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The Ways of God

by T. Austin-Sparks

Edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Way of Wisdom

Chapter 2 - The Way of Vision

Chapter 3 - The Way of Spiritual Strength

Chapter 4 - The Wondrous Ways of God

Chapter 5 - The Way of True Discipleship

Chapter 6 - The Way of Spiritual Increase

Chapter 7 - The Way of the Glory

Chapter 1 - The Way of Wisdom

"When the woman saw that the tree... was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof" (Gen. 3:6).

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. 9:10).

The Way of Wisdom the Way of Salvation

It is quite clear that that first quest and bid to be wise and to obtain that kind of wisdom, was a most disastrous and calamitous thing. The result - and I have no doubt that Adam often sat in judgment upon himself as to that very matter - was that he had played the fool; when he sought to be wise, he was a fool. It was a disastrous thing and contradicted the very meaning and essence of wisdom, for the function and value of wisdom is to save us from disastrous mistakes. That is very simple and lies right on the face of things. If ever we make big mistakes, we blame our lack of wisdom. So wisdom is that which is intended to save from and prevent mistakes and calamities resulting from such mistakes, so that the wise one would not have to say, 'I made a terrible mistake, and as a result, there is nothing but trouble, calamity and tragedy.' The wise one does not have to look back with those regrets. If we could therefore find the way of wisdom, we should find the way of salvation, the way of deliverance, the way of light, the way which will never bring any kind of regret, but instead real gratification. At the end we should say, 'Thank God I took that way.' That is wisdom in its very nature, therefore the kind of wisdom which Adam got was not the true wisdom, and, as I said, it just contradicted the very meaning and essence of wisdom.

The Way of Wisdom the Long-term Way

But while that is true, the way of wisdom is often the long-term way; that is, the true wisdom is often only revealed in the long run. It is not always that we see the wise step immediately justified. Wisdom often waits for its justification a long time, and it is only well on the road that the wisdom by which we have been guided, the wisdom which we have chosen, is really proved to be the highest wisdom, and it will wait until the end for its full justification. Only at the end shall we know how wise was the wisdom by which we were guided and what a lot we have been saved from by going in wisdom's way. Not always early in the course can we say, 'I am glad I took that step, I am glad I took that way, I am glad I chose that course.' It is only as we get on that we begin to see the wisdom that was there, but surely it will be.

The Inscrutability of Divine Wisdom

And because it is so, we find ourselves in the presence of something which to the world and to our worldly minds, in the eyes of what is according to worldly standards, is incomprehensible and inscrutable, for Divine wisdom is that. It would hardly be Divine wisdom if all at once we could understand it, if we could bring it immediately within the range of our own comprehension. Divine wisdom is incomprehensible, inscrutable to this world. Seeing that there still remains very much of this world about our standpoint, we are greatly influenced by this world's considerations in great issues and decisions.

This matter of Divine wisdom is a matter of faith. We have to commit ourselves to the Divine wisdom in faith. All these things that I have just mentioned are wrapped up in that first great instance. Adam was not prepared to wait; he had to have it all at once. Adam was not prepared to trust; he had to understand immediately and have the wisdom in himself at once. Therefore the way of true wisdom is folly to this world. It cannot comprehend it; it cannot understand it. It is folly to the natural man.

These are the things which you and I, in practical life, are really up against in different ways. If you are out in the world, you know that these are issues which concern you - what the world calls wisdom and what it calls folly. Whether there will be a swift realisation and justification of the step you have taken, the course you are following, or whether you have to wait, seeming to be suffering loss. Will you be quiet, and close your ears to the arguments of those around you who would advise this and that contrary to the step that you have taken or the position in which you are because you belong to the Lord? Well, those are everyday practical questions for people in this world, especially for young men and women. But it is true that all the time in spiritual work you are up against these things: the whole question of policy and diplomacy, and what is called worldly good sense. This whole range of Mr. Worldly-Wiseman is with us in the most spiritual matters. These issues are ever present.

The Upshot of Wisdom

What is wisdom? What is folly? There are two far separated standards of judgment about those. One is the earthly and the other is the heavenly, and these two never meet. Let it be said very strongly, the matter that counts is whether in the long run we are able to say: "I have made a mistake which has confused my whole life and course. I have done the wrong thing; I have blundered and created complications; I regret that I ever took that course; it has made a difference to my whole life!" It does matter whether that is the issue. That is the long run view and it counts more than anything else. That is the upshot of wisdom.

The Folly of Adam's Wisdom

And that is bound up in two persons. One is the first Adam, who, in trying to be wise, became a fool and made a blunder which not only involved himself but the whole race in untold trouble. And the thing that could be written upon the whole history of Adam is: "I have played the fool; I have made the most terrible mistake; I have complicated everything by not choosing for true wisdom".

The Wisdom of the Last Adam

The other Man who embodies this true wisdom is the Last Adam, and what should we say if we were summing up His history? We should say, "You took the right course, You did the right thing, You made the right decision; there is no doubt whatever as to the wisdom of Your way". We surely, every one of us in Christ, are a vindication of Him and His wisdom in His decisions and choices. Does it not come naturally from our hearts to say Jesus was right! We should not be here but for that conviction, and it all amounted to this question of wisdom.

The Beginning of Wisdom

The Word here says in direct statement and by way of application and implication as to what we read in Genesis 3:6 - "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom", or, literally, the first part of wisdom. That is where wisdom starts. Now, while this word 'fear' has the element of being afraid, that is not the whole truth. This fear mentioned here is really born of love, not dread or terror, but of love. There may be one held very highly indeed in affection and regard. That love, that affection, is not free from a kind of fear lest that one should be in any way grieved, hurt, injured, or have reason to feel that they were distrusted. It is fear all the same. That is the kind of fear here. It is more the fear of a child for a beloved parent in the realm of love itself than of someone under the awful dread of a tyrant.

In the first place this fear of the Lord rests upon the mind of God having been made known, that we stand in the realm where God's will is revealed. You see the difference very clearly at once in the two Adams. God had spoken His mind to the first Adam; but Adam never said, 'We know God's mind about this, we know what God said about it, we cannot plead ignorance; we are fully informed as to His attitude; we are informed that such is His will.' Adam never said that. But the Last Adam said: 'It is written... It is written... It is written..." (Matt. 4:1-10). "God has said, God's will is made known", and the fear of the Lord rests upon that. Now what are you going to do about it? The heart relationship to the Lord, this kind of fear, the fear of affection, takes the position of the son and the father. The Lord Jesus said, in effect, this: "My Father has left Me in no doubt as to what He wants, that is the thing that matters". We cannot plead ignorance as to the mind of God in general, and in a good deal of the particular; it is made known to us. And the knowledge of the mind of the Lord is available to us so that the wisdom which is the fear of the Lord is expressed by a fundamental and complete consecration to the Lord.

Complete Consecration to the Lord

That is where the Lord Jesus was. He had a fundamental consecration to the Father and to the Father's will. It was a thing which dominated Him from His childhood: "My Father's business" (Luke 2:49); "My Father's house"; "The will of My Father". It was fundamental, settled. This has to be settled basically right there in the foundation as to whether it is going to be the Lord or something else; or the Lord and something else; or whether it is going to be the Lord and the Lord only who has the complete acknowledgment of our hearts. We must have complete consecration; no double heart!

The outstanding illustration in the Old Testament of the double heart is Saul. When the Lord directed Samuel to say to Saul, "Smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not" (1 Sam. 15:3) Saul used his own judgment over against the known mind of the Lord. He said, "I feared the people" (1 Sam. 15:24), not, "I feared the Lord." You remember the terrible words of Samuel: "To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams... Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected thee from being king... The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine" (1 Sam. 15:22-24,28). Saul was the man who used those words l have used once or twice here: "I have played the fool" (1 Sam. 26:21). He had a double heart. On the one side, there was devotion to the Lord of a kind, perhaps, meaning well, but weak, not strong enough. He considered how he would stand with other people, how he would appear before their eyes, thinking what a pity it would be to let this go, sacrifice this, instead of saying, "Well, that is how it appears to me and I know it is going to get me into trouble with the people and there are going to be consequences, but the Lord has indicated this to be His will and that is what matters".

The Test of Consecration

Remember that we shall always, like Adam, like Saul, like Judas (who is the great outstanding New Testament example), be put to the test by being given opportunity. The Lord does not step in and make us go His way, or leave us with no option or alternative. He is all the time allowing us to be in the presence of opportunities to compromise, to take another road, an easier way, to put our judgment over against His pronounced will, to do any of these things. He left Adam with an opportunity and a warning. Saul had his opportunity with a possible alternative. There is the opportunity and that is the test as to the fear of the Lord, the utterness of our consecration, the completeness of our heart relationship to the Lord.

