Memorial Service for T. Austin Sparks — T. Austin-Sparks

When I first met the source in Sparks 47 years ago and then when I actually came into this place just 40 years ago in 1931 I little thought that after all these years it would fall to me here today to gather you to offer our sympathetic condolences to his family and more than anything to offer thanksgiving to God for him but thus things have worked out, not been always an easy 40 years, it wasn't for him but thank God we went right through it together and here at the end are able to worship God for all his goodness.

The School of Christ and the Purpose of Christian Life

Many of you will be familiar with his books and if so you will know the title of one of them The School of Christ. I think that title enshrines his concept of what the Christian life is all about. We are here as long as we are here to be taught by the Holy Spirit in the school which has as its objective the making of us like the true, the perfect son who is our model, even Jesus Christ.

We are here to learn Christ, that of course means many things beside actual Bible study and it was in the chastening, or as he much preferred to render it, the child training of that school of Christ that Brother Sparks himself was a pupil, although thank God also he was a teacher, you can be both and I think he was most able to help people just because he himself recognized that he was always a learner.

His discipleship began when he was only 17 years old and was walking down a Glasgow street feeling rather miserable on a Sunday, have an idea Glasgow on a Sunday could be miserable in those days but it wasn't the outside it was the inside that was miserable and there was a crowd of eager young people holding an open air meeting and he stopped and he listened and that night in his own room he trusted Christ as his saviour and next week he was out with them, he also was a witness and before very long he'd taken his hat off and got into the ring to start preaching.

He went on preaching for 65 years and we thank God for that long and fruitful ministry represented. But to the end though a teacher he always regarded himself as a learner in the school of Christ and indeed I think I can say in all respect and indeed with great respect that in his last year he was more ready to confess how little he knew and how many mistakes he had made than ever he had been before.

That's as it should be, that's the sure evidence of growing maturity. Like the great apostle whose words were his favourites and have been read to us he was always ready right through to the end to say I have not yet apprehended but I'm pressing on toward the mark for the prize.

Suffering as the Father’s Child Training

He always taught that in the school of Christ one learns more by suffering than by study and in one way and another our dear brother suffered more than most of us. However we are not going to pity him in that but rather to give thanks to our heavenly father for this was the authentic child training.

The father was dealing with our brother as with a son not sparing the pain and the perplexing problems that must come to those who are in this school and being conformed to Christ. I have thought back quite a bit during these past days and have come to this conclusion that if it is true that the father chastens the man whom he loves God must have loved brother Sparks very much we thank God that through the chastening he proved as one always can prove the abundance of grace.

Indeed those of you who have your motto card they used to come every year so regularly. The one for this year 1971 contains those very well known and loved words my grace is sufficient for thee for him.

Those of us who knew him 40 years ago might perhaps testify that they saw God's grace in him. Those of us who knew him right to the end will gladly affirm that there were new and fuller evidences of that grace even in the closing years and months of his life to God be the glory.

A Full Life of Publishing, Preaching, and Fellowship

Now many of you have come here with appreciative recollections of our brother's life story and I'm sure could supplement what I can say. But the truth is that even I am not able to deal with even the main features of his life adequately because it was not only a long life it was a full life it was a full life of publishing in 1922 when he came over from North London there began in a very humble form what most of you will now know as the magazine a witness and a testimony which this year entered on the 49th year of its worldwide ministry and as I have told you already we have many letters from readers all over the world saying how much the ministry has meant to them.

A full life of sending out the printed word into many lands to the full life of preaching the overcomer testimony with his ministry in Christian conferences in many lands of Europe, India, the Far East and America as well as, he never called them conferences.

You know, we did, he didn't. You look it up on your witness and testimony special gatherings and they were special gatherings too. How many of them in this place up in Westminster and of course I mustn't forget Kilfragen many other places in the British Isles and then that series in Switzerland culminating last year at Hilterfingen with what everybody felt to be the best just like the Lord, isn't it.

