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Part 1 – Unmoved and Undismayed
And when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; (now his windows were open in his chamber toward Jerusalem;) and he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, AS HE DID AFORETIME.
Daniel 6:10
There is something tremendously impressive about a man who is beset and attacked from every side, apparently overwhelmed, and who yet maintains a quiet, dignified persistence of faith and goes on with his God, unmoved and undismayed.
Daniel’s troubles sprang from the fact that he had been marked out for advancement. “The king thought to set him over the whole realm” (v. 3). There were two presidents equal with him as well as many satraps under him. All these reacted violently to the decision about his promotion, so violently that they plotted to destroy him. At first they had a great deal of success. It seemed unlikely, or indeed impossible, that Daniel could ever obtain the supremacy planned for him. Yet he did! The evil scheme failed. The servant of God was delivered and placed over the kingdom. The means by which he was advanced must have seemed very strange. Yet they are in full harmony with all that the Word teaches us about spiritual progress. Especially is Daniel’s experience in accord with what is shown in the case of the Lord Jesus, that the way to the throne is by death and resurrection.
“As He Did Aforetime”
The lions’ den was a kind of grave. Daniel was not spared the grave; he had to go right down into it. Since, however, he was God’s man and kept true to his God, he lost nothing and gained everything by that descent. His rivals went down into the same grave, and they stayed there. By the end of the chapter we find no more mention of presidents and satraps. They could not stand the test of the grave. Daniel, on the contrary, was given his place over the whole realm, not by any effort or planning of his but simply by his maintained position of faith in God. The lesson is for us. We, too, in His amazing grace, have been marked out for advancement, chosen for the throne. This explains for us, as well as for Daniel, the peculiar bitterness of the conflict in which we are often involved. There are great issues in view; we need to know how to behave in the midst of it all, and what is the secret which will enable the Lord to fulfil His purpose in our case as He did in Daniel’s.
We find that he came through wholly and solely on spiritual grounds. His own wisdom, his earthly authority, his influence among men, his experience, his friends – all these counted for nothing. As he was hurried away and thrown into the den, he must have been a picture of complete helplessness. There was nothing he could say, and nothing he could do. He did not try to wrestle with the lions; it would have been useless if he had. In a spiritual conflict – and ours is that – nothing but spiritual strength is of any use. For all his apparent helplessness, Daniel had a standing with God. The key to his emergence from the conflict in such complete triumph is found in our verse about his praying, and particularly in the last words, “as he did aforetime”.
He was steadfast in his faith. Yet it would not be enough to think of his having faith in a merely general way, or being a man who habitually prayed for all sorts of things. We can only understand the nature of his steadfastness if we realize that he was keeping true to a definite and God-given vision. He had understood the purpose of God with regard to His people. Moreover, he had adjusted his whole life to that vision, as the open window and the “three times a day” prayer-watch show. He knew what God wished and intended, and had given himself wholeheartedly for its fulfillment. Day in and day out, fair days and foul, he kept himself in God’s direction and stood for God’s will. No wonder that human jealousy and spite were used by Satan in a determined effort to silence him! But he could not be silenced. He could not be made to close his windows. “Aforetime” he had persisted in his faith vigil; now that trouble was pending he refused to be turned aside from his set course with God. He had a spiritual ‘routine’, a holy habit, a steady heart purpose. When this brought him into the cross-currents of conflict, and the writing was signed against him, he seemed to take no notice at all, but calmly continued in his watch with the Lord – “as he did aforetime”.
We may be tempted to wish that we were that kind of man, calm, steady, unmoved – wrongly imagining that this was a matter of Daniel’s temperament. If so, it is good for us to remember the kind of man he could be. “I was affrighted, and fell on my face…” (8:17); “I Daniel fainted” (8:27); “Then said he unto me, ‘Fear not, Daniel…” (10:12). This was no man of steel, but one very like most of us, with all our inward quakings, our timidity and our tendency to faint. Yet he was undismayed. In the midst of plots for his destruction, in spite of tremendous pressure to panic or compromise, without any show of strain and in quiet dignity of faith he went straight on with the Lord. And so must we. Perhaps it will help us if we try to discover some of Daniel’s secrets.
The Largeness of His Vision
The first reason why Daniel was able to proceed so calmly, as though nothing had happened, was found in the largeness of his vision. If we have a vision that is chiefly concerned with ourselves, our circumstances or our ministry, we shall be puzzled or offended when things begin to go wrong with us. We need, indeed we have, a vision of God’s universal and eternal purpose in His Son, and this alone will save us from being overwhelmed in the hour of spiritual conflict.
Daniel looked back, far beyond his own time. The open windows looked out on an original purpose for the people of God, who had had their origin long before his own generation. The Jerusalem which he remembered was a poor affair compared with the true glory of Zion. Most of us are apt to dwell with regret on things as we once knew them, and to sigh for the days of the past. But it is vain, and altogether inadequate so to limit our vision. We have been called for something much bigger than that. We have a part in the Divine purpose which was conceived in eternity and realized in Christ by His Cross. If we set our hearts only on what we have known or experienced, on the limited sphere of our own past, we shall get into confusion when for the time being everything seems to be going wrong. Our natural vision is limited to the immediate, to the present experiences or to the tiny span of our own lives. We need to be saved from ourselves, and this will be by receiving spiritual vision as to the vast range of the Divine purpose in Christ. Like Daniel, if we look back far enough we shall be kept steady by the reminder of God’s original intentions.
Daniel also looked forward. We are told that he not only prayed, but also “gave thanks before his God”. Of course there was much cause for thanksgiving in Israel’s past history, but to the man of faith, the man of vision, the real motive for praise lies in the future. He had received assurance that there was to be a future for Jerusalem, a future even more glorious than the past. He knew that God would realize His end. It mattered little to him, therefore, if all the fury of hell raged around him for the present; it was of very small importance if he, Daniel, were swept off the face of the earth. Nothing could prevent the fulfilment of the purposes of God. Whatever else happened, the Lord would go marching triumphantly on to His goal. With this conviction, and his windows opened in this direction, Daniel could afford to ignore his enemies, and to treat all the decrees of men with dignified contempt. “And when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he… prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.”
The little calamities of the present time are contemptible in the light of the certain glories that are to be. We are meant to be people of eternity; we are called to view all present problems and difficulties in their larger setting. It may be true that we, like Daniel, seem to be involved in disaster, that for us the writing is signed which makes our own future quite hopeless. Our vision is not a personal one, nor is our ministry personal, so we must never allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by what is only personal. In Christ we have become closely associated with God’s eternal purpose for the greatness of His Son. This is the largeness that will lift us out of our own natural pettiness.
Daniel saw far beyond his own surroundings. He had gone to his house and entered his own chamber. It may well have been a large room, as rooms go, but in any case it was bounded by the four walls of what was essentially his. He did not look at the things around him, but away through the open windows towards the city of his God. How important it was at that critical moment that he should not look around to what was merely local, to the unpromising circumstances in which he himself was found, but should keep well in view the Divine prospect of the God-filled glory of Jerusalem. Only the eye of faith could see that city then, but Daniel had the eye of faith. Surely it was this vision that kept him steadfast.
There is a sense in which men who are under great pressure to capitulate or compromise can only resist the temptation by remembering that their ‘cause’ is much greater than themselves. They are kept true by the realization that, provided they do not despair, the cause with which they are associated will ultimately triumph in spite of anything which may happen to them. How much more is this the case with those whose ‘cause’ is spiritual! Had Daniel’s main preoccupation been about his own survival he could not have behaved as he did. If he had been thinking chiefly of how he himself could be preserved, he would probably have made terms with his enemies or in some way capitulated. To him, however, the vision was so great that his biggest concern was, not as to whether he could survive, but as to whether he could remain faithful. He felt that he had to be faithful because of the very importance and vastness of the issue.
