Reading: Luke
1:5-25,57-67.The
Lord is ever desirous of making His people know His
real purpose in fulness concerning them. We need to come
to a very settled position on this matter. It is not a
question of how the Lord's people may be at any given
time. It may be that, as we have read here concerning
Zacharias and his wife, and the people gathered there at
that time, conditions are fairly good. We might think
that this is quite a beautiful picture, that is just how
things ought to be. There is the servant of the Lord
correctly and faithfully fulfilling his ministry. There
is the temple order being carried on correctly; there are
people gathered in the court, apparently in a great
company, giving themselves to prayer. There is a spirit
of devotion, and other characteristics, which present a
picture which might be thought to be perfectly
satisfactory.
But it is not a matter
of whether at any given time things are apparently quite
good, answering to much that the Lord has shown to be His
mind, or whether things are maybe not so good, or even
bad, as has been the case at times with the people of
God. The point is always: Is this, after all, what God
really has as His end concerning His people? It may be
very good, and yet it may after all be only comparative -
for that is the upshot of this very incident. It was
good, yes, but it was not all that God wanted. God had
something more than that in view, however good it might
be. The thing that governs all the way along is the
full thought of God from the beginning, and until you
and I have settled that, we have not settled many things.
What we need to ask is: What more is there that is yet
required by the Lord for completeness, for fulness?
And so our object must
be, not to seek the comparatively good, not some more,
some extra, some further light and truth, but to be with
the Lord for His ultimate, His full, His final, His
complete intention. The peril is to look upon what is
very good and has the blessing of the Lord upon it, and
settle down, and say, 'Well, why want any more than that,
why not be content, why not just get on with that? Why
not leave aside all the other questions, those disturbing
questions, very disturbing questions, and just get on
with what is so obviously quite good in the blessing of
the Lord?' No, the Lord shows by His Word, Old Testament
and New Testament, that there is still something ahead,
still something more, and it has never been the Lord's
way to let His people settle down with anything less.
That is what is brought to us so clearly here.
God's
New Thing
Let us look at this
story again. The traditional order is being followed out
meticulously. The priest is doing his work, the people
are gathered to prayer, the temple routine is being
pursued, the service of God is going on. And then, right
in the midst of that, God breaks in from Heaven, and He
makes it clear that He is purposing to take a further
step forward in relation to the promised Messiah. God is
here seen to be taking another step, and a very big step
this time, in relation to His Son Jesus Christ. This
story can be gathered very largely into those words of
the seventeenth verse - "to make ready a people
prepared for the Lord". But all this - the temple,
the services, the priesthood, the people - was not this a
state of preparedness for the Lord? The story says, 'No -
only comparatively.' Something more and something else is
required. John the Baptist must come in. Another very
definite step by God is about to be taken.
Now God has always
appointed to move toward His end along the line of
priesthood, and all that that means, and so, in taking
this further step, God moves in the direction of His
appointed way, and, consistently with this, He makes His
mind and His intention known. He lets the priesthood
know, quite definitely, quite clearly, quite precisely,
what His thoughts and His intentions are.
And He is immediately
confronted with an obstruction. Right in that very place
He finds His difficulty. Just where He ought to have a
clear way, He finds the way is blocked. In the very midst
of that which bears His Name, which stands in the long
tradition of Divine things, He meets His main difficulty.
A difficulty arises instantly with Zacharias - in the
very priesthood, in the very house of God, and in the
order of things which obtains - and it is almost an
affront to Him.
No
Natural Ground of Confidence
Now, what were the
features of this obstacle, this rebuff to the Lord? For
it was nothing less than a rebuff that the Lord met here.
If we could really catch the tone of Zacharias, I am sure
we should discern something that was a challenge to the
Lord, a question. What were the features of it?
First of all, this
thing that God is making known, this thing that God
purposes to do, has no natural ground whatsoever upon
which to rest confidence. That is very searching. The
whole matter of confidence arises. The first question
raised is: 'Can we be sure? What about the reliability of
this thing?' People begin at once to look round for the
ground of confidence, and if they do not find it
according to their established ideas, then this thing is
doubtful, it is open to question. This is not in the
recognized and established way.
That is what arises
with Zacharias and Elisabeth. The recognized, the
established way, is the way of nature. But the way of
nature has no place here at all. It is quite in another
realm. Elisabeth's childlessness, and their advanced age
- it all puts aside any kind of hope, any ground of
confidence, so far as the natural is concerned. And
therefore, it not being according to what has always
been, and what is always regarded as the right way, the
regular way, the natural order - therefore it is a
doubtful proposition, and even God has that doubt
presented to Him. 'This is not according to tradition,
this is not according to what we have always been led and
taught to believe to be God's way of doing things. This
is so out of the usual!' Is that an argument with God?
Let us pursue it.
'This is far too
spiritual, this is far too otherworldly, this is far too
much for the earth! This makes demands for factors
altogether beyond our comprehension!' Is that an argument
to present to God? When God is going to do a new thing,
has He to confine it to human understanding, even to the
understanding of religious tradition at its best? Has He
ever done it? Must God reduce His infinite purposes
concerning His Son to the comprehension of man's mind?
Must He? Then it will become the measure of man and not
the measure of God. But man finds this a point of great
offence. It stumbled Zacharias and it stumbles the Lord's
people. There is something in this that is altogether
beyond us, something about this that we cannot grasp, we
cannot understand. It is off the beaten track. It is not
what we are used to, it is not what we have been
accustomed to - so much argument. And because of that,
because this thing is beyond us, beyond our comprehension
and understanding, therefore it is doubtful, it is
questionable.
