GOD'S TESTIMONY
GOD’S TESTIMONY
Ephesians 1: 1 - 14; 2 Peter 1: 16 - 21
I feel in a sense the difficulty of presenting the subject which I have before me — that is, the testimony — and for the reason that many will regard it as a worn-out theme. The term has almost become hackneyed amongst us. But nevertheless I will venture to say a little about God’s testimony, and will trace the line of that testimony through Scripture, and seek to show, if able, where that testimony now resides. And in connection with the subject I will say a word on the vessel of the testimony, and on the relation of the testimony to the vessel. Now, here are three pretty distinct points: the first, the testimony; then the vessel of the testimony, which in a certain sense is inseparable from it; and then what properly characterises the vessel of the testimony. That comes down, if not to practice, to what is very practical.
I have taken up the passage in Ephesians because it presents two thoughts. One is our calling, and the other our testimony. For the sake of brevity, I will say the calling of the church, or of the saints; and the testimony of the saints. These two thoughts appear. As regards the vessel of the testimony I would say, that if you do not understand the calling, the testimony must be defective. Depend upon it, we are not up to the height of the testimony if we do not apprehend the calling. If it be the case, as no doubt it is, that a great many people go forth gospel preaching with little or no knowledge of the calling, you may be sure that their preaching will be defective. Even though outward effects may be produced by it, the effects will not convince me that it is otherwise. It cannot but be defective from the lack in their own souls. I am [p. 137] not speaking of those in fellowship with us, but of many who go out preaching.
I begin by tracing the testimony of God through Scripture, and it is very interesting to see one mind, one thread, running through the whole word of God. The apprehension of this cannot fail to have the effect of confirming our confidence in the word of God, so that we have the sense that whatever may fail, or however we fail, yet the word of God cannot fail. That is a point to which every one of our souls must come. You have in the word of God not only what is in itself infallible, but what cannot fail us.
The first point I take up in God’s testimony is that seen in Abel, and I may remark that up to the church the testimony of God would appear to have been identified with individuals. I think that was so. The difficulty might be presented that Israel as a nation was here for the testimony of God; but I doubt if they really were that according to the purpose of God. They ought to have been a testimony, to have given by fruit-bearing, witness that they were a vine on earth; but when Christ came into the world, He says, “I am the true vine”. Israel had the place of God’s vine, but they were not the true vine. The Lord says, “I am the true vine” — the genuine vine. Israel will, under Christ, come into the place hereafter, and will be a testimony here for God, but only in abiding in Christ. I make that remark in order to guard the particular point that in the Old Testament the testimony of God is bound up with individuals.
I am for the moment referring to the testimony before the flood. The beginning is in Abel. What he did bore witness to the ground of acceptance. That is the principle apparent in his testimony. He died on account of his testimony, but it is remarkable that “he being dead yet speaketh”.
[p. 138] Now I pass on to the next point, namely, Enoch. The theme of his testimony was the Lord’s coming, “Behold, the Lord has come amidst his holy myriads”. At that early date, that was his witness. It was in view of what was a necessity for that that he walked with God, and that he was not, for God took him. If you had not the light of translation, you could not understand how the saints would come with the Lord. It is in principle the difference between 1 and 2 Thessalonians; in the first epistle the saints are caught up to meet the Lord in the air; in the second epistle they come with Him. That is what came out in Enoch, and the effect of it on him was that he walked with God; he was thus the vessel of the testimony. He did not make a conspicuous figure on earth; he was obscure, and he disappeared, for God took him. He was the witness for God in that day.
I pass on to Noah. Noah is not, as Enoch, a witness of the coming of the Lord, but of the coming judgment. I need hardly say that judgment must connect itself very intimately with the coming of the Lord. Noah was a preacher of righteousness, and what righteousness meant was expressed in warning men of coming judgment. The effect on him of his testimony was that he, believing God, did what God told him to do — he prepared an ark for the saving of his house. You see thus the effect of the testimony upon the vessel of it. Abel died; Enoch was not, for God took him; Noah was a preacher of righteousness, and built an ark for the saving of his house. That carries us up to the flood. Morally all was in a line.
