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The Recovery of the Lord's Name

by T. Austin-Sparks

Transcribed from messages given in August 1953, the spoken form has been retained verbatim. Missing messages from this series are published in the series, "The Altar and the Name".

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Honour and Glory of the Lord's Name

Chapter 2 - Called According to Purpose

Chapter 3 - The Ground of His Presence and Power

Chapter 4 - A Peculiar Vessel for a Peculiar Purpose

Chapter 5 - The Cross and the Name of the Lord

Chapter 1 - The Honour and Glory of the Lord's Name

We resume our occupation with this matter of the recovery of the honour and glory of the Lord's Name in His people. Just a few words to link up with what we were saying earlier when we were pointing out a certain correspondence between the time of Gideon and our own time. On the one hand a state of things amongst the Lord's people, which is altogether contrary to the glory and honour of His Name, that state being weakness before their enemies, so largely at the mercy of their foes; defeat and helplessness. Then poverty, no real enjoyment of the wealth of the land which still was the land of promise and covenant, flowing with milk and honey, but not for them in their state - food very scarce and far to be sought. Confusion - a big question continually dominating their minds as to the meaning of it all and as to the way out. Disintegration and confusion: no cohesion, no oneness, no solidity and without leaders to speak with that finality of authority in the Name of the Lord which would put new hope and new confidence into them. These were the conditions of Gideon's time. And, as we have said, there is something like that today. We will not traverse that ground again to emphasise or prove it is true. But on the other hand, God moving in a Sovereign way for His Name's sake, to recover its glory and its honour by changing those conditions; for the honour and glory of the Lord's Name is in a people who are strong against their enemies, strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.

His glory and honour is to be found in a people who are enjoying their inheritance in Christ of wealth and riches - where there is not spiritual poverty all the time. The Lord's people have not got the resources by which they flourish in the land, His glory is found in people who are really, truly, enjoying the depth of the riches in Christ and in people who have food, who are not starved and miserable because there is no real provision for them to feed upon. A well-fed people is what the Lord wants for His glory, a people who are sure and have confidence and certainty, and not all the time dogged and dominated by questions which disturb and unsettle and rob them of their sense of security. They've got the great answer in their hearts; that is, they know where they stand and why they stand there. Theirs is an assured life and further, the Lord's Name is certainly glorified in a united people. His honour has been sorely and grievously destroyed by the breakup of the Lord's people and all their scatteredness. It seems that the great, great prayer of our Lord recorded for us in John's gospel at chapter 17 very largely centered in that one thing, that there the unity of the Lord's people should be the great contributing factor to the glory of His Name. The Lord Jesus in that prayer repeatedly referred to the Name: "Keep them in Thy Name." It was for the Name's sake. Now to have a people like that, it is not just idealism, a vain hope, but something very near to the Lord's heart, for as we said, Gideon in the very first place sets forth the fact that the Lord wants it otherwise and moves to have it otherwise and Gideon brings into view the movement of the Lord to change that state of things for His Name's sake.

So we went on to see, to look at Gideon, as the kind of instrument that the Lord will use for the recovery of the honour of His Name by bringing about these name-honouring conditions amongst His people. At that point we take things up to date. It is a matter then, of the recovery and continuance of the testimony of the Name of the Lord.

While Gideon on one side does set forth the absolute "sovereignty of God", as we were saying, on the other side he indicates the ground on which that sovereignty works. It is not a contradiction to say that while God acts in absolute sovereignty, He does look for certain things to bring that sovereignty into action. Even the sovereignty of God where God's people are concerned, demands certain conditions. And those conditions are to be found indicated, at least, in the case of Gideon, this representative instrument of God's honour.

Now I am going to take some space to say some things that I doubt if I have ever said here before, but which comes out of a very real exercise of my own heart, and which I feel to be of very great importance; and it centers in the first thing about Gideon.

Gideon was a Young Man

Gideon was a young man - in saying that and what it implies, we really do get to the point of God's reactions, God's recovery and the continuance of His testimony - the honour and glory of His Name. What is true in nature is true in the realm of things spiritual: the great factor and principle of spiritual youth. The law of nature is ever fresh reproduction; as soon as any organism in nature ceases to reproduce, death has commenced and death is the law. The law of life is reproduction, God having once created, does not create a second time. He proceeds by reproduction, not by fresh creations. Every new generation is made by God to be the past values brought into freshness. No new generation is a new creation.

Creation and generation are two different words belonging to entirely two different things. I think some young people think that they're a new beginning; they're not. They are to be the gathering up and carrying on of what has been, but to gather it up and to carry it on in freshness. They are to be the sum of what has gone before, but brought back again to its primal freshness. That which is past (if you like, "old" - I repudiate that word, but for the sake of explanation I use it) is kept fresh by new generations.

Now, this has two sides: the side of ourselves, we who are a passing generation. Some of us are a passing generation, but if you are included in that, listen: our freshness and life will be just in so far as we equip the next generation. If we hold things to ourselves - and oh, what tragedies are resultant from old Christians keeping everything to themselves, old servants of God still hanging on, keeping it in their own hands - if we keep everything to ourselves the thing will die, and die with us, and we are bringing things to death.

This, of course, is the spiritual law of the blessing of families. You see, everything has a spiritual law behind it in God's mind. The blessing of families is, on the one side, to keep the old people young! Find the old people who have no young people around them and they are old indeed, they are older than they ought to be. You might sometimes feel that you must qualify that, they have a way of wearing you out! But nevertheless, the principle holds good. It's a Divine principle. The blessing of families, on the one side, is to rob old people of their age, to stop them getting old; that's the principle, that's the law, that's the Divine thought. You see, a mark that God has not come to an end, is not finishing up, but means to go on, is that He brings young people in. My older friends, take note of that, don't you be jealous of the young people, don't feel that they are getting in your place and you are having to hand everything over to them and they are being too much made of. We will talk to them in a minute, let me talk to you first.

No, you see, we are getting old some of us, and we are seeing the day of our departure drawing near, and we can become weak, we can lose our freshness. That thing can creep on us and over us and begin to bring us into severe limitation. We need something to save us, we need to be delivered, or as I have said, we may cling and cling and in so doing bring in death. What is our salvation? What is the renewing of our youth? What is the way out of that sense of an end, pending end, and growing limitation? What is the way out? It is, it is to equip and provide for the generation that follows, to do everything in our power to see that the thing is passed on to them and that they are ready to take it up - not to suspect their youth, not to criticise them because they are young, not to do what certain ones evidently were inclined to do over Timothy; the apostle had to say "Let no man despise thy youth."

When I first started ministry I was quite a young man and I had to assume the responsibility for a church and there were some old men who were saying, "But he is so young," but I had a champion among them who said, "But he is getting over that every day!" It's a better attitude isn't it? Yes, let me repeat, a mark that God is going on and means to go on, is that He brings on young people, that He brings in young people. Thank God, thank God! We are not going to die if this gathering is true to that. But you see, it is not years after all, that govern, years are not the criteria; spirituality is the criteria and that need not be a matter of years at all. There are some people old in years who are babes spiritually. There are babes spiritually who are far ahead of many of their time - elders. It is not that, it isn't. But let us turn over to the other side.

A new generation must succeed in an inward way to that which is passing. I underline certain words: in an inward way to that which is passing. The young people, the followers on, must succeed those who have carried the testimony of the Lord before them; they must succeed, not officially, they must succeed spiritually, inwardly. Here is the rigid law of the Bible and its principle again. Oh, there is always something deeper than what is on the surface of anything that's in the Bible, that rigid law of the Bible in the penalty of dishonouring and repudiating parents. There were fewer, if any more rigid laws and penalties in the old dispensation than those connected with children dishonouring or disparaging or repudiating their parents. In those days you had only to do that as a son to your father and stoning was the penalty, your life is forfeited. I say behind that there's a Divine principle. The Divine principle is this: that a father, a mother, a parent from the Divine standpoint, is supposed to have a knowledge of the Lord which is indispensable to their children. And let the children despise or set aside the parent, and they despise the very thing that they need for their own life, and their life is forfeited if they despise it. That's strong, but it's true. You see the Lord does not just take account of any rebellion against parents or disobedience to parents as in itself, He looks at the principle behind it. For when things are on the Divine pattern and level, it is like this: that the children cannot live without the parents, they die without the parents in this sense: that they are absolutely dependent upon what the Lord has already developed and stored up for them in a previous generation. Yes, it's a very, very strong law that, in the Bible.

You see, as I said before, young people are not a new created humanity, but they are generated, a fresh expression of humanity with the good that has been before. It's significant, isn't it, in this connection that when Gideon became an old man and the men of the country came to him and said, "Be our king and rule over us" and Gideon would have nothing of it, but his seven sons were to rule over them, "Instead of the father shall be the children." It is the principle again, you see. Age giving place to youth, but mark you, in terms of sonship that means spirituality. Now, have you young people got that? If you've got that, and all of us, we're on the way to the recovery of something: the recovery of the Lord's Name.

You don't need that I stay to discuss with you how, on the one hand, that which is spiritually old and worn out and finished with, takes from the glory and honour of the Lord. Let me put that another way: the Lord's glory and honour is expressed in perennial youth. You do not need me, on the other hand, to argue that if young people just as young people repudiate the older and take hold and put themselves in and begin to govern and rule and arrange the things of God's house as though everything began with them and ended with them, how much dishonour has been brought to the Lord by that. No, these are spiritual things to be taken note of, and perhaps they will be helped out by what I have yet to say this evening.

Let us look at some of the qualities in Gideon upon which the Divine sovereignty operated, some of the qualities which marked Gideon, a young man. And here we find a tremendous amount of spiritual maturity. And what were the marks of spirituality and spiritual maturity in this young man? And the first, and it shouts at you everywhere, was his humility.

His Humility

And humility is the primary mark, the hallmark of spirituality and of spiritual maturity. Oh, what a lot of history is so often required before the Lord gets that in His people and in His servants! Humility. Look at him: no pride of person, far from thinking anything of himself, he thought very little of himself. Read the story again. No pride of family, "My family is the least in Manasseh and I am least in my father's house." Now, he could take ten servants all the same out of his father's house. No, with all, with all, and it seems to me that from the story about the men of the city and Joash, all that; Joash did stand for something, he had a position, he had an entrance. It was Joash who had that altar to Baal, it was Joash who had that Asherah, it was to Joash's Asherah and altar that all the men of the city came to worship in the early morning. And yet Gideon - no pride of family - whatever there was there. The point, of course, is this: if you hadn't ten servants, you hadn't one, if you hadn't anything at all, a place of prestige, recognition, influence, you might say, "Well, of course it's only becoming, under such circumstances, to be humble". But no, it was there that, "I am least, I am least".

No pride of achievement. He could point to no accomplishments, no degrees, no successes in the military, the academic, scientific or any other realm. No pride of achievement. No pride of ambitiousness, no trace of any of these things, and certainly no spiritual superiority. He did not point the finger at the other people and say, "See, see, look at them! Look at the mess they're in, look at their condition, look! I am different." He just put himself amongst them all, he was one with them in their state, he was involved in their condition. There was no spiritual superiority.

Young men, young women, not because you are young are you going to succeed to the responsibility of the Lord's testimony, not because you've got life before you are you going by the Lord to be pushed in and given recognition and place. No, it will be like this.

Of course we have often heard people say, when perhaps we have expected something more of the young than we should, "We mustn't put old heads on young shoulders", but the Lord does, and requires it! You have got to take up that which has gone before and what the Lord has been doing in a spiritual way has been to bring about this state of things, this humility. And you have got to begin there and go on there.

If there is any mark about any of us of pride of person, of achievement, of position - any spiritual superiority in looking down at others and criticizing and judging and condemning - the Lord will not do as He did with Gideon when it says, "The Lord looked on him". No, the Lord will not look on us if it's like that. We will not come into His view. That can never bring glory to His Name.

