We should return to the purposes of Isaiah.
We are going to read a few verses from Isaiah 62, and then we will read from another part of Isaiah. First of all, Isaiah 62:1, and from verse 10.
For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
Until her righteousness go forth as brightness,
And her salvation as a lamp that burneth.Go through, go through the gates,
Prepare ye the way of the people;
Cast up, cast up the highway;
Gather out the stones;
Lift up an ensign for the peoples.Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the earth,
Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh;
Behold, His reward is with Him,
And His recompense before Him.And they shall call them The holy people, The redeemed of the Lord:
And thou shalt be called Sought out, A city not forsaken.
And then also in the prophecies of Isaiah, in Isaiah 58. I am reading from the American Standard Version of 1901.
Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet,
And declare unto My people their transgression,
And to the house of Jacob their sins.Yet they seek Me daily, and delight to know My ways:
As a nation that did righteousness,
And forsook not the ordinance of their God,
They ask of Me righteous judgments;
They delight to draw near unto God.Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and Thou seest not?
Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and Thou takest no knowledge?Behold, in the day of your fast ye find your own pleasure,
And exact all your labors.
Behold, ye fast for strife and contention,
And to smite with the fist of wickedness:
Ye fast not this day so as to make your voice to be heard on high.Is such the fast that I have chosen?
The day for a man to afflict his soul?
Is it to bow down his head as a rush,
And to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Wilt thou call this a fast,
And an acceptable day to the Lord?
Is not this the fast that I have chosen:
To loose the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the bands of the yoke,
And to let the oppressed go free,
And that ye break every yoke?Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry,
And that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house?
When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him;
And that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?Then shall thy light break forth as the morning,
And thy healing shall spring forth speedily;
And thy righteousness shall go before thee;
The glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward.Then shalt thou call, and the Lord will answer;
Thou shalt cry, and He will say, Here I am.
If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke,
The putting forth of the finger, and speaking wickedly;
And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry,
And satisfy the afflicted soul:
Then shall thy light rise in darkness,
And thine obscurity be as the noonday:And the Lord will guide thee continually,
And satisfy thy soul in dry places,
And make strong thy bones;
And thou shalt be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places;
Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations;
And thou shalt be called The repairer of the breach,
The restorer of paths to dwell in.
If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath,
From doing thy pleasure on My holy day;
And call the sabbath a delight,
And the holy of the Lord honorable;
And shalt honor it, not doing thine own ways,
Nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord;
And I will make thee to ride upon the high places of the earth;
And I will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father:
For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
Shall we pray?
O Father, we want to thank Thee together that we are found here in Thy presence, gathered in the name of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus. And we thank Thee once again, Father, that Thou hast made provision for us. We would not be so foolish as to ignore that provision.
We come to Thee, O Lord, to avail ourselves of the provision Thou hast made for speaking and for hearing, that we may meet with Thee, O Lord, and that Thou mightest do something in our lives and in our life together as Thy people.
O Lord, we thank Thee for Thy Word, which is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. We look to Thee, Lord. Wilt Thou, by Thy Spirit, release that kind of Word that will get into our hearts? Wilt Thou, Lord, keep at bay every single work of the enemy, whatever way he would seek to tamper with this time?
Help us to attend to Thee, to hear Thy voice, and above all, give us that grace to be obedient to Thee, O Lord. And we ask it all in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
In these times for which I have been responsible, we have been considering this whole matter of Zion. We have thought about the battle over Zion, the building of Zion, and the travail for Zion. Really, now we have gone a little bit too far to be able to go over all of that and bring anyone who has not been with us up to date.
But this matter of Zion is a tremendous matter. It is not just something that is an old-fashioned idea found in the Old Testament, which somehow went out with the old covenant. It is something which lies at the heart of all God’s dealings with humanity.
We find in the Bible this word Zion used again and again and again. We are told that the Lord dwells in Zion; He loves Zion; He reigns from Zion; He saves Zion; He roars from Zion; He rules out of Zion; the rod of His strength goes out of Zion. There is the inhabitant of Zion and the daughter of Zion. Everything is somehow or other connected with Zion.
In the New Testament, we have that wonderful word in Hebrews 12:22:
But ye are come unto mount Zion,
And unto the city of the living God,
The heavenly Jerusalem.
We have been considering this matter, this thing which lies so much on the heart of God. He says:
For the Lord hath chosen Zion;
He hath desired it for His habitation.
This is My resting-place for ever:
Here will I dwell.
I want this evening to talk a little about the work of Zion, the ministry of Zion. It is tremendously important that we should understand that this whole matter is not just a great ideal, a tremendous spiritual truth, or some great aim or objective of God which bears very little relationship to our life down here on earth.
No, it has everything to do with our life down here on earth. It lies at the heart of our salvation. It lies at the very heart of our calling. It is that which God has in His mind in every single dealing that He has with us as individuals and with us as His people.
