Sonship, Outside the Camp of Traditional and Earthly Religion

The Kingdom That Cannot be Shaken

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 2 - Sonship, Outside the Camp of Traditional and Earthly Religion

Reading: Hebrews 12:26-29.

We come back to this letter to the Hebrews, and we can narrow the whole thing down to it. In the first place, is there not some peculiar and wonderful significance about the preservation of this letter in particular? You see, it was written for a special occasion, and that occasion was one historically very near to the time of its writing. If, as many believe, its date was between 66 and 70, then it was very near in time to the actual carrying out or fulfilment of the thing for which it was written; that is, it was written because Jerusalem and Judaism in the order in which it then existed was about to be shattered to pieces and scattered to the ends of the earth, it was preparation for that, and that took place in 70. So the letter, written so near to the occasion, fulfilled its purpose within a very short time.

Why, then, should it last out till now? Why should it occupy the place that it occupies now in the preserved and protected writings of the New Testament? Some have been lost, we know. Why did not the Lord let this be lost, seeing that it had fulfilled its purpose? I venture to say that this letter is living now. It is not a letter that has no life in it, as though it had served its purpose and could now be put aside. It is a tremendous letter as a spiritual document today. What does it mean? Why was it written? Certain Jews had turned to Christ, and in turning to Christ had turned to the fulfilment of all their Jewish patterns, all their Jewish types and figures and shadows, passed from the substance to the reality. Then ardent Jews came along and sought to make it very hard for them. It meant ostracism, boycott, persecution, and much suffering; and a great effort was launched to Judaise Christianity, that is, to link Christianity on with Judaism and preserve, maintain, perpetuate all the Jewish orders in connection with Christianity.

The letter, as you see, was written against such a movement, and to strengthen those believers in the faith, and it set forth the fact in a very comprehensive way that Jesus fulfilled, embodied, transcended all the spiritual values of the Jewish foreshadowing and types, and put them aside, and that henceforth for the Lord's people it was not a matter of a tabernacle or a temple, an altar and its sacrifices, a priesthood in rota and all that outward order of things, but it was all in Christ in heaven, of spiritual value.

That was the content of the letter in brief. Its object was immediate. How far it achieved its object we do not know. It is possible that some of those believers went back in spite of the repeated warnings, and perished with Jerusalem and Judaism. It is probable that many of them were saved by this letter, so that when Jerusalem, the temple and the Jewish system was shaken, as the Word says, and ceased to remain, their link was with heaven, with a living, risen, exalted Christ, and it meant nothing to them of loss that all that did go. The immediate purpose was accomplished. Why maintain the letter? Why keep it alive? Why preserve it? That is the question we have to answer, and the answer is that the letter does not merely deal with an historic instance. It deals with an abiding tendency. It is something which is always the peril of God's people, whether they be Jews or Christians. The value of this letter today is that it is a letter no longer to Jewry, no longer to Israel but to the Christian church, and that is why it lives, because God knows that that tendency is a persistent one in the direction to which these Hebrew believers were being tempted, and in the direction to which they were almost being driven. So that something very concrete arises. It is this: that Christianity can become exactly what Judaism became, and God is against that. And it brings us back to the central point of our earlier meditation. It is one of the master-strokes of Satan against the Lord Jesus, and the principle result of his work is tradition. By that I mean the making of things into a system run by man. Now that covers a lot of ground, a lot of history. Christianity has become a repetition of Judaism. Organised Christianity today is what Judaism was when this letter was written: an historic thing, a systematised thing, a whole system of beliefs, truths, doctrines, activities, movements, which are very largely but an imitation of something.

We come to the New Testament. As to the things taught in the New Testament, we say these are the New Testament doctrines and we are called upon to subscribe to these doctrines. Now we are not going to attempt to cover the ground of what the New Testament doctrine was. Fundamentalism as such draws a circle around New Testament doctrines, but then there are a good many that go beyond that. Then we come to the New Testament and we see not only doctrines but practices, and we say, This is the practice of the New Testament. Then we come again, and we see the activities, what we may call the work which was carried on or carried out in New Testament times by the apostles, by the church. And then we come again and we see what the church was in New Testament times. We have a presentation of the church as it is here on the earth.

