I have often said to friends, “When we get to glory, and love, we shall look at one another and just say, ‘Well, we are here.’” We never often thought it would be. We wondered. But I love it: “Here we are.”
Now, our being here this evening, in this place, is a very small representation of that great truth and reality.
It has been battle all the way. We were ready and started out early yesterday morning. Frustration upon frustration; we found ourselves, at half past six in the evening, back again in our home after being in the airport and other places all day long.
Oh, we got away this morning, and just as we were going through the plane, the loudspeaker called, “Mr. Austin-Sparks, please call at the TWA desk; see the representative.” And I said, “Here is another one.” Well, we got away.
And our brothers will tell you, we took the wrong turning this evening on our way from Washington, and went twenty miles out of our way. And I said, “Here is another one.” But here we are.
And that is how it will be. It has often been many frustrations, many difficulties along the way, and sometimes, “Shall we ever get there?” That is, to glory. But we shall.
It was early this morning, reading the Word before setting out again, that I read this: “Jesus Christ—He is Lord of all.” And that came, as you see, right in the midst of all this yesterday and today. We just had to lay hold of that: He is Lord of all.
Now, that is by way of introduction, and we will spend no more time on personal matters. For this little while, you will not expect too much, I am sure, for my time is twenty minutes to one in the morning.
Well, the Lord will help us.
Now, I do not think that I shall get really into that which is on my heart for ministry this week, but I think I can move toward it in this way: by reminding you that there is one fear which ought to be characteristic of every true Christian.
I know there is much that forbids fear, and tells us to fear not. There is a kind of fear that we must not indulge in. But there is one fear which ought to characterize every true Christian child of God: the fear of unreality.
It is the fear of having divine truth without divine power; of having divine light without divine character; of having knowledge of things without the formation of Christ in our lives.
That is, having a great deal of teaching without it becoming effective in our lives. That is what I mean by unreality.
A vast amount of teaching and mental knowledge may be given to us in spoken ministry and in books, and yet there may be no corresponding measure of life, power, Christ-likeness, and reality.
That is the ultimate test of everything that we have, or think that we have. That is the test. It will never be how much we know of what is in the Bible, or how much truth we have received. The test will be, ever and always: What does that amount to in our case, in a practical way?
Now, that is the burden with which I have come here.
I do not know whether the devil has been trying to play upon my fear and my reservation, or whether, in a very real sense, I have not wanted to come to Wabana this year. In another sense, yes; but in a very real sense, no.
I am afraid—afraid of more talking, more addresses, more unfolding of biblical content. True, I have been doing it, you see, for so many years. Sixty years I have been teaching, and at this time I have to look out and try to say, “What has it amounted to? What does it amount to?”
I know it has not all been without blessing or usefulness to the Lord. God knows. But, seeing the mountains of teaching over these years, I ask, “Have I the assurance that if I go and do more, it is going to lead somewhere?” That is my fear, my question.
So I want, right at the beginning—I do not know what has been said to you already last night and today—but this is what I want to say as I come amongst you: we must have this fear this week, the right kind of fear. I believe it is a divine fear.
We must not fill our notebooks or our minds with more teaching, true though it may be. But every time there is something that can really affect us, or issue in something, then, so far as we ourselves are concerned, we are going to apply our hearts.
Then, day by day, when the days are past, we are different people. That is the only justification of our coming here: we are different people. We certainly are not the same in spiritual life at the end as when we came.
It does not require a very large knowledge of the Lord Jesus—His life, His movements amongst people, His teaching—to recognize that this was a characteristic of Himself: the one thing that He hated.
With all the beautiful things that He said, the kind things, the gracious things that He said and did, He said some terrible things. Words of rough anger came out of His mouth. Some of His denunciations were really terrible.
It was this element about Him, and about His forerunner, John the Baptist. John said some pretty terrible things, if you get the literal meaning and force of what he said.
These people would come out from Jerusalem to see him, and he said:
Ye offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Matthew 3:7
You get the picture. There is a bush fire spreading, and as it spreads, the vipers leap out and make for the river, escaping the flame. John says, “That is what some of you people are doing, coming down here to the river where I am baptizing. You are a generation of vipers, just seeking to escape the wrath to come.”
That is a pretty terrible thing to say to people. But the Lord Jesus said equally strong things: “Ye hypocrites!” “Ye blind guides!” Yes, words such as those.
Only because His soul was consumed with this passion for reality. The one thing He could not tolerate was hypocrisy, falsehood, unreality, pretense, play-acting—no reality.
Not even Nicodemus, the great teacher in Israel, who upheld the best traditions, could escape. The Lord said to him very frankly that, unless a man is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
John 3:3
If there is not reality, then there is nothing of the kingdom of God. And what Christ meant by reality was the heavenly nature. Even the best natural man must be born from above.
