work of the Lord,
bringing more and more to the consciousness that
it must be the Lord or there will
be nothing at all.
The human factor is increasingly of no account.
That's the pathway of the glory.
A very happy thing, perhaps, to contemplate, if
you look at it on that side alone.
But it is true.
Here is this man, naturally and humanly in
weakness, naturally and humanly in limitation.
As a man in bonds.
But there is the other side.
The enlargement of what is of the Lord.
Mighty, marvellous enlargement of Christ.
So that these letters from the prison are
a natural setting forth of the greatness of
the Lord Jesus.
And you ought to read your first chapter
of the Letter to the Colossians.
See it?
The place the Lord Jesus is given.
Now you can see this, and it is
as well that we do take at least
a glance at it.
By the opposite, go right through your Bible
and you will see that whenever man put
forth his hand upon divine things, that glory
went out.
That is a word written over Eden, isn't
it?
The Lord's precaution, lest he put forth his
hand.
Lest he put forth his hand.
The Lord knew quite well that if he
put forth his hand on divine things, that
was an end of the glory.
And that's exactly what happened.
And right through your Old Testament you can
see this.
Case after case, when man pressed him, pressed
him, and put his hand upon divine things.
The glory went out.
You know how Isaiah says, The day that
King Isaiah died, I saw the Lord high
and lifted up, seated upon a throne, and
his train filled the temple.
But the tragedy of Isaiah, you remember that
was the man, and one of the greatest.
An idol of Isaiah the prophet himself, who
reached great dimensions of power and influence, and
earthly glory, and then presumed upon it, and
forced his way in to the temple, to
the sanctuary, to the altar.
Fear came upon men, and they said, It
does not pertain unto you, King Isaiah, to
offer incense.
But he spurned the warning, and was smitten,
a leper, and died in shame with all
his own earthly glory gone.
He forced himself in, and lay his hand
upon divine things, and so far as he
was concerned.
And for that time, the glory departed.
It was a great reversing of the situation,
when Isaiah saw the Lord on the throne,
no longer Isaiah, the Lord on the throne.
Then the glory comes back.
When man usurps the place of God, the
glory goes up.
That's one instance, you remember, David, with the
best of motives.
Remember the ark, and the ark is always
the ark of the glory.
Remember that.
Always the ark of the glory.
The glory of Israel is focused upon and
centered in that ark.
David, with the purest and best of motives,
heard of bringing the ark to Jerusalem, and
mistakenly formed a new cart after Philistine, after
the Philistine manor, a new cart, put the
ark on it, contrary to the divine word,
to bring it up to Jerusalem.
They were apparently having a very good time
on the road until they reached the threshing
floor.
And the oxen stumbled, and Azar put forth
his hand upon the ark, his hand on
the ark.
And the Lord smote Azar there that he
died.
The ark was turned aside, and for long,
long weary months, it says, the time was
long.
It was in the house of Obed-Edom,
and Israel were weary.
The glory had gone.
Because man put his hand on divine things.
And so we could go on like that.
But there it is.
When the glory of life, glory of joy,
glory of spiritual fullness, glory of divine power
departs, comes under shadow, or is eclipsed, or
limited, it is usually because man's hand has
touched the testimony.
Man's nature has insinuated itself.
That is, his judgment, his ideas, his thoughts,
his will, his emotions.
David's mind got to work.
David's emotions got to work.
It was a very emotional scene, that.
Very emotional scene.
And David's will got to work.
So that his soul, mind, heart and will
came out to touch divine things.
It was man.
And whenever it's like that, if our judgments,
and our emotions, and our decisions lay hold
of the things of God, we will be
left without the glory.
Glory will depart, or the glory will be
under eclipse, or the glory will be limited.
It's a long story, lest he put forth
his hand.
So that's dark side.
But it's as well, I say, that we
take a glance at that, because that is
so largely the trouble today.
There's an absence of the glory, or a
limiting of the glory.
Our hearts cry for the glory to return.
We are always asking and praying that the
glory of the Lord may be manifested.
Known and felt.
We've got to get out of the way
before that can be.
Give the Lord all the place to be
all the Lord.
So on the one side there is the
limiting of human abilities and powers, mind and
will, ability.
The other side, by that limiting or excluding
the coming in of the Lord, the increase
of Christ.
That Christ is our wisdom.
Christ is our strength.
Christ is our will.
Christ is all.
Dear friends, that is the pathway of the
glory.
It's painful to the flesh.
Very painful.
Because this flesh is very strong, stronger than
we would believe.
It's there.
But we must finish.
And finish on perhaps a happier note.
A much happier note.
While we must understand what the glory demands.
See the way of the glory.
We do want to have at the end
a final look at the ultimate glory.
So that we remember Peter's word.
And the chief shepherd shall appear.
You shall receive a crown of glory.
A crown of glory.
That's the end.
It's a symbolic word of course.
A crown of glory.
I'm not very ambitious to have a literal
crown put on my head.
