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T. Austin-Sparks - on Overcomers

Contents

Alone? - Not Alone!

"And So We Came To Rome"

Attaining to God's Full Thought

The Basis of Authority

The Battle Which Is Not Yours

The Battleground of the Soul

"Because of the Blood of the Lamb"

The Blood, the Cross and the Name of the Lord Jesus

Boundless Heavenly Resources

"By My Spirit"

"Called. Chosen. Faithful."

The Coming of the Crowning Day

Complementary, Not Contradictory

David's Mighty Men

Deliverance in a Day of Judgment

Divine Strategy in What is Positive

Enlargement Through Conflict

Entering Into God's Rest

"The Fruit of Conflict"

Glory at the End

God Needs Gideons

The God of the Amen

God's End and God's Way

A Good Warfare

"How Know We the Way?"

The Increase of God

The Inheritance - Gained or Forfeited

The Joy of the Lord is Your Strength

Life and Death

Life in the Spirit

"The Lord is With Him"

A Man in the Glory

The Manifold Grace of God

Mentality of the Spiritual Warrior

More Pioneers of the Heavenly Way

The Mount of Vision

The Mystery and Miracle of Divine Support

An Open Heaven

The Overcomer at the End-time

Overcomers

Prison - Vision - Provision

The Prisoner of the Lord

Remembering and Forgetting

The Rest And The Courage Of Faith

Resurrection: A Living Personal Reality

Rooted and Grounded

Some Perils of the Way

The Spirit in Prison

The Spirit of Glory

Spiritual Warfare

Spiritual Warfare (1959)

The Spoil of Battle

The Stones of Testing

Striving In Prayer

Take Your Share

This Psychic Age

Under the Spirit's Government

The Value of Being Pronouncedly the Lord's

Victory Over and Deliverance from this Present Evil World

When We Cannot See the Way

Where Are You Looking?

Where Do You Stand?

The Wondrous Ways of God

Ye Are Come

Alone? - Not Alone!

From "This Ministry" - Messages given at Honor Oak - Volume 3

"I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord" (1 Kings 18:22).

"I, even I only, am left" (1 Kings 19:10,14).

"Yet will I leave me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal" (1 Kings 19:18).

"Then he mustered... seven thousand" (1 Kings 20:15).

"Elijah... a man of like passions (nature) with us" (James 5:17).

It is a gracious thing that, in recording the lives of His most used and representative servants, the Lord has never hidden their weaknesses. Most biographers seem to feel that it would harm their subjects, weaken the testimony, or do injury to the work to which they were called if they dwelt upon their human nature on its weakest side and pointed out when and where they broke down. There is also a mistaken kindness in this omission; the idea that, all of us being so faulty, we should never refer to the weaknesses of others. If the life was truly glorifying to God as a whole, and the work was really a work of God, it only enhances the grace of God to show how He was with, and blessed, such VERY human and imperfect vessels, and no one who really loves the Lord will take that fact as a cover and condonation of repeated failures. At the same time it is true that God is the only One Who has the right to speak of human weaknesses, and everyone who does so under His direction must do it with deep humility and fear: the reason for this is recognised in such representative cases as Moses, Elijah, David, Peter, etc. Even in the case of Christ Himself, although He did NOT succumb, yet this factor held good, and in His case the fact is definitely shown. That factor is this:

Satan Knows Our Weakest Moment, and Uses It

It was when the Master had fasted for forty days and nights and hungered that Satan came with his testings. Whatever other factors were present in the cases of Elijah and others, there is no doubt that the physical and nervous drain of recent experiences gave the cowardly enemy very promising ground for his assault. When Moses made his great mistake at the rock it is evident that he was an overwrought man, and although the weakness is given full uncovering and the result shown to be very grievous in a temporal way, he was never afterward repudiated in history as a failure; rather was he with the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration. David still held his place of high honour and value in Divine purposes, and his name runs to the end of Scripture with Divine recognition despite the grievous fallings in the way. He suffered, it is true, but God knows that in the lives of those who count for Him there are forces at work which are extra to the ordinary human weaknesses. This is made so clear in the case of Peter, whose terrible failure was said by the Lord to be the work of Satan; and there is no doubt but that Satan knew Peter's weak point and weak moment.

We must, however, bear in mind that, while the Scriptures on these matters are given us for our comfort, and to magnify the grace of God, they are not meant to weaken us or excuse our weakness, but to make us aware of how Satan can get an advantage, and to indicate the danger points along the way of spiritual usefulness.

In the case of Elijah before us, there is one thing that we want to note, and the noting of which we feel will be a help to some. It is this: in the moment of his weakness Satan sowed a lie in Elijah's mind, and Elijah accepted it. Our Lord said of Satan that "he is a liar, and the father thereof" (John 8:44). In this case he begot the lie that Elijah was the only faithful prophet of God left in Israel. There was ground for that seed. The man was fighting a lonely battle; ploughing a lonely furrow; walking a lonely path. There is no doubt about that.

Loneliness is a Part of the Price of Leadership

If we are seeking to go on with God to any degree beyond that which is commonly accepted as a true Christian life; if we are called to pioneer the way for any further advance in spiritual life or Divine service; if we are given a vision of God's will and purpose not seen by the general mass of God's people - or even the larger number of the servants of God - ours will be a lonely way.

There are many other ways in which we may feel aloneness. It may be for geographical reasons; or it may be because of an inward experience through which we are passing; an experience or phase which cannot be shared by another, even the one closest to us. All these and other reasons may respectively become our "wilderness" in which Satan comes, and, while there is a basic occasion, his business is to push things into the extra realm of untruth and tell us that we ARE actually and utterly alone. It is not a rare thing for him to tell a child of God that God has left him or her.

Elijah verily believed that he was the only one left in faithfulness to God, and he repeated his plaint several times, "I only am left." He had lost sight of the possibility that the prophets reported by Obadiah to have been hidden might still be in that underground faithfulness, or some of them at least. But the Lord knew better and told him of seven thousand unsurrendering saints who would not capitulate to Jezebel or Baal. The fact is that what Elijah believed was positively not true. If we look at things horizontally we shall only see so far, but if we look from heaven we shall see much more.

Well, what is the answer? Firstly, the Lord's love has taken the FULL measure of human frailty before ever He called us to Himself, and therefore that love, being all-knowing, does not give up because it comes upon something unforeseen and not already accounted for.

Secondly, the Lord asks for nothing more than a heart toward Himself. That is the ground upon which He will go right on. ONLY positive, definite, and persisted-in unbelief and disobedience will make the Lord say, "Look here, My child, I love you and want to go on with you, and I WILL go on if only you will trust me and respond to me. But we cannot go on until you have adjusted; we must just stand here and wait for that."

Thirdly, if it is true that the Lord neither leaves nor forsakes His own, it is equally true that they are not alone as to others of the Lord's own. There is the FACT, altogether apart from the teaching, that the body is one, and hath many members (1 Cor. 12:12). That FACT does not depend upon the doctrine, it is just a fact. Moreover it is constituted by the Holy Spirit Himself. He is the Spirit of unity; there is "the communion of the Holy Spirit"; i.e. the communion of believers in and by the Holy Spirit. There are always believers praying for "all saints," the vast majority of whom are utterly unknown to them in this world. If we would take our stand on God's fact in this matter, and, by faith, take the value of "all prayer for all saints" we should find a wonderful relief and reinforcement in our aloneness.

But let us face the fact that a certain measure and kind of loneliness WILL connect with any particular value which the Lord already has, or is seeking to have, in us, and we must accept this with courage, reminding ourselves that were it otherwise that particular value might not be possible. Jesus was able to meet many a difficult situation because He had learnt the secret in aloneness.

"And So We Came To Rome"

Reading: Rom. 1:10-15; 15:22-24,32; Acts 19:21; Acts 27, 28.

"And so we came to Rome" (Acts 28:14).

An Earthly Objective with Heavenly Significance

It is not a new idea that Paul's journey to Rome can be taken as not only the record of a journey but as representing spiritual factors in relation to the way of God with His Church in this dispensation, and perhaps especially the closing phase of the Church's history on earth, in that this journey represents the closing phase of the Apostle Paul's life. The interpretations vary, but the key to most of them is that the ship in which Paul travelled to Rome is a type of the Church and of its ultimate disintegration at the end of the dispensation. I do not find myself able to accept that interpretation, though not discountenancing altogether a typical interpretation of the journey. However, let us move to the positive side.

I will mention five aspects of this account which may be taken as typical of the Church's history. First of all, there are Paul and his companions - Aristarchus of Macedonia, and Luke - and I think they represent the Church. Then there is the ship, and that to my mind represents all such man-made means employed by God for the reaching of His ends. Then there is the sea, and frequently in the Word of God the sea is symbolical of the world of mankind. Further, there is the ship's company, and undoubtedly they speak of men of the world more or less affected by the Church, and affecting the Church. Finally there are the elements, which are very stormy and openly malignant, and sometimes apparently very benign; but whether in open revolt or quiet and apparently helpful, they are always hostile. That sums up the features of this story, but we come to the real message which lies in the heart of it.

The Objective - The Church and its Heavenly Function

We have first of all to get its setting in the large realm of Divine thoughts, and that is related to the end in view for the Church. The objective here literally was Rome - the long-standing and intense desire of the Apostle to see Rome and to be with the saints there for spiritual values. Now we know that it was from Rome that he wrote those letters which, perhaps more than anything else in all the dispensations, have been for the enrichment of God's people. It was from Rome that he wrote the letters to the Ephesians, Colossians and Philippians, and there is little doubt, I think, that much in those letters was derived from Paul's visit to Rome itself. A man of such alertness to everything that was going on around him, of such keen interest and so observant, was not likely to fail to be impressed by Rome as the capital city and centre of that great worldwide empire, with all that Rome actually meant and represented on this earth and in this world. He was, I think, without doubt greatly impressed, and was taking up a very great deal of what he saw there and with which he came into touch, passing it through that wonderful spiritual mind of his, and converting it to spiritual account; for when we find him writing from Rome, his letters have so much in them, in the spiritual and vaster realm, of what was, in its limited and earthly way, true of Rome itself.

There, for instance, was the great centre of government for this world. Rule was world-wide in Rome. There was a universality about that centre of government, there was a great imperialism seated there. Rome was pre-eminent among the nations and was the place of dominion, and we know that there was great pride in being a Roman citizen. The chief captain said to Paul, "With a great sum obtained I this citizenship" ("this freedom" A.V.): Paul replied, "But I am a Roman born" ("I was free born" A.V.). And that made the man who had paid a great price for his citizenship recognize the superiority of this man before him.

If you look into these letters written from Rome, you see all those features related to the Church. Its universality: its absolute supremacy in the counsels of God: dominion centred in it for the ages to come; all this is in his letter to the Ephesians. And is there not a touch of that pride of citizenship in those words of his to the Philippians - "Our citizenship is in heaven; whence also we wait for a Saviour" (Phil. 3:20)? Yes, Rome has made its impression upon him, but in every connection (such as with his jailor, the soldier-keeper and his armour) he is changing it all into spiritual values.

What is the end in view? It is not just to journey to see this temporal Rome. The end which looms up out of that visit is the great calling and destiny of the Church in union with Christ who in all things has the pre-eminence. That is the sum of the letters to the Ephesians, Colossians and Philippians - the pre-eminence of Christ, and the Church united with Him therein. That is the end of the journey, that is what is in view beyond.

The Objective Divinely Conceived

Then look at the way to the end. Paul's reaching Rome was the outcome of numerous details of different kinds. We will try to focus them, to gather them up. To begin with, there was that in Paul's heart which was not just a natural and earthly desire, but proved to be of God, the will of the Lord. There were many things in Paul's interpretation of his desire which proved to be different from the Lord's thought, but the desire itself was all right - this longing to see the saints in Rome, and to get into Rome for spiritual ends. Desires are put into our hearts by the Lord. We misinterpret them and think of them in our own way, and the Lord has to sift things out for us and adjust us, but in the end the desires often prove to be all right. The Lord has His way of realising, but the desire is there.

This began, then, with a desire in the heart of a man who was wholly for the Lord. Remember that. In all that we shall see, it is important to remember that this applies to a man who is utter for God. There was the longing, the purpose, and the expectation.

Mistaken Human Attempts to Reach the Objective

Then came the differences. There was the crisis of the long-drawn-out trial in Jerusalem, that crisis when Paul, knowing that there was a dead-set made against his life, suddenly said, "I appeal unto Caesar". That was the crisis. Now, was Paul precipitate, was he impulsive? Agrippa later said of him, "This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar" (Acts 26:32). We may say, What a pity Paul made that appeal! Was he impulsive? - or was he artful? Did he see that even if he were released then, there were those lying in wait for his life? More than forty men had bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed him. (Acts 23:12). But Paul perhaps saw that his quickest way to Rome was to appeal to Caesar, and that he would make the Roman empire to pay his fare! I do not know, it may be. But whether he made a mistake or not, whether he was precipitate or impulsive or - may I use the word again? - artful, what I do know is that this whole matter was in the hands of the Lord. We may make mistakes, we may be caught on an impulse, we may be precipitate, but provided our hearts are utterly for God, as utterly for God as was Paul's, the Lord can look after our mistakes and overrule our blunders.

Well, there were differences, you see, in the way in which Paul went to Rome from that in which he expected to go. He had made his plans, he had arranged his course; he was going to Jerusalem to minister to the saints that which had been entrusted to him, and then he was going to take his farewell of them and go off on the journey to Rome. His expectation was all very nice - but how differently everything turned out!

Divine Sovereignty Ruling and Overruling

Now the point is this: the Church does not proceed, even toward Divinely-fixed and appointed ends, by a protected course. Even with the Lord's end in view, we do not go by a way that is completely immune either from our weaknesses or from difficulties and adversities, and things which seem to upset completely all our plans. Our whole course will always be that of Divine overruling: not only ruling as in the unseen, but overruling in the seen. You must ever remember that those two things go hand in hand. God is ruling in the unseen: He is overruling in the seen. In the course there will always be plenty of room for an argument as to misadventure, calamity, defeat, tragedy, giving rise to regret, doubt and even condemnation. If we are so disposed, we can say, 'Oh, this is a calamity, this is defeat! This is due to my mistake, and everything is wrecked!' Had Paul been of another kind, like some of us, he would have said, 'I wish I had not appealed to Caesar! See what trouble I have got myself into! I am going to the bottom of the sea, and all my work is finished!' There is always room for that if we are so disposed, and thus to get under condemnation because we have made mistakes. The Lord has never so acted with His people that there was no room for anything like that. If we want to doubt, we shall have plenty of occasion for doubting. If we want to speak of tragedy, we shall have plenty of tragic experience. If we are disposed to get under condemnation, there will be plenty to take on. The way to the end is not a way free from these elements or from the possibility of so interpreting things. It will be that, in all and through all, God overrules, and at last we shall be able to exclaim, "and so we came to Rome"; the end reached through so much.

God's Objective not Frustrated by Human Frailty

You need to read the whole story again, and note every detail in the light of what I am saying. What a voyage, what a journey! How everything was threatened with complete destruction and loss! But the end was reached; and Paul, Aristarchus and Luke, representing the Church, were all there at the end. They were not disintegrated in any way, and the Church, as in them, was fully vindicated. They had made declarations, they had given warnings, they had given promises and assurances, and they had given commands. What they had said was at first flouted, ridiculed, set aside. Later, under duress, they were taken note of, and in the end perfectly vindicated. And have no doubt about it, the Church is going to be vindicated at length. Its testimony is going to be established and proved sure. Its word is going to be justified, its authority is going to be recognized. The testimony was fulfilled and the ministry enlarged to the whole scope of the universe from what looked like a narrowing down through straitening chains and imprisonment. The whole range of the eternities, of the heavenlies, and of the nations, was touched by the ministry from that imprisonment in Rome. Vindicated, established, enlarged: that will be the end of the way for those who are one with Him who is in the Throne, even though the way so often offers ground for real arguments about tragedy and disaster and for real questionings and fear because of mistakes.

The Break-up of all that is of Man

But on the way to that enlargement and vindication, while on the one side there seemed to be so much that was working in opposition and reverse and contradiction, on the other side it was a case of the stripping off of all the works of men. The ship did go to pieces, the man-made thing employed by the sovereignty of God to reach His ends was thrown away when His ends were in the way of realisation. There are a lot of things made by men, and godly men at that, which the Lord makes use of, but they will go, e.g. places of meeting, institutions, societies, organisations: they are made by men, they are useful, they help toward God's end, but like the ship, they are but means to the end. You must not put all your faith in the ship; you must not ascribe final values to the place, the means, the instrument. We shall find that the Lord has not committed Himself to keep the means intact, to hold the instrument for eternity. It is His Church that He is after, which He is preserving, which is to come out alive; and on the way, the things will have to go, they will have to be broken up, they cannot meet the full impact of the forces of evil in this terrific storm. The forces of evil are too much for anything made by man, but they are not the equal of what God has made: His Church will come out all right. Be careful that you do not put too much upon God's means, God's instrument, the ship. Keep your eye on God's real object. The framework of things may break up, but God's spiritual values will be eternally preserved. And let us not worry too much if God sees the time has come for the stripping off of things. They may have served a very good purpose and our hearts may be very much linked with them, with that place or that instrumentality; but if the Lord begins to break it up and take it from us, do not think everything of value is going. No, it is the spiritual values upon which our hearts must be set.

God's Objective Certain of Ultimate Attainment

The Lord is eventually triumphant, as we see outstandingly in this account - and triumphant in His Church. "And so we came to Rome". What a "so" it was, and what a "so" it is! How much is packed into that little word "so"! It was something given into the heart by the Lord, something around which all kinds of expectations and imaginations were woven, all of which were entirely disappointed, undone, brought to disintegration and changed; but the purpose of God stood. That which God had put into the heart went through and was found at last to be not of man but of God. I wonder what Paul felt like as he entered Rome; remembering when long ago the thing came into his heart, and all his visions and expectations and hope, and all his thoughts of going beyond Rome to Spain - and now this is how things have worked out! And so it is with us: not as we thought, not as we expected and planned, but we are here! That is the thing that matters; we are here!

We can transfer that to the large issue of the course of the child of God as well as of the Church. How many times have we looked at the storm, looked at situations, looked at our own faults and mistakes, at what the enemy has called our blunders, and have said, 'Oh, it is hopeless, we shall never get there!' And yet despite all that has happened, we are still going on, even though we cannot yet say that we have arrived. It will be like that if our hearts are as knit to the Lord and His eternal purpose as was that of this dear man Paul. When we get to heaven, we shall say, 'And so we came to heaven! Here we are!' We shall look at one another and say, 'Well, brother, you did not think you were going to be here, but here you are!' Believe me, that is God's sovereign part; and if any responsibility on our part comes in at all, it is that we should be of the spirit of this man who said, "One thing I do" (Phil. 3:13) - not, 'I hope to do', or, 'I am going to do when my present phase of life is passed, when my college years are finished'; not 'tomorrow', not 'presently', not 'when I am trained'. No, "One thing I do"; I am doing it now. If we are like that, we can count on this sovereignty of God, which may upset our plans and change our expectations; but we shall be there, and heaven will triumph in getting us there.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Sep-Oct 1951, Vol 29-5

Attaining to God's Full Thought

"...that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure, even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and of the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings; to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before thee, and make the rough places smooth; I will break in pieces the doors of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron; and I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that it is I, the Lord, who call thee by thy name, even the God of Israel" (Isa. 44:28; 45:1-3).

"Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord, the God of heaven, given me; and he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah" (Ezra 1:1-2).

Holding those Scriptures in reserve for the moment, I am going to put before you a case in the form of a proposition. Whether the supposition is more than that, and is actually the case, will remain to be seen by what comes to light.

Sovereignty in Relation to a Remnant

Supposing God had, and has, in His heart and mind a certain fulness of purpose which He has determined shall find expression by means of a people on this earth, and when it comes to the test, that people as a whole and in general fail Him. He never for an instant contemplates giving up one iota of His main purpose, and yet He has known all along that that people in the first instance would fail Him. He therefore resolved that in the failure of the whole people at that time, He would proceed to secure to Himself from among them another company, maybe smaller in number, who would respond to Him in His fuller desire. As He foreknew the whole and called them, so He foreknew these. In His eternal counsels He has His eye upon them and they are to Him - not an elect of the elect but the first ripe fruit of His husbandry, a kind of first expression of His thoughts concerning all the rest. On such a supposition what would you think would be some of the things that He would do in the case of such a company?

(a) Heart Hunger for God's Full Thought

In the first place, would He sovereignly do something inside them, that something being the creation of a sense of need, a right kind of dissatisfaction, of disappointment with the existing general condition, producing an inward longing for something, they may not know what, but a sense that there is something more, and that this existing state is not what the Lord really means for His full satisfaction; that there is reproduced in these people, inside of them, God's own discontent, God's own dissatisfaction, God's own desire for that something more in spiritual measure. Do you think that that is what He would do as one thing? Well, it is most likely.

(b)  Provision to Satisfy Hunger

Then do you think that, possessing perfect foreknowledge, He would work sovereignly to provide for that inwrought sense of dissatisfaction and need, to have the provision in existence so that there is no contradiction or inconsistency in His ways - that He creates a desire and a sense of need and has made no provision for it? Those two things surely would go together, God would do that. If you were in God's place, you would do it. Is it likely that that is what He would do, in the second place?

(c)  Life Sovereignly Directed and Controlled

Thirdly, do you think that He would act sovereignly, apart from those people, to so arrange and govern their experiences, their lives, that they were really headed up to that; that in some way, to begin with perhaps not knowing why and what it meant, but in some way to bring them within the compass of that intention of His and that provision of His, and to shut all other doors to them, so that they just could not get outside and go and become absorbed in something else, the more general? I am not saying that is all wrong, all bad, but it does not just meet God in that measure in which He must be satisfied. So for these people He is acting sovereignly, and they find, while they may give some explanation for it, that the fact is they have not been allowed to be absorbed by the general Christian life and outlook and activity. It is not a matter that they are separatists themselves, that they are not concerned in all that is of God and for God in a general way. Very often they would move out into that realm and become a part of it and take up its activities, but somehow or other God has not allowed it and does not allow it. There are conditions which put up barriers, there are things which do not allow it, do not permit it. You somehow are shut up to it against yourself, you are shut up to something more. It seems to be - you can call it fate if you like, however you explain it. Well, here I am, the Lord has not allowed me to get into that, to go into that, I am shut up for some reason. Do you think that is what He would do? Would you do that? Would it be necessary to do that in order to reach your end, to do quite a lot of frustrating of other things and other ways of a more general character, just frustrate it at every turn, cut across it? Hard, difficult, but do you suppose that is the sort of thing the Lord would do? Is it necessary? What would happen if He did not? Everything would become general; we should go out and be absorbed in the whole general line of things.

Then supposing you are in the unconscious sovereignty of God, unconscious of there being any special sovereignty in it, but in the course of your life you had been brought by those two things into touch with something fuller of God. In the first place, by inward sense of need which cannot be satisfied in the general way, and then by coincidence, accident, hap; whatever you call it, nevertheless you find yourself there. In the course of my life, I find myself here, there, and having a bad time because in such a realm things are very exacting. From the divine side, He is not going to accept a general kind of Christian life. There is going to be some real deep work done here: a bad time which cannot always be said to be a purely spiritual bad time. It is people, awkward people, difficult people, things arising which look to be just, after all, things here on this earth. You quit, you go off, and you are away for a time, but after that time you find that somehow you have got out of place, and you want to get back again. You begin to weigh up all sorts of things, what it involves of humbling yourself, and making confession, putting right this, that and the other, but facing it and eventually realising that it is God with Whom you are having to do, not people and things. You get back, and you say, I am home now, I am where I ought to be. Do you think that that is the sort of thing that God would do sovereignly? Do you think that might be an expression of divine sovereignty in relation to His special purpose? Is it not just likely that that would happen if God were in control of His purpose? It looks like a whole set of human circumstances, and yet, when you come to weigh it all up and look at it squarely and analyse it, you see, there is something more than man in this, this cannot all be put down to man, to people, to earthly things, to a teaching, to an interpretation of truth, to a set of people. If God is on the Throne and I really am in God's hands and I believe God is faithful, I have to say, there is something more than the human in this, there is something behind it. There is only one word I can use for it - that is sovereignty.

God's People in Babylon

(a)  A Heart-Hungry Remnant

Now that is a suppositional position. You have exactly that thing presented to you in the Word of God in every detail. Here in Isaiah you have that whole ground covered; the Lord taking a people, a nation, Israel, for the expression of Himself in divine fulness, the nation as a whole failing Him, and He knowing beforehand that it is going to fail Him and, foreseeing it, takes action before they fail. This word or two about Cyrus and to Cyrus is a prophetic utterance many years before Cyrus had a being. "Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus." Where was Cyrus in the day that was uttered? You will not find him. Here you find the Lord speaking about a remnant before they went into captivity and the instrument which should bring them back, send them back; and the building of the temple before the destruction of the temple. It is all spoken of before anything happens. God has His eye upon that second inner company before the whole company has gone into captivity. God has chosen the instrument of deliverance before there was any call for deliverance at all. And when you come to the captivity, what do you find? Well, the large body is satisfied, quite content with their condition, their position. The majority have settled down in Babylon with no thought of anything else at all, but within that company there is a smaller company who were saying, This is not what God meant, and therefore we know that God meant something other than this, something different from this. This is not what we know is God's will, we cannot inwardly settle down to this, we cannot be content with this. And yet, how can it be otherwise? How are we going to get out? There are those who say, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" (Ps. 137:4); the inward work.

(b)  Divine Sovereignty at Work

And then the sovereign outward provision for meeting that need already secured by God. What are these men doing in Babylon? What is Daniel doing, what are these servants of the Lord doing in Babylon? They are maintaining God's full thought in the midst of His people, and, as the result of Daniel's travail and soul exercise, as the result of Daniel being there, holding on day after day, as we know, for the recovery of God's fuller thought, as the result of that the remnant returns. God has got His prophetic ministry operating right on the spot on behalf of this remnant, His sovereign provision of one kind.

Then His sovereign apprehension of Cyrus. "That the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus." "I will gird thee, though thou hast not known me" (Isaiah 45:5). That is sovereignty. A man who does not know the Lord, girded by the Lord to do the Lord's work; irreligious solicitude for God; sovereignty at work to secure God's end.

Then you have two men, Ezra and Nehemiah. If you have any doubt as to what I have said, you have only to read this book of Ezra. "Then rose up the heads of fathers' houses in Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, even all whose spirit God had stirred to go up to build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem" (1:5). That is the inner work. And you go over to the next chapter and you have "Now these are the children of the province, that went up out of the captivity of those that had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away into Babylon..." and you get a list of people showing that there God had been working in the spirit of a company. They are not all Israel, but within Israel a number in whose spirit God had been working in this direction, sovereign work in the spirit of these people. All these elements are there, and what you have embodied in Ezra is the sovereignty of God in relation to this fuller expression of Himself in a company. You read that book of Ezra, and you find it just full of divine sovereignty from beginning to end. The very first words show the sovereignty of God. "The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus", and then the sovereign orderings of God to see that this thing is brought about. Ezra is one, and he represents the sovereignty of God.

(c)  Human Faithfulness in Response

Nehemiah is the other man, and he represents the other side, and do not forget there is always this other side. It is the side of the faithfulness of man to God's things. It is one thing to recognise the sovereignty of God, but it is a very important thing to recognize that that has to have its parallel, its counterpart, in the faithfulness of man, and Nehemiah is the embodiment of the faithfulness of man as to God's thoughts. One is God taking responsibility, the other is man taking responsibility. Those two things must go together, even when God is going to do a thing so sovereignly, when there is so much that is of God. Our inner spiritual history - we did not make ourselves like this that we cannot settle down and be satisfied with anything less than God's full thought. We had no idea of these things at one time. Certainly they were not of my conceiving. But there came a time when in me there rose up a tremendous sense - there is something much more that God is after; and that casting, divesting and shedding of all sorts of things that were less and moving under an urge that I cannot put off - it is not myself at all, it is in spite of myself, an urge for something more than the normal, the average, the usual, the general, of Christianity. I did not make that. Where did that come from? God has done that, His sovereignty at work within.

And then the hedging up of life. I would have gone into this and that and I would have become a part of this and that, but God has shut that door and that door, and although I have tried to move sometimes, there is no way, and I have had a bad time about it. Why does the Lord not allow that? But He does not, that is all, and to go and force the door would only be to do serious damage to one's relationship with God. Have you anything that answers to that? Then a bad time in which, either actually or inwardly, we drop out, we give it up, we turn aside, we go off at a tangent, and what a time! It is not as though we had just lost something; we have lost everything. For us it is the Lord, it is not the thing at all; we have lost the Lord. Not given up some teaching, some place, not just gone off and left some thing; we have lost the Lord, and we come to realise that the Lord has not come with us, we have to go back to find the Lord where we left Him. And that is not a matter of salvation and eternal life: it is something more than that. Have you any experience of that kind? Perhaps you have not. I hope in one sense you have not, but this is sovereignty girding us for some purpose, and while that sovereignty is at work in these ways, holding us, frustrating us, hedging us up, not letting us go altogether, and if we go a bit, having a wretched time; oh, that we could get back to where we were! That is sovereignty with us, in us.

There is the other side. What about our faithfulness? It is the corresponding thing: God's sovereignty, man's faithfulness. To reconcile the two things is not easy, but they are there. So God not only has an Ezra to express His sovereignty; He has a Nehemiah to express man's faithfulness, and Nehemiah was faithful. See him; read again the book which goes by his name. You highly esteem that man. I have a great respect for Nehemiah. He is a man who has seen what God wants, and he is committed to it up to the hilt. See him using every kind of resource, wisdom. His first move as he comes to Jerusalem is to keep the thing in his heart, and take his ass out after night has fallen and go round Jerusalem, the broken-down walls and burnt gates, to survey the whole thing and say nothing yet. Sometimes it is the greatest of wisdom to say nothing because there are plenty of treacherous people about and plenty of enemies who only want to get hold of what you are thinking about to start frustrating before you get a chance to begin. Nehemiah is wily with higher wisdom and from that start all the way through you see this man's faithfulness to this purpose. Oh, to recognise what God is after and to see the meaning of His dealings with us. It is not just hap and accident if we are committed to the Lord.

A Challenge to be Faced

Do you not think really that a major issue is raised - I think the major issue, one I have had to face again and again in the midst of the problems, the perplexities, the sufferings and all the seemings to which Satan gives his own explanation; I have to raise this ultimate, basic question. Well, is God God, and does God accept a life when it is given to Him, when it really does mean business with Him and He knows, with all its difficulties, with its flaws, with its weaknesses and foolishness, nevertheless, it really wants to be utterly for Him? Does He allow that life to get into all sorts of messes which are a contradiction of His faithfulness, a contradiction even of His righteousness, to say nothing of a contradiction of His love? Can that be if God is God? Surely not! Then all these things are not incidents, they are not just haps. Somewhere behind them there is a sovereignty at work; yes, frustrating, shutting doors, holding up, not allowing, bringing into difficult ways, deep perplexities; but there is a sovereignty at work in relation to some purpose. It must be so, if God is God.

I put it to you again as a proposition. Must it not be like that? If we have committed ourselves to God thoroughly, really meant with the Lord that we want His full will and we do not want our own, and by His grace we will go the way that He leads and shows, whatever it costs, if we have done that and then situations have arisen which look terribly complicated and seem to contradict the faithfulness of God, what am I to conclude, what are we going to conclude? We have to conclude one of two things - that God cares nothing for all our devotion and consecration, and just lets us get into any mess, or else this is all under His eye. That is ultimate. We have either to believe God or not to believe Him. You have all this here in the Word, and it all bears down upon this, that people who are related in divine foreknowledge and divine sovereign action come into situations like that, but in the end that sovereignty has been shown to relate to something unusually precious to the Lord, "and they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, even mine own possession, in the day that I do make" (Malachi 3:17).

The Lord is after something more than ordinary and He needs a people for it, but such a people will have unusual experiences, inside and out. It will not be the ordinary, normal course where everything goes well and straightforwardly. It will not be like that for these people. They go through ways that are tortuous and exceedingly difficult, but there is a sovereignty at work.

That is my way of analysing and summing up the situation as I see it in the Word, and I can only say to you that it is not foreign and strange to God's special purposes to have experiences like that. Whether it be the remnant of Israel, whether it be the reactions of God in this Christian dispensation, in the book of the Revelation, the messages to the churches which are just on this ground, it is all like this. Nothing seems normal with a people like that, because God is not going to have anything that is just normal, as we call the normal. It is something more, something extraordinary, and our experience therefore is extraordinary.

God's Sovereign Provision for Times of Declension

If I were going to add anything, I would just indicate something. As I read the Word, I have a habit of standing back from my Bible, seeing what is there in general, standing back and saying, Now, what is the implication of all that? What does all that signify? I get a lot along that line, and here is an example. I read certain letters that were written by an apostle at the end of his life and at a time when Christianity, as to its primal beauty and glory and purity, was breaking up. I see that the first early conditions as we have them in the early chapters of Acts changed, things all seem to be going wrong. I find all sorts of marks of a change for the worse; the purity of things, the heavenliness of things, is going. The church is becoming an earthly thing, and I know from church history that before the apostolic age was past, before John himself died, they had started making what they called 'bishops' - not in the New Testament sense of that word - ecclesiastical bishops, and it will not be long before they make a pope, and this whole thing has been brought down to earth - and it started before Paul was dead. He at the end with those conditions coming about writes some letters, and no one can suggest that these letters are a compromise, accommodating to the situation which has come about and is growing. They are the most drastic and utter contradiction of what is creeping in, what is growing up. They are such a full revelation of the heavenly thought and mind and position.

What is the significance of this? All I can say is this, that God has sovereignly made His provision for all times of declension in those letters. That is God's sovereign reaction in which He says, in effect, whenever declension sets in and things begin to lose their purity, Here is your provision, I have secured it for you, it is there, everything is provided to meet the situation. You are not left without guidance; you are not left without light in a dark day. You can take hold of these later letters and say, "Arise, shine; for thy light is come" (Isa. 60:1). Darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the peoples, but here is your light. The sovereign act of God has made provision for what He saw was coming, and in every age here it is right to hand. God does not accommodate Himself to the situation and say, Well, we must make the best of a bad job, we must be content with a little. He has taken sovereign precaution against that by giving us letters like Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and Timothy. That is the implication of that, that is the significance of that - the sovereignty of God again in relation to His full thought.

The Implication - God's Full Thought is Attainable

What about the faithfulness of man? It would be unfaithful, thoroughly unfaithful, if we take the attitude: Well, everything has gone wrong, there is nothing today which represents the original; we had better accommodate ourselves. All right - you will have to cut out those letters and put them in the fire. You cannot possibly take that attitude and leave the New Testament intact as it is. What a bad time you would have every time you read Ephesians if you did take that attitude of compromise. For a long time those letters were lost in their real value in the church. It is only within comparatively recent times that the value of Paul's later letters has come to Christians. They were too deep, abstract, heavenly. The Gospels were practically the Bible of the church for a long time, and then Luther got hold of Romans, and that made a break. Then another movement got hold of Ephesians, and that made another break. It is there in the sovereignty of God, the faithfulness of man.

May the Lord make us faithful. It is going to be costly, a lonely way, but the sovereignty of God is there. "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him" (2 Chron. 16:9). There is sovereignty toward those who will not compromise.

If there is one thing that I trust will result from our meditation more than another, it is that we shall get new faith, that our faith will revive, we shall be stronger in determination and recover from the weaknesses and the bruisings and the paralysings which so much suffering in the way may have brought. The Lord help us.

The Basis of Authority

Reading: Psalm 45:1-7; Hebrews 1:8,9.

"My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee for ever. Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty. And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the kings enemies; whereby the people fall under thee. Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of Thy kingdom is a right sceptre. Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows."

"But unto the Son He saith, 'Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of Thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.'"

The Conflict Between Two Kingdoms

May I just say here, for the sake of the setting of everything, that what we are seeking to see in these meditations is that the cosmic conflict between the two great kingdoms, the kingdom of God, of darkness and of death and life, is heading up in a very intense and comprehensive way at this time unto the end, and that the Lord's people everywhere are involved; and in a very real sense the conflict rests upon them for its issue. The Church is the eternally chosen instrument and vessel in and through which the absolute supremacy of the Lord Jesus is to be manifested and administered. Unto that a deep spiritual preparation has to be made on very practical grounds and along very practical lines, for these kingdoms are not just systems set up in an objective, external way. They are not political; they are not economic; they are not earthly in any sense. They are spiritual; and the very essence of their nature and strength and existence is a spiritual state, and that state is found within the very constitution of those who belong to the two kingdoms respectively. We have sought to see that the kingdom of Satan is really within man by nature. It is there in man's own nature that Satan now has his strength. On the other hand, the kingdom of the heavens is an inward thing. It is within you, and it is therefore a matter of inward constitution. Therefore one thing which arises for us is as to whether this kingdom, the kingdom of the heavens within the life of the people of God, is really going to manifest and express its supremacy, its ascendency; and that is what we are called unto, and that is really the challenge of these meditations.

Righteousness The Expression of The Righteous One

Now, if the kingdom of Satan is based upon sin, and if sin is what we have said it is - rebellion, perversity, with all its outworking: pride: self in all its forms; unto enmity against God, separation from God, and utter impotence and helplessness to redeem itself - if that is the basis of the kingdom of Satan, then the kingdom of God is based on righteousness; that is, upon that which is exactly the opposite of sin. If Satan is the embodiment of sin, then Christ must be the embodiment of righteousness, when rightly understood. The point is that it is something personal, not abstract or something in itself. Do not talk about sin as some abstract thing. Sin is the expression of a person. Satan is sin, and all that emanates from him is sin. In like manner; Christ is righteousness, and the righteousness which is of God is Christ, Who is made unto us from God righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30). He is the Righteous One (Acts 3:14). It is personal. We need to say that and emphasize it, so that we shall not get any kind of mentality that we are dealing with things. We are dealing ultimately with persons, and therefore with kingdoms. On both sides it resolves itself into 'Who?' not 'What?' Who is going to have the kingdom?

Now if the 'Kingdom' suggests dominion, authority, power - as, of course, it does - then dominion, authority, power, rest upon - spring from a nature. They are not official, exercised and asserted by an appointment. They spring from the nature of the person or persons concerned; that is, you and I will know no more of Divine power than we know of Divine nature, of Divine likeness. Our spiritual power, dominion, authority over the power of the enemy, depends, upon nothing other than our nearness to God, and our likeness to Him. Any system of teaching about authority which takes up a certain kind of phraseology and begins to throw about phrases at the enemy without a deep knowledge of the basis of authority is a most dangerous and pernicious thing, and will involve all concerned in inevitable trouble from which it will not be easy to extricate them. This is not just a statement of ideas, this is fact. Some of us have seen the devil make awful havoc of people who stood up talking about Satan being a defeated foe, and throwing at him phrases from the Bible. The end of that has been scattering and shattering. But that does not mean that there is no such thing as authority over the enemy. What I am trying to emphasize is that it is necessary to know the basis of authority, and that basis is what is here meant by righteousness.

Features of the Righteous One

(a) Meekness

So then, in coming to the nature of the Kingdom which is founded upon righteousness, we see how opposite it is in all its features to the kingdom of Satan. In the latter, as we have seen, pride is the starting point, the first feature of revolt, rebellion, and the long history of perversity. Thy heart was lifted up because of thy beauty (Eze. 28:17). Therefore the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the Son of God's love, must have at its very foundation the opposite of pride which is meekness; and I would call your attention to the large place that the matter of meekness has in the Word of God, in both the Old Testament and the New. Let me give you but a little handful of references, which will make many others spring up in your mind immediately. Psalm 25:9; Psalm 37:11; Psalm 147:6; Psalm 149:4; Isaiah 11:4; Isaiah 61:1.

These fragments, surely, are sufficient to bring us right up against this fact, that power over the whole power of Satan is found centered in the first place in meekness. It says that all that mighty power of sin, all that mighty kingdom which Satan has set up, into which he has drawn all the sons of men by nature - his kingdom is to be undone by meekness; that meekness is a greater power than that.

(b) Yieldedness And Obedience

We use another word here in this connection - yieldedness. The actual word does not occur often in the Scriptures but what it means fills the Scriptures. We saw that in Lucifer's rebellion, and then in the great betrayal of Adam into his hands, the thing which influenced and governed the enemy and Adam was possessiveness, drawing to self - I will, I will, I will - and all Satan's force was bent upon having and holding and not letting go; so his kingdom stands upon that. Does that need any argument? Look abroad today - the grab, the acquisitiveness, the stretching out of the hand to have, to take, to dominate by possession. Against that is the kingdom of God, which is the kingdom of the Son of God's love, and the characteristic of Christ and of His kingdom is yieldedness.

(c) Dependence

Then dependence; the opposite of independence, with all its many forms of outworking, of which we were speaking earlier - either throwing God over altogether, seeking to realize our destiny without calling upon Him, or through the various less blatant expressions of independence on to the place where even the sanctified man begins to show signs of spiritual pride because the Lord blesses him. It is so easy to assume that, because He has blessed, a step taken can be repeated without the need for going back to the Lord and saying, 'Lord, even though the last hour was a mighty hour, nothing can be for the next hour unless it comes from Thee.' That subtle movement, the taking of a second step because the first one has been blessed, springs from spiritual pride - presumption.

Now our whole being revolts naturally against the idea of dependence. Our pride will not let us be dependent; we are independent by nature. Yes, that is the poison of Satan in us. If that comes into the spiritual realm, it is in principle the kingdom of Satan coming into the kingdom of God.

But dependence is the way of power. Why? - because it is the way along which the Lord comes. It is the meek, the dependent, to whom the Lord looks. To this man will I look... (Isa. 66:2). Power results from having the Lord with us. We may presume and assume and go on with some activity, but what is the good if the Lord is not with us?

The Effects of Sin Negated by Righteousness

What is the result of all this meekness, yieldedness, obedience, dependence, selflessness? Well, just the opposite of what sin was on the other side. Sin was enmity against God; the result here is love, the love of God in Christ shed abroad in our hearts, destroying the enmity. Sin put at a distance; this nature of Christ brings nearness and likeness to God. Instead of impotence comes power with God and the power of God.

The Issue of Righteousness: Life

How shall the enemy be overthrown? How shall his kingdom be destroyed? By the nature of the Lamb being so developed in us, the people of God, that all that other kingdom of Satan is undone in principle.

What is life? It is letting go to God; it is meekness; it is all this that we have been speaking of; it is Christ, the Life. We are not dealing with things - although there may well be a very literal side to all this and it is not simply all principles and abstract ideas: yet behind all else there are spiritual features. We are not thinking of going to heaven until heaven has come to us. We are not thinking of going to the Lord till the Lord has come to us. We are not thinking of a kingdom which is going to be given to us until that kingdom has already been constituted in us. All that depends upon what the Lord does inside us now and our intelligent co-operation with Him in what He is after.

The Kingdom Established Within by the Tests of Faith

Why is He treating us as He does? Why does He lead us through the experiences that we go through? Do you ever have the slightest sense that the Lord has left you? In spite of what we have said about Christ bearing all for us, do we not from time to time feel the Lord is far away? Why? Oh, we have puzzled over that! He has said, "Lo, I AM with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the age (Matt. 28:20); I will in no wise fail thee, neither will I in any wise forsake thee" (Heb. 13:5). 'Then, where art Thou, Lord, today? Thou dost seem to be a thousand miles away today, I have no sense of Thy presence.' Why? Just this; God's fact is that He is not far away. What about your faith in God's fact? Are you living on facts or feelings? by faith or by sight? - for everything has to be established by faith. Faith must rise up and say, 'Lord, Thou dost seem to be a thousand miles away today, but Thou art not. Thou art here, according to Thy promise. I repudiate the devil's suggestion that Thou hast left, and that I have grieved the Holy Spirit and Thou hast forsaken me; I repudiate it on the ground of all that Thou has done to bridge that gap by the Cross.' When faith thus asserts its position things are restored, the trouble is cleared up.

And as it is with that matter, so it is with all others. We are in the school, where we are to learn that we are not just living on the Bible in an objective way, and that there is a sense in which the Bible merely as a book cannot help us or do us any good. Somehow or other, there has to be something done between us and that which God has said, in order to make it real, and that is done through testing and trial; and thus the spiritual reality - the Kingdom - is established within us, and we learn to reign over that other kingdom. THE LORD HELP US.

The Battle Which Is Not Yours

Reading: 2 Chron. 20:1–27.

“Then upon Jehaziel the son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, the Levite, of the sons of Asaph, came the Spirit of the Lord in the midst of the assembly; and He said, Hearken ye, all Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king Jehoshaphat: Thus saith the Lord unto you, Fear not ye, neither be dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s.  Tomorrow go ye down against them: behold, they come up by the ascent of Ziz; and ye shall find them at the end of the valley, before the wilderness of Jeruel.  Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you, O Judah and Jerusalem; fear not, nor be dismayed: tomorrow go out against them; for the Lord is with you” (2 Chron. 20:14–17).

“Having despoiled (or, having put off from Himself) the principalities and the powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it (the Cross)” (Col. 2:15; A.S.V.).

While it is true that in the New Testament the Lord’s servants are designated “soldiers,” and while it is also true that there are battles to be fought, there is one big fundamental and all-inclusive battle in which the Lord’s people have no part whatever.  To engage in it is to write over all the work of our Lord Jesus in His Cross, Failure!—to write it off as something which does not hold good.  There is a battle in which you and I have no fighting place.  It was the Lord’s battle, not ours, and it is over the recognition and settlement of that fact that most of the trouble arises in the experience of multitudes of the Lord’s people.  There has been a battle which includes all other battles, which has been fought by the Lord Himself for us.  It is important for us to know both that fact, and what that battle was.

A Victory To Be Appropriated By Praising Faith

The story in the Old Testament which we have read is an illustration of it. I am not saying that it fits into Col. 2:15 in doctrine, but in principle it does. The principle is this—that in both of those passages of Scripture a battle is set forth as having already been won.

The next thing is that the victory which already exists has to be entered into by faith.  There has to be a stand taken in relation to that, and not a fight for it.  If you begin to take up that fight you are destined to defeat, because you have put God’s ground away from under your feet. We shall see that when we come to the nature of the battle.  But it is very serious, and we should recognize it.  Here is something in existence, and upon that something as an accomplished fact in the realm of hostilities a stand has to be taken by faith, and no conflict allowed.

In the case of the people of Judah of whom we have read, their faith as to what had been said—“The battle is not yours, but God’s... ye shall not need to fight in this battle”—was demonstrated by song.  You do not need that I stay to show how necessary faith was, and that it was genuine faith and not mere optimism.  No, it was faith that was required. It was a very desperate situation naturally, but faith was demonstrated, and it was demonstrated by singing.  Their song was the evidence that they believed God and His Word; they believed the thing that was declared to them, and they proved it by singing.  And it was not the kind of singing of the little boy walking along the country lane in the dark, who sings to try and keep himself cheerful in the midst of terrible fears.  There is no doubt about it, it was a song of assurance and confidence.

“...Jehoshaphat stood and said, “Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem: believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe His prophets, so shall ye prosper.”  And when he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed them that should sing unto the Lord, and give praise in holy array, as they went out before the army, and say, “Give thanks unto the Lord; for His lovingkindness endureth for ever.”  And when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set liers-in-wait against the children of Ammon, Moab, and mount Seir, that were come against Judah; and they were smitten” (2 Chron. 20:20–22).

The Battle Already Won In The Cross

And then—this is where we begin to get near to the heart of the nature of this battle—the song was governed by the priestly and Levitical side of things.  You will see at the end of the previous chapter how the government was put into the hands of the priests; and then the narrative in chapter 20 shows that it was the Levites, whose it was to praise, who spontaneously broke into praise (v. 19).  Praise expressive of faith was governed by what was priestly and Levitical—which shows the nature of the battle at once.  This was the question, the whole question—on whose side was God? and God has no favorites.  God is not on one side just because He feels inclined to favour that side.  God is only on the side of righteousness, on the side of holiness—“in holy array.”  God is on the side where salvation is already implicit by reason of priestly government, or the government of priestly principles—that is, the Blood, the Cross, all that redemption means through the work of the Lord Jesus.  And so the answer to the question, On which side is God? is this—He is found where that is represented and implicit which is the work of His Son on Calvary.  That is the nature of the battle; and that is not your battle nor mine; that was God’s battle!

So we come over to this well-known passage in the Letter to the Colossians.  It is a wonderful passage.  I have been looking at several different versions, and, although I do not often trouble you with the technique of different translations, I think it worth dwelling upon two or three.

“Having despoiled the principalities and the powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it (His cross).”

“The dominions and powers He robbed of their prey, put them to open shame, led them away in triumph through His cross.”

“He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in His cross.”

Now you notice that is all in the past tense; that is something done.  The ground has been taken from the enemy—that is the first thing; and when an enemy’s ground is taken from him, he is in total confusion. Note the confusion back there in 2 Chron. 20—they are all killing one another. Why?—their ground upon which they trusted has been taken from them.  In Colossians it is the same confusion: “put to shame.”  What is shame but confusion?  If anybody is in confusion, they are very much put to shame.  In confusion they are helpless, you can take their prey; and that is what Judah did in the story we have read.  That is why I gave you those different versions.  He took their prey, prey from the principalities and powers.  Why?—because their ground was taken away.

The Enemy’s Only Ground Of Hope

What was the ground upon which the principalities and powers rested their confidence, and upon which they found their strength?  Now, follow closely here; let us look at it.

“And you who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having canceled the bond which stood against us in legal demands; this He set aside, nailing it to the Cross.  He despoiled the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing openly in His cross.  Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food, drink, festivals, new moons, sabbaths; these are only the shadow of things which were to come.”

You see the point—handwriting in ordinances and legal demands.  ‘Thou shalt!’  ‘Thou shalt not!’—the whole sum of law written in ordinances against us. Where was and is the strength, the solidity, of the principalities and the powers?  It is here—firstly, that whole range of legal demands; and, then, the weakness of man. All the power of Satan is upheld by those two things against us—‘Thou shalt!’  ‘I cannot!’; ‘Thou shalt not!’  ‘But I am always doing it, I cannot help myself!’  The demand, the law; and our weakness.  Oh, what a playground for the devil!  All his strength is there, all his confidence is there, all his solidity is there.  Take that ground away, take away the handwriting in ordinances against us, take away from him all the legal demands, and he has nothing to stand on, he is in confusion; he is made a show of openly, put to shame, to confusion; he is broken up, he is helpless.

You stand, and then you take.  Listen, friends—immediately you, as a believer in Jesus Christ, admit the slightest suggestion into your heart or mind that there is a question about your salvation, you have capitulated to the devil and undone the work of Jesus Christ in His Cross; you have strengthened the devil’s power to spoil you, immediately you admit anything like that.  Satan must recover ground in order to have power, and his ground is that.  What is it?—our weakness over against legal demands; that is his ground, and he will never, never, to the last breath of our bodies, cease to try and get that ground back in his hands.

The Enemy’s Suggestions To Be Repudiated

But, listen again.  You and I are not to fight that battle.  That is the point—we are not to fight that battle.  We are to take the attitude that the battle has been fought and finished —that is all there is to it.  Let the suggestion of doubt be presented—our attitude must be that there is no place for such a suggestion; it is not our concern at all; God has undertaken that, God in Christ assumed responsibility for that, and settled it once and for all!  Admit the suggestion, and see what a mess the devil will make of your life!  You know, as well as I do, that the song goes out at once.  What then are we to do on that matter?  We have to stand in faith and rejoice—that is all.  Oh, if ever a Christian, or even a servant of God with long experience, says anything to you indicating that he or she has some question, some doubt, about his or her salvation, you say at once, ‘You have absolutely given the ground back to the devil and he is robbing you of your life.’  I cannot be strong enough about this.  I know the enemy in this matter, and what he is trying to do, and how many lives are being turned by him right in upon themselves and made to go round this whole matter of whether God is with them, and to question their own salvation.  They are always bringing up again this basic sin question, looking at it, talking about it.  Their consciousness seems obsessed by this matter of sin.

If there is some specific thing that has arisen as a ground of controversy between the Lord and yourself, and you know it, your attitude toward that must be to take it right back to this fundamental and inclusive ground and put it there, and not bring into question this whole matter of Calvary’s immense triumph.  “If we confess our sins”—not to one another; do not go round confessing your sins to people—“If we confess our sins”—to Him—“He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).  Why?  Because already He has secured the complete ground for so doing.

Confidence Essential To Victory

But mark, there is no contradiction here.  “Ye shall not need to fight in this battle; set yourself, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord”; “tomorrow go ye down against them.”  Does that sound like a contradiction?  Oh no, there is no contradiction.  You must express your faith. Yes, there is fighting to be done, but there is a great difference between fighting in a victory and fighting for a victory when it is a matter of our salvation.  Oh, please, dear friends, do not be amongst those who talk much about the devil and the Lord’s victory over him, and have in your own hearts a dark shadow about this matter.  The only people who dare face the enemy and take an attitude against the evil powers are the people who have such assurance in their hearts on this fundamental matter that they are in joy.  Do not go out against the enemy with a cloud of doubt in your heart. This enemy cannot be faced with a doubt.  We have to take a heavenly position, a position on an established fact. Immediately we come down on to the position of nature—what we find here on this earth and in ourselves—we are undone.

To maintain our heavenly position we have to recognize that the whole question of progressive sanctification is another and entirely different issue, and there is no hope for us—we shall make no progress in sanctification and conformity to the image of Christ—unless this one fundamental issue is settled all-inclusively. We must have a vantage ground from which to move, we must have a position on which we stand and stand fully assured in all the will of God.

Introspection Leads To Defeat

Now, with one further word I will close.  Dear friends, if any truth has the effect of turning you in upon yourself, making you introspective, self-occupied in a spiritual way, that truth has been wrongly apprehended.  You may assume the position of the most spiritual, but you are all wrong in your apprehension.  This great work which Christ did in His Cross was never intended to make anybody miserable.  Of course, that goes without saying; yet there are multitudes who are miserable after trusting the Lord, miserable over the sin question in their lives; and the number, I am afraid, is increasing.  Always keep a very distinct and broad line between fuller revelation, deeper truth (whatever you may term it—all that going-on-to-full-growth realm of things) and this whole matter of introspection.  Some people seem to think that to become more spiritual we must become more intense and tied-up and occupied with this whole matter of the spiritual life, and really they are the most unbearable people, the joy has gone out of them.  I am certain of this, that nothing will ever come to you, however deep, however mighty, however tremendous, by revelation of the Holy Spirit, that will make you miserable.  The revelation of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit—and there is no other revelation—will never make a soul miserable.  There is something wrong if a Christian is miserable on spiritual matters, and it is either failure to apprehend the one great, absolute reality that the victory was God’s and that He won it in Christ, fully and finally, and we are not called to share at all in that battle; or the truth which has come subsequently has been misapprehended and has become something that is a burden grievous to be borne.  The Lord Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light” (Matt. 11:30).

And what was the yoke?  Well, listen again; you will get it in various places in the New Testament where the very word is used.  “They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger” (Matt. 23:4).  What was the yoke, the burden?—the law, ordinances, ‘thou shalt,’ ‘thou shalt not’; the enforcement of this.  “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”  He “despoiled the principalities and the powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in (His Cross).”  How?  He nailed to His Cross the whole list of ordinances against us and took the ground of the enemy’s strength and assurance from him.  You know quite well that the enemy has no abstract power over anybody.  It is always concrete, it is always positive.  The devil must have something to make his power felt.  It does not exist, in effect, unless he has got moral ground, and the thing with which he lashes and drives and harasses is this law of carnal ordinances which was against us, against us, against us!

Listen!  The enemy is always saying that God is against you, His Word is against you, things are against you. That is his ground and strength.  But—“if God be for us...” (Rom. 8:31). Oh, that is another side—“for us”!  How?  Not abstractly.  “He despoiled,” “He made a show,” “He triumphed.”  It was not simply a clash between spiritual forces in the unseen; a moral issue was involved.  It was taking ground and robbing the enemies of their strength, their coherence.  Confusion resulted.  They in effect, say, ‘What can we do now?  All our weapons are gone.’ Then they begin to blame one another, to kill one another. There is no love among these evil forces, they have no coherence of love.  It is all hatred there, and immediately they find the ground taken from them, they turn upon one another.

Well, we will stop there; but do get this matter settled.  Any introspective Christian is useless as a servant of the Lord.  Your days, weeks, months, years, go, and all that might be for the Lord is devoured by that canker-worm of uncertainty as to your own spiritual life.  Life is thrown away, the devil is triumphant, he is spoiling everything.  If you want to know effectiveness, then do not fight in that battle at all. The real power that overcomes in this matter is faith.  So believe God, and, if you will, believe His prophets—the thing which is declared unto you, which is the very truth of God.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jul-Aug 1948, Vol 26-4

The Battleground of the Soul

Reading: Matt. 16:13-25; Luke 22:31-34.

"Blessed art thou, Simon... My Father (hath revealed it unto thee)" (Matt. 16:17).

"He... said unto Peter, Get thee behind Me, Satan" (Matt. 16:23).

"Simon... Satan asked to have you... but I made supplication for thee" (Luke 22:31-32; A.S.V.).

We have before us the spiritual history in the making of a servant of God, and this can be seen in the representative and very human case of Simon Peter.

The thing which comes out of the passages above is the fact that, in the life of one who stands related vitally to the Lord's interests, heaven and hell have a very great concern, and such a one becomes the battleground of both realms; God and Satan, heaven and hell. You could hardly have anything which more vividly illustrates that than the tremendous contrasts here. At one moment - "Blessed art thou, Simon BarJona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father Which is in heaven"; and, it would seem, within a few minutes - "Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block (an offence) unto Me: for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men" (Matt. 16:23; A.S.V.). Then in connection with this we have the other passage in Luke. Literally the words are, "Satan obtained you by asking, that he might sift you as wheat: but I made supplication for thee." You hardly know what to make of such a swing of the pendulum in one man, but it has its lessons, and the very seriousness of the case accentuates the lessons which it teaches.

The Ground Of Satan's Power

(a) The World

You see it is a matter, in the first place, of the ground which is taken and occupied by the one concerned. When Peter took heavenly ground - "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" - he was in a very strong position. The keys of the kingdom of heaven, binding on earth and binding in heaven, were his. He was weak, and in a very weak position, when he took earthly ground, the ground of men, the ground of his own judgment and of his own selfhood. The ground taken decided whether he was spiritually strong or weak, and whether Satan had power over him or not. It would seem that, when the Lord was speaking to them about what was going to take place in Jerusalem as to His death, Simon just took Him apart quietly, and in a very kindly and consolatory way, and yet with a certain amount of patronage, one would feel, told the Lord that He must not be so depressed and gloomy, that He must take a brighter view of things, and that this sort of thing would certainly not happen to Him. But in Peter's attitude, on Peter's ground, the Lord saw quite distinctly a recurrence of what He had met so terribly in the wilderness in His temptation, when Satan had offered Him the kingdoms of this world without the Cross - had sought, that is to say, to divert Him from the way to which He had committed Himself. Peter became but the voice and instrument of that same arch-enemy to turn the Lord away from the Cross. Hence the word following about saving the life. But taking this ground of having the Kingdom and the Throne on any other line but God's ordained line, which is the way of the Cross, is alliance with Satan, and will put anyone in that alliance into the power of Satan and destroy them spiritually.

Firstly, then, it is very evident that any ground of the world, which in its nature is a kingdom without suffering, without the Cross, without the setting aside of natural life, is the realm of Satan's power and authority. It is perfectly clear that, in the case of the Church, speaking fairly generally, and in the case of countless individual Christians, the weakness, defeat and dishonour which characterize them, and which became so manifest in Peter's case, are due to occupying the ground of Satan's strength.

That ground may be said to be compromise with the world in its principle.

(b) Uncrucified Self

In the second place, there was Peter's own self-strength, self-confidence. "Lord, with Thee I am ready to go both to prison and to death." (A.S.V.). He later found out how unready, how unprepared, he was for that, but at the time it was a case of self-confidence, and that ground brought his undoing and Satan's power. The self still alive and dominant instead of dead, put to the Cross, is the ground of Satan's power. Not until the soul has been denied and laid down is the power of Satan destroyed and spiritual power established in the life of the child and the servant of God. It is a question of the ground - whether it is the world or whether it is the self (another word for the flesh) - that determines how far Satan has power and how far we have spiritual power.

The Need For Persistent Determination

Now, what the Lord says here to Peter is very indicative and, I think, very helpful. "Thou art a stumbling-block (an offence) unto Me." The Lord had fought out this battle, had taken His ground, put both His feet down upon this way of the will of God for Him, namely, by the Cross to the Kingdom; and it was for Him no easy way. It was not just the being crucified and being killed, but being made sin and all that is involved of ultimately suffering the forsaking of God. It was no easy way, and He had to keep Himself rigidly in that direction, and anything that came along to influence Him otherwise only brought up the new demand for resolution and persistence. Thus it offended Him in the sense that it made it difficult for Him, it made it hard for Him, it was not helping Him. It may have been intended to help, so far as Peter was concerned, not knowing what he was saying, but behind it the Lord saw that it only raised the old issue again, the old battle, and therefore it offended His sense of the will of His Father and stood across His path to make the way more difficult.

I think that does say to us that a position has to be taken inclusively and over many things where the will of God is concerned. We have to come very definitely and positively to such a position, and then realize that from time to time there will be, by one means or another, an effort of the enemy to change our minds, to weaken us in that course, to make other suggestions, to get us to reconsider it in the light of various issues and interests. We shall meet this offending, this stumbling, this hindering thing and have to be very ruthless with it. The way the Lord dealt with Peter was, in a sense, ruthless. Really there was no weakness in His attitude over that. Discerning its true nature, He saw clearly that, if He yielded to this suggestion, then He would go neither to Jerusalem nor to the Cross. It is a question of whether we have settled that such and such is the way of the will of God, and then, will this or that arising mean in the long run that we never get there, never do that will? If so, it has to be handled very ruthlessly and put out of the way and put behind us. The Cross comes to us in many connections and different terms.

Then, if we are really going to come through to the place of spiritual power as did Peter, that ground of the enemy must continually be forsaken and refused. The enemy has to be robbed of that which will destroy us and give him power to destroy us, and we have to be very ruthless with anything that arises to give him that position and defeat God's intention where we are concerned. This battle of heaven and hell, God and Satan, goes on in our souls, but there is for us this consolation, that we have a High Priest ever living to make intercession. We have a great asset in the continual intercession of the Lord Jesus for us. Let us close on that note of encouragement and assurance.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Sep-Oct 1948

"Because of the Blood of the Lamb"

(A Message as Spoken)

Reading: Zechariah 3:1-10; Revelation 12:1-12.

"And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life even unto death." (R.V.)

One clause of that verse sums up everything else and is sufficient - "because of the blood of the Lamb."

The Travail for the Man-Child

Now first of all, beloved, I want to gather together several things which I believe represent the significance of that statement, that to which the statement belongs. I am one of those who believe (I do not ask you to believe it because I do, but that you will go to the Lord with open hearts about it) that the man-child of this chapter represents a company of the Lord's people at the end-time who, in a peculiar way, stand in the fullness of the virtue and power of the Blood of the Lord Jesus; and, as we have often said, we believe that it is that people, that company, the man-child, that God in a special way is seeking to secure for Himself at this time; the thing which, in the midst of other things, He is peculiarly, particularly concerned to bring into being. It is a company called into a peculiar relationship to the Lord Himself for the fulfilment of a priestly ministry in relation to the universal kingdom of our God and His Christ - and I use the word "universal" there with care; not just an earthly aspect of that kingdom, but also the heavenly aspect. We must understand that there are two sides to the kingdom; there is the earthly side and there is the heavenly side. There will be those who are in the earthly side who will not be in the heavenly side, but there will not be any in the heavenly side who are not in the earthly side. Get the heavenly side and you get both. This particular company, the man-child company, is, in the purpose of God, to be brought into relation to Him for the fulfilment of a priestly ministry in relation to the universal kingdom of our God and His Christ; a priestly ministry, in relation to the kingdom and the throne, the universal sovereignty of the Lord Jesus; an administrative instrument in heaven, to rule with Him, from the heavens, the whole range of His dominion.

Let us call to mind an Old Testament illustration of this in the person of Samuel. You will remember that the birth of Samuel was impossible of realisation along the ordinary line of nature, but his mother Hannah entered into a spiritual travail concerning him. While in that spiritual travail, while before the Lord in strong crying and tears for this man-child, the other wife of her husband laughed at her, sneered at her, looked down upon her. She had children, Hannah had none, and was despised; and then by a special intervention and act of God that spiritual travail was answered and Samuel was born. Born, on the one hand, out of travail in her soul, on the other hand, born out of a direct act of God in His Divine intervention when man was helpless, and nature was impotent. When Samuel was weaned he was presented in the Temple and we read that "Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a child, girded with a linen ephod," - the priest's garment. You see the stages; he - you might say from birth, from infancy, without a lapse of years - immediately came into a priestly office. He was designed for that, brought into being for that, the travail was unto that. We have noticed that it says of Hannah, that she weaned the child. Speaking of Sarah and Isaac it says "when the child was weaned" - taking its course. Hannah did it as quickly as she could, it did not take its course, she did it to get him into this priestly ministry as soon as could be. So that his very life from its beginning was marked by this priestly ministry, and it was in relation to the throne and the kingdom - Samuel was the king-anointer, Samuel brought in the great king. His priestly ministry was in relation to the kingdom. He was the embodiment of that great phrase "kingdom and priests unto God."

Here is your type, a man-child. We have often said that women in the Bible represent spiritual principles, and Hannah represents the spiritual law of travail unto the specific purpose of God, and when you come to Revelation 12, you have a woman into whom there enters a spirit of travail; a spirit of travail comes in, as I believe, unto the bringing forth of this specific company, this remnant company, the man-child born out of that spirit of travail, that crying-out spirit, that anguish. Against that company the Adversary is set, deadly set. Zech. 3 which we have read introduces these principles again in another historic setting. Joshua the high-priest is in person the embodiment of the priestly ministry of all Israel, that which is to be a "kingdom and priests unto God"; the high-priest simply gathers up the whole priestly nation in his person, and Joshua is there seen as the figure-head of the priesthood in relation to the kingdom. The priesthood, the priestly ministry, the priestly vocation and calling, is in a sorry state in Zechariah's day. You see Joshua clothed in filthy garments. That is the condition of things, and Satan - the Adversary - is seen standing at his right hand to be his adversary. The right hand is the place of power, and Satan is in the place of power because of the filthy garments, and accuses Joshua before God. We will come to that again later - Satan in the place of power as an accuser of that which is meant to fulfil this priestly ministry in relation to the kingdom. Bringing these things together you are getting the background of spiritual principles, and you are seeing exactly what is in view in this chapter in Revelation. "And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb."

The Power of the Blood is Primarily in its Incorruptibility

What is the ground of victory? What is the basis of that ultimate triumph? By what means will God get His end? It says here "because of the blood of the Lamb." That, first of all, and I believe more than anything else, relates to the nature of the Blood of the Lord Jesus. I mean the absolute sinlessness of the Lord Jesus in His essential life, in His essential nature; His absolute sinlessness: that His nature was altogether devoid of the slightest suspicion of corruption, of sin, of defilement, of corruptibility. That is its strength; that is its power; that is its victory. Before you can understand the working of the power of the Blood of the Lord Jesus you have to understand the absolute immunity from any suggestion of sin in the nature of the Lord Jesus. Sin was not found in Him. He was the "Lamb without blemish and without spot," and although He was born of a virgin, of a woman who was a member of Adam's race, by the direct activity and operation of the Holy Spirit there was a complete cutting in between Mary as a member of Adam's race and the Lord Jesus as the Son of God, so that He inherited none of the sin of Adam's race by His birth. It is important to see that. He was born of a member of Adam's race and yet inherited none of its sin in His nature, because of a cutting in of the Holy Ghost, so that it could be said of Him as of no other being ever in this universe, "that holy thing." Essentially, in very substance, He was holy, and His Blood represents His nature, His life without corruption, without sin, without taint of any kind, absolutely sinless and, therefore, Satan has no power over Him; "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." Because of this He can cast out the prince of this world, and can make a show of him openly, triumphing over him in His Cross. He can vanquish Satan, He can meet sin and deal with it in the mastery of it because it has no ground in Him of crippling and weakening. See Joshua in his place of weakness, a place of impotence, a place where he is not functioning in his holy calling, in a place of defeat, and the Adversary in the place of power, at his right hand to be his adversary! He cannot help himself because of his filthy garments, and before Joshua can ever be established in the place of power, and given ascendancy, before Satan as the accuser can be cast down, these filthy garments have to be removed. In principle and effect the Blood has to take effect. The Blood, the precious sinless Blood, has to come in and deal with sin, the power and ground of satanic activity - the means of accusation on the part of the Adversary. Before that can be destroyed the Blood has to be operative.

The "Overcomer" Stands on the Ground of the Perfections of Christ, and Meets the "Accuser" by Faith's Appropriation Thereof

What is the meaning of the Blood being applied? It is that which is the absolute sinlessness of the Lord Jesus being the ground upon which we stand. That gives us authority, gives us power. It is the essential perfection of Christ as being the ground of our confidence, our faith, our trust and our testimony. If we stand in ourselves we are defeated. There are no perfections in us, there is nothing in us whatever that can bring Satan to naught and deliver us from his accusations and from his position of power over us. But when we stand in Christ, in all the perfection of His nature, of His being, in the absolute sinlessness of Christ represented in that incorruptible Blood, there is deliverance. And so that Blood poured out becomes active, operative, in motion, and it is a great thing to have the perfections of the Lord in motion on our behalf, flowing, active to meet all the accusations of the enemy. "The accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God day and night." Why? Because they are not standing now on the ground of their own imperfection and sinfulness and weakness and faultiness, but they are now standing on the ground of His absolute perfection, and bearing testimony thereto: "The word of their testimony." "They overcame because of the blood." It is a question of a ground of absolute holiness, absolute holiness not in ourselves but in Him, and our appropriating by faith and apprehending by faith all that the Lord Jesus is in His essential being as the spotless Lamb of God for us to God, from God to us. We can never reiterate that note too often. That is the ground of victory. Give the enemy one little fragment of old Adam, of the flesh, of self, of sin, and he immediately takes the place of power and immediately brings you under accusation and begins to weaken both life and ministry. You know this is true; if you do not you will find it out. But stand continuously in the efficacy of that Blood, stand continuously in your receiving by faith of all that the Lord Jesus is made unto you from God, clear up everything concerning which the Holy Spirit speaks in conviction, clear it up in virtue of that Blood, and the enemy is ruled out, he is not in the place of power.

Satanic Tyranny Through Self-Occupation Broken by a Right Apprehension of the Blood

Oh! if the Lord's people could get this in their hearts. There are so many of the Lord's people today over whom Satan is lording it; lording it along the line of accusation, bringing them under a sense of condemnation and judgment, robbing them of their peace, of their assurance, rest, hope; and you will find these people are everlastingly talking about their own short-comings, their sinfulness; they are for ever circling round themselves, all that they are that they would not be, all that they are not that they would be. Their deliverance from Satan is that they should have a fresh apprehension of the absolute satisfaction of the Father in His Son on their behalf, and that they find their standing before the Father in acceptance. That is the way of deliverance, the way of the Adversary's casting out. This is the way of overcoming him as the Accuser. Yes, the ground of the Blood is sufficient for this full-orbed, many-sided, all-round victory. "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb," and the first and supreme factor in the virtue of that Blood in all these directions, is its untainted sinlessness, the nature of the Lord Jesus. There has never been another who was such. Oh, I am so glad that it was God that came in Christ, GOD that came in Christ. Can you charge God with sin? Can you lay sin to God's charge, to God's account? It was God in Christ, the absolutely and altogether holy One in whom there was no sin, who came in incarnation; and in virtue of that Divine nature in its perfection Satan in his authority is defeated - on that ground. Blessed be God! We receive by faith the virtue of that precious Blood; that is, the perfection of the Lord Jesus can be put to our account. That is grace - the wonder of the Gospel. If we were to begin to analyse ourselves and take stock of ourselves, that would be a terrible business, a wretched business, and it would be endless - think of it, beloved, with all that we know of ourselves, all that God knows about us - ''The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart. I try the reins..."

Though all that be a fact, you and I can stand now in the presence of God as sinlessly perfect, not in ourselves, but in Christ, as having absolute sinless perfection put to our account by God. Understand I am not confusing things, I am not saying that any of us ever becomes sinlessly perfect in ourselves here, but those perfections of the Lord Jesus are put to our account before God to satisfy His requirements, to provide the ground where Satan no longer has authority. The defeat of Satan and the victory of the saints is not by their effort, their straining, their groaning, nor by anything they can do; it is the measure of their faith's appropriation of the absolute perfection of Christ for them as a living, working thing of God on their behalf. It is a great thing to be in Christ Jesus.

The Blood Represents Total Separation to God

The second thing, bound up with the first as to the meaning of the Blood, is absolute separation unto God, and that voluntarily; wholly, utterly separated and abandoned to God. There was not at any point in His person a deviation. He was whole. He was one. You cannot find mixture. You never find wool and cotton in His spiritual garments. You never find in Him the counterpart of those things forbidden in the Old Testament as typical of contradictions and deviations and things which do not harmonise. He was one, mind and heart and will, without the slightest reservation, and wholly for God. That was His nature, and that has its very seat in His Blood. His Blood represents that - a life which is sinless, and wholly and utterly given over to God without the slightest deviation in thought or desire, inclination, will. The Blood speaks of that, beloved, absolute separation unto God. Go back to the Old Testament for illustration. In the Book of Joshua, chapter 5, you have the people coming to Gilgal where the Lord, through Joshua, ordered the complete circumcising of Israel. All the males that had been born in the wilderness were circumcised at Gilgal and the Lord's word was this: "This day (when it was done) have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt... wherefore the name of that place was called Gilgal," which is "rolling." "The Lord hath rolled away the reproach of Egypt" - on the day of the circumcising, in the day of that symbolic act in the shedding and encircling of the precious Blood - the whole body of the flesh cut off - so Paul explains it in Col. 2, "the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ." The reproach of Egypt rolls away when that happens. What is "the reproach of Egypt?" What is the meaning of that? I wonder if you have noticed the persistent following of Egypt on the heels of Israel all the days of the wilderness. I do not mean literally, I mean spiritually. They were constantly looking back to Egypt. "Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?" Even when Moses went up into the mount and Aaron made the calf and they danced to the calf and worshipped it, it was Egypt brought out in representation. What is it that Stephen tells us about it - I think he sums it all up in a word in Acts 7:39: "... and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt."

Their hearts were in Egypt, and it was because their hearts were more than half in Egypt all the forty years, that there is such a sorry story; up and down; one day brighter, and the next day murmuring and complaining again. What a story it is. Whenever, you read the account it seems that the bright patches are almost overlooked and the dark thing is kept in view. It is referred to in the New Testament. Paul writes to the Hebrews about it - their "carcases fell in the wilderness," reminding them of the day of provocation in the wilderness when "your fathers tempted me..."; always coming back to this wretched failure. Why did they fail? Because their hearts were not wholly out of Egypt; because they had not recognised sufficiently nor apprehended adequately the meaning of the type of that precious Blood of the Lamb that was slain. It was not until they came into the land, through the Jordan (which is typically what Christ has done for them in His Cross) to Gilgal (the place of circumcision where the thing is made real in them, - that which was "for" is now made "in"), not until they reach the place of cutting (that Cross entering into their flesh, "the cutting off of the whole body of the flesh" symbolically), that the reproach of Egypt is rolled away. What is the reproach of Egypt? The prophet Zephaniah says, "I have heard the reproach of Moab, and the revilings of the children of Ammon..." - what are they doing? They are looking down upon the Lord's people, despising them because of their weakness, because they are not getting through to their goal, because from their standpoint, as they judge things, the whole thing is a fiasco - "You left Egypt to get to Canaan and you have been forty years at it!" Weakness, failure of realisation, helplessness and the enemy in the place of strength! Reproach is upon them because they had not recognised that the Blood fundamentally meant an utter cutting off from Egypt; whole-hearted and complete abandonment to God; standing over on God's side with God, not standing over on this side questioning God, but, on God's side with Him. When you get there, in the full meaning of the Cross - a total cutting off from Egypt; a total cutting off from the fleshly will, the fleshly mind, the fleshly heart, and you are with God wholly - then there is victory; until you get there Satan is in the place of power, but when you get there the reproach of Egypt is rolled away, you come into the land in the place of authority and go from strength to strength in ascendancy. It is so clear in the Old Testament illustration. That is Revelation 12:11 in principle. "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life even unto death: Therefore rejoice, O heavens..."

