PEACE - ON EARTH AND IN HEAVEN
[p. 305] PEACE - ON EARTH AND IN HEAVEN
Luke 2:13,14; Luke 10:17 - 24; Luke 19:37 - 40
The idea of peace runs throughout these scriptures, first peace on earth and then peace in heaven. We may be sure that before we have peace on earth there must be peace in heaven, for already indeed this has come about, for the Lord Jesus has entered into heaven, being welcomed there, received up there in glory and relatively, at least where He is, there is peace; not that the matter is consummated, for it is not. A great war is yet in mind according to the book of Revelation, the war between Michael, the archangel, and the devil, who is to be cast out, and no place is to be found for him there. But as I said, that is a matter for us now to understand. We know it is only partial, and God in the magnitude of His grace and forbearance and long-suffering is content at times to have things partial, making them tolerable so as to carry out His designs, for He can do this even in the presence of the enemy.
Now Luke 2 contemplates peace on earth. It was an auspicious time, outwardly at least. We are not told how many of the heavenly host appeared, but they came in to join an angel in a divine way, as you might say, to send out the glad tidings that others might join in. So this angel of the Lord spoke to the shepherds keeping their flocks by night. Heaven would value such sacrifice as the shepherds were carrying on — it is like God. The light from heaven shone round about them, as if God would honour them in their unselfish service when others were carrying on in the cities and towns. They were keeping their flocks by night, unselfishly caring for others, which is something to be noted, because there is always need for such service, unselfish service which would show itself in local companies in the [p. 306] care that is needed, and the shepherds are the divine provision for them. Shepherds and teachers - a combination that is always needed, the care of the shepherd with the ability and skill of the teacher. The prophets speak about the need of teachers and it is a notable fact that the Lord Jesus, according to Luke, began to do certain things and to teach. Therefore, if the flock is to be cared for, the idea of teaching should be added to the care the shepherds give. These services that we are now engaged in have taken on that character of doing anything that has to be done. The brethren know what amount of care is expended on these meetings. They cost something, not only actual purchasing power but what has to be done to provide for the brethren; the doing, we may say, in which unskilled labour can be conveniently used. Ofttimes the most needed service is unskilled. Skill is apt to make us proud that we can do things so well, but the point is to do the things that are not simply done for crediting ourselves with doing them. It is said of the Lord Jesus that He began both to do and to teach. He began; He had not finished yet, both to do and to teach. I stress the idea of teaching. Jehovah says through the prophet, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). Hosea says, “and we shall know, — we shall follow on to know Jehovah” (Hosea 6:3). Let no one take any pleasure in ignorance. Sometimes we hear it spoken of as if it were a virtue. Ignorance is no virtue. No Christian should be ignorant. The whole divine system is engaged largely in the teaching of the saints, that we should know. Heaven is not going to be peopled with those who are ignorant. We are to be taught in view of our going up there.
The first scripture that I read, therefore, contemplates a beginning of something. The first chapter is a long one and contemplates a beginning. Luke is the writer of it and the writer of the second treatise.
[p. 307] the Acts: he says of the Lord that He began both to do and to teach. There was other doing, of course, before the Lord, and Luke himself is viewed by himself as a man who knew how to do things. He knew how to write; he knew how to form letters, not only into words but into sentences, all having method. So the Lord in the book of Revelation taught His servant John in the order in which he was to write the things that he saw, and the things that are, as he said, the present things, and then the things that are about to follow. That is the order in which John was to write the book of Revelation, a most orderly book as it was written, and a book regarding which there is a blessing mentioned. I am saying all that because of the necessity of learning of the brethren knowing, gathering up things in our opportunities to learn so as to know and to teach others also. For God has promised that all His people are to be taught by Him; they should all be taught of God. Why should anyone be ignorant? There is such a slur on ignorance that the Spirit of God says in 1 Corinthians 14:38, “If any be ignorant, let him be ignorant”, a very solemn thing.
