The Fullness of Blessing by Otto Stockmayer

The Mildmay Conference

1882

The Fullness of Blessing: How to Communicate It.

Friday Morning, 23^rd June, 1882

Otto Stockmayer

My brethren, through the grace of our Lord, who is amongst us, working and blessing, I trust you will not be hindered by my language in receiving the message which the Lord has laid on my heart. I trust that you will help me, so that I may not be hindered by this difficulty in seeking to bring before you clearly and simply this quickening, life-giving message.

The subject today is, “How to Communicate the Fullness of Blessing.” Now let me remind you that the subject of this day and the subject of yesterday are only two sides of one and the same truth. To be blessed is to be fruitful. To be fruitful means to be, by the power of the Holy Ghost, in such a position and attitude that the Holy Ghost may be able to bring forth in us fruit, much fruit. The fullness of blessing is to be in such a state as to bring forth all the fruit for which we have been created anew in Christ Jesus.

Let us go back to our forefather Abraham; for we are his children. So far as we are the children of God through faith in Jesus Christ, we are the children of Abraham, who is the father of the faithful, and of whom Jesus Christ is after the flesh. Let us go back to Gen. 12, and there you will see what God understands when He speaks of blessing. In Gen. 12, we read at verse 2: “I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Now turn to chap. xv., and you will see that Abraham did understand his God, and that he would accept no blessing by which he would not become fruitful: “After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield, and they exceeding great reward. And Abram said, Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless?” I want to be blessed, I want to be fruitful; do not speak to me of riches and reward if Thou wilt not make me fruitful. Se the answer: “Look now towed heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and He said unto him, So shall thy seed be.”

Now let us go back to the creation, higher, earlier than Abraham, and there you will see, in the first chapter of God’s revelation to man, what God did and what God intended in creation. There you will see that as soon as the earth is prepared, “God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, after his kind; and God saw that it was good.” Then when the earth is prepared, and covered with vegetation, God goes on to create the inhabitants of the air and of the waters (vv. 21, 22), and He blessed them. And what does He understand by blessing? “Be fruitful and multiply.” So the Creator goes on to create the beasts of the earth. (v. 27). Then He will make man (v. 25); and having made man, God blessed him. And again by that blessing we are to understand, “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.” God has only one meaning in speaking of blessing for the beasts and for man, and it is, “Be fruitful, and multiply.”

So we see that the question of yesterday, “How to appropriate,” and the question of today, “How to communicate,” are but parts of one another. How are we to get into that glorious position out of the old state? When you see your need of God, then God is able to fill you and to manifest Himself through you. We have been speaking of the creating power of God. Let us now look at His redeeming power; for it is only by redemption that man is brought into such a position that God is able to reveal Himself through man. In no creature is God able to manifest Himself as He does in fallen men, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. We have seen proofs of the power of that precious blood by which we have been redeemed. From year to year we have seen that the center and power of these Mildmay meetings, and all such meetings, lies in the recognition of redemption by the blood of Christ. Paul the apostle said: “I know nothing among men but Christ, and I will know nothing but Christ;” and immediately he joins the word crucified. Jesus Christ and Him crucified; that is all. If I have one desire this morning in my heart it is to bring you and to go with you, before the Lamb of God, slain for the sin of the world. In that death of Christ, in the curse borne by Him on the cross, there has been taken away that curse, which never was pronounced on humanity. The ground was cursed; man was not. Why? Because Christ took it upon Him; and Christ, the Lamb of God, was slain in the purpose of God from the beginning for the sin of the world. There in the death of the cross is the secret of life. Out of the death of the cross flows all blessing, and there is the great secret of all fruitfulness.

Now let me remind you of one central word in the first chapter of John’s Gospel. “Out of His fullness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law came by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ.” The law was a barren dispensation, but grace is the dispensation of fruitfulness. The law was a dispensation that humbled man; it revealed to man his fallen state, it showed that he was separated from God; and it would be a monstrous thing to think we could bear fruit separated from God. There is only one eternal fountain of all good and all life, and that is God Himself. Man must be brought into such a state that the eternal life of God may flow again through him, that he may be able to manifest God, and that all creation and the whole universe may see what God is.

