Reading: Lam. 4:1-2; Rev. 2:4, 3:18; 1 Kings 14:25-26, 15:18-19;
2 Kings 12:18, 16:15, 20:13-17, 24:13.
This is a further little word following upon earlier meditations
upon the gold of the Sanctuary. This meditation originated with
our contemplation of the Candlestick of pure gold, of beaten work,
which the Lord commanded to be made for the tabernacle, which we
have seen to be the vessel of the Lord's Testimony constituted
according to His own thought: in the first instance the Lord Jesus
Himself, and then those who are brought into perfect spiritual
relationship with Him, being conformed to His image, the church,
which becomes in turn the vessel of the continuation of His
Testimony on this earth.
We have looked at the gold of that candlestick from time to time,
with specific purposes in so doing. Now there is one further
purpose and thought in our present meditation, and it is
concerning the persistent and many-sided activity of the enemy
against the gold of the Testimony. These passages which we
have selected from the books of Kings are representative and are
typical of a long-drawn-out history expressive of deep antagonism
against the gold abiding amongst the people of God. If we were to
take up each of such passages and study carefully the context, we
should see how many-sided is this effort of the enemy, from how
many quarters, along how many lines, by how many different means
he is always seeking to take the gold from the Lord's people.
This selection alone would be a valuable means of instruction.
Egypt, Syria, Babylon all represent different forms of opposition
to this gold abiding in the presence of the Lord's people, and the
reasons or occasions for the departure of the gold are also very
enlightening. Sometimes the parting with the gold on the part of
the representatives of the Lord's people is a means of seeking to
find favour, to secure safety, to avoid clash and difficulty.
However we may view it, and taking it altogether, there is one
thing that is quite evident, that whenever or however the gold
departs from the people of the Lord it is always the result of a
lost spiritual position, or a state of spiritual decline. As you
see in the setting of these passages in the books of the Kings,
the spiritual condition was gradually declining. It is interesting
and significant that at such a time of spiritual declension, when
at best, even in the days of Asa, when there was some little
improvement upon Rehoboam and Jeroboam, there was a parting with
the gold, and things were in a weak spiritual state. It is at that
time that much reference is made to the gold going away. For one
reason or another they part with the gold, they let the gold go.
The House of the Lord, the sanctuary, is deprived of its gold.
When we turn over to the book of the Revelation it is quite clear
that we find there a spiritual and true interpretation of these
things. The churches are introduced as candlesticks, or lampstands
of gold, the Lord is presented as the One Who is in the midst of
the golden lampstands. That is His thought about His church. The
divine thought for the churches is lampstands of gold, but it soon
becomes apparent that they are not according to His thought, that
the fine gold has become dimmed, the precious stones of Zion
comparable to fine, pure gold are poured out at the top of the
streets. As you study these letters to the churches in Asia, you
are able to see how it is the gold has gone from the Lord's
people.
It all bears out this one thing, with which we begin, that there
is through history a persistent, unceasing, many-sided effort put
forth by the enemy of God to see that the gold is taken from the
midst of the Lord's people. He is against the gold. We know quite
well what the gold is, for we have thought about it very much. We
can say in a word that the gold is the Lord Himself in a living
and glorious way in the midst of His people; the risen and exalted
Christ manifested in the midst. That is the gold. That can be
defined, and much can be said about that in its meaning, all its
values, its moral excellencies, what Christ is as risen, in the
power of a life triumphant over death - the exalted, glorified
Lord, yet by His Spirit in His people. That is the gold, and the
enemy is against that. The enemy will never give up his efforts to
remove that gold, to see that that Testimony is destroyed, and his
persistence will be along every line conceivable to him in all his
diabolical wit; from every angle he will seek to dim that gold, to
destroy that gold in the midst of the Lord's people.
