Introduction
Reading: Revelation 1:4-18.
"The Revelation of
Jesus Christ..." (Rev. 1:1).
"And out of the throne
proceed lightnings and voices and thunders. And there were seven
lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven
Spirits of God" (Revelation 4:5).
There is, perhaps, no book in
the Bible that has resulted in more confusion than the book of
the Revelation. To mention alone, by name, the many conflicting
schools of interpretation that it has produced, would be but to
open the door to the confusion. And yet it is quite certain that
God never intended any part of His Word to lead to confusion.
Confusion is not a characteristic of the Lord; He is not a God of
confusion. It therefore becomes necessary that we seek to reduce
the message of the book to some simple conclusions; and I think
the first three chapters, which form a distinct section, may help
us to see how the whole book can and should be reduced to such a
simple conclusion. We can leave the place names, for the moment;
forget Ephesus and Smyrna and Pergamum and the rest, as names,
and as places; we can, indeed, leave much of the symbolism - not
all of it, because some of it is so obvious - but what we cannot
understand we can leave, and we can resolve the section in this
way:
Eternal
Spiritual Principles
We have to recognise, firstly,
that we are here, in these chapters, in the presence of timeless
spiritual principles. It is true that they are being applied to
particular conditions, situations, and places, but there is
something more here than the place and the time and the
particular situation. There is a spiritual factor that is
governing everything. We are in the presence of those factors
which are more than local, more than geographical, more than of a
time setting: they are age-long - indeed they are eternal. The
very first thing, therefore, that we have to recognise and grasp
as we come to this book, and to this section as an example, is
this: Here we are being presented with something that is in the
mind of God, which touches all these situations that are set
forth here; and what we have to do is to get hold of what that is
in the mind of God. It is one thing, though it may have
many aspects; and to get hold of that one thing is the key both
to this section and to the whole book. I will not mention, for
the moment, what it is, but we shall come to that presently.
The Lord
Calls to Account
Secondly, we are in the
presence of one of those critical points - it may be the last -
when the Lord calls to account for all that He has given. That
is, of course, quite clear in this section, and in fact it
governs all the rest of the book. The Church and the churches had
received much from the Lord through His apostles and other
servants: they had a great wealth of spiritual inheritance. And
when the Lord has done anything like that at any time in history,
it is as though, at given points, He comes back and says, 'Now,
what about it? I have given; I have revealed, I have made known;
I have entreated; I have implored; I have besought; I have
exhorted; I have warned: now, the time has come when some
reckoning has to be made, and an answer given.'
The Lord has, as we know, done
that more than once in history; but here we are in the presence
of such an occasion, of such a crisis. I say, it may be the last,
because this book does stand in relation to the end - to the
Lord's coming - does it not? Here is a principle, as well as a
time application of the principle. The nature of the crisis is
this. The Lord is saying: 'How do you measure up to all that I
have given you? How do you stand in the light of the whole
deposit that has been made with you?' This crisis is a very
serious one, since it involves the issue of continuance or
discontinuance: of whether the vessel, the lampstand, remains or
is removed. It is a crisis that involves the whole future.
The
Lord's Desire is to Bless
Thirdly, we are here made aware
that the Lord's desire is to bless. His is a positive attitude,
not a negative one. While He has to put His finger upon the
things that are lacking, the things with which He does not agree,
you notice that He invariably ends His inquest with: 'To him that
overcometh will I grant...' The Lord's desire in every
case, with every situation, however bad it is, is to bless; He is
on positive lines. There may be rebuke, there may be exposure and
uncovering; there may be warning; there may be exhortation: but
there is a promise suspended before everyone - a wonderful
promise. None is obliged to face doom, since all are offered the
alternative of the good pleasure of the Lord.
He may condemn, but His
condemnation is to clear the way for blessing. He may have to
judge; He may have to break; but that is to provide the ground
for blessing. He may warn with a solemn voice, but His warnings
are coupled with His desire that these people should come into
something more of His grace, of His goodness. And we cannot read
these promises to 'overcomers' without being profoundly impressed
with this - that it seems that the greatest delinquents, those
who have failed most, are offered the highest blessing! So it was
with Laodicea. You cannot get any further than 'to sit with Him
in His throne'; yet that is the offer to Laodicea. All the things
that are judgeable are found there, but the highest reward is
offered. It is from the very depth to the very height - that is
His thought for His people.
