A Positive Purposeful God — T. Austin-Sparks

“In the Beginning, God” and the New Beginning

The first words in the Bible, the book of Genesis, chapter 1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was waste and void, darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water, and God said, Let there be light.

And there was. Place alongside of that four prophecies which you will see presently, a few words from the prophecies of Jeremiah. Jeremiah's prophecies, chapter 4, I beheld the earth, and lo, and void, and the heavens, and they had no light.

I beheld the mountains, and lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved, and I beheld, and lo, there was no light, all the boughs of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and lo, the fruitful field was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and before his fierce anger.

For thus saith the Lord, the whole land shall be a desolation, yet will I not make a full end. The beginning, God, and everyone will say, That's right, that is the place that he ought to occupy. With these words so familiar to us, the whole Bible is introduced from this note, this keynote.

The whole Bible runs and becomes a harmony, God. Here, God, the subject of the whole Bible is introduced in the beginning, God. God is in his place, which is first. There is always a new beginning. This is a point of departure, and a point which marks a new prospect.

It is always like that when the Lord has his place. Now, for these few minutes, I want to dwell upon the kind of God that is introduced with these words. These early verses of the Bible contain in principle the great God is like, the kind of God that he is.

God’s Positive Purpose Against Negative Conditions

We open our at once confronted state that is wholly negative, wholly negative, about that condition is negative. There was not this, and there was not that. That is the mark, and God introduced over against a negative condition is immediately shown to be a God who is positive.

God who is not negative, and a God who cannot bear anything that is negative. He just cannot endure a negative condition. He is like that. He is the great yay God. Almighty yes to his place. To be from a negative to a positive.

Things will at once begin to assume some positive character, some meaningfulness. With God, all that is negative will just begin to go out, and we shall find that whatever his activities may be, and his activities are many indeed, and sometimes they seem to be walking in a negative way.

The fact and the truth is that whatever he is doing, he is doing it with a positive object, and a positive mind. His end is not going to be a negative. I will not make a full end, we read in Jeremiah.

However it may appear things are being brought to an end, I will not make a full end. It is all unto a positive purpose. The very first thing about this God who is subject of this whole mighty book is that he is a positive God who is set against any negative condition.

Take that as a great truth in your relationship to the Lord, in your apprehension of the Lord. These are the foundations of everything. The next thing is and God created. Put that in another way, God got to work.

God is a God of purpose, inactive. He is a God actuated by positive. We know from the rest of the story how true that is. But here again, how much there is in the Bible that just comes back to this truth, God is not an inactive God, a standoff somewhere amidst the shadows, just a spectator.

He is right on the scene, he is right in things, working in all things, working in all things as Paul says, working in all things. He is not a purposeless God and he cannot endure a state of things that has no purpose.

Look upon this without form and empty. God is not going to tolerate that. He is introduced to us as one who will not bear a state that is without a purpose and will do all in his power things to positive purpose.

He is the God of purpose. He is not a passive God. Then without form, without form, and he comes in as set against anything that is formless or disorderly or without order. He is a God of order. It is a beautiful story of an order being evolved, introduced where there was no order.

God’s Work of Order and Fullness

Disorder is always weakness, isn't it? Disorder is always loss. A disorderly person is wasting a lot of energy and a lot of time and throwing away a very great deal of vital value. Disorderliness in our person, disorderliness in our home, or in any sphere, disorderliness in the church, it means weakness, it means loss.

God is a God of order. So when it says it was without form, God is introduced as one who is not going to put up with that. He is not going to allow that to continue. His activity is to bring about an order that is not order for its own sake.

Not because he's fastidious, finicky, that kind of a God, but because as we all know, economy is always bound up with being systematic, being orderly, and that's the kind of God he is. Who does not want there to be all that loss that is associated with a lack of heavenly order.

Was without form and void. The Hebrew word would be better translated to the English word empty. Without form and empty, or desolate, barren. And God is not a God like that. If there is one thing that the Bible says about the Lord all the way through is, it is that he's a God who believes in fullness.

