THE CLOSING DAYS OF THE ASSEMBLY’S HISTORY
I have in mind, dear brethren, that the time of our departure is at hand. John 13 starts with the fact that Jesus knew that His hour had come that we should depart out of this world to the Father, and the passage we have read in Luke’s gospel says that the days of His receiving up were fulfilled, and that He stedfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. We can see there is quite a contrast between going to the Father, passing out of this world to the Father, and going to Jerusalem, which meant that He was to face reproach and suffering, but these are two lines I think which are now to be before us. On the one hand we are about to be introduced into the Father’s house and all that that means for the pleasure of the Father and for the blessing of the saints. On the other hand, we have to complete our course of testimony here whatever it may involve in the way of more suffering than we have hitherto experienced, more restriction, more reproach. Those are the two lines that one has before one, and also that these things are imminent.
We are nearing the end, and therefore it behoves us to give ourselves entirely to these things, in order that we may complete our course. No one wants to drop out just at the end. The Lord is helping us wonderfully. There has been a period of purging and of exercise and in a sense it may not be completed yet. In fact exercises of that character are sure to continue to the end; but at the same time the Lord is now giving us a definite impression of the holy, spiritual character of things that we belong to, and of their satisfying character too, and of our ability to enter into them at the present time. And another thing I would say is that the Lord wants us to enter into things together, not as isolated individuals, but together. That is why He has set us in local companies. That is why the Lord commands that we love one another. He says, “A new commandment I give to you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another”. That is to work out in our localities. It is not to be mere sentiment, it is to be an actual thing in concrete expression that we love one another; that the local company is characterised by that; and unless that is so, dear brethren, we shall not be together.
We are going to be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air, caught up together. Not only so, it says that God has raised us up together, and has made us sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, so this idea of ‘together’ is a most essential thing in the mind of God. There is nothing He so values, I believe, as to see the saints firmly together. It is for His pleasure. He has chosen us in Christ before the world’s foundation, it says, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love. That is at the present time. It will be so in the future, but what He is concerned about is that these things should be real now, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love—not simply in His love but in conditions of love amongst ourselves. God cannot be satisfied, He Himself being love, with anything other than conditions of love amongst the saints, and so He desires that we should be together, together in love. That is why He has set us in local companies. You may say, ‘I could get on perhaps with brethren if they were a bit different, or if we had different brethren in our locality’, but the Lord makes no mistakes as to those whom He sets together in localities. He has in mind that the practical working out of love as an actual active matter should be seen amongst us.
It has often been remarked, as you remember, that in the epistle to the Corinthians, which has in view local conditions, the apostle describes ‘love’, but he describes it as a kind of picture on the wall. That is not to say that there was no love there amongst them. I am quite sure there was. I am quite sure the household of Stephanas was marked by love, love for the saints. I have very little doubt that Fortunatus and Achaicus, whom he mentions by name, would be marked by love, for he mentions them as those who are worthy to be owned. At the same time it is clear that it was not exactly characteristic of the Corinthian company, and therefore he describes, abstractly you might say, or objectively, what love does and what love does not do, and I venture to suggest, dear brethren, that if we would like to get help from 1 Corinthians 13 we should, instead of saying that ‘love does this’ and that ‘love does not do that’, read it that ‘I do this’ and that ‘I do not do that’. Go through the whole chapter on those lines and see how far you answer to the divine requirements, because God does not set these things out for nothing. If He says what love does and what loves does not do, He has in mind that there should be a corresponding answer to it in ourselves in what we do, and a corresponding answer to it in what we do not do and what we do not allow. For instance, we do not impute evil; we do not rejoice in iniquity; we do not vaunt ourselves. All these and other things are things that the apostle draws attention to as practical features of love to be seen in the local company.
