POWER: WHAT IS IT?
POWER: WHAT IS IT?
Power is the ability to act right, at any moment or in any case. It is not enough for power that the thing I do is good. Though it be good, yet if it is ill-timed or out of place, it is not power. It was not power in the old prophet of Bethel, in 1 Kings 13, to press his hospitality on the prophet sent by God. It was very amiable, but it was not power, nor was it power in the latter to accept it. It was power in Abel when he offered “of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof”. He did the right thing, outside and independent of anything to be seen around him. When I am in power, I am superior to natural influences, and I act for God as the occasion requires. Faith in God always ensures power, and then I act for God, irrespective of man and his judgment. Cain took more time and pains to prepare his offering [p. 271] than Abel did. It was every way at a greater cost, but there was no power in it, no rising above what his natural conscience would incline him to.
It was power in Noah to build an ark when there did not appear any need for it, and when everyone would have asserted, as year after year passed on, ‘There is no more indication of a flood now than there was a hundred years ago’ . The building of the tower of Babel was, as a work, a much greater one than the building of the ark, but there was no power in it. It was energy and skill combined, to construct a city and a tower which, as it grew, presented to the designers of it the very thing they wanted. Its benefit as it appeared to their minds was palpable. They were working with the stream of their own natural desires, and every foot of progress produced the very thing they desired. When Noah had the ark completed, he was, to human eyes, as far from the need of it as he was a hundred and twenty years before, and therefore only faith in God gave him power.
Abram had power when he turned from the city and the tower which man built, and came into an unknown country by an unknown way, leaving everything which was naturally dear to him - his country, his kindred, and his father’s house. We could hardly find a more touching or interesting example of power than this. A very rich man breaking away from all his associations, and adopting a migratory life, not knowing whither he went. How grandly superior he was to all the susceptibilities by which man naturally is influenced here! It is exhilarating to the mere mind to see a man so superior to himself, walking in such power.
Jacob does not appear to have acted in power until he left Shalem; he had essayed to find a home there, but consequent on the sorrow and shame that befell him there, the Lord tells him to go to Bethel; and then, though doubtless depressed by self-reproach, he breaks away from the spot where he expected to rest after the lengthened toils of his chequered life.
[p. 272] Joseph was a man of power; he was master of himself in divine rectitude; wherever he was, he was efficient and commended himself. With a man of power, “his leaf... shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper”, Psalm 1: 3. The way he restrained himself before his brethren, and controlled the deep affections of his heart until the fitting time for their expression, all testified that he was a man of power. Power is not violent; mere strength can be very violent and impulsive, but power is even, and equal to the occasion, be it great or small, but never extreme.
Moses was in power when he left Pharaoh’s house and “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season”, Hebrews 11: 24, 25. When he slew the Egyptian, I should not say it was power; it was violence - the force of strength. He would not have attempted it in the presence of anyone, for he looked this way and that way, and when he saw there was no one, he smote him, and slew him. There may be the exerting of great force and encountering great risks, when there is not true power. It was power when he helped the women against the shepherds at the well in Midian. Had he consulted his own sorrowful feelings at the moment - expatriated, a homeless and friendless wanderer - he would have sat on disconsolate; but instead of this he succoured the helpless, and therefore he mastered his feelings and helped them to water their flocks. Moses was peculiarly a man of power. He felt his own inadequacy for the service to which God had called him, but God gave him to effect the most wondrous things.
Joshua and Caleb only of the twelve spies had power; the others endured as much, saw as much, but they had not power to rise above their natural fears. Suffering, toil, or any amount of knowledge is not power, unless there be ability to make it available for God. “The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting”
([p. 273] Proverbs 12: 27); even though he is very energetic, he will not turn to account that which cost him much to acquire. Joshua was a man of power at Jordan and Jericho; he counted on God, and rose above all natural prepossession. But when Israel was repulsed by the men of Ai, Joshua was without power, and he fell on his face before God; he might have known - and if he had been in power he would have known, and have acted on it - that there must be some evil in the camp, on account of which God had declined to support them. There is power when there is faith in God; the heart can say, “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart”, Psalm 27: 14.
Samuel is remarkably a man of power. The less the ostensible means, the more manifest is the power. He trusts entirely to prayer, and he represents the remnant of the dispensation of divine intervention which began at Jericho. There was no king in Israel; but God was ever ready, as they were true to His calling, to interfere on their behalf. They soon forfeited the succour of His hand, and they were carried captive, God raising up deliverers to restore them to liberty. Samuel, more than any of them - and he was the last - avails himself of the power of God. He prays, and God helps him; he is our example in this hour; as we pray, we have power from God, so that the man of prayer is the man of power.
