The Recovery of the Lord's Name In His People # 4

The Honor and Glory of the Lord's Name (continued)

You see, as I said before, young people are not a new created humanity but they are generated a fresh expression of humanity with the good that has been before. It's significant isn't it in this connection that when Gideon became an old man and the men of the country came to him and said, "Be our king and rule over us." Gideon would have nothing of it, but his seven sons were to rule over them. "Instead of the father shall be the children." It is the principle again, you see. Age giving place to youth, but mark you in terms of sonship that means spirituality. Now young people got that? You grasp that and all of it. We're on the way to the recovery of something, the recovery of the Lord's Name.

You don't need that I stay to discuss with you how on the one hand that which is spiritually old and worn out and finished with, takes from the glory and honor of the Lord. Let me put that in another way, the Lord's glory and honor is expressed in perennial youth. You do not need me on the other hand to argue that if young people just as young people repudiate the old and take hold and put themselves in and begin to govern and rule and arrange the things of God's house as though everything began with them and ended with them, how much dishonor has been brought to the Lord by that. No these are spiritual things to be taken note of, and perhaps they will be helped out by what I have yet to say.

Let us look at some of the qualities in Gideon upon which the Divine sovereignty operated. Some of the qualities which marked Gideon. A young man, and here we find a tremendous amount of spiritual maturity. And what were the marks of spirituality and spiritual maturity in this young man? And the first, and it shouts at you everywhere, was his humility, his humility. And humility is the primary mark, the hallmark of spirituality and of spiritual maturity. Oh, what a lot of history is so often required before the Lord gets that in His people and in His servants, HUMILITY. Look at him: no pride of person, far from thinking anything of himself, he thought very little. Read the story again. No pride of family. "My family is the least in Manessah and I am least in my father's house." Now, he could take ten servants all the same out of his father's house. No, with all, with all and it seems to me that from the story about the men of the city and Joash, all that Joash did stand for something, he had a position, he had an entrance. It was Joash who had that altar to Baal, it was Joash who had that Asherah, it was to Joash's Asherah and altar that all the men of the city came to worship in the early morning. And yet Gideon no pride of family whatever there was there. The point of course is this: if you had not ten servants, if you hadn't one, if you had not anything at all, a place of prestige, recognition, influence, you might say well of course it is only becoming under such circumstances to be humble. But no, it was there that "I am least I am least."

No pride of achievement. He could point to no accomplishments, no degrees, no successes, in the military, the academic, scientific or any other realm. No pride of achievement. No pride of ambitiousness, no trace of any of these things, and certainly no spiritual superiority. He did not point the finger at the other people and say, "See, see, look at them, look at the mess they are in, look at their condition, look! I am different." He just put himself among them all, he was one with them in their state, he was involved in their condition. There was no spiritual superiority.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 5)