3. The Commission of the Call (John 20:21; Luke 4:18-19)
The Call of God
Unto me . . . was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. Ephesians 3:8 rv
1. The Consciousness of the Call (Jeremiah 1:5; Amos 7:14-15)
We are apt to forget the mystic, supernatural touch of God which comes with His call. If a man can tell you how the call of God came to him and all about it, it is questionable whether he ever had the call. The call to be a professional man may come in that explicit way, but the call of God is much more supernatural. The realisation of the call of God in a man’s life may come as with a sudden thunder-clap or by a gradual dawning, but in whatever way it comes, it comes with the undercurrent of the supernatural, almost the uncanny; it is always accompanied with a glow—something that cannot be put into words. We need to keep the atmosphere of our mind prepared by the Holy Spirit lest we forget the surprise of the touch of God on our lives.
Before I formed thee . . . I knew thee.
There are pre-natal forces of God at work in a man’s life which he may be unconscious of for long enough; but at any moment there may break upon him the sudden consciousness of this incalculable, supernatural surprising power that has got hold of his life before he has got hold of it himself.
Another force at work is the prayers of other people. You are born into this world and will probably never know to whose prayers your life is the answer. It may be your own father and mother who have been used by God to dedicate your life to Him before you were born. The prayers may have remained apparently unanswered, but in reality they are answered; and your life should be the answer in actuality. Our lives are the answers not only to the prayers of other people, but to the prayer the Holy Spirit is making for us, and to the prayer of Our Lord Himself. When once you realise this, you will understand why it is that God does not say “By your leave” when He comes into your life.
If we have been getting hard and metallic, untouched spiritually—not backsliding, but getting out of touch with God, we shall find the reason is because we are allowing things to come in between us and the sense of God’s call. At any minute God may bring the wind of His Spirit across our life, and we shall realise with a startled mind that the work we have been doing in the meantime is so much rubbish (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:12-13). There is so much self-chosen service; we say—“I think I will do this, and that for God.” Unless we work for God in accordance with His supernatural call, we shall meet havoc and disaster and upset. The moment that the consciousness of the call of God dawns on us, we know that it is not a choice of our own at all; the consciousness is that of being held by a power we do not fully know. “I have chosen him.” If we are saved and sanctified, we are called to testify to it; but the call to preach is something infinitely other and belongs to a different category. Paul describes it as a “necessity”—“Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!”
Then answered Amos . . . I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was an herdman, and a dresser of sycomore trees: And the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto My people Israel.(Amos 7:14-15 rv)
The only way I can begin to fulfil the call of God is by keeping my convictions out of the way, my convictions as to what I imagine I am fitted for. The fitting goes much deeper down than the natural equipment of a man.
Whenever the call of God is realised, there is the feeling—“I am called to be a missionary.” It is a universal feeling because the Holy Spirit sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts, and “God so loved the world. . . .” We make a blunder when we fix on the particular location for our service and say—“God called me there.” When God shifts the location, the battle comes—will I remain consistent to what I have said I am going to do, or be true to the insurgent call of God, and let Him locate me where He likes? The most seemingly untoward circumstances will be used by God for the men and women He has called. How ever much of wrong or of the devil there may seem to be at work, if a man is called of God, every force will be made to tell for God’s purpose in the end. God watches all these things when once a man agrees with His purpose for him, and He will bring not only the conscious life, but all the deeper regions of life which we cannot reach, into harmony with His purpose. If the call of God is there, it is not within the power of untoward things to turn you. Your heart remains, not untouched by them, but unbroken, and you are surprised at yourself—“Why didn’t I go under here, and there?” “I called thee.”
We try to make calls out of our own spiritual consecration, but when we are put right with God, He blights all our sentimental convictions and devotional calls. He brushes them all aside, and rivets us with a passion that is terrific to one thing we had never dreamed of, and in the condition of real communion with God, we overhear Him saying: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” and for one radiant, flashing moment we see what God wants, and say in conscious freedom—“Here am I; send me.”
