This is a part of the recounting of the deeds of David’s mighty men. What I want you to note is that there were a number of giants – apparently of the family of the original giant, Goliath – who were dealt with by these men of David; and alongside of that, in order to get us into our right and proper and up-to-date position,

I recall to your minds the familiar words of Ephesians 6:10-12. “Finally, be strong in the Lord… Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities,… against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies”. It is upon the relationship of these giants to the original giant, Goliath, that I want you to focus your attention.

A Corporate Answer To The Enemy’s Challenge You know that David himself first came into view in relation to the throne in connection with this original (and what we might call, inclusive) giant. It was in his victorious combat with Goliath that David was first taken account of publicly, and this marked his first step toward the throne of Israel, in relation to which he had been anointed. Now we have moved on some considerable distance, and the security of that throne is seen to be the issue at the time of these mighty deeds.

When these mighty men come into view, they, as in the case of David, are seen in relation to the throne and to him who is destined to occupy it. But the movement is one from the personal to the corporate. In David’s case, it was personal. He fought a lone battle with Goliath; he was a lone figure on that field. When the giant challenged, all the people fled, but David moved out alone to accept that challenge and to answer it. But here, in the portion of the record with which we are now dealing, everything is corporate; but it is the same issue. It is all gathered up into a company.

The one giant, the inclusive giant, has been fully dealt with and beheaded, but he has left some of his offspring, and they are all giants; and now the giant in corporate expression is being met by the corporate expression of the throne. That sets us very clearly in ‘Ephesians’. We know that in the beginning of ‘Ephesians’ it is declared that the Lord Jesus has been raised up and set far above all rule and authority; the personal and the individual is an accomplished thing.

But at the end of ‘Ephesians’ the Church comes into view in exactly the same connection, the issue of the throne as challenged by giants – principalities, authorities, world rulers, the great ones in the spiritual realm – as well as by the hosts of the lesser wicked spirits gathered around. I think that is perfectly clear. So that it is this company called David’s mighty men who are brought in to meet the residue of the giant, to take up the same great issue of the throne and of him who is to occupy it. These giants are to be dealt with by the company as the giant was dealt with by the individual.

The Embodiment Of A Spirit David’s mighty men are not so much a class of people as they are the embodiment of a spirit. They express a spiritual state, a spiritual life. In Ephesians, it is the Spirit. “Be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might”; and it is so clearly, in that letter, by the Spirit that we are strengthened with might into the inward man. Now there are two things to be noted about these mighty men.

Committal In Love To A Person Firstly, they are committed to David. You cannot fail to see how they loved him, the devotion of these men to David himself. We shall come upon that again before we are through, but you will recall that some of their exploits were especially related to some breathed desire of his heart. It was to himself that they were devoted, and that was quite a discriminating feature. You notice that when the giant Goliath shouted, the people fled (1 Sam. 17:24). Why? Because they were mainly there for the benefits that they could get for themselves. It was a matter of how things affected them.

That is the thing that is found in Israel’s life so continually – when things were not favourable to their interests, then they were anywhere but in the right place and condition. They were all over the place because personal interests were so much in the ascendant. But these men were not at all concerned about their personal interests and how things affected them. It was David alone who mattered to them; and so when others who had lesser interests would flee because of the difficulty, because of the greatness of the adverse conditions, these men saw the adversity as an opportunity for proving their love for their lord. They were committed to him. It was, in principle, love for the Lord.

Committal To God’s King And then, of course, they were committed to his throne. Read carefully the things that are said about them, and you will find throughout that their loyalty was not just because of David as a person, but because they knew God’s place for that person, because they had come to see that he was the man chosen of God to occupy the throne. The throne was for them the throne of the one of God’s choice. They had to come to that through discipline, and to arrive at the point where Saul no longer held the ground for them.

They saw that David was God’s man for the throne. They were committed therefore to him on the double ground of Divine destiny and of personal devotion. I am sure that simple truth needs no emphasis; here. We occupy ourselves much with the proclamation of those two things – that the Lord Jesus in Himself personally has won our hearts’ allegiance, and also that we have come to see that He is the One Whom God has chosen for the place of supreme authority throughout this universe unto the ages of the ages; and we are committed – to Christianity, or to the Lord – not for merely personal reasons. If we were, when a giant loomed up we should very quickly be off the scene; the test, you see, is that.

The Lord is really working very hard with us to try and woo us from our personal interests in Christianity and in our relationship with Him, because when things which touch us here on this earth and in our personal lives are threatened, we very often lose faith. We go down, we scatter spiritually, in the presence of an uprising threat to our interests here, even though we are Christians related to the Lord. We have to brush aside the consideration of how it affects us, and take a position in the interests of the Lord. It is a very testing and very important thing.

We must say, ‘It does not matter how it affects me, but how is the Lord going to suffer over this? What does the Lord stand to lose if I flee, or if this thing gains the ascendancy? How is it going to affect my Lord and to touch the great fact of His throne?’ So these mighty men of David are distinguished from the general company of those who very largely are Christians for the sake of the blessings of Christianity and who are driven from the field by the enemy because their blessings are threatened. These mighty men speak of those who have got beyond that point of personal consideration and have seen the interests of Christ and the purposes of God centered in Him for universal dominion.

