CHRIST'S DISPENSATIONAL LEADERSHIP
CHRIST’S DISPENSATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Luke 24:50 - 53; Acts 1:6 - 14
The first passage I read, speaks of leadership, the Lord’s leadership, and I wish to speak of it, not in the ordinary sense of leadership; that is, of persons being led into new thoughts or regions, but led dispensationally, for that is indeed what the Lord did in leading His own out as far as to Bethany, “as far as”. It was not very far, in a literal sense, only a few furlongs from Jerusalem, but in result it really meant that the Lord was leading dispensationally, as I said, and He stopped at Bethany. It was a remarkable time, and what led up to it, too, was remarkable, and indeed solemn, for the Lord had moved from the mountain called the mount of transfiguration. He had moved from that point, having been glorified there, and the movement was to Jerusalem, having in mind that it should be His exit out of this world, but through death; and so it happened. He was put to death according to the record of Peter’s address, and also of Acts 4. It was a judicial matter, a most solemn, a most dreadful judicial matter.
And now, as risen from the dead, the Lord is again moving, not from the mount of transfiguration, but from, we may say, the upper room in Jerusalem. The disciples were there, the Lord had not been there, but He came there, and doubtless heard what they were saying, and presently He was in the midst of them, and from that point He went to Bethany. There was much conversation, much adjustment, much instruction, but it was short of what was near to their hearts, namely, whether the kingdom should be restored to Israel then. Their hearts were Jewish, their calculations were Jewish, their outlook was Jewish, but the Lord had His outlook too, the [p. 554] Lord had His calculations, His thoughts, and He had joys which were set before Him, but not in Jewish settings. He was going up, but the journey led Him to Bethany, but this was just on the way to heaven for Him. Heaven was His objective, and I might say He hasted, speaking reverently, to get there, for as far as Luke’s first account goes, it would appear that this journey was taken on the day of His resurrection. He had much in His heart, great prospects too, the joy that was set before Him as we learn elsewhere; but He was going to heaven. I have already said that it was a dispensational journey, but His going to Bethany was only a part of the journey, and much had to be done before He could resume the great journey that He had before Him; I mean great in the sense of joy for Him, and for God the Father. And so the journey led to heaven, but it was the journey of a priest, and the Lord would not fail to exercise His function as Priest in view of their condition, in view of what He had in His mind, which would affect them. He would set them up, as He is ever ready to do, dear brethren, in such circumstances; He lifted up His hands, we are told, and blessed them. He was parted from them too, which would mean, that there could be no fulfilment of what I may speak of as assembly prospects in the Lord’s history here, because He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.
Assembly matters must be left, in measure, for the moment, and how much the Lord had in His mind dear brethren, at that time, and how much has since then come into the minds of the saints too, for the Lord finds ways and means of bringing the truth into our hearts, into our intelligences. But there had to be waiting on His part, and on ours, at least there was on their part. Immediately they had opportunity they would speak about Israel; they were not burdened about the new covenant particularly, though no doubt they had it in their hearts, but they were thinking of the kingdom, rather than the new [p. 555] covenant. He had the new covenant in His heart, His blood had been shed, the blood of that covenant; “the new covenant in my blood”, Luke 22:20. He said later as He had said already. So that there were many things to think of, and what I am saying I hope will lead the dear brethren now to think of many things, for there are many important things to be thought of. Some of the brethren know what has been thought of in this hall today and yesterday, and the clarification of them will bring, I hope, joy and better service for God, better service generally too, for men, as well as for God, because light is the great clarifying feature. “That which makes everything manifest is light”, Ephesians 5:13. Light clarifies, and much had to be clarified for the disciples then, even as for us now.
So the Lord did not say many words, He travelled away from Jerusalem to Bethany, and He served as priest, lifting up His hands as He was parted from them, He blessed them, as if to say that full assembly matters must be postponed for the moment. It was not to be thus for very long, for Paul was on the horizon, I might say; he was not far away, at least in the Lord’s mind, and the Lord would wait for him too, for it was a waiting time for heaven, as well as for Israel; not yet for the gentiles, their waiting time would come. But the Lord was ready to wait. He was parted from them; how He would feel the parting, because one of them had lain in His bosom, and there would be a sense of separation. He was parted from them, not they parted from Him, because they remained, no doubt, in their proper attitude, but He was parted from them, and that has its own significance. Nevertheless, with all the partings, and all the vicissitudes that entered into that moment, the Lord was received up in glory, heaven was waiting to hail Him, “be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in”, Psalm 24:7. I quote that merely to convey the facts of the case. What an entry He had, what a welcome! The Father had already raised Him by His glory. Think of that; what an [p. 556] experience! I say experience, because the Lord had experiences proper to Him as man. And so He entered heaven. It was a wonderful day for heaven, I need not say, but I add, it was a wonderful day for Christ too. Let us not think that He does not wonder at things, because He does, especially if they are experiences of His own, fraught with love, fraught with the prospects of love. It was a wonderful day for Him, but as I said, He was on a journey, on a dispensational journey, and it had not ended when He went to heaven. The dispensational journeys of the Lord were very many. I have no doubt that the Lord had to do with all these matters, all these dispensational matters, from the antediluvian dispensation down, and there were many the Lord Jesus had to do with, He had to do with them in His experiences. There can be no doubt that the Jehovah who visited Abraham at Mamre was Jesus. We do well to think on these things, dear brethren, so as to be reverential about Him, understanding that He had to do with all these things. As to things that are made, He had to do with them all, there was not one thing made without Him, and as regards moral things that had to take form, and have since taken form, and are now taking form, they are all by Him, 1 Corinthians 8:6. And so this dispensational journey is taken by the Lord, as all the dispensations really are, but now we are concerned with the one we have to do with.
