Words of Wisdom and Revelation # 7
The Hiddenness of God's Workings
We are so often found looking for, praying for, expecting, some mighty, shattering intervention of God in our situation, something that is evidence and proof that God is with us, something we can lay hold of, to which we can point and on which we can report, and such does not happen. Again and again when we have passed most critical points in our history and turned most serious corners, we have had to say, "How did we do it, how did it come to pass?" Well, it just happened. It undoubtedly involved very great power on the part of God, and there is no doubt that, if God had not done it, that there would have been disaster; yet it is done. But how? We thought the Lord must come this way and that, and we were telling Him what He must do, but He never came by our way, never did it like that at all. It, so to speak, just happened. We are going on like that. It may be from time to time the Lord will show His hand. He is the God of the sudden leap as much as He is the God of the long process, but normally the way of faith is this way. Silently, almost imperceptibly, without any power to detect that He is doing it, the needed thing is being done.
_____________________________
Qualification for Serving the Lord's Purposes
The Lord does really need men and women to serve His ends. His need may be very great, and yet He may not be able now to open the way for you to come in to serve Him in meeting it. The Lord is waiting until your heart is broken over this whole situation, and it is such a heart-matter that you come to the place where you say, "Lord, the only justification of my life is that your interests are served." It must be a matter of heart-love for the Lord and for what is His,k and not for the work, the ministry; not for anything but for your Lord and what is His. When you get there, and you are found upon your face before the Lord breaking your heart because you see He is not getting what He ought to have, when this becomes the travail of your soul, you will find the Lord will begin to do something. This is the necessary basis for the Lord to bring out His servants.
_________________________
The Cost of Special Service to God
A thing which is to serve the Lord in a specially vital way is not born easily, and is not brought into being without some unusual suffering and travail. There is much bitterness of soul to be gone through, and many tears.
For a time, a drawn-out time, it appears that there will be nothing. The barrenness, with its attendant heartache and sorrow, seems long to remain. And yet there can be no philosophical acceptance or fatalistic capitulation. The Lord is a factor in this situation, and there is a "hoping against hope," a wistful look toward the "God Who quickeneth the dead and calleth the things that are not as though they were" (Rom. 4:17).
So it is, when the Lord determines to secure for Himself that vessel of peculiar purpose, and cuts off all the many activities, works,and occupations which, while being in the same household of faith and in some relation to Himself, are largely by the energies of nature and the ability of man. When and where there are not those usual accompaniments and out workings, those issues and results, the evidences and proofs; then there is criticism, taunting, pointing of the finger, and grievous imputations. The very acts of Divine sovereignty are given a twist to mean just the opposite of God's thought. So one system of things taunts the other. Well, well, so be it. It ever was; it ever will be.
When the Lord wants something for an hour of peculiar need, the methods have to be out of the ordinary. To those concerned He has to say, "Others can; you cannot."
We are entering more and more deeply into such an hour at this time. The general thing is not meeting the situation. The Lord must bring through something which will "come to the kingdom for such a time as this" (Esther 4:14).
___________________________________
The Surprising Ways of God With Us
If we do really walk with the Holy Spirit, we find that He is leading us into things that we never thought of, never intended - but as He does it we have to say, This is not something that has just arisen, this is something that was intended of God. I am just coming into a program; the Lord has not shown me the whole program, but this is like item after item on the program.
As we look more deeply into God's ways with us and know God's principles, we see a wonderful logic in it all.
