THE TESTIMONY
[p. 436] THE TESTIMONY
2 Kings 2: 9 - 13; John 15: 26; Ephesians 4: 13
I would first remind you how far I have presented to you the new order, or the creation of God; for everything of God will last for ever.
The first lecture was man’s new relation with God: driven out of the garden of Eden, but now compelled to come into the Father’s house, and find that the joys there are his portion here on earth.
The second was our new position upon the earth. Outside the Jewish fold and all the Mosaic economy, under the hand of the Shepherd Himself, and “my Father’s hand”, and so kept on the earth.
The third was the new ministry; John 13, John 14.
The fourth was the new power; the Holy Spirit sent by the Father, and sent by the glorified Christ from the Father.
The fifth was the new centre, or the metropolis, as it has been called; that Christ is in heaven at the right hand of God, from whom, and in accordance with whom, everything comes - both the gospel and the church.
I desire to present to you now the new testimony. There always was a testimony, and witnesses, but there is a present one, and the more we enter into it, the more our hearts delight in it - it is to be descriptive of an exalted Christ here in the place of His humiliation. Nothing could be more attractive to a loving heart than to be descriptive of Him where He was rejected. You are united to Him in heaven; for though union had not been revealed to Stephen, yet he was led by the Holy Spirit up to the place where Christ is: Stephen, by the Holy Spirit, was conducted up to heaven. And this is true of every believer, though not in the same ample way; with Stephen it [p. 437] was an inauguration, the opening of a new line, the Spirit’s line, conducting to the spot where Christ is the new centre, and from Him there, everything springs. The professing church made Rome the centre, the metropolis, and we are more or less leavened by it, because we are looking continually for aid from man or the world. I say, No; it all comes down from heaven, both the gospel and the church. True there was a gospel before, but not of the same fulness. Hence Paul says, “I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ”.
If we are leavened by our association with christendom, we cannot find our true centre. But Stephen, having seen Jesus and the glory of God, encounters the greatest opposition when he declares that he sees the Son of man standing at the right hand of God - exalted to the highest place in heaven. We cannot account for the terrible opposition and objection to this declaration if we do not know our own hearts. Who objected to it? The religious man on earth, because it ignored that man altogether, and all that order of things; while to the true heart, to Stephen, it was a delight to see Christ exalted. And to be a witness of it here is now the testimony. Stephen turns round and says, “I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God”. Now all the council, the chiefs of the people under the law, there assembled, instead of being enraptured with such tidings, “stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, and cast him out of the city” (their metropolis), “and stoned him”.
I ask you, beloved friends, to weigh it, because I believe there is nothing so offensive to the religious man - I dread him most - as to insist that a Man is now at the right hand of God, to insist on the heavenly Man; because then every attempt to improve the man here, and all that could give credit to him, is over. That is all over, and that is set forth here.
[p. 438] Stephen in a moment accepted it, and gave testimony to it.
I think it is very simple - that I am responsible to be descriptive of the Lord Jesus Christ as the exalted Man, in the scene where He was rejected. I read 2 Kings 2: 9, to furnish an example of this testimony. Elijah is going away, and he says to Elisha, What shall I do for you? And Elisha answers, as it were, by saying, The only thing that would content me is a double portion of your spirit; because he is going to stand here for Elijah when he has gone away. I take this as an illustration, an incident which must touch every heart. If the Lord were to ask you what you would like best, would you not like to have a power commensurate with Himself, in order that you upon the earth might describe Him in His exaltation? There is one thing more. Elisha sees Elijah taken, he fulfils the condition. The same condition, in a measure, is required of us, and with us the power is given to carry it out; Stephen was made conscious of the blessedness of the new position before he uttered a word to anyone. I believe the lack with us is that we are not in conscious knowledge of our new position. Our power is according as we do know it; therefore the apostle in Ephesians first prays that the saints might have conscious knowledge of their great position. Our power down here is in proportion to the measure of our power to rise up to our position. You cannot descend in power, but as you have ascended. It is not a question merely of right, but the more it is your right, the more dependent you are on God for it. Hence the apostle prays that they may be “strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith”. Thus you are endowed in your great position, and consequently: “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”. Then [p. 439] follows the fullest range of practice, but there you encounter the whole force of Satan (see chapter 6: 10).