God has set aside Israel for the moment, He has not abandoned them; His present action is only for a season, as in the case of the blindness of Barjesus, it is only for a season. God will return to His ancient people. He has not lost His affection for them, He knows how to keep His affections, whatever they may be, to keep them until the time for them arrives, and then He will lavish them on the objects of His love. And so the Lord has now given up His relations with Israel. He lingered long, loath to leave them, but He has left them, and hence the dispensational [p. 557] journey that I have been speaking of has been terminated. He has reached another dispensation, and He is going to leave it presently, and return to the old one; He will do that. What Jesus does, God does; He is with Him in all that He is doing. What the Father does He does, and what He does the Father does; John 5 shows this. Hence this dispensational matter is a very important one, because now it involves the clearance of our souls from things that do not belong to us, that ought not to harass us at all, for they belong to another period, and the Lord is going to take care of everything that belongs to it, but He has not yet taken the journey back. He will return to it presently, very soon I believe.
Now referring to the passage in Luke 24, He was on the way to the assembly dispensation, but He has now reached it, removing all the Jewish trammels attaching to it; so that it might stand out in its glory; that we might understand that we belong to a glorious dispensation, the most glorious of all, the one that will run into eternity. The Lord has, through His servant, Paul, taken up all these matters. I am going over ground that I have gone over already in recent times, though perhaps not in the ears of all here, but necessarily so, because I believe the brethren all need to see that christianity is unique in itself, and intended to be glorious in itself, and that the Lord has taken His journey to it, out of Judaism. He is not supporting Judaism now, not in any way, either spiritually, or commercially, or politically. He is not in it at all. He is out of it altogether. He is as free as we are, having set us free, and He is liberating His people from it, bringing them into “the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free”, Galatians 5:1. That is the lesson for us. He has come to another dispensation and He is in it, and He is staying in it for the time, in order to get us all into it before we go to heaven. I am sure the Lord contemplates with grief seeing many of His own held with the trammels of religion, as it is called, whether it be paganism,
[p. 558] Judaism, or worldly christianity. The latter has originated, in the main, from Judaism, and the Lord is labouring to set us all free of it, so that God might get His portion, because every vestige of Judaism is hindering the service of God; wherever it is maintained, or in any way treasured, or cared for, it is hindering the service of God. The Lord is in the new dispensation, He has taken His journey, but I believe the whole position has been cleared for the reverse journey, the one that the Lord is about to take into the millennium.
Now I must proceed to the second passage in order that we may see how patient the Lord was at this time. We can well understand how He participated in the joy of the disciples as they returned to Jerusalem after He went up to heaven; they “returned to Jerusalem with great joy”, Luke 24:52. They were in the temple every day, praising and blessing God. The Lord had His part in that, undoubtedly, but it was not to continue; it would soon wane and disappear altogether, as the temple itself has disappeared altogether, in His own judgment, according to what we read in Luke 21, in fulfilment of which the whole Jewish system, with its city, Jerusalem, would be destroyed. It was sorrowful that it should be destroyed, but it was all to the end that what God had in mind should take place. It was to meet the attempted revival of Judaism that the epistle to the Galatians was written when the truth of the liberty of christianity was threatened by the enemy’s attack, and the Lord had His man to write it too, that is, Paul.
