"Praise
ye the LORD for
the avenging of Israel, when the people willingly
offered themselves" (Judges 5:2).
When we speak of spiritual leadership we
must keep out of our minds what we might call official
leadership, appointment to position, and such like. We
are concerned with leadership which is spiritual.
It does not require a very thorough
searching of the Scriptures to discover that in all
times the interests of the Lord have been very largely
and very definitely bound up with the spirit of
leadership, and that when that spirit was absent
things were in a very bad way; the Lord's interests
were not being advanced; there was barrenness and
unfruitfulness. Weakness, defeat and dishonour
prevailed always when there was an absence of
spiritual leadership. When the Lord would have an
increase, an advance, a development, or a fuller
realisation of His end, He always moved anew in the
matter of spiritual leadership.
We have already seen a correspondence
between the times of the Judges and our own time,
things being in a bad spiritual state. Perhaps the
main good is a renewing, growing, strengthening cry
for a fresh visitation of God. That is a good thing,
but it declares a bad state, it represents that things
are very much other than they should be.
In times such as the times of the Judges,
and in our own time, recovery as to the Lord's full
mind for His people is bound up with spiritual
leadership, so that we can truly say that there is a
very great need for this in our time. It is very
difficult to find this thing in any real and
commensurate way today. Everything is of a very low
level and measure. We have all found a fairly general
level, which is not very high. There is nothing which
speaks definitely and strongly of the spirit of
leadership.
If
we recognise and accept that, there is the possibility
of our coming to some profitable consideration of what
the Lord would do, and how He would do it through a clearer
understanding of what spiritual leadership is, to meet
the Lord's need and the need of the Lord's people.
The Securing of a People to God's
End
In the first place let us remember that
spiritual leadership has always to do with the
securing of a people to the end which God has willed.
God has an end in view for His people; He is not just
working haphazardly, moving without design. The end of
God is, to Himself, clearly, fully and finally defined
and settled, and He never departs from that and will
accept nothing other or less. God has a full end in
view, and He will make a full end, and will reach that
full end.
Spiritual leadership is always related to
securing a people to that end. There may be phases, or
initial steps in the salvation or the deliverance of
that people. After the initial stage all the other
stages, right up to the final crowning stroke to bring
them in at last, will call for the extra putting forth
of power for such a people. Whatever the point is at
which we take up this purpose of God, the spiritual
leadership in it is related to the end, not to any
particular phase at any time as something in itself.
We must not isolate any part or any stage
of God's work and make it something in itself and an
end in itself. The matter of the unsaved, for
instance, is relative and not detached or exclusive,
and must never be made so. The sanctifying of
believers, the leading of them into a life of
holiness, is not something round which you may put a
hedge and call it by a title, or make it something
that ends with itself. That is only a step, a stage.
So it is with everything else. It is all related to
the full end and must ever be maintained in that
relatedness.
We must see, then, that spiritual
leadership is the securing of a people to God's full
end, to the end which God has willed for that people.
We can never say that God intended to bring out a
people and leave them a third of the way, or
two-thirds of the way, or nine-tenths of the way. God
intends that they should go right through, by
successive stages, and every gift of the spirit of
leadership was but to carry them forward to the full
end. It is important to recognise that.
The End Will Never be Reached Here
Another
thing in connection with spiritual leadership is this,
that the end will never be reached here. It always
relates ultimately to heaven and not to earth. It never has been,
and
never will be, complete here. That is shown very
forcibly in the types. Abraham, with all the promises
and sovereign movements of God in his life, with all
the advance made (and there was tremendous advance of
a spiritual kind made in his life from Ur of the
Chaldees onward), came to the place where he realised
that the end could never be reached here. He looked
for "a city which had foundations, whose builder and
maker was God" (Heb. 11:10). When we find a quotation
to that effect in the New Testament we know that the
context points out clearly that it was not an earthly
thing at all but a heavenly. Then we know that Israel
looked for a country, and the apostle tells us that it
was "heavenly", which carries things beyond Canaan.
Then when Israel came into the land they never fully
possessed it, and if they had there would still have
been something lacking. Again, in the letter to the
Hebrews we are told that they did not enter fully into
God's rest, that even Joshua could not bring them
wholly into the rest. "There remains therefore a rest
for the people of God" (Heb. 4:9). So wherever you
look at the types you find there is a falling short,
and they point to the fact that God's full end can
never be reached here; it relates to heaven and not to
earth. It is important to recognise that in spiritual
leadership. You will see how that bears upon things as
we go on.
