By Martyn-Lloyd Jones
This is the fifth woe pronounced by Isaiah on his contemporaries and it deals with something for which we have a new word today - humanism, the creed of our so-called intellectuals.
The relevance of this verse in general, and in some particular respects, too, to our present condition, is something that should cause us to pause for a moment because it brings out certain truths so very clearly. The first is that it again reminds us that the Bible is a strangely contemporary book. People think it is out of date, and that is why they do not read it. They feel that the Bible has nothing to tell us about life today. But the simple answer is that if you but read the Bible, you will find that it tells you all about the modern world. If you want the best description of life as it is being lived at the present time, go to the Bible, and you will find it. That shows us that this is no ordinary book.
But the Bible also gives us the explanation of why things are as they are. It tells us that the essential human trouble is always the same. In other words, as the Bible puts it in the book of Ecclesiastes, "There is no new thing under the sun" (Eccles 1:9) - nothing at all. There is nothing so futile as the curious boast of modernity that it is "with it"; of all the boasts that is the emptiest. From the intellectual standpoint there is nothing quite so ridiculous as the way in which people think that modern life is something entirely new. They look back upon people who lived before them, and feel that those people knew nothing about life. They say, "But we have advanced, we have discovered a new way of thinking and of living!" But all that has happened so many times before and it is all in the Bible.
Modern men and women, with all their cleverness, are incapable of inventing a new sin. The worst forms of vice and evil being committed today are to be found somewhere in the Bible. Nothing new under the sun! This boast and claim of modernity, and the idea that the majority of people are not Christians because they are "up to date" and "twentieth-century people", is a most futile and foolish claim. I can understand people who say that they are not Christians and do not accept the message, but they must not say that this is because they live in the twentieth century. There is nothing new about such a rejection of Christianity. People have been rejecting it throughout the centuries, and for exactly the same reasons, as we shall show.
This astounding chapter in Isaiah's prophecy shows us these things very clearly, both the contemporary character of the word of God, and the fact that there is nothing new under the sun. History is most important, and if you study it you will find that it goes round in cycles. We think that we are advancing, but that is an illusion; we are always going round in a cycle. This is seen very clearly in the matter of fashions in clothing, as everybody knows. I was reading in a newspaper the other day of a man who kept a suit a number of years. For a long time he had been ashamed to wear it, but now it had again become the fashionable thing to wear!
This is not only true of clothing - it is equally true in the realm of thought, indeed in every realm. Human beings are never very original; they merely go on repeating themselves and the Bible brings that out in a most extraordinary manner.
What does humanism mean? I cannot give a better definition of it than these words of Isaiah, "Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!" Humanism is belief in humanity. It is interested solely in men and women without God. It banishes God because it believes that human beings are sufficient in and of themselves. That is the very essence of humanism. Man is the centre of the universe, and there is nothing bigger, and nothing greater.
There are two main types of humanism. There is what is called "classical humanism", which means that for your guidance in life and your understanding of life, you do not go to the Bible but instead you go back to Greek literature and philosophy, Greek drama and Greek poetry. Classical humanists are people who study these great Greek authors and conduct their lives according to their teaching.
It is no part of Christian teaching to disparage those Greeks; they were truly great men. But classical humanism teaches that there is nothing beyond them and that if you desire wisdom you must go back to the thinking and the meditation of these giant brains of the past. You study them and grapple with them, and try to understand what they thought and what they laid down. Then you try to put that into practice, and that is the way to live a good and harmonious life in this present world.
The other form that humanism takes is what is called "scientific humanism". This is the more popular of the two at the present time. The classical represents the poetic, the philosophic and so on, and on the other side there is the scientific outlook, the approach which says that the answer to the problems of the world is not going to come from Greek philosophy or poetry so much as from a scientific understanding of the whole universe, human beings included.
This is the more modem of the two humanisms. It claims that it is new, because the discoveries are at least comparatively recent, going back very little more than some four hundred years at the maximum. By delving into the mysteries of the universe and its constitution you discover the scientific truth about life, and from that you proceed to work out your whole scheme of living.
We must examine this because we are told, here in Isaiah, that this confidence in human wisdom leads to woe. But let us be clear about this. It is no part of the case for the Christian gospel to say anything derogatory of the intellect. Indeed, that is the very opposite of gospel teaching. The gospel places great value upon the intellect. Let nobody think that what Isaiah means is that there is no value in having a brain, or in the ability to use it, or in understanding, or the power of reason and so on. It is not that. There is nothing wrong with the intellect or with wisdom in themselves. Indeed, the Bible tells us that the highest gift that God has given to men and women in the realm of gifts-I am not talking about the soul and spirit but actual gifts- the highest of all the gifts is mind, reason, understanding.
The wonderful thing about human beings is that they can contemplate their own selves; they can analyse themselves, evaluate and criticise themselves. This is a tremendous gift, given, according to the Bible, by God - So we must say nothing derogatory about the intellect, reason, or the mind. The Christian preacher is not just a sentimentalist or an obscurantist. He is not just a man who tells stories and tries to entertain people. He is here to reason with them, because God has given them minds which they are meant to use. But, as I am going to show, the real explanation of the world's trouble is the fact that people's minds have gone wrong, that they do not know how to use them properly.
What, then, is the attitude of the Bible to humanism? It is that while there is everything that is right about the mind, the reason and the understanding, what is wrong is that people put their final confidence in the mind. They are so proud of it that they begin to worship it, they think that it is sufficient in and of itself and nothing is needed beyond that. The trouble arises when they begin to boast of reason and to claim that with their mind they can encompass the entire cosmos. This statement of Isaiah's puts it so perfectly - "Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes." They have put themselves up on a pedestal. "Look at me," they say, "am I not wonderful?" "Wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight." There is nothing wrong with being wise, but if you are wise in your own eyes, you are in a very dangerous condition. It is excellent to be prudent, but if you are prudent in your own sight, then you come under the condemnation that is delivered by the prophet.
I trust that that is clear. Far from saying that there is no value in intellect, I am going to use what little I have and I am going to ask you to do the same!
Why does God pronounce a woe upon those who are wise in their own eyes, and worship their brains and understanding - upon humanists? The first answer is that this is the very essence of their trouble and problem, this is the main cause of all the ills of the human race. Read the Bible and you will find that it says that this was their original trouble, and that it has been their trouble ever since. The temptation that first came to the man and the woman, as we have seen, was: "Hath God said?" (Gen 3:1). In other words, "Is God trying to keep you down? Is God trying to stand between you and a knowledge of good and evil? Is God trying to withhold something from you?"
"He is," said the devil, "because he knows that if you eat of that fruit you will become as gods yourselves, you will have understanding, you will know everything, you will be equal with God."
That was man's first sin, and it has been the cause of all his subsequent troubles.
But now let me show it in the New Testament. Take, for instance, what the apostle Paul says in the second half of Romans 1. He puts this very plainly. He is describing why the human race has become what it is, and he says,
"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." There it is exactly - "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up . . ." (Rom 1:21-24). This is a summary of the history of the human race.
In chapter 12 of Romans Paul puts the problem in the form of a piece of advice. We probably all need this advice: "Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits" (Rom 12:16). It is the same thing - the danger of trusting to your own wisdom, your own intellect, the feeling that you are wonderful and need no help at all.
It is found still more clearly in a great passage in 1 Corinthians from chapter 1:17 to the end of the third chapter. Here Paul draws a contrast between the gospel and the wisdom of the wise. Because they were trusting to their own intellects and their own understanding the Greek philosophers were dismissing the gospel as "foolish". That has always been the great trouble.
The Bible is full of this teaching. No kind of person was more condemned by our Lord than the Pharisee. The trouble was his conceit. He thought that he was all right, that he was very wise and that he was doing everything perfectly. Pharisees "trusted in themselves that they were righteous" (Lk 18:9). It is the same thing. They did not need any help and they resented the teaching of this upstart, as they regarded our Lord. Who was he to teach them? Pride of intellect: it was their central trouble, a manifestation of a curious kind of humanism. Christ also taught exactly the same point in his parable of the rich fool in the twelfth chapter of Luke's Gospel.
The case put forward in the Bible is that pride of intellect is, in a sense, the ultimate sin. This is the primary trouble that leads to all the others - men and women glorying in themselves, glorying especially in their intellect and their mind. In 1 Corinthians the apostle Paul explains how this becomes the ultimate sin. It is because men and women misappropriate God's greatest gift. God complimented human beings by making them in his own image, and he gave them this astounding gift. But this is the very thing that they use against God and for themselves, and so bring themselves down.
The second reason why a "woe" is pronounced on this is that people believe a lie. They think that they are wise and prudent; but they are not. Now this, surely, is a most astonishing fact. Modern men and women are proud of themselves, of their intellect and wisdom; they feel they are superior to all who have ever lived before them. But how can they possibly feel like that about themselves with the world as it is now and as it has been during this twentieth century, with horrible wars, mounting crime waves and utter confusion?
And the Bible explains this by saying that people glory in their wisdom and in their prudence because they are fools! The wiser the man or woman, the more humble they are. It is those who have a smattering of knowledge who are always difficult. Those who really have great knowledge know enough to know what they do not know. "A little learning is a dangerous thing!" And so the Bible says that the ultimate truth about those who do not believe in God, and who are not Christians, is that they are fools.
The Bible uses many terms in its descriptions of the sinner, but "fool" is the one it uses most frequently. Our Lord uses it in the parable about "the rich fool". Here is a man boasting - "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry" (Lk 12:19-20). The man who thought he was so clever, so wise, was nothing but a fool.
"I'm all right, Jack!" That is the modern way of putting it - "I'm all right; I've got money put by for the future. I've used my mind. What a clever fellow I am!"
"Thou fool," says God, "this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?" The Bible pronounces "woe" upon all this because it is a lie.
"But how do you prove that it's a lie?" asks someone.
Unfortunately, I can do so far too easily. I say that those who are wise and prudent in their own sight are to be condemned because they condemn themselves; they are a living lie. They claim to be wise; but how do they live? How do you test wisdom? How do you test intellect and understanding? It is not a matter of reading books and being able to give answers. That is the big mistake people make. No, the way to test people is not by how much they know, but by whether they have the power to apply what they know. Do they understand it sufficiently to put it into practice?
I have known many people who were excellent examinees, but who were useless afterwards. I have known people who, as medical students, could do well in examinations, they could learn facts off by heart and recite textbooks like parrots, but, clinically, when face to face with a patient, they were useless; they were quite incapable of applying their knowledge. But that is the test of wisdom.
The wise man or woman does not merely have knowledge - you can put that into computers - they have the power of appropriating and assimilating that knowledge until it becomes judgment. It becomes part of them, controlling their point of view, and determining their actions and practice. So our wisdom is judged not merely by the number of books we have read, or can quote and recite, but by the way we live, the way we use that knowledge. Christ put that in a famous question -"What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world [of knowledge and of wealth], and lose his own soul?" (Mk 8:36).
What about human beings individually at the present time? How are the so-called "wise" men and women living? Look at these people who can tell us all about life. How many times have some of them passed through the divorce courts? Take many of the most famous philosophers. Read their records. Never take people's books alone -find out something about them. To write a book is so easy, very much easier than it is to live! Yes, it is easier to preach than it is to live. But living is the test of wisdom. I am not interested in a man or woman's claim to great knowledge and perspicuity if they are failing in their own lives, if they are drunkards, or adulterers, if you cannot trust them. What then is the value of their knowledge and learning? They say they are wise, but they are not; they are fools, deceiving and deluding themselves.
But what of men and women collectively? How proud the world is of its learning, but look at it! While they are so proud of themselves and their intellect and so on, they must be reminded of these facts. With all their wisdom and knowledge, they have already had two world wars and they have blasted more people to destruction in this one century than ever before. That is what modern men and women with their wisdom and prudence do in practice. And here they are, still arguing about missiles and the means of destruction, still troubled by tensions and insecurity and discord and moral muddle.
Yet people go on boasting about their wisdom. They are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight - with their world a mess, with a kind of carnage before their very eyes! It is a lie! That is why it is condemned in the Bible. It is just boasting, nothing but talk. It has the bigness of an inflated balloon. It is loud in its profession, but there is no practice.
But I can demonstrate this in another way and that is the failure of people even to understand. They like to think that though they are not perfect saints, as they put it, they do have great understanding. But have they? "Wise in his own eyes." So what is your view of yourself? What is man? Do you understand him? Do you understand yourself? Do modern man and woman really understand themselves? Do they understand the meaning of life? They are so proud of their wisdom and knowledge, but what do they really tell us about life? Is it big, or is it little? Is it something grand or something ignoble? What is it?
Where, then, is their understanding? Where do they show their prudence and their wisdom? What is the whole meaning of the world? What is history? Is there any design in it at all or any purpose? Or is it all just a bag of nonsense, pointless, purposeless, just blundering along in any direction without anyone knowing where or what or how? Where is the wisdom in all this? What do men and women know about the most important things? They know a great deal about electricity and the atom and power, and all these abstruse scientific matters. I do not criticise that, but when you are talking about wisdom, what I want to know is: How do I live? What is it all about? How can I find happiness and peace? How can I live in such a way that I shall not be ashamed of myself at the end of my journey? That is wisdom, that is prudence.
But, further, people do not seem to know anything about the cause of their problems. These people who have been "wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight" for the last hundred years have been prophesying wonderful things for us in this century. We were going to solve all our problems. The Victorian thinkers - the philosophers, the poets, the politicians, the agnostics - all said this. The trouble with men and women, they said, was that they were too poor, and crime was inevitable while you had poverty. But once people were educated, once you gave them good houses and better salaries, everything would be put right. Well, we have dealt with most of those defects yet the problem is greater than ever - indeed, we are now told that the rising crime wave is due to affluence! Where is the wisdom? Where is the prudence? People obviously do not understand their problem, still less are they able to discover a cure.
I am told that I must not criticise modern dramatists and novelists. I am told that they are moralists who are trying to improve conditions. But what is their method? Their method of trying to improve is to describe. But surely you do not solve a problem by simply describing it; you do not improve a situation simply by painting it? The business of the moralist is to solve the problem, to get us out of the predicament. We do not need any more descriptions. We know all about it. There is no need for anybody to write a book to tell us how people sin: it is all to be found in the Bible. And not only is it all there, but anybody who has lived in this world knows something about It. We do not need novels and films and dramas to tell us how people behave. What we want to know is how to get out of moral failure and confusion, how to stop doing wrong, how to be delivered.
But I am told that the work of modern writers and dramatists is very realistic! All right, but that makes no difference. What would you think of a doctor who, the next time you are taken desperately ill, comes to you and gives you an account of your temperature and your pulse rate and your respiration rate and the colour of your skin and the state of your pupils and so on, who describes your condition to you in a vivid manner and says, "That is your condition, very serious, very bad" - and then goes home?
That is not a caricature of modern pundits, that is exactly what our humanists are telling us today. I will grant them this, they are experts at description. They can tell us all about ourselves, and analyse the condition for US. "There you are," they say, "that is your condition."
But they have nothing to give us. Why? Because nothing is higher in creation than human beings, and it is they who have failed.
Take yet another reason why the Bible pronounces a woe upon the humanist. This is much more serious. It does so not only because humanism is a lie, but because of what it produces, because of what it leads to. This is the really serious aspect of the matter. So what is it? First and foremost, it is pride itself. Pride is the greatest of all sins. It is more prolific in causing trouble than anything else in the world. It is also the ugliest of the sins, and what havoc it has caused in the long history of the human race.
And what we are examining is nothing but pride of intellect. It shows itself in the despising of all who have gone before, and modern scientific humanists are very fond of doing that. Nobody knew anything until they arrived on the scene. They despise their forefathers. This is seen in every realm. They dismiss all previous books, all previous knowledge. Everything is out of date; nothing is of any value. Indeed, there are foolish people who occupy Christian pulpits who are really saying that, in effect, nobody could truly understand the Bible until this generation with its modern knowledge. They dismiss nineteen centuries of Christian exposition and Christian learning. That in itself is enough to put them out of court - their colossal conceit and pride. It is ugly. And God hates it. He sees man standing up and inflating himself, and he pronounces his woe upon it.