This constraint to be faithful was noticeable in every part of Daniel’s life. It was true, not only in the prayer chamber when he was on his knees, but also in every feature of his ordinary daily life, that “he was faithful” (v. 4). There can be nothing mean or insignificant in the life of a man who finds himself associated with a great Divine purpose: he realizes that this association demands a very high standard in every aspect of his daily life. Few of us can be placed in such difficult circumstances as Daniel was in Babylon. And very few indeed have kept as faithful as he did in the many tests and temptations which came his way. Perhaps it was because he had so learned faithfulness in the smaller matters that he triumphed so completely in this supreme testing.
If Daniel had considered it most important that he himself should survive, it would have been very simple for him to have refrained either from praying, or from kneeling to do so, or from leaving the windows open for all to see. After all, he was no slave in Babylon, but a man of great importance. He was no enemy of Darius, but his good friend. Had he wished he could have kept his personal safety, and no doubt he could think of many very good reasons why he should try to do so. But then what would happen to Jerusalem? What would happen to the purposes of God for His people? To Daniel it was the vision that mattered, not his own personal good. And in this very way he found his own deliverance. The man who remains true to the God-given vision can afford to leave the question of his own fate in the hands of the Giver of that vision.
This, then, is the challenge which comes to so many of us, the call to be faithful to the vision. Daniel reminds us of how important it is that one man should remain steadfast to the Lord. None of us knows how much of great Divine purposes may be served by our simple faithfulness.
In a sense we do not matter at all. It is not important for us to avoid the den of lions, to be saved from difficulties, to justify ourselves or fight for our own position. But in another sense it matters supremely that we should be true to the Lord. In order that we may do so, we need to keep in view the largeness of the vision.
The Greatness of His God
To Daniel God was greater than all. It was as simple as that. He had many visions, concerned with all sorts of people, places and events, but he had one transcendent vision, and that was the vision of his Lord. None of the historical or prophetic allusions can be without significance, for the Word of God is never without meaning; but we shall have missed the essence of Daniel’s story if we become occupied with things or people rather than with the Lord Himself. This is the second of Daniel’s secrets of a steadfast life: to him the Person of the Lord towered high above all others. Prophetic truths may interest or enlighten us, but they will never save us in the hour of testing. Daniel’s chamber was not a study – at least it was not then being used as such; it was his prayer-room, his audience-chamber with his God. As we tend to hurry to our best friend when trouble comes, so Daniel, when he knew the writing was signed, went straight home to his prayer chamber to commune with his Lord. He knelt on his knees not as a matter of routine or ritual, not to list a number of items for prayer, but to worship and to wait upon his God. As we have said, he was associated with a very great vision, but the central and supreme feature of this vision was the Person of the Lord.
This is as important to us as it was to him. When we come to the New Testament, we must be careful to give due weight to every detail of its teaching. It is very wrong for us to ignore or disobey the injunctions, the admonitions and the explicit statements of the Word of God. Yet our supreme concern must be with the Lord Jesus Himself. To follow all the teachings and methods associated with the House of God and yet lack the overwhelming Presence of the Son and Owner of the House is to substitute an empty shell for the living reality.
Daniel’s vision of the Lord was so great that it involved the eclipse of all his enemies. No doubt they were very imposing, ‘the presidents, the deputies, the satraps, the counsellors and the governors’ (v. 7). Whatever Daniel thought as he considered this long and formidable list, he gave no indication of being greatly concerned by it. He went off home to meet with his Lord… “as he did aforetime”. To have his eyes on the Lord did not mean that he ignored his enemies or pretended that they did not exist. It only meant that because of their hatred he drew nearer to his Lord, realizing that at all costs he must not be drawn away from that committal and that communion which represented the very heart of the Divine purpose. He was determined to keep on positive ground. It can be merely negative to get preoccupied with our enemies, or with the things that menace God’s purpose. We shall never reach God’s end by chasing negatives.
Daniel refused to be diverted from the main issue. He would not even turn aside to pray about his own perilous position. He had but one answer for his foes, and that was to continue straight on in his devotion to the will of God. We need to follow his example. Satan will always try to divert us from the positive end of God. If we can be drawn out into side issues, he will always provide such for us. They may be things that provoke us, some matter that never fails to arouse our irritation or anger. If we turn aside to pray too much about them, we shall have missed the real call to positive prayer. It is true that Ephesians 6 stresses the call to prayer conflict, but it comes at the end of a letter that is devoted to the main vision of God’s purpose in His Son. It is for this, and not for lesser or personal matters, that we are called into the spiritual battle. Or the devil may even keep us busy with some side issue, which we like, good things in themselves, perhaps, but diversions from the principle one. The man of the Spirit refuses to be diverted. Like Daniel, he goes determinedly on.
Daniel’s vision was so great that it also eclipsed his friends. There is no mention here of Shadrach and his two companions. We do not know where they were. Perhaps they were praying for him in secret. We do know, though, that there are times when we must go through alone with the Lord. This is no contradiction of spiritual fellowship. Such fellowship can only be healthy and vital if in all things the Lord Himself is the One we keep in view. Darius was also Daniel’s friend. As a matter of fact he did his sincere best to help him. But it is not recorded that when Daniel knew that the writing was signed he sought out Darius, to talk the matter over with him or to seek his help. No, he went straight away to the Lord. With all his apparent power, Darius proved helpless in this matter. Daniel knew the Lord as ‘high over all’. He could not have held quietly on his way as he did if he had not known a constant walk with his Almighty Lord.
The Power of Prayer
In the third place Daniel had learned complete confidence in God’s ability to answer prayer. Nothing could deter him from waiting on God, for he knew the power of prayer. Daniel was well acquainted with power; he had lived at the seat of it for many years. As a lad, he had seen in his own land the amazing things that could be done by this world-power. Together with his fellow Jews he had been taken captive by the mighty emperor, the “head of gold” surmounting all the Gentile kingdoms; and now for a very long time he had had his place at the heart of that terrifying world authority. He knew all about the decrees of an absolute despot and about the “law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not” (vs. 8, 12). And when he had considered it all, he was more than ever convinced that one man on his knees was more than a match for it all, that there is more power in the simple prayer of faith than in the greatest empire that this world can ever produce. He had learned his lesson. To him it was no mere theory, as, alas, it often is to us. He had proved it in the past and he was content to go on proving it. It was a special occasion, but he sought for no special remedy. He just went on praying “as he did aforetime”.
When a man is up against something of satanic origin, he is forced back to prayer, for only God can deal with the great enemy. It is significant that the signed decree was based on a lie. Darius put his signature to it because of deliberate untruth. Those who brought it to him insisted that it had been agreed among “all the presidents of the kingdom…” (v. 7). Daniel was at least equal to his fellow presidents, and he had had no part in it. Had Darius known the truth it is certain that he would never have agreed to pass the law. Wherever there is a lie, Satan is not far away. And when we get involved in his activities we do well to stand back for a moment, to consider the whole thing, and to decide – as apparently Daniel did – that only God can deal with this situation. Of course we may need to state the truth or point out the lie, but how often God’s servants have only got themselves into greater difficulties by trying to grapple with something that was too much for them, too strong or too subtle, when the very presence of a lie in the situation could have warned them that this is not a matter of opinion or judgment – we all make mistakes – but of an untruth in the realm of facts. What do we tend to do when we meet such a lie? Usually we want to fight it, to argue about it, to try to deal with it by our own actions. What did Daniel do? He went straight back to God, got on his knees and found a place of spiritual authority over it. He dealt with it all in the place of prayer.