The Paralysis of a Divided Heart

Now, beloved, the trouble with a good many of us has been this divided heart. We are not sure, not absolutely sure about the Lord, about our own position, about the testimony that we are perhaps standing for and talking about; we are not sure about it, we have secret questionings. It does not matter what we say in public and to others about it, God knows the secret of our hearts, whether we are absolutely true in secret with Him over this matter; and there is no way of victory, no way to ascendancy, no way through to the realisation of the Divine end - a people to fulfil a priestly ministry in the universal sovereignty and kingdom of our God and His Christ - until we are on the ground of an absolute undividedness of heart for God in the matter of His testimony. The challenge to our hearts is, Are we utterly in or are we only partly in; half in; three-quarters in? Is there some lurking fascination of Egypt? How Egypt had fascinated and held part of their hearts when they were in the wilderness! Out here everything is uncertain; we never know from one day to another whether we are going to have our food! In Egypt there was at least certainty; we did know what our programme was; we were sure that things would be pretty substantial, that while we had our work we got our food! Out here you are forced to depend upon God, and that is a precarious business. Is it? God is more certain than Egypt. There are Christians who feel that this walk of faith is such an uncertain thing. You do not know what the Lord is going to bring you into next, what is going to happen to you. In the world you at least have solid ground under your feet. This flesh wants a basis of evidence for itself; solid earth. This heavenly life - you never know - ah! but do you know the Heavenly ONE?

Let me ask you - Do you believe, beloved, that when, having committed yourself to God, having been consecrated to the Lord, having had an understanding with the Lord, and having been obedient to Him up to all the light He has given you, do you believe that when you get to the glory you will be able to say to the Lord: You let me be deceived, my life has been ruined, I have gone wrong? Is that possible? I do not believe it! I believe that whatever the Accuser may try to bring upon us, and whatever others may say about us, if before God in the secret we are honest with Him, if we are cut off by the precious Blood from our own will, our own way, our own schemes, our life interest, and are putting our trust in Him and following the light that He gives, I believe that when we get there, beloved, we shall not have been deceived, but we shall have to say: Lord, You were good to our trust and You led us by a right way that we might come to a city of habitation! The Lord will accept a charge on His honour when we are cut off from ourselves and from all personal and worldly interests, and are wholly for Him.

Losing the Crown

Egypt for some is the ground of bondage and defeat. Even though we may be the Lord's children, may be Blood-bought, may have come out on redemption ground, yet we may be defeated because of an inadequate apprehension of the meaning of that precious Blood. I believe that there will be many who will lose that thing that God has in view as a special vocation in His heavenly kingdom, because they are not wholly devoted to God now. I do not believe that we will be brought into that willy-nilly. If you want the world, even as a believer, want a little of it - well, you may have it at this cost, the loss of that for which God has preeminently called you, the heavenly kingdom in a marvellous vocation, you will lose that. Paul was after that. Paul strained every nerve, spiritually, for that; left the things which were behind for that, to be preserved unto His heavenly kingdom. There are many Christians who will lose that because they do not go all the way with the Lord; not lose their salvation, but that specific vocation in glory and honour; they will lose it because they did not recognise and honour the full virtue of the Blood in the totality of their consecration and abandonment to the Lord. Yes, in that sense they will be left behind. But those who go through, who overcome in trial, are they that overcome because of the Blood of the Lamb in this second meaning, the absolute abandonment of the Lord Jesus to the will of His Father even unto death; who are standing in the virtue of His consecration, and making their consecration, by His grace, as utter as was His. We shall never have to let go what He let go in His obedience to the will of God. We have not got it to let go, but what the Lord is looking for, beloved, is a people who are with Him completely, with undivided heart, and that is the ground of our victory and of Satan's defeat.

Now I think I must close there for the present. Oh, let it be seen that the Blood of the Lamb in its absolute perfection of holiness and sinlessness as representing His being, His substance, His essence, His nature and His complete surrender, His capitulation to the will of His Father, is the ground to stand on; something to be appropriated by faith and held on to. More, it is something to be taken up as a weapon against the enemy.

The Blood is a Weapon to be Wielded

The Dragon is the adversary. We are up against the Devourer. All truly spiritual people know that today; some more than others, perhaps. If he can swallow us up, he will. I believe he is out to strike us with death if he can, to strike our bodies with death, to strike our souls with death. Let me say this word to those who are more intimately associated with things, that the more we come to stand in relation to the Lord concerning the heavenly kingdom and that priestly ministry in the heavenly kingdom in relation to the throne, the more shall we be aware of the immediate proximity of the Dragon, of him who would strike with death, strike our minds with death, strike these bodies with death. That will explain a good deal for some. The nearer we get to the vocation of the man-child, the closer we come to the Dragon, the more shall we be conscious of the encompassing and encircling of death, and shall cry to get out of it, and say, This is not life, it is death! Are we going to accept it? It is death; but where is the virtue of the Blood? Do we refuse it on the ground of that mighty shed Blood? "They overcame him because of the blood..." and we are not going to accept death, because of that Blood. Perhaps some might misunderstand that. We are not saying that we are not going to the grave if the Lord tarries long; but that is not accepting death. We can die, and go to the grave in the physical sense, but that can be victory; not defeat, but triumph! We do not accept death. You may know it spiritually, you know it mentally, you know it round you and playing upon you when you come into close touch with that ultimate end of God in the testimony of Jesus Christ. Look after that explanation; hold on to it. It calls, beloved, for standing up against the adversary, the engulfer, the swallower-up. Blessed be God, there is going to be a greater swallower-up than he. Death is going to be swallowed up. There is one who will swallow up if he can. Against the Dragon, against the Adversary, against the Accuser, against the Deceiver, the Blood is adequate, sufficient; but there must be a positive, active appropriation of the full power and meaning of that Blood and a standing upon it; a taking of it up as an active instrument. Oh! to get a company like that here and now who know and appropriate the power of the Blood; not in the strength of the flesh, but emptied of self, and in all humility, nothingness, weakness, standing in HIS virtue, the power of His Blood, and standing up and using that mighty weapon against the operation of death now, all round, to get through to that end which God has in view. That is what is needed now, a people like that.

May the Lord bring this home to our heart, that this may not be an address but an appeal, an urge of the Spirit of Christ - bringing us into that thing actively by prayer. Remember your ground, remember your weapon, remember that all the emptying of self, the weakening, the bringing down, the chastening, the discipline, is to bring you to an effective place. Pride has no standing here; self-sufficiency has no standing here; self-strength comes not into this; naught but the precious Blood.

Weakness is not helplessness. Helplessness on our part is not despair. No, it is the open way for the mighty efficacy of the Blood to come into operation.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Sep-Oct 1931.

The Blood, the Cross and the Name of the Lord Jesus

Readings: Series 1 - Luke 22:17,18,20. John 6:54,55. Col. 1:20. Heb. 9:12-14,20,22; 10:19; 11:29; 12:24. 1 Peter 1:2. 1 John 1:7. Rev. 5:9,10; 7:14,15.

Series 2 - Acts 2:38: 3:6; 4:7,12,17,30; 8:12; 16:18; 19:13-15, 1 Cor. 5:4; 6:11. Eph. 1:21,22. Phil. 2:9-11. Rom. 6:3-8.

Beloved of God, we have read a good many passages of the Word and you will have noticed that there are three distinct matters brought into view by them. They are divided into three and refer to three different things, and I have it on my heart to spend just a little time in considering these three matters; namely, the Blood, the Cross, and the Name of the Lord Jesus.

They are important matters in themselves, each one of them. I trust that we shall see something of that importance; but there is another thing related to them which is also very important, especially for the Lord's people, and that is, to discriminate between them, for there is a good deal of indiscriminate use of these words and terms, and I think that confusion or misuse very often means weakness and failure in getting through to the desired end. It is important when we go into war to know what weapons we need, and to be able to choose and intelligently use those weapons; for to be in a warfare using a certain kind of weapon which we discover is not the one that effects the end is a very embarrassing situation. And so it is important for the Lord's people to be able to understand the peculiar value and meaning of these different things which have so close a relationship to their spiritual victory. It is also very important for unsaved men and women to know the meaning of these terms, these words which are so frequently upon Christian lips: "the Blood of Jesus Christ", "the Cross of the Lord Jesus", "the Name of Jesus". We have no thought of covering the whole of that ground in this short space, we can merely introduce it and touch upon it as the Lord leads.

The Blood

We begin, then, with the Blood of Christ, about which we have read so much in the Word, and yet withal a bare fragment of what there is in the Word concerning it; and we may immediately point out that the Blood of Jesus has specifically and primarily to do with sin, and redemption unto life. I would that you would just take that statement and go to the Word of the Lord with it and investigate and inquire much more fully than we can do now, and you will see how truly that is borne out. The Blood has to do with cleansing and with redemption unto life, that is, it relates to sin and to all Satanic legal ground. When we speak of Satanic legal ground we mean this, that by nature, according to the Word of God, and according to the spiritual experience and knowledge of those who have come to the Lord Jesus, all the creation is in bondage to the Devil. You may dispute that because you do not know it experimentally and personally. I would suggest that you turn to the Lord Jesus and you will soon discover how much you are in bondage to the Devil, for it is only a prisoner who tries to escape who discovers that he is really a prisoner. But the Word of God tells us what is true, and the spiritual experience of all who have really come to Christ proves the Word of God to be true; that the whole of the race, and of creation, by nature is now in bondage to the Devil; but the power, the authority of Satan rests upon a condition, and that condition is sin, and he has legal ground for maintaining his hold where sin is, his hold upon the race is through sin. He grips, and holds, and maintains his hold through sin. You may say that sin is the chain by which the whole race is in the power of Satan, and sin therefore is his legal ground; in so far as he has legal rights to his position, those legal rights are constituted by the condition into which man has fallen by his own sin: sin against God and obedience to Satan. The Blood, therefore, relates to sin and to all Satanic legal ground, and the words which perhaps best represent that ground are condemnation and death. It is with those words that the Apostle sums up his matchless argument through the first three chapters of his letter to the Romans, where, tracing the course of the ages, and running through all realms of life, testing and examining according to the Divine standard, he at length concludes all under sin: "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10), and he pronounces by the Spirit, the verdict, all are under condemnation and therefore all are under death; and condemnation and death are words which represent the legal ground of Satan in holding the race in bondage.

The First Need of the Sinner

The initial need and appeal of the unsaved sinner is to the Blood of the Lord Jesus. "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission". The unsaved sinner, knowing it or not knowing it, is truly in bondage to the Devil, imprisoned by Satan. The Blood of Jesus Christ relates to condemnation and death unto life; and what the unsaved sinner has to come to as the very first ground of hope is a recognition of the meaning and value of the Blood of Jesus Christ. We shall never get through to God apart from that. We may struggle to break through, to break away, we may adopt Christian practices and Christian ideals, we may associate ourselves with Christians, we may pass off as Christians amongst them, and perhaps before the world, but this one thing is settled beyond any question or doubt or shakeableness, that in the sight of God no one ever comes out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of the Son of God's love except by the way of the shed Blood of Jesus Christ. To ignore that, to overlook that, to fail to see, recognize, accept that means, whatever else may follow, in the sight of God the thing has not been done which makes us a child of God and delivers us from the kingdom of Satan. Oh, it is so necessary, forgive the strength of emphasis, it is so necessary that we should not be deceived, that we should be in a true position that we should have no assumption about this, that ours should not be an assumed relationship to God, but that it should be upon God's foundation, God's basis, for only as it is so are we accepted in the Beloved One, the Lord Jesus, and are brought into fellowship with God. The initial need and appeal of the unsaved sinner is to the Blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, as shed for the remission of sins, by which our redemption has been made, has been secured for us.

'Redeemed by the precious

blood of Jesus,

Nothing else could ever save my soul'.

Now that is simple Gospel. It is where everything begins in relationship to God.

The Believer's Conflict with the Accuser

And then the conflict of the saved sinner necessitates the Blood, because the conflict of the saved sinner is so very truly with Satan; not now as his master, his lord; not now as the one to whom he is in captivity, but as the one who would get him back into captivity. Satan must therefore get him back on to a ground where for him the basis of escape has been overlooked, forfeited, let go. I mean this: that the conflict of the saved sinner is very largely with Satan as the Accuser. He is called the Accuser of the brethren - "for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night" (Rev. 12:10). He watches their movements, he seeks to cause them to move in some way that is not wholly according to the will and the mind of the Lord, to prompt a wrong movement, to provoke to a wrong word, to stir up a wrong feeling:

'Christian, dost thou feel them,

How they work within,

Striving, tempting, luring,

Goading into sin?'

and then when you slip, you make the mistake, you stumble in the way, he immediately pounces upon you to accuse you of sin and to bring you under condemnation, to bring upon you a sense of condemnation, to smother you with it and make you feel you have grieved the Lord, and the Lord has forsaken you, the Lord has withdrawn from you, to make you conscious of being out of fellowship with God. And so as the Accuser he is trying to make us sin and then he will pounce upon us with condemnation to drag us back into his grip: and the saved sinner needs the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus as an instrument with which to meet the enemy as the Accuser. Don't ever believe, beloved, that if you slip, if you make a mistake, if you stumble in the way, if you grieve the Lord, that that necessarily severs you from God, that that necessarily means that the Lord forsakes you. What might be the consequences of your willfully, consciously being in the way of sin, violating the will of God, I would not care to follow out; there is no doubt that you would get into darkness, very much into the power of Satan, you would lose the joy of your salvation. Whether you would lose your salvation ultimately or not is not a question for us at this moment, but you would lose all the joy and delight and pleasure of your salvation by persisting in sin. But I am not dealing with persistent sin, I am dealing with the slip, the mistake, the fault, the failure which the enemy immediately having himself brought about, quickly snaps up, takes advantage of, and makes the occasion of accusing us, seeking to bring us under condemnation.

The means to deal with that is the Blood of the Lord Jesus, and the Blood of the Lord Jesus can deal with that instantly. The argument to take to Satan is not: 'I am not a sinner; I have not made a mistake; I have not gone wrong'. We know we have. The answer is, that in that precious Blood, as we turn to the Lord and confess our failure, humbly repentantly, acknowledge our mistake before the Lord and grieve in exercise of heart that we should have so failed, the Blood of Jesus Christ goes on in its mighty efficacy cleansing from all sin. It stands us in stead to take that ground from the enemy immediately. But remember, you must use your weapon. You must know your weapon, and you must have faith in your weapon; faith in that precious Blood. And faith in the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus is our shield which receives the fiery darts of the Wicked One, and is impervious to them. Oh, the inflamed darts of the Wicked One are so often the darts of accusation and condemnation, and we have a shield of faith given to us by God, but it is faith in the virtue and efficacy of the precious Blood of Jesus, even when we have stumbled and slipped. Victory over the enemy, having been given initially through the Blood, is now maintained by reason of faith in that Blood in the hour of accusation. And so the saved sinner's conflict is very largely with the Accuser who is seeking to bring back on to the old ground of condemnation and death, and deliverance continuously from him, as initially, is by that justification which we have through His Blood; no condemnation; faith in the Blood of the Lord Jesus. It is in this sense that the Blood is a weapon. You see in Rev. 12:11 we are told that: "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb". Now the Revised Version being more accurate should be noted in its peculiar value. The Authorized Version reads: "They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb". The suggestion is of using the Blood of the Lamb as a kind of weapon with which to slay the enemy; it is a sort of objective thing with which you meet the enemy. If you look more closely you have two things. Firstly, the enemy in Rev. 12 as the Accuser: "The accuser of our brethren is cast down". The Accuser of the brethren is there, it is the enemy in that form. The other thing is: "They overcame him BECAUSE of the blood of the Lamb". That does not necessarily mean that they took up the Blood of the Lamb as some kind of weapon with which to smite him, but they stood upon the ground of that Blood, and the Accuser lost his power. The Blood has to do with sin all the time, and what the enemy is out to do is to bring us under a sense of sin, and thus to defeat and destroy us; but if we are standing on the value and meaning of the precious Blood, and refuse to forsake that ground, the Accuser is cast down from his high place, he is overcome, and we overcome, not by some objective conflict with the Blood, but because we in our hearts stand and refuse to move from the ground of justification through His Blood. "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb".

Now a further step. The Blood is one with the Life. We know that quite well. In the Old Testament from Lev. 17 we gather very implicitly that, "the life is in the blood and the blood is the life", and from John 6, which we have read, that same thing comes in: "Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life". So that the Blood is one with the Life, and that means that initially, through the Blood our faith in the Blood of the Lord Jesus, our acceptance of its meaning and value in relation to our sin - the Life is given. The Divine Life, Eternal Life, is given through the Blood of the Lord Jesus. Now both the Blood and the Life speak of the holiness of the Lord, and therefore of cleansing from sin. If sin is fallen into and not instantly repented of, confessed before the Lord and put right, there is an arrest upon the Life. The Life receives a check, and if the Life and the Blood and the Blood and the Life go together, that means that sin allowed, sin not confessed and repented of, checks the Life and the Blood is suspended in its operation of cleansing and we stand touched, spotted, blemished. And so John, in the passage read, says: "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin". There the tense in the Greek is 'keeps on cleansing', but there is an 'if': "If we walk...". What is it to walk? To go on. If we go on in the light; yes, there may be some dark thing touch us, we may touch a dark thing, we may fail, we may slip, go wrong, but that can be instantly put right before the Lord, and we can go on by putting it right away, we can go on in the light and the Blood of Jesus Christ God's Son goes on cleansing. You arrest the operation of the Life and the operation of the Blood if you willfully harbor sin. If the Holy Spirit shows you wrong and you do not confess it and put it right, if you do not bring it back to the Blood, you have arrested the Divine operation, and you stand there. "lf we walk..." So that in failure, confession is necessary, confession to the Lord, and a putting right away is necessary if the Life is to flow. And the Life can only flow as we recognize that that Life is a holy Life, and it cannot go on in its course alongside of sin. The holy Life of the Lord as represented by His incorruptible Blood cannot go hand in hand with known sin: it cannot! Many of us know that in experience.

The Cross

Then the Cross. Of course it was in the Cross that the Blood was shed, and the Blood is related to the Cross and the Cross to the Blood, but doctrinally in the New Testament the Cross has its own specific meaning, and as we have seen from the passage read in Romans 6, to which others could be added such as Colossians 2 and elsewhere, the Cross has to do with the flesh and the natural man; and the position to which the Cross brings us is this: not only have our sins been dealt with, but we have been dealt with, and we have been crucified together with Christ. Now you can have contradictions if you are not careful - and there are plenty of contradictions about in this way. There may have been constant failure and breakdown and going wrong, and seeking of forgiveness and cleansing, and then not getting very much beyond that; that may repeat itself again and again and life becomes a matter of failing and regretting, sinning and repenting, going wrong and being sorry for it, and this can stretch out through all your days; up and down, one day in victory, the next in defeat; and so it goes on until in many cases it comes to an acute crisis where the individual says: 'Well the Christian life is a tremendously strenuous business; it seems nothing but coming to the Lord and asking to be forgiven, going wrong and repenting; there is very little victory in it'. That is not as the Lord would have it and the secret is very largely here, that we have never recognized that in the Cross of the Lord Jesus we have been set aside as to our nature. We have not accepted that position with all that it means, all its implications, all its content, that from that time onward it is no longer I. "I have been crucified with Christ," said the Apostle, "nevertheless I live; yet not I but Christ liveth in me". It is not to choose our own way, our own will, our own desire, to make our own program for life, to project our own schemes for the future; but to have nothing whatever out from ourselves from our will, mind, desire; but that everything now is from the Lord. When we have come to accept that position, that in Christ's crucifixion we were crucified, in His burial we were buried, then raised together with Him, we receive into our hearts the Holy Spirit of Christ for the purpose and object of governing our lives, directing our course, choosing our way. "No longer I... One died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again", and that in the power and energy of the indwelling Spirit. Now that is a very utter, comprehensive, thorough-going thing and the Cross means that. It does not mean that after that we shall not fail; we may make mistakes, but there the Blood applied, but what so many of us have had to learn, and so many more have yet to learn is that the Cross has its own peculiar value. The Cross does not cleanse from sin, the Cross crucifies the flesh.

Now you can have a great deal of phraseology about the Blood, and be always talking about the Blood, and know little of the Cross. The flesh may be there very much in evidence while all the time speaking about the Blood. The basic thing is necessary, the Cross. "Our old man was crucified with Christ". Do you see the difference? What is the good of your going out to meet the Devil with the Blood if your flesh has not been dealt with by the Cross? He will come in the back door and with all your phraseology about the Blood, he will beat you every time if you have not come to that deep work of the Cross where the natural man has been dealt with. So many are preaching the Blood, have much phraseology of the Blood, and yet the flesh is rampant in their lives; the 'I' is very much in evidence. You may preach the Blood and still be a very self-assertive person with pride, arrogance, ambition and all that kind of thing. Well, the Cross deals with the man; the Blood with the sin.

The Name

Now one word about the Name, and here also there is a good deal of confusion. Many people plead the Blood when they ought to use the Name. It is the Name which is the mighty thing against the enemy for the believer mainly in the matter of service. The Name goes beyond the Blood, in this sense (do not misunderstand that) that the Name has to do with the authority of Christ over the enemy. The Blood takes the enemy's ground away from accusation and condemnation. The Name of the Lord Jesus is the mighty thing by which the authority of Satan in every realm is dealt with. Oh, you want something more than to have sin put out of the way. You need to be in a position of authority over the works of the enemy, not merely in your own life but all around in situations, as he comes up everywhere on this earth. And so it is in the Name that that power is found. The Name represents the authority of Christ - and in Christ - over the enemy. Acts 16 is a classic instance. What you have there, as you will recall, is Paul, who stood in all the virtue of the precious Blood in relation to sin in his own life; Paul, who stood in the fulness of the meaning of the Cross as to having nothing of himself, but all of Christ - oh, he was in a strong position, a well-crucified man, standing by faith on "no condemnation" ground through the Blood - and now finding the enemy busy at work outside, looking to the Lord for His moment, His time for dealing with the situation, not rushing in from himself, but after "many days", waiting for the Lord's time, then in the Name of Jesus Christ commanding this Satanic work to cease. Paul stood in a position by the Cross and the Blood and the Name, this three-fold strength, but he dealt with the thing in the Name, he did not plead the Blood for it. We sometimes see the work of the Devil objectively and we begin to plead the Blood. That has got to be appropriated, we have to see that that has been applied to our own hearts or else he will turn upon us. Paul did not plead the Blood against the enemy, he came in the Name. There were others, sons of Sceva who did not stand on the ground of the Cross. who were not standing in the virtue of the Blood, but held a mere formula, saying, "We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth", and the demon turned round upon these presumptuous men and answered, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are ye?" and these sons of Sceva had the scare of their lives. They discovered that there is nothing in a mere formula, but there is something, there is everything in standing on the ground of the Cross, in the virtue of the Blood, bringing us into the authority of the Name. And the Name has that objective value of authority over the enemy. "God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow", etc. "He raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenlies, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come" (Eph. 1:20,21). The Name represents the exaltation of the Lord Jesus. And so the Blood cuts us off from sin, the Cross cuts us off from ourselves, the Name brings us into union with an exalted, enthroned, authoritative Lord.

Now I trust that we have got some of our difficulties straightened out, at any rate, we are seeing a little more clearly the peculiar value of each of these things and we shall not confuse them; and we shall see how that mighty and precious Name carries with it all the honor and glory of our Christ, and that if He is to be honored and glorified in us it must be that sin is dealt with, we are set aside, and Christ is pre-eminent, enthroned, predominant in all things for us.

Boundless Heavenly Resources

For our lives and for our service - our ministry, our heavenly vocation - there are, in union with Christ, resources at our disposal which are heavenly, inexhaustible, and incorruptible. This is the great secret of strength.

It is a grand thing and a source of tremendous strength to come to the same position as that of Christ as Man, where we know that boundless heavenly resources are available. I think we only come there progressively, and not all at once. We only come there by the way of discipline - discipline which takes the form of bringing us to an utter dependence but which is yet not an emptying and a breaking down as an end in itself, but one which is accompanied by that grace of God - that graciousness of God - which, when we are empty, makes His fullness to abound.

There is a positive as well as a negative side. God is no believer in negatives as being the ultimate goal; but when He breaks and when He empties, He does something on the positive side which ever causes us to marvel, and we have to say every time: Well, that was the Lord, not ourselves. We come progressively by that way of discipline to know that there are heavenly resources which far outstrip all human possibilities, and these resources are operative.

This is what constitutes spirituality - this is what makes a life or service spiritual: it is the drawing upon heavenly resources, living the life as out from heaven. That is spirituality. That constitutes a spiritual life and a spiritual walk. The resources are not drawn from self or from the world; they are all drawn from above. The government is not that here of men or of the world, but that which is from above. Everything is so utterly from above - and so utterly not from man - that the life or work becomes spiritual as a consequence.

Some people seem to think that spirituality is a kind of mystical or mythical "something" - that spirituality is something remote from reality, a kind of frame of mind. Well, spirituality is certainly not a frame of mind in the first place. We speak of a calm and heavenly frame... and there may be something of this kind as a fruit of it... but spirituality is not a nebulous, mythical, or abstract thing. Spirituality is the most practical thing.

When men or women are called by God into some piece of Divine ministry and, in the face of the demand, are conscious to the last degree that they have no ability, no resource, no power to fulfil that ministry, that in themselves the thing is utterly impossible, that for them to essay to do it would be the utmost folly and absurdity - when in such circumstances they recognize that they have a living Christ in whom are resources more than enough to meet that demand... and by faith lay hold of Him and go forward into the ministry with that consciousness... that is spirituality; and that is practical, tremendously practical. The issues prove that it is practical. It is in that way heavenly things are done.

Christ's spirituality was not that He was remote from what was practical in everyday life. It was that He was bringing heavenly forces and resources to bear upon the practical matters of everyday life. You can wash doors, or clothes, or floors - or do any of these ordinary domestic things - in spirituality. People seem to think that spiritual work and ordinary work - household work, for example - are two different things. They talk about the spiritual work and the other work. Now, you can bring heavenly resources in to do anything that is legitimate, and the doing of those things may be a testimony.

The majority of people have no occasion to draw upon heavenly resources for a platform ministry. For the most part their work is of some regular, daily kind; and very often they feel utterly unable for it, and they are tempted to think that if they had some spiritual ministry to fulfill - if they had to go and take a meeting or speak to some souls about spiritual matters - they could make a claim upon the Lord for help and He would carry them through. For the trivial round and common task such a thought is all too often wholly absent from the mind. Now, exactly the same resources have to come into the ordinary work as into what we call spiritual work. It has all to be done on a spiritual basis and therefore to be a testimony. To get through an ordinary day's work often requires something more than ordinary human resources. Spirituality consists in our doing everything as out from heaven. Let us be careful how we draw a line, lest we make a distinction between the spiritual and "the rest."

There is a great deal of strength to be drawn from the realization that things are not incidental, not general, but specific with regard to our being here on this earth - that we are related to an eternal purpose - that we are called according to His purpose. Wherever we are... provided we are there after having subjected our lives utterly to the Lord and definitely sought to be in His will... we are not to mark time - not to stand and wait - but to recollect that we are there in relation to a purpose.

A great many of the Lord's people are standing about waiting - marking time. They think that they are in a kind of hiatus - in some place where the real thing has no bearing upon their lives. Now let us leave such thoughts behind us. There is a treachery about that mentality. It may be true that we have not yet come into our ultimate calling, but we are in it relatively now, and we shall never come into that unless we are making good all the possibilities that are present where we are.

This is preparatory. If the Lord were to come to us and say: Now look here, this present time which seems to be unmarked by anything very special in the character of the work is nevertheless intended by Me to fit you for a large work that I have in store, which will develop in a certain given year; and on the first day of that year you will move out into a tremendous piece of work! we should begin at once to use the time between for preparation. But God does not do that, and yet it may all the time be true that at a given point in the Divine ordering of our lives there should be a moving into something very important. But He would not have us to be exercised toward Himself simply because of a piece of work that lies ahead; He would have us to be exercised toward Himself for His own sake.

It is so easy to get people to be very earnest when you give them definite work to do; but so often, apart from that, there is no personal spiritual initiative in them which takes this attitude: Well, it may be that God has something on hand! I do not know, but I am going to use this time for Him so that I shall be ready if He should call. If we were but to take that attitude - to recognize that in any case we are bound up with the purpose of God - and if only we applied ourselves with all our hearts, we should find that that purpose was already present! There is something relative to our present position which is tremendously related to God's purpose; and were we to take that line - that attitude - we should derive strength from that definiteness of objective.

Where there is no vision, the people go to pieces. That is but another way of saying that if we lose - or fail to have - a sense of purpose we lose strength.

Nothing destroys strength more than the loss of a sense of purpose. Nothing demoralizes more than the loss of a sense of definiteness of purpose. If the enemy can come in and make us feel that, after all, we have been mistaken in our calling, in our lives, in our work; that when we thought that God had something for us it was not really the case - it is all a mistake and He has no such thoughts - then the enemy has destroyed us. We are weak; we are impotent; we are demoralized; we are unable to stand up to anything. That is a thing which we have to avoid. We are called according to His purpose.

Let us watch against that pernicious habit of postponing to a "tomorrow" which never comes. Oh, it is coming! - but it does not come; and our minds are ever fixed upon a calling that is future: Perhaps next week! Perhaps a month ahead! Perhaps two months! Perhaps next year! We must be careful. The Devil wastes our lives. Today is the day in which to know the Lord as much as we can, and today's increase in our knowledge of the Lord in its measure is our equipment for a larger ministry tomorrow.

The Lord Jesus moved day by day with such definiteness because He was aware that there was a great purpose bound up with His life, and no day was wasted. "I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day.... " "I work today and tomorrow, and the third day I am perfected." His law of life was day by day to its measure... and every day as a day bound up with the great purpose of God. There is strength in such an attitude.

With regard to our union with Christ risen, we have much to assure us of a purpose... and that we are bound up with it. Oh, if the Lord would bring us to the place where we realize that we are not here just to live our life in a general sense as Christians and then go to be with the Lord in glory, but that there is tremendous purpose bound up with it. There is a mystery in the purpose. We cannot always understand how the Lord achieves His purpose, but somehow He does so in these lives of ours. That is the fact of purpose.

God's resource is according to the purpose to which He has called us. We shall not receive more than that. If we stretch ourselves beyond our measure, the vital force will not come through. If we try to step into something for which God has never chosen us, we shall lack in resource. If we try to take on something more than the apportioned gift that is particularly ours, it will be disastrous. It is God who has appointed, adjusted, and arranged the Body. We can never take it upon ourselves to say what work we shall do for the Lord.

It is a most disastrous thing when people decide for themselves how they are going to work for the Lord and what kind of work they will do. It is a terrible thing for a man to try to fulfil a teaching ministry when God has appointed him to be an evangelist; it is a disastrous thing (We use that by way of illustration). God has sovereignly decided what our work shall be - what our gift is to the Church - and we have to function in that position and keep there... and not stretch ourselves beyond our measure. If we do, the power will not follow. Many take up more than the Lord intended them to, and they break down.

To express it in the other way: If the Lord has called us to a work, then His resources are available right up to the fullness of that calling. The supply is there according to the gift - the grace according to the gift - the vital force according to the vital function. It is all there. Blessed be God, that is true. If the Lord calls, then His resources are available for that calling... right up to the hilt. But we must be careful that we do not of ourselves manufacture the calling or the appointing.

That is where our union with the risen Lord is of such account. We are to be governed by Life through union with the risen Lord. Our point is that these resources - these heavenly resources - are related to a Divine purpose. The resources will be forthcoming as we enter into the purpose, keep within our measure, and draw upon them. They are there for the purpose of God. There is strength to be derived from the resources for the purpose, and there is strength to be derived from the fact of the purpose itself.

"By My Spirit"

Reading: Zechariah 4

The golden lampstand which Zechariah saw was the symbol of the divine testimony, the out-shining of the glory of God. Lying behind all God's activities with men, the very reason for man's creation, is His desire to display His glory. The human race, as a whole, failed to realise this grand design, but the testimony was taken up by individual witnesses, like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and others. In a very real sense the testimony of the glory of God rested on their shoulders; they carried the enormous responsibility of being here on the earth where the enemy had almost entirely succeeded in marring or veiling that glory. These lonely figures were the men who stood for the preservation of that testimony to God's glory. Then the testimony passed from individuals to a nation, when Israel was brought into being to be a corporate vessel of the divine testimony, a people in whom the glory of God could be displayed. Ultimately Israel failed, so the testimony was transferred and passed on to the Church, consisting of Israelites to whom Gentiles were later added. The glory of God certainly blazed up anew in the Church at the beginning. In the course of time, speaking generally, the Church has also failed, and it is not without significance that one of the seven churches of Asia was threatened with an entire removal of its lampstand. The article, however beautiful in itself, has no significance by its mere form or profession, but only as the light of God blazes out from it. This is what God is always seeking, the display of His glory in and through His people.

The great concern and business of the Church is to be a testimony to God's glory. The one plumb-line which measured Jerusalem was that of the glory of God in the midst (Zechariah 2:8), and this measurement is what matters for us today. The final judgment will be based on the degree of glory found in our lives. Nothing else will be of lasting importance. Those who have lived most of their lives already and perhaps been active for God, still do well to face this challenge concerning God's glory, and those who are only just beginning should know the real standard for all Christian living. We may well wonder how it can be. Zechariah had the same problem in his day, and this vision gave him - and us - the answer: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts".

GLORY IN THE FACE OF JESUS CHRIST

The only true Witness is the Lord Jesus Christ. Through all those early individual witnesses, through Israel, and through the Church, all is gathered up into one glorious witness, the Lord Jesus. All who went before Him, pointed on to Him; all those who followed (if there was any true testimony to God's glory in their experiences) took their character from Him; the glory of God is to be found in the face of Jesus Christ. It is there, of course, by the Spirit. The testimony of God was taken up at Jordan, where the Spirit of God came upon Jesus, who was immediately challenged by Satan's offering Him the kingdoms of this world and their glory in exchange for the glory of God. It always happens in this way: man is offered this world's glory in exchange for the glory of God. But by that same Spirit of anointing which had come upon Christ at Jordan He met the challenge, and He never swerved from the straight path of seeking only the Father's glory.

It was often a trial, a fiery trial for Him, but the Spirit sustained Him and kept the testimony untarnished. Later Peter interpreted the fiery trial of fellow disciples as being connected with this same Spirit's work of glorifying God, "The Spirit of glory... resteth upon you" (1 Peter 4:14). How can it be that in suffering and adversity the Spirit of glory, not of grace only but of glory, rests upon us? It can only be because the same Spirit who came upon the Lord Jesus to enable Him at great personal cost to glorify God, has now come to our lives for this express purpose of establishing and maintaining the testimony. Wherever you find the Holy Spirit coming, whether in symbol or in reality, you will find that the immediate outcome is always the glory of God. So it was that the tabernacle was filled with God's glory. The temple, also, was filled with this glory. At Pentecost the Spirit came in fullness to the Church, and the result was glory. That day was a wonderful day of glory for the men who had such a living experience of God being glorified in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, and the days following were equally wonderful as every new touch of God's Spirit upon them brought fresh evidence of God's glory.

Although we accept the fact of Christ's eternal sonship, we are told that as Son of man He was enabled to glorify the Father by means of the anointing Spirit. From the beginning of His public testimony to its completion when He offered Himself through the eternal Spirit, He carried through triumphantly His Spirit-given testimony to the glory of God. As representative Man, He lived and suffered for the one purpose of glorifying God, and so perfectly fulfilled this task that in Him the testimony to the glory of God has been secured forever. So, then, our fears and sense of weakness must not cripple us, for He has sent His Spirit into our lives so that in us, too, the testimony might be maintained and the glory seen. We can claim the promise, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit".

This also gives us the answer to the interrogation, "Who hath despised the day of small things?" (Zechariah 4:10). Out of the large numbers who went into exile, just forty-two thousand odd were ready to pay the price of letting go the comforts and security of life in Babylon to return to the land where God's testimony could be established. They were small in number, weak in themselves, despised by their neighbours, and they returned to a land which was desolate, impoverished and afflicted, so that it was indeed a 'day of small things'. But they were not to be despised, for God was backing them up as they truly sought His glory. It is no small thing to be involved in the testimony of God's glory. We should not make a virtue of smallness, as though there were something important about being despised by others, but at the same time we shall find that whenever God has called people to display His glory, He has chosen those who have no glory in themselves.

God has always been obliged to strip His instruments of their own glory. A Moses, full of Egypt's sufficiency, must go for forty years to the backside of the desert to be emptied out and made to confess his complete inadequacy before he can become an instrument for the display of the glory of God. There were times when some of the Israelites did try to despise this now humble Moses, and he made no attempt to stand up for himself, but God soon made it manifest to all concerned how wrong it was to despise him. The glory of God appeared at the gate of the tabernacle and took up the challenge. Sometimes it takes the Lord years to get us sufficiently emptied, weak and small, so that we can bear His glory in our lives, a fact which may well explain some of His dealings with us. When He has got us small enough and empty enough, then there is a chance for the working of His Spirit in glory.

GLORY IN THE HEART

The testimony to the glory of God must of necessity be a heart matter. Ezra tells us that when Cyrus made his decree that the house of God should be re-built in Jerusalem and every facility be granted to those who would return to do the building, he did not make it a command that all Jews should go back. Had he done so, they would all have been compelled to return, and such compulsion would have given little prospect of glory for God. The decree was really an appeal for volunteers, "Who is there among you of all his people? His God be with him, and let him go..." (Ezra 1:3). Like the original work of the tabernacle, it was entrusted to those who were of a willing heart, for God's testimony will always be a heart matter. Those who have personal interests in view are entirely out of keeping with the objective of God's kingdom and glory. So it was that only a comparative few returned to the land when the opportunity arose, the great majority having settled in and largely become a part of the life in Babylon where all the glory was for man. Their interests and future was so tied up with that realm that it would have involved a tremendous upheaval to extricate themselves and return to a land of poor and unpopular people with only God as their security and hope for the future. It was because so many were not willing to pay the price that for those who returned it was a day of small things. Nevertheless it was not to be despised - far from it.

The Lord Jesus Himself always stressed this heart aspect of discipleship, pointing out that without the denying of self and the daily taking up of the cross, the kingdom could never be fully possessed. The end which God has in view is something much more than mere personal blessing. He is looking for those who will share with His King the responsibility for the glory of His kingdom. Such a calling will find us out if we have personal interests, for it demands hearts which are consumed with jealousy for the glory of the Lord. The Holy Spirit will always support such an attitude, for He Himself burns with the same intense jealousy. This has nothing to do with a craving for special teaching or mere negative dissatisfaction with things as they are, but signifies a real heart hunger for more of God's glory. I am not referring to the people who are eternally disgruntled and full of criticism, those who will never be contented anywhere at all; but I wish to concentrate on the believers whose hearts are really groaning in travail for the full will of God. Such people sense that there are divine purposes which are not being realised, and they are on full stretch for a testimony of greater glory for God. It was a similar concern which stirred men's hearts to obey the decree of Cyrus. The Jews who remained in Babylon were not without God's blessing, but the remnant were full of concern not for themselves but for greater glory for the name of the Lord, and this made them ready to rise up and leave everything, if only that could be realised. To them - and to us if we are their spiritual counterpart - the promise is most reassuring, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit". We cannot pay the price, nor go through with all that is involved, in our own strength. We do not have to. The Holy Spirit is ready to take full responsibility for the glory of God, both in our own lives and also in the testimony of God through us.

GLORY IN THE CHURCH

The message of Zechariah's vision is that the testimony of God, which is the glory of God, can only be established, confirmed and perfected by the Holy Spirit. The testimony of God is not a teaching, a system of truth, but an experience in life. We must be very clear about this, for we may have a great grasp of doctrine, knowing all the explanations of divine things, and yet miss the essential, which is spiritual glory. It may be true that divine glory will require sound teaching and correct order, yet these in themselves may constitute a dry technique, a mere framework, an empty shell. It is true that the tabernacle was constituted and constructed according to God's own commandments, even down to the last pin, but it did not and could not function until the glory of God came into it. Again, the temple's plans and arrangements were given by God in a detailed pattern, yet it stood empty and valueless until the glory of God filled it. The testimony is not technique; it is glory. What a sad thing it is when would-be upholders of God's testimony are legalistically and meticulously pre-occupied with people's procedure, and even their dress and appearance, carrying heavy burdens themselves and imposing those burdens on others, when what God wanted was just a chance to display His glory.

It is possible, of course, to argue that just as the Old Testament insisted on correct form before the glory came, so in New Testament days the coming of glory will be dependent on careful insistence on right doctrine in the strictest correctness as well as on a perfect form of procedure, but surely Pentecost was the other way round, so far as men here on earth were concerned. In heaven, it is true, everything was perfectly according to God in Christ, and that was how the glory came down to the Church here on earth; but so far as the disciples were concerned, the doctrine and the procedure followed. The Church began with the glorious fullness of the Holy Spirit. Because of Christ's exaltation the glory was available, the anointing Spirit was released. The Church's experience was that it was the dynamic which came first, so that it was after they had the glory that they began to know what they should teach and how they should act. We must have it this way. It must be 'by My Spirit'. We can do nothing about the testimony until God acts. I cannot help to glorify God; you cannot help either; nothing that we can prescribe or provide can do it. The most perfect order will not bring glory. The most correct teaching will not ensure it. It does not come by our abilities, our understanding, our personality or drive, for nothing from man can produce this glory - it is only by God's Spirit.

The glory is itself a testimony. If we are bringing in the glory, people will want to know how they can get it. What is the use of answering them with the 'Thou shalts' and the 'Thou shalt nots' of legalistic teaching when they find no glow, no radiance, no power, but only an empty shell? The plumb-line which will show up their deficiencies is not that of Christian ideas or religious practices but the testimony of the glory of God in Christ. We begin with the glory; the whole emphasis is as positive as can be - glory by the Holy Spirit. The only negatives in this verse are connected with the futility of human power and ability.

As we have said, the testimony of God here on earth is to be found in the Church. This is variously described as God's house, God's temple and Christ's body, but in each case the essential factor is the indwelling Spirit. This is really what is meant by the phrase, 'the glory of God', namely the reality of His presence. The vessel of Testimony has as its sole object the making immediate and actual of the presence of God and fellowship with Him. Of course God is everywhere, and can be met anywhere, even in the most isolated and remote spot a man can encounter God. The Scriptures indicate, however, that God has a wish for something more immediate than His universal presence. They speak of God dwelling with men; making His habitation among them; and then they describe the final triumph in the words, "The tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them" (Revelation 21:3). This is something more immediate and actual than the all-pervading fact of the deity, and so the Church has as its object the presencing of God in a more personal and conscious way for the purposes of His fellowship with man.

This is what the Holy Spirit has come for, to make the presence of Christ a vital reality. The titles of 'house' or 'temple' are mere finger-posts, all pointing towards the person of the Lord Jesus. His very name, Christ, means the Anointed One, and it is by the anointing of the Spirit that God is present. The Lord's name is not only 'Jesus'; it is also 'Emmanuel', God with us. Christ is the true house of God, but since we are 'in Christ', we share in the reality of God's glorious presence.

So it is part of the Spirit's work to build us and hold us together so that there may be a united testimony to the glory of God. God needs something more than a heap of stones - even if they are living stones - if He is to have a properly constructed dwelling. Christ needs more than many members, even though they are living members, since a body can only function if its members are coordinated and integrated in vital relationship. Now although there are many members there is only one anointing; we either share His anointing or we do not know its power. The anointing upon Christ is the same anointing as that which we receive, and in us as well as in Him its one purpose is to express God's glory.

It is the anointing Spirit who makes the Church to be the house of God, and the house is one because Christ is one. We must never be caught in the mistake of imagining that those who hold the truth of the one body are more in the reality of it than those who do not. Those who know nothing of the teaching are as much part of Christ's body (if they are in Him) as those who feel that they have received so much light on the subject. We must beware of the schisms which come because of the things which we know and others do not, for light alone can easily cause divisions. "Is Christ divided?" (1 Corinthians 1:13). That was a challenge made to the church whose members were so ready to boast of their knowledge and so partisan in their attitude to various spiritual teachers. These were the very people whom the apostle described as being a temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16), and also warned very solemnly against destroying that temple. How is the temple destroyed? It is by trying to divide Christ, by making parties and groups among the Lord's people, often by wrongly imagining that they are superior to other Christians because of the teaching they have received or the teacher whom they follow. This is an offense to the Holy Spirit, and a sure way of thwarting God's desire to show forth His glory. The Lord Jesus has so identified Himself in the Spirit with all who are His own people, that what is true of Him is also true of them, and what is done to them is really done to Him. So it is that practical love towards any of His members opens the way for His Spirit's working and, conversely, carelessness, indifference or antagonism towards other members of Christ is a sure way of quenching the Holy Spirit. It may be that this is the explanation of there being so much less glory among God's people than there ought to be. The moment we grieve the Spirit, we begin to dim the glory. It is in their life together that God's people form the golden lampstand into which He will pour the golden oil through His own golden pipes. Let us not accept any less objective than God's glory when we seek His fullness, for the Holy Spirit's presence among us is specifically promised for the express purpose of providing a testimony to that glory. God's negatives ("not by might, nor by power") are but to make way for His glorious positive - "but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts."

From "Toward the Mark" Nov-Dec 1972.

"Called. Chosen. Faithful."

"These shall war against the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings; and they also shall overcome that are with him, called and chosen and faithful." Revelation 17:14.

There is a sense in which these three words represent a graduation from one plane and sphere of probation to another. While we may be "chosen in Him before the foundation of the world," it is also true that in the matter of trusted service and honoured intimacy with God the choice is from those who "make their calling and election sure."

God begins all His dealings with us by a call. "The call of God," to be of any use, must be personally felt and realised by the inner man. The flesh may hear of it; yes, as with those who went with Paul, it may be struck to the ground by the glory of the revelation; the senses may witness some of the outward manifestations accompanying the call; but, as Paul says, "They heard not the voice of Him that spoke to me."

The call of God contains both grace and truth. Truth is the separating instrument. "Get thee out." Grace is the promise. "I will bless and make a blessing." Man often grasps at the grace, the "I will bless" of God, and fails to comply with the demand thereof - "Get thee out." Now this does not only apply in the matter of our salvation in its first steps, but it comes in new revelations and calls at different times in the Christian life. The call of God to some fuller and higher acceptance of truth and ministry; of testimony and witness; of surrender and experience, will undoubtedly come by one or another of the Divine forms of visitation to such as the Lord wishes to lead in grace. This will be timed, definite, and challenging. A messenger may come as out from nowhere; the nowhere of reputation, recognition, worldly fame or honour. He will deliver a message, only staying long enough to leave its essential implications with those who hear. Then, having passed on, things can never be the same for them again.

The "call" has sounded. The crisis has been precipitated. The issue is between the life which has been with its limitations known or unrecognised, and that which God offers. But, as usually is the case, this truth is going to call for a "getting out." Getting out, it may be, of a certain popularity, a comparative easy going. There may be a risking of reputation, a loss of prestige, a disfavour among men, a being labelled "singular," "peculiar," "extreme," "unsafe." It may mean a head-on impact of all the prejudice, tradition, and disfavour of the religious world. It may involve exclusion, ostracism, and suspicion. These are the accompaniments of all calls of God to advance with Him beyond accepted standards. This is the cost of path-finding for souls. This is the price to be paid for the higher serviceableness to God and men.

One who paid this price as few ever will, and who was entrusted with superlative revelation and immortal and universal service said at the end of his life "There is no man like-minded with me." "No man stood with me." Did this mean that he was wrong? Who will ever dare say so?

Note, moreover, that every step ahead with God brings the "called" into more direct and intimate collision with the forces of the enemy, and he is going to give much more attention to such. The only way to "reign in life" is by literally knowing the need for it.

The interrogation is, are we going on with God at any cost? Shall we refuse Him that speaketh? Are we going to respond to every call to advance, mean what it may? Shall we stand our ground when the price seems almost too much? Shall we "hold fast" in the probation of a "call," and having proved ourselves by the grace of God, be chosen for a work which only such can have committed to them?

Or shall we sink back to our easier path, and take a line of less resistance; keep our treasures, fear to lose, keep our place in the pleasantries and safeties of the shallows, and not "launch out into the deep."

The "Well done, good and faithful servant," will be reserved for those who risked something of loss and went beyond the obligation of duty and embarked upon the second mile at the "call" of the growing revelation.

Oh, beloved of God, let us go all the way and whatever it may involve - it will never be in advance of the apostolic suffering - aspire to be of "the called, chosen, and faithful."

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jul-Aug 1926, Vol 4-4

The Coming of the Crowning Day

Peter, Paul, James and John all point us onward to the crowns which God offers to His servants. In each case the thought is related to an ordeal, whether it be a fight, a race or a trust. Three crowns are spoken of - the crown of righteousness, the crown of life and the crown of glory, and it seems that what is meant by crowning is the sealing of a course in triumph and with honour, the crown being a symbol both of victory and of honour.

1. The Crown of Righteousness

Righteousness is really a matter of God having His rights, that He shall be all in all, everything being centred in Him and given to Him. Unrighteousness is a disposition that we shall be the centre, and everything given to us, which is, in fact, satanic. Sin is the dethroning of God from His true place: righteousness is the bringing of God back into His place. That is what the cross has done.

Paul was a great champion of the righteousness which is established by the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and for that he fought a good fight. So far as we are concerned there is a challenge as to how far we will let go of our personal interests so that God should have His place. This is the battleground. It is a very real battle. So far as Paul was concerned he affirmed: "for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse...", the issue being that he might be found in Christ, not having a righteousness of his own, but that which comes through faith in Christ. It has always been that by means of the people who have but one interest, namely that the Lord should have His rightful place, that the kingdom of Satan has been overthrown. That is righteousness and that is the battleground. The apostle says that there is a crown of righteousness at the end, awaiting those who have been willing to pour out their lives so that the rights of God might be secured for Him by the cross of the Lord Jesus.

2. The Crown of Life

This crown is also placed in the setting of difficulty, suffering and adversity. It is for the man who endures temptation (James 1:12). Whenever we triumph on the battlefield for the rights of God, there is a new release of His life. It is the objective of the enemy always to seek to quench that life. The Word tells us that we are all in the battle for life. Satan at the beginning schemed and worked in order that he should capture the race for himself and defeat God's ends. Whenever he has succeeded it has been by hindering men from having divine life; a life which is not only continuity of existence but a quality of holy life.

Satan is now out to quench you. As the Lord's child, the question arises as to just how much you will lay hold on the Lord's life and how much in faith you will resist the working of spiritual death. You get up in the morning wondering what is the matter with you. For no apparent reason you feel depressed, "dead". What are you going to do about it? Will you yield to it? Or will you put up a real fight in prayer? You will find that this is something more than just a passing bad feeling; you are in the battle for life.

It is the man who is approved who will receive the crown of life. How are you going to be approved? You have never seen a scholar approved who threw aside his test paper and said: "I can never do anything like that! It is no use trying!" or even one who said: "I cannot go on any more. I will give it up!" No. "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life" (Revelation 2:10). Is it a battle? Well, do not give in. Is it a race? Do not drop out. Is it a trust? Do not surrender your trust. Go right through with it, and you will receive a crown of life.

3. The Crown of Glory

"When the chief Shepherd shall be manifested, ye shall receive the crown of glory" (1 Peter 5:4). Sometimes you can almost see that in people here and now. They have such an utterance of devotion to the Lord and such a complete selflessness of life that they carry around with them a radiance of God's glory. Put it the other way round and you will certainly agree that in people who are always occupied with themselves and taken up with their own troubles and difficulties, there seems to be a constant shadow. Such people bring nothing of brightness and glory with them. Glory is really the nature of righteousness and life manifesting itself.

It is very significant to notice the setting of Peter's words. He has just been talking to the under-shepherds, and telling them to feed the flock and to do it not for filthy lucre or the praise of men, but disinterestedly, denying themselves in the interests of the Lord and His people. It may be costly so to serve the Lord, Peter says, but if you do it with that spirit then at the end there will be a crown of glory for you from the chief Shepherd who is Himself crowned with glory.

So there is righteousness - God having His place in all things. And there is life - victory in His name with His own eternal life regnant in us. And finally there is glory - the life of the Lord manifesting itself in fullness in a glorious outbreaking of triumph over sin and death. These three crowns, these three seals, these three marks that we have triumphed, these are what the Lord has set His heart upon to give to us who are redeemed by the blood of Christ and indwelt by His Spirit. May our hearts also be set on obtaining them so that He may find satisfaction in us, through grace.

Let us make no mistake, though, that these will not come easily to us. They are the fruits of battle, of fierce battle and very often of inward battle. I sometimes think that it might be easier if our foes were more outward and the battle objective, easily discernible. It may be that in some cases believers are cast into prison and tried for the sake of the Lord's name, but in any case we are all put into positions where the responsibility for the testimony of Jesus are worked out in us, and the principle of faithfulness unto death operates in our case. When the thing to be overcome is inside, when it is I myself who must be slain, then it may be ever harder. This, then, is the moment to look away to Christ on the throne and to know that He has provided a victory which we can daily enjoy.

There is a serious business on hand for the Church. It is nothing less than the fulfilment of her vocation, the accomplishment of her course and the preserving intact of her trust. We are called to stand for the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ in a hostile world. What a privilege to be called to stand for those sovereign rights, and then what a wonderful prospect to be offered crowns for so doing. We want Christ to have all the crowns. He wants to share crowns with us. He has been "crowned with glory and honour"; He calls us to be partners together with Him at the coming of His Crowning Day.

Complementary, Not Contradictory

"The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet" (Acts 2:34-35).

"Jesus standing on the right hand of God..." "The Son of man standing on the right hand of God" (Acts 7:55-56).

"If Christ is in you"; "...his Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Romans 8:10,11).

It is a matter that should be clearly understood by all Christians that to confuse the truths of God is very often to nullify their value in the life of a believer, and worse than that, to bring about a condition which is a positive contradiction of what is fundamental to true Christianity. With great seriousness then we seek to discriminate between the different essential aspects of the truth, and the above passages represent one of the instances of immense importance. Although there are three quotations given, there are only two really separate matters signified. The first two are but two sides of one thing, but while those two and the third constitute a full Christian life, and are essential to such spiritual fullness, they are two distinctly different things which must on no account be allowed to overlap.

Christ in Heaven: (a) 'Sitting'

In the first two Christ is represented as in heaven at God's right hand, but in two postures, 'sitting' and 'standing'. There is no contradiction here. We must remember that we are in the presence of language which is figurative. In His "sitting" - "made to sit" (Ephesians 1:20): "Sit thou" (Acts 2:34) - there is the Divine attestation that His work was complete and perfect, and that as Son of Man He had won and inherited the place of absolute honour and glory. "We see Jesus... crowned with glory and honour" (Hebrews 2:9). The right hand is first the place of honour. It is of great significance that the new dispensation commencing with Pentecost begins with Christ sitting at God's right hand. All begins with a work completed! The seventh day the day of rest - becomes the first day. The colours of the rainbow end where they began. It is the law of the octave, the eighth is as the first and marks a new beginning. Our Christian life begins at the point where the work is already completed in our Representative Son of Man. There is nothing to add to it, either in need or possibility. Immediately we try to contribute something to it we in effect, for ourselves, nullify it all, and God stands back. We shall come back to that again presently.

Christ in Heaven: (b) 'Standing'

With regard to the second posture of Christ as in heaven - "standing on the right hand of God" - this is seen when the Church is in the conflict, or when things are needing to be done for her, not in the sense of her justification, but for her defence and support in adversity. Thank God, there is One in the glory standing up for us, and He will see to it that the enemy overreaches himself, as in Stephen's case. Much could be said about that, but it is not our subject just now.

We pass straight to the third position of Christ:

"Christ in You"

Any mental difficulty as to two so widely separated locations of Christ at the same time is got over by the further words "By his Spirit that dwelleth in you". Christ and the Holy Spirit are one.

Here we cross over to another phase of things entirely, and the only link between the two is that the second is the outworking of the first.

"Christ in you" is unto our being "conformed to the image of his (God's) Son" (Romans 8:29). It is to work in us that which has been perfected by Him. It is the whole realm of our being made Christ-like; having all the faculties and features of Christ, which are resident in the new life received at new birth, brought to maturity. Every spiritual and Christly virtue has to be brought to full growth; love, meekness, goodness, gentleness, intelligence, etc.; so that we are not just theoretical and doctrinaire Christians, but real ones, spiritually responsible and accountable, with the root of the matter within. This, however, necessitates much discipline; what is called 'chastening'. This discipline, which employs many forms of adversity and trial, has the effect of bringing to light what we really are in ourselves, and it is an ugly picture. Our own features do not improve as we go on. We know ever more what poor, wretched, and deplorable men we are, and - but for the grace of God - hopeless. But something is being done deep down which will show itself in due time to the glory of God.

Confusion Leads to Paralysis

But here is the point of our peril. Let no child of God whose heart is toward the Lord, who has not deliberately and wilfully and knowingly resisted the Holy Ghost, ever for a single moment confuse 'chastening' and its accompaniments of self-discovery with judgment. You do this at the peril of the joy of your salvation. If a child of God who loves the Lord and wants nothing more than to be well-pleasing unto Him should think that he is under the judgment and condemnation of God because he is finding out how evil his own heart is, that thought carries with it the suggestion that Christ did not die for our sins; that the wrath of God was not exhausted on Him and by Him when He was made sin for us. It goes back behind a completed work and Christ's sitting at God's right hand, and contradicts and denies the very bed-rock of our salvation - justification by faith. Satan is again given the place of power so far as such an one is concerned by such a thought. No, a thousand times No! Although I may discover unimagined depths of iniquity in my own heart, if I have put faith in Jesus Christ as the bearer away of my sin and myself, His perfections are placed to my account and God sees me in Him. This will never, never become to me an occasion for living complacently on the ground of what I am in myself. Without working through all the reasons for and the nature of Christian growth, with all the values in service which issue from it, let me keep on this emphasis. There are so many dear children of God who have so confused the two things mentioned as to be in an altogether negative condition. They are paralysed by their sense of sinfulness. They have seen the need for a subjective application of the Cross of Christ, and have recognized that when Christ died, they died in Him; but the realization that the work is not yet completed in them has resulted in their living in a world of death, and knowing little or nothing of the fact which cannot really be separated from union in death with Christ, that is, union in resurrection and exaltation. If such an one should read this, may I say to you that if you are unhappy, worried, depressed, or negative, uncertain, lacking in absolute assurance, and therefore limited in your usefulness to the Lord, you have entirely misunderstood and misapprehended the truth of union with Christ. You are really a contradiction to what you claim to believe. It would be better that you put back your subjective truth until you have got fully and firmly established in the glorious facts of what Christ sitting at God's right hand really means for you. Nevertheless, it is possible to be moving triumphantly and strongly in the path of a deep inward work of the Spirit, while knowing utter dependence and weakness.

Let me appeal to you again that you do not let these two things become confused. If you come upon fresh realizations of your own worthlessness, say, Yes, that belongs to the realm of God's work in me, and He will deal with that, but it makes no difference whatever to my acceptance in the Beloved so long as I do not condone my wrong, excuse it, and accept it. Remember, dear friend, that God demands the first ground, the ground of our settled faith in the finished and perfected work of Christ, in order to make any beginning inside of us. It would be fatal for Him to touch the inside had He not got that objective faith. We must be careful that we do not upset God's order and bring ourselves on to false ground. This can only result in destroyed testimony and much gratification to Satan at the Lord's expense in us.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jul-Aug 1965, Vol 43-4

David's Mighty Men

"And it came to pass after this, that there was again a battle with the Philistines at Gob: then Sibbechai the Hushathite slew Saph, which was of the sons of the giant. And there was again a battle in Gob with the Philistines, where Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great stature, that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number; and he also was born to the giant. And when he defied Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimeah the brother of David slew him. These four were born to the giant in Gath, and fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants" (2 Sam. 21:18-22).

This is a part of the recounting of the deeds of David's mighty men. What I want you to note is that there were a number of giants - apparently of the family of the original giant, Goliath - who were dealt with by these men of David; and alongside of that, in order to get us into our right and proper and up-to-date position, I recall to your minds the familiar words of Ephesians 6:10-12. "Finally, be strong in the Lord... Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities,... against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies". It is upon the relationship of these giants to the original giant, Goliath, that I want you to focus your attention.

A Corporate Answer To The Enemy's Challenge

You know that David himself first came into view in relation to the throne in connection with this original (and what we might call, inclusive) giant. It was in his victorious combat with Goliath that David was first taken account of publicly, and this marked his first step toward the throne of Israel, in relation to which he had been anointed. Now we have moved on some considerable distance, and the security of that throne is seen to be the issue at the time of these mighty deeds. When these mighty men come into view, they, as in the case of David, are seen in relation to the throne and to him who is destined to occupy it. But the movement is one from the personal to the corporate. In David's case, it was personal. He fought a lone battle with Goliath; he was a lone figure on that field. When the giant challenged, all the people fled, but David moved out alone to accept that challenge and to answer it. But here, in the portion of the record with which we are now dealing, everything is corporate; but it is the same issue. It is all gathered up into a company. The one giant, the inclusive giant, has been fully dealt with and beheaded, but he has left some of his offspring, and they are all giants; and now the giant in corporate expression is being met by the corporate expression of the throne. That sets us very clearly in 'Ephesians'. We know that in the beginning of 'Ephesians' it is declared that the Lord Jesus has been raised up and set far above all rule and authority; the personal and the individual is an accomplished thing. But at the end of 'Ephesians' the Church comes into view in exactly the same connection, the issue of the throne as challenged by giants - principalities, authorities, world rulers, the great ones in the spiritual realm - as well as by the hosts of the lesser wicked spirits gathered around. I think that is perfectly clear. So that it is this company called David's mighty men who are brought in to meet the residue of the giant, to take up the same great issue of the throne and of him who is to occupy it. These giants are to be dealt with by the company as the giant was dealt with by the individual.

The Embodiment Of A Spirit

David's mighty men are not so much a class of people as they are the embodiment of a spirit. They express a spiritual state, a spiritual life. In Ephesians, it is the Spirit. "Be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might"; and it is so clearly, in that letter, by the Spirit that we are strengthened with might into the inward man. Now there are two things to be noted about these mighty men.

Committal In Love To A Person

Firstly, they are committed to David. You cannot fail to see how they loved him, the devotion of these men to David himself. We shall come upon that again before we are through, but you will recall that some of their exploits were especially related to some breathed desire of his heart. It was to himself that they were devoted, and that was quite a discriminating feature. You notice that when the giant Goliath shouted, the people fled (1 Sam. 17:24). Why? Because they were mainly there for the benefits that they could get for themselves. It was a matter of how things affected them. That is the thing that is found in Israel's life so continually - when things were not favourable to their interests, then they were anywhere but in the right place and condition. They were all over the place because personal interests were so much in the ascendant. But these men were not at all concerned about their personal interests and how things affected them. It was David alone who mattered to them; and so when others who had lesser interests would flee because of the difficulty, because of the greatness of the adverse conditions, these men saw the adversity as an opportunity for proving their love for their lord. They were committed to him. It was, in principle, love for the Lord.

Committal To God's King

And then, of course, they were committed to his throne. Read carefully the things that are said about them, and you will find throughout that their loyalty was not just because of David as a person, but because they knew God's place for that person, because they had come to see that he was the man chosen of God to occupy the throne. The throne was for them the throne of the one of God's choice. They had to come to that through discipline, and to arrive at the point where Saul no longer held the ground for them. They saw that David was God's man for the throne. They were committed therefore to him on the double ground of Divine destiny and of personal devotion. I am sure that simple truth needs no emphasis; here. We occupy ourselves much with the proclamation of those two things - that the Lord Jesus in Himself personally has won our hearts' allegiance, and also that we have come to see that He is the One Whom God has chosen for the place of supreme authority throughout this universe unto the ages of the ages; and we are committed - to Christianity, or to the Lord - not for merely personal reasons. If we were, when a giant loomed up we should very quickly be off the scene; the test, you see, is that. The Lord is really working very hard with us to try and woo us from our personal interests in Christianity and in our relationship with Him, because when things which touch us here on this earth and in our personal lives are threatened, we very often lose faith. We go down, we scatter spiritually, in the presence of an uprising threat to our interests here, even though we are Christians related to the Lord. We have to brush aside the consideration of how it affects us, and take a position in the interests of the Lord. It is a very testing and very important thing. We must say, 'It does not matter how it affects me, but how is the Lord going to suffer over this? What does the Lord stand to lose if I flee, or if this thing gains the ascendancy? How is it going to affect my Lord and to touch the great fact of His throne?' So these mighty men of David are distinguished from the general company of those who very largely are Christians for the sake of the blessings of Christianity and who are driven from the field by the enemy because their blessings are threatened. These mighty men speak of those who have got beyond that point of personal consideration and have seen the interests of Christ and the purposes of God centered in Him for universal dominion.

Corporate Responsibility For Throne Interests

There was a sense - and this gets very near to the heart of it - in which David had to be saved and succoured by these men. You notice in verses 16 and 17, one of these giants, in a set of new armour, marked out David and made him his object of destruction, and David was involved in very great peril. The man who had slain the original giant was now in peril from one of that giant's offspring, and one of the mighty men came to David's rescue and succoured him and slew the giant. Then David's men said to him, 'We cannot afford to lose you; you keep back and let us deal with this; we will come between you and this sort of thing.' You will say it is a wrong interpretation to put the Lord Jesus in David's place there - 'Lord Jesus, You keep out of this, we are going to look after You!' Yet there is a sense in which that is right where the Church is concerned; the very interests and honour and glory and throne of the Lord Jesus are bound up with the Church. The matter is no longer His alone, and there is a sense in which He stands to lose if the Church fails - in which God would say about His Son, 'This is not the time for you to come out personally; you have done that; this is the time for the Church to take up your interests.' David's life, David's throne, were put into the hands of these men, and they saw their responsibility, and how great it was, and what David stood to lose if they did not take definite action about it. There must be a company of the Lord's people who rise to that level, who see that the tremendous significance of the throne of the Lord Jesus is in their hands. In one way it sounds a presumptuous thing to say, but you see what I mean. If we do not take responsibility over this matter of these evil forces in their assailing, if we are not strong in the Lord and do not move out against the principalities and powers, it is not only ourselves who are going to lose, but our Lord also. His throne is going to be affected. He has now, in a sense, made us responsible for the final issue, which is not personal but collective and corporate. So there must be a people (actual numbers are mentioned in David's case but we must not take that literally: they represent a specific inner company) who have seen the mighty issues of what is presented in the Letter to the Ephesians - those eternal counsels of God concerning Jesus Christ, and the place of the Church in those counsels as instrumental for their full realization - and have got through all personal interest in the matter of blessings, and are now committed to their Lord and to God's intention concerning Him, and realize that the responsibility is with them. That is what I feel is the Lord's word to us at this time - not to be just 'ordinary' Christians, but to realize that God must have a company of His Own, in the midst of the general rank and file, who answer to David's mighty men, to take up the ultimate issues of Christ's Lordship on His behalf. The Lord is involved in these battles into which we are precipitated, and they are not just our battles, they are the battles of the Lord.   There are situations and propositions which present themselves which are gigantic; they are paralysing if you can be paralysed. When Goliath started to shout, the people were literally paralysed - if that is in keeping with being able to run away! But all their strength went in the presence of this man's showing of himself. You can be petrified by some of the situations that the enemy brings about as tests of faith. And then what is it going to be? Well, one deciding factor will be whether we consider ourselves or our Lord; whether at once we begin to feel sorry for ourselves, get down on to our own ground - which is just what the enemy wants to bring about - or whether we say, 'Well, the Lord's name and honour are involved in this; the real issue here is the Lordship, the Sovereignty, the Ascendancy of the Lord' - and, as they did, meet the situation on that ground. They did not always wait for these enemies to come and start the thing. When the enemies loomed up before them, these men took the initiative. I am the last to suggest that we should be careless and frivolous over attacking spiritual forces. We can do that to our undoing; and I also remind you that this is a thing which it is very dangerous to do individually. This is the business for the Church - the corporate assault upon situations which loom up and which could literally paralyse and put out of action. The Lord must have people like this in whom there is the initiative of His Lordship.

Suffering For The Body's Sake

There must be some to meet the situation - may I use the word? - in a vicarious way. There are all the others, there is all Israel; but so many cannot stand up, they have not got the spiritual position, the spiritual measure; they are in spiritual weakness, and for them anything in the way of severe or extra trial or difficulty finds them at once paralysed and helpless. Is the enemy going to create a universal situation like that? No, for the sake of the Church there must be those who take this position of the mighty men vicariously for the sake of others, the strong to bear the burdens of the weak, to take the initiative on behalf of the Church for the Church's sake. I am sure that amongst the mighty men of the Lord Jesus the Apostle Paul has "attained unto the first three," and he was one who said "for His body's sake, which is the church" (Col. 1:24). He filled up that which was lacking of the sufferings of Christ for His Body's sake - vicarious suffering, not for sin, which is Christ's alone, but for the Church's victory. You are not unfamiliar with the large place in the New Testament given to the matter of spiritual strength and courage. I think that these stories are written in the Old Testament about David and his mighty men not as nice little picture book stories for the children, but as typifying what God means by courage, spiritual boldness, being strong in the Lord. There they are as great illustrations of these very passages which we have read from Ephesians. The message of the Lord to us is that He needs a company who, having seen what is involved in the spiritual warfare, will graduate out of the position of personal interests and personal blessing, and for the Lord's sake and for His people's sake take up the matter of the warfare with spiritual forces, and break a way through for the Church.

From "A Witness And A Testimony" magazine, July-August, 1949

Deliverance in a Day of Judgment

"And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, when a land sinneth against me by committing a trespass, and I stretch out my hand upon it, and break the staff of the bread thereof, and send famine upon it, and cut off from it man and beast; though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord. If I cause evil beasts to pass through the land, and they ravage it, and it be made desolate, so that no man may pass through because of the beasts; though these three men were in it, as I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, they should deliver neither sons nor daughters; they only should be delivered, but the land should be desolate. Or if I bring a sword upon that land, and say, Sword, go through the land; so that I cut off from it man and beast; though these three men were in it, as I live, saith the Lord, they should deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they only should be delivered themselves. Or if I send a pestilence into that land, and pour out my wrath upon it in blood, to cut off from it man and beast; though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, as I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, they should deliver neither son nor daughter; they should but deliver their own souls by their righteousness." (Ezekiel 14:12-20).

That is a very difficult and hard portion of Scripture; but you must remember that the people of God had gone very, very far away from God's mind and will, in the days when Ezekiel prophesied: so much so that the Lord took the attitude that their state was practically incurable. They had for many centuries had the knowledge of God's will, as it had been proclaimed to them by seers and prophets. They had in their possession the very oracles of God. God had, in numerous, almost countless ways, made it clear that He was for them, that He was ready to show His power and His love to them, and they had steadily set aside His word, turned away from Him, neglected His law, violated all that He had given them of the knowledge of His will; they had persistently hardened their hearts: so that the state had come when they were entirely without a sense of sin, when no appeal to them from God made any difference. His signs, all the things which spoke of Him, were in the land, but they had no respect, they passed on their way, they were almost entirely without any sense of God's requirements in their lives. They had reached the place where a prophet might hold an open-air meeting and proclaim to them God's mind, God's will, God's requirements, and no one would stop to listen: they passed on their way indifferent. The places of meeting, the house of God, were neglected. And so it came to be like this: the Lord made this terrible declaration, that though Noah and Daniel and Job were in the land, it would make no difference, except to themselves. When God is so ignored, repudiated, left out of account, judgment is inevitable.

Of course, for a company of God's people that may have no message, when we leave it there. But there is a message for us. That state of things is not unlike the condition as found in our own country - the unheeding ear, the cold rejecting heart, the increasing difficulty to get men to attend to the things of God. We are moving fast toward such a place, and we can already see the dark clouds of judgment drawing very near; and it is not exaggerating, or saying too strong a thing, to say that, if the men who, in their day, did represent God in a very mighty way, were to be accumulated in our day, it would not make much difference. Here were three men who had mightily counted for God in different ages. In their own days, in different ways, they registered for God in this world, and now the Lord says, 'Though I were to gather them all together, in one day in one place, it would make no difference, people would not take any notice.' That is terrible. Their ear is so heavy and dull, their hearts are so cold and indifferent, that it does not matter what appeal you make.

But let us take this principle in reverse for ourselves. In a day of judgment which must be, which is inevitable - it is coming - who will be delivered? For there are those who will be delivered. "They should deliver... their own souls": that is, they would be delivered. While it says that many will not, it does say, if not in actual words, at least by implication, that there are those who will be delivered. God will be faithful to His faithful ones. Here are three representative men, representative of those who in the day of judgment will be delivered: Noah, Daniel, and Job. Note the order, because that is not the Biblical order. Noah, of course, does come first of the three - but where does Job come? He might have come before Noah or he might have come after; but certainly Daniel stands third: yet he is put second here. It is not a mistake, not an oversight, not a slip. No: as it is here in the inspired Word of God, it is right, it is spiritually right.

I cannot stay with the significance of these three men in any fulness. But I note one thing about them all. Noah, mentioned first, lived in a day when the whole course of human nature had moved away from God, when human nature had become altogether indifferent to God. It was a matter of the race. God looked in the days of Noah and saw that all men had gone astray. It was the course of man's evil nature: and Noah lived in that day and stood against the course of nature, against the way that humanity goes when it is left to itself, leaving God out and getting further and further away from Him. Daniel, coming second here, lived in a day and in a place where the world power was all against God, the day of Babylon, the world system, in the glorifying of man and the excluding and denying of God; and Daniel stood up against that, not only against the course of human nature, but against the whole world system. He stood up against that, and overcame it. Job is mentioned third, and the scene of Job's conflict was still deeper, still more remote. You know the story of Job - it was in the realm of spiritual forces, something more than human nature and this world system. It was in the realm of 'principalities and powers and world-rulers of this darkness'. Job's whole battle was against the devil himself.

And in these three realms these men triumphed. In the realm of evil human nature, Noah triumphed. In the realm of the world's glory in itself and rejection of God, Daniel triumphed - at great cost, but he triumphed. And in the realm of the very devil himself, Job triumphed. A threefold glorious triumph is represented by these men. It makes this statement of Ezekiel a very terrible one - for three men like that to be brought together in one time, and yet for men to take no notice, to be unaffected.

However, these men bring their message to us. We are in this threefold realm. We know the course of nature, sinful nature; we know the conflict with this fallen humanity. But, blessed be God, we know the way of victory there. We know that it is in that very realm of sinful nature that the Apostle cries his great, exultant, triumphant cry - "Wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 7:24,25). That is victory over sin.

The world is a very potent force against God and what is of God. This whole system makes it very difficult for Christians; it is altogether opposed to the living of a godly life. You know it, most of you - you young people know it very well - and you have got a real conflict here in the realm of this world system - God-neglecting, God-rejecting, God-spurning, God-ignoring; you are right up against it. But the same Apostle cries, "Far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Gal. 6:14). Here is victory over the world.

And Job - well, we know something about conflict with the spiritual forces of evil: we know that there is a real drama being fought out there. Job did not know. I think one of the helpful things about Job is that he complained and grumbled so much. I am very glad that he did! Why? Because, in the light of what God said about him later, it shows that God knew that the complaints and grumbles were just the mental perplexities of Job, that they were not true of his spirit. His spirit was stedfast with God, his spirit was true, his heart was really for the Lord. Although he was perplexed and could not understand what was going on or what was the meaning of things, and sometimes felt that God was not doing the right thing by him, and said so, God knew Job better. We do not understand God, and we sometimes have a quarrel with God; but He knows us and knows that we love Him - that we want nothing beside Him. What we want in our hearts is the Lord and only the Lord. This other sort of thing is only our mental state for the time being. The Lord knows better than that. Your grumble is just your inability to understand, but He knows your heart. Job went through in his heart. God was able to say of him - and He never says anything just for the sake of paying compliments - that Job had 'spoken of Him the thing that is right' (Job 42:7). Here is that righteousness which is of faith, that is a triumph over the very power of the enemy.

