Heredity - Part 5 — G.W. North

Following Christ Through Darkness and Death

He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, he said, following that wonderful word to the woman taking her down, saying, neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life, and away it goes.

You see, then he starts to talk about the difference between servant and son. Notice the logic of the scripture in John chapter 8, goes through it, deals with a man that's been born blind, when do I know?

Now I can see we preach that as salvation, but it wasn't, he could only see. You see, we use these things and talk about them as though they are concretely the things we're talking about, but they're only illustrations.

And on we go, you see, and on we go, well where are you going, Lord? He leads them, I'm the resurrection and the life, where is he now? Keep following me. He goes to the after room, he says, here you are, off he goes, he goes to get somebody, where are you going now, Lord?

I'm the cross, whoa, run away, I'm not having that. Do you see that? That's right. I go my way, I'm the way, you can't come to the Father but by me, come on, follow, I'm the cross, never. Then no death, no birth, no death, no life, they ran away.

Of course they were lovely men, you would have run away under the same circumstances, I would have run away under the circumstances, but the Holy Ghost has come now. He changed it all, amen. And it's all so wonderful, and I finished that little bit as you commanded me, brother.

Suggested. I was going to say to be continued tomorrow, but we'll go down to the watery grave tomorrow, I think. If there are any more that know, they must obey the Lord in baptism. And I think tonight I'm going to preach to you about the one baptism.

If you will, come on Norman, you pray.

Father, again we find our hearts moved and touched by the simplicity and clarity of it all. For the reason of God, Lord, and for the explanation given to us of the Spirit, Lord, that simplifies it all unto our spirits and causes us to know that big yes inside of agreement.

Lord, we thank you that you are delivering us in these days from all the analysis and human intellect that's been brought to bear upon these precious truths, and you've sent the light of your spirit to teach us and to lead us into all truth, even unto the truth.

Blessed be thy name, Lord. We confess that we don't merely want to be hearers of these wonderful things, but we believe thee to inscribe all this precious revelation upon the fleshy tables of our hearts, Lord, that we shall no longer argue about it or reason concerning it, but live in the reality and fullness and glory of it all.

Thank you, Lord Jesus. Continue to work in our hearts and work out all that we've heard, Lord Jesus, in our daily lives. For thy glory's sake. Amen.

The New Covenant Written on the Heart

We'll turn, shall we, to the New Testament equivalent of what we read in Jeremiah 31. That is, we'll turn to Hebrews chapter 8. Jesus, we're told in the sixth verse of chapter 8, has obtained a more excellent ministry than all previous priests by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.

For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. But finding fault with them, he says, Behold the day come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my laws into their mind and write them in their hearts, and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.

And they shall not teach every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.

In that he saith a new covenant, he hath made the first oath. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away. Amen. And here we have the New Testament taking up of this great truth that the Lord expressed through Jeremiah and applying it to us in connection with our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the basic thing of the New Covenant, which you will know is testament or arrangement, actually, if you look up the word, the new arrangement of God. And the arrangement is precisely this, that instead of being an outward thing, it's all going to be inward.

That God, instead of writing laws on tablets of stone, is going to write them on the heart. What a tremendous thing this is. It's a tremendous word, really, in verse 10. I will put my laws into their mind.

That's going to put our thoughts right. And I will write them in their hearts, and that's going to put all the rest of our being right. It's going to put right our emotional life, it's going to put right our ethical life, it's going to put right our feelings, it's going to put right our love, it's going to put right our affections, because this is the source of all our life, this heart of ours.

God says, I'm going to write them there. And this is what he's saying, this is the proof that he is being to you a God. When God is God to you, he is this kind of a God that puts his law into your minds, God's blessing to put our minds right, and writes them in our heart, which puts the totality of our hearts right.

Our whole being is put right by God. You know, I wish, beloved, that... Oh, it's over there. I wondered where it was all coming from, that noise that's going on. I wish someone had told me when I was a young man the covenant into which God had entered in me.