Oh, may I appeal to you to guard against criticism, which comes from a spiritual superiority. Guard against it as you would guard against a plague. It's not our business to let it be known that we disapprove of people. Our business is to find a basis on which we can help them - help them. We may in our own heart of hearts feel bad about certain things where they are concerned, but that is to stay there and not to come out in our influence and our attitudes and our looks and our words and our arguments and our attempts to tell them where they're wrong, and wrong, and wrong in their associations and connections and all the other things. That's not our business, humility is. Find a point of spiritual helpfulness and work on that. If you will take that to heart you may be found within the view of that Divine Sovereign action to bring glory to the Lord's Name, to recover His testimony.

The next thing we find about Gideon was his industry or,

His Industriousness.

Gideon was threshing out corn in the winepress to hide it from the Mideonites. Very little seemed possible; most people had fled to caves and to holes; very little seemed possible. Looking out on the situation the question might have been asked, "Oh, what can be done? We can't do anything!" And because of the situation destroying them and saying, "Well, it's no use trying to touch this. The enemy has got so strongly entrenched, so widely spread over, there is so little for the Lord and so little to be done". Paralyzed and impotent because of the apparent impossibility of doing anything, but Gideon was not so.

Not much could be done, but Gideon set himself to do even the least that could be done. He did not give up, he did not abandon it all. He gave himself to doing what could be done. As he looked out on the situation so difficult, so hard, he said, "Well, at least, at least I can beat out some corn here up in this corner. At least I can do something, a little, over against this situation." The Lord took note of that. You see, it was right there over against the winepress where Gideon was doing that, that the Lord came and looked on. I wonder if it was because of that that the Lord said, "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour". I am certain the Lord is with no slothful person. Diligence is a very great thing with the Lord. "Not slothful in business," says the apostle. Fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, though that may be in a very limited and cramped capacity. It's the spirit that the Lord looks upon and it was the spirit of Gideon which was doing all that could be done, however little that might be. The Lord takes note of that my dear friends.

See, a gesture is enough with the Lord - whether you make for the armchair directly you enter the room, that's enough, the Lord does not look in that way. You see what I mean, I do not mean that literally. It is a gesture. Whether you are inclined to be a shirker, to evade, to get out of, to skirt round some responsibility, or whether you are alive or alert for anything. The Lord takes note of gestures. "The Lord looked upon him." The margin says, "The Lord turned toward him."

Further:

Gideon's Concern for Others.

Of course it is a part of what we have just said: concerned for others. He looked and he says, "My, these people are starving, the enemy is taking away their bread, their food. The enemy is doing all he can to see that these people are undernourished, underfed and so weakened that they will never be able to lift a hand for their own salvation and deliverance." And Gideon had a real concern about the starved state of other people, their needy condition: others, others.

You know how much Paul has to say about that, "Look not every man on his own things, but on the things of others". The outward look.

Gideon was not one of those introverts, always occupied with himself and his poor, poor situation. A young man, a young man... think of a young man and his prospects in a situation like this - what kind of a life lies before Gideon, a young man? Ah, but he doesn't sit down and nurse the adversities that have come into his life as a young man, be sorry for himself, smothering himself with self-pity, drawing attention to himself and his own unfortunate loss. He was not that kind of man and the Lord does not look toward that kind of person. You can go on like that and you'll not find the Lord turning toward you if you are like that. The Lord will turn toward those who - it is quite true their lot is a difficult one, no doubt about that, and God knows that better than anyone else - but nevertheless, who are turned out for the sake of others, really concerned for others. See his secret activity and exercise to defeat the enemy for the sake of the Name of the Lord; secret activity, secret exercise. In his heart, Gideon seems to me to have been saying, "I'll beat them if I can. I'll outwit the enemy if I can, I'll spoil their plans if I can, I'll see that they have as little success, as indeed [I can]". That is the spirit, you see, of the heart.

Further, Gideon betrays a real soul perplexity and suffering which, it seems to me, is the outcome of real heart exercise. When the Lord comes and says, "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour," he instantly answers, "If the Lord be with us, why is all this come upon us? Why has all that which our fathers told us of, the former activities and wonders of God. Why? And now that today?" There was a big "why" in his heart about the situation, he was exercised about this, he was concerned about this, he was trying to find some explanation, he was reaching out to get the key to this thing and the situation was creating real pain; I was going to say real bitterness. And you know, there is a kind of bitterness of spirit that is permissible, that is not wrong. If we become bitter and sour against the Lord in rebellion, that's a wrong kind of bitterness. But there was a bitterness in the heart of Hannah. Do you remember? When she prayed at the temple and Eli misunderstood the moving of her lips in prayer and charged her with drunkenness and she said, "No, no, my lord, thy handmaid is a woman of a sorrowful spirit," - a bitterness because of the situation in Israel.

Have you got anything that corresponds to that? It's so different from a theoretical position, isn't it? We have got all the doctrine and all the teaching and we know how and what people ought to be like and what they ought to do and what they ought to know and we've got the answer to it all like that. Oh, no, if it does not come out of a winepress, it is of no value. It has got to come out of the winepress, it has got to come out of soul travail where we have had deep exercise in this. "To such the Lord will look". Do believe me. Whoever you may be, old or young, it has got to be like that.

Don't you go out and think that you are going to save the Lord's Name and honour and deliver His people by doctrines, by theories, by wonderful interpretations of truth, wonderful vistas of spiritual things, not at all, not at all. The Lord is looking for hearts that are breaking over spiritual conditions. Gideon was sore, distressed, and perplexed and was suffering inwardly. And his cry was not the cry of a recalcitrant, it was the cry of a man in trouble. "Why? Oh, why are things like this?" And my last word for this evening is here.

Gideon Destroying the Enemy in His Father's House

We'll never destroy satan and his kingdom, we'll never destroy the Midianites, if privately, behind the scenes in the background there is some complicity with satan's kingdom. And sometimes, oh nay always, always the father's house is inside here, Adam has his residence here. And Adam brought about complicity with satan and that's inside our own souls. You and I know it; how easy it is, how easy it is to listen to satan, to agree with satan, to be carried away by his arguments. There's something inside of us which seems to be in alliance with the very devil himself. The Father's house is here and until, until that is dealt with and overthrown and in the place of Baal's altar, the Lord's altar is erected. Ah, more than that: the very thing that belongs to Baal is brought and made the thing for the glory of God. That is being more than conquerors, not only conquering. It is taking the enemy's strength and bringing it to the Lord. Well, if you don't understand that, don't worry, but here it is.

Before Gideon could go to save Israel and recover the honour of the Lord's Name something had to be done in the background of his life. He did it, he did it fearfully. He did it in no strong highhanded way of self-confidence and self-assertiveness. No, in the same meekness which has characterised him all along, he takes ten men, ten servants, and under cover of the night does it. It may want something, be wanting in something, you may say it's wanting in courage. Well, let it be what you like, but it was done; that's the thing. Day or night it was done. And the thing is, it has got to be done. But when we have said all, what is the motive, the motive of all this, the motive of all? Because these are not just things in themselves, they are all motivated, governed by a tremendous dynamic. What is it? Jealousy for the Name of the Lord, jealousy for the Name of the Lord. It is the Lord's Name. This state of things is dishonouring to the Lord. This, whatever it is, however little that can be done must be done for the sake of the Name of the Lord. It is not honouring to the Lord for me to accept this situation and sit down and be passive and placid about it. The Name of the Lord requires that I do something. You see? Governed by the honour of the Lord's Name. Oh, have a heart for that Name.

We must see the Lord's people fed, we must see them enjoying the wealth of their inheritance. We must see them on their feet, standing up strong. We must see them brought together. We must see them in a state that glorifies His Name - not because we want to be in Christian work, in a great enterprise and undertaking, not because we want to see something flourishing in which we have a part, but for the sake of the Name. Oh, the Lord give us a heart for His Name, looking on everything as through His Name. Does this honour the Lord's Name? Is this glorifying to the Lord's Name? Is this worthy of the Lord's Name? My relationships with others - everything, everything. Is this glorifying to the Name of the Lord? If not then - if we want the Lord to be with us and the Lord to make use of us individually and together with others of His people as a vessel, we must be after this kind - a vessel after the order of Gideon. Gideon! And looking at Gideon you might, if you took his estimate of himself, feel that he is rather a poor thing. But remember that there were those things which the Lord regarded as of tremendous importance upon which His sovereignty could encamp, and these were the things.

Chapter 2 - Called According to Purpose

The emphasis and note in my heart this morning, but I feel it to be a very important and vital one, has to do with this matter of being called according to purpose.

We have seen just a little, I think, in the earlier hours of this conference, that God was certainly moving according to purpose when He came and sovereignly called Gideon. And God is still moving according to purpose; no more in the days of Abraham, or Moses, or Gideon, or David, or Elijah, or any other, no more than the now. Until the purpose is reached and fully realised, God will still be moving according to purpose and will still be choosing according to purpose.

The purpose is comprehensive and quite clearly defined. Through one brief letter, the apostle Paul has given us comprehensively and definitely the purpose. We are not going to dwell upon the purpose this morning, but rather upon the calling according thereto. The purpose is the ultimate of all God's activities, the ultimate of the initial apprehending of lives and calling into fellowship with His Son in what we variously call "conversion" or "being saved", or "being born again". However we put it, it is the initial movement of God in bringing us into relationship with Himself in Jesus Christ, but the purpose is more than that. It is the ultimate of all the progressive preparation, training, and discipline of those who have been brought into that relationship with Himself. These are not things or ends in themselves. All this beginning and continuation of the Lord in line, is moving on according to purpose.

The great need, dear friends, where you and I and all the Lord's people are concerned, is to really become gripped and mastered by that fact. It is as though the Lord would come to us and say, "Now stand at My side and look on, look right on to the end, to the ultimate. Look with Me right over all time and all vicissitudes to the end and see with Me a universe, a people, with those who are just showing forth, manifesting forth My glory, My eternal glory." Called unto His eternal glory - that runs alongside "called according to purpose".

Called unto His Eternal Glory

Now the Lord says, "Do you see that? That is the ultimate, that is the purpose - the showing forth of My glory in a people."

He would perhaps say that, of course, there will be different degrees of glory: there will be one glory as of the sun, another glory as of the moon, another glory as of the stars. There will be differences in glory and of glory, those differences will depend entirely upon the people concerned. How much glory there will be in, and manifested through and by those people will depend entirely upon how much their hearts are set upon "My Glory" - how far their hearts are undivided hearts, pure hearts in this sense: that there is no alloy, no mixture, no two things which cannot be reconciled, that is purity of heart, and "Blessed are the pure in heart". He would say that. And then He would say to us, "You see, that's the end. You have got that vision? You see, the purpose? That you're called according to that purpose?"

Then He would say, "Now, for a moment look around, look around. Look upon the many who have not yet been brought into that initial relationship with the purpose and then look upon all those who are the Lord's, and what do you see? How much glory do you see? How much going on to glory?" Ah, how much that is very, very contrary to the glory of God. You see? "Now then," He would say, "although I have called you according to the ultimate purpose, I now call you to some situation which exists which is not in line with that ultimate purpose, in order that you may be used to bring it into line." That is purpose within the purpose.

"The God of Glory appeared unto our father Abraham, the God of Glory" - the initial step was to get a people; that step was taken with Abraham. But look at the seed of Abraham in Gideon's day: not at all in line with the great purpose revealed to and intended through Abraham. Look at this sad state, He called Abraham with the whole purpose in view, now He must call Gideon because of some "thing" that has interrupted the realisation of the full purpose, some "thing" that has arisen, some contingency, some digression, some declension on the part of the called. And so the Bible is just full of these, shall we call them "intermediate" callings, these "occasional" callings, these specific callings within "The Calling," this purpose which has become a necessity in the light of the whole final purpose. Do you see the position? I say the Bible is full of these particular callings. Moses is one, Joshua another, and so you go on with all these callings within the calling.

