SermonIndex Classics - T. Austin Sparks

T. Austin Sparks: The first words in the Bible. The Book of Genesis, Chapter 1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void. And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light." And there was light.

T. Austin Sparks: Please, alongside of that, for purposes which you will see presently, a few words from the prophecies of Jeremiah. Jeremiah's prophecies, chapter 4. "I beheld the earth, and lo, it was waste and void. And the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and lo, they trembled. And all the hills moved to and fro. I beheld, and lo, there was no man. All the birds of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and lo, the fruitful field was a wilderness. And all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and before his fierce anger."

T. Austin Sparks: "For thus saith the Lord, 'The whole land shall be a desolation. Yet will I not make a full end.'"

T. Austin Sparks: "In the beginning, God..." And everyone will say, "That's right." That is the place that he ought to occupy. So with these words, so familiar to us, the whole Bible is introduced. And from this note, this keynote, the whole Bible runs and becomes a harmony.

T. Austin Sparks: God. Here God, the subject verb of the whole Bible, is introduced. In the beginning, God. And when God is in his place, which is first and primary, there is always a new beginning. This is a point of departure, and a point which marks a new prospect. It is always like that when the Lord has his place.

T. Austin Sparks: Now for these few minutes, I want to dwell upon the kind of God that is introduced with these words. These early verses of the Bible contain in principle the great truths as to what God is like, the kind of God that he is. We open this book and are at once confronted with a state that is wholly negative. Wholly negative. Everything about that condition is negative. There was not this, and there was not that. That is the mark.

T. Austin Sparks: And God introduced over against a negative condition, is immediately shown to be a God who is positive. God who is not negative, and a God who cannot bear anything that is negative. He just cannot endure a negative condition. He's like that. He is the great "Yea" God, the Almighty "yes." And whenever God comes to his place, the change will be from a negative to a positive. Things will at once begin to assume some positive character. Some meaningfulness.

T. Austin Sparks: With God, all that is negative will just begin to go out. And we shall find that whatever his activities may be—and his activities are many indeed—and sometimes they seem to be walking in a negative way, the fact and the truth is that whatever he is doing, he is doing it with a positive object and a positive mind. His end is not going to be a negative. "I will not make a full end," we read in Jeremiah. However it may appear things are being brought to an end, "I will not make a full end." It's all unto a positive purpose.

T. Austin Sparks: The very first thing about this God, who is the subject of this whole mighty book, is that he is a positive God who is set against any negative condition. Take that as a great truth in your relationship to the Lord, in your apprehension of the Lord. These are the foundations of everything.

T. Austin Sparks: The next thing is, "And God created." Put that in another way, "God got to work." God is a God of purpose and not passive, inactive. He is a God actuated by positive purpose. We know from the rest of the story how true that is. But here again, how much there is in the Bible that just comes back to this truth: God is not an inactive God, a standoff God, somewhere amidst the shadows, just a spectator. He's right on the scene. He's right in things, working in all things, working in all things as Paul says. Working in all things. He's not a purposeless God, and he cannot endure a state of things that has no purpose. Look upon this: "without form and empty."

T. Austin Sparks: Well, God is not going to tolerate that. He is introduced to us as one who will not bear any state that is without a purpose and will do all in his power to turn things to positive purpose. He is the God of purpose. He is not a passive God.

T. Austin Sparks: Then "without form." "Without form." And he comes in as set against anything that is formless, or disorderly, or without order. He's a God of order. Beautiful story of an order being evolved, introduced where there was no order. Disorder is always weakness, isn't it? Disorder is always loss. A disorderly person is wasting a lot of energy and a lot of time and throwing away a very great deal of vital value. Disorderliness in our person, disorderliness in our home, or in any sphere, disorderliness in the church—it means weakness, it means loss. God is a God of order.

T. Austin Sparks: So when it says it was "without form," God is introduced as one who is not going to put up with that. He's not going to allow that to continue. His activity is to bring about an order that is not order for its own sake, not because he's fastidiously neat, that kind of a God, but because, as we all know, economy is always bound up with being systematic, being orderly. And that's the kind of God he is, who does not want there to be all that loss that is associated with a lack of heavenly order.

