Horizoned by Life

by T. Austin-Sparks Chapter 4 - The Criteria of Livingness - Reproduction 4. Reproduction Having noted that essential evidence of life which is organic relatedness, we naturally move to the law of reproduction. When God united man and woman in "the grace of life", He immediately said "Be fruitful, and multiply". Reproduction is the law, the object, and the evidence of organic, living, relatedness. Someone has said that 'Any organism that refuses right-of-way to life by denying it facilities for transmission commits a breach of trust. Nowhere is life a possession simply to be enjoyed. It is a stewardship to be sacredly worked so as to be a centre of transmitted energy.' A barren fig tree was taken by Christ as a symbol of Israel's failure in trust, and was cursed. Israel received, but did not pass on, and thereby lost its right to continue. Over against the barren fig tree is set the Vine, the chief concern of the Husbandman for which is "that it bear much fruit". The trust was given to Israel as "children of Abraham" to whom God said "In thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed". All nature cries with a loud voice that the God of creation is no believer in a 'No thoroughfare', 'Cul-de-sac', 'Dead end' way of existence. Whether it be the individual, the group, or the nation, 'No exit' is a contradiction of a fundamental natural and spiritual law. An open highway for life is the law of organic livingness. Exclusivism is, sooner or later, death and disintegration. The history of exclusivism is the history of unending divisions, and those divisions have always meant limitation and self-centredness. Strangle a limb and it will die. Stop circulation and mortification will ensue. Be an end in yourself, and you weave your own shroud. The New Testament with its supreme characteristic of newness is so clearly marked by world-vision. If there is a tendency to become exclusive and self-sufficient, then He who had said "Unto the uttermost part of the world" will sovereignly order that "They (were) scattered abroad everywhere". A veritable rising from His throne (as seen by Stephen) will be to apprehend a "chosen vessel... unto the nations", Heaven's battleaxe against Judaistic prejudice, bigotry, and exclusivism. The swinging of that axe meant hard hitting for carnal selfishness at Corinth, and wrathful anathemas for Galatia. While, on the other hand, the glorying and rejoicing over Thessalonica, Philippi, Ephesus, etc., was because that through them the word and testimony went into "All Asia" and Europe. It is not enough to have interest in the nations, whether by praying, and reporting, and reading. It is a matter of what we have to give. What can we transmit? What will the nations get if they come to us? Is there reproduction in the nations? There can be no reproduction without travail. This is the spirit of sacrifice. Selfcentredness, whether individual or collective, means selfishness. There can be plenty of missionary interest born of many various incentives, but rather pleasurable and romantic, and not travail, anguish, and unto blood. There is a great conflict for the universal, and this battle is often against that pernicious, inveterate, incorrigible tendency to lower levels, smaller measure, mediocrity, collective introspection. The livingness of the individual Christian, the local church; or any institution bearing the name of Christian will be determined by what is found through it of vital value beyond itself. A very successful manoeuvre of the devil is to get a local

company (or an individual, for that) wasting long months or years, and great spiritual vitality in occupation - if not obsession - with its own affairs, and in so doing limiting its reproductiveness, its 'being fruitful and multiplying'. It really means loss of the dominating and emancipating vision of the immensity of Christ.

The Risen Lord and the Things Which Cannot be Shaken

by T. Austin-Sparks Chapter 11 - The Essential and Vital Outworking of an Adequate Life We have been occupied with personal things until now. It is very important that we should have that side of things put before us first of all, but we do not stop there. When we have come to the place of our own personal appropriation of the resources which are in Christ for us, then we have to recognise that bound up with such appropriation there is a purpose that reaches far beyond ourselves alone. It is at this point that we begin to turn our eyes outward rather than inward, while still occupied with the same supreme matter, Christ risen, and the things which cannot be shaken. So we are being led to meditate upon the reproduction of an adequate life in the Church, to its essential and vital outworking. Adam and Eve have often been set forth as types of Christ and the Church, and perhaps rightly so. The injunction given to them was that they should be fruitful and multiply, and that law in a spiritual way is also carried over to the anti-type, Christ and the Church. The law of this one life, of this oneness in life into which Christ and His own have been brought, is fruitfulness, increase, reproduction. We should remember that life is a trust: by it a stewardship is created. Life is not something to be received, and, so to speak, pocketed, appropriated just for the good of the recipient. Life is a trust with which we are called upon to trade, and by means of which we are under an obligation to secure increase. Life demands a right of way for transmission, and to deny that right of way is to violate life, to be disloyal to the greatest of all trusts. In the history of peoples Israel stands out as perhaps the most conspicuous example of this law. Israel, of course, was chosen to be a representation of great Divine, spiritual laws amongst all the peoples of this earth, and Israel's national life was therefore the embodiment of a spiritual principle, the outward representation of something deeper, something heavenly, Divine. You will probably not have failed to recognise in your reading of the Old Testament how in the life of Israel the family had a very large place, and the larger the family the happier the people. Not to have a family was a tragedy and a shame; if that were not possible, then the whole life was regarded as being blighted, spoiled. That was a ruling fact in Israel. The fact is one which lies near the surface, and, as we have said, you can hardly fail to recognise it; but as you do so, you will see that in that particular, as in many others which perhaps are more obvious, there is embodied a spiritual law. Israel was chosen for the reproduction and propagation of the things of God. The Lord deposited His heavenly things with Israel, not that Israel should appropriate them and shut them up within herself, but should trade with them, and regard them as a stewardship. The oracles were for a stewardship. The Divine blessings were a stewardship entrusted to Israel for the world. The great word to Abraham was that all the families of the earth should be blessed in his seed. The covenant with

Abraham, therefore, was for the general good and blessing of mankind, and there were the elements of a stewardship deposited with the covenant of promise. Israel failed in the trust, and in so doing sealed her own doom. That is shown by the barren fig tree. The Lord Jesus, suffering hunger, came to the fig tree expecting to find fruit thereon, and He found nothing but leaves. We know that that fig tree was a type of Israel. It represented Israel. He cursed the fig tree, and it withered away. So, with the close of the life of the Lord Jesus here, Israel passed out of the place of the Divine stewardship, and has never occupied it since. The trust was removed and transferred. "The kingdom of heaven shall be taken away from you" said the Lord, "and given to anation bringing forth the fruits thereof". That is but another way of saying, You have failed to bring forth the fruit of that which was offered you, which was entrusted to you; you have defaulted in the matter of your stewardship; you have been barren when you ought to have been fruitful; you have sealed your own doom. The doom of an instrumentality is sealed by failure to fulfil the vocation for which it was raised up. An organism is never an end in itself, and is never something for itself. It is a means to a larger end, a channel for larger purposes, and the object of an organism is to reproduce itself by life. That reproduction is always sacrificial. It always costs. It is always by the vessel's yielding up of itself in some way. That is to say, death is the way to increase. Reproduction is sacrificial. That brings us to the passage of Scripture in which the Lord summed up everything with regard to His future relationship with His own, and the result of His having come into this world. The passage, you will note, is John 12:24: "Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit". Verse 25: "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal". That embraces and embodies all that we have been saying. Unless a life propagates it remains without being marked by any purpose. It is an end in itself, and God never meant any organism to be that. It saves its own life by letting it go, that increase may be the result. The law of increase is sacrifice - "Except a corn of wheat fall into the earth and die...". There is no propagation, there is no increase, there is no reproduction except by letting all that is merely personal go, in the interest of what is other and more. This then leads us to several things. The first is: The Meaning and Value of Christ Risen as an Inward Life Christ risen is shown to be a reality for inward expression, experience. The risen life of the Lord is to be in us. Christ is to be in us by His life, and by His Spirit of life. The inward meaning and value of Christ risen is the reproduction of His life in all those in whom He is, that all such as have Him dwelling in them in the power of His risen life should be an expression of Christ in life, should manifest Him in the power of that life. It is reproduction of the Christ life in us. The law of that reproduction in us is that we ourselves should die, should accept the place of death, so that all personal life, personal interest is entirely put away, is shed, is parted with, and Christ becomes all. That is what Paul meant when he said, "I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me". Here is the expression of Christ produced because all life which is not of Christ has been yielded to the Cross, has died. It has fallen into the grave of the Lord Jesus, and out of the grave of the Lord Jesus there has come an expression of Him. In our union with Christ in His death we cease and He begins, and from the beginning He becomes the all. That is a progressive thing, as well as a basic thing.

It is a thing all-inclusive in its meaning, in its intent, but it is also progressive. We have to accept the fulness of that thing in an act. We have to take the position quite definitely and consciously that now, in accepting our union with Christ in His death, this is to work out in our having no more place at all, and that whenever we come into evidence we shall be smitten, we shall be put aside, we shall not be allowed to go on. We have to accept that once for all in a definite act of commitment, that from henceforth everything that is of self is going to be smitten unsparingly with that Cross, and whenever self comes in it will not be allowed to have a standing. We had better settle it once for all, and have a dealing with the Lord on that inclusive, comprehensive, and utter ground, that He will make His own meaning in that real; not our understanding of it, not our grasp or apprehension of it, not what we think to be the "I" which is to be forbidden, but what He knows to be the 'I'; not the measure of our knowledge of ourselves, but His knowledge of us. There will be revealed a very great deal more that is "I" than has ever entered into our thought or imagination. Self, then, not as we know it, but as He knows it through and through, is to be brought under the power of that Cross, and this we accept in an act. Then it becomes progressive. To die daily, to be always bearing about in the body the dying or the deadness of the Lord Jesus, so that His death is a working thing every day by which self is denied, is the issue of our initial acceptance. But as that takes place, that sacrificial yielding over to the Cross, the life of Christ is being reproduced. By the power of His own life He is increasing while we decrease. We shall never meet a challenge to set ourselves aside but what, in meeting that challenge, and answering to it, there will be the occasion for an increase of Christ. Everything which demands that we accept a fresh measure of the meaning of His death means that, as we accept it, there will be a larger measure of Him in risen life. So that the meaning and value of Christ risen as an inward life is reproduction. And there is no other way. There is no way to make Christians according to the New Testament but that way. The increase of the number of the Lord's own is not by joining something from the outside; it is by coming to the Cross and dying. That is the only way. There is no Christian on any other ground than that he died with Christ, and has been raised together with Him. The Necessity for Everything to be of a Living Character That is the second thing. This takes us back to the first things which were said in these considerations, that it is contrary to the mind of God to systematise Christianity, Christian truth, Christian order, and appropriate it or apply it as a system. It must be the issue and outcome of life. Reproduction is only by life. It is not by truth as a system of doctrine. Reproduction is not by the setting up of some Christian order. It is by life. And herein is the necessity for everything to be of a living character. If Christ is to be multiplied, using that word in the right sense and not one of us will think that we mean that there will be a multiplication of Christ in any literal sense - if that is to be so, it can only be through everything being living, of a vital order. That brings us to the third thing, which will, to some extent, elucidate and explain what we have just said. The Nature of the Church (a) Constitution

What is it that constitutes the Church? The Church is not constituted upon the Christian creed; nor upon a set of beliefs; nor by assent to certain doctrinal propositions. The Church is not constituted by asking people to join it, become members of it, adherents, but the Church is constituted by the transmission of the risen life of the Lord. Reproduction is its law of increase. Increase may be brought about in two ways. One is the way of imitation. You can turn out so many things as by a mould, that is, by making so many things on the same pattern, and thus increasing, multiplying by imitation. It hardly needs saying that such is not the New Testament way with regard to the growth of the Church. That is not the New Testament way of reproduction. The other way is by conception, that is, the out-growth of life from within, the form which life takes when it expresses itself, when it has its way. It is inward rather than outward. The difference between imitation and what is conceived is the difference between what is dead and what is alive. One is made, the other is born, and the constitution of the Church is the result of the activity and energy of a life, the Lord's own risen life, being transmitted, passed on. Whatever you may develop, you will never get a development of the true Church unless the risen life of Christ is operative and is there in sufficient measure to be transmitted by the Spirit. (b) Order The same law holds good as to the order of the Church. It is the result of His life. Again, two kinds of things are possible. You can appoint to office, and set apart with certain titles and names, which represent certain spheres of activity or kinds of work and responsibility. You can elect or vote into such office or position, and proceed along that line, setting up the Church order. Or you can follow another line, and be ruled by the law of life, whereby account is taken of the working and expression of the Lord's life in the members of the Church, of the way in which the members, by that life, begin to show marks of certain spiritual ability. Ability is coming out and manifesting itself in this way, or in that way, and in due course, by a spontaneous expression, and by the result of the life of the Lord having its way in such members, the Church is compelled to take account of the fact that such-andsuch in its midst are spiritually qualified, and that as spiritually qualified they are already, by the very operation of this Divine life, the fit and proper persons for such-and-such ministry. The expression of life comes out perhaps in a ministry of teaching, or in a ministry of administration. It is not just natural ability. It is not the result of natural advantages, of training and so on, but there is the spiritual mark about it. Then the Lord's people take account of it, and say: Well, evidently the Lord has gifted so-and-so in this way, and we must take account of it, and allow that to have its expression. Thus the Church comes into its order along the line of life. A question may present itself to us in connection with the familiar passage in Ephesians: "He gave some apostles; and some prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministering..." When the Lord did that, did He announce to the Church what He had done? Did He say, Now I have definitely given into your midst so-and-so as your apostle, as your prophet, as your evangelist, as your pastor and teacher? Did He say, Now so-and-so is an apostle in your midst, and so-and-so is a teacher in your midst? Or was His gift in the first place secret, only manifesting itself as these believers respectively went on with Him, and it became noticed that they were developing in certain ways? Was it like that? I think that is the truth, speaking generally. As the fruit of obedience the perpetuation of His heavenly order was not mechanical, not official, not ecclesiastical, but vital, living, spiritual. True order is the expression of life.

That is tremendously important. The Lord does not leave it in our hands to appoint our ministers, to make either the ministry or the minister. The Lord develops ministry by life, and where the Lord develops ministry the Church has to take notice. It may be perfectly true that the appointment has been made by God, but it may be equally true that it has to be made manifest by life before it comes to function. I believe that is partly why Barnabas and Paul were detained at Antioch so long. Paul was definitely called, chosen. There was no doubt whatever that heaven had ordained him as an apostle, and all the signs of an apostle were in him, the supreme sign being that he had seen first hand the risen Lord. Yet, with the sovereign choice, and with the personal commission to him, he had first to go into Damascus to be told what he should do as one in the church, the assembly, and subsequently he had to tarry at Antioch as a member of the assembly there for over a year. Even then the Lord did not come to Saul or to Barnabas, his companion, and say, Now go out to the work to which you know I have called you, the work of which I have told you, the work for which you were chosen! Go out and get on with it! The Lord gave direction through the leading members of that assembly: "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them". And the Church was able to do that, not simply on the basis of a command, but because it had been proved in their own midst that these men were called for this ministry. They had revealed in the assembly by life that they were called to a ministry. That is the way by which the Lord reveals His ministers. That brings us to this point. You do not know what your ministry is, save as you go on with the Lord. You may have been Divinely ordained, sovereignly chosen. There may be related with your life a ministry of great value. You may not know anything about it yet, but it may be perfectly true that the Lord could say that you are a chosen vessel unto Him; but you will only discover what your ministry is as you go on with the Lord in life. As the Lord's life increases in you, and your communion with the Lord goes on unhindered in all its meaning and value, then you will discover that the Lord is moving in you in a certain direction, and that you are becoming exercised unto a certain ministry. None of us really discerns his ministry by being told beforehand. We only know it as we go on with God, and His life has its way. That is an important thing, for ministry hangs upon life. It does not rest upon mechanical appointment. We cannot make ministers. It is only the risen Christ Who can make ministers, and He makes them in the power of His risen life. Disaster lies before the man who tries to be a minister without the risen life of Christ. The Lord deliver us from ever trying in any way to be ministers without its being the outcome of His life in us. The life of the risen Lord takes its own form, expresses itself in its own way, according to the mind of Him Whose life it is. The Growth of the Church We have already touched upon this, but let us repeat and re-emphasise that the growth of the Church is on the principle of life. We can never go about this world gathering people together, asking them to accept certain things which we say about Christ, and then forming them into churches. The Lord has not called upon us to form churches. That is not our business. Would to God men had recognised the fact. A very different situation would obtain today from what exists, if that had been recognised. It is the Lord Who expands His Church, Who governs its growth. What we have to do is to live in the place of His appointment in the power of His resurrection. If, in the midst of others, the Lord can get but two of His children, in whom His life is full and free, to live on the basis of that life, and not to seek to gather others to themselves or to get them to congregate together on the basis of their acceptance of certain truths or teaching, but simply to witness to what Christ means and is to them, then He has an open way. As witness is simply and livingly

borne in this way, one and another will be provoked at length to say: I do wish I had what they have! And another will say: I covet that one's experience. It is just what I have been seeking for! Such as these will either come to inquire the way of salvation, or opportunity will be found to lead them to the Lord. It is in this way that the Church grows. Its growth may be furthered at a street corner as you preach Christ and someone responds, and believing on Christ with the heart and confessing Him as Lord with the mouth, life is given by the Spirit, and that one becomes the Lord's. The Church is not increased by your going and taking a building and trying to get people to come to it, and to your meetings, and then forming them, by a church roll, into a local church. That is not the way. Growth is by life, and this, to begin with, may be by the entering into life of but one soul, and then after a long waiting time of another; or it may be more rapid. But the point is that it is increase because of life. That is the growth of the Church. For the growth of His Church, the Lord must have life channels, life centres. I believe that, given a life centre, sooner or later one of two things will happen, that it will be abundantly manifest that Christ is fully and finally rejected there, or else there will be an adding, a growth. There is tremendous power in life, and the life of the Lord either kills or quickens. It depends on the attitude taken toward it. He is a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death. Things can never remain neutral. What the Lord needs is life centres. The irreducible minimum, and yet the adequate means, to begin with, is two; two who are one in His life, two in whom there is co-operation in that life. He sent them forth two by two. That is the nucleus of the Church. It is such as these that the enemy will endeavour to kill, to quench, or to separate, and thus to ruin them spiritually, so far as their value to the Lord is concerned for propagation. Remember that! The Lord's advantage is bound up with a fellowship of two in the one life. We can see now why in the main issue it is so important that all the resources of the risen Lord should be tapped by us, should be lived upon, drawn upon, why these spiritual, secret, heavenly resources of His life, His fulness, should thus become the basis of our lives. Their purpose does not end with ourselves, nor is it something for ourselves, and if we turn them to that end we shall die. That provision is for the Lord's end, which is reproduction, the reproduction of His own risen life.

