Reality Through the Cross — T. Austin-Sparks

I have often said to friends, when we get to glory, at last, we shall look at one another and just say, well, we are here. We never, or often thought, it would not be. We wonder, at last. Our being here, this evening, in this place, is a very small representation of that great truth and reality.

It's been battle all the way. We were ready and started out early yesterday morning. Frustration found us, six o 'clock or half past six in the evening, back again in our home, after being in airport, other places, all day long.

When we got away this morning, and just as we were going through to the plane, the loudspeaker called, will Mr. Austin Fox please call at the PWA desk to see the representative. And I said, hello, what's this one?

Well, we got away, and as our brothers would tell you, we took the wrong turning this evening on our way from Washington, and went, I suppose, 20 miles out of our way. And I said, here's another one. But here we are.

And that's how it will be. It has often been frustrations, many problems, many difficulties along the way. And sometimes, shall we ever get there? That is, to glory. But we shall. It was early this morning, reading the word before setting out again, and I get this.

Jesus Christ, He is Lord of all. And that came, as you see, right in the midst of all this yesterday and today. And we just had to lay hold of that. He is Lord of all. Now that, by way of introduction, and we spend no more time on personal matters, for this little while, you will not expect too much, I'm sure, for my time, my time, as London time, is 20 minutes to one in the morning.

The Fear of Spiritual Unreality

Well, the Lord will help us. I do not think that I shall get really into that which is on my heart for ministry this week, just now. But I think I can move toward it in this way, by reminding you that there is one fear that ought to be characteristic of every true Christian.

I know there's much that forbids fear, tells us to fear not. Very much about that. That's a kind of fear that we must not indulge in. But there is one fear ought to characterize every true Christian. And that is the fear of unreality.

The fear of having divine truth without divine power. Of having divine light without divine character. Of having knowledge of things without the formation of Christ in our lives. A great deal of teaching without it becoming effective in our lives.

That is what I mean by unreality. Teaching through mental knowledge given to us in ministry and in book form, and yet the corresponding light of everything. The test will never be how much we know of what is in the Bible.

How much we have received. The test will be, ever and always, what does that amount in our case, in a practical way. Now that is the burden with which I have come here. I don't know whether the devil has been trying to play upon my fear and my reservation.

Or, in a very real sense, I have not wanted to abound. In another sense, yes. But in a very real sense, afraid of more talking, of biblical content. I have been doing it, you see, for so many years. Sixty years I have been preaching.

And I, at this time, have to look out and say, what has it amounted to? All without blessing or trust. The mounting of teaching over these years. By the assurance that if I go and do more, it's going to lead somewhere.

That's my fear, my question. So I want, right at the beginning, I don't know what has been said to you already last night and today. But this is what I want to say as I come amongst you. That we must have this fear, this right kind of fear.

I believe a divine fear. That we do not fill our notebooks or our minds every time as far as there is something that can really affect us or result in something. So far as we are concerned, we are going to apply our hearts day by day.

And when the days are different, that's the only justification of our coming here. We certainly are not the same spiritual life at the end as when we came. It does not require a very deep knowledge of the Lord Jesus.

His life, His movement amongst people, His teaching. It does not require profound knowledge to recognize that this was a characteristic of Himself. The one thing that He hated with all the beautiful things that He said, the kind things, the gracious things He said and did.

He said some terrible words of wrath, anger came out of His mouth like a fiery sword. Some of His denunciations are really terrible, really terrible. It was this element about Him. It was about His forerunner John the Baptist.

John the Baptist said some pretty terrible things, but you get the literal meaning and statement of what He said. In turn, these people who had come out from Jerusalem, see Him, hear Him. He said, you generation of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the Lord?

You get the picture. There's a bush fire. It's spreading, and as it spreads, the vipers leap out and make for the river, escape the flames. John says that's what some of you people are doing, coming down here to the river where I'm baptizing.

You're a generation of vipers, just seeking to escape the wrath. That's a pretty terrible thing to say to people. The Lord Jesus said, equally strong things, ye hypocrites. You whited, separate, fierce with this passion for reality.

One thing He could not tolerate was hypocrisy, falsehood, unreality, pretense, make-believe, play-acting reality. Nicodemus, great teacher in Israel, somewhat upholder of the best traditions. He's not going to escape.

He will be told, very frankly, that it counts for nothing in the kingdom of God. If, this is the effect of the Lord's word, if there is not reality, and what Christ meant by reality is the heavenliness of nature.

Not even the best nature amongst men, but another, by another belt. Well, I need to say a little more. It's perfectly clear that the one thing that Jesus was set upon with all his heart was that there should be no gap whatever.

Truth, Doctrine, and Character United

Truth as truth, teaching as teaching, doctrine as doctrine, Bible knowledge as Bible knowledge, heavenly character. No gap between the two. One may be very good, but if it stops short of this, nothing after all.

