THE CONTROVERSY OF ZION

Series: The ConflictLesson #2

Rev. 22:1 And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

Rev. 22:2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Rev. 22:3 And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:

Rev. 22:4 And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.

Rev. 22:5 And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.

Rev. 22:6 And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to show unto his servants the things which must shortly be done.

Rev. 22:7 Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.

Is. 34:8 For it is the day of the LORD’s vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion.

I. What Is The Controversy Of Zion?

1. It is the controversy or battle for the life of Zion.

2. We established in our first lesson that God’s purpose is that the testimony of Jesus comes through that church, that is the testimony that God raised Him from the dead. Not just a verbal something, but that through us, Christ really lives. These lessons are dealing with life. The only justification for our being here.

3. Zion is often represented in the Old Testament as the bride of Jehovah. We are familiar with the phrase “the virgin daughter of Jerusalem.”

4. Zion was constantly in the realm of dispute or controversy. She was the object of envy, covetousness, and antagonism of the nations. All the nations were found at one time or another in some kind of relationship with Zion.

5. So God’s controversy with the nations was for the life of Zion.

6. This is what spiritual warfare is with God. It is this battle for life. All of hell is against life. The devil doesn’t care how religious you are if there is no life. So the warfare is here. In the Old Testament the warfare was over the physical life of Zion.

7. Let us bear that in mind as we take up the New Testament and consider the spiritual interpretation of Isaiah 34:8.

II. The New Jerusalem.

1. In the book of Revelation we find the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, adorned as a bride, the wife of the Lamb (Rev. 21:9-10).

a. The Apostle goes on to say, “And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev. 21:10).

2. The closing chapter of the book of Revelation brings us into the city where the central thing is the tree of life, while down the center of the city flows the river of the water of life. The central thing in that city is the tree of life.

3. As this fullness is viewed, the Spirit and the Bride say, “come.” In the midst of all this they say, “come.”

4. Here you see the spiritual follow through. The controversy for the life of Zion is at an end, and life, full and triumphant, is the characteristic.

5. Throughout the whole book of Revelation God is dealing with the nations, and at its close all nations are seen as having been brought under the judgment of His Son. Therefore, the controversy of Zion has been settled once and for all, and Zion (the church, the wife of God) is found at last triumphing in fullness of life.

6. The tree of life is the center, that is Jesus, and the river of living water is flowing down its center.

7. So we have said enough to establish the fact that the controversy is in relation to life, and it is that which we are concerned with in these lessons.

8. There is a very great spiritual sense in which we are in God’s controversy for Zion today. If we take the sixth chapter of Ephesians as representing what is going on in the spiritual realm, namely, a conflict with world rulers, then the rest of that letter makes it perfectly clear that the controversy with the world rulers is with the church; concerning the very life of that church.

9. We are then in the controversy, and the issue is the issue of life. If you don’t know that, then you will leave this school and you may be ever so religious, but you will mean nothing to God. So it is an issue of life.

III. The Issue Of Life.

1. We have seen in our first lesson that the preeminent thing with God is the testimony of life.

2. It is not tradition, they had that, nor so much Christian work and activity, they had that, not so many good and commendable things that were praiseworthy even in the sight of God. These things were there. But the basic thing was not there, the testimony of life. These other things are worthless without that.

3. In the first chapter of the book of Revelation the Lord is presented as the living One, the One who was dead, but is now alive forevermore, and has the keys to death, and hell.

4. Alive from the dead He is seen standing in the midst of the lampstands. What is the lampstand? The church. So as the living One He is seen standing among the lampstands, the vessels of testimony, and judging them according to life, judging them according to what He is as the living One, the one who has conquered death.

5. What He discovers and reveals to those churches is the measure in which the testimony to Him has been lost. He didn’t find in most of them what had to be there.

6. Then he shows the things that have brought about a contradiction to the testimony, and He doesn’t talk about them in general, He names them. He names those things that have interfered with the full expression of that life.

7. So it is revealed that the thing most precious to Him is the spiritual life, in fullness, in power, and in expression. And where that is not so, that which calls itself a church is a misrepresentation of God.

8. I want to carry that thought back through the Old Testament, to show you God’s jealousy over life, and what His relationship is to life.

9. The Old Testament was a school teacher bringing us to Christ (Gal. 3:24). So here in the Old Testament we are dealing with natural life that brings us to the New Testament where it is eternal life, divine life.

