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THE SUN-RISING

A.B.Parker

"We shall be saved in the power of his life": I believe that this refers to the power of Christ's present life. It is the same life that was expressed down here but in new surroundings. Jesus here was the heavenly Man. What was set out in Him was perfect. He is Jesus Christ "the same yesterday, and today, and to the ages to come", Heb 13: 8. He is in a new condition and, we may say, in new surroundings, in a sphere where there is vibrancy of response. I think that we should find encouragement in entering more into the activities of heaven. I do not mean only the activities of Christ in that sphere, but the sympathetic responses of the myriads of the heavenly host who, it would seem, are alert and ready for every fresh occasion to burst into responsive praise and worship. Hebrews 1: 6 would support that: it says "when he brings in the firstborn into the habitable world, he says, And let all God's angels worship him". It is "let" - hardly a command but rather that they are just waiting for an opportunity to fill heaven with their praise. What a sphere heaven must be! Just think of the reception of Jesus into heaven: "... has been received up in glory" - just a few words, but who can express what that means? It is not received up into glory, but in glory. The glory of His going into heaven, the glory attaching to Him being crowned as King, His installation on the Father's throne, and the Father hailing Him as "a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedec", (Heb 7: 17), established as such by the swearing of an oath - Jesus has been crowned with glory and honour. What were the feelings of the heavenly host in the presence of all this? How Michael and his angels would hail the Lord mighty in battle! How Gabriel and his angels would rejoice as Jesus was installed as Priest! We do not want to be fanciful in our thoughts, we need to be under the control of the Spirit; but it is wonderful to get lifted in our spirits from the realm of confusion, developing apostasy and daily trials to a sphere where everything is vibrant. What a moment it will be when God says to the whole angelic host, Now all can worship Him! That will be in relation to His coming out in millennial glory: "let all God's angels worship him", Heb 1: 6. What a moment of triumph for the Man once rejected here! It begins with the heavenly host - priestly angels, military angels, all the angels. I did not intend to speak about this but it just flooded into my thoughts as I commenced to speak about Jesus where He is and how all heaven is influenced by the power of His life there.

What does Jesus do in heaven? Think of Him as the great Priest who has entered "into heaven itself" (Heb 9: 24), and in one sense not alone, because the priest's garments for glory and for beauty included the breast-plate and the shoulder-plates on which the names of the tribes were engraved, anticipating the day when Jesus would go into heaven with the saints held in His affections and supported by His intercessory service there. He sustains us in the presence of God as He ever intercedes for us, constantly making intercession. Moses made intercession for the people when they turned to idolatry: he asked God to forgive their sin - "but if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book", Exod 32: 32. That was Moses, typically anticipative of the feelings of Jesus expressed in intercession for those for whom He died. Moses did not die for the people but Jesus did. The Lord's intercessory service therefore is related to His great sacrifice. He gave Himself that we should not perish but have life eternal.

Think of the myriads of persons there are in this world at the present time. How many prayers are being uttered at this very moment? How many prayers are going up to God? how many persons are dying? How many persons are there who need the personal touch of Jesus? How much crowds into just one moment! Not one is overlooked; heaven is a sphere of activity such as we cannot comprehend. We are finite whereas what is transpiring in heaven is infinite. We speak to the Lord and have the consciousness that He hears, and yet there may be millions of persons speaking to Him at the same time, and all can have the consciousness of being heard! This is to the human intellect impossible but it is true, absolutely real. Let us enter into these great matters more fully.

Now I want to speak about the sun-rising. You may wonder what connection there is between what we have been saying and the sun-rising. The sun is in the heavens and as it rises it typifies the way Christ, in heaven, can come into the believer's life every day so that we are saved by the power of His life. How does the sun rule the day? You do not hear any sound as it rises. It rules by influence - the power of life and light. This is a very great though as to rule. The great ultimate idea of rule is God's headship. God Himself will be the source of regulation, influence and control in eternity. But while we are here our time is regulated by days - day after day. The scripture says "grace upon grace" (John 1: 16); that is, I suppose, grace for today and grace for tomorrow and grace for every day. I link this with the idea of the sun-rising. There is much more to this subject than I can fathom or tell but impressions have come over my soul which I seek help to touch on briefly. There were those of whom I have read who were placed in relation to the sunrising, and I believe it suggests the idea that impressions of Christ in heaven should come into our lives morning by morning. The writers of the gospels must have had a very wonderful sense of Jesus as the light of the world - the sun-rising. The sun at its meridian and the sun as it set - what portrayals they have given of the life of Jesus here! but as impressions come into our souls of Jesus here, our hearts go out to Him where He is - where He "ever liveth". Matthew's gospel has to do with administration and may connect with Moses in the passage we have read.