T. Austin Sparks: Well, "without form and void." The Hebrew word would be better translated to the English word "empty." "Without form and empty." Or desolate, barren. Void. And God is not a God like that. If there is one thing that the Bible says about the Lord all the way through, it is that he's a God who believes in fullness. His thoughts are full thoughts. His ends are full ends. He believes in fullness. The great end which we have already been looking this morning is that when the earth shall be filled, shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord. He's working toward that. Now, the Lord cannot bear to have a condition that is not full. He just cannot.

T. Austin Sparks: He does not like people to be empty. He does not like us to be just partially full. He wants us to know his fullness, of his fullness to receive grace upon grace. Now, God cannot bear vacuums. A vacuum is always a dangerous thing, always a dangerous thing. He acts against that.

T. Austin Sparks: Next, "God said, 'Let there be light.'" God cannot bear a state of darkness. He is the God of light, the God of illumination. And his desire is that there shall be light everywhere, fullness of light. Now, that's the kind of God that is introduced with this word, "In the beginning, God."

T. Austin Sparks: There are those who believe that this state here described was the result of judgment upon a former creation. Well, whether that is so or not, the rest of the Bible does show again and again that God had to act in relation to a state of things that had missed the purpose of its existence, to bring it to this condition, break it down, destroy it, throw it into disruption and desolation. He did that again and again when a thing which he raised up for a purpose had lost that purpose. He just did it.

T. Austin Sparks: But whenever he did it, he moved again, he moved again. The Bible is just full of the second movements of God, in lives, in a people, in places. You look up the double movements of God that the Bible contains, and there you are. How thankful Jonah was that the Lord didn't leave him in the depths of the sea, in his misery. The word is, "And the word of the Lord came again, a second time unto Jonah." Thank God for that second time. How glad Peter would be that the Lord came a second time into his life after the chaos, after the blinding darkness of his failure. The Lord came again to Peter. And so the Bible is full of that. "I will not make a full end." In other words, "I'll come back again, whatever I have to do."

T. Austin Sparks: Sometimes the Lord does seem to be on that line of pulling down. I read this morning that short, perhaps shortest chapter in Jeremiah 45, the word to Baruch. Tremendous statement of the Lord through Jeremiah to Baruch. He says, "That which I have planted, I will pull up. I will root up. Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not." But we know that while the Lord pulled up, rooted up that people from the land because they failed to fulfill their divine purpose, he planted them again. Through the prophecies, "I will plant again, I will plant again." And he did.

T. Austin Sparks: Sometimes it does seem that there's the pulling up business going on. The pulling down business, the destroying and the scattering, and bringing about a state of chaos and desolation. If it seems like that, may not that be only another aspect of the Lord's positive line of action? If the Bible says anything at all, it says that, that even his judgments in time are intended to be to his glory and not to desolation.

T. Austin Sparks: Well, we could take many illustrations or instances in the Bible, the working of what I have said as to what kind of God he is. There was the chaos and the desolation, the barrenness, and the unfruitfulness, and the darkness of Israel in Egypt. A condition very similar in the nation, in the people to what we have here at the beginning of Genesis. And it might well be said that over Israel in Egypt during those 400 years, without form and void and darkness. But the Lord moved into that formless, emptiness, purposelessness. And in the wilderness, what a beautiful order he established. From a rabble he created a nation. From a purposeless people, he brought them into a wonderful prospect. From this chaos in which they were living, he produced that marvelous system of worship in the Tabernacle. How ordered it all is, to the last detail. It's the God of order. Or Israel in Babylon again, similar condition: without form and void and darkness.

T. Austin Sparks: The Lord moves against that. What about the disciples after the cross? We could say, "without form and void and darkness over the face of the deep." An awful chaos, a desolation. But see the Creator at work after his resurrection, recovering. And we know the end of that story.

T. Austin Sparks: Now, what I want to say over alongside of this, dear friends, is the great thing, of course. All this is true as to what kind of God this is that is introduced with the Bible. The great thing is what Paul says about it, that all things were created for, unto and by Jesus Christ. What does that mean? It means that all this of which we have spoken, so imperfectly of course, all this becomes spiritually true in the Lord Jesus. As it is true in creation, in nature at the beginning, in the new creation in Christ Jesus, it becomes spiritually true for every member of that new creation. Everyone truly born anew. We know it to be true. Every true child of God who comes into this relationship with the Lord Jesus, immediately assumes a new sense of positiveness in life.