To leave the best wine to last seemed rather puzzling having found such a marvellous site that it wasn't possible to re-book it for 1971. Brother Sparks couldn't understand that but the Lord's plans are always perfect and I'm sure all of us who were there were full of praise to God for the ministry we received for the fellowship we enjoyed and for the wonderful way in which our brother seemed thoroughly to enjoy himself there.

I have things to say about him of his spiritual ministry but you might have only seen him from a distance but I can assure you he was very human. I've seen him blowing balloons in this hall at a Christmas party and in the old days I can assure you that the cricket before they put the terraces out in the garden he was a really cunning left-hand slow bowler.

Of course sailing on the Clyde was his great love and that's why I mention Hilterfingen because even at his age if he could have got on the lake to him last year he would have done it. We're full of praise for all the ministry the preaching ministry that Brother Sparks was able to give.

But of course his ministry was not only on the platform it was off the platform in conversations and counselling but whether on the platform or privately I have always felt that his greatest helpfulness was when through the word and by his experience he was interpreting to you what you've been through.

The people that hadn't been through it couldn't always understand and sometimes he would say you don't understand what I'm saying but you'll know one day. But those who had been through something were puzzled didn't quite know what it was all about and what God was doing with them often found that our brother was a true interpreter and could make the word of God to have a very personal application.

These were the lessons that he had learned in the school of Christ and in the battle for life that's another book and it's not only a book the battle for life but I think I should say that although his sense of calling was to expound the scriptures to believers he was always concerned about carrying the gospel message to those who did not know the Lord as Savior not only as a teenager in the open air in Glasgow.

As a matter of fact the last public message he ever gave was to a group of London city missionaries the complete span of all those years from the men witnessing in the streets of Glasgow to the men witnessing in the city of London.

And if I'm right the time he spoke before that which was toward the end of last year was to that great crowd of OM people waiting to be let loose on Europe with the gospel message. A number of people a surprising number of people came to know Jesus Christ through Brother Sparks.

And while we are praising God for the blessing brought to his people through the word let us praise God also for those who would be wandering out in the darkness but for his ability and what an ability he had for making Christ real.

Some of the most fragrant memories that I have of Brother Sparks' ministry are not those of which I can write down the details and points of the message though I could do quite a bit of that but it was of the times when somehow one was melting Christ was so real the love of God was so precious.

The call of grace was going up. A fellow could preach the gospel and did and we thank God for that too. A life full of preaching not without significance that in his book of supplementary hymns with the great hymns of worship and you know about more light and truth and all that there is also and he chose to have it there.

I love to tell the story of unseen things above of Jesus and his glory of Jesus and his love. Of course to fulfill his ministry he had to travel and so we have to say his was a life, a full life of travelling.

He was privileged to carry his message and vision to many lands. He counted it a privilege greatly regretted when he wasn't able to respond to the many calls that were coming to him right up to the end of last year and no doubt in this year if they could have reached him.

His first flying experience in Switzerland was very unnerving. In those days before the war when navigational aids were not particularly developed he was at a conference at Gumligen and due to fly on the direct flight from Baal to London but in order to get to it had to take a little really a little toy like plane from Bern to Baal.

The pilot lost his way. The clouds made him overshoot Baal. At one point he didn't even know whether he was flying upside down or right side up by the mercy of the lord they found a gap in the clouds and came down landed on a French military airport and were promptly surrounded by gendarmes.

And in the end he had to get back to Baal by road and we travelled by train and boat back to England. And at the time he came to the conclusion that flying was not for him as is often the case with all of us.

It was a wrong conclusion. Indeed he did what nobody much here would probably have done. He even went in a flying boat once to the east. How many thousands of miles he travelled right through to 1970.

We thank god for safe journey could have been a tragic end over in Switzerland all those years ago. We are grateful also that strength was given to him in journeys of we may say of him now i can't take time to say anymore except that i must stress what i feel is the most important way in which his life was full.

Prayer as the Supreme Occupation

And that was in the realm of prayer. He taught us to pray make no mistake about it. At the funeral service i said that could i appeal to people to stand up and say i learnt more of christ through austin sparks.

Most of them would have stood up. I think i can say today that if i put this question have you learnt something of prayer through austin sparks. Every one of us will say yes. Some of you young ones who didn't know him.

