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Austin-Sparks.Net

Email: info@austin-sparks.net

ISBN: 978-1-927223-97-0

In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks' wishes that what was freely received should be freely given and not sold for profit, and that his messages be reproduced word for word, we ask if you choose to share these messages with others, to please respect his wishes and offer them freely - free of any changes, free of any charge (except necessary distribution costs) and with this statement included.

"The Rights of God"

by T. Austin-Sparks

This book was first published in German as "Die Rechte Gottes" and was from notes taken from messages spoken in Switzerland in 1936. The reader should therefore not expect the usual T. Austin-Sparks style, and of course it is in a condensed form. This version from Emmanuel Church, Tulsa, OK. First printed in 2006.

Contents

Publisher's Introduction

Chapter 1 - The Starting Point For The Working Of God

Chapter 2 - Dependence Upon God

Chapter 3 - The Place of God in His House

Chapter 4 - Prophetic Service

Chapter 5 - The Rights of God and Grace

Chapter 6 - God's Rights in His House

Chapter 7 - The Way to God's Fulness

Chapter 8 - Bethel  God's House

Chapter 9 - The Victory Over the Powers of Darkness

Chapter 10 - Christ and the Rights of the Father

Publisher's Introduction

Some years ago we came into the possession of a little German booklet by T. Austin-Sparks, called 'Die Rechte Gottes'.

It was not the translation of an English publication by 'A Witness and a Testimony', but written by a deaconess from the notes she took during a conference with brother Sparks, at the main Deaconess House, Gümligen, Switzerland, in 1936.

The reader should therefore not expect the usual T. Austin-Sparks style, and of course it is in a condensed form.

Nevertheless, we were greatly blessed by it and send it out with the prayer that in these last days, God may have His rights amongst His people.

Original Foreword

The following messages are a free rendering of messages given by T. Austin-Sparks at the main Deaconess House ('Siloah', Gümligen, Bern, Switzerland, 1936). In thankfulness for the rich blessing received of the Lord, we now send them out in print with the prayer that the Lord Himself will place them in the hands of those whose hearts are prepared and that God will possess in them His full rights.

May the Lord use this little book to prepare His church for His soon return. With the Spirit and with the Bride we cry: "Come quickly, Lord Jesus!"

Chapter 1 - The Starting Point For The Working Of God

Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:18 to 2:2.

"For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, Who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord."

And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified."

In all His dealings with us God has His particular starting point. He will not deviate or change from this starting point. Whenever men have attempted to bring God to their starting point, they have always had to recognize that God insists on His starting point.

We must recognize something of particular importance, that our progress in spiritual life is completely dependent upon this special starting point. Many have discovered this to their cost. They have embarked on many things with every good intention and devoted much time and effort to them, which they have then had to completely undo. They have had to unlearn much. However, that which they considered loss worked to their advantage. Had they not returned to God’s starting point, they would have been stunted throughout their whole life, and remained inhibited people unfit to bring forth that which God had determined for them.

God’s starting point for us is related to the fact that we must surrender to Him completely. Even though at the beginning we will not know all that this involves, nevertheless it is essential that we take up a position in which we can to some extent say: I do not know what my complete surrender to God involves; into what depths He will bring me; but I am ready for it. May God’s will be done in my life.

With such an attitude as this, a living fellowship with God will open for us upon which all else depends. We can call this starting point ‘new birth’. Whatever we call it, the main thing is that we have entered into a real living relationship with God, a completely new life: where it is no longer us, but in truth all from God.

We have two examples in the Word of God. In the Second Book of Kings, chapter 5:1–11, we are introduced to Naaman.

“Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria: he was also a mighty man in valour, but he was a leper. And the Syrians had gone out by companies, and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid; and she waited on Naaman’s wife. And she said unto her mistress, “Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! for he would recover him of his leprosy.” And one went in, and told his lord, saying, “Thus and thus said the maid that is of the land of Israel.” And the king of Syria said, “Go to, go, and I will send a letter unto the king of Israel.” And he departed, and took with him ten talents of silver, and six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, saying, “Now when this letter is come unto thee, behold, I have therewith sent Naaman my servant to thee, that thou mayest recover him of his leprosy.” And it came to pass, when the king of Israel had read the letter, that he rent his clothes, and said, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy? wherefore consider, I pray you, and see how he seeketh a quarrel against me.”  And it was so, when Elisha the man of God had heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, “Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes? let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.”

So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, “Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.” But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, ‘Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper.’”

So we are introduced to Naaman. We see an eminent man.  He is powerful and highly honoured, but—a leper.  One day, he stands before the house of Elisha. The king of Syria sends a messenger to inform Elisha of his arrival. Elisha, however, does not take any notice of the position of this great army leader, but simply sends a messenger to tell him, "Go and wash in the river Jordan seven times.” Humanly speaking, Naaman’s anger is understandable. Had he come all this way simply to be dismissed in this manner? Were not the waters of his own country better than the miserable Jordan? Elisha had not even had the decency to come out and greet him personally. That would have been the very least he could have expected. In anger Naaman turns away; by no means is he ready to follow these instructions.

Naaman expected that God should have begun at his own starting point. God ought to have recognized who Naaman was.  Naaman’s intention was to make an impression on the prophet and therefore upon God. With this in mind he had brought with him camels loaded down with valuable goods. They all counted for nothing. Elisha did not take the slightest notice of these things. “Go and wash in Jordan seven times.” That sounded too humiliating. Did a Naaman have to endure such treatment?

But wait—let us remember that the whole question here is connected with the question of fellowship with God.  It concerns our fellowship with God. Either Naaman goes the way of God, where he is no more anything, or he must give up everything. God begins with us there where we recognize and accept our nothingness, that is, God begins with us at the Cross. The starting point for all the blessings in Christ remains the Cross of the Crucified.

What applied to Naaman also applied to Nicodemus. John 3:1-8 says:

“There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto Him, “Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with Him.” Jesus answered and said unto him, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus saith unto Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?”  Jesus answered, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.’”

We can think of Naaman as a man of the world; on the other hand, Nicodemus represents the so-called religious people. But with God, none of this matters at all. Even our religion, our piety, our strivings: all are meaningless. God takes no notice of any of these things. Whether we seek healing from leprosy, an illustration of extreme poverty in the midst of great wealth, or whether we have other desires, recognition of our public position—God brings both to the same starting point. Whether the one must dip himself seven times in the Jordan as a sign that a complete death to one’s own self must take place, or whether it is said of the other, “Except a man be born again”—in both cases it is the same: the starting point of God with us is the end of all that we are in and of ourselves.

This is as valid for the ‘religious’ person as it is for the ‘man of the world’. There is no such thing as a second-hand knowledge of God. God cannot be ‘studied’. All true knowledge of God is a personal, immediate, living experience of Him. All else is so-called theology, our own thoughts about God, philosophy.

Has it become clear from what we have been saying that God can make no use of that which we are of ourselves? We may have travelled on a long, perhaps ‘pious’ road; but God cannot use that. God begins with us at the Cross. Living fellowship with God is only for those who are born of God. Naaman did not know God. In the case of Nicodemus, we cannot say this. Nevertheless, Nicodemus had no more life from God than Naaman.

This presents us with some serious questions. It presents us with the question: am I born again? Have I experienced resurrection? Is my relationship with God based on personal experience? Do I know what it means to be dead and buried? Or is this all simply knowledge? Are these ‘truths’ that I have accepted without having experienced them and stood in their full reality?

If we want to act according to the rights of God, then it is of utmost importance to begin at that point at which the rights of God have their highest confirmation, at the Cross of Calvary, where only one thing remains for us: to give God His rights in continually relinquishing all of ‘our’ rights.

In the seventh chapter of Mark, and the fifteenth chapter of Matthew, we find the report of the Syrophenician woman. Here too we are faced with the same starting point for all the blessings of God.

God Himself had drawn a line between Jews and Gentiles. Israel was by right heir of the blessing. The Gentiles lived outside the promises.  In the case of the Syrophenician woman, we see something different. While Israel insisted upon the blessing of God as being a matter of course, she seeks it. The blessing she seeks is for her a matter of life and death. At the same time, she has no right to it. The Jews were proud of their race. They were the people.  What could be lacking in them? They were not aware of any particular need. Everything for them was ordered by tradition. Traditional, yes, but no longer spiritual. And because for them the blessing had become a matter of tradition, they no longer had any longing for it in their hearts. With them there was no yearning, no expectation, no stretching out to receive it. “They that are whole have no need of a physician” (Matt. 9:12). But their health was only in their imagination. They did not know that they were blind—or how blind they were.  Therefore Jesus goes way over the boundary to that place where He comes into contact with people who have recognized their need.

But then they need to be brought to the starting point that enables God to bless them, to bless them in truth and in fulness. Matthew fifteen, and verses 22-28 says:

“And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto Him, saying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.” But He answered her not a word. And His disciples came and besought Him, saying, “Send her away; for she crieth after us.”  But He answered and said, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Then came she and worshipped Him, saying, “Lord, help me.”  But He answered and said, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.”  And she said, “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”  Then Jesus answered and said unto her, “O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.”  And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.”

The woman pleads: “Have mercy on me, O Lord.” He pushes her aside. Why? Because He has to bring her to a certain point. He must test her.  Would she be insulted? This may well have been possible. But then she would have had to return home without a blessing. So she remains insistent.

“I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In other words, “You do not belong to those who come into question. I am not sent to you.”

But she remains insistent, saying, “Lord, help me.”

The Lord takes yet a further step. “It is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs.”

Now let us think for a moment. If the Lord were to speak like that to us, what would we do? Would we not turn our backs on Him? Would we not be extremely offended, turn away convinced that He did not want to help us, that He had no sympathy towards us?

Ah, the Lord is putting this woman to the test. However, she does not walk away offended. She seeks the blessing. She does not rest until she has it.  She persists until the blessing of God breaks through that particular dispensation and comes to the Gentiles.

“It is true, Lord,” she says. “I am not appealing to anything of right. I know that I have no right. I am only a dog, but even dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table!”

Then it happened! The victory is there!

“O woman, great is thy faith: be it done unto thee even as thou wilt.”

