Books by T. Austin-Sparks

[Shammu]

A People in Harmony With Heaven

First of all, this correspondence that we have noted between the robe of the high priest, and the cord on the people's garments, sets forth the glorious fact that they were in harmony with Heaven, that there was a harmoniousness between them and Heaven; and that is something. It is a wonderful thing to have no discord with Heaven, and for Heaven to have no discord with you. That is not our natural state; we know it right well. That is not the state of men who have not entered into the wonderful, redeeming, atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ by His Cross. They know, as we all knew at one time, that they have no harmony with Heaven. Indeed, the one quest, the one longing and craving, the one thing disturbing their peace all the time, is this - How can we get into harmony with Heaven? How can we be so adjusted to God, to Heaven, and to all that belongs there, that the discord and strain in life ceases? Oh, to be freed from this state of strain and unrest and conflict, this disappointment and dissatisfaction and discontent! There is something wrong somewhere; things are out of joint. But here, you see, is set forth a wonderful harmony with Heaven. If the high priest represents Jesus Christ in Heaven, this touch of blue on the garments signifies that all the people are participating in that. That is the very first fruit and value of the great high-priestly work of the Lord Jesus in offering Himself for our sins.

Now we know that, when we come by simple, precise faith, to accept the atoning, redemptive work of the Lord Jesus by His Cross, the discord in our hearts ceases. The strain has gone out; something has happened that has adjusted us to Heaven. Beautiful harmony has come about between us and God. This is put in many different ways in the Bible. One of them is this: "We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:1). Or again: "having made peace through the blood of his cross" (Col. 1:20). It is a wonderful inheritance, an inheritance to which multitudes can testify. There came a crisis in our lives - something happened - and it was just as though bones that had been out of joint were suddenly put right - they clicked together, and the ache has gone. Oh, how wonderful! Have you ever suffered the ache of a dislocated joint, that has bothered you night and day, disturbed your rest, robbed you of sleep, a constant nagging pain - and then you have got it put right? How you breathe again - life is worth living now!

That is exactly what happens to the sinner who by faith accepts Jesus as Saviour. Things click into joint; harmony takes the place of discord. Why? Simply because all the cause of, and reason for, the discord has been dealt with. What is the cause? What is the reason? In the words of a prophet: "your iniquities have separated between you and your God" (Isa. 59:2). Sin is at the bottom of it. I am not talking about sins; I am talking about sin. Sin is a thing which is native to every child of Adam. It is our nature - it is what we are. You know that. Try to stop doing certain things, and you find you have got to stop living in order to stop doing them. Somehow or other you have got to get rid of yourself in order to get rid of that. Sin is in our very nature. The Lord Jesus in His Cross took on Himself our sin and our sinfulness and dealt with it - dealt with the cause of all the discord and the trouble; and because the cause is dealt with, the effect follows quite naturally.

A little girl once heard read that passage from the book of the Revelation: "God... shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, any more" (Rev. 21:3,4) and she said, 'God must have a very big handkerchief'! Well, that is a childish way of putting it. But you see, when God wipes away tears, He does not use a handkerchief. He gets behind the tears to why you cry, to the cause of the tears, and deals with the thing right at its source. All our trouble is dealt with at its source by the Lord Jesus. "Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf" (2 Cor. 5:21). "He bare our sins in his body upon the tree" (1 Pet. 2:24).

And so, having dealt with the source and root of the trouble, He brings us into union with Himself as the Redeemer, the great Atoner, the great Saviour, and we participate in His heavenly blue. Speaking now illustratively, if He is there wearing this robe all of blue, and we are here with a bit of that blue on us, it means not only that we are related to Him, but that our place in Heaven is secured. If you ask an unsaved person if they are going to Heaven, the answer, more often than not, is, 'Well, I hope so.' Now, it may happen that there is one reading these lines to whom that question might be addressed: 'Are you going to Heaven? are you expecting to go to Heaven?' You might in some uncertainty reply: 'Well, I want to', or 'I hope so.' I want to tell you that there is a way provided by God, whereby you need have no question about it: that there can come right into your life the witness of Heaven, you can now share what is true of the Lord Jesus in Heaven and you can have your place secured in Heaven here and now, all on the ground of the work which Christ has done for you. We will come back to that again in another way in a minute.

Let us go further with this gospel, this good news, of the heavenly blue. What does this mean for Christians, when once they are the Lord's, this blue cord on the garment of the Lord's people?

A People Distinct from all Others

First of all, it marks them off as different and distinct from all other people. I expect that if the other nations round about Israel knew about this, and if ever an Israelite went out amongst them, they would say, 'Oh, we know where you come from! That bit of blue gives you away, that marks you off from everybody, that distinguishes you from everyone else.' A true Christian is something different and something distinct from all others, and the feature which makes him so is that there is in him another life, which is a heavenly life. Jesus said, 'I am come down from heaven for the life of the world' (John 6:33). "I am the living bread which came down out of heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever" (John 6:51). Here is another life, a heavenly life, in Jesus Christ, which those who receive Him receive in Him.

This is a test of our Christianity, but it is also a testimony to its reality. We know, when we have come on to this ground of Christ's atoning, redemptive work, that we have received into our very being another life, a different life. And this new life always gravitates back to its source in Heaven, that is, it is always pulling us up out of this world, it is always drawing us upward. It is a life of elevation, of uplift, a life which gravitates towards Heaven, like water in a pipe from a reservoir, always seeking its own level. Paul put it in this way. "If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is" (Col. 3:1). The great characteristic of a true Christian is that he is living in touch with Heaven, in the light of Heaven, in communion with Heaven, and always feeling the mighty magnetism of Christ in Heaven.

Our natural life always gravitates downwards. It does not matter what you do: leave it for a minute, and down it goes. Take restraints away, and down it goes. Remove the props, and down it goes. Its whole gravitation is downward. It does not matter how far you advance in developments - intellectual, social, and so on. Take people out of their wretched hovels, and put them into nice new dwellings: after a time you will see deterioration setting in, and soon it will be another slum district. You cannot stop it. That is the way of things. It is true of everything in this life and in this world.

But here is something that comes in and counteracts, takes another course. It is a wonderful thing. When a man or woman accepts Christ and becomes possessed of this heavenly life, they begin spontaneously, without any instruction, to change their behaviour. From uncouth, they become polite. From being careless in their manner and dress and so on, they become conscious of something. They change, and it goes on like that. I am afraid it must be said that some Christians have forgotten. Something has happened to check the life of Christ, the heavenly life, and they have become careless, slovenly, indifferent, unwatchful as to behaviour, as to courtesy, and so on. But when this life is not hindered by wilfulness, it is a transforming life, and that is the great distinguishing mark of a Christian.

[Shammu]

People Belonging to Another World

Christians have got another world. It goes by the name of Heaven. I do not know where Heaven is, but I know what Heaven is. It does not matter so very much where it is, so long as we know what it is, and I am content to know that Heaven is a state. Christians are marked off as belonging to another world. This world knows quite well that, as soon as a man or a woman becomes a Christian, it has lost a citizen. They are lost to the world. Yes, we have got another world. It a very much better one, a much more wonderful one, an entirely new world.

People With Another Goal

And we have another goal. This is true to the illustration of the Old Testament. Israel in the wilderness was not limited to the resources of the wilderness. A wilderness is no place in which to try to live by the produce of the land, and yet they went forty years in the wilderness without starving. They had heavenly resources when there were none in their surroundings. They drew everything from another world. It is an illustration again. The survival of Christians under pressure, under trial, under suffering - the triumph of Christians through all sorts of adversities - is a testimony to the fact that they have another world from which they are drawing their resources. Thank God, this 'wilderness' is not the end for the Christian. We have another goal; we are people with an objective, people for whom there is something ahead. Death is not our goal; the grave is not our goal. All that this world may offer of prizes is not our goal. The goal of the Christian is something very much better and more glorious.

The Unity of the People of God

Let us note one other thing about these people. It is quite obvious that the blue cord on their garments, corresponding with the high priest's, indicates the unity of the people of God, not only with Christ as the High Priest in Heaven, but with one another. There was something about every one of them, as those who belonged to the Lord, which was the same, something about them that united them. They were not all the colours of the rainbow, as Christendom is now. No, there was one conspicuous mark about them which made them all alike, all one. There was a unity of the people of God amongst themselves.