If you belong here i can tell you that the foundation of prayer life which by god's grace we are trying to build upon was well and truly laid by brother sparks. Not only that he prayed he brought prayer before him.

That's the great supreme occupation of the christian. His favourite phrase. Well you see everybody will say he had a favourite phrase and i've said several different things already but i would say i think i will.

His favourite phrase was an open heaven now of course he often applied that to the word an open heaven because the light of god shone into his heart and he was able to speak not just from study but from what had shined in from heaven.

But i think the phrase quite equally applies to prayer perhaps even more. So his favourite thought was heaven is open to the man, the woman the church that cares to take the time and the trouble to pray.

There's a throne. Remember his book in touch with the throne that was his idea of prayer not just a little wishful thinking with a tag of amen on the end but in touch with the throne he taught us that prayer was worship.

New idea to most of us couldn't get through many sentences in prayer without asking god to bless us or teach us or do something or other for us. He taught us no there's a prayer which is a pure whole hearted offering of thanks and praise and worship to god with no request just adoration.

Don't let's forget that lesson for such prayer is precious to god. He also had a great belief in what he called executive prayer and by that he meant not just in a vague and general way asking god to do something but really laying hold of god really touching that throne really expecting something to happen really claiming that something should happen in answer to prayer.

Mr. Taylor was too old and frail to be with us but would have loved to have been here this afternoon told me that when he worked as an engineer in town and Mr. Patterson the other one of the trio was in his government office.

Brother Sparks the pastor here or rather down at the church down the road used to take a train and go up to town and they would give their lunch time to pray together. No wonder god worked. No wonder foundations were laid for a testimony here and as they prayed and claimed things from god.

God was glad and responded and those prayers were answered. He introduced many of us into the reality of prayer warfare. Himself was conscious sometimes.

A bit apologetic.

Because when the prayer meeting tended to be rather saggy and rather flat somehow he was a bit impatient. But oh how thrilled and how wholeheartedly he rejoiced when in our prayer gatherings we didn't allow the blanket to settle on but in the name of the lord claimed victory fought the fight broke through and indeed touched the throne.

That was what he called prayer. And that's how he taught us to pray. And we must go on making use of this that has come to us through our brother the challenge and the inspiration to pray I think in calling you to give thanks at this memorial service I would like to stress above all thanks for the throne of grace.

This is the heritage which brother has left us. His preaching will no longer be heard. His travelling days are over but his prayers continue because the throne continues. And as one of those for whom he prayed and as a member of the church here over which he longed in much earnest prayer I thank god not only for the past answers which have already come but for those which are yet to be.

In this sense we believe more than any other he being dead yet speaking wasn't it he who put also in the supplement the chorus that he brought us from Miss Barber in China with the music which his daughter wrote he cannot fail for he is God.

He cannot fail. He's pledged his word he cannot fail. He'll see me through. It is God with whom I have to do. God saw him through and he'll see us through. Now most of what I have said has concerned the past but we have to face the future.

The Future: Pressing On in Philippians 3

And so the rest of the occasion that we have here of being together will be devoted to the future. Two members of the new generation have something to say. A brother Roger Forster we have specially asked to give us a message on this scripture Philippians 3.

And then a brother Alan Barrow will lead us in a final prayer of dedication to God.

I must first of all ask your indulgent sympathy as I stand before you this afternoon one for the high honour and privilege of speaking at such a time as this and being so unqualified to do. So I'm sure there are many of you in our presence this afternoon who would be far better equipped and whose words would add far greater weight to the things that have already been said and give a greater note on which to conclude this occasion, this unique occasion than possibly my words could my acquaintance with a brother Sparks has been a shorter period than many of you my time involved here has been much shorter.

Please therefore give me your sympathy and indulgence as I seek to do something which you could do far better. Secondly I've been asked to speak about the future, we've spent so much time of course, rightly so looking back at the past and I've been asked to speak a word concerning what shall be in the future well have mercy on me please once again what can I say we've had brought before us the life of a man whose age certainly is more than double mine and certainly his walk with Christ would be more than double.

