The Way
by T. Austin-Sparks
“But Saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, and asked of him letters to Damascus unto the synagogues, that if he found any that were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.”, (Acts 9:1,2)

“But when some were hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude, he departed from them.”, (Acts 19:9)

“And about that time there arose no small stir concerning the Way.”, (Acts 19:23)

“I persecuted this Way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women.”, (Acts 22:4)

“But this I confess unto thee, that after the Way which they call a sect, so serve I the God of our fathers, believing all things which are according to the law, and which are written in the prophets.”, (Acts 24:14)

“But Felix, having more exact knowledge concerning the Way, deferred...”, (Acts 24:22)

“The same following after Paul and us cried out, saying, These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim unto you the Way of salvation.”, (Acts 16:17)

“This man had been instructed in the Way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spake and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, knowing only the baptism of John: and he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the Way of God more accurately.”, (Acts 18:25,26)

“Enter ye in by the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many are they that enter in thereby. For narrow is the gate, and straitened the Way, that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it”, (Matt. 7:13,14)

It is very interesting, to say the least of it, to recognize that in New Testament times the Christian life and walk became resolved into a term like this, to be spoken of as “THE WAY.” It would seem strange in our ears, no doubt, if we heard people talking about us as “the People of the Way”, but that is evidently how it was then, and it would be interesting to know just how that came about; and I think we shall not be very far wrong if we come to an opinion about it. Evidently people in those days were very much like people today. They were given to summing things up in a terse, brief manner, and affixing labels.

You see, the very word “Christian” was their way of summing it all up. At times we have that word mentioned. “The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch”, (Acts 11:26). Then the Apostle says, “If a man suffer as a Christian...”, (1 Pet. 4:16). Clearly, it was outsiders who gave believers that name, and, as we know, it simply means ‘Christ-ones,’ and it was shortened into Christians; it was the world who coined that title for believers in the Lord Jesus. ‘They are Christ-ians!’

Evidently it was something like that that resulted in Christianity becoming known as the Way, but it was apparently the result of something they were always saying. They, or at least the chief men among the Apostles at the beginning — Peter, James, John — had heard the Lord Jesus say, “I AM THE WAY... no one cometh unto the Father but by Me”, (John 14:6); and they had gone out preaching to the world and proclaiming that Jesus was the Way and that there was no other way. So people had taken it up and said, These are the people of the Way. What an admission! Whether or not they meant it as a slight and said it with a sneer, what a lot there is in it for truth! "These Christ-ones are the people of the Way". And in both cases, whether it is Christ-ones or the Way, the result is that it is all bound up with, and inseparable from, the Lord Jesus. If we are right in surmising that that is where the phrase comes from — "I AM THE WAY", and these men had preached Jesus as the Way—then it comes right back to that — Christ-ones, people of Him WHO IS THE WAY; that is, not people who just have a way of their own, who take a way different from others, but people of a Person Who is the Way. It is the Person Who gives character to the Way. It is the Person Who makes the Way, it is the Person Who has pioneered that Way and blazed that trail. They are in the Way of the Person.

And do you not think that is probably why the Devil hated it so much? It is strange how many ways people can take with seeming success and without very much trouble. Think of all the ways that people take today, even religiously. You cannot cope with all the fantastic courses that people adopt. They go all their strange, peculiar ways — ways that you think no commonsense person would ever look at — but they go and they get crowds to follow them; and nobody bothers to oppose them. But here it is different. We come to that in a minute.

We are not going to say a great deal about the Way — what it came to mean so far as the Church and believers were concerned. We just look right on the surface of it, at one or two things that are very simple.

An Exclusive Way

First of all, seeing that it was the Way which was that of a Person, and not just a system of truth and doctrine, it was a very exclusive Way. There is a sense in which we can use that word safely and rightly. I think it was to that that the Lord referred when He said, “Narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it.” It is a very exclusive way. The Lord has an illustration for that, the illustration of the camel and the needle’s eye, the name for the little gate at the side of the main entrance to the city. A merchant has arrived with his camel after sundown, and the gates are closed always at dusk. Somehow he has to get in with his camel, and so, after a good deal of argument, the porter says, Well, if you can get your camel through that lych gate, you may come in, but I must not open the main gate. So the man strips his camel of everything—everything comes off and is left outside. Then he tells his camel to go down, and the man tugs and squeezes the camel through. The camel is stripped of everything and he is right down as low as he can get. Here the illustration about the Way means this. There are a lot of things that cannot come in, and you will never get in if you try to bring those things with you. You will be stripped of everything of your old world and your old life if you are coming into the Way. Was it not that that caused the offence to the man known as the rich young ruler? “Go, sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow Me.”, (Matt. 19:21). He went away grieved, for he had great possessions. It was simply the test of the “needle’s eye,” and he could not stand up to it. It is an exclusive way, and the Lord never hid the fact from anybody who was coming after Him. Except this and that and that, He said, ye cannot be My disciples. Yes, it is narrow. Well, that is only the world’s view of it. That is what the world says about the Christian way, the Christian life — it is “narrow.” That is how it is viewed from outside. They call Christians narrow-minded. Have we found the life narrow? Well, yes, lots of things have gone, but when you have got inside, what have you found? It is only narrow from that outside standpoint. It ought not to be narrow inside. We have missed something if the Christian life is a narrow, mean, poor, thin thing. We have missed its meaning. Oh, what a vastness, what a wealth, what a fulness we have entered into!

