TRANSITION FROM THE REALM OF SIGHT
[p. 112] TRANSITION FROM THE REALM OF SIGHT
Luke 24: 1 - 12; Acts 1: 9 - 13; John 20: 11 - 18
I purpose speaking of these scriptures, dear brethren, in the order in which I have read them. My purpose is not to dwell on them in any historic sense, or even in a doctrinal sense. My purpose is, by the Lord’s help, to speak of them in their moral bearing, that is, in the sense in which they may enter into current exercises and conduct, or practice, among us. Indeed Scripture is never read aright, or studied aright, save as we keep the moral bearing in view. That is, they always speak to the reader.
Now what is in mind is the transition of the saints from the realm of sight to the realm of faith and the realm of the Spirit. This transition is needed by all of us at all times but by some in an especial manner, for we are exceedingly prone to walk by sight, to read Scripture on that principle, to attend meetings like this on that principle.
I have read from Luke and John because the witnesses, or persons at the sepulchre and at the ascension, in questioning the saints convey censure. What I have to say centres around the questions asked by the heavenly witnesses in these scriptures. You will observe they are in twos in Luke and John. Luke and John had in mind, under the guidance of the Spirit, the spirit of the dispensation. They are peculiarly feeling men, one greatly imbued by grace and the other by love, and they had in mind that the dispensation should carry on in the spirit proper to it. That is to say, Luke would maintain the spirit of grace sustained by the Lord’s supper, and John would maintain the Spirit of Christ, which we get in Philippians, “The supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (chapter 1: 19). So in Luke as the saints are together [p. 113] they are speaking about the Lord having appeared to Simon. That is grace, and immediately it is added “And they related what had happened on the way, and how he was made known to them in the breaking of bread”, Luke 24: 35. Then in John, on the other hand, the Lord “breathed into them, and says to them, Receive the Holy Spirit”, John 20: 22. That is to say, His own Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, is to mark us. As I said, Luke and John are particularly feeling men and they inject into the dispensation these features. And so the witnesses are in twos. It might be assumed that Matthew and Mark would be severer than Luke and John, but the angel in Matthew does not censure the women. He does not even question them. Others might fear, but he says,”Fear not ye”,
Matthew 28: 5. Stern as he was, his countenance like lightning so that the guards trembled and became as dead men for fear, he says to the women, “Fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus the crucified one”. You see how a heavenly representative can change his tone, can change his appearance and his attitude when speaking to the saints. To the guards and others that countenance was repelling, corresponding with that of our Lord Himself in the book of Revelation where He says to John, as He touched him with His right hand, “Fear not”, Revelation 1: 17. The attitude is changed at once as the saints are seen characteristically. Matthew is pleased to convey to us that heaven regards these women in their characteristic features, not in the immediate unbelief that marked them. It is surely obligatory upon us, in dealing with the saints, not to stress too much the immediate thing, if it be an offence, but regard what they are characteristically, or I may say, abstractly. Indeed, I doubt that one can help the saints save as one is able to take account of them abstractly. If I clothe them in my mind with the current thing, bad as it may be and needful as it may be to deal with it, if I clothe them with that in [p. 114] my mind I shall not help them. I shall shrivel them up and discourage them. Whereas if I clothe them in my mind according to what they are characteristically, I shall help them because I afford to them a measure of moral power, that such a one should not be swallowed up with grief. Severe as Matthew is in dealing with Jerusalem, he would bring in the kindly thought of heaven in that stern angel who turns to the woman and, emphasising the pronoun, says, “Fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus the crucified one”. He gave them credit for what was uppermost in their hearts, they sought Him indeed, not alive but dead, but still they sought Him and they are accredited with the thought. And he adds to that, “He is not here, for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay”, as much as to say, You have not come for nothing. The journey taken, although in unbelief, is not for nothing. It was worth while seeing the place where the Lord lay. Mark, as usual, agrees with Matthew in his account, not that he copies Matthew. There is no such thought in the evangelists. If anyone here has that thought that the evangelists copied, or borrowed, from one another, banish the thought! Each is taken up by the Spirit of God and caused to write what the Spirit saw was necessary. And so Mark is independent of Matthew as Matthew is independent of Mark. Each was taken up sovereignly by God. Mark follows closely on Matthew, only instead of a stern angel you have a young man. The word ‘angel’ is not employed. And he has no censure for the women although Mark makes more of the unbelief and rebukes it later. Yet he has no censure for the women. He says, “Ye seek Jesus, the Nazarene” (he adds that) “the crucified one. He is risen, he is not here”, Mark 16: 6. And then in both gospels they are sent with the message.