Now the second chapter of Luke contemplates an active situation, the shepherds keeping their flock by night. Heaven would look down on the scene delightfully; a flock cared for by those who knew how to exercise care over it, and heaven says, We will not leave them alone, we will visit them. Heaven visits, as we have already had today, the coming in and going out from heaven. Of course, angels are occupied with this all the time. It is said they are sent out. “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out for service on account of those who shall inherit salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14). Who can tell how many there are? They are not idlers or holiday makers, they are ministering spirits. Perhaps we hardly know what that means. We know what it means to be [p. 308] ministered to by others, but we read of ministering spirits. They belong to heaven, heaven’s workers, and one of them is here and the light shines about him. We have been just wearied and torn in our hearts for the last five and a half years with what is going on in this earth by men having no light at all, but darkness. The very light is darkness, whatever light they pretend to have is simply darkness and murder is behind it. This angel comes out, light is shining around the shepherds. What a difference! We have been seeking to engage each other with what we are attached to, that we are a part of the assembly; one of the greatest things we can think of is being part of the assembly. The angels, of course, are not part of it. They are at the gates of the heavenly city, but the city is itself heavenly and composed of men, not angels. God is saying, I have men, the right kind, the kind He intended to have. According to the prophet Jeremiah, the man spoken of in chapter 18 worked to do something, to accomplish something, and whatever it was he was seeking to make, it was marred. The whole earth is marred. When I look up to heaven there is nothing of that kind at all, not that there is not evil there, but as regards the physical heavens all is well. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the expanse sheweth the work of his hands”(Psalm 19:1). So that things are well in that sense, but as regards men, women, and alas, children too, how quickly they are learning wickedness. It is of the greatest importance for men and women today to look after youth. The devil is looking after them, filling the prisons with them. What dishonour to God that the youth should be so exposed at the present time as such examples of wickedness are portrayed before our eyes and their eyes.
The light was shining round about the shepherds. They were doing what was right. They were taking [p. 309] care of their flocks by night. Heaven was delighted with it, pleased with it. They were doing it by night, and then there is the multitude of the heavenly host. There is a great deal in Scripture about God and His relations with His hosts. You remember the occasion of Elisha. A young man said, What shall we do? The forces of the enemy were there, but Elisha says, “Fear not, for they that are with us are more than they that are with them”(2 Kings 6:16). The young man did not see them, but they were there. So Jehovah shows this young man what is there and sure enough the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire. “The chariots of God are twenty thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them”, (Psalm 68:17). That is the position. It is light; God is there. There is not much we can say of that, but it for us to understand. But God is here and moves in and out even militarily, and as I have said, these angels came in. “Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host”. They link on with the angel. The multitude of the heavenly host joined him, full of praise to Jehovah saying, “Glory to God in the highest”. It is not a question of what men are doing down here, but what God is doing. It is where God is, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men”. That was going to be; that was prophetic. God comes in with something worthwhile, some indication of what is worthwhile. There was some intervention but only with one angel, but presently with a multitude of them and they are saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men”.
Now I am seeking to enlist sympathy in this book because one confesses it has peculiar charm. Luke is the divine system, not the family; it is the divine system operating in grace, not in judgment. So one has peculiar pleasure in going over this ground,
[p. 310] because it is a line that runs through this book — this matter of peace on earth and then peace in heaven, but the peace on earth is first. God would say, I am intervening with My spearhead and My army, evidently a great army. I am going to do something. Luke says the Lord was not failing to do things. The Lord Jesus went about to do and to teach, the doing first so that there was no shadow of doubt. Something could be done, but then there is the moral side which always raises the question of where men are. How much do we give way to the devil? God is saying, I am here, and I am actually doing things. He is here in a multitude full of praise to God, but what about the moral side? God is saying to us that something has to be done on a moral line; it is not merely a question of creation as it was at the beginning. There is a moral question in it and Luke starts with that, always ready for the great event of grace, the grace system ready to operate, ready to do things for men whatever is needed to be done. But this moral question, where men are, arose and stopped the proceeding. There is a halt, as it were; instead of saying peace on earth, the Lord Jesus is to die — a solemn thing. We talk much about the Lord’s death, but we sometimes lose sight of what it means to Him and to heaven. But that had to happen.
So chapter 10 contemplates actings by the Lord’s servants, seventy of them, showing the bountifulness of the divine way. There were twelve earlier, but seventy added. God would say, ‘I am going on’, and something else had come into His mind. It was heaven, the operations that are there now and have been since the Lord Jesus went up. While He was down here the operations were down here, but as He went up He inaugurated a new thing, the Spirit came down while the Lord Jesus is staying up there, whom the heavens must receive The Lord Jesus is [p. 311] up there, but not in any sense inactive. The operations have begun up there and He is in charge of them. You may say we know all these things, but it is well to be told about them. We ought to see what men are doing and what Satan is doing; but we are not to be ignorant of what men are doing under God’s ordering among the nations. We pray for them. There are some whom God is using to maintain order and a sort of peace in a sovereign, provisional way, so that God can operate for a little while to save men by the gospel, to justify them, and glorify them. That is what is going on, not small things. The called are justified, glorified. These are not small things. These things are going on every day. It is an operational system, an operational time, and the devil knows it and is joining in it, making the most of it. Even unregenerate men are taken into God’s service so that He can maintain a sort of order, so that He can send out His emissaries to preach Christ and gather material for the assembly.
