Reading: Rev. 14:1-5; Acts 2:23; Eph.
1:4-11.
“These are they that follow the
Lamb whithersoever he goeth” (Rev. 14:4).
In our
previous meditation our time was occupied with
identifying the one hundred and forty-four thousand
followers of the Lamb. Without going over the ground then
covered, by way of retrospect it does seem perfectly
clear that that particular company represents something
distinct and different from other companies of the
Lord’s people mentioned in the book of the
Revelation. They are marked out by this characterization,
that they “follow the Lamb whithersoever he
goeth”, and have consequently come to a place of
peculiar value and service to the Lord in glory.
Christ the Eternal Lamb
Now we
pursue that matter in order to try to see what it means,
or at least something of what it means, to “follow
the Lamb whithersoever he goeth”, that is, in
unreserved utterness. So we allow the very designation to
lead us — “the Lamb”. And when we look
into the Scriptures to find where the first glimpse of
the Lamb is given — I do not mean of lambs but the
Lamb — we find it here in Rev. 13:8 — “And
all that dwell on the earth shall worship him, every one
whose name hath not been written from the foundation of
the world in the book of life of the Lamb that hath been
slain”. You will see that there is an
alternative rendering — “written in the book
of life of the Lamb that hath been slain from the
foundation of the world”, and I think that is
the more correct order. “The Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world”. That is really the
first glimpse that we have of Christ as the Lamb. A
remarkable statement — “slain from the
foundation of the world”. Probably you know that
the word “foundation” there could be more
literally translated “the laying down of the
world”, that is, the setting out of the whole scheme
of creation. We speak of laying down a plan, a scheme, a
project, and when God laid down the plan, the scheme, the
project of the creation, at that time the Lamb was, in
intention, slain, which, of course, in the very first
instance means that the Cross is no afterthought. The
Cross is not something brought in as an afterthought
because of certain emergencies. The Cross was in the
foreknowledge of God, as we have read in Acts 2:23 —
“being delivered up by the determinate counsel
and foreknowledge of God”: “delivered up…
by the foreknowledge of God”: “The Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world”.
That
takes us back to God’s counsels from eternity. A
purpose, a purpose framed, a purpose projected,
initiated. There we find ourselves once more in the
presence of those counsels of the Godhead to which Paul
so much refers; wonderful, great, glorious counsels. How
full, far-reaching, and glorious were those counsels
before times eternal. It is a matter about which we can
truly be in contemplation and meditation and
consideration all our days and never exhaust it. How many
times have we come back to those parts of the Word which
speak so much about God’s eternal counsels,
God’s foreknowledge, God’s predestinating
purpose, and still we feel we have not touched the
fringe. There is always something more. Yes, it was all
there before, and when God, so to speak, drafted His
great, universal, eternal plan and purpose, He at the
same time anticipated its disruption. He foresaw what
would happen as a mighty spiritual reaction against His
intentions. He took the whole situation in, knowing that
the very nature of the purpose must leave the door open
for voluntary obedience and committal and acceptance. The
very essence of it all, which is love, must leave the
place for option, and He foresaw the side on which
man’s option would move, He foreknew the tremendous
activity of spiritual forces against His purpose. He
foresaw all that has happened since man gave way to the
great spiritual foe of God’s intentions concerning
His Son Jesus Christ. Having projected, and having
foreseen, He provided, and redemption was forthwith
established.
The Work of the Lamb
It is
eternal redemption (Heb. 9:12). That is the name of it.
It is the timeless Cross because the purpose is eternal.
We are brought, then, right into the presence of the
timeless Cross and the eternal purpose. This introductory
designation, the Lamb, is tremendously impressive when
you see that already, before anything has happened,
Christ is called the Lamb. Christ is the Lamb; and His
being called the Lamb before all that terrible tragedy
and havoc had taken place, itself indicates the full
nature of the work to be done. The LAMB — the
title is an implication. It implies just what will have
to be done. We are in the presence of a tremendous thing,
if only it would break upon us. There is that vast
purpose of God which, in its realization, is to obtain
throughout all the ages of ages to come and to give
character to His universe. Then there is this terrible,
terrible sin, which is so utterly contrary, the
disruption of everything through these present ages: And
then you say that it is a Lamb that is going to put all
that right — what do you mean? Why, you want
something more than a Lamb for that! You must have a very
limited grasp of the situation if you say a lamb can put
it all right! But that is just what the Bible does say,
with a significance beyond our comprehension. Because,
you see, as we have said just now, it indicates the
nature of the work to be done, which is this — an
entire and utter reversing of the nature and constitution
of things as they are now.
