The Making of a prophet

My point is this - the identity of the vessel with its ministry is the very heart of Divine thought. A man is called to represent the thoughts of God, to represent them in what he is, not in something that he takes up as a form or line of ministry, not in somethingthat he does. The vessel itself is the ministry and you cannot divide between the two.

THE NECESSITY for SELF-EMPTYING

That explains everything in the life of the great prophets. It explains

the life of Moses, the prophet whom the Lord God raised up from

among his brethren (Deut. 18:15,18). Moses essayed to take up

his life-work. He was a man of tremendous abilities, "learned in all

the wisdom of the Egyptians " (Acts 7:22), with great natural

qualifications and gifts, and then somehow he got some conception

of a life-work for God. It was quite true; it was a true conception, a

right idea; he was very honest, there was no question at all about

his motives; but he essayed to take up that work on the basis of

what he was naturally, with his own ability, qualifications and zeal,

and on that basis disaster was allowed to come upon the whole

thing.

Not so are prophets made; not so can the prophetic office be

exercised. Moses must go into the wilderness and for forty years

be emptied out, until there is nothing left of all that as a basis upon

which he can have confidence to do the work of God or fulfil any

Divine commission. He was by nature a man "mighty in his words

and works"; and yet now he says, "I am not eloquent... I am slow

of speech..." (Exodus 4:10). There has been a tremendous

undercutting of all natural facility and resource...

We go through times of trial and test under the hand of God, and it

is so easy to get into that frame of mind which says in effect, 'The

Lord does not want us, He need not have us!' We let everything go,

we do not care about anything; we have gone down under our trials

and we are rendered useless. I do not believe the Lord ever comes

to a person like that to take them up. Elijah, dispirited, fled to the

wilderness, and to a cave in the mountains; but he had to get

somewhere else before the Lord could do anything with him. "What

doest thou here, Elijah?" (I Kings 19:9). The Lord never comes to

a man and recommissions him when he is in despair. 'God shall

forgive thee all but thy despair' (F. W. H. Myers, 'St. Paul') -

because despair is lost faith in God, and God can never do

anything with one who has lost faith.

Moses was emptied to the last drop, and yet he was not angry or

disagreeable with God. What was the Lord doing? He was making

a prophet. Beforehand, the man would have taken up an office, he

would have made the prophetic function serve him, he would have

used it. There was no inward, vital relationship between the man

and the work that he was to do; they were two separate things; the

work was objective to the man. At the end of forty years in the

wilderness he is in a state for this to become subjective; something

has been done. There has been brought about a state which

makes the man fit to be a living expression of the Divine thought.

He has been emptied of his own thoughts to make room for

God's thoughts; he has been emptied of his own strength, that all

the energy should be of God... That was the great lesson this

prophet had to learn. 'I cannot!' 'All right', said the Lord, 'but I AM.'

A great deal is made of the natural side of many of the Lord's

servants, and usually with tragic results. A lot is made of Paul. '

What a great man Paul was naturally, what intellect he had, what

training, what tremendous abilities!' That may all be true, but ask

Paul what value it was to him when he was right up against a

spiritual situation. He will cry, "Who is sufficient for these things?

... Our sufficiency is from God" (II Cor. 2:16; 3:5). Paul was taken

through experiences where he, like Moses, despaired of life. He

said, "We... had the sentence of death within ourselves, that we

should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead"

(II Cor. 1:9).

MESSAGE INWROUGHT by ACTUAL EXPERIENCE

You see, the principle is at work all the time, that God is going to

make the ministry and the minister identical. You see it in all the

prophets. The Lord stood at nothing. He took infinite pains. He

worked even through domestic life, the closest relationships of life.

Think of the tragedy of Hosea's domestic life. Think of Ezekiel,

whose wife the Lord took away in death at a stroke. The Lord said,

'Get up in the morning, anoint your face, allow not the slightest

suggestion of mourning or tragedy to be detected; go out as

always before, as though nothing had happened; show yourself to

the people, go about with a bright countenance, provoke them to

enquire what you mean by such outrageous behaviour.' The Lord

brought this heartbreak upon him and then required him to act

thus. Why? Ezekiel was a prophet; he had got to embody his

message, and the message was this: 'Israel, God's wife, has

become lost to God, dead to God, and Israel takes no notice of it;

she goes on the same as ever, as though nothing had happened.'

The prophet must bring it home by his own experience. God is

working the thing right in. He works it in in deep and terrible ways

in the life of His servant to produce ministry.

God is not allowing us to take up things and subjects. If we are

under the Holy Ghost, He is going to make us prophets; that is,

He is going to make the prophecy a thing that has taken place in

us, so that what we say is only making vocal something that has

been going on, that has been done in us. God has been doing it

through years in strange, deep, terrible ways in some lives,

standing at nothing, touching everything; and the vessel, thus

wrought upon, is the message. People do not come to hear what

you have to teach. They have come to see what you are, to see

that thing which has been wrought by God. What a price the

prophetic instrument has to pay!

So Moses went into the wilderness, to the awful undoing of his

natural life, his natural mentality; to be brought to zero; to have

the thing wrought in him. And was God justified? - for after all it

was a question of resource for the future. Oh, the strain that was

going to bear down upon that life! Sometimes Moses well-nigh

broke; at times he did crack under the strain. "I am not able to

bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me"

(Num. 11:14)... A terrific strain was going to bear down upon him,

and only a deep inwrought thing, something that had been done

inside, would be enough to carry through...

With us, too, the strain may be terrific; oft-times there will come

the very strong temptation - 'Let go a little, compromise a little, do

not be so utter; you will get more open doors if you will only

broaden out a bit; you can have a lot more if you ease up!' What

is going to save you in that hour of temptation? The only thing is

that God has done this thing in you. It is part of your very being -

not something you can give up; it is you, your very life. That is

the only thing. God knew what He was doing with Moses. The

thing had got to be so much one with the man that there was no

dividing between them. The man was the prophetic ministry.

He was rejected by his brethren; they would not have him. "Who

made thee a prince and a judge over us?" (Ex. 2:14). That is the

human side of it. But there was the Divine side. It was of God that

he went into the wilderness for forty years. It had to be, from God's

side. It looked as though it was man's doing. But it was not so.

These two things went together. Rejection by his brethren was all

in line with the sovereign purpose of God. It was the only way in

which God got the opportunity He needed to reconstitute this

man. The real preparation of this prophet took place during the

time that his brethren repudiated him. Oh, the sovereignty of God,

the wonderful sovereignty of God! A dark time, a deep time; a

breaking, crushing, grinding time; emptied out. It seems as if

everything is going, that nothing will be left. Yet all that is God's

way of making prophetic ministry.

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