I think that we see the situation. Not one of you here this morning would say that the Lord's people as a whole are right in the main line and thoroughfare and direction and way of the eternal calling, of the glory. You would rather say, "Oh no, oh no, there is a very, very great deal that is not only short of the glory of God, but contrary to the glory of God." We were trying to stress that yesterday. When a people are, as the people were in Gideon's day, weak and defeated before their enemies, starved and poor, without food and wealth... when there is no cohesion and authority under which the people of God are moving like an army with banners, that is something contrary to and other than the purpose of God. And God's movement in sovereignty is to call, to deal with that. "Have not I sent thee? Thou shalt save Israel" - that's a specific calling made necessary because of a general declension. Well, I think probably you will agree to that, mostly, at any rate.

But I want to follow that with this: that Divine presence and Divine support and Divine resources are always bound up with Divine callings. If you are not in the specific thing that God wants done at any given time, you cannot count upon God's support. You cannot just generalise about this thing, generalise about it and just heap it all together as "this work of God", without discrimination. At different times, in different realms, God has to act specifically and distinctively so that within the all of the compass of His inclusive purpose, there are essential purposes because of situations which have arisen. And He calls in relation to those specific purposes, which are the present time purposes of God. And God supports, sponsors, commits Himself to that.

Dear friends, let's be very, very honest about this thing. There is a great deal of activity which is ostensibly for the Lord which does not have the Lord's support. And the result is that anything and everything has to be done to get support for that which is called "the work of God," and that compasses the whole range of what is called "organised Christianity". It's one great system of launching schemes and enterprises and doing everything that art and wit and cunning can do to get support for it. If God wants a thing done, and has sovereignly decided that thing, that thing shall be done according to purpose, and He can get hold of a people and bring that people right into line with that thing, then God will commit Himself to it and support it, and lift the onus of resource from the people and take it on His own shoulders. Yes, the presence of God, the support of God, the resources of God go with His calling.

He never - it is an old, old saying, He never sends us a warfarin' at our own charges. He never gives us a commission and then leaves us to find what is required for its carrying out. He stands in to all the liabilities. If these resources are withheld, something is wrong. The motive may not be wrong, the intention may not be wrong, the sincerity may be not lacking, but let it be understood that motive and idea and enthusiasm have never, never been substitutes for Divine purpose, specific purpose. David found that out, did he not, over the bringing of the ark on the Philistine cart. He made a very, very serious discovery by a very tragic happening. He found that the responsibility rested upon him, for what happened. No, the purpose of God must govern.

Firstly:

The Whole Purpose

The ultimate must always be in view and everything must be brought into line with that. It just must be brought into line with that. Everything has got to be considered and contemplated from the standpoint of how is that going to reach God's end in the manifestation of His glory? And then, what would God do now, or what is God wanting to do now? What is God doing now in relation to that? What is the present movement or what are the present movements of God to which God has committed Himself?

Don't you agree with me, dear friends, when I say that the deepest cry in our hearts is this: "Oh Lord, oh Lord, bring me into the thing that You are doing. Save me from the things that I am doing for You and want to do for You and that I think You want done. Bring me not into things that are kind of, a kind of abstract vision, but into what You are doing, what You are doing. That with which You are occupied now." That's the deepest cry of our heart and that's a cry which enters into His heart, that we should be found not doing a lot of Christian work or hunting round for a job in the work of God, oh, pathetic situation, and yet there are a lot doing that, a lot doing that: trying to find a job, a place, in the work of God. Going around all the time, trying, trying to just, to be taken on in the work of God. Isn't that terrible? Dear friends, I cannot tell you how badly I feel about that. My understanding with the Lord is this: "Lord, Lord, if You haven't got a positive and definite place for me in something that you are doing, I am going to give it all up, I am going out." It's a very utter thing, this. No one ought to be looking for a job in the realm of God's purpose. No, not at all.

Well now, there is a tremendous strength as well as a tremendous value in the consciousness of being bound up with a specific calling of God in relation to the full and ultimate calling. I say there's a tremendous value bound up with that. It's a perfectly wonderful thing to know, to realise that you are not just called to be a Christian in order to be saved from sin and its consequences now and hereafter and to get to heaven and all that sort of thing, but there is a great, definite, positive purpose in your being saved. And that purpose relates to now, in this life, that this life is to be characterised by something quite precise and quite definite in the ultimate purpose of God. There's a tremendous strength in that and a tremendous value in that.

But there's this extra factor, that while that is true, and must be, (perhaps I had better stop here for a moment or put in a parenthesis: let no one think that this implies that they are individual Gideons or Elijahs or any other of this company of the chosen. We are not going to label ourselves Gideons and this and that and something else. You see, you must realise that God's whole purpose embraces the Church. It is a Church purpose, it is not just individuals.) And in line with that full thought of God concerning the Church as the called, as the called, you and I are parts of a whole, parts of a whole: parts of something comprehensive and inclusive. We are not just individuals. And what I want to impress upon you and I want you to see is this: that it may be that you are called to be a part of an instrument which is collective and corporate which God is seeking to have for Himself to meet a need and that your definiteness of calling is a related one. It's not just an individual and separate one.

I know how that appeals to our romantic hearts. I know how, when a young man, I read about D. L. Moody and read those so well-known words about D.L. Moody and he said that he'd heard someone say that if God could get hold of a man, He would show what He would do with and through a man whose heart was wholly toward Himself. And D. L. Moody said, "I said, I'm going to be that man! I'm going to be that man." Well, that was all right for Moody and I suppose it's all true, but you know, there is an appeal of that to this man. "I'm, I'm going to be..." what? A D. L. Moody or something like that? "I'm going to be..." rather, the emphasis is upon the first three words, isn't it? "I'm going to be," or the first four words: "I'm going to be." See? That's the appeal.

No, no, the discipline of all that may come along the line of our having to be a part of something that God is doing, just a part! Just a part, but a part. And it is in that whole, in that whole, in a related way, that I have to have just as great a sense, listen: just as great a sense of being called as I would have if I were singled out as an individual. Have you got that? It's a tremendously important thought. You would have a tremendous sense of vocation if the angel of the Lord came to you as he came to Gideon and singled you out and mentioned you by name and said great things to you personally. You would say, "That is a calling indeed! I am called according to purpose." But we have got to have that in a related and corporate way, dear friends, just as strongly and really. God has made me a member of the Body which is the vessel of His eternal purpose. And as a member, not as the whole body, and not as separate from the rest, but as a member, my eternal vocation is found. It has got to be very real, very real. The ends of God may be reached through companies, through groups, just as much as through individuals. Well, having got that, let us go on.

We must be very careful that we bring every thing, every part, every aspect of the Lord's movement toward His ultimate full purpose, into line with the great end. The point of that, the importance of that, is this: that God has again and again raised up instruments, individual and collective, in relation to His ultimate purpose and by them done something in their day which was quite definite and distinctive and positive. But the thing has become bound up with them and they have become the beginning and the end of it. And when they have gone, well, there has been a carrying on of the work that they started, but that distinctive and specific thing has not gone on, it's something now that's being carried on; carried on. And the responsibility is lying upon men to carry it on. And then there is a reverting again to this other way of getting support to carry on this thing. Now my point is this: all succession, all continuation, has got to be as definitely by Divine call as initiation. Therefore succession is not official, it is by anointing, it's by anointing.

You see, the Church does not belong to any one time, any one age; it is an eternal thing. It is the eternally elect vessel of the full purpose of God, but the Church is the anointed vessel. You cannot carry on the Church with an organisation! You cannot carry on the Church by any human means at all! The Church is instituted at the beginning by the anointing and it's got to go on right to the end by the anointing, so that this continuation of Divine purpose requires fresh, and ever fresh, anointings where specific vessels and instrumentalities are concerned. You cannot get a conception of the Divine purpose and then say, now we'll have a committee and we'll have a board, and we'll have an organisation and we'll have this and that in order to do this thing that God wants done. You just can't do it. You can have them if you like, but you'll find that you have got to take responsibility for them, for everything. You see, every vessel has got to be God-chosen and God-anointed in relation to something that is eternal and not of time at all and not of this earth. And in our place, in our relationship to what God may be doing at any given time in our own time, we have got to come really under the anointing of the Holy Spirit for that, just as much as those who went before who were the chosen instruments of God to bring that instrumentality into being, just as much as they were anointed in their calling, we have got to be anointed, if that thing is to go on. Heaven has got to come in and carry it to the next stage. We cannot.

Nothing, dear friends, is an end in itself. Everything is related to the so-much-more of God's intention, God's purpose. Your salvation is no end in itself. Any dealings of God with you are not just, just for the time, they are not an end. Anything that God has raised up and brought into being must not become an end in itself, a crystallized, rounded-off piece of work with a hedge round it, and that's something inclusive and exclusive. Oh, everything has got to be in line with and open to the ultimate fullness of God's purpose; therefore, therefore we must be open to the Lord for something more and something fresh all the time. That went so far, but God intended more.

Have you not seen how many a thing started by God, definitely under His anointing, many an instrumentality serving Him, just wonderful, has just gone so far and stopped, and stopped and from that time it has gone no further, it's come under arrest and it belongs, really belongs, to the past although it's being kept going; it is living on a tradition, it is living on a past, it is living upon a name and a reputation of the last generation or generations ago. There is nothing right up to date in fullness. Why? Because it was not realised that that was only in line with something more, it was never intended to be something by itself. The ultimate full purpose encompassed that and swallowed it up. It was related. Now some of you will perhaps see the point of this more than others, but it is tremendously important that we recognise that any vision that we have must not stop short with the thing that we are in, it must not stop short with the present aspect of things. Any God-given vision which is for a specific time is only related to the ultimate and must give place to the ultimate, and the fuller must come in and swallow it up.

Oh, let us ask the Lord to save us from settling down into something less than He intends. There must always be with us this sense, this deep-down consciousness that we are called according to purpose not yet fully realised. There's a wonderful future with which we are related and this is not the end of everything. We must have that sense. Have you got it? Have you got what we have here before called this "sense of Divine destiny", this something, calling you on, pulling you on, not allowing you to accept anything less than all God means? That is vision in reality. Or does your vision just reside within the narrow limits of a piece of work that you are doing for God or trying to do for God? Is that your vision? It's not adequate, it's not adequate. No, "called according to purpose."

Now I must close, but I have read in conjunction with these chapters about Gideon, the later chapters of the prophecies of Zechariah. Of course you wonder how they can be brought together, but they are part and counterpart. Those later chapters of the prophecies of Jeremiah still have in view God's full purpose and its realisation where Israel was concerned. Oh, read them, you're amazed, you are almost bewildered with what is said there of God's purpose yet concerning the land and the people. Why, here in these prophecies you have the uttermost things said, that all, all from all over the world shall come and bow and worship at Jerusalem and if anyone will not come and worship the Lord at Jerusalem, there will be a curse upon him and upon his cattle and upon all that he has; a terrible curse. And it's described, described in language that we today can understand better than Zechariah could understand it when he penned it, "Their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets." We understand that, don't we? "Their tongues shall wither in their mouths." The atomic age, there it is.

Now, all who will not come to worship the Lord at Jerusalem are going to be involved in that. That's tremendous, isn't it? A Divine purpose. But here I look at the book of Judges and I say, "My word, my word, something has got to happen to get Jerusalem into that position, to get Israel into that state, where all will come and worship the Lord at Jerusalem, from every nation." Something's got to happen. Yes, but Gideon (this is the point) Gideon was apprehended in relation to that ultimate. So far as God was concerned the full vision was still in view when He took hold of Gideon. And it's like that, we may have conditions such as those in the days of Gideon, but the Lord has still got His full purpose in view and He'll lay hold and say, "Have not I sent thee? Go, and thou shalt save Israel - from this, unto that."

Oh, that there might fall upon us, dear friends, this new sense of Divine calling and apprehending in relation to His full purpose, though meantime it may be connected with something that is out of line and out of accord with that purpose. And the purpose, where we are concerned within the whole purpose is this, it may be evangelism, it may be to bring in those who are called unto His eternal glory, it may be any aspect of ministry, but it must be in full view of the end, it must be a related thing. It must be under the anointing and not just some piece of work that we have taken up and are trying to do for God, but this sense of tremendous calling, tremendous vocation, tremendous apprehending, "This is the thing to which God has called me. This, this!"

