"...and
he that sat was to look upon like a jasper stone and a
sardius" (Revelation 4:3).
"Having
the glory of God: her light was like unto a stone most
precious, as it were jasper stone, clear as crystal...
And the building of the wall thereof was jasper: and the
city was pure gold, like unto pure glass. The foundations
of the wall of the city were adorned with all manner of
precious stones. The first foundation was jasper... and
there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or
he that maketh an abomination and a lie"
(Revelation 21:11,18,19,27).
"Ye
are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your
father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the
beginning, and stood not in the truth, because there is
no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of
his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof" (John
8:44).
"And
as for you, the anointing which ye
received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any
one teach you; but as his anointing teacheth you
concerning all things, and is true, and is no lie'
(1 John 2:27).
We have
now passed the half-way line of this consideration, and
it is very important that we should understand clearly
what it is that the Lord is wanting to show us. There are
many words, and there is much teaching, and we just ask
ourselves: 'What is it all about?' The one thing about
which we shall have to be clear at the end is: 'What is
it that the Lord has really said?' Therefore, leaving all
the symbolism, that is, the means the Lord uses to lead
us to the truth, let us seek to understand exactly what
the Lord is saying.
THE END TOWARD WHICH THE LORD IS
WORKING
It can
all be gathered into a few words: The Lord is trying to
show us what is the great end toward which He is moving
in the lives of His people, and that end is the
expression of His own Divine nature in them. That Divine
nature has been brought to us in His Son, Jesus Christ,
and the Holy Spirit has come to reproduce Jesus Christ in
the Church, so that when God's work is done in His people
there will be a manifestation in His universe of the
Divine nature in a people. God is not doing two things,
but one thing. Evangelism is just the gathering of the
people, the adding of believers to the Lord Jesus. From
that time it is the work of the Holy Spirit to conform
those believers to the image of God's Son, and the end of
the work of the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of
Christ in and through the Church.
The
Christian's life is progression in the increase of
Christ. That explains all the dealings of the Holy Spirit
with us, for His one object is to bring the Church to the
fullness of Christ. If you want to know what the fullness
of Christ is, then you have it in this symbolic
presentation of the holy city, the new Jerusalem. Every
aspect of this city represents some spiritual feature of
the Lord Jesus, that is, it represents some feature of
the Divine nature which is to be reproduced in the
Church, the people of God. Is that quite simple? Now do
you understand what it is all about? If you do, we can go
on.
JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO THE JASPER
STONE
We will
come to another feature of the Divine nature to be
produced, not in some imaginary thing called the Church,
but in you and in me.
We have
already seen that the all-inclusive character of the city
is gold. Pure gold is the dominating presentation of this
city, and we have seen that in the Bible gold is always
the symbol of Divine character, especially love. We
considered that last time. Now we are going to look at
the first feature of that Divine nature. If you have read
carefully those passages cited you will have noticed that
there was one idea in all of them - that which is
"clear as crystal". It says that the city is
like "a jasper stone, clear as crystal."
Jasper, as a symbol of clearness, is mentioned in all the
main connections of this book of the Revelation.
Immediately the Lord has dealt with the seven churches in
Asia, the second part of the book begins, and the Apostle
John says that he saw "a door opened in heaven... a
throne set in heaven... and he that sat was to look upon
like a jasper stone" (Revelation 4:1-3). The
churches have been judged, and now all the world, and
everything else, is going to be judged, for the throne
means judgment. It is the governing of everything from
heaven, and everything is going to be judged in the light
of the jasper stone, that is, according to that Divine
nature which is absolutely clear. The churches have been
judged in that light, and the world is to be judged in
that light. It is judgment according to what is
absolutely TRUE. Did you hear that word?
Transparent - you can see right through it. There is
nothing here that is not perfectly clear and true. There
is no darkness whatever in the Divine nature - it is
perfectly transparent. There is nothing false about God,
nothing that is not real. There is no mixture of two
contradictory things in the nature of God, nothing that
is imitation or artificial. There is no hypocrisy in the
nature of God and nothing that deceives or pretends to be
what it is not. It takes all these words, and many more,
to get to this characteristic of God, which is complete
purity, clear as crystal.
THE LIE AN ABOMINATION TO GOD
In this
description of the city John says that nothing can enter
in that makes a lie, and he calls the lie "an
abomination". That which is not absolutely true is
an abomination to God. In this way the Lord Jesus showed
what God's nature is like. The strongest and most
terrible things that came through His lips were against
hypocrisy. I would not like to have been there on that
day when He looked at the Pharisees and said: "Ye
hypocrites!" "Hypocrite" just means
"play actor" - he is on the stage of this world
playing a part which is not real and true. In the face of
the Lord Jesus there was anger against what was not
genuine. We read those terrible words from John 8 when He
said to those Pharisees: 'You are of your father, the
devil, and the works of your father you will to do. He is
a liar and the father of lies. When he speaks a lie he
speaks of what he himself is.'
THE ENTRY OF THE LIE INTO THIS
WORLD
That
brings us to an issue which has a very long and terrible
history. Jesus was thinking of what happened right back
at the beginning in the Garden, when Satan told a lie
about God and Adam accepted it. The whole history of the
terrible tragedy of this world came from that lie. There
is a lie right at the heart of this universe, and there
is no truth in this universe outside of God. The history
of this fallen creation is the history of a lie.
