LIFE

D.L.Stewart

John 2: 1-3; 4: 20,49; 5: 4; 6: 27,51-69; 10: 10 (last half of verse)

I would seek help to speak about life as it is in these scriptures. The Lord Jesus says in the verse that we have just read that He has come specially for the purpose "that they might have life, and might have it abundantly". It is in the divine mind for everyone of us to have life and to enjoy life. Young people setting out want to enjoy life and to choose the way that to them seems to lead to the kind of life that they want. Now God has in mind a character of life that is quite different from what is ordinarily thought of as life. Men often live in their business, one man in that, another man in his family and so on. The family of course is a great matter with God. The first verse I read was a family matter – the marriage occasion is a great day in the life of a young man and young woman. But then the wine was deficient. What is natural, and natural affection and family life is of God, but it is not the character of life that God has in His mind for us. It belongs to nature, but it is not really life. Paul says, "Lay hold of what is really life" (1 Timothy 6: 19).

I just wanted to touch on these early verses that I have read in John and for a moment or two speak on what we might call the negative side of things. Nature, wonderful as it is, and. in the sight of God beautiful, is not really life. In chapter 4 the woman says, "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain", that is tradition. There is a lot of tradition about. People seek to live in tradition, what their fathers did, and what has been handed down – but it is not life. We could be like that ourselves. The meetings could become a kind of tradition that we have been brought up in – but that is not life. God has something greater for us in the way of life. The courtier (also in chapter 4) must have been a man of society. Many a person tries to find their life in what is social. We can even have what is social among us, and it is not life. God has something far greater for us than that, infinitely greater. The courtier says, My child will die. There is death connected with that side of things.

In chapter 5, the pool of Bethesda speak of what is providential and that is another feature in which persons seek to find their life. What God provides in this way for us is right and good. In this incident the angel comes in and somebody gets the benefit. It is no' t a real picture of life, persons lying there "sick, blind, lame, withered, awaiting the moving of the water". Yet God comes in for them in a limited kind of way, and He does come in for us. He provides us with many, many things in this sphere of His providential dealings, but what is providential is not in itself life. We are to be thankful for it. In this country there is a great deal of what is providential and persons, and we ourselves, tend to live in it, but it is not life. So the Lord says in chapter 6, "Work not for the food which perishes". It is provisional, it is only for a time, it is a necessity, but He says we are not to work for it, not to put our life into that kind of thing. Many of us might do that. Men may live in it, we could live in it – live in our business, live in getting a bit more, a bit- more expansion. It is only provisional, "Work not for the food which perishes".

I wanted to speak a little on the Lord's own words in chapter 6, His own setting out of the great subject of life, what will yet be our portion and yet what we are to come into the gain of, and would desire to come into the gain of, now. I must say that I am hesitant in speaking on John 6 because it is so great, but there is no other way of life. The Lord speaks of it Himself and says, "I am the living bread which has come down out of heaven: if any one shall have eaten of this bread he shall live for ever; but the bread withal which I shall give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world" (v.51). "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Unless ye shall have eaten the flesh of the Son of man, and drunk his blood, ye have no life in yourselves" (v 53). Now I just seek to point out what comes out in these verses. "Unless ye shall have eaten", that is to say that we have not begun to live unless we have appropriated for ourselves what is involved in the fact that the Lord has gone into death. He makes a remarkable use of these expressions, "my flesh" and "my blood". To the natural mind it is not a matter of life.

It Is nauseous in a sense, but it is His blood and it is His flesh. "Unless ye shall have eaten". On an occasion like this we would almost assume that everyone might have had an initial experience of the blessing of partaking of that which speaks of the death of Jesus. We have no part in Christianity, we have no part in life, we have not started on the way of life unless we have appropriated this great matter of the Lord having gone into death. He lay there, He lay in death for us.

