Reading:
Deut. 1:2-3, 8:2.
In our
previous meditation, we were almost entirely on the
negative side of this matter, namely, the distance which
is the difference between ourselves and Christ. Forty
years were taken when eleven days alone were necessary
from the divine standpoint, because of the great expanse
which lies between what we are, even as the Lord’s
people, in ourselves, and what the Lord is. This expanse
of wilderness was bounded, as we know, at both ends by
death; by the Red Sea and by the Jordan respectively. It
was a space locked up in death, and, from one standpoint,
it is that place in the life of the Lord’s people
where death has to be applied and made to operate.
Now we
rather desire to strike a more positive note and aspect
of the matter. It is true that one of the great lessons
in the life of the Lord’s people is that of the
other-ness, the complete other-ness of Christ from what
they are; a lesson to be learned in every respect, and
along the line of undoing so largely, our undoing. But
what is the Lord after? What is the positive outcome of
it all in the Lord’s mind and will? What issued from
the forty years, or what issued from this company of the
Lord’s people? At the end of the forty years of this
wilderness journey, what have we really in hand, so far
as this particular company and journey were concerned? We
have only two men in hand at the end, Joshua and Caleb.
We know that another generation went in, but that is
another thing. So far as this particular generation is
concerned, all that we have at the end is two men; but
what two men! Those two men, one of them perhaps in
particular, represented and embodied all that there was
to be. The future hung upon them. The Lord’s
interests for His people were bound up with them. And
they were the fruit of this school of the wilderness.
The Lord’s Need of
Men and Women of Stature
But
let us come to it immediately, without any further delay
or going round. What is the Lord after? This came to me
with very real force recently in a time of indisposition,
and when it seemed that everything on the outside was
being narrowed down and the prospects for anything very
much of the Lord seemed to be so limited. I was driven
very much on the Lord about the whole situation, to
inquire very earnestly what it all meant and what it was
the Lord was really after, and I can say to you that it
came to me, in the way that things do just now and again
in a lifetime, as the Lord’s own message to the
heart; and it amounted to this: “What I am after at
this time is men and women of spiritual stature, I am
going to need them”. That is how it came to me with
great strength. When it so happens, it is as though
something has been written inside, and you know when you
get something like that from the Lord it is life, it is
salvation, it is release. And so it was; there was a new
sense of meaning, real meaning, in things. Men and women
of spiritual stature — I am going to need them!
The
whole of this work in the wilderness for forty years was
found in two men. You may say, that is a poor issue. Not
when you recognize the value of those men and how many
there were afterwards who owed everything to the
spiritual stature of those men.
You
pass on in the Word and you find that fact coming up
again and again. You go to 1 Chron. 21, and you know what
you have there. David is in the wilderness. All that in a
public way is of the Lord is in the hands of a man who
had been chosen — representation. Saul holds the
public position, but he is man-chosen, and he embodies
everything that is man, man in the things of God. But
God’s anointed one is there outside for the time
being, and he is in the wilderness. In that chapter you
have three secessions to David. There is the secession to
Ziklag, the secession to the stronghold or cave, and the
secession to Hebron; and if you look you will find that
those who seceded to David in each and every case are
described as men who were able to wield the sword and the
spear, men who were able to keep rank and to lead. They
of that sort came finally to David at Hebron to turn
again the kingdom and make David king over all Israel,
and these are they who were needed when the kingdom was
turned. When David came to the throne, he needed men of
stature for the constituting of the kingdom, for its
carrying on. The men of stature had been found in the
wilderness. They had come to him, not when all was going
well, when there was any appeal to the flesh, when coming
to him would have meant popularity, influence in the
world. No, everything was to the contrary. They had to
leave that realm and come out to the place where
everything was in disrepute, in rejection, under
ostracism; to be the enemy of what was public religion,
the established and acknowledged and recognized thing; to
come out and be tested there with David in the
wilderness, men of stature whom he was going to need in a
coming day.
