Spiritual Weakness Made Manifest By Testing Circumstances

This is a period during which Israel was particularly menaced by the Philistines.

They are always the shadow over Israel's life;

Immediately Israel's weakness and helplessness was related to the Philistines.

The Philistines brought out and made manifest Israel's weakness and helplessness.

The Lord usually has some particular thing by which a state or condition is revealed.

It is not always recognizable as a state in itself.

There has to be something that brings it out.

Because of this or that, the real condition of things is manifested...

And it would not be recognized apart from that instrument that the Lord uses to disclose exactly what the state is.

It becomes positive, rather than abstract, by reason of certain things.

The Lord will, for instance create a situation...

An experience...

A difficulty...

A concrete challenge...

And then the inability to meet it...

To deal with it.
                                                
That shows that that particular thing, which under other circumstances...

If things had been different...

Would have counted for nothing...

Would have at once been conquered and subdued...

Has now become the Lord's means of showing how bad the spiritual state is.

The Lord has a way of doing that.
 
When Israel came into the right position and condition under David, the Phil­istines did not count for anything;

They lost all significance.

But here they are very significant...

They do occupy a very dominant place...

And that is only because of the spiritual state of the Lord's people.

So, spiritual weakness is here made manifest by means of the Philistines.

We have to ask why it was that Israel was helpless before the Philistines.

Why was it that their weakness...

Their deplorable condition...

Was manifested in the presence of the Philistines...

Who otherwise would not have signified anything?

When you dig down for your answer, you find that it was because there was so much in common between Israel and the Philistines.

They had so much in common really deep down underneath.

The Philistines are known to us by a certain epithet...

The 'uncircumcised Philistines'.
 
David used that phrase concerning Goliath of Gath,"this uncircumcised Philistine" (1 Sam. 17:36).

But when you look at Israel, that was really their spiritual state.
They were uncircumcised in heart.
 
They were called the Lord's people, and in a sense, traditionally they were.

They had the ordinances, even the ordinances of circumcision...

But it was all outward.

Paul draws that very distinct line of discrimination...

Between the outward circumcision, which he calls the concision...

And the inward circumcision of the heart.

He says it is the latter that makes us Israelites in truth, not the former (Rom. 2:25-29).

Here you find Israel in exactly that position...

Uncircumcised in heart.

The fact that they said,"Make us a king... like all the nations" (1 Sam. 8:5)...

Showed that the thing which was common to the nations had come into their hearts.

They wanted to be like the other nations;

That is, the spirit of the world had come inside...

And thus they knew nothing of what Paul called "the circumcision of Christ";

Not "the putting away of the filth of the flesh" (1 Pet. 3:21), but the putting away of the old man entirely.

There was deep down something quite in common in Israel and the Philistines...

And that being so, that had to be ex­posed and the world exposed their weakness.

It is like that with a church, with a Christian community, or with a Christendom, which is really worldly in spirit, in principle or in method.

It is the world that exposes their weakness and shows how helpless they are.

The world, like the Philistines, laughs at them and says...

You don't count for anything;

You are not to be taken seriously;

We do not consider that we owe very much to you or that we are to take you seriously.'

The world laughs at the church and the Christian who, in principle, has that which is in common with itself.

The world says, 'We can do your job better than you can.'

So we find that the world is very largely the instrument of exhibiting or exposing the weakness of Christians...

Simply because there is that common basis.

~T. Austin Sparks~