That is where it was all done. The rest was simply the outworking. A painful outworking if you like, for it did not relieve him from the necessity of going down into the lions’ den, to the great distress of his friend, Darius, who spent a wakeful night worrying about him. He need not have worried. His own power had failed to deliver Daniel – human power always does fail in the face of spiritual opposition – but the man on his knees is the man in touch with the Throne. We are not told what sort of a night Daniel had, but it may well have been one of great inward rest. And this not because he had prayed about himself, but because he had devoted himself to the Lord’s interests and could therefore afford to leave his own needs in the Lord’s hands. He did not pray because he was faced with an emergency; he prayed because he was a praying man. He believed in the supreme power of prayer, and he practiced what he believed. If only we would do the same!
Daniel had had to pray in order to obtain his vision. A man is no prophet unless he is first a man of prayer – “… he is a prophet, and he shall pray for thee…” (Genesis 20:7). But that was only the beginning. We must not think that revelation as to the will of God is an end in itself; it is but the first phase of a prayer ministry. When Daniel had prayed through to an understanding of the ways of the Lord, he then set himself three times a day to persevere in prayer for their fulfillment. His prayer ministry took him into the lions’ den, but it also brought him out again, and he was able to see the thing right through to its glorious end. “So this Daniel prospered.” (v. 28). So – by praying through, unmoved and undismayed by plots and threats – this Daniel prospered. This Daniel – not the Daniel of the presidential office, but the Daniel of the lions’ den – this Daniel prospered, not only in the reign of Darius but also in the reign of Cyrus the Persian, who was the liberator and restorer of Jerusalem.
This all happened in the last years of his life. That may be because the time of Jerusalem’s liberation was at hand, and Satan the more fiercely attacked the man who was standing for it in prayer. If so, there is a special message for us, who surely have our testimony to give in the closing days of the dispensation. The kingdom for which we labour in prayer is not earthly, but heavenly: it concerns “the Jerusalem that is above” (Gal. 4:26). Let us therefore encourage one another not to be moved by the things which threaten to quench or divert our prayer life. And let us remember that this very experience was the way by which Daniel was brought to his appointed advancement. He went to the Throne by way of the lions’ den. Our Saviour ascended to the Throne by way of the Cross. We can only reign with Him if we suffer with Him.
Harry Foster
Part 2 – “Windows Open Toward Jerusalem”
“And when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; (now his windows were open in his chamber toward Jerusalem) and he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before His God, as he did aforetime.” (Daniel 6:10; A.S.V.).
The key to this verse, and indeed to the whole chapter, is that little parenthesis – “his windows were open in his chamber toward Jerusalem.”
These chapters of Daniel are not in chronological order. Chapters 7 and 8 both come before chapter 5, and then after chapter 5 comes chapter 9 which occurred in the first year of Darius. Chapter 6, although it does not say so, clearly occurred after the first year of Darius: there was an order of things already in the realm, there was a relationship between Darius and Daniel, there were enmities which must have taken time to mature: so that chapter 6 follows chapter 9, and chapter 9 explains the open windows.
A Revelation of God’s Purpose
Daniel had a revelation from God. Chapter 9 tells us how he humbled himself before God over the state of God’s people and of God’s city, and how from heaven there came illumination, and Daniel, with the eyes of the spirit, saw the Divine purpose in its immediate effect (for Jerusalem was to be rebuilt) and in its larger, fuller and final out-working – the day when the people of God and the city of God should indeed be a praise to Him, all transgression forever finished, everlasting righteousness brought in, all the prophecies fulfilled, and God’s dwelling-place with men. Daniel saw that; he was able to enter into God’s purpose concerning His people; and, whether his windows had been open before that or not, from that day onward they were open – the windows that looked toward Jerusalem – and Daniel made it the persistent, continual, purposeful exercise of his heart to get down before those open windows and pray for God’s purposes.
Daniel’s Committal to God’s Purpose
The opening of the windows was a symbolic act. It meant that he was committed to God and to that to which God was committed; he was with God for that which God intended to do; and the open windows were, humanly speaking, his undoing. Other people saw him at the open windows and realized that here was a trap, a way by which they could ensnare him. And that is, as I understand it, the setting for this chapter 6 – not a young man, but the old servant of the Lord, being faced with two alternatives, either to close his windows and leave off pursuing this utter attitude of co-operation with God, or else to go into the lions’ den.
The Enemy’s Antagonism
Of course, as far as the story goes, it was just the hatred of men and a convenient way of getting rid of him. But we know that there are spiritual lessons in it, and that it always happens like this – that heavenly revelation, and the committal of the heart utterly to the Lord for its fulfillment, provoke an assault which is meant either to make us desist or to destroy us.
Earlier on, Daniel’s companions had been in a similar position with regard to the fiery furnace; but for them it was a matter of whether they were on the Lord’s side or not. If they were on the Lord’s side, well then, the fiery furnace; if they wanted to avoid the fiery furnace, they must break with the Lord. And we know, and Daniel knew, how the Lord delivered. We all know something of that as Christians. So soon as we are truly on the Lord’s side we meet, as they met, an antagonism which calls upon us either to desist or to know the fiery furnace.
I think this experience of Daniel’s marks a step in advance of that. This was not for him a question of whether he was the Lord’s or not. He could have closed his windows, he could have desisted from this which was the cause of his being thrown into the lions’ den, without breaking with the Lord; in the quietness of his own heart, in the seclusion of his own room, he could have prayed. It was not now the question of whether he was the Lord’s or not, but the question of an utter position in the light of heavenly revelation, or of desisting from that. It is always so. That is the treatment that we may expect if we too have seen something of what God is desiring and intending to do, and have given Him our hearts and our hands that we are with Him for it.
The Delivering Power of the Heavenly Vision
But the message of this verse to my own heart lies here – in such conditions, in the midst of that bitter assault and antagonism, how did Daniel behave? What a lesson for us all! When he knew, he just went on praying toward Jerusalem. It did not make the slightest difference to him. It was not that he suddenly opened the windows – the windows were open; not that he suddenly began to pray – he had been praying and giving thanks three times a day toward Jerusalem. All the threats and fury of the adversary made not the slightest difference to him. Without any sense of strain, without any twisting of himself up and suddenly getting into a tense condition over it all; in quiet, noble dignity, he went on with the Lord. How important for us to be ready for the assault when it comes!
I think one of the reasons why Daniel was so steady and calm under it all was that his revelation was something so much bigger than himself that it carried him through. What I mean is that if Daniel had seen Jerusalem being rebuilt and himself a kind of Nehemiah or Zerubbabel taking the lead: if his vision, while being of Divine things, had brought himself into prominence: well, the lions’ den would have been a first-class problem. How could the vision be realized if he went into the lions’ den? And that is the disturbing feature in our spiritual lives – that so often, when God reveals Divine things to us, we somehow manage to introduce ourselves into the picture. A certain thing is going to happen, and we are going to have a part! and all too subtly we begin to see ourselves having a prominent place in the realization of it.