And for the life of me I don't
see if I'm going to ever have three
crowns on my head literally.
And there are three crowns mentioned in the
Bible.
It means being crowned.
Having your life and your work crowned.
Capped, if you like, with glory.
That's the last picture.
The crown of glory.
What is it?
Well, I've mentioned there are three crowns.
You know them well probably.
There is the crown of righteousness.
Which we'll receive on certain grounds.
The crown of righteousness.
Which the Lord, the righteous God, the judge
will give.
Paul says, there is laid up for me
a crown of righteousness.
Which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give
to me.
Not to me only.
What was he meaning?
Know that the last part of his life,
one of his prison letters was that beautiful
letter to his beloved and longed for children
in Philippi.
And he said, leaving the things which are
behind, I press toward the mark, the prize
of the on high calling of God.
Governor, I count not myself to have attained.
Neither am I already perfect.
But this one thing I do.
If by any means I may be found
in him, not having a righteousness of mine
own, but the righteousness which is of God
through faith.
The last longing cry of the apostle was
that the righteousness of God through Christ should
adorn him.
He should attain unto it.
That is, that he should stand before the
throne of the eternal bondings without any qualms,
any fears, any flinchings.
Stand justified.
Stand in a righteousness not his own.
Perfect.
Perfect in righteousness.
And that is what he meant by the
crown of righteousness.
Stand at last before the eternal throne of
infinite holiness clothed with divine righteousness with all
his own unrighteousness and imperfection gone forever.
Robed in righteousness.
That he called the crowning thing for his
life.
The fullest realization of his ambition.
I may stand perfect, lacking nothing.
I'm not already perfect.
I'm not already attained.
But if only I can attain to being
found in him, not having a righteousness of
mine own, but his righteousness.
Glorious in.
That's a crown to covet.
That's a crown to suffer for.
To live for.
To be abandoned for.
A crown indeed of glory, that.
For, dear friends, you and I are in
agreement on this, that if there's one thing
we long for, it is the full and
final escape from our own sinfulness.
This accursed fallen nature.
All that it carries with it.
The crown of righteousness.
And then, the crown of life.
Feed our faithful unto death, said the Lord,
and I will give thee a crown of
life.
A crown of life.
What is that?
Faithful unto death.
To be answered with a crown of life.
All right, it's perfectly clear, isn't it?
The crown of life means that death has
no power.
Is robbed of its power.
Death as a power is destroyed.
And life, divine life, resurrection life, is mightier
than all the power of death.
Stand in the power of his resurrection in
that same letter, in the same part of
that letter, as we have quoted in the
Philippian letter.
For, utters those words so familiar to us
that I may know him, and the power
of his resurrection.
Cry at the end of his life, the
power of his resurrection.
That is the ultimate and final nullifying of
death in all its forms and in its
whole power.
Standing in the good of a life which
can never, never be touched by death again.
Move over to John and the Revelation, there
shall be no more death.
The crown of life.
And then the third crown is the one
we are speaking about, the crown of glory.
You know what we've said about glory?
Glory is the expression of the full satisfaction
of God's nature.
Can that ever be for me, for you?
That crown, the full satisfaction of God's own
nature, that is what he has called us
to, redeemed us for, is working in us
unto.
And we'll walk to the end for this
crown of glory.
And although perhaps at the end of our
longest life we shall not have reached the
place where we do at that point utterly,
fully and finally satisfy the nature of God,
for in our last moments and our last
breath there will still be a lot of
imperfection about us.
But remember, when he takes the responsibility of
ending the process, he makes up all that
would have been if he hadn't done so.
That is, in the moment, the twinkling of
an eye, when shall they change?
All that we lacked then will be added.
All that would have been if we had
lived on and on and on under his
grace, under his power, will be put to
our account.
I shall be satisfied when I awake in
thy likeness.
I go to sleep not altogether in thy
likeness, but I awake in thy likeness.
It's just that, the mighty thing that God
is going to add to those who are
faithful, faithful to the end.
Not perfect, but in the way of being
changed into the same glory.
Not perfect, but in the way of being
changed into the same glory.
From one degree to another, from one image
to another, the crown of glory is God's
final approval.
God's final approval.
Come, ye blessed of my Father, enter thou
into the joy of thy Lord, and believe
me, the Lord will never be joyful, really,
over what is not according to his own
nature.
When he says, Thy joy of thy Lord,
he will have got what his heart had
been set upon.
And the crown of glory, God's full and
complete approval.
Satisfaction.
Oh, what a wonderful, almost unbelievable prospect there
is along the pathway of glory.
Well, I must leave all the rest with
you.
All the other connections of riches, and this
very, very imperfect and limited setting forth of
the riches of his grace and the riches
of his glory.
May the Lord just himself follow on and
teach all that we cannot teach, that we
yet to know about this, but use even
this for our help, our encouragement to go
on in the way of the glory unto
the everlasting glory.