As our custom is, we'll close this conference
gathering around the Lord's table.
The meeting will not be prolonged for that.
Those of you who have a long way
to go need not be anxious about time.
If you are the Lord's child, we welcome
you to join with us in this remembrance
of Him.
Now we come to the last fragment for
this time of this contemplation of the Lord's
servant and the nature, meaning of the
Lord's service.
Behold my servant.
I turn you for this last word to
the prophecies of Isaiah chapter 49.
Chapter 49, Isaiah's prophecies.
Listen, O Isles, unto me.
And hearken, ye peoples from far.
The Lord hath called me from the womb.
The bowels of my mother hath he made
mention of my name.
He hath made my mouth like a sharp
sword.
In the shadow of his hand hath he
hid me.
And he hath made me a polished shaft.
In his quiver, in his quiver hath he
kept me close.
And he said unto me, Thou art my
servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.
Here then is one more, and for this
time the last of this series of conceptions
of the servant of the Lord and his
service.
He hath made my mouth like a sharp
sword.
In the shadow of his hand hath he
hid me.
He hath made me a polished shaft.
In his quiver hath he kept me close.
Thou art my servant.
Now these remaining chapters of this book are
not easy to expound for one reason in
particular, that there is very little clear definition
as to who is in view.
It is very difficult as you move through
to see and recognize to whom the various
passages refer.
Sometimes it's perfectly clear, as in 52 and
53 and 61, no doubt about it there,
that it is the coming Messiah, the Christ.
At other times it looks to be like
Israel, and then you find that even there
it's not so clear, not so sure.
For instance, this very chapter, this very chapter
is like death as you see.
You go on to the chapter, and you
have in the chapter, and you have words
like these.
It is to light a thing that thou
shouldest be my servant to raise up the
tribes of Jacob.
That cannot be Israel raising himself up.
And to restore the preserved of Israel.
That cannot be Israel doing that to himself.
I will also give thee for a light
to the Gentiles.
We are more familiar with that, aren't we?
A light to lighten the Gentiles, the words
of Simeon concerning the Lord Jesus himself.
Thou mayest be my salvation unto the end
of the earth.
Well, we are able to identify that one,
and yet in the whole setting it seems
to move from one to the other.
Now, I am not going to attempt to
disentangle that and to give you the clear
dividing lines.
Indeed, it is not my intention to engage
in an exposition of these chapters at all.
For as brief a time as I can
use this evening, I just want to get
a hold of this one conception of the
servant of the Lord.
Be he the original thought of the Israel,
the whole nation?
Be he the Messiah, or be he the
remnant?
Be he the whole church, or be he
the church within the church?
That does not matter so much to me
and to us this evening.
The point is, what is this divine conception
of the servant and his service as viewed
here?
We have said that there are many conceptions
of the servant in this book, and we
have been looking at several of them over
the last two days especially.
Here's another one.
He hath made my mouth like a sharp
sword.
He hath made me a polished shaft.
A sharp sword.
A polished shaft.
That is what the Lord intends his servant,
his servants, and their service to be.
With all the other things that they may
be, this is one of the things.
Not the only thing, but it is here,
and it is to be taken note of.
Sharp sword.
A polished shaft.
And I think we should all say that
the element associated with those symbols is
that of incisiveness.
A sharp sword and a polished shaft are
no neutral things.
No indefinite things.
They speak of something having an edge and
a point.
Something that registers and really does have an
effect.
That is the overall feature of such things.
And at once, we pass to the service
that the church is intended to fulfill for
God.
And if it fails, service that the church
within the church, that company within the nominal
that is the real, and that really does
answer to God's thought, service that it will
fulfill.
It will be like this.
It will be present, not only in this
world and on this earth, amongst men, but
as in the heavenlies amongst other hostile forces.
A something that registers.
Something that cuts in.
Something that pierces.
Something that counts and tells.
A sharp sword and a polished shaft.
That, dear friends, is what the Lord intends
us to be as his servants.
And again, that is what he intends not
only individuals to be, but his church in
representation in any place.
Now, from another standpoint, it is quite right
that any company of the Lord's people should
be a very loving, happy little fellowship.
Enjoying him and enjoying one another, and going
on mildly and very pleasantly.
Having a nice time.
Everybody saying what nice people they are.
What a lot of love there is amongst
them and so on.
That's right.
But it's only one side.
Such, even such, ought to be a terror
to everything that is evil.
A positive menace to the powers of evil
on the earth and in the heavens.
They ought to be there as something that
stands against all that is against the interest
of the Lord.
Something that tells amongst men.
Now, of course, it's not at all difficult
to understand all this when we come away
from the general to the particular and take
another look at the Lord Jesus.
