Prophetic ministry is
something which has not come in with time, but is
eternal. It has come out of the eternal counsels.
Perhaps you wonder what
that means. Well, we remember that, without any
explanation or definition, something comes in right at
the beginning and takes the place of government in the
economy of God, and involves this very function. When
Adam sinned and was expelled from the garden, the Word
simply says, God "placed at the east of the garden
of Eden the Cherubim... to keep the way of the tree of
life" (Genesis 3:24).
Who or what are the
Cherubim? Where do they come from? We have heard nothing
about them before; no explanation of them is given. It
simply is a statement. God put them there to guard the
way of the tree of life. They have become the custodians
of life, to hold things according to God's thought. For
the thoughts of man's heart have departed from God's
thoughts and have become evil; everything has been
marred; and now the custodians of the Divine thought
about the greatest of all things for man - Divine life,
uncreated life - the custodians of that, the Cherubim,
are placed there.
But later we are given
to understand what the Cherubim are like: this symbolic,
composite representation has a four-fold aspect - the
lion, the ox, the man and the eagle; and we are given to
understand very clearly that the predominant feature is
the man. It is a man, really, with three
other aspects, those of the lion, the ox, and the eagle.
The lion is a symbol of kingship or dominion; the ox, of
service and sacrifice; the eagle, of heavenly glory and
mystery. The man, the predominant aspect of the Cherubim
- what is that?
We know that throughout
the Scriptures the man takes the place, in the Divine
order of things, of the prophet, the representative of
God. The representation of God's thoughts is a man.
That was the intention in the creation of Adam in the
image and likeness of God - to be the personal embodiment
and expression of all God's thoughts. That is what man
was created for. That is what we find in the Man,
the Man who was God manifested in the flesh. He was the
perfect expression of all God's thoughts.
Where has this symbolism
of the Cherubim come from? It is simply brought in. It
comes out from eternity. It is a Divine, an eternal
thought, and it takes charge of things, to hold things
for God. So that man - and we know that phrase "the
Son of man" - is peculiarly related to the prophetic
office, and the prophetic function is an eternal thing,
which just comes in. It is, in its very nature, the
representation of Divine thoughts, and it is to hold
God's thoughts in purity and in fullness. That is the
idea related to the man, to the prophet, and that is the
prophetic function and nature.
THE
IDENTITY OF THE PROPHET WITH HIS MESSAGE
But what does that carry
with it? Here we come to the most important point of the
whole. It is the absolute identity of the vessel with the
vessel's ministry. Prophetic ministry is not something
that you can take up. It is something that you are. No
academy can make you a prophet. Samuel instituted the
schools of the prophets. They were for two purposes -
one, the dissemination of religious knowledge, and the
other, the writing up of the chronicles of religious
history. In Samuel's day there was no open vision; the
people had lost the Word of God. They had to be taught
the Word of God again, and the chronicles of the ways of
God had to be written up and put on record for future
generations, and the schools of the prophets were
instituted in the main for that purpose. But there is a
great deal of difference between those academic prophets
and the living, anointed prophets. The academic prophets
became members of a profession and swiftly degenerated
into something unworthy. All the false prophets came from
schools of prophets, and were accepted publicly on that
ground. They had been to college and were accepted. But
they were false prophets. Going to a religious college
does not of itself make you a prophet of God.
My point is this - the
identity of the vessel with its ministry is the very
heart of Divine thought. A man is called to represent the
thoughts of God, to represent them in what he is,
not in something that he takes up as a form or line of
ministry, not in something that he does. The vessel
itself is the ministry and you cannot divide between the
two.
THE
NECESSITY FOR SELF-EMPTYING
That explains everything
in the life of the great prophets. It explains the life
of Moses, the prophet whom the Lord God raised up from
among his brethren (Deut. 18:15,18). Moses essayed to
take up his life-work. He was a man of tremendous
abilities, "learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians " (Acts 7:22), with great natural
qualifications and gifts, and then somehow he got some
conception of a life-work for God. It was quite true; it
was a true conception, a right idea; he was very honest,
there was no question at all about his motives; but he
essayed to take up that work on the basis of what he was
naturally, with his own ability, qualifications and zeal,
and on that basis disaster was allowed to come upon the
whole thing.