That is a thing which we know as a general fact, but it is a
thing concerning which we have constantly to adjust our minds, and
apply it in a very practical way to ordinary things. We must not
be mere idealists and romancers about the gold, having wonderful
mental pictures. We have to come down to the practical matters of
everyday life, and see that our relationships together in our
homes or wherever we live together, or in our business where we
have to work together, in relationships of any kind, in our own
conduct, in our own manner, in our own character, in everything,
all our transactions, Christ as the Living One, as the Triumphant
One, as the Glorious One, is manifested. That is the Testimony,
and that is the gold - that it may be true of us in a growing way
that as the Lord looks upon us, He sees an increase of Himself in
us, and as the devil looks upon us he sees the increase of Christ
in us, and then as we have to do with one another, while we are
still conscious of one another's natural, human weaknesses and
imperfections, we are able to discern that there is a movement
Christ-ward, some increase of Christ (though perhaps all too slow)
through the fire, through the beating, and the hammering. Against
that the enemy is set, to destroy the increase of Christ, or, in
these symbolic words, to take the gold from the sanctuary, to see
that the Lord's people are robbed by some means or another of the
pure gold.
We have to square up to this fact in practical ways every day,
and as we come under the government of the Holy Spirit He will
check us up, and we must see to it that we respond to the checks
of the Holy Spirit over this matter and where we fail in a
Christly disposition, in Christly behaviour, we have to put that
right with one another and let the humility and the meekness which
is a moral and spiritual element of Christ come out in a
confession to one another of our faults. That is pure gold, and in
a multitude of ways you and I have to increase with the increase
of Christ; the gold has to be there. But, as we have said, that is
a thing that will be fraught with constant, and persistent, and
many-sided activity in opposition of the enemy. Somehow or other
it seems that all the nations round Israel had their eyes upon
that gold. And it is like that. These great spiritual forces that
are set against us, the intelligent forces of evil, have their
eyes on that gold, not that they want the glory of Christ, but
they do not want us to have it, they do not want Him to have any
glory in the church. It was that that the apostle Paul kept so
much in view in his great doxology, "...glory in the church
unto all generations for ever and ever" (Eph. 3:21). It is
the Lord's glory in the church. We can see that as the glory of
the sanctuary was constantly taken away by robbery, or delivered
up by responsible people in an hour of compromise and weakness, it
was simply the Lord's glory departing from His House. You and I
have got to have a great jealousy over the Lord's glory in His
House, and not get these general mental ideas about the House of
the Lord as being somewhat vague and nebulous.
How do you think of the House of the Lord? What is your mentality
when such words are mentioned as "the House of the Lord", "the
Sanctuary", "the church", "the Body"? What comes into your mind?
We have to get out of that general, and often very vague, realm
associated with such a thing, right down to these practical
things. It is you and I in our homes, in our daily lives, and in
all our relationships, which is the church. The church can never
be more than you are, and more than I am, in relationship with
others, wherever it may be. The gold has to be found there.
There is always the danger of an illusion about substitutes for
pure gold. That was the trouble at Ephesus. "I know thy works,
and thy toil and patience, and that thou canst not bear evil men
... and thou hast patience and didst bear for my name's sake...
BUT I have this against thee...". For Ephesus the illusion
was that labour, works, with patience, with perseverance, and a
certain sense of consistency which hated hypocrisy, were
substituted for the pure gold. The Lord said, "...I have this
against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love" (Rev.
2:2-4). What does that mean? To me it bears some significance that
this is the first message and stands right at the beginning of
things. The word is: "thou didst leave thy first love", and the
Lord's message is: "I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by
fire..." (Rev. 3:18). If I understand the meaning of the
"first love", and of the gold, it means things as they were at the
beginning. That is comprehensive, and yet it is very definite.
Everything has to be constituted according to the beginning. In
spite of an almost overwhelming measure of discouragement and
disappointment and threatening of such a hope, the Lord is
determined to have at the end of this dispensation, even though it
may be in a comparatively small way, what He had at the beginning,
and that is what He is after.