An Inclusive Way

Yes, it is exclusive in a sense, but it is inclusive in the Divine sense, from heaven’s standpoint. It is tremendous for those who really become children of the Way. While it was exclusive at a certain point, the entering of the gate, it has become inclusive when you are inside. The Lord really is not a debtor to any man. “Every one that hath left houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands, for My Name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold.”, (Matt. 19:29). I ask you, with all that it means on the side of difficulty and trial to be in the Way, would you go back to the other way, would you leave this Way? If you really would, well, I do not know what has happened to you. You really have not come to know the meaning of being in the Way, for it is a large, a full, a wealthy place. Oh yes, we do know all the testing, we do know what a lot has had to go; but oh, we would think more than twice before exchanging our present lot for the lot of those outside of the Way. Have we not had to sit down sometimes when things were getting a bit too much for us and the pressure was tempting us to think back—have we not sat down and said, Can I go back? Can I exchange this for the old life that I left? And every time it has been No, oh no! We cannot do it, it is unthinkable. There is in the Way, after all, a wonderful fulness. It is not all loss, there is a great deal of gain. The Thessalonians were people of the Way, they suffered the loss of all things; but read again the opening chapters of the two letters, and hear the Apostle speaking about the overflowing joy and the overflowing love which was amongst them. They suffered joyfully the spoiling of their goods. Why? Well, not just for the pleasure of being very Spartan, and enduring a lot of suffering for the sake of showing what tremendous grit they had. No! They found in the Way a greater compensation for all their loss.

A Contested Way

But, saying that, there is no doubt about it, it is a contested way. Strangely, all the passages in which the phrase occurs are passages relating to opposition. Paul is saying that he persecuted the Way, and the first mention of the Way is in connection with his persecuting. “...that if he found any that were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem .” He did not carry it out in Damascus, but he says later that he used to do that (Acts 22:4) — he threw men and women, bound, into prisons (note the plural). He had been on some other expeditions wherever he could track the Way. Several passages speak of how the Way was contested — as we said earlier, not simply because it was a new doctrine but because of WHO THE WAY WAS. You can be a Christian of sorts, you can bear the name of a Christian, you can have a kind of profession of Christianity and not know any of the persecution. It is the temptation of many to try and be Christians but to avoid the persecution bound up with it, and there are today a lot of Christians, so-called, who are not in the fight of the Way. They are evading it by some means, they are hiding what they are, they are not coming out into the open with it; but here you notice it was when the Way was out in the open it was so challenged, antagonized, contested. They were proclaiming JESUS AS THE WAY, and so they met the antagonism of the prince of this world through his subjects; and if we are really going to be true to the Way, which is only saying to be true to the Lord—to be loyal to our Master, not to hide where we stand, let it be out in the open — well, we are going to meet the conflict. We had better make up our minds about it. But there is our opportunity, and there is the Lord’s opportunity, and it works good all round. It makes for tremendous spiritual increase and growth. You look for the people who have grown spiritually and become strong, and you find that they are the people who have let it be known Whose they are and Whom they serve, and they have accepted the consequences of open and positive antagonism. They are the people who have grown. Look for the people who are small and weak spiritually, and you will find they are the people who are not right out in the open with their testimony. It works for our own spiritual increase and strengthening—the Lord sees to that. Then it gives the Lord the opportunity of finding out where there are those who are wanting the Way. There are a lot wanting the Way, but they will not find it until there is a lamp that shows the Way; and “Ye are the light of the world ”, (Matt. 5:14). If the Lord has us in a clear, open place, it gives Him the opportunity of discovering and getting hold of those who will come into the Way. That is gain. So it is so necessary for us to be right out in the open, letting it be known that we are of the Way — taking the consequences, but to very great gain all round. Yes, it is a contested way.

The Entrance To The Way

What is the entrance to the Way? How do we get into the Way? What is the gateway? It is the Cross and what the Cross means. It is there that the laying down of our lives with Christ takes place; it is there that the stripping of this world from us takes place; it is there that the all-inclusive meaning of the Way is faced and accepted. The Cross stands there and no one gets into the Way except by that Cross and what it means. If we want not only to get into the Way but to make good progress in the Way — not all the time to be coming to a halt, then getting on a little and another halt, making very jerky and irregular progress which is most unsatisfactory — if we want not only to get in but to go on and keep on going on, then let us recognize the fulness of the meaning of that Cross, that in that Way all questions are settled as to who is going to be Master and Lord. This is what the Lord was suggesting in principle when He said that if the Master treads the way, the servant must tread it too (John 15:20). We have it in a hymn— “It is the way the Master went, should not the servant tread it still?” But He introduced that suggestion. "I have gone this way, the way of an utterness of letting go. Satan offered Me all the kingdoms of this world and the glory thereof as a gift outright, and I said, No!" Satan will never offer that to you, he will only offer it to you in bits, fragments; he offered the whole to Christ. The Lord said, No, not a bit of it on your terms! He accepted the way of the Cross wholly and utterly. Well, you see what happened. It was not at all necessary for Him, for Himself, to go to the Cross. He was glorified on the Mount of Transfiguration. For Himself He could have gone right through at once. He only went through the Cross for us, not for Himself. The Cross means that this world is ruled out, set aside, and all its prizes, and its tinsel, its so-called glories, have nothing for us, we are utterly for the Lord. We are here on this earth, in this world, for the Lord, cost what it may in this life. Well, that is both the way in and the way on. If we are pausing, to count the cost and to discuss the terms: if we are like those disciples before they came to the place where the Cross to them was not the loss of all things but the gaining of all things: if we are saying, as one did, “Lo, we have left all, and followed Thee; what then shall we have?”, (Matt. 19:27): if there is anything of that we shall not get on very far. “What shall we have?” Rather must it be, when we have done all — “ We are unprofitable servants”, (Luke 17:10). Really, the Lord has not got very much out of us when we have done all. Well, the gate is the Cross, and it is just in the measure in which we accept what the Cross represents that we shall go on in the Way—and that is only saying in figurative language that only in that measure shall we come to the appreciation of the fulness of Christ, make spiritual progress and be of real value to Him as pioneers in the Way for others to come on. “Those of the Way.” Well, with all the cost and with all the contesting, may the Lord give us that glorying in our hearts — after all, we are people of the Way.