How on earth could I, as it were, go beyond what has been presented to us or what he has presented to us in his ministry. And how can I dare look forward to the future and say anything which would be really positive and which would lay any sort of guideline.

Then have sympathy with me for that I've been asked also not to eulogize and I've been asked not to mourn. I'm following on after two other speakers you've heard already a lot and to cap it all I've been given less than ten minutes.

Nonetheless I shall do my best to go back to that passage which was so familiar to our brother and which so often he brought before us in writing and in speech. And that is that Philippian 3 passage which has been read to us.

For I suppose we can't really look forward at all unless we know where we stand for that'll show us the direction in which to look. And if we find our feet firmly planted in the things that, well, we've been considering already this afternoon that came to us through our brother's ministry then we'll be in the place in which to have at least some sort of possibility of looking forward to the future.

Perhaps you'll turn with me to the third chapter of Philippians the passage which brings before us the sort of one thinginess of Christianity there's nothing more in a sense that can be added than what Paul says here is one thing not even so much one thing I do the I do is nitallic.

But the one thinginess that belongs to Christianity as a whole and which in a sense we can't go beyond. But if we have our feet firmly secured in it through past ministries and through future ministries we'll be in the place to know where it is that God is taking us to in which direction he is leading his people.

This one thing forgetting the things that are behind and looking forward to the things that are before I press on says the apostle. I press on we start to read at verse 10 thy may know him the power of his resurrection and fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death if by any means by execution here in prison by release and further preaching by dying later on many years.

Hence if in any way I might attain unto the resurrection from the dead not as though I had already attained either were already perfect but I press on if that I may get hold of that because of which I have been got hold of by Christ Jesus brethren I myself reckon not to have laid hold but one thing the things behind forgetting and the things before forthreaching towards the goal I press for the prize of the supernal calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Let us therefore as many as be perfect be thus minded. And if any other thing you be otherwise minded God shall reveal even this unto you only where unto we've already attained. Let's walk by the same means I think it must have been about 13 years ago.

The Meaning of Pressing On Toward the Goal

I first called on brother Sparks in his home and there we had an afternoon together. I shared with him my few years of Christian experience and how God had been leading me. And then he shared with me his many years of experience of walking with Christ.

So we took all afternoon. His story is about 10 times longer than mine at the time. I've been catching up a little bit. The years have gone on instead of just being a tenth and it becomes after a few years a quarter and then it comes on after a while to nearly a half.

But that was an afternoon of fellowship. When we came to the end of the period I was due to go off to take a meeting. It was not a very consequential meeting I would have thought handful of youngsters getting around the word of God and one was seeking to share something of Christ with them.

He knew I was going to take this meeting. So when it came to praying together he began to pray concerning this particular ministry this service that I had before me. I was very surprised. I was surprised because he prayed for the meeting as though it was going to be about the last meeting on earth and every other thing else seemed to hang upon it and how important it was that we were in the place where we recognized that everything was absolutely hanging on this one vital meeting and it didn't even seem very vital to me at the time at all but I was beginning to get the spirit of the thing.

It wasn't so much I would say that was contributed to me in those moments of sharing fellowship with our brother Sparks of his teaching the things that he had to say but it was his spirit that was doing the very thing that this passage we've been reading about was doing in those moments and sharing it with me so it never left me.

He was showing me the importance of the moments in time of the things that we were doing that they were pressurizing moments pressing on moments moments of getting hold of eternity while we're in time because it was only as each individual moment of time was something to do with stretching forward to eternity, reaching up to the high calling laying hold of the supernal calling which is in Christ Jesus that the moments of time became something of any consequence and yet moments of time are a consequence they're all that we've got but it's whether we're laying hold of them in terms of eternity, whether the high calling is touching the temporal thing whether what we are doing is involved with our pressing on to the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, that was the atmosphere that was left with my spirit and at times has been recaptured and relived, but has not always been, as I suppose most of us must testify the overall approach to every minute of our lives that obviously it was for the apostle some degree translated to us by a brother and which is the ideal for every Christian we're pressing on and that pressing onness means that every single moment we're pressing on and that pressing onness means that every single moment now is what we must get related to eternity related to God's high calling in Christ Jesus.