_____________________________
Possessing Our Inheritance
How many Christians are enjoying the inheritance, are possessing their inheritance, are even progressing toward the possession of their inheritance? Many are not, yet they are children of God, legally heirs. Between being a legal heir and becoming a spiritual inheritor, something may happen so that you miss the inheritance. The New Testament is all the time telling us that we have a great inheritance - then do not miss it! we have great rights - then do not let them go; we are called into something from eternity - but be sure you "make your calling and your election sure." It is the difference between our legal status and our spiritual state.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 8)
Saturday, December 30, 2017
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Words of Wisdom and Revelation # 6
Words of Wisdom and Revelation # 6
Characteristics of Service to God
We may not be Jeremiahs, Isaiahs, or Pauls, but we are called to serve the Lord's interests, and there may be very much more sovereignty behind our lives than we are aware of. It may be only as we go on that we shall become conscious that the Lord evidently brought us into being for something - that there is something stirring in us that gravitates in a certain direction which is prophetic of how we are to serve the Lord. We find things taking shape in a certain way, with a corresponding deep exercise of our hearts about that. We come up against our own lack of qualification, our own unsuitability, and we are thrown right back upon the God of resurrection. We find that the very fact of our being thrown upon the Lord for everything is a sovereign act, with a view to safeguarding everything for the Lord. It is the safest thing, and perhaps one of the greatest evidences that things are of the Lord, when we feel, on the one hand, that we must, out of an inward compulsion,serve the Lord, and yet, on the other hand, that if there is to be anything at all for the Lord, it must be all of His doing. But let us note well that there is the vital turning point. Whatever we may have sensed before, until that day comes when the self-element gets right out of the way, until all the sense that we can do it and want to do it is thoroughly smitten and we are in the place where we really know that if there is going to be anything at all, it must be of the Lord, nothing can really arise. But when that day comes, then all that purpose which has been waiting stored up will begin to break out and take charge of our lives in a new way, we shall know that we are girded by God for something - not perhaps what we would have chosen. It may perhaps be for the most difficult thing ever given to anyone to do...once the Lord has set His hand to do a work, He will sovereignly carry the vessel of that service to full accomplishment so long as the vessel remains suitably yielded in His hand.
__________________________
Standing Alone
There are people who can move in crowds, and who will act when they have others supporting and encouraging them, but many fade out when it is a case of facing this tremendous thing alone. Superior greatness is shown by taking personal responsibility whether others do so or not.
Superior greatness is willingness to stand for what God has revealed as His will, though we have to stand alone. It may be one against many, there may be a considerable amount of aloneness, but that is where the test of our spiritual measure comes in, in initiative and responsibility that does not wait for an organization to come into being to deal with the situation, but makes it a personal matter - and a thorough going one, too.
___________________________
Reaching a Place of Strategic Value
Job's was a tremendous climb out of a miry condition, up and out into that place of vindication where the Lord could point to him in a new way and say to others, "This man is the key to the answer to your prayers and you will not get any answer to prayer unless he stands in the breach: your spiritual interests and destiny hang upon him." That is tremendous: that a man should have reached some specific point where the destiny of many others hangs upon him, and God has determined it and said it in so many words - "Your spiritual good is bound up with this man; I have had to bring him to this position for your sake."
___________________________
Standing for God's Full Thought
God has set His heart upon having His whole counsel represented. God must have that whole counsel found in representation or He is defeated, and so He sets to work to bring those who will come, who will pay the price, into this position which, in the first place, satisfies Him, and in the second place, serves Him in that purpose; and a basic essential is a passion in our hearts for God's fullest thought. If He is going to lead us into it, He must have that response in us for His own satisfaction.
______________________________
God's Wise Providences
The operations of the Holy Spirit, and the providential way of God - strange, mysterious Providences - these are all designed to keep us on the stretch. Any life that is really under the government of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, will never be allowed to settle down, will always be kept on the move - oh, yes, by strange means. The Lord knows how to deal with you and me. He knows the tendencies of our makeup, our constitution, our natures. He knows us exactly, every one of us, and (oh, that we could believe it, really believe it always!) the way in which we are going is the way that the infinite, inscrutable wisdom of God knows to be the only way by which we shall come to a greater measure of the Lord. He vetoes much in order to economize, to ensure that we shall not be spreading ourselves too widely but be directed into the essential channels.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 7)
Characteristics of Service to God
We may not be Jeremiahs, Isaiahs, or Pauls, but we are called to serve the Lord's interests, and there may be very much more sovereignty behind our lives than we are aware of. It may be only as we go on that we shall become conscious that the Lord evidently brought us into being for something - that there is something stirring in us that gravitates in a certain direction which is prophetic of how we are to serve the Lord. We find things taking shape in a certain way, with a corresponding deep exercise of our hearts about that. We come up against our own lack of qualification, our own unsuitability, and we are thrown right back upon the God of resurrection. We find that the very fact of our being thrown upon the Lord for everything is a sovereign act, with a view to safeguarding everything for the Lord. It is the safest thing, and perhaps one of the greatest evidences that things are of the Lord, when we feel, on the one hand, that we must, out of an inward compulsion,serve the Lord, and yet, on the other hand, that if there is to be anything at all for the Lord, it must be all of His doing. But let us note well that there is the vital turning point. Whatever we may have sensed before, until that day comes when the self-element gets right out of the way, until all the sense that we can do it and want to do it is thoroughly smitten and we are in the place where we really know that if there is going to be anything at all, it must be of the Lord, nothing can really arise. But when that day comes, then all that purpose which has been waiting stored up will begin to break out and take charge of our lives in a new way, we shall know that we are girded by God for something - not perhaps what we would have chosen. It may perhaps be for the most difficult thing ever given to anyone to do...once the Lord has set His hand to do a work, He will sovereignly carry the vessel of that service to full accomplishment so long as the vessel remains suitably yielded in His hand.
