The Need for Brokenness
by Chip Brogden
"Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (II Corinthians 12:9).
Observe how little attention is paid to the necessity of brokenness among those who so eagerly speak of the power of God. We should be afraid of listening to anyone who teaches us about the power of God but does not teach us about the necessity of brokenness. Invariably the power, once received, will pollute the spirit and pride will set in. Weakness, humility, brokenness, suffering, pouring out our lives, taking up the Cross - this language seems to be lost among the seekers of power. How tragic that is!
"Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ"
Chip Brogden
It is a glorious thing to be the prisoner of the Lord, for in our bonds we find liberty. In our weakness we find strength. In our foolishness we find wisdom. In our poverty we find prosperity. By losing everything we find everything. By giving up all things we inherit all things. By accepting the sentence of death we find the Life of the Lord. Let us stretch forth our hands and allow Him to dress us and lead us where He wishes us to go, in the way we would not choose for ourselves, for that is the Narrow Way, and it is the path of blessing, though it be disguised.
Selection from The Laird's Inheritance
George MacDonald
The Church of All Churches
"Oh, mighty, true church of all churches...church under starry roof...church where not a mark is to be seen of human hand! This was the church of God's building, the only fitting type of a yet greater, a yet holier church, whose stars are the burning eyes of self-forgetting love, whose worship is a ceaseless ministration of self-forgetting deeds--the one real ideal church, the body of the living God, built of the hearts and souls of men and women out of every nation and every creed, through all time and over all the world, redeemed alike from Judaism, paganism, and all the false Christianities that darken and dishonor the true..."
We cannot contain the overflowing cup of His love thus we share with you these messages of the Life of our Lord as lived out in His saints.
ONE SHIP ONE CAPTAIN
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Then I realized how bitter I had become, how pained I had been by all I had seen. I was so foolish and ignorant. I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you. Yet I still belong to you; you are holding my right hand. You will keep on guiding me with your counsel, leading me to a glorious destiny. Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever. But as for me, how good it is to be near God! I have made the Sovereign LORD my shelter, and I will tell everyone about the wonderful things you do. Psalm 73:21-28
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FREE WILL?
J. A. FREEMAN
BABY MOSES, tucked away in his cradle, floating on the water, {cried}. Was it God's will, or the baby's will?
It was a cry that originated in heaven. The king's daughter was attracted. The child's life was spared. He entered a palace and eventually became the greatest leader of men this world has ever known. He was entrusted with the commandments; he talked with God on the mountain top.
Is any adopted son of God restless or over-anxious? Then let him think of this minute event and its consequences, and let him watch for the Divine Hand in even life's smallest events.
Here lies peace. John the Baptist arrived exactly on time to behold the Lamb of God, and be labeled the greatest of all men born among women. Saul was at the right spot when our Lord Jesus visited him.
All is of God. Life's minutest circumstances are under His control. Therefore, be anxious for nothing. He knows. He loves. He cares. One Captain is competent enough for any ship. We are all only passengers.
Our Lord has an eternally deep rudder and nothing shall deter His purposed path of Love that will gather together all of creation. May we find rest in the wondrous tandem of His Love and His Sovereignty.
One ship, one Captain. And aren't you glad!
.
Then I realized how bitter I had become, how pained I had been by all I had seen. I was so foolish and ignorant. I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you. Yet I still belong to you; you are holding my right hand. You will keep on guiding me with your counsel, leading me to a glorious destiny. Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever. But as for me, how good it is to be near God! I have made the Sovereign LORD my shelter, and I will tell everyone about the wonderful things you do. Psalm 73:21-28 .
FREE WILL?
J. A. FREEMAN
BABY MOSES, tucked away in his cradle, floating on the water, {cried}. Was it God's will, or the baby's will?
It was a cry that originated in heaven. The king's daughter was attracted. The child's life was spared. He entered a palace and eventually became the greatest leader of men this world has ever known. He was entrusted with the commandments; he talked with God on the mountain top.
Is any adopted son of God restless or over-anxious? Then let him think of this minute event and its consequences, and let him watch for the Divine Hand in even life's smallest events.
Here lies peace. John the Baptist arrived exactly on time to behold the Lamb of God, and be labeled the greatest of all men born among women. Saul was at the right spot when our Lord Jesus visited him.
All is of God. Life's minutest circumstances are under His control. Therefore, be anxious for nothing. He knows. He loves. He cares. One Captain is competent enough for any ship. We are all only passengers.
Our Lord has an eternally deep rudder and nothing shall deter His purposed path of Love that will gather together all of creation. May we find rest in the wondrous tandem of His Love and His Sovereignty.
One ship, one Captain. And aren't you glad!
Jack
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THIS WORLD IS NOT YOUR HOME ..... an introduction
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"But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city." Hebrews 11:16
Oh, what great change comes to our lives when we we realize that this world was not meant to be our home, is not our home nor ever will be our home.
I open with this thought not to paint this world as a place full of emptiness and gloom but to possibly show that when we follow Christ and are led by the Spirit we can experience "heaven on earth." When our perspective is aright and thus born of the heavenlies, I believe we can indeed find great enjoyment, meaning and fulfilment as we experience the things of this life ..... and so much more so than the common Joe, who gropes in the shadows. Truly when we walk in God's Spirit there is always a banquet table set before us that is beautifully filled with love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance (Gal.5:22-23)
In the next couple of weeks I hope to share a few message that have been on my heart of late and they deal with finding within ourselves a sojourner's heart. Lord willing, a few of the diverse topics I presently have in mind that I would like to explore with you are:
* Our pre-existence and the Elohim
* Should Believers be involved in politics
* Questioning the methods of the God of the Old Testament
* Entering the Kingdom of Heaven through prayer
* Intellectualism at odds with the spirit
* Our three deaths
I really believe you will enjoy this series and hopefully they will help create in you a greater love for Our Christ and a deepening hunger to see and know Him better. That's what it is all about isn't it. We are only changed as our vision of Jesus is enlarged.
Folks, we are going to see that God's sons are sojourners and Heaven bent. We have not been called to gather and take our inheritance on this side of the river. Didn't Daniel know to refuse the pleasant bread and isn't Christ become the bread worthy of those that follow Him. And Jesus is the pattern son and like Him we must die to our selves that we might follow Him into Resurrection Life.
Yes sir! We are leaving the leeks and garlic of Egypt and are moving to the other side of the river. So pick up thy cross pilgrim and let's follow our Shepherd into a better country and even unto a city He hath prepared for you and me.
Jack
(to be continued)
.
"But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city." Hebrews 11:16
Oh, what great change comes to our lives when we we realize that this world was not meant to be our home, is not our home nor ever will be our home.
I open with this thought not to paint this world as a place full of emptiness and gloom but to possibly show that when we follow Christ and are led by the Spirit we can experience "heaven on earth." When our perspective is aright and thus born of the heavenlies, I believe we can indeed find great enjoyment, meaning and fulfilment as we experience the things of this life ..... and so much more so than the common Joe, who gropes in the shadows. Truly when we walk in God's Spirit there is always a banquet table set before us that is beautifully filled with love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance (Gal.5:22-23)
In the next couple of weeks I hope to share a few message that have been on my heart of late and they deal with finding within ourselves a sojourner's heart. Lord willing, a few of the diverse topics I presently have in mind that I would like to explore with you are:
* Our pre-existence and the Elohim
* Should Believers be involved in politics
* Questioning the methods of the God of the Old Testament
* Entering the Kingdom of Heaven through prayer
* Intellectualism at odds with the spirit
* Our three deaths
I really believe you will enjoy this series and hopefully they will help create in you a greater love for Our Christ and a deepening hunger to see and know Him better. That's what it is all about isn't it. We are only changed as our vision of Jesus is enlarged.
Folks, we are going to see that God's sons are sojourners and Heaven bent. We have not been called to gather and take our inheritance on this side of the river. Didn't Daniel know to refuse the pleasant bread and isn't Christ become the bread worthy of those that follow Him. And Jesus is the pattern son and like Him we must die to our selves that we might follow Him into Resurrection Life.
Yes sir! We are leaving the leeks and garlic of Egypt and are moving to the other side of the river. So pick up thy cross pilgrim and let's follow our Shepherd into a better country and even unto a city He hath prepared for you and me.
Jack
(to be continued)
.
THEY CALLED ME "EASY MONEY"
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Back when I was a young heathen hangin with other young heathens we used to sit around the beach between surfing sessions and try to come up with unique and easy ways to make money. I was actually pretty good at dreaming up some ploys that became remotely successful before the cog was discovered and the endeavor unraveled. Anyway my friends were impressed enough with my tenacious creativity to give me a new moniker for awhile. They called me "Easy Money" lol.
Well it seems there are many today under the guise of Christianity that are trying to make some "easy money" and their creativity mixed with a complete lack of moral restraint is astounding. I am going to share an old and often used method that seems to periodically find it's way to my mail box and a new one that I read of this morning.
This is the common one that just kills me. It also makes me know my Sovereign God has a sense of humor because one of these always comes when I am in the midst of the greatest of financial trials. Often after much heart breaking prayer and just about the time I believe God is about to bring some miraculous financial relief, I will find a letter like this in my mail. This one came a couple weeks ago and I forwarded it to Joian with the introduction, "Hooray !!! Happy days are here again. My boat just came in. We are rich ........ we are rich !!!!!" lol
From: Mrs Fatema Al Sabah,
Attn: Dearest in Christ,
I am the above named person from Kuwait. I am married to Dr.Fawzia Al Sabah, who worked with Kuwait embassy in Ivory Coast for nine years before he died in the year 2001.We were married for eleven years without a child. He died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days. Before his death we were both born again Christian. Since his death I decided not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which the Bible is against. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $5.6Million (Five Million six hundred thousand U.S.Dollars) in a Bank in Abidjan.
Presently, this money is still with the Bank. Recently, my Doctor told me that I would not last for the next Eight months due to cancer problem. The one that disturbs me most is my stroke sickness. Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to a church or individual that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein. I want a church or individual that will use this fund for orphanages, widows, propagating the word of God and to endeavour that the house of God is maintained. The Bible made us to understand that” Blessed is the hand that giveth".
I took this decision because I don't have any child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are not Christians and I don't want my husband's efforts to be used by unbelievers. I don't want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly way. This is why I am taking this decision. I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going’s know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord. Exodus 14 VS 14 says that "the lord will fight my case and I shall hold my peace". I don't need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health hence the presence of my husband's relatives around me always. I don't want them to know about this development. With God all things are possible.
As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the Bank in Abidjan. I will also issue you an authority letter that will prove you the present beneficiary of this fund. I want you and the church to always pray for me because the lord is my shepherds. My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy Christian. Whoever that wants to serve the Lord must serve him in spirit and Truth. Please always be prayerful all through your life. Contact me any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another church for this same purpose. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I Stated herein. Hoping to receive your reply.
Remain blessed in the Lord.
Yours in Christ,
Sister Fatema Al Sabah
Lest any have been moved by Mrs Fatima's severe health problems please note she mailed me three years ago. Only difference is, today she has a new "stroke sickness" and because she can't find anyone to give this money to, it has garnered interest and risen 1.1 million dollars from the original 4.5 million. Can you say, "son of a motherless goat !!! "
Now, below is the sham I read of this morning. We may have finally figured out how those big time TV Evangelist's do it ;-)
Pastor arrested with 'miracle' machine
It's as strange as it's true. A man of God of Ghanaian extraction was arrested and interrogated at Entebbe Airport after he attempted to clear a machine which, police say, he has been using to deliver electric current on unsuspecting worshippers during church service.
"Pastor' Obiri Konjo Yeboah on July 5 failed to convince Aviation Police officers why he needed this machine to do God's work. He is now facing serious charges including fraud and false pretence," Police Spokesman Asan Kasingye told Sunday Monitor.
Police said the machine could be worn like a corset on the body. It also can generate up to 12 volts.
"When he touches his flock, they fall down thinking he is using super natural powers," Asan Kasingye said. The machine is placed on any part of the body and gives a pleasant electric shock to whoever touches you.
The waterproof electric machine is activated within 10 seconds and can emit sparks of static electricity between the user's fingers while in darkness. The American company manufactures the machine known for freaking people's minds.
Kasingye said the machine using the body as a conductor of electricity, transfers the current to the person in contact but the one using the device remains unaffected. Other "Born Again" pastors including the head of the National Council of Born Again Churches (NCBC), a body that regulate Pentecostal churches, are calling for prosecution of Yeboah.
"Police should interrogate him properly, know where he stays and the people he works with so that we get a clear picture of it all," said Pastor Alex Mitala who heads NCBC. Yeboah is a pastor in We Are One Ministry Church on Sir Apollo Kaggwa Road, Makerere. His father, other pastors say, is Obiri Yeboah, the controversial pioneer of miracle healing in Uganda. His followers include several local pastors who include John Kakande.
Pastor Solomon Male said: "It's a pity they have arrested Yeboah but police should not allow him to use a machine to deceive he has supernatural powers," Male said. "Yeboah's father was a witch, magician and I am not surprised that he was caught with that machine," Male added.
Yeboah has denied charges he tried to import an electric shock machine to make people believe he could pass on the Holy Spirit.
"This is a toy. It was sent for my daughters' birthday," said Yeboah. The pastor told the BBC that during his prayers, members of the congregation "act as the spirit comes in them".
There has been a massive growth in churches set up by charismatic preachers in Africa in recent years, amid fears some could be fraudsters.
The website of the company which makes the "Electric Touch" machine, among other magic tricks, says: "Charge a spoon, keys or coins and watch as it shocks a volunteer! They will believe you have supernatural powers!"
The Uganda Monitor
Laying amusement aside let me say in sincerity that we must beware of the charlatans and merchandisers that prey on the vulnerable.
And lastly on a personal note, I wept and laid prostrate before God for most of three days when I first began to receive some financial support to help me in my mission to share the "Real Good News." So mightily did God reveal to me the pitfalls that can accompany the giving and receiving of gifts that at the end of those three days I was so sickened in my heart that I never wanted to see any financial help ever in my life. It was shortly after this I felt His touch as He told me it would be alright and that He would put in me a breaking humility that would arise whenever a gift ordained by Him came my way. If the feeling of infused humility was not there the gift was not of Him. In the last few years with this measure in place I have actually had to turn away quite a bit of help. When times were as dark as could be and my need was so great I have had to say, "No thank you" only to see provision later come from elsewhere just in a nick of time. He often works like that, doesn't He. I have found also, my giving brings that same feeling of tenderness and humility when it is of Him.
Speaking of more than just the financial realm, let us always discern the Source behind all our gifts whether they be received or given. Oh, God let our lives be completely surrendered to know that You are sufficient for each day. Make real to us, that our greatest gift is Your Eternal Love through Christ Jesus, and that He makes this world and all it's substance but a temporary vapor in comparison. Finally place deep within our hearts but only one desire and that be to give Thee all for the All.
Jack
The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he hath set the world upon them.
1 Samuel 2:7-8
.
Back when I was a young heathen hangin with other young heathens we used to sit around the beach between surfing sessions and try to come up with unique and easy ways to make money. I was actually pretty good at dreaming up some ploys that became remotely successful before the cog was discovered and the endeavor unraveled. Anyway my friends were impressed enough with my tenacious creativity to give me a new moniker for awhile. They called me "Easy Money" lol.Well it seems there are many today under the guise of Christianity that are trying to make some "easy money" and their creativity mixed with a complete lack of moral restraint is astounding. I am going to share an old and often used method that seems to periodically find it's way to my mail box and a new one that I read of this morning.
