Transcribed from a message
given by T. Austin-Sparks in 1965. The spoken form has
been retained verbatim. Words which were not clearly
discernible have been enclosed in [square] brackets.
Now, Lord, we have been reminded of
that great occasion when Thy Word was given, and those
that had understanding gave the sense and the people knew
what it was that the Lord was saying. We do pray that it
may be like that here, were a little company, the
Word of the Lord is amongst us but there is a need that
we should come into understanding and therefore there is
the need of an Interpreter. Thou hast given the Holy
Spirit to interpret the things of God and our prayer is
that He will do that while here tonight, fulfilling the
word and promise of the Lord Jesus: He shall guide you
into all the Truth. Oh Spirit of the Lord and Spirit of
the Word, guide us INTO the Truth tonight, may we not
only hear words but be led INTO the Word to have our life
in the Word. Lord, be very gracious to us as Thou knowest
and understandest our need. For Thy Names sake we
ask it. Amen.
I hope that no one here this evening
will feel any offendedness when I say that my sense of
leading at this time is to take you back to the
foundation of our life in Christ. I expect most of you
have had the experience of having many times gone over
the same road, traveled in the same area, until it has
become so familiar to you that you hardly notice it at
all. And then one day you take with you over that old
road, someone who has never been that way. And the whole
thing takes on new life and new interest; you are
impressed with the things that they see that you never
saw, it wakes up, it is almost as though you had never
been that way. You are seeing it through other, and
new eyes. It is often like that. Now I think there
is a very helpful way of coming to the word of God:
trying to approach it as though we knew nothing about it,
as though wed never seen it before, forgetting all
that we do know for the time being and taking it up and
pursuing it with that mind that is looking at it in an
altogether new way with new eyes as though it were for
the first time.
Now, if we were strangers, complete
strangers to Christianity and the Bible and were anxious
to know what it really is so that we sat down with the
New Testament and read it carefully, diligently,
seekingly, honestly
what would it be that would
impress us most? What would it be that would confront us
supremely? I wonder if you have ever approached the
Word in that way? Now, what is it really that is THE
message of this book? What is it that comes out most
distinctly and definitely as we read it?
Now if you were such a person as I
have imagined, coming for the first time in a spirit of
inquiry to the New Testament and then reading, dont
you think that the thing that would confront you more
than anything else would be this book is all about one
Jesus. And the thing about Him is that He was crucified
and then rose from the dead. That seems to be the
uppermost and foremost thing in this whole book.
There are four narratives of His
life. In quite a number of respects they differ, but they
all finish here, on this. There is one thing that every
writer seems to have as the end to all which he is moving
and that he puts over everything else: the death of this
One and His resurrection.
And then there follows a book of the
history of early Christianity and when we look at it, it
is all about the same thing: this Jesus Who was crucified
but Who was raised from the dead. And then we go on
into nine letters or epistles written by the first
apostles of this one Jesus, and we find that they are all
based upon this one thing: Jesus Who died is risen, is
alive. One phrase occurs repeatedly - as a matter of fact
in its different forms, twenty five times this
Jesus did God raise up from the dead. Well, noting
that, being impressed with that, we should draw our
conclusion, as strangers to this whole story, our
conclusion would be that this Christianity is built upon
one thing and that one supreme thing is the resurrection
of Jesus. That, of course, could only be if He had died.
So the supreme thing about it is the resurrection of
Jesus. This is what the New Testament is full of, what
dominates it all, and stands out above everything else.
But we should not be able to stop
there, having got that far, we should be impressed with
another, a further feature. It is that although a
comparatively few of the people mentioned and concerned
in this book claim to have seen Jesus after His
resurrection, they are ALL enjoying the reality of it!
By far the greater majority are living on the basis of
that truth. Its something tremendously real
to them, not because they have been told about it or that
it had been preached to them, that it is the thing that
they had been taught, because you know, you dont
really, livingly come into things by teaching. You know
that! You can be taught and taught and taught
thoroughly, soundly and for a long time and yet not be in
the real enjoyment and experience of it all. Teaching may
be vital, it may be important, but these people that we
meet in this New Testament are not just what they are,
living as they are, because they have heard about Jesus
being raised from the dead, but because Jesus raised from
the dead is in His resurrection life THERE and then
present with them! It is not something of a few
years ago, or many years ago. It is not something in
history or in Christian doctrine and teaching, it is
something right here NOW! Jesus might just at this
very moment in this very hour have risen from the dead
and appeared to them. It is like that with them, it is A PRESENT REALITY IN EXPERIENCE.
That is what the stranger would be
impressed with. It is like that! This book is
alive! Its alive, and everything in it is
alive because Jesus is alive in the present experience of
all those who have believed. And then, if you were still
inquiring, you would ask the question: Now, those things
are quite evident in this book, those things are quite
evident, there is no mistaking them but HOW did it come
about? HOW is this thing? What is the explanation
of a historic fact becoming an immediate, up to date
experience with such an effect on peoples lives?
Because, you know, this matter of resurrection from the
dead is a really startling thing! Oh, weve
got so familiar with the truth of the resurrection of
Jesus. It can be something we know so well without any
great wonder in it. I venture to say if any one of
your family really died and was buried and you have seen
them dead and buried and a week or more afterward they
came into your room and there was no mistaking about it
that this appearance was YOUR one, really; no mere
apparition, well, that one! You would
well, I dont
know what would happen to you! You would be perhaps
startled, you would certainly say, "Well, this is the most
wonderful thing that ever Ive known! Nothing like
this has ever happened before, indeed I had never
believed, never thought that such a thing COULD happen!"
