THE CONTINUATION OF THE CONFLICT

Series: The ConflictLesson #6

In these lessons we have seen that the issue is that of life and death. We have called this series “The Conflict.” We are attempting to show in this series what spiritual warfare is in actuality. It is the battle to keep this life manifested. That is the warfare we are in. It is not our place to put the devil out of business except in our own lives and in the church. But the warfare that we are engaged in is the battle for the manifestation of this life.

Eph. 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Our warfare is not against flesh and blood but against these powers and principalities. And we are going to look today at the realm of this battle, how its fought and where its fought. You are going to run into a lot of things that go under the name of spiritual warfare. There is a people that believe that God has anointed them to bind the devil in the whole earth. But today in this lesson we are going to look at it correctly.

I. The Continuation Of The Conflict In Relation To The Church As The Corporate Company. Not Just The Individual Believer But As The Church As A Whole.

1. In the lessons before this we have made it abundantly clear that there is an age-long battle for

spiritual life, and that if that life can be arrested in its manifestation, it will be so arrested.

2. The enemy will not stop day nor night in his effort to stop the manifestation of this life.

3. There is a great power and force working by the instrument of spiritual death to quench the testimony of the risen and ascended Lord within the individual believer, and within the church as the body of Christ.

4. The individual believer and the church are together in this battle for the manifestation of the life of the Lord. Satan could care less how religious we are, if the resurrection of Christ isn’t made real then he has no problem.

5. The issue is not as to the forfeiture of divine life, eternal life: as to whether Satan can take that away from us: but as to the keeping of it from its full expression in believers individually and in the church as a whole.

6. That this life can be in us and not seen is evident in the Bible. Jesus commanded us, “Let your light shine.” His life in us is the light. So when He said, “Let your light shine” that immediately tells us that it can be in us and yet not manifested.

II. The Higher Realms Of The Battle And The Testimony.

1. I think we can best get to the bottom of this matter by noting the contrast between the first letter to the Corinthians and the letter to the Ephesians. By this means we shall be greatly helped in understanding the nature and realm of the battle for spiritual life.

2. There are many practical suggestions and presentations in these two letters by which we can be governed in this matter.

3. To begin with, let us note the realm in which these letters stand; for undoubtedly there is a great difference between them in this respect.

4. We are familiar with the governing clauses of the letter to the Ephesians. The phrase “in the heavenlies” is one of its dominating notes.

5. We know quite well as soon as we take up the letter to the Ephesians that we are in the realm of the heavenlies. When you take up the letter to the Ephesians you are in the realm of the heavenlies. A great emancipation has taken place.

6. One whole world has been left behind and another has been entered, entered in a spiritual way. You cannot help but note that in reading this letter to the Ephesian church.

7. Here there is nothing fragmentary, nothing partial, nothing imperfect.

8. Here all the expressions are heavenly expressions.

9. We mean that the testimony is operating in a heavenly realm. It is operating back of all that is mundane, earthly, of flesh and blood, the things of this sentient (conscious) world.

10. It is in those ultimate relationships which are spiritual, with forces and intelligence which are supernatural, and which are more than human, and more than the forces and intelligences of this earth, that the testimony is seen to be operating.

11. It is there that something is being registered, being made to tell being made effective. It is back there that the testimony is being established, fulfilled, expressed. It is a heavenly realm. That is the letter to the Ephesians.

III. Turn To The First Letter To The Corinthians; What A Different Realm You Enter.

1. You find very little that is heavenly there.

2. You find that immediately when you begin to move into this letter you are touching the earthlies, mundane things, natural things: and what a mass of such things there is in the letter to the Corinthians.

3. You find yourself down in somewhat sordid (filthy, unclean) things even amongst the Lord’s people.

4. You are having to deal with all the unpleasantness, all the wretched aspects of mixture of flesh and spirit, of spiritual weakness and immaturity.

5. Oh, that we could get out of this realm of things, divisions and schisms and quarrellings, lawsuits, and what not! How earthly it is in the Corinthian letter.

