May 14

14 MAY – We Shall Never Have To Let Go What He Let Go

Egypt for some is the ground of bondage and defeat. Even though we may be the Lord’s children, may be Blood-bought, may have come out on redemption ground, yet we may be defeated because of an inadequate apprehension of the meaning of that precious Blood. I believe that there will be many who will lose that thing that God has in view as a special vocation in His heavenly kingdom because they are not wholly devoted to God now. I do not believe that we will be brought into that willy-nilly.

If you want the world, even as a believer, you want a little of it – well, you may have it at this cost: the loss of that for which God has preeminently called you – the heavenly kingdom in a marvelous vocation – you will lose that. Paul was after that. Paul strained every nerve, spiritually, for that; left the things which were behind for that, to be preserved unto His heavenly kingdom. There are many Christians who will lose that because they do not go all the way with the Lord; not lose their salvation, but that specific vocation in glory and honour; they will lose it because they did not recognize and honour the full virtue of the Blood in the totality of their consecration and abandonment to the Lord. Yes, in that sense they will be left behind. But those who go through, who overcome in trial, are they that overcome because of the Blood of the Lamb in this second meaning, the absolute abandonment of the Lord Jesus to the will of His Father even unto death; who are standing in the virtue of His consecration, and making their consecration, by His grace, as utter as was His. We shall never have to let go what He let go in His obedience to the will of God. We have not got it to let go, but what the Lord is looking for, beloved, is a people who are with Him completely, with undivided heart, and that is the ground of our victory and of Satan’s defeat.

Oh, let it be seen that the Blood of the Lamb in its absolute perfection of holiness and sinlessness as representing His being, His substance, His essence, His nature and His complete surrender, His capitulation to the will of His Father – this is the ground to stand on; something to be appropriated by faith and held on to. More, it is something to be taken up as a weapon against the enemy.

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May 13

13 MAY – Utterly In or Partly In?

Now, beloved, the trouble with a good many of us has been this divided heart. We are not sure, not absolutely sure about the Lord, about our own position, about the testimony that we are perhaps standing for and talking about; we are not sure about it, we have secret questionings. It does not matter what we say in public and to others about it. God knows the secret of our hearts, whether we are absolutely true in secret with Him over this matter; and there is no way of victory, no way to ascendancy, no way through to the realization of the Divine end – a people to fulfil a priestly ministry in the universal sovereignty and kingdom of our God and His Christ – until we are on the ground of an absolute undividedness of heart for God in the matter of His testimony.

The challenge to our hearts is, Are we utterly in or are we only partly in; half in; three-quarters in? Is there some lurking fascination of Egypt? How Egypt had fascinated and held part of their hearts when they were in the wilderness! Out here everything is uncertain; we never know from one day to another whether we are going to have our food! In Egypt there was at least certainty; we did know what our program was; we were sure that things would be pretty substantial, that while we had our work we got our food! Out here you are forced to depend upon God, and that is a precarious business. Is it? God is more certain than Egypt. There are Christians who feel that this walk of faith is such an uncertain thing. You do not know what the Lord is going to bring you into next, what is going to happen to you. In the world you at least have solid ground under your feet. This flesh wants a basis of evidence for itself; solid earth. This heavenly life you never know – ah! But do you know the Heavenly ONE?

Let me ask you – Do you believe, beloved, that when, having committed yourself to God, having been consecrated to the Lord, having had an understanding with the Lord, and having been obedient to Him up to all the light He has given you, do you believe that when you get to the glory you will be able to say to the Lord: You let me be deceived, my life has been ruined, I have gone wrong! Is that possible? I do not believe it! The Lord will accept a charge on His honour when we are cut off from ourselves and from all personal and worldly interests, and are wholly for Him.

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May 12

12 MAY – The Blood Speaks of Total Separation to God

The Blood speaks of that, beloved, absolute separation unto God. Go back to the Old Testament for illustration. In the Book of Joshua, chapter 5, you have the people coming to Gilgal where the Lord, through Joshua, ordered the complete circumcising of Israel. All the males that had been born in the wilderness were circumcised at Gilgal and the Lord’s word was this: “This day (when it was done) have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt… wherefore the name of that place was called Gilgal,” which is “rolling.” “The Lord hath rolled away the reproach of Egypt” on the day of the circumcising, in the day of that symbolic act in the shedding and encircling of the precious Blood, the whole body of the flesh cut off, so Paul explains it in Colossians 2, “the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ.” The reproach of Egypt rolls away when that happens. What is “the reproach of Egypt”? What is the meaning of that? I wonder if you have noticed the persistent following of Egypt on the heels of Israel all the days of the wilderness. I do not mean literally, I mean spiritually. They were constantly looking back to Egypt. “Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” Even when Moses went up into the mount and Aaron made the calf and they danced to the calf and worshipped it, it was Egypt brought out in representation. What is it that Stephen tells us about it? I think he sums it all up in a word in Acts 7:39: “… and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt.”