The Ultimate Vindication of True Wisdom

But this wisdom is eventually and eternally vindicated. It always is, though it be through faith, patience, and suffering. This way of wisdom is the stranger way in this world, strange wisdom to this world, which says to the follower of Christ, 'Look here, young man, young woman, you are a fool, you are jeopardizing all your prospects, you are taking the way that will not get you anywhere. If you were wise, you would do this or that which would make you secure concerning reputation, position and so on.' Very often the way of heavenly wisdom proves to be the way of the wilderness of our Lord, which has to put back the kingdoms of this world for the time being, with their popular applause and acclaim. It means the Cross and suffering the loss of all things, the reproach of men, and the ostracism of brethren, for even His brothers did not believe on Him (John 7:5). Those were His brothers in His own family. Why did they not believe on Him? The probability is that they were ambitious men. They were brought up in poverty, adversity and difficulty, and for them the way of an earthly kingdom, of a great popular Messiah, weighed more than the way of this despised brother of theirs who was all the time doing things which brought Him up against the powers that be on this earth, and jeopardized His and their future. They did believe on Him afterwards, thank God. (James, the Lord's brother, came to believe on Him and others also.) But, for the time being, until through patience and faith and suffering He was vindicated, it was the way of loss, and that is often the very nature and essence of the fear of the Lord. Has the Lord indicated that this is the way for us, this is the course for our lives - a costly one, a suffering one, a way which, to others governed by this world's standards, is a way of utter folly, a way for our own disadvantage? I am not suggesting to you that you go and be silly, that you unnecessarily cause prejudice and all that, but you know the realm of which I am speaking, the way of spiritual business. This is the way, the way of absolute foolishness in the eyes of this world.

Will you choose it? You know all that the wise man writing these Proverbs said about wisdom: "With all thy getting get understanding" (Prov. 4:7); wisdom "is more precious than rubies" (Prov. 3:15); "Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn out her seven pillars" (Prov. 9:1). The fear of the Lord is the very first thing in wisdom, and the fear of the Lord is an utterness of consecration to Him, never to be bribed, never to make compromises, never to be double-hearted. It is difficult, it is costly, it is painful, it is bitter to this soul-life. It may apply to all sorts of issues and crises. It all hangs upon this: not, "How is it going to affect me?" Not what I stand to lose or to gain, but, "Where is the Lord in this? How is the Lord going to be satisfied? How is the Lord going to get what He wants?" Or if I can see nothing as to what may be a good outcome, my attitude must be: I have no doubt at all that if I went the way of the Lord it would be this way; I cannot see any other way as answering to what I know of the Lord and that settles the whole question, that brings the battle to an end. I am going on with the Lord, no matter what it costs. "My goal is God Himself, not joy, nor peace, nor even blessing" - no bribes, but Himself. That is fundamental, and that must be an issue of our love, our devotion to the Lord, our sense of what we owe to the Lord; how much the Lord is to us. On any other ground it can only be a hard, cold, legalistic relationship. May He find us in that position where we love Him and we keep His commandments for that reason only.

Chapter 2 - The Way of Vision

Reading: Psalm 105:1-24.

This whole Psalm contains a record of the history of a vessel created for Divine purpose. We will, however, draw a circle around that small section relating to Joseph, who is a concentrated example of such a history. The ways of God are always the same in that connection. All His ways are like His ways with Joseph.

We might begin by using Paul's great phrase, "according to purpose" (Romans 8:28), for that is so evidently the thing governing the life of Joseph, of Israel and of all, both in the Old and New Testaments, who are brought into that relationship with God.

Well, let us look at Joseph in some of these 'ways of God' which are the most evident. Behind Joseph's life there was the Divine purpose. Before Joseph was born that purpose existed. Joseph, unconsciously at the beginning, was born into it and no doubt for some time was unaware of it. Then he came to realise that there was something more than just being in this world and being alive that accounted for his existence. He came to realise that God was deeply interested in him. But it was not Joseph's purpose for God, but God's purpose in Joseph. There is a big distinction between those two things. We may have purposes for God and arrange things and launch enterprises for God. Inasmuch as they are for God the Lord may bless them. There can, however, be quite a difference between our purposes for God and the purpose of God. It is important to remember that, because it is fundamental to everything. This purpose of God existed before Joseph came into this world. It had been revealed to Abraham that great day when God met Abraham and the covenant was made, the sacrifice divided, and the lamp passed between the two parts of the sacrifice - there was a great horror of darkness (there is always conflict bound up with purpose), and then the covenant and the revelation of a people: "Unto thy seed have I given this land" (Gen. 15:18). The very time was given, and that time led up to this crucial point. It was through Joseph that this people came into the land from Egypt as the next great stage in the plan of God.

The purpose was there before Joseph. He was born into it. The New Testament makes it very clear that by our new birth we are born into something that was in the heart and intention of God far back behind time, before ever we came here. It exists, and we are brought into it; not our plan for God, but God's plan for His Son. We are brought into that by new birth.

It is a special choice. Joseph was a peculiar vessel, even among his own brethren. What was said of him could not be said in the same measure of his brothers. He was marked out. It was his story, because he was chosen to bring his own brethren into that purpose. His was a peculiar vocation, part of the heavenly calling and heavenly vocation. Within the whole circumference of the purpose there is that purpose instrumentally to bring others into it. Joseph stood there, a peculiar vessel selected in relation to God's purpose to bring others into it. The day came when Joseph became aware of that. He may have been foolish about it, as we shall see, but nevertheless, it broke upon him, this sense of destiny with which he was bound up and which was bound up with his life. The Lord had put His hand on him in relation to that covenant and that great purpose which had been revealed to his forefather, Abraham. This grew upon him, took possession of him, became the horizon of his life. He lived to serve God, not in a general way, but in the particular way to which he had been separated, serving that purpose. It was a power in his life. He just could not get away from it. He talked, and he may have talked unwisely, because this thing had got hold of him. He could not accept something general; he could only follow this distinctive and definite guidance. He would not have gone through all that he had to go through if this thing had not really been a power in his life. If you had asked him in the days of his great suffering and affliction why he held on, why he continued, he would have said: "It is not my hold, but the hold of God upon my heart. I have seen something of God's purpose and intention and I feel that God has called me into that. I just cannot accept anything other or less. That holds me in its grip. That will carry me through to its issue."

Yes, it was a power, but, of course, there were perils, as there always are, bound up with that vision. He fell into some of the perils. By talking unwisely to his brothers he revealed that there was something in him bound up with this whole thing which was not good and not right. He fell into the perils, but both in his own testimony later on to his brethren and here, in this Psalm, there is this statement: "He (God) sent a man before them." To his brethren Joseph said: "God did send me before you to preserve life" (Gen. 45:5). Here is the pioneer of God's purpose. It is a special vocation to pioneer for the Lord's people, but there are peculiar perils bound up with it, and there are peculiar sufferings.

So we pass on to see that interlude of discipline in the life of Joseph. It is a long period, dating from the day that his brethren put him into the pit and then sold him. He was taken into Egypt and there was a sudden reverse into what looked like good fortune, but eventually he found himself in the prison. It was a long time, and those conditions make time seem very much longer. It was a period of eclipse, the eclipse of everything, probably of vision, of hope, and of God. A prison - a dungeon indeed! And long-drawn-out! But there was a Divine necessity for this. It was something that God saw to be necessary because somehow natural elements had made an invasion into the Divine purpose. It may have been pride that prompted him to talk to his brethren as he did about his dreams and that they, as they rightly interpreted, had to bow to him, acknowledge him and his position and his superiority. It may have been pride there that the Lord saw, some conceit - "I am the man" - or "We are the people. We know it. We have got it. The Lord is with us particularly. We are going to do it." Probably all that was there in this young man, Joseph. Ambition: secret, but it was there. Zeal: yes, for God perhaps, but without knowledge it is a dangerous thing. Inexperience: the novice. Impulse, self-sufficiency, self-strength. Perhaps any or all of these things were there under the eye of the Lord, and he set himself to realise the vision without faith. It just amounted to that; he was not prepared to trust the Lord in this whole thing. He must set to work to bring it about himself.

You can see that in others, too. Abraham fell right there over Ishmael. Yes, he knew all about the vision and the purpose, but in a lapse of faith he tried to realise it himself.

Undoubtedly Moses had the vision in Egypt in the first forty years of his life. It was that vision that led him to behave as he did. The writer to the Hebrews says that he counted "the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt" (Heb. 11:26). He had the vision, but there came that day, that disastrous day, when he took it out of the Lord's hands and took it into his own hands to realise it. He smote the Egyptian persecuting a Hebrew and thought that no one knew. He took the vision into his own hands.

Joseph was no doubt a favourite in the house of his father. He had many privileges and was no doubt pandered to - and he used that fact.

Now, Abraham was doubtless a great man in Chaldea, and Moses was a great man in Egypt, well educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, a prince and an aristocrat. Joseph was no doubt a favourite in his father's house. But none of these things in themselves could be the means of realising God's purpose. We may be clever and successful in this world, with business acumen and real ability, but it is no use bringing all that in to try and realise God's purpose. We may have standing among men and much to our advantage, but nothing that is of this natural life, until it has been really disciplined under the Spirit of God, can realise the Divine purpose.

These are the lessons we can learn from Joseph's life. All these things simply did not count when it came to God reaching His end. Spiritual values are so different from natural values. So Abraham only put the clock back years! Moses put the clock back forty years by trying to do things himself. And Joseph put the clock back years by his unwise, though perhaps very zealous concern for the vision! And he had to pass into this long and deep discipline to bring him to a specific place.

This is the great lesson you and I have to learn if we are really in the way of God's supreme purpose. In this realm only God can do it. Abraham had to learn that. Moses, in the forty years he was alone in the wilderness, had to learn that. Joseph, in prison, had to learn that. If it is ever to be, only the Lord can do it.

But, you see, the Lord was working at that. Until we learn that, we are holding up time.

Indeed, we are only creating confusion. The purpose, the vision, may be right, but it can only be carried out by the Lord in the Lord's way. If we take it into our hands we bring unspeakable confusion and just put the clock back, perhaps for years.

