Reading: 1 Kings
18:30-32, 36-38, 42-45. James 5:17-18. Ephesians 6:18.
We note that what is
true of the enemy's activity along the line of prevention
of prayer is also true along the line of interruption of
prayer. I do not only mean that while you are praying you
have interruptions, but he has a subtle way of
interfering with the continuity of a prayer-life. You may
triumphantly secure seasons of prayer for perhaps a week,
or more, and then something is introduced which breaks
into that continuity so that you lose it, and you find
that after a time a tremendous battle has to be fought to
recover that prayer-life. For many of us our history is
that of a spasmodic prayer-life which comes in patches, a
history fraught with the necessity for every now and then
recovering lost ground through having a setback - the
interruption of the enemy. So we have to set a watch
there, and watch especially against reactions from
intensive periods of prayer, slackening off and feeling
that now, after that strenuous time, we can take a
spiritual holiday. There is always a very great peril
there, as David proved. At a time when kings went out to
battle, he went up on to the housetop. Then what the
enemy cannot prevent or interrupt, he will seek to
destroy afterwards. That is, he will direct his attention
to spoiling the prayer-life afterwards. We may have a
strong time, or a series of strong times, but if he
cannot directly attack our prayer-life, the enemy is
always out to spoil it through another angle which does
not seem immediately to be related to it, but by which
indirectly we are crippled. Our prayer-life may be very
strong, good and consistent, but something happens in
some other department of our life, perhaps in a
relationship somewhere else, and when we come to prayer
we find that that thing represents a direct blow at our
prayer-life and we cannot go on until that thing has been
dealt with.
We must recognize that
all these things are just the enemy's efforts, and are a
highly organized scheme to destroy, either directly or
indirectly, our prayer-life, or to interfere with it.
Thus we shall find that our prayer-life is the focal
point of everything.
It is when we come
really to pray, to the real business of prayer, that we
shall discover exactly where we are in all the
relationships of our life. The iniquity which we regard
in our hearts may not have anything to do directly with
our prayer-life, but it comes indirectly as a terrific
blow upon us. Things which may be side-shows bear right
down upon our prayer-life. The enemy is always putting up
these things all round to destroy our prayer-life. We
register the state of things when we come to prayer. We
may not recognize for the moment what a certain thing
means, whatever that thing may be. It may be an
interrupted fellowship, a strained relationship, a
cross-purpose, or a breach somewhere, and we may not
recognize exactly what it does mean until we come to take
up our strong prayer-life. Then we find that that thing
has struck at the very vitals of prayer and we cannot get
on. That thing is out there, and so we are held up here;
and then we discover that there has been a subtle working
on the circumference of our lives which strikes at the
very centre. The enemy would destroy our prayer-life,
would, so to speak, throw things at it from the outside
to make it impossible. I think you are able to follow
what I mean, for experience bears it out.
The
Universality of Prayer
Now we come to widen
out a little in this spiritual conflict. These passages
which we have read present us with a very comprehensive
position. In 1 Kings 18 the account of the battle of
Elijah on Carmel is undoubtedly an Old Testament
illustration of the New Testament truth, especially of
Ephesians 6. These two things go together as type and
antitype, as part and counterpart, and what is common to
them both is that the sphere of the conflict is the
heavenlies. What James says directs the whole of this
matter to the heavens: the opening and closing of the
heavens, the government of the heavens, the ruling of the
heavens. The heavens are the main object in view here,
and this conflict relates to the heavens and the
heavenlies: "Our wrestling is... in the
heavenlies." Elijah's conflict was in a very real
way a conflict in the heavens where heavenly forces were
involved. That, I think, is patent, and that is a common
feature in these two portions of the Word.
This particular
spiritual conflict in which you and I are found when we
have come into God's full purpose and testimony in Christ
is, in its ultimate issue, related to the government of
the heavens. Who is going to govern in the heavens? There
are the principalities, the powers, the world-rulers of
this darkness and the spiritual hosts of wickedness who
have assumed the place of government. They are in a
usurped place, for that is not the eternal thought of
God, nor is it His will. Christ is Head, and His Church
as His members are, in the intention of God, called to
rule in the heavens, to govern as from the heavens. It is
a question of what the heavens are in this matter,
whether they are to be satanic, or whether they are to be
the expression of the absolute lordship of the Lord Jesus
in and through the Church, which is His Body. It is the
heavenlies, the ruling realities, which are involved, and
it is there that our conflict is. That is the sphere of
this warfare, and our prayer-life has to do with that. It
is not merely to do with the incidents of our lives here
on the earth. Oh, that the Lord's people would recognize
the immensity of this, for so often the generality of our
prayer is in the realm of merely trivial things, and a
great deal of time is taken up with telling the Lord all
about the little things of our ordinary earthly life
which, while they may be important to us and may count in
an earthly life, do not touch the ultimate things in
God's purpose.