You remember, too, that in John 15 the Lord speaks of a vine. He says, “I am the true vine”, and then “ye are the branches”. Now, a vine is a most remarkable thing. I do not think there is anything else quite like it in nature. The wood is no good for anything, as Ezekiel tells us. The only value of the vine is in the grapes, and the joy that they afford to God and man. The vine spreads and the fruit is not borne in the way of separate grapes, but clusters of grapes. Now that is a remarkable thing. You take account of the work of God all round the world and you will see clusters of grapes. You will see local companies, the saints set together in love, and as set together in love marked by the truth, affording fruit for the pleasure of the heart of God. What a wonderful thing it is to think of the fruit of the vine! Have you seen how a vine spreads out, and yet the fruit takes the form of clusters of grapes? That is what God is looking for all round the world—clusters of grapes, local assemblies characterised by love among themselves and by that which affords pleasure to the heart of the blessed God.
Well now, coming to this passage which I have read in John 13, the Lord is about to go out of this world, and Peter says to Him, “Lord, where goest thou? Jesus answered him, Where I go thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me after”. I think it directs our thoughts to the book of Joshua, chapter 3. The people were told that when they saw the ark of the covenant of the Lord moving, they were to go after it, but that there was to be a distance of about two thousand cubits between it and them. I think that is what the Lord is saying here to Peter. He is saying, ‘You must allow for the two thousand cubits. You shall follow Me after, but you cannot follow Me now’. The Lord has had to go into death alone and make a way through death into life beyond death according to the eternal thoughts of God. He had to go that way alone. No one could go with Him in it, and that is what He is saying to Peter. He is saying, so to speak, ‘You must maintain two thousand cubits to start with, so that you get a full view of the glory of the Son of God, as moving into death in such a way that death had to give way before Him’. It was not possible that He should be holden of it. What a glorious thing it is to see the Son of God go into death, and be there three days and three nights in the heart of the earth! Just think of it!—three days and three nights, a complete expression of someone lying in death, and then the Father raised Him from among the dead by His glory on that first day of the week. One sometimes speaks of it as that first first day of the week. What a day it was!
I have often thought of the feelings of the Father when He raised up Jesus from among the dead on that first day of the week. What feelings there were; what joy there would be in the Father’s heart! Now He had Christ before Him out of death, the beginning, firstborn from among the dead; the beginning of all that is going to be expanded in the assembly as taking character from Him; and then all the other families are to be brought into view. A wonderful expanse of glory opens up as soon as Christ is apprehended as “the beginning, firstborn from among the dead”. And what feelings of joy, too, must have been in the heart of Christ! We think of the Father’s joy in raising up Jesus from among the dead; let us also think of the joy that was in the heart of Christ as He found Himself, a Man out of death, there before the Father, having secured for the Father’s pleasure all that He set His heart upon even before the foundation of the world.
But then, you remember, although the Lord insists here that there was to be this distance—“thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me after”—when the ark did in fact go into the Jordan the people had to follow it into the Jordan and beyond it, and the ark remained in the bed of Jordan until all the people had passed over. That was the sign of complete victory over death. When the ark was there in Jordan, Jordan fled. Remember the song, “What ailed thee, thou sea [referring to the Red Sea] that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou turnedst back?”, Ps 114: 5. What a note of exultation the people of God can sing as they see the whole power of death annulled, Christ gloriously risen out of it, and every purpose of God secured now in Him, who is the Beginning, Firstborn from among the dead!
But then, as I say, although the ark had to go alone into Jordan, it had to remain in the bed of Jordan until all the people had passed over, and that is another thing I think we have to take account of, dear brethren. I believe the Lord would remind us continually that He has been into death and opened up a way into the region of divine purpose beyond death; and He will keep that before us until we all have passed over in our thoughts and affections. That is to say, are we going to continue to live in natural things, however legitimate they might be, or are we going to be moved over in our thoughts and affections to find our life in relation to Christ and the assembly as the family that is to be apprehended as the first family out of death? And so the ark remained in the bed of the Jordan until they had all passed over. I believe the Lord would speak to us in that way as to whether we have passed over in our thoughts and affections; as to whether we are maintaining it in our outlook that Christ has gone over as having first been into death. Death is the way through. Life out of death is the order of the day, so to speak, and so it says that the ark remained in Jordan until they had all passed over, and I believe the Lord would keep before us constantly the fact that He has been into death in order to open a way through until we all have passed over, until we really have come to it that our life, our living associations, are bound up with Christ out of death and we are of the assembly as of Him.
