ETERNAL THINGS
[p. 455] ETERNAL THINGS
2 Corinthians 4: 13 - 18; 2 Corinthians 5: 1 - 5; 2 Peter 3: 8 - 13
I have in mind to speak about eternal things, having read from Paul and from Peter. Paul treats, as usual, of inward, heavenly things, while Peter, although not overlooking the heavenly, yet speaks of physical things, as we may say mundane things. He reminds us that of old the world was, as he says, overflowed with water: “by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men”. He deals with the physical world, particularly linking it with Noah, but careful to connect the word of God with all that happens — an important matter. Even things that have recently happened, unparalleled of their kind, were not without the word. The word of God had — and has — to do with the matter. We may take refuge in that. The present heavens and the present earth are by the same word reserved unto fire. The word of God is governing all that is happening in physical matters; He can control them and has controlled them. He brought the earth out of the waters and then again engulfed it and brought it out again, all according to His word. So the present heavens and the present earth, whatever may be prognosticated of them, are under the hand of God.
I am speaking now from Peter, whose ministry deals with the government of God, inclusive of material things, what men would call scientific things. But they are things that God has in His own hand; whether it be the water or fire or other things hidden, they are under His hand and can only be used at [p. 456] His behest, according to His mind and will. I say these things that brethren may be restful, as Peter says, that we may “be found of him in peace”. There are those who would fill us with gloom, and perhaps have good reason, but the Christian takes refuge in the word of God. However much catastrophe may be in the future or in the past, all is under divine control. In a few words Peter would set us at rest as to these physical matters. They cause anxiety in those who rule on the earth, and should cause a certain anxiety in ourselves, but at the same time God would have us to be restful. All things that are in His creation belong to Him, they do not belong to the devil. However great or powerful they may be in their effects, they are God’s. Even as to this awful thing which has been found possible recently — someone remarked to me what is very true, that it is not an invention, but a discovery — God can frustrate any use made of physical things which would be detrimental to His people or His testimony. I think it should be a matter of prayer, indeed it has been so, and God has given us to understand that He is answering our prayers; that it is largely in our hands, as it were, God putting it there, so that His people should be with Him in whatever may be attempted or done.
I have alluded to the book of Genesis. The account of creation in Genesis is not primary creation, it is a renewal, a revival, a restoration of what was. Yet it is creation, and God so regards it, and it is spoken of in this way in the Scriptures. “From the beginning of the creation” — the creation recorded in Genesis is that to which the Lord alludes. What is to be noted is that angelic service is not referred to there, whereas we have angelic service attending on us. It is said, “Are they not all ministering spirits?” All of them — we cannot say how many. God has not been pleased to give any account of His matters [p. 457] in that sense, but they are all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for those who shall be heirs of salvation. And in all these matters that are happening or seem to be happening, we can count on their service, we can count on God using them. As He has heretofore, so He will hereafter. They are sent out for us, those who are heirs of salvation.
Peter says in these verses that we are not to be ignorant of certain things. Worldlings are willingly ignorant, and perish in their ignorance, whereas Peter says, “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”. That is to say, God has to do with time; He may use one day. The Lord Jesus uses one day, called His day, the Lord’s day, and very often the Lord’s people are using it to increase their own salary. The Lord is not pleased with that. If we can use it in His service, it is much better, and we shall not suffer accordingly. The Lord has been pleased to select a day to have a time with His bride, His assembly, and to carry on the divine part of the service of God, for He is the Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched and not man. If the Lord has set aside a day for that purpose, let us be very careful that we devote it for that purpose. I mention that as of importance, because the Lord’s service often suffers for mere pounds, shillings and pence, whereas His day is more valuable. The service of God belongs to it, and we are taken up for that. It is our prime interest, and everything must be subservient to that. And so he says, “A thousand years as one day”. That would mean that the Lord is pleased to condense the value of the day a thousand-fold. Why not spend it according to the Lord’s noting of it?
Verse 9 refers beautifully to the gospel, like a jewel set in amongst these material things, things that will perish. “The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up”. So, dear brethren, we need not be appalled at what is being said as to physical things, because more terrible things are recorded here. Peter speaks of the elements; what they are we may leave, but they will melt with fervent heat. We have been accustomed to read these scriptures prophetically, but these are veritable things we are actually dealing with, some of them being imminent. “The works that are therein shall be burned up”. Whether they be mountains and so forth, or man’s works, even the monuments built to the renown of heroes, all shall go; in a moment they shall go. There is not to be a vacuum after their departure; there is to be something else, a new heavens and a new earth. “Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God”. God comes into all this. We have the day of the Lord, but we have the day of God. He is beyond everything, He is to be all in all. What a relief to turn aside from these terrible things to God. God will make a way for Himself. He is going to have new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, nothing but what pleases Him. He will be all in us, as indeed we are told in Ephesians, “over all, and through all, and in us all”. So that we are living with God, and the thing is to accustom ourselves to this, dear brethren, to live of God; to live by His word in detail, but to live of God, as the apostle prayed that we might be “filled even to all the fulness of God”.
These things are a striking and fitting climax to Peter’s epistle, linking up as they do with Paul, the minister of the gospel, the minister of the assembly, the minister of reconciliation, the great vessel that Peter speaks of here as “our beloved brother Paul”. There is a beautiful link between these two great apostles. Peter, as I have said, deals more with physical things, and Paul with the inner, spiritual, heavenly things. God uses Peter as to these physical matters, and it would set us at rest as to the government of God, to live in it and go through it and find Him everything in it, and be restful all the time. He says here, “This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you: in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance”. It is not here the remembrance of the Lord as in the Supper, but the remembrance of an historical word, to bear in mind what God has caused to happen, what His word has caused to happen, and which will end up, not in oblivion, but in God. Of course, wickedness — awful material things — will act, but God will act through it all. So we are to be restful, not indifferent to what is threatened, but restful, knowing that we are more valuable than many worlds of material things. “All things are for your sakes”, Paul says. All things are ours indeed; all things that are current abroad that the eye can see are ours.