The last time I spoke, we considered the travail for Zion. We talked about the determination of the Lord and the fellowship of the Lord. It is all very well to talk about the building of Zion, but we need to know something of travail for Zion.
The only way Zion is going to be built is when there are sufficient numbers of believers with a spiritual capacity to travail for Zion, that it might be built up and completed. That is one of the great battles which is on at the present time.
The Lord is seeking those in whom He can bring to birth travail. He can conceive something in our spirit that will issue in a ministry of intercession, a travail which will result in the completion of Zion.
Then we have these wonderful words, which are the challenge of the Lord. We will come back to them on another occasion, but I want to catch on the theme:
Go through, go through the gates,
Prepare ye the way of the people;
Cast up, cast up the highway;
Gather out the stones;
Lift up an ensign for the peoples.
“Go through the gates,” as if the Lord is saying to us, “Do not linger. Do not gather on the periphery of things. There is a work to be done. Do not just stand on the circumference. Do not just be a spectator. Do not be involved in a superficial and shallow manner, glorying in the truth, glorying in the ideal, glorying in the fact that Zion is something God has in His heart, and never committing yourself practically to the whole matter.”
Go through the gate. Whether it is going through the gates into the city, or going through the gates so that you may be part of this work of casting up the highway, does not really matter. The fact of the matter is this: whether it means getting into the city and being built up in the city, committed to the life of the city, to the government of the city, and to the King whom the Lord has set in Zion; or whether it is going out under His government and by His power to cast up a highway for the people and prepare the way for others to come, it means we have got to commit ourselves.
Surely, going through the gate means that at last we finally commit ourselves to Zion and to the work of Zion. No longer are we content just to stand on the periphery, on the circumference, and watch—just spectate, just be a little partaker of the blessings, coming in for some of the advantages and glory.
We will commit ourselves, lock, stock, and barrel, to the battles of Zion, to the conflict of Zion, to the sacrifice required in Zion, to the building of Zion, and to this work of Zion. Oh, this is something tremendous.
Then we have this matter of preparing a way for the people. There is a way to be prepared. God longs not only for His own blood-bought children, His redeemed children, His elect people, to come into Zion; a way has to be cast up. The way has to be prepared.
Notice that this is not the Lord saying, “I will go through the gates.” The King is already in Zion. He has gone before. He is asking us to commit ourselves to Him, and He tells us that we are to prepare a way for the people.
One of the tragedies is that we can become so superior. As soon as we begin to see Zion, we get very superior. We cut ourselves off from all the other believers. We look down our noses: “They do not understand. They are divorced from Zion. They are blind to Zion.” As if we are everything and they are nothing.
Are they not also the people of Zion? Are they not also born in Zion? Is not their birth registered in Zion? Then we must prepare a way for the people. This means there must be something so loving about us, so humble about us, so real about us, so attractive about us, that somehow we make a way for people to come.
And what about young saints? Do we not live in an unsaved society, in which there is so much emptiness, so much unhappiness, so much corruption, and so much despair? We need to prepare a way for the people.
“Cast up, cast up a highway.” Have you ever seen a highway cast up? My word, it is a job. You have plenty of very good highways here in the United States. That is one of the things that impressed me when I first came to the United States: the roads.
I come from a dear little old-fashioned island—not as old-fashioned as some imagine. Sometimes people here ask me whether we have electricity. I think they imagine I come by horse and cart to the meeting now and again. We are not as old-fashioned as that. We did build the Concorde.
But casting up a highway is no small thing. You need equipment to cast up a highway, and in stony, rocky country there is a real job entailed in it. Not only is it a highway to be cast up, carved out of the stony ground, but there are stones to be gathered out of the way.
I do not know whether you have ever seen one of these old roads—there are many of them in the Middle East—where the water, when the rainy season comes, washes away the sand and earth. They are very hard places, especially if there is no light. At night you can fall over rocks and stones and into holes and all kinds of things.
“Gather out the stones.” Do you not think there are a lot of stones to be gathered out? I do. There are so many stumbling blocks amongst us—so many things which, somehow or other, we believers have created, which have produced a stumbling block for men and women who would find the Lord. They trip over these things. They fall over these things.
It is our job to gather out the stones. We are not to adjust to the stones. We are not to adjust to the stumbling blocks and sources of offence. We are to remove them.
Then listen to this lovely word: “Lift up an ensign for the peoples.” An ensign is a very interesting thing. Wherever the Queen goes in my country, the ensign goes with her. It is on her car. It is even on her airplane when it lands and just before it takes off.
The ensign is always there when the Queen is there. In the old days, that is how you could tell whether the Queen was in residence at Buckingham Palace. You looked up at the flagpole to see if the ensign was there. If the ensign was there, the Queen was there. If the ensign was not there, she was not there.
If you go to Windsor Castle, which is near me, and see the ensign flying on the flagpole, you know she is in residence there. The Queen is actually at home.
