The Recovery of Spiritual Power

by T. Austin-Sparks

From conference messages given in May, 1931. The last two chapters were published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazines in 1931. The remaining chapters are from unpublished manuscripts of the same conference, edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.

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Contents

Chapter 1 - A New Apprehension of the Cross

Chapter 2 - Keeping Our Eyes on Him

Chapter 3 - Going on with the Lord

Chapter 4 - A Spiritual Capacity for Spiritual Things

Chapter 5 - Knowing the Lord as Our Life

Chapter 6 - The Three Primary Factors

Chapter 7 - The Matter of Spiritual Knowledge

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Chapter 1 - A New Apprehension of the Cross

What we have particularly before us in this connection is the book of Judges. We have sometimes thought this book the most tragic book in the whole of the Bible. I am not quite sure whether that is so. Perhaps Malachi is not far off, but certainly Judges is one of the most tragic books in the whole of the Bible. It is the book of failure and utter weakness.

In the book we have the content of which is perhaps the fullest unveiling and presentation of spiritual weakness in all the Scriptures and we are going to learn the secret of spiritual power by looking at this book of weakness, to see the causes of the weakness. You know that the book is spread over a very considerable period of history. It represents three hundred years of the life of the people of God. Three hundred years which, but for the few breakings in of the Lord in mercy (which are bright patches in the dark story), were years of the most pathetic condition spiritually, among the people of God. There are bright patches. We have eagerly laid hold upon them: Gideon, a beautiful thing, but all too short; Deborah, a great thing but not lasting long. Others, until you come to the greatest of the Judges, Samson. That brings you to the end and it speaks for itself.

The conditions in this book historically and literally are full of symbolic suggestiveness of spiritual meaning. I think we shall not stay to go through the book and note these conditions. We recognise that the one feature of the book is weakness and failure; starvation conditions existed. Poor Gideon! He is threshing wheat behind a wall in a corner. The food of the Lord's people having to be locked in, in a hidden place lest the eyes of the Midianites should light upon it and it should be taken away. The food question is certainly a very acute one.

The fighting force of the Lord's people was simply destroyed by the destruction on the part of the Philistines of the smithies, so that they should not make any weapons of war with which to fight. There was no fighting power in Israel and for the most part they were unable to offer any resistance to the prevailing conditions. There is weakness. Now, we want to know why; what is the cause of it? And of course you have the all-inclusive answer to that enquiry when you make what may seem to be quite a trite observation that Judges follows Joshua. This may not convey very much to you on the surface. What was Joshua? [Taking] a people through the Jordan with all the assurance that God could give them... they had nothing to fear, they had no reason to doubt, but before ever they got into the land, the heart of the Canaanites went out of them. The Lord was with them and He had given the land into their hands. All that was necessary on their part was to exercise triumphant faith and enter fully into His secured position, and on the strength of a thing already done, to dispossess every other inhabitant as a rival to the Lord and His people.

But one stipulation constantly reiterated was the governing feature and factor of that possession. It was that they were to utterly possess, and that they were to destroy all that was in the way of their possessing. That was the thing that the Lord made very clear to them, that they were to go on and on and as they went, to leave nothing remaining of that which was opposing to God. Destruction of all such was to be absolute, complete, final, and while they proceeded according to that stipulation, nothing would be able to stand in their way, God would continue to be with them and power would be their abiding possession and characteristic. That was Joshua, "Go in and go up and possess and utterly destroy all those nations."

Judges follows. Take it up at Judges 1:19: "The Lord was with Judah and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron". The Lord was with him just as far as He could be with him. The Lord is with us as far as He can be with us. Take the statements:

"He could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron" (1:19).

"And the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem" (1:21).

"And Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-Shean" (1:27).

"They put the Canaanites to taskwork and did not utterly drive them out" (1:28).

"Neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites" (1:29).

"Neither did Asher drive out the inhabitants of Accho" (1:31).

"They did not drive them out" (1:32).

"Neither did Naphtali drive out the inhabitants" (1:33).

"And the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the hill country" (1:34).

Nine times there is a statement that they did not, or could not, drive them out. That is the all-inclusive explanation of the book.

Why could they not drive them out? Not because it was divinely impossible, not because the Lord had not secured the land for them, not because the Lord's part of the contract had broken down, but if you read on you find that this first chapter is a summing up of chapters which follow. It is subsequent history brought together in a kind of summary and as you read on you find that these could not, which all speaks of weakness; the result of their having made compromise with the people in the land. They had come into a kind of standing amalgamation with them. They had ceased to regard them as such as were to be utterly destroyed and they thought that they might get the same thing by making compromise, and having made compromise in the land, and becoming weakened by their compromise, enemies from outside the land came upon them and the Philistines and others overpowered them.

We are living in Judges conditions today spiritually. There is a state of weakness and failure where the enemy is not cast out. Where there is not that complete ascendency on the part of the Lord's people spiritually over the forces that are round about, there is a crippled, paralysed, defeated state of things. I am speaking generally. The food question is a very acute one, and it is only behind walls in little secret places you are finding spiritual food today. It is not the general thing. Here the Gideon party, as it were, is preserving all the food there is in secret, and it has to be hunted out - you cannot find it everywhere today. The food question is quite an acute one spiritually. We are not in the Acts conditions! We are in sub-apostolic times.

In Joshua you have the great leaders who maintained things according to God while they lived. When they died, when Joshua died, and Caleb died, then the period of the Judges came in. You have a much lower, lesser standard of holding things for God. The apostles held things for God while they lived. When they went, well, things went, and it has only been, and is only now, that here and there God raises up some ministry that recovers something for God, and it passes and God raises up something else, and it passes.

Another thing is that when the people did fail at any given point to do what the Lord needed, and to go on all the way with God - began to make compromise, to lower their standard, to accept things that God never intended to be accepted, to allow things to remain or come in - from that time onwards the Lord never cleared out the enemy altogether. He said, "Because you have not obeyed My word in destroying all these nations, they shall remain and be thorns in your sides forever", so that you never have through this whole period a complete clearing out, but He left these things to remain; firstly, on one hand, as a testimony to the unfaithfulness of His people as a whole, and on the other hand, as a test of the faithfulness of the people in particular. Their presence was a declaration that as a whole, God's people had been unfaithful. Their presence, on the other hand, was to be a test as to how many of the Lord's people in particular would be found faithful. So you have Gideon with three hundred out of thirty-two thousand. The rest are not going all the way, and God in a Judges era secures His great victories not by a whole compromising people, but by some who will go all the way with Him. Are we in conditions like that today? I do not think there is any doubt about it. The whole background as it is today spiritually, betokens weakness through compromise. It is a day of small things, and strength where there is a willingness to go all the way with the Lord.

The secret of weakness is compromise, and the secret of power is utter abandonment to the will of God. That is summing up Judges in a few words. We said it follows Joshua and that is the key.

We read the message to the church in Laodicea (Rev. 3:14-22). We believe that it represents the last phase of things of the Christian dispensation generally. We accept that interpretation that these messages and conditions represent things at different periods in the church history through the Christian era. Laodicea represents the last phase and last stage of conditions. What is it that represents Laodicean compromise? To be lukewarm; something trying to contain two things and losing its real character. "As many as I love I rebuke and chasten", with a view to getting them out of that state of compromise, that they may be those that overcome.

In a compromising age the Lord is seeking to get something that comes out of compromise to the state of absolute ascendency. At the end of the book of Judges we read again: "There was no king and every man did that which was right in his own eyes." There was compromise, refusal of sovereignty, government, and power. Come out of compromise, for all that is of God leads to the throne!

It is very clear what the Lord is after today. Laodicea and Judges go together as a state of things resultant from identical causes. Every chapter is crammed full of these things. Take the first chapter. The tribes of Israel are mentioned and what the Lord intended for them. Every one of the names in the list represents a spiritual principle. Then there are the names of the nations in this book, and they represent an opposing set of principles. (Look up for yourselves the meaning of these names). When those spiritual principles represented by those nations have got the upper hand in the land, it is because of compromise. Then the door is open to the invading forces from without and we find the first suggestion of Babylonian activity. One of the kings who came from far and brought the people into subjection here, came from Aram; the very place from which the Babylonian activity came, linked with Judges.

What the Lord needed ultimately was a remnant. In a day of declension and breakdown He seeks to get something out of it which is all for Himself and of Himself. That is what He is trying to do. Are you praying, longing for, expecting a return of Pentecostal conditions at the end? You are wasting your time. You will never have a repetition of the book of the Acts. A lot of people hope that something like that will happen. It won't happen. You have no foundation in the Word of God for expecting it. The Judges' conditions are that God leaves the enemy for a testimony to the unfaithfulness of the people of God, and then He begins to get something which, being wholly for Himself, is His testimony to victory in the midst of those conditions. Yes, blessed be God, it is still possible for there to be great expressions of the victory of the Lord Jesus, but what the Lord demands for those expressions is a people wholly according to His mind, where none of these things represented by these peoples in the land have a place and where the Philistines are once and for all settled.

The Philistines were a great harassing force and had the upper hand for a long time. The Philistines are the principle of the natural man taking hold of the things of God. When the natural man begins to get hold of spiritual things he destroys the value of them; he carries off your strength. Get the natural reason working upon spiritual things and you have no power at all. Two men may say exactly the same thing. One says it, it is perfectly true and in the Scriptures, yet there is something not there, something lacking. It is all quoted and does not satisfy, does not enrich though perfectly true. The other man says the same thing, every word, but it comes and reaches your heart and you feel it is getting in; the thing is life and strength. One is a Philistine and the other not. One is a Philistine from whom the flesh has not been cut off and the other knows identification with the Lord in death and resurrection. That makes all the difference - what is of man and what is of the Holy Spirit. The Philistines carry off the strength. Samson has his strength reduced to utter weakness by the Philistines. We have got people sporting themselves in the realm of spiritual truth and there is weakness, defeat, failure, paralysis. So we are able to see by the contrast what the secrets of power are.

First of all, there has to be a making good of Jordan. How is Jordan made good? At Gilgal. "Make you sharp knives." Judges 2:1 says, "And the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim and said, I brought you out of Egypt". And he narrated the story of their wonderful deliverance, coming into the land and then "Why have ye not obeyed My voice?" The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim. The Lord's residence was in Gilgal. The Lord abode in Gilgal. The trouble was that the people no longer came down to Gilgal. Gilgal is the place where Jordan is made effective experimentally, where the Cross operates to the cutting off of the flesh. God resides there, and in Joshua whenever the people went out to battle, they came back to Gilgal. Now they did not come back to Gilgal. There is a going up which the Lord bids us, but there is a going up of self-confidence, high thoughts, and pride. Gilgal represents the Cross in the self-emptying of the Lord Jesus. The angel of the Lord went up because the people had not come down, and he went up to Bochim, which means "the weepers". Spiritually it is a place of tears. When we cease to come down to Gilgal, from God's standpoint it is a place of tears. There is a loss of power immediately we get beyond the conscious necessity for having our flesh kept under the Cross. Are you complaining about the Cross? This crucifying business is such a hard thing - always having to be crucified, again and again, more and more, and we feel sorrowful.

We have a good reason for tears immediately we fail to recognise the necessity for that Cross being maintained in our lives. The Cross is the way of joy, victory, life; the way without tears if it is rightly apprehended. The ground of all the enemy's supremacy is removed by that Cross. It gives occasion for rejoicing. We have to get a new apprehension of the Cross. We have been thinking of it as something terrible. We see that that upon which the enemy counts for our destruction is neutralized by that Cross and immediately we fail to recognise that, the enemy has his ground and it will be tears spiritually. A good many people today are spiritually in tears because of failure and defeat; you hear their groaning and sighing everywhere. They have no power. Gilgal will put that right, rightly apprehended. Where is the Lord? You always find the Lord at the place where the meaning of the Cross of the Lord Jesus is made effectual and experimental in life. That is where you will find it. He lives there at Gilgal. This thing is borne out again and again in the book of Judges.

Immediately there is a hesitation to go right on with the Lord in some fresh step, some intimated thing in the will of God - if there is a holding back, a reservation - at that moment an enemy creeps in to paralyse, and you will find that it is infinitely more difficult to take that step after you have hesitated. If we could trace the history of every paralysing error that has crept in among the Lord's people in their whole history, we should find that paralysing error had its opportunity by reason of their failure to go on with the Lord. Think about that. That is not said extemporaneously. That is well considered. Errors have crept in and they have paralysed, and the occasion for the error to creep in was that at some point the Lord's people stood still instead of going on; hesitated instead of pressing forward.

One of the greatest safeguards for spiritual power is to keep going on. One of the most disastrous things is to hesitate about something which has been made known by the Holy Spirit as the will of God. In just one matter, we may stop going on with the Lord. We fail to obey Him; the enemy is watching and immediately in our walk with the Lord we come to something upon which the Lord's Finger is placed, and we do not take that step, the enemy rushes in with something else as an alternative, or a preoccupation, or an insinuation of some deadly force which postpones that issue. And later on it is ten times harder to take that step because something positive has come in. The enemy does not believe in gaps, and the Lord does not believe in gaps. If Israel had gone on and not compromised with the Jebusites or any of the other "ites", the book of Judges would never have been written. The book of Judges is the great declaration of the fact that the people of God did not go on into the fulness that was theirs in God. That is a very solemn word for us. It shows why there is such an insistence in the New Testament about going on into full growth, pressing on, for if you do not go on, the danger is that you will be occupied with something that was never in the will of God - taken up with something religious - and miss all that He intended, and the enemy will make havoc and entirely rob you of spiritual power.

Spiritual power is in going on, and keeping going on; standing at nothing, compromising with nothing. You notice the illustration here is the house of Joseph, and they went to take Bethel. They sent spies. Why send spies when the Lord told them He had given it? You need not send spies when the Lord tells you He has given it to you. And they found a man of Bethel and said to him, "You show us the way into the city and we will deal kindly with you", and the man, to save his own skin, showed them the way in and they let him off, with the result that the man ran away and founded another city, and called it Bethel. The tribe of Joseph came down to the level of the flesh and then asked this poor ruffian to show them the way when he should have been killed on the spot. Talking naturally, they spared him on the ground of compromise. They said, "In fact, the Lord cannot do it, we must get our information from this fellow, a man which belonged to that thing which God said must be destroyed". They dealt kindly with him, let him go, and he ran off and founded another city.

