The Spoil of Battle

by T. Austin-Sparks

"From spoil won in battles they dedicated gifts to maintain the house of the Lord." 1 Chronicles 26:27.


From this passage of Scripture we gather that the House of the Lord is constituted out of our conflicts. The Lord builds from the fruit of conflict. Thus it was in the temple, given through David to Solomon. When that temple was completed it stood as a monument to universal victory; its very substance declared triumph on the right hand and on the left. The silver and the gold, and all the precious things which it comprised, had been taken in battle and wrought into the House of God. What is an illustration in the Old Testament is true in the reality of the New. The greater Son of David, the greater than Solomon, who "is here", builds the House from the spoil of His own warfare, and the warfare of His saints.


I was impressed as I read in this first book of Chronicles, chapter 17:9. The Lord is speaking to David, and one of the things which He says is: "And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in their own place, and be moved no more; neither shall the children of wickedness waste them any more, as at the first, and as from the day that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel; and I will subdue all thine enemies". 


You notice that the Lord refers to the judges over Israel. The Lord raised up judges, as you will remember, to do that which Israel had failed to do completely under Joshua. Under Joshua they were meant by the Lord to utterly destroy all the nations in the land, and completely subdue every enemy. They failed to do that. They suffered enemies to remain, they compromised, and then the Lord raised up the judges to save them from the terrible results of their having failed to make a complete work of destroying all their enemies. 


But the judges failed, and the Book of Judges is a sad story of the work still incomplete. 


The Lord raised up the judges to do that which had not been done, but again the judges did not perfect the work. And it is tremendously interesting and illuminating to notice in 1 Chronicles 18 and 19, when the Lord had spoken to David about building the House, how he definitely and positively took in hand to overthrow all those other nations which the judges had not overthrown; and they are mentioned in these two chapters. Go over them and you will find a list of the very nations and peoples mentioned in the Book of Judges; and David, through the vision of the House of God, seems to be moved instinctively by the Spirit of God to see that the House can never be realised until these enemies are subdued, until they are entirely overthrown.


 The Lord fulfilled His word to subdue all his enemies, and those very nations were taken in hand and dealt with. When the Lord had given David victory on every side round about, then he handed the plan to Solomon to carry out the building of the House, and the spoil of those battles was the material for the House. The enemy had the resources for the House of God, and the enemy had to be despoiled that the House might be built. That could lead us a very long way and be very illuminating. I want to seek to reduce it to a few words and a small compass which, nevertheless, will provide you with a great deal for future helpfulness and contemplation.

The Twofold Building

There are two aspects of the building of the House of God. We are rather inclined to take more account of one than the other. There is the numerical side. When we think of building the House of God, we think of the gathering in of people, the adding of souls by their salvation and being brought into the truth, and so we think only of the House of God being built in the sense referred to by Peter: "Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house...", that is, we think of the numerical side, the gathering of the individual stones and their coming into their place in the spiritual edifice. Well, that is a true side to the building of the Lord's House, but it is only one side, and only half of the truth. 


There is another side which is equally important, without which that will be altogether an inadequate thing; that other side is the spiritual and moral side of the building of God's House. You may have a great number of individuals saved and still fail to have the truest meaning of the House of God. You may have a congregation and not have a church. You may have numbers, and not have spiritually the House of God. The House of God is not only a numerical thing, it is a spiritual and moral thing. That is, it has a character, and that character is what makes it in very essence the House of God. It takes its character from its Head and will eventually, in its consummation, be recognised - not as a great multitude merely of saved souls - but as something which bears the character of its Head, the Lord Jesus. 


The time is coming when the Lord will cause His Name to be upon His own; that is, we shall receive a white stone, and in that white stone a new name; we shall have a new name, and we shall be called by His Name, His Name will be in our foreheads. That is all symbolic language, and its meaning is just this: the Lord Jesus will be so fully manifested in His own that as you look at them you will say: That speaks of the Lord Jesus. You will recognise so much of Him, He will be so much in evidence, that you will simply have to say: That is the nature of Christ. You have met Him in them, and in meeting them you met Him. And so He will be universally revealed through His own. His Name is His character, what His Name embodies spiritually and morally will be resting upon them, they will take their character from Him, and so it will be one universal displaying of the character and nature of the Lord Jesus. It will not dispense with His own individual personal being, but they will be a channel of His own universal expression.