In our
previous meditation, we were speaking about the extra
world of resource which the Lord had at His service, at
His command, with which He was in communication and from
which He was drawing. Everything for Him was from above
that is, out from heaven. We are now going to consider a
further element in His unseen reserve and resource,
namely, the nature and reality of the spiritual energy
that resulted in His activity and movement. That is
something about which you and I will have to learn a
great deal, if there is going to be anything commensurate
with His life as the result of our own activities here on
this earth.
The Purposefulness Of Christ
No one
can read the Gospels without being greatly impressed with
the purposefulness of Christ. It characterized Him from
His youth, or even childhood. At the age of twelve, it
was one thing which came out pre-eminently in the, shall
we call it, altercation that took place between Him and
His parents, when they had been to Jerusalem and had
returned, not found Him amongst them, and gone back
seeking Him for three days. In all their anxiety and
concern He just quietly explained it all. "Knew
ye not that I must be in My Father's house?" (Luke
2:49) - with the emphasis upon the 'must'. 'I just must,
I am governed, I am controlled, I am under the mighty
persuasion and girding of a heavenly thing, a heavenly
relationship.' And how often afterwards, when He had
taken up His life-work from the Jordan days, that word
came from His lips. "We must work the works of
Him That sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh,
when no man can work" (John 9:4). "Other
sheep I have, which are not of this fold:
them also I must bring" (John 10:16). You
see this tremendous imperative in His life of
purposefulness, leading to so much of vital activity and
involving or expressing such a tremendous energy.
Whilst I
was reading in this connection, I naturally turned to the
Gospel by Mark, and I thought that I might perhaps be
able to put down on paper His movements in the first few
chapters of that Gospel. But I found that by the time I
reached the end of the fourth chapter, it was necessary
to give it up. You just look at the movement - quick,
rapid, incisive movement. 'Straightway He...',
'straightway He was...', and on from place to place. It
is a picture of continuous activity and constant
movement, from place to place, here and there, this and
that; a life just crowded and crammed, the working out of
some tremendous energy that was in Him. That was His
life.
And when
you move to the Book of the Acts, it is impossible not to
recognise that same energy in the apostles and in the
Church. It is a book of continual goings, of tremendous
energies, of vital activities. It is the Spirit of God in
action. And when you move still further, into the Letters
of the New Testament, you find this same thing; but now
it is carried into the spiritual life of the Church, the
spiritual life of believers, and the constant urge is to
go on, go on - "let us go on". It is the spirit
of movement, of progress, of advance. It is the
expression of the mighty energies of the Spirit, the
goings of the Spirit of God in the Church and in
believers.
Surely
this is a true fulfilment of Ezekiel's vision of the
cherubim, and the wheels, and the Spirit in the wheels,
going straight forward, turning neither to the right nor
to the left, but going. "The Spirit... was in the
wheels", and they were going straight forward. And
again, it seems to be so much the counterpart of what we
have in the Book of Numbers. There, as you know, the
Spirit is in charge, in the symbol of the cloud. When the
cloud rises and moves, the tabernacle has to be taken
down and moved, because the Spirit is on the move. The
Spirit stops, and the tabernacle is set up - but only for
a time; presently the Spirit rises and goes on, and the
same thing is repeated - all under this forward movement
of the Spirit, this going. The tabernacle, as you know,
is that which sets forth the whole heavenly Person of
Christ, Christ from every standpoint, and here it is the
matter of all things concerning Christ being in the hands
of the Holy Spirit, and constantly projected forward. It
is the fulfilment of His own words in John 16:13, that
"the Spirit... shall guide you into all the
truth". All the truth; ever on. Christ is the
fullness, the whole heavenly revelation, and the Spirit
is here to bring the Church ever on. There may be a
pause, for a purpose; but the pause, when the purpose is
accomplished, is terminated, and on we go again.
My point
is to indicate the tremendous energy that there is
related to God's purpose as embodied in the Lord Jesus.
