NEW THINGS
[p. 112] NEW THINGS
2 Kings 2:19 - 22: Luke 5:37 - 39; Colossians 3:10,11: Revelation 21:1 - 4
I have before me to speak of what is new. We have in Scripture, as of God, what is righteous, what is holy, and what is living, but we have emphasised also what is new; and perhaps we are less conversant with what is new than we are with these other features, especially as the material system of things, which is old, is what we are naturally most familiar with, and in itself is legitimate and right. God has not wholly given up what belongs to the old in that sense. Every creature of His is good. Our bodies are still in relation to the old, so that as accustomed to these things and these thoughts, it is perhaps difficult for us to enter on the new, but God has announced that He will make all things new. He announced by the prophet Isaiah, “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind”. Isaiah 65:17. So that in the Scriptures He prepares us for what is new. Peter says, “We according to his promise look for new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness”. 2 Peter 3:13. We have at the present time to practice righteousness in relation to the old, and in the millennium there will be a reign of righteousness in connection with the old, but for the dwelling-place of righteousness new heavens and a new earth are required. For if righteousness is to dwell it must be undisturbed. One idea of a dwelling-place in Scripture is a place undisturbed, a place into which nothing foreign enters, and I need not say that in the present order of things (what stands in connection with the present heavens and earth) there are such disturbances. Even the millennial kingdom, although perfect from its heavenly [p. 113] point of view, is not a perfect condition. There will be decline in it. In the book of Numbers the offerings of the feast of tabernacles (which will have their proper fulfilment in that day) begin with thirteen bullocks and diminish to seven. Spiritual basis is perfect, but nevertheless there will be decline and ultimate rebellion against God; a rebellion indeed which is summarily dealt with, but nevertheless proving that the capability of it is there. Hence the government of God, as Peter deals with it, requires new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness is to dwell.
You will all remember how the tabernacle of old was marked by gold inside; now gold is symbolical of divine righteousness, of what God is as revealed in Christ. The tabernacle was intended to be a dwelling-place; for all outside was different. The sphere of the gold was then pointing to a time when there would be new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness would dwell. The assembly will be that, and, indeed, it was that at the outset. It was the home of righteousness. It was not simply that righteous things were done there, but righteousness had a home there, it had a home in the assembly, and it should have and it has, too, a home wherever the Holy Spirit has His way with us. Where Christ is the centre the Spirit has a home for righteousness. Now that is what God has in view — new heavens and a new earth — and we look for it. “We, according to his promise”, Peter says, “look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness”. 2 Peter 3:13. We look for that in the measure in which we feel the disregard of righteousness in this world, for God has promised that there will be a scene where righteous- ness will dwell.
Well, I want to show you, dear brethren, how we begin with what is new, and I take up the new cruse of which we read in 2 Kings. That book, as most of [p. 114] us know, sets forth typically the present dispensation. It begins with one man falling, and another man ascending — see chapters 1 and 2. It is Satan, as it were, falling from heaven, and the Lord Jesus Christ ascending into heaven. The king of Israel falls down through a lattice never to arise, and Elijah goes up into heaven in a whirlwind, that is typically Christ ascending into heaven; and Elisha receiving a double portion of his spirit is a type of the Spirit of God down here in us at the present time. Mark, a double portion of the Spirit! Then Elisha, taking up the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, smites the Jordan in the name of the Lord God of Elijah and returns in the power, I may say, of the double portion of Elijah’s spirit to Jericho. There the men of the city called his attention to what was lacking in the city. It had a pleasant situation, but the water was naught and the ground barren. Just prior, however, to that, the sons of the prophets who were the religious descendants of men whom God had used in power, made an effort to set aside the great truth of the moment — that is the truth of the ascension. They did not deny that the Jordan had been crossed as divided, but they tried to set aside the heavenly side of the truth governing that, that Christ has gone up into heaven. And so they persuaded the prophet to send fifty strong men to find Elijah. Fifty strong men! They were on the lines of the king of Israel, in that respect; he had his fifty strong men and another fifty. So these sons of the prophets had their fifty; they were not delivered from the old thing, they were like the world. Although they were sons of prophets, they had taken on the character of the world, and in that character, as you might expect, they were endeavouring to set aside the great truth of the moment, that is, that Elijah had been taken up into heaven, and that God was about to carry on and maintain a new system of things here.