Corporate Responsibility For Throne Interests There was a sense – and this gets very near to the heart of it – in which David had to be saved and succoured by these men. You notice in verses 16 and 17, one of these giants, in a set of new armour, marked out David and made him his object of destruction, and David was involved in very great peril. The man who had slain the original giant was now in peril from one of that giant’s offspring, and one of the mighty men came to David’s rescue and succoured him and slew the giant. Then David’s men said to him, ‘We cannot afford to lose you; you keep back and let us deal with this; we will come between you and this sort of thing.’

You will say it is a wrong interpretation to put the Lord Jesus in David’s place there – ‘Lord Jesus, You keep out of this, we are going to look after You!’ Yet there is a sense in which that is right where the Church is concerned; the very interests and honour and glory and throne of the Lord Jesus are bound up with the Church. The matter is no longer His alone, and there is a sense in which He stands to lose if the Church fails – in which God would say about His Son, ‘This is not the time for you to come out personally; you have done that; this is the time for the Church to take up your interests.’ David’s life, David’s throne, were put into the hands of these men, and they saw their responsibility, and how great it was, and what David stood to lose if they did not take definite action about it.

There must be a company of the Lord’s people who rise to that level, who see that the tremendous significance of the throne of the Lord Jesus is in their hands. In one way it sounds a presumptuous thing to say, but you see what I mean. If we do not take responsibility over this matter of these evil forces in their assailing, if we are not strong in the Lord and do not move out against the principalities and powers, it is not only ourselves who are going to lose, but our Lord also. His throne is going to be affected. He has now, in a sense, made us responsible for the final issue, which is not personal but collective and corporate.

So there must be a people (actual numbers are mentioned in David’s case but we must not take that literally: they represent a specific inner company) who have seen the mighty issues of what is presented in the Letter to the Ephesians – those eternal counsels of God concerning Jesus Christ, and the place of the Church in those counsels as instrumental for their full realization – and have got through all personal interest in the matter of blessings, and are now committed to their Lord and to God’s intention concerning Him, and realize that the responsibility is with them. That is what I feel is the Lord’s word to us at this time – not to be just ‘ordinary’ Christians, but to realize that God must have a company of His Own, in the midst of the general rank and file, who answer to David’s mighty men, to take up the ultimate issues of Christ’s Lordship on His behalf.

The Lord is involved in these battles into which we are precipitated, and they are not just our battles, they are the battles of the Lord. There are situations and propositions which present themselves which are gigantic; they are paralysing if you can be paralysed. When Goliath started to shout, the people were literally paralysed – if that is in keeping with being able to run away! But all their strength went in the presence of this man’s showing of himself. You can be petrified by some of the situations that the enemy brings about as tests of faith. And then what is it going to be? Well, one deciding factor will be whether we consider ourselves or our Lord; whether at once we begin to feel sorry for ourselves, get down on to our own ground – which is just what the enemy wants to bring about – or whether we say, ‘Well, the Lord’s name and honour are involved in this; the real issue here is the Lordship, the Sovereignty, the Ascendancy of the Lord’ – and, as they did, meet the situation on that ground.

They did not always wait for these enemies to come and start the thing. When the enemies loomed up before them, these men took the initiative. I am the last to suggest that we should be careless and frivolous over attacking spiritual forces. We can do that to our undoing; and I also remind you that this is a thing which it is very dangerous to do individually. This is the business for the Church – the corporate assault upon situations which loom up and which could literally paralyse and put out of action. The Lord must have people like this in whom there is the initiative of His Lordship.

Suffering For The Body’s Sake There must be some to meet the situation – may I use the word? – in a vicarious way. There are all the others, there is all Israel; but so many cannot stand up, they have not got the spiritual position, the spiritual measure; they are in spiritual weakness, and for them anything in the way of severe or extra trial or difficulty finds them at once paralysed and helpless. Is the enemy going to create a universal situation like that? No, for the sake of the Church there must be those who take this position of the mighty men vicariously for the sake of others, the strong to bear the burdens of the weak, to take the initiative on behalf of the Church for the Church’s sake. I am sure that amongst the mighty men of the Lord Jesus the Apostle Paul has “attained unto the first three,” and he was one who said “for His body’s sake, which is the church” (Col. 1:24).

He filled up that which was lacking of the sufferings of Christ for His Body’s sake – vicarious suffering, not for sin, which is Christ’s alone, but for the Church’s victory. You are not unfamiliar with the large place in the New Testament given to the matter of spiritual strength and courage. I think that these stories are written in the Old Testament about David and his mighty men not as nice little picture book stories for the children, but as typifying what God means by courage, spiritual boldness, being strong in the Lord.

There they are as great illustrations of these very passages which we have read from Ephesians. The message of the Lord to us is that He needs a company who, having seen what is involved in the spiritual warfare, will graduate out of the position of personal interests and personal blessing, and for the Lord’s sake and for His people’s sake take up the matter of the warfare with spiritual forces, and break a way through for the Church.