Perhaps we have in the past put too much emphasis upon
the negative side of this. So often we have quoted the
words of the Lord, "I can of Myself do nothing"
(John 5:30), "The Son can do nothing of
Himself" (John 5:19), and similar passages of
Scripture which indicate the negative side, the
impossible side, the side of limitation. I say, perhaps
we have put too much emphasis on that. It is a most
impressive thing that the Lord who said that - "I
can of Myself do nothing", "The Son can do
nothing of Himself", "The words that I speak
unto you, I speak not from Myself: the Father abiding in
Me doeth His works" (John 14:10) - the Lord who said
all that was the most active and energetic person that
has ever been on this earth: His was a life more crowded
with movement - I mean movement to effect, movement with
an issue, movement with values of eternal character - a
life more crowded with that kind of thing than any other
life has ever been.
Perhaps
therefore we should pass over to the positive side; but,
as we do so, we must understand that this is not just
bare activity, this is not merely energy, this is not a
restless, feverish drive. There is a NATURE here,
and it is that nature of things, of the energy and of the
movements, which contains the quality of the result.
There have been, and there are, many full lives,
tremendously active lives, but again we come back to our
great test of everything - how much is of the
incorruptible character which will appear again, and what
proportion of it all will be there in glory for ever?
That is the test; that is the question. My point is not
just to say that the Lord Jesus had a very busy life,
that He was always on the move. My point is to say that
there was something in it which was not just the movement
of a very energetic person; there was something very much
more about it than that.
The Goings Of God
In the
first place, these goings were the goings of God. They
were not goings initiated by man. These goings were not
of the planning of man; these movements were not promoted
by man. They were the goings of God, and the Lord made it
perfectly clear that, with all that He was doing, He was
getting it from above, it was what the Father was doing
that He did, and He did nothing other than that. It came
from above. All the plan, all the purpose, all the
activity, every work, and the time of every work, was
given Him through the eternal Spirit from above: that is
why it is all eternal, that is why it was so full of
potentiality, and all so tremendous in its effectiveness.
We can,
of course, easily test that. We know quite well that that
is not true of a great mass of energetic activity, even
in Christianity. The percentage of the really eternal,
incorruptible value is very small in all our work for the
Lord. What the Lord is wanting to say to us at this time
is this: that He wants the maximum of the intrinsic, the
maximum of the eternal, the maximum of that which will
not pass when its vessels pass, when those used have left
the scene; that which will be established for all time,
appearing again and again in the spiritual life of His
people, and appearing in glory as the substance of that
whole Kingdom which is to be. The maximum of the
intrinsic value - if it is to be like that, as it was
with our Lord, it must be on this wise, that the goings
are the goings of God.
But let
me say again that the goings of God are really very, very
much in action. I think some people imagine that a life
in the Spirit is a life which is very passive, with much
waiting and doing nothing. Perhaps we have to adjust
ourselves about this. There are times when the Lord keeps
us out of action - as we call actions - but there are
another lot of actions going on in us. There are times
when it seems, outwardly, that we are not being allowed
to fulfil any great purpose, but the Lord is doing
something which is very vital to His purpose. His goings
are in operation all the same. A life in the Spirit is
never a passive life, never a quiescent life, never a
life without movement. If ever, inwardly or outwardly,
you come to the place where there really is nothing
doing, you may take it that you have got out of the way
of the Lord. There is always something doing provided the
Holy Spirit is in charge. You must not put your judgment
upon it and say that there is nothing doing. God is at
work IF we are under the government of the Holy
Spirit; there is no doubt about it. We must always keep
on the positive side of this, and not think that a
spiritual life is a life without purpose or action. It is
nothing of the kind. We will come back to that again
presently. The goings are the goings of God: they must be
so if the values are to be eternal values; and the value,
the eternal value, will be in proportion to our oneness
with God in His goings, not our own.
The Direction Of God
Then the directions are the directions of
God. God has never yet asked any man to make a plan for
Him - never! You will never find anywhere that God says,
'Please plan My work for Me, please arrange things for
Me, please provide Me with a schedule'. God has never
done that. God keeps the plan in His own hands. God
designs everything; and mark you, again, the measure of
real value from heaven's standpoint will be the measure
in which we are moving in God's plan, not in our own, in
the way in which God has predetermined He should fulfil
His purposes.