[p. 115] Well now, the men of Jericho were not like that. They were men ready to be helped, ready to benefit by what was there, they were in readiness to benefit by what God provides, whatever it is. God has provided a means of help, and readiness to avail myself of it is sure to mean that I will obtain the help, and help is obtainable at the present time. Well, the men of Jericho had called attention, as I said, to the situation of the city; that it had a pleasant situation, but the land was barren and the waters were naught; and they knew that Elisha had the power of Elijah, and so they sought help. It is a very fine principle this at the very outset, to have a true estimate of the thing, a true estimate of existing need, and to look for help, for remedy. And so the Lord answers to such a wish and sets Himself to supply the remedy.
It required a new cruse. “Bring me a new cruse”. You must begin with this principle, that it is not a question now of reformation, for Christianity is not that. John the baptist came in on that line, but the Lord Jesus came on the line of what is new. So the prophet requires a new cruse. He impressed all the men of Jericho at the outset that things must be on the principle of what is new. As I said, the sons of the prophets were on an opposing line, they were opposers; although recognising that Elisha had the power of Elijah, they nevertheless would set aside the great truth governing that, that is ascension, for the Holy Spirit here is a testimony to Christ in heaven. So the prophet required a new cruse with salt put therein; in other words, the men of Jericho, exercised about the situation, would be reminded of the element of preservation. Am I able to preserve a thing, not only to retain it in my mind, not only to remember it, but to carry it about for a week, perhaps, or a month, or a year, or ten years or a longer period? Can I take in a divine thought, a heavenly [p. 116] thought, a spiritual thought and preserve it? I do not mean the words merely, beloved friends, but the thing! Now if I take the word ‘church’ or ‘assembly’ as an illustration; if I take it as it was employed by the Holy Spirit in the Acts, it meant then a living company in which Christ was supreme, in which, as I said, righteousness had a home. What has that word become in man’s mind today? Has it been preserved? Take it from any dictionary; has it been preserved in its original sense? No, beloved friends, it has not been preserved. The word has degenerated into a dry stick, which has lost all its sap. Men do not recognise it now in the way that the Holy Spirit did at the beginning. Even the word ‘God’, the word ‘Jesus’, the term the ‘Holy Spirit’, almost every term in Scripture has lost its original significance — I mean amongst professing believers generally. There has not been the element of preservation.
But now let me refer to the Lord Jesus as born into this world and anointed by the Spirit. In the gospel of Luke He goes into the synagogue, He takes up that portion of Scripture, the roll of the prophet Isaiah, and when He reads it, it takes on a living touch. If He spoke of the temple, as He did, He called it His Father’s house. What freshness! And how such an impression would fall in freshness on the ears of the disciples whom He loved and who loved Him! What was there about that which had become “a den of thieves” Matthew 21:3, Mark 11:17, Luke 19:46 to indicate that it was His Father’s house? But He says, “Make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise”. John 2:16. It acquired in His words a living touch. He also said, “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you”. Luke 22:15. The word had never so much power in anyone’s lips; in His lips it meant all that it conveyed from God. And so, as referred to by Him, everything takes on a living touch. The law had become a dead thing in the hands of the [p. 117] doctors of the law, but He took it up and put it in His heart; it was precious to Him. The law is holy, and just, and good, not a tittle of it shall pass till all be fulfilled; He had it in His heart, and carried it right through. Everything was taken up by Him from the divine side, and presented in its true relations, in freshness as it was at the outset; in other words, the salt was there, the element of preservation was present; and now Christianity in figure is to be introduced for that is what is typified in the passage I read.
The requirement is a new cruse with salt put therein. It refers to the company in the upper room in Acts 1 who had learned this great principle from Christ. We read that Peter stood up in the midst of the brethren; he dealt with the need of another apostle to take the place of Judas, and in that connection cited the Psalms; they were living in his mouth. He brought in the passage in divine intelligence that referred to the then position, even as the Lord had cited from the book of Isaiah the passage governing His own position in the synagogue at Nazareth. So Peter cites from the Psalms what governed the position in the upper room at that moment, that another must take up the bishopric of Judas. Then in further divine intelligence, he indicates that it should be one who had assembled with them all the time in which the Lord Jesus came in and went out among them, beginning from the baptism of John until the day He was taken up from them into heaven. It is the very same position as Judas had occupied, but Peter is dealing with it in a living way Peter thus brings out the preservative power that was there, for the Lord had educated him to that. Things are to be preserved in a living way, and so the Holy Spirit comes to that company, and Peter stands up on the day of Pentecost with the eleven. These twelve men had had a wonderful experience; the [p. 118] Lord had selected them sovereignly, and called whom He Himself would. They were called on the principle of sovereign selection in order that they should be with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach. In being with Him they would learn this great principle of salt; indeed He had said to them, “Ye are the salt of the earth”, Matthew 5:13 and they were that.
