"His great love wherewith he loved us" (Eph.
2:4).
We come now to the
close of the New Testament, the consummation in the book
of the Revelation. A great deal of reading ought to take
place at this point for which we have not the time. Will
you open the Word at the beginning of the book of the
Revelation and glance down through the first, second and
third chapters as the first main part of this book,
hurriedly recalling what is there, and helping as best
you can as we go on by noting details also?
We have
said that we are here in the consummation, and I think I
shall have no difficulty in having your agreement that,
when we come to the book of the Revelation, we do come to
the consummation of all that is in the Word of God; that
is, it is a gathering up of all at the end to a final
settlement. That at least we can say about the book of
the Revelation. Whatever may be our ideas of
interpretation of the many things here, we are all agreed
that here we are at the end and everything is being
gathered up to a final settlement. At this point we must
just ask a further question. Have we not much to go upon
that we are now nearing that final settlement of all
things, that we are in the days of the consummation of
the ages? Is it necessary for me to gather up all the
proofs and evidences and signs to prove that? But I think
there again I have your agreement. We certainly are in
the end times.
If that is true, then
it is a matter of supreme importance that we should
recognize what are the primary and ultimate factors with
God; and if those factors are at all at issue in our
considering them together at this time, then our
meditation must take on a significance which is
altogether beyond our own. It must be a very solemn and
consequential time, and it must demand and receive from
us a definite act of putting away every other kind of
thought and consideration. There should be an
open-hearted seeking of the Lord, with no prejudices, no
suspicions, no curiosity, nor anything that is casual or
indefinite. We must come, and, with all our hearts, take
the attitude that if God is going to say to us that which
with Him is of primary and ultimate consequence, we must
note that and we must be in it.
I tarry to lay emphasis
on one further matter. I am intensely concerned that we
should not be just occupied with a lot of Bible matter.
This is not just a theme that is being taken up, a
subject, with all the subject matter about it being
brought out. No, a thousand times no! If this is not
God's message to us, well, we had better cut it short and
go and do something else.
Well then, let us come
to this book of the Revelation. We take chapters 1 to 3.
I have many times made great efforts to resolve these
three chapters into one clear meaning, but I have always
finished with a sense of defeat. There has been something
true and right, but in the thing that I was after I have
had a sense of defeat and frustration; and when we come
to certain details in these messages to the churches,
such as Jezebel, Balaam, the Nicolaitans, somehow we seem
to have got into a realm of the technical. The thing has
not become a concrete, definite, positive message, it has
escaped me. I knew what those things meant in principle,
but what I so much wanted to do was to find one resolving
thing which gathers them all up and makes of them as a
whole a single message for the Lord's people. Until now,
as I say, I have felt defeated every time, all through
the long years. I am wondering if I have got it now; we
shall see.
LOVE
THE MASTER-KEY TO THE WHOLE BIBLE
It seems to me at
length that the master-key to the whole Bible is in our
hands when we come to this. The master-key to everything
is love; and if you will look, I do not think there is
any doubt but that you will come to see that all that is
here is gathered into that one matter of Divine love. We
are in the consummation of love in this book, and it
begins and ends with the Church.
LOVE
THE KEY TO THE VISION IN REVELATION 1
You take, then, the
first chapter, and what is the key? The key to the first
chapter and also to the whole book is to be found in the
words, "Unto him that loveth us, and
loosed us from our sins by his blood; and he made us a
kingdom, priests unto his God and Father." You
can see love in almost every word of that great
sentence.
But alongside of, or
following on, that statement, you have the presentation
of the risen and glorified Lord, and He presented at once
in that marvelous designation "Son of man," the
title of kinship, the redeeming kinsman. "Unto
him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins"
- the title, you see, belongs to One who has come right
into our estate, and eventually into our state. That is
the theme of love. Oh, how great, how comprehensive, is
that Son of man, flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, to
redeem us unto His Father! He is described in that
matchless presentation, verse by verse, step by step, and
when you have read it all and noted everything that is
said about Him, every detail of His person and of His
adornment, you find it is the sum total of love.
He is "girt
about at the breasts with a golden girdle." Every
word speaks of Divine love, the breasts, the gold, the
girdle. The girdle is the symbol of strength, of energy,
of intention, of purpose. You mean business when you gird
yourself. The robes are no longer flowing for leisure,
loose for reclining. The girdle is golden, symbolic of
the very nature of God who is love. Above the rest that
girdle seems to me to include all the other features,
give meaning to everything else.