__________________________
Standing Alone
There are people who can move in crowds, and who will act when they have others supporting and encouraging them, but many fade out when it is a case of facing this tremendous thing alone. Superior greatness is shown by taking personal responsibility whether others do so or not.
Superior greatness is willingness to stand for what God has revealed as His will, though we have to stand alone. It may be one against many, there may be a considerable amount of aloneness, but that is where the test of our spiritual measure comes in, in initiative and responsibility that does not wait for an organization to come into being to deal with the situation, but makes it a personal matter - and a thorough going one, too.
___________________________
Reaching a Place of Strategic Value
Job's was a tremendous climb out of a miry condition, up and out into that place of vindication where the Lord could point to him in a new way and say to others, "This man is the key to the answer to your prayers and you will not get any answer to prayer unless he stands in the breach: your spiritual interests and destiny hang upon him." That is tremendous: that a man should have reached some specific point where the destiny of many others hangs upon him, and God has determined it and said it in so many words - "Your spiritual good is bound up with this man; I have had to bring him to this position for your sake."
___________________________
Standing for God's Full Thought
God has set His heart upon having His whole counsel represented. God must have that whole counsel found in representation or He is defeated, and so He sets to work to bring those who will come, who will pay the price, into this position which, in the first place, satisfies Him, and in the second place, serves Him in that purpose; and a basic essential is a passion in our hearts for God's fullest thought. If He is going to lead us into it, He must have that response in us for His own satisfaction.
______________________________
God's Wise Providences
The operations of the Holy Spirit, and the providential way of God - strange, mysterious Providences - these are all designed to keep us on the stretch. Any life that is really under the government of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, will never be allowed to settle down, will always be kept on the move - oh, yes, by strange means. The Lord knows how to deal with you and me. He knows the tendencies of our makeup, our constitution, our natures. He knows us exactly, every one of us, and (oh, that we could believe it, really believe it always!) the way in which we are going is the way that the infinite, inscrutable wisdom of God knows to be the only way by which we shall come to a greater measure of the Lord. He vetoes much in order to economize, to ensure that we shall not be spreading ourselves too widely but be directed into the essential channels.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 7)
Saturday, December 9, 2017
Words of Wisdom and Revelation # 5
Words of Wisdom and Revelation # 5
The Cost of Enlightenment
We know that the book of Joshua is the book of the inheritance. The people are going in to possess, to occupy, to exploit, in inherit. But what was the very first move, when Israel had come to the borders of the land, forty years previously? The setting up of Intelligence. Spies were sent to spy out the land. Joshua sent over intelligence officers, his intelligence Corps. Intelligence was a tremendously important thing here. We might say that Joshua and Caleb were themselves the very embodiment of the principle of intelligence. It was they who brought the report which, in the long run, resulted in a people going in and possessing. But note at this point an interesting and impressive and significant thing. The people thought to stone them! You see, the enemy is not only over there in the land - he is entrenched in the very hearts of the people themselves, he has got a footing there. How true that is to principle and to history! Let any of the people of God begin to get some new light, and, as the Lord's instrument, they will become the object of satan's hatred: he will stir up forces to stone that instrument. He hates instruments of spiritual enlightenment.
__________________________
The Word Of The Lord For Now
The food question among the Lord's people today is a very acute one, and a more or less good ministry is not going to meet the need. There is a growing concern to know, as distinct from the generalization of truth and service, what is the Lord's word for now, where we are, and what in the Divine purpose belongs to this present hour.