Do we now see what it all comes down to? The starting point of all blessings is there where it enters our consciousness that we have no valid rights, no valid claims; that before the Lord we are nothing other than beggars.

How different is this than the attitude of Naaman! He thinks first and foremost that he possesses rights, that he can expect his elevated position to be recognized.  The woman, however, says to herself, “If I despite everything, am still to receive the blessing, then this can only happen in one way, that He gives it to me by His grace.”

Let us remember that the sequence of events in this story serves a higher purpose.

We have already said that Israel had refused Him, that they felt no need of the blessing that the Lord wanted to give them. For this reason Jesus went beyond the boundary. For this reason He turned to the Gentiles. The blessing of God is only for those who seek it. But even then nothing will happen until God has come to His starting point. Whether we are speaking of Naaman, Nicodemus, the Syrophenician woman, or ourselves—God’s starting point is there where our own self has come to an end.

All the blessings of God flow from the Cross. God must empty us. God must bring us to the place where He can trust us. This will not happen until we despair of ourselves. Nothing could be more dangerous than to place spiritual blessings into carnal hands.  Many become proud and self-confident because God has blessed them, because God has given them understanding.

The foundation of all blessings is the Cross. If we want to stand in true fellowship with God, then it is only possible on the grounds of the Cross, only possible where all our own strength has come to an end, where we are completely dependent upon Him.

Be assured that God will put us to the test as to whether this is so. We remind ourselves of Elijah and Elisha; of how Elijah attempted to deter Elisha from accompanying him on his final journey. Elisha persevered. Elisha went with him right to the end.  But as they passed through the Jordan, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for thee, before I am taken from thee.” Had he allowed himself to be shaken off, all blessings would have been lost.

The same is true for us. There is no other way to receive the fulness of God in Christ. In no other way does the Lord come to His right with us without us first returning to the starting point of God, there where our old man was crucified with Him—and only when we are prepared to take the position of being crucified with Him will we receive the blessing whatever the cost.  This means, however, at the cost of our own life.

May the Lord bring us to that place, where we can say from the heart: Whatever the cost, I will go with You right to the end.

Chapter 2 - Dependence Upon God

Reading: 1 Kings 17:1–7.

“And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, “As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before Whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.”  And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, “Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there.” So he went and did according unto the word of the Lord: for he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook. And it came to pass after a while, that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land.”

In this passage we meet the Prophet Elijah for the first time. We do not know very much about him. We are simply told that he was from among the inhabitants of Tishbeh in Gilead, and that is no recommendation. If only he had come from Jerusalem or from one of the major Judean towns, for what of significance could possibly come out of Tishbeh!

But see, the very first thing he says shows a man in touch with God. “As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before Whom I stand....”

Elijah, a man who stands before God: that is the turning point of a sad story. In a few words, let us just look briefly at the situation.

The people had fallen away from God. Ahab had done more than all the kings before him to provoke the Lord. His wife, Jezebel, had introduced the worship of Baal. There were relatively few who remained true to God. Therefore, the ministry of someone like Elijah was in the first place to bring the testimony of the Lord once more in the midst of His people. This meant a fight, a fight involving people, a fight with the powers of darkness. Elijah stood against a flood of those who had fallen away from God. This is the reason that the first word we hear from him is of such significance. What he does he can only do because he does it for God. And because he does it for God, he must do it, cost what it may.

Is it necessary to point out that the times in which we live are very similar to those of that time? Therefore in these days the Lord needs an instrument to once again raise up a testimony to His life. We face a spiritual famine. Even if there is a lot of religiosity, spiritual life can hardly be found. The greater will be the falling away from God.

The Lord is looking for a testimony. He is looking for a prophetic ministry. The Lord is looking for a ministry that is in touch with heaven, a ministry that is more than preaching, that is a testimony in the power of the Holy Spirit of the new life that God has given us in Christ.

Anyone recognizing a call to such a ministry dares not avoid the fight. Anyone who bears testimony cannot allow him or herself to be frightened by the powers of darkness. There are those who understand this, those who for the Lord’s sake have found themselves in a fight that is far too big for them to tackle in their own strength. Nevertheless, they stand. They do not just stand; they triumph. They know that they are unconquerable because the Lord is with them. The battle is the Lord’s.

According to the word of Elijah, and this demonstrates his attitude towards God, we would expect anything else but the instruction: “Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith.” How is it that a man who stands before God should hide himself away? Is that not a contradiction? And then, “I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there... and he drank of the brook.”

Let us say the following. Should we wish to represent anything for God, then for the sake of the people and with the people of God we must suffer, so that the purposes of God can be carried out.

We see this also with Paul. He was a personal embodiment of all that the church means in the present dispensation. For this reason he goes through a lifelong experience in order to be a representation of all that the church should be in this time. In his last letter, he writes: “All they which are in Asia be turned away from me” (2 Tim. 1:15). He saw the breaking up of the church on earth. Without the heavenly vision, he would have to say: Everything is falling apart. Everything that I have fought for all my life is collapsing. But instead, he rejoices. He had seen that the church is not earthly, but heavenly; and that she exists in an indestructible unity in Christ and holds together in Him.  Paul went through more suffering than anyone else. That is why he lives today more than ever before.

In the end, God lets Elijah know that He still has seven thousand, who had not bowed the knee to Baal (1 Kings 19:18). Elijah believed he was alone. The seven thousand were a remnant. They were a testimony of faithfulness in a day of declension. But God’s purpose was not just to rescue His testimony. He wanted to bring it to a yet greater fulness. For this reason Elijah had to go through all this suffering—the same for Paul.

It was a time of famine. Elijah suffered along with the rest, and this has always been the case. Whenever God takes up an instrument for a particular purpose, He lets them live through that which is to be the experience of others. God brings His vessel through all the sufferings that are necessary for bringing His purpose about in others. God has never done anything on this earth without first having realized it in a particular instrument.

The prophets are called ‘signs’. We even read of Jesus that He was set as a sign, that is, He must Himself go through all the experiences that are necessary for the purposes of God in connection with Him that are to be realized. With God, no theory is valid. God is reality. And those experiences are reality that God trusts to those whom He sends through particular depths in preparation for a particular ministry.

“As the Lord liveth”. We can stand before the Lord, and still be in battle. To stand before the Lord does not mean to be saved from pain. Quite the opposite.

Something else. Ravens brought him bread and meat. And he drank from the water in the brook. But after a certain time the stream dried up. The Lord took care that Elijah had something, but then He took it from him again. What does that mean? God wants to bring His servants to the point where they recognize that every source of help for their lives comes from heaven. Do not ravens themselves like to eat meat? We have to say that it was supernatural for ravens of all birds to have brought meat to Elijah. Every morning and evening. God was behind it. He had sent the ravens. They would not have come on their own. For some time it continued. Elijah could easily have taken it for granted. But then suddenly it stopped. They stopped coming and the brook dried up. What now?

God said to him, “Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.” She was certainly no wealthy widow. We know what he found there. It had come to the point of baking the last cake and then dying. And the Lord had asked this woman to provide for him.

Let us make sure we see the deeper sense that lies hidden in this story.

When the Lord is in the process of restoring His testimony and forming His instrument as the restoration of His testimony demands, then on the one hand, He takes over the complete responsibility for His maintenance; on the other hand, He teaches His instrument not to look for his maintenance in earthly things, but only from God.

For a spiritual testimony, there can be no natural resources. That is the reason why we see Elijah is, right from the start, totally dependent upon God.

In James 5:17 we find a mention of Elijah. “Elijah was a man of like passions with us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain; and it rained not on the earth for three years and six months. And he prayed again; and the heaven gave rain....”

Elijah knew how to pray. Elijah had learned the secret of prayer. This inner fellowship with God gave him power so that he could step forward and say: “As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before Whom I stand....”

Have we ever tried to encapsulate the meaning of prayer in one word? It is ‘dependency’!

Anyone who has recognized his dependency upon God will pray. Whoever does not pray, does not recognize how dependent he is upon God. Our effectiveness for God depends upon the amount of our dependence upon God, and our prayer life will be the measure of such dependence.

It can be said of Elijah: the whole foundation of his life and service lay in his dependence upon God. God kept him in this attitude. It gave him security and power.

We can say much about Elijah. The Jews thought a lot of him. When they saw Jesus performing tremendous deeds, they thought Elijah had returned. Where was the secret of his greatness to be found, the secret of his powerful and victorious service? What lay behind his destruction of heathen worship, so that the people said again: “The Lord, He is the God!”? It is the absolute dependence upon God. It is that which we see at the brook Cherith, in the house of the widow, and everywhere he went.

Now, that is the starting point for all of God’s work in us: nothing from the world, all from God! Before God attempts to accomplish His great deeds through us, we must be brought to this point. In himself, Elijah was just as we are. But he was a powerful prophet, because in and of himself he was nothing. And he was nothing in and of himself because he was conscious of being completely dependent upon God.

Many think too highly of themselves. That makes them unfruitful for God. It hinders their life of prayer. The Lord must bring us low. Those whom God uses most are they who trust Him alone, who are poor in themselves, but consequently rich towards God; those who are in themselves weak, but consequently are strong in the Lord.

May the Lord succeed in preparing instruments, willing for such dependence, so that He is able to restore through them the testimony of His life in a time when nothing is more needful than precisely that: the testimony of His life.

Chapter 3 - The Place of God in His House

Reading: Isaiah 6:1-7.

“In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory.” And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, ‘Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.’”

God has intended great things for His people. He watches over the realization of His plan. We do well to have recognized the basis on which God completes His thoughts for us. If we long to see God’s full thought for us accomplished, if we yearn for the fulness of Jesus Christ, then we have to know where God starts, we have to discern the secret that governs God’s fulness. In Isaiah 6, we find the key for this. Great things are put before us. It is hardly necessary to say much about the place the Lord Jesus Christ has in Isaiah. His prophecies are well-known enough for us to understand that they are all fulfilled in Christ.

In chapter 9, we find the familiar words:

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

In chapter 11:1,2:

“And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a Branch out of his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.”

Then Isaiah 61:1-3, takes us further to the public ministry of the Lord, and we immediately hear Him say the words:

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me; because the Lord hath anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified.”