The Lord Jesus was so definitely set upon this reality, and He is now. And I want you to remember and to note both the Bible in its teaching and history as it unfolds and is moving now so swiftly toward its consummation.

Both the scriptures and history, and especially the end of this dispensation. Are marked by this. As we go on with God, if we are, let me put it this way, if we are going on with God, and as we go on with God, we shall have a deepening, deepening concern about reality.

That is, the very essence of things will become more and more our concern. You see, the parables of the Lord Jesus were on that line. What about the wheat and the so-called tares? Well, the suggestion of it was, let's pluck up the tares.

The Lord said, in so doing, you may destroy the wheat as well. Let a process ensue. Give it time, and sure, sure, as can be in time, that process of intensification will reveal without any doubt a possibility of making a mistake.

What is what, and which is which. And other parables were on the same principle. You see, the sower itself, such a simple parable it seems. But what is it? One sowing, two sowing, three sowing. Reality in two degrees.

Less or more. Measure of reality. The issue is this. In the end, after all the giving of the word, all the broadcasting of the truth, all the preaching of the gospel, in the end, what is the criterion?

Not how much has been given, or how much has been, in a general way, received of the real thing, comes out at last. Of course, I spend much time on the word, showing that, both in the teaching of the Lord himself and later New Testament.

Reality Tested Through History and Spiritual Conflict

But history is bearing this out, that it was a true law, a true principle. Who is so blind today amongst Christians to see this process of intensification? It has tested everything in China to the last degree.

What is going to be found after all the years of missionary enterprise and expense and cost and what not? What is going to be found in the end? That is the thing that stands eternally. It is spreading all over the world, isn't it?

Some of these dear Christians in Africa, in Egypt today, in Israel today. It is coming on, you know. It is coming on here. Sovereignty of God is going to press it over. After all that I have given to the nations of this world, after all that has come to people from heaven, during these centuries, will there be?

That is essential reality. Am I wrong? Isn't it obvious? It is patient. Even if there are not the outward persecutions in our part of the world, the western hemisphere, that there are in the east. My mail, dear friends, brings continually letters everywhere.

People, dear people of God say, I never in my life knew so much pressure as I am knowing today. Spiritual pressure. Spiritual trials. Sometimes I just do not know where I am. Which way to turn or to look.

Conflict is so intense. Some of you here perhaps know something about that. It is increasingly difficult to, in the utter way. The enemy is going to stop that if he can, by any means. And so we are here, we will be receiving from one another much I trust from the Lord that must not be the end of it.

We have heard it. We know it. But let us step back and say, but do I? Now dear friends, I am not standing before you to preach. That is not the idea. I want to say to you, that after these many years of seeking to walk with the Lord and know the Lord and to serve the Lord, minister to the Lord and to his people with a very wide and I think deep experience spiritually.

I say to you that the year between now and when we were here before has been the most terrible year in my life. From a spiritual standpoint, the conflict, the pressure, the intense determination of the devil that if it is possible he will get us out before we reach the end.

Does that sound too serious? Harry, no, I want to say to you that you are bound sooner or later to come up against this issue. Has all that I am, life to me, my very life, a part of my being here, stored here, of it being otherwise.

I expect somebody will say to me afterwards, well you have put a heavy load on, you have got heaviness on the whole thing. No, no. No, this has got to be a time of fortification. Knowing the Lord in an inward way, of an increase of Christ to go through triumphantly to the end.

Having stood and risked triumphant on the field. Now that just brings me to the point I can only indicate what it is that I feel the Lord is going to have me say to you this week. All that I have been saying and the much more that I could say on this matter of reality is focused, in the word of God, is focused, concentrated and summed up in one thing.

The Cross as the Central Reality

Apart from the person of the Lord Jesus, take that for granted, that after the recognition of the place, the immense place of the Lord Jesus, the next thing in the Bible which is central, which is supreme, which is all-governing and which is persistent is the cross of the Lord Jesus.

The supreme reality but after himself, the predominant reality of the Bible is the cross. This one can truly contemplate the cross of our Lord Jesus. Being overwhelmed with the real because there is no fiction about that, no imagination about that, no pretense about that.

Terribly, terribly real was that cross to him, to his first disciple. And the cross is not only a reality in history, the New Testament makes it perfectly clear that the cross is as real in experience for the child of God as ever it was in history.

Today, just as real in the spiritual experience and history of the child of God as it was when it was enacted those centuries ago at that spot called Calvary. Why it is so real is for us to see in a little time we shall have this week.

But I want to draw your attention to this, focus it upon this as the central reality in God's universe, in creation, in human history. The Apostle Paul of our book is either explicit or implicit. That is, it is either definitely referred to, mentioned, brought clearly into view or it is implied.