Now I come to later times, namely, to Abraham, and in him is marked a point of departure. It is not now simply a question of moral principles, as before the flood. In Abraham we come to another line, and it is indicated in that the God of glory
appeared unto our father Abraham. “The God of glory” and “the glory of God” are two expressions connected in Scripture. If you look at Acts 7 you will see that Stephen in speaking began with the God of glory, and ends with the glory of God. The glory of God is the climax, the result of what the God of glory works. The glory of God is the climax reached in Christ. The God of glory marks the point of departure. It indicated that God was One that had His own purposes. His purposes are His glory, and in the accomplishment of His purposes His glory is displayed. That is what I understand to have been presented to Stephen. He looked up to heaven and “saw the glory of God, and Jesus”.
But to return to Abraham. God gave the promises to Abraham. He promised to bless. In that way He anticipated the law and the curse. But another point comes out also in connection with Abraham, and that is, the title of God to dispose of the earth as He pleases. The world had become apostate; the spirit of antichrist was there; Babel was the proof that man had become apostate. In the face of this, God announces His purpose to dispose of the earth as He pleases. The earth does not belong to man. God has given it to man for enjoyment, but the earth is the Lord’s and He will dispose of it to whom He will. God gave to Abraham the testimony of blessing — he was to be the vessel of it, What was the effect upon him? He dwelt in a tent, but he looked for a city. He was a stranger and a pilgrim in this order of things, but he had a prospect — he looked for a city that has foundations. He was a man of expectation. I never knew of a city in this world that had moral foundations. Rome had no foundations, or it would not have passed away. Its renown was largely built up on violence and tyranny. London has no foundations — no moral ones. Abraham “waited for the city [p. 140] which has foundations, of which God is the artificer and constructor”. He looked for the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, founded in righteousness, in which no hand of man has ever been employed. It is a wonderful thing to contemplate a structure, whether it be a house or a city, in which man has had no hand, whose builder and maker is God. It is a work which God does not entrust to any man. It is all of Himself. You get something akin to it in Matthew 16, where the Lord says, “On this rock I will build my assembly”. So with this city, the Builder (the Architect) and Artificer is God. That is what Abraham looked for. As has been often remarked, Abraham had an altar, a place of approach to God, and on the other hand he dwelt in a tent. He did not run in the current of the course of things in this world, but confessed that he was a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth, for he believed God and had His promises.
I do not profess, in what I have been saying, to be exhaustive, or assume to compass everything connected with Abraham, I only bring two or three prominent points before you.
The next thing I take up is the tabernacle, and here the vessel of testimony was Moses. The truth foreshadowed in the giving of the law and the setting up of the tabernacle was this — that where the law was written God would dwell, that was what God indicated. I hope to be able to make clear that when the law is written in man’s heart, then the way is prepared for God to dwell among men. For the time being the law was written on tables of stone. God was acting on the principle of testing, therefore the law was not yet written in man’s heart. But in the ways of God the law will be written in man’s heart. The point of departure here is Christ. He said, “Thy law is within my heart”. Not that the law was written [p. 141] there, I need hardly say, but it was within His heart, and the consequence of His coming is that the law will be written in Israel’s heart; and when that is so, God will dwell with man. I do not doubt that this will be fulfilled in Israel in the future, when God consummates the new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. “Giving my laws into their mind, I will write them also upon their hearts; and I will be to them for God, and they shall be to me for people”; but “I will be to them for God” must be consequent on the law being written in the heart. There are two things consequent on the law being written in the heart: one is, that man becomes the reflex of God — Christ as man was the reflex of God, He was so perfectly, as we see in Psalm 40 — and the other is, that at the same time every one has individual knowledge of God. Consequent on that, God sets up His dwelling among men. I think that was foreshadowed in the direction to make a sanctuary which God gave to Moses. Moses had to set up God’s dwelling — place, and to make everything according to the pattern shewed him in the mount. Moses was the vessel of the testimony in that day, and what marked him was that he was faithful in God’s house. He was not only a stranger and a pilgrim — he could not very well help being that, for he was in the wilderness. It had been different with Abraham: he dwelt in the land, and being rich he could have been otherwise. But it is in connection with God’s house that Moses is spoken of as faithful. He did not deviate one jot or tittle from the directions given to him in the mount. He had a due sense of the importance of God’s house, and of what it was to have to do with it. I think it would be well if we had more sense of the importance of God’s house and of having to do with God in regard to it; we would not depart [p. 142] from the divine order and directions. Even in a day of the greatest confusion, faithfulness is the principle that ought to govern us — Moses was faithful in God’s house.
