There are quite a few people here this morning who have not been with us in the earlier part of this conference. We have had three days of this conference, and some of you who were with us on Friday and Saturday were not able to be with us yesterday. So, a little word by way of linking up will be necessary.
We are occupied with the question in the first verse of Isaiah 53: “To whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?” We are putting it more in the present tense: To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?
We are centering round this matter of the Lord—that is, the Lord coming out in power on behalf of His own interests, as bound up with a people of His own choice.
Now, we occupied much of the earlier time with the whole of Isaiah 53, showing that in it the cross of the Lord Jesus, in all its comprehensiveness and in all its details, is God’s way of securing ground upon which He can show His arm.
The cross is the ground and the way—the only ground, the only way—by which the Lord will reveal His mighty arm. Of course, in the first place, the answer to the question is found in the Lord Jesus Himself. It is to this One described here, with all the terrible details of His cross, that the arm of the Lord has been revealed and is still being revealed.
But we have seen that this is carried over to the Lord’s people and made the foundation upon which the Lord shows Himself mighty. The only ground is insofar as they stand in the good of Christ crucified—the cross of the Lord Jesus. Insofar as that is made a reality in their life, individually and collectively, just so far does He reveal His arm. No other way.
That occupied us for quite a time—all day on Friday, really, and a bit of Saturday. Then yesterday, I may say to the friends who missed it, you only missed one part of this, and I can give you the sum of it in very few words.
Yesterday we passed over onto the resurrection side of the cross with Isaiah 54, and saw there the eight features of resurrection life when the cross is an accomplished and established fact.
In that chapter we have these eight features of resurrection movement:
That is all resurrection ground into which the Lord’s people are brought if this great reality of the cross has become their own spiritual experience.
Now this morning we are going on further. We are going to move into this next chapter, having, as I have said, moved from the death side, or aspect, of the cross onto the positive resurrection side—the constructive side of the cross.
We find that one thing comes very much into view in these following chapters of Isaiah. It would have been very helpful if you had had notice and had been reading these chapters from Isaiah 53 to the end. It is quite impossible for us to read the chapters through, but with a rapid glance down these pages you will recognize what I am saying to be the case.
There is one thing that comes very much into view after the cross, on resurrection ground, and that is the recovery of God’s testimony in the city and in the nation.
That really is a key to these chapters of Isaiah from Isaiah 54 onwards: the whole matter of the recovered testimony of the Lord in the city. Zion is so much in view here, as you notice. Run along and encircle the words “Zion” and “Jerusalem,” and you will see that this is the centre, the focal point, of the testimony. But again, the nations are very much in view.
That will come out more and more fully as we move on through this day. We have one particular thing for the present hour.
As you notice, you come to Isaiah 55. There are two things which are marked by that chapter. Verses 1 through 9 set forth the release, or freedom, and the abundance of grace coming to the people of God on this resurrection ground: free and abundant grace.
Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,
and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat;
yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
This is free and abundant grace, which we find on the other side of the cross, on resurrection ground. How much of the New Testament we could crowd into that statement.
The other thing, in verses 10 through 13, is the sure Word: God’s sure Word in Isaiah 55:11. Now, by the way, we usually appropriate that promise when we are going to preach. We may hold it when we are going to give a message: “My word shall not return unto Me void.”
Well, of course, the principle is for general application. We are not wrong at any time in taking hold of that if it is really the Word of the Lord that we have to deliver. We cannot just put it upon any word that we are going to say and call it the Word of the Lord. If it is really the Word of the Lord, then the principle of this promise applies.
But what I want to point out is the particular meaning of the statement. You will notice, in verse 11:
So shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth:
it shall not return unto Me void,
but it shall accomplish that which I please,
and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
You must not stop there.
For ye shall go out with joy,
and be led forth with peace:
the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing.
The immediate meaning of the promise of the sure and effectual Word is this: this people had been promised by God deliverance. They had been assured that the Lord was going to bring them back from captivity. He had given His Word that they should go out with joy and in peace. That was the Word, and that Word was not going to fail.