Their hearts were in Egypt, and it was because their hearts were more than half in Egypt all the forty years, that there is such a sorry story; up and down; one day brighter, and the next day murmuring and complaining again. What a story it is. Whenever you read the account it seems that the bright patches are almost overlooked and the dark thing is kept in view. It is referred to in the New Testament. Paul writes to the Hebrews about it: their “carcases fell in the wilderness,” reminding them of the day of provocation in the wilderness when “your fathers tempted me…”; always coming back to this wretched failure. Why did they fail? Because their hearts were not wholly out of Egypt; because they had not recognized sufficiently nor apprehended adequately the meaning of the type of that precious Blood of the Lamb that was slain.

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May 11

11 MAY – A Right Apprehension of the Blood

Oh! If the Lord’s people could get this in their hearts. There are so many of the Lord’s people today over whom Satan is lording it; lording it along the line of accusation, bringing them under a sense of condemnation and judgment, robbing them of their peace, of their assurance, rest, hope; and you will find these people are everlastingly talking about their own short-comings, their sinfulness; they are forever circling round themselves, all that they are that they would not be, all that they are not that they would be. Their deliverance from Satan is that they should have a fresh apprehension of the absolute satisfaction of the Father in His Son on their behalf, and that they find their standing before the Father in acceptance. That is the way of deliverance, the way of the Adversary’s casting out. This is the way of overcoming him as the Accuser. Yes, the ground of the Blood is sufficient for this full-orbed, many-sided, all-round victory. “They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb,” and the first and supreme factor in the virtue of that Blood in all these directions, is its untainted sinlessness, the nature of the Lord Jesus. There has never been another who was such.

Oh, I am so glad that it was God that came in Christ. We receive by faith the virtue of that precious Blood; that is, the perfection of the Lord Jesus can be put to our account. That is grace – the wonder of the Gospel. If we were to begin to analyze ourselves and take stock of ourselves, that would be a terrible business, a wretched business, and it would be endless. Think of it, beloved, with all that we know of ourselves, all that God knows about us “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart. I try the reins…”

I am not saying that any of us ever becomes sinlessly perfect in ourselves here, but those perfections of the Lord Jesus are put to our account before God to satisfy His requirements, to provide the ground where Satan no longer has authority. The defeat of Satan and the victory of the saints is not by their effort, their straining, their groaning, nor by anything they can do; it is the measure of their faith’s appropriation of the absolute perfection of Christ for them as a living, working thing of God on their behalf. It is a great thing to be in Christ Jesus.

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May 10

10 MAY – “One Thing I Do” – Not “One Thing I Hope To Do”!

The Lord is eventually triumphant in His Church. Paul’s journey to Rome represents that truth. He writes, “And so we came to Rome” (Acts 28:14). How much is packed into that little word “so”! It was something given into his heart by the Lord, something around which all kinds of expectations and imaginations were woven, all of which were entirely disappointed, undone, brought to disintegration and changed; but the purpose of God stood. That which God had put into the heart went through and was found at last to be not of man but of God.

I wonder what Paul felt like as he entered Rome; remembering when long ago the thing came into his heart, and all his visions and expectations and hope, and all his thoughts of going beyond Rome to Spain and now this is how things have worked out! And so it is with us: not as we thought, not as we expected and planned, but we are here! That is the thing that matters; we are here!

We can transfer that to the large issue of the course of the child of God as well as of the Church. How many times have we looked at the storm, looked at situations, looked at our own faults and mistakes, at what the enemy has called our blunders, and have said, ‘Oh, it is hopeless, we shall never get there!’ And yet despite all that has happened, we are still going on, even though we cannot yet say that we have arrived. It will be like that if our hearts are as knit to the Lord and His eternal purpose as was that of this dear man Paul. When we get to heaven, we shall say, ‘And so we came to heaven! Here we are!’ We shall look at one another and say, ‘Well, brother, you did not think you were going to be here, but here you are!’ Believe me, that is God’s sovereign part; and if any responsibility on our part comes in at all, it is that we should be of the spirit of this man who said, “One thing I do” (Phil. 3:13) not, ‘I hope to do’, or, ‘I am going to do when my present phase of life is passed, when my college years are finished’; not ‘tomorrow’, not ‘presently’, not ‘when I am trained’. No, “One thing I do”; I am doing it now. If we are like that, we can count on this sovereignty of God, which may upset our plans and change our expectations; but we shall be there, and heaven will triumph in getting us there.

