The Parables of the Kingdom by T. Austin-Sparks

The Parables of the Kingdom
by T. Austin-Sparks

In the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel by Matthew, which we may have open before us by way of reminder, we find the operation of the Kingdom illustrated in a sevenfold way.

THE PARABLES OF THE KINGDOM

I do not propose to attempt an exposition of that sevenfold way, but will simply lift out from the chapter the salient features of the operation of the sovereign rule of God. We have here that operation illustrated, in what have come to be called ‘the parables of the Kingdom’. That is the title which men have given to them, but it is well to remember that the title which the Lord Jesus gave to them was ‘the mysteries of the Kingdom’.

THE KEY TO THE PARABLES

These parables, or mysteries, of the Kingdom of Heaven are really impossible of understanding, except in the light of the definition of the Kingdom which we have just given – that is, as the sovereign rule of God. If you interpret them as indicating primarily a realm or nature, then you have gone beyond their warrant, and you will most certainly get into confusion. Few parts of the New Testament have been more subject to controversy than these parables. The various interpretations that have been given to them have divided students and teachers into irreconcilable schools. We shall see something of that as we go along. It is therefore necessary to discover the key to the parables, in order to be saved from this confusion and contradiction; and that key undoubtedly lies in the definition of the Kingdom as THE SOVEREIGN RULE OF GOD. Let me repeat: I am not embarking upon an exposition of these parables, but seeking to get at something of very great importance and value to ourselves at this time.

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER

The first is what is called the parable of the sower (vv. 18-23). The Lord Jesus said that the seed is the word of the Kingdom. “When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom”, He said. Now re-translate that as ‘the word of the sovereign rule’. The word of the sovereign rule has gone forth. What is the result? Very largely failure. The success in the positive sense is very limited, cornparatively – some thirty, some sixty, some a hundredfold. You see how impossible it is to impart to the Kingdom the idea of a realm or a nature. That would imply that within the realm where God rules you have very largely failure. But that is not the teaching of the parable. The teaching of the parable is this. The word of the sovereign rule is sent forth, like seed; and, no matter if there is a large failure in response and reaction to that word, God is successful in the end with a body that is productive of that which is implicit in the Word.

Yes, man may fail. He may receive apparently with gladness, and then it may all come to nothing. He may respond in a way, and seem to be going to turn out all right – and then, because of difficulties and adversities, just fade out. But let there be failure, disappointment, breakdown: no matter – God gets something in His sovereignty. There is something that this sovereign government of God secures. You see, this is a tremendous word of the sovereignty for labourers. You labour, you scatter, you give, you work, you travail; but, if it is the word of the sovereign rule in very truth, it cannot ultimately fail. There may be much disappointment, but there will be an issue which answers to the intention of the One who gave it. Very simple: but you see how important it is to recognise the all-governing law of the sovereign rule which cannot, fully and finally, ultimately be defeated. A great deal may seem to argue that the labour is in vain; but the Lord is saying here in this parable: ‘No! When it is a word of the rule of God, it cannot ultimately return wholly void; there will be something resulting from it.’ The sovereignty is governing.

THE WHEAT AND THE TARES

The next is that commonly called the parable of the wheat and the tares – the darnel (vv. 23-30). Here from the word the thought passes to persons. It is not the word that is now sown – it is persons that are sown. Children of the Kingdom are sown in the earth, and then by night the enemy comes and sows his own children, children of his kingdom. They are the children of the Devil. His method is suitable to his object. His object being completely to nullify what is of God, his method is to imitate it. That is a wile of that evil wisdom of Satan – imitation children of God mixed in with the true children of God in order to nullify. The workers are represented as coming to the owner of the field and telling him what they have found there, and he says, ‘Ah, an enemy has done this.’ And they say, ‘What would you have us do? Shall we pluck up this other thing?’

He replies: ‘No – let the sovereignty have its way! Let them both grow together, and the sovereignty, the rule of Heaven, will progressively make very clear which is which, and the end will be an easy and a safe course. If you start doing that now, you have not got the wisdom of Heaven to discriminate. It is not your business, and you have not the faculty or capacity, to disentangle this deep work of the Devil, by trying to mark out what is true and what is an imitation. That is not your job, and you are not qualified to do it. Only Heaven can do that. So let it go on, and the sovereign rule will make manifest what is of itself, and what is otherwise.’

It is the sovereign rule that is going to solve and settle this whole problem. You cannot say that the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God is like that which is pictured in this parable – an awful mixture. It is not. The Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, is one thing, and only the sovereign rule of God can bring out into clearness what is of God.

But that will happen as we go on. We can trust the sovereign rule. That is very practical: it works like this. There are those who are truly of God, of Heaven; and then there are those who come in – who perhaps sing the hymns, use the phraseology, carry on the same way, associate with those of the Kingdom; but there is a difference. Deep down, they are really “not of us”. They are just imitations; they are not real, not the genuine thing. We may discern, as these men discerned, that there is something here that is not the same thing, something that is foreign, that is alien and strange. What are we going to do? Had we better turn them out, tell them to go?

No, no! Go on long enough, and they will go of themselves. The two things will be self-manifested, and it will be quite easy in the long run. “They went out from us”, said John, “…that they might be made manifest that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). This is a heavenly principle, you see – there is a manifestation. It is difficult to endure patiently those people who you sense have not, as we say, the root of the matter in them – who are just camp-followers. But, as with the mixed multitude that left Egypt with Israel, time and testing will find them out. This is the way if the Kingdom, the sovereignty, operates, and it calls for much faith, and much patience.

THE MUSTARD SEED

The parable of the mustard seed (vv. 31, 32) is one of the most difficult of all, and one that has perhaps been the occasion of some of the worst interpretations and teachings. “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is less than all seeds; but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the heaven come and lodge in the branches.” Do you really believe, in the light of all these other parables and of His whole teaching, that the Lord Jesus said, ‘This is the Kingdom of Heaven – the Kingdom of Heaven is like that’? If the common and popular interpretation is to be accepted, then we are involved in some real difficulties. Admittedly, the parable does seem to mean that Christianity, or “the kingdom of heaven”, has very small beginnings and then grows to very great dimensions. There may be an element of truth in that. The beginnings in Jerusalem WERE small, and in the course of the centuries Christianity has become worldwide. But is that just what the Lord meant by the parable?

There are at least three things that would pull us up and make us think again, and think more energetically.

One is that at other times the Lord definitely used terms of strict and severe limitation in relation to salvation, the way and the issue. So much was this so, that His disciples were startled into ejaculating: “Lord, are there few that be saved?” (Luke 12:23). He spoke of the way to life being straitened, and few finding or accepting it: of the gate being narrow, and few entering thereby (Matt. 7:13,14). He called His disciples (representatives of His Church) the “little flock” to whom it would be the Father’s good pleasure to give THE KINGDOM (Luke 12:32). There are contrasting ideas between “wide” and “narrow”, “broad” and “straitened”, big and little, popular and unpopular. All this does not agree with the usual superficial interpretation of this parable.

Then what about the “fowls of the air”? Did He use this metaphor in a contradictory way? In the parable of the sower He had spoken of these in a bad sense: is He employing the same terms in a right and proper sense here? This violates the principle of consistency in inspiration.

Thirdly, is it COMMONLY true that the “mustard seed”, the smallest of all, grows into a tree so great as is here depicted? No, it is positively not true. If our Lord saw such a thing – and He may have done – and drew attention to it, He was drawing attention to something abnormal and not natural. It was sufficiently abnormal and unnatural to attract attention.

This brings us to the factor that is common to ALL the parables and all the teaching of Jesus, and of the Apostles subsequently. In all these parables there is a selective, discriminating, contrasting, comparative, good-and-bad element. The Kingdom of Heaven is like that: the sovereign rule is all-comprehending, but it is very particular, selective, and judicial. Consistency in every direction demands that we interpret this “tree” of Christianity as an abnormal, unnatural development, capable of housing many things that are not in keeping with the true NATURE of the Kingdom. These “fowls” are NOT the born-from-above people who alone can see or enter the kingdom (John 3). They are all the accretions, the camp-followers, the parasites, the various kinds of people and things that take advantages of Christianity, and use its cover, but are not of its nature.

The Lord was letting His disciples know that this is what would happen, and that the sovereignty took all this in its stride. It is as well that we should know that the Lord has foreseen the developments of Christianity and its abnormalities, but it is to great detriment that His spirit of discernment and discrimination does not have a way with so many Christians.