Finally, and supremely, we are
confronted with that for which the Lord is looking, and, it must
be said, that without which He cannot justify the continuance of
a vessel of testimony. That is the point upon which our message
turns. What is it that the Lord is looking for? Now, many things
were thought, by these churches, to be the things that the Lord
was looking for, and they were not. It turned out that they were
just not the things that the Lord was looking for. He had His own
object before Him, and He could not be satisfied with any lesser
or other alternative.
That is a summary of this first
section, in the first three chapters. I hope that you can see
what is the supreme thing - that only, that essentially, for
which the Lord is looking when He has given so much to His
people.
The
Method Employed
From that point we come to the
method employed by the Lord, by the Holy Spirit, for reaching the
end upon which the heart of God is set. That is seen, in its
completeness, in the presentation of the Lord Jesus which we have
in chapter 1. That is always God's method; it is always the
method of the Holy Spirit: to bring Christ in His supreme fulness
into view. No one, meditating upon that vision of the Son of Man,
given in that chapter, could doubt that you have there a
presentation of the fulness of Christ. How full! I confess that,
after meditating upon this for many days, I find the greatest
difficulty in knowing how to compass the fulness of every
fragment. It is no exaggeration to say that into almost every
fragment of this Presentation of Jesus Christ, you could crowd a
mass of what is in the Bible. Here, then, the Holy Spirit's
method, comprehensively, is to bring back Christ, not partially,
but in fulness.
Christ
Presented in Fulness
We find here a seven-fold
characterization of the risen and governing Son of Man. It is
into those seven aspects that everything is crowded. Here is a
brief summary of what they are:
(1) The garment, with which He
is clothed down to the foot.
(2) The girdle of gold about
His breasts.
(3) The head and the hair,
white as wool.
(4) The eyes as a flame of
fire.
(5) The feet as burnished
brass.
(6) The voice, as the sound of
many waters.
(7) The sword, sharp and
two-edged, proceeding out of His mouth.
Who can comprehend all that?
This seven-fold characterization of the Son of Man is presented,
projected, in this case, before the churches - that is, before
the Church as a whole, representatively. And this seven-fold
characterization, in every detail, is to be the basis of the
examination which is to take place, and of the judgment which is
to be declared. These details are the features that constitute
His quest. What is it that the Lord is seeking? The answer is:
That which corresponds to these features of Christ. If we can
understand what they signify, then we shall know exactly what He
is after.
This presentation of Christ is,
first of all, personal. But then we find that it becomes
corporate. He is holding the churches, representatively, in His
hand; He is moving to and fro among them; He and they are, in a
sense, closely identified: and what He is really seeking is that
that which is true of Himself shall be true of His Church in
every place, in every location, in every expression.
The
Spirit's Ministry
In chapter 1, verse 4, we find
this phrase: "The seven Spirits that are before his
throne"; and in chapter 4, verse 5, you have another
reference to those seven Spirits, but in a particular form:
"There were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne,
which are the seven Spirits of God". Seven lamps of fire
burning before the throne - of course, 'seven Spirits' is another
way, a symbolic way, of speaking of the Holy Spirit. It denotes a
sevenfold expression of the Holy Spirit. It is One Spirit
mentioned here, as in the symbolism of the 'seven lamps of fire
before the throne'. The Throne, we know and understand, is the
symbol of government, of authority; and so the whole expression
symbolizes the Throne functioning by the Holy Spirit. We know
what 'lamps of fire' signify - the word originally is 'torches'.
The function of a 'lamp of fire' is, first, to reveal; then, to
test, and to determine. We shall have more to say about that
presently. This means the expression of Christ, by the Holy
Spirit, in a sevenfold characterization. Let us keep in mind that
they are before the Throne; it is the Throne that
is here in action. It is the Throne that has come into action, by
the Holy Spirit, in relation to the fulness of Christ in all the
main features of His character.
The picture is quite simple,
even through the intricate symbolism. The Throne is the seat of
government. The ministry of the Spirit is denoted by the
seven-fold 'what the Spirit saith to the churches'. Notice
that seven times repeated 'what the Spirit saith...' He is
speaking as from before the Throne of government; and what He is
saying is, that this One, who is brought into view, is this, and
is that, and is that... the seven major characteristics of
Christ. Christ is that: the Throne of government stands by that:
the Spirit challenges concerning that. That is what the Throne is
looking for, requires and demands. The ministry relates to those
Divine features which are the features of the Son of Man.
Son of
Man
"One like unto the Son of
man" (1:13). (The margin corrects 'a son of man', because in
the same writer's Gospel, 1:51, you cannot mistake the fact that
it is "the Son of Man": Jesus saying to
Nathanael: "Ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels
of God ascending and descending upon..." (and it cannot be 'a
son of man') "...the Son of Man"; and so it is
here.) This One is presented. When you read this description of
the Lord, in all its details, and then hear what He says about
Himself, does it not impress you that this One is described as
'The Son of man'? Why! you would expect that here, of
all places in the Bible, you should find 'The Son of God'.