I trust you see that it is the Lord, the exalted Man, at the right hand of God, who is to be testified of.
There is another act of Elisha which you should bear in mind; when he received the power, “he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces. He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him”. The old thing is over; he has the new. Nothing should satisfy you here but to describe Christ; this constitutes the testimony.
Now I turn to John 15: 26, the power by which it is effected, “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me”. Now here it is not Elisha receiving from Elijah in answer to his request, but the Lord Himself initiates the gift. “The Comforter... whom I will send... he shall testify of me”. He is the only power to effect it; there is no other; it is very definite. The Lord does not say, You will testify of Me; but, “He shall testify of me”.
I trust that the youngest here will learn from the Spirit of God that you are left down here, the Lord having gone away, with the power of the Holy Spirit. “He shall testify of me”. The Holy Spirit has come down and for this purpose. The church generally does not look for the Holy Spirit’s testimony, they seek the power of the world, the power that God gave man. But man has used this power to expel God’s Son from this earth, and God does not use that power to testify of Christ exalted to His right hand. The church had fatally fallen when they accepted and used the power of the world. And anyone who ever receives countenance from this power to help in the gospel or any work for Christ is damaging his service; he is introducing a carnal element - like a flaw in a chain. No one but the Holy Spirit can testify of Christ.
[p. 440] The great thing is to get simply before your mind the testimony itself. Of whom do you testify? Stephen was the first witness. I believe if a man were really true on earth to Christ in heaven, he would suffer persecution from his fellow men (see 2 Timothy 4). All the saints forsook Paul, he was reduced to a unit, but he can say, “The Lord stood with me, and strengthened me, that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion”.
May your heart lay hold of the word of God. When your conscience receives the word of God, you will turn to Him to make it good to you. You know that you are not up to it, but as it is from God, you are responsible to answer to it, and as you depend on Him, He enables you to be in keeping with it. He has given you the power to answer to it. When you say that anything to which He has called you is too high for you, you betray that you are not dependent on God to make it good to you.
Now turn for a moment to John 16: 7 - 15. Here you learn how the Holy Spirit will lead you. He demonstrates the state of the world. You could not accept its co-operation. You could not amalgamate with it. You might as well expect light and darkness or fire and water to amalgamate. No, the Holy Spirit leads you altogether apart from it. If you are with one, you cannot be with the other. But great is your gain when you are in fellowship with the Holy Spirit. “He shall glorify me” - that is the very thing you desire; the deepest satisfaction to your heart. “He shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you”; He will bring heavenly things to you. I know some say “Mine” is Christ Himself; but it is plain enough, “He shall receive of mine .. . All things that the Father hath are mine”. You are brought into a new world; you have turned away from the old world, but a new one is opened out to you which will last for [p. 441] ever. It is not merely that you have acquired a great property, but you have obtained the object of your heart; the Holy Spirit glorifies Him to you: “He shall glorify me” - there should be a small stop - “for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine”. You are brought into a sphere connected with the Father, and therefore not of the world. What “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God”, 1 Corinthians 2: 9, 10.
Let us now consider the testimony dispensationally in connection with the church.
Before I pass to Ephesians, I call your attention to Acts 9: 4, “And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Bear in mind the word “me”; it does not say ‘Mine,’ but “me”. That is the first allusion that we know of in Scripture to the church as the body of Christ; now you find that that “me” is the medium or vessel by which this testimony is to be carried out, namely, by the church which is His body on earth.
Now turn to Ephesians 3, and see how the apostle speaks of it. “Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel: whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power. Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery,
[p. 442] which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God”.
