T austin sparks biography of abraham

Now, you see that is the position to which Abraham came as recorded in Genesis 17 when God made the covenant and then gave circumcision as the sign of the covenant. Now you pass to chapter 22, and you find Abraham's supreme test of that whole situation. That was in the covenant, and that was the significance of the sign: death to all the motions and activities and energies of the natural or self-life.

He had become a party to that covenant, for a covenant must always have two parties. God was one, and Abraham was the other, and he had accepted it, and it has become very practical. Now then, the test of Abraham arose, and Isaac was the test of that position which he had taken. It was this: God had instituted a covenant, and the covenant was that his seed should be as the sand and as the stars.

God would multiply his seed exceedingly. He should be the father of many nations, and kings should come from him. These are the terms of the covenant. Abraham had said, 'All right, Lord, I am with You for that', and the Lord said, 'Very well, but that can never be along the lines of your natural resources, your own energies, your own abilities, your own intelligence.

That has got to come only through death and resurrection. Oh, I do wish that there you would put into parenthesis that other New Testament symbol that goes with circumcision - baptism, because the two things go together in the New Testament. Baptism is the Christian's way of doing what the Hebrew did in circumcision, saying, 'I die to myself, I die to the natural life.

I cut that all off in the Cross of Christ. I declare by baptism, just as Abraham did by circumcision, that I accept this: that the future is out from God, and not out from myself. There is no prospect of any kind so far as I naturally am concerned. It is only through the Cross in resurrection that there is any way at all, any life at all.

Now then, Isaac has come in by a miracle which Abraham had no reason whatever to expect to be repeated. God had bound everything up with Isaac, not with any further seed of Abraham, but with Isaac. At that point Isaac lives as the embodiment of God's covenant. Isaac dies, and what happens? What a test! Now then, between God and Abraham stands Isaac.

And Isaac says "God and everything because of His covenant"; or, "no God and nothing". It is God and everything, or it is nothing. You see, the promise of this multiplying of his seed had already been given several times, but the fulfilment of it only came through Isaac being offered up, for, immediately Abraham had obeyed, then the Lord appeared to him again and ratified the covenant, " Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son Now we must draw some very practical lessons and values from this.

Firstly, nothing is truly established until it has been yielded up and has received the brand of the Cross upon it. Have you got that? Even though that may have been given to you from God, there is still always the danger of something in ourselves impinging upon something that God has given us. We insinuate ourselves into it, and make it ours somehow.

This Self! This flesh! Oh, yes, God gives us a ministry and then we get hold of it and become jealous about our ministry and afraid of other people getting in our way and taking our ministry away from us; interfering with our ministry, you see. The flesh comes up in that way and in so many other directions and connections. God does something, and then we come into it.

We get into the t austin sparks biography of abraham. Somehow or other this flesh cannot keep itself out of even the things that God does by a miracle. We turn them to the glorification or the gratification of this flesh of ours, and even a thing which God may give - and you are thinking perhaps of different things which God may give - will never be established and confirmed until it has been yielded up and knows the mark of death to ourselves and that is only alive for and unto God, and we are only alive for and unto God in that connection, whatever it may be.

The Cross is the way of life in everything and immediately the Cross is nullified by this thing upon which the Cross says, "No, no! We not only arrest the progress, but we bring into smallness God's intention of multiplication. Why cannot God increase? Why is it that in the first few years of the church's history there was such a going on and on and on in life, ever and on in life, and growing, growing, growing?

That is a supernatural act of the Spirit of God. What does it mean to be born? It is to receive life. If, then, we are born from above; if ours is a supernatural birth, then the link with the Lord Jesus is the link of eternal life.

T austin sparks biography of abraham: And we know that

We must get hold of this! You may think that when you were born again it was in some place that you can mention, but that is only something to do with this earth. You were not really born again on this earth. You were born where the Lord Jesus was born. You were not really born on any date which you can mention in the earthly calendar.

You were born in eternity. Your home is not here at all. Your home is outside of this world and outside of time. In this matter we, like the Lord Jesus, are born with eternal life. This is a very wonderful thing.