Then, when the assault comes upon the revelation, and upon us because of it, we are disturbed, we are worried. But Daniel was not going back to Jerusalem, though, as we find, he was told that he should have his place in the end (Dan. 12:13); so far as he was concerned, he forgot himself, he was nothing. The people of God and the city of God, and the purpose of God in that people and city – they were what he saw when he opened the windows. Excuse me putting it this way – it was not a mirror he went to pray in front of, it was an open window. He did not see himself as the chief feature; he saw – though no human eye could see it at that distance – the city of God, he saw the Divine purposes. What did the lions’ den matter to them? What did it matter what men did to Daniel so long as that end was realized? In the light of what God had shown him, he could not stop praying for Jerusalem, and, what is more important, he could not stop giving thanks for Jerusalem.
We need a little imagination to put ourselves in his place. When he knew that the writing was signed, what did he do? Begin to pray for Daniel? No, that is what Darius did. Daniel gave thanks that Jerusalem was going to be rebuilt. Oh, the delivering power of a vision big enough, heavenly enough, Divine enough to swallow up all our little petty and personal interests! That is the secret – the open windows. Dear brother, dear sister, look out to God’s purpose! Of course, if you do, it will involve the lions’ den. What did Daniel care for the lions’ den? When he had heard all about it, he just went home, went on praying, went on thanking God.
The Futility of Earthly Endeavour
I like to compare Darius with Daniel. Darius was supposed to be the king, but Daniel was the man reigning in spirit. What a bad time Darius had! and that does not express to us the bad time that evil people have, but the bad time that the well-intentioned man has, who is concerned for the interests of the Lord without really knowing the Lord. It was to Darius’ credit that he was so moved and terribly anxious. You notice what it says: this shows the difference of attitude: Darius, when he had been tricked into this experience, “was sore displeased, and set his heart on Daniel to deliver him.” That is a good enough, reasonable enough, sincere enough exercise.
“He set his heart on Daniel to deliver him.” And what happened? “He labored till the going down of the sun to rescue him,” but all his labour did not make the slightest difference to the lions’ den; nor did it make the slightest difference to the Divine deliverance when it came. You can imagine those men who were the means of bringing Daniel into the lions’ den. How they enjoyed the problem, the dilemma in which Darius was! He laboured, but they outwitted him; he tried in vain to think how he could outwit them and express his power, and they laughed at him. And the devil laughs at us when we are in the position that Darius was in. And, while the Lord did not laugh at him – I am sure the Lord appreciated the good that lay behind it all – He would have said to Darius, Don’t trouble, you are wasting your time, I can manage without you.
Then the night came and the matter seemed irrevocable. What a night the king had, the restlessness, the bitterness, the disappointment! Bring him food – he doesn’t want food; music? – he cannot listen to music; sleep? – he cannot sleep. What a night! While Daniel, down among the lions, was having a nice, peaceful, quiet night! Which things are a parable. Daniel or Darius? I am afraid I am often Darius. Darius was a man of the earth, Daniel was a man of heaven. When you are a man of the earth and when you face Divine things as here on earth, that is the kind of condition you work yourself into. Darius was frantic, strained to breaking point. He wanted to deliver the Lord’s interests and he laboured and he fought and then he broke his heart because he felt all the Lord’s interests were in the lions’ den. He tried to meet the enemies of the Lord’s interests on their own level. They plotted – he tried to counter-plot; they had exercised their power – he sought the means for overruling with his power; he was wrestling with flesh and blood, and he was losing and he was suffering. “Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood” (Eph. 6:12). When Daniel knew that the decree was signed, he did not set his heart to deliver Daniel. He did not labour till the going down of the sun to try and find a way out. Daniel went on looking to Jerusalem, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding kept his heart and mind. But Darius, with the best of intentions, was struggling and striving and trying to do something to help the Lord, and he only succeeded in working himself into a state of restlessness and strain that are beyond description.
What is the secret? Surely it is as I have said – Darius was concerned for Daniel, for the human side, for the servant of the Lord – a very good concern in his case, because quite unselfish – but it did not help. Daniel was not concerned for the servant of the Lord, he was concerned for the interests of the Lord, for the heavenly revelation, and the result was that he was kept in perfect peace while Darius was worked up into a fever and a fret.
Well now, let the Lord apply the message and the lesson to each of our hearts. How does it work out with us? Are we on earthly ground or on heavenly?
The Devil’s Seeming Triumph
The devil seems rather to be limited in his ability to foresee the deliverances of God. He thinks – and indeed it looks as if he is right – that he can engineer situations in which there are only two alternatives; it was so with the three young men, it was so with Daniel, and in His time it was so with our blessed Lord. Two alternatives face the servant of God. Either he must relinquish the vision or he must be destroyed; and having, like some diabolical chess-player, engineered a situation from which there are only two possible moves, Satan stands back. In either case he is triumphant. If those three young men will avoid the fiery furnace at the expense of denying the Lord, the devil does not mind their going free – they have denied the Lord, the spiritual interest is marred. Daniel can, if he will, save himself from the lions’ den, he can close his windows, he can relinquish that utter position of abandonment to the heavenly revelation; he can – and alas many do – avoid the lions’ den. It can be done, and Satan has triumphed either way; and that is the diabolical ingenuity of it. It is a cleft-stick. Either we must relinquish that utter position concerning that which the Lord has shown us, or Satan will break us, he will finish our usefulness, he will mar our lives. So we have to sit down with the two alternatives.
God’s Counter by Resurrection
But the devil is limited, happily. There are not really only two ways, there is a third way. The young men proved it, Daniel proved it. In the case of our Lord, and in New Testament language, it is Resurrection. The word used in Daniel is “deliverance”. There is a third way; the young men may not have known about that, Darius did not know about it. Did Daniel know? I wonder. Neither he nor the three young men stopped to think when the alternatives were placed before them. They did not take any time to decide, they were committed to the Lord; what happened to them was a secondary thing.
Yet I think Daniel did know. He knew in the way in which we may all know. He could not foresee the way in which God would deliver him. That is what we want to know – we want the Lord to explain, we want that somebody else should have gone the same way, and nobody has gone that way before: it always is to us as a new experience, we cannot see the way out. Nor could Daniel in that sense; but spiritually he could see that his association with the Lord was the safe way, and though with his mind he could not understand, with his spirit he knew that to be on the Lord’s side was the safe way, and that is why there is this air of quiet calm about him. He did not see the way out, but he did know the Lord; so he would open his windows and pray and praise.
“Is thy God, Whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions?” Well, let the next morning and the light of day show, and the king shall see there are not the two alternatives. That is what the devil thinks – maybe even persuades himself. That is what man thinks as he looks at it from a human level. That is what we shall think unless we have the windows open toward Jerusalem. Two alternatives – either we must compromise in this matter of utter abandonment to what the Lord has shown His will or we shall be broken – one or the other. If we say, in any case I cannot abandon what the Lord has shown, my heart is set upon Him: we shall find that there is a third way. There is the vision, and there is deliverance. Thank God, that is true for us, He is the God of resurrection, the God of deliverances. So let us keep the windows open.
A Great Victory
See what happened as the result of this. There is always spiritual gain when we are faithful to the Lord. Daniel heard all their threats, knew what was going to happen, foresaw it all, and quietly went on with the Lord. That is all Daniel did, but you see the extraordinary results. This experience of his was a great victory. Without feeling revengeful about men, we must feel there is a certain spiritual satisfaction at the end of the story in the fact that the ones who had plotted Daniel’s overthrow were cast into the den themselves; and the spiritual lesson is a true one. Daniel’s quiet faithfulness and his deliverance were not just things in themselves, they were the overthrow of the enemies of the Lord. It was a great victory. And it is always like that. Daniel did not wrestle and strive. He did nothing concerning his enemies; he kept his windows open to Jerusalem. But so long as he did that, God was quite capable of dealing with his enemies. Let the rest, the quiet, the calm dignity of that assurance flood our hearts. Darius was trying to deal with the enemies and could not; Daniel was holding fast to the Lord and his steadfastness was the undoing of all his enemies.