Will
anybody look at the world today and man’s ideas of
running it, and say that it is just like a lamb? You see
how absurd that sounds, how ridiculous. Anything and
everything but the Lamb is in the present constitution of
things. Everything that is a complete antithesis of the
Lamb pervades this order of things, in its very
constitution. You see the point. The whole constitution
has got to be changed. Another constitution needs to be
given to this universe and it must be the constitution of
the Lamb. Yes, this universe has got to be reconstituted
upon the basis of the Lamb-nature, and the wonderful
thing is that all these tremendous forces — these
simply terrific forces, in this universe, of iniquity,
evil, wickedness, sin, hatred and malice — all these
forces are gathered up, and the Bible tells how a Lamb
can deal with the whole thing. There is something here
which is a mystery.
The Triumph of the Lamb
And so
you find this whole set of paradoxes and seeming
contradictions. In the book of the Revelation there is
the book sealed, and the apostle says, “And I
wept much, because no one was found worthy to open the
book, or to look thereon: and one of the elders saith
unto me, Weep not; behold, the Lion that is of the tribe
of Judah, the Root of David, hath overcome to open the
book and the seven seals thereof. And I saw in the midst
of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in
the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing, as though it
had been slain” (Rev. 5:4-6). Always remember
that in the twenty-nine occurrences of the word
“Lamb” in the book of the Revelation, it is
always the diminutive, “a little Lamb”.
“Behold, A LITTLE LAMB hath prevailed”.
Strange contradiction! The Lion, the Lamb —
identical! The Lamb is the Lion in strength in
prevailing; yet a lamb is the very symbol of weakness.
Nothing would speak more of weakness than a little lamb;
you would not want to put much weight upon a little lamb.
But
look at what it says in this book about the little Lamb.
These terrific forces make war with the Lamb and the Lamb
shall overcome them (Rev. 17:14). You could believe that,
perhaps, of the Lion; but the LAMB shall overcome
them — weakness and might in one object. Yieldedness
as a lamb to the slaughter, no resistance; and authority.
They flee before the face of the Lamb. Strange
contradiction: subjection, submission, and dominion,
dominion given to the Lamb — to the LAMB.
Meekness:
what do you mean by meekness? No standing up for personal
rights, no seeking of self-vindication. But what about
this wrath of the Lamb? It is terrible. There is a mystic
infinite power in the Lamb which is not to be accounted
for on any natural ground at all. Take the natural
aspect, and you have everything that speaks of weakness
and helplessness, submission and meekness. But there is a
mystic something about this Lamb that is not natural, it
is divine. All the mighty forces of God’s heavenly
universe are bound up with, centred in and expressed
through this yieldedness, this weakness, this meekness,
this submission.
That
is not just a statement. That is a fact, a thing that can
be put to the test by any Christian, and many of you know
quite well that it is a working principle. When you have
sought the grace of the Lord Jesus to suffer wrong rather
than do wrong, to accept joyfully the spoiling of your
goods, to restrain natural heat and wrath and reaction
and to hand things over to the Lord, you have seen the
Lord do things that none of your wrath and none of your
strength could have done. You have known the Lord to come
in then, when you have let go and have got out of the
way. That is the way. That is not natural. No, our
constitution is not the Lamb constitution at all. We know
that quite well. But when God reconstitutes according to
the Lamb, the ground is prepared and the way is opened
for the exercise of infinite power; for something that is
not natural, something that can only be said to be the
Lord. See this Lamb, led to the slaughter, opening not
His mouth. Behold Him in His yieldedness to the will of
God and see whether God has vindicated that nature. Has
He? God has indeed vindicated that.
