Oil for the Light

By T. Austin-Sparks


Transcribed from a message given in July 1955.

The book of Exodus, chapter 27 at verse 20: "And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring unto thee pure olive oil beaten for the light, to cause a lamp to burn continually. In the tent of meeting, without the veil which is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall keep it in order from evening to morning before the Lord: it shall be a statute for ever throughout their generations on behalf of the children of Israel."

Oil for the light. It is my growing conviction dear friends, that the greatest need of our time is a true knowledge and understanding of the Holy Spirit and His work. Such knowledge, if spiritually apprehended, would really solve by far the greater number of the problems which beset Christians and the church today. If only we really lived in the good of the indwelling Holy Spirit with all that that means as a matter of light... how different everything would be.

So I say again, the pressing need of our time is for such knowledge, such understanding. And so, what follows this morning is just touching on the very fringe of that matter; not by any means an attempt to cover it or exhaust it.

This simple fragment: "thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring pure olive oil for the light..." You notice this is a command to the Lord's people. This is an imperative. This is a necessity. This is indispensible, this is essential - a command. It is not optional, left to choice; this is an obligation: "Command the children of Israel that they bring oil for the light".

Now, first of all note the place of the light. The lampstand, as you know, was in the holy place, between the outer court and the most holy place. It was in that place which in type is a between place, a place between heaven and earth, heaven and the world - there's the outside and there's the inside. There is all that is here in this world on the one side, on the other side there is all that which is essentially heaven - the very presence of God. And in between heaven and earth, this light was to be a place which united heaven and earth and yet divided them.

I think the meaning is what our Lord meant in His great prayer. It seems to me that He was standing very much in this position when He prayed in John 17: "They are not of the world even as I am not of the world, and yet... and yet they are in the world, these are in the world. I come to Thee, they are not of the world." It is so familiar a truth, almost a hackneyed phrase, "in the world but not of it". Here is an in-between place which is the place of believers in this present dispensation at this present time. It is our place between heaven and earth in a very real sense. Well, we know that don't we? We know that on the one hand we are here in this world, right enough and it's very real. And yet it is just as real that we don't belong to it, we are not of its life, we're in an in-between place. We know that we're not yet literally and actually in heaven, and yet and yet! Somehow or other we are deeply linked with heaven. The place between... that is where the light was to be or where the light was; a place which divides heaven and earth and yet brings them together.

There were no windows in that place. No windows in the holy place. No provision was made for natural light. Natural light was excluded. But for this lampstand, it would have been totally dark. All that was there represented in type and symbol, all the values and functions of that place were only possible, capable, of being effective by a light which was not the light of nature.


The Light of the Spirit


The light is produced by the oil. That is very true and touches very closely upon my opening remark. This holy place, this in-between place was symbolic of the position in which Israel were just at that time, they were out of Egypt but they were not yet literally and altogether in the land of Canaan. They were in an in-between place and oh, how they needed the light of heaven for that wilderness journey!

FAITHFUL STEWARDSHIP

By A.W. Tozer


God has been pleased to deal with us in a most remarkable way concerning our Christian stewardship and responsibility of honoring Him with the things He has entrusted to us. The Bible teaching is plain: you have the right to keep what you have all to yourself-but it will then rust and decay, and ultimately ruin you! 

This may hurt some of you but I am obliged to tell you that God does not need anything you have! He does not need a dime of your money! What you need to understand is that it is your own spiritual welfare at stake in such matters as this. There is a beautiful and enriching principle involved in our offering to God what we are and what we have, but none of us are giving because there is a depression in heaven! 

A long time ago God said: "If I had need of anything, would I tell you?" Brethren, if the living God had need of anything, He would no longer be God!

FALSE CIVILIZATION

Discipline and Other Sermons, 6 - FALSE CIVILIZATION
By Charles Kingsley


JEREMIAH xxxv. 19.

Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever.


Let us think a while this morning what this text has to do with us; and why this strange story of the Rechabites is written for our instruction, in the pages of Holy Scripture.

Let us take the story as it stands, and search the Scriptures simply for it. For the Bible will surely tell its own story best, and teach its own lesson best.

These Rechabites, who were they? Or, indeed we may ask--Who are they? For they are said to exist still.

They were not Israelites, but wild Arabs, a branch of the Kenite tribe, which claimed--at least its chiefs--to be descended from Abraham, by his wife Keturah. They joined the Israelites, and wandered with them into the land of Canaan.

But they never settled down, as the Israelites did, into farmers and townsfolk. They never became what we call civilized: though they had a civilization of their own, which stood them in good stead, and kept them--and keeps them, it would seem, to this day,--strong and prosperous, while great cities and mighty nations have been destroyed round about them. They kept their old simple Arab customs, living in their great black camels' hair tents, feeding their flocks and herds, as they wandered from forest to forest and lawn to lawn, living on the milk of the flock, and it would seem, on locusts and wild honey, as did John the Baptist after them. They had (as many Arab tribes have still) neither corn, seed-field, nor vineyard. Wild men they were in their ways, yet living a simple wholesome life; till in the days of Ahab and Jehu there arose among them a chief called Jonadab the son of Rechab, of the house of Hammath. Why he was called the son of Rechab is not clearly known. 'The son of the rider,' or 'the son of the chariot,' seems to be the most probable meaning of the name. So that these Rechabites, at least, had horses--as many Arab tribes have now--and whether they rode them, or used them to draw their goods about in carts, like many other wild tribes, they seem to have gained from Jonadab the name of Rechabim, the sons of Rechab, the sons of the rider, or the sons of the chariot.

Of Jonadab the son of Rechab, you heard three Sundays since, in that noble passage of 2 Kings x. where Jehu, returning from the slaughter of the idolatrous kings, and going to slay the priests of Baal, meets Jonadab and asks him, Is thy heart right--that is, sound in the worship of God, and determined to put down idolatry--as my heart is with thy heart? We hear of him and his tribe no more till the days of Jeremiah, 250 years after, in the story from which my text is taken. What Jonadab's reasons may have been for commanding his tribe neither to settle in towns, nor till the ground, it is not difficult to guess. He may have dreaded lest his people, by settling in the towns, should learn the idolatry of the Israelites. He may have dreaded, likewise, lest they should give way to that same luxury and profligacy in which the Israelites indulged--and especially lest they should be demoralized by that drunkenness of which the prophets speak, as one of the crying sins of that age. He may have feared, too, lest their settling down as landholders or townsmen would cause them to be absorbed and lost among the nation of the Israelites, and probably involved in their ruin. Be that as it may, he laid his command upon his tribe, and his command was obeyed.

