Gather My Saints Together

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“Gather my saints together unto me, those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.” (Psalm 50:5).

“Now we beseech you, brethren, touching the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him” (2 Thess. 2:1).

“Not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh” (Hebrews 10:25).

In all of the above passages there is this one common factor, that an end-time movement and feature is dominant. It must be remembered that the Psalms themselves represent what remains when a history of outward things as to the general instrumentality has ended in failure.

The history of Israel in its first great phase closed with the book of “Kings” in a calamitous and shameful way. Weakness, paralysis, declension, reproach, characterized the instrument in general. But out of that history now so concluded the Psalms are carried forward, and they represent what has spiritually been gained and is permanent.

This is pre-eminently a personal, inward, spiritual knowledge of the Lord gained through experience. That is why they always reach the heart and never fail to touch experience at every point. To them the saints have turned in times of deep experience. They are the ministry of experience to experience, the only ministry which is permanent.

The end-time instrument will always be that which inwardly knows the Lord in a deep and living way through history fraught with much experience of the heights and depths. What David gave to the Chief Musician for the wind instruments and the stringed instruments touches the highest and deepest notes of a mortal’s knowledge of God. Worship, Salvation, Sorrow, Appeal, Victory, Battle, Faith, Hope, Glory, Instruction, are all great themes interwoven with the mass of matters touched, but the point is that all came in real life; he passed through it all.

It is this, and this alone, which can serve the Lord when what He first raised up has failed Him as a public instrument. So the Lord would take pains to secure this, and this may explain much of the suffering and sorrow through which He takes His chosen vessels.

It does not need pointing out that, in the other two passages with which we commenced, the end-time is in view; they definitely state it.

There is a further common feature, however, which is more particularly the subject before us. They all definitely refer to gathering together as something related to the end-time. The Day is drawing nigh, therefore there is to be a “so much the more” assembling together. The Lord is coming, and there is a gathering to Him.

A history of a religious system which sprang out of something which the Lord raised up in the first place has ended in weakness, chaos and shame. Therefore, there is to be a re-gathering to the Lord of His saints.

Before we deal with the nature of this end-time gathering, we must get clearly in view those that are concerned in it. The passage in the Psalm would embrace and include those referred to in the other two passages.

“My Saints… Those That Have Made a Covenant with Me by Sacrifice”

It need hardly be remarked that when all has been said and done through type, symbol and figure, the covenant means an entering into what the Lord Jesus has done by His shed Blood. It is an appreciation and apprehension of Him in His great work by the Cross. The Lord, by His Blood, has made a “New Covenant” by sacrifice, and we, His spiritual people, have entered into that covenant and set our hand to it.

Christ as “the mediator of a new covenant” stands for both parties, for a covenant requires two parties. On one side He is God, “The Son of God”: on the other side He is man, “Son of Man”. In Christ we are made the humanity side of the covenant, and by taking our place by faith in Him we enter into the covenant. Just as, in Christ, God has come out to us in a great committal, so also – as in the case of Christ – we in Him go out to God in a like utter committal. The Blood seals the covenant, that is, makes us wholly the Lord’s, and the Lord wholly ours.

If we see the meaning of “a covenant by sacrifice” then we shall see who it is that will be in this gathering together. It will certainly be only those to whom the Lord is everything, to whom He is all and in all; and those who are all for the Lord without a reservation, a personal interest, or anything that is less or other than Himself. Spiritual oneness is only possible on this basis.

The Lord’s word to Abraham in the day of covenant was, “Now I know that thou fearest God”. Malachi’s end-time word was “Then they that feared the Lord…” The fear of the Lord is an utter abandonment to Him at any cost; His will being supreme, claiming and obtaining the measure of a whole burnt-offering.

The Nature of the Gathering Together
Having then in view the kind who are concerned, which forms a test as well as a testimony, we are able to look at the nature of the gathering together.

We are well aware that there is a widespread doubt as to whether we are to expect anything in the way of a corporate movement or testimony at the end. Indeed, it is strongly held by some that everything at the end is individual, and this conviction rests, for the most part, upon the phrase “If any man”, in the message to Laodicea.

Let us hasten then to say that we here have nothing in mind in the nature of an organized movement, a sect, a society, a fraternity, or even a “fellowship” if, by that, any of the foregoing is meant.

Having said this, however, there are some things on the other side which need saying quite definitely.

The Church of the New Testament never was an organized movement. Neither was there any organized affiliation of the companies of believers in various places with one another. It was a purely spiritual thing, spontaneous in life and united only by the Holy Spirit and mutual love and spiritual solicitude. There were other factors which acted as spiritual links which we will mention presently. Further, and still more important, was the abiding fact that a “Body” had been brought into being. This is called “the body of Christ”. You can divide a society and still it remains, but you cannot divide a body without destroying the entity.

Are we to understand from the exponents of the individualistic interpretation that all the teaching of the Lord, in nearly all the Scriptures concerning the House of God, and in nearly all the letters of Paul concerning the Body of Christ, is now set aside or is only an idea without any expression on the earth? Are we to blot out the mass of the New Testament and live our own individual Christian lives with no emphasis upon working fellowship with other believers? Surely not. This would be contrary to all the ways of God in history, and would certainly spell defeat, for if there is one thing against which the Adversary has set himself it is the fellowship of God’s people.

Ultra-individualism is impossible if the truth of the “one body” still stands, and what is more, the Lord’s people are becoming more and more conscious of their absolute need of fellowship, especially in prayer. The difficulty of ‘getting through’ alone is becoming greater as we approach the end.

What then is the nature of this gathering together?
It is a gathering to the Lord Himself. “Gather my saints together unto me”; “our gathering unto Him”.

In times past there have been gatherings to men, great preachers, great teachers, great leaders; or to great institutions and movements, centres and teachings. At the end the Lord will be very much more than His vessels or instrumentalities.

God’s end is Christ, and as we get nearer the end He must become almost immediately the object of appreciation.

Our oneness and fellowship is not in a teaching, a ‘testimony’, a community, a place, but in a Person, and in Him not merely doctrinally but livingly and experimentally.

Any movement truly of God must have this as its supreme and all-inclusive feature, that it is the Lord Jesus who is the object of heart adoration and worship.

The two great purposes of the ‘gathering’ are prayer and ‘building up’; “supplication for all saints”, and spiritual food. These two things have ever characterized Divine gatherings or convocations – representation before God, and feeding in His presence.

This, then, is the meaning of “call a solemn assembly” (Joel 1:14; 2:15). The need more than ever imperative as “the day” approaches is the gathering together unto Him.

May we see more of this as His Divinely inspired movement to meet the so great need!

 

Alone? Not alone!

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“I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord” (1 Kings 18:22).

“I, even I only, am left” (1 Kings 19:10, 14).

“Yet will I leave me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal” (1 Kings 19:18).

“Then he mustered… seven thousand” (1 Kings 20:15).

“Elijah… a man of like passions (nature) with us” (James 5:17).

It is a gracious thing that, in recording the lives of His most used and representative servants, the Lord has never hidden their weaknesses. Most biographers seem to feel that it would harm their subjects, weaken the testimony, or do injury to the work to which they were called if they dwelt upon their human nature on its weakest side and pointed out when and where they broke down. There is also a mistaken kindness in this omission; the idea that, all of us being so faulty, we should never refer to the weaknesses of others.