The Way Of Recovery
by T. Austin-Sparks
“David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave of Adullam: and when his brethren and all his father’s house heard it, they went down thither to him. And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.”, (1 Sam. 22:1,2; ASV)

“Now these are they that came to David to Ziklag, while he yet kept himself close because of Saul the son of Kish; and they were among the mighty men, his helpers in war.”, (1 Chron. 12:1)

“And these are the numbers of the heads of them that were armed for war, who came to David to Hebron, to turn the kingdom of Saul to him, according to the Word of the Lord.”, (1 Chron. 12:23)

Spiritual Weakness Must Be Made Manifest

This was a period during which Israel was particularly menaced by the Philistines. These latter were always the shadow over Israel’s life, and the instrument by means of which Israel’s weakness and helplessness were brought out and made manifest. The Lord usually has some particular thing by which a state or condition is revealed. It is not always recognizable as a state in itself; there has to be something that brings it out. Because of this or that, the real condition of things is manifested as it would not be apart from that instrument that the Lord uses for its uncovering. It becomes positive, rather than abstract, by reason of certain things. The Lord will, for instance, raise up a situation, an experience, a difficulty, a concrete challenge, and then the inability to meet it and deal with it shows that that particular thing—which in other circumstances, had things been different, would have counted for nothing and would have at once been conquered and subdued—has now become the Lord’s means of showing how bad the spiritual state is. The Lord has a way of doing that. When Israel came into right position and condition under David the Philistines did not count for anything, they lost all significance. But here they are very significant; they occupy a very dominant place; and that is only because of the spiritual state of the Lord’s people. So spiritual weakness is here made manifest by means of the Philistines.

We have to ask, Why was it that Israel was helpless before the Philistines? Why was it that their deplorable condition of weakness was manifested in the presence of the Philistines, who otherwise would not have signified anything? When you look closely for your answer, you find that it was because deep down there was so much in common between Israel and the Philistines. The Philistines are known to us by a certain epithet—the "uncircumcised Philistines". David used that phrase concerning Goliath of Gath (1 Sam. 17:36). Now when you look at Israel, that was really their spiritual state. They were uncircumcised in heart. They were called the Lord’s people, and traditionally they were such. They had the ordinances — even the ordinance of circumcision — but it was all outward. Paul draws that very distinct line of discrimination between the outward circumcision, which he calls the concision, and the inward circumcision of the heart. He says it is the latter that makes us Israelites in truth, not the former (Rom. 2:25–29). Here you find Israel in exactly that position — uncircumcised in heart. The fact that they said, “Make us a king... like all the nations”, (2 Sam. 8:5) showed that the thing which was common to the nations had come into their hearts. They wanted to be like the other nations. That is to say, the spirit of the world had come inside, and thus they knew nothing of what Paul called “the circumcision of Christ”, not “the putting away of the filth of the flesh”, (1 Pet. 3:21), but the putting away of the old man entirely. There was deep down in Israel something quite in common with the Philistines, and that being so, the fact had to be exposed; and the world exposed their weakness.

It is like that with a church, with a Christian community, or with Christendom, when it is really worldly in spirit, in principle, in method. It is the world that exposes their weakness and shows how helpless they are. The world, like the Philistines, laughs at them, and says, "You don’t count for anything, you are not to be taken seriously". The world laughs at the church or the Christian who in principle has that which is in common with itself, and the world can say "We can do your job better than you can". So we find that the world is very largely the instrument of exhibiting or exposing the weakness of Christians, simply because there is that common basis.

The Way Of Spiritual Strength

(a) A Life Of Faith In Separation Unto GOD

At that point in their history, when things were like that, David is introduced. Over against Saul, who is a type of the world principle in the Church, David is brought into view, and we have these three gatherings to David; and they are very significant in relation to what we have just been saying. David, then, represents separation unto God and a life of faith. Israel had said, “Make us a king... like all the nations”. "We want something visible to rest upon, something we can see and take account of with our senses, something tangible, something altogether contrary to the life of faith". The Lord said, “They have rejected Me, that I should not be king over them”, (1 Sam. 8:7). They turned from a life of faith. David comes in as God’s principle of faith calling for separation from the world principle, the world spirit, the world mentality. Then it is not long before David, having been quite clearly indicated and signalized by God as the one with whom God was and to whom He had committed Himself, is, by the sovereignty of God, put into a position which is going to be the testing situation for the people of God. He provides a supreme test as to whether these people really are going on with God, or going on with Saul; going on with heaven, or with earth; going on in the Spirit, or in the flesh. David becomes the test now of spirituality — real spirituality.

