Int’l Training for Elders and Responsible Ones (Spring 2016)

SERVICE FOR THE BUILDING UP OF THE CHURCH

Message Five

The Humanity of One Who Serves the Lord

Scripture Reading: Lev. 2:1-16; John 6:57, 63; 7:37-39; 21:15-17

(Hymns 1174)

Outline

Day 1

I. The highest morality is one in which divinity is added to our humanity; this is the divine attributes of God expressed in the created virtues of man; there are seven major items of these excellent virtues:

A. We must have extraordinary love—1 Cor. 12:31b; 13:1-8a; Matt.5:44.

B. We must have boundless forbearance—Phil. 4:5-7; Luke 23:34a; Matt. 18:21-22.

C. We must have unparalleled faithfulness—1 Cor. 4:2; 7:25b; Psa.37:3.

D. We must have absolute humility—1 Pet. 5:5-6; John 13:3-5; 1 Pet. 3:8; Phil. 2:3; Eph. 4:2.

E. We must have utmost purity—Matt. 5:8; Psa. 73:25; 1 Tim. 1:5;2 Tim. 2:22.

F. We must have supreme holiness and righteousness—1 Pet. 1:15-16; 2 Pet. 2:5, 21; Rom. 14:17; Matt. 5:20; 1 Cor. 1:30.

G. We must have brightness and uprightness—John 8:12; Luke 11:34-36; Psa. 36:7-10; 111:1.

Day 2

II. Christ should be our humanity, and to be found in Christ refers to our humanity; we are transformed from being merely in Christ to being found in Christ—2 Cor. 12:2;Phil. 3:9:

A. The Christian humanity does not refer to our natural virtues; rather, it is the Christ who lives in us and out of us; we need to be found in Christ, and we should magnify Christ in our body—1:19-21a; 2 Cor. 12:2.

B. Every one of the following six virtues—what things are true,dignified, righteous, pure, lovely, and well spoken of (Phil.4:8)—is hard to achieve from man’s point of view, but we can have all these virtues in Christ who empowers us (v. 13).

C. In this way we live out godliness and the proper humanity,which is just Christ manifested in our bodies and lived out through us.

D. Once we lose the proper humanity, we do not have the position and right to serve the Lord; by grace we have to maintain this life through holding Christ as the proper humanity.

Day 3

III. Our humanity is safeguarded through our loving the Lord—John 21:15-17:

A. If we do not love the Lord, we lose the restraint that comes from His attraction and are liable to do anything and everything—2 Cor. 5:14-15; S. S. 1:4; cf. 2 Tim. 1:15; 4:10, 14;
cf. Eph. 4:17-21.

B. We have to look to the Lord to keep us unchanged and to preserve us all the way to the end; if we love the Lord’s appearing, we will be kept in the realm of having Christ as our
humanity, and when He returns, we shall surely be rewarded—John 14:21; 2 Tim. 1:15-18; 4:7-8.

Day 4

IV. We can see the humanity of Jesus in the meal offering,which typifies Christ in His God-man living; the meal offering also typifies our Christian life and church life as a duplication of Christ’s God-man living—Lev. 2:1-16;Psa. 92:10; 1 Pet. 2:21; Rom. 8:2-3, 11, 13; 1 Cor. 12:12;10:17:

A. Fine flour, the main element of the meal offering, signifies Christ’s humanity, which is fine, perfect, tender, balanced,and right in every way, with no excess and no deficiency; this
signifies the beauty and excellence of Christ’s human living and daily walk—Lev. 2:1; John 18:38; 19:4, 6b; Luke 2:40; 23:14;Isa. 53:3.

B. The oil of the meal offering signifies the Spirit of God as the divine element of Christ—Lev. 2:1; Luke 1:35; 3:22; 4:18; Heb. 1:9.

C. The mingling of fine flour with the oil in the meal offering signifies that Christ’s humanity is mingled with the Holy Spirit and that His human nature is mingled with God’s divine nature, making Him a God-man,possessing the divine nature and the human nature distinctly, without a third nature being produced—Lev. 2:4-5; Matt. 1:18, 20.

D. The frankincense in the meal offering signifies the fragrance of Christ in His resurrection; that the frankincense was put on the fine flour signifies that Christ’s humanity bears the aroma of His resurrection—Lev. 2:1-2; cf. Matt. 2:11; 11:20-30; Luke 10:21.