Where does everything begin in relation to God, and therefore, in relation to the enemy in his counterfeit? It begins in the realm of worship. The beginning of everything is worship, in relation to God. That is, God having the central and supreme place of recognition, acknowledgment, of government. In our complete obedience, surrender, in every part and phase of our being, God having supreme right. Worship begins there. It is a relationship, not only an exercise. It is not something that we do in specified ways and methods. It is some attitude of the life, some place which God has in the entire consciousness. That is worship.

Now if Satan is to counterfeit and take God’s place, worship is his objective. With the first Adam that was his objective; to draw man away from giving God the supreme place, that he might take God’s place. He supplanted God in the reverence and the acknowledgment and the obedience of man and captured worship and became “the god of this age”. When the last Adam, the Second Man, came and entered officially, publicly upon the great work that He had come to do, the one thing that the adversary sought to capture was His worship. “All these will I give thee if thou wilt worship me.” He has betrayed himself; he has shown his hand. If he could do the same with the last Adam as he did with the first, he has defeated the object of a new race.

Now it is just here that we have got to have light. We have read John 4 from the twentieth verse. The woman is saying “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem men ought to worship.” Jesus said unto her, “Woman, the hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, will men worship the Father. Believe Me, the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” In spirit – a small “s”, not a capital “S”.

Oh, what is this? This represents a new regime, a new order. This is the crisis of the Cross in the realm of worship, the basic thing. But what has happened? Jerusalem was definitely, divinely ordained as the seat of honour and worship. The Samaritans imitated with temple and mountain the system which was at Jerusalem and worshipped the same God. But God had brought into the world that system of worship at Jerusalem; He had projected that. It was a temple, a building, a piece of elaborate ecclesiastical architecture with priests, with robes and vestments, burning incense, offering sacrifices, making prayers, reading Scriptures, and many other things.

Yes, God had brought that in, and now the Lord Jesus was setting the whole thing aside, and in so doing, implying as clearly as anything could be implied, that this is not true worship. It is a comparison which is almost invidious. “Neither in this mountain, nor at Jerusalem, will men worship the Father. But true worshippers shall worship in spirit and in truth.” “God is a spirit.”

Where Christendom is Astray What has happened, then, if this is not the truth, what is the truth? That is where Christendom has gone astray. That is the divide between soul and spirit. Not something which was but a type, an illustration, a set of symbols. God never intended that to be the final thing, never intended man to make that a thing in itself, never intended that that thing should go on indefinitely. It was brought in to illustrate and represent something else and its time for duration was until the Lord Jesus came.

It all pointed towards Him, led up to Him, spoke of Him and His Cross in which that which was merely of the soul would pass, and that which was of the spirit would come in. What is the spiritual life in the matter of worship? Oh, it is not ecclesiastical architecture, it is not vestments, it is not ordinances, it is not rites. They pass out with Calvary. The perpetuating of anything like that is a contradiction of Calvary. See where we are today. The maintenance of that sort of thing, beloved, is because of a failure to perceive what the Lord Jesus has brought in.

What, then, is spiritual worship? It is getting back behind all that and seeing the spiritual meaning. Those sacrifices which were brought and sacrificed were looked into and most carefully turned over, if peradventure there might be a flaw, a blemish, a taint, an inconsistency, a double element, two colours, two kinds. If any such mark could be found the whole thing was rejected. When, however, after careful inquiry and investigation not a flaw or a blemish could be found, and God’s representative with the keen eyes of an expert could pronounce over them the familiar “Tetelestai” – “It is perfect”, then they were offered to God. And the truth embodied in the type was this, that the only fellowship with God is on the basis of the spiritual perfections of the Lord Jesus.

Worship is no longer bringing of animal sacrifices but bringing up from the heart an appreciation of the perfection of Christ. That is worship. The vestments of old were only types and figures and illustrations. The priestly apparel was speaking all the time in type of a righteousness and beauty and glory which is the nature of the God-Man, the Lord Jesus. It is given, imputed and imparted to the one who by faith apprehends Christ. We who are in Christ, in the sight of God, are wearing garments of beauty and glory and holiness. Why, then, perpetuate a system? The Lord Jesus put all that away in His Cross, it is all gone. That is what He means by worshipping in spirit and in truth.

The temple and the tabernacle were only types, speaking of that spiritual fellowship of the saints as joined to an exalted Head, one Body, the Temple of God. The boards of the tabernacle tied together by the bands only speak of saints with the imputed righteousness and holiness and glory of God laid upon them, bound together in one spirit, one Body, with the “joints and the bands”. The fitting together of the stones of the temple wrought in the quarry and brought together without the sound of hammer or axe, silently fitted in, only speaks in foreshadowing of the living stones built together for a spiritual habitation. God now indwells not temples made with hands, but a spiritual body, the members of Christ joined to Him.

Why, then, perpetuate a thing which God has dismissed in the Cross, and keep to the lower, fail to reach the higher, the fact that “we who are many are one body”? Do you see where things are astray today? I know how sweeping this is, but all this has to do with worship.