I am not going to
mention in detail all the features of this Son of man as
given to us here. What I am trying to convey to you is
that this inclusive presentation of the risen and
glorified Christ is the comprehensive presentation of
love. "But," you say, "is that true? -
because some of the terms used are terrible, awful. John
fell at His feet as one dead when he saw Him. Is that the
effect of love? Would it not be truer to say that this is
the Lord All-terrible, rather than the Lord
All-loving?" But think again. It is love, but not
our idea of love. We have to reconstitute our conception
of Divine love. This One here is described as "the
faithful and true." Have you never been in the hands
of the Lord in discipline, in breaking, yes, in
shattering, being poured out like water on the ground,
and afterward have had to say, "Thou wast right,
Lord; it was the only way. It was a terrible experience,
but Thou wast faithful with me, faithful to all the
highest and deepest principles of heaven. It was not in
anger and judgment, but in faithfulness and mercy to my
soul that Thou didst do it." We have to reconstitute
our idea of love. Here John says, "When I saw him
I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right
hand upon me, saying, Fear not." This is not
judgment, this is not destruction, this is not death and
condemnation. The right hand is the token of honour, of
favour. "Fear not; I am the first and the
last." "Everything is in My hands and in
the end it will be all right; I took it up and I am going
to finish it; fear not."
I was saying that John
fell at His feet as one dead. There was another man who,
travelling on a road with the positive intention of
blotting out from this earth, as far as it lay in his
power, every remembrance of Jesus of Nazareth, was met by
this same Lord of glory. All-terrible? Well, certainly
Saul of Tarsus went down, he was broken, the encounter
overpowered him and left its mark upon his very physical
body to the end of his life. For three days he had no
sight, and they had to help him into the city. But do you
tell me that was God the All-terrible? Oh, listen to the
conversation! "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
me?" What is the tone of that? It is not, I am
sure, the tone of anger. It is a pleading tone of
entreaty, of sorrow, of solicitude. "Who art
thou, Lord?'' "I am God the All-terrible,
and now I have brought you to book"? No - "I
am Jesus whom thou persecutest... What
shall I do, Lord?... Rise, and enter into the
city, and it shall be told thee what thou must
do." The Lord went ahead of him, prepared the
way for him (Acts 9:1-9; 22:4-11). Do you tell me that
terrible revelation was not love? Well, ask Paul himself
what he thought about it, and see in after years what he
had to say about it. He did not say, "He met me, He
smote me, He destroyed me, He brought me into such awful
judgment that I lost all hope." He said, "He
loved me and gave himself up for me" (Gal.2:
20). That meeting, terrible and devastating as it might
be in one sense, was a meeting with the Lover of his
soul.
I say again, we have to
make over anew our conception of Divine love. It is not
that sickly, sentimental thing we call love. It is
something tremendous. We have so to reconstruct our
conception of Divine love as to see that our highest
interests for all eternity demand very faithful dealings
with us by God, and the more we really know the heart of
God, the more we come to be ready to say, "Thou art
right, Lord; even in what I would call Thy hard handling
of me, Thou art right." God in His love has the end
in view, not just the pacifying of some fretful child
with a sop. We are called unto His eternal glory and "our
light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us
more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of
glory" (2 Cor. 4:17). But we do not
always believe it while the affliction is on us. We do
not even call it "light"; but He knows how
transcendently and infinitely the glory outweighs the
suffering. He has decided, with the greatness of the end
in view, it is worth His while to be faithful with us and
let nothing pass that would take from that glorious prize
of His glory or work against it. He knows quite well
that, when we are with Him afterward, were we to see
something that was not taken up by Him and dealt with
because of the suffering and the pain it would have
caused us, and because we would have murmured and
complained, that we would say to Him then, "Lord,
why didst Thou not do that in spite of me?" And so,
knowing the end and dealing with us in the light of it,
the faithful and the true love is other than our poor
sickly conception of love. Love in our thinking so often
means just giving way all the time, just having
everything we want or giving everything that others want.
God deals with us, not as infants, but as sons (Heb. 12:7). The presentation, you see, is all a comprehensive and
detailed consummation of love.