How much ought to be said on these things! But here is a threefold triumph, in spirit, in heart; over flesh, over sin; over the world and its power; over Satan and his hatred of that and those who belong to God; and there is triumph in Christ. These are the ones who will be preserved by God, who will deliver themselves, who will be saved in the day of judgment. These are the ones who go through.

And, what is more, God must have such people in the earth. Even though others spurn them, do not heed them, pass on their way - even though it be like that, God must have them here as a testimony. He must have such people as that in the earth. He must be able to point to them and say, 'Have you considered my servant Job?' If there should be an enquiring one - 'There you are: there is where you will get help'. He must have us here like that until the end comes; He needs us.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Sep-Oct 1952, Vol 30-5

Divine Strategy in What is Positive

"Fervent in spirit" ("The spiritual glow" - Moffatt) (Romans 12:11).

In the legend of Orpheus there is the incident when Orpheus sailed by the Island of the Siren and the Siren made such enchanting music that Orpheus had to lash his crew to the ship to keep them from rushing ashore and deserting him. Then he hit on another idea. With his lyre he made better music than the Siren and his crew lost all desire to leave the ship. The Siren was despised by comparison and no more trouble arose.

That is Greek legend, but there is an occasion in the Bible when in reality something happened of far greater importance. It is in the life of Hezekiah, the king of Israel (2 Chronicles, chapters 29, 30). Israel had been enticed away from Jehovah by other gods and were deeply involved in the worship of the idols of those false deities. So committed were they that neither appeal, entreaty, warning, nor threat on the part of the Prophets affected them. Things were in a bad state in Israel, but the people would not listen to God's messengers. Hezekiah was a man with a heart truly for the Lord. He decided to hold a feast of the Passover in Jerusalem. He sent an earnest invitation far and wide, and although they of Ephraim, Manasseh and Zebulun laughed the messengers to scorn, a great number responded and went up to the feast. It was such a time of life, joy and Divine blessing that the people voted to keep the feast for a further seven days. When this was concluded the people returned to the cities, towns, villages, and provinces. But as they went they saw the signs of their former spiritual declension, the idols of the false gods. So real was the work of grace in their hearts and their turning unto the Lord that they destroyed with zeal all these relics and swept them away. What all the warnings and entreaties had failed to do, one taste of the real thing accomplished in a short time. All the false was seen for its worthlessness in the light and experience of the real and true.

Many are the efforts, recourses, appeals, enticements, subtleties, attractions, and expense, being used to get people - especially young people - to come to the Lord, or to be more committed to Him than they are. Some respond; many do not. Some who respond turn back. Many who respond, because their response was based largely upon entertainment and pleasant attractions, require to have these incentives repeated and, should the glamour fade, they feel that the world has a better time than Christians do. Is this the only, or the best way?

In our own personal experience, and in our history in the Lord's work, we have known such a joy and satisfaction with the Lord and His life that all other incentives and interests have faded right out. The writer, as a young man, was one of a group of young people who hardly stopped to take a meal after their daily work so that they could get to a meeting, an opportunity for witnessing for the Lord, and Saturday was always looked forward to, not for sports and diversions, but because it brought a concerted action to go where sinners needed to know of their Saviour. Not in attractive and inviting conditions, but often in the slum houses and places of terrible filth and evil. In the Lord's work we have seen large numbers of young people gathered - on public holidays - for several days of intensive and solid conference gatherings, full of joy in the Lord. No other attractions or appeals than Christian fellowship and the ministry of the Word in an atmosphere of spiritual life. Coming from near and far, these hungry and committed numbers have rejoiced together like the Tribes of Israel going up to Jerusalem in olden times, singing the songs of Zion as they came and went.

We are not saying that there is little like that today; that would not be true, but we fear there is much more natural pleasure and worldly attraction than is necessary, or should be. If, in this day of frustrations, dissatisfaction, unrest, and casting off of restraint, people - especially young people - are going to be drawn to the Lord, we feel that the best and most effective way, and the way that will have the most solid results, will be the strategy of the positive; that is, by means of Christians who are so satisfied with the Lord, and to whom the Lord and His things mean so much, that their 'bill' is filled and they spontaneously convey that impression so that both the world and the 'Christian plus' feel that Christ is greater than all. It is not just exuberance; it is the deep waters of spiritual reality and Christly satisfaction.

The answer to the quest which lies behind words often sung:

"The dearest idol I have known,

Whate'er that idol be,

Help me to tear it from Thy throne,

And worship only Thee",

is not, first, in the turning down of idols, but in a taste of the true and real. The idols will go when we see the Lord.

This principle in Hezekiah's Feast, that all other and lesser things (in every connection) cease to be of any concern when that which is wholly of the Lord is seen and tasted, is the way of fullest joy, explains two things: one, why the Lord would provide the means for such experience. It is very important to the Lord's highest interests that there should be that which ministers to spiritual fulness; occasions when His injunction can be obeyed: "Gather my saints together unto me: those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice" (Psalm. 50:5). Such means can be a very great power in the Lord's testimony in this world.

The other thing is that the curtailment, hindrance, discontinuance, or weakening of such means will be a primary object of the enemy of God's testimony. Have you noticed what immediately follows this great celebration, convocation and committal in the time of Hezekiah?

"After these things, and this faithfulness, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came... and encamped against..." (2 Chronicles 32).

The devil is always opposed to anything that results in a testimony to the all-sufficiency of the Lord to His people.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Sep-Oct 1965, Vol 43-5

Enlargement Through Conflict

"Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil days, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints, and for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds; that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak." (Eph. 6:10-20).

I think it is well known to you that the Letter to the Ephesians in the New Testament corresponds to the Book of Joshua in the Old. As to the Book of Joshua, the Lord told His people, before ever they went into the land, that He had given the land to them; that every place that the sole of their foot should rest upon was already theirs by gift; that already the land was their possession, and the enemies were subdued. In Him it was already a concluded matter. Yet when they actually came into the land, they found that they had to fight for every inch of it. There was no contradiction really in that, because they were fighting in something that the Lord had already done. We have often put it this way - they were fighting in a victory rather than for a victory. It was a case of faith's possessing rather than of faith's receiving. Now there, of course, it was the matter of the inheritance and the enlargement of their possessions; and they did not come to possess any part, to extend and spread themselves out over the land, except by meeting a challenge all the way along and overcoming that challenge.

That is exactly the position here with the Church in the heavenlies. The heavenlies in "Ephesians" corresponds to the land in the Book of Joshua - that is, the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. It is the Lord in all the fulness of His ascended life and position, and that fulness is for the Church. It is to be His fulness, but the possession by the Church of any measure of Christ, the possession of any fragment of spiritual fulness and enlargement, comes along the line of spiritual conflict. The Lord left the enemy in the land; even when He said that He had given it to His people and would subdue their enemies under them, He did not go ahead and drive the enemy out. He left them to do that. Although in the Cross the enemy is defeated and everything is secured to the Church, the Lord has left the enemy in order that the Church may come, not to a mechanical or theoretical position of fulness, but to an actual, spiritual position. The enemy therefore is the Lord's instrument of bringing the Church to its place along the line of conflict.

The inheritance, of course, has its two sides in this letter. The Lord has an inheritance in the saints; that is, the Lord's people are His inheritance. There is the other side, where the inheritance of the saints is the Lord Himself; and these two in realization - the Lord getting what He has set His heart upon having, and our coming into that to which the Lord has called us - is a matter of spiritual enlargement day by day by means of spiritual conflict.

The Need For Strength Of Spirit

What does this amount to? In a word, it is a matter of strength of spirit. Our spiritual measure is a matter of how strong we are spiritually. Therefore this section begins with, "Finally, be strong in the Lord (or, from henceforth be made powerful in the Lord) and in the strength of His might"; that is your measure, and spiritual strength is decided in spiritual conflict. If we go down easily under opposition and pressure, soon give up and fade out because things begin to get difficult, that determines just our measure of spiritual strength, our measure of Christ. From one standpoint, you have to measure Christ by His contact with the enemy. Go back to His life on the earth, and see how far the enemy was able to gain advantage, to bring Him down, and you discover that he was not able at all, at any point, in any circumstances. The Lord proved His spiritual measure against the whole force of spiritual opposition. Satan and all his kingdom is matched against the one Man - and the one Man overcomes, casts out the prince of this world, subdues his kingdom and takes his authority. The measure of Christ is seen as over against the enemy; and our spiritual measure is determined in this combat with the enemy. Simply, then, our spiritual measure is a matter of spiritual strength.

That is seen here in these two ways. As the rest of the passage shows, there are many forms in which the enemy comes to break in, to get vantage ground. We cannot here pursue all the things represented by the armour, but each of these parts of the whole armour mentioned points to some form of enemy assault. The helmet suggests a blow at the head, that is, a spiritual assault upon the mind. How far is the mind impregnable to assaults? We know the terrific assaults of the enemy upon our minds, to capture them, to dominate our thinking, our reasoning. Another time he will make a terrific assault upon our hearts - our feelings, emotions, affections, desires. The breastplate suggests this form of spiritual attack. Another time the very vitals, the loins, are assailed, as suggested by the girdle of truth. The enemy will, as we say, 'hit us below the belt' if he can. There is a suggestion here of a form of spiritual assault at a place where we shall be thoroughly wounded if we are not careful, if we have not provision made. So you go through the whole armour in each part, and you find every part signifies some form of spiritual conflict, the point at which the conflict is being concentrated at a given time. Today it will be at one point, tomorrow at another. Am I able to meet the enemy in strength? Can I spiritually meet him in the mind? Can I spiritually meet him in the heart, where all the feelings are centred? That determines what my spiritual measure is. So, to begin with, it is strength in that sense, which is our need.

The Need For Intelligence

But then it is also a matter of intelligence. The two things which mark spiritual degree are strength and intelligence. You find that all the way through the New Testament. It is a matter of understanding as well as of being strong. There is a sense in which we may be strong, but not accomplish very much by our strength because it is not accompanied by intelligence. On the other hand, we may have a sort of intelligence and know all about things, and yet not stand up to them. These two factors must go together. So the word here is "the wiles of the devil." It is not only his fierce onslaught in strength that has to be reckoned with, but also his wiliness. He knows where to attack at a given time, and just when it is the best time to make a particular kind of assault; and very often he works up a situation that is very suitable to his purpose. He will get us moving very much in our minds, thinking, scheming, reasoning, and then he will make a terrific blow to bring us down through our minds. Sometimes he is moving altogether in the realm of our feelings, stirring these up, bringing about situations that touch our hearts very deeply. At that moment it is the emotional life that is the danger point, and then he makes a terrific onslaught upon that. He is very wily, very intelligent, very knowing.

To counter that, we need to have spiritual intelligence to see his intention and to be alive to his tactics. Spiritual intelligence is a matter of spiritual measure. How often someone has gone down under an assault of the enemy, completely knocked out; and someone else comes along and says, 'Did you not see so-and-so - how the enemy has been working up to this, and getting you in the end in a position for which he has been manoeuvering?' They reply, 'If only I had seen that, I should not have given way!' If we have intelligence to meet the wiles, we have spiritual measure. The need is not only of being strong in the sense of digging our heels in and clenching our fists, but of having intelligent strength, A very strong man can be, after all, thoroughly overcome by a little cleverness; beaten, not because of counter-strength, but by a wile.

Christ An Adequate Defence In Every Assault

Paul himself was an outstanding example of strength combined with intelligence. Think of his position when he was writing these very things. "I am an ambassador in chains" (Eph. 6:20). What a contradiction! How absurd! Paul, in that chain, in his imprisonment, had a very great deal of reason to give up, to weaken, to take the hopeless attitude; but in actual fact he was very strong. He might also have despaired of coping with the whole situation which confronted him, not only personally, but in the churches - he could have been completely defeated by the whole complex of the situation. But he is displaying a wonderful wisdom. This armour, as Paul picks it up and transfers it to the spiritual life, indicates a great deal of wisdom on his part. Think it through, piece by piece. For the assault upon the mind - the helmet of salvation. How apt, how suited to the situation it is! The assault upon the heart - what is that? What is it that gets us down more than anything else from the enemy? It is a spirit of accusation, of condemnation, bringing home to our hearts a sense of our own wickedness and unworthiness and unprofitableness, to cause our hearts to sink in despair. Paul so wisely says, 'The remedy for that is to put on the breastplate of righteousness - but not your own righteousness. Meet the enemy with the righteousness of Another; it is the only way to meet this assault.' Go through each part, and you find it is so wise a provision, so understanding. At every point, Paul is exhibiting this wonderful understanding, and showing his measure: for Paul could have gone down under these things as easily as any other man if he had taken another attitude. He could have argued, 'All these churches have turned against me, all these brethren have forsaken me; here I am in prison, shut up: the Lord must have something against me, there must be something very wrong with me.' If he had taken that on, it would not have been long before he would have been a prisoner in the inner dungeon of the castle of Giant Despair. But he had taken up the helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness and the rest of the armour, and he showed his measure. We cannot stand as equals with him, but he does indicate for us what spiritual enlargement really means; it is being strong and wise in conflict. So spiritual degree resolves itself into a matter of spiritual strength and spiritual understanding in the time of conflict.

Entering Into God's Rest

Adam's first day on this earth was a Sabbath day. God created man on the sixth day, and the first complete day that man had was the Sabbath, and that Sabbath day becomes the first day for man. Carried over to the New Testament, where God finishes and perfects His new creation work in the Lord Jesus, and enters into His rest, it is God's Sabbath, and there we begin. That is our first day - God's rest.

We begin in something that is already perfect. This is the ground of "the everlasting covenant". To grasp the significance of that is to see what the "eternal covenant" is, to come right in on a perfect ground and start there. It is not how we regard ourselves or how we feel about it, but it is God's place for us. The fact is, beloved, that in Jesus Christ you and I will never be more perfect than we are now. Those perfections may be wrought into us progressively, but, so far as the ground of our acceptance is concerned, we are "accepted in the Beloved One", and He wholly satisfies the Father; the Father has come to rest in Him. The work is perfect.

Our acceptance is always on the ground of God's end reached. Till that is settled, we have no steadying thing when God begins to work in us. Do not forget that. If, when God begins to deal with us in discipline and chastening, in training and moulding and formation, we begin at any moment to say, This is all because I am so bad, so wicked, and the Lord has got to do something with me in order that I may be acceptable, we have given our ground away. We shall never be more acceptable, however much the Lord does in us. We have been accepted, not on the ground of what we are, however bad or good that may be, but on the ground of The Beloved. "Accepted in the Beloved One".

We sing - and I wish we would lay it to heart more and more - that His perfections are the measure of our own acceptance. That is where we start. Blessed be God, that is the ground of confidence, and when the Lord begins to take us in hand and we begin to feel what wretched creatures we are, that never implies for a single moment that we are not accepted. The eternal covenant means here, in the first place, that we are accepted on the ground of God's satisfaction with His Son. If we were accepted on our own ground, where we stand in ourselves, there would be no eternal covenant, no ground of security at all. It would be a matter of how we might be tomorrow. But no, it is not a matter of how we are or shall be. The ground is settled in Christ. Now, God is only getting to work to make good in us what is true in His Son, but it does not change the ground. Do not let us give our ground away.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1940, Vol 18-2

"The Fruit of Conflict"

"Out of the spoil won in battles did they dedicate to repair the house of the Lord" (1 Chron. 26:27). The margin gives a slight variation - "Out of the battles and the spoil did they dedicate to repair the house of the Lord."

The emphasis for this moment is not so much upon the battles as upon the one word here which is translated "repair." The word really means to strengthen, to make sound, to consolidate. There are battles connected with the building - we know something about that - but here they are not particularly related to the original building. When the building is done, it needs preserving, it needs its original splendour maintained, its first glory kept; there needs to be something that can maintain it according to God's first thought in it; and if this word is to be taken as it stands - repair, maintain, preserve, strengthen, consolidate (the Authorised Version does translate it "maintain") - then it is something which has to go on after the work of building. It looks like a reserve that they had against the building falling into disrepair. I think it is just there that the force of the whole verse rests. "Out of the battles and the spoil." or, if you prefer it, "Out of the spoil won in battles did they dedicate to maintain the house of the Lord."

Conflict Allowed by Divine Sovereignty

Well, the message in that is, I think, very apparent. It lies right on the surface. Divine wisdom working sovereignly ALLOWS conflict, as a way to keep things strong, pure and healthy. Battles seem to be necessities for the very purity of that which the Lord is seeking to have. Conflicts, in the Divine judgment are essential to maintenance. We do not always look upon them like that; indeed, it is very often difficult so to regard the terrific conflicts into which the Lord's people individually and collectively are so frequently thrown. We know something about the conflicts. It is not necessary for me to tell you that there are such things. We know that they are increasing in their intensity, and sometimes they get almost, if not altogether, beyond our powers of endurance. It seems there is very little "let-up" in the number of battles that have to be fought. It is in the plural here - "Out of the battles..." You and I know a good deal about the battles, the real spiritual battles, the enemy coming in like a flood, the fury of the oppressor, the constant effort on his part to break and to destroy us. Our question often is as to why the Lord allows it. We are hardly out of one before we are in another; and there is no doubt about it, the Lord allows it. It may be that there are some things which could be cut short and put back, but on the whole, the Lord allows His people to know very much conflict and pressure; and as we enquire why, this little fragment does give us at least a part of the answer. When we examine the history of things, we can see it is quite true that any increase, any preservation, any maintaining, has come along the line of what we have gained from our deep experiences.

What the Church has secured by way of conflict, trial, pressure and adversity! If this were a literal building around which we could walk at the end of our days, we should be able to see quite a lot in it which we could relate to a definite experience of conflict and trial through which we went, and we could say, That came out of so-and-so, that was the result of that particular bad time that I had. Spiritually, it is like that. Even now we can see in our lives something like that, and it will be so at the end. If we use our imagination, the truth holds good (if it is not actually like this) that the Lord will be able to take us round His completed work and say, Do you see this and this? Do you remember what you went through? That is the result from it, the value of it, that is the good that came out of it. It was all built into the fabric, the great eternal edifice of God's own house. It was something secured through battles; it was the spoil that went to the house; it recovered something that was lost of original glory, purity, fullness. It safeguarded some breakdown. The Lord put you through something, and out of that He secured what was necessary to guard against a threatened loss of which He was aware.

The Enemy Used as God's Instrument

We will not let our imagination carry us too far, but we could take the enemy round and let him have a look at the result of his onslaughts - not to his great gratification. You see what you did! You meant it to destroy; it has worked the other way. Does this mean, then, that when the Lord is alive to some threatened loss or failure, some need for strengthening, a repairing, a recovering, when He sees that things are weakening, crumbling He lets the enemy in and allows him to make an onslaught? Does it mean that? It has proved like that. You can find much of it in the New Testament. It was not only connected with the securing of the house, with the winning of a way for the building of the churches and the Church, that there was conflict. But so often, after the Lord had established a church, the saints in it went through great conflicts, and you find that it was in that way that things were kept pure. We cannot keep the Lord's things pure by sound doctrine alone. A lot of people think we can - that we are bound to have a pure thing according to God's original thought if we have the doctrine right. It does not work out like that. It does not mean that the doctrine is a matter of little concern - of course, it must be right and sound - but there is something more than sound doctrine needed to keep things straight. You will never keep things wholly in a spiritual way according to God's mind by having only a perfect technique and perfectly orthodox teaching. They are kept living and pure only as we go through the fires with them, as we know the conflict which is associated with these things. Every bit of truth which we receive, if we receive it livingly, will take us into conflict and will be established through conflict. It will be worthless until there has been a battle over it. Take any position the Lord calls you to take, and, if you are taking it with Him, you are going through things in it, and there will be an element added by reason of the battle. You have taken a position - yes; but you have not REALLY got it yet, the real value of it has not been proved. You have not come into the real significance of it until there has been some sore conflict in relation to it. The enemy assails you. But, you say, where is Divine sovereignty at work? Can the enemy do just as he likes? No, he cannot. The Lord has allowed the assault, knowing quite well that by so doing you are going to get something as a result which you never would have got by just taking the position mechanically. It has to come to you, not technically, but spiritually. Out of the battles some extra factor will come. Do you not think that that is precisely the meaning of the Apostle's words, "We are more than conquerors..." (Rom. 8:37)? The Lord does not allow battles just to bring us to victory, simply to have a fight in order to win. To be more than conquerors means that there ought to be something out of the fight that is more than just being where you were before, a maintaining of your position; something out of it - the spoil of battle. You have not only beaten your foe, you have taken something from him of extra value.

That leads to another thought. Has the enemy got things which are of value to the Lord? Can he really yield values to what is of God which are only secured through this conflict? Well, it is true; he has much, very much, which, wrested from him, can beautify the house of the Lord and strengthen that which the enemy meant to destroy.

Well, it is out of the battles and the conflict that there is that dedicated to repair, strengthen, maintain, keep pure and healthy, the house of the Lord; and we have to seek this grace that, when we pass into conflict over some position we have taken in obedience to the Lord, some line that we are following which we know to be the Lord's way for us, and we find ourselves thrown into the vortex of a terrible conflict, we may remember that it is not loss that lies in that direction at all. It is something extra, it is spoil from the battle; the conflict is going to yield something for the house of the Lord. If we can only believe that and accept the pressure and the trial in that light! The Lord give us strength so to take hold of the conflict in faith that we really do believe that there is something coming out of it which is more than there was before, something very much for the Lord.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1947.

Glory at the End

Reading: Haggai 2:1-9; Ephesians 3:20,21; Revelation 21:10-11.

"The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former."

"Unto him be the glory in the church... for ever and ever."

"The holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God."

It is something of which we should remind ourselves continually, that the end is going to be in glory, with glory - the end will be glory. Sometimes our answer to an interrogation might very well be that of the people in the time of Ezra, Nehemiah and Haggai: The present glory is nothing! but "the latter glory... shall be greater than the former". The end will be with glory. We must tell ourselves that, when things look anything but glorious, when the glory seems to be entirely hidden, when there seems to be no glory at all in our experience and we are passing through a deep and terrible time of trial and affliction, this is not the end; it just cannot be the end. Though we think the end has come, it cannot be identified as the end, because the Word of God says that the end is glory. This is not glory; therefore it cannot be the end and we have not arrived at the end yet. We are not going down in shame, in dishonour, in reproach, in despair. We are going up in glory, for the end is glory.

The Glory of Grace

What is this glory? Well, quite clearly, according to these passages which we have read, and others, it is the glory of grace. "The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former", and in that very connection the prophet says: "He shall bring forth the top stone with shoutings of Grace, grace unto it" (Zechariah 4:7). The words from the letter to the Ephesians - "unto him be the glory in the church" - are set in a whole encompassment of grace. The incomparable words concerning grace are found in that letter: "That we should be... to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved" (1:6); "According to the riches of his grace" (1:7); "(By grace have ye been saved) ... that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace" (2:5,7); "Unto me", says the Writer, "was this grace given, to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ" (3:8). The last words concerning grace are in connection with the glory. So it is quite obviously the glory of grace. The Lord, in order to get the glory, will see that everything is kept on a basis of grace, that is, that everything that is not grace will be smitten hip and thigh by Him. In the end there will be no other element whatever in the situation. We shall just have to say it is His grace - the glory of His grace.

The Battleground of Grace

The enemy is always trying to get us off the ground of grace. If he cannot do so by accusation, he will do so by false grace, which is presumption. In this way he makes grace a way of living as you like. It does not matter what you do, how you behave, grace will cover anything. "Once in grace, always in grace", so do not be troubled with responsibility. So grace is subverted. In many ways grace is a battleground, not a playground.

Grace a Power in the Life

The only answer to these things is this: That while grace is that favour of God which asks for no merit, no earning, and is freely bestowed on us, as Paul says, in the Beloved, grace is also a power in the life. It is a vital force to make us live according to the good pleasure of God, the grace of God not only manifested in our acceptance, but in our lives, the acceptance begetting a response to the pleasure of God. Grace is a character, a nature, as well as a standing; grace unto glory, His glory, primarily the glory of what grace has done in our acceptance, in our standing, in our position, but also what grace has done in conforming us to the image of His Son, what grace is doing in us. It is a working thing. The glory of His grace at the end will be the manifestation of what grace has done.

The Glory of His Sovereign Wisdom and Power

It will be the glory of His sovereign wisdom and power. You go back to these books of Ezra and Nehemiah and you find a people very much in need of the grace of God by reason of their own helplessness, the remnant being stripped and shorn of everything, unable to provide anything at all, so that it must all be of the Lord. And then you see the enemies, all the enemies. No sooner does God's purpose come into view, and a people in it, than, as from nowhere, enemies spring up. You have never heard their names until now, you never knew anything about them and you did not know of their existence until now. How these people were beset on every hand by opposing forces who would make the work to cease by every means! You know the many forms of opposition in the book of Nehemiah - the enemy comes in from the deepest subterfuge to the most open and violent persecution. But there is a wonderful revelation of the sovereign wisdom and power of God; wisdom in outwitting the cunning of men and devils; wisdom in finding ways for the accomplishment of the purpose which men could never find; yes, and wisdom in turning the very work of their enemies to be complementary, spiritually complementary. Sovereign wisdom and sovereign power - and the house filled with glory at the end. The glory is the glory of that wisdom and power of God. "Unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think", which goes beyond our ability to imagine how it can be done, or that it can be done at all, "according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be the glory in the church". The story of the people of God is just that story of the power and wisdom of God, finding ways where there are no ways, finding means where there are no means, outwitting all the cunning of the enemy and turning the enemy's very work to advantage.... "I would have you know... that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the progress of the gospel" (Philippians 1:12). The wisdom of God, the power of God, the glory of that is manifested in the end.

The Glory of Life

And then it is the glory of life, the inherent qualities of Divine life being fully manifested at the end; life with its inherent power of transcendence, for the supreme and inclusive enemy is death, for death, while destroyed and defeated in the Cross, is still allowed to work against the Lord's people. The destroyer is always on the track of one who has the life of God within. It is a part of the Divine order and economy to put the Divine life within and then allow it to be assailed by death and the powers of death in order to bring out what is inherent in that life. You and I would never know what we have got until it is drawn out and forced out by adverse conditions. We will never know what a Lord we have until we have to prove Him as the Lord of hosts. Notice that this whole matter of glory and grace is kept closely in touch with that very phrase, which is almost monotonously repeated: "The Lord of hosts", "Thus saith the Lord of hosts". You have to know Him in that absolutely supreme sense as the Lord of hosts, which means that you have to come up against other hosts to know Him in that way. Death is allowed to assail the possessors of Divine life just with this object of showing what that life really is, and in the end the glory will be the glory of the absolute ascendancy of that life in nullifying all the power of death. When it says: "The last enemy that shall be abolished is death" (1 Corinthians 15:26), it is a very significant statement, because there are other statements which say that the Lord did destroy death in His death. He tasted death on the behalf of every man, and destroyed death in order that there should be no more fear of death, and yet the last enemy still, yet, to be destroyed is death. What was done in the Head is going to be done in the whole Body. The Church is to come into its inheritance, and it is an inheritance of life. We have within us, in the gift of Divine life, such a wealthy inheritance, and we know little about it. The Lord is trying to teach us what we have in hand, what we can trade with, and in the end it will simply be the blazing forth of that which has been there all the time.

Progressive Glory Now

I have said these things, but my object lies at the end of this. It is the glory of grace - "Grace all the work shall crown" - the glory of His sovereign power and wisdom, and the glory of His triumphant life, but do not let us think of glory as something detached and given, placed upon, at some future time. We are always using the phraseology about going to glory, which is imperfect at least. We are looking forward to the day of glory; we are putting glory on there. Somewhere in the future, in some realm, it is going to be glory.

My point is just this: that, while there is a future somewhere, sometime, when the glory will be manifested, the Lord's whole object is to bring about that glory in His people progressively now. That is why He is so careful to undercut everything that would take from the glory of grace, for, you see, grace is the great antidote to that terrible poison called pride. Pride was the ruin of the creation and it is an abomination with God: "God beholdeth the proud afar off". The strongest things that can be found in the Word of God are said against pride in all its forms, under all its names - arrogance, conceit, and all the rest. God hates pride, and that is why He will make everything a matter of grace. You and I can produce nothing and never will produce anything, and while we try to produce something as a merit in our favour to give ourselves a standing, God stands afar off and will reduce us to pulp to bring in the glory of His grace. He will break, shatter and empty us; and remember that our spiritual progress, our spiritual growth and our spiritual gain will always be in the measure in which we are aware that it is only by the grace of God that we have any place of recognition, or anything else by Him. God is very near to the humble and to the broken in spirit, but to the proud He is afar off. We will make progress as long as it is a matter of grace, and that is altogether contrary to this human nature in its fallen state. We can even be proud of our humility. Somehow or other this accursed thing will come up, seep in, to bring about self-congratulation. It is horrible to God, so He will have it all of grace.

So remember that the measure of glory at the end will be the measure of grace now. God will bring us into many perplexing, bewildering situations where there is no way through at all for human wisdom and human strength and power fail us, in order that by His sovereign wisdom, doing what could not be imagined, and exercising power so great as to remove the greatest difficulties with the greatest ease, we wonder that we ever thought the thing so difficult. It has so easily disappeared. God's power is so overwhelmingly great, and what we think requires the very moving of heaven and earth to accomplish is done so quietly that we hardly recognize it when it is done, and afterward we wonder that we were in such a state of distraction over that thing. Then we worship and give glory to God. The glory of His wisdom and His power.

And He brings us into situations of death - be they physical or be they spiritual; be they positions that we have to occupy in this world where it is all spiritual death - in order to show us that there is a life which is more than sufficient for these conditions. There is another life which is not dependent at all upon our physical fitness or upon the situation in which we are placed being helpful. There is another life which overcomes death, and it will be the glory of that life in fullness that breaks out. The thing is going on now, and the glory is already inherent. God is only preparing in us the glory which shall be manifested in the end. In the end we shall have to say: 'Well, I was learning all the way along the grace of God, the wisdom of God, the power of His life; I see now that that was the pathway of glory and that has issued in the effulgence; it is that that has led to this glory at the end.' It is inevitable; it must be because God has placed our lives upon this basis of the need of grace so utter, the need of wisdom, the need of strength, the need of life, in order that His glory should be manifested in meeting that need out from Himself.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1966, Vol 44-6

God Needs Gideons

"And the Lord looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might... have not I sent thee?

And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I...?

And the Lord said unto him, Surely I will be with thee." Judges 6:14-16

Gideon lived at a time when so much in Israel was contrary to the honour and glory of God's name. The Israelites were at the mercy of their enemies, a defeated people. They were pitifully poor, having no enjoyment of their land, which had been the land of promise, flowing with milk and honey. They were in confusion, with no unity, no cohesion, and no leaders who could speak with finality the authoritative Word of God which alone can bring hope and confidence. In His sovereignty, however, God reacted to recover such conditions as would honour His name among the people, and for this purpose He apprehended Gideon, a young man.

An indication that God means to go on with His purpose in spite of much failure is that He brings in young people. Older believers must not be jealous of the younger generation, for increasing age can mean loss of freshness, and if we of the older generation cling to our static position we may bring in death. What is our salvation? What is the renewing of our youth? What is the answer to growing limitation on our part? It is not to suspect youth; not to criticise it; not to despise it as some evidently did in Timothy's case (1 Timothy 4:12); but to do everything in our power to help the younger generation.

When I first started ministry I was quite a young man, and I had to assume responsibility for a church where there were some older men who objected, "But he is so young"! I had, however, a champion among those critics, and he answered their objections with the words, "Yes, but that is something he is getting over every day"! We need to see that after all it is not years that govern. Age is not the criterion; the criterion is spirituality. What is true in nature is also true in the realms of things spiritual. As soon as any organism in nature ceases to reproduce, death has commenced. The law of nature is ever fresh reproduction. The law of life is reproduction. God, having once created, does not create a second time; He proceeds by reproduction. Every new generation is meant by God to bring past values into new freshness. No new generation is a new created humanity, but a generation of fresh humanity which perpetuates the good which has gone before. Some of us are a passing generation, and our freshness and fruitfulness will be found in helpfully making way for the next generation.

The Lord's glory and honour are expressed in perennial youth, but the new generation cannot succeed just because of youth, any more than it can be officially appointed; it must take up the succession in an inward way, and that means by spirituality. This was the test applied to Gideon. He, like the other judges, illustrates how in divine sovereignty God takes up whom He will, but he also indicates the ground on which that sovereignty works. It is not a contradiction to say that while God acts in absolute sovereignty, He does look for certain conditions which will bring that sovereignty into operation. So it is that we may get some profit from examining a few of the qualities which marked this young man, Gideon, and made him usable by God.

Humility

The first of these - and it is everywhere evident - was his humility. Humility is the prime mark, the hallmark, of spirituality. No wonder it says that "The Lord looked upon him"! With Gideon there was no pride of person, for far from thinking highly of himself he clearly rated himself very low. He had no pride of family, being ready to confess that his was the poorest household in Manasseh. Now in fact it does appear that his father, Joash, stood for something and had a position of prominence in his city, for it was to his altar of Baal that the citizens came to worship. Moreover Gideon was able to select ten servants from his father's house. The truth seems to be that Gideon was a man of a genuinely humble spirit. He was not proud of being young. Nobody is going to be used by God just for that reason. Nor did he harbour any sense of superiority over the people around him in spiritual matters. He put himself among them and recognised himself to be one with them in their poor spiritual state. If we are proud of our more advanced understanding or of our imagined spirituality; if we look down on others in a critical fault-finding way; then the Lord will never look upon us as He looked upon Gideon nor choose us as His instruments.

It is not our business to let it be known that we disapprove of other Christians; it is our business to find a way of helping them. If we seek true humility then we may come into the Lord's view as His instruments to serve Him and His sovereign purposes to recover the glory due to His name. The whole story of Gideon is a declaration that such an instrument must never have any glory of its own. God found Gideon in a humble spirit at the beginning, and He subsequently took pains to reduce him and bring him even lower, for lowliness is the ground of the presence and the power of God. It is only when personal glory is set aside that the Lord can say, as He said to Gideon, "The Lord is with thee...." This is the kind of man whom God can use. A Moses, whose reaction to his call was, "Who am I, that I should go... Oh my Lord, I am not eloquent... but I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue". A Jeremiah, who argued, "Ah, Lord God! behold I cannot speak: for I am a child". An Elisha, who was a man not of the wind, the earthquake and the fire, but only an expression of God's power in "a still, small voice". This same principle was indicated for Gideon in the sign of the dew, that silent, lowly expression of life-giving power. God's instrument is always conscious of his own personal inadequacy.

Diligence

The next point which impresses us in connection with Gideon was his industriousness; he was threshing out corn in the winepress. He did his work in that most unlikely and unsuitable place in order to hide it from the Midianites. The days were so evil that very little seemed possible, and indeed most of the people had fled to caves and holes, being paralysed and impotent because of their ever-present enemies. It looked as though nothing positive could be done, and therefore the tendency was to despair of action and accept the situation of defeat. Gideon, however, had a different attitude. It might be that not much could be done, but there was a little, and he determined to keep occupied with what was possible. As he considered their impossible situation he saw that there was a small, hidden contribution which he could make for the preservation of life. The Lord took note of this spirit. The Lord was standing right by that winepress and watching Gideon's efforts. Perhaps it was for this very reason that He said, "The Lord is with thee thou mighty man of valour". The Lord is certainly not "with" a slothful person, since to Him diligence is an essential quality. "In diligence not slothful, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord" (Romans 12:11) describes the kind of man God looks for, and in the person of Gideon He found him.

Gideon's activities were very limited and performed in a cramped sphere, but he was doing all that could be done, even if it seemed so little. The Lord took note of that, for sometimes even a gesture is enough for Him. If He sees one who, as it were, on entering a room makes straight for the armchair, a man who is looking for excuses and glad to skirt around or evade some responsibility which confronts him, then the Lord will not look on him as He did on Gideon. The margin tells us that "The Lord turned toward him". The Lord always turns toward those who are alert to seize even small opportunities of service.

The same principle applied to the ten thousand who were taken down to the river to get a drink (Judges 7:4). The last thing that could have occurred to those men was that their method of drinking was really a test, but once again God's decision and choice was based on a gesture, a gesture which revealed those who were putting divine interests before their own personal affairs. It was not that in His sovereign majesty He had ordained that some would lap and some would go down on their knees but that His sovereign work would be done by those who revealed their dispositions by their behaviour in a small matter. We, too, reveal our dispositions by very simple actions, and it may well be that in our daily life and work the Lord's eye is upon us to watch our disposition, for if we will jump at that which gives us some personal gratification or grasp at an opportunity to shirk hard work, then He will not use us in His great purposes. None of us will ever be used of the Lord in any vital way unless our hearts are wholly set on Him and His interests. "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings." (Proverbs 22:29) God is looking for men like that.

Concern for Others

In a sense this is part of what we have already said - Gideon was concerned for others. He looked and saw that the people were starving, and that the enemy was seeking to steal away what little food they had, so he did his best to help an undernourished and weakened people who could not lift a hand for their own deliverance. All of us need the outward look - "Not looking each one to his own things, but each of you to the things of others" (Philippians 2:4). Gideon was not one of those introverts who are always pre-occupied with their own condition. He might well have been filled with self-pity and complaints at being involved in such a sorry situation, but instead he was concerned about the troubles of others and was ready to pray and act on their behalf. That activity down in the winepress suggests a secret concern and effort to outwit the enemy, even if only in a small way.

Further, Gideon betrayed a real heart concern by replying to the statement that God was with him with a question about his people's troubles and needs. His great concern was not about himself but about the fact that the former activities and wonders of God among His people were now no longer operating. This was all so different from theorising and giving slick theological answers to the Israelites' circumstances; it was as though the winepress was symbolic, and Gideon a man who was being crushed in spiritual travail over the needs of God's defeated people.

Whether a man is young or old he will only be useful to God if he bears this kind of heart concern. Nobody is going to serve the name and honour of the Lord by doctrines, by clever interpretations of the Scriptures or by mystical vistas of spiritual truths. The Lord will not spend much time looking towards the theorisers; He is watching for men with hearts that are as burdened as Gideon's was, burdened with inward suffering over the unhappy state of His people.

No Complicity with the Enemy

The further point to note is what took place when Gideon destroyed the idol in his father's house. We will never destroy Satan and his kingdom, we will never destroy what is represented by the Midianite tyranny if privately, behind the scenes, there is any kind of complicity with that kingdom. In our case the problem is not in our father's house but in our own hearts. There seems to be something inside us which is in alliance with the kingdom of darkness, a false altar which has to be overthrown to make way for God's altar. Before Gideon could go out and save Israel, recovering among them the honour due to the Lord's name, something had to be dealt with in the background of his own life. He did it! It is true that he did it fearfully, for he was a man without self-confidence, and it is true that he did it at night; nevertheless - night or day - he did it, and that was what mattered.

The altar and the name! It is impressive and significant how often these two are linked together in the Scriptures. The focal point of Gideon's whole story was that altar. It symbolised a new relationship and harmony between God and himself. Where there is an altar for the Lord's name, and where He finds His full satisfaction, there the glory of the Lord is secured and that being so it is peace - Jehovah Shalom. It seems that up to that point there was some uncertainty with Gideon, but after that there was no more uncertainty. The great victory was sure from then onwards.

The real battle is often in the heart of the man who is going to serve God; it is as though the Lord has to fight him before He can fight through him; having subdued and silenced his flesh by the mighty power of the cross, then He can lead His servant out to the battlefield around and use him for the honour of the name. God's warriors are those who through the cross are brought to enjoy God's peace in their own hearts, and then in the power of that peace they can bring to bear His victory on the kingdom of darkness. These are the Gideons whom God so greatly needs in our day.

The God of the Amen

"And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness" (Rev. 3:14).

"So that he who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth, and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth" or as the margin has it, "He who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God Amen; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God Amen" (Is. 65:16).

"For how many soever be the promises of God, in him is the yea: wherefore also through him is the Amen, unto the glory of God through us" (2 Cor. 1:20).

You will see from the passages in Revelation and Isaiah, that 'Amen' is a title, a designation, a description of God. His Name is the 'Amen', the God of the 'Amen'. We know what we mean when we use that word. We mean a note of affirmation, that there is nothing from which we dissent and everything with which we agree. We are saying, 'Let it be like that - Amen!' And that is a description of God; that is His Name. The description can be summed up in one fragment of Scripture: "the Father of Lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning" (Jas. 1:17). He is always the same, absolutely reliable, positive, definite, sure, for He is the God of the 'Amen'.

Isaiah Looks Beyond the Captivity and the Cross

Now the contexts of these two passages are very enlightening as to the use made of the title on each occasion.

In Isaiah 65, you will see that we are near the end of the prophecies; we are on the other side of the judgment of Israel, that is on the other side of the exile and the captivity. We are with the remnant that returned. The new day is presented in such verses as:- "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee" (Is. 60:1).

"Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; that she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins" (Is. 40:1,2).

Again, in this chapter in which our verse is found, the Lord says: "I create new heavens and a new earth" (65:17). A new day is in view, and on that ground, in that setting and context, these words occur. They are prospective as you see: 'he that, then, on that ground, in that day, blesseth himself... he that sweareth... in that day, on this new ground...' These words look on into the future and we may say here at once, that it is to the day which has come, to the day in which we live, that these prophecies point so clearly. The prophecies after chapter 53, the chapter of the Cross and the suffering, point so clearly to this day beyond the Cross, the day of His resurrection, the day of the Spirit; this is the day - our day - in which God is spoken of as the God of the 'Amen' - God, re-affirming, and God reaffirmed.

But to revert to Israel's history: it had looked for seventy long, weary, tragic, desolate years, as though everything was hopeless; all seemed lost. Look at Jerusalem during those seventy years; look at the land in its desolation and ruin, with the glory gone, everything broken down, and tragedy written large everywhere. The visitors to that country wagging their heads, remembering the past, were saying, 'Aha, aha; well, well; Look at this!' And while that cry, like a sob, from the prophet: "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow" (Lam. 1:12), may be truly put into the mouth of the Lord Jesus, on the Cross, it literally relates to this very situation. It was the cry of the land.

Of such a situation we should say today, 'Well, that is an end of that! There is not much prospect there.' But it is in that setting, just in a situation like that, that these words occur. He is the God of the 'Amen'! He is re-affirming that, despite of everything, He has not changed, He has not given up, He is not in despair. He is the God whose decisions and determinations are absolute and final, and it does not matter to those decisions what happens. He remains the God of the 'Amen'. Here He is then, in this title, re-affirming, that although all this has happened, a remnant shall return. There shall yet be a 'taking root downward, and a bearing fruit upward' (Is. 37:31). God cannot ultimately be cheated of His purpose; He is the God of the 'Amen'.

Confidence in the God of Hope

Here, then, is the mighty re-affirmation or declaration, like something rising out of the ashes. Yes, there are ashes and desolation and mourning and the spirit of heaviness and all these things, yet, there arises out of the midst an unchanged and unchangeable God.

And so we come to these words: "He who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God Amen". What does that mean? It sounds so strange, does it not? It sounds a little awkward; but what does it mean? Well, I think it just means this, quite simply - that the ground of our hope, of our blessing, of our prospect, and of our new joy, is that God is the same for ever. We can count on Him. There never was such a terrible threat to His purposes; there never was such a seeming desolation in the realm of God's election. And yet, and yet, He has not accepted that as an end; He has not accepted that as cancelling out what He has set His hand to do. He still remains firm, true, steadfast for ever, the God 'Amen'. What a blessing! if only we could get hold of it. We are certainly not going to bless ourselves for this, that, and the other thing; that is, to congratulate ourselves on things. Very often it is going to be like this; that there is nothing in the appearance and condition of things in which we can bless ourselves, but that we can bless ourselves in God 'Amen'.

Then the verse continues, "and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God Amen". What does that mean? Well, you see, the swearing was always related to covenant, was it not? And while that would open up far too large a field for this brief consideration, the point is just this: you can commit yourself to this God, you can depend upon Him as the covenant-keeping God, and you can swear by Him. There is nothing else in all this world that you can swear by, and no one else; everything else will let you down, but you can swear by Him - God 'Amen' - He will not let you down.

The Lord's Insistent Appeal for Reality

Turning now to the passage in the Book of the Revelation, notice the context there. Christ, the Amen, is speaking to the church in Laodicea. Laodicea - why, that very word and name is the synonym for what is indefinite, indistinctive, weak, and mixed! "Thou are... neither hot nor cold"; 'there is no distinctiveness and no definiteness about you. You are neither one thing nor the other.' And there are a lot of other things said about Laodicea, all representing a situation that is utterly unreliable and unsatisfactory; in one word, it is false. "Thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches," and you do not know that it is utterly false, that "thou art... poor" - thou art... poor! You think that you can see, and do not know that you are blind. You say: 'we are clothed; we have apparel; we have all we need'; and you do not know that you are naked before God. What a picture of falsehood. And whenever there is a falsehood, catastrophe is sure to follow sooner or later; a lie will always be found out. This is a very insecure position.

"These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness" - you see, the very context interprets and explains the title. The Lord is here calling Laodicea back to that which is represented by His own name and nature. There is nothing mixed, confused and contradictory about Him. There is no falsehood with Him, nothing like this with Him, and so His call is for recovery at the end. This is the last phase. At the end He is calling His Church back to complete distinctiveness, that there shall be no doubt whatever as to where we stand, as to where we are going. It is a great thing in these days, to meet people who know exactly what they are after, with no two minds about it; they are settled; they are fixed; there is no variableness with them. It is a great thing in these days to find such people. And the Lord says, It will be a great thing if the Church can be like that in the end, if there can be such a testimony. This, surely, is the meaning of 'overcoming' in the case of Laodicea. 'Overcoming' means that all uncertainty, indefiniteness, weakness, vaccilation, duplicity, and everything of that character, is eliminated. The overcomers are people who know where they stand, where they are going, what they are after, people who have got the positive note in their midst, the Amen, the note of certainty.

That is the last word of the Spirit to the Church in this dispensation. "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches" (Rev. 3:22). The last word of the Spirit to the Church in this dispensation - if we are to accept the dispensational interpretation of these messages to the seven churches - a word called out apparently by the very conditions, is this, 'Away with all indistinctiveness in your testimony, all uncertainty in your note, all indefiniteness in your goings, and let there be certainty, positiveness, confidence and assurance; let there be no beating the air, but a reaching the mark all the time.' This is the word of the Spirit.

The Great 'Amens' of Christ

Now you notice that this is not only a title ascribed to God in the Old Testament, but also one of the titles of Jesus in the New. It is Jesus who says, "These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness", the Amen, the I AM.

Now I am quite sure you are perfectly familiar with the fact that on the twelve or so occasions, when Jesus said, twice over, "Verily, verily...", according to our version and translation, the Greek word is "Amen", so that we may read, "Amen, Amen, I say unto you..." And realising what that implies, the mighty affirmation, you can understand better the things that follow. If Jesus says, "Verily, verily" - "Amen, Amen... I am the door...", there is a tremendous emphasis on that; in other words, you cannot get in any other way (John 10:7). Now I am not going to enlarge upon this, but you see the point. Here He is, affirming that He is the 'Amen'. In all of these twelve or more different connections He speaks of Himself in this way. He is the 'Amen'.

The Twofold Work of the Amen

But then, His work also was the work of the 'Amen'. To this there were two aspects, namely, death and resurrection. In order to see something of the significance of His death, let us go back to the Book of Deuteronomy 27. There you find all the curses that would come upon the people if they were disobedient to the Lord, and turned away from Him to serve other gods, a whole long list of the curses that would come. We note two things: that the Levites, as representing the people, are required to affirm the curses, and then at the end, "all the people shall say, Amen". By this they meant, 'Yes, if we do turn away, if we are unfaithful, if we reject the Lord, let it be like that, let all the curses come upon us'. They had to accept it.

Dear friends, in the death of the Lord Jesus, there was the mighty, inclusive Amen to all the curses. Terrible thought! He was made a curse for us. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree" (Gal. 3:13). As He hung there, viewing man's sin, departure from God, unfaithfulness and infidelity, and all that man had done against God, He entered into the consequences of the curse. He took the curse for it all upon Himself, and said, 'Amen, it is quite right, it must be'. He gave His Amen to the curse! But it was final! He swallowed up all the curse in His death, with a mighty affirmation, 'God is right - His judgment is just - Amen!'

But in His resurrection, we have the other side of His work as the 'Amen'. It is as the risen One that He appears to Laodicea, as you notice - "I am... the Living one... I am alive for evermore..." (Rev. 1:17,18). Here we are on the resurrection side, and in the resurrection, as Paul tells us, we are justified by His life (Rom. 4:25). Here is the Amen of justification! In His death, as we have seen, is the affirmation that God is right. You see, we never get through until we have come to the place where we say: 'In that judgment of the Lord Jesus on the Cross, God was right, where I am concerned. I was there, and God was right'. Until we come right down there, and say, 'Yes, Amen, God was right in judging me as a sinner, as an unfaithful one, God was right', we never get through to the other side. When we have got there, to that terrible Amen of judgment and death, by faith, we come to the place where we can stand on the other side of the Amen, the Amen of justification by His life. Yes, the mighty affirmation of God is that we are justified by His life! We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ. You see then, that God has committed Himself. God has put His stamp and His seal upon that Amen! Just as truly as you are condemned to judgment in His death, so truly are you raised to justification in His life, for, "Jesus our Lord... was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification" (Rom. 4:25). Amen! God says: Amen! He is committed to that.

Faith in the God of the Amen

Now we must close. Is not this word needed in our day? Was there ever a time of greater uncertainty, perhaps even amongst many of the Lord's people? On every hand there are questions and doubts, weakening, loosening and disintegrating lives, with discouragement, disillusionment and disappointment all weakening the heart and loosening the springs of confidence and faith. There is so much today to cause a great questionmark to stand over everything. Are you feeling like that? We are all tempted to ask big questions about the biggest things, are we not? As we look within and without, our hearts could very often lose their confident assurance.

In a day such as this, it is well for us to come back and hear Him say concerning the purpose to which He has committed Himself, 'I am the Amen'. He has committed Himself to it as the 'Amen', the unchangeable, the unalterable One, with whom there is no variableness. He is holding to it through everything. Amen is written over His purpose. God is the God Amen. Christ is on the throne, and His Name is the 'Amen'; His rule is the rule of the 'Amen': He has the last word in everything.

We must also see that it is the Holy Spirit who is speaking the words of the 'Amen' - "These things saith the Amen... He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith..." The Spirit is the power for realising the purpose and effecting the rule. The Three Persons of the Trinity are one God; they share this Name, this title, this description, the 'Amen', the 'Amen'. The Lord strengthen our faith in Himself.

God's End and God's Way

"Having made known unto us the mystery of His will... to sum up all things in Christ... according to the purpose of Him Who worketh all things after the counsel of His will... He put all things in subjection under His (Christ's) feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:9-11, 22-23).

There are three main parts to that statement.

1. The eternal will and purpose of God.

2. Christ as the centre of that purpose.

3. The Church, which is His Body, the vessel of the full expression of the purpose - that is, of Christ.

We are shown God in eternal counsels purposing. In outlining and devising His intentions to create and constitute "all things," "in the heavens and upon the earth" (Eph. 1:10), He was moved and governed by a specific and definite purpose. This "Purpose" is mentioned a number of times in the New Testament, and various things are shown to be related to it. It is most important that we recognize that, however many phases there may be in Divine activity, the purpose of God is one. Nothing is an end in itself. The first law of spiritual fullness (and be it observed that fullness is what is in view) is to apprehend the fact and nature of God's all-governing purpose. It is an impressive and painful fact that there is very, very little of what is associated here with the Lord that is really marked by spiritual fullness. Smallness, weakness, limitation, poverty, defeat, ignorance, immaturity, and disappointment characterize so many of the Lord's people, and so much of the Lord's work. This is one of the things that is causing so much distress, inquiry, and effort in some quarters.

May not the explanation be that nothing that is only a part of a whole can reach and realize the whole purpose? To be in the way of fullness it is essential that, in the first place, we recognize and realize that God is not just a Busybody in a large number of good and merciful activities; but that He is wholly occupied with one all-inclusive, and all-related purpose! "Who worketh ALL THINGS after the counsel of His own will." The measure of ultimate attainment and accomplishment will be according to our initial apprehension of a single purpose. When that is established, we shall soon move on to see what the purpose is, and how - and by what means - it will be realized. If a master-man has a single purpose to which he has abandoned himself, he will require that all who work for him are not just doing various things, however good they may be, even as parts of his whole work, but that they are seeing beyond their own job and part to the whole end and object, and are working positively to that. He will be favourable to any who come to work for him and to any means employed, only in so far as the full purpose is in their heart. The measure of his resource and fullness will be given on this basis alone. So it is with God. But let it be understood that it is spiritual fullness that is in view, not personal gratification.

Then the purpose is to sum up all things in Christ. It is a Person filled full, enlarged, and all-comprehending. The greatness, the magnificence, the universal fullness of Christ is God's goal. Again, it is not sufficient that we see the purpose, basic as that is, but that we see - in an ever-growing way - the fullness of Christ. There must be an initial seeing of this greatness, this majesty, this glory, this universality. It was such a seeing that accounted for the power, effectiveness, and glory of the Church's first days. That was the meaning of "Pentecost". It was such a seeing that made the Apostles the men that they were. Paul owed everything to God's revealing of His Son in him. But that seeing must go on. It must become ever fuller. We must not just date our seeing of Christ to some past experience. It is the Lord's will that we shall so live in and walk by the Spirit that we are able to say that what we see of Christ today is infinitely greater and more wonderful than ever it has been. That is only in line with God's purpose, and it is so for all who have truly come into a spiritual apprehension thereof.

Then in the third place we move to see God's method and means of fulfilling His eternal purpose. This is by way of "the church, which is His (Christ's) body". The Church is definitely stated to be "the fullness of Him that filleth all in all". That universal fullness of Christ is determined to be revealed and expressed in and through a vessel called the Church. What is this Church?

Firstly, it is said to be an elect company of people. Leaving all theories of election, let us be content, for the moment, to see that God has eternally determined to have such a company, and that election is related to purpose, not primarily - if at all - to salvation. God knows, He cannot help knowing, the ultimate reactions of people to His presentations, and according to His foreknowledge He has foreordained to His purpose. But God has never said to any unsaved person that he or she is so foreordained. He only calls. The Church is the company of the called who obeyed.

Secondly, the Church is something greater than the churches. Whatever we may mean by the latter, the Church may be in them all, or it may not be in many of them at all. The Church is essentially a spiritual thing; not sectarian, denominational, "ecclesiastical," traditional, etc. It is the spiritual relatedness as of a living organism; a body possessing one life; it is a single entity, an "all one in Christ". The measure of light does not make for a more or less membership of that Body, although that may affect functioning. The apprehension of "Church Truth" does not constitute Church membership, although it will greatly affect the matter of fullness. Vital relatedness to Christ is the basis of Body actuality.

But when we have said that, we must point out how important the recognition of the Church is. Next to the revelation of Christ personally in His greatness, the revelation of the Church is bound up with our practical progress toward fullness. Paul has a far greater fullness in his writings than any other Apostle, and this is mainly due to the specific revelation of the Church which was given to him. What arises from this revelation is that Christ and the Church are one, as Head and members of one Body.

There are one or two things which arise for our apprehension in this matter. Firstly there is the fact - so clearly and fully given in the Scriptures - that God has just as definitely chosen and appointed the Church for the realization of His eternal purpose as He has chosen and appointed His Son. He has just as positively bound Himself and His fullness to the one as to the other. While one is subject to the other, and the medium and vessel of the other - as the wife to the husband (Eph. 5:22-24), they are one in the matter of purpose. This carries with it the jealousy of God for His Church, and means that for fullness there can be no allowing of an ignoring, belittling, or injuring.

Further; God will keep strictly - in the matter of spiritual fullness - to working Bodywise. That is, it is not possible for any units as such to know fullness. Fullness is a related matter. "The Church is the fullness of Him." No individual can be that. Therefore spiritual oneness, inter-relatedness, fellowship, mutuality, and interdependence are basic and indispensable to spiritual attainment of full-growth. "Till we all attain unto... a full grown man, unto... the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13).

In the Old Testament, when things were constituted according to the heavenly pattern, God spoke out of the Tent of Meeting. So it is in the New Testament. For the answer to his inquiry on the Damascus Road, Paul had to go into the city and get it as out from the Church. For the entering upon his great life-work he had to abide in the Church at Antioch and get his commission confirmed there (Acts 13). All this does not mean that God has never sovereignly and in grace moved without the recognition of this law by those concerned for His interests, but we are speaking of spiritual fullness, and our ministry is concerned with that. It is not a committee, "General," "Executive," or "Advisory," but the "Body" in representation and spiritual functioning that is God's ordained way.

It would take much more space than we have at our disposal to set forth all the values and implications of an apprehension of God's place and purpose for His Church in all things. This is one of the matters which has had a considerable place in our spoken and written ministry through these past years.

This leads on to the churches; that is, the local companies of God's people. Times and conditions have changed greatly since New Testament days; that is, so far as the Western world is concerned. It was simple and straightforward to gather together believers in Christ in those times; there were only believers and non-believers. Today numerous other questions arise; such as "Connection," "Order," "Practice," "Belief," etc. But there are one or two things which must still govern this matter: they are

1. - The local church or assembly is intended to be locally all that the Church as a whole is universally. It must not be smaller in its vision, its vocation, its relatedness. Though locally placed, it is universal in nature, outreach, concern, and function. If it lives unto itself it will die. Fullness is dependent upon its spiritual length and breadth, and height and depth.

2. - The local church is the spiritual training-ground for all usefulness to the Lord. There all the essential lessons are learned, not by teaching alone, but by spiritual discipline. The very vital lesson of subjection to the Lord - which means so much in the matter of spiritual growth - is learned in a very practical way in a true assembly and fellowship life. All independent, unrelated, and merely personal life is impossible when the "Body" is truly recognized.

The spiritual support, upholding, encompassing, and covering of the Lord's people in something more than a general way is of tremendous value and consequence. Far from the local church being but a "congregation" or a preaching place, it is intended to be a local expression of the family of God, and to fulfil all the functions and provide all the values of a true family life and relationship.

3. - The matter of pre-eminent importance in the local church, as in the universal, is the absolute sovereign headship of Christ. Anything which usurps this, or in any way conflicts with it, will most certainly result in spiritual limitation and proportionate retarding of growth. Is this not why, in the New Testament churches, no one man exercised headship, but elders - not an elder - were appointed. The "Body" principle is upheld in the corporate, and individual sovereignty is prevented. At Antioch the "Holy Spirit said" to a company of representative men, who were together in spiritual responsibility. Eldership is representation - spiritual measure, not ecclesiastical. The New Testament plurality of eldership means that the church is brought - as in and by its representatives - under the complete sovereignty of Christ through the Holy Spirit.

4. - We must then see that the Apostles never set out with the plan to form churches. That was the spontaneous and necessitated result of the Holy Spirit's work in every place. Christ was preached and accepted, and relatedness spontaneously followed (see Acts 2:42). That which decides churches is Christ. This is the solution of and the answer to many of the problems and questions which arise, especially in this Western world in these peculiarly complicated times. What is to be our guiding and deciding principle in gathering together? It is to be Christ! We meet on that ground alone. Where God's end is most fully in view, and what provides most fully for its attainment - the fullness of Christ - decides where we ought to be, and no one ought to quarrel with that. It is because of a devotion to and jealousy for some "thing"; a "Mission," "Denomination," "Tradition," "Fellowship," "Movement," etc., that rivalries, and bad feelings spring up. All the talk about "sheep stealing" and "dividing the Lord's people," or a great deal of it, arises out of a concern for - not spiritual growth - but something here on the earth. How very much of this talk would be impossible if everyone concerned took the attitude that it does not matter what survives or ceases to exist so long as Christ is being increased in a spiritual way. This involves the necessity that all the Lord's people, and particularly those in "official" positions, and positions of influence, should be utterly and only devoted to the increase of Christ. Christ is not divided, therefore Christ is the ground of unity, not the things as mentioned above.

Whose sheep are they? Are they ours? Can Christ's sheep be stolen by those who are devoted to Him? If they are sheep of this or that, then things are in another realm. No, all this sort of thing is the cause of spiritual weakness and smallness, and a new mind as to Christ Himself is needed for fullness.

Finally, in this connection, and for the moment; everything appointed by the Lord is intended to be for the direct and positive "building up of the body". That marks its object and direction, and its unifying law. Evangelism, Teaching, Gifts, personal and spiritual, etc., are all said definitely to be to this one end. The evangelist and evangelism are not an end in themselves, nor something apart. The New Testament overwhelms such an idea or procedure most completely. All these functions are "Body" functions, and for a well-balanced Body they must be kept together; neither emphasized to the detriment of the other; neither left out. A teaching ministry must go hand-in-hand with an evangelistic ministry; and the other way round. Everyone who functions as a member of Christ's Body - and all members should function - should have in view - not souls being saved, not saints being instructed, but - through these, and all other means, the increase of Christ. Let us remember that the Church is not large or small; our work is not more or less successful according to the number of people represented, but according to the positive measure of Christ.

I cannot close this review without a brief reference to one or two other matters which are vital to this ministry.

There is the matter of the Cross. It will not be saying anything fresh or unusual when we say that the Cross of Christ is deeply bound up with the question of Divine fullness. But how this is so demands a continuous re-emphasis and growing unfolding. The Scriptures make it quite clear that right to the very end the Adversary will seek with all his might and by every means to revive the question of acceptance and standing with God. He is seen very late in the day (Rev. 12) as the "accuser of the brethren," and the destruction of assurance is one of his most determined endeavours. Everything that carries with it the idea of our doing anything and making ourselves anything to obtain the mercy of God and attain unto acceptance with Him, bears the hallmark of the Devil himself. Christ's death for us and our death with Him is the only, but the sure ground of full acceptance! Luther said it very utterly when he put it thus-

"O Christ, I am Thy sin, Thy curse, Thy wrath of God, Thy hell; and contrariwise, Thou art my righteousness, my blessing, my life, my grace of God, my heaven."

No wonder the Devil hated Martin Luther and assailed him so bitterly.

But there is not only the basic, initial, perfect value of the Cross for our full and unquestioned acceptance; there is a meaning of the Cross in relation to spiritual fullness and fruitfulness. It is what Paul calls "Being made conformable to His death" (Phil. 3:10).

This, let us emphasize, must be kept apart from our justification and access to God. How very much of the tragedy, scandal, defeat, weakness, deadness, limitation and unloveliness of many Christian people and Christian institutions, communities and churches is due to uncrucified "flesh" or natural life! How greatly Christ is hidden from view by men and things and methods which bring themselves into prominence! The need, if He is to come to the place of the Divine intention, and we with Him, is for a continuous and ever-deepening working of the Cross in us. We really must be in a position to say "I have been crucified with Christ". Yes, but also to complete the statement "It is no longer I, but Christ." Is it true - "No longer I?" "No... I"? That is what Paul meant, but who can know the depth of that "I". Only Christ knows how deep and thorough His Cross is, and we must hand ourselves over to Him for the Holy Spirit to work all His meaning of the Cross in us, if the way is to be clear for His fullness.

So the twofold meaning and message of the Cross is a very strong part of this ministry. There are many who do not like the latter and will not have it. We can only say that if they represent something far more than the average in spiritual wealth and their apprehension of Christ, and if that with which they are connected is free from the common results of the strength of the natural life; then there is something in their antagonism to the subjective meaning of the Cross to which we must give heed. But we have been there ourselves, and know the difference.

We must close, and we do so with a reference to one other matter. Many may agree with much that we have written, but they will react to it by saying that it is "idealistic"; it is too high; as things are now it is not possible; we cannot hope for such a recovery. Well, there is one answer to that attitude. The Bible has always recognized and provided for a position like that. It was but a small number of the captive nation of Israel who returned voluntarily to rebuild the city, the wall, the house at Jerusalem, and the word which governed and characterized them was, "Whoso is of a willing heart, his God be with him".

In the Book of the Revelation it is clear that the majority had left the full thought of the Lord. The appeal there is to those within who have "an ear to hear". We find them called "Overcomers," and this clearly relates to the decadent conditions; a reaction to the Lord's full and original thought. It is hardly to be expected that all Christians will respond to the appeal and standard, but it is clear that they can, the Lord wills it, and what He wills is not out of the question. It may be a costly way; and the cost will be mainly acute because of the attitude of other Christians.

Hence, we realize that this ministry will sift the Lord's people, and only those who really mean business with God and to "go on to full-growth" will have a place for it. Our message is therefore one which will affect the "Overcomers," although we do not regard them as an elect of the elect, a select spiritual aristocracy. They will have a place of special honour because in them the Lord will have that upon which His heart has been set from the beginning. The difference will be that which is seen ultimately between Joseph and his brethren.

Such ministry as that of which we have spoken will be the outcome of His very deep and drastic dealings with us. It is not something studied and worked out mentally. We shall never be off the wheel as a vessel finished, but somehow the Lord will combine the moulding and the using. Surely this is as it should be. "The Lord's messenger in the Lord's message" contains the vital principle that the instrument should never be in advance of its spiritual history. Even prophets who spoke of things to come, and of many things the meaning of which was not fully clear to them, were made to have their ministry inwrought by practical experience. But the drastic handling is ever unto increase and progress. Such a ministry cannot be "taken up," or adopted. We cannot go into it as we go into any other kind of work, by technical or intellectual training or instruction. Indeed, it is something from which to shrink naturally, as did Moses, Jeremiah, and others. It is helpful and interesting or enlightening to see that, when the Lord spoke through Jeremiah to Israel about the potter's house, and the potter, and then Himself took the place of the potter, the moulding, shaping, correcting, adjusting, purging, unto usefulness was by means of the assaults and inflictings of enemy activity. There was a connection between the Potter's hands and a foreign ruler's opposition and besieging. So for fuller usefulness the Lord uses the enemy and his work, and we are not for long free from this pressure.

These, then, are the main things to which we are called and committed. "Here we stand, we can do no other, God help us."

The Lord give you all a heart to "follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth," and to reach unto His fullness.

A Good Warfare

"This charge I commit unto thee, my child Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that by them thou mayest war a good warfare" (1 Timothy 1:18).

"Fight the good fight of the faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called, and didst confess the good confession in the sight of many witnesses" (1 Timothy 6:12).

"Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 2:3).

If I were taking any one fragment from these two letters which really could be the key to them I think it would be in that eighteenth verse of the first chapter: "This charge I commit unto thee, my child Timothy... that thou mayest war a good warfare".

I want that our time shall be used to consider something - it will only be a little - of the significance of these two letters to Timothy.

First of all, may I say what you already know, but perhaps it is as well to underline it, that Timothy was a young man, and, I suppose, amongst the robust, and what we in our modern language call 'the tough', he was one of the weaker young men, physically evidently, and by all that the Apostle has to say to him in these letters, very much needing a stimulant in body and in spirit.

But I remind you of the tremendous things that the Apostle puts on his shoulders as a young man. These two letters contain some of the greatest things that could ever be committed to any man, whether he be young or old, and therefore the Apostle is not just accommodating everything to his youth. He is pulling the young man up to a very high level, seeking to make him realize that the grace and power of Christ can make a young man a man of very real stature.

The idea exists that you must bring things down to the natural measure of people, whereas we find in the Word of God that the Lord is always seeking to bring people up from their natural level to one very much greater, whatever they may be naturally. Now here, as we shall see, Timothy is not being spoken to as a poor, weak little thing who does not count for much, but he is being spoken to in such language as to make any man feel: 'My, what a thing it is to be a servant of Christ! What a tremendous thing!'

That is said because there are a number of young people, some of whom have only recently come to the Lord: but it is also said for the benefit of all, however long we have been on the road. These letters are a tremendous challenge to stature, to rising to a high level, because the Lord calls to it.

Having said that, let us get into this message. We are dealing with the significance of these letters, not the detail. This is not an exposition of the letters, verse by verse, or even of the parts, but what they signify for us, and we have to begin with the writer himself, the Apostle Paul.

You will know that when Paul wrote these letters he did so from prison, the last imprisonment of several. The second letter brings us right up to the point where the executioner's sword is, so to speak, in hand. The Apostle says: "I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come" (2 Timothy 4:6). The end of his life is reached with the second letter to Timothy. It is generally believed that there was a space between the two. The first letter was in the first part of his imprisonment in Rome, then he was released for a little while, after which he was re-arrested and condemned to death. Be that as it may, the fact is that Paul now is at the end of his earthly course, imprisoned, and in the second letter, almost alone. That we shall see as we go further.

The thing about these last letters of the Apostle Paul that is so impressive is that he is still in the glow and fire of the fight. Whatever the situation and conditions are, the fire is still aglow in his heart. It is the fire of the fighter. Notice all these words about soldiers and fighting the good fight; and apart from those actual words and phrases, the two letters are just full of the old fighting spirit of this heroic Apostle. It has not faded out, by any means, and he is seeking to stir up that glow and fire of conflict in the heart of this young man.

What a debt the Church, through twenty centuries, owes to that heroic, fighting spirit of the Apostle, that never surrendered, never gave in, though wounded, sometimes battered and broken, and bearing many scars of the long drawn-out battle! He is not giving up and not going down under. And, I say, the Church owes an immense debt to that spirit - and that is the spirit that will always put others in debt, under a great obligation.

If you and I, as so often we are tempted to do, let up, let go, yield, surrender, feel it is no use trying to go on, we shall not only lose out ourselves, but probably deprive many of the Lord's people of something that they would have if we just fought on to the last breath.

The Time Factor

The time, and the time factor, is one of the very significant things about these letters. You probably know that Paul had left Timothy at Ephesus, where he was in a position of responsibility in the Church, and Ephesus was the key to Asia Minor. Through Ephesus the word went out into all Asia Minor, and Ephesus was the first of the seven churches of Asia referred to in the beginning of the Book of the Revelation. It is very important to remember those factors, especially in reading these letters, because they do throw a lot of light upon what is in these letters. It was a very significant time.

You see, Paul was executed in the year A.D. 68. John wrote the Book of the Revelation, with those letters to the seven churches in Asia Minor, in the year 96 so that the conditions that are revealed in the churches in Asia in the Book of the Revelation have come about in the twenty-eight years between Paul's execution and John's writing of the Book of the Revelation - and what conditions! You think of all that the Lord gave through Paul to those seven churches in Asia, all the pouring out on that man's part to and for those churches, and those wonderful letters from his Roman prison to Ephesus, Colossae and Thyatira, and all the others, for they were circular letters to those churches. But if you took one letter only, the letter - so-called - to the Ephesians, which was a letter to the churches in Asia, and all that is in that letter, such depth as you and I with the longest life that we could live will never fathom - all that, and in twenty-eight years it is practically all gone! You read those letters to the churches in Asia and then the beginning of the Book of the Revelation. Twenty-eight years! You say: 'Tragedy! That is terrible! A man could give all that, give himself like that, they could receive all that, and then in twenty-eight years the Lord have to write to those very churches: "I have this against thee, and I have that against thee, I know this and I know that." It is a deplorable situation. Is it possible?' Well, you see, that is the time factor, and it is a very significant one.

Now the beginning, or beginnings, of that condition found in the Book of the Revelation twenty-eight years afterward are found in these letters to Timothy. You will find in them the beginnings of that slide downward, and in the attitude of the churches toward the Apostle at the end of his life. What is their attitude toward him, and toward his ministry? (Of course - the man and his ministry are one.) Well, he says: "All that are in Asia turned away from me" (2 Timothy 1:15). That is comprehensive! That is a change of attitude toward him and his ministry. Then he speaks of some five men in particular who opposed him and his teaching. There is Alexander the coppersmith, of whom Paul says: "he did me much evil" (2 Timothy 4:14). There are Hymenaeus and Philetus (2 Timothy 2:17) and Hermogenes and Phygelus (2 Timothy 1:15). Paul marks out these five men as being men who opposed him and his ministry - "did me much evil". That was their attitude, and apparently they were influential men in the church. When Paul left that church at Ephesus and met the elders, as he was committing them to God, he said: "From among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them" (Acts 20:30). Right inside there were those who were against the ministry.

Then, almost as though it were with a sob, Paul says: "Demas forsook me, having loved this present world, and went to Thessalonica" (2 Tim. 4:9). Well, that is the tragedy of Demas. He "went to Thessalonica". If you read the Letters to the Thessalonians and the story of the Thessalonian church, I think you will feel that poor Demas could not have gone near the believers there. Those churches in Thessalonica were most loyal and devoted to Paul, and when Demas got there I do not think he would have been very happy there. Paul says: "Demas forsook me" ... 'one and another have forsaken me' ... "Only Luke is with me".

Here is a change, a big change of attitude toward the man and his ministry to whom they owed so much.

There is the evident need for Timothy to be strengthened. "Thou therefore, my child, be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.... Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier" - and the two letters are full of that sort of thing. Timothy is having a hard time, perhaps because of this change and because of his close association with the Apostle, for Paul says to him: "Be not ashamed therefore of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner" (2 Timothy 1:8). You know, if someone is a 'speckled bird', under a cloud of suspicion, people who are not strong will avoid allowing other people to know of their association with that one. They will hide it all, and try to keep face by not letting it be known that they are closely associated with that one under suspicion. This is something that Timothy was evidently having to face... "nor of me", says the Apostle.

There is so much here with reference to warfare, and to fighting, and all this indicates so clearly that Timothy had to be strengthened, pulled together, and enabled to stand on his own feet, for he was in danger of weakening, letting go, because of the influences of these strong men, Alexander the coppersmith and the rest of them. Paul says: "Let no man despise thy youth" (1 Timothy 4:12). You see what Timothy was up against? He needed some help!

Behaviour In The House Of God

In the next place, the emphasis in these letters, especially in the second one, is upon behaviour in the House of God... "that thou mayest know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God" (1 Timothy 3:15), and then various things are gathered around that. There are the elders, the deacons, and matters concerning behaviour, position, office and conduct in the house of God. Why all this? Because things are beginning to go wrong. Evidently the whole situation in the house of God needed tightening up, correcting, strengthening, pulling together. If the letters signify anything, they signify, as I have said, that the state found in the letters to the churches in the Book of the Revelation was commencing at the end of Paul's life, and the decline would go on during the next twenty-eight years. Paul was aware of what was beginning and how things were going.

Because of the situation developing in the churches, and the enemies within and without, we have this repeated call to battle: "That thou mayest war a good warfare... Fight the good fight of the faith... A good soldier of Christ Jesus." There is no place for sentimentalism in Christianity, nor for smugness. The Church is not a recreation ground; it is a training place for soldiers. It is an equipment place for battle, and if there are wounded soldiers, it is a place for healing them in order to get them back into the fight. That is what these letters say about the Church. It is not the place just to have a nice, happy, pleasant time. We are in a terrible battle, and, mark you, this is not something that ended in the year 96, when John wrote the Apocalypse. This is the sort of thing we are in today.

What, then, were the particular occasions for this battle to which the Apostle calls Timothy?

The Battle In The Unseen

We must say here, as Paul said in his letter to the Ephesians, that this is not with 'flesh and blood', that is, it is not with man and not with things. You notice, even when Paul speaks so strongly about Alexander the coppersmith, he says: "Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil; the Lord reward him" (2 Timothy 4:14; AV). Paul might have come out very vindictively and bitterly against that man. He might really have drawn his sword, for Paul was capable of using strong language if he wanted to. He did to the Galatian detractors: "Let him be anathema" - or 'let him be accursed' (Galatians 1:8). But no - 'Alexander the coppersmith did me personally much harm. The Lord will reward him. I will leave him in the Lords hands.' And again Paul says: "I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge" (2 Timothy 4:16; AV). He is not fighting with men. He is not out against flesh and blood. This is a spiritual warfare, and we must note that as we just pick out some of the things which lay behind this appeal to rise up anew to conflict.