__________________________
The Work of the Lord
What is the work of the Lord? What is Christian service from God's standpoint? It is contributing to the fullness of Christ. It is in the measure of each several part ministering to that end, that all things shall be summed up in Christ, and that He shall be the fullness of all things. That great Divine goal has many ways and many means of attainment, and it is not a matter of whether you or I are serving the Lord in the same way as someone else. That is not the point at all. We standardize and departmentalize Christian work, and we think of the activities of ministers and missionaries and suchlike functions, and we call that work of the Lord; we think of that when we speak of going into Christian service. The work of the Lord is, and can be, no more than contributing to the fullness of Christ and ministering of that fullness to Him and from Him. How you do it is a matter of Divine appointment, but that is the work of the Lord. You might aspire to be an apostle Paul - probably if you understood a little more you would not! But you see, whether Paul is doing it along his Divinely appointed line, in his Divinely appointed way - or Peter - or John - or this one or that one - the object comes first, the way afterward.
The beginning of all service in relation to God is the servant himself. What makes a servant of God? We think of a servant of God being made by academic training, Bible teaching,by this or that form of equipment,and we think when we have all that, when we have been through the course and have in our minds all that can be imparted of that kind, we are the Lord's servants. But that is not the way the Lord looks at it at all. The Lord is going to require that He shall be able to say, "Behold, my servant", and the servant to whom He will call attention will be the servant who is the impression of Christ. Yes, Christ registered, Christ presenced, Christ apparent, in the servant. God is far more concerned with having His servants in a right state than He is with having them furnished with all kinds of academic qualifications and titles.
You can use the Scripture and it may have no effect at all, or you can use it, and it may have a mighty effect. A great deal depends upon who uses the Scripture. It is the man of God who can use it in that way and be attested as the true servant of the Lord.
It is with you and with me that the Lord is concerned; it is with what we are, it is with our personal knowledge of Himself. It is that we may have within us the secrets of the Lord, that it may be true of us as it was of the Lord Jesus and of others that the key to the situation spiritually is in our hands.
______________________________
The Need to Press On
There is a vast amount in the Kingdom that we have never suspected - do believe that. There is more for all of us to know than anybody on this earth knows - for more than the very greatest saints, the most advanced Christians, know of the purpose of God. Paul intimates that. In his Philippian letter he makes it clear that even at the end of his life, he has yet to apprehend, he needs still to know. "That I may know..." (Phil. 3:10). There is far more to know. Are you going to allow your life simply to be boxed up within the measure that you know, or within the measure of other people? No - it is the measure of Christ that is God's end..."till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). No movement, no society, no evangelical organization, no church on this earth has come to that yet, but that is the objective in view.
____________________________
The Testimony Before the Work
The Lord is more concerned for a testimony than for a work. We need to get clear on that. A good deal of confusion comes in when you begin to think of things in the light of a work. When you get a lot of people leaving their employment to go into "the work", all kinds of complications arise; and really the Lord is not, in the first place, after the work. I am not saying you are not to work for the Lord, but in the first place it is not the work the Lord is after, it is a testimony, it is a light, a living flame.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 6)
The Cost of Enlightenment
We know that the book of Joshua is the book of the inheritance. The people are going in to possess, to occupy, to exploit, in inherit. But what was the very first move, when Israel had come to the borders of the land, forty years previously? The setting up of Intelligence. Spies were sent to spy out the land. Joshua sent over intelligence officers, his intelligence Corps. Intelligence was a tremendously important thing here. We might say that Joshua and Caleb were themselves the very embodiment of the principle of intelligence. It was they who brought the report which, in the long run, resulted in a people going in and possessing. But note at this point an interesting and impressive and significant thing. The people thought to stone them! You see, the enemy is not only over there in the land - he is entrenched in the very hearts of the people themselves, he has got a footing there. How true that is to principle and to history! Let any of the people of God begin to get some new light, and, as the Lord's instrument, they will become the object of satan's hatred: he will stir up forces to stone that instrument. He hates instruments of spiritual enlightenment.
