The Altar and the Name

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 8 - The Transformation of Values by the Cross

In continuance of our theme - the Cross and the Name of the Lord - we have one more fragment for this evening, and in that connection I will ask you to turn again to the book of Judges, chapter 7, verses 16-22:

"And he (Gideon) divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he put into the hands of all of them trumpets, and empty pitchers, with torches within the pitchers. And he said unto them, Look on me, and do likewise; and, behold, when I come to the outermost part of the camp, it shall be that, as I do, so shall ye do. When I blow the trumpet, I and all that are with me, then blow ye the trumpets also on every side of all the camp, and say, For the Lord and for Gideon. So Gideon, and the hundred men that were with him, came unto the outermost part of the camp in the beginning of the middle watch, when they had but newly set the watch; and they blew the trumpets, and brake in pieces the pitchers that were in their hands. And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the torches in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands wherewith to blow; and they cried, The sword of the Lord and of Gideon. And they stood every man in his place round about the camp; and all the host ran; and they shouted and put them to flight. And they blew the three hundred trumpets, and the Lord set every man's sword against his fellow, and against all the host; and the host fled as far as Beth-Shittah towards Zererah, as far as the border of Abelmeholah, by Tabbath."

I would like to read in that connection the whole of the second chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians, but I cannot do that because of time, but I will just take out the fragment around which everything else gathers - "Jesus Christ, and Him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2). You will keep before you that chapter to note its context as we go on.

What has engaged our attention today has been this matter of the Cross and the Name of the Lord, and we have been seeking to show that the Name which was so mighty, so powerful, so effective in the early days of the Church, by which the church advanced, by which all its wonderful work was accomplished, the Name of Jesus represents and embodies all the values of His Cross. I cannot go back even a little over the ground that we have covered in that connection.

The Transformation of Values

This evening we take this further fragment of that which is gathered into the Name, without which the using of the Name of Jesus has no meaning or value, it is quite empty and ineffective - but with this content of the Cross it is still as powerful as ever. What I have to say to you this evening is about the transformation of values which the Cross brought about and embodied in the Name of the Lord Jesus; the transformation of values.

Until we, the people of God and the church of God, have really come into the meaning of this, and the meaning of this has come into us, and we really are grounded in it and it becomes a spiritual and living reality, the Name of Jesus may be used, but still it remains ineffective. It is, as in the other matters already spoken of, imperative to the church for effectiveness. The church is called by His Name. His Name is called upon the Church, but that can be an empty label and manner of speaking. It may be called 'the Christian Church', which means the church of Christ, it may be called that, and it may be an altogether ineffective thing. We may be called individually Christians, or Christ ones, and yet that may amount to very little in real impact upon the world around us. We need to know what it means, and again I say the Name means all that the Cross of our Lord Jesus meant. All the values of His Cross are transferred to the Name, so that it is the Cross and the Name.

Transformation by the Cross

This matter, then, of the transformation of values, is of very great importance. It is all gathered into that little phrase of two words - 'Christ crucified'. You will see by what the apostle said in this letter where those words occur, that he is placing that over a whole world and a whole system. He is putting that right up against another realm of things entirely which in itself was regarded as a very wonderful world, a very strong, wise world, a thing of which men boasted. The apostle simply puts right over against that, this - Christ crucified - and this is infinitely and transcendently more than all that. Christ crucified. This is a Name which is above every name, but it is the Name Christ crucified. He applies that to the sum total of this world's wisdom, that is the context, and it was a world which boasted of its wisdom, and indeed, in its realm, it had something to boast of. The wisdom of the Greeks is proverbial to this day. It was something, that wisdom of this world.

Power - he places over against the world's conception of power, the world's idea of power. And in their day they knew something about that, for the Grecian empire was in succession to empires of great power, and around the Grecian empire was this mighty empire of Rome, and they had some real ideas about power, and in its realm it was power indeed, and we have the monuments of it today. You can go about finding a good deal of interest in looking up the remaining marks of the power of that great empire. Yes, in its realm and in its way, it was no small thing; wisdom and power, but the apostle says quite clearly that Christ crucified leaves it all far behind in the shade, and makes it (and these are his words): nothing.

As for wisdom, you want to talk about wisdom? Why, the wisdom which outwits and outstrips all wisdom is found in Christ crucified. You talk about power and boast of power and have your ideas of power, I tell you, until you know Christ crucified, you really do not know what power is. Christ crucified is the wisdom of God and the power of God, and that has made the wisdom of this world foolishness, and the power of this world weak. Christ crucified - the Cross producing a complete transformation of values.

