The book by Andrew Murray on the Spirit
of Christ, there is an actual article on
the Spirit of Truth, in which he attempts
to define what truth is.
I'll just read you a few portions.
The truth in shadow, in form and thought,
was all that the Lord could give, and
in that the religion of the Jews consisted.
The truth of substance, the truth of a
divine life, was what Jesus brought as the
only begotten, full of grace and truth.
He is himself the truth.
Here's Andrew Murray reaching out into the realm,
that's too deep for words, taking a shot
at it as it were, that the Jews
were in a certain dimension of category of
truth, that is verbal, that is creedal, that
is doctrinal, that can be articulated, can be
believed.
But what came with Jesus was a dimension
beyond that.
He himself was full of grace and truth.
Isn't it interesting that those that were schooled
in the lesser truth were incapable of perceiving
and receiving the greater truth?
You would have thought that the one would
have been the entree to the other, but
instead it proved to be an impediment, and
they were threatened by the greater manifestation of
truth than what they knew verbally and celebrated.
Are you following me?
It's a great irony, and maybe something of
that phenomenon exists even with the church, that
in the name of doctrine and creed we
can become so fixated as to nullify entering
a realm that is beyond doctrine, not that
it's in conflict with doctrine, God is never
in conflict with himself, but there are realms
of understanding, as I've said, too deep for
words.
So he's feeling for something, Andrew Murray, that
Jesus himself brought another dimension full of grace
and truth.
In fact, truth of the kind that he
brings requires grace.
I love the word ultimate, something of an
ultimate dimension in the truth that Jesus himself
is.
And it jars what is human, and wants
definition and clear categories.
It takes a grace to appropriate the truth
that Jesus is, because that truth, when it
floods your soul, threatens everything else that's lesser
or other.
It reveals what is contrary to the truth.
So I love the fact that he came
full of grace and truth, that they are
somehow inseparable, that truth is not just some
kind of efficacious conformity to fact.
Truth is a dimension.
It's an ultimate dimension.
It has everything to do with righteousness, with
holiness.
And because it's that, and because the world
is at enmity and opposed to it, it
requires a grace to obtain it, to love
it.
So, in promising the Holy Spirit to his
disciples, the Lord speaks of him as the
spirit of truth, the truth which he himself
is, the truth and grace and life which
he brought from heaven as a substantial spiritual
reality to communicate to us.
That truth has its existence in the spirit
of God.
He is the spirit, the inner life of
that divine truth.
And I'm waiting for that to settle in
my spirit, to come in, permeate the inner
man.
Andrew Murray is feeling, sensing, intuiting, trying to
express a dimension.
Lest we think in some kind of sophomoric
way that truth is some kind of immeasurable
scientific issue of statements and measure.
Truth is beyond.
Truth is that, but beyond that, there are
nuances.
Praise God for the French language.
How would we say this in English?
Nuance.
There are degrees of subtlety, of delicacy, of
things that need to be apprehended, that go
beyond mere facticity.
You know what's wrong with us as Americans?
We're all too American.
We're all too, what's the word, brittle, clever,
tinny.
You can hear it somehow, yet in our
voices, it yet betrays itself and lingers.
But there's a dimension of truth beyond facticity.
We're not to be contentious of what is
factually true, but we ought to be disposed
to intuit and to apprehend the dimensions that
are beyond that.
So that a look, a gesture, a tone
of voice, even this morning I spoke about
gait, posture.
Paul was the thing in himself.
He was, Jesus was the thing in himself.
He's the very truth, and somehow it must
be reflected in the way in which a
man bears himself.
The use of voice, so this inner life
of that divine truth, that when we receive
him, as much as we receive him and
give up to him, he makes Christ and
the life of God to be truth in
us, divinely real.
He gives it to be us, in us,
of a truth.
He enters the secret roots of our life,
and plants the truth of God there as
a seed, and dwells in it as divine
life.
God bless Andrew Murray.