But Luke, gracious as he is, records what implies censure. And the result proves that the censure,
[p. 115] mild though it was, was worth while. There are two men here and they appear suddenly. One might introduce the thought of an assembly gathering. The women came with others. They had seen where the Lord had been placed in the grave. They were interested, intensely so, but the record shows that we may be intensely interested and yet dark. The record, therefore, is to rebuke the darkness so that it should be replaced by light in our souls. Hence you have two men in shining garments. Heaven is greatly interested. Heaven is intensely interested in meetings like these, dear brethren, that where there has been darkness and confusion of thought there should be light. There is much more of it than we are aware of. So heaven thinks it worth while to delegate these shining ones. They bear the heavenly hue. They are shining, in bright garments, shining garments, and truly every minister is bound to consider whether he has these garments. Without the heavenly touch the clearest presentation of the truth must be wanting. It is the heavenly touch that elevates and there they are. They appear suddenly. The women come with prepared things which, in a certain way, may be right, but when we bring things for a dead Christ when there is no dead Christ, we are burdening ourselves unnecessarily, wasting our time. There is no dead Christ now, beloved, nor was there then. There never will be a dead Christ! These spices they had prepared were useless and worse than useless. They were the product of unbelief, the product of confusion, and so it is, that too much preparation for the assembly has the same character. Very often it denies, in effect, that there is anything in the assembly. They denied the riches of the assembly. Bringing these things with us may be right under certain circumstances but wrong under others, denying the unsearchable riches of Christ. The assembly is full of riches. It is a question of coming in a fit state, to be taken and [p. 116] employed in the distribution of these riches. They had brought these things. They had prepared them carefully and they had brought them, but they found no dead Christ, no Christ at all. It is a sorrowful thing to come with our bundle, having Christ in mind, but in confusion, and we find no Christ at all! It is an empty state of things. If there is no Christ there is no assembly according to God.
So these two men in shining garments appear suddenly and they ask the question. I want you to fix your minds on this question now. There are three, perhaps four or five questions in the passages altogether. The first question here is: “Why seek ye the living one among the dead?”. The living One, that is not just any living person; it is the living One; it is Christ. When you have an article in that way, it denotes the Person and Him alone. “Why seek ye the living one among the dead?”. How many are doing that? You will bear in mind that I am speaking in a moral sense, making the thing applicable, not the doctrine side nor the historic, but the moral. How many there are in confusion, seeking the living One among the dead! These are most estimable people.
They are the excellent on the earth. The Lord Jesus called them that. There is no question of belittling anyone in saying what I am saying, but there are many seeking the living One among the dead. You will never find Him. He is not among the dead. He is alive, He is risen. He told you so, the men say. He told you in Galilee that He would rise. You are unbelieving about it; yet how much ministry God has given to His people these many, many years back, dear brethren! We have been told these things about Christ and the assembly, and yet we are overlooking, or ignoring, or forgetting! He told you so. He told you so in Galilee that He would rise. Let everyone search his heart as to the things he has been told, divinely told, and has forgotten, or neglected, or [p. 117] ignored, perhaps refused. He told you, the men say, that He would rise. And they are looking for a dead Christ, looking for the living One among the dead! In their minds it was Christ dead. Let all of us look into our own hearts and see how this that we have been told divinely, fits us, whether it affects us, whether we are moving in it! This resulted well.
Well, I just wanted to show that these women went off and told the apostles and it says, “And their words appeared in their eyes as an idle tale”. That is not very good, but it is not without some effect. That is to say, if the Lord adjusts me and I speak accordingly, I may count on something. They thought their tale was untrue but then it says, “But Peter, rising up, ran to the sepulchre”. There is someone moving. I speak thus, dear brethren, that we may take heart. If we get one man, one brother or one sister, moving as a result of all that we have had these few days, something is effected; it is not lost. Peter is the leading man. He ran to the sepulchre. We are not told that he believed yet, but he noted how the clothes were lying, and if we follow up the history we shall see that his faith was affected. He believed, but for the moment he is running. There may be someone who has been hesitating in these meetings. We have not been in the custom of running at all. I doubt that there is much spiritual running today. It is rare to find it. We find Mary Magdalene running, and Peter and John running, and here Peter running alone. That is something. If there is someone here that has been hesitating, how great will be the joy of the brethren in hearing of you moving. May God grant it!
Well, Luke is aiming at the spirit of the dispensation. That is to be marked by grace and the Lord’s supper is to sustain that. So he gives us again two men, not now at the grave-side but as Jesus ascended. Perhaps we are more unbelieving as to that, the heavenly side [p. 118] of things, than as to the resurrection. You will remember how the sons of the prophets, in the days of Elisha, would fain have Elisha give up his faith, his belief, in the ascension of Elijah. They sent fifty strong men to verify that possibly “the Spirit of Jehovah have taken him up, and cast him upon some mountain, or into some ravine”, 2 Kings 2: 16. That was unbelief, not only unbelief as to themselves but influencing others to unbelief.