Well, Abraham had to wait a long time. Moses had to wait his forty years. Joseph had to wait, and what a time of discipline it was! Apparently forgotten of God! It is a terrible experience when there seems to be evidence that God has forgotten. Think of forty years in the wilderness looking after a few sheep after having had such a position in the world! Forgotten by God! Read again those verses from Psalm 105 about Joseph. He could easily have felt that God had forgotten him. He was left alone, cast out, fallen out of the purpose. His entire life was devastated and his purpose in life seemed to have gone. It was disintegration, hopelessness, a state of being forsaken.

Many of the Lord's servants have gone that way. You know, it was many centuries before the Lord Jesus took the words on His lips that David cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Psalm 22:1). Forsaken! It was not true, of course, but the depth of this thing is commensurate with the height of the purpose. Remember that the depth and the height are equal.

So Joseph went through this period of stripping, emptying and humbling just to reach the point where he was utterly dependent upon God. Whatever he had felt and thought at one time, however he had acted and betrayed himself, he now knew that nothing is possible apart from the Lord. The Lord must have that position, make no mistake about it! At any cost, any length of time, for His purpose He must have that position. When He gets it, when all these things which confuse and mix up the situation are dealt with, then we come to the set time of the Lord. A break comes in the Psalm at one point: the work is done. The set time of the Lord has come. Joseph was released and brought out, but only at the set time of the Lord.

It is not just that the Lord had a certain timetable. The Lord has not just planned things in the matter of the measure of time. The Lord's set time always corresponds with a work done in the instrument. You cannot reconcile these things, but there it is. Even the coming of the Lord Jesus may be fixed as to time, if you like, but it cannot be until something is ready, until a work has been done. And when the work was done in the life of Joseph, the set time came.

The work is accomplished, and the Lord knows when it is accomplished in us, when it is finished. We do not! We think there is nothing more to be done, or that can be done. The Lord knows, and He knows when that issue is settled, when that way is clear, when He can proceed with confidence and commit Himself. He knows when things are ready. That is His set time. When that time comes it just happens, and there is no power in this universe which can stop it.

You notice with Joseph it corresponded to an hour of need. Just a wonderful working together! The preparing of an instrument in this deep way unto a day that the Lord knew. "He brake the whole staff of bread." Why? Because He had been preparing an instrument to meet a need which concerned the next stage in His programme for the bringing of Israel to Egypt on the way to the land.

Oh, the beautiful balance of things! The symmetry! The instrument dealt with and prepared; the need manifested and the two brought together! The wonderful wisdom and sovereignty of God! And all that has to be said is that the end justifies all. The enlarged sphere is God's end. How true, not only of Israel but of others among His servants, is the principle of the words, "Thou broughtest us into the net... Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water" (Psalm 66:11,12). It was true of these men - but, "Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place." That justified it all. The end of the Lord is enlargement, increase and enrichment. If His ways are painful, as they are, even to the point of His seeming to have left us, His end is greater fulness through it all.

Let us believe, then, that we are "called according to His purpose". Does that mean that everything ought to go well and that the sovereignty of God ought to come in all the way along and make victory easy? Not at all! The history of a vessel for Divine purpose is this: the Lord always takes such instruments through very deep ways.

Now, of course, I must safeguard what I have said and mention that there is no conceit behind any word that I have uttered, no feeling that we are people anything like Joseph. What I mean is this - that the Lord does need Joseph instruments. He does need vessels that can be used not only for the salvation of the world, but to bring His own people into the knowledge and experience of Himself in a fuller way. That is a peculiar ministry, both for individuals and for companies, in order that His house should come into the greater fulness of His eternal thought for it. For that He must have an instrument, or instruments, but such go through very deep history with Him. It is a hard and painful way, sometimes a way which seems like utter desolation and God-forsakenness, but a day comes when it is all explained and justified, and Israel at length comes into the land.

The Lord interpret His word to our hearts.

Chapter 3 - The Way of Spiritual Strength

"David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave of Adullam; and when his brethren and all his father's house heard it, they went down thither to him. And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became captain over them; and there were with him about four hundred men" (1 Sam. 22:1-2).

"Now these are they that came to David to Ziklag, while he yet kept himself close because of Saul the son of Kish; and they were among the mighty men, his helpers in war" (1 Chron. 12:1).

"And these are the numbers of the heads of them that were armed for war, who came to David to Hebron, to turn the kingdom of Saul to him, according to the word of the Lord" (1 Chron. 12:23).

Spiritual Weakness made Manifest by Testing Circumstances

This is a period during which Israel was particularly menaced by the Philistines. They are always the shadow over Israel's life; immediately Israel's weakness and helplessness was related to the Philistines. The Philistines brought out and made manifest Israel's weakness and helplessness. The Lord usually has some particular thing by which a state or condition is revealed. It is not always recognizable as a state in itself. There has to be something that brings it out. Because of this or that, the real condition of things is manifested, and it would not be recognized apart from that instrument that the Lord uses to disclose exactly what the state is.

It becomes positive, rather than abstract, by reason of certain things. The Lord will, for instance, create a situation, an experience, a difficulty, a concrete challenge, and then the inability to meet it, to deal with it. That shows that that particular thing, which under other circumstances if things had been different, would have counted for nothing, would have at once been conquered and subdued, has now become the Lord's means of showing how bad the spiritual state is. The Lord has a way of doing that. When Israel came into the right position and condition under David, the Philistines did not count for anything; they lost all significance. But here they are very significant, they do occupy a very dominant place, and that is only because of the spiritual state of the Lord's people. So, spiritual weakness is here made manifest by means of the Philistines.

We have to ask why it was that Israel was helpless before the Philistines. Why was it that their weakness, their deplorable condition, was manifested in the presence of the Philistines, who otherwise would not have signified anything? When you dig down for your answer, you find that it was because there was so much in common between Israel and the Philistines. They had so much in common really deep down underneath. The Philistines are known to us by a certain epithet - the 'uncircumcised Philistines'. David used that phrase concerning Goliath of Gath, "this uncircumcised Philistine" (1 Sam. 17:36). But when you look at Israel, that was really their spiritual state. They were uncircumcised in heart. They were called the Lord's people, and in a sense, traditionally they were. They had the ordinances, even the ordinances of circumcision, but it was all outward. Paul draws that very distinct line of discrimination between the outward circumcision, which he calls the concision, and the inward circumcision of the heart. He says it is the latter that makes us Israelites in truth, not the former (Rom. 2:25-29). Here you find Israel in exactly that position - uncircumcised in heart. The fact that they said, "Make us a king... like all the nations" (1 Sam. 8:5), showed that the thing which was common to the nations had come into their hearts. They wanted to be like the other nations; that is, the spirit of the world had come inside. And thus they knew nothing of what Paul called "the circumcision of Christ"; not "the putting away of the filth of the flesh" (1 Pet. 3:21), but the putting away of the old man entirely. There was deep down something quite in common in Israel and the Philistines, and that being so, that had to be exposed and the world exposed their weakness.

It is like that with a church, with a Christian community, or with a Christendom, which is really worldly in spirit, in principle or in method. It is the world that exposes their weakness and shows how helpless they are. The world, like the Philistines, laughs at them and says, 'You don't count for anything; you are not to be taken seriously; we do not consider that we owe very much to you or that we are to take you seriously.' The world laughs at the church and the Christian who, in principle, has that which is in common with itself. The world says, 'We can do your job better than you can.' So we find that the world is very largely the instrument of exhibiting or exposing the weakness of Christians, simply because there is that common basis.

a) A Life of Faith, in Separation unto God

At that point in their history, when things were like that, David is introduced. Over against Saul (the world principle in the church) David is brought into view, and we have three gatherings to David. They are very significant in relation to what we have just been saying. David, then, represents the life of faith in separation unto God, and a life of faith. Israel had said, "Make us a king... like all the nations; we want something visible to rest upon, something we can see and take account of with our senses, something tangible..." and something altogether contrary to the life of faith. The Lord said, "They have rejected Me, that I should not be king over them" (1 Sam. 8:7). They turned from a life of faith. David comes in as God's principle of faith calling for separation from the world principle, the world spirit, the world mentality. It was quite clear that David was the one with whom God was, and to whom God had committed Himself. And it is not long before David is, by the sovereignty of God, put into a position which is going to be the testing situation for the people of God, going to provide a supreme test as to whether these people really are going on with God, or going on with Saul; going on with heaven, or going on with earth; going on in the Spirit, or going on in the flesh; and now David becomes the test of real spirituality.

In the first place, we find him in the cave in the wilderness. That is the place outside, spiritually outside, in rejection; the place apart from that worldly system which has captured the church, that merely traditional order of things; that which is only outward in form and ordinances, but not a thing of the heart. David is put right outside of that in the wilderness, and of course he is repudiated by that whole official system. It is positively against him, if possible, for his destruction.

So that the very first thing that arises for the people of God was the question of their discernment as to where God really was; discernment whether, after all, the Lord was with Saul or whether He was with David, whether they had spiritual perception as to where their deepest spiritual needs would be met. It is very unfortunate that that Hebrew word has been translated 'discontented' in the text. It would have been far better to have kept the marginal translation, 'bitter of soul' in the text as it is more correct. It has been used by a lot of people who speak of things like this as the caves of Adullam - by discontented, disgruntled people, who cannot get on with anybody else. But that is just sweeping aside the whole spiritual significance of this. God has had to do that sort of thing again and again. When the church has departed from a purely spiritual heavenly position, a true life of separation unto Himself, it has been found that the majority are not ready for that. It has only been a minority, and then people have said, "Oh, that is a cave of Adullam, a lot of discontented people". No, they were bitter of soul, and unable to meet their spiritual liabilities; in debt because the provision for spiritual competency has been lost on account of something quite false having gained the position among the Lord's people.

