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Recovery in a Day of Failure

by T. Austin-Sparks

From unpublished manuscripts, first published by the Golden Candlestick Trust.

Contents

Chapter 1 - Departure From the Full Thought of the Lord

Chapter 2 - Taking Responsibility for the Lord's Testimony

Chapter 3 - Faith to Take His Strength

Chapter 4 - Standing on the Ground of Our Union in Christ

Chapter 5 - Taking God's Ground of Faith

Chapter 6 - Features of Spiritual Leadership

Chapter 7 - Features of Spiritual Leadership (continued)

Chapter 8 - The Pathway to and the Nature of Usefulness to the Lord

Chapter 1 - Departure From the Full Thought of the Lord

Reading: Judges 4; 5:1-9.

Spiritual Judgement

One of the greatest needs of our time is that we should know what are those factors which make for the recovery of the Lord's people to His full thought, in a day when that thought in its fulness has very largely been lost. You will, no doubt, understand and agree that one of the factors of greatest importance is that of spiritual judgement, or spiritual administration.

We might approach it by recalling the opening chapters of the prophecy of Isaiah. The early chapters have to do, on the one hand, with the judgement of the nations, including Israel, because of apostasy, idolatry and failure to recognise the rights of God; on the other hand, with the bringing into view of a remnant. Much is said about the remnant of the Lord's people who will come to the place where His full thought has an expression, who will be the vessel and means of the expression of His mind in greater fulness. When that is borne in mind as to the nature of the early chapters of Isaiah, you find connected there with those remarkable Messianic prophecies, among them these familiar words: "And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord" (Isa. 11:1-2). Just prior to that there are those other, even better known, words in chapter 9: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from henceforth even for ever" (Isa. 9:6-7).

You will recognise the connection. The Lord has been disappointed as to all that He desired and intended in this earth in and through a people, and failure marks everything here that is supposed to represent the Lord. The causes of the failure are brought into view for judgement. Out of the judgement there arises a new state in a purged remnant, and in connection with that new state this One is seen; the Child is born, the Son is given, and upon His shoulder is made to rest the government. Among His titles there is that of Counsellor, and then it is said that the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom, understanding and knowledge. Thus it becomes perfectly clear that administration by judgement is vested in Him as Head. What follows is that that judgement, that administration, is to be expressed by the same Holy Spirit in and through a spiritual instrumentality, a vessel, a remnant.

When we carry that away from Israel, and see the other side of that prophetic foreshadowing, this is what arises. Christ, invested by the anointing with the Spirit of government, judgement, counsel and might, is exalted to God's right hand, and all rule and authority is made subject to Him. Then, by means of the same anointing an instrumentality - the church, His body - is brought into association with Him for the purposes of that spiritual administration.

Note that it is spiritual administration, or spiritual judgement. There is all the difference between natural judgement and spiritual judgement, between what we would call administering as here on the earth among men, and that which is by reason of spiritual understanding resulting in a ministry which is able to point out the difference between that which is man's mind and that which is God's. It is being able, by reason of spiritual understanding to check, arrest, and bring back those drifts, departures, declensions which are the result, not only of wilful and determined rejection of the Lord, but of the imposition of the mind of man into the things of the Lord. Look at the history of the things which bear the Lord's Name, and you will see quite clearly that the departure from the full thought of the Lord, and subsequent failure and weakness on the part of the people of God, has this one thing as its cause; that man, with every good intention and desire to further the interests of the Lord, has become the Lord's counsellor in His things, and the Lord has ceased to be His own counsellor.

Let us put that in another way. Man has sought to carry on God's work by his own (as he would call it) consecrated judgement, understanding, thoughts, ideas and intentions. And all unconsciously and imperceptibly, the Lord, as to the immediate and direct government of His own affairs, has been edged out, set back. In the course of time there comes a consciousness of weakness and failure, of paralysis, of arrest, of impotence, and the Lord's people awaken to the fact that other powers, with which they can no longer contend successfully, make it impossible for them to go forward triumphantly with the Lord's interests, and they are brought largely to a standstill. When the thing is investigated, what is the invariable result of such an enquiry? "We need a greater fulness of the Holy Spirit." That is how it is put. "We need the Lord to come in in a new way. We need to bring the Lord in more than we have been doing." These are only ways of expressing it, and these could be multiplied, but what is felt and recognised is this, that the Lord is not there in evidence, in fulness, as He ought to be. You ask, "Why?" If you are honest you will say, "He has been edged out. Man has taken His place. Man has become His counsellor."

Let the ultimate issue determine if that is so. When you come up against a situation of spiritual weakness, failure and defeat, against forces with which you cannot cope in the work, the interests and testimony of the Lord, what is the conclusion of the whole matter? What is the judgement that is passed? Well, we need the Lord in a way in which we have not had Him. That is a simple way of putting it. Why should we need the Lord in a way in which we have not had Him before? Why should that need exist? Is it because the Lord was not willing to be with us as fully as was necessary? Can we for a moment lay it to God's charge? Never! Then what is the cause? Somehow the Lord's place had been taken by something or someone else. How? What? We have been carrying on the things of the Lord with our own resources of mind, strength, and will, and it cannot be done. Sooner or later we are bound to come up against the fact that unless the Lord Himself is really on the Throne in full command, with all His resources being projected into His interests, deadlock is inevitable.

What then does that mean? It means that which we said at the beginning, that the great need in such a time of weakness and failure, in a time when God's fullest thought concerning His people and His work is not found in expression, is a ministry of judgement, of spiritual administration. What is needed are those in such a relationship with Him as to be able to discern what is and what is not the Lord's thought.

You will not, of course, allow yourself to sit in judgement of one another, but there is such a thing as a people being clear in spiritual perception, who are very clear as to how the Lord would do things, and how the Lord would not do things; when the Lord would do things, and when the Lord would not do things. That is discriminating between well-intentioned activities of His people for Him, and what is the pure, original, immediate mind of God about His own things.

I believe that the book of Judges has to do with that whole matter, and I think the Lord will say something to us out of that book as we turn to it. Before we do so we must be quite sure that we see what we are getting at, because it is so easy for the Scriptures to become an interesting study and for us not to be gripped by the real issue on hand. Have we grasped what has already been said? It is difficult to express it in few words. Are we impressed, in a day like this, with the need for a ministry of discrimination in the things of the Lord for the people of God, so that they have available that discernment, perception and judgement of which Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 2 concerning "he that is spiritual" judging all things? That judgement, that insight, will deliver from the inevitable and subsequent failure of all that is done in the best of intentions for God, as over against God doing His own work in His own way. It is a very important difference. The Bible is full of that difference, and to provide Himself with an instrument for that purpose is a matter of very special concern and care on the part of the Lord.

If the Lord is to have a vessel like that, that vessel will have to go through the depths. The Word of God divides between soul and spirit. That division represents very largely this discrimination: what man does out of his own soul, reason, will, his feeling for God; and what man does in his renewed spirit as directed immediately by the Spirit of God. They are two entirely different realms, and the consequences of each are as different as two worlds can be. In the end, one is bound for failure, the other is bound to be effective.

The Lord needs an instrument, a ministry through a people, which is of this character, so that it can, because of its understanding in the things of the Lord, call back the Lord's people to the true, pure basis of God's own way of doing things. Such an instrumentality will go through the fire, through a very deep way in order that it may have such perception. It means that that which is of the natural life, its judgements and its ideas, will be pulverised. Attempts, efforts, activities, enthusiasms in the things of God will meet such a smiting that there will be no hope for those who go that way to do anything more for the Lord. They will come to the place where unless the Lord does it, it is no use attempting it, and if they are going to be His instruments they will know what the Lord wants done and how He wants it done. We need spiritual understanding in the things of the Lord.

Dealings of the Lord

This will explain the Lord's dealings with those who will really put themselves into His hands. He will take them through experiences in which they are able, in their own history, to see the tremendous difference. He will allow them a history of the most utter devotion to Himself with the results of that devotion, but nevertheless springing from themselves. He will allow them a great deal of experience of work for Himself, activities in the name of the Lord, perhaps bring them into a very large place of what men would call "usefulness to the Lord", and then smash the whole thing, shatter it, like a potter's vessel, to smithereens. These people will see their work go, and all their capability to do any more, and then the Lord will begin to do something else, a different thing. It will not be anything that can be written up like before, or that can be talked about; nothing that men can take account of, nothing of a purely public character, but He will be getting right down to the place where every bit is of Himself, and they know it. While they may be used, nevertheless their deepest consciousness is of being spectators of what God is doing through them; it is God doing it, and not their doing it for God. There is a tremendous difference between those two things, and those two sides of a history are two sides which the Lord allows, in order to prepare such a vessel of spiritual understanding. We do not really spiritually understand without experience; we do not come into these things without going through something; we are battered into them. It is regarding this that the Lord wants to speak to His people, and we must listen to what He has to say.

Perhaps we shall get a little nearer to the matter if we turn to the book of Judges. We must first of all remember the connection between the books of Joshua and Judges, because the connection is maintained, and it is important to recognise that the connection is maintained, although the situation is so different.

Joshua - Ephesians

We may say that Joshua in the Old Testament corresponds to Ephesians in the New Testament. Joshua is the passing over Jordan and coming into the land, and going from strength to strength in victory, in the power and energy of the Holy Spirit. It is, in the language of Ephesians, in the heavenlies in Christ, warring a mighty warfare by the equipment which God gives against principalities, powers and world-rulers of this darkness and spiritual hosts of wickedness. It is the people of God through union with Christ in death, burial and resurrection coming into the realm of His sovereign triumph. That is Joshua. It states the position of the Lord's full thought for His people; they have tasted of it, they have some experience of it, they know the meaning of it. In the beginning, before the Epistle to the Ephesians was written, the church was known; that is, it was expressed. In the first days, the days of Pentecost, there is this thing in a living expression. They had to have the explanation in doctrine as God's thought presented to them in a concrete and crystallised way, so that they should always know from whence they had fallen, and that to which the Lord would have them come. But in experience they knew Ephesians at the beginning, victory over the powers of darkness, a living in spirit in heavenly union with Christ, blessed fellowship, a Holy Spirit ordered ministry, and all else that is in Ephesians.

Judges - Timothy, John's Epistles, Revelation

When you come to Judges you have a drop from the Ephesian's plane, and come down to much that you find in Timothy, and in John's Epistles, and in the book of the Revelation at the beginning. The people of God have dropped out of their heavenly position and come down on to an earthly position spiritually, with disastrous consequences. That is how you find it in the book of Judges.

When we remember that, and then read this book of Judges, it is difficult for us to fail to be impressed with similarities between that time and our own time; this dispensation since the days of the apostles. The book of Judges is a long period of over three hundred years, and only with big gaps between do you find anything of Joshua or Ephesian conditions. If you study the technique of the book of Judges you will be very much impressed with that. It is difficult when reading such a short book, with the very brief accounts of things there, to realise the time factor. You have to spread the thirteen judges over more than three hundred years, and have to crowd into a simple statement like this a period of probably forty years: "And the children of Israel did evil again... and the Lord delivered them into the hands of...". The range of these times of subjection to other powers is from six to forty years and is very often crowded into a single sentence. Then when it says the Lord raised up a deliverer, a saviour, and these judges were instrumental in bringing them out of those conditions, it only lasted a little while or for a longer period of perhaps forty years, but you can see that the Joshua conditions were spasmodic over a long time.

Is that not true of this dispensation? At the beginning you have Joshua conditions, Ephesian conditions: victory, heavenly life, glory and power; the power of the enemy broken; then a change, and at intervals spread right over this age, a glorious break of recovery, and for a time the testimony glowing again, triumphant conditions, then a lapse again, and a long period of declension and paralysis. That is the story of the church through this dispensation. If we look at things today as a whole, how do they appear to us? Would the most sanguine and the most optimistic, and the one who wanted to say the best thing today, say that the church as a whole is in Joshua or Ephesian conditions? The most evangelical minded today are saying this is impossible. It is no use aiming at such a high standard as Ephesians today for the church. We had better content ourselves with things as they are, and make the best of a bad job. No one would argue that we are more in a Joshua state than in a Judges state in this time, and we are being pressed more and more to that position. Everywhere leaders among the Lord's people are confessing to paralysis, defeat, arrest, to the impossibility of just going right on in glorious triumph. There is a state of defeat and weakness like that today, and we are going more and more to have to recognise it.

We do not assume the role of prophet, but we do feel very strongly that the time is not far off when organised Christianity will have to own itself defeated before this world order. There will be retrenchment, there will come about in the heart of the mass of God's people a cry for recovery of original conditions. And is not this cry already going out from so many parts of the world among the Lord's people for a new visitation of the Holy Spirit coming from the consciousness that that, and that alone, can meet the need? Is it not a confession? It is a confession of failure. We need not force this thing, that the Judges condition is very largely the condition today; mainly weakness, mainly defeat, broken by periods of power and patches of victory.

Two Glorious Things From Judges

What does the book of Judges bring up before us for such a time? It brings up two glorious things. One is a very glorious thing, and the other is a glorious thing inasmuch as it is God's key to the situation. The first thing is this, that the Lord is always ready to give to His people the Joshua or the Ephesians state of things if they will turn to Him with all their heart. You are impressed as you read this book. It does not matter how far they have gone away. Terrible things are said about Israel in this book, about turning to idols, all that they did against the Lord, and it only says: "But when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised them up a deliverer...". It seemed that God was standing right there ready to do it. Why? (Now this is why we said that the link between Joshua and Judges is maintained). Because God has secured that position for them. He has it, as it were, in His hand, and He is saying: I have that position. It is yours. You have only to come to it. Jordan has secured this. The cross has secured it. It is here already. I have not to do anything to give it to you, but you have just to come to it; it is ready for you. That seems to be what the Lord says. If His people come on to His ground, then His ground is that of Joshua conditions, victory at once.

See how these men led out their feeble, crushed, despised armies, things which were not of this world: Gideon and three hundred, Deborah and Barak and their little army compared with Sisera; and how mighty a victory. How much the Lord took of this matter in His own hands to see it through! That speaks for itself. Let us remember that there is no need to struggle towards what we call an Ephesian position. This is not something that has got to be achieved, agonised unto; it is ours. The life of heavenly union with Christ is ours; God has secured it by the cross for us. All we have to do is to come on to God's ground and we have it. What is God's ground? Well, that is just the whole purpose of the book of Judges.

Another thing which the book says is that there must be this ministry of discrimination in the interests of the Lord's people, that they should come on to the Lord's ground of victory and heavenly fulness. The Judges represent those principles of spiritual recovery in a day of declension, and they are this inclusive principle, that they judge in the things of the Lord.

It is necessary to understand what these Judges were doing. It was not just to judge for man. That was not their business at all. When they gave judgement it was not just in the trivialities of ordinary daily life among people, to get them out of difficult and inconvenient circumstances.

Their business was to judge for God, not for men, in the first place. There was a revealed mind of God in existence, there were the statutes and the laws of the Lord governing the life of His people. That was laid down, and there could be no departing from that. That was to govern. Now the Judges sat to determine everything in the light of the revealed mind of God. They judged for God. They said: "That is not of God, it must go; this is what the Lord requires, it must be established." They judged for the Lord on the basis of a revelation of God's mind. That means that they had understanding in the things of the Lord, they had a spirit of judgement, a spirit of understanding, a spirit of knowledge, a spirit of counsel in spiritual things. They were able to say, "That is not the Lord's mind"; "The Lord would not have that"; "The Lord requires this, and in this way." That was the work of the judges. They were, in effect, spiritually minded people to judge all things. "He that is spiritual judges" (or examines; the word in the Greek cannot be fully translated into English, it is a word which means the ability to look into a matter, dissect it, and discriminate as to the right and the wrong of it, and pass the verdict). The spiritual person is divinely given a faculty for that. That is what Paul is saying in this passage from 1 Corinthians 2:15. The spiritual man has a divinely given faculty for looking into a matter and dissecting it, and seeing what is of God and what is not of God in that thing, and passing a verdict from God's standpoint on that matter.

These were the Judges in Israel, equipped by the Holy Spirit for that work, and they saved Israel in a day of declension. They were the deliverers of Israel in such a time. Now is not that an important matter? Does the Lord not need something like that in a day like this? That is what comes out in this book.

We close this meditation by mentioning one other general thing in the book. These judges were very ordinary people in themselves. They had no title to their position, they had no rights, status or lineage, it was not an hereditary thing. It seems the Lord went anywhere, and put His hand on anyone and the people taken up were usually the most surprised. Gideon said, "I am the least in my father's house". Jephthah was an illegitimate child, cast out by his people because of illegitimacy and driven away, then brought back and made judge. Deborah was a woman. That is not to despise her, but it was not the usual way of God, but something quite unusual. What was governing all this? These very ordinary people in themselves, out-of-the-way people, despised among men, were constituted the judges of the Lord's people upon a basis which was entirely spiritual, nothing natural, not what they were in name or title or position. It was a purely spiritual thing, and the Lord dealt with them entirely upon that basis. The Lord never for a moment covered their natural and human weaknesses and defects, but told the whole story. We grieve to read of Samson the Judge of Israel, but God does not cover it up. He lets it be seen in clear light what they are by nature. It was their relationship to Him which determined everything. If they failed in their spiritual fellowship with God, they did not stand just because they were in office.