If the life was truly glorifying to God as a whole, and the work was really a work of God, it only enhances the grace of God to show how He was with, and blessed, such very human and imperfect vessels, and no one who really loves the Lord will take that fact as a cover and condonation of repeated failures.

At the same time it is true that God is the only One Who has the right to speak of human weaknesses, and everyone who does so under His direction must do it with deep humility and fear: the reason for this is recognised in such representative cases as Moses, Elijah, David, Peter, etc. Even in the case of Christ Himself, although He did not succumb, yet this factor held good, and in His case the fact is definitely shown. That factor is this:

Satan Knows Our Weakest Moment, and Uses It
It was when the Master had fasted for forty days and nights and hungered that Satan came with his testings. Whatever other factors were present in the cases of Elijah and others, there is no doubt that the physical and nervous drain of recent experiences gave the cowardly enemy very promising ground for his assault.

When Moses made his great mistake at the rock it is evident that he was an overwrought man, and although the weakness is given full uncovering and the result shown to be very grievous in a temporal way, he was never afterward repudiated in history as a failure; rather was he with the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration.

David still held his place of high honour and value in Divine purposes, and his name runs to the end of Scripture with Divine recognition despite the grievous fallings in the way. He suffered, it is true, but God knows that in the lives of those who count for Him there are forces at work which are extra to the ordinary human weaknesses.

This is made so clear in the case of Peter, whose terrible failure was said by the Lord to be the work of Satan; and there is no doubt but that Satan knew Peter’s weak point and weak moment.

We must, however, bear in mind that, while the Scriptures on these matters are given us for our comfort, and to magnify the grace of God, they are not meant to weaken us or excuse our weakness, but to make us aware of how Satan can get an advantage, and to indicate the danger points along the way of spiritual usefulness.

In the case of Elijah before us, there is one thing that we want to note, and the noting of which we feel will be a help to some. It is this: in the moment of his weakness Satan sowed a lie in Elijah’s mind, and Elijah accepted it. Our Lord said of Satan that “he is a liar, and the father thereof” (John 8:44). In this case he begot the lie that Elijah was the only faithful prophet of God left in Israel. There was ground for that seed. The man was fighting a lonely battle; ploughing a lonely furrow; walking a lonely path. There is no doubt about that.

Loneliness is a Part of the Price of Leadership
If we are seeking to go on with God to any degree beyond that which is commonly accepted as a true Christian life; if we are called to pioneer the way for any further advance in spiritual life or Divine service; if we are given a vision of God’s will and purpose not seen by the general mass of God’s people – or even the larger number of the servants of God – ours will be a lonely way.

There are many other ways in which we may feel aloneness. It may be for geographical reasons; or it may be because of an inward experience through which we are passing; an experience or phase which cannot be shared by another, even the one closest to us. All these and other reasons may respectively become our “wilderness” in which Satan comes, and, while there is a basic occasion, his business is to push things into the extra realm of untruth and tell us that we are actually and utterly alone. It is not a rare thing for him to tell a child of God that God has left him or her.

Elijah verily believed that he was the only one left in faithfulness to God, and he repeated his plaint several times, “I only am left.” He had lost sight of the possibility that the prophets reported by Obadiah to have been hidden might still be in that underground faithfulness, or some of them at least. But the Lord knew better and told him of seven thousand unsurrendering saints who would not capitulate to Jezebel or Baal. The fact is that what Elijah believed was positively not true. If we look at things horizontally we shall only see so far, but if we look from heaven we shall see much more.

Well, what is the answer? Firstly, the Lord’s love has taken the full measure of human frailty before ever He called us to Himself, and therefore that love, being all-knowing, does not give up because it comes upon something unforeseen and not already accounted for.

Secondly, the Lord asks for nothing more than a heart toward Himself. That is the ground upon which He will go right on. Only positive, definite, and persisted – even in unbelief and disobedience – will make the Lord say, “Look here, My child, I love you and want to go on with you, and I will go on if only you will trust me and respond to me. But we cannot go on until you have adjusted; we must just stand here and wait for that.”

Thirdly, if it is true that the Lord neither leaves nor forsakes His own, it is equally true that they are not alone as to others of the Lord’s own. There is the fact, altogether apart from the teaching, that the body is one, and hath many members (1 Cor. 12:12). That fact does not depend upon the doctrine, it is just a fact. Moreover it is constituted by the Holy Spirit Himself. He is the Spirit of unity; there is “the communion of the Holy Spirit”; i.e. the communion of believers in and by the Holy Spirit. There are always believers praying for “all saints,” the vast majority of whom are utterly unknown to them in this world. If we would take our stand on God’s fact in this matter, and, by faith, take the value of “all prayer for all saints” we should find a wonderful relief and reinforcement in our aloneness.

But let us face the fact that a certain measure and kind of loneliness will connect with any particular value which the Lord already has, or is seeking to have, in us, and we must accept this with courage, reminding ourselves that were it otherwise that particular value might not be possible. Jesus was able to meet many a difficult situation because He had learnt the secret in aloneness.

The nature of this dispensation

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THE NATURE OF THE DISPENSATION IN WHICH WE LIVE
Reading:
“The spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward.” (Rom. 8:16-18).

“For we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning our affliction which befell us in Asia, that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even of life: yea, we ourselves have had the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead; who delivered us out of so great a death, and will deliver; on whom we have set our hope that he will also still deliver us; ye also helping together by your supplication.” (2 Cor. 1:8-11).

”For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen,, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”  (2 Cor. 4:17-18).

Just leave those words in the background, while we come to stand before the general prospect or presentation.

First of all, it surely is of very great importance that we, the Lord’s children, should be able to recognise those governing features of the dispensation in which we live, that which gives to this dispensation its character, its nature. The importance of recognising that is, that unless we do, we shall be out of joint all the time, we shall be found in a state of inward conflict, we shall have a battle continually going on inside us which completely unfits us for the battle outside; and I am sure that you will agree that it is no use trying to fight a situation outside, an enemy outside, while you are all the time occupied with one inside. Until we have got something settled, we are weakened, if not altogether paralysed, in the real work and warfare to which we are called, and the thing that has got to be settled is this matter of what is the nature of the dispensation in which we live. If we have got some wrong ideas about that, then we are constantly turning in and back upon ourselves, not making very much progress, a state of strife and strain and uncertainty and questions all the time.

Well then, I suggest to you that that which gives to this dispensation its particular character, that from which this dispensation derives its real nature, that is, as to God’s mind, is in the fact that the Lord Jesus is in heaven and that He is known, only known, but known and ministered by the Holy Spirit. If you and I really could grasp what that means we are going to be taken a long way. The first half is that the Lord Jesus is in heaven, that is, He is not on the earth. If He were on the earth, an entirely different system of things would obtain. You think about that. If He were on the earth, the same things would be happening as did happen when He was on the earth. Everybody who had aches and pains would be going after Him wherever He might be, if He were in Palestine or in any other part of the world, they would be going after Him with aches and pains to get these cleared up.