Now we are going to bring that down to a very simple form of presentation. As we go back to the story which we have just read, which has engaged us so much during these gatherings, the story of Gideon, and that particular part of the story which we lifted out this evening, Gideon, his three hundred, and the way they caused a multitude like locusts for number (or another description of them is 'like the sands of the seashore for number' spread right over the earth) how three hundred men caused that mighty, mighty mass simply to melt away from the earth as though they were nothing. It is true, it is not exaggeration, that is exactly what happened, there is the record.

The Earthen Vessels

How was it done? What was the wisdom of it, and what was the power of it? When we answer that, we have really got to the heart of the Cross of Christ, and by that we have come to understand the supremacy of the Name of the Lord. Look at it. It is very simple.

First of all, there were the pitchers, and earthenware pitchers or vessels. Most of you have no need that I dwell upon that. You can tell me as much about that as I can tell you. But there it is. But it is a great factor, a very, very great factor in this whole thing; the earthen vessels. But they were only earthen vessels, nothing very beautiful, nothing very wonderful either to look at, nor in their constitution. They might have been golden vessels, brass or iron, and they would have been useless for this purpose. The chief advantage of these vessels was their breakableness. Their frailty was their strategy. They in themselves were nothing, and they were of no value whatsoever in this great ordeal and contest until they were broken. But look what came of fragile, broken vessels.

Now, you know how much can be gathered into that. You know how the apostle Paul, construed that, interpreted that: "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves" (2 Cor. 4:7). You were waiting for that, were you not? But there it is. This is Christ crucified. The statement is made -"He was crucified through weakness" (2 Cor. 13:4). But, oh, Christ crucified by the power of God. "The weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Cor. 1:23), says the apostle. I am not going to stay with it. The thing conveys its own message, but let us be perfectly clear about this. If we are thinking about power and great achievements and wonderful accomplishments, seeing the enemy overthrown, defeated, cast out, seeing the work of God go forward with irresistible strength, if we are thinking like that, what do we think is necessary for that? A wonderful, wonderful organization, a wonderful lot of people with abilities and accomplishments and all that sort of thing? All right, try it. God is not thinking in that way, for we come back to this - "God chose the weak things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, yea and the things that are not, that He might bring to nought the things that are" (1 Cor. 1:28). Oh, that is a great comfort to all of us, and yet the deception of our own hearts is all the time contradicting that. We do not place a premium upon weakness. We do not regard this frailty as of any consequence with the Lord. But He does. Let it be understood that for His great achievements God must have, and will have, broken vessels.

Be careful how you construe brokenness, for, after all, it is the brokenness of our self-life. Some people have got ideas that certain kinds of weakness are the things that God is looking for, and He is not looking for that kind of weakness at all. It is the brokenness of the self-principle, the self-strength, all that can be gathered into that word 'self', or, if you like, into the simple pronoun 'I'; all that that means. When that is broken, God can do something, and that explains a lot. That is the way of possibilities, the way of prospects and promise. Be sure God will take no other way to get to His greatest ends. There were the pitchers, let me repeat, whose chief advantage and value was their frailty and their capacity for being broken. Oh, God help us!

The Lamps

Then the lamps, the lamps in the pitchers, and all we need say about that is this, that it is just there in the lamp that the power is. It is not in the pitcher, it is in the lamp within. It is Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27) and the ground and occasion for glory. I heard the other day of some people talking about 'Honor Oak' and the error at 'Honor Oak', and warning people about the error of 'Honor Oak', and when they were asked, "What is the error of 'Honor Oak'?", they said, "Oh, they believe in Christ in you". Well, if that is the error, I am thoroughly drowned in error and glory in it! It is the lamp, it is the flame: Christ in you. There lies the power.

But again, He does not commit Himself to self-sufficiency. He has got to be the alone sufficiency. "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves", says the apostle, "to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God; who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant" (2 Cor. 3:3). What is the sufficiency? Well, it is just Christ in you, the most glorious and most wonderful and most amazing thing. Oh, that is the amazing thing! When you think of that in a vessel, you say, "Well, that requires a very wonderful vessel...". It just does not. The Cross transforms these values altogether, and says just the opposite of what man says, "For a wonderful treasure, you must have a wonderful casket" and the Cross says, "No!" - for the greatest of all the treasures: an earthen vessel, fragile, breakable, in itself and in its own consciousness of its worthlessness. It is true. It is an explanation, and it ought to be a very real comfort to us that if the Lord is at work breaking us and bringing us to the place where we are overwhelmed with the consciousness of our own worthlessness, that does make possible something where the Lord is concerned. That is His way of getting values. I am certain that in the end the Church, being a corporate vessel of that kind, will prove what I have just said, that we should be to the glory of His grace. The lamp - that is all at the moment.