Does the New Testament, to begin with, indicate that there is any such thing as abnormality, or this kind of abnormal development, about the true work of God? It rather indicates that, although ultimately the sum of many, many centuries will be ‘a great multitude which no man can number’, there will be, as we get nearer and nearer to the end, a tremendous sifting out and falling away. It is definitely stated that that day will not come before there is a great falling away (2 Thess. 2:3), and that “judgment must begin at the house of God” (1 Pet. 4:17). Well, then, if this is right – a great falling away – the Bible contradicts itself. As we have said, the teaching of the Lord seemed to be so clear to the disciples on this matter that they exclaimed: “Are there few that be saved?” What is all this about the broad and the narrow way? The broad way – many go by it; the narrow way – few find it. The Bible does not contradict itself; but it says that God takes account of these things, and God in His sovereignty permits them. He does not come out and destroy this freakish thing popularly called ‘Christianity’. That may be there, but God in His sovereignty is pursuing His own course to secure what He is after. Though all this may be quite true, the sovereign rule of God goes on, the sovereignty is preserved.

THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN

The same principle is implicit in the next parable.

“The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened” (v. 33).

(a) THE LEAVEN

The popular interpretation is that the leaven is Christianity: Christianity being taken by the Church and put into the world until the whole lump is leavened – the whole world is ‘leavened’ with Christianity. It is suggested that we shall see the world saved by the deep, silent movement of Christianity, working strongly and deeply and hiddenly, like leaven. It is easy to say that sort of thing, but it is superficial reasoning. In the light of history, and in the light of the Word of God, it is very difficult to believe.

Look again. The world-population is vastly more in excess of the Christian population than at any time in the dispensation. After these almost twenty centuries of Christianity, an immense number over a very great part of the world have never heard the Gospel yet. Look at this – 1,200 million out of the 2,000 million people of the earth are still without the knowledge of Christ. Then what of the unspeakable revelation of iniquity in countries which have had the Gospel for centuries? We could make an immense build-up of facts which would shatter this interpretation of the leaven beyond reconstruction.

What, then, is the meaning of the leaven? I do not believe that leaven here stands in a different category from leaven anywhere else in the Bible. Consistency of Scripture demands that we interpret leaven always as the same thing, in the same light: and everywhere else in Scripture leaven is evil – something that has to be purged out. In the old economy they had to light their lamp on the eve of the Passover, and search the house high and low, nook and cranny, for any leaven and purge it out. The Passover could not be eaten till it was certain that there was no vestige or trace of leaven anywhere. They had to eat unleavened bread in the Passover. The Lord Jesus spoke of “the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matt. 16:6) and “the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8:15). And Paul spoke of ‘purging out the old leaven’ (1 Cor. 5:7). Everywhere it is something evil. The function or effect of leaven is to disintegrate, to break up, to tear apart – every housewife knows that. And it is not different here: still it is leaven and still it is evil. If you say that the Kingdom of Heaven, as a realm, is like that, you are in trouble. But the sovereign rule of God knows all about this deep, secret movement of disintegration, of evil, that has come into the realm of Divine things. It is not the Kingdom of Heaven that is like an alcoholic fermentation, disintegration, putrefaction.

(b) THE WOMAN

It is only necessary to look at such passages of Scripture as Revelation 2:20-23 (“the woman Jezebel”), and Revelation 17 (“the great harlot”) to realise that a “woman” so often in the Bible is the symbol of a system. Again and again it has been a woman, either personally or symbolically, who has corrupted Divine things, or brought corruption into relationship with them. See Samson; see Solomon; see later kings for examples. In the message to Thyatira, this insinuation of evil and corruption into the House of God is the occasion of the severest judgment – for it is called “the deep things of Satan” (Rev. 2:24). What foreknowledge and foresight our Lord had in these parables! But let us go on.

(c) THREE MEASURES

Three measures. Remember that three is the number of Divine Persons and Divine things. Evil has spread even through the Church, so that within Christianity itself the very Divine Persons have been subjected to questions and doubts. God Himself – the Son, the Spirit – has been misrepresented. With many other things of God, evil has come in to break them up – to destroy their effectiveness and power by destroying their solidity. What are you going to do about it?

The sovereign rule of God takes account of it – the working of evil, the working of falsehood, the working of misrepresentation and misinterpretation of the things of God. History is just full of it, as we know. We hate using terms and labels, but is it not just that which has happened in the last hundred years in the realm called ‘Modernism’ or ‘Liberalism’? Is it not the leaven disintegrating Divine things? The very Person of Jesus Christ is stripped of His Deity; the very Word of God is denied its authority and its finality; the very Holy Spirit is degraded from His dignity as a Divine Person; and so on. The Lord Jesus discerned the future, saw the way things would go, and spoke like this. He was saying. ‘This very generation will not be out before all sorts of heresies and errors will come into the realm of Divine things’ – which they did.

But the sovereign rule of God goes on. This does not spell God’s confusion and God’s defeat. His sovereignty is greater than all this. It is the only way really to be consistent both with the teaching of Scripture and with history itself. Surely it must be sheer blindness that reads history in any other way. As I said, I am not expounding these parables, but lifting out the point that is common to them all. From various angles, for various and differing causes, in differing situations, right down the age: whatever may be permitted by that sovereignty, that sovereignty is equal to it all, and will be fully vindicated in the end.

THE PARABLE OF THE DRAG-NET

We reach the last parable, that of the great dragnet let down into the sea – the sea always speaking of humanity – and gathering a great multitude of fishes. Yes, the sovereignty of God does that: in comes the net, with its multitude of fishes of all sorts, and then sovereignty gets to work and separates the good from the bad, and in the end God has what He was after from the beginning. He has got it at last. That is how the sovereignty works. There is much instruction here for Christians and for Christian workers. If we had our way, we would go to work to see to it that we always and only have the thing that is absolutely and certainly and positively according to God’s mind: we would select that, and put a hedge round it, and set up walls about it, and we would protect it and keep it, as an exclusive company. But these parables say, No! The sovereignty of Heaven does not do that sort of thing. The sovereignty of Heaven permits and tolerates very much that will ultimately be found to be not according to Heaven. Yes, it takes account of much; but it is driving its own course, and, in the end, through all, God will have what He set His heart upon.

THE COMPREHENSIVENESS OF THE RULE OF GOD

To sum up – see how comprehensive is this rule of God. The sovereignty of God is one of the most problematic and perplexing things to Christians, in relation to what God will allow even in association with His own work. We would not do that at all. We would be very, very particular. But see how comprehensive God is. He allows a very great deal. He not only allows it – He even uses very much that perhaps we would never use, or about which we would have a question. He comes through things in His sovereignty to get His ends. It is HIS END that is the great testimony to His sovereignty. We say: How could God get anything out of this, or out of that? Well, He does, that is all. How could God get anything in that way? He just does! Look at this, look at that, look at all these things: is anything possible for God? The verdict at the end is that God sovereignly did get something.

You see, this is the great heart and core of this whole teaching and revelation of the Kingdom of God. It does not mean that you and I need not be sensitive to the Lord – that is another thing altogether. We may come to that later, when we say something about the Kingdom and the Church. It does not mean that, because we see that God’s sovereignty reaches His ends in spite of everything, we are just to be careless and insensitive to the mind of the Spirit; to do all sorts of things that God, if He could have His way, would not sanction. But it does mean that this sovereignty of God is going to cover a lot of ground: it is going to get its end through many, many ways and means which in themselves, intrinsically, are not of Him. It is this rule of the heavens that is, so to speak, ‘getting on with its job’.

We, left to ourselves, are so fussy, so particular, that we would not leave room for the sovereignty of God. The great appeal here is: Leave plenty of room for God. That is what it amounts to. Never despair over any situation as being finally and utterly hopeless. In the presence of the spread of this evil thing, this leaven – the expansion of this abnormal, ‘freak’ Christianity, with its contradictions and disappointments – we are forbidden by this sovereignty to give up and say it is a hopeless thing. We have to come to the place where we say and believe and take our stand: ‘That looks a pretty hopeless situation, but God can get something out of it, and He will.’

That is the good news of the Kingdom, the Gospel of the Kingdom. I know that many of you who read these words can bear this out. You have known the most awful and impossible situations of mixture and hopelessness. You have despaired – and then you have seen God do something. What a strength and force that gives to the remainder of the statement! “This gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed… for a testimony unto all the nations”. In His sovereignty, God can turn the most unpropitious and unpromising situation, the most hopeless state of things, into a glorious testimony. Yes, He allows so much, but He governs all. And He makes use of all manner of agencies – even the Devil himself. That must be sovereignty! “An enemy hath done this.” Very well: we will use the enemy to show what is right and what is wrong, to make all the more manifest what is of God and what is not. The work of the Devil shall be employed to that end. That is the rule of Heaven.