Now those four things since New Testament times have been taken up as a system and imitated: that is, there has been the forming of the doctrine into the creed, the Christian creed, and it is accepted, and we say, I believe in so-and-so! Why do you believe in it? Because it is in the New Testament. Well, that may be quite good so far, but you proceed beyond that. This was the practice of the church in New Testament times: therefore we can do likewise. This is how the church was organised (I am doubtful about that word, but we will use it for the moment) in New Testament times. This is how the church came into being, and how it was ordered and arranged in New Testament times, therefore we do the same. We have our churches on that basis, we imitate. And then as to the work, whatever it might be, evangelism and all the other activities on the side of the work of Christianity as a movement, we see this is what happened, we do the same, we imitate. And so for centuries the thing has become a system like that, of imitation, and that is what I mean by tradition.

That can just be Judaism repeated in Christendom. That is what Judaism was. Remember that Judaism came from God out of heaven at one time; it came by revelation, and it came in power, and it was accompanied, as this letter points out, with the voice of a trump, with fire and smoke, shaking and earthquake. It came with the accompaniments of God Himself, all terrible, a consuming fire: and yet it became that, a thing which had to be overthrown, for the overthrow of which God had to shake the earth. It became the thing which was the occasion of the chief conflicts of apostolic times. Paul's battles were on the field of Judaism. Yes, a thing which originally came from God, now one of God's main difficulties, doing more harm than it is worth, set aside, repudiated. You have only got to look at Jewry today and see how much respect God has for Judaism as such. Well, Christianity came from God, out of heaven, and this letter says that Judaism came through man but this faith came from the Son of God Himself. That is the comparison. He that spoke then on the earth, Moses; how much more in the case of Him that speaks from heaven. "God, who in time past spake unto the fathers in the prophets... hath at the end of the times spoken unto us in his Son..."; yet the peril and possibility and tendency is exactly the same in both cases, the end can be similar, and God will yet shake Christendom to its foundations, that it shall be shattered as He has done with Judaism. That is the testimony here. Yes, all our creeds, all our imitation of the New Testament. God never meant anything of His in this dispensation to be an imitation. He meant it to be the real thing. The difference between the real thing and the traditional is between life and death. Tradition is in one realm and life is in another. It depends entirely upon whether it is earthly or heavenly.

Resource in a Day of Limitation

"Not by Might, Nor by Power, But by My Spirit"

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 6 - Resource in a Day of Limitation

Reading: Zechariah 3:1-10; 4:6.

Once more at the outset let us make a survey of this and the present chapter. It is always important for us to be sure that when we are speaking from the Word of God, and especially from the Old Testament, what we are saying really does have an application in the thought of God to our own time and that we are not trying to make something apply. And so in order to get our present contact with the Word of God, and see that it is related to our own time, let us just glance over some of the features of this portion.

I think we have not far to look to discover the prophetic and the typical elements that are in this whole book of prophecies as well as in the other book which is its companion, in the prophecies of Haggai which precede these - I say the prophetical and the typical elements, and they are twofold.

Firstly, they are historical, as to Israel. They have that immediate application to Israel and are pointing on to future things. There is a future element and factor about these prophecies all the way through which had no fulfilment in the immediate history of the Lord's people. You take such a fragment, for instance, as that towards the end of the prophecies of Haggai (2:21,22): "Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying, I will shake the heavens and the earth; and I will overthrow the throne of kingdoms; and I will destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations." Now, that passage is quoted in the letter to the Hebrews where we are told that the things which can be shaken will be shaken. God will shake not only the earth but the heaven; and Haggai is quoted in relation to the desire of all nations coming. So that you see there is a future element here even in this fragment alone, and there are many others in these two books which had no fulfilment in that phase of Israel's history. It was prophetic as to their own history and lay in the future.