This is the common one that just kills me. It also makes me know my Sovereign God has a sense of humor because one of these always comes when I am in the midst of the greatest of financial trials. Often after much heart breaking prayer and just about the time I believe God is about to bring some miraculous financial relief, I will find a letter like this in my mail. This one came a couple weeks ago and I forwarded it to Joian with the introduction, "Hooray !!! Happy days are here again. My boat just came in. We are rich ........ we are rich !!!!!" lol
From: Mrs Fatema Al Sabah,
Attn: Dearest in Christ,
I am the above named person from Kuwait. I am married to Dr.Fawzia Al Sabah, who worked with Kuwait embassy in Ivory Coast for nine years before he died in the year 2001.We were married for eleven years without a child. He died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days. Before his death we were both born again Christian. Since his death I decided not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which the Bible is against. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $5.6Million (Five Million six hundred thousand U.S.Dollars) in a Bank in Abidjan.
Presently, this money is still with the Bank. Recently, my Doctor told me that I would not last for the next Eight months due to cancer problem. The one that disturbs me most is my stroke sickness. Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to a church or individual that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein. I want a church or individual that will use this fund for orphanages, widows, propagating the word of God and to endeavour that the house of God is maintained. The Bible made us to understand that” Blessed is the hand that giveth".
I took this decision because I don't have any child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are not Christians and I don't want my husband's efforts to be used by unbelievers. I don't want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly way. This is why I am taking this decision. I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going’s know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Lord. Exodus 14 VS 14 says that "the lord will fight my case and I shall hold my peace". I don't need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health hence the presence of my husband's relatives around me always. I don't want them to know about this development. With God all things are possible.
As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the Bank in Abidjan. I will also issue you an authority letter that will prove you the present beneficiary of this fund. I want you and the church to always pray for me because the lord is my shepherds. My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy Christian. Whoever that wants to serve the Lord must serve him in spirit and Truth. Please always be prayerful all through your life. Contact me any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another church for this same purpose. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I Stated herein. Hoping to receive your reply.
Remain blessed in the Lord.
Yours in Christ,
Sister Fatema Al Sabah
Lest any have been moved by Mrs Fatima's severe health problems please note she mailed me three years ago. Only difference is, today she has a new "stroke sickness" and because she can't find anyone to give this money to, it has garnered interest and risen 1.1 million dollars from the original 4.5 million. Can you say, "son of a motherless goat !!! "
Now, below is the sham I read of this morning. We may have finally figured out how those big time TV Evangelist's do it ;-)
Pastor arrested with 'miracle' machine
It's as strange as it's true. A man of God of Ghanaian extraction was arrested and interrogated at Entebbe Airport after he attempted to clear a machine which, police say, he has been using to deliver electric current on unsuspecting worshippers during church service.
"Pastor' Obiri Konjo Yeboah on July 5 failed to convince Aviation Police officers why he needed this machine to do God's work. He is now facing serious charges including fraud and false pretence," Police Spokesman Asan Kasingye told Sunday Monitor.
Police said the machine could be worn like a corset on the body. It also can generate up to 12 volts.
"When he touches his flock, they fall down thinking he is using super natural powers," Asan Kasingye said. The machine is placed on any part of the body and gives a pleasant electric shock to whoever touches you.
The waterproof electric machine is activated within 10 seconds and can emit sparks of static electricity between the user's fingers while in darkness. The American company manufactures the machine known for freaking people's minds.
Kasingye said the machine using the body as a conductor of electricity, transfers the current to the person in contact but the one using the device remains unaffected. Other "Born Again" pastors including the head of the National Council of Born Again Churches (NCBC), a body that regulate Pentecostal churches, are calling for prosecution of Yeboah.
"Police should interrogate him properly, know where he stays and the people he works with so that we get a clear picture of it all," said Pastor Alex Mitala who heads NCBC. Yeboah is a pastor in We Are One Ministry Church on Sir Apollo Kaggwa Road, Makerere. His father, other pastors say, is Obiri Yeboah, the controversial pioneer of miracle healing in Uganda. His followers include several local pastors who include John Kakande.
Pastor Solomon Male said: "It's a pity they have arrested Yeboah but police should not allow him to use a machine to deceive he has supernatural powers," Male said. "Yeboah's father was a witch, magician and I am not surprised that he was caught with that machine," Male added.
Yeboah has denied charges he tried to import an electric shock machine to make people believe he could pass on the Holy Spirit.
"This is a toy. It was sent for my daughters' birthday," said Yeboah. The pastor told the BBC that during his prayers, members of the congregation "act as the spirit comes in them".
There has been a massive growth in churches set up by charismatic preachers in Africa in recent years, amid fears some could be fraudsters.
The website of the company which makes the "Electric Touch" machine, among other magic tricks, says: "Charge a spoon, keys or coins and watch as it shocks a volunteer! They will believe you have supernatural powers!"
The Uganda Monitor
Laying amusement aside let me say in sincerity that we must beware of the charlatans and merchandisers that prey on the vulnerable.
And lastly on a personal note, I wept and laid prostrate before God for most of three days when I first began to receive some financial support to help me in my mission to share the "Real Good News." So mightily did God reveal to me the pitfalls that can accompany the giving and receiving of gifts that at the end of those three days I was so sickened in my heart that I never wanted to see any financial help ever in my life. It was shortly after this I felt His touch as He told me it would be alright and that He would put in me a breaking humility that would arise whenever a gift ordained by Him came my way. If the feeling of infused humility was not there the gift was not of Him. In the last few years with this measure in place I have actually had to turn away quite a bit of help. When times were as dark as could be and my need was so great I have had to say, "No thank you" only to see provision later come from elsewhere just in a nick of time. He often works like that, doesn't He. I have found also, my giving brings that same feeling of tenderness and humility when it is of Him.
Speaking of more than just the financial realm, let us always discern the Source behind all our gifts whether they be received or given. Oh, God let our lives be completely surrendered to know that You are sufficient for each day. Make real to us, that our greatest gift is Your Eternal Love through Christ Jesus, and that He makes this world and all it's substance but a temporary vapor in comparison. Finally place deep within our hearts but only one desire and that be to give Thee all for the All.
Jack
The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he hath set the world upon them.
1 Samuel 2:7-8
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OUR GOD "The Restorer"
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Wow, it seems as the Father has turned His attention to me. My, it has been a long time since I have felt so strongly His love as I do this morning. It is as though my whole being tingles with His touch and then softly melts as I feel His heart.
Joian and I were visiting earlier in the evening and were talking about all things God, as we usually do. We were sharing about how our "revelations" of God and His Kingdom are really but "remembrances" of who we were in Christ before the foundations of the world. This is part of our restoration and it comes precept upon precept until we see God and ourselves as we eternally are.
One of my favorite pictures of God, is as "the Loving Restorer" and in this post I want to share a beautiful account of three parables Christ taught. Please note at the close of this author's message (below), that after the prodigal is ministered to, the father must then turn his attention to the unhappy elder brother. Ever restoring, is our Father and until the last has found his or her place resting peaceably upon His bosom He will not cease. I pray you can see your self, your neighbor and even your enemy as the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal and the elder brother. Who of us at one time or another does not feel slighted like the elder brother. Never fear however. He will eventually turn His attention to you and that is why we love and share Him.
Jack
"The Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin"
I'd like you to think about these two parables of Jesus, and the reason why is because most of the time we get the parables of Jesus wrong. We pick them up, and we think that Jesus is telling us what we ought to do. You know, they're sort of lessons in loveliness. If we can master the lesson in the parable, we can turn out to be perfect peaches or something else. But the point is that parables are not first of all about us. The parables of Jesus are first of all about how God works in this world - the mysterious, strange, bizarre, odd way that God deals with us, because the parables are very strange things. Jesus is a genius of story-telling, and what you have to watch most of all with Jesus in his parables are the small twists, the little turns and the details you don't notice. I can have read a parable for twenty-five years, preached on it twenty-five times, and in the twenty-sixth year all of a sudden see something I never saw before; and it has been buried there all along.
So I'm going to start in on the parable of the lost sheep. This is in the 15th chapter of St. Luke's Gospel. And that chapter, incidentally, contains three parables about lostness: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, the great parable of the prodigal son. The first thing that Luke says when this parable begins, is that the tax collectors and the sinners were drawing near to Jesus to hear him. The scribes and the pharisees grumbled about this. They complained about this and they said, "This man welcomes sinners, and he eats with them, and therefore he's a bad person."
Now, obviously Jesus, by many people's minds, was thought to be a perfect candidate to be the promised Messiah who would fulfill God's will for Israel and do all sorts of wonderful things in the world. People like the scribes and the pharisees didn't think that Jesus was much of a Messiah candidate if he could associate with tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors were mostly crooks in those days, and sinners meant what it means now. Everyone's favorite sin is something sexual, and the sinners most likely were prostitutes. Jesus spent a lot of time welcoming those people, eating with them, talking with them, visiting them, and otherwise consorting with them, so they didn't like this. It's apropos of this remark: "This fellow eats with sinners and welcomes them!", that Jesus tells the parables of lostness.
"I want you to imagine that you have one hundred sheep," he says to the pharisees and the scribes around him. "I want you to imagine that you have one hundred sheep and that you lose one of them. Now, wouldn't you, therefore, go out after the lost one until you find it?" Well, what's the real answer to that question? The real answer to that question is "of course not." Nobody in his right mind who's in the sheep business has one hundred sheep, loses one, leaves the ninety-nine to the wolves and the coyotes, and goes chasing off after one. You cut your losses, forget about the lost sheep, and go on with the ninety-nine. So Jesus' question is perverse. It's odd. It's ironic. Who among you would do this? Who among you wouldn't go out and do this? Everybody wouldn't! They wouldn't go out and do this sort of thing. And, therefore, then he says, "And when you find that, what would you do with the sheep if you'd actually done this?" You would put the sheep on your shoulder, and then notice what Jesus says. He doesn't say, "Then he goes back to the ninety-nine and gives this little sheep back to his mother sheep," or something else. What Jesus says is that he puts the lost sheep on his shoulders and goes to his house. He goes home.
In this parable, Jesus never goes back to the ninety-nine sheep. The ninety-nine sheep are a set-up. Jesus has divided the flock into one sheep and ninety-nine sheep, and he's not trying to make two different groups. You know, ninety-nine who don't get lost, and one who does. I think the real meaning of the one and the ninety-nine is that the one lost sheep is the whole human race as it really is. And the ninety-nine "found" sheep who never get lost are the whole human race as we think we are. And the ninety-nine; therefore, are not a real piece of business in this. The one lost sheep stands for all of us, and this says that the only thing the shepherd—God, the God character—is interested in, is going after the lost, and, if necessary, the shepherd will go out of the sheep ranching business to find the lost, and God, therefore, will go out of the God business, of the business of being the kind of God we turn God into the God who's a bookkeeper, the God who's the divine infinite "watch-bird" who's keeping records on everybody, and if you don't do it right, he's not going to bother with you anymore. That's the business that God goes out of when he goes after the lost because he only wants to come and find sinners. He doesn't want anything else. And then Jesus asks the last question in this one, and he says, "I say to you that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance." The proof of this is, of course, did you ever meet any of those ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance? No, you didn't. There isn't one in the whole world. So this proves the set-up that Jesus is only interested in finding the lost; that God, in Christ, is only interested in finding the lost.
Now, he follows this parable up with the parable of the lost coin, and Jesus changes the image. The God character in this parable is not a shepherd. It's a woman. It's a very strange woman. As the shepherd is sort of crazy to go chase one sheep and leave ninety-nine to the wolves, so this woman is even crazier. It says this woman has ten coins, and I like to think, just to bring it up to date, that what this woman has is ten Susan B. Anthony dollars in a nice wooden case with red velvet lining and little recessed partitions for each of the ten Susan B. Anthony dollars. And every morning she gets up, and she looks in there and pats them and polishes them and puts them back down again. She gets up one morning, and one of her precious Susan B. Anthony dollars is missing so what does this woman do? She is as crazy as the shepherd, if not crazier, because she stops her entire life. She stops anything she had to do that day. She stops whatever housework she was going to do, and she lights a light, and goes into all the dark corners. She sweeps, and sweeps, and sweeps, and looks under everything for the whole day until she finds this coin. And what does she do when she finds it? Interestingly enough, like the shepherd Jesus never says she puts it back in the box. It says she gets on the phone to her friends and her neighbors and says, "Come on over, I'm going to have a party. I found my lost coin."
And now I'm sure that these friends and neighbors say, "Gertrude, you found a coin, right? And we're supposed to come?"
She says, "Yes. I have cream soda, and I have ring dings, and you're going to come over, and we're going to celebrate my lost coin."
Certainly they'd say, "Yes, Gertrude, we'll come." But they are not that enthusiastic. But the point is, she is. And this woman proves something. In the lost sheep, you can develop some pity for the poor, little lost sheep. You can feel bad, you know, that it’s injured or hurt or fearful and all that. But you can't work up any pity for a lost coin. A lost coin never knows it's lost. One place is as good as another. The point is that what these two parables put together say is that what governs God's behavior to us is not our sins. It's not our problems. It's his need to find us. These parables go by the need of the finder to find, not about the need of the lost to be found. That's obvious. We always knew that. We could have gone to our graves knowing that. The great thing is that the universe is driven by the need of the finder to find all of us in our lostness. And that, of course, is the beginning.
And the last of the three parables in this chapter is the lost son, which commonly goes by the name of the prodigal son because we misname these parables. Interestingly enough, obviously this parable should be called the parable of the forgiving father. Now, what I want to do is set-up the parable a little bit, and tell it to you quickly. I'm not going to go through the whole thing, just because I hope it's familiar. But a man has two sons, and the youngest son comes to him and says, "Father—Dad—put your will into effect and split up the entire inheritance right now between me and my brother." You know what that is in so many words? That's: "Drop dead, Father." He's suggesting that the father put his will into effect. And the father does it. He gives all the cash that's loose to the younger son. He gives the entire property, like South Fork, in "Dallas,"—some big spread—to the elder brother, and the father sits on the porch for the rest of the parable, at least for a little bit of it, and retires from things.
The younger son takes the money and goes to a far country. He has wine, women, and song; blows all his money, ends up feeding pigs, and sits there and says one day, "Oh, as I think of my father's servants, they eat better than I do. I'm going to go home, and say, 'Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you. I'm not worthy to be your son. Make me a hired servant.'" Now, that is not a sinner who was repentant, yet. Because what he's said: "Father, I'm a no-good son," and "Father, I've sinned against heaven and before you," is true. That's fine. That's pretty good for repentance. But "Make me a hired servant" is not a repentance. That's a plan for life. That's a plan to con his father into accepting him back instead of coming back as a no-good son. So he comes home. He comes down the road and when he's a half mile off, his father sees him. He runs down the road, falls on his neck and kisses him, and after the forgiveness and the father's kiss, the son makes his confession. He says, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I'm not worthy to be your son." And he leaves off the hired servant business. The father then goes immediately to the thing that ended the other parables. He goes to the party. He calls for the rings on his fingers, the shoes on his feet, and says: "Kill the fatted calf, and let us eat and be merry. My son was dead, and he's alive, was lost, he's found." And they have a party, and there's music and dancing and everything else. Then Jesus brings in the other lost son. He's the ninety-nine. He's the nine other coins in the box. He thinks he's found. He comes in, and he's whining.
He says, "All these years I have been such a good boy, and done your will and done all these wonderful things, and you never even gave me a goat to have a party with my friends. But when this son of yours who has wasted his substance with whores comes home, then you give him the fatted calf." And he won't go in. What this son has done—though he thinks he's a found character and he's a wonderful bookkeeper and has got everything else right—what he has done, is come into the courtyard of the house, with a party inside, and he has brought hell with him. He is the hell of his own bookkeeping, the hell of his own complaining. He has brought hell with him.