You would be living in the wonder of it, the surprise of
it, the amazement of it, it would become a tremendous
POWER in your life to have an effect on you. What
you would be saying is this: well if that can happen,
anything can happen!
Thats just how it was, you
see? Just how it was. They not only knew in their
minds by information that Jesus was raised from the dead. That One Who was raised was there and then as real to
them as Christ risen, as though they had been with that
handful who had seen Him with their own eyes of flesh,
after His resurrection; just as real as that. But,
I was saying, as an inquirer you would say, how do you
explain this? What is the explanation? How is it that it
comes about like this? And then you would have to go back
to your New Testament and begin to read again to find out
how. How? What is the explanation? And you would find as
you made inquiry as to the how, that you would light upon
a corresponding factor in the New Testament, you would
come upon another person being mentioned, called the Holy
Spirit. You would find that in that book containing the
history of the first years of Christianity, in that book
alone, one of all those that make up the New Testament,
only one, this one called the Holy Spirit is referred to
no fewer than seventy times! Now thats enough to
impress anybody! Seventy times referred to? And then go
into these letters written by only one of these men, of
these apostles of the New Testament, only one of them,
his name is Paul. And he refers to this one called the
Holy Spirit no fewer than one hundred and twenty times!
What is this here? We are in the presence of someone or
something.
Well, this would lead us to our
conclusion. Christianity is evidently this: Jesus,
crucified and truly dead - may I say here in parenthesis,
that the Lord God saw to it that He was really crucified.
He was really dead. You see all the evidences that they
killed him right enough, theres no mistake about
it. They killed Him, He was dead. Its all there,
all the four narratives make it perfectly clear and
everything afterward refers to that, they make it
perfectly clear that this was no mock thing, no sham
thing, that Jesus really died, and He WAS dead and He WAS
buried, theres no doubt about it. The resurrection
was not just resuscitation after a coma or something like
that. He was dead. Now this Jesus who was really dead,
and you cant in all honesty put anything else in
the place of that when you read this book, youve
got to accept it that He was crucified and that He died
and that He was really dead and buried. Everybody
knew that at any rate. He was raised from the dead, Jesus
was raised from the dead and that He in resurrection was
made real and true in the hearts of men and women and in
their every day experience by this One called the Holy
Spirit.
Forgive me friends for talking to
you as to little children. Sounds like the Sunday School
doesnt it? But you know, this after all is the
heart and essence of the Christian life, we know it as to
its truths, but there is ever to the end need, NEED, and
thank God possibility, of knowing this in a fuller and
ever fuller way. This one apostle who spoke so much about
it, and who knew so much about it, more than all of us
put together, right at the end of his life when he is
writing one of his last letters before his death still
said That I may know Him and the power of His
resurrection. STILL more to know when you know ALL
that such a man knows, theres still more to know?
This is the foundation of the Christian life. But
our imaginary person [break in recorded message]
This teaching is at least as
wonderful and we can truly say more wonderful than the
teaching of all the other great religions, why not make
then this so superior teaching of Jesus the foundation of
Christianity? Why not make His character the foundation?
He was such a good man, look at these life stories, what
a good man He was, what a kind man, what a lot of good He
did! Why not make His character the foundation of
Christianity? Or why not make His heroic death the
foundation? See Him laying down His life for His
principles, for His truth, His teaching, for what He
believed. For as He believed He was doing it for the good
of other people, ready to die. Why not make that the
foundation? You know quite well that people have tried to
do that in each of these cases, make that the real
essence of Christianity: the teaching, or the character
or the heroic death of Jesus. Why not? Why make the
resurrection the central and basic thing? Now were
getting nearer, you see, the answer to that question dear
friends, includes ALL the other realities of
Christianity.
Inclusively, inclusively, death is
the end of everything, isnt it? Death is the
end of everything. There are many things that men can do
for men, just provided that the men are alive. If they
are only alive, what a lot can be done for them! Even
if they are only half alive or quarter alive still we can
do something, we say while there is life theres
hope. We can still do something while there is any bit of
life remaining, we can do something. But when the life is
gone, we can do nothing. All that you might try to do
doesnt profit at all. Death is the end of all that
you can do. Death is the end of everything. Its
the end and you just have to close the book and say it is
finished. After that, what? Nothing; unless
God steps in! Nothing; unless theres an
intervention of God! Now men are entirely put out of
court with all that they could do, they had to say: we
can do no more, thats the end, it is finished. Now
its Gods matter. Its Gods matter
or its nothing at all, theres no more. Only
God can do anything now. You see, that is just the
beginning of Christianity, it is that! If God hadnt
stepped right in when Jesus was in the grave there would
have been no Christianity, there would have been none of
all this that the world has come into and is coming into
because of Him, but God stepped in. It was Gods
ALONE power and prerogative to raise the dead. Now it is
utterly and absolutely and ALL of God and NOTHING of man,
nothing outside of God. If Christianity begins there and
is based on that then the Christian life is something
which speaks of a mighty intervention of God and says:
I am today in this experience on the basis of
something that only God Almighty could do. What I have,
what I have is that which God alone, the Almighty,
Eternal God could do. I am the fruit of that. My life
rests on that. My Christianity is of that kind. It
derives from an intervention of God Almighty when no one
else could do anything at all.
I wonder if the experience of every
one of us is like that? You know the Lord takes pains to
have it like that, thats why so many, so many when
the crisis of their salvation has arrived and they try to
get through on all kinds of ground of their own works and
their own activities and energies and all the rest of it,
they never get through until they come to this place:
only God can save me!