10. But we go back there and we see God’s jealousy over life and what His relationship to life is. For it is imperative that you know this, because if we are in this world what He was, then we must have this same concern for life. He doesn’t want just a religious structure.

11. That is the reason this school is not like other Bible schools. It is a school of life. It is a school to make you what you are going to preach.

IV. The Tree Of Life.

1. We go right back to the beginning to Adam’s disobedience and losing his position in relation to God.

2. And when you get there immediately the question of the tree of life arises. After the fall, notice the judgment upon the serpent and man, God takes His step of precaution in relation to the tree of life.

3. God set His cherubim to keep the way of the tree of life with a flaming sword that turned in every direction. Why did He do that? That the tree of life could not be approached by that man that fell from God. The whole of it could not be approached.

4. The interpretation of that is found in the last chapter of the Bible.

5. The tree of life in the midst of the city of God is something from which all sin and sinfulness is excluded. Without are seen all of those things that represent fallen Adam. Without is everything that represents that sinful nature.

6. No one can know eternal life unless the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ has been made effective in him.

7. The point is this, that right at the beginning God took a step to protect life from the touch and the appropriation (seizure or use) of sinful man.

8. God was not going to have a sinful state perpetuated indefinitely.

9. The state God is going to perpetuate is one of fullness of life by reason of what Jesus has wrought through the shedding of His blood. Thus we see right at the beginning God’s jealous attitude and action in relation to life. That life is not going to be given to just anybody. That life is only going to come to those who come to Calvary.

10. It is wonderful to note that He suspends the possession of this life until the mighty work of the cross has dealt with the sinful state, which if perpetuated, would be the perpetuation of a lost world, of a world outside the divine intention. God dealt with that in the cross.

11. We move on in the Old Testament looking at God’s jealousy for life. From the garden we move to Cain and Abel.

V. Then We Come To Cain And Abel.

1. Here we have the next step in the unveiling of God’s attitude toward life.

2. When Cain slew Abel God instantly appeared on the scene. Have you ever noticed that?

3. Here is something that concerns Him preeminently.

4. One of the first things He said was, “Where is Abel thy brother?” Cain said, “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?” God replies, “What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto Me from the ground” (Gen. 4:9-10).

5. Later in the book of Leviticus God said, the blood is life (Lev. 17:11,14). What was God saying to Abel? “The life of your brother is crying out to Me.” You see God’s jealousy of life. Something has died.

6. Then we see what God says to Cain. He is cursed, he is marked, and God branded him.

7. Cain cried out, “My punishment is greater than I can bear” (Gen. 4:13). That is God’s attitude toward life. And for you and I to try to perpetuate a religious system without the life of Jesus brings the same curse.

VI. We Move To Noah.

1. The terms of God’s covenant with Noah are familiar to us if we have read the Bible. The equalizing of things in that covenant and the terrible warning to man: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed” (Gen. 9:6).

2. God will keep things equal. No man shall gain an advantage in this.

3. No man who touches that which is precious to God shall come by any gain. God will work that out. He will bring it to equal. You rob a man of life, and you will be robbed. That is a solemn warning and it shows God’s attitude toward life.

4. He said, “You take man’s life, and a man will take your life.” This is the eternal punishment. Cain was banished from the presence of God.

VII. Then We Move On In The Old Testament To Enoch.

1. There is a great revelation in the Old Testament of God’s mind for man in this matter of life.

2. God’s thought is always life and not death. Keep that in mind.

3. We look back at Enoch who breaks through a long story of death. For hundreds of years there has been nothing but death. “And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him” (Gen. 5:24).

4. That is an offset to the course of fallen man, showing what God’s thought is when man returns to real living fellowship with God. It is life and not death. That has always been God’s thought.

5. Enoch broke that long line of death, and in the testimony of Enoch it shows us that God’s thought is life.

6. That remains God’s thought, and He is going to have it fully and gloriously expressed in a company of His own believing children that will one day be translated into His presence. They will not see death nor the grave. They will not be because He will take them.

VIII. Then We Move On To Abraham And Isaac.

1. In Abraham and Isaac it is further set forth that when God has a great purpose in mind, and when He is going to move out on that basis, He must have everything brought to the ground where death cannot touch it.

2. Listen closely! I’m going to teach you something about Abraham that you never knew. When God has a great purpose and He is going to move out on the basis of that purpose, He must bring that thing to the place where death can’t touch it.

