"BLESSED IS THE MAN ..."

Message given at the conference in Switzerland in September 1968

[W. E. Thompson]

"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water, that bringeth forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also doth not wither; and whatsoever he doeth he shall prosper" (Psalm 1:1-3).

WE have been hearing how the New Testament is constructed on a spiritual basis rather than on a chronological one, and that is also true of the Old Testament, particularly the books of the Psalms. As we read the Old Testament, and the Psalms, I believe we need to do so from this standpoint. If you have good Bibles you will find that the Psalms are divided into five books, and I think you will find that these five books of the Psalms correspond to the five books of Moses.

The first book of Moses is Genesis, the book of beginnings, the book of man. Throughout that book we read of God's dealings with man, and the main content is a man; and the first book of Psalms (1 - 41) deals with the blessed man. That is what we are now going to consider. But, for your interest, if you read the second book of the Psalms, 42 - 73, you will find that they correspond to the book of Exodus, for they are the Psalms of deliverance. Then what is the next step after deliverance? It is not service, but worship -- the sanctuary. "Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary" (Psalm 77:13). That is the book of Leviticus -- and you will find a lot about the sanctuary in Psalms 73 - 89. Next we have the book of journeyings -- the book of Numbers, and if you read that fourth book of [38/39] Psalms (90 to 106) you will find much about wanderings and wilderness experiences. Then, of course, the fifth book of Moses, the book of Deuteronomy, has the land in sight.

We have also seen this week how God's history is bound up in the history of a man, and the Psalms are the reflections of God's dealings with a man, for we will find here almost every experience that we can possibly know. It is said of David that he was a man after God's own heart (Acts 13:22), and he was also a man after God's head, for it says: "He shall do all my will." Thus we find in the Psalms the answer to our needs and our problems.

This first Psalm begins with a very important word -- "Blessed": " Blessed is the man ...".

WHAT ARE BLESSINGS?

Now what are blessings? We use the word a great deal. We pray for God to bless us, to bless this one and that one, and I think perhaps it is true to say that we have come to Aeschi for a blessing. Now I believe that there are some Christians who consider that God is like a supermarket. All they have to do is to get their baskets and pick a blessing here and a blessing there; they go to the conference section and think that they can just fill their baskets with this kind of blessing.

No, blessings are not like that. We just cannot go round and collect them. These blessings are to be found only in Christ, and we shall find that we shall be blessed only in the measure that we are ourselves truly in Him and really share in a practical way His blessed life. "Blessed is the man ...". Well, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ is the first and the primary blessed Man, and it is the purpose and intention of God to bring us into these blessings of Christ. 'Blessed' is the first word used in the earliest recorded discourse of our Lord Jesus Christ -- "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3). God put Adam in the garden of Eden for a blessing, and the blessings that he lost are only regained in our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why His ministry has so much of this very important word. We want, and we need, a blessing. so that Lord says: "Blessed ...".

Another translation of this word helps us to understand what it means -- 'happy'. We can talk about the blessed man as a happy man. But then I would like to ask another question. What really makes us happy? What is it that really constitutes true, deep happiness? I think it is the word 'satisfied'. We can take this word 'blessed' away and put 'satisfied' in and it would be quite correct.

Now this kind of satisfaction is not a cheap and easy thing, but is something that goes right, deep down into our very innermost being, because it is deep in the heart of God Himself. It is the very meaning of the Gospel. If you look at 1 Timothy 1:11 you will read a verse that will alter your whole idea about the Gospel. It is "the gospel of the glory of the blessed God", or " satisfied God". Is that not wonderful? That makes a difference to what you mean when you talk about a 'Gospel meeting', when you are supposed to preach some kind of formula which is the answer to people's needs! No, this Gospel that we have been brought into is the gospel of a God who is absolutely satisfied. Why is He satisfied? Because He has found the way by which He can reclaim man and bring Him back to Himself. After He had created Adam He said: 'It is good!' I do not think that God was finally satisfied after creating Adam, but He was certainly satisfied at the coming into the world of the final Adam -- "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). And God is satisfied because of those sons who have been brought to glory. That is why He is a blessed God, and the only basis of our true blessing is as we experience that in which God is well pleased; and that depends upon the measure in which the Lord Jesus Christ reigns within us.

THE LOSS OF BLESSEDNESS

Now we find in this first Psalm how the devil tries to rob this blessed man of the enjoyment of his blessings. The first verse, with its three negatives, gives us an idea of how the devil tries to rob us of what God has given us. The blessed man 'walks not in the counsel of the ungodly; he stands not in the way of sinners; he sits not in the seat of the scornful'. There are three nouns and three verbs in that verse, and they are very important. The ungodly: that represents everyone who does not acknowledge God. The sinners: that represents those who actively do evil. The scornful: those who are directly opposed to God. You will notice that there is a decline in these three kinds of persons.

I want to say a word to all young people under eighty, and it is this: It is vitally important what friends you have and what company you keep, if you are the people of God, if you are those who have a completely different nature, and if you are the blessed people, for this is where the devil begins to work.

Notice those three verbs: Walk -- Stand -- Sit. Again there is a declension. We do not find ourselves immediately sitting amongst those who scorn God. It all begins with a walk. Some years ago in [39/40] Bombay the Lord brought to Himself a remarkable young Hindu. He came from a very staunch Hindu family, and it was wonderful to see his growth in the things of God. Then he began to lose his joy, his blessings. We found that he began to go right away and his life became quite contrary to the life of a Christian. Ultimately he went right back into his Hindu family. How did this happen? He began by 'walking in the counsel of the ungodly'. He started listening to his worldly friends concerning things like marriage, and began to take advice from non-Christian friends. Then one day I looked in his bag and I found some books. They were not very nice books. He was 'standing in the way of sinners'; and I know many young Christians who have lost their blessings through reading the wrong kind of books and magazines. Eventually he found himself in the 'seat of the scornful'. If we had the time to study the story of the Prodigal Son we would find the same kind of thing.

This matter of walking is very important. Our walk reveals our character. Those disciples in John i did not hear the Lord Jesus preaching, for it says: "They looked upon Jesus as he walked, and said, Behold the Lamb of God!" He was identified by His walk. We can disguise ourselves in many ways. We can wear a wig, or we can paint our faces and do a lot of outward things, but we cannot disguise our walk. The blessed man walks in the newness of life, for we shall walk in the light of that new, hidden life. As we know the Lord so we shall walk. When God revealed Himself to Abraham as El Shaddai, the Almighty God, what did He say? 'Go and preach about it!'? 'Go and write a book about it!'? No, He said: 'Walk!' -- "Walk before me, and be thou perfect" (Genesis 17:1). This walking is a very important part of our Christian life.

THE LAW OF THE LORD

In verse 2 of this Psalm we find something about the positive aspect of this blessed man. It is very simple: "His delight is in the law of the Lord." Now we delight our bodies in good food. We delight our souls in a variety of ways -- in nice music, or beautiful scenery, but our bodies and our souls do not delight in the law of the Lord. We can only delight in the law of the Lord in the inward man. Paul said: "I delight in the law of God after the inward man" (Romans 7:22). The natural man never understands and delights in the Word of God. He may read it and say that it is wonderful literatures but he does not delight in it, because "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God" (1 Corinthians 2:14).

We also find in verse 2 of this Psalm that this blessed man meditates in this law, and not just for a few minutes in the morning and in the evening. It says: "Day and night." He is constantly meditating in the law of the Lord Jehovah.

But wait a minute! What was David's Bible? What was the "law of the Lord" in which David meditated for such a long time? He did not have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, nor did he have the letter to the Ephesians. He had Genesis -- well, that is quite interesting. He had Exodus -- yes, there are many interesting things there. He had Leviticus -- oh, what can you get out of Leviticus? And he had the other two books of Moses.

If we really have the life of the inward man we shall find a tremendous lot in Leviticus, and, young people, please do not skip these books when you read the Bible! If you want to know the real blessedness, you meditate in these books. What is the key, the secret of them'? It is the satisfied God! You look for the satisfied God in Leviticus and you will find a tremendous world of richness.

THE EVIDENCE OF BLESSEDNESS

In verse 3 we find the evidence of the blessed man: "He shall be like a tree." To you people living in Switzerland that may not be very wonderful, for you have so many trees around you. The country is just full of them. But to those of us who in the East a tree is quite a rare thing, and it was certainly a rare thing in the country where David lived. When you fly over India and look down over the barren plain you will suddenly see a little patch which is all green, and there are many trees. If you look more carefully you will see the reason: there will be a river. This tree here is "planted by the streams of water". Here is the centre where the Holy Spirit is working, and certainly our blessedness will depend a lot upon that. Get near the stream and we shall grow.

We read three things about this tree in this verse -- about its root, its leaf and its fruit. These are very important things in this blessed life. Without the root and the leaf there will not be fruit, and the Lord has ordained that we shall go forth and bear fruit. The main purpose of a tree is to bear fruit, and this is the evidence of a blessed man. How does he do this? He must draw his life from two sources. There is the hidden life, the roots that go down deep into the dark earth where the streams are. The more I read concerning the Holy Spirit the more I believe that His work is essentially hidden. We do not read that the Holy Spirit is given to us for sensations! That life which feeds on the Holy [40/41] Spirit is a hidden life. David said in Psalm 51 that the Lord wanted "truth in the inward parts", and Peter talks about "the hidden man of the heart" (1 Peter 3:4). It is this hidden life, this life deep down in the dark that is so important to blessedness. If we had time to read Psalm 17 we would understand more of this -- you can read that at your leisure!

Not only is there the hidden life, but there is also the outward life, the life that is derived from the leaves. The leaves draw from the sun's rays, and through the process which is known as 'photosynthesis' they minister life to the tree -- and we need this corporate life. You notice that it says: "We all with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord", and then the photosynthesis -- the spiritual synthesis -- goes on.

Now it is most important that we see that we maintain in balance the hidden life and the corporate life if we are going to bear fruit, and you notice that it is 'fruit in season'. That does not mean that you have only to bear spiritual fruit once a year. Please do not think that! I think it means timeliness. There is a verse in Proverbs 25 which says: "A word in due season is like apples of gold" (verse 11, margin). The timely word, the timely act, the timely bearing of spiritual fruit are the things which bring blessedness.

