THE PLACE WHERE CHRIST IS
THE PLACE WHERE CHRIST IS
It is of all importance that if we know the Lord is not here, we should know the place where He is. In fact, we could not be truly attached to Him where He is not if we did not follow Him in heart to the place where He is. The place is heaven, which is our only place.
The point for us to consider next is how we enter into and enjoy the place where He is.
The great failure of the church was giving up Paul. Therefore it was said to Timothy, “Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner”. All in Asia did not give up evangelical truth, but they gave up Paul. Anything popular you may have, but not Paul; and why? Because it is heavenly.
If I look at men of God like Baxter, John Newton, Samuel Rutherford, Owen, or George Herbert, what do I find? Plenty of affection for Christ, but nothing heavenly.
I cannot believe you love the Person if you would not like to get to the place where He is.
I never saw a division yet in which the heavenly position was not given up by the malcontents.
It is of immense importance that we seek to understand the place.
Now in the passage in Joshua it is not that they were not over Jordan. They were over Jordan, and it is in Colossians 2: 20 that you are over Jordan.
In Romans you get “dead to sin, dead with Christ”: out of the man. But in Colossians you are out of the place where the man is.
When I get deliverance I am free from the man; the next step is, I am clear of the place where he is.
[p. 2] Gilgal is the actual spot where all of man goes.
Many understand Marah who do not understand Gilgal.
Marah is that I refuse the thing that would draw me from the wilderness.
In Gilgal you drop it all. It is cut off and cannot be resumed.
It was said lately that the testimony is all about the Lord Jesus Christ; but I would add that the testimony is to a glorified Saviour. For in John 15: 26 the Lord says, “whom I will send”. This is not the same as in chapter 14: 16: “I will pray the Father, and he shall give”, etc. In one place the Holy Spirit is spoken of as sent by the Father, in the other as sent by the Lord; and there are two distinct offices connected with the mission of the Holy Spirit in these two chapters, in chapter 14 to comfort them, and in chapter 15 testimony. Power and faith are always connected.
What gives power is, as we have in Jeremiah 4, “Return unto me”. “He shall testify of me”, the blessed Person who is gone up to the right hand of God. His body is on the earth, and that body was to be the expression or manifestation of that Man in the very scene of His rejection.
You do not get “testify” in John 14, but in John 16, “He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you”. The effect will be as with the queen of Sheba; she said, as it were, I have lost Abyssinia, but I have gained the knowledge of all the glory of Solomon; “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage”, Psalm 16: 6.
You can be occupied with feelings of attachment for a person, and yet not be in concert with what that person has, because you are not in the place. That is “the old corn of the land”. The children of Israel when they got over Jordan had the passover, and the [p. 3] day after they ate the old corn of the land. The passover was a type of the Lord’s supper, in which I can say, I have reached the consummation of His accomplished work. I begin a new day, and I eat of the old corn of the land. When I come to Gilgal I find I am left in a place where the Lord is not, but I have the power of the Holy Spirit in the place where the Lord is not.
What has hindered souls from understanding the mystery is that they are not consciously on heavenly ground. You never can understand the mystery but on heavenly ground.
In Colossians 3 the apostle sought to educate the Colossians for this mystery.
No man gets clear of the intrusion of the flesh until he gets to Gilgal. I have seen a great many suffer from the Colossian intrusion; it may be loud singing or anything that brings the man to be a contributor to christianity. We ought to be able to say to every offer of the flesh, I do not want your learning, I do not want your sanctimoniousness; I want nothing but Christ, for I am complete in Him, and He is everything and in all - I am looking up.
You see a great many texts on the walls, but do you see that text, “Seek those things which are above”?
I never did look back that I did not become a spectacle to my fellows - like Lot’s wife.
Take Stephen: he looked up, and he saw he had a Saviour in heaven.
You know very little about a person if you only know what he was and not what he is; and that is the difference between the manna and the old corn of the land.
In Colossians 1: 4 they had not the mystery in faith. They might have nice meetings and the like - not forsaking the gospel. Demas, for example, did [p. 4] not go after infidelity, but the apostle says, “Demas hath forsaken me”.
There is nothing a man so revolts from naturally as to see that this scene is gone.
But though this scene is gone for me, I am supported down here by supplies from the place where my Lord is gone.
You may have great capacity for enjoyment of this world, but you do not belong to it.
By the Holy Spirit I walk the path He has trodden up to the place where He is.
There are many who have for a moment tasted it; and I would ask, Had you your relatives, you property there? No; I had only the Lord. And were you happy without them? Perfectly so.
There are many in heart over Jordan who have never accepted it. Your acceptance of the new place necessitates dropping everything connected with the old place. Like a recruit brought to the barrack gate; he drops all the old, the civilian, to get the new.
The apostle said that when he was caught up into the third heaven he did not know whether he was in the body or out of the body. They say that a man in a balloon gradually loses, first the sense of feeling, then the sight of things below, then his hearing, and lastly, consciousness.
You do not get a right idea of sanctification until you come to this: Paul came down from the place where he did not know whether he was in the body, and now he will have a crippled body. The more I understand the exaltation, the more I shall be crippled here.
Once you separate the church from the gospel, I am prepared for any departure, human subsidy and carnal support of every kind.
In the letter the apostle writes to the Colossians he warns them that they had not the mystery in power. And nothing but the mystery in power can keep you.
[p. 5] How often have I wished I were eloquent! And if I had been, I should have spoilt it.
I have no doubt Laodicea has come out of this; and as surely as you separate the church from the gospel you will get into that which is Laodicean.
How often an evangelist deplores the state of his converts! I say, Your converts are the pattern of yourself. No one ever understood the gospel thoroughly that did not understand the church.
The apostle prayed for the Colossians, for heaven. The gospel gives you the right to heaven; the church takes you up to heaven.
The Head was given up in Romanism.
Sardis is the source of Laodicea. It is the return to the gospel without returning to the church. Luther did not get Paul’s gospel; therefore he did not get the church.
During the last sixty years the truth has been fading away in the kingdom of heaven, which has the word of God for its rule, but not the Spirit; while concurrently God has been recovering the truth in the church, His own assembly.
The Lord give you and me grace to keep it!
I never saw a brother who left the heavenly ground who did not become Babylonish, not Egyptian - for Egypt is the gross world, but Babylon is the refined, aesthetic world. I have watched them, for I have had to watch myself.
Laodicea is christian religion without Christ Himself. Do not give up the heavenly side! Do not give up Paul! Do not be “ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner”!