There is such a
difference between praying down there and praying against
the immense forces of the universe and getting the
heavenly things through. The Lord's people want to be
lifted in prayer to where the mighty, heavenly, eternal
and universal are affected, touched and brought through.
There is a great need for us to be brought into our
heavenly place in the matter of prayer, where real
spiritual matters lying behind the other are touched.
Very often the Lord never allows our prayers to be
effective in the merely earthly details of our lives
because He wants us to see that there is something behind
those things which matters a great deal more. You
sometimes pray for a thing to happen, a change to take
place, or an event to come off, but nothing happens. The
Lord seeks - after you have extended yourself as fully as
you can on the matter - to show you that there is a
spiritual key to that situation, and He cannot do just
the earthly thing for you because that would not in any
way be to your spiritual increase of intelligence,
understanding, knowledge or value, and would only be
doing things because you asked Him. He is trying to
instruct and teach you so that you come into possession
of spiritual situations.
Well, it is the heavens
which are the sphere of this conflict.
The
Church - the Occasion of the Conflict
What is the occasion of
the conflict? What is it for? Well, from the context in
both these passages, 1 Kings 18 and Ephesians 6, you see
that the occasion of the conflict is the Church. The
Church is the immediate object in view. In 1 Kings 18, of
course, it is the people of God, and the issue of
Elijah's prayer is that their hearts should be turned
back. The Lord's people are in view and his prayer is for
this people, so he brings them all near and involves them
in this issue, and associates them with it, because it is
their issue. We know that the thing which is in view
right through the letter to the Ephesians is the Church
which is His Body, and this is the occasion of the
conflict. It is a battle in the heavenlies in relation to
the Church, the Body of Christ.
There are two things to
be said about that. One, that it is not merely a personal
matter, but a collective, corporate matter. This conflict
relates to the whole Body of Christ, and the conflict of
every individual is a related conflict, relating to all
the rest of the saints, so that there is that spiritual
relativity which means that if one member is defeated the
whole Body suffers spiritually. It may not know why, nor
be conscious of its particular suffering, but, registered
in the Head and the consciousness of the Head, there is a
loss to the whole Body when even one member falls into
defeat. The conflict is a related one; and so the enemy
seeks to isolate individual members of the Body and bring
such pressure upon them as to crush them down, because he
knows - not just the value of an isolated member - but
the relativity of every member. It is because of this
that there is so much spiritual emphasis from the
intelligence of the Holy Spirit upon the necessity for
praying for all saints, for the fellowship prayer, the
corporate prayer of the Lord's people. There is loss to
Christ, the Head, if there is not that prayer for all
saints.
Christ
in Glory - the Object of the Conflict
The other thing to be
said about this is that it is not even the Church as the
Body which is the ultimate thing, although it is the
immediate occasion. We must not put the Church, the Body
of Christ, in the pre-eminent place. It is an occasion,
but it is not the final thing. The Church, the Body of
Christ, is His instrument, His vessel for His testimony.
His testimony is deposited in the Body. It was so in His
resurrection, and at Pentecost the testimony of His
victory, the testimony of His exaltation, the testimony
of His glorification and the testimony of His universal
authority in heaven and in earth was deposited in the
Church. As the temple in the Old Testament was the shrine
of the glory of God, so the Body of Christ in the New
Testament is the shrine of His glory, His testimony and
His Name, and it is ultimately to strike at that glory,
that Name, and that exaltation that the enemy directs his
attention to the elect vessel, the Church, the Body of
Christ. And so the Church becomes the occasion of the
conflict, although not the end, but the enemy gets at the
Christ, at the Name and at the glory through the Body. We
know that that was true in the Old Testament.
When Israel was in a
state of declension the Lord's glory and honour, His
Name, and His majesty were over-shadowed, beclouded, and
lost to view. When Israel's spiritual life was in the
ascendant, then Jehovah's testimony was maintained in
full strength. In the New Testament, and in our own time
in this New Testament age, the enemy's way of
dishonouring the Lord is by destroying the spiritual life
of the Lord's people, or by breaking up the fellowship of
the saints.
So the Church, the
Body, becomes the occasion of the conflict because of
what it is in its divinely-appointed vocation, purpose
and object. The enemy's bitter hatred and violent
opposition are directed against the corporate life of the
Lord's people. He will seek by any means to destroy that,
to break up the fellowship of the saints, to set the
Lord's people against one another, and to introduce
disintegrating things - but, oh, how subtle are his ways
in this!