I think he was over his head.
He's speaking like the fool, as indeed he
must, but he's getting at something.
This hidden, this dimension, because if we don't
have it there, how do we love truth?
It's got to be beyond the level of
articulacy about what we can state or frame
in words.
The secret roots of our life, he plants
the truth of God there as a seed,
and dwells in it as the divine life.
When in faith, and expectation, and surrender, the
hidden life is cherished and nourished there, he
quickens and strengthens it so that it grows
stronger and spreads its branches through the whole
being.
And so, not from without, but from within,
not in word, but in power, in life
and truth, the Spirit reveals Christ and all
he has for us.
The Spirit brings with his incoming the truth
into us, and then, having possessed us from
within, guides us as we can bear it
into all the truth.
Now, there's an interesting statement.
Once truth has had its entry in the
root of our being as this indefinable reality
that permeates and touches every category, because no
category is exempt, it's something within us, it
then guides us as we can bear it
into all truth.
Isn't that a precious statement?
We Jews have a word for someone who's
come of age we call a mensch.
We say, this person, this man is a
mensch, M-E-N-S-C-H.
Same word in German, which I suppose can
be crudely translated as a person.
But when you meet a mensch, or you
sense something, you want to stroke it.
Lean alongside it and appreciate one who has
come of age.
That the voice, the way in which he
speaks and conducts himself, and he is the
thing of himself, is truth.
Isn't that precious?
Through and through.
But you know, we'll not come to that
except we consciously seek and desire that.
God forbid we should be fixed at some
lesser place where we're satisfied only with creedal
truth, subscribing to correct doctrine, and we sound
brittle and tinny because of it.
So we must take on the whole dimension
of truth beyond what is correct.
Because to be merely correct is to be
in error.
We want to be brought into all the
truth.
So just one more, two statements.
You need for this a lowly, listening, teachable
spirit, is the mark of the presence of
the spirit of truth.
Are we open to the truth?
Are we disposed?
Are we teachable?
Can we be instructive?
Can we read and rightly understand our situations,
our life situations, and see the hand of
God in them, and receive the truth of
our situation?
Or are we in flight from the truth?
Do we find excuses and self-justifications, and
are unwilling to reckon on the tragic aspects
of our life and upon our failures?
Failed marriage, failed family, failed fellowships.
So to love the truth is the willingness
to be open, to be instructed, to receive
lessons that are painful.
I'm embarrassed often by a flash from the
past.
Did I do that?
Did I say that?
Did I conduct myself that way?
I'm embarrassed even to think that I was
once able and capable so to behave.
And yet it was true, I'm responsible.
I wish I could make amends, my God,
for the embarrassing lapses.
But I want to be instructed by it.
I want to integrate the past into the
present.
I want to receive the benefit and the
wisdom of those failings.
When you have a spirit like that and
a heart like that, you'll come into all
truth.
But if you're guarded and defensive, and want
to protect your vanity and pride and not
acknowledge that you erred, you'll miss it.
And if you miss it there, you'll miss
it presently, you'll miss it in the future.
The love of the truth is a certain
disposition, and willing to receive truth when it's
painful before it's glorious.
And when we do wait, let us remember
that even then the spirit of truth does
not at once or at first speak in
thoughts that we can apprehend and express.
These are but on the surface.
To be true, they must be rooted deep.
They must be hidden depths in themselves.
He's a deep calling unto deep.
Do you know the Lord at that depth?
Do you know your own depth?
Or are you living from the surface of
your life?
Because the deeps are painful as well as
glorious areas, and they're guarded, and many don't
even recognize their own deeps, and don't want
to live from that place.
But he's a deep calling unto deep.
And to be true, they must be rooted
deep.
They must have hidden depths in themselves.
Not to thought or feeling does he speak
in the first place, but to the hidden
man of the heart, the spirit of a
man which is within him and is in
most parts.
It is only to faith that it is
revealed what his teaching means and what is
his guidance into the truth.
