WHAT IS POWER, AND HOW ARE MEANS TO BE USED?

^[p. 80] WHAT IS POWER, AND HOW ARE MEANS TO BE USED?

To the earnest and true-hearted servant of Christ no question can be of deeper interest than, What is power, and how are means to be used?

It is not only in the first part of the question that the importance lies, for many are assured that power is of God; many can say, “Twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God” (Psalm 62: 11), who cannot reply to the second, which is really the one which exercises the heart before Him, and in which we all so fail. Let us search and see how means may be used, consistently with the assured sense that power is of God only.

It is very instructive to mark how the servant of God in every age used means; and if before the death of Christ, while the first man was still recognised, we can trace and discover how the means were in abeyance to the power — nay, that they were always, when the servant was walking with God, so disproportionate to the power that the source of the power was not clouded or obscured by the means, but the contrary — how much more now!

Faith always has to do with God, to whom power belongs, and not with means; and hence I may pass over Abraham, for his life properly was one wholly of faith, and he passed through the deepest exercises known to the heart of man, reckoning on God only, apart from any means. And this is, as I may say, one’s private history and walk with God. Jacob, on his return from Laban’s house, has got out of faith, and is full of means. In the wrestling he is taught the power of God, and that if He be for him who can be against him? Every devoted saint knows that God’s resources are outside and beyond the means he could use, and has found it so; but when the servant of God testifies of Him to His professing people, the means are used to ^[p. 81] express the power. The servant is himself an instrument; and it will be seen that, while he has full confidence in the power, yet, in proportion as he is in spirit with God, he makes a very secondary account of the means. Moses is not eloquent. Aaron supplies the deficiency, because Moses considered it one, but it is the rod of Moses, used in faith, which is the means to manifest the power of God. With that rod he stretched out his hand over the waters of the Red Sea, and that simple movement, that very insignificant means, effected the mightiest of results. He was not thinking of the means, but of the power; and this is faith always. The power is most before the soul when the means are most insignificant. Moses failed, grievously failed, and forfeited the land, when in Numbers 20 he made much of the means. God had directed him to take the rod, and to speak unto the rock, “and it shall give forth his water”; instead of which he smote the rock twice, and said, “Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?” He spoke unadvisedly with his non-eloquent lips; he failed to sanctify the Lord in the eyes of the children of Israel. The more God is with His people, the smaller and simpler are the means used. Jericho fell down after it had been compassed seven days. The only means used were that the people “shouted with a great shout”. Ai, on the contrary, is only reduced by an ambuscade. Means were used, but of no honour to the prowess of Israel, and, though ordered of God, not declarative of His intervention. He graciously delivers, even after failure, but He does so without conferring honour on them, or open favour from Himself.

We see in the book of Judges, when Bochim (chapter 2: 1) represented the state of Israel, that the means used for the people’s deliverance from time to time were not honouring to man, though they were made to accomplish the desired end. Ehud’s knife (chapter 3), Shamgar’s ox goad, Jael’s nail and hammer, Gideon’s ^[p. 82] pitcher, are means imparting no distinction to the users of them; yet they were effective, and rather obscured than exhibited the power by which deliverance was effected. The greater the failure, the less can God honour His people personally. How could He? But He delivers; and while He does so, He will make use of means in no wise honouring to us, and yet at the same time not openly indicative of His intervention. When there is Nazarite separation, as in Samson, there is personal strength; and the jawbone of an ass — very insignificant means — will accomplish great results. But when, as in Samuel, there is prayer, a simple and unequivocal turning of the heart to God only, then the Lord Himself acts for His people in marked intervention: “And as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel: but the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them”, 1 Samuel 7: 10.

Now I turn to the apostle Paul, the pattern of all them who shall believe on Him to life everlasting, as our example. If any one has meditated before God on the examples I have furnished from Scripture, he cannot fail to see that the more faith and holiness in walk there is, the less the visible means, and that the means never, even in appearance, assume the place of the power, except when God cannot connect His power with the state of failure in which His servant or His people are found. Paul glories in what Moses deplores, even that he has not personal power; “his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible”. He glories in it, because he would not have the faith of the saint to stand in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God. He actually takes pleasure in infirmities, that the power of Christ might be fully manifest, as entirely apart from any co-operation which human effort could contribute to it. And hence he will judge of others, not by their speech but by their power. He reminds ^[p. 83] the Corinthians that he personally sought and derived nothing from the flesh when first he preached to them; and if he in his preaching disallowed the flesh and its co-operation, how could they venture to glory in it? He says, “I determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ” — a known living Person truly, but as to this scene, a crucified One; and he adds, “I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling” (1 Corinthians 2) — the very opposite to any exhibition of human ability or sensationalism. For he continues, “My speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power”.

When he would restore the Galatians to the true ground of the Spirit, he not only insists, in chapter 1, on the nature and order of his conversion as being from God in His Son, but he reminds them that he did not minister among them in any carnal power, but on the contrary, “Ye know”, he writes, “how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first”. These statements are very conclusive, and establish that the more we are in the power of God’s Spirit, the less shall we seek or use the co-operation derived from the flesh. Man in mind and body is the earthen vessel; the instrument for Christ’s service, which, when simply given to Him, He uses. But my faith ought not to be in the exertion of either one or both, but in the Spirit of God. Nay, the more faith I have, the less value shall I place on any bodily or mental exertion. This would not prevent me from being always assiduous, while it would check excitement, and disallow anything that would promote it. Nay, it is well known that there cannot be general assiduity where there is even occasional overtaxing; for there cannot be any accelerated action without a correspondent reaction. Now where there is power, earnestness is always apart from anything sensational or excited. See the earnestness of a physician by a sick ^[p. 84] bed; of a good father expostulating with a beloved but wilful son. The sense of power and the greatness of the stake at issue, when together, impart earnestness and gravity. The greatness of the stake at issue without the sense of power to meet it must, when there are right feelings, provoke undue declamation and impassioned expression to supply the sense of power, and this in proportion as the former exists without the latter. The means of expressing the power are reduced and uncalled for, according as the power is felt to be possessed. Hence, wherever there is an assured sense of being led by the Spirit to any place or work, as for instance Paul to Philippi, there would be a waiting on God and a discountenancing of any questionable publicity. One would go on quietly, assured of God, in the mind of the Lord, though unknown and unheard of. Alas nowadays no room is left for the option of God’s Spirit; but the flesh is actually fostered and given place to, at the very time that the truth and grace presented condemns it, and invites the soul to safety in Christ from the judgment on it.

Let the saints, I repeat, be assured that as there is faith and holiness, so will there be a consciousness of God’s power by and through very insignificant means; and it will be found that it has not been a long, excited sermon which has been blessed to souls, but some little word guided by God’s Spirit which has carried to the heart the germ of life.