In the first place, we find him in the cave in the wilderness — that is, the place outside, spiritually outside, in rejection; the place apart from that worldly system which had captured the Lord’s people; apart from that merely traditional order of things which was only outward, in form and ordinances, but not a thing of the heart. David was put right outside of that in the wilderness, and of course he was repudiated by that whole official system, and it was positively against him — if possible, for his destruction. So that the very first thing that arose for the people of God was the question of their discernment, discernment as to where God really was — with Saul or with David — and as to where their deepest spiritual needs would be met. I think it is very unfortunate that the Hebrew word has been translated “discontented” in the text. It would have been far better to keep the marginal rendering in the text — “bitter of soul”. It has been made use of by a lot of people who speak disparagingly of a place as a "cave of Adullam", implying that it is the place of a lot of discontented and disgruntled people who cannot get on with anybody else. But to give it that kind of meaning is to sweep aside the whole spiritual significance of this. God has had to do this sort of thing again and again. When the Church has departed from a purely spiritual, heavenly position, a true life of separation unto Himself, it has been found that the majority were not ready for such a position. It has only been a minority who were ready for it, and then people have said of them, "Oh, that is a cave of Adullam, a lot of discontented people". No, they were bitter of soul, and unable to meet their spiritual liabilities; in debt because the provision for spiritual competency had been lost on account of something quite false having gained the position amongst the Lord’s people. That is quite a true position spiritually.

But here was David outside of that whole world system that had captured the Lord’s people, and it was a question of whether the Lord’s people could discern; and those that did discern went out to David to a place of faith.

(b) Union With Christ In Death

What I want to say here in the first place is that this position in the wilderness, and all that it involved for David and for those who went out to him, clearly and positively represents the believer’s union with Christ in death. These others have been glorying in this wonderful fellow Saul, glorying in this idea of their’s of a great kingdom. It was a worldly thing, according to the nations. Paul said, “Far be it from me to glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world .”, (Gal. 6:14). It is that union with Christ in death to the whole world spirit and system, to the whole world tendency that is constantly invading the Church, like the Philistines who came in again and again with their worldly principles, causing trouble and bringing the Lord’s people into a place where He could not go on with them nor commit Himself to them. Those who went out to David took a position outside of that, and represent the truly spiritual people who take their place in that aspect of the Cross which means death to that whole thing. David’s life was being sought, and those who joined him became fugitives with him and really, from one standpoint, it was a laying down of their life to the whole world. They lost their position and all their hopes in that kingdom. They laid down their life, and took all the risks bound up with associating with David.

(c) Union With Christ In Resurrection

The second passage, at the beginning of 1 Chronicles twelve, brings us to Ziklag. We will not stay to rehearse how David came into possession of the city, but here we find that in Ziklag there was another secession to David. What we do know about Ziklag is that while David and his men were away one day, the Amalekites made a raid on the city and captured everything, wives and children and all possessions, and then burned the city with fire and went off. When David and his men came back, they found everything gone or destroyed. They wept, it says, “until they had no more power to weep”. It was a very serious and critical situation. It was the death side in very truth. But then it says, “ David strengthened himself in the Lord his God”, and he inquired of the Lord whether he should pursue after the Amalekites, and the Lord said, "Yes, pursue". The Lord sovereignly facilitated his overtaking of the Amalekites, so that he recovered everything (1 Samuel 30:1–31).

This is another stage in true spiritual life and fulness. To me it corresponds to the Letter to the Romans. In the first chapters of that letter you find everything being lost. From the very first verses, you mark this movement to discover something that has been lost in Adam, and when you get to the end of chapter five, you have reached the point where everything is lost. Chapter six brings in the Cross, and from then onward you find everything is being recovered. Everything that was lost is recovered through the Cross. In chapter eight, you have a full recovery, and you find that the whole creation, which was subjected to vanity, is recovered. All that was lost through Adam’s sin has now been recovered, and this is the resurrection side of the Cross. The death always goes with it. The Lord never overlooks the death side—that in Adam, in the world under judgment, everything is lost. In the case of David we carry over from the wilderness to Ziklag on the death side, but then we take a further step here to the recovery of everything in resurrection. David strengthened himself in his God. The Lord said, “Pursue... overtake, and (thou) shalt without fail recover all”. That is the other side. There is resurrection union with the Lord Jesus as well as death union. It would not do for us to take the death position with Christ and leave it there; we must come on to the other side. Spiritual progress means the apprehending of Christ risen for the recovery of all that has been lost: and it has been recovered. It was a very full recovery.