All this is borne out in the later New Testament. “The things which befell me”, writes Paul (Phil. 1:12) – what were they? They were the Devil’s work. Again – “We would fain have come unto you, I Paul once and again; and Satan hindered us” (1 Thess. 2:18). Strange, mysterious statement! Yes, the Devil is busy; “a messenger of Satan” (2 Cor. 12:7) – he is very active. And what is the verdict at the end? “The things which befell me have fallen out rather unto the progress of the gospel”! Under the sovereignty of God the very works of the Devil are being used to reach God’s end.

Perhaps that is common knowledge, so often said. But we must come more definitely to this settled position, that GOD AND CHRIST ARE ON THE THRONE. This Kingdom is a present reality. There are many things which contradict it and work against it. God does not consume and annihilate them: He permits them, and then takes hold of them; and the end is that His throne is established and it is made manifest that “his kingdom ruleth over all” (Ps. 103:19).

What these parables say to us is this – that God faces facts and has no illusions. He faces the fact that a large proportion of the sowing of the word of the Kingdom will fail. He faces the fact that Christianity will become an abnormal conglomeration, without any distinctiveness of testimony. He recognises that there will be a secret hidden working of error, of evil, of falsehood, all to disintegrate. He faces it all – all the work of the Devil, all the work of evil, all the failure of man – and then He declares His sovereignty over it all. That is what arises here. Let us ask for strength to believe it.

GOD’S JUDICIAL WORK

I have not said much about another aspect of these parables: namely, that there is a judicial, discriminatory work going on all the time. Do not fail to see that. All through these parables, He is cutting a line, He is discriminating, He is acting judicially. God is not just saying, ‘Everything is all right – do not worry. Sit in your armchairs, ye Christian men; sit down, the Kingdom is coming.’ No; rather – ‘Rise up, ye men of God!’ God is not passive, indifferent, careless, saying, ‘Oh, it will be all right, this is all right; do not worry about it.’ He is not like that. He is acting, and will act, judicially. He is really putting things in their place, and dividing between, as He does with the churches in the Revelation. He is discriminating. He is putting this here and that there, and saying that they belong to two different realms. That is a part of His sovereignty.

But our chief point is this: The operation of the Kingdom, or the rule, of God is to bring in at last the triumph of that rule. Whatever else may come in, it means the triumph of that rule. The rule of Heaven, the rule of God, comes out in the end triumphant.

This is chapter 2 from the book “The Gospel of the Kingdom” originally published in “A Witness and A Testimony” magazine, Mar-Apr 1961, Vol. 39-2.

This Present Evil World by T. Austin-Sparks

Before we proceed with the message, for the sake of any young Christians who may read it, and who have not yet studied the use of words in the New Testament, let us explain the one which is now to occupy us – the ‘World’.

There are three main ways in which this word is used:1. As to the material sphere which we call the earth.

2. As to the people who live on the earth.

3. As to the spiritual and moral system, order, economy, and principles which govern the people.

Peter has things to say as to the climax and destiny of No. 1. John three sixteen relates to No. 2: “God so loved the [people of this] world.”

It is No. 3 that is the occasion of what follows here.

A reading of such passages of Scripture as John 17, John’s Letters, Colossians 2:20, 3:1-2, Galatians 1:4, and many others such, will leave us in no doubt whatever that the New Testament designates this world system as evil, and that any spiritual relationship with it lies under God’s judgment. It has always been so since the beginning, but we are now living in the full development of the fact, so terribly and shockingly, that it is ripening fast for final destruction. The following message is very timely, and we trust that it will serve the solemn purpose of leading many to save themselves from “this present evil world”, and will explain the spiritual conflict through which many are passing.

We shall gather up certain things which we find running through the whole of the Scriptures, and what we find throughout the Scriptures is, for our present purpose, an eightfold thing:

1. AN ABIDING ANTAGONISM AND CLASH BETWEEN GOD AND THIS WORLD

I think that needs very little enlarging upon for the moment. Anyone who has any grasp of the Scriptures will be able instantly to recognize that that is so. From Cain – the man of the earth – right on through the whole of the Scriptures, you are brought to recognize that abiding antagonism and clash between God and this world.

2. AN ABIDING EXPRESSION OF THAT ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THAT WHICH IS SPIRITUALLY RELATED TO GOD AND THIS WORLD

Anyone, any company, or anything spiritually related to God is found to be in the expression of that antagonism and that clash between God and this world, and that very relationship to God spiritually involves in the clash, involves in the antagonism.

3. A NEW CONSTITUTIONAL AFFINITY WITH THIS WORLD IS SEEN TO BE IN MAN’S NATURE

A new constitutional affinity with this world is seen to be in man’s nature, gravitating toward the world, like the point of the compass to the magnetic North. There is that which is in the very nature of man now as fallen which has an affinity with this world, and gravitates towards it, and the Scriptures reveal that that gravitation is of an inveterate character.

May I stay to make a parenthesis? No one is thinking that when I use the word ‘world’ I am just meaning the geographical sphere. You understand that the word ‘world’ is a very much bigger word as we use it spiritually than this geographical sphere. We use that word in its fullest meaning – an order of things here separated from God, organized and controlled by the evil one. That is the full meaning of ‘kosmos’.

4. A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM OF INTELLIGENCE

A spiritual system of intelligence as revealed by the Scriptures to be bent with all its might upon maintaining that affinity, and that relationship between man and this world.

5. SPIRITUAL DEATH IS THE LAW WHICH GOVERNS THAT RELATIONSHIP

Spiritual death is the law which governs that relationship, and is the mainstay and master-hold of that system of spiritual intelligences. Let me repeat that: spiritual death is the law which governs that relationship, the relationship between fallen man and this world, and spiritual death is the mainstay and master-hold of those spiritual intelligences which are out to maintain that relationship between fallen man and this world.

6. TO SEVER THAT BOND, TO DESTROY THAT AFFINITY, TO INTRODUCE A COUNTER LAW OF GRAVITATION, IS THE ESSENCE OF THE WORK OF CHRIST

If you get that you get the heart of everything. That will explain everything. The work of the Lord Jesus in coming from heaven and fulfilling His mission here is, in its very essence, the severance of the bondage of man to this world, the destroying of fallen man’s affinity therewith, and the introducing into man of another law, which counters man’s gravitation toward this fallen world, another law of gravitation, which is not world-ward spiritually.

7. THIS SEVERANCE, THIS INTRODUCTION OF THE NEW SPIRITUAL LAW OF HEAVENLY GRAVITATION, IS ALWAYS MARKED BY A MOST INTENSE CONFLICT AT EVERY STAGE AND POINT

It is always fraught with deep spiritual suffering. You will never emancipate a people spiritually from this world except by intense conflict and through deep suffering.

8. THE METHOD IS THAT OF GOING INTO DEATH IN ORDER TO DESTROY DEATH, AND BEING IN THE WORLD IN ORDER TO OVERCOME THE WORLD

That is an outline, and if you were able to sit down with that prayerfully I am sure you would see that you have touched something which is of primary importance. Within the range of that everything with which you and I, as the Lord’s children, have to do is gathered up. Now I am going on to take up one point. The work of Christ, the Cross in the work of Christ, and the purpose of His coming. That again is gathered up into eight things.

THE EFFECT OF CHRIST’S PRESENCE

Firstly: To once and for all register in an absolute and pre-eminent way that collision, that mutual antagonism between God and this world. Christ’s coming into this world, and Christ’s work in this world in a way unparalleled, unprecedented, registered, made manifest, dragged out into the light, threw up into clear relief that fact that there is a mutual antagonism between God and this world. You can trace it through the Old Testament. It is quite clear there, but it is more or less local or localized in the Old Testament. When you come to the Lord Jesus coming into this world you have the universal factor, a universal Person set down in the midst of the universe, and universal forces focused upon Him. And because of who He is, because God is there in Christ, because this is no mere man, as in the case of the Old Testament, because this is “God with us”, you find that from the very commencement of His career, His course, His time here on the earth, there broke out that smouldering volcano of antagonism: first through Herod, and then by another, and another, and another means, until in the end it seems that everything has conspired and converged to cast Him out of this world, as having no place in it, as being a menace to it.

Demons betrayed secrets, the full explanation of which is not in the Word of God: “Art thou come to destroy us before our time? I know thee who thou art, the Holy one of God”, betraying deep mysteries concerning the destiny and the doom of that spiritual world, that world of spiritual intelligences. Men and demons worked together, and this hate showed itself. What a great deal He had to say Himself about it, and to what lengths He carried it, and into what realms – right into the heart of Judaism and its spiritual, religious citadel, the Scribes and the Pharisees: “Ye are of your father the devil”; “The works of your father ye do”; “Ye are from beneath; I am from above”; “If ye had known the Father ye would have known Me.”