Of the after-history of these simple God-fearing folk we know very little. But what we do know is well worth remembering. They were, it seems, carried away captive to Babylon with the rest of the Jews; and with them they came back to Jerusalem. Meanwhile, they had intermarried with the priests of the tribe of Levi; and they assisted at the worship and sacrifices,--'standing before the Lord' (as Jeremiah had foretold) 'in the temple,' but living (as some say) outside the walls in their tents. And it is worth remembering, that we have one psalm in the Bible, which was probably written either by one of these Rechabites, or by Jeremiah for them to sing, and that a psalm which you all know well, the old man's psalm, as it has well been called--the 71st Psalm, which is read in the visitation of the sick; which says, 'O God, thou hast taught me from my youth: and hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works. Now also when I am old and grey-headed, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.'

It was, moreover, a Rechabite priest, we are told--'one of the sons of the Rechabim spoken of by Jeremiah the prophet'--who when the Jews were stoning St. James the Just, one of the twelve apostles, cried out against their wickedness.

A DIADEM OF BEAUTY

By Bible Names of God


Isai 28:5 In that day shall the LORD of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people,

Words are but poor things to convey to our minds the glories that await us "in that day" when we shall gaze upon our Lord as a "Diadem Of Beauty." What will it be to see Him then, He whose life here upon earth was spotless and beautiful, whose character was flawless! How can we meditate upon that glorious scene beside which all other scenes of beauty and splendor are colorless, without longing for that day to come when we shall see Him, and --- wonder of wonders, --- we shall be "like Him!"?

Oh, Lord Jesus, our hearts are going out in longing and anticipation. May we seek daily to bring others to Thee that they too may share in that Crowning Day. Amen.

Ye Shall Live

By A.B. Simpson


The Holy Spirit is the only one who can kill us and keep us dead. Many Christians try to do this disagreeable work themselves, and they are going through a continual crucifixion but can never accomplish the work permanently.

This is the work of the Holy Spirit, and when we really yield ourselves to the death, it is delightful to find how sweetly He can execute the sentence. They tell us that by the touch of the electric spark life is extinguished almost without a quiver of pain. However this may be in natural things, we know the Holy Spirit can touch with celestial fire the surrendered thing, after it is really yielded up to the sentence of death, and slay it in a moment. The yielding is our business, and it is God's business to execute the sentence and to keep it constantly operative.

May we not live in the pain of perpetual and ineffective suicide, but reckoning ourselves dead indeed, let us leave ourselves in the hands of the blessed Holy Spirit. He will slay whatever rises in opposition to His will and keep us true to our heavenly reckoning and filled with His resurrection life.

The Cause and Cure of a Wounded Spirit

Sermon 2494 - The Cause and Cure of a Wounded Spirit
By C.H. Spurgeon


A sermon

(No. 2494)

intended for reading on Lord's Day, December 6th, 1896,

delivered by C. H. Spurgeon

at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington on Thursday Evening, April 16th, 1885.


"The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?"--Proverbs 18:14.
Every man sooner or later has some kind of infirmity to bear. It may be that his constitution from the very first will be inclined to certain disease and pains, or possibly he may in passing through life suffer from accident or decline of health. He may not however have any infirmity of the body, he may enjoy the great blessing of health; but he may have what is even worse, an infirmity of mind. There will be something about each man's infirmity which he would alter if he could; or if he should not have any infirmity of body or of mind, he will have a cross to carry of some kind--in his relatives, in his business, or in certain of his circumstances. His world is not the Garden of Eden, and you cannot make it to be so. It is like that garden in this respect--that the serpent is in it, and the trail of the serpent is over everything here. It is said that there is a skeleton in some closet or other of everybody's house. I will not say so much as that, but I am persuaded that there is no man in this world but has trial in some form or other, unless it be those whom God permits to have their portion in this life because they will have no portion of bliss in the life that is to come. There are some such people who appear be have no afflictions and trials; but as the apostle reminds us, "If ye be without chastisement, whereof all (the true seed of the Lord) are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons;" and none of us would wish to have that terrible name truthfully applied to us. I should greatly prefer to come into the condition of the apostle when he said, "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." I say again that every man will have to bear an infirmity of some sort or other. To bear that infirmity is not difficult when the spirit is sound and strong: "The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity."

I. Let me therefore first of all try to answer the question --what is that sound spirit which will sustain a man's infirmities?

Such a spirit may be found, in a minor degree, in merely natural men. Among the Stoics there were men who bore pain and poverty and reproach without evincing the slightest feeling. Among the Romans, in their heroic days, there was one named Scoevola who thrust his right hand into the fire and suffered it to be burnt off, in order to let the foreign tyrant know that there were Romans who did not care for pain. We have read wonderful stories of the patience and endurance of even natural men, for our text is true in that sense, "the spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity." Whatever it was that was placed upon some men, they seemed as if they carried it without a care or without a thought, so brave was their heart within them; yet if we knew more of these people, we should find that there were some points in which their natural strength failed them; for it must be so, the creature at its best estate is altogether vanity. David truly said, "God has spoken once; twice have I heard this: that power belongeth unto God;" and the strength of mind by which Christian men are able to bear their infirmities is of a higher kind than that which comes from either stoicism, or from natural sternness, or from obedience to any of the precepts of human philosophy.

The spirit which will best bear infirmities is first of all, a gracious spirit wrought in us by the Spirit of God. If thou wouldst bear thy trouble without complaining, if thou wouldst sustain thy burden without fainting, if thou wouldst mount on wings as eagles, if thou wouldst run without weariness and walk without fainting, thou must have the life of God within thee, thou must be born again, thou must be in living union with him who is the Strong One, and who, by the life which he implants within thee, can give thee of his own strength. I do not believe that anything but that which is divine will stand the wear and tear of this world's temptations, and of this world's trials and troubles.

"Mere mortal power shall fade and die,
And youthful vigor cease;"

but they that trust in the Lord and derive their power from him shall press forward even to victory. So then, first, if you would sustain your infirmity you must have a gracious spirit, that is, a spirit renewed by grace divine. Further, I think that a sound spirit which can sustain infirmity will be a spirit cleansed in the precious blood of Christ. "Conscience does make cowards of us all;" and it is only when conscience is pacified by the application of the blood of sprinkling that we are able to sustain our infirmities. The restful child of God will say, "What matters it if I am consumptive? What matters it if I have a broken leg? My sin is forgiven me and I am on my way to heaven; what matters anything else? Have you not sometimes felt that if you had to spend the rest of your life in a dungeon, and to live on bread and water, or to lie there as John Bunyan would have said, till the moss grew on your eyelids, yet as long as you were sure that you were cleansed from sin by the precious blood of Christ you could bear it all. For after all, what are any pains and sufferings that the whips and scourges of this mortal life can lay upon us compared with the terrors that have to be endured when sin is discerned by an awakened conscience, and the wrath of God lies heavily upon us? Believe me when I say that I would rather suffer such physical pangs as may belong to hell itself than I would endure the wrath of God in my spirit; for there is nothing that can touch the very marrow of our being like a sense of divine anger when it comes upon the soul, when God seems to dip his arrows in the lake of fire and then shoot them at us till they wound the very apple of our eye, and our whole being seems to be a mass of pain and misery. Oh, this is dreadful! But once delivered from all fear of the righteous vengeance of God, and I can sing with Dr. Watts--

"If sin be pardon'd, I'm secure;
Death hath no sting beside;
The law gives sin its damning power;
But Christ, my ransom, died."