What does the father do? The father's the God character. What does the father do? The father goes out into the courtyard once again, like the shepherd, like the woman, to seek the lost. The need of the finder to find. He goes out there, and he talks to his son, and he says, "Look, son, Arthur, everything I have belongs to you. You could have had fatted calf three nights a week if you wanted. All you had to do was build the stalls. You have the money. You have no imagination, Arthur. You know what I would like you to do, Arthur? I would like you to shut up, go inside, kiss your brother, and have a drink." And the wonderful thing about this parable is that Jesus, genius of a storyteller that he is, has ended it so that it doesn't end.
At the end of the parable—suppose you saw it in a film—you have the music and the sounds of the feasting and the laughter inside the house. You have the father and the elder brother standing in the courtyard, and the way the film ends is, it ends with a freeze frame: father, elder brother, joyful music over in the back. And for two thousand years this has been read in the church, every year people have read it in the Bible endlessly, endlessly. For two thousand years, that's where the story has ended. It has never ended. The father always seeks the lost son, and the lost son is not just the prodigal, it is at the end, the prodigal's already found now, he's home free, but the other one is not, because he won't come into the party. Consequently, the other thing you could say about this, it's not only for two thousand years that that parable has stood with that freeze frame, it will stand there forever because God will forever stand. We say Jesus, between when he died and when he arose, descended into hell. He descended to the lost. This is the last truth of the parable of the prodigal son, that for all eternity God still seeks those in hell. If I go down into hell, Thou art there with me. We cannot get away from the love that will not let us go because God, who in all these parables represented by the shepherd, and the woman, and the father, never ceases to seek and to find the lost.
Thank you, very much,
Robert Farrar Capon
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Wow, it seems as the Father has turned His attention to me. My, it has been a long time since I have felt so strongly His love as I do this morning. It is as though my whole being tingles with His touch and then softly melts as I feel His heart.Joian and I were visiting earlier in the evening and were talking about all things God, as we usually do. We were sharing about how our "revelations" of God and His Kingdom are really but "remembrances" of who we were in Christ before the foundations of the world. This is part of our restoration and it comes precept upon precept until we see God and ourselves as we eternally are.
One of my favorite pictures of God, is as "the Loving Restorer" and in this post I want to share a beautiful account of three parables Christ taught. Please note at the close of this author's message (below), that after the prodigal is ministered to, the father must then turn his attention to the unhappy elder brother. Ever restoring, is our Father and until the last has found his or her place resting peaceably upon His bosom He will not cease. I pray you can see your self, your neighbor and even your enemy as the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal and the elder brother. Who of us at one time or another does not feel slighted like the elder brother. Never fear however. He will eventually turn His attention to you and that is why we love and share Him.
Jack
"The Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin"
I'd like you to think about these two parables of Jesus, and the reason why is because most of the time we get the parables of Jesus wrong. We pick them up, and we think that Jesus is telling us what we ought to do. You know, they're sort of lessons in loveliness. If we can master the lesson in the parable, we can turn out to be perfect peaches or something else. But the point is that parables are not first of all about us. The parables of Jesus are first of all about how God works in this world - the mysterious, strange, bizarre, odd way that God deals with us, because the parables are very strange things. Jesus is a genius of story-telling, and what you have to watch most of all with Jesus in his parables are the small twists, the little turns and the details you don't notice. I can have read a parable for twenty-five years, preached on it twenty-five times, and in the twenty-sixth year all of a sudden see something I never saw before; and it has been buried there all along.
So I'm going to start in on the parable of the lost sheep. This is in the 15th chapter of St. Luke's Gospel. And that chapter, incidentally, contains three parables about lostness: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, the great parable of the prodigal son. The first thing that Luke says when this parable begins, is that the tax collectors and the sinners were drawing near to Jesus to hear him. The scribes and the pharisees grumbled about this. They complained about this and they said, "This man welcomes sinners, and he eats with them, and therefore he's a bad person."
Now, obviously Jesus, by many people's minds, was thought to be a perfect candidate to be the promised Messiah who would fulfill God's will for Israel and do all sorts of wonderful things in the world. People like the scribes and the pharisees didn't think that Jesus was much of a Messiah candidate if he could associate with tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors were mostly crooks in those days, and sinners meant what it means now. Everyone's favorite sin is something sexual, and the sinners most likely were prostitutes. Jesus spent a lot of time welcoming those people, eating with them, talking with them, visiting them, and otherwise consorting with them, so they didn't like this. It's apropos of this remark: "This fellow eats with sinners and welcomes them!", that Jesus tells the parables of lostness.
"I want you to imagine that you have one hundred sheep," he says to the pharisees and the scribes around him. "I want you to imagine that you have one hundred sheep and that you lose one of them. Now, wouldn't you, therefore, go out after the lost one until you find it?" Well, what's the real answer to that question? The real answer to that question is "of course not." Nobody in his right mind who's in the sheep business has one hundred sheep, loses one, leaves the ninety-nine to the wolves and the coyotes, and goes chasing off after one. You cut your losses, forget about the lost sheep, and go on with the ninety-nine. So Jesus' question is perverse. It's odd. It's ironic. Who among you would do this? Who among you wouldn't go out and do this? Everybody wouldn't! They wouldn't go out and do this sort of thing. And, therefore, then he says, "And when you find that, what would you do with the sheep if you'd actually done this?" You would put the sheep on your shoulder, and then notice what Jesus says. He doesn't say, "Then he goes back to the ninety-nine and gives this little sheep back to his mother sheep," or something else. What Jesus says is that he puts the lost sheep on his shoulders and goes to his house. He goes home.
In this parable, Jesus never goes back to the ninety-nine sheep. The ninety-nine sheep are a set-up. Jesus has divided the flock into one sheep and ninety-nine sheep, and he's not trying to make two different groups. You know, ninety-nine who don't get lost, and one who does. I think the real meaning of the one and the ninety-nine is that the one lost sheep is the whole human race as it really is. And the ninety-nine "found" sheep who never get lost are the whole human race as we think we are. And the ninety-nine; therefore, are not a real piece of business in this. The one lost sheep stands for all of us, and this says that the only thing the shepherd—God, the God character—is interested in, is going after the lost, and, if necessary, the shepherd will go out of the sheep ranching business to find the lost, and God, therefore, will go out of the God business, of the business of being the kind of God we turn God into the God who's a bookkeeper, the God who's the divine infinite "watch-bird" who's keeping records on everybody, and if you don't do it right, he's not going to bother with you anymore. That's the business that God goes out of when he goes after the lost because he only wants to come and find sinners. He doesn't want anything else. And then Jesus asks the last question in this one, and he says, "I say to you that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance." The proof of this is, of course, did you ever meet any of those ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance? No, you didn't. There isn't one in the whole world. So this proves the set-up that Jesus is only interested in finding the lost; that God, in Christ, is only interested in finding the lost.
Now, he follows this parable up with the parable of the lost coin, and Jesus changes the image. The God character in this parable is not a shepherd. It's a woman. It's a very strange woman. As the shepherd is sort of crazy to go chase one sheep and leave ninety-nine to the wolves, so this woman is even crazier. It says this woman has ten coins, and I like to think, just to bring it up to date, that what this woman has is ten Susan B. Anthony dollars in a nice wooden case with red velvet lining and little recessed partitions for each of the ten Susan B. Anthony dollars. And every morning she gets up, and she looks in there and pats them and polishes them and puts them back down again. She gets up one morning, and one of her precious Susan B. Anthony dollars is missing so what does this woman do? She is as crazy as the shepherd, if not crazier, because she stops her entire life. She stops anything she had to do that day. She stops whatever housework she was going to do, and she lights a light, and goes into all the dark corners. She sweeps, and sweeps, and sweeps, and looks under everything for the whole day until she finds this coin. And what does she do when she finds it? Interestingly enough, like the shepherd Jesus never says she puts it back in the box. It says she gets on the phone to her friends and her neighbors and says, "Come on over, I'm going to have a party. I found my lost coin."
And now I'm sure that these friends and neighbors say, "Gertrude, you found a coin, right? And we're supposed to come?"
She says, "Yes. I have cream soda, and I have ring dings, and you're going to come over, and we're going to celebrate my lost coin."
Certainly they'd say, "Yes, Gertrude, we'll come." But they are not that enthusiastic. But the point is, she is. And this woman proves something. In the lost sheep, you can develop some pity for the poor, little lost sheep. You can feel bad, you know, that it’s injured or hurt or fearful and all that. But you can't work up any pity for a lost coin. A lost coin never knows it's lost. One place is as good as another. The point is that what these two parables put together say is that what governs God's behavior to us is not our sins. It's not our problems. It's his need to find us. These parables go by the need of the finder to find, not about the need of the lost to be found. That's obvious. We always knew that. We could have gone to our graves knowing that. The great thing is that the universe is driven by the need of the finder to find all of us in our lostness. And that, of course, is the beginning.
And the last of the three parables in this chapter is the lost son, which commonly goes by the name of the prodigal son because we misname these parables. Interestingly enough, obviously this parable should be called the parable of the forgiving father. Now, what I want to do is set-up the parable a little bit, and tell it to you quickly. I'm not going to go through the whole thing, just because I hope it's familiar. But a man has two sons, and the youngest son comes to him and says, "Father—Dad—put your will into effect and split up the entire inheritance right now between me and my brother." You know what that is in so many words? That's: "Drop dead, Father." He's suggesting that the father put his will into effect. And the father does it. He gives all the cash that's loose to the younger son. He gives the entire property, like South Fork, in "Dallas,"—some big spread—to the elder brother, and the father sits on the porch for the rest of the parable, at least for a little bit of it, and retires from things.
The younger son takes the money and goes to a far country. He has wine, women, and song; blows all his money, ends up feeding pigs, and sits there and says one day, "Oh, as I think of my father's servants, they eat better than I do. I'm going to go home, and say, 'Father, I've sinned against heaven and against you. I'm not worthy to be your son. Make me a hired servant.'" Now, that is not a sinner who was repentant, yet. Because what he's said: "Father, I'm a no-good son," and "Father, I've sinned against heaven and before you," is true. That's fine. That's pretty good for repentance. But "Make me a hired servant" is not a repentance. That's a plan for life. That's a plan to con his father into accepting him back instead of coming back as a no-good son. So he comes home. He comes down the road and when he's a half mile off, his father sees him. He runs down the road, falls on his neck and kisses him, and after the forgiveness and the father's kiss, the son makes his confession. He says, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I'm not worthy to be your son." And he leaves off the hired servant business. The father then goes immediately to the thing that ended the other parables. He goes to the party. He calls for the rings on his fingers, the shoes on his feet, and says: "Kill the fatted calf, and let us eat and be merry. My son was dead, and he's alive, was lost, he's found." And they have a party, and there's music and dancing and everything else. Then Jesus brings in the other lost son. He's the ninety-nine. He's the nine other coins in the box. He thinks he's found. He comes in, and he's whining.
He says, "All these years I have been such a good boy, and done your will and done all these wonderful things, and you never even gave me a goat to have a party with my friends. But when this son of yours who has wasted his substance with whores comes home, then you give him the fatted calf." And he won't go in. What this son has done—though he thinks he's a found character and he's a wonderful bookkeeper and has got everything else right—what he has done, is come into the courtyard of the house, with a party inside, and he has brought hell with him. He is the hell of his own bookkeeping, the hell of his own complaining. He has brought hell with him.
What does the father do? The father's the God character. What does the father do? The father goes out into the courtyard once again, like the shepherd, like the woman, to seek the lost. The need of the finder to find. He goes out there, and he talks to his son, and he says, "Look, son, Arthur, everything I have belongs to you. You could have had fatted calf three nights a week if you wanted. All you had to do was build the stalls. You have the money. You have no imagination, Arthur. You know what I would like you to do, Arthur? I would like you to shut up, go inside, kiss your brother, and have a drink." And the wonderful thing about this parable is that Jesus, genius of a storyteller that he is, has ended it so that it doesn't end.
At the end of the parable—suppose you saw it in a film—you have the music and the sounds of the feasting and the laughter inside the house. You have the father and the elder brother standing in the courtyard, and the way the film ends is, it ends with a freeze frame: father, elder brother, joyful music over in the back. And for two thousand years this has been read in the church, every year people have read it in the Bible endlessly, endlessly. For two thousand years, that's where the story has ended. It has never ended. The father always seeks the lost son, and the lost son is not just the prodigal, it is at the end, the prodigal's already found now, he's home free, but the other one is not, because he won't come into the party. Consequently, the other thing you could say about this, it's not only for two thousand years that that parable has stood with that freeze frame, it will stand there forever because God will forever stand. We say Jesus, between when he died and when he arose, descended into hell. He descended to the lost. This is the last truth of the parable of the prodigal son, that for all eternity God still seeks those in hell. If I go down into hell, Thou art there with me. We cannot get away from the love that will not let us go because God, who in all these parables represented by the shepherd, and the woman, and the father, never ceases to seek and to find the lost.
Thank you, very much,
Robert Farrar Capon
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SERVANT SONS & THE OX
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Some months ago I had a most wondrous and beautiful dream concerning the manifested sons of God that all creation groans for. If you are familiar with Romans 8 you know all the world stands on tip toe in expectation of being set free and healed by the sons of God that are promised to come in the image of Christ performing the promised greater works. It seemed in this dream I was caught away with joy unspeakable as the momentous occasion of God's sons manifested had come. There was a most incredible festive atmosphere as great crowds of men, women and children of every nationality and color gathered as a crowd would for a great parade. All were straining with the most glorious and exciting expectation to get a first peek at the company of the first fruits company of sons in Christ perfect image coming down the parade route. I laid in bed completely enraptured and thrilled for I do not know how long, only knowing that when the dream ended I was disappointed because I would have wished it had gone on forever, so tremendous was this expectant feeling.
When I awoke from this night vision I laid back on my pillow for a period and pulled from my memory the details of this life changing dream. As I recalled this tremendous experience I could still feel a fleeting residue of excitement. However it seemed I had a part of this dream missing from my memory. For the life of me as hard as I could try I could not remember, whether in this dream I was myself a manifested son of God or I was a part of the great crowd waiting and then cheering them on.
I pondered this for a while and then I gave up with out being able to discern of which group I belonged. Finally I asked God, "which it be, Lord? Was I a manifested son or was I part of the waiting crowd of creation groaning to catch a glimpse. I will never forget His simple answer as in three succinct words he taught me a great lesson.
God said, "does it matter."
With my personal account as an introduction please allow me to share a portion of J Preston Eby's latest writing. In this excerpt my favorite contemporary author shares the nature of a son. I often marvel at the paradoxes of the Kingdom of God when compared to the ways of this world. Sadly I also know well that most in Christendom do not discern the differences. I pray this wonderfully anointed writing will encourage you if you are feeling somewhat forgotten or even hidden away. Truly God sees your heart and if you are a servant He just awaits for the right moment to lift you to a greater place of ministering healing and deliverance to the nations. Little by little He is exposing His company of sons for all the world to see and embrace. This is the plan and purpose of the ages and I believe we stand on the threshold of it's greatest manifestation. I pray you hear the call to become a servant son after the pattern of God's only begotten Son, our precious Jesus.
Jack
“In the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four living creatures full of eyes before and behind. And the first living creature was like a lion, and the second living creature was like an ox, and the third living creature had a face as a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle” (Rev. 4:6-7).
The four living creatures are in the “midst of the throne” denoting kingship. The four living creatures had four faces in the likeness of four different creatures, representing four aspects of kingship which are true in Christ Jesus and are also wrought out in the life of every son of God apprehended to share His throne. Each of the faces reveals an aspect of the attributes, characteristics, and qualities which qualify one to rule and reign with Christ in His kingdom. They are, furthermore, the four-fold manifestation of Himself to all mankind!
