We could turn once more to the prophecies of Isaiah, chapter 58. I will read from verse 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?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.
So let us bow together in a word of prayer.
Father, we want to thank Thee that we are here, gathered in Thy presence through the name of our Lord Jesus. Father, we want to thank Thee that we do not have to ask Thee to meet with us, because we know, Lord, that Thy desire is to commune with us. Thy desire is to meet with us.
And Lord, Thou knowest the need of all our hearts and lives. Thou knowest the need represented, Lord, by every company of Thy children here. And Lord, Thou knowest the need of us as Thy people in the generation in which we live. O Lord, Thou knowest far more about the needs than we do.
Lord, we come and we ask, O Lord, wilt Thou by Thy Spirit really meet that need? Whether it is individual, whether it is local, whether it is, Lord, in general, meet the need, we pray, in our day.
Then, Lord, we thank Thee for the provision Thou hast made as we turn to Thy Word. By faith, appropriate that provision of anointing, whether for speaker or for hearer, that, Lord, we may really know Thy being here and speaking and working in our hearts. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Now, yesterday evening we were talking about this whole matter of the ministry, or work, of Zion. We have been considering Zion, at least in the times for which I have been responsible. Last night we were talking about the work of Zion.
In Isaiah 62, we have the words of the Messiah in verse 1:
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, in verse 6:
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.
Then comes that great challenge of the Lord in verse 10:
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.
Now, here in Isaiah 58, we have been considering what really is the ministry and work of Zion. Not only is it a matter of travail, not only is it a matter of intercession, if Zion is to be built and completed. There are certain matters to which we have to give ourselves.
We considered two of those matters last night. The first was the breaking of all oppression in mercy:
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?
Now, we know that it is our Lord’s ministry to free those who are bound. We read it in Isaiah 61:1-2:
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 brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.
We have this same thought again in Isaiah 42:7, speaking of the Lord Jesus as the One who shall be for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles:
To open the blind eyes,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.
We know those wonderful words in John 8:32 and John 8:36:
Ye shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free.
If therefore the Son shall make you free,
ye shall be free indeed.
And, of course, we had that other wonderful word in 2 Corinthians 3:17: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Then there is Galatians 5:1: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”
This freedom, which has been bought for us at the cost of the Messiah, is of tremendous and strategic importance. It is not just a luxury; it is strategic. Soldiers cannot fight if their arms are bound, if their feet are heavy, or if their brain is dull.
In this warfare in which we are found, it is essential that God’s army be free, that they be able to move under the impulse of the Spirit of God, and particularly in relationship to one another—subject to one another. We do not have soldiers all doing what they think a commander wants them to do, without any regard to the rest. We have to be subject one to another.
Part of our problem is this: there are some people bound to an idea, a conception that the Lord has a direct line with them, telling them what to do with complete disregard to the rest of the family of God. This is nonsense—rubbish. We cannot just act without any regard to our brothers and sisters.
We are, as it were, in a family. We are members of a body. We are living stones fitly framed together. We have a relationship to one another, and our Commander has set in the army those who are captains and generals, as well as ordinary soldiers. We have to take that guidance and be subject one to another. We are to obey them that rule.
Now, our problem sometimes is that we are so bound to ourselves and to an egocentric Christianity that we cannot be subject to anybody. This is also bondage. The funny thing is, these people talk about freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, and they are really very bound.
The kind of freedom we want is the freedom to do the will of God; the freedom to really be subject one to another; the freedom to fall into the ground and die; the freedom to lay down our lives for one another.
Oh, I know so many believers who long to lay down their lives, but something inhibits them. Something holds them back. Something paralyzes them. Now, this whole matter of the breaking of bondage is strategic.
We can talk, and talk, and talk, and talk about Zion, about the church, about the body of the Lord Jesus, about the work of God, about the purpose of God; but unless we give ourselves to this matter—the breaking of oppression—then we shall find the matter is really a mental appreciation of truth.
