Faith Unto Enlargement Through Adversity (Transcript)

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 7 - The Shining of the Light

As we renew our occupation with the message of Isaiah chapter 60, there are first two preliminary words I want to say at this point.

First of all, if there are any who were not with us this morning, let me say, lest they should be a little mystified, that we sought to make it very clear that in a great deal of the Old Testament scriptures, there is a double meaning. There is that which is historical and earthly, very largely related to Israel and their future. And there is that which lies behind the message to Israel and is the larger message for the people of God in a spiritual way; for now and for the future. We are not going to argue that out again, but we are this afternoon occupied with the second of those interpretations. We are not spiritualising everything historical out of existence, but we are seeing that the historical has most certainly a spiritual meaning which is not historical, but which is eternal.

Then the other thing that I want to say is just a following up of the last word this morning. We are going again to use the word "church" and we are going to point out that the things being said concern and relate to the church.

Now, here in this quite small company, there are those who come from many places, some from very far off and you will be probably going back there, others from points nearer or farther between those distant places. And if you in your places are scattered, and many of you are just individuals, or two or three, and you might just have somewhere undefined in the back of your mind as we're speaking, "Well, that is for the church, he is talking about the church, all that is concerning the church, but I am just one lonely one somewhere..." or, "We are only just two or three in some remote place, we can't be regarded as the church! And therefore, to some degree, all this can hardly apply to us...". Now, I am quite sure it is necessary to say a corrective word about that and the best way of doing it is to remind you that when Paul wrote his final letters, mainly to and about the church, he did not write them to any one collection of Christians in any one place. Nor did he write them just to several large companies of Christians. They were for all Christians, whether in companies, or scattered and alone, and they have remained that ever since.

And Paul thought comprehensively and inclusively of all believers, and just called them 'the church' - that's all. They may have been just here and there, or in many places just ones or twos or little groups, or there may have been the larger assemblies, but they were all the church where he was concerned and what he had to say applied to them all. For this reason, as we shall emphasise presently, he never at that time thought of them finally as on this earth. He had got completely away from earth conditions, so far as geography and time were concerned; from the merely physical, and he was seeing the church as one thing, from the standpoint of God in heaven. And so this whole matter of scatteredness and individual place and position didn't come into the thing at all, only in this way, that every fragment, wherever it was, was a part of a whole, as in heaven. So that everything applied to every fragment.

And the practical value of that, dear friends, is this: that, as I said this morning, we are all, wherever we are and however alone we may be, involved in all that the church is involved in. And that you may be in a remote place alone, but you are bound up with all that relates to the church, that is happening to the church, that the church is knowing, that the church is suffering, that the church is called to. You're bound up with it, you're in it; you're not apart from it, wherever you may be. It's necessary for you to grasp that and take that back with you. You say, "I am here, although alone or with another, in this remote place, as much a part of the whole in the church as that group at Honor Oak, or any other group is." For that's what it means.

And in the Spirit, and in the heavenlies, you are always in the whole congregation of the church. You may not see them, you may not have, perhaps, the extra benefits of close personal fellowship and association with all the others on the earth, but you are in the whole church, wherever you are, a part of the congregation. You see, "we are come... to the general assembly and church of the Firstborn One" and that does not... that "we" was not just a few somewhere in one place, or a big crowd in one place. That is all the children of God. We are all come to the general assembly, the church of the Firstborn One. So, what we say this afternoon is not to be regarded as something said to an imaginary body called the church, meeting somewhere; it is said to us all wherever we are.

Now, having said that, let us come back to the message which we get through Isaiah chapter 60: "Arise, shine, for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee."

We have said quite a bit about the ground and the nature of this Light and now we go on to ask, and in brief seek to answer the question: what is this Light? What is the Light which is come, and the glory which is risen?

