Bull, Geoffrey: Closed Doors & Open Doors ~ Matt 6

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him. After this manner, therefore, pray ye, our Father. That's the first scripture. Now, in Acts chapter ten, we have another very interesting passage of scripture in regard to this matter, and I'd like you to turn to that now. Acts chapter ten And verse nine. on the morrow, as they went on their journey and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour, and he became very hungry and would have eaten. But while they made ready, he fell into a trance. And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners and let down to the earth, wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him, rise, Peter, kill and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God has cleansed, that call not thou common. This was done thrice, and the vessel was received up again into heaven. Now, while Peter doubted in himself what this vision which he had seen should mean, behold, the men which were sent from Cornelius had made inquiry for Simon's house and stood before the gate and called and asked whether Simon, which was surnamed Peter, were lodged there. While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee. Arise therefore and get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing, for I have sent them. Now may God bless to us these readings from his precious word. Now, you know, when we come to the Bible and we think about man, the human being, of course we learn that he's made in the image of God, and therefore it is not surprising that he is, in a sense, in his own way, three in one. We talk about the spirit and the soul and the body. And we not only do that, but if you, for instance, touched my body, I would say perhaps, don't touch me, or you touched me, and we would use the body virtually as representing ourselves. And if you said something very moving, I would say, you know, what you've just said touched my heart, or my soul was moved. So again, you say it was very touching to me, and there is a sense in which we make the soul represent our whole being. Or maybe if I heard a message from the Lord through one of his servants, and my conscience was pricked, I might say, you know, I was very spiritually affected, so that I might refer to my spirit as the whole of me. Now, these are very difficult things. We cannot understand very much, really, how God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and yet one. And we really understand very little of ourselves as to our own makeup, the tripartite nature of our own being. One of the ways in which people have thought of the human being is helped in this way when we come to the scripture where Paul speaks about our body being the temple of the Holy Spirit. Or, for instance, where we read, he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. Yes, there is a sense in which you and I are like a house, and if we look back to the tabernacle of old or to the temple and its courts, there was the outer court, the court that was really in touch with the world at large, the court into which people brought their offerings and their sacrifices. But then, of course, there was the inner place, the holy place, where only the priests operated. And then, of course, there was the holiest of all, the holy of holies, the very inner sanctum where God met with his people over the mercy seat. And in a sense, this is a picture of you and of me. We too are a temple. We have, in a sense, an outer court. We have our contact with the world through our senses, through our body, our world consciousness. But then there is that rather holy place, our soul, and perhaps only some of our nearest and dearest ones really enter into our soul, and we share with them the things that are hidden there. But then there is the very inner sanctum of the spirit, and it's only when we are born anew that we have renewed within us the capacity to have fellowship with God. It doesn't mean that the spirit didn't exist, that it was dead in the sense of having no means of activity. People who are dead in trespasses and sins, they sometimes have contact with the occult world, with the world of demons and of spirits. It's not that the spirit is annihilated because of sin, but it is cut off from its life source, from God. But when we are born from above, our spirit becomes conscious and aware of God, and we are able to commune with him and discern spiritual things. This is wonderful. It has to do with the inner core of our being, the very inner sanctum. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Well, having said that, may I put it perhaps in another way, a way perhaps we would be more familiar with today. Sometimes we have, uh, what you might call a three-story building. You don't have just so many of those in the suburbs. Many of the houses in Australia, of course, are just what we would call bungalows, single-story dwellings in their own ground. But, uh, in Europe and in Britain, many houses are two or three or more stories, and, well, we have a ground story, we have the ground floor, and really that's a situation where our door, the door of our life opens on the street. And some of us, you know, aren't too careful as to what we allow to cross our threshold. And sometimes all the traffic of the street goes in and out of our house. Some people's homes are like that. It's good to be available, but