God does not spare Samson. You would say: "Oh, here is Samson, the judge of Israel, the one man in all the world representing God: surely God will cover Samson and all his defects. If Samson goes wrong God must be specially lenient with him because of the special responsibility resting upon him." Not a bit of it. If Samson goes wrong he will be caused to bear the results of his wrongdoing, and he will go out of his position. God is dealing with people this time entirely upon a basis of their spiritual relationship with Him, and that is spiritual government; it is never official. It is never given to anybody because of what they are in themselves, it is never by some official appointment of God. Anybody who among men may be worthless, outcast, rejected, who has a relationship with God spiritually becomes a part of His instrument for correcting the things which are wrong among the Lord's people, and bringing back to the full thought of God.

By this we are seeking to emphasise that God needs a spiritual vessel, not a great, public, official thing. He will pass by the traditional thing, He will pass by the official thing, He will look for spiritual men and women. He will take pains to make us spiritually minded because of the value of this. There is a larger meaning than lies on the surface. Its full ministry is not going to be fulfilled here in this dispensation. These various judges (leaving out Abimelech, who was altogether wrong), represent aspects of that full-orbed government which is gathered up eventually in the king. The last of the judges, and the fullest of them, was Samuel, and it was as though he gathered up all these in himself and handed it all over to the king, brought in the king. It is remarkable that the end of the book of Judges is: "In those days there was no king in Israel...". And Samuel brought in the king. But Samuel took up all these spiritual things in his own person. Samuel was a glorious judge.

The King is coming, and He is coming into His position of universal administrator. He will need an instrument through which to administer, and that instrument will have to have spiritual understanding, a spirit that has been developed in the understanding of the Lord. So the Father of our spirits is busy with us now to bring us to a place where spiritually we understand for the purposes of administration later on.

That is a little extra word. It does not come immediately into our consideration, but otherwise it is difficult to explain why, when we reach any little measure of spiritual maturity, the Lord takes us to glory. Just at the time when a saint has become mature and is needed by the church, has insight and perception, then he is taken home, and the church here says, "Why did the Lord take all those pains to get a man there, and then take him away?" Because his ministry is yet to be fulfilled. The King is coming, and the King will need those who are around Him sharing in His counsel, also clothed with a spirit of counsel and understanding.

This is all very general and imperfect, but it may help us to begin to see why the Lord deals with us as He does, and perhaps what the Lord is after in a day like this.

Chapter 2 - Taking Responsibility for the Lord's Testimony

Reading: Judges 2:16-23; 5:10-23.

Following the general survey of the book of Joshua which we made in our previous meditation, we come to something more particular by looking at fragments of this book as the Lord may lead. First of all, however, we must recognise the cause or the nature of the history which is in the book of Judges. We have seen that there was a deplorable state of affairs, so completely other than in the book of Joshua. Looking for the reason, we find it in the second chapter, in verses 1-4 and 21-23. In those passages there is a statement of great importance and value which can be broken up into one or two things.

Failure to Enter the Lord's Plan in Fulness

In the first place the terrible period of over three hundred years was the result of a failure on the part of the Lord's people to go on into all that He had revealed as being His will for them. That is where we begin.

If you look into the tragic state of the history of God's people at any time you will find that the cause is the same. Wherever there has arisen a state like this that we find in the book of Judges, it can be traced to this, that at some point those concerned ceased to go on with energy into all that the Lord had set definitely before them as His will for them. It is always a most perilous thing not to go on with energy into anything that has been presented to us as the Lord's will for us, which He has made possible for us, because it will not be long before other forces take advantage of that stopping short to press in, and then it becomes a question as to whether we can go on when we want to. That which at one time was a clear way - while always fraught with a measure of conflict, nevertheless in a sense of victory, with a knowledge that the Lord was there, committed to the thing - has now become a most onerous thing, marked by struggle, stress, and a conflict which is not characterised by the Lord being in it as at one time He was. There is a sense of having given the enemy an opportunity. There is all the difference between the kind of conflict and progress which is straight on with the Lord in the light, and that recovering kind of conflict which is the result of our being stopped short somewhere, having given the enemy an opportunity to encamp on the ground.

When Israel was in the first movement, the enemies in the land were all in a state of looseness. It seems that their very heart was loosed out, and it was not going to be such a terrific task to move them out; they were already in heart moved, very largely expecting to have to go. You know that once you expect anything like that you may as well go. If ever you accept the idea of leaving, half the battle is over for the person who is going to eject you. These enemies were very largely expecting to have to quit, and so there was not a hundred percent resistance. But when Israel stopped, these enemies dug themselves in, thus, the removal of them was a much greater challenge afterwards.

The Lord's Reactions

Then there was the Lord's side of it. The Lord, while in the first instance fully with them, now let them feel something of the tremendous range of not having gone on with Him, and it came back upon them. We all know something of that in spiritual experience. Whereas there was a time when it was comparatively easy to go on in some step of obedience, because we did not go on, it has become infinitely more difficult when we come to face the matter, and we find the situation has become far more complicated. We must remember that the history of God's people through all ages speaks loudly of the tremendous peril of failing to go on in the light when the Lord presents it to us.

Then there is the Lord's side again. Whenever a people has failed to go on to God's end, and other forces have taken hold, the reaching of His end becomes, by His own permission or appointment, a matter of far more conflict. In connection with the children of Israel God said that He would not drive out their enemies, but would leave them to prove Israel.

Now you can see the difference between what took place in the early days of the church and the apostles, and what has obtained since in the matter of conflict in driving out the enemy. In the first place it was really, although with cost and suffering, a stepping on. God was there mightily in evidence. Then the church stopped; it ceased to go on; and ever since, progress of that earlier kind has been fraught with terrible conflict. It has been a matter of difficulty raising the biggest questions, even the question as to how far the Lord is with His people. There has always been an enemy. That enemy was defeated at Calvary. The victory was given to the church. They entered into it, and carried it forward, and then stopped. Ever since, they have been trying to take it up again, and what have they found? They have found that it is not so easy, and that the Lord has not come in in the same way as He did at the beginning, but has let them feel the brunt of this thing. The church has felt the terrific strain of this matter of overthrowing the enemy. Why is that? Well, that brings us back to the book of Judges, and the very point that we want to emphasise. Let us see how true that has been in all of human history.

Take Adam for instance. Adam had light. We do not know how long he walked in the light, but while he did so everything went on blessedly, and there was the exercise of dominion. Then Adam ceased to walk in the light. The result was that the Lord made it necessary for Adam to exercise his dominion through terrible stress. A new element had come in. The Lord told Adam that in the sweat of his face he should eat bread (Gen. 3:19). Before that God had said to man that he was to have dominion (Gen. 1:28), and he had it, and we read of no conflict in it. Afterwards the dominion was to be expressed through great cost and suffering, agony and hard labour. A new element had entered in.

Take Israel, as we have already seen. We sum them up thus: at one time going on in dominion, then stopping; afterwards discovering that new elements had entered in, thus progress and conquest was fraught with a very great deal more suffering, agony and conflict than before.

As we have just pointed out, it was the same with the church. In the beginning there was a triumphant marching on. If the church had continued as it started, I suppose the whole world would have been subdued, or something immense would have happened. Take the first week or so after Pentecost and multiply that over a year or two, extend it for a decade. Take the life of Paul as an example of conquest, of getting out into the world, into the nations. There was a world bigger than Paul knew, but if things had been carried forward on the same scale for another period of three or four generations, the world that is now known would have been reached. What we mean to say is that there was a tremendous going on at the beginning. The Lord did not want it otherwise. The Lord did not call a halt; it was the Lord's people who stopped. When they tried to resume they found there were new elements. When ground has been forfeited, the recovery of that ground is far more difficult than the possessing of that ground in the first place. That is the history of everything in relation to God's purpose in this world. Of course, God sovereignly permits that for a very good reason, and as the Lord enables we want to see that sovereign reason.

Spiritual Responsibility and Understanding

We read in the book of Samuel, the last of the judges, that these judges were those who judged for the Lord in a day when there was no open vision (as we read in the book of Samuel, the last of the judges). The great demand in that time was for someone to take spiritual responsibility for the Lord's full thought. It is this matter of spiritual responsibility which is the focal point of the book of Judges, and is to be our focal point now. It can all be gathered up into two words: spiritual responsibility.

In order to take spiritual responsibility, spiritual understanding is necessary. When once the Lord raised up vessels with spiritual understanding, the one issue is that of taking responsibility for the Lord's testimony, the Lord's full thought for His people. If you look at this book and read it with this one word in mind, you will see that a very great deal of the spiritual history was focussed upon this matter of responsibility.

The most outstanding and classic illustration is seen in Deborah's song. Many of the judges are only mentioned by name, and by one act which led to the deliverance of the Lord's people. These men judged Israel over a series of years. As far as I can see, the shortest was seven or eight years, the longest about forty years, but in many instances only their names are mentioned and the act which led to deliverance. But even in the mention of the name and the telling of that one thing, you find that in these cases there is a deliberateness in the matter of responsibility. All that is known about one is that he was left-handed and made himself a sharp two-edged sword which he hid under his cloak and surreptitiously slew the enemy. It is all told in a few words, but the atmosphere speaks of deliberateness. Here is a man who takes the whole responsibility of the Lord's interests for His people upon himself, and it seems in a few clear-cut movements he brings about an open way for the Lord's deliverance; he goes straight to the business.

This question of responsibility comes up in various ways. In some it was deliberate, clear-cut, and direct; in some it was under constraint, as, for instance with Barak. Deborah almost had to thrust Barak into it. "Up Barak!" was what she said to him, and he told her that if she went with him he would go, but if she did not go, then he would not. Deborah did not let Barak off, and he eventually had to take responsibility.

Take the case of Gideon. In his meekness of spirit he was rather slow to respond to the call when the angel of the Lord came and spoke to him. It was his sense of humbleness of life that held him back, but eventually the Lord laid it upon him, and Gideon had to take responsibility; and when once he took responsibility he did so thoroughly. That night he destroyed his father's idols and rid the place of false worship. Then, having cleared the ground in his own domestic circle, he pursued the Lord's interests in a public way, and was no longer lax in the matter of responsibility.

In the case of Abimelech the responsibility was usurped in a fleshly way, and that led to disaster. It is an instance full of instruction. Responsibility must be in the Lord and in the Spirit, otherwise it only leads to the undoing of the one who usurps it.

In one case there seems to be a holding of responsibility in a loose manner, and the Lord demonstrates in that case the terrible perils, and how important it is in a day like this that anyone called by the Lord to take responsibility should take it seriously. We refer to Samson; he seemed to play with responsibility. We know the terrible shame which covered his life because of this, and the Lord did not allow this side to be hidden, but revealed that this matter of responsibility is exceedingly serious.

The song of Deborah divides between those who did and those who did not take responsibility. She speaks of a number of tribes which did not come up for various reasons. These reasons are very interesting to note, and pointed in their application.

In a day of weakness, when the Lord is not being glorified as He should be, when conditions are not as the Lord would have them, there must be those of the Lord's people who, with spiritual understanding and discernment, will take responsibility. The enemy would, of course, do everything he can to stop the Lord's people who should be taking responsibility from doing so. He would cause them to be preoccupied. Preoccupation is a favourite method of the enemy to destroy responsibility. Preoccupation takes many forms and has many directions. It may be the preoccupation of the multitude of things with which we are kept constantly on the move, diverting or distracting us, keeping us from direct concentration upon the things that matter most.

It may be preoccupation with a personal problem. Oh, how the Lord is losing and how the Lord's people are losing because of this! Many of us, if we were only free from our own problem, would be counting for the Lord, making a contribution to the Lord's people, could be bringing the Lord's people into the fulness of His thought for them. We ought to be doing that, but we continually go round in that vicious circle of our own personal trouble. We are not able to take responsibility, we are not free to do so, because of this problem. We will have a problem to the end, unless we begin to take an attitude towards the cause of their problem. In nine cases out of ten the cause is a perfectly natural thing, such as a physical defect or disorder of the nervous system, although we think it is a spiritual thing. So you find us introspective and always needing to be helped out of ourselves in some way. If only somebody can get us out of ourselves for five minutes we are different people, but unfortunately we drop back again immediately we are on our own.

What is to be done about it? How can we help ourselves? Nerves are nerves we know, and a problem like that is a very acute one, but why should we not face it before God, and say what David said, "This is my infirmity; but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High" (Ps. 77:10). It is as well for us to have a reckoning with this thing, and get it weighed up and labelled. What is it? What is behind it? When it has been measured and labelled we can say, "That is what I am, but God is other than that; God is not what I am when I am in a bad nervous condition; God is not such as I am as the consequence of my poor physical state! God is other than that, whatever it may be, and He has come to dwell in me by His Spirit. I have to take sides with God against myself!"

Until we get there we shall be useless to God and it is a loss to the Lord in a day like this and loss to the Lord's people. Get free from the personal problem by taking sides with the Lord against yourself. Look it squarely in the face. So often we try to struggle out of our bad state, out of some slough of despond, some miry pit, and we fall back more often than not. The Lord never comes and reaches out a hand to pull us out of it. We are waiting for the Lord to pull us out, crying to the Lord to pull us out, and He does not do it. In effect the Lord is saying: Get victory inside, and then you are able to get on top of your difficulty and I can help you. Look at it in the light of the need of the Lord for men and women to take spiritual responsibility for the Lord's interests, for the Lord's testimony.

There are those who are always leaning on others who will never take the initiative with the Lord themselves. They are always submitting things to someone else for their mind on it, their judgement about it, and really seeking to get a push or a pull into the thing before they will move themselves. The cases of failure in the matter of responsibility are legion, and the difficulties numerous.

What about responsibility in your case? Are you really taking responsibility before the Lord as though you were the only one in the land to take responsibility? That perhaps wants safeguarding. We are talking about taking responsibility, not about independent action, self-assertiveness, setting yourself up as an authority. That aggression is just individual aggression. We are meaning this, that you take on your heart before the Lord as a personal thing those larger interests of the Lord which have been shown to you to be the Lord's mind for His people and give yourself to its realisation, as far as it is possible. You really take position that now, although there may be many others better fitted than you are, nevertheless you are responsible before the Lord for some measure of Christ in His people. You are not to leave that with other people; it is your business. The Lord's people are desperately in need, and a tragic condition obtains among the Lord's people. What can we do before the Lord in meeting that need? Are we really taking the matter to heart? Are we regarding ourselves as being responsible in relation thereto? I am convinced that a great deal of breakdown, failure and subsequent confusion in the lives of the Lord's people individually, and in their domestic life, is because somewhere responsibility is not taken in the place where it ought to be taken.

Perhaps a husband has not taken responsibility in his home spiritually, and consequently there is a bad state of things there, and a great loss to the Lord. That home might have meant very much for the Lord, a great deal more than it does mean. Not only is there loss, but there is confusion. There are many problems; the enemy is always getting advantages and striking hard blows, and it is all because things are not as they should be in the matter of responsibility there. He puts someone in a certain place - it may be in business - and there are those there for whom that one is responsible. That responsibility is not taken seriously; that one has not shouldered the responsibility of the Lord's will in that place, and the result is disorder and eventually a breakdown. Because of this the enemy would become strongly entrenched and would drive out the interests of the Lord from that place. We may be speaking about what may seem ordinary, commonplace things, but these are true to life.

Every one of the Lord's children must take responsibility, must take this thing up personally and ask, "What is my responsibility before God where I am, in my home, in my business, in my place of serving the Lord, in the company of the Lord's people?" Have you taken seriously the matter that you have a responsibility? See what Deborah has to say about those who did not take it: "Curse Meroz... curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof. Because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty" (Judges 5:23). That is one side, a terrible side of not taking responsibility. The other side is found in verse two. The Revised Version reads: "For that the leaders took the lead in Israel...". Here is initiative and responsibility.

That strikes a very important note; the application is many-sided. The Lord is ready and willing to bring us into a knowledge of His mind, and He must have a people of spiritual wisdom and revelation, who will take responsibility in this day. Let us bring it down to this simple thing: Are we taking responsibility in relation to all the light that we have? It does not matter about the light beyond that; we all hold responsibility for the light that we have. Let us pray most earnestly that the Lord will bring us into that clear place where we really have the spirit of understanding as to the mind of the Lord, so that the Lord has in us those whom He can put into a position of responsibility. Let us pray that we would be able to discriminate in a spiritual way as to the things which differ.