And then we find, concerning this man, that "whatsoever he doeth, he shall prosper" (margin). Not 'it shall prosper', but " he shall prosper". Sometimes people think that they only have to do all these things and then go to business, and the business will prosper. God is not interested in our business prospering, but He is interested in us prospering.

This immediately takes us to another man in whom God's history is bound up -- and I wish we had another hour to study the life of Joseph together. Dear old Jacob, when he gathered his sons together at the end, did not have very much to say about Judah and the others, but he said this about Joseph: "Joseph is a fruitful bough. ... His branches run over the wall" (Genesis 49:22).

(Next to the house where I am now living the neighbour has a very nice apple tree and it comes over the wall -- and there are more apples on my side than on his! Well, they are blessings indeed!)

Jacob goes on to say: "The Almighty, who shall bless thee, with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that coucheth beneath ..." (verse 25). There are many more blessings there if you will read that passage. Joseph was a man who was prospered of God. Whatever people did to Joseph, he prospered. We find that in Genesis 39. If his brothers put him into a pit, he prospered, and if he was made a servant in Potiphar's house, he prospered -- and if you want an illustration of not walking in the ways of the ungodly and sitting in the seat of the scornful, you read Joseph's history in Potiphar's house! You will understand why he prospered! They put him in prison, and even there he prospered.

Now this is the character of the blessed man. It does not matter where you put him, for he will spring up with spiritual prosperity -- blessedness. If we had time to study it we would understand that Joseph's life was one that was alienated from his brothers. It was a life that was contrary to a lot of the natural things around him, and it was a life of suffering -- and there are blessings to come from the sufferings of Christ. It may be that some of the truest blessings that the Lord will ever give us are those that come through suffering and limitation, but when they are the blessings of the hidden man, the blessings of the satisfied God, we shall go right through and bear fruit, and our blessings will be shared by many. - W. E. T.
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http://www.austin-sparks.net/mags/wat47-2.html#38

Poor Yet Rich

By A.W. Pink

One of the prayers which the Lord teaches His people to pray is, "Bow down Thine ear, O LORD, hear me: for I am poor and needy" (Psa. 86:1). Empty professors filled with pride, by their very attitude and actions, boast that they are "rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing" (Rev. 3:17). But the real child of God, whose eyes have been opened by the Holy Spirit to see his utter worthlessness, freely acknowledges that he is (in himself) "poor and needy"; and the Lord Jesus declares "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Matt. 5:3). May more of this poverty be our felt portion.

Above we have said that the child of God is in himself "poor and needy": that is a most necessary qualification, for in Christ he is rich and possesses all things (1 Cor. 3:21). In Christ there is an infinite "fulness," and it is the office and work of faith to draw upon and draw from the same. It is the Chrisitan's unspeakable privilege to recognize that he is now (not simply will be in Heaven) a "joint-heir" with Christ. It is his glorious privilege to perceive that Christ is the Head of His people, and as a wife turns to her husband for money to meet the household expenses, so His Spouse should act toward her Husband-coming to Him for counsel, help, supplies of need, in full confidence that His love will freely bestow them.

Thus we have sought, again, to preserve the balance of Truth. Not until we are made to feel anew our emptiness, nothingness, sinfulness, woe-begone condition, shall we continue to turn unto Him whose exhaustless riches are ever available when the empty hand of faith is extended toward Him. Alas, so many of His dear people have been left with the impression (if not expressly taught so) that there is nothing better for them, while here in this wilderness, than to feel their helplessness and groan over their wretchedness, remaining spiritual paupers to the end of their journey. No doubt that is greatly to be preferred to the self-sufficiency and self-righteousness of the bloated and Satan-deceived "free-willers." Yes, indeed; a million times better for any of us to lie wounded, stripped, groaning, and half-dead by the wayside, than be left by God wholly dead in a state of carnal complacency. And yet, beloved, it is far from glorifying to the Lord, as it is far from our entering into the Inheritance which is now ours, to be the helpless "victim of circumstances," the captive of the flesh, or the doormat of Satan.

Daily living by faith on Christ is what makes the difference between the sickly and the healthy Christian, between the defeated and the victorious saint. Not that we are suggesting it is possible for any of us to attain a state or experience where we are no longer tripped up by Satan, or wounded by the flesh. No; but rather that the Christian should refuse to continue in that wounded state and go on lying on the ground moaning and groaning. Our duty is to search out what it was in us which gave Satan the occasion to trip us up and the flesh to wound us; confess it to God, put it under the Blood, and seek grace to enable us to be more watchful against a repetition of the same. We should eye the all-sufficient Atonement, count upon its efficacy to cleanse from the guilt and defilement of the fall we experienced; and having put the matter right with God refuse to allow it now to hinder our communion with Him-our free approaches unto and our delighting ourselves in His promises.

Does the reader say, in answer to what has just been said, "That is easier said than done." Of course, for all "doing" requires effort! After the confession of a failure and fall, a feeling of shame and heaviness frequently oppresses the soul and makes it exceedingly difficult to approach the Holy One with filial freedom. What then is to be done? This: begin by thanking God for the marvelous grace which has made such full provision for our wretched failures: praise Him for laying all your sins upon Christ. Then what? Why, continue praising Him that the blood of Christ is of such amazing potency, of such infinite efficacy, that it "cleanseth us from all sin." Bless the God of all grace that He invites needy souls to come to His throne for mercy. That, my Christian reader, is the way to overcome heaviness of soul when filled with shame (after confession), and the way to overcome Satan's efforts to keep you depressed: thanksgivings and praises for the provisions of mercy for failing saints will give "freedom of access" and restore unto the joy of communion quicker than anything.

It is written "the joy of the LORD is your strength" (Neh. 8:lo). There can be no spiritual energy for the cheerful performance of duty, no buoyant heart for the trials of life, unless the joy of the Lord fills the soul. It was by the "joy that was set before Him" that Christ "endured the cross" (Heb. 12:2). True, He was "the Man of Sorrows," and "acquainted with grief" to an extent which none of us ever are; yet those sorrows did not incapacitate Him for attending to His Father's business: that deep "grief" hindered Him not from daily going about "doing good." No, there was a "joy" which sustained, which nerved, which energised Him for the doing of God's will. And beloved fellow-pilgrim-groaning it may be over vile corruptions felt within, or disheartened and dismayed by the multiplying difficulties and obstacles without-that blessed One is still saying "If any man thirst, (for joy, or any spiritual grace) let him come unto Me, and DRINK" (John 7:37)-draw from My fulness.

It is striking to observe the setting of these words "the joy of the LORD is your strength" (Neh. 8:10). They were spoken to the godly remnant in a "day of small things." That remnant had listened to the reading and expounding of the law (Neh. 8:7, 8). As they listened, they were rebuked, reproved, condemned; and, in consequence "all the people wept when they heard the words of the law." That was startling, unusual, blessed: to behold a contrite and broken-hearted people is both a rare and precious sight. But were they to continue thus? lying in the dust sobbing and groaning? No, to them the words came "Neither be ye sorrowful"-dry up your tears, "for the joy of the LORD is your strength." There is "a time to weep" and there is also "a time to laugh"; "a time to mourn, and a time to dance" (Eccl. 3:4)! After grief for sin there should be joy for forgiveness.

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article1129.shtml

Where is God When It Hurts?

By Philip Yancey

The problem of pain will have no ultimate solution until God recreates the earth. I am sustained by faith in that great hope. If I did not truly believe that God is a Physician and not a Sadist, and that he, in George MacDonald's phrase, "feels in Himself the tortured presence of every nerve that lacks its repose," I would abandon all attempts to plumb the mysteries of suffering.

My anger about pain has melted mostly for one reason: I have come to know God. He has given me joy and love and happmess and goodness. They have come in unexpected flashes, in the midst of my confused, imperfect world, but they have been enough to convince me that my God is worthy of trust. Knowing him is worth all enduring.

Where does that leave me when I stand by a hospital bed the next time a close friend gets Hodgkin's disease? After all, this search started at a bedside. It leaves me with faith in a Person, a faith so solid that no amount of suffering can erode it.



http://articles.christiansunite.com/article5709.shtml

The Prophetic Call - Ezekiel: Prophet of the Resurrection

By Art Katz

I want to give a perception or perspective of the issue of Israel, and one that I can freely commend, if indeed we have serious intention of being an apostolic and prophetic body, which is to say, an authentic expression of the 'called-out' ones;the church. There is something that needs to be fitted into our end-time perception, and it is the issue of Israel, so central, in my opinion, to the final and consummating purposes of God. What is more, the issue of Israel profoundly involves the church. We cannot talk of things prophetic without some kind of expression of this theme. It is a theme that is so dear to the heart of God, and should be therefore so to our own hearts

This is so enormously important. The issue of the Jew and the issue of Israel is in fact the issue of the church. God has locked these two entities into a reciprocal relationship, that the one without the other cannot come to its full fulfillment in the purposes of God. It behooves us, therefore, to give careful attention to this mystery, the mystery of Israel and the church, lest, as Paul says, "...you be wise in your own estimation ('conceits' - King James Version of the Bible)...(Rom. 11:25b)."

When Paul says in Romans 11:15, "For if their (Israel's) rejection be the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?" , we can be sure that that thought had its origin in the 37th chapter of the prophet Ezekiel.



