"For they that
dwell in Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew
him not, nor the voices of the prophets which are read
every sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning Him"
(Acts 13:27).
The above statement as a
whole carries a significance which embraces a very great
deal of history, but its direct and immediate implication
is that if the people referred to - the dwellers in
Jerusalem and their rulers - had been in the good of the
most familiar things, they would have behaved very
differently from the way in which they did behave. Every
week, Sabbath by Sabbath, extending over a very great
number of years, they heard things read; but eventually,
because of their failure to recognise what they were
hearing, they acted in a way entirely opposed to those
very things, though under the sovereignty of God
fulfilling them in so doing.
Surely that is a word of
warning. It represents a very terrible possibility - to
hear repeatedly the same things, and not to recognise
their significance; to behave in a way quite contrary to
our own interests, making for our own undoing, when it
might have been otherwise.
The point is this - that
there is a voice in the prophets which may be missed, a
meaning which may not be apprehended, and the results may
be disastrous for the people concerned. "The voices
of the prophets": that suggests that there is
something beyond the mere things that the prophet says.
There is a 'voice'. We may hear a sound, we may hear the
words, and yet not hear the voice; that is something
extra to the thing said. That is the statement here, that
week by week, month after month, and year after year, men
read the prophets audibly, and the people who heard the
reading did not hear the voices. It is the voice of
the prophets that we need to hear.
As you go through this
thirteenth chapter of the Acts you are able to recognise
that this little fragment is in a very crucial context.
This chapter, to begin with, marks a development. There
in Antioch were certain men, including Saul, and the Holy
Ghost said: "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the
work whereunto I have called them." That was a new
development, a moving out, something far-reaching, very
momentous; but you are not through the chapter before you
come upon another crisis, which became inevitable when in
a certain place a great crowd came together, and the
Jews, refusing to be obedient to the Word, stirred up a
revolt. The Apostles made this pronouncement: "It
was necessary that the word of God should first be spoken
to you. Seeing ye thrust it from you, and judge
yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the
Gentiles" (vs. 46); and they quoted a prophet
(Isaiah 49:6) for their authority: "I have set thee
for a light of the Gentiles." These were epochs in
the history of the Church; and the Jews, as a whole, were
turned from, and the Gentiles in a very deliberate way
were recognised and brought in, because of this very
thing - that the Jews had heard these prophets Sabbath by
Sabbath but had not heard their voices.
Big things hang upon
hearing the voice. Failure to hear may lead to
irreparable loss. Very big things concerning Israel have
come into the centuries since the time of Acts 13. It is
not my intention to launch out on matters of prophecy
concerning the Jews, but my point is this. On the one
hand, it was no small thing to fail to hear the voices of
the prophets. On the other hand, you notice that the
Gentiles rejoiced. It says here, "As the Gentiles
heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of
God." Well, on both sides, it is a great thing to
fail to hear what could be heard if there were an ear for
hearing and it is a great thing to hear and give heed. I
think that is a sufficiently serious foundation and
background to engage our attention.
OLD
TESTAMENT PROPHETS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Let us now look more
closely at this matter of "the voices of the
prophets". A fact of very great significance is
this, that the prophets have such a large place in the
New Testament. I wonder if you have taken account of how
large that place is. You will not need to be reminded of
how largely the Gospels call upon the major prophets, as
they are called. "That it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the prophet..." - how often that
statement alone occurs in the Gospels. It came in from
the birth of the Lord Jesus, and in that connection alone
on several occasions the major prophets are quoted. But
when you move from the Gospels into the Acts and the
Epistles, you move largely into what are called the minor
prophets - not minor because they were of less account
than the others, but because the record of their writings
is smaller. It is tremendously impressive and significant
that these minor prophets should be drawn upon so
extensively in the New Testament; they are quoted over
fifty times.
PROPHETS
MEN OF VISION
From that general
significance, two factors emerge. One as to the prophets
themselves: why do they have so large a place in the New
Testament? Well, the answer to that will be largely
another question. What do prophets signify? They are the
'seers' (I Samuel 9:9); they are the men who see and, in
seeing, act as eyes for the people of God. They are the
men of vision; and their large place in the New Testament
surely therefore indicates how tremendously important
spiritual vision is for the people of God throughout this
dispensation. Of course, the other thing is the vision
itself, but I am not concerned just now to speak about
what the vision was and is - that, with other aspects,
may come later. At the moment, I feel the Lord is
concerned with this factor - the tremendous importance of
spiritual vision if the people of God are to fulfil their
vocation. It resolves itself into a matter solely of
vision unto vocation, and the vocation will not be
fulfilled without vision.