The Lord's people are confused. Go out among them and speak to them about the things of the Lord, the ways of the Lord, and you open a new world to the multitude of His people. They have never seen it like that; all they know is that they are saved, and they want to serve the Lord and are doing it to the best of their ability. But as to spiritual guidance, as to knowing any inward sense of what the Lord would have and would not have, and how He would have it, and the means to be used for it, that is quite unknown to them. They go on in a more or less mechanical way with very little light indeed, and the Lord needs that His people should be enlightened. He must, therefore, have enlightened instruments as to His thought in greater fulness. The Lord takes some of His people into strange experiences in order to teach them these things. He would educate them deeply and thoroughly as to His way. He wants educated people in that sense of having the spirit of understanding, able to judge all things; the faculty of seeing with God's eyes what God's way is, resulting in them taking up the responsibility made possible by that education to speak to the Lord's people in this day of need. There is no doubt that the Lord's people are in great need today, and their greatest need is of spiritual understanding, that they might understand the way of the Lord. They are groping, they are crying for understanding. How is the Lord going to give it? The Lord would raise up these instruments, vessels, individuals, and a company of people who can judge for Him and interpret in the light of God's will for the Lord's people.

Has it ever occurred to you that the Lord's way of deliverance is always enlightenment? Initially and all the way through it is enlightenment. Paul was given a commission, and it was this: "...unto whom I now send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God..." (Acts 26:17-18). Just open their eyes, and everything else follows. The Lord's way of deliverance for His people is spiritual enlightenment. We shall come out into a free place of spiritual enlightenment if our eyes are opened, and the Lord, in turn, will use us for the opening of other people's eyes for their deliverance. In a time like this the Lord wants judges to deliver His people. The Lord could have come in in sovereign acts, but He raised up judges, and the judges were what the Lord's mind was, and when the people were open to receive the mind of the Lord through the judges then the judges drew the people into oneness with themselves in that enlightenment, went out to battle with them, and deliverance was wrought.

Before we conclude, let us go back to that point which we did not quite clear up, concerning the subsequent difficulty after having stopped. Do you recognise that the Lord must have people morally responsible? That is why He did not drive out their enemies. When they ceased to drive them out, the Lord did not come in and drive them out, but left them there as thorns in their sides. He did that to draw these people out into definite, deliberate exercise at great cost, so that they themselves became morally responsible people. They had got into that state, and if the Lord had come in and sovereignly acted to drive these enemies out, what would have been the result? There would have been a people in a bad moral state in possession of the land. God put the onus upon them in this matter and called for an extra exercise on their part, because He allowed them to feel the extra acuteness of their failure.

When they did rise up things were very glorious indeed. You have one man slaying six hundred men with an ox goad; another man causing devastation among the Lord's enemies with the jawbone of an ass; three hundred men putting a mighty host to flight. These things bring a great deal of glory to God when once there is a recognised responsibility towards Him for the conditions, and a taking up of that responsibility. Then the Lord does come in. But in the first place it means facing terrible odds which were not there in the same way originally. The Lord is calling out a people into a position of strong moral responsibility in relation to the conditions which obtain.

All this has revolved around that one word, and the Lord must apply it to our hearts. We can be passive, wrongly dependent upon others, preoccupied; we can be engrossed with our own, even spiritual, matters. The Lord wants us to turn from everything like that and take responsibility for His testimony. I am sure that the words addressed by Mordecai to Esther sum all this up in an excellent manner, and in a conclusive way: "For if thou altogether holdest thy peace (remain silent, NAS) at this time, then shall there enlargement (relief) and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14).

That is something to take to heart. It sums up this whole matter of spiritual responsibility. The Lord would call us "for such a time as this" to take responsibility for His interests. So Deborah would say to the reluctant Barak, "Up Barak!" The Lord would say to us, "Up, this is your responsibility, take it!" Be sure that you are not failing the Lord in the matter of your measure of responsibility for His full thought among His people!

Chapter 3 - Faith to Take His Strength

"Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenlies, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:15-23).

"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man" (Eph. 3:14-16).

"Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might" (Eph. 6:10).

"And when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel, who delivered them, even Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. And the Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he judged Israel, and went out to war: and the LORD delivered Chushanrishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand; and his hand prevailed against Chushanrishathaim" (Judges 3:9,10).

In the first place we want to know how the book of Judges should be read. It is always good to know how to read any particular part of God's Word, and when we come to the book of Judges we always want to bear in mind that the background of this book is a representation of Christ as the inheritance of God's people; that is, Christ as God's fulness for His own. If you like, you can put it the other way, the saints' inheritance in Christ. As we know, the land represents that.

Inasmuch as the book of Judges shows the Lord's people as having failed to possess all the land, it speaks to us typically of a stopping short on the part of the saints, and a failure to appropriate all God's intended fulness for them as vested in Christ. These two things simply go alongside one another. The land, representing the fulness of God's thought for His people, speaks of Christ and all the fulness of God in Christ for them.

We know what the thought of God is for us. It is fulness in every sense, in Christ. That thought is for all the Lord's people. We want to establish that, and make that perfectly settled so far as our recognition of it is concerned. The condition among the Lord's people, we know, is anything but that, but it does not alter the fact. God's desire, God's purpose, and what God has actually done for His people, is in relation to their knowing fulness of every kind in a spiritual way in Christ. Then the other thing is the fact that there has been a stopping short and failure on the part of the Lord's people in relation to that thought and will of God.

Remaining Elements Contrary to Christ

A third thing arises as we read this book, and it is that there are elements which have been allowed to remain in the place which should be occupied by the fulness of Christ. Those elements, therefore, must be the things which are contrary to Christ. Anything which takes Christ's place must be contrary to Christ. Anything which is a factor preventing the greater fulness of Christ must be opposed to Christ. So what we have here in this book is a whole range of elements which remain in possession where the saints ought to be enjoying something of the Lord, and those elements are preventing that enjoyment and that possession. Thus there are elements keeping out of full possession.

Seeing these three things, we have the clue to the book. It is this: we must discover what those things are which are contrary to Christ, and we must see that they stand in direct opposition to some particular feature of Christ. If only we recognised the feature of Christ which is challenged and set back, which does not obtain at that particular point, then we have the key to victory, to recovery, to moving on into God's full thought. These elements which are allowed to remain represent something that is other than Christ, so what is the characteristic of Christ which will eject them? For it is Christ in some particular characteristic or feature who is needed to be brought in to eject these other things, and so by the bringing in of Christ, the appropriation of Christ, the applying of Christ, we remove the difficulty, uproot the evil, displace the opposition, and enter into the greater fulness of Christ.

Therefore we have these two things. On the one hand, the people who dominated in the land were forces contrary to Christ. On the other hand, the judges bring into view the features of Christ for deliverance. Each judge himself or herself, (although not a type of Christ in the full sense), have something primarily spiritual about them which is a feature of Christ for the bringing of the Lord's people into the fulness of His will. That is how to read the book of Judges. That is simple, but it is tremendously instructive.

Othniel, "The Lion of God"

So then we come to the first of the judges. You will notice that very little is said about him. We are told that God raised up a saviour for them, Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him; he judged Israel, went out to war, the Lord gave deliverance, the land had rest forty years and Othniel the son of Kenaz died (Judges 3:9-11). Quite a lot of history is crowded into a very abbreviated record of a man's life. Yet if we look inside we shall see all that we want to know as to a primary feature of Christ for deliverance from that which held back from fulness. It is impressive to recognise that right at the beginning of things this should be the first judge, the first step for deliverance, for recovery. Othniel. You notice how the name ends, therefore you at once conclude that it has something to do with God. God's Name is at the end, El. The first part of the name means lion. The lion of God! It goes right to the root of matters.

All the best features of the book of Judges are gathered into the first chapter. This book must never be read as though it were chronological. Everything that is good that can be said is gathered in the one chapter; after that there is not a great deal of good, so far as the people are concerned. But remember Joshua. In Joshua we have presented to us a wonderful possessing of the land, an entering in and a taking possession, a movement of faith in God, and a resultant fulness; fulness up to a point, and then a stopping. When Joshua died there was still land to be possessed, still these inimical elements to be overcome and cast out. At some point, for various reasons, the people ceased to go on.

It is not for us to judge them and determine why, but I think we could get very near the truth if we said that they felt perhaps that enough had been done. They had gone so far, and it was hardly necessary to go any further. A great deal of land was possessed, they had a measure of the knowledge of the Lord - to put it into spiritual terms - and now it was not necessary to go on any farther. At any rate, that was their spirit.

It may have been that they had grown somewhat weary, and that they recognised that these forces were a little more deeply entrenched than they had imagined, and could not be expelled quite so easily as they had thought. Whatever the case, they were coming up against fresh challenges, demands and difficulties, and the way led them into a state of spiritual decline. For some reason or another they came to the place where their spiritual strength for going on was surrendered. Although they had gone on in a large degree, had known wonderful deliverances and victories, had proved the Lord marvellously, they failed to go on. Yet all that the Lord had shown was not yet realised, and seventy-five percent, ninety percent, or ninety-nine percent would not satisfy Him.

For some reason or another that spiritual energy to go on ceased; spiritual strength gave out; they let go. It may have been a wrong attitude of contentment, a false satisfaction or it may have been discouragement, the hardness and difficulty, and the long delay. Many other things may have come in, but whatever they were, the fact was that they let go, became weak, ceased to lay hold on divine strength for what remained to be dealt with. The result was, of course, that those forces doubly entrenched themselves and consolidated their position. This failure in faith led the Lord to take another attitude towards them that, rather than being favourable towards their position, He allowed these things to bring home to them the evil of their position, and bring them into a state of bondage to the things to which they had voluntarily surrendered. They did not find the Lord with them as He was before. So we have this terrible state of things in the book of Judges.

How is there to be recovery? How will the Lord's people be delivered from this bondage of limitation, this state of spiritual defeat where they are not enjoying the Lord and His fulness? How will it be? Well, the Lord raises up judges; that is, the Lord raises up those who will make known to His people just what is of Himself, that is the way of deliverance.

Divine Strength

The first judge is Othniel, the lion of God. The significance of Othniel and his name is that there is divine strength for these people if only they will lay hold of it. Yes, all the things round about are calculated to weaken the Lord's people today. He knows the intensity of the conflict, the length of the road, the weariness of the flesh, for He has been this way Himself. He knows all about it, the cause of the suffering, the fury of the oppressor, the subtlety of the devices of the enemy. He knows all about our frame; He considers that we are dust. We can tell Him nothing about that that He does not know, and probably He knows more, for He came down and went this way Himself. In a spiritual way in a human body He went this way.

See the Lord Jesus as He travels this road. Mark you, He was in very truth moving Himself towards divine fulness. That statement needs guarding at once. He had emptied Himself. He existed in God-form. He changed His form and came into man-form, and that meant a voluntary emptying of Himself, not of His Godhead but of His form. He was here on a basis of dependence upon the Father; just as dependent upon the Father as we are. That was His choice; that was the wonder, the glory of His emptying, that He accepted a life of dependence upon the Father, so that all that He got was to be had in exactly the same way as we get it. His purpose was to come back to fulness - not now on the ground of the right of Godhead, because it was His right to be there; not back into divine fulness because of His eternal right as the Son, but to come back into a divine fulness which was God's fulness for man. When Christ got through at length He was filled with all the fulness which was man's inheritance in God. Christ possesses the fulness of God, which is our fulness, our inheritance. There is a fulness of God which is not ours; that is, the fulness of deity, Godhead. That is Christ's on the side of deity. But on the other side there is that fulness, the inheritance which God had for man, intended for Adam, which Adam never attained. Christ came to redeem the possession, redeem the inheritance, and God vested Him in glory with all that inheritance which is ours. But to arrive at that fulness as a Man was along the road of dependence, suffering, where He had to draw strength, not out from Himself as Man, but from God.

See the Lord Jesus drawing His strength from above. He knew weariness of body, mind, and soul, perhaps weariness of spirit. He groaned in His spirit. "Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus upon the well" (John 4:6). And yet, what persistence! What going on! What refusal to be turned aside by enticement, promise, or the attempted comfort of friends! You find in this One a setting of the face, a going on resolutely, strongly, determinately, not being turned aside one hair's breadth, and all the time drawing upon the Father for that strength necessary, until He came right through. Heavenly ministrations strengthened Him to go through. He was being strengthened from heaven. Just think of Very God needing angels to minister to Him, to strengthen Him. Is not that a proof that for a little while He became lower than the angels for the suffering of death? It was not upon His own deity that He was drawing. He was being succoured by the angels whom He had created. The point is that His strength was above, and it was by drawing upon that strength above that He could go through.

What is the nature of this Lion of God? Look at Him on His face before God, pleading for strength that He shall not break down, reaching out with both hands to draw His strength from His Father to go on. Nothing turns Him aside; He goes on in that strength. This Lion of God is not some great majestic being that the natural eye can behold as such. When we think of the "Lion of the tribe of Judah" we immediately conjure up in our minds something very terrible, terrific, impressive, something that is a great outward demonstration of power, of strength, of majesty.

If you look at the Lion of the tribe of Judah down here there is nothing like that about Him. You have got to look inside to see the Lion nature; the strength is spiritual, not natural; it is from above, not from beneath. But it is very real, very wonderful, a strength which in the end all the combined power of hell and man cannot break, but which rather breaks all other forces in this universe as they converge upon Him.

You and I know very little about the power of the enemy, but all the power and all that the enemy had at his command was brought to bear upon God's Son, the Son of Man, to break Him, yet there was a strength in Him which broke that united force of the whole kingdom and power of Satan. It was spiritual strength by which He came through to that fulness as Man for us.

Now we see where we begin in the book of Judges. Who is Othniel? You need no fuller study of his life, you do not need to know his whole life background, all you need to know is what he stands for. The Lord's people have come into a bad condition because they have let go of their strength in the Lord. The only way for them to get into a good condition and out of the bad condition is to get hold of the strength of the Lord. In spite of conditions, in spite of what they are themselves, in spite of everything, they need to get hold of the strength of the Lord by faith. The Lord's strength which is more than our human frailty, the Lord's strength which is more than all the power of the enemy against us, the Lord's strength which is more than all the circumstances which would discourage us, is ours through faith.

Judges and Corinthians

You see, there is Joshua and Ephesians, and in between there is Judges, and, if you like, Corinthians. The book of Joshua represents the fulness in the heavenlies, the Lord's strength marvellously in evidence. The Epistle to the Ephesians represents the fulness of the heavenlies, "strengthened with might by His spirit in the inner man"; "the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe"; "that strength of His might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead" (ASV); "be strong in the Lord". Judges is not in the heavenlies, in the fulness, in the victory, but is on the earth, grovelling in weakness, defeat and helplessness. What, then, do we need? We need Ephesian conditions, Ephesian elements, Joshua elements. That is just what we have already referred to. Look at Ephesians 1:18-23 again.

How do we get recovery? How shall we come into the fulness? How will the Lord's people be delivered from this terrible state spiritually? The answer is in a name in the book of Judges - Othniel, the Lion of God. In Ephesian language it is "the exceeding greatness of His power which is to usward who believe"; "strengthened with might through His spirit into the inward man".

That is what it is simply in words, but it has to be practised. It is a challenge. So the apostle brings the Ephesian letter concerning all this fulness to a close with this word: "Finally... be strong...". That is your business. That is your responsibility. It is not: "Finally... may the Lord strengthen you." That is how we should like it to be. We should take hold of that promise, if it were a promise; but it is not a promise, it is a challenge. "Finally... be strong in the Lord...", and take the whole armour of God.

The Strength of the Lord

The point is clear: this is the strength of the Lord. If you are feeling sufficient and strong this word has no meaning for you. Sooner or later you will come to the place, if you are going on with the Lord, where you will know that only the Lord's strength will get you through. The fact remains that we may or may not feel strong, but that does not count, and we shall never get through on our own weakness or strength, so we must not rest upon either. Let us come off our natural ground, of whatever kind it is - our sense of sufficiency or our own weakness. If we take the position of our own natural condition spiritually or physically, circumstantially or temperamentally, there will be limitation. If we say, I am one of the weak, fearful, timid ones, we will be in very severe limitation as to the measure of Christ, and we will be of no value to the Lord for the deliverance of others from limitation. Remember that is not the Lord's thought for you, nor is it for me. The Lord's thought is perfectly clear, and it is the fulness of Christ. We must come right off our natural ground, and recognise that it is the Lion of God, that it is the strength of God, the strength of the Lord, the power of His might, and when we recognise that, that the exceeding greatness of His power is to usward, we shall get through. Who is it to? Is it to "usward", who are such strong, go-ahead, robust people with such a lot of faith and confidence; to "usward" who are quite sure we shall get through? No, it is to "usward" who believe. Are we going to put ourselves among the unbelievers? That is all that is required: "...who believe". We are weak in ourselves, we are finished, beaten, everything is too much for us. Are we going to accept that position and sit down in it? It will not be long before we find that other powers will rise up and gain the mastery of our life, and we will be beaten and harassed, just as these people were from these various forces coming in from round about, simply because they had accepted a lower level than the Lord intended. But even though we may be feeling perfectly unfit and worthless, if we will accept this position of appropriating faith as to the strength of His might, the Lord may take hold of us as that weak thing and bring to naught the mighty things, as a nothing to bring to naught the things that are, His strength made perfect in weakness.