Take sin away and give me a spirit washed in the fountain filled with blood, and I can patiently go through anything and everything, the Lord being my Helper.

The kind of spirit then that a man needs to sustain his infirmity is one which has been renewed by the Holy Ghost, and washed in the precious blood of Jesus.

Next it is a spirit which exercises itself daily unto a growing confidence in God. The spirit that is to sustain infirmity is not a spirit of doubt and fear and mistrust. There is no power about such a spirit as that; it is like a body without bone or sinew or muscle. Strength lieth in believing. He who can trust can work, he who can trust can suffer. The spirit that can sustain a man in his infirmity is the spirit that can say, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him; come what may, I will not doubt my God, for his word is strong and steadfast. Although my house be not so with God, yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure." O dear sir, I am sure that if God calls you to do business in great waters, you will want the great bow or anchor with you, you will not feel safe without it. When the Lord calls you to battle with your spiritual foes you will feel the necessity of having upon you the whole armor of God, and above all you will need to take the shield of faith wherewith you shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the enemy.

So beloved, our spirit must be a renewed spirit, a blood-washed spirit, and a believing spirit, if we are to sustain our infirmity.

I must also add my belief that no spirit can so well endure sickness, loss, trial, sorrow, as a perfectly-consecrated spirit. The man who is free from all secondary motives, who lives only for God's glory, says if he is sick, "How can I glorify God upon my bed?" If he is in health he cries, "How can I glorify God in my vigor?" If he is rich he asks, "How can I glorify God with the possessions which he has put under my stewardship?" If he is poor he says, "There must be some advantage about my poverty; how can I best use it to the glory of God?" He looks to see not how he can comfort himself, but how he can most successfully fight his Master's battles. A soldier who is in the fight must not enter into business on his own account. Paul wrote to Timothy, "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier;" and the true soldier of the cross just says, "Up hill and down dale, wet or dry, in honor or dishonor, all I have to do is to lift on high the banner of my Lord and strike down the foe; and if needful, even lay down my own life for his sake." The perfectly consecrated spirit will enable a man to sustain his infirmity; but a selfish spirit will weaken him so that he will begin to complain of this and to lament that, and will not be made "strong in the Lord and in the power of his might."

So much then about the sound spirit that can sustain infirmity; may the Lord give it to every one of us! How many of us have it? "Oh!" says one, "I think I am all right; I have a sane mind in a sane body." Ah! yes, but there is another part of you that needs sanity: you need spiritual health, and there are times that will come to you who have nothing to depend upon but your bodily and mental vigor, and then you will find you want something more. There will come a trial that will touch you in a very tender spot, and you will cry out, "Oh! what is it that I want?" You will find that there was an unguarded place in your harness, and the arrow of the adversary has pierced you to the soul. You must be born again even for the bearing of your present infirmity; even for struggling through this life you must have a new heart and a right spirit or else sometime or other you will find yourself overthrown. "If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?" What wilt thou do then if thou hast not that divinely-given spirit which will sustain thine infirmity? When the deathsweat is on thy brow thou wilt need a better handkerchief than was ever made by human hands; and if the Lord thy God be not at thy side then to wipe the scalding tears from thine eyes, what wilt thou do? What wilt thou do?

Lost, Driven Away, Broken, Sick

With New Testament Eyes: 77 - Lost, Driven Away, Broken, Sick
By Henry Mahan


Ezekiel 34:1-6

The Lord has been pleased to use prophets, apostles, evangelists, pastor-teachers to preach the gospel of his grace to his people that they may hear, believe, and be converted (Eph. 4:10-14). 'It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe' (1 Cor. 1:21). While these men are called 'shepherds,' the Lord Jesus is the chief shepherd, the good shepherd, and our great shepherd. These undershepherds labor as his servants, stewards of the grace of God, and as those who must give an account of their stewardship (Heb. 13:17; Luke 16:2).

Our text begins with the Lord's rebuking some unfaithful preachers who have not done what they were called to do.

v. 2. Their first concern was for themselves and not for the sheep. Should not a true shepherd's first concern be for the well-being of his flock?

v. 3. These preachers eat well, live well, and are clothed and cared for by the sheep; but, while they take from the flock, they do not feed them the word! Isaiah said, 'They all look to their own gain' (Isa. 56:10-11).

v. 4. In this verse we encounter for the first time four words which are found later in this chapter to describe the ministry of our chief shepherd, the Lord Jesus! Here is the charge against the shepherds: 'You have not sought that which was lost.' 'You have not brought again that which was driven away.' 'You have not bound up that which was broken.' 'You have not healed that which was sick.'

If this is the ministry of the chief shepherd, then it should be our ministry. If this is the work of our Saviour-God, then let us who preach and teach his word, who are called to feed his sheep, study his person and work and be about our Master's business (John 10:14-16).

vv. 11-16. He says, 'I will both search my sheep and seek them out' (v.11); 'I will feed them in good pastures (v. 14); 'I will feed my flock and cause them to lie down' (v. 15). And, as he has always used faithful men, he will raise them up and send them to his sheep today! But the under-shepherds must understand the character of his sheep and the character of his gospel, which is given in Verse 16 using these four words--lost, driven away, broken, sick!

John Bunyan - The Secret of our Perseverance (Reformed Christian devotional)

Robert Murray McCheyne - The Good Way (Reformed Christian Devotional)

SOME MEANINGS OF WORSHIP

SOME MEANINGS OF WORSHIP
John H. Paterson

THE idea of worshipping God is one of the most familiar of human themes. It is common to those who worship tree-spirits and those who crowd into great cathedrals. A part of every religion which acknowledges a god is that he should be worshipped. Christians are bidden to worship, and gladly do so. Yet if we stop to ask, "What does worship consist of? What are we actually doing when we worship?" we may find this universal reaction to the godhead difficult to define.