The Fact of Unity

Now, first of all, that is factual. We have got to realize this and stand upon it deliberately and persistently, that everyone who is truly a child of God is our brother, our sister, belongs to our family; we have the one life shared amongst us. That is the fact of the unity of Christians, of children of God. Our unity rests in the first place upon nothing but the oneness of life which we share in Christ. The approximation to that in expression may vary, but that depends upon how far God's people live upon the fact of another life. Its expression will never come about by our trying to bring together all the sects, denominations, churches, departments, and so on, and setting up a unity. It will not happen. It will always prove in the long run to be like the tower of Babel. Something will happen, and it will all go wrong again.

But if only we would live upon the great fact that we have received, through faith in Jesus Christ, His own life, that is the basis upon which we are to proceed. I meet you, not upon any mechanical ground, but upon the ground that you belong to the same Lord, you share the same life. Let us forget the other things as far as we can. Let us not allow the other things that divide to affect us more than we can possibly help. Let us cling to this, that, if you and I are truly children of God, born from Heaven, we have one life. It is a fact upon which we need persistently to live, and for which we must fight.

A Unity of Interest

And then it means that we have a unity of interest. The real people of God have only one interest, and they are a unity because of this particular interest. What is the interest of Christians? Paul put it in this way: "To me to live is Christ" (Phil. 1:21). 'My sole interest in life is the furtherance of the interests of Jesus Christ, the glory of Jesus Christ.' That Apostle sought unceasingly to further the interests of Jesus Christ and to make Him glorious wherever he went. We have one interest, and we put it in that one word - Christ. That is the unifying factor. If we have other things - private things, personal things, things in this world - upon which our hearts are mainly set; if we have sectarian interests: very well, we shall not be one. We are one by this all-captivating passion - Jesus Christ.

And that springs up immediately this great thing happens in us. Is it not true, that as soon as we receive the Lord Jesus in virtue of His saving work for us, immediately we want to tell people about Him, we want to talk about Jesus Christ? You cannot keep us quiet on this matter. We must be talking about Christ. He has become the one all-absorbing interest for us, in our very being. It comes out in business, it comes out in our social circle, it comes out everywhere: we are miserable if we cannot talk about Jesus Christ, if there is no place for Him. That is our unity, a unity of interest.

Now I go back where we began. Do you belong to the people of God? Have you received this Divine life? Do you know harmony with Heaven, or do you go on hoping, maybe praying, maybe longing, but... you are not sure? Heaven is something that makes you long, but you do not know. I want to say to anyone who has not peace with God, who has not perfect assurance that it is well between themselves and Him, that God has nothing more to do to provide you with the ground for it. God has done everything - everything that God Almighty could do - to bring you into that blessed experience of peace with Himself, harmony with Heaven; to give you another life than the one that you have, as a power drawing you upward, drawing you onward, giving you a great motive, a great interest, altogether beyond this poor world. Here it is all available.

What then? It rests with you. You have not got to work for it, or work it out; you have not got to try and fit yourself for it, by trying to be better than you are. You are only prolonging the misery if you say, 'Oh, it is not for me, I am not good enough for that.' What about Israel - what kind of people were they, as to themselves? Well, the Bible story of Israel is not a very pleasant one, as to the people, but I believe it was written for the very purpose of showing up what kind of people they were. If ever there was a difficult people on this earth, it was Israel! Yet that did not prevent them from coming into what God had provided for them. It is not what we are - good, bad or indifferent. God will no more accept the good person than the bad person. God is not waiting for you to change anything in your manner of life. Everything has been done in Christ, and all He says now is: 'Look, I have made a full provision - I ask nothing from you but that you believe it and accept it. Recognize your need, bow before Me, and say: "I am one in need: You have the provision. By faith I receive all Your provision in Christ."'

Does that sound far too easy and too simple? If it does, remember that, while we get it so simply, like that, it cost God and His Son infinitely to provide it. The greatest suffering and sacrifice that this universe has ever witnessed was the cost of your salvation and mine. If we say, 'Only believe and receive by faith', that does not mean that it is cheap. It is very, very costly to God. But He waits for you. You think you are waiting for something - perhaps for Him, or for a change in yourself. You will wait. God has done it all. Christ is now in Heaven, the seal of the fact that the work on earth for men is done. In the words of the great Apostle: "We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 5:20).

[Shammu]

Chapter 5 - A Special Vocation

"Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ... But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that ye may show forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" (1 Peter 2:5,9).

The Lord's People Divided Into Three Realms

At the beginning of the nationally constituted life of Israel, after they had come out of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea and arrived at Sinai, and the Lord had given instructions concerning the tabernacle and all its materials and its order, and the people were now gathered around the completed tabernacle which had been set up, we find that they were divided into three main realms.

There was, on the circumference, shall we say, the main body of Israel; it was a very large body. We will call them the general company of the people of God.

Then, within them, as a kind of 'Israel within Israel', as it has been expressed, we have the tribe of Levi. For the purposes of the service and the journeys of the people and the tabernacle they are subsequently divided into three, the three families of the sons of Aaron. Their respective functions and ministry were, briefly: (1) the charge and care of the holy vessels - that went to one section of the priestly family; (2) the charge and care of the boards and the bars of the tabernacle, committed to another definite section of the priestly family; and (3) the curtains, the fabric, and all that had to do with the coverings, committed to the third section. Later a fourth function was entrusted to the Levites, namely, the teaching ministry. This was their scope. But there were also limitations imposed upon them. For instance, they were not allowed to slay the offerings, and they were not allowed to offer incense. These things belonged to the priests.

Then, within this second realm, we find at the heart and centre of things Moses and Aaron: Moses, who is the prophet, that is, the one who receives the mind of God for His people; Aaron, the priest, whose function it is to deal with all that has to do with the presence of God in the midst of His people, and with man's approach to God, as present.

That, very briefly, as Bible students know, is a very, very condensed outline, covering an immense amount of detail. But it is sufficient for our present purpose.

Let us now consider the meaning of these three realms of the people of God. We shall actually confine ourselves mainly to the two outer realms, not thinking specially of Moses and Aaron just now, for we need very little further instruction about them. We all know of what we might term the dual value of the ministry of the Lord Jesus, as God's Prophet and High Priest: as the One in whom is revealed all the mind of God for His people, and by whom all the ground is provided for the presence of God in the midst of His people, and all the means available for the approach of God's people to Him. We are not going to dwell upon that just at present. It is the other two that concern us - the general and the more inward.

Divisions in the Old Testament Official

Now, in the Old Testament, the differences and the divisions which we have mentioned were official, they were 'ecclesiastical', they were formal. We see that clearly set forth in the sharply defined companies or bodies of people in different positions, performing different functions. There is the general mass, and there is the more particular company called the Levites; and they are objectively distinguishable. You can see them. Anybody who has seen a picture or model of the tabernacle in the wilderness, with the tribes arranged, can see quite clearly that here are distinct and definite divisions. That is how it is in the Old Testament: it is something official.

Divisions in the New Testament Spiritual

In the New Testament it is not like that, and I ask you to follow me here very closely, for so much depends upon the real grasp of this fact. In the New Testament the same differences are seen, but they are not official, formal, or ecclesiastical. They are spiritual. You can see them, but you can only see them in a spiritual way, for they are only present spiritually. One great danger, with which many other perils are connected, is that of recognizing distinctions and differences on a basis other than a spiritual one. The whole system of Christianity has gone astray on this very point, with disastrous consequences, and there is no end to it. Even amongst quite spiritual and evangelical people there is a very great deal of this Old Testament mentality, and in so far as that is true, it is loss, it is confusion - it means limitation in almost every spiritual direction. I do want you to grasp this, that the distinctions which are made in the Old Testament are present also in the New Testament, but in an altogether different realm. Here they are spiritual, whereas there they are temporal. Let us then examine these distinctions, keeping in mind the governing law that they are essentially, fundamentally, predominantly, spiritual and not official.