We must not accept our own natural condition as the final criterion. Remember that God calls us through faith to His fulness, and to come there we must rise up and lay hold of His strength. The Lord needs, right at the outset, men and women who will - though they are weak in themselves, utterly worthless and useless, are strong in spirit, inwardly unbending, inwardly refusing to capitulate to the conditions, whether these are enemy conditions from without or from within, or human conditions from within. These things are not to dominate, for they are contrary to Christ. Our human conditions are contrary to Christ, and they will work against Christ. Whether they be physical, or moral, or any other conditions, they will work against Christ, and keep us in limitation and in bondage. We must lay hold of His strength by faith, and appropriate it to overcome the conditions which we find in ourselves which are holding us in bondage.

There were two things about Othniel; he judged Israel and went out to war. He determined the nature of the cost, and then went out to meet the enemy. That judgement, perception and insight caused him to recognise what the position was. He had the eyes of his heart enlightened, and he saw that this was not something that was to be surrendered to, because this was something against the Lord's thought, something that the Lord did not accept. Argue as you might for it, and for the hopelessness and helplessness of the position, nevertheless, it stood in contrast to what the Lord had shown to be His mind, and that is the final argument.

Ask yourself whether your condition is what the Lord wants for you, or whether the Lord has not revealed something other than that. Let that determine. Does the Lord want us to be poor, grovelling things, beaten and harassed by enemy forces and by human elements and natural conditions, so that all the time we are at the mercy of these things, in bondage, unable to deliver souls? The answer does not lie far off. That is not the Lord's thought for you and for me. The Lord has called us to liberty, victory, and fulness.

Othniel judged. He that is spiritual judges all things. He knows what the Lord wants and what the Lord does not want, and he sees the situation in a spirit of clear judgement. Othniel went out to war. There are a lot of people who think that they have a lot of spiritual perception, that they understand the difference. They can tell you the difference between conversion and new birth, and all these fine distinctions, but they are no good at fighting. The Lord does not want us to talk about distinctions, discriminations, or fine differences. The Lord wants that we, in seeing things spiritually, should go out to battle, and thus lay hold of His strength against ourselves, our weaknesses and conditions, and all else. We must lay hold of the Lion of God, which represents the strength that is in Christ Jesus.

The Lord make us strong, and give us faith to take His strength.

Chapter 4 - Standing on the Ground of Our Union in Christ

"And the children of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah: and Jehovah strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah. And he gathered unto him the children of Ammon and Amalek; and he went and smote Israel, and they possessed the city of palm-trees. And the children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab eighteen years. But when the children of Israel cried unto Jehovah, Jehovah raised them up a saviour, Ehud the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a man left-handed. And the children of Israel sent tribute by him unto Eglon the king of Moab. And Ehud made him a sword which had two edges, a cubit in length; and he girded it under his raiment upon his right thigh" (Judges 3:12-16, ASV).

"And Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, before the new court, and said... And now, behold, the children of Ammon and Moab and mount Seir, whom thou wouldest not let Israel invade, when they came out of the land of Egypt, but they turned from them, and destroyed them not; behold, I say, how they reward us, to come to cast us out of thy possession, which thou hast given us to inherit. O our God, wilt thou not judge them? For we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee" (2 Chron. 20:5-12).

Ehud - Unity or Joining Together

In our last meditation we were considering Othniel, the first judge. We now come to look at the second, Ehud. Ehud means "joining together", or "unity". Another meaning of his name is practically the same as the meaning of Judah, that is, "praise" or "confession". We shall see that these two things are really all of one.

Then it is said that Ehud was a Benjamite, and that fact in itself carries a significance, because, as we know from the Word, Benjamin means "the son of my right hand"; but it is said that he was left-handed, which looks like contradiction, though it is not. Then he made a sword with two edges, and the length of it was one cubit.

That is all we need say about Ehud, because in those features we have all we need to show of the features of Christ which lead to deliverance from a wrongful bondage and limitation into which we as the Lord's people may come by our own spiritual decline, and which lead us out into that fulness of life and fulness of victory which is the Lord's mind for us.

Unity of God's People

The name itself surely is significant, and I wonder if in the Holy Spirit's fuller and deeper knowledge and understanding of things, this name itself does not go to the root of the matter - unity or joining together. That may not have to be understood, in the first place, in the collective sense. It is quite true that a good deal of the condition among the people of God in this book of Judges was that of intertribal conflict and strife. They were a divided people, and we read of several very painful exhibitions of their state of schism and division. Probably Ehud has something to say to that, and as he speaks of joining together, or unity, he indicates quite clearly that there can be no going on into the fulness of the Lord, no knowledge of the Lord's fulness in life and victory only as the Lord's people are together in love. That is distinctly an Ephesian characteristic. The body builds itself up in love, makes increase by love. The Lord's people come really to the Lord's fulness in life and power and fruitfulness by being together in the true concord and fellowship of the one Spirit, in the one Body. There is no doubt about that being true, and if Ehud has a message for the church as a whole, that is the message very largely. We have proved it to be true both by the positive and the negative side of it. There is always loss, arrest, paralysis and defeat when once the enemy can divide the Lord's people. That is a master method of his to defeat the end of God which is the coming into the fulness of Christ. And we know, on the other hand, that apart from any organising or human efforts to bring about oneness or union, and apart from all the mechanical contrivances of registers and what-not to make a people one, if they come together in one Spirit and one testimony, there is a very great spiritual increase; there is an enlargement of the Lord among them; there is growth, progress, a pressing back of the horizon to a great revelation, vision, and unfolding of the purpose of God. That is surely known to us to some extent at least. Get the Lord's people together on a spiritual basis, and you get enlargement and enrichment.

Unity of the Individual

That is one side of it, but Ehud has something more to say than that, and what he has to say is very largely in connection with the individual. The application is true to the company, but it is just as true, and just as important, for the individual. The individual has to be united. The individual has got to be joined together. The individual has got to be a solid whole. Just as a master-stroke of the enemy is to divide the Lord's people collectively, to break into the fellowship of the saints, so a master-stroke of the enemy is to divide the soul of the individual, to make the individual two rather than one. If we for one moment, for one instant, have a question as to the Lord, and as to our standing or our relationship with the Lord, the enemy makes full use of that doubt to bring a divided state in our lives. This will cause conflict with ourselves and a continuous warfare going on inside; we are divided against ourselves. A house divided against itself cannot stand. The enemy always makes full use of any kind of uncertainty in our hearts in relation to the Lord to bring us down into bondage, and to destroy us and prevent our spiritual progress. That is a thing to be recognised. We know it, but we need to lay that to heart. Any kind of dividedness within that is of uncertainty, of question as to the Lord, as to our relationship with the Lord, as to our spiritual position, or as to our place in the will of God, lays us open immediately to a watching enemy who takes instant advantage of that uncertainty, and encamps upon it, and seeks to force a breach in our own souls to our undoing. The result of any question like that is always to bring us into bondage, to arrest our spiritual progress, to turn us in upon ourselves, and to make us totally incapable of serving the Lord's fuller and higher interests in others unto the fulness of Christ.

That is why it is significant that the Holy Spirit takes care to give us details like that. Ehud, meaning unity, joining together, was a Benjamite, "the son of my right hand". Surely that means standing in the place of strength. It speaks to us of our standing in the Lord, and a standing in the place of strength. You will know what we mean when we speak of our standing. Have you any question about your standing before the Lord, about your position, about your acceptance? Have you any question as to whether, after all, your sins are all remitted, that the sin question has been fully and finally dealt with, as far as you are concerned? Have you any shadow of a doubt as to your acceptance by the Lord and that that acceptance is an abiding acceptance, that you stand there not on the ground of what you are? If that were the ground, you would not stand there two seconds, but on the ground of what Christ is you are able to stand securely. Do you believe that Christ is settled in the presence of God, without any fear whatever that He will be ejected? Have you ever thought that Christ will ever be turned out of God's presence? Do you think it is possible through all eternity that the Lord Jesus will be expelled from the presence of God because of something in Him that is wrong? Such a thought is ridiculous. We would never entertain such a thought. Well, that standing is yours by faith. If you will only, by faith, take Christ as your standing you come into the Son at God's right hand. That is what it means to be in Christ: established, settled, fixed in the presence of God.

A true acceptance of that will never make us careless, it will never leave room for presumption, it will never lead to the sin of saying, "Well, I am saved, nothing will alter that!" A true appropriation of Christ, which is a true appreciation of Christ, will always smite anything like that in our hearts. When we come to the place of faith's settlement in Christ as the Son at God's right hand, we have beaten the devil of most of his tactics, and are delivered from paralysis. Have a question about that, and you are defeated; it is into that crack which defeats you that the enemy forces his way and he will drive it home until you become two in one, fighting within, the house divided, ready to fall.

This Son at God's right hand speaks to us of our standing, meaning we are whole, a unity; we are one, we are joined together. There is nothing like this faith position as to our standing in the Lord to make us a solid whole, and to defeat all those forces of the enemy that would bring us into bondage and defeat, uselessness and barrenness. This eternal questioning about the Lord, our acceptance, our sins, how we stand with the Lord, what His attitude is towards us, and a thousand and one forms which this questioning takes, can destroy unity.

Ehud, the Benjamite, speaks of the divine side of things, that we are established as a unity on the ground of our acceptance in the Son at God's right hand. We know that he was a left-handed man. Paul was a Benjamite, and he was a left-handed man. The Word does not say that anywhere, but he was. What is meant by a left-handed man standing in a right hand position? "In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." As for myself, I am weak. Left-handedness in the battle is a type of weakness. It speaks of man's own weakness; here is a man who in himself is weak, who is regarded as less than others, a man who is at a discount, under a handicap in himself, and yet is nevertheless in the Son at God's right hand.

There are two sides: there is the divine side, and our side. These two sides must go together; they are not contrary, they are one. We have to come to the place where we recognise our left-handedness; that is, that in ourselves we are nothing, we are weak. When we have come to the full consciousness of that, we are in the strongest position. Paul was of the tribe of Benjamin, but look at the two sides of that man. Was there a man more confident, more assured, more certain as to his standing? See the words he uses of positive conviction: "...hath translated us out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love" (Col. 1:13). It is all quite certain on that side, yet he was always ready to confess his own weakness, his own faultiness, his own worthlessness.

Do not think you have got to feel tremendously able and worthwhile in yourself to have this assurance. We have got to know how utterly worthless we are in ourselves before we can fully appreciate our standing in Christ, because it brings us to the position that it is not what we are, but what He is. God demands that, and that is where God's strength is found.

This left-handed Benjamite, a solid unity in himself, made a sword with two edges. See the man who wields the Word of God to good effect! We are not dealing with all the typical elements in the book of Judges. If we were dealing with Eglon, and all that that man represents, you would see the point, but we take the positive side. Here is the two-edged sword, which leads us to think of Hebrews 4:12:

"For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

This sword goes right through, as did Ehud's.

The Spiritual Application

In applying this, first of all let us say that the only man who can wield the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, to real effect, is a man who is a unity. When you and I have this dividedness of soul, this question, this uncertainty, we can never use the Word of God to real effect. We shall never be able to take the Word of God into our hands and do real work with it for the deliverance of others. We have to be sure of our standing, our acceptance, and place in the Lord.

Ehud made his sword a cubit in length. A cubit is a measure from the elbow to the finger tips, and you will see that a cubit is said to be according to the measure of a man. That cubit from the elbow to the fingertips is therefore representative of the measure of the man. Ehud made his sword according to the measure of a man. That does not mean that the Word of God is brought typically down to human dimensions, but it means that the Word of God was vitally related to his human life.

It is just possible to take the wonderful revelations of the Word of God and use them, or talk about them, out of all relationship to ourselves, without our having a living, practical relationship with the Word of God. The very first thing that the Word of God has to do in the one who uses it is to measure him up and deal with him. If you and I use the Word of God out of correspondence with our own lives, then we have gone beyond our measure, and we shall not be effective. The Lord is able to say, "That man is talking about something which he is not living. That is out of relationship; that is not true in life." The Lord will bring conviction on such a one sooner or later. The Word of the Lord has got to be brought into active, immediate relation to the life of the one who uses it. Ehud was such a man. He was in living oneness with the Word of God, typically speaking; and, being this kind of man, he dealt with and destroyed the power that had imposed itself upon the Lord's people, and led them out into liberty!

We have referred to 2 Chronicles 20. Do you see the parallel? In that chapter the enemies Moab and Ammon were mentioned. They came against the Lord's people. It is very inspiring to notice that what we have been saying is closely related to this chapter. Here you have these forces rising up, and you notice that Jehoshaphat says that these are the people whom the Lord Himself dispossessed, and gave the land unto His people. These dispossessed foes sought to repossess themselves and dispossess the Lord's people. Jehoshaphat made it a matter of the Lord's purpose, the Lord's mind, the Lord's intention about this. He says, in effect, "You never intended this; You showed what You intended when You drove them out! Now it is not Your intention that Moab and Ammon should dispossess Your people; Your purpose is the other way round!"

Then you notice that everything here is a matter of strong confidence. We are left-handed in ourselves, "but our eyes are upon thee"! The Son of the right hand!

Then listen to Jehoshaphat later: "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." Isn't that what Ehud means? "Believe in the Lord your God", get rid of all doubts, uncertainties; get rid of the dividedness of heart; get rid of the questions; stand solidly in your God, "so shall ye be established".

You see the message to our hearts. If there has come arrest, limitation, defeat and a falling short of what the Lord intended, and the forces against us have obstructed our way and imposed themselves upon us so that we feel incapable of getting through, what is it that is said to us regarding the way of deliverance?

The first thing is faith's laying hold of God's strength. The second is coming to a settled place as to all questions concerning our relationship with the Lord, our standing, our acceptance; getting rid of all dividedness of soul and standing by faith firmly in the Son of God's right hand. Then, on that ground of faith's assurance of the Lord, the faithfulness of God, the certainty of His will for our being in a place of victory, rising up with the Word of God closely related to our own lives to strike those forces that are besieging, that are hemming us in.

We have in our remembrance how the enemy tried this very thing with Martin Luther. He tried to divide his soul regarding his acceptance with God, by bringing against him his own left-handedness; that is, his own worthlessness, his own weakness, and the devil sought to write his sins over his head as a charge against him. Martin Luther said he felt himself going to pieces, sinking, and losing confidence and faith, until he recollected the Word of the Lord. Then he laid hold of the Word of God and rose up and smote the enemy by declaring: Yes, all that is true which you have said but you have forgotten one thing, "The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth from all sin." The devil left him, and Luther came out in victory. This is a simple, and well-known illustration of this very thing.

If the enemy can divide our souls with doubt, with questions or uncertainty, we are a bound and defeated people; but, taking our place solidly upon the fact of Christ our life, Christ our righteousness, Christ our standing, Christ our everything, and refusing this dividedness of soul, we can take up the Word of God and use it against the forces of evil and cleave a way through. The whole matter resolves itself into a strong standing on the ground of our certain union with God in Christ, and refusing all dividedness of heart. If the enemy could have succeeded with us, very few of us would be where we are today. The enemy can create dark, dense and thick atmospheres so that it seems that heaven is closed and hell circles around. Then he immediately tells you that the Lord has a controversy with you, the Lord has left you to your own devices, and the Lord is not with you any longer. The devil is always the accuser of the brethren. How are we going to escape? If we give in, that is the end of our progress, the end of our victory, the end of our spiritual growth. How are we going to overcome? By being united in heart with God's testimony concerning His Son, and, standing on that ground, to use the Word of God, "It is written...". It was after the Lord Jesus had said those words that the devil left Him. It was when Ehud had triumphed that the land had rest forty years. It would have been much longer if the people had not gone wrong again. While we stand our ground there is the rest and peace of victory. The Lord speak that word to our hearts.

Chapter 5 - Taking God's Ground of Faith

Reading: 1 Thess. 1; 1 Tim. 1:4; Heb. 11:32-34.

It is not particularly the book of Judges which is the matter of our concern, but the burden of the Lord is bound up with that little clause at the end of 1 Thessalonians 1:9, "a living and true God".

"Remembering without ceasing your work of faith..." (1 Thess. 1:3).

"...to serve the living and true God" (1 Thess. 1:9).

Knowledge of the Living and True God

If we were to read through the first and second letters to the Thessalonians, we should be greatly impressed with the fulness, richness, strength, victory, fruitfulness and effectiveness of these Thessalonian believers. We have often remarked upon it, and it is certainly something which calls for remark, for some of the grandest and choicest things said to believers were said by the apostle to those at Thessalonica. He was able to say of them that they were exemplary; that is, that throughout a whole region their faith was spoken of and they were talked about; and that they were an example; and by means of them the Lord became known in a very extensive and effectual way. It means the Lord was known to them in no small and weak way. Their knowing of the Lord was a very effectual and fruitful thing over this wide region. They have been preserved by the sovereign work of God as a testimony right down the ages, and are before us now as a monument. When we come back to the root of this matter, and ask how this was, what the secret of the matter was, what lay behind it, the answer is found in this statement with two fragments brought together: "...your work of faith"; "...ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God".

