And Asa cried unto the Lord his God, and said, Lord, it is nothing with thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have no power: help us, O Lord our God; for we rest on thee, and in thy name we go against this multitude. O Lord, thou art our God; let not man prevail against thee. 2 Chronicles 14: 11.
These were the words of the prayer of this godly king of Judah who exhorted his people to serve God and keep His commandments, as he endeavoured to do himself, and who understood clearly the necessity of having the favour of God in all his endeavours. He was here confronted with this powerful army of Ethiopians coming against him, who were great in number and far superior in power to those men of Judah who were gathered in battle array. This is the prayer of this man of God at this particular time, because he knew that as long as the church is in this world, it is the church militant. It is a church confronted by many enemies, which has to witness on the side of Christ as it engages in spiritual warfare. That being so, carnal strength and carnal power can never be sufficient. So he appeals here to the God of Israel for spiritual strength to go forward against these enemies as he declares himself, “we rest on Thee, and in thy name we go against this multitude.”
A week today, an era came to an end in our history as a branch of the visible church, having been preserved for 100 years to witness on the side of Christ. We are now beginning a new era and we do not know how long or how short that era may be, for the Saviour told His disciples that it was not for them to know the times or the seasons, as these were in the Father’s hands. Nevertheless we know that we are beginning a new era, and we must know, if we know anything about the spiritual condition of the generation in which we live, that our work is beyond the power of man. We need as we go forward to this new era, the mind of Asa. What we should desire is that we would go forward, even though we are surrounded by enemies which we shall come to mention, so that it would be true of us that our help and strength is in God alone. He is the One who helps and can help, and has revealed and made known that it is nothing with Him to help, whether with the many or with them that have no power.
Now these words bring to our mind, words which were used many years after this, when the children of Israel returned from the Babylonian captivity to build the temple in the time of Zerubbabel and Joshua. It was a time of beginning to build the temple that had been destroyed by the enemies of God, and it was a time when they met with many discouragements. It seemed that the resources of Israel, from the carnal point of view, were too few to carry out and execute this great work. They were also discouraged by the fact that when the foundation of the temple was laid it appeared very small in the eyes of those who had seen the previous temple in the days of Solomon. So there was a danger of despising the work of God because it appeared small in the eyes of men, both in the eyes of the enemies and even in the eyes of those who were within the camp of Israel. Therefore two things were said. One was that the building of this temple was to be carried on, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” Just exactly the same principle as is here. The power of God was what was to be effective in the building of that temple. Furthermore they were warned that they were not to despise, “the day of small things,” or as the words mean, the day of small beginnings. It was true that the day of small beginnings was also the day of great mountains, but it was also true that the day of small beginnings was the opportunity for the greatest manifestation of the power of God.
Therefore we desire to notice how these first principles operate in connection with three spheres in the life of the church of God in the world.
- First of all we shall consider it from the point of view of the building of the spiritual temple and we shall notice how it was a temple too, which in the eyes of the world had small beginnings. In the laying of the foundations it appeared despicable in the eyes of the world, and appears despicable to such to the present day. But there was evidence made known there of the power of God.
- Secondly I would like to consider how the Lord operates in this way in the spiritual experience of those souls who are living stones laid upon this spiritual foundation. The beginning of the work in them is often a work of small beginnings. We can see that, with regard to the spirit of the Savior Himself spoken of by Isaiah when he says, “A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench.” But however small this work may begin, because it is work begun by the power of God, it will be brought to fruition.
- Then in the third place we shall consider how the Lord operates according to this principle in the experience of the church militant. That is the church here in the days of Asa, when he said that the Lord was able to work with the few who had no power to make them overcome the many. This is the experience of the visible church in the world, or as I am calling it, the militant church, because it is in enemy country and it is confronted by powerful enemies. Therefore it needs the power of God to maintain it and to give it victories over the great mountains. “Who art thou, O great mountain?” it was said to Zerubbabel, “before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain”: and this should be for our encouragement when we view the great mountains surrounding the church of God today, with their impressive power and their apparent stability. We are ready to be cast down, but let us not be cast down, for the Lord is One Who reveals Himself as delivering the few who have no power and overcoming the many.
As enabled therefore, we would like to say a little on these three matters.