He is the Son of God, but that is not what He is called here, in
this particular connection. The Son of man - what does
this mean?
It is a title which comprises,
firstly, God's original, first thought as to this special
creation called 'man'. God said: "Let us make man..."
(Gen. 1:26). He was doing a new thing; He was embarking upon
a particular kind of creature, a special creation; and, in so
doing, He had large thoughts bound up with man-kind.
'The Son of Man' embraces that original thought of God in man.
Secondly, it embraces, in the case of the Lord Jesus, God's loss
as to His purpose and desire in man. For when man departed from
the way of God, God lost in that man what He had
intended. And in this Son of Man, God's loss - that of
which God has been deprived by man's sin and wilfulness and
Satan's interference - is taken up.
But this term 'Son of Man' is
also related to God's redemption of man, and, therefore, of that
which He had lost. Further, 'Son of Man' includes the Divine
perfection of the man which God made. We are getting very near to
the vision, now, are we not? And finally, 'Son of Man', as
relating to the Lord Jesus, is God's model for all His further
activities where man is concerned. There we have the five-fold
component of this title, 'Son of Man'. Now we can see what the
Lord is after; what the churches and the Church are intended to
be, in the mind of God. What God is seeking, what the Son of Man
is seeking, what the Holy Spirit in His seven-fold activity is
seeking, is one thing - correspondence to the Son of Man! That
that Son of Man shall be found repeated in character in all men -
the Church is chosen for that.
The 'seven lamps of fire'
reveal how far that is true, and how far it is not true. They
test everything on that ground: Does this answer to what Christ
is like, what the Son of Man is like? and, having found the
answer, they judge accordingly. That is the quest - to illumine
and search; to discriminate between what is Christ and what is
not Christ; and to establish what is. That is the sum of these
three chapters.
1. The
First Lamp - 'A Garment Down to the Foot'
"Seven lamps of fire
burning before the throne". Lamp One. What is the first
aspect of Christ with which we are met? What is the ground of the
Holy Spirit's quest and activity? "A garment down to the
foot" (1:13). This is not the priestly robe, and this is not
the kingly robe; this is just a garment. It is not described at
all; it is just stated that 'He was clothed', and 'with a garment
down to the foot'. He was clothed, and fully clothed,
wholly clothed. You remember that the very first effect of man's
sin was the consciousness of nakedness. It was sin that brought
about that consciousness. We are told precisely, immediately that
man had sinned: "they knew that they were naked" (Gen.
3:7). They had a realisation of it; their consciousness was
changed, because their nature was changed. And their changed
nature was first marked by a sense of shame. You notice
that the first genuine work of the Holy Spirit, toward redemption
and recovery, is to produce a sense of shame. I am afraid that
many supposed, professed, conversions lack that sense, or lack it
sufficiently. But any true, genuine work of the Holy Spirit
begins there: we cover our face with shame - with the
consciousness of our undone-ness, of what the Bible means by our
'nakedness' in the sight of God - with shame.
Now look at chapter 3 of this
book, verse 17: "Because thou sayest, I am rich, and
have gotten riches, and have need of nothing; and knowest not
that thou art the wretched one, and miserable, and poor, and
blind, and NAKED..." Few more terrible judgments could
be passed upon anybody than that - to have no sense of need, or
to have no consciousness of how you really stand before the eyes
that are a flame of fire! You think you are all right! You think
you are covered! "I counsel thee to buy of me gold
refined in the fire, that thou mayest become rich: and white
garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of
thy nakedness be not made manifest..." (v. 18).
Suitability
to the Lord's Presence
This is symbolic language
related to spiritual truth. When the first man fell, God
immediately proceeded to make clothing for him, to cover
him, to put away from His own sight man's sin. When we come to
the Son of Man, the Last Adam, we see Him clothed down to
the foot. Surely this means that He has a fine, keen sense and
sensibility as to what is fitting to the Presence of God. Is that
not searching? In so many matters in these churches, that was the
trouble - that they had not that due, fine sense of what is
suitable to God, what is right for God, what becomes God. They
were putting all sorts of things forward as ground for
commendation, but this one thing was so often missing.
