We are continuing along the line which we were pursuing yesterday, with words from the first verse of Isaiah 53 as our guide:
“To whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?”
— Isaiah 53:1
The arm of the Lord—we are circling round that question, seeking its fullest answer.
I take it that most would, in some way or another, say that there is a very great need for the Lord to show His power. Perhaps that would be a personal confession. We would individually say, “It is a great need for the Lord to do something in my life, to do some new things, and to do some mighty things in me personally and in my position—perhaps in my ministry.”
Many others would say that, in the circle of believers with which we are connected and related, there is a great need for the Lord in power to move and do something. We can widen the scope still further and say that there is a very great need in the whole Church of God, and in the whole world, for the Lord to do something mighty.
I think I should be gathering most of you into such a conviction and realization. To whom, then, is the arm of the Lord revealed? That is our question for this time.
Now, before I go further with that matter, I am going to present to you a hypothetical situation.
Supposing there were a very complicated, serious, and afflicted patient. Let that patient perhaps be ourselves, or our company, or the Church, or the world.
Supposing such a serious condition had arisen with a patient, and a doctor came along who, after serious and patient consideration, with considerable experience, knowledge, and no small amount of good authority, came to a quite definite conclusion about the matter. He knew that he had the remedy. He had no question about it at all.
But when he approaches the situation and the patient, he meets one or two difficulties which would come in as deterrents to his desire to help.
Firstly, he has to explain that his remedy is going to be painful. It is not going to be pleasant. It is going to be totally against all the natural dispositions of the patient. It is going to demand real cooperation, perhaps over an extended period, calling for much patience, faith, and persistence with him in the matter.
Then he meets another thing. The patient says, “I have heard about this remedy before. I have heard it many times.” The reaction is, “Well, I have heard so much about that. You are, I mean, so much talk about it. I think you are a one-line man. You have nothing but that one thing. Perhaps you are a crank on that.”
“Can’t you vary it a bit? Can’t you introduce some other lines, a little more palatable, more pleasant? Must we be tied down to this one thing?”
And then the third thing: “Well, you know, this is not a very popular thing. Public opinion has some criticisms about this, and there are many different minds on the matter.”
These are the things with which he is confronted. What should he do? What would you say that he should do? Should he give way to these deterrents, abandon the situation and the case? I should say, “Get on with the job.”
Then, if I ask another question, I will pursue the matter along another line—from the side of the patient. What should be the logical attitude of the patient in this matter?
Should it not be: “Well, the situation is serious. There is no doubt about that, and it is very complicated. What are the alternatives? Do I know of any alternative? Are there prospects in other directions, and ways and means?”
“Have I really given this a fair trial? And, being perfectly honest, do I sense the seriousness of my condition sufficiently to make me brush aside all public opinion, all personal feelings and reactions, likes and dislikes, and really give myself over to this matter?”
Now, dear friends, although that is a hypothetical supposition and presentation, that is exactly the position in which we are.
There is no doubt that there is a great need in the spiritual life of God’s people—the need for Someone to come in with something that will solve the problem, meet the need, clear up the situation, straighten it out, and do a real work of healing. Is not that true?
And yet there are all these arguments lying about. “There is so much talk about this particular thing. We have heard it again and again. Public opinion is divided on this matter so greatly. And this is something that goes altogether against our grain.”
Well, does it not depend upon these two things: whether we realize that the situation is serious enough to lead us to put aside all secondary considerations, to really give the thing a fair chance and test it; and whether we examine our alternatives? Have we any alternatives? Are there prospects of this whole thing being better along any other line?
At first you are saying, “What is the line? What is the remedy? What is it that you are talking about?”
Perhaps some of you have already drawn your conclusions. The remedy—the only remedy, the sure remedy, for all our spiritual maladies—is the cross: the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is not nice. It is not pleasant. It runs counter to all our likes and predispositions. It is not popular. Christian opinion is greatly divided on this matter of the work of the cross.
But after all, we are left with our condition. We are left with it. We are left with our needs. We are left with the situation.
Whether you realize it or not, the situation is very, very critical in Christianity, amongst Christians. Take it from any standpoint. This whole matter of division amongst the Lord’s people is a blight. It is an insidious, working, deep-seated disease. It is an evil thing. It is undermining the whole constitution of the Church of God.
