"The Wiles Of The Devil"

If we had time to note all the secretive things of which the Word of God tells us concerning the earthly Jerusalem, we should find that it was the purposes of God that were so often  threatened by those secretive elements.

Think, by way of illustration, of Nehemiah's day, when the wall was being built, and how the enemy got one of his own representatives hidden right in the temple itself, and so sought to compromise everything, to weaken the whole work and position, by having a representative occupying a chamber in the temple itself.

Then in Ezra's time the adversary said: We serve the same God as you do, let us come and work alongside of you! Subtle!

But thank God the man of God was a man of such transparency himself that he could see through things, and he was not deceived.

He saw quite clearly that in these people there was darkness.

Their condition was not one of clearness, nor of light.

There was duplicity, and he shut them out; and immediately he did that they showed quite well where they were.

In these and numerous other ways you can mark the enemy trying all the time to get that which was not suitable to God right into the heart of things, in order to destroy the effectiveness, the positiveness of testimony, and Jerusalem's history is a long history of these subtle elements working in the midst. 

We come to the day of our Lord Himself. What a mass of this sort of thing he encountered in Jerusalem! They tried to catch Him in His words.

They were all the time laying traps for Him. 

They were working furtively, secretively, by deceptions, by snares, trying to take Him.

The whole situation, the whole condition of Jerusalem was like that in His day, and clearness, transparency, was destroyed.

Yet the temple worship was going on. 

Outwardly the whole of the religious system was proceeding as it had been wont to do, yet here was this dark interior. God forsakes it, because of the lie.

The Lord put His finger upon that so often in very straight and terse language. "You make clean the outside of the platter..."! "Whited sepulchres"! What a picture! 

See them going round with their whitewash, making white their sepulchers; and within, He says, they are "full of dead men's bones."

They were making the thing to appear something other than it was. Such is the lie, which is the Devil's work, leading to rejection. 

The Lord's desire toward us is that we should know that state of light, of clearness, of which we have spoken.

The next thing is love. What is the character of New Testament love? Love unfeigned! What a word! 

Fancy using that word to Christians - love unfeigned! Does that mean that some would love feignedly, feign to love, pretend to love, while really they do not love at all?

That which the Lord seeks in every virtue, in every element, is something that is true.

That is what we mean by light in the sense of clearness. It is the purity and inwardness of things. 

Truth may be in word, in doctrine, but there has to be a corresponding truth in heart, truth in life.

Light may be a matter of doctrine, but there has to be a corresponding state of light in the heart. 

The enemy will not object to us having plenty of the former kind of light and truth, but, if he can, he will seek to destroy its real value by introducing a lie over against it, a contradiction.

This may sound rather strong. Well, it is strong! 

It must be strong! It has not been put in this way to lay charges against anyone, but by way of warning.

It will perhaps explain some things, but we must take it to our hearts as a word of exhortation or admonition. 

Remember that God never builds in the dark; that is, there can be no constructiveness where there is not light.

Before ever God would bring this world back into order and fruitfulness He said: "Let there be light." God is out for the manifestation of the truth.

God's works are never darkness, and we can never know constructiveness and progress unless there is absolute light.

You know quite well that you cannot go on with people who are not straight, people who are crooked, people who are all the time furtive, not open, not frank, who have somewhere in the background a secretiveness.

You have to say, I cannot go on with that one. 

God is like that. He would say to any one of us who might be there, I cannot go on with you until you are absolutely out in the open, until you have come to a place where you are going to be perfectly honest.

Reality is God's demand for any kind of work that He will do.

There may be many weaknesses, many imperfections, but if there is genuineness, reality, openness before God, where the spirit is clear and pure, God can go on with His work. 

But immediately we begin to lock something up inside, hold something back, cease to be perfectly open before God, the work stops. 

Light in the sense of clearness is an essential for the building of the city of God, because the ultimate purpose for that city is to shine forth with that glory of God in character.

With Him there is no variableness, neither shadow cast by turning.

That means that God can be relied upon.

The Lord make us like that.

~T. Austin Sparks~