It is an academic intake of doctrine. It becomes a glorious ideal that we thoroughly believe in, absolutely believe in, and cherish, but which has very little practical outworking in our lives and in the communities in which we are found.
God has made us His free people. If Zion is anything, Zion is free. Does it not say it in Galatians 4:26, in so many words?
But the Jerusalem that is above is free,
which is the mother of us all.
Zion is nothing if she is not free. But then, we are living in a world that lieth in the evil one. The prince of this world has been cast out by the finished work of the Lord Jesus, but still we are in a world that lieth in the evil one.
In another place we are told that the prince of the powers of the air energizes the sons of disobedience. So, dear ones, we are in a world—we belong to the city of God. We have been born in Zion. We are registered in Zion. We are Zionists. But we are in a world that is in captivity, energized by the adversary of God.
Now, do you mean to tell me that in this confrontation between light and darkness, between life and death, between the Messiah and the enemy of God, between God and Satan, there can be coexistence? Here we are, planted in the midst of a world that has been taken, as it were, from God, its authority usurped by Satan and by the powers of darkness. Are you going to tell me that in this confrontation there can be coexistence?
Somehow or other, just like the two superpowers in the world today—the United States and the Soviet Union—are going to work out some kind of coexistence with one another? Never. There is no such thing as coexistence in this tremendous confrontation between righteousness and evil, between truth and the lie, between God and Satan. No, there is no coexistence.
We are here on this earth as the guarantee that the nations will become His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth His possession. We are those who have been delivered from the power of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of His dear Son.
Now, do you really think the enemy is going to just leave us there and smile at us and say, “I cannot do anything about it, of course. I mean, they are saved by my great arch-enemy. I cannot do anything about it”? Of course not.
He is going to work in every single way to trip us up, to tie us up, to bind us, to inhibit us, to oppress us, to bring the yoke of bondage back onto us. Therefore, the very first thing we consider is this matter in principle. It is in general.
You notice it is not so personal. It says, “Is not this the fast that I have chosen?” Is not this the thing that we must give ourselves to with everything we have: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Whether it is in the work of the kingdom, whether it is in the building of the church, whether it is in the preaching of the gospel, whether it is in children’s work, or whether it is in youth work—whatever it is, dear friends—we are going to come up against bondage.
Sooner or later, the enemy is going to say, “I will not let this go any further.” And we have got to learn how to loose the bonds of wickedness, how to undo the bands of the yoke.
Friends, some of you in children’s work, do you not sometimes find that an awful pall of heaviness somehow hangs over the whole thing? We do not know what to do with it. We just sit under it. We sort of expect it. We take it as natural.
No, there is a time when those who are responsible have got to get together and assert the lordship of Jesus Christ over that work. It is the same with youth work. Do we want our sons to marry us? Do we want those sons, as it says in Isaiah 62, to marry the old generation—to be wedded to the old generation?
But listen: there is an enemy who is going to work a work of bondage and fetter those young people, insinuating into their minds ideas that somehow or other would alienate them altogether from what God has been doing in those who are a little older.
No amount of instructing them, correcting them, giving them heavy words, or books to read is going to do anything about it. The thing that has to be done, at some time or other, is that those who are responsible have got to get behind the scenes and assert the lordship of Jesus Christ.
They have to command the loosing of the bonds of wickedness, undo the bands of the yoke that would take away the new generation and enslave them in another direction. Let the oppressed go free. Break every yoke.
These things are essential. They are not just incidental; they are strategic. That is my point. Now, I use that word, and I do hope you understand what I am talking about. Strategic, in the sense that it is all to do with the strategy of God and the strategy of the enemy.
The strategy of the enemy is to inhibit the people of God and bring them back into bondage, under the enemy’s influence—to compromise them, so that they pray and it means nothing; they preach and nothing happens; they have new truth revealed to them, and there is no outworking of it.
He just says, “I have got them where I want them. Here are God’s free people, but I have bound them. I have said, ‘This light shall not shine in darkness. This life shall not bring resurrection to those who are dead in trespasses and sins.’”