In Isaiah 42:1-4, we see Jesus Christ as the suffering Servant of God:

“Behold, My Servant, Whom I uphold; My Chosen, in Whom My soul delighteth; I have put My Spirit upon Him: He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up His voice, nor cause it to be heard in the street. A bruised reed will He not break, and a dimly burning wick will He not quench: He will bring forth justice in truth. He will not fail nor be discouraged, till He have set justice in the earth: and the isles shall wait for His law.”

Isaiah 52:13-15, we see the Lord Jesus exalted and extolled:

“Behold, My Servant shall deal wisely, He shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. Like as many were astonied at Thee, (His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men): So shall He sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at Him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they understand.

And then we are taken further to the Cross, the great fifty-third chapter, and beyond the Cross to His reign.

“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.... Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He hath poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isa. 53:1-3, 10-12)

Thus we have in Isaiah a comprehensive presentation of the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The people of Israel did not fulfil the thought of God. Captivity was the only way left for them. Because God wanted to demonstrate His plan for His people, it was necessary to cut them off from the place of His glory, Jerusalem. A large section of Isaiah points to the captivity which awaited them.

But our attention is now drawn to the context in which Isaiah sees all of these events. Even the captivity stands in connection to the Lord on His throne. What else does this mean, except the irrefutable assurance that God’s will will be done, that God’s plan will be fully realized. But if God wants to reach His goal, then He Himself has to create the prerequisite for fulfilment in His people. Therefore He must educate His people in the school of suffering, by way of purging, so that they will be willing to walk in the way of His thoughts, to act with the deepest interest from the heart for His will to be done.

We find in Isaiah 60 a remnant, those who have become ready for the full realization of the will of God. In reference to them the Word says: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.”

What does the glory of the Lord consist of? Nothing else but Jesus Christ Himself. He is the glory of God. In Him all God’s thoughts and desires in relation to His people are fulfilled.

Isaiah writes: “In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and His train filled the temple” (ASV).

This sentence, “In the year that king Uzziah died” is immensely important. Let us recall the history of this king. He was the king that dared to appropriate the things of God. The priests had warned him: “It pertaineth not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord.” But he became enraged. He forced his will through. The Lord struck him. Leprosy broke out on his forehead. He fled from the presence of the Lord. He died as a leper and—“In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord.” Isaiah sees Him, high and lifted up, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Did Uzziah believe he could put himself in God’s place? Did he believe he could become proficient in the things pertaining to God? He had dared to want to be king in God’s house. He had dared to act with natural power, instead of in the Spirit alone. Then God opposed him and struck him. “You have tried to take My place. This cannot be. This is My house. You must make room for Me.” Then Uzziah fled.  He died, overcome by the judgment of God (2 Chron. 26:16-23; RSV).

The next thing that Isaiah tells us is this: “The glory of the Lord filled the temple.” He saw the Lord on the throne, the throne belonging to Him alone. This is the beginning in Isaiah. This is the beginning of all things that are God’s.

If we want to reach the fulness of Jesus Christ in our life, then God must receive the place in our life that is due to Him. Then He must be the Lord in us, to Whom everything in us bows and Whose will we do entirely.

If we take Isaiah’s vision over into the New Testament, we see it confirmed there in the fullest measure. In Acts 1 we have a new beginning and we see two things there:

Christ in heaven, lofty and exalted, sitting on a throne, and: “Men of Galilee.”

Nazareth was in Galilee. In a certain sense it was a ‘forecourt’. One of the messages of the angels had said: “He goeth before you into Galilee.”  That had a special meaning. Galilee lay outside of the official religious centre. Had not Jerusalem refused the Lord Jesus Christ the rights due to Him? Jerusalem had given the Lord of glory no room. They had rejected Him. They had taken what belonged to God into their own hands. That is why the Lord leaves Jerusalem.  He goes to Galilee. He goes to where He is recognized. “Men of Galilee”.  It does not say: “Men of Jerusalem”.

In Acts 1:13 we read: “They went up into the upper chamber.” They did not go to the temple. The temple was the officially recognized centre of religiosity in Jerusalem. But they did not go there. They went to the upper room. They went to that place which in a vivid way speaks of separation: separation from everything that is only tradition and form. It speaks in a pictorial way of elevation, of that which is higher, separated from the earthly, because it is purposed to be heavenly.

We find Peter and John amongst those who are mentioned first. It is not insignificant that the new name of Peter is found at the beginning. Peter had gone through a deep experience. Peter had learned. He had learned a great deal. There had been a time in which he had raised objections at every opportunity. When the Lord wanted to go to the Cross, he had said: “This shall never be unto Thee.” When Jesus wanted to wash his feet, Peter had said: “Thou shalt never wash my feet.” Despite all his love for the Lord, Peter was clearly self-conscious as well as strongly assertive of his own opinions. But he had learned. When we read his Letters we see that he has much to say regarding submission. The Lord now has the place and room in Peter that He deserved!

This is the reason why his name is mentioned first in the church, because the church must be distinguished by the fact that in her the Lord has the first place. Everything depends on her being totally subjected to Him. Only thus can He fill His house.

But we also read of John. Peter and John are often mentioned together. They belong together. Where there is subjection to the Lord, there is also love. Where self-interest reigns, there is no love. But where there is true submission, we meet love, so that both submission and love form the basis on which the fulness of Jesus Christ is attained.

Could the rushing wind from heaven have been ignored? Hardly. It was too mighty. But in reference to the direction of this wind we need to take note that it came from heaven. It was not a matter of a north, south, east or west wind. It concerned a wind from a unique direction, as a sign that the Lord had taken up His throne to send from heaven the Spirit of power, Who works resurrection in His own people and gives power to testify. Nothing can happen before Christ has taken up His place in heaven. And similarly in us there can be no fulness of Christ as long as we deny Him the throne of our heart.

In his description of the events, Luke is persistently accurate. It was said to be a mighty rushing wind. That is nothing else but a storm. What can we do in a storm? Whoever has been in a real storm knows how helpless one is. There is no point in standing up to the storm. It takes us and carries us away. Through this storm from heaven the Lordship of the Spirit is expressed. The Spirit wants to reign. He does not need our help. Our plans and programs are only in His way. The Spirit alone knows what God wants. Only He knows the hour of God. Only He disposes of the means; only His is the power. The things of God that aim at the fulness of Christ are too big for us to achieve. In theory we admit this. We agree with this from time to time, not without sighing, when once again our plans have come to nothing, when that which we have undertaken for the Lord with the best of intentions has failed. But in practice we continue our own activities. Things are set up and organized. We work and suffer for God—so often in vain....

The whole house in which they sat was filled. Everything is pushed out. There is room for nothing else. It reminds us of the dedication of the temple of Solomon. When the temple was completed and filled with the glory of the Lord, the priests had to leave the temple of God. They could not stay there because of His glory. That means when the Lord fills His house, there is no room left for anything human. Everything that does not submit itself to Him, that does not open itself to Him in love, that is not completely available to Him must go out.

And then tongues of fire appeared. Tongues are figurative of a testimony. The testimony that Christ was crucified, resurrected, ascended to heaven and highly exalted, was there. It was there in a living way in those that had become witnesses of the great deeds of God, and in whom Christ lived in the power of His resurrected life.

Fire on the other hand speaks of judgment. Fire pierces through. Fire tests. It did not take long before the people on the day of Pentecost cried out: “Brethren, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). The fire had tested their hearts. Everything was connected to the issue of the full Lordship of Jesus Christ.

What is the secret of the fulness of the Lord? It is complete submission to Him, so that He receives His full place in those that are His house. Without this there is no fulness of the Holy Spirit. Christ must become Lord in our hearts. He must become Lord in all things pertaining to our life. Christ must become Lord over our thoughts, our desires and over our inclinations. “It is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20).

There we are, back to Isaiah. Isaiah, who by his prophecy is called to lead us to the fulness of the riches of Christ, sees God and cries out: “Woe is me! for I am undone.” It is like that everywhere where the Lord has come to be Lord. Whether it concerns the upper chamber where the disciples are united together, the individual, or any local representation of the church in our day: if God is to achieve His full goal in His temple, then we must recognize His Lordship and bow before Him, so that God can really be ALL, AND IN ALL.

Chapter 4 - Prophetic Service

Reading: 1 Kings 18:17-21.

“And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, “Art thou he that troubleth Israel?” And he answered, “I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim. Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel’s table.” So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together unto mount Carmel. And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people answered him not a word.”

In the previous chapters, we have seen the trouble to which the Lord goes to produce things the way He wants them to be. God needs such a testimony. His plan from eternity is connected to it. This plan cannot be achieved until God’s people have entered into His thought, until they stand experientially in everything that God has given them in Christ. That is, God wants to be ruling in the life of His people. His people should be the living realization of His thoughts. Only in this way does God have what He wishes to have. But if this were to happen, then firstly, everything has to be given to us by God; that which is in God has to have full and undivided importance in our life, so that that which came from God can return to Him.

If only we could grasp the thoughts of God better! There is such a lack of spiritual receptivity. This is because there is a lack of spiritual life; we can only understand the thoughts of God to the degree we walk in them. Where there is a lack of walking in the Spirit, there is also a lack of understanding of God’s thoughts.

How can we forget that we stand in a battle? Satan has tried from the start to bring other thoughts than the thoughts of God into this world, namely his own. As a result of their disobedience, humans beings became subject to this other spirit; man lost his ability to grasp God’s thoughts; the thoughts of the flesh took possession of him. Therefore we see from the beginning two directions of thoughts in battle with each other: the thoughts of God and the thoughts of the flesh. In regard to the latter we could also say: the thoughts of the devil. This is not just the case in undisputed sinners, but the thoughts of religious flesh are also thoughts against God. We have to admit that in Christianity today something pagan co-exists, yes, that in the midst of service for God, and the salvation of souls, methods are used that have nothing in common with the thoughts of God, that are not from His Spirit. What do we mean by this?