Therefore, there must have been a point at which these Thessalonians abandoned idols on the ground that they believed, without any previous history and experience or without being in possession of proof that there was a living and true God. Here were their idols, and there was this God of whom Paul had spoken, to whom Paul was a witness. They had no experience of that God, and they had nothing at present in themselves to prove that He was such a God as Paul had said. But they believed that He was a living and true God, and without anything in their own history to go upon they just took the step of faith in what God presented to them. Abandoning their idols they turned from them to serve a living and true God. That all sounds very elementary, but there is no doubt about its being basic to every discovery of God, to every fragment of knowledge that He is a living and true God.

In the first place, witness is borne to you that there is a living and true God. You have heard proclamation made, you have heard a declaration that God is. There is witness borne to God as Paul witnessed to these Thessalonians. It has been found to be so by a multitude who would give their lives for that testimony. It is presented to you from the outside. How are you going to prove it? How are you going to know it? How is He going to become to you a living and true God? There is only one way, and you are pinned down to it, but if you will accept it, you will know as truly as these Thessalonians, and your knowledge of it may be just as fruitful as was theirs. "Your work of faith", in turning to serve a living and true God! Simple as it is in words, it concludes the whole matter. There is no getting out of it. There is no getting round it. The slightest fragment of personal knowledge that God is a living and true God demands an act of faith towards Him on your part; not proof, not evidence, not the answer to all your questions, not argument, nothing whatever but an act of faith towards Him, to serve Him. To serve Him is the giving of a very definite, active aspect to faith. You have got to act in faith, and faith is always faith if it is true to the Word. God never, in this dispensation, comes out and projects for us a kind of gangway across to Himself in proofs and evidences. This is a dispensation of faith, a dispensation appointed and fixed by God. It is as though God had said at the beginning of a certain period of this world's history: "From this moment up to a certain time which I shall fix, covering so many ages, so many generations, the whole character and nature of things is one of faith! I do not depart from that a hair's breadth, nor for an instant! The character, the nature, the governing law of this dispensation is faith. Try as you will, you will never get Me off that ground." God has fixed it. No one will ever find Him on any other ground, by any other means. The past dispensation was different! You had only to do certain things and you discovered Him.

Go back to that time in the day of Israel and it seems that they almost walked by sight. It seems that the response of God to them was so instant, and so demonstrative, so manifest, that they almost walked by sight. But this is not that dispensation, this is a dispensation of faith; fixed, immovable, unalterable by God Himself. But, inasmuch as God has fixed it, and will not move from it, He will meet you on His own ground, He will answer to His own condition, and if you come on to the ground of faith you will know that God is a living God and a true God.

You may batter yourself against the door to know God in any other way, and you will batter yourself to pieces, but once you take God's ground of faith you discover Him. You turned to serve One of whom you had no experience, no personal history, but whom you believed to be. It has been proclaimed to you, but the evidence of those who say they know and have proved is all you have to go upon. You believe that He is a living and true God, and you turn, and in turning you discover God, and you have to say: "It is true! God is, and God is a living God, and God is a true God!" Then a history of knowing God has commenced.

Let all who are within the realm of what we have just said about the initial stage of knowing God lay it to heart. It is the only way to know God in a living and saving way in this dispensation. It is the sure way. Whether we have believed or not, whether we have turned or not, whether this work of faith has been in us or not, we shall wake up in the end to know that He is a living God, and that He is true - but then it will be a different discovery. Ultimately you cannot get away from the fact that God is a living and true God. Let that fact be laid to heart by any who are arguing, struggling, battering themselves in the dark to find God. You never will, until you exercise faith in God, until you believe that God is, and that "He is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." If He is that God that you are looking for, He must be that. You do not want a God who is not a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. You may have your idea of the kind of God that He must be, but He transcends all your highest ideas. You will never discover that He is, and you will never discover what He is, until there is a definite turning to Him in faith, which says, without knowing, without anything to go upon: "Oh God, I do not know You, but I believe that You are! I abandon myself to You, that You may make Yourself known to me!" That is very simple, but that is the way in.

The principle applies all the way along. You and I are still called to know the living God. That is going to be our history all along, to discover that He is a living God, and it is, of course, one of the elements of glory in our Christian lives that we do again and again come into the (shall we say) surprise: we make discovery again and again that the Lord is a living God.

That sounds as though we have been doubting that the Lord is alive, but it is not that. In some pressure, in some trouble, we have needed to know the Lord. We have been going round and round that Jericho', but not in faith. We have been trying to get to know the Lord in this way, in this matter, to be assured; perhaps pining and repining, groaning and moaning, struggling and agonising; everything but believing. Then one day the Lord shows us that an attitude of faith in Him, calling for an act of obedience, without any history, without any precedent, through faith in Him in this connection, is required, and when we turn and take that step of faith's obedience, that step of faith in the Lord over this thing, we discover He is a living God in that connection. That is the romance of the Christian life, that even those who know the Lord, and have very good reason to know the Lord, and have a lot of history with the Lord, of whom you might say that they are established in the knowledge of the Lord, again and again wake up to the fact that, after all, the Lord is alive. That sounds strange, but it is true. The discovery of the livingness of the Lord in multitudes of different ways comes by fresh steps of faith in Him in this dispensation of faith.

God locks us up to this, because this is a dispensation of faith. It is as though He said, "If you want to know Me in a living way more, and still more, in new discoveries, every fraction of this depends upon some fresh gesture of faith in Me. So I bring you into all kinds of conditions which demand faith in Me." It seems to me that the older we grow, and the more we know of the Lord, the more difficult do the tests of faith become. And it seems as though the nearer the end of the course we get, the easier it is for faith to give up from one point of view, because the tests become so much greater and deeper, yet they lead to something which is so much ahead of all that has been as to the knowledge of the Lord.

Knowledge of God Based on Faith

Faith is the law of this dispensation and God demands it for the knowledge of Himself in every way, if our relationship with Him is a true one. It is not necessary, though it might be of help, to touch on different ways in which this is so. The fact is that you may be holding back from the Lord in some matter of obedience for a long time, exercised about it, and while you delay you are circumscribing and limiting your knowledge and enjoyment of the Lord. All the time witness is borne that if only in faith you take that step of obedience you will find the Lord in a new way; and then eventually you yield, and in the obedience of faith in the Lord, because you believe it is the Lord's will, you do it, and almost immediately you make a discovery. The Lord is more alive to you than ever He was before. There is a livingness about your relationship with the Lord which is new, which is fresh, which is added to all your past knowledge of Him. All you have to say, the only way you can put it, is that the Lord is a living God.

We are not dealing with doctrine. We are not dealing with laws and regulations, which are optional. We are not dealing with things being imposed upon us as a system to which we must adhere. We are dealing with a living God, and what we discover is not some new gratification because we have got over a difficulty; we discover the Lord.

For the testimony to Himself, God more and more needs those who know Him as a living and true God. That knowledge is going to be promoted by God by way of tests of faith, and all those who are going to be of the greatest value to God on this earth, in conditions such as they are, will be those who have come to know God by way of faith exercised in Him in the midst of the most acute difficulties! We give our lives to the Lord; in all honesty of heart we declare ourselves as being on this earth for God and there is nothing which has any place in our interest, consideration, desire or ambition beside the Lord's interest. So far as we know our own hearts, that is our position before God: complete consecration to Him. Then we move as we believe God leads us to move. The course of our history finds us taking such steps, moving in such directions, in such matters, as we believe are God's will. We have prayed over them, committed them to the Lord and then we have acted after prayer in a way which we believe to be God's way. Then concerning these very things we come into the greatest troubles of our life, very often a terrible tangle seems to come about because of those things. Everything seems to say it was all wrong; God was not in it, had no place in it. What are we going to do? How can we go through life like that? We have trusted God, we have been honestly here for God, and now in the things about which we prayed, in which we had no personal interest as far as we knew our own heart - and we challenged God to root out anything that we did not know - as a result of all our trusting God, and all our committing to Him, we have come into this horrible mess, and everything says that it was wrong, and God was not in it. How are we going to get through life like that?

The issue is clear. If you are going to be honest, if you are not going to hedge, you are going to take one of two courses: abandon a life of trust in God and take things into your own hand, or (and there is no middle course), stand to it that God is faithful, and eventually you will see a divine plan brought out of all this confusion.

Humanly it looks like a hopeless situation. There seems no redeeming it. We cannot record it as being of God! Are we going to capitulate to that? Or we may as well give it all up! If we take that position we may as well say, "It is vain to trust the Lord" and not do it any more. That is the honest course to take if you are going to accept that level of things. The alternative is this other thing: "I seem to be in the most awful mess, and everything seems to have gone wrong. My steps of faith and trust in the Lord have brought me into an awful confusion, and everything seems to be a contradiction that God ever had anything to do with me at all, but I believe God!" Out of this there will come something which will make it perfectly clear that, although it may not have been altogether God's first directive will, it was His permissive will; and something for Him, for His glory, comes out of it which justifies it, and does not condemn the whole thing. Take that ground and you will discover that God is a living and true God, that in all this God is not dead, He is not a false God, and not unfaithful.

Some of us know that this means an utter attitude. We are either going under or we are going to take this attitude. Such as are brought into that position most deeply and severely, where they think they have an overwhelming mass of seeming evidence that God has failed, that God has let them down, God never honoured their trust in Him, God never took responsibility for their ignorance when they acted before Him in perfect honesty, are those who, in the intention of God, are to make the greatest discovery of Him, and to know Him in such a way as to be of tremendous value.

An Illustration

Take a simple illustration of this in the case of the apostle Paul in the storm on the Mediterranean. If Paul had wanted apparent proof that he had made a series of mistakes, that storm provided him with all those apparent proofs. If Paul had sat down and said, "I was a fool to appeal to Caesar! If only I had not appealed to Caesar we should not have been in this, and I have made an awful mistake! They tried to persuade me not to go to Jerusalem and I insisted upon going to Jerusalem, and now it is because of my folly and my mistake that I am in this condition! This is an ignominious end! The Lord has left us to our own devices, the ship is going to pieces, and we shall all be lost!" There was any amount of evidence to prove that he had been wrong. What was his attitude? "I believe God, that it shall be even as He hath said" (Acts 27:25). I believe God! When? When neither sun, nor moon, nor stars appeared, when a great tempest lay on them, when the ship already was creaking and its timbers parting one from another, when all hope that they should be saved was given up. I believe God! What was the result? The ship's company was captured. We do not know how it was carried out, but we are told that the Lord said that He had given Paul all them that sailed with him. The Lord had put them into his hands in some way. There was a trail of results, not the least of which was the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians, and one or two more, lasting over the greater part of a thousand years in building up saints, and causing us to continually believe in God.

Two ways were open to Paul. One was that he could believe that God was failing him, to lose faith in God, to capitulate to the appearances, which were grim. Get into a Mediterranean storm and see that there is no myth about it. I have seen ships in the Mediterranean which seemed to disappear from sight, and after what seemed like minutes have seen their masts appearing again and coming up; mighty war ships seem to have gone down with the waves. Now in the midst of that Paul said, "I believe God."

We know something of that in our spiritual experience. All hope that we should be saved given up, neither sun, nor moon, nor stars appearing. There is a spiritual counterpart. We know what it is when the tempest is upon us. What expressive words they are; "...no small tempest lay on us...". A long-drawn-out conflict with spiritual elements, and all the time the whisperings of the devil, "You have made a mistake! You have gone wrong! You have taken the wrong way! God has left you to your own devices!" What is going to be our attitude?

Do not think that in speaking like this, with this emphasis, we for a moment claim to be in the position we say we have to be in; that is, the alternative to abandoning everything. God needs that which is a knowledge of Himself which is not a meagre knowledge. And that knowledge is to be possessed only through faith towards Him, which is tested and maintained through these deep and dark experiences.

It could frighten us, but we will not be frightened. We know that God will not put upon us more than we are able to bear. We know that we shall be inwardly strengthened in the day of the test. The point is this, that it is the definite, active faith in God in the midst of all that seems to contradict which is the way of discovering in a new way that He is a living God.

Sometimes it seems that God is not living in some matters, as though God were not livingly associated at all. It is all a big test of faith. Then when faith which has been tested takes a deliberate attitude towards God, you discover that in that particular connection, where God seemed to have no interest, no concern, no relationship, He is, after all, a living God. In that particular thing God seemed to be away from you, and you have been tested. Now you have discovered in a new way, in a specific connection, that He is a living and true God. That underlies everything.

It gives the key very largely to the book of Judges again. Here are the representative members of the judges mentioned, the men who stand out perhaps most conspicuously: Gideon, Samson, Barak, Samuel, and Jephthah. These are the judges, and it says that these men did all that they did in the delivering of God's people through active faith in God, when everything seemed to have gone. Oh, what recovery it was because, as we have pointed out, there was a state of things where a great difference had taken place as to God being in evidence. In the days of Joshua, God was so marvellously in evidence all the time. Now, because of this declension, God is not in evidence in the same way. He is not right on the spot taking the initiative. He is allowing circumstances, in a sovereign and providential way, which are exceedingly bitter and adverse. Then these men exercise faith in God in the midst of those conditions, with wonderful results. They discover that God, after all, is not dead, as He seemed to be, but is a living and true God, but always and only living and true to nothing else but to faith.

Faith does not make God living, but faith discovers that God is living. Let us not mix faith with psychology, that if only you can believe a thing is, it is. That is not the point. We do not make God alive by faith; we do not make God true by faith; He is infinitely more than we know Him to be. We shall discover Him by faith, and we shall discover far more as faith increases. The Lord make us men and women of faith, not for our own deliverance, satisfaction, justification and vindication, but because God needs the knowledge of Himself here among men, and God needs a vessel prepared with that kind of relationship to Himself for administering in His coming Kingdom.

Chapter 6 - Features of Spiritual Leadership

"Praise ye the LORD for the avenging of Israel, when the people willingly offered themselves" (Judges 5:2).

When we speak of spiritual leadership we must keep out of our minds what we might call official leadership, appointment to position, and such like. We are concerned with leadership which is spiritual.

It does not require a very thorough searching of the Scriptures to discover that in all times the interests of the Lord have been very largely and very definitely bound up with the spirit of leadership, and that when that spirit was absent things were in a very bad way; the Lord's interests were not being advanced; there was barrenness and unfruitfulness. Weakness, defeat and dishonour prevailed always when there was an absence of spiritual leadership. When the Lord would have an increase, an advance, a development, or a fuller realisation of His end, He always moved anew in the matter of spiritual leadership.

We have already seen a correspondence between the times of the Judges and our own time, things being in a bad spiritual state. Perhaps the main good is a renewing, growing, strengthening cry for a fresh visitation of God. That is a good thing, but it declares a bad state, it represents that things are very much other than they should be.

In times such as the times of the Judges, and in our own time, recovery as to the Lord's full mind for His people is bound up with spiritual leadership, so that we can truly say that there is a very great need for this in our time. It is very difficult to find this thing in any real and commensurate way today. Everything is of a very low level and measure. We have all found a fairly general level, which is not very high. There is nothing which speaks definitely and strongly of the spirit of leadership.

If we recognise and accept that, there is the possibility of our coming to some profitable consideration of what the Lord would do, and how He would do it through a clearer understanding of what spiritual leadership is, to meet the Lord's need and the need of the Lord's people.

The Securing of a People to God's End

In the first place let us remember that spiritual leadership has always to do with the securing of a people to the end which God has willed. God has an end in view for His people; He is not just working haphazardly, moving without design. The end of God is, to Himself, clearly, fully and finally defined and settled, and He never departs from that and will accept nothing other or less. God has a full end in view, and He will make a full end, and will reach that full end.

Spiritual leadership is always related to securing a people to that end. There may be phases, or initial steps in the salvation or the deliverance of that people. After the initial stage all the other stages, right up to the final crowning stroke to bring them in at last, will call for the extra putting forth of power for such a people. Whatever the point is at which we take up this purpose of God, the spiritual leadership in it is related to the end, not to any particular phase at any time as something in itself.

We must not isolate any part or any stage of God's work and make it something in itself and an end in itself. The matter of the unsaved, for instance, is relative and not detached or exclusive, and must never be made so. The sanctifying of believers, the leading of them into a life of holiness, is not something round which you may put a hedge and call it by a title, or make it something that ends with itself. That is only a step, a stage. So it is with everything else. It is all related to the full end and must ever be maintained in that relatedness.

We must see, then, that spiritual leadership is the securing of a people to God's full end, to the end which God has willed for that people. We can never say that God intended to bring out a people and leave them a third of the way, or two-thirds of the way, or nine-tenths of the way. God intends that they should go right through, by successive stages, and every gift of the spirit of leadership was but to carry them forward to the full end. It is important to recognise that.

