Clearness
of Life and Testimony.
READING:
Rev. 21:10-11,18,21; 22:1; Gal. 4:25-26.
The word
"clear" occurs on more than one occasion in
those passages, and synonymous words are there, such as
"pure gold," "as transparent glass."
These words suggest the idea of light. They are
associated with that light which is spoken of in
connection with the heavenly Jerusalem coming down from
God out of heaven, her light like unto a stone most
precious, a jasper stone.
In speaking of the
light of the Lord's heavenly people we are touching again
a very solemn, and serious, and important feature,
something which has a tremendous history associated with
it. The entire history of the Lord's people, and of the
spiritual life, is one of light and darkness, of truth
and falsehood, of purity and adulteration or mixture, of
clearness and cloudiness, of openness and secretiveness.
And many other words can be used to express this long
history, so long and so chequered all because of this
persistent, continuous effort to bring what is of God
into a place of doubtfulness, of uncertainty, to rob it
of the tremendous power of absolute truth, absolute
purity, absolute clearness.
Long before Christ came
Satan had spread abroad in this earth those Babylonish
elements which only waited for an hour when the Church
should fall into a state of spiritual declension or
weakness to seize the opportunity to pounce upon this
spiritual Body and become the parasites which sapped and
destroyed its life. So that we find, even before we move
out of the New Testament, that where there was a state of
spiritual declension there was a condition of Babylonish
features, priestcraft, ecclesiasticism, formalism,
ritualism, and a host of other things which came from
Babylon and are seen in the occult, the mystic, the
aesthetic, those ideas which are now the very sum and
substance of the whole Romish system. These all came from
Babylon, and were in the world waiting for the Church to
decline, and immediately that decline took place they
took hold, impinged upon the Church. You find them all
there in the first chapters of the book of the
Revelation, and in other places also, elements of this
religiousness of Mystery Babylon. Their object was not to
blot out Christianity in a direct and immediate way, not
to wipe the Church out of existence, but so to mix things
as to bring her into an uncertain place before God, that
He could no longer recognise her as His pure Bride.
You notice the call in
some of Paul's letters, as well as in those letters to
the seven Churches, is to purge out these pagan elements.
There is a tremendous amount of paganism represented in
the conditions of those to whom he wrote. Take the letter
to the Colossians. What was the object of the writing of
that letter? Well, the whole spiritual hierarchy, the
realm of spiritual beings, angels and archangels, had
been, by paganism, so marvellously organised that even
Jesus Christ had been placed as but a super-archangel.
All the other angels, it is true, had been set under Him
in different ranks, but He was given no more than the
position of a super-archangel; one of them, though of
much higher rank. And the Colossian letter was written,
as you will see from the content, on the one hand, as
denunciatory of this whole false system of teaching; to
destroy it by pointing out how evil the whole thing was,
and, on the other hand, to give Christ His rightful
place. The first chapter of that letter is the classic as
to the Person of the Lord Jesus and His eternal
relationship with the Father. He was before all things;
all things were made by Him; He is the Head. But all that
mischief had been done by mixture, that is, the
destroying of the utter purity of truth, the truth which
is only in Jesus.
This is but a very
small and inadequate illustration of how the enemy has
all the way through sought to destroy real spiritual
power by introducing elements which would take from the
utterness of the truth, destroy the Church's clearness,
and work against this ultimate revelation in which she is
seen with "her light like unto a stone most
precious... a jasper stone..." Pure gold,
transparent glass, clear as crystal - that is the
characteristic of Zion, the characteristic of the Lord's
people; and against that the enemy has worked
continuously, in order to compromise the Church's
position, the position of the Lord's people, by getting
them into an uncertain state in themselves and before
God.
Dimming
the Fine Gold.
This has been done in
the first place, as we have seen, by doctrine. If the
enemy can introduce any suggestion of false doctrine, if
he can but insinuate the slightest degree of error, he
will cause it to work like an evil leaven till a
development of that kind has become the occasion for the
Holy Spirit's drawing back, the Lord being unable to go
on where that is, and a state of compromise, and
paralysis, and weakness obtains. The pure gold, the fine
gold, has become dimmed.
Not only along the line
of doctrine has this been done, but along the line of
life. The same method, and the same object, governs the
enemy's activities. It is possible to stand very strongly
upon what is absolutely orthodox as to doctrine, and to
be in a very doubtful state in your own life, your own
spiritual life, your own moral life; to be very faithful
to the letter of the Word of God, and yet to be
compromised in your own spiritual life and testimony.
