(Thomas Watson, "The Lord's Prayer")
"May Your kingdom come." Matthew 6:10
When we pray, "May Your kingdom come," we pray
that the kingdom of grace may come into our hearts.
"The kingdom of God is within you." Luke 17:21.
Why is grace called a kingdom? Because, when
grace comes, there is a kingly government set up in
the soul. Grace rules the will and affections, and brings
the whole man in subjection to Christ. Grace . . .
kings it in the soul,
sways the scepter,
subdues mutinous lusts, and
keeps the soul in a spiritual decorum.
Unless the kingdom of grace is set up in our hearts—
our purest offerings are defiled. They may be good
as to the matter—but not as to the manner; they
lack that which would meliorate and sweeten them.
Until the kingdom of grace is in our hearts, our good
works do not purify us—but we pollute them! Even
the prayer of an ungracious person is sin. "The
Lord hates the sacrifice of the wicked." Proverbs 15:8.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
BRAWN AND MUSCLE
New Tabernacle Sermons, Vol. 1, sermon 1 - BRAWN AND MUSCLE
"And Samson went down to Timnath."--JUDGES xiv: 1.
There are two sides to the character of Samson. The one phase of his life, if followed into the particulars, would administer to the grotesque and the mirthful; but there is a phase of his character fraught with lessons of solemn and eternal import. To these graver lessons we devote our morning sermon.
This giant no doubt in early life gave evidences of what he was to be. It is almost always so. There were two Napoleons--the boy Napoleon and the man Napoleon--but both alike; two Howards--the boy Howard and the man Howard--but both alike; two Samsons--the boy Samson and the man Samson--but both alike. This giant was no doubt the hero of the playground, and nothing could stand before his exhibitions of youthful prowess. At eighteen years of age he was betrothed to the daughter of a Philistine. Going down toward Timnath, a lion came out upon him, and, although this young giant was weaponless, he seized the monster by the long mane and shook him as a hungry hound shakes a March hare, and made his bones crack, and left him by the wayside bleeding under the smiting of his fist and the grinding heft of his heel.
There he stands, looming up above other men, a mountain of flesh, his arms bunched with muscle that can lift the gate of a city, taking an attitude defiant of everything. His hair had never been cut, and it rolled down in seven great plaits over his shoulders, adding to his bulk, fierceness, and terror. The Philistines want to conquer him, and therefore they must find out where the secret of his strength lies.
There is a dissolute woman living in the valley of Sorek by the name of Delilah. They appoint her the agent in the case. The Philistines are secreted in the same building, and then Delilah goes to work and coaxes Samson to tell what is the secret of his strength. "Well," he says, "if you should take seven green withes such as they fasten wild beasts with and put them around me I should be perfectly powerless." So she binds him with the seven green withes. Then she claps her hands and says: "They come--the Philistines!" and he walks out as though they were no impediment. She coaxes him again, and says: "Now tell me the secret of this great strength?" and he replies: "If you should take some ropes that have never been used and tie me with them I should be just like other men." She ties him with the ropes, claps her hands, and shouts: "They come--the Philistines!" He walks out as easily as he did before--not a single obstruction. She coaxes him again, and he says: "Now, if you should take these seven long plaits of hair, and by this house-loom weave them into a web, I could not get away." So the house-loom is rolled up, and the shuttle flies backward and forward and the long plaits of hair are woven into a web. Then she claps her hands, and says: "They come--the Philistines!" He walks out as easily as he did before, dragging a part of the loom with him.
But after awhile she persuades him to tell the truth. He says: "If you should take a razor or shears and cut off this long hair, I should be powerless and in the hands of my enemies." Samson sleeps, and that she may not wake him up during the process of shearing, help is called in. You know that the barbers of the East have such a skillful way of manipulating the head to this very day that, instead of waking up a sleeping man, they will put a man wide awake sound asleep. I hear the blades of the shears grinding against each other, and I see the long locks falling off. The shears or razor accomplishes what green withes and new ropes and house-loom could not do. Suddenly she claps her hands, and says: "The Philistines be upon thee, Samson!" He rouses up with a struggle, but his strength is all gone. He is in the hands of his enemies.