And I have no hesitation in saying inclusively, that it is that which has peculiarly and particularly come through the instrumentality of the apostle Paul. I know, of course, that much light has come through others; but the full light, concerning and for the church, the spiritual Israel, has come through Paul, and it is gathered into, or stored up in his full and concentrated ministry through his last letters. The final letters of Paul, that is, his church letters, are undoubtedly the light which God has given concerning, and for the church. That is the light which has risen and that is the glory which has come. Those two words are characteristic of those final letters.

Light and Glory

Not only are the words themselves there, but the truth is there. What light! You find no such light anywhere else in the Bible. Indeed, you are amazed at what this man came to see. Light shining right back into eternity past, light shining right on into eternity to be, light shining right down on to this dispensation. How great is the Light!

And as for the glory, again, it's a characteristic word - but it's a characteristic feature, isn't it? "Unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus". What glory has arisen through that ministry! Let me safeguard this by saying: this is not all the light that has come, nor all the glory; but in its fulness, its meridian, it has come through this channel. Well, let us look at him.

First of all, it is light and glory concerning the church's calling to be the resurrection vessel of the Lord. That is an early statement of the Ephesian letter, isn't it? Remember, here Paul is dealing with the church. In other places he deals with the individual, and refers to the individual's union with Christ in death and resurrection. That is the peculiar message to Corinthians, for instance, because there it has to do so much with personal conduct and personal character. But when you come here to these last great letters, especially Ephesians and Colossians, the idea of Paul is all the time collective. And when he refers to our being quickened together and raised together, he means that's the church - it is a quickened and raised church. And as such, it is the vessel of the resurrection - the vessel of the resurrection of Christ, the vessel of the resurrection power.

Now, of course, there can be no church without individuals, and therefore these things have their personal application. So, when the apostle says that this light which has come, which has risen upon us, this glory which has appeared concerning the church, it's to make us know, that we might "know... the exceeding greatness of His power... according to that working of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead", that is for the church, and [said to all] individuals. But the Church itself is a resurrection vessel, to be the embodiment of the exceeding greatness of His power.

No one of us individually, nor any number of us just as detached and unrelated individuals, can know the exceeding greatness of His power, any more than we can know any other aspect of His fulness. Thus it is easier to realise how the church - the great company of the elect right through all the ages, in its pilgrimage and its warfare, with all that it has had to encounter, and does have to encounter, with all that is set against it - how necessary the exceeding greatness of His power is to get that church up and out and clear, as emancipated and heavenly established people. But here it is, here is the light which has come, the glory which has arisen, that the church, my dear friends - you and I, wherever we may be as a part of that whole - are, by this illumination told that we are of the vessel of the resurrection; that is, of the exceeding greatness of His power.

I don't know how much that comforts you, I don't think that it's comforting you very much because you all look very miserable! But if you had been with me during the recent six weeks and seen the terrible, heartbreaking state of Christians in spiritual limitation and weakness, and all that is set to keep them so, and how little there is that can make it otherwise - you would get very near to where I have got, to the point of despair over this matter.

May I say here that this conference is coming out of my experience; the whole of it. This is not just a subject got up for the conference. Every bit of this conference is very near to my own experience, born of the past months. And this, I say again, that if you really did know the state of the church in this world, the state of Christians and the desperate situation, the need, the limitation and the lack of that which would bring them into greater fulness - you might despair! You might even raise the major question: does God really mean to have His church in fulness? Are we not really attempting something impossible? Have we not committed ourselves to something that cannot be? Is it not going to break us, shatter us? Is it right, after all, that this is what God wants?

The answer is: the Light has been given. The Light has been given - it "has come" - this Light, that this is what God wants. And, blessed be God, because He wants it, the power is there for it, and it is the power of resurrection. Perhaps we are wanting too much all at once, perhaps we are impatient; but God is going to have it. The vision has been given of a church filled with glory at the end. The Light has come and that that is how it is going to be - spiritual fulness at last. God is not going to be defeated, and the church is the very vessel or sphere of the power of resurrection.