Surely the youngest believer here can take in the fact that Christ has a body upon earth, for no one could be fully expressed without his body. I want you to accept the momentous fact that Christ’s body is here. It is a great thing to accept a fact - Christ’s body is on the earth, “Why persecutest thou me?” An astounding fact for Saul of Tarsus. Mark, it was never made known until Christ was fully rejected by His own on the earth, until after Acts 7. He was rejected by His own when here in humiliation; but after He sat down at the right hand of God, He was offered from glory; in the stoning of Stephen they sent a message after Him, “We will not have this man to reign over us”. And what comes out now? Israel has resisted the Holy Spirit. As a nation they have no forgiveness. Their restoration depends on “the sure mercies of David”. Now arises the question - Has Christ forsaken the earth, because He has been refused and slain here? No; emphatically no! The Holy Spirit has come down from Him, and “he shall testify of me”. Next, it is revealed that His body is here. I know well how some refuse this truth and think it is impossible. I simply ask you, Do you believe Scripture? See what is involved in it. If Christ has not a body on earth, Satan has succeeded in driving Him away from it; and consequently - what could not possibly be - we are simply individual saints in the place where Christ was rejected. The only possible solution of our being here where He is not, is that we are His body; otherwise, if you take the place of individuality, you are assuming that you can remain in the place where He was not allowed to do so. You therefore cannot take the ground of individuality, but that each [p. 443] believer is a member of His body, and in no other way could you be on the earth. And as you are true to Him, you must be descriptive of Him as united to Him in heaven. One might say, If this is true it would alter my whole course. Are you, because of consequences, to refuse the word of God? You may be quite sure that the more simply you accept the word of God, the better off you will be. Do you think you have lost by losing the world? No; you have received a greater world. It may be asked, Do we see the body? We do not see it, but we believe that it is here, a far better thing. Unless we are members of Christ’s body, how could we be in a world of opposition, from which the Son of God has been called away? “Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool”. How could this place from which He was called away be your place? It is not. You enter on the place where He is, because you are united to Him. It is not only that He is your Saviour, but you are united to Him. And to this the apostle refers here; he wants all men to see, to be enlightened in, the fellowship or administration of the mystery. It will be so by and by, when the new Jerusalem is displayed. If you say, I do not see it, you will not be any help to it. If you believe it, you will say, Thank God, I believe it, and look to Him that I may be true to what He has called me to. I think the language of Mary would become us; when an astounding communication was made to her, she said, “Be it unto me according to thy word”. Would that every heart in this room tonight said in faith, I am by divine grace a member of the body of Christ: He not only saved me and placed me, once a prodigal, in the joys of the Father’s house, but, blessed be God, I am united to the One who saved me. If you look at the earth merely, He is the Shepherd who rescued you; but if you look at Him in heaven, He is the Head of His body, the church. The apostle labours to set forth [p. 444] Christ by His body, through the Holy Spirit. It only could be descriptive of Him on the earth.
The apostle does not speak of practice until he has made you acquainted with the power. Like Stephen, you must be acquainted with the power for yourselves, before you display it in the face of the opposition down here. This is the course of education in the Ephesians. The first prayer in the first chapter is the counsel of God, where the power is toward you. You there learn that the power has carried you up to Christ, where He is. Next, that the Christ is to dwell in your hearts by faith; you then survey the domain of glory, the things of God, the breadth and length and depth and height: the effect of the power which has taken you up. You must learn that you have gone up and that you have acquired much, the Christ dwelling in your hearts by faith, before you can be here in the grace and the beauty of the heavenly Man.
I trust I have in some measure presented to you the testimony, what it is. I have brought before you how Satan led man to expel from the earth the Lord of life and power, and that then was divulged that wonderful secret that Christ’s body was on the earth, and that thousands of men would be here to describe the rejected Christ now exalted to God’s right hand. He is set there, head over all things to the church. Do you believe that you are united to Him? When you are acquainted with the effect of the power and your gain from it, then the power is in you. Then you can understand how God is “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us” - not the power merely that is in Himself, but in you; you cannot measure it.
Thus Stephen testifies according to the power that worked in him, he was in the effect of it. And no one is able to stand for Christ here, but according to the measure of the power which he knows for himself.
[p. 445] We read that all in Asia turned away from Paul, where he had done the most of his work; they had never known the effect of the power, though it was their right, and they did not believe in the wonderful grace which had come to them, even that they were united to the heavenly Man in heaven. If they had accepted this they knew that they were bound to be descriptive of the heavenly Man on earth. What could be more beautiful? What could delight the true heart more? I can understand the apostle wishing that all men might see it - all the saints here in one body descriptive of the exalted Man in the very place of His rejection. Such a testimony would exasperate Satan. If you set forth, according to the measure of the grace given you, the heavenly Man in your life down here, Satan will give you no rest; he will hinder you if he can, though I do not say you will lose, “because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world”.