We
need not follow the principle through. You know that it
comes up so frequently. The Lord finds a little company,
speaking generally, amongst His people and brings them
into the difficult school of a spiritual wilderness, to
increase their spiritual measure in the light of a need
which is coming. We, I think, are not mistaken and wrong
in saying that the Lord is not giving a great deal of
encouragement in these days to great public movements and
efforts and activities in Christianity. That is not His
line at the moment. Many who are honestly burdened with
the need are straining after something like that, a great
movement amongst Christians and in the world, but the
Lord has not yet set His seal to anything like that in
any very real way. He is not doing it just now.
But I
think we are just as right in saying that the Lord is
very intensely occupied in an inner, hidden, secret way
with many of His children along the line of deep
discipline and trial. I do not think there is any doubt
about that. This is a time in which the work of God is
very much hidden, and is of a very intense kind, with a
company within the main company of Christian people. Not
all Christian people are going the same way, but there
are those who are. To secure men and women of spiritual
stature in the light of a need which is coming —
that seems to me to be the explanation.
We do
not know what that need is. It is useless to try to
forecast, to shape, the future. All sorts of things are
possible and probable. It is not difficult to imagine
— though I think it goes beyond imagination, mere
imagination — that the horrors of peace will be
greater than the horrors of war. You may say, that is
strong speaking. I have used a strong word — horror
— but I do not think it is too strong, I do not
think it is the wrong word. Perhaps the difficulties and
sufferings and trials of peace will be very much greater
than those of war. We do not know. I say it is useless to
try to forecast the future, but there are such prospects,
and if that is so, a very great need is going to exist
spiritually. Things are not going to be easy for a long
time; they are going to be difficult, hard, tight,
perhaps severe. A need is going to arise, and that need
is only going to be met by people who know the Lord in a
peculiar way, who have proved and come to know the Lord
in a wilderness, a spiritual wilderness.
The Measure for which the
Lord Looks
What
is this stature of which we have spoken? Well, if you
investigate the life of Israel in the forty years, you
can see something of the meaning of it. Take it, for
instance, from the standpoint of reactions, reactions to
the situations into which the Lord brought them. The Lord
said, I led thee these forty years in the wilderness to
prove thee, to try thee, to know what was in thine heart.
Really the words there mean more than that; to make thee
know what was in thine heart, to bring it to light. It is
not as though the Lord did not know their hearts. He knew
before the trial was applied, but He put them into a
situation to bring it out, to make it manifest. “It
was in thine heart”! That could be stated thus, To
manifest natural reactions to situations.
Today
the situation is one of lack of bread, or tomorrow lack
of water, at another time a different situation; and so
difficulties, trials, arise along the way of different
kinds. What is the reaction? There is nothing wrong with
a reaction that is perplexed. There is nothing wrong with
a reaction that feels the stress of things. There is
nothing wrong with a reaction that says, I do not know
what the Lord means by this, I do not know what the Lord
is doing with me; I am bewildered! There is nothing wrong
with such a reaction at all. But what actually took place
was that they were embittered against the Lord. The New
Testament way of putting it is, that they hardened their
hearts in the day of trial (Heb. 3:8). They were
embittered, they allowed themselves to be soured by
trial, they turned in their hearts against the Lord. They
lost their concern for the things of the Lord. The way
was hard, very hard, but the effect which they allowed
the difficulties to have upon them was just that —
Oh well, if the Lord does not please me, I have no
interest in His affairs; if the Lord does not do what I
want Him to do, well, I am just going to let go! That is
a state that is nature, a state of the human heart. It is
a wrong interpretation of the Lord’s way, the
Lord’s dealings and experiences. That sort of thing
can drag on until the heart becomes stony and the life is
lost entirely as a positive thing to the Lord.
The
spirit of grace produces another kind of reaction. It
does not take the sting out of trial, it does not prevent
the trial being a trial and fire being fire, it does not
make us insensitive to difficulty, but the spirit of
grace, the spirit of faith, says, Well, it is hard, it is
difficult, the Lord is not doing what I expected, what I
would like; He is doing just the opposite, and in every
way He is emptying me and breaking me, and withholding
what I in my heart would like; but He knows what He is
doing. “He knoweth the way that I take; when he hath
tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” He knoweth!
