As our custom is, we will close this conference gathering around the Lord’s Table. The meeting will not be prolonged for that. Those of you who have a long way to go need not be anxious about time. If you are the Lord’s child, we welcome you to join with us in this remembrance of Him.
Now we come to the last fragment, for this time, of this contemplation of the Lord’s servant and the nature and meaning of the Lord’s service.
I turn you, for this last word, to the prophecies of Isaiah, Chapter 49.
Listen, O isles, unto me;
and hearken, ye peoples, from far:
the Lord hath called me from the womb;
from the bowels of my mother hath He made mention of my name:
and He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me:
and He hath made me a polished shaft;
in His quiver hath He kept me close:
and He said unto me, Thou art my servant;
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.
Here, then, is one more—and for this time the last—of this series of conceptions of the servant of the Lord and his service.
Now, these remaining chapters of this book are not easy to expound, for one reason in particular: there is very little clear definition as to who is in view. It is very difficult, as you move through, to see and recognize to whom the various passages refer.
Sometimes it is perfectly clear, as in Isaiah 52, Isaiah 53, and Isaiah 61. There is no doubt there that it is the coming Messiah, the Christ.
At other times it looks to be Israel. Then you find that even there it is not so clear; you are not so sure. For instance, this very chapter is like that.
As you go on in the chapter, you have words like these:
It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and to restore the preserved of Israel.
That cannot be Israel raising itself up, nor Israel restoring itself.
I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles,
that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.
We are more familiar with that, are we not? “A light to lighten the Gentiles”—the words of Simeon concerning the Lord Jesus Himself. We are able to identify that one. Yet, in the whole setting, it seems to move from one to the other.
Now, I am not going to attempt to disentangle that and give you the clear dividing lines. Indeed, it is not my intention to engage in an exposition of these chapters at all.
For as brief a time as I can use this evening, I just want to get hold of this one conception of the servant of the Lord—be he the original thought of Israel, the whole nation; be he the Messiah; or be he the remnant; be he the whole church, or the church within the church.
That does not matter so much to me and to us this evening. The point is: what is this divine conception of the servant and his service as viewed here?
We have said that there are many conceptions of the servant in this book, and we have been looking at several of them over the last two days especially. Here is another one.
He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword.
He hath made me a polished shaft.
In His quiver hath He kept me close.
Thou art my servant.
A sharp sword, a polished shaft: that is part of the Lord’s intent in His servant and His service. With all the other things which that servant may be, this is one of the things. Not the only thing, but it is here, and it is to be taken seriously.
A sharp sword, a polished shaft. I think we should all say that the element associated with those symbols is incisiveness. A sharp sword and a polished shaft are no neutral things, no indefinite things. They speak of something having an edge and a point—something that registers, something that really does have an effect.
That is the overall feature of such things. At once, we pass to the service that the church is intended to fulfil for God. And if it fails, then the church within the church—that company within the nominal that is the real, and really does answer to God’s thought—will fulfil it.
It will be present not only in this world and on this earth amongst men, but in the heavenlies amongst hostile forces, as something that registers; something that cuts in, something that pierces, something that counts and tells: a sharp sword and a polished shaft.
That, dear friends, is what the Lord intends us to be, as His servants. Again, that is what He intends not only individuals to be, but His church in representation in any place.
Now, from another standpoint, it is quite right that any company of the Lord’s people should be a very loving, happy little fellowship, enjoying Him and enjoying one another, and going on mildly and very pleasantly, having a nice time. Everybody says, “What nice people they are. What a lot of love there is amongst them,” and so on. That is right—but it is only one side.
Such—even such—ought to be a terror to everything that is evil, a positive menace to the powers of evil on the earth and in the heavens. They ought to be there as something that stands against all that is against the interests of the Lord, something that tells amongst men.
Of course, it is not at all difficult to understand all this when we come away from the general to the particular and take another look at the Lord Jesus.