THE OX
In our previous message we considered the face of the lion which speaks of strength — power, authority, and dominion — for he is the most powerful of all the big cats, and is known as the king of the beasts, and the king of the forest, by virtue of his awesome prowess! This brings us to the face of the ox which is symbolic of servanthood, for he is the largest and most useful of all domestic animals and is historically a beast of burden, one that draws wagons, plows fields, can be milked, and gives meat — a servant to man from time immemorial. With the face of the ox, Christ is revealed and manifested as the compassionate servant of all. The firstborn Son of God did not come to lord it over people, or to compel them to obey Him. He came to serve! (Phil. 2:7). The service Christ renders is done with compassionate mercy and out of a heart of divine love. It is the greatest service ever! He stoops to touch and receive and bless every man right where he is, without condemnation or judgment. His is the service of redeeming love and transforming grace that draws a person to serve and obey Him. When He comes to us and draws us with the cords of lovingkindness, by the sacrifice of Himself, we can do nothing else but respond in love and devotion to Him who has redeemed us!
Only the spiritually ambitious man will lay hold upon the kingdom of God. To be spiritually ambitious is to earnestly desire God’s best — in His way and time, according to His purpose, and always and only for His glory. It means to seek first the kingdom of God in all things! It means to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. It means to come only to do the will of the Father, and to do only what we see the Father doing. To be spiritually ambitious is the very spirit of sonship! There is a place for ambitious men in the kingdom of God! Jesus explained the process, “Whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.” He did not turn the man away from the ambition to be great. He simply told him how greatness can be achieved — become the servant of all!
Then there are degrees of this greatness. If you want to be great, be “the servant of all.” If you want to be first, be “the bond-slave of all.” The servant and the bond-slave represent degrees of self-giving, and they, in turn, represent degrees of greatness attained, namely, “great” and “first.” Beyond that is a level to which Jesus Himself attained. “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” In other words, since He went deeper than being servant of all, or a bond-slave of all, in that He gave His very life, so He becomes the Son of God upon the throne of the heavens, which is more than being great, or first, among a group — it is the acme of being! So the door is open for ambition. You may be least, or less, or great, or greater, or greatest, or first, or a son of God upon the throne!
Yet, it does not mean that we give in order to get — that is not the kingdom of God at all! We do not put on humility and serve others with the motive of becoming great, attaining to exalted positions of power and honor. If we are serving to gain advantage, to receive a position of authority over others, for the sake of authority, then we are not truly humble servants at all, but devious, cunning, crafty, deceptive, scheming, snaky, contriving, plotting, insincere hypocrites — and our motive is all wrong! That is not how the kingdom works! We do not serve to be made great — we serve because we are great with God’s greatness!
This is not a position of exercising power over others but of serving them. Serving is the power and the greatness! The motivation of the desires of those who are truly called to sonship is the same as the Captain of our salvation. Filled with the great love of God, the desire to attain to this position is to give ourselves in sacrifice and service for the deliverance and restoration of the rest of God’s creatures. Having attained to this deliverance from the bondage of corruption as the firstfruits of the creation, our only desire is to labor together with the Lord in the deliverance of the rest of His creation, to lift them up to the same level of life as He has lifted us. The heart of God, the heart of unconditional, unlimited, and sacrificial love and all goodness, is the greatest heart in the universe. It is not serving that makes us great, it is true divine greatness that causes us to serve! Oh, the mystery of it!
Some months ago I had a most wondrous and beautiful dream concerning the manifested sons of God that all creation groans for. If you are familiar with Romans 8 you know all the world stands on tip toe in expectation of being set free and healed by the sons of God that are promised to come in the image of Christ performing the promised greater works. It seemed in this dream I was caught away with joy unspeakable as the momentous occasion of God's sons manifested had come. There was a most incredible festive atmosphere as great crowds of men, women and children of every nationality and color gathered as a crowd would for a great parade. All were straining with the most glorious and exciting expectation to get a first peek at the company of the first fruits company of sons in Christ perfect image coming down the parade route. I laid in bed completely enraptured and thrilled for I do not know how long, only knowing that when the dream ended I was disappointed because I would have wished it had gone on forever, so tremendous was this expectant feeling.
When I awoke from this night vision I laid back on my pillow for a period and pulled from my memory the details of this life changing dream. As I recalled this tremendous experience I could still feel a fleeting residue of excitement. However it seemed I had a part of this dream missing from my memory. For the life of me as hard as I could try I could not remember, whether in this dream I was myself a manifested son of God or I was a part of the great crowd waiting and then cheering them on.
I pondered this for a while and then I gave up with out being able to discern of which group I belonged. Finally I asked God, "which it be, Lord? Was I a manifested son or was I part of the waiting crowd of creation groaning to catch a glimpse. I will never forget His simple answer as in three succinct words he taught me a great lesson.
God said, "does it matter."
With my personal account as an introduction please allow me to share a portion of J Preston Eby's latest writing. In this excerpt my favorite contemporary author shares the nature of a son. I often marvel at the paradoxes of the Kingdom of God when compared to the ways of this world. Sadly I also know well that most in Christendom do not discern the differences. I pray this wonderfully anointed writing will encourage you if you are feeling somewhat forgotten or even hidden away. Truly God sees your heart and if you are a servant He just awaits for the right moment to lift you to a greater place of ministering healing and deliverance to the nations. Little by little He is exposing His company of sons for all the world to see and embrace. This is the plan and purpose of the ages and I believe we stand on the threshold of it's greatest manifestation. I pray you hear the call to become a servant son after the pattern of God's only begotten Son, our precious Jesus.
Jack
“In the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four living creatures full of eyes before and behind. And the first living creature was like a lion, and the second living creature was like an ox, and the third living creature had a face as a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle” (Rev. 4:6-7).
The four living creatures are in the “midst of the throne” denoting kingship. The four living creatures had four faces in the likeness of four different creatures, representing four aspects of kingship which are true in Christ Jesus and are also wrought out in the life of every son of God apprehended to share His throne. Each of the faces reveals an aspect of the attributes, characteristics, and qualities which qualify one to rule and reign with Christ in His kingdom. They are, furthermore, the four-fold manifestation of Himself to all mankind!
THE OX
In our previous message we considered the face of the lion which speaks of strength — power, authority, and dominion — for he is the most powerful of all the big cats, and is known as the king of the beasts, and the king of the forest, by virtue of his awesome prowess! This brings us to the face of the ox which is symbolic of servanthood, for he is the largest and most useful of all domestic animals and is historically a beast of burden, one that draws wagons, plows fields, can be milked, and gives meat — a servant to man from time immemorial. With the face of the ox, Christ is revealed and manifested as the compassionate servant of all. The firstborn Son of God did not come to lord it over people, or to compel them to obey Him. He came to serve! (Phil. 2:7). The service Christ renders is done with compassionate mercy and out of a heart of divine love. It is the greatest service ever! He stoops to touch and receive and bless every man right where he is, without condemnation or judgment. His is the service of redeeming love and transforming grace that draws a person to serve and obey Him. When He comes to us and draws us with the cords of lovingkindness, by the sacrifice of Himself, we can do nothing else but respond in love and devotion to Him who has redeemed us!
Only the spiritually ambitious man will lay hold upon the kingdom of God. To be spiritually ambitious is to earnestly desire God’s best — in His way and time, according to His purpose, and always and only for His glory. It means to seek first the kingdom of God in all things! It means to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. It means to come only to do the will of the Father, and to do only what we see the Father doing. To be spiritually ambitious is the very spirit of sonship! There is a place for ambitious men in the kingdom of God! Jesus explained the process, “Whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.” He did not turn the man away from the ambition to be great. He simply told him how greatness can be achieved — become the servant of all!
Then there are degrees of this greatness. If you want to be great, be “the servant of all.” If you want to be first, be “the bond-slave of all.” The servant and the bond-slave represent degrees of self-giving, and they, in turn, represent degrees of greatness attained, namely, “great” and “first.” Beyond that is a level to which Jesus Himself attained. “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” In other words, since He went deeper than being servant of all, or a bond-slave of all, in that He gave His very life, so He becomes the Son of God upon the throne of the heavens, which is more than being great, or first, among a group — it is the acme of being! So the door is open for ambition. You may be least, or less, or great, or greater, or greatest, or first, or a son of God upon the throne!
Yet, it does not mean that we give in order to get — that is not the kingdom of God at all! We do not put on humility and serve others with the motive of becoming great, attaining to exalted positions of power and honor. If we are serving to gain advantage, to receive a position of authority over others, for the sake of authority, then we are not truly humble servants at all, but devious, cunning, crafty, deceptive, scheming, snaky, contriving, plotting, insincere hypocrites — and our motive is all wrong! That is not how the kingdom works! We do not serve to be made great — we serve because we are great with God’s greatness!
This is not a position of exercising power over others but of serving them. Serving is the power and the greatness! The motivation of the desires of those who are truly called to sonship is the same as the Captain of our salvation. Filled with the great love of God, the desire to attain to this position is to give ourselves in sacrifice and service for the deliverance and restoration of the rest of God’s creatures. Having attained to this deliverance from the bondage of corruption as the firstfruits of the creation, our only desire is to labor together with the Lord in the deliverance of the rest of His creation, to lift them up to the same level of life as He has lifted us. The heart of God, the heart of unconditional, unlimited, and sacrificial love and all goodness, is the greatest heart in the universe. It is not serving that makes us great, it is true divine greatness that causes us to serve! Oh, the mystery of it!
Let us see how beautifully Jesus taught this by His own example. Everything is prepared and set in order for the last supper, to the very water to wash the feet of the guests, as their custom was. Christ and His disciples gather in the upper room to eat and fellowship together on this solemn night. Each one waits for the other, for there is no servant available to perform the customary service of washing the guest’s feet. Washing feet was one of the basest tasks in the culture of Jesus’ day. It was a job usually done by a house slave. Just as we offer a visitor hospitality, so in Jesus’ time they customarily washed a visitor’s feet. Washing feet was undesirable responsibility: the roads were dusty well enough. But the filth of the road was more than dust! The transportation of that day was the camel, the donkey, the horse, and the mule. It takes little imagination to understand that the streets and roads were littered with their manure. The traveler’s feet would be covered with this as well as being caked with dust. The washing of feet was assigned to the lowliest slave because it meant handling the filth of the streets. This job was thought to be beneath the dignity of the “good man of the house.”
Not one of the twelve thinks of humbling himself to do the job, for, after all, are they not the honored ones, the disciples of the very Son of God, the flaming apostles of the kingdom, the future rulers of the world! Even at the table they were full of the thought — who should be greatest in the kingdom that was then beginning to dawn. Suddenly, unexpectedly Jesus stood up from the table, and began to take off His inner layer of garments until He was stripped to the waist, wearing only His loin cloth. He then took a large towel and wrapped it around Himself, poured water into a large brass basin, and, beginning with one of the men at the end of the table, laid heavy emphasis upon His words of a few moments before, “I am in the midst of you as one that serves.” Oh, the wonder of it! on which angels gazed with adoring wonder. Christ, the Creator and King of the universe, at whose word all worlds and galaxies flooded the infinity of space, who might with one word have compelled any man or legions of angels to do His bidding, Himself chose the slave’s place as His own, taking the soiled, filthy feet in His own holy hands, and washes them. It was to this task that the Lord of glory stooped!
But listen more carefully to the divine why and how of this wondrous spectacle. Jesus does it in the full consciousness of His divine glory, for the apostle John records, “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God, rose…” What a startling combination of sublime cause with curious consequence! How could Jesus have done this? How could the Master and the King of the universe wash dung from His disciple’s feet? He could do it because HE WAS SECURE IN WHO HE WAS. He knew that the Father had given all things into His hands. He knew that He had come from the Father and that He was the Son of God and was soon to ascend the throne. He knew that He was going back to the Father after He defeated sin, sickness, death, hell, and the grave. He didn’t have to prove anything to Himself or anyone else. His life had already proven who He was to those who had eyes to see. And He didn’t stoop so low to become a tyrant, to rule over this world by force. Oh, no! He came to heal and bless and deliver and transform, to reign by serving! Ah, yes, my beloved, once we thoroughly know who we are there is no need to proclaim it, no need to sound a trumpet, no need to wear a badge, to remind people of how special we are. Once we know that we are the sons of God WE ARE FREED TO SERVE!
You see, it wasn’t in spite of the fact of His greatness that Jesus took the place of the servant — it was because of His greatness! The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of the Father’s heart. The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of divine love and humility. The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of sonship! For the hands into which the Father gives all things nothing is common or unclean. Because one is the offspring of the God of all grace, compassion, love, mercy, and goodness, in whose hands all things are given, it is not difficult for him to stoop so low. In this taking the form of a servant, Jesus proclaims the divine order of the kingdom of God and the nature of the kings and priests who reign. The higher one stands in attainment in the kingdom, the more it is his joy to be servant of all! “Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” (Mat. 20:27). “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant” (Mat. 23:11).
The higher I rise in the consciousness of being like Christ, the deeper shall I stoop to serve the creation around me. The reason why we so often do not bless others is that we wish to appear to them as their superiors in blessing, calling, or rank. But that is not the spirit of sonship! The truth is that only as a son can we truly be a servant. It was the Son of God who assumed the form of a servant and humbled Himself. Ah, beloved elect of the Lord, walk among men as sons of the Most High God! A son of God is only in the world to show forth his Father’s glory, to demonstrate how God-like and how blessed it is to live only and always to find a way to love, bless, redeem, and restore God’s fallen creation. Someone has well said, “God has three sorts of servants in the world: some are slaves, and serve Him from fear; others are hirelings, and serve for wages; and the last are sons, who serve because they love.”
I once read a story which beautifully illustrates why the mighty God would stoop so low as to appear as a servant in His sons in order to restore creation. A little child was handed over to another by her own father — not because he wanted to part with her, but they were very poor, and so that she could have sufficient food and clothing, a good education and opportunity in life, he gave her into a rich man’s keeping, letting her be adopted by the rich man as his own daughter. He then hired himself as a servant to the rich man where he was given a small cottage to live on the grounds. He was always there and daily kept watch over that little life until she matured; and the girl, as she grew up, always felt a peculiar bond with him and that she could always rely upon the unselfish love and wise counsel of him who seemed but a serving man. Her father, as she supposed him to be, was cold, demanding, and even cruel. The day came when he repudiated her in a fit of rage because she had brought what he perceived as shame upon his name. In that dark moment the serving man stepped forward, and flung his arms around her, shouting, with the fierceness of righteous indignation to the man who had so cruelly abused her, “She never was your child!” Then the girl knew why it was that she had felt such acceptance, concern, care, peace, and joy in the presence of the serving-man. She had listened to his language of love many a time, not knowing the speaker was her real father!
Old father flesh, old father Adam, old father the devil repays all men with cruelty, injustice, baseness, lack, pain, fear, sorrow, and death. But there is a better Father — the One that sent you here, the one who has watched over you, cared for you, counseled you, blessed you, helped you, entreated you, wooed you and overshadowed you with His love as you have passed through this world of tears and trouble. Even when you knew it not, He was already your Father! And in Jesus He came as a servant to minister to your need, to lift and redeem and restore you unto Himself and His kingdom. And now, bless His name, He comes in many sons to reveal His heart of love to the whole vast creation and restore all things. We, as sons of God, are among men as Him that serveth!