The Lord Himself had brought in the principle of preservation or salt, and under His influence they were a new cruse. They were a product of His own, wholly new, not born of flesh’s will, nor of man’s will; they were a wholly new thing born after Himself, and in them was this principle of salt — of preserving things in freshness. So it says “The waters were healed to this day”, that is to say, that the things of God continued long amongst the saints in their original freshness, for “to this day” always means that the thing had come down to the time of the writing, historic writing, divine writing, as shown long after the event. When you have “to this day” you may depend upon it attention is being called to the duration, the durableness of the thing. Among the early Christians there was the element of salt; divine things were preserved in freshness.
Well, I need not comment on the present application of this. If we are to be a new cruse it has to be after the original pattern. There must be a keeping under the influence of Christ to get the idea of salt in the vessel in which things are preserved in freshness for God. If things are to be preserved as they were introduced, it must be in persons; divine things are living things, and God is a living God, and if His things are to be preserved it must be in living persons. Now life, I suppose, is one of the greatest preservatives. As soon as the element of life ceases, decay sets in; corruption sets in when the principle of life is gone, and so it is spiritually. The salt really lies in the principle of life divinely given and maintained [p. 119] in our souls; in virtue of that we have divine things preserved as they were introduced, and so, as I said, I need not comment on the present application of this. Each one of us has to be a new cruse in which salt is, so that the preservation of what God has so graciously recovered for us is there. Divine things must be preserved in persons. As Paul says, “The things that thou hast heard of me …. the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also”. 2 Timothy 2:2. These things could not be handed down unless there is the vessel — the new cruse. The apostle says also, “Keep, by the Holy Spirit which dwells in us, the good deposit entrusted”, 2 Timothy 1:14.
I pass on now to speak of the new bottles. We are now dealing with that which can contain what is new. In Luke 5 the Lord taught in the order of constructive sequence. Scripture is remarkably constructive, it is not simply so many different sayings; they are put together in a constructive way and so in this chapter the Lord built up on the line of that which culminates in the thought of new bottles and new wine. I want to connect the thought of new with that which contains the thing in its fulness, carrying the idea of newness forward from the cruse with salt in it. There was at the beginning of Christianity the element of preservation, so also, that of strength to contain, and I want now to go back in connection with the latter thought to the source of things, connecting it with the thing in its fulness. You have wine suggested in Paul’s ministry. At Pentecost they had wine. It was then fresh from heaven, and it was energetic. Wine would suggest that. New wine would burst old bottles, the old could not contain the full energy of the new. The great Roman Empire, of its kind, wonderfully powerful though it was, could not have contained this. Nothing outside of the vessel which God had prepared could contain it or keep this wonderful power within bounds. It was new wine.
[p. 120] We are in the fishing region just now, I was in the wine region a few weeks ago. If you had been there, you would have got light as to this subject. Wine has to be kept in suitable vessels, but it does not deteriorate in the vessels. The older the better, but it must be kept in vessels capable of containing it. As I said, in speaking of the new wine, the Lord refers to Christianity in the fulness of it. When the Holy Spirit had come, Judaism was set aside, and all believers — Jew and Gentile — were bound together in one body according to Ephesians. There was a divine vessel formed — the assembly according to Paul’s ministry. That which he had built up was a vessel great enough to hold the new wine, and it did not burst. The wine and the bottles are both to be preserved; that is the divine thought.
Well now, at the present time it is a question whether we are great enough to take in Christianity in its entirety; it is a wonderful thing. Our apprehension of it, I fear, is extremely meagre. The Spirit pervading produces intelligence, affection, and service according to God, and also holy joy. Wine is a type of holy joy; it makes glad the heart of God and the heart of man; and it is preserved in the new bottle. How much are we up to this, dear brethren? I need not say we are extremely weak, and for that reason one would urge that we go back to the beginning and view the thing as it was in the light of both figures — new wine and new bottles — for if you see that, you will have a more just apprehension of the littleness of the present time; it is a day of small things, and one would be humbled by it.