His thoughts, his ends, he believes in fullness. Which we have already been looking this morning, is that when the earth shall be filled, shall be full, the knowledge of the Lord. He's working toward that.

Now the Lord cannot bear to have a condition that is not full. He does not like people to be empty. He does not like us to be just partially full. He wants us to know his fullness, of his fullness to receive grace upon grace.

God’s Desire for Light and Illumination

Now God cannot bear vacuums. Vacuum is always a dangerous thing, always a dangerous thing. It's against that. God said let there be light. God cannot bear a state of darkness. He is the God of light, the God of illumination.

And his desire is that there shall be light everywhere, fullness of light. Now that's the kind of God that is introduced with this word, in the beginning, God. There are those who believe that this state here described here was the result of judgment upon a former creation.

Whether that is so or not, the rest of the Bible does show again and again that God had to act in relation to a state of things that had missed the purpose of its existence to bring it to this condition, break it down, destroy it, throw it into desolation.

He did that again and again when a thing for which he raised, which he raised up for a purpose had lost that purpose. He just did it. But whenever he did it, he moved again, he moved again. The Bible is just full of the second movements of God in lives, in a people, in places.

You look up the double movements of God that the Bible contains and there you are. How thankful Jonah was that the Lord didn't leave him in the depth of the sea in his misery. The word is, and the word of the Lord came again a second time unto Jonah.

Thank God for that second time. How glad Peter would be that the Lord came a second time into his life. After the chaos, the blinding dark, the Lord came again. And so the Bible's full of that. I will not make a full end.

In other words, I'll come back again whatever I have to do. Sometimes the Lord does seem to be on that line of pulling down. I read this morning that short, perhaps shortest chapter in Jeremiah 45 of the word to Beirut.

Tremendous statement of the Lord through Jeremiah to Beirut. He says, that which I have planted I will pull up. I will root up. Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not. But we know that while the Lord pulled up, rooted up that people from the land because they failed to fulfill their divine purpose.

Judgment, Restoration, and God’s Second Movements

He planted them again through the prophecy. I will plant again. I will plant again. And he did. Sometimes it does seem that there's the pulling up business going on. The pulling down business. The destroying and the scattering and bringing about a state of chaos and desolation.

If it seems like that, may not that be only another aspect of the Lord's positive line of action. If the Bible says anything at all, it says that. That even his judgments in time are intended to be to his glory and not to desolation.

Well we could take many illustrations or instances in the Bible of the working of what I have said as to what kind of God he is. There was the chaos and the desolation, the barrenness and the unfruitfulness and the darkness of Israel in Egypt.

Conditioned very similar in the nation, in the people to what we have here at the beginning of Genesis. And it might well be said over Israel in Egypt during those 400 years without form and void and darkness.

But the Lord moved into that formless, emptiness, purposelessness, and in the wilderness what a beautiful order he established. From a rabble he created a nation. From a purposeless people he brought them into a wonderful problem.

From this chaos in which they were living he produced that marvelous system of worship in the tabernacle. How ordered it all is to the last detail. It's the God of order. Or Israel in Babylon again, similar condition without form and void and darkness.

The Lord moves against that. What about the disciples after the cross? We could say without form and void and darkness over the face of the deep, awful chaos and desolation. But see the creator at work after his resurrection, recovering.

And we know the end of that story. Now what I want to say over alongside of this, dear friends, is the great thing of course. All this is true as to what kind of God this is that is introduced with the Bible.

The great thing is what Paul says about it that all things were created for unto and by Jesus Christ. What does that mean? It means that all this of which we have spoken so imperfectly of course, all this becomes spiritually true in the Lord Jesus.

As it is true in creation, in nature at the beginning, in the new creation in Christ Jesus, it becomes spiritually true for every member of that new creation. Everyone truly born anew. We know it to be true.

New Creation and Purpose in Christ

Every true child of God who comes into this relationship with the Lord Jesus. Immediately assumes a new sense of positiveness in life. We know that before that it's all so negative, isn't it? All so negative.

Even the positives of this world are negative. And everybody knows they are. Things in which the world glories or finds its pleasure, they know it's all negative. They must have and have and have to try and overcome this negative element that is in everything.

