We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should
not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:9)
You know that those who are not the Lord’s
people are not alive to the fact that they are dead. Death is not the great
reality to them until they come to their body dying. But in their ordinary life
when things are going on and there is health and provision, death is no reality
to them. But death is brought home to the child of God. Immediately we get into
God’s hands this thing begins to be brought home to us – that we are not much
good, we cannot stand up to things, we cannot go through. Our natural life and
resources do not count here. The course of a true Christian life in the hands of
God is that of being more and more brought to the experience of helplessness. Is
that not true? Yes, of helplessness, of the impossibility of everything. Do not
think things have gone wrong if that is becoming your consciousness. You may
take it that you are in an immature spiritual stage if you have not come to that
realization that in the realm into which you have been introduced in your
relationship with God, you have no resource. You are as a dead man. The death
fact is brought home to you, is made real.
Ah, but on the other side, resurrection is
taking a certain form over against that. With that background and with that
basis, more and more the child of God is being brought to the position where he
or she has to say: "That was the Lord, it is the Lord; I cannot account for
that, I am not the one who accounts for that, it is all of God," and you know
quite well that resurrection is all of God. You can go a long way in many clever
things and inventions, but you have not got as far as raising the dead yet. That
is God’s prerogative. That is only God. And so in the hands of God the child of
God is being brought progressively more and more, and still more, to the place
where they have to say, "It is of God, it is all of God" and that is the
testimony coming out. The Lord did that, the Lord is doing this. Is that not in
Israel’s history in the wilderness? See how again and again they were brought to
an end, which did seem to be an end... nothing beyond this, and then they had to
come out with a new song – The Lord did it! It is victory over death, it is the
power of resurrection Life.