HEAVENLY THINGS
[p. 93] HEAVENLY THINGS
We get in John 3, the distinction between the earthly and the heavenly things. Every believer has tasted of the earthly thing, but the question is whether each has enjoyed the heavenly things. The earthly thing is conversion; but there is more than that. The Old Testament: saints were born again: but the heavenly things had not come. “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven”. (John 3:13) We never had heaven on earth till Christ came; there were good men but not heavenly men. Moses and Joshua were types; Abraham got into Canaan but he saw a famine and left it. Suppose you are converted; well, what you want to see is that there was a heavenly Man on earth, and if I can get the life of that Man I am all right. But they never possessed and never could enjoy the heavenly life till Christ came. Go to a nest and see the young birds in it without their feathers — perhaps you could not tell what sort of birds they were. But come after a while, and you say they are gold finches; they had life before, but not that character of life. So the apostle says, “the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God”. (Galatians 2:20) We are not only converted, but we have another life and in another Man — “The Second man”.
We have an excellent government: it is a great thing; and we get good laws through it. Are you in the government? No, you say, but we have a great many good things through it. That is the way people speak of Christ; they have got a great good through Him. But there is another step — In Christ; that is eternal life; this the heavenly thing. The soul will [p. 94] never get clear, till it sees there are two men — Christ and Adam.
“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up”. (John 3:14) He says I have been to that side of death and you cannot get lower than death, — “that. Whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life”. (John 3:16) Now for the wings: you are brought into “the power of an endless life”. It is not what people call final perseverance; eternal life is a new kind of life altogether. David says, “Oh that I had wings”. The believer does not say this; he has them. But many believers never seem to use them. In the Old Testament they had not come to that kind of life, therefore, they say, “Oh that I had wings”. (Psalm 55:6) Every believer now has “eternal life”, though all do not know it. They had the same life then but not expanded.
There are three things a true bird can do — feed, sing, and fly; but no bird in the nest can do one or the other. It cannot feed, sing or fly. I do not believe any bird can sing till it can fly; It can chirp, but not sing: Until they get full deliverance people cannot sing; they may try, but it is premature. Sometimes when people sing they are not up to it. “As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather ... so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart”. (Proverbs 25:20) That is why people like the psalms best, because it is their match just as they read biographies and say ‘Oh, that was a good man, but he had his doubts’. A pity he told them then! That is not flying! This life is not a transformation of the old life, but a new thing, a capacity to enjoy God, and the more you use it, the more you can use it. I had the life of Adam and was under judgment because of that life; but Christ was judged for us; brings that life to an end, and redeems us in order that He may give us His life. The Son of man was lifted up to give eternal life. Adam. Even in his innocent days, did not know what it was to [p. 95] enjoy God as a Christian does; he never could say, ‘Abba, Father’, so we see that every believer is immensely above Adam in innocence. The Adam-life may go to pieces, may be delivered even to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. “The spirit shall return unto God who gave it”, (Ecclesiastes 12:7) God breathed into Adam the breath of life. His body died, but his soul left it. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die”. (Ezekiel 18:4) What is it, the soul? No such thing? It means the life, the judgment is upon the body. Now the body is the Lord’s. It is either under the power of judgment, or redeemed by Christ; the garden where all the weeds of Satan grow, or the garden where all the flowers of Christ grow and scent the air.
In John 4:14 we get an entirely new thing for the believer: “never thirst”. The believer ought to be able to say, I am in possession of something. It is not merely that I believe something; but I have gotten something, a thing I never had at all before, a power that enables me never to want anything. It is like a lake where the river runs through it, or the gulf stream. They say this country would be bleak and barren but for it, for it brings fertility and warmth. I compare it to a man living in a cottage by the sea-shore, easily knocked to pieces by the wind. That is the old thing; the other is a fine mansion where there is everything. Which do you live in? Very often in the cottage, and complaining heavily. A pity you do not go to the mansion: there is no want there. Suppose you see a nice book, or a beautiful dress, and you think within yourself, ‘Oh, I would like that;’ but ask the Spirit of God ‘Would You like it?’ ‘No!’ ‘Then I will do without it’.
I go to visit a friend staying at the sea-side; I say to him, ‘You put up with very small accommodation here’. ‘Oh’, he says, ‘I have a fine house in the country’ “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst”. (John 4:14) This poor woman had tried it often enough. She had had five husbands, but she had found nothing. But He says, I have something that will make you perfectly happy — not once a week, or once a day, or once an hour, but always. “As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing”. (2 Corinthians 6:10) I think you cannot go to any who will not tell you of their trials. ‘But have you no mercies?’ ‘Oh, yes’, they say, but back they go to temporal things. I remember talking to a poor woman, trying to educate her in the twenty-third psalm — “The Lord is my shepherd”. ‘Oh, that’s beautiful’. “I shall not want”. Then I went on; “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures”. (Psalm 23:1 - 2) Oh, she did not want that; she was contented with the first, that was enough for her. If a man brings me into his parlour, I am not afraid of being denied the benefit of his kitchen. When God brings me up to the top, there is no fear for the rest.