At the beginning there was a wonderful expression of Christ risen
and glorified, everything was centred in Christ as risen and at
God's right hand. And everything came out of that as to their
testimony and their fellowship. All their problems were solved by
a really great apprehension of that fact. The question of
fellowship, of unity, was all answered by that apprehension, by
that heart-grasp of the Lord Jesus. The question of the carrying
out of the Gospel, the reaching out to others was involved. It
does not matter where you touch the life and work of the church,
it was perfectly as it ought to be, because at the beginning there
was such a wonderful realisation that Christ was living as raised
from the dead, and He was exalted. It solved all their problems.
It was the possession of His life which brought this Ephesian
assembly into being, and you know the history of that assembly's
origin, what an abandonment to the Lord there was, a tremendous
heart out-going to Him. He became Lord indeed with them. And now
that fine gold has become dimmed, they are going on with the work,
they are very active, seeking to maintain a sense of right and
wrong, and yet there was something lacking of what there was at
the beginning, and the Candlestick of pure gold had been dimmed.
The Lord is seeking to get things back to a first state, and the
way back is the way by which they came into it. It is a fresh
apprehension of Christ in glory and in life.
The only safety, the only defence for the testimony, is in
faithfulness to the original position of fulness. That is Israel's
history as marked in these books of the Kings. At the beginning
there was fulness with David and Solomon. What fulness came in
with Solomon! There is no word which expresses the reign of
Solomon better than the word fulness. The Queen of Sheba had all
the wind taken out of her sails as she looked on the fulness of
Solomon; "...there was no more spirit in her" (1 Kings
10:5). She was simply overwhelmed with what she saw. She said the
half had not been told. Now the successive kings are in a state of
spiritual declension, and as they decline the gold goes out. I am
quite sure that Asa and Hezekiah and all the rest would have been
perfectly safe if they had been true to the original position,
whether Benhadad or Shishak or any other, or all the others
combined, came up against them. They would not have had to
compromise, make bargains, send the gold of the treasuries of the
House of the Lord to ward off their enemies, to bribe them to
depart.
Faithfulness to God in the original fulness would have been their
safety. The Lord would have seen to the rest. Our safety is not by
compromise, our safety is not by giving something of the fulness
away. We shall never be established by coming down on to a lower
level. We shall never save ourselves trouble in the long run by
letting go a bit of our high spiritual position and the fulness of
our testimony. That is not the way to be established. That will go
on until all the gold has gone and we are undone, and the Lord has
to say, "I come to thee, and will move thy lampstand out of its
place..." (R.V.M.) Our safety, after all, although it may
increase the number of our enemies, although the antagonism may
become more and more intense, is in faithfulness to the fulness of
Christ. The Lord will establish that. The Lord will stand by a
position like that, though the enemies may become all the more
active in their attempts to destroy that fine gold.
Is it not patent? If you have any knowledge of the history of the
things of God, if you are able to trace the movements of God even
over a century or two, you will know that wherever God has raised
up for Himself some vessel or instrument for a greater measure of
the fulness of Christ, to bring into the view of His people
something more of Christ than they knew, that instrument has been
the object of far more vehement activity and antagonism on the
part of the devil than anything else in the world. We can call to
mind half a dozen instrumentalities of that kind. But oh, how
tragic it is that so many of them have lost their fine gold before
they finished their ministry. In some way the intensity or the
subtlety of the enemy's activity has caused them to come down, to
let go a bit, sacrifice something of their position, weaken in
some direction, make a compromise, cease to stand in the utter
position which they had taken up in a divine revelation, and the
fine gold became dimmed before their history ended.
We, by the grace of God, are going to stand for all the fulness
of Christ that we know, and that shall ever be revealed to us, or
ever has been revealed to us, but it involves us in this: that the
eyes of myriads of forces of intelligent evil are focussed upon us
to destroy that gold, to rob of some measure of Christ. It will be
revealed in multitudes of ways. It is as well that we know it. But
our defence is not along the line of coming down, giving up,
letting something go, surrendering, weakening. It will not be by
trying to ward off in a kindly, pleasant way the antagonism, by
taking something of our treasure and handing it over. Our strength
and our safety is by remaining true to the Lord Jesus right up to
the full degree of our knowledge of God.
The Lord save us from coming to the place where it can be said in
our case, "How is the gold become dim!"
Edited and supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.