But to pass on. We have had the promises in Abraham, the writing of the law and the tabernacle in Moses. The next point, I think, is the throne. David was in this the vessel of testimony. Again it was an individual. The throne came in when everything had failed after the first order. Prophets had testified, Samuel had come upon the scene. There had been a king after the flesh in Saul. Then comes in as king the man after God’s own heart — the anointed of God; and the testimony of God is bound up with David. He was the witness, the reign of grace, when all had been lost under law. Now, there are two things that mark David: he was ever subject to God’s word, and was unflinching in opposition to God’s enemies. He stood in the truth, always subject to the prophet. He was not a wilful king that did his own will. It is on the ground of what was seen in David that the throne of God in this world rests. The enemies are subdued and set aside, and the throne is maintained in all faithfulness to God’s word.
I will not now speak further of the testimony of God as presented in the Old Testament; we have had the promises with Abraham, the tabernacle with Moses, the throne with David. I come now to the point where all these testimonies meet and rest, and that is in the Lord Himself. I will refer for a moment to what Christ was after the flesh. These different testimonies were all centred there, not one was lacking. The promises were there, for He was Abraham’s seed and the vessel of the promises; the tabernacle was there, for God dwelt there in a prophet who was like unto Moses; the throne was there — or perhaps I should say,
[p. 143] the title to the throne — in the true Son of David. That is how the Lord came into this scene and was presented to His people after the flesh. The consequence was this, that at the close of His course here the Lord rides into Jerusalem, claiming the throne. He enters Jerusalem as Zion’s King, claiming the throne. “Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass”. He rides into Jerusalem, claiming His inheritance. That was the testimony presented in Christ after the flesh, and that was rejected. They rejected the promises, they rejected the One in whom God dwelt, and they rejected the One who had divine title to the throne. Christ was the vessel of the testimony, and what marked the vessel of the testimony when you get every testimony centred there? It was the perfect solution of the whole question of good and evil. “Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity”. That was what marked the pathway of the Lord Jesus here in this world. It has been said (and truly) that the opposite will mark antichrist; he will love iniquity and hate righteousness; the result to Christ is — “God, ... thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows”. There was the unvarying resistance of sin and evil all through His pathway here. In His death He took the place of death to sin, but in His pathway it was not death to sin, but striving against sin. (Hebrews 12: 4). He resisted sin in every form in which it presents itself, every kind of evil; the whole question of good and evil was completely gone through, the complete conflict with sin and the complete maintenance of good — all that was due to God. What came to pass in the Lord down here, to put it in the language of scripture, was, that evil was overcome by good. It is most terrible to think that the Lord was rejected in spite of all [p. 144] the good that came out in Him. All good from God was presented to man here, and yet the vessel of it was rejected. He resisted unto blood, striving against sin. That was the pathway of the Lord Jesus Christ down here.
Now the Lord Jesus Christ is no longer here. Other things had to come into view. Redemption had to be accomplished and Christ to be exalted to the right hand of God. The whole ground of action had to be changed. The man after the flesh, after the first order, had to be set aside, and the Man after another order had to come in. Man after the flesh was annulled, and in the resurrection of Christ man after another order was brought into view. God had to be glorified in man after the flesh; for that reason Christ came in flesh that He might glorify God. But there was another reason. The Man from heaven had to come into view when He had severed every connection with man after the flesh. Now what I say is this: The testimony is still here, but it is now no longer connected with an individual, but with a company on the ground of faith. The ground has changed. The One in whom the testimony was presented is rejected and is now on the right hand of God and is Head of the church, which is His body here. It is not individual testimony now. I understand that the church is left here in testimony to what belongs to Christ. It is no new testimony, that is to say, it is not of anything further that has to be accomplished, for every element of God’s glory is secured in Christ at God’s right hand. God has His way. Christ is the true ark of the testimony and the mercy-seat. The church is here, properly speaking, in witness by the Spirit of God to the glory of Christ. That is the position of the church, maintaining here in this world a testimony to the rights [p. 145] and inheritance of Christ, and in which latter the church itself has its own proper part.