Now, if you and I are ready for that, that will be our experience. If you want to sit under it, and sit, sing hymns, say prayers, and die, and have Bible studies, and have little meetings, of course the Lord will say, “All right.”
They talk about Zion. They play about Zion. They rejoice in the ideal of Zion. So frankly, there is no building of Zion; it is all in their heads. Because until this whole matter is really dealt with, there can be no light breaking forth as the morning, healing springing forth speedily, righteousness going before us, and the glory of the Lord coming up behind us.
Is that not wonderful? You will never know the glory of the Lord unless you know the justifying work of the Lord. That is the thing that goes first, and behind comes the glory of the Lord, and we are all in between those wonderful things.
We spoke about love and compassion in all relationships. What a need there is. Do you not think there is a tremendous need for love and compassion in all our relationships?
We are in the midst of a needy world, of a society that is empty and aimless, tragically self-centred. Somehow the word comes to us:
Is not this the fast that I have chosen:
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?
What a tremendous need there is for us to know this work of the Lord—this love of God being shed abroad in our hearts. We need a sensitiveness to this world.
We can become like little automatic spiritual machines. We are working in offices, working in colleges, working in hospitals. We rub shoulders with our neighbours. We see our friends who are not saved, our relatives who are not saved, and our hearts are not moved with compassion.
There is no love in our hearts. We know very well they are all going to hell, and the very way we put it is sort of in quotation marks. It is a hard-hearted attitude.
We need the love of God to be shed abroad in our hearts, because love is the only way in which, in the end, the body of the Lord Jesus is really built up. It is the only way in which disorder is overcome.
Now, I am not talking about sentimental, gullible, sloppy, sloshy thing that some people call love. You do anything, you allow anything—you know that kind. Love is not like that.
Real love sometimes gives us a caning. Real love has it out with us at times and confronts us with where we are going wrong. Real love demands order at times.
Real love is concerned about our growing up into maturity, about our education, about our becoming disciplined, responsible members of the body of the Lord Jesus. That is the love of God.
So when the Lord loves us, He scourges us. Now, thank God He does not spend His time scourging us—as if all the time He just beats us and says, “Now, you do realize I love you very much,” and gives us another big beating, and says, “You realize just how much I love you,” and then gives us another big beating.
Now, some of us need those beatings. But you know the Lord is not like that. The Lord really does love us. But there are times when the Lord does not let us get away with anything.
When we were spiritual babies, we got away with murder. But once we start to grow up, the Lord says, “No more, no more. Now you will learn that you cannot do that. You cannot take that position. You cannot have that attitude. You cannot deal with that other brother or sister like that, because you will suffer if you do.”
In other words, the Lord is beginning to deal with us. Now, do we not need this kind of love? We need this love in our attitude to one another, to be able to see one another and to be able to see the world through the eyes of God.
Real love: the kind of love that is strong and firm and true and righteous and merciful and compassionate. Oh, for such a love in us. Do you not think we need a baptism of love? I think so. There is such a need in all our hearts.
This is one thing that does not just stay there, does it? You know, the Lord speaks to the church at Ephesus and says, “Thou hast left thy first love.” It is the easiest thing in the world to let the routine take over, to let all the meetings take over, to let even the ideas and conceptions of truth take over.
Without even knowing it, the real first love has gone. We are no longer in love with our Lord. We are no longer moved by a tender sensitivity to Him. Somehow or other, we have got the routine; we have got the other things.
Well now, dear ones, let us move on to another matter here in this chapter. Verse 9, the second part of it:
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.
Now, did you hear this? Some of us are in such small companies that we feel, “Oh, nothing can ever happen.” But listen to this: “Then shall thy light rise in darkness, and thine obscurity be as the noonday.”
Some of the modern versions put it, “Thy gloom shall be as the midday.” Obscurity—that is, something dark, like the old English word gloaming, in the half-light—will give way to midday light, noonday light, the brightness of the sun at noonday.
It does not matter how few we are if we will give real attention to this ministry and work of Zion. First, the breaking of all oppression in general, whether it is those in the world or whether it is generally in the atmosphere, and so on.
