SermonIndex Classics - T. Austin Sparks

T. Austin Sparks: In the Gospel by Matthew, chapter 13, chapter 13, and verse 5.

T. Austin Sparks: And others fell upon the rocky places, where they had not much earth.

T. Austin Sparks: And straightway they sprang up because they had no deepness of earth.

T. Austin Sparks: When the sun was risen, they were scorched. And because they had no root, they withered away.

T. Austin Sparks: The letter to the Romans, chapter 11, at verse 33.

T. Austin Sparks: Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past tracing out.

T. Austin Sparks: Immediately recognize that contrast, those three statements in the Matthew portion. Not much earth, no deepness of earth, no root.

T. Austin Sparks: And then, oh the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.

T. Austin Sparks: May seem just a little out of place today. Not to speak on the season. But spiritual need is always in season.

T. Austin Sparks: And that is always with us. And I have it on my heart just to say a brief word, a simple word, on this matter of depth. Oh, the depth.

T. Austin Sparks: In this parable of our Lord, with which we are so familiar, called Parable of the Sower. In this second phase of the sowing and its result, the Lord puts his finger upon something that is nothing less than a tragedy.

T. Austin Sparks: When it is remembered what the tremendous potentialities of the word of God are. You come to the end of the parable, you see what was in the word that was sown. It was no different word sown amongst the thorns or on the rocky ground from that sown on good ground. In every case and instance, the potentialities were the same.

T. Austin Sparks: No difference in the word. Mighty, wonderful things are possible from the word of God in the heart.

T. Austin Sparks: And yet, with all those great potentialities and possibilities, here is a receiving, receiving. It comes to them just as it came to the others, receiving. And all that was possible missed.

T. Austin Sparks: The tragedy of shallowness. What a tragedy. So the Lord puts his finger upon that which is so contrary to his own nature and his own thought. So contrary to God. Oh, the depth of God.

T. Austin Sparks: How deep God is. How deep God goes. Here, perhaps there is a link with the present remembrance to what depth the Lord Jesus came down and went. How deep God has gone.

T. Austin Sparks: The breadth and the length and the height and the depth of the knowledge surpassing love of God. How profound is the love of God. How deep God is.

T. Austin Sparks: The depth of the riches, of wisdom, and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. That's God. That's his nature.

T. Austin Sparks: And over against that is this tragic shallowness, contrary to him. Missing all that could have been.

T. Austin Sparks: Shallowness is always unsubstantial. It never, never stands the test and goes through. Always unenduring for a time and then it's all gone.

T. Austin Sparks: Always unprofitable, missing what God intended.

T. Austin Sparks: Now you see, if God is like this and if there is something in what the Lord Jesus says and means in the parable of condemnation, deploring such a state, what should we expect of God? What should we expect?

T. Austin Sparks: We should expect nothing other than that if God really gets a chance and has a way to his end, he will go very deep. And he will take us very deep.

T. Austin Sparks: And it does prove to be like that. I trust that there are many here now who know that that is true. It's a word that not only is true to experience but it's a word that explains so much.

T. Austin Sparks: The Psalmist cried, thy way was in the deep. And it always is. God's way is always in the deep.

T. Austin Sparks: God will always seek to take us down into the depths in order that he might reproduce in us the things that are true of himself.

T. Austin Sparks: We have said just now that shallowness is that which is not substantial. Now the one thing that that Psalmist was always saying about the Lord was that he was his rock. His rock. What a lot the Psalmist owed to the fact that he had discovered the Lord to be his rock. Something that could not be moved, could not be shaken, to be relied upon, to be dependable, always there. Thou art my rock.

T. Austin Sparks: That is the Lord. You friends, the Lord does want to reproduce his own character in us. To make us dependable, reliable, substantial. That we are there and always there, which can always be found there, not moved.

T. Austin Sparks: In order to do that, he has to take us into the depths. He is that himself because he is so deep.

T. Austin Sparks: Enduring. He is the eternal God. He abides forever. There is a word, you know, that brings us right into touch with that. He that doeth the will of God shall abide forever. Abide forever.

T. Austin Sparks: So easily moved away, aren't we? Unabiding. The Lord Jesus was ever stressing this, abide in me. Abide.

