Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Natural Talent or Divine Power
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| Watchman Nee |
And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. 1 Corinthians 2.1.
Every one of us has natural talent—some with more, others with less. We tend at first to depend on our natural gifts to proclaim the cross which we have experienced. How eagerly we expect our audience to adopt the same view and share in the same experience. Yet somehow they are so cold and unreceptive, falling short of our anticipation.
Strengthen Thee Out of Zion by T. Austin-Sparks
by T. Austin-Sparks
Edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.
Reading: Psalms 20-22.
"The Lord answer thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God of Jacob set thee up on high; send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of Zion" (Ps. 20:1-2).
I think it may be known to you that this first section or book of the Psalms (there are five sections) is what is called the Messianic character; that is, there is a special prophetic connection between these Psalms and the Lord Jesus as Messiah. Of course there are three aspects of the Psalms throughout. There is that which is personal to the Lord Jesus, and then there is that which relates to Jews and history, and then in the third place there is that which applies spiritually to all the Lord's people, the saints. The first and the second are quite clearly pronounced in their historical outline. The third is that which we all spiritually derive as we read these Psalms. And who among the Lord's people have not been spiritually strengthened by the reading of the Psalms!
Now, here in these Psalms immediately under our eye, we have very clearly that which is personal to the Lord Jesus and that which relates to the Jewish realm, especially in the last times, that realm that will be at the end in the days of Jacob's trouble. There comes out of these two historical things, that which is for us spiritually. It is important to recognise that while one does not want to deal with technical details, you must understand that to enter into the meaning of these Psalms.
Psalm 22. We know that was taken up by the Lord Jesus and can see the Messianic side of that quite well, but was it merely only prophetic? There is the historic side to that as again between that and the Jewish remnant that will yet cry "My God why hast thou forsaken Me?" When you get to that position you can appreciate that fully. So you must understand the applications of all these Psalms in all their directions. There is the personal, the historic, and the spiritual.
The fragment here in my heart for these few moments is: "send thee help from the sanctuary and strengthen thee out of Zion" (Ps. 20:2).
"Strengthen thee out of Zion". Taking this as a Messianic Psalm, which indeed it is because the next, Psalm 21, is the answer to the cry of Psalm 20: "The king shall joy in thy strength O Lord... thou hast given him his heart's desire". That is the answer, "...and hast not witholden the request of his lips...", etc.. This is the Lord Jesus who is in view. The crown of everlasting life has been set upon His head in view of His sufferings and His death.
Now the cry in Psalm 20: "The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble... the Name of the God of Jacob set thee on high", that firstly applies to the Lord Jesus in the day of His forsaking, in the day when all men are against Him, in the day of His travail, in the day of His cross. He seems to be in an attitude of spirit of crying to the Lord. You notice that the end of Psalm 20 is "Let the King" with a capital K "answer us when we call".
Psalm 21 begins with king with a small 'K'; the two are here, God and Christ. The King is God being appealed to. The king here is the Lord Jesus making His appeal. These two are brought into relationship in kingship. He, Christ in the day of trouble to the King, to God, to the Father who is able to deliver Him. In response to His cry there is help sent from the sanctuary and He is strengthened out of Zion. That is a typical phrase, as we know, and represents something spiritual in the glory. We remember how in the day when with strong crying and tears He made His appeal unto Him who was able to save Him from death and was heard in that He feared, there was an angel sent to strengthen Him. Help was sent out of the sanctuary, succour out of Zion, and He was strengthened to go through, help came; we know that quite well. Then having received help out of the sanctuary, strength out of Zion, and having been carried right through, His full cry was answered in His being delivered from death and raised to the glory and the crown of power, gold, set upon His head and life everlasting given to Him. That is the full answer.
It is the Lord Jesus being brought, by the help from the sanctuary, the strength out of Zion, to the place of absolute triumph, absolute glory, absolute victory, the name of the Lord proving its power in delivering Him from death. Now, that is what is personal to the Lord Jesus, but then there is that which is spiritual which applies to us, and this has a spiritual application to the saints and to our own hearts. We spiritually enter into not the same work of the Lord Jesus in His cross, i.e. mediatorial, atoning, but we enter spiritually into much of the experience that He knew of rejection, opposition, despisings, and sufferings from men. We should read all these Psalms to collect up all through which He went. We go through our darknesses; "yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered" (Heb. 5:8). We are in that school, we go that way, we know something of spiritual suffering in relation to the Lord Jesus.