But there is also another side which is spiritual, as to the church. Again let me point out what is familiar to most of you: that these two things run parallel throughout the whole of the Word of God; that while there is a historical aspect which in the main relates to this earth and its affairs, there is also behind that historical a spiritual, which does not primarily relate to this earth but relates to the heavens although it affects this earth; and that is spiritual. There is a representation in the historical on this earth, of that which is spiritual in the heavens.

These two things run right through all the Scriptures, and here in these prophecies they are quite patent. You take some of the features of these prophecies and you will at once see this twofold aspect of things. Take some of the typical words and phrases here. Firstly you began with: "My house that lies waste." "My house". Now it does not require a very profound or comprehensive grasp of the Scriptures to see that that very phrase relates to two things. It related to the temple as here on the earth, and has been used many times in that connection - My house. But we also know quite well that that phrase is linked with another house which is not on this earth, which is not a material house at all. It is the House of God which is eternal and not temporal, and in the heavens and not of the earth. It is that House which is brought into view for us by the spiritual epistles of the New Testament; and the two find their meeting place in the Person of the Lord Jesus. On the one hand He gathered up in His Own Person in His own body, the temple of the old dispensation, and related it to Himself, and showed that that temple and that system passed out when on that side of the meaning of His Person He passed out. In the presence of the temple in Jerusalem, for instance, He said, which we say in a beguiling way to the unspiritual and undiscerning: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up", this naos (Gr.), this sanctuary. They thought He referred to the temple but there was a sense in which He linked the temple with His own Person, but the recorder with spiritual illumination puts in brackets: "But He spoke of the temple of His body." So there was a link between the Person of Christ on the historic side with the temple of the old dispensation, but with His passing, that passed, and we know that it did in a very short time and it has not been reconstituted since.

Seeking God with ALL Our Heart

 

Seeking God with ALL Our Heart

By A.W. Tozer

  I have previously shown that any Christian who desires to may at any time experience a radical spiritual renaissance, and this altogether independent of the attitude of his fellow Christians.

      The important question now is, How? Well, here are some suggestions which anyone can follow and which, I am convinced, will result in a wonderfully improved Christian life.

      1. Get thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself. Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. The contented soul is the stagnant soul. When speaking of earthly goods Paul could say, "I have learned to be content" (Philippians 4:11); but when referring to his spiritual life he testified, "I press on toward the goal" (3:14). "So stir up the gift of God that is in thee" (2 Timothy 1:6, KJV).

      2. Set your face like a flint toward a sweeping transformation of your life. Timid experimenters are tagged for failure before they start. We must throw our whole soul into our desire for God. "The kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it" (Matthew 11:12).

The Reason Why Many Cannot Find Peace (James 4:7-10) - C.H. Spurgeon Sermon

The Great Life

By Oswald Chambers

'Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: . . Let not your heart be troubled.'
John 14:27

Whenever a thing becomes difficult in personal experience, we are in danger of blaming God, but it is we who are in the wrong, not God, there is some perversity somewhere that we will not let go. Immediately we do, everything becomes as clear as daylight. As long as we try to serve two ends, ourselves and God, there is perplexity. The attitude must be one of complete reliance on God. When once we get there, there is nothing easier than living the saintly life; difficulty comes in when we want to usurp the authority of the Holy Spirit for our own ends.

Whenever you obey God, His seal is always that of peace, the witness of an unfathomable peace, which is not natural, but the peace of Jesus. Whenever peace does not come, tarry till it does or find out the reason why it does not. If you are acting on an impulse, or from a sense of the heroic, the peace of Jesus will not witness; there is no simplicity or confidence in God, because the spirit of simplicity is born of the Holy Ghost, not of your decisions. Every decision brings a reaction of simplicity.

My questions come whenever I cease to obey. When I have obeyed God, the problems never come between me and God, they come as probes to keep the mind going on with amazement at the revelation of God. Any problem that comes between God and myself springs out of disobedience; any problem, and there are many, that is alongside me while I obey God, increases my ecstatic delight, because I know that my Father knows, and I am going to watch and see how He unravels this thing.

link

All Types

By George Matheson

"When they saw the boldness of Peter and John...they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus" (Acts 4:13).