Then that in turn leads to self-confidence and self-satisfaction. Our Lord has painted the perfect picture of this in his parable of the Pharisee and the publican who went up into the Temple to pray. Look at that Pharisee walking up right to the front. Here is a man who is pleased with himself, a man who has a mind and a brain; and he thanks God that he is what he is. He does not need any help; he does not ask for anything. He has everything; he can do everything himself! That is the kind of man whom Christ denounced most bitterly. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" There is nothing more terrible in the sight of God than self-confidence.
But what makes this self-confidence such a terrible thing is that it always leads to rebellion against God. I reminded you earlier on that that was the cause of the original sin. The devil came and said, "God is trying to hold you down." And Adam and Eve believed him and began to feel a hatred of God. They felt that if only they could get that knowledge, then all would be well, and they would be able to lead an independent life. So they elevated themselves in their own esteem, and human beings have been on that pedestal ever since.
Rebellion against God - that is the essence of humanism. The humanist says, "I do not believe in God and I will tell you why. I do not need him. I can carry on perfectly well without him. There is no God."
God's comment on that is found in Psalm 14: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (v. 1). But there are many people today who think that nobody ever said that until this century. But David said that in Psalm 14 nearly three thousand years ago! It was true at that time, a thousand years before Christ was born. People were saying, "There is no God," and David said, "Yes, they say that because they are fools."
So humanists do not believe in God because, they say, we have no need of him. Why do people who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight, need God? If they understand everything and can manage themselves and all life, well, they do not need God. That has increasingly been the position of the human race for the last hundred years, with knowledge growing and advancing and the various developments in scientific knowledge - we are all so advanced!
"Of course," they say, "there may have been a time when people needed God, but not now." Everybody has enough now. We have the money, we are getting better wages, we can get all we want! We can read, we have television sets, and we are men and women of knowledge. So we do not need God.
That is rebellion against God. "The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (Rom 8:7). That is always an immediate consequence of rebellion against God. The moment people think they are wise, and rebel against God, they begin to go wrong morally. This is a very subtle matter. Men and women in their folly do not realise that their real objection to God is that they have to obey him, that God is a God of justice, of righteousness and holiness. And the Bible tells us that God made man and woman in his own image, and he meant them to live in the same sort of manner as God himself.
But people do not want to live like that; they do not want to live upright, pure, disciplined and holy lives. They want to give rein to their passions and lusts. Desire, that is the trouble; forbidden fruit, of course. The illicit ah! This is love!
"Of course, stupid people don't understand," they say. "I thought I was in love before, but this is the real thing. I have it now. I thought I had, but I hadn't - this is true love!" Let them do what they like; let them commit adultery and spit upon the sanctities. "Don't talk about law," they say, "don't bring in morality. That's legalism. Love!"
The truth is, of course, that it is nothing but lust, but to suit their own lust and deaden their own conscience, they try to work out a philosophy, and in that philosophy there is nothing higher than human beings. There is no God, so they have nothing to fear; all is well and they can go on pleasing themselves.
There has never been any form of humanism without moral declension. The humanists I know claim to be moral - and in their own personal lives many of them are moral people - but the teaching of the Bible is that in every period when humanism has been in the ascendant, morality has invariably gone down. "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools," says Paul, as we have seen, in Romans 1:22. Then the moral declension came in.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather [in AV margin] than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature (Rom 1:24-26).
It is a recognised fact of history that some of the great Greek philosophers were moral perverts. High idealists, writing their blueprints of a Utopia, and yet guilty of the foulest vices! It always happens! The moral consequences always follow, and that is why God pronounces woe upon it. When people set themselves up as the final authority they always descend into the abyss. Why? Because they cannot extricate themselves, they have not got the power.
This leads us to the last point, which is that God pronounces "woe" upon this pride of intellect, this confidence in human understanding, because it is that which above everything else causes men and women to refuse God's way of salvation. This is the most calamitous thing of all. There they are in their awful plight and they try to extricate themselves. They perfect their educational systems, they multiply their cultural media. Never have they been so busy trying to put themselves right as they have been during the last hundred years. They have exhausted almost every conceivable approach and tried every avenue, but in spite of it all we see what is happening. And yet, in this very situation, when the gospel of Christ is offered to men and women, this gospel which alone can deliver them and set them free and save them, they refuse it.
Why is this? It is because they feel that they are sufficient, because they think that they are wise and prudent, because they still think that they can save themselves. Why do people not read history? Why do they not read their own books? History proves that men and women cannot deliver themselves, try as they will, with all their might and main. All great civilisations have gone down, and the present civilisation is going down. But people still refuse the offer of the gospel, They still laugh at Christ and ridicule the cross. They spit into the face of God and say they do not need him. This pride of intellect, this is the curse, this is the real trouble with humanity. They say, "I will not believe unless I can understand." They want to understand God! They think they are so big that they can measure God himself, they can measure Infinity!
So men and women are under the wrath and the woe of God, finally, because they refuse God's offer. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting.
For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world throug him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: be he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light came into the world, and men love the darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (Jn 3:16-19)
God pronounces a woe on all that; and I see calamity coming. More than ever before, men and women are standing up in their pride: proud of their own wisdom, wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight, saying they do not need God and that they can handle and order their own affairs. They maintain that they can perfect the world and they stand up and say all this, while refusing the gospel, ridiculing it and blaspheming against it! They are like that rich fool who turned to himself and congratulated himself, saying, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry" (Lk 12:19).
"It's a good world," they say, congratulating themselves. "We're having a great time. Never had it so good!"
"But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee" (Lk 12:20).
What if some scientists are right, and this universe has not got many more years to go, what then? Where is your wisdom and your learning - where is it all? When God says, "Now, this night you must go out of this world, you must die" - whether of a virus infection or by bomb does not matter, but you have got to die- "This night thy soul shall be required of thee." What then? Do you know where you are going? Do you know what happens to you after death? Can you tell me what happens in that great unknown beyond? Here is wisdom - what am I? How do I live? How do I die? What happens to me afterwards? Where is your knowledge? What are you boasting of? The humanist has nothing, nothing at all, and God pronounces his "woes" upon it, and he does so in a very terrifying manner.
Let me direct your attention to some verses in the book of Revelation, which is the last book of the Bible, the book which tells us of the day that is coming when God will arise and say, "This night!" to the whole universe. And the great men of the earth, we are told:
..cried when they saw the smoke of her burning [this great city of Babylon, meaning civilisation], saying, What city is like unto this great city! And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate. Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her. And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all (Rev 18:18-21).
And this Babylon of civilisation is going to be destroyed in an hour when God arises. "Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!"
Is that the last word.) Thank God, it is not. But that is the last word as far as humanism is concerned. It is wrong, essentially. It is a fraud. It is deceit. It is a failure. It can do nothing. And it calls down wrath upon itself. But it is not the last word. In spite of this insanity of men and women, in spite of the fact that they are such blind fools, God has mercy upon them. There is an answer to it all.
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom" (Prov 9:10). That is the answer. People must be awakened; they must realise it. They must see that they are fools, that they are failures and that their outlook and life will lead to a fatal end. And they must submit. The apostle Paul says, "If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise" (1 Cor 3:18). Human wisdom leads to nothing, but there is this "wisdom from God".
"We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:23-24).
"For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe" (I Cor 1:21).
When men and women had completely failed, "God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law" (Gal 4:4-5).
So what is necessary? Those who want to be wise must become as little children and admit that they know nothing. Let each one say, "I am but a child. I thought I knew but I was just fooling myself. I was drunk on my own intellect. When it comes to the point, I see that I know nothing about myself. I don't understand life, I don't understand the world and I cannot do anything about it. I cannot control myself and I see everything going wrong. I'm a fool, a child, I know nothing!" Blessed are those who come to that position. "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 18:3).
And to such people, God says, "I sent my only begotten Son into the world to redeem people like you. You have become as a little child, so I offer you in Christ my Son, who bore your sins in his own body on the tree - I offer you free forgiveness. I will blot out all your sins as if you had never committed a sin in your life." God's wisdom in Christ! That is the way to solve the problem. This is heavenly, this is divine wisdom.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article533.shtml
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Silence
By Martin Hope Sutton
The late Martin Hope Sutton, of Reading, one of the founders of the great Seed Firm, and who showed his practical Christianity in many ways, sent, shortly before his death, in 1901, the following message to "Good Lines", the organ of the Commercial Travelers' Christian Association.
THIS is the only way to know God. 'Be still, and know that I am God.' 'God is in His Holy Temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him.'
A score of years ago, a friend placed in my hand a little book which became one of the turning points of my life. It was called 'True Peace.' It was an old medieval message, and it had but one thought, and it was this-that God was waiting in the depths of my being to talk to me if I would only get still enough to hear His voice.
I thought this would be a very easy matter, and so I began to get still. But I had no sooner commenced than a perfect pandemonium of voices reached my ears, a thousand clamouring notes from without and within, until I could hear nothing but their noise and din. Some of them were my own voice, some of them were my own questions, some of them were my own cares, some of them were my very prayers. Others were the suggestions of the tempter and the voices of the world's turmoil. Never before did there seem so many things to be done, to be said, to be thought; and in every direction I was pushed and pulled, and greeted with noisy acclamations of unspeakable unrest. It seemed necessary for me to listen to some of them, and to answer some of them; but God said, 'Be still, and know that I am God.' Then came the conflict of thoughts for the morrow, and its duties and cares; but God said, 'Be still.' And as I listened and slowly learned to obey, and shut my ears to every sound,I found after awhile that when the other voices ceased, or I ceased to hear them, there was a still, small voice in the depths of my being that began to speak with an inexpressible tenderness, power, and comfort. As I listened, it became to me the voice of prayer, and the voice of wisdom, and the voice of duty, and I did not need to think so hard, or pray so hard, or trust so hard, but that 'still, small voice' of the Holy Spirit in my heart was God's prayer in my secret soul, was God' s answer to all my questions, was God's life and strength for soul and body, and became the substance of all knowledge, and all prayer, and all blessing; for it was the living God Himself as my life and my all.
This is our spirit's deepest need. It is thus that we learn to know God; it is thus that we receive spiritual refreshment and nutriment; it is thus that our heart is nourished and fed; it is thus that we receive the Living Bread; it is thus that our very bodies are healed, and our spirit drinks in the life of our risen Lord, and we go forth to life's conflicts and duties like the flower that has drunk in, through the shades of night, the cool and crystal drops of dew. But, as the dew never falls on a stormy night, so the dews of His grace never come to the restless soul.
We cannot go through life strong and fresh on constant express trains; but we must have quiet hours, secret places of the Most High, times of waiting upon the Lord, when we renew our strength, and learn to mount up on wings as eagles, and then come back to run and not be weary, and to walk and not faint.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4090.shtml
The late Martin Hope Sutton, of Reading, one of the founders of the great Seed Firm, and who showed his practical Christianity in many ways, sent, shortly before his death, in 1901, the following message to "Good Lines", the organ of the Commercial Travelers' Christian Association.
THIS is the only way to know God. 'Be still, and know that I am God.' 'God is in His Holy Temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him.'
A score of years ago, a friend placed in my hand a little book which became one of the turning points of my life. It was called 'True Peace.' It was an old medieval message, and it had but one thought, and it was this-that God was waiting in the depths of my being to talk to me if I would only get still enough to hear His voice.
I thought this would be a very easy matter, and so I began to get still. But I had no sooner commenced than a perfect pandemonium of voices reached my ears, a thousand clamouring notes from without and within, until I could hear nothing but their noise and din. Some of them were my own voice, some of them were my own questions, some of them were my own cares, some of them were my very prayers. Others were the suggestions of the tempter and the voices of the world's turmoil. Never before did there seem so many things to be done, to be said, to be thought; and in every direction I was pushed and pulled, and greeted with noisy acclamations of unspeakable unrest. It seemed necessary for me to listen to some of them, and to answer some of them; but God said, 'Be still, and know that I am God.' Then came the conflict of thoughts for the morrow, and its duties and cares; but God said, 'Be still.' And as I listened and slowly learned to obey, and shut my ears to every sound,I found after awhile that when the other voices ceased, or I ceased to hear them, there was a still, small voice in the depths of my being that began to speak with an inexpressible tenderness, power, and comfort. As I listened, it became to me the voice of prayer, and the voice of wisdom, and the voice of duty, and I did not need to think so hard, or pray so hard, or trust so hard, but that 'still, small voice' of the Holy Spirit in my heart was God's prayer in my secret soul, was God' s answer to all my questions, was God's life and strength for soul and body, and became the substance of all knowledge, and all prayer, and all blessing; for it was the living God Himself as my life and my all.
This is our spirit's deepest need. It is thus that we learn to know God; it is thus that we receive spiritual refreshment and nutriment; it is thus that our heart is nourished and fed; it is thus that we receive the Living Bread; it is thus that our very bodies are healed, and our spirit drinks in the life of our risen Lord, and we go forth to life's conflicts and duties like the flower that has drunk in, through the shades of night, the cool and crystal drops of dew. But, as the dew never falls on a stormy night, so the dews of His grace never come to the restless soul.
We cannot go through life strong and fresh on constant express trains; but we must have quiet hours, secret places of the Most High, times of waiting upon the Lord, when we renew our strength, and learn to mount up on wings as eagles, and then come back to run and not be weary, and to walk and not faint.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4090.shtml
The Scorpion
By Harriet N. Cook
This frightful creature is several times mentioned in the Bible. It is the largest among insects, and more dangerous than any of them. It is sometimes found in Europe, and is there about four inches long; but those of hot countries are sometimes more than a foot in length.
The scorpion is very easily made angry, and then its sting is terrible; it very often causes death, but not always. In Revelation, 9:5, 6, we read, "And their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man; and in those days shall men seek death and shall not find it: and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them." This shows that the pain caused by their sting is very great. When a person has been stung by a scorpion, the part around the wound swells and becomes very painful, the hands and feet become cold, the skin is pale, and there is a feeling as though there were needles in every part of it. This pain often increases and rages until the person dies in great suffering.
It is well for man that scorpions destroy each other as readily as they do animals of a different kind. It is said that a hundred were once put together under a glass, where they immediately began to attack and kill each other; so that in a few days only fourteen were left alive. I have heard that if a circle of alcohol or spirit of any sort, is set on fire, and a scorpion placed within it so that he cannot get out on any side, he will sting himself so as to cause his death. I am not certain that this is true, and it would be a very cruel thing to try it even upon so dangerous an animal as the scorpion.
It seems that this creature was sometimes seen in the wilderness through which the children of Israel passed. When they had nearly reached the end of their journey, Moses reminded them to praise God for having kept them safely in so many dangers, while passing through "that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions and drought; where there was no water."
Our Savior asks, "If a son shall ask of his father an egg, will he give him a scorpion?" The scorpions in that country are about as large as an egg, and when rolled up look a little like one. Yet no father would be so wicked as to give one to his child instead of the egg which he needed for food.
Christ once said to his disciples, when they were going out to preach and to heal the diseases of the people, "Behold I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and nothing shall by any means hurt you." This was a very wonderful power; and whoever should see one of those disciples tread on the terrible scorpion without being hurt, would know that Christ was surely with him to take care of him.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4255.shtml
This frightful creature is several times mentioned in the Bible. It is the largest among insects, and more dangerous than any of them. It is sometimes found in Europe, and is there about four inches long; but those of hot countries are sometimes more than a foot in length.
The scorpion is very easily made angry, and then its sting is terrible; it very often causes death, but not always. In Revelation, 9:5, 6, we read, "And their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man; and in those days shall men seek death and shall not find it: and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them." This shows that the pain caused by their sting is very great. When a person has been stung by a scorpion, the part around the wound swells and becomes very painful, the hands and feet become cold, the skin is pale, and there is a feeling as though there were needles in every part of it. This pain often increases and rages until the person dies in great suffering.