So faith is more than just the categories
of correct belief.
Faith is a mode, a willingness, an openness
to receive the truth into the inmost depths.
See, do you like what Andrew Murray is
saying?
This is not the complete statement.
It's a feeling for an area that few
have ever sought to explore.
But we need to.
If we love the truth, we need to
open to what truth is, to recognize it,
to esteem it, to be it, and to
recoil from anything that is dubious, questionable, appearing,
giving an impression that is not true, that
we are what we are.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if the church could
accept its members as they presently are, that
no one needs to now put on some
air, some show of spirituality, that whatever we
presently are, whatever the fact is yet working,
there it is, and that we can absorb
and receive that in a brother or sister
without being offended, and because we can receive
it and address it and bring counsel and
correction, that person will be helped from that
place.
That the church itself should abide in the
truth and be willing to receive the truth
of the church and its members in their
present condition and not be offended thereby or
create a phony environment or atmosphere in which
some kind of an air or impression has
to be made that is not true, in
which we could say, here I am, by
the grace of God, what I presently am
by the grace of God, and to be
received like that, and to be loved like
that, cherished like that, and to know that
that's not the final statement, but because we
receive the believer in that condition, then there's
prospect for change.
It's an atmosphere of reality, and you know
that's where the Lord is, that's where his
grace is, that's where his redemptive action is,
is where truth is, but if we try
to meet him on the ground of what
is false, he doesn't play that game.
He'll not meet us on some fiction, some
imagined ground, he meets us on the ground
of truth.
When we'll acknowledge what is true, however presently
painful, there his grace is to attend to
that condition.
And so we're brought from faith to faith,
grace to grace, glory to glory.
So I would say when someone is sensitive
and they're laboring with a grieved conscience, we
have to be more sensitive than they, to
know when to speak, when to ease off,
to help them to find a recognition of
the truth, by which then forgiveness can be
received, and healing and restoration.
So that's living in the truth, that's being
to each other in the truth what we
ought, and that we're not blunt, what's the
word, officious men who are going to bring
correction right now, that we operate in the
truth, which is to say we know what
to ease off, we know when to press,
and we can be redemptive instruments to help
people to the acknowledgement of truth, by which
redemption and forgiveness and true release can be
obtained.
But we're not, what's the word, mechanical, we're
not compelling, we're not heavy handed, that in
the name of truth, that would be an
untruth.
Because truth is more than what is technical,
truth is a mode of being, you know
what I mean?
So that we're not compelled, we don't feel
ourselves as if we have betrayed God if
we draw back and are silent for the
moment.
Because we're abiding in the truth.
We have no reputation, we're not stricken that
somehow we're under obligation.
And so truth is a mode of being
that one sometimes might require a relentless insistence
of the kind that Hamlet brought to his
mother Gertrude.
Though she cried, Hamlet no more, he didn't
stop.
He pressed the issue right into her teeth.
And that was probably the appropriate thing in
the moment.
But there are other moments in which it's
not appropriate.
So those that are guided by the truth
will know when to be insistent and when
to draw back.
Because they are jealous for the love of
the soul that's before them, the delicate thing
that that soul represents, because we're all affected
by it, being integral one with another in
the body.
Are we ready to move into the realm
of what is holy?
I think we're already in that realm.
So I owe to Reggie this book, a
17th century classic, The Existence and Attributes of
God, Stephen Charnock, in which there are wonderful
chapters, not the least of which is the
chapter on holiness, from which I want to
quote on the holiness of God.
Remarkable detail.
So I'll just read here in their little
portions and invite you to take it up
and respond.
In which he says, Divine holiness is the
root of divine justice, and divine justice is
the triumph of divine holiness.
Both are expressed in scripture by the word
of righteousness, which signifies the rectitude of the
divine nature, and sometimes the vindictive stroke of
his arm.
The Lord executes righteousness and judgment for all
that are oppressed.