Not so are prophets
made; not so can the prophetic office be exercised. Moses
must go into the wilderness and for forty years be
emptied out, until there is nothing left of all that as a
basis upon which he can have confidence to do the work of
God or fulfil any Divine commission. He was by nature a
man "mighty in his words and works"; and
yet now he says, "I am not eloquent... I am slow
of speech..." (Exodus 4:10). There has been a tremendous
undercutting of all natural facility and resource, and
I do not think that Moses was merely disagreeable in
his reply to God. He did not say in effect, 'You would
not allow me to do it then, so I will not do it now.' I
think he was a man who was under the Divine discipline
and yet on top of it. A man who is really under things
and who has become petulant does not respond to little
opportunities of helping people. We get a glimpse of
Moses at the beginning of his time in the wilderness
(Exodus 2:16,17) which suggests that he was not of that
kind. When there was difficulty at the well, over
the watering of the flocks, if Moses had been in a bad
mood, cantankerous, disagreeable because the Lord had not
seemed to stand by him in Egypt, he probably would have
sat somewhere apart and looked on and done nothing to
help. But he went readily to help, in a good spirit,
doing all he could. He was on top of his trial. Little
things indicate where a man is.
We go through times of
trial and test under the hand of God, and it is so easy
to get into that frame of mind which says in effect, 'The
Lord does not want us, He need not have us!' We let
everything go, we do not care about anything; we have
gone down under our trials and we are rendered useless. I
do not believe the Lord ever comes to a person like that
to take them up. Elijah, dispirited, fled to the
wilderness, and to a cave in the mountains; but he had to
get somewhere else before the Lord could do anything with
him. "What doest thou here, Elijah?" (I
Kings 19:9). The Lord never comes to a man and
recommissions him when he is in despair. 'God shall
forgive thee all but thy despair' (F. W. H. Myers, 'St.
Paul') - because despair is lost faith in God, and
God can never do anything with one who has lost faith.
Moses was emptied to the
last drop, and yet he was not angry or disagreeable with
God. What was the Lord doing? He was making a prophet.
Beforehand, the man would have taken up an office, he
would have made the prophetic function serve him, he
would have used it. There was no inward, vital
relationship between the man and the work that he was to
do; they were two separate things; the work was objective
to the man. At the end of forty years in the wilderness
he is in a state for this to become subjective; something
has been done. There has been brought about a state which
makes the man fit to be a living expression of the Divine
thought. He has been emptied of his own thoughts to make
room for God's thoughts; he has been emptied of his own
strength, that all the energy should be of God.
Is not that perhaps the
meaning of the fire and the bush that was not consumed?
It is a parable, maybe a larger parable, but I think in
the immediate application it was saying something to
Moses. 'Moses, you are a very frail creature, a common
bush of the desert, a bit of ordinary humanity, nothing
at all of resource in yourself; but there is a resource,
which can carry you on and on, and you can be maintained,
without being consumed, by an energy that is not your own
- the Spirit of God, the energy of God.' That was the
great lesson this prophet had to learn. 'I cannot!' 'All
right', said the Lord, 'but I AM.'
A great deal is made of
the natural side of many of the Lord's servants, and
usually with tragic results. A lot is made of Paul. 'What
a great man Paul was naturally, what intellect he had,
what training, what tremendous abilities!' That may all
be true, but ask Paul what value it was to him when he
was right up against a spiritual situation. He will cry,
"Who is sufficient for these things? ... Our
sufficiency is from God" (II Cor. 2:16; 3:5). Paul
was taken through experiences where he, like Moses,
despaired of life. He said, "We... had the sentence
of death within ourselves, that we should not trust in
ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead" (II
Cor. 1:9).
MESSAGE
INWROUGHT BY ACTUAL EXPERIENCE
You see, the principle
is at work all the time, that God is going to make the
ministry and the minister identical. You see it in all
the prophets. The Lord stood at nothing. He took infinite
pains. He worked even through domestic life, the closest
relationships of life. Think of the tragedy of Hosea's
domestic life. Think of Ezekiel, whose wife the Lord took
away in death at a stroke. The Lord said, 'Get up in the
morning, anoint your face, allow not the slightest
suggestion of mourning or tragedy to be detected; go out
as always before, as though nothing had happened; show
yourself to the people, go about with a bright
countenance, provoke them to enquire what you mean by
such outrageous behaviour.' The Lord brought this
heartbreak upon him and then required him to act thus.
Why? Ezekiel was a prophet; he had got to embody his
message, and the message was this: 'Israel, God's wife,
has become lost to God, dead to God, and Israel takes no
notice of it; she goes on the same as ever, as though
nothing had happened.' The prophet must bring it home by
his own experience. God is working the thing right in. He
works it in in deep and terrible ways in the life of His
servant to produce ministry.