"That They May All Be One, Even As We Are One" - Volume 1

by T. Austin-Sparks Meeting 12 - "This Kingdom is an Everlasting Kingdom Twelfth Meeting (February 8, 1964 P.M.) As this is the last meeting of these series this week, it will be necessary for us to do a little reviewing of what has been said. Not very much, but just enough to be able to go on from where we left off last night. But before we come to that I want to take you back to the Old Testament. Those of you who are familiar with the Book of Daniel, will remember that in the second chapter of that book we have the account of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream in which he saw a great image. The different parts of the body of that image from the head downward to the feet were made of different materials. The head

was made of gold, and the other parts of the body were made of other materials, until the feet and the toes were made partly of iron and partly of clay. When Nebuchadnezzar woke up from his dream, he wondered what it all meant, for people in that part of the world always believed that dreams meant something. Perhaps you do that. If you have an unusual dream, you wonder what it is all about. The next morning, you tell somebody about it, hoping that they will be able to explain your dream. Well, that is what Nebuchadnezzar did. He called all his wise men, but he did not tell them his dream. Now he said, 'You tell me what is the meaning of this dream.' But none of them could give the interpretation. Then at last Daniel was brought in and Daniel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord explained the dream to Daniel, and Daniel said this: 'These four parts of the image represent four great kingdoms. The head of gold is great Babylon, your kingdom, Nebuchadnezzar. After you will come another kingdom, and then that will pass away, and another will come; and then that one will pass away, and another one will come.' Daniel told him the names of most of these kingdoms, but the last one he did not name. Well, Daniel explained all that, and then he said this: 'In the days of those kingdoms, the God of Heaven shall set up a Kingdom. And that Kingdom, unlike all these others, will never pass away.' The Kingdom of the God of Heaven - what the New Testament calls the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven - and, beloved, we are living in the days of that Kingdom. Now that is what we have been talking about this week. We are just going to leave that for the present and come back to where we were last night. It is rather impressive that in the days of Daniel, Daniel said that the God of Heaven would set up a Kingdom even while Israel still existed. The kingdom of Israel had not yet passed away at that time; although Israel was in captivity in Babylon, it was not finished with. A remnant did come back to Jerusalem, and rebuild the city and the temple, and for some four hundred years Israel went on. It was having a bad time with these other kingdoms. But what we have been seeing is that when the God of Heaven did begin to set up His Kingdom, the kingdom of Israel began to disappear. This great kingdom of Israel was also set aside by the God of Heaven. And what we have been seeing is that the God of Heaven brought in a new Israel, a heavenly and a spiritual Israel, to take the place of the older one. The God of Heaven, Who had dismissed the others, now brought in His new spiritual Israel. We, who are the Lord's true born-again people, are the new Israel. And this Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom. It will never pass away. Everything is being done in the world to destroy it. The world powers are seeking to destroy this Kingdom. But as surely as those other four kingdoms had gone, and the Kingdom of the God of Heaven remains, so they are doomed to failure. THIS KINGDOM IS FOREVER. Now we are coming over again to where we left off last night. We come into the Gospel by John. I think you know that John wrote this gospel toward the end of the first century of this dispensation. All the other apostles had gone to be with the Lord. John had had

a long life, and through long years, he had meditated much upon the relation between Jesus and the Old Testament. John knew the Old Testament very well, and through all those years of his life, he thought about it. More and more clearly, by the light of the Holy Spirit, he saw the connection between Jesus and the Old Testament. John knew that the old Israel of the Old Testament had been rejected by God, and he knew that Jesus had come to form a new Israel. This new Israel was not something of this world. It was a heavenly Israel, a spiritual Israel. Everybody knows that the Gospel by John is the most spiritual of all the Gospels. John had come to see that the new Israel embodied all the spiritual principles of the old Israel - although the Old Testament Israel had been put away. God's thoughts in Israel were eternal thoughts and John saw that all those thoughts of God, which were represented by the old Israel, were now taken up by Jesus in a spiritual way in a new Israel. John saw that when God began with the old Israel, He appeared as the God of glory unto Abraham. "The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham," and that was the beginning, the first step of God toward the old Israel. Then John took that over into the new Israel, so that when he began to write his Gospel, he spoke about this coming of the God of glory. "And the Word was God... and we beheld His glory" (John 1:1,14). So John began the new Israel where God began the old. And then he knew that God promised Abraham a son, and through that son He would make a great nation, and through that son all nations of the earth would be blessed. He introduced a new idea. This was not creation. He was not creating a new man; He was bringing one to birth. There is a difference between being created and being born. The new idea was sonship. Isaac was to be Abraham's son. Now John begins in his first chapter all about the Son, God's Son. And then God was going to have a new Israel of sons in His Son. So John says, in His birth. Isaac was on supernatural ground, he was "Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." And then John knew another thing about the beginning in the Old Testament. He knew that the God of glory had appeared to Abraham, he knew that He had spoken about the son, and then he knew that that son was quite impossible along natural life. Isaac could not be born in the natural way. Probably you know all about that. We simply make the statement. Isaac was a natural impossibility. Nevertheless, Isaac was born. Now John takes that over, and he knew quite well that Jesus was not born in a natural way. JESUS WAS THE RESULT OF A DIRECT INTERVENTION OF GOD. Isaac was a miracle. Jesus was a miracle not on natural ground. Jesus was on supernatural ground from His birth. But then we saw that even Isaac had to go into death and resurrection. You know the story quite well. I am having to take it for granted that you know your Bible. If you do not know what I am talking about, go back and read your Bible (Genesis 22). You will find it all there. Isaac had to be offered as a sacrifice, and then

as in a figure raised from the dead. Now here is a rather impressive thing! You are not far into the Gospel by John in the first chapter before this Son of God comes to the river Jordan. He comes to be baptized by John the Baptist. You know the meaning of baptism; it is a figure of death and burial and resurrection. But the impressive thing is this: John has been talking about the eternal Son of God, through Whom all things were created. And now, before he had got much further, he calls Him "The Lamb of God." There you have it repeated, "Behold the Lamb of God, Which taketh away the sin of the world" (verse 29). The Lamb has to be slain. When you come to the Book of the Revelation, the Lamb is in the midst of the throne, and all are worshipping the Lamb (Rev. 5). This great Isaac has gone into death and into resurrection. Now we must just stop in this course for a moment to make the application. You see, we have said that believers in this dispensation are God's new heavenly Israel. What is it that makes us members of this heavenly Israel? In the first place, it is that we have seen the greatness of the Lord Jesus. We are able to say in a measure, "We have beheld His glory." Every true believer ought to be able to say that I have seen at least something of the greatness of the Lord Jesus. You may not put it in these words, but this is what it means, "that the God of glory has appeared to me." "I have seen the Lord of glory." We may put it in different ways, but that is what it amounts to. Something of the greatness of the Lord Jesus as God's Son has been revealed in our hearts, that is the first step toward the new Israel. I wonder how many of you in this hall tonight can say, I am a member of that Israel; I have seen the Lord! The Lord of glory has appeared in my heart. If not in the same words as Paul, you could say the same thing. "For God, Who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (II Cor. 4:6). That is the beginning of the new Israel. The next thing is, we have become sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ. We are amongst those of whom it can be said, our real spiritual life is not by the will of man, it is not by natural blood. We have not inherited it from anybody. We have not got it because some people persuaded us into it. Not by the will of man, not by natural blood, but we have been born of the Spirit of God. We are children of God by the will of God. Now all that is very simple and very elementary, I know, but we have not finished yet. The next thing in this new Israel is this: You and I have got to come through death unto the ground of resurrection. We have got to know something of the power of His resurrection in our life. What Paul calls, "being in the likeness of His resurrection" (Rom. 6:5). This is a very important thing, not only at the beginning of the Christian life, but this is something that has got to characterize the new Israel all through history. Just look at the history of the people of God during these two thousand years. Before God finally destroyed that great Roman Empire, that Roman Empire massacred ten million Christians. How many Christians there must have been? That mighty iron empire determined to destroy this

new Israel, that was the first great historic baptism into the death of Christ. You wonder that anybody remained. But it was the Roman Empire that was destroyed. The only thing you know about that Empire today is to go to the city of Rome and see a few ruins. But where is the heavenly Israel? It is everywhere in the world. You see, this Israel is indestructible. But since that first baptism into death, it has had many others, right up to our own day. The heavenly Israel has been baptized into death in China, has been baptized into death in Russia, and it is the same in other parts of the world. Well, what is going to be the end of this? It is a great pity that those people who do this do not read history; if only they would read history, this is what they would see. The Jewish nation tried to kill Christianity and the Jewish nation has been set aside. The far greater Roman Empire determined to kill the heavenly Israel, but it is the great Roman Empire that has been killed. The heavenly Israel just goes on and many other great powers have tried to do that. But where is the heavenly Jerusalem? This spiritual Israel just goes on. THE GOD OF HEAVEN HAS SET UP A KINGDOM WHICH SHALL NEVER BE DESTROYED. Now this baptism into Christ's death and resurrection is not only a historic thing, it is not only a thing in history, it is a thing in personal experience. The Lord, again and again, takes us into an experience of death - an experience when we feel that the end of everything has come, and it looks as though we are never going to get through. It may be for one reason or another, but there it is. It looks as though we are at the end. And that has happened to us many times. But we are still alive. We are still going on. The Apostle Paul spoke of his own experience of this when he said, "I would not have you ignorant, brethren, of what befell us in Asia. We were pressed beyond our measure. We had the sentence that it was death. We despaired of life, that we might not trust in ourselves, but in God Who raiseth the dead" (II Cor. 1). When the apostle wrote that, that was an experience in the past, and he was now writing in resurrection. Sometimes, it is like that in the work of the Lord. Things seemed to go right into death. We feel that the end has come - there is no more. We go through deep experiences like that. Why does the Lord allow this? Why has He allowed it in the history of the Church? Why does He allow it in His own work? And why does He allow it in our own personal experience? Well, why did He allow it in the case of Isaac? You remember where we finished last night, we said that it was in order that everything should be kept on supernatural ground, This new Israel is a supernatural thing, and it has got to be kept on that ground. Because resurrection is something which belongs to God alone, and it has got to be said about everything that is God's. "This is of God, and not of man." Our lives have got to bear the mark of God in them. While we have strength, we feel we can go on. But sometimes the Lord takes away our strength, and we feel that we can go on no more, and then His strength comes in. His strength is made perfect in weakness. Resurrection of the Lord Jesus is not

only something which happened 2000 years ago. It is something that has got to be continually happening in all of us. The Apostle Paul had lived a long life. He had lived a very full life. I doubt whether there was anyone else who had a fuller knowledge of the Lord than he did. But right at the end of that life, he was saying, "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection" (Phil. 3:10). Right to the end, there is still more in the power of His resurrection for us to know. That is the nature of the new Israel. You see how John is following the course of the old Israel in a spiritual way? I wonder if I have time just to take you one step further. Do you notice the next thing that comes in John's Gospel? You will find it at the forty-third verse of the first chapter. Now note how true to principle John is keeping. At that point Jesus is calling His twelve apostles. He is saying to this one and to that one, "follow Me." He is selecting twelve. That is the number of the tribes of Israel. So, He is constituting the new Israel on the principle of twelve. But as He is doing this, He calls one man, and that man's name is Nathaniel. One of the others brings Nathaniel, and as Nathaniel is coming and Jesus sees him, Jesus says, "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no Jacob!" Nathaniel said, "Master, how do You know me?" Jesus said, "Before your friend called you to come, I saw you under the fig tree." Why had Nathaniel gone under the thick fig tree? He wanted to pray, and he did not want anybody to see him. He wanted to be alone, quiet, where no one would see him and disturb him, and so he went under the fig tree. Jesus said, "I saw you when you were under the fig tree." It must have been a very thick fig tree, because Nathaniel was so surprised, so surprised that anybody could have seen him that he said, "Master, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel." Now listen to what Jesus said to him. "Because I said, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You shall see greater things than that. Afterward thou shall see the heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." Starting with Abraham, we went to Isaac, now we come to Jacob. Everybody knows the story of Jacob's dream - how he journeyed and when the sun went down, he lighted upon a certain place, and he went to sleep, and he had a dream. He saw a ladder set up on the earth. The top of it reached into heaven. And he saw the angels of God ascending and descending upon the ladder. And the Lord was above the ladder. And the Lord spoke to Jacob. Now John has taken that over also. Perhaps we would be better to say the Holy Spirit is taking it all over. So we come to Jacob. Where did everything of God begin with Jacob? What is the great thing about Jacob? There are many things about him that we can forget for the moment. And we just remain with this dream because Jesus put His finger upon that. He said to Nathaniel, "an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" And then to him He said afterwards, "Thou shalt see the heavens open, the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." Of course, that was all type and figure. We will see in a minute what it meant. We have got to go back to the Old Testament again. You know right from the day when Adam sinned in the

garden, the presence of God was shut and closed to him. All through the Old Testament, God is so separate from man that man cannot come near God. Everything in the Old Testament says to man, "Keep out! Come not near, this is holy ground." That court around the tabernacle said to man, "Keep out. You cannot come in here, only the priests can come in here, you keep out." You see, man was excluded from the Presence of God. It was a terrible thing to come into the Presence of God. If ever anybody felt that God had come near, they would have been afraid for their life. Heaven was closed. The old Israel had a closed heaven. "Thou shalt see the heaven open." A WONDERFUL FEATURE ABOUT THIS NEW ISRAEL IS THAT IT HAS AN OPEN HEAVEN IN JESUS CHRIST. When did Nathaniel come to experience what Jesus said he would? You open your New Testament at the beginning of the Acts of the apostles. You will read the names of the people who were gathered together after the resurrection of Jesus. It says now there were soand-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, and Nathaniel. Oh, Nathaniel is there! And they were all gathered together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven the sound as of a mighty rushing wind. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2). The heaven is open. Why? Because Jesus has gone through and opened it. And on that day, and from that day, they lived under the open heaven. That is, they had a freeway through to God. No longer were they kept outside. The Holy Spirit says now you can come with boldness to the Throne of Grace. It is no longer a closed door to God. The heavens are open. That is the inheritance of the new Israel. I think we are having a little bit of the experience of that today. We have an open heaven here tonight. We know something about the Lord speaking to us from heaven in the Lord Jesus. God's messages are coming to us from heaven. I trust that is true. That is our great privilege as the new Israel. Now I have got to stop. And I only got to the first chapter of John, and that goes right through the whole Gospel of John to the end. All that which is in that wonderful gospel has to do with this new spiritual Israel. We are brought into a wonderful thing through the Lord Jesus, to the God of glory, to the wonderful miracle of spiritual sonship. We are learning to know the power of His resurrection and we are coming to experience more and more of the meaning of the open heaven. This is not just Bible teaching. This is wonderful spiritual experience. IT IS ALL THE INHERITANCE OF THE CHILDREN OF THIS NEW ISRAEL!

We Beheld His Glory - Volume 2

by T. Austin-Sparks Chapter 5 - The Glory of Christ the Vine READING: John 15. Considering the subject of this part of our Lord's discourse on the way from the upper room to the Cross, we have to bring into the foreground the governing object of all these discourses, and indeed of all that is reported and recorded in this Gospel. It is an object that is seen in a peculiar way to govern the early part of this

chapter - the discourse on the vine. Before we can understand all the rest everything that the Lord is saying here - we must see the object for which the vine exists. That object is clearly shown to be nothing less than the glory, pleasure, and satisfaction of God. We have previously defined the glory of God as being His Divine nature satisfied in seeing His purposes realized: His very nature in its peculiar requirements satisfied satisfied in the realization of its objects. But we must not just take that as a definition or a statement in words; we must feel it. It is the very being of God what He is in His nature - finding an answer in kind, as embodied in purposes of His heart. When there is a correspondence between God and the object - the sentient object - of His work, there is a sense of glory; it may express itself in worship, joy, rest, gratification, a burst of praise. But this is something rather to feel than to grasp mentally. Thus, it is the glory or the glorifying of the Father for which the vine corporately exists. He is glorified in that which is the fruit or issue of the existence of the vine. So we let the glory of God interpret every statement of the Lord Jesus in this remarkable, wonderful discourse. We cannot just now go through the whole, sentence by sentence, statement by statement. But if we take this matter of God requiring to be satisfied in His nature, and bring it alongside of each utterance of the Lord Jesus throughout this discourse, it will explain everything. It will even solve some of those long-standing problems which this chapter holds. For the moment we must confine ourselves to the statement that the governing object of the existence of the vine is the glory, or the glorifying of God: that is to say, His satisfaction in the realization of His purposes. Christ the True Vine Having established that, we proceed to consider the way to that object, the way to the glorifying of God, as it is revealed in this chapter. As we should expect, right at the very beginning we are confronted with His Son, and the first thing we meet here is a statement which signifies the exclusiveness and uniqueness of the Son of the Father. In words of comparison and contrast, He begins, almost abruptly, it would seem: for, rising from the supper and the upper room, and saying, "Let us go hence," He just proceeds. It sounds almost an abrupt continuation. But there is no interruption; He just goes on talking. "I am the true vine." "I" and "true" are words of comparison and contrast. They follow in the line of many such things already said. "I am the good shepherd" (John 10:14); that is comparison and contrast. It is invidious. "My Father giveth you the truebread out of heaven" (John 6:32). This comparison of the vine is, of course, with Israel who was the Lord's vine. He "brought a vine out of Egypt" (Psa. 80:8), but that vine failed to produce the fruit for the glory of God; that is, the satisfaction of God's nature in the realization of His purpose. It proved a false vine - false to the Father's nature, false to the Father's expectations, false to the Father's purposes; still remaining in the earth for the time, still in a way growing, developing, making a show, making a profession, but now set aside as a false thing, in no way corresponding to the intention of God in its existence. The Son says: "I am the true vine." What He is saying is that everything now for God's satisfaction, for the satisfaction of the Father's nature in the realization of His purposes, is centered in the Father's Son; everything now is summed up in the Son. "I am." When we gather together all those "I ams" of this Gospel, how many there are of them, and how tremendously emphatic they are, even in the language itself. The "I" is emphatic. If we had heard the Lord say it, in familiarity with the