You see, He carried it right there into the highest realm of religious life as this world knew it, and finding there this deep-rooted antagonism, and dragging it out, making it impossible for that thing to go on being hidden, until at last, stung by His presence, it broke loose, and from that realm came His doom, so far as his course here on the earth was concerned as a man. Oh yes! everywhere this universal focal point: God in Christ making manifest as never before not locally, but universally, not merely on the earth, but in that spiritual realm – that there is a clash, a deep-seated and terrible clash between God and this world. And His coming was for that purpose. It is important for us to realize that it was necessary to expose that thing. It was essential that that thing should be dragged out, but, oh, that the people of God had sufficiently recognized and grasped and apprehended this thing!

Oh, dear friends, you and I, before we are through, will see the utter impossibility of that contradiction called ‘a worldly Christian’, ‘a worldly Church’. If we do not see that now, well, the Lord help us! The very coming of the Lord Jesus into this world was, firstly, to manifest, as had never been manifested before in a universal way, that there is, right at the very heart of things spiritually, an antagonism between God and this world, and that world can never be reconciled to God. You have to use the word ‘world’ in another sense when speaking of reconciling the world; that is a more limited usage of the word, but that world of which we are speaking is beyond reconciliation. We shall see that as we go on.

Secondly. His coming was, while to register in an absolute and pre-eminent way that mutual antagonism, TO RESCUE AN INSTRUMENT FROM THIS WORLD, to secure an instrument in this world for this age, EMBODYING THAT ANTAGONISM. Do you get the force of that? Did Christ come, first of all, to make the antagonism absolutely apparent? Yes! Then equally He came to secure an instrument in this world, for this age, which would embody that antagonism. That is, the instrument which Christ secures in this age, in this world, is going to be an age expression of the antagonism between God and this world. That means that if you and I are a part of God’s instrument in this world, resultant from the work of the Lord Jesus in His Cross, you and I are going to be the embodiment of that antagonism; that is, there is going to be something about us which can have no compromise with this world, and which for ever stands in a position similar to that which the Lord Jesus occupies in relation to this world in the spiritual antagonism. And that instrument is going to feel the antagonism which He met, and is going to be conscious that this place, this world, is by no means a place of rest and abiding. “In the world ye shall have tribulation…”. To get rid of that is to undo the work of the Lord Jesus: to try to get popularity in this world for Christianity, to escape the world’s bitterest antagonism, is to counter all that the Lord Jesus came to do.

Now that is a terrific thing to say, but it is true. I made a note in my Testament from Martin Luther. He had a pictorial way, as you know, of presenting truth, and he did it both for the devil and for the Lord. In speaking about Matthew 5:10-12 he pictures the disciples of the Lord, the believers, arriving at the gates of heaven and being met there by the Lord Himself: and one of the questions which He asks each one who arrives, with which He interrogates every professed disciple, is this:

“Wert thou an abomination to the whole world as I and Mine have been from the foundation of the world?”

Well, the Lord’s coming was to secure an instrument in this world for the age which would embody that mutual antagonism between God and this world. You see your calling, brethren. Does that explain something? I think it explains a lot. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews has a way of putting it: “Of whom the world was not worthy.” That is his verdict on the whole matter.

Thirdly. His coming was to destroy for such (that is, such instrument) that law of death. Note: firstly, to bring out into the clear light, which He Himself was, the reality, the depth of that mutual antagonism between God and the world; secondly, to take out of the world a people for Himself, yet to be in the world for the age as a representation of that antagonism; then, thirdly, to destroy for such that law, that mainstay, that master-hold of the powers of evil, to destroy him that had the power of death and to deliver them; to destroy the power of death for His own. He came to do that. It would be impossible for us to live here on God’s side and on God’s behalf, to meet all that antagonism of hell to God, unless Christ had accomplished the destroying of that masterhold of the devil – spiritual death.

Dear friends, you and I are becoming more and more conscious, are we not – many of us are – that the only possibility of staying in this world and on the earth is by the life which is triumphant over death, and unless we know more of that, this place is going to be impossible spiritually. Is that not true? It is! There is a real spiritual world with which we are in touch, but which we so dimly understand. What is the spiritual experience of those who are really going on with God? It is, on the one hand, of an intensified consciousness of death, and, on the other hand, a growing emphasis on the power of His resurrection. Is that true? I do not think there is any doubt about it. And this is not something which touches merely the spiritually aged and fully matured. I believe that the Lord would teach the younger folk this thing: those of you who would, perhaps, think that you are not old enough to understand and enter into these great spiritualities. I believe the Lord would teach you that you can know deliverance and victory in the realm of death by coming into a full apprehension of Him as your life, and, while the phraseology, the terminology may be difficult for you, the experience may be as clear and as simple as anything could be. The fact that those who are children of God – whether mature or immature – ARE children of God brings them into experiences which they might never have if they were not the Lord’s children. The Lord does not save from going into those experiences, but in them draws out to Himself by a strong taking hold, when something very critical is threatened, and then Himself comes in, and it is something which is above what man can do, and they have learned their lesson. They have discovered that it is possible to live in this world, where death reigns, and to know victory in Christ by taking hold of Him as their life. He came that for His own He might destroy that law of death by which the god of this world, the prince of this world, holds his own in bondage, and by which he operates against the saints to try to bring them back into bondage, the bondage of death.

Fourthly. His coming was to set up His instrument, redeemed from the world, that counter-law of a heavenly life, to introduce something else into their constitution. The constitutional law of the unredeemed from the world, of those who are of this world, is bondage to the world. They see nothing beyond the horizon of this world, and all the time the world holds them and carries them on. The tides of worldliness carry this world on, and to try to stem those tides is an impossible thing until something has happened by which there comes about the realization of this: “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world”, the introduction of that which is an adequate countering to the mighty gravitating affinity in man’s nature toward the world. He came to set that up in His own, and here that big difference is recognized, which has been so often pointed out – that if you really do become begotten of God, born from above, there is put into you the life of God. You do not have to give up the world, there is not a struggle to break with this anew that and something else, and you never have to sit down and say: ‘I suppose now that I am a Christian I have to give up this and that, and I must not go here and I must not go there.’ You never have that sort of thing at all: you find a counter-gravitation, you find that something else has come in which has made that kind of gravitation comparatively weak, and your heart is now in other directions, drawn to other things. You may test your spiritual life by that.

Now, young people, let me say a word to you. Perhaps sometime in your superficial thinking and imagining you think the world has a better time than you do, and that you would like to have a little more of what the world has. I put it to you: make up your mind to go and have it. IF YOU ARE A TRUE CHILD OF GOD, start off, and see how far down the road you get. You will not get there. You will turn round and come back. What is the matter with you? Well, something has happened in spite of your thinking and your imagining and those superficial feelings – many of them, perhaps, the fruit of the severe time which you have because of spiritual antagonism. In spite of all that you cannot go very far in that way. You know the parable of the squirrel; you know that the gravitation is upward. Although you might just jump down to get a nut, it is not your place. The Lord came to do that, and it is the strategy of the Lord never to say that you must not go there and you must not do this. He puts something into you – a counter-gravitation, a mighty work, which the Lord has accomplished.

Fifthly. To gather out from the world spiritually a people for His coming Kingdom. Not to take them away from the world. That would be very nice, but He would take them out from the world spiritually, so that He has here in the world His Kingdom spiritually represented by them. And He is gathering out from the nations spiritually now; a spiritual out-gathering, detachment, a people for that coming Kingdom. He came to do that, and He has made it perfectly clear that His Kingdom is not of this world and is not of things seen and handled. “I would have you know, brethren,” said the apostle, “that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom.” His Kingdom is now a spiritual thing in the hearts of those who have been taken out of the kingdom of darkness and translated into the Kingdom of the Son of His love. That is a thing already done. A day will come when He will translate them from this world while He deals with the rest, and purges this world and makes it fit for the habitation of saints, without any antagonism. He came to do that. He is doing it. We know it in our own hearts. That is exactly what has happened with us. We are not of the world. Our life “is hid with Christ in God.” We look for a Saviour.