You and I will know that, in so far as we apprehend this truth by faith that we are a part of that, and we are on that ground and when we stand there, we shall come into the good of this power of resurrection, and it will operate in us wherever we are. It's the Light that has been given, the calling of the church to be the vessel of resurrection Life and power. Therefore: "Arise, shine... thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee."

Now that, as you recognise, was the first thing we said this morning about this light, that here, in Isaiah 60, we have the other side of the captivity - the other side, so to speak, of the grave of Israel, their grave of exile having been opened and they having been called out on resurrection ground. The word is: "Thy light has come".

So, you see, it's bound up with resurrection this light, and so Paul's letter to the Ephesians begins with that. "You hath He quickened... and hath raised us together with Him" and "unto us is the exceeding greatness of His power", as in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

Then the second thing about this Isaiah message, which finds its spiritual fulfilment in this ministry of Paul is:

The Church Called to be the Vessel of Light.

The light for all, unto the nations. This morning we saw what that light meant, how it worked out, how effective it was, or is shown to be in this chapter: what tremendous impact it registered unto the ends of the earth, and how the nations began to flow toward that light, or are pictured as flowing toward that light, how effective it is.

Now, it is perfectly clear, is it not, from this ministry of Paul that that is the vocation of the church - to be the vessel and the vehicle of this light, the light which all need. Paul's great prayer for the saints here is for light - "the eyes of their heart being enlightened, that they might know..." and then you know the gradual unfolding of that light. What a wonderful fulness it is! How many beams there are to that light in his prayer! What is to be known by the Spirit of revelation opening the eyes of the heart! The church is definitely called to be (and that means you and me) the vessel of light - that, if people are wanting to see and wanting to know, well, the Lord transmits knowledge through us. They will find it amongst the Lord's people.

Now, that is not generally true, but this is the calling of the church: that wherever people are really seeking to know the truth, to know the Lord, to come into the light, the Lord has a vessel where that light can be found.

It's a challenge, as well as a statement of fact. It is something that we must quite definitely lay hold of by faith. You see, it is God's intention: therefore it must be possible, therefore the Lord provides for what He wants. And it is not necessary for any one of you dear children of God, if you are standing by faith in the good of the heavenly calling and vocation, it is not necessary for any one of you not to be a vehicle of light to others. Indeed, it is a failure in your calling if you are not such, if others are not seeing the light through you. I am not now thinking specifically in terms of your moving about with your Bible, trying to give people light, but being the light. The church is to be the light which is given, and we are to be all "light in the Lord".

And the enemy's great work is to try to bring in darkness and shadows. The darkness and the shadows come in by anything that he can do to eclipse the light that the church is called to be. He has greatly succeeded to a very large degree in doing that, and he is always at it. It's strange isn't it, that as soon as there comes anything of difference, disagreement, division, lack of love, there is a shadow. There's a shadow, there is darkness. So the enemy is very busy to destroy the church's testimony in this way, as a testimony of light. But oh dear friends, it's a very blessed thing for us really to contemplate, consider, and to apprehend that, given the conditions required, there can be light which radiates, as in this chapter, to the ends of the earth, and people flow to it.

We said this morning the flowing, the flowing is because there's something to which to flow, something that answers a need. Oh, the Lord put us in that position where need is being met all the time, right out to the uttermost bounds.

And then the next thing in this chapter, as we pointed out, is the wealth, to which reference is made. You have probably or possibly looked through the chapter again in this connection and have recognised what a lot is said here about wealth!

Wealth

So much wealth that the whole world seems to be enriched by it, everywhere. And this is no fanciful imagination. No, dear friends, this, this is something that the Lord really has provided for, because He has called to it - to have a people here on this earth, wherever they are, who are the channels of the enrichment of others in all directions, that there shall go out through them spiritual riches.