Now the Lord goes further. He says to Peter, “thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me after”. Peter comes in, of course, with an illadvised remark, “why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thee”. He is full of what he would be for Christ instead of being occupied with what Christ would be for us and for the Father. The Lord says to him, “Thou wilt lay down thy life for me! Verily, verily, I say to thee, The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice”. What a humbling reminder to us all, dear brethren, that so long as we are here we are capable of denying the Lord, capable of failing Him when He would have us true to Him! So the Lord says to Peter, “Verily, verily, I say to thee, The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice”. But now the Lord says, “Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe on God, believe also on me”. See what enlargement He begins to open up at once. He begins to speak about “my Father’s house”. “In my Father’s house”, he says, “there are many abodes”. What can we say about them? Scripture speaks of every family in the heavens and on earth. We know that there are the many families, some heavenly, some earthly. It is a very vast system of glory, dear brethren, to which we belong, to which we have been called, on the very verge of which we are. That is the position as we were having it in the earlier meeting. In a moment, the twinkling of an eye, we shall be found there in the Father’s house, and how vast it is, “my Father’s house”! Think of a world which takes its character from the Father, Christ’s Father!
It says in John 3, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things to be in his hand”. In this chapter 13 it says, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given him all things into his hands”, and that is the position. Just think of it—all things! First, the assembly is given to Christ. That is the first family, first in importance, at any rate, but then every family is given to Christ. I love to think of it, the vastness of what has been given to Christ. Faith can take account of it. Of those who compose the heavenly families—the assembly is not yet complete; it is nearing completion; but those who compose the other heavenly families, I suppose, will have been already secured (except those who die between the rapture of the assembly and the appearing of Christ) but are awaiting resurrection; and then there are the earthly families to be brought into view very quickly. As we have been saying, a nation can be born in a day; Isa 66: 8. Think of the immensity of what is under the hand of Christ, all things are in His hand! The pleasure of God in regard of the administration of the world to come is to head up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth, and we ourselves have received an inheritance in Him.
The prospect before us, beloved brethren, is simply glorious, the expanse of it is glorious! One would be glad to have an enlargement of it in one’s own soul and that the brethren should get an enlargement in their souls of the grandeur of what they belong to, as belonging to the assembly loved by Christ, in the most intimate place in the Father’s house with Christ. And then there are all the other families. I cannot speak of them; one knows very little about them, but we know that they are there, and the Lord says, “In my Father’s house there are many abodes”. “Were it not so”, He says, “I had told you”, as though to say, ‘I am not holding anything back from you’. That is the position of the assembly. It is the confidant of Christ. He does not hold anything back. He says, “were it not so, I had told you: for I go to prepare you a place”. He has gone for that purpose. Of course the place is prepared already by virtue of His being there. The place for us is, “where I am ye also may be”. Do we believe it? Do we believe that our place is exactly where Christ is, and He is in the very centre of the position, the object of His Father’s love? The assembly is there with Him, and all the other families will take their place in due time in relation to Christ, and what will it be? It will be a vast system of love, of which the Father is the Head and Christ is the Centre, the assembly standing with Christ in that position, and then every other family recognising Christ in some sense as its Head, for all things are to be headed up in Christ. It is a vast system, dear brethren, headed up in Christ known as the beloved Son of His Father; it is a vast system of love that the Father has conceived, and we shall soon find ourselves in it; so we want to be enlarged in relation to the Father, dear brethren.
Yet the millennial glory is not what God has in mind as the final thing. There will be millennial glory, the answer to all the reproach and shame that Christ has been through here, the answer to all the reproach and suffering the saints have been through here. It will be a witness on the earth that God can do much better through Christ than anything man has been able to do. There will be millennial glory, but that is not what is eternal. What is eternal in character is a system of families with the Father as the blessed Source of all, Christ as the Centre of all, by whom all is held for the Father’s pleasure—the assembly with Christ, and then all the other families brought into their respective places for the Father’s pleasure.