And, beloved, that is stature, that is measure, that is
growth, that answers to Joshua and Caleb whose hearts did
not turn back, but who wholly followed the Lord.
Oh, I
know this must not be a hard word, and it is not said
harshly at all. There is not one of us who has not
suffered in this way. We have all got confessions to make
about our reactions to the Lord’s dealings. Maybe
there are some here who have lost the flame, the warmth,
who have lost zeal, who are letting go, who are not
concerned about the Lord’s interests so much as they
were, because the Lord has not taken them up along the
line of their own desires and expectations and ambitions,
but has frustrated all that again and again. If you are
there, I want you with me to try to recognize the
seriousness of the crisis of that position. My dear
friend, whoever you may be, if you are in that particular
state or peril just now, a coming need is the strength of
appeal for you to stand up and seek to trust the Lord in
your dark day in a new way when you cannot understand, to
have confidence in Him in this time when you feel that,
so far as His ways with you are concerned, they are
calculated to undermine all confidence. The Lord has a
need which is going to arise, and He is going to need men
and women of measure, of stature, and He has been trying
to make you such in the light of that coming need.
I do
believe that the ordinary Christian resource and
Christian life and Christian measure of today is not
going to meet the need of a near tomorrow. It is already
failing. Leaders, if they only would be honest and
confess it — and some have already done so —
would say: We are failing, our methods have not
succeeded, we are not meeting the situation; the need is
beyond us, we have not got what is required! That is more
or less recognized by responsible people today, and there
are many who are deeply aware of that need, but they do
not know what to do, where to turn, which way to look: so
they just have to stay where they are. If only they knew
where to find what they sense to be necessary, they would
be there. Is God going to take no account of that? Is He
not true to His word, “Blessed are they that hunger
and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
filled”? Is He not going to satisfy the hungry soul?
Is there going to be real need, and the Lord be
indifferent to it?
But
the Lord’s way is not to meet it direct from heaven.
He needs you, He needs me, but we have to have it to
give. We are “stewards of the manifold grace of
God.” And what is a steward? A steward is one who
knows what His Lord has, has an entrée to it, a right to
it, and knows what to bring forth for the specific case:
a steward, one of understanding and resource. The Lord is
needing stewards, He is wanting to make stewards, and
that is what He is trying to do with many today. He has
cut off a great deal that was good. There was nothing
wrong with it in itself, but as the good was the enemy of
the best, it had to be cut off. We had to be separated
unto something. We are not going to judge anybody who may
still be in things we have felt we must leave behind; we
thank God for every measure there is of Himself however
limited. But the Lord in His sovereignty does so work as
to deal with a people in the light of a greater need, and
that is His message to us today. I have less doubt about
the truth of that than about anything else. If I am
speaking in the name of the Lord at all, that is His word
to you. A need is growing, it exists, and it is coming
into manifestation, and for this a stewardship will be
necessary, men and women of stature, Joshuas and Calebs,
and such as those who came out to David, such as have
wholly followed the Lord.
Trial is Meant to Yield Measure
Well,
what is our reaction to the Lord’s dealings with us?
Are we less concerned than we once were? If we become
petulant, peevish, displeased with the Lord, anything
like that, that proves beyond any doubt that we have
interests of our own: nature was in this thing, it was
not all the Lord. And so it has had to be exposed, we
have had to know what was in our hearts.
But
there are two ways, you see, even of coming to the place
where it does not matter to us what happens to us. Under
trial we can come to the place where at length we break
away, saying, The Lord does not care, does not hear; oh
well, it does not matter; if the Lord is not concerned
about it, I’ll just let it go! We can drop out like
that, petulant, disappointed, soured by trial and
adversity: it does not matter, we have lost interest.
That is one position; and you will acknowledge that is
not right, there is something wrong with that.
But
there is the other position. It does not matter what
happens to me, it does not matter what happens to my
interests, it does not matter at all whether I myself am
used or not in this thing that the Lord wants to do: all
that matters is that the Lord gets what He is after, and
gets it in His way. So far as I am concerned, what
happens to me is quite a secondary matter! That is
stature, that is measure, that is Christ. “The Son
of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister,
and to give his life” (Mark 10:45). It does not
matter what happens to me, so long as the Lord gets what
He is after. Does it matter to you? How does it matter?