Now note that when there is a failure to recognise, to know the spiritual meaning of all this and to enter into it, and a maintaining of the old thing, you are still on a soul-level and you are open to deception. The whole thing may be a ghastly deception. And how does that deception work? In this way, that so many good Christian people are absolutely in bondage to a traditional system which is cutting clean across divine revelation for them. It is their traditional system which is simply barring the way to the spiritual revelation.

The Cross of the Lord Jesus represents the liberty in the spirit for God to lead into the fullness of His life and light. That is the whole purpose of the letter to the Hebrews. It was for that very purpose; that here was a people that had received light concerning the true nature of fellowship with God in Christ. The Lord Jesus had taken the place of the temple and the priesthood and the sacrifices and the ordinances, and even the sabbath. The sabbath was no longer merely a point of time but related to a Person. God had reached His rest in Christ. All God’s works were finished in Christ. God had entered into His rest when Christ perfected the work of God in redemption on the Cross.

Now that is no longer a matter of form, ceremony, external rites, buildings, priests, sacrifices; it is all Christ. They had seen that; He had called upon them to go outside the religious, formal, historic, traditional camp, and that brought persecution, ostracism, isolation, loneliness and all manner of things. The official religious people made it very hard for them because of that. The price to be paid for what is truly spiritual and heavenly was and is great, and they were dangerously in peril of going back to the old thing.

The letter to the Hebrews was just written to save them from that peril, and to more fully tell them about the great change that had come about in the Cross, the work of the Lord Jesus. One system had passed, the earthly representation, and the other, the heavenly reality, had come in. You know how that letter speaks about the “pattern of things in the heavenlies” and “the heavenly things themselves”. The letter comes to the great conclusion in “We are come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the blood of sprinkling, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant”, come to that in Him.

Now you see historic Christianity as such, traditional Christianity as such, may still keep us on a soul-level of worship where we must have a certain kind of building with certain kinds of windows, with a certain kind of music, and certain kinds of prayers, certain kinds of people and certain kinds of dress, and all this to “aid” our worship: all this to make real our fellowship with God. It is living back on pre-Calvary ground and it may be all soulish, and it may just be obstructing the path to a full personal inward spiritual life with God.

Free from Outward Systems To know the Lord in Life we must be free from the Grave Clothes of Outward Systems. Beloved, it is as true as anything I have said, that if you want to know the Lord livingly in greater fullness you have to be free from every external control of religion, you have got to be free and open to the Lord, you have to be free in the spirit. Formalism has got to go and reality and life have got to come in.

There must be a personal life in God, and that is not dependent upon place or anything outside and round us. That is dependent entirely upon our spiritual fellowship with Him. It can be as real, as blessed in a dingy rat-infested Bedford jail as it can be in the most gorgeous ornate cathedral. Oh, yes, some of the most wonderful fellowship with God has been in the most unlikely places. You need no “helps” of that kind when you know God. Your life is with God.

Now remember, that letter to the Hebrews was written in anticipation of something. The Apostle knew that before very long the whole of that Jewish system would be in ruins. The Lord Jesus had prophesied it, that there should not be left one stone upon another. It would be scattered to the four winds. There would be no temple, no altar, no sacrifice, no festivals, no priests. The whole thing would cease and be smashed in fulfilment of the divine prediction.

What would happen to these people if their fellowship with God was bound up with that? It would go. It would go with the system, and He wanted to save them from that thing which, being bound to earth, would go, and to bring them into a new thing which belonged to salvation. Fellowship with God must be of that kind, that whether we can go to meetings or not we have still got the Lord. Whether we have nice soulish music or not, we have still got the Lord. We are not in that realm. “Woman, believe Me, the h our cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.”

Bricks and mortar cannot communicate with spirit. Man’s soul can communicate with God only through the vehicle of his spirit in union with God. That is what Calvary has done. Of course, you can understand now why the message of the Cross is unacceptable, and if you are going to proclaim and stand for it, you will be outside the camp because of this strong cleaving to a historic traditional inheritance. The awful thing is this, that Satan has taken hold of the divine representation or typical system to appropriate it, when God has done away with it. That which God has had brought in for a temporary purpose Satan has captured for himself to obscure the real nature of fellowship with God.

Now no one will think that I am saying that there are no spiritual people in that system of things. I am not saying that, but I am saying that if that represents for them their spiritual life, and if they must have that, and if that is the realm in which they live, that they do not see beyond that and are not free from that as a thing in itself, then they have missed the meaning of Calvary, and they are bound to miss all the meaning of Christ crucified, the wisdom and the power of God. Wrestling with principalities and powers demands something more than a system of external things.

You see we are up against a terrific business, we are up against a spiritual position which is colossal and only a spiritual position is adequate to that, nothing less. I trust you have received enough light to see that what has been said is justified. We do not want to be in any position less than the Lord’s first best for us. I am sure we are prepared to pay the greatest price to be in God’s first place for us, by His grace.

