A Tozer
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.—Matt. 5:3
Before the Lord God made man upon the earth,
He first prepared for him by creating a world of useful and pleasant things for
his sustenance and delight. In the Genesis account of the creation these are
called simply "things." They were made for man's uses, but they were
meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep
heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him
was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him.
But sin has introduced complications and has
made those very gifts of God a potential source of ruin to the soul.
Our woes began when God was forced out of His
central shrine and "things" were allowed to enter. Within the human
heart "things" have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace
within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral
dusk stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on
the throne.
This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate
analysis of our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough
fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It
covets "things" with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns
"my" and "mine" look innocent enough in print, but their
constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the
old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal
symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things,
and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary
to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place
of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
Our Lord referred to this tyranny of things
when He said to His disciples, "If any man will come after me, let him
deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his
life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find
it."
Breaking this truth into fragments for our
better understanding, it would seem that there is within each of us an enemy
which we tolerate at our peril. Jesus called it "life" and
"self," or as we would say, the self-life. Its chief
characteristic is its possessiveness: the words "gain" and
"profit" suggest this. To allow this enemy to live is in the end to
lose everything. To repudiate it and give up all for Christ's sake is to lose
nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto life eternal. And possibly
also a hint is given here as to the only effective way to destroy this foe: it
is by the Cross. "Let him take up his cross and follow me."
The way to deeper knowledge of God is through
the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed
ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing
and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the
"poor in spirit." They have reached an inward state paralleling the
outward circumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem; that is
what the word "poor" as Christ used it actually means. These blessed
poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the
yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by
surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all
things. "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Let me exhort you to take this seriously. It
is not to be understood as mere Bible teaching to be stored away in the mind
along with an inert mass of other doctrines. It is a marker on the road to
greener pastures, a path chiselled against the steep sides of the mount of God.
We dare not try to by-pass it if we would follow on in this holy pursuit. We
must ascend a step at a time. If we refuse one step we bring our progress to an
end.
As is frequently true, this New Testament
principle of spiritual life finds its best illustration in the Old Testament.
In the story of Abraham and Isaac we have a dramatic picture of the surrendered
life as well as an excellent commentary on the first Beatitude.
Abraham was old when Isaac was born, old
enough indeed to have been his grandfather, and the child became at once the
delight and idol of his heart. From that moment when he first stooped to take
the tiny form awkwardly in his arms, he was an eager love slave of his son. God
went out of His way to comment on the strength of this affection. And it is not
hard to understand. The baby represented everything sacred to his father's
heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years and the long
messianic dream. As he watched him grow from babyhood to young manhood the
heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till
at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous. It was then that God stepped
in to save both father and son from the consequences of an uncleansed love.
"Take now thy son," said God to
Abraham, "thine only son Isaac, whom thou loves, and get thee into the
land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the
mountains which I will tell thee of." The sacred writer spares us a
close-up of the agony that night on the slopes near Beersheba when the aged man
had it out with his God, but respectful imagination may view in awe the bent
form and convulsive wrestling alone under the stars. Possibly not again until a
Greater than Abraham wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane did such mortal pain
visit a human soul. If only the man himself might have been allowed to die.
That would have been easier a thousand times, for he was old now, and to die
would have been no great ordeal for one who had walked so long with God.
Besides, it would have been a last sweet pleasure to let his dimming vision
rest upon the figure of his stalwart son who would live to carry on the
Abrahamic line and fulfil in himself the promises of God made long before in Ur
of the Chaldees.
How should he slay the lad! Even if he could
get the consent of his wounded and protesting heart, how could he reconcile the
act with the promise, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called"? This was
Abraham's trial by fire, and he did not fail in the crucible. While the stars
still shone like sharp white points above the tent where the sleeping Isaac
lay, and long before the grey dawn had begun to lighten the east, the old saint
had made up his mind. He would offer his son as God had directed him to do, and
then trust God to raise him from the dead. This, says the writer to the
Hebrews, was the solution his aching heart found sometime in the dark night,
and he rose "early in the morning" to carry out the plan. It is
beautiful to see that, while he erred as to God's method, he had correctly
sensed the secret of His great heart. And the solution accords well with the
New Testament Scripture, "Whosoever will lose for my sake shall
find."