Now I turn to Paul’s words in the passage read. In chapter 5 the word “dissolve” or “destroy” is used as to our bodies. “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved”, the same word that is used of the elements, the heavens and the earth. It is important to understand, how ever, that our bodies are to be raised; they are not destroyed in that sense. It is said in Matthew’s gospel, “Many bodies of the saints which slept arose” — not simply they arose, but their bodies arose — “and went into the holy city and appeared unto many”. It is not for us to speculate on these matters; God has said very little about these bodies, and He does not expect us to say a great deal about them, but the fact remains; many bodies of the [p. 460] saints which slept arose after the Lord arose — not before. He is the first-fruits of resurrection, then those that are Christ’s at His coming, but these who are mentioned in Matthew are said to have arisen in their bodies. Their graves were opened, it was a physical matter. God would have us, while not speculating on these things, to be conversant with them, and to think of ourselves as having bodies that may be changed in a moment, not destroyed, but changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. The Lord Jesus is to do that. He does not leave it to the Spirit, it is the Lord’s own action; He descends to do it. But then they are called mortal so far. We are living in a provisional time, and God says to us that He will raise the very bodies in which we came into this world and have lived in it. The woman of Samaria left her water-pot and went her way into the city; she understood that her body was a vessel. The Lord has claimed our bodies as His. Still they are mortal, they may be dissolved according to this chapter. Moses tells us by the Spirit of God how long we are likely to have them — threescore and ten or fourscore years. I have no doubt that, from the time that Moses said that, eternal things became more real to the saints of God than they had been before. If our bodies are not to last more than seventy years — maybe a half or a quarter of that — our wisdom is to think of eternal things. God is saying to us, ‘You are not to live as Methuselah lived, nine hundred and sixty-nine years, nor even as Noah or Abraham’. We come down the line and find ourselves with people who are short-lived. David lived to about seventy, Paul perhaps to not more than seventy. So Paul himself tells us that our bodies are earthly tabernacles and may be dissolved. But our bodies of humiliation are to be changed into the likeness or image of the Lord’s body of glory, a marvellous expression, and one intended to touch our hearts and [p. 461] stimulate us as to our bodies; they are to be made like His own body of glory, what He is now. Philippians is most stimulating experimentally for the saints.
“We having the same spirit of faith”, — not simply the ordinary formula of faith, but the spirit of it — “according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak”. That is the title to speak for God in any sense, on the principle of faith. Anything spoken outside faith is hardly worth hearing. Christianity is a matter of faith, and Paul says that which is not of faith is sin. A most sweeping statement, covering the whole lives of persons who are not converted. The books are kept accurately, and what is not of faith is put down under that heading — sin. But then Paul says, and I speak of it thus to the dear brethren that they may drink in the spirit of it, “We also believe, and therefore speak; knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by [or with] Jesus, and shall present us with you”, as if the apostle would say, I do not want to go without you. It was thus he loved the saints, he would not go without them, although he could say that to depart and be with Christ is far better. I may say, in my humble way, that I would wish to go with the brethren; as knowing them, they are more lovable than ever. And Ephesians would show how you go with them, raised up together and made to sit down together, that is the principle.
“For all things are for your sakes”. “All things work together for good to them that love God”. If we could only take things in according to Paul, beloved! Why not? I can hardly visualise what the dear brethren in these countries have suffered, but God is in it all, and He has been thinking of us. Many a time one yearned as one heard of persons being instantly killed, not without God, for not a sparrow falls without Him. And so it is that fruit will [p. 462] be abundant after all, perhaps beyond our expectations. For there must be fruit — not young people aspiring to get on in this world; no, these sufferings were not to make us fit for this world, but to make us fit for “that world, and the resurrection”.
“That the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. For which cause we faint not”, — Paul is himself encouraged in it. “Though our outward man perish”. Let us not forget that the outward man may perish, indeed it is so in every one of us, even the youngest. When we begin to live we begin to die in a physical sense. “Yet the inward... is renewed day by day”. That work is constantly going on. “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal”. Eternal things are not seen, therefore we have to learn to perceive things in that sense, see them by faith. Some are so careless and taken up with ordinary things that they forget they were purged from their former sins, a terrible thing, but possible even for Christians. Therefore, there is nothing else but faith; without faith it is impossible to please God. That is what the apostle is aiming at here — the spirit of faith, and the element of faith is active as we begin to look at eternal things. It is an experimental thing. No one can give an account of eternal things unless he looks at them in this sense, perceives them in this sense. We are enjoined to “apprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge”. I would impress upon us the necessity and importance and profit of being engaged with eternal things. Moses says of God, “From eternity to eternity thou art God”; Psalm 90. In that same psalm, he tells us how long we may live, and he, like Paul, would have the saints to look at the unseen things which centre in God.
“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven... that mortality might be swallowed up of life”. This is the great victory of God; the whole being is to be swallowed up in life. That is what the Lord Jesus is coming to do. What days are ahead of us! Let us look into these matters, live in them, prove their reality, their blessedness! We ourselves are in the imminence of these things.
“Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God” — I have been endeavouring to keep God before you in this matter of eternal things — “who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit”. The earnest is our present portion. There is more in the Spirit than that, but the earnest is our portion, and it for us to get that portion and not to lose it. The Spirit of God is ready to grant it to us. May God bless these important thoughts, dear brethren, to all of us!