The General Mass of the Lord's People: An Objective Realm

The general mass of the Lord's people - the whole body as represented by all those gathered around the tabernacle to the uttermost bound of the camp - all stood in the value of the high priest's work. By reason of the priestly work of the high priest, they were the Lord's own people. They were in covenant relationship with the Lord, in virtue of shed blood. They were in the good of the presence of the Lord in the midst. All that was true right at the heart of things, with Moses and Aaron, the great altar and the sanctuary, went out to them, reached out to them, embraced them; they were their common property and heritage as the people of God. In that they were no different from other Israelites. There was no difference between them and Levites and priests on that ground. In virtue of the sacrifice and the blood, the atonement and the intercession, this was common ground for all the people of God. They were in the values of the work of the Levites, because the Levites were, after all, as we said previously, only their representatives, and not apart from them.

Now if we apply this up-to-date, we recognize that all who are on the ground of the one great offering, Jesus Christ, on the ground of the precious shed and sprinkled Blood, on the ground of the great atonement made, on the ground of the Holy Spirit as given, on the ground of the High Priestly intercession of the greater than Aaron - all who are on that ground inherit, enjoy, come into, the common benefits of salvation, and all that that means. Well, we accept that, that we are all one in Christ Jesus, and that there is no difference between us.

But note - that their good, their position and their realm, were matters of what was provided for them outwardly, objectively, and of what they believed to be for them - what they appreciated as being for them, and what they accepted as theirs. It was all something presented to them, of which they had an appreciation, which they believed to be theirs by God's mercy, and which they accepted as God's gift. That is the general or comprehensive realm of the Lord's people.

[Shammu]

The Levite Realm

But then you come to the second realm, the Levite realm, and you find a difference. There must, of course, be a difference between the Levites and the general company, otherwise they would not exist. And there are indeed many fundamental differences. Many things obtained in the case of the Levites which were specific and particular. They were there as a separate tribe, different from all the other tribes in respects which we may see later on. They were in another realm.

Now you will faithfully cling to what I said a little while ago, that I am not now, in this dispensation, in this New Testament day, distinguishing officially between these realms: that is, I am not putting some people into one specific category, as a people by themselves, and calling them the general mass, and other people into another category, and saying they belong to another order of Christians. Underline that as many times as you like, because there is a good deal of misapprehension and distortion about what we teach on this very thing. We are not talking about Christians in general, on the one hand, and then of an inclusive company of a different order altogether, on the other. We are talking about spiritual realms, not personal. But here, in both Testaments, whether it is in the Old as temporal, or in the New as spiritual, there is a distinction discernible, and the distinction is marked by certain basic things.

Subjective Experience

First of all, the Levites were those who personally saw and handled and tasted and knew of those things which were available to all the Lord's people - which the Lord's people in general had as their own inheritance, but were only enjoying objectively, and therefore in a very limited way. The Levites were those who had come into all that more inwardly, more experimentally, and it was just that, was it not, that was the point at which they were distinguished. In Exodus 32 they were distinguished by the fact that the object and purpose for which Israel as a whole was called and meant to exist had entered into them in a deep way. We can only speak, of course, in type, but the type contains the spiritual principle. The difference here between the great mass and this 'Israel within Israel' is that the one, the great bulk, were standing in the good of what was objective, and the others were standing in the experience of that made subjective; and that is a very great difference.

We can be the Lord's people; we can know the values of the High Priestly work of the Lord Jesus; we can know what He means as our Prophet, as having brought to us the revelation of God's mind for man: that, and all these other things, may be our inheritance as Christians. But they may yet, while of unspeakable value - and never for one moment let their importance be minimised - they may yet be but objective things that leave our inner life still wanting, still lacking in many respects. I have no hesitation in affirming, though I may expose myself to much misunderstanding, that that is a distinguishing mark amongst the Lord's people today: many standing in the objective good of all that Christ has done, knowing themselves to be the Lord's, and rejoicing in it, but amongst them comparatively few in whom all that has become a powerful, working reality, so that it is in their very being.

The second thing about the Levites is that, because of this realm in which they are found, of the inwardness of things as extra to the objective nature of things, they are in a position to minister to all the others. They are in a place of positive ministry, in the sense that they have a living, fuller and more inward understanding of Christ. That is the basis of ministry. It is the ministry of Israel that is bound up with these people. Now, in our systematized Christianity, we have made ministers into a class; we distinguish them from the 'laity' as the 'clergy' - the ministry and the laity; and these are classes, official, ecclesiastical classes - an utterly false apprehension of Divine truth. Ministry is not based upon anything of that kind at all - upon anything that is external. Ministry is based upon an inward knowledge of the Lord, and no one has a right to enter into any kind of ministry - much less take upon them the title of 'minister' - except in so far as they have a personal, inward, powerful knowledge of the Lord. The other is merely formal and ecclesiastical. Ministry is not official or hierarchical, but spiritual. It is a matter of spiritual measure, and spiritual measure is just the measure of Christ within. Christ is our measure. There is no other measure with God but Christ, and we can only minister according to our inward measure of Christ.

You see the difference, then, between these two great realms. I am not saying that one is the Lord's people and the others are not, I am saying that there are many dear, saved, believing children of God, who know that their eternal hope rests upon Christ's shed Blood, His atoning work, His redeeming activity, and who rest upon His continuous, High Priestly intercession, but with whom you cannot enjoy any deep spiritual fellowship in the things of the Lord. If you try to do so, they do not know what you are talking about; you are talking another language. With them everything is objective, as it was with the main mass of the Israelites. Everything was brought to them as a congregation, ready-made; they were told what they should do by others, and they did as they were told. They just conformed, because that was the thing that was done in Israel, it was the thing that was believed in Israel. 'God has made known this as His will for His people, so we do it.' In just the same way, many true children of God would say: 'This is how we are told to behave, this is what we are told to believe. We do as we are told by our ministers and our teachers. We simply conform to the established order of Christian doctrine, of Christian practice. The Church believes this, and so - well, we conform to that and accept it.'

But when you come to the Levites, it was not like that. The thing had entered right into themselves, and they were those who had a first-hand, personal, inward knowledge of the mind of the Lord. They did not get anything secondhand. A vast amount of Christianity today is just secondhand. You are not surprised that the mass of Israel could not stand up to the crucial test which came sooner or later. It is a very, very urgent thing that the Lord's people, the Lord's own dear people, should be able to stand up to the severe, fiery tests and trials which come and are coming; but it will only be as they move from the merely objective realm, important and precious though that is, to the realm where they have the root of the matter in themselves.

[Shammu]

The Difference Made by
(1) The Cross

We shall perhaps be helped in this matter of the Levites if we go on to ask what it was that made the difference between the objective and the subjective, as we have called them - between that which was accepted, believed, appreciated, obeyed and followed as from without, and that in the other realm which came first-hand from the Divine throne and headquarters. What made the difference, and what makes the difference?

The answer is a large one, with quite a number of aspects. The first answer is the Cross, and I take you back again to Exodus 32, for that chapter is basic to the life and the realm and the ministry of the Levites. You remember what is in the chapter. Moses had been in the mount, had tarried long. The people had lost patience, and had called on Aaron to make them 'gods that should go before them' - 'for as for this Moses which brought us out of Egypt, we know not what has become of him.' And so the calf was made, and they danced around it, and gave it the glory of God. Moses came down, having already been told by the Lord what was happening, came down and verified, saw and heard, challenged Aaron as to this great sin, and then took the calf, ground it to powder, strewed the powder upon the water, made them drink it - the bitterness of their own folly. We always have to do that when we depart from the Lord: we have to drink the consequences. That by the way. Then Moses went off to the gate, stood there and cried, 'Who is on Jehovah's side? Let him come to me!', and all the sons of Levi went over to him. And he said, 'Put every man his sword upon his thigh, and go in and out and slay every man his brother and every man his friend and every man his neighbour', and they did it; and from that time the Lord took the tribe of Levi, and set it aside for the essential service of the tabernacle. That is the story in brief.

Let us come over to the New Testament, to the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 4, to the familiar words in verses 12 and 13: "For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature that is not manifest in his sight". What do we find here as the context of those words?

We have seen, in the case of Israel, a people in spiritual weakness and in spiritual immaturity, behaving like irresponsible children. Look at them down there around the calf - just like a lot of irresponsible children. And here, in the letter to the Hebrews, it is like that. Everything had been done for them, and they had come into the good of that which was provided in the High Priestly work of Christ, which is much spoken of here in the immediate context. They were Christians, that is, they were the Lord's people, but they were in terrible spiritual limitation and weakness and childishness, just as those people were when Moses came down from the mount. 'Gird every man his sword upon his thigh'. "The word of God is... sharper than any two-edged sword".