language used, we should have heard the emphasis there: "I am the true vine." So, everywhere in this Gospel, He brings things away from all other connections, centers them in Himself, and says: "Everything now of God's expectation, God's purpose, God's satisfaction, and therefore God's glory, is centered in His Son." "I am." As I said just now, that is what we should expect, when we are looking for God's satisfaction and God's realization of heart-purpose. It is in His Son we know that so well. The Branches But then a wonderful thing about that - about the glory of God, the satisfaction of God in realized purposes - is carried by the next statement. "Ye are...." "I am the vine, ye are the branches" (vs. 5), and in between "my Father" (vs. 1). We must always keep the terms clearly before us: the husbandry is that of the Father; this has come as from a Father. It is something begotten of God, something born of God; something with which He, as Father, is bound up in a heart-relationship, for which He is jealous with the jealousy of a Father. This is not just a proprietor, an owner. This is something of an inward relatedness, not merely outward. The Father's heart is bound up with this. It is pre-eminently a matter of love. Identity of Life "Ye are the branches." In this statement there is at once struck the note which is fundamental to the whole New Testament revelation: the note of identity of life. What a dominant matter that is in the New Testament, as well as in our own experience! Of course, we are now able to read into this the so much greater revelation which came afterward as to its meaning, that of which this was but an illustration. We "know it all" now; it is one of the most familiar truths to us; and yet it is the matter upon which the Father is concentrating every day of our lives, and it is the matter which gives rise to by far the greater measure of our troubles and difficulties. There is not an adhesion to Christ; there is not a "coming to" Him. There is a sense in which we come to Him, in the sense of His words "Come unto me" (Matt. 11:28); or else "ye will not come to me" (John 5:40); but no one would ever say, in the light of the New Testament, that coming to the Lord Jesus makes us an organic part of Him. We need all those other illustrations that are in the New Testament really to express this, e.g. "planted together," "born anew," "buried-raised with Christ," and so on. We do not just come as people, and range ourselves at the side of a certain One, and then go on together. That is not the teaching of the New Testament. We come to Him and then are plunged into His grave, and out of that grave we do not rise in our old life, separate and different. "I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20). Now we are familiar with that truth, but that is what the Lord here lays down as the essential and indispensable basis of any satisfaction to the Father and realization of His purpose. It is basic to that; for only the Son can satisfy the Father, and only in the Son can the Father's purposes be realized. Therefore, if that is to be in any way fulfilled through a corporate instrument, there must be an absolute identity of life. We know now how that takes place: whatever there is going to be will not be from us - it will be from Him. But I do want specially to underline that point, that it is not our coming unto Him that has this result; it is what arises from His life within. It is the rising out from, and not the coming unto, that makes all the difference. We can adhere, we can sponsor, we can attach, we can take up a position; we can "come just as we are"

and go on just as we are. We can still be in a kind of relatedness to the Lord which does not bring with it any rising out from the Lord, and it makes all the difference to what kind of life ours is going to be in the matter of God's glory. That is what the Lord is saying here, in more words. He is pointing out that there can be a kind of relatedness to Himself which does nor bear this fruit to the Father's satisfaction and glory; something somewhere is lacking. Whatever the function of the branches and that function is to bear the fruit of the vine - they can do nothing in that matter apart from this identity of life. This is a deep inward oneness with the Lord, which is not two things, but is only one thing; and that one thing is the Lord Jesus as the life. The whole teaching of the New Testament is that union with Christ implies the end of any separateness of existence as apart from or other than Christ Himself. It is existence now as from a birth, not from an attachment; from a life imparted which has never before been possessed. It is something quite new, quite fresh, quite other than there was hitherto. That is the uniqueness and exclusiveness of Christ. So the branches become a part of something unique, something different from all that we know of mankind and creation, something that has not been before. The Purpose of the Vine's Existence We come now to this matter of fruit, and we note that, so far as the glory of God is concerned, it is a governing matter. It is impressive that the Lord should have chosen the vine as the symbol of this means of reaching His end. You know so well that a vine has no other use in all the world but to bear fruit. It has no by-products. There are some things from which, if the main object is realized or even has failed, you can get other things, byproducts; there are secondary uses. But you cannot even make a walking-stick out of a vine. If it does not bear fruit, it is good for nothing. There is no other purpose to which you can turn a vine except to make a bonfire of it. The whole object of the existence of Christ and His members is this matter of fruit. The Lord expresses Himself here in strong terms. If fruit is not forthcoming, He says, such branches are cast out, gathered, thrown on the fire, burned. Men do not say, Oh, well, it is not bearing any fruit, but we can turn it to this use and to that, we can make it serve some purpose. There is no alternative for a vine. And there is no alternative for your life and mine, in relation to Christ, but the glory of God. God has no secondary purposes for us, saying, Oh, well, they are not bearing any fruit we will make some other use of them. No: the glory of God in satisfaction, in the realization of His purpose - His purpose - is the only justification for our existence in relation to Christ. That is precisely the reason why Israel was cast off and burned. An old doctrinal or theological question arises here; but I am not going to follow that out. Is Israel in the fire? Have men cast Israel into the fire, since God cast Israel off? Well, we know the answer to that. But, leaving that aside for the moment, you see the point: it is that, with God, this vine is only justified in having an existence in the satisfaction of His nature and in the fulfillment of His purposes. "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit." Fruit the Evidence of Life And it is the fruit which is the evidence of the life. That is what the Lord comes down upon. He does not say that branches and leaves justify the existence or prove anything. It is the fruit which proves everything and it is the fruit which proves the life. He fastens upon that: the fruit proves the life. And Christ's life is essentially

fruitful. An unfruitful Christian is a contradiction of Christ, a contradiction of the life of Christ. Christ did not have to make efforts to be fruitful; there was no effort in His fruitfulness. It was spontaneous. The life itself is spontaneously, inevitably fruitful. Was it not just there that Mr. Hudson Taylor came to his life crisis, when, after years, he was brought to a complete standstill on this question of fruitfulness? The whole crisis turned upon his struggling, his agonizing, his taking the strain and burden of this matter of fruitfulness, until he fretted himself into despair. And then he came upon this chapter of John's Gospel, and the Lord, so to speak, stood by him and opened it up to him, and showed him that He was the life of the vine, and the branches had to do nothing by way of struggle to bear fruit. All they had to do was to let the life have its way unhindered. It came as a revelation to him; you have it in that great chapter in his autobiography, "The Exchanged Life." If the life of the Lord is not frustrated, is not hindered, or, to use the Lord's word here and its reiteration, if we abide in Him, that is, keep on Christ's ground and do not take our own or any other ground, the life proves itself spontaneously in fruitfulness without any effort. The Bearing of Fruit Is Service And inasmuch as this fruit-bearing is the service which is rendered to God and includes all that is meant by Christian service, the service of the Lord; inasmuch as the fruitbearing is the service of the believer and the Church: then it is quite clear here that service and union with Christ the right kind of union with Christ, the kind that we have mentioned are the same thing. It is a union that means identity of life through losing our own and having His yielding up our apartness, our independent life, and taking His. That union is spontaneously service. We have thought of the service of God as a matter of preaching and teaching and doing a multitude of things for the Lord. They may only be the framework; they may only be the outer casing, like the bark of a tree. The Lord may pour His life through such methods and means, or He may not let us do any preaching or teaching. In the case of some, He may have the greatest measure of fruit without ever any preaching being done at all. Fruit is the spontaneous expression of a deep-rooted oneness with Christ, and there may be very much satisfaction and glory to God through people who are never allowed to preach or teach or do any of those things which we call Christian work. But to express Christ, to live Christ, to manifest Christ, to let everything around feel Christ and be touched by Christ through our presence - that certainly is to the glory of God and the satisfaction of His heart, and that is service. For what is this fruit? It is the life of Christ manifested, and God help both the preachers and the teachers and the workers, and those to whom they preach, if there is not a manifestation of Christ coming through what they are saying and doing. The real heart of it is this deep union of life with the Lord, and it is this kind of service which satisfies God. The Pruning Knife "Every branch that beareth fruit, he cleanseth it," or "purgeth it": by which we understand Him to mean that He is pruning, and there are one or two things which we must conclude from this procedure of the Lord. He does not say that if a branch bears no fruit, He prunes it to bear fruit - no, He cuts that off; but if it bears some fruit, He "cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit." The point here is that, for the Father's full satisfaction, it is not merely size that weighs with Him, it is not just

bigness, it is not the expansiveness of the branches. The thing which counts with the Father ultimately is the quality and amount of fruit - in other words, the measure of Christ, the essential qualities of Christ. Other metaphors or figures the "Body of Christ" pre-eminently - will be used in the later New Testament to set forth this principle, but here it is the measure of Christ that the Father is seeking. We can press that even more closely. Even in that which comes from the Lord - for the fruit comes from the Lord; it is the expression of His life - even in that very vine, the Lord takes measures of curtailment in order to get intrinsic values. Paul and the churches might well have thought that it would be of far more value to God if he had been kept at liberty, kept free to travel about over the world and meet the saints; but God's pruning knife decided that it would be of greater intrinsic value if Paul's liberty were curtailed and he were put in prison. We know the wisdom of God in that now. Thank God for what came out of that prison in those letters - intrinsic value indeed! Sometimes the wisdom and the love of God operate in what looks like limitation, in certain ways and certain directions, in order to get intrinsic value. A seed-plot is an intensive thing, not necessarily an expansive thing; but it may be that presently the whole world will be sown from that seed-plot: that plant or that crop will be reproduced everywhere. And the Lord is saying here, "I am not first of all interested in how big and expansive you are, in what you are doing, even though it may be for Me, and even though it may be, in measure, by the life which I have given you. What I am primarily concerned about is the richness of the fruit, the quality of the fruit and the real measure of intrinsic value." You can have grapes and grapes, and the Lord is after the first quality. It means that there is a good deal of saying "No" when that life is at work. Here are these branches spreading, and the knife says, "No, not that, not that, not that." The pruning knife is a great instrument for God's "No" - but it is governed by God's "Yes." The "Yes" lies hidden behind. The "Yes" relates to the quality and the intrinsic value of the fruit, the measure of Divine satisfaction, and it is that which governs the "No," which lops off. The Object of the Pruning Finally, the work of the Husbandman, the Father, with His pruning knife, has as its object the preserving of true character. That is true in all pruning, as you know. You go along the path there in the garden. You will see some grafted rose bushes which once bore beautiful roses. They were not pruned. Now they have run wild: the wild stocks have been allowed to supplant the beautiful grafted forms, and they are only bearing what we call dog-roses. They may be pretty, but we know that the plant has run wild for want of the knife. The result is not the real thing - it is a wild thing; it is something inferior, it is not what it might have been. It is so easy for us, if the Lord spares the knife and leaves us alone, to lose distinctive character. Just let us get out of the Lord and run free, take our own way for a bit, and we lose distinctiveness of character. There is a wildness, a foreign element that comes in, and the real pleasure of the Lord is lost. It is not until that knife comes back and does some pretty hard work, saying, "No, no, not that way, not that way," that the Lord recovers the thing which He first intended as His own satisfaction. But what is the result? "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full." We have to admit, after all, that it was not in that independent way that we really found our joy; our joy is being in the way of the Lord's first appointment and choice, and our joy is restored very often by the knife. "That my joy may be in you." If you go to Hebrews 12, you will see the fuller interpretation and explanation. It is the Father's hand that is upon us to get that which, firstly, justifies our existence the satisfaction of His nature, the fulfillment of His purpose - and in so doing brings

His joy into our hearts. It is not our joy in the first place, but His. Then our joy is His joy - and our joy is fulfilled.

In God or Outside of God?

by T. Austin-Sparks (A message given at a conference in Switzerland in 1964) Reading: John 15:1,2,4; 1 Peter 3:18. There are two words to be underlined in the fifteenth chapter of John. The one word is 'true' - "I am the true vine" - and the other is 'abide'. which occurs eleven times in the chapter. If you look at these three chapters in John's Gospel, chapters 14, 15 and 16, you will be impressed with one thing. (This is one way of obtaining the real message of any part of the Bible: try to sense the atmosphere of what is being said.) How do these chapters impress you? In them there is an atmosphere of crisis and uncertainty. There are questions in the atmosphere, and there is doubt and there is fear. Look back in chapter fourteen and you hear Thomas saying: 'Lord, we do not know where You are going. How can we know the way?' Philip says: 'Lord, show us the Father and that will be sufficient'. You see, there are questions in the air. The disciples are uncertain, not knowing the meaning of things. They want to know what it is all about. In their hearts they are saying: 'Where is it all leading us?' There is the feeling that a great upheaval is about to take place and that everything is about to be shaken. And they were right. In a few minutes the Lord Jesus will be saying: "They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto God" (John 16:2). 'They will put you out of their whole religious system, and when they have done that they will kill you. Having killed you, they will think they have done a good thing for God.' Of course, that was their way of looking at it, but there was another way of looking at it, and it was this that was really causing the tension in the air. What Jesus was really pointing to was the repudiation of that whole historic religious system. That whole system of Judaism was about to be put away. These disciples had already begun to lose faith in that system, but their trouble was: What is going to take its place? Judaism may be a poor thing, but perhaps a poor thing is better than nothing, and here is Jesus saying that He is going away and leaving us. What shall we have left? It is rather impressive, is it not, that Jesus says: 'I am going away; yet abide in Me.' The disciples were asking: How can we abide in someone who has gone away and left us? That will be worse than our Judaism! That, you see, is the setting of these chapters, and chapter sixteen is the answer to those questions and doubts. Before we go on with this, may we not say that there is something very much like that in the atmosphere today? If you were living in any other part of the world than Switzerland, you would be full of questions as to what is going to happen next. The whole world is full of that question, and even Christians feel that we are coming to a great crisis. Many Christians have already lost faith in the religious system. Much that they were brought up in, much that they believed in and hoped in, and much that they thought for a long time was the true thing, has disappointed them. There are very many Christians who are disappointed with Christianity, and they are seeing that it is something that is going to be shaken and perhaps removed. The big question that is in the heart of many Christians is: Where are we going to? What is it all leading to? What really are we going to have in the end?

That is exactly how these disciples were feeling. Israel had been called 'God's vine'. The Psalmist said of God: "Thou broughtest a vine out of Egypt" (Psalm 80:8), and at the time that the Lord Jesus was speaking to His disciples, that vine had proved false. It was not giving fruit to God or to man. It was disappointing everyone. It only had the name of being a vine, and was not a true vine. Jesus said: "I am the true vine". Everyone was asking: What is truth? The common people were asking that, and Pontius Pilate will presently say: "What is truth" (John 18:38). The answer of Jesus is: "I am the true vine". 'Abide in Me and all your questions will be answered and all your uncertainty will be removed. Abide in Me and you will know what is true.' That is the immediate setting of these words. But there is a much bigger context to these words than perhaps you recognize. And here is another thing that you must always try to discover when you are reading any words of the Lord Jesus. Anything that He says is not just something for an immediate local situation. What Jesus says, even though it just be one thing, has the whole counsels of God in it. It comprehends all the ages. I venture to suggest that you never saw that in these three simple words: "Abide in Me"! When Jesus said that, He was getting right back behind everything to the great eternal factor, and in those simple words He was taking up the one thing for which He came into this world. It is the question with which the whole Bible is occupied from beginning to end, and the one question which comprehends everything that Jesus came to answer. The question: In God or outside of God? That sounds very simple, but it comprehends all the ages. It is the question of all time and eternity. We must open that up a little more. In the beginning, when everything came fresh from the hands of God, the whole creation, including man, was in God. God was the sphere of everything. He was man's sphere - man lived and moved and had his being in God. I often wish that we had a fuller account in the Book of Genesis of what things were like at that time, but we have to draw our conclusions about that by seeing what they were like afterward. We have enough there, however, to show us that it had been a very blessed condition. God was man's environment - and that is a very blessed condition. It is like a beautiful garden, the Bible says. Man walked in a beautiful garden with God, and there were no weeds or thorns there. Man did not have to fight adverse things in that garden. You know, there are some gardeners who are very particular. You take them to gardens that you think are wonderful, and they are not a bit excited about them. They have such a high standard that they are bound to find some fault somewhere. Jesus says here: "My Father is the husbandman", and God is a very particular gardener. If He says 'It is verygood', then it must be very good. We are told: "God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good" (Genesis 1:31), and that is how it was when all things were in God. We do not know how long it was like that, but while all was abiding in God, it was all very good. But then came the tragedy: Man and the creation fell out of God. We speak about 'the fall', but have we ever realised what a terrible thing that fall was? Man and the creation fell out of God - and they fell into Satan. So, the New Testament says, "the whole world lieth in the evil one" (1 John 5:19). In God? Or outside of God? In God? Or, not just out in a vacuum, but in Satan? Now that is the great question that Jesus came to answer in His own Person, and that is why we read that little fragment from Peter's letter: "Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God"... back into God! We have pointed out that there are two sides to the Person and work of the Lord Jesus. There is the one side of the Man in God. Jesus lived His life on this

earth in the Father - He said: "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). He always abode in God, and that was a lifelong battle for Him, for Satan and all his kingdom set themselves to drive a wedge in between Christ and His Father. We will not stop to look at all the ways which Satan employed, but the whole earthly life of Jesus was one continuous battle to prevent a gap coming in between Him and His Father. Satan did not trust this business to his demons - I don't think he could trust any of them to do this. I think Satan had said: I must do this, so it was always Satan who was mentioned in this connection. No doubt he drew upon all his forces for this, but he set himself personally at the head of them to try to open this gap between Christ and His Father. Jesus triumphed in this battle. On the one side, as the Man in God, Satan could not separate Him from His Father. I do want you to recognize that this is something that you and I have to know about, for there is just one thing that Satan wants to do with you and me. It is to separate us from God, to get us away from Him, and he will use anything in our lives to do that. On the one side he will use our sufferings and our adversities. When we are going through a bad time he is always very near to whisper: 'You see, God does not love you. He is not with you - He is against you. You have evidence that He is against you, for if He loved you you would not have to suffer like this.' If we allow a doubt about God to come into our hearts when we are having a bad time, we shall find ourselves away from the Lord, and it is much easier to get away from the Lord than it is to come back to Him. It is a lifelong battle to keep our fellowship with the Lord unbroken. If Satan cannot break it in our sufferings he will sometimes try it in our prosperity and blessings. He offered Jesus all the kingdoms of this world and said, in effect, 'I can make you great and prosperous in this world.' But we must get over to the other side of the Person and work of the Lord Jesus the Man out of God. When Jesus was 'made sin for us' - and He was made sin for us in the end - He went out from God. I never fail to be more and more impressed with that terrible thing that happened. Here is this Man who had fought a lifelong battle to abide in God. It had been His one great object never to be separated from His Father, and He had won that battle in Himself, but here at the end He is crying: 'My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? I am where I have fought the battle so that I should never be. I am outside. I am forsaken of God. I am separated from My Father. I am like that scapegoat away back in Israel, upon whose head the priest laid his hands and transferred the sin of all the people. He then led the goat far outside the camp, away until it had gone right out of sight. Then the priest drove it away and it was alone in the wilderness, where it died in its loneliness. I am like that now. I am not only forsaken of men, but I am forsaken of God.' But that is where all men would be but for Jesus Christ. He suffered, "the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God". When Jesus was crucified all His disciples were scattered abroad everywhere. You might have had great difficulty in finding them if you had tried to. Two of them went down to Emmaus. Where poor Thomas was hiding himself we do not know, nor where Peter had gone to after denying His Lord. They were all broken and scattered. Do you notice what happened after the Cross, when Jesus was raised from the dead? He knew where every one of them was and He brought them all back together. He reunited them in Himself and the last picture we have of them is that they are all together in Christ. They would agree that it is nothing but desolation to go out from God. It is not a garden, but a wilderness. Peter would agree with that, and so would Thomas. When the Prodigal Son went out from his father's house, he

went out to bankruptcy, from a garden to a wilderness. When he came home he came to a life of fruitfulness and of rest. Do you see something of what the Lord Jesus meant when He said "Abide in me"? 'Outside of Me it is just a wilderness. There is no fruit there. If you abide in Me you bring forth much fruit'... "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit" (John 15:8). God's satisfaction is the one great thing through all the Bible. His satisfaction is now in His Son, and if we abide in Christ we abide in God's good pleasure and shall bring forth much fruit. If we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us as we are supposed to have - we shall know in our hearts whether we are out of fellowship with the Lord or whether we are abiding in the Lord and we shall know because we shall feel that we are in the wilderness when we are out, and that we are in the garden when we are in. Jesus was very emphatic about this. He knew what a tremendous thing it was and so, eleven times in a short chapter, He said "Abide... abide... abide in Me." May the Lord keep us abiding in Christ! All other things will prove to be false and only what is true will stand us in good stead to the end. "I am the true vine... Abide in Me". That is only one way of saying: 'We must know the Lord and our place in the Lord'. What are you abiding in? Are you abiding in people? Are you abiding in conferences? Are you abiding in a religious system? Well, all these things will pass, and the time will be when there will not be any more conferences and when you will not be able to depend upon any people. The whole religious system will disappoint you, but if you know and abide in the Lord Jesus, it will be all right to the end. First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1964, Vol 42-6