Israel's Call


Israel will bless all the families of the earth, but not in her present condition, character and mentality. Blessing is more than a slap on the back, a chuck under the chin and some kind of platitude. To confer blessing is nothing less than a royal priestly prerogative. It is a palpable thing that is actually communicated and conferred in priestly authority and power. If ever there was a generation that needed to receive blessing by those who can bless, it is this generation. We are steeped in curse, but where are the people who have priestly authority? It is a question for the church and it is a question for Israel, for no one else has that privilege or that right or that call. Ezekiel chapter 37 speaks of a nation brought to the end of herself that she might finally come into her call of a nation of priests and a light unto the world:

The hand of the LORD was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. And He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry. And He said to me, 'Son of man, can these bones live?' And I answered, 'O Lord God, Thou knowest.' Again he said to me, 'Prophesy over these bones, and say unto them, 'O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, 'Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life. And I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow back on you, cover you with skin, and put breath in you that you may come alive; and you will know that I am the LORD ' (Ezekiel 37:1-6).
The fact that they shall know that 'I am is the Lord' is evidently important to God. The whole object of the entire process of the death and resurrection of Israel is for this one thing: "And you will know that I am the Lord." Why is it so important that they should 'know' beyond any other nation? This is not Talmudic knowledge nor academic knowledge. This is existential knowledge. This is the knowledge of a God who raises the dead, and until we know God as the God who has raised us from the dead, then we do not know Him at all. Why is that so imperative for Israel? It is because the only way that they can bless all the families of the earth is by communicating the knowledge of God as He in fact is, that is, the God who raises the dead. Their communication of that truth will be more powerful than any other knowledge because they will have known it as the fact of their national existence. If there is no other reason for the death and resurrection of Israel than this, then that is reason enough. They have a destiny as a nation of priests and a light unto the world. The world does not need more religion, more humanism, more charismatic fun and games. It desperately needs the knowledge of God as He in fact is, namely, the God who can raise the dead and make those things to be which were not.

It is evidently only an extremity of being, reduced to this condition and being raised from this condition, that will confer that knowledge. How dear is the knowledge of God to us? How extensive or deep is that knowledge? Do we know Him as He in fact is? Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses and other sects and heresies are not the only forms of deception. There are countless numbers who count themselves 'Christian', who recite the correct doctrines of the faith, and who are as much deceived and out of the faith as a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness, even though they employ the vocabulary of the faith. That is why the Scripture tells us to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith. We are not to think that because we say the right things and have the right reality that we are in the right place. We do not know Him as we ought and the true knowledge of God is always expensive. How far will we allow God to bring us in extremity, trial and dealings in order to come to a knowledge that will enable us to stand in these last days?

So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, and flesh grew, and skin covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then He said to me, 'Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, 'Thus says the Lord God, 'Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life (verses 7-9).'

They are the slain of the Lord, evidently the people who have suffered through the final and yet future desolation and ruin that has brought their cities into utmost destruction. This either means physically slain or slain in terms of having any hope of restoration or meaningful existence as a nation.


A Resurrection Word


Sin is death, and Israel's death will be in exact proportion to Israel's sin and it will be a very real death. The raising from that death will be something that will have to come to the nation outside of itself. Its death will be so complete that it will have no ability even to call on the Lord. Something must come to it outside of itself, as it came to Lazarus when he was in the tomb, dead for four days, namely, a prophetic word of resurrection.

This is no mere, religious word. This is a word of an ultimate kind that raises the dead, a 'come forth' word, and only a resurrected 'son of man' or 'son of God' can speak it! Israel will remain in her grave unless our word is resurrection life in that power, no matter how well meaning and desirous we are for her resurrection. We cannot be to them the agent for their resurrection unless we ourselves are first of the resurrection. We ourselves must have gone into the waters of death and not once and for all, but a death that will be daily, otherwise we cannot be a corporate 'son of man' with one mind, one heart, one soul and one will that God can command to address those bones in a once-and-for-all explicit moment historically.

It is remarkable how singular God is, that He will not depart from the principle of His glory which is resurrection or nothing. He makes no concession. It was required for His first begotten Son and thus for everything that pertains to His glory.

Then said He to me, 'Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, 'Thus says the Lord God, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life."' (Ezek. 37:9).

God commands the prophet to prophesy to the Spirit (ruach, breath), that He would come from the four winds of the earth and breathe on the bones. The Spirit is the breath of God, and it is implying that the prophet is to command God. Try and follow that. It is one thing to speak to bones and quite another thing to speak to God. You know when you are dead when you can speak to God in the way that He commands you to address Him contrary to your own instinctive deference. In other words, this is the most sensitive, gossamer thing, where if you are going to have a last resistance to God, it would be here: "Lord, far be it from me to command You. I am just dust. I am just a son of man. Are You are requiring me to command the Spirit, which is to command You? No, no, I have to draw the line. I mean, that is impolite. That goes too far. I am willing to address the bones, but I cannot command You." Unless the prophet, however, commands the Spirit of God to come into the flesh and bones that have been joined, then the house of Israel remains dead. They only become an exceeding great army when the Spirit comes into them. It sounds like the height of presumption and arrogance that man, who is a creature, should command the Creator, yet I intuit that there is a deeper significance. The 'I cannot' is the last vestige of 'spiritual' self that has got to go.

It is something parallel to taking your son, your only son whom you love, and making him a sacrifice. In other words, there is a delicacy of some final strand of self-will and independence that may even be legitimate, that is even God-honoring, and yet behind it can hide the last vestiges of self and independence from God. It can only be broken in what seems to be an act of disrespect because He has commanded it. God asked a man to kill his only son, who is the son of promise, and yet it is in that obedience that God spoke, "...now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me (Gen. 22:12b)."

I believe that it is something like that here: "Now I know by this"...You have obeyed me though it contradicts the last residue of your spiritual self that is offended by the very thought that man should be presumptuous so as to command God; but until you have obeyed Me in this, I do not have you in full." It is an obedience unto death of the last subtlety of self that is even spiritual and God-honoring and God-respecting, behind which the palpitation of our self-life might yet continue. Until God has that, He does not have us in the totality with which He must possess the individual.

The word that is used in Hebrew here is 'r�wach', or 'breath'. It may well be that the translators could not bring themselves to the affront that this represents, and so they had to use the word 'breath', as if you are commanding natural elements rather than the very Spirit and breath of God Himself. We have to be alert to that possibility because the Hebrew word is clear. It is the r�wach of God, the Spirit of God. For those who have ears to hear, hear it; for those who have faith to understand, receive it; and for the rest of you, keep it on the shelf or put it before the Lord, and see if He is not touching that final, delicate and last strand that still keeps a man or a woman from that total surrender. It would be the final irony, that the last thing is our own spirituality that keeps us from total surrender. It is not our carnality, but the last delicate thing is spirituality itself. How jealous God is that He might be all in all, "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen (Rom. 11:36)."



A nation brought to extremity


So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they came to life, and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. Then He said to me, 'Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off (verses 10-11).'

This is the pivot of this great chapter. Historically, to my understanding, there has never yet been a time when Israel, as a whole nation, has acknowledged that it is, 'cut off, without hope and as dry bones.' We die hard. We do not give up easily. We are an indomitable people. We are the inveterate optimists, not in God, but in ourselves. Not even the Holocaust resulted in this statement. We gathered up our rags and found ourselves in new places and established our fortunes. We went to Israel, which was a wasteland, and drained the malarial swamps and established a modern civilization. We resuscitated the liturgical Hebrew language and in forty years made it a modern language for a nation. It is a supreme accomplishment. We are a formidable, capable people with great expertise and prowess. Has such a people ever acknowledged that, 'We are cut off, we are without hope, we are as dry bones?'

In fact, the phrase that came out of the experience of the Holocaust, which is as close to dry bones as we have ever historically been, was the macho insistence of: 'Never again'. It was far more stringent and far more militant. "You Gentiles took advantage of us in our ghetto helplessness, but now we have a state that no-one will be able to take from us." That statement should never be made in the face of the God who intends to be their Strength, Redeemer and a place to run into and find safety. Israel's whole political posture today is predicated on the proud and defiant note struck by 'Never again'. God is required to bring down that nation that thought it could be its own defense. 'Never again' is predicated not at all in a confidence towards God to keep us, but in an ability to keep ourselves. It is a supreme confidence in oneself and in one's own ability. God's intention with Israel is ultimate and therefore it requires ultimate dealing. God is waiting for and will bring the whole nation to come to that recognition.

Israel's national anthem of today is entitled, 'The Hope,' Ha Tikvah. It is the hope in man. It is the hope in human ability. It is the hope of what the State will represent for a people that have been stateless and without nationhood for two thousand years since the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Dispersed throughout the whole Roman empire, we have been living in ghettoes and in countries where we were persecuted and had to be in the gates by a certain hour at night. We are a people that were used for merchandise and cut off from occupations and careers. Lowly and disregarded, we have suffered immeasurably in the hands of the nations wherever we happened to find ourselves.

If only we had our own nation and not be at the mercy of Gentile nations, then we could show the Gentile nations the uniqueness of what a Jewish nation is. It would be more than a place of safety in the world. It was to be a place to exhibit the uniqueness of what a Jewish civilization and nation is, because we are proud about this one thing: that even when we were in the ghettoes, and even when we were powerless, we had this distinction above the Gentiles,we were morally and ethically superior. It is a wonderful fantasy to enjoy when you are powerless, but when you have power, do you know what you find out? Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That is why God has allowed the establishment of the present State of Israel. It was never established to be the permanent and enduring prophetic fulfillment of Scripture, but a necessary and instructive preliminary. "He takes away the first that He might bring the second." "First the earthly, then the heavenly." Our mistake is to celebrate the first as being the enduring, not recognizing that it was given, like the first begotten son, to die. That is what Jesus had to experience in the brilliance of His humanity. As the Son of Man, He had to be brought to death in order to be raised as the Son of God and to be exalted on high, and given a name above every name and the millenially exacted nation must itself follow in the path of its own Messiah.

To invest your hope, even in a nation, is still idolatry. Hope is only a hope when it is in God. Anything less and other is a form of idolatry however much the nation itself is a thing to be desired. God must rid us of false hopes until He establishes Himself as the Hope.

There must first be the natural because we have something to learn from it, namely, that however gifted and capable we are, we cannot establish a nation that will "bless all the families of the earth." We might impress the families of the earth, but we cannot bless them. There is something higher than morality and ethics, namely, the holiness and righteousness of God, and you cannot fabricate that out from human intention.

When everybody was about to begin to celebrate and rejoice for the success (in only forty years!) of such a State, something began to happen that is called the Intifada, the Palestinian uprising. It started with the throwing of stones that today is going beyond stones and Jews are being stabbed to death and blown up in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem itself. That thing has multiplied and become such a threat, within and without, that the nation has been required to act defensively in ways that it would never would have thought possible. Would it not be ironic if history comes full circle and Jews, who were formerly the victims of others, would now be required to victimize another out of the necessity to preserve their Statehood, their existence and assure their survival?. When you trust in the arm of flesh for survival, how far will you go for your own preservation, if God be not your safety?

