MEETING GOD'S NEED AND PRESENT NEEDS IN THE LORD'S RECOVERY
Message Two
God's Good Pleasure
Scripture Reading: Eph. 4:11-16; Phil. 2:13; Matt. 3:13-17; 17:5; Gal. 1:15-16; Rom. 14:17-18
I. God's good pleasure, His heart's desire, is to meet the demand of this age, which is God's need in this age:
A. God does not need "spiritual giants" any longer in this age; what He needs is the Body testimony, which is the reality of the Body of Christ consummating in the New Jerusalem; this is to fulfill the Lord's heart's desire according to His word concerning the building up of His Body—Matt. 16:18; Eph. 4:1-16.
B. Verses 15 and 16 say that all the members of the Body grow up into the Head and function out from the Head; thus, "all the Body" (with the supplying joints and the functioning of each one part) "causes the growth of the Body unto the building up of itself in love."
C. As ministers of the present age, Brother Nee and Brother Lee are patterns to us so that we may be perfected "unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the Body of Christ"; we are being perfected in this present age to become functioning members of the Body of Christ—vv. 11-12; 1 Tim. 1:16; 4:12; 1 Cor. 4:16-17.
D. "Spiritual giants" are a hindrance to the producing of the church ministry; we need to see what the church is intrinsically; the church as the Body of Christ is brought forth when all the one-talented ones are functioning; talents signify spiritual gifts, and each member of the Body of Christ has at least one talent—Matt. 25:14-30; Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:4, 12-27; 1 Pet. 4:10:
1. For the work of the Lord, we need the talent, the spiritual gift, that we may be equipped as good slaves to accomplish God's eternal economy; surely, we must make all the five-talented ones serve and the two-talented ones serve, but even more, we must make all the one-talented ones serve.
2. When five one-talented ones are put together, they equal one who has five talents; if all the one-talented ones in the church today would bring forth their talents, there would be no need for so many great gifts among us; just by the coming forth of the one-talented ones, the whole world will be conquered (cf. Acts 17:6b)!
3. If our work does not bring out the one-talented ones, our work is a failure; 2 Timothy 2:2 and Ephesians 4:11-12 are the way of our work today; only those who teach others to work will succeed in the work; today the building up of the church hinges on the perfecting, building up, and raising up of the one-talented ones; what is needed today is men who can lead others into their function in serving the Lord for the church, not men who will replace others in their service.
E. God is recovering the most difficult thing today, which is the fulfillment of Ephesians 4:11-16; God's ultimate work is the recovery of the Body testimony.
F. We need to see that the Body can be damaged by the misuse of "spiritual pursuit" (see Brother Lee's testimony about this in The History and Revelation of the Lord's Recovery, vol. 2, pp. 346-354):
1. In the twentieth century Mrs. Penn-Lewis and T. Austin-Sparks were people with high spiritual attainment who began to work together, but they were divided and could not be spiritual together; this shows that being "spiritual" can result in division.
2. Mrs. Penn-Lewis knew the subjective experience of the Lord's death, and T. Austin-Sparks saw the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection life; but because he had his own spiritual knowledge and felt that his spiritual knowledge was higher than that of Mrs. Penn-Lewis, he left and started his own work; there was even a sense of rivalry between them.
3. Although T. Austin-Sparks was "spiritual," he was shallow in his understanding of the church; because he did not have a sufficient understanding of the church (the oneness of the church and the ground of the church), during his second and final visit to Taiwan, he expressed dissenting views, and the loss brought about by this was ten times, even fifty times, greater than the help he rendered.
4. Before that time we had the one accord and were in harmony, but those who said that they were "helped" by Brother Austin-Sparks became factors of division.
5. We surely need to be genuine spiritual men, those who are dominated, governed, directed, moved, ruled, controlled, and led by our mingled spirit; a true spiritual man, who lives according to the spirit, will do everything and speak everything not only in his spirit but also in the Body, through the Body, and for the Body; if we are truly spiritual, we will be diligent to "keep the oneness of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace"—Eph. 4:3; 1 Cor. 2:14-15; 3:1, 3.
II. God's good pleasure, God's heart's desire, is what makes God happy:
A. God is happy with the creation of the earth; His kingdom will be set up on the earth—Job 38:4, 7; Matt. 6:10; Rev. 5:10; 11:15; 21:1; Zech. 12:1.
B. God is happy with the creation of man; for each of the items that God had created, He said "good" (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 21, 25), but for the creation of man, He said "very good" because man had God's image and had been given God's dominion for the glory of God and the kingdom of God (vv. 26, 31; Isa. 43:7; Matt. 6:10, 13b).
C. God is happy with the incarnation (Luke 2:9-14); Jesus is the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Eternal Father, and the Prince of Peace to be the unique Governor, and the government of the Triune God is upon His shoulder (Isa. 9:6-7); He is our Savior and our Emmanuel, the God-man, the One who is united, mingled, and incorporated with man (Matt. 1:21, 23; John 14:9-11, 16-20).