If you do not do the thing that God tells you, you liberate a force that sets up an imitation of the real. You release something that sets up what is not true - a false thing - and the enemy all over the place is setting up these caricatures. You will get something false in your life immediately. Have done with that compromise. If you spare a little bit in order to get something more easy, you are going to set up something that is mere imitation. It is not worthwhile. I know it is costly, I know the conflict, but do you want the Lord's testimony to be really established? Is it really not yourself, but for the glory of God that you want spiritual power? The Lord wants spiritual power recovered in His people for His own testimony's sake.

We have not spoken much about power because so many today want to have power in order to be somebody great, to have power with men. The Lord has shown us that when flesh lays hold of power, the ultimate issue is very discreditable to God and there are all kinds of perils along that line, and flesh must not seek power for itself. We are afraid of speaking about power. Yet we need it.

The enemy has got to yield. With all the truth, teaching, light, knowledge, the enemy does not yield; there is not the power that carries through and puts the enemy out of action, and if this is to be, we have to come to the place where we do not compromise with the flesh, the devil, or the world on the slightest matter - where we go on with the Lord fully, rejecting all our own argument which would give us a more favourable way, everything that rises up within and says that if you take that step it is going to bring you into collision with things, rob you of popularity, doors will be closed to you, you will come under suspicion, you will lose a lot of friends. Immediately you listen to that, you have stopped, lost power, compromised. The history is going to be very disappointing. We must give no consideration to the flesh, to ourselves, to man, to the world, because the enemy lies there waiting for a moment's compromise in order that he might rush in with something that is not true, and destroy the whole purpose of God and set up a story like this which hits back at God, and brings loss and discredit upon Him.

The Lord give us to see that the one great inclusive secret of power is unhesitatingly, uncompromisingly, to go on in the obedience of faith to the fulness that is in Christ Jesus.

Chapter 2 - Keeping Our Eyes on Him

Reading: Joshua 3:10; Eph. 1:18,19; Phil. 2:9; Acts 9:3; 2 Cor. 4:4; Heb. 2:9.

We are occupied, as you know, beloved, with the matter of the Recovery of Spiritual Power, and for a little while this morning we are returning to one of the emphases of the previous chapter to seek to carry it a little further, and to open our hearts, by the grace of God, to its fuller impact. That is as to the object of faith which leads to power.

All these passages which we have read bring before us one thing and that is: the Lord Jesus in glory. That is, the Lord Jesus in glory and what is implied and what is involved by His being in glory. And when you and I have a true, a spiritual, and a sufficient apprehension of that one great heavenly reality, we have got the key to everything. There is nothing impossible then. There is no need whatever for weakness, failure, breakdown, disappointment or dishonour. This fact really borne in upon our hearts is the way of complete emancipation, ascendency and triumph.

We are all conscious of the need of spiritual power. We are all conscious of the fact that there is much yet occupying God-given territory, which ought not to occupy it. There is still very much that occupies the place which the Lord ought to be occupying in His people. And by that counter-occupation and possession, the testimony is weakened. The Name of the Lord is not glorified. There circles round the Lord's people the suggestion that they are not what they profess to be, what they claim to be, or what they ought to be. Now, we know that both in spiritual life and in service, and so we want to speak to one another about this situation, not only for ourselves, but because of this being the condition so widespread among the Lord's people; that we may know how to minister in a day of weakness, failure and breakdown. We want to speak to one another to see how this thing can be changed.

What are the secrets of the recovery of spiritual power? We have seen that the great proof of weakness in the Lord's people in the days of the Judges, was the fact that there were forces opposed to God which still remained with impunity in the territory which God intended His people to occupy in His Name; that the enemy still had a lodgement in forces represented, as we said, by these different nations in the land.

Each one of their names represents something quite distinct as a spiritual thing. The Canaanites are those who traffic. It is literally interpreted "the traffickers". And if I understand that rightly, in New Testament language Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light and he traffics in holy things under a guise. And the enemy does traffic in holy things under pretension, under a guise. We would not have any traffic with the beautiful type of Satan, but as an angel of light he does make good business and as an angel of light gives false light and leading to many children of God who are in bondage to something they thought was of God but is not of God at all. It is deception, and the Canaanites represent that in brief. It is not my intention to touch that. In 2 Corinthians chapter 11 we also read about the god of this age who has blinded, lest that specific light of the glory of Christ, and the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, should shine. He gives false light and that is the traffic of the Canaanites.

The Hittites represent a sense of terror. Is it not true that fear is one of the most successful tactics of the enemy over the Lord's people? They are afraid to open their lips in prayer; afraid to do many things the Lord would have them do. Fear is one of the marks of the enemy's possession. His success and triumph is that fear is among the Lord's people. There is nothing more terrible than fear and the Hittites represent "a sense of terror". New Testament language is, "a spirit of fear".

The Amorites were high talkers. Maybe power has been destroyed among the Lord's people because they talk loftily, but do not have the truth in reality. It is so easy to talk about the heavenlies, and know of the heavenlies, but the power of the heavenlies to be absent. The enemy does spoil things by getting us to talk about things, but not live them. It is not good enough. You are there, but you are worsted by some thing and the whole thing proves to be failure. The enemy does not mind us talking if it is not living in the heavenlies.

The Amorites do not mind us being occupied with lofty things so long as we are not in a lofty place. Each nation represents a spiritual force and when these things come in and have a lodgement, a place alongside the Lord's people, and share the territory with the Lord's people, they always work out to weakness and failure. And the proof of the weakness, as we began to say, is that these things get such a lodgement by reason of compromise - an acceptance of them instead of a wholesale destruction of them - they get such a place that you cannot get rid of them. You are powerless in their presence, powerless in the presence of deceiving spirits, false light and leading by the angel of light who traffics among the Lord's people, or the fear which has overcome so many of the Lord's people. We cannot meet it and destroy it because spirits of fear have come upon us and we have failed to recognise that all fear comes from the devil. We admit it, at once rise up in the strength which is not our own but of the Lord, and put away that fear which keeps us in bondage: from doing the will of God, from going on with the Lord and destroy it outright. If we do not, it will destroy us as it is destroying many.

Verbosity about spiritual things without spiritual power is just as insidious. We must be careful not to talk about spiritual things without the truth being in our lives. Some may talk glibly about things and yet their words do not carry weight; they are empty, and do not represent the power of God in their life. We may meet men who can talk about the heavenly things, and have an interest, but there has been an awful feeling that their words are hollow. They are in bondage to fleshly habits and are deceived by their own knowledge of truth. This hallmark of power is not represented by verbosity, or the amount of Divine truth that we know and can give expression to with our lips. Power is that God is coming through, and God is possessing His possessions in and through the saints.

That is the situation. And so the mark of weakness in the book of Judges, as we have seen, was mainly in that the people of God were unable to cast out these paralysing, weakening enemies with whom they had come to a kind of agreement. It is a desperate thing to come to an agreement with anything that is going to weaken us.

Coming back to this all-inclusive, supreme secret of deliverance and victory, we said it is the object in view for the believer And that object is Christ in glory and what His being there implies and involves.

Christ in Glory

Do you notice how the Lord always begins there? Yes, He does not begin with Christ in the Cross for the believer. Not for the believer. No, He begins with Christ in glory. He brings you back to the Cross because Christ, being in glory, implies something tremendous as to what He has done, and involves something tremendous as to what is to be the outcome. The greatest fact for the believer is Christ in glory. It was the sudden breaking upon him of the fact that Jesus was in glory, was glorified, and at the right hand of the Majesty on high, it was that as the greatest objective fact of his whole history, it was that that was basic to what Paul became as a man and as a servant of God. There was the counterpart of the revelation of the Son of God in Him, but the first thing was the revelation of the Lord Jesus in glory. I wonder if we may have lost something or missed something in this connection, if our subjective side may have robbed us of a little, or occupied us so much, to the importance of the great objective fact.

When it comes to the look and direction, it is to the Lord in glory; that is, the eye of God is upon Him. The eye of the Father is upon Him. If that were not so, if for one instant the Father took His eye off the Lord Jesus in glory, it would go ill with us. The Father has to keep His eye on the Son in glory and that is the only hope for us in every matter of our spiritual life. If the Father were to look at us for a moment, instead of at His Son, that would be an end of hope for us. The fact that the Lord Jesus is there in the glory, and the Father sees Him there in the glory, implies that the whole work of our redemption, salvation, sanctification, glorification, and the whole work of the church's vocation has been finished, and in the Person of the Lord Jesus it has reached its glorification.

Go back to a familiar illustration of this in Joshua: "Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you; Behold the ark of the Lord of all the earth goes before you into Jordan". That is the Lord Jesus going on into and through death, and out of death into the heavenlies, into the place of resurrection, victory, power and authority. "Hereby ye shall know..." there is One who has gone right through, who has accomplished the whole thing. It was on the ground of the fact that the ark has gone through, and that their going through was secured. It was on the ground that the ark was through and had overcome that their victory was certain. On the ground, speaking literally not figuratively of what the Lord Jesus has done in the energy of the Holy Spirit reaching the glory through death, that the whole work is secured in Him as an accomplished fact.

There is a tremendous power and significance in simple words, "God has highly exalted Him" not, "is going to". "He set Him at His own right hand", not "is going to". "He set" - it is done. The whole thing is finished, the work is accomplished in the Person of Christ, and now He is in glory, and if you get your eye off that fact for one moment, you have lost the secret of spiritual power. The Father looks on Him and sees there a Man in the glory as representative of all the sons whom He is bringing to glory, and He says that the finishing of the work for the sons is secured in the finished work of the Son, and the perfection, completeness of every son is secured in Him in the glory, beyond the reach of any disputing, or rival power. If that truth were wrought into our very being, we should know something more of power. If you keep your eye on that, these spirits of fear have not a ghost of a chance - you have destroyed them out of hand - the paralysis and weakness that comes through these spirits of fear, these sons of Hittites, and causes us to ask, "Will we be able? How are we going to get through?" All the time, though not in word, we are questioning whether the Lord really can save us, get us through to glory, whether we shall come out in the end, whether this can be done, whether this great vocation with which we are called can become a fact.

Deliverance from the Hittites is along the line of keeping your eye on the Christ in glory because that involves the complete destruction objectively and subjectively. In Christ in glory there is implied the fact that He has destroyed all the powers of evil that are against us. He has destroyed, "That through death He might bring to naught him that had the power of death... and hath delivered all those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage". This is bondage through fear. There are your Hittites, and deliverance is seeing Christ in glory as having destroyed. And then, because He is in glory and your eye is upon Him, that is your hope, your assurance. That is how you destroy the Hittites; without a fight, in a sense. There is a great deal in the Word of God about getting the victory without fighting. We may sing our way into victory.

If we have such an apprehension of the absolute victory that is secured in God, our faith brings us to the place where it is not fighting so much as rejoicing in a great fact! We go through because we have gone through. Faith has gone through and we follow through upon the faith of Christ in glory. How did they go through in the beginning? Stephen got through in the hour of his ordeal, the people stood raging, put their fingers in their ears, rushed upon him, gnashed their teeth; how did he get through without these sons of terror paralysing him? He saw Christ in glory. That got him through. How did Paul get through all the way (and if ever a man was beset by the seven nations he was; every one of them tried by some means or method to destroy his strength and bring him into bondage) how was it that in effect they were wiped out? Because his eye was constantly upon that first vision of Christ in glory. Because Christ was in glory, he was secure in Christ.

It is a great fact that we are in Christ in the heavenlies. I know there is a very real living sense in which every member of my body is in my head. Touch a part of my brain and you affect every member of my body, to the lowest extremity; my head involves all the members. He is the Sovereign Head and every member is in Him there already. We are there. We have got to live in Him. It is seeing the Head in glory securing all the members in Himself and putting our faith upon that, that is the secret of strength: Christ in glory.

Oh, that the Lord would register this in our hearts. It is a small fragment so far as a theme is concerned, but it is everything bound up in all the implications of Christ being in glory. Where was He? Well, see Him in incarnation and taking upon Him the form of a man, being found in fashion as a man, made in the likeness of sinful flesh. He was there. He came into our Adam nature representatively. Though Himself sinless, He accepted a close relationship with us - sinful flesh. We see Him, the very Creator for whom and through whom and unto whom are all things; we see Him cast out of His creation, refused a place in that which He had created; we see Him in all the weakness of His cross submitting Himself to death and submitting Himself to man. He, submitting Himself to the flesh, and submitted Himself for a moment to him that had the power of death, that in the next moment He might destroy him. The Cross and Hades, and now in the glory.

What that "being in glory" implies! What He has done, destroyed, overcome! And that Man in glory upon whom the eye of the Father rests is the implication of all that relates to every son that is going to glory, and it is secured in Him. Oh, the implications of Christ being in glory! "The exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead", that power is to us-ward who believe. The power that brought Christ to glory is going to bring us to glory, and we look on Christ and say, "That is our end". That is where we are going most surely, going up there; there is no question about it.

Is there such a thing as falling away? We will not if we keep our eyes on Him. There is no need to backslide, go wrong or miss the way if we keep our eyes on Him. This is the way of endurance and victory all the way along if we always remember that Christ has overcome and is exalted as your representative, and the same Spirit as in Him is given to you, and is in you. Romans 8:11: "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall also give life also to (quicken) your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you." The same thing, the same energy, the same power; but we must keep our eye on Him, the Lord in victory, the Lord in glory. That is the secret of power. Every solution lies there in where He is and what His being there implies for us. The Lord keep us moving on towards Himself.

Chapter 3 - Going on with the Lord

Reading: Judges 1.

As we have pointed out, the tragedy of Judges is made all the more noticeable because it follows the book of Joshua. These two read together creates such a change in your feeling as you come from the one to the other, that you become heartsick after seeing all the wonders of those Joshua days, all the possibilities of the Divine intention, all the hope, the great things of Joshua and what the will of God was. And then you came into Judges and see the sequel.

We have a counterpart of these two books in our own dispensation. We have the Joshua state of things in the book of the Acts - a wonderful story of spiritual conquest, triumph, ascendency, the mighty things by the right hand of the Lord. Then, before the New Testament closes, you move into the Judges condition of things and find yourself right there with the first Revelation: seven messages to the churches. Before that you find Judges conditions coming in at Corinth, creeping in at Galatia and other parts, and today we are undoubtedly in the Judges condition of things. There is widespread spiritual failure, a state very largely of weakness, defeat and disappointment which is proved (as it is proved in the book of Judges) to be so by the fact that so many things which are not according to it, but very contrary to the Lord's mind, have got the upper hand among the Lord's people. There are things outside the Lord's purpose that are in the ascendency, and the Lord's people are in bondage to much that is contrary to the will of God.