It is well for man that scorpions destroy each other as readily as they do animals of a different kind. It is said that a hundred were once put together under a glass, where they immediately began to attack and kill each other; so that in a few days only fourteen were left alive. I have heard that if a circle of alcohol or spirit of any sort, is set on fire, and a scorpion placed within it so that he cannot get out on any side, he will sting himself so as to cause his death. I am not certain that this is true, and it would be a very cruel thing to try it even upon so dangerous an animal as the scorpion.
It seems that this creature was sometimes seen in the wilderness through which the children of Israel passed. When they had nearly reached the end of their journey, Moses reminded them to praise God for having kept them safely in so many dangers, while passing through "that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions and drought; where there was no water."
Our Savior asks, "If a son shall ask of his father an egg, will he give him a scorpion?" The scorpions in that country are about as large as an egg, and when rolled up look a little like one. Yet no father would be so wicked as to give one to his child instead of the egg which he needed for food.
Christ once said to his disciples, when they were going out to preach and to heal the diseases of the people, "Behold I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and nothing shall by any means hurt you." This was a very wonderful power; and whoever should see one of those disciples tread on the terrible scorpion without being hurt, would know that Christ was surely with him to take care of him.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4255.shtml
The Raven
By Harriet N. Cook
The raven has always been very well known to man, and is mentioned almost at the beginning of the Bible. You remember that this was the first bird that Noah sent out of the ark to see whether the waters had begun to dry up; and that it did not go back to him again. I suppose it was very glad to be at liberty after it had been shut up more than a year; and as it lives upon the flesh of other animals, it probably found food enough from the bodies of those that had been drowned.
It is a large bird, considerably larger than the crow; and its feathers are very black, very glossy, and very beautiful. People in ancient times seem to have liked a black color, and were especially pleased with black hair; so we read in the Song of Solomon, where one who is beautiful is described, "His locks are bushy, and black as a raven."
It is said that the raven always attacks the eye of an animal first; seeming to prefer that to every other part. This may explain one of the verses in Proverbs, "The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it." It has been the custom, in many countries, to hang those who have been guilty of great crimes on a tree or on a gallows in the open air; and there to leave the body for the birds to peck at and devour if they chose. I suppose this verse means that stubborn and disobedient children, or those who are not kind and respectful to their parents, must expect to come to some sad end; and they very often do so.
I have heard that the raven drives out its young ones very early from the nest, almost before they are able to seek their food. This may explain a verse in the Psalms, "The Lord giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry;" and another in Job, "Who provideth for the raven his food ? when his young ones cry unto God, wandering for lack of meat." Our Savior speaks of this bird in the 12th chapter of Luke, "Consider the ravens; for they neither sow nor reap; they have neither store-house nor barn; and God feedeth them." He was speaking to his disciples, and it was as much as to say, "If God takes care of the ravens, he will certainly take care of you; so you need not be anxious or afraid.
Have you read in the Bible how a good prophet's life was once saved by ravens? The people who were living then were very wicked, and would have been glad to kill the prophet Elijah; so God told him to go into the wilderness and live there alone by the side of a small brook. Elijah went to the brook, and there was water enough for him to drink, of course, but no food to keep him from starving. You may be sure that God did not forget his servant; but you would hardly believe, if it was not in the Bible, that he would send the ravens to carry food to him. Yet so it was: "the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook." It is supposed that he was fed in this way for as much as a year. It was a long time to stay there by himself; but I do not think he was lonely or afraid, for he loved God, and felt sure that He was always near him, even in the wilderness.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4253.shtml
The raven has always been very well known to man, and is mentioned almost at the beginning of the Bible. You remember that this was the first bird that Noah sent out of the ark to see whether the waters had begun to dry up; and that it did not go back to him again. I suppose it was very glad to be at liberty after it had been shut up more than a year; and as it lives upon the flesh of other animals, it probably found food enough from the bodies of those that had been drowned.
It is a large bird, considerably larger than the crow; and its feathers are very black, very glossy, and very beautiful. People in ancient times seem to have liked a black color, and were especially pleased with black hair; so we read in the Song of Solomon, where one who is beautiful is described, "His locks are bushy, and black as a raven."
It is said that the raven always attacks the eye of an animal first; seeming to prefer that to every other part. This may explain one of the verses in Proverbs, "The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it." It has been the custom, in many countries, to hang those who have been guilty of great crimes on a tree or on a gallows in the open air; and there to leave the body for the birds to peck at and devour if they chose. I suppose this verse means that stubborn and disobedient children, or those who are not kind and respectful to their parents, must expect to come to some sad end; and they very often do so.
I have heard that the raven drives out its young ones very early from the nest, almost before they are able to seek their food. This may explain a verse in the Psalms, "The Lord giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry;" and another in Job, "Who provideth for the raven his food ? when his young ones cry unto God, wandering for lack of meat." Our Savior speaks of this bird in the 12th chapter of Luke, "Consider the ravens; for they neither sow nor reap; they have neither store-house nor barn; and God feedeth them." He was speaking to his disciples, and it was as much as to say, "If God takes care of the ravens, he will certainly take care of you; so you need not be anxious or afraid.
Have you read in the Bible how a good prophet's life was once saved by ravens? The people who were living then were very wicked, and would have been glad to kill the prophet Elijah; so God told him to go into the wilderness and live there alone by the side of a small brook. Elijah went to the brook, and there was water enough for him to drink, of course, but no food to keep him from starving. You may be sure that God did not forget his servant; but you would hardly believe, if it was not in the Bible, that he would send the ravens to carry food to him. Yet so it was: "the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook." It is supposed that he was fed in this way for as much as a year. It was a long time to stay there by himself; but I do not think he was lonely or afraid, for he loved God, and felt sure that He was always near him, even in the wilderness.
http://articles.ochristian.com/article4253.shtml
The Final Warning By Asahel Nettleton
By Asahel Nettleton
A STRONGER INDICATION OF A mind unreconciled to God can hardly be conceived than the unwillingness to receive reproof. The humble man is always thankful for admonition administered in the spirit of meekness and prompted by a sincere desire for the welfare of the offender; while the haughty sinner, whose ways are always right in his own eyes, indignantly rejects it. Hence the reasonable precaution which our Saviour addressed to His disciples: "Give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you" (Matthew 7:6).
It is not the best policy to reprove offenders of every description and on all occasions. Prudence and judgment ought ever to be exercised in the discharge of this duty. Otherwise, the well-meant endeavors of the man who undertakes the unwelcome task of a censor will meet with a sad recompense. Few, when faithfully reminded of their offenses, will evince the placid temper of the pious David, who (doubtless in allusion to the plain and pointed reproof administered to him by the prophet Nathan) exclaimed, "Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness; and let him reprove me, it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head!' (Psalm 141:5). Most persons, on the contrary, when closely pressed as he was, and to whose conscience crimes are sent home with a clearness which cannot be mistaken, "Thou art the man" (Second Samuel 12:7), will give free vent to their rage; and will not scruple to accost their reprovers in the libertine language ascribed to the wicked by the Psalmist, "With our tongues will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is Lord over us?" (Psalm 12:4).
The spirit which is discerned in the disdainful carriage of individuals of this sort, when reminded of their faults, is a striking commentary on the just maxims of the wise man, "He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame: and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot" (Proverbs 9:7). "Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee; rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee" (Proverbs 9:8).
Such is the difference which marks the demeanor of the righteous and the wicked when reminded of their faults. From the passage which has been selected, it is purposed to contemplate:
First, The Care Which God Has Taken For the Reproof of Offenders - It Is Often Administered.
Second, The Effect of This Reproof-He Hardens His Neck.
Third, The Consequence of An Incorrigible Disposition-Sudden and Remediless Destruction.
THE CARE WHICH GOD HAS TAKEN FOR THE REPROOF OF OFFENDERS-IT IS OFTEN ADMINISTERED.
God has made it the duty of His people to deal faithfully with each other. "Exhort one another daily ... lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin" (Hebrews 3:13). And again, "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him" (Leviticus 19:17). And says our Saviour, "If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone; if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican" (Matthew 18:15-17). "Brethren," says James, "if any do err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins" (James 5:19,20).
Further, God has provided for the reproof of offenders by making it the duty of parents towards their children. To attend to the spiritual concerns of children and to restrain their wickedness is the most important of a parent's duty. "We have fathers of our flesh," says the Apostle, "which corrected us, and we gave them reverence" (Hebrews 12:9). Most persons can adopt his language in relation to their own experience, Yes, and what a load of guilt will rest upon the head of that ungodly child who has despised all the warnings, the entreaties, and tears and prayers of a pious father or an affectionate mother, who travailed in birth again that Christ might be formed in their souls, the hope of glory, when their own bodies slumber in the dust.
God also reproves sinners by His providence. He sends His judgments abroad in the earth that the inhabitants may learn righteousness. By the pains we feel, we are admonished that we are sinners and warned to flee from the wrath to come. We are admonished by His Word. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (Second Timothy 3:16,17). All the invitations, commands, threatenings, and warnings in the Bible are so many admonitions to sinners.
Ministers reprove us. "Son of man, I have made thee a watchman to the house of Israel; therefore hear the word at My mouth, and give them warning from Me" (Ezekiel 3:17). "Show My people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sin" (Isaiah 58:1). Hear the injunction of Paul to Timothy, "I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom; preach the Word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables" (Second Timothy 4:14). It seems as if, in uttering this prediction, the Apostle had an eye upon sinners of our own day.
But woe to those ministers who do not feel the weight of this charge, and woe to those wincing hearers, who, having itching ears that will not endure sound doctrine, heap to themselves teachers that prophesy smooth things and say "peace, peace" to the wicked when God hath expressly declared that there is no peace for them. Against such preachers and hearers, the anger of the Lord and His jealousy will smoke and all the curses that are written in this Book shall lie upon them and the Lord shall blot out their names from under heaven.
"When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity: but his blood will I require at thine hand;" is the warning given by the Lord through the prophet (Ezekiel 33:8). Mark: the consequence of withholding the warning is the destruction of both the preacher and the hearer.
We are likewise reproved by His Spirit. "And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment" (John 16:8). The Spirit is sent to admonish. His language is, "Sinner, where are you going, and what will be the end of your sinful course? Prepare to meet your God!"
God sometimes reproves one sinner by the conviction and conversion of another. Here is one who has been your intimate friend and companion. Your views and feelings and pursuits and objects of delight, and I might add, your sins too, have been the same. Yesterday he thought and spoke and acted in all respects like yourself. Today he is alarmed at his awful condition. He trembles in view of a judgment to come. Hitherto he has been moving merrily along with you, side by side; but he dares follow you no further. He has quit your company and fled. But why? Alas, he finds himself a sinner. He has a soul to be saved or lost forever. This, my hearer, is strong preaching to some of you. When near and dear friends begin to forsake and shun you, it is time for you to begin to look about yourself. This is a silent but a solemn warning to you to flee from the wrath to come. When you see or hear of a hardened sinner, alarmed at his awful condition, sight or sound carries with it this solemn admonition: see the end to which you are coming. Though you may think to hold out, yet you cannot endure long. Your stout heart will soon tremble, and all your boasted courage will prove to be mere cowardice. Here you can see the fearful end to which you are fast approaching. You must repent or perish!
THE EFFECT OF THIS REPROOF-HE HARDENS HIS NECK
Allusion is made to the bullock which has repeatedly felt the galling yoke. At length his neck becomes hardened, and he can bear it without flinching or feeling. The sinner never hears a galling reproof without it producing some effect. If his heart is not subdued and changed, he becomes altogether more hardened. The child which is often corrected but not subdued becomes more hardened.
The sinner, under the afflictive hand of divine providence, is always made better or worse. If sickness and pain and the death of friends do not wean him from the world and drive him to God, they harden his heart. This is the effect of all the judgments of heaven and of all the calamities and miseries of human life. This is strikingly illustrated in the case of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil" (Ecclesiastes 8:11). Thus despising the riches of divine goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads him to repentance, after his hardness and impenitent heart and with a stiff neck, he perseveres in his course of rebellion, treasuring up unto himself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God (Romans 2:4,5).
Oh, the awful reckoning that awaits such offenders!
It is wholly impossible that a person should be frequently and faithfully admonished for his crime, and yet experience no alteration in is condition. His rancorous pride will be augmented, and his conscience seared as with a hot iron. "The earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God; but that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned" (Hebrews 6:7,8).
On this work, the sinner may make rapid advances. He may acquire the faculty of silencing the remonstrances of his conscience and, with a stoic apathy, proudly boast that he is superior to the thunders of Sinai. He may resist the mild accents of mercy and do despite to the Spirit of grace. He may spurn the offers of a bleeding Saviour. The darkened heavens, the rending rocks, and the quaking earth may have no effect; to all these, he may render himself impervious. But the day comes that shall burn as an oven. Then his stiff neck and his stout heart will not exempt him from the terrors that shall overtake the soul of every guilty culprit that shall stand at the judgment seat of God.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF AN INCORRIGIBLE DISPOSITION-SUDDEN AND REMEDILESS DESTRUCTION.
"He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." He "shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power" (Second Thessalonians 1:9). This is the doom of the incorrigible sinner.
His punishment shall have no end. "Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:44). "The smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever" (Revelation 14:11). "The rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and he cried and said... Father Abraham, have mercy on me... But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented." And to cut off from Dives the last hope of relief in his torments, Abraham added, "And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence" (Luke 16:22-26). The redemption of the soul is precious for the soul lives forever; but its destruction is eternal.
It is sudden. "....Shall suddenly be destroyed." Thus the Psalmist said, "How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors" (Psalm 73:19). "As the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them" (Ecclesiastes 9:12). When sinners lose their souls, they always lose them unexpectedly, especially those who have been hardened offenders. "When they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape" (First Thessalonians 5:3).
This sentiment is verified in the providence of God. The fact is common that it has become a proverb. The text itself is the result of a wise observation of the conduct of divine providence. It embodies the wisdom of the ages. Thus was it with the inhabitants of the old world. They were often reproved by the preaching of Noah and by the strivings of the Spirit; but they hardened their necks and heeded neither. "They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away' (Matthew 24:37-39). They were suddenly destroyed and that without remedy.
Thus it was with Pharaoh who was so often reproved by Moses and by the judgments of God. Conscience was aroused; but as often did he silence her voice and harden his neck. At length he was suddenly drowned and went down quickly into hell.
Thus it was with the inhabitants of Sodom. Righteous Lot warned them of their danger. The very evening before their destruction, the men of Sodom compassed the house of Lot around, both old and young, all, people from every quarter; and Lot went out and reproved them for their wickedness; but they were too far gone to bear it, and they said, "Stand back." This unwillingness to take reproof marked them out as ripe for destruction. The same night Lot went out and delivered his last warning to his sons-in-law, "Up, get ye out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city' (Genesis 19:14). And what was the effect of this alarm? Why they felt just as sinners now feel; he seemed as one that mocked. So hardened were they that Lot appeared like a fool, and his message like an idle tale. They were not to be frightened by him. They saw no signs of an approaching storm and heard no distant thunder roar. The morning arose fair as ever; and all was peace and safety. "They did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all" (Luke 17:28,29). They were suddenly destroyed and that without remedy.
Ah! Methinks, it is enough to curdle the blood in our veins to consider how suddenly the most stupid and hardened sinner in the house may lose his soul. He may, and doubtless will, sleep on until he is awakened by the voice of God, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee" (Luke 12:20).