The problem is compounded by the embarrassing richness of the English language in alternative words like "praise", "adore" and "give thanks". Are they different from "worship" and, if so, in what way? Is a "worship service", which you will sometimes see announced, anything more than a meeting of Christians at which they carefully avoid asking God for things they need? Can we give the idea of worship any content?

This word, "content", is, I think, the key. Those of us who, from age or taste, find much modern worship devoid of content can easily point out that to sing choruses which simply repeat the name of Jesus -- or, even worse, "I'm so happy" -- over and over again has very little to do with worship. Only when we come to consider content can we begin to distinguish between the tree-spirit worshipper (who may well feel happy in doing whatever he does!) and the worshipping Christian believer.

Perhaps I can introduce this search for content in worship by making two very simple points about it to begin with. The first is the suggestion that the focus of worship is what God is rather than what He does . I think that there is a simple, practical distinction between thanking God for His mercies and worshipping Him as their author -- as the One who thought of such things for us in the first place.

The second point then follows: that since the theme of worship is God's attributes and character, the quality of that worship depends on just how much of them we know. The worship of a believer who knows little of God and His ways will grow richer if, with time and experience, he comes to realise more of what God is like: in other words, our capacity for worship should increase as we come to know Him better. Let us trust that all of us may, in this way, grow in grace and knowledge.

If these points are accepted, I want to choose three aspects of worship for our present purpose and look at them in turn. For ease of reference they can be listed in this way:

Worship as Acknowledgement or Recognition
Worship as Acceptance or Submission
Worship as Appreciation

Worship as Acknowledgement or Recognition

If we are to worship in spirit and in truth, then we must begin by recognising that God is utterly different from us His creatures: He is the Wholly Other. So long as we think of God as being separated from ourselves only by virtue of being wiser, or stronger, or more far-sighted than we are, we have no subject-matter for worship. Worship stems, on the contrary, precisely from the recognition that, no matter how good we are, or however hard we try, He is simply outside our class, and far off the top of our human scale.

Let me take a simple illustration. A young man or woman who is interested in, say, football or tennis watches their favourite player and thinks, "If I train hard, and watch my diet, one day I may be as good as he or she is." Between their own ability and that of their hero there is no discontinuity; the greater ability and the lesser are linked by a chain of evident circumstances -- practice, speed, muscle power. [101/102]

But between God and His worshippers there is, if I may put it this way, a total discontinuity! God is not just a very special version of ourselves: He is utterly different. He is in a class altogether by Himself. And that, as I see it, is one of the main Bible grounds for worship, a worship that grows as our understanding increases of just how deep and wide is the gap between God and ourselves.

The problem is to get some idea of scale of the greatness of God. The psalmist chose the only possible scale when he wrote:

"When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man ...?" (Psalm 8:3-4)

If you are like me, you generally read that familiar passage as a measure of the scale of man; it is the word "man" which we emphasise as we read it. But the psalm is addressed "O Lord, our Lord"; what the psalmist had in mind was to focus equally on how great God is, judged by the scale of His infinite universe.

Nor is the unbounded superiority of God in His creation recognised by man alone. In the Book of the Revelation, there is much worshipping of God, and that by beings far ahead of us men and women in their own wisdom and power, yet who realize that for them, too, there is this great gap between God and themselves. The perceptive beings who surround His throne know (Revelation 5:1-5) that "there is no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth" who is worthy to open the book -- no one except the Lamb and, recognising this, they worship.

"THOU GOD SEEST ME"

"THOU GOD SEEST ME"
Genesis 16:13

Harry Foster

WE seldom pay much attention to little Hagar. The allegorical use of her as the slave mother in Paul's letter to the Galatians, tends to make us think slightingly of this Egyptian and her son. We are told that they had to be cast out, and on the whole we are prepared to leave it at that.

But Hagar was more than an allegorical figure -- she was a human being whom God loved. It is true that she was a stranger by birth and a slave at heart, but is not that where we all begin? She has things that can be said against her but she has left us all in her debt, for she it was who first pronounced this wonderful spiritual truth: "Thou God seest me". I, for one, thank her profoundly for such comforting words.

It is typical of graceless men that they distort this happy confession and make it into an attack [97/98] upon the God of the Old Testament. Is there a single writer with some early experience of the Bible who can resist a sneer at this conception of a malicious snooper upon human affairs? One after another, in their biographies or novels, they describe the wall-text with a large EYE, and the ominous warning that a fault-finding God is spying on you in your most private room. It almost seems a 'must' for those who want to have a sly dig at the Old Testament. If they sincerely considered the matter they would discover that the description applies equally to the Jesus of the New Testament, and if they really verified their reference by turning to the actual story in Genesis they would find that Hagar -- far from resenting God's all-seeing eye -- found the sweetest comfort in her discovery of an understanding God.

"Thou God seest me." Is it a warning? Well, if Abraham's daughter-in-law, Rebecca, had just remembered that story of Hagar, she might not have plotted with Jacob to deceive Isaac. Her old husband was blind, and fair game for their deception, but God is not blind. He sees it all. She might have saved her family from that disgraceful quarrel if she had kept Hagar's words in mind. True, she did not foil God's purposes -- nobody can do that -- but she lost her pampered son Jacob, and never saw him again, and all because she ignored that all-seeing eye of God.

Later on, a happier recollection of this divine title took place down in Hagar's native Egypt, for Joseph rejected the immoral advances of Potiphar's wife with the reminder that although her husband might not see them, God could. As he fled the temptation he exclaimed: "How then can I do this great wickedness against God?" (Genesis 39:9). "Thou God seest me." That reminder sent Joseph to an unjust prison but it preserved him for God's highest purposes. Had he not heeded that warning he might have avoided immediate trouble, but he certainly would have missed the throne!

So even as a warning, the phrase can be most helpful. Nevertheless, it was not coined with this in mind, but was the grateful ejaculation of a greatly tried slave-girl, who found that God loves slaves.

IT must have seemed to Hagar that nobody cared for her at all. She was far from her native land. We remember that the visit of Abram and Sarai to Egypt was a matter of wilful unbelief, so we have no reason to think that their employment of Hagar was a matter of prayer. She was available; she was probably cheap; possibly she was actually sold by her parents to these affluent Hebrew visitors. It is unlikely that her wishes were consulted, either then or later. She was a mere chattel.