1. Let us come first of all to the spiritual temple.
The spiritual temple brings before us the fact that God had a purpose to dwell among men, although the race of mankind had rebelled against Him, broken His law, departed from Him, and their souls had become habitations of every form of unclean bird and lust. Yet it was in the everlasting purpose of God that He would have a dwelling place among the children of men. We read of the Saviour Himself, when He was with the Father, He was the Father’s delight and was brought up before Him, and when He was rejoicing in the everlasting love of His Father flowing out through the Holy Ghost for His eternal enjoyment, at the same time His delights were with the sons of men and His rejoicing was in the habitable parts of the earth. Because the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost had gone out to a number that no man could number, they would form a spiritual temple in which God would abide in time and throughout the endless ages of eternity. This is a great work and worthy of God — a work that gives glory to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, this formation of the spiritual temple. This temple will appear yet in all its glory, when time shall be no longer, when the people of God shall be gathered at God’s right hand and will be with Christ, which is far better. They will be the habitation of God through the Spirit, throughout the endless ages of eternity. Now when we take a view — and may we have views of the glory of God in connection with the spiritual temple — the wonder of this work is that He is going to take of the children of men and make them a habitation of His own through the Holy Ghost. Surely we would think now, like those who came back to Judah in the days of Ezra, Nehemiah and Zerubbabel, that they would have expected a great temple like the temple of Solomon, but no! It was the day of small beginnings. We would expect, and the Jews expected, that when the foundation of the spiritual temple was laid, it would be a work of consummate glory, and so it is, but it was also the work of small beginnings. Who would have thought that when this foundation was laid, it was to be in the Person of His beloved Son, the express image of the Father’s person, and the One in whom there is the outshining of the glory of God. He was chosen to be the foundation of this temple, elect and precious to God the Father. What else do we read? When He came into the world He took into union with His divine Person the holy humanity conceived by the miraculous power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin. It was said they would find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manager, not in Herod’s palace, not among the great men of the world, but in the place of small beginnings. Though this Person was a glorious Person, His glory was veiled by His holy humanity. He was born in a low condition and they were to find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying, not in a bed in a palace, but in a manger.
What a wonder, my dear friend, that this is a God who, to advance His glory and power, begins with small beginnings. It was true in every aspect of the term. The house of David, in which the Messiah was to be born, was then in ruins. Surely as they looked at this babe the question would arise:— Is this the foundation laid in Sion spoken of by Isaiah? Is this the foundation that is to be elect and precious? This babe in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. But this foundation required something more than that the Son of God would become the Son of Man, and yet continue to be the Son of God although found in a humble condition. It required more than that, because those who were to be living stones in this temple were sinners by nature and by practice. They were under the sentence of death. Their sins were more than could be numbered, and these sins needed to be atoned for before they could have a foundation to stand on in the presence of the God who is a consuming fire. What about your own foundation for eternity, what is it? Do you know what it is to have a sense that you have no foundation, like David felt when he said, “If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” Where is the foundation? It is gone, every human foundation will be gone. Here is the foundation laid in the person of Jesus Christ, born as He was and then coming to that place where He was to pay the ransom price for His people. Is this the foundation? Were the pharisees saying this? The pharisees rejected this foundation. They despised this doctrine, that One who was crucified through weakness was to be the foundation. That this one was to die the cursed death of the cross, was something beyond them, something they could not grasp. They had expected a mighty power, a mighty saviour, at least in the sense of carnal power. But instead of that here was One who was wounded for our transgressions, who was bruised for our iniquities and upon whom the chastisement of our peace fell, so that His blood was shed for the remission of the sins of many. Through His divine sacrifice He satisfied the claims of law and justice, and secured the salvation of His people from their sins, by satisfying the claims of God’s holy nature. But yet, they saw no glory in Him. It seemed to them this Jesus of Nazareth had come to an end — that all these expectations would never be fulfilled. He was now dead and His body was in the grave. But there was something else, there was the power of an endless life, and this One who was crucified through weakness, rose by the divine power of God. He who was crucified and died willingly and lovingly for His folk, conquered death and the grave and now provided a foundation for His people to have a standing place in the presence of God, or using our figure, to have a place upon which their souls could be put, for time and for eternity.
So the pharisees could see no glory here, but Paul came to see glory for this is what he said, “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.” The world looked upon Paul. There he was a young rabbi, how promising, very likely to rise rapidly in the Jewish state and church, and yet here he was serving Jesus Christ. They looked upon him as one who had died, as one who had just gone out of sight as far as they were concerned. Paul knew better, he knew he had seen the glory of the foundation and he himself had come to rest upon it.
2. Now I would like to say a few words in the second place on the day of small beginnings in the experience of the living stones.