they don't know when to say no. They don't know when to shut the door, and all sorts of alien influences pour into the home. But then we have, to put it this other way, a second story, and uh, maybe we don't often invite friends upstairs. Some people have what we call an upstairs lounge at home, and uh, you go upstairs to the living room, and uh, you know, in the human being, there are only certain friends that we are more intimate with. Sometimes, when you come to think of it, how very few real friends we have. But then, you know, there's what we might call the top story, the third story, and there the windows open to the sky, open to the heavens. Some people might call that just the attic, and it can be all lumbered about with all sorts of rubbish, dusty, infrequently visited, shut off from the rest of the activity of the house. And you know, one of the great tragedies is that as to our ground floor, we're open to the street. As to the second floor, yes, we're open to our friends. But too often, uh, to coin the phrase, there's something wrong in the top story. Something wrong, yeah. Because too rarely do we open our windows to the fresh air of heaven and have that touch with God. And so when our Lord Jesus was talking about prayer, he talked about closing the door and opening the heart, if you like, your windows to God. When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret. It is a lesson that we have to learn. We have to understand our maker, the kind of being that we are, and the Lord Jesus makes it abundantly clear that there is a time to shut our door to the world's streets and to open our windows heavenward to God. If we haven't learned that lesson, then we become people of multitude. But we can only count amongst men in the multitude if we are people who know God in the solitude. That is of prime importance. And so with those opening words, I want us to look at a number of illustrations. Perhaps the first illustration I would draw would be from one of my experiences away on the Tibetan border when I was a missionary there. One day, when I was living in a log cabin there in a very remote valley with a Tibetan community, a very feudal little group there away behind the ranges, you know, one day there was a knock on the door of the log cabin, and there stood a man very concerned. His wife was ill, and she lived with him down the valley there, about an hour's ride on horseback away. Well, we got the horses saddled, my boy and I, and we, uh, went pretty fast down the valley. It was a glorious day. The great mountains towered above, and the bright blue sky and the sunshine flooded the valley with light, and on we went, going down and down the ravine, until at last, after about an hour, I jumped off the horse, and there was the house. Well, if you could call it a house, it was only a hovel, really. It was built, uh, partly, I suppose, of stone, but also there must have been some clay in it as well, and uh, it was a strange sort of dwelling. We went over and we went inside, but you know, we couldn't really see a thing hardly. It was so dark. Whatever the person that made the house, either they were too lazy or they forgot to leave a gap, but you know, it was a house without windows. There wasn't a window in the house. The result is you went inside and it was just black, especially going in out of the sunshine. Well, we lit some pine chips, which served as a kind of flame, and the little place began to light up, and there was this poor soul, a woman, I suppose, maybe about thirty or less, and I got the impression that she had been poisoned. The blisters, the telltale sign there on her tongue and I think on her lips, and well, you know, she wasn't long for this world. I tried to tell her that I had come as a servant of the true God, and uh, I talked a little to her, but it was almost too late. We boiled a little milk, and we gave it to her, but it wasn't long, you know, really, before she died. And I've often thought of her dying out there in the back of beyond, in a house without windows. Maybe the light did come in. Maybe the Lord did open a window of heaven and let his light shine into our heart. Who knows? For they that call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And how little must be the understanding of many that call upon him. But he's true to his word. But the thought is this, a house without windows. Yes, this is a matter of tremendous importance. People in our world, you know, the majority of of them, they live in their house that God has given, in this house of clay, but you know, they hardly ever open a window towards God. But the door on the street is open all the time to all the riffraff and the rough roughage of this world. Result is their house is defiled and begins to crumble. Now, thinking of this kind of thing, shut your door and open the window. Be a person of communion with God. You know, I want us to look at some illustrations also in the Bible. One of them I'd like to look at is in Genesis, and here we have something a little different, but in a sense it's virtually the same. Genesis chapter six. And here we read about the ark. We're going to think a little bit about Noah and his day. And what do we read there? We read about the window there in chapter six and verse sixteen. uh A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above, and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof, with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. Rather