This is the great miracle of sonship! It unites greatness and humility in a divine combination. It is the figure of an ox in the midst of a glorious throne! Oh, the wonder of it! This is the new creation in Christ Jesus! The great secret lies in the indwelling spirit of Jesus. Being made partakers of His nature and mind we are able to stand before Pilate, and when he says, “Are you a king?” we answer, “Thou sayest it.” On the same night it is possible to kneel before our brethren with a towel and a basin of water, washing their feet — cleansing their walk — in the spirit of service and humility. Only in sonship do power and humility find their true relationships and their true balance. Have you ever seen the President of the United States cutting the grass at the White House? How about Queen Elizabeth scrubbing the floors of her palace? Or the Prime Minister of Canada cleaning the toilet? We don’t expect people of high position to do lowly and seemingly unimportant tasks. Yet Jesus has revealed the law of a Higher Kingdom, a kingdom where power and servanthood are joined together in a divine outpouring of love, grace, and goodness!
Lyn Gitchel, a dear friend of ours in Pennsylvania, once shared a precious point about the meaning of what we call ministry. She wrote, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and give His life a ransom for many. The whole idea that we have of “ministry” has got warped up in these days, and I believe we shall have to have a new picture of what ministry really is put into our minds by God. The word ministry comes from two Latin words, minis, (from which we get minus), which means lesser, and tri, which is the Latin word for servant. Now, when you think about it, a LESSER SERVANT is a whole lot different from what we think of when the word ministry is put in our minds. We think of accomplished pastors, famous evangelists, large meetings, crowds with a tremendous flow of miracles and worship, and people that can really hold your attention by their great preaching — and then we find that the word means LESSER SERVANT!
“The impact of this hit me recently and I’ll share the experience with you. For most of my life I have served in a professional capacity. Before I was an ordained minister I was a registered nurse. I have never really worked as a servant of any kind, until recently. A friend of mine was doing a little job here in town which involves helping an elderly lady who has had a stroke. You need to help her in whatever capacity she needs, from housework to bathing her. My friend had to leave town and, to help her out, I took the job. Nearly a year later I am still doing it! One day I was kneeling on the bathroom floor drying her feet when suddenly I said to myself, ‘Whatever am I doing here — I’m supposed to be an Ordained Minister!’ Immediately the Spirit of God answered within my heart, ‘You wanted to minister, didn’t you?’
“The time has come when we must understand that ministry is not preaching but servanthood. We are going to have to learn all over again what it means to serve people with the same heart of love that Jesus had when He walked among men. It was not beneath Him to lift a woman caught in adultery to her feet and speak a word of reassurance to her, nor was it beneath Him to eat at the house of an ungodly tax-gatherer and his friends. Jesus did not hire a huge auditorium and put out publicity announcing great meetings. He simply moved among men and women where they were and touched them with love, and healing, and compassion” — end quote.
There is the story of a man who desired from the Lord a true understanding of heaven and hell. One night in a dream he was told that he would soon receive this understanding. He was taken into a room where a few dozen people were sitting around a huge kettle of stew. Each one had only a long-handled spoon to eat with, and their arms were straightened so they could not bend them and bring the food into their mouths. The people were extremely upset and angry at their plight, shouting and cursing those who had done this to them. This, he was told, was hell. Then he was taken into another room which would be a picture to him of heaven. To his surprise, the room was identical. The large pot was there, as well as people with stiff arms and long spoons. There was one major difference, however. In this room, each one would smile and lovingly dip into the stew with his or her long-handled spoon and feed his fellow on the other side of the kettle! In this day we are being translated from hell to heaven within ourselves as we learn the ways of the kingdom which is the kingdom of love — by SERVING!
Every new year the Queen of England publishes her Honors List, conferring titles and decorations upon men and women who have rendered distinguished service to mankind or to the country or to the political party in power. I have in mind a little Honors List of my own! There is not much point in publishing it, because you will never have heard of these people. They include a dear sister who was poor in this world’s goods, who lived in a little house that approached being a shack, yet was committed to God’s purposes for this Day and vibrant with her love of God. She was always sharing the Word with the neighborhood children who graced her porch, continually cooking and sharing with others, fixing up and maintaining a building for the gatherings of the saints, entertaining the ministries the Lord sent their way, and encouraging everyone. She never murmured or complained about anything that came her way.
Honor also goes to a brother who prayed earnestly and is credited with “praying down” a mighty move of the Spirit of God many years ago, by which others with whom he was associated were propelled into world-wide fame, while he unpretentiously cherished the deep truths and hope of sonship and the reconciliation of all things, continuing in prayer, setting an example of righteousness and humility before his family and community, regularly visiting the widows, orphans, and shut-ins. I honor another brother whose name I do not even know who, during our Conferences in Florida years ago, would sweep and clean the meeting place until the wee hours of the morning (without being asked — it wasn’t his responsibility!), while most of the brethren and the preachers were enjoying rich fellowship over a mid-night spread of food at the local restaurants. The one thing that these quiet heroes have in common is that they lived the spirit of servanthood without pretense or any motive other than a pure love and the deep desire to bless creation and advance the kingdom of God into men’s lives. Truly such are to be called great in the kingdom of heaven! In the spirit of these precious ones we see THE FACE OF THE OX IN THE MIDST OF THE THRONE!
That there are different levels in the kingdom of God, from the least in the kingdom to the greatest, Jesus clearly taught. He told His disciples, “Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there has not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Mat. 11:11). On another occasion we read of Jesus’ disciples that “they disputed among themselves who should be the greatest. Jesus sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all” (Mat. 9:34-35). Christ Himself was the greatest among them! He said, “I am in the midst of you as he that serveth.” He was the humblest, and therefore, the greatest, but had He no authority? He had authority in heaven and on earth! Because He takes the place of deepest humility, does that strip Him of His kingly authority? Not at all! It intensifies and magnifies it! Both the lion and the ox are in the midst of the throne! They reign there together! This is revealed so powerfully in the Lord Jesus.
Many Bible commentators endeavor to make a case for the idea that the characteristics of the four living creatures are portrayed in the four Gospels: Matthew showing us Jesus as the lion of the tribe of Judah; Mark revealing the Lord as the ox, the servant of all; Luke portraying the Lord as the Man above all men; and John manifesting Christ as the eternal Word, or the flying eagle. Personally, I find very little ground for this. The truth is, if I were picking one of the four Gospels as a portrait of Christ as the ox-servant, I would choose the book of Matthew. There are more passages concerning greatness through servanthood in the book of Matthew than in all the other three Gospels combined! You will note that nearly all the scriptures I have quoted on the subject in this message are taken from the gospel of Matthew!
Christ was the greatest, yet He took the place of the lowest. He who stooped from the highest heaven, not only to earth, but to the deepest hell, who descended into the deepest depths to seek for erring and sinful men, is greatest. That is why He exercises authority today in the heavens and on the earth! He now takes the highest place as the Head of the body, the High Priest of our profession, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and the Head of all principality and power. He is the greatest! And He is still the servant of all!
He that would rise to be the highest,
Must first come down to be the lowest,
And then ascend to be the highest
By keeping down to be the lowest.
God has called a people aside in this hour and brought them to a place of brokenness, humility, and nothingness in the eyes of the world and the church systems of man. We have obeyed the word the apostle Peter admonished, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time” (I Pet. 5:6). God is about to exalt His sons, but it shall be the exaltation of humility.
Many years ago amidst a great moving of the Spirit of God the revelation of sonship fell with wonder upon our ears and burst with glory within our hearts. We sat enraptured for hours, day after day, and were taught by the Spirit about the Father and His purposes and about that elect company He has called, apprehended and chosen to be His sons to rule with Him in His kingdom and restore all things. We learned that these sons would have power unlimited — power over everything! Power over sin, power over sickness, power over demons, power over the elements, power over the nations, and power over death. We were going to rule and reign in power, and our eyes sparkled like diamonds in the noonday sun and our hearts swelled with joy in expectation of the wonderful position and authority we would soon have in the kingdom. We could think and talk of nothing else but the power we would have, and in our glorying we tried at times to usurp and demonstrate this power. We were intoxicated with illusions of grandeur as we pressed our way into the kingdom and the exalted position of sitting on the throne with Jesus and ruling the world and the vastnesses of infinity forever.
Little did we understand in those early days that the way up is down! The carnal mind would have us believe that the way up is up. Thus we have pressed our way into ministry, pressed our way into the kingdom, stood on the promises, demanded of God our “rights,” presuming even to command God to do this and that, and sought to seize the throne. It is true, elect of the Lord, that God wants to take us UP — high into the realms of God — UP to the throne — but God would have us know that the way UP is always DOWN! The one who serves the people well as a priest is the one who will also reign well as a king. “They shall be priests…and they shall reign.” That is the order! Though He is calling us to be kings with authority over all, yet our inner spirit must be that of a servant, that we might freely minister out of a contrite spirit and a broken heart the compassion and love of God right down where creation is. Do you want to know what manifest sonship is? CONSIDER JESUS! Jesus was the most lowly and humble of all men, and also the most powerful and authoritative. He was not a super-duper-elite-country-club Son of God. He didn’t bounce onto the platform under the lights with a flare of worldly showmanship and then disappear out the back door to escape contact with the people. Oh, no! He was the ox in the throne bearing the burden, pulling the wagon, plowing the fields, and giving His life to be meat for mankind. That is the mystery!
Not one of the twelve thinks of humbling himself to do the job, for, after all, are they not the honored ones, the disciples of the very Son of God, the flaming apostles of the kingdom, the future rulers of the world! Even at the table they were full of the thought — who should be greatest in the kingdom that was then beginning to dawn. Suddenly, unexpectedly Jesus stood up from the table, and began to take off His inner layer of garments until He was stripped to the waist, wearing only His loin cloth. He then took a large towel and wrapped it around Himself, poured water into a large brass basin, and, beginning with one of the men at the end of the table, laid heavy emphasis upon His words of a few moments before, “I am in the midst of you as one that serves.” Oh, the wonder of it! on which angels gazed with adoring wonder. Christ, the Creator and King of the universe, at whose word all worlds and galaxies flooded the infinity of space, who might with one word have compelled any man or legions of angels to do His bidding, Himself chose the slave’s place as His own, taking the soiled, filthy feet in His own holy hands, and washes them. It was to this task that the Lord of glory stooped!
But listen more carefully to the divine why and how of this wondrous spectacle. Jesus does it in the full consciousness of His divine glory, for the apostle John records, “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God, rose…” What a startling combination of sublime cause with curious consequence! How could Jesus have done this? How could the Master and the King of the universe wash dung from His disciple’s feet? He could do it because HE WAS SECURE IN WHO HE WAS. He knew that the Father had given all things into His hands. He knew that He had come from the Father and that He was the Son of God and was soon to ascend the throne. He knew that He was going back to the Father after He defeated sin, sickness, death, hell, and the grave. He didn’t have to prove anything to Himself or anyone else. His life had already proven who He was to those who had eyes to see. And He didn’t stoop so low to become a tyrant, to rule over this world by force. Oh, no! He came to heal and bless and deliver and transform, to reign by serving! Ah, yes, my beloved, once we thoroughly know who we are there is no need to proclaim it, no need to sound a trumpet, no need to wear a badge, to remind people of how special we are. Once we know that we are the sons of God WE ARE FREED TO SERVE!
You see, it wasn’t in spite of the fact of His greatness that Jesus took the place of the servant — it was because of His greatness! The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of the Father’s heart. The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of divine love and humility. The greatness of Jesus is the greatness of sonship! For the hands into which the Father gives all things nothing is common or unclean. Because one is the offspring of the God of all grace, compassion, love, mercy, and goodness, in whose hands all things are given, it is not difficult for him to stoop so low. In this taking the form of a servant, Jesus proclaims the divine order of the kingdom of God and the nature of the kings and priests who reign. The higher one stands in attainment in the kingdom, the more it is his joy to be servant of all! “Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” (Mat. 20:27). “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant” (Mat. 23:11).
The higher I rise in the consciousness of being like Christ, the deeper shall I stoop to serve the creation around me. The reason why we so often do not bless others is that we wish to appear to them as their superiors in blessing, calling, or rank. But that is not the spirit of sonship! The truth is that only as a son can we truly be a servant. It was the Son of God who assumed the form of a servant and humbled Himself. Ah, beloved elect of the Lord, walk among men as sons of the Most High God! A son of God is only in the world to show forth his Father’s glory, to demonstrate how God-like and how blessed it is to live only and always to find a way to love, bless, redeem, and restore God’s fallen creation. Someone has well said, “God has three sorts of servants in the world: some are slaves, and serve Him from fear; others are hirelings, and serve for wages; and the last are sons, who serve because they love.”
I once read a story which beautifully illustrates why the mighty God would stoop so low as to appear as a servant in His sons in order to restore creation. A little child was handed over to another by her own father — not because he wanted to part with her, but they were very poor, and so that she could have sufficient food and clothing, a good education and opportunity in life, he gave her into a rich man’s keeping, letting her be adopted by the rich man as his own daughter. He then hired himself as a servant to the rich man where he was given a small cottage to live on the grounds. He was always there and daily kept watch over that little life until she matured; and the girl, as she grew up, always felt a peculiar bond with him and that she could always rely upon the unselfish love and wise counsel of him who seemed but a serving man. Her father, as she supposed him to be, was cold, demanding, and even cruel. The day came when he repudiated her in a fit of rage because she had brought what he perceived as shame upon his name. In that dark moment the serving man stepped forward, and flung his arms around her, shouting, with the fierceness of righteous indignation to the man who had so cruelly abused her, “She never was your child!” Then the girl knew why it was that she had felt such acceptance, concern, care, peace, and joy in the presence of the serving-man. She had listened to his language of love many a time, not knowing the speaker was her real father!
Old father flesh, old father Adam, old father the devil repays all men with cruelty, injustice, baseness, lack, pain, fear, sorrow, and death. But there is a better Father — the One that sent you here, the one who has watched over you, cared for you, counseled you, blessed you, helped you, entreated you, wooed you and overshadowed you with His love as you have passed through this world of tears and trouble. Even when you knew it not, He was already your Father! And in Jesus He came as a servant to minister to your need, to lift and redeem and restore you unto Himself and His kingdom. And now, bless His name, He comes in many sons to reveal His heart of love to the whole vast creation and restore all things. We, as sons of God, are among men as Him that serveth!
This is the great miracle of sonship! It unites greatness and humility in a divine combination. It is the figure of an ox in the midst of a glorious throne! Oh, the wonder of it! This is the new creation in Christ Jesus! The great secret lies in the indwelling spirit of Jesus. Being made partakers of His nature and mind we are able to stand before Pilate, and when he says, “Are you a king?” we answer, “Thou sayest it.” On the same night it is possible to kneel before our brethren with a towel and a basin of water, washing their feet — cleansing their walk — in the spirit of service and humility. Only in sonship do power and humility find their true relationships and their true balance. Have you ever seen the President of the United States cutting the grass at the White House? How about Queen Elizabeth scrubbing the floors of her palace? Or the Prime Minister of Canada cleaning the toilet? We don’t expect people of high position to do lowly and seemingly unimportant tasks. Yet Jesus has revealed the law of a Higher Kingdom, a kingdom where power and servanthood are joined together in a divine outpouring of love, grace, and goodness!
Lyn Gitchel, a dear friend of ours in Pennsylvania, once shared a precious point about the meaning of what we call ministry. She wrote, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and give His life a ransom for many. The whole idea that we have of “ministry” has got warped up in these days, and I believe we shall have to have a new picture of what ministry really is put into our minds by God. The word ministry comes from two Latin words, minis, (from which we get minus), which means lesser, and tri, which is the Latin word for servant. Now, when you think about it, a LESSER SERVANT is a whole lot different from what we think of when the word ministry is put in our minds. We think of accomplished pastors, famous evangelists, large meetings, crowds with a tremendous flow of miracles and worship, and people that can really hold your attention by their great preaching — and then we find that the word means LESSER SERVANT!
