BEHOLDING THE GLORY AND PROSPERING
[p. 180] BEHOLDING THE GLORY AND PROSPERING
Isaiah 53: 10, 11; Ephesians 5: 1, 2
In reading the writings of those who speak of Christ, it is well to weigh the history of the speakers; indeed, on general principles it is well to take account of the history and associations of any one who speaks of Christ. No one can rightly speak of Him who has not seen His glory; I refer to the prophet Isaiah. The apostle John, in chapter 12 of his gospel, cites from this prophet. The chapter in John is that which closes the Lord’s public relations with Israel. John quotes from chapter 6 and also from chapter 53 (see John 12: 38 - 41), and having quoted from the prophet, he establishes the prophet’s authority to speak, in that he says, “These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him”. Esaias saw His glory. You can understand what these words would mean from the lips of John, for John had seen His glory; he tells us so, “And we beheld his glory”.
One cannot but dwell upon John’s reference to and estimate of Christ with the most profound pleasure; he speaks so truly, so accurately, and with such interest of the One he loved. He says, when he speaks of the glory, “We have contemplated his glory, the glory as of an only-begotten with a father”.
Think of that! A man of like passions with ourselves can say, “We have contemplated his glory, the glory as of an only-begotten with a father”; and then he adds, “full of grace and truth”; full of grace and truth. What perfect blending, grace and truth! That was what marked His Person in the eyes of John as he saw His glory, He was full of grace and truth. You can understand what these words, this comment of Isaiah’s, would imply in the ears of John the apostle; how he would value such a record. He says, “These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him”.
Isaiah says in chapter 6, “I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up”. Do not think that this is beyond you. It is not beyond you, for it is the privilege of a Christian, to have seen the Lord upon His throne, high and lifted up. This is the light conveyed to you in the gospel. The gospel commences with the Man, whom Isaiah portrays in this chapter as sitting upon the throne. How wonderfully that throne is adorned! What an influence issues from the throne with Him upon it! We are all more or less accustomed to the thrones of the world, to the governments of the different nations of the world; is there any one sitting upon a throne today who adorns it? The throne is right, for it is the form of government that God establishes, but which of them today is adorned? Ponder the influence of the thrones of the world. From whence does the river of the water of life spoken of in Revelation 22, which descends “clear as crystal”, proceed?
Whence did it flow? Out of the throne of God and of the Lamb; that influence is as clear as crystal. No darkness came from behind that throne; there are no selfish workings or motives behind it, all is bright as crystal, and the river is said to be a pure river, a river of the water of life, it is life-giving.
Now Isaiah saw that in principle; he saw the Lord sitting upon His throne, high and lifted up, “and his train filled the temple”. The throne was filled and adorned by that Man, and the temple too. The throne and the temple go together. Have you seen that glory? As I said, it is not beyond you. If you have not seen it in the principle of it, you are hardly a Christian; but as a true believer in Christ, you have recognised Him on that throne, and you submit to Him unreservedly. You have seen His glory.
Now, when you come to Isaiah 53, you have [p. 182] another view of Christ, but not less glorious. When John alluded to Isaiah as seeing these things, “when he saw his glory, and spake of him”, he did not simply refer to chapter 6, he referred also to chapter 53, which depicts the suffering Man here. There He is the suffering Man down here. Is it less glorious than that which chapter 6 relates? No, it is His moral glory, it is His glory as Man. “Now”, says the Lord, “is the Son of man glorified”. The Son of man is glorified in carrying out the will of God; that is the peculiar glory of the Son of man. The Lord said that when Judas had gone out. What a contrast between the Lord and Judas! The Lord had loved Judas, and felt his defection. I need not cite the psalms that speak of this. The Lord had genuine affection for that man, and He felt his betrayal; but God considered for Christ. There were the twelve, but the number was broken; out of twelve only eleven were left. He lost a man who was a thief, but He got another who was a thief.