If we will really give heed to this matter of seeking the Lord for a baptism of His love, that we may have hearts of love and compassion in all our dealings and relationships, now we come to the third thing: dealing with the problems in our midst.
Now it becomes even more personal. The Lord says, “If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, and the putting forth of the finger, and speaking wickedly; and if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul.”
Now we have come down to Zion in our locality, where we really are living. The Lord says, “It is all very well to talk about this in general, to talk about it in principle. Now we come right down to where we live, in our fellowship with one another, in the locality in which we are found.”
Here are three things:
Firstly, we are told to take away from the midst of us the yoke. We have to deal with the problems in our midst. Where is the yoke? Take it away. Is it bondage? Is it inhibition? Is it limitation? Is it a heaviness? Is it getting into a rut? Let us deal with it.
No, I do not mean that we have to have novel ideas. Some of the Lord’s people get into this trap where they think that, as long as they are doing something new—singing hymns standing on chairs, or praying with their head under the chair, or putting their hands up, or keeping their hands down—as long as we are doing something new, we will not get into a rut.
I am not talking about that, as if novelty is the answer to everything, as if doing all kinds of new things and always trying to find some new method or new technique is the way. That is not the way.
What we have got to deal with is that kind of yoke that can be in a person’s circumstances or in a person’s life, or sometimes just in the very atmosphere of the company in which we are found.
Very often, you see, we are found fighting one another because, somehow or other, the enemy, as I said last night, is sitting on the whole thing. We feel this as we come. We sing in a half-hearted way. We pray in a half-hearted way. We do not feel able to communicate.
We do not feel able to touch one another in the Lord, and we sit there in a kind of stupor almost. Do you understand what I am trying to say? We all know it. This is not something American; it is something all over the world.
It is one of these things the enemy does in the work of the Lord. He sort of just says, “I am going to sit on this.” And the amazing thing is, the Lord says, “Yes, I give you permission. You can sit on them.”
“I have liberated them. I have provided them with weapons of warfare which can deal with anything that you have in your armoury. Now I will give you permission to sit on this work, upon this building of Zion in this locality, until they wake up.”
And so, you see, we have to wake up. At some time, we have got to deal with this thing, whether it is in a person or in the atmosphere, whether it is in homes or whether it is in the life of the church. We have got to deal with it.
There are times when, in our little meetings, we all feel that we should be moving in a certain way, and yet no one dares say anything. Is it not strange? I mentioned it last night. Again and again, we all sit facing each other, get more and more awkward, more and more tied up, and it is so silly.
Now, may I say a word to those who are responsible? Very much of this matter goes to those who are given responsibility in the fellowship of God’s people locally. You and I have to give ourselves to this matter of taking away the yoke from the midst of us.
We cannot expect the sheep to take over if the shepherds are somehow or other doing nothing. You see, the enemy is very clever. He comes to saints who are often more spiritually sensitive than those who have responsibility and leadership.
He says, “Oh, is it not heavy?” And we say, “Yes, it is terribly heavy.” Then he says, “Well, you really ought to be doing something about it, should you not?” And they say, “Well, yes, but how can I? Brother so-and-so is not doing anything. He is not saying anything.” So we all sit.
The interesting thing is that the enemy comes to brother so-and-so and says, “Do not you do anything, because they will kill you if you do. If you take any action on this thing, they will think, ‘What a weird person you are. You have gone to that conference and got all excited.’”
They will say, “Oh, what an excitable person. He is simply doing what he heard somebody else tell him to do.” And so we get all frightened and fearful. Strangely enough, it is on both sides, so no one does anything.
We can sit month in and month out with an awful sense of heaviness. It is a yoke. It is a yoke. In other words, when we come to times of prayer, we come right up to the point where something really could break through.
Then, when we come to it, if a yoke is there, we are steered away from it at the last moment. Have you had that experience? Or sometimes, in a time of praise, it is as if the praise begins to rise to a real crescendo—not emotional; it really is the Lord.
