I turn again to the prophecies of Isaiah,
prophecies of Isaiah, in chapter 9, at
verse 6.
For unto us a child is born, unto
us a son is given, and the government
shall be upon his shoulder, and his name
shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting
Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of
peace there shall be no end.
On the throne of David, and upon his
kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it
with judgment and with righteousness from henceforth even
forever, zeal of the Lord of hosts shall
perform this.
Chapter 61, 61, Spirit of the
Lord God is upon me, because the Lord
hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto
the meek.
He hath sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the
opening of the prison to them that are
bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the
Lord, the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all that mourn, and so on.
We are being engaged in this conference at
present with the Servant of the Lord.
Basic fragment is from chapter 41 of these
prophecies, Behold My Servant.
When we put these two passages that we
have read together, a question arises.
If he was all that which
we have in chapter 9, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty
God, Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace, if
he was all that, why was it necessary
for him to be anointed with the Holy
Spirit?
For it is the same person in chapter
61 as in chapter 9.
Is not that description of him the description
of one who is perfectly self-sufficient?
What could be added to that?
What necessity had he to be anointed with
the Holy Spirit?
And of course the answer is found in
the chapters between those two, and especially in
what we have called the Servant chapters.
The Servant of the Lord, the capacity in
which he came into this world, as he
took upon him the form of a bond
slave.
His life, ministry, work here were not
in virtue of his essential deity, not in
the virtue of his personal inherent Godhead.
But here, as a man, servant-wise, everything
was done, and his whole life lived in
virtue of an endowment, an anointing.
He himself very forcefully repudiated and undercut any
idea that he was able to do or
to say anything out from himself.
Even in speaking of himself as the Son,
he was emphatic in saying, and repeatedly saying,
the Son can do nothing out from himself.
Yet, he described himself as meek
and lowly in heart.
And that is the language of dependence, not
of self-sufficiency.
And here is something, dear friends, which it
is very important for us to recognize, and
especially so for ourselves.
Jesus was different from other men, and he
was more than other men.
That difference was either definitely recognized and noted,
or it was subtly sensed by the people
of his day.
He was different.
He was different in his
mental faculties, his wisdom and knowledge and
understanding were of a different order.
It was not of the schools.
Whence hath this man this knowledge, having never
been taught?
In other words, having never been in the
school.
The most subtle attempts to trap him and
ensnare him in arguments and to corner him
by the best brains of the nation found
them very quickly in the corner, and he
out in the open.
And they had to go away again and
again, completely worsened, but it was of another
order.
It was different.
This difference was found in his spiritual faculty,
his discernment, his perception, how often it is
said, and Jesus perceiving their thoughts, for anything
was said.
Knowing what was in their heart, his judgment
of situations, it was different.
The difference was found in his sympathetic faculties,
his understanding of people.
Not a lot his disciples owed to his
understanding of them.
His understanding, his compassion, his forbearance and patience,
he was different.
Ask yourself how you would have acted, even
in the case of the Twelve, but it
is written over all their difficult make-up,
over all the trouble that he had with
them.
Having loved his own, which were in the
world, he loved them to the end.
He was different.
And I think we could say that he
was different in his physical capacity, his powers
of endurance, and what he achieved in so
short a time, even physically, is a study
in itself.
We knew his nights of prayer without any
relaxation, continuous drain upon him.
It made its mark, we know.
Nevertheless, there is something different here in every
part of his being, that is what I
am saying.
And then, he had a significance amongst men
which was unmistakable.
This one signified something.
He was not lost in the multitude and
in the mass, but he was unmistakably significant.
He made an impression, there was an impressiveness
which was unavoidable wherever he went.
Yes, he was different, and he was more.
And yet, and yet, let it be clearly
understood, that it was all derived, it was
all derived.
It was not just a man, but it
was a man with God united.
It was a man who was not himself
extraordinary, but was extraordinary because in the anointing,
God had joined himself with him as a
man.
And it is not here, I am saying,
his essential inherent deity.
It is his manhood with God added.
It was derived.
And from beginning to end, he was in
a state of complete dependence upon that other
than himself.
That is not true, then he cannot help
us.
But that is true, and that is just
where he does help us.
Yes, he was not just an extraordinary man
amongst men.
He was a man, but a different man.
There was this difference.
In him was recovered the man that God
intended every man to be.
And God never intended every man to be
God or deity.