Let us go on, for what we have at the beginning of chapter 6 of this letter to the Hebrews is all of a piece: "Wherefore let us... press on unto full growth". Now between that and chapter 4 you have chapter 5, verses 12 and 13: "For when by reason of the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again that some one teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food. For every one that partaketh of milk is without experience of the word" - "the word of God is... sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit" - "without experience of the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food is for fullgrown men, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil."

'Let us go on to full growth'. On the one side immaturity, spiritual infancy, irresponsibility, and all the marks of childhood. On the other hand, full growth. What is the way out of spiritual childishness and immaturity and feebleness, and all that goes with it - out of that into full growth? We have it in chapter 4, verse 12: the sword of the word - the word of the Cross - dividing between soul and spirit. It is the word of the Cross that makes this cleavage. Spiritual infants live in their souls. And what is the soul? It is just the sum of our senses, our natural senses, our feelings, our natural seeing, our natural judgment; the way we approach, apprehend and react to things naturally, even as Christians.

Now, you see, the Israelites reacted. Moses is away there a long time. 'We wot not what has become of him.' 'We have lost him to our senses, we cannot see him, we cannot hear him, we cannot handle him'; and children must do that. They must see, they must handle, they must have all the evidences and the proofs. That is the mark of a child. He had gone out of their natural realm, and they were living in that. Now, the Levites took the sword and cut and cleft between soul and spirit. Their very action was such an action. "Every man his brother". Do not think for a moment that that meant the hated brother, the disliked brother, the brother to whom you would like to use the sword in any case. It is your brother, your own kith and kin, your blood relationship, your own family, the closest ties. Here is a test as to whether you are going to live in your soul or live in the spirit, whether you are going to move on the basis of your own feelings, sentiments, likes, reasonings, or whether you are going to move with God on principle. There are very, very big spiritual issues bound up with this.

As we said in an earlier message, it was a breaking in of Satan to draw worship away from God to himself, just at the time when the worship of God was being set up and constituted; as though he would say, 'I am taking all that - the very gold of the sanctuary, which is meant for the tabernacle.' Is not that a very, very big thing? Satan is always doing that, seeking to steal God's place and God's rights, even amongst the people of God. Now, the Levites reacted against that. I am not saying that they understood all that was involved, but it is here in principle, and it was a costly thing to their own souls to slay their own brother and their own friend and their own neighbour. The neighbourly man, to do it, was taking the sword to his own soul, was he not? There is no doubt about that.

cont'd next post

[Shammu]

Yes, the sword divided between soul and spirit then, right enough, and the Cross, you see, is represented by that. The Lord Jesus connected and linked those two things - taking up the Cross, or His Cross, and denying oneself. "He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. 10:39). This is the work of the Cross. But it was just that that made all the difference between these people, the Levites, and the rest. The Cross brought the Levites into their special position. Today, a deep application of the Cross would slay the self-life, the whole self-life; and God only knows how comprehensive that is, how many-sided and many-pointed that is. But a deep application of the Cross to the very centre of the self-life, the selfhood, for its deposing, that Christ may have that place, is the only way out of immaturity into maturity, out of the objective into the subjective; out of that realm where everything, though precious, is just presented to us and given to us, to the place where it is planted in us and becomes a part of us - and there is a very great difference between the two.

The Cross severs, the Cross divides. The Cross nullifies a whole realm. And spiritual knowledge - "for the priest's lips should keep knowledge" (Mal. 2:7), says the Word - waits on this work of the Cross. Whoso has not known this work of the Cross may regard himself or herself, or may be regarded by others, as an authority in the things of God, but that authority is not resting upon a proper foundation. Authority rests upon this - has it been wrought in you by a mighty, deep, self-destroying work of the Cross? Out of that, and that only, is authority. Take the case of all cases - the Lord Jesus. He spoke with authority. Why? Because, all the while He was speaking, and in all His life, He was utterly self-crucified - crucified to self.

Ministry, too, is consequent upon a work like this. Let me ask any of my readers who are in ministry: How did you take up ministry? If you like to put the article there, How did you take up 'the ministry'? On what ground? Let me tell you something. It has not been an unknown thing for men who have been in what is called 'the ministry', to come to an end of that whole thing, and quit it, because they have discovered that they were in it on a wrong basis. Yes, called ministers, wearing the garb of the minister, on the ministerial list, and all the rest: and yet eventually, by some eye-opening work of God, they have realized that theirs was a false position. They were in it, not on this ground that God had done some terrific thing in their being, shattering the natural life. And out of those ashes there sprang a knowledge of the Lord for His people which is the only qualification for the ministry. If that is not the ground, it is better to quit. Do not be in a false position, under a false interpretation of: "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:62). With your hand on that plough, you may yet be in a wholly false position. You may have no right or proper basis for having your hand on that plough at all.

Forgive the seriousness and solemnity of this word, and the emphasis, but these are very vital things. Much more could be said. The first answer to the question - What makes the difference? - is the Cross.

The Difference Made by
(2) The Blood

The second part of the answer is the Blood. Many people confuse the Cross and the Blood. Do not confuse them. If you have done so in the past, let me now try to help you to discriminate between them. Of course, they go together - they are two parts of a whole; but there is a difference, and the Blood itself has two aspects.

First of all, there is the aspect of implication. You can never have the blood unless a slaying has taken place, unless the death of a body has taken place. The word 'body' in the Scriptures is often used representatively of the whole man. When Paul says, "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice" (Rom. 12:1), he means yourselves, your entirety, the whole being. He speaks of the whole "body of the flesh" (Col. 2:11). There the body is just the 'embodiment', as it were, of the whole man. But note that nowhere in the Scripture is it said or implied that Christ's Blood in itself carried or bore our sin. Perhaps you ask, What about blood shed for the remission of sins (Heb. 9:22)? Let me repeat: it is nowhere said or implied that Christ 's Blood bore our sins. "He bare our sins in his" (not blood, but) "body upon the tree" (1 Pet. 2:24). It was His Body that bore our sins. The shedding of the Blood implied, carried with it, the fact that the Body had been broken, had been slain, had been offered. It was not that which was shed which bore our sins. It was His Body which was broken that bore our sins. The implication is that there is an entire body or embodiment of things that is slain, and in His Body He was made sin for us, and the judgment, the sword of God, fell upon His Body. He was smitten and stricken of God in His Body. It was then that our sins were met and judged and dealt with.

But by that slaying His Blood was released: and, look where you will in the Bible, you will never find other than this concerning the Blood, that the Blood is always the vivifying factor - not the death factor, but the vivifying factor. "The life... is in the blood" (Lev. 17:11). "He that... drinketh my blood hath eternal life" (John 6:54). The sprinkling of the blood upon the tabernacle and its vessels, and everything else, spoke of a vivifying, a making alive; and in the Blood of Christ an incorruptible life, which was never touched by our sin, was released for all future purposes, in principle to vivify everything. The Blood itself is the vivifying of everything subsequent to the slaying, to the dying, to the offering. The life has been taken from the body which has been made sin, or which has borne the sin, and released to become the life of another body. We are members of Christ, of His Body; and all that is represented by His life, His deathless life, the life that could not see death, could not touch death - if it could have been touched of sin, it could have been touched of death; that holy, perfect life that was in Him, signifying by His Blood that it was incorruptible, that it could not taste death - all that has been released by His slaying to be the life of His spiritual corporate Body.

The Levites came into the good of that. They came into the immediate value, on the one hand, of the slaying of a body, the setting aside, the cutting off, of the whole body of the flesh, the natural life, the self-life, as dominant; and, on the other, of all the vivifying power of the released and sprinkled blood, speaking of another life and another body. Again, I beseech you, do not draw artificial distinctions between the people of God, but see that these are spiritual principles. It is a tremendous thing to have entered into the meaning of the setting aside of the body of the flesh. All Christians have not done that. Many of us know in our own experience that at one time we laboured in the flesh with natural resources for God, and very earnestly so, and yet we knew we were not getting very far - it was a heart breaking business. Yes, until the day came when the Lord brought it home to us that that whole body has been set aside. It is out of another life and in another relationship with the Lord Jesus that this ministry is to be fulfilled.