I think it would tend to produce a longing to be more in keeping with that great vessel that holds the new wine and to walk in the light of it, seeking to be it in our measure, that is to say, to be expanded: as the word puts it, “Be ye also enlarged”. 2 Corinthians 6:13. It is as we make more room for the Spirit that we are great [p. 121] enough to contain the new wine in its original purity. If we are conscious of the new wine, and become proud of it, we lose the character of the bottle. The bottle and the wine are both to be preserved. The principle applies to every one of us, for we are all exposed to that danger. If I am made conscious of the energy of the Spirit, the joy of the Spirit, I only have it from God. As soon as I begin to get proud I lose the character of the bottle. The bottle and the wine are to be preserved together, so the Lord says, “No man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new; for he saith, The old is better”. This passage suggests that you do not pass into the new in a moment; there has to be a distance between the parting with the old and the perfecting of the new. It refers to experience; man does not enter into it straightway. You will find out by experience the superiority of the new, and so you do not go back. The older a brother becomes in the enjoyment of the things of God, the more he abhors the old, and he is not likely to go back. He has tasted too much, and he is not likely to go back to the old. “No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new, for he saith, The old is better”. You have got to acquire the taste for the new to prove how superior it is to the old.
I turn now to the epistle to the Colossians, which dwells on the new man. I have been dealing with vessels as figures — new cruse, new bottles — but now we come to the “new man”, where we have intelligence. In Colossians 3 it says, “The new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him”. Now we come to what is for God, for God had a man before Him at the very [p. 122] outset. In this epistle the old man is put off, he is discarded. The old man is corrupt. We are born in sin and practised in sin, but here the old man is put off with his deeds. I want to enlarge a little about the new man; he is for God — a testimony for God; he is new, new in the sense of being fresh, and he is marked by the renewal in knowledge after the image of Him that created him. Believers individually are not referred to as new men; the new man is one idea — a collective thought. In order to be in it we need to be in unity. There is only one new man; it is a moral thought. The term, “the new man” is never applied to Christ. “The new man” is a creation, and Christ is not a creation, He is the Creator. It has developed in it all the moral features of Christ. It is developed in us, in the saints, and so it must be a new creation, for these features were not in the old. The old man is set aside; it is “put off” and the new is “put on”. There is now as God looks down on us, that is in Christians, that which shone in His beloved Son in His life down here. We are like Him in knowledge, for the new man is “renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him”. You can see that “the new man” is a mature thought; it is not an infantile thought, it is mature, for Colossians deals with maturity.
Ephesians also takes up the same subject, only the apostle carries it forward and says that he “is created in righteousness and true holiness”. Ephesians 4:24. That is what the new man is. Colossians is the freshness of it as new. We all know that in dealing with created things how we prefer the new to the old; that is the way in which God deals. In the new man He has all the saints formed after Christ. He has something entirely new and fresh. If they are dwelling in unity there will be that delightful sense of freshness to God. An illustration of it, I think, was presented on the third day of the creation. The earth came up from the [p. 123] sea, the dry land appeared. It had been submerged, but it came up from this submerged condition and then fertility followed. It came up from death and brought forth the green grass, the herbs, and the trees. The earth was not something bare, it was not rocks and mountains, there was fertility, and so it yielded that in which the eye of God had pleasure- there was the evidence of life. One would conjecture a little on the sense of newness. If one had been there, there would have been a delightful sense of newness. So God pronounces it ‘Very good’. That which is new is a great idea for the saints at the present time. We are new in the way that is suggested in a leper’s ear being anointed by blood and by oil, that is to say we are to take in divine thoughts by the Spirit, so the apostle says of the new man, “renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him”. Then it goes on to say, “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew ... .. but Christ is all and in all”. He is the Object for us, and He is in all. It is the collective idea. There is only one new man, and we have part in it in the measure in which we are in unity. Then we are exhorted to “Put on therefore as the elect of God ... bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering”, Colossians 3:12 etc. These are the traits of Christ developed in us collectively. They are the evidences of the freshness of life.
There is just one other reference I wish to make, that is to the new Jerusalem. There are great modern cities, but these will all be eclipsed in the age to come by the great city — the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God. In relation to eternity — to the new heavens and the new earth — it is called the holy city, new Jerusalem. After the thousand years it is new, it is not old, it is holy, the new Jerusalem, and she comes down as a bride adorned for her husband. There is no decay, everything is new and fresh, and is in keeping with the holy scene — the new heavens [p. 124] and the new earth. We shall be that, dear brethren, and it is a wonderful thing to have before us. All these great things we have spoken of are new — the new cruse, the new bottles, the new man and the new Jerusalem. The elements ushering in that grand result in the future are being acquired now, and are operative here.
I urge on the young to be occupied with what is new. The Lord will help you on that line; you will realise by practice the newness of all that was introduced at the beginning when Christianity was first brought in.