In the last conference, we said that His voice was like the sound of many waters. That is only another way of speaking of the many aspects of Christ. Sometimes He was very gentle, very kind, very compassionate, very understanding, consoling—like that.
Sometimes He was reasoning, seeking to reach understanding, seeing eye to eye: gentle argument, as with Nicodemus.
But sometimes His mouth was like a sharp sword. Sometimes He was like a polished shaft. You can see that aspect of His presence: the point was being felt by the people around Him.
And you know, a sharp sword or a polished shaft is not a comfortable thing to encounter. How many of them cringed from that point, that cutting, and that piercing.
Really, His crucifixion was very largely because of that—their retaliation, their hatred. He was far too straight, far too clear-cut. He was too piercing and exposing for their comfort. He exposed their hypocrisy. He uncovered their falsehood. He showed up their inconsistency. He tore from them their mask.
He was a sharp sword. He was a polished shaft. He had that effect upon everything that was false and contrary to God and truth, however pretentious it was.
Yes, that was His effect. And that is one aspect of the servant of the Lord; there will be no doubt about it. It will bring things back on us if we are like that.
There is a side of things where you must not condone, where you must not compromise, where you must not be gentle. Your effect must be incisive. No one can misunderstand a sharp sword or a polished shaft. That is something no one can misunderstand.
It is necessary for this aspect of divine service to be present. It may go altogether against your natural temperament. You want to be on good terms with everybody. Well, remember that you may, by that way, just fail to do a piece of work for the Lord.
Sometimes we have to put aside our own feelings and be very faithful. Be very faithful. For I suggest to you that a sharp sword and a polished shaft are very faithful things. It is speaking the truth, even if it is in love; it is being faithful.
There is a ministry to the Lord and from the Lord which is of this character. It is clear-cut, incisive, definite; it registers. It will have no type of compromise with anything that is untrue, unreal, or false, and that is contrary to the Lord.
After all, dear friends, our real accountableness is in the realm of spiritual forces, is it not? What we count for is known best there amongst those spiritual intelligences.
How many advantages they get by our weakness, our indefiniteness, and our uncertainty. How much ground they hold because we are not as utter as we should be on the things of God; we are not as positive as we ought to be.
We are wobbling. We are weak. We are uncertain. We are indefinite. We are limping between two opinions, and they are holding the ground.
I suggest that these weapons are a contradiction to that sort of thing. They mean that the enemy will lose ground if we are like this—if we are really positive for God, clear-cut for God, sharp as His weapons and polished as His shaft.
That is the real point here. But then we have to ask: how can that be? On what ground can that be? Because this kind of effectiveness, this telling power, this incisiveness, like everything else, has a ground, a basis.
Our chapter makes that perfectly clear. I do not mean that it is written in the chapter in so many words, but the chapter itself marks the point which makes it possible for this one—whoever he is. I think these words themselves refer to the Messiah; however, leave that. It is possible for this servant of the Lord to say this about himself only because he has the foundation and the position which enable him to say it.
The history was this: Israel, the nation, had lost its position and its distinctiveness by allowing to come in the gods of the nations—their idols and their altars, their obelisks and their Asherah. You know all the prophets had to say about that.
The world and its gods had come in. That raised the great controversy between them and the Lord: Is the Lord the Lord, and the only Lord, or are these gods also lords?
That was the big question. The prophets fought that battle. The real battle that they were in was just because of that. They were fighting that whole thing.
But this thing persisted. They were wedded to their idols, and they hardened their hearts against the prophets. At last God said, “They are wedded to idols; let them go to the land where the idols are.” He handed them over to Babylon, into captivity for seventy years.
And that did it. Those seventy years were purging fires. The idolatry was purged out of Israel, and never again—mark you, from that time to this very day—has idolatry of that kind had a place amongst the Jews.
God cut in between them and Babylon. So far as that kind of idolatry was concerned, that form of idolatry, it was finished.
