Reading:
Revelation 2:3
Seven is the governing number of
this whole book of the Revelation. We have the seven
churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls, seven
angels, seven spirits of God, and so on. We know that
seven is the number which speaks of completeness and
fullness. God ended His works and rested from all His
labours on the seventh day. The seventh is the sign of
completeness: the works were complete. So that when we
come to seven churches, we at once find ourselves in the
presence of something which is being judged as a whole,
in completeness — the completeness of the church in
itself and the completeness of the church in all time. I
am not staying with those details of biblical exposition
which are familiar to everybody. This is not an
exposition of the book of the Revelation, and so we are
not touching on any of the theories which have been
propounded, such as whether these seven churches
represent seven stages in the dispensation, and so on.
That does not concern me at all just now, and I do not
think it should concern us so much as it has done,
because theories as to times are quite unnecessary here.
At any given time you will find conditions such as marked
all these churches. You may find them all simultaneously
in different parts of the church. In the church scattered
over the earth today, different parts may be marked by
all these things which are found here in the sevenfold
message. So we can dismiss those technicalities and say
that what is really being brought into view is that the
church as a whole, in itself and for all time, is being
interrogated by this Man, and by the standard which He
represents as the Man according to God’s heart, whom
God has made the horizon of all judgment.
The
Lord’s Unalterable Standard
The next thing with which we find
ourselves confronted is this. As we come to the sevenfold
message to the church, we are brought right to the very
heart of God’s purpose. We are compelled to take
account of one thing, and that one thing is that the Lord
will not accept a lesser standard than His full thought
for the church. However we may cringe, however much we
may dislike that, however much we may try to get round
it, here it is. The Lord will not accept anything less
than His full thought concerning His church, and He is
going to have it. We shall see, as we go on, that He may
not have it, in the first instance or at the beginning,
in the whole church, but He will have it somewhere. That
is the heart of things.
Many difficulties and questions may
arise in this connection. When there is a presentation of
God’s full thought concerning His church — when
we come to these wonderful revelations of the eternal
counsels and purposes as we have them in some of the
later letters of Paul, and when they are presented,
expounded, explained to us, and the Lord throws light
upon them and shows how great, how perfectly astounding
and marvellous are His conceptions concerning His church,
and what that involves and necessitates — our
immediate reaction, and in a sense a very natural one,
is, “But only one in a thousand sees it, one in a
thousand has any apprehension of it! And as for entering
in, going on, coming to expression of it — well,
look at the church! Where do you find it?” And
because that is true, alternatives have been sought and
back-doors have been fled to.
Now, the fact is this — and I
bid you to confirm or, if you can do otherwise, repudiate
this by the Word. The fact is that, in the Word of God,
God has never made provision for anything less. You say,
“Well, what is going to happen to all the other
people who have not seen it, or who have had it presented
and just do not accept it and will not go on? What is
going to happen?” The Lord does not give a
provisional revelation, that, if they do not — well,
it is all right, He will be comparatively satisfied, He
will accept the situation simply because He cannot do
otherwise, He will make the best of a bad job. There is
nothing like that at all. There is plenty to indicate
that failure to go on to the fullness involves in very
serious loss, very serious consequences; if not in the
loss of salvation, at least the loss of the great purpose
of salvation. There is plenty there, but nowhere will you
find the Lord saying, “Well, we will put this lot of
people into a second category, and be quite satisfied
with them where they are.” The Lord always keeps His
full standard in view, and says, “That is what I am
after, and I will never be satisfied unless I have it.
Satisfaction for Me is found only in fullness, in
completeness.”
That is the real upshot of these
messages. While there is so much that is good in the
churches, so much commendable, the Lord does not settle
down and say, “Well, that is very good, very nice; I
will be content with that, I will be satisfied with
that.” Men very often have to do that, but God
never. There is no provision for a lower standard and no
reprieve given to a lesser measure. He holds us to the
fullness of His original intention. So He presents the
church, not with a second-level challenge but with a
first-level challenge. He is judging here — not in a
second man of an inferior type: He is still judging in
the Man who is complete and perfect before God. That is
God’s horizon.