The Dispensation of the Holy Spirit

by T. Austin-Sparks Chapter 2 - Its Nature In the first message of this series we laid the Scriptural foundation with John 4:21,23, Matthew 18:20, Matthew 28:19-20 and Acts 15:17. We concentrated our attention upon the very great significance of three words spoken by our Lord to the Samaritan woman in the context of the great transition: "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth... God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth." In that context Jesus used these three words: "Neither" (in Samaria), "Nor" (at Jerusalem), "But" (in spirit and truth). We pointed out that this indicates, and postulates, first, a change of dispensations; second, a change of order; and third, a change of nature. "Neither... nor" dismisses one dispensation with its form and order. "But" introduces a new and other order and nature. Before proceeding to the new nature of worship inaugurated by the coming of God's Son, Jesus Christ, we must lay further stress upon this change. To a very large extent this challenges Christendom and Christianity as it exists now. The very words used by Jesus above carry with them such a challenge: "Spirit and truth". Can we deny that He implied - at least implied that what had obtained as represented by the Samaritan temple in Mount Gerizim, and the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, was not "Spirit and truth", but, at most, a type, a figure, and a manmade representation? It was form, not spirit; it was artificial, not true. An immense

amount of the New Testament opens up when we get this John 4:21,23 key intelligently into our possession by the Holy Spirit. Our minds faint in the presence of so much, and we feel confronted with an impossible task as we contemplate coping with it. We can do no more than give hints and indications. May the Holy Spirit do the rest! In the first place, we must remind ourselves that Jesus said of Himself that He is the Truth. He said also: "To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice" (John 18:37). By implication He said that He was the true Temple (John 2:19). In contrast with the Jewish 'false shepherds' He said that He was the true Shepherd. In contrast with the old Israel as the Vine (Psalm 8:8-16, Isaiah 5:1-7, Jeremiah 2:21) He said "I am the true Vine." This conception of truth in relation to His own person and work is one of the major features of His coming into the world. If we take up this word in its seventeen occurrences in John's Gospel alone we cannot fail to be immensely impressed. Then follow it through into John's Letters; and finally see it in the great consummation in the Revelation - "The faithful and true". Paul speaks of the truth - "As truth is in Jesus" (Ephesians 4:21). Jesus, as the Truth, is contrasted with Satan, the liar. But He is also contrasted with all representations, types, symbols, outward forms, etc., which were - and are - not the true, the real. When our Lord spoke of His body as the Temple, deliberately refraining from the fuller explanation because of the fixed prejudice of His hearers, He introduced the great truth of the transition from one dispensation to another, and the complete change in the nature of temple and worship. It was because Stephen saw this and declared it that he was murdered by these very people. Said he: "The Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands" (Acts 7:48). Paul said the same to the Athenians (Acts 17:24). This does not mean that God never came into representations when they wholly corresponded with His thought. Both the Tabernacle and the Temple were "made with hands" and God came into them in power and glory, but not to commit Himself to the thing. The time came when He forsook both and He was no longer found there. They were only temporary representations and His presence was conditional. The "true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man" (Hebrews 8:2) is "not of this creation". The whole Letter to the Hebrews has to do with this change from the earthly and temporal to the heavenly and spiritual. Hence, He is no longer in "temples made with hands". To come right to the point: the New Testament teaches that the Temple in this dispensation is a Person, and persons incorporated into Him through death, burial and resurrection, and 'baptized into one body by one Spirit' (1 Corinthians 12:13). We must also remember that Jesus foretold the passing away of that entire temporal system, with Jerusalem as its centre and representation. This actually came to pass, and it has not been recovered so far as Jewry is concerned. That Letter to the Hebrews takes up the prophecy of Haggai (Haggai 2:6,21) wherein is predicted a two-fold shaking of all things with a view to testing their temporal or eternal nature; and Hebrews 12:27 says that only the things which cannot be shaken will remain. This is a kind of summary of the Letter. The things which can and will be - shaken are the figures, representations of heavenly things, the "things made with hands". The things which cannot be shaken are the spiritual, the heavenly; which are the true! May it not be (and we put it in question form just to draw consideration), may it not be that we are now really in the universal shaking? There are large realms in which it is being said, and believed, that Christianity has failed. In Christendom there are many who have abandoned faith in the old teaching and beliefs of Christianity. There is a great sifting and falling away. There is an intense testing of all who are in

any way connected with Christianity. Yes, 'shaking' is the right word, both as to things earthly and things heavenly. The issue will be just as to what is true, and what is otherwise; what is really of the Spirit, and what is of man, tradition, and outward form. If this great shaking is going to head up to what Peter said, with prophetic illumination as to the nuclear age, "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up... these things are thus all to be dissolved..." (2 Peter 3:10-11) (a thing which we know to be all too possible in our time) what will remain but what is "spirit and truth"? This issue is being forcibly pressed in the nations, in Christendom, in evangelical Christianity, and in the experience of the Lord's own people. This is the first and basic thing as to the fact and nature of the present dispensation, and of the great transition from the past. It will be intensified as the next transition of dispensations get nearer. With His foreknowledge of the passing of the earthly, temporal and material things; places, systems, fixed locations, and outward forms, the Lord Jesus put the whole matter of survival upon Himself as the constituent of a spiritual structure against which the very powers of hell would not prevail. Against fixed localizing and systematizing of Himself and His presence He was emphatic, and history is evidence of how right He was. If, according to John 3:16, salvation is a matter of "whosoever", the Lord's presence and true worship, according to Matthew 18:20, is "wheresoever". The Lord is no more sympathetic toward being bound to this or that location than He is to making Paul or Apollos, or Cephas a gathering centre. Over against this very tendency in Corinth Paul wrote: "...with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their Lord and ours" (1 Corinthians 1:2). Exclusiveness, with its tragic entail of endless divisions, can only result - sooner or later - from a violation of this fundamental principle! That is all on the negative side, as warning and admonition; but what blessedness there is when - all things apart - it is only the Lord as the definite and consistent gathering object and delight! "Neither" ... "Nor" ... "But" in spirit and in truth. Let it not be thought that, in dismissing one tight legal system governing His presence, He was putting nothing definite in its place. His thought is far from a nebulous generalization, a nondescript go-as-you-please kind of 'liberty', an independent free-lance unrelatedness. The law of His presence is a very definite and positive one; it isgovernment by the Holy Spirit. This will not allow us to do as we like or go as we please - the misuse of the "wheresoever". This is strictly - the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, and the measure of Christ, the measure of life, the measure of power, and of fruitfulness, depend entirely upon how much we recognize and move into this essential nature.

The On-High Calling - Volume 2

by T. Austin-Sparks Chapter 6 (15) The Vine of God's Full Satisfaction Reading: John 15; Psalm 80:8,14; Isaiah 5:1,2; Jeremiah 2:21, 6:9; Ezekiel 15:1-6

The fifteenth step in the transition from the old Israel to the new is here in the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel by John: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman." You have the Old Testament background to that in the passages we have read: What Israel was intended to be, failed to be, and their destiny - "Cast into the fire". It is clear from these Scriptures that Israel was God's vine, but it became a false vine and God had to cast it into the fire, where it has been for nearly twenty centuries. But when God cast that vine into the fire, He brought forth another. We have said that this Gospel by John sets forth the putting away of the old and the bringing in of the new. We have seen that various names of the old Israel have been taken over into the new Israel, and here in this chapter the vine is taken over. When Jesus said "I am the true vine", He emphasized that word 'TRUE'. If you could hear Him saying that phrase, it would be like this: "I am the TRUE vine". The implication is perfectly clear. 'I take the place of the false vine. That has been cast away and I am the true vine which takes its place.' We have to spend a little while seeing how Israel was false to its very nature and purpose. What is the nature of a vine? For one thing, it spreads out far and wide, on the right and on the left, always reaching out to cover more space. It is not the nature of the vine just to go straight up. It reaches out, expands itself. Israel was raised up for this very purpose - to stretch out their arms and embrace the nations: "I... will give thee... for a light to the Gentiles" (Isaiah 42:6) is the word:"Nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising" (Isaiah 62:3). God raised up Israel to be a testimony in the nations, to bring the knowledge of God to the whole world. It was Israel's calling to fulfil a world purpose and a world vision. They were intended to be His missionary nation to the whole world, but instead of embracing the nations, they excluded them. They drew a wall round themselves and said 'We are THE people and all others are dogs.' They called the Gentiles 'dogs'. They shut themselves in to themselves and became an exclusive people, thus contradicting their own nature and mission. Exclusiveness was a contradiction to the very nature of Israel - and it is ALWAYS a contradiction to divine nature. It is not written in, Scripture: 'God so loved the Jewish nation that He gave His only begotten Son.' It says: "God so loved the WORLD" . The very love of God was contradicted by their exclusiveness. His very nature amongst them was violated in that way: and to turn in upon ourselves is always a violation of divine calling. It is a sin for any people to make themselves an end in themselves. That is why in the order of nature - when nature is normal - a family expands. The Lord laid down this law right at the beginning of human history, when He said to Noah and his sons after the flood: "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth" (Genesis 19:1). It was in the very nature of things by the appointment of God. As I say, when things are normal, no lives are an end in themselves. Of course, I know of those exceptions when it is not possible to expand, but I am speaking of the NORMALcourse. In the very nature of things God intends life to be an expanding life. Anyone who violates that law deliberately will be an end in himself or herself and will sin against God's law. Israel was called to expand and fill the earth with the knowledge of the Lord, but they withheld that knowledge from the nations and turned in on themselves, made themselves an end in themselves. So God came down upon that and said: 'All right!

You shall be an end in yourselves.' God's judgments are usually the confirmation of our own choices! That was Israel's violation of their nature as a vine. Instead of expanding to the world, it contracted into itself and anything like that is always fatal. 'What about the purpose? Quite obviously the purpose of a vine is to bear fruit. It bears grapes, and from grapes there is to come the wine. In the Old Testament wine is always a symbol of life. That is why we have it at the Lord's Table. It represents His blood, and in that there is life. He Himself called it the fruit of the vine. He did not say: 'I will no more drink of My blood until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.' What He did say was: "I will no more drink of THE FRUIT OF THE VINE, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God" (Mark 14: 25). The grapes and the wine are symbols of life. Israel of old was called to minister the life of God to all the nations. When you read these Gospels and look to see what kind of fruit it is that Israel is bearing, you find that it is anything but life. It is really death. The fruit was sour. All those who were tasting the fruit of that Israel were turning away and saying: 'We do not want any more.' It was not life: it was death. The Gospels are just full of that truth. Jesus said: "I am the true vine" ... "In him was life: and the life was the light of men"(John 1:4). Men's faces grew light when they tasted HIM . Did you notice one thing about the vine that we read in the Old Testament? We read, in Ezekiel 15, that the vine has no other purpose in its existence than to bear fruit. Have you ever seen anything made of vine? You have never seen a table, or a vessel or even a walking-stick made of vine! Ezekiel says that you can do nothing with the wood of the vine - you cannot even make from it a peg on which to hang things. The vine is absolutely useless apart from the fruit. The grapes are the only purpose of its existence, and if it does not bear them, then, says Ezekiel, you just cast it into the fire. There are no by-products of the vine, no secondary use. It exists for one thing, and one thing only, and that is fruit. God raised up the old Israel to bear His divine fruit of life and light for the nations, but they failed to do that. God had no other use for an Israel like that, so He said 'Cast it into the fire.' He did that nearly twenty centuries ago and that is where Israel is now. We can see from that what the Lord Jesus means when He says that He is the true vine and we are the branches. The TRUE vine is that which fulfils the one and only purpose of its existence. So Jesus brings this illustration over to Himself and His Church, and it is perfectly clear what is the nature of the Lord Jesus. He is reaching out to all men, embracing the whole world. He asks ALL the nations into His heart. ALL men are His concern and not any one nation. He said to His disciples: "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of ALL THE NATIONS" (Matthew 28:19). It is the very nature of Jesus to do that. It is quite foreign to Him to be exclusive, small and narrow and selfoccupied. Our salvation is to have our hearts enlarged so that they are bigger than ourselves. Anyone who turns in on himself or herself, and those who are always occupied with themselves, are dying while they live. It cannot be avoided. Let a little company of the Lord's people live just to itself, become wholly occupied with itself, and its days are numbered. They are living a living death. Their destiny is to fade out. That is

true of any one Christian or of any company of the Lord's people, because Christ is in the believer and His very nature is to reach out like the vine. He would draw all men unto Himself, and for His people to be otherwise is a contradiction to His very nature, which is the nature of the true vine. Jesus says: "I am the vine, ye are the branches". The branches of the vine make one vine - they partake of the same nature. Do you notice that it is the very branches themselves that do the expanding work of Jesus? Yes, this expanding work is manifested by the branches. That, of course, is what happened in Jerusalem right at the beginning, when some troubles sprang up in the Christian church there. It was the first bit of trouble that the Christian church had! Some of the first Apostles wanted to stay in Jerusalem and build up the church there. Forgetting the commandment of the Lord, they were just settling down to make Jerusalem the center of everything and the church an exclusive body. Then there rose up in their midst a young man "full of faith and of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 6:5), and his name was Stephen. If you listen to what Stephen said you will recognize that what he is saying has this meaning: 'This will not do. We have been called for the nations. We are not to be an exclusive people. We are called to a world mission and must not settle down in the old Judaism.' Some of the first Christians and Christian leaders did not agree with him. Of course, the old Israel did not agree with that! And so they stoned Stephen on this very issue of the world mission of the Church. I cannot help asking the question: Where were James and Peter when Stephen was being stoned? They were in Jerusalem, but were not present. Why was it that Stephen was stoned and not Peter or James? Because at that time they were not taking the line that Stephen was taking. They were making Jerusalem everything, and, of course, the old Israel would not stone them for doing that, so they were quite safe somewhere in Jerusalem. But Stephen was stoned. Do understand that there is something here of which to take note: that this new Israel is given a mission to all the nations, and there is a great price to pay for that. The whole kingdom of Satan is against it. If you will just become a little, quiet, compromising local sect you will be all right. The devil won't worry you if you are just living within your own walls and closed doors, and the world will not trouble about you. It will leave you alone... but if you go out on this heavenly level of things and embrace all men in Christ, you will find that the world is against you and the devil is against you. You and I ought to see this in our day as no one has ever seen it before. Do you not see what is happening in the nations? There is not a missionary left in China! It is no longer possible for one to go into that country; and that same thing is happening in other parts of the world. They have tried to drive them out of Africa. Why is this? Oh, the kingdom of Satan does not want Jesus to get into his world. There have been literally many thousands of martyrs for Jesus Christ in China, and many others in Africa, and in other parts. It has never been quite like this before. It is a new phase of things. Satan knows that his time is short and that he must do all he can to close the nations to Jesus Christ. So there is a great price bound up with this world mission. Stephen is the great example of that. The purpose, then, of Christ and His Church, of the vine and the branches, is to bring life to men all over this world. I wonder if that is altogether true of the church today! Do you not think that even the Christian Church is failing in this matter? It is not really bringing life to the nations. Many a place called a 'church' is not bringing life even to its own little locality. This is a contradiction of Christ!

