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Reading:
Luke 2:25-38; 1 Cor. 10:11; Heb. 8:13, 9:26.
We are being led at this time to
take note of the fact that we are at an end-time, and that God does a
peculiar work at such a time. Things become very strange and very difficult
at an end-time; everything seems to be thrown into a state of disturbance,
upheaval, intense pressure and conflict. The great conflicting forces in
this universe register very terribly and intensely upon that which is of
God and upon those who are of account to Him, so that there often arises
the sense that this is an actual end, and a question as to what more is
possible. Inwardly we feel that the way is becoming exceedingly hedged up:
'frustration' is the word which seems to prevail, and outwardly everything
is in a state of serious and great question as to the future. Indeed, it
becomes more persistently the experience of the true people of God that
they could give up and abandon everything. The ways in which this works out
are numerous, but the whole effect is to paralyse and put out of commission
that which is of God and bring it to a complete standstill. It is this,
then, that will govern our consideration at this time - that we are in an
end-time and that in end-times the work of God takes a particular form and
is of a peculiar nature. It obviously becomes supremely important and
necessary for the Lord's people to know the time in which they live, what
the portents are, and what it is that God would do at such a time.
I suggest to you that that
constitutes a real reason for getting together in serious and solemn
conference, for it is not something that we can take just as a part of a
sequence of meditations. Our consideration of it may be supremely crucial
and in a peculiar way related to a time in the history of this world, and
of God's work in this world, which is of tremendous importance and will not
be repeated.
Now, this matter of the end-time
and God's work therein is brought very fully and clearly into view by
Simeon and Anna. There is no doubt that they represent firstly an end-time
- an end-time dispensationally and an end-time with regard to their own
age, for they were both advanced in years. And then they also represent
God's service at such a time. Simeon used the word of himself - "Now
lettest thou thy servant (bondservant, the word is) depart, Lord,
according to thy word, in peace." "Thy servant." Anna
was found continuing in the temple in fastings and supplications day and
night, not leaving it, a prophetess thus occupied in the house of God; and
if that is not a picture of service, what is?
FULLNESS OF RIPE AGE CARRIED ON IN FRESHNESS
OF NEW LIFE
I am, in the first place, going
to take up the age factor. Let me say at once that, although I am going to
talk about old age, my message is mainly to young people. If that sounds
hardly kind and fair to others, let me put it in this way: age is not a
matter of years at all. You may be young in years and yet be far beyond
your years, or you may be old in years and far behind your years. This is a
spiritual matter. This age factor, as represented by Simeon and Anna,
corresponds to the word in Hebrews 8, "He hath made the first old.
But that which is becoming old and waxeth aged is nigh unto vanishing
away"; and again, to the words in 1 Cor. 10, "upon whom
the ends of the ages are come." That makes us very old, does it
not?
Well now, what have we as the
picture before us? We have an aged man with a babe in his arms, at once
bringing an end and a beginning together, an end handed on to a beginning,
a beginning taking up all the fullness represented by the old. It is the
old passing over into and giving place to the new. If we get the Divine
idea, the spiritual thought, about this - an aged man with a babe in his
arms - we at once see that from the Divine standpoint that is the Divine
principle. Age is not diminution, contraction, declension, depreciation.
That is not God's mind about old age. There is a passage in Isaiah which
says, "The child shall die a hundred years old" (Isa. 65:20). There
is a state, a condition, a realm in which a child shall die one hundred
years old. It means there is a principle here - that there is a realm in
which age has the child present, has the babe there in its arms. At one
hundred years old the child has not gone, it is still the child. The Divine
thought about old age is rather that of fullness, fullness unto the
enrichment of what is yet to be, and which is about to come in; to provide
a heritage; not to pass out and take everything with it and for that to be
the end, but to have something very full and rich to be taken up and
carried on and expressed in newness, freshness, youthfulness; all the
values of a long history brought out in new ways. That is what is here.