I hear the groan of the giant as they take his eyes out, and then I see him staggering on in his blindness, feeling his way as he goes on toward Gaza. The prison door is open, and the giant is thrust in. He sits down and puts his hands on the mill-crank, which, with exhausting horizontal motion, goes day after day, week after week, month after month--work, work, work! The consternation of the world in captivity, his locks shorn, his eyes punctured, grinding corn in Gaza!
I. First of all, behold in this giant of the text that physical power is not always an index of moral power. He was a huge man--the lion found it out, and the three thousand men whom he slew found it out; yet he was the subject of petty revenges and out-gianted by low passion. I am far from throwing any discredit upon physical stamina. There are those who seem to have great admiration for delicacy and sickliness of constitution. I never could see any glory in weak nerves or sick headache. Whatever effort in our day is made to make the men and women more robust should have the favor of every good citizen as well as of every Christian. Gymnastics may be positively religious.
Good people sometimes ascribe to a wicked heart what they ought to ascribe to a slow liver. The body and the soul are such near neighbors that they often catch each other's diseases. Those who never saw a sick day, and who, like Hercules, show the giant in the cradle, have more to answer for than those who are the subjects of life-long infirmities. He who can lift twice as much as you can, and walk twice as far, and work twice as long, will have a double account to meet in the judgment.
How often it is that you do not find physical energy indicative of spiritual power! If a clear head is worth more than one dizzy with perpetual vertigo--if muscles with the play of health in them are worth more than those drawn up in chronic "rheumatics"--if an eye quick to catch passing objects is better than one with vision dim and uncertain--then God will require of us efficiency just in proportion to what he has given us. Physical energy ought to be a type of moral power. We ought to have as good digestion of truth as we have capacity to assimilate food. Our spiritual hearing ought to be as good as our physical hearing. Our spiritual taste ought to be as clear as our tongue. Samsons in body, we ought to be giants in moral power.
But while you find a great many men who realize that they ought to use their money aright, and use their intelligence aright, how few men you find aware of the fact that they ought to use their physical organism aright! With every thump of the heart there is something saying, "Work! work!" and, lest we should complain that we have no tools to work with, God gives us our hands and feet, with every knuckle, and with every joint, and with every muscle saying to us, "Lay hold and do something."
But how often it is that men with physical strength do not serve Christ! They are like a ship full manned and full rigged, capable of vast tonnage, able to endure all stress of weather, yet swinging idly at the docks, when these men ought to be crossing and recrossing the great ocean of human suffering and sin with God's supplies of mercy. How often it is that physical strength is used in doing positive damage, or in luxurious ease, when, with sleeves rolled up and bronzed bosom, fearless of the shafts of opposition, it ought to be laying hold with all its might, and tugging away to lift up this sunken wreck of a world.
It is a most shameful fact that much of the business of the Church and of the world must be done by those comparatively invalid. Richard Baxter, by reason of his diseases, all his days sitting in the door of the tomb, yet writing more than a hundred volumes, and sending out an influence for God that will endure as long as the "Saints' Everlasting Rest." Edward Payson, never knowing a well day, yet how he preached, and how he wrote, helping thousands of dying souls like himself to swim in a sea of glory! And Robert M'Cheyne, a walking skeleton, yet you know what he did in Dundee, and how he shook Scotland with zeal for God. Philip Doddridge, advised by his friends, because of his illness, not to enter the ministry, yet you know what he did for the "rise and progress of religion" in the Church and in the world.
Wilberforce was told by his doctors that he could not live a fortnight, yet at that very time entering upon philanthropic enterprises that demanded the greatest endurance and persistence. Robert Hall, suffering excruciations, so that often in his pulpit while preaching he would stop and lie down on a sofa, then getting up again to preach about heaven until the glories of the celestial city dropped on the multitude, doing more work, perhaps, than almost any well man in his day.