You remember that Jesus said this new covenant was in his blood. We looked at it the other day. And it came out of the blood of Jesus. And obviously, this is what the Lord shed at Calvary. This was the only thing that could cleanse us from our sins.

A life that had been right in mind and heart. That Jesus was the fulfillment of the law simply because he lived it out fully. Jesus was a person whose mind fought the laws of God. He didn't need the Ten Commandments outwardly.

And his heart felt and acted in the laws of God. He had new heart laws and new thought laws. This was the new man. This is God's new man. This is the new man that was created in Jesus Christ. Hallelujah.

And when you read about the new man and the old man this is the great distinction between them. This kind of life. The life that utterly fulfilled the law of God. Not because it had to under law. But because it just had to to exist at all.

To be life at all. And this is what God has been telling us. We've got to see, beloved, that when we are born of God this is the life that we receive. This is what God gives us. It's this life that had the new paternity.

The father that got this life by the Holy Ghost. This is the new kind of humanity. Everything in it is eternal. Internal and therefore eternal. You see that one of the great things you read in this section, beloved and this is sometimes what makes me grow so much inside when I hear much that goes on in modern jangles and jingles that are supposed to be a sort of a revelation from God and churches and peak churches that profess to be baptized in the Spirit sing them with great gusto.

Here then is a verse and it says this I'm not going to make a covenant with them. Look at verse now. When I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt. You see God was external. God was external.

I took hold of somebody. It's about three people I think this morning since the morning service. I took them by the hand and led them. One couldn't see so I led him because he couldn't see. Others I led them because I was going to take them to steer them to a certain spot where we could talk away and God could speak.

That was because I was outside them. If I was inside them I would have thought my way in them through to that chair. I would have done it. You see everything is all internal and I hate and detest these things that go on about he holds my hand and all that sort of business based on soulish tunes and everything that keeps pushing us away to God being outside of us.

When everything in this great new covenant is God within me. Everything. And I refuse totally to join in this general idea of abandonment back to a lesser covenant that pushes us away back down there where things are all external.

Bless the name of the Lord. God has come and oh what a tremendous thing this is. Now those of us that were together last night beloved will remember that we looked at the two great introductions to the life of the spirit in the Roman letter.

The first one was in the first chapter the spirit of holiness. The second one was the Holy Ghost that shed the love of God abroad in our hearts. Amen. What a blessed introduction. And in the eighth chapter we come to the life in the spirit.

The Law of the Spirit of Life in Romans 7 and 8

You will have noticed I trust that the man in chapter 7 hasn't got the spirit at all. The Holy Ghost isn't mentioned in chapter 7. Anybody can expect to live that kind of life who isn't baptized in the Holy Ghost.

No one that's baptized in the Holy Ghost ought to live the Roman 7 life. No one. Unless they may, but this is because they sin, they go back, or a concatenation of things that can sort of all mill up together and push you out.

Wrong teaching can. Indulgence in sloppy singing can. Getting wrong ideas into your mind can. You see, beloved, the great thing about it is this. As a man thinketh in his heart, that's what he is, says Jesus.

And you cannot be the man or the woman that God wants you to be unless your mind is changed. It must be changed. In order to change your mind, God has to change the laws that govern it. He has to change the power that works upon the original basic creation of God so far as mind is concerned.

And change the power from sin under the domination of the satanic mind to holiness under the blessed inspiration of the divine mind. That's what he has to do. It's quite impossible for you and me to be the kind of person God wants us to be if we don't think right, if our minds aren't right.

Quite impossible. And so we see, if you like, the common sense of God. I love God's common sense. You know, I think that God is eminently sensible, really. I mean, not that I can examine God or anything like that, but everything I discover about him brings me down to a place where I say, Oh Lord, of course it's all so basically simple.

I mean, it's marvellous. It's as precious and as simple as it really is. God hasn't done anything fantastic. I mean, we use this word fantastic right out of its proper grammatical sort. It isn't a fantasy at all.