May He enable us to be willing to go on with Him, “leaving the things which are behind and pressing on”, or, to come to the Hebrews again, “Let us go on unto full growth”. The toys, the picture books, the illustrations, the symbols, the types are for children who have little intelligence. They are taken away at a certain time when God’s intention is not to have children, but to have sons, and there is all the difference between the two. And so Calvary dismisses the kindergarten of external things in relation to God and brings in the fullness of heavenly order to make of us full-grown sons of God. May we be so.

God’s mandate, God’s sending is firmly founded in his own choice. If man can add anything at all to the process of sending, it would be his willingness to wait, his willingness to be reduced as to categories, to personal preferences and ambition. Waiting is reducing, a reducing as to self-gratification and self-aggrandizement. The waiting accepted by God, is directly related to the altar, to the work of the Cross. A mandate requires the 40 years of isolation in the desert. Only God is able to light a thorn-bush, and keep it burning.

The encounter with God, and the thorn-bush which is not consumed by fire, produces meekness. The “I am undone” before the altar of eternal fire is the beginning of apostolic meekness – without which there will be no sending. The experiences of Moses and of Isaiah are absolutes as to the formation of an apostolic man. The sending is a non-occurrence without the reduction at the altar. To have begun to see, as these men saw, is the beginning of sending. And such an experience cannot be appropriated by faith – it must take place in reality, in real time. It is a “shoes of” reality, it reduces the three-piece-suit man to a bare minimum of existence – silk-tie and patent-leather shoes will have no meaning in this setting or after such an experience. A seeing – and a cleansing – of this peculiar kind equals sending.

Apostles and prophets are foundational men, men overwhelmed by the Holiness of God. “To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word.” Isa 66:2. Apostolic meekness has its counterpart in the apostolic trembling. The apostolic man is qualified to speak because of his fear of the Word, even because of the jealousy for the righteousness set forth in the word. “God is greatly to be feared in the congregation of the saints.” Ps 89.7. “Justice and judgment are the foundation of Your throne.” Ps 89:14. The apostolic man bears a mark of the “otherness” which he has encountered in the presence of God – Joh 7:31-34.

The prophetic man is a tempered man, a man who has learned obedience. He is tempered by the Tent – “At the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, where I will meet you, to speak there to you. And there I will meet with the sons of Israel, and Israel shall be sanctified by My glory.” Ex 29:42-43. This speaking brings substance and depth to the prophetic man. The tempering of the Tent brings mandate. And, again, this experience is not to be appropriated by faith – it is a substantial day-to-day experience in fellowship with Him who dwelled in a thorn bush.

“Who shall go up into the hill of Jehovah? Or who shall stand in His holy place?” Ps 24:3. The pretentious man does not care for such an experience. The light-hearted man finds substitutes for it – and dares to call it glory. The conceited man follows his own imaginations – and becomes a vanity prophet. The mandate begins at the altar, the mandate begins with a holy fire. What burns within will be seen without. A fire of personal desires will not manifest holiness and glory. A fire of personal ambitions will not satisfy hearts who long for righteousness. Only the heart which is touched by His word unto godly living will carry a prophetic testimony to chosen segments of our cities and churches.

Lars Widerberg

From the notes to a Church in Bronx, New York

The earlier part of August will be spent together with a praying Church in Bronx, New York. I am invited to speak on the subject “Restoring an Apostolic, a Prophetic mandate”.

An entry into the subject is provided by the fact of a Ground Zero. The location in the financial district in southern Manhattan speaks loudly regarding many societal issues and the role of the Church as testimony to an altogether different reality.

We will pray at Ground Zero and possibly a few other locations – including the U.N.

But the main purpose is a restoring of a Church in the times of the Messiah as a prophetic entity, speaking radically regarding repentance, regarding kingdom ethics, regarding the Church as a point of a breaking off and away from common trends in a society bound for severe judgment – unless real revival is granted through prayer.

We all know our personal as well as our local Ground Zero, a place or a situation in which the testimony has been reduced to rubble. The Lord is looking for a break point, a point of new beginnings in these final days. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginner and the one who grants final results. He is the beginner, he has a new beginning even at the very end of all things.

Pray with us, pray with confidence. Pray with confidence at your own Ground Zero. . .

Lars W.

“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!

CONFLICT BETWEEN THE SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL

In the first place, there was the conflict between the spiritual and the temporal, the conflict between the seen and the unseen – and that is a very fierce conflict. In Abraham’s life it was sometimes pressed to a very fine issue. You see, on the one hand Abraham was blessed of the Lord, he was prospered of the Lord, there were the signs that the Lord was with him. There was increase, enlargement, great enlargement, yes, embarrassing enlargement. His flocks and his herds multiplied; he was a very prince in the land – and yet, and yet, that very blessing of the Lord was at times brought to the point where the whole thing could in a moment be wiped out – by famine, acute, devastating famine. Why had God blessed and increased and enlarged, and then allowed something that could wipe it all out in no time? That is rather a difficult problem, is it not? Would it not have been better to have been kept small and limited than to see all this threatened? Abraham found the problem very acute. It was that that brought about one of his failures. He went down to Egypt.