There would be people who would take all their temporal difficulties and troubles and situations to Him and all the problems of this life as here on the earth. And then the whole world situation, political and so on, to have this whole temporal realm of things dealt with, and it would resolve itself into a matter of Jesus constituting a temporal order. As they did then, so they would now, want Him to be the leader of a new political or social movement, to deal with the political situations and the social difficulties, and so on.

Supposing you heard that the Lord Jesus was just round the corner. You would be after Him like a shot with some of your troubles, perhaps your physical troubles, or domestic quarrels, to get them put right. What shall I do with my brother? How am I to deal with my wife, my husband? All that would be going on, and when He was here on the earth, they were all the time seeking to get Him to deal with a whole temporal state of things on this earth.

We do not find very many coming to Him really with spiritual troubles when He was here, not directly and deliberately with spiritual troubles. Not many raised the question of sin and how they were to be forgiven and have it dealt with. He had to go behind to deal with that, refer to that; they did not.

Well, you see, Jesus is in heaven. He is not on earth, and that means that everything in this dispensation from the Divine standpoint is heavenly in its essence and nature. It is not firstly, primarily, but quite subserviently, of secondary account, that He touches the temporal situation. Until you and I have got this adjusted, we are going to be in trouble all the time. Why does not the Lord do this and that and the other thing, a thousand and one temporal things? Why does the Lord allow this and that and the other? ”Our light affliction…” (2 Cor. 4:17). ”If we suffer with Him…” (Rom. 8:17). Look at all the suffering that there is in the New Testament when you get past the Lord’s days on the earth – the suffering amongst the Lord’s people. Why, why does not the Lord come in? Yes, we would bring Him down to earth again, into that realm, but He is not coming down. He is in heaven, and that is a governing thing for this dispensation. He is in heaven, and everything primarily with Him is heavenly.

He is to be known and ministered by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. He is not known as He was known in the days of His flesh. He is not known after the flesh. ”Though we have known Christ after the flesh,” said Paul, ”yet now we know him so no more” (2 Cor. 5:16). He is not known temporally in the first instance. He is known and only known by the Holy Spirit and ministered to us, given to us, imparted to us, by the Holy Spirit alone, which means that this dispensation is pre-eminently spiritual in the mind of the Lord; heavenly and spiritual.

The Lord Jesus has been perfected, that is brought to completion, fullness, finality, and has been filled by God, filled unto all fullness, and has therefore become the pattern and the standard for believers. He is in heaven and in heavenly fullness as a Man, and has been set forth as God’s heavenly pattern for the people of God. So that this dispensation is above all things, from God’s standpoint, governed by this – our being brought to that which Christ is, to heavenly completeness and spiritual fullness. It is heavenly and it is spiritual, heavenly completeness, spiritual fullness, and the Lord is devoted to that object in this dispensation, and looks at and deals with everything in the light of that.

A LIVING WAY
The next thing, in line with that, is that everything unto that end is a matter of moving in Divine, heavenly, spiritual life. It is the living way, the living way, of reaching God’s end. That is, it has got to be, it can only be, by the Holy Spirit getting us there. We can never reach that goal, that object of God, Christ in heaven and in Divine fullness, we can never reach that goal of God along any lines, by any means, save by a definite work of the Holy Spirit, that is, by a living way. Man cannot do this; no means of man can accomplish it. You see, you may, for instance, attend meetings. You can attend them three times a day or more every day of your life as long as your life can possibly be and not be one iota spiritually advanced. It is not the number of meetings or the nature of the meetings that we attend, it is not the addresses to which we listen. It is not anything of that kind at all that gets us to God’s end. It is the Holy Spirit doing something in a living way, our coming by the way of Divine life to Divine fullness.

If one thing is true among others, it is this, that you and I are utterly hopeless in the matter of making people spiritual. You may put them into institutions and colleges, and make them preachers, and make them organizers, and make them workers, and make them a hundred and one things, but you can never make them spiritual. It is no use having homes and places for gathering together the Lord’s people with a view to making them spiritual. If ever you think that that is what you are going to do with them, let me tell you, you cannot do it. You can give them a lot of knowledge, teach them what is in the Bible, can turn them out very different from what they were when they came in in many respects, but you cannot make them spiritual. I cannot make myself spiritual, you cannot make yourself spiritual. You are helpless in that matter.

Unless the Spirit of God comes and does something, we are helpless, and that is the great mistake many have made, that they have thought by imparting Biblical knowledge and knowledge of spiritual things and how to work for the Lord, they are qualifying people for the Lord’s use. Does it work out like that? Not necessarily; unless there is something extra to all that which is God’s own work, then that does not count with God, it does not get anywhere with God, and really it only provides the background of fresh tragedies. It is true of many. I am not saying that those things are wrong and useless. I am speaking of one thing. We cannot make people spiritual, in that matter we are helpless. Only the Holy Spirit can do it, and that is done only on the basis of life or in a living way. It can only be accomplished by real, inward, spiritual history under the hand of the Holy Ghost.

THE PURPOSE OF SUFFERING
Now, it is just there that suffering, affliction, adversity, frustration and all those things have their place. Why adversity in the Lord’s work and in relation to the Lord? Why frustration, why suffering, why affliction? When the story is told at last, when it is fully told at last – and what an immense story it will be – what we shall discover is that it was the frustration, it was the suffering, the affliction, the adversity, the sorrow, the trial, that was the means of making us spiritual, nothing else – it was that that did it. We have to say, by the grace of God, that we owe our spiritual measure of increase to the suffering through which the Lord allowed us to go.

”Our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:17-18).

God is working eternal values which are not seen, but only to be grasped by the eye of faith. We have got to settle this, or else we are beaten before we start. Are we not all the time really fighting strongly to get the Lord on to a temporal basis with us? Why have any adversity, why have any suffering? Indeed, why have an enemy at all, why have a devil, why have afflictions and persecutions? Why should we have this if the Lord is Lord almighty, all-powerful, all-gracious, and really is concerned for His interests and for the progress of His work? If the Lord really is with us and on our side as the Mighty One, then the devil ought to be swept out of the way, and all hindrances and frustration ought to go to the wind, and all sufferings at once ought to be subjugated, and we ought to know nothing of this, we ought to ride triumphantly on without any of this sort of thing which is a weight upon us, and is only interrupting and frustrating growth and progress. The devil all the time is hindering and the Lord is not getting. Is He not? That is a matter you and I have got to settle.

The fact is that the New Testament is full of that sort of thing. The one man who has more of the heavenly vision, the knowledge of things spiritual, than any other man in the New Testament is the man who knows more of this other side than any other man. He tells us more about what he had to go through. ”Thrice I was shipwrecked” (2 Cor. 9:25). There is something wrong about that – the Lord letting one of His great apostles be shipwrecked again and again, just escaping with his life on a spar! Imprisoned again and again, thrashed with rods, suffering hunger, cold, nakedness. Oh, the list! We do not know when these things happened. He simply tells us that they did happen. Most of them have never been recorded by Luke. Why? Because he was not writing the life of Paul, he was writing the life of the Lord Jesus, but Paul mentions them. Paul says, ”I once and again would have come to you, but Satan hindered ” (2 Thess. 2:18). Oh, there is something wrong about that! Paul does not explain it, he does not say that it is wrong, he takes it in his stride. You see what I mean.