So many there are who are wandering about and missing the way, and are in a state of ineffectiveness because they are in the wrong position. They are trying to do something that God never called them to do. They have seen Christian work is such and such and so they have taken it up and they are trying to do it, but no, there's no sense of God laid hold of them for that - just trying to do it. I wonder if you have grasped the emphasis this morning, "Called according to purpose," ultimately in its fullness, at present in some way necessary unto the ultimate. Whether, whatever it is, it's got to be that you and I know that our lives are apprehended lives. Until we get there and have that consciousness, there will be weakness, there will be loss, there will be confusion; we have got out of the purpose. The Lord draw us by a mighty new sense into the thing that He is Himself concerned with at this present time.

Chapter 3 - The Ground of His Presence and Power

By way of linking up with what has already been before us, may I just bring very hurriedly and briefly into view what it is that we judge to be the Lord's object for our understanding and apprehension at this time, in these gatherings, it is that the Lord is concerned above all things for the glory and honour of His Name. And we have been seeing how God's sovereignty and power are always brought into operation in the interests of His Name; for no other reason. The honour of His Name is in a people. He has bound up His Name and its glory with a people. And that glory is found in a people in life, and strength, and wealth, and food, and oneness. These things, spiritually interpreted, are the things which display His glory in His people. Then in the third place, we went on to see that there are certain factors for which God looks as a basis for His work in securing that state in His people. Last evening, we gave our whole time to seeing the characteristics in Gideon - a typical instrument sovereignly chosen of God for that very purpose of the glory of His name in His people. And those of you who were here will remember the things which came to light as characteristics of Gideon in relation to God's purpose.

This morning we were occupied with the fact that God calls instruments, specifically, according to His purpose, that is, with His glory as the end in view. Now this afternoon we shall look at that matter again from a different angle. And I just remind you of the words addressed to Gideon, as in the sixth chapter of the Book of the Judges, verses 12 and 14 (you know them so well by now you hardly need look them up): "The angel of the Lord appeared unto him, (that is, Gideon) and said unto him, The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour." Verse 14, "And the Lord looked upon (or turned towards) him and said, Go in this thy might and save Israel."

Now I want to read some words that are very familiar to you in the letter to the Philippians, chapter 2 at verse 5: "Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus, Who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondslave, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him and gave unto Him the Name which is above every Name, that in the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."

And our occupation this afternoon will be with the ground of the presence and power of God. If one thing is evident about Gideon, it is that he does set forth, very strongly and forcefully, the power of weakness. The power of weakness.

I have on the fly leaf of my Bible something that I wrote there many years ago, in a time of perplexity and difficulty in the work of the Lord, and seeking very much to know the way of strength, of power, of wisdom, I came upon this; it is in the life of Lillias Trotter, whose work in North Africa will be known to many of you. And it just met my need. I'll read it to you. "So many questions lie ahead concerning the work. A great comforting came to me this morning in reading the twenty-eighth chapter of the book of Job about the way of wisdom and the place thereof. It tells how God finds the way for the wind and the water and the lightning, and it came with a blessed power what those ways are. The way for the wind is the region of the greatest emptiness. The place for the water is the place of the lowest depth, the way for the lightning, as science proves, is along the line of the greatest weakness. If any man lack, there is God's condition for the inflow of spiritual understanding. Praise be to His Name." The ground of the presence and the power of God. Of course, inclusively and preeminently the ground is His Name, and His jealousy for His Name in the heart of any servant of His. But the way of the power is:

The Way of the Cross.

The words which we have read, with which we are perhaps too familiar in that letter to the Philippians, analyse for us the meaning of the Cross, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." In other words, let your mentality be the mentality of Christ; your mindedness the mindedness of Christ.

Now, here we have a wonderful thing. Paul, in these words, reads, reads the motive of the Incarnation and the Cross. He reads right back into the glory, into the presence of God where the Son is and reads the mind of the Son as the decision is arrived at to leave that estate and to come here and take the way of the Cross. He reads a motive in the mind of Christ. The motive has evidently sprung from the fact that another name had taken the place of the Lord's Name, His Father's Name; another name had intruded, it fell into the place of the Name of the Lord. And, that being the case (and we know quite well the whole of that story, that story of the one who said, "I will... I will be equal with the most High," who sought to make for himself the name above every name. We know about that) that being the situation, it was not enough for the Son to sit in equality with God in heaven when His Father's Name was dishonoured on earth. He could not be at rest and be comfortable and be satisfied. Indeed, He could not endure it, that He should be there in His glory in possession of that position and that estate while in the creation another name was being honoured, another name had usurped His Father's Name. And the motive was jealousy for the Name of God, jealousy for God's honour. That lay behind everything: "He emptied Himself..." and all the other things mentioned here which we are going to look at one by one.

But first of all notice the Incarnation, the Cross, and the ultimate exaltation above all names rested upon one thing: jealousy for the Name of God. The great, "Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him" sums up all the steps of the great cycle from the glory back to the glory, but relates preeminently to this: Wherefore, why for? Because all that was in jealousy for His Father's Name. This mind, this mindedness, it's a kind of mindedness, you see. Unless you've got a mind and a motive then you could not do all these things. It's of little use to apply this scripture to Christians and say it now, "You ought to have the mind of Christ, and the mind of Christ works out like this, in this way, and this way; and you've got to be Christ-like, you've got to be Christ-minded." You see, that can bring a tremendous amount of pressure and weight like a legal obligation to bear upon Christians, "I'm not a bit like that! That is not at all my mind, my way". You've got to have a motive, a motive that will make you, cause you, to take this path of the Cross; a motive strong enough to make it something that you must do, you can't help doing it. That is Christ-mindedness, He could not help it. The constraint of this jealousy for His Father's Name was so strongly upon Him that there was nothing else to do, He must, He must, take this way.

Dear friends, I am beginning upon this very strong note. There is a very great need in you and in me and in the people of God and in the servants of God today for more of this, this terribly fierce jealousy for the Name - the honour and glory of the Lord's Name. Well now, this whole thing commenced, we see, with a motive, but that motive led to a reckoning, a reckoning. In the motive was an accounting. It says, "He counted it not a thing to be grasped, to be held onto; to be equal with God". "He counted it not...." A reckoning took place with Him - that's the suggestion or implication. "On the one side, here am I in a place of equality with God; I have the glory of which He spoke in His prayer, 'The glory which I had with Thee before the world was', I had that. Here I am up here in possession of all that. Down there my Father's Name is dishonoured, robbed of its glory and another name is put in its place. Is this, My having this position, and all this possession and all this glory, of greater importance than My Father's Name being glorified down there?" And He came to the conclusion, "No it isn't. Putting these two things into the balances: My own glory, My own personal position, is far, of far less importance than My Father's Name being glorified down there". He weighed it up, the one thing against the other, put them both into the balances, and the honour of the Father's Name in the creation or with Him, altogether outweighed His own glory and His own personal fullness. It was a reckoning. He counted, He counted, He reckoned.

Now, dear friends, when the Apostle says, "Let this mind be in you," and he sees the issue, the wonderful issue of this: God committing Himself. Committing Himself, I think we may say rightly, in a way, in a way, fuller than ever before to His Son and it says, "He gave Him the Name which is above every name that now, now in the Name of Jesus, in the Name of Jesus, the Incarnate Lord, every knee shall bow in the universe, and call Him the Incarnate Lord. Lord of all." With that in view, the apostle says, "Let this mind be in you." In other words, he says, "If God is going to commit Himself to you, if God is going to presence Himself with you, as with His Son, for it was written, 'and God was with Him.' And if the power of God is going to rest upon and work through you, you have got to have a fundamental reckoning." This is something which every servant of God has to face at the outset. For this, after all, is the thing which constitutes a servant of God. This is the very essence of service.

What is Service?

What is the essence of service? What is it that makes a servant of God? We talk so much about the Lord's service; sometimes we substitute the Lord's "work". We are concerned and anxious to be "in the service of the Lord" and then we think about missionary work, and ministry, and one thing and another, and this, this really is what we mean by the service of the Lord and by being the Lord's servants. But what is the heart and essence of service? What is a servant of the Lord? It is nothing more, because there can be nothing more, and it is nothing less, in truth, than bringing glory and honour to the Name of the Lord. That covers and compasses all service and that makes a servant of the Lord.

We may do a thousand things, but unless it results in the Lord's Name being glorified, it's not service to God. Jesus is the great Servant of Jehovah. There never was such a Servant of the Lord. He has served the Father as none other has ever served or could ever serve the Father. But how has He done it? He has brought back the Father's Name to its place of honour and glory. He has come down and entered into the dispute with the other name, and now He is far above every name that is named. He has dealt with the challenge to the Father's place, and in that way, He is the greatest of all servants: "Let this mind be in you". We have got to weigh all our Christian activities and efforts in this way: how much real glory is coming to the Lord in this? How much is the Lord coming into His own, His place in this? Not how much am I doing, but how much positive glory to the Name of the Lord is bound up with what I am doing?

That is followed out in the fuller analysis of this great statement in the letter to the Philippians. I was saying this is something that every servant of God, every aspirant to service for God, has got to settle at the outset

A Reckoning

A reckoning - comparative values. Moses made that reckoning. It is said of Moses, he accounted, "accounted that the reproach of Christ was greater riches than the treasures of Egypt"; accounted, made a reckoning. It was a tremendous reckoning, wasn't it? My word, look what that involved: all the treasures of Egypt, his place, his learning, everything that he had in the palace of Egypt. On the other hand, what he did come to and into, with the Israelites. And yet, he weighed it all up at the beginning and accounted before, before he took his step, "That's greater riches down there than this. I've weighed these things up, and for me the greater importance is that, because it's there that the Name of the Lord is involved, the Lord has chosen that people through Abraham to be the vessel of the glory of His Name; that's my place, whatever it costs." It was a reckoning.

And many others made that reckoning, not least Paul. He weighed it all up: "The things which were gain to me" the things which were gain to me... and he tabulates them and you know what they were: everything that the natural heart would be set upon. "Things which were gain to me, these have I counted loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." Here is a basic reckoning, but what the accounting led to, all the suffering, all the affliction, all the trials, oh, everything, and yet, and yet, Paul never abandoned that position. To me, it's one of the most wonderful things, most wonderful things, that of all that he had to suffer, and all the consequences of his great decision and reckoning, Paul to the end held on to this, "It is better, it is better, far better, to be here with Christ than... have all this, than to be back there without Christ, having all that." He weighed it all up.

Now, that's a very, very serious challenge isn't it, this reckoning. You won't come to that conclusion, to that mind, and take that step of letting everything else go, all other possibilities and prospects, unless you have got a tremendously strong and high estimate of the glory of God, of the glory of God. But if you've got an adequate and right conception of the glory of God, and what that is going to mean in this universe, you see everything else, however great, as very small in comparison. "I reckon..." here we are, "I reckon that the sufferings of this present hour are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be." "I reckon." He weighed it up.

We are involved in a very great deal of suffering and affliction and trial and difficulty when we take a stand for the Name of the Lord, for the glory of that Name. It's a very costly stand. We shall only be able to maintain that stand if we have made the reckoning. The Lord Jesus always required such a basic reckoning, didn't He? He never deceived anybody. When He called to discipleship and fellowship with Himself, He made it perfectly clear: "You're in for a bad time, I tell you frankly. This way is going to be a very costly way, don't you have any mistake about it. Be quite clear on this. If a man is going to war, he sits down and counts up his resources, 'Can I, can I, not only make a beginning, but go right through with it? Can I? Have I got resources to carry me through?' A man is going to build a tower; he sits down, 'Now, have I the means not to lay a foundation or to make a beginning; but to complete this thing? Can I go through with it?'" In those ways, the Lord Jesus was only saying what we are saying here now, "Look here, you've got to have a fundamental reckoning over this." This mind that was in Christ Jesus must be in you, and you've got to settle something. This is a thing that has got to be settled. It's a battle that seems to spring up again and again, doesn't it? And yet, and yet, something has got to be done about this. I do want to urge upon you my younger friends, that you're going to have a very difficult time. All hell is going to range itself against you if you take a stand for the honour of the Name of the Lord. You're going to have a bad time, but you've got to reckon that. Is it worth it? Is that Name worth it? Is that glory worth it? You've got to put the things in the balance, and get that settled.