6. It is another realm altogether. If you were in that world and went to the Ephesian church on a Sunday morning and the Corinthian church on Sunday night, it would have been hard for you to reconcile the two as being the churches of God, because they are operating in an entirely different realm. Because it is so earthly, because there is such an absence of the heavenly, you are not surprised that the testimony is so poor.

7. If you allow the flesh into your life or if you allow it into the church you pastor then the works of that flesh will show up. If you let the unsaved sing on your platform it won’t be long before there will be adultery in your congregation. It cannot be different.

8. This one church Corinth operated in the realm of the flesh. It was an earthly thing, it was a mixture, and there were sins in that church that Paul said wasn’t named among Gentiles.

9. You can find here no trace of registration upon spiritual forces.

10. You have to admit that the enemy is having a field day in Corinth amongst the saints. He seems in some things to be having his way altogether, carrying things into a realm which even in the world it is a shame to speak of.

11. The enemy is no defeated foe so far as these believers are concerned, or so far as the situation in this letter is concerned. He is having too much of his own way, simply because they are so much on the earthly level of things.

12. The Corinthians decided that they know how to do it. They worked at it and programmed it and they moved in accord to this world. They were more governed by what the world thinks about them than what God thinks.

13. The testimony, for its real value and effectiveness, demands that the Lord’s people return to their basis. The church must be a heavenly body.

14. In its birth the church was one hundred percent a product of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit is in control she (the church) never violates the principles of God. Men violate those principles. So when the flesh is allowed in then you see these carnal things begin to happen.

15. It is clear that these believers at Corinth had come into a very small measure of the power of His resurrection, simply because they had not entered into the meaning of His death, His cross. The cross wasn’t a central thing with them.

16. If there is a living apprehension of Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, you will not have divisions like this. If there is a true apprehension of Christ death and His cross you will not have divisions, schisms, and fornication in the church. Corinth had missed the meaning of the cross.

17. And if they do not know the meaning of the cross, and you and I don’t know the meaning of the cross, how can we know the meaning of the resurrection? How then can we know the power of the resurrection? Because it is in the power of the resurrection that we live this deathless life.

18. And if they do not know the power of the resurrection, then they cannot know the power of that resurrection life registering its impact against the powers of darkness, making Christ a living thing.

19. You can never undo divisions among the saints by bringing them together to discuss their differences. The church has dealt with that foolishness so long. The more you just talk about a thing the worst it gets. The Holy Spirit has to be brought into this. You can’t change it by just asking them to make up.

20. The power of the enemy behind that thing has to be broken. That the reason our prayer meetings can’t be just petitions. You cannot just come to the altar and just ask God to do things, you must in the power of the Spirit enforce what He has given you to do. To do that, I must walk with Him. I must know that He has given power over all of the power of the enemy, and we must break the power of that enemy that is behind these divisions.

21. You can never patch up a situation like that in Corinth, because it is devilish. It has to be dealt with as the devil. You can get the devil to make up. But the same spirit will break out again unless we deal with the devil. You can never just patch it up.

IV. What Is True In The Matter Of Divisions Is True In Every Other Matter In This Letter To The Corinthians.

1. It is the enemy behind it all who is ultimately the occasion of all this disorder, and there is nothing but the impact of a risen, ascended, sovereign Lord against the enemy behind which will make for a better state of things. Human reason cannot evict the devil from the church.

2. All of this is made very evident in Corinth. They could not register that impact upon spiritual forces because they were living on the wrong level. People who do not pray, people who do not wait upon God they may be ever so busy religiously but they cannot register against the powers of darkness. No matter how religious they are. The biggest trick of the devil is to get you and I doing so many religious things that we do not seek the Lord and without that we can make no impact upon the devil.

3. The realm makes a lot of difference to the testimony. The testimony is going to come out of the level of your living.

I have watched that pastoring a church. There are people who move with God and they made an impact against the darkness. There were others that God was kind of a secondary thing to them. If all you needed were a teacher, they would do that. If you needed someone to preach for you, they would do that. They knew all of the cliches, but they weren’t praying people. They weren’t spiritual people. They have no affect upon the night.

