DIVINE TEACHING AND THE SERVICE OF GOD
[p. 61] DIVINE TEACHING AND THE SERVICE OF GOD
I think there is an interesting and important connection between that which Christ effects, or carries out, now from heaven, from the right hand of God, and that which was effected in His work down here. You will find this presented in a great many ways in scripture. For instance, in Luke 24, “It behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name”. Remission had been secured by His death, but was to be ministered in His name, and that marks the present time. It behoved Christ not only to die, but to rise. The same thing holds good in regard to peace. Christ made peace by the blood of His cross, and now He preaches it. Further, in regard to the communication of the Spirit. It is the One in whom sin was condemned in the flesh who ministers the Spirit; He who takes away the sin of the world is the One who baptises with the Holy Spirit.
Now it is the same in principle as to the new covenant: it was established in the death of Christ. The death of Christ was, so to speak, the declaration of God’s disposition towards us. And now Christ is livingly the Mediator of the new covenant. We are said to have come to the Mediator of the new covenant; and He is also the Minister of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man. It is well the connection should exist in our minds between that which Christ secured by His work and that which He now ministers in power from the right hand of God. And one can see the suitability of it. He is the living minister of that which He secured by His work. I suppose it is true that there is no consequence of His death but what He ministers [p. 62] now in living power; that is how we know Christ at the right hand of God. We know Him as the Mediator of the new covenant, and that undoubtedly introduces us to the line of priestly work. It is curious that often the Old Testament types fail you; when you have the truth of the New Testament you see that types do not come up to the antitype, they are not the image; when you get into the realities you get beyond the type. Now in regard to priestly work the first great service of Christ was building the house of God; but in the type of the tabernacle this was the work of Moses. (Hebrews 3.) He was faithful in God’s house as a servant. It appears to me that in setting up the tabernacle Moses was doing, in a sense, priestly work; Aaron was not consecrated until the tabernacle was set up. But there was a kind of priestly work carried out by Moses previous to the installation of Aaron as high priest. I gather that from the Antitype. According to Psalm 68, when Christ went up on high, He “led captivity captive”, and “received gifts for men”. This is really in character and principle priestly work. I fancy we see here the real beginning of priestly work in connection with the Lord Jesus. He goes up on high, and, having received from the Father the promise of the Spirit, “He hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear”. (Acts 2.) And the apostle in connection with this quotes from Psalm 110, where Christ is spoken of as a “Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec”. Thus the beginning of priestly work was in the formation of the house of God, the communication of the Holy Spirit to the saints gathered down here.
There is another character of priestly work, when the house has been formed, which has to do with sympathy with our infirmities; and in that connection is priestly intercession, and the activities of Christ in regard to the saints down here. He succours the tempted, and that is made effectual down here in the power of the Holy Spirit. Until the Holy Spirit was come you could hardly conceive of that being carried out. It gives us an idea of the activity of Christ’s love with regard to His saints.
There is a great deal of priestly service that we have not been accustomed to connect with priesthood. I fancy all the little service we can render to one another in the way of sympathy and succour is the fruit of the activities of Christ as high priest above; Christ sets all in motion. When saints are under trial and pressure of various kinds they get a great deal of sympathy on the part of one and another, but all is set in movement by Christ at the right hand of God.
There is also the element of intercession, illustrated in the case of Peter. The Lord, in view of his fall, says, “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not”. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, and that is where the power of the Spirit comes in. Christ intercedes for us in heaven, but there is activity on the part of the Spirit down here that calls to mind the word of the Lord. So Peter, instead of being driven to despair is brought to repentance; grace works in him, repentance is the result, and he is restored.
Now in chapter 8 we have a further idea in connection with the priesthood of Christ. He is “minister of the holy places and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord ... pitched, and not man”. That thought I should connect with Psalm 118. The Jews are to be blessed in the future, and will say, “Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord”. That refers, I judge, to Christ coming out in the power of the Melchisedec priesthood. The Lord said to the Jews in the past, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord”. That is not quite the thought of Jehovah coming to reign. That comes out in the fourth book of Psalms. When you come to the fifth book, it is “Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord”. That is Christ coming in on man’s side, and fulfilling the desires of His people down here on earth. They say, “We have blessed you out of the house of the Lord”. Christ comes, and is welcomed in the very place from which He had been rejected. He comes in, in priestly grace, to His people as Melchisedec, and in that character will be welcomed by Israel, He will indeed establish Jehovah’s throne. He will be the Jehovah that reigneth, but at the same time He comes in as the priest after the order of Melchisedec, welcomed in the name of the Lord. But until then their house is left to them desolate.
Now, we get Christ as the Minister of the holy places; He is welcomed there and we welcome Him. He is the Leader in all that is connected with the service of God.
The point in this chapter is not the service of man; there is that, but that is not the character of the service that is spoken of here; it is the service of God; and in this Christ is the Minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.