Oh, how often it is that men with great physical endurance are not as great in moral and spiritual stature! While there are achievements for those who are bent all their days with sickness--achievements of patience, achievements of Christian endurance--I call upon men of health to-day, men of muscle, men of nerve, men of physical power, to devote themselves to the Lord. Giants in body, you ought to be giants in soul.
II. Behold also, in the story of my text, illustration of the fact of the damage that strength can do if it be misguided. It seems to me that this man spent a great deal of his time in doing evil--this Samson of my text. To pay a bet which he had lost by guessing of his riddle he robs and kills thirty people. He was not only gigantic in strength, but gigantic in mischief, and a type of those men in all ages of the world who, powerful in body or mind, or any faculty of social position or wealth, have used their strength for iniquitous purposes.
It is not the small, weak men of the day who do the damage. These small men who go swearing and loafing about your stores and shops and banking-houses, assailing Christ and the Bible and the Church--they do not do the damage. They have no influence. They are vermin that you crush with your foot. But it is the giants of the day, the misguided giants, giants in physical power, or giants in mental acumen, or giants in social position, or giants in wealth, who do the damage.
The men with sharp pens that stab religion and throw their poison all through our literature; the men who use the power of wealth to sanction iniquity, and bribe justice, and make truth and honor bow to their golden scepter.
Misguided giants--look out for them! In the middle and the latter part of the last century no doubt there were thousands of men in Paris and Edinburgh and London who hated God and blasphemed the name of the Almighty; but they did but little mischief--they were small men, insignificant men. Yet there were giants in those days.
Who can calculate the soul-havoc of a Rousseau, going on with a very enthusiasm of iniquity, with fiery imagination seizing upon all the impulsive natures of his day? or David Hume, who employed his life as a spider employs its summer, in spinning out silken webs to trap the unwary? or Voltaire, the most learned man of his day, marshaling a great host of skeptics, and leading them out in the dark land of infidelity? or Gibbon, who showed an uncontrollable grudge against religion in his history of one of the most fascinating periods of the world's existence--the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire--a book in which, with all the splendors of his genius, he magnified the errors of Christian disciples, while, with a sparseness of notice that never can be forgiven, he treated of the Christian heroes of whom the world was not worthy?
Oh, men of stout physical health, men of great mental stature, men of high social position, men of great power of any sort, I want you to understand your power, and I want you to know that that power devoted to God will be a crown on earth, to you typical of a crown in heaven; but misguided, bedraggled in sin, administrative of evil, God will thunder against you with His condemnation in the day when millionaire and pauper, master and slave, king and subject, shall stand side by side in the judgment, and money-bags, and judicial ermine, and royal robe shall be riven with the lightnings.
Behold also, how a giant may be slain of a woman. Delilah started the train of circumstances that pulled down the temple of Dagon about Samson's ears. And tens of thousands of giants have gone down to death and hell through the same impure fascinations. It seems to me that it is high time that pulpit and platform and printing-press speak out against the impurities of modern society. Fastidiousness and Prudery say: "Better not speak--you will rouse up adverse criticism; you will make worse what you want to make better; better deal in glittering generalities; the subject is too delicate for polite ears." But there comes a voice from heaven overpowering the mincing sentimentalities of the day, saying: "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgressions and the house of Jacob their sins."
The trouble is that when people write or speak upon this theme they are apt to cover it up with the graces of belles-lettres, so that the crime is made attractive instead of repulsive. Lord Byron in "Don Juan" adorns this crime until it smiles like a May queen. Michelet, the great French writer, covers it up with bewitching rhetoric until it glows like the rising sun, when it ought to be made loathsome as a small-pox hospital. There are to-day influences abroad which, if unresisted by the pulpit and the printing-press, will turn New York and Brooklyn into Sodom and Gomorrah, fit only for the storm of fire and brimstone that whelmed the cities of the plain.