This may be in business dealings, in other relationships,
or in your own life before God; something not clear,
something not pure, something not clean, something not
straight, something doubtful, maybe a secret habit. Oh,
it may be one of a multitude of things which takes out of
the life that certainty, that definiteness, that
positiveness, that clearness, and creates, sometimes
almost unconsciously in the one concerned, a fear of
being confronted with something, of having to own up to
being found out. There is something in the background of
the life which is causing an arrest. It is taking the
real drive out of testimony, the real impact out of life,
and the real fruitfulness and value out of fellowship.
There is something there, though very often intangible.
You cannot put your hand upon it, but you know there is
something there in that life which is not right, which is
not clear; and then there develops a secretiveness, an
evasiveness, a detachment, or many other kinds of evil
symptoms may develop. It is all because there is
something there which is not absolutely clear before God.
The enemy has got in an element which has destroyed the
pure light, and there is a shadow, a film about that
life. The enemy's purpose is to destroy that perfect
crystal clearness of a life in God, and so paralyse the
whole life. The outward form may still be the same, the
profession may be just as ever it was, but there is a
check.
This is said, not by
way of accusation, but by way of indicating one of the
favourite lines along which the enemy works to destroy
what God has in view for His people, for Jerusalem;
namely, that she should eventually come out of heaven
having the glory of God, her light like unto a stone most
precious, as a jasper stone, and that everything about
her should be pure gold, as transparent glass, clear as
crystal. Oh, the spiritual value and weight of words and
phrases like those!
All this is
indisputable and patent. We have to recognise this, that
the enemy is continuously seeking to get us into some
place where, in spite of ourselves, we feel that we are
under a cloud. Sometimes he sets up a false position, and
makes us feel that we are false. We may not be false, but
he seeks to make us feel that we are false, to get us
into that realm where we have lost our confidence, our
assurance, our certainty, our standing, our position,
where we are weakened by some element which has crept in.
The enemy is out to bring God's People under clouds,
under suspicion, and to bring them in their own hearts
under doubts and questions, so that the clearness, the
certainty, the strength is destroyed and they are a big
question to everyone, even to themselves.
Poison
Gas from the Enemy.
Not only as to
individuals, but as to collective instrumentalities of
God, this is true. Whenever God raises up an instrument
by which He intends to bring His Testimony into greater
clearness and greater fullness, the object of which in
His desire and thought is to reveal the nature of His Son
more clearly, more perfectly, then the concentrated
attention of all the powers of evil is to bring that
thing under suspicion, and to put over it a great
question mark in the eyes and minds of everybody.
Why are not the Lord's
people alive to that fact? For a fact which runs parallel
with that, and which is just as mighty a fact itself, is
that when you really investigate that thing you find you
have no reason for question at all. It was all an
unfounded suspicion. This is clearly the Devil's work, to
cast over something which the Lord would use for a fuller
revelation of His Son, and of what He desires for His
people, this film of questioning, suspicions, doubts, so
that it is forced into a realm where it is regarded as
dangerous, suspicious. Would to God that the Lord's
people would obey the injunction to "prove all
things"!
You see what the enemy
is after, and how he goes to work. It is helpful to know
sometimes what the enemy is after, and how he does
operate. We may be saved from much if only we are aware
of it.
This is a message to
our hearts, not only of helpfulness in an objective
direction through our being informed as to the danger,
the peril, the devices of the enemy, but it sheds light
upon the inward experience, and shows that all the Lord's
dealings with us are intended to bring us to this state
of crystal clearness. "Behold, thou desirest truth
in the inward parts" (Psa. 51:6): and what the Lord
desires He will get. The dealings of the Lord with His
own are purifying dealings, in order to have this crystal
clearness, this pure gold, this stone most precious. They
are for the getting rid of the dross, getting rid of the
film, getting rid of all those secret and secretive
elements which work in the direction of deception. Those
are like unto a lie, a falsehood. The Lord wants to root
all that out of us. He is against everything that is
shadowy. He is for everything that is perfectly clear,
and so to get rid of the dark substances He puts His
fires to work in our lives to purify them. In our
individual lives and in the case of such collective
instrumentalities as we have mentioned, He does this. He
does not allow such to be out of the fire for long. He is
after this state of utter purity.
You see what is
involved. In the coming generations all the nations have
to walk in that light; that is, they are going to have
their knowledge of the Lord through the Church's
instrumentality. They are going to be governed by the
Church. The nations shall walk in the light thereof. What
light is this? This is no mere external aurora. This is
the out-shining of a spiritual and moral condition of
glory. This is something out from the very nature of the
thing "having the glory of God." It is from the
centre, and works as an expression of a spiritual and
moral condition. God is not cleansing, purging,
chastening you and me, and causing His fires to work to
our purifying, just for the sake of doing it, and He is
not doing it just for our own sakes inasmuch as He wants
us individually to be good and not bad. I suppose He
wants that, but that is not all. God has a mighty,
universal purpose in view, an eternal vocation, and that
is what He is after, and it requires a condition. That is
one of the governing conditions of Zion, namely, the full
expression of the Lord's mind. The Lord is always motived
by things so much greater and vaster than we understand
in the day when we are passing through the trial. We
bring it down to a personal matter, and ask questions:
Why should the Lord deal with me like this? We narrow
down the range of His thought, His purpose, His
intention. Because we make it so local we lose the
strength and helpfulness which would come to us if we
could see the great eternal vocation for which we were
being prepared.