We say, “Oh, bless the Lord, we are going to the Lord,” and then all of a sudden it peters out. This happens again and again in the life of the churches. Somehow there is a release of divine life, and we are being moved forward, and then all of a sudden, at the last moment, nothing happens. We do not go through.
The problem is that there is a yoke. Now, what is a yoke? A yoke is something by which a bullock, or an ox, or a donkey, so often in the Middle East, is steered. You put a yoke on, perhaps a double yoke with a pole between them, and the two creatures have to move together.
That is why it says in the Word—which I am afraid amongst our Arab people is not observed very much—“Thou shalt not yoke an ass and an ox together.” Have you ever thought why they should not be unequally yoked? Because a donkey is very much smaller than an ox.
It is a cruel thing when you have one small creature yoked to a big creature. It means that the big creature is dragging the other along all the time, and its shoulders get chafed. Is it not interesting that God was so concerned, nearly four thousand years ago, when He gave that word through Moses, that animals should be treated rightly? They should be equally yoked together.
Of course, it has tremendous spiritual lessons for us, because the Bible says, “Be not unequally yoked together.” Those who have got unequally yoked together in marriage and in other things know very well what I am talking about.
You have one partner who is going one direction, and either you have a lot of problem or you have to go the same way. Do you understand what I mean? Why does the Lord use the word yoke? Because the enemy is trying to put a yoke on you and bind two things together so that he can stop you from doing what the Lord wants you to do.
He can take a company and stop it going through into the realization of the purpose of God at the last moment. Just as you are going through, he turns aside, and you have to go with him. You cannot go through.
So we brethren who are responsible in leadership—and I do not mean all that dictating everything publicly, but leadership is a matter that is there whether it is visible or invisible, if you know what I mean—we who are leaders, we who are responsible in the things of God, need to give ourselves to taking away the yoke from the midst.
Deal with it. How do we deal with it? We deal with it through the finished work of the Lamb. There is no other way. If I think that so-and-so has got a yoke on him and I go to him and say, “Listen, I think you are bound,” we are going to get into problems.
If we are all going to go to one another and say, “I think you are bound. I think you are bad. I think you are this,” my word, it will be a witch-hunt. We do not want that kind of thing.
What we need to do is tackle this thing spiritually, because it is a spiritual matter. The yoke has got to be broken. How is it broken? Through the finished work of the Lamb.
And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb,
and because of the word of their testimony;
and they loved not their life even unto death.
It is to learn how to take the consequences and effects of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ and apply them to the building of Zion in our localities. Sometimes it is just a matter of declaring the truth that we need to take away the yoke from the midst of us.
Sometimes we so long to be able to communicate with one another. I think, at home, in the company I come from in Britain, how often in our house fellowships people have said to me, when they have really started to open up, “Oh, I longed for so long to be able to open up to my brothers and sisters, just to tell them the need that is in my heart.”
Now, we all know people who are so egocentric, so self-centred, that they are like whirlpools. You know what I mean? They want to talk about themselves and pray about themselves and have the whole church circling round them endlessly.
They sort of suck us into a whirlpool, so that the whole thing goes round and round and round them. We have to be careful of those kind of people. But I am talking about the vast majority of God’s children who really have real needs and will never bring them out into the open. Never.
They do not want to impose upon their brothers and sisters. They feel, “I do not want to draw attention to myself.” But sometimes we have needs in our hearts which need the body. We need the ministry of the body.
Sometimes we only have to open up and say, “You know, I have been suffering from depression for the last two months. Could you brothers and sisters pray for me?” It is amazing how sometimes we just open up in prayer and instantly the yoke is broken.
It was a work of the enemy, but that person could not get through alone. They needed their brothers and sisters, and the very act of opening up to your brothers and sisters has brought release.
You see, sometimes—and it is a very interesting thing—we can look at each other, and after all, let us be honest, we only see the appearance of one another. There are very few of us who have those wonderful X-ray eyes that look right through one another and see all the deep things about one another.