We could go round and face this thing from many standpoints and find, without exaggeration, that the situation is really a serious one.
The Word of God offers us this one remedy. It is fully and thoroughly documented. It has the most established authority behind it. It has proved itself again and again, in individual lives and in collective life, to be the answer.
It is there. It is established. There are no alternatives. The Word of God offers us no alternative, no prospect along any other line. The cross is the answer.
Well, that is my introduction this afternoon—my way of approaching this matter. We come then to Isaiah again, to this section which begins in the previous chapter. We have pointed out the unfortunate chapter division: Isaiah 53 ought to begin at Isaiah 52:13.
This section, from Isaiah 52:13 right through to the end of Isaiah 53, shows the cross to be the remedy for many-sided and most complicated situations in this world.
You see all the things that go to make up the situation. Put them together, and when you recognize what they signify, you say, “My, that is a situation.”
Sin. “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Sin—the word there is our errors, our failures. Transgressions—stronger words here—means our rebellions. Iniquity means our perversities.
Errors, failures, rebellions, and perversities: these are the beginnings of the malady. Sicknesses, griefs, sorrows—you make up the case with the words from the chapter, put them all together, and you say, “Well, that patient is in a very poor state. That indeed is a serious outlook.”
The chapter as a whole has as its object to show that the cross of the Lord Jesus is the remedy for it all, the answer to it all. By the cross of the Lord Jesus, the whole thing is dealt with and cleared. That is the result of this chapter.
But here we must stand back for a moment to take account of two things. A question is asked at this point, and the rest of the chapter is the answer to that question: “To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?”
Let the arm of the Lord be God coming into this situation—coming in with skill, coming in with power, with wisdom, with ability to deal with and clear out this situation. That is the arm of the Lord.
The fact is that the cross is the answer. The cross is the arm of the Lord coming in—coming in in power in relation to this whole situation, in all its aspects and in every detail. The cross is the arm of the Lord.
It is the arm of the Lord against this whole condition. The cross is set against this whole condition. That, of course, is perfectly obvious. The arm of the Lord is against this state of things.
It is the arm of the Lord unto a new condition, unto a certain clearly defined end. That end is our second thing.
The end for the arm of the Lord is the exaltation and vindication of Jesus Christ. The arm of the Lord is for that.
But the exaltation and vindication of Jesus Christ demand that the cross clears up this situation. It is because the situation was cleared up at Calvary that Jesus was exalted and vindicated.
That is the end to which the arm of the Lord is extended and revealed. In other words, that is the end which the cross has in view and secures: the exaltation and vindication of Christ in power and in posterity.
Those two things frame this whole section. Notice Isaiah 52:13:
“Behold, My servant shall deal wisely,
He shall be exalted and lifted up,
And shall be very high.”
That is right at the beginning. Right at the end of the chapter, He “shall see His seed,” and “He shall see of the travail of His soul.” In power, very high, in posterity—His seed, in other words, His Church—He is vindicated and exalted. Exalted and vindicated; and that is by the cross.
Dear friends, that brings matters very closely home to us, because the first challenge of this whole thing is to our concern—our concern for the right exaltation and right vindication of Jesus Christ.
Let us ask ourselves individually this question: How much are we really concerned for the exaltation and the vindication of the Lord Jesus?
I have no doubt whatever that if I approached you individually and asked you, or if I asked you to give a signal as a company on this matter, you would say, “I am very greatly concerned for the exaltation of the Lord Jesus. Indeed, there is nothing that I would desire and work for more than the exaltation of the Lord Jesus and His vindication. He should be vindicated. What greater thing could we live for or work for?”
You would say that. I have no doubt about it if I put it to you. But do you know, dear friends, the proof of your concern—the thing which measures your concern—is your preparedness to accept the cross.
There is no other way to the exaltation and vindication of the Lord Jesus than by the way of the cross.
We shall prove whether we really are concerned, and how much we are concerned, by how much we are prepared to accept this work of the cross in ourselves, clearing up every situation that is dishonouring to the Lord.