E. Salt, with which the meal offering was seasoned, signifies the death, or the cross, of Christ; salt functions to season, kill germs, and preserve—Lev. 2:13.

F. That the meal offering was without leaven signifies that in Christ there is no sin or any negative thing—vv. 4-5, 11a; 2 Cor.

5:21; Heb. 4:15; 1 Pet. 2:22; Luke 23:14; cf. 1 Cor. 5:6-8.

G. That the meal offering was without honey signifies that in Christ there is no natural affection or natural goodness—Lev.2:11; Matt. 10:34-39; 12:46-50; Mark 10:18.

Day 5

V. If we eat Christ as the meal offering, we will become what we eat and live by what we eat; by exercising our spirit to touch the Spirit consolidated in the Word, we eat the human
life and living of Jesus, we are constituted with Jesus, and the human living of Jesus becomes our human living—John 6:57, 63; 1 Cor. 10:17; Phil. 1:19-21a; Eph. 6:17-18; Jer.
15:16; Gal. 6:17.

VI. The Spirit, who was not yet because Jesus had not yet been glorified in resurrection, is the Spirit with the humanity of Jesus; the Spirit today has been constituted with the glorified humanity of Jesus—Luke 24:26; John 7:37-39; Acts 16:7:

A. This Spirit, who is the living water that we drink and that is flowing out from within us, is constituted with the humanity of Jesus;without the humanity of Jesus, there could never be such a Spirit.

B. Without the human essence the Spirit of God could not be the flowing water of life; if God would be a flowing river of life, He must be constituted with the human nature of Jesus.

C. “There is now the Spirit of the glorified Jesus...we have received Him to stream into us, to stream through us, and to stream forth from us in rivers of blessing” (Andrew Murray).
D. We must consider who this “Me” is in Jesus’ words: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink”; this “Me” is not just the divine person but the man Jesus; hence, when we come to Jesus to drink of Him, we come to drink of this man; we drink not only of His divinity but even the more of His humanity:

1. To have the flow of life, we all must drink of the humanity of Jesus; we must drink not only of the Spirit of God but also of the Spirit of an exalted person, the Spirit of an exalted man—1 Cor. 12:13.

2. We need to drink of the resurrected and ascended man, Jesus; the bountiful supply is not merely of the Spirit of God but of the Spirit of Jesus Christ—Phil. 1:19.

3. Our Christian living must be up to the standard of the humanity of Jesus;we should not be naturally human but “Jesusly” human.

4. We are drinking of the Spirit of Jesus for the humanity of Jesus; if we are drinking daily of the Spirit of Jesus, whatever we are will be a flow of life that will satisfy not only ourselves but also others.

Day 6

E. We must enjoy the Spirit of the humanity of Jesus for the church service, for our daily walk, and for the Lord’s recovery—1 Tim. 2:8-10; 3:2-3, 8, 11, 14-15; 5:1-2; 2 Tim. 3:1-5,
16-17; 2:21-22; 1:7; 4:22; Titus 2:2-6; Gal. 5:22-23; Phil. 2:15;4:8.

F. The believers are the salt of the earth, those who kill and eliminate the earth’s germs of corruption and rottenness; the basic element of the salt is the humanity of Jesus—Matt. 5:13; cf. Lev. 2:13.

G. The believers are the light of the world, those who let their light shine before men to dispel the world’s darkness; we can be the light only by taking the humanity of Jesus—Matt. 5:14-15; Eph. 5:8.

VII. The way to enjoy the humanity of Jesus is by five main items:

A. We need to call on the name of the Lord out of a pure heart;when we call on the name of the Lord, we are really taking His humanity into us—2 Tim. 2:22.

B. We need to breathe in every word of the God-breathed Scriptures; this is to pray-read and muse upon the word of God—3:16; Eph. 6:17-18; Psa. 119:15 and footnote 1.

C. We need to practice the Body life; we pursue Christ as righteousness, faith, love, and peace “with those” who call on the name of the Lord; with those indicates the Body life—2
Tim. 2:22; Rom. 12:1-3.

D. We need to exercise our spirit (1 Tim. 4:7); “God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but a spirit of power and of love and of sobermindedness”—2 Tim. 1:7.

E. We need to experience the Lord’s being with our spirit to have the presence of grace—4:22; Gal. 6:18.

VIII. We must pray for the entire situation of the Lord’s recovery so that all the brothers and sisters in the local churches may have a full enjoyment of the humanity of Jesus.