There are some people like that who are older in the Lord, and you just feel, when those eyes scrutinize you, so exposed. I remember years ago a very dear sister, who was a really great spiritual woman and still is—she is eighty-something today. She knew Mrs. Penn-Lewis.
Some of you probably do not know who Mrs. Penn-Lewis was, but she was one of the most extraordinary Bible teachers that the church has ever had. She was a lady. Now, I am not saying ladies should all be Bible teachers, but there are now and again, dear ones, exceptions to the rule—quite remarkable—and this one was.
I said to this dear sister, because she knew Mrs. Penn-Lewis so well, “What is it that made the biggest impression upon you about Mrs. Penn-Lewis?” She said, “I can tell you straightaway. All these years later, I still remember: she had X-ray eyes.”
She said, “I hated those eyes. I felt as if everything in me she just saw.” Well, that somehow makes fellowship a bit uncomfortable, does it not? Unless there is a tremendous amount of love.
Those of you who are older in the Lord and have come to that capacity, do you see the need to seek the Lord for love? You can put fear into your brothers and sisters just because you have got so much maturity, because you have got such knowledge of the Lord, because somehow or other you have that spiritual intuition, that discernment.
If we have that, we need to seek the Lord for love all the more, that we may be filled with love. Coming back to this matter, we really do need to open up to one another.
Sometimes we look at one another just on the exterior. I see someone there who seems very correct, very nice, scrubbed and clean, pious and godly, with a smiling face, and I think, “So-and-so does not know anything about problems.”
In fact, sometimes we can think of one another as very shallow. Let me tell you something against myself. I used to think that one of the most shallow hymns in the whole church hymnbook was that hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God, with Heart and Soul and Voice.”
I used to think, “What a shallow hymn.” We used to sing it:
Now thank we all our God,
with heart and hands and voices.
You know the one—the good old Lutheran hymn, a marvellous hymn. I used to think, “I suppose he never had a problem.” You read right through those three verses: he does not seem to have had a single problem in them. He never mentions darkness, travail, suffering, or the mystery of pain.
I thought, “It must have been very nice to write a hymn just like that.” I suppose the dear Lord smiled and thought, “Lance is himself so shallow.”
You know, I stumbled across, in some old book, the story of “Now Thank We All Our God.” It comes, of course, from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and it was a time of plague.
That dear man who wrote that hymn saw two-thirds of his congregation die with the plague. In the end, the gravediggers would not bury anybody with the plague, and he buried them himself with his own hands.
On the day that his wife died, and his children died, and he buried them with his own hands, he went back and wrote the hymn, “Now Thank We All Our God, with Heart and Soul and Voice.”
When I read that, I thought, “Oh Lord, I dare not meet that man one day after what I have said about him.” I thought he was shallow. I thought it was so easy for him. It was not.
Do you see how sometimes we can look at one another and see something that seems so calm, so perfect, and think they do not have any problems? We do not open up to one another, so we do not know what lies behind the face.
But then the brothers and sisters begin to open up to one another in our times of fellowship. We ask for help from one another and ask for ministry from one another. My goodness, we begin to understand one another.
We begin to love each other. We become more sensitive toward one another because we are handling people who are very precious to God, and we begin to see how precious they are.
If that dear brother had been in one of our groups here, I would probably have thought, “Hm, he has not got much to offer. ‘Now thank we all our God’—he has not suffered like I have. When I say, ‘Now thank we all our God,’ it means something. He is no good.”
But then, in a time of fellowship, he says, “Brothers and sisters, I do not want to impose upon you, but could you pray for me? I feel so lonely. I have lost my wife. I have lost my children. I have lost so many that are dear to me, and I stay awake at night and think about them. Could you pray for me?”
And I think, “Has that brother got such an experience?” As I pray for him, a new love comes into my heart, a new sense of the preciousness of that brother and of God’s dealings with him—what precious stone is being produced in his experience and life.
You see, I have a new relationship with him. It is not only that he is my brother; I begin now to understand him and cherish him as my brother.