(d) Union With Christ In The Heavenlies

Pass to the third passage, in the second part of 1 Chronicles twelve. “These are the numbers of the heads of them that were armed for war, who came to David to Hebron”. The third stage — Hebron. The name means League or Fellowship. It says of Hebron that it was a very ancient city. Its history lay right back in the mists of antiquity, as though outside of this world. This is a very advanced position spiritually. Where do we come to through death and resurrection? What is the next position? Surely it is in the heavenlies. The sovereignty of the Lord Jesus as enthroned now comes into view. It is here they make David king. The whole question of His heavenly exaltation and government as outside of this world comes before us when we come to Hebron. I think you see quite clearly what this means. We pass from "Romans" now into "Ephesians". It is “the heavenlies in Christ Jesus”. GOD “raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named”, (1:20,21). David is coming to the throne now, and there gathered to him many to turn again the kingdom to him — at Hebron. It is the Church in the heavenlies that, in type, we see here — the fellowship that is outside of this world, of a truly spiritual nature; union with Christ in ascension in the heavenlies where He is absolutely, unquestionably Lord. He is made King. He is “Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him That filleth all in all”, (Eph. 1:22,23). Well, here it is something more than an earthly society or institution, something more than a company of the Lord’s people like a congregation on the earth. It is that thing which is brought out from the antiquity of “before the foundation of the world”. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world”, (Eph. 1:4) — the Church of the eternal counsels of God. It is a heavenly position, a heavenly thing, a heavenly fellowship, which has broken its contact in spirit with this whole world system even as it is found in the Church.

And there we find at Hebron they had a very good time. Seven days they feasted, they ate and they drank, and they wanted to have another seven days. With anybody who tastes real, heavenly fellowship, there is no question of ‘What do you belong to, what denomination, sect, association?’ They have left all that behind. They have come into a realm where it is Christ as sole and absolute Lord. If you taste that sort of fellowship you want to go on. You are ready to excuse Peter for wanting to make three tabernacles! "Let us not go back to business, let us stay here forever!" That is how we ought to feel. We have, of course, to go back to our business, but what we are thinking of is not of a conference for seven days “in the heavenlies ” and then of our leaving our heavenly position and resuming the old earthly one. No! This is to be the constant consciousness of the life of the Lord’s people. You have to go back to business, but you can still be in the spiritual good of the heavenly fellowship of the Lord’s people, and you must stand for that.

The Way to Heavenly Fullness
by T. Austin-Sparks
Reading: 1 Kings 19:9-10; 2 Kings 19:29-31; Isaiah 59:17; John 2:14-17

The word we see to be common to those passages strikes the keynote for our present meditation: The Zeal of the Lord, or: The way to Heavenly Fullness. Heavenly fullness in a very real and special way is set before us in the life of Elisha. This fact will impress us every time we read that life, or anything in connection with it. From beginning to end, wherever Elisha is seen to come into a situation, the result is fullness, living fullness, fullness of life. That fullness is heavenly fullness because it came out from heaven, had its rise in heaven. It was when Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven, and his mantle fell upon Elisha, that Elisha's real life and ministry commenced. So that it was a heavenly fullness, and it is of this that his life speaks to us.

Elisha, then, was the outcome and fullness of Elijah. Elijah laid the foundation and provided the ground for Elisha's ministry, and in spiritual things Elijah indicates, therefore, the way, the basis, the foundation of heavenly fullness. Elisha required Elijah. In a very real sense he sprang out of Elijah. But Elijah also needed Elisha. He needed that which would be the increased expression of his own life. Here you have part and counterpart. Here you have the ground or foundation, and the superstructure. Here you have the seed and fruit and fullgrown tree. You need to know the nature of the seed, to know exactly what it is you are planting or sowing, and it is likewise important to recognize what Elijah stands for, in order that you may get the Elisha result. It is very nice to take up what is presented to us of heavenly fullness in Elisha, and be drawn out to that, and to say: Well, we desire with all our hearts to have the heavenly fullness, the resurrection life, the power of His resurrection as brought out by Elisha, but it is quite impossible for us to enter into that, to know anything about the heavenly fullness, unless we stand upon the Elijah ground which provides for it.

The Starting Place of Heavenly Fullness

We therefore look to Elijah, to see the starting place, the foundation, the basis of heavenly fullness. Before we go on in our consideration of Elijah in this particular connection - and there is no doubt whatever that that is the meaning of the life of these two viewed as one life: seed and fruit; foundation and building; root and branch - there are one or two preliminary words of a general character to be said, though they are of great importance.

God has a fixed starting place. God never changes that starting place, nor does He move from it. The importance of recognizing that to be so is that everything in the matter of progress is determined by the starting place. The starting place governs all the later life. That means that if we take up things at a point beyond God's starting place, we shall have that much to go back upon and to undo, or we shall otherwise be limited as to the measure of divine fullness for ever after.

I am sure that strikes you as being of some significance, for there are undoubtedly a great many who take up things of the Lord a long way beyond God's starting-point, and therefore a great deal of time is occupied by the Lord in taking them backward rather than forward, in undoing a great deal of history. They do not immediately move on from the point at which they sought to begin, but we find them being humbled, undone, and their movement for a long time seems rather backward than forward, rather down than up. The explanation is that they have taken things up elsewhere than at God's starting-point.

On the other hand, where there is not the yielding to that work of God, that work of the Spirit which seeks to bring back by undoing, but rather a forcing on, a taking of things up at a point other than at God's starting-point, if there is an unwillingness to be brought right back to God's basis, and a pressing on and determined taking up of work on the part of such, there remains to the end a limitation. This would explain many difficulties and problems which arise.