Well, in the last conference, we said that
his voice was like the sound of many
waters.
It's only another way of saying there are
many aspects of Christ.
Sometimes it's very gentle, very kind, very compassionate,
very understanding, consoling.
Like that.
Sometimes it's reasoning, seeking to reach understanding, see
eye to eye, gentle argument, as with Nicodemus.
But sometimes the word in his mouth was
like a sharp sword.
Sometimes he was like a polished sharp.
And you can see that aspect of his
presence here.
The point, the point was being felt by
the people around him.
And you know a sharp sword or a
polished sharp is not a comfortable thing to
encounter.
And how many of them cringed shrank and
felt that point and that cutting and that
piercing.
Really, you know, his crucifixion was very largely
because of that.
Their retaliation, their hatred.
He was far too straight, far too clear
cut.
He was far too piercing and exposing for
their comfort.
He exposed their hypocrisy.
He uncovered their falsehood.
He showed up their inconsistencies.
He tore from them their masks.
He was a sharp sword.
He was a polished sharp.
And he had that effect upon everything that
was false and wrong, contrary to God in
truth, however pretentious it was.
Yes, that was his effect.
And that is one aspect of the servant
of the Lord, and there'll be no doubt
about it.
And it will bring things back on us
if we are like that.
There is a side of things where you
must not condone, where you must not compromise,
where you must not be gentle.
Your effect must be incisive.
No one can misunderstand a sharp sword or
a polished sharp.
That's something that no one can misunderstand.
And so it is necessary for this aspect
of divine service to be present.
May go altogether against your natural temperament.
You want to be on good terms with
everybody.
Well, remember that you may, you may by
that way just fail to do a piece
of work for the Lord.
Sometimes we have to put aside our own
feelings like that and be very faithful.
Be very faithful.
For I suggest to you that a sharp
sword and a polished sharp are very faithful
things.
Very faithful.
It is speaking the truth, even if it
is in loud being faithful.
Well, all that.
What I'm saying, and I can add to
it, is this, that there is a ministry
to the Lord and from the Lord, which
is of this character, and it is clear
cut, incisive, definite, it registers, and it will
have no talk or compromise with anything that
is untrue, unreal, that is false, and that
is contrary to the Lord.
And after all, after all, dear friends, our
real accountableness is in the realm of spiritual
forces, isn't it?
What we count for is known best there
amongst those spiritual intelligences.
Though how many advantages they get by our
weakness and our indefiniteness, our uncertainty, how much
ground they hold because we are not as
utter as we should be on the things
of God.
We are not as positive as we ought
to be.
We are wobbling.
We are weak.
We are uncertain.
We are indefinite.
We are limping between two opinions and they
are holding the ground.
All that.
I suggest that these weapons are a contradiction
to that sort of thing, and they mean
that the enemy will lose ground if we
are like this.
We're really positive for God.
We are clear-cut for God if we
are sharp as his weapons and polished as
his shots.
Well, that's the real point here.
But then we have to ask, how can
that be?
On what ground can that be?
Because this kind of effectiveness, this telling power,
this incisiveness, like everything else, has a ground,
a basis, and our chapter makes that perfectly
clear.
I don't mean that it's written in the
chapter, but the chapter itself marks the point
which makes it possible, makes it possible for
this one, whoever he is, I think these
words themselves refer to the Messiah.
However, leave that.
It is possible for this servant of the
Lord to say this about himself.
You can't say it unless you've got the
same foundation.
You've got to have the same position as
he had to say it.
And so chapter 49 of Isaiah's prophecies marks
the point at which a long-standing controversy
is at an end.
The history was this.
Israel, the nation, had lost its position of
distinctiveness by allowing to come in the gods
of the nations, their idols and their altars,
their obelisks and their asherah.
You know all the prophets had to say
about that.
The world and its gods had come in,
and that had raised the great controversy between
them and the Lord.
Idolatry, which is a very big word, a
very comprehensive term, idolatry.
We need not just restrict it to idols
of wood and stone that the heathen worship.
Idolatry can be almost anything.
And we can say of it that it
is anything that divides life with God.
Anything that shares things with the Lord.
When we come to that again in a
moment.
Now that was what had happened in Israel,
and that had raised the big controversy as
to who is the Lord.
Is the Lord the Lord?
And the only Lord.
Are these gods also lords?
That's the big question.
The prophets fought that battle.
The real battle that they were in was
just because of that.
They were fighting that whole thing.
But Israel persisted.
They were wedded to their idols, and they
hardened their hearts against the prophets.
And at last, God said, they are wedded,
they are wedded to idols.
And so let them go to the land
where the idols are.