It's absolutely reality. And when we come to Romans 7, we find a man under law. The key to Romans 7 is in the first verse. Read it to yourself. I speak to them that know law. That's the key to Romans 7.

We touched on this the other day. We come into Romans 8 and immediately we read this. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.

For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Romans 6, we read in verse 18, being then made free from sin, you became the slaves of righteousness. And 22, being now made free from sin and become the slaves of God.

Alleluia. That's wonderful. We're not only made free from sin, beloved, but we're made free from sinning because the law of the spirit of life has made me free from the law of sin and death. Not only sin, but from the law of sin and death.

Amen. The mental spiritual laws by which sin works and it all works by law. Praise the name of the Lord. There's nothing hit or miss. There's nothing haphazard. Fulfill the rules and everything will be fine.

Everything works by law. It's a strange thing that we can look out into an ordered universe, albeit fallen, and think of the marvellous, Lord Copernicus, and away we go back, if we do do that sort of thing, where astronomy is concerned.

And there's a chap named Newton, I think we've all heard about him. I don't mean the man that wrote the hymn, I mean Sir Isaac. And what he discovered when apples started to fall. There's a man named Watts that we think marvellous.

He discovered all these laws. And we come to electricity and all things. Splitting the atom, it's all based on law. Yet when we get to salvation and talk about grace, we think that there's no law anywhere in it.

It's all higgledy-piggledy. We think grace means the end of law. It only means the end of the mosaic law, in that sense that we're no longer under the mosaic law. And it also means the end of the law of sin and death.

You see? Praise God. Let me put it this way. The law of sin and death. Here comes Jesus. Praise God. He goes to the cross. God takes sin, puts it on him, makes him to be sin, if I read my Bible right.

Death. Hallelujah. But you see, the end of the law of sin and death is this, that he rose again. The end of it. This is the thing that shouts out to us from the scripture. I am set free. Something has happened in me that sets me free from the awful workings of sin in my life.

What a tremendous thing that is. All right. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has done this. When you were baptized into Christ, you were baptized into the laws of the life of Jesus in the spirit.

That's what you were baptized into. In your mind. Oh, this great domination of the mind. It's in the thought realm where everybody finds their greatest difficulty. In the thought realm. This is where the pressures come on.

This is where the great troubles lie. Lots of people find trouble in their physical makeup realm. In their very bodies. But God has answered that too. God has made provision for that too. He's not only made provision for spirit, he's made provision for mind, he's made provision for body.

So that we can literally be the new creatures that he wants us to be. And when Jesus Christ baptizes us into his body, he does it in the spirit. We are baptized in the spirit into his body. That's what that word is in 1 Corinthians 12 that we read this morning.

It's the Greek word in. In one spirit. Unfortunately it was translated by, if the revisers haven't put in they've let you down. In one spirit. This is what happens when you're baptized in the spirit. In one spirit we are baptized into one body.

In the spirit. Alleluia. And what a glorious thing this is. This can only happen because in the spirit, not only does Jesus Christ live, but so does his cross. And so is his blood. Calvary is all alive in the spirit.

Calvary is here in the spirit. Amen. It wasn't just what Jesus did in the flesh on the cross that was so important. The more important thing was wrought in the spirit. May God write that deeply down in every one of our hearts.

The blood had to be shed. Atonement had to be made. Praise God for that precious lamb that was ready to go and shed his blood. We sing enough hymns about it. And it's all so wonderful. And we can never, never cease to thank God for it.

But it was what was wrought in the spiritual realm that was the most important thing. It was the spiritual content, it was the soul content that was in the blood that gave it its importance. And why glory be to God.

What the Lord wrought there, everything that he accomplished on that occasion, just those two hours, that's all it was in history. Beloved, it's all here, present, in the spirit. God's done that. And it's forever.

It's here. And there's no way into everything that God has for us in the spirit save by the cross. No way, he said. No one comes to the Father but by me. All right. Now that's what Oswald Chambers would call nugget gold.