We all have our brothers and sisters, but we do not always cherish them or understand them. Sometimes we feel we have to put up with them. “Oh well, so-and-so is saved. I suppose I have got her for eternity. So-and-so is in the kingdom.”
We do not understand one another. Take away the yoke from the midst of thee.
Now listen to this: “Take away the putting forth of the finger, and speaking wickedly.” What is this putting forth of the finger? Well, it is this kind of thing.
Sometimes it is trying to instruct one another all the time: “See? You listen to me. God has given me something to say.” Oh, I find those people the bane of fellowship—people with heavy words all the time, who get us into corners, especially the younger ones, and give us heavy words to do us good.
It is the putting forth of the finger, and it is speaking wickedly, because it is not commanded of the Lord. Anything we say in the name of the Lord which the Lord has not commanded is wicked.
We are taking the name of the Lord in vain. God preserve us. Better to talk about the weather, better to talk about a motorcycle, or the Olympics tomorrow evening—or is it tonight?—and have a thought of fellowship that way, than to have a heavy word for somebody which the Lord has not commanded. It does damage.
But you see, this matter of putting forth the finger is much more profound than that. If you think this word is good for somebody else, and you are sitting there saying to yourself, “I hope so-and-so is listening to this,” I want to tell you: this word is for you.
Because in your very attitude of sitting there and saying, “Lord, unblock so-and-so’s ears for this word. Unblock their ears, Lord. Get it into them, get it into them,” you are putting forth the finger.
You are saying, “Lord, so-and-so—I am so glad You brought forth that word, Lord. That is just what so-and-so needs. Slay them, Lord, slay them!”
You see, we all have a psychological way of pitchforking responsibility onto somebody else. As soon as we hear it, we pitchfork it over. It is really coming for us, but psychologically, “Oh Lord, this is wonderful for brother so-and-so. Here is something else coming—sister so-and-so. My word, Lord, this is a blessed meeting. You are just dealing with all kinds of people in our midst.”
Now you laugh, but is it not true of us all? Yes, it is. I sit there sometimes thinking, “I hope so-and-so is listening to this,” because it is our attitude; it is our heart. We are putting forth the finger.
May God humble us. It is something to repent of. Although we have laughed, because it touches us all—the only thing we can do, when we hear the truth, is to smile—yet it is not a smiling matter. This is something that has to be taken away from our midst.
Our Lord said, before you take the mote out of your brother’s eye, take the beam out of your own. You see the little bit of sawdust in your brother’s eye, but you have a log in your own. Now get rid of the log. Take away the log out of your own eye.
The Word of God says quite a lot about this matter. If we look at James 3, listen to this:
Be not many of you teachers, my brethren,
knowing that we shall receive heavier judgment.
For in many things we all stumble.
If any stumbleth not in word,
the same is a perfect man,
able to bridle the whole body also.Now if we put the horses’ bridles into their mouths that they may obey us,
we turn about their whole body also.
Behold, the ships also, though they are so great,
and are driven by rough winds,
are yet turned about by a very small rudder,
whither the impulse of the steersman willeth.So the tongue also is a little member,
and boasteth great things.
Behold, how much wood is kindled by how small a fire!
And the tongue is a fire;
the world of iniquity among our members is the tongue,
which defileth the whole body,
and setteth on fire the wheel of nature,
and is set on fire by hell.
We could have in our midst people always, always criticizing, criticizing, criticizing; insinuating, casting aspersions on others, casting doubts on others, putting forth the finger all the time. “So-and-so is the problem in our midst. So-and-so is this, and the other.”
Oh, a few little words, and they are set on fire by hell, and a whole wheel is set in motion. The result is bitterness, division, and faction.
We are to take away this kind of thing. It is part of the ministry of Zion. The Lord says that if we take away this from our midst, then our light will rise in darkness and our obscurity will be as the noonday.
But time is flying away. Then we have this other matter about drawing out your soul to the hungry and satisfying the afflicted soul. Here we are dealing with our own folks in our own midst.
We can talk about the world in need and talk about love and compassion in a general way. But in the end, it comes down to those people with whom we are associated in the Lord in our own locality.