The
Strategic Value of Watchfulness
Here I do feel, dear
friends, that you and I will have to do what Nehemiah
did, and what the Apostle in this very portion exhorts us
to do: "Set a watch"; "watching
thereunto," because, as you notice in both
connections, it is the wiles of the devil which are in
view. They are the subtle activities of the enemy, and to
set a watch against the wiles of the devil in practical
outworking will, at least in one direction, mean this:
that we make quite sure that the rumours which we
hear and the reports that come to us are absolutely
trustworthy. We must make quite sure - "prove all
things". We can be divided by a rumour, and split up
by a report. We can be set at variance or apart by a mere
insinuation. In these days, when the atmosphere is
surcharged with fear and suspicion, you have only to hint
at the possibility of someone being 'unsound' and a
spiritual breach of fellowship is created and a gap made.
If only we set a watch and made sure, we would find that
a great deal of that was unnecessary and unwarranted, and
represented a great loss to the Lord Himself and to His
people, for when we get really to close grips and sift
these things we find there is nothing in them, or, if
there is anything in them, they have an explanation and
we cannot fail, in all honesty of heart, to accept that
as being right. That is very often how it works out.
But, oh! to set a watch
against these wiles of the devil! His methods of breaking
up the corporate life of the Lord's people are beyond our
power to enumerate, and that is where prayer and watching
are necessary. Prayer should result in intelligence about
the wiles of the enemy, and 'watching unto prayer' is
watching and praying that you might discover in prayer
what it is the enemy is after and how he is working.
We do not want to be
obsessed with the enemy, always to have our eyes on him,
but we must recognize the facts as they are, and those
facts are that throughout these almost two millenniums
the enemy has made it his great business unceasingly to
destroy the fellowship of the people of God. Is that
true? Is that history? If it is true, what does it
signify? That you can never have something that really in
any measure represents what is precious to the Lord,
something of a spiritual character, embodying some
precious element of His testimony, but what it is the
object of satanic malignity and cunning which has the one
intention of splitting that thing, breaking it up, and
getting schism and division there somehow, by truth or by
lies. That is history, and surely it gives the whole game
away, that a Church in fellowship, a Body rightly
adjusted and related, moving together in the will of God,
is the greatest menace to the spiritual rule of
principalities and powers that there is in the universe.
So it is that to which
we should work and direct our attention. Let us lay
ourselves out for spiritual fellowship! That does not
mean compromising with things which are contrary to the
Word of God, and must not mean coming down from any
spiritual position to which the Lord has, through cost,
brought us. We must be where Nehemiah was when his
enemies said, 'Come down and let us discuss this matter.
We must confer about this.' Nehemiah said: "I am
doing a great work so that I cannot come down."
There must be no coming down to discuss things that are
beyond the point of discussion as to spiritual necessity.
But, dear friends, any spiritual position arrived at
through cost and the deep in-working of the cross must be
held only in relation to all the saints. It must not be
held out of relation to the saints, nor must those who
have it and hold it be made something apart from the
rest. No! Whatever may be the difference of spiritual
position so far as degree is concerned, fellowship with
all saints must be striven after and maintained as far as
possible, and it must be reached out for. I do want to
urge that upon you more and more, as it is urged upon my
own heart, because the Lord's end in giving light and
truth may be defeated if the reception of it and the
holding of it constitutes those who have it as being
something apart from the rest of the saints. He has given
it for the Body; if it is held apart, then the end for
which He gave it has been missed. Lay that to heart very
definitely!
So the occasion of the
conflict is the Church, by reason of its heavenly calling
and vocation. This is no personal thing, nor local thing:
it is universal. The Body of Christ is a universal
reality.
The
Basis of Victory
Just a word or two with
regard to the basis of victory in this conflict. The
basis of victory here in 1 Kings 18 was undoubtedly the
altar, and in Ephesians it is the same. Before you reach
your position in the heavenlies for heavenly conflict and
triumph, you have to pass through the earlier chapters of
Ephesians and recognize that a death has taken place,
that an altar was there, and that, having died, you have
been 'quickened and raised together.' All the features of
the cross, the altar, are implied at the beginning of the
letter to the Ephesians, so that both in the
representation and in that which is represented the basis
of victory is the cross, the altar. Elijah took twelve
stones, and the constitution of the altar with twelve
stones immediately brings in the administrative feature
in relation to the altar, for twelve is the number of
administration. The altar comprised of twelve stones
becomes the administrative instrument, the governmental
principle, in this conflict in the hands of God. The
government is in the cross, and by the cross, for by His
cross He triumphed, and in His cross He stripped off
principalities and powers and 'made a show of them
openly.' I wonder if, in reading those fragments of 1
Kings 18 you were struck with the terms:
"...according to the number of the tribes of the
sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the Lord came,
saying, Israel shall be thy name." What is that?