Never let us think that we shall reach
something here that is complete, perfect and final. We
never shall, however far we go. However much we
advance and progress we shall come at the end to
realise that there is still a very great deal further
to go, and that extra bit is not an earthly thing at
all. As a matter of fact the spiritual consciousness
of truly spiritual people is that the further they go
with the Lord the more other-worldly do all their
interests become. That is, the more they are separated
from things here and attached to heaven. They find that
it is essential to do that, because of the invariable
and inevitable failure of anything in a creation which
lies under a sentence of vanity and cannot reach its
end until the manifestation of the sons in glory. That
governs this matter. It should not be a
discouragement, but it should be a reinforcement.
Spiritual Leadership Sometimes
Bound up
with a People
Spiritual
leadership is not always bound up with individuals, it
is sometimes bound up with a people. This again is set
out in types. There were leaders in type who were
individual.
We stress the word "type" because so often this
natural man gets hold of the Old Testament idea of leadership and
tries to reproduce it in
our time. God does not do that. In types we see
spiritual leadership entrusted to individuals, but we
also see it with peoples, with a tribe for instance.
"Who shall set the battle in array?" "Who shall go
before?" And the Lord said that Judah should set the
battle in array, that Judah should lead the people. A
whole tribe becomes endued with the spirit of
leadership. We make that point at the moment as we
work towards the application, in order that we might
realise that God sometimes raises up a people as well
as individuals for the purpose of spiritual
leadership. He sometimes raises up a collective
testimony to set a standard for the rest of His
people, something expressed in a corporate body by
which all His people shall see more of His thought,
and be to them an advance guard in the purpose of God.
We have been speaking of the assembly at
Thessalonica, and have seen how they were an example
to all that believed, and that through them the Word
went out into all the region, and that they were
spoken of everywhere. Evidently spiritual leadership
was there. You see at once the nature of leadership
when you look at it. People did not set themselves up
as a body in front of all the Lord's people to lead
them on, but it was a spiritual influence, something
emanating from a spiritual company, and it had the
effect of leading the Lord's people on, and showing
the way, showing what was possible through faith. The
Lord would do that kind of thing as much today as ever
for a collective testimony which serves Him in the
capacity of spiritual leadership; but we must not
allow our personal and our individual responsibility
to be lost in the collective.
Bearing the Brunt of the
Opposition
There is one more thing by way of
introduction. Spiritual leadership always means the
bearing of the brunt of the first line opposition.
Quite obviously leaders must meet the first line of
opposition, and in spiritual leadership it means that
the brunt of things falls upon the leadership. Those
who are in the position of spiritual leadership will
know more of the fury, antagonism, hatred, malice and
evil cunning of the oppressor than perhaps the average
child of God, or people of God, will know. That
explains a good deal. Remember that it is something to
be expected.
Having said those things of a general
nature, we come closer to the meaning of spiritual
leadership.
Leadership from God's Standpoint:
Always and Essentially Spiritual
That means several things:
a)
Natural qualifications are not the
governing factors
The book of Judges has already shown us
that. These whom God raised up were, on the natural
plane, anything but what the world would choose as its
leaders. They suffered from various kinds of
handicaps, and their handicaps are made perfectly
clear. Ehud was a left-handed man, and that fact, in
Scripture, is always intended to indicate human or
natural weakness from God's standpoint. It is a type,
but that is what it is intended to indicate. Deborah
was a woman, indicating that again something out of
the usual is in view from God's standpoint. Gideon was
the least in his father's house. He was away in a
corner, threshing wheat to hide it from the enemy,
largely unknown, and not one in any prominent public
position, not one about whom we have anything to say
as to his natural qualifications. Jephthah was
handicapped by the unfortunate birth, and driven out
by the other members of his family because he was not
a true member of the family. What a handicap for a man
to be a leader among the Lord's people!
Natural qualifications are clearly not the
governing factors here, and from God's standpoint they
never are. Leadership is spiritual. Human
personality, which counts so much with the world,
is not the first consideration with God. There is
personality which is produced by spirituality which is
far more effective than the strongest personality
among men. Real spirituality (in leadership) means
discernment, perception, judgement, understanding
and wisdom, insight and strength. It emerges
spontaneously as the result of a secret history
with God.
I remember once hearing something said of
a certain man, that it did not matter where he was,
whether in a board meeting, or committee meeting,
(though he might only be invited to attend that
meeting for a special purpose), if he was there even
for a little while, spontaneously the whole meeting
turned to him, and he became the unofficial chairman
for the time being. That was because of his judgement
and insight. It is an illustration that spiritual
personality is something which is developed in a
secret history with God while human personality is not
a first consideration with Him.