Luke 10 is to call attention to the fact that the Lord is not inactive. It is a heavenly matter now and they return and say to the Lord, “Even the demons are subject to us through thy name”. The Lord, in fact, is saying great things will happen in that sense, and among them, “I beheld Satan as lightning falling out of heaven”. That is a great matter. The seventy had not seen that, and the Lord is telling them that what they are glorying in so much is not so great as they think it is; not that it is not wonderful, but as I said, God can go on in His operational ways to achieve certain things in order to reach certain ends. He is content to do that, but we must not make too much of our part in it. We are apt to think we are doing something for the Lord and that we are the very centre of everything, but it is not so at all. In the parable in [p. 312] chapter 17 He directs them to go and do something more, as if to say, You may think something of what you are doing, but you are not doing very much. When you have done all He says that we are to say, “We are unprofitable bondmen”(Luke 17:10). It is well to be balanced, to have our measure. God is the God of measure. You may be sure that whatever my measure is God will know about it, and will not have me thinking I am anything more than that. “And the seventy returned with joy, saying. Lord, even the demons are subject to us through thy name. And he said to them, I beheld Satan as lightning falling out of heaven”. That is a sort of check and yet, on the other hand, is a wonderful thing; Satan falling from heaven is not nearly so great as when the saints go up to heaven. It is a much greater thing to go up than to fall. You may fall by gravity. The Lord says, “I beheld Satan as lightning falling out of heaven”. It must be a rapid fall. The Lord said, I beheld it, but He does not go beyond that or stop to enlarge on the wonderful thing that He saw. The truth is, in His mind it was not so great as you may think. When the assembly goes up it will be a great thing. When the Lord Jesus went up, it was a very great thing. Here He says to them, “I beheld Satan as lightning falling out of heaven. Behold, I give you the power of treading upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall in anywise injure you. Yet in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subjected to you, but rejoice that your names are written in the heavens”.
It would seem as if the Lord was belittling what was going on and we have to learn to take in those things. We need to humble ourselves by things we are doing. There are a good many things going on. There are a good many brothers who can take meetings, as we call it, but we have to watch as to what the value of these things may be, what the results [p. 313] may be, and it may perhaps disappoint us at times. The Lord knows how to deal with those matters. So He says “notwithstanding” how good the meeting was or how many were saved. I suppose we may say they are saved; it is a misused word. The Lord too knows how to value that. But what He says here is, “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven”. Learn that, not that you have been an evangelist, or teacher, or preacher, but that you belong to heaven, you are among those who are to people heaven. There are only a few real men there yet, such as Elijah and Enoch and one or two others, so that the population of heaven is yet to go there. Angels are there, of course, but wisdom says, “My delights were with the sons of men” (Proverbs 8:31), not only men but the sons of men as if they are peculiarly attractive. The Lord is saying, I am not despising what you are doing, but I want you to get the real thought in My mind now which is heaven. Heaven’s time will come; the time of peopling heaven will come. There will be another time later on for peopling the earth, but heaven has a priority. Heaven did not have priority in chapter 2, but it has now. So the Lord says, “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven”.
I would seek to engage you, dear brethren, with your own greatness in this sense, not to occupy ourselves with ourselves, but this is the time for heaven and the time for us to enter into it. Hence the Lord is waiting up there, the heavens must receive Him, we are told. How honoured He is up there, received up in heaven, received up in glory! What a time heaven had when He went in there! What a time heaven will have and the assembly will have, because they are going to come into things in a big way, not [p. 314] simply those of us who are alive and remain but all the saints going into heaven, caught up together, changed by the Lord’s own power. It will be a big time, dear brethren; big times are ahead of us, and very near. It is the assembly time and God is not going to stop until it is finished. I may speak of certain things that will come, but He is not for a moment giving up the assembly, nor is Christ. “For the Lord himself, with an assembling shout, with archangel’s voice and with trump of God, shall descend from heaven”(1 Thessalonians 4:16). It is going to be a big time and yet it will be private, very big happenings involving great sentiments and feelings, great enough to fill up heaven as the saints go up with the Lord. We do not go up by ourselves nor do we go up severally; we go up together. The great word in Ephesians, the great assembly epistle, is the word ‘together’: “Raised us up together, and has made us sit down together in the heavenlies”(Ephesians 2:6). Well, there will be enough to occupy us and the Lord says, You are so great, so dignified; you will be made to sit down together in your own company. Paul, Peter, and John, and all the saints until now, all the sleeping saints, will be there and the changed saints will be there. What big times, eminent times, about to come! The Lord is preparing for all this. Heaven has received Him; He is there. It is heaven’s business now to receive Him, but He is presently to come out and do things in a big way as to the accomplishment of the divine purposes in heaven and on earth, but heaven first.