When you come to Isaiah 56, you find that everything centres in the house of prayer for all peoples.
Even them will I bring to My holy mountain,
and make them joyful in My house of prayer:
their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon Mine altar;
for Mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.
So you are moving in relation to the recovery of testimony—the Lord’s testimony—and it is to be found in His house: “My house of prayer.”
You pass into Isaiah 57, and here you have some further warnings to the Lord’s people against any recurrence of that which had destroyed the testimony before. It seems necessary always for the Lord to say, and say again, “Yes, be careful of the coming back of those old things which wrecked your testimony in the past.”
The things which, to use Jeremiah’s phrase at the potter’s house, marred the vessel of testimony—this chapter has to do with warnings and admonitions concerning the perils that are ever present to mar the vessel again and spoil the testimony.
Then, as you notice, in Isaiah 57:15, the ground of the Lord’s presence and commitment is mentioned:
For thus saith the high and lofty One
that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy:
I dwell in the high and holy place,
with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit,
to revive the spirit of the humble,
and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.
These are the conditions of the Lord’s presence in which His testimony will be reconstituted.
Isaiah 58 and 59 are full of more warnings, admonitions, and instructions, by way of clearing the sky of the clouds that would obscure the testimony. Notice, it has to do with the shining:
Then shall thy light break forth as the morning.
It is the question of this testimony that is governing everything with the Lord: these warnings and admonitions in order that the clouds lingering about the sky, trying to obscure the shining, shall be removed, so that there shall be the clear shining.
All that then leads us to Isaiah 60. It is preparing the way; it is all with this in view:
Arise, shine; for thy light is come,
and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
Here, then, we come to this matter of the recovered testimony: the shining light of the church in the midst of a dark world, of very dark conditions.
For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth,
and gross darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon thee,
and His glory shall be seen upon thee.
It is the church’s testimony, the church’s light, in the midst of dark conditions. That is the thing, I repeat, which is uppermost in this last section of Isaiah’s prophecies.
Here, then, the testimony is restored. The nations are affected by it:
Lift up thine eyes round about, and see:
they all gather themselves together, they come to thee;
thy sons shall come from far,
and thy daughters shall be carried in the arms.
Then thou shalt see and be radiant,
and thy heart shall thrill and be enlarged;
because the abundance of the sea shall be turned unto thee,
the wealth of the nations shall come unto thee.
When the testimony is clear, when the shining is undimmed, when God has in His people conditions that answer to the cross—to all that the cross means—then you have this effect all around. The nations are affected. Peoples are affected. Something happens, and there comes back to the church as well an enrichment, a fullness.
If the Lord has things according to His mind, or, in other words, if He really does have His testimony without clouds, without shadows, in fullness and undimmed in the midst of His people—in the vessel of His house—then the nations feel the effect of that, the impact of that, and the church itself is greatly enriched.
Surely the isles shall wait for Me,
and the ships of Tarshish first,
to bring thy sons from far,
their silver and their gold with them,
for the name of the Lord thy God,
and for the Holy One of Israel,
because He hath glorified thee.
The enrichment of the church.
This, we know, is Old Testament prophecy. We recognize that the prophet was saying more than he knew. There were two things, and this was history in the making so far as Israel was concerned. But you see, all the way through, this is pointing on—as in Isaiah 53—to the Lord Himself, the Messiah, to the cross, and on into what follows in resurrection.
There is that other side of this—the spiritual side—which the Holy Spirit always saw and had in view in history. There was the temporal, the passing; but there was the spiritual and the eternal. So, in every connection we have seen so far, we are handed on, so to speak, by these prophecies to the New Testament.
The counterpart of what we have been saying is found particularly in one letter in the New Testament: the Second Letter to the Corinthians. That is the counterpart of all this about the recovered testimony.
The great issue in both letters to the Corinthians was that of the testimony of the church in the city and in the world.
When we read those letters, of course, we become very much taken up with all the details. In the first letter, the miserable details, the many things that are being dealt with—it is not a happy and pleasant letter to read. Perhaps you have given it up many times before you got to the end, not understanding, and not liking, a good deal of it.