You who are seated in your Christian homes, compassed by moral and religious restraints, do not realize the gulf of iniquity that bounds you on the north and the south and the east and the west. While I speak there are tens of thousands of men and women going over the awful plunge of an impure life; and while I cry to God for mercy upon their souls, I call upon you to marshal in the defense of your homes, your Church and your nation. There is a banqueting hall that you have never heard described. You know all about the feast of Ahasuerus, where a thousand lords sat. You know all about Belshazzar's carousal, where the blood of the murdered king spurted into the faces of the banqueters. You may know of the scene of riot and wassail, when there was set before Esopus one dish of food that cost $400,000. But I speak now of a different banqueting hall. Its roof is fretted with fire. Its floor is tesselated with fire. Its chalices are chased with fire. Its song is a song of fire. Its walls are buttresses of fire. Solomon refers to it when he says: "Her guests are in the depths of hell."
Our American communities are suffering from the gospel of Free Loveism, which, fifteen or twenty years ago, was preached on the platform and in some of the churches of this country. I charge upon Free Loveism that it has blighted innumerable homes, and that it has sent innumerable souls to ruin. Free Loveism is bestial; it is worse--it is infernal! It has furnished this land with about one thousand divorces annually. In one county in the State of Indiana it furnished eleven divorces in one day before dinner. It has roused up elopements, North, South, East, and West. You can hardly take up a paper but you read of an elopement. As far as I can understand the doctrine of Free Loveism it is this: That every man ought to have somebody else's wife, and every wife somebody else's husband. They do not like our Christian organization of society, and I wish they would all elope, the wretches of one sex taking the wretches of the other, and start to-morrow morning for the great Sahara Desert, until the simoom shall sweep seven feet of sand all over them, and not one passing caravan for the next five hundred years bring back one miserable bone of their carcasses! Free Loveism! It is the double-distilled extract of nux vomica, ratsbane, and adder's tongue. Never until society goes back to the old Bible, and hears its eulogy of purity and its anathema of uncleanness--never until then will this evil be extirpated.
IV. Behold also in this giant of the text and in the giant of our own century that great physical power must crumble and expire. The Samson of the text long ago went away. He fought the lion. He fought the Philistines. He could fight anything, but death was too much for him. He may have required a longer grave and a broader grave; but the tomb nevertheless was his terminus.
If, then, we are to be compelled to go out of this world, where are we to go to? This body and soul must soon part. What shall be the destiny of the former I know--dust to dust. But what shall be the destiny of the latter? Shall it rise into the companionship of the white-robed, whose sins Christ has slain? or will it go down among the unbelieving, who tried to gain the world and save their souls, but were swindled out of both? Blessed be God, we have a Champion! He is so styled in the Bible: A Champion who has conquered death and hell, and he is ready to fight all our battles from the first to the last. "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, mighty to save?" If we follow in the wake of that Champion death has no power and the grave no victory. The worst man trusting in Him shall have his dying pangs alleviated and his future illumined.
Losing or Finding
William M. Clow
"For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it"
(Matt. 16:25).
On the face of it nothing can be more contradictory than to say that to save one's life is to lose it, and to lose one's life is to find it. Sometimes this paradox is explained by declaring that Jesus had two different kinds of life in view. We are told that Jesus meant us to sacrifice a lower life for a higher, an earthly and a temporal life for a spiritual and an eternal, the life of the body for the life of the soul. We are taken, for the noblest instance and proof of this interpretation, to the Roman amphitheatre. We are shown the martyrs awaiting the onrush of the lions. As they are set upon by the hungry and merciless beasts, and as the mangled remains of their bodies are carried away we are told to see in their tragic loss their splendid gain. They have lost their lives for Christ's sake, but they have found the life eternal. But the martyrs' loss and gain touches the fringe, but only the fringe, of Christ's truth.
Jesus has enshrined a deeper meaning in His paradox. He is stating a law of universal life. He does not mean two different kinds of life, a lower and a higher, set in contrast. He is thinking of the same life in each case. He is stating the still unaccepted and, for many men, incredible truth, that to be eager to save life is the way to lose it, and that the way to find it is to be willing to lose it, and, if need be, to pour it out in a splendid waste.
link
"For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it"
(Matt. 16:25).