I don't know whether you're familiar with Oswald Chambers, but he said that nugget gold you'll find in the Gospels. Negotiable gold. He was a great one for his alliterations, as you know. You'll find those in the epistles.

The nugget from which the sort of golden sovereigns are made, because you can't put a nugget over the counter. They'd call the police if you did one nugget of gold, they'd wonder where you got it from.

But you couldn't buy and sell with nuggets in the days when they had spade guineas and golden sovereigns because nuggets weren't negotiable. You couldn't sort of buy a pound of sugar with a nugget of gold.

Access to the Father Through the Cross and the Spirit

So you find in John chapter 14 that Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. But when you find it beaten out into negotiable coins, you've got to read it in Ephesians.

And in Ephesians this is what you read. You know the great story, having abolished in his flesh, verse 15 of chapter 2, the enmity that is between Jew and Gentile, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances for to make in himself a twain one new man, so making peace, and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body, by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby, and he came and he preached peace to you which were far off and to them which are nigh, for through him we both have access by one spirit.

Now we've got the thing made understandable to us. I'm the way to the Father, but it's only by the spirit. The access, we have access through Jesus by one spirit unto the Father. And you and I, beloved, are brought into this marvellous place by God.

Everything is in the spirit, every groan that he groaned, and every prayer that he prayed, all the conflicts he brought to an end, every battle he fought, everything on that cross, it doesn't matter whether you can remember them all or whether you can't, everything he accomplished there, the slaying of the old man, totally, praise God.

Jesus Christ was the last Adam. There's never been another Adam since Jesus Christ. I hope you believe that. You've got to start believing the Bible, you see. He was the last Adam. And you see, he dealt with the whole thing.

Blessed be the Lord's name. And all he accomplished there in the spirit, everything he accomplished that was done in the mind, everything, it's here. Blessed. Blessed. And I go through this into the wonder of that glorious life in the body of Christ.

Now may the Lord open this right up to us that we understand it. Spiritually, the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, that makes me free from the law of sin and death. That negates that one. Amen.

Now if I go into Romans 8, I find something else. That this was done in verse 4, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. That's what it was done for. That all that righteousness of the law should be fulfilled in us.

You know, this is a tremendous thing, because we find that Jesus Christ was the end of the law for righteousness because he fulfilled it. Now that's all going to be fulfilled in us. We can't fulfill the ceremonial side of the law that demanded bloodshed for sin.

That's the side we can't touch. That all belongs to Jesus. Blessed. But the moral, ethical side of the law, everything that has to do with righteousness of life, everything that has to do with holiness, everything which has to do with filling in the exactitude of God's requirements of man, the perfections of God's expecting of us, all this marvellous righteousness of the law to be fulfilled in us.

Hmm. Wow, this is a tremendous thing, isn't it? But now, not because he's taken us by the hand, because we're blindly groping for the way, saying, oh, oh my hand, Lord. You know, I said to the man that stood at the gate of the year, and all this business, God give us some prophets of truth.

Hallelujah. And not that anymore. Well, Lord, I need this because I don't know the way. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. He says, I'm the way. He's in you. Mighty sermons built up on people that don't know the way.

All this kind of thing. And Jesus is in us. Most of us. Sorry, perhaps I'm being too sweeping. But so much of our preaching dishonours God. It brings big ahs and oohs and sighs from people who listen to it, because they're not in the true New Testament position.

That's why. I'm the way, he says. I'm in you. You're in me. All right. We're here. The righteousness of the law is to be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. And then the man says, well, how can I avoid that then?

If I walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit, how in the world can I be sure I'm not walking after the flesh? I see the sights that dazzle, the tempting sounds I hear. Be thou forever near me. It's built on the assumption that he's outside of us, but we want him to come near.

You take it. Your hypnology. You'll never find Wesley writing like that. That's why I've got this blue book together. For if a man got on to the recognition of truth, it was that man. And you see, we'll all sing these things.

