CHRIST'S WORD OF COUNSEL
CHRIST’S WORD OF COUNSEL
Revelation 3: 14 - 22; Luke 8: 26 - 40
We get in these addresses to the churches an admonition to the one that has an ear. “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches”. I regard this as being a very important point, for in these seven churches we get a kind of consecutive history of the church as a whole. These addresses were sent to seven assemblies that actually existed at the time in Asia Minor, but any one who has perception can see that we get in them a tracing of the history of the church, in a moral point of view, from beginning to end. Ephesus presents to us the beginning, and Laodicea, indeed all the last four, the end. Laodicea presents one particular phase of the end. Now these things were written at the beginning, two thousand years ago, and yet in all the Spirit has a particular voice to us, at the end; that is what I refer to at the present time.
We all believe that the Spirit of God abides here. There never was any thought of the Spirit departing. The Lord said in regard to the Spirit, “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever”. Not like the Lord Himself, who had to leave. He had a work to accomplish, and having accomplished that work He sat down at the right hand of God. But the Comforter was to come and to continue with the disciples forever. And so long as the Spirit abides He has a living voice to one that has an ear to hear. Not simply in what He says to one church in particular, but in what He says to the churches. I hope that we shall be attentive to what the Spirit has to say. The Spirit has no new revelations. When once the word of God was complete there was nothing to be added. There could be nothing added after Christ. That is the crown. Previously God had spoken by prophets, but when once God spoke [p. 135] by the Son there could be nothing added. That thought would commend itself to any right-minded person. The Spirit is now here to bring home to us what has been spoken; if you apprehend the fact that the Spirit is remaining here, you could not doubt that the Spirit has something to say to the churches. And it is a proof of divine goodness to us if our ears are open to hear what He has to say.
There are three points I want to take up in connection with what we have before us. The first is the way in which Christ introduces Himself, which is important. The next is the condition of those to whom the Lord addresses Himself, and the third point is the counsel of the Lord. He gives counsel. You could scarcely have a better proof of grace than that the Lord should give them counsel while rebuking them in regard to their condition.
I will ask you to look at verses 14 and 21. The last indicates to us the position of Christ at the present time. He does not yet sit on His own throne, but for the moment on the Father’s throne. I may speak of that as being provisional. It is the position He has for the moment, so to speak. The moment will come to pass when Christ will sit upon His own throne. I allude to that in connection with the way in which the Lord addresses the assembly as “the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God”. I daresay all have considered these expressions. They will not suggest any particular difficulty to you. I take it “the Amen” is the confirmation of the divine promises; that is the character in which Christ comes out. But not that alone, He is the faithful and true Witness, which I take to be in contrast to that which Israel and the church have been. At the beginning the Lord warns the assembly that if it did not repent the candlestick would be taken out of its place, and that warning has hung over the church from the beginning until now, and the candlestick will be removed. In one sense it has been, in regard to the particular church spoken to, but in a larger sense it will be taken out of its [p. 136] place, when the church has fully proved itself an unfaithful witness; and it is in contrast to that, that Christ comes out as the faithful and true Witness. He has proved Himself that. He witnessed a good confession here. There is still another word spoken of the Lord. He says, “the beginning of the creation of God”. Now it is not at all difficult to apprehend what God’s creation is. We might have thought of Adam as a beginning of God’s creation, so far as man is concerned, but the truth is that Christ is the beginning of the creation of God. He is also the crown of it. If you build a house, when you lay the foundation, you involve the roof. The foundation is made for the roof; and Christ is not simply the crown of creation but the foundation of it morally. It is a very important point to recognize this, for it involves that the moment will come when creation will take its character from Christ. I notice that wherever God was dealing with people, from the beginning of the world, He was producing some trait of Christ. Enoch, Noah, Abraham and David all bore some trait of Christ because Christ was morally the beginning. He had not yet become man, but He was the Man of God’s purpose, and everything should bear some trait of Him.