But here is David outside of that whole world system among the Lord's people, and it became a question of whether the Lord's people discerned, and those that did discern went out to David, to a place of faith.

b) Union with Christ in Death

What I want to say here in the first place is that this position in the wilderness and all that it involved for David and for those who went out to him, clearly and positively represents the believer's union with Christ in death. It is what Paul meant when he said, "Far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal. 6:l4). These people had been glorying in this wonderful fellow, Saul, glorying in their idea of a great kingdom. It was a worldly thing, according to the nations. Paul said, "Far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified unto me, and I unto the world." It is that union with Christ in death to the whole world spirit, to the whole world system, to the whole world tendency that is constantly invading the church, like the Philistines who came in again and again with their worldly principles, causing trouble and bringing the Lord's people into a place where He could not go on with them or commit Himself to them. The aspect of the Cross which means death to that whole system was the position of those who went to David. He was being pursued for his life and those who joined him, joined in that. From one standpoint, it was a laying down of their life to the whole world. They lost all their position and all their hopes in the world. They laid down their life and took all the risks bound up with associating with David.

c) Union with Christ in Resurrection

The second passage at the beginning of 1 Chronicles 12 brings us to Ziklag. Here we find that in Ziklag there was another secession to David.

While David and his men were away one day, the Amalekites made a raid on Ziklag and captured everything, wives and children and all possessions. The last thing that they had was taken by the Amalekites, and then they burned the city and went off. When David and his men came back, they found everything gone and destroyed. They wept, it says, "until they had no more power to weep" (1 Sam. 30:4). It was a very serious and critical situation. It was the death side in very truth. But then it says, "David strengthened himself in the Lord his God" (v.6), and he enquired of the Lord as to whether he should pursue after the Amalekites. The Lord said, 'Yes, pursue', and the Lord sovereignly facilitated David's overtaking of the Amalekites, so that he recovered everything (1 Sam. 30:1-31).

This is another stage in true spiritual life and fulness. To me it corresponds to the letter to the Romans. In the first chapters of the letter to the Romans, we find continually everything being lost. From the first verses, you find this movement to discover something that has been lost in Adam, and when you get to the end of Romans 5, you find everything is lost. Romans 6 brings the Cross in, and from then onwards, you find it is recovering everything; everything that was lost is recovered through the Cross. And in Romans 8 you have a full recovery, even to the end of the chapter, where the whole creation which was subjected to vanity is recovered. All that was lost through Adam's sin has now been recovered, and this is the resurrection side of the Cross. The death always goes with it. We carry over from the wilderness to Ziklag on the death side. The Lord never departs from the death side, that in Adam, in the world under judgment, everything is lost, but then we take a further step here to the recovery of everything in the resurrection. David strengthened himself in his God. The Lord said, "Pursue... overtake, and (thou) shalt without fail recover all" (v.8b). There is the other side. There is resurrection union with the Lord Jesus as well as death union. It would not do for us to take the death position with Christ and leave it there. We must come on to the other side. Spiritual progress means the apprehending of Christ risen for the recovery of all that has been lost - and it is recovered. It is a very full recovery.

d) Union with Christ in the Heavenlies

Pass to the third passage in the second part of 1 Chronicles 12. "These are the numbers of the heads of them that were armed for war, who came to David to Hebron" (v. 23). The third stage is Hebron. The name means league or fellowship. It says about Hebron that it was a very ancient city. Its history lay right back in the mists of antiquity somewhere outside of this world. This is a very advanced position spiritually. Where do we come to through death and resurrection? What is the next position? Surely it is in the heavenlies. The sovereignty of the Lord Jesus now comes into view. It is here they make David king. The whole question of His heavenly exaltation and government as outside of this world comes before us when we come to Hebron. We pass from Romans into Ephesians. It is the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. God "raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named" (Eph. 1:20-21). David is coming to the throne now, and there gathered to him many to turn again the kingdom to him, at Hebron. It is the church in the heavenlies that comes in here, the fellowship that is outside of this world, the truly spiritual nature; union with Christ in death, resurrection, ascension in the heavenlies where He is absolutely, unquestionably Lord. He is made King. He is "head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of him that fills all in all" (Eph. 1:22-23). Well, here it is something more than an earthly society or institution, something more than a company of the Lord's people like a congregation on the earth. It is that which is brought out from the antiquity of "before the foundation of the world". "He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1:4). We are the church of the eternal counsels of God. It is a heavenly position, a heavenly thing, a heavenly fellowship, which has broken its contact in spirit with this whole world system.

And there we find at Hebron they had a very good time. Seven days they feasted, they ate and they drank, and they wanted to have another seven days. With those who taste real heavenly fellowship, there is no question of what they belong to, what denomination, sect or association; they have left all that behind. They have come into a realm where it is Christ as Lord only and absolute. If you taste that sort of fellowship, you want to go on. You are ready to excuse Peter for wanting to make three tabernacles. We may say, "Let's stay here forever instead of going back to our business." That is how we ought to feel. We have to go back to it, but we do not leave our heavenly position. This is to be the constant consciousness of the life of the Lord's people. We should be in the spiritual good of the heavenly fellowship of the Lord's people, and we must stand for that.

The next stage would be Jerusalem. When the Lord gets something like that on earth, you may expect the Lord's coming before long. Jerusalem will be the next thing.

Chapter 4 - The Wondrous Ways of God

"Thy way was in the sea, and Thy paths in the great waters, and Thy footsteps were not known. Thou leddest Thy people like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron" (Psalm 77:19-20).

What a strange contrasting of similes! It would be difficult to have a greater contrast than we have in those two verses - the pilot through the sea, and a shepherd with his flock. The sea in a rage and an uproar, tempest, storm; and right alongside of it, the shepherd and his flock. One is a picture of unrest, disturbance, anxiety, stress and mighty forces in action. The other is a picture of tranquillity, restfulness and calm. What a contrast! - and yet brought together in one statement as to what the Lord is to His people - a pilot and a shepherd.

You need to read the whole psalm to get the full value of that. The first part of the psalm is a record of distress, perplexity, confusion; a crying out in trouble, the cry of agony, "Has God forgotten to be gracious?" "Is His lovingkindness clean gone for ever?" (v.7,8). And then the writer recollects and says, "This is my infirmity... I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High" (v.10), and the whole tone changes. There is recollection and review of how it all worked out in the long run - reassurance. It is a summary at the end, and yet also an introduction, because undoubtedly the last two verses of this psalm are an introduction to the next one, that great historic record of the Lord's dealings with His people - Psalm 78. What a long psalm that is, telling of the movements, guidance and dealings of the Lord with His people! With all there is here for helpful, encouraging, reassuring meditation, we will only look now at the gist of the matter.

I am going to change the metaphor again from the pilot through the storm, the shepherd with his flock, to the mountaineer. There are three peaks which every child of God has to master, the peaks that are suggested by this psalm. We are not really qualified for the service of the Lord, nor for life itself in relation to the Lord, until we have mastered these three peaks. They will challenge us and they may again and again challenge us, but somehow or other we have got to be the masters of them and they have got to be things that have lost their terror and dread for us, and their power to defeat and weaken us.

Divine Purpose Governing All

The first of these peaks which arises out of this psalm so clearly is Divine purpose governing all. You know how this mountain presented itself to Israel at the beginning of their history as a return to the sea and His paths in great waters. What is the psalmist talking about? Undoubtedly about the Red Sea as it confronted them. Oh, what a terror, what a dread that night! The east wind no doubt howled and the water lashed. What a dread that sea was to the people, with what fear and trepidation did they approach its banks, even though its waters were standing up. It was a terrible night, the passing through the Red Sea. It was, in a sense, a mountain to be negotiated and a mountain of - for them - terrible possibilities. But do you notice what the psalmist says? He says that these waters were in a certain condition; our translation does not give us the exact word. They were troubled, in anguish, groaning, and the original word which was used to describe the state of the waters was that they were in travail, the sea was in travail, and the nation was born in that sea that night. A nation was born in the Red Sea that night, and the waters were in anguish. It is an illustration.

You see Divine purpose working in the tempest. Behind the fear, the terror and everything that seemed so awful that night, Divine purpose was governing, producing a nation, bringing a nation to birth - paths in the great waters. That is one thing that we have sooner or later got to settle, that the raging, the terror, the dread, the threatening, the thing that seems to mean our undoing, is being governed by Divine purpose to produce something of tremendous value to the Lord. The recollection of that saved the psalmist when he was crying out with these questions: "Has God forgotten to be gracious? Is His lovingkindness clean gone for ever?" The psalmist was in a state of distress. I think he was expressing the state of the people at that time, and wondering whether the Lord had not forsaken His people altogether and left them. Then he says, 'Let us look back, let us go back to our beginning as a nation; were we not born in a threat? Did we not begin our history in what seemed to speak destruction? Was it not in the most terrible tempest that we, by the mighty power of God, came forth as His people, delivered, saved, set apart?' That recollection saved the psalmist in his hour, and we have to get to the place where we say with every new tempest raging, every threat, all dread and fear, fierce attack, whatever it is: 'God has something in this; purpose governs.' But then, that involves something else.

Divine Wisdom Dictating

The other mountain peak is this: Divine wisdom dictating; not only that there is purpose which is the end, but wisdom dictating the way to that end. The psalmist looked back and saw, 'Oh, at the time we could see no wisdom of God at work, the way we were going seemed to be such a confused way, a contradictory way; it seemed to be anything but the dictating of Divine wisdom; but now I can see. God chose the way, the method and the means which He knew would most effectively reach His end, and we have to negotiate that mountain.' It does seem so strange, the way the Lord takes. What is the Lord doing? Why? We ask all these questions. Wisdom is dictating the way to the end.

