"And if it seem evil unto you to serve Jehovah, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Josh. 24:15).
"And Elijah came near unto all the people, and said, How long go ye limping between the two sides? If the Lord be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him" (1 Kings 18:21).
"When I therefore was thus minded, did I show fickleness? Or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be the yea yea and the nay nay? But as God is faithful, our word toward you is not yea and nay. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us... was not yea and nay, but in him is yea" (2 Cor. 1:17-19).
"Now after these things were ended, Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome" (Acts 19:21).
"Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Heb. 4:11-12).
"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold not hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth" (Rev. 3:15-16).
Now, you may think that they are strange passages, but they are not chosen by me, that is, what they represent is not something that is the result of my trying to get something. I have only taken the passages and gathered them together to give form to something that has been quite strongly borne in upon me.
It is that which is within all these passages that we need to see, not necessarily the particular situation to which they apply respectively, but their inner message. It is God's desire for definiteness. That lies at the heart of them all.
Sometimes it is very helpful to stand back from our Bibles and just allow the general effect of the Bible to come upon us, that is, to stand back from the detail, the minutiae, and ask in a general and broad way what the effect of the Bible is, what the main implications are, and to allow them to come upon us as an influence, and if you do that in this connection, you see what I mean.
The Bible seems throughout to have, among others, this continuous note of emphasis - Be strong! Be steadfast! Be unmovable! Go on! There is a tremendous amount along that line. And you ask about this, if from one point of view that is the whole Bible, what does it imply and what does it signify? Why should the Bible find it necessary to keep that emphasis all the way along, to maintain that note from start to finish? Well, quite obviously, the whole trend of things is in the opposite direction, to either turn us back, pull us back, hold us back, or in some way to keep us from an end. The things are countless which would seek to have that effect upon us, and they are always present in some form or another, and we shall never know a time or a position when we are entirely free from that which would, if it cannot turn us right back, keep us or hold us back. There will always be something, and, if we listen to it, if we take account of it, if we stop to be occupied with it and allow it to be the thing which affects us most, then we are going to stand still; we are going to stop, we are going to cease to go on. That is simple, but it is sometimes good to let the whole weight of the Bible come upon you, getting away from its detail and sitting back and getting its effect. When you view it in this particular connection, you see, wherever you look, in the Old or the New Testament, there is this coming from God: Go on! Be purposeful! Be definite! Be positive! There is everything in this universe to make you otherwise, and, unless you recognise it, reckon with it, you are not going to go on!
The Bible is then throughout one long mighty emphasis upon God's desire that His people should be definite, and we find Him coming out again and again in the strongest way against indefiniteness.
"How long limp ye between the two sides?" Those words were spoken at a very big hour in a nation's history, showing what God's mind was about things. Limping between the two sides. The Authorised Version has it - "halting between two opinions", but I am afraid we have rather given the modern English sense to the word 'halt' - standing still between two things. It also means hopping from one to another, limping, just crippled by indecision. The Lord is against that. If there is any one stronger passage in the Bible on that matter, it is Rev. 3:15: "Because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth" - God's desire to have definiteness in His people.
Then we have got to take account of this from the other side, the positive side, from that of God, and see that one of Satan's tactics against God's full purpose is to press or ensnare God's people into indecision and indefiniteness. And strangely enough, this is a peculiar peril of those who could not very easily be brought to turn right round on God in repudiation of Him, those who really do mean to go on with God, those who in their hearts want God's best, whom Satan would find very difficult subjects to get to forswear everything and say, "I have done with it all! I have washed my hands of God and everything connected with Him, I am finished!" Those whom Satan would find very difficult subjects to get to take this line, he does with them what he did through Balaam. He could not bring the direct result. So he got round the back door and secured the same effect by paralysing them.
What I mean is this, that if Satan cannot get God's people to positively and definitely repudiate Him, go back on everything, he will make those people the very objects of his continuous activity to get them into a state of indecision or indefiniteness, a sort of in between the two positions. It is the peculiar peril of a certain type of believer, and the enemy works hard with them, and strangely enough, it is the very dealings of God with us which Satan takes hold of to use to his end, to this end.
God is dealing with us. God is removing our own natural strength, forcefulness and determination, that which in us naturally would cause us to be very positive in a natural way. God is undercutting that and leaving us without that natural strength and Satan takes hold of that very work of God to bring us into a state of paralysis through indefiniteness. Now it is such a situation that we have got to look at because it is very true. We began by seeing the terrible peril of indecision, how indecision is just as capable of robbing us of God's full purpose as an entire repudiation. That is what comes out in the Word. If God spews any people out of His mouth, you may take it for granted that they have missed God's end. If, for this indecision and indefiniteness, God has to say, "I cannot go on with you in My purposes!" well then, the end is just as certainly secured by the enemy in defeating God's purpose in us of fulness as though we would have nothing whatever to do with it.
We are staying to think of the extra values to Satan of having children of God always in indefiniteness. There are special values to him in that, but here is this tremendous peril of indecision, of an undecided position, something in between the two. There is this fact, that Satan works hard to get us there, to destroy everything by getting us in this neither-one-thing-nor-the-other position, always with one big question, that question hanging over us all the time never finally settled, never decided once and for all, in a state of a question mark, a note of interrogation. That is a condition of things which Satan is always trying to create and, when he has once created it, it is no easy thing to get out of it. He will hold us there as long as possible.
But then we must look at this matter. Do you notice that Hebrews 4:12 is connected with Israel in the wilderness? When you ask what is the meaning of this, you can go back and you get the answer in a Psalm. If you look at Psalm 78, you have got the explanation of Hebrews 4:12. Psalm 78:8 reads like this:-
"And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God."
A generation whose spirit was not steadfast with God. This is referred to as Israel in the wilderness. Now in Hebrews 4 we have - "Let us fear, let us take heed, let us give diligence, that none of us fall into the same disobedience, fail to enter into the rest, His rest." That is Israel in the wilderness. Then this immediately follows -
"For (what a significant 'for' that is) the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit".
"Whose spirit was steadfast with God".
"Dividing of soul and spirit".
If you look at Israel's life and history in the wilderness during forty years, you will find it a life and history of indecision, of variableness. One day, of course, they are going on well. So far as their attitude is concerned, to all appearances, they mean to go on today. Why? Well, they have got some encouragement, the situation is propitious and helpful. The influences bearing upon them today are such as to cause them to feel like that; for certain reasons they feel like that today. Bringing that down to smaller, narrower limits of individuals and little companies, well, today there has been a good message of inspiration and encouragement, a good 'stir-up'; today we have been in the company of some stronger influences, perhaps stronger personalities, and we are going on. Tomorrow we are away from all that. The stronger personalities are not present, the helpful influences from the outside are cut off. Then we begin to go over the thing and all sorts of things arise, reasonings. After all, you see, it was only the argument, only their way of putting it, their interpretation! - stronger personalities and influences and so on, and we are tomorrow not where we were the day before and we are not going on. Now, Israel's whole life was like that. Sometimes everything was pointing in that direction and helpful, and so they were going on. Now things are not so easy, there is nothing to help, and they are thinking of going back, wondering whether the whole thing has not been a mistake, whether Moses was not, after all, wrong, a false prophet, whether the old life was not better than this, all that sort of thing. "Whose spirit was not steadfast with God". Do you notice soul and spirit? Their history lay in that realm, being influenced by their own souls. Anybody who lives on the basis of their own souls will be a variable person. These souls of ours are not steadfast, they are influenced and affected by things, and we change, our moods change with the conditions in which we are. Living in the soul means that we shall be like Israel in the wilderness, never long of the same mind, the mind to go on.
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