Now these two men are on the opposite line. They are to ensure faith in the heavenly, and that our dispensation is not only to be a dispensation of grace sustained by the Lord’s supper, but a dispensation of faith. As Paul says to Timothy, “God’s dispensation, which is in faith”, not in sight. We are apt to come to meetings like these in sight, young ones especially, and you miss it. They are intended to build up faith. The dispensation of God is in faith and that is what these two men are here for. The disciples had been listening to the Lord and He had been taken from them. They saw Him go up, a cloud having received Him out of their sight. All that is to establish faith, to show that the era of faith had begun, that is, the present time.
So these two men in white garments this time say (this is the second question), “Men of Galilee, why do ye stand looking into heaven?”. That is the question. Men of Galilee-I suppose none of us here would repudiate the stigma of Galilee. “Behold, are not all these who are speaking Galilaeans?”, Acts 2:7. It had a stigma, it had reproach, Men of Galilee. These two men are heavenly representatives, but called men, in white garments, and they say, ‘Men of Galilee, why are you doing so-and-so?’. That question is asked today, whatever it may be, whatever you may be doing that is not according to the light furnished, because these questions are instructive. They are educational. They allude back [p. 119] to things already spoken, to light already given. “Why do ye stand looking into heaven?”. How were they gazing up? With their naked eyes. If they had had telescopes I doubt not they would have used them. The astronomers gaze into heaven today. What do they find? Very confused things, and they are constantly changing their minds about them. Powerful though their telescopes may be, they are most unreliable. They admit it. “Why do ye stand looking into heaven?”. Your natural eyes have seen a cloud that has received Jesus and you will never see Him again in that way. He is to be seen henceforth, during this dispensation, on the principle of faith. “We see Jesus”, says the writer to the Hebrews, “... crowned with glory and honour” (Hebrews 2: 9); it is not on the principle of sight but on the principle of faith and by the Spirit.
So the Lord honours faith in a striking way in speaking to Thomas who would continue the era of sight, the era of natural sensibilities and natural understanding. The Lord says to him, “Blessed they who have not seen and have believed”, John 20: 29. We want to be among those, dear brethren, who believe without seeing. These two men in white garments are there to introduce that, that henceforth these men of Galilee should be men of faith in keeping with the dispensation, as I was saying, which is one of faith. The result in their case, too, justified the testimony. Divine operations in this way are always resultful. I say this for our encouragement that our “toil is not in vain in the Lord”, 1 Corinthians 15: 58. We can reckon that something will come out of every bit of labour rightly exercised. It is “not in vain in the Lord”.
So it says, “Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called the mount of Olives, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath-day’s journey off. And when they were come into the city, they went up to the [p. 120] upper chamber, where were staying both Peter, and John, and James, ... with several women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren”. That is another thing we should notice. Tonight we are about to disperse and perhaps we are relieved that we can. I mean to say that three days of meetings such as we have had suffice. There is abundant testimony in them from God, and there is a certain amount of relief with us in returning to our various localities.
Perhaps we cannot stand more. It is well to admit it.
But not so in the early days. It is as well to admit facts. They were staying there. You cannot say that the three hundred visitors here are staying in Toronto. You cannot use that word. They are barely visiting, but these dear people, full of holy love for God and Christ and for one another, were staying in that room. They were staying in that room in that building.
Staying in a seemly manner, of course, but they were staying; they were not in a hurry to get away. Heaven will not be a place where we shall have any desire to separate or retreat to our own places. Love will pervade. We shall “be filled even to all the fulness of God”, Ephesians 3: 19. Everyone stayed in it, infinitely satisfied in it. And that is the point here. They went to that place. Not to their several houses in Jerusalem, nor to the temple, but to the upper room.
It has a spiritual meaning governing the whole dispensation. It is over against man’s conception of religion, man’s heart; it is over against the whole religious system. It is the upper room, the moral superiority of christianity to all that.
Finally I want to show how John confirms all this and leads to results that also mark the dispensation and that are even superior, in a sense, to what Luke presents to us. He is concerned about the spiritual, not only that we should have faith but that we should be spiritual. We find that Mary remains after Peter and John go home. It says, “But Mary stood at the tomb weeping without”. Well, you say, There is not much christianity in that. What is there in that to evangelise the world? What is there in that to make disciples of all nations? No weeping woman would make disciples, certainly if the tears are tears arising from unbelief. It is well to face facts and however estimable this dear woman was, or is, she was weeping in darkness. There was no occasion for it. It was the wrong time. If she were weeping for an erring saint, it would be in order. If she had heard of Peter’s denial of Christ, it would be in order, but not because of an empty sepulchre. And so she looks in. That is a movement that has its reward. The sepulchre anyway was something to her. The angel indeed had encouraged her in that: “Come, see the place where the Lord lay”. Here it is two angels in white sitting. They are not weeping, they are not doleful, they are not disconsolate. One is placed at the head and the other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain. They are in order, they are sitting in respect for the One who had been there, not the One who was there, but who had been there. He is elsewhere, but they respect the position. Two angels in white, not men but angels. John would say now, There is distance here in spite of your tears. There has been distance somewhere. God is not near in this. He is dealing with you at a distance. Not even two men with their sympathies but two angels in white.
