The Honor and Glory of the Lord's Name (continued)
No, you see we are getting old, some of us and we are seeing the day of our departure drawing near, and we can become weak, we can lose our freshness. That thing can creep on us and over us and begin to bring us into severe limitation. We need something to save us, we need to be delivered, or as I have said we may cling and cling and in so doing bring in death. What is our salvation? What is the renewing of our youth? What is the way out of that sense of an end, pending end and growing limitation? What is the way out? It is to equip and provide for the generation that follows, to do everything in our power to see that the thing is passed on to them and that they are ready to take it up. Not to suspect their youth, not to criticize them because they are young, not to do what certain evidently were inclined to do over Timothy, the apostle had to say "Let no man despise thy youth." When I first started ministry I was quite a young man and I had to assume the responsibility for a church and there were some old men who were saying, "But he is so young." But I had a champion among them who said, "But he is getting over that every day!" Better attitude is it? Yes, let me repeat, a mark that God is going on and means to go on is that He brigs on young people, that He brings in young people. Thank God, thank God we are not going to die if this gathering is true to that. But you see it is not years after all that govern, years are not the criteria; spirituality is the criteria and that need not be a matter of years at all. There are babes spiritually who are far ahead of many of their time, elders. It is not that, it is not.
But let us turn over to the other side. A new generation must succeed in an inward way to that which is passing. I underline certain words in an inward way to that which is passing. The young people, the followers on, must succeed those who have carried the testimony of the Lord before them; they must succeed, not officially, they must succeed spiritually, inwardly. Here is the rigid law of the Bible and its principle again. Oh there is always something deeper than what is on the surface of anything that is in the Bible, that rigid law of the Bible in the penalty of dishonoring and repudiating parents. There were fewer if any more rigid laws and penalties in the old dispensation than those connected with children, dishonoring or disparaging or repudiating their parents. In those days you had only to do that as a son to your father and stoning was the penalty, your life is forfeited. I say behind that there is a divine principle. The Divine principle is this: that a father, a mother, a parent from the Divine standpoint is supposed to have a knowledge of the Lord which is indispensable to their children, and let the children despise or set aside the parent and they despise the very thing that they need for their own life and their life is forfeited if they despise it. That is strong but it is true. You see the Lord does not just take account of any rebellion against parents or disobedience to parents as in itself. He looks at the principle behind it. For when things are on the Divine pattern and level it is like this: that the children cannot live without the parents, they die without the parents, in this sense. That they are absolutely dependent upon what the Lord has already developed and stored up for them in a previous generation. Yes, it is a very, very strong law that, in the Bible.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 4)
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