He and Aaron, who may link on with Luke, dwelt toward the sun-rising at the entrance to the tent of meeting. It would suggest administration as tempered and regulated by the priesthood. This would lead us to search out Matthew's gospel (authority) and Luke's gospel (priestliness). Luke gives considerable detail about the incoming of Jesus. What tender feelings are expressed in relation to it! What feelings there were on the part of Simeon when he took the Babe in his arms and blessed God, the glory of the Son of man opened up to him as he uttered "a light for revelation of the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel", Luke 2: 32. He saw "the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings", Mal 4: 2. Matthew tells us about an area where the people were sitting in darkness but they have "seen a great light, and to those sitting in the country and shadow of death, to them has light sprung up", chap 4: 16. That was when Jesus came from Nazareth to Capernaum. That is the way Matthew presents the commencement of His service - a glorious sun-rising. Then you get on toward midday in the gospels and we are told about Jesus on the mount of transfiguration. Matthew tells us that His face shone as the sun. The three disciples saw the sun at its meridian - noonday. Then, when Jesus died, he tells us that "there was darkness over the whole land", chap 27: 45. The footnote tells us that it was over the whole earth. This is what Matthew tells us.

We could say much more of what the gospel writers recorded, but I want to speak of personal experiences. We can only touch the edge of this subject which is tremendously great, like the waves at the shore when you realise that the whole ocean is before you, but you can just take account of the waves. I want to raise the question of how Jesus comes into our lives day by day. How many of our mornings are cloudy! how many are overcast! but how bright are the days when we have the conscious sense that Jesus has come into our lives in some fresh way! So, to refer to the people, those who encamped eastward toward the sun-rising were those under the standard of Judah. What an area of consideration that opens up! What was Judah's history? We may well start with the word that "the genealogy is not registered according to the birthright, for Judah prevailed among his brethren and of him was the prince", 1 Chron 5: 1. The moral basis was laid for the incoming of Christ when Judah prevailed among his brethren. How many of us prevail amongst our brethren? There is plenty of opportunity for it. It involves sacrifice, tremendous sacrifice; for Judah it involved that he was prepared to be a servant forever. Oh, what heaven must have felt as Judah was prepared to commit himself to perpetual servitude so that Benjamin, the son of the father's love, could return to that father. Think of how the Lord Jesus would come before us as the great antitype of Judah saying "I love my master, my wife, and my children' I will not go free", Exod 21: 5. He is devoted in service to maintain what is for God's pleasure. He is still serving! He has been appealing to us this very day, seeking to awaken in our hearts a deeper appreciation of His sufferings to provide the means to reserve us from uncleanness as we go through a wicked, corrupt and violent world, that we may have unhindered access into the presence of God. He is concerned that the service of God be maintained in power. I believe that He desires to give God a moral basis for terminating the present dispensation and gathering the saints into glory, not as a fag end, but as those who are entering deeply into the feelings of God in intelligent understanding of what He is looking for currently. We need to stand, as it were, and observe the terrible burning of the red heifer; we need to feel with the priest as he would cast in the scarlet, the cedar and the hyssop, speaking of features of man naturally, of Adam's order, that have been removed in the death of Christ. The scarlet is what distinguishes me naturally; the cedar wood, pompous religious pride: "God, I thank thee that I am not as the rest of men" (Luke 18: 11); the hyssop, the kind of person that never amounted to anything distinctive, never did anything outstanding, just the ordinary kind of a person: that must go too. The end of all flesh has come before God. We should ponder this, that man after the flesh, no matter what his character, has been removed from before God's eye in the death of Christ. When we come to that we are ready increasingly to appreciate the Man who did everything according to the will of God, who never came under yoke to any other.