3. Isaac is the one in whom the purpose of God is bound up, and therefore for the sake of the purpose Isaac must be put typically beyond the power of death.

4. He must come to death to have death destroyed. You wondered why Abraham had to offer him. You have to come to death to have death destroyed so that God’s purpose might be realized upon a ground where death is not future but it is past.

5. That is a great illustration of divine purpose established upon the ground of deathless life.

6. And in the greater Isaac the purposes of God are all going to be realized without any fear of death breaking in to interrupt it. In the Lord Jesus Christ death is not future, it is past. He was dead, He is alive forevermore.

7. All of these are vivid, strong, and sometimes agonized expressions of God’s attitude to the matter of life.

8. It is a very costly thing. It was infinitely costly to God.

9. It cost those who were in fellowship with God much also. All of this is the controversy of Zion in principle. It is God’s jealousy over life.

IX. Then We Go To Job.

1. In the book of Job Satan is found in the heavenlies with access to God. He comes right there with the sons of God and God challenges him, “Hast thou considered my servant Job? For there is none like him in the earth...” (Job 2:3).

2. Satan sneers back at God, “Skin for skin, yea, all that man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face” (Job 2:4).

3. Cannot we see how the question of life is bound up here in that challenge itself?

4. So God gives Satan permission to touch Job; to touch his body, family, his property, everything he has, but says, “...only spare his life.” He won’t let him touch that life.

5. Here again you see God’s jealously for life.

6. Satan presses along every line, by every means, seeking to touch his life indirectly, because he cannot touch it directly. Satan’s indirect method is to get Job to break with God by cursing Him, so that his life is forfeited, and destroyed.

7. To understand the book of Job we must understand that it is a controversy for life.

8. We have said it is a controversy over faith, many have said that. But faith is a relative factor. The real controversy is over life.

9. You listen to men talk about faith it is something that they can have in the abstract. Of course that is not true, because faith is a part of this life. But God’s jealousy is over life, and the reason I’m putting so much emphasis on this is that that is what He expects you to produce when you leave this school, that is that you produce the life of God somewhere in the nation.

10. Job passed through great storms, but the life link is never broken, and in the end life is triumphant, Job had twice as much.

11. We see fullness, victory, everything that speaks of life at the end.

12. When the enemy is pressing to quench our spiritual life through the body, through the mind, through circumstance, we are often brought very low as was Job. But we must understand what it is all about, and understand that greater is He that is in me than the one that is trying to steal this life.

13. We will have our questionings. There will be times when we are despondent. Every believer has his own story of how far it goes into gloom.

14. We must know God is jealous for life, and is the custodian (the keeper) of life, the issue is always more than we had before. You must know that. That is the reason that He said, “All things work together for good.” For all of His working with the circumstances, with the body, with everything is for more life.

X. We Move On In The Old Testament To The Exodus. We Are Dealing With God’s Jealousy Over Life. The Controversy Of Zion.

1. The story of Israel and the Exodus from Egypt is again the issue of life and death.

2. God heads it right up in the main the final issue of life and death.

3. God takes His own way and makes His own provision, so that when death is abroad in the land His own people will be immune to it. They will have life because of blood. God takes things in His own hands.

4. The life of His own is taken into His own custody, and if the life of His own necessitates the smiting of a nation to preserve that life, God will do it. God will stop at nothing where the life of His people are concerned.

5. That should give great courage to us. God will not let me be destroyed if I will always make my choice for Him.

XI. Levetical Law Of Life.

1. Those passages of scripture in Leviticus concerning God’s attitude towards life, and the emphasis laid upon His people to avoid the drinking of blood, because the life is in the blood (Lev. 7:27).

2. What you have here is God preserving life. Life is sacred to God. It is His life.

3. Man must not take life and make it his. Life is God’s and must ever be regarded to be sacred to Him.

4. All of these things when summed up bring us to this one fact: “Life is sacred to God, and He is very jealous over it.”

5. Life and not death is the will of God.

6. Sin and death always go together, just as righteousness and life go together.

7. The Old Testament is an earthly type of the heavenly truth. It is the Master bringing us to reality. All of this is throwing its light forward and saying that what is represented there in those Old Testament scriptures as to God’s attitude toward life, soul life, is but figurative.

8. The Old Testament is a foreshadowing of a dispensation to come in which it will no longer be soul life but eternal life that would be given to man.