The Lord says, “I go to prepare you a place; and if I go and shall prepare you a place, I am coming again and shall receive you to myself”. Notice He does not say, ‘I will come again’, making it future. He says, “I am coming again”, showing that it is present to His heart and mind. He is speaking of it now: “I am coming again and shall receive you to myself”. One has often thought that, during the war when men were at the front, you could understand a soldier writing home to his wife and saying, ‘The moment I can get leave I am coming home’. He would not know exactly when it would be, but that was his outlook. That was what he was thinking of. The Lord would say, ‘I am coming again, to receive you to myself’. He does not tell us what the moment is, but it is present to His heart. “I am coming again and shall receive you to myself, that where I am ye also may be”. You find the Lord taking up the same language in speaking to the Father in chapter 17. He says, “Father, as to those whom thou hast given me, I desire that where I am they also may be with me”. That is the great matter, dear brethren, “where I am”. And so we can have these things in our souls. We belong to that scene. When it comes to the first day of the week, when it comes to tomorrow, if the Lord leaves us here, I trust we shall find fresh entrance into the Father’s presence in company with Christ, in the joy of union with Christ. Christ finds great pleasure in union, but first of all we have to have some apprehension of the Lord coming in in the distinctive glory of His Person.
It is very interesting how the Lord addresses Himself to Smyrna, and then how He addresses Himself to Philadelphia, for those two assemblies are the two assemblies out of the seven with which He finds no fault whatever. To Smyrna He says, “These things says the first and the last, who became dead, and lived”. “The first and the last” is a title of deity; we can see that from Isaiah 48: 12. In saying “who became dead”, of course, He is referring to His manhood. He took up manhood in order that He might die. He is the “first and the last” in His Person, and if One who in His Person is God enters in manhood into death, then death must give way before Him. It was not possible that He should be holden of it, but He comes in in that way, “the first and the last”, and is known now as the Man out of death, the glorious Man who has by going into death annulled its power completely; He can now present Himself to us in that glorious light. He has brought into view the resurrection world of the Father’s pleasure and we have our own distinctive part with Him in it as of the assembly. And then to Philadelphia He presents Himself as loving the assembly. He says He will cause certain ones to come and do homage before the assembly’s feet and to know that He has loved her. As you consider the way the Lord presents Himself to Smyrna and Philadelphia, you get impressions such as we receive on the first day of the week, of the Lord in His glory coming in as having disposed of death, and then assuring the assembly of His love for her, so that we might touch the joy of union; and then as union is known and enjoyed He conducts us with Himself into His Father’s presence, in order that all the blessedness of the service of God might be set forward and maintained by Him for the pleasure of God.
But now the other line is what Luke speaks of. He stedfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, not to go to the Father, but to go to Jerusalem. He stedfastly set His face. He was to finish His part in the testimony and finish it in Jerusalem. Later on He wept over Jerusalem. “If thou hadst known”, He says, Luke 19: 42. What feelings there are in the heart of Christ: we often realise how shallow our feelings are, but there was no shallowness of feeling with the Lord. He set His face stedfastly to go to Jerusalem.
I link with that what we have in Revelation 5. Although that depicts a scene of glory, at the same time it is a question of the Lamb. The path of testimony and suffering has been completed by the Lord, and is to be completed by the saints, in lamb character. It says here, “I saw in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing, as slain”. It is a little lamb, a diminutive idea. He had just been announced as the lion of the tribe of Juda. That is what Jesus is, “the lion which is of the tribe of Juda”. A lion does not turn away for any, Prov 30: 30. He comes in in all His moral power as able to carry through every thought of God whatever opposition He might encounter, whatever reproach He might encounter, whatever the cross might entail for Him. He is the Lion of the tribe of Juda who can carry it through, but when He is seen, what is seen is a little Lamb. How men would despise a little lamb! Would any man think there was power connected with a little lamb? You remember how Abraham took seven ewe lambs and presented them to the king of the Philistines, and what did the king of the Philistines, with his military captain, think of seven ewe Iambs? But this is one little lamb. One speaks reverently, but He is presented as a little Lamb—with all the outward weakness and smallness connected with a little lamb, yet everything secured for God by Him on this principle of suffering.