What I wanted to touch on particularly for a moment is a subject familiar to many, and that is the connection between the Minister of the sanctuary and the Mediator of the covenant. The suitability of the Minister is dependent on His being the Mediator. The Mediator is the One in whom the disposition of God towards us is declared. He is thus suitable to lead us in the praises of God. These two things are bound to go together. You see here how the type is defective. Aaron was not the mediator of the covenant. He was the minister of the sanctuary and might not be always in accord with the mediator of the covenant. But in the antitype Christ is the Minister of the sanctuary. “By how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant”. We need, as I understand it, to know the Mediator of the covenant before we get any true worship of God. You get the new covenant in the Lord’s supper. In the Supper the Lord is distinctly presented as the Mediator of the new covenant. It is stated, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood”. You must touch the Mediator of the covenant before you can appreciate the Minister of the [p. 65] sanctuary. And I think I can understand the working of that morally. I do not believe that any one not established in the knowledge of God’s disposition towards us is competent or ready for the service of the sanctuary. But the wonderful thing is that the One who in death has been pleased to declare the disposition of God towards us is the One who leads us in the service of the living God. The new covenant is a great lesson to learn, it is where divine teaching comes in. The teaching of the new covenant is not what man can do for you; the ministry of the new covenant makes us acquainted with the disposition of God towards us as set forth in the death of Christ. That is, we apprehend the death of Christ in its teaching, which in a sense is distinct from the thought of its efficacy. Many have learned the death of Christ in its efficacy, who have not learned the divine teaching in it, founded on the death of the Testator. For Christ is looked at in that light, and in the death of the Testator we have the declaration of the disposition of God towards us. That is a wonderful thing, and in it Christ is the Teacher. We have to sit at the feet of Jesus and hear His, word; He is the Teacher by the Spirit. We have to learn the meaning of Christ’s death from Himself. His death is the great lesson-book to us. We have to learn the meaning of His death in the ways of divine love. What it means is that love never ceases to act on behalf of God’s people, and the end which the love of God towards us has in view is to have us with Himself in His own habitation. I do not think people weigh that enough; they think they go to heaven as a matter of course, but as I understand it they go to heaven to satisfy the love of God. God will have His people in His own habitation. By and by He will have Israel in the mountain of His inheritance. I think we learn two great lessons in the death of Christ, one is His great mercy towards us, He “is rich in mercy”, and the other that which is the spring of His mercy, His great love wherewith He loved us. It would be a great lesson [p. 66] for every one here to learn. If our hearts were instructed in the great love expressed in Christ towards us, in His going down on the cross into all that great distance, we should understand that it must be that God will have us with Himself in the nearness of heaven. Our place in heaven is the answer to the place of distance which Christ took in His love toward us on the cross. He went into the distance that we might be brought to God’s habitation, and in going to heaven we shall receive a warm welcome there. We are not to be carried to heaven by angels, but by the One who gave Himself for us. And you may be sure we shall be welcomed, seeing that we go there as the fruit of the great love wherewith He loved us.
That is the effect of the teaching of the new covenant. It may take a somewhat different form with Israel. We have the spirit of it; they are more in the terms of it. They will be acquainted with the mercy of God, will have the law written on the heart, and thus be made acquainted with the goodness of God. But the instruction it conveys to us is the disposition of God toward us; and His love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us. Now the One who has declared to us the love of God, is the One who leads us in the service of God; and we have to learn in connection with the ministry of the sanctuary that it is impossible there should be any complacency of God in us as men; we have to accept that by the death of Christ the flesh is wholly and entirely excluded. There is complacency in man on the part of God, but the man in whom is the complacency of God is the Man that is now before God.
In our own experience Adam has to be set aside and Christ to have his place. It has been said sometimes Ishmael had to be cast out of the house, when Isaac had his place in the house, and so it is in regard of the christian; that is the qualification for the service of God. I do not think we could apprehend the service of God if we did not understand the completeness of God’s complacency [p. 67] in those who serve Him. He could not be served otherwise. We could not serve Him according to His pleasure if He were not completely complacent in those who serve Him. The way it works in regard to us is this; when we are instructed in the love of God, then we are prepared for the displacement of self; when Christ gets His own place in us, then we enter into the holy places, and come under the eye of God for God’s complete complacency. We are before God in His complacency in Christ, and the eye of God rests on that which He Himself has formed in us, and there is that which is according to Himself on the part of those who approach Him.† There all is of God. Christ is the Minister of the sanctuary, and we enter like Aaron’s sons, as sons of God, we go in in the company of Christ; but the complacency is really in the true Aaron, in the Son of God. Christ has been pleased to take the position of man in relation to God, and He has the place of the Minister of the sanctuary. There could be no meaning in this if others were not there. And the ministry is equivalent to the grace of “the new covenant”, which is established upon “better promises”. He is the Minister of the holy places by as much as He is the Mediator of the better covenant; and that is a great lesson to learn.
God will be sanctified in those who approach Him, but the idea I want to convey is that there is complete complacency in those who approach. We stand in connection with the true Minister of the sanctuary, having learned effectually in the death of Christ, through His ministry, what God’s mind and disposition is in regard to His people down here.
It is often a long time before that lesson is learned, before we are prepared for complete displacement. But we have to be displaced. In the eye of God we were displaced in the death of Christ, but it is often long before
†Like the prodigal in the best robe. The Father’s eye could rest with complacency on him. Reconciliation has come in and Christ is Head.
[p. 68] we learn it and come to practical displacement in regard to ourselves. How could we understand complete displacement in regard to God without displacement in our own eyes in regard to man?
It is a blessed thought that, after all, God can look upon His people apart from all that is unsuitable to Himself. It is in the power of God to look upon His people and to see only that which He has formed in them, apart from all that is not according to Himself. But then when it is a question of the service of God, you want the other side too. The worshippers should be conscious of the complacency of God in those who approach Him. I desired to shew the connection of the two things. I think we have to learn the lesson of the death of Christ, and then, having learned that, we are prepared to accept our own displacement, and learn that God’s complacency is in His work. If God can look on those who approach Him with entire complacency, we see it is on account of His own blessed work in us. He has quickened us together with Christ, but I do not think the complacency can go beyond the limit of His work in us.