2. The Character of the Call (1 Corinthians 9:16)
Paul puts out of court the idea that the preaching of the gospel is chosen as the choice of a profession is made. He says it is a necessity laid upon him . He was called to preach , even from his mother’s womb, although for years he did not recognise it. Then suddenly the call awakened in him, and he realised that that was what God had been after all the time.
There is no mention of sin in Paul’s apprehension, that came after; it was an apprehension of the call of God, a call which “separated” him unto the gospel. I have chosen him, “. . . for I will shew him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake” (rv). God called him in order to use him as broken bread and poured-out wine for others. When once Paul realised God’s call and knew the meaning of his life, there was no competitor for his strength. Is there anything competing for our strength in our devotion to the call of God? It is not the devil but the “little foxes, that spoil the vines”—the little annoyances, the little actual things that compete for our strength, and we are not able to pray, things come in between, and our hearts are troubled and our minds disturbed by them. We have forgotten what Jesus said—“As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you” (rv). Our Lord never allowed anything to disturb Him out of His oneness with the Father; only one thing held Him—“Lo, I am come . . . to do Thy will, O God” (rv). With us, there are things that compete for the strength that should be given to God only. Thank God for such places as this Bible Training College where God gives us time to be shut in quietly. He is letting us see how competitors for our strength will knock the consciousness of His call right out.
Have I been forgetting the character of God’s call? Has there been a refusal to be made broken bread and poured-out wine? If so, life is consequently being lived on the threshold of conscious devotion and conscious declension. This always happens when I do not realise that it is God Who engineers my circumstances, when I “despise the day of small things.” I refuse to see God’s hand in the circumstances of the weather that prevented me on such and such a day, I refuse to see God’s hand in the routine of my life, and as a result there is no sense of arrestment by God, no being made broken bread and poured-out wine for others, but a dryness and a deadness all through. Prayer has brought no light, studying God’s word has brought no comfort. This has nothing to do with the soul’s salvation, but with the obliteration of the character of God’s call. Let me take a revision and see how in the little things God has not been first, but my notions, my affinities, consideration of my temperament.
If we are not in full conscious allegiance to Our Lord, it has nothing to do with our personal salvation, but with this “broken bread and poured-out wine” aspect of life. God can never make me wine if I object to the fingers He uses to crush me with. If God would only crush me with His own fingers, and say, “Now, My son, I am going to make you broken bread and poured-out wine in a particular way and everyone will know what I am doing. . . .” But when He uses someone who is not a Christian, or someone I particularly dislike, or some set of circumstances which I said I would never submit to, and begins to make these the crushers, I object. I must never choose the scene of my own martyrdom, nor must I choose the things God will use in order to make me broken bread and poured-out wine. His own Son did not choose. God chose for His Son that He should have a devil in His company for three years. We say—I want angels, I want people better than myself, I want everything to be significantly from God, otherwise I cannot live the life, or do the thing properly; I want to be always gilt-edged. Let God do as He likes. If you are ever going to be wine to drink, you must be crushed. Grapes cannot be drunk, grapes are only wine when they have been crushed. I wonder what kind of coarse finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped? You are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you, the wine that came out would have been remarkably bitter. Let God go on with His crushing, because it will work His purpose in the end.
3. The Commission of the Call (John 20:21; Luke 4:18-19)
Have we answered God’s call in every detail during this Session? Have we really been the “sent” ones of Jesus as He was the sent One of God? We can soon know. What has been competing for our strength?—what kind of things have we objected to? What things have hindered our times of communion, so that we have had to pray about them when we had no business to be in the place where we could notice them? We ought to have been living in John 14:1; but the heart has been troubled, and we have taken account of the evil (rv), consequently we have been less concerned about God’s enterprises than about our own. Woe unto me, said Paul, if I do not keep concentrated on this one thing, that I am called of God for His service.
God puts us through discipline, not for our own sake, but for the sake of His purpose and His call. Never debate about anything God is putting you through, and never try to find out why you are going through it. Keep right with God and let Him do what He likes in your circumstances, and you will find He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will be a benefit to others.