An ensign had, in the old age, in battle and in war, a very honoured place. In times past, my forebears were ensign-bearers for one of the royal houses. You had to bear the ensign for the King.
When, in battle, any group of soldiers or unit got a little divorced from the rest of the army, they looked around to see, “Where is the ensign?” Because where the ensign is, there the King is. They would fight their way back to the ensign.
“Lift up an ensign for the peoples.” What does it mean? Wave a flag in a nationalistic way? No, no, no. It means, let the whole world know where the King is. Let the whole world know where the King is.
Lift up an ensign for the peoples, so that all those in the world may know, “This is where the King is. This is where the King is doing His work. This is where there is royal authority. This is the throne of God.”
When the King is on the battlefield, the throne goes with him. I do not think they actually carry the throne with him; he leaves the throne back in the palace. But as far as government goes, though he leaves the throne back there, the government goes with the King. In that sense the throne goes with the King. Where the ensign is, that is where the throne is.
Here, then, we have a tremendous challenge from the Lord: go through the gates; commit yourself; do not linger any more. Give yourself to this matter of Zion. Give yourself to the King of Zion. Then prepare a way for the people. Cast up the highway. Gather out the stones. Lift up an ensign for the people.
What does all this really mean when it comes to it? You remember the Lord’s great cry:
For Zion’s sake will I not hold My peace,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
Until her righteousness go forth as brightness,
And her salvation as a lamp that burneth.
Then He says to us:
I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem;
They shall never hold their peace day nor night:
Ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers, take ye no rest,
And give Him no rest,
Till He establish,
And till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
When we come to Isaiah 58, we have something to do with this whole matter of light shining. Look first at Isaiah 60:1:
Arise, shine; for thy light is come,
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
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.
And nations shall come to thy light,
And kings to the brightness of thy rising.
In Isaiah 58 we have an extraordinary prophecy through the lips of Isaiah. At first it seems almost amazing. Here are people praying. Here are people fasting. Here are people seeking the Lord daily. Here are people identified with the things of God. Yet the Lord says, “This is not My fast.”
“You are making an excuse of all this thing. You are not getting down to the real issue.” Then He goes on to say, “Is not this the fast that I have chosen?” He describes certain things, and as He describes them, He gives a promise.
If you fulfil this condition, He says in Isaiah 58:8:
Then shall thy light break forth as the morning,
And thy healing shall spring forth speedily;
And thy righteousness shall go before thee;
The glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward.
Then, again in Isaiah 58:10:
Then shall thy light rise in darkness,
And thine obscurity be as the noonday:
And the Lord will guide thee continually,
And satisfy thy soul in dry places,
And make strong thy bones;
And thou shalt be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places;
Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations;
And thou shalt be called The repairer of the breach,
The restorer of paths to dwell in.
Then another marvellous promise, Isaiah 58:14:
Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord;
And I will make thee to ride upon the high places of the earth;
And I will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father.
Tremendous promises, all to do with Zion’s righteousness going forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burneth; all to do with Zion being established in the earth and becoming a praise in the earth, so that men and women in need see in Zion the King and taste the salvation of God through the King in Zion.
Oh, dear people of God, do you not mourn with me about our weakness and our poverty? I am not talking about the large numbers of the Lord’s people found in all kinds of circles, segments, and sections. I am thinking of ourselves. I am thinking of us.
Do you not mourn with me about our poverty, weakness, and limitation? Do you not feel at times that somehow here we are, a people who understand something about the purpose of the Lord? By the grace of God, He has revealed at least something to us of His purpose, something of the nature of His church, something about His Zion.
Yet we meet together, and we sing our hymns, and we sing our little songs, and we say our little prayers, and somehow or other the world never feels the impact of our presence. Is this not a cause for burden?
“Oh, but,” you say, “we are not large enough.” No, I know. Of course, it is not just an American mentality—if you forgive me saying it—but it has to be large to succeed. We have got it on our side too: the idea that unless you have a few thousand people gathered, you cannot make an impact upon a community.
How can you? A little handful? My dear friend:
One shall chase a thousand,
And a little one shall become a strong nation.
God always begins with one. He always begins with a few weak people. There is no excuse. Once you have people in living union with the King, there must be an impact, surely. Surely.
This must give us some concern. Are we just going to meet in our groups, our companies, and our localities, and deceive ourselves that because we understand a few more truths than some other believers, somehow it is happening amongst us?
We need to let this whole matter of prayer get right into us, so that we begin to face realities about ourselves. Then we can get to the throne and say, “Oh, we are weak, insignificant, poor people, but You have saved us and joined us to Yourself. We long to see something happen.”
Is it possible—and I think I can say this without upsetting anybody—that there are many of our companies where we are not fasting weekly, or even daily? We are coming together for prayer, but the Lord says here, “Daily they seek Me, and they fast, and they bow down before Me.”