On the face of it nothing can be more contradictory than to say that to save one's life is to lose it, and to lose one's life is to find it. Sometimes this paradox is explained by declaring that Jesus had two different kinds of life in view. We are told that Jesus meant us to sacrifice a lower life for a higher, an earthly and a temporal life for a spiritual and an eternal, the life of the body for the life of the soul. We are taken, for the noblest instance and proof of this interpretation, to the Roman amphitheatre. We are shown the martyrs awaiting the onrush of the lions. As they are set upon by the hungry and merciless beasts, and as the mangled remains of their bodies are carried away we are told to see in their tragic loss their splendid gain. They have lost their lives for Christ's sake, but they have found the life eternal. But the martyrs' loss and gain touches the fringe, but only the fringe, of Christ's truth.
Jesus has enshrined a deeper meaning in His paradox. He is stating a law of universal life. He does not mean two different kinds of life, a lower and a higher, set in contrast. He is thinking of the same life in each case. He is stating the still unaccepted and, for many men, incredible truth, that to be eager to save life is the way to lose it, and that the way to find it is to be willing to lose it, and, if need be, to pour it out in a splendid waste.
link
Crucified to the Religious World
by T. Austin-Sparks
"But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Galatians 6:14).
"For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh" (Galatians 6:13).
What does the Apostle mean? They want to say, "See how many proselytes we are making! See how many followers and disciples we are getting! See how successful our movement is! See what a power we are becoming in the world! See all the marks of Divine blessing resting upon us!" The Apostle says that is worldliness in principle and spirit; thatis the world. He sets over against this his own clear spiritual position. Do I seek glory of men? Do I seek to be well-pleasing to men? No! The world is crucified to me, and I to the world.
All that sort of thing does not weigh with me. What weighs with me is not whether my movement is successful, whether I am getting a lot of followers, whether there are all the manifestations outwardly of success; what weighs with me is the measure of Christ in those with whom I have to do: "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Galatians 4:19). Christ formed in you — that is my concern, he says that is what weighs with me... not extensiveness, not bigness, not popularity, not keeping in with the world, so that it is said that this is a successful ministry and a successful movement. That is worldliness. I am dead to all that; I am crucified with Christ to all that. The thing that matters is Christ — the measure of Christ in you.
You see how the world can creep in... and how worldly we can become almost imperceptibly by taking account of things outwardly — of how men will think and talk, what they will say, the attitude they will take; of the measure of our popularity, the talk of our success. That is all the world, says the Apostle, the spirit of the world; that is how the world talks. Those are the values in the eyes of the world, but not in the eyes of the risen Christ. In the new creation, on the resurrection side of the Cross, one thing alone determines value... and that is the measure of Christ in everything. Nothing else is of value at all, however big the thing may be, however popular it may be, however men talk favorably of it; on the resurrection side that does not count a little bit. What counts is how much of Christ there is.
You and I in the Cross of the Lord Jesus must come to the place where we are crucified to all those other elements. Ah, you may be unpopular, and the work be very small; there may be no applause, and the world may despise; but in it all there may be something which is of Christ, and that is the thing upon which our hearts must be set. The Lord gives us grace for that crucifixion. There are few things more difficult to bear than being despised; but He was despised and rejected of men. What a thing is in God’s sight must be our standard. That is a resurrection standard. Now that is the victory of the Cross: "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world".
LINK
Minister or Sinister?
How to know when your church has become a cult.
Atlanta, GA 10/28/2010
Everything is about CONTROL. The main tools used to control members are INTIMIDATION and MANIPULATION. The intimidation and manipulation are very subtle and disguised with a false sense of love and concern. It’s all a strategic COURTSHIP.
THE SEARCH (LOOKING FOR LOVE)
Most people come to church with a NEED. The need can be physical, emotional, financial, social, or spiritual. Having that need puts a person in a very vulnerable state of mind and they are searching for fulfillment of the need. CULT PASTORS are searching for vulnerable people that they can control and manipulate.
THE BAIT (GETTING THAT FIRST DATE)
It's All in the Eyes and Ears
READ MORE.........