Now, this whole chapter sees the end of that controversy. It is settled: Who is the Lord? The Lord is the Lord. God alone is God. Idols are nothing. As far as the Lord is concerned, He occupies the alone place as Lord.
And that is the ground. That is the ground of triumphant warfare. That is the basis of this kind of effectiveness.
Now, I broaden that out as a principle. There is a lot more that can be said presently about Israel, but this chapter is in the second half of Isaiah’s book, which looks beyond the captivity.
It looks beyond the captivity. There was a lot still to be done, a lot of unsatisfactory conditions; the Lord still had a lot of controversy. But after the captivity, that one thing was settled.
Now, if this one in Isaiah 49 is the Messiah, the servant—“Thou art my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified,” the true Israel—then again, His tremendous effectiveness, His incisiveness, was based upon this utterness for God.
There was absolutely no compromising in any direction with anything that was not of God. No doubt about this.
You see, God has always been against mixture, and mixture has always been the cause and the occasion of defeat where the people of God are concerned.
Was it not the mixed multitude that came out of Egypt that were the weakness and the undoing of the nation in the wilderness? It says, “The mixed multitude murmured,” and we know that, in the final issue, it was that murmuring which set that people aside so that they were never allowed to go into the land.
The Apostle Paul exhorted the Corinthians, “Neither murmur ye, as some of them murmured, and perished by the destroyer.” But it was the mixed multitude that murmured. They were the weakness of the whole thing and the cause of their defeat and subsequent loss.
Yes, Israel’s mixed multitude. And this mixture in Israel later, in the later period of their history to which we are referring—the mixture was the cause of their undoing and their going into captivity.
Even when they came back from Babylon, there was still mixture. You know how, in Ezra and Nehemiah, the great business of those leaders was to deal with this state of mixture in marriage: to get rid of the two things that were not the same things. They laid themselves out to do it, and when that was done, the people were in a strong position.
But let us come to the great Servant again, the Lord Jesus. It was just this very thing that lay behind His statement:
The prince of this world cometh: and he hath nothing in me.
He had nothing—nothing that belonged to him, or related to him, or was of him. So far, the prince of this world was cast out.
His victory over the forces of evil was due to His complete purity so far as the kingdom of Satan, and all that belonged to it, was concerned.
You see, that was the battle of the wilderness, was it not, during the forty days after His baptism? What was Satan trying to do?
He was trying to defile, to corrupt, this One—this Christ—by getting Him to accept this world in its unregenerate state and its unclean condition, to accept it like that as His dominion.
All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
Why did Jesus refuse it? He was not going to be the king of a corrupt world, of a defiled world, of this world.
Note—not only then, but always—He was not having it. When they would come and by force make Him king, what did He do? Oh, what a chance! What a chance! Had He not come for that?
Oh, no. When they would by force make Him king, He departed into a mountain Himself alone. I wish we could handle all our temptations to popularity like that—a corrupt popularity.
You see, the statement about Him is so clear, and He is so true to it: He would not commit Himself unto them, for He knew what was in men.
He knew perfectly well the corrupt strength of this world and of the crowd: that today they would come and make Him king, and tomorrow they would say, “Crucify Him.”
That is the world. If the world cannot use you for itself, it will crucify you. That is the kind of world it is, because the spirit of this world is to use you and everything for itself. It is the spirit, the principle, of the flesh, of fallen nature: to use everything for itself.
It is corrupt, and Jesus was not having that kind of kingdom. In effect, He was saying, “If I am going to have the kingdom of this world—and I am—I will have it redeemed from all iniquity, with the prince of this world cast out.”
On pure ground. Holy ground.
And so He hurled the weapon of His mouth, the sword of His mouth, at the tempter. He said:
It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.
That is the ground of strength: Him only. Him only. That was the trouble with Israel and what brought Israel’s downfall: it was not Him only.