Well, I need say little more. It is perfectly clear that the one thing upon which Jesus was set with all His passion was that there should be no gap whatever between truth as truth, teaching as teaching, doctrine as doctrine, Bible knowledge as Bible knowledge, and life, heavenly character, and Christ-likeness.
Look at the three dimensions. One may be very good, but if it stops short of this, it is nothing after all.
Oh, Jesus was so definitely set upon this reality, and He is now. I want you to remember and know that both the Bible in its teaching and history as it unfolds are moving toward this consummation.
As we go on with God—if we are going on with God—we shall have a deepening, deepening concern about reality. That is, the very essence of things will become more and more the concern.
You see the parables of the Lord Jesus around that matter. What about the wheat and the tares? The suggestion was, “Let us pluck up the tares.” “No,” He said, “in so doing, you may destroy the wheat as well. Let a process ensue. Give it time.”
And in time, that process of intensification will reveal, without any doubt or possibility of making a mistake, which is which.
Other parables are on the same principle. You see the sower itself, such a simple parable, it seems. One sowing, two sowing, three sowing, four sowing—there you go. The issue is the measure of reality.
In the end, after all the giving of the Word, all the broadcasting of the truth, all the preaching of the gospel, what is the criterion? Not how much has been given, or how much has been received in a general way. How much of the real thing comes out at last? What have you got?
I could spend much time showing that, because in the teaching of the Lord Himself and later in the New Testament, history bears this out: it is a true law, a true principle.
Who is so blind today amongst Christians as to fail to see this process of intensification? It is spreading. It is spreading.
It has tested everything in China to the last degree. What is going to be found, after all the years of missionary enterprise and expense and cost and whatnot? What is going to be found in the end that stands eternally?
It is spreading all over the world, is it not? Oh, these dear Christians in Africa, in Egypt today, in Israel today—it is coming on. You know it is coming on here. The sovereignty of God is going to press this issue more and more.
After all that God has given to the nations of this world, after all that has come to people from heaven during these centuries, what is going to be the essential reality? Am I wrong? Is it not obvious? It is happening.
And even if there are not outward persecutions in our part of the world, the Western Hemisphere, my mail brings continually letters from everywhere. Dear people are saying, “I never in my life knew so much pressure as I am going through today.” Spiritual pressure, spiritual trials. “Sometimes I just do not know where I am, which way to turn, or where to look. Conflict is so intense.”
Well, some of you here perhaps know something about that. It is increasingly difficult to go on in the utter way with God. The enemy is going to stop that, if he can, by any means.
And so, while we are here, we will be receiving from one another, I trust, and from the Lord. But that must not be the end of it. We have heard it. We know it. But we need to step back and say, “But do I? Do I?”
A difference must be made in us. I am not standing before you to preach; that is not the idea. I want to say to you that, after these many years of seeking to walk with the Lord, know the Lord, serve the Lord, minister to the Lord and to His people—with a very wide and, I think, deep spiritual experience—I say to you that the year between now and when we were here before has been the most terrible year in my life from a spiritual standpoint.
The conflict, the pressure, the intense determination of the devil—if it is possible—to get us out. Does that sound too serious, too heavy?
Now, I want to say to you that you are bound, sooner or later, to come up against this issue: Has all that I have heard and received and know become life to me—my very life, a part of my being? Or is it merely here, just stored here?
That is the thing which must come. Otherwise, people are still untouched.
I think somebody will say to me afterwards, “You have put a heavy load on; you have brought heaviness on the whole thing.” No. This has got to be a time of fortification.
We must know the Lord in an inward way, and have an increase of Christ, in order to go triumphantly through the end and stand at last. Having done all, to stand—stand at last triumphant on the field.
Now, that just brings me to the point where I can only indicate what it is that I feel the Lord is going to have me say to you this week.
All that I have been saying, and much more that I could say on this matter of reality, is focused in the Word of God—focused, concentrated, and summed up—in one thing.
Apart from the Person of the Lord Jesus—take that for granted—but after the recognition of the place, the immense place, of the Lord Jesus, the next thing in the Bible which is central, supreme, all-governing, and persistent is the cross of the Lord Jesus.
He is the supreme reality; but after Himself, the predominant reality of the Bible is the cross.
No one can truly contemplate the cross of our Lord Jesus without being overwhelmed with the sense of what a real thing it was. There is no fiction about that, no imagination about that, no pretense about that. Terribly, terribly real to Him, to His first disciples.
And the cross is not only a reality in history. The New Testament makes it perfectly clear that the cross is as real in experience for the child of God as ever it was in history.
Today it is just as real in the spiritual experience and history of the child of God as it was when it took place those centuries ago at Calvary.
We shall have to see that in a different way this week, but I want to draw your attention to this: the cross is the central reality in God’s universe, in creation, and in human history—the cross of our Lord Jesus.
In every book of the New Testament, the cross is either explicit or implicit. That is, it is either definitely referred to, mentioned, and brought clearly into view, or it is implied; it is in the very heart of things as you read through your New Testament.