“The impact of this hit me recently and I’ll share the experience with you. For most of my life I have served in a professional capacity. Before I was an ordained minister I was a registered nurse. I have never really worked as a servant of any kind, until recently. A friend of mine was doing a little job here in town which involves helping an elderly lady who has had a stroke. You need to help her in whatever capacity she needs, from housework to bathing her. My friend had to leave town and, to help her out, I took the job. Nearly a year later I am still doing it! One day I was kneeling on the bathroom floor drying her feet when suddenly I said to myself, ‘Whatever am I doing here — I’m supposed to be an Ordained Minister!’ Immediately the Spirit of God answered within my heart, ‘You wanted to minister, didn’t you?’
“The time has come when we must understand that ministry is not preaching but servanthood. We are going to have to learn all over again what it means to serve people with the same heart of love that Jesus had when He walked among men. It was not beneath Him to lift a woman caught in adultery to her feet and speak a word of reassurance to her, nor was it beneath Him to eat at the house of an ungodly tax-gatherer and his friends. Jesus did not hire a huge auditorium and put out publicity announcing great meetings. He simply moved among men and women where they were and touched them with love, and healing, and compassion” — end quote.
There is the story of a man who desired from the Lord a true understanding of heaven and hell. One night in a dream he was told that he would soon receive this understanding. He was taken into a room where a few dozen people were sitting around a huge kettle of stew. Each one had only a long-handled spoon to eat with, and their arms were straightened so they could not bend them and bring the food into their mouths. The people were extremely upset and angry at their plight, shouting and cursing those who had done this to them. This, he was told, was hell. Then he was taken into another room which would be a picture to him of heaven. To his surprise, the room was identical. The large pot was there, as well as people with stiff arms and long spoons. There was one major difference, however. In this room, each one would smile and lovingly dip into the stew with his or her long-handled spoon and feed his fellow on the other side of the kettle! In this day we are being translated from hell to heaven within ourselves as we learn the ways of the kingdom which is the kingdom of love — by SERVING!
Every new year the Queen of England publishes her Honors List, conferring titles and decorations upon men and women who have rendered distinguished service to mankind or to the country or to the political party in power. I have in mind a little Honors List of my own! There is not much point in publishing it, because you will never have heard of these people. They include a dear sister who was poor in this world’s goods, who lived in a little house that approached being a shack, yet was committed to God’s purposes for this Day and vibrant with her love of God. She was always sharing the Word with the neighborhood children who graced her porch, continually cooking and sharing with others, fixing up and maintaining a building for the gatherings of the saints, entertaining the ministries the Lord sent their way, and encouraging everyone. She never murmured or complained about anything that came her way.
Honor also goes to a brother who prayed earnestly and is credited with “praying down” a mighty move of the Spirit of God many years ago, by which others with whom he was associated were propelled into world-wide fame, while he unpretentiously cherished the deep truths and hope of sonship and the reconciliation of all things, continuing in prayer, setting an example of righteousness and humility before his family and community, regularly visiting the widows, orphans, and shut-ins. I honor another brother whose name I do not even know who, during our Conferences in Florida years ago, would sweep and clean the meeting place until the wee hours of the morning (without being asked — it wasn’t his responsibility!), while most of the brethren and the preachers were enjoying rich fellowship over a mid-night spread of food at the local restaurants. The one thing that these quiet heroes have in common is that they lived the spirit of servanthood without pretense or any motive other than a pure love and the deep desire to bless creation and advance the kingdom of God into men’s lives. Truly such are to be called great in the kingdom of heaven! In the spirit of these precious ones we see THE FACE OF THE OX IN THE MIDST OF THE THRONE!
That there are different levels in the kingdom of God, from the least in the kingdom to the greatest, Jesus clearly taught. He told His disciples, “Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there has not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Mat. 11:11). On another occasion we read of Jesus’ disciples that “they disputed among themselves who should be the greatest. Jesus sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all” (Mat. 9:34-35). Christ Himself was the greatest among them! He said, “I am in the midst of you as he that serveth.” He was the humblest, and therefore, the greatest, but had He no authority? He had authority in heaven and on earth! Because He takes the place of deepest humility, does that strip Him of His kingly authority? Not at all! It intensifies and magnifies it! Both the lion and the ox are in the midst of the throne! They reign there together! This is revealed so powerfully in the Lord Jesus.
Many Bible commentators endeavor to make a case for the idea that the characteristics of the four living creatures are portrayed in the four Gospels: Matthew showing us Jesus as the lion of the tribe of Judah; Mark revealing the Lord as the ox, the servant of all; Luke portraying the Lord as the Man above all men; and John manifesting Christ as the eternal Word, or the flying eagle. Personally, I find very little ground for this. The truth is, if I were picking one of the four Gospels as a portrait of Christ as the ox-servant, I would choose the book of Matthew. There are more passages concerning greatness through servanthood in the book of Matthew than in all the other three Gospels combined! You will note that nearly all the scriptures I have quoted on the subject in this message are taken from the gospel of Matthew!
Christ was the greatest, yet He took the place of the lowest. He who stooped from the highest heaven, not only to earth, but to the deepest hell, who descended into the deepest depths to seek for erring and sinful men, is greatest. That is why He exercises authority today in the heavens and on the earth! He now takes the highest place as the Head of the body, the High Priest of our profession, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and the Head of all principality and power. He is the greatest! And He is still the servant of all!
He that would rise to be the highest,
Must first come down to be the lowest,
And then ascend to be the highest
By keeping down to be the lowest.
God has called a people aside in this hour and brought them to a place of brokenness, humility, and nothingness in the eyes of the world and the church systems of man. We have obeyed the word the apostle Peter admonished, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time” (I Pet. 5:6). God is about to exalt His sons, but it shall be the exaltation of humility.
Many years ago amidst a great moving of the Spirit of God the revelation of sonship fell with wonder upon our ears and burst with glory within our hearts. We sat enraptured for hours, day after day, and were taught by the Spirit about the Father and His purposes and about that elect company He has called, apprehended and chosen to be His sons to rule with Him in His kingdom and restore all things. We learned that these sons would have power unlimited — power over everything! Power over sin, power over sickness, power over demons, power over the elements, power over the nations, and power over death. We were going to rule and reign in power, and our eyes sparkled like diamonds in the noonday sun and our hearts swelled with joy in expectation of the wonderful position and authority we would soon have in the kingdom. We could think and talk of nothing else but the power we would have, and in our glorying we tried at times to usurp and demonstrate this power. We were intoxicated with illusions of grandeur as we pressed our way into the kingdom and the exalted position of sitting on the throne with Jesus and ruling the world and the vastnesses of infinity forever.
Little did we understand in those early days that the way up is down! The carnal mind would have us believe that the way up is up. Thus we have pressed our way into ministry, pressed our way into the kingdom, stood on the promises, demanded of God our “rights,” presuming even to command God to do this and that, and sought to seize the throne. It is true, elect of the Lord, that God wants to take us UP — high into the realms of God — UP to the throne — but God would have us know that the way UP is always DOWN! The one who serves the people well as a priest is the one who will also reign well as a king. “They shall be priests…and they shall reign.” That is the order! Though He is calling us to be kings with authority over all, yet our inner spirit must be that of a servant, that we might freely minister out of a contrite spirit and a broken heart the compassion and love of God right down where creation is. Do you want to know what manifest sonship is? CONSIDER JESUS! Jesus was the most lowly and humble of all men, and also the most powerful and authoritative. He was not a super-duper-elite-country-club Son of God. He didn’t bounce onto the platform under the lights with a flare of worldly showmanship and then disappear out the back door to escape contact with the people. Oh, no! He was the ox in the throne bearing the burden, pulling the wagon, plowing the fields, and giving His life to be meat for mankind. That is the mystery!
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OUR FUTILITY
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One of the most overlooked and most important of all scriptures in the Bible tells us of the state we were created in. This state works all the way from Eve's enticement to the very ends of my self and your self. All our doings were foreordained by God and try as you will, He knew before hand the path you would take and thus He made provision beforehand. What a mighty God we serve!
Rom 8:20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
Some translations render this thought "the creature was made subject to futility"
"How great is our futility/vanity," you might ask
My friend it is total and this is confirmed with God's prescription even before the "creature was made." Before there was even man, Christ was crucified that He might lift us from our futile state. Before their was a problem there was a solution. Such are the ways of our magnificent God.
Rev 13:8 ........the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
We all must come to see the vanity of our ways and our view of our futility is only as great as our view of His omnipotence. Eventually we will come to see ourseves as naught and Christ as All. Such is the path of each man, each in his own order.
Have you failed in bearing your cross? Surely you have and if you have not, you have not born it at all, for even Christ fell beneath it. Brother's and sisters, cross-bearing ends in nakedness ...... not a self-disrobing .....not a nakedness of our own choosing, but a nakedness brought by life's challenges and at the hands of others. We shall be stripped by nature and by our fellow human beings and put on display for the world's scorn. Jesus Christ is our pattern and to name ourselves Christian is to walk with and in Him. The organized church for the most part soft peddles our salvation but I dare say the first century believers knew the cost and so shall we that truly know Him.
We will suffer and we will be blessed in this life. We will suffer and be blessed by life's occurrences and even at the hands of others and all that comes our way is sovereignly directed that you and I might be made perfect through His grace. All is to bring you and I to nought that Christ will reign as the All in All. Oh yes, we must fall and suffer to see our weakness .............. "when we are weak He is strong." Yet some (and I have been there and still am on occasion) still want to lend our strength to carry that which cannot be carried ........ only One could carry it and He was and is God come in the flesh! And Glory Be! ......... today God through Christ has come in you and me!
Those are a few of my thoughts on God's sovereignty and let me also say that I was excited the other day to discover an author and teacher that carried this same message into the early part of the last century. This by Allan Burns is one of the most wonderful writings I have ever read on the subject, both for it's beauty of language and profoundness of content. I pray it blesses and changes you, as it did me.
Jack
God's Sovereignty
by Alan Burns
Part One
"GOD over all." Here is another gentle emphasis on the divine supremacy. First we have had a picture of what Paul would have done if he had been running things. He would willingly be accursed for Israel. Now the gentle impetus of the inspiring Spirit carries his vision to the fact that it is God who is running the universe, and if he once was willing to be accursed, he now wills that God should be blessed. God's plan and purpose was more perfect than his. He who was over all was able, because He was over ALL, to turn Israel's failure into His own success. If He was over all then there could be no such thing as failure from His standpoint. If He was over all then even Israel's failure to respond to this eightfold blessing was part of His purpose. If He was over all He who allowed Israel to stumble was able to raise them up again in His own likeness.
But the ground of His praise is not in the present but in the future. If it were merely in the present it would have been "God over all be blessed." The ground of praise lies in futurity "in the ages." It is as if Paul says, "We look at the present and see failure. We look at Israel and see gloom. But we look on and we see the ages, and up and see God over all, and gloom becomes glory and the thought of curse is changed into tribute of blessing." Much of the "vision" that we read of in current theology is the vision of a cross-eyed man. Orthodoxy, as it exists today, cannot help but make us squint. So we have, been trained to view creation as God's grand experiment. An experimenting God! But this loathsome thought is nursed in the bosom of theological culture, and we who have imbibed its virus have therefore read this sixth verse as if it were a consoling reflection on the part of Paul that despite the failure of that experiment on Israel as a whole, it was not a total failure. "Not as implying that the word of God had altogether failed." If we hold this dishonoring idea we shall have an impression in our minds of God's relation to creation as like that of the owner of a worn out automobile--continually tinkering with it in order to make it go. We would suggest that the right way of reading this verse is "not as implying that the word of God has fallen at all." "And God said, light be, and light was." Genesis one gives us a graphic picture of the efficiency of the word of God in the world of matter. It is not less efficient in the world of mind. It never fails.
How this verse suggests to us the assurance of Isaiah 55: 11! If it has accomplished fully the purpose of God, then God never meant to save the nation, as a nation, at that time. If it had been sent forth to save them all, and had come back with but a little handful of souls, did it accomplish that which God pleased? You see it is the idea of the dilapidated auto again. But the Word of God has never been compelled to go to the garage for repairs!
In Abraham we have a concrete exhibition of Free-will and Sovereignty. As an Arminian he did the best he could: tried to help God out of His difficulty--and produced ISHMAEL! Free-will has filled the world with Ishmaels. When a Christian leaves his appointed sphere of simple witness, and takes a hand in politics to help repair the world, he is marrying Hagar. When he thinks he is called to victory instead of perpetual defeat; and when he thinks the puny might of man can effect what the power of God may alone accomplish--he is marrying Hagar. O beloved reader if "Jerusalem above is the mother of us all," is it not also true that Hagar has been the wife of us all, and Ishmael our offspring? Arminian "ability" was the father of Ishmael, but it took divine sovereignty to produce Isaac from that which approximated physical death.
How powerless the creature is is again emphasized by Paul in the eighth verse. "Children of the PROMISE." The law is a demand--"thou shalt." The Gospel is a promise--"I will." The law was given simply that it might turn us upside down and knock the Arminianism out of us. When it has done so, and when we have taken the law itself into the presence of God, asking Him in grace to turn its precepts into prophecies, its gloom is transmuted into glory. "Thou shalt have no other gods" is a dazzling forecast of that future day when Israel shall really know Jehovah.
And now Paul, still keeping in mind the unfailing potency of the Word which ever accomplishes the pleasure of the Almighty, defines the word of promise in relation to Isaac. "According to this season I WILL RETURN." While God is away, and a state of separateness exists, Hagar is taken and Ishmael born. Man makes a botch of things while God is away. Sin entered while God was away. The serpent spoke, Eve listened, and Adam fell while God was away. Sarah suggested, Abraham hearkened, and Ishmael was born while God was away. But--and this is the quintessence of the gospel, and the hope of Israel and mankind--"I will return."
"I will . . . and Sarah shall"--blessed mingling of promise and prophecy. But notice the wording "according to this season." I know not just what the allusion may be. It may be physical, but it probably transcends the merely physical. At the very least it suggests that there is a schedule according to which God acts, and He always acts according to schedule. Prophecy is God's time-table of history and God's trains are never late. There is a right time for God to act, and the ripe-time is the right-time. God never harvests the crop until it is ripe, and his harvests never rot ungathered in the field--"according to this season I will return."
In verses five and six Paul's allusion to the word of God was preceded with a reference to the ages--the hours on the dial- plate of Time. God's clock of the eons, in which the centuries are as moments, is never fast and never slow; nor does it strike outside the appointed hour. "In the fullness of time" Christ personal was born into the world (Gal.4:4). "In the fullness of the seasons" the world of redeemed creaturedom with Christ personal its appointed head will round out to maturity the proportions of Christ mystical--creation's goal. In the fullness of the seasons "God will return," and rehead the Universe in Christ (Eph.1:11.
Arminianism, however, is one of mankind's perpetual diseases, and so we find it thriving lustily in Abraham's descendants who had not learned Abraham's lesson in regard to Hagar. Verse 11 gives us "not of works" and Jacob evidences this. "Jacob have I loved." Why? Analyze him and his history, and find me some reason why you should love him; then analyze him again and tell me the reason why God should love him. Perfection cannot love imperfection: Righteousness cannot love unrighteousness. How then, and why, did God love Jacob who was neither right nor perfect? Here we are touching on the mystery of the gospel. Was Jacob's character so like God's that that was the reason of His love? Think then, if you can, that the God you bow the knee to is merely a Jacob drawn to the scale of the infinite! Well may you shudder at the thought.
The answer has really been given already in the case of Isaac "I will return and Sarah shall." God went away, and Jacob wriggled and plotted and planned, just as Abraham did, in relation to Hagar and Ishmael. God went away, and Jacob tried to help God along by buying the birthright. But God in effect said, "I will return...and Jacob shall."