[Shammu]

The Difference Made by
(3) The Spirit

The Cross, the Blood; and thirdly, the Spirit, the anointing of the priests. The Cross is on the death side, but the Blood and the Spirit are on the vital side, the potency side, the resurrection side, so do not always dwell on the Cross aspect. The Blood and the Spirit are united, and this is an important point. It is the Spirit of life - "the law of the Spirit of life", as Paul calls it (Rom. 8:2) - which means that this life that is released through the Cross is not just some abstract element, some force at work. This life which is given us in Christ in and by the Holy Spirit is conscious life and intelligent life. Let me say to young Christians, to any who are new on the way of the Lord: this is one of the most important things that you should know. The conscious, intelligent life of the Holy Spirit in you is going to make all the difference between a child and a grown Christian. It differentiates between those who just do what is expected of them, because they are told it is the thing that they ought to do, and those who know in their hearts what they should do, and need not to be told. How good it is not to need telling everything, when your life with the Lord is such that if anybody does bring some point to your notice, you are able to say, 'Yes, the Lord has spoken to me about that already: the Lord has been dealing with me on that matter.' Do you not think it would make a lot of difference if Christians on the whole were like that? - if they could say, 'The Lord has been speaking to me, the Lord has been showing me, the Lord has been putting me right; the Lord has been touching things in my life; He has been talking to me about my dress - or my no dress'?

Perhaps this sounds amusing; but there are many practical matters. One is distressed at the way in which some Christians can behave, even in this matter of dressing - or not dressing - when they come into the house of prayer. They have the Word of God before them. What is the matter? Either they are not reading the Word of God, or the Spirit finds some difficulty. I beseech you to give heed to this. Many, many matters which concern our spiritual growth, our full growth, depend upon this - that the Holy Spirit within is truly governing. The thing that has distressed and appalled me perhaps more than anything else for a large number of years is that dear children of God, men of God, servants of God, can accept and pass on things that are positive lies, and yet never seem to hear the Holy Spirit inside say anything about it. What is the matter? I tell you - if the Holy Spirit within us is really in government, and having His way, we shall never hear a lie without knowing that He does not agree with it. We shall have a check-up about it. We shall never be able to speak or pass on a falsehood without something inside 'going wrong', so that sooner or later we have to go back to the Lord and say, 'Well, Lord, I do not know how it is, but I feel that was wrong. I must get right over that.' Do you not think it would make a great difference to Christians and Christianity if it were all like that? What is the matter? I am afraid the Cross needs still to do something, and the Blood. I pass no judgment, but I have to draw conclusions from facts. The fact is that it is possible.

Yes, there is a great difference between childhood and maturity. The Levites were spiritual men who had to walk before God, and were checked up all along by the anointing, by the Spirit. It was not an objective fact, as it was with the whole mass of Israel, that the cloud and the pillar represented the presence of the Holy Spirit overshadowing, and, in a general kind of way, leading. With these men that thing became an inward positive reality. They had discernment as to the movement of the Spirit, and their discernment was for the rest of the people who had not got it.

Do take this to heart. These are the principles. It is very important that we should be clear on these things, because it is going to make a great difference to life, to service, to ministry, and to going through. I am glad to see that the Levites, although they were in the van when the people passed through Jordan overflowing all its banks, were not a separate, exclusive company of people, but were in the midst of God's people, as a spiritual company.

[Shammu]

Chapter 6 - Features of Spirituality

We have seen that, in the Old Testament dispensation, the tribe of Levi occupied a distinctive spiritual place. They were different; they were marked off by certain very important spiritual features and factors. In our last study we were seeking to show what those factors were. The first thing was in relation to the Cross - that, of course, is using the New Testament counterpart of the altar and the sacrifice of Levitical times - a deep work of the Cross within themselves. And then they became people in the power of another life, represented by the blood shed and sprinkled. Another distinguishing feature of those people was the oil of anointing - type of the Holy Spirit - constituting them spiritual people.

What is a Spiritual Person?

It is always an exceedingly difficult thing to explain what a spiritual person is. The mental reactions to that very phrase are often strange and peculiar. The idea of a spiritual person is that your feet are off the earth, you are living somewhere up in the clouds, and you are very unpractical as to the affairs of this world. You are too 'spiritual' really to be here at all - you ought to be in Heaven! Of course that is an entirely false apprehension of the meaning of being spiritual. Let us try a little further to explain what it really means that by the Holy Spirit we are constituted spiritual men and women.

But let me first draw a distinction, because not all Christians are very spiritual people. The New Testament has a very great deal to say about Christians who are carnal people, and that is a word which just means fleshly people, and if you want to know what that means - selfish people. You can be a Christian and be very self-centred, self-occupied, self-interested. Self - who can run to earth all the many aspects of what self means? When you think you have compassed the whole thing, it breaks out somewhere else in new forms. You just cannot finally lay your hand upon the multiplicity of the expressions of this deep root, with all its fibres, this self life.

Now a spiritual person is one who is not dominated and governed and influenced by the self nature, but whose thoughts, interests, actions are directed by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is in charge of the life. It is not what I think - and how often Christians are talking like that: 'I think', 'I think', 'I think' - that does not come into it with a spiritual person at all. There is no asserting of what I think, it is, 'What does the Lord think about this? What is the mind of the Lord about this?' Not, 'I want', and 'I will', but, 'What does the Lord want? Let us seek to know the Lord's mind, the Lord's will about this. Let us put our own mind and will and feelings out of the thing altogether, and let the Holy Spirit tell us. We will not move until we have a sense of what the mind of the Spirit is. At least we must know that our own minds are not governing.' The government of the Holy Spirit, the anointing, means that spiritual people are like that. And of course it means a great deal more. This complete, inward enthronement and government of the Holy Spirit touches things in all directions.

That again is discriminating. You see, we can be governed, as I said in an earlier meditation, by objective truth. It can be 'the truth' - orthodox, sound, Bible truth. We can be governed by that simply because it is taught; we do it objectively. But there is something more than that. There is such a thing as the Holy Spirit taking hold of the truth of God and making it something that lives in us. As I said previously, many Christians are just Christians: that is, after they are saved, after they are born again, their Christian life consists in doing as they are told by the minister or the Christian leader or the Bible class teacher, because it is presented to them as the thing they should do. It is what is in the Bible, and they do it so. But there is a very much higher level of life than that. The thing is right, but it is altogether transformed when the Holy Spirit brings it home to us in an inward way, and adjusts us to it. We no longer do it because it has got to be done: we do it because the Lord has done something in us, and shown us that that is the thing He wants done.

Do you grasp that? We can illustrate it, of course. A little child may obey what mother says because mother says it - love, perhaps; perhaps a spirit of obedience; or perhaps there is just no choice in the matter - mother says it! But there is a lot of difference between that and anticipating what mother would like, doing it without mother having to lay down the law at all. It is a difference of realm: one is law and the other is grace. And grace is only another word for love. Different kinds of Christians, you see; anticipating the will of God, being very sensitive. The same in practice: the Church teaches that certain things are rites of the Church, the ordinances of the Church, and therefore those who belong to the Church ought to do certain things, and so they go to Holy Communion, because the Church says that is what they ought to do, it is an ordinance of the Church, and other things which we might mention. They do it because that is the thing that is done. But oh, if the Lord has spoken in the heart and revealed the meaning of these things spiritually, how different the life is! It is no longer mechanical - it is vital.

The Government of the Word of God

Let us return to the Levites, and consider some other features of spirituality - things that were true in the life of the Levites in a typical way, that is, they pointed on to the spiritual truth of our own time. A marked thing in the case of the priests, the Levites, the sons of Aaron, was that, as anointed men under the government of the Holy Spirit, they came in a very utter and immediate way under the government of the Word of God.

There was a symbol of that, as you know, in the court of the tabernacle. It is called the 'laver'. The laver, as we know, was made from the mirrors of the women. They had metal mirrors, shining, bronze mirrors, into which they looked, as women are wont to do, and saw what they were like; and when they saw that there was anything not right about them, they put it right in the face of the mirror, they adjusted to what they conceived to be the right kind of thing. They brought those mirrors, and there was made of them this great basin called the laver, and it was filled with water; and the priests, the Levites, could not perform or fulfil their ministry, could not enter upon the ministry of holy things, except as they came to the laver and washed hands and feet. They could never take a further step in the fulfilment of their service to God without coming to the laver to wash.