Did not Christ get that thief on the cross? God gave Him that thief, not as a thief truly, but as a genuine admirer of that glory. He saw the glory, and he was a thief no longer. If you see the glory of Christ, you will never be a thief, you will not rob God even: you owe something to Him. “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth”. Is not that man for Christ? That man has seen the glory, and he is reflecting the glory. That man who labours with his hands is no longer a thief; he is labouring with his hands the thing that is good. He is a giver; that is glory. Judas’ place was filled in the heart of Christ by the thief on the cross. Suppose that thief were to have come down from the cross and got the Holy Spirit, what would he have been here? He would have been a reflector of the glory he had seen.
[p. 183] He saw the Lord upon the cross literally, but he says, the cross is no place for the Lord, the throne belongs to Him, and the thief in the vision of his soul saw that.
Isaiah 53 is really the counterpart of chapter 6. It is Man down here carrying out the will of God; it is the Man of Luke’s gospel. Would that the Lord would give us a view of that glory! It is the glory of the Man who puts every other man out of your mind, out of your vision. It is the glory of the King that puts all other kings out of your mind; they have no glory in this respect. Chapter 6 puts the political world out of your mind, eclipses it by the surpassingness of this glory. Chapter 53 puts every other man out of your sight. There is no other man than this One to speak of. “Of whom”, says the eunuch to Philip, “speaketh the prophet this of himself, or of some other man?” When the prophet spoke of himself it was, “Woe is me”; but he spoke of Another; he spoke of One whose glory he saw — Jesus. That was what Philip told the eunuch. How one would love to have listened to that sermon! “He began at the same scripture and preached unto him”. Whom did he preach?
Not the Messiah, he preached Jesus, the Man. I am not belittling the other; he preached the Messiah to the Samaritans, the anointed Man; but to the eunuch he preached Jesus.
Young people are liable to be greatly damaged by men. There is nothing, in a sense, that we are more prone to than hero worship; certain men acquire huge proportions in our minds, but they are not entitled to it. Sometimes we see men as trees walking: we know what trees are, tall and conspicuous. We want to be instructed in the simple elements of the gospel, I mean Philip’s gospel. Philip is the only man in Scripture called an evangelist. I do not say there were not others, because there were. Paul tells us, that “he gave ... some, evangelists”;
[p. 184] but Philip is specifically called one, and he well deserved the title; he preached according to the requirements of his congregation; he preached the Messiah to the Samaritans in order to set aside their pretensions, but when we come to the eunuch, what he needed was a Man for his affections. That is what we all need, we need to know Christ as an Object for our affections. The apostle says in Romans 7 “that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God”. You may depend upon it that the true way of deliverance from the influence of man, or men, is in having Christ clearly and distinctly before your soul in all His beauty, and hence Philip’s gospel is, he “began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus”. I have no doubt Philip saw more of the glory than Isaiah did; Isaiah had seen it, but Philip had the Holy Spirit. Isaiah did not have the Holy Spirit as indwelling; Philip did, and hence he had a fuller view of Christ’s glory. What was said of the deacons in Acts 6 is that they were “men ... full of the Holy Spirit”. Philip was one of these; he was full of the Holy Spirit and, being so, he saw the glory. The Holy Spirit, filling a man, will occupy him with Christ, He never occupies us with ourselves. Look at Stephen; there was the perfect reflection of Christ in a man full of the Holy Spirit; it was not less so in Philip in another way. In his evangelical service he was full of the Holy Spirit, and as full of the Holy Spirit he saw the glory. And how wonderfully he could speak of that Man — Jesus. I have dwelt on these things in order that you might have clearly before your souls what the apostle John had in his mind when he said, “These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him”.