But it is all very well to think of this objectively. It has to come down to every one of us. What is the proof that Christ is in you and in me? How can it be known that Christ is in us? Only in one way - that others are receiving life through us, that we minister the life of Christ to others, that when hungry and needy people come into touch with us they feel the touch of life. They may express it in different ways, but it amounts to this: 'That man, that woman, has something that I have not got and it is something that I need. There is something about them that I feel, and it is what I really need.' That should be true of every Christian because Christ is in us, expanding Himself through us and ministering His life through us. Oh, do pray, dear friends, every day as you get up: 'Lord, make me a channel of life to someone today. Lord, minister Your own life through me to someone today. May I bring life wherever I am.' The Lord has no other purpose for you and for me. We may try to do a lot of things, but if we belong to the Vine we are no good for anything but to bear fruit; and that is to bring life to others. We are not even to be a peg upon which to hang something, or a walking-stick to help someone to stand up straight. No, God has no use for us other than to bear fruit, to bring life. Jesus said here in this chapter: "Every branch that beareth fruit, he cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit". Of course, we understand that in nature and agree with it. Perhaps if you have had anything to do with grape vines, you have done it yourself. It is strange that we believe in it as a law of nature and say: 'It is the right and the best thing to do to cut this piece off so that it will do better', but we do not agree with the Lord doing it to us. When He begins to do it we are full of grumbles and complaints! When for a little while He calls us to do less in order that He might fit us to do more, we do not agree. When it seems that the Lord is taking away some of our fruit, some of our work, we are full of problems. We do not understand the Lord and begin to ask questions about His love. Jesus has laid this down as a positive truth. Here is some branch that is bearing fruit (not one that is bearing no fruit: that, He says, will be cast into the fire) and it is THATone that He prunes. Here is a branch that is fulfilling its vocation and the Lord looks at it. He says: 'That is very good! I am very pleased with it, but I can do better, and there is better that that branch can do.' So He takes the knife, and He disciplines us, He reduces us in order to increase us. He cuts some away in order that there might be more. What a lot of history there is in that statement! The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews said: "All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous, but grievous: yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness" (Hebrews 12:11). That is only saying in another way that the Husbandman does sometimes take the knife and He cuts deeply into our souls, but afterward there is more and better fruit than there was before. Now we come to this last word. The wine comes from the grape through the winepress, which is the symbol of pressure. What pressure is brought to bear upon that fruit in order to get the wine! The winepress is the symbol of breaking, and that fruit is broken to pieces. The wine is wrung out of its agony. The Lord Jesus said "I am the true Vine", and it was prophesied of Him that He would tread the winepress alone. The Cross was His winepress. How He was pressed in the Cross! He was crushed and broken, but out of that breaking has come the life which you and I have, and which so many in all the nations have received. That is true, in a measure, of His Church. It was out of the breaking and

crushing of the Church that the life came to the world. And that is true of every member, every branch of the vine. If we are to fulfil this true, living ministry, it will only be through suffering, through the winepress, through pressure and through breaking. Paul said: "We were pressed out of measure, above strength" (II Corinthians 1:8 - A.V.) - but what life has come out of that man's pressure! It is like that. We are not talking about preaching and Bible teaching, but about this great ministry of Christ giving His life through us. It may be passed on to others through preaching, or through teaching, or through living, but if it is His life it will come out of experiences of suffering. A preacher or a teacher who has never suffered will never minister life. Well, this may not seem a very pleasant outlook, but it is true. The best doctors and nurses are those who know something about suffering themselves. Some are just professional, treating you as a case - you are just case No. -. But, ah! there are others who treat you as a person, a human being, who care for you. If you ask why, you may find that they have a background of suffering themselves. They know just a little of what you are going through. We have read in the Letter to the Hebrews: "We have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are... he is able to succour them that are tempted" (Hebrews 4:15, 2:18). He has been the way of the winepress and we have received the benefit. Is this why Paul said: "That I may know him... and the fellowship of his sufferings"(Philippians 3:9)? He knew quite well that the sufferings of Christ meant life, and if there was one thing which Paul wanted for others, it was that they should have this life, and have it through him. So he said: "That I may know... the fellowship of his sufferings". That may not be our ambition, and we may not like the idea very much, but may the Lord help us to look at things in this way: 'The Lord is putting me in the winepress. He is putting me through a time of great pressure. I am being broken and crushed. Therefore the Lord intends to have more fruit, more life, and more people to have the life.' It is the very nature of this thing to reach out to others. That is the TRUE vine. Anything that is not like that is the false vine. "I am the vine, ye are the branches."

We Beheld His Glory - Volume 2

by T. Austin-Sparks Chapter 5 - The Glory of Christ the Vine READING: John 15. Considering the subject of this part of our Lord's discourse on the way from the upper room to the Cross, we have to bring into the foreground the governing object of all these discourses, and indeed of all that is reported and recorded in this Gospel. It is an object that is seen in a peculiar way to govern the early part of this chapter - the discourse on the vine. Before we can understand all the rest everything that the Lord is saying here - we must see the object for which the vine exists. That object is clearly shown to be nothing less than the glory, pleasure, and satisfaction of God. We have previously defined the glory of God as being His Divine nature satisfied in seeing His purposes realized: His very nature in its peculiar requirements satisfied satisfied in the realization of its objects. But we must not just take that as a

definition or a statement in words; we must feel it. It is the very being of God what He is in His nature - finding an answer in kind, as embodied in purposes of His heart. When there is a correspondence between God and the object - the sentient object - of His work, there is a sense of glory; it may express itself in worship, joy, rest, gratification, a burst of praise. But this is something rather to feel than to grasp mentally. Thus, it is the glory or the glorifying of the Father for which the vine corporately exists. He is glorified in that which is the fruit or issue of the existence of the vine. So we let the glory of God interpret every statement of the Lord Jesus in this remarkable, wonderful discourse. We cannot just now go through the whole, sentence by sentence, statement by statement. But if we take this matter of God requiring to be satisfied in His nature, and bring it alongside of each utterance of the Lord Jesus throughout this discourse, it will explain everything. It will even solve some of those long-standing problems which this chapter holds. For the moment we must confine ourselves to the statement that the governing object of the existence of the vine is the glory, or the glorifying of God: that is to say, His satisfaction in the realization of His purposes. Christ the True Vine Having established that, we proceed to consider the way to that object, the way to the glorifying of God, as it is revealed in this chapter. As we should expect, right at the very beginning we are confronted with His Son, and the first thing we meet here is a statement which signifies the exclusiveness and uniqueness of the Son of the Father. In words of comparison and contrast, He begins, almost abruptly, it would seem: for, rising from the supper and the upper room, and saying, "Let us go hence," He just proceeds. It sounds almost an abrupt continuation. But there is no interruption; He just goes on talking. "I am the true vine." "I" and "true" are words of comparison and contrast. They follow in the line of many such things already said. "I am the good shepherd" (John 10:14); that is comparison and contrast. It is invidious. "My Father giveth you the truebread out of heaven" (John 6:32). This comparison of the vine is, of course, with Israel who was the Lord's vine. He "brought a vine out of Egypt" (Psa. 80:8), but that vine failed to produce the fruit for the glory of God; that is, the satisfaction of God's nature in the realization of His purpose. It proved a false vine - false to the Father's nature, false to the Father's expectations, false to the Father's purposes; still remaining in the earth for the time, still in a way growing, developing, making a show, making a profession, but now set aside as a false thing, in no way corresponding to the intention of God in its existence. The Son says: "I am the true vine." What He is saying is that everything now for God's satisfaction, for the satisfaction of the Father's nature in the realization of His purposes, is centered in the Father's Son; everything now is summed up in the Son. "I am." When we gather together all those "I ams" of this Gospel, how many there are of them, and how tremendously emphatic they are, even in the language itself. The "I" is emphatic. If we had heard the Lord say it, in familiarity with the language used, we should have heard the emphasis there: "I am the true vine." So, everywhere in this Gospel, He brings things away from all other connections, centers them in Himself, and says: "Everything now of God's expectation, God's purpose, God's satisfaction, and therefore God's glory, is centered in His Son." "I am." As I said just now, that is what we should expect, when we are looking for God's satisfaction and God's realization of heart-purpose. It is in His Son we know that so well.

The Branches But then a wonderful thing about that - about the glory of God, the satisfaction of God in realized purposes - is carried by the next statement. "Ye are...." "I am the vine, ye are the branches" (vs. 5), and in between "my Father" (vs. 1). We must always keep the terms clearly before us: the husbandry is that of the Father; this has come as from a Father. It is something begotten of God, something born of God; something with which He, as Father, is bound up in a heart-relationship, for which He is jealous with the jealousy of a Father. This is not just a proprietor, an owner. This is something of an inward relatedness, not merely outward. The Father's heart is bound up with this. It is pre-eminently a matter of love. Identity of Life "Ye are the branches." In this statement there is at once struck the note which is fundamental to the whole New Testament revelation: the note of identity of life. What a dominant matter that is in the New Testament, as well as in our own experience! Of course, we are now able to read into this the so much greater revelation which came afterward as to its meaning, that of which this was but an illustration. We "know it all" now; it is one of the most familiar truths to us; and yet it is the matter upon which the Father is concentrating every day of our lives, and it is the matter which gives rise to by far the greater measure of our troubles and difficulties. There is not an adhesion to Christ; there is not a "coming to" Him. There is a sense in which we come to Him, in the sense of His words "Come unto me" (Matt. 11:28); or else "ye will not come to me" (John 5:40); but no one would ever say, in the light of the New Testament, that coming to the Lord Jesus makes us an organic part of Him. We need all those other illustrations that are in the New Testament really to express this, e.g. "planted together," "born anew," "buried-raised with Christ," and so on. We do not just come as people, and range ourselves at the side of a certain One, and then go on together. That is not the teaching of the New Testament. We come to Him and then are plunged into His grave, and out of that grave we do not rise in our old life, separate and different. "I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20). Now we are familiar with that truth, but that is what the Lord here lays down as the essential and indispensable basis of any satisfaction to the Father and realization of His purpose. It is basic to that; for only the Son can satisfy the Father, and only in the Son can the Father's purposes be realized. Therefore, if that is to be in any way fulfilled through a corporate instrument, there must be an absolute identity of life. We know now how that takes place: whatever there is going to be will not be from us - it will be from Him. But I do want specially to underline that point, that it is not our coming unto Him that has this result; it is what arises from His life within. It is the rising out from, and not the coming unto, that makes all the difference. We can adhere, we can sponsor, we can attach, we can take up a position; we can "come just as we are" and go on just as we are. We can still be in a kind of relatedness to the Lord which does not bring with it any rising out from the Lord, and it makes all the difference to what kind of life ours is going to be in the matter of God's glory. That is what the Lord is saying here, in more words. He is pointing out that there can be a kind of relatedness to Himself which does nor bear this fruit to the Father's satisfaction and glory; something somewhere is lacking. Whatever the function of the branches and that function is to bear the fruit of the vine - they can do nothing in that matter apart from this identity of life. This is a deep inward oneness with the Lord, which is

not two things, but is only one thing; and that one thing is the Lord Jesus as the life. The whole teaching of the New Testament is that union with Christ implies the end of any separateness of existence as apart from or other than Christ Himself. It is existence now as from a birth, not from an attachment; from a life imparted which has never before been possessed. It is something quite new, quite fresh, quite other than there was hitherto. That is the uniqueness and exclusiveness of Christ. So the branches become a part of something unique, something different from all that we know of mankind and creation, something that has not been before. The Purpose of the Vine's Existence We come now to this matter of fruit, and we note that, so far as the glory of God is concerned, it is a governing matter. It is impressive that the Lord should have chosen the vine as the symbol of this means of reaching His end. You know so well that a vine has no other use in all the world but to bear fruit. It has no by-products. There are some things from which, if the main object is realized or even has failed, you can get other things, byproducts; there are secondary uses. But you cannot even make a walking-stick out of a vine. If it does not bear fruit, it is good for nothing. There is no other purpose to which you can turn a vine except to make a bonfire of it. The whole object of the existence of Christ and His members is this matter of fruit. The Lord expresses Himself here in strong terms. If fruit is not forthcoming, He says, such branches are cast out, gathered, thrown on the fire, burned. Men do not say, Oh, well, it is not bearing any fruit, but we can turn it to this use and to that, we can make it serve some purpose. There is no alternative for a vine. And there is no alternative for your life and mine, in relation to Christ, but the glory of God. God has no secondary purposes for us, saying, Oh, well, they are not bearing any fruit we will make some other use of them. No: the glory of God in satisfaction, in the realization of His purpose - His purpose - is the only justification for our existence in relation to Christ. That is precisely the reason why Israel was cast off and burned. An old doctrinal or theological question arises here; but I am not going to follow that out. Is Israel in the fire? Have men cast Israel into the fire, since God cast Israel off? Well, we know the answer to that. But, leaving that aside for the moment, you see the point: it is that, with God, this vine is only justified in having an existence in the satisfaction of His nature and in the fulfillment of His purposes. "Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit." Fruit the Evidence of Life And it is the fruit which is the evidence of the life. That is what the Lord comes down upon. He does not say that branches and leaves justify the existence or prove anything. It is the fruit which proves everything and it is the fruit which proves the life. He fastens upon that: the fruit proves the life. And Christ's life is essentially fruitful. An unfruitful Christian is a contradiction of Christ, a contradiction of the life of Christ. Christ did not have to make efforts to be fruitful; there was no effort in His fruitfulness. It was spontaneous. The life itself is spontaneously, inevitably fruitful. Was it not just there that Mr. Hudson Taylor came to his life crisis, when, after years, he was brought to a complete standstill on this question of fruitfulness? The whole crisis turned upon his struggling, his agonizing, his taking the strain and

burden of this matter of fruitfulness, until he fretted himself into despair. And then he came upon this chapter of John's Gospel, and the Lord, so to speak, stood by him and opened it up to him, and showed him that He was the life of the vine, and the branches had to do nothing by way of struggle to bear fruit. All they had to do was to let the life have its way unhindered. It came as a revelation to him; you have it in that great chapter in his autobiography, "The Exchanged Life." If the life of the Lord is not frustrated, is not hindered, or, to use the Lord's word here and its reiteration, if we abide in Him, that is, keep on Christ's ground and do not take our own or any other ground, the life proves itself spontaneously in fruitfulness without any effort. The Bearing of Fruit Is Service And inasmuch as this fruit-bearing is the service which is rendered to God and includes all that is meant by Christian service, the service of the Lord; inasmuch as the fruitbearing is the service of the believer and the Church: then it is quite clear here that service and union with Christ the right kind of union with Christ, the kind that we have mentioned are the same thing. It is a union that means identity of life through losing our own and having His yielding up our apartness, our independent life, and taking His. That union is spontaneously service. We have thought of the service of God as a matter of preaching and teaching and doing a multitude of things for the Lord. They may only be the framework; they may only be the outer casing, like the bark of a tree. The Lord may pour His life through such methods and means, or He may not let us do any preaching or teaching. In the case of some, He may have the greatest measure of fruit without ever any preaching being done at all. Fruit is the spontaneous expression of a deep-rooted oneness with Christ, and there may be very much satisfaction and glory to God through people who are never allowed to preach or teach or do any of those things which we call Christian work. But to express Christ, to live Christ, to manifest Christ, to let everything around feel Christ and be touched by Christ through our presence - that certainly is to the glory of God and the satisfaction of His heart, and that is service. For what is this fruit? It is the life of Christ manifested, and God help both the preachers and the teachers and the workers, and those to whom they preach, if there is not a manifestation of Christ coming through what they are saying and doing. The real heart of it is this deep union of life with the Lord, and it is this kind of service which satisfies God. The Pruning Knife "Every branch that beareth fruit, he cleanseth it," or "purgeth it": by which we understand Him to mean that He is pruning, and there are one or two things which we must conclude from this procedure of the Lord. He does not say that if a branch bears no fruit, He prunes it to bear fruit - no, He cuts that off; but if it bears some fruit, He "cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit." The point here is that, for the Father's full satisfaction, it is not merely size that weighs with Him, it is not just bigness, it is not the expansiveness of the branches. The thing which counts with the Father ultimately is the quality and amount of fruit - in other words, the measure of Christ, the essential qualities of Christ. Other metaphors or figures the "Body of Christ" pre-eminently - will be used in the later New Testament to set forth this principle, but here it is the measure of Christ that the Father is seeking. We can press that even more closely. Even in that which comes from the Lord - for the fruit comes from the Lord; it is the expression of His life - even in that very

vine, the Lord takes measures of curtailment in order to get intrinsic values. Paul and the churches might well have thought that it would be of far more value to God if he had been kept at liberty, kept free to travel about over the world and meet the saints; but God's pruning knife decided that it would be of greater intrinsic value if Paul's liberty were curtailed and he were put in prison. We know the wisdom of God in that now. Thank God for what came out of that prison in those letters - intrinsic value indeed! Sometimes the wisdom and the love of God operate in what looks like limitation, in certain ways and certain directions, in order to get intrinsic value. A seed-plot is an intensive thing, not necessarily an expansive thing; but it may be that presently the whole world will be sown from that seed-plot: that plant or that crop will be reproduced everywhere. And the Lord is saying here, "I am not first of all interested in how big and expansive you are, in what you are doing, even though it may be for Me, and even though it may be, in measure, by the life which I have given you. What I am primarily concerned about is the richness of the fruit, the quality of the fruit and the real measure of intrinsic value." You can have grapes and grapes, and the Lord is after the first quality. It means that there is a good deal of saying "No" when that life is at work. Here are these branches spreading, and the knife says, "No, not that, not that, not that." The pruning knife is a great instrument for God's "No" - but it is governed by God's "Yes." The "Yes" lies hidden behind. The "Yes" relates to the quality and the intrinsic value of the fruit, the measure of Divine satisfaction, and it is that which governs the "No," which lops off. The Object of the Pruning Finally, the work of the Husbandman, the Father, with His pruning knife, has as its object the preserving of true character. That is true in all pruning, as you know. You go along the path there in the garden. You will see some grafted rose bushes which once bore beautiful roses. They were not pruned. Now they have run wild: the wild stocks have been allowed to supplant the beautiful grafted forms, and they are only bearing what we call dog-roses. They may be pretty, but we know that the plant has run wild for want of the knife. The result is not the real thing - it is a wild thing; it is something inferior, it is not what it might have been. It is so easy for us, if the Lord spares the knife and leaves us alone, to lose distinctive character. Just let us get out of the Lord and run free, take our own way for a bit, and we lose distinctiveness of character. There is a wildness, a foreign element that comes in, and the real pleasure of the Lord is lost. It is not until that knife comes back and does some pretty hard work, saying, "No, no, not that way, not that way," that the Lord recovers the thing which He first intended as His own satisfaction. But what is the result? "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full." We have to admit, after all, that it was not in that independent way that we really found our joy; our joy is being in the way of the Lord's first appointment and choice, and our joy is restored very often by the knife. "That my joy may be in you." If you go to Hebrews 12, you will see the fuller interpretation and explanation. It is the Father's hand that is upon us to get that which, firstly, justifies our existence the satisfaction of His nature, the fulfillment of His purpose - and in so doing brings His joy into our hearts. It is not our joy in the first place, but His. Then our joy is His joy - and our joy is fulfilled.