(a) Against Lowering The Spiritual Level

Quite obviously, there was to be a strenuous determination and strong attitude against the down-grading and lowering of the spiritual standard, of spiritual life. It is always a peril of the spiritual life of the Church - the declension, the decline, the lowering of standard, the down-grading of things. Sometimes it is said, in plausible language: 'Let us return to the simple Gospel!' That is only another way of saying: 'Let us not try to rise to such heights! Let us be content with something easier, something more pleasant!'

Now, you see, alongside that, the Apostle says: "For the time will come when they will not endure the sound doctrine; but, having itching ears, will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts" (2 Timothy 4:3). That is: 'Oh, say nice, pleasant things to us; soothe us in your way of speech; remove the irritation of this constant appeal to something higher and greater. Modify; lower.' That, you see, was the thing that landed those seven churches into that awful reproach of the Lord twenty-eight years later. What the Apostle is in effect saying is: 'Look here, Timothy, have none of that. Gird yourself! The warfare is not with flesh and blood. It is against this terrible peril and tendency to down-grade the spiritual life, to take a lower level. Have none of it', he is saying, 'maintain your high standard to which you were called.'

(b) Against Loss Of Spiritual Measure

Next: 'Watch against the sacrifice and forfeiting or letting slip of the fullness which has been made known to you, which has been revealed, to which you have been called.' There is no doubt about it, the Apostle Paul did to all his converts - churches and fellow workers - present the FULLNESS of the divine calling in Christ, which is VERY full and very great.

Here the tendency has begun to sacrifice, to forfeit some of that measure, to let it slip away, and so he says: "Fight the good fight of the faith". And what the faith was to the Apostle Paul - well, you need to read all his letters to find that out. The faith was something very great, very full. The peril which is ever present, as much today as ever, is to let go something, to sacrifice something, to forfeit something of the great fullness of Christ to which we were called.

(c) Against Formality

Next: Against the supplanting of spirituality and life by mere form and ritual and officialdom.

Does it not seem perfectly clear, when Paul here has so much to say about elders and what they ought to be, the kind of people they ought to be, their abilities, their capacities, their standard of life and their gifts, and what he says, moreover, about the deacons, who are the servants of the church in the general matters - he says quite a lot about them, their standard of life and the kind of men they should be - and of other matters which go to make up the life of the Lord's people together - their corporate life - that it can be taken for granted that he was calling back from something? And what was it? From mere officialdom. Elders becoming officials, deacons becoming officials, perhaps desiring office and prestige more than sacrificial service. He is seeking to arrest a course which is letting go life and real spirituality in all these matters and allowing just form to settle down in their place. What Paul means, if we read him aright, is this:

An elder is not just an official. He is not just put into a position because he is a man of intellect or of means, or of social standing, or popular. The danger is to make men officials on those grounds. They have public position, they have money, they are something amongst men, and therefore you put them into office. Paul is saying 'NO! An elder is a spiritual man, or he is nothing. These things must be safeguarded by spirituality and not allowed to drift into something else.' It is the same with the others who have position. The Church is not just an organized thing with a set form. The Church is a spiritual body, a living expression of the Lord Jesus, or it is nothing.

I would like to put in there quite a lot about the New Testament Church. You know, there is a lot being said and written about New Testament churches. I wonder what they are! That is not just a joke! For over fifty years I have been studying this matter, and today I have to say: 'I wonder what a New Testament church is!' We really do not know all that happened in the New Testament churches. There are certain things, of course, which are basic and which must obtain, but what I am saying is this: The thing then was a SPIRITUAL matter, not a formal ritual, a set way of going on.

The Apostle implies that everything is degenerating fast into formalism, legalism, officialism. 'Oh, Timothy, stand against that! Fight this thing. Fight for spirituality: fight for life... "Lay hold on life eternal, whereunto thou wast called"'.

(d) Against The Loss Of Spiritual Fervour

Then, further, the conflict against the loss of this glow, this fire, this dignity that is the true character of the Lord's people and the Lord's servants. Here Paul says: 'Stir up the gift that is in thee', and the thought there is: 'Stir the fire, get the fire aglow again. Things are fading out, things are dying, the glow is going', and you know that when it becomes merely a form the glow has gone. Is that not true? You go through a form, but there is no glow in it, no fire. It has lost that element that speaks of what is great, what is grand, what is fine, and what we have called dignity. How much these letters of Paul to Timothy stress the necessity for there being about him a dignity, a high standard, something that is infectious. 'Stir up... stir up... fight against the loss of spiritual glow.' In another letter he has actually used those words in the original. Our translation is: "Fervent in spirit; serving the Lord" (Romans 12:11), which is a good one, but the original says: 'Maintaining the spiritual glow'. I think it is Moffat that gives us that translation. That is what Paul is saying to Timothy - 'Stir up! Don't lose the fire; don't lose the glow. Resist everything that would have that tendency.'

(e) Against Loss Of Responsibility

Finally, the fight against the loss of a sense of vocation and responsibility. That, of course, comes in when Paul says: "That good thing which was committed unto thee guard" (2 Timothy 1:14). Again I think it is Moffat who translates that more accurately: 'The trust with which you have been entrusted' ... 'That trust, which, being committed to you, guard against this loss of a sense of vocation!'

This is a word for every one of us. The youngest to the oldest should have this strong, deep sense of vocation, of responsibility. It is not optional at all, whether we like it or do not like it, whether it pleases us or does not please us. There is no option about this: it is obligation. It is responsibility. It is a trust that has been put into our hands. Drawing from Ezra, you will remember that when they started out on that long trek back to rebuild the city, they took the treasure, the gold and the silver, from Babylon, and they had to deposit it in Jerusalem, safe, intact and without any loss - and they did. They called upon the Lord for safeguards in order that they should get it through, and at last, we are told, they brought it and delivered it in the house of the Lord. There was nothing lost by the way. It was a deposit, a trust.

Dear friends, you and I have been entrusted with the testimony of Jesus in fullness, entrusted with a great revelation of Christ. It has been committed to us. Christianity has become, and is, I am afraid, becoming more and more generally a matter of whether you like it or not, something that you like, that pleases you. No, here is a challenge which says: 'Look here, if it costs you everything, even your very life, you have got to see that there is nothing lost.' It is not a case of whether it pleases you, of your having a good, happy time, but whether, through every adversity, you are determined to land this treasure intact at last at the feet of the Master and say: 'Here you are, Lord. Here is that which is Thine. Nothing is lost. You gave. I return.' To use the Lord's parable of the talents, the return is with interest, with increase.

Go back to these letters and you see that all this call and challenge to Timothy, as a representative member of the Church, is that there shall be no loss whatever of a sense of vocation, of a high and holy calling, of real responsibility - 'I am a RESPONSIBLE member of Christ, of His House, of His Church. I am not a passenger, not just someone to be carried and fed, but someone taking responsibility, with a sense of trust.' There has been given to each one of us a deposit by Jesus Christ, and at the end He will look to see what we have done with it.

Now, you see, this is the significance of these letters, and I think you will agree that all this is familiar to us today, this tendency to lower, to deteriorate, to decline, to lose something. It is a real battle, is it not, to maintain the high standard, to keep things on a high level, to maintain spiritual fullness. There are the pressures, the discouragements, the heartbreaks, the treacherous Christians; there is Alexander the coppersmith.

So, to end where we began, we note that the conflict is from the beginning to the end. Paul's life, from conversion to execution, was marked by conflict, and there was no let-up at the end. If the testimony of Jesus is truly and deeply bound up with a life or a people, it is only logical that the forces of evil will not abandon their antagonism to what is predestined to be their doom, and anyone or any company called into that destiny will be marked for that antagonism. The warfare, therefore, will continue as long as we "Stand, withstand, and, having done all, stand".

The Lord help us so to do!

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1965

"How Know We the Way?"

From "This Ministry" - Messages given at Honor Oak - Volume 3

"Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?" (John 14:5).

The chapter in which the above words occur is a chapter of questions. Mental perplexity prevails on the side of the disciples. Strange things are being said to them; things which represent the complete reversal of all their deeply rooted ideas; things which turn their world of expectation upside down. Disappointment, despair, disillusionment, and grief strive to submerge them. "We know not." "How know we?" "Show us." "What is come to pass?" These are some of their bewildered ejaculations. But they are only a very few of the many questions which are covered by the comprehensive answer. Indeed, a whole future life is embraced by what these questions elicit from the Lord.

1. Firstly, He makes it clear that the answer to their questions is not - in the first instance, nor in itself at all - a matter of teaching, doctrine, truths, or traditions, but union with a Divine Person; "I am"; "He that hath seen me, hath seen..." To have a living union with Christ in some indefinable way brings the answer to all questions. That is a statement of fact, and we shall wallow in our mental quagmire, and get deeper and deeper, until we come to know by living relationship through spiritual new birth that all-inclusive Person.

2. The next thing in the answer is that the Way is inside. "I come to you." "I in you." It is not a matter of precepts and legal systems imposed from the outside; but One dwelling within Who is the power of the Way. The Way, the How, the What is all answered by a Life Way, a Truth Way, Who governs from within, and just MAKES us know. This is not conscience. Conscience says different things to different people. To the conscience of one a thing is wrong; to another there is no trouble about that thing (see 1 Cor. 10:23-33). But Christ within will say the same thing to all, and everything becomes a matter of obedience to Him. This may deliver from the bondage and tyranny of an imperfectly enlightened and instructed conscience, and all the terrors and misery suffered therefrom.

3. How do we know anything at all as to God's mind, as to right and wrong according to it? The answer here is: "I am the... life" (v. 6). "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you" (v. 27). In brief, it is by life and peace within, or the contrary. When we are in the will of God, when He has gained His place over our own will, there is a sense of life and peace. When there is conflict between our wills, our ways, our souls and God, there is unrest and inward death. The Lord in John 14 is speaking of the coming day of the Spirit (in which we now live) and He says, "He shall be in you." The Spirit witnesses to the will of God by life. We KNOW God and Christ in terms of what they are - life; and where that life is dominant there is peace.

4. Then there comes the change from head to heart. "Love" - verses 23, 24, 28. "Heart" - 1, 27. A heart relationship, i.e., that of love: not a head relationship, i.e., that of question: is the key to spiritual knowledge. Love for Christ opens the door to His self-revelation and impartation.

5. The place of faith. Verses 1, 10, 11, 12. In effect the Lord says, If you will trust Me, trust My Spirit within you, I will see that you get where I would have you - "I AM the way"; I will see that you come to know all that is necessary to realise the purposes of my Father - "I am the truth"; I will see that you do not go under but triumph - "I am the life," and "Because I live, ye shall live also."

The Increase of God

Reading: 1 Cor. 3; Heb. 5:11-6:3.

"We desire each one of you to show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope.... that ye be not sluggish, but... through faith and patience inherit the promises."

"Walk worthily of the Lord... increasing in the knowledge of God." - Col. 1:10.

"Holding fast the Head from whom all the body being supplied... increaseth with the increase of God." - Col. 2:19.

"The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another." - 1 Thess. 3:12.

"We exhort you brethren that ye abound more and more." - 1 Thess. 4:10.

"Speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into HIM, who is the Head, even Christ; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love." - Eph. 4:15-16, A.R.V.

The Lord's thought for His children is fulness; and in connection with all the works of God there is always the thought of fulness; that which the Lord desires for His children is fulness, increase, abundance, growth, development. When the Lord was on earth, He met the need found in the multitudes of people with an abundance and fulness, although having very little naturally with which to meet it. We see His thought is abundance - "and they all ate and were filled and they took up that which remained over of the broken pieces twelve baskets full." (Matt. 14:20).

His utterances likewise are full of this thought, "Give and it shall be given you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over," Luke 6:38. There is fulness and abundance.

If we but realised the possibilities of the Holy Spirit resident within us in correspondence to the energy that He energises in us, how different things would be; "Having the eyes of your heart enlightened that ye may KNOW... what the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that 'energising' of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenlies far above all." (Eph. 1:18-21. A.R.V.).

"I was made a minister according to that gift of the grace of God which was given unto me, according to the working [energising] of His power. (Eph 3:7). "The Lord Jesus who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory according to the working [energising] whereby He is able even to subject all things unto HIMSELF" (Phil. 3:21). "I labour also striving according to His working who worketh in me in power " (Col. 1:29, A.R.V.)

"There are diversities of workings [energisings] but God who worketh [energiseth] all things in all... but all these [energiseth] the one and the same Spirit dividing to each one severally as He will" (1 Cor. 12:6-11).

"It is God who energiseth in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13).

The Lord's thought is to add, to give increase, to bring into fulness.

But there is a side of responsibility where we are concerned, and we need to ask whether the measure of power working in us has to do with ourselves; as to how much we limit those powers, energising, working in us? The Holy Spirit in the power of the Lord Jesus is capable of realising "far above all that we can ask or think," but so often we limit the work by getting in His way. There is a tremendous stress in the New Testament to our going on to the fullness; 1 Cor. 3, and Heb. 5 lay special emphasis on our responsibility to go on.

The Golden Measuring Rod

The measuring rod of God has been set up in the midst of His people, and everything is brought to that golden measuring rod set up in the House of God. To the last detail all that has part in the House of God is brought to that rod - the measure of Christ, and tested by it as to whether it is meet for the Divine requirement.

The measuring rod is the Lord Jesus HIMSELF, HE is the fulness of God, "In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," (Col. 2:9) and everything has to be brought to measure in the Lord Jesus (Col. 2:12 - "In HIM ye are made full.") to be seen whether it comes short; "Lest any of you should seem to come short" (Heb. 4:1). "Lest any man falleth short of the grace of God." (Heb. 13:15). "Wherefore, having the doctrine of the first principles of Christ, let us press on unto full growth." (Heb. 6:1 A.R.V.).

God has a very full standard of completeness in the Lord Jesus in relation to spiritual life, and truly for the child of God there should be no other kind of life, but all the life a spiritual life, where everything is brought by God's Holy Spirit to God's measurement in Christ. Are you coming short of God's measurement in Christ for your business life? If there is anything crooked in your business life the Holy Spirit will bring the straightness of the Lord Jesus against that thing. Also with the home life both personally and unitedly, everything is brought by the Holy Spirit to God's degree and standard in Christ Jesus and tested by HIM. And it is made manifest if there is crookedness, and where there is a falling-short of God's requirement you get conditions which make for unhappiness.

Likewise our secret prayer life, and reading of the Word of God, all must come to the measuring rod of God. Everything in the House of God, i.e., the Lord's people, is brought by the Holy Spirit to God's measurement in Christ, to be tested whether all is according to Christ. The ministry of the Word should be to the straightening out of all to the straightness of Christ. Sometimes it is a cutting off, if we have gone beyond the measure of Christ. We are not so much in peril of doing this, but rather of falling short and not coming up to the "stature of the fulness of Christ." The Holy Spirit's operations with us are according to the standard of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Spirituality

Let us look at some of the things which relate to the increase of God. Firstly, and in some sense all inclusively, it is a matter of spirituality.

"Whom having not yet seen ye love, in whom though now ye see Him not, yet believing ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." (1 Peter, 1:8). "He endured as seeing Him who is invisible." (Heb. 11:27). "Enduring as seeing." This is a measure of spirituality. With us faith is still largely measured by sight, and the Lord is seeking to bring us to the place where we are spiritual; the natural side of things does influence us so much, and the Lord is trying to cut in between this approving and apprehending by the senses.

Paul could not speak to the Corinthian believers but as to carnal; yet this first letter to the Corinthian Church is largely occupied with "spirituals"; "Now concerning spirituals, brethren," (1 Cor. 12:1). And yet this declaration "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual" (1 Cor. 3:1). Now what has happened? These Corinthian believers were tremendously interested in the spirituals, yet they were not spiritual, not really growing, and to have these things on the gift side does not represent maturity. Interested in these spiritual gifts and probably possessors of the manifestation side of things as the spirituals, yet not spiritual.

Love, the Law of Increase

What are some of the laws of real spiritual increase? LOVE, 1 Cor. 12. If I have all gifts, and have not love, I am nothing, I am not spiritual. In the opening passages note how "increase" is linked with "love." What was the reason of the Thessalonian believers' quick growth? Look at the testimony they bore. Paul found he had no need to speak of them, for wherever he went they were known. "From you hath sounded forth the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Acaia, but in every place your faith Godward is gone forth, so that we need not to speak anything.'' (1 Thess. 1:8). What was the secret of their increase? The letters to the Thessalonians are often thought to be the elementary letters, but, the order in which God has sovereignly arranged the letters of Paul, represents far greater facts than mere  chronological order. Romans begins with justification by faith; Thessalonians ends with the coming of the Lord, and with the coming of the Lord you have got to have maturity. And Thessalonians represents coming, to maturity in a very rapid way, a coming, to an "End Time" place - the holding the word in much affliction (1 Thess. 1:6).

The key to the Thessalonian position is LOVE; yes, spiritual increase is by love. Along that way is growth and maturity. You can have all the gifts and be very immature. Spiritual increase is not by knowing all these things, the way of growth is not by faith's power externally manifested, but more by inward endurance. Do you want to know the way of the increase of God? It is by LOVE.

What the Lord needs is an open pure spirit towards HIMSELF, and love toward ALL saints, the Lord will bring into His greater fulness where there is a genuine love one to the other - IN HIM. The sure way of being locked up and limited is to have a closed heart to any of the Lord's children. LOVE is the way to spiritual increase. The Ephesian letter in which there is the fullest unveiling of heavenly truth in the deepest teaching concerning the Church, the Body of Christ, there is from start to finish the golden thread of LOVE running all through, this is significant when you consider what the letter contains.

1 Cor 13 is the great chapter on love, and is put over beside all the "gifts." Love is the real spirituality that is spirituality. Love is the most difficult and the greatest of all gifts. "Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own affections." (2 Cor. 6:12). You are so narrow, so limited, like a closed hedge, pent up, cramped! "Our heart is enlarged, ye are not straitened in us."

The measure of our spiritual life is no greater than our heart; the knowledge that is in the head is not the measure of spirituality, the way for your release, emancipation, increase, abundance is the way of the heart. Spirituality is not mental agreement on things stated in the Word, it is the melting of one heart to another - to all saints. The devil has locked up a number of the Lord's children as in a padded room of their own limitations; frozen their love by something between them and other children of God. The way out is by increase of love; and we shall remain locked, up until we are there!

In the book of Leviticus where the offering to the Lord is introduced, we read "If any man of you bring an offering to the Lord"; then there follows the nature of the sacrifice, what  it is to be and what it is to be like, and "he shall offer it of his own voluntary will." In Leviticus it is voluntary, "If any man," "of his own voluntary will." In Numbers the offering is obligatory and dealing with another aspect of truth. In Leviticus it is a matter of the heart, a voluntary matter, a coming into the presence of the Lord in fellowship; it is the heart going out to the Lord, and wanting something for the Lord, that the Lord should

have something. That is fellowship, that is worship. Then notice the character of the offering to be given, it must be that which wholly speaks of the Lord, it must represent the Lord Jesus. Leviticus opens with the heart going out voluntarily to God, that HE shall have something, and what He shall have is His own satisfaction and be wholly according to Christ. Spiritually this is seen to be a matter of love to the Lord, the desire to have all things according to Him.

True spirituality is the measure of love of God shed abroad in the heart, all the spirituals rest upon and have their rise out of Love. Not power, or knowledge, or different gifts, these are not the first things, the first thing is love. That leads to the increase of God. There are other things that lead to increase but love is first and basic to all other. Any threat to fellowship among the Lord's people is the way of arrest in growth.

"That He would grant you according, to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled into all the fulness of God." (Eph. 3:16-19).

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, May-June 1931, Vol 9-3

The Inheritance - Gained or Forfeited

"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?" (Rom. 8:32).

"Wherefore let no one glory in men. For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." (1 Cor. 3:21-23).

"For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh: though I myself might have confidence even in the flesh: if any other man thinketh to have confidence in the flesh, I yet more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; as touching zeal, persecuting the church; as touching the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless. Howbeit what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith: that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death; if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, this also shall God reveal unto you." (Phil. 3:3-15).

An Inheritance to be Possessed

In reading passages like these, we should be strangely dull and insensitive if we were not left with the impression of much more yet to be - that there is a great prospect for the people of God. The Bible all the way through is a book of prospect; it records movement forward and then failure to attain, but with the resultant sense that that cannot be all, that must not be all, there is something very much more to be entered into. In the first of the above passages of Scripture we are told that there is already secured unto us a tremendous inheritance. "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?" In giving us His Son, He gives us all things; they are ours. The Apostle says, "All things are yours"; they are yours, they belong to you. And yet we find him in this state, caught up in this sense of tremendous prospect and possibility, of the greatness of what is yet for the Lord's people beyond all his own vast apprehension and attainment; giving him this sense, that, though he had come into such wealth and such fulness, it was nothing compared with what he knew was his in Christ, and which was yet to become his in experience. So we have already secured unto us a great inheritance.

We have inherited with and in Christ; not by earning, by working - it is the inheritance of faith in Christ Jesus and goes far, far beyond anything that we have yet imagined. We have only sensed that there is very much more, that it is a land of far distances. It is ours.

But there is a difference between having an inheritance and enjoying it; having wealth secured unto you as yours, and experiencing all that it can bring and all that it means. "Know ye not that Ramoth-Gilead is ours, and we are still, and take it not out of the hand of the king of Syria?" (1 Kings 22:3). That is an Old Testament word. The inheritance is ours, it belongs to us, but we sit still and take it not.

So we begin at this time by reminding ourselves that in our coming into the Lord Jesus and receiving Him, we have been introduced into an inheritance far, far beyond our present knowledge and experience; and it is not only to be entered into hereafter. Do not immediately mentally relate it to the hereafter. If our Christian lives are not characterized by a continuous apprehension of greater fulnesses in Christ, there is something very seriously wrong with us. The inheritance is to be known now. Its fulness will extend beyond all time - it must do, for life is far too short and limited for the apprehension of the 'all things' of God's fulness, in Christ. Nevertheless it is all ours now - for our discovering, for our knowing, for our experiencing progressively and continuously now.

But if that is to be so, if we are to make our inheritance an actual possession and experience, there is a certain spirit needed. There is no doubt about it. This part of the letter of Paul to the Philippians is just full of the spirit necessary for this purpose.

A Spirit of Renunciation and Devotion

Firstly, it is the spirit of renunciation. "What things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ". Yes, those which were gain - not bad things, not evil things to be put away, not wrong things to be given up, not things upon which the Divine veto rests to be let go, but good things to be renounced for the best. That spirit has to characterize us - that we will never be satisfied with good that is less than the best, a measure that is less than the fulness. Renunciation - yes, of good things and things which in their measure and in their way may have been gain to us; renunciation of these for the best. Devotion of heart is breathed here. Oh, how this man's heart is set upon all that has come to him in Christ! What a heart Paul had to exploit all the profound and unsearchable riches of Christ and to turn them to account! Devotion of heart.

Concentration of Purpose

And then concentration of purpose. "This one thing I do". In all the ways, in all the aspects, in all the phases, in all the many-sided occupations - "that I may know him"; that I may know Him along this line, down this way, through this avenue, through all the avenues and ways of life, I am set to make one thing govern everything - to know Him; "for the excellency (that does not mean only the splendour, but the transcendence) of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord". Concentration of purpose - "this one thing", an undistracted life, an undivided interest, everything gathered and focused on one thing; whatever comes must in some way be made to serve this end - my fuller knowledge of the Lord. It is the only way to economize in life; otherwise you have a lot of waste things that count for nothing. Paul would look at everything and ask, 'What has this in it of potentiality to bring me into some further and fuller knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord?' Through sufferings - "the fellowship of his sufferings" - through conformity to His death, but always the cry, "that I may know him". This is concentration of purpose.

Unceasing Pursuit of the Goal

And then continuation. - "I press on". 'I am not going to be brought to a standstill, I am going on'. Now this is exactly what the Spirit that was in Jesus Christ and that is in us will do. The operations of the Holy Spirit, and the providential ways of God - strange, mysterious providences - these are all designed to keep us on the stretch. Any life that is really under the government of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, will never be allowed to settle down, will always be kept on the move - oh, yes, by strange means. The Lord knows how to deal with you and me. He knows the tendencies of our makeup, our constitution, our natures. He knows us exactly, every one of us, and (oh that we could believe it, really believe it always!) the way in which we are going is the way that the infinite, inscrutable wisdom of God knows to be the only way by which we shall come to a greater measure of the Lord. He vetoes much in order to economize, to ensure that we shall not be spreading ourselves too widely but be directed into the essential channels. Yes, He deals with us because He knows us. His providential dealings with us and the Holy Spirit's operations in us are to keep us on the move, on the stretch, with a holy discontent, for there is a great enemy to spiritual fulness. Do believe this, that there is no time in the life of a true child of God or servant of God when they retire, with their work at an end. We ought always to be receiving so much from the Lord that we just cannot retire and keep it all to ourselves. We ought to be like David, who said, "I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good... My heart was hot within me; While I was musing the fire burned; then spake I with my tongue" (Psa. 39:2-4). No, the Spirit will keep us on the stretch, keep us in the way of the growing revelation of what is ours in Christ, so that we have more and more of Him, and cannot keep it to ourselves because it is too much.

Refusal of all Enticements

Well, I was saying there is a great enemy. John Bunyan can help us here. His pilgrims came to a place called the Enchanted Ground and the air in that country was so enervating and drowsy that they wanted to lie down and take a nap. It was all grown over with briars to slow up their progress and weary them so that they would succumb to the atmosphere. Mr. Feeble-mind has to be taken in hand very strongly by Greatheart, and Mr. Despondency has to be laid hold of by Mr. Valiant-for-Truth. In this Enchanted Ground there are many arbours in which you can turn aside and sleep, and some say that if you do, you may never wake up again in this life. There is one arbour which bears the name of The Slothful's Friend; in another two men are asleep - Mr. Heedless and Mr. Too-Bold - and the pilgrims do their utmost to wake these two from their sleep, but they cannot be wakened. And now note - for this is what I am getting at; Bunyan is here so full of wonderful insight and suggestion. 'This Enchanted Ground is one of the last refuges that the enemy to pilgrims has; wherefore it is, as you see, placed almost at the end of the way, and so it standeth against us with the more advantage, for when, thinks the enemy, will these fools be so desirous to sit down as when they are weary? And when so like to be weary as when almost at their journey's end? Therefore it is, I say, that the Enchanted Ground is placed so nigh to the land Beulah and so near the end of their race. Wherefore let pilgrims look to themselves, lest it happen to them as it hath done to these that are fallen asleep and none can wake them'. I say again that a spirit of energy is needed if we are to prevail.

As they journeyed over the Enchanted Ground, they espied a man upon his knees, and as they drew up closely to him, he suddenly sprang from his knees with new vigour and energy. They interrogated him and found him to be Mr. Standfast. They asked him why he was on his knees, and, a little abashed that they had seen him, he explained that having come to this Enchanted Ground, he was met by Madame Bubble who came and offered him all her enticements not to go on, inviting him to turn aside, to take a rest, to receive premature prizes before he reached the City; and, lest he should weaken under her influence, he fell to prayer and so was saved, and could go on.

What need we say more? Oh, there is the fulness. It is there, it is ours, but we need a spirit to lay hold, to persist; this spirit - "Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect." "I count not myself yet to have apprehended (laid hold)", "forgetting the things which are behind... I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the on-high calling". That spirit alone will bring us into the experience of what is ours. It is a terrible thing to have been heir to a very great deal and yet never to have known what was ours. The Spirit of God would make us know. He would stir us to great earnestness in the quest that we may know, that we may possess the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jul-Aug 1951, Vol 29-4

The Joy of the Lord is Your Strength

"Go your way; eat the fat and drink the sweet, and send portions unto him for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy unto our Lord. Neither be ye grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." (Nehemiah 8:10) - or stronghold - "The joy of the Lord is your stronghold".

My intention is just to take that last sentence - "The joy of the Lord is your stronghold".

Really to get the meaning and value of that statement, it is necessary, of course, to see it in relation to the context; that is, in its setting in this whole book: so we must approach it along that line.

An End-Time Message

You are aware, I believe, that Nehemiah is the last bit of inspired Hebrew history in the Bible. Its position, of course, in the binding, is a little misleading, but that is the fact. Until the year 1560, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were one book, and they were called the First and Second Books of Ezra. They go together; they form what I have said is the last piece of inspired Hebrew history in the Bible, i.e., in the Old Testament. Now, of course, as you read these two books, you find yourself in the presence of conditions which are not difficult to discern in our own time. These books mark events and conditions at the end of the 'old' dispensation. They cover about one hundred and twenty years. Ezra and Nehemiah give the history of that period. Zechariah and Haggai are the Prophets of the same period. And during that one hundred and twenty years, beginnings had been made to try to recover what had been lost when Israel went into captivity. A remnant returned, and set to work to try to rebuild, and then the effort faded, and a period of some years marked inaction; and then another attempt was made, a little progress was achieved, and another interruption, and another period of inaction and silence and waiting. One period lasted for sixty years with repeated attempts to recover the original position and fulness, but by reason of a low state of spiritual life, spiritual declension and weakness, there were these interruptions, these periods of inaction, when the work of recovery was suspended.

It is not difficult to see a similarity between that dispensation and this. Remember the days of fulness under Joshua - what days they were! Conquest and possession and fulness! Remember the days under David - what days they were! What a forty years of fulness and life! How the order of God obtained! And now - look at all that has been lost.

We too, we Christians, look back to beginnings in fulness, the great days of the Church at the beginning, what fulness! what life! what Divine order! And then - the same things happened. Many attempts have been made to recover; movements have taken place, and then they have faded out, For some reason they have been arrested; the whole thing has been brought into suspense. And there are those periods in the history of the Church when nothing was happening, all seemed to be silent; and then a fresh movement, and for a time, things seemed to be back on the way again; and again, interruption - and that is the history of the Church. And I think that today there is not a very great deal of difference between the situation as in Nehemiah's time and our own. Lost fulness, ruined Divine order, through spiritual declension, a low standard of spiritual life.

The Former Glory - And Now

The people who had this burden upon their hearts are the people who are here before us in the Book called the Book of Nehemiah. Look then into their hearts, and you will get the clue to these words of this verse. First of all, they were very conscious of the difference between what things were formerly and what they were in their own day. That comes out very clearly. There were old men who remembered, and when they saw even this reproduction, wept; when they remembered the former glory, they said that this was nothing like it was. Of course, there are always a lot of people who are always living sentimentally in a past, but, in this case it was quite true; and while we do not want to be pessimistic and melancholy, there is no doubt about it that conditions today are very different from what they were at the beginning; and although we have not lived in those days, we know well enough, both in the Word, and in our hearts, that a great deal has been lost: the Church is not today the effective, spiritually wealthy thing that it was at the beginning.

And then these people were also bitterly conscious of their own loss, their own spiritual loss. You know that they had lost their language: and there, as they were gathered together by Ezra and Nehemiah, they had to have a large number of interpreters scattered among them, when the Scriptures were read, because, in the seventy years, they had lost their own language, and did not understand the Scriptures; and as the Word was read in public, the interpreters had to say - 'That is that; the meaning of that is so-and-so': and they were conscious, made keenly conscious, that they had lost their understanding of the Word of God. It is a very paralysing thing to realise that the Word of God is so very largely closed; there is so little spiritual understanding of the things of God. You know how baffling it is to realise that God's Word is not an open book, and is not a disclosed revelation to the heart. Well, that is how they were, a great deal had been lost in that way.

And then their desire, strong as it was, and true as it was, to recover this testimony, this former glory, this former fulness, was beset by enemies on every side. You know the story - Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem, and all the rest - enemies all round! A little, weakened, despised, crippled people, of so little account, and enemies everywhere. "What do these feeble Jews?" All that, I say, constituted a situation, a state of things, very disheartening, and created a need for some refuge from despair, some refuge from overwhelming sense of weakness and hopelessness, some stronghold, into which to flee.

In that context we have these encouraging words: - "Neither be ye grieved; for the joy of the Lord is your strength". What does that mean, what does the 'joy of the Lord,' mean? The Lord's joy - a stronghold: that is the word here. 'The Lord's joy - a stronghold'. Well, see it, as you may from the earthly standpoint; but the Lord is evidently looking upon this in a different way, from Heaven.

You know, it does not look like it, but if you like to go to Isaiah 35:10 you will find these words "And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads...; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." That was a prophecy as to the return of this very remnant. The Lord sees here a ransomed people. It was never any pleasure or joy to the Lord that they went into exile - that broke His heart. If the cry of the prophets echoed the heart of God, it was a broken heart, when His people had to go into exile and captivity. And when the Lord brought again out of captivity a people, be they but a small people, a despised and weakened people, nevertheless, a people whose heart was set upon His satisfaction, the Lord had something that gave Him joy, and turned His sorrow away. The joy of the Lord is in having a people, be it ever so small, so despised, so weak, nevertheless, whose heart is set upon that which is according to His heart. If you are in oneness with the heart-beat of God, you may have many enemies, and you may have many things to deplore and grieve over, in yourself, and in yourselves, nevertheless, if you are one with the heart-purpose of God, you are right in the way of the Lord's delight, the Lord's pleasure, the Lord's joy; that can be a refuge for you. It is a tremendous thing to have the assurance that, after all, weak as we may be, imperfect as we may be, despised as we may be, opposed and persecuted as we may be, nevertheless, we are on the line of the Lord. Our hearts are for the Lord; it is what will satisfy the Lord that is the only thing that concerns us. Remember, that is a strong position. The Lord draws around such His mighty defences: it is all right! You are in a strong position if you are one with Him, no matter what you may be in yourself.

A Ransomed People

In having a ransomed people - ah, yes, - not only in that initial sense, of being converted and saved, but a people ransomed from what Babylon means! Ransomed from those conditions which have emaciated and weakened and spoiled His testimony through the ages. Ransomed from those things - they are His people, but His people as a ransomed people; not ransomed in that they have become His people, but now as His people, they are ransomed from those things. That is a special joy to the Lord. And to be with the Lord in that, is to be in a strong position - "the joy of the Lord is your stronghold".

A Representative Remnant

But then, they were also a representative people. You know the Lord has always found joy in something that is representative of His mind. In every sphere it is like that. Take the harvest - well, He ordained that in the time of the harvest, they should go out in the fields and scan the crops, every day, to discover, to see, the very first ripe ears, and when they found, over the whole field, just a few ripe ears, according to His ordinance, they gathered them, and brought them into the presence of the Lord, as representing all the rest that would come afterward; and there was joy, the joy of harvest, in just the few ears. It was something taken account of by the Lord - a simple Divine ordinance, but embodying a wonderful principle. And you can extend that over other things, such as the firstborn as precious to the Lord - it is representative. Now today, He is the Firstborn from among the dead, and oh, the preciousness of Him, as representative of all the sons that He is going to bring. This remnant was representative of God's thought and mind about His people; and they, therefore, were very precious to Him, very precious to Him. Malachi, the last one to prophesy, makes it very clear: 'They shall be my peculiar treasure in that day that I do make'. Something specially precious to the Lord. And, dear friends, it is a strong position to be in, to be very precious to the Lord: as representative of His mind; when there may be much otherwise, that He might have some who do answer to His heart. 'My peculiar treasure' - something the Lord gathers around, as though that were to be looked after for Him.

The Lord Does Not Lose Heart

Here in this, we have a recovered testimony, and everywhere, everywhere it is made so clear in the Word, the Lord has never given up; everything may have seemed to have gone at times. Yes, there may be long periods of silence, with nothing happening, but the Lord has not abandoned it; He has not given up. And any sign of movement, again and again, towards completion, restoration, finds Him there, finds Him in that, finds Him interested, finds Him alive. Here in Nehemiah, so far as would be, and could be, under those Old Testament conditions, things were coming to completion, the wall was being finished, the Temple was built, the testimony was being recovered in representation, in type, and, well, here is the spirit of it. "Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto him for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy unto our Lord". Holy unto our Lord - something sacred to the Lord. "Neither be ye grieved; FOR the joy of the Lord is your stronghold".

In a word, it is to be in a strong position to be in what the Lord really desires and has His heart set upon - His pleasure. Even if there is much to regret, much for which to be sorry, and even if there is much opposition, if there is that which the Lord really wants, it is a strong position to be in. "The joy of the Lord is your stronghold".

How the Lord Sees Things

You see, the Lord sees everything. The Lord did not just see those poor attempts, those imperfect successes, but He saw them in the light of His end; He saw, this was right in line with the end. Oh yes, this city may be a comparatively poor thing, even when it is finished, and it may fail again: but the Lord sees beyond this. It is a token, it is a pointer, it is in the direct line of His eternal city. He sees through this city to the greater City. You see, this is symbolic of that ultimate, and although this will fail, ah, it is on the way to the one that will never fail, and the Lord sees through the token, to that which it betokens. We may only have the token, and it may be poor and imperfect, but, it is precious to the Lord because it is in line with what He is after, what He has set His heart upon. And He has set His heart upon "the city which, hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God."

There may be still much disappointment, but if we have that which is true - in principle - to God's purpose, although not full and perfect in expression, but true in principle, and our hearts are set upon all that can possibly be of that kind, Heaven will make perfect our imperfections at last, and the perfect City will swallow up the imperfect one.

God Needs Men

Now, I close by reminding you - and here is a very practical application of this - Nehemiah was not an official prophet, nor was he an official king, nor an official priest; he was only a man among the people. The official side of things was in much weakness. Kings had all gone wrong and failed; the priests were corrupt: even Joshua the high priest, was clothed in a filthy garment. The prophets, well, they had done their work, and were seeking to do it, but there was much weakness. But here is a man who is none of those officially, just a man, and he rises up to take this whole thing as the burden upon his heart, to bring God full satisfaction. My point is this, what God wants is men, who will take the thing on their hearts. You may not have official designations, you may not belong to the official ecclesiastical, or political class, but you can be a man for God; you can be a person who takes this on your heart. You may meet the disheartenments that Nehemiah had to encounter, you may find there is much slackness amongst the Lord's people, as he found, but he stands out as a man of courage, a man of faith, and he brought the testimony as far on to recovery as ever it was brought at the end of that dispensation. If we could catch something of the meaning of this - "the joy of the Lord is your strength", it would deliver us from a great deal. That is, let me change the word, 'the pleasure of.the Lord', that comes from Isaiah 53 "and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand": that is only another way of saying 'the joy of the Lord'. To be in the Lord's pleasure because in line with the Lord's end, will save us from much. You see what it meant here. "Go your way" - what they might have done and said - 'I have lost my appetite; I am not inclined to eat anything, or drink anything: I am going away to be miserable': 'it is all a poor look-out'!

But mark you, here it is; you are in the way of the Lord's purpose; therefore, eat the meat, drink the sweet; send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared. This joy of the Lord is a great delivering thing from ourselves, and our own troubles. It turns us out to others. It releases us for service. We are no good in service if we are miserable; that is, if we are self-occupied with our own troubles, whatever they may be, spiritual or anything else. If we are turned in on ourselves, that cripples us for service. It is only when we come into line with what the Lord is after, really in line with that, the Lord's joy, the Lord's pleasure, that we are any use to anyone else. "Send portions" - great delivering from self-occupation, to be occupied with the good of others - send portions. And it is a command - "Neither be ye grieved". That is not just a kindly exhortation, a little bit of trying to stimulate us to be a little more cheerful. "Neither be ye grieved" - we are commanded to rejoice in the Lord. "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice!"

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1957, Vol 35-1

Life and Death

"For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again. Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh: even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no more. Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new. But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:14-18).

The Invasion of Death

I want to try and put the meaning of that portion of Scripture into a simple, concise form of explanation. You see that its main theme is life and death. Now, the Bible teaches that death was not natural, it did not belong to the constitution of things. It was not a law which God put into man and nature, that after a certain time he and it should die. Death is not a natural law originally. It is something altogether unnatural from God's standpoint. Death was an invasion like the invasion of an enemy, and is always regarded in the Bible as an enemy which has invaded, has no right, and ought not to be. You know that, deep down in your very being, you revolt against death. There is that which says, This is wrong, death is wrong, death ought not to be! Yes, the Bible teaches that death is an invading enemy who has got in and really should not be there; he is an intruder into God's creation.

But the Bible just as definitely and fully reveals that there is such a thing as a deathless condition or state, a state out of which the very sting of death which is sin, has been rooted, extricated; a state free from death, a deathless life. In the New Testament, in our translation, it is so often called 'eternal life' - not a very complete and perfect explanation of what it is, for that phrase always conveys the idea of duration rather than kind. We come to that again. The Bible, we are saying, equally reveals a condition of deathless life which is not only continuation indefinitely but is glorious life, or a life of glory. There is no glory about death as death. You may see glory triumphing in the presence of death as in the passing of a saint triumphantly, but death itself has no glory in it. Glory is only found in deathlessness, and this deathless life of which the Bible speaks is a glorious life in its essence, in its nature; that is, it has all the power of glory and glorification in it.

There are two sides of the Bible about this matter, but we have to return for the moment to the former. God, so to speak, had to make a grave: He had to make a grave for what had been invaded by death. Graves have always signified the end of a certain order, a certain form, a certain creation. You have to say over every grave, That is the end of something and it is the end of that in which death has its root, its place, its grip. So we find that graves came in right at the beginning. Sometimes, and usually or more often, they are the graves of individuals. You have the monotonous repetition - So-and-so died and was buried; So-and-so died and was buried. But you also find very big graves into which vast multitudes were cast at one time. The flood in the days of Noah was one of God's graves. It stands as a great type and symbol of this truth, that sin works death and death must have a grave. There must be the burying of something, the putting away forever of something.

But let us remember that death does not begin with the body, death is not first of all physical. Death is first spiritual. The bodily or physical side of it is only just the final outworking so far as our being here on this earth is concerned; it is the final stage of death's working in us here. But death started long before that. It is firstly spiritual, and the nature of death is simply, but terribly, severance from God, a rupture in the Divine relationship. When that takes place, there is death. When we become conscious of that, we know something very, very much more terrible than physical death. Indeed, many have sought most eagerly to bring about physical death in the hope that they might quench this full consciousness of their separation from God as it has broken upon them. To become alive to the fact, which fact exists in the case of every one of us outside of Christ, to become alive to the fact that we are severed from God, are without God in our natural state and therefore without hope, is the meaning of death, and it is an awful thing.

Now, apart from an intervention of God, the whole situation is desperate and hopeless. There is nothing for it but eternal separation and somewhere becoming conscious of it, becoming conscious that that separation is a fixed thing - that is awful. A hopeless and desperate situation exists unless God intervenes. It requires God to intervene; only God can meet this situation. You know quite well that in the physical realm, with all inventions and devices, there is no power of man in existence to ultimately frustrate death. When the time for death has really come, nothing can change that. We are all compelled to bow, to surrender. It will take Almighty God in a direct intervention to change the situation and bring in hope.

God's Intervention

Well, that brings us to the other side. God has intervened. That is the Gospel. So familiar is the word to us that it has lost its real meaning and impact and force: it is just thought to be some kind of preaching something that preachers talk about. They call it 'the Gospel', and it is a word despised by many. Ah, but originally it carried a different sense - God's Spell, God's good news, and you have to be in a desperate situation in order to appreciate good news. If we recognise how desperate the situation is, we are ready for good news. God's Gospel is this, that He has intervened in a hopeless situation. He has Himself intervened in this very matter, this desperate state of things. God has not sent an angel, not even an archangel. He has come Himself, incarnated in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ, and so has intervened in this scene and state of desperate hopelessness.

Well, now we are keeping very close to what we read, "One died for all". One stepped into the place that all were in. He, sinless, Who knew no sin, He in Whom there was no sting of death at all, which is sin; He over Whom death had no right or power whatsoever, He Who in His own right and prerogative of His very nature of sinlessness could not be touched, let alone holden, of death, He came into the scene, He Who knew no sin, was made sin on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21), and by His being made sin the sting of death was there, and so He suffered the death of sin in our place. He died as in our room and stead, as a sinner upon Whom were laid our transgressions, our sins. He died our death, bore judgment in our place, and the point at which He touched our state far beyond our consciousness was this, that there was given to Him in an eternal moment the awful consciousness of what death is - abandonment by God - when He cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34). He entered this into the full and consummate meaning of death, and to have that for a moment is to touch eternity. In that moment, He entered into the full consciousness of separation from God. We have never had that and need never have it, thank God! That is where He went instead of us.

"...That they which live..." That clearly indicates life beyond death; that clearly indicates resurrection from the dead. Postpone the physical side of that, that is in the future. The spiritual side of this is now, resurrection from the dead now. God "raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand" (Eph. 1:20). That setting means that God placed Him, positioned Him in the sense and with the meaning that here is One installed Who is an inclusive representation of many others. He is the type, the firstborn, the firstfruits, the forerunner of many others who will and can come into that blessed position of deliverance from the power of death because of deliverance from the condemnation of sin. He is installed, He is placed, He is set as the representative One, "that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes (or in their place) died and rose again". The intervention of God in Christ, the raising of Him from the dead and setting Him at His own right hand, has brought hope, eternal hope, into the place of that awful despair and hopelessness in which we are.

Dear friends, do recognise the infinite grace of God in this present time. God declares facts to us; He does not, He could not possibly, bring those facts home to us in any fulness whatsoever. If we were to have the fact of our condition outside of Christ brought fully home to us, we should disintegrate, we should go raving mad, something would happen, we should commit suicide, do something desperate, we could not bear it. In His mercy, God is not doing that. But He is saying that we need not know that. When He speaks of a darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 13:4-7, etc.), He knows what He is talking about. There is a consciousness of hopelessness, full and complete. But that is the dark side. In His mercy, He says that that is not necessary because He has intervened to save us from it, and not only to save us from that awfulness of doom and despair, of darkness and hell, but to save us unto glory, deathless life which in its full outworking is glory for spirit and for body - a glorified body in the power of this deathless life. He has intervened to secure for us that which was the inheritance He meant us to have at the beginning, but which was lost to us through Adam's sin, and this invasion of death. He has dealt with the whole condition, cleared it up and made possible a full realisation of all that glorious hope. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you" (1 Pet. 1:3-4). "A living hope". That is what this passage of Scripture that we have read amounts to.

But what is the practical thing between the two? There is the awful grave, and here are we, and that grave is in our path, it lies across our way; not just the grave of Mother Earth, but that awful grave, the grave which God has had to dig for a creation, the grave of that awful death, that grave which is after all spiritually only a passage through into an awakening which it is impossible to contemplate. Here we are, and in our path lies that grave, but between us and that grave stands a cross - "two arms outstretched to save, like a watchman set to guard the way from that eternal grave" - a cross on which the Prince of glory died, a cross where He, as us, suffered the consequences of sin right to their full and most awful realisation in God-forsakenness, and full consciousness of it. That cross for us - that is the Gospel.

The Need of a Declaration on our Part

But the practical point for us - it is simple, so simple that so many stumble at it, do not come to it, and the great enemy who would hold in that grasp of sin and death sets himself with all his power and his cunning to keep from that act - what is it? A declaration on our part - that is all. This is the way from death to life, this is the way from that awfulness to that glory - a declaration on our part that His death was our death, the sin laid on Him was our sin, the separation from God which He experienced was our separation from God. We were there in God's thought and mind. When Christ died, we were there. He died in the place of all - that is God's declaration. In that death, our sin as the very sting of death was plucked out and destroyed. In His resurrection, sinless, no longer bearing sin, sin done away, buried forever from God's sight, in His resurrection our sins are gone. We are no longer under death because we are no longer under the penalty of sin. We stand justified in His resurrection. He lives for our justification, and in His resurrection we are accepted by God and are given by God that deathless life - "the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 6:23) we are given that deathless life and possess it, the germ of all that glory which is to be, and "though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God" (Job 19:26). Not in this flesh - in a glorified body I shall see God. The body of this humiliation shall be changed and made like unto the body of His glory (Phil. 3:21). Then it shall be said, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? ...Thanks be unto God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 15:55,57). We make a declaration on both sides, the death side and the resurrection side, and in taking that position and expressing our faith like that, we come into the place where we are no longer under condemnation but justified, no longer in death but in life, no longer in hopelessness of prospect but now in the prospect of eternal glory.

A Practical Expression

In the New Testament there is seen the way by which that declaration is made practical. It is baptism. The means does not effect the result, it does not bring it about. The means does not pass us from death to life, from despair to hope, but it is God's given way of helping us to put our faith into a very practical expression. As we go into the water, we declare that we have passed through; that, on the one hand, we have recognised ourselves as in that doomed, judged, crucified, slain Son of Man. On the other hand, we see that One in the glory there for us, nay, He is there as us, and we shall be there with Him in due course. That is the declaration that this form of expression, baptism, holds. God always asks that we should put our faith into a practical expression. A practical expression does not save, but if the Lord has prescribed, there is something about it which carries a blessing, and we who have gone that way do know that it does carry a blessing. It is a glorious Gospel, changing despairing darkness to light, shame to glory, hopelessness to the most blessed prospect conceivable.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, May-June 1946, Vol 24-3

Life in the Spirit

"And Jesus, when He was baptized, went up straightway from the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon Him; and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased'" (Matt. 3:16).

"Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He afterward hungered. And the tempter came and said unto Him, 'If Thou art the Son of God...'" (Matt. 4:1-3).

"Again, the devil taketh Him unto an exceeding high mountain, and showeth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and he said unto Him, 'All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me.' Then saith Jesus unto him, 'Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve"' (Matt. 4:8-10; ASV).

"And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one" (Matt. 6:13; ASV).

"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God" (Rom. 8:14; ASV).

"And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire; and it sat upon each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus Whom ye crucified" (Acts 2:2-4, 36; ASV).

In the first of these passages we see the link between the Holy Spirit and sonship: the Spirit is seen lighting upon the Lord Jesus and a voice out of the heavens is heard saying, "This is My beloved Son." That truth is taken up again in the passage in the Letter to the Romans, chapter 8:14, "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God." In the second passage, Matthew 4, the Son, under the government of the Spirit, is led into the wilderness, and the issue of that particular leading of the Spirit was a mighty victory for the rights of God.

"Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth Him," as Luke adds, "for a season." That is the end of that battle and it is victory in the hands of the Son under the government of the Spirit.

What I feel the Lord wants us to recognize at this time is what a life or church that is led and governed by the Holy Spirit does; what it means to be led and governed by the Holy Spirit so far as we personally and collectively are concerned: in other words, what are the marks of sonship. You see, beloved, we have to begin here, that sonship is proved by our being led by the Spirit. How do we know that we are sons: what is it that evidences sonship: in what way does sonship manifest itself and work itself out? The clear, precise statement of the Word of God is that it is by our being "led of the Spirit." It was so in the case of the Lord Jesus. The marks of His Sonship were in His being led of the Spirit. The statement moreover is quite positive in Romans 8:14. How tremendously important it is, therefore, that we both have the Spirit and are governed by the Spirit. That is fundamental to everything.

I venture to say that if that which I feel the Lord wants to bring to us now could be truly got over to us, it would be a matter of tremendous value to every one of us. Let me repeat: the basis, the foundation of everything so far as our relationship with God and with God's purpose is concerned, is the presence and the government of the Holy Spirit; and that government, of course, means and presupposes the absolute Lordship of the Holy Spirit: because the Holy Spirit does not come save on the ground of death, burial and resurrection. It was when Jesus was baptized and came up out of the water that the Holy Spirit came upon Him; and baptism, as we all well know, sets forth in testimony the fact that, so far as any other government is concerned, be it the government of Satan, or that of the world, or be it the government of the self-life, that government is broken and we are out of it; and our resurrection, typified in our coming up out of the baptism, means that we are alive, and alive unto God only. Thus the ground is provided for the Spirit to come in as Lord, and so become the basis of everything in our relationship with God and God's purpose. The thing that I feel we want to recognize is what that really means.

A Principle Of Spiritual Guidance

There are a great many questions which arise, and which we are often asked. They sometimes seem to be theoretical questions, technical questions about the Christian life. Now, we may seek to help one another by giving what we might call a technical answer, an answer, for example, from the Scriptures on some passage or some interpretation. But I am always doubtful as to the real helpfulness of that kind of answer. I think, beloved, there is an answer which goes deeper and which is much more satisfactory.

I have recently been asked a question, and I will answer it publicly so that what help there may be in the answer will be afforded to others. The question turned upon the difficulty over the difference between soul and spirit, and the place which the soul is going to have in the future life. Is it going to have any place at all or is it going to cease? Now you know I might answer a question like that with passages of Scripture, but I do not think that would be the most helpful way, because it would probably only raise more questions. But I am going to answer it in this way, because, although we are not dealing now with the matter of soul and spirit, I am seeking to get at a principle of guidance, a principle of spiritual guidance, the law of sonship.

I would ask you, What is your experience as a child of God in the matter of soul and spirit? Perhaps those words are too technical. Let me put it more simply. What is your experience with regard to that side of your life which is directly in touch with the Lord (in the measure in which you have a conscious life in the Lord: I think every child of God ought to have some little measure of a conscious life with the Lord), and that other side of your life which you know to be yourself - not the Lord, but yourself, your natural life; your spiritual life on the one side, and your natural life on the other. Now when, as a child of God, you take just a little excursion into that region which is your natural life, what is the result? It may happen through a slip, a momentary breakdown, an indulgence - "overtaken in a fault" is how the Apostle expresses it - anything which means that, just at that moment, you drop down into the natural life, or the natural life rises up and gets the advantage for the moment, asserts itself and becomes the dominating thing. What is the effect of that upon you? If you are a true child of God and are really seeking to live with the Lord, you have a terribly bad time, and it is not just a matter of your conscience in the same way as any man might have a twinge of conscience. You know that there are other factors in this, that of the Lord being grieved, of something between yourself and the Lord having been damaged. It is something much more than just conscience. You have a bad time and you react, you rebound, you are stung by that, and you make haste to get back on to the other side. You seek to recover your spiritual ground as soon as you can, with considerable regret and remorse and repentance. What has happened? Well, you have come out of your spirit in its union with God into your soul. You have learned a lesson. You take account of this thing and you say, "How was it that I slipped up there? Why was it, what accounts for that? I will prayerfully watch that in the future. I know now what that means."

Now, it does not follow that you never do slip in the same way again, but as you go on you do spiritually grow out of that particular thing, and what is happening is that in spirit you are taking the mastery of your soul. You are not annihilating your soul, but you are bringing it under government and making it your servant; for mark, that frequently the occasion of stumbling is only the evil form of an expression which in itself may be necessary. Take anger, for example. You became angry; but you became angry in your nature, your natural life, and it was because there was a self-interest or some self-element in your anger that you had such a bad time. Anger is not evil. "God is angry with the wicked every day" (Ps. 7:11). "Be ye angry, and sin not" (Eph. 4:26). Anger is not evil. You are not therefore going to annihilate your soul and make anger non-existent. I instance anger, but you can take any other feature that you like in the same way and you will find that the soul itself is not essentially evil. The evil lies in the evil principle that has got hold of it.

What are you going to do then? In spirit you are going to destroy the evil principle and get the mastery of your soul, so that anger is going to serve you. Love may have personal elements in it; but you are not going to annihilate love because you find love trips you up sometimes on a personal line and leads you astray. You are going to destroy the evil principle by the power of the death of Christ and master your soul and bring it under, so that by your spirit you use love, you govern the matter of love. Now then, the point that I am after is not so much the difference between the soul and spirit, but rather something related to the Holy Spirit Himself.

The Holy Spirit An Earnest

The Holy Spirit is a basic necessity, but mark that the Word puts it in this way. "... ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance" (Eph. 1:14). What does that mean? Well, if the Holy Spirit is the energy, the power, the intelligence, by Whom we are doing this very thing of which I have been speaking, He is pointing on to something. What is it that He is pointing on to as an earnest of something that is to be? Why, He is pointing on to a time when you and I will, in spirit, have our souls utterly and perfectly under our government - not annihilated, but perfectly under our government; and I do not believe that in the resurrection life, the life hereafter, we are going to be only naked spirits. We shall be men, we shall have souls, but without the evil principle and without the soul being in the place of mastery. Through the organ of the spirit we shall govern all the rest of our being and enjoy a perfectly adjusted manhood. Manhood is not a temporary thing. It is an idea of God which is to go on.

Well now, you see the principle. But the question is answered when you get the law. All questions are answered. The question is this in general. What does the Holy Spirit do in us? How does the Holy Spirit lead us? What does it mean to us in a practical way day by day to be led of the Spirit? Oh, do not just narrow that down to the question of, Lord, shall I go here or there, shall I do this or that? That is only a mere fragment of being led of the Spirit. Without any such questions arising, the Spirit is in us to lead us, and to lead us to moral issues in the way I have just been indicating; that is, to show us the way and to say to us, No, that other is not the way, this is the way; and we know, not by His pointing it out but by His effective working in us. Our reactions, as true children of God, are the work of the Spirit. That jumping back from the ground that we have touched to our hurt, that is the energy of the Spirit in us leading us, and it is a terrible thing for any child of God ever to come to the place where he can indulge without a reaction.

The enemy would like us, because of our failures, to say, Oh, well, it is no good, we give it up! If you and I have a bad time when we touch the natural realm, that is a glorious evidence of sonship. Do not try to rule out all your bad times and make light of them, but beware that the enemy does not turn them to such effect as to make you introspective and morbid. But remember the Spirit will keep alive in you a very active sense of what is, and what is not, in accord with the mind of God. These are the sons of God who are thus led by the Spirit of God.

You see how we answer all our questions. I answer all my technical questions by looking to see what it means to me that the Holy Spirit is in me. What is the spirit pointing to? What is the significance of today's touch of the Spirit upon my spirit? That is an earnest of something. If that is followed through it will grow and develop and it will lead me somewhere. That is going to answer all my questions if I have got that principle. Have I been too difficult for you? Oh, listen to the Spirit, come under the government of the Spirit, and then, when the Spirit checks you, urges you, moves in you, gives you a bad time, or gives you joy in your heart, note what that means, what it is leading to. Oh, there is something bound up with that, there is something at the end of that. I interpret everything in life by that touch of the Spirit and that answers all my questions. If the Spirit touches my mortal body today with His living finger and quickens it, I do not at once conclude that I have become immortal, that death for ever has gone and incorruption has settled down in my mortal frame. But I can say, "My resurrection body will be like that in fullness. It will simply be the consummation of that touch I have known today. I have a wonderful accession of life today, but the time is coming when that very thing will have been developed to its fullest extent and I shall live utterly by Divine life. I have the Spirit as an earnest." I am trying to illustrate this thing. The Spirit touching us in any way, dealing with us in any way as sons of God, is pointing on to what it will be when sonship is manifested (the day of the manifestation of the sons) and the creation is delivered from the bondage of corruption.

Now all that is detail. You can drop the detail and get back to the foundation. What is it? The Holy Spirit is basic to everything. We shall never get anywhere without the Holy Spirit; we shall never know anything without the Holy Spirit; we shall never reach anything in the purpose of God without the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit has to be a conscious life with us: growingly so, as in the case of a baby. The baby has very little self-conscious life to begin with. As a baby, most things are done for it. But it is not long before the very first and remote signs of conscious life are there. Whereas up to a point there seems to be no consciousness of anything in particular, suddenly you will see a baby get its eyes fixed upon something; suddenly it sees something. From that time, the baby is taking account of something. It does not understand, but it is aware of some object and cannot take its eyes from it. It comes back to it and, as the days go by, seems to look for it. Self-conscious life has started, and from that time onward that grows. In the spiritual life it is just like that.

At the beginnings, most things are done for us as from the outside, although there is a remote sense of a new self-conscious spiritual life. But, as we grow, the Spirit's presence in us has to become more and more a conscious life of government; and these who are led by the Spirit of God are sons. That is the foundation. It is the foundation of growth, it is the foundation of understanding, it is the foundation of God's purpose, it is the foundation of all that is wrapped up in our relationship with God.

Forgive me for being so elementary, but if we can only get this, it is the key to everything. We do not want to have certain questions answered in a technical way to the satisfaction of our minds, but we get at the answer spiritually. We are never really satisfied by having a question answered so that our minds can grasp it. Presently we shall come up against new features of the thing and want new explanations. But if we can have the answer conveyed to our spirit - ah, then we are satisfied; and I say the answer is found in the presence of the Spirit and what the Spirit is indicating by His present dealings with us. What do His dealings with us indicate? What is the end of it all? If the Spirit today touches us upon a question of wrong, of evil, of something doubtful, what is the end of that? The end is holiness, perfect holiness. It will take some time because there are many things to be dealt with. But the end, when reached, is a holy being. So with everything else. In this the Spirit is therefore the foundation.

Adjustableness A Mark Of A Life Governed By The Holy Spirit

There are some other things that come up in that connection. One of them is this, that a mark of sonship or of a Spirit-governed life is adjustableness. Now, I want you to grasp this. You see, it means that nothing is final with us, so far as our attainment is concerned or our light, and that we can never, if we are under the Holy Spirit's government, come to a fixed place. We can never come to the place where we just accept everything and go on with it rigidly as it is. Oh no, a Spirit-governed life can never do that, can never become stagnant, can never become fixed. There can never be any sense of finality about the position or state in such a life. I am not talking now about those great truths which are settled, to which nothing is added or need be added. We are settled, of course, in the matter of what Christ has done and what Christ is, those great objective truths of our faith. I am not talking about that, but of our understanding, our apprehension, our knowledge, our growth, our relationship to these things, our position. These are all things which must remain open to enlargement, to expansion, and it may be, to drastic changes. You see, in traditional Christianity we have come into something that is more or less fixed. It is fixed in different ways. If you are a Baptist, then your position is a fixed position. If you are a Presbyterian or a Methodist, etc., it is the same. These are things which are rounded off. I am only illustrating, not judging. What is within these things is something to which you have conformed, of which you are a member. That is your bound, your world. I have only cited one or two examples: I could take any number of things.

Now then, where are we? How did we get in? Perhaps we were born, brought up, in those things, or perhaps we came into them later. But they are something, and they represent a fixed position and we, if in them, are fixed and governed by that position. That is to say, within them, certain things are interpreted in this way, certain things are practised in this way, the method there is this method; and how often, when you have been speaking of things, have you had this reaction from people, "Oh yes, but I was never brought up to that way of thinking. In the church to which I belong" (really referring to the denomination) "it is taught and practiced like this." That is a fixed position. Let me say it, without judging of these things, that any fixed position is a contradiction of the Holy Spirit and of sonship. It does not matter what the position is; and it may be (I am only going to say it may be, I could put it more strongly than that) that if you really come under the government of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of sonship, you will have to make very drastic changes and cease to be this and that, and go on with God. Adjustableness is a mark of sonship, and, as the Holy Spirit has never brought any of us yet to a final position, there is more light and understanding yet to be received. The ways of God are not all known to us yet.

We must remember there is all the difference between the permissive will of God, for such instruction in us as can never be gained in any other way, and the whole will of God, which is another thing. We all have to look back on our lives and believe that certain steps which were taken and courses followed were in the will of God for us. Yet, in later life, we have had to repudiate the position into which we then came, entirely change and adjust. But, beloved, I am going to say this: it does not mean that it was not the will of God for us that we took that step. The Lord may, at one time, in His permissive will, lead us in a certain way, because of its being the only way we can learn certain things we have to learn. But it does not mean that God intends us to stay there for ever, that He has settled us there, and that, because He led us in that way and into that, we dare not ever contemplate moving out of it. That is bondage. You and I as sons have to know liberty from bondage of every kind, and that means that we are adjustable, free for adjustments, not bound by any kind of conception that would prevent us from making changes as we are led by the Spirit; and it is true of every life that is Spirit-governed that tremendous changes take place. The things which at one time would never have been considered nor contemplated, have become actualities now. The basis of the life of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit producing sonship means that you and I have to be adjustable, and if we are not adjustable there is arrest at once: we are in bondage, we are in limitation. The Lord Jesus was adjustable under the government of the Holy Spirit. He was not playing a trick on His brethren when one day they came to Him and said, 'We are going up to the feast. Are you going up with us? If you do not go, people will wonder; you will prejudice your interests.' He said, 'No, you go up, I am not going up.' Yet when they were gone up, then Jesus went up to the feast. Is He playing a trick on them? Was He simply saying, Well, I would rather go alone, I would like to get rid of you? He had not the witness of the Spirit at that moment that He was to go, and therefore He had to stand His ground and take the risk of being misunderstood. But when they had gone up, He evidently got the Spirit's witness that He should go up; and He did not say, I have told them I was not going up: they will think I have played a trick on them, that I did not want them. No, He did not argue like that, but moved in the Spirit and left it all with the Father. He was not bound by those considerations of what people would think and say either way. If they should talk because He was not there - all right, let them talk. As for Him, He must be true to the Lord. Adjusting, even if it is at an hour's notice, that is life in the Spirit, that is sonship.

This is the basis of victory over the Devil. There is no defeating Satan save on this ground of walking by the Spirit, of being governed by Him. May the Lord give us understanding in these basic things about our life with Him.

"The Lord is With Him"

"Then answered one of the young men and said, Behold I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is skilful in playing, and a mighty man of valour, and a man of war, and prudent in speech, and a comely person; and the Lord is with him" (1 Samuel 16:18).

This verse gives us six features of the life of David, the man who came to be described as being after God's own heart. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that there are five virtues and that the last, "the Lord is with him", is really explanatory of the rest.

1. "...skilful in playing..."

This introduces us to a main feature of David's whole life, which was worship. We owe many of the Psalms to him. The title for what we call 'The Book of the Psalms' was originally 'The Book of Praises'. It became the book of worship, first for the nation and then for the whole world. There is an indication of what was to be an outstanding characteristic of David in this description of him as a skilful player. Where had he learned? How had he developed this talent? In solitude. When these words were spoken, David was unknown, living out his days in the fields of Bethlehem where he cared for his father's sheep. It was there in obscurity, and perhaps in loneliness, that he developed his spirit of praise. Afterwards it became public and the whole people profited from it, but it had its first beginnings in a simple humble life with God. How was the young man who recommended him to king Saul aware of this gift? It seems that he had somehow overheard David, for he appears to be the only one who was informed about him. We do not want to make too much of this point, and yet it is clear that what happened way back in those fields of Bethlehem did produce the foundations of David's later life. He himself referred to this when he offered to go out and fight Goliath. It was in the ordinary affairs of life that he proved the reality of the presence of the Lord and learned the secrets of an anointed life.

From this fact there immediately emerges the reminder that in the Lord's work we neither need to push ourselves forward nor to be pushed by others. Our first concern must consist of exercise Godward. If in your secret history you minister to His good pleasure, without the stimulus which comes from public applause, it will sooner or later, become apparent. God will see to that. Do not worry too much about your lifework; if you have a hidden life of worship, then that will show itself in the outward service to which He has called you. God has always described His service as worship and regarded worship as basic to His service. "Let my son go, that he may serve me," He demanded (Exodus 4:23). And how did Israel serve Him? By worship. The important point is that this does not begin in public. David's life of song was the result of a heart attitude of worship, in songs of praise which expressed his heart devotion to the Lord. Sometimes, perhaps, it was a case of songs without words, inner melody to the Lord for which there were no words.

We note that this first mention of music in David's life is associated with evil powers in king Saul. Saul had been given the highest opportunity, but he had been disobedient, taking into his own hands those things for which he should have waited for God. "Tarry till I come unto thee" - but Saul could not tarry. He was restless, impatient; and in taking hold of the things of God for himself he had allied himself with evil powers. As Samuel told him: "Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft..." (1 Samuel 15:23), for it links a man with that other evil world. So by seeking to grasp at things for himself, Saul not only forfeited them but allowed Satan to gain a foothold in his life. This has been Satan's objective from the first, to draw things away from God and to himself. In his ultimate manifestation in the person of the Antichrist, he will sit in the temple of God, giving out that he is God and being worshipped as God. That is his ambition. David was just the opposite, for the motive in his music was that everything should be for God's glory. That explains the clash. There are the two kingdoms, one taking from God and the other bringing everything to God. No wonder, then, that Saul became David's greatest enemy.

From the first beginnings of his life David turned everything into music. All his experiences, all his history, he turned into song. It is a most helpful study to look for those Psalms of his which have an introductory explanation of the circumstances in which they were written. Even when Absalom drove him from his throne, David turned that bitter experience into a song (Psalm 3). The whole value of his Psalms is that they arose from a vital experience of God. The volume of Psalms then became the book of Israel's praises, until at last David organised the whole thing for temple worship. He drew together a choir of four thousand voices, and so organised their singing into twenty-four courses that praise was never silent in Israel, day or night. No sooner had one course finished than the next took over, and so round the whole twenty-four hours of each day, every week and every month, throughout the entire year. In this way there was an unbroken flow of continuous worship to God.

Even the deep and dark things of his life were turned by David into Psalms of praise to God. He had his failures, his tragedies, and even his desperate sin, but in all this he found forgiveness and restoration as he turned back in heart to God. This is why he was so beloved by God, because he never failed to find his way up and out through worship. And worship has always proved a most powerful weapon against the kingdom of darkness. "The lion of the tribe of Judah... hath overcome" is part of the heavenly song, and since Judah means 'praise', this suggests that there is a victoriously militant power in spiritual praise. Many a time Martin Luther found his escape by this means. He knew much of the onslaught of satanic powers; he seemed sometimes to be engaged in hand-to-hand conflict with the Devil. His only but very effective answer at such times was to say: 'Let us sing, brother'!

Psalm 22 is one of David's great Messianic Psalms and, although it opens with a dismayed cry at being forsaken by God, it soon breaks through in an appeal to the one who inhabits the praises of Israel (verse 3). It seems that God is provided with a throne for ruling when His people worship and praise Him. This is no small thing. Again in Psalm 114:2, speaking of the glorious procession out of Egypt and on towards the inheritance, the psalmist tells us that: "Judah became his sanctuary". This is only a figurative way of saying that the praises of the Lord provide a holy dwelling place for Him. Praise brings God into a situation as nothing else can, and it puts Him in His right place which is over all. It is a tremendous thing to be able to put the Lord over everything, over breakdown, over perplexity and suffering, over your enemies, over your failures and even over your sins. That was what David did, and that is surely the spiritual reality which lies behind the description: "skilful in playing".

Praise, real praise, means that we are on the victory side. Of course there is a kind of singing which is really a confession of defeat, singing to keep up your spirits, whistling in the dark to pretend that all is well. There was no need for David to do that, for the final statement about him was: "the Lord is with him". That was both the reason for David's singing and the result of it. Yet worshipper as he was, provider of praise as he might have been, David sometimes went down into the depths of despair and had to confess that, as he sang, his soul was cast down and disquieted within him. But he had an answer for this. It was to look on to the day of deliverance which must surely come: "Hope thou in God; for I shall YET praise him..." (Psalm 42:5). The end of the story is written for us in the book of Revelation which gives us glimpses of the glorious choir of the redeemed in heaven. In that day we shall all be skilful in playing and it will be true in the fullest sense that the Lord is with us. So let us praise Him that we shall YET praise Him, and this in itself will bring us a present experience of victory.

2. "...a mighty man of valour..."

This brings us straight on to the second feature of this anointed man's life, namely that he was a great man of courage. David may not have been as impressive in physique as those brothers of his, but because he had spiritual and moral courage he was rightly considered as a mighty man. Valour begins by getting on top of ourselves, by conquering our own moods and feelings; it begins within and not in outward things. At times it is not so difficult when you have an audience, and are inspired to courage by the fact that people are looking on, but it is much more difficult to be brave when you are quite alone. Once again we note that David first acquired his claim to valour when he was in the background, largely unobserved.

Of course there are also new challenges to the man who is exposed to public testing, but when that came, David confirmed that the original assessment of his valour was a correct one, for by God's grace he kept true through many temptations to doubt and fear. When the Philistines seized him in Gath he declared: "What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee" (Psalm 56:3). It is fear which robs a man of his courage. Fear entered the world when sin came in, and it has governed human behaviour ever since, just as it exercises a dreadful rule in the ranks of evil spirits (James 2:19). If sin brings in fear, then courage often depends on having a good conscience. The most fearless or courageous Man who ever walked this earth was the Lord Jesus, whose remarkable moral courage was based upon an absolutely clear way between Himself and His Father. A bad conscience makes us small and makes us cowards but a good conscience gives stature and boldness. David was far from being a sinless man, but he had learned the secret of getting right with God and a great theme of his Psalms is the blessing of forgiveness and justification by faith in our Saviour God.

Valour also depends upon a complete faith in the Lord. David believed God implicitly; he believed and he loved. The Psalms are full of this fact. Only perfect love can cast out fear. Every new experience of God which came to David made him the more ready to trust God's great love and to love Him in return, a fact which doubtless established him more and more as a mighty man of valour. The Lord built up his strength by taking him through difficult and adverse circumstances in which he proved the steadfast love of his God. Then as he grew in courage, he was able to undertake things altogether beyond his measure in the interests of the Lord. Tremendous odds mattered nothing to him provided he could be sure that the Lord was with him. He also proved his courage in waiting for God and enduring without complaining when things seemed to be against him. For a man of action to be powerless, just to endure and be patient while he waits for God, demands very great courage. There were times when David could have acted in desperation to rid himself of his great enemy Saul, but he refused to do so. He was prepared to wait for God. When we learn such a lesson then we are learning valour of a very high order.

3. "...a man of war..."

In the third place David was a warrior. This reference is the first intimation of the constant warfare which was to be a feature of his life. David had to be a fighter, not because he was personally aggressive, not because he needed to be relieved of superfluous energy, and not because he was trained or qualified in military matters, but because he was jealous for the rights of God. It is quite clear that what stirred his spirit was both indignation that God's name should be dishonoured and concern for the good of God's people. It was a sense of responsibility for the Lord's interests which made him a fighter, and as we speak of this we seem to hear the words of that other great spiritual warrior, Paul: "Knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel" (Philippians 1:16).

As we have said, it all began in the simple and humble affairs of David's daily life. His first fight was over a lamb. Only a lamb! Why risk your life for just a lamb? Your father is a man of some substance - witness his gifts to the king and the older brothers - and he would never miss one little lamb. Surely the lion could have that one! But no, that lamb was David's responsibility, it was part of the father's possessions which had been committed to his care, and it was this sense of concern for Jesse's interests which led him later into concern for God's interests and made him the fighter that he was.

Warriorship, however, demands utter selflessness. Those who have personal problems and interests may be fighters in a wrong way but they will never be good soldiers of the Lord nor fight the good fight of faith. Those who spend their time complaining and criticising are doing the enemy's work. In the wilderness Israel was defeated not by outward enemies but by their internal complaining and murmuring. You may think that you have plenty to murmur about; David himself had times when he felt that he was being very badly treated, but he found - as we shall do - that whole-hearted devotion to the Lord's interests is the sure way of victory. God's man of war is also a worshipper; his mouth is filled with the high praises of the Lord. If worship is to come first, then this will mean a turning aside from selfish or personal problems and a total concentration of the whole heart on the honour of the name of the Lord. Only so can God's man be a true warrior. This brings us to a very practical point which is that the first phase of spiritual warfare and every subsequent skirmish and battle calls for a new letting go to the Lord. This is very often the secret of success, and especially so for the Christian whose enemies are spiritual and who is called not to personal conflicts or triumphs but to share in Christ's battle with evil and to share His victory.

4. "...prudent in speech..."

David was known to be prudent in speech or, as the Authorised Version has it, "prudent in matters". David was a man of discretion, a man of wise counsel, and a man who could speak for God because he had first learned to listen to God. Perhaps teachableness was one of his outstanding qualities. The person who is self sufficient, who thinks that he knows so much, will never be able to speak wisely for God.

Some of you may have felt at times that God can make no use of you, since you lack the qualifications or natural abilities which men regard as necessary for serving Him. The prudence of which we are now speaking is not a natural quality at all, but that which becomes a spiritual feature of the one who truly knows what it is to have the Lord with him. The Lord is not looking for cleverness. Indeed He often cannot use people because they are too clever in their own estimation. Teachableness, however, is a quality which He greatly values, and this is a matter of the spirit as well as of the mind. There is often a big difference between knowledge and wisdom, or prudence. Knowledge may consist of a mass of correct information, but wisdom means the application of that knowledge in ways which are good. It is possible for a Christian to have a vast amount of spiritual information, information as to what the Bible teaches and what the commentators suggest, holding all this in the mind or in the notebook yet with little evidence of it in the practical values of life. Wisdom is a matter of using the information correctly by turning it to account for the glory of God.