“The God of Daniel”
And the second feature which emerges from this story is the great testimony to the Lord which was set up because of Daniel. The Book of Daniel has a number of titles of God which are very striking, and some of them very wonderful. He is the “Living God”; He is the “God of heaven”; He is the “Ancient of days”; and so on. But come to chapter 6:26, and He is “the God of Daniel”. In all that list of glorious titles, here is one more – “the God of Daniel”. What a testimony! It is not that Daniel stands for anything, but what makes the King and all others to marvel is, ‘What a God Daniel has!’ Would that that might be added to the many titles of the Lord, with my name and yours in the place of Daniel’s! We are not important, but nor was Daniel in his own eyes.
Our windows open toward Jerusalem, our going on with the Lord, mean the lions’ den; but we go on with the Lord, and after all we come out of the lions’ den and there is a great victory, something established in the earth that never was before of a testimony to the greatness of the glory of God. “The God of Daniel.” The Lord grant that this may be true in our case.
Harry Foster
Part 3 – Meekness of the Man of God
“And there hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face; in all the signs and the wonders, which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land; and in all the mighty hand, and in all the great terror, which Moses wrought in the sight of all Israel.” (Deut. 34:10-12).
“Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.” (Numbers 12:3).
The prophet Micah described the man who pleases God as the one who loves mercy and walks humbly with his God (Mic. 6:8). Moses was outstanding in his humility, not only in his own days but through all time. In connection with this, it is helpful to realize that he was a man who loved mercy. He had reason to do so, since he himself owed everything to the grace of God. There seems to be no greater man in all the sacred record – certainly not in the Old Testament; and the mark of his greatness is that he was very meek.
A Christ-like Virtue
His meekness was not a superficial guise which he assumed, but a profound characteristic of the man. The actual statement about him was made in connection with a period of great provocation. He was tested – tested severely and often; and from it all emerged the Divine verdict that he had passed the test: he was indeed a truly meek man.
Meekness is, of course, a Christ-like virtue “I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29). Perhaps it is one of the greatest virtues, for it was the Lord Jesus Himself Who not only pronounced a special blessing on the meek, but promised that they should inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5). He knew very well that meekness is not natural to humanity; indeed it was in order that men might be instructed in this quality of life that He called them to come unto Him and to take His yoke upon them. “Learn of Me…”, He commanded, with the clear inference that we sinners would never be meek or lowly unless we did.
This was certainly true of Moses. Nobody would suggest that the man Moses was naturally meek. Nor would the years of training and luxury in the Egyptian court have taught him such a lesson. He learnt much from the Egyptians, but he certainly never learned meekness. His outburst in Egypt, and the one flash of impatience in the wilderness which cost him so dearly (Num. 20:8-12), give clear indications of the kind of man he was by nature. The more wonder, then, that this man, of all men, should be meek, and the supreme wonder that he surpassed all others in this Christ-like virtue.
Not that Moses was a mere dreamer. Meekness is not a characteristic of the contemplative; it is a virile virtue. Moses was a man of action. “In all the mighty hand, and in all the great terror…” He was the leader of the greatest venture of all history, the pioneer of the Israelitish nation. God was mightily with Moses. When Joshua took over the leadership of the people there was no greater encouragement which God could give him than to assure him that he should have the same backing: “As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee” (Josh. 1:5). What was the explanation of the wonderful experiences of Divine power which Moses had? Surely this very fact, that he was meek above all other men. His meekness was his strength.
Meekness Because of Mercy
As we have said, the prophet made a close association between mercy and meekness: the man who loves mercy will walk humbly with his God. It may well be that the greatest contributory cause to the supreme meekness of Moses was that his life was transformed by an overwhelming realization of God’s mercy to him.
It is possible, of course, to take God’s blessings in a wrong way; to become conceited, as the Jews did, vainly imagining that God’s kind treatment of them was due to some innate superiority of theirs. Such men may use the right phrases, and talk of God’s grace, but it is only phraseology; they cannot be said to “love mercy”. If, however, we do appreciate the amazing patience of God, and His goodness to the utterly undeserving, then we begin not to boast of mercies, but to love mercy. There is surely nothing so calculated to make us truly lowly in heart as a realization of the greatness of God’s grace, even to us.
Mercy at His Beginning
Moses’ life began with a very great mercy. At that time every other baby boy had to be drowned. He alone was saved, and saved by the mercy of God. We can give every credit to his mother who thought of the plan and executed it, to the sister who watched by the ark of bulrushes and intervened so successfully, and even to Pharaoh’s daughter who showed such true and unexpected compassion. But it was not the mother, the sister, the ark, or the princess, who delivered him, but the great mercy of God. Moses himself contributed least of all. When the casket was opened, he just cried – that was all he could do.
Probably it was the one thing which his mother hoped would not happen, and it may be that Miriam stood by, tense with concern, lest the baby should spoil everything by not smiling at the appropriate moment. All that the babe could do was to wail in complete weakness and so fail to give any help at all. His deliverance was all of God. The name given to him, Moses (Ex. 2:10b), was a lifelong reminder of how he had been pulled out of the waters of destruction by the mercy of God. Such a beginning should keep a man humble.
Yet this, too, was our beginning. We would have been swallowed up by destruction had it not been for Divine intervention. Like the baby Moses, we could contribute nothing but a cry, a despairing wail. It was God Who showed mercy to us and drew us out of the waters of death. We might well ask, as Moses must often have done, why we should have been the favoured ones when others all around us have no such history. Many have had the same opportunities, the same, or even greater privileges; yet we are the Lord’s, and they are not. The grace of God is amazing. ‘Tis mercy all!’
Mercy of Recovery
A time came when the Lord met him at the burning bush, met him with a commission and a promise. “Come now therefore, and I will send thee”, He said to him (Ex. 3:10); and later, “Certainly I will be with thee” (v.12). It would be impossible to imagine the overwhelming sense of the mercy of God that must have filled Moses’ heart as he heard those words.
What a lot of history had intervened between Moses’ first sense of call to be the Deliverer, and this present commission! He had begun – where we must all begin – by making a great renunciation. At forty years of age he let go of possessions, prospects, everything selfish and earthly, in order to be a servant of the Lord. This was not wrong; it was right, and nobody can serve the Lord without such a complete renunciation. He let everything go – or at least he meant to do so. This, however, did not make him meek. Many of us have passed through a similar experience, and been most sincere in our dedication, but it did not make us meek. Perhaps it made us the very opposite, giving us a false idea of our superiority to other Christians.
For Moses there followed a complete fiasco. He tried to serve the Lord in his own strength, in his own way and at his own time. Meek men don’t do that sort of thing. The result was abysmal and utter failure. Away he fled into the land of Midian, and for forty years he had to live with his own sense of complete breakdown. Perhaps it was borne in on his soul that God’s work could not be done by the kind of man he was, even when such a man had made great sacrifices. There must have been a collapse of any imagined ability, a sense of deep disappointment, in the conviction that he had spoiled every chance he ever had, that he had disqualified himself from ever being a servant of God.
We, too, must go this way, though happily it need not last for forty years as it did with him. But there is a spiritually symbolic meaning in that number: it is meant to indicate the thoroughness of the weakening process. He had learned his lesson.
At least, he thought he had. But in fact it was only the first half. He had settled down with his own failure, but now the Lord appeared to him, with this surprising call to go back again to the work which he had ruined by trying to do it in his own strength. He went back, unwillingly, hesitatingly, full of doubts as to his own ability or worthiness, but he went with the new and emphatic assurance: “Certainly I will be with thee”.