Atlanta, GA 10/28/2010
Everything is about CONTROL. The main tools used to control members are INTIMIDATION and MANIPULATION. The intimidation and manipulation are very subtle and disguised with a false sense of love and concern. It’s all a strategic COURTSHIP.
THE SEARCH (LOOKING FOR LOVE)
Most people come to church with a NEED. The need can be physical, emotional, financial, social, or spiritual. Having that need puts a person in a very vulnerable state of mind and they are searching for fulfillment of the need. CULT PASTORS are searching for vulnerable people that they can control and manipulate.
THE BAIT (GETTING THAT FIRST DATE)
It's All in the Eyes and Ears
READ MORE.........
The presence of a loving God!
(Brooks, "A Word in Season to Suffering Saints")
"You were precious in My sight, and
I have loved you." Isaiah 43:4
God loves His people with a first love! 1 John 4:19
"We love Him because He first loved us." By nature
we were without God, and afar off from God; we were
strangers to God, and enemies to God, yes, haters
of God! Therefore if God had not loved us first—
we would have been everlastingly undone!
God loves His people with a free love! Hosea 14:4,
"I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely."
I know they are backslidden—but I will heal their
backslidings. I know there is nothing at all in them,
which is excellent or eminent, which is honorable or
acceptable, which is laudable or lovely—yet "I will
love them freely"—of My own, free, rich, absolute,
and sovereign grace!
God loves His people with an everlasting love!
Jer. 31:3, "I have loved you with an everlasting
love; therefore, with loving-kindness have I drawn
you." That is, "I love you with the love of perpetuity,
or with the love of eternity. My love and My affections
to you shall continue forever!"
God loves His people with an unchangeable love!
Mal. 3:6, "I am the Lord, I do not change; therefore
you sons of Jacob are not consumed." Men change,
and counsels change, and occurrences change, and
friends change, and relations change, and kingdoms
change; but God never changes! "He who is the Glory
of Israel does not lie or change His mind; for He is not
a man, that He should change His mind," 1 Sam. 15:29.
God is immutable in His nature, in His essence, in His
counsels, in His attributes, in His decrees, in His
promises, etc. He is Omnina immutabilis, "Altogether
immutable!"
God loves His people . . .
with a special love,
with a peculiar love,
with a distinguishing love,
with a superlative love!
God loves His people with the greatest love, with
a matchless love! John 3:16, "God so loved."
This signifies . . .
the greatness of God's love,
the vehemence of His love, and
the admirableness of His love.
What an unspeakable comfort must this be to God's
people—to have the presence of a loving God, to have
the presence of such a loving God with them in all their
troubles and deep distresses! If the presence of a loving
friend, a loving relation in our troubles and distresses,
is such a mercy—oh, what then is the presence of a
loving God!
link
"You were precious in My sight, and
I have loved you." Isaiah 43:4
God loves His people with a first love! 1 John 4:19
"We love Him because He first loved us." By nature
we were without God, and afar off from God; we were
strangers to God, and enemies to God, yes, haters
of God! Therefore if God had not loved us first—
we would have been everlastingly undone!
God loves His people with a free love! Hosea 14:4,
"I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely."
I know they are backslidden—but I will heal their
backslidings. I know there is nothing at all in them,
which is excellent or eminent, which is honorable or
acceptable, which is laudable or lovely—yet "I will
love them freely"—of My own, free, rich, absolute,
and sovereign grace!
God loves His people with an everlasting love!
Jer. 31:3, "I have loved you with an everlasting
love; therefore, with loving-kindness have I drawn
you." That is, "I love you with the love of perpetuity,
or with the love of eternity. My love and My affections
to you shall continue forever!"
God loves His people with an unchangeable love!
Mal. 3:6, "I am the Lord, I do not change; therefore
you sons of Jacob are not consumed." Men change,
and counsels change, and occurrences change, and
friends change, and relations change, and kingdoms
change; but God never changes! "He who is the Glory
of Israel does not lie or change His mind; for He is not
a man, that He should change His mind," 1 Sam. 15:29.