Well, after the reckoning came:

The Emptying.

"He counted it not a prize to be grasped, to be on equality with God, but emptied Himself." And although, of course, there is such a difference both in kind, and degree, and measure, between Christ and His servants, that is, we can never empty ourselves of that of which He emptied Himself. We never had it; we haven't got it. That is true. We have no glory that corresponds to His glory. Yet, although there is so great a difference between Him and ourselves, yet the principle is the same. The principle is the same, there is, even with us, with us, strange, strange thing, there is with us, that which is our personal glory. Poor wretched things as we are - and know ourselves to be - somehow or other it almost takes a lifetime to get us emptied of things which are in the Lord's way, to which we cling, which we do count a prize, which we do grasp, and hold onto. He emptied Himself. And if the principle were not the same with us as with Him, Paul would never say it, "Let the same mind be in you." The kind may be different; ah, but the principle is the same, the emptying.

Gideon, the whole story of Gideon is a declaration that the vessel must never have any glory of its own. The vessel that God will mightily use, must have no personal glory. The glory has got to be the Lord's and the Lord's alone. The whole story, I say, declares that, doesn't it? Take the man himself; take the means that the Lord used for the work. It was a case, as we shall see later, of just reducing, reducing, reducing, bringing down lower and lower and lower, and never allowing anything whatever to come into this business which would contribute to the glory of the instrument. When that thing was done, everybody had to say, "Well, that's perfectly marvelous to think that could be done with such instruments in such a way." The Lord was taking precautions, wasn't He? "Lest Israel vaunt themselves," "Lest Israel..." no glory to the vessel. No, it's the glory of the Name, and that glory of the Name is exclusive of all other glory.

Dear friends, what am I talking about? I am talking about the ground of the presence and the power of God. "The Lord is with thee... Go in this thy might": the presence and the power. What is the ground? It's this, it's this: the utter emptying of all personal glory and ground of glorying. Shall we put it the other way: providing the Lord with an utter ground for His own glory. The Lord takes infinite pains to secure that ground. Oh, what a story of weakness and defeat and limitation, and all those things of which we've spoken, simply because men will get their names in, their reputation in, draw some attention to themselves, put their honours in view, call themselves by titles in the work of the Lord, advertise themselves, or be advertised as the great instrument that is going to do this; and the appalling state of things after 2,000 years.

So the thing is self-evident; it's self-evident. No, the ground of the presence and the power is this: if it was true in the case of the Lord Jesus (and undoubtedly it was) it was because He, in the other translation, "made Himself of no reputation," and men are always trying to make reputations for themselves in the sphere of God's interests, and God is not in it. He'll have nothing to do with it. Get on with it, and do what you can and what you like, but you cannot count upon the presence and power of God.

It's the form and the function in man-likeness, in slave, bondslave function. I'm not going to stop with the technical points of the different words here in the original fashion and form; that won't be very edifying or helpful to you. It doesn't matter just at the moment. But what it amounts to is this: the form, in the form of a man, the form in which Christ appeared here on this great mission: the form of a man. The function, which He accepted, adopted and fulfilled, was the function of a bondslave. That's what it says. As a man, in man-likeness. All I am going to say about that here for, in keeping with this whole matter of the Presence and Power of God, is this: that He did not appear here as some Superior being of another order. No. So far as the world looking on could tell, there was no difference between Him and other men. Whatever difference there was, it was altogether hidden from the world's eyes. They could look at Him, judge Him, speak to Him and of Him, handle Him, deal with Him, just as they would deal with any other man. No, not as some superior being of another order. You see, you see, there's a principle there, dear friends, of tremendous significance and importance where the Lord is concerned. We have said the great tendency is to put men up and make them of a superior kind. They're great, they're wonderful, they're superior! They're above the ordinary kind of men in the work of God. And oh, oh, what is said about them, the columns about the wonderful things that this man has done and achieved, and is, and all the rest of it.

God looks on this poor thing with pity: pity, if not with contempt. In man form, in man form, not angel form, not some superior order of creation, just man form. We seek our embellishments to make an impression; we add things to convey to people that we are something different than others, to gain access and acceptance and so on. There's none of that in the mentality, the mindedness of the Lord Jesus. If we have not got spiritual influence, God save us from artificially trying to make it, to have it by artificial means. Oh no, none of that. It's men that God wants, not officials, not dignitaries, men, but men of His own making. That's enough for that. In slave function, the form of a bondslave, a bondslave, "I am among you," said He, "as He that serveth; as He that serveth. I came not to be ministered unto..." What a challenge, what a challenge to so much in you and in me. What a challenge to so much there is in Christianity. "I came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, but to minister." A bondslave; not a dictator, not an autocrat, not a master. A servant, so it says here, a servant; and surely He was that. But this is the ground of the Presence and the Power, that's the point. It's always like that.

And then:

The Obedience.

"He became obedient"; obedient. I suppose before the Incarnation He could command. Angels would run swiftly at His behest. The slightest gesture or indication, and they would move to serve Him. But here: obedient. The One who is having to be told, ordered, coming under direction, "obedient unto death". That little word "unto" has a double meaning. It means "right up to death," "right away to death." That is, right to the final, the final step, the final phase, the final fragment of obedience, no more to be done, right unto death. But oh, it implies the depth, the depths to which He went, "unto death, yea, the death of the Cross." How utter was this Bondslave functioning. How utter was this self-emptying.

The Cross here is set as the utterness of God's will, the fullness and finality of the will of God, right through to the last degree and down to the deepest depths. "Let this mind be in you." Ah, it is from that point that the turn is taken. "Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him and given Him the Name which is above every name." The "wherefore." Oh, what a lot hangs upon that word.

Well, these things constitute, as we set out to say, the ground of the presence and the power of God. "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man... go in this thy might." The strength of weakness. The strength of emptiness. What is the strength of this weakness, of this emptiness? What is the strength of all this that is no honour to man at all? The strength is "The Lord is with thee," that's all! What more do you want? What more could we have? If the Lord is with us, well, "if God be for us, who can be against us?" I mean that, that's strength isn't it? That, that's power, that's assurance, that's certainty. It's all right, it's all right if the Lord is with us, no matter how weak and empty we are, how little there is that we have to draw upon. It does not matter that we have no name or reputation or title or merits or anything else to display and proclaim, if the Lord is with us, that's enough. Strangely enough, it is not enough for many, many today; they must have the plus of publicity, advertisement, and all that sort of thing. They don't consider that it's enough to have the Lord with them. The Lord seems to them, in their mentality, to depend upon their newspaper advertisements and proclamations about their own wonderful persons and works. Not at all. It's enough, it's enough, if the Lord is with us. That will be all the power that is necessary.

Do you want to know the Lord's presence? Do you want to know the power of God resting upon you? Well, it is the strength of weakness, the strength of weakness. The wind, the water, and the lightning all finding their way where there is weakness, where there is weakness. The Lord give us this grace, this mind which was also in Christ Jesus, for we need Him and we need His power.

Chapter 4 - A Peculiar Vessel for a Peculiar Purpose

In the seventh chapter of the book of the Judges. The book of the Judges chapter 7: "Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with him, rose up early, and encamped beside the spring of Harod: and the camp of Midian was on the north side of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley. And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel vaunt themselves against Me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me. Now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people saying, Whosoever is fearful and trembling, let him return and depart from Mount Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand. And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people are yet too many; bring them down unto the water and I will try them for thee there: and it shall be that of whom I say unto thee, this shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee; and of whomsoever I say unto thee, this shall not go with thee, the same shall not go. So he brought down the people unto the water: and the Lord said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was three hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water. And the Lord said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thy hand; and let all the people go away every man unto his place".

Turn to two other scriptures in the first book of the Chronicles, first book of the Chronicles, chapter 28 and verse 9: "And thou, Solomon my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve Him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind; for the Lord searcheth all hearts and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts".

The other passage is in the prophecies of Jeremiah, chapter 17, verses 9 and 10: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, the mind, I try the heart even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings".

There are some of you present this evening who have not been with us before in this conference, and possibly some of you who do not know the Lord Jesus in a personal way. Let me say here, that we are met as a company of God's people from many parts of the world, that we might receive from Him some light and instruction concerning His will where we are concerned at this present time. In saying that, you will all understand and appreciate the nature of the ministry; that I believe that the word we shall have this evening may reach even to those who are not the Lord's, and we certainly shall have such in mind as we go on.

There are two main things being brought before us just now. One is:

The Desire of the Lord

Indeed, the purpose of the Lord is to have His people in such a condition and state that His glory is expressed and realised in them - His people really in the enjoyment of all that He has provided for them. He has provided life, but He has provided Life more abundantly. He has provided spiritual riches and wealth, treasures untold and inexhaustible. He has provided spiritual food, a store which has no end and can be drawn upon continually without failing. He has provided strength, His own strength, that they should be a strong people indeed. The Lord has made a great and many-sided provision for His people, but history shows that His people have not always been in the enjoyment of His provision. And there are many today who bear His Name, who carry His Name, who are called by His Name, "Christians", "Christ ones", who are not in that enjoyment, not in that blessed state. Some are, but not all. And in so far as that is not the case, the Lord is not glorified in them. Well, that is what the Lord wants.

It is not an impossible thing, not just a bit of fancy and idealism, a high standard, a lofty conception, but beyond possibility of attainment. In this very place tonight, there are those who will very readily say that they know something of that, that Christ is to them a fountain of Life, not just a trickling stream, He is a fountain of Life; who will say that they know something of the depth of the riches, that they know something of how wealthy it is possible to be in Christ, and they know something about the food matter, His wonderful provision of spiritual food; inexhaustible. Yes, some of us know something about that. The wonder to us is the inexhaustibility of what is provided for us in the Lord Jesus. That is the one thing that is in view. I am quite sure that none of us are at the point where we feel we can't know any more, that would be a contradiction to what I have said. If it is inexhaustible, then we can never come to a place where we have got all that we can have.

Not any of us here would say that we have really obtained unto all that the Lord wishes and desires in these matters; not at all, but it may be that there are those here, perhaps many of this company, who are not in that enjoyment; they're just striving to eek out a spiritual existence - as we say, "to make ends meet," to find something upon which to subsist and keep going. They're living on a very poor fare. They're hungry, longing for more, and it may be that you do not feel that it is altogether helpful to be told about the things that there are for you. What you want to know is how you can get them, and how you can come into that enjoyment. Well, we are saying some things about that, but that is not our particular point tonight. We may be moving more in that direction later, as you'll see.

But the other thing that is before us, the other main thing, is that:

The Lord is Shown to Have Moved

From time to time during the history of His people, when they have been in a state, a poor state, spiritually of weakness, and starvation, and poverty and defeat, He has moved to bring into relationship with Himself in a peculiar way, some instrument - sometimes an individual, sometimes a company - who have come into such a knowledge of Himself in this fuller way, in the greater fullness of Christ, that they could be instrumental in bringing more of the Lord's people into that good.

The Lord must have instruments with which to do His work, and vessels through which to reveal Himself. And He has moved like that and shall we not say that He is seeking to have such an instrument in our time, seeing that the need is so great? And there is really so little real knowledge and experience of those greater fullnesses that are in Christ. Would He not bring a people near to Himself and work in them in a peculiar way, that there they are; He might make people envious, envious, looking on their food and coveting it, looking upon their wealth and longing for it. Yes, by expression, by example, by manifestation, to bring His people into a better position and a better condition. Well, those are the things that are engaging us in these gatherings.

Now this evening in that setting, I have a word which will be a very simple word indeed, but its simplicity does not mean that it is not very important. It springs out of the passages of Scripture which I read to you just now, particularly as illustrated in that incident with Gideon who was such an instrument laid hold of by God for the deliverance of God's people from their poor condition: the incident of securing a company, a band, by which the Lord could accomplish that deliverance and secure unto His people their rights of inheritance in Himself.