The righteous Lord loveth righteousness, and as was
observed before, when he is going about the
dreadful work that ever was in the world,
the overturning of the Jewish state, hardening the
hearts of the unbelieving.
Once dear to him, his holiness is the
spring of all this, and is applauded by
the seraphims.
The angels celebrate God's judgment, his righteousness.
They celebrate when Babylon is brought down in
the judgments of God, because his righteousness is
exalted in those judgments.
And the issue of his righteousness is the
issue of his holiness, that we ourselves are
called to share in that holiness, and having
these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all
filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in
the fear of God.
For without holiness no man shall see God,
and that he chastises his sons, so that
by the attainment of holiness, we can see
him and be in communion with him.
You can only commune with God on the
basis of what God is in himself.
What is unholy cannot commune with what is
holy.
So that maybe the whole of our redemptive
life, the whole of our struggle, the whole
of the sanctifying work of God, is to
bring us to a place of our holiness
appropriate to the holiness of God, that we
can abide with him eternally and have communion
with him in his essential nature.
So we need to welcome all of the
sanctifying work of God now, that we might
come to that state.
And where do we see the insistence of
the holiness of God for righteousness, uncompromisingly required?
It's at the cost of the sacrifice of
his son.
Nothing reveals the attribute and the issue of
God's holiness than what was required to expiate
the sin that was the attack or the
travesty against the holiness of God, the sin
of mankind, which Jesus met by bearing it,
but at the cost of becoming it, and
that the father did not withhold the stroke,
that the issue of his holiness was so
imperative that the son was required to bear
what was needed to expiate sin.
The author says, Justice indeed gave the stroke,
but holiness ordered it.
God did not withhold the stroke.
If he did, he would have flinched on
his own holiness.
Try to imagine what it would mean if
God allowed his holiness to be compromised, or
to be vacated, or to be made a
lesser thing.
The whole of reality, the whole of the
world, the whole of the universe, the totality
of life and future would, in one fell
swoop, collapse.
If he did not maintain the integrity and
the issue of his holiness, everything would suffer
irremediable loss.
There has got to be a jealousy of
God for his holiness, for our sake, and
if that standard is removed, what then can
help us?
His holiness is buttressing the whole of creation,
the whole of reality.
It's the undergird.
So he has got to be unbelievably jealous
for it, and that jealousy was most profoundly
demonstrated in the sacrifice of his son.
The holiness of God appears in the manner
of our restoration by the death of Christ.
Not all the vials of judgments to have
or shall be poured out upon the wicked
world, nor the flaming furnace of a sinner's
conscience, nor the irreversible sentence pronounced against rebellious
devils, nor the groans of the damned preachers,
for such a demonstration of God's hatred of
sin, as the wrath of God let loose
upon his son.
No ultimate demonstration of the holiness of God
than the wrath of God let loose upon
his son.
And the holiness of Jesus was that he
was the candidate to bear it.
For if he himself were not holy, he
would not have been the appropriate offering.
But that he was that offering was the
statement of his own voluntary yielding to the
necessity for the sacrifice for the Father's holiness.
We have received the benefit as the atonement,
but as I've said many times, the very
first purpose in the giving of Jesus as
sacrifice in his own holiness as the acceptable
Lamb of God was in defense of the
Father's holiness.
The jealousy for the Father's holiness, the Father's
name, the integrity of that holiness that was
assaulted by sin is the first consideration of
the Son and voluntarily made and given and
the Father approved.
And so painful a requirement that we can
never begin to fathom what Jesus experienced when
he cried out, My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?
He had to be forsaken.
The Father had to turn his face.
A holy God could not even bear to
look upon what his son had become as
sin.
And Jesus had to bear that moment which
was an agonizing eternity who had never for
a moment in his eternal relationship with the
Father ever lived outside the actual experience communion
with Father.
But in that case now, he has to
experience the absence.
Why have you forsaken me?
He doesn't say, Father, why have you?
But God, why have you?