In Christ that negative gives way to a positive. We, most of us, if not all here this morning, know it is true. Union with the Lord Jesus has given a positiveness to life and has given a purpose that comes in at once.

Anyone is saved or born again, you see them assuming a sense of purpose in life. There's now a meaning to things that has been introduced, called according to his purpose. Some mighty divine purpose comes in with Christ.

It's found in him. Then the life begins to take on a new order, doesn't it? All that uncoordinated state where everything was in a state of disintegration and unrelated, begins to give place to a coordinating purpose.

The life becomes united and united by something quite positive. A new order that is brought in to life in Christ. A heavenly order. A divine order. What is true of those things is true of this matter of fullness.

How empty after all life is, until we find the Lord Jesus. It is empty, however full it's empty. There's an emptiness, we know. I never understand the phrase, really an aching void. What is an aching void?

Void's a void and it's void even of an ache, but it's an expression. It's an expression, we know what it means. A void, an emptiness, an ache for something that is answered, isn't it, in the Lord Jesus.

We begin to know something of that when we begin the true Christian life. Now, now we are on the way to something rich and full. And so it goes on and on. There's no end to this fullness. John said, of his fullness have all we received.

Of it? Not it. We haven't received his fullness, but of his fullness have all we received. The end unto the fullness of the measure of the fullness of him that filleth all in all. The fullness of God.

That's what we're introduced into. God is that kind of God, but he has now made all that to us in Christ. There should be no vacuum in the Christian life. No emptiness. And again, is it not true that in Christ there is the true illumination?

The true light. He is the light. Paul, as we know, this first chapter of Genesis, these very first phrases with his own spiritual experience and said, God who said, let light be shined into our hearts.

Give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The new creation. The new illumination. The light begins to shine. Now we have it. Imperfectly, it's true. Little more and more.

Surrendering the Mind to God’s Revelation

The measure of light, the measure of understanding of divine things will entirely depend upon two things. On the one side, how prepared we are to subject our wisdom to the wisdom of God. Now our heads are usually at the hindrance to spiritual illumination.

We are wanting to get it all through our heads. Through our reason. To understand it with our natural mind. Struggling and struggling. We don't get very far. We say, I can't understand. Well, you never will that way.

Just as the will has to be subjected to the will of God, so the mind has to be subjected to the mind of God. We come up against something which is God's revealed mind. And it doesn't accord with our minds.

Our minds do not accord with it. And we therefore put our minds in the way and say, but, but, but, their life is arrested. Their understanding is arrested. Your thoughts are not my thoughts. My thoughts are not your thoughts, saith the Lord.

As high as the heaven is above the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts. So you've got to surrender your own mental activities to the Lord. Perhaps be crucified in that tremendous reasoning capacity, faculty that you have in humble acceptance of what God says.

The Holy Spirit’s Work in Spiritual Transformation

The life will break then. But you see, that's one side. The other side is the Holy Spirit is the spirit of illumination, of revelation. We must have the spirit for spiritual understanding. The Spirit of God brooded over the face it was.

Who was the agent in transforming this scene and bringing in this light which made all the difference? The Spirit of God does this. It's a simple word for perhaps beginners in the Christian life. It's just a wonderful, wonderful thing how, if we really do surrender on the one side, surrender mind as well as heart and will to the Lord.

How the Lord can get on with his new creation so much more quickly than if all the time we are arguing or reserving or holding back or contradicting when the Holy Spirit really gets his place in us. How quick the change is.

How wonderful the transformation. But my point this morning is, all this that comes in by way of illustration, I'm not saying it's only illustration and parable, history or not history. That does not really matter for the moment.

Thing is, all this is God's way of leading us on to his Son and saying, what is true in the natural order of creation under the hand of God has its superior counterpart in the spiritual, heavenly, new creation in Christ.

And this is what we find or should find in Christ. This kind of God working against what is negative to bring about the positive. What is empty to bring about the full. What is disorderly to bring about the order.

What is dark to bring about the light. That is the nature of the Christian life. That is what is made true in Christ and the new creation, shall we pray.