You remember Gideon blew the trumpet, and there gathered unto him a great host, over thirty thousand men. Of course, even at that it was a poor, poor thing compared with the Midianites, and all the rest. Nevertheless, it was thirty thousand. The Lord said, "Gideon, the people that are with thee are too many, too many for Me to deliver the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel vaunt themselves against Me." A terrible, terrible possibility saying: "Mine own, mine own arm; mine own power saved me".

Well, the first test was: "Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him depart." We, I think, have to admire these people for one thing, if we cannot admire them for everything: they were at least honest; ready to admit that they were afraid of this business. Well, they had good reason to be afraid, you know. It says that these enemies, these enemies were like locusts for numbers, spreading themselves right over the whole land, filling it. They had good reason to be fearful and afraid. And they honestly, in fact, said, "We are, and we are glad of the opportunity of going home, thank you". And away they went. Ten thousand remained. Still the Lord had got His basic difficulty that He had to say to Gideon "There's still too many, still too many... Bring them down to the water and I will try them for thee there."

You know the rest of the story, just what happened. The ten thousand were brought down to the water, to the river, and then the Lord whispered in Gideon's ear, "Don't let the people know..." that would've given the whole thing away and undercut the whole thing. He just quietly aside said to Gideon, "Now then, tell them to have a drink and you watch them, how they drink. Those that lap like a dog, you just set them on the side. And those that get down to it on their hands and knees, and on their faces, and wallow in it, you put them by themselves." And so Gideon gave the order that the whole army could have a drink, and they did. And their drinking, all unbeknown to themselves, was a test. The Lord said that it was a trying of them.

"I Will Try them for thee There."

The word "try" here is the word which means, "tested under an ordeal." The same word is used in another place: "Thou hast tried us as silver is tried in the fire"; an ordeal to discover something, to bring something to light, to bring something to the surface. "I will try them for thee there."

This water scene is said to be a "trying" and, of course, that gives some support to the interpretation that has been placed upon this. It doesn't say so here, but the interpretation that has been given to this is that those who got down on their knees to drink were those who were thinking more of their own gratification than of the Lord's interests in the battle. Those who just lapped it in their hands, took it and lapped standing, were those who were not thinking so much of that as they were of the real business on hand. I think that is a genuine interpretation. It certainly did indicate a disposition and it is upon that that everything hangs: a disposition. They were all thirsty and in need of refreshment and renewal. There was nothing wrong at all in their drinking of the water; nothing wrong with the water and nothing wrong with their taking a drink of the water - nothing wrong with that. The difference was just this: that some regarded the water as a necessity, while the others, the majority, made it an indulgence. Some took it because it was absolutely necessary, but getting the necessity attended to, they were already erect and ready for the real business. The others were having a good time and just giving themselves up to it, so to speak. They were more occupied with the thought of getting as much personal gratification out of this as they could and not wholly and completely concerned with the Lord's interests, the great thing which was at stake at that time: the honour and glory of the Name of the Lord in His people. Now, that's the simple message, you see, but it's a case of sifting unto vital service; trying with a special vocation in view.

Of course, of course, in the matter of salvation, the matter of salvation, the Lord does not always carry things so far, or press issues so thoroughly. It seems that in the matter of salvation, all kinds of people get in, every type that you can think of comes into the realm of being saved, although I think in many, many instances, they don't get there without some test. However, I am not talking about the whole mass of Christians and the matter of their being saved and the ground upon which they are saved. That may simply be, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." But I am speaking about something more than that: the great vocation into which we are called as God's saved ones and the specific work that God needs to have done at a given time and a time such as this.

Dear friends, we shall never be of any use to the Lord beyond the point where we ourselves know the Lord. Real service, real service - listen - is limited to the point of the experience of the servant. You cannot go beyond that, you cannot lead anyone beyond the point where you have gone yourself. You cannot give anybody anything beyond what you've got yourself; that is, of real truth, of real value. You can give a lot of teaching, but it doesn't get people anywhere. And if you and I are going to serve the Lord in His very, very serious and solemn need of bringing, leading people of His into the greater fullnesses of Christ, we have got to be a special kind of people. The thirty-two thousand type won't do, and the ten thousand type won't do. It is the three hundred type alone; the three hundred type. The Lord said, "By the three hundred I will save Israel"; this is sifting down, reduction, in order to get to effectiveness. This is a kind of limitation that means expansion, enlargement, but it has to take place, it has to take place. And so God applies His tests and brings in His trials to get a peculiar vessel for a peculiar purpose. That, I feel, is His message at this time. It is not just a general kind of convention and conference for general teaching to Christian people; it is something with a specific object relative to the tragic situation amongst the Lord's people today - to get something after the order and kind of these three hundred.

Well, what are they like, what are they like? The Lord has very simple ways and means of trying and proving, and they are often so simple that we don't recognise them as tryings and provings. This was a very simple thing, wasn't it? For the whole ten thousand, a very simple thing to bring them down to the water and let them drink of it. And the last thing, it seems, that occurred to any of them was that as they came down to the water and took their drink, they were under a supreme test. The eye of God was upon them, and that eye was moving from them to Gideon, "You see? You see? You see? You note that." And they didn't realise what was happening. This great sifting and selectiveness for this purpose was going on in some very ordinary and simple matter out of their consciousness. You know, you and I would rise to the occasion if an angel of God came to us and said, "Look here now, look here, you are called to a great piece of work for God, and I want you to give some proof that you are ready for it." Why, we would rise to it, wouldn't we? We would be very, very careful watching everything to see that we didn't default, that we didn't disappoint, that we weren't set aside, ruled out, we'd be right on our toes, as we say, about it. But the Lord doesn't do it like that, friends. He has never done it with any of you like that; He's never done it with me. But He has applied just as serious a test in very simple ways.

I said, I think it was last night, that a gesture is a very, very, indicative and significant thing; just a gesture. Here's the gesture: here's one man, he flops down at the riverside and has a good going of the water. The other man, he stands by the river and takes some in hand and laps; all alert. Well, why not? Ah, yes, but you see, bound up with that, that simple test, is what? Oh, it is not just a sign, not just a sign, that is, the Lord hasn't ordained that some lap and some go down on their knees, and so you separate them. It is a sign of the heart! It's a revelation of a disposition. This larger crowd, they are the people who want a good time, even in the Lord's work, a good time. These others, they're not thinking of the good time at all, they are putting first things first, the first thing is this battle, is this work of God. It comes first and everything else takes the last place, or the second place. This is the thing that is on hand:

The Revelation of a Disposition.

And do you know that we are showing our dispositions in all sorts of simple ways, just as simple as that, just as simple as that, as we go about our daily life, our daily work. Yes, the Lord's eye is upon us there in the office, in the workshop, in the shop, in the study, wherever we are. The Lord's eye is upon us, and our hearts are being revealed in just the way in which we go to work; the ordinary things of life. Oh, we separate these things, you see, the sacred and the secular: in the church it's one thing, of course, in business it's another. But it isn't, it isn't. Our qualification is in our disposition you see, not in our consciousness of being under the eye of God, but when we are not conscious of that at all, and the disposition we are showing, that's the test; that's the test. And oh, how many and how simple are the ways in which we show our disposition, just our inclination.

Now, of course that does apply, it does apply, to every stage of the Christian life. I said that there are saved people of all kinds, but if you are going to have a really thorough-going salvation, and not one of those poor things, those inadequate things, those experiences of Christ which are anything but what He would have you have; if you're to have that, you have got to show that you mean business, that you really do mean business, that this thing is a very serious thing with you. You will get as much as your heart is set upon, and no more, and no more; and the Lord is looking at your heart. We read those passages, David to his son Solomon, "and God searcheth all hearts," "Serve the Lord with all your heart." "The Lord searcheth all hearts." Those words of Jeremiah: "The Lord trieth the heart"; the heart, the heart!

And what is true of your salvation is true of your usefulness to the Lord. None of us will ever be used of the Lord in any very vital way, unless, unless our hearts are wholly set upon the Lord and His interests - not to have a good time, not to have a good time, that is, as men speak, not to have every picnic that's going, not to have every diversion from the strain that is available, not to have every escape from responsibility and obligation that can be found; not a disposition like that at all. But the disposition that recognises how great is the matter in which we are involved and we are people wholly committed to that, and our own gratification and satisfaction is not allowed to affect or influence us at all; it is a heart wholly for the Lord.

Now, I said that the Lord has many ways of finding that out. I couldn't compass all the ways in which He does it, but what I want to say is this: that the Lord will present a test, He will present a test. It will not always be as to whether the thing is right and wrong, but it may more often be as to whether it's the good or the better. If you are of the disposition of the great majority, you will be always asking questions like this: "Well may I not? Is there any harm in it? What's wrong with that?" You see? And there was nothing wrong with drinking the water; it isn't a case of whether it's wrong, or whether you may, whether you are obliged to. See, that is a disposition. You will just only go as far as you must, if you are like that.

What the Lord is looking for (and it's always a minority) are those people who never, never talk like that, or think like this: "May I? Must I? Is there any wrong in it?" They are always saying, "Can I do more than I am doing? Can I go further than I am going? Is there not some fuller thing that the Lord would have than I know, than I am in, than I am doing?" A question like that, always in the heart: "Has the Lord not got something more than what I have known and what I am in and what I am doing? Has the Lord not got something more? My heart is set upon all that the Lord wants and I will never be satisfied with anything less, however good it is, however good it is - many, many good things, but is there not something more than this?" Such are the people for whom the Lord is looking. And He Who readeth all hearts knows our disposition in this matter - whether we will accept something less, or never accept anything less than all that the Lord would have, if He could have it.

The Lord allows opportunities to come for personal gratification, He presents something that demands hard work, and then He watches the disposition. Ready to jump at that which offers some personal gratification? To grasp at an opportunity to skirt the hard work? That's your disposition! It rules you out, it rules you out! He sometimes presents something in His Word, He brings you up against something in His Word. Now then, what's your disposition? "Must I, really, must I? Is that a command? And I, if I don't do it, I shall just be breaking a command? Is that really necessary?" And then we begin to go round to people who we think are authorities, or know better than we do, who know the Lord better than we do, and say, "Do you think it's necessary for me to do so and so? Do you think that I must?" And how often, how often, even godly people have said, "Oh, no, I don't think it's necessary for you to do that!" Making men, so often, our authority in the things of God, when God has presented us with something; going round, going round.

I remember many years ago (to give you an illustration of what I meant, or mean) I was visiting a certain home. I felt constrained to go to that home, at that time, that particular evening. I didn't know why, but it just seemed that I had to go, and I was asking in my heart, "Why is it that I feel so strongly urged to go there tonight?" And I went with this question. And I got there and while we were quietly talking together I couldn't see anything special. Then there was a knock at the door and a man was brought in, was brought in where I was, and introduced to me, a man who'd had a very remarkable conversion. He was, in the army in the old days it was the "barrack rooms", converted, soundly converted, and knelt down at his bedside with all the vile, blaspheming, drunken soldiers around him and paid the price. He meant business with God. And he came into this home on this particular occasion and I got into conversation with him, it was the first time I had met him and I found him very earnest. And as we talked I was all the time asking this question, "What, what's it all about? What am I here for? Is there something...?" We talked on and on and presently he said to me, "Mr. Sparks, what do you think about so and so?" It was a water test! "What do you think about so and so?" Immediately he asked the question, I knew inside; something touched me, "That's the meaning of your being here and his being here tonight". I said, "Why do you ask me? Does it matter what I think about it? Has the Lord said that to you?" He said, "Yes I think He has, I think He has, I feel pretty sure He has, but I wanted some confirmation, and so I am asking you." I said, "Brother, if the Lord has said that to you, you just go and be obedient to the Lord. Everything hangs upon your answering the Lord." It's a real test. And we talked, and he went away. I went home.