Ah but a man's reach must exceed his grasp or what is heaven for says the poet and that is the Christian viewpoint what is heaven for but to grasp, to reach forward to seek to lay hold of it. The apostle saw life just like that.

He didn't see the Christian life as something that was already obtained as something which had reached a perfection, something which was an accomplishment and therefore we have arrived, there was nothing about the apostle Paul's view of Christianity in those sort of terms but rather as Luther would put it commenting on these ideas of the apostle in this chapter the Christian life is more a thing of taking than of having.

It's more of a becoming godly than being godly. It's a going on business which is never culminated, certainly anyway not in this scene of things. It's a continual reaching into the eternal. It's a continual bringing heaven in touch with time.

It's a continual relating of God's eternal purpose to our little temporal affairs. That's Christianity for Paul. That's the sort of Christianity which we've been exalted to in our brother's ministry. This is the sort of Christianity we've got before us in the third chapter of Philippians.

Rejecting Self-Righteousness and Self-Sufficiency

It certainly is not a self-righteous perfectionism. Paul says I am not already perfect so that's excluded. There's nothing self-righteous in the Christian experience of Philippians 3 because we're not yet perfect there is nothing about it of self-complacency.

Of self-sufficiency. We've not yet arrived we've not yet apprehended. So we're not to be self-complacent. That isn't a Christian experience at all just as self-righteousness isn't and could never be not by Paul's definition.

It isn't a kind of lazy imperfectionism. Well we're all sinners anyway never get very much better here on earth. You know the sort of thing it isn't that either for the Apostle Paul tells us that he is pressing on rather it's this one thinginess business this one thing, forgetting the things that are behind reaching forth those things which are before and here Paul is painting a picture of the life right the way through our earthly scene that runs right the way through the grave because it's a kind of race.

It's a race like a runner who has got his eye on the mark that word mark of the prize of the high calling is the tape in front of us. It's something we set our eye on in which we are gearing our whole being and we're steering our direction.

It's something which is calling forth our hand as the runner puts his hand forward, stretching forward. It's something which, well our feet have got to move. If we're in a race we pursue a word of hunting until we've captured it.

The whole of our earthly life is a pursuing to capture something. It's a stretching forth because we haven't got it yet, it's an eye on the goal and our whole being is being geared into this intense aim, we've got to go on, we must press on, says the Apostle if we've learnt anything about Christian living at all it's a pressing on one thingness running right through life, running through the grave and perhaps then we find the goal and perhaps only then, maybe that's why Paul says, if by any means I might attain to the resurrection out from the dead he doesn't mean when he goes on to say, I've not yet attained, that he hasn't yet attained the resurrection because that's self evident, he's still there, the resurrection hasn't taken place yet, he couldn't be saying that but the thought of the resurrection has once again awakened in him the concept of knowing Christ in the fullest possible way which will only be ours in that day of the resurrection when we have run and run and run and run right through the grave and out the other side and in that day oh to know him the power of his resurrection the fellowship of his suffering conformed unto his death to achieve that moment of running out of the grave and knowing our Lord face to face perfectly as we've never been able to know him here in this scene, that's the aim and the striving and the intensity of the Christian experience.

Some of us have run right into the grave others are still running. There are more who have run into the grave than are still running praise the Lord and one day all together we will be knowing him in the completion of this experience which has begun that we may know Christ as fully as a man may know him when we know him face to face and have become like him because we should see him as he is.

Forgetting the Past and Pursuing Christ

The aim of the Christian intent running is to run through life and out the other end into the arms of the Saviour that already we've been longing and yearning and aching for the touch that's already come to our souls to know in an ever deepening way.

So then there's no time to see how far we've got. There's no time to assess what we've run that far but forgetting that because if you do well in a race others would overtake you. And it's not our concern that others overtake us or not but it's our concern to run as though we were running the race and we want to win.