We are so wanting to bring the Lord again on to the temporal basis, to clear up all these difficulties, to get hindrances out of the way, to have a clear course, to lift us right out of adversity, suffering, affliction, weakness, and very often we are tempted to make that the criterion as to whether the Lord is with us and for us. You know quite well there are plenty of Job’s friends about, Christian ones too, always ready to say, ’Yes, it is because you are wrong, you are in error, that is why you have so much of it!’ That is a matter that has got to be settled. Here it is. Are we going to expect anything different from what the Lord had Himself, the heavenly Lord? Are we going to expect anything different from what Paul and the believers of his day had? These letters are so full of references to these afflictions and sufferings of the saints. Do they mean that Satan is triumphant and the Lord is defeated, or that the Lord is not with His own? Let us get that settled!

What, then, is the meaning of all this? Oh, let us look again. Is it not by these means that we are being made conformable to the heavenly Christ?  You know the fact remains that the people who live in that infant stage of temporal things and who will not walk with the Lord unless He gives them proof positive in temporal realms of His being with them are not spiritually helpful people, that is, they are not the people to whom you can go in the deepest hours of your life. There is an inward place. People who can help those who really do know the deepest tests of faith, are those who have gone through and been sustained even when the Lord has not shown His hand for their deliverance. Is that not true? It is a level of life. Conformity to the heavenly Lord is by everything being heavenly and the Lord not letting us off in this matter of heavenliness.

You want it down here, you want it in the temporal realm, things seen, things that you can bring up as proof positive, all the evidences. You want it like that, but the way of conformity to the heavenly Christ is not along that line. Things will be heavenly, and oh, my word, they are! We have not got much here, the Lord does not give you much here. It is all heavenly, it is HIMSELF. As soon as you and I begin to make a great deal of the THINGS, the Lord may step in and smite the things in order that He might be the object and not the things, the heavenly Lord known and ministered by the Spirit in a living way on the line of life.

CONCEPTION, NOT IMITATION
I do wish that we could see and really grasp inwardly this, that our New Testament is not something to be imitated in any matter. Our New Testament is something in the hands of the Holy Spirit to be wrought in us. You see, the New Testament did not come out of a study at all. Paul did not go and shut himself up in his study and think out the doctrines of Christianity as a theologian, look up his commentaries and authorities and so on, giving you the manual of New Testament doctrine. Paul was every day of his life right up against terrible tragedies, actual situations, and the New Testament was written right in the midst of the fight on the battlefield, grappling with problems, grappling with living problems, and when those letters were written they never thought that they were writing Holy Scripture, they never thought that in time to come people would sit down and study every word and resolve it into a doctrine, and crystallize it into ”New Testament teaching.” They never thought like that. What they were doing was that they were trying to meet a practical situation right on the spot, and it was wrung out of them. Yes, the Holy Spirit came through in that way and revealed the meaning of Christ in a living situation; and unless you and I are right in a living situation, faced with a terrible problem in our own case or someone else’s, we will never be conformed to the heavenly Christ.

We will never come to that by sitting down and studying New Testament doctrine. It has got to be wrought on the anvil of experience, and that experience is going to be, in a certain sense, tragic experience. It is going to be something of a real question of life and death. Anyone who has really walked with God knows that I am telling the truth, that what they have come really to know of God, what they have come to possess of real spiritual value and strength, has come out of some dark and terribly grim and awful experience in their own life. They were taken into the depths where faith rocked. They did not know but what this was the end of everything. That is how they have grown and become spiritual and heavenly. They have not come there because the Lord has pandered to every childish demand for satisfaction and gratification and answered prayer in everything temporal. They have been tested, and if the Lord has subsequently come in to do things to answer prayer, He has only come in when He has done the spiritual thing inside and prepared and made it safe to do that. He has done it after travail. THIS IS THE NATURE OF THIS DISPENSATION. It is heavenly, it is spiritual and God is governing the life of His true children with this fact.

Now, all practical points, all practical matters, have got to arise out of a spiritual quest. They have got to come up by reason of our seeking to know the Lord, to go on with the Lord, to reach the Lord’s end, not the other way round. Quite a lot of people think if they do this and that and the other thing, that the Lord will lead them to spiritual things. Oh no, we cannot duplicate, we cannot reproduce, anything that is spiritual. You cannot duplicate a spiritual assembly. You cannot duplicate a spiritual company of the Lord’s people, You cannot duplicate a real spiritual order. Now listen to me, brethren. It is no use going about the country saying, ’We are going to set up New Testament companies, order of assemblies!’ You cannot do it.  You cannot duplicate anything spiritual. You get people together and say, ’We will have a New Testament order and this is it’ – and then have your order written down – ’this is the order of a New Testament church!’ The thing may be absolutely dead.

You cannot reach spiritual things by coming out of this and that and coming to some thing else. Oh no, let it be said very, very strongly, you can never guarantee that you are going to reach any fuller spiritual measure by coming out of something. I would never for a moment suggest to you that if you came out of a certain connection, a certain denomination, a certain church, a certain association, it would be to your spiritual gain, unless that thing, of course, were wrong in some quite positive sense. If you are in some personal relationship which is evil, of course you will not move spiritually until you break that; but I am not talking about that. You can never assure people that they will make spiritual progress if only they will come out of this connection and that, and become connected with something else. Never do it, never hint at it, you may put them into an entirely false position.

If ever such questions – I have only mentioned that out of a large number that I might mention – if such questions are ever to arise at all, if you have to leave something, withdraw, associate somewhere else, if ever such questions are to arise at all, they have got to come up as you are seeking the Lord and His fullness, to go on with Him. The Lord will make it perfectly clear to you that that is a hindrance, a spiritual hindrance, that is definitely athwart the path of spiritual progress.  It has got to be an issue like that. Do not do anything because somebody else tells you you have got to do it. It has got to arise as a practical issue as you have a quest for God’s fullness. It has got to be in the living way, not the legal way, not the technical way.

Let me repeat. It is impossible to duplicate spiritual things. It cannot be done; it is a work of the Spirit of God.

I am speaking of a principle which is so perfectly clear in the New Testament if you look at it. You see, Paul and the other Apostles did not leave the Temple and did not leave Jewry in order to join the Christian Church, in order even to go on with the Lord. No, no, they did not. They went to the Temple, they continued going to the Temple, they continued going to the synagogue, they continued association with the Jews, in fellowship, if you like, with them, until the matter became an inward, spiritual issue, a thing from heaven, a thing by the Holy Ghost, and then you find gravitation according to life, conformity to heavenly type; and when they came to see that the Temple is not that thing at Jerusalem, it is something in heaven, THAT came by revelation of the Holy Ghost, not because someone told them that was so. If ever they came to withdraw from the Temple and the synagogue because they had seen the heavenly, it was a crisis in their spiritual life, a mark of their spiritual progress. It was not because it was said to them, You have got to leave this, come out of that, association with that is all wrong! No, it was a spiritual matter with a living issue, and you cannot find the point at which it happened with them. There is no secession recorded in the New Testament, no split as a part of the history of Christianity. It happened, and it did not happen with all the Christians at once, just this one and that one. It happened, that is all. In the end, they saw there was a difference. It was a spiritual matter. That is my point.