We come back in a moment to speak of that in a more specific way, but here you have this book of Judges representing a state of things so contrary to what God intended... so much less than the Lord willed for His people. Rather than a state of universal glory and victory and joy and praise, there is a state almost entirely of groaning under oppression, sighing by reason of weakness, helplessness and bondage. What was really of God was found in secret places among a few hidden away somewhere - such as Gideon threshing his wheat behind the wall for fear of the Midianites - just like that. And I think that we recognise that we are in the Judges condition of things spiritually today. Recognising the condition, we have to enquire as to the fundamental cause. What lies at the root of this state of things? The chapter we have read tells us plainly what the cause of it all was in their case and the same cause lies at the root of things always when there is a state of spiritual weakness and failure. That constant reiteration, nine times: "they could not drive them out" or "they drove them not out" goes to the root of everything and lies behind the whole state and condition.

As we said at the beginning, it is by reason of failure to go on with the Lord into all the fulness that the Lord intended. Somewhere there was a hesitation, a reservation, an argument to debate, a question; somewhere there was a holding back. At some point there was a counting of the cost with the result that a line of less resistance was adopted. Somewhere some little personal interest was taken account of. Somewhere something that the Lord had demanded should be utterly slain was spared. Somewhere the Lord had put His finger upon something and said "that must go" and it was not done away with. The Lord had required a movement, another step to be taken, and the step was not taken; somewhere a little bit of flesh which had to be completely yielded up to the Cross was spared. And whenever such things happen, such reservations, sparing, personal considerations, failure to go right on... whenever that takes place, immediately there is a compromise; the enemy gains advantage. And the power of God's people was lessened and they found themselves having released forces of evil which gradually, slowly worked to get the upper hand until they found themselves almost helplessly and hopelessly in something less than God intended for them.

God had intended fulness, absoluteness, finality, supremacy, sovereignty, but for one or other, or more of those various reasons, they had failed to just move with God as His Spirit would lead, and in that failure they had not only come to a standstill themselves, but they had opened the door to some positive evil to come in and occupy the ground which they ought to have occupied themselves, in the name of the Lord. So they were not up to that standard, but they were in bondage and they found that eventually when they did not cast the enemies out, eventually they could not cast them out. It works like that, from the stage of not doing it, you are not able to do it. This is always the history of not going on with the Lord. Oh, that the Lord would stress this in our hearts by this tremendous presentation of spiritual facts... that He would press home upon us that it is the most perilous thing to have any question about going on with the Lord, to stand still for a moment when He says go on; to allow any other consideration to come in and influence us when He has told us what we should do.

And I want you to notice this, that one party doing that influenced all the rest. It is an impressive thing that all these people are gathered into this state of things and they are interrelated in it. They do not live or die to themselves. It is not dealing with an isolated party, it is the influence and effect of each upon all the rest - a matter of tremendous responsibility.

We have an illustration in the case of Judah; always the leading tribe in going out to battle. They were the leaders in the conflict, and Judah means "Praise". It is interesting to notice that praise is always intended by the Lord to lead the way into battle and to always go into the Lord's battles praising is a sign you have the victory before you strike a blow. Judah went so far and then stopped short and did not finish the thing and so the very praise of a full victory was cut short.

Immediately you go into battle with half a sound, not full praise, full certain assurance, glorying in the Lord, you know you are only going to have half a victory. There is going to be something lost; you are not going to get right through to what the Lord intended. Judah stopping short, meaning what Judah did, had an effect upon all the rest and you find all the others stopping short as well. If there is one man or woman connected to the will of God, some company of His people in the body of Christ meet face to face with something the Lord has called upon them to do, and they stop short half or three quarters of the way and do not go right through, this has an arresting force upon the rest. One man or woman in a fellowship so vitally related in the spirit has the power of arresting all the others spiritually and holding up the full purpose of God. Not simply because they are not personally going on with the Lord, but because they become the gateway for the entrance of some arresting power of the enemy; immediately they stop, the enemy comes in with some spiritual influence and checks the whole action of the Lord's people.

Go to the New Testament and you find this. At Corinth one man was holding up the whole assembly because there was something there God had said must go - idolatry. Because that man was there, the whole fellowship at Corinth was involved, and the apostle gave clear instructions that the fellowship were to take responsibility for this and judge it. They were to deal with it. This brings you to the point in Judges. Why are these people called Judges? Of course it represents an official capacity, or position, but it represents something more, for you see it was in the day of the Judges that the state of things prevailing was broken into, arrested, and reversed. Read it again, that while this one judged, things were reversed, but immediately the judge died, things went wrong again.

Another Judge arose; things were arrested, put right for a time; immediately he died, things went wrong again.

We were speaking of Othniel in the previous chapter. Othniel judged Israel and went out to battle. There has to be judgment inside before you go out to battle. If we are going out to conquest, to victory, we must first judge things that are not according to God, otherwise there is no hope of success whatever. The Judges principle must come in as a great active spiritual principle. There has to be a judgment of wrong on the inside before you can go out against the enemy with any hope of success whatever. So the Judges made it their business to deal with the internal conditions. See how it happened every time.

Immediately Gideon was chosen, the angel of the Lord said by way of introduction, "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour." It is a poor valour threshing wheat behind a wall for fear of the Midianites! But the Lord knows His vessel and what He can make of a vessel when He gets one. Gideon said "Oh my lord, if the Lord is with us why then is all this befallen us?" - a heart-searching question. Do you notice the result of that inward exercise of heart as to questioning the state of his people? The result was that he overthrew the altars, cut down the groves and destroyed all the false worship in his Father's house, in the family circle. He got to the heart of things. He found the answer to his own question. For a man to be a judge, he must judge within his own circle what is not according to God. Gideon would have been absolutely worsted before the Midianites if he had not judged things in his immediate circle of influence. Judgment must begin at the House of God. There has to be a clearing up of things where the enemy is in possession; [there has to be] occupation or ascendancy within the company of the Lord's people before there can be any hope of triumph.

That is the book of Judges. Othniel, Ehud and Deborah judged Israel and then things were according to the Lord's mind, and it was manifest that the Lord was with them, so that the principle of the very title "Judge" is that there has to be an internal examination as to whether things are according to God. There has to be a judging of all that which is not according to God or, to come back to the specific thought of a moment ago, we have got to look at God's exercising of our hearts. Has the Lord shown me anything? Spoken to my heart about something? Sought to lead me in a certain way? Raised a question in me about a certain thing? Exercised me in any matter whatever? What am I to do about it? Unless I immediately face up to that and give the Lord what He requires, respond, obey, and go all the way with the Lord without any question or hesitation, unless at the greatest cost I go on with the Lord, not only do I come to a standstill and the Lord in that measure departs from me, but I let in a positive thing which makes it ten times harder for me to go on presently. It brings in an arresting power in the work of God where He has placed me and in that measure I affect the whole and rob it of the fulness that God intended for it.

It is a solemn responsibility for anyone to fail to go on with the Lord, to be spoken to on any matter by the Lord and then to hold back. It involves the honour of the Lord and in the spiritual realm gives a great advantage to the enemy who never fails to take that advantage, but subtly, secretly begins to work upon that, as those nations in the land; to seize upon it and gradually, almost imperceptibly to use the vantage to gain the upper hand. And before long there is the whole terrible story of ascendency of evil forces and the arresting of the work of God and people of God and you track it down and find the secret there; at some point someone has made a reservation and did not go all the way with the Lord as shown them.

I am restrained from hurrying past these things - it may be plain to some of you here; it may explain something in the past of your life which has to be faced up to, or a warning for days to come. Whatever it may be, do take this to heart.

The book of Judges is the largest portion in Scripture representing spiritual weakness and has its explanation: it is that the people did not go on with the Lord. The land was before them; God said, "Possess and utterly destroy", and they said, "It is a pity to destroy some of these things... cannot we make use of them, turn them to account?" The land represents the flesh. We were saying in the previous chapter that Othniel had to face the flesh, but in every one of these there is a conflict with the flesh in some different form. All these battles were different - Amalekites, Amorites, Philistines or Moabites or whatever it may be - you have the flesh in some form. They were sometimes very pleasing forms in a sense, sometimes coming very near to the spiritual thing, an imitation of it. But the Lord had commanded these things should not be regarded as possible of being of use, but that they should be destroyed. There should be no compromise whatever.

We pointed out that the sparing of one fragment of this whole system gave occasion for the setting up of something which was an imitation and represented something more to be overcome. We mentioned the case of the man at Bethel. When they came to Bethel, the children of Joseph, to take the city, the Lord had given it into their hands - assured them of victory - but they dropped down on to this much lower level of asking this fellow to show them the way in and they would deal kindly with him, and in order to save himself he shows them the way in among his own people for their destruction. He escapes and builds another city so that instead of one evil to deal with, they now have two. He calls it "Bethel" - an imitation, not the House of God. They let a mere fragment of this system go, dealt kindly with it, and thereby released a power which set up something definitely opposed to the will of God. And whenever - to get an advantage, an easier way - we begin to deal kindly with a fragment of the flesh, because it is going to serve some advantage, when you do that you have released something which is going to construct something else which will be harder to overcome and set up a construction which is a lie, which pretends to be something which it is not.

The enemy says, "If only you will not take that step, if only you will take the line of least resistance, it will not cost you so much... you will not bring so much trouble upon yourself..." - the Lord says, "No! Not one bit, not one scrap is to be let off; all has to go." And we discover eventually, that this is the way of power, victory, ascendency, whereas that which we sought to preserve in order to get something to our advantage has become the source of weakness and has robbed us of our power and victory.

These are solemn words; let them come to our hearts in all their spiritual meaning. Forget the symbolism that has to be used. The Lord Jesus always spoke in parables. These are, in a sense, parables. The Lord would say to us, "What about your exercise before the Lord?" What is the Lord saying to you about something, some way of life or a habit, something that has delayed His will for you, a step to be taken? There are people here, (one is grieved to say it), who have heard, seen, and nothing could be clearer to them, but they have not taken certain steps of obedience to the Lord. And may that not be some explanation of a smaller measure of Divine spiritual power than there might be? Are you sure that you have gone all the way, up till this present moment, that the Lord has called you to go? Can you sit down and make up your accounts with the Lord? We must be able to say: "Everything that the Lord has shown me I have, by His grace, put down. There are no more items outstanding before the Lord".

If we hold outstanding items in the margin, it is going to bring arrest and let in a power which is going to make it a hundred times more difficult for you in a few weeks or months time, and which is going to affect the whole body of Christ in some loss. It is solemn but it is true. We may fail to go on.

Let us go to Paul on this matter. He said to the Corinthians, "Brethren I could not speak to you as unto spiritual but as unto carnal... I fed you with milk, not with meat for ye were not able to bear it, for when every one of you says I am of Paul and I of Apollos are ye not carnal?" These are personal elements, personal preferences, likes and dislikes being let in, with what result? "I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual." This is what he means, in the same paragraph: "Things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit". The Lord has prepared for us here and now a fulness in the Lord Jesus, a Canaan life of His fulness in Christ. "For all the fulness dwelleth in the Lord Jesus and you are made complete (or full) in Him". The Lord wants us to come into the fulness now.

We are saints in the light now, and if we are not in the light, we ought to be. When we get to glory there is an inheritance for the sons in light, prepared for them that love Him, but "I cannot speak to you as unto spiritual", so that you are not getting "the things that God hath prepared". There is the same thing to the Hebrew believers, in Heb. 5:12: "Of whom I have many things to say but I cannot, ye are not able to bear them, because seeing that when by reason of time ye ought to be teachers, you still have need that one teach you the first principles of Christ... Of whom I have many things to say but ye cannot have them". Why? You have stopped short somewhere; you have not gone on. The Corinthians and Hebrews had not only stopped growing, but were in peril of the enemy making a mess of things; he was doing it at Corinth and about to do it among the Hebrew believers. We must go on without compromise or reservation; it is the only safe way into all the fulness. We must not hold back and whatever has occasioned this state of things, or is trying to occasion such a state of things, must be judged. The Judges have got to come in.

The Lord give us grace to judge ourselves. That does not mean a morbid introspection, always analysing ourselves. That is the way of bondage. The whole question of judging self is in relation to the Lord. Has the Lord shown anything, spoken anything, required anything; has the Lord made known? You can rest if the Lord has not made known; do not begin to enquire in your own spirit as to whether you should do this, that or the other. Keep the Lord in view; keep in touch with Him and when He speaks, obey, but let the Lord take the initiative, give Him a chance to take the initiative. He does not want us to take on the whole burden of our spiritual life. He just wants to lead us that we might walk closely with Him and maintain a line of instant and full obedience. If we can say, "Whatever the Lord has shown me I have sought diligently, by His grace, to do without hesitation", then we should be in a state of peace, rest, victory and praise. So advance into the battle, for you will never be able to fight if you have some reservation or argument with the Lord.

I think this is the key to everything else we can say; all that will follow is simply a working out of that. What the Lord wants is our full capitulation and yieldedness in absolute obedience. I expect for some this brings no specific ground of challenge, and you are able to look into the face of the Lord and say, "I do not know of anything the Lord has shown me that I have refused or shelved". That is a blessed state, and it is possible to be in that state, but remember you may meet a desperate situation and you will want to know how to meet that situation.

In nine cases out of ten, spiritual bondage can be traced back to be a refusal to go on with the Lord in the will of God. The man of God must be thoroughly furnished unto his work. This must first of all come as a challenge to our own hearts, and we must have our own exercise before God, but He must also equip us for that into which we are called because we are related to the spiritual condition of God's people everywhere. Every one of these judges suffered acutely, personally, from the conditions of the people and that is what made them able to become judges. And if the Lord is going to use an instrument for the deliverance of others, He must bring that instrument into a personal experience related to the whole condition as it is in the world today. The Lord does want to recover something which is to His glory. He must impress His own Word upon our hearts.

Chapter 4 - A Spiritual Capacity for Spiritual Things

Reading: Revelation 2:8-3:1-6.

We continue in that way in which the Lord has been leading us concerning the recovery of spiritual power. You know that we are finding our light very largely in the book of Judges, which is the book of spiritual weakness and spiritual failure. It represents the entire failure on the part of the Lord's people to make good all that the Lord had provided for them. They were brought into a state of spiritual impotence, bondage, defeat and tyranny. We are seeking to learn from this very terrible story, with its long-drawn-out period, some of the secrets of spiritual power, and I feel that what the Lord wants to say is largely pivotal to the whole subject. It represents the whole thing gathered up into one note, one emphasis, one point.