The Energy Of God
Not only the goings, and not only the
directions, must be of God, but the energy must be the
energy of God. That is the pivot of our present
consideration. It is the energy of God, and this also
makes a big and very deep discrimination. Our energies,
as such, will never accomplish anything eternal. Let us
settle that. We start on that side, and come to the other
side in a moment. Our driving force, our strength of
will, our strong-mindedness, our determination, our
forcefulness, in itself, will get nowhere in eternal
things. We admire people who overcome many difficulties,
who accomplish great things, and especially who overcome
the handicaps of human life, by sheer force of will. Yes,
that is heroism, in its own realm to be admired, but
never let us think that we are going to accomplish
anything of eternal, heavenly value by force of will, by
our own energy of mind, soul or body. Not at all! The
Lord Jesus had tremendous energy, but He drew it all from
above. It was all the energy of the Holy Spirit by whom
He was anointed, and that is borne out overwhelmingly by
the whole teaching of the New Testament.
Saul, the persecutor, was a man of
tremendous will. The driving force of that man was
terrific. He was a dynamic force amongst men, and what
Saul of Tarsus determined no one would withstand but God.
He was a man like that. But what does Paul say about
himself, and what did Paul have to learn all through his
life? This very thing - "I can do nothing of
myself". He came to the point, to the wonderful
height of spiritual attainment, where he said, "I
will not glory, save in my weaknesses" (2
Cor. 12:5). "Most gladly... will I... glory in my
weaknesses, that the power of Christ may tabernacle upon
me" (2 Cor. 12:9). That is rising very high. It
was one of his life lessons, that, with all his natural
drive and force, power of will, of mind, nothing was
accomplished in that way, by that means. It had to be
something coming down like a tent and then enfolding,
enwrapping him, so that he was moving within the sphere
of another mighty energy that he called "the power
of Christ". He spoke of himself as being
insufficient, wholly insufficient, for these things; he
cried, "Who is sufficient...?" (2 Cor.
2:16). And he answered, "Our sufficiency is from
God; Who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new
covenant" (2 Cor. 3:5,6).
The real effectiveness of that man's life,
which was by no means a passive or negative life, came
from heaven. It was not because Paul was such a forceful
man, with such a tremendous will - so energetic that he
could never stop going. No. He put it all down to one
thing, when he summed it up like this: "according
to the power that worketh in us" (Eph. 3:20).
Here is another energy which is responsible for all
things. There were certainly many times in the life of
Paul, as no doubt also in the life of the Lord Jesus,
when he could not have gone on, when he would have just
had to give up in sheer exhaustion, under a
"sentence of death". But how many times did
this servant of God rise and go on when it was humanly
impossible! The energy is the energy of God, not the
driving force of man.
The Impact Of God
And yet once more the impact of these
lives and of all this activity was the impact of heaven,
the registration of heaven. We make a mistake when we
attribute things to the natural side of servants of God.
When we attribute anything to what Paul was himself, we
make a big mistake. Men have got into the habit of
talking about Paul's wonderful powers of intellect, of
Paul's wonderful powers of recuperation, of Paul's
wonderful powers of survival and continuance. Paul may
have had a wonderful brain, but that wonderful brain did
not produce the revelation that we have got through him.
The Lord may have had a very useful channel and vessel,
but the knowledge, the revelation, was not there until
the Lord put it there that is, it was all from heaven.
All this purpose, execution, realisation, impact,
effectiveness, is because of some incorruptible resource,
because there is that 'plus' of energy to draw upon.
Thank God for that inexhaustible fountain of spiritual
energy! It is a very great reality. You and I need to
learn what we have, in the way of resources in Christ,
for DOING, for accomplishing and for
finishing.
A Practical Life
Now we must come to this very important
point. While this is all from God - and it IS
all from God, the work and the works, the plan and the
procedure, the energy and the accomplishment, and
everything in Christ, and for us according to His will;
it is all of the LORD - do not let us make
this fatal mistake, that we are to wait until the Lord
moves us, that we are just to sit down in our armchairs,
if you like - literally or metaphorically - and wait
until the Spirit stirs us up. What I see about the Lord
Jesus is this, that the Holy Spirit moved Him to a great
many practical things here on this earth in relation to
the needs of others. His was an immensely practical life.
