THE KINGDOM AS EXISTING FOR THE CHURCH

^[p. 294] THE KINGDOM AS EXISTING FOR THE CHURCH

Exodus 14: 20 - 31; Matthew 13:19; Matthew 13:44-50; Matthew 16: 18 - 20

I want you to bear in mind my purpose in what I have to say to you, that is, to shew the sequence and connection of various parts of truth. There has been the tendency to take up truths separately, apart from their connection with and bearing on other truths. The fact is there is really no such thing as “truths”. There is the Truth; but there is no detail with God — Christ is the truth. But of course we apprehend the truth in detail, and the result is — or the tendency is — to take up things in too detached a way; we take up the truth of life, or of the kingdom, or other things as though they were self-contained, but I want to shew how one part is dependent upon another. For instance, the kingdom depends upon the revelation of God; and the kingdom leads to the church, and the church to the testimony; we could not understand the testimony — Christ dwelling in the heart by faith — unless we entered into the truth of the assembly. I want to speak now of the kingdom; and in doing so I may bring before you God’s pleasure and will, but you must bear in mind that it is quite another thing how you stand personally in relation to that will, and that depends upon divine teaching, “ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him”.

I refer now to the kingdom. In the passage in Exodus we have related the victory over the enemy, and the consequence was that Israel feared Jehovah and they believed in Jehovah and in His servant Moses; in the application of the type to us, we believe in the One in whom the power of God has been expressed. Moses had wielded the rod of God, and the waters were ^[p. 295] divided, but it typified the One whom God raised from the dead. To Israel it was the beginning of the kingdom. The kingdom could not exist in Egypt; the people had first to be freed from the Egyptians. The question of kingdom involves for God the destruction of an adverse power — this thought is seen throughout scripture. With Israel at the Red Sea it was so; and in the establishment of the kingdom hereafter it will be so: there will be the complete destruction of the enemy’s power. You get a sample of the kingdom again in the throne of David; this was God’s intervention at the time, to give deliverance to the people from the hand of the Philistines; the people were sadly oppressed; Saul was first raised up to deliver, but David finally; and God gave him the victory over all his enemies round about, and that just gives a sample of the kingdom: that is grace acting in power on behalf of the people in their utter weakness. The divine thought is that being delivered we should come under the moral sway of the One in whom the power is expressed; that is of us, believing in the Lord Jesus. The kingdom practically for us is the moral sway of the Lord Jesus, which is in grace.

I have spoken of Moses and David in connection with the idea of kingdom. Now I pass on to the Lord coming into the world; and the moment He came, the question of the kingdom was raised, for the power of the enemy was here. When Christ came He expressed God, but He came also spoiling the strong man; He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil — He bound the strong man, and then went on spoiling his goods. The power of God has delivered us from the authority of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love; the practical result is that we believe in God, and on His Servant the Lord Jesus Christ.

This principle — grace acting in power — came out markedly in the Lord down here; there was in Him the perfect revelation of God — what His heart toward man ^[p. 296] was; Christ made known that in the heart of God there was love towards man. Men should have learnt this in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ down here; He laid the heart of God bare to men; but there was too, as I have said, the spoiling of the strong man’s goods. In the temptation the stronger One bound the strong man, and from thenceforth He spoiled his goods. Satan tried his hand, all he could, against Christ, but the stronger One was there.

We see thus that the kingdom on the part of God is grace acting in power on man’s behalf, and against man’s oppressor; and in its application to us, it is that we come under the sway of grace. In coming under that sway, we escape the authority and power of the prince of this world. The world is the scene of Satan’s power, and people do not really break with the world until they come under the sway of grace. We are like children in that sense, who will not relinquish what they have, save for a better thing; we do not break with the world until we come to what is better — to the sway of grace. The kingdom, as has been said, is grace active in power. Now there is a teaching connected with that power, as we see in Titus 2, “the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world” — but more than that, there is the looking for “the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” — grace leads us in thought to glory.