The Cross the Way of the
Lamb
Now
let us go back a little. What we mean by the Lamb is the
Cross. The Cross is the way of the Lamb, and the Cross,
or the Lamb, links the eternities. One arm, so to speak,
of that Cross reaches right back over all the ages and
beyond the garden into the eternal counsels, and there
takes up all the immensity of those counsels of God, the
eternal purpose. The other arm of the Cross touches the
ages to come; and by way of that Cross, that from the
beginning, which has in the meantime been challenged and
upset, is realized: so that the way of the Lamb is the
way of the realization of the eternal purpose of God, and
nothing less than that. That is why I have taken pains to
stress the immensity of that purpose. Our conception of
the Cross is so small. Our hymns about the Cross have
such a limited view of that Cross. Oh, yes, “the
burden of my heart rolled away” at the Cross —
quite true and good, blessed; but the Cross is
infinitely, transcendently more than our conversion. The
Cross has come in not just to get people saved from their
sin and secured unto heaven and have the blessings of
forgiveness and access to God. No, the Cross has come in
to lay right hold of that vast scheme of the divine
intention and purpose and to realize it, and nothing less
than it. We ought to see that the Cross is a very much
bigger thing than we have ever imagined.
When
the Lord begins to work subjectively by His Cross in a
life, He does a very utter thing beyond conversion. In
many lives it often comes to this: that a fuller
apprehension of the meaning of identification with Christ
in death and burial and resurrection is a far bigger
thing than conversion, and that is significant. You
cannot make too much of the Cross, for this very reason
— that there is nothing greater and vaster than
God’s eternal purpose in the creation of this
universe, and the Cross has to do with every bit of it,
touches it at every point. The things in the heavens are
purged by the Blood of that Cross (Heb. 9:23). The Cross
is an immense thing because of the immensity of that with
which it has to do. So the Cross is retrospective —
but not merely to the fall, not merely to the entrance of
sin. The Cross is retrospective to before the world was,
from the laying down of the foundation. It is
retrospective to the very purpose of God in having a
world at all. If you can understand and grasp why God
created this universe, what His thoughts were, what His
intentions; if you can really comprehend all the
immensity of His purpose in making this a heritage for
Himself, worthy of Himself and satisfying to Him, then,
and only then, will you be able to see the greatness of
the Cross, the magnitude of the Cross. Yes, the Cross
reaches right back to that.
A Company in the Good of the
Eternal Purpose
What
are we to say about these people, these one hundred and
forty-four thousand? If what I have said is right and
true, surely they must mean this: they are a company
standing in the good of the eternal purpose of God, and
nothing less. They have “followed the Lamb
whithersoever He goeth”, not a bit of the way, not
more or less, not with reservations, not just so far as
forgiveness of sins and no further. Not just that, on
such-and-such a day in such-and-such a year so long ago,
“I gave my heart to Jesus”. These have come
into an apprehension of the greatness of God’s
purpose concerning His Son, and have gone right on with
it and are standing in it. Surely that is what it means.
I am
not saying that these are an elect of the elect. I am not
saying that this is not for all, this is only for a few
— not at all. But anyone who has eyes to see knows
quite well that very few Christians actually do go this
way, comparatively few really do go all the way with
God’s purpose. Look at Christianity today and tell
me if what you see represents all the thought of God; and
then enquire into it, investigate it, and see how many
are willing to go farther, and you will be surprised. How
many care about anything more? It is comparatively few
who answer to God in His fuller thought as to His eternal
purpose. Indeed, I fear that there are multitudes of
Christians who do not know what you mean when you talk
about the eternal purpose of God. And so God has to find
His satisfaction as to this in a representative company.
Here
is the position. Who will accept the fuller meaning of
the Cross in order to satisfy God as to the fuller
expression of His purpose? That is the issue. And this
company has said Yes to the Lord. Not just that I am
going to be saved and live a happy Christian life and do
a lot of Christian work; no. But I am going to allow God
to entirely reconstitute me, from centre to
circumference, according to His own Son, conformably to
the image of His Son; and that takes a profound work of
the Cross, a tremendous operation of the Cross to do
that. That is following the Lamb. The figures used may
seem strange, but that is what it means, the way of the
Lamb — He was made perfect through sufferings. That
is, He was brought to completeness through sufferings. We
shall come there in no other way. That we should be
before Him without blemish, before Him in love. That is
what reconstituting us means.