What I want now to say a word about specially is this, that in the hand of this Man the pleasure of [p. 185] Jehovah prospers. That is what I want to encourage you with, and you can see it is a wonderful thought, when you consider what the pleasure of God is. It was as if the Lord Jesus said to the Father, What is your pleasure? “Lo, I come to do thy will”. As become Man, He was here for that will. He was here for the carrying into effect of the divine pleasure, so the prophet says, “when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand”. That is what I want to dwell upon. I want to engage you with this Man, undertaking to carry out the divine pleasure. His soul has been made an offering for sin; remember that His soul was in it. I speak reverently of the Lord; all the inner feelings, all the inner motives of the blessed Lord were in it; but He saw a seed. I think that must have been a wonderful thing to Christ; there were those who were like Himself, there was a seed. He said He had laboured in vain; He had spent His strength for nought and in vain; nothing had been effected for Israel, but there was a seed. Let us ponder that; the Lord Jesus saw it, He saw the seed. There is to be a seed like the Lord, like Christ. “He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days”. He is the Man who lives; He has title to live. He had title to live before His death, but then there was the glory of the Son of man. “Now”, He says, “is the Son of man glorified”. There was the complete carrying out of the will of God, and He says, “God is glorified in him”, and “if God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him”. What is all that for? It was God showing His delight in the perfection of the work of His Son, viewed as Man here; He glorified Him immediately; that is to say, the Son of man has not to wait for the public display, when all creation shall be put under Him, He is glorified [p. 186] immediately. The Father did that, the Father glorified Him at once, and I have no doubt but that the seed which the Lord Jesus saw was part of that glory.
But then His days are prolonged. “He shall prolong his days”. Is He not worthy to live? Is He not entitled to live? Is it not for God’s satisfaction and for our blessing that He should live? “He shall prolong his days”. In Psalm 21 we read, that He asked life of God, and God gave Him length of days for ever and ever. The soul that knows Jesus delights in that, “length of days for ever and ever”.
In His hand the pleasure of the Lord is to prosper. I ask you, what is it that is prospering with you? There is only one thing that the Lord Jesus has undertaken to cause to prosper, and that is the pleasure of God. It is a searching thing as to whether there is something before me which is for my pleasure that is not according to the pleasure of God; if so, it will not prosper, you will have no help from Christ in it. You may not prosper temporally, for that may not be God’s pleasure for you, John desired for Gaius that he might prosper as his soul prospered, but if your prosperity exceeds the prosperity of your soul, the Lord is not in it. He has undertaken to carry out that which is for God’s pleasure, and it is that which prospers in His hand. It is wonderful how the touch of Christ causes things to prosper. You may be in a small meeting, isolated and with little to help: turn to the Lord. He will cause you to prosper, but how? For the pleasure of God. The pleasure of God prospers in His hand. What a wonderful thing it is to be in His hand! You may have observed Christians making headway spiritually and have rejoiced in it; what is the secret of it? They are in the Lord’s hand, that is the secret of it. The pleasure of Jehovah prospers in His hand. Do not take yourself out of His hand. He may bring [p. 187] you through deep waters, but He will be with you in them. It is worth while going through them if He is with you in them. They are the waters of affliction, but remember the waters of affliction shall be turned into waters of blessing. Ezekiel’s river was a marvellous river; it is a river that cannot be passed through. Such is the extent of the blessing the Lord leads us into. He may have to lead us through the waters of affliction, but if He does, He is with us in them, and we would not be without them, if we have Christ with us in them.
At the waters of Marah the wood was thrown in that was Christ. If He underwent the judgment of God in the sea we must have Marah, and we would not be without it. It is our privilege to taste that bitter water, similar to, that in the Red Sea, but He is with us in it and the waters, instead of being brackish, become sweet. They are sweetened by His company and our prosperity is in them. “The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand”. One loves to see a Christian prospering. The Lord is set for our prosperity, our soul prosperity, because that is for the pleasure of God. He is going to bring in a world for the pleasure of God. “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hand”. The kingdoms of this world are to become His; He is to rule over them: What for? For the pleasure of God. It is for the pleasure of God that there should be a righteous rule here, and that men should live under it, and be maintained on this earth in life. The Lord Jesus will do that for the pleasure of God. The angels understood it; they said, “Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good pleasure in men”; not man, but in men, here living for the pleasure of God. “The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand”.