Sixthly. The whole course of spiritual experience is progressive detachment from the world and attachment to Christ. It is a course of spiritual history. It is a progressive thing, and not that in the very commencement of our spiritual life we were not severed from the world. We were fundamentally and originally separated from the world, but you and I know quite well that our experience has been all in the direction of this world becoming less and less, and Christ becoming more and more and more. “Whom having not seen, we love.” “Where our treasure is, there our heart is also.” We know something of the words: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is…”. “Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.” We know that that is going on in us.

Seventhly. The death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit are the basic factors in this work of Christ. Let me repeat it. The death, the resurrection, the ascension of Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit are THE factors, the basic factors, in this work of the Lord. His death is basic, and we are told that His death is to be entered into by us in faith. “Ye died…”. That means we were crucified to the world and the world unto us in Christ. The resurrection of Christ is a basic factor in this work. It means that we stand on resurrection ground and are outside of the world. He never appeared personally to the world again after His death. He will one day, but He has not done so yet. So far as this age is concerned, He is not on that level at all. He is outside of the world, and for the age all His own, standing with Him in resurrection, are there spiritually. His ascension means that everything now for this age for His own is heaven-ward and not of this world. The anointing of the Holy Spirit will lead us progressively, ever more and more, away from the world to Christ, revealing His things. These are the basic factors in this great work which He has come to do.

Eighthly. The Church is called to be the collective embodiment of all that truth. The Church is called to be the collective – the corporate – embodiment of that full, absolute antagonism between God and the world. I realize that is a tremendous thing to say in the face of what is called the Church, in the face of what we know to be associated with what is called the Church. One hesitates in the almost hopeless situation that immediately confronts you when you raise the standard like that. Are we to conclude that what is called the Church is not the Church? At any rate, let us challenge ourselves on that. We can do no more than proclaim the truth and seek that it shall be realized in ourselves. It is not for us to go out and denounce or to judge, we must proclaim. But, oh! it does raise some very serious questions for many of the Lord’s people. To be in any way entangled with that thing, that awful thing spiritually, against which God as in Christ has been revealed to be so utterly set! To be entangled in that through religion, through Christianity, through what is called the Church! You know quite well that if you stand on that ground you will meet the antagonism of the scribes and pharisees.

The Church is called to be the corporate expression of that antagonism, of that impact, by which Christ has destroyed the power of death, and living in the power of His resurrection. The Church is called to reveal in itself that it is not of this world and that it is moving steadily further and further away from the world, because Christ is becoming more and more its life; to be the embodiment of all that is meant by the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the ascension of Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. There is no doubt but that that is how it was at the beginning. Are we to say that that is gone for ever, and that that can never be? No, we cannot say that. We may have to come within a very limited realm, but I verily believe that when the Lord comes, and there is that blessed movement toward Himself of the overcomers, He will have in them the embodiment of all that. They will represent all that.

For myself I cannot see translation possible on any other ground. Is the Lord going to translate this world to heaven? Never! If you are spiritually bound up with it – when I say ‘spiritually’ I mean bound up with it in heart, a heart link – I do not know what will happen. It seems to me to be so distinctly contradictory to the law of Christ’s work. The work of the Lord Jesus marks the utter detachment from this world, and the consummation is simply the crown of that which has already taken place spiritually, the seal upon what has been done spiritually. That is how I see it, but I know the many difficulties that come up there.

Now let us close, so far as this broad survey is concerned, by just putting our finger upon one or two points. Do you see now why there must be no personal interests on the part of the people of God? What are personal interests? They are worldly in essence, in nature. It is what Paul spoke of when he said: “All seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s.” That personal element runs out into so many directions, and is so imperceptible in many things, that only the Lord can bring it to light and destroy it. Do you see, on the face of it, why there must be no personal interest, and that there must be such an utterness of abandonment to the Lord’s interests, and that anything other than that is a spiritual link with this world? The enemy can come in and destroy your testimony if you have any personal interests, even in the work of the Lord. Deeper than we recognize there are those things which represent our like and our dislike, our want and our not want, our going to have and our not going to have, all of which give rise to suspicion of others, and then suspicion moves silently and imperceptibly on to jealousy, and jealousy on to a breakdown in fellowship. Tracked right down to its source it was some personal element, wanting it as we want it, wanting it ourselves, and not the utter emptying of self; and in the long run, sooner or later, the enemy has made an awful havoc because there was his link. Do you now see why?

When the Lord really gets a complete mastery of the life, He works to have everything carried on to resurrection ground. That is, He takes everything through a depth and a death, where we lose it, and then in a deep crisis, in which we are brought to the point in heart of letting that go to God, not reproaching God, not rebelling against God, not refusing to accept God’s way, but where we come to the place where our heart is one with the heart of God over that matter; then so often the Lord gives that back, but it has come back in a new realm. It has gone through death and it comes back by resurrection, and there is something in it now which is not of this world. It is not a time thing, nor merely an earthly or natural thing. There is something about it now which has God in it. It is on resurrection ground, and the world factor in it has been destroyed. Now that is a true spiritual law. Do you see why the Lord must have it that way?

Let me put that in another way. This is why everything must be brought through to the place where it is wholly for God. Everything has to be wholly for God. The apostle had something to say about the shortness of the time, and those who had wives being as those who had none. Do you think he meant that literally? Ignore your domestic responsibilities, or ignore something which was of God, or ride rough shod over it for what you call spiritual things? Never! A thousand times, never! What the apostle meant was this: you have to hold everything in the light of God’s interests, and if you are holding domestic relationships, or anything else here on this earth, on a natural level, where they are for yourself, for time, and for what they mean to you merely in this life – and that is the range of things – well, that is wrong. Everything has to be held for God, in the light of the Lord’s interests. Why? To have that link with this world and the natural life absolutely destroyed so that the power of spiritual death cannot operate there. Do you not know that when you as a believer, as a spiritual person, or I, touch things naturally we touch spiritual death? Have you no experience of that? The power triumphant over death is in having everything wholly for the Lord and not for ourselves, not for this world, not for this life. Everything has to be held for the Lord.

It is so easy to sing hymns of consecration. We can sing about being all for the Lord, and having everything for the Lord, and we can answer to such challenges, but now let us face it. Are we holding everything for the Lord? Have we got something which, if we would only let that go, would in some other life give the Lord larger interests? Are we taking this attitude: ‘Now, while this thing means much to me, while in a natural way I have deep sentimentalities with this, and it is not easy to let things go, nevertheless, if the Lord is going to get more by my letting go, giving up, well, that is the thing that counts and that matters.’ That is holding things for the Lord. Are we holding things for the Lord? If we are holding things for ourselves, if we are holding things in this life before those heavenly interests of the Lord, we are opening the door to spiritual death. We cannot grow spiritually; we become earthbound, and our spiritual progress is delayed, if not utterly arrested. Everything must be carried over on to resurrection ground, and be wholly for the Lord, wholly for heaven. “Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.” There is so much bound up with this.

Now do you understand the meaning of suffering? I ask you, those of you who have suffered as the Lord’s children, what has been the effect of your suffering? That is, inasmuch as you have not been persistently rebellious and hard because of the suffering, but inasmuch as you have sought to be one with the Lord in your suffering, what has been the effect of it? Answer me: has it been to make this world much less and the Lord much more, the things of heaven much more? Is that not true? This world has lost its grip, perhaps its charm, its hold. The things which are above have become far more to you through your suffering. Well, do you see the meaning of suffering? Do you see what the Lord is doing? Why does He empty us out? Why does He pour us out to the last drop? Just so that He can pour in, that is all. Just so that heavenly things may take the place of natural, earthly things. The Lord permits His people to suffer in order that that gravitation world-ward might be weakened, and that that power of death might be destroyed: that they may become a heavenly people, living by a life which is His own life, and which it takes full spiritual intelligences to appreciate.

That is the testimony of Christ triumphant, but you cannot recognize that with the human mind. You need a full spiritual intelligence to grasp that. It is only principalities and powers who are able adequately to register the power of His resurrection. They recognize it. So the Church goes on in suffering, in weaknesses, in infirmity, “in deaths oft”; but the Church will finish its course, and the issue will be that the full measure of that law of death operating in this world was taken by Christ in His Church and triumphed over. He is doing something through our weakness. We do not see it nor feel it, and we very often forget all about it in the presence of the suffering, but He is doing something, that now unto the principalities and powers in the heavenlies should be displayed this manifold wisdom of God. That is the meaning of suffering – the raising of a heavenly testimony: getting us away from the world and making us live by a life which is hid with Christ in God.

Do you see the utter impossibility of being all the Lord’s and having any kind of heart association with this world? That ought to come home to us in a new way.