Some of us are so inhibited that we could not even do that. They fell down before Me, and I go, “What?” But He said, “I do not want it. I do not want it, because they are missing the whole point.”
The fast that I have chosen is fourfold. Tonight we shall only be able, I think, to look at two things. Here is the first thing that this chosen fast is: it is the breaking of all oppression.
Did you hear that? The breaking of all oppression. Here it is, Isaiah 58:6:
Is not this the fast that I have chosen:
To loose the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the bands of the yoke,
And to let the oppressed go free,
And that ye break every yoke?
Here is His chosen fast: the breaking of all oppression—loosening the bonds of wickedness, undoing the bands of the yoke, letting the oppressed go free, and breaking every yoke.
This had particular reference, in the time of Isaiah, to the freeing of slaves who were Jewish. It was expressly forbidden that there should be Jewish slaves. If you come to Jeremiah 34:8, we read:
The word that came unto Jeremiah from the Lord, after that the king Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people that were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty unto them;
That every man should let his man-servant, and every man his maid-servant, that is a Hebrew or a Hebrewess, go free; that none should make bondmen of them, to wit, of a Jew his brother.
In other words, this had reference first and primarily to those who were Jewish, who belonged to the people of God, but who were slaves.
If you turn again to Leviticus 25:39:
And if thy brother be waxed poor with thee, and sell himself unto thee, thou shalt not make him to serve as a bond-servant:
As a hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee; he shall serve with thee unto the year of jubilee:
Then shall he go out from thee, he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return.
For they are My servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen.
Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor, but shalt fear thy God.
My point is this. When we look at this word in Isaiah 58, “to loose the bonds of wickedness,” this word in Hebrew means simply something that is bound or twisted powerfully around.
Do you not think there are times when our meetings, our very gatherings together, have got something powerfully twisted around them? I do. We find it again and again at home in Richmond. There are times when somehow the whole life of the church has something twisted around it.
The whole question is: are we going to accept it or not? Sometimes, because we do not know what to do or what action to take, we just accept it. Then often there begins infighting. “What is responsible for this? So-and-so is responsible. This leader, that leader, this circumstance, that circumstance.” We all start fighting with one another.
It has nothing to do with personalities. The enemy has come and said, “I will not let this work go another step. I will bind it.” God, in His wisdom, says, “Yes, you may. You may. Because these are My children, and unless they learn to undo the bands of the yoke, loose the bonds of wickedness, let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke, then I will let them suffer heaviness and know bondage.”
Do you understand? If you want to put up with the Midianites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and all the other -ites, God will let you. But be sure of this: they will not be in the land to serve you. You will serve them.
Every single time the people of God forgot the Word of the Lord to drive out the nations in the land before them, and to leave not a single vestige of them in the land, where they left them, the Book of Judges tells us, they became the means of oppression of the people of God.
There is no neutral ground in this war with the powers of darkness. Here it is: it is an honour to know the activity of the enemy.
Did you hear that? It is an honour to know the activity of the enemy. Why? Because it means the King is present. That is why.
It means that somehow there is something valuable in our gathering, something valuable in the testimony, something valuable in the lives of those in that company of believers, so that the enemy has said, “I will not let this thing go another step.”
The Lord is not always going to spoon-feed us. There has to come a time when we recognize that if we allow these things, these beings, to oppress us, sit on us, or frustrate the purpose and design of the Lord amongst us, then the Lord will allow them to have their way.
For the Lord is a good Father. He wants to train us. If we have got to the place where we do not want to use our muscles, He is not going to help those muscles to become permanently weak. He will allow us to suffer until finally we wake up in the name of the Lord.
Then, like a Gideon coming amongst us, or even a Samson, or any of the others who rise up in the name of the Lord and say, “We will not let this thing happen. The Lord is with us,” suddenly we find the Lord starts to work in a new and powerful way.
These bonds, these fetters—this word also has the idea of pangs. Fetters have pangs. The beginning is bonds, and the end is pangs. Did you ever find that? When you have a bondage in your life, it begins as a limitation, but it ends in pain.
“Undo the bands of the yoke.” Interestingly enough, the word here is not merely yoke; it could be the bar of the yoke, the bar that goes across and yokes you to another. When you are yoked to another, you can do nothing about it.
It means somehow that we can be yoked to the powers of darkness, that they can influence us through circumstances and various people whom they bring amongst us, and disrupt the whole life of the company.
Because there is a bar that yokes us to them, when this other animal moves forward, we have to move with it. “Undo the bands of the yoke.” In other words, let the pole slip out, and we are free from that other influence altogether. We are not being dictated to by circumstances. We are not being dictated to by problems. We are not underneath; they are underneath.
Then there is this word oppressed: “Let the oppressed go free.” The word means shattered or crushed. There are many shattered and crushed people. They have been shattered by the work of the enemy, by background problems, by things inherited, as well as by actual spiritual activity of the enemy.