Oh, it is so easy for us to talk, to preach, about the exaltation of the Lord Jesus—His enthronement, His glorification. Yes, it is very wonderful to talk like that, and of course it is a very great thing—the Church of Christ, the great masterpiece of God, the Church which is the Body of Christ. Talk about it!
But the test as to whether really, really that has got a grip upon our inward life is just how much we will let the cross work in us. Those things are not practicable; they are not possible of realization—His exaltation and His Church—except by the work of the cross in believers.
I say that the challenge arises at once, and it is very searching. It will come to that. As we go along, sooner or later, it will come to that. All our language, all our talk, all our pretensions, and everything will be challenged by this.
“Yes, but are you prepared to allow the cross to work in you in this particular matter, in that particular relationship, and in this thing about yourself? And in this thing in your connections, are you prepared to let the cross deal with that?”
The answer to that would just prove whether, really after all, we have a concern for Christ’s exaltation and vindication. Our concern for these will be shown in our estimate of the cross and by our attitude toward it.
If we are going to say, “Well, we have heard so much about this cross. It is the one-line thing,” if we can take any attitude like that which in any way belittles the cross, making the cross something less than God has made it, then that is proof that we have not yet become gripped inwardly by this concern for the exaltation of the Lord.
He would never have been exalted but for His cross. Do not forget that.
“Wherefore also God highly exalted Him.”
— Philippians 2:9
He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God highly exalted Him. He would never have been exalted, and He never is exalted in principle, except insofar as the work of the cross is wrought in His people.
If the cross is not dealing with things in you and in me, then the Lord Jesus is not glorified in our lives. And as for His Church, the Church would never have been but for the cross. It never can be but for the cross. Its beginning, its continuation, its growth, its consummation—it is always by the law of the cross. Every little bit of addition, spiritually and numerically, to the Church is by means of the cross. There is no other way.
So it is very challenging and very testing to us. Now, here again, the Spirit of God shows that God’s ways and means are always positive; they are not negative.
I want to say that with emphasis, and I want you to underline that in your minds. God’s ways are always constructive and not destructive. God’s ways are always purposeful and not ends in themselves.
If God’s inclusive, comprehensive way and means is the cross, let it be understood now, once and forever, that God by the cross is working to an end—a large end. The cross is never intended to end with destruction. It is never intended to end with a negative.
God is working for some great thing, and He uses the cross in this positive way, in this manner.
You see, the weakness in our apprehension of the cross is largely due to a misapprehension of the cross. Our misapprehension is that it is destructive, that it is negative, that it is death. We recoil from that.
We do not want always to be talked to about the death of the cross. You can so preach the cross as to bring in death, to bring in a state of death. But that is mispreaching, and that is a misapprehension. That is not God’s interpretation of the cross at all.
Let me repeat: the Holy Spirit here shows clearly that God’s ways and means are always positive and not negative. They are always unto something more, and not unto something less—not to an end, but to a new fullness.
If only we could really grasp that, it would transfigure the cross. The Lord applies it; the Lord challenges us with it. What do we do? We draw back. We do not like it. We react negatively to it. Why?
Simply because we have not seen that in this application of the cross God is definitely set upon something more than there ever has been in our lives, in our position, in our company, and in His Church.
God is definitely at work by this application of the cross to get something transcendently more than ever there has been. That is the Lord God. God is not a negative God. Other gods are negative gods, but our God is not a negative God.
He is not working to bring things to annihilation, to an end. He has very large purposes before Him in all His ways and in all His means.
What we really have to see, dear friends, is that whatever the cross may negate—and it will negate some things—whatever it does negate, it is God’s most positive instrument in securing spiritual, heavenly, and eternal gain.
The cross is God’s most positive instrument in securing enlargement of that which will abide forever.
But, having said that, we can never have God’s yes—the arm of the Lord—until we have accepted God’s no. Because the cross, in the first place, does represent God’s no.
But if we will come and accept God’s no, then the way is clear for us to come right into God’s yes. Mark you, His name is not “No.” His name is “Yea and Amen.” He is the God of Amen, the positive, the verily, the God of purpose.
So it is very necessary for us to move on to the established place that God always comes in with a mind to create or to recover, to build and to increase.
We could believe that of the Lord even in our most devastating times. In our most devastating times, when everything seems to be taken away, when we are being stripped and stripped and all is going, it seems to be a process of reduction. We can see an end coming, we think.