He handed them over to Babylon, to Chaldea,
way into captivity.
Seventy years.
And that did it.
Those seventy years were purging fires.
And idolatry was purged out of Israel and
never again, Mark you, from that time to
this very day, today, in our own lifetime,
has idolatry had a place amongst the Jews
of that kind.
God cut in between them in Babylon, and
so far as that kind of idolatry is
concerned, that form of idolatry, it was finished.
Now this forty-ninth chapter sees the end
of that controversy.
It's settled.
Who is the Lord?
The Lord is the Lord.
God alone is God.
His idols are nothing.
So far as the Lord is concerned, He
occupies the alone place as Lord.
And that's the ground.
That's the ground of triumphant warfare.
That's the basis of this kind of effectiveness.
Now I've broadened that out as a principle.
There'll be a lot more, of course, that
will be said presently about Israel.
But you know that this chapter is the
second half of Isaiah's book, which looks beyond
the captivity.
It looks beyond the captivity.
A lot to be done.
A lot of unsatisfactory conditions.
The Lord still has a lot of controversy.
But that, after the captivity, I'm saying, after
the captivity, that one thing was settled.
Now if this one, in chapter forty-nine,
is the Messiah, the servant, thou art my
servant Israel, the true Israel, the true Israel,
in whom I will be glorified and use
you in this way as my salvation to
the ends of the earth, and so on.
If this is the one, the Messiah, then
again, His tremendous effectiveness, His incitedness, was
based upon this utterness for God.
It sprang out of there being absolutely no
compromise in any direction with anything that was
not for God.
No doubt about that.
Now you see, God has always been against
mixture.
And mixture has always been the cause and
the occasion of defeat where the people of
God are concerned.
Mixture.
Well, was it not the mixed multitudes that
came out of Egypt that were the weakness
and the undoing of the nation in the
wilderness?
It says the mixed multitudes murmured, murmured.
And we know that in the final summing
up, it was that murmuring that set that
people aside, that they never were allowed to
go into the land.
The apostle Paul exhorted the Corinthians, neither murmur
ye as some of them murmured and fell
in the wilderness in one day.
But it was the mixed multitudes that murmured.
They were the weakness of the whole thing
and the cause of their defeat and subsequent
loss.
Yes, Israel's mixed multitudes and this mixture in
Israel later, in the later period of their
history to which we are returning, the mixture,
the mixture was the cause of their undoing
and their going into Babylon.
And even when they came back from Babylon,
there was still mixture.
And you know how in Ezra, in Nehemiah,
the great business of those leaders was to
deal with this state of mixture in marriage,
get rid of it.
The two things that were not the same
thing.
They laid themselves out to do it.
And when that was done, the people are
in a strong position.
But let us come to the great servant
again, Lord Jesus.
It was just this very thing that lay
behind his statement, the prince of this world
cometh to me and hath nothing in me.
He hath nothing.
Nothing that belongs to him or relates to
him or is of him in me.
Therefore, the prince of this world is cast
out.
His victory over the forces of evil was
due to his complete purity so far as
the kingdom of Satan and all that belonged
to it was concerned.
You see, that was the battle of the
wilderness, wasn't it, during the forty days after
his baptism?
What was Satan trying to do?
He was trying to defile, to corrupt this
one, this Christ, by getting him to accept
this world, this world in its unregenerate state,
in its unsaved condition, to accept it like
that as his dominion.
All this will I give thee, thou wilt
fall down and worship me.
Why, why did Jesus refuse it?
He's not going to be the king of
a corrupt world, of a defiled world, of
this world?
Note, note, not only then but how always
he was not having it.
When they would come and by force make
him king, what did he do?
Oh, what a chance.
What a chance.
Hadn't he come for that?
Ah, no.
When they would by force make him king,
he departed into a desert place.
I wish we could handle all our temptations
to popularity like that.
A corrupt popularity.
You see, the statement about him is so
clear and he is so true to it,
he would not commit himself unto them, for
he knew what was in man.
And he knew perfectly well the state, the
corrupt state of this world and of the
crowd, that today they would come and make
him king by force and tomorrow they would
say crucify him.
That's the world.
If the world cannot use you for itself,
it will crucify you.
That's the kind of world it is.
Because the spirit of this world is to
use you and everything for itself.
It's the spirit, it's the principle of the
flesh, of the fallen nature, to use everything
for itself.
It's corrupt.
Jesus is not having that kind of kingdom.
In effect, he's saying, if I'm going to
have the kingdom of this world, and I
am, I'll have them as redeemed from all
iniquity, with the prince of this world cast
out on pure ground, holy ground.