Moses
was something when he left Egypt at the age of forty.
When he left the wilderness forty years later he was
nothing. Then it was that God could come in and give him spiritual
leadership. He sought to assume leadership at the age
of forty, on the basis of what he was in Egypt. Forty
years later he was loath to accept spiritual leadership
at all, and had to get it from God. Leadership is
clearly a matter of the spirit.
Joshua and the judges give us the same
lesson. Then in connection with David you will notice
what Samuel was looking for: a man of personality, of
stature, of manifest qualifications. The Lord made it
clear that He was looking on the heart, and not on the
outward appearance. When David entered in (the one
who would never have been selected but rather left out
of account) the Lord told Samuel to anoint him. Then
there is Paul. While so much is made of Paul's natural
qualifications and achievements, Paul would never stand
on that ground himself. We know that it is the
spiritual value of Paul that counts, not any natural
ability. Enough has been said to prove that leadership
is spiritual, that it is a matter of spiritual
qualities and features being pre-eminent.
This word is for the one who may think
himself or herself the very least, the one who might
feel that leadership could never come their way. We
are talking about spiritual leadership. All other
ideas and considerations must be deliberately
thrust aside, and we must remember this, that
leadership is constituted by God, and is the result of
His approbation of a life lived in secret with Him.
There is no other qualifying, no other training; it is
not taught in the schools; it is a life in secret with
God, upon which God's eye is resting, and in due time,
when that eye is satisfied, God moves and says: "This
is My son, in whom is My delight!" and gives him to be
a leader and commander to the people under anointing.
We have used those words, not to apply them generally
to everybody, but to apply the truth. I believe that
there is far more in the thirty years of the hidden
life of the Lord Jesus than we know. It is impossible
to think for a moment that those thirty years were of
no account, that they were not under the eye of God
and had no meaning. I believe they had the greatest
meaning. The declaration at the Jordan was not only to
do with the Eternal Sonship; God was not recognising
among men One who was other than the rest of men. I
believe it was God's acknowledgment of what had been
going on for thirty years. Those thirty years were
hidden, silent, but the eye of God was upon them, and
because of what had gone on in the thirty years the
Father was able to say that in Him was His delight.
Then He was anointed.
That
is the law which holds good; therefore I believe that
it is essential unto spiritual leadership that we
should have a probation which is under the eye of God.
Oh, this mechanical taking hold of the work of God, and taking
hold of the lives of young men
and women, bringing them out of business and putting
them into responsible positions at home and abroad!
What wreckage and loss there is by that false system
of things! God chooses the workers, not men; God
chooses the work, not men; and God brings the workers
and the work together when He is able to say: "I am
well pleased!" Until God can say that, there will be
delay. In any case there will not be that full
approbation of God, and that full effectiveness and
fruitfulness that there should be, until God has put
that life under probation and watched for
faithfulness, watched for the relationship of that
life to Himself under all the most difficult
conditions. There is no royal road to spiritual
usefulness. There is no quick way into a position of
value.
God will put us into a place of business,
and will make that very hot for us. Our inclination
will be to get out of business into the Lord's
service, and thus we are breaking with the very
dispositions of God for our lives if we do, because
God is there seeking to find that ground of approval
which will lead to His choosing of us.
Let us be careful of our ideas of service
and usefulness to God. Leadership is spiritual, it is
not official; it is not by appointment, or by choice.
It is the result of God's approbation. If God looked
down upon that period of our lives which He intended
to be the preparation time and saw us always shirking,
refusing to take responsibility, wanting to get out of
it to something else, trying to get round things as
quickly and as easily as possible, then we should not
be approved, and there would never be God's choosing.
A word like that is very necessary. It is
governed by this word: "...the
Lord
looketh on the heart" (1 Sam.
16:7). That truth governed David. That clearly
indicates that the Lord had His eye on David all the
time he was in the field with those few sheep, and when
at last he came out it was in spite of the set-back
which his brethren would have given him, in spite of
the hatred of Saul, in spite of all powers set against
him. He had to come through to spiritual leadership
because he was approved of God. Wherefore Paul will
exhort us to study to show ourselves approved. It is a
strong position.