Now before that time of public peace arrives there has been here a tender plant for God in an adverse [p. 188] soil. The Lord was that. He grew up here, deriving nothing from the soil. There was nothing to derive from it; it was a dry world, but He flourished; He was the green tree. What green is to the eye, Christ was for God’s eye, the one green spot for the eye of the Father down here. The Lord says this green is to be extended. “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples”. There is to be here a generation or a seed after the kind of that Man, which is to be for God’s pleasure; the green is to be here; God’s eye is not withdrawn.
In John 12: 39, 40, the world is left, and there is judicial blinding. Judgment is there, and the prince of this world is to be cast out. The Lord withdraws from it; He withdraws into a circle, that was all green for God. Judas was there for a moment, but his presence marred it. There was no green in Judas; there was nothing for God’s pleasure in him; but he went out, and the green remained. Look at that circle after they received the Spirit. What a reflection of Christ! The Lord provided for it. He Him self had been for the pleasure of God. God delighted in a mind like that. “Let this mind be in you”, says Paul, “which was also in Christ Jesus”. That is what God delights in in men. What kind of mind was Christ’s? It was a descending mind, a mind that went down for the good of others. You see what I have done, He says to His own in John 13. Now, this is to be seen in you all. “If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet”. Every one of us is taken in there. If God sees you stooping down to wash that brother’s feet, you are for the pleasure of God. If there is one thing I covet, it is that I might have the consciousness of moving about for the pleasure of God in this world of lawlessness. I think every Christian should desire it. Thus there is a green spot [p. 189] for God. Who does that? Those who are in Christ’s hand. John 13 is the hand of Christ; the pleasure of the Lord is prospering in it: and what is the pleasure of the Lord? That the saints are to love one another. What kind of love? The kind of love Christ showed them. That is the new commandment.
For John, everything begins with Christ; hence he indicates the kind of love that is to be amongst the Lord’s people; “As I have loved you”, and as that kind of love grows amongst us, the pleasure of the Lord is prospering in His hands, and so it will go on until the New Jerusalem appears. The New Jerusalem is the full result of the pleasure of the Lord having prospered in the hands of the Lord Jesus. What a prospect! There will be full measure in it; it comes up to the standard.
On the mount Moses received the pattern of the tabernacle. There was only one pattern; it does not say patterns. Christ is the pattern of everything for God’s pleasure. The heavenly city is the holy city, the New Jerusalem, and it is according to the pattern; it answers to the measure, and hence it is for the pleasure of God, and as for the pleasure of God, it has the glory of God. It is not simply that it is glorified, but it has the glory; it comes down from heaven with it. What a wonderful thing that is, and that is to be the bride of the Lamb; the suffering Man here has a suitable companion in the bride, who herself has suffered in measure as He did.
I touch on the passage in Ephesians 5: 1, 2, because it shows us the idea of the way of life; “walk in love”, not simply when you are in the meeting; it is a question of walking in it. A person who walks in love has his foot dipped in oil; he has a peculiar kind of walk. “Looking upon Jesus as he walked”. That is the pattern; that is the walk.
“Walk in love”. “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also [p. 190] hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour”. There is the idea; He was for God’s pleasure, and as we walk in these footsteps we are for God’s pleasure, and no greater privilege can be ours. It is given to us to be here in this world, where Christ has been, where the apostles have been, for God’s pleasure. It is a responsibility too, so do not put it away from you. It has been seen in men of like passions with ourselves. We have the Spirit of God; we have the example of Christ, the example of the apostles. “Mark them which walk”, says the apostle, “so as ye have us for an ensample”. Remember the apostles, remember Paul; in them we see the reflection of the walk and ways of the Lord Jesus Christ.
May He give us in these days to be in His hand, and to remain in His hand; for as we remain there the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in us. His work shall be promoted in us, and thus we shall be for His pleasure here.