God is not allowing us
to take up things and subjects. If we are under the Holy
Ghost, He is going to make us prophets; that is, He is
going to make the prophecy a thing that has taken place
in us, so that what we say is only making vocal something
that has been going on, that has been done in us. God has
been doing it through years in strange, deep, terrible
ways in some lives, standing at nothing, touching
everything; and the vessel, thus wrought upon, is the
message. People do not come to hear what you have
to teach. They have come to see what you are,
to see that thing which has been wrought by God. What
a price the prophetic instrument has to pay!
So Moses went into the
wilderness, to the awful undoing of his natural life, his
natural mentality; to be brought to zero; to have the
thing wrought in him. And was God justified? - for after
all it was a question of resource for the future. Oh, the
strain that was going to bear down upon that life!
Sometimes Moses well-nigh broke; at times he did crack
under the strain. "I am not able to bear all this
people alone, because it is too heavy for me" (Num.
11:14). What was his resource? Oh, if it had been the old
resource of Egypt he would not have stood it for a year.
He could not stand provocation in Egypt, he must rise up
and fight. He broke down morally and spiritually under
that little strain away back there forty years before.
What would he do with these rebels? How long would he put
up with them? A terrific strain was going to bear down
upon him, and only a deep inwrought thing, something that
had been done inside, would be enough to carry through
when it was a case of standing against the stream for
God's full thought.
With us, too, the strain
may be terrific; oft-times there will come the very
strong temptation - 'Let go a little, compromise a
little, do not be so utter; you will get more open doors
if you will only broaden out a bit; you can have a lot
more if you ease up!' What is going to save you in that
hour of temptation? The only thing is that God has done
this thing in you. It is part of your very being - not
something you can give up; it is you, your very life.
That is the only thing. God knew what He was doing with
Moses. The thing had got to be so much one with the man
that there was no dividing between them. The man was
the prophetic ministry.
He was rejected by his
brethren; they would not have him. "Who made thee a
prince and a judge over us?" (Ex. 2:14). That is the
human side of it. But there was the Divine side. It was
of God that he went into the wilderness for forty years.
It had to be, from God's side. It looked as though it was
man's doing. But it was not so. These two things went
together. Rejection by his brethren was all in line with
the sovereign purpose of God. It was the only way in
which God got the opportunity He needed to reconstitute
this man. The real preparation of this prophet took place
during the time that his brethren repudiated him. Oh, the
sovereignty of God, the wonderful sovereignty of God! A
dark time, a deep time; a breaking, crushing, grinding
time; emptied out. It seems as if everything is going,
that nothing will be left. Yet all that is God's way of
making prophetic ministry.
A
MESSENGER DIVINELY ATTESTED
I expect that Moses at
the beginning would have been very legalistic, laying
down the law - 'You must do this and that' - and so on;
an autocrat or despot. When, after those years, we find
him coming off the wheel, out of the hands of the Potter,
he is said to be "very meek, above all the men that
were upon the face of the earth" (Num. 12:3), and
God could stand by him then. He could not stand by him on
that day when he rose up in a spirit of pride, arrogance,
self-assertiveness. God had to let that work itself out
to its inevitable consequence. But when Moses, as the
meekest of men, the broken, humble, selfless man, was
challenged by others as to his office - at such a time
Moses did not stand up for his position, his rights; he
just handed the matter over to the Lord. His attitude
was, 'We will allow the Lord to decide. I have no
personal position to preserve: if the Lord has made me
His prophet, let Him show it. I am prepared to go out of
office if it is not of the Lord.' What a different
spirit! And the Lord did stand by him marvelously and
mightily on those occasions, and terribly so for those
who opposed themselves (Numbers 12:2ff.; 16:3ff.).
PROPHETIC
MINISTRY A LIFE, NOT TEACHING
Well, what is a prophet?
what is the prophetic function? It is this. God takes
hold of a vessel (it may be individual or it may be
collective: the function of prophetic ministry may move
through a people, as it did through Israel), and He takes
that vessel through a deep history, breaking and undoing,
disillusioning, revolutionising the whole mentality, so
that things which were held fiercely, assertively, are no
longer so held. There is developed a wonderful
pliableness, adjustableness, teachableness. Everything
that was merely objective as to the work of God, as to
Divine truth, as to orthodoxy or fundamentalism, all that
was held so strongly, in an objective, legalistic way, as
to what is right and wrong in methods - it is all dealt
with, all broken. There is a new conception entirely, a
new outlook upon things; no longer a formal system,
something outside you which you take up, but something
wrought in an inward way in the vessel. It is what the
vessel is that is its ministry. It is not what it has
accepted of doctrine and is now teaching.