interesting. There we have the lower, the second, and the third stories, if, uh, you like to think of it that way. And then we go over to chapter seven and verse sixteen: and they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him, and the Lord shut him in. Well, there's the window, and there's the door. Now, in chapter eight and verse six, and it came to pass at the end of forty days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. So there we have it, you see, a shut door and an open window. You know, sometimes God just shuts us in. I suppose, really, I was a little bit like that with the prison, engulfed in that great tide and flood when the communists overran China and Tibet. And you know, the communists came in from the east, and there was a big earthquake which shut me in from the south, and I was just shut in the roof of the world in a rather definite way. But, you know, although I was shut in to that prison situation, in the midst of that desperate flood of atheism and that political overthrow by the communists, but, you know, in prison, though I was shut in, God opened a window for me. Paul was like that, wasn't he? You know, I remember, um, this sort of idea when I was in the prison, one of the places. See, the sun used to come through the bars, and it would strike and make a patch of light on the floor. If you wanted to, you could step out of the shade or the shadow and into the patch or the pool of sunshine. Then you can look up and away out through the bars beyond the window into God's heaven. And I have a feeling, you know, when Paul was writing the letter to the Ephesians, that this was his idea perhaps there. You see, he was an ambassador in bonds there. He was a man in chains. He'd been shut in. But suddenly in the spirit he was up and away in the heavenly places, seeing things from God's viewpoint in Christ, where he is, in heavenly places, caught up there, and the whole epistle virtually is written from that standpoint. It was written in the prison, but its content is written from the viewpoint of heavenly places in Christ. And so when God allows us to be shut up and shut in, thank God he's opened a window. We have access into the presence of God through the Lord Jesus. Through him, it says in Ephesians, we have access by one spirit unto the Father. So even in that letter, you see, you've got the idea, a man in bonds, a man shut up, and yet access to God in the heavens, a window opened on glory. And so it was for me, but there's more to it here. Here the Lord shut Nor in, and Nor, after the forty days, opened the window. Now, what did he do in this case? Well, he let go the raven, and he let go the, the dove. The raven, of course, didn't come back. He probably found some carrion, uh, floating on the water, but, uh, you know, the little dove didn't find anywhere to rest, as it says in this rather sweet and picturesque way here, no place, he found no rest for the soul, um, uh, she found no rest for the sole of her foot. And so back she came. Well, the second time, the water had gone down a bit, and the dove came back, you remember, with an olive leaf plucked off. So when she went out the first time, uh, you see, the judgment was not assuaged. It was proceeding. When she went out the second time, judgment had been made and was assuaged, and she brought back the olive leaf plucked off. And when she went out the third time, the little dove didn't return anymore. The judgment was passed. You know, I like the suggestion, and I think it's a very sweet one, that there were three stages in history. In the first one, the spirit went forth from God, but the judgment was not passed. It was pending. And the spirit would only alight upon a person. It may be one of the judges like Samson and clothe him, or Gideon, or it may be a man like Bezalel would be inspired in his work, or it may be that a prophet will be filled with the Spirit and write a portion of the Holy Scriptures. But the Spirit did not come to abide. Judgment was still hanging there, and the Spirit returned. There was no rest permanently for the Spirit in the earth while judgment was still pending. But then, of course, we read in the, uh, in the Gospels how the Holy Spirit came down in the form of a dove and rested on the Lord Jesus. And of course, the Holy Spirit was given to him without measure, and he knew the Spirit's anointing in all his works. Thus he moved forward to the tree, and there, through the eternal Spirit, he offered himself without spot to God. And the Spirit bore the tidings, as it were, back to heaven, that the judgment had been answered. Christ had died. The olive leaf, as it were, plucked off. Peace, but at a price. But then we read of that other wonderful event, Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down, a historical event, a dispensational event, not an event occasioned really by the tarrying and the praying of the saints, but an event which was occasioned through the prayer of the Lord Jesus to the Father, and when God vindicated him and he sat down at the right hand of God, all judgment was passed. Everything had been answered at Calvary. God had raised him from the dead and exalted him to his own right hand. And now, on the ground of judgment met and judgment passed, the Holy Spirit could come down. And the Lord Jesus said, he