Now you can see quite clearly that that is a very simple and easily understood picture. This laver undoubtedly represents the Word of God: that is the thing into which we look now and see where we are wrong. If we look into the Word of God, we see where things are out of the straight: if we look into the Word of God, we see what God requires, what God's picture is for us, and what we are in contrast. We look in, and then, as we adjust to the Word of God, the Word of God has this mighty power of putting us right, cleansing us, and keeping on cleansing us, "by the washing (or laver) of water with the word" (Eph. 5:26).

That is brief, but it is very important. A spiritual person is first of all one who seeks to know the revealed will of God in His Word. You cannot be a spiritual person, after the kind of which we are speaking, and neglect or be careless about the Word of God. You will be one who is really diligent in reading and searching the Word of God, with one object - to know what God wants where you are concerned. If there were more of that, there would be a different kind of Christian, stronger, purer, and far more satisfying to the Lord.

[Shammu]

No Violation of the Word of God

Moreover, a truly spiritual person will never violate the Word of God. Should they do so, they will know all about it inside of themselves. The Holy Spirit will make it clear to a spiritual person that they have gone contrary to the Word of God. Under the government of the Spirit we shall never be a contradiction to the Scriptures. It does not mean that all at once we shall be a perfect expression of all that is in the Word of God, but it does mean that the Holy Spirit will be dealing with us in the light of what is in the Scriptures. Have you not sometimes experienced an inward, unaccountable sense of grief? You may not have put it that way, but you had a strange sense of grief, of distress. The Holy Spirit has been grieved about something you have said or done, the way you have behaved. You cannot explain it or put it into words, but you just say to the Lord, 'Now, Lord, I am conscious that something is not right. I put it into Your hands, and trust You to show me, and make it clear.' Either sooner or later, you come on something in the Word of God, which exactly explains just where you failed, just where you defaulted. There it is, and you did not know that it was in the Word of God. You know, it is possible to get a surprise over what is in the Word of God. I have been reading and studying the Bible for quite a good many years, but some eighteen months ago I came on a fragment in the Bible that I never knew was there - I had never seen it before! I expect there are plenty more. If you told me that that was in the Bible, I should not have known where to find it. But it just suited and fitted into a position in which I was at that moment. I needed something at that time for my deliverance - for my salvation, in a sense - and I came on that something. I opened my Bible, and there it was, right there. It amazed me; it was so fitting to the whole situation. It described my situation in one single sentence.

The Holy Spirit knows the Bible, He knows what He has written; and if the Spirit is in us, and we are seeking to live in the Spirit, we shall live in the Word. The Word is a living thing when that is so. Spiritual people are people of the Word, and consciously or unconsciously they are checked up by it. And I do say to you, especially to young Christians (it may be necessary to many others as well): Be very careful about your life in the Word of God. Do not choose only the things that you feel you can understand. Do not just pick out the things that you like. How we like to take up our Bible, and find out something so nice and helpful - perhaps a lovely promise and just to live on that sort of thing, the delicacies of the Word of God. It is just lovely! And all the time there are whole sections that we pass over. 'Those are parts that we do not understand - we do not read them.' Now, do not make any mistake like that. You will find that there are treasures which come to light in times of special need in the very parts that you would never read. You do not like all those long lists of names - that is all they are - difficult names at that. You cannot pronounce them, so you quickly turn the page. You will find some treasures there - hidden treasures!

But how much more necessary it is for us to read this Word first of all that it shall be there for the Holy Spirit to work upon. It is just there, that is all. We read: for the moment we do not realize what it means, or that it is a message to us; but we have read it, and it is there. Presently, the Holy Spirit begins to speak to us about that very thing, and it becomes most valuable, and by it we may be guided. I suggest to you that you read this Word always with a view, first of all - What has God to say to me here? It is going to touch everything.

And do not accept any human reasonings about the Word. Paul has a number of things to say, in his first letter to the Corinthians, for instance - things that people do not like, especially moderns - about dress and head coverings and all sorts of things. The modern mind says, 'Oh, well, Paul was old-fashioned, he was a woman hater', and so on. If you listen to that, you will get out of harmony with the Word of God. That Word is there to put you right and keep you right with God. Violate those things, and you will limit your own spiritual life. Conduct and behaviour are governed by the Word of God, and there is nothing in the whole range and realm of our human life that is not touched by it. I say that thoughtfully: it is true. The Word of God touches all our temperament; it touches our dress, our behaviour, our talk; it touches everything that you can think of. Somewhere in the Word of God there is something about it. A spiritual person gives a large place to the Word, and allows the Word to adjust them. They do not argue at all. If the Word of God says that, then that is all there is to it.

So the laver is a very important thing in the matter of our relationship with and service to God. A life in the Spirit will never violate the Word. A life in the Spirit will always mean adjustment to the Word, and that we shall not allow other influences to affect us if they are contrary to the Word of God. We can only be ministers - that is, spiritual men and women who have to minister to the Lord and to His people - in so far as we are governed by the Word of God.

[Shammu]

An Anointed Ear

And that brings us to this matter of sensitiveness to the Holy Spirit. For the priests, the Levites, the blood and the oil were given a threefold application: to the ear, to the thumb, and to the great toe. The blood and the oil were applied first of all to the ear. As regards the blood, that meant that the ear was opened and made alive to God, vivified Godward, while the oil, as symbolic of the Holy Spirit, meant that the ear was wholly and completely under the government of the Holy Spirit. Now hearing is a very, very important thing, it typifies spiritual perception. When the Lord, in dealing with the seven churches in Asia, in the Revelation, is trying to check them up as to the faults, errors and failures that are among them, the appeal at the end of every message is: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches". The ear symbolizes spiritual perception, discernment, detecting, sensing. A spiritual person is one who is sensitive to the voice of the Lord.

That is the great contrast that is seen with Samuel. When Samuel began his Levitical, priestly ministry in the temple as a lad, it was just that. It was a day when even the high priest himself had no ear for God: he had lost his sensitiveness to God's voice, his ear was dull, and the people therefore were not hearing the voice of God - they were all dull of hearing. It was a bad state. And, in the sanctuary that night, young Samuel heard the call of the Lord, had an ear for the Lord; and it was through his sensitiveness to the voice of the Lord that things were so marvellously changed in Israel, and an entirely new regime came into being. The situation was saved by a sensitive ear, and that is something of great value to the Lord's people.

Oh, for men and women who have this anointed ear, who have this sense of the Lord, who are not dull of hearing; whose senses are not preoccupied and jaded by a multitude of conflicting, clamant, distracting voices and interests, but who have the quiet ear, and reap the harvest of a quiet ear for God. Be careful about your ear. In the physical realm, the purity of our hearing - our sensing through this faculty - depends so much upon what we listen to. If you listen constantly to jazz, you will probably lose your appetite for the classics, if I may illustrate it in that way. You will always be in a jangle, and you will lose your fine sense of what is good, what is pure, what is high and what is elevating in music. If you and I listen to gossip, if we listen to what is not good, not profitable, the Holy Spirit will cease to have a place of speaking. If you want to be of real value to the Lord, watch your hearing, have an anointed ear alive unto God.

An Anointed Thumb

Then the blood and the oil were placed upon the thumb of the right hand of the priest, the Levite. Of course, the thumb of the right hand is symbolic again. The hand is very, very much at a discount if the thumb is not there. We require that for everything, for all the rest. Some people manage very wonderfully without thumbs, but the thumb is really a very important factor. It stands for the hand itself in fulness, and it applies to what we handle.

Be careful what you handle. Some people can handle all sorts of things and still be Christians. Be careful what you handle in your reading, young Christians. Be quite sure that what you read can be turned in some way to value for the Lord. Is that too hard? Well, I think you will come to the time, if you go on with the Lord in the life of the Spirit, when you pick up something, and you will say, 'Oh, there is nothing in that, that is no good, that does not lead anywhere'. You begin to discriminate like that. On the other hand, with this - 'Ah, now we are finding something, there is a lesson in this'. Perhaps you are wondering about what I said in an earlier message about a certain book - the story of Lindbergh's crossing of the Atlantic. That was quite a secular kind of book. But I got tremendous lessons out of it, wonderful lessons, just as out of the Everest story. I could turn it to real account. And you have to test everything you handle by whether it can be turned to real account for God.