4. If you are trying to operate in the power of the testimony of the ascended and reigning Lord, and living an earthly life, you are defeated before you ever start. If you are going to register against those spiritual forces you must be a spiritual person. There must be a time that you meet God, that you wait on Him renewing yourself every morning. Just as Israel had to gather the manna every morning you have to be renewed and then you can command the devil.

5. If we are really going to have the coming through of the power His throne, then we must be severed in a spiritual way from this world, from this earth.

6. We have to live here. But He said that we are in it, not of it. When Daniel was taken to Babylon he had as much power in Babylon as he had in Jerusalem. Because Daniel never allowed Babylon to get in him.

7. We must be, in a spiritual sense, a heavenly people, seated together with Him in the heavenlies. This must be our life.

8. The realm is important for the functioning of the testimony. You cannot live down here an earthly life (spiritually speaking) and function in the heavenlies. You must walk as He walks.

V. It Is To This Testimony That We Are Called.

1. We are not called to do a lot of things per se. Things will work out. But we are called to be and out of the being comes the doing. We can do all kinds of things, but if we are really not spiritual, what we do is washed away. It is nothing. So it is a testimony that we are called to.

2. This is not some ideal impossible of realization. This is not something presented as a high level of truth. This is the thing for which the church is constituted. “The testimony of the risen Lord.” It is better that we don’t plant a church if its not going to be a real church.

3. I do not believe, as some people seem to believe, that the church in Corinth and the church in Ephesus are two different churches.

4. I do not believe that the Corinthians were called for anything less than the Ephesians. It is the same calling.

5. Some students in this school are going to register against this spiritual darkness others of you are not. I hate to have to prophesy that but it is the truth. It is not because all of have not been called to the same thing, it is that some of you are not going to pay the price. You are going to live down here religious doing a lot things. You are going to learn about money, learn about your own little world and not understand why you are here.

6. It is a matter of whether we accept the meaning of the cross to bring us through into the power of His resurrection, and that will determine how far we shall be the expression of that ultimate power of the enthroned Lord.

7. The cross of Christ is set for the removal of everything in you that is not Christ. Your acceptance of that meaning and your willingness to let it work through you will determine how high you go with God.

8. The deeper you are willing to go into the death of your own self the higher you are going to rise in His resurrection. If we allow Him to deal with all of those things that are not Christ then He can raise us. You must know that the trials and the tribulations of life are that cross.

9. That “realm” question touches any number of circumstances.

10. It raises the whole question of whether we are living on an earthly level; whether we are officially bound up with something which, after all, is only earthly in its constitution, even though it be of a religious kind. In the final analysis it will have nothing to do with this testimony.

11. All such questions as these are raised, and with them the issue as to whether we are out with the Lord, whether we are a heavenly people or whether we are just a religious earthly people. In the eyes of God there is no difference between religious flesh and sodomite flesh. All of it is going to hell. It is only Christ that matters.

VI. The Range Of The Battle And The Testimony.

1. Running parallel with the realm is what we may call the range of things; not so much the dimensions as the values, the qualities.

2. We look again at the Ephesian letter, and some of the great words that are found in it. There are some wonderful statements, and phrases, and terms.

a. “The exceeding greatness of His power.”

b. “Strengthened with all might by His Spirit in the inward man.”

c. “Able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.” The power that worketh in us is capable of enabling us exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.

d. “Raised Him...and made Him to sit at His own right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule, and authority, and power and dominion...and gave Him to be head over all things to the church...the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.”

3. These are statements to a church living in the Spirit. You can see the quality and the range of this testimony.

4. Pick out all these transcendent, superlative (exceptional, excellent) things in the letter. Do not regard them just as words, just as oratory. This is not a sermon, it’s a testimony. Mark the tremendous range of value and caliber represented by these things.

5. You have nothing to compare with them in the first letter to the Corinthians. Nothing! They are living on the realm that most of the church lives in the twentieth century, and nothing like this said to the Ephesians can be said about them. We make talk about having power over the enemy, but he is having a field day in the church.

