Four Greatnesses of Divine Revelation

by T. Austin-Sparks

Introduction

Read: 1 Chronicles 28 and 29.

These chapters bring into view something which, in its realization, is the solution to all our problems and the deliverance from all our difficulties.  In a word, that ‘something’ is spiritual enlargement.  Most of our troubles are due to our smallness.  Paul recognized that enlargement was the solution to those very great problems at Corinth, and you know what the problems were and the difficulties which confronted him.  At length he gathered all up in one full-hearted outburst: “Our mouth is open unto you, O Corinthians, our heart is enlarged.  Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own affections.  Now for a recompense in like kind... be ye also enlarged” (2 Corinthians 6:11-13).  That was only an inclusive and comprehensive way of saying: ‘All these things which are such troubles amongst you, such problems, such difficulties, are due to your smallness; if only you were bigger people so many of these things would disappear altogether.  The way out is enlargement!’  It is true so often that the collapse of things in different realms has been because there was no one big enough to cope with them.  If only there had been someone of adequate measure to grapple with it, the situation would have been saved.  This is a day when all sorts of maladies are troubling the Church and upsetting Christianity.  We need not mention them, for we are conscious of them, but they are mainly due to a lack of spiritual greatness, or, to put it again the other way, they are due to pettiness and smallness.  The only way out is enlargement, a new horizon, and a new sense of the greatness of that into which we, as Christians, are brought.  But unfortunately today, in so many directions, the only bigness amongst Christians is that which is according to the world’s standards of bigness, and not the Lord’s standards.

Now, in these Scriptures there are four great things. We might call them: ‘The Four Pillars of the Faith,’ ‘The Four Greatnesses,’ and we have covered them all in the two chapters which we have just read.  In type and principle they are:

 the Greatness of Christ, David’s greater Son;

the Greatness of the Cross, as suggested by the  altar and the immensity of the collective sacrifice;

the Greatness of the Church, the House of God; and

the Greatness of the Word of God, indicated in  these chapters at two points. Firstly, Solomon’s greatness was said to depend entirely upon his faithfulness to  the Word of God; and, secondly, David, in committing the pattern of the House to Solomon, said that he had received it all in writing from the Lord—it was the Word of God governing.

Those are the four great things of the Scriptures.