“Let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke.” This is the heart of the matter. Do listen to me. I know some will not accept for a moment that this is the heart of the matter. But, dear friends, this is the heart of the matter.
The whole device of the enemy is bondage. Just because you and I have been redeemed does not mean that we cannot again be entangled with a yoke of bondage.
Look at Romans 8:15:
For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear;
But ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
Do you know that sometimes in a company we can get such a bondage that we are afraid of any new way the Lord might lead us? We become frightened to death of anything that God might do amongst us.
Is that not strange? You would think believers would always be only too ready to follow the Lord. But we only need the Lord to move. If He is leading us forward, let us follow Him. We all know it. I have known it in my own life: a sudden fear. “Oh, have you been insecure? Am I not?” It is the enemy.
There is a bondage again unto fear. We have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear, but the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, “Abba, Father.” For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. That is the answer to the spirit of bondage: to be led by the Spirit of God, in the spirit of adoption, growing up as sons.
Or again, Hebrews 2:14-15:
Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same; that through death He might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;
And might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
Spiritual death, physical death—it does not matter. That is the weapon the enemy uses to bind men and women.
Or again, Galatians 5:1:
For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.
This bondage, the breaking of all oppression, covers all—whether the unsaved world or the people of God. What I am trying to say is this: this word through the prophet Isaiah concerns the whole principle of bondage, particularly as it affects the people of God.
All around us are thousands and thousands of God’s people still bound by the enemy. I say God’s people—they are not yet born again, but God can bring them. You remember how the Lord said in the Book of Acts that there were yet many in that city who were His, and they were not even saved. But God foreknew them. He knew who they were.
They were all there, bound by Satan. Then came that liberating preaching of the gospel of God. The power of God came in, and those who were bound by Satan had their shackles and fetters broken, and they came out. They burned their books of witchcraft, and all those links with Satan were snapped and broken in the waters of baptism. Praise God.
Do you think that once we have escaped the bondage of the enemy, he will not try again to ensnare us? Do you think he will not find, by one means or another, to sit on us, to encompass us once again, and twist powerfully around us bonds of wickedness?
I hope it does not need to be said that sin will do this most easily. The easiest way for this to happen is simply to have sin in our midst: immorality, deceit, dishonesty—all these things. Sin coming into our midst brings bondage.
But, dear friends, I want to say this: I hope there is not that kind of sin amongst us. If there is, that would explain any heaviness or oppression that we might find. But often it is not that at all. It is simply that the enemy has said, “I will not let this work go one step forward.”
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
In other words, we are wrestling; we are not having a tennis championship. There are times when the enemy sits on top of us, and we feel the whole weight of the powers of darkness. That is why I called it an honour. It means there is something worth contesting, something worth overcoming, something worth destroying. Praise God.
And if the enemy has come out against us, we have sufficient grace in and through our Lord Jesus Christ to overcome him, for greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. We have no need to fear.
But our whole problem is that, having become the Lord’s, we become passive. We come into a meeting and feel this whole heaviness hanging over us. We sit under it. We sing a hymn half-heartedly. We think, “I wonder what is wrong with me tonight.” Then we look at some of the other dreary old faces and think, “Oh dear.”
No one has got any sense of worship. No one shakes himself. There is a kind of dust in the whole thing. If we accept that, it is one band that has gone right round the whole work. When we come together the next time, it is worse. We think, “Oh dear, dear, dear, we are having a heavy time.” There is another twist gone right round, another band gone round.
We are told here that we are to loose the bonds. If God tells us to loose the bonds of wickedness, it means we can do it. God does not mock us. He does not say, “This is the fast that I have chosen, that you loose the bonds of wickedness,” when we cannot do it.
All we need to do is praise the Lord and thank Him. “There is a bondage here, Lord.” Is it not amazing? Sometimes when we feel most bound, we say, “Lord, there is no bondage here. It is gone.” Why? Because it is the very declaration of truth. “I stand against the bondage. The whole thing is phantom.”
It only needs the assertion and declaration of truth by believers. That might mean not singing a hymn half-heartedly, but singing it as a declaration of real worship. When we worship the Lord, we assert things; we declare things.
We do not say, “Maybe You reign on high. Perhaps You have all power in heaven and on earth. Possibly Your will will come on earth as it has come in heaven.” No. When we say, “He is Lord,” you release a power that can run through a whole gathering, and somehow the forces and powers standing about it stand back at the declaration of fact.
When we say, “Oh, we thank Thee, Lord. We are Thy free people,” Satan has to say, “It is true.” He can do no other. He knows that God has redeemed us. He knows they are named with the name of the King.
When the Lord says, “This is the fast that I have chosen, that you loose the bonds of wickedness, undo the bands of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke,” He means we have the ability, the equipment, and the authority in the name of the Lord Jesus to do it.