It would be a shame on us, should we ever join the world in the chorus of condemnation against Israel for her failures to be a moral and ethical nation, and for her increasing use of violence, brutality and expulsion. We have not understood that they must fail; that God Himself is the Author of their predicament; that things are set in motion by which they must show themselves violent; that they must disappoint themselves; that they cannot be the hope for a nation that they had intended until they come to such a final impasse of such desperation, futility and hopelessness, that they cry out with one voice, "We are cut off, we are without hope, we are as dry bones", in terms of any fulfillment for which they could have hoped for as a nation.



The Death Before the Resurrection



This people has got to come to a time where their problems are so insuperable, so beyond solution, that they themselves cannot save themselves. If we do not understand that the perplexities that afflict Israel are God-given and that Israel's increasing failure to resolve those perplexities is also God-given, we will find ourselves inevitably drawn into a place where we join the increasing chorus in the world that condemns that nation for her failures because we do not understand that they must of necessity fail. There is a going down before there is a coming up. There is a death before a resurrection. There is a suffering and humiliation before the glory.

God yearns to hear men repent of any confidence that they have in their own flesh. Human pride clutches for anything if men will only esteem them, appreciate them and acknowledge them on the basis of themselves, what they are and what they can do. It dies hard. There is something in us that wants to be accepted for us. There is nothing good in the flesh at all. Jesus would not even allow Himself to be complimented when a man called Him 'good' master. He said, 'Why do you call Me good?' Jesus knew that this man was flattering Him as a man and would not allow him that kind of ideological or philosophical ground, because if that man could call Jesus good, what do you think that he thinks about himself, who obeyed all the laws and the commandments from his childhood up? 'There is no one good but God,' and Israel will never bless all the families of the earth until they believe that. When Israel recognizes that, God turns to the 'son of man', and says, "Speak to these bones." That is why this whole chapter begins not with Israel, but the 'son of man'. Israel is helpless. The 'son of man' is the whole issue.



The 'Son of Man'


Ezekiel chapter 37 is not just about Israel. It is about this someone called the 'son of man', a prophetic entity of a mystical kind who in the end becomes the voice of God's speaking and whose word raises Israel out of her death. God does not Himself in some mystical way speak to that nation but employs a 'son of man', who is first brought down into the valley of dry bones, and moved around and in them, right into the grit of that death! Why does God use the figure of the valley of "very dry" bones, and there were "many around about?" Why that metaphor and why the use of that image? I believe that it is because there is no death that is more dead. It is one thing to be a Lazarus in the grave for four days, but this is a condition even beyond that death. This is when you have decomposed, your flesh is gone and your bones are so desiccated, so utterly dried up, that they are ready to crumble to powder.

Who is this prophetic 'son of man' who has the authority, the creative power, the union and identification with God Himself that he can speak for Him and as Him, so as to raise an entire nation by the word, "Come forth"? I am suggesting that he is a corporate 'son of man', that is to say, a church that has come to its full prophetic constituency and stature. It is a church that speaks with one voice in perfect and total agreement, just as the church of old where they were of one heart, one mind and one soul. It does not mean that we are robots punched off the assembly line, but that we are distinct individuals, through the dealings of God in our lives. In the process and the formation of our own growth and maturity, we come into agreement with God, and so does everyone else with us, that we might speak the word of God as one voice that raises the dead. Only a church that recognizes the profound centrality of resurrection for itself will equally, by that recognition, understand the necessity for Israel's death and resurrection.

Then God asks him a teasing question, 'Son of man, can these bones live?' Have you ever felt like a 'son of man'? For all your spirituality, are you ever aware of your humanity at the same time? Have we been made to feel the terrible contradiction of the treasure in our own earthen vessels? The great prophetic man of faith could not say 'yes'. He had to say, 'O Lord God, Thou knowest.' When the crucial moment comes and the nation confesses that it is without hope, then God turns to the 'son of man' and says, "Therefore, prophesy to these bones that they might live."



The Mystery of Israel and the Church



Why would the God of Israel not Himself speak directly to the bones? He does not need anything from anyone. God has, however, chosen to employ the 'son of man' or the church, because the Jews will be in their graves in the nations. This is before Israel returns to the Land as the redeemed of the Lord. God could have done it sovereignly by Himself, but I believe God is as much concerned for the transfiguration of the church as He is for the restoration of the nation. It is a mystery.

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! (Romans 11:33).

This is what Paul saw in Romans chapters 9 through 11. This is why he broke through every barrier of language when the mystery broke upon him. He could not contain himself. It was more than just Israel's restoration. It was the transformation of the church at the very same time, by the process of the crisis that came to the church, the 'son of man' company, called to speak to the dead bones in a faith that could believe that those bones could live.

God's concern for the church is as great as His concern for Israel, and this is the thing that compels the church to a place of authenticity, as nothing else ever given, ever required, could have. It is the ultimate requirement and it is in meeting it that we become apostolically and prophetically ultimate as the church. Unless we can meet this requirement, and it calls us to be larger than life, then we are not the church. It is the final challenge and it can only be met on the basis of the degree to which we can say, "For me, to live is Christ."

Our grasping of this word and the giving of ourselves to the fulfillment of it is the key to the church coming into the fullness of God's intention in the last days. There will be no other challenge of this proportion in the calculated stratagem of God for our rising to a fullness of an apostolic and prophetic kind than the challenge that comes to us by a prostrate, inert and dead nation that cannot help itself, and to whom something must come from outside of itself or it remains in that grave. We are that someone whose word will either permit it to rise from the dead or remain in that condition. This is an ultimate requirement of the church that will identify who, in fact, the true church is. Only a people who are so in union with God, and share the purposes of God, and desire the glory of God, will give themselves to this final cross requirement, a requirement that is beyond their own faith and ability.

It is a unity that cannot be obtained by a people in agreement of an ecumenical kind where we all give bear hugs and backslaps to one another. I mean the kind of agreement that the Lord forges out of suffering, the unity that takes suffering, pain and disillusionment to temper and establish, that we might be 'one as He is one.' It is a death to our individuality, our individualism, our many opinions, our self-will and our self-centeredness. This is a unity that can only be obtained at the Cross. How does God get us from the condition we presently are in to that where He can command us to prophesy? We are not attenuated to being commanded. We do not like it. We chafe. A crisis, however, has come that requires us to speak as one voice in order to give that speaking the power to raise a dead nation. Are we willing? It is not a compulsory requirement. To see Israel apostolically and prophetically in its death, to go down into the midst of it is to make the radical requirement. That is the genius and the mystery of God.

We have got a long way to go and this is the incentive for making that journey. If we do not make it, then we will languish in an inferior faith, and find ourselves cut off from the ultimate purposes of God in the last days. We might likely even find ourselves apostate. The church will be a prophetic entity that can speak for God, with the authority of God, that the speaking is not just inspirational instruction, but an 'event' that causes a nation to rise from death. A faith that would rather prefer to go to Israel and plant some trees or attend a Feast of Tabernacles conference is not a faith that God employs. This is ultimate requirement, and God is putting all of His eggs in one basket, namely, the church.

With what authority do we presently speak, who have given our mouths to trifles, to gossip, to chitchat, to nonsense and all the things that debase the currency of words? We have so little understanding, so little respect for the spoken word as 'event'. It will take much more silence, that when the speaking comes, then it will be consequential. That means discipline because we are a generation that cannot stand silence. We need to have the earphones on, even while we are on the bus, or walking in the street or doing our homework. We do not respect silence and we do not respect true speaking.



Israel's Destiny


So long as the nation Israel remains in its grave, we will continue to have incest, abortion, child molestation, perversion and every sick and defiling, Sodom and Gommorah sin. We will be inundated with every grotesque form of sin until the nation Israel comes to be a priestly nation and a light to the world, and bless all the families of the earth, because they know God as the God who raises the dead. The true knowledge of God is the knowledge of a God who raises the dead. It is not the knowledge about God, but the experience of the resurrection ourselves. Except we have experienced that resurrection from our death, then how shall we believe it for them? Except our word be a resurrection word in resurrection power, how shall they be raised from that death?

Since Israel has a millennial destiny that is central to all nations, there is no alternative but for God to bring her out from the place of man in his self-sufficiency and dependency and into a union with Him by which He alone is glorified. The unhappy thing is that no-one can come into that short of death. It is really a remarkable revelation of our own condition that we have not understood that necessity for Israel, and the reason is that we have not understood it for ourselves! The church itself is operating too much from its own unaided humanity and making a brave show of it in terms of meetings, enjoyment, success and programs. It is only when the issue of glory is raised that our presumptions and failures are apparent. I have a complete persuasion that all of our error and failure to understand how God will bring Israel down and our reluctance to consider the necessary suffering and devastation, stems from the fact that our central consideration is not the glory of God but the success of a nation, a fellowship or a ministry.

We need to understand that Israel's predicament shall get worse and worse, both from within and without. There has never been a nation so bewildered, so bedeviled with such vexing problems in culture, nation, and ethnic differences. They are ringed around by hostile enemies who are determined for their destruction, and have a hostile Palestinian presence within, that even if they resolve the present Palestinian crisis (which I cannot imagine that they can find a way to do it), the intractable hatred, the bloodlust and the revenge, that is characteristic of the Arab and Muslim mentality, cannot be placated.

This is neither accidental nor haphazard, but the calculated wisdom of God to bring a proud, stubborn, self-willed and self-assured people down and out, that He might raise them up in the power of God, supernaturally, by a word spoken through Gentiles, whom Jews disdain as being inferior. We will be ironically the key to their national restoration. That is why God does not speak the word, He has us to speak it, together, in agreement, one heart, one mind, one will, when it is commanded and in the faith that works by love.