Now, as we have surveyed this book, as we have looked at the Judges, as we have looked at the forces which were at work against the Lord's people, the forces of evil which were ascendant. As we have seen something of the meaning spiritually of the men who were raised up to meet these situations, there is really only one thing which is the explanation of everything. The thing involved was the absolute sovereignty and supremacy of the Lord. That is one thing which includes everything else; it explains everything else. It was the great challenge to the absolute sovereignty and supremacy of the Lord in every sphere and in every detail of the life of His people.

We have noted that the book of Judges follows the book of Joshua and that fact gives it a very great deal of its significance. And when you get back to the book of Joshua you will remember how everything there in Joshua represents the complete dominion and the absolute sovereignty of the Lord.

As you read the closing chapters of Deuteronomy you find those glorious prophecies of absolutely triumphant possession - the assurance that the Lord had secured the whole thing already, and that all they had to do was to exercise faith in what the Lord had already in His own possession and possess it on that ground. When you open the book of Joshua you find the same emphasis. The Lord has it in His hands. The Lord is already completely Lord of the situation and the Lord has secured the utter and complete overthrow of all their enemies, and the Lord has already given them the land before they put their foot on it. The sovereignty of the Lord is proclaimed loud and long before ever they stepped forth, and then comes the word through Joshua, "By this shall ye know that the Lord of heaven and earth is with you, behold the ark of the covenant of the Lord goes before you into Jordan" (Josh. 3:10-11). We know that that represents the advance of the Lord Jesus into, and through, death triumphantly. And it is tremendously impressive that the implication there is that because the Lord Jesus has ploughed His way triumphantly through death and the grave, the complete ascendency is secured for the Lord's people, and the Lord triumphant in possession of the issue fully and finally is with them on that ground. "By this shall ye know that the living God is among you" (Josh. 3:10).

"All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth - and lo I am with you always". The Lord has secured it Himself completely by His own initiative and He is sovereign Lord of the whole situation, and a moving forth in complete unquestioning faith with a word, on that basis, is the method of possession. Jericho being encompassed seven days in silence represents the unquestioning, unhesitating, unargued acceptance of the absolute victory which is in the hands of the Lord. Without a word. The people were prepared to be a spectacle, to be laughed at, to accept all that is involved in that peculiar behaviour, for faith always brings us into peculiar and ridiculous situations from the natural standpoint, and of being considered extraordinary and singular from the natural. But they accepted all that. Faith was complete in the fact that nothing was to be done but "believe God" and that He was Sovereign of the situation. And that ark going before through Jordan was a sign that it was all well, all done in God and by God.

So, from the beginning, and ever in those triumphant days, all continuous progress and victory there was upon this emphasis that the Lord was sovereign. And when they are moving out to take up the victorious conflict of which they had already secured the victory, there stood a man over against Jericho with drawn sword to declare himself as coming as the Captain of the Hosts of the Lord. The sovereignty of the Lord, the Captaincy of Christ, Captain of our salvation because He is already the Conqueror; He in sovereignty took charge then. What was demonstrated was the fact that the Lord was Lord, the Lord was Sovereign, absolute in His sovereignty, complete in His dominion, and there was no question whatever as to His ascendency over the whole situation. It demonstrated the Lord supreme, that He is Lord of heaven and earth. All that follows in the book of Judges in the unhappy sequel represents a challenge to that sovereignty, represents a mighty effort to make that sovereignty nil among the Lord's people.

The sovereignty and supremacy of the Lord is the real battleground in the experience and life of the Lord's people. That is the thing that is involved. Everything in this book of Judges is explained by that. The Lord's people in this book are found very far from giving Him sovereignty. The name of the Lord is dishonoured and the testimony to His victory is destroyed and anything but a Joshua state of things, as was intended, prevails.

If you study the background of Judges, as to the various forces which were ranged against the people of God, and those forces which had brought them into bondage, taken away their strength and brought this state of failure and weakness, you will see that they represent all those means and methods by which the sovereignty of the Lord is limited in His people. That is the thing to keep in view. The great point of the challenge is the Lord's people standing in the full sovereignty of the Lord. How can the Lord's people be pulled out of the supremacy of the Lord or prevented from getting into it? Look at these forces and you have got there an Old Testament illustration of things very clear in the New Testament.

We were speaking about the first of the Judges, Othniel, and the conflict into which he entered to make the first break in this tyranny. We saw that Othniel had to do with Cushan-Rishathaim, the king of Aram, which subsequently became Babylon, and that this represented that whole Babylonish system of an earthly, humanly produced and constructed religion. That was the first tyrannizing power that is found in this book, and it was that that Othniel had to meet, and Othniel overthrew, and through all the days of Othniel the people were in a state of victory, ascendency. There was deliverance and there was a recovery of spiritual power.

You can see by very simple interpretation how that fits in with what we have been saying. There are few things more calculated to safely destroy the Divine supremacy as a testimony in the people of God, than to bring religion, Christianity - to bring your Christian life down on to an earth level and let it become a product of man. We link this with the first message to the churches in the book of Revelation, the message to Ephesus, and we know that the Ephesian letter has its stand in the heavenlies (He made us to sit in the heavenlies) and our possessions in the heavenlies: the inheritance, the land (Joshua!), every spiritual blessing in Christ in the heavenlies, and the conflict in the heavenlies with which the letter closes.

The place of the church, which is His Body, is a high position, drawing its life and fullness from above. This is not of man, but of God. There is to be a maintaining of the position as detached from what is of human manipulation and man's control - earthly standards of government, of judgment - and to have everything from the Lord for His people. This is the Ephesian position, and when you come to the first message to the churches in Revelation, the terrible indictment is, "Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen." A heavenly position has been lost and they have come down on to a lower level. The Lord has this strong, terrible thing to say, that while there may be things that are quite good, commendable, this one outweighs all the rest because a heavenly, spiritual position has been lost there. "Thou art fallen." That means that you have come to Babylon, because as you pursue the book of Revelation and come near to the end you have two features running side by side. You have one dealing with Babylon, and one with the heavenly Jerusalem. And the one that deals with Babylon shows the apostle taken out into the plain, on to the level, and shown Babylon. The next chapter sees him taken into an exceeding high mountain and shown the New Jerusalem - a heavenly thing. It needs no ascendency to see Babylon: a thing of the earth. That was the thing that came in first to destroy the sovereignty, the testimony of the sovereignty of the Lord. It was the invasion of Babylon that had lost for them their heavenly position: conduct dictated by human judgment and going along the natural line of things, and the Holy Spirit was not governing everything from above and from the Lord.

The question of sovereignty is a very important question for us. It is the question today. The greatest question for the Lord's people is the question of the expression and manifestation of the absolute and perfect sovereignty and pre-eminence of the Lord in and through His people. That is the biggest, most important thing with which we have to do. It is a question of the Lord coming through in absolute sovereignty in every situation and every matter, and the Lord's people being in that. It is the absolute sovereignty of the Lord Jesus as manifested and expressed in the life of His own people. That explains every bit of conflict, pressure, temptation and trial. What the enemy is out to do is to pull us down to a place where we have lost the sovereignty of the Lord. How much is there today of the experience and enjoyment of the words we have quoted, and which we quote so much in relation to the world activities of the people of God, "All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth"? Is not the story very largely a story to the contrary? You get so far and then you are beaten, brought to a standstill. You meet forces which absolutely bar your way and at that point the enemy laughs at you. That is the story of many of the servants of God today all the world over, and not only in the recognition of spiritually-minded people is it true, but in numerous other ways that fact is declared universally.

What is the explanation of the advertisement, of the programmes of attraction, all that effort to draw people, to get people to come to church? All this tremendous mass of stuff that is used to somehow maintain Christianity is its own confession, its own betrayal: it declares spiritual failure. There lies behind all this the fact that men are not meeting the challenge of God, they are not being met by the Lord; that the church has not got that thing that makes people stand up and take notice.

And in many other ways there is a betrayal of the fact that the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus is not there in the measure in which it ought to be among His people. We know it in our own experiences. It is true that we are acquainted with forces over which we have no power; we know in our own hearts. Oh, the need for the coming in of the power of this mighty Christ to meet situations. It is just that, and nothing but the exercise of His authority in heaven and on earth will meet the present situation among the Lord's people. Everything that they are trying to do to be effective is breaking down. The great need is the fuller measure of the manifestation of the supremacy of Jesus Christ over all His foes. He is not going to demonstrate that sovereignty independently of His people, therefore, if they can be brought into a condition of compromise, the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus is set back. It is coming down on to an earth level that accounts for the whole thing. It is Babylon: the human religious order of things, man-made Christianity which is of the earth.

Christianity today is so very largely a thing of this world. Things which once were a power are today under the patronage of this world... seeking for their maintenance and their preservation people of influence, power, wealth and anything of this world to maintain them in some way, to keep them going. They have got into that bondage and they have lost their testimony. If you can get someone with a name to come along and make your Christian movement a popular movement, that is the order of the day. Inasmuch as this is true, the real testimony of the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus has gone out. The thing has lost its position; it has become a thing of this earth, this world. This is where you start with Othniel and it was that in principle that he was meeting for Israel, and all that followed was only other aspects of the same thing.

Ehud comes next. Ehud had to meet Eglon and Eglon was the head of a confederacy. To him there gathered Moab, Ammon and Amalek and all these brought Israel into bondage, defeat and weakness after the death of Othniel. Moab was a natural kinsman of Israel through Lot. Lot followed Abraham. Abraham followed the Lord, but Lot followed Abraham everywhere until one day he was compelled to take a stand for himself. He was brought to the point where he had to stand on his own feet and he made his choice for the well-watered pasture lying in the direction of Sodom; you know the whole sordid story. Ammon also was the son of Lot's eldest daughter - worse than that - a natural link with Israel. Amalek came from Esau. We know the story of Esau, the man who despised the things of the Spirit, the things of God, who sold his birthright, and oh, what a lot was in that birthright! Forever after the Lord is known as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob; and Jacob came into that because Esau sold his birthright. The God of Jacob who became Israel - a prince with God. Esau sold that for a mess of pottage. This is all a natural link with Israel in the flesh, but not the true spiritual product of Abraham, the direct issue of this man of faith, this man who walked with God. It is the other side in relationship. Sum that up and see what it represents: profession, not possession. These got in and the insinuation was along this line.

Well, we are naturally related to Israel. Why should we be destroyed? Why should we not live together, why should we not have things in common? There is the natural link between us, you see. How subtle that is. What is the curse of the church today? The link and relationship of mere professors with true believers - a mixed multitude. Those who have come into the things of God, but not by new birth. They have come in along the flesh line and because they have some kind of link which is profession, they profess to believe the same things, the same God, to have the same interests. And because there is that kind of natural link, the Lord's people have said "Oh, they are very good people, they mean well..." and they have not gone to the root of the matter as to whether they have been born from above.

The question of new birth is a far bigger one than we recognise. The question has within its power the whole testimony of the church of God. What the devil has done has been to destroy the testimony of the sovereignty of Jesus Christ by getting in people who are not really born from above. The Lord's people are robbed of power, and it has been the enemy's way of destroying the testimony of the absolute pre-eminence of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a threefold natural relationship and the Lord said that this should be destroyed.

Though it seems a hard thing to say, there is a sense in which every mere professor ought to be slain, not literally of course, but in this sense: they ought to go to the Cross and be slain and be raised together with Christ in newness of life. You have got to be hit very hard by the Cross or else the testimony is going to be ruined. The letter to the Romans was written to believers, not to the unsaved. The whole significance of the Roman letter is this. If we are going to know the life of sovereignty in the Spirit which comes in with chapter 8, we can only know it as we know the life of death in chapter 6. Dying with Christ, that is the way in.

The message of the Cross is essential to sift out professors from possessors, pretence from reality, and it raises a very solemn and serious issue for many today. The flesh resents being crucified, resents dying. You can go a long way with a crowd of good professing Christians until you come to the question of identification with Christ as a practical thing; then there is conflict. The forces of evil are just as much lodged in mere profession as they are in utter infidels. This is one of the subtle activities of the enemy. He could not do it by downright infidelity, but gets in people who profess to be one with you, but they have never died, nor known what it is to be crucified with Christ, or had any experience of His Cross in their lives in a real way.

Ehud had to meet that. He had to deal with Eglon, the fat man. Now, everything in Scripture is significant. Eglon means a circle, or circuit. It says, "Now Eglon was a very fat man". A very fat man is a man who had not got a great deal of energy (I do not want to be offensive!). There is something about mere profession that is very self-content, very full of itself and without real spiritual energy and power. It is a kind of well-fed, self-satisfied, complacent thing that never does very much. Eglon was having a nice comfortable time in his summer parlour. The flesh, this well-fed, comfortable, self-satisfied natural man in the world of religion coming in to dominate the people of God. His name meaning "a circle" seems to suggest that profession goes round in a circle, but never gets anywhere. That is Eglon - profession, and Ehud met that on its own ground with the two-edged sword of the Word of God, and pierced to the dividing asunder to discover what is profession and what is real. It is interesting to note that Ehud's name means "Confession". He was up against profession. There is a great deal of difference between the two testimonies. Details throw a very great deal of light upon the spiritual background.

It would seem that the Lord would say to us, spiritual power is a matter of standing in the full sovereignty of the Lord Jesus and knowing that in your life individually and collectively. The thing which is essential to that is that you know the Lord in a living, personal, real way and that yours is no mere Christianity - that you are not in the thing because it is a good thing to be in, or that you are interested because religiously inclined, but you are in it because you cannot help being in it. You are born in it from above.

In the most spiritual thing you can have a lot of camp followers, people who are in it because they are afraid to be out of it. They would not withdraw because they are afraid of what might happen to them, or they have friends in it, or personal interests in it, or because they agree with it all. Let the Lord search our hearts, and ask ourselves: "Why am I in what I am in? Am I in it because I have come into it from above? Because God has put me in on the basis of a mighty experience of Himself and I cannot be otherwise? It is not a matter from which I could resign, or withdraw, or go to something else; it is my life". When God gets a people there, there is an opening for His sovereignty to be declared. So many are on the fringe, spectators, not quite sure whether it is alright, wondering if it is quite safe and they have a mental examination of things which prove they are not in it. The sovereignty of the Lord can be held up because of people who are not in it, and have not come down into it from above.

We have got to come into the thing of God from above. We cannot join Christianity like we join a society or a movement. You cannot get into the things of God like that. You wonder what I mean by coming in from above? I mean that you have died, you have been buried, and now you have come in from the heavenly side, through an open heaven, by way of revelation, the revelation of Jesus Christ in your own heart. This is no earthly thing at all for you; it had its origin in heaven.