For there is no remedy. The sinner who continues to harden his neck under reproof cannot be saved. He shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy, because it cannot be prevented. Here is a sinner who will not take reproof. The question arises, what shall be done to prevent the loss of his soul? The answer is, Nothing! He is marching forward to eternity and to the pit of destruction with a proud heart and with a stiff neck, and nothing can stop him in his mad career. Such a sinner must go to destruction, and no means can prevent it. This is the meaning of our text. There is no remedy. The only remedy which can be applied for the salvation of sinners is the Gospel, and this remedy never takes effect without alarming and arousing the guilty conscience. But when warned to break off his sins and to flee from the wrath to come, the hardened sinners says, 1 will not be frightened to heaven."
Thus was it with the old world. "Noah, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. (Hebrews 11:7). By his preaching, and by his example, he warned the wicked world of the coming flood. But they were not to be frightened. Thus was it with the inhabitants of Sodom. The preacher applied the most powerful means, the only remedy to prevent their destruction, "Up, get ye out of this place, for I will destroy the city' (Genesis 19:14); but they were not frightened. He seemed as one that mocked. They would not be alarmed, and so there was no remedy. What could the preacher do more? Nothing! Sinner, if you cannot be alarmed, you cannot be saved' If you do not believe that you are under sentence of death from God's holy law, then you do not feel your need of pardon, and "Ye will not come to Christ that ye might have life" (John 5:40). "He that believeth not is condemned already" (John 3:18), and "the wrath of God abideth on Him" (John 3:18, 36). The sinner who does not feel the awful conviction of this truth cannot be pardoned or saved.
The language of the Gospel is "Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish' (Luke 13:3). But no sinner ever repented without conviction of sin. Even the Spirit of God never interposes to rescue the sinner from destruction in any other way than by arousing his guilty conscience to perform its office. His genuine effects on the heart are thus described, "and when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin because they believe not on Me; of righteousness because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more; of judgment because the prince of this world is judged" (John 16:8-11). But you are not to be frightened! "When they heard this they were pricked in their hearts, and exclaimed, men and brethren what shall we do?" (Acts 2:37). But you are not to be frightened! "When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died" (Romans 7:9). But you are not to be frightened! The sinner who talks in this strain is either an infidel or ignorant of the contents of the Bible.
For such a sinner, with such views and such feelings, the Gospel contains no remedy. To such a sinner the Spirit of God offers no remedy. "He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." The sinner who will not take reproof must be destroyed. The physician who has exhausted his skill and tried every experiment upon his patient can only look on and see him die. So fares it with the incorrigible sinner. You may soothe him in his sins; you may flatter his vanity; but this is only hastening the work of destruction. The only salutary application is conviction of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come; but this his proud heart will not endure. Every attempt to rescue him from destruction will be resisted. It will only exasperate. "He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame, and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth to himself a blot" (Proverbs 9:7). Therefore, says the wise man, "Reprove not a scorner lest he hate thee" (Proverbs 9:8).
But if such be the effect of reproof, methinks I hear someone say, "Then I will not hear the Gospel. I will shun all reproof." Answer: A resolution not to take reproof proclaims yourself to be one of the very persons described in the text. Whoever objects in this manner shows his determination to harden his neck at all events; for no one can shun reproof, or a preached Gospel, without hardening his neck in the most effectual manner. He voluntarily places himself beyond the reach of hope. The man who has drunk poison may say, "I will run, I will shun it!" But he is too late! You have heard the Gospel and can never rid yourself of its everlasting obligations. "If they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven" (Hebrews 12:25). "They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them" (Proverbs 1:30-32).
From this subject we make the following reflections:
REFLECTION ONE. The equity of the sinner's punishment. He hardens his neck against reproof and brings destruction on himself. When the Spirit of God comes and with a still small voice whispers conviction to his guilty conscience and he feels some concern for his soul, he tries not to be alarmed but to appear above it. He shuns the light of divine truth. He loves darkness, and now he shall have darkness enough. God says, "Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see" (Psalm 69:23).
The sinner says, "Peace and safety, let us alone." God says, "He is joined to idols, let him alone" (Hosea 4:17). The sinner says, "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee." (Acts 24:25). God says, "I go My way. My Spirit shall no longer strive."
The sinner chooses not to be under conviction, and now suppose God's choice and the sinner's choice should happen to coincide? All can see the equity of the sinner's punishment. If he will not lay up treasures in heaven, then he must lay up treasures in hell. This is done by hardening his own heart. After his hardness and impenitent heart, man treasures up unto himself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God (Romans 2:5).
When sinners are lost, their consciences will forever reprove them for destroying themselves. They are made to eat of the fruit of their own ways, and are filled with their own devices. They utterly perish in their own corruption. By hardening his neck, the sinner, with his own hand, doses the door of heaven against himself.
REFLECTION TWO. Our subject is full of alarms to the aged sinner. My aged fathers, how long have you lived without God in the world? How many warnings have you heard and lost? You have lived so many years and have heard so many warnings and have lost them all!
I now appeal to your own experience. Do you not find that the longer you live, the harder are your hearts? Can you not bear testimony to the truth of our text? Where are you now? Once you enjoyed a season of youth, but alas it is over and gone forever! Your sun is almost down. I address you on the very brink of the grave. You are just ready to launch into eternity; and if you are not suddenly saved, you will be suddenly destroyed and that without remedy. You now live in an interesting crisis, the season of a revival. It has an important bearing on the aged in this congregation. Oh, how many younger than yourselves have hopefully entered the kingdom of God before you! In this you have often been reproved. And are you still out of Christ? Your case is becoming more and more hopeless. The probability, oh fear, is a thousand to one that you will be lost. You have no prospect of witnessing another revival in your day. Let the present season slip, and where are you? This very warning, if neglected, will render your case more hopeless still.
REFLECTION THREE. Our subject contains a warning to the young. If he, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy, then beware how you feel and how you conduct yourself under reproof. How often have you been reproved by preaching, by conversation, by the conviction and conversion of your companions, by the admonition of conscience and by the voice of the Holy Spirit? How is this revival season likely to leave you? Certainly not as it found you! if you do not profit by all these warnings, you will be seven-fold harder than when it commenced. What improvement have you made of all the warnings you have heard? Where are you now. If my preaching does not prove a savor of life, it will be a savor of death unto death to your souls.
Every warning you neglect is rendering your salvation less and less probable. It is making the work of repentance more and more difficult. You are wandering farther and farther from God and plunging deeper and deeper into misery at every step which you advance. With your own hands you are now forging those chains which will bind you down in darkness and despair.
To you the Saviour calls, "Turn you' Turn you at My reproof!" "Because I have called, and you have refused; I have stretched out My hand, and no man regarded; but you have set at naught all My counsel, and would none of My reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon Me, but I will not answer; they shall seek Me early, but they shall not find Me: for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord; they would none of My counsel; they despised all My reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices" (Proverbs 1:23-31). Today then, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.
REFLECTION FOUR. The more stupid and hardened the sinner, the nearer to destruction he is. Thus was it with the inhabitants of the old world. They never were more thoughtless than before the flood came. It came when they least expected it. "They knew not until the flood came and took them all away' (Matthew 24:39). Never was Sodom more stupid than the very night before it was destroyed. The preaching of Lot seemed like an idle tale. They were doubtless making themselves merry with it until the very moment when the flames of hell took hold of them.
Thus was it with the rich fool: "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry" (Luke 12:19). And thus it has been with all who have gone to hell from under the light of the Gospel. They cried peace and safety until they were lost. Death came too soon, and they dropped into hell as into a snare, and it closed suddenly upon them.
Those sinners are commonly nearest destruction who think and care the least about it. Hell is truth learned too late. Stop, poor sinner! Stop and think!
http://articles.ochristian.com/article499.shtml
A STRONGER INDICATION OF A mind unreconciled to God can hardly be conceived than the unwillingness to receive reproof. The humble man is always thankful for admonition administered in the spirit of meekness and prompted by a sincere desire for the welfare of the offender; while the haughty sinner, whose ways are always right in his own eyes, indignantly rejects it. Hence the reasonable precaution which our Saviour addressed to His disciples: "Give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you" (Matthew 7:6).
It is not the best policy to reprove offenders of every description and on all occasions. Prudence and judgment ought ever to be exercised in the discharge of this duty. Otherwise, the well-meant endeavors of the man who undertakes the unwelcome task of a censor will meet with a sad recompense. Few, when faithfully reminded of their offenses, will evince the placid temper of the pious David, who (doubtless in allusion to the plain and pointed reproof administered to him by the prophet Nathan) exclaimed, "Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness; and let him reprove me, it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head!' (Psalm 141:5). Most persons, on the contrary, when closely pressed as he was, and to whose conscience crimes are sent home with a clearness which cannot be mistaken, "Thou art the man" (Second Samuel 12:7), will give free vent to their rage; and will not scruple to accost their reprovers in the libertine language ascribed to the wicked by the Psalmist, "With our tongues will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is Lord over us?" (Psalm 12:4).
The spirit which is discerned in the disdainful carriage of individuals of this sort, when reminded of their faults, is a striking commentary on the just maxims of the wise man, "He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame: and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth himself a blot" (Proverbs 9:7). "Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee; rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee" (Proverbs 9:8).
Such is the difference which marks the demeanor of the righteous and the wicked when reminded of their faults. From the passage which has been selected, it is purposed to contemplate:
First, The Care Which God Has Taken For the Reproof of Offenders - It Is Often Administered.
Second, The Effect of This Reproof-He Hardens His Neck.
Third, The Consequence of An Incorrigible Disposition-Sudden and Remediless Destruction.
THE CARE WHICH GOD HAS TAKEN FOR THE REPROOF OF OFFENDERS-IT IS OFTEN ADMINISTERED.
God has made it the duty of His people to deal faithfully with each other. "Exhort one another daily ... lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin" (Hebrews 3:13). And again, "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him" (Leviticus 19:17). And says our Saviour, "If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone; if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican" (Matthew 18:15-17). "Brethren," says James, "if any do err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins" (James 5:19,20).
Further, God has provided for the reproof of offenders by making it the duty of parents towards their children. To attend to the spiritual concerns of children and to restrain their wickedness is the most important of a parent's duty. "We have fathers of our flesh," says the Apostle, "which corrected us, and we gave them reverence" (Hebrews 12:9). Most persons can adopt his language in relation to their own experience, Yes, and what a load of guilt will rest upon the head of that ungodly child who has despised all the warnings, the entreaties, and tears and prayers of a pious father or an affectionate mother, who travailed in birth again that Christ might be formed in their souls, the hope of glory, when their own bodies slumber in the dust.
God also reproves sinners by His providence. He sends His judgments abroad in the earth that the inhabitants may learn righteousness. By the pains we feel, we are admonished that we are sinners and warned to flee from the wrath to come. We are admonished by His Word. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (Second Timothy 3:16,17). All the invitations, commands, threatenings, and warnings in the Bible are so many admonitions to sinners.
Ministers reprove us. "Son of man, I have made thee a watchman to the house of Israel; therefore hear the word at My mouth, and give them warning from Me" (Ezekiel 3:17). "Show My people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sin" (Isaiah 58:1). Hear the injunction of Paul to Timothy, "I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom; preach the Word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables" (Second Timothy 4:14). It seems as if, in uttering this prediction, the Apostle had an eye upon sinners of our own day.
But woe to those ministers who do not feel the weight of this charge, and woe to those wincing hearers, who, having itching ears that will not endure sound doctrine, heap to themselves teachers that prophesy smooth things and say "peace, peace" to the wicked when God hath expressly declared that there is no peace for them. Against such preachers and hearers, the anger of the Lord and His jealousy will smoke and all the curses that are written in this Book shall lie upon them and the Lord shall blot out their names from under heaven.
"When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity: but his blood will I require at thine hand;" is the warning given by the Lord through the prophet (Ezekiel 33:8). Mark: the consequence of withholding the warning is the destruction of both the preacher and the hearer.
We are likewise reproved by His Spirit. "And when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment" (John 16:8). The Spirit is sent to admonish. His language is, "Sinner, where are you going, and what will be the end of your sinful course? Prepare to meet your God!"
God sometimes reproves one sinner by the conviction and conversion of another. Here is one who has been your intimate friend and companion. Your views and feelings and pursuits and objects of delight, and I might add, your sins too, have been the same. Yesterday he thought and spoke and acted in all respects like yourself. Today he is alarmed at his awful condition. He trembles in view of a judgment to come. Hitherto he has been moving merrily along with you, side by side; but he dares follow you no further. He has quit your company and fled. But why? Alas, he finds himself a sinner. He has a soul to be saved or lost forever. This, my hearer, is strong preaching to some of you. When near and dear friends begin to forsake and shun you, it is time for you to begin to look about yourself. This is a silent but a solemn warning to you to flee from the wrath to come. When you see or hear of a hardened sinner, alarmed at his awful condition, sight or sound carries with it this solemn admonition: see the end to which you are coming. Though you may think to hold out, yet you cannot endure long. Your stout heart will soon tremble, and all your boasted courage will prove to be mere cowardice. Here you can see the fearful end to which you are fast approaching. You must repent or perish!
THE EFFECT OF THIS REPROOF-HE HARDENS HIS NECK
Allusion is made to the bullock which has repeatedly felt the galling yoke. At length his neck becomes hardened, and he can bear it without flinching or feeling. The sinner never hears a galling reproof without it producing some effect. If his heart is not subdued and changed, he becomes altogether more hardened. The child which is often corrected but not subdued becomes more hardened.
The sinner, under the afflictive hand of divine providence, is always made better or worse. If sickness and pain and the death of friends do not wean him from the world and drive him to God, they harden his heart. This is the effect of all the judgments of heaven and of all the calamities and miseries of human life. This is strikingly illustrated in the case of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil" (Ecclesiastes 8:11). Thus despising the riches of divine goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads him to repentance, after his hardness and impenitent heart and with a stiff neck, he perseveres in his course of rebellion, treasuring up unto himself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God (Romans 2:4,5).
Oh, the awful reckoning that awaits such offenders!
It is wholly impossible that a person should be frequently and faithfully admonished for his crime, and yet experience no alteration in is condition. His rancorous pride will be augmented, and his conscience seared as with a hot iron. "The earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God; but that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned" (Hebrews 6:7,8).
On this work, the sinner may make rapid advances. He may acquire the faculty of silencing the remonstrances of his conscience and, with a stoic apathy, proudly boast that he is superior to the thunders of Sinai. He may resist the mild accents of mercy and do despite to the Spirit of grace. He may spurn the offers of a bleeding Saviour. The darkened heavens, the rending rocks, and the quaking earth may have no effect; to all these, he may render himself impervious. But the day comes that shall burn as an oven. Then his stiff neck and his stout heart will not exempt him from the terrors that shall overtake the soul of every guilty culprit that shall stand at the judgment seat of God.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF AN INCORRIGIBLE DISPOSITION-SUDDEN AND REMEDILESS DESTRUCTION.
"He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." He "shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power" (Second Thessalonians 1:9). This is the doom of the incorrigible sinner.
His punishment shall have no end. "Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:44). "The smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever" (Revelation 14:11). "The rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and he cried and said... Father Abraham, have mercy on me... But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented." And to cut off from Dives the last hope of relief in his torments, Abraham added, "And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence" (Luke 16:22-26). The redemption of the soul is precious for the soul lives forever; but its destruction is eternal.
It is sudden. "....Shall suddenly be destroyed." Thus the Psalmist said, "How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors" (Psalm 73:19). "As the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them" (Ecclesiastes 9:12). When sinners lose their souls, they always lose them unexpectedly, especially those who have been hardened offenders. "When they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape" (First Thessalonians 5:3).
This sentiment is verified in the providence of God. The fact is common that it has become a proverb. The text itself is the result of a wise observation of the conduct of divine providence. It embodies the wisdom of the ages. Thus was it with the inhabitants of the old world. They were often reproved by the preaching of Noah and by the strivings of the Spirit; but they hardened their necks and heeded neither. "They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away' (Matthew 24:37-39). They were suddenly destroyed and that without remedy.