So then leadership is not official, it is
spiritual. Let us not think of leadership of a
movement, for instance, or of some institution. Let us
keep the spiritual always in our minds.
b)
Walking with God and not with men
The thing which is required in this case
is that those concerned walk with God in the first
instance, and not with men. No one will
misunderstand that. There are all the values of
fellowship, all the values of counsel. The Lord would
never have us brush aside the mature experience of any
of His servants which can be placed to our help and
good, but the Lord would have us have a life with
Himself, so that within our own hearts the Holy Spirit
can corroborate what others say, so that we know the
voice of the Spirit. When we hear anything we know
whether it is the voice of the Spirit; when we hear
advice and counsel we know in our hearts whether it is
the voice of the Spirit. It is an inward walk with
God, a basic essential to spiritual leadership. It is
a great thing to find young men and women walking
with God, not apart from their fellows, and not
showing superiority or independence in relation to
available counsel and experience, but at the same time
walking with God themselves. Nobody who has experience
will expect the younger believer to accept what they
say right away or come under their government, but
will expect anyone who is spiritual to take the
attitude that they will hold that before the Lord,
and, given the Lord's witness, will follow in
that way. That is walking with the Lord and this is an
essential to spiritual leadership.
Features of Spiritual Leadership
We have said that spiritual leadership is
marked by certain spiritual features. What are they?
a)
Spiritual understanding
It need not be full, complete, mature
understanding, but it is that faculty of the
spiritually minded by which it is possible to discern
between what is of the Spirit and what is otherwise.
It is something which cannot be defined, which cannot
be explained in words, but something which can be
known. We can only say, as to our experience of it:
"Well, the Lord gave me no assurance about that; I
lacked that sense that it was of the Lord." It could
be put in a thousand ways. Spiritual understanding is
just being able to see the difference between what
comes of man and what comes of the Spirit of God; what
is of ourselves and what is of the Lord; the
difference between even the best intention and motive
in the interests of the Lord and that which the Lord
really considers to be the best thing in His
interests.
The
Lord's mind is so completely other than our mind even
about His own things and His own interests. Spiritual
understanding is that power, that capacity and faculty for
discerning,
judging, registering differences. Sometimes that
spiritual faculty will lead us to refuse a whole realm
that would be argued for by the natural mind, even in
the interests of the Lord, as being the course to be
taken, the thing to be done, what would glorify God.
It is brought home to us like that, and within us
there is something which sets itself against that,
which will not give us the confirmation that, after
all, however good it may seem, and however right, we
are not sure. We cannot tell why we are not sure, we
cannot give an argument against these things, but in
ourselves we know.
On the other hand, that faculty leads us
to move out into realms which all the common sense of
the natural mind would be set against, to do things
which would be perfectly mad to the natural mind. No
one can define or explain it, but it can be known, and
it is basic and governmental to spiritual leadership.
It is judgement of a spiritual kind. It is not our
task to impose the results of it upon other people,
nor for us to judge other people according to that. It
is for us to walk with God and not be taken hold of by
things or people, but be faithful to God because in
our hearts we know! How we know we cannot tell, but we
know, and that is all there is that can be said about
it. We know that God says, No! and God says, Yes! and
that brings us into conflict with every argument that
man would bring to bear upon the situation. But to be
true to God we cannot, or we must (as the case may
be), and that by inward spiritual understanding. It is
an essential, and every child of God can have it and
should have it. It is the normal state of a life in
the Spirit. It is just as natural to the new man as
our own judgements are to our old man. We know in the
natural what our inclinations and our disinclinations
are. We ought to know just as truly in the new man, in
the new creation, what the inclinations and the
disinclinations of the Spirit are. Paul uses the
term "spiritually-minded".
That does not mean that you have a kind
of abstract ‘something' that you call a mind. In
Scotland they have a way of expressing it which is a
very good interpretation of Paul's language. They say
about a matter, "I was minded to do" or, "Are you
minded to do that?" Spiritual-mindedness is that you
are minded in a positive way, in a certain direction;
your inclination is that. This is natural to the
spiritual, the new creation, if the life is lived in
the Spirit. It is not something extra, but is born
with the new child. Spiritual understanding is so
important for spiritual leadership, and we should seek
it from the Lord more and more, together with the
development of it by the Holy Spirit in us, who is the
Spirit of wisdom and understanding, or revelation.
b)
The full assurance of spiritual
understanding
Then there is this extra thing, the full
assurance of understanding. How necessary that
is to spiritual leadership! Where you find
lack of that assurance you find the inability to give a
lead, or to take a lead. Any kind of uncertainty,
indefiniteness, or lack of assurance means paralysis.
The apostle prays for believers that they may come to
the full assurance of understanding. What a thing that
is! It is being fully persuaded and fully assured on
the matter. The Lord would have us like that. It is
the positive side, or element, in understanding. It is
one thing to have perception, it is another thing to
believe your perception, to stand on your perception,
to commit yourself to your perception, for that
perception to be strong enough to govern your whole
life and lead you to take risks. Full assurance of
understanding is an essential to spiritual leadership.