I pass on now to Matthew 13: in this chapter the Lord is making known what He had all along been doing; He makes known the work in which He had been engaged from the outset of His ministry; He had been all along a Sower. It was His service; He had been sowing the word of the kingdom. The truth is that He was Himself the expression of the kingdom, and for the reason that He was the perfect expression of the grace of God acting in power. You must take into account that in ^[p. 297] Christ down here there was a perfect revelation of the heart of God to man. Christ was not the minister of law, He was here as Physician, in the grace of God, and in power to deliver men from the bondage in which man was held. Now if the word of the kingdom was sown, then the kingdom must have been there — the kingdom was there in the person of Jesus. If Nicodemus had had eyes to see it, he would have seen that the kingdom was before him in the person of Jesus. But in order to see it, and to come under its sway, it was necessary that man should be born again.

Now the kingdom has reference to us individually — we, of course, come under the sway of grace individually — but I want to shew you that on the part of God the kingdom subsists for the church. The kingdom is in that sense subsidiary to the church. I ask you to read the parables of the treasure hid in the field, and of the pearl of great price: all the early part of the chapter is occupied with the development of the kingdom as in the hand of man; the Lord foresaw what it would come to in the hand of man. If you want to get an idea of the mustard tree, I would point you to popery; but in the end of the chapter we come to the secrets of the kingdom; the purpose for which the kingdom exists in the mind of God and in fact. The kingdom is maintained as a bulwark against the flood of evil down here, but its object is for the treasure — the treasure is the church; the field was bought for the sake of the treasure that was in it. The following parable is of the pearl of great price, and to buy this the merchantman went and sold all that he had. Here we have the thought of the church, but it is viewed as a similitude of the kingdom; the kingdom in the mind of God has in view the church. The final parable is the net cast into the sea which drew fish of every kind, and the good are put into vessels, and the bad are cast away. At the close of the age there is selection. My object in referring to these parables is to prove that the kingdom is maintained for the sake ^[p. 298] of the church.

I pass on now to chapter 16 and here we have another passage connecting the thought of the kingdom with the church. Peter had a special revelation made to him from the Father, and the result was that he confessed Christ as the Son of the living God. The Lord gives no ministry to Peter in regard to the church; in connection with that, Peter is simply regarded as a sample stone; the rock was the confession of Christ as the Son of the living God; and it proved that Peter was a stone — a piece of the rock. The church here is looked at solely and entirely as of Christ’s building. Peter takes up in his first epistle the thought of living stones; a person comes to the Living Stone, in apprehending that Christ is the Son of the living God, and at the same time that He is disallowed indeed of men. His resurrection is the expression of one — He is “declared ... Son of God with power, ... by the resurrection from the dead” — and His death of the other, for death is the extreme expression of man’s disallowance. And until christians are outside the influences of this world, they can hardly be said to have come to Christ as the Living Stone. As regards the church, as we have seen, Christ alone is the Builder, and Peter in this passage is in regard to it simply a stone; but in regard to the kingdom, Peter had by the Lord’s appointment a very important place. He opened up the sway of grace to both Jew and Gentile. Peter preached grace in the light of the glory on the day of Pentecost; God answered the people’s wickedness and perverseness in the preaching of grace, and on the condition of repentance they received forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and three thousand were added to them that day.

The force of Christ’s resurrection is accentuated by the fact that He Himself, when here, raised the dead. The power of resurrection was set forth in Him. We believe in God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, and more than that, we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ in whom the power of God has thus been expressed.

^[p. 299] Now the teaching of grace leads us to apprehend love; and thus brings us practically to the assembly, and then we begin to apprehend what God is doing for Himself; He is “bringing many sons to glory” for the satisfaction of His love; the assembly is composed of the many sons whom God is bringing to glory, and who are to be with Christ in the full light of divine love, and to respond to that love. Grace leads to glory, and God’s glory is His purpose, and in apprehending His purpose, we are brought into the truth of the assembly; and it is in that way that we are in company with many more in the presence of divine love. Aaron and his sons stand as a type of Christ and the church, but we do not get in the type that they went into the holiest in company; but now, the moment you in spirit cross the threshold of the holiest you find yourself in company with many more, and it is the effectiveness of grace that has brought you there. Grace does not stop at teaching, but leads to glory. It is in this way that it works as you come under its sway, you are brought into the divine purpose, into the presence of divine love, and are responsive to it. The assembly is where the Father’s love is known, and where we are responsive to that love. The kingdom is necessarily dependent upon the revelation of God, and when the kingdom is established in the heart of the believer, it leads him into the presence of the Father’s love, in association with Christ, and thus we learn what the assembly is, and that grace leads to glory.