THE
CHURCHES CHALLENGED AS TO LOVE
Now you pass to the
next two chapters, and you have the churches; and the
Lord is here dealing with the churches on the basis of
the presentation. That can be seen by noting that every
one of the seven messages to the churches takes up some
feature of the presentation of Christ in the first
chapter. You can look at that and note it. Actual phrases
in the presentation of chapter one are used in relation
to the churches respectively. So He is dealing with the
churches on the basis of Himself as fully presented, and
therefore if the presentation is the comprehensive
embodiment of love, He is dealing with all the churches
on that basis.
Now you note that the
messages and the churches are bounded by Ephesus and
Laodicea, and not as unrelated but as embracing and
covering all the seven. In Ephesus and Laodicea the
trouble is defective love. Ephesus, "thou didst
leave thy first love"; Laodicea, "thou
art neither hot nor cold." The whole
question with these churches is love. Let us hurriedly
look at them separately, as far as we can.
FIRST
LOVE AS COVERING ALL
Here again
is the wonderful thing, that in Ephesus, which marks the
beginning of everything, all turns on love. "Thou
didst leave thy first love." What is first
love? Well, first love is all-inclusive in its nature.
You will not be able subsequently to find any
characteristic or feature of love without finding it in
first love. First love covers all the ground of love. We
could not tabulate the meaning of first love. It is
everything, it is all that you can say about love;
utterly selfless, self-forgetting, uncalculating. It is
fierce, it is fiery, it is completely hot, strong and
faithful. That is where the Lord begins. First love is
the basis on which the Lord takes up the whole matter,
comprehensive of all love's features. So in relation to
the ultimate situation, we see here, through Ephesus,
that what the Lord must have in His Church is inclusive
love, love in all its features. He must come at the end
back to the beginning, and bring His Church likewise back
to that basis. Of course, there must have been a first
love; you cannot depart from what never was. That will
challenge us.
To Israel
the Lord said, through a prophet, with a sigh of
disappointment and grief, "I remember concerning
thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine
espousals; how thou wentest after me in the wilderness,
in a land that was not sown" (Jer. 2:2).
That is what love will do. Love will go after its lover
in a wilderness where there is nothing to live on.
If
necessary, it will die of starvation in order to be with
its lover. "I remember concerning thee... the
love of thine espousals." Inclusive love
is the basis upon which the Lord begins, and in effect He
is saying, "I can be satisfied with nothing
less." Oh, there is love in Ephesus, there is no
doubt about that. "I know thy works, and thy toil and
patience" - and this, that and the other: it is
not that they are without love, but that they are without
their first love, that utter, inclusive, every-sided
love; that is the trouble.
Let this
come to our hearts. We all love the Lord; I trust we can
say that truly. We love the Lord and we will do much for
Him. But is our love of this kind? Is everything in our
lives prompted by love, or is much of it lived under a
sense of duty, of obligation or necessity, of having to
do; or are there other motives, other interests and
objects that keep us in the work of God as Christians? Is
it the fear that we must not drop out in case of what
happens to us? That is all on a lower level of life.
Inclusive love is God's starting-point, and He says,
"I can be satisfied with nothing less; even you who
labour and are patient and have this, that and the other
thing which are very commendable, I cannot let your
lampstand remain with a loss of first love."
Testimony is really gone when first love is gone, however
much remains.
THE
NATURE OF FIRST LOVE
(a)
SUFFERING LOVE
We look
now at Smyrna, and see that a great suffering has come
upon the church there, a period of intense suffering in
which it will be necessary to be faithful unto death; and
so the Lord, in the inclusiveness of first love, would
say, and does say, as I see it here, that first love is
suffering love. It is indicated by what you will go
through for the Lord's sake and out of love for the Lord,
what you will endure, what you will put up with. No, not
just to what part of the world you will go to minister to
the heathen and lay down your life for your Lord, but
what you will put up with at home, what you will put up
with in other Christians, what you will put up with of
daily martyrdom in love for your Lord without a
revengeful spirit, without wanting to see those who cause
your suffering and affliction made to suffer themselves
for it. Suffering love, that is first love. Are you
having to suffer, and suffer wrongfully? Peter says, "If,
when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it
patiently, this is acceptable ("grace"
- R.V. margin) with God" (1 Peter 2:20). As
we have said, grace is only another name for love.