It was a hard school.

What does it mean? It seems that God gives with one hand and takes away with the other: prospers and blesses – and then throws in something that threatens to destroy the blessing. Is God a contradiction? Is He denying Himself? You know the temptations at such times to try to interpret. Are we, after all, but the pawns in a game? Are we, after all, but the children of chance, of fortune or misfortune? After all, is the Lord in this? Can this really explain the Lord, a consistent God?

It is a hard school. But, you see, it is wholly in keeping with what God is doing.

What is He doing?

Well, if He blesses, there are two things bound up with it. In the first place, Abraham’s blessing and prosperity and increase and enlargement had to find its support from heaven and not from earth. God is introducing the great heavenly principle. Oh, the Lord may bless and enlarge, but God forbid that ever we should assume that now we can support ourselves, now we can carry on, now we have got going and can maintain our going by our own momentum. He will see to it that, however He may bless, if a thing is of Himself – however great, however enlarged, however increased it may be – it can perish at any moment if heaven does not look after it. That is a lesson. Do not presume; do not take anything for granted. Live every moment out from heaven. As truly in the day of blessing as in the day of adversity, cling to heaven.

And then there is this other factor. God was so training Abraham that he could be safe for blessing, and that is something – to be safe for blessing. Such discipline, such trial of faith, such testing! And yet it does not matter to Abraham how much God blesses him, he does not allow the blessings to obscure the heavenly vision and halt him on the way. That is a tremendous triumph. Oh, the devastating perils of blessing! Perhaps you may feel that you do not know much about those perils as yet. But God wants to make us safe for His heavenly kingdom, safe for spiritual enlargement, safe for being used mightily; and we are never safe if things less than God’s ultimate can hold us up, never safe if the good is the enemy of the best. With Abraham it is perfectly clear, that, whether in prosperity or adversity he was never allowed to settle and never allowed to seem to have arrived. If at any time he did feel he had now arrived, that was very quickly exploded. “These all died in faith, not having received… but having seen… and greeted… from afar”.

Another thing about Abraham is this: that he never allowed the apparent difficulties, however great they were, ultimately to stay his spiritual onward and upward march. We will come back to that again in a moment. Do you not see how all that was taken up by Joshua and Caleb? Think again about Joshua and Caleb. These were most certainly men who had been in that school. If they had not been, they would never have taken the next generation into the land. God only knows what those men went through. You see, the story is told in so few verses, about the spies going out, and the minority report, and the taking up, or proposal to take up, stones, to stone these men and kill them. But you have got to add to that the long, long years while that whole generation was dying out, with only two men holding on to the heavenly vision. That is a hard school. They might easily have lost heart and given up and said, ‘It is a hopeless outlook’; but they did not: the heavenly had got a grip upon them in their innermost being and held them. It held them, even in the greatest adversity, and they came through; they ‘overcame the world’.

THE BODY NECESSARY TO FULL MANIFESTATION OF CHRIST

In the expression of Christ the same thing holds good. Is He going to manifest Himself against the enemy? Well, beloved, I shall have very little hope against the enemy in a detached capacity; but if I can bring in the Body, even if it is only in two or three gathered into His Name, that represents the Body, and the principle of the Body in function and representation is there; (and the Lord binds Himself up with a principle) He is in the midst.

The Lord’s irreducible minimum for His Body is two, not one. Bring in the Body even by its minimum representation and the Lord recognizes the full value of the Body, and for manifestation it is in fullness through the Body. That is why alone we are so often brought to a standstill; why so often it is hopeless for us to try and get through until we draw in co-operation.

The Lord holds us to that. But if you can get the Lord’s people in a larger, fuller way into the real spiritual apprehension of the headship of Christ in relation to the Body, how much greater will be the potency of the impact of Christ in manifestation over against the enemy, and before men. The Body is necessary for the manifestation of Christ in fullness, and that is the Divinely determined method of the full manifestation of Christ in the ages to come. The headship of the Lord Jesus demands the Body. Not so many detached individuals, but the Body; because a head implies a body, demands a body.

Now it is no use you making a comparison with others. They may, in their way, have a certain seal and blessing of God upon them; but it does not mean that the way the Lord is leading you is a wrong way; and you dare not argue according to the ways the other people go. This is the way of the Lord for you. Do not stay to make comparisons. We stumble at that so often, we who have given ourselves wholly to God and then have these exceptional and trying experiences to come up against – the full impact of the wrath of the enemy.

We look around upon others who have an easier time, because they are not going the way we are going. Immediately we do that the bottom begins to fall out of the whole thing. The point is, the Lord has His wheel within a wheel, His instrument with which He desires to make a special sign to His people, of His Wisdom, His Power, His Grace, His Methods, His Purpose, so that He can reveal Himself through you to others. Do not have, for one moment, the thought of anyone being on a pedestal, and being in solitary isolation, of special account to the Lord. It simply means that we go deeper down to death, and in humiliation before the world, than anyone else. And because the Lord takes us deeper, He is able to reveal something higher.

