Pioneers of the Heavenly Way # 16

Israel Under the Leadership of Moses

Then there is that phase, so large that I hardly dare touch on it at the moment - Israel under the leadership of Moses. It was one long drawn out issue of the heavenly and the earthly. All those forty years of the nation in the wilderness were just that - the issue of the heavenly and the earthly being fought out. They had been brought out to be a heavenly people; to have all their resources, all their support and succour, from heaven; to be in this world and not of it. If ever that is true - to be in the world and not of it - it is true in a wilderness.

The Divine thought was the making of a  large place for heaven. There was a large place for heaven in that wilderness. Everything from the Divine side was to be heavenly. The people were constituted on heavenly principles for the constituting of the nation. It was all coming from heaven. Their whole relationship to God in the wilderness, as centered in the tabernacle, came out of heaven: it was the pattern shown in the mount. It was heavenly; nothing was left to man and his judgment at all. Their going from day to day was out from heaven - by means of the pillar of cloud and fire. It was all heavenly. What warfare there was, was heavenly: Moses on the top of the hill with hands uplifted, the battle going on in the valley. Heaven is directing this warfare: it is heavenly warfare. It was all learning the meaning of the heavenly way, in every aspect. 

But they failed to learn those lessons. They would come down to earth, they would reject the heavenly. It was too hard, it was too difficult for the flesh, it was too uncertain. It was such dependence, it was such helplessness so far as self was concerned. They could not help themselves - and we do want to help ourselves in this business. It was all so heavenly. But it was most real. Those who know anything about it know that heavenly things are the most real, that spiritual things are far more real than other things. But they would not have the heavenly way, they would have the earthly; and they repudiated it all and perished, on the earth, in the wilderness.

Joshua and Caleb took up all those lessons of the schooling of Moses and Israel, in themselves. They learned the lessons, they apprehended the heavenly truth, and they took the next generation over - a heavenly generation.

Well, all that may be regarded as history, as what is in the Bible: but I am sure that many of you are reading your own history. Is it not so true in principle to what we are going through, to what God is doing with us - defeating us, bewildering us, bringing us to an end, to an emptiness and helplessness? - and yet, by some mighty power that we do not feel, of which we are not conscious, we are going on; we are being drawn out and drawn up. It is the story of so many survivals, when it would seem that all has gone: that we are lost, we have failed, broken down, disappointed the Lord; there can be no future.

But there is a future. We have continued. There is something from beyond that is all the time holding us on, and it may be that today our hearts are more set upon what is of God than every they were. And why is that? Not because we have been more successful, not because we have been less full of failure and weakness. No; rather because we have learned the lesson of our own weakness. We know today, better than ever we knew it, that "in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing" (Romans 7:18) - and yet today the Lord has a stronger purchase upon us than ever. What is this? This is a mystery. Oh, thank God it is true! Thank God for His sovereign grace! There are the evidences that He has called us with a great calling and that He will not be satisfied until He has brought us right through to His own full end. May we follow on, whatever the cost. [Amen]

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 17 - "Jordan - A Change of Situation")