Oh, to get free of all
that horrible realm of things! It is a wretched realm,
that of adopting teachings, taking on interpretations,
being known because such and such is your line of things.
Oh, God deliver us! Oh, to be brought to the place where
it is a matter of life - of what God has really
done in us, made of us! First He has pulverised us, and
then He has reconstructed us on a new spiritual
principle, and that expresses itself in ministry: what is
said is coming from what has been going on behind,
perhaps for years and even right up to date.
Do you see the law of
prophetic function? It is that God keeps anointed vessels
abreast of truth by experience. Every bit of truth that
they give out in word is something that has had a
history. They went down into the depths and they were
saved by that truth. It was their life and therefore it
is a part of them. That is the nature of prophetic
ministry.
A
PROPHET, TOLERANT BUT UNCOMPROMISING
Reverting to what I was
saying about the change in Moses: you can see a
reflection of it in the case of Samuel. I think Samuel is
one of the most beautiful and lovable characters in the
Old Testament, and he is called a prophet. Do you notice
that although his own heart is utterly devoted to God's
highest and fullest thought, and inwardly he has no
compromise whatever, yet he shows a marvelous charity
toward Saul during those early months? (It seems not to
have gone much beyond a year, the first year of Saul's
reign, during which it seems that Saul really did seek to
show some semblance of good.) And yet you must remember
that Saul represents the denial of the highest of all
things - the direct and immediate government of God. Such
government was repudiated by Israel in favour of a king -
"Make us a king to judge us like all the
nations", they said. God said to Samuel: "They
have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me"
(I Samuel 8:5-7).
Kingship was a Divine
principle as much as prophecy was. The lion is there with
the man. The monarch, representing God's thought of
dominion, is there. But with Saul it is on a lower level.
His coming in represented the bringing down of that
Divine thought to the level of the world: "like all
the nations" - a Divine thought taken hold of by
carnal men, dragged down to the world level; and Samuel
knew it. In his heart he could not accept that, and he
complained to God about it; he was against this thing,
for he saw what it meant. But how charitable he was to
Saul as long as he could be!
Why do I say that?
Because there is a condition like that existing today.
Divine things have been taken hold of by men carnally,
and brought down to an earth level; the direct government
of the Holy Spirit has been exchanged for committees and
boards and so on. Men have set up the government in
Divine things and are running things for God. The way of
the New Testament, that in prayer and fasting the mind of
the Lord is secured, is hardly known. Well, those who are
spiritual, who know, who see, who understand, cannot
accept that. But they are very charitable. A true
prophet, like Samuel, will be charitable as long as
possible, until that wrong thing takes the pronounced and
positive form of disobedience to light given. The Lord
came to Saul through Samuel and gave him clearly to
understand what he had to do. It was made known to him
with unmistakable clearness what God required of him, and
he was disobedient. Then Samuel said, 'No more charity
with that!' He was implacable. "Because thou hast
rejected the word of the Lord, he hath rejected thee from
being king" (I Samuel 15:23). Samuel went as far as
he could while the man did the best he could. That is
charity.
Of course, types are
always weak and imperfect, but you can see the truth
there. The prophet Samuel showed a great deal of
forbearance with things that were wrong, even while in
his heart he could not accept them. He hoped that light
would break and obedience follow and the situation be
saved. We have to be very charitable to all that with
which we do not agree.
The point is this -
Moses had to learn that; he had to be made like that. We
are better fitted to serve the Lord's purpose, we are
truer prophets, when we can bear with things with which
we do not agree, than when in our zeal we are
iconoclasts, and seek only to destroy the offending
thing. The Lord says, 'That will not do.'
In all that we have said
we have emphasized only one thing - that prophetic
ministry is a function. Its function is to hold
everything in relation to God's full thought - but not as
holding a 'line' of things, in an objective and
legalistic way. You do not take something up. You can
only do it truly as God has wrought into you that thing
for which you are going to stand, and in so far as it has
been revealed in you through experience, through the
handling of God - God has taken you through it, and you
know it like that. It is not that you have achieved
something, but rather that you have been broken in the
process. Now you are fit for something in the Lord.