We will close there for the moment, so
far as points are concerned, and conclude with one
further general word as to spiritual leadership.
We have sought to strip this whole matter
of all ideas of the official, of appointment, of
headship in movements, and such things, and to
recognise that it comes down to this: here are
multitudes of the Lord's people who hardly know their
right hand from their left, groping in mists and
shadows; multitudes of the Lord's people who are
remaining babes spiritually, far beyond the time when
they ought to have moved from the infant stage. There
is a great need for an increase of the knowledge of
the Lord among His people. There is a tremendous need
for a voice of authority and assurance coming from
directions where the Lord is known.
You and I can come into such a
relationship with the Lord that would result in that
need being met in some measure. If you can help
another child of God out of your knowledge of the Lord
into a fuller knowledge of the Lord, then you are a
spiritual leader, you have got spiritual leadership in
principle, you have leadership in spirit. The urge of
the Lord at this time is that He wants His people to
come up out of that general state, out of that latent
spiritual life, to represent something more for Him of
a positive character.
No
one will stand up and begin to throw their weight
about as an assumed leader. They will soon meet the
judgement of the Lord if they assume to follow
Abimelech. The Lord wants something more positive in
His people, that positive element which can be an
adding of Him to others, a real leading of His people
into some greater fulness. He needs leadership of a
spiritual kind, and He challenges us all as to where
we are by asking, "Are you a passive one? Are you one
who is always deriving and never contributing? Are you just a
passenger
being carried? Are you all the time waiting for things
to come to you?" That will be one realm to which He
will speak. Then in other realms He will speak also.
He will seek, even where there is responsibility being
carried and a measure of leadership being expressed
and fulfilled, to bring back the necessity for
recognising that we must not surrender ourselves to
men or systems or order or organisations. The thing
that is needed is spiritual leadership.
So many put the machine in the place of
the man, allow that real spiritual value which is
related to a man who knows God to be lost in a great
organisation. You would not believe how many men are
lost in an organisation, how much spiritual value is
lost in the institution. It is the thing that is carried
on, and it
is not the knowledge of God in a man that is the
supreme value.
How often things have changed like that!
God raised up a man who walked with Him, who was
approved of God, and drawn into spiritual leadership.
Then the Lord's people became tremendously enriched
through that man who knew God. He led the Lord's
people into a new spiritual place. Then either towards
the end of his life or after he was gone, people took
hold of his life work and turned it into an
organisation, an institution, a movement, and it is
now being run on that line, with a great
administrative department, and it is no longer
acknowledged of God; it is carried on as ‘a piece of
work'. What is the result? It is not really the
increase of the Lord, but it is an extension of a kind
of work for God. The judgement is not intended to fall
upon the work, the judgement is intended to fall upon
this terrible loss to the Lord's people as well as to
the Lord. God does not want Philistine carts, but
living Levites to carry the testimony - men who walk
with Him.
It
is not enough for us to have a secret, quiet life with
the Lord, but to recognise that that involves us in
responsibility to the Lord's people, a responsibility
which we must take. If you are passive God will leave
you there, and you will be in a backwater. You may be
a leader in spiritual qualification by your knowledge
of the Lord, but you are not recognising the fact that
that involves you in something quite active for the
Lord, to give what you know of the Lord. The leader
must take the lead, not assume a position, not be
self-assertive, but seek to be active in the interests
of the spiritual life of the Lord's people, and by
that means you will find the Lord moves you into an
adequate occupation. You may be waiting for someone to
give you a job. The Lord will not give you a job while
you wait. Move out in a positive way to give what you
have of the Lord where you see the need as the Lord
gives you liberty, and you will find your time becoming
more and more occupied, and you will have the job
without any official appointment. If that is so, you can
take it that the Lord will take responsibility and
look after you.
This touches us in the ordinary spheres
of the home and the office, and anywhere else.
Leadership is not a matter of coming out of all else
and taking up the work of God. It is the expression of
our knowledge of God in a positive way. What are you
waiting for? Are you waiting for something to happen?
Are you waiting for the Lord to come and put you into
an experience of a testimony? Have you a knowledge of
the Lord? Have you been shown that there is a greater
fulness of the Lord? Has that been presented by you?
Take a step of faith in relation to it, and if it is
God's will for you, believe that you have it. Your
belief will not make that thing, but your faith will
bring you into the enjoyment of it. Perhaps it is just
passivity that is keeping you out of things. When the
Lord says there is water, step out. You will make the
discovery when you step out that there is something
more solid than water there.