In the four Gospels, they vary in their content. One writer leaves out what another puts in, and John has much that is not found in the others. They all have their own different points of teaching concerning the work of the Lord.
But they are on common ground over this one thing. Not one of them fails to head everything up in the cross. They crown all that they have said with the cross.
John says that what he had written was a mere modicum of what he could have written. He said that if everything were put down, the world would not contain the books. Was he exaggerating? Well, we have learned through two thousand years that it was full of books, and they are still pouring out.
But whatever the lesser or greater measure, not one of them fails to make this perfectly clear: the cross is the crown, the great and final summit-point of everything. It gives meaning to everything else—to the Person, the work, and the teaching. The cross gives power to everything else.
Yes, they are on common ground there. Whatever they have had to say, they all find themselves being led up to that one thing as the end.
But in the Gospels, it is the historic fact of the cross: something enacted in history, at a certain time and in a certain place, because of certain things. It took place in history; it had to be like that.
When you move from the Gospels to the book of Acts, you find that out of the history has come a gospel, a preaching. Those who are found in that book are heralds of the cross. Learn the place that they give to the cross, and how they hold everything to that center.
Peter has come to see what he did not see at the time that he denied his Lord. Now he is telling the people very frankly and very strongly that the cross is the key to everything that has happened: “Whom ye crucified, God raised.” Out of that, everything proceeds. The whole book of Acts is based upon the cross.
Heralds of the cross are going forth to the ends of the earth.
You move on to the letters, the epistles, and you will find, as I have said, that the cross is either explicit or implicit in every one. That is what we are going to see, I trust, as far as we can get.
But in every one of these letters, some particular aspect and application of the cross is brought to light and applied. The cross is applied to this situation and that situation, because of this and because of that. Every letter has in it, in some way, the law, the principle, of the cross to touch a particular need, condition, state, or situation.
There is a many-sided cross running right through all these letters.
This, surely, is enough to impress us that there is something here we have got to know and understand more than we do about this thing which we call the cross—the message of the cross.
I told you last year how tired I am of what people write and what people speak. They seem to think that I am either a crank or an expert on this matter of what they call “the message of the cross.” Oh, no.
The Lord save us from the message of the cross as merely a message. Let Him show us the tremendous, eternal significance of this central thing in Christianity.
Not only at the beginning, when becoming a Christian—the cross where I passed from death to life, where the burden of my heart rolled away. That is good. Never get away from that blessedness. But, dear friends, that is not all that the cross has got to say to us.
It is going to follow us through—follow us through all our years—if we are going to move with God. And at the end, at the end, we should not have got away from the cross. We will need it as much at the end as at any time, whether at the beginning or subsequently.
I think one of our older hymns may sound strange to you, an American audience, because you know the phrase, “the Victorians,” the Victorian era. If you do not know the phrase, you find it in your hymn books.
The Victorians, I think, had a more ready apprehension of the place of the cross at the end of the Christian life. They may have been a bit morbid—I think they were a bit morbid in so many of those hymns, you know.
You take up one of those hymns: “Clothe me with Thy last gasp,” and, “When I pass.” It sounds a bit morbid, does it not?
I did hear, I think it was Miss Carmichael of Dohnavur, tell something. I think it was she who said that, when she was a child and taken to church, she was so wearied with the church service, and not least with the preacher, that she opened a hymn book and made a study of all the things people were going to say when they died—the collection of all their last words in the hymns.
Well, that may be a bit morbid and depressing. We do not see those hymns so much today, though we still see some of them.
But I think those people had a more ready apprehension of the place of the deliverance, the victory, and the triumph of the cross at the end.
Perhaps we have put so much emphasis upon the beginning of the Christian life and the place of the cross there. Thank God—thank God for it. Never lose our appreciation of that. But we are going to need all that mighty work of the cross more and more as we go on with God, and at the end.
Yes, we are going to need to know the reality of what Christ has done by His cross, and what that cross stands for to us, for time and for our eternal destiny.
Well, that is an introduction. But I feel that I want, right at this point, to come in on this. Dear friends, get adjusted in mind and heart over this week, if you have not already done so. You may already have had the appeal; I do not know. But get adjusted to this.
I am not here just to get my notebook full of what the preachers are saying, either to have it for myself or to use it for other people. I am not here to accumulate fresh stores of truth.
I am here to come under the hand of God, that He may effect in me what remains to be effected and can be effected at this time.
Would you adjust to that? Say to the Lord, at the close of each day, every morning, “Lord, not just teaching today—power. How is it affecting something?”
If it is going to be the Word like a sharp two-edged sword, dividing asunder, all right, Lord, better that than to die in unreality.
Would you do that? God help you, I trust.
Although what I have said may seem to make the cross terrible, rather dreadful, I trust we shall see the other side and really be with the apostle:
But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Galatians 6:14
May the glory of the cross come to us, as well as its challenge, in a new way.