We think here of the vast area of psychology. Modern psychology in its spiritual content is completely heathen. It goes back to men who knew only of the difference between soul and body, who were not conscious of the human spirit. This pagan psychology has been taken over by the theology of our time, so that today evangelization is widely practiced on a pagan basis. When I studied theology, we were told that a sermon was successful and had achieved its goal, when the following three points had been considered:

1. To win the intellect of man through facts or evidence.

2. To take into account the feelings of man.

3. To persuade the will of man.

When that was achieved, we would have won the intellect, the emotions and the will of man. But that is nothing else than what we call in psychology the ‘soul’. Mental activity, emotional life and the will is exactly that which the New Testament calls the natural man, who as a ‘soulish’ man is incapable of accepting what comes from the Spirit of God.

Nearly all so-called revivals have happened on this basis. They were mighty movements for the shaking of emotions: mighty persuasions and argumentations were used to influence the understanding and will. What was the result? The natural man has been manoeuvred into Christianity and been made a Christian. We cannot, however, recognize the thoughts of God in this and it has nothing to do with being born again.

According to the Word of God, man is body, soul and spirit. Christ says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). It may be that ‘rebirths’ have occurred in the revivals mentioned above. But there is a difference between, let us say, a psychological rebirth and a rebirth in the Spirit. The one might temporarily carry all the characteristic features of a real rebirth. And yet all of that does not necessarily have anything to do with the Spirit, and in innumerable cases it has had nothing to do with the Spirit. It is a work of man. The disastrous fruit of these often well-meant efforts are devastating. We see how successful the devil was to confuse things; how he has managed to smuggle a whole heathen system into Christianity, a system that has nothing in common with the thoughts of God.

We see the same in reference to the church. Christianity has become a system of human interpretation of the thoughts of God. Spiritual death hovers over it. It is no living testimony for God.

God has given us a burden in our hearts concerning His thoughts. We do not speak to criticize. We speak because we have to. The force of the devil operates there where the wealth of people’s souls are at his disposal. He reaches his purpose through alliances available to him in the soul of man. That is why God endeavours to such an extent to save man from himself, to save him unto God.

We have said that the ministry of the prophets consisted of leading the people back to the thoughts of God. It was a ministry amongst the people of God. It was about the rights of God in His house.

Let us return once more to Elijah, and let us note how things started. It starts with the Lord saying to Elijah: “Go, show thyself unto Ahab!” (1 Kings 18:1). Three and a half years earlier He had said: “Hide thyself!”  (1 Kings 17:3). The prophet had therefore hidden himself all this time until then. But now the word was: “Go, show thyself unto Ahab!”. He stands face to face with Ahab. We remind ourselves about what Ahab said on that occasion: “Is it thou, thou troubler of Israel?” (1 Kings 18:17; RSV). People that stand without reserve for the rights of God will always be considered as enemies by those who reject the thoughts of God. There is the point of view of Elijah, and the one of Ahab. Ahab, who says: “You, the troubler of Israel.” Or Elijah who can reply: “It is not I that have brought Israel into trouble, but you” (1 Kings 18:18). Where did the trouble come from in reality? Did it come from the side of those that wanted things the way that God wanted them? Did it not come from the side of those that denied God His rights? Those that do not want to go the full way with the Lord, who do not have the thoughts of God at heart, they are really His enemies.

On which side do we want to stand? That is the real question. That is what it is about. We know how Elijah expressed himself in reference to his own life: “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts” (1 Kings 19:14). Elijah has a clear picture of what God wants. He can also see through to recognize what does not correspond to God’s thought. But he himself stands outside of these matters. He is not entangled with the exterior. That is why he is able to be at God’s disposal. His devotion includes the willingness to pay the full price necessary for a full restoration of the testimony of God. Consequently, such witnesses will be fought as enemies. Wherever a religious system has come to reign, it will always be held against them that it is they who bring the people of God into confusion. This is what makes the ministry so difficult. This is what makes the ministry so costly.

But behind all of this was Baal. Elijah was not against Israel. It was a blinded nation. Baal stood behind it. The forces of darkness were working in the idolatry into which Israel had surrendered itself. Israel was so deceived that it thought it was doing right in its idolatry. This is the highest level of deception, not seeing that everything one does, also that which is sincerely intended, actually serves the devil. The prophet’s disagreement is not in the first place with Israel. His battle is with the whole spiritual system into which Israel is entangled. ‘Religious’ people would not even rebel against the ministry of the prophet, if the enemy did not instigate them. So they become instruments of the devil. But the prophet is ready to encounter this. He is misunderstood, he is slandered and seen as an enemy; he is marked as the one who troubles Israel. But he has a vision. He does not serve himself. He knows that his standpoint leaves no room for personal ambition. But he has seen God. He is connected to God. And in the special standing which he has with God, the difference between the godly and the human has been revealed to him. With this vision he has become prepared to carry the cost that the service of God demands.

How important it is that we recognize our calling. It determines our ministry. What does it consist of? Has God not revealed His secret to us? Has He not made known to us in His Word what He wants? He has surely spoken to us quietly and has unveiled His thoughts to us. Can we do otherwise but recognize the immense contrast between the thoughts of God and those of men, between that which God wanted as a testimony of heavenly things and that which men have made of it?

Let us proclaim the message of God! Let us give back the thoughts of God to His people! But let us not forget what it costs.

When the Lord shows us such things, a crisis emerges for us. Are we prepared to pay the price? Are we prepared to be called enemies, who apparently want to confuse the people of God? Are we prepared to take a place of full trusting and dependence, if only God attains His goal? We may be slandered and regarded as contemptuous, but what does it matter? As long as God is honoured.

I think we all realize such decisions are final and definitive. The decision that God demands of us takes everything away from us. But how abundant in contrast to this is what God gives us! We have the choice.  We can decide for God with the full consciousness as to what we have decided. The alternative is to reject our calling. We can return to lower, earthly things because of all sorts of reasons. We then lose the vision, and we lose the calling. We have missed “so great a salvation” (Heb. 2:3).

Elijah’s behavior is also meaningful in reference to something else. In his time Israel was divided. He could have accepted the division without complaining about it, wishing for a better time. But he does not accept the separations. He builds an altar of twelve stones, to bring to expression that according to God’s thought the church is an indivisible whole. From God’s point of view she is one body. Did the Lord not say to Jacob: “Thy name shall be Israel”? (Gen. 32:28). As a prince of God he was called to build the house of God. Elijah refuses to present anything to a part of Israel that may only be applied to the whole.

“And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the Lord came, saying, “Israel shall be thy name”: and with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord: and he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed. And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, and said, “Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood.” And he said, “Do it the second time.” And they did it the second time. And he said, “Do it the third time.” And they did it the third time. And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water. And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that Thou art God in Israel, and that I am Thy servant, and that I have done all these things at Thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that Thou art the Lord God, and that Thou hast turned their heart back again.” Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, ‘The Lord, He is the God; the Lord, He is the God’” (1 Kings 18:31-39).

Do we not see the same in the Letter to the Ephesians? Paul sees the church, as far as an earthly representation is concerned, in the process of collapsing. As he looked at his life work from prison in Rome, he had to admit that it did not last. In Asia, in Galatia, in Europe, everywhere he sees failure and breakdown. When he was free he could travel to and fro; he could do his utmost to keep the spiritual state of things going. Now, sitting in prison, he watched the work come to nothing. Some assemblies turned away from him altogether. The state of the church could have caused him to say: It is all in vain. However in reading the Letter to the Ephesians, we do not find the slightest indication of such a point of view. He wrote the letter at the end of his life. Had he written the letter at the beginning, we would say: What a wonderful ideal the church of Paul is. However, Paul wrote it when the church on earth was failing. Despite this, for Paul there is no division. Oneness is the word that governs this letter. What kept Paul from despair was this:

“Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone; in Whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in Whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:19-22).

Paul saw the heavenly reality of the church in Christ. He saw the Body of Jesus Christ in its perfection through the work of Christ. He saw that the Lord did not want to make something for the earth, but that through the Holy Spirit He was seeking to turn from the earthly into the heavenly that which had been redeemed from the earth in Him.

In spirit Paul was standing on the same ground as Elijah. Elijah did not take ten stones to show that he was acting for the ten tribes of Israel. Neither did he take nine and a half stones, leaving aside the two and a half tribes that had not crossed over the Jordan. According to the thought of God he used twelve stones for an altar. A mighty testimony for the unchangeable and glorious realization of the thought of God at the Cross of Golgotha. Elijah stands alone on the top of Carmel. But God stands with him. Like Paul he can say: “All forsook me... but the Lord stood by me” (2 Tim. 4:16,17). He is not scared of the outcome of the fight. He asks for water to be drawn four times. It has to be made as clear as possible that only God can act in the way He did in response to Elijah’s prayer.

What does God want to show us by this? God waits until all hope in human help and human efforts of explanation have come to an end, to show that He is God and no one else.

What wonderful faith do we see in Elijah! What happened on top of mount Carmel is an illustration of the Word in the Letter to the Ephesians: “The exceeding greatness of His power (is directed) to us-ward who believe.”

Elijah had stood up for the sake of the testimony of God. He had suffered because of the recovery of the rights of God. Let us also stand for the rights of God! Even if we are to be considered by some as enemies. The Lord can strengthen us in our testimony, and He will do it. Only let us pay the whole price. Let us not keep anything back. Let us give ourselves completely to God, so that He may have opportunity to realize His thoughts.

This will lead us into battle. What does it matter? We look at the end. After Elijah comes Elisha. The whole life of Elisha is an uninterrupted triumph of life. We also look to the future and know that it will be only life in eternity.

Chapter 5 - The Rights of God and Grace

Reading: Luke 4:17–27.

“And there was delivered unto Him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” And He closed the book, and He gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. And He began to say unto them, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” And all bare Him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth. And they said, “Is not This Joseph’s son?” And He said unto them, “Ye will surely say unto Me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal Thyself:’ whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in Thy country.” And He said, “Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of them was Elijah sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.”

In Luke 4 we see how the Lord is on the side of the prophets. He is the Son of God, but concerning the rights of God He is the Prophet, as was Moses. He came to Nazareth. He was given the book of the prophet Isaiah. Everything that the prophet says finds a sudden living embodiment, but: “No prophet is acceptable in his own country” (v.24). He used the Word in regard to Himself. What separates Him however from the other prophets is the special message of grace.

Grace is the way in which God gains recognition for His rights. What a wonderful proclamation of grace!—

“He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor: He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (verses18,19; RSV).