VISION
IMPARTS PURPOSE TO LIFE
So for a moment let us
dwell upon the place of vision - and you will not think
that I am talking about 'visionariness'. No, it is
something specific, it is the vision, it is
something clearly defined. The prophets knew what they
were talking about - not merely abstract ideas, but
something very definite. Vision is something quite
specific, something with which the Lord is concerned and
which has become a mighty, dominating thing in the life
of those who have it; clear, distinct, precise, specific;
taking hold of and mastering and dominating them, so that
the whole purpose of existence itself is gathered into
it. Such people are at the place where they know why they
have an existence, they know the purpose for which they
are alive and are able to say what it is, and their
horizon is bounded by that thing; they, with their whole
life in all its aspects, are gathered into that, poised
to that. It is an object which governs everything for
them. It is not just living on this earth and doing many
things and getting through somehow; but everything that
has a place in life is linked with this definite,
distinct, all-governing objective. It is such a vision
which gives meaning to life.
It is not necessary for
me to take you through Israel's history as governed by
that very truth. You know quite well that, when Israel
was in a right position, that is how things were -
focused, definite, with everybody centred in one object.
And, before we go further, let us say again that all
these prophets - men who were the eyes of God for a
people, and signifying to that people God's thought and
purpose concerning them, their Divine vocation, God's
interpretation of their very existence - these prophets
who embodied that are all brought into the New Testament
dispensation and into the Church, with this clear
implication, that that is how the Church is to be if it
is to get through. The Church is to be a seeing thing,
dominated by a specific object and vision, knowing why it
exists, having no doubt about it, and poised in utter
abandonment thereto, bringing all other things in life
into line with that. Our attitude has to be that, while
in this world we necessarily have to do this and that, to
earn our living and do our daily work, yet there is
something governing all else: there is a Divine vision.
These things have to bend to that one Divine end.
That is the first
implication of the fact that the prophets have such a
large place in this dispensation. We cannot now stay to
follow that out in detail from the Word, but it would be
very helpful to go through the New Testament, and see how
the bringing in of the prophets is made to apply to the
varied aspects of the Church's life. It is very
impressive.
VISION
A UNIFYING FACTOR
The prophets are
governing this dispensation in this way. This vision, the
vision, was the very cohesiveness and strength of
Israel. When the vision was clearly before them, when
their eyes were opened and they were seeing, when they
were in line with God's purpose, when they were governed
by that end to which God had called them, they were one
people, made one by the vision. They had a single eye.
That little phrase, "If... thine eye be
single..." (Matthew 6:22), has a great deal more in
it than we have recognised. A single eye - it unifies the
whole life and conduct; it will unify all your behaviour.
If you are a man or a woman of one idea, everything will
be brought into that. Of course, that is not always a
very happy thing, though in this case it is. People who
are obsessed and, as we say, 'have a bee in their
bonnet', with nothing else to talk about but one thing,
are often very trying people. But there is a right way, a
Divine way, in which the people of God should be people
of a single eye, a single idea; and that singleness of
eye brings all the faculties into coordination.
During the rare periods
when Israel was like that, they were a marvelously
unified people. On the other hand, you can see how, when
the vision faded and failed, they disintegrated, became
people of all kinds of divided and schismatic interests
and activities, quarrelling amongst themselves. How true
is the word: "Where there is no vision, the people
perish (go to pieces)" (Proverbs 29:18). And so it
was with Israel. See them in the days of Eli, when there
was no open vision. What a disintegrated, disunited
people they were! That happened many times. The vision
was a solidifying, cohesive power, making a people
solidly one, and in that oneness was their strength, and
they were irresistible. See them over Jordan in their
assault upon Jericho! See them moving triumphantly on!
While they were governed by one object, none could stand
before them. Their strength was in their unity, and their
unity was in their vision. The enemy knows what he is
doing in destroying or confusing vision: he is dividing
the people of God.
VISION
A DEFENSIVE POWER
What a defensive power
is vision like that! What little chance the enemy has
when we are a people set upon one thing! If we have all
sorts of divided and personal interests, the enemy can
make awful havoc. He does not get a chance when everybody
is centred upon one Divine object. He has to divide us
somehow, distract us, disintegrate us, before he can
accomplish his work of hindering God's end. All those
features of self-pity, self-interest, which are ever
seeking to get in and spoil, will never get in while
vision is clear and we are focused upon it as one people.