Well may we contrast the divine promise in Genesis 28:12-15 with Jacob's in verses 20-22. Jacob's was a promise with an "if." God's contained no "if."--and if it had it would have been no promise to frail, erring Jacob. Look up Genesis 32 at your leisure and see what happened when God returned. Then Jacob came to an end of his Arminianism, and clung with a broken thigh to One who would give a blessing that could never be earned.
In Genesis 32 Jacob becomes Israel. In Romans 9 Israel has become Jacob again.
Part Two
"NOT OF WORKS." Not occasioned by effort, physical or mental. Not purchased by deed of hand or heart. Not to be won by a nod of the head or a movement of the will. Not conditioned by the taking of an attitude. Not subject to the saying of a word, or the thinking of a thought. Channelled thru the will, the emotions, the mind, if you like, but not conditioned by them. In God's economies these creature powers act as operating means, though none of them may ever be an effecting cause.
"Not of works"--good, bad, or indifferent. Not of attempt, effort, or intention. How can a deaf man "hear?" How can a paralyzed man "come?" How can a dead man "will?" Human sweat can never earn divine salvation. Human agony can never earn divine repose. Humanity cannot raise itself by tugging at its religious bootstraps.
"Not of works" would sour the sweetness of Heaven itself to a legal soul, and transform Paradise into a Hell to every Pharisee. Much rather would such an one spend an eternity lauding the excellence of one meritorious act of his own than a single moment in self-forgetful wonder at the marvels of the Omnipotent's handiwork! "Not of works" constitutes Heaven's highest glory to the humble soul. It adds melody to its music, and increases the rapture of its joys. If the glory of the Lord so fills the house that the priests may not stand to minister in the Presence, much less may the Pharisees strut and plume themselves where sinless angels veil their faces and adore.
"Where then does the action of my will come in?" Read it again (Rom.9:11). Note how it says nothing whatever of your thinking, your intending, your willing, or your purpose, but "that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works." "Oh, then it is a matter of what God wills?" Yes, now you have it. It is God's intention, God's will, and God's purpose, not yours at all. "Then it is not of me at all?" Read it once more, "not of works, but of Him that calleth." It is not "of him that listeneth," as if the "listening" to the call was a purely human thing entirely "free" and under no determination whatever. The calling includes the listening. The "will to listen" is "of Him that calleth." "He maketh the deaf to hear." Thus it is that when He works He at once places a negative between His working and all fancied human ability-- "not of works."
"Not of works . . . Jacob." That proves it, doesn't it? We have already considered the marvel of God's love to Jacob. We should not, however, be guilty of the grave error that has disgraced so much of our thought on this subject, by thinking that God went out of His way to specially hate Esau. Nor, on the other hand, should we imagine for a moment that He had to force Himself to love Jacob. Humanity does that. Deity never. There is no compulsion in His love. There is no venom in His hate. The simple difference between God's relation to Jacob and to Esau was that He looked upon Esau as He was, and He looked upon Jacob as He was to be. He regarded Jacob in the future tense, whereas for the time then being He chose to regard Esau in the present tense alone. It was not a mechanical love in the one case, and a mechanical hatred in the other. His love to Jacob and His hatred to Esau both flowed freely and naturally from the perfections of His Being. His love was not weakness, nor was His hatred wickedness. His love for Jacob, and His hatred for Esau were both of them exhibitions of His justice. He did not lower the laws of His righteousness in order to love Jacob, nor did He make them more drastic so that He might hate Esau the more intensely. He hated Esau because He was a loving God! Nor would He be a God of love except He hated everything that was not good for Esau, and as long as Esau, was allowed to cling to those hateful, hurtful things, so long did he thrust himself into the sphere in which God's anger burned. Love must hate all that which challenges its authority. And all this is really anticipated by Paul when he queries, "Is there unrighteousness with God?" "Far be it," cries the great apostle as he flings the base suggestion aside. "No, no," he would say, "He is righteous when He loves, He is righteous when He hates, in all that He does He is the God all holy. God may have hated Esau, but He did not make him hateful. This on the principle that while you have to grow roses, orchids, and other flowers of fragrant bloom, weeds grow themselves. No one has ever had the slightest trouble in growing weeds. But before God could love Jacob He had to do a lot of gardening.
Nor need we hesitate to recognize the fact that if it is not our listening but God's calling, not our working but God's willing, then why He should choose to give this one and not that the listening ear, or work His will in one and not another is an enigma which human reason is not able to solve, and which divine revelation does not offer to explain. So we are prepared for the way that Paul gives mere prying curiosity a stinging slap in the face. Nor, indeed, was this Paul's, but God's rebuff to mere idle questioning. Why I, should have been born in the nineteenth century and not in the first; why I should have been born in America and not in the wild mountains of Afghanistan; why I should have been nursed by a Christian mother instead of a cannibal one; these are alike the workings of that "purpose of God according to election." "It is not of him that willeth." I chose neither the twentieth century, the American continent, nor the Christian mother. I didn't will them. I didn't work for them. God willed them, and I'm here. The same God who wills generation wills regeneration; and my being in Christ is no more a matter of my willing than my being born in America is, or was, a matter of my choosing.
We should not think that any one moment of time can tell all that may be told of God. The full scroll of all the ages alone will suffice to reveal the eonian God. The volume of a solitary era can never reveal what takes the whole library of the eons to make plain. So if we read in an introductory chapter that God hated Esau, we learn in a later, fuller one, that He loved the world, and so He must have loved the man He hated. Though the waves may roar on its surface, the ocean is untroubled in its unfathomed depth. Nor could Esau, nor Pharoah, nor Nero, nor Judas work or will themselves out of that cosmic love, any more than they could either work or will themselves into it. God hates, but He is not hatred. He both loves, and is Love. We may attempt to state the difference between His love and His hatred thus: His hatred is dispensational, His love is eternal; His hatred is as temporary as is the sin that calls it forth, and on which it rests; His love is as eternal as the righteousness on which it feeds. Hatred is a passing phase: Love an eternal revelation. Jacob have I loved for ever, but Esau have I hated for a time.
But if Jacob was a vessel of mercy and Esau a vessel of wrath we have the same vivid contrast shown in God's word to Moses, and His message to Pharaoh. He speaks of mercy to the one, and of wrath to the other. Here Moses is the vessel of mercy and Pharaoh the vessel of wrath. What Moses willed is not of sufficient consequence to have passing mention in this fifteenth verse. Four times over God says "I will." "I will have mercy...I will have mercy; I will have compassion...I will have compassion." You can't squeeze man into it sideways. Its language is foolproof. It locks my willing and my listening outside. It evicts everything except myself as the passive, inert recipient of undiluted grace.
It would seem as if the main purpose of our institutions for training theologians was to impart an ability to dilute scriptures like the seventeenth verse with a stream of apology and equivocation. They cannot be said to justify their existence. But, theologians notwithstanding, let us note that God's will is just as prominent here as it is in the case of Moses. "For this cause I have raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, that my name might be declared." And the absolute control of the All-Ruler is shown by the kind of illustration chosen by Him to illustrate His supremacy in the sphere of will. As clay in the hand of a potter so is man in the purposes of his Maker. Does the illustration prove more than our creeds allow us to think, or teach? The solution of the difficulty is simple. Either cut out God's illustration, or man's creed. One must go.
But while we note the variety and difference that exists here, we should not overlook the fact that, vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy though they be, both vessels are made by the Potter "out of the same lump." Thus Esau and Jacob, one "loved" and the other "hated," were "out of the same lump." Moses before the throne, a servant of God, and Pharaoh upon the throne an enemy of God were, both of them, despite the differences that lay like yawning chasms between them, "out of the same lump." A certain unity lay back of, and beyond, the differences which were developed in the two kinds of vessel. How such a simple phrase can puncture the bombast of human pride!
In the verses that follow, where the contrasting divisions of the human race into Jew and Gentile, are referred to, it is well to remember that such distinctions can be traced back, past their differences, to a common source and a common humanity in Adam. Both Jew and Gentile, though one be nationally a vessel of mercy and the other a vessel of wrath, are ultimately "out of the same lump." And not only so but the vessels of wrath at one time become vessels of mercy at another; and those who were vessels of mercy then become vessels of wrath now. This seems to be purposely shown in the fact that whereas in chapter nine the Gentile Pharaoh's heart is hardened, in chapter eleven (v.25) the position is reversed and while the Gentiles become vessels of mercy it is now Israel's lot to be "hardened." That God's final purpose in His universal pottery is not to make some "vessels of mercy" and some "vessels of wrath" is clear in 11:32 where His declared will is not to have mercy on some but on ALL.
In chapter ten (v.12) Paul reverts, it would seem, to the same thought. All national and moral difference between Jew and Gentile is brushed aside. "For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek." Why? Because they are "out of the same lump." That, too, is the lesson of this epistle's earlier chapters where, as regards sin, as here in regard to grace, the same phrase summarizes the historical lessons of racial degradation.
"There is no difference" (Rom.3:22). Man is levelled as concerns both guilt and grace. Social class, intellectual attainment, and national distinction are alike annihilated by the "no difference" of holy writ. The very figure of the clay from which the potter molds his vessels suggests to us the truth of man's earthly origin. "Dust thou art." Potter's mold! Yes, and in that handful of red earth which the mighty Potter moulded into human form, in that "same lump" lay, dormant and potential, the myriad varieties of saint and sinner alike. Moses and Samuel and David the king were there. There also Isaiah, Daniel and Jeremiah. There the Twelve, with the heroes and martyrs of the early church. The fools and the philosophers of all earthly time were there. The heroes and the cowards, the noble and the base, monks and martyrs, pirates and priests lay waiting the moment when they would be molded into the part they were destined to play in the drama of the ages.
And thus is there "no difference." But if all have come "out of the same lump," this involves the added thought that the vessels, however much they differ, are all made by the same Master Potter. "For the SAME LORD over all is rich unto all that call upon Him." The Potter is the Lord of the Clay. At least in Scripture He is; but in theology the clay is the lord of the Potter, if indeed it needs a Potter at all when it becomes what it wills and wishes to become! The vessels are out of "the same lump," and they have the "same Lord." Glory to His Name!
Is not this idea also in the background of chapter eleven? There we have two trees; one "good" and the other "wild;" one a "tree of mercy" and the other a "tree of wrath;" nevertheless, as both vessels are out of the same lump so also are both trees, despite their difference, olive trees. One is a "good" olive tree which we presume, like all good olives, has become so through cultivation; the other has simply been left to itself. So was Israel in Egypt no different physically, morally or spiritually from their Egyptian masters, and we can find as little reason for loving whining, murmuring, and rebellious Israel, as we can for loving their father Jacob in an earlier day. But God put Israel under "cultivation." This was the Master Gardener's pleasure as making one vessel a vessel of mercy was the pleasure of the Master Potter.
Just one more scripture in the eleventh chapter which reminds us of the Potter in the ninth. "For if the firstfruits be holy so ALSO IS THE LUMP." Not some of the lump but "THE LUMP." Vessels of wrath do not constitute the "firstfruits." Pharaoh is not a specimen of the art of God. "Christ the firstfruits." Is He holy? Then "if the firstfruit be holy, the lump also is holy." But did He enter into and become part of that same lump?" "As the children are partakers of flesh and blood he also himself took part of the same." The art of the Master Potter is shown in the firstfruits Christ, and in Him is exhibited the goal and the destiny of the human race.
Beyond the mystery of "the lump," we have the still deeper mystery and truth of man's origin as sketched in that miniature Bible of Romans 11:36. "Out of the same lump" may humble us in the dust. "Out of the same God"--we bow in adoration before our heavenly Source. We are not merely one with the clay, one with our fellow-creatures that the same Artist-Lord has formed from the same material as ourselves but--surpassing wonder of wonders--we are one with the heavenly Potter Himself.
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One of the most overlooked and most important of all scriptures in the Bible tells us of the state we were created in. This state works all the way from Eve's enticement to the very ends of my self and your self. All our doings were foreordained by God and try as you will, He knew before hand the path you would take and thus He made provision beforehand. What a mighty God we serve!Rom 8:20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
Some translations render this thought "the creature was made subject to futility"
"How great is our futility/vanity," you might ask
My friend it is total and this is confirmed with God's prescription even before the "creature was made." Before there was even man, Christ was crucified that He might lift us from our futile state. Before their was a problem there was a solution. Such are the ways of our magnificent God.
Rev 13:8 ........the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
We all must come to see the vanity of our ways and our view of our futility is only as great as our view of His omnipotence. Eventually we will come to see ourseves as naught and Christ as All. Such is the path of each man, each in his own order.
Have you failed in bearing your cross? Surely you have and if you have not, you have not born it at all, for even Christ fell beneath it. Brother's and sisters, cross-bearing ends in nakedness ...... not a self-disrobing .....not a nakedness of our own choosing, but a nakedness brought by life's challenges and at the hands of others. We shall be stripped by nature and by our fellow human beings and put on display for the world's scorn. Jesus Christ is our pattern and to name ourselves Christian is to walk with and in Him. The organized church for the most part soft peddles our salvation but I dare say the first century believers knew the cost and so shall we that truly know Him.
We will suffer and we will be blessed in this life. We will suffer and be blessed by life's occurrences and even at the hands of others and all that comes our way is sovereignly directed that you and I might be made perfect through His grace. All is to bring you and I to nought that Christ will reign as the All in All. Oh yes, we must fall and suffer to see our weakness .............. "when we are weak He is strong." Yet some (and I have been there and still am on occasion) still want to lend our strength to carry that which cannot be carried ........ only One could carry it and He was and is God come in the flesh! And Glory Be! ......... today God through Christ has come in you and me!
Those are a few of my thoughts on God's sovereignty and let me also say that I was excited the other day to discover an author and teacher that carried this same message into the early part of the last century. This by Allan Burns is one of the most wonderful writings I have ever read on the subject, both for it's beauty of language and profoundness of content. I pray it blesses and changes you, as it did me.
Jack
God's Sovereignty
by Alan Burns
Part One
"GOD over all." Here is another gentle emphasis on the divine supremacy. First we have had a picture of what Paul would have done if he had been running things. He would willingly be accursed for Israel. Now the gentle impetus of the inspiring Spirit carries his vision to the fact that it is God who is running the universe, and if he once was willing to be accursed, he now wills that God should be blessed. God's plan and purpose was more perfect than his. He who was over all was able, because He was over ALL, to turn Israel's failure into His own success. If He was over all then there could be no such thing as failure from His standpoint. If He was over all then even Israel's failure to respond to this eightfold blessing was part of His purpose. If He was over all He who allowed Israel to stumble was able to raise them up again in His own likeness.
But the ground of His praise is not in the present but in the future. If it were merely in the present it would have been "God over all be blessed." The ground of praise lies in futurity "in the ages." It is as if Paul says, "We look at the present and see failure. We look at Israel and see gloom. But we look on and we see the ages, and up and see God over all, and gloom becomes glory and the thought of curse is changed into tribute of blessing." Much of the "vision" that we read of in current theology is the vision of a cross-eyed man. Orthodoxy, as it exists today, cannot help but make us squint. So we have, been trained to view creation as God's grand experiment. An experimenting God! But this loathsome thought is nursed in the bosom of theological culture, and we who have imbibed its virus have therefore read this sixth verse as if it were a consoling reflection on the part of Paul that despite the failure of that experiment on Israel as a whole, it was not a total failure. "Not as implying that the word of God had altogether failed." If we hold this dishonoring idea we shall have an impression in our minds of God's relation to creation as like that of the owner of a worn out automobile--continually tinkering with it in order to make it go. We would suggest that the right way of reading this verse is "not as implying that the word of God has fallen at all." "And God said, light be, and light was." Genesis one gives us a graphic picture of the efficiency of the word of God in the world of matter. It is not less efficient in the world of mind. It never fails.