That is the grace of God. It is the grace of God in Jesus Christ. This is how He introduces Himself to the people. He brings God close to them on the ground of grace. He Himself and His presence are the grace of God. “The grace of God hath appeared to all men” (Titus 2:11).

But now grace has to be demonstrated. He has announced it, but those to whom grace has been offered, have to know what it means. He refers to Elijah and the widow, who was maintained with her son, and to Elisha and the cleansing of Naaman. What is grace? Israel thought that it had a right to God’s blessing. They did not recognize that it was a question of grace. As long as we think we have legitimate claims, we are not on the ground of grace. In other passages we have pointed out how proud Israel was of its special election. That was enough for its downfall. Pride made it blind to the fact of its own need. Because Israel thought it had a legitimate claim to God’s grace, it did not deem it necessary to ask for it.

How different with Naaman and the widow. They know their poverty. They know their need. They also recognize the rights of God and accept through grace that which is not to be had in any other way.

Is it not so? We also know quite well that real devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ is not compatible with the assertion of any demand. Grace is for those who are in need of grace. In Nazareth the people were ‘religious’. Therefore the examples the Lord uses must make clear what is lacking in them. With Naaman and the widow God went beyond the borders of Israel. Was He repeating this strategy? Would He go to the Gentiles because Israel did not need Him? This is what He wants to show them. He wants to open their eyes to their need; to show them that they need grace. But they did not understand Him. They became filled with rage. They stood up and pushed Him out of town. Had it been in their power, they would have killed Him. The Lord however knew their hearts. The Lord knew that they would not recognize grace. But He offered it to them. He offers it to everybody. He sees to it that grace is accepted as grace, as that which we cannot earn through anything, which is not to be had in any other way than by taking possession of it as grace.

“And He arose out of the synagogue, and entered into Simon’s house. And Simon’s wife’s mother was taken with a great fever; and they besought Him for her. And He stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and it left her: and immediately she arose and ministered unto them. Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto Him; and He laid His hands on every one of them, and healed them. And devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, “Thou art Christ the Son of God.” And He rebuking them suffered them not to speak: for they knew that He was Christ” (Luke 4:38-41).

“And when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto Him; and He laid His hands on every one of them, and healed them.” These were those who had recognized the need for help and for grace’s sake desired it. Demons were also driven out. That was grace in its triumph.

So we have four things standing closely together:

Grace proclaimed.

Grace demonstrated.

Grace rejected.

Grace triumphing.

Although the demons testified that He was the Son of God, the people, however, recognized Him as God’s messenger of grace and accepted Him. Thus God came to His rightful position.

How clear grace is made to us in the case of the widow!— Flour and oil, that do not run out during three and a half years become a picture of Himself. “I am the bread of life, which come down from heaven, to give life and to save the people from spiritual famine” (John 6). He does this in the power of the Holy Spirit. Does this not speak to our hearts? We are only saved from spiritual poverty through Christ giving Himself to us. We have no means to save ourselves from spiritual poverty. If we are left to ourselves, we must die as the widow would have died. But Christ in His grace has sought us out. He has become our life. Should we not give God His place, after having recognized our need for His grace!

And how about Naaman? He too was outside of Israel. And he was leprous. Of what use was his exterior position to him? Leprosy was consuming his life. But the grace of God is for this very leper who is outside of Israel. For him there was help. Christ wants to show us this. He wants to demonstrate that the Son of Man came to seek and save that which is lost. The grace of God in Christ Jesus is for sinners. They will thank Him and give Him the place He deserves, because of the greatness of His grace.

Israel failed to recognize its need to be freed from sin. Therefore the grace of God meant nothing to them. Those, however, that stood outside of Israel recognized it. God will always have His place where His grace is recognized most and where it is accepted gratefully.

The measure in which we recognize His grace will also be the measure in which we surrender to Him.

Wherever there is an incomplete picture of the grace of God, there is also an incomplete testimony. The more we live in His grace, the more we will also testify for Him and be effective.

This is a very simple message. It is the simple message of the grace of God. But what in truth is more suitable to give God His place in our hearts than grace!

The Lord keep us from the self-satisfied position of Israel and make us hungry for grace, that it may accomplish its full purpose in us.

Chapter 6 - God's Rights in His House

God’s rights concerning His house have always been challenged. God had created this earth as a place where His rights would be recognized. That is why He gave man certain commandments. He gave them to man to bring him to the place where he would respect God’s rights. Through the recognition of God’s rights, obedience to God, man was to grow into all that which had been ordained for him from God.

However, it happened differently. The adversary appeared and the battle for God’s rights started. This happened in the form of a simple question: “Hath God said?”

“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, “Yea, hath God said, ‘Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?’” And the woman said unto the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ‘Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.’”  And the serpent said unto the woman, ‘Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil’”  (Gen. 3:1-5).

There we have the questioning of God’s rights. The will of man is to stand in the place of the will of God. What is religious modernism other than that? The authority of the Word of God is opposed. Human thoughts judge that which is of God.

One king of Israel dared to say: “Who is the Lord?” This is what things are like for God after the fall. This is what He has to take into account, but that which He is also strong enough to overcome.

In the New Testament we see the same fight over the rights of God in His house. The Lord says: “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer: but you have made it a den of robbers” (Matt. 21:13). And in saying this, He explains the parable of the vineyard owner.

“Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, “They will reverence my son.” But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.” And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him” (Matt. 21:33-39).

God has planted a vineyard and has put a fence around it. This vineyard is His property. Nobody therefore has any rights in this vineyard except Him. Then He hired it out to husbandmen and sent His servants after a while, to fetch the fruit, His ‘rights’. The husbandmen, however, beat them and killed them and murdered His Son in the end. This is robbing God. This is misuse of His rights to the extreme. The Pharisees recognized that this parable was meant for them. They gnashed their teeth. They did not consider repenting. Only a short while later, and the Lord has to say about Jerusalem: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.”  (Matt. 23:37,38). What was once God’s house, is His house no longer.  God has left it. His house is somewhere else.  It is in the hearts of those that have opened themselves to Him. “WE are His house.”  And Christ is the Son over God’s house (Heb. 3:6).

The connection, which the Lord Jesus Christ makes between Himself and the ministry of the prophets, shows us:

Firstly, that the prophets and the Son of God stand in a very specific relationship to each other as far as the will of God is concerned. They were sent in view of the rights of God; they were killed because of the rights of God.

Secondly: The church as the house of God is there where the rights of God are recognized and given to Him.

But is there something more disputed than His church? Where is she? Is she there, where people that call themselves Christians come together? Yes and no. Fellowship is one of the characteristics of His church. But not fellowship outwardly, but oneness in spirit. Spiritual fellowship cannot be made.  It is foolish to think that one could join the church, because one agrees with the message or structure of an assembly. The church is more than the union of religious people. The church consists of those to whom the Lord has brought new life, in whose hearts He has become Lord, of those who have learned to worship Him in Spirit and in truth. The church is not our house. It is His house. He, however, is the Lord of heaven, Who has judged this world and has done away with it for ever. How could we serve Him with that which He has rejected? How could we dare to bring Him that which has been judged through the Cross? How long will it take until the eyes of the children of God are opened to the fact that the church of our Lord Jesus Christ must be heavenly through and through, that the church has nothing at all in common with this world?

If we did not take into account the power of the Holy Spirit, we would despair. The natural man cannot understand that his role is finished, that the new birth is an absolutely new life, in which all our natural opinions will have ceased. The soulish and the spiritual are so mixed up even in advanced believers, that only the Holy Spirit is able to divide them. But a division must come. In God’s house there is no room for anything of man. Any so-called goodness of man, his religious disposition and his seemingly unselfish efforts are all a big deception. If God’s rights are to be of account, then all our rights, however skillfully covered, have to come to an end.

This takes us to Moses. He stands before us as a prophet. How zealous he was for the rights of God! God showed him His house on the mountain. But at the foot of the mountain he erected an altar and sacrificed. By doing so he respected the rights of God. His altar is nothing else but the explanation that the way to God’s mountain (and therefore to God’s house) is via the Cross of Calvary. Lightning and thunder surrounded the mountain. It was so terrible, that even Moses trembled. Why? Because no one can come close to God and serve Him except he whom God has called. God takes care that the mountain is fenced off, that nothing may come close to Him, that access to Him is only through the power of the Blood.

We say all of this in view of the rights of God. There is a burden on our hearts to make clear that God’s house is only really God’s house if it is filled by Him alone. We see this in the tabernacle. Because of the veil it is separated from everything outside. Inside, however, everything speaks through the large altar of the rights of God, the right God has over all life, of His sole and exclusive right.

When, after Solomon, the worship of God began to waiver, when other gods were worshipped, prophetic service amongst the people increased. Why? We have said before that the prophets stood for God’s rights in a special way. When therefore a prophet raised his voice in the old covenant, we know that something was not in order, that God was working to win back that which was lost, to save the spiritual from being covered up by formalism and tradition. This stepping in for God marks Elijah in a special way. When he says: “As the Lord liveth, before whom I stand,” it means: The Lord and I are one; the Lord stands on my side because I stand on His side; your attitude towards me reflects your attitude towards the Lord. And all this happens in view of winning back the rights of God. Now Elijah was not an important personality. We judge him wrongly if we ascribe him a personality which he did not have. The Lord shows him to us when he was discouraged, sitting under the juniper tree:

“But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers’”  (1 Kings 19:4).

And James confirms this, by saying: “Elijah was a man of like nature with us” (James 5:17). But the Lord has chosen him. His calling has to do with the rights of God. Because he stood on God’s side, God stands with him. The Lord defends His honor in His prophet. He seeks to safeguard His rights in those that are His messengers. For example, consider Elijah and the widow of Zarephath.

“And the word of the Lord came unto him (Elijah), saying, “Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.” So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, the widow woman was there gathering of sticks: and he called to her, and said, “Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.” And as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, and said, “Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine hand.” And she said, “As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” And Elijah said unto her, “Fear not; go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, “The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.” And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days. And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the Word of the Lord, which He spake by Elijah” (1 Kings 17:8-16).