But you have got to stand back from it and say, “What is it all about, after all?” Let us not trouble ourselves about all the details for the moment. They all go to make up one particular issue. What is the issue?
The issue of Corinthians is the Lord’s testimony in the church, in the city, and in the world. Make no mistake about that.
There is very much said in that letter about the world and how the church in Corinth was failing to overpower the world because the world had already overpowered it from the inside. The testimony was destroyed on the inside, and therefore there was no real impact upon the world.
The natural man and the carnal man had found their way into the church, and the church therefore had lost its testimony. It will always be like that. If anything of the natural man and the carnal man makes inroads into the church in any locality, you may say goodbye to the testimony in that church and in that locality, in that city.
So far as that company is concerned in relation to the world, the testimony goes out when the natural man comes in. In the first letter, then, it was the whole question not merely of local conditions, but of local conditions destroying the testimony of the church in the city.
But in the second letter this comes out on the positive side. In the first letter, all those conditions destroying testimony have to be dealt with, mentioned, exposed, uncovered, and brought to the cross—Christ crucified. Between the two letters, something has happened. Something has happened. Change has taken place.
May I pause there to say this again? What we have in 1 Corinthians is Satan’s second great strategy toward paralysing the church’s testimony. His first strategy, of course, is open persecution. That was his first line with the church: open persecution, trying to destroy and obliterate the church’s testimony in Jerusalem, in the city, and in the nations.
It failed. But Satan comes back again along a second line of strategy, and that is to bring in men according to his own mind right onto the inside of the church: the natural man, the carnal man, carnal elements. They serve the devil’s purpose so well.
They effect this very thing that the devil is after, which he cannot succeed in doing by open persecution. He comes round, as it were, to the back door, and gets carnal and natural elements in people through the back door—and that has done it. Testimony goes out. It is destroyed.
But, as I was saying, between these two letters something happens. Look at 2 Corinthians 7.
Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry,
but that ye were made sorry unto repentance;
for ye were made sorry after a godly sort,
that ye might suffer loss by us in nothing.
For godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation,
a repentance which bringeth no regret.
The apostle has quite a bit to say about what had evidently taken place after his first letter. There was repentance. There was judging of themselves and the conditions. There was, as he says, a clearing of themselves. There was a real distress and exercise about their condition.
It had taken place between the two letters. We may say that they had brought it to the cross, or they had brought the cross to it. Something had happened which had changed the situation.
Now that things had been dealt with on the inside, the whole matter of the testimony to the world in the city could be reconsidered. A counterattack could be made by the church upon the enemy and upon the world. That is what is in this second letter: the recovery of the testimony in the locality and out to the world.
All this brings out in very clear relief the constituents of effective testimony, or, to use Isaiah’s word, clear shining.
In this letter, you see, some of the things that he says about those constituents of effective testimony. In 2 Corinthians 2:4:
For out of much affliction and anguish of heart
I wrote unto you with many tears;
not that ye should be made sorry,
but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you.
That is a constituent of effective testimony and clear shining. What is it? The value of triumphant love.
This clearly had its two sides in the apostle. If ever a man might have found his love exhausted, the apostle might well have been that man where these Corinthians were concerned, when he did say, “The more I love you, the less I be loved.” Well, that is enough to put any man off, is it not?
To find all his outpouring and outgoing and giving in love only means that less love and less love comes back—love is being withdrawn. What a situation! Yet his love was triumphant. His love triumphed.
But it seemed to have had an effect in them too, and something of what he had written in his first letter, in 1 Corinthians 13, seems to have come about. Yes, the triumph of 1 Corinthians 13 can be traced in this second letter to some very real degree: the love that suffereth long and is kind, and so on.
The constituent of triumphant love is, we might very well say, the first and primary factor in effective testimony. The Lord Jesus said that:
By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples,
if ye have love one to another.
This is the testimony. This is how it will be known: if you have love one for another.