David is a man of power when he proposes to fight Goliath. Power is simply God brought into my circumstances. It is not measuring the difficulty, but the resources of God. I could not say it was power in David when he obtained the shewbread, and armed himself with the sword of Goliath (1 Samuel 21). Success in itself is not an evidence of power. God in mercy allows many a labour of ours to succeed, where there is little but our own energy and feeling; but when it is so, even in a right thing, we shall expose ourselves, and involve our friends, the servants of God, in reproach, suffering and trial, just as it was with David and Ahimelech (1 Samuel 22); while [p. 274] on the other hand, when the man of power is rejected and slighted, as David was, he will surely be vindicated, and often in the very place where it had occurred. When I act in power I give glory to God, like Paul and Silas in the prison; their liberation involved no one. Power is manifested in my act; when my act exposes me to reproach, and involves others in suffering or worse, there may have been a good intention in my act, but there was not power. Power never does a right thing in a wrong way. No one could approve of Rebekah’s ways, though evidently she was labouring for a right thing in securing the blessing for Jacob according to the word of God. If she had had faith in God, power would have been vouchsafed, and guidance as to the right way of accomplishing His own word, “The elder shall serve the younger”. There is no more fruitful source of loss to oneself and sorrow to others than doing a right thing in a wrong way. It was right for David to bring back the ark in 2 Samuel 6, but certainly not right to set it on a cart. And this lack of power on his part, this inability to rise above mere natural contrivances, led to the death of Uzzah, who in his turn, in attempting to keep the ark from falling, brought judgment on himself; so that David in bitterness of heart called the place Perez-uzzah. Alas! how often do we now see a Perez-uzzah, because there is not power to carry out or effect a very desirable end in simple faith!
Our blessed Lord was always in power. He was always ready for every demand. When He came down from the glorious mount, from the highest honour, He was ready to provide the tribute money when He found Himself saddled with it because of the humiliation of His nation, and He at once pointed out where it was to be got, saying, “Go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up”, Matthew 17: 27.
Power is indeed wonderful; nothing is so sensibly magnificent in its greatness; and this the Lord teaches Peter, when He tells him to come unto Him on the water,
[p. 275] Matthew 14: 28, 29. There is always power when the eye is fixed on Him, as Elijah said to Elisha, “If thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so”, 2 Kings 2: 10. The more exclusively the Lord is before my mind, the more He helps me. Stephen, being full of the Holy Spirit, “looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus”, Acts 7: 55. It is God who is before me when I am in power, and not man.
Barnabas could sell his property, and be the great friend of Saul of Tarsus; but when it became a matter of his kinsman Mark, in Acts 15, he failed; he had no power, because he considered his own natural feelings. In the former case he was in power, in the latter he was not.
Possibly in no instance do we lack power more than in that which is nearest to us naturally; and there is no case in which our weakness meets with so just a retribution as in our own family, as we see in David on account of Absalom. Paul was very different as to power at Philippi, when he concealed that he was a Roman, and at Jerusalem, when he pleaded it in order to escape suffering; and yet it is very interesting to note that relief was effected in a much more complete way at Philippi than at Jerusalem. Power is simply bringing in God, and therefore it is marked with quietness of expression and behaviour. “When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel”, Hosea 13: 1. “The words of wise men are heard in quiet, more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools”, Ecclesiastes 9: 17. What a contrast between man and God in the sentence, “The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted”, Psalm 46: 6.
To sum up. Surely we see that it is not only with regard to the things of God that the path of power is to act simply with reference to Him; but in everything, even in the greatest strait, as with David at Ziklag, the more simply and exclusively I turn to Him, I am not [p. 276] only strengthened with power by the might of His glory, but He interposes for me in some distinct and unexpected way. As with Paul in Acts 27, the ship may go to pieces, but I shall not only be preserved myself, but others will share in the mercy vouchsafed to me. Whereas when I trust to my own strength, I shall, like Peter at Antioch, not only expose myself to open rebuke for my manifest feebleness, but involve others through the influence of it (Galatians 2: 11 - 14).
Power, then, is doing everything which is divinely appropriate, the right word and the right act; always equal to the occasion, and sensibly so, because of Christ’s present grace; unswerving in the pursuit of my service, and unruffled in my manner, however aggravated. It is great, glorious, and most blessed to be set here, though encompassed with infirmity and assailed on every side, in the power of Christ. May we be found more in the great dignity of our calling!