D. God is happy with Christ's baptism; when He was baptized to begin His public ministry, "the heavens were opened to Him…And behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I have found My delight"; the Lord Jesus, taking the standing of a typical man, was baptized to fulfill all righteousness and to allow Himself to be put into death and resurrection so that He might live and minister in resurrection—Matt. 3:13-17.
E. God is happy with the resurrected and glorified Christ; when Christ was transfigured, as a foreshadowing of His resurrection, "behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I have found My delight. Hear Him!" (17:5); God took pleasure in the resurrection and glorification of His Son (Luke 24:26).
F. God is happy when His prodigal sons return to Him; the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15 may be called the parable of a happy father; after the father "ran" to his returning son (v. 20), he told his servants to bring the fattened calf and slaughter it, and he said, "Let us eat and be merry" (v. 23); here we see the merriment of God.
G. God is happy when His Son is revealed in us—"It pleased God…to reveal His Son in me" (Gal. 1:15-16)—and when we are fully brought into the sonship of God (4:4-6; Eph. 1:4-5); this fulfills God's good pleasure to have many sons for His corporate expression; the Son revealed in us has brought us into the meaning of the earth, of man, and of the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected Lord.
H. God is happy to operate in us "both the willing and the working for His good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13); the Christian life with the supply of the Body life (1:19) is a happy life; our inward joy is an indication that we are living and walking according to God's good pleasure; since the book of Philippians, written by Paul in prison (v. 13; 4:22), is concerned with the experience and enjoyment of Christ, which issue in joy, it is a book filled with joy and rejoicing (1:4, 18, 25; 2:2, 17-18, 28-29; 3:1; 4:1, 4).
I. God is happy to have a man of God (Psa. 90, title; Deut. 33:1; Ezra 3:2) who lives God and lives out God in order to gain God by being one with God (2 Tim. 3:16-17; 1 Tim. 6:11-12; Phil. 3:8, 14); Jesus of Nazareth is the standard pattern of a man of God who lived out God (John 6:57; 5:19, 30; 10:30); the Lord said that He did not come to do His own will or to seek His own glory (5:19, 30; 6:38; 7:18); when we take Christ as our crucified life for His manifestation as the resurrection life, we will experience Him as the indwelling and enabling power of resurrection to deny our will and our glory (Phil. 3:10; 2 Cor. 4:5-7; Rom. 14:7-9).
J. God is happy when we eat Christ as our spiritual food in order to live because of Him (John 6:57); to eat Christ is to eat His words by exercising our spirit to both pray-read and muse upon His words so that His words become the gladness and joy of our heart (Jer. 15:16; Psa. 119:15-16; Josh. 1:8-9); to live because of Christ means that the energizing element of Christ becomes the supplying factor for us to live Christ.
K. God is happy when we are daily strengthened into our inner man so that Christ may make His home in our hearts through faith; our inner man is our regenerated spirit, which has God's life as its life (Eph. 3:16-17; John 3:6b; Rom. 8:10).
L. God is happy when we remain in our spirit and pay attention to our spirit (v. 6b); when the Lord says, "Abide in Me" (John 15:4), this wonderful "Me" is in our spirit, and when we are in Him by being in our spirit, in us the ruler of this world has nothing—no ground, no chance, no hope, and no possibility in anything (14:30; cf. 12:31-32).
M. God is happy when we serve Him as a slave by living in the reality of the kingdom of God in the way of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit; this is well pleasing to God and approved by men, and it preserves the oneness of the church for the practical Body life—Rom. 14:17-18.
N. God is happy when we worship Him in spirit; God's eternal economy is focused on and is carried out by our mingled spirit—the divine Spirit mingled together with our human spirit as one spirit—John 4:23-24; Rom. 8:16; 1 Cor. 6:17; Rom. 1:9.
O. God is happy when we are one with Him in His ministry to carry out His eternal economy; in the Lord's ministry we care only for the divine dispensing of the Triune God, embodied in Christ and realized as the Spirit, into His chosen people—Eph. 1:9-11; 3:2, 9-10; 2 Cor. 3:3, 6; 1 Pet. 4:10.
P. We must be a people in whom, with whom, and through whom God may have His good pleasure; we must be "determined…to gain the honor of being well pleasing to Him" (2 Cor. 5:9) by being one with Christ as the One who sacrificed Himself on the cross to produce new wine to cheer God and men (Judg. 9:12-13; Matt. 9:17).
Q. God will be happy with our glorification—"The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed upon us. For the anxious watching of the creation eagerly awaits the revelation of the sons of God…The creation itself will also be freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans together and travails in pain together until now. And not only so, but we ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan in ourselves, eagerly awaiting sonship, the redemption of our body"—Rom. 8:18-19, 21-23; cf. Eph. 1:4-5.