Well, Israel means 'a prince with God,' so in that verse
31 we have sons of a prince with God represented in the
altar, in the cross.
Symbolically that
speaks to us very clearly of that basis of our coming
into our Prince, our governmental position in Christ, Who
is the Prince with God. He is greater than Israel, for He
is the Prince with God, and we are sons in Him and
partake of His princeliness. That brings us up into a
place of governmental authority in Christ in the
heavenlies, but it is all bound up with the altar, the
cross. The cross is the basis of victory, and that is
borne out again, not only by the testimony of heaven, the
Word of God, but by the testimony of hell. Satan is an
unwonted, unwilling - and I sometimes wonder whether he
is an unconscious - witness to the truth in this way, for
it is perfectly clear that he hated the cross, and he
tried in the first place to keep the Lord Jesus from it:
"...this shall not be unto Thee. But He turned and
said unto Peter, Get thee behind Me, Satan." This is
Satan trying to keep the Lord Jesus from the cross, and
then, having failed to keep Him from it, he tried to
bring Him off the cross: "If Thou be the Son of God,
come down from the cross." Those subtle suggestions!
"...let Him now come down from the cross and we will
believe Him." To be believed in by the world was
what He had come for, but, no, the second method of the
enemy did not succeed.
The enemy having failed
along those lines, and the cross having been accomplished
in spite of him, he will seek now to change and alter the
preaching of the cross in order to make it of non-effect.
He will get people to preach it, and in their very
preaching of it make it void. That is extraordinarily
subtle! It is as well to recognize how far the enemy will
go. He will promote the preaching of the cross, and the
cross preached by his instigation and under his influence
is made non-effective. The Apostle tells us that in his
first letter to the Corinthians, that the cross preached
in the wisdom of men makes it of non-effect, or void. Men
preaching the cross in their wisdom are simply taking the
true meaning and power out of the cross. Oh, yes, you
hear plenty about the way of the cross, but it is not His
way of the cross. The very power of the cross is in its
registration against the enemy and all his works, against
sin as a principle, and against evil as a state, a
nature. The power of the cross is taken out when you
speak about the heroics of the cross, and about the way
of the cross as, well, any man who denies himself and
lays down his life for his country is in the same
category as Jesus Christ, Who, after all, only laid down
His life as any soldier has done. That is the cross in
modernism.
Another thing which the
enemy seeks to do in relation to the cross is to keep
Christians in ignorance of its full meaning. It is a
great day for the Lord, and a terrible day for the enemy,
when a Christian breaks through into the revelation of
the full meaning of Calvary. That day marks a new bit of
history in the realm of conflict. You may meet a certain
kind of opposition on the ground of the substitutionary
work of the Lord Jesus, but, believe me, you will meet
ten times more when you come on to the ground of the
representative work of the Lord Jesus, and when you take
up your place in identification with Christ in death,
burial and resurrection in a spiritual way. Then begins a
new history of conflict, of battle, and of satanic
antagonism, but you have entered into a new realm and a
new place, and you have new powers at your command. The
enemy has lost his ground. Multitudes believe in the
substitutionary work and rejoice in it, but they are
still going on in the energy of the natural man, even as
Christians. They do not represent a menace to the enemy
in those higher ranges, but when the cross has been so
accepted and planted in our lives that the natural life
is set aside - "I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in
me"- then there is a new realm of meaning to the
Lord and of meaning to the enemy, and therefore a new
realm of conflict. The enemy is out to keep that side of
the cross from Christians, and we have said before, and
it is true, that very often you meet your opposition on
that line more from Christians than from any others. It
is a strange thing. Immediately you go on with the Lord
into all the fullness of the meaning of Calvary you find
your chief difficulty is in the realm of Christians, and,
as a rule, 'official' Christians. Leaders will not have
it, and you find that your way is made infinitely more
difficult. It is true that the enemy does hate the
fullness of the cross, and he will seek by any means to
destroy its value for believers, to hide its meaning from
them, and if possible to get them to forsake the position
and come down from it, or to persuade them not to accept
it.
Well, surely that is
his testimony to its value! He is a witness to its
meaning. The cross, then, is the basis of victory, and
the enemy knows it very well.
I am not going further
than that now. We must take this, think about it and
apply it, but remember this grand, conclusive thing:
Satan is a defeated foe for all who are truly one with
the cross of the Lord Jesus, because Calvary does
represent his defeat, and, as we are planted into the
death of Christ, so we stand with Him in that defeat of
the enemy, in that victory of the Lord Jesus. So, however
he may rage, storm, fight, afflict, press, worry, and
harass, the fact remains that for those who are one with
Christ in His cross, Satan is a defeated foe.