It is tremendously defensive. The Apostle spoke about
being "in diligence not slothful; fervent in spirit;
serving the Lord" (Romans 12:11). Moffatt translates
"fervent in spirit" as "maintaining the
spiritual glow". Being centred upon an object
wholeheartedly is a wonderfully protective thing. Such a
condition in a people closes the breaches and resists the
encroachments and impingements of all kinds of things
which would distract and paralyse.
VISION
MAKES FOR DEFINITENESS AND GROWTH
Vision was like a flame
with the prophets. You have to recognise that about them,
at any rate - that these men were flames of fire. There
was nothing neutral about them; they were aggressive,
never passive. Vision has that effect. If you have really
seen what the Lord is after, you cannot be half-hearted.
You cannot be passive if you see. Find the person who has
seen, and you find a positive life. Find the person who
does not see, is not sure, is not clear, and you have a
neutral, a negative, one that does not count. These
prophets were men like flames of fire because they saw.
And when Israel was in the good of the Divine calling,
Israel was like that - positive, aggressive. When the
vision faded, they came to a standstill, turned in upon
themselves, went round and round in circles, ceased to
get anywhere.
This aggressiveness,
this positiveness, which is the fruit of having seen,
provides the Lord with the ground that He needs for a
right kind of training and discipline. It does not mean
that we shall never make mistakes. You will see in the
New Testament - and I hope you will not charge me with
heresy - that even a man as crucified as Paul could make
mistakes. Peter, a man so used and so chastened, could
make mistakes. Yes, apostles could make mistakes. And
prophets could make mistakes. "What doest thou here,
Elijah?" (I Kings 19:9). 'You have no business to be
here' - that is what it means. Yes, prophets and apostles
could make mistakes, and they did; but there is this
about it - because they had seen, and were utterly
abandoned to that which they had seen of the Lord's mind,
the Lord was abundantly able to come in on their mistakes
and sovereignly overrule them and teach His servants
something more of Himself and His ways.
Now, you never find that
with people who are indefinite. The indefinite people,
those who are not meaning business, who are not
abandoned, never do learn anything of the Lord. It is the
people who commit themselves, who let go and go right out
in the direction of whatever measure of light the Lord
has given them, who, on the one hand, find their mistakes
- the mistakes of their very zeal - taken hold of by
Divine sovereignty and overruled; and, on the other hand,
are taught by the Lord through their very mistakes what
His thoughts are, how He does things, and how He does not
do them. If we are going to wait in indefiniteness and
uncertainty and do nothing until we know it all, we shall
learn nothing.
Have you not noticed
that it is the men and women whose hearts are aflame for
God, who have seen something truly from the Lord and have
been mightily gripped by what they have seen, who are the
people that are learning? The Lord is teaching them; He
does not allow their blunders and their mistakes to
engulf them in destruction. He sovereignly overrules, and
in the long run they are able to say, 'Well, I made some
awful blunders, but the Lord marvelously took hold of
them and turned them to good account.' To be like this,
with vision which gathers up our whole being and masters
us, provides the Lord with the ground for looking after
us even when we make mistakes - because His interests are
at stake, His interests and not our own are the concern
of our heart. The prophets and the apostles learned to
know the Lord in wonderful ways by their very mistakes,
for they were the mistakes, not of their own stubborn
self-will, but of a real passion for God and for what He
had shown them as to His purpose.
VISION
GIVES ASCENDENCY TO GOD'S PEOPLE
And then note that the
very ascendency of Israel was based upon vision. They
were called of God to be an ascendent people, above all
the peoples of the earth, set in the midst of the nations
as a spiritually governmental vessel. The Lord did
promise that no nation should be able to take headship
over them. His thought for them was that they should be
"the head, and not the tail" (Deut. 28:13). But
that was not going to happen willy-nilly, irrespective of
their condition and position. It was when they had the
vision before them clearly, corporately, as an entire
people - dominated, mastered, unified by the vision - it
was then that they were head and not tail, it was then
that they were in the ascendent.
And that brings in these
prophets again. (We think now of the later prophets of
Israel.) Why the prophets? Because Israel had lost their
position. Assyria, Babylon and the rest were taking
ascendency over them because they had lost their vision.
It is in the minor prophets, as they are called, that you
have so much about this very matter. "My people are
destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). That
is a note to which all the prophets are tuned. Why this
state of things? Why is Israel now the underdog of the
nations? The answer is - lost vision. The prophet comes
to try to get them back to the place of the vision. The
prophet has the vision, he is the eyes of the people: he
is calling them back to that for which God chose them, to
show them anew why He took them from among the nations.