There are many who refuse the work of the cross in its deepest meaning, who will not have it, who have yet taken up the things of God, and the work of God, without that deep work of the cross in their lives, the need of which they refuse to acknowledge or to recognize. They seek to force their way onward, and to forge ahead with the work of God. They build. What they build may reach great dimensions, and according to the standards of men may appear to be something successful, something big, something full of activity and energy, but when you come to measure it with the golden reed, that is according to the Lord's estimate of its spiritual value, it is very limited, very thin, very superficial, and represents but very little of the fullness of Christ in the lives of those concerned. These builders are full of activity, but they are babes in spiritual intelligence and understanding. The trouble is that things have been taken up somewhere beyond God's starting-point, and there has not been a yielding to the Spirit to bring back to that point, and therefore there is a remaining limitation to the end, and tragically enough for ever.

These are alternatives which arise from recognizing the fact that God has a fixed starting-point which He never changes, and from which He never moves. It is necessary, on the one hand, to come to His starting-point. Right at the beginning is the best time to come there. However, if by reason of lack of knowledge, understanding, proper teaching, or because of our ignorance, we have been drawn into things without knowing of God's starting-point, then in His faithfulness to Himself, and in His faithfulness to us, but always with the highest and fullest interests in view, God will take in hand to bring us back, to undo, if we will let Him. On the other hand, unwillingness and unyieldedness leave the other alternative open, which is to go on, but to be for ever in limitation, which God never willed for us.

Two Practical Issues

There is another thing to remember in this connection and it is that, while God's starting place is unalterable, on our side there are two things of a practical character in relation to it.

a) An Acceptance of God's Position

Firstly, there must be an acceptance of all the implications of the fact in one definite act of faith and consecration. You and I will never know at any one time all the implications. We shall never be able to see all that God means in laying down this law of a fixed starting place. Everything, from the divine standpoint, is bound up with that, and takes its rise from that, but we shall only realize this as we go on. It is for us to take the attitude of faith and consecration toward all the implications of it, though we do not fully know what they are. In one definite act we have to come to the place where we say: Now Lord, what You mean by bringing me to Your starting place, and all that is bound up with that, I stand into by faith. It is one definite act of commitment, acceptance, and consecration.

Many people have a very insufficient conception of the meaning of consecration. So often it is thought to be just a handing over of the life to God, a giving of oneself to the Lord in complete surrender. Of course, it is that, but there is far more in such an act of consecration than is generally recognized. Complete consecration means that we are going to allow the Lord to do all that He means by consecration, and not merely what we may think it to mean. When the Lord gets both His hands upon a life, as it were, and that life is completely in His hands, the Lord does extraordinary things with and in that life; strange things; deep things; many things which were not looked for, not expected; things which are very unpleasant to the flesh and very mysterious, which the natural mind can never reconcile with the wisdom of God, nor with the love of God. That is all a part of consecration. Consecration means that we are henceforth in the Lord's hands for Him to do what He sees is necessary. It is rather the surrender of an inner life, an inner being to God, than the mere superficial idea of just putting your life into the hands of God, with the thought that now God is going to use you mightily. There is something very much more in consecration than that, and from the standpoint of God, Who knows us, knows the requirements, knows what is necessary, there are many implications bound up with coming to God's starting place.

You and I have to recognize that, and in one act of faith hand ourselves over to all the implications which are clear before His eyes, and not only to what we may see of them at the moment. We find that as we go on, and things which we never thought of, never imagined, never anticipated, begin to arise in our experience, and we come to crises, to something in the nature of an impasse with the Lord, where we have a controversy over the Lord's ways with us and come face to face with the Lord in a challenging attitude, the Lord will wait until we soften toward Him, and then He will say to us: "But this was in the original reckoning! This is nothing new! This is not something that has just come in by the way! This was all in the original reckoning, and you told Me I could do just exactly what I liked! Are you prepared to stand on your original ground? This is what consecration and surrender means, and you accepted it for all that it meant. Are you going to stand there now?"

Many of you know what is meant, although you have not had it presented in this way to your minds. You know that every fresh crisis only takes you back to your original position with the Lord. It at once recalls you to the place where you started, where you gave yourself to the Lord for all His way and will. Now you are saying: But I did not think it meant this! But the Lord did mean this, and He has thought a great deal more than we have ever yet conceived. God's starting place has to be accepted in all its implications in one act of faith in Him.

b) A Progressive Outworking

Secondly, there is the other side of this. There will be a progressive working out of the implications. God does not bring us in experience in one complete act into all those implications. They are all settled in Him, all perfected in Christ, but in us the implications will be worked out progressively. This, however, will only be on the ground that we have given the Lord full permission to work them out, and given Him an open way. Then He will work out progressively the implications of God's starting place.

For different people that will mean different things. For some it will mean going back a bit, being taken back over the road traversed in order to get back to God's starting place, to the end that they might have a greater fullness of the Lord and be released from the present limitation. That necessitates humility of spirit. It means that we shall have to let go a great deal of our assumed spiritual position; that we shall have to have our ideas about things very greatly changed. We have the generally accepted ideas, and conceptions, and definitions of spiritual things and work, the work of the Lord, ministry, and all such things, and now that system of thought and ideas is going to be ruled out, and we are going back to the beginning to discover that ministry is not the professional sort of thing that we had imagined it to be. Ministry from God's standpoint is simply the outworking of what God has been doing inwardly, the fruit of spiritual history. Our ideas have to be entirely transformed, turned upside down, and we have to come back to God's standard. Some of us know what all this implies. For years we had a certain idea of what ministry was, and then we had to come to the place where we started all over again with God's idea of ministry, but it has been worthwhile. We regard ourselves as such fools now for having thought that what we formerly cherished was God's idea of ministry. Oh, blessed be God, He has met us at a point and caused us to traverse the past backward and come right to the beginning of ministry all over again on a different level, from a different standpoint, with a different idea. What a different ministry!