__________________________
The Word Of The Lord For Now
The food question among the Lord's people today is a very acute one, and a more or less good ministry is not going to meet the need. There is a growing concern to know, as distinct from the generalization of truth and service, what is the Lord's word for now, where we are, and what in the Divine purpose belongs to this present hour.
__________________________
The Work of the Lord
What is the work of the Lord? What is Christian service from God's standpoint? It is contributing to the fullness of Christ. It is in the measure of each several part ministering to that end, that all things shall be summed up in Christ, and that He shall be the fullness of all things. That great Divine goal has many ways and many means of attainment, and it is not a matter of whether you or I are serving the Lord in the same way as someone else. That is not the point at all. We standardize and departmentalize Christian work, and we think of the activities of ministers and missionaries and suchlike functions, and we call that work of the Lord; we think of that when we speak of going into Christian service. The work of the Lord is, and can be, no more than contributing to the fullness of Christ and ministering of that fullness to Him and from Him. How you do it is a matter of Divine appointment, but that is the work of the Lord. You might aspire to be an apostle Paul - probably if you understood a little more you would not! But you see, whether Paul is doing it along his Divinely appointed line, in his Divinely appointed way - or Peter - or John - or this one or that one - the object comes first, the way afterward.
The beginning of all service in relation to God is the servant himself. What makes a servant of God? We think of a servant of God being made by academic training, Bible teaching,by this or that form of equipment,and we think when we have all that, when we have been through the course and have in our minds all that can be imparted of that kind, we are the Lord's servants. But that is not the way the Lord looks at it at all. The Lord is going to require that He shall be able to say, "Behold, my servant", and the servant to whom He will call attention will be the servant who is the impression of Christ. Yes, Christ registered, Christ presenced, Christ apparent, in the servant. God is far more concerned with having His servants in a right state than He is with having them furnished with all kinds of academic qualifications and titles.
You can use the Scripture and it may have no effect at all, or you can use it, and it may have a mighty effect. A great deal depends upon who uses the Scripture. It is the man of God who can use it in that way and be attested as the true servant of the Lord.
It is with you and with me that the Lord is concerned; it is with what we are, it is with our personal knowledge of Himself. It is that we may have within us the secrets of the Lord, that it may be true of us as it was of the Lord Jesus and of others that the key to the situation spiritually is in our hands.
______________________________
The Need to Press On
There is a vast amount in the Kingdom that we have never suspected - do believe that. There is more for all of us to know than anybody on this earth knows - for more than the very greatest saints, the most advanced Christians, know of the purpose of God. Paul intimates that. In his Philippian letter he makes it clear that even at the end of his life, he has yet to apprehend, he needs still to know. "That I may know..." (Phil. 3:10). There is far more to know. Are you going to allow your life simply to be boxed up within the measure that you know, or within the measure of other people? No - it is the measure of Christ that is God's end..."till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). No movement, no society, no evangelical organization, no church on this earth has come to that yet, but that is the objective in view.
____________________________
The Testimony Before the Work
The Lord is more concerned for a testimony than for a work. We need to get clear on that. A good deal of confusion comes in when you begin to think of things in the light of a work. When you get a lot of people leaving their employment to go into "the work", all kinds of complications arise; and really the Lord is not, in the first place, after the work. I am not saying you are not to work for the Lord, but in the first place it is not the work the Lord is after, it is a testimony, it is a light, a living flame.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 6)
Saturday, December 2, 2017
Words of Wisdom and Revelation # 4
Words of Wisdom and Revelation # 4
The Road to Conformity To Christ
As the Man (Christ) is the full embodiment of the perfection of God's thoughts concerning man that is ultimately to be, man that is eventually to occupy God's realm, and as Son of man He is installed, enthroned, established as the perfect model of how things are going to be; and God is taking the straight course in the power of the Spirit to that end - to have things according to the Man in the glory. And that Man in the glory is not just officially, but morally and spiritually, governing everything to that end. You and I are not brought to God's end simply by those sovereign acts of the Lord in heaven which save us from all kinds of difficulties. Something has to be done in us, and therefore it must be spiritual and moral government that operates to conform us to the image of God's Son; so that, although there may seem to be hinderances and obstructions and difficulties - and there are - nevertheless, His spiritual government is producing spiritual ends in us which mean approximation to His own likeness. So it is a spiritual government, for it means that everything is spiritual. Ascendancy and triumph and arrival are going to be spiritual, not just natural - we shall not simply be brought there apart from anything that is accomplished in us. We are moving toward God's end by spiritual government within our lives, not merely by a sovereign hand upon us.