Divine Love Controlling

And then, Divine love controls. The end, the way, the motive, the pilot... but not a disinterested detached pilot just doing his job without any heart relationship to the people in his care. The metaphor changes at once - 'Ah, there is something more in it than that; God is not just negotiating through difficulties in a cold, detached way; He is a shepherd.' And if there is one picture in the Bible of a heart relationship to others, it is the picture of the shepherd. God's heart is bound up with His people, and the psalmist says an interesting thing here. "Thy way was in the sea, and Thy paths in the great waters, and Thy footsteps were not known." What does he mean? Go back again, after it is all over, to the other side of the Red Sea. The wind has quieted down, and the tempest has come to rest, and you look to see where His footprints are, and you cannot find them. You cannot say, 'He did it like this and that.' The fact is He did it; that is all, and you cannot explain how. The psalmist is saying: 'That is how God does things.' He does it, the most wonderful thing, the things which involve the whole question of life and death for us. He did it, and now you just cannot see any trace of how He did it, but it was done. Do we not have to say that? Yes, we come up against a situation like the Red Sea and say, 'How are we going to master this? What is the Lord going to do with this problem?' We look back and say, 'The Lord has done it again and again, but how, I do not know.' "Thy footsteps were not known." You cannot trace out how the Lord does things, but He does them. He brings the mighty tempest to serve His end by His wisdom, in His love, because He is the Shepherd of His flock; that is, His heart is bound up with us. It matters to Him about us.

Chapter 5 - The Way of True Discipleship

Reading: Matt. 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11.

We see in these passages of Scripture the beginning of discipleship so far as the Lord was concerned. The first time that the word is used and mention is made of the Lord having disciples was at Cana in Galilee at the end of the turning of the water into wine. From then onwards, at different places in the country and at different times, the word 'disciple' is used of them, and we see in these passages the calling of such, and therefore the beginning of discipleship. 'Disciples' simply means 'learners', those who are to learn, and that by association with the Teacher.

Now, in the records of the calling of the disciples, or in their relationship with the Lord, there seems to be a gap at one point. Simon, Andrew, and John went after the Lord and were completely captivated by Him, and it becomes quite clear that, while they were disciples of John the Baptist, they transferred their discipleship at a certain point to the Lord. But the gap was between the initial calling and the point at which they made the full and final break. In between they went back to their fishing, as we read in Luke.

It is quite clear that Simon knew the Lord before this incident and had a kind of relationship with Him which meant a certain degree or a certain kind of obedience. There was an understanding between them; there was a relationship already existing, but they had not finally left their boats and nets and their work as fishermen. In a sense they were already disciples up to a point. They had gone so far; there was an understanding between them and the Lord. There was a relationship, but the relationship had not yet arrived at the point where everything else was abandoned for Him. That came, as we shall see later, on certain grounds.

The point for the moment is this gap, and during the gap this incident occurred which we have just read in Luke, referred to as the 'miraculous draught of fishes'. That is placed between an initial relationship and understanding which just goes so far, and the full break and entire abandonment of all for the Lord, and therefore this incident has peculiar significance, coming into that gap. You see, they are in a way disciples, but that discipleship was not intended to remain in that realm and on that basis indefinitely. They were called to learn in order that they might do; "He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him, and that He might send them forth" (Mark 3:14). "That they might be with Him" - that is the discipleship; "and that He might send them forth" - that is the apostleship. They may be two different things, or two halves of one thing, and in between, at some point, in some way, in between the discipleship and the apostleship (that is, in between the relationship with the Lord for instruction, for discipline, and the effective service) certain things have to take place. It is not always a time matter at all; it is just how quickly we learn. The two things may be going on more or less at the same time - that we are disciples and apostles at the same time, for these men were that at a certain point. But something has to come in to carry us from the point where we are only in an indefinite way the Lord's disciples, and the full way which leads to the realisation of the full purpose for which we have been called of the Lord, the object for which He has called us into fellowship with Himself.

The Value of a Practical Background

There are two things to say about that. One is, firstly, the great importance and value of a practical background. These men were trained fishermen. It seems it was a kind of limited liability company, and Simon was the managing director. The two families are mentioned working together, and they were partners with Simon. How very much their natural training and background is drawn upon in their lives. It is very impressive, if you just read Mark's Gospel alone, to see how much the sea and fish, and fishing, are mentioned. "He walked by the sea" is constantly reiterated in Mark. These men had that practical, temporal background which was going to be of tremendous value, and the Lord Himself drew upon it. They knew something about the sea and what you might expect on the sea; they knew something about fish and what you might expect where fish were concerned and how to go to work in catching them; they knew something about nets. All that was going to stand them in great stead in the other realm where the sea is the world; the fish the multitudes of men in the world; the sea and the fish together - the whole mass of humanity, and the ways of God in taking men alive. It is interesting to follow Peter through from the day of Pentecost onwards, and see that higher spiritual wisdom at work in his life in relation to men. In the same way we can look at the church and the Spirit's wisdom in the world, taking hold of men.

My point is this, that training and values here in this world in a temporal way are not wasted. There is a sovereignty behind the way in which the Lord deals with us in our lives here. In some cases there may be a very full and complete training along a certain line. In other cases, the way of the Lord's sovereign dealings with us may be different. Some He has led this way and some that. Some have been led for some reason (perhaps they do not know why) to take up this line of work or that, and they become efficient or trained in that. Others find that their background is different from their current task, but when looked at from the Lord's standpoint, the way the Lord has dealt with us is not meaningless or without value. There are some, of course, who would say, "If only I had been trained in this or that! If only I had this in my hands!" Well now, the time may come, if it has not already come, when even such people will be able to say, "Well, that has provided a very real ground for knowing the Lord and for knowing people and being able to enter into the lives of others; it has not been wrong, a mistake or a misfortune." Sometimes it is something quite definite and concrete, as with these men who were expert in their trade. I do not know what Matthew might think about it. He had to sit at a desk receiving tribute money as a servant of an invading, occupying nation. Perhaps he reflected on that with a good deal of questioning. The Lord sovereignly has a place for our background, and we must not take the attitude of discarding it as something that does not count for anything. It will find a place just as with these men it had a very definite place. It will find a place if we trust the Lord and not just clean the slate of everything of the past as if there had been no sovereignty of God in it at all. That is a very important thing to remember and, whether you are able to recognise it now or not, the time will come when you will not be sorry that your former life was as it was. You will see that under the hand of the Lord, it really has been a ground upon which He has been able to work, and out of which He has been able to get peculiar values. That is one thing here. The Lord took up these men, and transferred their past history to a higher realm and made use of it there - with a higher wisdom of course, and an entirely new understanding of things.

Capitulation to the Lordship of Christ

The other thing that is quite clear here is this crisis in the life of Peter. If he is managing director, if he is the head of the firm, of course he is a representative one. He is, in the light of the big place that he is going to occupy in the future, the leader in the church at the beginning. It was through him, after recovery, that the scattered brethren were related and gathered. It was by the leadership which was given to him by the Holy Spirit that the first big movements of the church were made. We cannot get away from the fact that in a spiritual sense afterwards, he is still the managing director, so to speak; he is still the man who influences the situation and influences the other lives and is the centre of the church. When he was put in prison, the whole church made prayer for him; he is the key to the situation. Well, in the light of the influence that he will exert, the position he will hold, he has to be dealt with in a representative way.

Now just think of the managing director, the head of this firm of fishermen, having toiled all night and having caught nothing, being told in broad daylight by someone who is not a fisherman at all, whom he has not yet recognised as the Son of God but only as the prophet, the Messiah (a carpenter more used to agriculture than seafaring, who naturally has no knowledge and no authority in this realm of Peter's, in which Peter is an expert) to let down the nets. Now here is an interesting thing. He objects, has his reservations - "We toiled all night, and took nothing; but at Thy word I will let down the nets." He has used the word, 'Master'. That is a peculiar word, it is not the usual word for Teacher or Rabbi. It is a very rare word which means simply Superintendent, and that, I say, is significant, that Peter should have got that far and said, "Well, I am boss in this firm, but You are my boss. I give way to You because I recognise You as head of this whole business!" But when he had taken the draught of fishes, he said, "Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." The word here is 'Kurios', meaning absolute Lordship. He is the Lord Jesus Christ. This is another realm altogether, not in the temporal but in the universal, the transition from superintendent to absolute Lordship. Now, that transition indicates the movement from discipleship to apostleship. "Thou shalt take men alive." The Lord has so governed this whole matter as to bring Simon, this one who knew all about it and could do it all, and who had the position, to a place where he has discovered his own helplessness and futility. Then he discovers in his own utter futility that the Lord can just very simply do what no expert would ever imagine could be done. You do not go out fishing in broad daylight, especially in those parts of the world. If you have toiled all night and taken nothing, you conclude that there is nothing doing, so you clean up your nets, hang them up to dry, and when things are more favourable, you will try again. But in the most unfavourable, naturally speaking the most hopeless situation, here is the tremendous reverse from heaven.

The fact is - we have got to face it - that sooner or later everyone who is going to be used of God will, under the Divine sovereignty, come to a full recognition of their own utter futility. In the hour of that recognition, of course, the enemy will pounce. When we are feeling worthless and helpless, he will say, "You are no good, you had better give it all up and quit!" But let us recognise that such times of manifested worthlessness when we feel and know that we in ourselves are a failure, are absolutely necessary to having greater usefulness to the Lord. The Lord will not have any natural experts in His service. There are no natural specialists in the service of God, no experts, no people who know how to do it and are capable of doing it. The Lord has no place for them or for those who think they can. Simon is a representative one; he stands at the head of all discipleship and says, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." How utterly futile! The Lord, of course, did not depart from him; He went on with the work of training.