There was nothing comely but what was of Christ. Christ is thus morally the crown of creation and the beginning. All that is connected with His being seated on His own throne. That is, He comes out in that light, in what we may speak of as kingdom characters. What is in view is the world to come. The Lord speaks to Philadelphia as having the key of David, as opening and no man shutting. This undoubtedly speaks of the place and right of David in regard to things down here; so the titles in this address are in view of His leaving the Father’s throne and taking His own throne.
In regard to that I ask, Do you know what will mark the throne of Christ? Look at Hebrews 1: 8, 9. I refer to that because we get in it the moral foundation of the throne. That is the love of righteousness and the hatred of lawlessness. When Christ came, He came to undo the works of the devil. “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil”. The works of the devil were seen in that good and evil were entangled in this world, and Christ came that He might disentangle them. Everything here is in confusion, but Christ has come to bring the confusion to an end. He came where lawlessness was, but He loved righteousness; and therefore when He is upon His own throne the characteristic of the throne will be the maintenance of righteousness after the putting down of lawlessness. All that will come out in a very distinct way when Christ occupies His throne. If you look abroad in the world men are universally lawless. They may be moral, and yet lawless. If you were to ask me who are the most lawless people in the world, I should say the great leaders of public thought, because they claim unrestricted liberty for the human mind, and that means, in principle, the exclusion of revelation, because in the very nature of things, if there be revelation, the human mind must be bounded — the human mind cannot judge of the revelation of God. And yet that is what is claimed at the present day. I call it lawlessness, and yet a certain sort of righteousness or morality may be connected with it. In fact, Scripture leads us to think so, because it tells us that even Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light, and his ministers into ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works. You may be very confident that the devil and his angels are essentially lawless, and men are lawless; and the more they claim liberty the more they make lawlessness apparent. That will come to an end when Christ comes out as the faithful and true Witness, the beginning of the creation of God. Every family will be brought into attachment to Christ and the result will be that righteousness will rule and lawlessness will be abolished. The present is a moment of testimony when Christ does not assert His rights. His rights are for the moment in abeyance. But everything will be changed when He comes.
[p. 138] I will dwell for a moment upon the character of the people to whom the Lord addresses Himself here. Verses 15, 17. They are professedly christians, these who bear His name; all is spoken to the assembly and what marks it? One thing is indifference, and the other is pretension. There is indifference, lukewarmness, indifference of the worst kind, because it is indifference to Christ — and on the other hand there is amazing pretension. They are rich and increased in goods and have need of nothing. I would not speak of this if I did not believe that a great deal of that character is to be seen abroad at the present time. There is undoubtedly a class of people in this world unable to discriminate between lawlessness and righteousness. They have no real apprehension of moral principles according to God, because they have no right apprehension of Christ. They are indifferent, lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, and yet, on the other hand, there is with them pretension. There is nothing they will not touch. They will touch Scripture by the human mind with unbounded confidence. They will undertake to bring before you the original sources of Scripture. They will subject Scripture to criticism. And they appear to know more about Scripture than either Christ or the apostles knew. There is a large class of people of that kind in the world at the present time, practically indifferent to Christ, claiming the liberty of the human mind to judge of the records which the Spirit of God has been pleased to give to us. Now, the Lord speaks of them as being poor and blind, and wretched and miserable, and that is really their true description — it is the mind of the Lord in regard to them. They have no spiritual riches, and they are blind, for any one that does not see Christ is blind.
Any one that does not see the sun in the heavens is manifestly blind. And if a man is blind in regard to Christ, he can have no true moral perception. The perception of moral principles and the discriminating of right and wrong is dependent on the apprehension of Christ, who is the Sun of righteousness, who has loved righteousness [p. 139] and hated lawlessness; and I defy any man, whatever may be his natural ability or his cultivation, to give you a right idea of righteousness and lawlessness if he has not the apprehension of Christ; and I can understand the Lord speaking of such as being “wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked”, with all their pretension. Nothing is more nauseous to Christ than indifference. “I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth”. If they were not professedly christian it could not be said that the Lord would spue them out of His mouth. He could not spue the heathen out of His mouth. They are nauseous to Him by their lukewarmness and by their amazing pretension. It is the pretension of the human mind. They can say, We have the resources of knowledge and research at our disposal, we are rich and increased with goods, and we prefer to trust to the monuments which have come within the reach of man’s observation rather than to the records which God has been pleased to give us, we judge of these records by what has come under the observation of the human mind.