So to miss that is to miss the
greatest revelation of the holiness of God.
We Jews have suffered for the rejection of
the crucifixion of Jesus and have dismissed it
as a non-event and have not understood
what it represents and have in some cheap
way looked upon it as some unfortunate character
who has run afoul of the Roman authorities
by threatening somehow the status quo in his
presumption to be the King of Israel.
They've missed the entire point.
But more than that, they've missed God as
God.
For nothing more reveals God as God and
the holiness of God than the issue of
the sacrifice of the Son for the holiness
of the Father.
So how then do you speak about it
having missed that?
What then does the word holy become in
your Jewish practice or your Christian practice but
a hollow word or a term without a
corresponding reality?
The cross, the crucifixion, the death is the
nub of the issue of the holiness of
God.
And if you don't see it there and
apprehend it there there's no other substitute and
no other place by which the reality can
be communicated.
So the writer speaks of the dignity of
the redeemer's person which Jesus was in himself.
One that had been from eternity had laid
the foundations of the world had been the
object of the divine delight.
He that was God-blessed forever became a
curse.
He who is blessed by angels and by
whom God blessed the world must be seized
with horror.
The Son of Eternity must lead to death.
When did ever sin appear so irreconcilable to
God?
Where did God ever break out so furiously
in his detestation of iniquity?
The Father would have the most excellent person
one next in order to himself and equal
to him in all the glorious perfections of
his nature die on a disgraceful cross and
be exposed to the flames of divine wrath
rather than that sin should live and his
holiness remain forever disparaged by the violations of
his law.
Did you get that?
What a statement.
Shall I read it again?
Let's take this in saints.
This is a rare saint who has wrestled
with the issues the ramifications of atonement.
What does it mean?
Because we have reduced it to a formula.
We speak it blithely and blandly but this
man has gone in and gets at the
genius of what the cross means because if
you miss what Jesus is in himself and
what he represents as the Lamb of God
as the only suitable atonement whose blood is
acceptable in the Father's sight because the life
of the flesh is in the blood and
because the life then is holy, holy, holy
exactly as is the Father's.
It was a suitable expiation a suitable sacrifice
to touch the issue of the holiness of
God which had been beclouded and disparaged by
sin.
No blood of an animal could ever have
sufficed there were only token things that required
this life, this blood, this son and if
we miss the son in his significance we
miss the issue of the holiness because what
he is in himself underscores and gives meaning
and depth to the holiness of God that
nothing less or other than the blood of
a holy son would be the suitable provision
to requite the holiness of God from the
offense that had come upon it in the
sins of mankind.
So let me read this again.
He speaks of the dignity of the redeemed
person, Jesus one that had been from eternity,
had laid the foundations of the world.
This is not Johnny come lately, had been
the object of the divine delight.
He that was God blessed forever became a
curse.
He who is blessed by angels and by
whom God blessed the world must be seized
with horror.
The son of eternity must bleed to death.
When did sin ever appear so irreconcilable to
God?
In fact when did sin ever appear as
sin more than at that occasion?
How could we know sin and hate it
and flee from it unless we understand and
see what was required for its propitiation?
If we don't understand that we lessen the
issue of sin, we lose the issue of
righteousness, we lose the issue of holiness, we
lose all.
The faith becomes a formula, mechanical.
We have no message.
So when did ever sin appear so irreconcilable
to God?
Where did God ever break out so furiously
in his detestation of iniquity?
The Father would have the most excellent person,
the one next in order to himself, equal
to him in all the glorious perfections of
his nature, die on a disgraceful cross and
be exposed to the flames of divine wrath
rather than sin should live and his holiness
remain forever disparaged by the violation of his
law.
Talk about anguish.
Can you imagine even the, how shall I
say it, the temptation for God the Father
to ease this judgment upon his Son, whom
the object of his dearest love, watching him
bear the curse of sin and become it,
this loathsome thing that merely contemplating this made
Jesus to give drops of blood at the
garden of Gethsemane.