There are other kinds of suffering of course, but spiritually there is no suffering that we enter into in relation to the Lord Jesus that is not pre-eminently spiritual. It all bears so strongly on the spiritual life; you cannot separate between this kind of suffering and that kind of suffering. There is nothing out of relation to the Lord; when it is joined to Him it has a spiritual application. By reason of the cloud which the enemy brings around us and of the frailty of our flesh we may even feel that the Lord has left us, forsaken us, and sometimes, although we dare not take these words on our lips, we might say: "Why have You forsaken us?" We may experience a spiritual time of darkness when the Lord is hidden and sometimes it seems to us that He is so hid in clouds of trouble, foreboding, depression and so on that we are tempted by the enemy to think that we are forsaken. But what I want to get at is this: the Lord Jesus when He was tempted in all points like as we are, when He entered into the experiences and temptations which are common to man, cried unto One who was able to save Him from death, and was answered, and so fully answered as to bring Him right through out into the place of glory and eternal life, and it is the prayer which will be answered on our behalf in the same way. We can receive the same strength out of Zion, and the final point which I want to reach is this - what Zion is as a resource of strength.
We are getting familiar with Zion these days. "Strengthen thee out of Zion". Zion then is a place out from which strength comes; Zion is that where our strength is from which we draw our strength. What is Zion? Well for us now on New Testament ground Zion is the Lord Jesus glorified, in the place of absolute power, ascendancy, sovereignty and glory in virtue of something that God has done because of His suffering and death. It is the position of Hebrews 1 and 2. "Because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour". It is Christ who has got through and is in possession of the power over death, over all His enemies. He has defeated the many bulls of Bashan, now He is vested with that power over which there is no power, that Life which is death defying and death destroying, vested with full glory. He is the sum total of all that which is necessary of the power of God to bring Him through all this, out of all this and put Him there. That is Zion, that Person, the Lord Jesus, in a position and seat absolutely glorified. His endowment death-conquering life and all the power over hell, the devil, men, the world and everything else all in the Person of the Lord Jesus as He is there; that is Zion.
Now, "strengthen thee out of Zion": minister Life to you out of death, glory in the hour of suffering, minister to you what Christ is, while you are here. The Father is there, the Son is here, the Son is going through all this; He makes His appeal out of Zion that the Father ministers His own life, strengthens Him, ministers Himself to the Son, for He came through in the power, life, strength, grace, and love of God. Christ is in that position. He is Zion. We are going through, not what He went through, but a shadow of it. Our prayer is to Him and out of Zion He ministers to us Himself.
Zion is the ministration of the Lord Jesus to us in our hour of need; when we are in trouble, suffering, and trial we say: "Lord help me". That is a very simple way of putting it, perhaps the child's way of putting it, but if we do not know any better, perhaps the Lord answers us on that level; but the Lord would have us understand what we mean by being helped. He would have us come to draw upon the power of resurrection that is in Jesus Christ, draw upon what the Lord Jesus is by reason of where He is in the power of God.
That is Ephesians. "The exceeding greatness of His power... according to that working of His might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead..." (Eph. 1:19-20). That is Zion and that ministration of Christ to us is sending help, strength out of Zion. And Ephesians is the sanctuary, the City, and it is the ministration of what Christ is in the heavenlies to us as we are passing through trial and difficulty here.
So getting strength out of Zion is simply drawing upon Christ as already triumphant, glorified. "We will triumph in His victory." His Name is above every name because He was obedient unto death. "In the name of our God we will set up our banners" (Ps. 20:5), drawing on what the Lord Jesus is now in virtue of the power that is vested in Him and which has proved itself sufficient to get Him through. That power is for the remnant, to get them through. And while there may be a Jewish remnant, we also are a remnant and we have to be got through.
Let us say to ourselves and to one another, "The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble, the name of the God of Jacob defend thee, send thee help out of the sanctuary, strengthen thee out of Zion" (Ps. 20:1-2) - minister to you the victorious Christ in your hour of need. Draw on Him and we shall get through.
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"Roll on Jehovah thy way" (Ps. 37:6, margin).
Thursday, January 6, 2022
Resources for Service and Worship by T. Austin-Sparks
Resources for Service and Worship
by T. Austin-Sparks
Edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.