You know the instances in the
Bible of infancy linked with old age. How much is made of this spiritual
principle in relation to Abraham and Isaac! When Abraham was old, Isaac was
born. The fact is taken up to express this - that when there is a great
accumulation of history and spiritual knowledge, God will reproduce that,
He will give it form again and yet again. "In Isaac shall thy seed
be called" (Gen. 21:12). Or again, Jacob and Benjamin, the child
of his old age; and what a lot Benjamin represents spiritually. Then we
have the case of Eli, who was very old, and the child Samuel. It is not
only a beautiful picture, but it is a very significant one, that child
alongside of the aged Eli. God started there again, right in the presence
of something that was in itself about to pass out, but taking up all its
spiritual values to reproduce them and bring out all their intrinsic worth.
Here again are the aged Simeon and Anna, - by certain computations we
arrive at the conclusion that Anna was 106 years old at this point - these
two with a babe. It is not an end with God; it is something very much more
than that.
ALL FORMER SPIRITUAL VALUES NOW CENTRED
IN CHRIST
So the inclusive thing
represented by Simeon and Anna is fullness by fulfilment. Firstly, it was
the completing of a phase, the gathering up of all past spiritual values,
as represented in these two, into a new and wholly spiritual order, the
order of Christ.
Simeon so clearly speaks of that
transition mentioned in the first chapter of the letter to the Hebrews: "God,
having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers
portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto
us in his Son." It is a transition from the fragmentary, the
partial, the occasional, the diverse, to the complete, to the inclusiveness
of the unified, and to the final. That is the transition here represented.
The bringing in of the Babe, the Christ, holding Him in his arms, was in
figure, simply the gathering up of all that had been of God in the past,
and centering it in Christ, and seeing how He takes it up and is the
fulfilment of it and transcends it.
See Simeon, then, as to the
past. Something was happening now with the coming in of this Babe, the
coming in of the Christ. It is not without a certain significance that
Matthew's Gospel has been put out of chronological order and put into the
first place in our New Testament. In that Gospel, again and again Matthew
uses this phrase, "that the scriptures might be fulfilled," or,
"that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
prophet." It is characteristic of Matthew's Gospel. It
pointed backward to all the Scriptures which were looking toward this
Christ in Whom they were to find their fulfilment, their realisation, their
finality and their transcendence. All the hopes, all the expectations, all
the promises, all the foreshadowings and all the forecastings, were
gathered into the hands of Simeon that day as he held that Babe. The Hope
Of Israel was in his hands. What a long hope, what a checkered hope! Even
through all their failure when black and dark despair seemed sometimes to
have settled down upon them and they cried that their way was hidden from
the Lord and their judgment passed away from their God, still they
cherished a hope. Through all their failure, through all their sufferings,
they still held to the hope that there was something yet to be. Through all
the judgments which were poured upon them from heaven for their sins, they
still clung to the promises and believed that they would one day see the
salvation of the Lord. Oh, here it is all in the hands of Simeon! All that
past is here present in those arms. That Little One answers to it all. The
Hope of Israel!
This expectation and hope has
reached its consummation in these very two who, with others, were looking
for the consolation of Israel, the redemption of Jerusalem. They were
looking; and what a day it was of little prospect, of seeming hopelessness!
and yet there were those who were still hoping, still believing, still
clinging. And there that day stood Simeon, holding in his arms the
fulfilment of all the hopes and expectations and promises - holding the
complete embodiment of the full thought of God. Simeon held all that in his
hands, and by his words and attitude and spirit you can see him projecting
that into the future, holding it forth. "This child is set for..."
- the whole future is going to be affected by Him. It was a tremendous
moment.
ALL TYPES AND SYSTEMS TRANSCENDED BY CHRIST IN
PERSON
Ah, but note, it carried with it
a stripping of all framework of earthly systems. It was no longer that
which encased Christ, it was Christ Himself. All the encasements of Christ
were finished at that moment. What a moment it was! The encasing in types
and figures, symbols and prophecies and the whole system of Judaism, that
whole framework was shattered and stripped off that day, and the manifest
reality of all that had been inherent and intrinsic in the past was in
Simeon's hands, to be handed on to the future. It was a crisis, a turning of the dispensations. It was a
passing from all that was merely of earthly systems in relation to Christ,
to the Christ Himself: and that is no small thing, and that is the mark of
the end-time.