Now when Elijah comes to the widow, she has just enough flour and oil for one cake, but Elijah tells her: “First make me something to eat.”  This looks like selfishness. But the Lord and he are one. Is the widow ready to recognize this? Is she willing to honour the Lord in His prophet? Should God have His right at the peril of herself possessing nothing any more? The woman obeys. What a victory! It is the recognition of the rights of God that leads to the jar of flour not becoming empty and the cruse of oil not drying up. The recognition of the rights of God has opened the door to wonderful experiences. Not that her faith did not have to go through depths. That happened when her son died. Then she could see life out of death, the power of resurrection, something which not everyone has the privilege to see. She had recognized God’s rights and had given Him the first place. Then the Lord manifests the power of resurrection.

“And it came to pass after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick; and his sickness was so sore, that there was no breath left in him. And she said unto Elijah, “What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?” And he said unto her, “Give me thy son.” And he took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into a loft, where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed. And he cried unto the Lord, and said, “O Lord my God, hast Thou also brought evil upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son?” And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, “O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him again.” And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived. And Elijah took the child, and brought him down out of the chamber into the house, and delivered him unto his mother: and Elijah said, ‘See, thy son liveth’” (1 Kings 17:17-23).

Let us see this in the light of the house of God. The house of God is the place where He is everything, where the Lord has been recognized in the power of His resurrection, where we come together as living stones, in whom heavenly life has become a reality.

Let us not think that we will be spared difficulties. How Moses suffered! How Elijah was persecuted! The presence of the Lord does not mean that we will be spared suffering. On the contrary. We will be slandered, denied and persecuted. We will be abandoned and hated. We will not be spared this. This does not mean that the presence of God is not with us. We find it in the life of the Lord in us. We find it in the ability to be calm. We find it in the peace and joy in the midst of all storms and tribulations. That is enough. That is worth more than all recognition and outward confirmation. But when the Lord comes, we will appear with Him, and because we have sought His rights and have given Him His rights, we will exult and rejoice in the universal reign of our Lord, Who will be “The Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful” (Rev. 17:14).

Chapter 7 - The Way to God's Fulness

The Epistle to the Colossians is a wonderful unveiling of the fulness of God in Christ, while in the Epistle to the Ephesians we see the church as the fulness of Him Who fills all in all.

“In Whom (in Christ) we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins: Who is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of every creature: for by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.  And He is the Head of the body, the church: Who is the beginning, the Firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of His Cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.” (Col. 1:14-20).

“For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him, Which is the head of all principality and power: in Whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, Who hath raised Him from the dead” (Col. 2:9-12).

“Having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might Which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to set at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him That filleth all in all” (Ephesians 1:18-23; ASV).

It is understandable that it is important for us to know the fulness God has purposed for us, but we must not overlook the other side of the coin, that God wants us to be His fulness. Paul speaks of an inheritance of Christ in the saints (Eph. 1:11,18). The Lord has something in us that gives Him pleasure, that which for Him is fulness. The question is just how this will be perfected in us, and whether there are conditions that have to be recognized and met if the fulness of Jesus Christ is to be realized in us.

As an example, in 2 Kings 2:1 and 2, we see how this condition is completely fulfilled in Elisha:

“And it came to pass, when the Lord would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal. And Elijah said unto Elisha, Tarry here, I pray thee; for the Lord hath sent me to Bethel. And Elisha said unto him, As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee. So they went down to Bethel.”

Elisha cannot be dissuaded or discouraged from being zealous, but follows his master Elijah, until he becomes witness of his wonderful ascension. This is what God must have in us to build on. There must be in us something of the zeal that inspired Elisha. God does not look for strength in us. He does not look for a certain ability. He simply looks for the willingness to be led and filled by Him with the power of His resurrection, through which the testimony of Jesus Christ in us becomes a reality.

God puts this zeal to the test. He must take us to the point of realizing whether we are serious or not, whether in regard to His fulness it is only a desire on our side, maybe a big desire, but still only a desire, not a willingness to pay any price.

Have we noted that in the chapter mentioned it significantly says: “Elijah went with Elisha”? This shows us that the Lord goes with us when our hearts are set on Him, and that He often waits a long time for us to be ready to move on. Is it not so that He often says to us: “This is My way. Are you ready to go that way? Good—prove it.” If we are truly ready and prove this by taking the first step, He then goes with us and very soon we may walk with Him. But the Lord does not urge us to move on. He does not force us to go forward. He waits until we are ready.

The way that Elijah and Elisha walked together is very meaningful. We speak to those whose eyes of their hearts have been opened, who have received a glimpse of spiritual things. What does it mean to see that the starting point of the road was Gilgal?

We know Gilgal. It is the place where the new generation was circumcised; the place where the reproach of Egypt was rolled away. What does this mean?

It means the putting aside of a life in the flesh. Speaking figuratively, it is about the separating work of the Cross. Here all personal interests have come to an end. Every personal standpoint, all holding fast to the ‘I’ is finished.

If it is a question of God and the things of God, there can be no other starting point than Gilgal. Only where the flesh has been judged and the old man put into the grave, can God turn to us and make us co-workers in His plan.

This is easier said than done. This sounds very ‘edifying’. But it costs a lot. It costs that which we are. It costs our life.

Now, let us say again that it is not written for nothing: “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me”  (Luke 9:23; ASV). If we want to be His instruments, if we want to be available for Him, so that He can have His rights through us, then let us come over to His side. Let us give up all our rights. This is the first step towards heavenly fulness.

What do we understand by the reproach of Egypt? One can talk about heavenly things, and yet still live and act in the flesh. It is the reproach of the world that justifiably shakes its head about many a ‘Christian’ who becomes a stumbling block when holy talk is not followed by deeds. Gilgal means: the reality of heavenly things. And for us too, there can be no testimony without the reality of the life to which we are called to testify.

We should not be annoyed that we always come back to the same starting point for all God’s work in us. What is the point if we continue without having laid a good foundation? The good foundation is Christ. As long as we have not grown together with the Crucified in the likeness of His dying, we can know nothing of a life of resurrection. Where there has been no resurrection, there may be some knowledge, but no life. There may be some understanding, but no power. Therefore, let us bear in mind that God’s starting point is Gilgal. From Gilgal we may take the first step towards godly fulness.

Chapter 8 - Bethel  God's House

The way from Gilgal leads to Bethel. From Gilgal alone! Because Bethel is the house of God. We only get to the house of God through the Cross.

What do we mean by the house of God?

The expression ‘houses of God’ has created much confusion. It has given rise to the idea of holy ground, that is, places that are holier than others. Have you noticed that there is no comparative for the word ‘holy’? We can say that someone is prettier in comparison to somebody else. We cannot say, however, that someone is holier in comparison to someone else. There are no degrees of holiness. That which belongs to God is holy. That which does not fully belong to God is not holy. Whether we are in reality, as the Word says, "holy and beloved," depends on whether we belong to God in reality or not. That is why the church of Jesus Christ is a holy Temple in the Lord, because He Himself lives in His Own people, because they are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit (Eph. 2:21,22). And there is no other habitation of God. “The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands” (Acts 7:48). God lives in the hearts of those that have accepted Christ, having cleansed their hearts by faith.

When we speak of the house of God, we speak of the church of Jesus Christ, of His holy Temple, nothing earthly, but something heavenly. The house of God is connected to heavenly fulness. Those that have become living stones have come to know this experientially. They know it on the basis of the love that binds them together on the basis of the life that fills them all. In Hebrews 12:22 and 23 we read: “Ye are come to the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.” That is the church. It is a heavenly assembly. It is an assembly of those who have been born again. And as long as she is on this earth, she is in reality a representative of heavenly things, through whom the Lord wants to reveal Himself to the world. If there is to be a practical expression of the heavenly reality that fills the church, then it is necessary that all believers come to a living realization of the unity of all members of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. Only together do we arrive at the fulness of God. The fulness is given to us in as far as we, the many, are one body. That is why every division means loss to us and for the time being also loss to the Lord.

In the Old Testament no one was allowed to come to the temple with empty hands. What do we have, we who are His temple? Nothing else but Himself. Only that which is of Christ is worthy to be presented, because our unity is only based on that which is of Christ.

Let us look at the house of God from different angles. Firstly from the point of view of fellowship. We have already spoken about it. Fellowship in Jesus Christ is what makes the church so wonderful. It is only through fellowship that the church is formed. Who could have brought together into one new man those who are so different according to nationality, social standing and gender? That which came into being through the Cross is so wonderful, so unfathomably great, that all human efforts to create fellowship have remained poor, bungled attempts. For exactly this reason the devil tries to destroy this fellowship. The devil does not want that which Christ has brought about to become visible. The devil creates divisions, denominations and even uses the truth, divided into truths, just so that the unity does not become visible, and that the power that is in unity does not become effective.

Instead of fellowship we could also say love, because this is the true essence of fellowship. Love is the practical value of fellowship.

Beside that there is life. The house of God is the expression of the life of God. Wherever there is fellowship in Christ, fellowship of love, there we have a wonderful fellowship of life, life as an indivisible life, from which we cannot withdraw ourselves, from which we cannot separate ourselves without immediately sensing the powers of death. There is such oneness in this life that James says: “Is any among you sick? Let Him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil... and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick” (James 5:13-15). Here we see the church. We do not only see her in the representation of the elders. We see her in her totality, because if “one member suffers, all the members suffer with it” (1 Cor. 12:26). The purpose for the members is to have life. The fulness of life that is in the Head is available for the members. The Holy Spirit will transmit it to them. They may come and as members of a body intervene for one another, acting together, so that the whole body in wonderful growth becomes an expression of the fulness, given to our Head for us all.

The third angle from which we want to look at the House of God is light.  Bethel was the place where Jacob’s ladder stood. It stood under an open heaven. This is an indication of revelation, of light from above. Light that illumines us inwardly, to see the things of God in the light of God. Therefore we can say that the house of God is there where God reveals Himself. Where has God revealed Himself more gloriously than in the Lord Jesus Christ! While He was on earth, He was the temple of God. As we are now sent by Him, we may be His temple, a living temple, full of the knowledge of God and full of His love.