Thus it was with Pharaoh who was so often reproved by Moses and by the judgments of God. Conscience was aroused; but as often did he silence her voice and harden his neck. At length he was suddenly drowned and went down quickly into hell.
Thus it was with the inhabitants of Sodom. Righteous Lot warned them of their danger. The very evening before their destruction, the men of Sodom compassed the house of Lot around, both old and young, all, people from every quarter; and Lot went out and reproved them for their wickedness; but they were too far gone to bear it, and they said, "Stand back." This unwillingness to take reproof marked them out as ripe for destruction. The same night Lot went out and delivered his last warning to his sons-in-law, "Up, get ye out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city' (Genesis 19:14). And what was the effect of this alarm? Why they felt just as sinners now feel; he seemed as one that mocked. So hardened were they that Lot appeared like a fool, and his message like an idle tale. They were not to be frightened by him. They saw no signs of an approaching storm and heard no distant thunder roar. The morning arose fair as ever; and all was peace and safety. "They did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all" (Luke 17:28,29). They were suddenly destroyed and that without remedy.
Ah! Methinks, it is enough to curdle the blood in our veins to consider how suddenly the most stupid and hardened sinner in the house may lose his soul. He may, and doubtless will, sleep on until he is awakened by the voice of God, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee" (Luke 12:20).
For there is no remedy. The sinner who continues to harden his neck under reproof cannot be saved. He shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy, because it cannot be prevented. Here is a sinner who will not take reproof. The question arises, what shall be done to prevent the loss of his soul? The answer is, Nothing! He is marching forward to eternity and to the pit of destruction with a proud heart and with a stiff neck, and nothing can stop him in his mad career. Such a sinner must go to destruction, and no means can prevent it. This is the meaning of our text. There is no remedy. The only remedy which can be applied for the salvation of sinners is the Gospel, and this remedy never takes effect without alarming and arousing the guilty conscience. But when warned to break off his sins and to flee from the wrath to come, the hardened sinners says, 1 will not be frightened to heaven."
Thus was it with the old world. "Noah, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. (Hebrews 11:7). By his preaching, and by his example, he warned the wicked world of the coming flood. But they were not to be frightened. Thus was it with the inhabitants of Sodom. The preacher applied the most powerful means, the only remedy to prevent their destruction, "Up, get ye out of this place, for I will destroy the city' (Genesis 19:14); but they were not frightened. He seemed as one that mocked. They would not be alarmed, and so there was no remedy. What could the preacher do more? Nothing! Sinner, if you cannot be alarmed, you cannot be saved' If you do not believe that you are under sentence of death from God's holy law, then you do not feel your need of pardon, and "Ye will not come to Christ that ye might have life" (John 5:40). "He that believeth not is condemned already" (John 3:18), and "the wrath of God abideth on Him" (John 3:18, 36). The sinner who does not feel the awful conviction of this truth cannot be pardoned or saved.
The language of the Gospel is "Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish' (Luke 13:3). But no sinner ever repented without conviction of sin. Even the Spirit of God never interposes to rescue the sinner from destruction in any other way than by arousing his guilty conscience to perform its office. His genuine effects on the heart are thus described, "and when He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin because they believe not on Me; of righteousness because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more; of judgment because the prince of this world is judged" (John 16:8-11). But you are not to be frightened! "When they heard this they were pricked in their hearts, and exclaimed, men and brethren what shall we do?" (Acts 2:37). But you are not to be frightened! "When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died" (Romans 7:9). But you are not to be frightened! The sinner who talks in this strain is either an infidel or ignorant of the contents of the Bible.
For such a sinner, with such views and such feelings, the Gospel contains no remedy. To such a sinner the Spirit of God offers no remedy. "He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." The sinner who will not take reproof must be destroyed. The physician who has exhausted his skill and tried every experiment upon his patient can only look on and see him die. So fares it with the incorrigible sinner. You may soothe him in his sins; you may flatter his vanity; but this is only hastening the work of destruction. The only salutary application is conviction of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come; but this his proud heart will not endure. Every attempt to rescue him from destruction will be resisted. It will only exasperate. "He that reproveth a scorner getteth to himself shame, and he that rebuketh a wicked man getteth to himself a blot" (Proverbs 9:7). Therefore, says the wise man, "Reprove not a scorner lest he hate thee" (Proverbs 9:8).
But if such be the effect of reproof, methinks I hear someone say, "Then I will not hear the Gospel. I will shun all reproof." Answer: A resolution not to take reproof proclaims yourself to be one of the very persons described in the text. Whoever objects in this manner shows his determination to harden his neck at all events; for no one can shun reproof, or a preached Gospel, without hardening his neck in the most effectual manner. He voluntarily places himself beyond the reach of hope. The man who has drunk poison may say, "I will run, I will shun it!" But he is too late! You have heard the Gospel and can never rid yourself of its everlasting obligations. "If they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven" (Hebrews 12:25). "They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them" (Proverbs 1:30-32).
From this subject we make the following reflections:
REFLECTION ONE. The equity of the sinner's punishment. He hardens his neck against reproof and brings destruction on himself. When the Spirit of God comes and with a still small voice whispers conviction to his guilty conscience and he feels some concern for his soul, he tries not to be alarmed but to appear above it. He shuns the light of divine truth. He loves darkness, and now he shall have darkness enough. God says, "Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see" (Psalm 69:23).
The sinner says, "Peace and safety, let us alone." God says, "He is joined to idols, let him alone" (Hosea 4:17). The sinner says, "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee." (Acts 24:25). God says, "I go My way. My Spirit shall no longer strive."
The sinner chooses not to be under conviction, and now suppose God's choice and the sinner's choice should happen to coincide? All can see the equity of the sinner's punishment. If he will not lay up treasures in heaven, then he must lay up treasures in hell. This is done by hardening his own heart. After his hardness and impenitent heart, man treasures up unto himself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God (Romans 2:5).
When sinners are lost, their consciences will forever reprove them for destroying themselves. They are made to eat of the fruit of their own ways, and are filled with their own devices. They utterly perish in their own corruption. By hardening his neck, the sinner, with his own hand, doses the door of heaven against himself.
REFLECTION TWO. Our subject is full of alarms to the aged sinner. My aged fathers, how long have you lived without God in the world? How many warnings have you heard and lost? You have lived so many years and have heard so many warnings and have lost them all!
I now appeal to your own experience. Do you not find that the longer you live, the harder are your hearts? Can you not bear testimony to the truth of our text? Where are you now? Once you enjoyed a season of youth, but alas it is over and gone forever! Your sun is almost down. I address you on the very brink of the grave. You are just ready to launch into eternity; and if you are not suddenly saved, you will be suddenly destroyed and that without remedy. You now live in an interesting crisis, the season of a revival. It has an important bearing on the aged in this congregation. Oh, how many younger than yourselves have hopefully entered the kingdom of God before you! In this you have often been reproved. And are you still out of Christ? Your case is becoming more and more hopeless. The probability, oh fear, is a thousand to one that you will be lost. You have no prospect of witnessing another revival in your day. Let the present season slip, and where are you? This very warning, if neglected, will render your case more hopeless still.
REFLECTION THREE. Our subject contains a warning to the young. If he, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy, then beware how you feel and how you conduct yourself under reproof. How often have you been reproved by preaching, by conversation, by the conviction and conversion of your companions, by the admonition of conscience and by the voice of the Holy Spirit? How is this revival season likely to leave you? Certainly not as it found you! if you do not profit by all these warnings, you will be seven-fold harder than when it commenced. What improvement have you made of all the warnings you have heard? Where are you now. If my preaching does not prove a savor of life, it will be a savor of death unto death to your souls.
Every warning you neglect is rendering your salvation less and less probable. It is making the work of repentance more and more difficult. You are wandering farther and farther from God and plunging deeper and deeper into misery at every step which you advance. With your own hands you are now forging those chains which will bind you down in darkness and despair.
To you the Saviour calls, "Turn you' Turn you at My reproof!" "Because I have called, and you have refused; I have stretched out My hand, and no man regarded; but you have set at naught all My counsel, and would none of My reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon Me, but I will not answer; they shall seek Me early, but they shall not find Me: for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord; they would none of My counsel; they despised all My reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices" (Proverbs 1:23-31). Today then, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.
REFLECTION FOUR. The more stupid and hardened the sinner, the nearer to destruction he is. Thus was it with the inhabitants of the old world. They never were more thoughtless than before the flood came. It came when they least expected it. "They knew not until the flood came and took them all away' (Matthew 24:39). Never was Sodom more stupid than the very night before it was destroyed. The preaching of Lot seemed like an idle tale. They were doubtless making themselves merry with it until the very moment when the flames of hell took hold of them.
Thus was it with the rich fool: "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry" (Luke 12:19). And thus it has been with all who have gone to hell from under the light of the Gospel. They cried peace and safety until they were lost. Death came too soon, and they dropped into hell as into a snare, and it closed suddenly upon them.
Those sinners are commonly nearest destruction who think and care the least about it. Hell is truth learned too late. Stop, poor sinner! Stop and think!
http://articles.ochristian.com/article499.shtml
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The Making of a Prophet By T. Austin Sparks
The Making of a Prophet
By T. Austin Sparks
Prophetic ministry is something which has not come in with time, but is eternal. It has come out of the eternal counsels.
Perhaps you wonder what that means. Well, we remember that, without any explanation or definition, something comes in right at the beginning and takes the place of government in the economy of God, and involves this very function. When Adam sinned and was expelled from the garden, the Word simply says, God "placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim... to keep the way of the tree of life" (Genesis 3:24).
Who or what are the Cherubim? Where do they come from? We have heard nothing about them before; no explanation of them is given. It simply is a statement. God put them there to guard the way of the tree of life. They have become the custodians of life, to hold things according to God's thought. For the thoughts of man's heart have departed from God's thoughts and have become evil; everything has been marred; and now the custodians of the Divine thought about the greatest of all things for man - Divine life, uncreated life - the custodians of that, the Cherubim, are placed there.
But later we are given to understand what the Cherubim are like: this symbolic, composite representation has a four-fold aspect - the lion, the ox, the man and the eagle; and we are given to understand very clearly that the predominant feature is the man. It is a man, really, with three other aspects, those of the lion, the ox, and the eagle. The lion is a symbol of kingship or dominion; the ox, of service and sacrifice; the eagle, of heavenly glory and mystery. The man, the predominant aspect of the Cherubim - what is that?
We know that throughout the Scriptures the man takes the place, in the Divine order of things, of the prophet, the representative of God. The representation of God's thoughts is a man. That was the intention in the creation of Adam in the image and likeness of God - to be the personal embodiment and expression of all God's thoughts. That is what man was created for. That is what we find in the Man, the Man who was God manifested in the flesh. He was the perfect expression of all God's thoughts.
Where has this symbolism of the Cherubim come from? It is simply brought in. It comes out from eternity. It is a Divine, an eternal thought, and it takes charge of things, to hold things for God. So that man - and we know that phrase "the Son of man" - is peculiarly related to the prophetic office, and the prophetic function is an eternal thing, which just comes in. It is, in its very nature, the representation of Divine thoughts, and it is to hold God's thoughts in purity and in fullness. That is the idea related to the man, to the prophet, and that is the prophetic function and nature.
THE IDENTITY OF THE PROPHET WITH HIS MESSAGE
But what does that carry with it? Here we come to the most important point of the whole. It is the absolute identity of the vessel with the vessel's ministry. Prophetic ministry is not something that you can take up. It is something that you are. No academy can make you a prophet. Samuel instituted the schools of the prophets. They were for two purposes - one, the dissemination of religious knowledge, and the other, the writing up of the chronicles of religious history. In Samuel's day there was no open vision; the people had lost the Word of God. They had to be taught the Word of God again, and the chronicles of the ways of God had to be written up and put on record for future generations, and the schools of the prophets were instituted in the main for that purpose. But there is a great deal of difference between those academic prophets and the living, anointed prophets. The academic prophets became members of a profession and swiftly degenerated into something unworthy. All the false prophets came from schools of prophets, and were accepted publicly on that ground. They had been to college and were accepted. But they were false prophets. Going to a religious college does not of itself make you a prophet of God.
My point is this - the identity of the vessel with its ministry is the very heart of Divine thought. A man is called to represent the thoughts of God, to represent them in what he is, not in something that he takes up as a form or line of ministry, not in something that he does. The vessel itself is the ministry and you cannot divide between the two.
THE NECESSITY FOR SELF-EMPTYING
That explains everything in the life of the great prophets. It explains the life of Moses, the prophet whom the Lord God raised up from among his brethren (Deut. 18:15,18). Moses essayed to take up his life-work. He was a man of tremendous abilities, "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians " (Acts 7:22), with great natural qualifications and gifts, and then somehow he got some conception of a life-work for God. It was quite true; it was a true conception, a right idea; he was very honest, there was no question at all about his motives; but he essayed to take up that work on the basis of what he was naturally, with his own ability, qualifications and zeal, and on that basis disaster was allowed to come upon the whole thing.
Not so are prophets made; not so can the prophetic office be exercised. Moses must go into the wilderness and for forty years be emptied out, until there is nothing left of all that as a basis upon which he can have confidence to do the work of God or fulfil any Divine commission. He was by nature a man "mighty in his words and works"; and yet now he says, "I am not eloquent... I am slow of speech..." (Exodus 4:10). There has been a tremendous undercutting of all natural facility and resource, and I do not think that Moses was merely disagreeable in his reply to God. He did not say in effect, 'You would not allow me to do it then, so I will not do it now.' I think he was a man who was under the Divine discipline and yet on top of it. A man who is really under things and who has become petulant does not respond to little opportunities of helping people. We get a glimpse of Moses at the beginning of his time in the wilderness (Exodus 2:16,17) which suggests that he was not of that kind. When there was difficulty at the well, over the watering of the flocks, if Moses had been in a bad mood, cantankerous, disagreeable because the Lord had not seemed to stand by him in Egypt, he probably would have sat somewhere apart and looked on and done nothing to help. But he went readily to help, in a good spirit, doing all he could. He was on top of his trial. Little things indicate where a man is.
We go through times of trial and test under the hand of God, and it is so easy to get into that frame of mind which says in effect, 'The Lord does not want us, He need not have us!' We let everything go, we do not care about anything; we have gone down under our trials and we are rendered useless. I do not believe the Lord ever comes to a person like that to take them up. Elijah, dispirited, fled to the wilderness, and to a cave in the mountains; but he had to get somewhere else before the Lord could do anything with him. "What doest thou here, Elijah?" (I Kings 19:9). The Lord never comes to a man and recommissions him when he is in despair. 'God shall forgive thee all but thy despair' (F. W. H. Myers, 'St. Paul') - because despair is lost faith in God, and God can never do anything with one who has lost faith.
Moses was emptied to the last drop, and yet he was not angry or disagreeable with God. What was the Lord doing? He was making a prophet. Beforehand, the man would have taken up an office, he would have made the prophetic function serve him, he would have used it. There was no inward, vital relationship between the man and the work that he was to do; they were two separate things; the work was objective to the man. At the end of forty years in the wilderness he is in a state for this to become subjective; something has been done. There has been brought about a state which makes the man fit to be a living expression of the Divine thought. He has been emptied of his own thoughts to make room for God's thoughts; he has been emptied of his own strength, that all the energy should be of God.
Is not that perhaps the meaning of the fire and the bush that was not consumed? It is a parable, maybe a larger parable, but I think in the immediate application it was saying something to Moses. 'Moses, you are a very frail creature, a common bush of the desert, a bit of ordinary humanity, nothing at all of resource in yourself; but there is a resource, which can carry you on and on, and you can be maintained, without being consumed, by an energy that is not your own - the Spirit of God, the energy of God.' That was the great lesson this prophet had to learn. 'I cannot!' 'All right', said the Lord, 'but I AM.'