All those who are to be in this temple, they are all living stones, lively stones. They were by nature dead in trespasses and sins, and were the enemies of God by wicked works, but there came a time when they were to be brought to be laid upon this foundation. That time came when the Holy Spirit was sent from heaven through the divine Redeemer’s intercession to deal with them through the Word of God. Very often, as I said already, the beginnings may appear small. The beginning of the work of the Holy Ghost in the soul of the sinner may appear to others, and to themselves to be small, compared perhaps to what they thought conversion might be like, because they had been hearing about others and forming some idea in their own mind of what is meant to be regenerated by the grace of God. But however small the beginnings are, there is the application of the word of God to the soul by the power of the Third Person of the Godhead. The same power by which Christ rose from the dead is exercised when a sinner is brought from spiritual death to spiritual life. When that happens, as I indicated already, one of the things experienced by that soul is that he discovers in the light of God’s word his sins and his iniquity against God, and that he has no foundation. He has no foundation for eternity, and finds himself in a fearful pit and in the miry clay, and ready to sink down into the bottomless pit of a lost eternity as far as any human foundation is concerned. And although such an experience may appear small in the eyes of man, it is a great work, a work of divine power. To deliver your soul from having a false foundation is a work of divine power. It is true of all such, when they come to be laid on this foundation, that they are poor, bankrupt and have nothing to pay to the law and justice of God, they are destitute in themselves of any hope of salvation, in anything that they do, say, desire, or long for. They come to see that here is the one foundation laid in Sion, the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and by faith of the operation of God they come to rest upon and to be in Him, and in so resting upon Him they are justified by faith. Their sins which are many are forgiven them, and resting in Him they are adopted into the family of God, and the work of sanctification will go on in them until it will be complete.
Now it is coming before my mind on this particular point about the small beginnings, that Flavel, one of the well known Puritan divines, has a very instructive example to describe what I am speaking of. He says, “If you see a lake of water, then you see a chimney on fire and you see a spark from that chimney falling into the lake, you would not be surprised if the spark went out. But if the spark, instead of going out, dried up the lake you would say this is the work of God.” So it is with that spark of grace and of spiritual life that the Holy Spirit imparts to the soul in the act of regeneration. All the moral uncleanness, the lake of sin and darkness and death in the soul, will never put that spark out, but that spark will dry it all up till at death that soul is made perfect in holiness and passes into glory. Then it must be said, this is the work of the power of God.
3. Let me now go on to the third matter I was to mention.
And that is the experience of the church militant in this way. Look at them at the beginning — they were surrounded by the Roman power. They were surrounded by pagans all over the world. In the midst of all this the church numbered 120 — truly the day of small beginnings — surrounded as they were by these great mountains of opposition, but they experienced the Holy Spirit being poured fourth upon them. Three thousand souls were converted under one sermon, five thousand down in Samaria, the day of small beginnings, is growing and spreading abroad, in Galatia, in Rome, in Corinth, in Ephesus. Why? Because of the power of God. Because He can be with those who have no power of their own as well as with the many, and they were engaging in warfare by using spiritual weapons. “The weapons of our warfare,” says Paul, “are not carnal, but spiritual, and mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” The Saviour had told his disciples the parable of the mustard seed. It was small, yes, it had a small beginning, but it was to grow up into a great tree and the birds from every nation, kindred, tribe and tongue were coming to find a resting place in Sion and to find Christ there, and to be united to Him for time and for eternity.
Again at the time of the Reformation, look at the darkness which had reigned for so long. There’s a monk and what is he doing? I’ll tell you what he’s doing, he’s discovering that he has no foundation for eternity. That’s the beginning of true religion. Those who profess false empty religion that is common in our day, know nothing about that. You say it’s very severe to be speaking like that, but Luther and Calvin experienced it. They learned the glory of the gospel and yet they learned that they were despised. You read Calvin’s works and you find him saying again and again how they were despised and mocked by the powers-that-be and especially by the Papal power in various ways. But nothing could stop the growth. Fire, faggot, death by the thumbscrew and torture, could not stop this work because it was the work of God. It had small beginnings, but there was Divine power accompanying it.
And so it spread over the western world, You see the men and women of this generation don’t appreciate that. They are so ignorant and spiritually blind they don’t even begin to understand the value of what took place at the Reformation and the great benefits that we enjoy therefrom.
Now I would like you to pay attention to this good saying of Robert Trail, one of the puritan divines. This is what he says, “the only place where there is spiritual hatred to popery, is in the heart of the elect.” That’s a great saying and, Oh, how true it is. Because it is the elect, the people of God, who have seen the glory of Christ, and because they have seen that glory, they see the dishonour done to it by popery in all its forms and in its system of error. You may belong to a Protestant society and may be a very vigilant Protestant in various directions, but Trail says, and I agree with him one hundred per cent, that the only place where there is spiritual hatred to popery is in the heart of the elect people of God. Although it is said of these people that they are bigots, they are very far from having that spirit.