The next thing — perhaps, in
the light of some people’s ideas, this needs to be
said — is that these churches are composed of
Christians. There has been a theory put forth that these
are only professing Christians and not real Christians;
that these are professing churches, not real churches.
Well, I am not accepting that. These are churches with a
history, a spiritual history, and the challenge is on the
ground of that from which they have fallen, that which
they have lost, and that which they have let in. They are
Christians. “Thou didst leave thy first love.
Remember... whence thou art fallen”. “Thou
sufferest the woman Jezebel”. (2:4,5,20). They have
a history, a spiritual history. They are not merely
professors. It is what they have allowed to happen to
them and amongst them. So this is not just an attempt to
get people saved. It is an effort to get Christians where
they ought to be. That of course is very simple. I am
quite sure it hardly needs to be emphasized, but we take
it on the way to the objective in view.
Distinctions
Made by God Among Christians
And here we come to something which
is of course the ground of much controversy, but about
which we have to be very bold and take the consequences.
This book of the Revelation reveals clearly and
unmistakably, distinctions and divisions made by God
amongst Christians. God makes distinctions and God makes
divisions, and the whole book is full of that fact. These
divisions are not the schisms in the church, the
divisions in the church, with which we are so unhappily
familiar, but God’s divisions, God’s
distinctions — yes, God’s separations. There
are distinctive companies here, indicated by various
titles and designations.
There are “overcomers” and
they are distinct from the rest. There is a
“firstfruits” company, and you will find that
they are distinct from the rest. The very word and title
itself would have no meaning if there were not a
“second-fruits” — if there were not
others. There is the “hundred and forty-four
thousand”, a distinctly marked out company,
different from the rest. There is the “bride”,
and language does not mean anything if that which is
meant by the bride comprises all. There are those who are
“bidden to the marriage supper of the Lamb”.
They are not the bride. I could follow that very closely.
If the Lord wills, we shall devote our next study to this
matter of the bride. But my point at the moment is this,
that here in this book there are distinctive companies,
there are divisions made by God between His own people
— believers — and they are marked out in the
main by spiritual measure. Spiritual measure determines
their distinctiveness.
Distinction
According to Spiritual Measure
What is the meaning of firstfruits,
if it does not mean that they are ripened before the
harvest, before the rest? You have only to go to the Old
Testament for that. The sheaf of the firstfruits was that
which ripened before all the rest and was brought in as a
token of what was to follow. Ripeness indicates spiritual
measure. It does not say that the others will not come to
that — do not misunderstand me. It does not mean
that others will not follow on and come. But it does mean
that here are those who are earlier satisfying God’s
standards, who have matured more quickly, who have
responded more readily, who are spiritually leading the
way. They are not an “elect of the elect”, they
are not people who are exclusive. They are
representative: yet they are at the same time
distinctive, because they have more readily and more
quickly come to that place of satisfying God’s
heart, and that of course has involved them in particular
and peculiar difficulties, adversities, sufferings and
conflicts.
But again to our point: there are
these, and there are the rest. THESE are not ALL.
They are something distinct in themselves. I do not think
we can get away from that, if we honestly face this book
in a spiritual way. We cannot escape this fact, that God
marks out people as distinct according to their spiritual
measure, according to how far they satisfy His fullest
revealed mind. And those people will come to a particular
position, will be invested with a greater measure of
glory, will be entrusted with administration. These are
all things which follow. That is what the Lord is set
upon, and that is what this book clearly reveals. So that
these distinctive companies in the first place represent
an approximation to the characteristics of the full
revelation in the Man in chapter 1: they are like Him,
they partake of those characteristics which we have
studied; and, secondly, they enter on to the vocation of
the Man in the glory: spiritual administration now, and
both spiritual and literal administration later.
God’s
Concept in Creating Man
So we are brought to this, that the
dealings and judgments of God in Christ by the Holy
Spirit in the church must be viewed in the light of the
full conception and purpose which has been presented.