A great deal is made of the natural side of many of the Lord's servants, and usually with tragic results. A lot is made of Paul. 'What a great man Paul was naturally, what intellect he had, what training, what tremendous abilities!' That may all be true, but ask Paul what value it was to him when he was right up against a spiritual situation. He will cry, "Who is sufficient for these things? ... Our sufficiency is from God" (II Cor. 2:16; 3:5). Paul was taken through experiences where he, like Moses, despaired of life. He said, "We... had the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead" (II Cor. 1:9).
MESSAGE INWROUGHT BY ACTUAL EXPERIENCE
You see, the principle is at work all the time, that God is going to make the ministry and the minister identical. You see it in all the prophets. The Lord stood at nothing. He took infinite pains. He worked even through domestic life, the closest relationships of life. Think of the tragedy of Hosea's domestic life. Think of Ezekiel, whose wife the Lord took away in death at a stroke. The Lord said, 'Get up in the morning, anoint your face, allow not the slightest suggestion of mourning or tragedy to be detected; go out as always before, as though nothing had happened; show yourself to the people, go about with a bright countenance, provoke them to enquire what you mean by such outrageous behaviour.' The Lord brought this heartbreak upon him and then required him to act thus. Why? Ezekiel was a prophet; he had got to embody his message, and the message was this: 'Israel, God's wife, has become lost to God, dead to God, and Israel takes no notice of it; she goes on the same as ever, as though nothing had happened.' The prophet must bring it home by his own experience. God is working the thing right in. He works it in in deep and terrible ways in the life of His servant to produce ministry.
God is not allowing us to take up things and subjects. If we are under the Holy Ghost, He is going to make us prophets; that is, He is going to make the prophecy a thing that has taken place in us, so that what we say is only making vocal something that has been going on, that has been done in us. God has been doing it through years in strange, deep, terrible ways in some lives, standing at nothing, touching everything; and the vessel, thus wrought upon, is the message. People do not come to hear what you have to teach. They have come to see what you are, to see that thing which has been wrought by God. What a price the prophetic instrument has to pay!
So Moses went into the wilderness, to the awful undoing of his natural life, his natural mentality; to be brought to zero; to have the thing wrought in him. And was God justified? - for after all it was a question of resource for the future. Oh, the strain that was going to bear down upon that life! Sometimes Moses well-nigh broke; at times he did crack under the strain. "I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me" (Num. 11:14). What was his resource? Oh, if it had been the old resource of Egypt he would not have stood it for a year. He could not stand provocation in Egypt, he must rise up and fight. He broke down morally and spiritually under that little strain away back there forty years before. What would he do with these rebels? How long would he put up with them? A terrific strain was going to bear down upon him, and only a deep inwrought thing, something that had been done inside, would be enough to carry through when it was a case of standing against the stream for God's full thought.
With us, too, the strain may be terrific; oft-times there will come the very strong temptation - 'Let go a little, compromise a little, do not be so utter; you will get more open doors if you will only broaden out a bit; you can have a lot more if you ease up!' What is going to save you in that hour of temptation? The only thing is that God has done this thing in you. It is part of your very being - not something you can give up; it is you, your very life. That is the only thing. God knew what He was doing with Moses. The thing had got to be so much one with the man that there was no dividing between them. The man was the prophetic ministry.
He was rejected by his brethren; they would not have him. "Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?" (Ex. 2:14). That is the human side of it. But there was the Divine side. It was of God that he went into the wilderness for forty years. It had to be, from God's side. It looked as though it was man's doing. But it was not so. These two things went together. Rejection by his brethren was all in line with the sovereign purpose of God. It was the only way in which God got the opportunity He needed to reconstitute this man. The real preparation of this prophet took place during the time that his brethren repudiated him. Oh, the sovereignty of God, the wonderful sovereignty of God! A dark time, a deep time; a breaking, crushing, grinding time; emptied out. It seems as if everything is going, that nothing will be left. Yet all that is God's way of making prophetic ministry.
A MESSENGER DIVINELY ATTESTED
I expect that Moses at the beginning would have been very legalistic, laying down the law - 'You must do this and that' - and so on; an autocrat or despot. When, after those years, we find him coming off the wheel, out of the hands of the Potter, he is said to be "very meek, above all the men that were upon the face of the earth" (Num. 12:3), and God could stand by him then. He could not stand by him on that day when he rose up in a spirit of pride, arrogance, self-assertiveness. God had to let that work itself out to its inevitable consequence. But when Moses, as the meekest of men, the broken, humble, selfless man, was challenged by others as to his office - at such a time Moses did not stand up for his position, his rights; he just handed the matter over to the Lord. His attitude was, 'We will allow the Lord to decide. I have no personal position to preserve: if the Lord has made me His prophet, let Him show it. I am prepared to go out of office if it is not of the Lord.' What a different spirit! And the Lord did stand by him marvelously and mightily on those occasions, and terribly so for those who opposed themselves (Numbers 12:2ff.; 16:3ff.).
PROPHETIC MINISTRY A LIFE, NOT TEACHING
Well, what is a prophet? what is the prophetic function? It is this. God takes hold of a vessel (it may be individual or it may be collective: the function of prophetic ministry may move through a people, as it did through Israel), and He takes that vessel through a deep history, breaking and undoing, disillusioning, revolutionising the whole mentality, so that things which were held fiercely, assertively, are no longer so held. There is developed a wonderful pliableness, adjustableness, teachableness. Everything that was merely objective as to the work of God, as to Divine truth, as to orthodoxy or fundamentalism, all that was held so strongly, in an objective, legalistic way, as to what is right and wrong in methods - it is all dealt with, all broken. There is a new conception entirely, a new outlook upon things; no longer a formal system, something outside you which you take up, but something wrought in an inward way in the vessel. It is what the vessel is that is its ministry. It is not what it has accepted of doctrine and is now teaching.
Oh, to get free of all that horrible realm of things! It is a wretched realm, that of adopting teachings, taking on interpretations, being known because such and such is your line of things. Oh, God deliver us! Oh, to be brought to the place where it is a matter of life - of what God has really done in us, made of us! First He has pulverised us, and then He has reconstructed us on a new spiritual principle, and that expresses itself in ministry: what is said is coming from what has been going on behind, perhaps for years and even right up to date.
Do you see the law of prophetic function? It is that God keeps anointed vessels abreast of truth by experience. Every bit of truth that they give out in word is something that has had a history. They went down into the depths and they were saved by that truth. It was their life and therefore it is a part of them. That is the nature of prophetic ministry.
A PROPHET, TOLERANT BUT UNCOMPROMISING
Reverting to what I was saying about the change in Moses: you can see a reflection of it in the case of Samuel. I think Samuel is one of the most beautiful and lovable characters in the Old Testament, and he is called a prophet. Do you notice that although his own heart is utterly devoted to God's highest and fullest thought, and inwardly he has no compromise whatever, yet he shows a marvelous charity toward Saul during those early months? (It seems not to have gone much beyond a year, the first year of Saul's reign, during which it seems that Saul really did seek to show some semblance of good.) And yet you must remember that Saul represents the denial of the highest of all things - the direct and immediate government of God. Such government was repudiated by Israel in favour of a king - "Make us a king to judge us like all the nations", they said. God said to Samuel: "They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me" (I Samuel 8:5-7).
Kingship was a Divine principle as much as prophecy was. The lion is there with the man. The monarch, representing God's thought of dominion, is there. But with Saul it is on a lower level. His coming in represented the bringing down of that Divine thought to the level of the world: "like all the nations" - a Divine thought taken hold of by carnal men, dragged down to the world level; and Samuel knew it. In his heart he could not accept that, and he complained to God about it; he was against this thing, for he saw what it meant. But how charitable he was to Saul as long as he could be!
Why do I say that? Because there is a condition like that existing today. Divine things have been taken hold of by men carnally, and brought down to an earth level; the direct government of the Holy Spirit has been exchanged for committees and boards and so on. Men have set up the government in Divine things and are running things for God. The way of the New Testament, that in prayer and fasting the mind of the Lord is secured, is hardly known. Well, those who are spiritual, who know, who see, who understand, cannot accept that. But they are very charitable. A true prophet, like Samuel, will be charitable as long as possible, until that wrong thing takes the pronounced and positive form of disobedience to light given. The Lord came to Saul through Samuel and gave him clearly to understand what he had to do. It was made known to him with unmistakable clearness what God required of him, and he was disobedient. Then Samuel said, 'No more charity with that!' He was implacable. "Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath rejected thee from being king" (I Samuel 15:23). Samuel went as far as he could while the man did the best he could. That is charity.
Of course, types are always weak and imperfect, but you can see the truth there. The prophet Samuel showed a great deal of forbearance with things that were wrong, even while in his heart he could not accept them. He hoped that light would break and obedience follow and the situation be saved. We have to be very charitable to all that with which we do not agree.
The point is this - Moses had to learn that; he had to be made like that. We are better fitted to serve the Lord's purpose, we are truer prophets, when we can bear with things with which we do not agree, than when in our zeal we are iconoclasts, and seek only to destroy the offending thing. The Lord says, 'That will not do.'
In all that we have said we have emphasized only one thing - that prophetic ministry is a function. Its function is to hold everything in relation to God's full thought - but not as holding a 'line' of things, in an objective and legalistic way. You do not take something up. You can only do it truly as God has wrought into you that thing for which you are going to stand, and in so far as it has been revealed in you through experience, through the handling of God - God has taken you through it, and you know it like that. It is not that you have achieved something, but rather that you have been broken in the process. Now you are fit for something in the Lord.
By T. Austin Sparks
Prophetic ministry is something which has not come in with time, but is eternal. It has come out of the eternal counsels.
Perhaps you wonder what that means. Well, we remember that, without any explanation or definition, something comes in right at the beginning and takes the place of government in the economy of God, and involves this very function. When Adam sinned and was expelled from the garden, the Word simply says, God "placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim... to keep the way of the tree of life" (Genesis 3:24).
Who or what are the Cherubim? Where do they come from? We have heard nothing about them before; no explanation of them is given. It simply is a statement. God put them there to guard the way of the tree of life. They have become the custodians of life, to hold things according to God's thought. For the thoughts of man's heart have departed from God's thoughts and have become evil; everything has been marred; and now the custodians of the Divine thought about the greatest of all things for man - Divine life, uncreated life - the custodians of that, the Cherubim, are placed there.
But later we are given to understand what the Cherubim are like: this symbolic, composite representation has a four-fold aspect - the lion, the ox, the man and the eagle; and we are given to understand very clearly that the predominant feature is the man. It is a man, really, with three other aspects, those of the lion, the ox, and the eagle. The lion is a symbol of kingship or dominion; the ox, of service and sacrifice; the eagle, of heavenly glory and mystery. The man, the predominant aspect of the Cherubim - what is that?
We know that throughout the Scriptures the man takes the place, in the Divine order of things, of the prophet, the representative of God. The representation of God's thoughts is a man. That was the intention in the creation of Adam in the image and likeness of God - to be the personal embodiment and expression of all God's thoughts. That is what man was created for. That is what we find in the Man, the Man who was God manifested in the flesh. He was the perfect expression of all God's thoughts.
Where has this symbolism of the Cherubim come from? It is simply brought in. It comes out from eternity. It is a Divine, an eternal thought, and it takes charge of things, to hold things for God. So that man - and we know that phrase "the Son of man" - is peculiarly related to the prophetic office, and the prophetic function is an eternal thing, which just comes in. It is, in its very nature, the representation of Divine thoughts, and it is to hold God's thoughts in purity and in fullness. That is the idea related to the man, to the prophet, and that is the prophetic function and nature.
THE IDENTITY OF THE PROPHET WITH HIS MESSAGE
But what does that carry with it? Here we come to the most important point of the whole. It is the absolute identity of the vessel with the vessel's ministry. Prophetic ministry is not something that you can take up. It is something that you are. No academy can make you a prophet. Samuel instituted the schools of the prophets. They were for two purposes - one, the dissemination of religious knowledge, and the other, the writing up of the chronicles of religious history. In Samuel's day there was no open vision; the people had lost the Word of God. They had to be taught the Word of God again, and the chronicles of the ways of God had to be written up and put on record for future generations, and the schools of the prophets were instituted in the main for that purpose. But there is a great deal of difference between those academic prophets and the living, anointed prophets. The academic prophets became members of a profession and swiftly degenerated into something unworthy. All the false prophets came from schools of prophets, and were accepted publicly on that ground. They had been to college and were accepted. But they were false prophets. Going to a religious college does not of itself make you a prophet of God.
My point is this - the identity of the vessel with its ministry is the very heart of Divine thought. A man is called to represent the thoughts of God, to represent them in what he is, not in something that he takes up as a form or line of ministry, not in something that he does. The vessel itself is the ministry and you cannot divide between the two.
THE NECESSITY FOR SELF-EMPTYING
That explains everything in the life of the great prophets. It explains the life of Moses, the prophet whom the Lord God raised up from among his brethren (Deut. 18:15,18). Moses essayed to take up his life-work. He was a man of tremendous abilities, "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians " (Acts 7:22), with great natural qualifications and gifts, and then somehow he got some conception of a life-work for God. It was quite true; it was a true conception, a right idea; he was very honest, there was no question at all about his motives; but he essayed to take up that work on the basis of what he was naturally, with his own ability, qualifications and zeal, and on that basis disaster was allowed to come upon the whole thing.
Not so are prophets made; not so can the prophetic office be exercised. Moses must go into the wilderness and for forty years be emptied out, until there is nothing left of all that as a basis upon which he can have confidence to do the work of God or fulfil any Divine commission. He was by nature a man "mighty in his words and works"; and yet now he says, "I am not eloquent... I am slow of speech..." (Exodus 4:10). There has been a tremendous undercutting of all natural facility and resource, and I do not think that Moses was merely disagreeable in his reply to God. He did not say in effect, 'You would not allow me to do it then, so I will not do it now.' I think he was a man who was under the Divine discipline and yet on top of it. A man who is really under things and who has become petulant does not respond to little opportunities of helping people. We get a glimpse of Moses at the beginning of his time in the wilderness (Exodus 2:16,17) which suggests that he was not of that kind. When there was difficulty at the well, over the watering of the flocks, if Moses had been in a bad mood, cantankerous, disagreeable because the Lord had not seemed to stand by him in Egypt, he probably would have sat somewhere apart and looked on and done nothing to help. But he went readily to help, in a good spirit, doing all he could. He was on top of his trial. Little things indicate where a man is.
We go through times of trial and test under the hand of God, and it is so easy to get into that frame of mind which says in effect, 'The Lord does not want us, He need not have us!' We let everything go, we do not care about anything; we have gone down under our trials and we are rendered useless. I do not believe the Lord ever comes to a person like that to take them up. Elijah, dispirited, fled to the wilderness, and to a cave in the mountains; but he had to get somewhere else before the Lord could do anything with him. "What doest thou here, Elijah?" (I Kings 19:9). The Lord never comes to a man and recommissions him when he is in despair. 'God shall forgive thee all but thy despair' (F. W. H. Myers, 'St. Paul') - because despair is lost faith in God, and God can never do anything with one who has lost faith.
Moses was emptied to the last drop, and yet he was not angry or disagreeable with God. What was the Lord doing? He was making a prophet. Beforehand, the man would have taken up an office, he would have made the prophetic function serve him, he would have used it. There was no inward, vital relationship between the man and the work that he was to do; they were two separate things; the work was objective to the man. At the end of forty years in the wilderness he is in a state for this to become subjective; something has been done. There has been brought about a state which makes the man fit to be a living expression of the Divine thought. He has been emptied of his own thoughts to make room for God's thoughts; he has been emptied of his own strength, that all the energy should be of God.
Is not that perhaps the meaning of the fire and the bush that was not consumed? It is a parable, maybe a larger parable, but I think in the immediate application it was saying something to Moses. 'Moses, you are a very frail creature, a common bush of the desert, a bit of ordinary humanity, nothing at all of resource in yourself; but there is a resource, which can carry you on and on, and you can be maintained, without being consumed, by an energy that is not your own - the Spirit of God, the energy of God.' That was the great lesson this prophet had to learn. 'I cannot!' 'All right', said the Lord, 'but I AM.'
