The Zeal of the Lord # 9

The Zeal of the Lord # 9

The Path to Fullness, continued

It is not, in the first place, a case of how much we see. We may be incapable of comprehending, apprehending, or understanding all the truth that we hear, all that is brought to us in the way of teaching. If we have thought it to be necessary for us to understand everything before we can come into the Lord's fullness, we have made a mistake, because, in the first instance, it is not how much we see that is basic to heavenly fullness, it is how much we mean. God knows our meaning. God knows how utter we are. God knows exactly the measure of our abandonment to go on, and He takes us up on that ground. It is not the measure of our understanding of truth but the measure of our utterness for God that gives Him the opportunity of taking us on to increasing fullness in Christ.

Let us remember that God is toward us what we are toward Him. "With the pure Thou wilt show Thyself pure; and with the perverse Thou wilt show Thyself froward" (Psalm 18:26). If we are utter toward the Lord, the Lord will be utter toward us. If we are half-hearted toward Him, we shall find that the Lord Himself will be limited to our measure. He cannot be other with us; He cannot be more for us. He cannot show more to us, or lead us into more than we are really purposing by His grace to come into.

Thus in the case of Elisha, though it is his later life that represents heavenly fullness, he came to it as being a man who had always meant business with God. Our first glimpse of Elisha, before ever he came into association with Elijah, shows him to be such a man. Elijah was passing by, and he saw Elisha the son of Shaphat ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen. Here was a man who had all his resources in the field. He had brought out into action, into operation, all that he had at his command. He was putting everything into his business. Why should the Holy Spirit record that? Surely He is not interested in merely embellishing narratives with interesting details. This man was ploughing, and he was ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen. The Holy Spirit takes account of what sort of a man he is, and of whether he means business or not. Elisha was found to be such a man, a man of purpose who put all that he had into commission. God met him, and found that to be a suitable avenue for His self-expression in that man's life spiritually in services of another kind. So we first find this man ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen, and then later in another connection refusing to be turned aside, but persisting right up to the point where he could go no further. He was a man who went as far as he possibly could.

Zeal for the Lord, devotion, is a great factor. Elisha's reality was tested. The Lord always puts our declarations to the test. He subjects them to test after test, tries us by what we say, to see if we are really in earnest. Another rebuff comes, another set back, another check, another discouragement, another experience which seems to say that the Lord does not want us. It may be a strange way of putting things, but I believe that the Lord sometimes brings us to the place where we have to take the attitude that we will not be put off by Him. Perhaps you do not understand that language. I can put it in another way. We sometimes have to come to the position where we say, Well, we are going on, whatever the appearance may be; and it may even seem that the Lord is discouraging us and working against us. The enemy may interpret things in that way, and, were we to yield to things as we find them, to the circumstances, to the experiences, we should simply give up and cease to go on. At such times we have to say in cold deliberateness, without anything to encourage, without any inspiration, without anything at all to support us, We are going on! God allows us to come to positions like that, and tests us in that way. When the Lord gets men and women who, despite every kind of discouragement, every lack of encouragement, even from the Lord Himself for the time being, say, Well, in spite of all, we are going on, He has something there that gives Him an opportunity, and such lives will come into His greater fullnesses.

We mark then these things which lead to fullness. It is most interesting to note the inner history of the spiritual life that this story reveals, and the lessons are not difficult to read. When Elisha had been subjected to testing as to his reality, as to whether he were really in earnest, and had shown himself approved, then we are able to see that these occasions of his testing themselves represent the advancing stages of fullness toward final fullness. The very places mentioned in this journey indicate heavenly fullness. We look at them briefly, to get the main thought connected with them.

The Meaning of Gilgal

You notice, in the first place, that they started from Gilgal. We are not told that they came to Gilgal, but it appears rather that they had their residence there. Then, further, it is stated that Elijah went with Elisha, not that Elisha went with Elijah. It is a good thing to remember that the initiative is with the Lord. From the Lord's side the position as a start is made may be thus expressed: Now, you come with Me! Thereafter it is a following of the Lord, a going on with Him. It is always a means of great strength to be able to point to the fact that it was the Lord Who initiated the work - "...He which began a good work in you will perfect it ..." (Phil. 1:6). "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to work ..." (Phil. 2:13). What He works in us we have to work out; there comes the Elisha side, the following.

Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal. That was their starting point, and perhaps their place of residence. Maybe you know the meaning of Gilgal. Gilgal has two aspects. Firstly, it stands for the setting aside of the flesh. Turning again to the Book of Joshua, we see that at Gilgal the new generation which had grown up on the wilderness was circumcised. There, in a typical way, the flesh was set aside, in order that they might come into the land and possess its fullness. The very first step toward heavenly fullness is the setting aside of the flesh. This speaks of the separating words of the Cross, the cutting off of the whole body of the flesh, the SELF-LIFE.

I prefer the use of the term "the self-life," because when we talk about the flesh, many people have no other thought but of all that wicked, evil, base sort of thing that everyone as evil, and cannot be tolerated. Those ideas are associated with the term "the flesh." But what is the flesh? The comprehensive definition of the flesh is the self-life, and if you know all the aspects of the self-life, you know a great deal! Who can comprehend the self-life? It comprises self-will, self-energy, self-glory; there is no end to the catalogue once we attempt to define.

The will of the flesh, which is the will of ourselves as a part of the old creation, stands in the way of heavenly fullness. The more serious aspect of this, in the light of what the Lord is saying to us about His rights and His interests, is that self-life in any form destroys the testimony to what Christ is in heaven. Christ is in heaven because of what He is, because of the utter repudiation of the self-life in every way. He emptied Himself, humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death. He repudiated every suggestion to act from His own human life apart from the Father. Every evil offer made to Him, every temptation presented to Him which had in it the thought of serving Himself, His own interests, was immediately quenched. "All these things will I give thee..." said the devil pointing to the kingdoms of this world (Matt. 4:9). To have heeded the appeal at such a time, and from such a source, would have been a serving of Himself.

On that principle,self, in every form, and shape, and suggestion, was set aside in the interests of the Father. It was not mere aestheticism, as of one who was denying himself and being an aesthetic on the basis of other worldliness. No! He was positively living unto the interests of His Father - "...make not My Father's house a house of merchandise" (John 2:16). It was then that the disciples remembered that it was written, "The zeal of Thine house shall eat me up" (verse 17). On the ground of His complete triumph in thus setting aside all that could have been the expression of His own life, as apart from the Father, He is what He is in glory.

That is to have an expression here in the Church which is His Body, and in its individual members. But that testimony to what Christ is in glory is eclipsed, is hidden, is marred, when you or I are actuated by anything of the self-life. It is a searching thought. When we consult ourselves, what we would like or what we would not like, what we want or do not want; when in any matter we refer to our own feelings and consult our own inclinations in the presence of something that is of the Lord the testimony is spoiled in us personally, spoiled in our homes, and in any other direction where we are living with a self-interest of any kind. And it is only as we are brought to the place where we ourselves are ruled out that we perceive in what measure the Lord was seeking to work, while we were holding fast the ground in our own interests; consulting our own will, our own preference. In that realm heavenly fullness can never be ours. We shall be as the children of Israel were, limping from one side to the other, crippled, unsettled, restless, never coming to an established position, because this question of the Lord's interests has not been fully settled.

Gilgal is the place where that question is settled. The Cross has cut off the whole body of the flesh. Perhaps we do not know how selfish we are. We can only discover that the Cross. Most of us have a blind spot about ourselves, but at the Cross we shall discover our own hearts.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 10 - Gilgal And The World)