Then He goes on from that and says in the next section, "He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal" (v 54). "He that eats". It is not what is past, it is not something we have done, it is a characteristic feature that is to be found with those who are in the gain of the death of Christ. It is something that is meant to be continuous with us, something that is meant to be characteristic of us. This is the kind of food that we are to eat, the kind of food that we are to enjoy, that relates to His going down into death. And then He goes on from that to say that "He also who eats me shall live on account of me" (v.57). That is Himself in His present place. There is what is past – "shall have eaten" – then the characteristic line of going in for the kind of food that relates to His death, and then "who eats me", relating to Him where He is now. We need to challenge ourselves as to how much we are found appropriating this kind of food. It means life. It is the only thing that means life. I would like to call attention to verse 57. He says, "I live on account of the Father, he also who eats me shall live also on account of me", and in the note Mr Darby says, "I live by reason of his (the Father's) being and living". The Lord lived because of the Father, He lives in the area of the Father's realm and the Father's affections. He lived there and makes it evident that we could live on account of His living, that we could be here in this scene depending and drawing our resource and what we need for the sustaining of life from Him, because of His living; not only that He has gone down into death, _but it is because of His living, because of His present position, His exaltation His glory, His present place with the Father'. So this is the kind of food that is to sustain us, the kind of food that we are to go in for. You can understand that some persons thought this was hard – "this word is hard" – and in that connection He says, "If then ye see the Son of man ascending up where he was before?" (v 62). That relates to His Person, His Deity, His own act in ascending. That is the Person in manhood that we feed upon, that same Person, but He speaks of Himself as ascending up. It is to lift our eyes above this scene and above all these negative features that I spoke of, things in which there is no life, but there is a character of life that depends on Him where He is, live on account of His living.

He says, "It is the Spirit which quickens, the flesh profits nothing" (v.63). These are things which we have to come to, "the flesh profits nothing": four words, perhaps among the most momentous that have come to us through Him. "The flesh profits nothing". What a lesson to learn! For the sake of the young people I will tell you an experience that I had myself as to this verse. As a young man keen to get on at that time, I got hold of a book one day, a bound volume of old magazine ministry in the last century. I looked up the index and saw an entry which said, "What shall I study" (J.N.D.), and I thought that is just the very thing I want, so I looked up the page number and thought I was going to get a great deal of help from Mr Darby as to how to learn to study, what ministry I should read and how I was to build up my knowledge of Scripture. To my surprise there were only two lines at the bottom of the page, and it said, "Do you ask what shall I study? Study well these four words – the flesh profits nothing" (J.N.D.). It is a life-long lesson. We are still studying it. Right to the end of the day we are going to study it, "the flesh profits nothing". As we study that, we think of the One who ascended. What a subject! What an inexhaustible subject! Let us fill our hearts with it, fill our souls with it. Oh to be engaged more with the One who has ascended! He has gone up there and He has everything in His hands, He has control of the whole divine arrangement of things. The world that is yet to come is His; in what is past, in His work and His death He has secured the basis for it all. At the present time He would have us living in His life. A life that has such a quality about it, there is nothing else that can be compared to it, and so in the light of all this He says to His disciples, "Will ye also go away?" (v.67).

The Lord is presenting things to the disciples which are eternally great and challenging as He would challenge everyone of us whether we are going to go on, whether we are going to go in for that character of life, that emanates from Him, have our beings saturated with it, circumstances affected by it in detail every day. How little one can speak about it. We seek to speak about such things; perhaps we say a great deal that is very challenging to ourselves as to whether we know what this kind of life is. "Will ye also go away? " He says. I think the Lord felt it, felt it as to persons who had come under the sound of such remarkable ministry. Never had it been uttered in the ears of men before: He says, "Will ye also go away?" "To whom shall we go?" says Peter, "To whom shall we go?" It is not a question of where or of what. The question is as to the Lord Jesus being the centre. "To whom shall we go? thou hast words of life eternal". Think of having Him as the centre and drawing from Him words of life eternal. There was a great controversy on the subject of eternal life, but it has been well said by another that the best way to know what eternal life is is to go to the One who has the words of it. We need these words. We need them every day, as the days proceed, as the weeks proceed, we need the words of life eternal, need to feed upon them. We spoke of that this afternoon, about the word that would sustain us; it is His word and He would come near to us in relation to it.

I trust the Lord would encourage us and help us to go in for these things, not to be among those that go away, but of those that are going on, cost what it might. The tests come, the difficulties come, but go on, and in going on be in the enjoyment of this kind of life that depends upon Him alone.

May the Lord bless His word to us.

BENDIGO

14th September, 1985