These dealings must be considered in the light of the
revealed purpose in fullness. Now inasmuch as it is the
new-creation Man who is governing everything personally,
and the concept of the new-creation man corporately that
is governing all these judgments, we find much light
thrown upon things from the first creation, which was a
material, temporal, earthly representation of heavenly
principles. We mentioned this earlier.
a) God-likeness
What was the concept that governed
God in creating man? What is man intended to mean, to BE
in his very being? “Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness”. He is intended to set forth
what God is like in His own Being and Person. That is the
governing concept of man. The first man failed of it; the
last Adam achieves it, reveals it, manifests it. This Man
is tested, tried and proved to the very last degree;
tested as to obedience, love, faithfulness unto death,
even the death of the cross; and He comes up as the Man
who wholly satisfies God, in showing what God is like. So
that, when you look at this Man, you can say, “Now,
that is what God is like.” When you hear this Man
speaking, you say, “That is what God is like.”
You hear Him giving some of His illustrations and
parables, such as that of the Good Samaritan. The priest
passed by on the other side, and so did the Levite, and
the Lord Jesus is saying, in effect, “God is not
like that — that is exactly what God is NOT
like!” But then comes the Good Samaritan, as he is
called, and he crosses the road and takes in the need and
distress of this poor fellow, and delivers him, brings
him home and pays for his needs. The Lord Jesus is
saying, in effect, “That is what God is like.”
Or take the prodigal, with the elder
brother representing the Jewish conception of God. The
implication is: that is not what God is like. God is so
different. This poor fellow who is worthless, who has no
claims whatever, who has forfeited every right — a
wastrel — the Father does not just pity him, and
say, “Come home, you rascal, I will give you a bed
and a corner”; no, he lavishes everything upon him
and goes as far as he can possibly go, as though to one
who had not failed him, but had completely satisfied him.
And the Lord Jesus is saying, in effect, “That is
what God is like.” So you look at Him in His Person,
in His manner of life, in His teaching, and you have this
contrast — what God is like and what God is not
like. That is what is making people so miserable, so
unhappy, so enraged — they feel what a poor picture
they are in the presence of this Man and what He says.
They make right deductions when they conclude that He has
said this about them, against them. They are right.
Here, then, in the Revelation, He is
brought out in all the completeness of the Man made in
the image and likeness of God; and that is governing
— the whole corporate new man. I want to press this
as a very real part of this message, for if we take what
is said merely as teaching, interpretation, and so on, it
will all be of no profit. We have got to be motivated by
this primary consideration: that in the new-creation man,
which we are in Christ, the thing that God is looking
for, is His own likeness. What matters most is not how
much teaching we possess, how much Bible knowledge we
have, how much work we do. What matters is: How much is
the Lord manifested? It should really engage us
continually. This should be the basis of our
self-judgment, of a right kind. “That was not
Christ, that was not like the Lord, this is not like the
Lord.”
“Ministry” is the cause of
so much trouble. “My ministry”, getting a place
for our ministry, being able to fulfil our ministry. Oh,
let it drop. The Lord will test us on this matter. Are we
going to hold on to our ministry, our place, what we
believe to be our divine calling — hold to it in the
strength and tenacity of our own will, our own fleshly
conviction that that is what God has called us to? Oh,
no! If God has called us to anything, He will hold us
into it, and we must let go to Him if there arises a
situation in which that is necessary. The Lord will see
that the ministry is fulfilled and the position occupied
that He wants for us. The thing that is far more than the
ministry, and out of which the ministry must come, is
that I should be a Christlike man, and that you should be
a Christlike man; and we can show Christlikeness in just
letting others get into our place in ministry, being very
meek about it, not fighting to keep our position. The
Lord will look after the rest. “The meek shall
inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5). That is God’s
word. The image of the Lord is the all-governing matter.