"Ah," but somebody will say, "What a privilege to live in such a godly home!" That is a very doubtful assumption. The truth is that there is only a godly atmosphere in a home where husband and wife honour God's Word and pray together. Did Abram and his wife share the promises of God round a family altar? If they had done so, then Sarai would never have made her unbelieving proposal to exploit Hagar for their own convenience, and if she had, Abram would not have listened to her. Did the husband and wife wait together on God in family prayers? If they had, God would not have left them to their own carnal devices and would not have let them spend thirteen empty years with no message at all from Himself. No, I fear that the truth is that Hagar lived and worked in a home where there was little, if any, evidence of God's presence. Any home where there is no regular sharing of God's Word and no mingling of praise and prayer at the Throne of Grace is a place where people do not meet God. Hagar never did.

Suddenness of Change

By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman


"And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness" (Mark 1:12).

It seemed a strange proof of Divine favor. "Immediately." Immediately after what? After the opened heavens and the dove-like peace and the voice of the Father's blessing, "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." It is no abnormal experience. Thou, too, hast passed through it, O my soul. Are not the times of thy deepest depression just the moments that follow thy loftiest flight? Yesterday thou wert soaring far in the firmament, and singing in the radiance of the morn; today thy wings are folded and thy song silent. At noon thou wert basking in the sunshine of a Father's smile; at eve thou art saying in the wilderness, "My way is hid from the Lord."

Nay, but, my soul, the very suddenness of the change is a proof that it is not revolutionary.

Hast thou weighed the comfort of that word "immediately"? Why does it come so soon after the blessing? Just to show that it is the sequel to the blessing. God shines on thee to make thee fit for life's desert-places--for its Gethsemanes, for its Calvaries. He lifts thee up that He may give thee strength to go further down; He illuminates thee that He may send thee into the night, that He may make thee a help to the helpless.

Not at all times art thou worthy of the wilderness; thou art only worthy of the wilderness after the splendors of Jordan. Nothing but the Son's vision can fit thee for the Spirit's burden; only the glory of the baptism can support the hunger of the desert. --George Matheson

After benediction comes battle.

The time of testing that marks and mightily enriches a soul's spiritual career is no ordinary one, but a period when all hell seems let loose, a period when we realize our souls are brought into a net, when we know that God is permitting us to be in the devil's hand. But it is a period which always ends in certain triumph for those who have committed the keeping of their souls to Him, a period of marvelous "nevertheless afterward" of abundant usefulness, the sixty-fold that surely follows. --Aphra White

Resurrection, the Hallmark of Sonship

By T. Austin-Sparks

      In the terrible darkness of the Cross, Jesus uttered the cry of desertion and forsakenness in which He could only use the term: "My God..." (Matthew 27:46), but before He died He was able to say: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46). After He had risen from the dead, among the first words that He spoke were these: "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father: but go unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father..." (John 20:17). The battle was won. All that the first cry meant of sonship being obscured, had been set aside. In perfect tranquillity the Lord could not only speak of His Father but of our Father too.

      Such passages as: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee", and "declared to be the Son of God... by the resurrection from the dead" can make for intellectual difficulty. What about the eternal Sonship? Was He not God's Son before the resurrection? The words: "This day have I begotten thee" evidently refer to the resurrection, as the first two chapters of the letter to the Hebrews confirm. In what way is the Lord Jesus God's Son by virtue of resurrection?

      Let us at once state that this is related to the first and the last Adam. The first Adam was called God's son (Luke 3:38) and in a sense this was true, but that sonship was never fully realised - all its meaning, all its potential, all the divine intention, was never known. It was sonship on probation which never attained to determination. In the case of the Lord Jesus, however, we are told that He was "determined the Son of God..." (Romans 1:4 m.). The first Adam failed, and in him the whole race lost its sonship. That was why the Lord Jesus went to the Cross as representative of the whole race, to meet the final consequences of that lost sonship. Those consequences were known in that eternal period of unspeakable agony, when there was the awful consciousness of what it means to be abandoned by God. By nature we are out of Christ, without God and without hope in this world, but we are not fully aware of it nor of what it involves. In that phase of the Cross, the Lord Jesus was, so to speak, projected into the full realisation of that complete consciousness of what God-forsakenness really means, that which is the very terrible destiny of all deliberate rejectors - to find themselves rejected.

      Well, having suffered that judgment, and having carried all the agony of it to the disrupting of His soul and the breaking of His heart (for when the soldiers came to inspect, they found that He was dead already, while those crucified with Him were still alive) - when that was accomplished He came to the moment of consciousness that the judgment was past, and so could return again to use the word, "Father". Now, however, He used it with a meaning that it had never borne for man until that time, so that the last word of the cross is not "forsaken", but "Father". Sonship had now come on to a new ground of resurrection, restoration; the alienation of the race had been overcome. Restoration is made for the race in Christ, and so everything begins with "Father". What a wealth there is in the phrase: "The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" when it is seen in the light of the Cross! It is the ground of our approach, our appeal. It carries with it the full meaning of the triumph of His Cross over all the alienation that had come to the human race with the loss of God's meaning of sonship.

Prayer the Greatest Outlet of Power - S.D. Gordon / Quiet Talks on Prayer (1 of 17)

Quiet Talks on Prayer by S. D. Gordon

Quiet Talks on Prayer

by

S. D. Gordon

Copyright, 1904, by

Fleming H. Revell Company

Contents

1. The Meaning and Mission of Prayer
   1. Prayer the Greatest Outlet of Power
   2. Prayer the Deciding Factor in a Spirit Conflict
   3. The Earth, the Battle-Field in Prayer
   4. Does Prayer Influence God?
2. Hindrances to Prayer
   1. Why the Results Fail
   2. Why the Results are Delayed
   3. The Great Outside Hindrance
3. How to Pray
   1. The "How" of Relationship
   2. The "How" of Method
   3. The Listening Side of Prayer
   4. Something about God's Will in Connection with Prayer
   5. May We Pray with Assurance for the Conversion of Our Loved Ones
4. Jesus' Habits of Prayer
   1. A Pen Sketch
   2. Dissolving Views
   3. Deepening Shadows
   4. Under the Olive Trees
   5. A Composite Picture

CREATIVITY IN PRAYER

CREATIVITY IN PRAYER

John H. Paterson

ONCE upon a time I was asked to give a talk on the subject Creativity in Prayer. Frankly, I was taken aback: I had never thought of putting those two words together in quite that way! Moreover, the request for the talk came from a group of Christians involved in the arts, which gave to the title the suggestion that prayer was something to be composed, like music by Mozart, or created out of word-pictures, after the style of a novelist. I felt very uneasy about the whole project, and wondered who had been responsible for conceiving it.

But then, as I thought about the matter, the title began to suggest to me all kinds of ideas which were both useful and more importantly Scriptural. Perhaps, after all, the concept of creative prayer was not so outrageous! Perhaps prayer can be creative, provided that we are clear about what is being created. So, after thought and prayer, I gave the talk, and I was glad that I had done so, for the interest of the audience was aroused, and I was invited to repeat it elsewhere.