The garment of Jesus was woven without seam, from the top throughout. That may not have been the customary way to weave a garment but it was the unique way in which His garment was woven. From His very birth the will of God controlled Him. That whole precious life, worked out in warp and woof - the warp being the absolute recognition of the will and pleasure of God; the woof, the fulfilling of it every moment in every day. No wonder that when, by faith, a woman touched the hem of his garment, she was healed! How do we face each day? It is a challenge to me; I trust that you do better than I do. In our three-day meetings here it was said that our first thoughts each morning should be of the Lord Jesus. What a sunrising! The Lord Jesus wants to come into our thoughts when we awake, and then in the household reading. Oh, dear brethren, have any of us given up the household reading morning by morning? The enemy tries hard to cause it to be given up. The manna was gathered before the sun arose, but the reading of the precious word first thing in the morning causes Christ to come before us and the sun-rising takes place. The day takes on fresh, new, living character. You are helped to go through the day in buoyancy. It is a wonderful thing to get a fresh shining of Christ in our hearts every morning. One would seek to encourage us in this, especially where there are children in the house. Try to get at least one impression each morning. Think of John 8 for instance: Jesus "early in the morning" came into the temple and taught the people. Then, in the presence of corruption and of self-righteousness - conditions that fill the world at the present time - He stooped and wrote on the ground. We are not told what He wrote. It is left to the spiritual discernment of persons to understand, but something was written in relation to the existing condition and the sun rose in the heart of that poor woman, to whom He said "go, and sin no more (v 11). Can we assume that she did not sin any more? She now had power because Christ was in her mind and heart; the Sun of righteousness had risen in her life. What an impression, early in the morning, for that woman! She was now held by the cords of a Man; the love of Christ would constrain her. What a wonderful thing it is when Christ comes into our lives! Do we need divine light? He may bring light in through the word or He may fill our souls with light as we kneel and pray. It is a wonderful thing to get into the presence of Jesus - into the presence of God. The light that shone in Jesus here is still shining in Him in heaven. He is the true lamp-stand in the holy place. Let us get into that sphere where He is, with our hearts sprinkled from a wicked conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Can we hear Him say, You are clean by reason of the word that I have spoken to you? Can we hear Him say, He that is washed all over needs not to wash save his feet? Oh that Christ may shine freshly into our hearts morning by morning!

When we pray we are prone to speak constantly of our own matters that we carry every day, but do we take enough time to get into matters that affect the testimony or the growth of the saints? Do we spread these matters out before the Lord? Hezekiah, in a day of great trial, with overwhelming power of the enemy imminent, went into the presence of God and spread Sennacherib's letter out before Jehovah, saying, in principle, Read this: I have read it; hear the words of Sennacherib who reproaches the living God! Think of him asking Jehovah to read the letter! How do we get into the presence of the Lord about problems, for there are unsolved problems. Do we spread them out? Are we free to do so in that holy environment? The great High Priest has the names of the saints on the breastplate and on His shoulders. How am I going to speak to Him about them? He is carrying them in His affections. Am I critical, or can I say "he whom thou lovest is sick" John 11: 3? Oh, you may say, Lazarus was a very lovable man! Is that the basis on which the name is on the breastplate? We may say that Mary would be the most loved person at Bethany, but the word is "Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus". Mary's name is not mentioned; she is referred to as Martha's sister. It adjusts us in our thinking; the saints are loved according to purpose, dear brethren! The names on the breastplate, and on the shoulder-plates, are there according to divine regulation. In the light of that I must be regulated as I pray for my brother or sister or the brethren in a locality. The weak brother is the brother for whom Christ died; he is on the breastplate, he is on the shoulder-plate; he is represented in the bread of presence on the pure table in the holy place. The table is representative of Christ and the way He is supporting the saints. Thus we are able to pray feelingly and with a definite end in view, that we may all be conformed to the image of God's Son. May we have more power in prayer!

In closing I would like to suggest, dear brethren, that we take to heart whether Christ comes into our life each morning, bringing in light, and the warmth and the power of life. We are to be saved by the power of His life, and that can be experienced morning by morning. When John introduces Jesus in his gospel he says "In him was life, and the life was the light of men", chap 1: 4. The reciprocal working out of it is that as the light of life comes into the soul it produces life. The Lord Jesus Himself said "Because I live ye also shall live", John 14: 19. May He, in the power of His life, sustain, preserve and keep us in the consciousness of an unbroken link with Himself as we go through each day!

PLAINFIELD NJ

30 October 1976

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