XII. A Life That Is Eternal.

1. When we come into the New Testament it is not merely the soul life of man, it is another life called eternal life. “I came that ye might have life and have it more abundantly” (Jn. 10:10).

2. It is over this life that God is represented as being jealous.

3. We are not in the New Testament very long before it is apparent that the controversy has been taken into another realm, and is now seen to be over man’s spiritual life, over eternal life.

4. The controversy is waged on two issues:

a. First, as to whether man shall become possessed of that life or not.

b. Second, as to whether that life once possessed shall be allowed its full expression in man, or will man baffle and hinder that life. You must here that.

5. God will judge you on those grounds as to whether you hinder this life or not. God will possess us with this life and we must birth this life. But if you hinder the expression of this life through your own life individually or the church that you establish, God will not deal kindly.

6. That is the controversy. It is still over life.

7. Now we come into the reality as we come out from the shadows and types.

XIII.We Find There Is A Persistent Assault Upon Life.

1. All of your troubles are because of this. I take it for granted that you are walking with God. If we sin willfully we have brought trouble upon ourselves. But if we walk with God we are going to face the enemy in storms and troubles, because there is a persistent assault upon life.

2. So we look into the realm of reality, that is the assault of death upon that which is of God.

3. We will look at the types again in this connection.

XIV. Adam: What Did God Have In View For Adam?

1. Undoubtedly the supreme thing for Adam was the tree of life in the midst of the garden.

2. Adam did not possess that which the tree of life represented, but there is no doubt but what this was God’s plan for him.

3. The typology clearly indicates that God’s thought for man was that he should become possessed of eternal life. “...lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” (Gen. 3:22). This was the plan, that Adam partake of the tree of life and live forever.

4. God had already determined eternal life for man in a living fellowship with God Himself.

5. So the great thing in view for Adam was eternal life.

6. Satan struck a blow at that union and succeeded for the time being. Adam lost it through sin. Paul sadly writes, “...in Adam all die...” (1Cor. 15:22).

7. It was an assault upon that which is of God. It was the assault of death.

XV. Abel: The Same Thing Is True In The Case Of Abel.

1. Abel is a spiritually minded man, a man who recognized the great fundamentals of a true living relationship with God.

2. Thus Abel stands in the testimony for God on the ground of a life which triumphs over death, and Satan.

3. Through Cain Satan comes as a murderer of that which is of God.

XVI. Abraham: In Chapter 15 Of The Book Of Genesis, There Is No Other Explanation Of That Horror Of Great Darkness Than That Abraham Was At That Time Coming Into A New Relationship With God Concerning A People For God’s Name. A People Who Should Escape The Toils Of Death.

1. It was then that all of this darkness came against him. With Job it was the same thing, and also with Esther.

2. At that time God was about to speak to Abraham concerning his seed being in captivity, and after four hundred years being delivered by a strong hand.

3. Just before that assuring vision broke in upon him, there by the altar, with the sacrifice divided, there ascended upon him a horror of great darkness (Genesis 15).

4. In smaller ways many of the Lord’s people know something of that experience.

5. When God is about to do a new thing, give further revelation, they go through a horror of great darkness.

6. They approach that new thing of God feeling that all life, all light, and all strength has gone, and anything but life seems to be their experience.

7. It is death seeking to engulf that which God is about to do. It is death seeking to swallow that child immediately after it is born. It is the old story.

XVII. Job: The Same Thing Was True Of Job. It Was The Assault Of The Spirit Of Death Upon What Was Standing For God.

XVIII. Esther: We Pass To The Book Of Esther.

1. We are familiar with the illustration presented of the plot against the people of God.

2. Haman had set in motion a plot, that on a certain day all the Jews would be destroyed.

3. Once more, it is the assault upon the life of that which is of God.

4. It is always that way. That is the spiritual warfare. We are not going to run the devil out of the country. But the warfare is over the manifestation of this life.

XIX. The Lord Jesus: Then When We Pass Into The New Testament And All Of It Is Summed Up In The Lord Jesus. All Of This Is Gathered Up In Himself.

1. Jesus is the greater Abel. All of the Old Testament types are gathered up in Christ.

2. At His birth the devil tried to murder Him.

3. From that attempt we pass over many years which we have no record of the things that touched His life, and then we find Him in the wilderness experience.

4. The only explanation of those wilderness temptations is that they were an assault upon life.

5. The issue was one thing: The enemy’s temptations were intended to break His union with the Father, to get Him into a realm where He could be smitten. That is the whole effort.

