NO VICTORY - NO WITNESS

^[p. 302] NO VICTORY — NO WITNESS

Many a one admires and covets eminence and distinction, who will not begin at the first step and steadily work his way up to it. It is the honour of the position that is before his mind, and not the qualification for it. The sons of Zebedee longed to sit, one on the right hand and the other on the left, with Christ in glory. They admired the place; and the Lord does not discourage them, but challenges them thus: “Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptised with the baptism that I am baptised with?” That is to say, are they willing to walk in the path, to endure the suffering that would qualify them for such an eminence? Every man in himself is a part of the system of the world, and hence, if he would influence any in it, or be superior to it, he cannot do so truly except as he has been influenced and is superior to it himself. The extent and force in himself individually is the real measure and force of what he can effect in others. If we bear in mind the alienation of man’s heart from God, and that there is no reconciliation but through the cross, we cannot fail to see that no one can be a witness for God except as he is master in himself of the enmity which he rebukes. He has to learn the power of the cross in himself before he can press it on others. How could he know what to insist on, or what its value or importance, unless he has known in himself the virtue of it? Every saint of God is only effective in service according to the nature of the divine discipline to which he has been subjected. I admit that the word of God has been blessed to souls, though uttered by those who are not witnesses, nor in any way a model of the word which they have uttered. God is sovereign in using His word, and in such cases, though there be life, they are as orphans without a parent or nurse to lead them on. The witness, on the other hand, is a representative of the truth which he enunciates, and in ^[p. 303] order to be this, he himself must first be formed by it. He shows what the truth which he preaches would do or effect in a man, and that is a witness. In order to be this, he must first be superior to the working of the will in himself, and thus be an exemplar in his own person of the truth which he proclaims. There is no true way of persuading others, but as one can show the effects in himself. The parent birds induce, encourage and instruct their young how to fly by showing them how they themselves can fly. The child learning to write copies the head-line; so it is in everything. Nothing so damages the testimony as the truths presented producing no effect on the preacher, because this intimates that there is no power in the truth; for if there were, would it not show itself in the possessor? In ordinary things it would be hard to persuade a man that a certain thing in my possession would have a particular effect on him and on every one if they possessed it, which evidently it had not on myself. Nothing can be simpler than that, as the grace of God has been received, there must be the influence and effect on myself, before I can be a witness of it to others. The contrary would produce infidelity in myself. Were I to receive a truth from Scripture which did not produce any effect on me, who am naturally ignorant of and adverse to it, how could I with a good conscience press it and enlarge on it to others? I may have read of its effects, but if I have not tasted of its virtues, I cannot insist on them without either wounding and spoiling my own conscience, or doing so in such an intellectual parrot-like manner that it will produce nothing better than myself. So that, whether for others or for myself, it is necessary that I should be influenced by the truth before I attempt to influence others.

When I have received a truth which can effect and influence others, it is plain that it must first influence myself because it reaches me first. You could not expect a light set up in your own house to afford a light to your ^[p. 304] neighbours if it was insufficient to give light in the circle nearest to it. “I believed, therefore have I spoken” is the only moral course. If what I teach does not produce an effect on myself, how can I expect it to produce one on others? If light makes no impression on me, how can I have any confidence in urging it on those around me, who are in every way of the same nature as myself? But if I know that it has had a great and marked effect on myself, I am encouraged and earnest in pressing it on others. Every servant of God suffers first in himself, before he is a witness or a guide. Moses not only surrendered the highest position and glories in Egypt, but he was tested in the wilderness as to the genuineness of his surrender for forty years, before he was called to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt. He knew the exercise and surrender of the one, and the strangership and toil of the other. No one could taunt him with ignorance of or inconsistency with what he preached and insisted on. He had broken from the attractions of Egypt, and he had endured the sorrows of the wilderness; and he is qualified to lead the people out of Egypt and through the wilderness.

Joshua carries the grapes from Eschol, and endures forty years in the wilderness before he leads the people into the land. He did not require them to take a course unknown to himself. The wilderness had not weakened in his soul his sense of the glories of the land, it only proved the depth of it; for the feeling that abides constant to that which produces it, under prolonged discouragement, is that which has taken full possession of the heart. Moses leads out of Egypt; Joshua leads into the land. Each was fitted by God, in his own personal history, for the service and testimony which he discharged; he was the model in himself of the course and manner which he called on others to be — the head-line to the rest.

David, after he is anointed king, endures every kind of suffering, is reduced to every strait, hunted like a ^[p. 305] partridge on the mountains; and he ascends the throne acquainted with all the trials of the powerless and destitute. Peter learns first the worthlessness of everything in the presence of God (Luke 5), and then the weakness of himself in the presence of man’s power, before he is fit to strengthen his brethren; Luke 22: 32. Paul can say, “Be ye followers of me”. Could anything that he taught lead to a more distinct course than what was seen in himself? He was Moses and Joshua combined; he was so severed from the power of the world, and so filled with the glory of Christ, that he could call on the saints to look on him as an example of the truth he pressed, as he says, “Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day”, 1 Corinthians 4: 11 - 13.

But besides this, if I have not subdued or overcome the flesh in myself, I cannot be superior to it in contact with others; and here again I must be a victor before I can be a witness. The flesh, the evil principle of self-will, is all around me; unless it is subdued in myself I cannot contend with it, or I should find that in myself which turns against me, and co-operates with those whom I seek to oppose. I cannot war against the Canaanites, and at the same time be in union or confederacy with them. And this is the real cause of the timidity of saints to testify of Christ, as well as of the small and imperfect testimony in us all. The fact of a man being able to cut off his right hand, or to put out his right eye, if it offends or hinders him, is evidence that he is possessor of a new power or principle of existence. Otherwise, as a kingdom divided against itself, it could not stand. The great proof that Israel would be able to overcome all the seven nations, was that they had crossed the Jordan. “Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among ^[p. 306] you, and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Perizzites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Jebusites” — the whole seven; Joshua 3: 10. If I have learned the power of God in myself and for myself as dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2), then I can use that power against Satan and his tools; Ephesians 6. I know the virtue of the power in myself first; and as I do, I can speak of what it can do, and trust to it accordingly. Otherwise it would be as Saul’s armour to David; he could not use what he had not proved, and hence he preferred the stones of the brook, which he was used to.

I must suffer in the flesh (see 1 Peter 4), which is personal, before I can be reproached for the name of Christ. I must be as Christ before I can suffer for Him. I must free myself of the link to the world before I can stand for Christ in it.

The faithful captives in Babylon declined to eat of the king’s meat or to drink the king’s wine, and thus they were prepared to endure the king’s fire. If I cannot deny in myself the things of the world which foster my flesh, I cannot endure the persecution of the world. If there be not by the Spirit a mortifying of my members (Colossians 3: 5), when affliction and persecution arise for the word’s sake, immediately there is offence. The testimony fails because there is no root, no known sense of the power of God overcoming the desires of the flesh and of the mind. There is nothing to rely on in the face of the enemy if the soldier has not learned by personal drill to have confidence in himself; that is grace in practice. A man who is not a soldier in heart is never one in action; and if he will not submit to the irksomeness of daily drill, he will find himself unskilful, unwieldy, and discomfited when charged by the enemy. The word of wisdom is, “Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field [in private]; and afterwards build thine house”, that is, that which is visible to everyone.