Now in chapter 4: 13, you get the measure or standard to which we are called: “until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ”. I know that this verse is enough to discourage one. I have heard one, trying to get out of the difficulty, say that it is future. I submit that it is not future, it is the standard the ministry must work for. You may say, We are very far from it. I admit it; but if you lower the standard, you lower the ground of your prayers even; you not only lower what God has called you to, but you lower your own dealings with God, you are satisfied with a lower order of things.
I will just recapitulate before I close. I have brought before you, first, the Person that you have to testify of, and I have presented to you a pattern in Elisha.
Secondly, I have set forth the power of the Holy Spirit, who will enable you to testify, and the wonderful [p. 446] gain that you acquire in doing so; though you lose the world, you gain heavenly things.
Thirdly, each of you is not an individual like Elisha, but you all are members of that wonderful structure, the body of Christ (the mystery which had been kept secret from the foundation of the world, but is now revealed), and should be descriptive of Christ upon the earth, to the wonder of men. We know the corporate testimony is lost, but we cannot give up the testimony which in God’s grace has been given to us. Corporate responsibility must ever remain.
Fourthly, not only should we know the power by which we are united to Christ in heaven, but we should know the effect of being there; as in the case of Stephen, or as it is typified in Joshua 3: 10, “Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you”. The power that has borne you over Jordan is the power that enables you to triumph over every force here. Stephen had to encounter the whole force of evil here, and he was triumphant all through. One might say, I never could stand like that. I am not saying what you could stand, but would you not like to be found in heavenly colours for Christ on the earth where He was rejected?
I want your hearts to apprehend the wonderful relation you are in to the One who did everything for you. What is the aim of all ministry? “Until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ”. Then all the force of the enemy will be against you.
In conclusion, I would confirm you in what I have already advanced - namely, that the more fully you apprehend where His grace has placed you, the better will you be descriptive of Christ. It is not merely that you are the channel of His grace, but you yourself are glad to be the exponent of what you enjoy.
I turn to Romans 12. This epistle presents the [p. 447] believer as a justified man on the earth. We have the practice of the justified man in this chapter. Your body is the Lord’s, and your practice begins with the church. That is always the first sphere where the manifestation of grace begins. In chapter 13 you are to walk about this world in the armour of light, preserved from the darkness; and therefore it is added, “Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof”. That is Romans.
Turn now to Colossians 3: 11. Here it is not merely a justified man upon earth, but a christian in the knowledge of the Head. “Wherein there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is everything, and in all”. Then you know the Head. Now you enter on the new testimony. You get two circles: the first is always in connection with the saints, and the other with your home duties. The home circle you do not get in Romans. You have not gone high enough to enable you to reach down to the smallest thing. That is a great principle.
Lastly, turn to Ephesians; for there you are united to Christ in heaven by the Spirit’s power.
In Colossians you are not actually in heaven, you “seek those things which are above”; but in Ephesians you are raised up and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ. Here again there are two circles the church circle and the home circle. You are now competent to act in every ordinance according to God’s pleasure who appointed it. If I were to counsel a man and his wife, I should not say, Learn from Adam and Eve in a state of innocence. No; but I would give them the chief circle of interest to Christ as their example for the most natural circle; for it has been ordained of God, and therefore the nearer you [p. 448] are to God the better you will behave in it. If the wife is defective, I should say to her, Go and learn what the church is to Christ; and if the husband is defective, I should say to him, Go and learn what Christ is to the church. The more you are occupied with Christ, the more exemplary will you be in your own most interesting circle here. You have not to learn from Adam and Eve, nor from Abraham or Moses. No; but from Christ and the church.
I need not add more. I look to the Lord to fix the subject by the Spirit in your hearts. May your hearts cleave to Christ as your one delighting Object; and then nothing will satisfy you except that you are according to His pleasure here. It is not a question of the greatness of your service; but like Mary of Bethany, who sat at His feet, and heard His word, and then was ready, when the time came, to render the most touching service, even to testify before all present that He was the One to be pre-eminent above all others.
If your hearts are with Christ in heaven, you will be a peculiar people here, you will testify of His worth in some unprecedented way. The Lord grant that you may in faith accept your great position, and be here in true testimony to your absent Lord. Each of you may be greater than Elisha. May you abandon old things, in order to live Christ here in His absence, for His name’s sake.