And so that is the nature of things now. It has got to be like that. If you are in something not on that basis, I ask you to go back and reconsider your whole position. Are you where you are because it has become in you at some time a spiritual issue, a matter in which your spiritual life was involved, something between you and the Lord? Is that the basis on which you are where you are? If not, let me urge you, go back, do not be afraid, don’t you think the Lord will be grieved with you. He will not be grieved with you putting things on a right basis. We must be on the basis of what is living, of the Spirit, in a heavenly way, that is, on the basis of Christ in heaven known and ministered by the Holy Spirit.

WHY WE ARE WHERE WE ARE
Now, there are many more things I would like to suggest to you. May I just add this little word for each life? You see, the Lord disposes of us entirely on spiritual considerations, that is, our spiritual growth, and through that, the spiritual growth of others. That is the thing that is governing the Lord in His disposing of us all the time. If only I were in such and such a place, in such and such a situation, had such and such a job; if only I were there or here, how much more I could be doing for the Lord, how much more I could be counting for the Lord! But where I am, I am bottled up, I am shut up, I am pressed down, and there seems so little for the Lord, so little, practically nothing, if anything at all, for the Lord. It all seems so inadequate, so insignificant, so unworthwhile, and life is passing, nothing very much to show! Are you up against a situation like that? Things seen; what you want to see, you cannot see. That is the trouble, this matter of the things seen, even spiritual values.

Let me say this, and I understand the position, I know. It is a thing we have got to settle. What is the Lord doing? Have I deliberately taken myself out of the Lord’s hands, taken my own way, acted without prayer, without committing my way to the Lord, chosen my own course? Oh well then, if that is true, there may be an explanation of the situation, but if I am where I am without any self-will, where the Lord has been given first place, where I have sought to honour Him, trust Him, put my faith in Him and subject everything to Him, and yet this situation obtains, what is the explanation?  The Lord is more concerned with my, and with your, spiritual and heavenly measure than He is with the number of things we are doing. We would call spiritual success the number of converts, the number of churches, the number of workers. The Lord does not. It is the spiritual measure of ourselves that matters. That is what it is with the Lord.

The heavenly measure, the spiritual measure, what there is of the Holy Ghost, that is the thing that matters. ”Let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he hath understanding, and knoweth me” (Jeremiah 9:24). This is a hard school, knowing the Lord, a bitter school, nevertheless, that is what the Lord is after, a spiritual, heavenly measure of Christ. He is more concerned about that than He is about anything else, and remember that you and I can NEVER HELP ANYONE BEYOND OUR OWN SPIRITUAL MEASURE. The Lord is preparing us in this hard school to do something more than the average, to be something more than the average, of spiritual value. Whether it is here or hereafter, that is not the question, but that is the end that He has in view. Let me repeat. The Lord disposes of us on entirely spiritual principles.

He puts us into the place, the situation, the circumstances, where our spiritual life is the thing in question, our spiritual life is the matter in hand, and we shall usually find that the Lord puts us where everything is contrary to our natural disposition, because that is the difference between Christ and Adam, between the spirit and the flesh, between the new creation and the old. Am I naturally one who shrinks and would not take responsibility, would never do by initiative myself? Well the school for me is, in the Lord’s choosing, going to be one where I will have to take the initiative for my spiritual life, I have to do that from which my whole nature shrinks. I would like to be in a corner where no demands were made on me, where I could be left alone; but the Lord is not going to leave me there. Or the other way. Am I one who naturally would lead, would dominate, would govern, would master, would lord it? Mine is going to be the bitter school of self-emptying where I shall eventually come to a place where I am not doing anything of myself. It is a bitter school because it lets men ride over your head, it brings you into the net, and all that about you that wants to be vindicated, justified, is simply being ground to powder, being humbled in the dust. That is the school which is going to make way for the Lord Jesus.

I wonder if you have contemplated the Lord Jesus. He was all this, you see, born to be Lord of the universe, and yet knowing how to be a servant. Again, He, the meekest of men, at times had to rise up and take a course, as in the cleansing of the Temple. Do you think it was easy? No, not easy. He did it on principle, on grounds of righteousness, but I believe that the Lord Jesus would rather not have done that. I believe the Spirit of Christ was, If I must come to you with a rod, it hurts Me more than it hurts you; it is not because I love to wield the rod, that is not My nature, nor the nature of the Spirit! – and yet it works both ways.

Now you think of it, and that is what it means. The Spirit is making us, through our afflictions, which afflictions are things which work contrary to our natural constitution, making us to be conformed to Jesus in heaven and that by the Spirit, a spiritual life. Now I have suggested. Do you agree? Is it right? I hope the Lord will make it clear to us all and give us grace.

The Law of Travail

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“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children… And unto Adam he said… cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil (sorrow) shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; …in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” (Genesis 3:16, 17, 19).

“The creation was subjected to vanity… For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain…” (Romans 8:20, 22).

The presence of the law of travail in the whole creation is beyond dispute. That it was something imposed by the Creator because of sin is a fundamental truth of the Bible. That it is something not in the first thought of God, but something running counter to man’s nature, is common experience. But we are left to draw from God’s act and the Bible’s teaching the meaning and necessity of travail. What that meaning is lies at the heart of this present meditation.

It can be put very precisely in this way: What costs little is little valued. What comes easily is let go easily. What we suffer over becomes precious. What we labour for is not despised, but jealously guarded. And so on.

That brings us to a surmise and a deduction as to the introduction of this law. But note, the law was not established with partiality. Not only was the woman to be subjected to it, but man also. Then we are told that “the whole creation… travaileth”.

The surmise and deduction to which we are brought is that the behaviour of Adam and Eve in the garden implied or indicated a serious lack of reverence and esteem. Everything was made for them and given to them as a trust and a responsibility. They were the custodians of Divine interests. Nothing was an end in itself; all was full of glorious potentialities, to be sacredly guarded and let out to full realisation. It would seem that all was taken too much for granted and as a matter of course. An adequate and governing sense of values was lacking, and they just looked upon everything in the light of how it served their pleasure.

This weakness and lack was fully exploited by the discerning tempter, and was made the ground of his assault. Hence, the law of travail was established to counter this disposition. Man must be made to realise that God places a value upon His gifts, and that everything in His mind is costly and precious. What we are not prepared to suffer for we lightly esteem. This is surely and so clearly seen in redemption.

Whether it be basic redemption in the Cross of Christ, or the progressive redemption in the Christian’s life, or the consummation of redemption in the ‘creation’s deliverance from the bondage of corruption’, and the ‘manifestation of the sons of God’, all is at very great cost and through deep and anguished travail. Christ sees His seed through the travail of His soul. The Church and true Christians come to spiritual fulness through “the fellowship of his sufferings”. The creation itself will come to glory through great upheavals and anguish. The Bible says and shows all this.

But to return to the specific point and its application. If God gives freely and richly He will look for and expect a reverent and serious regard for, respect for, and appraisal of His gifts, as for a sacred trust and responsibility. The presentation of salvation is often too cheap, and that unspeakably costly thing is made a matter of the pleasure of the recipient. The result is that when the true value is involved in a testing ordeal of trial and adversity, many are disappointed and go away. They have not seen that it is something of such value as to be worth suffering for.