And now the question: They say to her, “Woman”. Not ‘Mary’; that would not do. It is a question of distance. They do not call her by name. They say, “Woman, why dost thou weep?”. This is a question. If we are weeping, if we are oppressed, if our tears flow, why? That is the question. Are they tears of darkness, of confusion, tears that should never flow? There are many such tears that should never flow. And there are tears that should flow every day, but [p. 122] there are very few for the divine bottle. These are tears in regard of the testimony. “Why dost thou weep?”. She says, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him”. She is in unbelief. Who are they that have taken away her Lord? She could not tell. Possibly she would say, These guards, or these wicked Jews. But the Lord Jesus had risen triumphantly. No one had taken Him away! The clothes lay there as they had been about His body; there had not been a struggle. He arose Himself, according to John. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”, John 2: 19. He came out of the grave triumphantly.
Well now, the time has gone but these questions are not for nothing. Mary looks around. If there are any here in this case in any way, grieving in unbelief and in confusion of thought, well, maybe you should look around; you have been looking in the wrong direction. She looked around and she saw Jesus standing. I beg of you to note the ‘know nots’ here. “Having said these things she turned backward and beholds Jesus standing there, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus says to her, Woman, why dost thou weep? Whom seekest thou? She, supposing that it was the gardener, says to him, Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus says to her, Mary”. The Lord has a word for someone here tonight. You, Mary. You have been in confusion of thought. You love the Lord and He knows it, but you have been in confusion of thought. You have wept unnecessarily. He would say, “Why dost thou weep?”, and call you by name, Mary. Then she turns all the way round. That is the point. You have to take up a new attitude. These turnings here are most instructive, these movements. That is my point, as to whether they apply and whether I am making room for them. “She, turning round, says to him in Hebrew, Rabboni”.
That word means ‘My Teacher’, as much as to say that all these tears and sorrow and agony of soul are due to the want of teaching. Not that the teaching was not available but she had not appropriated it. There is no lack of teaching and light today, but the lack is in the appropriation. She says, My Teacher. The end is reached. Although she would touch the Lord, He says, “Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father”. What precious thoughts are wrapped up in that word! “I have not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. And she went. The result is according to the Lord’s design. She went to the disciples and told them “that she had seen the Lord, and that he had said these things to her”. One would venture to suggest to the brethren as to these meetings, What will you carry away? What will be the result of them in your case, or in my case? The Lord intends results. What will you carry away to the saints? He says, “But go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. It is the heavenly side of the truth, eternal relationships. That is what God is aiming at. She went to the disciples and told them that she had seen the Lord and that He had spoken these things to her. Perfectly comely and suitable and, I may add, effective, for the next verse says that very day (’late in the night’ as the word means) He went to the disciples where they were and the doors were shut. I believe the shut doors may be coupled with the message. She made the brethren exclusive. The adjustment of this woman led to a message being sent by her that made the brethren exclusive. We must not be afraid of the word ‘exclusive’; not to be used in the narrow sense with which some charge us, but “through fear of the Jews”. All the religious element, the accredited religious element, is shut out [p. 124] in the doors being shut. We have often said, and it is well worth repeating, that the word ‘doors’ is in the plural. Spiritually there were as many doors as brethren in the place where the disciples were (the word ‘assembled’ should not be there). They are enriched by the message and the message makes them exclusive. If we can carry messages back to our meetings, making the brethren exclusive in the sense that it is to shut out what is religious in a worldly sense, we shall certainly reach the end the Lord has in mind. The result is that we have the Spirit of Christ. The way is made for the Lord, the true Solomon, to come in to establish peace, to bring into the company peace and joy. It is an exclusive company, filled with holy peace from the lips of Christ, from the presence of Christ, and with holy joy, for they were glad when they saw Him. Then He says to them, “As the Father sent me forth, I also send you. And having said this, he breathed into them, and says to them, Receive the Holy Spirit: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained”. I believe as the exclusive character of the thing is maintained with us we shall have the Spirit of Christ, and the power for ministry too, and forgiveness to our brethren all around us. “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained”. The Lord indicates His confidence to us under these circumstances.
I thought we might see the adjustment in the closing chapters of the gospels, how we are carried over from the realm of sight to the realm of faith and the realm of the Spirit.