It is in the very heart of things as you read through your New Testament. In the Gospels, the four Gospels, they vary in their content. What one writer leaves out, another puts in. Find only a little of John in the others.

They all have their own different teaching, work of the Lord. But they are on common ground over this one thing. Not one of them fails to head everything. They crown all they have said. And John says that what he had written was a mere modicum of what he could have written.

He said if everything was to be put down, the world would not contain the books. Was he exaggerating? Well, we have learned through two thousand years that the world is full of the books and they are still pouring out whatever it wants.

The lesser or the greater measure, one of them fails to make this perfectly clear, that the cross is the crown, is the great and consummate point of everything, which gives meaning to everything else, both the person, the work and the teaching.

The Cross in the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles

The cross it is that gives power to everything else. Common ground there. Whatever they have had to say, they all find themselves being laid up for that one thing, the end. But in the gospels it is the historic fact, something enacted in history at a certain time, in a certain place, because of certain things.

It took place in history, it had to be like that. When you move over from the gospels to the book of the Acts, you find that out of the history has come a gospel, a preaching. And those who are found in that book are heralds of the cross.

Note the place that they give to the cross and how they hold everything to that center. The day of Pentecost, Peter has come to see now what he didn't see at the time that he denied his law, comes to see now and now he is telling the people very frankly and very strongly that the cross is the key to everything that has happened, whom ye crucify, God raised.

Out of that everything proceeds and the whole book of the Acts is based upon the cross. The heralds of the cross are going forth to the ends of the earth. You move on to the letters that are called the epistles.

You will find, as I have said, the cross is either explicit or implicit in every one. That is what we are going to see, I trust, as far as we can get. But in every one of these, some particular aspect and application of the cross is brought to life, applied.

It is the cross being applied on this situation, on that situation. Because of this and because of that, every letter has in it in some way the law, the principle of the cross to touch a particular need or condition or state and situation.

There is a many-sided cross running right through all these letters. This and with this I... This surely is enough to impress us. There is something here we have got to know and understand more than we do about this, about this message.

The Cross Beyond Conversion

I told you last year how tired I am. People write that I am a kind of either a crank or an expert on this matter of what they call the message of the cross. The Lord save us from the message of the cross.

It shows us the tremendous significance of this in Christianity. Not only as basic to becoming a Christian. The cross as the cross where I first saw the light and the burden of my heart rolled away. That's good.

Never get away from that blessedness. But dear friends, that's not all that the cross has got to say. It is going to follow us through for years if we are going to move with God. We shall not have got away from the cross.

We will need it as much at the end as at any time beginning or subject. I think a call may sound strange. You perhaps know the phrase, what are called the Victorians. The Victorian you are. Does it convey anything to you?

Well, if you don't know about the phrase you will find it in your hymn books. The Victorians I think had them already at risk. The place of the cross for the end of the Christian life. They may have been a bit morbid.

I think they were a bit. For so many of those hymns you know. You take up Moody and Tanky's hymn book. You know how many hymns you will find closing with the last gasp of breath when I pass. It sounds a bit morbid doesn't it?

I did hear, I think it was Miss Carmichael of Donovo. Does it convey anything to you? I think it was she who said she was a child and taken to church. She was weary with the church service and not least with the preacher.

She opened her hymn book and made a study of all the people were going to say when they died. A collection of all their last words in the hymn. When the last breath sounds morbid. Depressing. We don't sing those hymns so much today.

Some of them. But I think those people had a more ready apprehension of the place of the deliverance. The victory. The triumph of the cross at the end. Perhaps we put so much emphasis upon the beginning of the Christian life and the place of the cross there.

Thank God. Thank God for it. Never lose our appreciation of that. But we are going to need all that mighty work of the cross more and more as we go on with God. And at the end, yes, we are going to need to know the reality of what Christ has done by his cross and what that cross stands for.

For us. For time. And our eternal destiny. Well that's my introduction. I do feel that I want, I want right at this point, coming on this. Dear friends, get adjusted in mind and heart over this week if you have not already done so.

Receiving Truth as Spiritual Transformation

You may have already had the appeal, I don't know. But get adjusted to this. I am not here just to get my notebook full of what the preachers are saying. Either to have it for myself or to use it for some other people.

I'm not here to accumulate fresh stores of truth. I'm here to come under the hand of God that he may effect in me what yet remains to be effected and can be at this time. Would you adjust to this? Say to the Lord, at the close of this day, and every day, and morning, and all now, effecting something.

If it's going to be the word like a sharp two-edged sword piercing to dividing asunder. Alright Lord, better that than that I should be whole in unreality. Would you do that? Lord help me. I trust that although what I have said may seem to make the cross rather terrible, rather dreadful.

I trust we shall see the other side and be really with the apostle. Forbid that I should glory, glory, save in the cross. May the glory of the cross come to us as well as it shall in a new way.