I was brought up to sing them at school, based on a false idea. And it so suits people's conditions that they ooh and ah and sob them very soulfully and meaningfully. I'm not saying find the people, but it's all on the wrong premise.

If you say, I mustn't walk after the flesh, but after the spirit, how am I going to refrain from walking after the flesh? Now you've got to see that the flesh here is distinct from the body. We'll come to the body in a moment.

We dealt with this the other day. Let's come to it. In Romans chapter five, it says that they, sorry, chapter eight, verse five, they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh. But they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit, that word after doesn't mean, oh, you know, like they say, that fella's after that girl.

We know what we mean by that. No, it doesn't mean that kind of after. It's the Greek word kata, meaning down to, scrupulously down to. That's the power of the Greek. They that are down to the spirit, you know, not up in the air, all heighty, tauty, whatever you say.

It's not up in the air and floating about all over the place. Down to the spirit. Really down to the spirit. Glory be to God. You know, you need some getting down to the spirit, first of all. That's where it's got to start.

You've had your heart changed. All right. Now you're spiritually regenerate. Is this right? Okay. To fulfil the righteousness of the Lord that's already written in your heart. Now you're mined, for to be carnally minded.

The minding of the flesh. So you see that being down to the spirit is having your mind down to the spirit. All right. Getting your mind down to the spirit, beloved.

In other words, listen, pay attention to studies. I don't mean this, you know,.

Burning the midnight oil. Because the Romans didn't have a Bible to do that with. It's the English that have a part of the Bible that was written to the Romans. The whole tremendous thing is that these people were conscious that the Spirit of God had come.

This was a great thing, they were conscious. And from the moment the Holy Ghost comes to you, beloved, let me please acquaint you with this or re-emphasize it in your ears. It is expected of you that if everything else in the world has to go, you will get down to the spirit.

That's what God's expecting of you. He thought you'd appreciate that because of the terrible price He had to pay, that you should have the Holy Ghost. He really thought that the blood we sing about would truly be precious to you.

Really precious. Oh, if it's so precious to you that it's outletting meant finally the outletting of His Spirit. That that Spirit could come to me. That's why the blood was shed, was in Him, in Him. He says, I'm all straightened up.

Oh, shall I go through this great baptism? He says, then, oh, hallelujah. This is so much of the preciousness of the blood to me. And once that Holy Ghost comes, He wasn't expecting you just to get taken up with feeling good, though that's all part of the bonus scheme.

He wasn't expecting you to get taken up with, oh, now at last I feel free. That's all part of it. Have as much as you can drink of it. Hallelujah. This is God's goodness. As soon as you know that the sun isn't shining now just so that you should feel nice and warm, it's really shining, beloved, to bring the glory of the light and the power of it all unto this whole land of ours that presently we don't all shrivel up and die through malnutrition.

But if you can bask in the sun and get yourself nice and brown and say, oh, isn't it marvelous at Cliff this year? Well, that's fine. Do you see that? But that's not the prime purpose of God giving the sun.

For you to buy a bikini or something and get brown. If you do buy a bikini, I pray you go to the bikini atoll and stop there. The whole tremendous thing, beloved, is that you, you, God is, is wanting us to do this gets us into the knowledge of what he's after.

I've got to get down to the spirit. I praise God and testify to you that in the days when God baptized me in the Holy Ghost, purifying and, I don't know, dealing with me, that from that moment, my wife's here, she'll say yes or no.

She's an honest woman. We got down to the spirit. Glory be to the Lord. I was soon slung out of the church I was in because I got getting down to the spirit. You've got to go on with the spirit. People are tied up on whether they've got to go on with their denomination or they've got to go on with this or they've got to go on with that.

Nothing matters at all, beloved. Once this thing became an obsession with me, because that's why I'm nearly gone, it became an obsession with me, getting down to the spirit. I didn't know that, mind you, I didn't sort of say, now I'm going to go obsessed on this.

It just sort of took over. I found the Holy Ghost was, it just did it. Well, I found the Holy Ghost. I didn't need to sort of wonder whether I should read two chapters of the Bible a day. It's whether I should read two Bibles in one day.