How amazing the grace of God must have seemed to him, rescuing him from his failure and despair, offering to one who had broken down in the past such high and privileged service. We know, of course, that it was this very self-despair which made possible such power as he had never known before. It was the proof that the forty years, far from being wasted, had done the necessary work of undoing. To receive back his original commission by such a miracle of mercy was calculated to make Moses feel deeply humbled.
There is a sense in which God’s true servant is always a defeated man. The one who drives on with the sense of his own importance, who is unwilling to appreciate the worthlessness of his own best efforts and is always seeking to justify himself – that one will not be meek, and so will lack the essential power by which God’s work must be done. Our brokenness must not be feigned; we must not be content with the mere language and appearance of humility. We, too, must be as conscious of Divine mercy in our being recovered for God’s service as we are of the original mercy which drew us from the waters of death.
Mercy of the Exodus
God abundantly fulfilled His promise to ‘be with’ His servant: Moses was used in a unique way to do the work of God. This, too, he realized, was pure mercy: “Thou in Thy mercy hast led the people which Thou hast redeemed” (Ex. 15:13). Moses did not need the deliverance for himself. He was free; he had never been a slave; he could walk in and out as he pleased. He was sent, however, to his people who were in ‘the house of bondage’, and was faced with the impossible task of getting them released so that they might worship and serve God.
The miracle happened; the great emancipation came; and Moses had been the man whom God used to bring this about. The old Moses, full of his own importance, might have been ready to take some credit to himself for this. Alas! it is all too easy for the servant of the Lord to get puffed up, even if he has been used in only a small way. Even the new Moses, deeply aware of his dependence on the Lord, had severe tests in Egypt which threw him back even more on the absolute grace of God, and he was only able to share in the great Exodus when it had become abundantly clear that God alone was doing the work.
This is the case with every spiritual servant of God. He has to be so dealt with that any tendency to imagine that he is anything in himself, or at all superior to others, must be purged from him. Then, to see God working in power and deliverance, as Moses saw Him, to be the instrument of a work which is so wholly and absolutely of God – this can only bring a man very low in humble worship. Really, the man who is most used should be the meekest of all. When Christ turned the water into wine, we are told that, while the ruler and the guests at the feast did not know the secret, those who did the carrying did. “But the servants which had drawn the water knew” (John 2:10). They knew how gloriously Christ had worked, and that they themselves had been spectators, rather than agents, privileged to be so used, well aware that all the glory belonged to the Lord and none to man.
Mercy of Answered Prayer
Think, also, of the wonderful way in which the Lord answered Moses’ prayers. There were miracles of preservation, miracles of provision, miracles of progress. Every time when a new crisis of need came upon them, Moses turned to the secret place of prayer and called on the Name of the Lord. And on each occasion there were fresh blessings which could only have come by way of the trials. The people could not pray for themselves. More often than not they doubted and complained. Moses was the man who prayed, and so Moses had the full spiritual blessing which comes to those who see their prayers answered, especially if these prayers are for others rather than for themselves.
After all, when the people lacked food, Moses was as hungry as any of them. He, too, could have died from thirst, just like the rest. When they were attacked by their enemies, Moses was as much in danger as any of them – possibly more. It seems, though, that, as a true intercessor should, Moses forgot himself and his own needs in his shepherd-like concern for the people. He prayed for them, not for himself; and, as he did so, he could hardly ignore the fact that they were as unworthy as he. When the prayers were answered – and what a wonderful record of answered prayer the wilderness journey provided! – then anew he would be impressed with the greatness of God’s mercy.
There were, of course, deeper spiritual needs than the physical and material perils of the wilderness way. There were times when the whole nation was likely to be destroyed, because of its disobedience and sin. There were individuals, like Aaron and Miriam, whose only hope of survival could be in the mercy of God. Moses was the man who prayed for that mercy, and God graciously responded to his selfless intercession.
There are two ways of receiving answers to prayer. The wrong way is that of conceit, as though we or our prayers had some kind of merit in them. A prayer ministry will not continue for long, nor remain effective, if any such spirit is allowed a place in the heart of the intercessor. But there is the other way, when those concerned are humbled to the dust by the sheer goodness and grace of God. Even more than suffering, even more than chastening, the very abundance of God’s mercy can melt our hearts in lowly gratitude. Such people do not have to try to be meek. They do not even have to pray to be made meek. It is the goodness of God, so amazing and so undeserved, which produces such meekness.
Harry Foster
Part 4 – The Tragedy of the Unfinished Task
This evening we move in thought into the Book of Judges – and how very different it is from the Book of Joshua! I think the Book of Judges is the most terrible book in the Bible! And why is it such a terrible book? Because it is the book of the unfinished task.
In the Book of Joshua the people of Israel went into the land, and had a wonderful history of victory after victory, moving more and more into God’s full purpose. Then, before they had finished the work, they settled down. In the last chapters of the Book of Joshua we see the people just settling down before the work is perfect. They had heard the great call of God. God’s purpose had been presented to them and they had made a response to it. They had moved so far, and then, before it was all finished, they settled down. The Book of Judges follows, and that is the book of the tragedy of the unfinished work.
None of us will say that there is nothing like that in Christianity today! There are many Christians who make a wonderful beginning. They see the vision of God’s great purpose, and certain words in the New Testament make a great appeal to them, such as: “Called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). That is a wonderful vision! “According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ephesians 3:11). Such a thought makes a great appeal to these people and they make a heart response. They go on so far, and then many stop too soon. They lose the vision; they lose the inspiration; they lose the sense of purpose; they lose the energy to go on, and of some we have to say: ‘Something has gone out of their faces. What was there with them once is not there now. They were so positive once, so occupied with the heavenly calling, but something has happened.’ These people may not be altogether conscious of it, and they would not tell you that something has happened, but it is quite evident that something has happened. They have just lost something, and you do not get the response now from them that you once got. They are not so interested now as they were. The heavenly vision has gone out of their lives. That is true of many Christians, and it could be true of all of us.
And the Book of Judges is our instructor in this matter. What I say now is not in judgment – although it is from the Book of Judges! I have a very great deal of sympathy with these people. Oh yes, I know how wrong it was, and how this book spelt the failure of these people. I know how sorry the Lord was about it, but from my own experience I cannot help being sympathetic, for I think I understand.
Weariness In The Battle
Why did these people stop short of finishing the job? I think that very likely it was because they became weary in well doing. The battle was long drawn out. It was spread over years and was very exhausting. No sooner had they gained one victory than they had to start fighting again. They did not have much rest between one battle and the next one. It was a long drawn-out warfare; they got weary in battle, and in their weariness they lost the vision, they lost heart, and they lost the initiative.
I am so glad that with all the strong things that the New Testament says, it says some very kind and understanding things about this: “Let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9); “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, … your labour is not vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58); “God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love” (Hebrews 6:10). What a lot of things there are like that! And Jesus said to His disciples, who were being brought into the battle: “Let not your heart be troubled!” (John 14:1), while we can hear the Lord’s words to Joshua: “Be strong and of a good courage; be not affrighted, neither be thou dismayed” (Joshua 1:9). Again, the Lord Jesus said to His disciples: “He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved” (Matthew 24:13).