We come now to ourselves, gathered here on this occasion. One hundred years ago last Tuesday it was a day of small things. In the eyes of the world how small it appeared. One man loving the truth, getting grace to do what he did. They expected that in two years it would all be gone. You remember the contemptuous phrase that it would all just be like steam going out of the kettle. It would go out of existence by process of evaporation. You see people forget the Word of God. It was a day of small things only in the sense that it was one man who had the spiritual discernment in that Assembly Hall where we were a week today. As I pointed out, when the 750 of us were gathered there, how intimidating it must have been for Mr MacFarlane when he was to stand up alone in that hostile atmosphere. But you see there was something else, there was grace and discernment in his soul, with the light of God’s word in his understanding, and there was the gracious influence of the Holy Spirit moving him to make the protest that he did. I was very interested in the book that has been issued by Mr Roy Middleton, our elder in Barnoldswick, on a matter that I had not previously known. This was that Rev Neil Cameron in writing to John MacLeod, who became Principal MacLeod of the present Free Church, at one time had doubts about Mr MacFarlane, whether he would stand. That was due to a misunderstanding. When Mr MacFarlane became minister in Raasay, Mr Cameron obviously did not know that he became such under protest against the Declaratory Act. But this is the point and this is what impressed me, how clearly Mr Cameron knew that if that protest was not made the whole witness was gone.
The constitutionalists who became the leaders of the present Free Church, adopted the argument that they could still preach the gospel, (always assuming they were doing that), without any word about the witness for divine truth in its entirety and in its completeness. That is why it was so necessary for us to meet there, in the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh, so we could highlight this point about the protest, because it is essential that we understand it. People may appreciate the form of worship in the Free Presbyterian Church, they may appreciate the preaching, they may even appreciate the discipline, but really to appreciate why we are separate, and why we are where we are, we must get a crystal clear understanding of what happened, and the grace that was given to Mr Mac-Farlane to do what he did. Since then during the hundred years that have passed the witness has continued, despite being faced with great difficulties and powers — powers of false religion of various kinds and descriptions. It is not my purpose to expand on this just now, you all ought to know these things very well indeed, but for us too, the battle is not over. Asa won a good number of battles and he had peace, but the battle is not over. We are still the church militant, and are to be a witnessing body in this world, witnessing on the side of Christ against false religion, and beginning, as I said already, with Popery. As I was trying to emphasise it is not dislike of the people that makes us witness, that kind of thing does not come into it. What the opposition to Popery arises from, is the spiritual nature of the people of God, and the spiritual grasp of Christ’s glory that belongs to Him. Now we all know that Romanism is a great mountain. Nearly all the churches in Scotland are waiting to be swallowed up by the Church of Rome. The Council for Churches Acting Together in Scotland, has as its convener a priest of the Church of Rome. You know yourselves Cardinal Hume said that Church of England ministers going into the Church of Rome was an answer to their prayers. That was their desire and still is. We must recognise that. You will say what are we going to do because we are so small in number and so on, but that is just the very core of the message that I have for you this evening, “Despise not the day of small things.” Despise it not, for as long as the gospel is there, the power of God will be there. The power of God may not be accompanying the gospel as we would desire in our day and generation, but if it is to come at all it will come where the gospel is. The Roman Catholic Church is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But to anyone who has spiritual discernment it is quite a simple matter to see great big pieces of the wolf sticking out here and there. Mohammedanism is a wolf without sheep’s clothing and it is growing in power and growing in this country along with other forms of false religion. So that when we are faced with these great powers and the influence they have in the world, and the influence they have on statesmen, may we not say as this text here says, “Help us O Lord, for thou art our God;” and plead that He will help us as He reveals Himself in the way that we have been endeavouring to explain just now. “It is nothing with Thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have no power”: Let us lay hold of that, let us lay hold of the help of God, and look to Him with regard to all our enemies, and that it is in His name that we go against them. We have nothing else but the spiritual weapon of the Word of God, and that is what will ultimately conquer these evil powers. Therefore we are called, in gratitude to the Lord for what He has done for us during the hundred years that are passed, and now starting this new era, to lay to heart how essential it is that we maintain our witness against these powers, and that we do so crying to the Lord our God with the grace of prayer: “It is nothing with Thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have no power.”
We might think of former days and say there were many of God’s people and many of God’s servants in Scotland then. Yes, and now there are few, but here Asa was laying hold on this, that it was nothing for God to help, whether with the many or with them that have no power. The Lord is able to revive His cause in the midst of the years. We would be the last to speak about the times and the season as if we knew about them, it is something we deplore, but for all we know we may not be very far from better days, so let us earnestly seek this putting forth of power and have the prayer of David:
“That I thy power may behold,
and brightness of thy face,
As I have seen thee heretofore
within thy holy place.”
This God will be our God for ever and ever and He will guide us even unto death. Those who are spiritual, lively stones in the building are not to be with us always, don’t let us be thinking so. They are not to be with us always because there is a place for them all in the Father’s house. As generation after generation go, so they pass away and they enter into the rest of the people of God. But while we are in the church militant, let us be seeking grace to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ. May He bless His word.