Faith Unto Enlargement Through Adversity

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 4 - Faith In Relation To Life Reading: Romans 4:16-25. We are being led to see the relationship of faith to three things. Firstly, faith in relationship to enlargement. We have taken note that God's thought revealed for His people is enlargement unto His own fulness. "All the fulness of God" is the word which indicates God's thought concerning His people. But every fresh movement toward enlargement, or every stage in enlargement, comes about by a fresh challenge to faith--faith being tested in a new way as not hitherto - and by faith's triumph there is further enlargement. The Scriptures show, from beginning to end, that there is no enlargement, no increase of God, in any other way. Secondly, we see faith in relationship to establishment. We have seen the thought of God to have things in a state of stability, endurance, steadfastness, trustworthiness; something substantial, something deeply rooted and grounded and immovable. God works along that line, seeking to eliminate all those elements in us which are weak, unreliable, unable to carry a weight and take responsibility; to bring us to the place where we are established in Christ. But every bit of this work of confirming, establishing, rooting and grounding is connected with some further testing or proving of faith. Every fresh storm sends our roots deeper down, to take a firmer hold. It is along the line of faith's proving that we become established. Where there is no testing or trying, no adversity, we are weak and unreliable. So we see that, right through the Scriptures, God is moving towards having things settled and fixed, after His own nature: eternal, abiding, enduring for ever. The whole Bible shows that this is brought about by faith. In the third place, we see faith in relation to life. That is to be our occupation at this present time, with just a closing word on faith itself. Faith In Relation To Life I need hardly take you through the Scriptures to see how these two things go together. Much will come to mind as we proceed. I just remind you of the familiar fact that this matter of life bounds the whole Scripture. The Bible opens with the tree of life, and it closes with the tree of life, and that is the great issue from beginning to end. From one angle, as we were saying earlier, the Bible is all about this issue of life as over against death. We find, therefore, as in the case of the other two things - enlargement and establishment - that God has left us in no doubt whatever as to His mind on the matter. He has made it perfectly clear that His thought is life, and life in fulness. So much so that the Lord Jesus, in His coming into this world, reaching with one hand right back to the beginning, and with the other hand right on to the ages of the ages yet to be, declares that He is in that position on one ground and with one purpose: "I am come that they may have life, and may have it abundantly" (John 10:10).

Enlargement Depends Upon Life Now these two things of which we have spoken - enlargement and establishment - are inseparably bound up with this matter of life. All God's enlargements are by life. We see a parable of this in the work of creation. At the very beginning we find God filling the void, the waste, the emptiness which was the primal state of this world we find God filling it in every realm in terms of life. His increasing fulness was along the line of life. That is a parable of God's way. Increase and fulness in the Christian life, in the people of God, is always in terms of life. When God adds, it is always additional life. All God's work has the issue that there is more life present than ever there was before. And so progressively, by crises and stages, God is moving with His people - where they will let Him, where they will not waver through unbelief - in the direction of His ultimate fulness on the basis of constantly increasing life. Establishment Depends Upon Life The same is true in relation to establishment - the work of confirming, making things stable, solid, deep. This again is always in relation to life: confirming in life, making strong in life. The essential element in this life is its eternity. An increase of life is always an indication of something deeper having been done in the heart, the emergence from some state of uncertainty, some difficulty, some dark experience, in a crisis, through the victory of faith. The emergence just adds more life - that is all. It is like that every time: we find that we are experiencing and enjoying more life. Life is the basis of our becoming more settled. There are many people who think that there are other things which lead to consolidation and establishment, to certainty and assurance. But it is not that way at all. You do not get established by more teaching, or by additional information, even about Divine things. You do not even become spiritually established by knowing your Bible better. That is not to say that you should not seek to know it better, but the real establishment is that which comes through life known in ourselves. "And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life" (1 John 5:11). The testimony is not a form of teaching, an interpretation of truth, a system of doctrine, or a way of doing things. "And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life", and to be established means to be knowing this life in constant increase. The 'Evidence Of God' Is Life We will now take a look at what we will call some of the 'evidences of God'. Let us say at once that the inclusive evidence of God is just life. The evidence of God - the proof, the testimony to God, and the testimony to what is of God--if life. Let us go back to that original criterion in the symbolism of the beginning: the tree of life. It is perfectly clear that that tree of life, and what it represented and symbolized, held the whole issue of whether God was going to continue with man or not, whether man was going to continue with God or not, whether their relationship was going to

remain intact. The 'evidence' of God was centered there. Now that tree evidently represented another and different life from what man already possessed. God had brought in the living things. The waters swarmed with living creatures; the air swarmed with the living fowl; the earth was full of living creatures and living vegetation. Then man had been created, into his nostrils there had been breathed the "breath of life" (Gen. 2:7), and he had become an animate being. He had what we all have by nature - this natural life. It was after the imparting of that kind of life, and man becoming a living soul, that God pointed to the tree of life, and made that the issue of life and death. It was not the life that was in man that was the issue of life and death, because man did not forfeit that life which was in him when he disobeyed. The tree evidently represented and symbolized another life than that which God had already breathed into him - a different life altogether. Divine Life Forfeited Death, therefore, came to mean two things. In the first place, it came to mean a change in man as he was. Although he would continue as an animate being over a tenure of years, a change took place in him. We will not stay to analyze that change, but by disobedience he became different even in his own natural being. Secondly, he forfeited his right to this other and extra and really true life, as represented by the tree. He never inherited that, he never possessed that. It throws a little light upon John's words about the Lord Jesus, that "to as many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name" (John 1:12). You see the whole question of faith coming in relation to the right. It is the right, in other words, to this other, Divine, life, which is through being begotten of God. The right to that life was forfeited by Adam through disobedience, or unfaith. The right to that life is restored through faith in the Lord Jesus. Now Satan said, 'Hath God said, Thou shalt surely die? Thou shalt not surely die!' What a categorical statement! Now note: Adam, apart from his known rupture in fellowship with God through his disobedience because of unbelief, probably was not conscious of what had happened. True, a frown and a shadow came over the face of God; there was no longer the light and the clearness of fellowship; but man went on living. He did not there and then fall dead and perish. He went on living quite a long time, went on growing, developing, enlarging. When you see the tremendous enlargement after its kind that came from that man - his children, family, tribe, race - it looks very much as though the Devil was right. 'Thou shalt not surely die'. God was wrong, the Devil was right. The Delusion Of A False Life But what has happened? There has entered into man a deep and terrible delusion - the illusion of a false life, in which there is a lie right at the very core. And that has surely worked itself out, and is still working itself out. There is increase of days, unto many years,

it may be; there is development and enlargement, of its kind, in the matter of this world; but right at the core of it all there is bitterness and disappointment. At last, at most, emptiness, disillusionment. What has it all been for? What is it all about? And the most dissatisfied people are always those who have the most. That is true, is it not? The people who have the most and have not the Lord are the most dissatisfied people in this world. The evidences of it are patent. As I was saying on a previous occasion, a year of two ago I was in a part of the world where the last whim and fancy is satiated to the full. Everything that the soul of man could crave or ask for seems to be available. In Southern California, you see acres and acres and miles and miles of the most wonderful fruit. I picked sackfuls of the most beautiful grapefruit and oranges that you ever saw. But my friend, on whose fruit-farm I was staying, said, 'Do you know, it is so prodigal that, in order to keep any market at all for it, tons and tons of this beautiful fruit are put into a ditch, and acid is poured over it, so that no one will get hold of it to try to make a business out of it.' Poor people who might make a little out of this surplus are deprived of it in order to keep some sort of market. And it is like that, not only in natural products, but in pleasure. The word 'Hollywood' has come to connote the very ultimate in the gratification of human desire. You can see it all there is display. But oh! The feverish, the restless, the uncertainty, the anxiety! The biggest hospital in the world is there in Los Angeles, and four thousand cases are treated every day, in a country like that where every possible aid to health is available. What is it all about? It is the strain of coping with life. Out in a very beautiful suburb, I saw, as I went along, house after house up for sale, or to let; and I asked my friend, 'What is the meaning of this?'; 'Oh, everybody within miles of this city is living as if they were on the edge of a volcano, over this atomic bomb business. They are all moving out, as far out as they can get, because they think that any day the atomic bomb may be dropped on Los Angeles.' With everything conceivable to fill life, people are living in strain and tension and fear. I have not exaggerated the picture, because I could not. I have cited this as an illustration of the truth that the more men have, the more dissatisfied they are. The more you give to this life, the more it will take - and can take - and the more it will demand, and the more unsatisfied it is. It wears out in no time. The whole thing fails to last - it just does not last; and that is the life that the Devil has given in place of this other life. You and I may have very little in this world - nothing at all comparable to a Californian set-up - and yet have the Lord Jesus in our hearts and be perfectly satisfied. The difference is a very practical thing. The Devil said, "Thou shalt not surely die", and man just swallowed it: he thought that God was wrong, and the Devil was right; and this is what it has led to - a false life, hollow at the core, never, never answering to man's real need; a mockery in the end, the fruit looking beautiful but falling from the trees before it is ripe. But in that other life, represented by the tree of life, it is all the other way. This life has nothing to do with things at all: it has to do with a Person. This life does not wear out: it wears infinitely - it

survives. It is not, like the other, kept going by artificial respiration and stimulants - and how artificial they are! This life is maintained from a living source. That is very searching. It is very, very important to be quite sure that this thing has taken place with every new convert: that there is no illusion or delusion about this, but that they have really become, definitely and surely, the recipients of this other life - this life that will not require a constant succession of stimulants from without, but which, when all outward things cease, will still go on. That is going to be the test. Now this illusion can get into religion, and that is the place where the Devil likes to have it more than anywhere else. The Lord had something to say on that very matter to the church at Sardis: "Thou hast a name" - a reputation - "That thou livest, and thou art dead" (Rev. 3:1). A reputation for life - and yet dead. The eyes of flame see through the false situation - the false reputation, the false name. It would not be difficult to imagine or portray what a church like that would be. We need not stay with it. There are many things that have a semblance of life, that look like life - what people call life - but they are not life. They require external 'stimulants' to be applied all the time to keep the thing going. What the Lord calls life is another thing altogether. Marks Of Divine Life (a) Freshness One of the thoughts associated with this Divine life is newness, or freshness. "That we might walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:4). That word 'new' in our English versions has two Greek words behind it. One means something that never was before; the other carries the thought of that which is young and fresh. This Divine life is, of course, something that no one has ever possessed before, outside of Christ, but its mark, its characteristic, is its freshness - its freedom from the 'earth touch'. This earth is an accursed earth; it is in death, it is under judgment, and all that belongs to it is under judgment: if this earth touches anything, it touches it with death. This life of which we are speaking is completely free from the earth touch, and free from the touch of man as he is by nature. It is fresh, therefore, and for its freshness it demands that it shall be kept free from this earth and kept free from man's touch. That has been the issue all the way along. The life of God comes in, and is regnant and wonderfully fresh and beautiful; and then what? Man must needs take hold of it in some way, put it into his mould, run it according to his ideas, organize it and set up machinery for it, and it is not long before the freshness has gone. It is touched with something that takes the bloom off it; in the course of time it has become old; and - perhaps I may be permitted to say this, as one who is no longer young! - God has no interest in anything that is old. God is only interested in that life in us which is of Himself, and His interest is to keep it fresh. "Even to old age and even to hoar hairs", there is still freshness if the life

of God is the principle upon which we are living. Yes, but we must keep out hands off, and we must keep the earth touch away. Oh, man's terrible habit of wanting to take hold of, and run, the life of God. It has killed more works of God than anything else, brought an end to wonderful movements of the Spirit. Man has taken hold, brought things into his framework, under the control and direction of his committee. Very well; the Lord withdraws, and the freshness of His life is no longer found. Freshness, newness, is the mark of God's life. The Church is His new creation. The Church is His new cruse, to refer to Elisha and the falling fruit of the trees of Jericho because of the lack of this vital element in the water. "Bring me a new cruse", he said, "and put salt therein" (2 Kings 2:20). The waters were healed. And Pentecost is the counterpart of that. The Church is the new cruse with the life in it, to counteract all the death in this world: there is newness of life, and newness of vessel. The Lord Jesus put His finger upon this very principle when He said: "No man" (He might have added, 'much less God') "putteth new wine into old wine-skins" (Mark 2:22). It is folly. 'If you do that, you will lose everything', He said. "No man seweth a piece of undressed cloth on an old garment" (vs. 21); neither does God do that kind of thing. He must have everything new and fresh. We are citizens of the new Jerusalem (Rev. 3:12; 21:2); and so we could go on. If you look up the words 'new' and 'newness', you will be surprised how much they cover in the New Testament. Everything is new where this life is. (b) Productivity The second feature of this life is its productiveness, or productivity. That is God's method of increase. There is all the difference between putting on, adding to, accretion, from the outside, and increase from the inside. That is God's principle, the organic principle of increase and multiplication by life from within, and it really does happen that way. Life produces life, and life produces organisms after its own kind: the seed has the life in itself to reproduce, to multiply a hundredfold. That is a testimony, but it is also a test and a challenge. If there is no increase, then there is something wrong in the matter of the life. If you and I are not bearing fruit, if we are not really in the way of increase, then we need to look to this matter of our life. For it is inevitable, it is spontaneous. If there is to be productivity, there must be life: and if there is life, then there is reproduction unless, of course, we thwart the life or get across the life. If somehow or other we block up the wells, then our fruitfulness ceases. (c) Inexhaustibility Further, this life is characterized by its inexhaustibility. There is no end to it, no exhausting it; it just goes on. As we have already said, it does not get old. We may get old, but that life in us does

not get old at all. It goes right on; it is inexhaustible. (d) Incorruptibility And then, because it is God's life, it is incorruptible. Life is symbolized by salt in the Bible. The symbolism of the new cruse and the salt is just that of the vessel of God with the life of God in it. The presence of that life is the counter to the presence of corruption, wherever it is. This, of course, is quite clearly seen in the first chapters of the Book of the Revelation, containing the challenge and message to the churches. It was clearly a time of spiritual decay: but we would go further, and say 'of spiritual corruption'. Strong language, but justifiable. "Thou sufferest the woman Jezebel" (2:20); "Thou hast some that hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel" (2:14). Here is corruption, and the challenge to that state of corruption in the first place is indicated by the announcement of the Lord Himself. "I am the Living one; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore" (1:17-18). It is as though He were saying, 'I am measuring you by the standard of this incorruptible life, on the principle of this incorruptible, deathless, death-conquering life: I am challenging you in your corruption.' The import of the message is this: 'These conditions of corruption are due to something having arrested the life. If you had the life vibrant and regnant and triumphant, there would be none of these conditions at all.' The issue, then, for the overcoming, the setting aside, of all corruption, is that of life. The corrective for false teaching - for heterodoxy - is not orthodoxy. Let us say, changing the words: the corrective for error is life. That is what the Scriptures show. It was so with the seven churches. John, who wrote the Revelation, at about the same time also wrote his letters, and these likewise deal with falsehood, error, decline, decay, corruption, Antichrist, and all the rest - a bad state coming amongst believers; and John's great word in his letters and in the Revelation, as well as in his Gospel, is life. That emerges from the most elementary study of his writings. John begins his Gospel: "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men" (1:4), and that is the keynote to the Gospel all through. His letters are on that note all the time. "The witness (testimony) is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; He that hath not the Son of God hath not the life" (1 John 5:11-12). At the beginning of the Revelation you find: "I am the Living one" (1:17 -18); you pass on to the "four living ones" (4:6), and their testimony and influence; and you close the Revelation with the "tree of life" and the "river of water of life" (22:1-2). It is all about life. But that is all presented in a day of corruption. The answer to corruption is not argument, but Divine life. (e) Intelligence: Life Recognizes Life This life is something which is only appreciated and understood by

those who have it. Those who do not possess it can see its effect or its fruit, but they do not understand it at all. They may say, 'Well, those people have got something that I do not know anything about: I do not understand it at all, I do not know what it is. They seem to be happy about it, but I am certainly a stranger to all that.' Or it may not affect them at all. They may come in where there is abundant life and go away unaffected. They just do not understand it or appreciate it. But those of us who have this life both appreciate and understand it. We cannot explain it to anyone else, any more than we can explain what natural life is. No one can explain what life is. But if we are spiritually alive, really spiritually alive, and we go in amongst other children of God, we sense something. It may be we feel death, a lack of life, something here that is not alive; there is some check to life here. On the other hand, we may sense the presence of life. Now, that capacity to appreciate and to understand is the guide of the Lord's people. It is a very intelligent faculty - it is, indeed, our 'intelligence', in more senses than one. Why do we say, 'Something is wrong here', because we do not sense the life; there is something that is not alive. We are 'alive' to the fact that something is wrong! I believe that is exactly what Paul knew when he found those disciples at Ephesus. They were having some wonderful Bible teaching from Apollos, who was a man mighty in the Scriptures; but Paul had to say when he came down to them: 'You have a lot of Bible teaching here, and you are professing disciples of the Lord - but what is the matter with you? There is something amiss here. Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?' (Acts 19:2). The Holy Spirit in Paul, as the Spirit of life, registered here the absence of life: there was no witness of life, even with all the Bible teaching and the profession. The Spirit enabled Paul to put his finger upon the situation, and to clear it up. Life Through Faith Now, all the Lord's progress with us, as we have said, the Lord's enlarging, the Lord's establishing, is along this line of life. But this life is all governed by faith. We are thinking much of Abraham, and we have something to say about him yet. With him, every fresh movement toward enlargement and consolidation and increase of life was by way of fresh testing of faith. Everything rests upon this matter of tried and proved faith. If you and I pass, then, into a time when our faith is being sorely tried, really being put through it, let us ask the Lord to help us to adjust ourselves to this: for this is not unto death, but unto life. This is not permitted by the Lord in order to bring an end in death. This is meant by Him to bring us into larger life yet. If only we could rest in that assurance, it would rob the dark times and the difficult times of their deathliness, and make them the very ground upon which we might come into newness of life through fresh victories of faith. Faith is the way to life through trial, testing, suffering, adversity