The foundation of all training, all discipleship unto usefulness is exactly that. The foundation is your coming to know that it is no use, you have not got it; however much you may think you can, you just cannot do it. It does not matter how much training you have had; you cannot do it. It does not matter what the past has been. You may be the head of an important firm - it does not count here. You have touched another realm in which things are different. You cannot get away with it here; it is the Lord in this realm. It is another superior realm, altogether greater, but one which has to produce in us one thing.

It says, "he was amazed", and so were the others. No one who is conceited is ever amazed. No one who thinks they can do it and know all about it is ever amazed. If you come to the place where the whole situation is utterly impossible, proved to be impossible, and you know that it is not in you, and then the Lord does something, you are amazed. You can do nothing but go down on your knees and worship.

That is the double side of discipleship and training for usefulness - and let us lay it to heart. When Moses thought he could do it and he went out and took the thing in hand and started to throw his weight about, that was an end of his usefulness to the Lord for forty years. When he came to the place where he said, "I cannot - although mighty in word and learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians - yet, I cannot!" - that is the time the Lord began, and gave him the illustration of the bush filled with fire and not consumed. There is something supernatural about this and not natural at all, in the service of God. This is the way of our calling: to constantly be reminded that we have not got it, we cannot do it; but on the other hand, that the Lord can, and the Lord is doing it. So, while we have no faith in ourselves, we have faith in the Lord over against ourselves. This is the way of true discipleship.

Chapter 6 - The Way of Spiritual Increase

Reading: Gal 4:21-31; John 3:6; Rev. 12:1-11,13,15,17.

In Galatians 4 we have Abraham and his two wives, Sarah and Hagar, and the two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. Abraham, such as he was, with all that he was, was a man of faith, a man to whom an initial revelation had been given, a man who at the beginning had been separated from the world unto God. The apostle says here that at a point in his life where he was undergoing a very severe test of faith, God broke his life into two. God created a fork in his life and from Abraham there came two courses. The apostle says that those two courses were the flesh and the Spirit, or the carnal and the spiritual (not the regenerate and the unregenerate) but both taking their course from Abraham, a man separated unto God, a man in the way of faith.

The apostle takes hold of this and uses it in a double way. First of all, he shows its application to Israel and the church. Israel after the flesh at the time at which Paul wrote, corresponded to Ishmael, the child of the flesh, the ordinary natural course, having had its origin in Abraham. It was a good origin nevertheless, out from what initially and originally was truly according to God, but by deviation there came in something wholly other than the Lord's mind. While still being, in a sense, the Lord's, it fell far short of His original intention, being altogether different from His thought for His own. In time it became a veritable menace to His thought. That is, Israel after the flesh, as Israel came to be a carnal seed. The church is, over against that, speaking generally, the heavenly seed, the spiritual, that which is according to God's mind.

But then the thing is pressed further, and it is shown that that second thing, the church, has a fork. There is a point at which it divides, and even in the church, that which had such a wonderful origin, that which at its inception was so wholly according to God as was Abraham, now at a certain point in its history also divides and in the church there are the carnal and the spiritual. This is found right through the whole history of things related to God. It did not begin with Abraham. We find it beginning with Cain and Abel, the first children of Adam, and it is found everywhere and persists right down through the ages, and as with Isaac and Ishmael, so with the church. There is always an irreconcilable conflict between the carnal and the spiritual. God never says anything in the direction of reconciling or bringing about an understanding and a co-operation between the two. God is utter and final in His attitude toward flesh and Spirit, the carnal and the spiritual. He says that these two things are as far apart as the heavens are above the earth. His thoughts are much higher than the carnal thoughts of Israel. There is the range of the heavens and the earth between the two, and they never can be reconciled. "As he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, so also it is now" (Gal. 4:29). And it is not only true between Jew and Christian, it is true in the church between the carnal and the spiritual, and the Lord's conclusion about this matter is not 'Reconcile', but, 'Expel!' "Wherefore cast out...".

We come to the book of the Revelation and we remember that that book was not written upon a chronological principle and basis, it is written in spiritual order. The last thing said in the Revelation in the message to the churches is: "Because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold I will spew thee out of My mouth" (Rev. 3:16). I take that to mean, 'You are Christians and yet not Christians; you are not utterly outside. If you were, there would be a chance of evangelizing you and getting you saved, but because you are inside and have come to this established position with your carnal mind and life, you are in a hopeless position so far as My purpose is concerned. I cannot evangelize you; I cannot do anything with you but spew you out.' "Cast out the bondwoman and her son"; "I will spew you out." I am not so sure (though I am not going to be dogmatic about it) that that does not get to the heart of Revelation 12. There is a man-child company (obviously plural) which is caught up to God and to His throne to rule the nations with a rod of iron. That word had already been said to one of the churches, to that very church to which we have referred - Laodicea; "He that overcomes, I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne". That is the issue of the spiritual over the carnal. That man-child company was caught up to God and His throne. Then the end of the story is that the dragon went away to make war with the rest of the woman's seed.

You have the two seeds in the church, not the regenerate and the unregenerate, but within the church itself. They are the seed of this woman, they are her children who are the rest of her seed. Why have they not been caught up? Why are they not with the Lord in His throne? Why are they there in the wilderness for this period? May it not very well be that they represent the carnal among the Lord's people, who were not spiritual enough to be caught up? Leaving all matters of times out, it is the principle of this thing that we must recognize - how God sets His heart, thoughts, and purpose upon the spiritual among His people, and how the time must come when that legalistic, unspiritual, carnal 'Christian' order of things which exists and which is predominant as to its opportunities and its earthly power, will be spewed out of God's mouth. Is it not becoming apparent that Christianity in its organized, systematized, earthly sense, is losing its place with God? God is setting it aside and looking for something within that great mass that answers more to His thought - a spiritual company.

If that is true, that is the point of His word to us, and especially the point of His speaking to Christians today, to indicate that His thought is bound up with Isaac and not with Ishmael. He is committed to Ishmael inasmuch as Ishmael has come on to the ground of grace. I mean that if anybody is a Christian, however carnal, if they have accepted Christ as Saviour, then God is bound up with that one and with that people as with Ishmael, but He has not bound up His full purpose with that people. His full thought is with the Isaac company, the children of the Spirit, the children who have as the very basis of their life an impossibility were it not for God. It was impossible that Isaac should be, but for God; and that is the basis of the very course and history of the Isaac seed, that it is initially and continuously a matter of God, or it is nothing. It is God coming in at the beginning and God coming in all the time in the miracle of resurrection. But for God, there could be no existence, no going on; it is God who is the very life and existence of that people. That is the Isaac seed. We are of Isaac, says the apostle.

Well, we apply this to ourselves. God has all His interests and purpose bound up with the spiritual people, and God will, sooner or later, cast out, spew out that which is unspiritual. It represents a tremendous divide that God has placed between these two which will work out to its final conclusion; they cannot persist together indefinitely.

Now there is this other thing that I am wanting to get to. It is the increase of that which is spiritual. The apostle here quotes from Isaiah 54:1: "For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for more are the children of the desolate than of her that hath the husband." This is a strange quotation interjected by Paul here, and you need to look at it in its context. It evidently had a double meaning. Isaiah 54 is a wonderful chapter. It begins like that.

"Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations; spare not: lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes. For thou shalt spread abroad on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall possess the nations, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth; and the reproach of thy widowhood shalt thou remember no more. For thy Maker is thy husband; the Lord of Hosts is His name: and the Holy One of Israel is thy Redeemer; the God of the whole earth shall He be called. For the Lord hath called thee as a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even a wife of youth, when she is cast off, saith thy God. For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In overflowing wrath I hid My face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting lovingkindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer ... O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will set thy stones in fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires" (Isa. 54:1-11).

That is quoted right here at this point where the apostle is speaking about the carnal and the spiritual. Evidently that had a double meaning, for in Isaiah 54 we have come to that part, that half of the prophecies which looked beyond the captivity to the restoration of Israel. That is the meaning here.

Israel, the Lord's bride, was cast off for her sins, and being forsaken by Him, went into captivity. The remnant returned and is regarded as the whole, spoken of as the whole not as a part only; spoken to as though the remnant were all Israel, the bride. The Lord speaks not to the whole, but to the representative of the whole, the little remnant, the wife who was cast off and who was saying, "Where are all my children gone?" Look back to Isaiah 49:21, and you see that is made more precise: "Then shalt thou say in thy heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have been bereaved of my children, and am solitary, an exile, and wandering to and fro? And who hath brought up these? Behold, I was left alone; these, where were they?" To this remnant that came back the Lord is saying, "You have lost all your children, but I am giving you a new family and a great family. 'Thy seed shall possess the nations.'" He promises a great expanse in restoration, in resurrection from the dead a great expanse and increase. In the first place, that evidently was to apply to Israel literally: cast off for a small moment, forsaken, suffering overflowing wrath, yet gathered again. Historically that applied to Israel.

But Paul, using that in connection with the church, gives it a second meaning and makes it perfectly clear that it had a double application, and it applies here. There is a little company of the spiritual, and if you stand truly for God you will lose (it cannot be otherwise; it is inevitable) you will lose a great multitude of merely carnal Christians; you will lose their fellowship. They will be cut off; God will have to set them aside. The true ones will be but a small remnant, and they will feel that they are shorn and bereft, brought down to something very small, and they wonder whether it is worth it, but the Lord comes in at that point.