6. There are very vital things in the first letter to the Corinthians, but in the range, in the depth and the height, the length and the breadth, so far as spiritual value is concerned, there is no comparison.

7. Even when you deal with the church, the body of Christ, in 1 Corinthians 12 you are largely dealing with it from the side of its expression here.

8. When you deal with it in the Ephesian letter you are carrying it higher, away from the conditions of the Corinthian church where it is necessary to say such things to them as this: One member cannot say to another, I have no need of you (1Cor. 12:21). That is earthly. In the spiritual we in love prefer one another. If you can do it better than me then you should be the one to do it. This is the realm of the spiritual.

9. How that reveals what the spirit of things had been at Corinth, what an earthly level that church had come to.

10. The Apostle Paul is giving an unfolding of spiritual relationships, but it is of such a kind as is largely occasioned, if not wholly, by spiritual disorder among the saints. In the whole of the letter to the Corinthians he is dealing with these spiritual things that are brought about by spiritual disorders.

11. Some said, “I am of Paul, I am of Cephas, I am of this.” Paul says, “I am of Christ.”

12. Paul didn’t die for me. He wasn’t raised for me. All of this is the working of the earthly realm.

a. What is described there is conditions created by spiritual disorder.

13. But when you come into Ephesians 4 and touch the truth of the body there, you are breathing an altogether different atmosphere. It is like going from the city to the country. You begin to breathe good clean air. When you move from the letter to the Corinthians to the letter to the Ephesians you are carried into a higher realm of things.

14. Pass on to Ephesians 5:32: “This mystery is great: I speak in regard of Christ and of the church...” You are carried away into the great mystery of the Body. This is different than you find in the Corinthian letter where Paul talks about the body. He deals with that body of Christ (and they are the body of Christ) and the conditions that have brought about spiritual disorder. But here in the Ephesian letter he deals with the heavenlies. That is something deeper.

15. What is the explanation of this difference? It is not that they are two different churches, nor that they represent two different callings. It is that there are two different levels upon which they live.

16. If all these wonderful things presented in Ephesians, these mighty things, these weighty things, are elements of the true testimony of Jesus, then they belong to a place where the earthlies are left behind, where nothing of us naturally has any place to operate.

17. Would you know the exceeding greatness of His power which is to usward who believe? You cannot live on a Corinthian level and have an Ephesian experience. If you live on a natural, earthly basis, even as a Christian you cannot have what is presented here in that power that is to usward.

18. Do you want to know the fullness of Christ? Do you want to become in a related way the fullness of Him that filleth all in all? You can never be that if you live spiritually at Corinth.

VII. The Testimony Is A Mighty Thing.

1. It is a thing fraught with these massive elements and features of the risen and ascended Lord.

2. It is to be known and set forth now in a spiritual way in the life of the church, but the church has to come out on to the ground which is presented in this letter to the Ephesians.

3. I am not saying that the church at Ephesus was on this level. It may or may not have been. But it seems perfectly clear that the Ephesian saints were in a position to have such a revelation given to them and the Corinthians were not. The Corinthians were in a place where they needed correction, and most of our preaching to the church has been to correct it.

4. But if Paul’s visit to Ephesus and the results are indicative of anything, they do speak of thoroughness, a completeness there. They brought their books of magic and made a great bonfire of them.

5. They sacrificed everything to the fire because they had found a new mystery, a heavenly force which was more than the force of the magicians, the occultists, the spiritists, something far above all that.

6. They had discovered Christ, and at great cost they let all else go, and that prepared the way for a wonderful revelation to them.

7. Paul was able to say to those Ephesian elders: “I shrank not from declaring unto you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). You can never declare the whole counsel of God to any company of people unless they are ready for it.

VIII.The Comparison Of The Corinthian And Ephesian Assemblies.

1. The place of man.

2. Look at these two, and focus you attention upon one word, or one title, one designation, namely, that of “man.” What was the place of man in these two different assemblies?

3. In Corinth man, as such, had a very large place. The Apostle says: “I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ...for whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal, and walk after the manner of men? For when one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not men?” (1Cor. 3:1,3-4).