Let us state one more time that the way to Bethel starts at Gilgal. One cannot come to the House of God and that which is heavenly cannot come into being as long as the earthly is not put off and all flesh is judged. However, where this has taken place, the road leads on to Bethel.  It leads us to the House of God. It leads us to where we have fellowship in life, in love and in light.

Chapter 9 - The Victory Over the Powers of Darkness

Reading: 2 Kings 2:1-15.

"And it came to pass, when the Lord would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal. And Elijah said unto Elisha, “Tarry here, I pray thee; for the Lord hath sent me to Bethel,” And Elisha said unto him, “As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” So they went down to Bethel. And the sons of the prophets that were at Bethel came forth to Elisha, and said unto him, “Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head to day?” And he said, “Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace.” And Elijah said unto him, “Elisha, tarry here, I pray thee; for the Lord hath sent me to Jericho.” And he said, “As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” So they came to Jericho. And the sons of the prophets that were at Jericho came to Elisha, and said unto him, “Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head to day?” And he answered, “Yea, I know it; hold ye your peace.” And Elijah said unto him, “Tarry, I pray thee, here; for the Lord hath sent me to Jordan.” And he said, “As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” And they two went on. And fifty men of the sons of the prophets went, and stood to view afar off: and they two stood by Jordan.  And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote the waters, and they were divided hither and thither, so that they two went over on dry ground.

"And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, “Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee.”  And Elisha said, “I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.” And he said, “Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so.” And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.  And Elisha saw it, and he cried, “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof.” And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces.

"He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back, and stood by the bank of Jordan; and he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” and when he also had smitten the waters, they parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over. And when the sons of the prophets which were to view at Jericho saw him, they said, “The spirit of Elijah doth rest on Elisha.” And they came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him.”

From Bethel the road leads to Jericho

We expect Jericho to come before Bethel. But once we have recognized the meaning of Jericho, we will see that the Holy Spirit led Elijah and Elisha in the right order, that we can get to Jericho only after having been in Bethel.

What is the meaning of Jericho? With the conquering of Jericho, Israel had conquered the whole country so to say, because Jericho was on the threshold of the Promised Land, and the battle for Jericho was, in a representative way, a battle for the whole country. Because of the seven nations that inhabited Canaan, Israel had to march around Jericho seven times. When therefore, on the seventh day, after having marched around Jericho seven times, Jericho fell, everything that stood as an enemy against Israel fell. As they had taken Jericho, they were to take everything else.

Canaan is a picture of the heavenly places. The fulness of the country points to our fulness in Christ. We have been “blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3). But the enemy stands in our way. He wants to hinder us from taking possession of our riches. God had assured Israel: “I have given you the land” (Deut. 8:10; 9:23). It therefore belonged to them. It belonged to them on the basis of the Word that God had spoken. And yet it is no contradiction that they had to fight in order to take possession of it, because their battle was, rightly seen, not a human battle. The walls of Jericho fell without fighting.  In faith Israel had fought for Jericho. The fall of the wall was a victory of faith.

This should be our position towards the hostile powers of wickedness that want to prevent us from taking possession of our heavenly blessing.  If Jericho is a picture of the powers of darkness that we meet in the heavenlies, which stand between us and our blessings in the heavenlies, then we see how needful it is that Bethel comes before Jericho, because the fight against the powers of evil in the heavenly regions cannot be the battle of individuals. Individuals will not overcome the powers of darkness. To overcome them requires the fellowship of the saints. Through the ages some have thought themselves strong enough to stand up against the powers of darkness alone, and they have suffered badly. This is the reason that the devil finds it so important to isolate us.  If he succeeds in this, then he has a chance to overcome us. Therefore he brings so many divisions among the saints.

From Bethel the road leads to Jericho. The church, placed in the heavenlies is charged with the battle, a battle not against flesh and blood, but against the forces of wickedness in the heavenly regions. This is a battle that is fought now. At present the saints are called to attain to the fulness of Christ, to stand, filled with Him, in His victory.

Let us stand together! Let us be one in spirit! Let us be one for the purpose of the battle with which we have been charged, because as long as divisions exist, as long as the flesh can assert itself, it will be difficult to keep the ground.

It is normally assumed that Elijah went to heaven in a chariot of fire. This does not correspond with the facts. In the first verse of the second chapter of 2 Kings we are expressly told that the Lord was going to take him to heaven in a whirlwind. And that is exactly how he went.

But what do we do with the chariots and riders? They have a special and very important meaning. Do we not still see them standing with Elisha in chapter six? Here he is in danger, but knows that chariots and riders surround him. How frightened his servant is in the light of the seriousness of the situation! But when his eyes are opened, he sees the mountain full of chariots and horses.

“And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, a host with horses and chariots was round about the city. And his servant said unto him, “Alas, my master! how shall we do?” And he answered, “Fear not: for they that are with us are more than they that are with them.” And Elisha prayed, and said, “Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes, that he may see.” And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and behold, the mountain, was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha” (2 Kings 6:15-17).

In chapter thirteen we find Elisha on his deathbed. The king who approaches him, however, senses a power surrounding the one dying. Therefore he exclaims: “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!” (verse 14). They still surround him, because they are God’s gift to His servant. They represent the power in which Elisha dared to stand up against the powers of darkness. Chariots and horsemen mean victory. As the powers of darkness were targeted against God’s servant, God had surrounded him with chariots and horsemen which caused the defeat of the powers of darkness.

We know that Elisha represents the assembly in the power of His resurrection. He is connected to his master whom he saw ascending to heaven, from whom he received a double portion to do greater works than him. The same with the church. The Lord has said: “Greater works than these shall he (you) do; because I go unto the Father” (John 14:12). With the coming of the Holy Spirit the chariots of Israel and its horsemen have, metaphorically speaking, returned. That means that the victory has come to us. We stand in victory over the enemy. Even if we are still in the battle, we know that the victory has already been won. Therefore we do not fight to win; we fight in victory, because we stand in victory. Our fight is nothing else but a holding fast in trust to Him Who has said: “I have given you the land,” and whose Word confirms to us that He has blessed us with all blessings in the heavenlies.

We hear no sound of battle at Jericho. We see no use of fleshly powers. Jericho is encircled, persistently, full of faith, and then in the motion the trumpets announce the victory. Is not all our trying hard a sign that we still doubt that the victory has been given to us, that we think we still have to obtain it? It is all a matter of faith, a matter of trust, our holding fast to His Word. John says: “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4).

Let us consider something important. At the end of the road lies the Jordan. That is both the end of Elijah’s life and the beginning of the public ministry of Elisha. Because of this the Jordan receives a special meaning for both of them. Before Elijah can ascend, he has to cross the Jordan. The Jordan must first be overcome. Elijah took his mantle and folded it. Figuratively speaking he gathers together all power and with this gathering of his powers he divides the Jordan. Figuratively he overcomes death. Elijah breaks through that which divides the heavenly from the earthly. He breaks the enormous obstacle that can only be broken in the power of the life of God: death. Elijah has to break the power of death before he can enter heavenly fulness. The crossing of the Jordan was, figuratively speaking, the victory over death. All this points to our Lord Jesus Christ. All this takes us to the Letter to the Ephesians: “He has made us alive together with Him, and raised us up together and seated us together in the heavenlies” (Eph. 2:5,6). And further: “...that ye may know what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion”  (Eph. 1:19-21).

This is our position now. Because Christ holds the victory over death in His hands. In Him death has been overcome. “I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades” (Rev. 1:18). This means: “I have all power over death.”   This is what must become clear to us through Elijah. His last work here on earth was, figuratively speaking, the overcoming of the power of death. Through the parting of the water he tore up death, so to speak. He went through death as through dry land. After the victory over the power of death, however, he ascended in a whirlwind to glory.

Let us turn to Elisha, and we will see that he is to come into the same position: the position of a death-overcoming life on this earth. Elisha now possesses the mantle of Elijah, in whom we have the symbol that the power of death has been broken. This must become real to him through faith. Elisha is intended to be a witness and a testimony of the power of the resurrection.

Let us not overlook that “the exceeding greatness of His power” is only prepared for those “who believe” and given to them only (Eph. 1:19).

Elisha’s heart was set on receiving a double portion of the spirit of his master. When Elijah heard the request, he hesitated. And his answer is: “Thou hast asked a hard thing.” Oh, faith always asks for the impossible. The true nature of faith consists in always being on the lookout for something that is impossible on natural grounds. From the start Elisha acts on the basis of faith. Everywhere the sons of the prophets had tried to shake his faith. But his heart was steadfast. He knew what he wanted. He did not let go until Elijah said: “If thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee.” He followed him.  He followed his master until the end. And when he saw him ascend, he cried out: “My father, my father...”; in other words: “Here I am, and I expect to receive what you have promised me.”

Do we see what faith is about? Faith looks into the surpassing greatness of His power that is available to us “who believe”.

In this connection let us point to something that is not less important. The Lord wants the power of His Spirit in His people to be seen. If this is to happen, then Gilgal must first have done its work. If not, the danger exists that yet again our self becomes visible and that personal interests come in. When Elijah asked: “Ask what I shall do for thee.” Elisha did not ask for a double portion of his power, but a double portion of his spirit. What are we striving for? For strength and power? Or are we focussed on the Spirit of Jesus Christ not in the first place as the Spirit of power, but simply as the Spirit Himself? Elisha esteemed his master extraordinarily highly. It was his spirit he longed to possess. He wanted to be like him. For this reason God has also sent His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is there, not only to reveal His power, but that Christ is seen in us in His power.

Now the way back starts for Elisha. He stands at the Jordan. With the mantle that fell on him, he strikes the Jordan, as Elijah had done: “Where is the God of Elijah, even He?”— He puts the God of Elijah into the centre of the first situation of death he meets, because even though he has the victory over the powers of death in his hand, death in itself has not yet ceased from existing. But now he profits from the fellowship in spirit with his ascended master.

Let us be reminded that victory over death was the last thing in Elijah’s life. But with Elisha, however, it is the first. And this now becomes the basis for all his further work. The whole history of Elisha is built on the fact that death has been conquered. It is marked with the mystery of the victory over all death. This is also the reason why the church can do greater works than her Lord, because she too stands in His victory over all power of death.