Jesus
said of Satan that he "abode not in the truth".
Therefore he must have been in the truth at some time,
and at some point he abode not in the truth. He departed
from it and the terrible judgment of God fell upon him
and all those who shared the lie with him. So he came to
impart his own lie and nature to man, God's creation, and
the Apostle says: "The whole world lieth in the evil
one" (1 John 5:19). This is a very long and terrible
history, but it is coming to its climax now. One of the
most powerful influences in this world today is that
which does not believe there is truth. It says with
Pilate: 'What is truth? There is no such thing as truth.
It is just as good to live by lies as it is to live by
anything else.' That ideology is spreading over all the
world - cynicism as to truth. This world is a deceived
world, and Christians know how artificial, unreal and
empty this world is. Here we are face to face with one of
the most solemn issues in the whole history of this
world.
GOD'S ANSWER TO THE LIE
It was
in relation to this historic lie that the Son of God
became incarnate in this world. Jesus said: "I am
the truth" (John 14:6), and "To this end have I
been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that
I should bear witness unto the truth" (John 18:37).
Jesus is the embodiment of the great answer to the
history of the lie. That is why the devil hated Him so
much, and why those who were children of the devil,
according to His word, hated Him so much. He tore the
mask of their hypocrisy and their play-acting in religion
off from them. He exposed their true nature and, driven
by the devil, they took counsel to destroy Him. Truth
with the Lord Jesus was not just some abstract thing. It
was not just that He spoke the truth - He WAS
the truth. He became a personal power in this universe, a
mighty, effective witness against all that was not true.
When Jesus came into this world the battle was on between
the truth and the lie, and He was only just born into the
world when that great hypocrite, that false man, Herod,
sought to destroy Him.
Jesus is
the truth. In Him there is no darkness at all, and that
is why He could also say: "I am the light of the
world" (John 8:12).
THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH
The Holy
Spirit is called "The Spirit of Truth" (John
16:13). Jesus said: "When he, the Spirit of truth,
is come, he shall guide you into all the truth",
and: "The Spirit of truth... for he abideth with
you, AND SHALL BE IN YOU" (John 14:17). Jesus
was saying: 'What I have been outside of you the Holy
Spirit will be IN you.' "Ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free" (John 8:32) - free from the lie. So John says:
"As His anointing teacheth you concerning all
things, and is true, and is no lie."
Now you
can see how we are coming to the city. Dear friends, do
try and be patient with me, for I am dealing with
something of very serious consequence and this is God's
solemn truth. If this city represents any great spiritual
principle of the Divine nature, and if the One upon the
throne of government is as a jasper stone, we are all
going to be judged according to what is now being said.
A GLORIOUS CHURCH
Well,
then, here in the symbolism of the city the Church, in
relation to Jesus Christ, is presented. The Apostle Paul
said that He is going to "present the church to
himself a glorious church" (Ephesians 5:27), and
here it is at last, "having the glory of God".
But then the Apostle defines what he means by "a
glorious church" - "not having spot or wrinkle
or any such thing." That means not having any dark
thing in it, or any of the marks of this deceived
creation - in a word, nothing that is not absolutely
true.
All this
may sound very terrible to you, and I expect some of you
are saying: 'Why is he talking to us like that?' Well, I
am talking to myself just as much as to you. What is the
Holy Spirit seeking to do in you and in me? He is
seeking, on the one side, to deliver us from that nature
of ours which is so impure, and, on the other side, to
bring into us the nature of the Lord. The Lord, the
Spirit, is trying to purify the gold until it is like
transparent glass, that is, a gold which is quite
different from what is natural. Is there anyone who has
seen transparent gold like glass? A piece of gold which
you can look right through as you can look through a
window? Well, I have seen a lot of gold in many parts of
the world, but I have never seen any like that! This is
something that is not natural: it is Divine. This is not
what we are by nature, but it is what we are going to be
by grace. To change the metaphor: 'Whiter than the snow'.
That is why I chose that hymn this morning. I had been
looking out of my window upon the Blümlisalp and I saw that perfectly white
snow glistening in the sun. I said: 'Is there anything
whiter than that snow?', and then the Word of God came:
"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as
white as snow" (Isaiah 1:18). Later on we shall have
to see the place of the Lamb in the city and then we
shall see why the city is transparent like pure gold.
You see,
this book of the Revelation gives us a picture of the
Church at last arrayed in white robes, clothed in that
pure, righteous nature of God and "they shall walk
with me in white" (Revelation 3:4).
The
message of this book of the Revelation comes from one who
says: "He that is true" (Revelation 3:7).
Dear
friends, the Lord wants us to be people who are real,
genuine and transparent. You know, fellowship is
impossible unless there is absolute transparency. It says
that the street (and there is only one street) of the
city is PURE gold. It is going to be the
fellowship of the Lord's people in absolute transparency.
You cannot have that fellowship while you are suspecting
one another, while you are not sure about the motive of
the other person, and while you have to say: 'Now, I
wonder what he - or she - is after! I wonder if he is
trying to find something out! I wonder if he is trying to
get hold of something that he can use against me! I don't
trust him. There is something about him that is not
transparent.' You see, that is the world. You cannot have
fellowship when it is like that, and if you want to
mingle on the golden piazza it will only be if all that
is not true, real and genuine has been removed.
The Lord
cleanse our hearts and our minds from all that is not
true!