Now I refer to the Acts, because it is by the same writer; that is, Luke. The book of Acts was written in the careful provision of God. There can be no doubt that as the Lord Jesus told John the evangelist how to write the book of Revelation, the order in which it should be written, that He also told or taught Luke how to write the book of Acts. He wrote it, and his personality enters into it, but the Lord had to do with it; it entered into the [p. 559] journeys that I am speaking of. And the Lord waited, waited in the happy enjoyment, I might say, of His people’s joy in what remained of Judaism that was according to God. There was that which remained for a time, and which was fresh in the hands of the apostles, fresh in the energy of the Spirit. The Lord had His part in it too, so did the apostles, as I said; they clung to it, and the Lord regarded it according to the place it had had with God. He would think of God’s feelings. He was the Messiah, and He was the King too, the King of Israel, as was attributed to Him by Nathanael, for instance, “thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel”, John 1:49. That remained true, and the Lord knew it, but I say now, speaking reverently, that the Lord was ready to wait, indeed He just put the disciples off, when they inquired about restoring the kingdom of Israel. “It is not yours to know times or seasons”, Acts 1:7. He said. He did not give them a prophetic lecture about it, there was nothing of the kind, just a few words; “It is not yours to know times or seasons”, Acts 1:7. How briefly the Lord dealt with prophetic matters at that time. But He was thinking of something else, of the journey He was ready to take, and complete, the dispensational journey which would lead Him fully into christianity, and all the blessings attached to the service of God in christianity. All that was in the Lord’s mind; and He was waiting, according to His own perfect knowledge, wisdom, and holiness, until the time came when He could take up christianity wholly and fully, which He did. But, as I said, there was the waiting, the waiting of heaven, and of the blessed God Himself. We were speaking today of God, that He would be “all in all”. He will be “all in all” in Israel too, in due course. He will be known thus in all the dispensations, according as He has planned them and made them, but He is wonderfully patient, that is one of the chief things to be understood as to God, His patience. How wonderful it is:
[p. 560] at the beginning, waiting for the things to happen that He knew would happen in Israel. The longsuffering of God was there; He was there in the disciples going to the temple. They went to the temple, and were there every day praising and blessing God. God had to do with that, but it was to wane and disappear, and it has disappeared.
That is the point I am making, dear brethren, so that we might follow what God is doing, and how He is now seeking to get all that is possible for Him from His people, from ourselves. That is to say, what is accruing to Him. We are they, says the apostle Paul, “who worship by the Spirit of God”, “We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God”, Philippians 3:3. That is indeed the only proper way to worship. The public worship of God today, according to God, is “by the Spirit”, and no other way. None of the denominations have it at all, not one of them. Worship is only by “the Spirit of God”. We are the circumcision; that is, the real christians, the real ones, who are circumcised according to God. Christ has been circumcised in that sense, through His death, and we are too, Colossians 2:11. So that we have part in the true service of God. “We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and boast in Christ Jesus, and do not trust in flesh”, Philippians 3:3. That is what is going on, and that is what God is aiming at, and that is what the Lord is aiming at, and that is what the ministry is aiming at, that we might all be in it. As the Lord returns to the other dispensation, to Israel, coming back to take up the kingdom, He will bring us back with Him. We will have our part in that; we shall shine in the coming dispensation. The assembly will have a great place in it. The “holy city” will come down out of heaven from God and the names of the sons of Israel will be on the gates, and the angels will be identified at the gates with these sons of Israel. We will not be ashamed of them in that day; and the day is nearing too. The Lord will then have taken His journey, His dispensational [p. 561] journey, from ourselves to Israel, and we shall have gone up to heaven. He is not leaving us here; no; He is taking us up there first, and then He will take the journey back to Israel. There will be no journey back to Israel until we are gone to heaven, because our place is fixed there. “I go”, says the Lord, “to prepare you a place, and if I go…I am coming again and shall receive you to myself, that where I am, ye also may be”, John 14:2,3. That has to happen, before we can have this next journey that I am speaking of. And what a series of events! Heaven knows that all this has to happen, so that the Lord can freely leave the western world and take His journey back to the east.
I can visualise it in a way, for I know how the Lord deals with things, with what wisdom, what patience; everything according to the divine plan, nothing going awry in any sense. All is going to be well. The Lord Jesus is to be in charge of all the matters. Before He takes on the government of the world He is going to take the assembly to her place in heaven, and then He will resume His relations with Israel; she will have the first place with Him then, for He is the King of Israel. He will not then say, “It is not for you to know”, Acts 1:7. He said that at the beginning, for at that time it was for them to turn to something else, to what was in His heart. The Holy Spirit was coming to do things for Him, and it was for them to wait for Him, and to lay hold of the Holy Spirit, and to carry out the things that the Lord would direct them to do. He has been doing that ever since, and I am assured we are all ready for it. We have had the thing before us today, and yesterday, and I believe that in a sense we re-dedicated ourselves; I am assured that is not saying too much as to many of us. I refer to the journey that the Lord took after He reached Bethany. He was carried up to heaven from there; only the waiting had to take place, and Bethany was a landmark. They would soon know that that position was taken up designedly by the Lord. “He led them out as far as Bethany”, Luke 24:50. He knew the spot where that part of the matter would stop, and He is taken up from there. They go to Jerusalem, for God was still in Jerusalem, going on with it in grace. God in His patience is allowing them to go, and even to enter the temple, but the Lord’s supper was never taken in the temple; the service of God as we have it never proceeded in the temple. It is altogether our own, as indeed the Lord’s supper is. “This is my body”, He says, “which is for you”; (1 Corinthians 11:24) only for us; for the assembly.