First published in “A Witness and A Testimony” magazine, Nov-Dec 1968 Vol 46-6

Living Principles of the New Creation – W.E. Smith

Grace and peace dear brother and sisters -

May we lift all of the Lord’s people up in this hour. He knows everything and the Spirit intercedes so graciously on our behalf, adding content and power to our feeble prayers. We are one in our intercessions for one another! Tho we are few and weak, we are always one in Him.

The Lord has been waking me up again (He did this for many years; waking me up to tell me things; to show me things, to flood my heart and mind with His thoughts).

I have been meditating on the New Creation of which we are all pilgrims and pioneers. That there is no future for this world, its God, the basic principles which under-gird everything about it. No more Adam, no more sin, no more death, no more corruption, no more pain, nor more failure, no more rebellion, no more!

Praise the Lord!

I thought of the Lord striding atop the waves of the sea (the sea, the waters, the deep picture death in the Word) – telling His disciples not to be afraid. “I am greater than death, greater than this world, its evil, its lies, its pain, its utter hopelessness, everything flowing out of the old creation. I am above it, and you who are in Me are as well. The life in you, My life, is part of the New Creation, operating on living principles that are eternal and righteous and perfect. The fruit of the True Vine; this Tree of Life, is fruit unto the New Creation, the new and better order of things, the Kingdom of God. There is no need to be afraid, or overwhelmed, or anxious – All is finished! I have judged this order of things, its god, and all those who are part of it – the nations, the principalities and powers who energize and animate it.”

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” (Rev 21)

The New Creation, standing on the other side of the cross of Christ, contains life that has risen up out of the old death; the old order of things; out of the fallen-ness of everything before. It is resurrection life, and so it must be. The living principle of this new creation is Christ. It was made through Him and For Him, and for all those who are in Him. Everything in this New Creation lives and moves and has its being in the Father’s Eternal and Beloved Son – He alone is the LIFE OF THIS NEW WORLD! Everything in it will express Him to the glory and praise of the Father, the Most High God. All contained within it will be His Temple, where He dwells with all worship and pre-eminence and honor!

Beloved saints of the Lord – please stop looking for life and meaning and a place in this dying world, this old order of things. Stop attaching yourself to it, seeking identification with it, allowing it to flood over you. In Christ we are to walk atop the death of this world, untouched, unafraid, as sojourners seeking a better country, a new order of things, built on the eternal foundation of Christ the Lord our God! This is what it means to seek first the Kingdom of God, to put it first, to place all of your hope and future in it; to subordinate all else to it – home and country and history in this world.

All you see and know is giving way to a new order of things – all that is of Adam and Satan and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has been judged already. The curse pronounced at the beginning will run its course. The Lord divided the tongues long ago to form the nations, and He is judging them now. He is also saving many from out of the abyss of death, and feeding them on His Heavenly Bread. All that is not of Christ is marked already! Nothing of the old will be perpetuated in the new world that is coming; nothing, not even the good things. The Lord Jesus is the express image of God, and His life must run deep before it can grow up and out, and be manifest. He is doing this secret, animating work in His own right here and now in the midst of this dying order. Every fish taken out of the sea, and given as food for life represents this. Every system, every idea, every ‘ism and ‘ology, every thing, new and ancient – that is not of Jesus Christ will perish – it will not go on! This has been established from the beginning – the Lord has spoken it. Out of the chaos and ruin will come separation unto life. Newness of Life. A New Principle of Life! Not fiat life, not that formed solely by creative command, not that which formed the angels, but life out of death; life by virtue of victory over death; life triumphing over the very shadow and idea of death. Only the one who walks above the water, only the One not subject to the flood of death and judgment, will usher in and animate this new life. this New Creation, this New Jerusalem. He alone will be its its life and light! No more moon, no more reflected light!

In the old creation, the Creator God spoke. In the new, He poured out His life, that from out of this death, many sons should come forth, unto Dominion, unto His first intent. In the New Creation, all life must flow out from God; it must express Him perfectly, completely, lovingly, willingly – It must be a life laid down and poured out, not merely God-breathed. It must be life issuing from the very Tree of Life, the Eternal Son of God. Not self-life, but God-life! A life that pleases not itself, but the one who gave Himself for it.

Brethren, we are so much like Peter bobbing desperately in the sea, trying to keep our heads above water, above the death all around us, kicking our feet, flailing our arms, crying out for help. ‘TAKE MY HAND. Let me lift you above the perilous depths, the death of the old creation all around you. “TAKE MY HAND, and rest in Me, live in Me, breathe anew in Me. Let all that is in you that is part of the old order fall way, let it die, let it go, let it sink to the depths”.

Dearest saints, please hear this word in the very bowels of the spirit – time is so very, very , very short! The hour is at hand. All the players have taken the field. All is being staged on the world scene. The Lord is getting ready to act. The enemy is busy seeking whatever way means he can find. The hearts of so many men are trembling at the dark prospects before them. A time of separation, of sifting is upon us, and only His wheat will be taken up into His storehouse.

Let us take His hand as He offers it to us. Let us rise up in all the ways His Spirit speaks to us. Let us call upon the one who walks on the water, who sleeps in the midst of the tempest, who multiplies the fish from out of the depths unto life in His New Creation. Let us pray for this enlargement of vision, for all is being summed up in His Beloved Son! His Bride is being made ready, for only one so worthy, so pure, so finely dressed will appear in His presence, as the Father’s blessed gift to His Beloved and Faithful Son! She is the New Eve! No more will the forbidden fruit be tasted! She will eat from the hand of her Beloved!

COME LORD JESUS COME, COME GREAT KING! COME TO RECEIVE THE FULL REWARD OF YOUR SUFFERING! UNTO ALL GLORY AND HONOR AND THE LOVE OF ALL THOSE WHO LIVE IN THEE!

I pray this word speaks to you beyond the words, in the deep places, the Christ places of your hearts.

amen

your brother in travail -

A New Creation – by T. Austin-Sparks

The all-inclusive rule of the new creation is that “all things are of (out from) God.” Concerning this fact the Apostle Paul uses the word “but” – “But all things are of God” – as though he would anticipate, intercept, or arrest an impulse to rush away and attempt life or service upon an old creation basis, or with old creation resource.

The great question then is: What does it mean that all things in this new creation are out from God? What kind of a life will such a life be? To answer that question adequately would be a very comprehensive task and the most revolutionary thing conceivable.

To begin with, we should have to be settled regarding the difference between the old and the new creations, and then as to how far-reaching that difference is. In addition, we should need to see that God has put these two creations asunder, utterly and forever, and however gracious and forbearing He may be with us in our ignorance and slowness of apprehension, He never accepts the overlapping or intertwining of the two. Then there would be the further need of an inward, intelligent judgment and power by which we are made aware of the Divine veto upon the one and energy toward the other.

There are a few things which, precisely stated, sum up this matter.

1. All things out from God means that all things, in the first place, are in God. A truism though it be, that fact is one of great significance. Whatever man may have, or think that he has, or knows, or can do in the realm of the old creation, nothing of the knowledge, ability, or power of the new creation originates with man. He has to begin as a helpless, ignorant, innocent infant. Everything for him is in God, he has nothing in himself.

2. Whatever God may impart, of wisdom, knowledge, or ability in the new creation, He never does so outright. That is to say, He never gives the resource to be held apart from Himself. He never constitutes men gods, with independent Divine resources. He never allows man to become a possessor in himself, in such a way that man of himself is something. Everything must be held in abiding dependence upon God, both for receiving and using, and nothing can be absolute. It was the violation of this law or the attempt to have it set aside, that brought ruin in the first instance. Man had all by dependence, faith, obedience, and humility. He yielded to the suggestion to have it in himself, with freedom from this law – to “be as God.” God is not leaving that door open in the new creation, and nothing that savours of man will ever get through at last. Here is the importance for life and service of a life wholly in God.

3. The larger the measure of what is of God the more utter will be the application by God of the law of dependence. This means that God will have no plenipotentiaries-at-large. The life and instrument related to God’s fullest thought will be kept on a basis of step-by-step guidance and strength. There will be no making over of plans, schemes, schedules; no seeing of the way from beginning to end; no resources to draw upon without Divine witness, or to endanger exactness as to the Divine intention; no making of men into authorities and courts-of-appeal by reason of their being a fountain of wisdom and knowledge: in a word, nothing that would infringe the law that for all things, at all times, and in all ways, “all things are out from God.”

The only certainty is God. An apostle may be led to move in a particular direction, and then by reason of need and opportunity he may conclude that certain regions are the objective, but when he reaches a point he will be met by a double, Divine “No” to those thoughts, and be shown something unthought of. (Acts 16:6-10.)