T. Austin Sparks: We know that before that, it's all so negative, isn't it? All so negative. Even the positives of this world are negative, and everybody knows they are. Things in which the world glories or finds its pleasure, they know it's all negative. They must have, have, have, try and overcome this negative element that is in everything. In Christ, that negative gives way to a positive. We most of us, if not all here this morning, know it is true. Union with the Lord Jesus has given a positiveness to life. And has given a purposelessness to life, that comes in at once. Anyone is saved or born again, you see them assuming a sense of purpose in life. There's now a meaning to things. That has been introduced. Called according to his purpose. A sense of mighty divine purpose comes in with Christ. It's found in him.

T. Austin Sparks: Then the life begins to take on a new order, doesn't it? All that uncoordinated state, where everything was in a state of disintegration and unrelated, begins to give place to a coordinating purpose. The life becomes united and united by something quite positive. It's a new order that is brought in to life in Christ, a heavenly order, a divine order. What is true of those things is true of this matter of fullness. How empty, after all, life is until we find the Lord Jesus. It is empty. However full, it's empty. There's an emptiness. We know. I never understand the phrase, "really an aching void." What is an aching void? A void's a void. And it's void even of an ache. But it's an expression. It's an expression. We know what it means. A void, an emptiness, an ache for something to fill life.

T. Austin Sparks: That is answered, isn't it? In the Lord Jesus. We begin to know something of that when we begin the true Christian life. Now, now we are on the way to something rich and full. And so it goes on and on. There's no end to this fullness. John said, "of his fullness have all we received." Of it. Not it. We haven't received his fullness, but of his fullness have all we received, even unto the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ, the fullness of him that filleth all in all, the fullness of God.

T. Austin Sparks: That's what we are introduced into. God is that kind of God, but he has now made all that to us in Christ. There should be no vacuum in the Christian life, no emptiness. And again, is it not true that in Christ there is the true illumination, the true light. He is the light. Paul, as we know well, linked this first chapter of Genesis, these very first phrases, with his own spiritual experience and said, "God who said, 'Let light be,' shined into our hearts. Give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The new creation, a new illumination. The light begins to shine.

T. Austin Sparks: Now, we have it emphatically, it's true. Little and more and more. The measure of light, the measure of understanding of divine things will entirely depend upon two things. On the one side, how prepared we are to subject our wisdom to the wisdom of God. Our heads are usually the hindrance to spiritual illumination. We're wanting to get it all through our heads, through our reason, to understand it with our natural mind. And we're struggling and struggling and we don't get very far. We say, "I can't understand." Well, you never will that way. Just as the will has to be subjected to the will of God, so the mind has to be subjected to the mind of God. We come up against something which is God's revealed mind, and it doesn't accord with our minds. Our minds do not accord with it, and we, therefore, put our minds in the way and say, "But, but, but." Their light is arrested. Their understanding is arrested. "Your thoughts are not my thoughts. My thoughts are not your thoughts," saith the Lord. "As high as the heaven is above the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts." So you've got to surrender your own mental activities to the Lord, and perhaps be crucified in that tremendous reasoning capacity, faculty that you have, in humble acceptance of what God says. The light will break then.

T. Austin Sparks: But you see, that's one side. The other side is, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of illumination, of revelation. And we must have the Spirit for spiritual understanding. The Spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters. He it was who was the agent in transforming this scene and bringing in this light which made all the difference. The Spirit of God does this. It's a simple word for perhaps beginners in the Christian life. It's just a wonderful, wonderful thing how, if we really do surrender on the one side, surrender mind as well as heart and will to the Lord, how the Lord can get on with his new creation, so much more quickly than if all the time we're arguing or reserving or holding back or contradicting.

T. Austin Sparks: When the Holy Spirit really gets his place in us, how quick the change is. How wonderful the transformation. But my point this morning is, all this that comes in by way of illustration (I'm not saying it's only illustration or parable), history or not history, that does not really matter for the moment. The thing is, all this is God's way of leading us on to his son and saying, "What is true in the natural order of creation under the hand of God has its superior counterpart in the spiritual, heavenly new creation in Christ." And this is what we find or should find in Christ, this kind of a thing. God working against what is negative to bring about the positive. What is empty to bring about the full. What is disorderly to bring about the order. What is dark to bring about the light. That is the nature of the Christian life. That is what is made true in Christ and the new creation. Shall we pray?