If the Lord gives a rich and costly ministry to His people, sooner or later they will pass into a time which will be nothing less than deep and desperate travail, and that ministry will be tested as to how much it really means to those to whom it has been given. The same is true with regard to those who minister. A true servant of God is one in whom, through suffering and passion, that which he gives has been born. His ministry must carry the impress of deep history with God. A merely ritualistic, liturgical service, however devoutly performed, will not produce spiritual men and women. It may make people religious, but that can be true in realms other than Christianity.

Christ’s travail was not because there was no religion. There was an abundance of it in Jerusalem and elsewhere. But there was little or no sense of the costliness of God’s gifts. Two thousand years of anguish in the case of Israel is God’s way of showing that His greatest Gift – Jesus Christ, His Son – cannot be so lightly regarded and disposed of as Israel thought.
The travail of a mother has much to do with her love for her children, unless she is wholly unnatural and subnormal. When the farmer or gardener has toiled and laboured, and spent anxious days and nights over his harvest, he does not lightly esteem the seed or the soil, but cherishes and cares for it.

Let us look at suffering and adversity as God’s way of seeking to bring us into His estimate of what He has given. ‘He that has suffered most, has most to give.’

Crucified to the Religious World

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“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Galatians 6:14).

It is interesting to notice the particular way in which the Apostle speaks of the world here. That term is a very comprehensive term and includes a very great deal. Here Paul gets right down to the spirit of the thing. You notice the context; it is well for us to take account of it:
“For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh” (Galatians 6:13).

What does the Apostle mean? They want to say, “See how many proselytes we are making! See how many followers and disciples we are getting! See how successful our movement is! See what a power we are becoming in the world! See all the marks of Divine blessing resting upon us!” The Apostle says that is worldliness in principle and spirit; that is the world. He sets over against this his own clear spiritual position. Do I seek glory of men? Do I seek to be well-pleasing to men? No! The world is crucified to me, and I to the world.

All that sort of thing does not weigh with me. What weighs with me is not whether my movement is successful, whether I am getting a lot of followers, whether there are all the manifestations outwardly of success; what weighs with me is the measure of Christ in those with whom I have to do: “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). Christ formed in you – that is my concern, he says that is what weighs with me… not extensiveness, not bigness, not popularity, not keeping in with the world, so that it is said that this is a successful ministry and a successful movement. That is worldliness. I am dead to all that; I am crucified with Christ to all that. The thing that matters is Christ – the measure of Christ in you.

You see how the world can creep in… and how worldly we can become almost imperceptibly by taking account of things outwardly – of how men will think and talk, what they will say, the attitude they will take; of the measure of our popularity, the talk of our success. That is all the world, says the Apostle, the spirit of the world; that is how the world talks. Those are the values in the eyes of the world, but not in the eyes of the risen Christ. In the new creation, on the resurrection side of the Cross, one thing alone determines value… and that is the measure of Christ in everything. Nothing else is of value at all, however big the thing may be, however popular it may be, however men talk favorably of it; on the resurrection side that does not count a little bit. What counts is how much of Christ there is.

You and I in the Cross of the Lord Jesus must come to the place where we are crucified to all those other elements. Ah, you may be unpopular, and the work be very small; there may be no applause, and the world may despise; but in it all there may be something which is of Christ, and that is the thing upon which our hearts must be set. The Lord gives us grace for that crucifixion. There are few things more difficult to bear than being despised; but He was despised and rejected of men. What a thing is in God’s sight must be our standard. That is a resurrection standard. Now that is the victory of the Cross: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”.

Church and the Cross

 

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The Church embodying the meaning of Calvary is the occasion of the spiritual conflict, and where there is a real apprehension of the full meaning of the Cross and a practical expression of it in a people, there you have opposition and conflict in its most intense and persistent form.

 

To say that in other words, the measure of the living corporate embodiment and expression of the meaning of Calvary is the measure of spiritual warfare.

 

The more there is of the living apprehension of the Cross and the more there is of a living expression of God’s thought about the Church, the more there will be of spiritual conflict, the more the antagonism and hatred of the powers of evil will be manifested, expressed, demonstrated.

 

The Cross in all its fulness of meaning, the Church in all its mighty, Divine significance, have one object in view ultimately, and that object is the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ.

 

The Church, therefore, takes up that meaning of the Cross and is to be a company of the Lord’s people on this earth which represents the overthrow of Satan’s power, in his destruction of oneness, fellowship, relatedness, co-operation, and this bringing into view of the absolute Lordship and sovereign Headship of Jesus Christ.

 

T. Austin-Sparks

 

The Power of the Kingdom

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“I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 16:19).

 

“Verily I say unto you, There are some of them that stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Matt. 16:28).

 

“They therefore, when they were come together, asked him, saying, Lord, dost thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6).

 

“Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

 

“Now there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven… And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying, Behold are not all these that speak Galilaeans? And how hear we, every man in our own language wherein we were born? …we hear them speaking in our tongues the mighty works of God… But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice… saying…” (Acts 2:5-14).

 

The whole matter of the kingdom of heaven can be reduced to one simple issue. In all the above passages it is undoubtedly the kingdom of heaven which is in view, and which is governing. Pentecost saw the Son of man coming in His kingdom, and the exercise of the authority concerning that kingdom of which the Lord had spoken to Peter.

 

The disciples still had some earthly ideas of the Kingdom, but by the happenings on the day of Pentecost they were lifted completely out of their old ideas and came to see that the whole matter of the Kingdom, as regards this dispensation, was bound up with the person of the Lord Himself – that it is Himself present and manifested in power by the Holy Spirit.

 

The Kingdom is not, in the first place, what is so commonly implied when people speak of ‘extending the Kingdom,’ meaning thereby the realm in which Christianity is propagated and converts are secured. The Kingdom in its inception at all times is the Lord Jesus present in power. “Ye shall be my witnesses” – that is the simple issue of the Kingdom. It is not a movement, it is not a teaching and it is not an institution. It is firstly Christ; then it is ‘ye’. It is Christ present by the Holy Spirit in people – and manifestly present.

 

This coming of the Kingdom on the day of Pentecost, or Christ the Son of man coming in His kingdom, changed everything from negative to positive. Up to that point, everything was negative where the disciples were concerned. Now everything became positive. The Kingdom is very positive. Christ is very positive. The Holy Spirit is very positive. Where Christ and His kingdom by the Holy Spirit are in people, things are of a positive character.

 

It is not a case of just being there, just going on from day to day, just waiting for something to happen; the Kingdom is there. There is a witness for Christ. It does not have to be organised. At Pentecost it was not organised at all. I recently read the statement of a modernist trying to interpret these things, and his word on this matter was that on the day of Pentecost the Apostles came to the conclusion that they had to form a society. Nothing could be farther from the mark, more utterly out of keeping with what God was doing, than such a statement. What happened was spontaneous; and that is the point about the Kingdom – it happens. Where it is a matter of lives made positive by the power of Christ in the Holy Spirit, everything else follows.