This love, the faith that works by this love, is the love of God, the unconditional love of God that cannot be offended against, irrespective of what Jews do or what they have become. In a word, the 'son of man' who speaks for God has got to be in such union with God, that his love is God's love, his faith is God's faith, and for him to live is Christ. How many of us can say that that is our present and consistent condition? Can we say with Paul, with complete integrity and certitude, 'For me, to live is Christ.' Is that true of us at work on Monday, in the home, in relationship, as husband, as father, as servant? I do not live by my own wisdom. I avoid it. I do not trust it. I do not move by my own energy. I allow God to empty me. I am weak, helpless, and a frail thing. I am dust. Except that He lives, I do not live either. I am dead and hid with Christ in God until His life is revealed, then is my life revealed unto glory, for it is my life.



The Issue of the Glory of God


Let me put it another way: If Israel had not been in this crisis unto death; if they had been in any less demanding place where the church could have helped them as it is doing now, for example, through finances, through making trips to Israel and through helping them effect the peace negotiation; if they would have had the security and peace and that would have been the end of history, then, in what condition would we have been eternally fixed, both as the church and as Israel? It would have been in a condition less than what glorifies God. It certainly would not have been a condition that fitted us for our eternal calling. If we miss this, we miss it all. For we cannot discuss the issue of Israel except in the context of eternity. It is not just their immediate need, their security and helping them through, but there is an issue of eternity at stake, and this is the last occasion in time and history by which that is to be effected. It is ultimate and final, both for Israel and for the church.

It raises a question for the church, "How can I communicate this to the church, that the church would be willing to embrace this death and to know this life?" It is exactly the same question here toward Israel. What does it take? A well-meaning prophet could never have succeeded. He has got to be brought to a certain place himself, and it is the crisis of Israel that brings him to that place. Ezekiel chapter 37 begins:

The hand of the LORD was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. And He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry (Ezekiel 37:1-2).

Does this indicate that the prophet voluntarily would like to be in the midst of the valley of dry bones? Think on that. Would you like to be in it? When the Allies arrived in Germany at the end of World War II, they came upon scenes of mounds and mounds of stinking corpses and bones in the most ugly configurations that men puked, their stomachs went out on them to see the horror of those mass graves and unburied corpses and bodies in their final convulsions of death. It is not something that is pleasant, but it is something that is true. If the prophet or anyone will not come to the place of truth, if he will not see things as they in fact are, as God Himself sees them, then he cannot speak for Him.

The 'son of man' is as much a concern in the purposes of God as the valley of dry bones themselves. It describes God's preoccupation and jealousy not only for Israel but something symbolized in the phrase, 'son of man', who has a prophetic calling and yet evidently, unless the Spirit of the Lord brought him out and the hand of the Lord was upon him, he would not have chosen to come down into that valley. Unless we will allow the hand of the Lord upon us as a 'son of man' company as a prophetic end-time people, to bring us out of our charismatic shallowness and the other kinds of thrills and trivia to which we have given ourselves, and be brought down into the place of desolation and death, then we have no ultimate place in God's purposes.



The Depravity of Our Humanity



It is the issue of truth, and we need to begin to see how desperately evil man is in his humanity. We need to see that only the Lord's death is the answer to it. Part of what is deep-seated in our humanity are our delusions, our wishful thinking, the way we like to color something in our views or see the good side of it. We want to avoid the hard, painful seeing of something as it in fact is.

There is an illustration I often give. Years ago, I went with my brother Lenny to a "Joe's Bar and Grill" to watch a Joe Louis fight. Joe Louis was the defeated former champion and Rocky Marciano, a rising blockbuster, was just coming on the scene and he was wiping out his opponents as if they were made out of straw. So they get Joe Lewis out of retirement to meet this young threat and of course who do you think that my brother and I were rooting for? Joe Lewis. The sentimental favorite, the man we loved, was making a comeback. I will never forget it. We watched and it was pathetic. You wanted to look away. He was getting bashed from one side of the ring to the other. He was just being chewed up and spit out. An old man flailing wearily with his hands against this massive brute. There came one moment, however, when he began to try to put together some offense. I think I could have pushed him over myself. It was pathetic to watch. It was so hopeless. My brother leaped to his feet and cried out, "He's got him! He's got him!", and I am looking at Lenny as if he has gone mad.

Do you know what that says? He wanted so much to see Joe make it that it actually influenced the way in which he perceived reality. It is self-induced deception born out of the carnal heart that refuses to see something as it in fact is, and so colors it and transforms it, that it believes its own perception and its own lie. In that condition we will never prophesy anything. A prophet is a seer before he is a spokesman. If his word is not in keeping with the truth of what is to be seen, then it is not a true word and it will not raise the dead. I have to say that this text seems to suggest that this prophet is not willing, that there is a degree of reluctance, and there would be for us too, to see things as they in fact are. How many of us are willing to see the condition of our marriages as they painfully in fact are, or our children, or our fellowships, or ourselves? That is prophetic seeing and the truth is often painful before it can become glorious.

How do we perceive Israel? Is she just struggling through some temporary problems? Yes, there have been some unhappy things; and yes, they have had to use some force and even brutality; and yes, it was a very sad episode about that Jewish doctor going into the Mosque in Hebron killing many in cold blood with a machine gun; and yes, "Those things will happen." Is it rather a symptom and statement not of a man, but of a condition of a nation? When a man who is both orthodox and highly educated can in cold blood calculate the death of others as being the means by which Israel will preserve its security, then we have something much more than an aberrant individual. Are we seeing humanly, with a degree of wishful thinking that wants to dismiss painful considerations, or are we seeing something deeper and truer, as God would have us to see?

We have to ask whether it was an act of a deranged man, who really is not himself, or have the extremities and the pressures revealed what the man in fact is, and always has been, and it took this extremity to reveal it. It is asking the same question about Nazi Germany, the land of philosophy, ethics, morality, music and culture. Is that the true Germany or is the true Germany what was unmasked by the pressures that revealed the pagan heart of that nation in the Nazi time? In fact, does God allow, if not bring into being, the circumstances that will reveal our condition nakedly? God will not bring His redemptive answer to the changing of that condition until we acknowledge it, and do not make excuses for it, and say, "That is me."

I was a 16-year-old kid getting papers to be a merchant seaman and found myself in Sicily and Italy in 1945. The war was just over, the harbors were full of sunken ships and we sailors with our American cigarettes were kings. We could buy the city. For one pack of cigarettes you could have a woman all night. There were pimps that met us at the wharf to bring us to their homes so that we could line up and take on their sisters. Do you know what I realized as a tender, young, poetic, philosophical, Jewish boy from Brooklyn, when I saw dogs as meat hanging in the butcher shop windows, and respectable, middle-class women as prostitutes taking on an entire ship's crew? My supposed morality is only skin-deep. My assumed morality is a luxury that I have been able to enjoy because I have not been required to live under the desperate conditions that made these women do what they were doing.


True Seeing


We need to see as God sees, and because we have not seen it in His Word, then we have to see it in our experience. The church needs rightly to interpret the meaning of these events and see them with a steady eye. Does that mean that we do not love Israel because they are not as nice as we had hoped, or that we do not love Germany, or that we do not love man that is made in God's image? Yes, of course, we love them, but we are not going to allow that to deceive us as to their condition and their need. We loved Joe Lewis, but the fact of the matter was he was being painfully done in. He should not even have been in that ring, but I am not going to be deceived to think that he was going to win.

Before we can speak prophetically, we need to see prophetically, and that is dying to every illusion and desire we have to see things in a better light because it feels better to see it that way. God is not saying, "Just take a glimpse at this." He brought him down into the midst of these dry bones and walked him all around and pushed his face right into it. What do you think of a God like that? In fact, we might just as well be talking about community. God puts your face right into it. If you want to live with delusion, then just be a Sunday Christian. Wear your pious face and let others wear theirs, and greet each other in the foyer of the church, and have a little backslap, and "How are you doing, brother?". If you want to see the true condition of the church, then live in community for the rest of the week and see people when their religious masks are off, as they in fact are. Do you know what is yet more shocking? It is what you in fact are!

Disillusionment is not a bad thing. What is illusion but another name for a lie. It is a grace of God that enables us to give up our illusions and disillusions, and see things as they in fact are. It is on that ground that God meets us. That is when His mercy is available. That is when we experience the grace of God on the ground of truth and no other. He is not going to play a game with us and allow us to feed our suppositions or romantic imaginings or any such thing, and think that He is going to meet us on that ground. He is full of grace, but also full of truth. Where is a prophetic people like that? I do not think it is compulsory. It is as many as will allow the Spirit of God to bring them out from their comfortable views and their wishful thinking, and down into the situation as it in fact is grim and full of death and from that place, to speak as God in the place of God. That is why the priests were barefooted. They had to touch the ground. They had no illusions about the truth of Israel's condition, and only in that intercessory condition could they go in and make sacrifice for the nation. Before you are a prophet you are a priest or you are not a prophet. Only priestly identification with the people, in the condition that they are, can bring the prophetic benediction and blessing. We have got to recognize that God is as concerned for the 'son of man' as He is for Israel. It is only in the interaction between the two that both come forth into the place of resurrection and glory.

It is death to be brought out and to be set down in the midst of the valley full of bones, and to pass by them round about. There is a death that precedes the glory and it is a very real one. We have got to taste it as this man did coming down by the Holy Spirit. "Son of man, can these bones live?" He could not even bring himself to say "yes" but, "Thou knowest". It is so despairing and so bereft of any hope, that he could not even bring myself to say, "Yes, they can live." This encourages me for the church today. When I look at the condition of the churchI despair. We are so removed. There is not even a beginning of a flicker of things. God will reduce us to that, that if there is any hope, it is Himself.



For Me, to Speak is Christ



There is a very interesting conclusion here, that we should not miss. After he prophesies, and bone comes to bone and flesh upon the bones, and when they are brought up out of their graves and into the land of Israel, verses 13-14 read,

'Then you will know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people. And I will put My Spirit within you, and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken and done it,' declares the LORD.