These two men drew one quality from the same source; they had both become bold from living with Jesus. Yet it was not the same kind of boldness. Peter and John were both courageous; yet the courage of Peter was as unlike the courage of John as the sun is unlike the moon. When Christ gives the same quality to two men He does not thereby make them the same man. The light which shines on the wall comes from the same source as the light which shines on the river; but no one would mistake the light on the river for the light on the wall. Even so, no one would mistake the courage of Peter for the courage of John. They are not only different; they are in some sense opposite. Peter has the courage that strikes; John has the courage that waits. Peter is a force of action; John is a force of bearing. Peter draws the sword; John lies on the bosom. Peter crosses the sea to meet Jesus; John tarries till the Lord comes. Peter goes into the sepulchre where the body of Jesus has lain; John merely looks in--keeps the image of sorrow in his heart.

Christ needs each of these types. There are times when His kingdom requires the courage of the hand--the power of actual contact with danger. There are times when it needs the courage of the heart--the power to wait when nothing can be done, and to keep the spirit up when the hand must be let down. Life has both its Galilee and its Patmos--its place for work and its place for waiting; and for both it requires courage.

David encouraging himself in God (1 Samuel 30:6-8) - C.H. Spurgeon Sermon

Natural Talent or Divine Power

Watchman Nee

And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. 1 Corinthians 2.1.

Every one of us has natural talent—some with more, others with less. We tend at first to depend on our natural gifts to proclaim the cross which we have experienced. How eagerly we expect our audience to adopt the same view and share in the same experience. Yet somehow they are so cold and unreceptive, falling short of our anticipation. 

We do not realize that we are rather new in our experience of the cross, and that our natural good talents need also to die with Christ. Not until we discover that the work done by relying on natural ability can only please men for a time but does not impart to their spirit the actual work of the Holy Spirit, do we finally acknowledge how inadequate is our beautiful natural talent and how necessary it is that we seek for greater divine power.

Strengthen Thee Out of Zion by T. Austin-Sparks

Strengthen Thee Out of Zion 

by T. Austin-Sparks

Edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.

Reading: Psalms 20-22.

"The Lord answer thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God of Jacob set thee up on high; send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of Zion" (Ps. 20:1-2).

I think it may be known to you that this first section or book of the Psalms (there are five sections) is what is called the Messianic character; that is, there is a special prophetic connection between these Psalms and the Lord Jesus as Messiah. Of course there are three aspects of the Psalms throughout. There is that which is personal to the Lord Jesus, and then there is that which relates to Jews and history, and then in the third place there is that which applies spiritually to all the Lord's people, the saints. The first and the second are quite clearly pronounced in their historical outline. The third is that which we all spiritually derive as we read these Psalms. And who among the Lord's people have not been spiritually strengthened by the reading of the Psalms!

Now, here in these Psalms immediately under our eye, we have very clearly that which is personal to the Lord Jesus and that which relates to the Jewish realm, especially in the last times, that realm that will be at the end in the days of Jacob's trouble. There comes out of these two historical things, that which is for us spiritually. It is important to recognise that while one does not want to deal with technical details, you must understand that to enter into the meaning of these Psalms.

Psalm 22. We know that was taken up by the Lord Jesus and can see the Messianic side of that quite well, but was it merely only prophetic? There is the historic side to that as again between that and the Jewish remnant that will yet cry "My God why hast thou forsaken Me?" When you get to that position you can appreciate that fully. So you must understand the applications of all these Psalms in all their directions. There is the personal, the historic, and the spiritual.

The fragment here in my heart for these few moments is: "send thee help from the sanctuary and strengthen thee out of Zion" (Ps. 20:2).