The End Will Never be Reached Here

Another thing in connection with spiritual leadership is this, that the end will never be reached here. It always relates ultimately to heaven and not to earth. It never has been, and never will be, complete here. That is shown very forcibly in the types. Abraham, with all the promises and sovereign movements of God in his life, with all the advance made (and there was tremendous advance of a spiritual kind made in his life from Ur of the Chaldees onward), came to the place where he realised that the end could never be reached here. He looked for "a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker was God" (Heb. 11:10). When we find a quotation to that effect in the New Testament we know that the context points out clearly that it was not an earthly thing at all but a heavenly. Then we know that Israel looked for a country, and the apostle tells us that it was "heavenly", which carries things beyond Canaan. Then when Israel came into the land they never fully possessed it, and if they had there would still have been something lacking. Again, in the letter to the Hebrews we are told that they did not enter fully into God's rest, that even Joshua could not bring them wholly into the rest. "There remains therefore a rest for the people of God" (Heb. 4:9). So wherever you look at the types you find there is a falling short, and they point to the fact that God's full end can never be reached here; it relates to heaven and not to earth. It is important to recognise that in spiritual leadership. You will see how that bears upon things as we go on.

Never let us think that we shall reach something here that is complete, perfect and final. We never shall, however far we go. However much we advance and progress we shall come at the end to realise that there is still a very great deal further to go, and that extra bit is not an earthly thing at all. As a matter of fact the spiritual consciousness of truly spiritual people is that the further they go with the Lord the more other-worldly do all their interests become. That is, the more they are separated from things here and attached to heaven. They find that it is essential to do that, because of the invariable and inevitable failure of anything in a creation which lies under a sentence of vanity and cannot reach its end until the manifestation of the sons in glory. That governs this matter. It should not be a discouragement, but it should be a reinforcement.

Spiritual Leadership Sometimes Bound Up With a People

Spiritual leadership is not always bound up with individuals, it is sometimes bound up with a people. This again is set out in types. There were leaders in type who were individual. We stress the word "type" because so often this natural man gets hold of the Old Testament idea of leadership and tries to reproduce it in our time. God does not do that. In types we see spiritual leadership entrusted to individuals, but we also see it with peoples, with a tribe for instance. "Who shall set the battle in array?" "Who shall go before?" And the Lord said that Judah should set the battle in array, that Judah should lead the people. A whole tribe becomes endued with the spirit of leadership. We make that point at the moment as we work towards the application, in order that we might realise that God sometimes raises up a people as well as individuals for the purpose of spiritual leadership. He sometimes raises up a collective testimony to set a standard for the rest of His people, something expressed in a corporate body by which all His people shall see more of His thought, and be to them an advance guard in the purpose of God.

We have been speaking of the assembly at Thessalonica, and have seen how they were an example to all that believed, and that through them the Word went out into all the region, and that they were spoken of everywhere. Evidently spiritual leadership was there. You see at once the nature of leadership when you look at it. People did not set themselves up as a body in front of all the Lord's people to lead them on, but it was a spiritual influence, something emanating from a spiritual company, and it had the effect of leading the Lord's people on, and showing the way, showing what was possible through faith. The Lord would do that kind of thing as much today as ever for a collective testimony which serves Him in the capacity of spiritual leadership; but we must not allow our personal and our individual responsibility to be lost in the collective.

Bearing the Brunt of the Opposition

There is one more thing by way of introduction. Spiritual leadership always means the bearing of the brunt of the first line opposition. Quite obviously leaders must meet the first line of opposition, and in spiritual leadership it means that the brunt of things falls upon the leadership. Those who are in the position of spiritual leadership will know more of the fury, antagonism, hatred, malice and evil cunning of the oppressor than perhaps the average child of God, or people of God, will know. That explains a good deal. Remember that it is something to be expected.

Having said those things of a general nature, we come closer to the meaning of spiritual leadership.

Leadership From God's Standpoint: Always and Essentially Spiritual

That means several things:

a) Natural qualifications are not the governing factors

The book of Judges has already shown us that. These whom God raised up were, on the natural plane, anything but what the world would choose as its leaders. They suffered from various kinds of handicaps, and their handicaps are made perfectly clear. Ehud was a left-handed man, and that fact, in Scripture, is always intended to indicate human or natural weakness from God's standpoint. It is a type, but that is what it is intended to indicate. Deborah was a woman, indicating that again something out of the usual is in view from God's standpoint. Gideon was the least in his father's house. He was away in a corner, threshing wheat to hide it from the enemy, largely unknown, and not one in any prominent public position, not one about whom we have anything to say as to his natural qualifications. Jephthah was handicapped by the unfortunate birth, and driven out by the other members of his family because he was not a true member of the family. What a handicap for a man to be a leader among the Lord's people!

Natural qualifications are clearly not the governing factors here, and from God's standpoint they never are. Leadership is spiritual. Human personality, which counts so much with the world, is not the first consideration with God. There is personality which is produced by spirituality which is far more effective than the strongest personality among men. Real spirituality (in leadership) means discernment, perception, judgement, understanding and wisdom, insight and strength. It emerges spontaneously as the result of a secret history with God.

I remember once hearing something said of a certain man, that it did not matter where he was, whether in a board meeting, or committee meeting, (though he might only be invited to attend that meeting for a special purpose), if he was there even for a little while, spontaneously the whole meeting turned to him, and he became the unofficial chairman for the time being. That was because of his judgement and insight. It is an illustration that spiritual personality is something which is developed in a secret history with God while human personality is not a first consideration with Him.

Moses was something when he left Egypt at the age of forty. When he left the wilderness forty years later he was nothing. Then it was that God could come in and give him spiritual leadership. He sought to assume leadership at the age of forty, on the basis of what he was in Egypt. Forty years later he was loath to accept spiritual leadership at all, and had to get it from God. Leadership is clearly a matter of the spirit.

Joshua and the judges give us the same lesson. Then in connection with David you will notice what Samuel was looking for: a man of personality, of stature, of manifest qualifications. The Lord made it clear that He was looking on the heart, and not on the outward appearance. When David entered in (the one who would never have been selected but rather left out of account) the Lord told Samuel to anoint him. Then there is Paul. While so much is made of Paul's natural qualifications and achievements, Paul would never stand on that ground himself. We know that it is the spiritual value of Paul that counts, not any natural ability. Enough has been said to prove that leadership is spiritual, that it is a matter of spiritual qualities and features being pre-eminent.

This word is for the one who may think himself or herself the very least, the one who might feel that leadership could never come their way. We are talking about spiritual leadership. All other ideas and considerations must be deliberately thrust aside, and we must remember this, that leadership is constituted by God, and is the result of His approbation of a life lived in secret with Him. There is no other qualifying, no other training; it is not taught in the schools; it is a life in secret with God, upon which God's eye is resting, and in due time, when that eye is satisfied, God moves and says: "This is My son, in whom is My delight!" and gives him to be a leader and commander to the people under anointing. We have used those words, not to apply them generally to everybody, but to apply the truth. I believe that there is far more in the thirty years of the hidden life of the Lord Jesus than we know. It is impossible to think for a moment that those thirty years were of no account, that they were not under the eye of God and had no meaning. I believe they had the greatest meaning. The declaration at the Jordan was not only to do with the Eternal Sonship; God was not recognising among men One who was other than the rest of men. I believe it was God's acknowledgment of what had been going on for thirty years. Those thirty years were hidden, silent, but the eye of God was upon them, and because of what had gone on in the thirty years the Father was able to say that in Him was His delight. Then He was anointed.

That is the law which holds good; therefore I believe that it is essential unto spiritual leadership that we should have a probation which is under the eye of God. Oh, this mechanical taking hold of the work of God, and taking hold of the lives of young men and women, bringing them out of business and putting them into responsible positions at home and abroad! What wreckage and loss there is by that false system of things! God chooses the workers, not men; God chooses the work, not men; and God brings the workers and the work together when He is able to say: "I am well pleased!" Until God can say that, there will be delay. In any case there will not be that full approbation of God, and that full effectiveness and fruitfulness that there should be, until God has put that life under probation and watched for faithfulness, watched for the relationship of that life to Himself under all the most difficult conditions. There is no royal road to spiritual usefulness. There is no quick way into a position of value.

God will put us into a place of business, and will make that very hot for us. Our inclination will be to get out of business into the Lord's service, and thus we are breaking with the very dispositions of God for our lives if we do, because God is there seeking to find that ground of approval which will lead to His choosing of us.

Let us be careful of our ideas of service and usefulness to God. Leadership is spiritual, it is not official; it is not by appointment, or by choice. It is the result of God's approbation. If God looked down upon that period of our lives which He intended to be the preparation time and saw us always shirking, refusing to take responsibility, wanting to get out of it to something else, trying to get round things as quickly and as easily as possible, then we should not be approved, and there would never be God's choosing.

A word like that is very necessary. It is governed by this word: "...the Lord looketh on the heart" (1 Sam. 16:7). That truth governed David. That clearly indicates that the Lord had His eye on David all the time he was in the field with those few sheep, and when at last he came out it was in spite of the set-back which his brethren would have given him, in spite of the hatred of Saul, in spite of all powers set against him. He had to come through to spiritual leadership because he was approved of God. Wherefore Paul will exhort us to study to show ourselves approved. It is a strong position.

So then leadership is not official, it is spiritual. Let us not think of leadership of a movement, for instance, or of some institution. Let us keep the spiritual always in our minds.

b) Walking with God and not with men

The thing which is required in this case is that those concerned walk with God in the first instance, and not with men. No one will misunderstand that. There are all the values of fellowship, all the values of counsel. The Lord would never have us brush aside the mature experience of any of His servants which can be placed to our help and good, but the Lord would have us have a life with Himself, so that within our own hearts the Holy Spirit can corroborate what others say, so that we know the voice of the Spirit. When we hear anything we know whether it is the voice of the Spirit; when we hear advice and counsel we know in our hearts whether it is the voice of the Spirit. It is an inward walk with God, a basic essential to spiritual leadership. It is a great thing to find young men and women walking with God, not apart from their fellows, and not showing superiority or independence in relation to available counsel and experience, but at the same time walking with God themselves. Nobody who has experience will expect the younger believer to accept what they say right away or come under their government, but will expect anyone who is spiritual to take the attitude that they will hold that before the Lord, and, given the Lord's witness, will follow in that way. That is walking with the Lord and this is an essential to spiritual leadership.

Features of Spiritual Leadership

We have said that spiritual leadership is marked by certain spiritual features. What are they?

a) Spiritual understanding

It need not be full, complete, mature understanding, but it is that faculty of the spiritually minded by which it is possible to discern between what is of the Spirit and what is otherwise. It is something which cannot be defined, which cannot be explained in words, but something which can be known. We can only say, as to our experience of it: "Well, the Lord gave me no assurance about that; I lacked that sense that it was of the Lord." It could be put in a thousand ways. Spiritual understanding is just being able to see the difference between what comes of man and what comes of the Spirit of God; what is of ourselves and what is of the Lord; the difference between even the best intention and motive in the interests of the Lord and that which the Lord really considers to be the best thing in His interests.

The Lord's mind is so completely other than our mind even about His own things and His own interests. Spiritual understanding is that power, that capacity and faculty for discerning, judging, registering differences. Sometimes that spiritual faculty will lead us to refuse a whole realm that would be argued for by the natural mind, even in the interests of the Lord, as being the course to be taken, the thing to be done, what would glorify God. It is brought home to us like that, and within us there is something which sets itself against that, which will not give us the confirmation that, after all, however good it may seem, and however right, we are not sure. We cannot tell why we are not sure, we cannot give an argument against these things, but in ourselves we know.

On the other hand, that faculty leads us to move out into realms which all the common sense of the natural mind would be set against, to do things which would be perfectly mad to the natural mind. No one can define or explain it, but it can be known, and it is basic and governmental to spiritual leadership. It is judgement of a spiritual kind. It is not our task to impose the results of it upon other people, nor for us to judge other people according to that. It is for us to walk with God and not be taken hold of by things or people, but be faithful to God because in our hearts we know! How we know we cannot tell, but we know, and that is all there is that can be said about it. We know that God says, No! and God says, Yes! and that brings us into conflict with every argument that man would bring to bear upon the situation. But to be true to God we cannot, or we must (as the case may be), and that by inward spiritual understanding. It is an essential, and every child of God can have it and should have it. It is the normal state of a life in the Spirit. It is just as natural to the new man as our own judgements are to our old man. We know in the natural what our inclinations and our disinclinations are. We ought to know just as truly in the new man, in the new creation, what the inclinations and the disinclinations of the Spirit are. Paul uses the term "spiritually-minded".

That does not mean that you have a kind of abstract something' that you call a mind. In Scotland they have a way of expressing it which is a very good interpretation of Paul's language. They say about a matter, "I was minded to do" or, "Are you minded to do that?" Spiritual-mindedness is that you are minded in a positive way, in a certain direction; your inclination is that. This is natural to the spiritual, the new creation, if the life is lived in the Spirit. It is not something extra, but is born with the new child. Spiritual understanding is so important for spiritual leadership, and we should seek it from the Lord more and more, together with the development of it by the Holy Spirit in us, who is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, or revelation.

b) The full assurance of spiritual understanding

Then there is this extra thing, the full assurance of understanding. How necessary that is to spiritual leadership! Where you find lack of that assurance you find the inability to give a lead, or to take a lead. Any kind of uncertainty, indefiniteness, or lack of assurance means paralysis. The apostle prays for believers that they may come to the full assurance of understanding. What a thing that is! It is being fully persuaded and fully assured on the matter. The Lord would have us like that. It is the positive side, or element, in understanding. It is one thing to have perception, it is another thing to believe your perception, to stand on your perception, to commit yourself to your perception, for that perception to be strong enough to govern your whole life and lead you to take risks. Full assurance of understanding is an essential to spiritual leadership.

We will close there for the moment, so far as points are concerned, and conclude with one further general word as to spiritual leadership.

We have sought to strip this whole matter of all ideas of the official, of appointment, of headship in movements, and such things, and to recognise that it comes down to this: here are multitudes of the Lord's people who hardly know their right hand from their left, groping in mists and shadows; multitudes of the Lord's people who are remaining babes spiritually, far beyond the time when they ought to have moved from the infant stage. There is a great need for an increase of the knowledge of the Lord among His people. There is a tremendous need for a voice of authority and assurance coming from directions where the Lord is known.

You and I can come into such a relationship with the Lord that would result in that need being met in some measure. If you can help another child of God out of your knowledge of the Lord into a fuller knowledge of the Lord, then you are a spiritual leader, you have got spiritual leadership in principle, you have leadership in spirit. The urge of the Lord at this time is that He wants His people to come up out of that general state, out of that latent spiritual life, to represent something more for Him of a positive character.

No one will stand up and begin to throw their weight about as an assumed leader. They will soon meet the judgement of the Lord if they assume to follow Abimelech. The Lord wants something more positive in His people, that positive element which can be an adding of Him to others, a real leading of His people into some greater fulness. He needs leadership of a spiritual kind, and He challenges us all as to where we are by asking, "Are you a passive one? Are you one who is always deriving and never contributing? Are you just a passenger being carried? Are you all the time waiting for things to come to you?" That will be one realm to which He will speak. Then in other realms He will speak also. He will seek, even where there is responsibility being carried and a measure of leadership being expressed and fulfilled, to bring back the necessity for recognising that we must not surrender ourselves to men or systems or order or organisations. The thing that is needed is spiritual leadership.

So many put the machine in the place of the man, allow that real spiritual value which is related to a man who knows God to be lost in a great organisation. You would not believe how many men are lost in an organisation, how much spiritual value is lost in the institution. It is the thing that is carried on, and it is not the knowledge of God in a man that is the supreme value.

How often things have changed like that! God raised up a man who walked with Him, who was approved of God, and drawn into spiritual leadership. Then the Lord's people became tremendously enriched through that man who knew God. He led the Lord's people into a new spiritual place. Then either towards the end of his life or after he was gone, people took hold of his life work and turned it into an organisation, an institution, a movement, and it is now being run on that line, with a great administrative department, and it is no longer acknowledged of God; it is carried on as a piece of work'. What is the result? It is not really the increase of the Lord, but it is an extension of a kind of work for God. The judgement is not intended to fall upon the work, the judgement is intended to fall upon this terrible loss to the Lord's people as well as to the Lord. God does not want Philistine carts, but living Levites to carry the testimony - men who walk with Him.

It is not enough for us to have a secret, quiet life with the Lord, but to recognise that that involves us in responsibility to the Lord's people, a responsibility which we must take. If you are passive God will leave you there, and you will be in a backwater. You may be a leader in spiritual qualification by your knowledge of the Lord, but you are not recognising the fact that that involves you in something quite active for the Lord, to give what you know of the Lord. The leader must take the lead, not assume a position, not be self-assertive, but seek to be active in the interests of the spiritual life of the Lord's people, and by that means you will find the Lord moves you into an adequate occupation. You may be waiting for someone to give you a job. The Lord will not give you a job while you wait. Move out in a positive way to give what you have of the Lord where you see the need as the Lord gives you liberty, and you will find your time becoming more and more occupied, and you will have the job without any official appointment. If that is so, you can take it that the Lord will take responsibility and look after you.