To the old creation such a life is most unsatisfactory and irregular. Yes, and in a thousand other things this life is utterly different from what man naturally wants and likes. But that does not mean that God is not more honoured, glorified, and satisfied. Let us read the New Testament with this one thought in mind, the Gospels as well as the rest, and see if it was not true in the case of Christ, the Apostles, and the teaching.

4. If this is all true, then it is its own reflection upon those other major questions. The difference between the two creations, their extent, and the Divine attitude toward them, is clearly and forcefully revealed by such issues as we have pointed out. The difference is irreconcilable and cannot be bridged. The extent reaches to mind, heart, and will. It is a matter of mentality, capacity, and the very springs of life. We are not only confronted with the fact of limitation when we come to probe the question of the old creation, but with a state with which God can have nothing to do. Even though it appear in religious form, and that in the red-hot devoutness of Saul of Tarsus, its deeper nature will be proved inimical to God.

5. There remains one thing to be referred to. In the divide between the two creations there is planted the Cross of Christ. The Cross has a death side and a life side; death to the old, life to the new. The recognition and acceptance of the Cross in this twofold meaning is God’s only way to the new creation. To the believer who receives Him by faith the Holy Spirit is given as the inward intelligent power for witnessing to the Cross against the one and for the other. Hence the immeasurably great importance of a life governed by the Holy Spirit at all points and in all things. Only that which, by the Spirit, is immediately out from God will survive or get through. All else must perish with the creation which God has placed under condemnation.

It is not what is done for God that will last, but what is done by God.

The measure of spiritual value is determined by the measure in which God promotes it, not the measure of human activities according to human judgments and energies in the name of God.

First published in “A Witness and A Testimony” magazine, Jan-Feb 1937, Vol 16-1

Rooted and Grounded by T. Austin-Sparks

The Lord’s Object with the Overcomer

“And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward.” (Is. 37:31).

Reading: Isaiah 36:1-22.

“And even now the axe lieth at the root of the trees: every tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” Matt. 3:10.

“Then came the disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, when they heard this saying? But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” Matt. 15:12-14.

“…and when the sun was risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.” Matt. 13:6.

You will have noticed that in all these passages there is reference to roots, and roots are very important things. A very great deal depends upon roots; for a tree almost everything depends upon the roots. And in the same way, beloved, our roots and our rooting are very important things in the matter of our eternal destiny.

I want to say a little in a general way at the outset before we come to something more specific in this connection. You will notice that the passages which we read (and others could be added to them on the same subject) are divided. Some refer to the sound rooting which will take the strain, which will prove adequate. The others refer to rootings which are not adequate and which will not abide. We might just say a word or two about that second class to begin with.

Through the Word of the Lord there are various kinds and classes of those whose roots and whose rooting is not adequate. Some have been mentioned. The one in Matthew 3:10: “And even now is the axe laid unto the root of the trees”; a word in the ministry of John the Baptist, representing a time of crises when a long period of probation and opportunity had been given by the Lord, and there had been every provision made by Him to secure a sound and abiding rooting on the part of Israel, but now the testing time had come when roots were going to be subjected to a severe trial and testing. The result of that testing, as we know, was that once again Israel was rooted up. Not so many years after this they were rooted up from their land and were carried away in the great hurricane of Divine judgment through the Roman Legions and scattered to various parts of the earth, and they have never since been planted again. The axe was laid to the roots of the tree.

Then two others came in in that class. In Matthew 13 the sower had sowed his seed and some had fallen in rocky places. It had sprung up; when the sun was up it withered, died, having no root. And that, we are given to understand, illustrates those people who hear the Word of the Lord superficially; hear it and in a way receive it, on the face of things respond to it, but in whom it is found eventually there is not the root of the matter. Their kind of receiving, their kind of responding, their kind of association with the Word of the Lord cannot bear the heat, the blaze of the sun, it is something which lies on the outside, it is not that which reaches down into the very depths of their being.

The third, Matthew 15, was a word concerning the Pharisees. The disciples reported that the Pharisees took a certain attitude toward things. The Lord’s Word was: “Every planting (literally) which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind leaders of the blind.”

The Danger of Living on the Past

Now these three cases of roots which do not stand, bring different aspects before us. In the first case, in Matthew 3, you have an historical and traditional thing which has occupied the place of that which claims to represent the Lord and has had much in its history which was of the Lord, in blessing and in use and service; with which much of the Lord has been associated, and which has been associated with much of the Lord in His purpose and His ways; but which has come to a time when it is no more than a past history, a reputation without present life; something that belongs to a by-gone day; whose life, whose vitality and energy and spiritual progress is not up-to-date and abreast of its present claims.

A time of testing comes in the sovereign ordering of God for all such, and it is found by reason of its present root-dryness, lack of vitality, of energy, of up-to-dateness of life that it cannot go through the testing, it is rooted out. A simple word that, and yet a challenging word which shows us two things: that God, in His sovereignty, does most definitely appoint a time in which He will test the state of everything and everyone which makes a claim to be related to Him. He will do that, and then no amount of past history, good history, Divine history, will stand that thing in stead for the day of His testing. Or to put it another way, God tests to find out just exactly how up-to-date spiritual life and spiritual experience is.

There are quite a lot of people who have had a very sound, thoroughly genuine conversion, but who live back on their conversion of ten, twenty, or forty years ago; and while it is true the history was quite sound, it is something of the past. Its vitality has not been continuous, it is not up-to-date, and such people will find that when the winds of God begin to blow they are lacking, they are wanting, and they will be carried away, not necessarily to be eternally lost, any more than Israel is, but to very great loss.

The Danger of an Assumed Relationship to God

And then the Lord also tests most definitely, every kind of profession, every kind of response, every kind of attitude or relationship, to discover whether that is a thing which is on the surface, on the face, superficial; or whether it is a thing which has gone right down deeply into the life, burying its roots in the very sub-soil of experience. Here, again, a simple word, but it may be that there is someone here who is attaching themselves to something, attaching themselves to a place, to a company of people; attaching themselves in an outward way to that which represents the Lord, in hymns and addresses and prayers and services and such like; associating themselves, and, in a way, making some kind of answer or response to the things of the Lord.

Have you seen a self-grown forest in a mountain district after a gale? We have a good deal of that sort of thing in Scotland where the seeds have been carried by the wind and have sown themselves in the very thin soil of a mountain slope, a rocky district. They have grown very tall, lanky thin trees, firs or pines; their roots have spread out and covered a great area, and then – a gale – and as you go along after a gale there are those lanky, thin, gaunt trees lying with their roots right up in the air. You wonder how in all the earth they have managed to cling to the shallow soil. There they are everywhere, rooted up because self-grown, and that is Matthew 13. Something which has made its own kind of response, given its own response, answer, with reservations perhaps, not going too far, not going to be “extreme,” not going to be “singular,” not going to be “fanatical,” just going to be “perfectly balanced” and “sane” and make their own response to the Lord.

All right, God has appointed the hour for a gale. Yes, there will be a blazing sun, it will be discovered whether God did that planting, whether that was a work of God in the heart or whether it was just something of human attachment or association. It may just be that here there may be one or more attaching themselves from the outside to that which is of the Lord, but they are not right in, buried, rooted, grounded, not in the thing in the Lord. Are you attaching yourself to something religious, or are your buried with your roots in Christ? Rooted in Him?

The Danger of Position without Possession

The third word in Matthew 15 relating to the Pharisees of course has to do with those who assumed the role of teachers, spiritual leaders. The Pharisees were those who took upon themselves to guide others in matters of religion. The Lord said of them: “Every planting (literally) which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” In other words it was just this: Everyone who dares to take the responsibility of giving guidance to others, who has not been commissioned of the Lord, with the Lord’s message, will be rooted up. They are self-planted teachers and leaders.

Now, while within the compass of this gathering that may have a very limited application, it is something for us to remember in these days. The absolute necessity that those who lead us in spiritual things should themselves be men who have a mandate from God, men with a message, men with a revelation, men in whom the root of the matter is and not just teachers. I am saying all this in the light of the end-time because I believe we are entering more and more into that phase of things when everything is going to be subjected to testing in the sovereignty of God. Everything of tradition, everything of profession, of vocation; all are going to be tested by the winds of God.

Oh, such winds! Yes, winds of deception. God may not send deception but God will not prevent it. False teachers, false doctrine; severe trial and testing; deep, deep searching experiences, we are all coming into it and it is going to be discovered under the sovereign direction of God just how deep our roots are. Beloved, testing will do one of two things, it will either carry us away or drive us deeper. There is going to be in the end nothing that will not stand the test. The Lord make us those who have our roots downward and our fruit upward.