I come now to what is much more interesting, that is the counsel of the Lord. He says, verse 18: “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous, therefore, and repent”. What strikes me is the wonderful grace on the part of the Lord to give such a word of counsel. It is not His pleasure to spue them out of His mouth, and in such a state of things as we have here the Lord has a word to say. Whatever christianity is, at the lowest ebb, the Lord has a word of counsel. A word which I think would do all good if every one took it well to heart. He counsels them to buy. Buy is a word in Scripture. “Buy wine and milk without money and without price”. What I understand by it is the necessity of a transaction with [p. 140] Christ. It is not buying in the sense in which we understand buying, for if you buy anything in this world you will have to pay a price for it; but buying is figurative of a transaction. It is the soul having a transaction with Christ. He counsels them to buy gold tried in the fire. It is an important point to be rich. Most people in this world would not object to be rich, but the point is, as to what is riches. Riches in this world are very artificial; what people esteem to be riches, that is gold, would not be of the slightest value if the sun did not shine, for if the sun did not shine there would not be any fertility, and there would be nothing for gold to obtain. It happens that the sun does shine and there is fertility on earth and gold has a value; but in gold there is no moral value, and Christ will not appreciate anything in which there is no moral value. “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire”. I will tell you what is true riches. Righteousness. I do not think any other riches are true. The apostle speaks of the unsearchable riches of Christ. Christ is the true riches, because He is righteous ness. That is what I understand to be figured by “gold tried in the fire”. Righteousness is no small thing to be possessed of. You have no riches if you have not Christ. It is a great thing to be rich toward God. Man may have millions in this world’s goods, but what does it all come to when a man dies? Does he take one single stiver with him? He leaves it all behind, and does not know what it will accomplish, whether good or evil. But supposing Christ be your riches, when you die will you leave your riches behind? I do not think you will. The point is this, we are already attached to Christ risen from the dead, and hence death touches one very little; if we are married to Him who is raised from the dead, death cannot touch us severely. And the riches we have now we will not lose in death. That expression “gold tried in the fire” is remarkable. In Christ you get the rights of God having their full place in a Man. The Lord Jesus was here the righteous One. God’s law was within His heart. The righteousness was subjected to the fire, and in that way tested, in Christ [p. 141] entering into the judgment which lay upon us. And now you have gold tried in the fire. And Christ is available as righteousness to us because the righteousness has been tried in the fire. Righteousness is not a thing you can lose when you die, it entails glory beyond. Therefore righteousness is great riches, Righteousness and glory are intimately connected in Scripture; if I have Christ for righteousness there remains one thing, I shall have Christ for glory, and in that day it will be a great deal. There is no inherent value in gold, and men have their riches only by the long-suffering of God. All that will come to a close, and the day will arrive when nothing will avail but righteousness.
One word more, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear”. It is very important for us that we should be clothed. “Naked” in scripture is a word employed with terrible force. To be naked is to be Christ-less, and we want something to cover our nakedness. I will tell you what I understand by white raiment, it is pure and undefiled religion, and that is to visit the fatherless and the widows, in their affliction, and to keep yourself unspotted from the world. I would advise everybody to buy it. You do not want fine clothing. It will only commend you to the unthinking and vain people of this world; the thing is to be clothed morally; to keep yourself in this world and to be marked as one who visits the widow and the fatherless in their affliction. That you will get from Christ. It is really as Christ affects the heart that anyone would desire to be clothed in white raiment “that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear”.