Let me begin, then, with the fundamental question: What does prayer create ? To that, so far as I can see, there is one clear answer: prayer creates the conditions in which God can act. We have all encountered at some time the problem, either in our own thinking or in the challenge of someone else's, "Does prayer really change God's mind? Surely He knows already what He is going to do: do you expect to alter His will?" Clearly prayer cannot, in that sense, be said to create God's will, to make up His mind for Him; otherwise He is no longer sovereign.

But that God should wait for, should expect, from His people, a reaction before doing His will: that is quite in keeping with His nature and His ways. So we can say, can we not, that He knows what He will do but He wants people -- His creatures -- to will it too? What is more (we are guessing here, but I think the guess can be justified), He wants these people to desire whatever He wills for the same reason as He wants it. Rather than act sovereignly, God evidently desires to involve us, His people, in His decisions and reactions.

Let me at once authenticate that statement, if only in a negative sense, by referring to the Scriptures, in Isaiah 59:15-16. Here is the prophet's picture:

"... the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgement. And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his own arm brought salvation unto him, and his righteousness, it upheld him ...".

Here is God, says Isaiah, asking, 'Surely there is someone who sees the point, who realizes the danger, and who will react? Nobody at all? Then, alas, I'll have to see to it Myself.' Yet the danger was so great, the lack of righteousness so blatant, that you would have thought that someone would have acted!

Even more dramatic are the words of the Lord reported by Ezekiel (22:30):

"I sought for a man among them, that should make up the fence, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none. Therefore I poured out my indignation upon them ...".

It is one of the mysteries of God's working that what He has decided to do, what he is able at once to do, He will not do without first seeking the participation of His people.

What is more, He seems to do this not in the grim spirit of an officer or manager who says to an underling, "You are taking responsibility for this. I'm not having you trying to shift the blame on to me if it doesn't work out right!" Rather, God acts out of love and of a desire to share His thoughts with His people. No-one has ever captured this aspect of prayer better in words than S. D. Gordon in his Quiet Talks on Prayer. Here, in some old-fashioned words which I long ago [9/10] committed to memory, he describes the situation which God desires to create through prayer:

"God up yonder, His Victor-Son by His side, and a man down here, in such sympathetic touch that God can think His thoughts over in this man's mind, and have His desires repeated on the earth as this man's prayer."

"(for he that wrought for Peter unto the apostleship of the circumcision wrought for me also unto the Gentiles)" Galatians 2:8

INSPIRED PARENTHESES (21)
"(for he that wrought for Peter unto the apostleship of the circumcision
wrought for me also unto the Gentiles)" Galatians 2:8

IN these breathless chapters of the Galatian Letter it is hard to keep pace with Paul's parentheses. Close on the heels of the previous one in verse 6, we now find a further reference in brackets to the matter of his relationships with the apostles. It is a very happy reference this time, for it underlines the similarity between him and Peter. It is a most notable feature of the book of the Acts that there we find continuing and often parallel experiences of these two great men.

BOTH of them were involved in the healing of a lame man as his first recorded miracle (3:7 and 14:10). Both were the instruments for "special miracles" (5:15 and 19:11). Both were miraculously released from prison (12:11 and 16:26). Each of them raised a person from the dead (9:40 and 20:10). Each had his whole course of service for God altered by a vision in a trance (11:5 and 22:17). This and much more can be discovered in the book of the Acts. Beyond that they had much more in common, both in their teaching (2 Peter 3:15) and their awareness of approaching martyrdom (2 Peter 1:14 and 2 Timothy 4:6). It was the same Lord who governed each of their lives.

THE particular point of this parenthesis is to assert that both Peter and Paul fulfilled their respective ministries in the power of the same Spirit. Their paths diverged. Their callings were different. In some ways Paul must have been tempted to envy Peter, for he longed to spend his life witnessing to Jews. After Caesarea Peter might perhaps have been tempted to envy Paul, for in that city he himself had a marvellous experience of the outpouring of the Spirit on the Gentiles. But it was theirs not to envy but to obey.

THE key word in this verse is "wrought" or "worked". It was Christ who was at work in both men, so that it was not a question of the work that Peter was doing or the work that Paul chose in the ministries to both Jew and Gentile, but it was the work that the risen Christ was doing through them. And it was mighty, as we would expect if Christ was at work. We must get it quite clearly established that the very same Lord works in different people for different purposes.

THERE is a sense in which each of us should be able to add, 'for me also', since every one of us is called to be His functioning member here on earth. We do not have to engage in the same activities as others. We certainly do not need either to envy or to imitate them. Each of us has a distinct calling from God, to be fulfilled by the powerful working of the same Lord in and through us. It is wrong to despise or to envy. What we need to do is what these godly apostles of old did -- give to one another the right hands of fellowship and get on with our own calling in God.

----------------

She hath done what she could--Mar 14:8

 
George H. Morrison - Devotional Sermons

      The Grace of Appreciation     
      She hath done what she could--Mar 14:8
     
      Appreciation Alleviates Drudgery     
      Few gifts are more helpful than the gift of appreciation. It is like rain on the mown grass, or sunshine falling on the flowers. When one of our Scots ministers died, a very beautiful thing was said of him. It was said that there was no one left to appreciate the little triumphs of little men. Mrs. Oliphant, too, in her Life of Edward Irving, tells us that not a little of his influence sprang from the possession of this grace. "He addressed ordinary individuals as if they were heroes and princes; made poor astonished women in tiny London apartments feel themselves ladies in the light of his courtesy; and unconsciously elevated every man he talked with into the ideal man he ought to have been." A recent essayist has divided people into minus and plus people. The minus people are those who leave us poorer, and the plus those who leave us richer. Among the latter, in the common ways of life, where there is little applause and many a weary hour, are those who have appreciating grace. It helps folks wonderfully when things are difficult to know that somebody appreciates. It is always easier to march to music. A little word of appreciation now and then would make all the difference to thousands whose day's round is very largely drudgery.
     
      Appreciation Is Different from Flattery and Praise     
      One must distinguish true appreciation both from flattery and praise. Flattery is veiled insult, and praise may be condescension in disguise. Newman has said that people shrink from praise, because the right to praise implies the right to blame, and Scripture warns us with no uncertain voice against coveting the praise of man. But genuine appreciation is different from praise or flattery, and for it every heart is hungering. A story is told of Robert Browning, how once at Oxford he got a great ovation, and when someone hinted that he must hate all this, he said, "Why, I've been waiting for it all my life." Men of genius, who would scorn to stoop to the passing fashions of the hour, are as eager for appreciation as the rest of us. Just as everybody yearns for love, so everybody yearns to be appreciated. The drudgeries of life are always lightened when there is somebody who understands. There are few nobler heroism's in the world than that of those who have to toil for years without a single appreciative word.
     