T austin sparks biography of abraham: Abraham's life can be

If the Bible is true, it is a very wonderful book. If Christianity is true, it is a very wonderful thing. We are so familiar with these things about Christianity that we have lost something of the wonder of it all. I think we need to sit down with our Christianity again and really think about it in this way: the Holy Spirit is reproducing what was true of the Lord Jesus in us, and the beginning of His history and the beginning of our history is in eternity.

You ought to look up all those references to "before the world was", "before times eternal", and see us in the mind of God away back there!

T austin sparks biography of abraham: Abraham's covenant with God was

So John begins his Gospel with: "In him was life" Johnand later in that same Gospel Jesus will say: "I am come that they may have life" John In both of those statements it is taken for granted that no one outside of Jesus Christ has that life. If they already had life why should He come from heaven in order that they should have it? This is very elementary, I know, but we have not got very far yet.

This is the beginning of the biography of Jesus Christ which is being written by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers. Of course, it is very simple when you come to think about it. It is very wonderful, very profound, but very simple, for the very first thing that a newly born again child of God realizes is that something has happened which makes him know that he does not belong here any longer.

He has a new home, a new nativity, a new genealogy, and it goes - not back to Adam. Thank God for that! You understand that I am not talking about the deity of Jesus Christ, but about His Sonship, and I said before that that Sonship relates to humanity. I am not going to argue that out now, but the purpose of God in creating man was to bring Himself into the relationship of Father and children, and by childhood to sonship.

That is another thing I am not going to argue about! I think that will come out as we go on. So we begin the biography in eternity. I wonder if you are aware of that! We have a hymn which says: "I am a stranger here, within a foreign land, My home is far away, upon a golden strand. As we go on our life-journey we do find that we are getting further and further away from our natural birth, further and further away from this world, and we are becoming more conscious of our heavenly relationship.

I want to look at two or three fragments of Scripture: "For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one, much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ. So then as through one trespass the judgement came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life" RomansThat life, then, links us with what is eternal.

Now I want to say one or two quite important things at this point. This that is called eternal life is the factor which determines everything in history and destiny. Not religion, nor ritual, nor orthodoxy, but life determines history and human destiny. It governs everything. The Bible is God's Book of world history and human destiny, and it is wonderful how universal the Bible is.

It comprehends the whole human race, it governs the destiny of all the nations which t austin sparks biography of abraham up the human race, and it contains the principles of destiny. And the centre of the Bible, from the beginning to the end, is this that is called eternal life. It is the all-governing factor. Life determines whether God is present or not.

The question, down to the smallest detail, is a question of life. Begin with the individual and the individual's personal experiences. If we understood rightly we should know that this matter of life is governing our personal experiences. We are individually involved in this great governing matter of life, and that determines whether God is with us.

The same is true of any company of God's people, or any company of religious people. The thing that determines whether God is there is this matter of life. God is the source of life, and He cannot be present and life not be there. That, surely, is a very searching thing for our assemblies! Thus, in every sphere, this question of life governs.

Now we are going to look at the Bible along three lines. The earthly life of the Lord Jesus was divided into three sections, and each one of those sections has to be repeated in the life of the believer. First, there was His birth and infancy; secondly, His childhood; and, thirdly, His manhood. InT. Austin-Sparks resigned his Baptist ordination.

Together with like-minded Christians, he established a conference and training center at Honor Oak in southeast London. A great number of Christians participated in conferences and classes at the center while staying at available guest quarters, some living there years at a time participating in Bible courses, practical services and church meetings.

There was a similar, but smaller center maintained during the summer at Kilgreggan House in Scotland. From the Christian Fellowship Centre, Austin-Sparks and his co-workers also ran a publishing operation which printed a bi-monthly magazine, A Witness and a Testimony published from until the death of Austin-Sparks inand books either written by Austin-Sparks or edited from transcripts of his recorded messages.

The primary theme of Sparks' books is the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Florence Austin-Sparks died in Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikidata item. Early life [ edit ]. Career [ edit ]. Publications [ edit ].