Another thing is that we should be out to get Christian men and women by way of the Cross. All this flesh business paralyses the testimony of the sovereignty because it produces something that is not heavenly. That is what is here. Have you got a profession or have you got a confession? Ehud, Deborah and Barak, Gideon, Jepthah, and finally Samson; the same thing from different angles. Deborah and Barak; you are up against Jabin, king of Hazor. It was Jabin, king of Hazor with his field marshal Sisera whom Deborah and Barak had to encounter because they gained the ascendancy over Israel. We are not dealing with the instruments of deliverance fully, but we are looking at things which brought about the bondage and weakness; so here you have Jabin king of Hazor, and Jabin means "understanding". This is a strange title when you are thinking of being in spiritual bondage, because understanding spiritually is the way of emancipation. The typology of Scripture as to directions is that the South is the way of the sun and the North is the way of darkness, and Jabin comes from the North, and his name is Understanding'. "Having the understanding darkened" and yet believing he had wonderful understanding. This was the whole trouble at Corinth. Paul said, "I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual but as unto babes. I fed you with milk". Why? Because of the wisdom of this world and the wisdom and the understanding of the natural man.

If I look back upon my past life, years of ministry, very earnest, very devoted, but so devoid of power... it was "intellectual" ministry. (Do not misunderstand, I am not talking about my intellect, but I mean that what there was of ministry was "head knowledge" very largely). I was good at philosophy, psychology, and brought all this into the ministry. I could quote poets and literature at great stretches, and the spiritual impact of it was, "Do you understand what I mean?" It is just the opposite of what we have mentioned earlier: spiritual knowledge, spiritual intelligence, revelation; the spirit of wisdom and revelation.

Well, Jabin came from the North and his name meant "Understanding" and he brought Israel into bondage. Immediately you project your brains into spiritual things and try to grasp spiritual things by natural understanding, you are defeated, in bondage, weakened, paralysed. What you are trying to do all the time is to get an intellectual grasp of spiritual things; putting your head into it, when all you want is the Holy Spirit to suddenly bring a shaft of light into your heart and you will say, "I see it all". You have been tied up with your own head all the time. Slay that natural mind of yours - have the natural mind crucified. "Now the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned." "But he that is spiritual discerns all things but he himself is judged of no man." He is a mystery in the same way as the Lord Jesus was a mystery. "Whence has this man this knowledge having never learned?" He, a man from Nazareth, went up to the temple and began to teach in the temple at Jerusalem. There was a secret knowledge which was a mystery, which never comes by the schools, never comes by the way of intellectual exercise. It comes by way of fellowship with God and this revelation by the Spirit is a mighty thing. The simplest Christian can have it. It is not a matter of years. You can be very young and know the Lord in a very blessed way.

It is possible to see someone saved and in a few weeks being far ahead of someone saved for forty years. It is that living fellowship of the spirit with the Lord and the reality of the things of God. It is mental apprehension that keeps you long delayed in growth: "The god of this age has blinded the minds lest the light...". It is a question of spiritual understanding and it is a matter that is withstood by all the power of hell because it is a mighty factor in the destruction of the works of the enemy. Jabin must be slain and Deborah will do it helped by Barak. The natural mind can bring you into bondage and rob you of spiritual power. The natural mind must go to the Cross and we must have a spiritual capacity for spiritual things. If you are trying to grasp this in your head you are going to have a headache. If you ask the Lord to reveal this in your spirit it is going to be your emancipation and put you in the place where you see the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus.

I must deal with the Midianites. They are one of our big troubles today. Gideon dealt with the Midianites. They had a very large say in the hiring of Balaam to bring Israel under a curse. Israel was standing there in the power, in the glory of the Lord and one of the beautiful things in the Old Testament was what God compelled Balaam to say. It was a wonderful thing that came through his lips and he did not want it to come. But it was the Midianites who had hired Balaam to curse Israel and so destroy the glory of the Lord. The direct curse failed, but you know the story. Balaam's heart was set upon the present and so he taught Israel to commit fornication, which meant making alliances with nations round about. This is the meaning of spiritual fornication: alliances with the world. The result was that Israel fell and lost their testimony. Midian represents the world and worldly alliances and strangely enough, the name Midian means "strife". Has not the alliance between the people of God and the world been the great occasion of most of the strife? Introduce some of the world among the people of God and it is not long before you have got upheaval and strife. There can be a beautiful thing wholly of the Lord, but if someone introduces a little bit of worldliness, before long the whole thing is torn to shreds. Today the conflict is on that one thing. The world is always trying to get into what is of God. Someone brings in worldly policy, worldly methods, worldly means, worldly judgments and they are accepted instead of going to the Lord and trusting the Lord for it all. If a worldly policy is introduced, the thing is rent, causing strife. That is Midian.

What are you going to do? It is so difficult with these dear people of God who do know the Lord, who may have walked with the Lord so much longer than we have and we see they are diverting to something that has a worldly element in it. Are we going to compromise?

Peter was saved long before Paul. Peter walked with the Lord in the days of His flesh. Peter saw Christ crucified, risen, received up. Peter was at Pentecost and the descent of the Spirit, and preached in the power of the Holy Spirit and was instrumental in the salvation of great multitudes. Peter was one of the pillars of the church and when you come to the letter to the Galatians and begin to read, you hear Paul, who came in much later, saying, "When Peter was come down I withstood him to the face... because that before certain were come down from Jerusalem he went in and ate with the Gentiles but when James and certain others were come he withdrew." Compromise. Compromise because of reputation, because of what the brethren would think of him! Paul says "I withstood him to the face". Here is a man comparatively young in the faith, withstanding one of the chief apostles, having no compromise. This is not a matter of years. It is a matter of principle. It is not how long people have been on the road, but keeping ourselves from idols. They may say, "We know the Lord better than you do", but never mind if it is a question of principle. You must take the risk of being thought all sorts of things, but you must stand your ground. Let nothing of the world come in whatever, at any cost.

Let Jabin, king of Hazor be smitten. The Lord must raise up Gideons to do this business today. All these things represent some phase or aspect of the natural life coming into a realm of spiritual things and laying hold. That destroys spiritual power and is set directly against the absolute supremacy of the Lord Jesus in His people. There may be many points of conflict, but the one final issue is: who is going to be Lord? Jesus Christ, or the god of this age? It is interesting to notice that to the Corinthians both of these things are said: "The god of this age hath blinded" ... "We preach Jesus Christ as Lord." They are the issue, and it is going to be settled upon the ground of how far every natural element of the flesh and the world, the natural understanding and natural mind, are utterly slain and we ourselves become instruments to bring to naught. May we be such an instrument.

Chapter 5 - Knowing the Lord as Our Life

Reading: Judges 6:24; Hebrews 13:20-21; Revelation 2:14,17; 1 John 2:14-17; 1 John 4:4-6; 1 John 5:4-5.

We have been occupied in this conference with the matter of the recovery of spiritual power and the greater part of the background scripturally has been the book of Judges. We have by no means covered the book; there is very much yet here for the instruction of the Lord's people in this great matter of the recovery of spiritual power, but now I feel the Lord would have us confine ourselves to one fragment of the book, and that with regard to Gideon as in chapters 6 and 7.

We have been seeing that this book of Judges is the book of spiritual weakness and failure, and we learn from the failure and weakness of the Lord's people as presented, what are the causes of weakness and therefore, what are the secrets of power. Now, it is almost impossible for us to take the whole of this matter with regard to Gideon, and we shall have to be content with a very few things, but I trust they will be those things of very great value to us.

We were speaking in chapter four about Gideon and the Midianites and we were saying that the history of the Midianites represents the history of the world interfering with the things of God among His people. May I repeat that it was Midian, with Moab, who hired Balaam to curse Israel and thereby brought them under a state of bondage, defeat, paralysis, weakness and dishonour. This was not carried out in a direct way, but it succeeded eventually in an indirect way inasmuch as Balaam was compelled to bless rather than curse, but obtained the same thing by teaching Israel to commit spiritual fornication. That is, to make alliances religiously with the nations round about. And so Balaamism is the world being allowed to come into relationship with things of God, and the people of God entering into fellowship and relationship with the world. This has perhaps more than anything else brought the people of God into spiritual weakness. It is patent to all who have eyes that the great paralysing tactic of the enemy in the case of God's people right through, has been to bring about an association between them and the world in some way or some form. Their strength is destroyed, liberty is taken away, and they find themselves in a paralysing bondage when they have come into fellowship with the world.

We have read what the Lord's own mind is about that. John has given us that mind very clearly: all that is of the world, or in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the vain glory of life, this is of the world and this is enmity with God. This is the Midianite and this is Balaamism and it was that that brought the tremendous censure upon that church of which we have read in the book of Revelation, "Thou hast there those that teach the doctrine of Balaam". In other words, more simply, it amounted to this: there are those there who introduce worldly methods, worldly means and resources, worldly policy into the realm of the things of God and among the people of God.

Every one of us is assailed far more subtly than we recognise in this very thing. It is not just a matter of introducing the grosser forms of worldliness, but it is sometimes just a little bit of worldly wisdom, for example, in making decisions, where the thing is not wholly of the Holy Spirit and we use man's standards of values and judgment; where we are sometimes tempted to take a line of less resistance in order to gain some advantage; where we come down from the high place of trusting the Lord for everything in a day of pressure, adversity or trial and do not hold on to the Lord to meet the situation. Instead we are tempted to turn to some expedient way of meeting the situation... expediency, to a little bit of human diplomacy, patronage, stirring of the flesh in order to get through. All that is the spirit of the world and it works in very subtle ways from time to time, and when it has dictated a course or governed a decision, there has come about a state of compromise where the Holy Spirit Himself has to stand back in helplessness and leave us to get on with it and we find ourselves in a state of terrible bondage and spiritual weakness. That temptation is one which is overcoming multitudes of the Lord's people today.

The situation today is just honeycombed with that sort of thing - great instrumentalities which have been raised up and used by God, which have been wholly of God, which have been faith institutions, faith instrumentalities, which had a testimony to the power of God and faith of God, by trusting wholly in God and not resorting to the flesh or world in any way whatsoever for support. These are being assailed along this very line and they are coming down from their high position, beginning to appeal, letting their needs be known in all directions, to get patronage, names.... You know the whole thing and it represents a coming in of something that will paralyse the spiritual life. There is a subtle moving of the enemy to destroy the testimony to the absolute sovereignty of God in every realm and every matter; God's sovereignty to carry on His own way.

That is what you have in Midianites and when you come to this, Midian is unveiled. And what a lot is said about Midianites; they overran the country! They were a multitude like the sand, like locusts; they ate up everything... the very food of God. And here is Gideon trying to preserve a little grain behind the wall and hide it in the winepress for fear of the Midianites. Why is there such spiritual starvation? Why is the food question so acute, that wherever you go people say, "We cannot get spiritual food; it is all husks; the locusts have eaten it up". It is the inevitable result of the world getting hold of things of God among the people of God.

The church has been captured by the world, and honeycombed by the world, and the church is depending upon the world and its resources and that is the result: that the food has gone. We have to understand the nature of the things that are around us today. People are hungry for spiritual food. It is one thing to recognise this and another thing to know why. You cannot deal with it unless you know the cause of it. It is because the Lord is not the whole portion of His people. So you have got to come back to the place where the Lord is the portion of His people absolutely and where He is the whole portion and look nowhere but to the Lord. And when the Lord is everything and has His place, you are well-fed and sustained and the Lord can look after His interests. The Midianites devour everything. They represent that subtle link of looking to the world rather than to the Lord, and drawing upon other sources than the Lord to help in the things of the Lord. The issue will be spiritual weakness. That introduces you to the whole matter of Gideon.

When you come to Gideon the Lord arrives behind that wall, as it were, and sits over under the tree and watches Gideon do his secret work trying to preserve a bit of food from the Midianites. Then He addresses Gideon in most astounding words, "The Lord is with thee thou mighty man of valour"! And he was anything but that, "I am the least of my father's house..." and when put to the test and told to destroy the idols, the images, the groves of his father, he did it by night because he was afraid to do it by day. Then he tested God three times before he would move. A mighty man of valour! I get a good deal of comfort out of this.

The Lord wants a Gideon instrument today, and the explanation of this is that the Lord called Gideon not what he was, but what He was going to make him. The Lord saw Gideon as the product of His own dealings and activity in him and He saw him as a mighty man of valour in the future, not as he was then. Peter had exactly the same thing happen to him. "Thou art Simon, thou shalt be called Peter". "Thou art Peter and upon this rock..." - Peter denied the Lord with oaths and curses after that was said to him and could not even stand up to a servant maid! Petros, a rock. It was not what Peter was; it was what the Lord saw he was going to be when He had done with him.

The Lord calls the things that are not as though they were, and He saw the possibility of the energy of the Holy Spirit in this man and so called him according to His own grace and power, and not according to what he was by nature. There is hope for all of us. "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man" - that is not you and me by nature. It is you and me when the Lord has got His way with us. Now, when did that take place? "And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon" - and then it started. It is not what we are, but what the Holy Spirit is. When He comes in, things happen. That is the secret of might. It is with the Lord, not with us.

Now, you notice the next thing is that Gideon raises a question. It is a beautiful question. It sounds like an argument, "If the Lord is with us, wherefore is all this befallen us?" Do you notice there is a change in one word? Why has this befallen, not "me", but "us". Do you catch the significance of that? Gideon was not living to himself or for himself; he was in close, suffering touch with his people. You will never get an instrument that is going to be of use to God that has not that close suffering touch with God's people. God is not going to take an instrument that stands apart from His people and begin to hammer them. If you are going to have Daniel's ministry you must have his burden. If Ezra's, then you must have that passion that he had. He was down on his face before God with a heart suffering touch with the condition of things. Gideon was not taking this thing for himself. He was concerned about the spiritual state of the Lord's people.

The Lord is not trying to get hold of something that He puts out there in detachment to take down the spiritual state of His people everywhere, but is trying to get something that will help them because they are suffering together. That instrument has them on his heart. Beware of occupying a pedestal because of some experience which makes you think that you are better than the rest and you must begin to "hammer" others because they are not where they ought to be. If you look through the Word of God you will find this principle continues, that whenever God raises up an instrument to meet the situation among His own people, that instrument suffers terribly. Ezekiel, "l sat where they sat" - that is it. A man in touch with the situation and overwhelmed by it, loses. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Paul had all come to that place. Paul said, "I could wish myself accursed for my brethren's sake". Not taking them down, but suffering in their suffering, and he is keenly touched with the state of things. That is the kind of instrument the Lord must have: one who is in sympathetic fellowship with things as they are.