T. Austin Sparks: Keep settled down. But you don't if you live on the surface. You know that quite well. Nothing that lives on the surface abides, it's carried away so easily by whatever comes along. Only those who to use the words of a prophet twice employed, dwell deep, dwell deep. Only so shall we endure and abide.

T. Austin Sparks: Things of greatest value are not found on the surface at all. The real treasures are in the deep. You have to go deep for the pearls and the jewels. Dig deep. Things that really are of value are not just superficial things found strewn anywhere, everywhere. You have to search deeply for them.

T. Austin Sparks: The Lord was describing the land for his people, the land of promise, the land of their inheritance. Told them that there were treasures there, but they'd have to dig for them. Have to dig for them. Out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. Nothing that really is of value comes easily. Oh, we know that. In every sphere of life, it does not come easily, but we have to go deep.

T. Austin Sparks: The Lord then is always seeking to deepen and deepen. He is in quest of depth. And because of the importance to the Lord of all these these features of depth, depth is always a costly thing. It's always a costly thing.

T. Austin Sparks: The fact is, and we know it so well, that we never do make deeper discoveries of the Lord only through very deep trial, very deep testing, very deep suffering. These treasures are treasures of darkness. That are always treasured somewhere in the darkness. They are always precious things somewhere down in the depths where the Lord leads us. Like that.

T. Austin Sparks: This essential of God in his people, all that it means of real depth, unto the abiding and unto full fruitfulness. It comes only by way of deep trial and suffering.

T. Austin Sparks: That explains the ways of the Lord with us. Really does. We wonder why the Lord does plow so deep and not allow us to abide in our superficiality.

T. Austin Sparks: Now here is Paul, the great example always of every kind of divine truth and divine working and way and method. Here is this man out of very deep ways with God and God's very deep ways with him. Crying, oh the depth of the riches.

T. Austin Sparks: Oh, the depth of the riches. How unsearchable, past finding out. There's really, there sometimes we think we've touched bottom, there is nearly no touching bottom in this matter. There's always something more to discover, but every time something more of deepening in us.

T. Austin Sparks: Just like that. Another way of man and the way of the world is the shallow way, isn't it? To get things as cheaply as possible and as easily as possible and as quickly as possible with as little cost as possible. That's the way of our nature. We want it like that. And we don't like the other way.

T. Austin Sparks: But that is a mark. It's a mark of something of divine character missing. It is. It just shows how devoid of the character of God human nature is and this world is. And all God's ways of enrichment demand the countering of our natural desires, inclinations, propensities to to have it all so easy. That's our way, it is the way of man.

T. Austin Sparks: Now, dear friends, this this matter of depth, matter of depth and of deepening into God and by God constitutes a feature of the great battle that the Lord's people are always in.

T. Austin Sparks: As an illustration and an instance of this, remember the Lord Jesus, as he stepped across that line from his 30 years of private hidden life into the public vocation and mission for which he'd come. And the enemy clearly discerning with that intuition common to spirits, recognized quite well why he had come and for what he had stepped across that line that day, to become the Lord of creation, the prince of this world, the ruler of the kingdoms.

T. Austin Sparks: He recognized that. And offered that prize to him along superficial lines. Superficial lines, compromise. Take this easier way. You can have it. You can have it all if you'll only take this way that I suggest.

T. Austin Sparks: You're going the hard way. You're going the deep way. You're going the costly way, but you can have it all without that. Superficial, see? The superficial way for a kingdom. But for a kingdom it would have been, it would not have lasted. It would not have endured. It would not have been of that substantial order of eternity.

T. Austin Sparks: And that's what the enemy wanted to rob of that that deep reality that God meant. The Lord Jesus saw the snare and accepted the deep way. Although how deep it was that way of the cross to the very depths, to the very depths. But what a kingdom. An everlasting kingdom, an enduring kingdom. He has it, it will endure throughout all generations forever and ever. The deep way is the real way.

T. Austin Sparks: The enemy is always trying to rob of depth. That's the point. To make things easier.

T. Austin Sparks: He is always trying to make things superficial. Oh so happy and so pleasant, so nice all on the surface. All looks so lovely and so enjoyable. Seems to be so good, but the point is, at what cost has it been secured?