Sometimes it happens so easily, just by praying for one another, caring for one another, and loving one another. Sometimes a person is in great need, and a few words of prayer are spoken, and something disappears. A shadow which was upon them has gone.
Have you not all felt that? It is just that we wonder, “Why did I not share that before? Why did I not come out into the open with that before? It just took a few words of prayer by my brothers and sisters, nothing more.”
But what we all do is get so inhibited. We want to go more and more into ourselves. Then we come and sit isolated, if you know what I mean. We sing our hymns in a half-hearted way because we feel isolated.
“Undo the bonds of wickedness.” We are commanded to loose, to undo, to let go, and to break.
Our Lord is the One with the great ministry in Isaiah 61. What does it say?
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me;
Because the Lord hath anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the meek;
He hath sent Me to bind up the broken-hearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to them that are bound;To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all that mourn;To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion,
To give unto them a garland for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.
Am I to believe all that only happens at conversion? That the Lord does all this for us at conversion, and after that no more? Of course not. You know as well as I do: the Lord comforts those who mourn. He gives the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.
A garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. It means that the ministry of our risen King, of our exalted King, is that when I have a spirit of heaviness, He can say, “Do not give that to Me. I will give you a garment of praise.” It is all there for us. We are so stupid when we do not put it on.
Sometimes we are in little dungeons, are we not? Some of these dungeons are dungeons of our own making. Do you understand the word dungeon? A dungeon is a cellar a thousand times over—normally in a huge castle—and it was where people were left alone.
Many of us were in dungeons when we were saved. God took us out of the dungeon. But is it not true that sometimes, through our backsliding and foolishness, we get back into them?
Is there no ministry of the King in Zion for those who get back into a dungeon? No ministry for those who once again have become captives—those who have been blood-bought by the Paschal Lamb and brought out of the house of bondage, who again have chains on their wrists and ankles, so that they cannot praise the Lord and cannot do the will of God?
Oh, God help us. Do we really think that we are in some kind of fairy-tale battle? We talk about it. We preach about it. Now and again we even mention it in prayer. But then it is not a real battle.
My dear friend, far more real than the Second World War is this spiritual war in which we, as Zion, are engaged. The weapons in this war are as powerful spiritually as anything used in the Second World War—to destroy things, to destroy life, to captivate, defeat, and occupy.
Wake up. We are in a battle. If you and I are in this matter of the building of Zion, then, dear ones, we have got to give ourselves to this battle of breaking all oppression.
There are going to be casualties in this battle. Do not think there will not be casualties. There will be casualties. We must know what to do with the casualty—how to love them, how to nurse them, how to minister to them, how in the name of the Lord to bring healing to them, and how to restore them in a spirit of gentleness.
Do you not feel with me that this is a terrible lack amongst us, the people of God? Here we are: we sing the songs of Zion, we glory in Zion, but this is the ministry of Zion.
The enemy knows that it is either Zion or his kingdom. Did you hear that? He knows that either Zion will be completed—and it is his end—or he frustrates the whole work of God in life.
Therefore, he must hinder us. He will suppress us. He must bring yokes of bondage amongst us. He will work in every way—in the atmosphere, in circumstances, in believers, through compromise, through foolishness, through ignorance, through sin. He will somehow get in amongst the inhabitants of Zion, the daughter of Zion, and make her, who is free by the grace of God, a slave.
You know, dear friends, sometimes I go into a place—and I thank God I do not go so much into these circles—but sometimes I am asked. I can think of a work in the Arctic where I went.
This work in the Arctic had seen such a tremendous work of God done twenty-five or thirty years ago amongst the Lapps. They had not seen a single one saved for about twelve years.
I was asked to come into this school for Lapp young people. Every one of the staff was a believer, and they all said the same thing: “Oh, we feel such a heaviness. We feel such oppression. We feel such darkness.” Do you know, they never prayed together.
Did you hear that? They never prayed together. I could not understand it. I said to them, “But you are believers. Why do you not get together and pray?” They looked at me blankly. “The need is so…” “Yes, yes, yes, we know.”
The principal of the whole work said, “Yes, yes.” I said to him, “What would you do?” He gave an example. He said, “Our very classes are now being infiltrated by Marxists. We are having things done in our classes with our teachers which are disorganizing it.”
I said, “Please, brother, bring together the staff and spend the night in prayer.” “Well,” he said, “I do not know whether we could sustain it.” “Well, start. Get on your knees and really take hold of the Lord.”
He said, “Maybe, maybe we will do this. I do not know if the others will agree.” I knew, because I had spoken with some of the other influential members of the staff, and they said to me, “Yes, yes, we think this would be good. I do not know whether the others will agree.”
When I went back a year later, they had still not had a prayer time together. Then I thought, “What is wrong with these people? They are born-again believers. They know the Lord. They love the Lord. Here they are sacrificing in many ways to be right up here in Finnmark, in the Arctic, where they could be having such a nice time down south in one of the big cities.”