Much depends, too, in the Christian life, upon what you hold on to and what you let go. You do that with your hands. There may be a lot of manipulating of things, 'pulling of strings' to our own advantage. Be careful: it is all just a matter of our interests. We put our hands to our own interests, our own occupation, and behind it all there is a purely selfish motive and concern.

[Shammu]

An Anointed Great Toe

Finally, the same blood and oil were placed upon the great toe of the right foot - full of significance. The tread of a person very often betrays the character of the person. There is the heavy tread of the heavy-handed - to confuse the metaphors again. They come down, as we say, with a heavy hand. They are not sensitive, they are not careful, they are not sympathetic, they are not gentle; they are brusque. We know the heavy tread of the heavy, hard kind of nature, and the light tread of the sensitive, sympathetic and careful. We do not stop to think about this: it is just what we are - it happens. Our tread, our walk, betrays our character, without our thinking about it at all. And there is the uneven and unsteady step of the indefinite life. If you are indefinite in your life, it will come out in some way in your physical manner: an unsteady, uneven walk so often betrays a similar character. And there is the tread of the double soul - furtive, stealthy, lacking in transparency, ulterior in motive, betraying the character. And so we could go on.

But how necessary that all this should be brought under the government of the Holy Spirit, that our heaviness may be turned into sympathy and sensitiveness, our indefiniteness into steadiness, our self-interest and furtiveness into singleness and transparency. I think you see the point. A life in the Spirit means a certain kind of walk, it produces a certain kind of character and behaviour. How differently we walk when we become Spirit-governed men and women from the way we walked before! Where once we were so hard, so cruel, so insensitive, so heavy-handed, now we have learned to be sympathetic and understanding and sensitive, and so on. It is the oil of the Spirit upon the great toe, bringing our goings, our course, our movement, our response to the Lord in obedience, all under the Spirit.

The Inheritance of the Levites

In closing, just a word about the privileges of the Levites. They were very real. You know that the Levites were eventually granted forty-eight cities of their own. They had no inheritance themselves on the earth: God was their portion and their inheritance. They were not allowed to have what other people could have. In the same way, some Christians can have many things that other Christians cannot have. Whether you can do what some Christians can do, and get away with it, depends very much upon how utter you are for God, upon how much value you are going to be to the Lord. Vocation is always governed by that.

But the Levites were given these forty-eight cities, and that came about when the wilderness journeys were over, and they had no longer to carry the different parts of the tabernacle through the wilderness. They came into the land, and were given these forty-eight cities, distributed amongst the Lord's people throughout the whole of their territory. That is a very, very rich realm of thought and truth, for cities are always figures or types of governmental centres. The Lord's ultimate thought is that He shall have those who govern spiritually all the rest and all the others, who are distributed amongst His people in a position of spiritual government. There is much in the New Testament about that. The Lord wants a heavenly people for a heavenly government, in the day when the wilderness journeys are finished and the kingdom is established, to be seated in the midst of the nations in order to govern and rule with Him. The word which, after all, so aptly applies to the Levites is: "If we suffer with Him, we shall be glorified with Him" (Rom. 8:17); "if we endure, we shall also reign with Him" (2 Tim. 2:12).

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Chapter 7 - Princely Service

Reading: Numbers 7:1-84.

The first thing that becomes apparent from the record in this chapter is that the Lord's people, as represented by their princes - the princes of all the fathers' houses, you notice - are looked upon as a princely people. God's conception of His people is that, and He desires His people so to conceive of themselves. They are a princely people, a royal priesthood.

Princeliness: The Character of the Lord Jesus

What is princeliness in its real nature, when it is a true princeliness? Ultimately, fundamentally, it is that which takes its character from the Lord Jesus. We are very ready to extol the Lord Jesus, to acclaim Him and proclaim Him as King of kings and Lord of lords, to put Him in the highest place. We glory in the fact that "God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name" (Phil. 2:9). I trust that it can truly be said of every one of us, that that is our estimate of the Lord Jesus. If that is true, and He is to us Prince as well as Saviour, then surely we who bear His Name, and are of His family, over which He is Prince, should take our character from Him. It is God's thought, and God's will, that there should be about us something of the princeliness of the Lord Jesus.

(a) Spiritual Dignity

Princeliness is a very different thing in the spiritual realm from what it is in the temporal and the natural. We have already seen through this series of studies the great difference that there is in priestliness, in Levitical service, between what is temporal and what is spiritual: it is a different realm, a different kind of thing altogether. When it comes to the Lord Jesus and His princeliness, again we say that it is not just official, it is not just by appointment, it is not ecclesiastical or formal. It is spiritual and it is moral - for princeliness is pre-eminently a moral and a spiritual thing. If we take our character from the Lord Jesus, we shall not be mean, contemptible, petty, or 'little' people, or anything at all like that. That is not princeliness.

No, to take character from Christ means something noble, something fine, something big, great, honourable, dignified. You expect that of a prince, do you not? Even in the natural realm, you expect dignity in conduct, behaviour, presence. You lose all respect for a prince who is mean or contemptible.

(b) Spiritual Stature

Princeliness seems to speak, too, of stature. I expect these princes in Israel were men of physical stature, dignity of presence - men whose presence impressed. That is, everybody could look up to them - perhaps literally, as well as in other ways. Princeliness is stature, and stature in the Bible is always spiritually and morally a matter of the measure of Christ - just how much there is of Christ.

(c) Spiritual Wealth

It seems an anomaly for a prince to be poor. Here you find the princes were men of substance, men of wealth. They were people who had a competence, who had plenty, who had whereof to dispose. Not only were their own needs met and satisfied, but they had plenty to give away.

Now, this is not a mere artistic presentation of things, or exaggeration in words. This is exactly what the Lord wants His people, His spiritual Israel, to be. He wants big people, in the spiritual sense, people of stature, people of dignity. And I think, as I have already said in earlier messages, that that may well come down to very practical matters of our personal presence and appearance. We can so easily let the Lord down by our appearance, by our carelessness, by our behaviour, by the way we talk, and so on. 'Letting the Lord down' is only another way of saying - taking from the grandeur of Christ, instead of showing forth the excellencies of Him.

That covers much ground and includes many things. But what I am trying first of all to impress upon you is the Divine conception and idea of His people: that that is to be true of them, not only when they are together in meetings, but at home, at business, wherever they are. There should be something about them that is fine, something about them that is grand - not petty, not small; something about Christians which will lead people to look up to and speak highly of them; something about them that is honouring the Lord. We should be people, too, of stature and people of substance - not going round, as we say, cap in hand, having to try to get something for our subsistence. No, we have plenty. I verily believe that, if we really come into what God wills for us, we shall be people of plenty. There will always be a margin; we shall never be at the end of things. Plenty! Plenty! Twelve basketfuls over all the time! It is the Lord's thought for His people that they should be spiritually wealthy. That should be true individually as well as collectively. This is what is represented here by the princes of the fathers' houses of Israel.

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A Great Appreciation of the Cross

But what was it that particularly brought into view their princeliness? How is it that we are made to take note of them? What was it that gave them a place in the Bible? What was it that caused them to occupy all this long chapter of eighty-nine verses? In a word, what was it that showed their princeliness?

The answer is very simple, but very, very striking and searching. It was their appreciation of the altar, their estimate of the value of the altar: in New Testament terms, their appreciation of the Cross. If you think about it, you will see how true that was. Was the Apostle Paul a prince in Israel? Was he a man of stature? Was he a man of substance? Was he a man of dignity? Why? "Far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Gal. 6:14). It was his glorying in the Cross, his estimate of the value, the importance, the meaning, of the Cross. It is our apprehension of the Cross which reveals our spiritual measure. Measure always comes along the line of a very deep regard for the Cross of our Lord Jesus. It is the way of our enlargement; it is the way that makes a lot of room; it is the way of spiritual wealth. Despise the Cross, hold the Cross lightly, think little of the Cross, and you will become a very small person spiritually. These princes had a tremendous conception of the significance and value and importance of this altar which was being dedicated. I leave that with you to think about. The more you enter into the meaning of the Cross, as you really do in heart give an adequate estimate to the sufferings of God's Son, the greater will your spiritual life be, the more will you emerge a person of account, the more wealth will God lavish upon you.