How this verse suggests to us the assurance of Isaiah 55: 11! If it has accomplished fully the purpose of God, then God never meant to save the nation, as a nation, at that time. If it had been sent forth to save them all, and had come back with but a little handful of souls, did it accomplish that which God pleased? You see it is the idea of the dilapidated auto again. But the Word of God has never been compelled to go to the garage for repairs!
In Abraham we have a concrete exhibition of Free-will and Sovereignty. As an Arminian he did the best he could: tried to help God out of His difficulty--and produced ISHMAEL! Free-will has filled the world with Ishmaels. When a Christian leaves his appointed sphere of simple witness, and takes a hand in politics to help repair the world, he is marrying Hagar. When he thinks he is called to victory instead of perpetual defeat; and when he thinks the puny might of man can effect what the power of God may alone accomplish--he is marrying Hagar. O beloved reader if "Jerusalem above is the mother of us all," is it not also true that Hagar has been the wife of us all, and Ishmael our offspring? Arminian "ability" was the father of Ishmael, but it took divine sovereignty to produce Isaac from that which approximated physical death.
How powerless the creature is is again emphasized by Paul in the eighth verse. "Children of the PROMISE." The law is a demand--"thou shalt." The Gospel is a promise--"I will." The law was given simply that it might turn us upside down and knock the Arminianism out of us. When it has done so, and when we have taken the law itself into the presence of God, asking Him in grace to turn its precepts into prophecies, its gloom is transmuted into glory. "Thou shalt have no other gods" is a dazzling forecast of that future day when Israel shall really know Jehovah.
And now Paul, still keeping in mind the unfailing potency of the Word which ever accomplishes the pleasure of the Almighty, defines the word of promise in relation to Isaac. "According to this season I WILL RETURN." While God is away, and a state of separateness exists, Hagar is taken and Ishmael born. Man makes a botch of things while God is away. Sin entered while God was away. The serpent spoke, Eve listened, and Adam fell while God was away. Sarah suggested, Abraham hearkened, and Ishmael was born while God was away. But--and this is the quintessence of the gospel, and the hope of Israel and mankind--"I will return."
"I will . . . and Sarah shall"--blessed mingling of promise and prophecy. But notice the wording "according to this season." I know not just what the allusion may be. It may be physical, but it probably transcends the merely physical. At the very least it suggests that there is a schedule according to which God acts, and He always acts according to schedule. Prophecy is God's time-table of history and God's trains are never late. There is a right time for God to act, and the ripe-time is the right-time. God never harvests the crop until it is ripe, and his harvests never rot ungathered in the field--"according to this season I will return."
In verses five and six Paul's allusion to the word of God was preceded with a reference to the ages--the hours on the dial- plate of Time. God's clock of the eons, in which the centuries are as moments, is never fast and never slow; nor does it strike outside the appointed hour. "In the fullness of time" Christ personal was born into the world (Gal.4:4). "In the fullness of the seasons" the world of redeemed creaturedom with Christ personal its appointed head will round out to maturity the proportions of Christ mystical--creation's goal. In the fullness of the seasons "God will return," and rehead the Universe in Christ (Eph.1:11.
Arminianism, however, is one of mankind's perpetual diseases, and so we find it thriving lustily in Abraham's descendants who had not learned Abraham's lesson in regard to Hagar. Verse 11 gives us "not of works" and Jacob evidences this. "Jacob have I loved." Why? Analyze him and his history, and find me some reason why you should love him; then analyze him again and tell me the reason why God should love him. Perfection cannot love imperfection: Righteousness cannot love unrighteousness. How then, and why, did God love Jacob who was neither right nor perfect? Here we are touching on the mystery of the gospel. Was Jacob's character so like God's that that was the reason of His love? Think then, if you can, that the God you bow the knee to is merely a Jacob drawn to the scale of the infinite! Well may you shudder at the thought.
The answer has really been given already in the case of Isaac "I will return and Sarah shall." God went away, and Jacob wriggled and plotted and planned, just as Abraham did, in relation to Hagar and Ishmael. God went away, and Jacob tried to help God along by buying the birthright. But God in effect said, "I will return...and Jacob shall."
Well may we contrast the divine promise in Genesis 28:12-15 with Jacob's in verses 20-22. Jacob's was a promise with an "if." God's contained no "if."--and if it had it would have been no promise to frail, erring Jacob. Look up Genesis 32 at your leisure and see what happened when God returned. Then Jacob came to an end of his Arminianism, and clung with a broken thigh to One who would give a blessing that could never be earned.
In Genesis 32 Jacob becomes Israel. In Romans 9 Israel has become Jacob again.
Part Two
"NOT OF WORKS." Not occasioned by effort, physical or mental. Not purchased by deed of hand or heart. Not to be won by a nod of the head or a movement of the will. Not conditioned by the taking of an attitude. Not subject to the saying of a word, or the thinking of a thought. Channelled thru the will, the emotions, the mind, if you like, but not conditioned by them. In God's economies these creature powers act as operating means, though none of them may ever be an effecting cause.
"Not of works"--good, bad, or indifferent. Not of attempt, effort, or intention. How can a deaf man "hear?" How can a paralyzed man "come?" How can a dead man "will?" Human sweat can never earn divine salvation. Human agony can never earn divine repose. Humanity cannot raise itself by tugging at its religious bootstraps.
"Not of works" would sour the sweetness of Heaven itself to a legal soul, and transform Paradise into a Hell to every Pharisee. Much rather would such an one spend an eternity lauding the excellence of one meritorious act of his own than a single moment in self-forgetful wonder at the marvels of the Omnipotent's handiwork! "Not of works" constitutes Heaven's highest glory to the humble soul. It adds melody to its music, and increases the rapture of its joys. If the glory of the Lord so fills the house that the priests may not stand to minister in the Presence, much less may the Pharisees strut and plume themselves where sinless angels veil their faces and adore.
"Where then does the action of my will come in?" Read it again (Rom.9:11). Note how it says nothing whatever of your thinking, your intending, your willing, or your purpose, but "that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works." "Oh, then it is a matter of what God wills?" Yes, now you have it. It is God's intention, God's will, and God's purpose, not yours at all. "Then it is not of me at all?" Read it once more, "not of works, but of Him that calleth." It is not "of him that listeneth," as if the "listening" to the call was a purely human thing entirely "free" and under no determination whatever. The calling includes the listening. The "will to listen" is "of Him that calleth." "He maketh the deaf to hear." Thus it is that when He works He at once places a negative between His working and all fancied human ability-- "not of works."
"Not of works . . . Jacob." That proves it, doesn't it? We have already considered the marvel of God's love to Jacob. We should not, however, be guilty of the grave error that has disgraced so much of our thought on this subject, by thinking that God went out of His way to specially hate Esau. Nor, on the other hand, should we imagine for a moment that He had to force Himself to love Jacob. Humanity does that. Deity never. There is no compulsion in His love. There is no venom in His hate. The simple difference between God's relation to Jacob and to Esau was that He looked upon Esau as He was, and He looked upon Jacob as He was to be. He regarded Jacob in the future tense, whereas for the time then being He chose to regard Esau in the present tense alone. It was not a mechanical love in the one case, and a mechanical hatred in the other. His love to Jacob and His hatred to Esau both flowed freely and naturally from the perfections of His Being. His love was not weakness, nor was His hatred wickedness. His love for Jacob, and His hatred for Esau were both of them exhibitions of His justice. He did not lower the laws of His righteousness in order to love Jacob, nor did He make them more drastic so that He might hate Esau the more intensely. He hated Esau because He was a loving God! Nor would He be a God of love except He hated everything that was not good for Esau, and as long as Esau, was allowed to cling to those hateful, hurtful things, so long did he thrust himself into the sphere in which God's anger burned. Love must hate all that which challenges its authority. And all this is really anticipated by Paul when he queries, "Is there unrighteousness with God?" "Far be it," cries the great apostle as he flings the base suggestion aside. "No, no," he would say, "He is righteous when He loves, He is righteous when He hates, in all that He does He is the God all holy. God may have hated Esau, but He did not make him hateful. This on the principle that while you have to grow roses, orchids, and other flowers of fragrant bloom, weeds grow themselves. No one has ever had the slightest trouble in growing weeds. But before God could love Jacob He had to do a lot of gardening.
Nor need we hesitate to recognize the fact that if it is not our listening but God's calling, not our working but God's willing, then why He should choose to give this one and not that the listening ear, or work His will in one and not another is an enigma which human reason is not able to solve, and which divine revelation does not offer to explain. So we are prepared for the way that Paul gives mere prying curiosity a stinging slap in the face. Nor, indeed, was this Paul's, but God's rebuff to mere idle questioning. Why I, should have been born in the nineteenth century and not in the first; why I should have been born in America and not in the wild mountains of Afghanistan; why I should have been nursed by a Christian mother instead of a cannibal one; these are alike the workings of that "purpose of God according to election." "It is not of him that willeth." I chose neither the twentieth century, the American continent, nor the Christian mother. I didn't will them. I didn't work for them. God willed them, and I'm here. The same God who wills generation wills regeneration; and my being in Christ is no more a matter of my willing than my being born in America is, or was, a matter of my choosing.
We should not think that any one moment of time can tell all that may be told of God. The full scroll of all the ages alone will suffice to reveal the eonian God. The volume of a solitary era can never reveal what takes the whole library of the eons to make plain. So if we read in an introductory chapter that God hated Esau, we learn in a later, fuller one, that He loved the world, and so He must have loved the man He hated. Though the waves may roar on its surface, the ocean is untroubled in its unfathomed depth. Nor could Esau, nor Pharoah, nor Nero, nor Judas work or will themselves out of that cosmic love, any more than they could either work or will themselves into it. God hates, but He is not hatred. He both loves, and is Love. We may attempt to state the difference between His love and His hatred thus: His hatred is dispensational, His love is eternal; His hatred is as temporary as is the sin that calls it forth, and on which it rests; His love is as eternal as the righteousness on which it feeds. Hatred is a passing phase: Love an eternal revelation. Jacob have I loved for ever, but Esau have I hated for a time.
But if Jacob was a vessel of mercy and Esau a vessel of wrath we have the same vivid contrast shown in God's word to Moses, and His message to Pharaoh. He speaks of mercy to the one, and of wrath to the other. Here Moses is the vessel of mercy and Pharaoh the vessel of wrath. What Moses willed is not of sufficient consequence to have passing mention in this fifteenth verse. Four times over God says "I will." "I will have mercy...I will have mercy; I will have compassion...I will have compassion." You can't squeeze man into it sideways. Its language is foolproof. It locks my willing and my listening outside. It evicts everything except myself as the passive, inert recipient of undiluted grace.
It would seem as if the main purpose of our institutions for training theologians was to impart an ability to dilute scriptures like the seventeenth verse with a stream of apology and equivocation. They cannot be said to justify their existence. But, theologians notwithstanding, let us note that God's will is just as prominent here as it is in the case of Moses. "For this cause I have raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, that my name might be declared." And the absolute control of the All-Ruler is shown by the kind of illustration chosen by Him to illustrate His supremacy in the sphere of will. As clay in the hand of a potter so is man in the purposes of his Maker. Does the illustration prove more than our creeds allow us to think, or teach? The solution of the difficulty is simple. Either cut out God's illustration, or man's creed. One must go.
But while we note the variety and difference that exists here, we should not overlook the fact that, vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy though they be, both vessels are made by the Potter "out of the same lump." Thus Esau and Jacob, one "loved" and the other "hated," were "out of the same lump." Moses before the throne, a servant of God, and Pharaoh upon the throne an enemy of God were, both of them, despite the differences that lay like yawning chasms between them, "out of the same lump." A certain unity lay back of, and beyond, the differences which were developed in the two kinds of vessel. How such a simple phrase can puncture the bombast of human pride!
In the verses that follow, where the contrasting divisions of the human race into Jew and Gentile, are referred to, it is well to remember that such distinctions can be traced back, past their differences, to a common source and a common humanity in Adam. Both Jew and Gentile, though one be nationally a vessel of mercy and the other a vessel of wrath, are ultimately "out of the same lump." And not only so but the vessels of wrath at one time become vessels of mercy at another; and those who were vessels of mercy then become vessels of wrath now. This seems to be purposely shown in the fact that whereas in chapter nine the Gentile Pharaoh's heart is hardened, in chapter eleven (v.25) the position is reversed and while the Gentiles become vessels of mercy it is now Israel's lot to be "hardened." That God's final purpose in His universal pottery is not to make some "vessels of mercy" and some "vessels of wrath" is clear in 11:32 where His declared will is not to have mercy on some but on ALL.
In chapter ten (v.12) Paul reverts, it would seem, to the same thought. All national and moral difference between Jew and Gentile is brushed aside. "For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek." Why? Because they are "out of the same lump." That, too, is the lesson of this epistle's earlier chapters where, as regards sin, as here in regard to grace, the same phrase summarizes the historical lessons of racial degradation.
"There is no difference" (Rom.3:22). Man is levelled as concerns both guilt and grace. Social class, intellectual attainment, and national distinction are alike annihilated by the "no difference" of holy writ. The very figure of the clay from which the potter molds his vessels suggests to us the truth of man's earthly origin. "Dust thou art." Potter's mold! Yes, and in that handful of red earth which the mighty Potter moulded into human form, in that "same lump" lay, dormant and potential, the myriad varieties of saint and sinner alike. Moses and Samuel and David the king were there. There also Isaiah, Daniel and Jeremiah. There the Twelve, with the heroes and martyrs of the early church. The fools and the philosophers of all earthly time were there. The heroes and the cowards, the noble and the base, monks and martyrs, pirates and priests lay waiting the moment when they would be molded into the part they were destined to play in the drama of the ages.
And thus is there "no difference." But if all have come "out of the same lump," this involves the added thought that the vessels, however much they differ, are all made by the same Master Potter. "For the SAME LORD over all is rich unto all that call upon Him." The Potter is the Lord of the Clay. At least in Scripture He is; but in theology the clay is the lord of the Potter, if indeed it needs a Potter at all when it becomes what it wills and wishes to become! The vessels are out of "the same lump," and they have the "same Lord." Glory to His Name!
Is not this idea also in the background of chapter eleven? There we have two trees; one "good" and the other "wild;" one a "tree of mercy" and the other a "tree of wrath;" nevertheless, as both vessels are out of the same lump so also are both trees, despite their difference, olive trees. One is a "good" olive tree which we presume, like all good olives, has become so through cultivation; the other has simply been left to itself. So was Israel in Egypt no different physically, morally or spiritually from their Egyptian masters, and we can find as little reason for loving whining, murmuring, and rebellious Israel, as we can for loving their father Jacob in an earlier day. But God put Israel under "cultivation." This was the Master Gardener's pleasure as making one vessel a vessel of mercy was the pleasure of the Master Potter.
Just one more scripture in the eleventh chapter which reminds us of the Potter in the ninth. "For if the firstfruits be holy so ALSO IS THE LUMP." Not some of the lump but "THE LUMP." Vessels of wrath do not constitute the "firstfruits." Pharaoh is not a specimen of the art of God. "Christ the firstfruits." Is He holy? Then "if the firstfruit be holy, the lump also is holy." But did He enter into and become part of that same lump?" "As the children are partakers of flesh and blood he also himself took part of the same." The art of the Master Potter is shown in the firstfruits Christ, and in Him is exhibited the goal and the destiny of the human race.
Beyond the mystery of "the lump," we have the still deeper mystery and truth of man's origin as sketched in that miniature Bible of Romans 11:36. "Out of the same lump" may humble us in the dust. "Out of the same God"--we bow in adoration before our heavenly Source. We are not merely one with the clay, one with our fellow-creatures that the same Artist-Lord has formed from the same material as ourselves but--surpassing wonder of wonders--we are one with the heavenly Potter Himself.
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