That was Gideon's answer to the Lord. We should take fragments as we go along in the matter of the recovery of spiritual power. That is the way. After that the operations of God commenced in the constituting of faith in order to bring Gideon to the place where he was in the mind of God. In the mind of God he was a mighty man of valour; but he was not that in himself, so the process commenced by which he was going to be what he was in the thought of God, and it was the process by which faith was constituted, a basis of faith upon which he was to stand for all the future of his ministry, for you recognise that it was on the basis of a mighty faith that Gideon delivered Israel from the hand of the children of the East as they were spiritually abroad.

Hebrews 11: "And what say I more; time would fail to tell of Gideon, Barak, and so on... who through faith...". It is this kind of faith, and it was a faith in God that had to be constituted to mightily overthrow this thing, this mighty force, and deliver the Lord's people from this paralysing entanglement with the world and its tyranny. This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. There had to be a course of deep experience to constitute a faith like that. All these Judges had to go through an experience to get to a place where they could deliver Israel. And the ministry of emancipation, or the secret of spiritual power in a day of weakness, is found in a deep experience through which God takes you, wherein and whereby you learn to trust God. You learn what faith is. For many of us it is a long-drawn-out thing, represented in simple tests on the part of Gideon. Take the three as you see them.

First, his sacrifice. His altar built and his sacrifice laid thereon, and the Angel of the Lord touched it and it was consumed and went up in fire. Here you have Gideon presenting himself to the Lord and having the witness in himself that the Lord had received him. That present represented the gift or presentation of himself to the Lord. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God" (Rom. 12:1). The whole consumed unto the Lord and the witness of the Lord that you are the Lord's and that you are accepted of the Lord. When Gideon brought his sacrifice his test was, will the Lord accept, and if the Lord will indicate that He accepts, that will be the first step in the construction of his faith. That principle holds good, in this way: that before ever you step out in your ministry in the power of God, you have got to have the assurance in your heart that the Lord is well pleased to receive you.

The Lord Jesus came through at Jordan and presented Himself, in type, at Jordan to the Father in a whole burnt offering: in death, burial and resurrection. The Gospel of Mark says, "Thou art My Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased". Luke and Matthew say, "This is my beloved Son". The change is significant because in Mark it is the Servant of the Lord; before the Servant could step out into Divine service of power He has got to have the attestation Himself that He is accepted of God and then, coming out of that service, because the Lord is well pleased, He will draw the attention of others to that One. That is what you have got with Gideon. First of all they were going to slay him for what he had done. He presented his offering to the Lord and got the witness that the Lord was well pleased, and after that the very people that were going to slay him, rally to him. It is as if the Lord drew attention to this man and they had to accept him because God had accepted him.

We are no good to God in a day of weakness if it is not settled with us that Christ has risen, and that God has accepted us for Christ's sake, that we are accepted in the Beloved. So many are still uncertain of that. They are wondering if the Lord is quite well pleased with them and really does love them, or whether He is against them, and round they go in a continual terrible introspection as to whether the Lord has a delight in them at all, and they are in bondage and cannot lift a hand to deliver another soul. It is not what we are, but what the grace of God can make us. Because of the grace of God we are accepted in the Beloved. God has accepted us for Christ's sake, and all that we come short in has been made over to us in the Person of Christ, and He has become our sufficiency to give us a standing in the presence of God with the definite attestation of approval. It is all of grace. It is not what we are. If we have presented ourselves wholly to the Lord (have you done that?), the Lord brings down all the perfections of His Son and lays them to our credit, and gives us the assurance that for His Son's sake we are accepted in the Beloved. Get that settled and you can take the other steps. Until that is settled you are in weakness, bondage, defeat and helplessness. So he presented his offering to the Lord as a test as to God's acceptance; that was his first stage of training. He believed the Lord a bit at that time!

The second and third tests were with the fleece. Most people have got this fleece business out in the wrong realm. You have heard of people going to "test the Lord" with their fleece. But God has given us a far more adequate base than that. It is dishonouring to the Lord, this fleece business is an infinite thing. First of all he said, "I will put the fleece out; let it be dew on the fleece only and dry all round". The Lord accepted his test. In the morning the ground was dry, but he wrung out a basin full of dew. The next night he said, "Forgive me, Lord but do allow me to put another test. This time let the fleece be dry and the ground all round be wet". And the Lord was again gracious. He was constituting faith. He did what Gideon asked. The next morning the fleece was dry and the ground all round was wet. Notice that in these tests Gideon built an altar and offered sacrifices and called the name of that place, "Jehovah-Shalom", Jehovah is peace.

See Hebrews 13:20-21 to explain Gideon's situation. Paul explains Gideon's fleece. He explains it beautifully in relation to the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. That fleece is the skin of the sacrifice. That Lamb has been slain and stripped. It is related to the altar. By reason of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus something has taken place in the life of Paul which is altogether contrary to nature both ways, and which is an abiding testimony to the absolute supremacy of God. "That the life whereby Jesus conquered death might be manifested in my mortal body" - that is one side. The other side is: "Wherefore death works in us but life in you." The life whereby Jesus conquered death may be manifest in my mortal body. Death all round and life within; triumphant over death. Dryness, death reigning without and yet in the midst of death we are in life. It is this upon which Gideon went forward - the miracle of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus becoming a new reality in the servant, instrument and vessel. The mighty power of His resurrection became an inward and experimental thing when death was round everywhere. Follow the life of Paul and see if it is not true. He says, "We despaired even of life... that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead" (2 Cor. 1:8,9). This man is a living testimony by the saturation of resurrection Life with death everywhere, death assailing. This is the secret of spiritual power. We are not a part of the situation, but different from it. Death around us everywhere, but we live, by the power of His resurrection. The truth is all the way through the scriptures. It is the principle on which God builds faith.

By faith Enoch was not, God took him. Do you know where that statement comes? In a long chapter with its monotonous, "So and so died and was buried with his fathers" and on you go until the whole thing is broken into - "and Enoch walked with God and he was not" (Gen. 5:24). God broke in upon the universal reign of death as a testimony to resurrection, ascension life. Gideon had to have his faith constituted - that God was in him - the mighty power of overcoming Life, and in principle he overcame on that. That is something different to putting your fleece out to test the Lord. Proving the power of His resurrection when everything around you is death; in a place of death you would be swallowed up, engulfed, but because of the living Lord who has conquered death within you, you can wring it out! Life triumphant. "Death worketh in us but life in you." It sounds like a contradiction, but what he is saying is that while we are continually suffering, going through trials and difficulties, death is at work; the fact of it all is that our suffering is producing Life all round. Dryness inside and Life outside. Sometimes when you feel you are as dry as you can be, other people get the biggest blessing. The sufferings which happen unto us are working out for the very Life of the body of Christ. It is contrary to nature; all of God.

The fleece is dry: suffering, knowing much of death, but all round is Life because of all that suffering, that working of death. Jehovah-Shalom, "the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that Great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight" - that is the basis of faith. When you know something about that, you have an inward secret or power. People seem to think that putting out their fleece means that if the birds chirp in a certain way, tomorrow they will do something specific; if things go a certain way, they will know what to do. But it is founded upon nothing less than the mighty resurrection of the Lord Jesus made real in the life of the believer; that is the faith of the Son of God. That is mighty. Gideon got that in principle. He saw the work of God which was in every case contrary to nature. When you ought to be dead you are alive! This is some other Life than natural life; it is the very Life of God! When you have an experience of that, you can go on into the conflict. Things are settled.

What the Lord must have is the inward thing with His people; where they know Him and He is their very Life within. And when it seems that suffering is swallowing them up in death, to know the Lord still lives and that is not the end, but the Lord can do great things even through suffering. Sometimes we have thought that we must be vigorous, but have found at our lowest ebb God did the biggest thing; the time when we were most at a discount that the Lord was enabled to do the biggest thing. It was God working in the power of a life that was not natural. It is the Lord. You see Gideon's vessels and the lamps - the inward revelation. Paul, as we have seen, explains that for us. The Lord is the treasure in earthen vessels. "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). We are earthen vessels containing that revelation of Jesus Christ as risen, as Saul saw Him on the Damascus road, Jesus Christ in glory, shining into our hearts. Then the Midianites do not stand a chance.

The Lord must get a people where we know the Lord within as our very life. This is the secret of spiritual power. That makes you an overcomer. It is the victory that overcomes the world - our faith - the faith which is constituted upon the basis of that experience which has made us know the Lord in a mighty way in the presence of death, and in the power or His resurrection. You can do a lot in the Name of the Lord then.

It is a very important factor in the case of Gideon, that virtue of breakableness, brokenness. Paul says, "Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received Christ (mercy), we faint not... Though our outward man is perishing..." although the vessel is being broken, the new man is being renewed day by day. Though the natural man is breaking up, in ourselves getting less and less, yet the Lord is able to do all the more as we are breakable, and we are broken. He is in need of such as be broken. Breakableness and brokenness gives God His chance. Not what we are, "Thou mighty man of valour" never can be said of a man in himself. It is what he is in the Lord, not what he is in himself. He is a vessel of fragile clay, and that broken. It is strength destroyed that the Lord may be everything; that is the secret of spiritual power. The Lord would bring us there spiritually, would make us know what His strength is in order that we may be constituted an instrument in a day of weakness to destroy the universal tyranny and domination of these foreign elements.

There must be a testimony in the earth that the prince of this world does not reign and that Jesus Christ is Lord. Every company of the Lord's people is a "gap". Every child of God is a gap in the universality of the reign of "the prince of this world". Are you that? Do I stand, do you stand, to represent and declare that the god of this age, and prince of this world has not universal sway? It is costly. You know that, but you can look upon one another, some have been thinking upon this and saying that they have been through the depths, some thought God had failed and everything they had sought the Lord for had gone the other way. There has been a time when faith could have been terribly shaken, and a testimony to what God can do when no man could have stood that. We go through extraordinary experiences. The faith of the man of the world would not go through the experiences that you and I go through.

If we were to launch into the realm of human reason we could not believe God any longer. Naturally, you could not trust God any more, but God has brought you through a time when you were sorely tempted to have done with the Lord as One who could not be trusted. Am I too strong? Or did He fail you? Today you know the Lord and that is a mighty gap in the universal dominion of the god of this age. A faith that triumphs. A faith which is not our faith, but the mighty energy of the Holy Spirit in us and we know the Lord in a better way than we ever knew Him before. This is a gap, a break in the dominion of the devil, a testimony that Jesus Christ is Lord.

The Lord strengthen us by these words and get us to the place where we may be perfect in every good work to do His will, to whom be the glory for ever.

Chapter 6 - The Three Primary Factors

I believe, Beloved of God, that it is the Lord's mind that in these days of our gathering together, we should be concerned with the matter of the recovery of power. That seems to be the way in which He has been leading my own heart in relation to this time.

The recovery of power. Of course, that immediately implies the loss of power; and I think there would be very little difficulty in persuading you to believe that there has been a considerable loss of power amongst the Lord's people, and that we are very greatly in need of a recovery of power. Taking that then for granted, we proceed in the assumption that it is so, and if this is the Lord's leading, then it does surely indicate that the Lord sees a need in His people with regard to spiritual power.

The Three Primary Factors

I want you again to come back to familiar chapters in the letter to the Romans. Chapters 7, 8 and 6, for in these chapters we have three primary things in relation to spiritual power. The close of chapter 7 gives us the first, out of which everything else comes. Verse 24 - "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." In that last clause we have Christ set forth as the Object by whom, through whom, there is the emergence from all that this chapter contains. Chapter 7 of the Roman letter, as we know, is a very morbid chapter; a chapter full of failure, full of weakness, full of disappointment, full of heartbreak, full of problems, full of contradictions, and that chapter certainly is not a revelation of spiritual power - anything but that. How then are we to emerge from such a condition of paralysis, morbidness, defeat, failure, collapse and contradiction? The answer is given at the end - "Through Jesus Christ our Lord." What I am anxious for you to see is that He is presented as the Object, if I may say it, also as an Object. You see the explanation of the weakness of chapter 7 is that the object all the way through is "I." That is the trouble. The object in view is "I." You know how this chapter is simply full of the personal pronoun "I," and what there is always before the one who is represented as "I"; and there is no deliverance until that object gives place to the Lord Jesus. There is no power, but all weakness while "I" is in view, and not the Lord Jesus. Now that is a very simple statement I know, and yet upon this fact and this truth there hangs everything for the Believer in the way of emancipation from defeat and failure and spiritual weakness.

The Paralysis of Self-occupation

ALL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IS WEAKNESS. Now if you forget everything else, write that down - all self-consciousness is weakness. Self-analysis, self-scrutiny, self-investigation, self-occupation of any kind whatsoever is self-consciousness, and self-consciousness of every form and kind is weakness, weakness, and it is in that respect and connection that the subjective side of truth is a very perilous thing.

You know what I mean by the subjective side of truth. We speak much about what Christ has done for in being made good in us; the inwardness of the work of the Lord Jesus by His Cross; the Cross applied within; the inwardness of identification with Christ in death, burial and resurrection and all that follows. Now that is all true, all necessary, all vital, and not one bit of it must be sacrificed, missed or lost. At the same time it is just in that connection that the Believer comes into touch with the greatest peril of his or her life. There is a great peril always associated with the greatest blessing. When you are touching something of very great value, you have not far to look for something which is of very great danger. The higher you get spiritually the more perilous your position becomes from another standpoint, and it is here in the matter of the subjective side of truth that we meet that peril which, if it overtakes us, will work in us the most terrible bondage, defeat and spoliation of everything. I want to try and explain what I mean by that. If you can grasp this word, beloved, you will find it an emancipating word as the Holy Spirit brings it home to your heart. You see, when the truth is applied subjectively, so often we relate it to ourselves, and ourselves to it as some thing apart instead of Someone. For instance, we have thought and said a good deal about the tripartite nature of man. We have spoken much about spirit, soul and body, and especially about soul and spirit, spirit and soul and we have dwelt much upon that. The mental grasp of this by many of the Lord's children has brought them into confusion, and they do not know where they are, and all the time they are afraid of themselves, they are afraid to open their lips lest it might be "soulish," they are afraid to do anything lest it might be "soulish" - all the time looking within to see if it is soul or spirit - trying to read themselves.