God is immutable in His nature, in His essence, in His
counsels, in His attributes, in His decrees, in His
promises, etc. He is Omnina immutabilis, "Altogether
immutable!"
God loves His people . . .
with a special love,
with a peculiar love,
with a distinguishing love,
with a superlative love!
God loves His people with the greatest love, with
a matchless love! John 3:16, "God so loved."
This signifies . . .
the greatness of God's love,
the vehemence of His love, and
the admirableness of His love.
What an unspeakable comfort must this be to God's
people—to have the presence of a loving God, to have
the presence of such a loving God with them in all their
troubles and deep distresses! If the presence of a loving
friend, a loving relation in our troubles and distresses,
is such a mercy—oh, what then is the presence of a
loving God!
link
Friday, October 29, 2010
Captivity In The Lord
by T. Austin-Sparks
Read: Ephesians 3:1, 4:1; 2 Timothy 2:9 & 1:8.
There is a very real sense in which the Apostle Paul, in his own person and experience, was an embodiment of the history of the Church in this age. Indeed it would seem to be a principle in the Divine economy that those to whom a revelation has been entrusted should themselves have it so wrought into their very being and history that they are able to say, "I am your sign." To take the one fragment which is now before us, the end of Paul's life saw a process of narrowing down and limitation working itself through by "a great falling away" on the one hand, and a closing up from the general to the specific in the case of which (him who) represented the testimony on the other. This is precisely what is foretold as to the conditions at "the end" and it is not a little significant that it is specially referred to in prophetic utterances to Timothy - in the end letter. So that this phrase "The Prisoner in the Lord" occurring as it does in the last writings, is prophetic in its meaning, and wonderfully explanatory of the end way of the sovereignty of the Lord.
What we have here, then is
I. The instrument of the Lord's testimony in a place of limiting by the will of God.
As we read the record of the incidents which led up to Paul's going to Rome as a prisoner, and especially when we read the words of Agrippa: "This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar" we are not far from feeling that there were mistakes and accidents, but for which there might have been a much more propitious issue, and the ministry of the Apostle at large might have extended. There may have been times of stress when Paul himself was tempted to wonder if he had not been impulsive in that appeal to the Emperor. But as he went forward, and when the Lord spoke to him from time to time giving light, it became clear that, however the thing might have been construed humanly, there was a sovereign government of God in it all, and that he was in prison not as the Emperor's prisoner, but as the prisoner of the Lord.
Perhaps Paul did not accept this all at once. Possibly he did not realise just how it would work out. A more or less quick trial and release may have been put to mind. Some hope of further ministry amongst beloved saints seems to be absent from his correspondence. (There probably was a short period of release from the first imprisonment.) At length, however, he fully accepted what was becoming increasingly clear as the Lord's way, and it grew upon him that this was in the greatest interest of the Body of Christ. Thus we see that when the time comes for the Lord's people to be brought face to face with the ultimate and supreme things of the revelation of Jesus Christ: things beyond personal salvation: things which relate to the mind of God from above being saved: then there has to be a narrowing down, a closing up, a limiting. Much activity that has been, and all quite right for bringing things to a certain position and state, now ceases to carry them further, and something more intensive is needed.
That which represents the testimony in its fullest and closest approximation to the ultimate purpose of God, then, has to be shorn of much that has been good, necessary, and of God in a preparatory way, and must be shut up to what is ultimate. The captivity is not to a conceived truth or a superimposed doctrinal acceptance. It is wrought into the very fiber of the being by experience following revelation, and revelation interpreting experience. It is not the championing of some espoused interpretation: it is that it is the very life of instruments and the instrument is that in its very being. It is not a matter of wanting to be or not wanting to be, but cannot be other, a prisoner, the sovereignty of God has done it.
II. The importance and value of seeing and accepting things into God's light.
This applied both to Paul and to those who were brought into touch with him. For the Apostle the settling in to the sovereign ordering of God in his imprisonment issued in increasing illumination leading to spiritual emancipation.
No one can fail to recognize the tremendous enrichment of ministry as contained in what are called "the Prison Epistles". If he had been restive, piqued, rebellious, or bitter, there would have been no open heaven, and a spirit of controversy with the Lord would have closed and bolted the door to the fuller Divine unveilings and clarifyings.
When all was accepted according to the mind of the Lord, then "the heavenly places" became the eternal expanses of his walking about, and earthly bondage gave place to heavenly freedom. So it must be with every instrument set apart in relation to the higher interests of the Lord's testimony. Then the reading of certain passages in his letters and the record of his imprisonment shows how this applied to others. Take the following:-
"Be not ashamed therefore of the testimony of the Lord, nor of me his prisoner" (2 Tim. 1:8). "And he abode two whole years in his own hired dwelling, and received all that went in unto him. ...teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus" (Acts 28:30).
"The Lord grant mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus: for oft he refreshed me, and he was not ashamed of my chain; but, when he was in Rome, he sought me diligently, and found me" (2 Tim. 1:6).
Clearly the effect of these passages is that there had to be a Divine apprehension and not merely a human appraisal of Paul's position. Human levels of mentality would have produced an atmosphere of doubt, suspicion, question, and would have let in elements of false imputation. Regarded on merely natural lines, association with the prisoner would have involved such associates in the suspicion and prejudice. Doubt of the Lord's servant was very widespread, and even many of the Lord's people were not sure of him. But the Lord was shutting up a very vital revelation to this channel, and for such as were really in spiritual need, and such as were to stand in a living relation to fullness of testimony from identification with Christ in death and resurrection, on to throne-union with Him, power over "Principalities, Powers" etc., and on to the ministry "in the ages to come", there had to be a putting aside of all human, personal, and diplomatic considerations and a standing right in there with the instrument where God put it in honorable imprisonment. For possession of which is to come through the vessel, there has to be a coming where the vessel is, without consideration for reputation, influence, or popularity.
In this way the Lord sifts His people and finds out who really is wholly for Himself and His testimony, and who is actuated in any measure by other considerations and interests. The instrument in this position of popular rejection is thus the Lord's means of searching, and it will thus meet their need.
The other truth remains here, then, is that
III. Shame, reproach and limitation are often God's ways of enriching the whole Body of Christ.
This has always been so. The measure of approximation to the fullness of the revelation has always been accompanied by a relative cost. Every instrument of the testimony has been laid under suspicion and reproach in a measure commensurate with the degree of value to the Lord, and this has meant that, humanly, they were limited to that extent. Many have withdrawn, fallen away, held aloof, doubted, feared, and questioned. But as Paul could say "my tribulations for you, which are your glory" (Eph. 3:13), or "The prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you Gentiles" (Eph. 3:1), so the measure of limitation in the Lord is the measure of enrichment in His people. The fuller the revelation, the fewer those who apprehend, or the greater the number of those who stand aloof. Revelation only comes through suffering and limitation, and to have it experimentally means sharing the cost in some way. But this is God's way of securing for Himself a spiritual seed plot.
A seed plot is an intensive thing. There things are narrowed down to very limited dimensions. It is not a great extensive show that is immediately in view, but things are all considered firstly in the light of seed. The real meaning of things is not always recognized there, but you can travel the world over and find a great many gardens which are the expression of that intensive and restricted seed plot. If ever there was such a seed plot it was Paul's prison in Rome.
All this may apply to individual lives in relation to the Lord's testimony. There may often be a chafing against limitation, confinement, and a restless hankering after what we would call something wider or less restricted. If the Lord has willed us to the place where we are, our acceptance of it in faith may prove that it becomes a far bigger thing than any human reckoning can judge. I wonder if Paul had any idea that his prison meant his continuous expansion of value to the Lord Jesus through nineteen hundred years? What applies to individuals also applies to corporate bodies, assemblies, or companies of the Lord's people scattered in the earth but one in their fellowship in relation to the Lord's full testimony. May the Lord be graciously pleased to cause the merely human aspect of prison walls to fall away, and give the realization that, far from being limited by men and circumstances, it is imprisonment in the Lord, and this means that all ages and all realms are entered through that prison.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)