who has been with you shall be in you, and he will abide with you forever. The dove at last had found rest in the hearts of those redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. And today, shut in to Christ. For the ark speaks of Christ, and the waters of Noah speak of the waters of judgment. But the ark, though it came under the tempest, it came through the tempest. It survived the flood. And thus you and I today know the security which is in Christ Jesus. One John puts it very beautifully. I love the thought there. John has been talking about the Father sending the Son to be the Savior of the world there in one John four. and he's come at the behest and sending of the Father to be the Savior of sinners, to bear our sins in his own body on the tree. And, uh, this wonderful love manifested in this way. We can read here about it. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. The Father loved the Son. The Father sent the Son. The Father sent the Son to be the Savior. The Savior, why he went right through with the great work of salvation, and he, he endured the tempest and all the floods of divine wrath, and he came through onto the Father's side. And how does the Father view the Son today? You see, he views him on the other side of judgment. And because he bore our sins and took the judgment and expiated it, therefore God views us as he views Christ. He views us in Christ on the other side of judgment. So we may have boldness in the day of judgment, and we love him because he first loved us and bore the judgment for us, so that his wonderful love, being so perfect in all its expression and works, casts out our fear of judgment. We have been shut up to grace. We have been shut in with Christ. And so today you and I have a window that opens on glory. Through him we have access unto the Father by one spirit. And we can be a people shut in with him, and yet with hearts opened to him. Nor, a man of faith. You know, grace is first mentioned in connection with Nor. The very first time in the Bible, Nor found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and you and I have found grace like Nor did. And so somehow there is a correspondence between Nor, between Nor's experience and ours. And of course, that's how Peter puts it. He says God's patience waited during the building of the ark, in which a few people, actually eight in number, were saved through water. And baptism, which is a figure of their deliverance, does now also save you, that is, from inward questionings and fears, not by the removing of outward bodily filth, but by providing you with the answer of a good and clear conscience before God, because you are demonstrating what you believe to be yours through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yes, there is a sweet correspondence there. We've come through in Christ. God shut the door, and he expects us now to open the window and to know the communion that only the Spirit can give us as he makes intercession for us according to the will of God on the ground of the blood of Christ. So there are some quite fundamental things in that particular reference. But now I would like us to look at a prophet. We've looked what we might, what we might call a patriarch. Now let's look at a prophet. Let's look at Elisha, ah two Kings. And chapter thirteen. Now here we have Elisha, and he's fallen sick of his sickness whereof he died, verse fourteen of two Kings thirteen. Now this is a very interesting little incident, and Joash, the king of Israel, came down unto him and wept over his face and said, oh, my father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof. Now, just what Joash meant by all that is difficult to say because really he didn't have a great deal of time for Jehovah, nor did he really have a great deal of time for Elisha. In fact, he, he spent more time, I think, fighting against Judah than he did against the enemies of the Lord. And, uh, and yet when Elisha was sick, Joash came down. There may have been some sincerity with it. It's doubtful. Maybe there was a, a bit of superstition. Uh, he thought of Elisha as a kind of talisman. He viewed him as the charm, as it were, almost for the nation. Oh, my father, my father, you see, you are the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof. You're as good as an army to us. Well, whatever Joash's motives were, we're not too sure, but they don't look just too clear. And then Elisha said unto him, take bow and arrows. And he took unto him bow and arrows, and he said to the king of Israel, put thine hand upon the bow. And he put his hand upon it, and Elisha put his hands upon the king's hands. And he said, open the window eastward. And he opened it. Then Elisha said, shoot. And he shot. And he said, the arrow of the Lord's deliverance and the arrow of deliverance from Syria. And you can almost see it taking its flight. For thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek till thou have consumed them. And he said, take the arrows, and he took them, and he said unto the king of Israel, smite upon the ground, and he smote thrice and stagged. And the man of God was worse with him and said, thou should have smitten five or six times, then hast thou smitten Syria till thou hast consumed it, whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice. My, hadn't Elisha got the measure of this king Joash? He was a half-hearted, uh, sort