God intended from the beginning to have man
with himself in union.
Here he is.
The man of God's original intention and thought
recovered.
Hence there are two things that the Bible,
shall we say the Holy Spirit, takes very
great care to make clear about him.
The first thing is the demuting of him
of all things which other men require for
significance.
For having or taking on any significance, other
men must have certain things.
Well, they must have education.
The education of the schools.
They must have money or riches.
They must have perhaps wealth, and what that
means.
Position.
Important friends and helpers.
Friends at court.
Influence and work on their behalf.
Patronage.
Or they must be possessed of forcefulness, of
personality, and assertiveness.
All these things are the things and others
with them that other men must have, some
or all, to give them significance.
Take all these things away and the very
foundations of human accountableness are removed.
But what we have is a very careful
and meticulous and thorough demuting of him of
all those things.
He hadn't one of them.
He was a root out of a dry
ground.
That is as to where the house of
David had come.
So that all that had been in the
past generations was now dried up.
He had nothing by birth.
Only something remote from his present position.
He had no riches.
Work a miracle to pay a tax had
no riches.
He had no education in the academic sense.
They recognized this, having never learned.
No doubt he as a boy did his
amount of schooling, but that is not the
thing we're talking about.
It's this higher realm that you must have
in this world if you're going to count
for something.
No, he had no patronage.
He had no influential friends.
No friends at court.
And these other personal things were lacking.
No forcefulness of his own assertiveness.
Listen, behold, my servant whom I uphold, my
chosen in whom my soul delighteth, I have
put my spirit upon him.
He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor
cause his voice to be heard in the
street.
Bruised reed shall he not break, and the
smoking frank shall he not quench.
That's not personal assertiveness and forcefulness and obtrusiveness
and ostentatiousness, quietness, reserve, gentleness.
No, all this from birth to cross is
one story of how utterly lacking in his
case were all those things which go to
make a man important in this world, to
give him any significance.
And yet he was more significant than all
the others.
But his significance, his accountableness rested upon nothing
in this world.
Rested upon another basis altogether.
How meek and lowly he was.
How unassuming, unassuming, unobtrusive, yet
how forceful.
All that I have said, to which much
more could be added about the impact and
registration of this man in this world, could
not be exaggerated.
He, in a phrase, could not be hid.
Sometimes tried to hide himself.
He just could not be hid in that
right sense.
The second thing that is made so clear
about him is the place that the Holy
Spirit had in his life from birth onward.
Everything is attributed to the Holy Spirit from
infancy to manhood and then in his public
work from the Jordan onward.
It's all attributed to the Spirit.
His whole significance then is made perfectly clear
as resting upon the Holy Spirit and not
upon what he was himself as man.
I know the dangerous and delicate ground that
I'm on, but you will have sufficient understanding,
I'm sure, to see what I mean.
Yes, and in the last terrible moments, the
momentary withdrawing of the Spirit, momentary but very
real, the momentary withdrawing of the Spirit, his
forsakenness found him as capable of despair and
brokenheartedness as any other man.
He tasted the despair that any other man
can know and outside of Christ will know
when made fully alive to separation from God.
It's all that.
But what is the message for us?
What is the message for us?
And it has a message for us.
Firstly, this same anointing is the new birthright
of every consecrated believer.
No mistaking that if you read your New
Testament.
The Holy Spirit is the birthright of every
born again and consecrated child of God.
Same Spirit.
And that means that if we have that
same Spirit as he had, and he has
only recovered to God the kind of man
that God ever intended us to be, we
have received the Spirit.
That Spirit gives a significance to us which
is other than more, which is different and
extra.
Every child of God and every consecrated believer
ought to be different and more than other
people as he was.
John says, as he is, so are we
in this world.
Should be like that?
Every one should take on a significance that
is different and that is more, if you
like, that is super-human or super-natural.
That is more and other than we are
when we are not born again.
Perhaps that means very little emphasis, but you
see where that leads us.
This is a fact.
I do want you to take hold of
it and believe it.
Grasp it in faith that in union with
the Lord by the Holy Spirit, you and
I are supposed in our very constitution by
new birth to be different from others and
more than others with faculties that are different
and that are more.
It is the birthright, it is not the
extra gift, it is the birthright ought to
be in us by second nature, the second
nature being the divine which comes by the
Holy Spirit.
But note, this significance is unique.
It cannot be accounted for on any natural
ground whatever.