How can the Lord say that, when it is clear from the text that the 'son of man' is the one who prophesied? How can the Lord say, "I have spoken it."? How can both things be true at the same time? God is not a man that He should lie. It is because the two are one. God is not exaggerating. It is the very genius of the faith of a coming together in that final moment where the son of man ends and God begins. God's word is his word; God's thought is his thought; God's will is his will and God's impulse is his impulse. The 'son of man' has no independent life of his own. He is a son reflecting the father, and that is the glory. For God to have performed it Himself would not have been a glory. The glory is always revealed when it is expressed through another vessel, "We have this glory in earthen vessels." That is the final demonstration to Israel of the genius and glory of God coming through a Gentile church for which they have been in long-standing derision and contempt. It is the last agent that Israel would have selected to be their deliverer. They would have loved for God to have been exclusively their Deliverer and then they could have boasted that they were the favorite son, but no, the agent is the Gentile church, the same church that has historically called them 'Christ killer!'. God will use, despite every negative prejudice, the church to become their redemptive agent.

What would you rather be, a Christian who receives help from the Lord that you can do so- and-so for the Lord, or a 'son of man', who has come to such a place of union with the Lord, that you cannot tell where the 'son of man' ends and where God begins? Your speaking is His speaking; your thought is His thought; your will is His will. You have no independent existence. What would you rather have, an independent Christian existence with your speaking, your thoughts and your desires, which are nice and good, or the abolition of yourself, where you are dissolved into the Lord Himself, and He is your life and He is your speaking? That He can say about your speaking that it is His, "I have spoken and performed this." I would hazard a guess that the majority of Christians would prefer not to cross over. Yes, they would like the help that God would give to them, and what they could do for God, but they do not want to cross over to that side where they no longer are.

How many women would be willing to cross over to that side where they no longer are, where their husband's speaking is their speaking and their husband's ministry is their ministry? Their own identity is so transmuted and into his that they have become one flesh, and that there is no desire for the woman in her own independence to have her own ministry or her own speaking. She is as much gratified when her husband speaks as if she spoke herself, and is willing so much to see that, that she will die to any possibility by which she could have been the speaker. I am getting now down to where we live. I do not want to be abstract. If the husband himself is the dry bones, then it may take the sacrificial act of the woman to bring him to life. I am not trying to evade that.

An ultimate condition of being in God is implied here beyond anything we have ever contemplated as charismatic, Pentecostal or evangelical. This is more than being a sincere Christian. This is coming to a place where you no longer have an independent identity in yourself, and that your life is in God. You are dead and hid with Christ in God. Until we come to that, Israel remains in her grave. God will not allow Israel's restoration to be on any basis other than this. I am glad that He is a stubborn holdout. We have got to come into the place where we are so fused with God, so one with Him, so having come to the death of our own identity, purpose and being, however well intended, that our speaking is His speaking. On that basis it is the resurrection word that raises the dead!

Unless our death and resurrection as the church precedes theirs, then Israel remains dead, to the detriment of the nations and the holding back of the establishment of the Kingdom of God in the earth. The issue of the Lord's coming and the whole eschatological climax is so altogether interwoven with Israel's restoration, that to omit Israel is to lose any interest in the Lord's coming, except as personal escape.



The Conclusion of the Age


That is the mystery of the church; it is the mystery of the Godhead; it is the mystery of Israel; it is the mystery of marriage. It is ultimate and final. It is the end of history. It is the whole purpose for which history has been established. It is the consummation of everything. The purposes of history, nations, and time are finished and the Lord comes. He has got an Israel that is one with Him, a church that is one with Him. His glory is revealed. He can take credit for everything. It is, "from Him, through Him, and to Him, to whom be glory forever." Now He can trust us to be co-heirs and co-laborers with Him in His kingdom. Now with Abraham we can be the "heirs of the world," where there is nothing left that would in any way threaten or jeopardize the interests of God in terms of our misappropriation of His glory.

The last day's dealings of God with Israel are not some novelty. It is not God putting on another face. It is not finding a new mode of conduct. This is God in His essential being. This is God in what was always intrinsic to Himself. This is the way that He has always performed and the way His wisdom has always been depicted. It has always been set forth that there is a suffering that precedes a glory. The Lord demonstrated that in His own earthly tenure. Why should we be surprised that the nation who is called to be the 'first born son,' (Exodus 4) should have an experience less or other than the Lord Himself? Our problem is that we are not attuned to God. We are not in keeping with the basic thought of God and the disposition of God of which the Cross is the great symbol. It has become a sentimental and ceremonial thing; we are seekers after experiences; we want alleviation from pain; we do not want to embrace it. The suffering I am talking about is the suffering that is intrinsic to the faith by anyone who has a jealousy for God's glory and desires the fulfillment of His ultimate and last day's purposes. The very embrace of those purposes and that glory makes one candidate for suffering.

My dwelling place also will be with them; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. And the nations will know that I am the LORD who sanctifies Israel, when My sanctuary is in their midst forever (verses 27-28).

It almost reads like the last chapter of the Bible. It is the consummation of everything. The kingdom is established under the greater David (Jesus). His rule is forever. God has a new nation which will never again break covenant with Him, with a new spirit and another heart, (Jeremiah 31). We have to see the whole death and resurrection of Israel in the context of the establishment of God's theocratic rule forever.

The last word is 'forever', which implies final, irrevocable and eternal. It is finished, finished on the basis of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. When Jesus said, "It is finished", He was envisioning this. This was the "joy that was set before Him", and that He was setting in motion, by His own death, the release of the power of the resurrection glory by which Israel at the end would be raised from the dead, that He might be King over them and rule forevermore. Everything is predicated on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That is why Paul had to ask the Corinthian church why they were saying that there was no resurrection. For if Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead, we of all men are most to be pitied.

I am very fond of saying that the one thing that will distinguish the apostolic from the apostate church of the last days is the subject of resurrection. That is not to say that the apostate church will deny the truth of it as doctrine. They will continue ceremoniously and religiously to acknowledge it, but they have no intention of living in it. Whereas the thing that will distinguish the remnant church is that they can say with Paul, "For to me, to live is Christ." For me to live is Christ, for me to speak is Christ, for me to teach is Christ. It is a people who live eminently in the power of the resurrection life. Why would the apostate church have any reluctance to also live and move and have its being in the resurrection life, if it is available? Why is it only the remnant church? Why is one content merely for the form of it, and the other insistent on the power? It is because death precedes resurrection power every time. God will test those who avow that they intend living in the power of that life.

If we want religious success, then that is fine, and it can be done on the basis of our own expertise, prowess and religious ability. If we want our fellowship, our marriage or our life to be the issue of God's glory and not the issue of our success, then they must be predicated totally on resurrection ground. The question is, "How far do we want to go?" For most of us success is all that we want, be it enjoyment, gratification or satisfaction, religiously or in any other way. The root problem of the church is that we have a false center, namely, ourselves, when the true center should be the glory of God. We never will have gratification and satisfaction until we make that radical adjustment and put God, His interests and the fulfillment of His eternal purposes by which He obtains His glory as the central, primary and first and foremost purpose of our being.

Our very failure as the church to understand the necessary death of Israel shows that we have not truly understood God. Our hope to see the fulfillment of Israel in fifty years as the prophetic, Messianic state is really an expression of our own impatience, immaturity and lack of understanding of the centrality of the Cross and of suffering in the effecting of things that are enduring and eternal. There is a fulfillment of the Scriptures, but by a process that is much more painful, much more demanding and much more requiring the supernatural demonstration of God.

How much of the church's disappointment with Israel is predicated upon a false premise and hope of an idealized or romantic view of Israel, in which we had been fascinated by the energy of this people and their ability to raise themselves up in a generation. This is really a statement of a projection of our own vain perception of ourselves contrary to the whole tenor of the gospel that rests on the issue of death and resurrection, necessary for Abraham, necessary for Jesus, but somehow not as necessary for Israel nor for ourselves. We wanted a more facile and easier success both for ourselves and for Israel, but God is not accommodating our shallowness, for He must perform what He must perform that He might be glorified thereby.



True Unity



If this does not come to us where we are at, then I despair for my entire nation. If every cell and every member of the Body constitute the corporateness and the fullness of Christ, then any segment of the Body cannot be exempted, whether it be in Harare, Zimbabwe or some place in the Ukraine. We are in this together, and it is this very recognition of our call to be the agent of Israel's deliverance that is the heart of God's unifying theme, principle and revelation. Any other basis for unity is political, false, ecumenical and a hoax. The only reason why men are working to obtain it, through denominational and religious structures rather than the organism which is the Body, is because they have not this revelation and do not want to have it because it centers in a people in whom they have no interest, and do not especially desire to see resurrected unto glory.

I was asked the question: "What is the difference between our death and resurrection as the church as opposed to that of Israel?" I first said, "No difference". Then it caught me. Our death is entirely voluntary. We do not have to enter these waters. We can prefer to remain only as subscribers to the truth of it, but we do not have to go down into the death of it; but Israel will have no choice. Israel's death is involuntary. That is not to say that it is arbitrary. Do you know how skillful we have to be with words? Involuntary does not mean arbitrary. God requires it, but it is also the consequence of their own sin.

The issue of Israel is the issue of the church. Israel in its final, last day's death can only be saved by the resurrection power. It makes, therefore, a requirement of the church as nothing else has ever made a requirement, and in meeting it, the church becomes the church in its full, apostolic and prophetic character, and in that, is fitted for coming into its own millennial destiny of ruling and reigning with Christ as the overcoming church. Israel, then, is the final testing and preparatory provision for our own eternal destiny.

http://articles.christiansunite.com/article405.shtml

No Rest Yet

By Arthur John Gossip

"And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain"
(Heb. 12:27).

God will not allow us to settle down with any second best, however splendid; He keeps breaking in on us, disturbing and upsetting us, much to our own chagrin. Each time that we drop anchor in some snug haven out of the wind, and straighten our stiff backs, and stretch ourselves luxuriously, meaning henceforth to take our ease, He calls to us imperatively, bidding us hoist sails at once and make for the wild tossing of the open seas again. And it is slowly and grudgingly we lift our anchors and very wistfully that we stare at the fading shores, yet we must go. We knock together a scheme of things we think will do, and propose to rest satisfied with that, and not bother ourselves about such matters any further; and He thrusts upon us some new fact that makes the whole thing, even to our prejudiced eyes, quite out of date and hopelessly inadequate, and we perforce must start anew. We run up a mode of life that is well enough, we say, and He flashes before us a vision of what it might be that makes us flush and hurriedly bury out of sight that poor thing grown impossible now, and build again more boldly and on a far ampler plan. We know Christ as well as we want to do, have taken from Him as much as we wish, and God so orders things that one day we come on Him face to face; and with that we must rise and follow Him into far lands we never thought to travel. Our ambition is to live a dull, tame, uneventful life, pottering to and fro at little nothings.