It is to draw out your soul to the hungry. It does not just happen. You must draw out your soul, as if you are pulling a bucket out of a deep well. Draw out your soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul.
Are there afflicted ones? Are they being satisfied? Are there hungry ones? How is their need being met? We must give ourselves to this.
Lastly, may I say something in closing in Isaiah 58 about this last word, verse 13:
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.
You know, worship—listen to me in this—real worship is a gift. What we often call worship, God does not really call worship. He still loves us, but it is not real worship, because to delight yourself in the Lord has to be given you.
It is to do with freedom. To be able really to do it—“Then shalt thou delight”—it is as if the Lord says, “I will not hide Myself from you. I will open My heart to you. I will give you such a vision of Myself, such an unveiling of My glory and beauty, that you will be overcome with ecstasy, overcome with delight.”
Delight is an emotional word, you know. “Then thou shalt delight.” Now, what is it all about? What is this Sabbath?
Some people feel we should still keep the Sabbath. I have always had problems on that, because the Sabbath really is the seventh day, which is Saturday. If we are going to keep it according to Scripture, it begins on Friday evening with sunset. I do not know many people who keep that.
Also, in the New Testament it says quite clearly that some observe the Sabbath. Evidently, the Apostle Paul felt that most of the believers did not feel that they had to keep the Sabbath. So how did they view the Sabbath?
They viewed it in a very interesting way, because really, what is the matter? The Sabbath is the Lord’s inheritance. Or put it this way: it is the Lord’s rest. Or put it another way: it is the Lord’s right.
If we see it like that, it explains a whole lot. What the Lord is saying is this: “If you will give Me My right, and if you will allow Me to have My inheritance, My rest—come into My resting place—then thou shalt delight thyself in the Lord.”
“And I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and I will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father.” You notice this: “Thou shalt not speak thine own words. Thou shalt not find thine own pleasure. Thou shalt not do thine own way.”
What is all this about? It was the Lord’s right, the Sabbath, as if the Lord was reminding the people, “One day out of seven, I want to remind you that you belong to Me. I have your life.”
In actual fact, what the Lord was really saying was, “Well, the rest of the week is Mine as well.” He was not saying, “One day is Mine; do what you like with the others.”
He was saying, “I want to remind you on this day that the whole earth is Mine. I am the Creator of heaven and earth. I have sanctified this day that you remember Me and that you give Me My right.”
In other words, to put it in New Testament language:
Seek ye first the kingdom of God,
and His righteousness;
and all these things shall be added unto you.
Now, are we really giving the Lord His rights? In our company, has the Lord really got His right? Are we putting priorities—have we got our priorities right? Seeking Him first.
What a marvellous promise this is: “Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth.” Dear friends, the trouble with most of us is that we are not riding in the high places of the earth; we are underground most of the time.
We are not above; we are beneath. The Lord’s promise is that His Zion shall not be beneath, but above. His Zion will ride the high places of the earth.
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.
In what way can we do it? By tackling this whole matter of oppression and bondage; by love and compassion in all our relationships and dealings; by dealing with the problems that are in our midst and seeing that it all starts at home—in other words, where we live.
And above all, by giving the Lord His right. If we shall do this, we shall be like a spring of waters whose waters fail not.
Now, that does not mean a lot to you here, but in Israel, very often we have a kind of well that lasts for a while, and all of a sudden it dries up. My word, if you have got a garden and the well has dried up, it is finished.
“You shall be satisfied even in time of drought.” My, that is a promise. The Lord will make your bones strong. Does anyone have weak bones? You doctors know very well that health is very much tied up with our bones and with the marrow in our bones.
The Lord says, “I will make your bones”—what you cannot see—“strong, and I will give health at the heart of the matter.”
There is a tremendous promise: your light will rise in darkness; your obscurity will become as midday brightness; you will become a watered garden, a spring of waters whose waters fail not.
Then those that are of thee shall build the old waste places. They shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.
Then shalt thou delight in the Lord, and He will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father.