This not only works out in the general dispensational application, but it works out in our lives individually and as companies of the Lord's people. We lose the sympathy, the fellowship of the great mass of those who are merely carnal Christians and sometimes we are tempted to wonder what is the real profit and value of being true to the Lord when there are so few who are that. The Lord says in that connection that He is going to realise through the spiritual a great spiritual purpose. There is going to be an expanding family of the spiritual. He is not going to leave it like that. "Thy Maker is thy husband." The Lord is going to get a spiritual company, an ever-growing company of those who are according to His mind. The Lord believes in increase, in fulness. The Lord is not in the end going to have a little insignificant thing as the result of all His labours and His sufferings. The Lord is going to have a great company who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. The end is not going to be just a little thing; it is going to be a mighty thing. Here His word says that while there may necessarily have to be reduction, He is only reducing in order to increase, He is only removing that which does not answer to His thought and cutting it off and setting it aside really to make way for something more according to His mind. That is a principle that the Lord is always putting into operation: getting rid of the thing which stands in the way of the truly spiritual in order to increase the spiritual. There is quite a lot of stuff that really does not serve the highest ends of the Lord. It is going on in us. Sometimes we feel we are reduced to nothing, and all that is left is a mere germ of spiritual life. The Lord is making room for the expansion of that germ in us.

Sometimes it is outward, the Lord has to cut off. As John says, "They went out from us, but they were not of us" (1 John 2:19). The Lord has cut off that which is not going His way in order to make room for something that is. This extends right from the inward life of the individual through the smaller companies to the whole church. The day comes when God comes right down as to the whole thing and spews the mass out of His mouth, but it is only to make room for increase. These words of Isaiah 54 have a double application, not only to Israel, but to the church. "I will lay thy foundations with sapphires." "Thy seed shall possess the nations." The Lord makes room for spiritual increase by getting rid of the carnal that is in the way wherever it is and whatever it is. That is what the apostle is saying here in Galatians. It must go, and he could only see with the Galatians that, if they were returning to a carnal basis, it was the way of being set aside, "You are fallen from grace, you are separated from Christ, you will have to be set aside". So his appeal is to go on on the basis of that which is spiritual and wholly according to God's mind, for that is the way of real increase.

Chapter 7 - The Way of the Glory

"These things spoke Jesus; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee... I glorified Thee on the earth... And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own Self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was" (John 17:1,4,5).

"But this spoke He of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified" (John 7:39).

"But when Jesus heard it, He said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby" (John 11:4).

"These things understood not His disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of Him, and that they had done these things unto Him" (John 12:16).

"And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abides by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:23,24).

"When therefore he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him; and God shall glorify Him in Himself, and straightway shall He glorify Him" (John 13:31,32).

"Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour comes, yea, is come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me" (John 16:31,32).

"He shall glorify Me: for He shall take of Mine, and shall declare it unto you" (John 16:14).

You will have noted the common word in all these passages, which are only a selection from others containing the same word. This word forms a pathway right through the gospel by John. It is the pathway of the glory. You will have noticed, even in this selection of passages which we have quoted, how the Lord Jesus places everything on the ground of His being glorified. For Him, from beginning to end, this was the ground of everything. We should be impressed with that without any exposition of it or enlargement upon it. The fact is overwhelmingly shown and declared and verified in this book, that for the Lord Jesus everything rests upon the ground of His being glorified. The phrase which He used a number of times, and seemed to be governed by very much in His life, was 'the hour'. "Mine hour" (John 2:4); "The hour is come" (John 12:23); "His hour was not yet come" (John 8:20). There was an hour which governed His whole life. There was an all-governing time in everything and that hour, that particular time, was in His mind, coming up again and again as He went along. He called it 'the hour', the hour of His being glorified. It was as though He were bringing out of the future something that governed the present situation, whatever it might be, from time to time.

When you ask what is the glory of the Lord Jesus, what does the glorifying of the Lord Jesus mean, the answer throughout the Bible is this: the glory of God is always the expression of His complete satisfaction. When God is perfectly satisfied, then the glory of God always breaks out. You can trace that through the Old and New Testament. The Lord Jesus was living in the light of a time which He called 'the hour', when the Father's full satisfaction would be realised. He was living in the light of the Father being fully satisfied, the glory of God's satisfaction, and bringing that into every detail of His life.

But you notice that He was governed again and again by this 'hour' business, whatever it was. Begin in John 2 at the marriage in Cana of Galilee - "this beginning of His signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory" (John 2:11). But notice what led up to that: the feast, the failure of the wine, and His mother, anxious and concerned, turning to Him and saying, "They have no wine" (John 2:3). Jesus turned to her and said, "Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come" (John 2:4). But then He acted. After that pause, waiting for something, saying in effect: 'I can do nothing of Myself. I can only do what I do as the Father enables Me, gives Me His sanction to do, and when it comes from the Father it will be quite alright. The Father will be glorified. I am not here to glorify Myself by what I do; I am here to glorify the Father.' In His heart He was saying: 'Father, will it glorify You if I do this thing?' And He got the answer back - 'Alright', and "manifested His glory". His hour, that great future hour of the Father's satisfaction, was brought forward. And that is not imagination and strained interpretation, because you have actual occasions when He said, "Father, glorify Thy name. There came therefore a voice out of heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again" (John 12:28). He was living, you see, in close touch with the Father.

On another occasion, when the feast of tabernacles was at hand, His brethren after the flesh said: "Depart hence, and go into Judea" (John 7:3), implying that everybody was going up to Jerusalem to the feast. He said: "Go ye up unto the feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; because My time is not yet fulfilled" (John 7:8). In effect He was saying, 'I am not just governed by what everybody else does. I am not governed by common acceptance, popular opinion, the fashionable thing to do. I must have it from the Father that this going up is in some way going to be to the Father's satisfaction. You go up.' "But when His brethren were gone up unto the feast, then went He also up" (John 7:10). Strange behaviour, wasn't it? But what was going on inside? It was this all the time: 'Father, are You going to get something out of this? Is this going to be Your pleasure? I cannot do it on any other ground than that it glorifies You. If You are not going to find satisfaction in this, well, let them have all the feasts they like. I will not be there. Let them do what they have always been doing, but I will not be in it. Unless there is something for the glory and the satisfaction and the pleasure of the Father, it is not My hour.' He evidently got the witness from the Father at that moment: 'It is alright. I have got something in this.' And He went up. And, you see, God did have something in His going up.

He was putting everything on the ground of glory, the glory of God in Jesus Christ; the glory of Christ. That is something to govern a life, isn't it? Does this really minister to the glory of Christ, my going here, or not going? What I do, or what I do not do, whether I act, or refrain from acting; how much is this going to minister to His glory? That is the governing thing: a touch with heaven. 'Can I do this? Will I be doing it for my own glory, my own pleasure, my own satisfaction, or does His glory require it? Will it minister to His glory?' That was the basis of the life of the Lord Jesus. He called that 'His hour'. He was governed by the hour of the Father's satisfaction, and that was His glory. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me" (John 4:34). That is only another way of saying, 'My glory is His pleasure.'

So, you see, His life was governed by this. But then you notice from one fragment which we read, this glorifying of the Lord Jesus was the signal for the change of the dispensation by the coming of the Holy Spirit. "This spoke He of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified" (John 7:39). In other words, Jesus is glorified and the Spirit is released. The Spirit comes; the great advent of the Spirit takes place. The dispensation is changed into the dispensation of the Holy Spirit - and how much the Lord Jesus stressed this fact! "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you" (John 16:7). Obviously, He put much more importance upon the Holy Spirit coming than upon His own staying in the flesh.

The signal for the coming of the Spirit, as Pentecost so clearly declares and shows both in the act and in what followed, was Jesus having been glorified. I mean by 'in the act', the day of Pentecost was a day full of the glory of the Lord. Everywhere the disciples went, full of this glory, they were preaching, 'Jesus is glorified! Jesus is on high!' The glory went out over the earth, but the signal for that was Jesus being glorified.

And this is a very practical thing. Whatever we may desire from the Holy Spirit (and we pray for the Holy Spirit when we want power, light, guidance and we ask for the Holy Spirit for a lot of things for a lot of purposes) remember this: the Holy Spirit will only act in any way at all if the motive is the glorifying of the Lord Jesus. Nothing else! You can pray until you cannot pray any more for the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit genuinely will make no response until your motive is that Jesus may be glorified; not that 'I may have something, do something, or be something'. No, nothing like that. Jesus being glorified governs the whole matter of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has put it on that ground. So you can be quite sure of this, that once you are adjusted wholly to the glorifying of the Lord Jesus, truly and rightly adjusted, and have given the Holy Spirit the ground that He wants, then He will move spontaneously.

Notice again - and this is the door through which you enter into such a wealth in this gospel - that this matter of the glorifying of the Lord Jesus was the ground of the reversing of situations from the impossible to the possible, or to the actual. There is a sense in which this whole gospel of John is the gospel of impossible situations which are turned into actualities. Have you ever thought of that? It is a whole series of events from beginning to end, of utterly impossible situations on the natural level. We will briefly take a look at them.