Thus things had to wait, and Luke did not write the second time yet, but it was the design of God that this second treatise of Luke’s should be written. I suppose heaven had special delight in him, I think it had. He wrote according to method, and He spoke about the Word, about the Lord Jesus as the Word, the Logos, and that He had attendants, persons who attended Him in that capacity. Paul too in his day had attendants, because the Lord would extend the privileges that He had Himself to His great servant. He knows how to do these things, to touch us, to show that He cares for us, that He is thinking of us, and so He allowed Paul to have his company — “Paul and his company”, Acts 13:13. So, as I said, the waiting went on; the Lord waited in heaven, and then the Spirit came down. Great events these were. And the Lord was superintending them all. He received of the Father the promise of the Spirit, and shed Him forth, we are told. That was a most important action, it has the service to God in mind. Peter was ready to evangelise, but still the Jews came first, the Lord was taking care of them, not yet ignoring them, but He would ignore them, and presently as we had it today, take all that belonged to Him out of Judaism, and incorporate them into the assembly, every one of them.
It was a great time, as Paul and Barnabas laboured at Antioch for a year, incorporating all that were there into the assembly. It was the assembly now, the assembly was [p. 563] to be everything. In the meantime it was at Jerusalem in a metropolitan sense and the Lord recognised that. Paul knew that, and he went up “to salute the assembly” at one time, showing how He clung to the thought. The Lord did not disregard that either, because he had Himself greatly regarded it, but now, and this is my point, dear brethren, the matter is changed, and it is for us to come to the real point, the real facts of the case, that christianity is a reality in itself set up in the power of the Spirit of God. The Spirit is in control, in control subjectively here, as the Lord is in control in heaven; the two great Persons, the Lord in heaven and the Spirit here; the Lord in heaven as a High Priest there, and the Spirit here as a Comforter, the other Comforter, and so the dispensation goes on. It is in full sway now, but it may end at any moment, and I would seek to touch the hearts of the brethren as to this matter. I hope that I have said enough to indicate what is in mind, and what is imminent at the present time, what may happen at any time, that we shall all be caught up together, because that is the word. Let us not be simply theoretic about it; I am speaking of real facts, as real as any can be, that the Lord is coming, and He is preparing us to go there. Presently He will be preparing Israel to take its place here on earth, she belongs to the earth, not to heaven. There is no change in the mind of God in that respect, because it is a question of the fathers, “the promises of the fathers”, Romans 15:8. God loves the fathers, and He is going to restore all that belonged to them, all that belonged to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and all that belonged to royalty too, in Israel, the King, Christ Himself being the King; how rejoiced He will be, as all will come back, according to the divine plan, all be reinstated here on earth, so that “all Israel shall be saved”, Romans 11:26. How real that is, and as we think of what is current now, what a contrast; when these men that we are hearing of every day in such pitiable circumstances and violent,
[p. 564] wicked circumstances too, shall be changed by the new birth in the power of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God will come in as effecting new birth in them, so that Israel shall be born in a day. These are great facts, and in another sense all Israel will stand up as a great army, according to Ezekiel 37.
All these realities are about to take place. In the meanwhile we have our satisfaction in the assembly, in Christ and the assembly. That is where our joys are. Not that we ignore all else, as I said, but our joys are in Christ and in the assembly, and His joys are in us too, in the assembly; and the Father has His joys there also. We have to think of what God has, as the Lord Jesus is set up with His bride; but what glorious thoughts and terms are to be employed. Think of the marriage of the Lamb! What a time it will be when it is said, “the marriage of the Lamb is come”! Not will come but is come, “and his wife has made herself ready”, Revelation 19:7. See how everything is happening, according to the Lord’s mind and plan, and we are essential to it. These meetings are all intended to be essential and to make our hearts rejoice in the things that we are coming into, at any moment. I believe the Lord would make us realistic as to these matters, not merely theoretic, but realistic, knowing that these things are about to happen. Why not expect them to happen? Why not be ready? “His wife has made herself ready”, Revelation 19:7. That is what the Lord is thinking of, and we are to be of His mind. Let us be in readiness for what is coming about in the saints, through the ministry of the Spirit. So may God use these words to help us all.