The Spoil of Battle by T. Austin Sparks

The Spoil of Battle  by T. Austin Sparks

1 Chron 26;27

From this passage we gather that the house of the Lord is constituted out of conflict.  The Lord builds from the fruit of conflict.

When that temple was completed it stood as a monument to Universal victory.   The silver and the gold and all the precious things which it comprised, had been taken in battle and made the House of God.

The enemy had the resources for the house of God and the enemy had to be despoiled so the House could be built.

The House of God: the People of God – there is a spiritual and moral side to the building of the house. You may have a great number of individuals saved and still fail to have the truest meaning of the House of God; you may have a congregation and not a Church.

The time is coming when the Lord will cause His name to be upon His own; that is we shall receive a white stone, and in that white stone a new name, and we shall be called by His name, His name will be in our foreheads.  That is all symbolic language and its meaning is just this: the Lord will be so fully manifested in His own that as you look at them you will say: that speaks of Jesus, that is the nature of Christ.   Christ will be universally revealed through his own.

The character and Nature of Christ will be seen, this character is formed through conflict, just as the House in the OT was built through conflict.  The divine economy has been so ordered that, although the Lord Jesus has in himself a universal triumph over all His foes, the foes are left for us to deal with.   The Lord has not put our foes out of the universe, though He himself has triumphed.

It is by conflict, by battle, by grim and terrible warfare spiritually, that the moral excellencies of our triumphal Head are brought out in us.   We triumph in His victory, but we know that faith is so tested in a conflict, so deeply tried in a battle, that it is something more than just objectively holding on; that very exercise of faith brings out from Him, into our own souls, the strength of His victory.   We are made morally one with Him in His triumph by a test of faith which is so grim and so terrible that nothing that is not of him in us would be sufficient to carry us through.   When you are in such a place of holding on, Calvary’s victory is not something just objectively being taken hold of, but it is being inwardly established, and at last that victory is in us as it is in the Lord.

Remember Joseph,”until the time that his  word came to pass, the word of Jehovah tried him.”   The word of the Lord tries us, but it is in that conflict that spiritual and moral elements are developed.    Conflict secures the spoil for future building. 

Whatever conflict you may be facing recognise that it can become future building material for the House of God, producing gold, silver and precious stones in you.