What is more, such wisdom will always be constructive. There are those who seem to think that they show their superior wisdom by their ability to criticise. If they can put their finger on a fault or discover some flaws, then they consider that they are being wise. But the effect of their activities is destructive, whereas the Scriptures make it plain that true wisdom is always constructive. Solomon, the wisest king of all, was a great builder, and it was he who wrote about wisdom building her house (Proverbs 9:1). So much is written in the New Testament about speech which is for building up or edification that the implication seems to be that if our tongues cannot contribute to positive helpfulness in this way then they had far better remain silent. Wisdom is always shown in its building values.

In fact wisdom is always actuated by the ability to discriminate as to what is for the glory of God. Nothing else matters. The Spirit's presence in a man is made evident by the ways in which he can avoid that which grieves God and devote himself to God's pleasure. If the Lord is with him then he will be prudent in matters.

5. "...a comely person..."

The final verdict on David was that he was a comely person, a man of good presence. It is clear that God intended that this should be true of every human being. From one standpoint this is the Bible's theme. "Let us make man in our image" God said. So far as man is concerned God always had perfection as His purpose. Through sin, however, man has become stunted, deformed and repulsive to God, and he would always remain so but for the fact that the Lord Jesus has brought a salvation which makes men perfectly whole. As the Saviour passed along the way He met the blind, the paralysed, the deformed, and He spoke the words of deliverance and transformation which left them whole again - they were saved. His eternal purpose in salvation is to have sons conformed to His eternal Son, who is indeed the Comely Person.

David is a foreshadowing of this mighty work of salvation. He who would by nature have been repulsive to a holy God (born in sin and shapen in iniquity) became a man after God's heart, a man of good presence who could be looked upon and admired. It may be helpful to consider some of his features, and the first one is undoubtedly meekness. David never claimed to be as good as the other man. He always thought himself to be the poorest of men. Emptiness of self is the very essence of meekness. See also how David suffered when things went wrong. Never for a moment did he blame someone else, but condemned himself outright. If ever a man was filled to overflowing with the consciousness of the marvellous mercy of God to a sinner, that man was David. See again how he suffered wrong without becoming vindictive. It is a mark of meekness to bear unjust wrong and not be embittered by it. For years David bore so much evil from Saul and yet he refused to take revenge, even when it could have been so easy. When Saul died in battle David did not gloat, he did not express relief but he made one of the most beautiful laments of grief over Saul as well as over his son, Jonathan.

Another thing which made David great was the way in which he accumulated wealth for the house of God. He took hold of every experience of suffering and wrung out of it something for God and God's people. Did he go into a deep and dark experience? Then he took hold of it and extracted from it that which would be for the enrichment of generations that were to follow. That is how we got our Psalter. That is not the little person's way of looking at things. He gets under his troubles, turns in on himself and gives way to self pity. The big man, however, does what David did, uses his own adversity to bring comfort and help to others.

One further feature of David's spiritual and moral stature was his single unifying passion. "...for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face... For the zeal of thy house hath eaten me up" (Psalm 69:9). David's supreme concern was for the Father's house, and in that he was a true type of the Lord Jesus to whom these very words are applied. He had a mighty concern for the Father's glory, and tremendous courage to carry that concern into action. David was like that. So much is written in the books of Samuel and Chronicles about his concern for the house of God. This was his one unifying passion. His life was a unity governed by a singleness of purpose, and that was what made him great. He had spiritual quality; he was a man of a good presence. God does not get glory out of our littlenesses, our petty jealousies and selfish pre-occupation. But when we grow up spiritually, leaving all those childish things behind, then the glory of God begins to be seen in us.

All this, then, because the Lord was with David. He himself was aware of that Presence, though at times he was tempted to question and doubt. What is more important, other people took note of it. This is what matters most. When people meet us, do they meet the Lord? When the Lord Jesus came to this earth He was called "Emmanuel" - God with us. The verdict upon His life after He had gone back to the glory was: "God was with him" (Acts 10:38). And the Holy Spirit has come to make this our experience. His anointing signifies that the Lord is with us, and this should make effective in our lives those five qualities which were observed in the young David. To have the Lord with him cost David dearly. It cost him his home; for a time it cost him his rightful place as king; it cost him comforts and popularity. But it gave him that which is more valuable than all earthy treasures. It gave him the supreme joy of bringing pleasure to the heart of God. The Lord was with him.

From "Toward the Mark" Nov-Dec 1975.

A Man in the Glory

From "The Work of the Ministry" - Volume 1.

Reading: Hebrews 2:5-12.

This portion of the Scriptures is a condensation of all that the Bible, and especially the New Testament, is about. It is a strange thing to say, yet it is quite true, that at this late hour in the New Testament dispensation our greatest need, as the people of God, is to know what we have come into, what Christ means, and what we, as the Lord's people, are called unto.

The Need of Assurance

That need has several aspects. You will, I am quite sure, agree that one aspect of our need is that of assurance, of confidence, of being settled, rooted, grounded with an unwavering hope. We all have need of being so confirmed in the faith, so established, that we are not easily shaken in our minds nor moved in our confidence. That need is present with us, and that need, I think, is going to be felt more and more, as things become increasingly difficult - the need for the Lord's people in this world to be established and fully assured. There is need of strength, real strength, amongst the Lord's people, deliverance from weakness, from feebleness, so that they can go on, make progress, and really grow, for where there is uncertainty, where there is weakness, then there will be slowness of progress, then there will be real limitation in spiritual development.

The Need of Understanding

Further, there is the great need of understanding, especially understanding of God's ways and God's dealings with His people, to know why the Lord deals with them and with us as He does, to have the meaning of the Lord's ways and the Lord's works which are so strange and often so difficult for us to understand. These are aspects of the great need which we all feel.

The Meaning of the Incarnation the Answer to all Our Need

This passage of Scripture, as I have said, is a condensed statement of that which goes to the very heart of that need. It brings us to the infinite wonder and mystery of the incarnation. If we could grasp the meaning of the incarnation, God manifest in the flesh, we should have an answer to all our questions, and all our many-sided need would be met.

Notice this twofold "not". "For NOT unto angels did he subject the world to come" (verse 5), and "verily NOT of angels doth he take hold" (verse 1:6, A.R.V. margin), "but he taketh hold of the seed of Abraham". "Not unto angels", "not of angels". The first is not angels, but man. What is man? The second, not of angels but of the seed of Abraham. Man - that is humanity; the seed of Abraham - that is covenant love, love in covenant. You look in your margin and you probably find a reference, taking you back to the Old Testament, about the seed of Abraham (2 Chron. 20:7; Isa. 41:8), and you find the immediate context is 'Abraham, the friend of God' - of the seed of Abraham, the friend of God - God's covenant love. That is the direction in which this wonderful mystery of the incarnation lies, in the direction of man, of humanity, and in the direction of man brought into the covenant love of God.

Here the upshot, the issue, the grand climax of this whole paragraph is - "We behold... Jesus". Oh, the music of that Name - for we are permitted in the right connection to use that name by itself. I know the modern school drops all the other titles, speaks not of Jesus Christ or the Lord Jesus, but is always talking about 'Jesus', making Him one amongst many, though perhaps somewhat better than other men; and that of course is evil. But here and there in the New Testament we have this name used by itself, and rightly so. "We behold... Jesus... crowned with glory and honour". Jesus is the name of Him who emptied Himself, of Him who became man, who took our humanity, a body like our body, a soul like our souls. He took our manhood - He, Jesus, crowned with glory and honour - to bring to glory and honour our humanity, our manhood. That is the heart of Christianity.

Consider our humanity: let us look at ourselves, take account of ourselves, what we are as human beings; these bodies, at best, at worst; these souls - an everlasting trouble. Yes, our humanity: what a thing it is! Those of us who have come into touch with the enlightening Spirit of God in any real way have nothing to say for our humanity. We would be more inclined to apologize for BEING at all. And He has taken hold of our humanity to bring it to the place where it is crowned with glory and honour. That is redemption. That is why the passage goes back to the very first. "Thou didst set him over the works of thy hands." "Thou crownedst him with glory and honour" - potentially declared. "Thou didst put all things in subjection under his feet." That was man's creational purpose, but he failed of it, missed it all, and became the humanity that we know him to be. And there came from heaven One who took hold of that humanity, and took it through all its trials, all its temptations, all its pressures and its stresses, through all its opposition and its antagonisms, through all the full force that came to bear upon it for its destruction. He took that humanity through it all, perfected it, took it to glory - our humanity, your humanity and mine, this troublesome thing, and made it fit to abide the very presence of the infinitely holy and glorious God. That was indeed "bringing many sons unto glory".

The Bible is full of that in figure, in portrait - the union of the Divine with the human. You have it in the figure of the Cherubim, and in the figure of the Ark of the Testimony - the wood, the common wood of the desert, overlaid with the gold. You have it right through. God is testifying - for this is the ark of testimony - testifying that from glory He has laid hold on humanity and is going to bring it through into the Most Holy Place where it is to abide forever. The last picture of the ark of the testimony is in that Holy Place in the Temple, when they drew out the staves. It is there forever in the presence of God. Its journey has ended, it is crowned with glory and honour - Christ and you and I in union in the presence of God. I say, that is the heart of everything, and if you and I need, as I have said, assurance and confidence, remember that God has entered into covenant love with us to do this. Do we want anything to give us greater and deeper assurance and confidence and hope than this, that God has entered into covenant love?

Every time we gather at His Table and partake of the symbols, we are entering into the meaning of that covenant love, as the seed of Abraham. What a mighty covenant is in that Blood! What a mighty covenant in that body of the Lord Jesus! We are made partakers of His flesh, of His bone, of His very life. This is covenant love. What assurance that should bring to us, what strength for progress - for if we have not that assurance and hope, how slow we are to go on; how difficult it is to maintain a going-on position and course. We may take a step forward - and then there enter in thoughts about ourselves, some accusation from our own hearts: the enemy comes because of some thing that is in us, and we find ourselves two steps backward. A little on, and then a rest, and then back where we were, because of uncertainty springing from the humanity that we are.

Jesus in Glory Our Confidence

The absolute strength of certainty to keep going on is in our faith hold on the humanity that is in heaven. "We behold". You see, this letter eventually arrives there. There are all those who have run this race of faith, and they were weak men many of them. They are not the pick of the world's best in themselves. The story of their failures and of being men of like passions with ourselves is not covered up by the Lord; it is fully exposed; but they have run the race. And then it says, "Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus" - "crowned with glory and honour": the guarantee that we will be there crowned with glory and honour through faith in Him. You can have as little faith in yourself as you like, perhaps the less the better, but do not stay there with your no faith in yourself. Your strength to go on is in looking off from yourself unto "Jesus... crowned with glory and honour". Does it convey something to you, that here is a man tempted and tried, as we have been, through the fires of antagonism and evil that were always seeking to scorch Him, to mar Him? He got through, He triumphed, "crowned with glory and honour". Did He do it for Himself? No, He did it for us, as us. Our strength to go on is in looking off.

The Explanation of God's Ways With Us

And as for God's ways with us, His strange ways, His sometimes seemingly hard ways. What about understanding all these? There is the explanation - "crowned with glory and honour", "conformed to the image of His Son". We are going through the fires; we are being tried, tested, up to the hilt; we are really having a difficult time in the hands of God. But what is it doing? Well, sometimes it seems that the fires are just making manifest all that is bad in us, as it comes to the surface. But look again into the crucible. That scum, that dross, is on the surface, it has come to the surface all right. But what is underneath? The gold is underneath. We see what is on the surface; it is the things that are seen that we take note of - but God is doing something deep down. It would not be for our good to know all that God is doing deep down. We should, in our poor humanity, at once become spiritually proud. The last thing for our good is that. But He is doing something deep down underneath. He is refining the gold, even if we are more conscious of the surface dross than of anything else. He is going to crown us with glory and honour, that we should be held in honour before God. That is a mystery, but we have to accept it.

Jesus has actually taken our human nature and has carried it through into the presence of God, and it is there through all testing and difficulty and adversity. It is exalted. Our humanity is already exalted in the presence of God to glory and honour, and He, being there, is the pledge that, whereas the presence of God would be our utter destruction, we are going to abide the presence of God without destruction. He is the pledge of that.

The Need for Objective Faith

I close with this. If you have lost it, if you are in danger of losing it, or if you have never yet adequately grasped it, lay hold on your great objective faith. You may have become so subjective in your faith, in your doctrine, that you are wholly occupied with what is inside yourself, and that is a devastating thing. You never have any encouragement or hope along that line. May the Lord recover our balance between objective and subjective truth, and restore to us the full balance of this great fact, this glorious fact, without which all the subjective will be for our undoing. There is One in the glory who, tempted in all points like as we, sin apart, took our humanity through the fires, far keener and more intense fires than we know anything about. He is there as us - the pledge that we are going to be there. To me it is wonderful. This is the Gospel, this is the substance, the essence, the heart of Christianity. The incarnation is the very core of Christianity. Oh yes, we are not going, the longer we live, to have a better opinion of ourselves, to begin to be able to congratulate ourselves. It is going to be worse and worse along that line, but the counter to it all is "Christ in you, the hope of glory" - "crowned with glory and honour".

The Manifold Grace of God

"GRACE to you and peace be multiplied" (1 Pet. 1:2).

"Concerning which salvation the prophets sought and searched diligently, who prophesied of the GRACE that should come unto you" (1 Pet. 1:10).

"Wherefore girding up the loins of your mind, be sober and set your hope perfectly on the GRACE that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 1:13).

"For this is acceptable (GRACE, Gr.), if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted for it, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable (GRACE) with God" (1 Pet. 2:19-20).

"...according as each hath received a gift, ministering it among yourselves, as good stewards of the manifold GRACE of God" (1 Pet. 4:10).

"Likewise, ye younger, be subject unto the elder. Yea, all of you gird yourselves with humility, to serve one another: for God resisteth the proud, but giveth GRACE to the humble" (1 Pet. 5:5).

"And the God of all GRACE, who called you unto his eternal glory in Christ, after that ye have suffered a little while, shall himself perfect, establish, strengthen you" (1 Pet. 5:10).

Thus we have the keynote to the whole letter found in the word grace. It is a word which has several different facets. Sometimes it is used in the sense of graciousnessgraciousness of manner and attitude, a sense of beauty, causing pleasure to others. Sometimes, as in the great doctrine of the grace of God, it is that favour which is shown where there is nothing to warrant itset over against a situation which is altogether unworthy of any kindness and goodness; the grace of God as favour unmerited in forgiving actual debt. That is the great doctrine of grace.

Then sometimes it is used, in a very simple form, of being in a state of grace. And then, finally, it is used in the sense of strength and support"My grace is sufficient for thee: for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9). So it is a word used in the New Testament in these different ways, and here in this brief letter of Peter which we can read right through from beginning to end in a few minutes, we have all those aspects of grace brought before us.

Grace is the great theme of Peter, and that in itself is significant, when you think of Peter. If there is anybody who should have written about grace, it is Peter. He writes out of his heart. The first word in the second verse of the first chapter is like the spring. It is the spring of grace rising up. It is there inclusive. "Grace to you and peace be multiplied." That is general. As the spring becomes a stream through the letter, it seems to break out into these various aspects, having these different meanings.

Grace as a Ground of Confidence and Assurance

So you come to the two passages in the tenth and thirteenth verses of that first chapter. "Concerning which salvation the prophets sought and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you." "Set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Here we have grace as a great ground of expectation, of confidence, of assurance. It is unto us in this dispensation that the great grace of God, in its full content and full meaning and full purpose, is brought to light. The prophets knew that there was some tremendous thing in store for someone. It was fixed by God that some people should come into something very great; and here it says that we are those people, we are the people in the eternal counsels of God. A people in this dispensation were to come into the full meaning of Divine grace, and the full meaning is just glimpsed with the appearing of the Lord Jesus.

Here is grace as a great basis of confidence and assurance that the thing is fixed in its fulness in the dispensation in which we live, and the prophets were in a state of anticipation and not realisation. They had not the assurance that it was for their time, but it was for somebody sometime. We have that assurance. The grace of God has come and is coming to us in His fixed counsels in all the fulness of its meaning.

Grace in Conduct

Then you pass into chapter two, verses 19 and 20. Here we have a strange thing that the translators have done. It is very difficult to know why they have done it. They have twice translated exactly the same Greek word into the word 'acceptable.' Properly read, it should be"For this is grace, if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted for it, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this  is grace with God." I suppose the translators thought that it sounded a little strange, and so they made the change. But there is the word. So here grace becomes a matter of our conduct. One of the outflowings of this grace is expressed in how we behave under trial, under adversity. The grace of God is to express itself in this way. How easily we take offence, get upset, retaliate, want our rights established, get under the weather, when we are misunderstood, when our motives are misinterpretedwhen we meant well but it has been construed that we had some other motivewhen something is brought upon us without any foundation at all. We can go down under that, or we can flare up under that, to get even and to establish ourselves; or we can quietly and humbly suffer inside and go on without showing any spleen at alljust go on. This is grace. And the great example is the Lord Jesus Himself"...leaving you an example, that ye should follow his step: ...who, when he was reviled, reviled not again" (1 Pet. 2:23). He showed no retaliation in spirit. That is the grace of God. That is grace in the matter of conduct.

Grace in Character

We pass to the next two references. "As each hath received a gift, ministering it among yourselves, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God." "Yea, all of you gird yourselves with humility, to serve one another: for God  resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble." Here grace touches down deepdeeper than our conduct. It goes down to our character; and here the opposites are the proud and the humble. Pride and humility are character factors. We may have a feigned humility that is not true humility. Humility is really something which is the very nature of Christ in us, and so grace here, becomes a matter of character, showing itself in humility. He gives grace to the humble and resists the proud.

The Source of All Grace

Then finally, chapter 5, verse 10: "The God of all grace, who called you unto his eternal glory in Christ, after that ye have suffered a  little while, shall himself perfect, establish, strengthen you." "The God of all grace." In the light of all that the Apostle has been saying, the summing up in this phrase, "the God of all grace," is intended, I think, to provoke courage. God is the God of all grace. There is grace in God for everything. Do not give up, do not lose heart. There is grace for every situation. Be of good courageHe is the God of all grace.

That statement and chapter 2:12"...having your behaviour seemly among the Gentiles; that, wherein they speak against you as evil-doers, they may by your good works, which they behold, glorify God in the day of visitation"is in the light of the various difficulties and trials to which these believers and ourselves were and are being subjected. It is when faith is tried, when circumstances are difficultthey speak evil against you falsely, and other things are present which create a set of difficult circumstanceswhen you are suffering for conscience' sake, and when you are assaulted by the enemy who goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (v. 8); then remember that the God of all grace called you, and so there is grace for everything, for all situations and all demands. It seems as though 1:2 is the spring, then there is the stream breaking out in its varied applications and meanings and values, and then it seems as though all converge into the seathe God of all grace; the spring, the distribution over the whole land to meet every situation, and then the coming back and flowing into the great oceanthe God of all grace for all situations.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1948 Vol. 26-6

Mentality of the Spiritual Warrior

"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds); casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

We wish to consider the matter of mentality in relation to our great spiritual warfare. The marginal alternative to "casting down imaginations" is "casting down reasonings" and William Barclay renders this "destroying plausible fallacies". In any warfare there are perils and threats to victory where there is a wrong mentality. On the other hand, the warrior has a tremendous advantage when he is of a right mentality. What are the plausible fallacies which must be destroyed if we are to share in Christ's victory?

A WRONG MENTALITY AS TO THE HIGHER COMMAND

The first consideration in warfare is that of the Supreme Command. When we consider the Church as the fighting army we realise how important it is that there should exist no wrong mentality concerning the Lord Jesus who is the Supreme Commander. One aspect of a wrong mentality concerning Him is this: that He is One from whom we GET everything, instead of the One to whom we GIVE everything. There is a great danger of always thinking in terms of what we are to get from Headquarters, of what advantages are to accrue to us, of drawing toward ourselves; in effect - although we would never admit this - really putting ourselves, our interests, in the place of those of the Supreme Command. That is how it works out.

It is just at this point that "popular" Christianity has done a great deal of harm. Christianity has been put on a wrong basis, or perhaps to be a little more charitable, upon an inadequate basis, and the preaching is almost exclusively in terms of what we are to GET. We are to get salvation; we are to get eternal life, peace, joy and satisfaction - all this and Heaven too! But the emphasis is so largely upon what we are to get from the Lord Jesus, our Supreme Commander. It is at least an inadequate mentality, if not an altogether wrong one when it is made a principle; it is a misinterpretation of the whole Christian life. The right mentality - and the only one that is going to serve the great purpose and to minister to the great objective - is the mentality that is governed by the principle: "Give everything to the Lord" and not "Get everything from the Lord".

This is the governing principle of the Godhead, that to give is the way of fulfilment. In the case of the Lord Jesus, that is made very clear in one classic passage where we are told that He "...emptied himself... Wherefore also God highly exalted him..." (Philippians 2:7-9). Fulfilment, the restoration of His voluntarily laid aside fullness, came to Him along the line of emptying, giving, pouring out. That is the principle of the Godhead, and it should be the mentality of all who are engaged in the great spiritual warfare. We shall be knocked about, brought up short and defeated if we are all the time thinking in terms of what should come to us. The self-centred life is always the discontented life.

But the out-going life is the life of abundant return - it all comes back. "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over" (Luke 6:38). Those are the words of the Lord Jesus. Do you want eternal possessions? The way to receive is to give. We must not think only of the Lord Jesus in terms of receiving from Him, as though He were only there for our benefit. Those who have this mentality may feel that He is not giving as they expected, so they lose interest and become paralysed in the battle, useless as fighters and powerless as servants. The true mentality about the Supreme Commander is that He should receive the honour and the glory, the dominion and the power, and everything. It is true that He will give and go on giving eternally, our relationship must be not on the basis of what WE can get but of how much He is going to get from us.

A WRONG MENTALITY AS TO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

Secondly, there are the perils of wrong ideas about the Christian life. There is a prevalent idea that this is merely a matter of being saved and blessed. For many, salvation and personal blessing are the sum of the Christian life, a mentality which is sometimes encouraged by preachers and leaders. The Word of God makes it perfectly clear, however, that this life is something far more. We need to realise that the Christian life involves being actively engaged in the great conflict of the elemental forces of this universe.

That is the issue. Long, long ago, something tremendous was set in motion; and ever since then, down through the centuries, the great purpose of God has been challenged and disputed. All through these generations the people of God have given themselves in relation to that one great battle in the universe; and it still goes on - the battle is not over yet. The real nature of the Christian life is that you and I, immediately we become related to the Lord Jesus Christ, are called into this spiritual conflict. We are involved in what I have called the ultimate elemental forces of the universe in conflict. This means no less than that the whole hosts of the kingdom of God and of heaven are on one side, while on the other side is the vast and vicious kingdom of Satan.

Do not have any illusions about the Christian life. The Lord Jesus did not allow His disciples to harbour any illusions: "Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). "Whosoever would save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it" (Luke 9:24). That is frank and straight-forward. This is what we are in! It is a great privilege to be in it, but we should have no wrong mentality about the costliness of the honour. There IS joy and there IS peace. Thank God for all the blessings. We need, though, to recognise and adjust to the fact that we are in a battle, a fierce and unrelenting battle; a warfare from which there is no discharge in this life.

A WRONG MENTALITY AS TO THE CHURCH

Thirdly, there can be wrong ideas about the army itself, that is the Church. The Church is the army, but it would be a wrong mentality to imagine that the Church is the end and object of everything. We are accustomed to say much about the greatness of the Church and we do not exaggerate when we do so. We speak of it in superlative terms as, "God's masterpiece" and we are right to do so. We are encouraged by the Word of God to think of the Church of Christ as something great and wonderful, even magnificent. It is a wonderful conception in the mind of God from all eternity; it has a very large place in the divine counsels; and it is to be at last presented to the Lord Jesus as a glorious Church. All this is true.

But when it has all been said, it must still be affirmed that the Church is not God's ultimate objective and end; it is, after all, no more than the instrument. It is but the vessel, the agent for God's purposes. There is something far beyond. It is perhaps the greatness of the Church that it plays such a part in the "super-greatness" of that object which it lives to serve. We must not think that we have to live only and utterly for the Church. We have to remember that, just as the army does not exist for itself, nor campaign in the field for itself, but in the interests of its sovereign and his kingdom, so the Church exists and engages in warfare solely for the glory of the Lord on the throne, and for His kingdom. If we have faulty ideas in this matter, we will find that they constitute a weakness. If we put the Church in the place of Jesus Christ, we will find ourselves in trouble with the Holy Spirit. That is not in any way to displace or to belittle the Church, but only to insist that the Church exists for Christ. All our Church conceptions and procedures should be governed by the fact that everything must be for Christ's sake. We must never regard these as being ends in themselves, but only to minister to the satisfaction of our Supreme Commander.

A WRONG MENTALITY AS TO MINISTRIES

We next come to the matter of functioning in God's army, which is the way in which we may well describe the ministries within the Church. It is important to correct any wrong mentality concerning the real meaning and value of ministries. Is ministry just a question of imparting knowledge and information? No, true ministry is something more than mere teaching. We are an army in the field, and what is needed in a day of battle is not lectures but provision for the actual need in which we are found.

Do you see the point? Here is the background of conflict. From time to time the Supreme Commander visits the various positions, gathers the staff together and reviews the situation. He assembles all his men and talks to them. But the scene is a scene of battle. It is a time of war and not of peace. The conditions prevailing are war conditions; the scene and circumstances are those of actual war. Why does he gather the men around? To give them lectures on the theory of military life? Not a bit of it! He calls them together in order to give help and instruction on how to meet the existing and immediate situation; to direct as to how to cope with that which confronts them at that moment.

That should be the nature of all our meetings and our ministry. We ought all the time to be a people on a war footing, ready to face emergencies, perils and dangers. If we had that mentality, that we really are in the thick of the battle, our meetings would serve much greater purposes, our ministry would be of far greater value. Our meetings must at all costs be redeemed from being just sessions of theory. We can reach saturation point as to doctrine and be unable to absorb any more. But if we are conscious of being right up against things and needing help, then we will find the help we seek. We ought to be at our meetings on this footing: "I need it; I cannot do without it; my situation demands it". If there is no demand, then the supply will be valueless. Our meetings and our ministry must represent a provision for actual need.

And if we are in earnest, the Lord will see to it that we are in need. He will make things very practical, very real. He will see to it that our Christian lives are constantly brought up against new needs. Do not worry or think that things have gone wrong, if you find yourself up against a situation for which you have no answer. Our progress can only be on the basis of growing need. Immediately that stops, we stop. We go no further than our sense of need - our very acute sense of need. Blessed be God! He only allows this ever pressing sense of need in order that the need may be supplied.

All ministry must have a practical background, both for giving and receiving. May God save those of us who minister from ministering just theories or sermon material. That which is ministered must be born out of experience and actuality in life. The ministry must not consist in searching out subject matter, putting it together and then retailing it as addresses. It must be born out of life, right up to date. And there must be an active exercise on both sides - in those who minister and in those who receive the ministry. There must be action about it. There must be, on the part of all, a very serious quest, the seriousness of which is born of the desperateness of the situation; the realisation that unless we have this knowledge from the Lord, unless we have new life from Him, we will go under in the battle and cede victory to the enemy. That is the nature of those "councils of war", those meetings with the Supreme Commander, to which we sometimes gather. They are just that we may be equipped for our job - and our job is fighting. Whenever we meet it should be to get equipment for our very life work which is now on hand.

A WRONG MENTALITY AS TO OTHERS

Lastly we come to wrong ideas concerning the other personnel in the army - the other people in the Church. We have many wrong ideas about one another. You know how easy it is to be selective, to look at the other man or woman and to write them off as not counting for much. That is very dangerous. Our kind of selectiveness, our judgment of people, may sabotage the whole movement. And what about ourselves? Where would you be, where would I be, if the Lord had been very particular that we should be exactly of the right stature and have full qualifications for His work? I know where I would be if He were so particular; I would be disqualified from any part in the ministry or warfare.

We must be very careful, too, that we do not contemplate others as competitors or rivals who are seeking to get an advantage over us. We must not be "touchy" about our own position and our own rights, becoming explosive if someone else is put before us, or seems to have been given favourable treatment instead of us. It is a horrible thing to think of such an attitude among Christians, but it happens only too easily. By taking personal offence, because of something that has been done that seems to be placing us at a disadvantage, we can be put out of the fight altogether and count for nothing in the battle. In such a situation, whether we judge ourselves to be in the right or wrong, our attitude must be this: "Lord, I am YOURS, I am YOUR man, I am in this just for YOU. Men can do what they like - put me out, put others over my head, whatever they like. That is between You and me, Lord, and between You and them." If you allow yourself to take offence and harbour a grievance, then the enemy can gain an advantage and you will become a casualty. You may as well be carried off on a stretcher straight away!

We need to remind ourselves that a favourite manoeuvre of our enemy is to get amongst us and make us look at one another and misjudge one another. What is the use of an army like that - with its men suspecting and mistrusting one another? What a sad state of affairs! The word is: "Casting down imaginations" - and if we only knew the truth we should discover that our grievances are not real but based on imaginations. This is the clever manoeuvre of the enemy. The counter to it is found in the passage which speaks of casting down such imaginations, "and bringing every thought into captivity... to Christ". Failure to do this may affect the whole issue of the battle. Lay hold of those thoughts about other fellow soldiers and bring them into captivity to Christ. Make sure that you are right, and even if you are right, be prepared to forgive, to be charitable, and above all not to make a personal issue of it.

A WRONG MENTALITY AS TO OURSELVES

How prone we are to have wrong ideas about ourselves. Paul said: "I say... to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think" (Romans 12:3). What ought we to think of ourselves? In the light of God's grace, mercy and love and in the light of God's holiness, what ought we to think of ourselves? Paul continues: "so to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith". That is, if we may take another saying of Paul's out of its context, "according to the measure of the gift of Christ" (Ephesians 4:7). The measure of our self-esteem will be in inverse proportion to the measure of Christ that we have. How much of Christ have we received? Well, if we have a super-abundance of Christ, if we have more of Christ than anyone else, we shall not think highly of ourselves at all. The more we have of Christ, the less we shall think of ourselves or want to talk about ourselves. The less we shall want to be in the limelight.

What ravages such a wrong mentality could make in an army. Just imagine what would happen if its men thought more highly of themselves than was right and despised their fellows. It would play right into the hands of the enemy. Our safety lies in "thinking soberly". In this great battle it matters very much that we think of ourselves as we ought to do, and that is, in a related way. An army depends upon its units. The whole can suffer through the weakness of the individual. We can overestimate our personal importance or we can underestimate our related significance. To think of ourselves as we ought to think will mean not to err in either direction.

More Pioneers of the Heavenly Way

Genesis 45:5,7

"God did send me before you to preserve life"

"God sent me before you to preserve... a remnant"

It is clear from this double statement - "God sent me before..." - that Joseph was one of God's pioneers of the heavenly way. His history holds some very helpful things in relation to the goings of God. Let us repeat what we have said before in such connections: that we are not engaged with a biography of the people referred to, but only with what they represent in spiritual truths as to God's pursuit of His ultimate end. We must remind ourselves that God's full and final end is comprehended in His Son, Jesus Christ. Therefore the Bible is the book of Jesus Christ throughout. Every part of it has, in some way, to do with that end and object. There are few cases in the Old Testament that more deeply and clearly foreshadow Jesus Christ as God's end than does Joseph.

This is inclusively indicated in the two fragments mentioned above which gather up the whole purpose of his history. We can only understand the life and history of Joseph as we recognize the purpose governing all. When this has been pinpointed we can see without difficulty how he points to Christ. His double statement is that the sovereignty of God in his history had the one inclusive end and object to "preserve life".

The life of an elect people was the all-governing object. That undoubtedly was the mission of God's Son, and it is the fundamental factor in the whole Bible.

Having said that, we can note the course by which that end was pioneered: only pausing to interject that ALL ministries in the choice and appointment of God are related to the one end of Christ.

The story of Joseph is both a very human story and a very Divine story, but with one key to both. That we shall come on presently.

On the human side, if read ONLY from the natural standpoint, there are features which may be regarded as quite regrettable. For instance, a father's favouritism for one member of a large family is really an unwise thing. Whatever argument there may be for it, it only engenders jealousies and complications. Joseph was clearly a favourite with his father, and was perhaps - or evidently - singled out for special partiality. Then Joseph had dreams which put him in a special position of superiority over his brothers. It is quite all right to have dreams, but it is of doubtful discretion to tell your family of them if they are of this sort. Quite naturally they could give the impression of arrogance and self-importance. It would therefore be very natural for the family to develop a dislike for such a brother.

You know, Jesus was a special object of His Father's love. He DID know the destiny bound up with His life. Further, NOT IN HIS CASE indiscreetly, He told quite frankly to the family of Jacob (the Jews) both those things - His Father's love for Him, and what His destiny would be as OVER THEM. This was undoubtedly the ostensible and natural reason for their hatred of Him and for what they did to Him.

There are intimations that He was the lone and suspected member of His own family, for it is definitely stated that "His brethren did not believe in him". He was therefore a lonely man, discredited in His family and in the world. "Despised and rejected of men." This in His case, as in Joseph's, led on to deep and dark soul-sufferings, malignings, intrigues, mysterious ways of Providence, and apparent forsakenness of God. "The iron entered into his soul", or "His soul entered into the iron". A long period of patient waiting unto God's time for the completion of His God-appointed mission was involved.

The other details of Joseph's history need not be followed out here. We have to retrace our steps to lay hold of the Divine side of it all. The sovereignty of God is unmistakable. "God sent me before." The sovereign foreknowledge in that word "before" is, at last, clear to Joseph when, in the full light of God's deep and hidden ways - "Mysterious Providence" - he declares to his brethren: "Ye meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." What a "But" - "But God!"

"Thy way, O Lord, is in the deep."

Having mentioned the human side and the Divine, we have not told the whole story. There is an element that is neither of these: it is the satanic. This extra factor is one with which all pioneers of the HEAVENLY way have to reckon. The jealousy and hatred of Joseph's brethren AFTER THE FLESH, and that in the case of Jesus, were not just natural. There was something sinister in it. It is not easy for us to understand how Satan knows, but it is clear from Scripture that he has an uncanny intuitive knowledge of God's intentions, and, more strangely those intentions being bound up with the life of elect vessels of ministry related to those intentions. This is QUITE evident - and fully so in the case of the Lord Jesus. From Herod's satanically-inspired murder of the babes with the sole object of destroying One, right on to the Cross this sinister and devilish motivation is evident because he - Satan - knew who that One was, and what His destiny was to be. It was all so unnatural, and can only be explained on the ground between the human and the Divine.

So with Joseph. Say what you will as to the human, there was something deeper in his history than men's attitudes and actions. He was marked out in the Divine councils as a pioneer of life, and Satan knew it. Joseph's life from the beginning was dogged by something that was an element of adversity, although beloved of his father.

The ways of any pioneer of heavenly purpose will always have this involvement in difficulties and adversities which are not the lot of ordinary people. As vocation is the principle of election, so the vocation is the cause of all the trouble. A pioneer in the way of God's eternal purpose will know much of "the fellowship of his sufferings"; but the throne and the crown and the glory are in view, for "God meant (and means) it" so.

From "A Witness and A Testimony" March-April 1969.

The Mount of Vision

Why the mountain? So often in the Bible God's movements in revelation and purpose were connected with mountains. It was so with Moses and the Law and the Pattern of the Tabernacle. It was so with Elijah at Carmel and Horeb: with David and the Temple site. It was so with Christ and His great kingdom discourse, His transfiguration, etc. And it was so with John and the vision of the New Jerusalem. These are but a few of the mountain-epochs in the Scriptures. What is its significance? for surely it is not just coincidence.

Does it not represent elevation above and ascendency over the earth and its influences. It involves detachment (in spirit), heaven countering earth, gravity overcome, exercise - deliberate and determined. In a word, it points to another realm and order, a "kingdom of the heavens", to that which is not of this creation. There is a place of heavenly vision and revelation, and it has to be taken with the "loins of the mind" girded and with steadfast outreach to God.

The Letter to the Ephesians is the counterpart of Exodus 24-25. There the position is "in the heavenlies". The object is "that ye may know", the issue is "the eternal purpose". These three things correspond to a position secured, a vision given, an intention grasped and established.

Such a place must be found in the life of the individual believer and in that of the Church. Lose your 'mountain' apart with the Lord and you lose your vision and governing purpose, and become bound by mere happenings and activities on the earth. The earth is a very small place compared with the heavens! But remember that such a position of being "seated together with Christ" in the heavenlies is only by way of the Altar or Cross. In Exodus 24:4-6 we see the altar and its values - the blood governing the ascension of the mount. This inclusively establishes the position that all is of and for the Lord.

The whole movement begins with worship, verse 1, and worship means that there is nothing of man, but all is of the Lord, and back to Him. It results in all that eventuates being wholly out from God. In this case (Exodus 25) it was the tabernacle.

Now, the majority of evangelical Christians believe that the Tabernacle was a type of Christ, but there are several defects and weaknesses in this belief. For many it is a beautiful and fascinating typology, full of interest and wonderful truths. Then, so often, only the redemptive aspects are taken up: those factors or features which have to do with redemption, e.g. atonement, justification, sanctification, access, etc. Then again, it has supported an earthly and objective system of outward 'orders', rituals, rites, vestments, ordinances, sacraments, and 'offices'. All this so often means the missing of the basic and supreme meaning of this representation. It resolves itself into Christian 'truth', order and practice as the basis of things, and this - to say the least - is inadequate, it may be harmful. What is really in God's mind and eye is not a thing, not a Tabernacle, a system, and not even a 'pattern'. The all-governing matter with God is a revelation of God in Christ to the heart by the Holy Spirit, a revelation of Jesus Christ.

The Tabernacle is only meant to be a mirror of Christ. So Paul speaks of "beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord"; and, in the same context, "God... hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ".

It is not a matter of our seeing Christian truth, but of seeing Christ by revelation of the Spirit. See Christ now first, not the Tabernacle first and then Christ. We live in the day of the full revelation, not of typical foreshadowings. There is so much failure to recognize that the Tabernacle is meant to lead to a recognition of the oneness of Christ and His Church, a corporate representation of Christ. With the majority of Christians the corporate almost goes for nothing as to its practical values. An immense amount is done in evangelism but the results are incommensurate both in measure and calibre. A great percentage of those moved to a 'decision' in an evangelistic effort are subsequently, not only missing but, less approachable than before. The spiritual measure of the majority even years afterward is very meagre, they just become 'church-goers'. The impact of 'the Church' upon the world is exceedingly disappointing. We have no hesitation in saying that all this is largely, if not mainly, due to a failure to see the difference between a congregation, a 'meeting', a location of a number of unit-Christians, on the one side, and a living corporate organism on the other. The composite and the organic are two different things. One is formed from the outside, the other is formed from within.

There is very great power bound up with such a vision. What no other force on earth could have done was done in a moment when Paul saw Christ and caught what He signified. It completely emancipated him from tradition, earthly systems of religion, and all those things which by inheritance, training, and belief had been his very life - "the things", said he, "which were gain to me". When we want to explain Paul, and account for his influence through twenty centuries, we have to go to his "vision". He had seen Christ, and in seeing Christ had come to see the meaning and nature of the Church as His Body. Such a vision roused hell against him, and provoked the utmost prejudice, ostracism, and conflict. Had the vision not been so tremendously real he would long since have compromised and have taken a less costly line. But he "was not disobedient", and so has become the answer to every crisis in the Church's history.

The vision is for all who mean business with God. But we shall truly be tested as to whether we do. The vision is up there where all the gravity of indecision, passivity, compromise, indifference, cowardice, expediency, policy, unbelief, feeble-mindedness, etc. has been overcome and subjected to "the on high calling". There are no 'funiculars' or 'chair-lifts' to those altitudes, it is a challenge, and often a lonely business.

But to move for ever after in the power and influence of that 'open heaven' is to meet the greatest and deepest need of the Lord's people in relation to their high destiny.

The Christianity of numerous Christians is not big enough. If they are not frequently provided with strong stimulants in the form of conventions, 'revival' meetings, (and more than ninety percent of the people who attend big gospel campaigns are Christians) 'rallies', etc., they drop into, or go on in, a very lifeless and limited sort of way. Now all this is a false mountain life. So often, after some special 'rally' or 'event', the time is referred to as having 'been on the mountain' and now having to come 'down into the valley'.

While there are real values in the gathering of the Lord's people from far and near, such occasions should not be the life of such. Paul was in prison when he wrote most about the heavenlies. Special occasions can give an artificial sense of life and 'vision', which fades when these times pass, so that 'we live for the next' occasion. Paul's "heavenly vision" kept him going through all the dark, drab, and sordid experiences which were associated with his ministry. There is something very much more than being saved and much engaged in 'Christian work'. Without this great plus the essential motive and impetus is lacking, and there is little or no personal spiritual enlargement. This extra is "heavenly vision". It was the inspiration of Peter, Paul, John, Stephen, and of many others.

How could the Prophets have fulfilled their sorry, and in some senses, tragic and hopeless mission but for the dynamic of a God-given vision? 'But', you say, 'they were Prophets and Apostles. We are just ordinary people'. The answer is that the New Testament almost as a whole was given by the Holy Spirit to give and to keep before the whole Church this tremendous objective of the "eternal purpose", and Paul, exhausting all superlatives of language in this very connection, falls to prayer for "all saints" thus:

"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, (note the designation - the Father of GLORY) may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints", etc.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1952, Vol 30-2

The Mystery and Miracle of Divine Support

(A message given in conference)

Reading: John 6:25-27, 30-33, 47-48, 53.

During this past week we have been considering the Lord Jesus as God's pattern to which He is seeking to conform us, and have reminded ourselves of the Apostle's words that we are "foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 8:29). So we have been looking at some of the features of that image.

This afternoon we are going to consider the mystery and the miracle of divine support. This was evidently a very important matter in the mind of the Lord Jesus, for four times over in this connection He used that double affirmative: "Verily, verily". That means that He said four times: 'Most truly, truly, I say unto you'. There must have been a very serious look on His face when He was saying these things, for it was as though He was saying: 'If you forget everything else, don't forget this!'

Firstly, He said: 'Verily, verily, this meat I give to you endureth unto everlasting life.' Then He said: 'Verily, verily, it was not a man - Moses - who gave you bread, but My Father who gives you the true bread.' Thirdly, He said: 'Verily, verily, I am the bread of life'; and finally: 'Verily, verily, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man you have no life in yourselves.'

You will recognize that all this is an explanation of a miracle which He had just performed. Out of a little handful of loaves He had fed a great multitude, and, having done so, there were many basketfuls over. But, when He had done that wonderful thing, they had seen nothing more than the bread multiplied. He intended it to be a sign of something else, but He said: 'You have not seen the sign: you have only seen the bread', and it is proved that they had not seen the meaning because they said: 'Well, show us a sign.' That is why He used this double 'verily' four times. He was saying: 'You people only see things; you do not see meanings', so He proceeded to give the meaning.

In the first place, Jesus was saying: 'This bread that I am talking about cannot be had by any human effort. Labour not for the bread which perisheth! The bread that I am speaking about is something that all your labour will never secure. Man cannot produce it. It is heavenly bread, not earthly bread. Moses did not give you this bread, but My Father does give the true bread, and the bread that He gives, and I give, is Myself. I am the bread of life... Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves.'

Perhaps we are not surprised that they were mystified at His language! They said: 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?' and because they could not understand many of them went away.

But Jesus only emphasized the necessity of receiving this bread. Bread is essential for strength, for health, for endurance, for work, for growth and for intelligence. If you stop feeding your brain will break down. And Jesus was saying that, just as bread is necessary for all these things in the natural life, so He is necessary for all these things in the spiritual life.

Now let it be understood that Jesus was not only giving teaching. These were not only ideas, however true they might be. Jesus Himself lived His life and did His work on this principle: He received all the resources for His spiritual life and work from heaven. That is, Jesus lived on supernatural support, and He was saying: 'You can do the same.' He is our pattern in this matter. Not only should you live on this principle, but you can live on it.

The life of Jesus is a wonderfully full example of this great truth. See the things which He had to do without! All the resources of this world were absent. He was born in a stable, not even in a home, and far from a palace. He was brought up in a poor home, and His mother had to go to the market and strike a bargain. If she could spend just a penny she would get two sparrows, but if she could spare an extra penny she would not only get double, but one thrown in (Matthew 10:29; Luke 12:6). You will remember that Jesus spoke about that, and it was evidently out of His own experience. Later on He said: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head" (Matthew 8:20), and when it was a matter of paying the tax He had to work a miracle to get the money. He was entirely without all the resources of this world. And then He was completely without the support of men. He was not believed in even by His own family and his brethren - it says: "For even his brethren did not believe on him" (John 7:5), which means that there was misunderstanding of Him in His own family. And how often His own friends did not understand Him! Then He had the fierce opposition of all the official people, and those in high places who could have helped Him were against Him. In addition to all that, from the time that He stepped out to do His work, Satan never left Him alone. There was persistent Satanic opposition and energy against Him. And then there was the constant consciousness of how it was all going to end on this earth, for He always knew that the end was going to be the Cross. He knew all the Old Testament Scriptures about Himself.

Well, that is a fairly large mountain of difficulty to encounter! If any man ought ever to have broken down on the way, that man was Jesus. How often in His circumstances did He have good reason to give it all up! His whole life, in every way, was on a basis of dependence upon resources outside of Himself and outside of this world. Under this crushing weight of adversity, of sorrow and grief, of disappointment and reproach, He was sustained from heaven. His heart was broken, but He went right through to the end without failing. There was a mystery and a miracle about His support: He had spiritual bread and spiritual wine from heaven.

That is the meaning of this four-fold 'verily'. He is, in effect, saying: 'As I am supported from heaven so can you be. What I receive from My Father I give to you. As I have overcome so you can overcome.' Do you say: 'How can this be?' I cannot answer that question. There is a mystery about this thing, and there is a miracle in it. The fact is that the Lord allows impossible situations to come into the lives of His people. They think many times: 'Now we are never going to get through this time. We have had many hard experiences before, but this is the end. Surely we are going under this time, for we see no way through. Men cannot help us, and there are no circumstances that help us. We have not the strength or wisdom in ourselves,' and they can go on saying all that they like about it, and yet Jesus says: 'You can get through, and if you will draw on Me as your life, you will never fail. The bread that I give you, which is Myself, is unto life eternal.'

I have often put it like this. While it is true that we wonder very often how it was that we got through a certain situation, when we get to heaven at the end of all the troubles we shall look at one another and say: 'Well, is it not wonderful that we are here? How often we thought that we were never going to get through! But here we are! All the troubles are finished and we are at home.'

There is truly a mystery and a miracle about heavenly support, but how shall this be? Jesus just put it into a very short phrase: "Except ye eat... ye have not life."

All that we have said is true. The bread from heaven is presented to us, but if God does all that He can do and we do not take it, then it is of no avail. Every day, in every situation, we must by faith take Jesus Christ as our life, as our strength, as our wisdom, and as everything that is necessary to see us right through to the end in victory.

Now that may seem a very simple message to you, but Jesus says that it is a very important thing. "Verily, verily" ... again, "Verily, verily" ... and for the third time, "Verily, verily" ... and yet again, "Verily, verily, He that feeds on Me has life eternal."

May this message come back to us whenever we are in need of heavenly support!

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1965, Vol 43-2

An Open Heaven

"His servants shall serve him; and they shall see his face" Revelation 22:4

With the book of Genesis and the book of the Revelation we have the whole bound of human history and, as we read through the Scriptures, the matter which governs in this long record of human life is that of THE FACE OF GOD.

The expulsion from the garden (Genesis 3:24) was expulsion from the face of God. From that time on, the face of God was never again seen by man - except in tokens such as His mercy and goodness - and then only on certain occasions. In reality man did not and could not see God's face.

Throughout the Bible we find that man's greatest blessing, highest good and deepest longing always related to such a Vision. How often from the heart of believing men the cry is heard: "Lift thou up the light of thy countenance". "Make thy face to shine on thy servant"! On the other hand, man's deepest misery is always when God's face is turned away - when he senses that God's countenance is not toward him. To be spiritually sensitive and yet to feel that there is a cloud over the face of the Lord is the most desolating experience of which we are capable.

The abiding issue of the face of God was brought to a focus in the cross of Christ. At the beginning, God drove the man out. At the end, "they shall see his face". But midway, not in the Bible as a book, but in human history, the cross makes it possible for men to see God's face. On the one side, that face is turned away - man is in desolation. On the other side, that face is turned to him - there is hope, with new joy and new prospects. All things are new because once more the light of God's countenance is, in the full sense, lifted upon believers. Genesis and Revelation meet at Calvary.

The Wilderness

A wilderness is always a type of desolation and death. The wilderness came when the garden was lost. It was the result of the curse, in other words, the outcome of God's face being turned away. Israel would certainly have perished in the wilderness if Heaven had not intervened - and what is more, they knew it. There was nothing there to maintain life; it was only because there was the Testimony in their midst that they could possibly live in the wilderness. When their hearts were rightly adjusted to that Testimony, they survived in the wilderness. In the midst of death they were in life; in the midst of desolation they were in plenty; in the midst of the curse they were in blessing.

Later they went into captivity and knew desolation for seventy years, and it was only when that seventy year's accomplishment came into view that the prophet cried, with his gospel of hope: "Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished". From that came the issue: "The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose"; "In the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert" (Isaiah 35:1, 6).

The wilderness is always a symbol of desolation and death because of the curse. Perhaps one of the most poignant of all the issues of the Tabernacle ritual was that of the scapegoat. One cannot read the story without feeling desperately sorry for that goat, with all the curse of Israel's sins transferred to it by the laying on of hands, led out by the priest to the outer bounds of the camp and beyond, away until the last signs of human life were out of sight, driven out into the wilderness to die, forsaken by God, desolate, bearing the burden of sin.

All this, of course, was symbolic of the sufferings of the Saviour who came to bear our sins. After His baptism He went for forty days into the wilderness, into the realm of Satan who was the cause of it. Every wilderness belongs to the Devil. In that place of Satan's power the Lord Jesus would not have survived had He not been a heavenly Man, and in type a resurrection Man. He had been to the Jordan and in figure had died and by rising, had overcome death.

We note that He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness. When He rose from the baptismal waters in triumph, the Spirit came in a new way upon Him, leading Him into the wilderness as One who had overcome desolation and death. This was all leading to the cross. The Lord was led forward by the Spirit and He sensed what was coming. There have been many arguments about His cup, His exceeding sorrowfulness in the garden and His cry: "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me" (Matthew 26:39). Surely it was because He sensed what was coming. It was certainly not His physical death and sufferings which troubled Him; it was because of necessity He was going to be forsaken of the Father with whom, through those thirty three years, He had enjoyed unbroken fellowship. Favours were shown to Him at His birth: He grew in that favour as a lad, and when He came out into public life, the heavens were opened to Him and the voice came: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). In the secret of His own heart He enjoyed the Father's favour, dwelling in the Father's bosom every day, and now that was to be withdrawn. He was to have the Father's face turned away. This was most dreadful of all.

So it was that on the cross He cried: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Why have You turned Your face from me? Why am I in this awful desolation, beside which every other kind of desolation is nothing. Thank God that when we hear the gospel we know why. The heavens were closed against fallen man who, apart from this suffering of Christ, would be lost for eternity. Job gives a hint of that cry of an orphan soul: "Oh that I knew where I might find him... Behold I go forward, but he is not here; and backward but I cannot perceive him: on the left hand where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand that I cannot see him" (23:8-9). This, however, is but a faint indication of the sense of forsakenness known by the Lord Jesus as He took the sinner's place.

To attempt to compare any other human distress with Christ's cry of forsakenness on the cross would be a sacrilege, yet many Christians have passed from experiences of blessing when God seemed so near and so full of favour, to times when it all seems completely to have gone. All the tokens of the Lord's loving presence seem to have departed. It can be a dreadful experience. But how small are our worst trials in comparison with the experience of being forsaken which came to the Son who from all eternity had been in the bosom of the Father and was now taking the place of all who had lost the face of God through sin.

Christ's Open Heaven

Yet there is the other side, the open heaven, the face of God. Jesus had it from the first, for heaven was open to Him. We know that at the age of twelve He spoke freely of God as His Father (Luke 2:49). His language was expressive of a life with God on most intimate and affectionate terms. At His baptism, the heavens were opened to Him and a voice heard saying, "You are my beloved Son". To Nathanael the Lord was able to say, "Ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man". His transfiguration saw those heavens opened again, with the same voice attesting Him as the beloved Son.

After the desolation of the cross and the tomb we read of His being "received up in glory" (1 Timothy 3:16). Somehow that term gives point to His resurrection. His "receiving up" suggests that the heavens were opened to give Him a tremendous reception. There was no-one to question His right to be at the Father's right hand; the gates lifted up their heads and the everlasting doors opened to welcome Him. Then at Pentecost the heavens were opened to all believers. He poured out His Spirit through the heavens which He Himself had opened by the merits of His cross. In this way He attested to all who would believe that God's face was again in their direction. How could one better express those Pentecostal days than to say that the light of God's countenance was upon them all!

But there is also an inward witness. Men received the Holy Spirit when they believed (Acts 19:2). The Spirit is not only given to the Church as a whole, but to every member of that Church. It is an inward reality; it proves that the Lord is with us and His face in our direction. The coming of the Holy Spirit, as we come into the good of Christ's death and resurrection, brings the light of God's face. In the terms of the Old Testament benediction: "...the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace" (Numbers 6:26). When His face is not toward us there is no peace. In what seems like the crowning blessing of that last chapter of the Bible, it is said, "They shall see his face". This is the one thing which has been the issue through all ages - the face of God towards man being his greatest blessing; the loss of that vision man's greatest desolation. Here then is the end of the story: "There shall be no curse any more... they shall see his face".

An Open Heaven For Us

This may seem a simple fact, how Christ won the victory for us in the wilderness, and how much blessing comes to us because He was willing to be forsaken on the cross. The explanation of His cry, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" is that this has brought to all believers the supreme and all-inclusive blessing of knowing that we will never be forsaken if we are in Christ. It is not really as simple as it sounds. Have you, a believer - perhaps for many years - in spite of devotion to the Lord been tempted to feel that God has forsaken you? Have you never felt as though God had left you, parted company with and washed His hands of you? I am not going to say that you ought to have passed through such an experience, but it may well be, even now.

As in Adam's case, so with every child of Adam, every member of the human race, the efforts of Satan are directed to getting between us and God. If only he can do that, if he can bring about that separation, it is an end of everything and an occasion for despair. Happily in the case of the believer in Christ, he cannot do that in actuality; he can only tempt us to accept his suggestions and accusations. To grasp the significance of Christ's cry and to enter into the value of His work on the cross in destroying the works of the Devil, this is at times the sphere of our conflict. Nothing can get in between us and God.

Calvary always provides an open door, an open way to God's face, and faith is the victory (1 John 5:4). The central matter for faith is that for one terrible moment the Lord Jesus suffered the eclipse of that divine face so that fellowship with God might be secured for us forever. He has brought the light of God's countenance back to us, and that is the great blessing. I am not saying that we may not experience some shadow between us and God because of some folly in grieving His Spirit. This does happen but, thank God, it can never be a total eclipse, for grace restores. The Lord is behind that shadow, so that however often we experience it because of some unbelief or failure of ours, we will find Him still just where He was when we get the matter adjusted and are again right with God. His promise is secure: "I will in no wise fail thee, nor will I in any wise forsake thee" (Hebrews 13:5).

Satan's Antagonism

Satan is the great enemy of fellowship with God. When the Lord Jesus was about to come into the world, the prophetic statement made by Zacharias was "that God would grant unto us that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies would serve Him without fear" (Luke 1:74). That went far beyond any earthly enemies. Have you never had times when, through stress and suffering, Satan has got so near your soul that it seemed he might turn you against God and make you bitter towards Him? This can be a very real experience. Satan tries to use the believer against God, for there is no instrument more useful to him than a Christian revolting against the Lord.

You are not surprised when unbelievers, men of the world, flare against God, but when there are Christians rebelling against their Lord it is a great disgrace to His name. This need not be. Our Lord has secured victory for us, destroying for all the impingement of the Devil's insinuations and suggestions. If you ever do come under such a cloud, remember that the Lord Jesus has established forever the ground upon which God will never leave nor forsake you, never withdraw His face from you. Believe that! Remember that!

Deliverance by the Cross

"Why hast thou forsaken me?" I am so glad that the story of the cross does not end there. The awful cry to "My God..." is followed by the last words from the cross: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46). Jesus was back on the ground of perfect fellowship with the Father. The victory is gained; the work is done; the enemy is defeated; the Father's smile is upon His beloved Son.

And upon us in Christ! Whatever Satan may suggest in our deep temptations to feel that God has left us, it is not true. It can be a very real trial for even the most mature Christian, to be enveloped in spiritual darkness and provocations to despair. At such times we have many precious promises. But even more effective for us can be the recollection of the time when the depths of forsakenness - real forsakenness - was plumbed for our sakes, producing that bitter cry from our Saviour, and then followed by the shout, "It is finished" and the restful committal into the hands of the Father. All that was not for Himself; it was for us who belong to Him. Never, never will a true believer know the desolation of God-forsakenness now that by His cross Christ has obtained the blessing of the light of God's countenance shining on him.

So let us rejoice that we have an open heaven, secured for us by our blessed Lord. Not to Nathanael only but to each of us is given the promise: "You will see heaven opened..." One day in the glories of eternity, we will see His face and have His name on our foreheads. "And there shall be night no more... for the Lord God shall give them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever" (Revelation 24:4-5).

The Overcomer at the End-time

Reading: Revelation 12.

"And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death."

As to these words in the eleventh verse, we remind ourselves again, that they are part of an utterance by a loud voice in heaven at a time when the heavenly hosts were watching a colossal conflict which was taking place in the lower heavens, a conflict between celestial and diabolical forces; Michael and his angels on one side, Satan and his angels on the other. The occasion of the conflict was an object, a corporate object here spoken of as a man-child, or a son; which son, or man-child, having been raptured to the throne, precipitates this terrific battle and its issue with Satan and his angels being cast out of the heavens - "no more place being found" for them there - down to the earth. Then a loud voice is heard in heaven (a "great voice" the revised version has it) saying: "Now is come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down who accused them before our God day and night. And they [our brethren] overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their life even unto death. Therefore, rejoice O heavens and ye that dwell in them. Woe for the earth and for the sea because the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time." There is very much of detail in that with which we shall not stay for the moment, but note the occasion of that utterance as well as the substance of it, for that, and all that is connected therewith, is what is before us at this time.

Now it will be necessary for us to just look at the book itself for a moment or two and make a very hurried survey.

We note that chapter 11 brings us to the time of the end. The seventh trumpet closes that period; that is the completing of things, of that phase or part of the dispensation. Chapter 12 deals with the end time, but it is very important for us to see that chapters 12 to 14 are a parenthesis. That is, they are not in the direct line of the narrative; they are - as the word parenthesis means - a section or clause inserted for explanation or confirmation of what has been said. The narrative is complete in itself but something is introduced in a parenthetical way to elucidate and explain certain things in it, and so chapters 12 to 14 inclusive are a parenthesis, an explanation of what has already been said. Recognizing that, if we are able thus to see, chapter 12 corresponds with chapters 2 and 3, and the word which is the key, or the link, between chapter 12 and chapters 2 and 3, is the word "overcome". We know how all those messages in chapters 2 and 3 come to the Overcomer, that is, they are concluded with "to him that overcometh". The link between that section and chapter 12 is just that word: "And they overcame", the overcomer is the key and the link. In chapter 12 the man-child, the son, is the group of overcomers at the time of the end. I suppose I ought to stay here to say that that may not be agreed to by some. I know quite well that it is so, and if I say it with emphasis please do not think that I want to impose upon you my own conviction or that I am trying to make you accept that interpretation. My emphasis is the strength of my own conviction, that is all. You are still to go to the Lord about this thing and get from Him His witness. To me this is a matter of unparalleled importance, and I think we may see some of the importance of this thing as we go on. Now that also is by way of parenthesis. Let me repeat as to what I feel myself, that the man-child in chapter 12 is the group of overcomers at the time of the end. I note two things; that this man-child is referred to as "they". Verse 5, "she was delivered of a son, a man-child",verse 11, "and they overcame him..." That is not a single entity, that is a corporate body. It is true the word 'son' (v. 5, R.V.) is the Greek word huios, frequently used of Christ; but the combination in this chapter of teknon (twice), not so used, and huios (once), only strengthens if it does not prove our point, i.e., the "Overcomer" - "Man-child" - is Christ and a company out of the church caught up to the Throne before the tribulation (Rev. 3:10,21). Some of you may not, of course, see the value or force of that; others will, because of a large school of interpretation that thought this man-child was the Lord Jesus and that all this took place when He was born. But the context needs a good deal of wrestling with to conclude that that is so.* (see Appendix)

Now then, if our interpretation is correct, we are able to open out into a larger realm and see the great thing which is in view here. What is the thing that occupies the central and supreme place in this revelation? It is a company associated with Christ in His throne as having overcome the great dragon, the old serpent, the devil, Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, the accuser of the brethren. That is what is here - a company in that throne-position and union with the Lord Jesus, the first and inclusive Overcomer. Now, beloved, that ranges the whole history of this earth or this world. It represents God's primary and ultimate thought concerning man in union with His Son, Jesus Christ. It represents God's original thought concerning His Son, and then His thought concerning those whom He chose in Christ before the world was; and His thought concerning His Son and those whom He chose in Him from eternity was that they should reign and govern and administer this universe for and with God; that they should be linked with the throne of God in universal administration and government. That thought, that truth runs all the way through the Word of God. On that He set His heart. Against that this other one, presented in these various titles representing the varied forms of his activities and character, set himself in one great age-long challenge and resistance. But God had had His thought, His intention, His purpose for us in Christ in relation to His throne, and the overcomers are that. This company embodies the original intention of God, and are God's sphere and instrument of His success. They declare the success of God concerning His original thought, therefore "Rejoice O ye heavens and ye that dwell therein", for God has succeeded in spite of everything. You might think that speaking like that represents some great difficulty for God - not at all. If God had dealt with this whole thing in naked infinity, it would have been like a snap of the fingers to wipe it all out. But it is by Man that He has done it: by Man for man, and that represents a terrific conflict. Now you see what is in view. The achievement of God, the success of God in Christ, in those who are in Christ and that represented by a company, a specific company called "Overcomers".

Over against that, then, everything else is set and to that everything else is related. All that is in the Book of the Revelation is connected with that. Chapter 12 is the key to the whole book. Everything thus far moves up to chapter 12 and everything else moves from chapter 12. Perhaps one ought to keep the connection between 12, 13 and 14 because they are so intimately bound up with one another, but this part of chapter 12 is the pivotal point upon which everything revolves. As you go back and traverse this book you begin with Ephesus and see the first love left. "I have this against thee, thou hast left thy first love." You seek for an explanation of leaving the first love and you find the explanation is not to be found simply in the waning of an enthusiasm, but in the attempted quenching by the deluges of spiritual antagonism, the object being to close down the fire of love for God in the heart. You know that true love for the Lord does not just wane of itself, you do not just give it up and let it go; you know it is by reason of great pressure, great adversity, conflict, discouragement, wearing-out tactics as well as by subtle insinuations and subterfuges and such like things; the snare of the world, deceitfulness of sin, and the awful opposition of the enemy - why? This is not merely a natural, temperamental thing. It is against that ultimate object of the Lord, the throne. You have Balaam's subterfuge leading to spiritual fornication; and the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, and that woman Jezebel, the false prophetess, and the name to live, but yet dead; mere profession, the false claims of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan; then the lukewarmness of Laodicea.

All these things represent different ways and means by which the enemy has sought to get in to destroy the testimony. You see, the lampstand is the testimony. At that time and in that place it was God's testimony in the earth, and all these things are working against the testimony to destroy it, to quench it, to blot it out, and God is appealing for a maintenance of His testimony, and all these things are against the issue of that testimony as maintained, which is in the throne. And so you find they overcame because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony. They have kept the testimony of Jesus, these Overcomers. Do you see the link between these things? And all else you find, whether it be in the nature of the persecutions through which the saints have passed, which are mentioned here; or the subterfuges, the snares, the deceptions of the serpent; or the many trials, adversities, sufferings of the Lord's children, so many that we could never catalogue them; all that we pass through as we seek to go on with the Lord and be faithful, it is all directed against this ultimate issue, the coming of this company of Overcomers to the throne.

It is the explanation of what we are passing through now; the explanation of all trial on the one side, from the adversary's side; sufferings, persecutions, pain, anguish, to quench the testimony with a view to thwarting that rapture to the throne. On the Divine side we are not protected against it because the Lord wants us to overcome, and you will never overcome unless there is something to overcome. There are the two sides, the Divine, sovereign side and the diabolical side to thwart this. All is related to that, beloved, all is leading up to this final fury of the erect dragon waiting to swallow up this corporate company who are to bring about the issue of the ages.

Does it not strike you as a thing of immense moment, that a company (we do not know how many, small or great but comparatively small we judge, a company nevertheless of the Lord's children) are going to be the Lord's occasion for the precipitating of the crisis of the ages; that is, bringing about that time and that condition when and where there is no more place for Satan and his angels in the heavens. I think it is a tremendous thing to say that: "there was found no more place..." as though the heavens said: 'There is no more room for you here any more.'

Now we do not want to get hilarious about it, it is too solemn - but that is the issue: "no more place in the heavens"; and that is arrived at by this company being raptured to the throne in the face of the fury of the dragon. They are God's instruments for winding up the old regime which held for thousands of years contrary to God's original thought. Supposing this is that time, supposing that we have entered into this last phase! Only to suppose it is to explain a great deal. But, beloved, the intention of the Lord in these days is to show us how to overcome. We have got to know how to overcome. We have got to come to see the means of overcoming, the ground of overcoming, and that is what is in view as we pursue this matter in these pages, that we shall be put in the way of understanding what overcoming is, and how to overcome.

So we see that with the rapture to the throne of this man-child company a great change takes place in the heavens as well as on the earth. With this rapture the first thing that is seen is war in heaven. The next, the issue of that war: "no more place" in heaven for these forces of evil. Therefore, they are cast down out of the heavens, and then a great voice in heaven is heard at the moment of that casting down, saying: "Now is come..." (it almost seems to say 'now at last, now at length, now', the great eternal now! This hierarchy which has encircled the earth as "prince of the power of the air", "the world-rulers of this darkness, the principalities and powers, the hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies", now at length they are cast down, and now is come) "the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ."

I pause to note the distinguishing words - "Now is come the salvation of our God". The salvation of our God is come now. Sit down with that in this connection for a little while and see where that will lead you. "Now is come the kingdom of our God"; the kingdom of our God is come now. "Now is come the power of our God". The power of our God is come now. Here is Divine energy, Divine force, Divine might, here it is Now. But then note. "And the authority of his Christ". The exousia of His Christ; the jurisdiction of the Lord Jesus has come now. How much hangs upon this 'now'! You weigh these sentences one by one and you see that with this rapture of the man-child there synchronizes this arriving at the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the jurisdiction of His Christ. A great point to reach, that! To fathom all that, we need much more time than at present; we will leave it there for the moment. There is a new phase of things on the earth as well as a new phase of things in the heavens. Before passing to that, note how this thing is put. There is a great voice in heaven, and that great voice says: "Our God... our brethren". There is a company in heaven looking on, who call this overcomer group "our brethren" and speak of God here as "our God". Some already there have been interested in this final overcomer conflict. There have been overcomers in every age and they have overcome and they are interested in this thing to its end, and they say "our God" and "our brethren" - "who accuseth our brethren"; and notice, when you go on, "Satan is gone down", is gone down - that is someone speaking from above, not underneath, saying 'Satan is come down'. Those there are saying: 'he has gone down', they are above.* A new phase then begins on the earth, and then you go on to the other two chapters, 13 and 14.

* Katabaino is not always used for 'to go down', but sometimes 'to come down' or simply 'to descend': but the best authorities translate it in the former sense here, i.e., 'has gone down', and that is more than justified by the context, the voice is speaking in heaven and is noting that the "Accuser" has been "cast" down (verse 9).

You have on the one side, antichrist, and on the other side linked with that, the tribulation of those who have not been raptured, or the tribulation on the earth into which those enter who have not been raptured, even the Lord's people. The discrimination in the seven letters is between those who overcome and those who do not overcome. (I cannot accept that the seven letters addressed to the seven Churches were addressed to those who were not the Lord's people, neither to just a few inside a merely professing Church). I believe the messages were addressed to those who were the Lord's people in a state of spiritual apostacy or weakness, out of the way, in a state of declension, and there is a division between the Lord's people who are in a state of declension and those who overcome. I think it is J. N. Darby who says concerning the Philadelphian saints: 'but then there were very blessed encouragements given to them. There was an hour of great temptation coming upon the whole world to try those who dwell thereon; some might be victorious in the trial, but those who kept the word of His patience would be kept from the trial. On the whole world it would come, but where were they? They had gone out of it.' That is the position here, and the great tribulation overtakes non-overcoming believers. There will be those who were kept out of the great tribulation, but there will be those who "come up out of", who were kept there and who came out of the tribulation in the midst of which they have washed their robes which had become spotted by the world.

We see what is in God's eye, in His mind. We see that the end-time is going to have this central thing, the securing of this overcomer group, this overcomer company. In the securing of that company through spiritual travail, and the rapture of that company, God is going to secure His original purpose, His pre-eminent thought. Changes in heaven and in earth will be related to that. That company will be raptured on a threefold basis. "They overcame because of the blood of the Lamb." That is one of the things we have got to consider carefully, more fully; "because of the blood of the Lamb". That is foundational. "And because of the word of their testimony." The blood of the Lamb was that which was provided for them, apart from them, the word of their testimony is their part. We have got to know, first of all, God's basis of victory, and then our side of the victory, what the word of testimony is by which we overcome. And then, as to the cost, the third factor: "and they loved not their lives [their souls] unto the death."

That is the position as I believe we have it, perhaps only at its beginnings, just now. Maybe we are coming into it. Some of us feel sometimes we could not stand very much more, the spiritual conflict and pressure is so great. Beloved, do you see the tremendous issues bound up with this conflict, do you see the need for us to know what the means of victory and the ground of victory are? Therefore it is necessary that we gather together in days like these. These are times when we need to be in solemn convocation. The ends of the ages are coming upon us and there is a very, very big explanation to the pressure and the suffering, the spiritual intensity through which we are passing now. Some of you are feeling that pressing in, that intense spiritual pressure: it is becoming almost unbearable. There is an explanation, a big explanation, the biggest explanation to anything that ever existed. God is about to accomplish His end and change the aspect of the universe. Oh, wonderful thing! all that, beloved, has its operation in saints. We are in that. That is taking place in us. Perhaps we might sometimes think it might be very much easier if we saw an erect dragon, if these figurative things were literal, we would know where we were and what we had got to do. But it is this spiritual pressure, this thing that comes to us, not in the bare, naked, devilish antagonism of the enemy, but that which is coming in very often along what we call ordinary, everyday things, the domestic things, the business things; yes, all that, coming in that way, it is all the conflict, it is there. But again, we see there is a marvellous explanation to it, and we need grace, much grace, we need a mighty instrengthening of the Lord.

Oh, unto this, doctrine is not enough, teaching will not do, light merely as a matter of light, beloved, is not always power. No; power is the capacity for going through, and light does not take you through; light may help you to see your way, but you want energy as well as light, and we need in these days the mighty instrengthening of God to get through.

This message will be very pertinent to the situation in which many of God's people are found at this time. The spiritual pressure is growingly intense. The trial of faith is increasingly 'fiery'. The explanation of God's ways is beyond human ability. There is a cry and a sob in many a devoted heart - 'Why, Oh, why,' The word is for such. Those who know little of this costly way to the Throne will not feel its appeal. Those who are only interested in theoretical prophetical interpretations will sabotage the point by rejoinders such as 'Selective' - (or 'Partial Rapture'), of course.

We have no concern to systematize the truth into such theories or 'teachings'. What is patent to all honest and unprejudiced minds is - as many accredited and highly-respected Bible teachers have taught - that the New Testament does discriminate between Christians, and the force of its general and particular teaching is that there is a 'crown' which can be missed, and a 'calling' which can be forfeited.

There are many letting go the greater for the lesser. The Lord does not bring judgment on them now, but it will be a terrible thing to realise in "the day" that they let go "the on-high calling".

APPENDIX

The "Man-child" of Revelation 12

Inasmuch as many have sought to interpret this Scripture as historical in the past, that is, as having been fulfilled before John wrote at Patmos, and as applying to the birth of Christ, Israel being the woman, it will be well if certain very clear points are afresh taken into consideration and honestly faced.

1. The pangs of travail (verse 2).

Where were the birth-pains in Israel when Christ was born?

Israel has never yet travailed unto the birth of Christ.

Isaiah 66:8-24 shows Christ's birth out of the nation without travail. That Scripture does not refer to Revelation 12.

2. "Clothed with the sun" (verse 1).

The Lord Jesus is Himself the sun, "light of the world", and it is the Church which has been invested with that Light; the revelation of Jesus Christ, the whole Truth of God. The Jewish nation has never stood so robed.

3. "The moon under her feet" (verse 1).

The moon is an object which has no light of its own, but borrows its light from the sun.

This is exactly what the whole Jewish system of Law and Types did. The Law, the Prophets, the Types, all reflected the Christ, and shone with borrowed light. These are all fulfilled in Christ and realised in the Church, and all are under the feet of - in a subject relation to - the Church. This cannot apply to the Jewish nation.

4. "On her head a crown of twelve stars" (verse 1).

Stars are heavenly living bodies in a ruling capacity. Twelve is the number of governmental power or order.

The twelve Apostles may be seen to fulfil this part of the symbolism. They come in several times in the "Revelation" as in a place of special honour. What is here, we believe, is that, in the mind of God, the Church is seen in the position of heavenly authority according to Luke 10:19; Ephesians, etc. But, while this is God's thought concerning the whole Church as in "Ephesians", only a company out of her actually and experimentally come to know the throne-union in the first instance. Undoubtedly, this is the position today, as it has always been, and this is the occasion for the great amount of exhortation and admonition in the New Testament. And this also is the place and condition which gives rise to the many provisional "Ifs" of the New Testament.

5. "As soon as it was born", or "When she was delivered" (verse 4; R .V.).

There is no gap here. Christ was not caught up to the throne when He was born, there was a considerable interval.

6. "A great red dragon"

"Ten horns" (not crowned).

"Seven heads" (crowned) (verse 3).

No such power existed when Christ was born. John was writing nearly a hundred years later than the birth of Christ, and in the seventeenth chapter of this book he shows that only five of these powers had been overthrown, and one was in existence; the seventh was yet to be (17:10). The ten horns as ten kings obtain power at the same time as the Beast (17:12 ; cf. Daniel 7:20).

All these come into view when the Gentile Dominion is at its close.

The Beast and the False Prophet (Political and Religious) are the two aspects of the Dragon which persecute the true Church at the end, and the very removal of the "man-child" is a main cause for this assault and of the commencement of the tribulation.

7. "War in heaven", "The dragon cast down"

("The old serpent, the devil, Satan, the deceiver"), "No more place in heaven".

This did not take place either at the birth or the ascension of Christ.

"Ephesians" still sees conflict in the heavenlies (6:12).

Satan is still "the prince of the power of the air".

True, Christ is far above all principality and power, etc., and we are seated in Him there, but the clearing of the lower heavens with the result that the Church administers and governs the world therefrom is something yet to be, and the "manchild" is the fulfilment of Revelation 3:21,22, unto this end.

We have not incorporated these notes into the body of the message because it is our aim not to allow the messages to be of a controversial character, but always straightforward spiritual teaching. The notes are added that it might be seen that we are not saying things without very good ground in the Word, and careful meditation and study therein.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, May-June 1964, Vol 42-3

Overcomers

You see, the Remnant and Overcomers have as their function to be God's vantage ground in a day of widespread spiritual declension and failure, to be vantage points, that upon which God can act and say. Here is my thought positively expressed; here is the thing that I am after! 'That is the function of Overcomers to be to God like that. ‘Here is the thing ’(God is saying); ‘look at this..... look at Christ and His own as God wills them to be and you have what I am after, what My mind is!' The Remnant is for that: God's vantage ground in a day of declension to show the thing to others.