 

It is remarkable how much was included in this. First of all, you notice that the feature of the universality of Christ was very clearly and powerfully displayed. There were all these languages and tongues represented in Jerusalem. There is a Rabbinical statement that the whole range of human languages at that time was seventy.

 

 It seems clear that the intention of Luke was to show that practically the whole world in tongue and language was represented in Jerusalem, and then, by this miracle, all those differences of language, tongue, nationality, were suddenly transcended. The universality of Christ, of His gospel, of the Church, of the Kingdom, transcended all the earthly aspects; and more – it overcame all the results of Satanic interference with the race in disintegration and division. What a marvellous thing it was! But that is all part of the Kingdom.

 

The point is, the Kingdom is so positive, and it is not an organised thing. It is not something set up in an external framework. It is the Lord present in us in the power of the Holy Spirit, and that, without any appointments or institutions, constitutes us positive factors; there is nothing negative about us at all. I do feel that is a point upon which we should focus for personal exercise.

 

Supposing we take out of our lives any given period of a few months or a year; how far can we say that our life in that period has been positive, there has been some registration, some real impact? How far do we have to say that it has just been a matter of carrying on, and we have not been positive at all; there has been no impact? It is a simple, concrete issue which we ought to take up before the Lord day by day.

 

‘Now, Lord, today at least my presence here must be a positive thing so far as the Kingdom is concerned, so far as Thou art concerned; I desire that Thou shalt be positively manifested whatever I am doing.’ I think that both men and the powers of evil should have something to reckon with in our being here. That is how it was in the “Acts”.

 

The world and the devil had to reckon with the presence of these people. Their mere presence was a menace. It must be like that, that we count, that we mean something that is positive, that there is some mark left by our going on from day to day. “Ye shall receive power… and ye shall be my witnesses”. That implies the presence of men in whom the Kingdom has become a reality by the power of the Holy Spirit.

A Burden in a Valley

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The Burden of the Valley of Vision

 

Reading: Isaiah 22:1

 

The word “burden” here just does mean a load or weight, as much as a man can carry. Thus the Prophets felt what the Lord had shown them to be something that weighed heavily upon them and often overwhelmed them.

 

The prophetic function is brought into operation at a time when things are not well with the people and work of God, when declension has set in; when things have lost their distinctive Divine character; when there is a falling short or an accretion of features which were never intended by God.

 

The Prophet in principle is one who represents, in himself and his vision, God’s reaction to either a dangerous tendency or a positive deviation. He stands on God’s full ground and the trend breaks on him.

 

That which constitutes this prophetic function is spiritual perception, discernment, and insight. The Prophet sees, and he sees what others are not seeing. It is vision, and this vision is not just of an enterprise, a “work,” a venture; it is a state, a condition. It is not for the work as such that he is concerned, but for the spiritual state that dishonors and grieves the Lord.

 

This faculty of spiritual discernment makes the Prophet a very lonely man, and brings upon him all the charges of being singular, extreme, idealistic, unbalanced, spiritually proud, and even schismatic. He makes many enemies for himself.

 

Sometimes he is not vindicated until after he has left the earthly scene of his testimony. Nevertheless, the Prophet is the instrument of keeping the Lord’s full thought alive, and of maintaining vision without which the people are doomed to disintegration.

 

While it has so often been an individual with whom the Lord has deposited His fuller thought and made His prophetic vessel, it has also very frequently been a company of His people in which He has been more utterly represented. Such companies are seen scattered down the ages. They were the Lord’s reactionary vessels. Such, surely, are the “Overcomers” of every “end-time.”

 

The mass of Christians may be too taken up with the externals and accepted ways of Christianity; too spiritually satisfied with the lesser; too bound by tradition and fettered by the established order. The Lord cannot do His full thing with them because He does not put His new wine into old wineskins; the skins would burst and the life be wasted, not conserved to definite purpose.

 

He finds Himself limited by an order which, while it may have been right at a certain time and for a certain period to carry His testimony up to a certain point, yet now remains as the fixed bound, and for want of an essential adjustableness His fuller purposes are impossible of realization. So it was with Judaism, so it has become with Christianity, and so it is with many an instrumentality which has been greatly used by Him.

 

There is no finality with us here, and it is dangerous to the Lord’s interest to conclude that, because the Lord led and gave a pattern at a certain time, that was full and final and must remain. Every bit of new revelation will call for adjustment, but revelation waits for such a sense of need as to at least make for willingness to adjust.

 

The Lord needs that which really does represent His fullest possible thought, and not those who are just doing a good work. But it costs; and this is the “burden of the valley of vision.”

A Vessel of Recovery

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What is the nature and the condition of a vessel to be used by the Lord in recovering His full testimony – the testimony concerning His Son? That vessel – that instrument – is, and must be, one upon whose heart, genuinely, the condition of things as so clearly contrary to the thought of God lies with very great pressure.

 

It is one thing for us to get a kind of public concern about things and then begin to make a lot of noise about it amongst men – to advertise, to demonstrate, and to give it a public form in utterance and effort and organization; to join ourselves to some cause or to join some cause to ourselves. . . and then, in that cause, to make a great big affair of it; – that is one thing.

 

It is quite another thing for the Lord to put into our hearts in secret an almost unbearable, intolerable burden, which is His own heart-burden, and for us first of all to bear that thing upon our hearts in a deep outpouring of travailing prayer secretly in the presence of God; – quite another thing to come to the Lord’s interests in that way.

 

It is one thing to come to a situation from the outside, link ourselves on with it, and take it up and make it our bit of work for life – our life-interest. There are plenty of people whom you could get interested in a cause, whom you could get to take up a piece of work requiring help. But it is another thing to have that spiritual fellowship with God which results in God’s putting His travail into your soul.

 

What kind of vessel must the Lord have in order to do things? He does not want “workers” to take up His work; He wants travailers to travail with Him for His spiritual interests. He does not want employees; He wants sons. He does not want experts; He wants those who have a passion – those to whose heart the whole thing comes so closely that it bends them down before Him in an anguish. . . who are so much in the matter that it is their matter before God – it is theirs. It is no mere mental apprehension of teaching and of truth; it is a heart burden, a desperate concern for the Lord because of things as they are spiritually amongst His people.

 

Have we taken up work for the Lord? Have we associated ourselves with the cause of Christ? Or, have we come to know God’s own burden of travail in our souls to the point that this is to us a thing which saps our life, saps our very vitality – the thing for which we are pouring out our very blood, the thing which costs everything? And yet we can do no other. There is no question of resigning – of giving up; the thing is ourselves. For His purpose, God must have something like that at the end.

 

Oh, let us wipe the slate of all these other ideas of organizing something, running something, getting a movement going. Let us see that God brings His thing into being out of travail.

He baptizes a soul into an anguish; He throws upon some one – or some little company – the mantle of His own terrible disappointment, dissatisfaction, and grief because of things as He sees them spiritually amongst His own people. That is how God brings things into being. Men do it in other ways, but that has always been God’s way. It has cost the instrument its life every time (not necessarily that it has died a sudden death, or even laid down its life in martyrdom, but it has cost the instrument its life).