Dear friends, it does matter very much whether the world is affected by what it sees. It does. We cannot close the doors on ourselves and say, “Oh, well, the world in any case is always inimical, always hostile, always unsympathetic. Why take any account of it? Let us shut ourselves in and get on with our job.”
You cannot do that. You cannot ignore the world. You are here; we are here to affect the world. That is one very real reason why the Lord leaves us here—not just to live here cloistered and closed in, ignoring the world and indifferent to the world.
Our business is to affect the world. We cannot separate and detach ourselves from the world. The world is going to find out, in some way, what is happening inside the church. The world will know the condition of the church; make no mistake about it.
What is happening in your local assembly? You cannot close doors and windows on it and keep it in. All around will know. It will be known.
I say it is the most important thing that the world should be affected by—not what it hears, but what it sees in us. The only thing that it can really see that will affect it will be the mutual love which we have one for another.
By this shall all men know,
if ye have love one for another.
One of the most effective ways of testimony is not preaching; it is loving. If that is there, it will do far more than our preaching, but it will give tremendous backing to our preaching. All our preaching must be supported by this one thing behind: a strong, triumphant love in the midst of the Lord’s people.
Triumphant love is the first constituent of recovered, established testimony—or the clear shining.
The second thing in testimony is the value of suffering with Christ. Notice, if you look at chapter 1—and there is much in this second letter about this matter—take this one:
Who comforteth us in all our affliction,
that we may be able to comfort them that are in any affliction,
through the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
For as the sufferings of Christ abound unto us,
even so our comfort also aboundeth through Christ.
The tremendous value and potency of suffering with Christ: first of all, the return that it brings in our discovery of the consolations of Christ.
That is a very important thing in a world like this: that we should have something to give. There is a great need of comfort in the church and outside the church—a great ministry of comfort. We come back to Isaiah: “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God.”
The ministry of comfort—but you cannot fulfil a ministry of comfort just in nice phrases, getting alongside difficult and troubled situations and saying nice things.
If somebody is really in deep distress and you begin to talk to them, the first thing they have a right to say to you is, “Well, what do you know about it? Have you ever been in my position, my condition? Have you ever had any deep, deep suffering? What do you know about it?”
Perhaps it is one of those sovereign, providential ways and purposes of God in allowing His people to know much suffering, that they might derive this wonderful value of the consolations of Christ, in order that they may have that with which to comfort others.
After all, testimony is real comfort to the suffering and the sorrowing. What have you got to give? We may comfort with the comfort wherewith we ourselves have been comforted of God.
If there is anyone here today having a difficult, painful, suffering time—going through a dark patch—might I try to transfigure it for you by saying: “Just look at it in another way. Say, ‘I can make a discovery of the Lord in this which will be stored up for future service.’”
“I can find some comfort of the Lord in my distress and trouble which is going to be of tremendous value to somebody else, or to some others, in the future.” That is how ministry is made.
A man or woman who is ambitious to minister, to begin a ministry, to be speaking and taking meetings and going about doing that sort of thing, who has not gone through the depths and found the Lord in the depths, and has something that has been brought up from the depths—a pearl of great price—that man or that woman’s ministry is merely professional. It is artificial. It is not real.
The true minister of Jesus Christ will be taken down to the depths to discover there, right down there, these pearls, these precious things, to bring up for the sake of the church.
Did you notice that phrase in Isaiah? “The abundance of the sea shall be turned unto thee.” The abundance of the sea. Yes, but the sea can be a very deep place, and a very dark place—a very terrible place. But there are treasures there. That is a way of testimony.
Then notice, in verse 8 of this first chapter:
For we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning our affliction which befell us in Asia,
that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power,
insomuch that we despaired even of life:
yea, we ourselves have had the sentence of death within ourselves,
that we should not trust in ourselves,
but in God who raiseth the dead.
This is how ministry is made: when you have a real experience of, and testimony to, the power of His resurrection; when everything seems hopeless in your own personal situation, or everything seems hopeless in your company of believers, and the providence of God has led you that way to make a discovery of the power of His resurrection.