God is leading us out into a way which is, unusual, which is, if you like, peculiar; and doing a thing which we know not of as having been done anywhere else. As He leads us thus I believe it is in order that, in doing this thing, with all its cost, with all its pain, with all its need of the slaying of every bit of the flesh, pride and arrogance, and its desire for the approval of men, and all that kind of thing – in His new way He is seeking to have such to go with Him, in order that He may make them a Sign, as something spiritual, and something spiritually powerful; not that men can applaud, not that men may approve, but which perhaps will be like the impact of God from the Throne of God upon the throne of Satan, in these closing days. That is the burden of the Word of the Lord: ”Son of man, I have made you a Sign”; ”Say unto them, I am your Sign.”

It seems to me that this moment is a moment when we should face the implication of this word; as to whether we are going the popular way; or whether we are going the unpopular way; as to whether we are going to be the Lord’s Sign. When Paul uttered these words: “God has made us last of all a spectacle,” he was taking account of the holidays of the Romans, when they gathered for a day’s sport. When all the other things had been got through, the last thing was the turning into the arena of criminals who were made sport of to crown this holiday, for people to laugh at, jeer at, ridicule, make fun of, and Paul says: “Last of all, we are made a ‘spectacle’” – the world laughs. Just as the world laughed at Nehemiah in the building of the walls of Jerusalem.

“God has made us a spectacle.” Are we ready to be made a “Sign”? The thing which the world laughs at? The cross of the Lord Jesus has proved ever and always to have been the superlative wisdom and power of God. For the time being the sharing of the cross is the real test. The Master endured the cross, and despised the shame, in order to be made a sign.
Was there ever a Sign more glorious and mighty than that cross, – in the heavens, in hell, and on the earth?

So our Master came to the end, and said: ”For their sakes I consecrate Myself. For their sakes I give Myself unto the full consecration; and that consecration is the cross; and I am willing to be made a ’Spectacle’ to men, demons and angels, for their sakes.” The Lord wants us to be Signs. One says this with bated breath, knowing little of what it means, but knowing also that His Grace is sufficient. Beloved, He is just seeking to gather a company of people together of whom He can make a Sign, not only of suffering and affliction, but of Power and Glory, to show to others His Wisdom, His Might, His Sovereignty, His Grace. Will you say on those terms, on that ground: ”I am the Lord’s.” ”At Thy feet I fall; to suffer, live or die, for my Lord crucified”? This is what it means to be His witnesses. ”Ye are my witnesses” – it does not mean going out and talking; it means the Lord working out in our lives, and others looking on, and saying: ”That is the Mind of God: that is the Way of God; that is the Will of God.” And as He does it, so demons learn what God is, the Glory of God, the Sovereignty of God; angels bow because of His doings in the Church, and glorify Him on our behalf.

May He lead us to give our assent and consent in a new, fresh act of abandonment and consecration individually, and as a people, for these coming days. What the Lord does will, doubtless, for a while, cost something, test us very deeply, but we shall emerge into a revelation of Himself which has not been seen by us before.

If this is true then the secret of victory is the capacity for and the deliberate persistence in looking – not at things seen but at the “things not seen.” So it has always proved to be in the history and experience of God’s people. Paralysis, defeat, disaster have always been consequent upon judgment after the sight of the eyes (the eyes of the natural senses). Victory has always issued sooner or later from someone’s assurance of and discernment of the Divine resources and realities behind all else.

How often this twofold issue upon this one principle is seen in the scriptural record of the experience of men. How often deliverance was because someone was given spiritual and moral ascendency because in their close walk with God their inner eyes refused the tyrany of their outer and were given to a spontaneous “LOOKING OFF”! How often the effect of the Divine admonition by which triumphant emergence came was negatively “NOT AT THINGS SEEN,” and positively “BUT AT THE THINGS NOT SEEN.” And when “things” were hidden for faith’s purifying, the sum total of all the things was “HIM Who is invisible.”

So when a deep sea lies ahead, a ten times hardened and infuriated Pharoah and his host hotly pursue, unnegotiable peaks rise on either side – a humanly impossible situation – but the saving attitude is “Not at the things seen, BUT” and what a “but”!

A land of promise, of fulfilment, of realisation, the entering into the purpose of long and painful preparation lies immediately before. But, as is so often the case, one big final challenge to spirituality as against carnality stands between an exodus and an eisodus. Gigantic difficulties demonstrate before the senses and God waits in the dim unseen.

Again the issue of going over and in, or back and out rests upon a capacity to apprehend the Supreme Asset, and the exhortation is again heard – “NOT AT THE THINGS SEEN.”

A prophet’s servant who depends upon another’s spiritual perception and has none of his own will see only the forces of earth beleaguering the city and will be petrified with fear and paralysed with apprehensiveness, but the prophet who has a firsthand fellowship with God sees the mountains round about filled with “the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof.”