Suffering love - that is first love.
I could
illustrate that. You have no need that it should be done,
but you know quite well that in a first wholehearted
devotion to any object you are prepared to go through
anything for that object. It does not matter what people
say, the love is stronger than all hindrances.
(b)
DISCERNING LOVE
Next we
come to Pergamum. Here we have an awful state of mixture,
contamination, compromise, entanglement with evil things.
If we seek for the cause, we find that the church in
Pergamum has not discriminated between the things that
differ, between what is of the Lord and what is not. It
has compromised by reason of defective spiritual sight,
and so the issue here, the matter of first love, is that
first love is a discerning love. There is much about that
in the Bible. Paul is rich on the matter of discerning
love. "...having the eyes of your heart
enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his
calling, what the riches of the glory of his inheritance
in the saints" (Eph. 1:18). "The
eyes of your heart enlightened" discerning
love. Love is as far removed from blindness as heaven
from earth. "Love is blind"? No - not true
love. The fact is that true love sees everything, but
transcends everything. The love of Christ for His
disciples was not blind love that did not know His men,
love that was duped, deceived, misled, but eventually
found out that they were not the men He thought they
were. No, "he... knew what was in man"
(John 2:24). His love saw everything, could tell them
beforehand exactly what they would do; but love persisted
in face of it all. Love is a great seeing thing. If you
are consumed with a burning love for the Lord, you will
be very quick of scent as to what is doubtful and
questionable. You will not need to be frequently and
continuously told when a thing is not right. No, love for
the Lord will bring you quickly to see and to sense there
is something that needs to be adjusted. You may not know
what it is at the time, but you have a sense that all is
not well. Love will do it. All the instruction in the
world will not bring you to it. You may have the Word of
God brought to you on all such points, and you might even
say, "All right, because you say so, because it is
in the Bible, I will do it, I will be obedient." Do
you think that is good enough? Such a thing has never
come to you through the eyes of your heart. But mark you,
if this love, this discerning love, has really filled
your heart by all the intelligence of the Holy Spirit
indwelling you, you will sense it without being told; or
if it should be brought to you from the Word, that within
you will say, "Yes, I know that is right, the Lord
tells me that is right." Do you not think that is
the kind of Christian that is needed, and what the Lord
needs at the end? That is what He has had in mind from
the beginning and He calls that first love that is quick
of scent to see what needs to be cut off or added, what
adjustments are necessary, and does accordingly. You do
not have to follow round and say, "Please do this;
have you never taken note that you might be helpful in
this way?" You do not have to do that where there is
devotion, love watchful all the time, aliveness,
alertness, perception, readiness to do without being all
the time told to do it. Real devotion to the Lord is
something that far outreaches legality. First love is
discerning love.
I would
like to spend all my time on this matter of discerning
love, because there is so much about it. We do not grow
by teaching and information, by being filled up with the
Bible and its doctrines and its truths, however wonderful
and true and great they are. We only grow by love, and we
grow by love in terms of spiritual discernment. "Love
buildeth up" (1 Cor. 8:1); but love buildeth up
because love gives us spiritual insight, and the simplest
child of God, who has never been brought up in profound
things, in the midst of a great wealth of teaching, but
who loves the Lord, will make far greater strides in
spiritual growth than those who have it all mentally and
intellectually and not through the eyes of the heart. It
is true. If there is an adequate love there will be no
compromise with error, with wrong, no permitting of
questionable things, no long-drawn-out shedding of things
which, while they may not be altogether wrong, would be
better not there. The Holy Spirit can come along that
way. Have we not seen it? Have we not seen people making
all kinds of changes in their habits, in their manner, in
their very adornments and fashions, as they have grown
spiritually, and because of an intense love for the Lord,
without anyone having said anything at all? Probably had
someone pointed out various things - I had better not
mention them - they might have said, "All right, he
says we must not do this." Is that good enough? Oh
no! But without ever mentioning these things, we have
seen people gripped by the love of God, some right at the
beginning of their Christian life, steadily through
following months changing themselves outwardly, becoming
different people. Love is the key. You can see, then, why
the Lord spoke to the church at Pergamum in the terms in
which He did. What was needed there, and therefore what
is needed in the consummation, is first love as marked by
discernment.