Now you see how true that is in Paul's ministry, don't you? What riches have been disclosed to us through him! Here is a man who himself was overwhelmed with the wealth into which he had been brought. He would cry - "Oh the depth of the riches...!" He would speak of the "unsearchable riches of Christ" and he has given us the light concerning a great deal of that wealth, hasn't he? Look again into his ministry from that standpoint, with that thought in mind. What wealth there is here!

Ought we to be poor, ought we to be in a state of spiritual penury? Ought we to be living so that it's difficult to make ends meet? Ought that to be our state or the state of the church - as, sadly enough, it is largely the case? Ought it to be, in the light of all this wealth, this unsearchable, inexhaustible wealth that has come to light through this man alone? Look at it again.

Surely you are familiar enough with these vessels of light in his letters to realise that you've been taken out of your depth. The phrase in this chapter in Isaiah, the sixtieth chapter: "the abundance of the sea shall be turned unto thee, the abundance of the sea shall be turned unto thee". It's a phrase which intimates, as perhaps nothing else might intimate, how vast are the resources that God has uncovered.

If you read this week about the return of the fishers on the East coast of our own country, so, so great, so immense was the haul, that a whole fleet of fishing boats had to wait for hours because there were no berths for them. So, so, so many had come in already, they just could not cope with this, and the fear was that the great hauls of fish would have to be thrown back into the sea. Well, that's only a little spot on this earth, after all, a mere microcosm of the whole. We can't cope with the content of the sea, of the abundance of the sea. What wealth! What wealth!

And is that exaggerating? Is that exaggerating? Well, I have been trying to cope with it for upward of forty years, and I am conscious yet that I am well-nigh drowned in this sea. I mean, every time you come here in the Spirit, you realise that this is so beyond you! I can't cope with the wonderful light as to the counsels of God before this world was! Can you cope with that? Can you cope with all that is said here about what is going to be in the ages of the ages? It is beyond us altogether. But out of that fulness, out of that fulness you and I are called to be enriched for the sake of others.

The church is called into this wealth. How wealthy we should be! Ask the Lord if you don't understand this, to open your eyes to your inheritance in Christ. The church is called to be the vessel of resurrection, the vessel of the light which has come, the vessel of the wealth that has been disclosed.

And here again, both in Isaiah 60 and in these letters of Paul, it is a matter of government.

Government

There's something here, just [sketch] the picture: "Kings shall come to the brightness of thy shining... You shall, in a word, you shall have power, authority, government. Here are the kings, here are the rulers, here are all these people who are supposed to be in the place of government, and they are all bowing at your feet. They are all bowing at your feet, they are all going down before you." Surely that is superior authority. Is there anything about that in Paul's letters? Well, there is, isn't there? "Set us at His own right hand... far above all rule, and authority, and every name that is named". Yes, even over principalities and powers and world rulers of this darkness and spiritual hosts of wickedness. The church is called to that position. We have a lot to learn yet about that place and power of government, and ruling, of ascendancy spiritually; but here we are saying that what the light has shown and brought to us is that that is the church's place according to God's mind. That is our place - the place of spiritual government, ascendancy, power, in Christ.

Oh, that we did actually know more about it, in practice! But here it is, may we be moved tremendously, and realise that this is not something to which we are to climb by struggling. We have been brought there by Christ. He has seated us together with Him in the heavenlies. He has raised us, and set us far above all. That is our place by right.

And I think one thing that you and I need to learn (although we have got to be very careful about this, a lot of people have got themselves into trouble on this very matter and have developed a phraseology and what-not in this connection - nevertheless, we are not to be put off by that sort of thing) one thing we have to learn is how, in prayer together, in our prayer times, whether we be two or three or larger companies, how to really stand in our place of authority, of government. We are all the time beseeching and imploring and entreating, and reaching out, and striving and struggling to get somewhere, and we very rarely take the position that is ours in Christ to govern situations and spiritual forces. Here we are called to that - to rulership in a spiritual way. That doesn't call for loud, strident language, and phrases and voices. It is a spiritual position, but it is a definite and positive exercise that is to be made by us together as the church: authority over other authorities that are at work in this universe.