Reading: John 11:1-2; 12:1-5; Psalm 66:9-15; Genesis 26:12-15,18-19.
These several passages are brought together in relation to one simple but helpful thought. It is the way in which we become possessed of resources for service and for worship.
In the case of the passages in the gospel of John, what comes out is Mary offering something very costly in worship, adoration, and service to the Lord. It looks very much as though Judas and those of like mind stood in the place of the Philistines, who envied and coveted. He, and they, were impressed with the wealth, the value, the preciousness of what was being expended upon the Lord, and what the Lord was receiving. They were putting the value very high. Of course, from their standpoint it was too high for its purpose, it was more than Himself; but from Mary's standpoint it was a very small thing in comparison with Him.
The thing which is quite clearly thrown up in that passage is the preciousness, the value, and the Lord's appreciation of it. The question is, what brought this about? How did it come to be? By what way did the Lord come to receive this wealth, this richness, this preciousness? The answer is seen in the history of her relationship to Him. It was a history of sorrow, suffering, discipline, some mystery in which the soul was torn and rent with perplexity. John 11 is the story of a good deal of inward suffering, perplexity, and anguish. She undoubtedly went through a deep time. Mary's life was evidently marked by more than one deep time, and it was out from those depths, out from that suffering, out from that discipline, that there came this which is marked for ever in the Divine record as something characterised by preciousness and value, wealth and riches; something which became the envy of the carnal.
So it ever is, that it is by the way of suffering, by the way of pressure, by the way of travail, that we become possessed of the resources for the service of the Lord. That hardly needs emphasising, it is too manifest a fact, and yet it is something to meditate and reflect upon. We do not get resources which really serve the Lord by mechanical means. We never serve the Lord with the accumulations of mere study. The resources for service are not what we collect outwardly. The means for the work of the Lord are not the result of the activities of our brains. What really serves the Lord is something very costly, and the costly things are never got easily. When they are spiritual things they are only got by very much spiritual suffering. Perhaps there is need for some revision as to what it is that really serves the Lord; what the means are by which the Lord is really glorified. It is not a matter of what we have said, or do say, about the Lord as something grasped. It is what comes out of the suffering through which the Lord Himself allows us to go.
The mystery of John 11 for those concerned was that the Lord was so obviously refusing to prevent that particular sorrow coming into that life. "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died", and yet we know from the fuller history given us by a disciple who was there, and given us much later, that His not being there was quite a deliberate thing. He might have stepped in and prevented that sorrow, but He deliberately took the other course. That was a mystery to them, and we know that it is the mystery of God's ways with us that is a very large factor in the intensity of the suffering. He does not tell us all about it in advance. He does not just lay it all clearly before us, and say: "Now, that way leads to so-and-so; if you go this way, such-and-such will be the result". He simply begins to lead us by a way that is inexplicable, which seems to be totally contrary to Himself and to His nature, and we have to go on. The end is that we are in possession of a wealth with which to serve Him, a wealth which goes down to history in spiritual annals as something which the Lord prizes very greatly. These are the true resources of service, and, after all, the measure of real value to the Lord is the measure of what is wrung out of life's travail. Enrichment, the valuable possessions for the Lord, come that way.
The passage in Psalm 66 is given a special significance by reason of the context:
"For Thou O God, hast proved us:
Thou hast tried us, as silver is tried.
Thou broughtest us into the net;
Thou layedst a sore burden upon our loins.
Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads;
We went through fire and through water."
"I will offer unto Thee burnt-offerings of fatlings,
With the incense of rams;
I will offer bullocks with goats."
Through it all there is something for worship; that is, worship comes out of all that. It is impressive to notice David one moment is saying: "Thou hast done all this in my life, which was calculated to destroy me". And then: "I will worship, bring an offering, the very best. As a result I am not just bringing the reticent, hesitating acknowledgment of the Lord which is grudged, and grudgingly given, because of all I have gone through. 'I will offer unto Thee burnt offerings of fatlings, with the incense of rams; I will offer bullocks with goats.'"
The large sacrifices are here. David is saying: "I am not going, because You have dealt so hardly with me, to bring You a dove," the smallest of all the offerings. The thought here is of wealth, fullness, largeness, resulting from suffering. The Lord gets something big out of the suffering through which He brings us. There are resources for service through suffering. Here it is worship given, but worship which is produced, not by some objective contemplation of God, but by reason of an inward history of suffering. There is some value in that.