"Strengthen thee out of Zion". Taking this as a Messianic Psalm, which indeed it is because the next, Psalm 21, is the answer to the cry of Psalm 20: "The king shall joy in thy strength O Lord... thou hast given him his heart's desire". That is the answer, "...and hast not witholden the request of his lips...", etc.. This is the Lord Jesus who is in view. The crown of everlasting life has been set upon His head in view of His sufferings and His death.

Now the cry in Psalm 20: "The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble... the Name of the God of Jacob set thee on high", that firstly applies to the Lord Jesus in the day of His forsaking, in the day when all men are against Him, in the day of His travail, in the day of His cross. He seems to be in an attitude of spirit of crying to the Lord. You notice that the end of Psalm 20 is "Let the King" with a capital K "answer us when we call".

Psalm 21 begins with king with a small 'K'; the two are here, God and Christ. The King is God being appealed to. The king here is the Lord Jesus making His appeal. These two are brought into relationship in kingship. He, Christ in the day of trouble to the King, to God, to the Father who is able to deliver Him. In response to His cry there is help sent from the sanctuary and He is strengthened out of Zion. That is a typical phrase, as we know, and represents something spiritual in the glory. We remember how in the day when with strong crying and tears He made His appeal unto Him who was able to save Him from death and was heard in that He feared, there was an angel sent to strengthen Him. Help was sent out of the sanctuary, succour out of Zion, and He was strengthened to go through, help came; we know that quite well. Then having received help out of the sanctuary, strength out of Zion, and having been carried right through, His full cry was answered in His being delivered from death and raised to the glory and the crown of power, gold, set upon His head and life everlasting given to Him. That is the full answer.

It is the Lord Jesus being brought, by the help from the sanctuary, the strength out of Zion, to the place of absolute triumph, absolute glory, absolute victory, the name of the Lord proving its power in delivering Him from death. Now, that is what is personal to the Lord Jesus, but then there is that which is spiritual which applies to us, and this has a spiritual application to the saints and to our own hearts. We spiritually enter into not the same work of the Lord Jesus in His cross, i.e. mediatorial, atoning, but we enter spiritually into much of the experience that He knew of rejection, opposition, despisings, and sufferings from men. We should read all these Psalms to collect up all through which He went. We go through our darknesses; "yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered" (Heb. 5:8). We are in that school, we go that way, we know something of spiritual suffering in relation to the Lord Jesus.

There are other kinds of suffering of course, but spiritually there is no suffering that we enter into in relation to the Lord Jesus that is not pre-eminently spiritual. It all bears so strongly on the spiritual life; you cannot separate between this kind of suffering and that kind of suffering. There is nothing out of relation to the Lord; when it is joined to Him it has a spiritual application. By reason of the cloud which the enemy brings around us and of the frailty of our flesh we may even feel that the Lord has left us, forsaken us, and sometimes, although we dare not take these words on our lips, we might say: "Why have You forsaken us?" We may experience a spiritual time of darkness when the Lord is hidden and sometimes it seems to us that He is so hid in clouds of trouble, foreboding, depression and so on that we are tempted by the enemy to think that we are forsaken. But what I want to get at is this: the Lord Jesus when He was tempted in all points like as we are, when He entered into the experiences and temptations which are common to man, cried unto One who was able to save Him from death, and was answered, and so fully answered as to bring Him right through out into the place of glory and eternal life, and it is the prayer which will be answered on our behalf in the same way. We can receive the same strength out of Zion, and the final point which I want to reach is this - what Zion is as a resource of strength.

We are getting familiar with Zion these days. "Strengthen thee out of Zion". Zion then is a place out from which strength comes; Zion is that where our strength is from which we draw our strength. What is Zion? Well for us now on New Testament ground Zion is the Lord Jesus glorified, in the place of absolute power, ascendancy, sovereignty and glory in virtue of something that God has done because of His suffering and death. It is the position of Hebrews 1 and 2. "Because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour". It is Christ who has got through and is in possession of the power over death, over all His enemies. He has defeated the many bulls of Bashan, now He is vested with that power over which there is no power, that Life which is death defying and death destroying, vested with full glory. He is the sum total of all that which is necessary of the power of God to bring Him through all this, out of all this and put Him there. That is Zion, that Person, the Lord Jesus, in a position and seat absolutely glorified. His endowment death-conquering life and all the power over hell, the devil, men, the world and everything else all in the Person of the Lord Jesus as He is there; that is Zion.