b) Spiritual government
Then — “Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness: and let them have
dominion.” Now, dominion issues from likeness. We
are not talking about offices and appointments. We are
talking about spiritual matters: for dominion now is a
spiritual matter. That is obvious, of course. Dominion
with us is not at present temporal. But dominion is none
the less a very pertinent matter. This word in Genesis
— “Let them have dominion” — is the
earthly, material, temporal representation of the
spiritual reality, and the spiritual reality of which it
is only a representation is found in Ephesians 6:
“principalities and powers”, “world rulers
of this darkness”, “hosts of wicked
spirits”. And the church is seated together with
Christ in the heavenlies, “far above all rule, and
authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that
is named” (Eph. 2:6; 1:20,21). There is a
proposition for you and for me! It is a question of
dominion in the spiritual realm, the church’s
dominion in the spiritual realm. This man, this
new-creation man, is to have it, and we are brought into
it in a spiritual way in Christ.
Now, you see, it is just here that
our education is so much at stake, so much involved.
There are numerous situations which the enemy projects.
Why did the Lord let Satan come into that garden? The
Lord knew all that was involved. Why did He let him get
in there? Just for the very purpose of giving the man the
chance to exercise his dominion, because the Lord knows
quite well that back of the material is the spiritual,
back of the world and flesh is always the devil. You have
not conquered when you have only mastered material
things. You are only at the beginning of conquest then.
It is the spiritual forces behind. Men are — to some
limited extent — mastering the material today, but
God only knows how they are being defeated by the
spiritual lying behind the material.
I am saying that the Lord allows the
enemy to precipitate and project all kinds of situations
and conditions and difficulties — situations in the
home, situations in the business, situations in the
church, situations in our personal, private and secret
experience. They are devil-projected, satanic in origin,
though not always seen to be so. But you calculate what
they will do if they triumph, and you will see that there
is something sinister about them. And the Lord allows
them! What are we going to do about it? Begin to pray and
plead with the Lord to take this difficulty away, change
this situation? Nothing happens. We try to fight and get
on top of it by being optimistic, being hopeful, being
cheerful. We do not get very far. We may indeed just get
worn out, and still nothing happens. What is the meaning
of this? It means that we are in the school of rulers, in
training to be made rulers. The whole destiny and
vocation of the new man is at stake in these situations.
We had better settle it quite soon that we are in this
very matter of having dominion, and that this situation
is something that has to be dealt with on a spiritual
level, from a heavenly position.
But the great effort of the enemy is
to get us so involved morally that we have no fighting
power left, because he has the right to the position. He
is trying to destroy our testimony, destroy our vocation,
destroy this very calling to have dominion, by getting us
involved in a situation where the Lord cannot come to our
rescue. He says: “You have got to get out of that,
repudiate that, put that back, before anything will
happen. You have become caught in something wrong, and
until you break clear of that, you are defeated; I cannot
do anything for you.” Some of you may be thinking,
“This is a Christianity that is very complex, very
difficult!” Need it be stressed that we are not now
speaking of our salvation? We are moving in a realm
altogether beyond “simple salvation” —
although salvation is never a simple thing. This is not a
matter of our being saved from hell, having eternal life
and going to heaven. This is the great eternal purpose of
God, centred in His Son personal and corporate. This is
the central conception and idea of God in making man to
have dominion. So that in future let us as quickly as we
can face whatever situation may be exercising or
perplexing us, and say, “Is this something in which
I am to exercise my position in Christ, as above this, as
over this — to bring this thing under my feet, in
Christ as the exalted Man?” For we inherit with Him
the dominion that He has taken since God has “made
us to sit with him in the heavenly places” (Eph.
2:6).