If only we will believe that God is working not to bring values to an end, but to increase them. He knows why He is doing it in that way, but that must be our ground. He is ploughing. He is digging. He intends a harvest. He intends something more.
He knows, I say, why He is doing it in that way. We do not. But I can tell you one thing: God is at work by the cross to make things safe for Himself.
God is at work by the cross to make things safe for Himself.
Supposing the arm of the Lord was revealed to us—to you, to me. Supposing the arm of the Lord was revealed in the company with which we are connected, in the place where we are, in the work in which we are engaged. Supposing the Lord came out with His mighty arm and showed that arm in prospering and increasing. What would happen?
What would happen? Oh, I know you will not agree with it, because you do not feel that it would be true in your case. But that is just to see where the heart is deceived. Our hearts are deceived. I know what would happen.
You and I would come into the picture. You and I would begin to strut about in this thing that is growing and enlarging and prospering, becoming something to take account of. We would be walking around like peacocks with our tails all spread out.
And we would, if not literally, be wearing a badge—“Superintendent,” “General Manager,” something like that.
We would begin to talk about the thing. People would begin to talk about it, and how pleased we would feel. If the news of it spread, how gratified we should be.
That is the infinite peril. God will not run the risk of allowing anything to be other than wholly of Himself.
I tell you something. I want you to repeat it, publish it, write about it. You know, we have been out there to the Brethren, and we have seen the arm of the Lord revealed. There is no doubt about it.
You will have to confess, dear friends, that if in seven short years a work has grown from eight people—divided by two hundred miles, four down there and four up here—in seven years that has grown into twenty thousand, with over fifty assemblies, and is still growing, and has a large spiritual measure, you say, “That is the arm of the Lord.”
You cannot touch it, you cannot see it, you cannot feel it without saying, “The arm of the Lord”—especially if you know what it has cost, and if you know how utterly dependent upon the Lord everyone is.
If you mark the deep humility, one thing that impresses you is that those in responsibility are always trying to hide themselves. It is the most beautiful thing to see young men who have come on and been given responsibility just all the time trying to hide themselves, keep out of view, and never coming forward unless they are drawn out.
It is a beautiful thing. I am not surprised that the arm of the Lord should be revealed where it is like that.
But the brother who is now in the place of our dear brother Watchman Nee, responsible under the Lord for that whole work, said to me again this time, “Brother, I want you to know that Brother Nee’s principle was this: try to keep things as small as you can.”
“Try to keep things as small as you can. And if there is going to be enlargement and increase, let it be in spite of yourself. Let it be God’s doing, and not because you have done anything to try and make it big.”
“Try to keep it small, and let God do in spite of you what He wants to do.” He said that this was his life principle. “That is the explanation of everything. So we never, never try to make things big. We do nothing to make them public or popular.”
“I beg of you not to publicize, not to let this thing become known. Keep it covered.” Now perhaps I am violating his request in saying this, but I say to you in confidence that you will respect and honour the principle.
It is to that that the arm of the Lord is revealed, dear friends. The Lord must make things safe for Himself, so that if He does stretch out His mighty arm and do something, you and I will not begin to pocket the credit.
There must be something in us that is hidden and covered. We should be a hidden, under-cover people. I cannot say how important that is, but here it is.
Is not this perhaps one of the deepest underlying laws of the arm of the Lord where Christianity is concerned? Why was there that great expansion which has never been paralleled through the centuries, as at the beginning?
Because the Church was stripped and peeled, broken and battered, bruised and persecuted. Because it preached Christ crucified as the wisdom of God and the power of God, the world would not have it.
The arm of the Lord was revealed to that. The Church was not trying to avoid the offence of the cross in order to find a place in this world. No, it preached the cross. It preached Christ crucified. It was not ashamed of that. It cost everything, and the arm of the Lord was revealed.
A tremendous lesson for us, is it not?
So it comes back here, you see. This chapter in Isaiah, which is the quintessence of the New Testament and of all God’s ways, shows this: that the arm of the Lord is revealed to the humbled, emptied, despised, and crucified Servant.