4. Man was coming into view to the obscuring of Christ. All the way through that letter natural elements in man are being dealt with.

5. Whatever it is, at whatever point you touch this terrible trouble that engaged the Apostle, you are touching some expression of man in himself; some dispute, for example, though over what we do not exactly know.

6. But two believers, members of the same assembly, have perhaps been in some business transaction, and there has been something not straight, something upon which they have come to a serious difference, and one says, “All right, I will take it to court, and will fight you in legal quarters.”

7. It is man doing things as man does them.

8. But when you come to the letter to the Ephesians, and see where man comes in there. You cannot find him; but we find “one new man,” that new man which we are exhorted to put on (Eph. 4:24).

9. The old man has given place to the new man.

10. It is no longer a case of so many separated individuals all thinking of their own interests, but here all that individualism is lost in one collectivity and relativity of the new man.

11. You can almost see them growing up into Him:

Eph. 4:13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:

12. That word “man” is a key to the situation in both letters. How?

13. If he is allowed to come in, there will be a state such as you have at Corinth. If you allow that carnal man to dominate your thinking then you will come to what they were. If you allow man to operate as man in the church you will come to the same place. But if he goes out, then Ephesian position is found.

14. That is the work of the cross.

15. You are not surprised, then, that in the Ephesian letter fairly early you come upon the words “...quickened us together with Christ...and raised us up in Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus...” All that quickening and raising presupposes a death, and that is the death of the old man, the man by nature.

IX. Comparison Of The Two Churches Continued.

1. The place of the world. The word “world” occurs a number of times in the letter to the Corinthians – “...the wisdom of this world,” “...the princes of this world...”

2. Read down through those first two chapters, and see what a large place the world has. The world and its wisdom, the world with its spirit, the world with its way, had a large place amongst Corinthian believers.

3. If you follow through the letter you cannot get away from it. It is the way of the world, the way the world does things, or conditions ruling there, that is continually before us - the spirit of the world.

4. They are even handling heavenly and divine things with worldly wisdom. They are prophesying off of the top of their head and talking in tongues without the Holy Ghost. All of this is there.

5. Turn to the letter to the Ephesians and see where the world is. It is left behind, and believers are spiritually seen as out of the world.

6. Recall those strange and seemingly contradictory phrases in John 17: “...the men whom thou gavest Me out of the world...” They are not of the world. “I pray not that thou shouldest take them from the world...” We know what is meant in a spiritual sense, and that there is no contradiction, in it and out of it at the same time.

7. In Ephesians 6 those things which belong to ordered life here are mentioned. There are families; husbands and wives, parents and children; masters and servants.

8. You say, “Merely earthly!” No! They are the relationships proper to life here, and yet in them is the possibility of a heavenly life. My wife and I, me and my children, between us all.

9. All are lifted on to a heavenly level where spiritual interests govern those relationships with a view to heavenly purposes and not just earthly interests. The world, in the sense in which it is found in 1Corinthians, is not found in Ephesians.

10. That explains the testimony; that shows what is necessary for this impact upon spiritual forces.

11. That can never be unless we come to the same position, with the world left behind in this sense.

12. Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood - that is the world’s way of doing things - but against the principalities, against the powers.

13. It is a case of getting behind flesh and blood, and what a much more effective wrestling that is.

14. What mighty issues there are in the spiritual realm.

15. How things really count when we know the secret of functioning there in the power of resurrection.

16. But that requires that we shall know here in mind, in spirit, absolute separation from this world.

X. The Difference In The Order At Corinth And At Ephesus.

1. At Corinth two things, or two sides of the one thing, are presented.

2. In what the Apostle has to say there is brought before you a heavenly order.

3. He is indicating what that heavenly order is as in the church. He is seeking to recover it, or to establish it.

4. But over against at least the intimation of heavenly order there is a terrible disorder in the assembly (the Corinthian church).