They get a phraseology about their spirit all the time, "they have it in their spirit," and it brings death and weakness. It is perfectly true that it holds up activity very often; real activity; so that as I have said, very often prayer is not forthcoming because people are afraid to pray lest they should not pray in their spirit. Many are afraid to take part in many of the active aspects of the spiritual life lest it should be other than in their spirits, or out from their spirit, and, do you see what has happened? Their spirit has taken the dominion, they have their spirit always dangled before their eyes, and asking questions about it, trying to analyse it and get to know it and understand it. It is the inward ego. It is the "I." [It] may be the spiritual "I" that is in view all the time, and that being their governing, dominating obsession, is a weakening, enslaving thing. It is a subjectivity which is generally introspective, producing self-consciousness that makes you afraid to do anything, and all self-consciousness, be it spiritual or not, is weakness. Now beloved, we have got to be delivered from our spiritual selves, from occupation with our spiritual selves. What is the way of deliverance from all these contradictions that arise, and there are many, in this realm? Often the people who are always talking about "having it in their spirit" do the most outrageous things - things that are a sheer contradiction of the Word of God - that violate the Word of God, very often because they have "got it in their spirit." Forgive my emphasis.

(It is a very important thing to know the difference between the Natural (GK. Soulical or Psychical) and the Spiritual, but our spirit is not the object of Government or really the seat of knowledge, it is only the vehicle or instrument of the Holy Spirit within. Our spirit may be affected by the Natural influences and suffer deviations like the compass, thereby showing that even a renewed spirit is not infallible. The Lord will never allow infallibility to be a part of us, and a life of utter dependence and faith is the only way of being led aright.)

We must know the way of recovery of spiritual power. What I am feeling more and more is just this: that a large amount of spiritual knowledge, spiritual teaching, spiritual instruction, is not the secret of power at all. That is not power. In this realm of spiritual things teaching and instruction and doctrine, and light as such are not the secret of power at all. You find this terrible contradiction that so many who have a large amount of light, and a great measure of teaching and instruction are sometimes the chief offenders, and sometimes they bring death, sometimes they are a sand-bag, they are an arrest, they bring in weakness, and it may be that with a very great deal of light, knowledge, truth, there is still the upper hand of the enemy with impunity. You know what I mean. The enemy can be laughing all the time at our knowledge of truth and making a mess everywhere, while we are so well versed in all the doctrine of the Bible. (I am discriminating between mental knowledge and spiritual knowledge, dealing with the latter in the next message).

Power is the thing that meets the enemy in his challenge. We want to know the secret of power. Am I not right that very often with all our wonderful teaching, we have not got power? There is not sufficient power to bring to an end the activities of the adversary, and to bring about the works of God. Why is it? Maybe because we are occupied with the spiritual ego, the spiritual "I." That may be the object all the time. Wrapped up in our spiritual selves. The way of deliverance and the way of power is to have the Lord Jesus as the Object, but subjectively objective. Not out there, but in here. Himself, not I. Not you, HIM. Subjectively objective. It is the "knowing the Lord," not knowing ourselves. Having the Lord and knowing the Lord inwardly. Not knowing our spirit and being occupied with our spirit, but the Lord. There has got to be an inward detachment from ourselves and an attachment to the Lord. You may not be able to feel that. I know its conclusion - it seems drastic but it is very real - a thing of the greatest value and, of course, only those who have come into this problem, perplexity, can appreciate it to the full, but I do want you to recognise, whether you can feel all that I am saying from experience or not, I do want you to recognise that the Object with whom we are to be occupied all the time is the Lord Jesus Christ inwardly. Apart from that you have only spiritualised psychology - you have only developed in a new form the spirit, the natural spirit of man, and tried to bring him into a spiritual realm. The natural man who is not born again has a spirit just as much as we have. Every man is spirit, soul and body, and you can have all the features of the natural spirit developed and becoming the governing laws of your spiritual mind with the result that you have only swung over your own spirit into a spiritual realm occupied with yourself, listening to the voice of your spirit, and you are gravely in danger of getting false leadings.

It is the spirit of man which is linked to the whole spirit world, and the natural spirit linked to the fallen spirit world, and if you are going to concentrate upon developing your own spirit, you are going to expose your spirit to false light, false guidance, and death may still remain when you have developed your spirit to a large degree and made it exceedingly sensitive to all psychical influence; but death still remains and bondage is still there, and there is still weakness, not true spirituality. What has happened? You have simply developed yourself - one part of your own being, your spirit, and made it the law of your life. While our spirit must be inwardly renewed by the Holy Spirit, our spirit must not be the law of our life.

Not "I" but Christ

IT IS THE LORD JESUS WHO IS TO BE THE LAW OF OUR LIFE. He is to be the Object with Whom we are occupied. Having said all that mysterious stuff, to many of you, let me say this, that if the Lord is concerned with the recovery of spiritual power in and amongst His people, He must bring them back to the Lord Jesus in a new way. He must bring them back from things, as things; doctrine as doctrine; from anything that has to do with the spiritual life as a thing in itself. He must bring them back to the Lord Jesus, and there is no way of recovering spiritual power until we have come to the place where the Lord Jesus is everything; where He is LORD, where He is Master, where the government is upon His shoulders, where He is our very life: and if this is true, then can we not discern the movement of the Lord today? In the day of weakness, a day when there is disappointment in the matter of spiritual power because of weakness: a time when the Church is a sorry spectacle in the matter of spiritual power. There must be this characteristic feature, that He is bringing His Son into pre-eminence in the hearts of His own where things are ceasing to satisfy. Teaching, movements, fellowships, all bearing the marks of disappointment. The Lord does not let them become the dominating thing in the life of His children - He will allow disaster to overtake things upon which our hearts have been set and which have become the object of our strength. He allows those things to break down, to disappoint us; allows other people to disappoint us, opens our eyes to see how disappointing everything is, until we wonder if there is anything at all that is really satisfactory, really according to God; whether there is anything that really does come up to the standard. The Lord is working very much in that way today, beloved. Disappointment with things, with people, with fellowships, with Christian movements, with Churches - everywhere there is weakness. It is an age of spiritual weakness.

How will the Lord meet such a time? By bringing His own Son, the Lord Jesus, into pre-eminence and prominence, and making HIM the object, that is how it was in the beginning; how it has always been in the days of power amongst the Lord's people. The secret of power has been that the Lord has been the supreme and all-governing Object of His people's life. Not the things of the Lord, but the Lord Himself. The Ark represented the presentation of the Lord, and when it was at the centre and occupied the place of devotion and honour of the Lord's people, they went forward in strength so that waters were cleft by the mighty power of God as the Ark went in first, and upon that Ark all eyes were set. At the beginning of the Christian era it was the Lord Jesus Who was the one in view; engrossing enrapturing; not fellowships or movements, but the Lord Himself. That was the day of power, and we have to come back there. It has got to be so in the individual life and the corporate life. The Lord is the centre of the life, governing. The Lord in the centre of His people individually and collectively. Not places, teaching, teachers, or fellowships, but the Lord, and then you have recovered power. This simple statement goes a long way - and the cry of a man in despair "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me..." has its answer in hope and assurance - "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

This is a very practical thing for you to take to those who are so introspective that they are tied in and bound with grave clothes. If anyone here is occupied with their own spiritual position, turning your eyes inward, feeling all too much condemnation - beloved, your deliverance is not along the line of having questions answered or someone trying to convince you that it is alright, and that you need not trouble; nor is it a matter of further light and teaching, but changing the "I" for Christ, or Christ for the "I," and putting the Lord Jesus as the subjective Objective of your life instead of the "I." Christ in you is alone the hope of glory, the way out. You meet so many of the Lord's children today with whom you cannot speak for half a minute before they have begun to pour out a terrible story about themselves, their spiritual difficulties, problems, and you do what you can to help them, and they profess to have been helped, but the next time you meet them you get the same thing again. You meet them after months, or years, and at the end of it all you get the same old story. Their only deliverance is that Jesus Christ our Lord becomes the Object of their hearts within as their hope. They must become attached to Him and detached from themselves, even spiritually. A new appreciation of the Lord Jesus - that is the way of deliverance. You will find you get up against situations where you are impotent to help the Lord's people until you have cut clean into their obsession with themselves. The Lord Jesus is to become the Object of your faith inwardly, He will deliver. He is the gate of the arena, around which you have been going so long with that corpse.

The Law of the Spirit of Life

I am going to venture to say a very brief word about the second thing. Chapter 8:2. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." If No. 1 is Christ as the Object, No. 2 is the Spirit as the power. "Made me free." You see the Holy Spirit always works in relation to an Object. He must have that Object and that Object is the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit never works in relation to our self-occupation. Always in relation to the Lord Jesus. So Christ is the way. The Holy Spirit is the energy to take it, to go through. Power comes by freedom. "Made me free." The Spirit of life.

The Spirit's law of life or the law of the Spirit of life. "The Spirit of life made me free." Of course you want to go on to Chapter 8:11. "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His spirit that dwelleth in you." That is the Spirit of life you see, in you. In you: in relation to the living Christ as the Object. Christ lives now on the other side of the grave, death, sin, bondage to sin, over there on resurrection ground. The living Christ lives in you and the Spirit works in relation to Him to bring you through to where Christ is, making you free just as He made Christ free. The Lord Jesus went down unto death, to which He surrendered Himself, and broke that law, and the Holy Spirit has put the Lord Jesus over there on the ground of emancipation and victory. You have the Lord Jesus on resurrection ground as the object of your faith and of your occupation, and then the Spirit that raised up Jesus and put Him there, in you, works towards that object and puts you where Christ is. We have to honour the Holy Spirit and give Him His place. The place that the Holy Spirit claims to have, is the place of honouring the Lord Jesus and not honouring Himself, and we have to recognise that the Holy Spirit in us must be honoured in His work of honouring the Lord Jesus. So many people put the Holy Spirit in a place by Himself and thereby do despite to the Spirit. It is perfectly wrong. We must recognise that His Object is the Lord Jesus and all His activities are in relation to the Lord Jesus, and an issue which simply reaches the end of making the Holy Spirit everything is a false impression of the present work of the Holy Spirit. The end of all the Holy Spirit's activities is to make the Lord Jesus glorious.

Spirituality is not cultivating our spirit but it is the Holy Spirit gaining the ascendency in us over ourselves. Spirituality is not the cultivating of our spirit, watching over it to see how it is growing, pulling it up and putting it in again as it were to see how it is growing. Some people think the height of spirituality is always giving attention to their own spirit. The Lord deliver us. The real mark of spirituality is that we are coming to a larger enjoyment of the Lord Jesus, where He is having a larger place; and that is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the power. The Holy Spirit is the power, but His power is always directed towards bringing the Lord Jesus into the place of living reality and of fulness in our hearts as different from that false spirituality which is constantly bringing ourselves spiritually more into view. There is a lot more to be said about that, but - the third thing, chapter 6:5-6.

The Cross, the Instrument

The Cross. What you have here is the third primary thing in relation to spiritual power - the Cross. The Cross in this sense: the Lord Jesus has died, He was crucified and buried. He died unto sin once for all. We died in Him, but the Lord Jesus having died, having become dead, has changed things in this way, that whereas for the moment in His yielding to death through weakness which He had accepted, death had dominion over Him for a moment - He allowed death to have dominion over Him for a moment, but He, by the Eternal Spirit broke the power of death's dominion, arose from the dead, and took death captive, and instead of death having dominion Christ had dominion over death. The last revelation - how wonderful - "And have the keys of death and hades" - the authority of death and hades. "I am He that liveth: I became dead but behold, I am alive for evermore." "I am alive unto the ages of the ages, and have the authority of death and hades." What have we? Death is in the Hands of Christ! Death is in the Hands of Christ, and the Eternal Spirit, through Whom Christ was raised from the dead, brought back from among the dead, given the power and authority over death. Death is in the Hands of Christ, in the Hands of the Holy Spirit. Now here is the wonder, beauty, glory of this thing, that sovereignly the Holy Spirit is using death against the flesh, whereas death originally was used against Him.

Let me make that plain. What is the ground of death in the natural man? Flesh. Death has its authority, power, ascendency by reason of the flesh. It must have flesh. The flesh has been taken by the Lord Jesus and death has been destroyed by Him, and overcome, and He has taken the power of death and now sovereignly in the Believer the Lord Jesus is using death against the flesh. That is Romans 6. Death is being used by the Holy Spirit against the flesh. You know it. When a Believer touches flesh what happens? There is a consciousness of death at once. The result:- oh, to escape that thing - to turn from it! There is a revulsion when you have touched "flesh." Your first thought is to get out of this. You run to the Lord - "I have been moving in flesh." The Holy Spirit has used death to work against flesh to deliver you.

Paul speaks about his bodily weakness - "Death worketh in us," but it is not the authority of death. Death is in the Hands of another authority to be used to work Life. What is it? The working of the death of Christ in himself. The Life of the Lord Jesus is made manifest in this body because the death of the Lord Jesus is working there. A contradiction but wonderfully true. A conqueror simply wipes out - a more than conqueror uses his enemy to his own ends! He has taken death and the Holy Spirit is using death to teach us not to touch flesh. The Law of the Spirit of Life has made me free from the law of sin and death. The moment we touch flesh we know it badly, and we turn from it. We should never have learned if the Lord had not used death to teach us. The Lord sovereignly using death now in His Hands, using death in order to make Life more manifest. The Lord is using the enemy wonderfully in this age. If only we could get this right into our hearts. We are encountering death everywhere. All the authority has been in the Hands of the Lord Jesus since He arose from the dead, and the very impact of death is intended to be the occasion of the manifestation of the Life. It is not intended that we should be swallowed up of death, but that death should be swallowed up of Life to display what the Lord Jesus has done. We know we learn to shun death because we know by experience that we should never shun the flesh if we did not get our instruction by the Holy Spirit's use of death. More than conquerors; the enemy reserved for the present use of the Lord to teach Saints how to live triumphantly. We must learn that in and by His Cross, the Lord Jesus did conquer death and make death His prisoner, that He conquered flesh, He put away the old man and is using the very power of death, that evil communications corrupt good manners, we must not touch the old man, we must walk after the Spirit of Life.

So often we think that the Cross is to annihilate us, to wipe us out. It is really an emphasis of Life. The message of the Cross ought to produce Life. It produces death in a great many people. Suffocation, putting you down so that you are afraid to move. It ought to be Life by the Cross because we have died, we reckon ourselves dead, therefore we live. "I have been crucified - therefore I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me and that which I now live..." "Now live!" The Cross is the way of power. The working of the death of the Lord Jesus is intended to show us that flesh is paralysis, weakness, impotence: but the Cross has cut us off it, from all weakness, and defeat, which is in the flesh, and the Holy Spirit is using the Cross now to make us know that we are not to live in the flesh.