He was sweated, clots of blood contemplated, contemplating
becoming this.
What was it for the Father to watch
his Son in the act and have every
urgency to call it off and bring it
to a quicker conclusion but the jealousy for
his holiness was greater than the consideration for
his Son and therefore the Son had to
bear the full measure of the anguish of
the cross to the last drop of blood
in order to requite sin and expiate it
in order to maintain the truth of God's
holiness.
What should that teach us?
How much more than should we esteem that
holiness and understand it as the heart of
all reality that the Father was that insistent,
that jealous, more than for his own Son.
In the same way that the Father had
to experience an infinitely greater measure, the pain
of seeing his Son pay the price for
the holiness of his name and not ease
the requirement.
He had to allow his Son to bear
that grief and he bore that with him
because in all of our afflictions he is
afflicted.
It's not God at some remove, at some
distance looking on in some academic and impersonal
way to the suffering of the Son.
It's the Father sharing in the suffering with
the Son and in that anguish but not
allowing it to be cut short or to
be less than what is required for the
issue of holiness required the total expiation of
that life to the last drop of blood
unto death.
So great is the issue of God's holiness
so great is that holiness foundational to reality
that if it were ever threatened or removed,
as I say, there'd be a total collapse.
Even now the world in ignorance of the
holiness of God and going about to do
its own thing is in such a woeful
moral state that life itself is jeopardized.
Incest, abortion death, murder, mayhem abuse of children,
pornography you can go on with the list
mankind has been ravaged because it's conducting itself
in the absence of the fear of God
and of the knowledge of God as holy.
And once that's removed, anything goes.
Man expresses his depraved nature in so vile
and vicious a way that there are not
institutions enough to control it.
We don't have prisons enough.
They're bursting at the seams Imagine if it
were removed once and for all I would
not want to contemplate a world in which
the holiness of God is no longer a
factor.
However ignored it is now, at least it
is foundationally there to be recognized revived and
brought into the consciousness of men but were
it absent altogether or nullified the world would
be more pitiful than we could describe.
And even now its violence and ugliness increases.
So God is jealous for his glory, for
his honor for his holiness.
The strong cries uttered by Jesus could not
cause him to cut off the least fringe
of this royal garment apart with the thread
of the robe of his holiness woven with
it.
The torrent of wrath has opened upon him
and the father's heart beats not in the
least notice of tenderness to sin in the
midst of the son's agonies.
It almost sounds like the father is indifferent
to the suffering of the son.
But if we know anything about God, he's
the antithesis of indifference.
God is alive to feeling, to compassion, to
mercy.
That's what he is.
And yet he's got to close himself to
any consideration of that thing, of that, which
would in any way mitigate or lessen what
his son has got to bear.
Because the issue of his holiness demands it.
God seems to lay aside the bowels of
a father and put on the garb of
an irreconcilable enemy.
And even to Israel he says I have
become your enemy in the judgments that are
yet to be poured out upon that nation.
But that Jesus himself becomes the irreconcilable enemy
upon which account our savior in the midst
of his passion gives the title of God
not a father when he cries out my
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
He seems to hang upon the cross like
a disinherited son while he appeared in the
garb and rank of a sinner.
Then his head was loaded with curses when
he stood under that sentence of cursed is
everyone that hangs upon a tree.
And looked as one forlorn and rejected by
the divine purity and tenderness.
God dealt not with him as if he
had been one so near a relation to
him.
He left him not to the will only
of the instruments of his death.
He would have the chiefest blow himself of
bruising him.
He was bruised for our transgression.
God has laid upon him the iniquity of
all.
God brought the stroke.
The father did not only observe the judgment,
he actually brought it.
What is that for a holy God to
perform that?
How great is the issue of his holiness
that it was required from his hand.
Another could not perform it.
In other judgments he lets out his wrath
against his creatures.
In this he lets out his own wrath
as it were against himself, against his son
who was as dear to him as himself.