We use ministry as an illustration of what we mean in the application of this law. When we get into the hands of the Lord we recognize that He has a starting place, and He never leaves His position or His ground to come to find us where we are and to take us up for His service at that point, but we always have to come back to His starting place. It is one tremendous act, one deep act with God, one acceptance, perhaps in an agony - for it may well be we would never come to the point of acceptance save through an agony, the agony, maybe, of despair over our own spiritual lives, or despair as to our own present service, work, ministry - and we come to the place where there is an end, and where a new beginning has to be. We are confronted with the challenge as to whether we are going to let the Lord order everything according to His mind, and as we accept God's starting-point in one full-orbed acceptance, though we may have been in things for many years, all kinds of changes now begin to come about: changes of ideas, changes of conceptions, changes of mind, changes of manner, changes of activity. Things are changed, but they are changed from limitation to fullness, from earthly bondage to heavenly liberty. We have found God's starting place to heavenly fullness.

Let us remember, then, that God has a starting place. He will not leave it to come to any self-chosen point of ours, but He will require that we come to His, and that we accept by faith all that that means, and then allow Him to work the principle out and yield ourselves to it as it works out progressively.

The Divine Treasure in the Earthen Vessel

Now we are able to come to Elijah as representing God's starting-point for heavenly fullness, and we will consider for a moment or two the man himself. Read through the life of Elijah again. It is one of the fullest lives, yet so far as narratives are concerned packed into the shortest compass. You are surprised, when you remember the significance of Elijah, the tremendous place that he occupies, how quickly his story is told. You are through the story in almost a few verses. Yet what a life! As you read it through, one thing that should impress you is the amount there is in it that speaks of human weakness and dependence. That is rather changing the point of view, for when we think of Elijah we always think of power, of wrath, of something terrific. We almost feel that we are in the presence of an earthquake. Yet if you read the story again you will be impressed with how much there is that indicates weakness and dependence.

Take the name of this man - Elijah. It means: Jehovah my strength. That brings you at once to an utter position. Jehovah my strength! You can almost hear an echo of the words in the case of the apostle Paul when he said: "...I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God ..." Jehovah my strength!

Then as you touch his life at different points, you see hallmarks of weakness and dependence. Go with him to the brook Cherith. "Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And it shall be, that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there." What a position for a mighty man of God, a position of weakness, of dependence. The very fact that God commanded ravens to feed him showed how dependent he was upon God, because ravens are not given to feeding other people, it is not their disposition. It requires some sovereign act of God to make a raven look after someone else. If there is one outstanding characteristic about a raven it is "myself first!" So the very power of God was necessary there to transcend this course of nature, and it was doubly so in that any creature should be the means of sustaining this prophet, this man of God.

Then the Lord let the brook dry up, and on its drying up He said: "Arise, get thee to Zarephath... I have commanded a widow there to sustain thee." A widow woman! And when Elijah arrived at Zarephath what a state of things he found. The woman was on her last morsel, in a state of weakness, and her resources exhausted. What dependence upon God! What a state of weakness in himself!

Or pass on to that later point in his career, to the incident at Horeb, in which there occur the words for which we have such a liking, "...a still small voice", (the sound of gentle stillness). Elijah came to Horeb and entered into a cave. The Lord passed by, and there was a mighty earthquake, thunder and lightning, and a whirlwind, so that the very mount must have rocked and the rocks well-nigh split. There was a terrific sense of power, force, energy, and might. But God was not in the earthquake, God was not in the whirlwind. There followed a sound of gentle stillness, a still small voice, and God was in that. There was tumult in Elijah, resultant from Jezebel's threat and Elijah's fear. That tumult in Elijah seemed to be shouting for some mighty manifestation of power which should defeat Jezebel, cheat Jezebel of her object and save the Lord's servant from her clutches. He was seeking escape from the clutches of Jezebel, from her threat, and what he needed, he felt, was some mighty exercise of power to deliver him. But the Lord was not in the earthquake, the Lord was not in the whirlwind, He was in the still small voice, the sound of gentle stillness. But what came out of the sound of gentle stillness? "Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus: and when thou comest, thou shalt anoint Hazael to be king over Syria; and Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel: and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room." What was the outcome? Ahab was overthrown and Jezebel was destroyed. All that came out of a sound of gentle stillness. The weakness of God is greater than men. Very eloquently God was saying, This whole thing is in My hand. Who is Jezebel? Who is Ahab? My little finger is more than their combined might! A sound of gentle stillness can produce something that will bring Ahab's career to a very speedy end and Jezebel to a very humiliating one.

It is a mighty lesson. It does not require God to come in an earthquake and a whirlwind to deal with a situation like that. Elijah, what are you doing here? Have you forgotten what your name is? Have you forgotten that in your weakness I have again and again made My strength perfect? My weakness is greater than all the combined force of the enemy. Elijah's life is gathered up from the standpoint of the man himself in one great reality, namely, that it is God, not the man. God's weakness associated with a man is more than all the strength of men against that man.