Then I realized: it was bondage. They knew what they should do, but they could not. They were so inhibited, they could not get on their knees before one another.
That is how far it goes. Once bondage begins, it is not static; it goes on and on and on. Sometimes we cannot lift our hands in praise. Some of us cannot open our lips in praise. We feel afraid of one another. We are inhibited. Oh, there is bondage.
We can all see it in the school up there in Finnmark, but do we recognize sometimes the same sort of elements? Perhaps not in so powerful a way, but it would lead to that unless we learn to tackle this whole matter of oppression and bondage.
Do you think that up there the enemy does not know that if those dear ones got on their knees, something could happen in that staff which would be a thorough renewing, quickening, and awakening, and could sweep like a fire through the Arctic?
It is the same with us here. In localities and communities, God longs that Zion’s righteousness should go forth as brightness and her salvation as a lamp that burneth. The enemy knows that, and he has said, “No, it will not. I will sit on them. I will make them fearful of one another.”
I remember years ago at home, we all wanted to pray together. When I say pray together, sometimes so many people wanted to take part that we were colliding with one another—two or three people trying to get in at once. Then we had the long-winded ones amongst us, who sort of hogged the whole time, and the others could hardly get in.
I used to think to myself, “God, sort all this out.” Then it came to me: there was another company about ten miles from us, and they were praying. God listened to every one of their prayers at the same time as He listened to ours. Then I thought, “There must be thousands and thousands and thousands of people all praying to God all over the globe, and He hears every one.”
So I thought, “Would it not be good now and again if we all praised the Lord together?” But I did not mention it. I was supposed to be one of the leaders, but I was so afraid. I thought, “The other brothers will look at me and think, ‘What has gone wrong with him? Is he going Pentecostal?’”
So I would not say anything. Every time this happened, I felt such a heaviness in my heart. Then I thought, “I wish I could say it.” In the end, one of the brothers, one of the weaker and younger brothers, brought it up in the time of fellowship.
He said, “Would it not be good when we have two or three people colliding together if we all just praised the Lord together for a few moments?” He said it.
I did not dare look at my brothers. Then I heard one of the others say, “What a wonderful idea. I had been wishing we could do that for ages.” I looked at him, and I thought, “Well, I thought he was rather stuffy. I thought he would be the first one to sit on it.”
I said, “Well, that is funny. I felt…” “No,” he said, “I thought you would hate it.” Then we found that four or five of us had all had the same thought. We were all afraid of one another. Is that not silly?
We had fought together, battled together, prayed together, travailed together—literally—over things. Yet still there was a kind of bondage that came in at the last and inhibited us, so that we felt, “So-and-so would not like this. So-and-so would not like that.” We were all inhibited.
Is that not silly? When we did it, there was such joy. I do not mean we were going to stay that way; it was just something the Lord gave us on that occasion. But when the Lord wants to lead us in some new way that will bring new life, new vitality, and a new expression, it is so lovely just to do the will of God instead of feeling somehow inhibited and bound.
Our time has gone, but I did so want to take this other matter. Can I just very briefly underline it? This matter in Isaiah 58:7:
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry,
And that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house?
When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him;
And that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
Here is the second great thing. We have got to deal with this whole matter of oppression and bondage in the atmosphere, in the conditions facing us as companies of the Lord’s children, and in individual life amongst us. This next matter is what I call love and compassion in all relationships.
Oh, beloved brothers and sisters, hear me on this thing. Our greatest tendency is to become a bit of spiritual machinery.
We only have to get hold of a truth, and somehow or another, before long, instead of being liberated by it, we systematize it. Do not think that does not happen to us. We say, “No, but we believe in the organic. We do not believe in systems.” Yet we can still become spiritual machinery.
Listen to this word: “Deal thy bread to the hungry.” Have you noticed now that it becomes more personal? Thy bread. “Deal thy bread to the hungry. Bring the poor that are cast out to thy house. When thou seest the naked, cover him. Hide not thyself from thine own flesh.”
Do not think it is something in others. It is something in you. It is something in me that God wants. We are all waiting for others to care for the needy. God says, “Deal thy bread.”
Do not say, “Care about your brother, your sister.” It is your bread. Have you got bread? Deal it. Share it. Have you got a house? Bring the poor into your house. Be they afflicted, be they lonely. Are you clothed? Cover someone who is naked. Have you got those in your kith and kin? Do not ignore them.
I feel sometimes, brothers and sisters, that church truth—hear me—church truth, for which by the grace of God alone I have given quite a little portion of my life, can become a cold, hard, mechanical thing.
There is no such thing as church truth without love. There is no such thing as a revelation of the body of Christ without compassion.
If the One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever is in me, and I am in Him, is it possible that there are hungry people whom I do not care for, lonely and destitute and afflicted people whom I never bring into my house? Is it possible that there could be someone naked and I never cover them?