He was alive to need, and He was alive to need by the
Holy Spirit actuating Him. He was ALIVE to it.
Oh, how much we wait to be told what needs
to be done, to have it pointed out to us. And how
selective we are. 'Well, that is not spiritual, that is
merely temporal, that is secular.' We begin to put things
into categories like that, and become - may I use the
phrase? - far TOO 'spiritual'! We are up in the
clouds somewhere, and men or women governed by the Holy
Spirit will never have their feet off this earth. You
understand what I mean. We may expand that in the next
chapter. But there are Christians who are all the time
thinking that a really spiritual life is a life intensely
occupied with studying the Scriptures, and with prayer,
and with all kinds of spiritual exercises, and any SPIRITUAL
work, well, that is all right; but this and that, the
menial, the ordinary, the everyday, the things of this
life and this earth, no, they belong to another realm.
THEY DO NOT! The Holy Spirit is
going to manifest energy for the simplest and for the
most difficult tasks down here. The thing does not appeal
to our natures at all, that He is for THAT, and
in THAT. In these things it can be proved - and
He would have it proved - that there is a heavenly
resource. Oh, be careful of your selectiveness! Be
careful of the dividing between what is called
'spiritual' and something else. I see the Lord Jesus
alive to need, and alive by the Holy Spirit to need, not
having to be coerced, to be persuaded; 'on the spot', as
we would put it; and that is where the testimony is. It
is a very practical thing, this testimony of the heavenly
life. I am always afraid of using that very phrase
'heavenly', in case people get the idea that somewhere or
other we are going to float about on clouds and be out of
everything. Not a bit of it! We shall find the Holy Ghost
drives us into a wilderness, the Holy Ghost brings us
into very practical situations and says, 'Now then, test
your resources, test your heavenly resources in that
situation, and in that!' We are all the time wanting to
come out of business and get into 'spiritual' work, but
that is not the way of the Spirit. I believe that really
spiritual people are alive to situations and are very
practical and active in all manner of things. Much more
could be said about that, but no more for the present.
The point is this, when all is said: that
in everything, in all sorts of ways, by very many
different practical, everyday courses, heaven would
insinuate itself, heaven would come in and say, 'Yes, in THIS
there is to be the testimony of the Lord Jesus, which
is that He has brought life and incorruption to light. In
THIS there is something extra to what it is in
itself. In THIS there can be a testimony to that
other resource that is yours.'
When the Lord Jesus was here, and touching
so many of the ordinary things of this life, as we said
in our last chapter - a wedding, a funeral, a
market-place, a feast that they made for Him - when He
came in, something extra always came in with Him. That
extra at the marriage of Cana of Galilee; that was no
ordinary earthly affair. "This beginning of His
signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His
glory" (John 2:11). Something of heaven came in to
what otherwise would have been an ordinary affair - that
is, viewed from the outside. Perhaps marriages are never
ordinary affairs in the case of the people who are
concerned! But here was one of a million marriages - yet
it was not just 'lost in the crowd'. It was something
distinguished; He brought into it His 'plus'.
There is a funeral. Oh, there are many
funerals, a daily occurrence, but this was an exceptional
funeral. There probably never was a funeral like that
one. Jesus came into it, and He brought in something that
made all the difference. Then there was that feast that
they made for Him. Wherever He was, He touched the
situation with something that lived and has gone on and
will show its value throughout eternity. This is what the
Lord needs, this is the Lord's testimony: that we should
be here on this earth, not apart from the everyday things
of life, in what we call the 'spiritual' - which really
means the 'abstract' - but that here, in this world,
heaven should be coming through, something more should be
registering; there should be an energy, a vitality, which
is more than human, more than natural, which will not
just pass when that thing is done, but which will appear
again. So it was with Him, so it was with the Apostles,
so it was with New Testament Christians. So it is shown
to be the mind of God for the Church, and so it should be
with you and with me - that we should be here as living
embodiments of the fact that there is something all the
time coming through which is not of this world, something
of heaven that is our resource.