We have perhaps in measure been in the place of Elijah, conscious of the tremendous forces against us, human and diabolical, and have felt the need of some putting forth of mighty power, of God to rise up in an earthquake, in a whirlwind for our deliverance. We have looked for that, and, not seeing it, we have been discouraged, and have thought that the Lord had failed us, and we have begun to tell the Lord all about our devotion and our faithfulness - "I have been very jealous for the Lord..." The Lord has never come to us in a whirlwind, nor in an earthquake. I doubt whether anybody has ever been delivered by an earthquake or whirlwind coming from the Lord, but we have been delivered, we have been set on high, we have been brought out of that tempest of satanic antagonism again and again, and the Lord has done it in such a quiet way. The Lord has not seen the need for an earthquake to deliver us. His weakness is greater than all other strength. He would teach us that, while we are what we are in ourselves, weak, in dependence upon God, we can be set over all the power of the enemy. It is so good that the Lord put it in the way of Elijah to go and do the things which were going to bring both Ahab and Jezebel to their ignominious end. It was as though the Lord said, All right, Elijah, just go along and anoint Elisha and anoint Jehu, and that is the end of Ahab and Jezebel, and you have no more to fear than that: "...him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay." You see how the Lord is master of the situation, and how He brings His feeble, weak, consciously dependent servant into fellowship with Himself to bring an end to the enemy. There is a lot of history in that.

The Power is of God - and not of Men

The Lord never covered up the weaknesses of His servants. The Lord has not drawn a veil over that paragraph in the life of Elijah, His beloved servant to whom He refers many times, whom He brings into view at the most critical times, not only in ancient Israel but also in New Testament times. John the Baptist came in the power of Elijah. Then Moses and Elijah appear on the Mount of Transfiguration in connection with that other great crisis, the exodus which the Lord Jesus was about to accomplish at Jerusalem, the greatest crisis in the history of this world. No wonder the people, when they heard what the Lord Jesus was doing, somehow or other mixed up John the Baptist with Elijah in their minds. Herod himself said that John was risen from the dead. That implied something rather bad for him in his consciousness, for he was much in the same place as Ahab.

However, the Lord has not covered up the weaknesses of His servants, or drawn a veil over such incidents as that where Elijah is seeking for a juniper tree and casting himself down, and complaining to the Lord, and asking for his life to be taken away. It is a painful scene, and yet the Lord brings it out in full, clear relief.

Why does the Lord not hide from others our weaknesses? Why does He not hide those wounds which shame would hide, those things about us that we would like to be kept covered up for pride's sake? Why does the Lord let them come out? It is because if the Lord uses a man or a woman He is going to take good care that it is always known that the power working through them is not of themselves but of Him, and that if they for a moment get out of touch with Him it is very clearly revealed what they are, and that stands over against what He is. It is shown that these servants of His are not something in themselves, but that He is their strength.

You and I will never get to the place where the Lord will allow us to be something in ourselves. If ever you and I are in danger of getting there the Lord will very soon let us know that our usefulness to Him is altogether a matter of our dependence upon Him. Usefulness to God in a true way is always arrested when we lose the sense of dependence upon Him.

If Elijah stands out as one of the great peaks of usefulness to God, one that you can never miss as you scan the skyline, there is alongside of that this that we read of him, and you cannot shut your eyes to the fact. You feel you have somehow or other come down from great heights to great deeps when you read this passage about the breakdown of Elijah. Surely, in view of his faithfulness to the Lord, it would have been kind of the Lord to have covered that up and not inspired the recording of it! No! Elijah's name means: "Jehovah my strength". The incident under the juniper tree proclaims what Elijah is in himself. What is to be seen of value and effect in the life of Elijah is to be ascribed to the Lord in Elijah. So it is with Moses, and so with David, and so with all the others. The Lord has allowed the dark passages in their lives to be recorded just to show that men greatly used of God are only so used because of their dependence upon Him; and such records as these are necessary to us.

So then we are beginning to see the starting place of heavenly fullness. That is the first thing. Perhaps it is going a long way round, and saying a lot to indicate just one thing, but how important that thing is! The starting place of heavenly fullness is our emptiness, our dependence, our weakness. The Lord may have to take us right back there. If we have started at any point beyond dependence, beyond emptiness, beyond weakness it is a painful way back to God's starting-point. But it is not all a backward march, for that very process of emptying is the way to the fullness. It is only making real to us what is already so clear to Him. It is, in a word, that we are brought to the place where we know that all the fullness is in HIM. Our fullness is in Him, but we never appreciate it, never enjoy it, never profit by it, never really enter into it in a living way, until that has been done in us which has made us conscious that it is so, and apart from this it is a bad lookout for us.

It is so easy to say that all the fullness is in Him, to view it in an objective way, and to sing about it, but, oh, to come to the place where, knowing in a deep and terrible way how utterly futile we are in ourselves, we suddenly realize, in the presence of that deep poignant consciousness of our weakness, that that is only one side of things, and that the fullness is in Him for us. We need not stop because of our emptiness and weakness, we need not remain at the end, but that rather can be the place of beginning, and we can go on from there. The very emptiness and weakness is the ground upon which to move into a discovery that will ever keep us in a place of worship and wonder.

The Lord speak that word to our hearts.