One thing more, The Lord says, “anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see”. It is a great thing to get spiritual sight, because then you begin to distinguish between good and evil, lawlessness and righteousness. You see everything like a sane person. In a dream little pieces of your experience are pieced together in some [p. 142] incongruous way, and everything is seen out of proportion and relation. There is a good deal in common between madness and dreaming, only that a mad man does not come to the recovery of his senses, as we do after dreaming. A mad man has really not got eyes mentally. He does not see things in proportion. To see everything in its true proportion and relation is one of the greatest mercies which the Lord can confer upon us. People in the world see many things in the most exaggerated way, and other things which are vastly more important are very small in their eyes. I defy anyone to see things right apart from Christ, otherwise you have no true measure. We see that illustrated in the case of the demoniac. That miracle is full of teaching, it brings before us one very important point in regard of Christ. He was manifested to undo the works of the devil, and the work of the devil has been to bring into this world confusion. You see many beautiful things in the world. The love of a mother to a child is beautiful, so is love between brothers and sisters. There are abundant traces of God’s mercy in the world, which are beautiful, but they are marred by lawlessness which lies even under natural affections in the heart of man. Now one effect of the coming of Christ will be to resolve everything, and that is what was seen in the case of the demoniac, The man was delivered from lawlessness, and the power of Satan, and the legion of devils went into the herd of swine, and they ran down into the sea, and perished in the waters. Where is the Jew at the present time who rejected Christ? He has been hurried down into the sea of the gentiles, and is perished. Solemn things came to pass in connection with the advent of the Lord into this world. A little remnant was delivered and brought into the enjoyment of the Holy Spirit, but the great mass of the people possessed by the unclean devils were hurried on to destruction. The wrath of God came upon them to the uttermost. The man that was delivered sat at the feet of Jesus, He was no longer lawless. Had he been he would not have been sitting there. He was brought into attachment.
[p. 143] He had Jesus in a way for righteousness. He had been naked, but he was naked no longer. He was clothed, and was in his right mind. He no longer saw things in a terrible and fearful and distorted way, but according to their true measure and proportion. Now that is the character and effect of the work of Christ. What a blessed work! In connection with Christ we have to face terrible things because everything is brought to an issue. Everything has been brought to an issue with the Jew, and everything will be brought to an issue as to the gentiles. This is a great moment of opportunity for the gentiles, but how will they use it? They will turn apostate and set up antichrist. They too will be hurried to destruction by a legion of unclean devils, but God takes care to accomplish His own blessed purposes. The poor demoniac was delivered. Very likely a few may be delivered from Laodicea. Who can say but that some of that class of people may give heed to the counsel of the Lord and buy gold tried in the fire and white raiment to clothe their nakedness and anoint their eyes with eye-salve so that they may see? If your soul is brought into contact with Christ of necessity you take up things very seriously. There are such serious things connected with the coming in of Christ. Righteousness and lawlessness are bound to be disentangled. Where is the disentanglement going on at the present time? In each of us, that we may be in accord with Christ, hating lawlessness and loving righteousness. It is a good thing to have gold tried in the fire, and to be marked off from the covetousness and folly which characterize the people of the world; to be clothed in pure and undefiled religion and to have our eyes anointed with eye-salve, so as to have true discernment between things that differ, between what is according to God and what is not according to God in our pathway through this world. To put it in the language of Scripture, to have the “senses exercised to discern both good and evil”. May God give grace to all of us that we may take heed to the gracious counsel of the Lord. And then what follows? The Lord says: To him that [p. 144] overcometh I will accord communion, I will sup with him, I will enter into his things and he shall enter into My things; and glory shall follow. He shall sit with Me in My throne. Present communion and glory to follow. The Lord engages Himself to that for the overcomer. If we are going with the current we are not overcoming. There is not much sign of vitality. The proof of vitality is, that you are going against the current, and as sure as you are here in this world, in whatever association and condition of things you may be found, the current will be against you. And therefore there is great grace in the promise to the overcomer.