This is a principle that is
capable of very wide application. Clothes are usually the
expression of the person who wears them. Untidy clothes,
unbrushed clothes, careless clothing, betrays the person. What a
searching word for the whole question of clothing or not
clothing, before God, in these days! But the symbolism
is spiritual. It is what we are in ourselves before God, as
producing shame, self-abasement: but then, thank God, it is what
the Son of Man has secured and provided for us in 'a garment of
righteousness', that we may stand in the Presence of God. I said
a little way back that you could crowd into every one of these
fragments a mass of the Bible. Into that one word 'clothed' you
crowd the whole of the letter to the Romans, and the letter to
the Galatians, and much more. It is this question of the
'righteousness which is through faith in Jesus Christ' - the
'righteousness of God' (Rom. 3:22). 'I counsel thee to buy of me
white raiment...' and "the fine linen is the righteous acts
of the saints" (Rev. 19:8). It is the righteousness of God
given to us in Christ, the Son of Man.
Our
Standing Before God
You see what a large realm that
opens up. How do we stand before God? Are we projecting ourselves
before God? In our life amongst the Lord's people, or alone, or
anywhere in this world, are we walking as before the Lord? Or are
we in any way obtruding our natural life upon the eyes and the
consciousness of those around? What a lot of that there is, even
in our religion - of feigned spirituality, making an impression
of meekness, and so on! - and behind it there is the impression
of ourselves. We are right at the foundation of everything here:
What is our standing before God? what is our standing before our
brethren? our standing at all? It can only be what we are in
Christ. It must never be anything other than what Christ has been
'made unto us', as 'Wisdom from God: that is, Righteousness, and
Sanctification, and Redemption' (1 Cor. 1:30). In Him we are
'clothed'! "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom.
13:14)! "Ye have put off the old man" (Col. 3:9), and
in the original language the figure is there quite clearly that
of a garment: one garment being put off, and another being put
on. 'Ye have put off that garment of Adam, the old man, and ye
have put on Christ' - another garment, another clothing.
So the first challenge of the
Holy Spirit is this: How much of 'us' is appearing? Are 'we'
making an impression? May the Lord save us from wanting to make
an impression - from trying to be outstanding and singular and
different, in order to draw attention, or to register something
that brings us into view. The Lord have mercy on us! It is
Christ, as our clothing, who gives us our only fitness,
seemliness, for the Presence of God. For indeed, the ultimate
question of all these searchings is the Presence of
God - standing in the Presence of God. "That ye may... stand
before the Son of man" (Luke 21:36). We cannot do that
in ourselves, because our natural condition is 'nakedness' and
'shame'. You know how much the New Testament says about this
matter: when 'we appear before Him' (cf. 2 Cor. 5:10), and when
'He appears' (Col. 3:4; 1 John 2:28, 3:2), whether we shall be
'naked before Him in that day' (cf. 1 John 2:28). Again, this is
a symbolic word. How searching it is! But how blessed it is; how
it will drive us again to our most blessed of all blessings - the
clothing of a righteousness which is not our own, but the
righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ. It deals with
every aspect of self, of ourselves, coming into the picture. The
Spirit as a Lamp of Fire, exposes, searches, determines, with
this one end - the Presence of God - in view.
May the Lord lead us to seek
more and more that we may have this fine sense of what is proper
to God. You will see what that means in the natural. Come into
the presence of a person of honour... I remember reading of the
'Seer of Chelsea' - Carlyle - going on a visit to Queen Victoria.
Being what he was - philosopher and recluse - he never bothered
about how he dressed, and he appeared at the Palace most
shabbily. What a scandal it was to Queen Victoria! she never got
over it. All his philosophy, all his genius, and everything else,
went for nothing: the man had no sense of what was fitting for
the presence of a Queen. That is only a side-light. But if it
works like that in the natural, how much more for the Lord! When
we come together, what is fitting for the Presence of the Lord?
But we would be in His Presence at all times. May the Spirit
check us up continually on that which is not suitable to abiding
in the Lord's Presence. May He say, Now, that is not consistent
with the Lord: you will have to 'change your clothes' a bit in
this matter!
Is that practical? Is that just
teaching - a subject, a theme? Very little could be more
searching than that. The Lord lead us to the same quest as that
which is in His own heart; for on this matter, remember, He, on
the one side, puts the highest value; and on the other side,
utters the most scathing denunciation. Listen to Him with the
Pharisees - their fine clothes; their garments; their pretences;
their outward adornments: He saw right through to their
nakedness! How scathing He was to hypocrisy, to pretence! God
sees! But there is a blessing for those who will seek continually
to cultivate that sense of the honour, the glory, that belongs to
the Lord. The Old Testament fragment comes back to us with new
force:
"Worship
the Lord in holy array" (Ps. 29:2, 96:9).