Is it possible that I hide myself from my own relatives under the guise of serving the Lord? I say, it is Corban—devoted to the Lord.
The Word of God says that he who does not care for his own household is worse than an unbeliever.
Now, dear friend, it is not only on the physical side. There is need, is there not? Even here, in our highly urbanized society, there are lots of destitute, lonely, afflicted people. Some of them are wealthy people, but they are still poor. They are destitute, lonely, empty, aimless. No one cares. No one bothers.
We are sometimes so concerned about church truth that we do not even love. This whole matter of Zion has to do with those who are hungry, those who are destitute, those who are afflicted, those who are lonely, and those who are naked.
There is a spiritual side to it too. Has God given you any revelation of Himself? Do you share it? Or do you use the revelation that has come to you to condemn your brothers and sisters?
“Southern Baptist. Fundamentalism. Methodist. They died about fifty years ago. Only God could show a few things to them.” You see, it is so easy to become exclusive.
Some of you, brothers and sisters, have suffered in things that began with God and became a denomination. We say it with grief in our hearts. With all the church truth in the world, it has become something cold, metallic, hard. It is used to judge others and condemn them.
Instead of seeing that, if you are an overcomer—I would like to meet you if you are; I pray that I might be—if you are an overcomer, you are, as dear brother Sparks used to say, in the advanced working party.
You are in the working party that has gone ahead to clean the whole place up and do all the dirty work, all the hard work, and everything else, so that the rest can come in and enjoy themselves. I say that is worth being an overcomer, do you not think?
That takes all this elite superiority out of it and makes it what it really is: a matter of service. We lay down our lives that our brothers and sisters may come in.
Share thy bread. Bring the poor, the needy, the destitute, and the cast out to thy house. Cover the one who is naked. Do you do that? Do you find someone who has fallen into sin, someone who has fallen into a problem or difficulty? Do you cover them?
Or do you simply accuse them? Oh, I see this in the house of God again and again. Someone has fallen, and before long people are on the phone all over the place: “Have you heard? Have you heard? So-and-so has fallen into sin.” Then they give all the gaudy details.
Love covereth a multitude of sins.
It does not condone sin, but it never rejoices in sin. To cover means to know how to restore someone who has fallen in a spirit of gentleness—firmness, truth, gentleness. Only God can help us.
Do you hide from your own flesh? There is a most wonderful little word in Deuteronomy 22:
Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely bring them again unto thy brother.
And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou know him not, then thou shalt bring it home to thy house, and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it; then thou shalt restore it to him.
And so shalt thou do with his ass; and so shalt thou do with his garment; and so shalt thou do with every lost thing of thy brother’s, which he hath lost, and thou hast found: thou mayest not hide thyself.
Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ass or his ox fallen down by the way, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again.
Hide not thyself from thine own flesh. I know some Christians who use the house of God and the whole matter of Zion as an excuse for not taking any responsibility for their families. That is not right. We cannot hide ourselves from our own flesh.
May God help us in this matter, because we have the most glorious promise here:
Then shall thy light break forth as the morning.
Do you not want that? I do.
Then shall thy light break forth as the morning,
And thy healing shall spring forth speedily;
And thy righteousness shall go before thee;
The glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward.Then shalt thou call, and the Lord will answer;
Thou shalt cry, and He will say, Here I am.
May God help us in this matter. It is not an easy message to bring, but it concerns the work of Zion. We can get marvellous ideas about the ministry of Zion—watchmen on the wall, a ministry of intercession and travail—but there must also be this breaking of all oppression and this love and compassion in all relationships.
Has God spoken to you? Let us ask Him to watch over this Word and make it flesh and blood.
Dear Lord, there can be few of us, Lord, who in one way or another do not fall short when it comes to some of these things of which we have been speaking. O Lord, forgive us and cleanse us, Lord, we pray, and give us true godly sorrow that leads to true repentance, deliverance, and salvation.
Lord, help those of us who are responsible in Thy work about this whole matter of oppression and bondage. Lord, come upon us, we pray, by Thy Spirit. Release Thy Spirit within us in a new and deeper way, so that, Lord, these things which so often sit on our life together as Thy people may be broken in the name of the Lord.
In our prayer times, Lord, give us grace to face these things, to name them, and to break them in prayer through the finished work of the Lamb and in the name of our Lord Jesus. Father, help us in this.
And Lord, when it comes to love, well now, Lord, we all come short in this matter. We need that love of Thine to be shed abroad in our hearts. We do not want to bite and devour one another. We want rather to obey the royal law:
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
Lord, help us. There are hungry, destitute, poor, afflicted, and naked people—if not physically, spiritually—all around. Help us, O Lord, we pray.
We want Zion’s righteousness to go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burneth. We want Thee to establish Zion and make her a praise in the earth. Lord, help us in this matter.
Watch over Thy Word to perform it. Blot out anything that has been said that was untoward. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen, Father.