These people in the Book of Judges were discouraged by weariness – and we are all capable of that! Sometimes it is not easy for us to give up – or perhaps I ought to say that it is not difficult for us to give up! – because we do not want to get out of the battle, and yet, at the same time, we do want to get out of it. The battle is inside, and even so great a man as the Apostle Paul had that battle. He said: ‘I really do not know what to do! I have a strong desire to depart and be with the Lord in order to get out of the battle, and yet I know that duty to the Lord would keep me in the battle. I do not know whether to give up or to go on!’ I say that that is a possible temptation to every Christian, and the Lord knows all about that! The New Testament is full of understanding things about it.
The first reason why these people settled down too soon, then, was discouragement. It was not because they had had no victories – they had had many – but because they said: ‘There is no end to this battle! It looks as though we shall never finish!’ So in weariness and discouragement they settled down too soon.
I feel sure that this Book of Judges recognizes that. Every time these people stirred themselves again they found that the Lord was very ready to go on with them. This book is a picture of an up-and-down Christian life. One day these people are down in despair, and another day they are up in victory. It was that kind of Christian life which was always up and down, but when they turned their faces to the Lord they found that He was waiting for them. The Lord had not given up. He was always ready to go on. I think that is the first great lesson in this Book of the Judges.
The Loss of Heavenly Vision
But what was the effect of this loss, of this stopping too soon? It was the loss of vision. They only saw the things that were near and lost sight of God’s eternal purpose. They lost sight of what Paul calls the “prize of the on-high calling” (Philippians 3:14). Now this sounds like a contradiction, but they lost sight of the things that are not seen! You say: ‘What do you mean by that? That is nonsense! How can you see the things that are not seen?’ Paul says: “The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). They lost sight of the things which are eternal because they were looking too much at the things which are seen. They lost the heavenly vision for they became satisfied too soon. It was all good so far, but the good became the enemy of the best.
The first thing that happened, then, was the loss of the heavenly vision. It works both ways. If we lose the heavenly vision we settle down too soon. If we settle down too soon we lose the heavenly vision. And what do we mean by settling down too soon? We mean: losing the warring spirit. In this Book of Judges the Philistines resorted to a very subtle strategy: they took all the weapons of war away from Israel, and all that they had left was one file to sharpen their agricultural instruments, so that every farmer in Israel had to take a journey to the blacksmith to sharpen his farm instruments. All the sharp instruments had been taken away and the spirit of war was undermined. The Philistines had made it impossible for Israel to fight and you know that there is a very big Philistine about! The strategy of this great enemy of the inheritance is to take the fighting spirit out of us. Oh, what a lot of mischief the Philistines have done to Christians! What about our prayer life? There was a time when we were mighty warriors in prayer. We fought the Lord’s battles in prayer. What about our prayer meetings? Where can you find the prayer meetings now that are out in spiritual warfare? Yes, we ask the Lord for a hundred and one things, but we do not battle through to victory on some situation. There is some life in terrible bondage, there is some servant of the Lord having a hard time, and there are many other calls for battle, but where are the prayer groups who take up these issues and will not give up until they are settled? The warring spirit has gone out from so much of the Church. That is a clever strategy of the devil! Lose the spirit of spiritual battle and you will stop short of finishing the work.
The Spirit of the World
The next thing that caused these people to settle down too soon was the spirit of the world getting in amongst them. What is the spirit of the world? It is the spirit of: Have a good time! Let us have a good time! Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die! And these people of Israel looked at the world around them and, if I understand it rightly, they said: ‘These people do not have all the hard time that we do. Our life is a life of continual battle. They do not know so much about that, but they believe in having a good time.’ I think that is how it was at this particular time.
Of course, up to this time Israel had given the people round about a bad time! But Israel had lost the fighting spirit now, and the world was having a good time because the Church was no longer fighting it. Instead of fighting the world they made friends with the world. They made the world their friends, and so they did not finish the work. Compromise is a dangerous thing to the inheritance! Trying to be on good terms with the world and having an easy time will result in our losing a large part of the inheritance.
Recovering the Fighting Spirit
But let us finish on a better note. As I said before, God did not give up, and whenever the people took up the battle again and turned again on the Lord’s side to fight the enemy, they found the Lord waiting for them. So we have the story of Deborah, the story of Gideon – and dare I mention Samson? However, although Samson was a poor sort of man, if only the Lord gets a poor chance, He will take it. You may not think much of Samson – but do you think better of yourself? We are all poor creatures! We have all been discouraged, we have all been tempted to give up, we have all stopped too soon, we have all been weary in well-doing, but take the sword of the Spirit again! Take up the battle again, and you will find the Lord is ready and waiting for you.
Gideon – Deborah – Samson – and all the others. But I think there is one who is better than them all – do you remember that beautiful little Book of Ruth? Everybody is charmed with that book! What a lovely book of spiritual recovery it is! What a picture of the Lord’s patience, the Lord’s readiness to take advantage of every opportunity! How does that book begin? “And it came to pass in the days when the judges judged…” The Book of Ruth was in the times of the Judges, which until then was the most terrible time in history of Israel, but God was ready to change the whole picture. There are the two different pictures: the Judges and Ruth, but both were in the same period. Do you see what I am trying to say?
Dear friends, we are in a great battle, and it is long drawn out. We can get very weary in the fight. We can become discouraged and give up too soon. We may have to stop before the work is finished. That is always our temptation, the tragic possibility in the Christian life, but the Lord does not give up. He does not faint, nor is He discouraged, and if we will turn again to Him, rise up again, recover our fighting spirit and continue to fight the good fight, we shall find the Lord is ready every time, and He is always wanting to help us to fight to the end. He will help till the day is done!
T. Austin-Sparks
Part 5 – “Gather My Saints Together”
“Gather My saints together unto Me, those that have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.” (Psalm 50:5 A.S.V.).
“Now we beseech you, brethren, touching the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto Him.” (2 Thess. 2:1).
“Not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh.” (Hebrews 10:25).
In all of the above passages there is this one common factor, that an end-time movement and feature is dominant. It must be remembered that the Psalms themselves represent what remains when a history of outward things as to the general instrumentality has ended in failure. The history of Israel in its first great phase closed with the Book of “Kings” in a calamitous and shameful way. Weakness, paralysis, declension, reproach, characterized the instrument in general. But out of that history now so concluded the Psalms are carried forward, and they represent what has spiritually been gained and is permanent. This is pre-eminently a personal, inward, spiritual knowledge of the Lord gained through experience. That is why they always reach the heart and never fail to touch experience at every point. To them the saints have turned in times of deep experience. They are the ministry of experience to experience, the only ministry which is permanent.
The end-time instrument will always be that which inwardly knows the Lord in a deep and living way through history fraught with much experience of the heights and depths. What David gave to the Chief Musician for the wind instruments and the stringed instruments touches the highest and deepest note of a mortal’s knowledge of God. Worship, Salvation, Sorrow, Appeal, Victory, Battle, Faith, Hope, Glory, Instruction, are all great themes interwoven with the mass of matters touched, but the point is that all came in real life; He passed through it all. It is this, and this alone, which can serve the Lord when what He first raised up has failed Him as a public instrument. So the Lord would take pains to secure this, and this may explain much of the suffering and sorrow through which He takes His chosen vessels.
It does not need pointing out that, in the other two passages with which we commenced, the end-time is in view; they definitely state it.
There is a further common feature, however, which is more particularly the subject before us. They all definitely refer to gathering together as something related to the end-time. The Day is drawing nigh, therefore there is to be a “so much the more” assembling together. The Lord is coming, and there is a gathering to Him.
A history of a religious system which sprang out of something which the Lord raised up in the first place has ended in weakness, chaos and shame. Therefore, there is to be a re-gathering to the Lord of His saints.