“But the water that I shall give him shall be in him”. (John 4:14) A person says, Have we never a temptation? Plenty in the cottage; I have none in the mansion for I cannot get to the end of it as I cannot get to the end of the green pastures. I cannot take it all in. If I were to say to a boy. There is a room full of apples, go and take them, and I meet him half-an-hour after, and I say. Did you take them all? I could not: ‘I .look a dozen’. Well, he cannot say there was not plenty. There is a great deal more than I can take in: ‘never thirst!’ I heard a person say. That could not apply to this world. Do you think Christ wanted anything? You say He wanted food; He did: but then He retired out of the temporal thing. There is no such thing as hunger or pain with the Spirit of God. You can be made superior to these things, (see Matthew 4: 2. Also Moses and Elijah.)
A person says, I am not up to it. But I ask; Are [p. 97] you looking for it? We have seen a child jump up on the table and say, I would like to be as tall as my father. I would like to be as Christ. It is not a question of experience, you get that when you look down here and see there’s a slate off, a pane out; that is the cottage, but I have everything in the mansion. This is the contrast to the second chapter, where the wine was out. The Lord says, However happy you are you will have to come to Me in the long run; and He says I will give you something better than wine that will never run out — “a well of water springing up into everlasting life”. (John 4:14) Things down here -worldly things — cannot satisfy. As one has said, -’Man into whom God has breathed the breath of life, cannot be satisfied short of God’.
A man in the world, a natural man, if he has not got ambition is not worth anything. See a young man trying to better his condition, quite right. But, thank God, I don’t want now to better my condition for I cannot be better. I cannot improve myself, for I cannot thirst, but I can enjoy it more — I have never got over half the mansion. I have never got to enjoy all that Christ is — never got Christ’s thoughts or circumstances fully. What a wonderful thing to be walking about with Christ’s thoughts! The very troubles in the cottage ought to drive me to the mansion. It is not that I am unnatural: there are trying circumstances in the cottage; the cottage is want, trial, hunger; but if I look to the provision of the Spirit of God I will not be hungry. Look at Stephen, as they knocked him to pieces, the stones never made him swerve. I believe he fulfilled that word “Greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father”. (John 14:12) Take this life away, there is a new current in me, and that current will take me away to Christ, and leave this old thing behind. Now, it is not deliverance from the trial, but superiority to it which Christ gives us. The old way [p. 98] was to put people in the furnace and they were not burnt; they were put into the lions’ den and they never touched them; but now they go into the furnace and are burnt to a cinder, the lions eat them up, and they never give in; for it is not power for them now, but power in them. Romans is power for us. I come to a fence and I say I would like to have a gap here. The Lord says, if I were for you I would make one, but I am in you and you must go over the fence: that is power in you, and you are able to get over the fence. That power is the Holy Spirit who dwells in you. When sorrow, or trial, or weakness comes, the thing is to look for grace to be above it. Look at Paul and Silas in the prison: God was in them and they were superior to circumstances, and they were singing away there as if at their own fireside, and the prisoners heard them. Peter was sleeping in his prison. If trial is impending, you had better be quiet.
A man once said to me, I thought God was to take us out of our trials; but this is a new era now, and it is very important we should understand it. The moment Christ was rejected He introduced a new thing: to walk on the water He left the ship that was made for the water (that God had made for the water) and walked above the water. He has gone to heaven above it all and I have to walk above it all in Him.
John 20: 19 - 21, “Peace be unto you”. None of the Old Testament saints had peace. How could they? the battle was not fought. They might be expecting it, verse 22, “He breathed on them”. Did they get the Holy Spirit then? I believe it was confirmed when the Holy Spirit came, but they had the sense of it: it was the intelligence of it. He connects life with the Holy Spirit, chapter 4: 14. Water rises to its level.
Adam’s life was in the blood; Christ’s life was in the Holy Spirit. It is “Christ liveth in me” but I am sustained in the enjoyment of it by the Holy Spirit.
Romans 7 supposes life, but there is not the power of the Spirit of God. Life is not power; the divine nature is not power. There must be the “new bottles” and the “new wine” in the “new bottles”. We don’t get the new wine till the bottle is ready. I may have the Spirit in me, but not in power unless I am walking in communion with Christ. It is like a husband saying to his wife. ‘I will give you what you want, but you must come to me for every article’. It is not a question of union but of communion; you must come to me for everything, that I may have the pleasure of your coming to me for everything. If I lost this, what must I do? Turn back and see the thing by which you lost it. Sometimes it is high up, for it is only when you begin to act that you find you have lost ground, therefore it is by our acts we shall be judged. Where did you lose it? I began to talk to that man about politics, but that was ten hours ago; but that is where you lost ground. It is like a child who will have its own way, and leaves its father and gets into the mud. He does not cease to be your child, but you leave him to flounder in the mud until he calls out, ‘I am in the mud’. Then you go and give him a hand; but he must come out of the mud.