_______________________________
The Deeper Meaning of Pentecost
Pentecost in its outworking - or the presence of the Holy Spirit here - will mean that those in whom the Spirit operates and has His own way will never be able to rest short of God's full thought for themselves or for others. They will be deeply exercised and burdened and will be drawn into the travail of Christ, to fill up that which is lacking of His sufferings for His Body's sake which is the Church. This man in Christ is a marked man, he is marked from heaven as one whose whole heart is taken up with this great concern that what is there should be found here that what is true of Christ, the Man in the glory, should be more fully expressed here in this new man, the Church, the Body. That is an operation of the Holy Spirit; and if you tell me that the Holy Spirit is having His way, and yet there is complacency with things that are not according to Christ, I say that is a contradiction; it cannot be. If you are perfectly satisfied with things as they are in yourself or in other believers, and have no real concern that there should be a full conformity to the image of Christ and that the whole Body should be brought to the measure of the stature of a man in Christ, the Spirit of God is not doing the work in you. Pentecost in its deeper meaning will produce that. The very fact that so soon after His advent the Church moved out as by Divine urge to seek the members of the Body and then to bring them into full conformity is proof positive that the Spirit of God is seeking to perfect a Body, a manhood, according to that Man Who has been revealed as in the glory.
The Lord is very greatly concerned about spiritual measure, although His people are not so concerned; and Christ, the Man in fullness, is coming down to be like a measuring rod beside His Church, and to say, This is where you are not true, and you must adjust; this is where you have excesses, and they must go; this is where you have deficiencies, and they must be made good. It is the Spirit of God at work all the time to see to it that in all details we are according to Christ, the Spirit of God working in relation to that perfect measure that is in heaven, the measure for this Body, for this collective man, in all its parts.
The Man in the glory, being at God's right hand exalted, established, settled, is the assured realization of God's end. The Spirit of sonship has come, not to try and do something, not with a hope that it may be; He has come in all the sovereignty of that One there, and it is going to be.
There is a Man in the glory; the Spirit of God has come and has entered into us with just one object - to make all things abound toward the reproducing of that Man in us,in measure individually, and in the collective measure of the individuals in one glorified Body, Christ corporate.
______________________________
The God Who Raises the Dead
Death is the thing which pronounces an end. Whenever you and I say, This is the end, we are finished! - we have succumbed to death. That is the verdict of death, for death always says that. The Church should never believe in ends - that is to capitulate to death. Although a thousand times in ourselves we might feel the end has come, in the very experience which brings us to that place God has invested a new realization that in Him that finality is cancelled out. We should never expect an end until God says, That is the end! God is trying to bring us to the place where we stop expecting what the devil is constantly offering through circumstances - death, an end, limitation. God is all the time thinking of increase, enlargement. God allows very deep and hard and painful things - things which bring us in ourselves really to the point of giving up, where we pass the verdict of death upon ourselves. He allows them with this object, that - however much we may have known and proved the truth in our earlier experience - He may bring us yet a stage further into the power and good of it, that God raiseth the dead. If He does that, then there is hope for anybody and for anything.
Again and again in the course of our history, we shall be at the place where there is no hope but in "God Who raiseth the dead" (2 Cor. 1:9) if there is to be any future at all. We shall come there in our own soul life - that we are at an end of our resources, mind, heart, and will. We may come ofttimes in our very physical life to the place where, if God does not do something, it is an end. We shall come there in the work of God - where everything seems to declare that this is the finish of the work, there is nothing more possible; but now is the occasion for the God Who raises the dead, the God of promise, the God of Isaac, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 5)
The Road to Conformity To Christ
As the Man (Christ) is the full embodiment of the perfection of God's thoughts concerning man that is ultimately to be, man that is eventually to occupy God's realm, and as Son of man He is installed, enthroned, established as the perfect model of how things are going to be; and God is taking the straight course in the power of the Spirit to that end - to have things according to the Man in the glory. And that Man in the glory is not just officially, but morally and spiritually, governing everything to that end. You and I are not brought to God's end simply by those sovereign acts of the Lord in heaven which save us from all kinds of difficulties. Something has to be done in us, and therefore it must be spiritual and moral government that operates to conform us to the image of God's Son; so that, although there may seem to be hinderances and obstructions and difficulties - and there are - nevertheless, His spiritual government is producing spiritual ends in us which mean approximation to His own likeness. So it is a spiritual government, for it means that everything is spiritual. Ascendancy and triumph and arrival are going to be spiritual, not just natural - we shall not simply be brought there apart from anything that is accomplished in us. We are moving toward God's end by spiritual government within our lives, not merely by a sovereign hand upon us.