God's thought concerning His Church is that it should be gathered out of the nations, slowly but surely formed into a bride worthy of giving to His Son as a gift, without spot or blemish or any such thing - given to Christ as His bride to be for Him the instrument, the agency, of filling and fulfilling the coming Kingdom throughout the ages. That is God's thought about the Church. Can we say that that is being realized in any commensurate way? No, but God holds to His thought and He seeks an inner company whom we are calling a Remnant or an Overcomer Company to stand for Him in this service, to be a link between Him and His full thought in His people, and to be that instrument for the realization of His full thought, to serve Him, to see His face. What is that? To be to His Son the agency of filling the Kingdom and fulfilling the Kingdom in the days to come. That is tremendous service. It is unto that that the Overcomers are called.

If you want to be in the work of the Lord, if you want to be the Lord's servants, it is not given to a special class called ministers and missionaries. It is to a whole company, to every one who overcomes. ''He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne'' (Rev. 3:21); ''...will I give to eat of the tree of life" (Rev. 2:7). These are all things symbolic of that full thought of God concerning His Church, gathered up and expressed firstly in Overcomers.

Prison - Vision - Provision

"And Joseph's master took him, and put him into the prison, the place where the king's prisoners were bound: and he was there in the prison" (Genesis 39:20).

"Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon... and Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream... I have heard say of thee, that when thou hearest a dream thou canst interpret it. And Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer."

"And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom the spirit of God is?"

"And he [Joseph] gathered up all the food of the seven years... and Joseph laid up corn as the sand of the sea, very much..."

"And the famine was sore in the land" (Genesis 41:14-16,38,48,49,56).

"...desiring to gain favour with the Jews, Felix left Paul in bonds" (Acts 24:27).

"And when we entered into Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the praetorian guard" (Acts 28:16, margin)

"The prisoner of Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 4:1).

"I John... was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus".

"And I heard... a great voice... saying, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it to the churches" (Revelation 1:9-11).

The passages quoted above are a summary of the lives and ministries of three of God's servants, the fruit of whose experience has meant life to the people of God in a very full way. But that way of God's sovereign choice is not peculiar to those three alone. It is the story of many more, both in Bible times and since. To the former we could add Jeremiah and Daniel, as outstanding cases.

There are many such records in the 'Book of Remembrance' of those whose hard way has meant - and is now meaning - bread for the spiritually hungry. The prison has not always been literal chains and incarceration. Sometimes it has been a sick room; sometimes the lonely isolation of a divinely-appointed place of service; sometimes the rejection and exclusion of a servant of God because of prejudice, blindness, jealousy, or spiritual smallness on the part of those who could so force him out. Of many it could - and can - be said: "for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus".

There are some features of such 'imprisonments' which it may be helpful to note. Inclusively, of course, we have to have our hearts at rest as to the certainty of the Divine government. Provided always that such a position is not due to a wayward, self-willed, or disobedient course on the part of the one concerned, and their situation is not due to anything akin to that of Jonah's predicament; although there may have been human weakness and mistakes, yet God is greater than all, and given a heart really true to Him, He can turn all things to serve His main end: "Who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will".

In difficult and seemingly impossible situations there will always be much room for reflection upon the faults and mistakes which could account for the trouble. 'If only' is a desolating reflection. 'If only Paul had not appealed to Caesar!' 'If only Joseph had told Potiphar what his wife had really done!' There is no end to this kind of reflection, and there are very few who, if they had their time over again, would not - they think - have done differently, and so have avoided a great deal of trouble. We are not referring to particular sins, but to 'mistakes'. The matter of the sins of the past goes without saying that we should - with our present light - not repeat. With so much of what we now look upon as mistaken, we then acted according to the best light that we had. This provides a very large realm for sovereign grace, and sovereign grace is quite equal to the task.

The adversary of God and of our walk with Him will flog us hard with accusation to make us mistrust Him. There is thus a big realm which has to be definitely committed to the Father's understanding and mercy.

Having said that, we can look at some of these more comforting features of adversity.

1. God is never overtaken by an emergency, nor is He the victim of adverse activities. This fact is so evident in the above instances.

Joseph's classic verdict upon the whole soul-wracking experience was 'You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good', and then he gives the all-justifying reason - "God meant it". Paul and John would have heartily endorsed that verdict.

The very foreknowledge of God in choosing and calling His servants, whose hearts He cleanses from selfish and worldly ambitions, is involved in what befalls them in the way of their devotion to Him. Even Job, than whom no one ever had a more bewildering history, could say: "He knoweth the way that I take".

Not even in the greatest and most terrible of man's defaultings, and Satan's seeming triumph - the "Fall" - was God unprepared and unprovided with His way through. The answer was with Him before the demand was actually existing - "The Lamb [was] ...slain from the foundation [the laying down] of the world". God's end justified His permission. Grace and glory will vastly transcend the suffering and the sorrow. With God there are no unforeseen accidents. "He is Lord of all".

2. While the servant in question is going through the dark, cold, and desolate ordeal of the 'prison', he does not know what it all means. At best and most he knows that the Lord is God. All the appearances are of being cut off, shut up or in; being forgotten; having suffered through the treachery, disloyalty, cruelty, or fickleness of men - even of brethren; or the vicious spite of evil powers, human and satanic. The iron can eat into the soul, as it did with Joseph. The battle against bitterness of spirit, disappointment, depression and despair may be fierce. Joseph had no knowledge of the coming fourteen years of vindication, the fruit of his sufferings. Disillusionment was a cruel foe, for present experience gave useful ground for the mocking evil spirits to make fun of his early dreams of honour.

Paul and John never imagined that for two thousand years people would read with immense profit and gain that which came from their prisons. They knew nothing of making spiritual history for the duration of time and eternity. But so it was.

3. The major factor in these imprisonments and apparent limitations was that the fruit was for a time yet to come. Pharaoh's dreams and Joseph's interpretation related to a time not yet come and which had to be prepared for in sheer faith. God knows what is coming, and He Himself prepares and provides for a situation beyond the present. In the deep dark night of adversity, God may be doing something, securing something which will "save much people alive". In our own time, because of the poverty and shallowness of contemporary resources, there is a reverting to and reproducing of the deeper, stronger, and more heart-satisfying ministry of those times when it cost deeply to be "obedient to the heavenly vision".

The writer included among his personal friends a servant of God whose name is known worldwide for his Bible-teaching ministry. That dear man was formerly the minister of a certain church. There came a time when the responsible people in that church decided upon adopting policies and procedures which he believed to be quite contrary to spiritual principles. The minister withstood this on Scriptural grounds. He was forced to leave the church, and because 'this thing was not done in a corner', it was taken up by the secular and religious press, mostly to his condemnation. For several years no church or people would have anything to do with him. He was ostracised, excluded, isolated, and confined to his own home, coming down - with his wife - to their last two shillings and sixpence. But, said he to me, 'It was in those years of imprisonment that I was able to give myself so thoroughly to my Bible as to lay the ground for the many subsequent years of worldwide Bible teaching!' There was no church, however important, and no convention, however large, that would not welcome him (if they were faithful to the Bible), and the university of the city of his later ministry honoured him with a doctorate of divinity.

Not all - in their lifetime - are given their vindication, but the principle holds good that, in times of adversity, God prepares and provides for a time to come.

So, Israel was preserved for the subsequent centuries, in spite of the brothers' treachery; because Joseph went to prison and there proved his God.

So we have the infinite treasures of Paul's prison ministry in his letters. So we have the priceless wealth of John's Patmos visions and writings. For these latter there was nothing that they could do but to write; and the writing - though they did not know it - was to be the food of saints for many generations to come.

Prison. God only knows all the exercises of an eager heart when shut out and shut in by - what seems to be - the unkindness of men, or the overtaking of adversity!

Vision. And yet such times can be times of an 'open Heaven' and much spiritual enrichment.

Provision. And the fruit may be life to many in a time of spiritual famine.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Sep-Oct 1963, Vol 41-5

The Prisoner of the Lord

"The prisoner of the Lord" (Ephesians 4:1).

"Thanks be unto God, who leads me on from place to place in the train of His triumph to celebrate His victory over the enemies of Christ" (2 Corinthians 2:14, Conybeare).

It is a matter of vital importance that in our relation to the Lord Jesus for the outworking of God's eternal purpose we should have a right conception of ourselves. Among the many designations by which the Apostle Paul expresses his conception of himself, that of the "prisoner of the Lord" is by no means the least significant. This designation had in his experience various aspects. There was that which related to the literal imprisonment at Rome, true; but there were others....

But even this captivity in Rome was not regarded by him as a captivity to jail or jailor - to Rome, Caesar, or circumstances - but as a captivity to Christ. In other words, he was a captive by a foreseen and foreordained purpose of God, and all was according to the divine schedule.

There was a sense in which such imprisonment meant liberty. His body may have been in chains and under close guard, but his spirit was "in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus"; and he was traversing the limitless realms of divine truth and revelation. To those who live in the Spirit there are no limits to spiritual influence and effectiveness. The prisoners of the Lord have realized this in all ages.

The spiritual experience of the Apostle had become the ground of the great revelation that the prisoner of Jesus Christ is such because he is not in the slightest degree free to draw upon his own resources.... Paul is a sign to us in this matter, for of all men he knew best that he was entirely and utterly dependent upon the Life not his own. Even his physical body was dependent upon the inner quickening of the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead.

He had no life of his own for the work of God. The sentence of death was in him - the lord of death was ever against him; death beset his course seeking to get its advantage at every point, and but for this energizing within by the Risen Lord the great purposes of God could never have been accomplished. It was not the Lord's will that it should be otherwise; in fact, we might truly say that the Lord would have it thus, and Paul himself realized that it was for the safety of the revelation that his own life should be staked through and pinned down. Thus it would be impossible for him to move in any self-directed way and act as out from himself without immediately coming up against the fact that he had no life from above for such a course, and therefore it would prove fatal to seek so to essay. Thus he was a prisoner of the Lord because of his utter dependence upon the Lord's Life for all service.

The principle is an abiding one for all who are "called according to His purpose." If there should be the full recognition of the principle... and obedience to this law, then the working out of it in physical weakness and suffering might be modulated accordingly; but who is there that, with large resources of personal energy, will not draw upon them, count upon them, and - almost unconsciously - make them in themselves a factor of strength.

This was Paul's dangerous tendency at the outset, and so might it be with the majority of those whom the Lord would greatly use. Because of this, they have to be brought to the place where, by reason of their own weakness and utter insufficiency, they draw every breath by the Holy Spirit... and come to realize that the Risen Lord, as within them, must live their life for them. It is thus that the Master secures for Himself the greatest percentage of real spiritual life and work... and protects His own interests against the judged and condemned flesh that seeks to glory in His presence.

Much has been said about the wonderful intellect of the Apostle, just as it has concerning his energy. But in this respect the Apostle himself would have pointed out, with equal emphasis, that the spring of everything was the Spirit of wisdom and revelation as a specific endowment in Christ. He of all men would have most strongly discriminated between reason and revelation - between the judgment acumen, and intellectual resources of man and that wisdom and discernment from heaven which comes by revelation.

For all spiritual service, spiritual revelation is essential and indispensable - our speaking, our plans, our methods, our times must be by revelation. So many there are who have schemes and enterprises - visions and undertakings - for the Lord, but who are falling far short of real spiritual effectiveness.

A mentally conceived purpose and desire for God is not adequate... even though it be an assent to a program as contained in the Word of God. What is in the written Word by revelation of the Holy Spirit must also be in the spirit of each servant of God in the same way. We shall be held to this if we really are abandoned to the Lord and walking not after the flesh - even in Christian service - but after the Spirit.

On the one hand, one may essay to go here and there in the general conception that the Lord wishes work to be done in such places, but to our surprise and temporary bewilderment we may find that the Spirit suffers us not. On the other hand, we may find that - while everything according to our judgment and the arguments of Christian men would dictate a certain course of restraint - we have to go "bound in spirit" in the face of all.

Then again, it is not sufficient to have received revelation, but - for the transmitting of such - a special enablement of utterance is necessary. Few men have received greater and fuller revelation than the Apostle Paul, but how he besought the saints to pray that he might have utterance! And this emphasizes the principle of our complete imprisonment to the Lord Jesus, so that every word, every step, every undertaking shall be as out from Himself... and not of ourselves.

Now in his declaration of God's leading him on "from place to place in the train of His triumph" (2 Corinthians 2:14), the Apostle suggests other aspects of this imprisonment. He draws for us a picture of the victorious return of a Roman general from campaign. As the general approaches the gates of the imperial city, his distinguished prisoners are fastened with chains to his chariot. The whole populace has turned out to greet him and applaud his prowess. He sweeps through the gates and then - at a given point - the procession halts. He makes a speech, telling of his conquests, and then - with a wave of his hand toward the prisoners - would make them the evidence of his triumph. In effect he would say, "These prisoners speak for themselves of the truth of what I say." Then the procession would move forward and the same thing would happen again and yet again. It is these prisoners who are on show for his glory and are used to celebrate his triumph.

Paul takes up this historical background and uses it to illustrate his own relationship to the Lord Jesus. As Paul was led by the Lord from place to place, he in himself was the evidence of what Calvary and its triumph means within a man. Many would remember Saul of Tarsus - his pride, his vehemence, his forcefulness, his intolerant and bitter opposition to the followers of Jesus of Nazareth - how that he would stand at nothing, even to the hurling of women as well as men into prison... and fully consenting to the murder of the young man Stephen. And here is this man - the same, yet another - suffering for the "Way" that he persecuted, no longer bigoted, proud, bitter. He who once would brook no interference with his schemes now shows infinite patience with those who oppose themselves. He who once in wrath would breathe out threatenings and slaughters against those whom he had made his enemies, now - when even carnal believers criticize, malign, misrepresent as at Corinth - would write to them one of the most glorious pieces of spiritual literature ever penned, showing how love - even the love of God in Christ - when it gains the ascendent, suffers long, is kind, envieth not, is not puffed up, behaveth not itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, keeps no record of evil, and never gives up. Surely this change would speak for itself, and this man's testimony would ever be... as in his life... a celebration of Calvary's victory. He was on show to the glory of Christ... and was being led from place to place thus to celebrate His victory.

But there was another vital aspect of this imprisonment. Paul realized that the great adversary of Christ was holding sway in the world. He had his hands upon man; he was having things his own way; he was throwing a world darkness around the mind of man as a precaution against the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus from shining in unto them. And yet, Calvary was victory; and the Prince of this World was cast out, and principalities and powers were stripped off, but how was this to be wrought out for the deliverance of man?

So the Apostle conceived of himself as being led in the triumphal train of his Lord to meet the enemy in back of the situation in all those places of the Divine appointment, and there to have the celebration of Calvary's triumph in the form of a small company who would maintain in their place the testimony of Jesus - even the testimony of His mighty Calvary conquest.

So the Lord would lead Paul to a place, and there the enemy - recognizing the significance of his presence - would stir up all his resources against him. It might seem that the first encounter ended disastrously, as at Philippi or Lystra or Ephesus, but there was no element of disaster in the spirit of the Apostle, and he firmly held on for the celebration to be complete. We know the issue - how that in a phenomenal way in a few short years, the testimony of Jesus was triumphantly established in a multitude of places, each of which was itself strategic.

What a conception of our relationship to the Lord! All our own programs scrapped, our own schemes set aside, our own resources ended; dependent to the last degree - even to a word - upon the Lord as our life, chained to Him as prisoners, having no freedom to think, speak, or act for, or of, ourselves; and then led by Him from place to place, and in each place almost immediately encountering a deluge of Satanic opposition - the terrific efforts of the enemy to make it impossible for us to stay there; and yet, held in spirit, ready to die for the testimony of Jesus, that testimony at length represented perhaps in a small company - a nucleus - His triumph celebrated, His victory declared. So dotted here and there, as marking the stages of a triumphal march, the scene presents the witness to the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father - each of these testimonies a prophecy of His possession of all the earth.

Remembering and Forgetting

Reading: Deuteronomy 8.

"And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God hath led thee..."

"Brethren, I count not myself yet to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things that are before, I press on toward the goal, unto the prize of the on-high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14).

"Thou shalt remember..." "Forgetting the things which are behind..." Remembering and forgetting!

In these two passages, which look like a contradiction (though we shall see that they are not), we have, firstly, an exhortation to grateful recollection. "Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God hath led thee." Then there is an exhortation to profitable resume - gathering up the lessons for the future. And, finally, an exhortation to purposeful resolve: "Forgetting... I press on toward the goal."

In both places, Deuteronomy and Philippians, we have one particular point of likeness and similarity: they both mark a point of transition, or, if you like, of crisis. In the former case, a big change was about to take place, and all that Moses said, as you have read in this long chapter, was said in relation to that transition.

There was about to take place a change in leadership, which involved a change from a period of deep and drastic preparation, from a phase of pioneering the way and laying the foundations for the future, to a time of proving the value of all that had been and of taking up responsibility by means of it. It was a transition from a period of child-training, or what is called chastening, discipline, to the possession of the inheritance and an exercise of stewardship.

If you gather all those features together, you will see quite clearly that they represent the stages and phases of any normal Christian experience. A true Christian life or pilgrimage should be marked by those characteristics; it has its stages, which are Divinely-appointed economies for these different phases of the Christian life. At one time, certain things obtain, and are the governing, outstanding and quite conspicuous ways of the Lord. The time comes when these lose, or pass from, their particular place of prominence, and other things take their place. But within those changing economies there are always these two things that I have mentioned - preparation and fulfillment, or responsibility. There is the laying down of a ground, the providing by God of experience, of instruction, and then comes the point at which all that is going to be put to the test as to its real meaning to those concerned; and it will be put to the test as they are forced into the way of new responsibility.

It may be that this is the experience of an individual, and it very often is, for most of us can see the stages and phases of our Christian life as we have moved on through various crises, going from one phase to another. It may be true of a company of the Lord's people. It may be true of the whole Church. And at such a time, when the Lord brings us face to face with the issues of all that has been in the light of a new day, with its new demands and new responsibilities, there is a great value in remembrance. At such a time the Lord says: "Thou shalt remember."

There are two sides to the remembrance, or recollection. There is the human side. That is here in this chapter: "All the way which the Lord thy God hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no." It was not, as we have often said, that the Lord did not know what was in their heart, and had to put them into situations to discover it, but more correctly: 'That He might make thee know.' The later statement about the basis of man's subsistence - "that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only" - can well govern this earlier statement: 'To make thee know what was in thine heart.' That is an essential uncovering and disclosure if there is going to be all that the Lord intends, and it is certainly the most painful experience, or part of life, when, under the hand of God, by His dealings, by His ways, by His methods and by His means with us we come more and more desperately to recognise what kind of people we really are. There is such disillusionment about ourselves if we were ever at all proud or self-sufficient, if we had any opinion of ourselves, or thought that we were anything. But this devastating uncovering of our true selves as God sees and knows them, while it is perhaps the most terrible aspect of a life under His hand, is absolutely essential to the purpose of God. There is no doubt about that; and there is no doubt that that is one of the things that the Lord does with a life when He gets it into His hands. Sooner or later He lays that life bare to itself so that it has no confidence in the flesh whatever. 'To make thee know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or not.' And what was the verdict upon the forty years in the wilderness? It was 'No!' They were not capable of doing it in themselves, and they proved to themselves and to everybody else that it was not in them to do it. 'And thou shalt remember that!'

Too easily, in the day of blessing, as the chapter goes on to show, we forget that work of humbling, of emptying, of breaking, which the Lord did as a part of the very foundation of everything. That is human nature, how we are made, so the word comes with tremendous emphasis: "Thou shalt remember." There are very many of those phrases with God: 'Thou shalt... thou shalt...!', and this is one of His imperatives: "Thou shalt remember!" You must keep in mind always that the foundation of everything is your own unworthiness of anything at all. You will never, never come to appreciate all the grace and mercy of God, all His goodness and kindness, His patience, His longsuffering and His forbearance (of which the forty years are such a history) unless you have come to realise what Paul said of himself, that 'in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. There is no merit for this in me.' Thou shalt remember that side!

But then, over against the human side of self-discovery, so much weakness, so much failure, so much shame and breaking down, there is the Divine side. Oh, what a story of faithfulness on God's part! The faithfulness of God is magnified as the true nature of man is revealed under His hand. 'Thou shalt remember...' that, while it was true that you could not be relied upon, depended upon, at all, that you failed at every point of testing and of trying, and that you proved yourself to be utterly worthless under every trial, God did not give you up; God did not abandon you; God did not wash His hands of you. He remained faithful. "The Lord, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in loving-kindness" is written large on the, so to speak, Divine banner over all the tribes for forty years. 'Thou shalt remember... His infinite patience, His infinite long-suffering!' This is the foundation, and is, as I have said, necessary whenever it is the Lord's purpose to lead into something more of His glory and honour. It is a work of bringing home two things: that we are not the people, and better than any others; and that God is infinitely merciful to the poorest stuff of humanity.

THE FORWARD LOOK

Paul, in the passage in Philippians, is also at a point of transition. As we know, when he wrote that letter he was in prison. He felt that the time of his departure was at hand, and he did not know from day to day whether he would be led out to his death. He had hopes that there might be an extending, but he was writing as though the end was very near. So it was a time of transition for him and for the churches. The leadership was changing, and all that had come in by way of the pioneering, the foundation-laying, the teaching and the training, was now to give place to the proof of its value by those to whom it had been given.

Paul knew that his course was run: 'I have finished my course; I have kept the faith', and yet for him it was not the end by any means. I think it was very wonderful that Paul did not close down at that point and say: 'This is the end!' Instead, it was: 'Even if I have only got another hour, another day, another week, I press on. I am not closing down now; I am going on!' And why? Because as Moses had done, he had seen far, far more ahead than ever had been before, far more than that which lay behind, and because that which lay ahead far outweighed all that he had come into thus far, even after all those years.

You see, these are the two great lessons of life. Where does hope lie? Negatively, you have to say: 'Well, looking at myself, as I now see myself in the light of God's uncovering of everything, I have to say: "There is no hope there! There is no hope in me! I have proved that I am hopeless in this realm of things."' And that is what Paul was referring to when he said: 'Forgetting...' What was it about which he said: 'Forget...'? Look at the chapter again and you will see. It was all the things in which there was no hope. He was recounting those things which he said, 'were gain to me' in the old life, all the things that made up this world for him in the past, and was saying: 'I have come to see that these things were no ground of hope at all. I have come to see that, though I may have had everything to which people in this world aspire, things that men are ambitious to get, there is no hope at all in them.' That is the great lesson of life, on the one side - to discover where there is no hope and to leave it. Leave the hopeless ground! Forget it! Oh, for this grace of forgetfulness, in this matter at any rate! Forgetfulness is a great trouble to some of us as we get older. But here is something which we are bidden to forget.

And on the other side, of course, we have to learn where hope lies. What is the ground of hope? And here Paul is but the counterpart of Moses. Moses is bringing into view the land - the wonderful land flowing with milk and honey, with all its wealth, all its fruitfulness, all its depth and fulness. All that was in view. And now today we know that all that was but a prophetic pointer to the spiritual. We have heard hundreds of times, perhaps, that that land depicts, typically, Christ, the 'heavenly country'; Christ, in whom all the fullness dwells. Hear Moses talking about the riches and wealth in the land, and then hear Paul crying: "O the depth of the riches...!" Oh, the fullness he had seen in Christ! The land and Christ are part and counterpart. Where is the hope to deliver Moses and Israel from despair? It lies in Christ: "Christ in you the hope of glory." What is the hope with Paul? Well, his outlook was not too inspiring, you know. He had many things that made up a ground of very real depression: 'All they that be in Asia be turned from me', and then he mentioned different ones who had left him. And then, looking at himself in his situation, it was not too inspiring from the natural point of view. He was shut up in prison, tied to his chain, and reduced to pen and paper, but he was not for a moment cast down or depressed. Why? Because he had seen how much more there is in the Lord Jesus than he had ever attained unto. Christ is bigger than it all. His Christ is bigger than everything, bigger than all the accumulated discouragements, so he says: 'I have counted everything as loss, as refuse, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him...' - "Forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things that are before, I press on towards the goal unto the prize of the on-high calling of God in Christ Jesus." There is the hope, and that saves from despair.

I wonder, dear friends, if this is all words to you? What would be your salvation in a time of severe trial, disappointment, discouragement, opposition, perhaps of disillusionment? I suggest to you that it is that the Christ whom you have seen and come to know is bigger than all that. You just cannot give up everything because of the difficulties, for what you have seen of Christ is so real. It is not theory, nor mere teaching. It is not mere verbiage. No, it is your own heavenly vision. You have seen, and what you have seen you just cannot un-see. What has come to you you cannot let go as some mere thing, for it is your life. And when I say 'it', I mean Him. What the land was to Moses Christ was to Paul - very, very real, very wonderful and very great. And that was hope in a day when it might well have been despair and deep depression.

So, what is it? It is the fullness of Christ that has got a grip on the heart, is pulling at the heart strings and drawing on, getting through the transition, and disappointment, of sorrow, of anguish, and of all that into which we have been brought in those training ways of God when it would have been so easy to give it all up - if it were not that we have seen the Land; that we have been to Pisgah's mountain, and viewed the Land; that we have had some revelation of Jesus Christ to our hearts that just cannot be given up as something that does not work, and does not matter.

"That I may know Him!" says Paul in this chapter. That is not the quest of a beginner, but of a man at the end of a long and full life of learning Christ. Here, at the end, with that so full and rich knowledge of his Lord, gained through all the years of training, he says, in effect: 'My knowledge of the Lord is such that I see far beyond my present attainment and experience. I see that He is far, far greater than anything to which I have yet come.' So it is that he says: "That I may know him!"

There does come a time in the Christian life when the Lord says: 'Now, look here, I have been dealing with you. I have been making you know and understand very much, and now the time has come when all that is going to be put to the test as to its real value. Have you learnt the lessons? What do they amount to now in your being able to take responsibility in spiritual things?' Those crises arise from time to time. They are very real, for a new phase of things is breaking upon the people of God. I do not think I am wrong if I say that the time has begun when the people of God are going to be put to the test as to their inheritance, as to what they have received from the Lord.

Now, let us gather up all the values of our past experience of the Lord and His past dealings with us and bring them to this resolve:

'I press on... I press on... I press toward the goal of the prize of the on-high calling of God in Christ Jesus.'

I wonder if we can come to that resolve! Individually, you may have been in the fires and have been having a pretty hard and painful time in your spiritual life, but that only means that God has been preparing you for something more. No, God is not a God who believes in bringing everything to an end. He is always after something more. He is made like that, if I can put it so. Something more, and then something more - that is God! And if He has to clear the way for something more by devastating methods, well, that is all right, for it is something more that He is after. There is so much more, far, far transcending all our asking or thinking.

I said that individually you may have been in the fires, but it may also be as a company. The Lord does deep, deep ploughing, but it is always in order to do deep sowing. He wants a harvest, a crop, and His past dealings, though they may seem to have been devastating, are only in the light of that so much more that He would have. But there must be this resolve to go on, and not give up: 'I am going on, by the grace of God. I press toward the goal!'

May that spirit be found in us!

From "A Witness and A Testimony" September-October, 1970

The Rest And The Courage Of Faith

"There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God" (Heb 4:9).

"So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief" (Heb. 3:19).

"Then the children of Judah came unto Joshua in Gilgal: and Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite said unto him, Thou knowest the thing that the Lord said unto Moses the man of God concerning me and thee in Kadesh-barnea. Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in my heart.

Nevertheless my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt: but I wholly followed the Lord my God. And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the Land whereon thy feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance, and thy children's for ever, because thou hast wholly followed the Lord my God.

And now, behold, the Lord hath kept me alive, as He said, these forty and five years, even since the Lord spake this word unto Moses, while the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness: and now, lo, l am this day fourscore and five years old.

As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in. Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the Lord spake in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities were great and fenced: if so be the Lord will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord said."

And Joshua blessed him, and gave unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh Hebron for an inheritance. Hebron therefore became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite unto this day, because that he wholly followed the Lord God of lsrael" (Joshua 14:6-14).

I am sure it will sound to many of you like going a long way back and going out into a very broad realm when I say that we Christians are being constantly confronted with and challenged by our Christianity. Many of us have not really entered into Christianity yet. What do I mean? Well, for one thing, the very door into true Christianity is the door of rest, the rest of faith. The very simple way in which the Lord put it in His appeal was - "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). That was to a multitude, and those words are usually employed in Gospel messages to the unsaved. The meaning of the Lord in using those words is given to us here in the letter to the Hebrews, a very much deeper and fuller meaning than is generally recognized in the usage of the simple invitation "Come unto Me... and I will give you rest". There is something that we have to hear, to detect, in the statement - "There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God" (Heb. 4:9; A.S.V.).

A Present Entering Into Rest

If you look at the context, the meaning is something into which the people of God had not entered. "They were not able to enter in because of unbelief" (Heb. 3:19; A.S.V.). They could not enter in. Who were they? - the people of God. It is still the people of God for whom the rest remaineth. Do not let us put that into the future, that is not the meaning at all; that afterward, when we get Home to glory, then we will arrive at the Sabbath day rest, we will enter into rest. It is not something for the tombstone  -he or she entered into rest. It is something which remains now as a present thing for the people of God, not in death, but in life. The rest remaineth.

You will not think me too elementary, for you know in your heart, as well as I do in mine, that this matter of heart rest, the rest of faith, is a live question continually, it is coming up all the time. One of the things which is lacking in so many of us is this rest, or, to put it the other way, the things which characterize us so much are fret, anxiety, uncertainty, and all those things which are just the opposite of calm assurance, quiet confidence, the spirit and attitude and atmosphere which says all the time, Don't worry, don't fret, it is all right. One thing our great enemy is always trying to do is to disturb that, destroy that, rob us of that, churn us up, fret us, drive us, harass us, anything to rob us of our rest or to prevent us from entering into rest.

It is the rest of faith, not just the rest of passivity, indifference, carelessness. There is all the difference between carelessness and carefreeness. There remaineth, there is still to be had, there still obtains, there still exists, there is still preserved a rest for the people of God - for the people of God. We have no right to go to the unsaved and bid them come to Christ and find rest until and unless we ourselves know that rest. Our testimony and our ministry is jeopardized; weakened, limited and discredited if we are not ourselves in rest; and this is the object of the enemy's activity in this matter - to discredit us by taking from us that very birthright of our union with Him Who is never perturbed, never anxious, never in doubt as to the issue, the One Who reigns. You see, rest is the practical outworking of our belief that He is Lord, and the very Lordship of Christ is struck at by the unrest of the people of God.

The rest of faith must be our position; not only in the great matter of justification, though if it is not settled here, it will not be settled anywhere. Oh, the enemy is striking at that, even with the people of God; he is ever seeking to undercut that; in some way to raise again the question of justification, of being just with God in our standing, in our acceptance - not yet fully and finally in our state, only in Christ; that is, not as finally perfect in ourselves, but in that union on the ground of what He is. The enemy never ceases to try to undercut that, and his methods are countless and very persistent and very forceful. The rest of faith in that, but also in a hundred and one other ways in the practical things of everyday life; things which are not in our power to arrange, secure, settle and bring to pass. Every day brings hundreds of ways in which there is the opportunity to stand into the rest of faith, into that faith in the Lord which brings rest. So subtle are the ways of the enemy that he will even tell us that that is too small a thing with which to trouble the Lord; that is a mere incident, why take that to the Lord? He has bigger and more important things than that on hand! Why try to make the Lord your errand-boy (I say that reverently) just to do all the little things you want done? If in this the testimony is preserved in rest, then it is a big thing to the Lord, not a little thing. If in this matter the Lord's glory stands to suffer, then it is a very big thing. It may be an incident in daily life, yes, in many, many ways every day, you and I can so lose our poise and our rest and our quiet confidence as to lose out spiritually, and the Lord lose much, so that it is proved that somewhere faith has been lacking, and with it the rest has gone. That is one side. It is a challenge to us, a real challenge.

The Necessity For Faith

"We see that they were not able to enter in because of unbelief". Not able - paralyzing, disqualifying, incapacitating unbelief. That means that the sooner we face this whole question and, as far as possible, get it settled, the better. For thirty-eight years Israel was simply locked up, held up, and went round and round, so to speak, on this one question as to whether they were going to believe God. It arose, let me say again, on all kinds of matters. It arose on physical matters, for a life in that wilderness was a great proposition physically. The Lord did not change the physical conditions. He called for a change in the people themselves first; the physical conditions were settled when He had got the change inside them. When the matter of faith in Him was settled, then the Lord dealt with the physical. The question arose in the circumstantial, the emotional, the intellectual, the volitional realms; the challenge was made along all those lines in numerous ways. You can take all their experiences and see how each one was a peculiar form of the challenge to faith, and the challenge was changing almost daily in its aspect, its form, but it was the same challenge. It came along every kind of line and the Lord never changed it, never prevented it, never allowed the whole set of conditions to be altered, but always focused on one point. The thing that matters is the inner man, and not until the issue was settled there, did the Lord deal with all the other things.

Well, that is very comprehensive. Do not think that it is necessarily such-and-such things that account for our condition. These may be contributing factors, they may be very testing, may bear upon us very heavily. Physical matters - yes, they do press, they do make the situation exceedingly difficult, they do make a difference. Circumstances in which we have to live our lives, they do make a lot of difference, they make the situation exceedingly difficult. We say, If only the Lord would deal with this physical matter or these circumstances or this something else! It is all due to that, that is the cause of it, the reason for it. That is our way of reasoning, but it is not the Lord's thought at all. The thing is deeper down than that, and it is simply a matter of believing God; resolute faith, confidence in God. The Lord is trying to get us out of our variable and varying soul life where we are at the mercy of all our feelings, thoughts and reasonings and all that kind of thing, into a realm where, in spirit, we are steadfast. That is the point upon which it is all fixed in the Psalm. "Their heart was not stedfast with Him" (Psa. 78:37), and around that the whole of their forty years is gathered. The key to this is spiritual; tested by every other line, every other means, it is a spiritual matter ultimately. To be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inward man (Eph. 3:16) is the answer to it all. The other may then give way; at least, we shall gain ascendancy over the other if it is not removed.

Faith In God The Secret Of Courage

Come back to the word in Joshua. Of that first generation, only two men got out of that soul realm - Joshua and Caleb. They triumphed in and over that realm. They triumphed in that realm first, and then the Lord brought them out, but the fact that it was the rest of faith which was the secret of their triumph while they were in it is brought so beautifully, magnificently, to light in this fourteenth chapter of Joshua. I think this is fine. Caleb, one of the two, comes to Joshua. He is an old man now, but still living by faith in the position which he took up with the Lord years before. He took up that position when he went as one of the spies and when the great majority, the overwhelming majority, brought their evil report. They looked at God through their circumstances; these two men looked at their circumstances through God; it made all the difference. Caleb took up that position of looking at everything through God, and he is still living in that position; and now, as an old man, he comes to Joshua, and, while all the other people are being given their inheritance in nice, easy, prosperous positions "where every prospect pleases", Caleb says, Give me this mountain where the giants are, and cities great and walled up; this hilly country; give me this mountain!

Oh, dear friends, there is a lot to be said about that, but I am going to be content with this now as following up this challenge to my heart and to yours. What are you looking for? - an easy inheritance, a nice, workable cabbage-patch, something that is going to respond to your touch immediately and give you satisfaction? Are you looking for the flourishing land? The faith which brought Joshua and Caleb into rest of heart before they came into the rest of the land was this kind of faith - Give me a tough proposition! Here is a situation full of difficulties, full of threatenings, full of adversities; why, it is almost an appalling prospect, yet nevertheless give me a chance there! You see the challenge. Do difficulties appall you or do they at once present a great opportunity for the Lord? "It may be that the Lord... as the Lord spake." How are we facing the big difficulties? - and there are difficulties! there are problems! and these mountains seem to pile up upon one another as we go on. Sometimes it seems an impossible outlook and prospect, a hopeless situation. Perhaps for our own lives individually for some reason within ourselves or outside of ourselves, or for the work to which we are called, the ministry, the testimony that is laid upon us, it seems so utterly hopeless, the mountain is impossible. Well, what about it? Is it - Give me this mountain! Nothing but a real faith in God can take things on like that, and say - All right, it is difficult, there is no doubt about it, it is an appalling prospect naturally, a hopeless outlook, nevertheless let us take it on in the Name of the Lord; it may be that the Lord... The Lord - looking at the mountain through the Lord, and not at the Lord through the mountain.

I think that is the kind of faith that we need, that brings into rest. A mountain - yes, it is a mountain right enough, a physical mountain, a circumstantial mountain, a mountain of outlook in the work. Naturally we would do the right thing, the wise, common sense thing if we said, No, we are not going to touch that! But faith says, I am not going to try and skirt that mountain, I am not going to turn my back on it and run away; give me this mountain! I want that faith, you want it. It is not just our natural courage, our bulldog nature, our pugnacity that will do it. We know quite well that we have nothing; if left to ourselves, we had better quit. But the Lord is challenging us, and Caleb does come up as a rebuke to us. At the end of a long life when we might think that now is the time for him to be given a very nice little garden and a lodge somewhere where the work was easy and he could take his rest - no, he says, Give me this mount wherein are the giants, the walled cities; give me this mountain! His choice was a difficulty, because it was an opportunity for the Lord.

Probably we shall very soon be brought up against what we have been saying in very practical ways, but let us have dealings with the Lord on this. We are going to have to face what will be naturally appalling difficulties, within and without, taking the very heart out of us, but oh, for this quiet, restful assurance and confidence in our God which says, Give me this mountain as an opportunity for proving the Lord!

And Caleb got it - and it was Hebron, and that is another story; a very long story is Hebron. I leave you to look that up, for Hebron has a wonderful place in the purposes of God. David was first crowned king in Hebron before he was crowned in Jerusalem. Hebron means 'fellowship'. There is a great inheritance bound up with Hebron. Hebron is secured to men and to women of this kind of faith which says, I am not wanting to escape from my difficulty and get out of my hard way; let me take it in the Lord's strength and give the Lord an opportunity to show that He can do what is naturally impossible. The Lord give us that faith!

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec, 1946

Resurrection: A Living Personal Reality

Transcribed from a message given by T. Austin-Sparks in 1959. The spoken form has been retained verbatim. Words which were not clearly discernible have been enclosed in [square] brackets.

Reading: 2 Kings 6:1-33

In the second book of the Kings, chapter six: “And the sons of the prophets said unto Elisha, Behold now, the place where we dwell before thee is too strait for us. Let us go, we pray thee, unto Jordan and take thence every man a beam and let us make us a place there, where we may dwell. And he answered, Go ye. And one said, Be content, I pray thee, and go with thy servants. And he answered, I will go. So he went with them. When they came to the Jordan, they cut down wood. But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water and he cried and said, Alas, my master! for it was borrowed. The man of God said, Where fell it? And he shewed him the place. And he cut down a stick and cast it in thither; and the iron did swim. He said, Take it up to thee. So he put out his hand, and took it.”

I confess that I used to wonder why that story was included in the number which we have of these acts of Elisha; very interesting and of course quite wonderful, but what is its lesson? What has it to say? And in thinking about it, several things have become quite clear to me and I would like to pass on just one or two of them this morning.

Of course this, with all these other things that are recorded about the acts of Elisha, this, with them, is included in the great beginning of his life. You recall that as his master Elijah was about to be taken up into heaven, he asked Elisha what he might give him. Elisha said, "A double portion of thy spirit". More literally: the portion of the first-born. Elijah said, "You have asked a hard thing, nevertheless if you see me when I am taken up, it shall be." And as they passed through the Jordan, onto the other side, the chariots of the Lord appeared and caught up Elijah. Elisha cried, "My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!" The mantle fell from Elijah and Elisha took it up.

The sons of the prophets, who come into view at that point and are mentioned so many times in this book, find the spirit of Elijah does rest upon Elisha and they bow themselves to the ground. Now that is where it all begins, for these various, shall we call them stories - they are more than stories, works of power - were the expression and outcome of that mighty anointing with the Spirit; that portion of the first-born. So that what we have here in every one, and in this one of which we are thinking this morning, is the real work of the anointing. That is, the Holy Spirit operating in the power of resurrection.  Every incident, as you notice, there’s that stamp in some way or another, in some form or another: it is the mighty working of resurrection power by the anointing, by the Holy Spirit.

It would be easy, and we have done it before, we will not take the time to repeat this morning; to show how this is but a foreshadowing of the ascension or receiving up of the Lord Jesus whereupon the Holy Spirit descended upon the Church. The mantle of the firstborn, the portion of the firstborn, fell upon the Church.  We want to know what the portion of the firstborn is. It is just this: the power of His resurrection. Seeing that, let us come to this story.

The sons of the prophets, again in view, and note what they represent: they represent the generation succeeding, following on, to carry forward the prophetic testimony, the next generation, the sons of the prophets. The heart of this whole thing, where they appear again and again in relation to these mighty acts of the Spirit through Elisha, the heart of the whole thing is this: that these called sons of the prophets who were in the schools of the prophets being educated and trained to carry on the work of the prophets, to fulfil their ministry in the next generation, were not just academic students. They were being, by these various ways, brought into the closest touch with reality. And you will at once see how true that was in the case of this man and his axe-head. For these sons of the prophets expressed quite a legitimate ambition or desire when they said the place where we dwell is too strait for us and said let us have enlargement; perfectly legitimate ambition or desire, a right thing, nothing wrong with that at all. To desire to escape limitation and straitness and to enlarge and to expand for the work of the Lord; that’s quite a good thing and quite a right thing. And so Elisha raised no objection, put no difficulty in the way, but encouraged. And when some of them said to him, "Look here, we’re not just going on with this without you, we’re not discarding the old generation, you come with us, we need you" he said, I come. There was a towardness in this whole matter, and quite rightly so. But even so, with a perfectly legitimate desire and ambition, a right quest in which there is no objection at all; the thing has got to be kept very close to life.  And that’s what this story is about.

Amongst the various lessons that it teaches, there are just two that I will point out this morning. But in our going on, or our desire to go on, our quest for enlargement and increase and escape from anything that is small, narrow, straitened, limited... all that is employed in the work of the Lord must be first-hand. It cannot be done with BORROWED tools. And there are many ways in which the testimony can be second-hand. It may be children brought up in it in their home. I wonder if I might refer to such an occasion in our own midst several years ago. When our brother Patterson was taken so suddenly to the Lord, his son John, who was with us at the conference time recently, passed into a very difficult phase and he came to see me. He said "I’m having a very difficult time. I have discovered that I have been living on my father’s testimony. I have just taken what he said, followed him, thinking that I was on the same ground as he. I’ve discovered that it was his, and not mine and I have got to find it all for myself right from the beginning.” It was a difficult passage. He came through of course, he’s on his own ground. It was a borrowed axe.

We may get it from our meetings; teaching that we have received over years. We’ve got it in our hand, we think, and then we imagine that we are going to use it in some way and it's going to be a serviceable thing and then something happens: we find it doesn’t work, the head comes off. It just comes off and lets us down. This is not ours, alas, it was a borrowed one. It wasn’t ours, it was someone else’s. It was the fellowship’s, the meeting’s, or the teacher’s.  In various other ways it can be something borrowed, from the study and the library and the bookshelves, the commentaries and the translations and all the authorities, the godly men who’ve written it. We’ve got it, we think, and it doesn’t work. The head comes off, alas, for it was borrowed.

Now, the Lord allows these incidents - if you like: these accidents, they’re no accidents at all - these things to happen where the whole thing seems to let us down, doesn’t seem as though it’s working. He does that. A crisis arises, such as arose with this man and his axe, in order that the thing should pass through death onto resurrection ground and become ours in the power of resurrection. When the whole head has come off and we are left just [with a handle], with a shaft in our hand which won’t hue down any trees at all, won’t accomplish anything, left like that standing... it’s a painful hour, a painful time. We feel that perhaps we’ve been on the wrong road, that we’ve been in some kind of illusion. Well, maybe, but the Lord is very faithful, the Lord is very faithful. And such experiences may seem to be like disaster and we cry alas, alas. Those experiences are in the very faithfulness of God to bring that thing onto new ground where it’s ours by a miracle of God. It’s ours because the power of His resurrection has come in and when that has come in, it's no longer a borrowed one, it’s yours. I’m quite sure you’ve seen more than is necessary for me to say.

No, dear friends, the very faithfulness of God necessitates on the one side the loss of the axe-head sometimes to leave us standing crying "Alas!". All our power to do things is flown, it’s gone, we’re stranded. On the other side there is always the positive purpose of God in such experiences, that we shall know this portion of the firstborn. You get the firstborn portion, you know, if you'd like to go back to the book of Deuteronomy you’ll see what that is and where that arose. The portion of the firstborn is something which secures the inheritance to the individual concerned. It is not something bought, paid for, earned, but a gift of grace. The portion of the firstborn. It is knowing the anointing in truth. We will all agree, every one of us here this morning will agree at least with the theory, with the statement, that we don’t want borrowed experiences or teaching, second-hand addresses, studied up things; we want people who KNOW and can speak out of a deep experience. They have been through the depth of Jordan, they have BEEN into death and have come onto resurrection ground. They know it by the bitterness on the one side of loss, failure, disappointment; on the other side the wonderful strength of this miracle of resurrection life. We want sons of the prophets who are in the GOOD of the anointing, not just students of it. Well, that’s the first lesson, simple it is, but it explains a lot I think, of the Lord’s ways with us, that everything has got to be established upon the ground of a living personal experience and not be somebody else’s, but our own.

The other thing which goes with it, of course, quite clearly is that in this that happened, this miracle of resurrection, it was a complete and perfect reversal of the natural order. It is the nature of a piece of iron to sink. That is nature. It will sink. For a piece of iron, a lump of iron, an axe-head to float, is contrary to nature. I only need hint at things, you see much more than I need say. Dear friends, by nature we are all bits of iron. Let me put that another way: by nature we are of the sinking kind. We know that. It wants very little to push us under, to put us down; it’s in us. And especially when there is some spiritual demand on hand, for here was the whole matter of enlargement, expansion and increase in the work of the Lord, and I wonder if you have noticed that whenever something more of the Lord is in view, how quickly we get down, we get pressed under. I have noticed that it happens, it just happens with something of the Lord just coming on, you’ll find people under things, they’ve gone down, they’ve been caught in some way and they’ve sunk. We have to really gird ourselves for anything that the Lord is going to do, it just doesn’t happen. Well, we’re made like that, naturally we’re of the sinking kind.

Perhaps you may think that you’re a very buoyant person. I venture to suggest that the most buoyant person in this place this morning, with the most buoyant and optimistic natural makeup, coming right up against the forces that are set against the things that are of God, will find that they need more than natural buoyancy. We are not going to swim, to float, to stay on top, without something more than our own strength of nature, our own constitution. And the wonder of the anointing, let’s say it quickly and close, the wonder of the anointing, the wonder of the Holy Spirit, the wonder of the portion of the firstborn is this: that although we are so sinkable, we are such sinkable stuff, naturally it is decline, it is to drop down under pressure, under trial, but the marvel is that you and I are afloat today. It is a marvelous thing that we are afloat today! Many of you know that, perhaps you think that you’ve sunk many times, but you’re afloat today! Your heart may be sinking today you think, but you’re not drowned yet, you’re not at the bottom yet, you’re not lost for good yet, we’ve all been there many times, we can say with the Psalmist “Though I fall, yet shall I rise, though I fall, yet shall I rise”. There is some extra factor in the child of God and in the servant of God called according to His purpose, that causes us to survive a thousand drownings: the power of His resurrection. It’s a wonderful thing and this simple little story just says to us that if the Holy Spirit is in us, there is a reversal of the way of nature; nature declines, nature goes down, nature sinks, but here the Spirit is always reversing that and causing us to rise, to rise, to go on again and again. It’s like that, there is something that is different from nature in us, it's the divine nature: the power of His resurrection.

So, for the moment, the simple message is we must be on TRUE ground. Everything must be true and real; not borrowed and second-hand. We can do nothing really effective with tools that are not a part of our own being, wrought into our own experience, but of which we can say "Now, this truly is mine, I’ve been through death with this. This has brought me into life! This is mine, this is mine, not something that I’ve heard, not something that I’ve got from someone else. I have this because I’ve gone through it with God on this matter." It must be like that to carry the testimony on, the prophetic testimony. And then this great assurance, this wonderful assurance: we have the Holy Spirit. If we are the Lord’s, we have the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelling in us and that is something not only more than nature, but contrary to nature. And although oftimes we may feel we’re going to the bottom, we may feel we have touched bottom, we’re going to come up again if that Spirit is in us. The Holy Spirit is not going to die in the grave; if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead be in YOU, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken your mortal body by His Spirit dwelling in you, your body of death quickened; the power of His resurrection. And the iron... the iron did swim.

Rooted and Grounded

The Lords Object with the Overcomer

"And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward." (Is. 37:31).

Reading: Isaiah 36:1-22.

"And even now the axe lieth at the root of the trees: every tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire." Matt. 3:10.

"Then came the disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, when they heard this saying? But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." Matt. 15:12-14.

"...and when the sun was risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away." Matt. 13:6.

You will have noticed that in all these passages there is reference to roots, and roots are very important things. A very great deal depends upon roots; for a tree almost everything depends upon the roots. And in the same way, beloved, our roots and our rooting are very important things in the matter of our eternal destiny.

I want to say a little in a general way at the outset before we come to something more specific in this connection. You will notice that the passages which we read (and others could be added to them on the same subject) are divided. Some refer to the sound rooting which will take the strain, which will prove adequate. The others refer to rootings which are not adequate and which will not abide. We might just say a word or two about that second class to begin with.

Through the Word of the Lord there are various kinds and classes of those whose roots and whose rooting is not adequate. Some have been mentioned. The one in Matthew 3:10: And even now is the axe laid unto the root of the trees; a word in the ministry of John the Baptist, representing a time of crises when a long period of probation and opportunity had been given by the Lord, and there had been every provision made by Him to secure a sound and abiding rooting on the part of Israel, but now the testing time had come when roots were going to be subjected to a severe trial and testing. The result of that testing, as we know, was that once again Israel was rooted up. Not so many years after this they were rooted up from their land and were carried away in the great hurricane of Divine judgment through the Roman Legions and scattered to various parts of the earth, and they have never since been planted again. The axe was laid to the roots of the tree.

Then two others came in in that class. In Matthew 13 the sower had sowed his seed and some had fallen in rocky places. It had sprung up; when the sun was up it withered, died, having no root. And that, we are given to understand, illustrates those people who hear the Word of the Lord superficially; hear it and in a way receive it, on the face of things respond to it, but in whom it is found eventually there is not the root of the matter. Their kind of receiving, their kind of responding, their kind of association with the Word of the Lord cannot bear the heat, the blaze of the sun, it is something which lies on the outside, it is not that which reaches down into the very depths of their being.

The third, Matthew 15, was a word concerning the Pharisees. The disciples reported that the Pharisees took a certain attitude toward things. The Lords Word was: Every planting (literally) which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind leaders of the blind.

The Danger of Living on the Past

Now these three cases of roots which do not stand, bring different aspects before us. In the first case, in Matthew 3, you have an historical and traditional thing which has occupied the place of that which claims to represent the Lord and has had much in its history which was of the Lord, in blessing and in use and service; with which much of the Lord has been associated, and which has been associated with much of the Lord in His purpose and His ways; but which has come to a time when it is no more than a past history, a reputation without present life; something that belongs to a by-gone day; whose life, whose vitality and energy and spiritual progress is not up-to-date and abreast of its present claims.

A time of testing comes in the sovereign ordering of God for all such, and it is found by reason of its present root-dryness, lack of vitality, of energy, of up-to-dateness of life that it cannot go through the testing, it is rooted out. A simple word that, and yet a challenging word which shows us two things: that God, in His sovereignty, does most definitely appoint a time in which He will test the state of everything and everyone which makes a claim to be related to Him. He will do that, and then no amount of past history, good history, Divine history, will stand that thing in stead for the day of His testing. Or to put it another way, God tests to find out just exactly how up-to-date spiritual life and spiritual experience is.

There are quite a lot of people who have had a very sound, thoroughly genuine conversion, but who live back on their conversion of ten, twenty, or forty years ago; and while it is true the history was quite sound, it is something of the past. Its vitality has not been continuous, it is not up-to-date, and such people will find that when the winds of God begin to blow they are lacking, they are wanting, and they will be carried away, not necessarily to be eternally lost, any more than Israel is, but to very great loss.

The Danger of an Assumed Relationship to God

And then the Lord also tests most definitely, every kind of profession, every kind of response, every kind of attitude or relationship, to discover whether that is a thing which is on the surface, on the face, superficial; or whether it is a thing which has gone right down deeply into the life, burying its roots in the very sub-soil of experience. Here, again, a simple word, but it may be that there is someone here who is attaching themselves to something, attaching themselves to a place, to a company of people; attaching themselves in an outward way to that which represents the Lord, in hymns and addresses and prayers and services and such like; associating themselves, and, in a way, making some kind of answer or response to the things of the Lord.

Have you seen a self-grown forest in a mountain district after a gale? We have a good deal of that sort of thing in Scotland where the seeds have been carried by the wind and have sown themselves in the very thin soil of a mountain slope, a rocky district. They have grown very tall, lanky thin trees, firs or pines; their roots have spread out and covered a great area, and then  a gale  and as you go along after a gale there are those lanky, thin, gaunt trees lying with their roots right up in the air. You wonder how in all the earth they have managed to cling to the shallow soil. There they are everywhere, rooted up because self-grown, and that is Matthew 13.  Something which has made its own kind of response, given its own response, answer, with reservations perhaps, not going too far, not going to be extreme, not going to be singular, not going to be fanatical, just going to be perfectly balanced and sane and make their own response to the Lord.

All right, God has appointed the hour for a gale. Yes, there will be a blazing sun, it will be discovered whether God did that planting, whether that was a work of God in the heart or whether it was just something of human attachment or association. It may just be that here there may be one or more attaching themselves from the outside to that which is of the Lord, but they are not right in, buried, rooted, grounded, not in the thing in the Lord. Are you attaching yourself to something religious, or are your buried with your roots in Christ? Rooted in Him?

The Danger of Position without Possession

The third word in Matthew 15 relating to the Pharisees of course has to do with those who assumed the role of teachers, spiritual leaders. The Pharisees were those who took upon themselves to guide others in matters of religion. The Lord said of them: Every planting (literally) which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. In other words it was just this: Everyone who dares to take the responsibility of giving guidance to others, who has not been commissioned of the Lord, with the Lords message, will be rooted up. They are self-planted teachers and leaders.

Now, while within the compass of this gathering that may have a very limited application, it is something for us to remember in these days. The absolute necessity that those who lead us in spiritual things should themselves be men who have a mandate from God, men with a message, men with a revelation, men in whom the root of the matter is and not just teachers. I am saying all this in the light of the end-time because I believe we are entering more and more into that phase of things when everything is going to be subjected to testing in the sovereignty of God. Everything of tradition, everything of profession, of vocation; all are going to be tested by the winds of God.

Oh, such winds! Yes, winds of deception. God may not send deception but God will not prevent it. False teachers, false doctrine; severe trial and testing; deep, deep searching experiences, we are all coming into it and it is going to be discovered under the sovereign direction of God just how deep our roots are. Beloved, testing will do one of two things, it will either carry us away or drive us deeper. There is going to be in the end nothing that will not stand the test. The Lord make us those who have our roots downward and our fruit upward.

Now just a little more specific word especially in connection with Isaiah 37. Isaiah has much to say about the remnant, and there is a remnant of Israel, and as we know quite well, there is a remnant of Christianity. The remnant of Christianity is found in the first three chapters of Revelation. It is represented by the oft-repeated words To him that overcometh; that is the remnant. You see quite clearly that it is but a remnant in those churches in Asia. The main thing has gone wrong, a remnant of overcomers is seen there and that remnant of Christianity is very much in view in the Word of the Lord.

Now, a remnant feature is roots downward. A feature of a remnant is that it takes root downward. And the Lord does it, the Lord causes it to be so. The Lord so acts in His sovereignty and in His providence to see to it that a remnant is marked by roots which have got such a grip that nothing in hell or on earth can pluck it out. The Lord must, for His own glory, have something like that which can stand all the challenges of the circumstances of life.

The Lord must have something which cannot be carried away, which cannot be removed, cannot be shaken, and certainly something which cannot be rooted up. That is His remnant. That, He must have for His own glory, and, that being so, He will take every measure with His remnant to have them after that kind, with roots downward. Of course, unto fruit upward. We speak much about the upward side of things, life in the heavenlies, sitting in the heavenlies, and our warfare and work  the fruitfulness of our life in union with the Lord. That is only possible as our roots are downward. In order that that might be so, we have to get into a place of unshakeableness where the roots have got such a grip that nothing can overthrow. And I believe that explains a very great deal of what the Lord is doing with His own spiritual people in these days.

It is true that the true children of God are going through a time of intense trial and testing spiritually in these days; everywhere it is so. Why? Because the Lord must have something against which hell is impotent and by which He demonstrates to the universe that strength of His might which causes to stand and withstand and having done all to stand. If one were asked what the last issue for the Church in this age is, I would say that it stands, and that is saying a tremendous thing. Oh, you say, that is surely limiting things, are you not expecting much more than that? Progress, advance, sweeping movements? The Church will have all its work cut out in the end to stand, but its standing will be its victory. Just to be able, through testing, trial, when everything is blowing round you like a blizzard; when everything is dark, mysterious, and even God seems far away and unreal, and faith is tested and you are being assailed on the right hand and on the left, and there is every reason outwardly for your moving, giving up, falling down, surrendering, lowering your standard, just to stand and not be moved in your faith is the greatest possible victory.

The Remnant a Testimony to the Lords Power

Now I come to Isaiah 36 and 37. You notice that that passage about the remnant taking root is an issue. Chapter 36 we have heard read this evening, about Rabshakeh and Sennacherib with his boasting, flaunting, high-faluting utterances, challenging not just Hezekiah and the Jews, but their God. Vaunting himself against Jehovah, saying that there has been no god of any of the peoples of the earth who has been able to stand before his master, and certainly the God of the Jews will not be able to stand; and there they are outside the gates of Jerusalem with all this. Why did the Lord allow it? The Lord saw the first movement in far away Assyria, toward Jerusalem; why didnt He stop them, intervene for the sake of His own, and circumvent? Why did He not raise up circumstances that would hinder? Why did He allow them actually to encamp round and lay siege to Jerusalem, and then allow them to say these things?

It is all in the sovereignty of God. God has allowed this. God has permitted this thing to come right up to this present point. Hezekiah received the letter and rent his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went and spread the letter before the Lord. They were surely in straits. The Lord has allowed, we might even say drawn out, Sennacherib and the mighty hosts of the Assyrians, drawn them out literally, drawn them out materially, drawn them out mentally, drawn them out verbally, extended them, allowed them to inflate themselves to bursting point: they are exalted to the very heavens in their own eyes.

All right, the Lord has drawn them out. A remnant comes into view and the remnant shall take root. When the Assyrian and Sennacherib have gone just as far as it is possible for them to go, have become as inflated as it is possible for them to be, when they have swelled to the very heavens, the Lord for His remnants sake sent one angel! Surely, the Lord wants a mighty host to deal with this situation  And the angel of the Lord went forth.

Do you see, beloved, a New Testament factor in this? The adversary would impress the weak saints of the Lord with his importance, with his greatness. There is one thing the enemy is always trying to do as a strategic thing and that is to put fear in the heart of a child of God. Fear. There is nothing so weakening, so devastating as fear. If the enemy can get fear into our hearts he has got the city and he will make a great display and vaunt himself and try to impress upon us how mighty he is.

It is never for us to under-estimate the power of the enemy, but we have always got to keep the balance of comparison between our God and the enemy. The Lords weakness is more than a match for all the power of Satan. And it comes to this, the remnant puts its faith in the Lord over against all the fury of the oppressor, all the vaunting of the oppressor, and then the Lord proves He only allowed the oppressor to come out in that extreme way to show that the remnant cannot be destroyed, for the remnant takes root in the presence of Sennacherib, in the presence of the Assyrians. And the remnant shall again take root. You see that is the ultimate issue. This was looking on to a coming day, it is true, but it is remarkable that these two things come together, that the Assyrians come into view with all their power and they are only allowed eventually to destroy that which is not counting for God, but God gets, in spite of everything, a remnant with roots.

Rooted in the Cross and Immovable

Now note, you who know the conflict, you who know the fury of the oppressor, the bitterness of the animus of the devil, remember that the Lord allows him to go a long way in order that there might be this double issue. Firstly, an entering into the knowledge of the exceeding greatness of Gods power  but how exceeding great must be Gods power if against the mighty host of Assyria one angel alone is all that is necessary! To discover the exceeding greatness of Gods power on the one hand, and on the other hand, through the work of the enemy himself, to drive the roots down. The Lord uses the adversary in his own hatred and bitterness to get our roots in, and to make us impervious to the Devil. He uses the adversary against himself in our trials. Roots downward, fruit upward. I am sure that is what the Lord is doing.

We are passing through deep experiences, the enemy is doing it and the Lord is not preventing him, but we are coming to a fuller knowledge of the power of our God and a deeper rooting beyond all previous shakeableness. And the Lord is seeking to have a people who cannot be shaken, against whom hell with all its demonstration of arrogance and pride, is impotent. And the remnant shall again take root downward. That is what the Lord needs.

May I remind you that the nature of this planting is just that with which we are so familiar. Planted together in the likeness of his death. That is the word of the Apostle, For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. The enemy is the instrument so often, of planting us more deeply into the death of Christ. His assaults, his attacks, his accusations, everything  yes. The Lord is not the source of evil but the Lord allows it.

So often our hearts cry out: Why did the Lord ever allow that in our lives? That thing which has meant such a deep, dark passage. Why did the Lord allow it? He could have prevented it. Well, we were planted by it into the death of the Lord Jesus. We were brought more than ever to an end of ourselves. Yes, and therefore, to know the Lord in a larger measure than we have ever known Him, and to be brought to a place where it will not be so easy for the Devil to shake us next time.

That is the sovereign way of God in deeper death experiences. Planted together in the likeness of his death. Have you been planted there initially? Have you been planted in Christ crucified? Or are you one of those attachments to something? Are you planted? And when a deeper planting comes, remember it is the roots being driven downwards, and the issue is going to be most surely endurance, stability, ability to stand; but, oh, there is going to be greater fruitfulness.

We are in the Lords hands, not in the Devils hands. We are in the Lords hands, and being in His hands we are in the hands of a Potter Who knows what He is after. We were saying this afternoon that first of all, the vessel is in the potter, and then eventually the potter is in the vessel. What we mean is this. That before ever the potter starts, the vessel is in his mind, in his heart very clearly. The pattern is not something objective, the vessel is already a complete thing in him; and then he gets to work upon it and when he is finished, he is in the vessel he has wrought. What was in Him has come out in it.

We say of peoples work: I can see who made that, it is just like them. That is just like So-and-so to make a thing like that. Yes, He is in His work, He is in the vessel that He makes, and that is just what He is doing. Sometimes that clay has to be pressed down to a shapeless mass, broken. It is not showing all that He intended it to show, there are defects and flaws, and so He crushes it down to shapelessness. A mass without shape. But it is to start again to get something more perfect than has been before, in which He Himself is.

May He give us grace to endure whatever the trial may be, along whatever line of metaphor, the wind, the blaze, supreme heat, or pressure of His hand, all of which is to get us into a place where we cannot be moved, where hell cannot shake us, where His power is made manifest as triumphant over all the power of the enemy.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1933, Vol 11-1

Some Perils of the Way

The Word of God is strewn with instances of how good people were either caught in traps and snares, or were just saved from such by a small margin.

There is no doubt that the Adversary is out to cripple, spoil, or make havoc of the work of God by any means in his power, and where he cannot do so by direct methods, he will attempt it by the indirect course of deception, and subterfuge.

The servants of the Lord have no small amount of warning in the Scriptures in the direction of watchfulness. Sometimes lessons of the most vital importance can only be learned by painful experience, but there is something to be gained from the experiences of those who have gone ahead, as well as from a spiritual grasp of the teaching of the Word.

If we did but see the spiritual factor in the things recorded, we should see how frequently history repeats itself, even if the outward form is not always the same.

We take three instances for the moment, and we are sure that all servants of God who have any measure of experience will recognise how true to life are the perils therein constituent.

1. The Peril of Mistaken Glorying

It was Hezekiah who fell into this snare. Hezekiah had been ill with an illness which, but for Divine intervention, would have been fatal. By such an intervention a lease had been added to his life. Just at that point, when God had done a great thing for him, and made possible a further period of valuable ministry, the Enemy seized the occasion and the overjoyed state of Hezekiah to lead him beyond the limits of discretion. It was a cleverly laid plot, and came along the line of human sympathy. A ruler from far off Babylon who had heard of his sickness sent messengers with tokens of friendly congratulation, if he had heard of the recovery, or of sympathy because of his sickness. This was, apparently, a kindly act, but it must be borne in mind (and this is where Hezekiah failed) that friendliness with the nations round about was always a matter of serious question with God as to Israel, and there could never be eliminated the element of treachery, though unrecognised, which would rise to take advantage of friendship (?) when the occasion made it an advantage to do so. There were other factors, but Hezekiah was caught in the trap of sentimentalism, and uncovered all the glories of the holy things to such as could only value them carnally, thus stimulating a desire to exploit them for the ends of the flesh. Read the story in 2 Kings 20, and you will see what place this injudicious act had in the tragedy of Israel's later history.

Those glories of gold, silver, precious oil, spices, armour, etc., were the secret glories of the inner life of a people in specific spiritual relationship with God. They were the wrought things of fire, and suffering, and the Holy Ghost. The flesh has no right to look upon them, and they may not be displayed to the carnal mind. Then, again, they may not be gloried in as things in themselves; like blessings, spiritual qualities, spiritual riches, and spiritual giftsl They must always be kept sacredly in closest relation to Him Whom they represent. They are His excellencies, and they are not for boasting or showing off. They are not for advertising or for making use of for an impression. There are many things which come out of deep exercise with God which cannot be explained to the unspiritual, neither can they be used to entice patronage or favour. There is a right kind of glorying in the Lord, and a proper chastened magnifying of His works; but there is also a dangerous uncovering to the uncrucified, uncircumcised, desire of men. The Lord Himself, knowing what was in men, would not commit Himself to them, and there are often times when the enemy will use spiritual information given to the flesh as a means of destroying the true testimony. The only way to rightly possess the riches of Christ is that of the Cross, and if we give the knowledge of these things without pressing home the absolute necessity for the flesh, in its desire for power, glory, influence, position, reputation, and possession, to be utterly set aside by crucifixion with Christ, then we shall see what we have uncovered only used for the destroying of the true spiritual value of the testimony.

2. The Peril of Unspiritual Solicitude

Our second instance takes us into the Book of Ezra, chapter 4. The building of the House of God as a place for the expression of His thought in fulness is not going to be carried through without every kind of opposition which the Enemy can bring against it. When that is finished he will have no more place. He will neither have anything more to do, nor will he have any more opportunity for trying it. Hence, by every means, he must interfere with this work.

Amongst the almost countless methods used by him, one of the most effectual has been, and still is, what we have called Unspiritual Solicitude. That is, the help (?) of those who are not walking in true fellowship with the Lord.

Argue as you may for getting people interested in good things, and thereby getting them "saved," the flesh and the natural man never can build a spiritual house. "That which is born of the flesh, is flesh," and it will never be anything else. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven." A spiritual state by being born of the Spirit is indispensable to doing spiritual work.

We do not say this without a good deal of experience in the matter, and we know that, in the long run, what was done by the unspiritual has not stood the test. But worse, the mass of the trouble, disintegration, discord, division, weakness and dishonour to God in Christian work has been the fruit of the uncrucified flesh, and unspiritual people. Like those in the chapter above-mentioned, the evil is so often hidden in an outward solicitude and sympathetic interest, often with a confession of oneness in the interest and the object of the interest.

It is always a dangerous thing, and not at all in keeping with the principle of Scripture to allow some from without whose spiritual qualities and walk with God have been unproved to take up the sacred responsibilities of the work of the Lord. This is not meant to apply to the point of suspecting everyone who comes along. But service should grow out of fellowship and life together in the Lord.

From what the Holy Spirit shows us in Ezra 4, we are able to see that those who came in such a sympathetic (?) way were after all enemies; and while all who come in solicitude may not be consciously or deliberately set upon mischief, the principle holds good that, all who are not truly in fellowship with the Lord in life and walk will prove to be an adverse factor in His work sooner or later, and the cause of weakness.

3. The Peril of Untried Workers

For this further illustration we turn to Acts 13. In this chapter we find ourselves at a point in the journey of Barnabas and Paul which brings out from obscurity a secret flaw in their method. It is in Perga in Pamphylia. One - John (Mark) whom they had taken with them for the work, broke down and returned to Jerusalem.

There are one or two things in the background of this young man going with them which ought to be investigated. Primarily this, that we do not read of the Holy Ghost saying, "Separate me Barnabas and Paul, AND John Mark unto the work whereto I have called them."

The inclusion was one of a purely personal and arbitrary character, and apparently of a very casual order.

John Mark was evidently a young man of some earnestness and apparent promise. He had a Christian home, for it was in the house of his mother that the prayer meeting was held when Peter was in prison. These things evidently led Barnabas to think of him as being promising and, perhaps, a useful addition to the party.

But when all is said, he was an unproved worker, and sooner or later it was inevitable that the weakness should make itself manifest.

Now, it is true that every worker has got to be tested somewhere, and many who were no more proved beforehand than was John Mark have gone forth and made good. But here is a case where so much depended upon the workers being men who had been tried, and where it was so very necessary that the Holy Ghost should do the selecting. The issue of this matter was not just that John Mark returned from the battle, but that confusion and an abiding cause for sorrow and shame arose out of it in the very beginnings of this great epoch. It is useless to try and settle who was right, Barnabas or Paul, in the subsequent refusal of him for a second journey of these two men. Probably they were both right. Paul was right in not exposing the next journey to the possible further weakness and further breakdown. Barnabas was right in taking the position that because a young man had failed once, he should not be deprived of a second chance. But then the two positions cannot be made one, and so it must be, either that a measure of positive right on one side or the other is surrendered, or you must admit that there was a mistake and weakness in the first place.

The sequel to this episode which is given us by Paul in his letter to Timothy shows that Paul stuck to his original position. He had taken the attitude that in such work as that to which he was called, those who took a place should be proved and known. When, after years, John Mark had proved himself, Paul was quite ready to have him as a fellow-worker and companion, and instructed that he should be brought to him.

It is tremendously important that for the sake of the testimony, the necessity of unbroken fellowship in the case of those whom the Holy Ghost has brought together for a great work, there should not be the jeopardising element of the unproved and unestablished worker.

The Assembly ought to provide an ample testing-ground for all who are to go forth. If the Assembly is constituted and governed by the Holy Spirit, all the weakness of its members will come to light. The fact that it is so in many local "families" of the Lord's people, is intended to result in moral and spiritual training for the time when the members will have to stand against common foes without the spiritual home-life immediately around or behind.

There are terrible tragedies on the "mission field" in the way of broken relationships which were intended to be very fruitful for the Lord, because the training and proving in a home fellowship was not adequate. This whole thing is spiritual. It is not just getting on happily with other workers in the more or less comfortable conditions of organised work at home. It is being in a spiritual testimony, against which the devil is positively set. Here there are met factors which are not just ordinary social difficulties, however unpleasant. It is the devil out to ruin the testimony by setting the Lord's people at variance, and anyone who has not learned to triumph in the matter at the home end is not safe to be sent forth to the realms where the devil has so much more of his own kind to play with, and so much more in every way by which to cause pressure and strain.

Any "training" in a college ought to be but an adjunct to equipment, not THE equipment. The real training is spiritual, not academic; and this is only possible in a spiritual Assembly.

There will always be serious loss in any life if it has not had a true Assembly background.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1934 Vol. 12-1

The Spirit in Prison

The history of Christianity from the latter days of the Apostles is the history of prisons. Not literal, material prisons, though there have been not a few of these, but prisons which are the result of man's inveterate habit of taking hold and bringing into bondage. How many times has the Spirit broken loose and moved in a new and free way, only to have that way brought under the control of man and crystallized into another 'Form', Creed, Organization, Denomination, Sect, 'Order', Community, etc.! The invariable result has been that the free movement and life of the Spirit has been cramped, or even killed, by the prison of the framework into which it has been drawn or forced. Every time we seek to express something Divine in word or form we at once limit it, and when that expression or form becomes the established and recognised formula we have in effect put fetters on the Spirit. God gives a vision, and every God-given vision has illimitable potentialities; but all too soon the vision is laid hold of by men who never had it in or of the Spirit, and the grapes of Eshcol turn to raisins in their hands. So very many of the living fruits of the heavenly country have suffered in this way, and have become dried, shrunken, unctionless shadows of their early glory.

Upon a living movement of the Spirit born with fire in the heart of some Prophet, successors, sponsors, or adherents build an earthly organization, and imprison the vision in a tradition. So a Message becomes a Creed; a "Heavenly Vision" becomes an earthly institution; a movement of the Spirit becomes a 'Work', which must be kept going by the steam of human energy, and maintained by man's resourcefulness.

Sooner or later any real or seeming departure or diversion from the 'recognised' and traditional order of Creed or practice will be heresy, to be violently suspect, repressed, and outcast. Too often what, at its beginning, was a spiritual energy producing a living organism expressing something that God really wanted and to which He gave birth has become something which the next generation has to sustain and work hard to keep going. The thing has developed a self-interest and it will go hard with anyone or anything interfering with it, or seeming so to do. The Spirit has become the prisoner of the institution or system, and the people become limited spiritually as the result.

Why is all this so true, resulting, as it does, in strain, divisions, jealousies, rivalries, and often deception? And, if there is any remedy, what is it?

The answer is to be found in an honest - if costly - facing of the fundamental question. Why am I where I am? Did I enter into something objectively? Was it something already formed which was presented to me, with an appeal, an argument, a 'need'? Was it a something at all? Or did the Spirit open the eyes of my heart, and give me a heavenly vision, which on one side made me cry "Woe is me" and on the other "Here am I"? Was it a life crisis? Did I take up a 'teaching', a complexion of truth, a 'work', an enterprise? Was I right at the very source of life? Was it a definite and overpowering 'apprehending' from Heaven? Is my position that of relationship to something from which I can resign? In a word, is my imprisonment that of a system or order of an outward kind, or am I the 'bondslave' of the Spirit? The Apostle Paul, in particular, shows that the former bondage or imprisonment can even be to what is in the Bible, in the form of what he calls "the letter", and the Bible - in this sense - can be 'death' ("the letter killeth" - 2 Cor. 3:6). Not that we can have the Spirit and the life without the Word, but it can most certainly be the other way round.

It is so seriously important that we, and everything, shall be kept continuously in touch with the original source of life. Succession and continuation is not ecclesiastical, traditional, or of human choice and decision; it is certainly not policy, expediency, or fear. It is anointing - the anointed eye, ear, hand, and foot. It is a fire in the bones, not the obligations of a profession, association or idea.

The Spirit must have initiated our course and position. The Spirit must be referred to and deferred to all along the way. The Spirit will be a rebel in anything in which He may have His liberties limited; and if He is in us, He will make us such rebels. This does not for a moment mean that all rebellion and bid for what is called 'liberty' is of the Spirit. It just means that we are broken people in the realm of nature, and robbed of a power to fight for our own conceptions.

So it becomes just the issue of imprisonment to the Spirit, or something other or extra. It must be, at the greatest cost, and because the Spirit has done a deep and drastic thing in us -

"Here am I, I can do no other. So help me God."

First published as an editorial in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1961, Vol 39-2 with the following additional comment from the editor:

(The above Editorial is largely suggested by the reading of an article (mostly political) by an English Member of Parliament, and published in 'The Spectator' in 1947. - Ed.)

The Spirit of Glory

From "The Work of the Ministry" - Messages given at Honor Oak - Volume 2.

"These things spake Jesus; and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee" (John 17:1).

"If ye are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are ye; because THE SPIRIT OF GLORY and the Spirit of God resteth upon you" (1 Peter 4:14).