I want to go on to chapter 19, which I hope will clarify what I have already said. It is a crucial time, a time in which the Lord was received, not up in heaven, but in Jerusalem. He had said in chapter 13, “Ye shall not see me until it come that ye say, Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord” (Luke 13:35). We have to wait for that time but in the meantime this happens. “And as he drew near, already at the descent of the mount of Olives, all the multitude of the disciples began, rejoicing, to praise God with a loud voice for all the works of power which they had seen, saying. Blessed the King that comes in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest”. There is no damper put on this as there was in chapter 10. This is a matter that relates to the great doings of Christ. We spoke of big times; this is a big time. It is not simply our going in there yet, but what the Lord Jesus had been doing here, and what He had been doing here had reference to heaven, not simply to earth. Satan had already been seen as cast down; the book of Revelation enlarges on it, when Satan shall be cast down in military power by Michael. The Lord had said this would happen in chapter 10, but now the “multitude of the disciples began, rejoicing, to praise God with a loud voice for all the works of power which they had seen, saying, Blessed the King that comes in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest”. Peace in heaven — they are saying it now, the multitude of the disciples are saying it. It is not a question of angels here. The saints have learned to say things and that is the point in one’s mind, that we might know how to speak of things, call them by their names, and join in when the time comes; and it does come, a time when we are together. We are taught for this, to be ready for it. The disciples had been taught for this, not angels now, but disciples, persons who have learned from Christ. That is the point of these meetings, that we should be taught and know how to call things by name, and if anything is to be done let us know how to do it that it may be worthy of heaven. What is done in the assembly should be worthy of heaven. The assembly is a reflection of heaven. We have been taught for this. It is a shame to us if we [p. 316] are not learning, if we are not here as disciples, as persons who are learning to join in with praise and celebration. There are many opportunities for that. Heaven is always ready for a celebration. “Blessed the King that comes in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees from the crowd said to him. Teacher, rebuke thy disciples”. Think of that! This is the devil. What we are doing in a little way the devil would stop. He would say, You are expending all this on the disciples and they do not know how to do anything. The devil would make them believe they do not know and they would do nothing. We have been taught to do things and do them well, to celebrate, and many other things. So the Lord says to the Pharisees among the multitude, “I say unto you, If these shall be silent, the stones will cry out”. The Lord does not say the angels would do it. They have done it, but they do not need to do it now. The stones would do it; such is the education and power going on by the Lord that the stones would do it. The Lord is telling us what is in heaven and what power there is in regard of the assembly and its testimony and service in the coming age. He is saying in answer to these Pharisees, these religious men, “If these shall be silent, the stones will cry out”.
The Lord would stir us up as to these matters. These are great times we are in. People are talking about what histories are going to be written. I doubt that God will recognise much of their histories. There is so much to be written, but it is not worth much because all is just about to go into oblivion. But this coming out of heaven is all glory; it is for God, and what He has up there. The Lord Jesus is received up there, occupied day and night up there. Heaven has received Him and the assembly is going up too. The Lord is waiting for that, as if to say. There is nothing more now. The priority [p. 317] belongs to the assembly; the assembly is the first thought, has the first place in heaven. Priorities belong to it now. The Lord is saying, I am waiting for the time. The day is fixed; as the Lord says. No one knows the day but My Father, it is so wonderful. The Lord Jesus is God, and He is with the Father now, but nevertheless. He takes the lowly place in these operations. “But of that day or of that hour no one knows, neither the angels who are in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father”(Mark 13:32). That day is in the Father’s keeping. “Behold, I come quickly” (Revelation 22:7). That is what these terms really mean — that the Lord is waiting for the Father to unfold the moment. Things will happen then; there will be no mistake about it, and I do not want to be out of it for a second, but be ready for it, ready to join in with what is going to happen in heaven and what is happening now in heaven.