The judgments, then, and dealings of
the Lord with His people are in the light, firstly, of
the likeness, and secondly of the dominion. The question
for these churches in the Revelation is not whether they
are Christians and are going to Heaven. It is the
question of how they are reigning in life, how they are
exercising spiritual dominion in the spiritual world.
c) Fruitfulness
The next thing about the
new-creation man is this: “In the day that God
created man, in the likeness of God made he him; male and
female created he them... and called THEIR name
Man” (Gen. 5:1,2). He said to them: “Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth”
(1:28). So the new-creation man is related to Christ, or
is the functioning of Christ, in reproduction after his
own kind. This is a test. The idea of stagnation has no
place in the things of God. Anything that draws a circle,
that is limited to a smaller sphere than that of
continuous development, continuous growth, continuous
expansion, continuous reproduction, is contrary to the
thought of God. Reproduction is a law of the creation,
and in the new creation it is that. In the book of the
Acts, you see this thing at work. The new-creation man
has come in truly — and look at the multiplication
and the reproduction after his own kind! This is the
calling, and this is the ground of testing and judgment:
Are there those, and more of them, in this world, who are
in existence as the result of our spiritual travail, as
the result of our spiritual life passed on? Or are we
just alone, just individuals, trying to be Christians on
our own? That is not God’s thought. Reproduction
cannot be in that way. The word at the beginning was:
“replenish the earth”; and God knows it needs
replenishing with children of God after this kind —
the kind of this Man.
d) God-blessed and a
blessing
Finally, for the present: “And
God blessed them” (Gen. 1:28). They were not only to
be blessed but to be a blessing. Very simple in terms,
but how wonderful. This world does not know what a
blessing the church is to it in its midst. It will be a
sorry day for the world when the church has gone. Just as
truly as Joseph was a blessing in the house of Pharaoh,
so the church is a blessing in this world, if the world
only knew it. But it must not only be so in that
unrecognised way. God forgive us that we are not the
blessing in the world and to the world that we ought to
be; that is, that the world has a good deal of reason to
feel that the church is not worth very much. But we will
leave that. It must also be that our presence here is a
blessing to others. This is a real test. Are we a
blessing? Is the blessing of the Lord resting upon us so
that we are made a blessing? I think it is one of the
loveliest things that we come across in our Christian
fellowship, when we are able to hear someone say,
“So-and-so is a blessing to me.” That is how it
ought to be: we ought to be a blessing to people. Very
often we are a bother to one another! Yes, “God
blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and
multiply”: that is to say, reproduce a blessed
people, be a blessing unto multiplication.
God’s
Standard of Judgment
These are the things which are
governing the judgment of the church at all times right
on to the end — likeness to the Lord, spiritual
government, reproduction in Christ, growth and a
blessing, and you can apply that to these seven churches.
“Now then, with all that you have and all you are
doing and all your profession, what is the measure of
your revelation of what God is like? What is the measure
of your absolute dominion over evil forces?” We
collapse in so many instances before the evil forces
which have got inside. “What is the measure of your
increase, your spiritual reproduction?” May that not
touch the very point of first love with Ephesus? What a
centre Ephesus was as a church at the beginning,
radiating blessing to all in Asia! What increase came
through Ephesus! May it not be perhaps that Ephesus had
become something in itself, turned in upon itself —
occupied with itself, its own works, its own profession
and reputation? And how is it with you in being a real
blessing where you are, to all near and far — a real
blessing? It is that to which the Lord is really
challenging and with which He is concerned.
So this Man, who is the image, who
has the dominion, who shall see His seed, who has brought
so many children to birth, who has been such a blessing
in this world, says, “I want that it shall be like
that with the corporate new man — just like that.
That is what you are called unto. That is the meaning of
your existence.” Now you do recognise that that is
not just Bible exposition. It is a real spiritual
challenge to us, it really is. You are going to meet this
— we are all going to come up against this.
“Was that like the Lord? Was that Christlike?”
Very simple; but you see it is an ultimate thing.
“Has the enemy got the upper hand there, or have you
stood and withstood and kept him from his objective,
reigned in life, kept on top, maintained your
position?” We are found out. “How much result
is there of our spiritual life in reproduction?” It
is a challenge. “How much a blessing are we?”
Oh, if only we measured up to that last point alone, if
every one of us were a blessing in the church where we
are, a blessing on this earth, what a difference it would
make!
May the Lord truly conform to the
image of His Son.