 

Oh, may the Lord save us from having the preponderance, the greater measure, before men and the lesser measure before Himself. May all that is before men come out of what we are before God. That should be a matter of exercise for us, and we should ask the Lord that our secret life with Him over these matters shall be kept well abreast of all our public ministries and our outward activities. If the balance is on the side of what is public and toward men, there will be weakness and failure. Strength and effectiveness will be the measure of our secret history with God, and others are able to take account of us and say: “There is nothing put on in this matter; this is no mere professional thing; it is not some habit – something they are interested in. This is something which to them is a matter of life and death; it is a matter which goes right to the heart with them.”

 

And men are able to discern whether it is like that or not. Oh, they know, better than perhaps we think they do, whether we are real or whether it is put on; whether we are speaking out of a book or out of our hearts; whether the thing is something we have collected or something born of anguish.

 

May I urge this upon you, that you seek ever to have your own heart deeply exercised in everything that you have to say publicly. Yes, it will cost, it will be anguish, it will be sorrow of heart, it will mean a price; but it is the way of spiritual fruitfulness and effectiveness. The Lord can make you His messenger in His message; that is, a sign unto the people of what you are saying. Men are able to say: “Yes, that is not something he has read or studied and prepared; that has had a working in the life, and it has cost something.” It will cost, but it is the way of effectiveness and fruitful service.

 

And what is true as to public ministry will be true in relation to any instrument that the Lord will use for any special purpose; it must have the thing wrought into it, and it must not be something that it has adopted. The Lord keep us from adopting things. . . but work the thing right into us.

Priesthood and Life

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What is a priest? He is not an official or a member of a religious caste, but a man who withstands death and ministers life. The one all-inclusive issue of the ages, the great purpose of God from eternity to eternity, can be described in New Testament language as eternal life. As soon as sin entered the world then death ensued, and so men needed an altar and the shedding of blood in order that sin could be countered by righteousness and death be overcome by divine life. Together with the altar there emerged the personal activity of a man called a priest, and so, as time went on, such service grew and grew until it developed into an elaborate priestly ministry.

 

Death as an active power could only be arrested, nullified and removed by having its ground of sin adequately dealt with, hence the priestly ministry of righteousness, the perfect righteousness of incorruptible life expressed by the blood of the offering. Israel was to be a nation of priests, a people based and grounded on God’s own righteousness, and therefore able to face death and defeat it. The Church was called to take up this ministry. The Lord Jesus Himself foretold this by saying: “the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matthew 21:43). Peter later explained that redeemed sinners have entered into the spiritual calling, being the “chosen nation”, the “royal priesthood” which has to undertake the great vocation of being God’s ministers of life in the earth.

 

So we find that as members of Christ’s body we have a relationship to Him, the great High Priest, which is analogous to that between Aaron and his sons who shared his work of priesthood. In the letter to the Hebrews, which deals with this subject, we have a kind of New Testament Leviticus. In this epistle believers are addressed as sons as well as “holy brethren”, as though Christ regards us as His sons – “I and the children whom God has given me” (Hebrews 2:13). Through us, therefore, as members of Christ, the great high priestly work in heaven is to find expression here on earth. If we ask what is the significance of the Lord’s continuous work as High Priest, the answer is to set life over against death, to nullify the operation and reign of spiritual death. The Church’s great conflict is with spiritual death, and the more spiritual a man becomes, the more he is aware of the awful reality of this battle with the evil power of death.

 

No priest or Levite of the Old Testament was ever tempted to become lyrical on this subject or to talk in poetical language as though death were some sort of friend. Oh no, they knew death to be the great enemy of God and of all God’s interests. When the Scriptures speak of death as the last enemy, they not only mean that it is the last on the list but that it is the consummate enemy, the inclusive expression of all enmity. The effect of priesthood is illustrated again and again in the Word of God. We observe death breaking in because of sin, and then God intervening with His answer of life by means of blood sacrifice. The blood speaks of an accepted righteousness, and by means of it, the priest was able to meet death, counter it and minister life. Finally we are told of the Lord Jesus, who met death in the concentration of all its enmity, overthrew it by means of the perfect sacrifice of His own life’s blood, and then entered upon His priestly work of ministering life to believers.

 

The priest is a man of authority though this is spiritual and not ecclesiastical. He has power with God. The apostle John speaks of the case of one who has sinned a sin which is not unto death, and he says: “He shall ask life…” for him (1 John 5:16). This reference discloses that a believer who is standing on the ground of righteousness by faith through the blood of Jesus, can exercise the power of priesthood on behalf of an erring brother, and so minister life to him. Surely there is no ministry more needed on earth today than such a vitalising ministry. If we minister truths which do not issue in life, then we are wasting our time.

 

God has not commissioned us to be mere imparters of information about divine things or teachers of morals; He has loosed us from our sins so that we might be ministers of life to others by virtue of priestly authority. We live in a world where death reigns. Daily there are multitudes being swept away by a tide of spiritual death. Why? Because of unrighteousness. What is needed is the activity of those who will accept their priestly responsibilities, both asking life for others and offering them that life through the gospel. We must minister Christ. Not mere doctrines about Him; not mere words or commandments; but the vital impact of Christ in terms of life. So every believer is called to stand between the dead and the living giving the answer of Christ to the activities of Satan.

 

No wonder that the kingdom of Satan was at war with Israel, for the presence of this nation on a right relationship with God proclaimed effectively that sin and death do not reign universally in God’s world, but they have been met and overcome by the power of a righteous and incorruptible life. In the end Israel lost this testimony and so lost the priestly ministry. The Church was then brought in to take it up, being no longer a localised people in one land but a spiritual community scattered in all the earth, a people whose supreme calling is to maintain God’s victory over death according to the testimony of Jesus. And what is the testimony of Jesus? It is the testimony of the triumph of life over death. He Himself so described it to John: “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and I have the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:18).

 

This testimony was deposited in the Church, and immediately the disciples presented it powerfully among the nations. Alas! In many respects the Church is now failing in its priestly vocation. This vital element of victorious life seems to be lacking. The letters at the beginning of the book of Revelation show that Christ was not satisfied with the churches’ many good activities, zealous works, correct teaching, patient persistence in orthodoxy. He sought to call them back to their true task of demonstrating the power of His overcoming life in the face of every challenge. What ministry do we want? To be running around taking meetings, giving addresses, supporting Christian work? All this may be included, but it is of little value if it does not fit into the context of priestly warfare against death, the bringing in of the powerful impact of Christ’s victorious life to meet death’s challenge.

 

The book of the Revelation makes it plain that such a testimony provokes the animosity of Satan, but such enmity should be a compliment to us, for it means that our lives are really counting for God. The day when you or I are no longer involved in the spiritual battle will be a bad day, for it will mean that we have lost our true vocation and are no longer providing any real challenge to spiritual death but are failing in this matter of priestly ministry. On the other hand, the painful antagonism of the powers of evil may be a clear proof that we are truly serving as priests.

 

Test everything by life. The life that is victorious over sin. The life which delivers from bondage, especially the bondage of fear. The life which expresses itself in terms of love for needy sinners. Not only does John encourage us to ask for life, he assures us that in answer to such prayer God will give it – “…he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death”. We must not fail in our priestly ministry.