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of glory. All the Holy Spirit's interests and concerns and activities have glory as their object and have nothing else in view by which to satisfy Him. Glory is the object and the end of all God's works and ways - numerous, various and largely unsearchable and inexplicable as they are. His object in everything is glory - and moreover that glory has to do with us. The Scripture precisely states that we are 'called into His kingdom and glory' (1 Thess. 2:12); and many other like statements affirm the same thing - that God's concern for us is glory.

THE SOURCE AND GROUND OF GLORY

Let us look first of all at the source and the ground of glory, the glory, which concerns us and with which, through the grace of God, we are concerned. The source and the ground of the glory can be simply stated as being Christ glorified. Christ glorified is the source of glory for us and the ground of glory for us.

When He was here on the earth He was not here in glory. He was here in humiliation, and humiliation for Him meant voluntary self-emptying. "He emptied himself" (Phil. 2:7). In this very chapter in John's Gospel we have that wonderful utterance of His: "Father, glorify thou me... with the glory which I had with thee before the world was" (John 17:5). Humiliation meant voluntary self-emptying. It meant no self-fullness. "I can of myself do nothing" (John 5:30). It meant voluntarily accepting a life of complete dependence. The fact of the Holy Spirit coming upon Him and taking charge, immediately leading Him into the wilderness, and all the way through to the end, when He "through the eternal Spirit offered himself" (Heb. 9:14), means that He was dependent, He became dependent; there was no self-sufficiency.

It meant voluntary self-weakness. We are told that He was "crucified through weakness" (2 Cor. 13:4). He accepted that weakness - which meant that He drew every bit of strength from another source. There was no self-strength.

And then it meant voluntary acceptance of shame and dishonour - and what shame, what dishonour! They degraded Him according to their own mind. No self-glory, no self-esteem. "He humbled himself" (Phil. 2:8), He was not here then in glory. For one brief moment on the Mount of Transfiguration He was glorified. But it passed. John says: "Jesus was not yet glorified" (John 7:39).

The fact that He lived such a life of prayer is the proof, the inclusive mark, of all this. He had to draw everything from outside Himself. These opening words of John 17 are very remarkable words, far too profound for our fathoming, altogether beyond us; they would take us completely out of our depths. He was God, very God, and He is praying to God. Something has happened, for God does not pray to God, God does not ask God for things. You see the point. It does not mean that He was other than the Divine Son, the Son of God, very God: but He had for the time being taken a place in which all that was suspended.

But when God raised Him and took Him back, He reversed all that. When Jesus was glorified, it was in every respect just the opposite of His humiliation. That is, He is now no longer emptied - He is full. God has filled Him with all things. Paul speaks of God's "riches in glory" which are "in Christ Jesus" for us (Phil. 4:19). He is filled with all the riches of glory for His own people; full, sufficient - yes, self-sufficient; all sufficiency is in Him. Paul says that in the Colossian letter. He, being filled with all things, has all sufficiency, and we are made sufficient in Him. He is made powerful - "the ruler of the kings of the earth" (Rev. 1:5). No longer weak, but mighty with all the might of Heaven and God. And no longer in shame and dishonour and reproach, but in Heaven "crowned with glory and honour", says the Word (Heb. 2:9). God gave Him honour and glory (2 Pet. 1:17). This is the Scripture. He gave Him "the name which is above every name" (Phil. 2:9). Jesus glorified is the source of glory, the basis of glory.

GLORY FOR US ON THE BASIS OF HIS COMPLETED WORK

But then what does that mean? What does this circuit from the glory to the shame, and back to the glory, mean for us? It means that glory for us is upon the basis of His completed work. The glory springs spontaneously out of His glorification, and His glorification is because of the completeness of the work which He did. That means that He has put away everything that is not glorious and that cannot be glorified, in order to make glory for us possible and actual. His completed work is embodied in His own glorified person.

You have probably noted in this rich seventeenth chapter of John how frequently He makes the affirmation - "I have...", "I have...". The 'I haves' of John 17 are the basis of glory. "I glorified thee on the earth" (vs. 4).

There has never been another man on this earth who has glorified God in this way, who has satisfied the requirements of the glory of God as He did. In man-form He has glorified God perfectly. "I glorified thee... having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do" (vs. 4). "I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me" (vs. 6). "I manifested thy name". Not merely 'I spoke Thy name', 'I mentioned Thy name', 'I gave them a title for God', but "I manifested thy name" - quite a different thing. To manifest the Name, make manifest what God is - that was His life.

"The words which thou gavest me I have given unto them" (vs. 8), and "I have given them thy word" (vs. 14); and they live for ever because He gave them the Word and the words of God, just as we do. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4). "I have given them thy word". We live by the Word of God. If we do not lay hold of the Word of God and believe it, if we do not have faith in the promises of God, we die very quickly. It is one thing or the other. Those words are going to be our life or they are not, according to our attitude toward them. He gave them the foundation of life with God in giving His words and His Word. "The glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them" (John 17:22). All these "I haves" - if we got inside of them, opened them up, analysed them, we should find that they are the perfect basis of glory.

But inclusively they mean that the basis of glory is His full mediatorial work - His work as Mediator between God and man. That is inclusive. First of all, His work in relation to SIN. Sin is the thing which makes glory impossible . Sin is the thing which covers the glory. We know it. The glory fades where there is sin. God can never be glorified or give glory where there is sin. But, blessed be God, the Word is full of the affirmation that God intends that there shall be glory, and that He has secured His intention by what His Son has done in relation to the thing that is in the way of the glory. Sin is dealt with - has been dealt with completely and utterly. Then SELF is always in the way of the glory; we know that. What we are in ourselves - that is always hindering the glory, spoiling the glory, driving out or shutting out the glory. Christ has dealt with it. He has taken us, as to what we are in ourselves, and put us out of God's sight. And more, it is the works of the DEVIL that have covered the glory in this world, got in the way of the glory; but He was "manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8), and Satan's works were taken up by Him and destroyed. Blessed be God!

And all human helplessness was compassed by that helplessness which He voluntarily accepted. Yes, I know there are two sides to the whole story. He is laying down His life and no man is taking it from Him (John 10:18). He is perfectly deliberate in what He is doing. He is fulfilling the predetermined counsels of Cod when He goes to the Cross. Nevertheless, in a certain sense He is in the hands of those men. There is weakness, helplessness. "He was crucified through weakness" (2 Cor. 13:4). They appeal to Him to come down, and they deride Him. "He saved others; himself he cannot save" (Matt. 27:42). How true those words were. He could not save Himself because He was saving the whole world. It is a law. You will never save anybody if you try to save yourself. But that was so in His case in a deeper sense. All human helplessness was compassed in the weakness of that beloved Man. All this human helplessness of ours is in the way of the glory. You know it well enough. If you begin to sink down into your own weakness and helplessness, into what you are, in that way, and say, 'I cannot', where is the glory? It departs. While conscious always of dependence and emptiness and weakness in ourselves, there is another attitude which we may take, which lets in the glory.

'Glory crowns the Mercy-seat' - that is the point; and spell Mercy-seat with a capital M, for it is the Lord Jesus. 'Glory crowns the Mercy-seat'. Go back to the Old Testament again. It was there in the Most Holy Place, at the Mercy-seat, that the glory had its focal point. They were called the "cherubim of glory" (Heb. 9:5) as they overshadowed the Mercy-seat. It is the place of glory. But what is the Mercy-seat? It is the Throne of grace, the blood-sprinkled meeting-place between God and man. Look at what Israel were in themselves: what a story of everything dishonourable, as to all that they were in themselves. But this perfect God meets them in His Mediator at the Mercy-seat - 'and glory', not shame, 'crowns the Mercy-seat'. His work accomplished, in all these respects and much more, is the basis of all glory for us. We need to get a firmer hold on it and keep our hold on it, or else the glory will go out. The measure of our faith-hold on Christ glorified is the measure of the glory in our lives. No matter how much we may believe and hold to the doctrines of our redemption, atonement, justification, and all the rest, unless we have an inward hold on the truth of Christ glorified, the doctrine counts for nothing so far as the glory is concerned.

THE MEDIATOR OF THE GLORY

Then come nearer. The Mediator of the glory. "The Spirit of glory... resteth upon you" (1 Pet. 4:14). The Holy Spirit has come as the Spirit of the glorified Christ. "The Spirit was not yet given: because Jesus was not yet glorified" (John 7:39). Putting that round the other way, we might say, 'Well, the Holy Spirit could only come on the ground of Jesus being glorified, and Jesus could only be glorified when He had finished His work: so the Spirit comes on the ground of Christ glorified, in virtue of the perfected work of our redemption, of our sanctification, and of our glorification.' He has come as the Spirit of Christ in glory, as the Mediator of all that it means that Christ is in glory; and let us remember that glory is not a place but a state. When we receive the Holy Spirit, as we do when we are born from above, we receive the Spirit of glory. He is called "the Spirit of glory"; that is the capacity in which He has come: so that we receive Him as that, and if we live and abide in the Spirit, the Spirit of glory rests upon us. If we get out of the Spirit, the glory gets out of us. Any of us, at any time, getting out of the Spirit, gets out of the glory. When we are out of the glory, in some way or other, for any reason, we have got out of the Spirit. We know that to be the case all too well. When we are in the Spirit there is glory.

Let us turn to our friend John Bunyan. 'After these things the Interpreter takes them apart again and has them first into a room where was a man that could look no way but downwards with a muck-rake in his hand. There stood one over his head with a celestial crown in his hand and proffered him that crown for his muck-rake, but the man did neither look up nor regard but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, the dust of the floors.' Oh, our muck-raking amongst the rubbish and filth and pollution of what we are in ourselves, turning it over and sorting it out, looking no way, but downward! Where is the glory? There is no glory in that.

Let us regard the statements of the New Testament seriously and in a practical way. He has 'borne our sins in His own body on the tree' (1 Pet. 2:24). We were "crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20). God has "raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him" (Eph. 2:6), has given us to share His place in heaven. He has "called (us) unto his eternal glory" (1 Pet. 5:10). We are "sanctified in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor. 1:2). It is all there as accomplished fact. It is the way of the glory, the only ground of the glory. No one muck-raking in human depravity, can ever be in the Holy Spirit. That is a solemn and serious thing to say. You are not in the Spirit if you are muck-raking. The Holy Spirit takes away the muck-rake and gives you a crown of glory in its place - not hereafter, but now. He is against all muck-raking.

Let us remember that whatever the Holy Spirit ministers is intended for glory. A ministry by the Holy Spirit is a ministry which ministers glory. We may have to preach Romans 6 and preach Romans 6 forcibly. We were crucified with Christ. But that truth was never intended to bring us under condemnation and depression. It was intended to bring us to glory. The ministry of any one truth, unbalanced and unrelated, will bring a heavy burden upon us, will weigh us down and make us depressed people. Such is not Holy Ghost ministry. There are times for us to be convicted of wrong, but the Spirit would lead us at once to the place where the wrong is put right in the Cross of the Lord Jesus, to get it out of the way to make room for the glory. Yes, solemn words, serious words, if necessary: the Lord will make real to us what fallen human nature is, but always and only to get it all out of the way and to lead at once to the glory.

THE PATHWAY TO THE GLORY

There is a final thing to remember. The pathway of glory is the pathway of suffering. Look at Peter's letters, and you have three outstanding things. What are they? The Holy Spirit, suffering and glory. John 17 is just that. The pathway to the glory is suffering. "If ye are reproached for the name of Christ" - then you ought to be as miserable as possible? - no, "blessed are ye; because the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God resteth upon you" (1 Peter 4:14).

The Lord give us grace to keep our eyes on the positive side of all His dealings. It is our attitude toward His dealings that makes so much difference. There will be suffering - yes; but the attitude toward the suffering determines whether it is going to be shame or glory, darkness or light. Our attitude of faith toward our sufferings will let in the glory. That is a very practical matter with the Lord and for us. We are so often asking the Lord to change things, to deal with things which stand in the way of glory. If only the Lord would just deal with this and that, change it, move it out of the way, then we could glorify Him. It would be so much more to His glory if He did that.

The Lord says. 'No, not that way.' This glory is something very much more than being cheerful in happy circumstances. This glory is born out of the utmost depths of agony and suffering. This is real glory, which is much more than the glory of this world and the glory of favourable circumstances. The Lord says, 'You get into the place where there is glory in your sufferings and your adversities, and if I think it good, then I will change circumstances. I am waiting for you to climb on top: let the glory in, amidst your adversities, and then perhaps we will see about other things.'

That is very practical. We get down under our troubles and sufferings and begin to get depressed and to complain to the Lord; we want the Lord to do something about it. But we do not get anywhere along that line at all. Sooner or later the Lord comes and says, 'Real glory shows itself against a dark background: when the glory is there, whatever I see fit to do in the situation I will do; but first of all glorify Me in the fires.'

The Lord give us grace!

Spiritual Warfare

"If you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one" Luke 22:36.

Later on Jesus said to those same disciples, "Put your sword back into its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword" (Matthew 26:52). There must be a good explanation for the Lord's earlier command that His disciples should be sure to be armed, and among other possible reasons for this apparent contradiction I propose to concentrate on the one point that the Christian's warfare is not physical but spiritual. This is very clear from the whole of the subsequent teaching of the New Testament, notably from Paul's statement that "The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God" (2 Corinthians 10:4). Moreover we nowhere find the apostles - to whom these words were addressed - carrying swords as they pursued their ministry, so we presume that when the Lord said: "Put up thy sword", He meant that we should put away from us any idea of fighting against men and address ourselves to active participation in spiritual warfare.

The Reality of Spiritual Warfare

Although we know that the Bible teaching reminds us that we are soldiers of Christ, we forget that we are in a battle. We put down our troubles to other causes. There ARE times when we get into conflicts because of our own faults or strained relationships - then it is no use blaming the Devil for what is really our responsibility. On the other hand we must not become obsessed with secondary causes, people and circumstances, when the real issue is that extra element of spiritual evil which is the real enemy. There is a warfare in heaven and from this, circumstances can be created and people affected.

When, in New Testament language, we speak of heaven, do not let us think of that which is remote and far away, somewhere in or beyond the clouds. No, heavenly warfare is in the atmosphere all around us. The Devil is called "the prince of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2). Now the air is not all above the clouds, but it is where we are as we breathe it now. The heavenlies are wrapping us round all the time and the spiritual conflict is in this very atmosphere. There is an illustration of this in the Old Testament story, when Elisha prayed: "Lord, I pray thee open his eyes that he may see" (2 Kings 6:17), and the young man had his eyes opened to see how near as well as how real were the unseen armies of God. Because we have a spirit, which is the medium of connection with that which is spiritual, this evil atmosphere is not always outside of us but sometimes seems to make the conflict inward. In one way or another, the spiritual conflict is very real and for it we need the Spirit's sword.

The Church's Battlefield

The occasion of this conflict is the destiny of the Church. All departments and realms of really spiritual work seem to provoke the opposition of spiritual forces, but the nearer we get to the great, eternal conception of God's destiny for the Church of Christ, the Church which is His Body, the more pronounced the enemy's antagonism becomes.

We meet spiritual antagonism in seeking to win souls for Christ, because it is only in this way that the Church is born. When, however, the full thought of God is brought into view, then the greatest challenge of the forces of evil is registered. This is because it is in the Church and in relation to the Church's destiny that the whole kingdom of Satan is to be met and overthrown. Hence, of course, the tremendous significance of corporate life. Even by small and seemingly insignificant means, moodiness or trifling disagreements, Satan breaks up the flow of fellowship among the saints. It seems strange that the vital power of the Church should be weakened by the moods and temperaments of God's people but so it can be. If the Devil cannot succeed by such simple methods he has many other ploys and complex strategies, all aimed at the destruction of the relatedness of God's people. So spiritual fellowship becomes a real battleground.

Some think that fellowship is a kind of picnic, a religious festival. We praise God for all the joys of fellowship, but the matter is more serious than that, and is so important that it can become a matter of real battle. The exercise and preserving of true heart fellowship with all other Christians - not just with those whom we like but with all - is a field of constant conflict. Fellowship is not just something that happens. We must fight for it. It is a great factor in the spiritual battle.

Conflict in Corporate Prayer

One of the main functions of such fellowship is the great corporate activity of united prayer. We need to be reminded from time to time that our seasons of coming together for prayer are more than occasions for bringing to the Lord a list of items. We have, of course, to be definite with the Lord and we have to ask Him for things. The real goal of our praying, however, must be not merely personal blessings but the triumph of the will of God. Daniel gives us an excellent example of such prayer. He was stretched out for three whole weeks, fasting and praying, as he gave himself to prayer for the fulfilment of the great purposes of God. His prayer was based on what he "understood by the books" (Daniel 9:2). He knew what other servants of God had written about the divine purposes and he had those purposes in his heart. Because those purposes were in apparent suspension, because there was a contradiction of them since the Lord's enemies had been given an advantage through the unfaithfulness of the people of God - this was why Daniel was so drawn out in his praying. We are told that the result was great warfare in heaven. During the twenty-one days of this particular season of prayer, a terrific conflict had been taking place without his being aware of it. The very principalities and powers had been so stirred and roused by this kind of praying that they had withstood the messengers of God. A fight had been going on, and one great angel needed to come to the support of another, as if one angelic being was not enough and needed help to get through. The value of prayer is not decided by asking for things but the nature of the things asked for.

What God needs is a people who have seen His intentions and purpose, seen the destiny of His Son and of the Church which is His Body, and devote themselves to the fulfilment of His will. Such prayer draws us into a spiritual conflict, for which the Lord told us to be sure and have a sword. It is so easy to be discouraged, so easy to be put off or silenced. With our sword in our hand we must stick at it and press the battle through to victory.

The Ground of Triumph

For this prayer warfare we are advised to "take up the whole armour of God" (Ephesians 6:11). It is not that we enter a prayer session by some mental process of thinking of the armour. It is no use when you sense that the battle is on that you should try to concentrate your thoughts on the various items of the armour. To do that would be to find yourself too late. You can only begin to stand if you are already girded beforehand. This is not an emergency outfit for special occasions but a manner of life for the Christian warrior.

1. The importance of truth. We begin with the matter of being girded with truth. This means that things must be real in our lives. If there is anything false about our position, anything artificial or unreal about our profession, then we will be ineffective in the spiritual battle. We must be free from errors in doctrine - that is very important. More than that, though, we must be living in the good of what we believe, not just holding some mental ideas without real heart knowledge of the truth. The spiritual warrior needs to be girded with the truth if he is to triumph.

2. Practical righteousness. "Having put on the breastplate of righteousness". What matters is what is satisfying to God, for that is His righteousness. The whole question of righteousness is that of God's rights, what He has a right to; and what God has a right to must accord with His own nature. God is always right, He is just and true. He therefore must have that which satisfies Him and He has found this in His Son whose righteousness is imputed to us. The wiles of the Devil are always directed against that, trying to get us off the ground where we stand in the absolute satisfaction of God by faith. The enemy keeps saying, "God is dissatisfied with you, He has this and that against you" so to counter his accusations we must hold fast to the fact that full righteousness is supplied to us through faith in Jesus Christ. It is His righteousness which alone can protect that most vital part. No doubt this also makes a reference to the need for that righteousness to work out in our lives in a practical way, for anything unrighteous in our dealings or behaviour will mean that we cannot stand against Satan.

3. The Good News of peace. "Having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace". We need not become too involved with the reference to our feet, but rather stress the point that God's message is good news of peace. Anybody with that message is a menace to the kingdom of darkness, for the enemy is always endeavouring to oppress us with bad news. We must go to the world with the good news that God offers perfect peace to the troubled heart and mind. Satan never minds us going to people with bad news, or with a face that suggests gloom, but he hates to have Christians spreading the glad news of peace. Paul and Silas went to Philippi with good news, the gospel of peace, and the enemy did his best to take that off their faces and out of their voices (Acts 16:11-34). He did not succeed. They triumphed over him because the very spirit of the good news was in their hearts. It is a tremendous strength against the Devil to be standing in the good of the glad tidings of peace. Christ "made peace through the blood of his cross" (Colossians 1:20). There is now no need for estrangement or depression. God is for you. He has shown that in Christ. Stand and walk in the power of His peace.

4. The shield of faith. We must take up and make good use of this big - or overall - shield of faith. Faith is all-embracing and relates to every possible aspect of the conflict. There can be no triumph in the spiritual life without the full exercise of vital faith.

5. The assurance of salvation. Clear assurance about salvation needs to cover the head as a helmet. How many arguments, debates, fears and uncertainties are ready to impinge upon our minds and paralyse our value to the Lord. The salvation of the Lord is mighty, and we must use it to protect our minds from succumbing to satanic assaults. His strong salvation is the only cover which can do this.

6. The Word of God. Finally there is "the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God". We know how the Lord Jesus met the enemy in the wilderness with apt quotations from God's Word. He had so soaked Himself in the Old Testament that the right emphasis came to Him at the right moment. We, too, are told to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly (Colossians 3:16). Do not let any of us think that we are going to triumph in the spiritual warfare if we neglect our Bibles, any more than we can do so if we neglect prayer. Try to do without prayer and the Word and you will be worsted in the fight. You will be a soldier without a sword!

Spiritual Warfare (1959)

"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (Genesis 3:15).

"Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel: for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears: but all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock" (1 Samuel 13:19,20).

"This charge I commit unto thee, my child Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that by them thou mayest war the good warfare" (1 Timothy 1:18).

"Fight the good fight of the faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called" (1 Timothy 6:12).

The very first of these passages informs us, if we need to be informed, that there is an enmity in the very constitution of things. There are really only two sets of people in creation and in the universe: 'the seed of Satan', whether they be men or demons, and 'the seed of Christ'; and, in the very constitution of things, there is enmity between these two. It is in the human race; we know that well. There is that within human nature that is enmity both against God and against those who are of God, or of Christ. We know that we live in a universe which is shot through and through with enmity, with hostility. It goes beyond humanity; it is in the very heavens, this warfare; it is spiritual, back of everything else.

Now, of course, that is a very big subject; we only have one fragment of it all that we want to underline at this time. But we need continually to keep this fact in mind. I think so often we are at a discount, we are weakened, because we still have some element of surprise or wonder about it. Why all this we experience, this stress, this pressure, this antagonism, this conflict? We need to settle it completely, once and for all; that it is in the very constitution of things; and, until the constitution of things is changed, with a new heaven and a new earth, it will continue; it will always be with us. By our very first birth we are brought into a realm of conflict; it is in us; then we are brought into it in another direction by our new birth, and we begin to know something more about it than we ever did before. It is something that we have really to settle, as a fact, and it is going on to the end.

This is not a very comforting thought, I know; it may sound very depressing. But much of our defeat is because we have not really settled this matter. Let it be understood that we are going to remain in spiritual conflict right through to the end. It will always be so, and so we had better adjust to it, and recognise that it is here. We are in a warfare between two great spiritual systems headed by two great leaders. On the one side there is Satan and his vast hosts; as Paul calls them, 'hosts of wicked spirits'. On the other side, there is our Lord Jesus, and He has His hosts also. And these two are set in deadly array.

The Enemy's Strategy

We need, however, to know and recognise not only the fact, but something as to the strategy of each leader. As to Satan, his supreme strategy is to neutralise the fighting spirit. Take note of that! There is a little illustration of it in the passage we read from Samuel. The Philistines were always seeking to neutralise the testimony of Israel. Their strategy was just to rob Israel of all fighting weapons, take all their weapons away, so that they could not fight; they had nothing to fight with. That is the supreme strategy of the enemy - to neutralise the fighting spirit of the people of God.

The ways in which that is done are almost countless. He will paralyse by seeking to overwhelm with ostentatious demonstrations of power and influence, and to create in the Lord's people a feeling that the enemy is greater than the Lord. If the enemy cannot bring us to believe that he does not exist at all, he will do everything to make us believe that he 'extra'-exists - that is, that he is more than he really is. He puts on ostentatious demonstrations to make us succumb to the feeling that he is too great for us, the forces against us are too mighty. Of course, that is not true; but, if we allow it to get in, it can take the fight out of us, and that is what it is for.

Or again, he will neutralise the fighting spirit by introducing paralysing confusion, raising questions, getting divided minds, thus breeding mistrust, uncertainty, and doubt; and when that is in, all our security is gone. We are finished if the enemy can succeed in turning us in on ourselves and our own problems, and raising these distracting questions. The fighting spirit will soon go out.

Or again (and we are keeping in every case very close to the Scriptures, which we could cite in each connection), he will bring in some paralysing corruption, some secret, hidden sin amongst the Lord's people; something of which he can truly accuse them before the Lord. There is a great deal, of course, of that which he does, which is not right; but he knows very well that, if only he can get in something that is questionable or wrong amongst the Lord's people, the Lord cannot stand with them. The Lord is arrested in His support, cannot commit Himself, if there is any kind of questionable or corrupting element of life or conduct.

We could spend much time enumerating the ways in which the enemy seeks to destroy the fighting spirit amongst the Lord's people. But although we could not cover the whole of that ground, though we spent much time on it, let us take note of this: If the fighting spirit has gone out of us, it means that the enemy has gained a tremendous advantage; somewhere the enemy is succeeding. The enemy dreads, more than anything else, a people who are girt to battle, who are on their feet for the fight.

The Lord's Strategy

On the other hand, there is the strategy of the Lord. Now, we usually make our appeal to the Lord to move in and fight for us, and to settle the issue; and, just as usually, we do not find that the Lord does it. The Lord cannot stand with a doubting people: a people who have been caught in any kind of unbelief, or doubt, or question. The one thing the Lord does demand is that we know where we stand, on what ground we stand, and that in our hearts there be a deep assurance, a quiet, deep, steady confidence - we have no doubt. A doubting people, a questioning people, is a paralysed people: the Lord requires that we be an assured people: that we know where we are, and we know where we are going, and we know the ground on which we stand.

The Lord demands a united people. The Lord can never stand with, and fight for, a divided people. It is the work of the enemy to divide. It is the Lord's strategy to bring about a complete oneness, a unity: His power lies in that direction, and victory lies in that direction - that we are altogether; we are as one man, of one heart, of one mind, of one will. It is essential. The Lord has spoken so much about this in the Word - to have a people who are of one heart. It is the absolute necessity to victory over the enemy.

Again, it is essential to victory that we have one single vision and purpose. 'Where there is no vision, the people disintegrate' (Prov. 29:18); where there is divided vision, there is no solid power of countering the enemy. No, we must be a people with a single vision; we must know what it is the Lord is after in our time, in this world - really what it is that is the end of God, toward which He is committed; and we must be in line with that. Oh, how important it is that we have God's vision for the time, and be under its mighty government. A people of vision means a people of distinct and definite purpose. If we do not know, if we have any uncertainty, if we are not clear, as to why we are, and for what we are, we shall be a defeated people; we shall be held up all the time. It was always like that with Israel. When they lost their vision of that for which God had called them, for which He had brought them out, they just went round in circles; they were a neutralised people. There must be an all-consuming purpose.

You remember how - and there are many illustrations of this in the Word of God - whenever the Lord's people began to settle down and take their ease, and ceased to be aggressive and positive, something always went wrong. It was so when they got into the Land, before they had completely turned out their enemies: they began to settle down. You know what followed. It was so even with David. "At the time when kings go out to battle", instead of going out to battle, he "tarried at Jerusalem"; and you know what happened (2 Sam. 11). Likewise with Solomon: it seemed as though there was no more fighting to be done; it seemed that all the nations round about were now subdued. But the enemy did not think so! Just when everything seemed to be so nice and good, it says: "And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter..." (1 Kings 3:1). How subtle! You know all that followed in Israel. It was not long after Solomon that the kingdom was divided, followed by all that long, terrible story; the tragedy of king following king in apostasy, in disaster, in death.

No, diligence, the 'fervent spirit', is a very great factor in warfare. We must not be a people without motive, without purpose, without having our lives absorbed in some object. Oh, this work of the enemy, to rob our lives of a sense of motive, of some great enough thing for which to live and work; to weaken our hands that they hang down. We shall soon be a neutralised people if it is like that. There must be a positiveness - as Paul puts it: "Always abounding in the work of the Lord" (1 Cor. 15:58). The person who has not his hands full enough of purpose in life is a person who is open to every kind of assault. Even in the natural realm that is true: you are far happier if you are busy than if you are doing nothing; far more victorious in life if you are doing something, getting on with something, whatever it may be. As soon as you stop and sit down (unless of course it be from fatigue), you know how things begin to crowd into the mind, and in other ways; you will soon be caught up in worries and troubles. But in the spiritual realm, this is a very important thing: "in diligence not slothful; fervent in spirit" (Rom. 12:11); a people like those of old, who 'have a mind to work' (Neh. 4:6).

The Battle for Life

Now, if you look again at the Word, you will see that all spiritual progress, all increase of spiritual measure, came to the Lord's people along the line of battle; and it is still like that. But what is the focal point of this whole contest, this whole battle? Upon what does it all turn? Just one thing: life. It is the battle over life. Make no mistake about it, that is the issue upon which the enemy is focusing all his attention. In all his countless schemes, of neutralising and putting out of the fight, his objective is that life, against which he moved at the beginning. His whole success will depend upon death. If he can bring death in, in any form whatever, he has succeeded; and on the other hand, the whole triumph of the Lord's people is in the one connection of life.

We have said that all spiritual progress is a matter of knowing Him ever more in the power of His resurrection. Every fresh step in spiritual progress comes out of a crisis, and that crisis is one in which a fresh knowledge of the power of His resurrection is the only thing for our salvation. That is a very hopeful thing. If today you and I are more conscious than ever, both personally and collectively, of the need of a new, mighty incoming of the power of His resurrection, it may be that the Lord has precipitated a crisis in order that there shall be more of that Divine life than ever. It has always been like that. Israel's coming out to be the Lord's people, with the inheritance in view, was through a crisis of death and resurrection; their moving into the Land, into the inheritance, was on another crisis of death and resurrection. All progress, all increase, is in this battle between death and life, life and death.

And so we come to this word: 'Fight... Lay hold on eternal life.' Now, we know that eternal life is a gift in response to faith in the Lord Jesus. It is a gift, but that is not the end of the story. When it has been given, it becomes the battleground for the rest of the experience of the Christian; right through to the end, that very life is the battleground of all true Christians. If it can by any means be neutralised, made inoperative, arrested, Satan will do it; that is his object. On the other hand, the Lord's object is to make us, with Paul, 'know Him, and the power of His resurrection', in ever greater fulness. If ever a man knew the power of His resurrection, it was Paul, through many, many deadly conflicts, terrible battles and deep experiences; and yet, in his last writings, right at the end of his long, full experience of knowing resurrection upon resurrection, he still says: 'That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection' (Phil. 3:10). It is as much as to say: 'I don't know all that there is to know of that yet. I know a lot, but there is much more to know of that yet.'

And to Timothy, much about the same time, Paul writes: "Lay hold on the life eternal." That is where I would put the emphasis. Do not just passively rest upon the fact that through faith in Jesus Christ you have eternal life. Remember that, from day to day, that life is to conquer; it is to be the basis of your very survival , it is to be the very means of your daily overcoming. It has to be the ground of your physical life, as well as your spiritual life: for body, you must lay hold on that life; for victory, you must lay hold on that life. Would that we knew more about this in our prayer gatherings - really laying hold for victory, laying hold for the overthrow of the enemy - this positive taking hold, in spirit, of life. This is the battle; this is the very nature of things. In all this terrible welter in which we find ourselves, we have not, on the one hand, to accept it as inevitable, things being as they are; nor, on the other hand, to have a merely passive faith that, in the end, the Lord will triumph. Between those two, there is all this in the Word of God about our being positive, about our laying hold; about our attitude - on the one side, of refusing; on the other side, of laying hold of God's end.

The Lord save our fighting spirit, and 'teach our hands to war, our fingers to fight!' (Ps. 144:1).

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1959, Vol 37-6

The Spoil of Battle

"From spoil won in battles they dedicated gifts to maintain the house of the Lord." 1 Chronicles 26:27.

From this passage of Scripture we gather that the House of the Lord is constituted out of our conflicts. The Lord builds from the fruit of conflict. Thus it was in the temple, given through David to Solomon. When that temple was completed it stood as a monument to universal victory; its very substance declared triumph on the right hand and on the left. The silver and the gold, and all the precious things which it comprised, had been taken in battle and wrought into the House of God. What is an illustration in the Old Testament is true in the reality of the New. The greater Son of David, the greater than Solomon, who "is here", builds the House from the spoil of His own warfare, and the warfare of His saints.

I was impressed as I read in this first book of Chronicles, chapter 17:9. The Lord is speaking to David, and one of the things which He says is: "And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in their own place, and be moved no more; neither shall the children of wickedness waste them any more, as at the first, and as from the day that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel; and I will subdue all thine enemies". You notice that the Lord refers to the judges over Israel. The Lord raised up judges, as you will remember, to do that which Israel had failed to do completely under Joshua. Under Joshua they were meant by the Lord to utterly destroy all the nations in the land, and completely subdue every enemy. They failed to do that. They suffered enemies to remain, they compromised, and then the Lord raised up the judges to save them from the terrible results of their having failed to make a complete work of destroying all their enemies. But the judges failed, and the Book of Judges is a sad story of the work still incomplete. The Lord raised up the judges to do that which had not been done, but again the judges did not perfect the work. And it is tremendously interesting and illuminating to notice in 1 Chronicles 18 and 19, when the Lord had spoken to David about building the House, how he definitely and positively took in hand to overthrow all those other nations which the judges had not overthrown; and they are mentioned in these two chapters. Go over them and you will find a list of the very nations and peoples mentioned in the Book of Judges; and David, through the vision of the House of God, seems to be moved instinctively by the Spirit of God to see that the House can never be realised until these enemies are subdued, until they are entirely overthrown. The Lord fulfilled His word to subdue all his enemies, and those very nations were taken in hand and dealt with. When the Lord had given David victory on every side round about, then he handed the plan to Solomon to carry out the building of the House, and the spoil of those battles was the material for the House. The enemy had the resources for the House of God, and the enemy had to be despoiled that the House might be built. That could lead us a very long way and be very illuminating. I want to seek to reduce it to a few words and a small compass which, nevertheless, will provide you with a great deal for future helpfulness and contemplation.

The Twofold Building

There are two aspects of the building of the House of God. We are rather inclined to take more account of one than the other. There is the numerical side. When we think of building the House of God, we think of the gathering in of people, the adding of souls by their salvation and being brought into the truth, and so we think only of the House of God being built in the sense referred to by Peter: "Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house...", that is, we think of the numerical side, the gathering of the individual stones and their coming into their place in the spiritual edifice. Well, that is a true side to the building of the Lord's House, but it is only one side, and only half of the truth. There is another side which is equally important, without which that will be altogether an inadequate thing; that other side is the spiritual and moral side of the building of God's House. You may have a great number of individuals saved and still fail to have the truest meaning of the House of God. You may have a congregation and not have a church. You may have numbers, and not have spiritually the House of God. The House of God is not only a numerical thing, it is a spiritual and moral thing. That is, it has a character, and that character is what makes it in very essence the House of God. It takes its character from its Head and will eventually, in its consummation, be recognised - not as a great multitude merely of saved souls - but as something which bears the character of its Head, the Lord Jesus. The time is coming when the Lord will cause His Name to be upon His own; that is, we shall receive a white stone, and in that white stone a new name; we shall have a new name, and we shall be called by His Name, His Name will be in our foreheads. That is all symbolic language, and its meaning is just this: the Lord Jesus will be so fully manifested in His own that as you look at them you will say: That speaks of the Lord Jesus. You will recognise so much of Him, He will be so much in evidence, that you will simply have to say: That is the nature of Christ. You have met Him in them, and in meeting them you met Him. And so He will be universally revealed through His own. His Name is His character, what His Name embodies spiritually and morally will be resting upon them, they will take their character from Him, and so it will be one universal displaying of the character and nature of the Lord Jesus. It will not dispense with His own individual personal being, but they will be a channel of His own universal expression.

Character Through Conflict

The building of the House of the Lord, therefore, is not only a gathering of people but it is a spiritual and a moral building up, and that is only done through conflict. The Divine economy has been so ordered that, although the Lord Jesus has in Himself a universal triumph over all His foes, the foes are still left for us to deal with. The enemy, although defeated, has still been left for the saints to have something to do with, and the Lord has not put our foes out of the universe, though in Himself He has triumphed. He has left them for us to deal with in His triumph, and it is thus that you and I get our spiritual and moral development. It is by conflict, by battle, by grim and terrible warfare spiritually, that the moral excellencies of our triumphant Head are brought out in us. We triumph in His victory, but we know that faith is so tested in a conflict, so deeply tried in a battle, that it is something more than just objectively holding on, or believing in something in Christ; that very exercise of faith brings out from Him, into our own souls, the strength of His victory. We are made morally one with Him in His triumph by a test of faith which is so grim and so terrible that nothing that is not of him in us would be sufficient to carry us through. It has to be wrought into our very being, and that is done through conflict in which faith is drawn out; and so, spiritually and morally, we build through conflict, through adversity, in the Divine and sovereign ordering of our lives.

The moral side of things is that which comes out in exercise, exercise of faith in the value of Calvary's victory. It is one thing to have a theoretical appropriation of Calvary's victory and say in an hour of emergency: I take the victory of Calvary. But very often nothing happens, and although you take a position like that, you find yourself called upon to hold on, and hold on, and hold on, and during that time of being called upon by the Lord to hold on, faith is being tested, Calvary's victory is becoming something not objectively taken hold of but inwardly established, and at last that victory is in us as it is in the Lord. But it has become a moral quality in our being, and in the next time of testing it is not a trying to get hold of something, it is there with its roots in us, something has been done in us, it has been made a part of us.

The Battle over Revelation

Now this works in various ways, and in numerous directions and connections. You get a revelation, an unveiling from the Lord in relation to truth; an opening of the heavens to see Divine truth as you have never before seen that truth; perhaps it is a new, an entirely new thing, or perhaps it is new light upon an old thing. In any case, it is a new revelation; revelation which comes to you with all the freshness, and all the joy, and all the inspiration, and all the uplift of the opening of the heavens; and for a time you delight in it, you glory in it, you bathe yourself in it, and you have nothing else to talk about but the new revelation which has come to you. And then a point comes where you go right into an awful conflict in connection with that very revelation. It seems that the first glory of it has gone and you are left asking all sorts of questions about it. You are cold, dead, dark; the thing has lost its grip and looking at it now from this standpoint, the standpoint of this experience, you wonder whether after all it was right or not. What strange creatures we are! Things which have come to us as the mightiest things in our experience can, in given circumstances, be the things which are questioned by us as to whether they are really true at all, or whether we simply picked up something and ran it for a time; there was a freshness about it, and its freshness was its own momentum to carry us on; now it is all unreal, and we go into a time of conflict over truth given to us by the Lord. In that time of conflict we are searched, our hearts are looked into, we are tried. Remember Joseph: "Until the time that his word came to pass, the word of Jehovah tried him." The Word of the Lord tried him; and we have to go over the things which we have been saying and believing, and have to ask ourselves all sorts of questions about them.

The Word of the Lord tries us, but it is in that conflict that spiritual and moral elements are developed, features are brought out. Conflict secures the spoil for further building, and then we come back again, not only on to the original ground of our apprehension of that truth, but on to a very much higher, and into a much deeper and stronger apprehension of that thing, so that it is more to us than it was before, because we have gone into the battle with it, and we have come out with spoil for building; there have been fresh heavenly factors put into it. Something has been introduced into the original thing, through the conflict, which has given it extra value; it is the power of resurrection. Thus the thing of God comes as from God, with all its Divine glory, beauty, strength, and we rejoice in that light for a season, and then we go into death with that very light; but in the battle, in the conflict, the death, the being searched, tried, tested, found out, and driven down to the place where, if that goes, we go, because it is our life, then the power of resurrection begins to operate and we come back with that thing stronger than ever, and in addition with spoils for building. We know the value of that thing as we had never proved it before, because we had never been into conflict with it, we had never tested that armour, never tried that sword; but now something of value has been given to it which we never knew until we went into the conflict with it. It does work that way with a revelation. How many people we have seen leap to the revelation, they have embraced it, could talk about nothing but the new revelation that had come to them. We are very glad, we are delighted when people do this, but we say: Yes, presently they will be tested on that, and that thing will test them; and they go into a time of awful conflict and darkness, full of questions as to whether or not, after all, the thing is true, is right; and now the Lord is putting the thing inside. It was very largely on the circumference; it was, in a sense, in a measure, objective; but now the Lord is planting the thing into them, and them into it. They will come through and say: Before, it was something given to me but it belonged to someone else, now it is mine. Thus they begin to build with the spoil resultant from the conflict.

The Battle over Vocation

The same thing is true in the matter of a vision as to purpose. The Lord gives a vision as to His intention, His purpose unto which He is calling us as His servants, and the vision captures us, the purpose lays hold of us, and for the time being we have nothing to think about or talk about but the purpose unto which we are called; the whole sense of vocation and service has mastered us; we have a vision. Well, we go on with that for a time, by the momentum of the vision and then it seems that the vision fails, or we get into such a realm of conflict over that vision, and such a battle rages, that the thing seems to go into death, we pass through a deep and dark experience in which the whole question comes up again: Was there anything in it after all; have we not been mistaken? Is this the thing to which the Lord has called us? Was it not something we leaped at and, after all, the Lord did not mean it for us? Have we been wrong? I expect most of us know those experiences of conflict, of battle over the vision, but it finds us at length in a stronger place than ever before in relation to that Divine purpose.

Our history is just that; many times we have been into death and conflict with our vision, in which experiences it seemed that the vision altogether went, many questions arose about it, but we came through and we found ourselves more solidly bound up with that Divine purpose than ever we were. We have gone into conflict and there have emerged spiritual and moral elements by which there is a building up as a result of the trial.

The Battle over a Position Taken

We take a position, we declare ourselves - and how easy it is in meetings and in conferences to take positions, amongst the fellowship of the Lord's people to declare ourselves - that we are going in a certain direction, that for us this is to be the course for ever: "I never, no never will leave Him". We can sing these things glibly in hymns: to-morrow may find us reviewing the whole thing, looking round to see if there is not some back-door way out. It is true, these hearts of ours are at best inconsistent. We take our attitudes, we take our positions, make declarations, and for the time being, in the strength of that, we go on, and then we are challenged as to our position.

See how this is illustrated in the history of the children of Israel: "Then sang Moses and the children of Israel: "Then sang Moses and the children of Israel..." They got to the other side of the sea and all Israel sang; and what did they sing? A song of absolute victory. You would have thought that they were in the land already, but it was not long before they were murmuring against the Lord and Moses. They were tested, challenged, tried by the position which they had taken, and then went through a dark time. So we, whenever we make a declaration, shall sooner or later be tested by it. (I hope the effect of what I am saying will not be that you will say: I will never declare myself again. If you do take that attitude that may simply prevent the Lord in His purpose). It is necessary, to get the spoil, that we go that way. The qualities are only going to be drawn out in that way, and it is quite right that in the measure of devotion we have, we make a declaration, take a position; the Lord calls upon us to do that, it gives Him the ground for testing us out. Somehow in the order of things, it seems that the Lord requires declarations before He can do much. If you have never declared yourself, have always had a reservation, have been so cautious, the Lord has never been able to do anything with you. It is when we take our feet off the bottom and launch out into the deep, and say that we are out with the Lord, that the Lord can begin to do things. We are tried by the position we have taken, and tested by our commitment, and those qualities are brought in which are building qualities, the spoil of battle.

I was reading the following:

"Many people are wanting power. Now how is power produced? The other day we passed the great works where the trolley engines are supplied with electricity. We heard the hum and roar of the countless wheels, and we asked our friend, 'How do they make the power?' 'Why', he said, 'just by the revolution of those wheels and the friction they produce. The rubbing creates the electric current.'

"And so, when God wants to bring more power into your life, He brings more pressure. He is generating spiritual force by hard rubbing. Some do not like it and try to run away from the pressure, instead of getting the power and using it to rise above the painful causes.

"Opposition is essential to a true equilibrium of forces. The centripetal and centrifugal forces acting in opposition to each other keep our planet in her orbit. The one propelling, and the other repelling, so act and re-act, that instead of sweeping off into space in a pathway of desolation, she pursues her even orbit around her solar centre.

"So God guides our lives. It is not enough to have an impelling force - we need just as much a repelling force, and so He holds us back by the testing ordeals of life, by the pressure of temptation and trial, by the things that seem against us, but really are furthering our way and establishing our goings.

"Let us thank Him for both, let us take the weights as well as the wings, and thus divinely impelled, let us press on with faith and patience in our high and heavenly calling."

(From "Streams in the Desert")

That is only another way of stating the case. Light and power come from conflict. And so the Lord builds His House with the spoils of battle, and allows the enemies to remain for our overcoming, inward enemies and outward enemies, in order that He may get the beauty and the glory for His House.

The Lord lay His finger upon this word, and show us that when He gives a vision, a revelation, a call; when we respond and then reverses come in, difficulty and opposition are no contradiction of God's revelation or call, but are intended to bring us into something which is more than merely an emotional realm in relation to truth and service; they must bring into a place of strength where we can be counted upon. Says the Lord Jesus, "I will build my church; and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it" - because of its moral quality. Because of its moral virtue it is established for ever.

The Stones of Testing

Transcribed from a message given by T. Austin-Sparks in 1959. The spoken form has been retained verbatim. Words which were not clearly discernible or questionable have been enclosed in [square] brackets.

Our meditation for a few minutes will be in the book of Joshua, chapter 4:

"And it came to pass, when all the nation were clean passed over the Jordan, that Jehovah spake unto Joshua, saying, Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a man, and command ye them, saying, Take you hence out of the midst of the Jordan, out of the place where the priests' feet stood firm, twelve stones, and carry them over with you, and lay them down in the lodging-place, where ye shall lodge this night. Then Joshua called the twelve men, whom he had prepared of the children of Israel, out of every tribe a man: and Joshua said unto them, Pass over before the ark of Jehovah your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take you up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel; that it may be a sign among you, that, when your children ask in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? then ye shall say unto them, Because the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever. And the children of Israel did so as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve stones out of the midst of the Jordan, as the Lord spake unto Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel; and they carried them over with them unto the place where they lodged, and laid them down there. And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood: and they are there unto this day. For the priests which bare the ark stood in the midst of the Jordan, until everything was finished that the Lord commanded.” [Joshua 4:1-10]

Chapter 5: “And it came to pass, when all the kings of the Amorites, that were beyond the Jordan westward, and all the kings of the Canaanites, that were by the sea, heard how the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan from before the children of Israel, until we were passed over, that their heart melted, neither was there spirit in them any more, because of the children of Israel.”

As you know, historically and symbolically this represents the crisis of the fullness of God’s purpose concerning His people - that for which He had moved and worked and been patient through many years, that which now was immediately before them. And at this crisis or this turning-point, in that relationship, as at every crisis relating to something more of the Lord, the people were, and we are, brought back to our foundation: to the foundation. These stones, twelve on the land and twelve in the Jordan, were the foundation stones of everything concerning the purpose of God.

We know the typology, that these waters of the Jordan - which at this time were spread over not only the riverbed but the land round about in a mighty inundation, for it says “that season Jordan overfloweth all its banks”   - these waters typify the floods of death. The floods of death; death at the full.

The ark, we know, is the symbol figure of Jesus and Jesus taking up His position, the great priestly ministry, right in the heart of death’s flood and flood time. And as He did so, death gave way. As we are told in the Word, “He could not be holden of it” that is, it had NO power over Him. It had to yield to His presence, He conquered it, it stood up, the mighty flood was held in its course and broken in its way; it had no power. Death had no power over HIM. And here, this record is intended to teach us that in the place where death reigned universally, a testimony is planted, and planted forever, for whenever we come on that little phrase “And there it is until this day” it is meant to imply permanence; it goes on, it is something unchanged. Right in the place of death’s fullness and overwhelming there is a testimony that its power has been broken, that its long course has been interrupted, that it has not held on its way forever. There’s something which FOREVER says death has been arrested and its power broken.

Well that is, of course, the Gospel in its objective form but the message here for us this morning is this: that what is there, right in the very scene of that triumph, of that overcoming, of that mighty thing; has got to have a counterpart on the land where it can be seen, right here, where everybody can note it and the children can say “What is the meaning of this, what do you mean by this?” Something clearly manifest in the very LIFE of the people, that it is not only a looking back to something that was, but it’s looking to something that here is and we can say what was, is! What was there is here, it’s something to be seen.

The very foundation of everything in the purpose of God and in the FULL purpose of God for His people has got to be a literal ACTUALITY, right here, every day where it can be taken note of. That means more exact words, for there have got to be people who will take it up on their shoulders and say “I make myself responsible for that testimony. I carry on MY shoulders that testimony, I am one in whom, through whom, it CAN be seen. Jesus has conquered death! There is a death-conquering Life present with us!”

And inasmuch as twelve men were chosen and twelve stones were placed here and twelve there, while we know that in the symbolism of numbers twelve means government (we’ll not stay with that aspect) twelve is always representation of the Lord’s people. And the Lord does choose amongst His people those who know something deeper of the death and [might] of the resurrection, who’ve gone in and come out with a testimony on their shoulders - a representative company. It’s His will for all of His people of course, but there are those who’ve got to stand FOR the people of God in this matter, carrying the burden OF& this testimony FOR the people of God, that all in looking may see what God wants concerning them and see it in these.

My brothers and sisters, the great Joshua, (it’s the same name you know, Jesus - Joshua, the Lord, the Saviour) this greater Joshua, our Lord Jesus, would select men and women who He can take into the testimony in a very real way and bring them out - on their shoulders, so to speak, carrying its responsibility.

We do not think in terms of an elect of the elect, of a select people in that technical sense, but we do know it is true, we see it through the Bible again and again, right to the end of the Bible in the book of the Revelation, that there are those who come into a closer association with the Lord in the meaning of His death and resurrection ON BEHALF OF OTHERS! On behalf of others that others may SEE what the Lord wants, ah, that they may see that this thing is real; these have gone into the depths, these have known something of the place of the flood, these have been where the Lord has been in measure, and have learned HIS victory, have learned HIS power, who have come out with something on their shoulders of a testimony to the power of His resurrection; His death-conquering Life.

He would select a representative company and if the Lord deals with any in that deeper way, that so much deeper way, understand, understand that He is building something that is not just doctrine - teaching about the death and the resurrection - but making it very real in certain lives, perhaps in certain places, that it may be seen; taken note of, that coming generations now rising around may be affected and say “What is the meaning of this?” and be instructed by that which has come out of Jordan’s deep bed, that which carries in it the significance of His mighty, mighty, victory.

And it is not only for themselves, it is not only for other believers; that’s why we went on and into chapter five and saw that the chapter was divided at that point - it should not have been - all the enemies of the Lord lost heart when they saw this testimony in action! The conquest of the land, the possessing of the inheritance, the overthrow of the evil forces which were against them, came about because this thing was REAL in the life of the Lord’s people. They fought, but they fought without a heart.  Listen to what Rahab said about it, “When we heard what the Lord did our hearts fainted, there was no strength left in us any more”.  And when the enemy fights, and he will fight, but he hasn’t got much heart for this fight for then he sees that this testimony is not theory, not teaching, not doctrine, but it’s on the very shoulders of men and women - they carry it, it’s something that is REAL in them. Well, we may be going into the deep places, but this is the Lord’s object: that there shall be a concrete testimony to the power of His resurrection and His victory over death.

You notice that the waters came back again, they overflowed as before, they spread themselves over the earth again, and yet not as before; there were twelve stones right down there at the bottom which said “Your sway is not universal while we’re here!”. They were a denial. And friends, death spreads over the earth, even since Calvary, even since the resurrection, it’s spread over; but has the Lord got His stones of testimony which say “Yes, but death is not universal and while this testimony remains as it WILL, the heart of death is taken out of it, the power of death is NOT universal, we testify to the fact that that power HAS been broken and that eventually it will be utterly destroyed!”  The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

Do you get the message of the Lord?  I’m sure the message to you, to me, to us - what I’m going to do - no, that’s not just a message, that’s a challenge: shall we take up with both hands the stones of testimony and say “As for me, by the grace of God, I WILL be something that others can see in this matter, HE HAS CONQUERED DEATH and in me the power of His resurrection SHALL be seen.”

The Lord help us.

Striving In Prayer

A Conference Message

Reading: Phil. 1:29-30; Col. 1:28-2:2; 4:12.

There is much more in the Word of the same nature that could be added to these passages, but these are sufficient, I think, to indicate something we need to lay to heart. I always feel that one of the great factors in our own spiritual enlargement is a real active concern for others; not in the sense that we look after another's vineyard and neglect our own, become "busy-bodies" as the Apostle would term it, occupied with everybody's business except our own, but that there is a right and proper and fruitful concern for others. What the Scriptures that we have read bring before us is that God's great revelation of purpose in the Church is not going to be realized without some tremendous and terrific conflict. There have to be those who throw themselves into that conflict for that end.

The Importance Of Taking The Initiative

So here the Apostle says, "What great conflict I had for you and for them of Laodicea," and for many others. "Striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily." "Epaphras... a servant of Christ Jesus... always striving for you in his prayers." It is the laying to heart of this matter about God's desire for His people in such a way as to draw us into tremendous spiritual conflict over it. Now, we are meeting the conflict perhaps, without seeking it directly, but it is a very true thing that very often the advantage is with those who take the initiative. Do you not recognize that when the enemy takes the initiative in the matter of spiritual assault, we usually find ourselves at a disadvantage. When it comes from his side, we turn in upon ourselves, we begin to ask questions. We find ourselves sometimes almost paralyzed by the pressure, the tenseness and the forms in which his assault comes. It affects us in such a way as almost to overwhelm us and put us out. That is because he is taking the initiative, and he knows enough of strategy in warfare to know that it is with the one who takes the initiative that a great deal of the advantage lies.

Now we shall always of course meet that and he will always be doing it, but what about the other way round? Paul met a very great deal of the onslaught of the enemy upon spirit and mind and body. It came along every line and by every channel and means conceivable. He tells us a good deal about the nature of his conflicts, spiritual and temporal, in his ministry and life, but Paul by no means left things there. He also makes it perfectly clear that he took the initiative as well, and these words which we have just read concern the initiative of the Lord's people on this matter. If the enemy is out with all his might and all his cunning to frustrate this purpose of God in the saints, namely, their coming to the fulness of understanding, their having the full knowledge of Christ; I say if he is out by every means to frustrate that, there has to be some initiative from the other side. There has to be a real throwing of ourselves into this matter in a spiritual way against this assailing of the children of God, so that God's end shall not be frustrated.

"What great conflict I have for you," says the Apostle, "striving." You know how he uses that word in his Corinthian letter about the Olympic games. "If a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully" (2 Tim. 2:5). He sees this man in the arena or on the track stretched out, throwing himself into the battle, striving for the mastery. It is the same word. And here it is striving for the mastery over the enemy and for the will of God, that His people might know the mystery of God, even Christ, unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, and so on. Well, the emphasis is clear and does not need a great deal added to it of words from me.

My deep feeling is that there has to be another side to our concern about this matter of the Lord's desire for His people to come to fulness, beyond the personal, and until that other side is brought in the end will not be reached. That means there must be those who will really throw themselves in to strive, by the enablement, the energy of the Spirit, to strive over this matter.

An Old Testament Illustration

When I was thinking about this, there came back to my mind the very familiar story of Elisha and the Shunammite, and her son. It seems to me to be the point of this very matter. Elisha, as you well know, sets forth in type that which was ordained to remain here on this earth after the Lord was risen. Elijah and Elisha had passed through the Jordan, the Cross, and Elijah had been translated to heaven. The great issue upon which that continuation of the testimony here depended was that there should be with Elisha a double portion of his master's spirit. His request was that. He was put on probation over that. He was tested and drawn out concerning that, but, having been approved, Elisha received a double portion of the spirit of his head. The sons of the prophets always spoke of Elijah in those words - "Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head today?" (2 Kings 2). Elijah was his head. Now when the head was received up into heaven, the double portion of the Spirit came upon Elisha. He was here on this earth in the power of the Spirit to maintain and carry on a testimony of life, so that at every move, in every connection, Elisha is found meeting conditions of death. He is called upon to prove that the Spirit is with him as the Spirit of resurrection by having to encounter death in many forms.

Amongst these many instances is the one of the Shunammite's son, full, I think, of helpful features and elements if we were dealing with it as a whole. We only have one thing in mind at the moment. Here, for instance, in grace the Lord had visited her and given her that son; for I think it is quite evident that she had closed that chapter in her life as something which would never be. You remember she asked the prophet not to mock her, and then later when the son died, she said, "Did I desire a son of my lord?" as much as to say, I had closed that chapter, that was something which I killed in my heart, I was not any longer thinking in that direction; you did that. It was something that could not be, but the impossible was done. The thing that she no longer dared to think about or hope for had become an actuality by the grace of God. It was something God had done in grace, and the son existed.

Now the son dies. Strange mysterious ways of God, to give something altogether of Himself, something beyond our powers and beyond our expectations, and then, having done something so much of Himself, to allow it to fall under what looks like a mere calamity, to die. Strange ways of God! The Lord does do strange things, things that are strange to our understanding. He is beyond us.

When the boy is dead, there is one there who has not been by the way of the Cross and the anointing, namely, Gehazi. He was not there to go through the Jordan with Elijah and Elisha. He did not come back again across Jordan in the power of the anointing, triumphant over death. He was not under the anointing of the double portion; he was a mere professional, not an anointed one. He came to a very sad end, a very tragic end. The leprosy of Naaman the Syrian clave to him. That, by the way, happens to people who take up Divine things not crucified, uncrucified people, unanointed people. Gehazi went to this death chamber and tried to do something for this boy, and nothing happened, and he had to go away acknowledging that there was nothing. Elisha came, and you remember his procedure. He went in and he stretched himself upon that body, hands to his hands, feet to his feet, lips to his lips, eyes to his eyes. He got right down on this situation, so to speak. He got into it, he identified himself with it, he made himself a part of it. But he was in the good of the power of resurrection. It is safe to do it when you are there. He was under the anointing, and because he was a man under the anointing on the ground of resurrection, he could come into touch with that situation, not to his own undoing but to the undoing of it. It was as though he literally lifted that boy out of death.

Few things in the New Testament more amply describe that sort of thing than these words about Epaphras: a servant of Jesus Christ striving for you in his prayers. It is like that. I am not just giving you Bible Study. This is the point: I do not believe things are going to happen until we get down to it. I believe God is waiting for a getting down to this situation. There have to be some people who really do get down to it.

The Factor Of Prayer In Relation To The Lord's Purpose

Take the present situation among the Lord's people. God has a purpose, but are we taking it for granted, are we waiting for something to happen, looking out all the time, observing, spectators, weighing it up, judging it? This is not happening and that is not happening, this is all we can see! I do not believe anything will happen until a people really get down to this; a people, mark you, who stand on resurrection ground, who have the anointing, and then get down to it to break the deadlock of death, to break the bonds which bind. It is real business. There has to be a striving over this matter. It is not going to happen, it is not just going to come to pass. All this that Paul says and all that is here in the Word is sheer nonsense if the mere fact of a thing being in the will of God ensures its happening, apart from any other consideration. What are you striving about, Paul? There is no need for all that agony, travail, striving of yours! The Lord purposes it, it is the will of God; you just believe and be quiet and it will come to pass, the Lord will do it! Well then, all this is unnecessary, and therefore it is nonsense. Is it? Does this not represent something, count for something? You see what I mean.

In Colosse, in Laodicea, and for many others who had not seen his face in the flesh, all those churches, their being knit together in love unto all the riches of the full assurance of understanding that they may know the mystery of God, be presented every man complete in Christ, that hangs upon this man's conflict and the conflict of Epaphras and others. How much of this are we doing? It is so easy to criticize one another's spiritual life, and the spiritual life of other people. It is so easy to take account of small measure, little growth, the arrest and limitation. It is so easy just to be lookers-on. Yes, in our hearts we are troubled, we are perplexed. In a way, we ask the Lord continually to do something, we are not detached altogether, but are we quite sure that we are where Paul was? "How greatly I strive for you." How I get down to this, how I identify myself with this situation, this need! - this that has come in which is just the opposite of what God intended, this that has interfered with the continuation of progress and development in a life that God produced, this which undoubtedly is of the Lord but locked up, fallen under something in the way of a blight, a lack, an arrest, a hold up.

There is the sovereignty of God, of course, in this, the sovereignty of God which works over the enemy in order to draw out some people. As we said at the beginning, our own enlargement is bound up with our vocation; or, to put it in another way, we shall not make much progress spiritually until we take spiritual responsibility. It is vital to our growth that we have concern for souls, our own spiritual growth. I do not believe people do grow, however much information they accumulate along spiritual lines, if they are all the time turned in on themselves. Responsibility is a tremendous thing for enlargement, and here is a man who took responsibility to the full. But he turns to these Philippians and he says, "To you it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer in His behalf," and these sufferings are very often along this line, soul suffering for the saints. "I... fill up... that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ... for His body's sake, which is the church" (Col. 1:24). The sufferings of Christ; it is given to you to suffer with Him. The sufferings of Christ for His Body's sake which is the Church - I fill up that which remains of that.

It might be that the edge of a great deal of the enemy's assault upon us would be blunted if we were a little more of the assailing kind. I think we feel the keenness of it because we wait for it. I think there is something that really does save us when we are turned out in the aggressive. There are values, great values, to our own spiritual life, safety and growth, by a positive and an aggressive spirit in the interests of the Lord; for undoubtedly a positive state is a protection. To be fervent in spirit is a great protection.

I do not want to say a great deal more. I felt that the Lord wanted that emphasis this evening. You are concerned and I am concerned in a way. We recognize a need, a great need, and in relation to that need perhaps we come to wonder why this and why that. Then we begin to try and interpret it and explain it, and we give this interpretation and that interpretation, and all too often it again becomes a turning in on ourselves or on ourselves collectively.

Well, let us face this to begin with, that the Lord's people never did in all their history come through to His end for them without terrific conflict, a great withstanding. It was always so, and they have never come through only as the Lord has had a vessel which has taken up that issue in a most positive way. It was like that with Israel in their getting through to the land. Joshua and Caleb took up that issue and fought it through, and by them a generation came in. Daniel took up that issue when the people were in captivity and fought it through in the heavenlies. The coming back of the remnant was undoubtedly to be laid instrumentally at Daniel's door. And here is Paul in the same thing on the higher spiritual level; Satan out to withstand this coming of the Church to God's end in fulness. Amongst others, here is Paul taking it up, fighting it out. It always has been, it always will be. In every city Paul had to meet it and fight it through. He is there himself on resurrection ground under the mighty anointing, but look at Philippi and the jail and the stripes, look at Corinth. There was evidently very real need for the Lord to say to Paul about Corinth, "Fear not, I have much people in this city" (Acts 18:10). It was very necessary for the Lord again and again to come alongside and fortify His servant because of what he was meeting in the city. See what he met in Ephesus: the sentence of death, he despaired even of life. Right in the conflict in every city, but fighting it through. The Lord needs that kind of instrument.

Again I say, while there may be various subsidiary causes for arrest or limitation, here is the big issue, that the enemy is out to prevent our going through, to prevent the Lord's people from knowing what His thoughts are about them, being brought into touch or led into touch with that which will be for their enlargement. It is all a mighty campaign of the enemy, blinding, nullifying, neutralizing, hindering, putting up blankets, clouds and smoke, everything and anything. It is all a part of this determination of his that the saints shall not be brought through to completeness in Christ.

Over against that, there have to be those who, together in the Lord, standing on the right and sufficient ground, take up this issue in the Name of the Lord and fight it out. "How greatly I strive" has to be true of a company of us.

The Lord give us grace for this and really work in us, and we shall see things breaking. No one will doubt, no one will dispute, that we are in a life or death issue. We are going to live and live triumphantly, or we are going to die, going to fade out. Perhaps in the Lord the issue rests with us along this line. The Lord add to the company of Epaphras!

Take Your Share

Reading: 1 Chronicles 15:1-2, 2 Timothy 2:1-3.

And David made him houses in the city of David, and prepared a place for the ark of God, and pitched for it a tent. Then David said, None ought to carry the ark of God but the Levites: for them hath the LORD chosen to carry the ark of God, and to minister unto him for ever. (1 Chronicles 15:1-2).

Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. (2 Timothy 2:1-3).

The Levites are a very interesting people and their history is full of valuable things for the Lord's people at all times, but the thing which we are concerned with now is that they were the men who took responsibility for the Lord's testimony. David's decision about their task was the sequel to a tragic experience. One of the very many snares set by Satan against God's testimony in the life of David had succeeded when the king thoughtlessly ordered a new cart to be made for the transportation of the ark. It was a violation of divine law; it produced the death of at least one man; and it brought the whole testimony to a halt for a long time. After the chastening experience, David corrected his mistake by reference to God's Word and a new spiritual movement was made possible. So in accordance with the Scripture which David now remembered, the ark was brought out and committed to the Levites, as David affirmed: "None ought to bear the ark of God but the Levites, for them hath God chosen...". Theirs was a peculiar responsibility among the Lord's people, and they had to take up their responsibility and not leave it to other means. It belonged to them, and if they did not shoulder this burden then everything went wrong and was held up.

Maturity and Responsibility

These men are a reminder to us in our day that God calls us to take up our responsibilities and to play our part in His testimony. The Levites could not enter upon their ministry until they were thirty years of age, and then they had to give it up when they were fifty. While the age for going to war was twenty, the entering upon this Levitical ministry in fullness was not allowed until they were thirty. This represents real maturity. The Levites then had to retire at fifty before their strength began to wane. It is a spiritual thing which is represented, and what it seems to say to us is that for this carrying of the Lord's testimony, full strength is required. Levitical ministry was the expression of the best years of a man's life. It does not apply to us in the matter of age, either for beginning or for laying down our work for God, but it does remind us that spiritual strength is required for the bearing of this responsibility. That is why God calls us to be strong.

This brings us to the reference in the message to Timothy: "Thou therefore, my child, be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus" and then: "Take your part...". What was Timothy's spiritual strength needed for? It was that he might take his part in suffering hardship for Christ. So far as others were concerned he was to commit to faithful men those treasures which had been committed to him. The whole background is levitical. Timothy and the other faithful men were having responsibility committed to them by the Lord, and so they needed fresh grace to be strong in the Lord. In our day there is a tremendous need for people to take their share in the Lord's testimony and not always to think of others being responsible instead of them. The Lord calls for His people to grow up spiritually, not always to remain babes, demanding that they be carried and nursed, nor being immature youngsters who childishly complain or avoid responsibility. Such can never be entrusted with the work of Christ, they will never take their share in its hardship, never be good soldiers of Jesus, and the testimony will not be safe in their keeping. Perhaps one of the greatest spiritual tragedies of our time is the fact that so few seem to be sufficiently strong spiritually to shoulder the interests of Christ in a mature fashion, preferring rather to follow and let others take the lead.

I feel quite sure that it was because Israel had not recognised spiritually the meaning of the Levites in their midst that they failed so constantly in the wilderness. The Levites had been chosen to take the place of the priestly firstborn in every family. The firstborn was the natural priest who was to take responsibility in household affairs, but the Levites had been chosen to substitute for the firstborn and had become the tribe of the firstborn ones. If all Israel had recognised this, and abode by the spiritual truth, there would not have been that detachment which meant so much weakness and which found the general company constantly drawing back, wavering in uncertainty. They let the Levites carry the ark as though it was something separate from themselves, never realising their own responsibility, and so they were often murmuring and complaining, not giving any sort of loyal support to their representatives.

It seems that today we have something very similar. A large number of those who belong to the Lord are just in the camp, content to be lost in the throng of God's people and leaving the main responsibility to others. They like to see things going on, but for themselves they do not want to carry any responsibility. To all such the Lord says: 'Take your share, take your part in the sufferings as a good soldier. Do not be always babes, carried about by every changing wind or impulse. Do not be those of whom the letter to the Hebrews complains that when they should have been teachers they were still needing to be put right over the simple elementary principles of the spiritual life.'

Responsibility Means Strength

There is a sense in which those who take responsibility have to feel that all will fail if they fail. The important thing is to realise, in a right and humble spirit, that the Lord's testimony does depend on us individually. Each one is fully justified in taking the attitude that this is his business, that he is not just one of a crowd, but a responsible member. The real difference between the Levites and the rest of the people was that this tribe had been called to bear the Lord's burdens, to accept responsibility in His name, and in this sense we are all Levites. When these men accepted their responsibility and took up the ark, we are told that they received special help from the Lord (I Chronicles 15:26). Timothy was assured that God's grace would supply him with new strength as he took his share.

I do believe that if we recognised the responsibility resting upon us and took it up, however conscious we are of our weakness and inadequacy, we would have a new incoming of divine strength. If, for the Lord's sake and for the sake of His testimony, we reached out to Him, He would give us more strength. The way to get strengthened is to take on more than you can of yourself carry. Perhaps you are working the other way round. You may be thinking that when you are stronger you will be able to accept more responsibility, that when you feel more of His power in you, then you will be more serviceable to Him. I ask you if it has ever worked out like this with you yet? What is your experience so far? Has the Lord ever come to you, given you a new sense of His power within, and then appointed a new task? Or has He not called you to something which is quite beyond you, and then given you the strength and enablement as you have moved forward in faith. Your experience differs very much from mine if it has not been in this second way. I have always found that the Lord makes demands upon me, calling for an exercise of new faith in Him, and then has met the demand as I have been willing to take my share.

So we must not wait until we have become such wonderful people that we feel competent to carry the load, but must shoulder our responsibility and prove the strength and enabling which the Lord will give us. It is as though the Lord said: 'Take your responsibility and then take your strength'. Strength comes not merely along the line of consciously feeling the need of it, but of appropriating it because of a specific need. It is the object in view which brings the strength. We tell the Lord that we are willing to take our share, to accept responsibility for His interests and yet feel quite unequal to the task, and so we can have a new experience of His strengthening grace.

The Nature of Responsibility

The fact that none but the Levites should bear the ark does not mean that in our day there is a special class of worker, but it reminds us that all of us are called to a priestly ministry and should have our lives altogether bound up with the Lord's interests. The tabernacle was the place where the Lord was known as King. This means, then, that all that relates to His majesty, to His honour and glory was put into the hands of the Levites. They were a sort of bodyguard here on earth of the King invisible. They had to keep things for Him, to watch His interests and to maintain His testimony in strength. This is our calling. The Lord is in the midst of us, and things must be maintained in accordance with His presence. This is not just a latent and passive truth, but a challenge to our spiritual energy to care for His interests. He is holy; then the responsibility of holiness is committed to us, His Levites. He is a Being of power and majesty; then that power and majesty are our responsibility. We have to be faithful, and that is why the charge to Timothy was concerned not with clever but with faithful men, men who by life even more than by words were able to teach others and bring them into taking their share in the testimony.

The Levites were divided into three sections. They had three departments of responsibility. One section had the vessels of the sanctuary, all the holy vessels; another section had all the curtains and the coverings; while the third had the boards and the bars. We may have our different aspects of work, some in preaching and more obviously spiritual work and others in different spheres, but it is all the same testimony. The Levites were divided into sections of different kinds of work. Some had the rougher work, the heavy bars and boards, which was more strenuous physically than the carrying of the pots and pans; but it was all Levitical work, they were all one people, one tribe. Responsibility rested upon all equally, for the totality of their labours made one ministry. The great thing was - and still is - that each should take his own responsibility seriously and give himself to his ministry.

I am sure that the Lord's heart must long for that. I am sure that at times in looking at me, He has had to say: 'Oh, I wish that I could trust him more; I wish he were more reliable, more responsible'. And I know that, as I have looked at many of God's people I have sometimes said that I wish that they did not need so much looking after. If only they would begin to stand on their own feet and take responsibility, so that we need not worry about them any more because we know that they can be trusted! They need urging and encouraging and all the time to be followed up, put right, and pacified when they get touchy and take offence. We all need fresh grace from the Lord to take our share in the labours and the sufferings as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. His grace will give us the necessary strength if we put our shoulders to the burden and take our share in the testimony.

From "A Witness And A Testimony" March-April, 1939

This Psychic Age

The feature of intensification is inherent in all realms; the physical, the metaphysical, and the spiritual. In nature, harvest is the intensification of a process. The end is but the full outworking or development of what was inherent in the beginning. We are living in an age when, in every realm, this process has reached an enormous proportion. It is not new potentialities. All that we are now seeing is but the discovery of what has been present all the time. Atomic energy, for instance, is not something newly created in the twentieth century. It has been in the constitution of things from the beginning; it has only been discovered and appropriated in this century.

The same is true in every other connection. Sin is no new thing, it is in the nature of man. If sin has become intensely more pronounced and more widely and wickedly expressed, it is but the full development of what was 'original'.

We are living in a time when the psychic element in this universe and in creation is manifesting itself in colossal proportions. If 'psychic' means soul; and if soul means mind (reason), feeling (emotion), and will (volition), then it can be seen that soul is developed to a degree that dominates this world in every realm. It is true that this wheel sometimes develops a bulge at one of its three sections, or even two, and the wheel becomes unbalanced. Emotion and will may become out of proportion. Sometimes reason takes control and predominates. But when we have said all that can be said on this matter, let us hasten to add that all this is but the human ego.

It is what the New Testament calls "the natural man". Translators have so worded it because it would sound strange to translate literally and say 'the soul', or 'the soulical man'. This may be a simplification resort, but it may also gloss over a very serious matter. The gloss may be to weaken and conceal the contextual contrast between this species and category of humanity and "he that is spiritual", or 'the man of spirit'.

This difference of categories and 'species' is traceable back to the very beginning of human life. If "God is Spirit" as Jesus affirmed; and if only spirit can communicate with Him, and He with spirit, as Jesus also declared (John 4:23,24), and it it is true that God walked and talked with man before he offended and separated himself from God, it is not only the solid implication of the whole of Scripture but the clear teaching of the Word of God and of history that the injury and separation took place in what man was then, that is, in the realm of his spirit. He must have previously been preeminently a man of spirit, by which all his communications with and government by God proceeded. If the spirit was violated, or man as a man of spirit was changed, then man became a changed order of being, and that was, a man of soul, with his spirit closed to God. The Bible calls it "separated from God". Therefore he became a soul-and-body man or species, with his spirit nullified in its true functions.

So man, in the 'Fall', fell out of his true union with God into himself, his ego, and thenceforth was a man wholly of natural mind, feelings, and decisions and volition. This nature and consequence can be seen quite clearly in the fact that, in order to interrupt the true normal relationship with God for all Divine purposes and interests, Satan made his attack at the point of the soul: firstly, reason - "Hath God said?"; then, feeling - "it is pleasant". Then the will followed reason and emotion which were put into the act, the choice and deed. This changed the order of man's nature, and, as we have said, made of him another kind than God made him.

This, then, was the beginning; man became preeminently a soulish, psychic creature. The process has gone on with ever-increasing strength and range. The whole commercial world is built upon this nature. Every advertisement contains the three features - reason why; an appeal to the advantage; and the capture of the act. But in every other realm a Satan-inspired and energized soul-force is his method of controlling his captured kingdom.

In our times the principle of 'dictatorship' has reached abnormal proportions. We have seen men of almost uncontrolled soul-force sweep nations into the vortex of unspeakable destruction and carnage. We are seeing a swift and unrestrained movement towards 'Antichrist', that is, the 'super man', the man or system of psychic powers which simulate the miraculous and the supernatural. The Bible tells us all about this. But for this present we have two things in mind; this development as an intensification of what came in through Satan at the beginning gives very strong evidence of the hastening harvest when the sickle will be plunged into the field of this humanity and it will be cut down. Intensification in any realm is always a warning. Abnormality is always a symptom that there is danger in the body corporate.

But our special emphasis is on the need to note that there is, and will be, an increasing invasion of this soulical, psychical character into the realm of 'Christianity'. We have seen this especially in the past century in the matter of reason or rationalism. The enthronement of 'liberalism', rationalism, and human judgment in the things of God has done an immeasurable amount of damage to the true life in the Spirit, and has almost entirely set aside the supernatural, especially in the matter of new birth; which, of course, is the new birth of the spirit of man.

In the work of God too often an autocratic and abnormally strong human control has been asserted; bringing everything and everybody under a domineering and legalistic mastery. But we are seeing an immense amount of the appeal to soul along its emotional line, with much imitation of the supernatural. All this is leading, as the Devil would have it, to confusion in the things of God, and to no small amount of discredit to the Lord. It all ministers to suspicion and fear. Anything that is abnormal, the pushing of things to an extreme, is to be suspect and feared. It is in this way that the great deceiver and subverter discredits the truth and brings dishonour to the Lord's name.