“That we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead.” This constitutes the ministry. You have gone that way; you are a minister, all right. You need not take the name; you need not be set apart for anything. You are a minister if you know the power of His resurrection. You have something that is most greatly needed: knowledge of that mighty power of resurrection.
Number three: in chapter 4, in the first section, from verses 7 through 18:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels,
that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves;
we are pressed on every side, yet not straitened;
perplexed, yet not unto despair;
pursued, yet not forsaken;
smitten down, yet not destroyed;
always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus,
that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.
You will notice that this section has as its real message the value, the tremendous value, of brokenness and weakness.
We perhaps do not put much value on brokenness and weakness, but here very much value is put upon that. “We have this treasure in vessels of fragile clay.” The apostle is saying, in effect, “We are broken, broken men. We are weak vessels. The one thing about us more than anything else is our capacity for being broken. It seems that we have just been made to be broken.”
Yes, he is speaking about brokenness and weakness, and then he is saying that there is an infinite value attached to that.
In the first letter to the Corinthians, the church was not broken. It was not broken. It was hard. It was trying to hold itself intact. It was proud. It was judging. It was cruel. It was unkind—anything but broken.
But now look again in this second letter and you find that there is a softness about the church. It is broken. It is melted. It is soft. Now you can talk about ministry. Now you can talk about testimony. You could not talk about that before.
Until the vessel is broken, there is nothing to flow out. It all flows out when the vessel is broken. That is the way.
The apostle is saying that that was how it was with him personally, and of course he is passing it on to the church at Corinth and saying, “Our weakness and our brokenness are of tremendous importance and value. It is only then that the real treasure comes out, shows itself, manifests itself.”
You talk about testimony—have you got a phraseology of testimony? You talk about ministry—good ideas about ministry? My dear friends, the Holy Spirit is saying to you and to me this morning that testimony and ministry are only real when they come from broken men and women. Make no mistake about it.
I know it is the hard way, but it is the only way. You have no right to minister. You have no right to talk about the testimony, or about the church, the vessel, or any of this sort of thing, unless you know something of this brokenness and this weakness.
You see how true it is to what we recognize now. The Lord says, “My house of prayer. My house of prayer shall be a house of prayer for all nations.” But thus saith the Lord, the High and Holy One who inhabiteth eternity: “I am with the one who is of a broken and contrite spirit.”
You find Him at converted Corinth—chastened Corinth. You feel in the second letter the unction of the Spirit, do you not? The beauty of the Lord—something new here that you miss in the first letter. Oh yes, the Lord is here now, because they are broken.
It is very true, I am sure, that the Lord is only found with men and women who really have had a breaking, an emptying, a weakening, and have lost all confidence in their own flesh. All their own self-strength has gone.
That is the way for shining. That is the way of recovered testimony.
Should we look just at this verse in chapter 6 and verse 11?
Our mouth is open unto you, O Corinthians,
our heart is enlarged.
Ye are not straitened in us,
but ye are straitened in your own affections.
Now for a recompense in like kind
(I speak as unto my children),
be ye also enlarged.
What was the cause of the broken-down testimony in Corinth? They were too small. They were too little. They were too petty. Paul said that they were like babes; he had to treat them like babes. They were peevish. Children can be like that, cannot they? Just like that.
They were too small, too little, too petty. Little things were far too important. He says, “Be enlarged, be enlarged. Let your heart be enlarged. Be bigger people—really bigger people.”
Be too big to come down to stupid, mean things. Do not be contemptible. But without self-importance, self-inflation, and pride, have big feelings; have a large heart. Love, love.
What does love do?
Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness,
but rejoiceth with the truth;
believeth all things.
It is a large heart to do that, is it not? Never ready to believe the wrong report; always prepared to believe that there is something, even in a wrong report, that may be set over against it—maybe another explanation.
Love does not rejoice when the one who has done the harm suffers for it. Oh, that is bigness. This is where even David is such a rebuke to us, is it not?