A great deal is made of the natural side of many of the Lord's servants, and usually with tragic results. A lot is made of Paul. 'What a great man Paul was naturally, what intellect he had, what training, what tremendous abilities!' That may all be true, but ask Paul what value it was to him when he was right up against a spiritual situation. He will cry, "Who is sufficient for these things? ... Our sufficiency is from God" (II Cor. 2:16; 3:5). Paul was taken through experiences where he, like Moses, despaired of life. He said, "We... had the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead" (II Cor. 1:9).
MESSAGE INWROUGHT BY ACTUAL EXPERIENCE
You see, the principle is at work all the time, that God is going to make the ministry and the minister identical. You see it in all the prophets. The Lord stood at nothing. He took infinite pains. He worked even through domestic life, the closest relationships of life. Think of the tragedy of Hosea's domestic life. Think of Ezekiel, whose wife the Lord took away in death at a stroke. The Lord said, 'Get up in the morning, anoint your face, allow not the slightest suggestion of mourning or tragedy to be detected; go out as always before, as though nothing had happened; show yourself to the people, go about with a bright countenance, provoke them to enquire what you mean by such outrageous behaviour.' The Lord brought this heartbreak upon him and then required him to act thus. Why? Ezekiel was a prophet; he had got to embody his message, and the message was this: 'Israel, God's wife, has become lost to God, dead to God, and Israel takes no notice of it; she goes on the same as ever, as though nothing had happened.' The prophet must bring it home by his own experience. God is working the thing right in. He works it in in deep and terrible ways in the life of His servant to produce ministry.
God is not allowing us to take up things and subjects. If we are under the Holy Ghost, He is going to make us prophets; that is, He is going to make the prophecy a thing that has taken place in us, so that what we say is only making vocal something that has been going on, that has been done in us. God has been doing it through years in strange, deep, terrible ways in some lives, standing at nothing, touching everything; and the vessel, thus wrought upon, is the message. People do not come to hear what you have to teach. They have come to see what you are, to see that thing which has been wrought by God. What a price the prophetic instrument has to pay!
So Moses went into the wilderness, to the awful undoing of his natural life, his natural mentality; to be brought to zero; to have the thing wrought in him. And was God justified? - for after all it was a question of resource for the future. Oh, the strain that was going to bear down upon that life! Sometimes Moses well-nigh broke; at times he did crack under the strain. "I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me" (Num. 11:14). What was his resource? Oh, if it had been the old resource of Egypt he would not have stood it for a year. He could not stand provocation in Egypt, he must rise up and fight. He broke down morally and spiritually under that little strain away back there forty years before. What would he do with these rebels? How long would he put up with them? A terrific strain was going to bear down upon him, and only a deep inwrought thing, something that had been done inside, would be enough to carry through when it was a case of standing against the stream for God's full thought.
With us, too, the strain may be terrific; oft-times there will come the very strong temptation - 'Let go a little, compromise a little, do not be so utter; you will get more open doors if you will only broaden out a bit; you can have a lot more if you ease up!' What is going to save you in that hour of temptation? The only thing is that God has done this thing in you. It is part of your very being - not something you can give up; it is you, your very life. That is the only thing. God knew what He was doing with Moses. The thing had got to be so much one with the man that there was no dividing between them. The man was the prophetic ministry.
He was rejected by his brethren; they would not have him. "Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?" (Ex. 2:14). That is the human side of it. But there was the Divine side. It was of God that he went into the wilderness for forty years. It had to be, from God's side. It looked as though it was man's doing. But it was not so. These two things went together. Rejection by his brethren was all in line with the sovereign purpose of God. It was the only way in which God got the opportunity He needed to reconstitute this man. The real preparation of this prophet took place during the time that his brethren repudiated him. Oh, the sovereignty of God, the wonderful sovereignty of God! A dark time, a deep time; a breaking, crushing, grinding time; emptied out. It seems as if everything is going, that nothing will be left. Yet all that is God's way of making prophetic ministry.
A MESSENGER DIVINELY ATTESTED
I expect that Moses at the beginning would have been very legalistic, laying down the law - 'You must do this and that' - and so on; an autocrat or despot. When, after those years, we find him coming off the wheel, out of the hands of the Potter, he is said to be "very meek, above all the men that were upon the face of the earth" (Num. 12:3), and God could stand by him then. He could not stand by him on that day when he rose up in a spirit of pride, arrogance, self-assertiveness. God had to let that work itself out to its inevitable consequence. But when Moses, as the meekest of men, the broken, humble, selfless man, was challenged by others as to his office - at such a time Moses did not stand up for his position, his rights; he just handed the matter over to the Lord. His attitude was, 'We will allow the Lord to decide. I have no personal position to preserve: if the Lord has made me His prophet, let Him show it. I am prepared to go out of office if it is not of the Lord.' What a different spirit! And the Lord did stand by him marvelously and mightily on those occasions, and terribly so for those who opposed themselves (Numbers 12:2ff.; 16:3ff.).
PROPHETIC MINISTRY A LIFE, NOT TEACHING
Well, what is a prophet? what is the prophetic function? It is this. God takes hold of a vessel (it may be individual or it may be collective: the function of prophetic ministry may move through a people, as it did through Israel), and He takes that vessel through a deep history, breaking and undoing, disillusioning, revolutionising the whole mentality, so that things which were held fiercely, assertively, are no longer so held. There is developed a wonderful pliableness, adjustableness, teachableness. Everything that was merely objective as to the work of God, as to Divine truth, as to orthodoxy or fundamentalism, all that was held so strongly, in an objective, legalistic way, as to what is right and wrong in methods - it is all dealt with, all broken. There is a new conception entirely, a new outlook upon things; no longer a formal system, something outside you which you take up, but something wrought in an inward way in the vessel. It is what the vessel is that is its ministry. It is not what it has accepted of doctrine and is now teaching.
Oh, to get free of all that horrible realm of things! It is a wretched realm, that of adopting teachings, taking on interpretations, being known because such and such is your line of things. Oh, God deliver us! Oh, to be brought to the place where it is a matter of life - of what God has really done in us, made of us! First He has pulverised us, and then He has reconstructed us on a new spiritual principle, and that expresses itself in ministry: what is said is coming from what has been going on behind, perhaps for years and even right up to date.
Do you see the law of prophetic function? It is that God keeps anointed vessels abreast of truth by experience. Every bit of truth that they give out in word is something that has had a history. They went down into the depths and they were saved by that truth. It was their life and therefore it is a part of them. That is the nature of prophetic ministry.
A PROPHET, TOLERANT BUT UNCOMPROMISING
Reverting to what I was saying about the change in Moses: you can see a reflection of it in the case of Samuel. I think Samuel is one of the most beautiful and lovable characters in the Old Testament, and he is called a prophet. Do you notice that although his own heart is utterly devoted to God's highest and fullest thought, and inwardly he has no compromise whatever, yet he shows a marvelous charity toward Saul during those early months? (It seems not to have gone much beyond a year, the first year of Saul's reign, during which it seems that Saul really did seek to show some semblance of good.) And yet you must remember that Saul represents the denial of the highest of all things - the direct and immediate government of God. Such government was repudiated by Israel in favour of a king - "Make us a king to judge us like all the nations", they said. God said to Samuel: "They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me" (I Samuel 8:5-7).
Kingship was a Divine principle as much as prophecy was. The lion is there with the man. The monarch, representing God's thought of dominion, is there. But with Saul it is on a lower level. His coming in represented the bringing down of that Divine thought to the level of the world: "like all the nations" - a Divine thought taken hold of by carnal men, dragged down to the world level; and Samuel knew it. In his heart he could not accept that, and he complained to God about it; he was against this thing, for he saw what it meant. But how charitable he was to Saul as long as he could be!
Why do I say that? Because there is a condition like that existing today. Divine things have been taken hold of by men carnally, and brought down to an earth level; the direct government of the Holy Spirit has been exchanged for committees and boards and so on. Men have set up the government in Divine things and are running things for God. The way of the New Testament, that in prayer and fasting the mind of the Lord is secured, is hardly known. Well, those who are spiritual, who know, who see, who understand, cannot accept that. But they are very charitable. A true prophet, like Samuel, will be charitable as long as possible, until that wrong thing takes the pronounced and positive form of disobedience to light given. The Lord came to Saul through Samuel and gave him clearly to understand what he had to do. It was made known to him with unmistakable clearness what God required of him, and he was disobedient. Then Samuel said, 'No more charity with that!' He was implacable. "Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath rejected thee from being king" (I Samuel 15:23). Samuel went as far as he could while the man did the best he could. That is charity.
Of course, types are always weak and imperfect, but you can see the truth there. The prophet Samuel showed a great deal of forbearance with things that were wrong, even while in his heart he could not accept them. He hoped that light would break and obedience follow and the situation be saved. We have to be very charitable to all that with which we do not agree.
The point is this - Moses had to learn that; he had to be made like that. We are better fitted to serve the Lord's purpose, we are truer prophets, when we can bear with things with which we do not agree, than when in our zeal we are iconoclasts, and seek only to destroy the offending thing. The Lord says, 'That will not do.'
In all that we have said we have emphasized only one thing - that prophetic ministry is a function. Its function is to hold everything in relation to God's full thought - but not as holding a 'line' of things, in an objective and legalistic way. You do not take something up. You can only do it truly as God has wrought into you that thing for which you are going to stand, and in so far as it has been revealed in you through experience, through the handling of God - God has taken you through it, and you know it like that. It is not that you have achieved something, but rather that you have been broken in the process. Now you are fit for something in the Lord.
Divine Life by Spiritual Sight By T. Austin Sparks
Divine Life by Spiritual Sight
By T. Austin Sparks
Reading: John 9.
We have pointed out that with the sign of the feeding of the five thousand Jesus entered upon a new phase of His ministry, that is, upon the phase of conflict. There arose a great deal of conflict out of that work, and from that time He was in an atmosphere of controversy.
When we come to this incident we see how the conflict is intensifying and the division is widening, and the end of this incident is complete division. The emphatic statement concerning this man is: "And they cast him out", and that made the division complete.
The two sides were becoming increasingly distinct and definite. On the one side there was religion, and over against that was spiritual sight. On the one side there was tradition, and on the other side there was revelation. On the one side there was the historic system, and on the other side was spirituality. On the one side there were disciples of "Moses" - you notice what they said in verse 28: "Thou art his disciples; but we are disciples of Moses" - and on the other side there were the disciples of Christ. And these two sides were getting further and further apart - the distinction between these things was becoming more manifest. On the one side religion, tradition, historic system, "Moses": on the other spiritual sight, revelation, a spiritual state and disciples of Christ.
The whole of this conflict and division focused upon one thing. John had opened his Gospel with these words: "In him was life: and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4), and that was the focal point of all this controversy: Light through life. And you see the difference in the prospect or outlook of these two sides. So far as the opposition was concerned the situation had become quite hopeless. You have only to read the whole of this story and you will see how hopeless was the Jewish situation. The words at the end of the chapter we have just read indicate that quite clearly. The verdict of the Lord Jesus upon that whole side was: "Your sin remaineth". It is a great thing to say that religion, tradition, historic system and disciples of "Moses" create a hopeless situation, but that is not my verdict: it is the verdict of the Lord Jesus. And you have only to read through these chapters of controversy and come to that which we shall be considering in the next chapter, and you will agree that that whole situation was a hopeless one.
On the other side was this man, the representative of another class. I trust that we all belong to this man's class - the class which is able to say: "One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see." Over against this hopeless situation was this wonderful hopefulness. A new hope had come into this man's life, and he had come into a new hope.
We were saying that the whole conflict focused upon this one thing: light through life. Jesus said that they were all blind, and to begin with there was no difference between this man and all the others. Of course, his was physical blindness, but it is quite evident that that was only a sign of spiritual blindness. All these others were just as blind as he was in a spiritual way. But the thing which made the difference between hope and hopelessness was just this: he knew he was blind and they did not, and hope or hopelessness turned upon that. There is no doubt about it - this man knew he was blind: "One thing I know... whereas I was blind". There is no question about that. However, these people were just as blind, but they did not know it. The difference was this: that there was in this man a terrible natural limitation of which he was conscious. He knew all about his limitation. Every day that he lived he was made aware of it. He had to be led by the hand and put in the same place every day to beg for his living. The picture of this man is of one who is every day aware of his dependence.
Over against that were these other people, and they lived every day in their own sense of self-sufficiency. Natural limitation and natural self-sufficiency were in conflict, just look at this man again.
The disciples asked a mysterious question, and we are not going to try to explain it: "Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?'' That only means they had the idea, which was a common one, of the pre-existence of spirits, and that people had a history before they came into this world. That may have been pure superstition, but we are not going to try to wrestle with that one, as it does not concern us very much. They asked the Lord that question and He just disposed of it: "Neither did this man sin, nor his parents". All it amounts to is that the man was born with a handicap, and, of course, that is true of everybody. It is just as true of us as it was of this man - the handicap with which we are all born is spiritual blindness.
Whatever form our handicap may take, it is meant to be an opportunity for the sovereignty of God. Here it is spiritual blindness, but we all have various kinds of handicaps with which we are born. What has been one of your greatest problems in life? Is it not that you feel yourself to be quite unfit for that to which the Lord calls you? You find that the Lord makes demands upon you and are conscious that it is not in you to meet them.
You remember Moses. When the Lord met Moses and gave him the command to go into Egypt for the deliverance of Israel, he tried to get out of it, and at last he resorted to his handicap. Perhaps he thought: 'This will beat the Lord, anyway!' He said: 'I cannot speak. This job needs an orator, a man who can preach. I am not the man for the job. Lord, You have chosen the wrong person for this. Lord, You don't know what You are doing.' And you can carry it on and on like that. 'The fact is, Lord, that I am not just fitted for the thing for which You have called me.' What did the Lord say to Moses? 'Who made man's mouth? If I made your mouth I know what kind of a mouth I made. And if I made your mouth so that you cannot speak, that will provide all the greater opportunity for Me to do it through you. Have I not taken forty years to empty you of your own ability? And all that I may have glory and you have none.'
These people said: "We are disciples of Moses" - but how false to Moses they were! They would have said: 'Oh, we can do it!' No, they were not true disciples of Moses.
You remember Jeremiah. The Lord called Jeremiah and gave him a great commission to Israel - and he did exactly the same thing that Moses had done. He tried to get out of it and his argument was: "I cannot speak: for I am a child." The Lord said: "Say not, I am a child: for to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt go, and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt speak" (Jeremiah 1:6,7).
These are examples of men born with a handicap but providing the Lord with a great opportunity to show what He can do. If the Lord requires of us that we should be righteous, we will at once say: "In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing" (Romans 7:18). And how often we turn to that side: 'Oh, I am no good. There is no good in me. In this matter of goodness I am perfectly hopeless.'
Well, the Lord has given us quite a lot in His Word about that. We have had the Letter to the Romans for so long! "The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ" (Romans 3:22). We know all about the doctrine, and yet so often we just come down under this natural handicap. I could go on speaking about many handicaps with which we are born - most of us do truly know that we in ourselves are not fit for the thing the Lord requires of us. We have discovered that we were born that way and it is not in us naturally. We have this handicap. Well, the Lord Jesus has much comfort for us in this sign.
This man had a terrible handicap - he was born blind. He had never seen and did not know what it was to see. He had to have everything explained to him, having no faculty of his own. And Jesus said over against that: 'This is just the greatest opportunity for the glory of God.'