5. Their procedure, their government, their relationships, all are in disorder.

6. The question at Corinth is largely a question of order or disorder. We recognize that. There is nothing arbitrary (just impulsive) about the Apostle in that letter. A false explanation and interpretation has been put upon a great deal that Paul said in that letter, as for instance, upon his reference to the place of the sisters in the assembly.

a. The interpretation or construction placed upon his words has been that Paul was a woman hater, that he was caught up in the Rabbinical idea of women, which held they were subject and had to be kept in a place of subjection, and therefore that what he wrote in that letter was out from that mentality, that conception.

b. Nothing is further from the truth. Nothing is a greater libel against that Apostle. The Apostle was not dealing for one moment with the question of status, of honor; he was dealing purely with a matter of order.

c. He will not rule sisters right out of the assembly in the matter of functioning, but he will show that their functioning is relative, and that it is both right and profitable when in its place. It is a matter of order.

7. Turn to the letter to the Ephesians, you can discover nothing about disorder in the assembly. Chapter 4 presents the body and its relationships established; or that part of the letter brings it mainly into view. It is a beautiful heavenly order.

8. There is no reference whatsoever to an upsetting of that order, it is simply presented as if that order really was obtained in that church.

9. The point is that the church’s testimony to the risen Lord in the power of His risen life is bound up with order in the House of God. The devil is the author of all confusion and the manifestation of the resurrected Lord in our midst is bound up with the order in that house.

10. If the divine order is upset, the testimony is weakened, the testimony is nullified in that measure or made of no value.

11. Let no one think that the appeal for order is simply with a view to having a domination, a control, a power over others, a desire to subject people. The word “subjection” has become anathema to a good many because they have missed its significance. It is the value of divine order, heavenly order, expressed amongst the Lord’s people that is in point. Because without this there can be no testimony. So the whole purpose of the enemy is to destroy or at least upset that order in the church. Thus order is so vital a factor in the meeting of the enemy.

12. A Corinthian disorder cannot destroy the power of the principle, and world rulers cannot stand before spiritual forces when a divine order is established and adhered to, and sacredly guarded.

13. Very often a church is divided and broken, and crying out for victory, for deliverance, for power, for effectiveness; and in the midst of that confusion, if the Lord could only be heard speaking He would be heard to say: “Set your house in order; that is the way to power.”

14. Put things right in your midst, and your prayers will be answered.

XI. The Expression Of His Life Demands The Heavenly Realm; Separation From The World By The Death Of The Old Man In His Natural Strength And Life; The Constituting Of Things According To The Heavenly Pattern.

1. This is all practical. There is nothing mystic about it.

2. There are no flights of thought to carry you away into ecstasies but there is a coming down on to the practical basis of everyday things.

3. I am persuaded that nothing touches the heart of the whole issue more than this.

4. The church’s defeat, weakness, and failure in testimony today is in the first place is because it has become an earthly thing. It is because of the worldly elements that have gained entrance, because man, as man, has such a large place in it, because the heavenly order does not obtain, but a man made order is what is called the church.

5. Do you know heavenly union with the Lord? Have you from your heart abandoned this world?

6. Have you accepted the meaning of His cross for the putting aside of all that belongs to man as such?

7. Are you quite sure that you are fitting in your place in the House of God? Are you sure that you are not out of your place? So far as your devotion to the Lord is concerned, are you really bent upon being in your place, remaining in your place, and there functioning for the Lord?

8. Are you a party to something that is not an expression of the heavenly pattern?

9. These are practical, direct questions. The Lord gives grace and understanding and response to what this means.

10. You may not grasp it all now, but it is something laid in store.

11. Remember, it does matter tremendously whether you are in a Corinthian condition or an Ephesian condition, and these are the features, these are the differences. The Lord make us, if we may say it in a spiritual sense, good Ephesians.

12. No matter where you are, no matter what you perceive yourself to be spiritually, if you will let Him, He will move you into that realm spoken of in the Ephesian church.

13. So we need not be discouraged if we find ourselves not occupying the proper place.

14. But God graciously has brought us here in these lessons to see where we are that we may have a goal.

15. You won’t get there overnight, but you will get there if you set your heart upon it.