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May 9

9 MAY – God Rules the Unseen and Overrules the Seen

The Church does not proceed, even toward Divinely-fixed and appointed ends, by a protected course. Even with the Lord’s end in view, we do not go by a way that is completely immune either from our weaknesses or from difficulties and adversities, and things which seem to upset completely all our plans. Our whole course will always be that of Divine overruling, not only ruling as in the unseen, but overruling in the seen. You must ever remember that those two things go hand in hand. God is ruling in the unseen; He is overruling in the seen. In the course there will always be plenty of room for an argument as to misadventure, calamity, defeat, tragedy, giving rise to regret, doubt and even condemnation. If we are so disposed, we can say, ‘Oh, this is a calamity, this is defeat! This is due to my mistake, and everything is wrecked!’

Had Paul been of another kind, like some of us, he would have said, ‘I wish I had not appealed to Caesar (Acts 26:32)! See what trouble I have got myself into (shipwreck)! I am going to the bottom of the sea, and all my work is finished!’ There is always room for that if we are so disposed, and thus to get under condemnation because we have made mistakes. The Lord has never so acted with His people that there was no room for anything like that. If we want to doubt, we shall have plenty of occasion for doubting. If we want to speak of tragedy, we shall have plenty of tragic experience. If we are disposed to get under condemnation, there will be plenty to take on.

The way to God’s end is not a way free from these elements or from the possibility of so interpreting things. It will be that, in all and through all, God overrules, and at last we shall be able to exclaim, as Paul did, “and so we came to Rome” (Acts 28:14); the end reached through so much. What is the end in view? It is not just to journey to see this temporal Rome. The end which looms up out of that visit is the great calling and destiny of the Church in union with Christ who in all things has the pre-eminence. That is the sum of the letters to the Ephesians, Colossians and Philippians – the preeminence of Christ, and the Church united with Him therein. That is the end of the journey; that is what is in view beyond.

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May 8

8 MAY – The Break Up of All That Is In Man

The apostle Paul and his companions who can be said to represent the church went by ship, and that to my mind represents all such manmade means employed by God for the reaching of His ends, to Rome.

On the way while on the one side there seemed to be so much that was working in opposition and reverse and contradiction; on the other side it was a case of the stripping off of all the works of men. The ship did go to pieces, the man-made thing employed by the sovereignty of God to reach His ends. It was thrown away when His ends were in the way of realization.

There are a lot of things made by men, and godly men at that, which the Lord makes use of, but they will go, e.g. places of meeting, institutions, societies, organizations: they are made by men, they are useful, they help toward God’s end, but like the ship, they are but means to the end. You must not put all your faith in the ship; you must not ascribe final values to the place, the means, the instrument. We shall find that the Lord has not committed Himself to keep the means intact, to hold the instrument for eternity.

It is His Church that He is after, which He is preserving, which is to come out alive; and on the way, the ‘things’ will have to go, they will have to be broken up, they cannot meet the full impact of the forces of evil in this terrific storm. The forces of evil are too much for anything made by man, but they are not the equal of what God has made: His Church will come out all right.

Be careful that you do not put too much upon God’s means, God’s instrument, the ship. Keep your eye on God’s real object. The framework of things may break up, but God’s spiritual values will be eternally preserved. And let us not worry too much if God sees the time has come for the stripping off of things. They may have served a very good purpose and our hearts may be very much linked with them, with that place or that instrumentality; but if the Lord begins to break it up and take it from us, do not think everything of value is going. No, it is the spiritual values upon which our hearts must be set.

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May 7

7 MAY – Are You a Sign Spoken Against?

The presence of the Lord Jesus brings in the heavenly standard, the heavenly laws, the heavenly system, and it is not easy for anyone unless you are on the side of heaven. Jesus was the sign which was spoken against. They could not get Him to conform to the customary thing, because He was not going to be a party to their falsehood, their hypocrisy, their formality, to their unspiritual condition which lay back of their outward ritual; and therefore He was a provocation; and He is always like that. He will find out whether we are governed more by policy than by principle, whether temporal interests concern us more than eternal considerations.