Look at him. What a life Saul gave him during those years! Hunted him, he said, like a flea, like a partridge; chased and pursued him from rock to rock and cave to cave through the wilderness to get him and destroy him; gave him no rest, no peace, day nor night—determined that David should die.
Then came the time when, in one of these pursuits, Saul with his armour-bearer and his army arrived at a certain place at night and lay down to sleep, not knowing that David was so near—right on the spot. I do not know that he would have slept if he had known.
David came with his men and looked. David’s man said, “Now is your chance. God has given him into your hand.” If you can only get divine support for something, that is all you want, is it not? If it serves your own interests, and somebody says, “Well, it is the Lord’s will,” how you will go for it.
And so this one said, “The Lord has delivered him into your hand. Now is your chance. Let me smite him, and I will not have to smite him twice. One blow, and I will finish the whole thing for you.”
David said, “No. No. God forbid that I should touch the Lord’s anointed.”
That is bigness, you know. To his own hurt—yes, to his own hurt. He knew not how many more years of suffering he would have. He accepted them. He could have ended all that with one blow. He said, “No, no. I must not touch the Lord’s anointed.”
The Lord’s anointed may be wrong. He may be doing the wrong thing. I may be in the right and he may be in the wrong. Nevertheless, it is not for me to touch him. I leave him with the Lord. I must not speak against him. I must not lift my hand against him. God forbid that I should touch the Lord’s anointed.
I say, that is bigness, is it not? That is spiritual greatness. “Be ye also enlarged.” Lord, make us big people in this spiritual sense.
Well, to sum up all this: all this has to do with the constituents of recovered testimony—testimony in any locality, testimony in the world.
It must be born out of these things. First of all, what we know of divine comfort inside. Then, what we know of resurrection when all has seemed to be hopeless. That is individual, that is corporate, that is local.
Then, what we have learned of divine love through our own failure. I am sure that was a great factor in Corinth. Their recognition of their failure brought them down, right down in the dust, under the sense of what a miserable failure they had been as a local company.
Down in the dust, they discovered love pouring through this apostle—pouring from the heart of God to them. They discovered love when they discovered and realized what a failure they themselves had been. That discovery constituted their new testimony.
Then, what brokenness and enlargement of heart have come through the consciousness of weakness. If any people ought to have had a consciousness of their own weakness, it was those people at Corinth.
There are indications in this second letter that they themselves came to this almost to the point of despair about themselves. This consciousness of their own failure, their own weakness, their own untrustworthiness—I think it overwhelmed them; it overflowed them. But through it they came to this enlargement of heart.
An enlargement of heart—that is the way. You and I are smitten with a consciousness of our own failure. We are not going to be petty and mean toward other people’s failures. We are going to be larger of heart where other people’s wrongs are concerned, very much more patient, very much more understanding.
We are going to say, “Well, they have failed, but I have had to walk very carefully, and there go I but for the grace of God.” That is largeness of heart, you see, through brokenness.
And then finally, what uttermost-ness for the Lord results from a sense of our responsibility for His honour in the locality and in the world.
I think that is what arises here: a sense of tremendous responsibility for the honour of the Lord. I am quite sure that if that were not present, then all the other means nothing. It must have been brought home to them that they were letting the Lord down in the city, in the locality.
Their situation was bringing dishonour to Him, and that provoked a sense of responsibility. “Oh, we cannot afford to let the Lord down. Whatever it costs, we must put things right amongst ourselves for the Lord’s sake, for the sake of the name of the Lord.”
That is in Isaiah’s later chapters, is it not? It is about the name of the Lord in Zion. When testimony was recovered, it was just that: the name of the Lord.
This sense of responsibility for His name and for His honour in that locality, in that city, and in the world produced a new uttermost-ness for the Lord.
We come back to our question: To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? Well, to those to whom it is like that.
You see, this is all the outcome, the outworking, of the cross. It all comes out of Isaiah 53. This recovered testimony of this kind is the result of the cross.
The cross is always the basis of everything, and in everything of testimony: the testimony of our lives, the testimony of the church locally and universally. Here we pray.