It says, “I saw in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing, as slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God”. It speaks, I suppose, of completeness of power and discernment. Things have been carried through on this line of suffering suggested in a little lamb, and they are going to be carried through on that line. We shall have to accept suffering; we are the Lamb’s wife, beloved brethren. You remember how chapter 19 says, “the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife has made herself ready”. The idea in the marriage of the Lamb is not the inner affectionate side connected with marriage; that is not the idea here. We read of a king making a marriage for his son and there is no mention of the wife at all, so the idea of marriage in that sense in Scripture is not the affectionate side of what is private between the husband and wife. It is the idea of a public celebration, in which the king’s son in the one case, and the Lamb in this case, is the central figure. “The marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife has made herself ready. And it was given to her that she should be clothed in fine linen, bright and pure; for the fine linen is the righteousnesses of the saints”. Think of all that has been worked out during the last few years even, apart from previous history, in the saints individually having to stand for the rights of the Lord! How many detailed righteousnesses have been wrought out by the saints, brothers and sisters alike, and each one of them is constituting an element in the clothing with which the Lamb’s wife is to be arrayed! She is to be there on that occasion in complete accord with the Lamb Himself, as enhancing the occasion and contributing to it. She is there as having taken character from the Lamb, she is there as having been marked by suffering, and righteousnesses worked out in suffering.
So we find here that the Lamb is celebrated, “Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open its seals”. He is the only One in heaven or earth morally suited to take this book and to open its seals, the book that was going to open out the ways of God in judgment on the world. John wept much because there did not seem to be anybody competent to take the book and open its seals, but one of the elders said to him, “Do not weep. Behold, the lion which is of the tribe of Juda, the root of David, has overcome so as to open the book”. Everything in divine things is entered into on the principle of overcoming; do not let us forget that. It says in Revelation 21: 7, “he that overcomes shall inherit these things”. That is after the Spirit of God has traced the full development of things on the earth, the final relegation of evil to the lake of fire and the introduction of the eternal day, the new heavens and the new earth. He says, “He that overcomes shall inherit these things”, as though to say, ‘You will have your part in these things on the principle of overcoming’. Of course it is pure grace, we all understand that, but publicly it is on the principle of overcoming.
As soon as sin entered into the world, overcoming was called for; do not forget that. When Adam and Eve sinned God clothed them with coats of skin, and that became the testimony of the moment. Now what do we find? Cain moves and he entirely disregards the light God had given and he brings an offering that did not speak of death or blood at all. He entirely ignored the truth of God for the moment, and he moved first. Now what is his brother Abel going to do? Is Abel going to do the same as his brother, or is he going to regulate himself by the truth? That was the issue. Abel overcame; he was the first overcomer. He stood for the truth against contrary, opposing elements. He had to die for it. He was the first martyr, but still he overcame, and that principle of overcoming set up then has continued ever since as the principle upon which the things of God are to be entered upon. And so we are tested in our responsible path here in regard of the rights of Christ. Let us understand that every time the rights of Christ are stood for, in whatever way it may be—it may be quite obscurely, no one seeing it perhaps but the Lord—in that very fact some further righteousness of the righteousnesses of the saints is being worked out, and it is part of that with which the Lamb’s wife will be clothed in the day of His glory.
And so, dear brethren, there are these two lines. There is the line that leads into wondrous privilege, all that is connected with the Father’s house; the Lord would give us increasing entrance into it now in the Spirit. Of course I know the Father’s house itself is a future thought, but I do not think there is anything that is future that we cannot enter into now in the power of the Earnest, save the actual glorified condition. I do not believe there is anything else that we shall enter into eternally that we cannot touch in the power of the Earnest, and on that line we may touch the blessedness of the Father’s house already; but there is also the moral glory in the suffering and testing of testimony here in accordance with the Lamb. May the Lord help us in these things, for His Name’s sake.
SEATTLE
30th May 1964
From Ministry of the Word, 1965
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