And then one other thing as we close for the present. You notice the universality of things in this sixtieth chapter of Isaiah - how far-reaching it all is. How comprehensive! "Thy sons shall come from far, thy daughters from the ends of the earth... The nations, the nations of the earth". It's very comprehensive and extensive. It's universal, isn't it, this ministry. The value of this light is so far-reaching.

And when you turn to Paul's ministry, well, there we are, this is not just something for just a little few in some corner or a number of corners, it is something for all. Something for all, oh, God deliver us from exclusiveness - God deliver us from tying up what He has given to us, to ourselves, and to just little companies here and there. God make us know that He has planted us right in the midst of the universe, right in the midst of the nations, and that He has given us enough for all His people. We do need to constantly watch this matter, lest we should preserve things unto certain people who like this sort of thing. No, no! This light has been given for all, and we must watch carefully against anything and everything that stops us from seeing that all are in the way of having, and that it is available for all. For the church's light is universal, that is, it is for everyone and everywhere.

And there's enough of it! Enough of it, dear friends, we are not going to lose anything - certainly we are not going to run out of resources - if we enlarge ourselves to all the Lord's people. The real way of our own enlargement is the enlargement of our hearts to the Lord's people. Be careful, then, and watchful against all that which is ever the propensity of people who get light - to reserve it for certain narrow circles and hold it into those limited realms.

Oh, do always remember that it is not only for people who have seen it and responded to it. To be precise, there are always many of the Lord's people who are in danger of interpreting things in this way: "Well, you see, we've seen the light! We've got the light and we've come out by the light that we've received. And these other people... well, they are where they are and they're in this and they're in that; well, they're not in the light." And the effect of that is pernicious. It is destructive to the very thing for which the church exists. No, the light is for all, as the love is for all. It is for all. And keep the open heart, keep the open heart and keep the open mind. It is amazing how many really hungry and longing people there are just shut up where there is no light. We have got to be always watchful that the light is available for them all.

This is a warning note that is very necessary. Oh, let us be enlarged, because the Lord does not make His sun to shine upon the good only! And the light you see, the light does good to very bad people, those very evil people are getting good from the sun. The Lord doesn't say, "Only the good people are going to have My sun, have the light, have the sun". No, no, it's available for all and we must keep it there.

If the light has come, and the glory has risen, then it's like the sun, it's like the sun: for everyone. And we get surprises, don't we? Oh, we get surprises. I am ashamed to say that I have had some startling surprises. Some people, some dear women with make-believe as thick as paint, and everything that would set you back, and make you keep away: and yet on contact and beginning to speak, and a heart that is hungry and ready. That's not exaggeration, that's not fiction - that's true! Surprises... how hungry hearts and ready hearts are hidden away behind things that would repel. We must keep the light available for all, and never be put off.

I have spoken of physical things, but even other, you see, ecclesiastical things, religious things, denominational things - anything you like - don't be put off! Don't be put off, don't allow your light to be withheld from anybody because of these complexes toward what perhaps you think is not the Lord's full thought. Nevertheless, keep open to all. You will be in the way of surprises, and you will find that there will be wonderful responses to the light, if only you make it available, from very unexpected quarters.

Oh, the light! The light is for all. It is a universal light, this light, that is, it is to be available for everyone. It's a large thing, this light, a large thing. So, "The sun shall no more be thy light or the moon: the Lord shall be thy light". That's something very much bigger than natural bodies of light, isn't it? How great is the Lord! How great is the Lord! If our sun is great to the illumination and the warming of the whole earth (well, sometimes - capable of doing it, at any rate!) how much more so the Lord! The glory of the Lord is risen on thee. Don't keep it to yourself, don't tie it up in any compartments. "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee."