Service and Servanthood of the Lord - Part 4 of 8 — T. Austin-Sparks

The Universal Law of Service

We continue in the matter that has been laid on our hearts for this time, that is, the servant of the Lord. Gathered around that little fragment in Isaiah's prophecies, chapter 41, behold my law of service as being central to everything in this universe, that this universe exists minister to God, that that law was established at the creation of this world and man.

Immediately upon his being constituted, he was given a trust. Build everything, develop everything for a ministry. And that law being established at the beginning is seen to run, is seen eternal state.

And when his servants shall serve him, and they shall see his face. A law ministering to the pleasure and glory, then we have method and means of service. We saw a nation separated, particularly, specifically, to minister to the pleasure of God, the Lord saying to Pharaoh, let my people go, that they may serve me.

At the center of the nations to be the embodiment of this universal principle of service, to lead the nations to it. And we saw that that nation elect for that purpose as a whole faith and terribly. And then moving in, and in these prophecies of Isaiah, in a large section, being introduced and presented completely and perfectly, fulfilled in every respect, law of service, that satisfaction to God, the servant of the Lord, one referred to in our passage, behold my servant.

And having foreshadowed, predicted, pre-visioned that servant, the next movement, in the time of the whole nations failure, was to deposit the principle of service in a remnant. Very many references in these prophecies and others to the remnant as being God's repository of the service of the servant of the Lord.

That is, to take character from him and to carry forward great responsibility and privilege and trust of ministering to the Lord. That is the Old Testament, a figure of the divine thought, passing into the New Testament, set aside, that servant, not now in prediction, but in presence, right here on the spot, fulfilling his ministry, his servanthood, and perfecting it.

Then, the bringing in of the nation, to take the place of that nation that has failed, fulfilling of the word of the Lord, the kingdom of heaven shall be taken away from you and given to a nation, bringing forth the fruits thereof.

A new nation brought in, Peter calls a holy nation, that is, the church, and then, too soon, a repetition of our general failure, a repetition of the Lord's method and means. The appeal to those within the general body who will form for him this remnant of this dispensation, take up and carry forward and represent the principle, the law of God's satisfaction, God's pleasure for which everything was created.

Isaiah's Vision of the Lord

Now, that has occupied us for quite a time in this conference. We must not take more time in retrospect. This afternoon, we come back to Isaiah's prophecies, to a part which you may think has been worn threadbare, but it is a cameo of this whole subject or matter.

I refer to the sixth chapter. Words are so familiar to you, I feel quite sure that the Lord wants something said about this at this time. The year that King Isaiah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, and his train filled the temple.

Above him stood the seraphim. Each one had six wings. With twain he covered his face. With twain he covered his feet. With twain he did fly. One cried unto another, and said, Is the Lord of his? Foundations of the thresholds were moved at the voice of him that cried.

The house was filled. Then said I, I am a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes saw the King, the Lord. Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a living coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar.

He touched my mouth with it, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips. Thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin. I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? Then I said, Here am I.

Send me. And he said, Go, tell this people. Hear ye indeed, but understand not, and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat. Make their ears heavy. Shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed.

Then said I, Lord, how long? He answered, Until cities be waste without inhabitant, and houses without men. The land become utterly waste. The Lord hath removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land.

If there be yet a tenth in it, it shall again, shall again be eaten up as a terebinth, and as an oak, whose stalk remaineth when they are felled, so the holy seed. I say that this is a cameo of the whole subject.

Israel's Tragedy and the Church's Decline

In this, we have the whole history of the nation embodied as quickly as possible with so much ground. See the outline, at least, what is here. First of all, then, we are in the presence of the tragedy of a great epoch.

Our king, Isaiah, had been one of the most glorious in history. In a long, dark, troubled, Isaiah, to a great eminence, and a great glory. Humanity, so commonly, to carry the responsibility of prosperity.

Like the grace of God and men, his heart was lifted up, and when that happens, that's the beginning of the end of that glory, of that epoch. Disaster is not far away. So in the uplifted heart, in his pride, Isaiah presumed upon heritage, his position, and the blessing of God, and took the holy things into his own.

So the story, he was doing it, he was suddenly smitten with leprosy. Went out from the presence of the Lord, and for the rest of his life, lived in the seclusion of a leper, and then died. That is the story of the nation.

The nation had come to a place of great eminence among the nations, prosperity, riches, and influence, and then began to presume upon it. Take it for granted, because of so much of the blessing and prospering of the Lord, well nothing mattered, do as you like, and the hands of men took hold of the holy things, to use them for their own ends.

That is the story of Israel, and I suggest to you, dear friends, that that is very largely the story of the Church. What we are always looking back upon, and today, a commemorating Pentecost, and we are always looking back to the great days of the Church.

What days they were, what blessings, the presence of God, so manifestly in their midst. The whole thing taken into the hands of men, manipulated and changed, and used for human glory, the introduction of a whole system, high-flown names and titles, and all that, and men coming into prominence, becoming a sporting ground for the flesh, in that form of human glory, and the days of the Church's blessing were numbered.

We say too much if we say it was smitten with leprosy. Nevertheless, tragedy at the end of a glorious epoch, as with Isaiah. It was at that point, at that point, God intervened with Isaiah, through Isaiah of the Lord.

Heavenly Intervention and the Exaltation of Christ

In Isaiah, his experience and his history, very much of what was true in the case of the great servant, his master, our Lord Jesus. That is why I have called him a cameo of the whole. That situation, if you will accept what I have said as true, I think it is, called for, demanded a heavenly intervention, a heavenly intervention, when the athlete fell into tragedy, and had to be left, so largely, at least without.

And Isaiah became the figure, the type, of the heavenly intervention at such a time, at such a time. I need not, I think, make the correspondence on every point. It is so patent, that it was when the fullness of that tragedy was reached in Israel, that heaven intervened with the greatest prophet, the Lord Jesus.

Heaven broke in a great reaction against that tragic state, and produced a servant of God to deal with it. The Lord Jesus came at a time like that, a time of terrible tragedy, in the realm of the people of God.

And here is heaven breaking in, and Isaiah. Now, it is just there, that we have so much enlightenment and instruction, Isaiah died. You could put that in various other ways. In such and such a time, when such and such conditions obtained, saw the Lord.

Since the dark background, failure, breakdown, tragedy, a heavenly vision is given. A heavenly vision. Let me underline one word, a heavenly vision. Because here is a transition, from the earthly to the heavenly.

Heaven takes charge, heaven breaks in, and that is the way of recovery, of salvation. What Paul called, the heavenly vision. And what was it? What were its components? First of all, I saw the Lord, and lifted up.

Now you know that that is a phrase that is used immediately, in the context of the servant of the Lord, my servant, in chapter 53. Behold, my servant shall be high, and lifted up. And it is surely very impressive.

That John, writing his gospel, we have it in chapter 12 and verse 41, refers to Isaiah 6, these words, and says, These things said Isaiah, when he saw, when he saw him. These things said he, when he saw him.

Who was it that Isaiah saw, high and lifted up? Well John says, it was Jesus. And that's always the beginning of a great change in the situation. It is always God's new beginning. To see him he represents, may have fallen, fallen idol, as he had been.

Now there's one high and lifted up to save the situation. Exaltation. The exaltation of the Lord Jesus. We know, means, firstly, that a work has been accomplished and finished. On which the future rests with certainty.

It's finished. He never was high and lifted up, exalted and glorified until he had finished his servant work. And upon that, the whole future founded. Work was accomplished. His authority universal was established.

All authority in heaven and in earth given to him as he took his place at the right hand of the majesty in the heavens. His name is enthroned above all rule and authority and every name that is named.

Not only in this age, but in that which is to come. His name enthroned. That God begins again. He did with Isaiah, for whatever there was to be of recovery, even though it might be in a remnant. And that, so imperfectly, nevertheless some recovery to which the Lord referred with not a little pleasure.

My peculiar treasure he called the remnant. That issued from this vision. The Lord, high and lifted up. And dear friends, that is true. If it is as true of the church as it was of Israel, that there has been loss and tragedy, conditions have faded, as everybody recognizes and acknowledges without any criticism or unwarranted criticism of church, it is true.

We all look back to those days as the heydays of the church. If the church has, speaking quite generally, followed in the train of Israel, lost its great vocation as the servant of the Lord, will begin, as he has always begun, someone or some people, a remnant if you like, a corporate person, getting a new conception and revelation and apprehension of the greatness of Christ.

It is the only way. It is the only way, but it is the sure way. It is God's way. The greatness of Christ. The overlordship of Christ. The absolute supremacy of Christ. That is God's method, the whole purpose of the dispensations.

It's his method with every individual life. If you have fallen into tragedy, if the earlier days, Christian experience, into shadows or even darkness, if you in your own spiritual life were a tragedy, what will save you will be if only you can get a new apprehension of the greatness of Christ.

And that is God's way. Turn your eyes from your tragedy, from yourself, from your desire, from all things around and lift them up and see him high, lifted up, great enough to cope with your tragedy, great enough to cope with the tragedy of a universe as well as of a church.

The Heavenly House of God

I saw the Lord lift it up. Things passed, tragic temple in Jerusalem to the temple in heaven as I saw a heavenly temple substituting the earthly which had failed, a heavenly house of God. It's the second move in the way of recovery.

You notice how true to principle this is? According to the New Testament, firstly, always firstly, the greatness of Christ, the exaltation of Christ, that is always the beginning. And then the greatness of the church, the greatness of the house of God, the greatness of that conception and that reality, a place of God's dwelling.

But now we know that the earthly thing is in tragedy and you're not going to rebuild that, you're not going to recover an earthly thing. The church now is a heavenly thing, a heavenly thing. I get on to a heavenly ground that we can be a true expression of the church, its unity, its life.

Touch this earth and you touch everything that divides, everything that brings strife, everything that is a contradiction, that divine idea. Get off the earthly ground of things and people onto a heavenly ground and at once a new kind of church comes into evidence.

It's a heavenly thing. How much time we could and would like to spend on this, but you see the head of the church and then the church. First the Lord, high and lifted up, and then the temple of the Lord, which he fills.

Substituting the earthly for the heavenly, Lord deliver us from our earthly ideas and our earthly limitations and conceptions, our earthly bondages. Oh, how contradictory the earthly church is. It's not the church, according to God's mind.

His few symbolic language. Here in this heavenly temple or house or church, Christ is all-pervading and all-inclusive. Here he fills all things. There's no room for anyone or anything else. His filling his house just does mean that there's no place for anything earthly, persons or things.

There's no place for what is of this world. He is in the eternal counsels of God appointed and destined to fill all things. And the first place of his filling is his own house, the church. That is very testing, isn't it?

After all, men have come into the house of God and things have been brought in. There's very much today that corresponds to the condition in the days when the Lord was here in the flesh, concerning which he could repeat his words, take these things, take these things hence.

They don't belong to my father's house. They don't belong to my father's house. They are not in keeping with the place, the habitation of the Lord. Take them out. This heavenly, heavenly house is filled with Christ.

The garments or the skirts are only symbolic of himself and his fullness. All tub feeding is deposed and has no place. Just as Uzziah was driven out, took him and drove him out. It has to be made for the Lord in his heavenly house.

Heavenly Servants and the Ministry of Worship

And then the next thing in the vision, the heavenly vision, is of the heavenly servants and their service. Here called the seraphim, saw the seraphim. Above him were the heavenly servants, fulfilling heavenly ministry.

Each had different kinds of features of their heavenly service. Covered or veiled their faces. This service, this service, which is going to bring God his satisfaction and reach his end and fulfill his purpose and be according to his original intention.

This service is carried out and carried through a period of deep reverence, humility and awe. Unto the flesh. I suppose these seraphim were themselves beautiful and glorious beings. In other places you find that is so.

But they covered it in the presence of the Lord. Whatever they were in themselves, they covered it in the presence of the Lord and in the service of the Lord. They hid themselves. They hid themselves.

That is just different, isn't it? From a very great deal of what is called Christian work. It is used to bring people into prominence. Many there are that uncover themselves in the work of the Lord. And you only see them.

You encounter them. They are in view, but these who fulfill the true heavenly ministry to God cover themselves. In a spirit of deep reverence, awe, humility is fulfilled. With two, they covered their feet, symbols of their goings, their walk, their ways, their work.

And this was all their cover. Their government. All very much in subjection to that throne. They are before the throne. They are in the presence of the Holy God. And all their ways, their walk and their work is governed by this sense of holiness and reverence.

It is under the Lord's government. These are not just running hither and thither, doing this and doing that according to their own whims and fancies and impulses and ideas. It's all governed under the restraint of heaven.

They cover their feet. And with two, they fly. Their flying is only at his behest. All their goings are in obedience. They fly to do his will. Their flying will be very swift and very immediate. To discern intuitively his mind about any matter will find them instantly.

This is the nature of the servant of the Lord. Obedient, governed, restrained, humble to do his will when it is known. Retrained, they did fly. And one cried to the other, holy is the Lord of hosts. What is that?

I think that is the essence of everything. The essence of all their ministry. The essence of heavenly ministry. When you come to get a look into heaven at any time in the Bible, what is it that you find that is going on in heaven?

Worship, ceasing worship. That is the great thing that comes out in the consummation, isn't it? The book of the Revelation. The Lord's table this morning, we picked out three of the instances. This is the end.

Things now are at the end, the consummation of the ages. God is in the possession of the realization of his purpose through the Lamb. And heaven is just filled with worship. It's worship, worship, worship.

That's heavenly ministry. And what is worship? What is it? Worship, of course, is the service of the Lord. Because worship is God having his rights. God having his rights. Everything coming back to the Lord.

Everything being drawn God wants. That's worship. From the earth, from all things, held for him, directed toward him. He is the center and every stream flows toward him. That is the meaning of worship and that is the ultimate and supreme service.

They worship. Worship should characterize everything in our lives. Our home should be held for the Lord. So that they become not just places where we have five, ten minutes or an hour or two of prayer, worshiping the Lord.

The things should be for the Lord. All of it for the Lord. And everything that we have should be a matter of worship. We hold it for God. Everything. Our whole lives should be God-worn in every matter.

That is service. That is servanthood. To see that God has his place and his rights and comes into everything. One cry to another saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. Next. What you might expect, what we might expect, and what would certainly happen if this did come to us as a vision.

Brokenness, Cleansing, and Anointing for Service

If ours was an open heaven like this, the servants undoing, undoing is me. Be said to profit on that matter. Let me sum it up by saying this. You'll never, never be a servant of the Lord according to Jesus Christ.

On his principle of self. Until you have come very low. That's one way of putting it. He honored the Father. How he honored the Father. However and always and in all. He was the slave of the Father's honor and glory.

It was never his of himself to say he personally was unclean. The man of unclean lives. Dear friends, let there be no mistake about it. The way of servanthood is the way of the shattering of this self-life.

The exposing of our own. Does that bring you some hope? He struggled to take some hope out of that. Certainly does take infinite pains to break us, to empty us. To bring us down to the dust as his servants.

But if this has anything to say of encouragement and comfort. It says this. This is the way of service. It's the way of the greater service. The way of being able minister to the Lord. Shall we put it the other way?

Here to begin with in this universe somewhere. We don't know, don't know where. There was one great glorious being who was a minister. A minister of God. The anointed cherub. When he became self-important and sought to have the root of the matter in himself.

And be self-sufficient. He lost his ministry for all eternity. He lost his place in the glory as that grace. And that is ever true. Any pride, any self-esteem, self-sufficiency, self-confidence, self-centeredness of any kind.

Any selfishness and usefulness to God. No mistake about it. So it was necessary in the reaction of God to the situation both in Israel and in the church. The vessel should come into being for his recovery purpose.

And it's very empty. It has been thoroughly emptied and weakened and broken. And brought to the place where there's nothing to say but woe is me. That opens a prospect when we get there as it did with Isaiah.

The woe. The servant's undoing first. And then through the undoing. The anointing. The anointing. For what I see here is the feature of the anointing. The living coal from the altar. Blood soaked with the sacrifice.

Alive with the fire in it. Living coal. Blood and the spirit together. The twin symbols of cleansing and empowerment. Back in the Levitical system it was like that, wasn't it? The blood and the fire of the altar.

That was for the cleansing of the priesthood. And that was for the constituting them, the servants of God. Divine unction. So the servant's anointing, but mark you, he had to know the power of the blood in his own experience.

All true service to God has got to come from a personal knowledge of the virtue of the blood. Tremendous effectiveness and efficacy of that blood has got to be deeply rooted not in our doctrine and theory, but in our experience, in our history.

Oh, the infinite value of the blood. Respondingly the infinite power of the spirit. Must know that in our experience. The fire of God which purges, which cleanses, but which also energizes. That's the servant's equipment.

The Servant's Call and the Cost of Unpopular Ministry

And when you get there, the servant's call, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, who will go for us and whom shall I send? And that sounds very much like a contradiction of what I said last night. There is nothing voluntary about this service.

It's compulsory. But it's not a contradiction. Think a little more below the surface. No, this service is compulsory. It's the service of the bond slave who has no option, no alternative, and no rights.

Yet here it is, suspended, so to speak, in the air, waiting for an answer, waiting for a volunteer. Think again. Maybe, and yet, see how everything had been very personal with this man up to this point.

First of all, he had a name. Isaiah, the salvation of the Lord. By his very birth and name, his ministry is implied. There's a sense of destiny in the very title that he has. Most of you don't understand that, but some of you may do.

Some of you may do. But right from earliest days, you had a sense, though you were not saved, you didn't know the Lord, but you had a sense of there being something more than just this life and this earth and this world bound up with your existence.

Right there. Might I illustrate my own experience? I don't mean to imply that I am any good as a servant, but I happen to be in the Lord's service. Is that the wrong way to put it? But there is something sovereign about it.

I remember when I was a little fellow of about five, six, or seven years of age, a relative of mine took me to see one of those Scottish divines, the old type, of the Andrew Bonner, a Dr. Bleck. Then he was the aged 82-year-old minister of the great Wellington Church in Glasgow.

And I remember I never thought anything about this in my little life. It occurred to me, she took me into his room to study, and she sat down, and he put his hand on my shoulder and drew me to his side, and he looked at me, mad boy.

When you grow up, you're going to be a minister. No such idea had ever occurred to me, to be a minister, because it shouldn't at six or seven years old. But I remember that something stared in me when he said that.

And old, without knowing what I was saying, I simply said, I would like to be. He put his hand on my head. God bless you, my boy, and make you one of his servants. And I have to say that though years came in, there was not very much of the Lord's service or the Lord's glory in those years.

That never left me. It held something in me, like a sense of destiny. Now, is that worth saying, by way of illustration? It may be true with you, or it may not be true. You see, Isaiah had something like that by his very name.

By his very name. It was there. And then, as I have said, all this, all this was so personal to him, wasn't it? That he had been given a heavenly vision, and all these wonderful aspects and features. He had been touched by the living coal, and he had heard the voice of the seraph.

Listen, and thine iniquity is pardoned. What more do you want to make a servant, and to convince any man that he's a man with a call, that he is, before he has committed himself, he is apprehended of God.

Apprehended of God. There's nothing voluntary about that. That's all sovereign, from God's side. What about this, this suspended call, whom shall I send, and whom will go first? Why that seeming optional element of it?

I think for this, not to make him a servant, not to make him Isaiah the prophet. That was all settled in the sovereignty of God. But look at what he'd got to do. You read the last part, the last section of the chapter.

My word, he was called to no popular work. He was called to nothing that was going to make him, nothing in this that was going to give him personal gratification. No, this was no popular, no pleasant work, so it was called.

Could ever a man be called to anything more heartbreaking and more distressing? Look at it again. Go, this people, hear ye indeed, but understand not. How do you like that, minister? That is the failure of your ministry right at the outset.

That's failure written over it from the beginning. See ye indeed, and but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, shut their eyes, lest they see and hear and understand.

What about it? The Lord doesn't leave us in any doubt on this matter. Look here. If you are going to do me true service, you're not going to be a popular preacher. You're not going to get anything out of this for yourself.

You're going to have a difficult time. They indeed, for the more part, will not receive your word. They won't like what you say. And if tradition is true, Isaiah was the man who was thorn asunder in the end.

Martyrdom lay in the line of this ministry, this service. Will you accept it? Will you? Will you? Not will you be a prophet, not will you be a servant, but will you serve me? Though you get nothing out of it.

That's perhaps where the voluntary element comes in. Lord is not going to force this on us. He looks for cooperation. He wants us to know what we're involved in. He wants us to face this thing quite squarely.

Look it right in the eyes. Say, this kind of ministry, of the remnant standing for God's full thought, is not what all Israels will take to kindly. Indeed, every kind and form of rejection will be met.

You'll be despised and rejected of men. The prophet was well mixed up with that language. He entered into the experience of the one whom he saw. The one of chapter 53, despised and rejected of men. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Isaiah knew a lot about that. And be sure, don't have any illusions about this. I know the ideas of young men wanting to go into the ministry and the service and the Lord's work and become a great evangelist, or a great preacher, or something else great.

That's not it. The nearer you get to the heart of God, the more deeply you are baptized into the full thought and purpose of God. The smaller will be your following and clientele. The narrower will be your way of acceptance.

The less popular will your ministry be. That is what is said here. And lest, dear friends, you, after all this, may be thinking in personal terms only, a prophet. Here we are, a number of sisters, a number of brothers, a number of young people.

That all may be all right for a prophet like Isaiah, but where do I come into that? Have you not heard what I've been trying to say? That this service and ministry is the ministry of a company, as well as of individuals.

A remnant. That you can fulfill this very service and ministry, not individually and separately, but by reason of your relatedness to a remnant. To a body of the Lord's people who are standing for Him in this way.

Fulfill it just as truly. Collectively or corporately as individually. And you'll know this. You'll meet all this by reason of your relationships and associations. You'll meet it. Not because of yourself, but because of that.

Well, I need say no more about that. But here we are. I think the situation is clearly defined as to servant and servanthood in Jesus Christ. All this was true of Him, the Great Savior. And if the Master went that way, we His lesser servants.

Send me.