of fellow, wasn't he? And Elisha could see from the word go that this man was never going to go through with these victories and this battle, and, uh, he told him. Well, here we have a very interesting thing. Elisha's dying. Now, Elisha, as far as we can gather, had a double portion of God's spirit as compared with Elijah. When Elijah was going to be taken up in that chariot and, uh, in those, uh, wonderful, in that wonderful way, um, he said, if thou see me, it shall be so. And Elisha asked for a double portion of Elijah's spirit. Well, he saw him, and surely he received a double portion. And it's a very interesting point that whereas Elijah performed in the power of God eight miracles, Elisha performed fifteen miracles. You say, what about the other one to make it double? Well, the other one is here in this chapter, and it happened after Elisha had died, and when the moabites were invading the land, we read in verse twenty, they were having a funeral, and they quickly had to dispose of the corpse, and they dropped the, the dead man into the sepulcher of Elisha. And when the man was let down and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood up on his feet, and there was the sixteenth miracle, a double portion of God's spirit. Now here, Elisha is very weak. He's sick, and he dies of his illness. An interesting thing, isn't it, that a man who had a double portion of God's spirit should die of a sickness. You know, some people today think they have some superior power in the spirit, and uh, yet here's a man who was probably as much spirit-filled as any man in the Old Testament, but he died of an illness. Oh, we have to be beware, don't we, of getting extraordinary notions about what spirituality is. Yes, God will still heal and answer the prayer of faith that is in his will, but let's remember Romans eight, that even we who have the first fruits of the spirit groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to wit the redemption of our body. So, for most of us, that's what it will be. And indeed, it was like that for Elisha. Now, we see here that Elisha tells the king to take the bow and the arrows, and then the king holds the bow and the arrow, and Elisha puts his hands upon the king's hands. You see, the weakness of God is stronger than man. And Elisha, in his weakness, was stronger than the king in his strength. And so the prophet holds the king's hands. It's not the king's hands that hold the prophet's hands. You remember, don't you, about Joseph? It said of him, his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Israel. And surely the hands of the mighty God of Israel, the God of Elisha, were holding, as it were, through Elisha, the hands of this king with all his lack of faith. And God would indeed have answered even a mustard seed of faith in the heart of that man for Israel's sake. Shoot! And Elisha sees in the symbol of the arrow, the arrow of the Lord's deliverance. Oh, what faith can see even in physical weakness. Open the window. Shoot. As far as Elisha was concerned, the door of that room had closed for him for the last time. He would never go out of that door alive, but the arrow went out of the opened window. Isn't it like that for so many, a dear saint, our natural powers fail? Our outward man perishes. This world's doors, as it were, close behind us, and there's no way back. Ah, but there's an opened window on glory, and faith is the victory that overcomes the world. And even as our body becomes limp and decay is rampant, the faith of the saint leaps out to God and says, thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory. We can see through the days of time, right on to the triumphs of eternity. What a lovely thing, isn't it? Yes, the doors may shut behind us, but we have an open window eastward towards the rising of the sun. One of the Psalms goes like this: They looked unto him and were lightened. The Chinese version is: They looked unto him and grew red. And so Elisha passes in the victory of his God, strong in faith, giving him the glory. The weakness of God is stronger than me. Now I'd like us to turn over into Daniel. Here we see another man of God, and this time we go to Daniel chapter six. We've seen uh, Noah in the day of doom, and we've seen Elisha in the day of death. And here we come to Daniel in a day of despair. Not his despair, but certainly a day that despaired of all human help. And in Daniel six and verse ten, we read this: Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house, and his windows being open in his chamber towards Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime. Isn't that lovely? Oh, the Lord Jesus, when he said those words in, in Matthew, when thou prayest, go into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret. Isn't that what Daniel was doing? He'd gone in there. Yes, out of the sight, it would seem, of men, but not to evade them. Shutting the world away from himself, but opening his windows towards Zion. Towards his God. Oh, they knew he was praying there. Perhaps they even heard him. He did it as he did aforetime. He was a man of spiritual habit, and habit isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can be forged in the Holy Ghost, in a life of discipline. And dear Daniel, he knew the writing was signed, but he had this window that opened towards Jerusalem. You know, when I think of this, I think of a man like Jonah. You remember, dear Jonah, he was in the whale. He was shut in, wasn't he? But you know, if whales ever had windows, you know that whale did, because Jonah said, I am cast out of thy sight, yet I will look again toward thy holy temple. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came in unto thee, unto thy holy temple. You see, it doesn't matter to what degree we are enclosed or even entombed, as it were, in some circumstance, so that the natural man says, well, we'll never get out of here. We'll never get out of this mess. We're just shot up on every side. But with a window open towards Zion, towards Jerusalem, our prayer can leap forth and over the great distances enter into the very presence and ear of God. You know, sometimes in the course of my, uh, interrogations, I might be taken into certain rooms, and one room in which I was taken was a big room, and one side of that room was one immense window. And, you know, my captors and interrogators sat, it would seem, a whole committee of them with their backs to the window, and I was made to stand up in front of them, and, uh, as I stood in front of them, I looked over their heads. Of course, they were looking at me and speaking to me, and I had to answer their questions, but it was wonderful to look over their heads. I was shut up. I was absolutely a prisoner there, but you see, I could look through the window, and I could look away to a lovely expanse of country that ran down to a river in the distance, and then the fields ran up the farther side to the distant horizon, and somehow it was so lovely to look out of the shut-in world of my imprisonment to the world beyond, and to the, to the heavens and to the horizon and to the rolling countryside. God's dear children, in their times of pressure and persecution, have always been granted a window, you know. You think of Ezekiel. He said, I was among the captives. Then he said, I have visions of God. And what visions they were. One temple, the glory had departed, it had been burned with fire, but he looked on to God's temple of a different kind and his presence. To Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is there. To a new covenant. What visions he had when he was a captive. And then too, you think of Paul again, dear Paul. How often he was in prison, but he wrote these letters, and you know, if you look at them, he was praying for this one, he was praying for that one, he was thinking about brother so and so and sister so and so, and his prayer was escaping from the prison all the time. He talked about praying night and day, praying with tears, praying without ceasing. He was in bonds. He was behind closed doors, but his prayer was reaching out through his window to the heavenlies eye, through the Lord Jesus to his father. Yes, Daniel had got it. He knew, he understood. He had, as it were, entered into his closet. The door was shut, the windows were open. He prayed to his father in secret, and what happened? His father rewarded him openly, and those men that had sought to engineer his death were cast themselves into the den of lions, and the Lord who had shut the lions' mouths for Daniel allowed those lions to open their mouths and receive the accusers of one of his saints. So, as we scan the scripture, this little expression begins to fill out, and the words of our Lord Jesus begin to take on real encouragement for us. Here we are in the world today, and we have this priceless privilege of being able to be amongst the multitude for God, and yet draw aside, shut our door from time to time that opens on the street, and open our window towards heaven, and pray in secret. So we absent ourselves from men and present ourselves in Jesus Christ to God. And then when we go back amongst men, God is present with us, there before men, to vindicate and to use us and to bring his love and grace to them through us. Isn't that how it works? One of the old sages of Rome said, let us keep our silent sanctuaries, for it is in them the eternal perspectives are preserved. You know, in the war years when I was in the forces, my, the hurly-burly of it. Some of you older ones may remember it. You get into a nissen hut or some barrack room, and my, about twelve o'clock, in one and another would come, perhaps half drunk, and oh, I remember one night in came some fellow, he tore a mirror off the wall, he smashed it on the floor to a thousand pieces, and uh, oh, you'd think your bed was going to be turned over any minute. You'd really wonder how to pray, wouldn't you, in these kind of circumstances, in all the hurly-burly and the hobnail boots and the shouting and the carrying on and, oh, such a disturbing and disconcerting sort of life. But, you know, sometimes when I was off duty, I might just be near the gate of a field, perhaps just go through, just pause in the countryside, under God's heaven. I couldn't escape the army, of course, but I had a window, even then, that opened to God. Or maybe in a busy city street, find that a church door was open and just go in and sit in a pew, talk to the Lord Jesus. Yes, let us keep our silent sanctuaries. It is in them that the eternal perspectives are preserved. So it was with Noah, and so it was with Elisha, and so it was with Daniel. Now, we've been talking quite a bit about Paul. I would like to take you to a different kind of window in two Corinthians and chapter eleven. This is a