See what we come to. Christ
Himself emerges from the framework of things, from all the scaffolding of
past ages, from all the figurative and typological and symbolical, and
transcends the things by His own Person. There is all the difference
between Himself and His things. Right up to that time, God's people had
been occupied with the things concerning the Christ: now they were to be
occupied with the Christ Himself. It was a tremendous moment. This is what
will be at an end-time. That is the point. An end-time is transition from a lot that has had to do with Christ
to Christ Himself, transition from frameworks to the essential and the
intrinsic, transition from all the works and the things related to Christ
to that which is known of Him personally. All the other is going to be
stripped off, and we are in the day when that stripping off has seriously
commenced. The issue is going to be - may I put it this way? - how much we
have actually in our hands of the very Christ Himself, how much we are
occupied with the things concerning Him, the encasement of Christ.
This work of transition is going
to be done, for this is an end-time movement. I see it here so clearly, the
pre-figuring of the prophesying of that other end-time which we have in the
book of the Revelation, when the man child is brought forth, and the
ultimate things are in view. At such a time everything will be tested and
challenged by the forces that will be let loose from hell. There started,
with the bringing in of this first man child, the Lord Jesus, a loosing of
Satanic and hellish forces which has gone on and on, right through this
dispensation. Herod heard, and loosed his sword, occasioning a terrible
massacre, in an endeavour to compass the death of this One; and from that
time onward hell was out (and has continued to be out) not against a system
but against a living Person. So here we see the man child presented and the
tremendous reactions that are immediately provoked.
Pass right on to Revelation 12,
and there you see a corporate company called the man child. (It is
corporate because the language is "and they overcame him because of
the blood of the Lamb.") This is the corporate counterpart of the
individual, of the personal. When that corporate expression of the man
child is presented in the book of the Revelation, what have you? - a most violent release of evil forces
for the destruction of everything that speaks of Christ.
GOD'S END-TIME WORK - EVERYTHING
ESSENTIALLY
SPIRITUAL
Well now, what is the service of
God at an end-time? As far as we have gone, surely we are able to see one
or two things. The particular work of God at an end-time is, to begin with,
the constituting of a new and spiritually inclusive dispensation, a new age of an essentially and
wholly spiritual kind. In Heb. 12:27 we have, "And this word,
Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as
of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may
remain." That word 'removing' really means the transferring or the
transposing on to another and different basis. The fact that that comes at
the end of the letter to the Hebrews is significant, for that letter is
just full of that earthly system of Judaism with all its forms, its ritual,
its make-up and constitution. All that is earthly, even in relation to God,
is going to be removed, and everything is going to be transferred to another
basis - a spiritual, a heavenly basis; and when things begin to happen on
the ground of an end-time, that is the character of what is taking place. The earthly is now going to be forced
to give way to the heavenly, the temporal to the spiritual, the outward to
the inward. Then it will be proved just how much we have that can be
transferred, for there are many things that are not going to be transferred.
"Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor.
15:50). That signifies and implies that there is a whole order of
creation which is not going to constitute that eternal order; it is to pass
away. Everything is going to be transferred to another basis, and this kind
of thing intensifies at an end-time. Do you see that?
Let me put that more simply.
What God will see to, by sheer force of conditions, is that anything that
is only temporal will go and that which is spiritual alone will remain. There must therefore be intensifying
processes to bring out the spiritual. Is not that where we are? I do
not know what your experience is, but touching one and another here and
there I find there is some real understanding of this. We never knew such
spiritual conflict, pressure and difficulty as we are knowing now; things
seem to be getting beyond measure. May this not be the explanation? The
Lord seems to be concentrating upon bringing out spiritual values, making
spiritual men and women, and if I am not mistaken (and I claim no gift of
prophecy, in the foretelling sense), we are going to see, and are already
seeing, the removal of so much, the external things, upon which Christians
have been relying as though these things constituted their Christian life.
We are going to be forced back to the place where the one question that
faces us is, After all, what have I got of the Lord Himself? Not, What can
I do, where can I go? but, What have I got? I believe that is a very
present and appropriate question in many parts of the world just now, and
it will be increasingly so as everything outward is brought to an end. Now
is the test - What have I got in my hands?
GOD'S END-TIME WORK INCLUSIVE OF ALL FORMER
VALUES
Yes, the constituting of a new and spiritual dispensation.