_______________________________
The Deeper Meaning of Pentecost
Pentecost in its outworking - or the presence of the Holy Spirit here - will mean that those in whom the Spirit operates and has His own way will never be able to rest short of God's full thought for themselves or for others. They will be deeply exercised and burdened and will be drawn into the travail of Christ, to fill up that which is lacking of His sufferings for His Body's sake which is the Church. This man in Christ is a marked man, he is marked from heaven as one whose whole heart is taken up with this great concern that what is there should be found here that what is true of Christ, the Man in the glory, should be more fully expressed here in this new man, the Church, the Body. That is an operation of the Holy Spirit; and if you tell me that the Holy Spirit is having His way, and yet there is complacency with things that are not according to Christ, I say that is a contradiction; it cannot be. If you are perfectly satisfied with things as they are in yourself or in other believers, and have no real concern that there should be a full conformity to the image of Christ and that the whole Body should be brought to the measure of the stature of a man in Christ, the Spirit of God is not doing the work in you. Pentecost in its deeper meaning will produce that. The very fact that so soon after His advent the Church moved out as by Divine urge to seek the members of the Body and then to bring them into full conformity is proof positive that the Spirit of God is seeking to perfect a Body, a manhood, according to that Man Who has been revealed as in the glory.
The Lord is very greatly concerned about spiritual measure, although His people are not so concerned; and Christ, the Man in fullness, is coming down to be like a measuring rod beside His Church, and to say, This is where you are not true, and you must adjust; this is where you have excesses, and they must go; this is where you have deficiencies, and they must be made good. It is the Spirit of God at work all the time to see to it that in all details we are according to Christ, the Spirit of God working in relation to that perfect measure that is in heaven, the measure for this Body, for this collective man, in all its parts.
The Man in the glory, being at God's right hand exalted, established, settled, is the assured realization of God's end. The Spirit of sonship has come, not to try and do something, not with a hope that it may be; He has come in all the sovereignty of that One there, and it is going to be.
There is a Man in the glory; the Spirit of God has come and has entered into us with just one object - to make all things abound toward the reproducing of that Man in us,in measure individually, and in the collective measure of the individuals in one glorified Body, Christ corporate.
______________________________
The God Who Raises the Dead
Death is the thing which pronounces an end. Whenever you and I say, This is the end, we are finished! - we have succumbed to death. That is the verdict of death, for death always says that. The Church should never believe in ends - that is to capitulate to death. Although a thousand times in ourselves we might feel the end has come, in the very experience which brings us to that place God has invested a new realization that in Him that finality is cancelled out. We should never expect an end until God says, That is the end! God is trying to bring us to the place where we stop expecting what the devil is constantly offering through circumstances - death, an end, limitation. God is all the time thinking of increase, enlargement. God allows very deep and hard and painful things - things which bring us in ourselves really to the point of giving up, where we pass the verdict of death upon ourselves. He allows them with this object, that - however much we may have known and proved the truth in our earlier experience - He may bring us yet a stage further into the power and good of it, that God raiseth the dead. If He does that, then there is hope for anybody and for anything.
Again and again in the course of our history, we shall be at the place where there is no hope but in "God Who raiseth the dead" (2 Cor. 1:9) if there is to be any future at all. We shall come there in our own soul life - that we are at an end of our resources, mind, heart, and will. We may come ofttimes in our very physical life to the place where, if God does not do something, it is an end. We shall come there in the work of God - where everything seems to declare that this is the finish of the work, there is nothing more possible; but now is the occasion for the God Who raises the dead, the God of promise, the God of Isaac, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 5)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)