Well, the point, dear friends, clearly is this: incisiveness, effectiveness, victory over evil and evil forces, are upon the basis of a heart undivided where God is concerned—where He is Lord, and Lord alone.
So, when in principle this controversy as to what place the Lord is to hold, and how much of the place He is to have, is settled, then it is possible to say, “He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword. He hath made me a polished shaft; in His quiver hath He hid me.”
I think you see, with all the wrappings, the principle is just this: there has got to be a place with God where this world has no place, where all that belongs to this world as Satan’s kingdom has no place whatever.
But, oh, after all, dear friends, in far more subtle ways than you or I recognize, the enemy is always at work to weaken our fighting force, to blunt the edge of God’s weapon in us by some kind of worldliness.
Some form of worldliness—worldliness as a principle; something linked with this world; some way of doing things as the world does them; some pandering to some worldly interest; some ways in which we use our time and our means.
Oh, so many different forms it takes. This world is wholly inimical to God. Only as you and I are completely severed from that whole thing, in a spiritual as well as in a practical way, shall we be a fighting weapon in the hands of God.
This world is wholly inimical to God. Only as you and I are completely severed from that whole thing, in a spiritual as well as in a practical way, shall we be a fighting weapon in the hands of God.
And I say that is something that the Lord very much needs. After all, these symbols represent the belligerent aspect of the service of the Lord. We are in a tremendous battle. We are going to be beaten, defeated, and worsted unless we are on the right ground.
The right ground is the ground that the Lord Jesus was on all the time: no selfish consideration, no personal interests to serve.
That is the spirit of the world, I repeat—the spirit of the world. Because, after all, servanthood, if rightly understood, just means unselfishness, does it not? Unselfishness.
It is not true to the principles of servanthood to be using your position for yourself. That is a violation of servanthood.
A real servant is one whose personal interests, considerations, and ends have been completely subjected to the interests of the one to be served. That is all. They just live for that one, never considering how it affects them, what it matters to them. They live for the one to whom they have given themselves as servants.
It is an entirely and utterly unselfish thing. Yet that is such a tremendous power, as seen in the case of the Lord Jesus.
Unselfishness—what a range that covers. What a reign it has over selfishness.
The only way of being delivered from it is that Another should have completely captured the heart; Another should have taken the place of self. And that is where the Lord Jesus was. He was just there. It was enough.
I come;
in the roll of the book it is written of me:
I delight to do thy will, O my God;
yea, thy law is within my heart.
That is the servant. And again I say, what a power He was, and has ever been, in this world.
Oh, you see, it is just the reverse of the world, is it not? If you are going to count for anything at all, if you are really going to mean anything, you must be master. You must assert yourself. You must make your presence felt. You must be something.
That is the world. It always is the world. The world cannot understand this sort of thing—that you will ever be anything at all if you are not something. You never will be anything at all unless you are something. See what I mean?
It sounds strange, but that is just it. The world cannot understand this law of the kingdom of heaven, this law of real spiritual power: the meekness of Christ, the meekness of Christ.
But like it or not, dear friends, the most potent thing in this universe was the meekness of Jesus Christ.
Listen—you know it:
He emptied Himself,
taking the form of a servant,
being made in the likeness of men;
and being found in fashion as a man,
He humbled Himself,
becoming obedient even unto death,
yea, the death of the cross.
For that reason, on that ground, because of that, God highly exalted Him and gave unto Him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Is that power? That power is by way of meekness, self-emptying. It is tremendous—tremendous.
There it is. This is just gathered around this idea: service that really counts for God in a definite and incisive way in the midst of all that is inimical to His interests; really to be somebody who counts for God, or a company that counts for God, about whose registration there is no mistaking at all.
The people who are utterly for the Lord will be like that. He will make them a sharp sword and a polished shaft.
A polished shaft—that is something that is not rusty and unfit for use, something in His hand, in His quiver, ready to be used.
The Lord make us that.