Now no one of us could do that if he did not first know the calling. In the passage I read (Ephesians 1) you first get the calling. If you are not in the truth of the calling you cannot be in the full enjoyment of God’s love, for that is the great point in the calling. “He has chosen us in him before the world’s foundation, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love”. Love is the very essence of sonship. The secret of sonship lies in the knowledge of God’s love; we are in that position in the enjoyment of God’s love, and responsive to that love, and no one can be of any account practically in regard of God’s calling, except as he responds to His love, for He has chosen us to be before Him in love. We must be holy and without blame or we should not be suited to God, but the essence of sonship is love. God has made known His purpose as to us to that end, that we might be formed in the divine nature. Sonship is that we might be before God according to His nature. If God sees fit to have sons for Himself they are “before him”. Testimony down here is not the point in this passage, but “to himself”. The thought in sonship is “to himself”. We need to be in the light of that, in order to be responsive to that love.
When you know the calling then you are fitted to be here in the testimony. The two points that come before us in this passage are: First, we have the forgiveness of sins. Secondly, we have intelligence of God’s will, and the will of God is to head up in one all things in Christ. Everything that was presented in times gone by in type and shadow is now gathered up in Christ. God has made known that no purpose of His will has failed, however it may have appeared to fail. All is established [p. 146] in Christ, gathered up in Him, and in Him we have obtained an inheritance; and in whatever Christ has taken up in the way of promise, or as regards the dwelling-place of God, or in connection with the throne, we — the saints — have part with Him. It is not the higher side of blessing; I fully own that the calling is that, because it presents what we are to God; the calling is the supreme thought; but the testimony of forgiveness of sins, and of inheritance is vastly important down here; to put it in the language of Acts 7, we bear witness to “the glory of God, and Jesus”. And we have the Spirit, the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of His glory.
Just one word more, and that is this. We can understand that our testimony must be completely ineffective except as we are apart in spirit from the course of things here. If you are disposed to settle down here in a path of earthly ease, I do not see how you can be going on with the testimony of God. That is a danger which besets us all. If you fall into it you are not faithful in maintaining the witness of God’s will, and that, you must remember, is part of the testimony. Even in the very first principle of the gospel to the gentiles it is, “that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance”. Inheritance is in Christ; it does not refer to the present order of things; and if we have it in Him we are left here to be witnesses, not of our inheritance, but of His.
I do not think that our path here is exactly as was Christ’s in conflict with sin. It is true that we have to walk as He walked, but as regards sin our place is of death to it. People I daresay will not leave us alone if we are in this path and walking as alive to God in Christ, they will be against us; but still our path is different from Christ’s, it is death to sin rather than of conflict with it. We get an indication of our path in Peter (Matthew 14) when the Lord encouraged him to leave the boat to go to Himself on the water. I am here, but I do not set myself to attempt to stem the current of evil; but to walk in correspondence to Christ. I am not going to try to improve the world or anything of that kind. At the same time I am waiting here until the time comes to reign with Christ, and am here in the power of the Holy Spirit to witness to His inheritance.
I believe that to be our testimony, and I think it is of all moment to apprehend it, and to see that the testimony of God is now bound up with the church. It might be said, Where is the church? Where am I to find it? I must leave that, but I think it is important to see that the church was the special vessel of the testimony. When Christ was here it was individual; He was alone; though even then He associated twelve with Him. Now it is no longer individual. The church is the vessel of it. People say, ‘Ah, but the church has failed’. It has failed as God’s house on earth, but I think we ought still to be like Abraham, strangers and pilgrims here, and like Moses, faithful in God’s house, and like David, true to God’s word and unflinching in opposition to God’s enemies. In the light of the glorified Man, walking in death to sin, and coming consciously nearer and nearer to the One who is the blessed expression of God’s purpose in regard to us, getting more to the height of God’s calling as chosen in Christ that we might be holy and without blame before God in love, predestinated unto sonship. I do not believe in the power of any testimony here save as we are fully in the light of sonship, since I do not think we shall be effective if we are not in the enjoyment of it.
[p. 148] I feel how imperfectly I have presented the subject to you, for the reason that I am so little up to it myself — but it is a great thing to see the line of God’s testimony right through Scripture, and to realise where at the present moment the testimony of God resides.