I
think the whole matter is clearly before us. Here is a
company. (It is clear that, in the book of the
Revelation, there are companies of saved people, various
and different companies, larger and smaller companies,
and here amongst the companies is this one marked out and
clearly defined.) It is called the one hundred and
forty-four thousand, with symbolic, not literal, meaning,
and they stand in a special relationship to the throne,
and, as we said in our previous meditation, they are in
the good of a special secret that no one else knows or
can learn. They have come into something by their walk
with the Lamb, by their sufferings together with Him.
What do they mean?
Once
again, the Lamb takes us back to God’s purpose in
fullness before the world was. He does not just say that
He by His Blood will deal with the sin that has come in
— that is a part of the whole — or with the
conditions that have resulted from man’s
disobedience: they are all included. What the Lamb does
is right at the point where God lays down His whole
ultimate plan for eternity: namely, to sum up all things
in Christ, to fill all things with Christ and to make His
people the fullness of Him that filleth all things. It is
in order to secure that against the invasion of the
disruptive forces — to secure that and nothing less
than that. So the Lamb relates to the fullness of
God’s purpose from eternity, and to “follow the
Lamb whithersoever He goeth” likewise relates to the
fullness of that purpose, bringing those who so follow
not only to heaven but into that particular position that
answers to God’s thought in fullness from eternity.
Now
you are able to see why it is necessary, before you can
come to the Church, to have the Cross. You never can have
the Church without the Cross. The Church is that in which
God’s eternal counsels are to be fulfilled, and the
Church is based upon the Cross. All that that means just
comes back to one thing. Will we “follow the Lamb
whithersoever He goeth”? In other words, will we
accept the Cross in all its meaning for the reversing of
everything that is contrary to God’s purpose, the
reversing of the very constitution that is contrary to
God’s mind? And the reversing is a very practical
thing. It is so practical, it is so terribly practical,
that it is most unacceptable to any part of our being.
The Lord tells you and me that in opposition and
affliction and suffering heaped upon us by other people
we are to be perfectly meek, not rising up and reacting
in the heat of our own temper and hurt feelings and
pride, but in meekness we are to accept it, allow it,
commit the whole thing to the Lord and suffer.
That
is not our constitution. We have to be reconstituted to
do that. But when the Spirit of Jesus Christ, God’s
Lamb, really does prevail in our hearts and get a victory
there, when the Lamb overcomes in us, the ground is
provided for God, in His own time and in His own way, to
exercise His infinite power in that very situation. It
might very well be that these people would come back and
say, “Look here, if you had shown resentment, any
bad spirit, I should not have thought much of you as a
Christian; but because of the way you took it, somehow or
other I have had a miserable time ever since!” God
has had His opportunity. How many are won that way! Yes,
the Lamb WINS.
The Unity of the Company
But
let us not get some objective mentality about following
the Lamb. It is coming right home to us in a new way, any
day that we live it is going to find us out all along.
Nevertheless at the end there is this company right in
touch with the throne, singing their song in such a
oneness that the apostle said he only heard one voice. “I
heard a voice… and the voice which I
heard…” — singular. One hundred and
forty-four thousand singing in unison so that it was like
one sound or voice. God has done something. How has He
done that? How does God bring about an utter unity and
oneness, identity, in a disrupted creation? How is God
going to deal with all the divisions that the enemy has
brought about in this world and even amongst the
Lord’s people? Only by the way of the Lamb —
and He will do it that way, that is His way.
It is
a mighty thing. You may try every other means conceivable
to the human mind to bring about absolute oneness between
two people, and you find there is always some kind of
breaking out. It cannot be done. You think you have
nicely patched up some matter, but somehow or other it
breaks out again; you can never be sure of it. Yet here
is something done where a great company is only heard as
one voice, only identified as one person. That has undone
the work of the devil; that has destroyed his works.
How is
it done? THE LAMB, THE WAY OF THE LAMB. The Lord
make us followers of the Lamb.