Now, "strengthen thee out of Zion": minister Life to you out of death, glory in the hour of suffering, minister to you what Christ is, while you are here. The Father is there, the Son is here, the Son is going through all this; He makes His appeal out of Zion that the Father ministers His own life, strengthens Him, ministers Himself to the Son, for He came through in the power, life, strength, grace, and love of God. Christ is in that position. He is Zion. We are going through, not what He went through, but a shadow of it. Our prayer is to Him and out of Zion He ministers to us Himself.

Zion is the ministration of the Lord Jesus to us in our hour of need; when we are in trouble, suffering, and trial we say: "Lord help me". That is a very simple way of putting it, perhaps the child's way of putting it, but if we do not know any better, perhaps the Lord answers us on that level; but the Lord would have us understand what we mean by being helped. He would have us come to draw upon the power of resurrection that is in Jesus Christ, draw upon what the Lord Jesus is by reason of where He is in the power of God.

That is Ephesians. "The exceeding greatness of His power... according to that working of His might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead..." (Eph. 1:19-20). That is Zion and that ministration of Christ to us is sending help, strength out of Zion. And Ephesians is the sanctuary, the City, and it is the ministration of what Christ is in the heavenlies to us as we are passing through trial and difficulty here.

So getting strength out of Zion is simply drawing upon Christ as already triumphant, glorified. "We will triumph in His victory." His Name is above every name because He was obedient unto death. "In the name of our God we will set up our banners" (Ps. 20:5), drawing on what the Lord Jesus is now in virtue of the power that is vested in Him and which has proved itself sufficient to get Him through. That power is for the remnant, to get them through. And while there may be a Jewish remnant, we also are a remnant and we have to be got through.

Let us say to ourselves and to one another, "The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble, the name of the God of Jacob defend thee, send thee help out of the sanctuary, strengthen thee out of Zion" (Ps. 20:1-2) - minister to you the victorious Christ in your hour of need. Draw on Him and we shall get through.

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"Roll on Jehovah thy way" (Ps. 37:6, margin).

Streams in the Desert

 Leave It To God 

  "Roll on Jehovah thy way" (Ps. 37:6, margin).

 Whatever it is that presses thee, go tell the Father; put the whole matter over into His hand, and so shalt thou be freed from that dividing, perplexing care that the world is full of. When thou art either to do or suffer anything, when thou art about any purpose or business, go tell God of it, and acquaint Him with it; yes, burden Him with it, and thou hast done for matter of caring; no more care, but quiet, sweet, diligence in thy duty, and dependence on Him for the carriage of thy matters. Roll thy cares, and thyself with them, as one burden, all on thy God. --R. Leighton

  Build a little fence of trust 

 Around today; 

 Fill the space with loving work 

 And therein stay. 

 Look not through the sheltering bars 

 Upon tomorrow; 

 God will help thee bear what comes 

 Of joy or sorrow. --Mary Butts 

We shall find it impossible to commit our way unto the Lord, unless it be a way that He approves. It is only by faith that a man can commit his way unto the Lord; if there be the slightest doubt in the heart that "our way" is not a good one, faith will refuse to have anything to do with it.

 This committing of our way must be a continuous, not a single act. However extraordinary and unexpected may seem to be His guidance, however near the precipice He may take you, you are not to snatch the guiding reins out of His hands. 

Are we willing to have all our ways submitted to God, for Him to pronounce judgment on them? There is nothing a Christian needs to be more scrutinizing about than about his confirmed habits and views. He is too apt to take for granted the Divine approbation of them. Why are some Christians so anxious, so fearful? Evidently because they have not left their way with the Lord. They took it to Him, but brought it away with them again. --Selected