The child of God, the Holy Spirit indwelt
and governed believer is inscrutable as he was.
They just could not get to the bottom
of him.
They were defeated in every attempt to understand
and explain him.
They had again and again when they tried
to reduce him to their level, bring him
within their compass, they had to just give
it up and go away.
Something here is not of that with which
we are familiar.
It is different.
It is a significance that is unique.
It is not just natural.
What does this amount to?
Well dear friends, it amounts to this.
It means this so far as we are
concerned.
That there should not really be one insignificant
person in the family of God.
That on one side.
Will you, will you believe that?
Will you take hold of that?
That there should not be one insignificant member
of this family.
In so many local families there are always
many who are just occupants of the chairs,
just there, whose voices you never hear in
prayer or worship, whose presence may or may
not mean much.
I do want to say to you all
that from God's standpoint, you matter.
You matter.
You count.
And you are intended to count.
Do you really believe, do you really believe
that if the Holy Spirit of God is
in you, resident within you, that makes no
difference and gives you no greater value?
Do you really believe that?
Are you quite ready to accept that you
don't count?
You are an insignificant person.
It doesn't matter very much or anything at
all.
The very, the very truth of the anointing
forbids any such idea.
But note, this significance is not something put
on.
God forbid that anything that I should say
should have the effect of making you assume
some position and try to be something.
There is no need to assume.
There is no need to presume.
There is no need to pretend.
There is no need to pose.
There is no need to assert yourself.
You need not take on uniform or voice
or anything else to take on the highest
significance.
These are all the artificial ways of making
people important and bringing them into prominence.
Or they're trying to gain some notice.
It's all false.
You need nothing of that at all.
You may be the humblest.
You may have nothing by birth, nothing by
education, nothing by your status, nothing at all
of wealth or of popularity or even of
personality and you may count more than those
who have all those things without this, the
indwelling Spirit.
And you're supposed to.
It is spontaneous and it is unconscious.
It's unconscious.
You need not try to be a leader
and take on the ways of a leader
and the voice and so on.
Something fails, opposes.
Get rid of all that.
If the Spirit of Christ is in you
and you are under the Holy Spirit's government,
though all unconsciously there's a significance about you
and an influence and a meaning in your
life that is more than that of all
those who have all the other things without
the Spirit.
We need to be redeemed from our inferiorities
as well as from our superiorities and come
to this basis of the servant of the
Lord who wrought so mightily in his servanthood.
In his servanthood, not as a despot, not
as one of the world's monarchs, not as
one of the peers of knowledge and education,
worldly wisdom.
Not in any of those capacities but as
a servant, leaving his mark upon this world,
a servant, a bond-slave.
Oh, what a bond-slave, just leaving an
impressive mark.
But all unconscious.
That's the holy thing about it.
Immediately we become self-conscious in any work
of the Lord.
Drawing attention to ourselves or assuming something becoming
artificial.
We just do death's right to this Spirit.
But all unconsciously led and governed by the
Spirit.
If we were asked to define it, the
only thing that could be said is, the
Lord is with him, the Lord is with
her.
That's all.
You meet the Lord.
What an immense thing that is to be
able to say that about anybody.
The Lord is with them.
That is the essence of significance.
That is the very meaning of leadership.
We are not looking for and to take
on all those things which men regard as
marks of leadership.
We are looking for men and women of
this kind.
One thing, you go to the Bible, you'll
find that that's the definition of all leadership,
the explanation for all leadership, the Lord was
with you.
The Lord was with you.
It's not just natural.
In many cases, the natural was lacking, but
they counted.
In other cases, there were many natural things
there, but their leadership could not be attributed
to that.
They wouldn't have got through, Moses would not
have got through with all the learning of
the Egyptians, unless the Lord had been with
him.
With it all again and again he was
at the point of despair and breaking down.
The Lord is with the Lord, and so
it was with the Lord Jesus.
I think now to you that he worked
and lived and got through to the end
because of what he was as a man
in himself.
The verdict of the apostle about him was,
for God was with him.
For God was with him.
For himself, he said, the spirit of the
Lord is upon me.
All that followed was that.
Mighty, counsellor, father of eternity, wonderful, and
all the rest which gave him his real
significance.
I say again, dear friends, there should not
be spiritual and not natural.
It is heavenly and not earthly.
It is more.
It is other.
May the Lord make us all, everyone, a
significant one in the right sense.