Let us put this on the
positive side. We have got to accommodate ourselves to
the fact that the greatest things that God will ever do
will always be beyond us, beyond our power of
understanding, beyond our attainment in knowledge - even
in the things of God. God is always going to take us out
of our depth with His new thing. He is always going to
prove that we in our own resources cannot follow Him,
this is too much for us. God is making demands for which
we can make no supply. He has got us completely out of
our realm. That is God's way. That was the trouble with
Zacharias, and so he presented God with this objection,
this question. It was the fixed position of the
traditional order of things that caused the difficulty
with Zacharias.
The
Obstacle of Pride
And that fixed position
had a very unfortunate effect. Think of the superiority
and pride of Zacharias. He is in the presence of an
archangel from Heaven - "I am Gabriel, that stand in
the presence of God" - who has come down right
alongside of Zacharias, and made an announcement
concerning the will of God, and Zacharias has the
effrontery to call him into question, simply because his
position is so fixed. 'It has always been like this -
this is the understood way of things. This other is so
much outside the realm of our understanding, and
therefore....' What pride can be ours, when we think we
have it all and know it all, and have our position so
fixed that even God Almighty does not stand a chance,
because we have boxed the compass of spiritual truth. We
have got the whole thing so set, so fixed, that the
archangel Gabriel cannot move us.
Is that not terrible?
Here is the priesthood arguing with an archangel! But
that is spiritual pride. It was for that that judgment
fell upon Zacharias. It always does fall upon spiritual
pride. God cannot tolerate spiritual superiority, this
terrible lack of adjustableness and submission, such as
was shown in Zacharias - in a member of the very
priesthood. If only we were broken, if only we were
pliable, if only we were open enough for the Lord to do
what He wants to do, whether we understand it or not,
whether it comes within the compass of what has been in
the past or not, or what is new or not, and say, 'Lord,
this is beyond me - but, Lord, if You want to do it, I am
with You for it', what things God could do, and how much
more swiftly He could do them.
Testimony
Suspended Until Adjustment Made
In the incident before
us, God went on, but the priest's ministry became merely
formal, inarticulate and tentative, until the lesson was
learnt. I said 'formal' - he finished his course and went
home. It seems to say to me that Zacharias was only
wanting to get this job done to go home. He had to stay
it out, he had to go on with the routine of the thing;
but it had become a mere performance, and he was longing
for the day when he could just leave it and go home.
"When the days of his ministration were fulfilled,
he departed unto his house." The whole thing had
become empty form, it had become inarticulate, dumb.
The point is this, that
the real testimony was suspended until adjustment was
made to the situation - until there was a recognition of
the Divine, the heavenly, the spiritual, the
supernatural, that which was outside of man's power of
comprehension and execution. For, after all, the argument
seems to have been, 'If we cannot do it, then it will
never be done.' And that is very much the attitude of
systematized religion. If it cannot do it itself in its
own way, then the thing never can be done. And so the
testimony is in suspense.
The
Obstacle of Convention
Now, when God moves
from Heaven in relation to His Son and all those
fulnesses which yet lie ahead concerning Him, what do we
find? We find that His movements are not according to
convention. Let that be settled. God does not move
forward according to convention. God's great movements
are always very unconventional movements. God refuses to
be put into a box. He demands liberty to take us beyond
any limits that we may impose upon Him. So often
convention is God's main obstruction. The spiritual, the
heavenly nature of God's developing movements is
altogether beyond the understanding of men; and because
man cannot understand it, he does not believe in it. He
doubts it, he questions it, he throws suspicions upon it,
he raises issues as to its soundness, if he cannot
understand it, and therefore it is not acceptable to man,
it is put aside.
God's
Act a Complete Break With the Natural
But note: the
instrument to be used - in this case John the Baptist -
is God's act, and wholly God's act, not man's. That is
the issue of this thing. If God is going to do something
peculiarly related to the final fulness of His Son, it
will be His act, uniquely God's act. John the Baptist was
God's act, not the act of Zacharias or Elisabeth, nor of
them jointly, nor of any other means or instrumentality.
"A man, sent from God, whose name was John"
(John 1:6). 'He shall be filled with the Holy Spirit from
his birth.'
And John, being God's
act, represents a complete break with the natural. That
is seen in his very name. The name (the Old Testament
Johanan) means 'God's gift', or 'God's favour'. When he
was born, all the people of tradition said, 'Of course,
his name is Zacharias: that carries on the old tradition,
that secures the future in relation to the past.' But
Elisabeth, the principle of spiritual discernment, said,
'No, not at all. His name is to be John.' And when they
asked Zacharias about it, he said, "His name is
John!" 'We are not going to call him John - he is
already called John.' It meant a complete break with
tradition not to take his father's name. When God moves
and raises up an instrument, so often it is a complete
break with what men expect and demand.
Finally, if you do not
accept it, if you do not believe it, if you do not come
on to God's ground, that is an end of your testimony -
you will be dumb. You may go on with your work, you may
continue in the old system, but your days are numbered.
You may uphold the old tradition, but in the true sense
of testimony, you are dumb, you have not
got a living message. The simple principle is of very
wide application. If you do not believe God, then you
have lost your testimony, and you will not have a
testimony, and if you are dumb it is because somewhere or
other you have doubted God, argued with God, answered
back to God, tried to reason with God. A real living
testimony comes of faith. As soon as we begin to allow
questions as to God's ways and purposes, methods and
means, we shall lose our testimony, we shall become
silent, our ministry will go.
But that, as I say, is
a very wide and far application. We must be in
line with God in His full purpose, though we may not
understand, it may be altogether beyond us and our
resources. We may see in nature no hope or prospect at
all: yet, knowing that God means this, we believe God,
and our mouths are opened and the ministry is given. May
the Lord teach us what this means.