"In a sleepy land where under the same wheel
The same old rut is deepened year by year."

But He won't let us be, keeps crying to us, "Up! Up! Rise, ye, and depart, for this is not your rest"; is urgent and insistent with us; brutally rough, we sometimes whimper, rubbing ruefully at the shoulder He has shaken till we opened drowsy eyes, and grumbled slowly to our heavy feet. At all events He won't take a refusal, but forces us to go; and, if we try to tarry, there and then shakes down about our ears the comfortable resting-places where we meant to loll and take our ease.


http://articles.christiansunite.com/article9665.shtml

"AS I WAS WITH MOSES ..."

[Harry Foster]

Reading: Joshua 1:1-9.

"Certainly I will be with thee" (Exodus 3:12).

"And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest" (Exodus 33:14).

"As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee" (Joshua 1:5).


I WANT, as the Lord shall enable me, to bring to you this word as it came to Joshua, who stood on the threshold of an altogether new life, with the land open before him. His whole attitude and purpose was that of Hebrews 6:1: "Let us go on!" And what would be the secret of it all? "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee." You will remember that there was a moment when the Lord said to Moses: "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward" (Exodus 14:15); and the purpose of this word is to remind ourselves that the Lord who calls us to go on is the Lord who is leading us on. It is not our strength and our responsibility to go on, it is His, and He pledges Himself and gives Himself to us for that. So my thought is not so much to open up an exposition of Scripture as to impress this deeply on our hearts: God says, 'I am with you!' "The Lord thy God is with thee." He was with Moses -- and how was He with Moses? That is what we want to consider, in order to know the kind of God who says to us: 'I am with you.' Moses His servant is dead, but Moses' God is not dead! He is still alive, and He is still the same! "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee."


GOD'S PRESENCE A MATTER OF DIVINE GRACE



What was the first characteristic of God's presence with Moses if not that it was a matter of Divine grace? Moses, of course, is the one who is always used to represent the Law, and in some senses he does; but I think he is used very often in that case not so much because he introduced the Law, but because the Law which he introduced and his name became associated, and thus his name became associated with a line of things which were opposed to grace. So in the New Testament it is often Moses, as it were, versus Christ, the Law as against grace; and yet there never was a man in all the record of Scripture who lived his whole life not upon the basis of a legal relationship with God but upon the basis of pure grace.

Turn to the eleventh chapter of the letter to the Hebrews. Here you will read about a mighty man of faith, but before you read about the faith of Moses you find something that happened before ever he had consciousness. The faith was not first of all in him but in his parents. God was with Moses before ever he made the grand decision to be with God. Just let that come home to your hearts! For it is true of you, if you are a man or woman of faith. God alone knows how true it is of all of us! Before ever Moses came to mature years and decided that he would be God's, God provided a love and a faith that took him and presented him to God. Is that not grace? God began the movement, where Moses was concerned. If Moses was going on it was because God started him going on, and so he began on the basis of pure grace.

And then you know how he broke into things when he became forty years old, and, as it seemed, spoiled every purpose that God had for him and had to flee for his life. If the beginning of Moses was grace, the call of Moses was sheer grace, for, after leaving and abandoning all that could be for God, and the forty years' caring for sheep, Moses himself did not resolve in the end that, after all, he would go on. God met him and said: "Certainly I will be with thee!" What grace! When Moses went away to the land of Midian he had forfeited everything. Everything was a failure, a breakdown and a miserable fiasco, and he reveals what went on in his own heart by the names of the children that were given to him. Joseph did the same. When Joseph married in Egypt, he called his first son Manasseh -- "God hath made me to forget": 'The past is finished and my father's house is all gone.' He called his second son (and second thoughts are usually best in the spiritual life) Ephraim: "fruitfulness". Moses called his first son Gershom -- "I am a stranger here": 'I have lost everything, my home, my own people and my adopted people, my mother's home, my foster-mother's home, my prospects, everything that might have been, and even my God. I am a stranger here!' I suppose he felt that he deserved that, for he had cut across God's purpose and got in the way, and all this had happened to him. Mr. Legality was belabouring him rather hard! He [62/63] had another son -- and again second thoughts are best, for he called this one Eliezer: "God is my help." He remarked when he put that name upon the boy: "The Lord saved me from the sword of Pharaoh" (Exodus 18:4). 'I am not dead. Every thing else may have gone wrong, but I am alive, and I am alive by the mercy of God!'

So the whole atmosphere of this call, so far as Moses was concerned was the sheer grace of God to him. God had pitied him and had been his help. And it was the sheer grace of God to the people of Israel. Make no mistake about that! Stephen says that they thrust Moses from them, saying: "Who made thee a prince over us?" They rejected him. Open the third chapter of the book of Exodus, and what do you find? Does God say to His people: 'Well, you are a lot of fools! I have provided you with a man who was to be your deliverer and your judge, and you have rejected him. It serves you right!' The Lord said: "I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt ... and I am come down to deliver them" (Exodus 3:7). It is the grace of God all round whichever way you look at it. Neither Moses nor God's people, Israel, have any claim upon Him at all. If they ever had, they had forfeited it. Oh, but "who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity?" (Micah 7:18). He wipes the slate clean. He remembers these erring people, and He remembers Moses, and appears to him in a flame, a burning flame that goes on burning.

Moses did not turn aside to that bush because it was a burning bush. He must have seen thousands of burning bushes; but they all burned out. This was a bush that burned, and went on burning -- the burning flame of God's love and His grace. Moses turned aside to that. The Lord was saying to him: 'I am still here. I still stand by My word and by My promises! Come now, and I will send thee, but not as though I was going away from you, certainly I will be with you!'

"As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee." Moses had died, but Moses' God is still alive. The word to Joshua is the word to us, if we will take it. Let us go on! How shall we go on? "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee, I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee." But He was with Moses as a God of grace, and if you go through the story with that in view you will be struck by how true it was, how at every turn and step of the way somebody failed, somebody, as it were, let God down. The people doubted Moses, they doubted Aaron, they sinned and yet all the time God went on with His people and He never forsook them. The cloud was always with them by day and the pillar of fire by night. For forty long years God was with them, and always as a God of grace. When Moses sought the revelation of the Divine glory, you will remember that what he received was a revelation of God's grace, and his whole basis of appeal to God for the people had to be this -- the pardoning mercy and love of God. That is not just a matter of sentiment. It is very precious to the heart, and we can never make too much of it: that the God who says He will be with us is supremely marked by this -- that He is the God of all grace. His basis of relationship with us is not a legal one, but of sheer sovereign grace. I say that it is not merely a matter of pleasant thought. Going on depends upon that! Move off the ground of grace and progress is immediately arrested. You see, the Lord said: "Certainly I will be with thee!" What basis is there for certainty except in God's grace?

Now the people again and again, and yet again, had a question about God. They said: 'Is the Lord with us? Can God provide a table in the wilderness?' God said: "Certainly I will be with thee!" The only ground of assurance is the ground of grace. Move off that ground and your life becomes a big question mark; and how many of the children of God today have their life curled up into a question mark, doubting, wondering, sometimes full of confidence, and at other times in the depths of despair! "Certainly I will be with thee!" With thee! 'Well, Lord, it must be on the ground of sheer grace if there is any certainty about Thee being with me!' "Certainly I will be with thee!" You see, Moses, at any point of the way, could have given up, and would have given up if he had not lived upon this basis.

If you look at the matter from a purely earthly, reasoning point of view, you will say that the man who lives with the law always before him -- what is right and what is wrong -- will live a holy life, and the man who says that God's grace is glorious and wonderful and abounds to the chief of sinners will do all sorts of things he ought not to do. That is what men have always said, reasoning as men. But how does it work actually? Like this: Here is a breakdown and a failure. Legality says: 'The Lord is angry with me. The Lord has broken with me and it is no good!' And what does such a man do? He plunges into more sin! After all, that is what the people of Israel did again and again. They had broken with the Lord and so they went headlong on their foolish way. The same failure and breakdown, and yet a sense of the infinite mercy and pardoning love of God, even to me, melts my heart, and I long never to fall in that way again. That is how it works spiritually, though [63/64] the opposite is man's reasoning about it. I think it was John Wesley who said that the great mark of people who believe in salvation by works is that they never do works and never have any confidence about salvation. Legality brings a question. It does not bring a passive hopelessness, but a positive drive of despair. "Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity?" What a holy life Moses lived, not merely because he knew God as a holy God, but because he knew in his own heart something of the infinite riches of the grace of God to an undeserving sinner, and, knowing that, he was able to say: 'Let us go on!' That was the mark of this man all those forty years in the wilderness. We are going on because God is going on, and God is going on, as far as we are concerned, because He is such a God of grace that He says even to us: "Certainly I will be with thee!"

Then, if Moses had dealt with the Lord upon a basis of legality as far as the people were concerned, he would have left them behind. He would have broken with the people of God and said: 'I am going on alone!' And that is another great danger of legality, and therein lies the saving virtue of the power of the grace of God. It binds us to God's people in love. God went a very long way with Moses, and went so far as to say to him: 'We have finished with this undeserving, miserable crowd of offenders. I will wipe them out, and we two will begin again.' And Moses rejected that. He said: 'No, Lord, it is Thy people, and we are all going on together!' and though some, as we know, fell in the wilderness, the purpose of God went on in His people, and Moses was saved from a spirit of separateness by the grace of God. He never despaired of God's people, though they were enough to provoke despair. He clave to them and pleaded for them before God. He was not blind to their faults. He was a nursing father, but not an indulgent father. Oh, but his heart was full of love to them! He never forsook them, with all their faults; he brought them in intercession, faults and all, to God.