Sooner or later this abnormal asserting of the soul-force will bring its own nemesis of judgment, as we have seen both in Bible history and in recent times in the case of 'dictators'. Our mental institutions tell a sorry tale in this matter, and there are all too many who, having so projected themselves, their ego, into Divine things, are mental, nervous, and spiritual wrecks. This is possible in all human personality.

Saul of Tarsus could have been a very real case in point, for he had such force and strength of soul naturally. The Lord's precautions for him were brokenness: "...lest I should be exalted above measure". The Lord saw to it that there was plenty of ballast in Paul's life to keep him balanced and moving only by dependence upon God.

Brokenness is a great safeguard against ourselves and the Devil. The Lord never ministers to our self-sufficiency, and certainly never does anything to inflate us. Rather is it the other way. Christ is the offset to Antichrist; and that means that Christ must become our only strength, wisdom, and understanding.

We have dealt with this whole matter in much greater fullness in our book What is Man?, but there is a place and need for this supplementary word.

Let him that reads take note.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jul-Aug 1964, Vol 42-4

Under the Spirit's Government

Transcribed from a message given in 1965. The spoken form has been retained verbatim.

His face… as a flint… to go up to Jerusalem. See what that means? All that was involved in that… we know and He knew, but He set his face steadfastly as a flint, to go up to Jerusalem; He’s committed. He’s committed! He’s under the Spirit’s government.

You know, you travel by air, you travel long distance by air, there is always a point which the pilot knows to be the point from which there is no turning back. We’ve gone too far to turn back; it would be far more fatal to turn back if anything goes wrong than to go on. From this point the only thing to do, whatever happens, is to go on, we're committed. Jesus went all the way from the day when the Spirit came upon Him; in His heart He’d gone all the way, there was no turning back. He set His face, steadfast.

I repeat: a life under the Holy Spirit’s government is a committed life on which there ought to be no turning back. Have you reached that point of committal? Have you really reached that point of committal? As we say, all the boats burned behind, all the bridges with the past destroyed, blown up? Committed. The Wind has taken over, the Spirit is in a position of mastery: subduing, controlling, a force which subdues every other force in us. Every other force! We’ll see that working out in a moment.

So the first thing - and dear friends I keep very strictly to the Scriptures in what I’m saying, you know this is so - the first thing about the Holy Spirit as the Wind from heaven and as seen on the day of Pentecost, the great foundation of the dispensation which is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, is that He just takes everything into His hands and demands that place of absolute sovereignty. You’re not going to argue with the Wind! You know it’s futile to argue with a hurricane, it’s futile to try out conclusions with a mighty rushing Wind! You’ll either be disastrously broken or gloriously broken. It’s possible to be gloriously broken. But everything of Christ comes along that line: following the Spirit.

The next thing about the Wind is that the Wind chooses and takes its own course. You cannot tell the wind which way to go or to come. You cannot dictate to the wind as to what its choice should be, this or that. Wind just chooses its own course and takes its own course; so is everyone born of God, born of the Spirit. The Spirit demands the right to do this with us, dear friends, to choose His course with us and to take His course with us, He demands the right to do it.

Now, Peter is a very splendid example of this whole thing. In a very real sense Peter is the embodiment of all that I’m saying. It’s not without significance that it’s Peter who is the foremost figure on the day of Pentecost. Not without significance, I said. What significance? Why, the very significance of Peter himself! Remember the last words that the Lord said to Peter in the old regime, before the ascension: “Simon, when thou wast young thou girdedst thyself and wentest whithersoever thou wouldest but when thou art old another shall gird thee, carry thee whither thou wouldest not”. Whither thou wouldest, whither thou wouldest not; naturally. Here you have Peter present with his own natural temperament, this mercurial man. What a descriptive word that is; have you ever spilt some mercury on the ground and tried to pick it up again, get it together again? Why, you’ve got to go after it in all directions and when you think you’ve got it you haven’t; that’s Peter isn’t it? Simon, very descriptive… the old Simon, his temperament, his natural make-up and constitution and disposition... diving off all the time. Frustrated in one way; he’s off in another. “Thou wentest whithersoever thou wouldest.” The Lord had got Peter well summed up hadn't He: “Whither thou wouldest – you dictated your own course; you chose your own way, you followed your own likes and dislikes and preferences. YOU were the sovereign of your own life and, as you thought, of your own destiny; but another shall gird thee, another shall gird thee. That belongs to your spiritual immaturity all that, your spiritual maturity’s going to be marked by this: another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou, the old Simon, wouldest not! This Spirit that will gird you, will work quite contrary to your own make-up, your temperament, your disposition and make it impossible for you just to do as you like or as you are disposed to do, another shall gird thee.” The Wind chooses its own course, takes it, so is everyone born of God…

Peter on the day of Pentecost came under the mighty girding and now the battle between old Simon and new Peter begins! Next thing as you know, Acts chapter 10, Peter is on the housetop praying; been fasting and praying and he becomes very hungry, and falls into a trance and sees a vision. You remember the story of the sheet let down, full of unclean creatures. And a voice: “Arise Peter kill and eat.” Old Simon rises up and says: “Not so Lord!” How we mix things up don’t we, when we get into that realm of nature, “Lord…” that word won’t do, that word won’t do when it’s our saying “not so”. You cannot say “Lord” and at the same time say “not so”. And three times this happened and the vision passes and Peter’s called, and you know the rest of the story don’t you? There arrives the three men from Caesarea and Cornelius the centurion, knocking at the door… Read the story, I haven’t time to just go over it again.

Peter was girded; the Lord said "Go with them", go with them; the Spirit said go with them. The Spirit said go with them! It was a headache for Simon but he was girded and he went - into the house of a Gentile! Into the company of Gentiles; unclean beasts according to Jewish ritual. According, mark you, and you’ve heard me say this before, to the Scriptures of the Old Testament. He’d got the Scriptures on his side, as he thought, and he is standing upon his interpretation of the Scriptures, they were supporting him. But the Spirit was doing something; see the contradiction to the very Scriptures and to his whole position! Oh, I know the danger of what I’m saying, but you see the point. The Holy Spirit knows what He is doing and He demands absolute sovereignty in this matter for it is not even our interpretation of the Scriptures that is final, it’s the Holy Spirit’s interpretation of the Scriptures. And very often as we go on with the Lord we come to the place, yes repeatedly in our lives, where we have to say: I’ve got to make an adjustment over that, I believed very strongly this and that about that but I’ve got to adjust, the Lord has made a demand that I change my position over that.

There was some years ago a retired army colonel, a friend of mine who’d written books, books and books on a certain prophetical subject, published them; well-known and read everywhere. And he said to me, he said to me, “You know, I’ve got to recall the whole lot. The real life, light that the Lord has shown me and poured upon this matter makes it necessary for me to change my whole position, my whole life position over this matter”. He was honest; he was honest! But there’s no doubt about it, the Holy Spirit had taken over this matter of his mental play upon the Scriptures and interpretation and there’s all the difference between a mental interpretation and a spiritual revelation.

Well, here is Peter in the house of Cornelius in this wonderful story, what was Peter doing really, or the old Simon doing in this matter? Listen: he was making Christ much smaller than He really is. And if there’s one thing that the Holy Spirit is against, He’s against that! He’s against that. Israel, the elect… the spiritual aristocracy; the Gentiles, the dogs… the unclean beasts. Israel… The Holy Spirit is saying to Peter very emphatically: Jesus Christ is a much bigger Christ than ever you have seen Peter yet, you have to adjust to that. If there is one thing that the Holy Spirit is against it is exclusivism, make no mistake about it, when exclusivism makes Christ smaller than He is. That’s the tragedy of Israel; chosen, yes! Elect, yes! Given the oracles, yes! All that, but what for? Why? For the sake of the nations. A testimony of God in the midst of the nations that the nations might see and believe and turn to the Lord. That’s, that’s the horizon of God but Israel…

Oh, Jonah, Jonah is really an example of this, “Go to Nineveh, that great, that mighty city”. You know the story of Jonah, but Jonah represents the traditional position of Israel: exclusive, shut up within themselves, “We are the people and no other! We are the chosen, we are the elect, we have received the light, we have got the truth.” But why? Why? Not for ourselves, not to make us something in ourselves, not to draw around us a fence, shutting out all others, but for the sake of all others! For the sake of all others, that’s all! And Israel lost their position, dear friends, for this whole dispensation on one, one issue: these two thousand years of Israel’s tragic, so tragic history, is the issue of making God’s Son, less than He really is. Oh, what Christ is! What God meant Him to be to Israel and the world! You see, it’s in this very chapter that the most familiar words in all the Bible are “God so loved the world… whosoever” Nicodemus, Nicodemus you’ve got to be born from above, out of this exclusivism, out of this narrow traditionalism, out of this fixed and set position of yours. Born right out into the greatness of God’s all-comprehending purpose in His Son. How great Christ is! Oh, may we be saved from having a smaller Christ than God means us to have. There’s no danger in that dear friends, the Holy Spirit can look after that. But my point is that the Holy Spirit in this tenth chapter of Acts is just saying this, “I’m not having any of your circumscribing of Christ on any ground whatsoever. You may quote Me Leviticus chapter eleven if you like, but I’m not having it.” What God hath cleansed call not thou unclean. The Cross has dealt with all that ceremonial uncleanness and opened up the vast vistas of grace for all men.

The third occasion of Peter, see first his temperament, then his spiritual bigotry. Chapter fifteen... Paul refers to what happened in his letter to the Galatians, referred to what happened. Peter is called to account for this by the elders at Jerusalem, he is, as we say, on the carpet, on the spot, having to answer for this, this unusual, unheard of behaviour. Well, you know, we quoted Peter who sums it up in all this “Who was I, who was I to resist God?” that is what it amounts to. Who was I to resist God? But something else happened. Peter’s at Antioch. The Gentiles at Antioch have been saved, gathered in, the Spirit has done something with the Gentiles and Peter’s down there rejoicing! He’s following up, he’s following up Caesarea, house of Cornelius, happily following up with the Gentiles in Antioch, eating and drinking. Alright, “But certain came down from Jerusalem, James and certain others, came down from Jerusalem and when they were come down, Peter withdrew”. Peter withdrew! Peter withdrew… there’s a withdrawing. This is a dangerous offence to the Holy Spirit, a violating of what He was doing. And Paul recognized the significance of this and he said “I withstood him to the face for his dissimulation. I withstood him to the face". Simon is having a bad time isn’t he under this aegis of the Holy Spirit; he really is. What’s happened now? Here something has come up of the old Simon - bondage to man: “What will the brethren say? What will the leaders, what will the chief men say? I must, I must be careful because of what they will say and perhaps what they’ll do.” And that kind of thing is set over against the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit; two things in collision, you cannot have it.

I’m so glad that Peter must have got the better of this, he couldn’t have written his two letters if he hadn’t. And he couldn’t have said later on about this man who withstood him to the face and said “Peter you stand condemned, before God you stand condemned. You’re guilty of dissimulation.” Later Peter wrote “Our beloved brother Paul… in all his writings… in which there are some things difficult to understand…!” You see? But he’s got over his hurdle. The Holy Spirit was choosing the way and taking it, and is finding Peter coming into line. Coming into line, there were some, mark you, who didn’t come into line: “Demas hath forsaken me, returned to Thessalonica, I don’t know about Barnabas. I don’t know about Barnabas, even Barnabas…” says Paul, “Even Barnabas, even Barnabas, unthinkable! Dear, beloved Barnabas to whom I owe so much, we all owe so much, the church at Antioch owe so much, but even Barnabas was carried away.” Barnabas falls out of the New Testament. I hope I don’t exaggerate judgment, condemnation, but there are those who just get out of the way of the Wind when He’s blowing toward this great, full purpose of God; dissimulate, withdraw. The Lord save us.

I don’t know where to finish this. The Wind searches… may I finish on this and leave the other, the Wind searches and tests everything, especially foundations and structures, of what kind they are. I've spent a great deal of my life in Scotland, my childhood and later. There’s a common sight in Scotland, we have there many pine trees, pine forests and pine trees growing along the roadside and it’s a land in which the wind blows sometimes. And after any of our great wind storms, you can go along and see these pine trees uprooted, themselves lying level with the earth and their roots up in the air. Before people had admired them, said very nice things about them; what fine trees they were! What a magnificent sight! And the wind blew…and the wind blew, testing the depth of their roots. Testing their power of endurance. Testing stamina. And down went so many of these - before time erstwhile admirable, praiseworthy trees - down they went, crashing to earth. The Wind bloweth! The Holy Spirit just does that you know friends! That is what He is doing. The Holy Spirit is going to blow on us all. Christian experience is just this, under the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit our foundations are going to be tested; make no mistake about it, they’re going to be tested, and our structure, our building, our stamina, our endurance.

The Wind’s blowing today, my word its blowing over this earth. Look at all the testing, see all the tragic crashing to the ground. Do you know dear friends, that Christianity as we now know it is going to be blown to bits, absolutely to bits and there’s going to be nothing of it left. Christianity as we know it. All these things must be dissolved, says Peter. This whole cosmic order and this whole Christian system as we know it, is going. You say, “That’s a terrible statement; on what authority?” Well, plenty! I have lived through two world wars, what have we seen? I know that’s a very simple and small example of what I’m saying; we have seen many and many a place with a great Christian tradition, something that has stood for something, simply crushed to the ground, hardly one stone left upon another. Everywhere destruction; no preferences, no favouritisms, and God, where is God? Where’s God? “Oh, if anything ought to have been preserved, that ought to have been preserved, God ought to have protected that!” No, the answer is no! Why? Because God is not interested in things. God is only interested in one matter. The Holy Spirit is only concerned about one matter, dear friends, one matter only and history bears this out. The Holy Spirit is only concerned with Christ. With Christ, with what is Christ, what is of Christ, with the measure of Christ. The Holy Spirit has only One in His vision, that’s Christ, and He’s always saying “How much really of the eternal essence of Christ is here?”

And so you can go to Asia Minor today and find no trace of the churches in Asia, you can go to Galatia, you can go to all these places of the New Testament and find nothing today as places. Now the first three chapters of the book of the Revelation just bear down upon that. Note to the churches, to the seven churches in Asia, what the Spirit saith, what the Spirit saith, what the Spirit saith; seven times: “What the Spirit saith”. The Wind is blowing... what for? Just to discover not, not whether this has got the tradition, not this and that and something else, not whether they’ve got a building and a place of meeting, or a technique of worship or kind of New Testament order BUT, whether they have that or not, how much of the risen, living, exalted Christ is here? And the Holy Spirit will go as far as to say “Repent or I will remove thy lampstand out of its place because the light’s gone". What’s the good of a lampstand if there is no light? Mere ornaments the Holy Spirit is not interested in. Do you see the point? The Light is Christ, the measure of Christ, it is Christ, it is Christ! What the Spirit saith is not this and that, I know thy works and thy labours and thy patience, all that is very good, BUT!

The Value of Being Pronouncedly the Lord's

Reading: Acts 27.

"Acts" is a book of principles. This whole story, and a great deal more in the life of Paul, is a commentary upon, and exposition of, verse 23 - "God whose I am, whom also I serve". Paul might have been the Lord's on this voyage and kept silent. The power and the value of his being there at that time was due to his being pronouncedly the Lord's, and letting it be known without any uncertainty. That power and value is recognizable in different connections.

Divine Overruling of Human Mistakes

First of all, it constituted a link with, and made possible the action of, the Divine sovereignty. There were not lacking those things which could have been the ground of some real misgiving in Paul's life at that time, for this whole thing was directly the outcome of his going to Jerusalem, when, in the first instance, the Lord had told him quite plainly that it was no use his going back to the Jews. The Lord had said, "They will not receive of thee testimony concerning me... Depart: for I will send thee forth far hence unto the Gentiles" (Acts 22:18,21). Moreover, his brethren besought him not to go, and warned him in the Lord's Name what would happen to him if he did (see Acts 21:11). But Paul went, and when he got there he was caught in a trap, resulting in his being taken prisoner. Then came his appeal to Caesar, and Agrippa said, "This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar" (Acts 26:32). Paul had all that to reflect upon, and the Devil had good ground to try and bring him under condemnation and to say, You disobeyed the Lord, you flouted your brethren, you appealed to Caesar - a carnal thing to do, thinking that you would get your liberty that way. Now the Lord has let you have your own way, and you have got yourself into trouble. The Devil does take up anything he can get of our own mistakes, and builds upon that to paralyse us and make us believe that the trouble that is on us is because the Lord has left us. But with all that, if it was a mistake, Paul was so pronouncedly the Lord's that there really was no personal interest at any point in this going up to Jerusalem. He did not go there for something for himself. It was all a way of suffering and sacrifice, even though there was a certain amount of self-propulsion, not the leading of God. He was so utterly the Lord's that, having no self-interest in view, it linked him with the Divine sovereignty so that even his mistakes could be taken hold of by the Lord and turned to glorious account. When barrenness and disaster come in, it is because there has been some personal interest, something of ourselves, governing. There was none of that with Paul, though he made mistakes.

It is something to remember. We are not going to be faultless or infallible. No, but if the life is the Lord's, and we are not keeping quiet about it - if we are pronouncedly the Lord's, He will look after our mistakes, take responsibility for our imperfections, and even use them to His own end. That is what happened here. This linked Paul with the Divine sovereignty, and that got the better of all Satan's accusations and all Paul's misgivings and the results of all his mistakes. Is it not something to encourage us? We look back on our lives and say, If I had my time over again, I would not do this and that. But if we are really the Lord's and there is no reservation about it, He is working good even through those mistakes, and will get Divine ends even by means of them.

Moral Power with Men in an Hour of Crisis

Notice a second thing about the strength and value of being pronouncedly the Lord's - the moral power of this in an hour of crisis. There was no mistake about where Paul stood and what his relationship to the Lord was. For a time the others ignored him. But an hour of crisis came; and now the one man in whom they hoped was this man whom they had rejected. He was the key to the situation.

This is how it often works out today - the moral power and value of being pronouncedly the Lord's. You may have to wait for your day, until things have worked up to a crisis, and for the time being you may be ignored; but if you stand there in relation to God, and it is known, the others will be very glad some day that you let it be known, and they will seek your help because they know that you know God. There is a great power in being pronouncedly the Lord's. Sooner or later the day of such will come.

Divine Sovereignty Acting in Relation to Other Lives

But there is something still more in this story - the tremendous power that lies behind such a position in relation to the mysterious placings of God's representatives by His foreknowledge. God knew, before ever that ship was built, the people who would be on board on that voyage, and He had His eye in foreknowledge upon them for the saving of their lives. From Acts 27:6 we infer that the ship would have set sail for Italy in any case. What would have been the fate of those on board if Paul had not been with them? Would they have been saved from death? The inference is that they might not, for the angel's message to Paul was "God hath granted thee all them that sail with thee" (v. 24). God gave them to Paul. And so it would seem that Paul had to be on that ship and go through that harrowing experience because in the foreknowledge of God there were lives which were to be saved from drowning.

If you think that is an over-statement, go back to your New Testament. Paul came to Corinth and found an awful situation in that city of sin and worldliness. It must have been a terrible situation, because when writing later he said, "I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling" (1 Cor. 2:3). But the Lord stood by Paul in Corinth and said: "Be not afraid, but speak... for I have much people in this city" (Acts 18:9); they are not saved yet, but "I have much people in this city". God knows who in the city will respond to the Gospel. He has got them, in effect, because He lives in the eternal present, and the future is now with Him. With God there is not to be another soul added to the Church; He has the total secured already. And on the ship came a similar message: "Fear not, Paul... God hath granted thee all them that sail with thee". What a wonderful thing that in spite of Paul's failures there is the working of this sovereignty in putting him there on that ship! He was not there by accident but in the foreknowledge of God in relation to an issue in other lives.

Sometimes we may be in a situation like that. We do not know why we are in the place that we are in. Everything seems so difficult, so contrary, and then we see things begin to break up. It looks like calamity, and in the end there is something secured for God. But it necessitates our being there pronouncedly the Lord's to secure it. This does not just happen. We can be there and hide our light, and think it will all work out. No; for this, pronounced proprietorship of the Lord is a necessary factor. There is a great deal bound up with our being unmistakably for God on this earth; the foreknowledge and sovereignty of God operate through us, the moral power of that position operates. The strategic opportunities are put into our hands when we are there for the Lord and people know it. So from every standpoint it is a position of strength, of value, of possibility.

Human Weakness Need Not Limit Utterness for the Lord

But you may say, Paul was a superman; I am not. But look again. Why should the Lord have to say to him such things as: Fear not, Paul? Evidently he was very human after all, capable of being afraid. Most of us are capable of being silenced by fear, or by pride - and pride can be just another form of fear: fear of losing something, fear of losing 'face', reputation, influence. More often than not, it has been those people who are very human, knowing weakness in themselves, who, trusting in the Lord, have been the ones whom He has used most mightily. The secret is just this - they are the Lord's, and they are His a hundred percent, and everybody knows it. What He is needing is not just that we should belong to Him, but pronouncedly so, and that those around us should know it; and the hour will very likely come when the Lord will put them into our hands, because they know that we are the only ones who have what they then need. It is a matter of being faithful to the Lord unto such a day. He may hold us in a place and not let us go until that testimony is there established, and then perhaps He will give the situation, or those there, into our hands. We may know nothing at present about them or the Lord's designs in their lives, but they will be delivered into our hands for the Lord. Then perhaps that voyage will be over and there will be another phase of things for us. The Lord help us to be faithful.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Sep-Oct 1946, Vol 24-5

Victory Over and Deliverance from this Present Evil World

"If ye died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, do ye subject yourselves to ordinances, handle not, nor taste, nor touch (all which things are to perish with the using), after the precepts and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and severity to the body; but are not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh." (Col. 2:20-23).

"If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God." (Col. 3:1-3).

"The doctrines of men." Let that clause govern the other part of the two previous verses. Verse 3 of chapter 3 stands over against the first part of verse 20 of chapter 2: "Why, as though living in the world...." That does not mean just having your location in the world; it means something more than that. Over against that: "Your life is hid with Christ in God." Your life is not in the world, your life is in Christ.

Those verses form the very best foundation we could have for the meditation to which we are being led. We shall gather up certain things which we find running through the whole of the Scriptures, and what we find throughout the Scriptures is, for our present purpose, an eightfold thing.

1. An Abiding Antagonism and Clash between God and this World.

I think that needs very little enlarging upon for the moment. Anyone who has any grasp of the Scriptures will be able instantly to recognise that that is so. From Cainthe man of the earthright on through the whole of the Scriptures, you are brought to recognise that abiding antagonism and clash between God and this world.

2. An Abiding Expression of that Antagonism between that which is Spiritually Related to God and this World.

Anyone, any company, or anything spiritually related to God is found to be in the expression of that antagonism and that clash between God and this world, and that very relationship to God spiritually involves in the clash, involves in the antagonism.

3. A New Constitutional Affinity with this World is Seen to be in Man's Nature,

gravitating toward the world, like the point of the compass to the magnetic North. There is that which is in the very nature of man now as fallen which has an affinity with this world, and gravitates towards it, and the Scriptures reveal that that gravitation is of an inveterate character.

May I stay to make a parenthesis? No one is thinking that when I use the word "world" I am just meaning the geographical sphere. You understand that the word "world" is a very much bigger word as we use it spiritually than this geographical sphere. We use that word in its fullest meaningan order of things here separated from God, organised and controlled by the evil one. That is the full meaning of "kosmos."

4. A Spiritual System of Intelligence

as revealed by the Scriptures to be bent with all its might upon maintaining that affinity, and that relationship between man and this world.

5. Spiritual Death is the Law which Governs that Relationship,

and is the mainstay and master-hold of that system of spiritual intelligences. Let me repeat that: spiritual death is the law which governs that relationship, the relationship between fallen man and this world; and spiritual death is the mainstay and master-hold of those spiritual intelligences which are out to maintain that relationship between fallen man and this world.

6. To Sever that Bond, to Destroy that Affinity, to Introduce a Counter Law of Gravitation, is the Essence of the Work of Christ.

If you get that, you get the heart of everything. That will explain everything. The work of the Lord Jesus in coming from heaven and fulfilling His mission here is, in its very essence, the severance of the bondage of man to this world, the destroying of fallen man's affinity therewith, and the introducing into man of another law, which counters man's gravitation toward this fallen world; another law of gravitation, which is not world-ward spiritually.

7. This Severance, this Introduction of the New Spiritual Law of Heavenly Gravitation, is always Marked by the most Intense Conflict at Every Stage and Point.

It is always fraught with deep spiritual suffering. You will never emancipate a people spiritually from this world only by intense conflict and through deep suffering.

8. The Method is that of Going into Death in Order to Destroy Death, and being in the World in Order to Overcome the World.

That is an outline, and if you were able to sit down with that prayerfully I am sure you would see that you have touched something which is of primary importance. Within the range of that everything with which you and I as the Lord's children have to do is gathered up.

Now I am going on to take up one point. The work of Christ, the Cross in the work of Christ, and the purpose of His coming. That again is gathered up into eight things.

The Effect of Christ's Presence

Firstly. To once and for all register in an absolute and pre-eminent way that collision, that mutual antagonism between God and this world.   Christ's coming into this world, and Christ's  work in  this  world  in  a way  unparalleled,   unprecedented,   registered,   made manifest, dragged out into the light, threw up into clear relief that fact, that there is a mutual antagonism between God and this world. You can trace it through the Old Testament. It is quite clear there, but it is more or less local or localised in the  Old Testament. When you come to the Lord Jesus coming into this world you have the universal factor, a universal Person set down in the midst of the universe, and universal forces focussed upon Him. And because of Who He is, because God is there in Christ, because this is no mere man, as in the case  of the  Old  Testament,  because this  is "God with us"; you find that from the very commencement of His career, His course, His time here on the earth, there broke out that smouldering volcano of antagonism; first through Herod, and then by another, and another, and another means, until in the end it seems that everything has conspired and converged to cast Him out of this world, as having no place in it, as being a menace to it.

Demons betrayed secrets, the full explanation of which is not in the Word of God: "Art Thou come to destroy us before our time? I know Thee Who Thou art, the Holy One of God": betraying deep mysteries concerning the destiny and the doom of that spiritual world, that world of spiritual intelligences. Men and demons worked together, and this hate showed itself. What a great deal He had to say Himself about it, and to what lengths He carried it, into what realms; right into the heart of Judaism and its spiritual, its religious citadel, the Scribes and the Pharisees. "Ye are of your father the devil"; "the works of your father ye do"; "Ye are from beneath; I am from above"; "if ye had known the Father ye would have known Me."

You see, He carried it right there into the highest realm of religious life as this world knew it; and finding there this deep-rooted antagonism, and dragging it out, making it impossible for that thing to go on hidden, until at last, stung by His presence, it broke loose and from that realm came His doom, so far as His course here on the earth was concerned as a man. Oh yes! everywhere this universal focal point; God in Christ making manifest as never beforenot locally but universally, not merely on the earth, but in that spiritual realmthat there is a clash, a deep-seated and terrible clash between God and this world. And His coming was for that purpose. It is important for us to realise that it was necessary to expose that thing. It was essential that that thing should be dragged out, but, oh that the people of God had sufficiently recognised and grasped and apprehended this thing.

Oh! beloved, you and I, before we are through, will see the utter impossibility of that contradiction called "a worldly Christian," "a worldly Church." If we do not see that now, well, the Lord help us! The very coming of the Lord Jesus into this world was, firstly, to manifest, as had never been manifested before in a universal way, that there is, right at the very heart of things spiritually, an antagonism between God and this world; and that world can never be reconciled to God. You have to use the word "world" in another sense when speaking of reconciling the world; that is a more limited usage of the word, but that world of which we are speaking is beyond reconciliation. We shall see that as we go on.

Secondly. His coming was, while to register in an absolute and pre-eminent way that mutual antagonism, to rescue an instrument from this world, to secure an instrument in this world for this age, embodying that antagonism. Do you get the force of that? Did Christ come, first of all, to make the antagonism absolutely apparent? Yes! Then equally He came to secure an instrument in this world, for this age, which would embody that antagonism. That is, the instrument which Christ secures in this age, in this world, is going to be an age expression of the antagonism between God and this world. That means that if you and I are a part of God's instrument in this world, resultant from the work of the Lord Jesus in His Cross, you and I are going to be the embodiment of that antagonism; that is, there is going to be something about us which can have no compromise with this world, and which for ever stands in a position similar to that which the Lord Jesus occupies in relation to this world in the spiritual antagonism. And that instrument is going to feel the antagonism which He met, and is going to be conscious that this place, this world, is by no means a place of rest and abiding. "In the world ye shall have tribulation...." To get rid of that is to undo the work of the Lord Jesus; to try and get popularity in this world for Christianity, to escape the world's bitterest antagonism, is to counter all that the Lord Jesus came to do.

Now that is a terrific thing to say, but it is true. I made a note in my Testament from Martin Luther. Martin Luther had a pictorial way, as you know, of presenting truth, and he did it both for the devil and for the Lord. Martin Luther, speaking about Matthew 5:10-12 pictures the disciples of the Lord, the believers, arriving at the gates of heaven and being met there by the Lord Himself; and one of the questions which He asks each one who arrives, with which He interrogates every professed disciple is this:

"Wert thou an abomination to the whole world, as I and Mine have been from the foundation of the world?"

Well, the Lord's coming was to secure an instrument in this world for the age which would embody that mutual antagonism between God and this world. You see your calling, brethren. Does that explain something? I think it explains a lot. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews has a way of putting it: "Of whom the world was not worthy." That is his verdict on the whole matter.

Thirdly. His coming was to destroy for such (that is, such instrument), that law of death. Note: firstly, to bring out into the clear light, that which He Himself was, the reality, the depth of that mutual antagonism between God and the world. Secondly, to take out of the world a people for Himself, yet to be in the world for the age as a representation of that antagonism. Then, thirdly, to destroy for such that law, that mainstay, that master-hold of the powers of evil, to destroy him that had the power of death and to deliver them; to destroy the power of death for His own. He came to do that. It would be impossible for us to live here on God's side and on God's behalf, to meet all that antagonism of hell to God, unless Christ had accomplished the destroying of that master-hold of the devilspiritual death.

Beloved, you and I are becoming more and more conscious, are we notmany of us arethat the only possibility of staying in this world and on the earth is by the life which is triumphant over death, and unless we know more of that, this place is going to be impossible spiritually. Is that not true? It is! There is a real spiritual world, with which we are in touch, but which we so dimly understand. What is the spiritual experience of those who are really going on with God? It is, on the one hand, of an intensified consciousness of death, and, on the other hand, a growing emphasis on the power of His resurrection. Is that true? I do not think there is any doubt about it. And this is not something which touches merely the spiritually aged and fully matured. I believe that the Lord would teach the younger folk this thing; those of you who would, perhaps, think that you are not old enough to understand and enter into these great spiritualities.

I believe the Lord would teach you that you can know deliverance and victory in the realm of death by coming into a full apprehension of Him as your life, and, while the phraseology, the terminology may be difficult for you, the experience may be as clear and as simple as anything could be. The fact that those, who are children of Godwhether mature or immatureare children of God brings them into experiences which they might never have if they were not the Lord's children. The Lord does not save from going into those experiences, but in them draws out to Himself by a strong taking hold, when something very critical is threatened, and then Himself comes in, and it is something which is above what man can do, and they have learned their lesson. They have discovered it is possible to live in this world, where death reigns, and to know victory in Christ by taking hold of Him as their life. He came that for His own He might destroy that law of death by which the god of this world, the prince of this world, holds in bondage his own, and by which he operates against the saints to try and bring them back into bondage, the bondage of death.

Fourthly. His coming was to set up in His instrument,  redeemed from the world, that counter-law of a heavenly life, to introduce something else into their constitution. The constitutional law of the unredeemed from the world, of those who are of this world, is bondage to the world. They see nothing beyond the horizon of this world, and all the time the world holds them and carries them on. The tides of  worldliness carry this world on, and to try and stem those tides is an impossible thing until something has happened by which there comes about the realisation of this: "Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world"; the introduction of that which is an adequate countering to the mighty gravitating affinity in man's nature toward the world. He came to set that up in His own, and here that big difference is recognised, which has been so often pointed out, that if you really do become begotten of God,  born from above, there is put into you the life of God. You do not have to give up the world, there is not a struggle to break with this and that and something else, and you never have to sit down and say, I suppose now I am a Christian I have got to give up this and that, and I must not go here and I must not go there. You never have that sort of thing at all; you find a counter-gravitation, you find that something else has come in which has made that kind of gravitation comparatively weak; now your heart is in other directions, drawn to other things. You may test your spiritual life by that.

Now, young people, let me say a word to you. Perhaps sometime in your superficial thinking and imagining you think the world has a better time than you do, and that you would like to have a little more of what the world has. I put it to you, make up your mind to go and have it. If you are a true child of God, start off, and see how far down the road you get. You will not get there; you will turn round and come back. What is the matter with you? Well, something has happened in spite of your thinking and your imagining and those superficial feelingsmany of them perhaps the fruit of the severe time which you have because of spiritual antagonism. In spite of all that you cannot go very far in that way. You know the parable of the squirrel; you know that the gravitation is upward. Although you might just jump down to get a nut, it is not your place. The Lord came to do that, and it is the strategy of the Lord never to say that you must not go there and you must not do this. He puts something into youa counter-gravitation; a mighty work, which the Lord has accomplished.

Fifthly. To gather out from the world spiritually a people for His coming Kingdom; not to take them away from the world. That would be very nice, but He would take them out from the world spiritually, so that He has here in the world His Kingdom spiritually represented by them. And He is gathering out from the nations spiritually now; a spiritual out-gathering, detachment, a people for that coming Kingdom. He came to do that, and He has made it perfectly clear that His Kingdom is not of this world, that His Kingdom is not of things seen and handled. "I would have you know, brethren," said the apostle, "that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom." His Kingdom is now a spiritual thing in the hearts of those who have been taken out of the kingdom of darkness and translated into the Kingdom of the Son of His love. That is a thing already done. A day will come when He will translate them from this world while He deals with the rest, and purges this world and makes it fit for the habitation of saints, without any antagonism. He came to do that. He is doing it. We know it in our own hearts. That is exactly what has happened with us. We are not of the world. Our life "is hid with Christ in God." We look for a Saviour.

Sixthly. The whole course of spiritual experience is progressive detachment from the world and attachment to Christ. It is a course of spiritual history. It is a progressive thing; not that in the very commencement of our spiritual life we were not severed from the world; we were fundamentally and originally separated from the world, but you and I know quite well our experience has been all in the direction of this world becoming less and less and less, and Christ becoming more and more and more. "Whom, having not seen, we love." "Where our treasure is, there our heart is also." We know something of the words which we have read: "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is...." "Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth." We know that that is going on in us.

Seventhly. The death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit are the basic factors in this work of Christ. I am only going to mention that, because they will occupy us a good deal more later. Let me repeat it. The death, the resurrection, the ascension of Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit are the factors, the basic factors, in this work of the Lord. His death is basic, and we are told that His death is to be entered into by us in faith. "Ye died...." That means we were crucified to the world and the world unto us in Christ. The resurrection of Christ is a basic factor in this work. It means we stand on resurrection ground, and are outside of the world. He never appeared personally to the world again after His death. He will one day, but He has not done yet. So far as this age is concerned He is not on that level at all. He is outside of the world, and for the age all His own, standing with Him in resurrection, are there spiritually. His ascension means that everything now for this age for His own is heaven-ward and not of this world. The anointing of the Holy Spirit will lead us progressively, ever more and more, away from the world to Christ, revealing His things. These are the basic factors in this great work which He has come to do.

Eighthly. The Church is called to be the collective embodiment of all that truth. The Church is called to be the collectivethe corporate, if you likeembodiment of that full, absolute antagonism between God and the world. I realise that is a tremendous thing to say in the face of what is called the Church, in the face of what we know to be associated with what is called the Church. One hesitates in the almost hopeless situation that immediately confronts you when you raise the standard like that. Are we to conclude that what is called the Church is not the Church? At any rate, let us challenge ourselves on that. We can do no more than proclaim the truth and seek that it shall be realised in ourselves. It is not for us to go out and denounce or to judge, we must proclaim; but, oh! beloved, it does raise some very serious questions for many of the Lord's people; to be in any way entangled with that thing, that awful thing spiritually, against which God as in Christ has been revealed to be so utterly set; to be entangled in that through religion, through Christianity, through what is called the Church! You know quite well if you stand on that ground you will meet the antagonism of the scribes and pharisees. Do not misunderstand me in the using of those words; I only mean in the official religious realm.

The Church is called to be the corporate expression of that antagonism, of that impact, by which Christ has destroyed the power of death, and living in the power of His resurrection. The Church is called to reveal in itself  that it  is not of this world, and that it is moving steadily further and further away from the world, because Christ is becoming more and more its life; to be the embodiment of all that is meant by the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the ascension of Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. There is no doubt but that that is how it was at the beginning. Are we to say that that is gone for ever, that that can never be? No, we cannot say that. We may have to come within a very limited realm, but I verily believe that when the Lord comes, and there is that blessed movement toward Himself of the Overcomers, He will have in them the embodiment of all that. They will represent all that.

For myself I cannot see translation possible on any other ground. Is the Lord going to translate this world to heaven? Never! If you are spiritually bound up with itwhen I say spiritually, I mean in heart bound up with it, a heart linkI do not know what will happen. It seems to me to be so distinctly contradictory to the law of Christ's work. The work of the Lord Jesus marks the utter detachment from this world, and the consummation is simply the crown of that which has already taken place spiritually, the seal upon what has been done spiritually. That is how I see it, but I know the many difficulties that come up there.

Now let us close, so far as this broad survey is concerned, by just putting our finger upon one or two points. Do you see now why there must be no personal interests on the part of the people of God? What are personal interests? They are worldly in essence, in nature. It is what Paul spoke of when he said: "All seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's." That personal element runs out into so many directions, and is so imperceptible in many things, that only the Lord can bring it to light and destroy it. Do you see, on the face of it, why there must be no personal interest, that there must be such an utterness of abandonment to the Lord's interests, and that anything else than that is a spiritual  link with this world? The enemy can come in and destroy your testimony if you have any personal interests, even in the work of the Lord. Deeper than we recognise there are those things which represent our like and our dislike, our want and our not want, our going to have and our not going to have; all of which give rise to suspicion of others, and then suspicion moves silently and imperceptibly on to jealousy, and jealousy on to a breakdown in fellowship, a strain.  Tracked right down to its source it was some personal element, wanting it as we want it, wanting it ourselves, not the utter emptying of self; and in the long run, sooner or later, the enemy has made an awful havoc because there was his link. Do you now see why? When the Lord really gets a complete mastery of the life, He works to have everything carried on to resurrection ground. That is, He takes everything through a depth and a death, where we lose it, and then in a deep crisis, in which we are brought to the point of in heart letting that go to God; not reproaching God, not rebelling against God, not refusing to accept God's wav, but where we come to the place where our heart is one with the heart of God over that matter, then so often the Lord gives that back; but it has come back in a new realm. It has gone through death and it comes back by resurrection, and there is something in it now which is not of this world. It is not a time thing, it is not merely an earthly thing, it is not merely a natural thing; there is something about it now which has God in it. It is on resurrection ground, and the world factor in that has been destroyed. Now that is a true spiritual law. Do you see why the Lord must have it that way?

Let me put that in another way. This is why everything must be brought through to the place where it is wholly for God. Everything has got to be wholly for God. The apostle had something to say about the shortness of the time, and those who had wives being as those who had none. Do you think he meant that literally? Ignore your domestic responsibilities; ignore something which was of God; ride rough shod over it for what you call spiritual things? Never! A thousand times, never! What the apostle meant was this: you have got to hold everything in the light of God's interests, and if you are holding domestic relationships, or anything else here on this earth, on a natural level, where they are for yourself, for time, and for what they mean to you merely in this lifeand that is the range of thingswell, that is wrong. Everything has got to be held for God, in the light of the Lord's interests. Why? To have that link with this world and the natural life absolutely destroyed, so that the power of spiritual death cannot operate there. Do you not know, beloved, when you as a believer, as a spiritual person, or I, touch things naturally we touch spiritual death? Have you no experience of that? The power triumphant over death is in having everything wholly for the Lord and not for ourselves, not for this world, not for this life. Everything has got to be held for the Lord.

It is so easy to sing hymns of consecration. We can sing about being all for the Lord, and having everything for the Lord, and we can answer to such challenges, but now let us face it. Are we holding everything for the Lord? Have we got something which, if we would only let that go, would in some other life give the Lord larger interests? Are we taking this attitude: now, while this thing means much to me, while in a natural way I have deep sentimental ties with this, and it is not easy to let things go; nevertheless, if the Lord is going to get more by my letting go, giving up, well, that is the thing that counts, that is the thing that matters. That is holding things for the Lord. Are we holding things for the Lord? If we are holding things for ourselves, if we are holding things in this life before those heavenly interests of the Lord we are opening the door to spiritual death. We cannot grow spiritually, we become earth-bound, our spiritual progress is delayed, if not utterly arrested. Everything must be carried over on to resurrection ground, and be wholly for the Lord, wholly for heaven. "Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth." There is so much bound up with this.

Now do you understand the meaning of suffering? I ask you, those of you who have suffered as the Lord's children, what has been the effect of your suffering; that is, inasmuch as you have not been persistently rebellious and hard because of the suffering, but inasmuch as you have sought to be one with the Lord in your suffering, what has been the effect of it? Answer me: has it been to make this world much less and the Lord much more, the things of heaven much more? Is that not true? This world has lost its grip, perhaps its charm, its hold. The things which are above have become far more to you through your suffering. Well do you see the meaning of suffering; what the Lord is doing? Why does the Lord empty us out? Why does He pour us out to the last drop? Just so that He can pour in, that is all. Just so that heavenly things may take the place of natural, earthly things. The Lord permits His people to suffer in order that that gravitation world-ward might be weakened, and that that power of death might be destroyed; that they may become a heavenly people, living by a life which is His own life, and which it takes full spiritual intelligences to appreciate.

I mean this: here are two possible courses; the Lord to come in in such a mighty fulness of His own life as the risen Lord, that the individual should never for one moment give the slightest hint that they know anything about death; be always so triumphantly aglow, throbbing with vitality, as though death had never existed for them at all. That is one possibility, or one alternative. What do you suppose would be the reaction to that? I think I can tell you. The natural man would simply say: What a marvellous constitution that man has! Why, if I had digestive organs, like him it would be heaven on earth! What a tremendous capacity the man has? They talk about the man, put that sort of thing down to nature. There is the alternative to that. Paul, moving about with infirmity, speaking about knowing weakness, despairing of life. Surely that is not to the glory of Goddespairing of life! All this talk about weakness and infirmity and despairing of life! Why, where is the resurrection in that? Where is Christ triumphant over death in all that? Spiritual intelligences know! They know quite well that if that man were left alone without God he would be dead in five minutes, that he really ought to have been dead a score of times. If hell could have had its way he would have been finished up long ago, but hell has not had its way. All the powers of death have not had their way, and the man has come to the time when he is able to say: "I have finished the course." No broken column there; no life cut short by the devil there, much as he has tried; no purpose frustrated by hell there. "I have finished...." I have not stopped half way or three quarters of the way; I have finished! Can you see the tremendous implication of that? The background over against which it is set?

That is the testimony of Christ triumphant, but you cannot recognise that with the human mind; you need a full spiritual intelligence to grasp that. It is only principalities and powers who are able adequately to register the power of His resurrection. They recognise it, they know. So the Church goes on in suffering, in weakness, in infirmity, "in deaths oft"; but the Church will finish its course, the issue will be that the full measure of that law of death operating in this world was taken by Christ in His Church and triumphed over. He is doing something through our weakness. We do not see it, we do not feel it, we very often forget all about it in the presence of the suffering, but He is doing something; that now unto the principalities and powers in the heavenlies should be displayed this manifold wisdom of God. That is the meaning of suffering; the raising of a heavenly testimony: getting us away from the world, and making us live by a life which is hid with Christ in God.

Do you see the utter impossibility of being all the Lord's and having any kind of heart association with this world? That ought to come home to us in a new way.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jul-Aug 1934 Vol. 12-4

When We Cannot See the Way

"Thy way was in the sea, and thy paths in the great waters" (Psalm 77:19).

You will notice that the above words are taken from one of the eleven Psalms bearing the name of Asaph. You will also know that "Asaph the seer" (2 Chron. 29:30) was one of David's leaders of music; he was both choir-master and composer of words and music as well. But in this Psalm we meet the choir-master in doleful mood. He has lost his song and his music.

Asaph is deeply and heavily depressed; he is having a bad time. As he looks out on the situation (whatever it was), and contemplates his predicament, he goes deeper and deeper into the Slough of Despond, and begins to ask questions about God Himself - His mercy, His faithfulness, His kindness. The lights are all out along that street, and there is - apparently - no way out.

But, as is always the case with a true servant or child of God, there comes a point at which a reaction sets in.

The Sun will be found shining again and the song will return; but, as in the natural, so in the spiritual, the new day is first heralded by faint streaks of dawn, declaring that the turning-point between night and day has been reached. Verse 10 seems to be that point of crisis: "I said, This is my infirmity". 'This is really not the Lord. This is not the beginning and the end of the story. This is myself! I am making God after my own miserable image. I am reducing God to my own temperamental complexion.' We, too, may do that sort of thing, and indeed we often do. It may be very real. But, however real, we must always take account of our "infirmity", our constitutional or temperamental or dispositional limitation.

But even before that lifting of the eyes from the earth to a larger horizon, Asaph had taken a step toward the sunrise. "I call to remembrance my song in the night" (v. 6). By that, he did not mean that he would call to mind the fact that he had been more cheerful in the past, and would remember that he had sung even in the night. It was not just the fact that he had sung; it was what he had sung. There was a night - either literal or spiritual - when, his eyes being held waking (v. 4), he had composed a song for the choir. What was the song about?

Well, what is all the trouble about? The focal point of, and the key to, the whole situation was this matter of a "way" (vv. 13,19). No Way!

Asaph was saying, 'In my song in the night I portrayed Israel's dilemma and predicament at the Red Sea. Behind them the pursuing army of Pharaoh. On either side desert and mountains. Before them the deep and dark waters of the sea straddling their path. There was no way! The question was: 'Where can God place His feet? There is no way, even for God.' "Thy footsteps were not known" (v. 19).

'Then', says the leader of song, 'I said that, sea or desert or mountains notwithstanding, God knows no embarrassment; He has to make no detours: He goes straight on and through, and the sea is as if it were not.' "Thy way was in the sea, and thy paths in the great waters." The Israelites knew no way for His feet, but He knew! The song that Asaph had once composed for others, now became the way of deliverance for the singer-poet himself. How often our 'doubting castles' have to be broken out of by applying to ourselves lessons that we have passed on to others - by believing our own beliefs! To call to remembrance - "I will remember" - may be the first streak of light for a new day.

How often has this same issue of a 'way' arisen in the history of God's people, God's servants, and God's work! And Heaven - only Heaven - has had the answer. A prophet was confronted with such a situation, and his servant cried: "Alas, my master, how shall we do?" (2 Kings 6:15). But Heaven had the answer. So it was with a king - Hezekiah - when a mighty host compassed the city and cut off every way. Heaven had the answer! (2 Chron. 32:21,22).

We are told that, just before the Church goes out, the nations will have no way out. In Luke 21:25, the Lord Jesus speaks of nations being "in perplexity". The most literal meaning of the word is 'without passage', 'having no way through'. How appropriate are those words to our time! But then the Lord said: "When these things begin to come to pass, look up... your redemption draweth nigh" - i.e., 'your way out is near'.

It may be the sea of tribulation in the nations; it may be mighty waters of testing for the Church but -

"Thy WAY was in the sea, and thy PATHS in the great waters".

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1958, Vol 36-1

Where Are You Looking?

Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.

Make level the paths of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.

Turn not to the right hand nor to the left. (Proverbs 4:25-27)

"Looking unto Jesus..." (Hebrews 12:2)

For the man in Christ life has a clear and definite objective. The Spirit has seen good to fill the whole Bible with that truth, continually urging the believer to realise that his life is set in the context of divine purpose. The letter to the Hebrews not only appeals to us to press on to this goal, but it portrays Christ as the great example and proof that the goal can be reached. Jesus has gone this way; He has gone the whole way, and He has arrived at the destination. More-over He has done it all for us, and by His accomplishment has given us the ground of confidence that the goal can be attained and the prize received. He took upon Himself our humanity, accepted the challenge of our circumstances and experiences, never faltering until the divine end was reached. We are reminded that He has triumphantly fulfilled God's purpose, and that by His present position He offers us the assurance that we too can share in His triumph. We must keep looking unto Jesus. More correctly this should be stated as: 'looking off unto Jesus'. This matter of the direction of our spiritual gaze is of the utmost importance. The wise man equated a straight and established path with the straight look ahead and with no turning aside to the right or to the left. The Word of God gives clear warning about getting off the road of His will, for God knows the hazards involved in so doing and wishes to save us from the hindrance to progress which can result when we look or face in the wrong direction. In this article we shall consider some of these looks which must be avoided by those who wish to make spiritual progress.

The Backward Look

The Lord Jesus was most emphatic about this matter when He stated that the one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. This backward look can lead to grave tragedies. In the wilderness this is what Israel did. Egypt lay behind them and should always have been turned away from, but in the difficulties of the way they called one another to look back. "They turned again and tempted God, and provoked the holy one of Israel" (Psalm 78:41). They spoiled their whole course by this action, and for many years they made no progress at all but went round and round in circles; and all because of the backward look. That generation failed to enter into what God had prepared for them, simply because they yielded to the temptation to look back, which was - and always is - the wrong direction.

Similar perils beset God's people in New Testament times. The Galatian believers were unsettled by the voice of the Judaizers, calling them to look back, not to the world with its ungodliness, not altogether to forsake Christ, but to face towards a religious procedure which was not the spiritual life to which they had been called in Christ. They had already half looked back, and had come to a standstill because of this. Previously they had been making good progress, as we always do when we keep our eyes on Christ, but now they had stopped and were raising the question as to whether they would in fact go on any more, or whether they would go back to the beggarly elements which should have been left behind. The letter was meant to warn them of the dangers of the backward look. The letter to the Hebrews was written for the same purpose. Those concerned could easily be made to feel the emotional nostalgia of the system from which they had been delivered, so they had to be reminded that they would forfeit God's pleasure if they drew back, and urged rather to press on, looking away from the past and focussing their gaze on the exalted Christ. However advanced we may be in our Christian experience, there seems to be no point when we can afford to take our eyes off the goal set before us and indulge in the follies of the backward look.

The Look Around

When the spies brought back the wrong report concerning the promised land, they did so because they had only looked around them, and never measured what they saw with the reality of an all-powerful God. They did not just imagine the difficulties; they did not need to do so for the cities and giants were real enough. But they kept their gaze down to the things around them, never lifting up their eyes to the one from whom help comes, and so they were discouraged themselves and they discouraged God's people with what was called an evil report. The trouble was that they only looked on their visible surroundings and took their eyes off the Lord. There were only two of them who kept their gaze in the right direction, and they were the ones who eventually went through to the end. Their eyes looked right on, and so their ways were established.

In the New Testament Peter is the great example of the peril which comes to those who look around. So long as he kept his eyes on Christ he could actually walk on the water, but he began to sink as soon as he turned them away, changed the direction of his attention and began to look at circumstances - "When he saw the wind..." (Matthew 14:30). Once again let it be said that he had plenty of reason for his fear. Indeed there are ancient manuscripts which read, 'the strong wind'. However it was his foolishness in letting outward circumstances distract his attention from his Lord which earned him a wetting, even though the hand of Jesus so graciously rescued him from anything worse. At all costs we must beware of looking around in unbelief when we should be looking off and up in faith.

The Short-sighted Look

Paul had to blame the Corinthians for limiting their vision to the things immediately before their eyes: "You look at the things which are before your face" (2 Corinthians 10:7). To be spiritually short-sighted, focussing only on what is near at hand, is to become too easily satisfied and contented in the realm of things spiritual; to have a small and narrow horizon and to fail to appreciate the much more which God has in mind. It is so easy to settle into a limited and very circumscribed area, thinking only of the spiritual things with which we are familiar and which seem so important to us, while we fail to take note of the much more which lies beyond us and to which we are being called. There are few things more stultifying in the Christian life than an assumption that there is nothing beyond the small sphere of our experience. It is possible to get so shut-in, so near-sighted, that we go round and round in circles, never looking out to the new dimensions of spiritual experience to which God is calling us, and almost imagining that we know all there is to know about God's Word and His purposes in Christ. The Corinthians seem to have done this, so to have focussed down on their own affairs, even their own spiritual gifts, that they were almost at a standstill spiritually. They were looking at themselves, full of concern for their own assembly, which was right enough, but apparently not able to appreciate the large purposes of God as represented by Paul's ministry. Even the matters which have been clearly shown of God and blessed by Him can become a hindrance when they arrest and hold the attention as things in themselves. These are the things before our face, but we were intended always to look beyond them to the Lord, and always beyond the immediate factors to the eternal values in Christ. We can be short-sighted even with the Word of God, if we concentrate only on what we have already known of Christ and fail to appreciate that God has much more light and truth to break forth from His Word.

The Downward Look

To the Philippians Paul wrote: "...not looking each of you to his own things..." (Philippians 2:4). He was urging them not always to be governed by how things affected them personally, not to measure every matter as to whether they stood to gain or lose by what was happening. Self-forgetfulness is one of the secrets of spiritual progress. When, in His talk with the needy Samaritan woman at Sychar's well, Jesus had demonstrated this gracious turning aside from personal concerns to care for others, He followed up His example by exhorting His disciples to lift up their eyes and look upon the fields. A selfish look is a downward look, and as such is to be avoided by those who wish to make level the paths of their feet. Paul's concern was not only with the spiritual good of the individual believers but with the onward march of the fellowship of God's people, and he knew that this would be seriously impaired if each one became preoccupied with his own affairs, even though it was in the realm of spiritual things.

The Inward Look

The last of these mis-directed looks is perhaps the commonest in the case of those who wish to follow the Lord. How much of the Scriptures seems to be concerned with getting God's people to stop looking inwards. Perhaps there is nothing more calculated to arrest spiritual progress than the inward look. What are we looking for? Something good in ourselves? We will never find that, as Paul makes quite clear when he affirms: "I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing" (Romans 7:18). Introspection is the very opposite of faith, for it searches for some evidence of God's holiness and power in ourselves, instead of rejoicing in the perfection of the Saviour. It has a spurious appearance of humility and piety, but in fact it leads to self-preoccupation, instead of preoccupation with Christ. We need to be sensitive so that the Holy Spirit can lead us ever continuingly to the appropriation of the cleansing power of Christ's blood, but we must never keep gazing inwards when we should be looking off and up to our Substitute and Saviour. It is not a healthy person but a sick one who is always feeling his own pulse and taking his own temperature. Salvation is health; the health of those who know that their righteousness is in heaven. We do right to let the Lord search us, but we will have nothing but trouble if we persist in looking within. If we think that it is necessary to keep looking in to avoid falling into Satan's snares, the psalmist will assure us that the Lord will watch our feet if we keep our eyes on Him: "My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for He will pluck my feet out of the net" (Psalm 25:15). This is one more argument for the upward look.

The Upward Look

It is becoming apparent that a great deal depends on our looking, so we are not surprised that towards the end of the letter to the Hebrews which reminds us that we are called to partnership with Christ and urges us to press on towards fullness in Him, there should be this call to look off unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. We are to look off from what is behind, from what is round about, from what is near at hand and what is essentially selfish; to look off from ourselves to Jesus. Abraham, the great man of faith, looked for a heavenly city and a heavenly country, and so was saved from looking back or settling down. Much was bound up with this sustained look of his. So often he was tempted to seek more immediate benefits, some middle ground which was less than God's best, and the Lord had constantly to call him to take his eyes off earth's distractions and rewards so that he could look away to the essentially spiritual and heavenly goal of his calling.

The passage in Proverbs stresses the close relationship between looking straight ahead and having a clear and direct path of progress. Abraham found that this looking away from the things of earth kept him constantly on the move. From time to time he could have settled down in satisfaction with his own position, but "he looked for a city", and he was saved from stagnation by keeping his eyes on God's promised goal. A very relevant passage in this connection is: "Our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:17-18). It is the eternal which is in view, and this calls for adjustment in many respects of our affairs, so that our lives can be directed towards the permanent glory of God's purpose for us. Our procedure should always have eternity in view. When we are considering a relationship, we should see it in the light of God's end. If we have to decide where to live or what work to take up, we should let our eyes look right on, not choosing what seems good just at the moment, but making sure that eternal values are also considered. Just as Satan tempted Christ by offering Him the kingdoms of this world and their glory, so he will try to distract our attention from the will of God by offering seeming advantages now. We shall always be saved by the upward look.

Where Do You Stand?

"And the Lord God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou?" (Genesis 3:9)

"Behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?" (1 Kings 19:9)

"I John, ...was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus." (Revelation 1:9)

There are times when we are called upon to give an account of where we are and why we are there. This is what happened on the three occasions which are described in our texts. The two in the garden were so challenged by God Himself, as was Elijah when he fled from Jezebel. Then there was John who commenced his book of the Revelation by declaring where he was when he received that revelation, and why he was there.

The Lord's purpose in the case of the garden at the beginning was represented and symbolised by the tree of life. Everything circled around it, as may be verified by the reference in the final book of the Bible, the Revelation. So the original man's position was challenged as to its relationship with the Lord's testimony of life.

Elijah was the great prophet of life. How much he had to do with the meeting and overcoming of death! Eventually he went up in a whirlwind, untouched by death and triumphing gloriously over it. Here, however, we read of his being questioned as to his position, and pressed by the Lord to state just why he was where he was at that time.

There can be no doubt about the spiritual position of the apostle John. His whole ministry had been concerned with the testimony of Christ's triumphant life, and it was for that testimony's sake that he found himself in the isle of Patmos. There was no need for the Lord to ask any questions as to the whereabouts of His faithful servant, for He Himself had permitted the banishment, but others might ask and, if they did, John had his answer. He was where he was for the sake of the testimony.

Each of these three men had a different relationship to the testimony and each had to declare just what his position was. Which immediately confronts us with our own personal feelings. Where do we stand? We have church associations and activities, we have doctrinal beliefs and Bible teaching, but the real question is whether we are in the good of a real and effective testimony to triumphant life in Christ. This is not just a matter of orthodoxy or sound evangelism, but rather of the impact of victorious life upon the kingdom of spiritual death.

ADAM and Eve had lost their living, God-appointed testimony. They hid themselves from the Lord. This means, of course, that there had awakened in them a conviction as to their maladjustment to the will of God. There was something gravely wrong with Adam's position. When the Lord asked: "Where art thou?", it was not because He did not know Adam's whereabouts so much as a stern challenge concerning his departure from the spiritual relationship with Himself which the man had previously had.

In the first place Adam was in a wrong relationship because of disobedience. He had been given light, had been instructed as to his proper procedure, but he had wilfully disobeyed. Perhaps he thought that he could get something better by taking this wilful way, or conversely that he would have lost by not taking it. This latter was certainly the suggestion made to him by the tempter. In any case, though, the point of the story is that, having been given light by God, he had disobeyed it and so fallen out of vital relationship with the Giver. So far as he and Eve were concerned, the door was now closed, and it would require another and a different 'Adam' to re-open it. It is a very serious thing to be shown the Lord's purpose and then to reject the light and sin against it. Adam tried to make excuses, as we so often tend to do, but the Lord cannot be put off in that way. No excuses will pass with Him. Adam is out of touch with God, that is where he is, and the inevitable consequence is death.

ELIJAH, of course, is in quite a different category, and yet, for the moment, we sense a certain peril in his position. His difficulty was not disobedience but unbelief. This man who had maintained such a glorious testimony of victorious life, was longing to be quit of it all. 'It is no good. Please take away my life, Lord', was what he said, although he was the one man in the whole of the Old Testament who could be expected never to succumb to such a death-wish. Yet here he was, the man who had proved the power of God's life in miraculous ways, now pleading with God to let death have its way with him.

I am not criticising Elijah. Far be it from me to reproach God's servant, for under much less trial, I have sometimes been tempted to feel that it was not worthwhile to go on. Under such Satanic pressure, it was no wonder that the prophet lost heart, became discouraged, and longed to get away from it all.

God, of course, would not accept Elijah's proffered resignation. He first challenged him as to why he was where he was, and then listened while Elijah poured out his mournful story. So often when we do that, there is not much in it, and even the telling of our tale makes us realise how wrong we are in our hasty reactions. With Elijah, God went on to point out that his assessment of the situation was quite erroneous: "I have yet seven thousand...". It was as though the Lord said to him: 'Your claim to be the only one is quite wrong. Go back again. Prove once more that the testimony which you bear is one of triumphant life. You are not finished yet, but when you are, the testimony will still go on.'

WITH John the story is quite different. Adam had perfect surroundings, but he lost his testimony. In his cruel banishment John had just the opposite; but he was where he was both because of and in the good of this testimony of triumphant life. It is not environment which decides this issue, it is not circumstances, but rather personal relationship with the Lord. Adam in Paradise departed from the testimony: John in Patmos maintained it. Think of his situation, his position, and then remember how he sat down and wrote Spirit-inspired words about the river of the water of life. This victim of Roman persecution, exiled and oppressed, penned his book of Revelation which abounds with references to life. There can be no reproach about John's location; he was in the right place and was there for the Lord.

Some of us may complain about our situation or surroundings, feeling that where we are and in our circumstances there is no opportunity for an expression of victorious life. The best remedy will be to re-read Revelation 1:9, and to get inspiration from this old warrior who could sing so triumphantly even in the midst of outward opposition. Here was a man who could answer the challenge as to his whereabouts by declaring that he was in the good of the testimony of throne life.

Really the matter resolves itself into a matter of being or not being in the will of God. Adam's position, even though at that time he was still in the garden, was that he was out of the will of God. Elijah's location was due to doubts and questions about the will of God. John could claim that for his part he was in the centre of God's will. Men would call his situation unhappy and unjust, but he was able to rejoice as he accepted God's overruling permission of the tribulation which had overtaken him. That explains the flow of living ministry which went out from Patmos to Asia and to the world, from that day to this. He knew where he stood, and God was with him.

Now in each of these three cases, the element of Satanic power and guile was very obvious. The Devil is one who deals in death, and he is the fierce opponent of the testimony of life. He saw that if Adam ever became a partaker of incorruptible life, he would forever have lost his chance with the human race, so he made his supreme bid to get in between man and God, and he did so by deception. By this he tricked Adam into a break with the will of God, robbed him of his birth-right, and spoiled the purposes of God for that first humanity.

In Elijah's case it was Jezebel who was Satan's agent in putting intolerable pressure on God's servant. Elijah withstood and overcame this enmity so well and for so long, but then in physical weariness and soul disappointment the prophet temporarily succumbed. So it was that Elijah felt unable to withstand the pressure any longer and decided to ask God to relieve him of any further responsibility for the testimony. This can happen to us all. It is not a matter of the kind of deception which defeated Adam and is not a direct temptation to flagrant disobedience, but the sheer pressure of doubting whether we can go on any more. Satan never lets up in this unceasing endeavour to get a man out of the place where he ought to be, either geographically or spiritually. He knows that only those who abide in the will of God are any match for him.

There is no question about the evil nature of the powers which made John a prisoner on Patmos, and it is specifically stated that it all arose from John's faithfulness to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. The apostle, however, refused to capitulate. Adam might defy the will of God. Elijah might doubt it, but he would glory in it. This is the way of certain victory; to accept God's will, however painful it may be, and to trust Him in the certain faith that His will must triumph in the end. John stood his ground, maintaining his testimony in the face of every foe, and as a consequence has exercised a mighty ministry of life right down the centuries.

For us it must be the Lord's testimony that determines our position - not things, not people, not arguments and not apparent failure. There is, of course, a battle. It is never easy to maintain that testimony of life, but it is all important that we should do so. At any point we may be challenged as to why we are where we are, and we can always face that challenge if we keep true to the Lord in every circumstance. Any sense of question, any lack of assurance, any capitulation to the tempter, will rob us of our testimony; but provided we can affirm that we are standing for God where we are, then we need fear no challenge.

The Wondrous Ways of God

From "The Work of the Ministry" Volume 1.

"Thy way was in the sea,

And thy paths in the great waters,

And thy footsteps were not known.

Thou leddest thy people like a flock.

By the hand of Moses and Aaron"

(Psalm 77:19,20)

What a strange juxtaposition of similes! It would be difficult to have a greater contrast than is presented in these two verses - the pilot through the sea, and the shepherd with his flock. The sea in a rage and an uproar, the tempest and the storm - and, right alongside of it, the shepherd and his flock. One a picture of unrest, disturbance, anxiety, stress, mighty forces in action; the other of tranquillity, restfulness, calm. What a contrast! - and yet brought together in one statement as to what the Lord is to His people - a pilot, a shepherd.

You need to read the whole psalm to get the full value of that. The first part of the psalm is a record of distress, perplexity, bewilderment, a crying out in trouble, reaching the agony of "Hath God forgotten to be gracious?" "Is his lovingkindness clean gone for ever?" - questions about the Lord. And then the writer recollects and says, "This is my infirmity... I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High"; and the whole tone changes. Recollection and review, as to how it all worked out in the long run, brings reassurance, leading finally to this summary at the end. And yet it is only an introduction - because undoubtedly the last two verses of this psalm are an introduction to the next one, that great historic record of the Lord's dealings with His people - Psalm 78. What a long psalm it is, recounting the movements of the Lord's people and the Lord's guidance and dealings with them. The psalmist has worked up to that in this way. With all there is here for most helpful, encouraging, reassuring meditation, we can at the present time only look at the gist of the matter.

I am going to change the metaphor again, from the pilot through the storm, and the shepherd with his flock, to the mountaineer. There are three peaks which every child of God has to master - peaks that are suggested by this psalm. We are not really qualified for the service of the Lord, nor for life itself in relation to the Lord, until we have mastered these three peaks. They will challenge us; they may challenge us again and again; but somehow or other we have got to be the masters of them and they have got to be things that have lost their terror for us, have lost their dread, have lost that which makes them for us things that defeat and weaken.

Divine Purpose Governing All

The first of these peaks which arises out of this psalm so clearly is Divine purpose governing all. You know how this mountain presented itself to Israel at the beginning of their history. When the psalmist refers to 'His way in the sea' and 'His paths in great waters', what is he talking about? Undoubtedly about the Red Sea as it confronted them. What a terror, what a dread there was that night! We may picture how the East wind howled and the water lashed. What a dread that sea was to the people - with what fear and trepidation did they approach its bank! The waters piled up as a wall on the left and the right served little to abate their terror. It was a terrible night, the passing through the Red Sea. It was, in a sense, a veritable mountain to be negotiated - and a mountain of, for them, terrible possibilities. But do you notice what the psalmist says? He says (Ps. 77:16) that these waters were - well, our translation does not give us the exact word. They were troubled, they were in anguish, they were groaning, and the original word which is used to describe the state of the waters suggests that they were in travail, the sea was in travail, and the nation was born in that sea that night. A nation was born in the Red Sea that night, and the waters were in anguish. It is a picture.

You see Divine purpose working in the tempest: behind the fear, the terror, all that seemed so awful that night, Divine purpose was governing, producing a nation, bringing a nation to birth - "paths in the great waters". That is one thing that we have sooner or later to settle, that the raging, the terror, the dread, the threatening, the thing that seems to mean our undoing, is being governed by Divine purpose to produce something of very great value to the Lord. The recollection of this saved the psalmist when he was crying out with those questions - "Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Is his lovingkindness clean gone for ever?" The psalmist was in a state of distress. I think he was expressing the state of the people at that time, and wondering whether the Lord had not forsaken His people altogether and left them. Then he says, 'Let us look back - let us go back to our beginning as a nation. Were we not born in a threat? Did we not begin our history in what seemed to speak destruction? Was it not in the most terrible tempest that we, by the mighty power of God, came out His people, delivered, saved, set apart?' That recollection saved the psalmist in his hour, and we too have to reach the place where we say, with every new tempest, raging, threat, dread, fear, onslaught, whatever it is - God has something in this; purpose governs.

But then that involves something else, carries something else with it.

Divine Wisdom Dictating

The second mountain peak is this - Divine wisdom dictating. It is not only that there is purpose which is the end, but that there is wisdom dictating the way to the end. The psalmist looked back and saw, and said to himself, 'Ah, at the time we could see no wisdom of God at work, the way we were going seemed to be such a confused way, a contradictory way, everything seemed to be anything but the dictating of Divine wisdom; but now I can see: God chose the way, the method, the means which He knew would most effectively reach His end, and we have to negotiate that mountain.' It does seem so strange, the way the Lord goes. What is the Lord doing? Why? All the questions come up. But wisdom is dictating the way to the end.

Divine Love Controlling

And then, Divine love controls. It controls the end, the way, the motive - yes, the Pilot; but He is not a disinterested detached pilot, just doing his job without any heart-relationship to the people in his care. The metaphor changes at once, as though to say, 'Ah, there is something more in it than that. God is not just negotiating through difficulties in a cold, detached way. He is a Shepherd.' And if there is one picture in the Bible of a heart-relationship to others, it is the picture of the shepherd. God's heart is bound up with His people, and the psalmist says an interesting thing here. "Thy way was in the sea, and thy paths in great waters, and thy footsteps were not known." What does he mean?

Go back again, after it is all over, to the other side of the Red Sea. The wind has quieted down, and the tempest has come to rest. You look to see where His 'footprints' are, and you cannot find them. You cannot say, 'He did it like this and that'. You cannot find out just how He did it. The fact is that He did it, and that is all; you cannot explain, define, mark it out. The psalmist is saying - 'That is how God does things'. He does the most wonderful things - things which involve the whole question of life and death for us; and when He has done them, you just cannot see any trace of how He did it - but it was done. Do we not have to say that? We come up against a situation like the Red Sea, and say, 'How are we going to master this? What is the Lord going to do with this one?' He just does it. We look back, again and again, and say, 'The Lord has done it, but how, I do not know'. "Thy footsteps were not known." You cannot trace out how the Lord does things, but He does them. He brings the mighty tempest to serve His end, by His wisdom, in His love, because He is the Shepherd of His flock - because His heart is bound up with them. It matters to Him about us.

Ye Are Come

Notes of a Conference at Honor Oak

Reading: Rev. 21 "The holy city, new Jerusalem."

Heb. 12:22 "Ye are come... unto the heavenly Jerusalem."

1. The City - Its Essentially Spiritual Character

The City, as set forth in Rev. 21, is a whole system of Divine thoughts set forth in symbols - the presentation in consummate form of all the working of God - a spiritual state and position seen in a whole people constituted according to His mind. It presents features that are precious to God, i.e. features of Christ. These are foundation factors (c.f. the precious stones of v. 19). In its principles it is therefore not only future, but is operative now. "Ye are come..." The background and basis of everything that counts for God in our lives is spiritual.

The City is one of the several designations in the Word of God (c.f. Body, House, Temple, etc.) to describe the people of God, the Church. Each designation has its particular significance. A city is a governmental centre. (The number 12, the number of government, is much in evidence in Rev. 21). The City therefore sets forth that which governs; first in the lives of the Lord's people themselves, and then through them in the universe. Government is entirely a spiritual matter with God: it is spirituality that directs the course of things (c.f. 2 Thess. 2:6,7 - "one that restraineth"). Whatever the exact significance of this, it is without doubt an essentially spiritual factor that is already governing the course of the age. Divine government is vested by predestination in the Church. Our influence is the measure of our spirituality. Are we seeking the increase of spiritual values?

2. The City - A Corporate Expression of Divine Features

"The tabernacle of God is with men" (v. 3) - fulfilled in Jesus Christ, "Emmanuel" - similarly in the Church, in terms of sonship; to be realised as a spiritual entity expressing God's thoughts, judgments, etc. Details of the City are the varied expressions of God - what He is like; e.g.:

(1) "Having the glory of God" (v. 11) - Glory can be defined as the satisfaction of God in expression. Whenever we know that God is well-pleased in us we taste glory and "are come" to the City. (How well we know that when God is not well pleased in us we taste the reverse of glory!)

(2) "Light... clear as crystal" (v. 11) - All cloudiness, duplicity, etc. gone. God is effecting this in us now by child-training, "that we may be partakers of his holiness" (Heb. 12:1-13). Sons are being perfected. We "are come" to the City.

(3) "Walls" and "Gates" (v. 12) - Features of discrimination and of government as to what is according to God's mind and what is not, to admit or to exclude. Spirituality alone can determine this. The spiritually minded already thus function (1 Cor. 2:15) - they "are come" to the City.

3. The City - The Bride of the Lamb

"Bride" suggests first love - undividedness of heart, joyous devotion to the Bridegroom's interests, jealousy for Him, realisation of the tremendous cost and grace wherewith He, as the Lamb, has bought her by sacrifice.

Ephesus was the climax of Paul's ministry and love is specially associated with that church. (Note the atmosphere of Acts 20:17-38, and Rev. 2:4). Ephesus departed from her first love - the love of her espousals (Jer. 2:2).

Love is the climax of the Lord's working. The City as the Bride suggests a corporate love - a company in a spirit and atmosphere of a great love for the Lord Jesus; a shared love, that finds expression in a life laid down for His interests in other lives. Is there not need for us to seek recovery of first love that we have lost?

4. The City - The Cost of Experimental Apprehension

Men who have come into the place of vision and true spiritual apprehension have invariably had a 'prison' background, literal or otherwise - c.f. Jeremiah (Jer. 32:1,2), Ezekiel (Ezek. 1:1), John (Rev. 1:9,10), Paul (Eph. 3:1, etc.). Such men were locked up to the consequences of the spiritual position they had taken up - c.f. Israel in the wilderness; they had left Egypt and come out to the Lord. This necessarily meant they no longer had the resources of the world available to them and they were shut up to receiving everything from Him: and how they murmured and rebelled and were sorry for themselves! - All who seek to be spiritual will know a prison in one form or other. Why? Firstly, because God is after something in them of such spiritual value (to be the governing thing in His universe), that He must shut them up to Himself for training; and secondly, because all opposing spiritual forces will try to bring under restraint so that expression and survival are rendered impossible. But the Lord is sovereign over Satan's work and makes the prison the very place of discipline, and enlargement. Every bit of real spiritual knowledge is wrung out of suffering. We shall never come to knowledge of the Lord without that knowledge being necessary. - Are we wanting spiritual knowledge? Then are we ready to pay for it? (c.f. Rev. 3:18). If so, let us draw encouragement from our imprisonment.

But note: sufferings do not necessarily enlarge us. What is the needed condition? Like John, we must be "in the Spirit" as well as "in Patmos", This means "in the Lord" and out of ourselves. If we are wrapped up in ourselves, in the trials, etc. of our "prison", we shall see nothing and make no spiritual advance. We must let go to the Lord, in acceptance and submission. Thus shall we be spiritually enlarged. The measure of our capacity is the measure of our spirituality, not of our intellectual attainment, etc.

5. The City - Realised through Faith and Patience

Abraham ('Faith') first got a glimpse of the City (Heb. 11:10). Once you have seen it, you need intense faith to hold on for it and to accept nothing less. Realisation may look hopeless, but the hopeless and the impossible can come to pass (c.f. Gen. 18:14; Rom. 4:18).

God's City has never come into view until Man's City has been judged and dismissed - c.f. Babel, then Abraham and the City of God; Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon overthrown, then Jerusalem restored; 'Babylon' (Rev. 18), then the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21); the nominal 'Church', then the true Church. While the earthly is having its day, those who are waiting for the heavenly have need of patience. They may not see much now, but their stand will count in the afterward.

Men of spiritual vision always committed themselves by acts of faith to what they saw - c.f. Jeremiah in the purchase of the field (Jer. 32). In the day of a double imprisonment - shut up in the court of the guard in a city which was itself surrounded by the army of the enemy - he staked his reputation and his money upon a day of Divinely promised recovery.

Have we seen God's full thought for His Church? If so, have we committed ourselves to it, to wait for it in faith and patience, as Abraham did?

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1943, Vol 21-6