But I also used the word inclusive - that is, the heritage of all the values that God has ever given. This is,
mark you, a dispensation principle. Spiritual history returns upon itself,
it goes back to the last point of fullness. Perhaps you do not grasp what I
mean by that. If there has come about a decline, whether in our own
spiritual life or in the life of the Church, sooner or later we shall be
forced back to the point where we left the full measure of God. Cannot you
see that happening? We see it in various connections today. Take the matter
of literature. There is an increasing demand for the old works. Publishers
are finding a great demand for something of years ago, and it is coming
into the market. The shelves have been full of cheap, superficial Christian
stuff with gaudy wrappers and all that, and times have come when people are
aware that this is not meeting the need, and the demand for something more
is arising. The call is for some of the books which former generations had.
That is happening. History is returning upon itself. There has been decline, loss, superficiality, frivolity, cheapness,
in Christianity, and the Church is going to perish for want of solid food
unless it is provided. Thus the cry is, 'Let us get back to what there
was before.' That is happening in many ways. It is a dispensation
principle. If God has really given anything, that will never be lost. Time
will vindicate it. Sooner or later we shall have to come back to it. We
shall be thrown back for our very lives on what God has given. This is
where the new takes up the old.
It is a sorry and a superficial
day, and one which will not stand up to things, when you think you can
dispense with experience. If young people suppose they can think lightly of
those who have gone through the fires and grown grey-headed in the service
of God, in learning to know the Lord, and that such can be set aside as
back numbers, that is a sorry day for the future. With all that is needed
of the new generation, do not let us think they can produce all the past in
their own lifetime. God will throw them back upon what has gone before. Do
not count the past servants of God as back numbers. They are very much up
to date. Simeon was very much up to date when he brought all the wealth,
fullness, richness of the past in his hands, and, so to speak, transferred
it to the new, to the Babe, Who took it all up, and Who later confessed
that He did take it all up. "Think not that I came to destroy the
law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil" (Matt.
5:17). There are always, sooner or later, reactions from cheapness and
superficiality, and that usually under duress and compulsion and a sense of
being unable to go on without something fuller.
Infancy in the arms of age. Yes,
and infancy depends upon those arms. I think I am not going too far in
saying that here, in the holding of the infant Christ in these arms, there
is this signification, that for the fulfilment of His life and ministry the
Christ depended very much upon the past, upon all that God had done before.
The only Bible He had was the Old Testament. How He lived on it! When He said,
"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God," He was talking about the only
Bible He had, the Word of God, the Old Testament. You see how the Old
Testament is used in the New. It is but another aspect of this. One of the
richest studies and most profitable lines of inquiry is to mark where the
Old Testament is found in the New and why it is found there, the use made
of it. Yes, it is a tremendous fact that
which is new depends upon that which has gone before.
THE ABIDING VALUE OF EVERY WORKING
OF GOD
We come to a close for the
present by noting this. We must live and we must work with our eye upon the after value of our lives. Thank
God that can be. Life would be an enigma and intolerable if all that we
have learned through suffering and discipline passed out with us and there
was nothing more for it. No, it is not like that at all. There is an after
value, and we ought to live, I say, and work, with our eye upon that
heritage which we are to give beyond
our own time. On the principle that God vindicates everything that He
Himself has done and given, and makes it necessary, then He is making
necessary for His new dispensation what He is doing in you and in me now.
That new dispensation is going to be constituted on the basis of what He is
doing in his saints now. That is a New Testament principle. What He is
doing in the Church now is to be the good of the coming ages. What He is
doing in us, it is not presumption to say, is going to be the very life of some
beyond our time. So we should not think of this life as something to be got
through, to be lived through to ourselves, something in itself. It is
something that is to be found again to the glory of God in that which is to
be - the passing on of that which has been of God, which can never die but
is conserved by Him forever, and will be necessary. I wonder if that is a
new thought to you? What the Lord is doing in you by way of increasing the
measure of Christ in you is going to be necessary long after you have gone.
It is a principle, a law, that anything that God does is forever and will
be necessary.
We will leave it there for the
time being and ask the Lord to exercise us quite strongly about this matter
of the intrinsic value of the knowledge of Himself for the time that is to
be, through this transition upon which we have now so seriously entered.
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