The Marriage in Cana of Galilee (John chapter 2)

First, the marriage in Cana of Galilee. The whole event is proceeding and then suddenly, it breaks down, collapses, for they have no wine. Wine is the key to that thing. It is the whole basis of everything, of the joy and the fellowship, and it broke down there. There is shame, disappointment, reproach, and the bottom, as we say, has fallen out of everything. When the wine fails it is a hopeless situation. What are they going to do? They can do nothing. Everything is at an end. I expect those who knew about it were looking at one another in consternation, and were perhaps afraid to let people know because of the disaster that it spelt, the utter spoiling of the whole thing. It was hopeless. And, mark you, Jesus was very careful - and this comes up again and again in the gospel - to see that it was hopeless. "They have no wine... What have I to do with thee?" 'I am not here just to redeem broken-down social occasions. I am not here just to make things a little more pleasant for people and save them from their embarrassments. I am here for the purpose of doing what is utterly impossible to men. That is why I have come!' Life has broken down. Life is full of shame and embarrassment and disappointment and hopelessness. That is where you begin: a hopeless, impossible situation for man by nature. And He has come in to that, and He showed forth His glory by changing this hopeless situation into not only one of hope, but of realisation. That is chapter two.

John Chapter 3

What about chapter three? This man Nicodemus is trying to find his way into the kingdom, to find the secret of the kingdom of God, and he has all that ever a man could have: a religion and learning. "Art thou the teacher of Israel?" said Jesus. He had everything of tradition, inheritance, position and prestige, everything that a man could have; and still he was dissatisfied, speaking like a man in despair. He was coming to Jesus by night to try and find a solution to his heart problem, and it was a heart problem with this man. Jesus takes great pains to show how hopeless his situation is. He does not take up this man on his own ground and encourage and comfort him. He throws it straight at him - "Ye must be born anew"; "Except a man be born from above he cannot see the kingdom of God." It is hopeless for the best of this world. It is an impossible situation naturally, no matter how much religion you possess.

But Jesus changed that hopeless situation, not only for Nicodemus, but for many more, and for us. He turned it not only into hope, but into realisation in the kingdom. It was an impossible one, you see. My point is that Jesus was continually making it perfectly clear that, but for Him, the situation was impossible, but with Him there is no such thing as impossibility.

John Chapter 4

Was there ever a clearer example of hopelessness than that woman of Sychar? "Thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband." And when she begins to speak you hear her tones of despair: "Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come all the way hither to draw." It is the cry of a woman who has exhausted life of all its hopes and is still in despair. You know what He did with that! Jesus drew out this hopeless situation, didn't He? He made her aware of it; He took pains to let her know. It sounds cruel for Him to bring up her past, but He is letting her see how her own state is a hopeless one in order that He might show that He is the hope of the hopeless.

Still in chapter four: "(Jesus) came therefore again unto Cana of Galilee... And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum... and (he) besought Him that He would come down, and heal his son; for he was at the point of death." Again it sounds so cruel. To this poor, distraught, heartbroken father, with his whole life wrapped up in that boy who was at the point of death, Jesus says: "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will in no wise believe." Is this unkindness? Is it cruelty, lack of sympathy? No, Jesus is drawing this man out to his extremity and making him recognise and acknowledge that only in Him is there any hope. He says, "Sir, come down before my child dies." It is the cry almost of despair, as though he had come to the last resort - Jesus. But that is what Jesus wanted! Only Jesus. There is no other hope. And Jesus did not go. He said, "Go thy way; thy son lives." You know the rest of the story. It is one more of these examples of the impossible.

John Chapter 6

Chapter six: "Whence are we to buy bread, that these may eat?" There was a great multitude of five thousand people. "Philip answered Him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread" - and if you like to look into your Bible and work that out you will find that that represented a year's wages for a labouring man in Palestine - "is not sufficient for them". Two hundred pence was not sufficient to meet this need. Jesus had put the question as a test: 'How can it be done?' 'It can't be done', said the disciples, 'It is hopeless. It is impossible.' "Make the people sit down", said Jesus. Well, you know the rest of the story. The situation is quite hopeless, quite impossible, but is turned to real actuality.

John Chapter 9

Here we find a man born blind. This is strange language and a strange kind of argument. A lot has been made of this and all sorts of things have been said about it. The disciples asked the Master, "Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind? Jesus answered, Neither did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be manifest in him." Well, the man was born blind and, mark you, the man's own language about this shows how he realised the hopelessness of his position. When the rulers challenged him about who it was who had given him his sight and said, "This man is a sinner", the man said, "Why, herein is the marvel... Since the world began it was never heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind." Since the world began! His idea about it, you see, was this: that this was a hopeless situation without question. "Since the world began it was never heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind." That is pretty hopeless, isn't it? Yes, Jesus meant it to be like that for the glory. A hopeless situation!

John Chapter 11

Chapter eleven brings us to Lazarus. And you know the Lord's attitude here! They sent to tell Him, "He whom Thou lovest is sick." He did not dispute that statement about His love; nevertheless He stayed where He was four days. And when at last He came and moved towards the tomb, the sisters said, "Lord, by this time he stinks." The Lord had deliberately forced it up to that to make the situation as hopeless as anything could be naturally. "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby."

John Chapter 21

Go on to the end, the last chapter. What is it? "They entered into the boat; and that night they took nothing." A fisherman's lifelong discernment, knowledge and ability - all exhausted! 'Nothing' is the verdict upon that. Well, you know the rest: "Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and ye shall find." An impossible situation was turned to a glorious realisation, for His glory. He put everything on the ground of His glory.

There is a lot of comfort for us in this. Oh, how often do we despair and feel the hopelessness of things! While Jesus lives there is no such thing as impossibility and hopelessness. It does not require a lot to say that, but, oh, sometimes it is the most testing thing that we could believe that a thing is possible after all. But it is. Many of us have enough experience in this, because He has taken pains to bring us to the place where, but for the Lord, it is the end. But for the Lord there is no more possible. However, again and again, He has changed that hopeless, impossible situation into something for His own glory, putting everything on His glory!

Now do you see what He is doing in all this? He is putting our life upon the same basis as His own. He came and lived His life on that ground, the glory of the Father. Nothing that was not to the glory of the Father could be done. All was to be to the glory of the Father. Everything was tested and challenged by this: 'How much does this serve the glory of the Father? If it does not, there is no place for it. Only if it does do I entertain it.' Now He turns that over and puts our life on to that same ground. He put the people in Cana on that ground. He put the woman of Samaria on that ground. He put Nicodemus on that ground.

The Pool of Bethesda (John Chapter 5)

And I left out one case: the man at the Pool of Bethesda. What a story of hopelessness that is, in chapter five! This man will let you know that he feels his situation is a hopeless one! He had been there thirty-eight years, and every time he tried to get into the water someone got ahead of him. A cry of despair - and Jesus changed it. He was putting this man's life on the same basis as His own.

All the way along it was like that. It is a very safe position to have your life on the same basis on which the Lord Jesus had His. And, you know, that is the destiny of the church. What is it that Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians? "Unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever" (Eph. 3:21). How? Just this way: that the church's life has been a life of impossible situations turned to glorious realisations. Is not that the history of the true church all the way along? See at the beginning, and you say 'Impossible!' Nero slaughtering ten million Christians! That shows how the church had grown, how quickly and mightily. But it is computed that he massacred no fewer than ten million Christians! Well, that is a lot, and leaves things pretty small, weak, and hopeless. And again and again the church has gone that way through history - but on it goes. It is greater than ever today. Hopeless and impossible... but for Jesus! And what is the object, what is it that is governing this? Oh, it is not because the church is anything, or that you and I are anything; His glory governs everything. It is unto His glory - "Unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus."

There is much more that supports this in those passages which we read. You remember one occasion near the end, at the Feast of the Passover, there were at Jerusalem among the multitude certain Greeks going up to the Feast. They were going about looking at the sights of Jerusalem and they included in their sightseeing this One of whom everyone was talking, Jesus of Nazareth. They came to the disciples and said, "Sir, we would see Jesus." Philip comes and tells Andrew; Andrew comes, and Philip, and they tell Jesus. And what did Jesus say? Immediately - "The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abides by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:23,24). How is Jesus glorified? How is Jesus really seen? They said, "We would see Jesus", and Jesus said, in effect, "You don't just see Me when you see Me after the flesh. You see Me when you see 'a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples and tongue' (Rev. 7:9). One Grain, having died, reproducing itself in a mighty harvest. That will show forth My glory. That will let you know who I am. Not just one of the sights of Jerusalem, but one of the sights of heaven." It is a new revelation and knowledge of the Lord Jesus. That was the thought there: how Jesus is really known or seen, how He is produced in other grains of wheat, in you and me, and in many others. That is how He is glorified. He puts our life on that basis.

And so He says to us that it is to be the same with us as it was with Him, falling into the ground and dying. And He immediately adds, "He that loves his life loses it; and he that hates his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal" (John 12:25). You let your life go for Christ, you pour out your life unto death in His interests, and glory will come along that line. That is the way of the glory.

I think I have said enough to make my point clear. This is the work. The Lord Jesus has put everything of His own life and ours upon this one foundation - His glory - challenging and testing everything according to that; governing everything by that, saying to us, "Now, it must be true of you as it was of Me that you have your life governed by one motive and one interest: how much does this minister to My glory?" That dismisses all talk about, "Well, must I?" or, "May I not?" "Have I got to?" There is no place for any talk like that, dear friends, when we are mastered by this - His glory. "If this does not serve His glory, then I'll let it go", and, "If this way can lead to His glory, no matter what it means to me, then that is the way I am going." It is the way of the glory all the time, the ground of the glory.

May the Lord write this word deep in our hearts and make us men and women, people, who are committed to the glory of our Lord Jesus!