God let the suffering old man go through with
it up to the point where He knew there would be no retreat, and then forbade
him to lay a hand upon the boy. To the wondering patriarch He now says in
effect, "It's all right, Abraham. I never intended that you should
actually slay the lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your
heart that I might reign unchallenged there. I wanted to correct the perversion
that existed in your love. Now you may have the boy, sound and well. Take him
and go back to your tent. Now I know that thou fears God, seeing that thou hast
not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me."
Then heaven opened and a voice was heard
saying to him, "By myself have I sworn, says the Lord, for because thou
hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in
blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the
stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed
shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of
the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice."
The old man of God lifted his head to respond
to the Voice, and stood there on the mount strong and pure and grand, a man
marked out by the Lord for special treatment, a friend and favorite of the Most-High.
Now he was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man who
possessed nothing. He had concentrated his all in the person of his dear son,
and God had taken it from him. God could have begun out on the margin of
Abraham's life and worked inward to the center; He chose rather to cut quickly
to the heart and have it over in one sharp act of separation. In dealing thus
He practiced an economy of means and time. It hurt cruelly, but it was
effective.
I have said that Abraham possessed nothing.
Yet was not this poor man rich? Everything he had owned before was his still to
enjoy: sheep, camels, herds, and goods of every sort. He had also his wife and
his friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side. He had
everything, but he possessed nothing. There is the spiritual secret.
There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the
school of renunciation. The books on systematic theology overlook this, but the
wise will understand.
After that bitter and blessed experience I
think the words "my" and "mine" never had again the same
meaning for Abraham. The sense of possession which they connote was gone from
his heart. Things had been cast out forever. They had now become
external to the man. His inner heart was free from them. The world said,
"Abraham is rich," but the aged patriarch only smiled. He could not
explain it to them, but he knew that he owned nothing, that his real treasures
were inward and eternal.
There can be no doubt that this possessive
clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits in the life. Because it is
so natural it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is; but its outworkings
are tragic.
We are often hindered from giving up our
treasures to the Lord out of fear for their safety; this is especially true
when those treasures are loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such
fears. Our Lord came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we
commit to Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.
Our gifts and talents should also be turned
over to Him. They should be recognized for what they are, God's loan to us, and
should never be considered in any sense our own. We have no more right to claim
credit for special abilities than for blue eyes or strong muscles. "For
who makes thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou did not
receive?"
The Christian who is alive enough to know
himself even slightly will recognize the symptoms of this possession malady,
and will grieve to find them in his own heart. If the longing after God is
strong enough within him, he will want to do something about the matter. Now,
what should he do?
First of all, he should put away all defence
and make no attempt to excuse himself either in his own eyes or before the
Lord. Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defence, and he will
have no other; but let him come defenceless before the Lord and he will have
for his defender no less than God Himself. Let the inquiring Christian trample
under foot every slippery trick of his deceitful heart and insist upon frank
and open relations with the Lord.
Then he should remember that this is holy
business. No careless or casual dealings will suffice. Let him come to God in
full determination to be heard. Let him insist that God accept his all, that He
take things out of his heart and Himself reign there in power. It may be
he will need to become specific, to name things and people by their names one
by one. If he will become drastic enough, he can shorten the time of his
travail from years to minutes and enter the good land long before his slower
brethren who coddle their feelings and insist upon caution in their dealings
with God.
Let us never forget that such a truth as this
cannot be learned by rote as one would learn the facts of physical science.
They must be experienced before we can really know them. We must in our
hearts live through Abraham's harsh and bitter experiences if we would know the
blessedness which follows them. The ancient curse will not go out painlessly;
the tough old miser within us will not lie down and die obedient to our
command. He must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the soil; he must
be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw. He must be expelled
from our soul by violence as Christ expelled the money changers from the
temple. And we shall need to steel ourselves against his piteous begging, and
to recognize it as springing out of self-pity, one of the most reprehensible
sins of the human heart.
If we would indeed know God in growing
intimacy we must go this way of renunciation. And if we are set upon the
pursuit of God He will sooner or later bring us to this test. Abraham's testing
was, at the time, not known to him as such, yet if he had taken some course
other than the one he did, the whole history of the Old Testament would have
been different. God would have found His man, no doubt, but the loss to Abraham
would have been tragic beyond the telling. So, we will be brought one by one to
the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing
place there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an
alternative, but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.
Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou may enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
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