very interesting one. You see here, the gates of the city have been closed. He records this incident. It obviously had very real significance to him because in two Corinthians eleven he gives a, a staggering catalog of his privations and all his perils and dangers and all the indignities he suffered and the weariness and painfulness and hunger, uh, that he endured. And, uh, after he said all that, and you would have thought, well, that's quite enough for anybody, then he crowns it with this word in verse thirty two of two Corinthians eleven: In Damascus, the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the Damascenes with a garrison desirous to apprehend me. And through a window in a basket I was let down by the wall and escaped his hands. You see, the gates were closed. The doors had been shut, as you might say, of the city behind him, and now where was he going to go? Oh, but there was a way of escape. Very often in life, it's like that, you know. We have a sense that everything's closed behind. It seems we can never return or retrace our steps. There's only the way on, but there seems to be no way through. But with the temptation, God shall make a way of escape so that we shall be able to bear it. That may not always be physically so, but spiritually it is always so. It is not always that he saves us from the fire, but he goes with us through the fire and out the other side. When thou passest through the fire, I will be with thee. It was like that for the Hebrew children. There is a way through, and there is a way on for the believer. With God, there are no dead ends. He always goes forward to the consummation. And so here's Paul. Now, where's he going to go? The doors are shut, the gates are barred up, and the governor's all set to make an arrest, when suddenly a window opens. You say, what kind of window was that? Well, it was on the wall. You know, it was really, I think, what you might call a vent. One of those apertures on the wall through which they probably threw the rubbish. And I think of this basket as what you might call a dustbin. Something in which the excrement and refuse and garbage of the city may well have been lowered down the wall and dumped outside. Oh, Paul, and just think of it, he'd been a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He'd known what, uh, Levitical purity had been and how not to get defiled, and now, for Christ's sake, he was put in what was probably a dung basket. He was made, as he put it later on, the off-scouring of all things, and he was let down the wall in a basket. You see, I think it's probably this that makes this incident, as you might say, the crowning indignity of all his privations. He couldn't forget it, you know. And it happened at the very beginning of his ministry. He was put in, as you might say, at the deep end. See, it's one thing to be a man with a basket, like those in the Old Testament that brought their first fruits, to bring something to God, a token of our commitment, which implies a total commitment. But whilst it's one thing to be a man with a basket, it's something more to be a man in a basket. To be a man in a basket. Paul puts it like this, doesn't he, in the next chapter of two Corinthians twelve and verse fifteen. He says, I will very gladly spend and be spent for you. Now, the first idea, I would say, there's a man with a basket. He's got something to give for God and for others. He will give his time. He will give his abilities. He will give perhaps his substance. He will give his energies. I will very gladly spend. That is to say, I've got something, and I'm prepared to spend that something for you. I will very gladly spend. A man with a basket, something to give to God, something to give to God for me. But then he says this, I will gladly, very gladly be spent for you. I will very gladly spend and be spent for you. That second phrase, it just seems to slip away off his tongue, as you might say, and off his pen. But really, that's the crux of the matter. And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you. It means a man in a basket. It means the total involvement of the person himself. You know, some of us will spend. We will give something to God, we will give something for men, we will give our of our time and our effort, but what God wants is not just people with baskets, he wants people to be in a basket. He wants them to be spent, to present our bodies a living sacrifice. You know, in the eighth chapter of this letter, you've got the thought too about these dear saints in Macedonia that were so poor, but who gave so much, and they were going to give their gift, but Paul says in verse five, and this they did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to the Lord. They weren't content just to bring a basket to God or to give a gift for the saints. They gave themselves. Now, Paul, here he is, and this lesson at the beginning of his ministry of being let down in this dung basket through the window down by the wall, it was really, I think, telling him this, that your ministry as a chosen vessel is not going to be just a question of sometimes preaching, sometimes giving gospel messages, sometimes doing something for God. It's not that you're just going, as it were, to give a preaching. Your message must be demonstrated in your own commitment. If you're going to preach Christ crucified, then you'll only preach Christ crucified not as a sermon, but as crucified with Christ. You see, that's the difference, isn't it? Paul might have said, oh, but I can't go into that basket, and I can't go through that window, and I can't go down like a bit of rubbish down that wall. How can I do that? But he did. And if you and I are going all the way with the Lord Jesus, we've got to be prepared to go through the window and down the wall. So in a variety of ways, really, these scriptures illustrate to us the kind of life that the Christian should live. We've got to be able to understand closed doors. We've got to be able to shut our own door on the street sometimes, and we've got to understand that God has shut us into Christ, and we've got to understand that some people shut us out from their company and shut us up in what they would call prison, and try to enclose us and encompass us. But you and I have to be people who know how to open our windows towards God, because we know that heaven is open to us through the blood of Jesus. And Peter had learned that, although he was still learning, and I read that other scripture, you recall, in Acts chapter ten. And there he was, oh, he was a busy man. He was a man of the multitudes, like his master Peter was. But that day, he'd gone up in the hot part of the day. He'd shut his door, as you might say, on the street. Or later on, people were to knock at the gate and ask, does Peter live here? But he shut the door, as you might say, on the street that hour, and he'd gone up on the house top, to the top story, as you might say, and he'd opened his windows in secret to his father. And oh, what a vision he got. He began to see men through God's eyes, not as clean and unclean, but as those whom God had chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world. The interesting thing about what he saw was that there was this sheet, and it came down from heaven, not to collect the animal animals on earth, but it came down out of heaven with the animals already in it. That is to say, the animals were in heaven in the first place. Did you know that there are animals in heaven? Oh, well, it's a difficult thought, isn't it? But, well, that's what he saw. He saw the great sheet coming down out of heaven, and the animals were in it when it came down, so they must have been there in the first place. But you see, these animals were in actual fact, of course, in the vision, symbols. They were pictures of people. And at first sight, these animals looked all the unclean ones. But do you know what God said about them? He says, they're not unclean, I've cleansed them. When I've made something clean, don't you call it dirty, he said. They're clean. Of course they'd have to be clean if they were in heaven, wouldn't they? You see, what's it all mean? Well, you know, I go to Ephesians for an understanding of this. You think of the kind of people that were in, were in Ephesus. There would be bigoted Jews, I guess, some of them, and others would be those who had been in the shadow and thraldom of Diana of the Ephesians. Oh, what a dreadful lot they were! But do you know how God looked at them? As chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world. That's how it was at Corinth. Corinth, a cesspool of iniquity. Oh, says the Lord to Paul, don't, don't be afraid, Paul. I've got much people in this city. What, in this city? Oh yes, I've got much people here, but they're all sinners. But you see, God saw them in Christ from before the foundation of the world. We were like wild beasts by nature, but you know, before we were ever born, God saw us in Christ. It's beautiful imagery, isn't it? And so Peter was taken a step forward in his understanding of God and of his grace and of his will for the salvation, not of the Jew only, but the Gentiles also. And Peter was enlarged for his ministry. But that all came about, didn't it? Because he knew when to shut the door on the street and go up to the top story and have his windows, as it were, on that rooftop open to God. Then he began to see things as God sees them. That's what we need today. Take the word to heart, will you? Of course, it's really the word of the Lord Jesus in Matthew chapter six. Learn in these busy days to shut the door and to open the window. Shall we pray? Our loving God and Father, we thank thee for these meditations and the beauty of scripture that so illumines for us these practical truths. And we pray that as we have looked at these stories and their characters, and heard thine own word, Lord Jesus, ringing its way down the centuries into our heart and conscience, that we each one may become truly people of prayer, people who are in touch with God. Because we're in touch with God, knowing how to be in touch with men. But oh, God forbid that our being in touch with men should exclude our touch with thee. Help us to get it the right way round, to know how to withdraw and to be with thee in the solitude, and then to go with thee out into the multitude and find thy presence there, even as we have known it in the sanctuary. We thank thee then, Lord, for our coming together, and we pray that thou wilt bless thy word to us, make it live, make it real, make it powerful within us. May there be a transforming of our life of communion, O God, as this word finds its place in our thinking and in our hearts. We ask it all through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Amen.