Some time later, I was at that home and along came the same man, without any arrangement, and I noticed that he was a little bit shy of me this time, a little bit awkward. And we got to talking, and he said, "I remember, I remember our talk here last time." He said, "After I left, I went to such and such a minister of such and such a denomination, who I know..." who did not believe in this particular thing, you see. And he asked him what he thought about it and he said, of course, "No, that is not necessary at all, that is not necessary.'" And I said, "Oh, Mr. So-and-So, or the Lord..." Well, we talked, and although I was not trying to press for this thing, I was taking the line of obedience to the Lord and when He speaks whatever it is; that line. And the man came right back and he said, "Yes, I see! I see! I can't get away from it. The Lord, the Lord has brought me up against this." "All right brother, you know your way." He went away.

It was some time, some months, before we met again, and we did meet again, and this time there was a real arrest and death. We couldn't get anywhere at all. He wasn't coming on to that again. You see, he's afraid; afraid even to mention it, because, well, it disturbed him, and we didn't get any fellowship at all. But, before he went I said, "Well, brother, are you, are you going on with the Lord? Are you going to obey the Lord?" And he said, "I don't know. When everybody I speak to says that it's not necessary." "All right," I said, "The Lord has spoken; it's a very serious thing for you." And he went.

One year later, in another part of London, right on the other side of London, I was going along, walking along a road, and I saw a man coming toward me on a bicycle, and as he got near he recognised me. He wheeled round and went for dear life in the opposite direction. That was that man. What did I hear of him? He had gone right away from the Lord, back into the world, right back into his old sin; a drunkard and a blasphemer, right back where he was before he came to the Lord.

Now, that is a true story. The Lord presented a simple test and he said, "Is it necessary?" Rather than, "Anything, anything that the Lord wants, I am for that." He did what the apostle Paul said he did not do: conferred with flesh and blood, instead of being obedient to the heavenly vision. And how much hangs upon it; how much hangs upon it. The Lord may present something; yes, it may not be this form or that form; it may be a water test. John the Baptist applied the water test, didn't he? At the Jordan, "Bring forth fruit meet for repentance," he said, "and say not within yourselves 'we have Abraham for our father.'" Here, here's the test as to whether you mean business with God.

And so it comes, I cannot tell you all the ways. God has such a variety of ways, but the point, the point is this, dear friends: God is always looking on the heart to see if we really do mean business. He knows the disposition, and He is seeking for a company of people who are not going to be influenced by anything, anything at all: associations, connections or anything else, which would in any way stand between them and all that the Lord wants. Oh, it is a test, that is a very thorough-going one, and how often people have come up face to face with an issue, an issue which the Lord might not have pressed right through. You see? He doesn't always do that, but don't you make that back door way out, will you! Sometimes He brings us face to face with something. He's not going to press that right through. He did it with Abraham and Isaac: "Take thy son and offer him..." tested right up to the last minute, the last instant, the split second of a raised knife and its falling, right up to then; and then didn't allow him to go through with it. He found his disposition.

There was a young man who had great riches who came to the Lord Jesus professing that he wanted to know about eternal life. The Lord Jesus said, "Well, go sell all that thou hast and give to the poor; come, follow Me." I am not sure that the Lord would have required the carrying out of that utterly, but He was testing disposition. We don't know how much time or space there is between the two things, the actual demand and its fulfillment. But it is just in that narrow space where we come to the point, that split second, so to speak, where if the Lord, if the Lord doesn't show otherwise, it's going through; it's going through. The Lord wants to know whether we mean business with Him or not.

Now, you see, it's one simple, very direct thing, but look how much did hang upon this. Oh, that three hundred, what a tremendous thing God did by them, how He committed Himself to them! What a wonderful thing, three hundred men against a multitude like locusts spread all over the whole land, and the whole lot of them thrown into confusion and defeated; and the people of God delivered. Three hundred men, but what a three hundred! What kind of men they were! And it seems to me that the proof that they were this kind was that they were prepared as three hundred to go on with the business. I mean, just think what it requires for three hundred men to look at a great multitude like that and say, "We're not going home, we're going on with this business. We've started and we're going through with it." That was the kind they were, you see, it proves that they were of that disposition, didn't it? That just being three hundred up against tens of thousands, they did not shrink, but they said, "We're going onwards."

The Lord needs men and women like that, and only people of that kind and that disposition and that heart can serve Him in this great business of recovering His glory in the Church.

Chapter 5 - The Cross and the Name of the Lord

We are now returning to the point from which we began on Saturday afternoon when we said that all that we were going to consider would be gathered into the Cross and the Name of the Lord. We then did, very briefly and lightly, indicate that these two things are found together right through the Word of God. We instanced several of the occasions where they are found together. It only needs to be said again here that that is so, and that that is open to proof if you will look at it. In the Old Testament, of course, the Cross is represented by the altar, and there it is a matter of the union of the altar and the Name of the Lord; the Name of the Lord connected with the altar. In the New Testament, as we expect to find it, the altar is changed for the cross, but the Name is still kept with it.

I just return your thoughts to a couple of passages which indicate this very definitely and clearly. One we have already considered fairly fully. We are going to greatly abbreviate or shorten it for our purpose at this time. In the letter to the Philippians, chapter 2, at the end of verse 8, we just have the words: "The Cross," and then verse 9 goes on, "Wherefore, the Name which is above every name." "The Cross... Wherefore... the Name." All the rest that is there is gathered into that.

Turn back to the letter to the Ephesians and you have the same thing indicated. Chapter 1, verse 20: "He raised Him from the dead and made Him to sit above every name that is named." "He raised Him... above every name that is named." Of course, you will take account of the context of both of those passages, and you will find that it is all about what God has done through the Cross of the Lord Jesus as the basis for glorifying His own Name, or bringing His own glory into full manifestation.

With that then, as our basic position, the union between the Cross and the Name - the Name of the Cross - let us go on. The book of the Acts, which is a very large and full book, as you know, stands entirely on the ground of the Cross. That book is just the issue of the Cross, the spontaneous issue of the Cross. It would never have been written, and all that was there would never have happened, but for the Cross; it rests upon the Cross. And in that book of the Acts, the term or phrase: "the Name," is mentioned no fewer than 33 times - which carries its own significance. The Name which is preeminent and predominant throughout that whole wonderful book, called the book of the Acts, rests upon the Cross. And in the New Testament, as a whole, everything is "in the Name," the Name of the Lord Jesus. People are exhorted "to believe into the Name." In answer to their inquiry as to what they should do, they are bidden "to be baptized in the Name." Their gathering together as the Lord's people was "gathering in the Name." All their prayer was "in the Name." They were praying "in the Name." They were preaching and teaching "in the Name." And the work that they were doing, healing the sick and so on, was all "in the Name." It was that that caused the trouble. The rulers came upon them and forbad them to speak or teach any more "in this Name." All that - and it is a most inspiring and helpful and instructive study just to look at that in the New Testament; all that rests upon the Cross, and is inseparably connected therewith.

The Name of the Lord Jesus came before Christianity. Christianity took its character, in the first place, from the Name. It was the Name that gave to Christianity its nature. I fear that it may have been reversed since. It seems, although perhaps not deliberately and intentionally or consciously, but it does seem that Christianity has come before the Name, and gets in the way of the Name, and very largely is a contradiction of the Name. So that what we have to understand, and what has to be recovered if there is going to be anything like the power and effectiveness and fruitfulness that there was at the beginning, is what the Name signified and implied because it is not just a title, a designation, some phrase, some tag put on: "in the Name of Jesus". It has become so commonplace to do that, so [much a] matter of practice and course to use the phrase "in the Name of Jesus," but nothing seems to happen, with all that - so little results, so little is present even when that kind of speaking and terminology is used as the commonplace thing. No, it is not just a title, it is not just a designation, just not the name of someone, although that Someone may be the Lord Jesus Himself. It is something very much more than that.

It is impossible to consider this matter of the Lord's Name in the Old Testament without recognising that it is not just the difference of title from other gods and other lords, it's an entirely different kind of being, and there is more in it than that. And what is true in the Old Testament is true, yes, infinitely and transcendently more, in the New Testament. May I repeat: what we have to understand and what has to be recovered is the significance and implications of the Name as the apostles understood it, as the Holy Spirit caused it to mean and therefore, which resulted in such tremendous things. When they said, "In the Name of Jesus Christ" something happened. When they prayed, "In the Name of Jesus Christ," something happened. When they preached in the Name, something happened. It's that "something" which is there that we have to know and to recover. The Name and its glory has got to come back into its right place.

Well, we have said, and we repeat that:

The Name Rests Upon and Issues from the Cross

Therefore, all the meaning of the Cross is embodied in the Name. That's simple enough, but it's very important. All the meaning of the Cross is embodied in the Name; and to separate these two is to put asunder what God has put together, and when you do that you destroy the real value.

The Name can never be effective without the meaning of the Cross behind it, or present with it. For the Name to manifest all its Divine power and fullness, it must be kept vitally bound up with the Cross. It must rest all the time upon that which has given it those values, "unto death... wherefore the Name." You cannot divide those two; "Wherefore, the Name," and they remain together so that it becomes necessary for us, dear friends, to reconsider some of the great meanings of the Cross which are gathered into the Name of the Lord Jesus and give that Name its real meaning and value.

I am going to assume that we here today, or this morning, are the Lord's children, so that it becomes unnecessary for me to spend time in speaking about those values of the Cross which have made us the Lord's people; to speak about the atonement and justification by faith, and the initial union with Christ by new birth. These are values of the Cross, meanings of the Cross, which are gathered into the Name. Of course, nothing more can be, until that is true, but I am assuming that you here do know and understand that the Name of the Lord Jesus means for you your sins forgiven, your union with Christ, and your justification before God, so that I can dismiss that in this company and proceed beyond that to these further values and meanings of the Cross which are gathered into the Name.

Firstly then, the Cross was the place, the scene, and the occasion of the overthrow of a kingdom and its prince. We've got to be very sure about that. Of course, we all believe in the common phrase "The Victory of Calvary," and well, we know or we think we know a lot about that, but we've got to be very sure about this because it doesn't always seem to be working out. It was definitely and positively (if the New Testament means anything at all) the occasion of the overthrow of a kingdom and its prince. That kingdom is a nature and a system in this world - ruled by satan - a nature, and because a nature, a system. Every nature produces its own system; every system is the product of a particular nature.

When I use the word "system" I am only using another word for kingdom. In every different kingdom, a certain nature predominates. That need not be followed up, it's obvious.

In the kingdom of this world, there is a nature and that kingdom takes its strength and its form from that nature; and it is in that nature, through that system, that satan rules. And the principle of that rule of satan is:

The Alienation of Man from God.

That sums up everything. All the works and ways of satan have one object, just one object. His ways and his works are perhaps countless, so various that they are often difficult to track down, but howsoever many they be, and however great their variety, they are all gathered into one single object, and that is: to alienate men from God. That may be done by making a great deal of man, making him his own god, his own lord, the very deification of humanity, the enthronement of man upon the throne of his own glory. Or it may be, on the other hand, to the other extreme, by depression and misery and suffering and degradation. And everything between those two extremes is just to make man, on the one hand, independent of God, and on the other hand bitter against God. The object is one: alienation from God, making man to part with God, to be independent of God, to take a course of self-will, to blind man, to make him ignorant; everything to get in between man and the Lord.

That is the nature that is in the kingdom of this world, isn't it? For the most part, you can divide the whole world into those two sections. On the one hand: man made to feel that he doesn't need God, that he can get on quite well without God and be independent of God and give God no thought. And that very largely is along the line of many preoccupations and what he calls "pleasures", the filling of his life so full that there is no place for God, or on the other hand, that more positive attitude toward God of bitterness and rebellion and hatred. In greater or lesser degrees, the whole world is summed up of those two things. And it is in every natural heart, every natural heart. That is the kingdom of satan, that is the kingdom of this world of which he is prince. We keep on the focal point: that which comes in between God and man, and man and God, as satan's supreme objective and activity.

The Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ meant the destruction of that. It was the occasion when the prince of this world was cast out, when that kingdom received its fatal blow, when that work of satan was met, mastered, and overcome. The Lord Jesus through His Cross holds that victory in His hands. It has not yet become, of course, true in the world actually, but we are coming to this in a moment. The fact is there, that the Lord Jesus has done that. And believers into the Name of the Lord Jesus, know it, and are in the good of that, so that the Name, the Name, embodies this: that that kingdom and that ruler has been cast out. The Cross meant its destruction and the Name is the Name of the One who specifically did that! Did that!

How did He do it? Firstly, there was none of that kingdom, that nature, in Him. Oh, how Satan worked along every line, by every means, to get in between the Son and the Father, between Christ and God. I say, by every means. We haven't the record of all the secret battles, but we have enough to know that there was a battle going on throughout His life to, in some way, get in between Him and the Father. "If Thou be the Son, if Thou be the Son, if Thou be the Son," trying to insinuate a question, a doubt - open the way for a breach. So I am not staying to take you through His life showing how here and there, in this way and in that, the enemy was at work by pressure and oppression, by subtlety, by foes, by friends, working all the time to find this gap where he could just thrust in his wedge, and then he would drive it home and do with the Last Adam what he did with the first. But, "the prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in Me," He said. "The prince of this world," note the phrase, not "the devil comes", not "the great adversary", but "the prince of this world comes and hath nothing in Me." He could not get in between Him and the Father. He could not bring about this alienation, this division and separation. He just could not do it. But, for our Lord, it was a matter of constant vigilance and constant conflict. It was not automatic. The mystery, the mystery of His humanity, the humanity of God, God Incarnate is just that, that He had to fight our battles. It is a theological problem, I know, how a perfect Being can be tempted. Leave it! The fact is writ large in the Word that it was real. He was not just play-acting, it was real; it was a battle unto blood to maintain this to the last.

You know, it is no small thing, no small thing when risen, just immediately after He had been raised from the dead, He said, "I ascend unto My God and your God, My Father and your Father." That's a tremendous victory over the dividing work and power of the enemy. He is still in union and fellowship. Ah, but what that meant, what that meant in the moment of His being forsaken by the Father... yet, that's not the last word. No, that cry of forsakenness was not the last cry, the last cry was, "Father, into Thy hands..." Father - the relationship through all is unbroken, He has triumphed in Himself. Yes, that's how He did it. All hell raged, raged on that ground alone. Everything, everything is focused in this Man. Satan's kingdom is at stake in this one Man. All his hopes, all his age-long hopes and ambitions, are in the balances of this one Man. And the pivot of all is this: this relationship with God. And so hell raged from its depths against Him on this ground alone, this one ground of fellowship with God.

It cost Him everything, it cost Him everything. Here in this world, it cost Him everything. Satan saw to it that He didn't have anything here in this world. "All right, all right, if you're not coming into my kingdom and yielding to my law and falling down and worshipping me and putting me in the place of God your Father, you shall have nothing, I'll see to that," and He had nothing, not so much as a place to lay His head. He did much more than that, right through to the end; and then from satan's side and the instruments of satan, He was murdered for it. Thank God we know another side to that, but from that side He was literally murdered by satan and satan's agents. He was killed for that reason only, because of the battle that He had come to fight out to a victorious issue and conclusion, the battle of this relationship with God. But He triumphed.

He Triumphed Through Death

There's God's miracle. The thing that was intended and calculated by that evil kingdom to be His destruction, was its own destruction. The one who planned all that, thinking that it would be his supreme triumph, found it to be his supreme triumph in a way that was not meant: the undoing of that kingdom and its prince. That, dear friends, is the Cross.

Now you see the book of the Acts which brings in the Church, the book of the Acts and all that is there and the Church, stood on that ground. It stood on that ground. It took up the values, that value of the Cross. By the Holy Spirit it was caused to stand upon that tremendous victory which Christ had wrought. By the very Holy Spirit, the Church at the beginning was brought into a marvelous union and fellowship with God. Oh, how strong it was, now let hell rage against the Church as it raged against Him and harry it to death, to martyrdom - he can't get in between them and their Lord. They have come into the good of His tremendous victory over that kingdom and its prince. The Church stood on that ground. And seeing that that was the content of the Name, we can understand now the potency of the Name in and through the Church and on the Church in those days, that standing on that ground when they employed the Name, they employed the mighty victory that was gathered into that Name: what Christ had done in His Cross, and things happened.

But Satan has not given up. There is still the need for the Church to stand on its rightful ground of the Cross and the Name - the Name and the Cross - and to be as vigilant as was its Lord and to be all the time girded, because the world, the world as a spirit, the world as a nature, the world as a spiritual system, is all the time seeking some point at which it can insinuate itself to get between the Church and the Lord, to make it necessary for the Lord to stand back, unable to go on with His people because, because that other thing has got some place in some way. This is the work that is going on.

Yes, how subtle it all is. You go back with this thought over your Old Testament again, and you see that not always was it by open assault that the enemy brought in the peoples of the world against the people of God to overpower them and to subject them to their deities. Not always along the line of open suffering and affliction. But oh, how often in the Old Testament it was a very subtle, quiet insinuation of something, just working like that, almost secretly. People were hardly alive to what was happening, but then, they woke up one day to find that the Lord was no longer with them, they woke up to find that they were in defeat, they had lost their Lord and lost their power and lost their position. And when the prophets, who were the seers, the men who saw, the men who knew the reason, seeing what the people did not see; the prophets came to interpret their condition and their situation, they put their finger always and ever upon some secret thing that was of that other kingdom which had got in.

This is a tremendous business, dear friends, for the people of God. It is like that. Why the loss of power? Why the loss of the Lord's presence? Why the loss of the situation such as obtained at the beginning in the days of the book of the Acts? Why are things so different? Why all the weakness and the defeat and the poverty and the hunger amongst the Lord's people? Why? Because there is that with which the Lord will not, cannot ally Himself. It's got in between Him and His people. You may call it the "world" if you like. We speak about the world in the church, and worldliness of Christians. Well, well, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? It is not always the grasping, sadly enough amongst many Christians, multitudes of Christians, there are the blatant worldlinesses. And in Christian assemblies and companies, what are called churches, it is vast worldliness, but that's not all. So many methods employed, and ways of going about things, so much of the energy and heat brought in is just of that other kingdom. It is not the Holy Ghost. Where does it come from?

I sometimes think (and I am going to say a rather serious thing) I sometimes think that satan can energise to do what looks like the work of God. Satan is always far-seeing, and if he can get a false movement in the name of the Lord, a false movement which is ostensibly a Christian movement, but which is false and is drawing upon other resources than the Holy Spirit of God, he sees quite clearly that the time will come when it will be far more difficult to touch things in that direction than it was before. The thing will have become hardened, so hard as to be almost impregnable. You may speak about the Lord there, "Oh, no we've had some, we've seen how that works out, that doesn't last; we are not going to have any more of that." That's a state at last worse than the first.

Well, if you don't understand me and agree with that, leave it; but there it is. There's a subtle working to get his kingdom in the place of the kingdom of God, and he'll do it by any means.

The Cross

The Cross does represent the undoing of that kingdom, and therefore, the Church must be a Cross-governed Church. The Cross must be its foundation and its basis, not in doctrine only, not in theory alone. You may have all the doctrine, it may be most accurate and sound, as to the atonement and as to the Cross, the life, death, resurrection of the Lord Jesus, all that, and it may count for nothing, spiritually, in effect. We can be outright fundamentalists and spiritual, real spiritual life and power, may be utterly absent. It's not that, it's not that. It is that the Cross is there as an actuality, a reality, undercutting all the kingdom and nature of Satan's kingdom; it must be there. The Church will know nothing of that first power unless it is so, or shall I say, will only know power, in so far as it is so. That's the meaning of the Name. When we use the Name we ought to be in our own hearts meaning the bringing in of all the potency of the Cross of the Lord Jesus over against the kingdom of satan in its nature and in its objective.

You know quite well that without understanding all this, without having had it explained and interpreted to you, when you really have come, as we put it, "to the Cross," that is, when you have received by faith the values of Christ's death and resurrection, you know that the very first thing that springs up in your consciousness is: "Somehow, I can't explain it, but I feel nearer to God, and God feels nearer to me." That's the most elementary way of putting it, isn't it? Just the language of a little child, "I feel that God is nearer to me and I am nearer to God than ever before. Somehow or other God and I have been brought together"; there is fellowship with God, no longer enmity. There is a consciousness of union, no longer separation. Ah, but more, there's a consciousness of love, and no longer bitterness or hatred or independence. But it comes to this, "This is my life and if ever I lose this, I lose everything. God has become in Christ everything." That's the first consciousness, isn't it?

Well, there you are, that's the work of the Cross, that's the proof, the simple elementary proof that the Lord Jesus in His Cross went right for the heart of this whole thing; this separation between God and man, He went right there and fought that out. And so, in Him risen, we are brought to and joined with God. If that sounds too simple, too elementary for you wonderful advanced Christians, don't brush it aside. It's the most beautiful thing, but the most costly thing. Oh, what a cost, what it cost our Lord just to fight out that battle, to overthrow that tremendous force and power to get in between God and man. He fought out our battle.

Do you see? That's the meaning of the Name; that's the outworking of the Name. If that is true, if we are in the value of that, oh, how wonderful the Name, how powerful the Name. It's a great victory, isn't it? And do you not see that the object of the enemy, all the way, still his object, still his object, is to recover that ground? And he persists in trying, not now to keep us away from God, but to again get in between us and the Lord by any, any, means whatsoever. It's a terrible thing for one who has really known that fellowship with God to lose the consciousness of it. It's the terror of the Cross again, isn't it? The terror of that moment of forsakenness, casting its shadow over. It is almost as though it were being said 'He did not, He did not win that victory.' It's as though all that Christ did is being nullified. Oh, what a thing it is, this fellowship with God. And therefore, our whole New Testament is constructed for believers upon this one thing: the way, the way of maintained and deepened union with God. It is only another way of putting "the way of Life in the Spirit." It is a battle, it calls for vigilance.

Remember, dear friends, that still the prince of this world in his own kingdom, to which, thank God we do not belong, because we have been translated out of the authority of darkness and into the kingdom of the Son of His Love; he still assails us. He still assails us from without, to try to get in between us and the Lord and if that happens, you know where it comes from. You know where it comes from, that doesn't come from the Lord. Beware of what interpretation you put upon the shadows between you and the Lord. You know where they come from, you know the remedy. You know the remedy: it's Christ and what He has done in His Cross. But do you see the issue of this? Ah, the dishonour of His Name, we come back to that every time: the motive.

The Motive

What is the motive for our vigilance, for our warring? What is the motive for our watchfulness? What is the motive, the only adequate motive for dealing with everything that comes between us and the Lord? The motive must be the honour of His Name. In the fighting out of that battle in life and death, it was the Name of the Father, the Name of the Father.

Oh, how much we have got to realise of what we know, that marvelous prayer which is called His "High Priestly prayer" as He was just going, so to speak, to the altar; as He was going to the Cross, it's the Name, the Name, the Name, and it's the Name involved in these, this company. He is praying, pouring Himself out in His concern for the Name which He has given them. "I have given them Thy Name; I have given them Thy Name. Oh, keep them in Thy Name!" The honour of the Father's Name is the passion of His soul. He fought the battle of that honour right through in the Cross. And you and I must be baptized into that same concern for the honour of His Name in His people, not something objective and abstract, but true in His people: the honour of His Name.

When we go on later, perhaps this afternoon, we shall see that in some very practical way, but I feel that that's enough to challenge us and occupy us this morning. We don't need more than that. Oh, that we should see one thing: when we say "in the Name of the Lord Jesus," we are not just repeating some formal platitude, some habitual way of speaking as Christians. We really ought to be meaning, "by the Cross of the Lord Jesus and all it means." You can put it that way if you like, this and that and the other, "by the Cross of the Lord Jesus," the ground upon which God intends. But that Cross, in all its values, is embodied in the Name and the Name just means that, and it means nothing without that.

The Lord give us to see and understand the meaning of the Name, and to be set upon the recovery of its values, we pray.