With all the difficulty of seeing these things, may the Lord show us what they mean, bring them home to us, and help us to see the real Life side of things - the power side of things. He, the Lord Jesus, as risen, being wrought in us by the Holy Spirit because we have accepted and appropriated by faith the fact that we died and now we live unto and in Christ, and Christ triumphant lives in us.

Chapter 7 - The Matter of Spiritual Knowledge

Reading: Judges 2:7,23 and 3:1,31. Ephesians 1:17. 2 Corinthians 4:4,6,7.

Beloved, I feel that the Lord has a very important thing to say to us at this time in connection with this great matter of the recovery of spiritual power. It is a word which, given utterance by the Holy Ghost, and enablement to spiritually apprehend it, I am sure is going to mean a very great deal for the Lord. It has to do with the matter of spiritual knowledge. Remember, we are occupied with the matter of spiritual power, and unto spiritual power, spiritual knowledge is a tremendous thing.

If you will quickly reflect upon the passages we have read, you will see that that is the thing that is in all of them. Go back to the passages of Judges, remembering that the book of Judges represents universal weakness, complete failure and impotence, absolute inability to deal with the forces of evil; and as we have read, one of the things, the basic things to that condition was that a generation which had experimental knowledge of the activities of God had passed away, and another generation which knew not experimentally the works of God took its place. You do not conclude from this reading that this generation knew nothing of the works of God; it would be impossible for them to be in the succession of that generation without knowing, as a matter of history, what had taken place in the experience of their fathers, but the conclusion is that they knew nothing of it experimentally. That is, they were not in living touch with it, not spiritually a part of it. They knew all about it, but they knew not the Lord or His mighty works as present things in their experience. The spiritual reality of that history had not been carried on into their history, and that led to the condition as presented in this book of Judges.

When you come to the passage in Ephesians you remember that you are in the heavenlies, and that the issue of the Ephesian letter, the grand climax is the making effectual in the believers at the end, of what was true in the case of Christ at the beginning. God raised Him up and set Him in the heavenlies at His own Right Hand, far above all rule and authority, principality and power. That is true in the case of the Lord Jesus, and He is there. All that lies between that in the first chapter and the great climax of chapter six is intended to bring Saints to that position experimentally, where their wrestling against principalities and powers is made effectual as was Christ's. That is the issue of the Ephesian letter, that we also in the heavenlies in Christ, in contact with the spiritual hosts of wickedness, know something also of that ascendency over them in Christ. Now then, in relation to Christ's position and our approximation to that, you find that one of the first things is spiritual knowledge. "The eyes of your heart being enlightened that ye may know." Ye may know. "The Father of Glory may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, His Son" - spiritual knowledge.

When you come to the Corinthian passage which we read, you notice a tremendous thing said there, "That the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God and not of ourselves." What is the exceeding greatness of the power? It is said to be the treasure which we have in earthen vessels. "God hath shined into our hearts to give the knowledge..." It is a revelation of Jesus Christ. That is spiritual knowledge. It is the Lord, of course. But not the Lord as outside of our understanding, outside of our knowledge. The Lord as revealed. The Lord.

All that He is and all that He has may still be detached from us and therefore ineffective. The link between us and the exceeding greatness of the power that is in Christ is the link of spiritual revelation. That is it. That ye may know... The thing that brings all that Christ is into practical operation in us and through us is a revelation of Him. Now we are told here, that against that (not against what Christ is - that is a hopeless undertaking for the enemy. He has enough good sense not to attack that. Not against all that the Lord Jesus is at the Right Hand of the Majesty on High; not against that) against that revelation coming into our hearts by the Holy Ghost, the whole power of the enemy is set. "The god of this age hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest..." Lest that should be revealed to us by the Holy Ghost, and in us by the Holy Ghost; because the enemy knows that once a person, or people, have a spirit of revelation in their own hearts of the Lord Jesus, his ground is lost and his power is weakened. Well, that becomes a practical matter when God shines into our hearts, when it is a matter of spiritual revelation and spiritual knowledge, and so one comes back to say this thing of such importance, that a great secret of spiritual power is spiritual knowledge. This is where we are helpless.

I am helpless ministering, speaking. This is where everybody is helpless who wants to minister in these things. Giving a mental assent to things said, and recognising mentally, assenting that it is the truth, does not imply that you have got it all. We can nod our heads until they ache and still be as impotent in this matter as a child could be. That is the helplessness of the thing. You cannot get over it by talking. It has got to happen, it has got to take place. When that takes place there is something set up for God that is mighty. It is a long journey sometimes from the knowledge of the truth, as truth in words, in systems, in the Bible, in our heads, to the making of that living, mighty, effectual as a very part of our being. Sometimes it is a very painful journey: it is never a journey taken without a good deal of suffering and a good deal of cost. This revelation, in order that it may get through, is withstood by the god of this age. He does not withstand our having truth in a formal way, intellectually, but he does withstand our having revelation by the Holy Ghost, and sometimes he just turns the point just there where the thing said is assented to, and we agree with it, and in our agreement with it we think we have it and we know that now, instead of our going away with it and saying "Now Lord this has to become very life."

There has to be deep exercise on the ground of every bit that is given to us from the Lord. Not that we have had an address or message and it is all very beautiful, wonderful. You know just how far that is might, power, how deep that thing has gone, whether it is in the mind or the very being. It has got to be wrought into the very fibre of the being. Until that is done it is powerless truth; it is not realised truth, effectual truth, not revelation, therefore it is powerless. Again, the proof of the value of anything is in its potency over against the forces of evil, and it is no use taking formulas from the Word of God and trying to apply them in a general way indiscriminately and quote scripture. You cannot take something out of the Word of God just as a doctor may take something out of the pharmacopoeia and try and apply it to any case which has certain symptoms and see how it works. It does not work. You have got to prove this thing out in a very real way. It has got to become a living thing and by the Holy Ghost to touch the specific need to produce results. That comes out of Life.

Many of you will possibly be, in the will of God, going out into spheres of service for the Lord. You will be going out with a considerable amount of knowledge of the Scriptures and of the various doctrines contained in the Scripture. Going out, perhaps, with a great deal of truth, what you might call "light." Oh, I do want to urge upon you, I want to warn you, I feel the Lord wants to say this to you - that that is not good enough. You are going to be worsted if that is all - you are going to be beaten and flawed. You are! The one thing, beloved, that is going to do the work is that that is in you by revelation of the Holy Ghost born out of a very deep exercise with God, the result of a secret history with God in the depths of your being where perhaps through travail, anguish and much suffering that thing has become your very life: has saved your life, has become the very foundation of your eternal hope. That is the only thing that is going to meet the situation. There is plenty of teaching in the world today. Plenty of truth going about, but oh, without judging or criticising, may we not go so far as to say that a very great amount of it is not doing the work, is not registering the impact of the Throne of God upon spiritual situations, and this concerns you and it concerns me. You get out a little more, and the more you get out into this ministry the more heart-sick you will become of your own teaching, of meetings, of conventions; wearied of speaking, talking. Your one groan and cry will be: oh, that the Word shall get through and do something - smashing and breaking! There must be something done by the Word. The thing has to come home to the consciences of the people.

That has ever been the true effect of the Word of God in the Spirit; not merely information to the mind, but the smiting of the conscience, and unless the conscience is smitten the word will fail, and that never happens until the word goes forth in the power of the Spirit; and the vessel, though in itself of clay, must have that thing within, not as something without. I am afraid that you are going before men suggesting the atmosphere of the study rather than the atmosphere of the Holiest of all. The impression made upon them and the apprehension of what you are saying is - "this man has been studying his Bible, reading a good many books on the Bible, has a technical knowledge of the Scriptures," etc. It is no good. It does not do the work. Suffer the emphasis. I am desperately in earnest about this thing. Though it is the truth, it is not revelation, that is in life, in the power of God. Do not neglect the study of the Word, but remember that is only a means of the Holy Ghost, and if you think that to come out with a wonderfully arranged and got up address will do the work, it will fail. It is not revelation. It has got to come through by the Holy Spirit in an inward illumination and, beloved, that does not come as you sit down with your Bible and say "now revelation". That comes through terrific exercises, troubles, deep waters - you must go through things - when you are brought in yourself to despair - then the thing becomes life and you begin to understand the Lord.

You know that the people, the generation through which God did things was the generation who experimentally knew the Divine power, and the generation in utter weakness, though possessing all that history, is the generation which does not know the Lord experimentally. The generation that went through things, through the Jordan, through the knife, and through whom the knife went at Gilgal - that generation knew, and God did mighty things with that generation at the beginning. A generation which knew not the Lord is the book of Judges. I am certain of this, we are not going to be able to carry on unless on the ground of an inwrought revelation of the Lord Jesus. There is more in that than appears in the words. We are going through experiences where, if we do not know the Lord in a real, living way we shall have times which will seem to prove that God is not what He says He is; seem to prove that Christianity, the Christian life, is all a mockery. It is true. You can have experiences which seem to prove that the Christian life is anything but what it is said to be. Prayer! Well, prayer is not answered. What you feel you have a right to expect of the Lord you do not get. You will have experiences that, unless you know the Lord, you will not go through, for it seems that everything in the faith has broken down. It is not a question of externals, but how much in your own heart you know the Lord.

A little bit of true revelation, spiritual knowledge, will go much further than a whole mountain of truth mentally apprehended. I say this is where everybody is helpless to speak of these things. It is a thing you cannot convey to anybody, it is spiritual knowledge. But you can point it out - you can say "This is a thing about which we must go to the Lord." Take this whole question to the Lord, and for us it must never be that we have heard so many things in the Word of God, but we must go back to the Lord: "Now Lord, I believe it, I agree with it, but I know that between that and that thing becoming a mighty operative force working through me out to the forces of darkness there may be a gap." So today we find this situation, that many people have a lot of the truth and very little of the power of it. Not only is the power lacking, but there are terrible contradictions in the life running alongside a lot of truth. It is a matter of our secret history with God. What goes on inwardly, things deep down in our being back of our public life.

Oh, the snare of public life. The snare of public life is this, that in the service of the Lord we have got to have something to say. We will get it, get something to say; go and prepare something, study something, write something, put something together, and say this is the message of the Lord. It is nothing of the kind. It is something we have got up for the occasion because it is expected of us. It has got to be a message for the time and woe betide the man who speaks for God who has not been given the message for the time. We have got to get to the place where we refuse to speak unless God Himself has spoken in us for the occasion. This needs courage, but it means emancipation. That is power. That is the word. If really we see the meaning of this we have got a key to spiritual power. For myself, you will allow this personal word - I am not speaking about something I am getting up for this Conference. There are plenty of other brethren to speak if the Lord does not give me the message, and I assure you that I refuse to speak at a gathering where the Lord has not given me a message for that gathering. You do believe that what I am saying to you is a matter of life and death to me? This is born out of experience. Yes, out of some depth of experience, so deep that if the Lord had not brought us through we would never have got through. One of the most precious things is the question of revelation. Not extra to the Word of God, but what is the mind of the Lord back of the Word of God.

This matter of spiritual knowledge is a tremendous factor in the matter of spiritual ministry and power. I believe that it is that which will account for very much of what the Lord is doing in secret; and let me say again, that in this present time, in this present age, the greatest works of God, almost entirely, are hidden works, a secret thing. The devil's constant attempt through this age has been to draw out Christianity and make it a popular movement, a public thing, attach it to the State or in some way get the mixed multitudes in it; drag it out and make a public thing of it. It is not in this age that the Church will be displayed to God's glory. That is hidden and only the spiritual forces see that. They see it. In the ages to come the Church will become a public body attached to the "State" The Heavenly State! It is a hidden work now, the inwardness of things. Thus you get to Gideon - the vessel of clay, and the light inside. 2 Cor. 4:7. The vessel of clay, and in that is the power by which the forces of the enemy are driven off, by the secret thing they carry in the vessel. That is it. That is the power that meets the enemy. Something you have inside. This can be manifested when we are broken. God has shined into our hearts.

I do urge upon you that you have much in secret with the Lord. Take the messages of the Lord. Take things that are said, to which you give full mental assent; and do not think that because your mind responds to it that you have it. The test is whether it is working. Whether the enemy knows about it. That is the test. It is a tremendous thing, this question of spiritual knowledge, whether it is on the outside or on the inside. That is the question. Is your spiritual knowledge on the outside? Do forgive me pressing this. I am just afraid of this place. I am tremendously afraid because it is a place where there is a lot of teaching. People who frequent this place, who may have been in this place from the beginning, may have got all the teaching, and yet they are still on the outside of things. They are not counting as vital factors. It is ten times worse to be there than to be without the teaching at all. The very teaching may be your snare. Is it inside with you? Is it all counting? Is it serving the Lord's purpose to drive the enemy out? What is the effect of it? What account does the enemy take of it? What is the meaning of the terrific conflict through which we come before there is going to be a ministry of revelation? It seems as if hell withstands, and utterance is stilled - what is the meaning if the devil is not afraid of something? And, beloved, he has got to be made afraid of every child of God. Not because of themselves but because of what is in them by the Holy Ghost. Not what is on them, not what they assent to mentally, but what they know. The very power of the Holy Spirit is IN THEM.

Three hundred are better than thirty-two thousand if the three hundred have got the vessel and got the treasure of the exceeding greatness of the power. I think it is a tremendously impressive thing to note that when you come to Gideon there is a big emphasis upon the magnitude of the enemy. The Holy Spirit does not hide the magnitude of the enemy when He has got what He wants to meet it. So the Holy Spirit causes it to be written: "The Midianites and the Amalekites, and all the children of the East like locusts for number."

The Holy Spirit leads you into the magnitude of the enemy, but what is that - when the exceeding greatness of the power is with those three hundred men? They went out into the dark with earthen vessels and a lamp as the strategic instrument of victory; for remember swords were not drawn - a havoc of the sword was not wrought until the enemy was already in confusion and defeat. It was the light that did the business, and the cry of faith. They had got the thing inside. Well now, the Lord give it to us within. Not that we shall be always studying our own spirit, taking about what we have in our spirit, but let us move in a certain knowledge of the Lord. It is not the vessel, it is the Lord. It is the light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ in our hearts: and this is the gospel of the glory of Christ. The fact that He is in glory with all that it contains and implies is the Gospel. The Gospel of the Glory of Christ shines into our hearts. This is the power. May the Lord make this more than words to us for His Name's Sake.