That is very important, dear friends. Let us go on, but not alone. Let us go on in our home, where there are other children of God, but not alone; not cancelling the others out -- wiping them out, as it were -- and saying: 'They are not going on, so I will leave them and go on!' The grace of God is such that, while it is true these others may have grieved Him and failed Him, He has not forgotten them and has not left them. How can you and I ignore them, in our assemblies, and in all our contacts with God's children, wherever they are found? There is a sense, I know, in which we must press on, whatever others do, but there is also a sense in which we will not. Because of the greatness of God's grace we will not despair of His people. We will not harshly and critically rule them out. We will bring them to Him in prayer, if by any means we may prevail yet further on the grace of God, that His people may indeed go on with Him.

So this matter of knowing the grace of God is very important, and has far-reaching effects upon our life. Because Moses knew the infinite grace of God, he went on. The people often turned away from him, criticized him, grumbled at him, murmured against him, and slighted him, but that is another great blessing about the grace of God -- it produces a spirit of meek patience in the heart. The opposite of meekness, of course, is pride. Pride is the mark of legalism, pride at being different, pride of being better, pride of position, or resentment because of personal injustice. The more we are steeped in the grace of God, the more careless we become about our own little rights, and the more we are able to go on and not be offended, even with those who are sometimes very difficult to go on with. That was Moses' experience, at any rate. He was the meekest of all men. I do not think he was so naturally, but because he was taken up with the amazing grace of God, and that sense of God's grace made him put himself in his right perspective. He saw how little he was, how puny and how foolish, and his attitude to these critical people was jealousy for the Lord indeed, and concern for the responsibility which he had to bear, but also, who was he that he should fight for himself?



GOD'S PRESENCE MEANS REST



"As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee." Do not begin to think that Moses was a wonderful man. If you do you miss the point. Do believe this: Moses had a wonderful God. "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.... Certainly I will be with thee ... My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest." That was a great feature of God's being with Moses -- the rest of heart that He brought to His servant, since the Lord's presence with him was the Lord's undertaking of all responsibilities for him. Let us go on -- not in a strained, burdened, worried giving of ourselves to this matter of spiritual progress, but with a blessed casting of all our care upon the Lord. Spiritual progress must be restful, or it is not progress. It is not that fretful worry and questioning, straining, and sometimes, praying, that [64/65] produces spiritual progress. There was an occasion when the Lord said to His servant, who was evidently crying to God to come in and work mightily: "Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward" (Exodus 14:15). 'Count on Me! My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest!' What a restful life!

Moses was responsible for many thousands of people for forty years. He had nothing with which to make provision for them. He turned to the Lord sometimes out of rest, demanding in desperation what he should do. How could he give them water? They were ready to stone him, but how could he give them water? How could the Lord provide flesh for a great multitude like that? But, whatever else the Israelites died of, they never died from lack of water. The Rock followed them -- the Lord was with them. And not one of them died from hunger, and not one of them died from malnutrition because they only had manna. They all died, but they did not die of that. The Lord was sufficient. Moses never had to produce anything, for God did it. I am quite sure that as Moses looked back on his life there were incidents that he regretted, and he must have wondered why he was so foolish as to get in a fret and strain and worry, when all the time he had God's presence pledged -- "Certainly I will be with thee." That did not mean that he left everything to God and sat back and enjoyed himself. The life of Moses, at least during those last forty years was not a contemplative life, but a life of action, with many responsibilities which he never shirked. He was a worker. And yet you have only to read the last chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, which tells of Moses' death, to find that he was never more alive. Whatever he died of, it was not the worry and tear of the wilderness life. He was a "hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated" (Deuteronomy 34:7).

What does that mean? Please do not begin to play foolishly with the Word of God, as God's children do, and believe all sorts of things that the Scriptures do not warrant, such as: 'The Lord will always keep you strong and well and young, and you can always trust Him to send you money from some miraculous place, and to do extraordinary things for you.' It does not mean that at all. The spiritual meaning behind is that Moses had not to contribute his natural energy to carry through the purposes of God. God did it, and Moses was at rest even while he served God.

"As I was with Moses ...". Do you believe that? And yet, how lacking in rest are our lives, and what a strain we get into! I think that prayer, and certainly prayer about our own affairs, should never be a matter of strain. It may need persistence, but not strain. You remember the great battle with Amalek, and Moses' attitude -- his hands up lifted to God -- which brought about the victory. It is true that he tired, and was weary, but it was not his energy that was winning the battle. In a sense, though it was not restful, it was an attitude which betokened rest, a claim upon God, and the strong, maintained affirmation that this was the Lord's battle and He would be triumphant in it. Moses kept his watch and lifted up his hands, but it was not his energy that won the battle. God did it so long as Moses counted upon Him. 'As I was with Moses, undertaking and providing, bearing the responsibility, so I will be with thee. My presence shall go with thee.'



GOD'S PERSONAL PRESENCE

How was God with Moses? Personally! We are told that there was no other such as he who had communion with God face to face. 'The Lord spake unto Moses face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Exodus 33:11). "As I was with Moses ...". Did God mean that? Yes, He did, but the pillar of cloud disappeared just about the time that Moses died. Joshua was entering into the land with no pillar of cloud, no visible presence of the Lord, no opportunity of speaking to Him face to face as Moses did, yet God said to him: 'As I was with Moses personally, Myself, speaking to him face to face, so I will be with thee!' Then the Lord introduces a new element into the situation which has never been there before: "This book of the law ...". What does He mean? The Lord has many ways of speaking, but it is the same Lord Himself who is speaking. 'Moses had the cloud: Joshua, you have the Book. I spake face to face with Moses in the cloud. Keep tryst with Me, and I will speak face to face with you in the Book.'

It is true that the Lord now speaks face to face with us, not in a pillar of cloud, but through the Book. "As I was with Moses ...". Oh, Moses did not receive what he had as a mere code of laws and regulations. He received everything as a personal communication from the Lord. This Book is given to you, dear friend, not as a means of rules and regulations, but as a medium by which God wants to speak to you 'face to face, as a man speaketh to his friends'. Of course, if we do not expect that, we do not get it, but when we do expect, is it not [65/66] true that we get? The Lord never says: 'Seek ye My face!' in vain. Oh, what a privileged man Moses was! Whenever he was in a difficulty the cloud came down and the Lord told him just what to do. How lovely to be Moses! 'As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee ... My personal presence shall be the solution to every problem of yours.' It is not a matter of looking in the Bible to see what it says as a kind of principle and rule of life, so much as seeking the Lord in His Word.



"Beyond the sacred page, I seek Thee, Lord,

My spirit pants for Thee, Thou living Word."


God said to Joshua: "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth." "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee." That is the secret of going on. I think that often the plunges we make in wrong directions are the result of finding something in the Word, or, more often, hearing somebody say that something is 'what it says in the Word', but the safe way is to seek the Lord in His Word. We shall go on, and we shall not turn to the right hand or to the left. "The meek will he guide in judgment, the meek will he teach his way" (Psalm 25:9). "As I was with Moses ...". Do you believe that?

"As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee." Who is the 'I'? You remember the revelation that came to Moses about the Name of God: "I am that I am" -- 'I always shall be what I am! I always was all that I ever shall be! I am!' The unfailing unchanging, eternal, faithful, enduring character of God. That is how Moses knew Him. The burning bush burnt on and on -- and that is God. The other bushes burn out so quickly. That which is merely natural and human catches fire sometimes in a great blaze, but how quickly it passes and is gone! But God goes on.

More than four hundred years before; this Joseph's family had gone down into Egypt. Long before that God had spoken of this very thing to Abraham, and all through those hundreds of years His purpose was to bring His people into the land. Abraham was dead; Isaac and Joseph were dead. Another order of things had come. But God was not dead, and His purposes were still the same. Even if Moses dies, God is still alive, the same God with the same purpose. Do let us take hold of that -- He is the unchanging, enduring God. You remember that in the letter to the Hebrews it says that Moses endured and, as you know, the New Testament force of that word is always one of time, and not just an enduring for a moment. Moses endured, and if we are going on, we have to endure. If we are going to reach God's goal it is perhaps a matter of endurance as much as anything else. Oh, shall we be the bushes burning with a natural flame and burning out, or shall we burn with a Divine flame and burn on, not being consumed? Moses became, as it were, a burning bush, for he endured. How? 'Wonderful man, Moses! Great faith, Moses! Tremendous strength of purpose and will and character!' No! A wonderful God was with Moses: "My presence shall go with thee." I AM is with Moses. God is true to His purpose and faithful to His declared aim. This dispensation has gone on for a long time, and in the Church the flame of revelation and of devotion to the Divine purpose has flickered, has faltered, has sometimes been ablaze, and sometimes apparently extinct, but through these hundreds of years God has never moved one fraction of a centimetre from His own Divine purpose. His flame has burnt on, and will to the end, and we are called to that eternal purpose.

We are called to endure. "Certainly I will be with thee. As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee." Oh, do not let us get preoccupied with our side of things. Let us more and more concentrate our attention on the Lord who is with us. That is the important thing.

I have not yet said how Moses endured. How did he endure? "As seeing him ...". That is the explanation of all those wonderful things you find in Hebrews 11 about Moses: faith that chooses, that renounces, that endures. It is all a matter of God's revelation, of His presence, and of Moses simply but firmly putting his hand into God's hand and clinging to the Divine promise of God's presence. That is the other side of the picture, but it is the most real and the most important side -- the invisible One who meant everything to Moses.

Just a last word. Moses, we might think, was rather a heavy, grim, burdened, dull kind of man. Do we think that? "Let us go on!" So often that rather sounds as if it is going to be a hard, tough, grim affair, but I do not think that is true of Moses at all. He had many burdens and cares, and doubtless shed many tears, but I read the last words that Moses spoke -- and there must be special importance in the last words: "Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, a people saved by the Lord" (Deuteronomy 33:29). It is a glorious life, this life of going on! And I read a Psalm that was written by Moses, the man of God, and in it I find these words: "Satisfy us early with thy mercy that we may rejoice and be glad all our life" (Psalm 90:14). It is a blessed thing to be going on when God is with you. "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee." - H.F. [66/67]

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