By punishing sin in his son his holiness
sharpens his wrath against him who was his
equal.
And only a reputed sinner as if the
affection to his own holiness surmounted his affection
to his son.
The affection of God, his devotion to his
own holiness equaled or exceeded that to his
own son.
So, when we sing holy, holy, holy, do
we know what we're singing?
Do we understand how dear it is in
God's own sight?
How essential to his own nature in what
he is in himself?
And that nothing more is the measure of
the esteem for his holiness than what he
allowed to fall upon his son.
The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity
of us all, it says in Isaiah 53.
He didn't allow some impersonal agency to bring
the death sentence.
The Lord hath laid upon him.
The Father himself brought the stroke upon his
own son whom he loved beyond all describing
and esteemed beyond all estimation but he himself
brought the stroke.
Why?
How could he?
Because he esteemed the issue of his holiness
greater than the issue of his affection for
his son.
When you love righteousness like that, you're in
the priestly place.
And in fact the priesthood was not established
until it was willing to put the sword
on its side and go in and out
of the camp and every man slay his
neighbor, his brother, and his friend.
God says this day you have been consecrated
unto me as priests.
Of course the word consecration means blood in
your hands.
But whose blood?
Not the blood of a stranger which you
might easily have brought in judgment for the
sin of the golden calf but your father,
your neighbor, your brother your flesh, that which
is closest to you.
When you'll be relentless for truth's sake and
for righteousness sake and not spare judgment and
be willing to be bloodied, as I often
say, from fingertip to elbow, then are you
in the conduct of a priest.
But the place where we cop out is
our own flesh our own son, our own
children we can't bring ourselves to be relentless
hard if it's an impersonal thing we're able,
but when it touches our own flesh which
is to say ourselves, then we balk and
it's for that reason that God required of
Abraham his Isaac.
Much easier for Abraham to have made himself
to sacrifice his Isaac was more dear than
his own life and God knew exactly what
to finger and what to call for and
when Abraham raised his knife over his son
and he was restrained by the angel of
the Lord, God said, now by this I
know that you fear God.
Now when I see that you're willing to
go this far and to bring the knife
on your own flesh and blood I know
that you fear God.
So do we love truth?
Do we love righteousness?
Do we love judgment?
Are we willing to be instruments in its
execution?
Speaking the truth in love not sparing unless
we take up from the father himself with
regard to his son and the priest that
followed in that instance whose hands were bloodied
will fall short of it and the church
will be the loser and the world through
the church.
But there needs to be a heightened seriousness
in the church about such issues because when
do we judge?
We can go through a whole lifetime as
believers there's never been a single instance when
we have ever had to bring a brother
up and decide whether to submit his body
to Satan for its destruction that his soul
might be saved before the day of the
Lord and as you may have heard from
recordings or I don't know where it's anything
we've written one of the outstanding episodes in
the history of Ben Israel is the day
in which we had to judge a brother
in exactly that way he came up for
trial he had been with us for months
he was a painful backslidden believer with a
history of offense in the church we took
him in, patiently counseled sought to restore and
finally after repeated offenses being corrected by one,
corrected by two being brought before the entire
body we had actually a court proceeding to
decide whether in the authority that was ours
we would give this brother over to the
enemy for the destruction of his flesh that
his soul might be saved I don't have
a word to describe that three hour trial
probably the most profound episode in the history
of Ben Israel where as I often say,
I heard housewives speak with such profundity such
depth, such careful statements from which once having
seen and spoken that, they would never again
come back to where they were before once
you are brought into considerations of this ultimate
kind where an eternal issue is being propounded
in judgment by a body, you don't go
back again to where you were before you've
come to something transcendent that affects all your
future and the final decision was indeed, that
his body was given over and a great
relief as if we had righteous judgment came
upon that body and the next morning, in
our prayer time which we then had in
what was Mom Broga's trailer at the head
of the camp road we watched this guy
walking, leaving the property and as we watched