Let us take two great ministers of the old covenant—Moses, through whom the law came; and Elijah, the restorer of the law. You remember that just on the eve of the central event of revelation, and some days before the death of Christ, these two men appeared on the holy mountain talking with Christ; whilst the three disciples were looking on in wonder, not knowing what it meant. There two men, faithful servants, are talking with Christ; and what are they speaking about? The death which He should accomplish. They are looking on from the old dispensation of which they had been ministers—Moses, whom God buried; and Elijah, who had never known death—and they were speaking to Christ of his death. Why? They were longing to see the end of the dispensation of the fruitless law, and the door to the dispensation of fruitfulness was the death of Christ.

Look also at that prophet, the greatest of them all, John the Baptist. When he saw that his ministry was ended, for a greater than he had come; when he saw the Lamb of God slain for the sin of the world walking along the borders of Jordan, and knew that thus there was no more necessity for his work, he rejoiced and gave glory to God, and testified to those around him, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” And so these servants of God around me know that the time will come when they will be not more necessary, When we shall not want to tell men of Christ; for all, from the least to the greatest, shall know Him, and there will be no more need to say, “Know Him.” Then the Holy Ghost will teach each one of us to take out of Him, who is the life and the light, all that we want.

Now let us go to Christ Himself. Moses, Elias, and John testified of His death. His incarnation was not all that we needed. It was fruitless, so long as He as the Lamb of God was not slain. There He was, the Lamb of God, filled with all the fullness of the Godhead, with all fullness of human life; but all was shut up in Him till He was broken down in the death of the cross. Let us take His own words (John 12:24) There came one day certain Greeks desiring to see Jesus. What do we hear Him saying? “The hour is come that the Son of man shall be glorified.” They came to see Jesus, to behold His glory; but they could not see it. Not even John, lying on His bosom, could understand Christ, until His life was offered up, until the Lamb was slain. Listen! He says, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” You read at the beginning of that chapter of the wonderful alabaster box which that loving, devoted woman broke, and anointed him for His burial. Himself was that alabaster box, full of divine life, and the box must be broken before the odor could fill the house. This afternoon we shall remember and proclaim: the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. We shall sit around the King’s table, and there we shall remember how He was broken for us. We saw in Genesis that after creation God blessed the earth, and made it fruitful. Sin entered, fruit disappeared, till He came to take away the curse by His death. So we can only be fruitful by oneness with Him, who, as an alabaster box, was broken for us. “Being crucified with Him,” let us be broken alabaster. boxes— broken so that the divine life and power may flow through us as His members, being no more shut up in ourselves. Let us see what the Lord says in the same chapter (John 12:25, 26), “He that loveth his 1ife shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world sha11 keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve Me, let him fo1low Me.” Follow even unto death. Again, in verse 32, 33, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me. This He said, signifying what death He should die.”—follow Me unto fellowship with My death and My burial; unto fellowship and communion with Me in My death; and through death in communion with Me in My resurrection life.

My brethren, that is the secret of being fruitful. Have we understood the meaning of the death of Christ? Have we understood that He became a curse for us, according to Galatians! On the cross He represented humanity, and never was He in Himself more dear to the heart of the Father than when He became a curse for us. There you and I have been cursed in the person of Him who hung upon the cross for us; there my body of sin has been cursed, judged, and done away with.

He came in the flesh, because we in our flesh have broken the law of God, and resisted the law of God. This sinless flesh of Christ must be broken, that these members of our bodies, which have been the seat and center of sin, might be redeemed and liberated. The members of the body are the organs of sin. The stomach, for instance, of a drinking man is the organ which constrains him to excess. Are not our members—our brains, it may be— the seat and center of sin and passion? So it was that God the Father asked His Son if He would take a human body, and He says, “Father, I am willing. Create Me a body, that through the offering of that body My brethren may be delivered from the curse. I will offer these members of My body, that these brethren may be redeemed and sanctified.” “A body hast Thou prepared Me; lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.” Redeemed by Him, these same members of our bodies are at His disposal, to be used by Him, and to be ready for Him.