(c)
UNCOMPROMISING LOVE
In
Thyatira again we come to a bad state, as well as a sad
one, a state of spiritual tragedy. Look at the language,
the names, the history behind certain names there, and it
is the history of the seduction of Israel. They have been
seduced, and corrupted through seduction. That is summing
it up. What, then, is the requirement, in what way will
love express itself? If a state of compromise in Pergamum
requires discerning love, in Thyatira seduction and
corruption demand an uncompromising love, repudiating
Balaam and all the rest of his kind. No compromise, no
seduction unto confusion, no mixing things up, no trying
to bring together contrary things, no wearing of linen
and wool, no ploughing with ox and ass - the symbols, you
know, of two realms, of two natures - none of this trying
to bring together the life of the flesh and of the
Spirit; it cannot be done. No compromise can really be
established between the flesh and the Spirit, between the
world and Christ. No; here first love to be recovered
will mean no compromise, no mixture, no confusing of
issues.
(d)
DISTINGUISHING LOVE
Sardis -
what is the upshot of things in Sardis? "Thou
hast a name that thou livest, and art dead." You
look at the message to the church at Sardis and try to
put it all into one word. What is the word that sums it
up? Well, you have to say it is indefiniteness. So we can
say again, in the light of the whole standard, that first
love, ultimate love, the love of Christ, the love which
He is seeking, is a distinguishing love that marks you
out as clearly defined for the Lord and all that is of
the Lord. Distinguished, different, outstanding, defined,
unmistakable by the love that characterizes and governs.
The thing that distinguishes from all else is this great
love, and this great love brings about a distinctiveness
of life. You cannot be indefinite if you are mastered by
this kind of love. First love does not care one little
bit what people think or say. Oh, everybody is saying
this and that about the lover in the grip of first love.
They may be using all sorts of language - He is a fool,
he is mad! - it does not matter. This love is making them
clear-cut - one object, one design, one thought, one
intent. They are people marked by one thing and not two.
There is no doubt about it. We have our humorous ways of
speaking of people who are in that state. He is in love,
you cannot get away from it, everything goes by the
board! There is one thing and one thing only in that
life. That is, of course, how it ought to be. You young
people, never have any relationships in the beginning
that are not like that. First love is like that, and the
Lord says, "I want you where you were at the
beginning." Or shall we say, "I want you where
I have ever been. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the
beginning and the end; I am like that from first to last.
I want you back there in a distinguishing love."
(e)
STEADFAST LOVE
Philadelphia
is very quickly summed up. While the name itself means
"brotherly love," there is one word that sums
up this message, and that is patience. "The word
of my patience." First love is patient love, or,
to use the other word that is always in the margin of the
New Testament when you come on patience, steadfast love.
That is first love, that is the love of Christ. "He
loved them unto the end" (unto the uttermost): "I
have loved thee with an everlasting love"; and
oh, what a triumph that kind of love was and is! It needs
steadfastness to go on with all that love has to
encounter and suffer and endure. It is the quality of the
love of God, steadfast love.
(f)
FERVENT LOVE
Finally,
we have Laodicea. What is the word which sums up
Laodicea? It is mediocrity, neither one thing nor the
other, nothing outstanding, nothing positive. You cannot
say they are not Christians, but yet again you cannot say
very much that is good about them as Christians. They are
very ordinary. There is no such thing as an ordinary
first love. In first love you are a most extraordinary
person. What then is first love? It is, as over against
Laodicea, fervent love, which means red-hot love,
white-hot love, fervent love.
This is
the sum of first love - suffering love, discerning,
uncompromising, distinguishing, steadfast, fervent. Have
we the key to the messages, have we the key to the end
time? There may be another, but I have not found it yet.
This is the last one I have found. I think we are right
this time, and it amounts to this, that the Lord is going
to speak to the Church, to His people, to us at the end,
and that the thing He will speak about is the matter of
love. He will place more emphasis upon that than upon
anything else. All other aspects of truth are important,
and they will be the directions in which love will work
itself out; but the foundation, the spring of all, that
which is to impregnate all - whether it be the service of
the Lord, the very truth of the Church's eternal calling
and vocation, the greatness of the work of the Cross,
whatever it may be as a matter of aspects of the one
whole truth - beneath and through all must be this Divine
love. Have the things in themselves - the truths, if you
like to call them that - have them all without love, and
they are nothing. May the Lord write this in our hearts.