Now just a little more specific word especially in connection with Isaiah 37. Isaiah has much to say about the remnant, and there is a remnant of Israel, and as we know quite well, there is a remnant of Christianity. The remnant of Christianity is found in the first three chapters of Revelation. It is represented by the oft-repeated words “To him that overcometh”; that is the remnant. You see quite clearly that it is but a remnant in those churches in Asia. The main thing has gone wrong, a remnant of overcomers is seen there and that remnant of Christianity is very much in view in the Word of the Lord.

Now, a remnant feature is roots downward. A feature of a remnant is that it takes root downward. And the Lord does it, the Lord causes it to be so. The Lord so acts in His sovereignty and in His providence to see to it that a remnant is marked by roots which have got such a grip that nothing in hell or on earth can pluck it out. The Lord must, for His own glory, have something like that which can stand all the challenges of the circumstances of life.

The Lord must have something which cannot be carried away, which cannot be removed, cannot be shaken, and certainly something which cannot be rooted up. That is His remnant. That, He must have for His own glory, and, that being so, He will take every measure with His remnant to have them after that kind, with roots downward. Of course, unto fruit upward. We speak much about the upward side of things, life in the heavenlies, sitting in the heavenlies, and our warfare and work – the fruitfulness of our life in union with the Lord. That is only possible as our roots are downward. In order that that might be so, we have to get into a place of unshakeableness where the roots have got such a grip that nothing can overthrow. And I believe that explains a very great deal of what the Lord is doing with His own spiritual people in these days.

It is true that the true children of God are going through a time of intense trial and testing spiritually in these days; everywhere it is so. Why? Because the Lord must have something against which hell is impotent and by which He demonstrates to the universe that strength of His might which causes to stand and withstand and having done all to stand. If one were asked what the last issue for the Church in this age is, I would say that it stands, and that is saying a tremendous thing. Oh, you say, that is surely limiting things, are you not expecting much more than that? Progress, advance, sweeping movements? The Church will have all its work cut out in the end to stand, but its standing will be its victory. Just to be able, through testing, trial, when everything is blowing round you like a blizzard; when everything is dark, mysterious, and even God seems far away and unreal, and faith is tested and you are being assailed on the right hand and on the left, and there is every reason outwardly for your moving, giving up, falling down, surrendering, lowering your standard, just to stand and not be moved in your faith is the greatest possible victory.

The Remnant a Testimony to the Lord’s Power

Now I come to Isaiah 36 and 37. You notice that that passage about the remnant taking root is an issue. Chapter 36 we have heard read this evening, about Rabshakeh and Sennacherib with his boasting, flaunting, high-faluting utterances, challenging not just Hezekiah and the Jews, but their God. Vaunting himself against Jehovah, saying that there has been no god of any of the peoples of the earth who has been able to stand before his master, and certainly the God of the Jews will not be able to stand; and there they are outside the gates of Jerusalem with all this. Why did the Lord allow it? The Lord saw the first movement in far away Assyria, toward Jerusalem; why didn’t He stop them, intervene for the sake of His own, and circumvent? Why did He not raise up circumstances that would hinder? Why did He allow them actually to encamp round and lay siege to Jerusalem, and then allow them to say these things?

It is all in the sovereignty of God. God has allowed this. God has permitted this thing to come right up to this present point. Hezekiah received the letter and rent his clothes, put on sackcloth, and went and spread the letter before the Lord. They were surely in straits. The Lord has allowed, we might even say drawn out, Sennacherib and the mighty hosts of the Assyrians, drawn them out literally, drawn them out materially, drawn them out mentally, drawn them out verbally, extended them, allowed them to inflate themselves to bursting point: they are exalted to the very heavens in their own eyes.

All right, the Lord has drawn them out. A remnant comes into view and the remnant shall take root. When the Assyrian and Sennacherib have gone just as far as it is possible for them to go, have become as inflated as it is possible for them to be, when they have swelled to the very heavens, the Lord for His remnant’s sake sent one angel! Surely, the Lord wants a mighty host to deal with this situation – “And the angel of the Lord went forth.”

Do you see, beloved, a New Testament factor in this? The adversary would impress the weak saints of the Lord with his importance, with his greatness. There is one thing the enemy is always trying to do as a strategic thing and that is to put fear in the heart of a child of God. Fear. There is nothing so weakening, so devastating as fear. If the enemy can get fear into our hearts he has got the city and he will make a great display and vaunt himself and try to impress upon us how mighty he is.

It is never for us to under-estimate the power of the enemy, but we have always got to keep the balance of comparison between our God and the enemy. The Lord’s weakness is more than a match for all the power of Satan. And it comes to this, the remnant puts its faith in the Lord over against all the fury of the oppressor, all the vaunting of the oppressor, and then the Lord proves He only allowed the oppressor to come out in that extreme way to show that the remnant cannot be destroyed, for the remnant takes root in the presence of Sennacherib, in the presence of the Assyrians. “And the remnant… shall again take root.” You see that is the ultimate issue. This was looking on to a coming day, it is true, but it is remarkable that these two things come together, that the Assyrians come into view with all their power and they are only allowed eventually to destroy that which is not counting for God, but God gets, in spite of everything, a remnant with roots.

Rooted in the Cross and Immovable

Now note, you who know the conflict, you who know the fury of the oppressor, the bitterness of the animus of the devil, remember that the Lord allows him to go a long way in order that there might be this double issue. Firstly, an entering into the knowledge of the exceeding greatness of God’s power – but how exceeding great must be God’s power if against the mighty host of Assyria one angel alone is all that is necessary! To discover the exceeding greatness of God’s power on the one hand, and on the other hand, through the work of the enemy himself, to drive the roots down. The Lord uses the adversary in his own hatred and bitterness to get our roots in, and to make us impervious to the Devil. He uses the adversary against himself in our trials. Roots downward, fruit upward. I am sure that is what the Lord is doing.

We are passing through deep experiences, the enemy is doing it and the Lord is not preventing him, but we are coming to a fuller knowledge of the power of our God and a deeper rooting beyond all previous shakeableness. And the Lord is seeking to have a people who cannot be shaken, against whom hell with all its demonstration of arrogance and pride, is impotent. “And the remnant… shall again take root downward.” That is what the Lord needs.

May I remind you that the nature of this planting is just that with which we are so familiar. “Planted together in the likeness of his death.” That is the word of the Apostle, “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.” The enemy is the instrument so often, of planting us more deeply into the death of Christ. His assaults, his attacks, his accusations, everything – yes. The Lord is not the source of evil but the Lord allows it.

So often our hearts cry out: “Why did the Lord ever allow that in our lives?” That thing which has meant such a deep, dark passage. Why did the Lord allow it? He could have prevented it. Well, we were planted by it into the death of the Lord Jesus. We were brought more than ever to an end of ourselves. Yes, and therefore, to know the Lord in a larger measure than we have ever known Him, and to be brought to a place where it will not be so easy for the Devil to shake us next time.

That is the sovereign way of God in deeper death experiences. “Planted together in the likeness of his death.” Have you been planted there initially? Have you been planted in Christ crucified? Or are you one of those attachments to something? Are you planted? And when a deeper planting comes, remember it is the roots being driven downwards, and the issue is going to be most surely endurance, stability, ability to stand; but, oh, there is going to be greater fruitfulness.

We are in the Lord’s hands, not in the Devil’s hands. We are in the Lord’s hands, and being in His hands we are in the hands of a Potter Who knows what He is after. We were saying this afternoon that first of all, the vessel is in the potter, and then eventually the potter is in the vessel. What we mean is this. That before ever the potter starts, the vessel is in his mind, in his heart very clearly. The pattern is not something objective, the vessel is already a complete thing in him; and then he gets to work upon it and when he is finished, he is in the vessel he has wrought. What was in Him has come out in it.

We say of people’s work: “I can see who made that, it is just like them.” “That is just like So-and-so to make a thing like that.” Yes, He is in His work, He is in the vessel that He makes, and that is just what He is doing. Sometimes that clay has to be pressed down to a shapeless mass, broken. It is not showing all that He intended it to show, there are defects and flaws, and so He crushes it down to shapelessness. A mass without shape. But it is to start again to get something more perfect than has been before, in which He Himself is.

May He give us grace to endure whatever the trial may be, along whatever line of metaphor, the wind, the blaze, supreme heat, or pressure of His hand, all of which is to get us into a place where we cannot be moved, where hell cannot shake us, where His power is made manifest as triumphant over all the power of the enemy.

First published in “A Witness and A Testimony” magazine, Jan-Feb 1933, Vol 11-1