Now, my brethren, in so far as you understand the meaning of “being crucified with Christ,” as in Rom. 6:2; 2 Cor. 5; Gal. 2, and so many other passages, you rejoice in freedom from self through oneness with Him. Sin is not eradicated in; but, being Crucified with Christ we are free to live outside the corrupt world of our own self. In the power of Christ’s life, and in the living power of the indwelling Holy Ghost, we may live for Him who on the cross identified Himself with our sin, and became a curse for us. Corresponding to the power of His love, by which He became one with me, my faith, the faith of a simple child of God, having nothing in himself, realizeth oneness with Him. The whole subject is there. Through faith I am one with Christ, and so really dead to sin, crucified to sin, and to self, and made alive to Christ. Thus realizing my unity with Him, I have in Him all the fruits of redemption. And thus we are made fruitful, and thus we become broken alabaster boxes, through which the divine life implanted in us can flow forth and produce fruit to His glory.

Thus it is that the Holy Ghost comes, and taking what, Christ has done makes us partakers of it. The work of the Holy Ghost cannot be separated from the work of Christ. When you turn to Rom. 8, you find in the beginning of the chapter that we have freedom and liberty though the death of Christ, but (v.4) if we “walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Remember that Christ Himself offered Himself “through the Eternal Spirit.” So can we only through that Spirit offer ourselves to Him, and only that Eternal Spirit, the Holy Ghost, can reveal to us the new covenant, writing the law of God in our hearts (Heb. 10:6), and establish us in that new covenant. He only can reveal unto us that “new and living way” which He hath consecrated for us through the veil; that is, His flesh. (Heb. 10:19, 20) Has that new and living way opened to us through Christ been revealed to us by His Spirit? When that revelation has come, when the Holy Ghost comes to lead us to a new and noble life, to the new covenant, to the covenant of fruitfulness, the law of love written on our hearts, then the question about, communicating the fullness of blessing is settled practically.

We have another word in 2 Tim. 1:7: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” Power, love, and wisdom. In the calling of His prophet Ezekiel you find how he must first of all be brought low, be brought under the power and glory of God, so that he might fall down before his God. In chap. 1 you find how he is brought into the presence of God, and afterwards how he is sent to a rebellious people. The Spirit enters into him, and he is sent to speak, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear. So it is today. We need to be brought into the presence of God, to be brought down on our face in the dust, that the Spirit of love, power, and wisdom may enter into us, and fit us to go to a “rebellious people,” blinded by the devil, and lacking the knowledge of the glorious Gospel. We must be brought under the glory of God, under the glory of the new covenant; i.e. under the blood of Christ, in order that the Holy Spirit may have His free way in us, so that we may, through His strength, be able to communicate His life and so be fruitful.

Now in Ezekiel 2:3 we find two things—silence and speech. “Open thy mouth, and eat what I give thee, and thou shalt speak My words unto them.” And again, “Open not thy mouth.” The Lord shuts up the mouth of His prophet, and opens the mouth of His prophet as He will, by His Spirit. In the freedom of the Spirit we have freedom to speak, and freedom to be silent. We are happy to testify, and happy to be silent; we are happy to be nothing, till the Lord has opened the door of service.

Thus you will never be angry against the brethren because they do not receive you; never impatient; only desiring to be used of God, where He will, and when He will; prepared, like Mary, to sit at the feet of Jesus, or, like Martha, for service. To remain under the cross is the secret to keep free from self, and thus silently to wait till the Lord calls us for service. The only place in the world where I can be sheltered against my own self and my own heart is the wounds of Jesus. I will never glory in anything but the cross of Christ. There I see all the past submerged under the blood of Jesus, and there, by the Holy Ghost, I am taught to be fruitful, to work in the way and in the measure in which He will, according to His own mind and Spirit.

And now, my brethren, through the Continent, and in England, and over the sea, there is only one people—redeemed people—redeemed by His death, and made ready to serve Him, and to show forth His glory. Blessed be the Lamb slain for the sin of the world. Amen.