Why does it matter? The answer to that determines our
spiritual measure, and it determines whether the Lord is
going to be able to meet His need by means of us when
that need is manifested. I do not believe the Lord will
ever have spiritual measure in a life without using it,
without finding a way for it. But oh, so many of us have
come to the place where our one cry is, Lord, do not draw
upon me beyond my measure, do not put me into a position
for which I am not fitted, do not involve me in
responsibility for which I am not qualified!
And
what is qualification, what is fitness? It is simply
Christ.
The Measure of Christ
Well
now, we come back to this wilderness, and you see
everything was on that basis; nothing whatever was of man
in that wilderness from God’s side, nothing at all.
Everything was forbidding from one standpoint. Take that
tabernacle, the outer court with its curtain stretched
right round, and so high; there is no getting through,
and no looking over. It all says, Keep out! Everything
says, If you come inside here, you die! Keep out! There
is but one way in, and that is through sacrifice; and
that is your death representatively. You come in here,
and your life is taken. It is all so forbidding, from one
standpoint.
And
yet from the other standpoint, there is the representing
of the people in the presence of God. But how could it
be? Well, from the first word to the last, it is all
Christ. The whole of that structure of the tabernacle
came from heaven. Not one idea was allowed to come from
man’s mind. It was not left with man to produce one
thought as to the manner of that tabernacle, or how it
should be built; from start to finish, it came from
heaven. That is the other-ness of Christ. The ideas are
God’s, not ours. Though we may be the Lord’s
people, it is still not a case of our ideas, but
God’s. Not a single thought from us is allowed. The
fellowship, the access, the communion — oh, you
cannot come in there save on the ground of Christ. It is
by sacrifice. That sacrifice is Christ. It is by
priesthood. That priesthood is Christ. The very garments
all speak of Christ. It is Christ, only Christ, and you
cannot come in except as Christ, so to speak. You are
only accepted in the Beloved. You are never accepted in
yourself, not even as the Lord’s child.
And
what of service? “Let my people go that they may
serve me”, the Lord had said to Pharaoh (Ex. 9:1).
But what is the service in the wilderness? It is priestly
service. The Levites represent the service of the
Lord’s people. Priests and Levites — what are
they? Why, their very adornment, their very clothes, are
all types speaking of Christ. Everything about these
priests and Levites is symbolical, representative of
Christ. So that service is Christ, and you and I are shut
out, even as the Lord’s people, shut out in our own
natures. Everything is God’s thought here. All
access in God’s thought is Christ. All service is
Christ, and only as you and I learn Christ, put on
Christ, walk in Christ, and live Christ, have we any
place, and the measure in which that is so determines the
measure of our value to the Lord, our usefulness to Him.
And
for this present moment the increase of Christ in us is
by that ruling out, putting aside, thrusting back of our
own encroachments and impingements, even in the things of
God, the pushing back by the Lord saying, I do not want
you! That is how it seems. That is how we feel rebuffed
so often. But there is another interpretation. WE are
wanting to get in. The Lord says, No, there is no place
here for you, keep out; this place is reserved for My
Son; your appreciation of Him is the measure in which you
come in here; your abiding in Him is the measure of your
standing here; your being hidden in Him, covered by Him,
is the measure of your acceptance!
And
for the coming need the Lord is intensifying the process,
taking us deeply and soundly into this in our experience.
Presently, perhaps, we shall thank the Lord for it all.
We have been able to meet a need which was too deep for
anything ordinary to meet. If we had not been that deep
way, we could not have met that deep need. If we had not
known those bitter fires, we could not have served that
divine purpose. Whatever else the Lord is doing —
and I am not saying this is the only thing He is doing
— whatever else He is doing, He is doing this, and
whether it be for this life here or for His Kingdom
afterwards, there is no doubt or question about the truth
of this principle. For the kingdom now in this life
spiritually, and for that kingdom which follows the Lord
must have at hand men and women of stature. May we find
the grace to follow Him wholly.