VISION
NEEDED BY EVERY CHILD OF GOD
All this is but an
emphasis upon the place of vision. It may not get you
very far; you may wonder what it all leads to. You are
saying now, 'Well, what is the vision?' That is not the
point at the moment; that can come later. The point is
that that is the necessity, the absolute necessity, for
the Church today - for you, for me; and let me say at
once that, while it is pre-eminently a corporate thing -
that is, it is something which is to be in a people, even
though that people be but a remnant, a small number
amongst all the people of God - while pre-eminently a
corporate thing, it must also be personal. You and I
individually must be in the place where we can say, 'I
have seen, I know what God is after!'
If we were asked why the
Church is as it is today, in so large a measure of
impotence and disintegration, and what is needed to bring
about an impact from heaven by means of the Church, could
we say? Is it presumption to claim to be able to do that?
The prophets knew; and remember that the prophets,
whether they were of the Old Testament or of the New
Testament, were not an isolated class of people, they
were not some body apart, holding this in themselves
officially. They were the very eyes of the body. They
were, in the thought of God, the people of God.
You know that principle; it is seen, for instance, in the
matter of the High Priest. God looks upon the one High
Priest as Israel, and deals with all Israel on the ground
of the condition of the High Priest, whether it be good
or bad. If the High Priest is bad - "And he showed
me Joshua the high priest... clothed with filthy
garments" (Zechariah 3:1-5) - that is Israel. God
deals with Israel as one man.
The prophet is the same;
and that is why the prophet was so interwoven with the
very condition and life of the people. Listen to the
prophet Daniel praying. Personally he was not guilty;
personally he had not sinned as the nation had sinned;
but he took it all on himself and spoke as though it were
his responsibility, as if he were the chief of sinners.
These men were brought right into it. There is such a
oneness between the prophets and the people in condition,
in experience, in suffering, that they can never view
themselves as officials apart from all that, as it were
talking to it from the outside; they are in it, they are
it.
My meaning is this, that
we are not to have vision brought to us by a class called
ministers, prophets and apostles. They are here only to
keep us alive to what we ought to be before God, how we
ought to be; constantly stirring us up and saying, 'Look
here, this is what you ought to be.' It ought therefore
to be, with every one of us personally, that we are in
the meaning of this prophetic ministry. The Church is
called to be a prophet to the nations. May I repeat my
enquiry - it is a permissible question without admitting
of any presumption - could you say what is needed by the
Church today? Could you interpret the state of things,
and explain truly by what the Lord has shown you in your
own heart? I know the peril and dangers that may surround
such an idea, but that is the very meaning of our
existence. It will be in greater or lesser degree in
every one of us, but, either more or less we have the key
to the situation. God needs people of that sort. It must
be individual.
VISION
CALLS FOR COURAGE
But remember it will
call for immense courage. Oh, the courage of these
prophets! - courage as over against compromise and
policy. Oh, the ruinous effects of policy, of secondary
considerations! 'How will it affect our opportunities if
we are so definite? Will it not lessen our opportunities
of serving the Lord if we take such a position?' That is
policy, and it is a ruinous thing. Many a man who has
seen something, and has begun to speak about what he has
seen, has found such a reaction from his own brethren and
amongst those where his responsibility lay, that he has
drawn back. 'It is dangerous to pursue that any further.'
Policy! No, there was nothing of that about the prophets.
Are we committed because we have seen?
There will be cost; we
may as well face it. There is a little fragment in
Hebrews 11 - "They were sawn asunder." A
tradition says that that applied to the prophet Isaiah -
that he was the one who was sawn asunder. Read lsaiah 53.
There is nothing more sublime in all the literature of
the Bible, and for that he was sawn asunder. Was he
right? Well, we today stand on the ground, and in the
good, of his rightness. But the devil does not like that,
and so Isaiah was sawn asunder. There are tremendous
values bound up with seeing, and with uncompromising
abandonment to the vision, but there is very great cost
also.
We will leave it there
for the time being; but we must have dealings with the
Lord and say, 'How much have I seen? After all I have
heard of the prophets week by week, after all the
conventions, the conferences, the meetings I have been
attending, have I heard the voice of the prophets
after all? I have heard the speakers give their messages
and addresses: have I heard the voice?' The effect will
be far-reaching if we have. If we have not, it is time we
got to the Lord about it. This must not go on! What
happened in Acts 13? Hearing they did not hear; but where
there was a hearing, oh, what tremendous things happened,
what tremendous values came!