When He said to His brethren after being urged by them to go up to the feast, “Go ye up unto the feast: I go not up unto this feast.” “But when his brethren were gone up unto the feast, then went he also up, not publicly, but as it were in secret” (John 7:8-10). It looks a little difficult, does it not? – as though He is involved in some duplicity. But what does it mean? It was the feast of tabernacles and it celebrated the consummation of the emancipation from Egypt and the entrance into the kingdom of God, the deliverance from this present evil world and translation into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love. That kingdom was embodied in Christ Himself, not in Jerusalem, nor now in any earthly celebrations of historic feasts. He is the kingdom of God; therefore He does not make it a matter of mere occasional celebration in an external way like that. The celebration was empty, false. Thus in no way would He allow it to be thought that He was in that. He was apart from it, and if He did go up “not publicly but as it were in secret” it was because He went to try to get people out of the false representation of heavenly things, to bring them to Himself as the embodiment of the heavenly thought of God about the feast of tabernacles.

He was a provocation because in His own behavior He signified something of another, a heavenly, order. It is ever so. Where the Lord’s children are living by heavenly principles, what provocation it arouses, what speaking against! You cannot be a heavenly child of God and not be spoken against. Do not try to escape being spoken against. You signify something, and everything of this world is against that something.

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May 6

6 MAY – The Challenge of His Presence

We should realize that many times when we are being provoked, upset, annoyed, and do not know why, the reason is that the Spirit of Jesus Christ is at work upon us because we are out of harmony with our Lord. In such a case we can take one of two attitudes: either get right, or go from bad to worse and become more and more bitter, even against the Lord.

Jesus is a sign spoken against; it implies something, and the effect of this implication is to provoke. Should you begin to see what Jesus means, there will be some reaction; and if you are not prepared to accept the implication of Jesus Christ you will be strongly provoked. You will not remain neutral, you will begin to fight. That is where Saul of Tarsus was. Deeper down than all else, he was fighting against the Lord, kicking against the goad. That was the innermost meaning of it. He was provoked by the significance of Jesus, the significance of Christ Himself. In the person of Christ you have a different kind of man, no mere earthly man, but a heavenly Man. Here is a Man embodying in His own person a holy, heavenly standard, the standard of heaven, and men are being measured and weighed by heavenly standards in the presence of the Lord Jesus, not only by what He says, and the judgments that He verbally passes, but by His presence. They are discovering that here is a standard that finds out their smallness, their lack, and their difference. You know that is very true.

When a true child of God, indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, goes into a business house to work or into some ungodly home, it often happens that, without their saying anything about their being a Christian, a strain begins to be felt, and people begin to be nasty or pass remarks. Something in the very atmosphere is stirred up and provoked by the presence of Christ in the believer. Even a true, humble, loving child of God finds that something is provoked, and he or she becomes a marked person and known to be different. People begin to feel uncomfortable. If that is true of some simple child of God, how much more true it must have been of the very Son of God Himself. His presence was the standard measure of heaven. Men could not measure up to it, and they felt all wrong and uncomfortable in His presence. He was a sign. There was a significance about Him, about His very presence, which was spoken against: it provoked.

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May 5

5 MAY – God’s End-Time Work – Everything Essentially Spiritual

What is the service of God at an end-time? The particular work of God at an end-time is, to begin with, the constituting of a new and spiritually inclusive dispensation, a new age of an essentially and wholly spiritual kind. In Heb. 12:27 we have, “And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain.” That word ‘removing’ really means the transferring or the transposing on to another and different basis. The fact that that comes at the end of the letter to the Hebrews is significant, for that letter is just full of that earthly system of Judaism with all its forms, its ritual, its make-up and constitution. All that is earthly, even in relation to God, is going to be removed, and everything is going to be transferred to another basis – a spiritual, a heavenly basis; and when things begin to happen on the ground of an end-time, that is the character of what is taking place.

The earthly is now going to be forced to give way to the heavenly, the temporal to the spiritual, the outward to the inward. Then it will be proved just how much we have that can be transferred, for there are many things that are not going to be transferred. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15:50). That signifies and implies that there is a whole order of creation which is not going to constitute that eternal order; it is to pass away. Everything is going to be transferred to another basis, and this kind of thing intensifies at an end-time.

What God will see to, by sheer force of conditions, is that anything that is only temporal will go and that which is spiritual alone will remain. There must therefore be intensifying processes to bring out the spiritual. Is not that where we are? The Lord seems to be concentrating upon bringing out spiritual values, making spiritual men and women, and if I am not mistaken, we are going to see, and are already seeing, the removal of so much, the external things, upon which Christians have been relying as though these things constituted their Christian life. We are going to be forced back to the place where the one question that faces us is, After all, what have I got of the Lord Himself? Not, What can I do; where can I go? but, What have I got? Now is the test. What have I got in my hands?

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