      Appreciation Is a Mark of a Noble, Generous Nature     
      This gift of appreciation is always the mark of a noble, generous nature, just as the constant habit of depreciating is the sign-manual of littleness. To depreciate is not to criticize, for true criticism has an eye for beauty. To depreciate is to betray an uneasy feeling of inferiority. But generous natures are always self-forgetful, and are touched with a certain sweet serenity, and so have the heart at leisure from itself. "See," said Nelson, "how that gallant fellow Collingwood takes his ship into action." There is nothing harder than to appreciate richly the men who are doing the same work as we are. The noble nature of Sir Walter Scott is never more beautifully evident than in the appreciation which he lavished on the efforts of his inferior fellow-craftsmen. When I went as assistant to Dr. Alexander Whyte, Professor Lindsay laid his hand upon my shoulder. "Never forget," he said to me, "that all Whyte's geese are swans." It was a playful warning not to lose my head when I found that the least service I could render was appreciated with amazing generosity. Little souls delight in faultfinding; big ones in appreciating. Mean folk are always minus folk; it is the great hearts who are the plus ones. They add to life and make it richer; they call out all that is best within us by the sunshine of their appreciation.
     
      Christ Appreciated What He Saw in Others     
      Then one turns to the story of the Master, and sees how gloriously Christ appreciated. That was why life blossomed in His company. When the woman broke the alabaster box, He alone appreciated what it meant. When the widow cast her mite into the treasury, He saw in a flash the splendor of her giving. Others appreciated a cup of wine; He a cup of water, and that was characteristic of His life. Hating sin as no man ever hated it, because He knew the Father with such perfect intimacy, the wonderful thing about our Lord is how He appreciated the common heart. He saw the worshipping woman in the harlot, the disciple in the despised tax-gatherer, the rock in the unstable will of Simon. Common things were beautiful to Him--the lily was more wonderful than Solomon. Sparrows, of little value on the market, were in His eyes fed by the catering of God. The love of woman, the wonder of the child, the fine things lurking in the pagan breast, our Lord appreciated them all. No wonder folk came to their very best with One who could appreciate like that, and so they are doing to this hour.
     
      Love Is the Secret of Appreciation     
      It only remains to add that love is the secret of appreciation. Love is not really blind; it has the most generous of eyes. Professor Henry Drummond used to say that if you buy a box, it must be flawless. But if your little son with his rough tools makes you a box, very probably it has a hundred faults. Yet you appreciate that clumsy workmanship far more than what you purchased in the market, because it's the work of the little chap you love. Love wildflowers, and you come to appreciate what to other people are but weeds. Love the hills, and you find beauties in them that other eyes are powerless to see. When love reigns, as it is going to reign when God's Kingdom is established on the earth, there will be such appreciative grace abroad that life and labor will be set to music.

"(After that Jeconiah, the king, and the queen-mother, and the eunuchs, and the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, and the craftsmen and the smiths, were departed from Jerusalem)" Jeremiah 29:2

OLD TESTAMENT PARENTHESES (22)


"(After that Jeconiah, the king, and the queen-mother, and the
eunuchs, and the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, and the craftsmen
and the smiths, were departed from Jerusalem)" Jeremiah 29:2

THIS is one of the least interesting of the Scriptural parentheses and seems largely to be interpolated as an indication of the actual time when Jeremiah wrote his letter from Jerusalem to the captive Jewish leaders in Babylon. It might have been enough to name Jeconiah, without specifying his entourage and the skilled men who accompanied him, so this appears to have more significance than a mere fixing of a date.

PERHAPS the parenthesis gives point to the contents of Jeremiah's letter. It seems that, as in Jerusalem so in the captivity, there were still plenty of those who blithely claimed to be prophets, finding popularity for themselves and raising false hopes among the bewildered people of God.

THE Word of the Lord had already been spoken. The land was to remain desolate for seventy years (Jeremiah 25:11). In his letter Jeremiah had to re-iterate this truth to the cheap optimists who were prophesying dreams which had no divine reality. The prophet's letter advised God's people to accept His Word and to order their lives in accordance with it.

FAR from being negative, Jeremiah's message assured his readers that God's ultimate purpose for them was one of peace and hope (v.11). The immediate need, however, was that they should humble themselves under the mighty hand of God instead of being influenced by the superficial inventions of those who based their ideas on natural and sentimental emotions, instead of being governed by God's Word. They ought to be giving themselves to God-glorifying, prayerful daily living instead of being carried about by excited emotionalism.

IT seems to me that Jeremiah's letter found an echo in some of the New Testament Letters. The circumstances were, of course, very different, but the principle is the same. "That ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your hands, even as we charged you" (1 Thessalonians 4:11).

BUT why was Jeconiah singled out in this connection? What had he to do with Jeremiah's letter? Perhaps it was because he was the one king who had listened to Jeremiah and had surrendered to the Chaldeans. In himself he was no better than the other members of his family, but he did obey the prophet's call to accept the captivity as a divine judgement and not try to avoid or resist it.

IN the end he was justified, as all will be who humble themselves before the Lord and obey His Word. Interestingly enough, it was Jeremiah himself who was able to record the ultimate mercy of God by which, after thirty seven years, Jeconiah was not only released from his prison but given kindness, honour and a continual allowance for the rest of his days (Jeremiah 52:31-34).

THOSE who have only a superficial acquaintance with the Bible are always ready to attach the label 'dismal' to Jeremiah. If they would look for themselves, they could find many proofs of how wrong such a designation is. Among them would be this letter with its assurance to humble believers that God's thoughts are always to give peace and to provide a future and a hope.

----------------

The Life That Lives

By Oswald Chambers


'Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.'
Luke 24:49


The disciples had to tarry until the day of Pentecost not for their own preparation only; they had to wait until the Lord was glorified historically. As soon as He was glorified, what happened? "Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear." The parenthesis in John 7:39 ("For the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified") does not apply to us; the Holy Ghost has been given, the Lord is glorified; the waiting depends not on God's providence, but on our fitness.


The Holy Spirit's influence and power were at work before Pentecost, but He was not here. Immediately Our Lord was glorified in Ascension, the Holy Spirit came into this world, and He has been here ever since. We have to receive the revelation that He is here. The reception of the Holy Spirit is the maintained attitude of a believer. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we receive quickening life from the ascended Lord.