So there's no time to see how far we've got that belongs to the past runners don't do that sort of thing. All they're concerned to do is to get on to the next step and the next reach and to see the take just that little bit more clearly because we're that little bit nearer and to keep on and to keep on running we press on and for the prize we press on to the mark of the supernal calling of God in Christ Jesus.

What is it that Paul has got in mind when he says forgetting those things that are behind. Perhaps if you look in the context you would say well his Jewish righteousness of works that he'd seen himself as a Pharisee as one who'd kept the law blamelessly as one who'd done so many religious works to be counted as high in his Pharisaic culture one who was born of the tribe of Benjamin and so forth.

But I think Paul must have realized as he used those words that these are the expressions of man's righteousness of man's attainment the attainments you know you've got when you really have arrived and you've got it and there it is.

It's complete and it's perfect. And anything in my Christian experience Paul would say I think I've got it and I've arrived. It's forgetting those things forgetting those things I've got to press on. Are we prepared to forget those things and press on for that is the Christian life that is the Christian spirit.

This is what our brother touched me with as he prayed and it's what really he would redirect our steps to surely as we come back to this of all prominent passages in his ministry to press on and to hold nothing as our achievement that is the righteousness which must be left behind unconcerned as to how far or how little we've got.

None of us are perfect. None of us have totally apprehended keep running and the pressing on until the eternal purpose which has touched our souls and we can't lose it, we can't forget it. It's energising us to get hold of that for which I've been got hold of, I've been pushed on to that end, I must lay hold of it.

Knowing Christ as the One Thing

It's to know Him. He is the prize just as equally as He is the author of the race. He who has laid hold of us is the one that we want to lay hold of to know Christ, this one thing this one thing forgetting everything else that would stand in the way.

One thing is to know Him. One thing of our desire to the Lord and that what I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord and behold the beauty of the Lord and inquire in His temple all the days of my life.

One thing is needful. Mary and you've chosen it and she says the Lord speaks to know Him young man if you'll follow me, sell what you have and come follow me, one thing is needful. Follow me. I'm what is needful one thing I know once I was blind and I opened my eyes one day and I saw Him now I see one thing I do one thing, the one thinginess of Christianity is Christ and that we can never get beyond but if we have really learnt the apostles lessons which have been so often brought before us by a brother in whose memory we meet this afternoon that is that Christ is all and is therefore to fill all things and is the object in the pursuit of our spiritual lives.

Expressing Christ in a Changing World

I wonder if I can just take on for one second what has been hinted at by Brother Patterson if I'm taking hold of the moments of time and running to pursue that which is eternal, to get them related to that which is eternal then I will begin to know what it is in this end of the church age that I must be and be accomplishing and achieving in the new sort of society which is forming rapidly around us the way to do it has always been the same and always will be, it's Christ, he's the emperor, he's what we're aiming at he is the one that we pursue.

But if I'm taking hold of the subculture strata of our western civilisation if I'm taking hold of the moments of our atomic polluting world, if I'm taking hold of the revolution undercurrent that's running through our economic and student society if I'm laying hold of the permissiveness that's round about me in my experience if I'm getting hold of these moments and running by the eternal purpose to know Christ in these moments, then the most wonderful thing of all is there will be a translation in our experience of the eternal purpose of God down into time, something will happen there in a hundred and one different ways, none of us can anticipate what there'll be for they've never been before, this is another phase another sort of world, a very rapidly changing world the same old answer the apostle Paul gave it to us our brother's ministry emphasised it but for the future, then we must express it by taking our moments of time, hitching them into the eternal of knowing Christ and the result must be an impact in the world like the apostle Paul's impact of the first century, like our brothers have been throughout the earth, but for this generation he has served his generation and fallen asleep as David, got out nothing more than any of us for in that way the resurrection spirit can take place and people can be served throughout the earth as what has gone in to the ground comes out in new sort of life, to meet a new sort of world, in a new sort of way the foundations are laid, we know where we stand we pursue the same Christ, we're going to express him in a hundred and one fresh and thrilling and new ways in all the different avenues that God so privileges to put us in the coming days.