This touches us in the ordinary spheres of the home and the office, and anywhere else. Leadership is not a matter of coming out of all else and taking up the work of God. It is the expression of our knowledge of God in a positive way. What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for something to happen? Are you waiting for the Lord to come and put you into an experience of a testimony? Have you a knowledge of the Lord? Have you been shown that there is a greater fulness of the Lord? Has that been presented by you? Take a step of faith in relation to it, and if it is God's will for you, believe that you have it. Your belief will not make that thing, but your faith will bring you into the enjoyment of it. Perhaps it is just passivity that is keeping you out of things. When the Lord says there is water, step out. You will make the discovery when you step out that there is something more solid than water there.

Chapter 7 - Features of Spiritual Leadership (continued)

c) Active faith

We touched on this matter of active faith at the end of our last meditation. However we want to note this difference, that this faith is very often strongest and truest in the matter of going on in the midst of apparent contradictions, not in objective undertakings. We will not stay to illustrate at length.

You will remember Abraham, a man who met an apparent contradiction to everything that the Lord told him to do, that the Lord had assured him of. The Lord had said certain things, and then the Lord met him and seemed to counter the whole thing as he went on. God said He was going to give Abraham the land, and when he came into the land he found it humanly impossible to stay and he had to quit. God told him that his son would be the vehicle of the seed that should be without number, yet then seemed to come in and contradict it. Now Abraham, who is the outstanding example of faith, shows his faith not so much by the great objective undertakings and adventures as by surely going on in the midst of repeated contradiction, when all that he had been led to expect seemed to be reversed. The way he expected to be quite clear became most complicated and entangled, and seemingly impossible. However he believed God, and went on. That is active faith.

As we pointed out, Paul illustrates this when he was in the Mediterranean, and everything was going to pieces; neither sun, moon, nor stars appeared for many days, and all hope that they should be saved was cast away. In the midst of all that he said: "I believe God!" That was no contradiction, it was active faith. Until you and I come into that position in some measure, we shall be useless in spiritual leadership. If you and I in the midst of contradictions go under, become paralysed, begin to raise questions to the Lord, while those questions prevail, our value in bringing others into any measure of Christ is arrested. True spiritual leadership requires this active faith. As we have already said, we must believe God in the midst of the raging tempest when everything seems to be threatened by disaster.

We are keeping very close to the book of Judges in all this, and we are especially keeping close to Christ. Bring all these things alongside of the Lord Himself while He was here on the earth, and you will see that they are all features of Christ. It would be profitable to go through the life of Christ with each one of them. Did He have spiritual understanding to see through and discriminate the fine issues? When Peter said, "I will follow thee even unto death", did He see through Peter? Did He, in effect, say: Oh yes, I know you mean it quite well, Peter, but that is you, not God in you! You will come to the place one day when the Lord will take you through the depths, but it will not be because you can go through! Did the Lord Jesus have the full assurance of understanding? "He spoke as one having authority, and not as the scribes", who were the public authority. When He spoke there was something there which made people say, "This Man knows His ground! He is on solid ground, and He knows it." You do not find any uncertainty with Him; it is, "Yea and Nay." Did He endure? Did He hold through when everything went to pieces around Him? Yes! Follow those points through in His life. These are features of Christ.

d) Spiritual initiative in the matter of responsibility

We have spoken of responsibility to one another, and will not say much more about it, but the Lord does need His people to be where they really will take the initiative in responsibility. There are so many of the Lord's people who are all the time waiting for a lead before they move. They will never do anything until they are pulled out and you have to stand by, and if you leave them for a moment they will go down. Oh, for more of that spiritual initiative in responsibility for the Lord's interests among His people.

Let us say this brief word on the matter. There is confusion, chaos, paralysis and tragedy in many lives for the very reason of passivity in the Lord's interests, not taking spiritual initiative, not taking the responsibility which they ought to have in the interests of the Lord. The Lord would say this thing to us, not for our own sake, but in order that we may be able to turn to help others out of their paralysed position, where the Lord is losing so much. The Lord would put spiritual responsibility upon us, and make us know that that is our way of deliverance. We may be waiting for someone to come and pull us out, lift us up, put us on our feet, but the Lord says, "Get on to your feet!" That is only another way of saying, "This is a matter for you!" Do not wait till someone comes and lifts you up and puts you on your feet, and becomes a crutch for you. Oh, this devastating leaning upon others! What loss there is! It does not glorify God. Believe me, the Lord will leave you where you are until you face this thing. You wait and pray, and agonise in prayer, and break your heart, and the Lord will still leave you where you are. He will say to you, "Take responsibility! Take initiative!" Your trouble is that you lack this spiritual initiative, and it is a kind of infantile paralysis! It is a mark of your spiritual immaturity, and you have to exercise yourself towards God.

When the Lord is making spiritual leaders, He very often cuts them off from others, does not allow others to come along and help them. They ask the Lord to send someone to help them, and the Lord never sends anyone. They are longing for someone to come to their rescue. The Lord can be the same for you as for anyone else; in Him there is the same life for you as for others. Appropriate His life for yourself, stand by faith in the Lord for yourself, discover the Lord for yourself. It is very important to know that if you are going to be of any value to bring anyone else further on with the Lord. You do not want to go to poor, crippled, bound and defeated Christians and say, "Well, now, the Lord was very good to me when I was in your condition and He sent someone along to pull me out, and that is how I got out!" They will say, "Then we must wait until the Lord does something like that for us!" That is not satisfactory. At any rate the Lord does not do that sort of thing. The Lord wants people who can say, "I was in your condition, and I, like you, was waiting and praying for someone to come and help me, and the Lord never sent; and then the Lord showed me that He could be just the same to me as He was to that person to whom I was looking to come to me. He turned me upon myself, and I had to exercise myself towards Him, and I came to discover the Lord." That is your way of deliverance. That is spiritual leadership with spiritual equipment. It is of real value.

There are other features of leadership which we perhaps will not mention just now. We must ever remember that one characteristic of a true spiritual leader is always a deep humility born of a deep sense of dependence. A leader is not one of those people who is very sure of himself; he is very often someone who is not at all sure of himself, but sure of the Lord.

That leads us to the next phase of things.

The Cost of Spiritual Leadership

We gather from this book of Judges that those who are going to be instrumental in the Lord's hands in helping others out of their bad condition must themselves have shared that bad condition. They do not stand apart from it, but are equal to the state of things by reason of knowing in their own experience what that state of things means. It is necessary for a spiritual leader to have suffered in the same trials as those being led; to have known the same depths of misery, to have been in the same complicated circumstances, to have passed through those very problems, and to know what it is to emerge from a dark, dismal and wretched state. All that makes a leader, but that also represents the cost to begin with.

We will analyse that more, and deal with it in a different way. The cost of leadership is

a) All that is involved in the transition from the natural to the spiritual

We have spoken of spiritual understanding. There must be, then, a spiritual transition from natural understanding to spiritual understanding. What is the transition? By what course, by what road, is this transition made? Always through the grave. Before we ever come to spiritual understanding we shall have all our own understanding pulverized, ground to powder, so that we do not understand anything, and we know it. If we are asked to explain we can give no explanation. It is not in us to explain. All understanding has gone. God breaks down the natural to make way for the spiritual. That transition is through death, through the grave. Then presently we emerge, and we are seeing things now from God's side, we are understanding with a faculty and capacity that we never before possessed. Somehow or other a resurrection work has been done; that is, something has been quickened which we never had before. We are made alive to that of which we had no knowledge before. We have a new standard of judgement now, a new standard of values, a new sense of differences. It is just something done, not something which we have created or made. It comes, as it were, to birth, and we know it, and as we move accordingly, in obedience to it, it grows. There is all the difference between natural understanding and spiritual understanding, and the difference is between death and life, and a grave is between. Oh, those dark days, when we lost all natural understanding and there was no light. It is a terrible cost.

We are not speaking about just understanding certain events. It may have to do with trials of a certain nature through which we pass, but it is the general faculty to which we are referring. There is all the difference between a natural faculty for understanding things and a spiritual faculty for understanding the things of the Lord, which cannot be defined, but can be declared as a fact. That cost is the cost bound up with spiritual leadership.

b) The assurance of understanding

There was a time when some of us were most sure. Oh yes, we knew, no one could tell us. We were the most sure people. We could lay down the law to anybody as to what they ought to do. The Lord has taken in hand and has ground to powder, made pulp of all that assurance. We have lost all self-assurance. We have come to the place where we feel that we could question everything in ourselves, doubt everything about ourselves. We have come to the place where, when we tell the Lord that we mean to be all for Him there is something inside which says we meant it, but come up against the test and we find that we are not that. Peter was a most self-confident man; "Lord, I will follow thee even unto death." I am certain that if we had met Peter later on, after the cross, we should have found him a man who would never for a moment say a word about his own certainty or self-assurance. Yet you find the man marked by boldness; there is nothing more sure than his statement on the day of Pentecost; but he is a different man. He has gone through the grave, and self-assurance has been broken in him and replaced with the assurance of God. There is the full assurance of understanding of the Lord. It is costly, but it is the way of spiritual leadership, the way to spiritual values.

c) Active faith

We spoke of active faith. It comes the same way. The time through which we pass is a time when we lose all. There are times when we feel that the bottom has fallen out of everything. What have we to rest upon? Faith. Where is our faith? If God is not merciful to us it is a poor lookout for us. If this whole thing depends upon our faith today, the Lord help us!

Yes, these are dark, strange experiences, things you may not say to the unconverted. They are not bound up with our salvation, our acceptance before God. It is another side, the side of our usefulness to the Lord, the measure of our spiritual value to the Lord for the sake of others. The cost of spiritual leadership and a faith of this true, pure kind is borne out of a grave. It grows like a new child; it is quiet, steady faith in God. You have been through the depths, and you have found the Lord faithful, and you have had to say, "It was not because of my wonderful faith in God, not because of my saying I am able to hold on, to persist! God was faithful to me when I had nothing of faith as far as I was concerned." That comes back from the grave. It is the cost of leadership.

d) Initiative

This is quite true also in the matter of initiative. Naturally there was a time when initiative was not difficult to some of us. The bigger the proposition the more we gloried in tackling it, and lacked no initiative in these things. Then the Lord took us in hand and broke all that natural force, or began to break it, and we came steadily to the place where, so far as we were concerned, the initiative left us: that is, the natural initiative, the taking of big responsibility, and we became deeply conscious that we were needing a divine energy to move in relation to the Lord's interests. And now to some extent we do know that energising of God in relation to His interests. When we have no natural energy, when it does not spring from ourselves, and if it were left with us, we should not do it, we would not move, but just lie there, refuse, decline, and yet we know that for the Lord's interests there is an energy which we have not got. We lay hold of that divine energy, and the initiative of God is appropriated by faith, and there are accomplishments.

There is all the difference between that natural go-ahead attitude in the work of God, and that energising of the Holy Spirit; that initiative which is of the flesh, and that initiative which is of the Holy Spirit. You have to pass from the one to the other in a deep experience, when all that is of nature is broken down, and you come on to the ground where it is all and only of God. It is a new creation in Christ Jesus, where all things are out from God, as manifested in the Lord Jesus Himself.

e) Humility and dependence

The same law holds good. We may have been very independent or self-dependent, or dependent upon others. The Lord has dealt with all that, or will deal with it in us, and bring us to a place where every other kind of support is removed, where all our independence is dealt with, where our self-dependence is destroyed, where our dependence upon others is cut away. And we come out to a place, through trying and painful experiences, where our dependence is upon God.

Paul is an outstanding illustration of this. There is no character more self-confident than Saul of Tarsus. In the long-run there is no one more dependent upon God, and confessedly so. He said: "We despaired of life." The sentence of death was upon him, so that he should not trust in himself, but in God who raises the dead. The way through is a deep, dark, and painful way, but this is all the way to spiritual leadership. It is all that is involved in the transition from the natural to the spiritual, and it all leads to values for others.

Your value to others in the Lord entirely depends upon your own measure of knowing the Lord for yourself as your very life, your wisdom, your strength.

There may be a little weakness in what we have been saying, that we have dealt with positives rather than negatives. Some are not in much danger of strong, natural, go-ahead-ness. Perhaps some are lacking altogether in any kind of strength like that, and may be saying, "Well, I do not have to be broken down very much, therefore I cannot come through to very much for the Lord." Do not say that, because your painful experience will probably be from a negative to a positive, not from one positive to another positive. We mean this, that some timid people will go through an agony when God brings them out to take initiative. It is an agony for reticent people to be made to stand on their feet and take responsibility. They would sooner shrink into a corner, but the Lord will not let them get away with that. In effect He says, "You have got to be of value, you have got to count; it is no use your hiding in a corner, I want values in you for My people." Then comes the agony of perhaps having to talk to someone, having to take initiative for the spiritual help of somebody, when you would rather be somewhere else, doing something else. It is the transition from the natural, whatever the natural is - whether positive or negative - to what is spiritual. It is costly, but it is the price of leadership, and after all, it is that the Lord should have His full measure in us, "...each several part in due measure" (Eph. 4:16). There is a "due measure" from each several part.

f) Loneliness

The cost of leadership is always loneliness. When you are going through a thing in the hands of God, your one sense is that no one has ever been through this before. The Lord sees to it that you do not escape by having someone come along who has just been through it so that you may throw yourself on them and they carry you. The Lord allows isolation. But, however it is, it is always loneliness. That is bound up with leadership. It is as though you were pioneering and no one has ever gone this way before; you are alone. It is part of the price, but it must be. No doubt you have longed for somebody who has been that way to be alongside of you while you are going through, but the Lord has not allowed it. We say in effect, "If only we had their experience in this thing to appeal to!" But somehow or other the Lord cuts it all off from us, and takes us through with Himself alone. If we refuse to go through with Him alone, we are going to miss the Lord's object.

g) Misunderstanding

So often accompanying the loneliness is misunderstanding, and that is the more bitter side. It is the more positive or active side. Think of Nehemiah. He had to take the lead, the initiative. But it was not long before not only in his loneliness, but in misunderstanding and misrepresentation he discovered the cost of that leadership. All around things were being said: "He is building this thing to make himself a name! He is going to appoint prophets to preach about him! He is starting a new movement!" All the things which were said were lies, false; it was misrepresentation, misunderstanding. That is simply because a man or woman has come to know the will of God as it applies to them, and they are going on in that way of God.

It is strange how people will very rarely give another credit for walking with God. Others always seem to interpret their movements as though they had been captured and led astray. They never give them credit for really walking with God themselves. They blame someone else, and then blame them for getting into the hands of someone else. It is a part of the price.

h) Selflessness

It is necessary when counting the cost of leadership to be selfless and disinterested in the matter. Leaders may labour for perhaps another generation, for others to enter into their labours, and they may never see the fruit of their own labours.

Look back over the history of all who have really been used of God in the lives of His people. Very rarely has their life borne fruit until they have gone. They have laboured, and other men have entered into their labours. It means that there is to be no present glory, nothing for self, no present reward. It is a Moses leading through the wilderness, up against the real hard, tough side of things, and then passing out without seeing the fruit. That is the price of leadership so often; selfless disinterestedness, being willing to labour, to give one's life, to suffer, to come to a place of value for others and never see the full result of it.

That is all we shall say for the time being. It has all come out of that expression of Deborah: "For that the leaders took the lead in Israel". That is the explanation of such deliverance, of a mighty emancipation, of glorious victory, the changing of the whole face of things from servile slavery, depression and oppression, to ascendancy, liberty and progress.

Do remember, again, that this is spiritual and not official; it has nothing to do with persons as such. It is a spiritual condition which the Lord would find in us all.

Chapter 8 - The Pathway to and the Nature of Usefulness to the Lord

Reading: Judges 6:11-40; 7:3-8.

When we come to look at Gideon, we find that he sets before us in a very full and rich way the pathway to, and the nature of usefulness to, the Lord in this matter of his place, acknowledgment and deliverance.

Conscious Unworthiness

The point at which to begin, as being a very important point indeed, is where we take account of Gideon's estimate of himself. The Lord has to bring us to a right estimate of ourselves before He can do very much in making use of us, before we can be of much account to Him. So we see Gideon, and hear what he says about himself when challenged by the Lord, "I am the least in my father's house." That is one of the first utterances of Gideon, and after this story in chapters 6 and 7 Gideon crops up again when his brethren came to him and said "Be thou king over us", and Gideon said, "I will not be king over you, the Lord shall be king over you."

Those two things alone are important, as they are an immediate key to the whole story of usefulness to the Lord. On the one hand it is a genuine, honest and deep realisation of unworthiness in this matter of personal inferiority. If you have not learned the lesson yet, if you are going to be of any use to the Lord, you are going to learn that lesson. God will never take you up and begin to make you really useful to Him until that lesson is surely learned. If there is the slightest trace of a sense of personal worth, importance, capability, then it is destined to meet with the constant rebuff of the Lord. It will be broken and shattered like a potter's vessel if there is going to be any usefulness to the Lord. We can settle that quite definitely once and for all. We shall not pass through into the Lord's hands for any real use until we have come to the point where we say, "Who am I? I am the least!"