T. Austin Sparks: And is there a peril if something of the depth is being surrendered. For that's the realm of value and of conflict. Depth. For this reason, and it's striking I know what sounds like a melancholy note. For this reason the Lord does have to bring his own things, his own divine secret things into a realm of tremendous suffering in order to preserve and increase their depth. Make no mistake about it.

T. Austin Sparks: The question will always arise, at what cost did you come by that? That determines whether it is real with you.

T. Austin Sparks: Thinking much about that incident, if you desire, in the life of Elisha. We know, we've heard many things about it. One thing has impressed me as I have been thinking over it again recently. The Lord sent him to the woman, you remember, and a child was given by divine act.

T. Austin Sparks: The prophet went away, and it fell upon a day, the child was stricken and died. The woman asked her husband to saddle the ass for her to go and fetch the prophet, and off she went.

T. Austin Sparks: She found him, told him her trouble, and he sent Gehazi with his rod, back. Gehazi, his servant, with the rod.

T. Austin Sparks: And I never can help my imagination getting to work as I see Gehazi. A man for which I have the utmost contempt for all I know of him in scripture. Taking that rod and in some professional way, a conceited way, going to the situation. Then entering into the death chamber and putting the rod upon the child. Nothing happened. Trying it perhaps some other angle, nothing happened. Nothing happened.

T. Austin Sparks: But the woman saw through Gehazi. And she said, I'm not going with Gehazi. I'm not going without you. You got to come. She came to Elisha. He went. And you know how he entered in, stretched himself upon that child. Hands to his hands, eyes to his eyes and lips to his lips, stretched himself.

T. Austin Sparks: Now you know the whole story, but what has impressed me is this. The Lord, the Lord in this scene was sovereignly at work, and the principle there undoubtedly was this. That here in this child was represented the very fruit, meaning and value of that woman's life if you'll allow her to represent the Church. And the child, the very meaning of her life, the very fruit of her life, the very testimony of her life, the only thing for which now she had to live. Something that was a matter of life or death with her.

T. Austin Sparks: And the Lord touched that. He touched that in order to to bring out this great, this wonderful, this profound truth. That everything in the Church has got to become a matter of life and death. No play-acting by any Gehazi. No merely formal, professional conduct with the rod. No mere words. No, mere performances.

T. Austin Sparks: Only the man, the man who is brought right into the thing in heart, so that this matter is with him a matter of his own ministry, of his own life, of his own testimony brought into the agony and the anguish of this thing. Not standing aside like a Gehazi and acting objectively, but this thing involves his very life, his very ministry, his very testimony, his very anointing. If God doesn't do this, then Elisha better give up everything. He's brought into the agony and anguish of this situation. God has touched something that is not just a matter of his professional ministry. It's a matter of his, the justification of his life.

T. Austin Sparks: Brought into it like that, God is going deep. My friends, God does that, make no mistake about it. Make no mistake about it.

T. Austin Sparks: In the Church, in the Church that is according to God, God will touch something in the individual life. He may touch a husband, he may touch a wife, he may touch a child, a beloved child, in order to get us out of this merely formal, detached kind of association with his things and make everything an agony. An agony. If the Church doesn't come in on our behalf now.

T. Austin Sparks: Well, you see, the dearest thing in life is threatened. God has wonderful ways of of making things real. Making things real, of destroying superficiality. Do you follow? I feel that this is a very solemn word from the Lord but a word that we all need to recognize. The Lord is not, not going to have shallowness and superficiality. He's going to touch the depth until it's a matter of anguish.

T. Austin Sparks: Everything is in the balances in this issue, whatever it may be. Whatever it may be, a business situation, a home situation, a personal situation, a church situation. Everything's in the balances now how this goes. The Lord simply draws us in, and I have a feeling the Lord is going to do things like that. To save from the matter of course kind of things, taking things for granted and to bring about more deadly, solemn reality with us all. It'll be by the deep ways, but oh, it'll be worthwhile afterwards.

T. Austin Sparks: That lad became the embodiment of the power of his resurrection. And it's something, you know, to have that testimony enshrined and embodied. Something indestructible and abiding there, substantial there, the power of his resurrection. Who can undo that? That's forever. Forever. It comes by this way. Thy way, oh God was in the depths.

T. Austin Sparks: Oh, the depth of the riches, is the point. The riches. Listen to the word. It will explain things that are going to happen to you, perhaps soon. And it may be a saving word.