And so he hurled the weapon of his
mouth, the sword of his mouth, at the
tempter and says, it is written, thou shalt
worship the Lord thy God and him only.
That's the ground of strength.
Him only.
That was the trouble with Israel, brought Israel's
downfall, because it was not him only.
Well, the point, dear friends, clearly is this,
that strength, incisiveness, effectiveness, victory over evil and
evil forces, is upon the basis of a
heart undivided where God is concerned, where he
is Lord and Lord alone.
And Lord alone.
So when, in principle, in principle, this controversy
as to what place the Lord is to
hold and how much of the place he
is to have, when that is settled, then
it's possible to say, He hath laid my
mouth like a sharp sword, he hath made
me a polished shaft, his quiver hath he
hidden me.
I think you see, with all the wrappings,
the principle is just this, there's got to
be a place with God where this world,
this world has no place.
Where all that belongs to this world as
Satan's kingdom has no place forever.
No place.
But oh, after all, dear friends, in far
more subtle ways than you or I recognize,
the enemy is always at work to weaken
our fighting force, blunt the edge of God's
weapon in us by some kind of worldliness,
some form of worldliness.
For worldliness as a principle, some link with
this world, some way of doing things as
the world does it, some pandering to some
worldly interests, some way in which we use
our time and our means, oh, so many,
many different forms it takes.
This world is wholly inimical to God.
It's only as you and I are completely
severed from that whole thing in a spiritual
as well as in a practical way shall
we be a fighting weapon in the hands
of God.
This world is wholly inimical to God.
It's only as you and I are completely
severed from that whole thing in a spiritual
as well as in a practical way shall
we be a fighting weapon in the hands
of God.
And I say that is something that the
Lord very much needs.
But after all, these symbols represent the belligerent
aspect of the service of the Lord.
We're in a tremendous battle.
We are going to be beaten, defeated, and
worsted unless we're on the right ground.
The right ground.
And the right ground is the ground that
the Lord Jesus was on all the time.
No selfish considerations.
No personal interests to sell.
That's the spirit of the world.
I repeat, the spirit of the world.
Because after all, servant, servant, if rightly understood,
just means unselfishness, doesn't it?
Unselfishness.
It's not true to the principle of servanthood
to be using your position for your own
ends.
That's a violation of servanthood.
The real meaning of a servant is one
whose personal interests, considerations, and ends have been
completely subjected to the interest of the one
to be served.
Hold on.
They just live for that one.
Never consider how it affects them at all.
What it matters to them, they live for
the one to whom they have given themselves
a servant.
It's entirely and utterly an unselfish thing.
And yet that's such a tremendous power as
seen in the case of the Lord Jesus.
Unselfishness.
What a range that covers.
What a range it covers.
Selfishness.
The only way of being delivered from it
is that another should have completely captured the
heart.
Another should have taken the place of servant.
And that's where the Lord Jesus was.
He was just there.
It was another.
I come.
The role of the book, it is written
of me.
To do thy will, O God.
Thy law is within my heart.
That's the servant.
And again I say, what a power he
was and has ever been in this world.
Oh, you see, it's just the reverse, isn't
it, of the world?
If you are going to count for anything
at all, if you are really going to
mean anything, you must be master.
You really must assert yourself.
You must, you really must make your presence
felt.
You must be something.
That's the world.
Always is the world.
World cannot understand this sort of thing, that
you will ever be anything at all if
you're nothing.
You never will be anything at all unless
you are something.
See what I mean?
Sounds strange, but that's just it.
Cannot understand this law of the kingdom of
heaven, this law of real spiritual power, the
meekness of Christ, the meekness of Christ.
But, like it or not, dear friends, the
most potent thing in this universe was the
meekness of Jesus Christ.
Listen.
You know it.
Heard it a thousand times.
He emptied himself, took upon himself the form
of a bond slave, being found in fashion
as a man, humbled himself, became obedient unto
death, yea, and the death of the crown.
Why?
For that reason, on that ground.
Because of that, God hath highly exalted him,
and given him the name which is above
every name, and in the name of Jesus
every knee shall bow, things in heaven, things
in earth, things under the earth, and every
tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Is that power?
That power is by way of meekness, self
-emptiness.
It's tremendous.
Tremendous.
Well, there it is.
All this is just gathered round this idea
of service, really to count for God in
a definite and incisive way, in the midst
of all that is inimical to his interests,
really to be somebody who just counts for
God, or a company that counts for God,
about whose registration there is no mistaking at
all.
And the people who are utterly for the
Lord will be like that.
He will make them a sharp sword, and
a polished sharp, a polished sharp.
That's something that is not rusty and unfit
for use, but something in his hand, in
his quiver, ready to be used.
The Lord make us like that.