Oh, the sweet wonders of that Cross
Where Christ my Saviour loved and died!

It is a tremendously enlarging thing to grasp, rightly and sufficiently, the meaning of the Cross.

A Spontaneous, Voluntary, Heart Expression

Now these princes had such a large appreciation of the altar that it required wagons to convey their appreciation. A wagon is a very large vehicle. It is not an ordinary little thing that you can carry in your hand. They did not want just a little bit of truck! Here are wagons, and here are these many wagon-loads expressing the large appreciation of the altar.

But note two other things about the wagon. All this was something for which, so far as we know, no prescription had been made, and, from the account, it almost looks as though Moses did not know what to do with it. He had nothing in the 'Blue Book' about this! God had said nothing about this sort of thing; there were no laws and regulations about what was to be done should a thing like this happen. Evidently Moses looked to the Lord about it, and the Lord said, 'Take it, receive it, turn it over to the ministry of the sanctuary'.

Here is something that is not by legal demand. This is a voluntary, spontaneous expression from the heart, something altogether outside of the book. This is princeliness, this is greatness: not just to do what we are expected to do and what is required of us and what is commanded to be done; not, 'Lord must I do this?' - but, 'Can I do it? Is there anything that I can do - in the book or out of the book?' That is the spirit of it. It was the spirit that prompted this offering that made it so princely, so grand, so noble.

A princely life is one that is not just doing because it must, or giving because it is expected to conform to the regulations, but a spontaneous life that 'goes the second mile'. It does not stop just at the set time, but looks for how much more can be done. There are some Christians - watch this, young Christians! - who talk like this: 'Must I give this up if I am going to be a Christian? Is this not allowed? May we not... this, that or something else - do this, go there? What is wrong with it?' That is so negative. Princeliness, if it is taken from the character of the Lord Jesus, never talks or argues like that, it says: 'What more can I do? Is there anything more that I can do for my Lord, who did everything for me?' You are not surprised that the Lord takes note of that sort of thing, and those people become the expression of His thought.

That is princeliness - the voluntary giving without any consideration whatever of whether it must be done. Can we give like that? How grand it will be when we are all people whose worship is so lavish, so free, so spontaneous, that we so to speak do not know what to do with it all! Our worship is so little, so poor, instead of being a lavish pouring out of the heart. And in many other ways it is like that. May the Lord make us His princely people like this - large of heart, magnanimous of spirit: not for its own sake, but because we have come to see something of the greatness of what our Lord has done for us in His Cross. The Cross, rightly apprehended, is a wonderful delivering power from all littleness - from our poor, miserable, contemptible little selves.

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A Covered Wagon

They were covered wagons. I do not know altogether what they may have implied from their standpoint, but I think I can see something at any rate in the spirit of it. Princeliness, real princeliness, makes not display. It does the large thing and never calls attention to it, never lets it be known or seen. Real princeliness is that kind of meekness and humility accompanying an uttermost outpouring for the Lord, without looking for admiration, or any return. An uncovered wagon with all this might have drawn attention, so that people might have said, 'Look what So-and-so is giving!' It is like a Harvest Festival: that used to be a great occasion for people to bring along the biggest cabbage, or the biggest bunch of grapes, to draw attention. 'Who brought that?' 'Oh, So-and-so!' The lesson of the covered wagon is: "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth" (Matt. 6:3) - a real spirit of meekness; going, perhaps, further than many others, but covering it.

In this series of meditations, which we now conclude, we have heard much about the service of the Lord, what is service to the Lord, and the spiritual character of the servants of the Lord, but it all gathers up into this. The Lord is seeking a great people, in every spiritual and moral sense; not perhaps in the eyes of the world, but in the eyes of God. Sometimes the smallest and most insignificant person, naturally, can be somebody very princely, very precious, full of values to the Lord. We do not judge and estimate naturally, but always and only according to the measure of Christ. You may be a very small person naturally, either physically in stature, which sometimes produces a serious inferiority complex, or you may be small of gifts, small of resources; but you know the Lord Jesus attributed far greater stature to the widow who cast in her two mites than to those wonderful fellows who were displaying before everybody what they were giving. Stature is different in the sight of God from what it is in the sight of man.

No, you may not be of much account in any way naturally, but you can be something in the eyes of the Lord if the Cross has become a great thing in your life and in your heart, and its deep, full, rich meanings have come to be practical realizations in your life. I have no hesitation in saying these things, dear friends; they are true. Enlargement of life comes by the application of the Cross, the apprehension of the Cross. The more there is of the Cross, the larger your life. It sometimes seems like reduction, but - make no mistake - it is increase.

The Lord make us a princely people - in this sense, that we have so greatly seen, grasped, sensed, the wonder of His Cross that our hearts go out, leaping over all the regulations, to be able to bring to the Lord all that is possible through life and through service, the fulness of our hearts turning to the service of the sanctuary.

The end

Up next; The Stewardship of the Mystery

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The Stewardship of the Mystery - Volume 1
by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1 - The Purpose of the Ages

“...No one knoweth the Son, save the Father...”—Matt. 11:27.

“...it was the good pleasure of God... to reveal His Son in me...”—Gal. 1:15,16.

“...I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord...”—Phil. 3:8.

“...that I may know Him...”—Phil. 3:10.

“Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ...”—Eph. 1:9,10.

That little clause in verse ten is the word which will govern our meditation—ALL THINGS IN CHRIST.
These scriptures speak for themselves. As we listen to the inner voice of the Spirit in these fragments of the Divine Word, surely we shall begin to feel a sense of tremendous meaning, value and content. We should feel like people who have come to the doors of a new realm full of wonders—unknown, unexplored, unexploited.

The Necessity for Revelation

We are met at the very threshold of that realm with a statement which is calculated to check our steps for the moment, and if we approach with a sense of knowing or possessing anything already, with a sense of contentment, of personal satisfaction, or with any sense other than that of needing to know everything, then this word should bring us to a standstill at once: “...no one knoweth the Son, save the Father....” Maybe we thought we knew something about the Lord Jesus, and that we had ability to know; that study, and listening, and various other forms of our own application and activity could bring us to a knowledge, but at the outset we are told that “...no one knoweth the Son, save the Father....” All that the Son is, is locked up with the Father, and He alone knows.
When, therefore, we have faced that fact, and have recognized its implications, we shall see that here is a land which is locked up, into which we cannot enter, and for which we have no equipment. There is nothing in us of faculty to enter into the secrets of that realm of Christ. Then following the discovery of that somewhat startling fact of man’s utter incapacity to know by nature, the next fact that confronts us is this: “...it was the good pleasure of God... to reveal His Son in me....” While God has all that locked up in Himself, in His own possession, and He alone has the knowledge of the Son, it is in His heart, nevertheless, to give revelation. And, given the truth that we are so utterly dependent upon revelation from God, and that all human faculty and facility is ruled out in this respect, since such revelation can only be known by a Divine revealing after an inward kind, we are making it to be very evident that everything is of grace when we renounce all trust in works, when we turn away from self-sufficiency, self-reliance, from all confidence in the flesh, and any pride of advance and approach.

Read these two passages in the light of what Paul was when known as Saul of Tarsus, before the Lord met with him, and afterward as Paul the Apostle, and you will gain something more of their force. Saul of Tarsus would have called himself a master in Israel, one well learned in the Scriptures, with a certain strength of self-assurance, self-confidence, and self-sufficiency in his apprehension and knowledge of the oracles of God. Even such a one as he will have to come to the recognition that none of that is of avail in the realm of Christ; where he realizes that he is utterly blind, utterly ignorant, utterly helpless, altogether ruled out, and needing the grace of God for the very first glimmer of light; to come down very low, and say: “...it was the good pleasure of God... to reveal His Son in me....” That is grace.

That marked the beginning; and for this present meditation we are considering the unexplored fulness of what God has Himself placed within His Son, the Lord Jesus, actually and in purpose, as being the object of His grace toward us. His grace has led Him to seek to bring us by revelation into all that knowledge which He Himself possesses as His own secret knowledge of His fulness in His Son, the Lord Jesus. ALL THINGS IN CHRIST.