him walk out great rejoicing and liberty broke
out in the fellowship for the judging of
righteous judgment this is very rare in the
experience of the church so we're not faced
with issues of judgment and of righteousness and
look the other way or it becomes a
non-issue where we refuse to see where
it's required and we suffer to the degree
that we ignore the issues of judgment and
righteousness which is the issue of holiness the
father did not ignore, did not look away
amazing how far God went with Moses is
already a preview of how far he will
go with his own son in the example
that was cited God was ready to slay
Moses in the very time when he's coming
to fulfill his call for the failure to
have circumcised his sons and enter them into
covenant and then later on at the end
of the career of Moses to forbid his
entry into the land of promise because of
one indiscretion and one lapse when he beat
the rock rather than addressed it he suffered
a judgment of an ultimate kind that God
did not relinquish, release, required it so we
see the severity of God and only because
we see the severity do we understand the
goodness so the God who is mercy is
also relentless in his judgments and because he's
holy, holy, holy Moses had not consecrated God
in his act of hitting the rock he
had given an impression to the nation contrary
to God's own nature and that required a
judgment of the severest kind where the great
leader was not himself allowed to enter the
land and lead the people into it unless
our concept and sense of the holiness of
God has its origin in the sacrifice of
the son for holiness at the great cost
to the father as well as to the
son we will not have an appropriate sense
of what holy means and it'll become something
transfigured it'll become sentimental, we'll sing about it
it'll have a euphoric aura but the reality
of what is holy brings us back to
the cross actual and a component in our
being is there there is no issue that
will come before us that will not be
affected by it a new seriousness comes into
the life a new regard for the faith,
a new regard for the saints a new
regard for God's glory everything is heightened once
the component of holiness comes into the soul,
is registered upon the soul is taken in,
in true conviction it will affect every category
of your being so the absence of holiness
shows itself in a shallow experience oriented church
that is looking for some kind of thrill
or some kind of affirmation of itself the
missing component is the holiness of God the
great crisis is that instead of waiting for
seeking and entering and appropriating the truth of
the holiness of God we have made a
simile a fiction we have created something out
of our imagination by which we are exalted
spiritually and then we give the appearance as
if we're walking on eggshells and we're so
ethereal, so lofty so that the end is
worse than the beginning you would be better
off being a craven carnal, out of the
faith believer than to emulate or imitate the
issue of holiness when it has not become
actual and authentic in your life, and you're
only exhibiting something of which you yourself are
the author this is the greatest threat is
to play at this, the temptation because we
so desire to be seen and recognized as
being in that realm that we ourselves can
affect it as an act and it's unholy
because it's false so to come into the
actual thing is to jealously guard ourselves against
such a prospect, and I'll tell you this
there'll be a no man's land through which
you must pass before you enter into this
Canaan God will test you, there's not some
direct entry now into the realm of what
is holy, holy, holy but your desire and
genuineness first requires that you pass through a
no man's land in which you wonder whether
you are even saved where the greatest doubts
rise where the greatest struggle about your own
soul and other issues it's a dying, it's
a no man's land of painful confrontation, until
there's entry into the land of Canaan no
one less than Oswald Chambers passed through a
dark night of the soul at the very
time that he was being applauded and complimented
for being eloquent and being spiritual, he himself
knew he was in a place of spiritual
unreality and he groaned, and he wrestled, and
he agonized and it went on, I don't
know for how many months until, through that
pain, he was finally brought into the place
of the thing that is actual this is
not a cheapie so we mustn't think that
there's a quick appropriation, lest we ourselves offer
that, and are willing to pass through a
no man's land in which you wonder, am
I even saved such doubts about yourself, about
your spirituality everything is brought up for review
something of the kind that Paul experienced after
the Damascus confrontation with the risen Lord, in
which he lay for three days and nights,
neither eating nor drinking and his whole life
passed before him in review and he had
to die through all of it and agonize