"The Rights of God"

by T. Austin-Sparks Chapter 6 - God's Rights in His House Gods rights concerning His house have always been challenged. God had created this earth as a place where His rights would be recognized. That is why He gave man certain commandments. He gave them to man to bring him to the place where he would respect Gods rights. Through the recognition of Gods rights, obedience to God, man was to grow into all that which had been ordained for him from God. However, it happened differently. The adversary appeared and the battle for Gods rights started. This happened in the form of a simple question: Hath God said? Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:1-5). There we have the questioning of Gods rights. The will of man is to stand in the place of the will of God. What is religious modernism other than that? The authority of the Word of God is opposed. Human thoughts judge that which is of God. One king of Israel dared to say: Who is the Lord? This is what things are like for God after the fall. This is what He has to take into account, but that which He is also strong enough to overcome. In the New Testament we see the same fight over the rights of God in His house. The Lord says: It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer: but you have made it a den of robbers (Matt. 21:13). And in saying this, He explains the parable of the vineyard owner. Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and

cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him (Matt. 21:33-39). God has planted a vineyard and has put a fence around it. This vineyard is His property. Nobody therefore has any rights in this vineyard except Him. Then He hired it out to husbandmen and sent His servants after a while, to fetch the fruit, His rights. The husbandmen, however, beat them and killed them and murdered His Son in the end. This is robbing God. This is misuse of His rights to the extreme. The Pharisees recognized that this parable was meant for them. They gnashed their teeth. They did not consider repenting. Only a short while later, and the Lord has to say about Jerusalem: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. (Matt. 23:37,38). What was once Gods house, is His house no longer. God has left it. His house is somewhere else. It is in the hearts of those that have opened themselves to Him. WE are His house. And Christ is the Son over Gods house (Heb. 3:6). The connection, which the Lord Jesus Christ makes between Himself and the ministry of the prophets, shows us: Firstly, that the prophets and the Son of God stand in a very specific relationship to each other as far as the will of God is concerned. They were sent in view of the rights of God; they were killed because of the rights of God. Secondly: The church as the house of God is there where the rights of God are recognized and given to Him. But is there something more disputed than His church? Where is she? Is she there, where people that call themselves Christians come together? Yes and no. Fellowship is one of the characteristics of His church. But not fellowship outwardly, but oneness in spirit. Spiritual fellowship cannot be made. It is foolish to think that one could join the church, because one agrees with the message or structure of an assembly. The church is more than the union of religious people. The church consists of those to whom the Lord has brought new life, in whose hearts He has become Lord, of those who have learned to worship Him in Spirit and in truth. The church is not our house. It is His house. He, however, is the Lord of heaven, Who has judged this world and has done away with it for ever. How could we serve Him with that which He has rejected? How could we dare to bring Him that which has been judged through the Cross? How long will it take until the eyes of the children of God are opened to the fact that the church of our Lord Jesus Christ must be heavenly through and through, that the church has nothing at all in common with this world? If we did not take into account the power of the Holy Spirit, we would despair. The natural man cannot understand that his role is finished, that the new birth is an absolutely new life, in which all our natural opinions will have ceased. The soulish and the spiritual are so mixed up even in advanced believers, that only the Holy

Spirit is able to divide them. But a division must come. In Gods house there is no room for anything of man. Any so-called goodness of man, his religious disposition and his seemingly unselfish efforts are all a big deception. If Gods rights are to be of account, then all our rights, however skillfully covered, have to come to an end. This takes us to Moses. He stands before us as a prophet. How zealous he was for the rights of God! God showed him His house on the mountain. But at the foot of the mountain he erected an altar and sacrificed. By doing so he respected the rights of God. His altar is nothing else but the explanation that the way to Gods mountain (and therefore to Gods house) is via the Cross of Calvary. Lightning and thunder surrounded the mountain. It was so terrible, that even Moses trembled. Why? Because no one can come close to God and serve Him except he whom God has called. God takes care that the mountain is fenced off, that nothing may come close to Him, that access to Him is only through the power of the Blood. We say all of this in view of the rights of God. There is a burden on our hearts to make clear that Gods house is only really Gods house if it is filled by Him alone. We see this in the tabernacle. Because of the veil it is separated from everything outside. Inside, however, everything speaks through the large altar of the rights of God, the right God has over all life, of His sole and exclusive right. When, after Solomon, the worship of God began to waiver, when other gods were worshipped, prophetic service amongst the people increased. Why? We have said before that the prophets stood for Gods rights in a special way. When therefore a prophet raised his voice in the old covenant, we know that something was not in order, that God was working to win back that which was lost, to save the spiritual from being covered up by formalism and tradition. This stepping in for God marks Elijah in a special way. When he says: As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand, it means: The Lord and I are one; the Lord stands on my side because I stand on His side; your attitude towards me reflects your attitude towards the Lord. And all this happens in view of winning back the rights of God. Now Elijah was not an important personality. We judge him wrongly if we ascribe him a personality which he did not have. The Lord shows him to us when he was discouraged, sitting under the juniper tree: But he himself went a days journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers (1 Kings 19:4). And James confirms this, by saying: Elijah was a man of like nature with us (James 5:17). But the Lord has chosen him. His calling has to do with the rights of God. Because he stood on Gods side, God stands with him. The Lord defends His honor in His prophet. He seeks to safeguard His rights in those that are His messengers. For example, consider Elijah and the widow of

Zarephath. And the word of the Lord came unto him (Elijah), saying, Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee. So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow woman was there gathering of sticks: and he called to her, and said, Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink. And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, and said, Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand. And she said, As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die. And Elijah said unto her, Fear not; go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth. And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days. And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the Word of the Lord, which He spake by Elijah (1 Kings 17:8-16). Now when Elijah comes to the widow, she has just enough flour and oil for one cake, but Elijah tells her: First make me something to eat. This looks like selfishness. But the Lord and he are one. Is the widow ready to recognize this? Is she willing to honour the Lord in His prophet? Should God have His right at the peril of herself possessing nothing any more? The woman obeys. What a victory! It is the recognition of the rights of God that leads to the jar of flour not becoming empty and the cruse of oil not drying up. The recognition of the rights of God has opened the door to wonderful experiences. Not that her faith did not have to go through depths. That happened when her son died. Then she could see life out of death, the power of resurrection, something which not everyone has the privilege to see. She had recognized Gods rights and had given Him the first place. Then the Lord manifests the power of resurrection. And it came to pass after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick; and his sickness was so sore, that there was no breath left in him. And she said unto Elijah, What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son? And he said unto her, Give me thy son. And he took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into a loft, where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed. And he cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, hast Thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son? And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this childs soul come into him again. And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived. And Elijah took the child, and brought him down out of the chamber into the house, and delivered him unto his mother: and Elijah said, See, thy son

liveth (1 Kings 17:17-23). Let us see this in the light of the house of God. The house of God is the place where He is everything, where the Lord has been recognized in the power of His resurrection, where we come together as living stones, in whom heavenly life has become a reality. Let us not think that we will be spared difficulties. How Moses suffered! How Elijah was persecuted! The presence of the Lord does not mean that we will be spared suffering. On the contrary. We will be slandered, denied and persecuted. We will be abandoned and hated. We will not be spared this. This does not mean that the presence of God is not with us. We find it in the life of the Lord in us. We find it in the ability to be calm. We find it in the peace and joy in the midst of all storms and tribulations. That is enough. That is worth more than all recognition and outward confirmation. But when the Lord comes, we will appear with Him, and because we have sought His rights and have given Him His rights, we will exult and rejoice in the universal reign of our Lord, Who will be The Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful (Rev. 17:14).

We Beheld His Glory - Volume 1

by T. Austin-Sparks Chapter 5 - Walking in the Power of God READ: John 5. KEY VERSES: 19, 20, 21 and 30. In chapter 5 we are back again with Christ in Jerusalem. We must not miss the importance and significance of the visits to Judea and Jerusalem as recorded in "John." These visits have a relationship with the position, condition and destiny of the Jewish nation in an official sense. Take, therefore, full account of every visit and every event, and, the connection of each. The details of these will come out as we move on, but we call attention in a general way to two aspects; one, the close association with Israel's past history, and the other, the place of the Mosaic order. Look at some of these: Chapter 1. "The Lamb of God." What a lot of history in Israel there is behind that phrase. Chapter 2. The marriage. Just look at two passages. Jeremiah 31:35-33: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I

was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people." Hebrews 8:7-10: "For if the first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people." Here, as you see, the point was a marriage covenant, and this is transferred from the covenant made through Moses to the covenant made in the Blood of Jesus Christ. Chapter 3. The serpent lifted up. (Numbers 21.) Chapter 4. The springing well. Here it is interesting and significant to notice, that in Numbers 21 the springing well came into view almost immediately after the lifting up of the brazen serpent, and this is the order in John 3 and 4. Chapter 5. The impotent man. (We are going to deal with this in the present chapter.) Chapter 6. The Manna. Chapters 7, 8 and 9. The Feast of Tabernacles. Chapter 10. The Feast of Dedication. Chapter 11. Contains the spiritual meaning of Jordan - death, burial and resurrection as something right at the heart of Israel's history. Chapter 12. Israel's blindness (verses 37-41). See in this connection the passages in Isaiah, chapters 6 and 53, quoted. Chapter 15. The Vine. Isaiah 5 represents Israel as the vine, or the vineyard, and the vine was a common figure amongst the prophets of Israel. This is transferred in John 15 by the Lord Jesus from Israel to Himself. Chapter 17. The High Priest, with the altar and the whole burnt-offering in view. This is only a selection, and more features can be traced, but there is one thing to be remembered that is, that everything to do with Israel in "John" is in a bad light, and represents the setting aside of Judaism to bring in the Church. This is done by Christ Himself taking all the elements of Israel's true life, and embodying them as the spiritual features of the Church's constitution, life and vocation. Everything which subsequently comes out in the doctrine of the New Testament will be found in germ in the Gospels, and especially in "John."

Now we can come to our particular chapter, John 5. Here, as on a number of occasions in "John," it is a Feast of the Jews which brings Him to Jerusalem, or is the occasion of His being there. What Feast this one is is quite uncertain. Other Feasts are mentioned, some by name such as the Passover and some are marked by such definite features as to leave us in no doubt as to what they are. In this instance the article is not present. It does not say THE Feast of the Jews, although some translations have included the article. If it were present we should know that it refers to the Passover. We are left very largely to conjecture, but, as far as it is possible to trace the date of this incident, it would seem that it is the Feast of Purim. This Feast was originated in the days of the captivity, and we have the account of it in the book of Esther. It related to the marvelous overruling by God of the counsels of the evil Haman, and the deliverance of the Jews from the awful death, under sentence of which they were living until the Lord turned their death to life. If this is the Feast of chapter 5, then verses 24-27 take on a wonderful significance: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man." Carry these words back into the book of Esther and see how wonderfully they fit in. Condemnation and death exchanged for life, and the Lord Jesus taking the place of Mordecai, to Whom at length the authority to execute judgment is given, even to Him Who has been set aside, humiliated and rejected by men. But there is another historical feature in the background of this chapter. The immediate foreground is occupied by the impotent man at the pool, and we are told that he had been there in that state for thirty-eight years. Now that was exactly the period of Israel's wanderings in the wilderness, from the giving of the law at Sinai to the death of Moses. Note these two things: (1) the law given, (2) a subsequent life in impotence, weakness and failure as under the law. What a lot of light is thrown upon this for us by the subsequent writings of the New Testament. The apostle Paul says a good deal about it in his letter to the Romans. He points out that, while man was weak, the weakness of man was not made manifest and brought to light until the law was given; and then, when the law came, the great fact, the universal fact that man is utterly impotent in the presence of the requirements of a holy God is made all too apparent. Not that the law is evil in itself. Nay, but good, and if only it could be lived up to, it would be a great blessing to man. God never imposes upon man anything that is not for his good, but then, because of sin and man's fallen state, there is an inherent weakness, which renders him totally incapable of standing up to God's demands; and so, what should be for his good and benefit, becomes the very instrument of his conscious weakness and helplessness. This is exactly what we have in John 5. Here is a man on his bed for thirty-eight years. A bed is intended to be a good thing, a blessing, but in the case of this man the bed has become the symbol of his weakness and bondage, and had really become a tyrant rather than a friend. So, right in the heart of Jerusalem, we have this long stretch of Israel's helplessness illustrated in the life of a single man lying in the bondage of his own weakness for thirty-eight years. What is the hope for Israel? What was the hope for this man? Hope lay only in one direction. That direction is indicated right at the commencement of John's Gospel: "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." Hope, then, lies in the direction of grace and truth, coming in the Person of the Lord Jesus. Thus we find

Him coming on the scene when all other hope had faded and disappeared, and wellnigh, if not altogether, settled down in the heart of this poor, helpless victim. What a picture this is, not only of Israel but of all men without Christ. It is not a matter of sins, many or few. It is not a question of comparative moral strength, greater or lesser; but it is the issue of standing face to face with the perfection of God in the Christ. How can man at his best measure up to that, and give an answer wholly satisfactory to God? There is no man who can do it. Remembering that a breach in one point declares imperfection, and involves the individual, and the race, in the fact of sinfulness, we have to come to Paul's conclusion: "All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." "There is none righteous, no, not one." But we cannot escape. We must all give an account before the judgment seat. What is our hope? Our hope is in Christ alone, and the grace of God in Jesus Christ. In his wonderful letter to the Galatians the apostle Paul opens up for us God's matchless grace in delivering us, through the death of Christ, and our death with Him, from the bondage of the law. Now this man did not finish his history there. There was a glorious issue when the Lord Jesus came into his life. Whereas at the outset his bed was his master, at the end he was the master of his bed. Whereas in the beginning he was completely dependent upon others, and all his strength was outside of himself, in the end there was that within him which made it possible for him to stand upon his own feet, and, not only walk, but, as the Greek tense of the words shows, "keep on walking," or "be walking all the time." So we see, then, that what is in view in the first place is deliverance from the bondage of the law, and from the hopeless impotence and weakness of all men by nature, when they stand confronted by the standard which God demands, and from which He will not excuse one single individual. That deliverance is found to be mainly along the line of grace, brought into experience by reason of a vital relationship with the Lord Jesus. But, while walking in the power of God is the object in view, what we have to see before we close is the law of this divine truth and blessing. What is the law of this walk in life and power? Well, our key verses bring us to that. The man in the story had tried many, many times to find in himself the energy by which he could get upon his feet and walk. That energy he had never found. Now, when the Lord Jesus comes on the scene, that man discovers that in Him (Christ) there is energy, and that energy flows out as the words are spoken - a literal fulfillment of another thing said by the Lord Jesus in this Gospel: "...the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." So that this man, unable to walk as out from himself, found himself able to rise up and walk by the energy which proceeded from Christ; and the simple law of this walk in the power of God is that of meeting everything as out from the Lord, and not from ourselves. This was the law of Christ's own life of moral and spiritual ascendency. Taking the place of man representatively, He said: "The Son can do nothing out from himself, but what he seeth the Father do...." He spoke of the words, and the works, as proceeding out from the Father, and not out from Himself. In the text the little word "of" is the Greek preposition "out from." So that Christ lived His life as out from the Father, meeting every demand, carrying every liability. Thus His life was one of victory over all weakness and ineffectiveness. But notice further, this all took place on the Sabbath day, and the Sabbath in this chapter signifies God's rest. God has come to the end of His works, and rests. As in every part of this Gospel, Christ is the chief character in view, and this Sabbath points to Him and says: God has reached the end of His works in His Son, is satisfied and at rest. Christ is the sum total of all the works of the Father. Out of that fullness of God in Christ we, who have labored under the bondage of the law, may now walk in the rest of being set free by faith in Jesus Christ.

Now the life of the believer is one of learning continuously and progressively how to live as out from the Lord. We shall always be conscious of our own weakness. In ourselves we shall never be anything but weak and impotent, but we do not stay there. We see that in Christ all strength, all ability, all wisdom, all grace resides, but that it is in Him for us, and as we, refusing to accept our own state as the criterion and the final argument, by faith take hold of the Lord Jesus, and move out to meet our obligations as out from Him, we shall find that we are able to do what we have never been able to do before, though we may have tried many times. We shall learn now what the apostle meant when he said that the Lord had told him that His strength was made perfect in weakness. Do we feel crippled? Do we despair of ever being able to walk and serve to any good purpose? Have we tried and failed again and again? Let us learn the lesson of John 5. Nothing out from ourselves but everything, hitherto impossible, out from Christ. Let us ask the Lord to show us how to live by faith in the Son of God. That life is a life of overcoming what has before been our bondage, our very tyranny. It is not something, it is the Lord Himself, and, reverting to the Esther link which may be somewhere in the background of this chapter, we shall know the wonderful joy of what is recorded in that little book as the issue of the divine intervention, "a good day"!

"Written Not With Ink"

by T. Austin-Sparks Meeting 15 - The Purpose of the Elect

28 February 1957, at Kaohsiung, Taiwan. I have been occupied with a big question today. We have been having many meetings during the past two or three weeks. For nearly two weeks we have had large meetings in Taipei, and in these last few days we have been having meetings in many other places, and now we have come here and are having some more meetings. The question that has been occupying me today is: "Why are we having meetings?" What is the purpose for some of us coming halfway around the world and others who have gathered together from various places; what is the object of it all? I feel that I should use the time this evening in trying to answer my own question. I feel that there is a very real answer to that question. Now, I am not going to take any particular passage of Scripture. There will be the whole Bible behind what I have to say tonight, and I trust that you will believe that I am speaking with the Bible as my background. So we begin to answer the question, and the first thing that we will say is this:God Has a Great and a Glorious Purpose. The Bible reveals that God is occupied with this great and glorious purpose indeed. The whole Bible is one great and wonderful revelation that God is a God of purpose.

All the way through the Bible, God is shown to be governed by a definite purpose. God has not created this world just so that the world should be created. God has not created man just so that man should exist. Nothing that God has done has been intended to be an end in itself, but everything that God has done relates to a definite purpose.

The Bible shows us that God, before He made anything, had a purpose in His mind, and that He made all things for that purpose. Now, that first thing has two or three different aspects. First of all, when God created man, it was so that man should be the vessel of God's purpose and that man should be in a definite relationship with God concerning His Purpose. The object of man's existence is to be in fellowship with God concerning His eternal purpose. I do hope that you will not just listen to the things that I say, but that you will apply them to yourself as I go along. You see, we men and women in this place tonight, the very meaning of our being here in this world is that God has a purpose. There was a purpose in God's heart in bringing mankind into being. We are a part of that mankind, therefore our existence was intended to be in relation to God's purpose. But then something went wrong. When God created Adam, He brought Adam into a very wonderful fellowship with Himself. God came down and walked with man and talked with man. There was wonderful fellowship between God and man, and man and God, and then things went wrong and that union of man with God was broken. That was bad enough, but that was not the worst of it, another thing came about. Man came into a relationship and union with Satan. The relationship which had existed between man and God was broken and that relationship has passed to Satan. And because of that, God's purpose was suspended. Of course that was the object of Satan's interference. Satan had some knowledge of what God's purpose was, and he set himself to frustrate the purpose of God. And so he brought about a relationship of man with himself. The Bible shows us man's relationship to Satan. It says that the "whole world lieth in wickedness" so that the children of Adam are now the children of Satan and not the children of God. That is what the Bible definitely stated, but then God moves again. He moves to recover that relationship between man and Himself so that His purpose could be fulfilled. So we have three movements: the first was man's union with God, the second was man's separation from God, and the third is man's reunion with God. All that we have in the Bible has to do with those three things. Let me repeat them.