That was the Holy Spirit I was concerned. People seem to have this, they call it the baptism in the spirit. I can't begin to understand their condition. Yet I'm supposed to get a word of knowledge and minister to them.

The whole thing, beloved. Oh, give yourself up to this. Get down to the spirit. All right. You see, you'll never get down to the spirit if your mind isn't altered. That's what the next verse is all about.

For to be carnally minded, the minding of the flesh, in verse 6, is death. It is death. That's what your death was. It was a minding of the flesh. Amen. Not only were you born, but what do you think it meant to be born dead and born in spirit?

Dead in spirit. What do you think it meant? It meant that your mind was down onto the flesh. We saw how that started in the Garden of Eden, where Adam preferred the eve of his flesh to the God of Heaven.

He chose Eve. That was where the mind of the flesh started. Instead of Adam's mind being on God, it was on his woman, on his flesh. That was the way it started. That's how the death came. It would never have touched us if Adam had said, Well, Eve, sorry, love, but that's it.

You've chosen. I'm not going to. Yeah. What a glorious thing this is, to stand here in this. Amen. Right. Now then, you've got to have that spiritual mind. The carnal mind, verse 7, is enmity against God.

It's not subject to the law of God. Neither, indeed, need be. Can be. So then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God. You're in the flesh when you have the mind of the flesh. That's where you are.

If your mind isn't down to the spirit and it's down to the flesh, not the body. We'll talk about the body in a moment. It's here in this same chapter. Yeah, it's death. It's enmity. You know, I talk to so many people.

They talk about inward conflicts and emotional problems and all sorts of things and mother gets blamed for it and dad gets blamed for it and all sorts of things like that. And the real problem is when you get down to it, there's conflict.

There's enmity. There's rebellion in their heart. They don't want to really go to God. They'll say to me, you know, there's part of me wants this, that there's part of me that don't. Have you ever been in that state?

There's part of me wants it. Part of me doesn't. That's a karma mind. It's a rebel. It's an enemy of God. It's got to die. That's another word for the old Adam. And with it comes fear. I was afraid. When I heard thy voice, I was afraid.

Yeah, that's right. Yes. You see? That old Adam, he's afraid of God. He'll do anything. He'll hide. He doesn't matter what. He won't care what he hides behind. He'll get out of the way. And unless a person is prepared to come out and expose themselves, complete exposure, and come right out into the light, you've got no hope of coming into the light.

None at all. You have to come right out into the light. No hiding. Hallelujah. And I want to say this, beloved, that the light is love. You've no need to hide from it. I illustrated that, I trust, the other day with the woman taken in adultery.

He didn't exactly say this, the Lord, but he said, it's all right, love. Just come here. Praise God. He got rid of all the old Adams that were around.

And he dealt with this Eve. And he said, it's all right, you see.

When he said, the ones that were out sin amongst you cast the first stone, all the old Adams walked out. But Eve stayed, you see. She stayed. Bless the name of the Lord. That's why so many women seem to get through before the men do.

The men all walked out. They weren't prepared to face sin. He caught them in their sin. Like they say, they caught her in hers. And all the men ran away. And the woman stayed. He didn't hold her. She wasn't in chains.

She could have gone out too. And it could have said, and last of all, the woman went out also. She stayed there. And he said, Does no man condemn thee? Where are thy accusers? There's no condemnation in Christ Jesus' heart at all.

And she said, no man, Lord. He said, well, neither do I. Go and sin no more. Isn't that lovely? You'll never be afraid to come to the light. And he goes straight on saying, He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

You see, that's the love and the light. Isn't that a marvelous thing? So you see, there's no need to get away from the Lord. You've got to come right out and let everything be exposed to the Lord. This is the only way you'll deal with it.

That calm mind, if it is down to the flesh, that is the satisfying of all your heart and mental things. That's what Eve was to Adam. She was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. And she was his satisfaction.