An apostle who has seen what others have been blind to because of their grossness; and because they do not know the Lord finds his supreme opportunity when all else in the company are terrorised and in dismay because of thing’s seen – storm, tempest, havoc, darkness, threatening destruction. Everything falls into his hands because his resources begin where men’s end and his confidence is not resting in “the things seen” but in “the things not seen.”

Thus we might illustrate ad libitum. Satan succeeds along a line which captures the senses of body and soul, and many of God’s sincerest children are led away by an appeal thereto. God seeks His ends in and through the spirit, deeper than feeling or seeing, deeper than sensation or emotion or reason.

Satan is great at demonstrations.

God is great at hiding Himself, in order that he may be sought out in spirit and in truth. If the Church is a heavenly body, if the law of her life is faith, and if the pilgrimage of faith is translation and transition from the earthlies to the heavenlies, from the natural to the spiritual, then surely we may expect that the nearer she comes to the end of her journey the more acute will become the demand for spiritual vision, discernment, and perception. The more will Satan seek success by deception on the ground of the senses, and the more will the Lord make the true life in Himself spiritual, divorced from earthly proof, evidence, and gratification, one of the pure essence of faith, looking “Not at the things seen,” or FOR things seen. The spirit of pilgrimage is that of “strangers on the earth,” and the sense of strangeness and estrangement in the earthlies must necessarily increase even to an agony of home-sickness for the things which are heavenly.

So we gather up the word; victory, spiritual progress, and transcendant service lie in the direction of a spiritual capacity to recognise, draw upon, and rest in those Divine things unseen, but all inclusively “HIMSELF.” “JESUS.”

Take this motto word by word, bit by bit.
“WHILE.” – May it be all the time, no lapses because we ceased to look away.

“WE LOOK.” – Deliberately, fixedly, in faith.

“NOT AT THE THINGS SEEN.” – Let this be a check, a warning, a rebuke, a correction, in the hours of the seeming.

“BUT.” – Every adversity and difficulty may be very real, actual or threatening – “But -“.

“THE THINGS NOT SEEN.” – And perhaps the supreme reality, though so often hidden from the natural consciousness – “Christ IN YOU.”

“LOOKING OFF.” – Oh, for a trained and spontaneous gravitation of looking off – from – unto.

Pioneers of the Heavenly Way
by T. Austin-Sparks
Chapter 3 – Abraham – A Great Pioneer

Reading: Hebrews 11:13-16

We return now to Abraham as one of the representative pioneers of the heavenly way. We begin by reiterating one thing which was so true of Abraham, but which must be true, and is always true, of every spiritual pioneer, of every one who is moving on to explore and exploit the heavenly kingdom: that is, his sense, his deep, inborn sense, of destiny. Stephen has told us, concerning Abraham, that “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham” (Acts 7:2) when he was in Ur of the Chaldees.

We do not know how the God of glory appeared unto him. It may have been in one of those theophanies common to the Old Testament and common to Abraham’s later life when God came to him in man-form. We do not know. But we do know from his whole life that the effect of it was to bring to birth in him this tremendous sense of destiny – the sense of destiny which uprooted him from the whole of his past life, and which created in him a deep unrest, unrest of a right kind, a deep and a holy discontent.

Discontent may be all wrong, but there is a right kind of discontent. Would to God many more Christians had it! There was started in Abraham an urge which grew and grew through the years and made it impossible for him to settle down and accept anything less than the full meaning of God. He could not accept a second-best in relation to God. Of course, the consciousness of that had to grow. He had to come progressively to realise what it meant. It came in this way: that he arrived at a certain place, and perhaps thought that here was it, and then he found it was not, and he had to move; and then perhaps he thought, ‘Now, this is it – but no, it is not. There is still – I do not know what it is, I cannot define, explain, but I know within me there is still something more that God has’.

“Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on” (Phil 3:12); it was this urge through the ages – so very real in the case of the man whose words I have just quoted. He was never able to accept God’s second-best. God has a second-best. Again and again in history God has found it impossible to realise His ‘first best’, His very best. People would not go on. He said, ‘All right, you shall have My second-best’, and they had it; but pioneers never do that. Abraham could not do it.

Now, do not misunderstand or misinterpret this. This was not natural or temperamental instability. Do not think that, if you are a person who is never contented, that is a Divine discontent. It may be temperamental. You may be one of those people who can never stick at a thing for very long, who are always jumping from one thing to another. You will be an entire misfit, both in the world and in the kingdom of God. It was not that sort of thing with Abraham. There was something of heaven working in him, the proof of it being that he was always on the upward move; he was not on the horizontal, he was on the upward move. He was making progress, not only on the earth level, but spiritually, all the time.

Now you see, alongside of Abraham there was Lot, and Lot was a man who was always seeking security here. He sought the city; he sought a house. He disliked this tent life. He wanted to be settled in this world, and he sought to be settled. But Lot was the weak man with all that. Abraham who was always moving in a tent was the strong man. This was not natural at all, it was spiritual. This urge from heaven, this mighty working of a spiritual force in Abraham brought him into the very hard school of the heavenly. To the natural, to the earthly, to the flesh, the heavenly is a very hard school, and Abraham was brought into it by this urge from heaven.