It is interesting to see that Elisha went back the whole way that he had come on with Elijah. From the Jordan he goes to Jericho and finds there a state of death. Nothing ripens to perfection. Everything wilts before fruition. Elisha, however, lets the testimony of victory over death be effective. The salt in a new jar is a symbol of the power of the resurrection in a new vessel. The new vessel is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ as she was manifested on the day of Pentecost. The church is the new vessel, the new jar, and the life in her is the victory over all power of death. Our advancement to heavenly fulness is nothing else but an increase in the power that has overcome death.

From Jericho the road leads on to Bethel. Malicious lads mock the ascension of Elijah. They laugh at the possibility of rapture—bears tear them up. This is a warning. It is dangerous to oppose the power of Jesus Christ. We put our life in danger when we stand in the way of the life of Jesus Christ. Bethel is connected to the heavenly, and nobody may dare to touch that which is the Lord’s. Ananias and Sapphira were to experience this. Heavenly authority rests on the church of Jesus Christ. When she has taken up her heavenly position, so that the power of the Resurrected becomes effective, then woe to him who dares challenge the authority of God in her.

How terrible it is to reject a heavenly vision, an inner seeing, because something earthly seems more desirable to us. Mighty forces operate on this earth: “Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8). The only salvation for us is our connection to our Lord in heaven.

The mockers were judged by the same powers that were operative within them. Figuratively speaking, they are those elements that have not come under the power of the Cross. Whoever gives himself over to them perishes through them.

From Bethel to Gilgal—there is a famine in Gilgal. The sons of the prophets go out to gather herbs. But they do not possess any discernment.  When they draw from the pot to eat, they realize that there is death in the pot—Elisha throws meal into the pot. Death has been withstood. They may eat. The meal is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Bread that came from heaven. Christ is our food. In Gilgal it becomes apparent whether Christ is our food, whether we can distinguish between the things of the flesh and those of the Spirit, because Gilgal stands for our crucifixion with Him being effective, so that it may henceforth be said: Christ is our life!

Chapter 10 - Christ and the Rights of the Father

It is important to recognize that the Lord lived on this earth with a double purpose. For the first time there was a Man on this earth whose whole life was an expression of what God wanted, in Whom all the rights of God were fulfilled. This was what God had intended from the beginning. In Christ He saw it.

On the other hand, Christ therefore became the Cornerstone of a spiritual temple, a temple in which God’s rights are fully respected. Christ was never intended to stay by Himself. He was intended to become the Head of a body, the grain of wheat with much fruit, a vine with many branches. But what applies to the Head must also apply to the whole body; what applies to the body, also to the individual member. The Vine is to be recognized by its branches. By way of summarizing we can say: Christ, in living fellowship with His own, is purposed to be an expression of God’s rights.  God is to be everything and in everything.

That is why Paul does not address the Corinthians as an assembly of individuals, but he writes to “the church of God.” She is the church of God. The Lord desires His full rights in everything that belongs to Him.

If Christ is the Head of the church, then what should be true for all the members must first be made real in Him. Let us therefore now draw our attention to that through which God assures His rights in Christ. Herein a completely new outlook opens up for us on the life of Jesus Christ. We see that everything depends on the rights of the Father being expressed from moment to moment by Him. Let us briefly prove this by mentioning a few points.

Right at the beginning of His life we want to see two things: firstly the position that Jesus takes, and secondly the consequence of the stand He has taken.

This relates to His baptism. We do not have to say much about baptism as such. We can summarize it in a few words.

What did He want to express through it? Nothing less than that He Himself, with everything that He was, had died. However, this is not about a dying to sin in Him. He was without sin. Since it could not be about dying because of sin, and since baptism is nothing else but a picture of death and resurrection, in the case of Jesus Christ, therefore, it must have a special background. This is indeed the case. It would have been possible for Jesus Christ to live a personal life, that is, a life of His own choice, without the unbroken relationship with the Father, according to His own human will. In itself that would not have been sin. He could have acted independently of the Father.

Now, here we see the meaning and purpose of the baptism of Jesus Christ. His baptism was to express that He wanted to live in utter dependence on the Father, that He had died to everything that did not stand in close connection to His Father. It is futile to ask if a life independent from God would have led to sin, as it was in the case of Adam, because precisely through baptism the Son of God testified that He was not thinking of independence in the slightest and that He had died to every possibility of it. He refused to possess any will of His own. He gave the Father that which He demanded. He gave Him an unrestricted right to dispose of Him as He wished to. “Lo, I am come to do Thy will, O God” (Heb. 10:7).

This is the negative side to start with. The positive side, however, is in the fact that God now had such a Man, that somebody was there, a Man on this earth, in Whom the rights of God had been completely kept, Who could say: “Not My will, but Thine.” In other words: “I don’t want to live an earthly life as I want to my liking, but a life in full subjection and dependence on God. Not I, but God!” Paul writes in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 5, at verses 14 and 15: “For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that One died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him Who for their sakes died and rose again.”

Let us express that in the shortest way possible for all of us: From now on I live for God! Nothing outside of Him, everything for Him. This is the way in which God comes to His rights. With reference to Jesus, this was the meaning of His baptism.

We see the Lord taking this stand from the beginning and from that moment everything had to be in agreement with this foundation. This means testing. That is why the road from the Jordan led to the desert. “He fasted for forty days and forty nights. Then He was hungry" (Matt. 4:2; Deut. 8:3). A state of physical weakness is always a good prerequisite for temptations from the enemy. The devil selects his occasions in such a way that they seem to promise success. He would have little to hope for, had he come forty days earlier, when Jesus stood in the full power of Him Who had spoken from an open heaven: “This is My beloved Son.” When, however, circumstances seemed suitable to him, he questioned the sonship of the Son of God with the word: “If Thou art the Son of God....” (Matt. 4:3). A promising position for the enemy!  A person who is close to dying of hunger and thirst, for whom something has to happen quickly, if he is to stay alive! At that moment the devil attacks.  That is temptation.

Do we not have the right to dare to do something for the sake of staying alive? The enemy whispers to us: “If you don’t do it, you will die.” For us, however, everything should revolve around the issue, without which nothing existed for the Lord Jesus: to persevere in dependence on the Father for as long as He wants.

There are times when we feel as though we are pushed into a corner. Maybe we have taken a position of absolute obedience towards God. We have declared to God that we are willing for His will to be done. It does not take long before we find ourselves in an impossible position. Such a position is basically about nothing less and nothing else but our faithfulness towards God. Are we prepared to die rather than take our life into our own hands and give up our dependency on God, to perish rather than do something which God has not told us to do?

In connection with this temptation there is the possibility of a new discovery. We find this in the answer Jesus gives the devil: “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). The enemy could have answered: “Without food you will die." But the Lord knows another kind of food. Obedience means life. Jesus did not turn the stones into bread and yet still lived another three and a half years. Later when the disciples returned to Him, when He was sitting on the edge of the well of Samaria and asked Him to eat, He could tell them, from a deeper experience than they could imagine: “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work” (John 4:34). It is manna for us to be faithful to God. There is life in obedience.

The second temptation.—The devil set Him on the pinnacle of the temple. “If Thou art the Son of God, cast Thyself down”  (Matt. 4:6). The devil puts himself on the same ground as the Lord. He uses the Word. The temptation becomes therefore more intense. Besides the Lord, probably nobody knows the Word as well as the adversary. Therefore spiritual discernment is needed. This we have in the answer: “It is written: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord Thy God” (Matt. 4:7; Deut. 6:16). In which context is this Word written? Israel was in trouble. The question arose, whether the Lord was in her midst or not; in other words, a questioning of the faithfulness of God, whether God keeps His Word or not. Is it not significant that the Lord uses exactly this passage to answer the enemy? The devil says in other words: “If You believe that the Father is with You, then try it. If You are really convinced that He is on your side, then do something for once that will show this.” A big temptation that our Lord did not succumb to. But what must we do? We find ourselves in trouble. Do we believe that God is faithful? Do we consider the possibility that God could deny Himself? When the Lord says: “I am with you,” let us believe it. Let us never do anything to put God to the test. The Lord has a right to demand such a position from us. Jesus gave His Father this right. He held fast to the position that He had taken: “Not My will, but Your will be done.”

The third temptation.—The devil took Him to a high mountain. “All these things I will give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me.” The answer: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve” (Matt. 4:8-10).

Here too the context is important. The words are in Deuteronomy 5 verses 8 and 9. There we read of the worship of other gods. “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any likeness... for I, the Lord, am a jealous God.” Let us take note that God jealously demands all worship, to be recognized and honoured as the only true God. With this passage the Lord defeats the enemy.  God demands all our worship.

World dominion is bound up with this last temptation. How can we gain world dominion? Who will rule over the kingdoms of the world in the end? He, Who has maintained the rights of God to the full. “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ” (Rev. 11:15). This is true for the church. She is destined to reign. The pressure of the enemy in connection with the offer of world dominion has to do with his demand of worship. Let us be assured that every pressure in our life serves the purpose to get us to worship the devil. Is this possible? Now, let us suppose we were in difficult times. It is possible for us to evade the difficulties. If it were faithfulness towards God and God-given revelation that brought us into this difficult situation, we could perhaps alleviate this situation through compromise. We could give in to something. Certainly, it would be unfaithfulness. We would steal from God what is His. But the difficulties! That is the enemy. That is the pressure: to bring us to a place where we rob God of something, or in other words, where we give the devil something. Ultimately it is about the issue of whom we worship, whom we trust completely, unreservedly. Our Lord Jesus Christ kept His position faithfully. At the Jordan He took this stand. “Nothing for Myself, everything for the Father. I live to do the Father’s will.” And then comes the test, the temptation. Then everything gets examined and tested as to its reality. But the day came when the Father could give His Son the confirmation from heaven: “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. And He was transfigured before them.”

We too will be put to the test. For us too it is about the proof of the reality of the position to which we testified. We testified to have died to sin, self and the world. From now on I live for God only! This will be put to the test. It will be well with us if in faith we hold fast to this position, if we stand firm in everything that has been given to us in our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him we have the victory. In Him we have everything. Oh, that we could wholeheartedly and with uninterrupted willingness say together with Paul:

“For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him Which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:15).