The Trumpets

There are one or two things about the trumpets that we need to take careful note of. Of course, the significance of the trumpet is a testimony, a proclamation, something that can be given, and people can hear and know. This trumpet was undoubtedly the trumpet of testimony, and its note was with no uncertainty. It was a note of absolute certainty. Now, that is a very simple thing to say, but you know the church is not blowing with one voice in absolute certainty. The church is very largely weakened, robbed of its effectiveness, because of its uncertainty, because its trumpet note is not clear and definite and emphatic and decided and final.

"Thus saith the Lord". Oh, how the church needs that today. Oh, for a note of certainty! 'This is what the Lord is after, this is what the Lord is doing, this is the purpose of God, and there is no doubt about it'. If the church were to speak with that voice of assurance and certainty, what a strong church it would be, and how the enemy would be routed. But it is not so, and this whole matter of the certainty of testimony is sabotaged by all kinds of doubts and questions and uncertainties and confusions in the ranks of the Lord's people. One says one thing and another says another, and they are all contradicting one another, and they are all claiming to have the Scripture for what they say. Well, the Spirit of God does not contradict Himself.

The New Testament makes it perfectly clear that the Holy Spirit speaks with one voice and one note, He is of one mind. If the Holy Spirit really is in charge, we shall all come to see alike on major things. I have no hesitation in saying that. If it is otherwise, somewhere the Holy Spirit has not got possession. Now it says here "But the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon and he blew the trumpet" (Judges 6:34). That is it. There was one clear decisive note struck by the Holy Spirit and there is power in that. The Cross deals with that dividedness, with the weakness which comes from uncertainty. The Cross of the Lord Jesus brings to us this absolute assurance both as to the Lord and as to His full and ultimate purpose. It does that. It undercuts all this other.

The trumpet is the testimony borne with absolute assurance. It is sounded in strength. I cannot think of Gideon or any of these men putting the trumpet to their mouths and feebly making a little noise. We can only think that when they took the trumpet, it sounded with a tremendous blast that reverberated throughout the ranks of the Midianites. They knew that the trumpet had sounded. It was something effective. Calvary and the Holy Spirit through the Cross makes not only for definiteness, but for strength. I have all the time, as I am speaking, so much more in the back of my mind, but amongst other things, that wonderful scene on the day of Pentecost. If ever those men were uncertain before, if when Christ had been crucified they were saying, 'Well, we had trusted that it was He who should redeem Israel, and beside all this, it is now the third day since these things came to pass, and we do not know what to make of it, and we are all just scattered and broken because we are so confused', look at the transformation on the day of Pentecost. They are standing up, and there is no weakness about their testimony now. Calvary has done something, and the Holy Spirit has brought the good of that in, and they are people standing in the strength of Christ crucified.

Another thing about the trumpet here. Although there were three hundred of them, they were as one. It was like one trumpet, one united sound and testimony, and the unity that was there was a very great factor. It was not one blowing, and then another blowing, and a little while afterward someone else blowing, and a few minutes after that the next fellow will have a blow, and they are all over the place, blowing here and there. That sounds funny, I know, but you see, we can sometimes get at the point that way. No, there was a unity about this, a oneness about this: in time, in strength, in mind, in purpose. We can say that the trumpet was the expression of a unity that was in those men.

We have seen (I dare not stay with the details) but we have seen earlier how those elements which would have made for weakness and disunity had been got rid of. A great company had been sent back because they were feeble, they were afraid, they were timid. Well, they would have taken from the unity. And a second company had been sent away, a large number, because, well, their hearts were not really in this business. But you have sifted down to the three hundred. They are as one man, and when it comes to the sound of the trumpet, it is not the shout of three hundred men and the Lord. It is one man and the Lord. They are all gathered, so to speak, into one man, as one man, and the trumpet declares their unity. Ah, yes, there is mighty, mighty divine strength in that. We have spent time earlier today in showing how the Cross dealt with discord and disunity - the earth touch where there is confusion. The Cross has dealt with that. In the church at the beginning we find that wonderful unity and oneness, born of the work of the Cross by the Holy Spirit, and they went forward terrible as an army with banners. They were a small company.

Finally about the trumpets, there was the distinctiveness of their testimony, and that is an important factor, the distinctiveness of testimony, that it is possible for people to know really what you are after, what you are getting at, what you are talking about, what it is that is in view. It is distinct, no blurred, confused sound or note. There is a great need for distinctiveness of testimony in the church today. I must not stay longer.