Before we deal with the nature of this end-time gathering, we must get clearly in view those that are concerned in it. The passage in the Psalm would embrace and include those referred to in the other two passages.
“My Saints… Those That Have Made A Covenant With Me by Sacrifice”
It need hardly be remarked that when all has been said and done through type, symbol and figure, the covenant means an entering into what the Lord Jesus has done by His shed Blood. It is an appreciation and apprehension of Him in His great work by the Cross. The Lord, by His Blood, has made a “New Covenant” by sacrifice, and we, His spiritual people, have entered into that covenant and set our hand to it. Christ as “the mediator of a new covenant” stands for both parties, for a covenant requires two parties. On one side He is God, “The Son of God”; on the other side He is Man, “Son of Man”. In Christ we are made the humanity side of the covenant, and by taking our place by faith in Him we enter into the covenant. Just as, in Christ, God has come out to us in a great committal, so also – as in the case of Christ – we in Him go out to God in a like utter committal. The Blood seals the covenant, that is, makes us wholly the Lord’s, and the Lord wholly ours.
If we see the meaning of “a covenant by sacrifice” then we shall see who it is that will be in this gathering together. It will certainly be only those to whom the Lord is everything, to whom He is all and in all; and those who are all for the Lord without a reservation, a personal interest, or anything that is less or other than Himself. Spiritual oneness is only possible on this basis.
The Lord’s word to Abraham in the day of covenant was, “Now I know that thou fearest God”. Malachi’s end-time word was “Then they that feared the Lord…” The fear of the Lord is an utter abandonment to Him at any cost; His will being supreme, claiming and obtaining the measure of a whole burnt-offering.
The Nature of the Gathering Together
Having then in view the kind who are concerned, which forms a test as well as a testimony, we are able to look at the nature of the gathering together.
We are well aware that there is a widespread doubt as to whether we are to expect anything in the way of a corporate movement or testimony at the end. Indeed, it is strongly held by some that everything at the end is individual, and this conviction rests, for the most part, upon the phrase “If any man”, in the message to Laodicea.
Let us hasten then to say that we here have nothing in mind in the nature of an organized movement, a sect, a society, a fraternity, or even a “fellowship” if, by that, any of the foregoing is meant.
Having said this, however, there are some things on the other side which need saying quite definitely.
The Church of the New Testament never was an organized movement. Neither was there any organized affiliation of the companies of believers in various places with one another. It was a purely spiritual thing, spontaneous in life and united only by the Holy Spirit and mutual love and spiritual solicitude. There were other factors which acted as spiritual links which we will mention presently. Further, and still more important, was the abiding fact that a “Body” had been brought into being. This is called “the body of Christ”. You can divide a society and still it remains, but you cannot divide a body without destroying the entity.
Are we to understand from the exponents of the individualistic interpretation that all the teaching of the Lord, in nearly all the Scriptures concerning the House of God, and in nearly all the Letters of Paul concerning the Body of Christ, is now set aside or is only an idea without any expression on the earth? Are we to blot out the mass of the New Testament and live our own individual Christian lives with no emphasis upon working fellowship with other believers? Surely not. This would be contrary to all the ways of God in history, and would certainly spell defeat, for if there is one thing against which the Adversary has set himself it is the fellowship of God’s people.
Ultra-individualism is impossible if the truth of the “one body” still stands, and what is more, the Lord’s people are becoming more and more conscious of their absolute need of fellowship, especially in prayer. The difficulty of ‘getting through’ alone is becoming greater as we approach the end.
What then is the nature of this gathering together? It is a gathering to the Lord Himself. “Gather My saints together unto Me”; “our gathering unto Him”.
In times past there have been gatherings to men, great preachers, great teachers, great leaders; or to great institutions and movements, centres and teachings. At the end the Lord will be very much more than His vessels or instrumentalities.
God’s end is Christ, and as we get nearer the end He must become almost immediately the object of appreciation.
Our oneness and fellowship is not in a teaching, a ‘testimony’, a community, a place, but in a Person, and in Him not merely doctrinally, but livingly and experimentally.
Any movement truly of God must have this as its supreme and all-inclusive feature, that it is the Lord Jesus Who is the object of heart adoration and worship.
The two great purposes of the ‘gathering’ are prayer and ‘building up’: “supplication for all saints”, and spiritual food. These two things have ever characterized Divine gatherings or convocations – representation before God, and feeding in His presence.
This, then, is the meaning of “call a solemn assembly” (Joel 1:14; 2:15). The need more than ever imperative as “the day” approaches is the gathering together unto Him.
May we see more of this as His Divinely inspired movement to meet the so great need!
T. Austin-Sparks
Part 6 – “Whither the Tribes Go Up”
“Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the Name of the Lord.” (Psalm 122:4).
“Gather My saints together.” (Psalm 50:5).
It was a beautiful thought in the mind of God when, in His divine economy, He prescribed for the periodic convocations of His people. Away back in the time of Moses, He commanded that all the males in Israel should journey three times in every year to some place of His appointment (Deuteronomy 16:16), the details of which are worth noting. It is clear that David laid great store by such convocations. Psalm 122 is by its heading attributed to David, as were other “Songs of Ascent”, or pilgrimage. It was due to division resulting from spiritual decline that such gatherings ceased for so long, until Josiah had a great recovery celebration (II Chronicles 35:17-19). It was therefore a sign of spiritual recovery and strength when the Lord’s people so gathered from near and far.
We can briefly summarize the values in the Lord’s thought for such convocations:
1. They were times when the universality of God’s church, or “Holy nation,” as on the basis of the Passover (the Cross) was preserved in the hearts of His people. “They left their cities”; that is, they left exclusively parochial ground. By the gathering from all areas they were preserved from all exclusivism, sectarianism, and the peril of isolation. They were made to realize that they were not the all and everything, but parts of a great whole. Thus the ever-present tendency to make God in Christ smaller than He really is was countered.
2. Thus, they were times of wonderful fellowship. People who belonged to the same Lord, but had either never before met, or had been apart for so long, discovered or rediscovered one another, were able to share both “their mutual woes, and mutual burdens bear,” or tell of the Lord’s goodness and mercy. Loneliness, with all its temptations and false imaginations, was carried away by the fresh air of mutuality. New hope, incentive, and life sent the pilgrims back to their accustomed spheres with the consciousness of relatedness.
3. They were times of consolidation. The Psalm says: “For a testimony unto Israel.” The testimony of the great thing that the Passover (the Cross) means in the heart of His people. A testimony to the unifying power of the blood and body of Christ. The gatherings held a spiritual virtue in the livingness of the presence of the Lord. If they had been assailed by doubts, fears, and perplexities, they went away confirmed, reassured, and established in their common faith.
4. They were times of instruction. The Word of God was brought out, read and expounded. They were taught, and they “spake one to another.” In a word, they were fed. There was spiritual food. The initiation of these convocations was connected with three “Feasts” (Deuteronomy 16). Eating and drinking in the presence of the Lord. They returned fortified, built up, enlightened, and with vision renewed.
5. They were times of intercession. Possibly not every individual was able to “go up.” For various reasons – infirmity, age, responsibility, or some other form of detention – kept some from the blessings of joining with the pilgrims. But God’s idea of the gatherings was – as put into later words – “My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples.” The New Testament is clear and strong on this point, that the representation of the “Body of Christ” in any place can, and should have real spiritual value for all its members because “the Body is one.”
So, let the lonely, detained and isolated ones realize that when the Lord’s people are together, they are being supported. And let those who are not so deprived of the “gathering together” realize how vital it is, and what a necessity there is in expressing this Divine thought.
T. Austin-Sparks