That is something more than a pious sentiment, something more than the language which we use as being sincere and honest when we are down before the Lord making confession. It goes deeper than that; it springs out of something which has taken place in us by the Lord's own work. It is the result of the Lord's grace, where we know that there can never be anything for the Lord so far as we are concerned unless the Lord Himself takes it up from the beginning and is the life and the energy, the wisdom, and the support of it all. It is not feigned humility, but a genuine, true consciousness of our own unworthiness. The first step in the pathway of usefulness and fruitfulness is that of conscious unworthiness.

How long some of us take to learn it! What a great deal the Lord had to do to bring us there. Let it be understood that it is so. Never let us for a moment have anything in the nature of a thought that there is that in us of merit which ought to be recognised, and that we ought to be given preference, we ought to be put in such-and-such a position, we ought to be acknowledged, or that the values in us should be taken account of. Although we would not put it as bluntly as that, sometimes it comes up in our manner, in our spirit, in ourselves. We make comparisons between ourselves and others, and we feel that they have no right to be where they are, that so far as we are concerned we have greater right. Whether that be true or not, let it be understood that those who are going to be of most use to the Lord will be those who are of least use in their own eyes, of least value in their own consciousness.

So we have here the man who is at a discount in his own eyes, and God comes to that man, "To this man will I look" (I like that little phrase, "The Lord looked upon him"; in the margin you will see the words are, "The Lord turned towards him"), "even to him that is of a contrite and humble spirit" (Isa. 66:2). Gideon was at a discount in his own eyes.

Secret Testing

God's eye was upon him in secret under very difficult and testing conditions. There is no doubt about the difficulty of the conditions of Gideon's life. The conditions were difficult in his home; the conditions were difficult in his business, in his work; the conditions were difficult in the land. Everywhere there were difficult conditions, adversity, straitness, opposition, and he was compelled to have a secret life with God. We find him here as a man upon whom God's eye was resting in secret, while the difficulties were many and everywhere. There was secret trial.

We must admit that God was not unassociated with the trial. It was no accident. The whole course of things proves that God brought about the trial and God drew the people into the trial. The trial was very much in the hands of the Lord; it was intense, and it came upon Gideon. It was secret exercise. He was beating out the wheat to hide it from the Midianites. If you read the early part of the chapter you will see that the Midianites and their allies were pursuing a course of destroying all the crops, spoiling all the result of the tillage, the labour in the field. That was their particular method, devastating the land so far as its vegetation was concerned. It says they were like locusts, and to preserve something from them Gideon was in secret exercise.

Secret Judgement

There was secret judgement of the position of the Lord's people. "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour... If the Lord be with us, why then is all this come upon us?" (Judg. 6:12,13). Put that in another way: These very conditions must be because the Lord is not with us. Gideon had weighed up the situation quite well, and said within himself, "The Lord is dissatisfied. This all means that somehow or other we have displeased the Lord. The Lord cannot be with us because of our spiritual state. How could the Lord be with us, and we be in a state like this?" That is the other way of putting it, and Gideon had secretly judged the whole situation in this way. He had said, "This is not the Lord's will for us. This represents something which is offending the Lord, and if things were otherwise among the Lord's people towards the Lord, then the Lord's attitude towards them would be different from this." He had judged the situation aright. Sin was at the bottom of this. Wrong was behind this. The Lord was grieved. You may take it, therefore, that Gideon's attitude was that if only the Lord's people could get right before Him, the situation would change. He had an exercise about this state of things because it was contrary to God. He was taking the situation to heart as in the eyes of the Lord. He had God's view of the situation. Now in this secret trial, this secret judgement of the position, the Lord's eye was upon him, the Lord knew all about him.

Maybe in a trying situation in our home, in our business, wherever the Lord has placed us, it may not just be the ordinary course of things. The Lord may be stirring up difficulties there. The Lord may be provoking things there, making things difficult for us, and His eye is upon us to see what is going to happen. If it is all going smoothly and easily in the home and in the business, and everywhere else, what is the Lord getting in that? Any of us can go out and be very useful if we have no difficulties at all. The Lord must have those whom He has watched in secret, taken account of in secret trial, in secret exercise, in secret judging of the situation with a concern that the Lord's people should have a different state of things from that in which they are, and, more, that the Lord should have a more satisfactory state in His people than He has. The Lord takes account of that faithfulness to Him under trial, in exercise, in judgement, under the eye of God.

God's eye is on us where we are. We may think that we go to business every morning, and meet the difficulties of business life, and people are awkward. But God may be very definitely in that. His eye may be on us. He may have in His heart a great desire to find in us a useful instrument in relation to the spiritual condition of His people, and He has put us there in that difficult home, in that difficult office, or school, or wherever we may be. His eye is on us, watching. He will not bring us out, He will not change things, He will not give us greater service, He will not put into our hands higher privileges and responsibilities until He has approved us in secret. Remember that.

The tendency is the fatal tendency if it were carried out. The danger is to want to get out of it, to change our position to something more suitable to our temperament, to forsake it. That is not the Lord's way for us. Victory, ascendancy, faithfulness in heart in the midst of it, then the approbation of the Lord, and then the call to come up higher. "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour." What is might and valour in the eyes of God? It does not mean to be out in the field leading an army, but spiritual and moral triumph in secret.

The Establishing of a Relationship With the Lord

a) Personal consecration

Gideon had his little difficulty, his little problem, his little controversy, his little argument. Then he needed to be established, assured, so he asked for a sign. The Revised Version is a little more explicit than the Authorised. It says, "Give me a sign that it is thou that talkest with me" (v.17). In other words, give me a sign, some proof, that my relationship is with the Lord, that this is the Lord, and that my relationship with Him is established. It was something to confirm that he was in relationship with the Lord, that this was no mere operation of the imagination, that this was not just some other person trying to bring him into something, but that it was the Lord.

He went and prepared his offering (the margin is not "present" but "offering" v.18). Do you notice what the offering was? He brought it and offered it, and the Lord said, in effect, "Make that rock an altar, and place your offering upon that altar," and Gideon placed the whole of it there. Then the Angel of the Lord (who is the Lord Himself) touched the rock and fire sprang out and consumed the offering.

There is a great deal in that. The relationship which Gideon sought to have established, the assurance of his relationship with the Lord, and the Lord's relationship with him, was effected in the altar and the sacrifice offered. This means for us, that if we have any personal questions about the Lord's relationship with us, and our relationship with Him, all these questions are answered in the cross. Have you any doubts that God has come in mercy and grace and love to you? Have you any questions about the possibility of a real, living relationship with the Lord and do you want a ground of confirmation? There is an offering and a sacrifice; there are the Holy Spirit's energies (symbolized by the fire); and there is the altar (the cross). God answers all our questions in that cross. Am I accepted? Do I stand before the Lord? Is the Lord gracious to me? Has the Lord come to me? Does the Lord want me? What is the answer? Go back to Calvary, and there is the answer. God has come down to you and to me in the cross. God has answered all our questions in the one sacrifice for ever.

Gideon got his question answered as to whether it was the Lord he was having dealings with, whether it was the Lord who was having dealings with him, whether the relationship was a true or a false one. It was not by the Angel saying, "I am So-and-so." He said: "Bring your offering to the altar, and We will answer by fire." It is that gracious work of the Spirit of God on the ground of the offering of Christ which is the witness to our hearts that the Lord has come, and the relationship is established.

The Lord always works on that basis. We stand and ask the Lord all sorts of questions as to our standing and acceptance with Him, and He never gives us a specific answer. He says, "Come back to Calvary, take another look at that. That is the proof of My love for you, My grace towards you, My acceptance of you, that I have come down to you, that the relationship with Me is a living and a true one." Calvary is the answer. The altar answers all the questions. The cross is God's means of proving that He is come down for the deliverance of His people. "Come thou therefore and I will send thee", said the Lord to Moses. That might be taken right over to Gideon. The cross, the altar, is the declaration that the Lord has come down to deliver. Now on the ground of the cross our relationship with the Lord is established.

Nothing affected that afterwards; it was established. There were no more questions of relationship. The sign later on was not a question of relationship at all. This was a question of relationship, that it was the Lord with whom he was having dealings. That was settled. You and I must have that question settled, the question of our acceptance with the Lord and the Lord having come to us in grace for deliverance. Let it be settled once and for all, as definitely, as fully and finally as the work of Christ in His cross. Having got that settled once and for all, and standing upon that blessed ground of assurance, it is clear that Gideon capitulated his life to the Lord. The act of complete surrender and consecration to the Lord was bound up with that altar. The offering was Gideon himself in type, joined to the Lord. He is accepted on that ground.

b) Consecration of the home

Following that act of complete consecration, the next thing was the evidence of it in his own home. All we are going to say about that is that the home is the place where the testimony must start. The home must be the starting place of the testimony. That is not just testimony to salvation. If you have not borne your testimony to your salvation in your own home you may take it that the Lord is not going to lead you out into usefulness somewhere else. But we are speaking about the testimony in a much larger sense than just the matter of our salvation in its initial sense. All that we are understanding of the testimony of Jesus, that great comprehensive fact of Christ our life, Christ our strength, Christ our victory, Christ All and in all, has its starting place in the home. Many look for a sphere of service, for an open door of opportunity, but the thing is not established in their home. That is where responsibility before God begins. We shall be paralysed everywhere else if we have a contradiction in the background of our lives. Let those who have it in their power, and are morally responsible to have the Lord's testimony established in their home, remember that this is a vital matter if they can be useful to the Lord in relation to His interests in His people. Perhaps that is the most difficult place to get it established. That means that if you can get it established there you can get it established anywhere. However, whether that be so or not, that is the place to begin. Gideon immediately turned round to the home situation to have the evidence of his established relationship with the Lord, and his full consecration, borne there.

It is a most remarkable thing that the man who was really responsible for that home, and God's testimony in it, failed in that responsibility. Because of the faithfulness of the son, the headship of that home passed into the hands of the son. The father came under the son. The father put his son forth as though he were now in charge of the situation. Morally and spiritually the headship passed to the son. It came under the Lord by means of the one who was faithful to the Lord. You do not know how far you can influence a difficult home, and bring down other powers there under the Lord, until in your utter faithfulness to God you have taken your stand. It may be that the spiritual influence in that home will pass into your hands if you are faithful. That is where the testimony begins.

c) The Lord as life

The next thing is the proving of the Lord as life, and the proving of Baal as subject to God. That little phase of the story is worth noting. The men of the city, when they saw what was done, enquired who had done it. They found it was Gideon the son of Joash, and they came to Joash and demanded that he bring out his son that he might be put to death. The father's answer shows that Gideon was established over the father even at this time, "Let Baal plead for himself" (v.31). If Baal is god we will spare Gideon alive, and give Baal the opportunity of slaying Gideon. The Revised Version in the margin states this correctly. Why slay Gideon? Let him live so that Baal may have a chance to slay him. Let Gideon stand to prove the worth of Baal, or for the Lord to prove in the life of Gideon whether Baal is the Lord or whether Jehovah is Lord. If Gideon dies, let it be by the hand of Baal if he is god. So he changed his name, and called him Jerubaal, meaning "let Baal contend".

Gideon has become a personal sign that life is with the Lord, and the power of life and death is not in the hands of Baal. It is gain when a man comes to that position. As a result of a stand for God a challenge is issued to the enemy, and then God and the enemy are brought face to face in that life and God is established in that one as Lord of life over the lord of death. It is a tremendous thing.

That has a very quick issue. It is not something very much advanced. You take your stand for God; you raise the testimony of the Lord; and it will not be long before you will meet a challenge, there will be a recognition of your action, and then the issue is, will the enemy prevail, or will the Lord prove victorious over the enemy? That battle is fought out in your experience and in my experience, and the Lord allows that, so that we become, as it were, the object in which the power of life is proven as triumphant over the power of death.

Gideon did not die. Baal could not kill him. Why? Because Baal was not God, and Gideon was on the side of God. God proved His life triumphant over that power of death. The enemy comes in with a challenge and the issue is, "I have taken my stand for God; is the enemy going to kill me? If I live - and I shall live - I shall be a living witness to the power of God's life over all the power of Satan." It is the pathway to usefulness.

Until that is established as a fact in us, we are not of much use to the Lord. The people who are really going to be of use to the Lord are the people who have come to prove and to demonstrate the triumph of His life over the power of the enemy, in whom personally that victory is established. They themselves have become a challenge to death, and by reason of their union with God have proved that death is not lord. Gideon earned a name which simply means that he was a personal sign of victory over the enemy. "Let Baal contend." Let him contend.

Life Triumphant Over Death in the Realm of Service

Something has taken place inside of the man. In the case of the man himself something has been established which is the power of life over death. Now the further question is of usefulness in service. So Gideon brings forth his test to the Lord, not as to relationship now, but "that thou wilt use me to deliver Israel". It is a question of service now, and he wants some proof, a sign, so he brings forth the fleece.

The fleece represents two sides of the working of life in a servant of God. First of all Gideon said, in effect, "If I put that fleece on the ground, and find in the morning that it is saturated and all the ground around is perfectly dry, then I shall know." In the life of Paul it is explained in this way: with death all around, death reigning, and being continually in the realm of spiritual death, he himself was full of triumphant life, regnant in the midst of death conditions.

On the other hand, Gideon said, "If the ground all round is wet and the fleece is dry, I shall know again." Paul says, "Death works in us, but life in you." We feel the impact of death, we know in ourselves what it is to feel dead, we have the sentence of death in us, yet the Lord's people around us are enjoying the life through that which we are suffering.

This is the secret of service. First of all, you know what it is to experience the Lord's life when everything around you is dead. That is an essential secret of usefulness to the Lord. If we simply become one with our environment of death, what use are we? If we succumb to the conditions around us, where is the testimony? The testimony is that in the midst of death we are in life. Then so often the servant of the Lord knows dryness in himself, and yet if you were to ask him whether the multitudes of people round that dry ground in ministry have life, he would say, "Oh yes, I felt dry and dead, and yet somehow or other the people said they were getting such wonderful blessing. I do not know how it is; I felt so dry."

These are secrets of usefulness to the Lord. It is quite true that sometimes when we have felt most full people have received the least, and when we have felt most empty other people have received the most. That is the Lord's testimony. That is the sign of life triumphant over death working in two ways.

Two more things. The first takes us to chapter 7 of the book of Judges, and it is this: trusting God with an altogether inadequate resource humanly. That is how it can be summed up. Gideon's army was reduced from thirty-two thousand to twenty-two thousand and finally three hundred, and Gideon was not a bit put out about it. We might have been completely disconcerted if we were working on a natural basis. God said twice over that the people that were with Gideon were too many, that he was to bring them down to the water, and the Lord would test them there. So God sifted out this mighty host and brought the number down to three hundred. Gideon did not demur. He did not say, "How ridiculous! Look at the Midianites and the Amalekites, and all the children of the East, like the sand of the desert, and here I have only three hundred men!" Not at all. He trusted God with a resource which was, humanly speaking, altogether inadequate.

You and I must come to the place where, in faith's obedience, with a very small instrument, with something very insignificant from this world's standpoint, we trust God, where God is the great factor and asset, and not the other resource which we have at our command. This is the way of usefulness. Can we trust God in a very difficult situation, when we have nothing with which to meet it, whatever it may be? Gideon came to the place where he really trusted the Lord even when what he had in the eyes of men was perfectly ridiculous, utterly inadequate. Oh, for such faith that will move out in spite of overwhelming odds which are against us on the human level, because we trust the Lord. It is the way of usefulness.

Finally, what is the secret of power, victory and fruitfulness? It is inward illumination, and the resultant word of testimony. We refer to the light in the vessel, and the trumpet, and the sword. The trumpet and the sword are two aspects of one thing. They represent the word of testimony, the living Word of God as given, but deriving their value, their power, so far as our service is concerned, from our inward illumination. Paul says: "God... hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6). And he goes on to say, "...we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power should be of God, and not of ourselves" (verse 7). Inward illumination of Christ through the Word and as the result: the trumpet blast and the drawing of the sword. That is a secret of power, not preaching out of the Book, though it be the most sacred Book in history, but the testimony out of our hearts as to Christ revealed through the Word. The secret of power, the secret of victory, the secret of fruitfulness - the lamp, the trumpet, the sword.

Let us always remember that to ensure effectiveness the Lord maintains the consciousness of the fragile nature in the earthen vessel, that the exceeding greatness of the power should be of God, and not of ourselves. God reduced Gideon's army to three hundred men, and said it was "Lest Israel vaunt themselves against Me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me'" (Judges 7:2).

Lay hold of the fragment of this word that the Lord is emphasising in your own heart and may He bless it to you.

Table of Contents

Author's Rights

Contents

Chapter 1 - Departure from the Full Thought of the Lord

Chapter 2 - Taking Responsibility for the Lord's Testimony

Chapter 3 - Faith to Take His Strength

Chapter 4 - Standing on the Ground of our Union in Christ

Chapter 5 - Taking God's Ground of Faith

Chapter 6 - Features of Spiritual Leadership

Chapter 7 - Features of Spiritual Leadership (continued)

Chapter 8 - The Pathway to and the Nature of Usefulness to the Lord