6. In those experiences we are made to see that even Jesus, had He cast Himself off from the pinnacle of the temple contrary to the will of His Father He would have perished. In other words if He had tried to test God instead of believing Him, He would not have been safeguarded by angels.

7. He had to move in the will of God. Angels have no commission to bear in their arms any man or woman who presumptuously tries to test God when we are called upon is to believe Him.

8. From the wilderness He went to Nazareth, where He opened the Scriptures.

9. The issue was that they led Him to the brow of the hill on which the city stood, to cast Him over. It was an assault upon life.

10. A little while later the Jews took up stones to kill Him. He entered into an argument with them: “Why go ye about to kill me?” (Jn 7:19). What is connected with such a question? “Ye are of your father the devil...” “He was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44).

11. The Lord Jesus uncovers what is behind the action. He sees something more than man’s opposition. He sees the devil as the murderer, set against His life.

12. Follow Him on the lake where the storm is about to capsize the boat. Being awakened He arose, and in words identical with those with which He used in casting out demons He commanded the storm, and it subsided. Thus showing there were other forces at work than just the storm.

13. It is all an assault of death upon that which is of God.

XX. The Church: When You Come To The Church You See That The Same Thing Is Carried On In It.

1. It is not long before Stephen is stoned, James is murdered, and Peter is taken with the same objective but is wonderfully delivered because God is not through with him.

2. Paul was in death often, despairing sometimes of life.

3. It is a battle with the powers of death.

4. Even today, tens of thousands of Christians are being persecuted, and called upon to lay down their lives for the testimony of Christ.

5. It is the controversy of Zion. It is the battle for the life of God’s people. This is always the warfare and is what spiritual warfare is all about.

6. May God bring home to our hearts the nature of the conflict we are in.

7. We never truly seek the Lord in relation to the conflict and come into line with His intention to overcome it, and be His instrument against it, until we are fully alive to what the issue is.

8. Satan is after that life. And when that life is gone, he doesn’t care how fundamental you are or how religious you are. It doesn’t matter as long as he can rob you of that life.

9. If the church was truly alive to the issue she could never pray mere prayers. We could never allow words to run out of our mouths, which we call praying.

10. We would be down on our faces in awful conflict on God’s side against the evil that is seeking to devour the life of God’s people. We will never pray in such a way until we fully understand the issue.

XXI. While We May Know It In A Spiritual Way, It Is Necessary For Us To Wake Up To What Is Happening To What This Means.

1. The explanation to much heaviness, and of many difficult experiences, is not simply that we ate something that did not agree with us, and we are not able to pray as we wish.

2. Behind these things very often is another power. It is in this area he fights the most, in the prayer life of the believer.

3. The enemy delights in our accounting for these things on the natural ground, when we ought to be waking up to the fact that there is a much greater issue at stake.

4. What is the tendency, what is its effect? Is it to destroy our prayer life?

5. Does it work in the direction of bringing us into a state of weakness and uselessness to God? If so, we cannot accept that.

6. There is much that seems perfectly natural that should not be accepted, we need to test everything.

7. Do not look for a devil with horns and a tail, he hides himself. He covers his tracks. He comes in such an intangible way, which makes it look so natural.

8. The church must recognize what is actually happening. The enemy does not mind how many so called churches there are, how much preaching there is, or how much religious worship.

9. Satan is against life.

10. In many places, so far as the preaching is concerned, so far as the things said are concerned, no fault can be found, but there is no sense of life. No sense of any vitalizing. There is no energizing, no impact, no moving of the people to register the testimony of the risen Lord against the forces of evil that have come to destroy. So it isn’t a church.

11. The enemy is getting them all quietly, nicely, snugly into spiritual death. Spiritual death abounds everywhere because the church as a whole is not alive to the issue. The issue of life and death. That is something that is secured and can be entered into by faith and known in a progressive way.

12. Now so far as you and I are concerned, it is not an actual fact that Satan is inoperative. But this has been secured for us potentially in Christ. It is absolute in Christ, it is potential in us. In Christ we see the destruction of Satan is final, accomplished, but in the saints it is potential.

13. Third it is essential that there should be a living representation of divine order. There should be this living representation of divine order at all times. This is what the church is called into being for and without this she cannot justifiably call herself the church.

14. The issue is an issue of life. Are we going to let Jesus live, or are we going to just be a religious debating society?