First, the union between man and God with God's purpose in view. Second, man separated from God and united with Satan and God's purpose suspended. Third, man's reunion with God in Jesus Christ and God's purpose recovered. Now I want you to notice this very important thing; all that we have in the Bible and especially in the New Testament, has to do with one thing. After the first three chapters of the Bible, where this breaking of fellowship with God took place, all the rest of the Bible is occupied with this one thing: it is a return movement to God. Let us note the movement. Firstly, everything was in God and all things were in Him. Man was in God, creation was in God; that is, God was the sphere of everything. All things were in Him. Secondly, there was a departure out from God. Things came out from God and went into Satan, so that all that which was in God came out of Him and went into Satan. Satan is called the prince of this world. He is called the god of this world and as I have quoted, the whole world lies in the hands of Satan. First it was all in God and then it departed out from God and went into Satan. Now the Bible, and especially the New Testament, sees this return movement unto God. That is the explanation of the Lord Jesus. The great truth about the Lord Jesus is that He abided in the Father. He said, "You shall know that I am in the Father," and He abided in the Father. The great effort and work of Satan was to get Him to come out from the Father, to get Him to act without the Father, to speak without the Father, to do things out from Himself instead of out from His Father. Satan was all the time trying to bring this separation between Christ and His Father. He was trying to do with the last Adam what he had done with the first Adam: to separate Him from God. But in the case of the Lord Jesus he never could succeed. Jesus abided in the Father and nothing could bring Him out; and in that way He destroyed the work of Satan; in that way, He secured the purpose of God. Now you can see the meaning of the second thing, this tremendous amount that is in the New Testament about being in Christ. A Christian is one who is described as one who is in Christ. You have got it on your motto on the microphone, I don't know if you can explain that funny figure there, but it is "in Christ" and that is the

great motto used by Paul. Paul used that phrase over two hundred times. We are, by our new birth, in Christ; and then the Lord Jesus said, "Abide in Me". He placed a great deal of emphasis upon this matter: "Abide in Me". Do you see what that means? He abided in the Father, He did not come out to Satan. Now, He said, "You who believe are in Me, you abide in Me" and the whole of the New Testament has to do with this matter of being in Christ and abiding in Christ. You see, it is in Christ, a return movement into God. That is the first thing. God has a great and glorious purpose and that purpose can only be realized when man abides in God. Now we come to the second part of our main question, that is, this great purpose of God is centred in His Son, our Lord Jesus.
The Son of God is the Centre of all the Purpose of God The Scriptures on this matter are very many. They tell us that God appointed Him the sole heir of all things. They tell us that in Him and through Him and unto Him were all things created. The Son is the centre of this great purpose of God.

We can understand very well now why Satan wanted to get the Son of God separated from God. Satan wants to capture the inheritance for himself. That inheritance belongs to God's Son. He could not get that inheritance while the Son abided in the Father. Now, we were created to be joint heirs with Christ in the inheritance. Man, in God's intention, has a great inheritance with God and Satan therefore is always trying to bring about this separation between Christian and God, to separate them from Christ. That is not only true about Christians, that is true about all men. You see, Satan wants to keep man away from God. He will do anything to keep man away from God. He will get man as far away from God as he can. If there is anyone here tonight who has not come to the Lord, let me tell you that it will not be an easy thing to come to the Lord, for Satan will keep you away for as long as he can, simply because you are called to this great purpose. This purpose which is centred in God's Son; you are called into that. If Satan loses his control over your life, he loses that which his heart is set upon. Let me illustrate this from one of the Lord's parables. He told a story of a certain man who had a vineyard and let it out to his servants and he went to a far country. Then at the time of harvest, he sent his servant to get the fruit from his vineyard. And the men who lived in the vineyard saw the servant coming and beat him and drove him off. So he sent another servant and they did the same to

him. And he sent another servant and they treated him the same way. The owner of the vineyard said, "What must I do?" then he said, "I will send my son and they will respect him." And after he sent his son, the men in the vineyard said, "This is the heir! Come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours." Now, Jesus is saying this to the Jews, He said, "You are the children of Satan. He was a murderer from the beginning". And, of course, Jesus was speaking about Himself; God had sent His servants, the prophets, and they had persecuted and beaten and killed them, and at last God said, "I will send My Son." And when they saw Him coming, they said, "This is the heir. We will kill Him and the inheritance will be ours." You see how true this principle was. Jesus is the heir of all things. It all belongs to Him, but Satan said, "Let us kill the heir and the inheritance will be ours." Satan wants the inheritance that belongs to Jesus. We are called to that inheritance, so Satan will do everything that he can to keep us away from God. And if we have come to the Lord, Satan will continue trying to get us away from the Lord. There are tremendous things bound up in our coming to the Lord and abiding in the Lord.
The Elect

Now I come to the third part of the answer to our main question. All of these involved an elect vessel. There is that in the Bible which is called "the elect". Jesus spoke about the elect. What did He mean by "the elect"? Well, the Apostle Paul makes it perfectly clear to us what He meant by "the elect" and what the elect is. The Church of Jesus Christ is the elect. Those who are truly and lovingly related to the Lord Jesus form His Church. And as we said this afternoon, they were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. That is the meaning of the elect: a people chosen by God in Christ before the world was, brought into Christ in time. It is what the New Testament means by "the church". Now, this elect vessel relates to the eternal purpose. It is a wonderful thing to be in the Church of Jesus Christ, because it is this Church which is His body which is God's vessel for the realization of His great purpose. We are all acquainted with some of the Scriptures that speak about that. "All things work together for good to them that love God and are the called according to His purpose." Look at this passage again in the letter to the Ephesians, chapter 1, and verse 11. Here is a clear statement of what I have been saying. Perhaps we had better read verse 10: "Unto a dispensation of the fullness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the

heavens, and the things upon the earth; in Him, I say, in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His will." What a tremendous statement that is! The purpose of God to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth, and then in Christ we are made a heritage and this is all after the counsel of Him who works all things. Now turn over to chapter 3, verse 11: "according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." And you notice that those words are addressed to the Church. It is the Church that are called according to His purpose. It is the Church which is to be the vessel of God's purpose concerning His Son. At the end of one of his prayers in this letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle speaks of the Church in this way, "the Church which is the Body... the fullness of Him." The Church is the fullness of Him, so this great purpose involves this elect vessel. We are brought into this great purpose of God to be the fullness of Christ. The next thing that I want to say in answer to our question, is that all God's interest and all the activities of God are related to His purpose concerning His Son. Now, that is not only a statement made, that implies something for us. Do you want to be in the way and in the place where God will be active concerning you? If you want that to be so, then your whole life must be centred in Christ. All of God's interest and activities are concerning His Son. If you and I are in Christ, we are in the place where God is most interested and most active. Do you really want God to be interested in you? Do you really want God to work in you? The way in which that shall be is by your being centred in Christ. When we come into the Lord Jesus, we come into the place where God is most interested, where God is most active.
The Place of the Cross

One more thing, this is the explanation of the Cross of the Lord Jesus. For one thing, the Cross is the place where the prince of this world was cast out. It is by the Cross of the Lord Jesus that men are taken out of the power of Satan and brought into Christ. It is in the Cross of the Lord Jesus that we die to our relationship to Satan and rise with a new relationship with Christ. The Cross of Christ is God's instrument of securing His eternal purpose. The Cross means our union with Christ, firstly in death, and then in resurrection. I have just said that it is in the Cross that Christ broke the power of Satan. If we are truly crucified with Christ, it means that the power of Satan is broken over our life. If we are

raised together with Christ in resurrection life, we are no longer under the power of Satan, we are under the power of God and that brings us onto the ground where His eternal purpose is recovered. This eternal purpose is the object of all the Holy Spirit's activities. The Holy Spirit has come for this particular purpose: to work in relation to God's eternal purpose in the Church.
This Eternal Purpose

Well, I don't know how much of this you are grasping. It is a tremendous thing that God presents to us and this is why we are having this meeting. I know quite well that Christians need encouragement and it might be a good thing for some to be meeting for the encouragement of the believers. I know that believers need more instruction in the Word of God, and it might be quite a good thing for having some meetings for that sometimes. But I feel the greatest purpose for which we have meetings is that people should know what a great thing they are called into. It is no small thing to be a Christian. It is not just a matter of being helped to live a better life. It is not just a matter of having joy and peace in our hearts. And it is not only a matter of escaping judgment and going to heaven. The real meaning of being a Christian is that we are called according to this eternal purpose. There is a great purpose of God behind our being Christians. All that which God has destined for His Son is brought over to us. We are brought into all that when we are brought into Christ. All the ages of eternity to come are going to reveal the meaning of this great purpose. I say again that it is no small thing to be a Christian. And what has been on my heart today is just this one thing: Oh, that I could make this people see what a tremendous thing it is to be in Christ and what an immense background that is to being a Christian! I am quite sure that if you could only see that, you would feel that to be a Christian is a far greater thing than you realise. There is something for which to live. There is something for which to suffer. There is something for letting the Holy Spirit do His work in us. There is something worth abiding in Christ for. We are the called according to His purpose, so I say as my last words to you:It is a Great Thing to be in Christ.

Being in Christ links us up with God's thought before ever the world was. Being in Christ links us up with the realization of that Thought in eternity. Eternity past and eternity to come are centred in that "being in" to come. May the Lord open our eyes to see the meaning of this.

So we are, in having these few minutes for this little bit of teaching, trying to help one another along in the Christian life. We are having this matter brought to us that we might help one another. What a great thing it is to be in Christ! May the Lord help you to see that. I think I would like to close with just turning you to one fragment of Scripture in the letter to the Romans, chapter 11, verses 34-36. And this is a comprehensive statement, "For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things. To Him be the glory for ever. Amen." And I think I will close with the last words of one of Paul's prayers, "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen."

"THE HOLY CITY, NEW JERUSALEM" 9. DIVINE LIFE "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the garden of God" (Revelation ii. 7). "And he shewed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of the street thereof. And on this side of the river and on that was the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of fruits, yielding its fruit every month ... Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the tree of life ... And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city" (Revelation 22:1, 2, 14, 19). THE PLACE OF THE TREE OF LIFE SO with this last chapter of the Bible we are taken right back to the beginning of the Bible and find ourselves in the presence of the tree of life. In this connection, the ending of everything is found to correspond to the

beginning, but, of course, with one great difference: the end is the full realization of the meaning of the beginning. In this form of a symbolic tree of life we are quite evidently in the presence of the main issue of the ages -- all the ages are compassed by this one issue. When Jesus, here at the end, calls Himself the "Alpha and the Omega, ... the beginning and the end" (verse 13), He is referring to Himself as the tree of life. The tree of life is the first thing, and it is the last thing. But although the tree of life was there in the midst of the garden at the beginning, man never partook of it. The partaking of that tree was on certain conditions. Those conditions were faith and obedience, and because man failed in those conditions, and because man disbelieved and disobeyed God, he was removed from the presence of the tree of life. Then God set up a protection for that tree and made it impossible for man without faith and obedience to partake of it. Of course, these are spiritual principles set forth in a symbolic way. This question of Divine life is the supreme question in all history. It is the issue of all the ages -- just whether man will receive this Divine life or not. Man's eternal destiny is decided upon that issue. This was God's supreme purpose in the creation. This life is the life of God, Divine life because of the Divine nature, and it was God's desire and purpose to share His life with His creation. The symbolic place that this tree had is very significant. It was in the midst of the Paradise of God. This question of Divine life is at the very centre of the creation, and, having the central place in all things, it governs all things. SPIRITUAL DEATH This life was available to man. It was God's thought and desire that man should take this Divine life, but, as we have said, it was on the condition of faith and obedience, and man never partook of this Divine life because he failed in those two things. So God said, quite effectively: 'That kind of man shall never have My Divine life', and death, and the prince of death, reigned over that realm and that kind of man. What the Bible means by death reigns over the whole creation of unbelieving men. Disobedience is the positive

aspect of unbelief. If man says that he believes, God says: 'Prove it by obedience!' Spiritual death is the hallmark of unbelief and disobedience. And if you want to know what spiritual death is, the Bible makes it quite clear: it is separation from God. God is the source of this life, and separation from God means separation from the very source of life. But that is not sufficient explanation. What is the effect of spiritual death? It is that nothing is ever [32/33] allowed to come to perfection apart from God. It will just go so far, and no further. In our cemeteries in England we have stones set up over graves, and many of these gravestones are in the form of a pillar which is just a certain height, and then it is broken off. It is meant to say: This life just went so far and could go no further. Life apart from God can never go through to fullness. There was a great atheist once who thought he knew a great deal. He boasted of his wonderful knowledge of philosophy, and made a great name for himself as what is called a 'free-thinker'. Then the day came when he was dying, and on his deathbed he was in a state of mental torment. His last words were: 'I am taking a terrible leap into the dark!' It does not matter how much we gain in this life. If it is apart from God that is all left behind. Nothing can come to perfection that is separated from God, and that is the mark of spiritual death. THE BATTLEGROUND OF THE AGES Now because faith and obedience are the way out of death, this matter of faith and obedience has been the battleground of all the ages. There is no greater ground of conflict than the ground of faith, and this great issue was headed up to its climax in the incarnation of God's Son. The whole purpose of God being manifest in the flesh in His Son was to take up this issue and settle it for ever. "A Final Adam to the fight and to the rescue came." This whole issue, then, becomes a matter of faith in the Son of God, and a life of obedience to Him. That is the pathway of eternal life. Now you see that the tree is not just a tree, it is a Person, and that Person is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We have been considering this New Jerusalem coming down out

of heaven, and we have been seeing how its many features are the features of Jesus Christ. Now what we have to see as we are coming near to the end is that all the features of the city are summed up in the tree and the river of life. All that the city represents is found in these final things, the tree and the river, and it is the tree of life and the river of the water of life. THE PRACTICAL NATURE OF DIVINE LIFE I want to say here, quite emphatically, that life is a very practical thing. That is true of natural life. We know what a tremendous thing it is to fight for someone's life. All the vast resources of medical supply and surgical care are concentrated into this one issue, and that vast realm of activity is concentrated upon this one thing -- life. Everything and anything to save life. It may be just a little life in some poor body, but all the resources of medical science and care will be employed just to save that bit of life. What a tremendous amount is bound up with this matter of life! When that life has gone all the activity and energy and concern ceases. This matter of life can make us very busy. I expect most of you have heard of the great missionary David Livingstone, and some years ago I was associated with a great movement for the celebration of the centenary of his birth. You know, for nearly a whole year we were busy, almost night and day, making the arrangements. We took the greatest hall in London, got the Archbishop of Canterbury to promise to preside, we had a special oratorio composed, and had special biographies of David Livingstone written. My word, we had to work hard! One day the man with whom I was working said to me: 'Old David Livingstone is not dead! He is still knocking us all out by his vitality!' Wen, you see, life is a very practical thing. Electricity is a very practical thing. You do not need that I should demonstrate that! If you want proof of that, just unscrew the lamp, pull down the switch and put your thumb on the point. If you did that to the lamp over there, the next moment you would be sitting in another corner and you would be believing in the practical aspect of electricity! Now all that is only to come to our point. If all that is true of natural life, how much more true it must be of Divine life! Divine life is immensely practical. It

is not just something which we receive; it is a power in us. The Apostle Paul said one of his very great things about this: "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,according to the power that worketh in us" (Ephesians 3:20) -- 'Exceeding' ... 'Exceeding abundantly ... 'Exceeding abundantly above' ... 'Exceeding abundantly above all ... according to the power that worketh in us.' It is the power of this Divine life by the Holy Spirit. THE LIMITING OF DIVINE LIFE Now we have been seeing that this city, in every part, is an expression of the Divine nature, and that is brought down to us in the Person of Jesus Christ. Where there is anything contrary to the Divine nature, that is death and not life. Recall some of the features of this city. We said that it was clear as crystal. You can see right through it -- there is no dark thing. It says that it is like transparent gold. That is only a symbolism for absolute honesty, absolute truth, and absolute [33/34] purity of mind, and where there is anything that is not absolutely honest and true and transparent, there is not life. If you were to try to deceive me, or someone else, or I tried to deceive you, that would seriously limit the Divine life in us. If we as Christians are not absolutely honest in our business, we are working against the life of God in us. If our Christianity is only a profession and not a reality, there is no life in it. I think I need not labour that any more. This place where God is is completely free from everything that is dark and dishonest. There are several things in the Bible which are said to be an abomination to God. We pointed out that the lie is an abomination to Him, and the Bible says that pride is an abomination, too. It says: "The proud he (the Lord) knoweth afar off" (Psalm 138:6). Pride cannot come near to God. What is pride? It is making believe something that is not true. Let us look at another thing about this city. A city, ideally, is the symbol of order. In a true city everything is in proper order, and everything that is governed by it is put into order. God is a God of order. Disorder is contrary to His nature. Whether it be in the personal life, or whether it be in the home, or whether it be in the church, or wherever it may be, disorder is contrary to the nature of God. Disorder is lawlessness, and all lawlessness has come from

Satan. Satan is called the 'Prince of this world' (John 14:30). Now, look at the world! There is only one word to explain the world situation, and that is chaos. More and more, and ever more chaos is coming over this world. The prince of this world is making for disorder everywhere in his world. In the realm of Divine life things are ordered if that life is having its way, for it is Divine life that will bring order into your personal life. When I see a disorderly life, a life in which you cannot see any real order, then I have to say: 'Divine life is suffering in that person'. When there is disorder in a company of the Lord's people we know quite well that the life is limited. We have to say: 'When I go there, amongst those people, I do not come away feeling renewed in my life.' When things are in Divine order, then you always feel life. THE FRUITFULNESS OF DIVINE LIFE Just two other things about this life. Divine life is always fruitful. You see, this tree is planted by the river of the water of life, and it bears all manner of fruit. It does not matter whether it is seventy, eighty or a hundred years old, it bears fruit every month. You have never seen a natural tree do that! It just means that fruit goes on and on and on. Divine life never grows old. What does that mean? You are saying: 'Well, what do you mean by fruit?' Life is influence. Somehow or other this water of life has an influence upon its surroundings, and that influence is seen in green leaves and much fruit -- You have to say: 'Well, that water is having a great influence on this whole area!' If we really have this life in us, our lives will be influential. They will have an effect upon what is around us. THE PLACE OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST IN OUR LIVES The last thing for this time. The city is the seat of government, and you notice that the river of the water of life flows from out of the throne, so it is the throne that produces everything. You know what that means! It is the throne of God and of the Lamb. In a word, it means the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ. Right at the very centre of everything is the government of Jesus Christ, in virtue of His Cross, and as the Lamb. All the other things will depend entirely upon the place that Jesus Christ has, and will depend entirely upon how much we are committed to Him. If we are whollycommitted to the

Lord and He is altogether Lord, then the life will flow and all these things that we have said about life will be true in us. It will be the testimony to absolute committal to Jesus Christ.