Now, dear friends, look at this in the training of disciples. It will not be long - only a few days - before these disciples discover that side of the meaning of this sign. Peter will say: 'Though all men forsake Thee, yet will I not forsake Thee. I will go with Thee even unto death.' And it says: "Likewise also said all the disciples" (Matthew 26:35) - already, 'We can do it.' Can you? Let us put it to the test - and you know what happened when the test was applied. Those two poor disciples on the road to Emmaus give us a very good idea of their disillusionment. Everything had gone for them, and all they could say was: "We hoped that it was he which should redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21), meaning to say: 'All our hopes are gone.' Oh, these disciples were a very sad picture. And they had to discover their handicap - they had to be brought there. It was necessary that they made this discovery that it was not in them at all, but that discovery was the ground of subsequent glory. We have seen the tremendous change in those men on the Day of Pentecost. Glory had just come down upon all their handicap and covered it. The life of the Lord Jesus had provided new capacities. This mighty life in Christ had taken possession of them by the Holy Spirit, and they were men who could do what they were never able to do before. All the spiritual blindness of those three years had gone. They were men with their spiritual eyes wide open. Read what they said on the Day of Pentecost... "Peter, standing up with the eleven" (Acts 2:14). I do not know whether the whole eleven were speaking at the same time! If not, Peter was speaking for them all. And that discourse is a discourse of wonderful revelation. They were now seeing what they had never seen before as to the Lord Jesus.
Many years ago I made an analysis of that address of Peter's, just to see how many subjects he touched upon. If you do that you will be surprised at the large number of subjects included in that sermon. Indeed, his eyes had been opened! Not only were the disciples seeing, but they were able to do what they could never do before, and the life of the Lord Jesus had effected this.
This is the kind of training that disciples need. The disciples of Christ are like this, but not the disciples of Moses. They are under the law and have always to say 'I cannot'. The true disciples of Christ can say: "I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me" (Philippians 4:13). It is the power of His life within and means that we have gifts and abilities that we never have by nature. This is the beginning of the Gospel. I do not want anyone to think that this is something advanced in the Christian life. It is the very beginning of everything. The commission to the Apostle Paul was in these terms. The Lord said: "Unto whom I send thee, to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light" (Acts 26:17,18). That is the beginning of the Gospel, and this sign ought to have been fulfilled in us right at the beginning of our Christian life. The very first thing that a true Christian and disciple ought to be able to say is: 'I was blind, but now I see. The Lord has opened my spiritual eyes and has removed my natural handicap.'
But while it is the beginning, it is only the beginning. Everyone has noticed the progressive feature in this man's case. They asked him: 'Who opened thine eyes?' In verse 11 he says: "The man that is called Jesus". That is a very simple and elementary beginning. Later on they said: 'What have you to say about Him?' In verse 17 he says: "He is a prophet." That is quite a long way on from 'a man'. But in the end, when Jesus met him - or shall I put it in another way, for this is what it really means - when Jesus knew that they had cast him out and went to find him and said: "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" he answered: "Who is he, Lord, that I may believe on him?" Jesus replied: "He it is that speaketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him." Worshipping Him as God is a long way beyond calling Him just a man.
You see, this is all in the sign: it is in the meaning of things. This life which we receive in Christ has a simple beginning, but it is a progressive life, and the progressive nature of that life is a fuller and fuller discovery of the Lord Jesus. We "grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18 - A.V.). We just detach words like this and separate them from their context. Of course it is quite true, but where do those words come from? Oh, Peter has told us - "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). How shall we grow in grace and in knowledge? By the power of resurrection life in us. This life is a life of spiritual progress.
Now we must come back to where we started. Have you recognized one thing that is so important? We have spoken of the great division, of how things were dividing into two classes, and that division was because a man had received spiritual illumination. That is the factor which always causes the trouble. Dear friends, we can divide professing Christians into two classes. The one class may believe all the Scriptures as being inspired by God; they may believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God; they may believe in the deity of Christ and all the fundamentals of the Christian religion; and they may still be people without spiritual revelation - they may still be unspiritual people. Is that true? Yes, the division there was just as distinct as between believers and unbelievers. And if the Lord really does open someone's eyes and give them spiritual revelation, they are in for trouble - and their trouble will come from the religious world.
Well, here were these orthodox Jews. They believed in the Bible and in all that the Bible taught so far as the words were concerned. But when one man in their midst received spiritual sight they cast him out. Spiritual revelation always provokes hostility - tradition never does. Orthodox religion never does cause trouble, but if you are a man or a woman living in the power of resurrection life, with your eyes wide open, you will meet trouble, and, as I have said, that trouble will come from the religious people.
What are you going to do about it? Well, we have already pointed out that many of the Lord's disciples said: "This is a hard saying; who can hear it?" and "Many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him" (John 6:60,66)... 'This way of spiritual illumination is too hard. We are not prepared to pay the price for it. We are not going that way.'
And so the Lord sifts out on this one thing, and the true disciples are those who have really had their eyes opened. The Lord make us true disciples!
It is a costly way and it does provoke a lot of opposition, but it is a very precious thing to have had our eyes opened - just to be able to see because the Lord has made us see. Those who have counted most for the Lord have been men and women who have come to see with spiritual eyes.
So here in the training of disciples is the sign of the opened eye. May we be able to learn the meaning of this sign!
By T. Austin Sparks
Reading: John 9.
We have pointed out that with the sign of the feeding of the five thousand Jesus entered upon a new phase of His ministry, that is, upon the phase of conflict. There arose a great deal of conflict out of that work, and from that time He was in an atmosphere of controversy.
When we come to this incident we see how the conflict is intensifying and the division is widening, and the end of this incident is complete division. The emphatic statement concerning this man is: "And they cast him out", and that made the division complete.
The two sides were becoming increasingly distinct and definite. On the one side there was religion, and over against that was spiritual sight. On the one side there was tradition, and on the other side there was revelation. On the one side there was the historic system, and on the other side was spirituality. On the one side there were disciples of "Moses" - you notice what they said in verse 28: "Thou art his disciples; but we are disciples of Moses" - and on the other side there were the disciples of Christ. And these two sides were getting further and further apart - the distinction between these things was becoming more manifest. On the one side religion, tradition, historic system, "Moses": on the other spiritual sight, revelation, a spiritual state and disciples of Christ.
The whole of this conflict and division focused upon one thing. John had opened his Gospel with these words: "In him was life: and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4), and that was the focal point of all this controversy: Light through life. And you see the difference in the prospect or outlook of these two sides. So far as the opposition was concerned the situation had become quite hopeless. You have only to read the whole of this story and you will see how hopeless was the Jewish situation. The words at the end of the chapter we have just read indicate that quite clearly. The verdict of the Lord Jesus upon that whole side was: "Your sin remaineth". It is a great thing to say that religion, tradition, historic system and disciples of "Moses" create a hopeless situation, but that is not my verdict: it is the verdict of the Lord Jesus. And you have only to read through these chapters of controversy and come to that which we shall be considering in the next chapter, and you will agree that that whole situation was a hopeless one.
On the other side was this man, the representative of another class. I trust that we all belong to this man's class - the class which is able to say: "One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see." Over against this hopeless situation was this wonderful hopefulness. A new hope had come into this man's life, and he had come into a new hope.
We were saying that the whole conflict focused upon this one thing: light through life. Jesus said that they were all blind, and to begin with there was no difference between this man and all the others. Of course, his was physical blindness, but it is quite evident that that was only a sign of spiritual blindness. All these others were just as blind as he was in a spiritual way. But the thing which made the difference between hope and hopelessness was just this: he knew he was blind and they did not, and hope or hopelessness turned upon that. There is no doubt about it - this man knew he was blind: "One thing I know... whereas I was blind". There is no question about that. However, these people were just as blind, but they did not know it. The difference was this: that there was in this man a terrible natural limitation of which he was conscious. He knew all about his limitation. Every day that he lived he was made aware of it. He had to be led by the hand and put in the same place every day to beg for his living. The picture of this man is of one who is every day aware of his dependence.
Over against that were these other people, and they lived every day in their own sense of self-sufficiency. Natural limitation and natural self-sufficiency were in conflict, just look at this man again.
The disciples asked a mysterious question, and we are not going to try to explain it: "Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?'' That only means they had the idea, which was a common one, of the pre-existence of spirits, and that people had a history before they came into this world. That may have been pure superstition, but we are not going to try to wrestle with that one, as it does not concern us very much. They asked the Lord that question and He just disposed of it: "Neither did this man sin, nor his parents". All it amounts to is that the man was born with a handicap, and, of course, that is true of everybody. It is just as true of us as it was of this man - the handicap with which we are all born is spiritual blindness.
Whatever form our handicap may take, it is meant to be an opportunity for the sovereignty of God. Here it is spiritual blindness, but we all have various kinds of handicaps with which we are born. What has been one of your greatest problems in life? Is it not that you feel yourself to be quite unfit for that to which the Lord calls you? You find that the Lord makes demands upon you and are conscious that it is not in you to meet them.
You remember Moses. When the Lord met Moses and gave him the command to go into Egypt for the deliverance of Israel, he tried to get out of it, and at last he resorted to his handicap. Perhaps he thought: 'This will beat the Lord, anyway!' He said: 'I cannot speak. This job needs an orator, a man who can preach. I am not the man for the job. Lord, You have chosen the wrong person for this. Lord, You don't know what You are doing.' And you can carry it on and on like that. 'The fact is, Lord, that I am not just fitted for the thing for which You have called me.' What did the Lord say to Moses? 'Who made man's mouth? If I made your mouth I know what kind of a mouth I made. And if I made your mouth so that you cannot speak, that will provide all the greater opportunity for Me to do it through you. Have I not taken forty years to empty you of your own ability? And all that I may have glory and you have none.'
These people said: "We are disciples of Moses" - but how false to Moses they were! They would have said: 'Oh, we can do it!' No, they were not true disciples of Moses.
You remember Jeremiah. The Lord called Jeremiah and gave him a great commission to Israel - and he did exactly the same thing that Moses had done. He tried to get out of it and his argument was: "I cannot speak: for I am a child." The Lord said: "Say not, I am a child: for to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt go, and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt speak" (Jeremiah 1:6,7).
These are examples of men born with a handicap but providing the Lord with a great opportunity to show what He can do. If the Lord requires of us that we should be righteous, we will at once say: "In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing" (Romans 7:18). And how often we turn to that side: 'Oh, I am no good. There is no good in me. In this matter of goodness I am perfectly hopeless.'
Well, the Lord has given us quite a lot in His Word about that. We have had the Letter to the Romans for so long! "The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ" (Romans 3:22). We know all about the doctrine, and yet so often we just come down under this natural handicap. I could go on speaking about many handicaps with which we are born - most of us do truly know that we in ourselves are not fit for the thing the Lord requires of us. We have discovered that we were born that way and it is not in us naturally. We have this handicap. Well, the Lord Jesus has much comfort for us in this sign.
This man had a terrible handicap - he was born blind. He had never seen and did not know what it was to see. He had to have everything explained to him, having no faculty of his own. And Jesus said over against that: 'This is just the greatest opportunity for the glory of God.'
Now, dear friends, look at this in the training of disciples. It will not be long - only a few days - before these disciples discover that side of the meaning of this sign. Peter will say: 'Though all men forsake Thee, yet will I not forsake Thee. I will go with Thee even unto death.' And it says: "Likewise also said all the disciples" (Matthew 26:35) - already, 'We can do it.' Can you? Let us put it to the test - and you know what happened when the test was applied. Those two poor disciples on the road to Emmaus give us a very good idea of their disillusionment. Everything had gone for them, and all they could say was: "We hoped that it was he which should redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21), meaning to say: 'All our hopes are gone.' Oh, these disciples were a very sad picture. And they had to discover their handicap - they had to be brought there. It was necessary that they made this discovery that it was not in them at all, but that discovery was the ground of subsequent glory. We have seen the tremendous change in those men on the Day of Pentecost. Glory had just come down upon all their handicap and covered it. The life of the Lord Jesus had provided new capacities. This mighty life in Christ had taken possession of them by the Holy Spirit, and they were men who could do what they were never able to do before. All the spiritual blindness of those three years had gone. They were men with their spiritual eyes wide open. Read what they said on the Day of Pentecost... "Peter, standing up with the eleven" (Acts 2:14). I do not know whether the whole eleven were speaking at the same time! If not, Peter was speaking for them all. And that discourse is a discourse of wonderful revelation. They were now seeing what they had never seen before as to the Lord Jesus.
Many years ago I made an analysis of that address of Peter's, just to see how many subjects he touched upon. If you do that you will be surprised at the large number of subjects included in that sermon. Indeed, his eyes had been opened! Not only were the disciples seeing, but they were able to do what they could never do before, and the life of the Lord Jesus had effected this.
This is the kind of training that disciples need. The disciples of Christ are like this, but not the disciples of Moses. They are under the law and have always to say 'I cannot'. The true disciples of Christ can say: "I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me" (Philippians 4:13). It is the power of His life within and means that we have gifts and abilities that we never have by nature. This is the beginning of the Gospel. I do not want anyone to think that this is something advanced in the Christian life. It is the very beginning of everything. The commission to the Apostle Paul was in these terms. The Lord said: "Unto whom I send thee, to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light" (Acts 26:17,18). That is the beginning of the Gospel, and this sign ought to have been fulfilled in us right at the beginning of our Christian life. The very first thing that a true Christian and disciple ought to be able to say is: 'I was blind, but now I see. The Lord has opened my spiritual eyes and has removed my natural handicap.'
But while it is the beginning, it is only the beginning. Everyone has noticed the progressive feature in this man's case. They asked him: 'Who opened thine eyes?' In verse 11 he says: "The man that is called Jesus". That is a very simple and elementary beginning. Later on they said: 'What have you to say about Him?' In verse 17 he says: "He is a prophet." That is quite a long way on from 'a man'. But in the end, when Jesus met him - or shall I put it in another way, for this is what it really means - when Jesus knew that they had cast him out and went to find him and said: "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" he answered: "Who is he, Lord, that I may believe on him?" Jesus replied: "He it is that speaketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him." Worshipping Him as God is a long way beyond calling Him just a man.
You see, this is all in the sign: it is in the meaning of things. This life which we receive in Christ has a simple beginning, but it is a progressive life, and the progressive nature of that life is a fuller and fuller discovery of the Lord Jesus. We "grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18 - A.V.). We just detach words like this and separate them from their context. Of course it is quite true, but where do those words come from? Oh, Peter has told us - "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). How shall we grow in grace and in knowledge? By the power of resurrection life in us. This life is a life of spiritual progress.
Now we must come back to where we started. Have you recognized one thing that is so important? We have spoken of the great division, of how things were dividing into two classes, and that division was because a man had received spiritual illumination. That is the factor which always causes the trouble. Dear friends, we can divide professing Christians into two classes. The one class may believe all the Scriptures as being inspired by God; they may believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God; they may believe in the deity of Christ and all the fundamentals of the Christian religion; and they may still be people without spiritual revelation - they may still be unspiritual people. Is that true? Yes, the division there was just as distinct as between believers and unbelievers. And if the Lord really does open someone's eyes and give them spiritual revelation, they are in for trouble - and their trouble will come from the religious world.
Well, here were these orthodox Jews. They believed in the Bible and in all that the Bible taught so far as the words were concerned. But when one man in their midst received spiritual sight they cast him out. Spiritual revelation always provokes hostility - tradition never does. Orthodox religion never does cause trouble, but if you are a man or a woman living in the power of resurrection life, with your eyes wide open, you will meet trouble, and, as I have said, that trouble will come from the religious people.
What are you going to do about it? Well, we have already pointed out that many of the Lord's disciples said: "This is a hard saying; who can hear it?" and "Many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him" (John 6:60,66)... 'This way of spiritual illumination is too hard. We are not prepared to pay the price for it. We are not going that way.'
And so the Lord sifts out on this one thing, and the true disciples are those who have really had their eyes opened. The Lord make us true disciples!
It is a costly way and it does provoke a lot of opposition, but it is a very precious thing to have had our eyes opened - just to be able to see because the Lord has made us see. Those who have counted most for the Lord have been men and women who have come to see with spiritual eyes.
So here in the training of disciples is the sign of the opened eye. May we be able to learn the meaning of this sign!
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