"The
Wiles of the Devil."
If we had time to note
all the secretive things of which the Word of God tells
us concerning the earthly Jerusalem, we should find that
it was the purposes of God that were so often threatened
by those secretive elements. Think, by way of
illustration, of Nehemiah's day, when the wall was being
built, and how the enemy got one of his own
representatives hidden right in the temple itself, and so
sought to compromise everything, to weaken the whole work
and position, by having a representative occupying a
chamber in the temple itself. Then in Ezra's time the
adversary said: We serve the same God as you do, let us
come and work alongside of you! Subtle! But thank God the
man of God was a man of such transparency himself that he
could see through things, and he was not deceived. He saw
quite clearly that in these people there was darkness.
Their condition was not one of clearness, nor of light.
There was duplicity, and he shut them out; and
immediately he did that they showed quite well where they
were. In these and numerous other ways you can mark the
enemy trying all the time to get that which was not
suitable to God right into the heart of things, in order
to destroy the effectiveness, the positiveness of
testimony, and Jerusalem's history is a long history of
these subtle elements working in the midst.
We come to the day of
our Lord Himself. What a mass of this sort of thing he
encountered in Jerusalem! They tried to catch Him in His
words. They were all the time laying traps for Him. They
were working furtively, secretively, by deceptions, by
snares, trying to take Him. The whole situation, the
whole condition of Jerusalem was like that in His day,
and clearness, transparency, was destroyed. Yet the
temple worship was going on. Outwardly the whole of the
religious system was proceeding as it had been wont to
do, yet here was this dark interior. God forsakes it,
because of the lie. The Lord put His finger upon that so
often in very straight and terse language. "You make
clean the outside of the platter..."! "Whited
sepulchres"! What a picture! See them going round
with their whitewash, making white their sepulchres; and
within, He says, they are "full of dead men's
bones." They were making the thing to appear
something other than it was. Such is the lie, which is
the Devil's work, leading to rejection. The Lord's desire
toward us is that we should know that state of light, of
clearness, of which we have spoken.
The next thing is love.
What is the character of New Testament love? Love
unfeigned! What a word! Fancy using that word to
Christians - love unfeigned! Does that mean that some
would love feignedly, feign to love, pretend to love,
while really they do not love at all? That which the Lord
seeks in every virtue, in every element, is something
that is true.
That is what we mean by
light in the sense of clearness. It is the purity and
inwardness of things. Truth may be in word, in doctrine,
but there has to be a corresponding truth in heart, truth
in life. Light may be a matter of doctrine, but there has
to be a corresponding state of light in the heart. The
enemy will not object to us having plenty of the former
kind of light and truth, but, if he can, he will seek to
destroy its real value by introducing a lie over against
it, a contradiction.
This may sound rather
strong. Well, it is strong! It must be strong! It has not
been put in this way to lay charges against anyone, but
by way of warning. It will perhaps explain some things,
but we must take it to our hearts as a word of
exhortation or admonition. Remember that God never builds
in the dark; that is, there can be no constructiveness
where there is not light. Before ever God would bring
this world back into order and fruitfulness He said:
"Let there be light." God is out for the manifestation
of the truth. God's works are never darkness, and we
can never know constructiveness and progress unless there
is absolute light. You know quite well that you cannot go
on with people who are not straight, people who are
crooked, people who are all the time furtive, not open,
not frank, who have somewhere in the background a
secretiveness. You have to say, I cannot go on with that
one. God is like that. He would say to any one of us who
might be there, I cannot go on with you until you are
absolutely out in the open, until you have come to a
place where you are going to be perfectly honest. Reality
is God's demand for any kind of work that He will do.
There may be many weaknesses, many imperfections, but if
there is genuineness, reality, openness before God, where
the spirit is clear and pure, God can go on with His
work. But immediately we begin to lock something up
inside, hold something back, cease to be perfectly open
before God, the work stops. Light in the sense of
clearness is an essential for the building of the city of
God, because the ultimate purpose for that city is to
shine forth with that glory of God in character. With Him
there is no variableness, neither shadow cast by turning.
That means that God can be relied upon.
The Lord make us like
that.