The Battle-cry

The next, the battle-cry. We have it here put in this way: the shout. They shouted, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon". But I find, I hope it does not dismay you, that that first part does not exist in the original text at all. "The sword" is not there. Oh, it comes presently. We will look at it by itself, but it does not come into the battle cry. Really the shout was not, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon", the shout was: "The Lord and Gideon". Perhaps you are wondering what is the difference, what is the particular value of that? Well, simply this. It was not the Lord alone on the one side. It was not just the Lord alone. We are so often crying to the Lord to do something. Oh, how much time and strength we spend in appealing to the Lord to do something, "Lord, do something! Lord, do this!", and we are expecting the Lord independently and just of Himself apart, to do the thing. We are waiting for the Lord, when the Lord may be waiting for us, waiting for us to be in the position and condition that gives Him His occasion and ground for doing what He wants to do. The Lord does not act apart from His Church. He requires His Church, but His church must be in the position of which we were speaking this afternoon - on heavenly ground, not earthly. No, you will wait to the end for the Lord to do it without instrumentality. He will not do it. He has chosen that it shall be by men.

But, on the other hand, it is not Gideon alone. It is not "Gideon" that is the shout. It is not man, it is not the instrument. That goes without saying here, these are together - the Lord and Gideon. Ah, but Gideon, a man so dealt with, that the Lord could commit Himself to him. It is a marvellous thing for the Lord to commit Himself like this, and in a battle-cry you can link things together like this. It almost seems scandalous to couple Jehovah (for it is Jehovah here) "Jehovah and Gideon". Ah, yes, but the Lord is ready and willing to commit Himself to those who are like Gideon. I am not going back again over the ground of Gideon's discipline, Gideon's sifting, Gideon's handling by the Lord until the Lord had subdued Gideon and won His victory in Gideon's soul, brought Gideon into subjection, to the place where he realized that, on the one hand, everything was impossible where he was concerned; on the other hand, all things are possible with God. It was a big battle in the soul of Gideon, but at last God won, subdued that man, and the Lord committed Himself to that man. It is only the vessel and the treasure in another form, the Lord and Gideon.

The Sword

Then we come to the sword, the sword in the hand. I need not say anything about the sword, I think. "The sword of the Spirit which is the word of God" (Eph. 6:17). But there are these things to be said in simplicity. The Word of God is a mighty thing. It was with the Word of God that our Lord Himself met the prince of this world. It was by means of that sword that the prince of this world left Him, departed. The Lord said, "It is written... It is written... It is written..." He stood there and refused to be moved from that. "It is written". Have you got something for your position? The Word of God? Have you? And are you standing unshakably upon it? "It is written".

Oh, how many things there are to bring about this strength in the Word of God, the Accuser is cast down by "the word of their testimony" (Rev. 12:11), and what is the word of their testimony? It is written, "There is therefore now no condemnation" (Rom. 8:1). No condemnation, it is written, to them that are in Christ Jesus. It is written - and the Accuser is discomfited when you stand your ground on that. It is written - that is all - it is written. And so one might go round with the Word. But the point is, having really and truly the Word of God for your position and standing to it, is like a sword to the enemy, but when that has been said, it has got to be covered and qualified. It is the Word of God, the sword, in the hand of a spiritual person. It is the Word of God spiritually used.

Scripture is taken for all sorts of positions, to argue for many contradictions to itself. It requires men like the men of Gideon to use the sword effectively; disciplined, broken, subdued, dependent people, spiritual men and spiritual women, and the spiritual value of the Word. There is no real potency in throwing Scripture about at the enemy. It is: what does this thing relate to and mean from God's standpoint? What is the spiritual principle that is at the heart of this Scripture? What is deeper and more inward than the words in which it is couched? What is the mind of God wrapped up in this word of His? To be able to rest back and grasp that, to know that this is not something from a book, though it be the Bible, this is something of real spiritual content and value and meaning. We have got to have it like that if there is to be this power. And there has got to be wisdom; how to use the Word, and when to use it, but I leave that.

When we have said that, we have covered the ground, but note, we must finish where we began. All this is the content of the Cross. The vessel fragile and broken, is that because of the work of the Cross. The undercutting of all the self-sufficiency and self-strength is the work of the Cross, and be sure it must be the work of the Cross. Just because you feel weak and no use, and therefore you can adopt a very pathetic kind of voice, that does not mean that you are necessarily weak, and that it is necessarily the work of the Cross. It must be something that the Spirit of God has done in us, using the Cross as His instrument. That is the kind of weakness that is strength. When it can be said I am weak like that, then it can be said; then am I strong (2 Cor. 12:10).

The lamps, the trumpets, the battle-cry, the sword, these all take their value from the Cross, from Christ crucified. It is the meaning of the Cross gathered up and passed into the Name, so that the Name embodies all that. The Name which is above every Name embodies that kind of weakness that is the power of God, that kind of brokenness that is the might of God. It is that, the Name is that. Ah, rather, it is Christ crucified. As we have often said, it requires crucified men and women to bring the impact of an exalted Lord. It requires a crucified church to register the power of the Name that is the inclusive outcome of His Cross. "Obedient unto death, the death of the cross, wherefore the name which is above every name".