That is an abiding law, and let there be no mistake about it. If you and I have a managerial spirit, an assertive spirit, a self-confident spirit, or anything like that, the arm of the Lord will not be revealed.
But again I say, if He is stripping and emptying and pouring out, and seeming to bring to nought, He is doing it to make things safe for Him to stretch out His arm. Will you believe that?
I say again, He is the God of the positive and not the negative. He will stretch out His arm if He is allowed to complete the perfect handiwork of undercutting everything that would take glory from Himself.
You and I do not know how much there is in us of that kind, do we? We think that we are just at the end of ourselves, that there is nothing left in us. Well, we do not know. We do not know what would happen if the whole situation suddenly changed, took the upward road, and began to enlarge. We would come in again—this inveterate flesh.
The cross is the only way of the glory. It is the great clearing instrument.
Now, at that point, of course, we open up another field of tremendous importance. I want you to notice that this is in Isaiah, and set in such a wonderful place in Isaiah.
I suppose you know the analysis of this prophecy. The first thirty-five chapters are occupied with a wide sweep of judgments, beginning, as always, with the people of God. That is a divine law. How can He judge the world until He has judged His own people?
Then chapters 36 through 39 are just a little interval dealing with Hezekiah. Then from Isaiah 40 through 66 comes the section of restoration and rebuilding.
Now Isaiah 53 is midway in that last section. That is so significant. Midway in this last section of twenty-six chapters, which has to do with new prospects, recovery, and rebuilding, there are thirteen chapters on each side of Isaiah 53.
That is the centre of building and recovery. It gives the cross the central place in building and in recovery. That is always true, is it not?
When you have said that about Isaiah, you might react and say, “Well, that is ancient history—long ago and far away.” But I would like here to put in a long parenthesis.
This whole thing is brought right into the dispensation in which you and I are living, and it is brought in with the letter to the Romans.
You know that letter. The first section is the sweep of divine judgment over the whole human race. It comes right up to the focal point of Romans 6: the cross.
That chapter is placed there in that connection, over against this whole situation which has gone before, to say that the cross says no forever to all that old humanity.
From Romans 6, you move into the positive, do you not? Into Romans 7 and Romans 8. You are moving out of that old situation into a new. In Romans 8 you come into an altogether new prospect, an altogether new opening up.
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”
— Romans 8:1
All that which was condemned has been dealt with in the cross. No condemnation. We are in Christ Jesus.
“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.”
— Romans 8:2
Now all this new and wonderful prospect is there. What does it amount to? It says this: God came on the scene with the object of laying the foundation for, and building, His wonderful and glorious Church.
Oh, that was ever the movement of God. He came on the scene and looked at the situation in order to find a foundation for that glorious Church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. And what did He find?
He found all that state of things in those early chapters of the letter to the Romans: a deplorable description of things in this world. What a description it is. You ought to go back to it and read it again—the tangle, the complication, the sin, the corruption.
Oh, what evils are in those first chapters of Romans. That is what He found when He came to lay down a foundation for His glorious Church.
He said, “I cannot put a foundation on that. I cannot build My Church on that. I must clear this whole situation, burn it in fire, clear it of all this state of things.”
And the cross does it. So the cross, like the mighty brazen altar, in the intense fires of judgment dealt with that tangled, distorted state of things.
Now God has put down His foundation: Christ crucified. After that, there is a new prospect for building the Church.
I have got to leave it there this afternoon. We may take it up again later. But do you see? This is the interpretation of the cross: to get rid of everything that makes it impossible for God really to get on with what He wants to do, what He has in mind.
He has come with purpose, but He finds things in the way. He says, “That must be dealt with,” and His means of dealing with it is the cross—to clear the way for a new prospect.
That new prospect we shall have to look at again.
But I do want to finish, even at this point, on the positive note again. Oh, do believe it. When you hear this phrase, “the cross,” guard your mind against that sudden uprising: “Oh, the cross again—the cross—and that interpretation given to the cross. Oh, it is all this; it is all crucifixion; it is all negative.”
Do not have it. Do not have it. That is Satan’s twist given to this wonderful instrument of God for realizing His glorious purposes.
When you hear “the cross,” you say, “That means prospect, friend. That means something more, not less. That means a clearing of the way. That means that God’s arm is going to be revealed.”