It is not the baptism of the Holy Ghost which changes men, but the power of the ascended Christ coming into men's lives by the Holy Ghost that changes them. We too often divorce what the New Testament never divorces. The baptism of the Holy Ghost is not an experience apart from Jesus Christ: it is the evidence of the ascended Christ.

The baptism of the Holy Ghost does not make you think of Time or Eternity, it is one amazing glorious NOW. "This is life eternal that they might know Thee." Begin to know Him now, and finish never.

The Mystery Of Believing

By Oswald Chambers


'And he said, Who art Thou, Lord?'
Acts 9:6


By the miracle of Redemption Saul of Tarsus was turned in one second from a strong-willed, intense Pharisee into a humble, devoted slave of the Lord Jesus.

There is nothing miraculous about the things we can explain. We command what we are able to explain, consequently it is natural to seek to explain. It is not natural to obey; nor is it necessarily sinful to disobey. There is no moral virtue in obedience unless there is a recognition of a higher authority in the one who dictates. It is possibly an emancipation to the other person if he does not obey. If one man says to another - 'You must,' and - 'You shall,' he breaks the human spirit and unfits it for God. 

A man is a slave for obeying unless behind his obedience there is a recognition of a holy God. Many a soul begins to come to God when he flings off being religious, because there is only one Master of the human heart, and that is not religion but Jesus Christ. But woe be to me if when I see Him I say - I will not. He will never insist that I do, but I have begun to sign the death warrant of the Son of God in my soul. When I stand face to face with Jesus Christ and say - I will not, He will never insist; but I am backing away from the recreating power of His Redemption. It is a matter of indifference to God's grace how abominable I am if I come to the light; but woe be to me if I refuse the light (see John 3:19-21).

By Faith...

By T. Austin-Sparks

      READING: Heb. 10:37-39; 11:12:1-2.

      In order rightly to appreciate and apprehend the value of this part of the letter, from the end of Chapter 10 through into Chapter 12, we have to remember the position in which these Hebrew believers were represented as being, or the position to which they were being called, or of which they were being reminded; that is, the heavenly position as over against the one to which they were at least in danger of falling. You know that the whole purpose of this letter was to cut in between these believers and that which was seeking to bring them down again on to an earthly religious level and basis, as under the government of the outward temporal forms of religious life as set up through Moses. The course of the letter is the unveiling of the fact that all those Old Testament things were but shadows of Christ Who was the substance; pointing on to Him, and that with His coming all were fulfilled and became heavenly in meaning, in value, for life now. And now these saints, under great pressure and trial, were being tempted to let go the heavenly position and come down again to the earthly, to that which, for the flesh, is so much easier a position of just doing religious things outwardly, and letting that be the beginning and end of everything. Thus the heavenly position is that which gives point to this last great summary, and it shows that it is the very position to which the Lord's people are called which becomes the ground of their greatest testings, that they are tried according to the position they have taken. That is so in every grade and every stage and every level. If the measure is small, then we are tested according to that measure, but if we take the full and the ultimate and the highest, then the testing becomes supreme. We are tested according to the position we take up.

      Every Dispensation Governed by Faith

      Now, there is another thing which this shows, and it is that faith is not something which has come with the New Testament dispensation, but that faith has been the principle by which the Lord governed His saints in every age. The Lord never intended the dispensation of the law through Moses to be other than a faith dispensation, and it is not just the contrast between the works of the law and faith that is before us; because you have faith here taken up in relation to all the people who were under the law and made the standard of their judgment. By faith Moses... by faith Israel, and onward under that whole dispensation, everybody was judged according to faith. Faith ever has been and ever will be the primary thing with God, the supreme thing. It is a thing which governs all ages in the mind of the Lord. Faith is the thing for every age.

      The Basis of Faith

      Now, what is the basis of faith? When you look at this chapter, the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, to see what the basis of faith is, you discover that it is and was something spiritual, done within a person. I know that in a number of cases recorded here, things happened without. There is Sarah, there is Isaac, there was deliverance from the furnace: many things like that happened without. But whatever happened without depended entirely upon something which had happened within. We do not know how all these things took place. For instance, by faith, when he was called of God, Abraham went out. We do not know how he was called of God. It may have been that an angel of the Lord appeared unto him, or the Lord Himself may have appeared in a bodily form to Abraham. Now we might say, Oh, if only that happened to us, then it would give us such a substantial foundation for faith! If only three men appeared to us as they appeared to Abraham, and proved to be the very representation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost in bodily form (as I think undoubtedly they were; if you look at the incident closely, that is the implication), how easy faith would be, or how different would be our foundation for faith! He was called of God.

      Now, beloved, I do not think it was a thing which happened without which became the foundation of faith. It was something which, however it came - it may have come by outward instrumentalities, outward things - however it came, it was something which was done inside, something registered inside, something effected in an inward way; for it is very doubtful whether ever an outward happening, a phenomenon, however marvellous it might be, be it an angel from heaven, can ever be an abiding, solid basis for faith. We can at times under given circumstances always doubt our greatest outward experiences. There is that in us called the soul which is a psychical thing and it is capable of producing the most remarkable and astonishing phenomena, so that we can believe things which the soul produces, and then presently turn round and say, Well, I was evidently overwrought, things began to happen, I heard things, I saw things! Thus we may question all that on a psychical or psychological basis. That is the temptation. Was I really at that time in a state of poise and balance, or was I in a state of nervous tension? Did I imagine these things, and were they only after all psychical things? And that could happen to any of these men in either the Old or New Testament. If that were the basis of faith, it is altogether unsound and unsatisfactory. However the Lord comes and whatever means He uses, the real basis of faith is something that has been effected in us, something wrought. Although it may have been the God of glory Who appeared unto our father Abraham, the effect was this, that Abraham knew something had happened in him, something had been wrought in him, and he could say from that time, There is something in me that is much deeper than the means and method used by the Lord, that has become a part of my very being! If you think for a moment that, were an angel to come to you, you could more easily believe in the future than you can without the angel, remember you can always doubt your angels. There is no guarantee that you will believe because you have seen an angel, or because you have had an open heaven. It is something which has to be inside, which, after all, is invisible, intangible, but something very real. It is something the Lord has done, something of the Lord Himself, something that the Lord has made real to you about Himself, His way, His mind, His will, something wrought by the Holy Spirit. That is the basis of faith - the Lord and His effect in your own life. I am not saying your experience is to be the basis of faith, but the Lord Himself as a reality within you, effecting something in you and affecting you in a deep inward way. That is the essence of faith here in this chapter right through. They knew the Lord in an inward way, and that was the beginning and that is the end for them in the matter of faith.