WHAT CHRIST LOVES
This word to Philadelphia, dear brethren, is a word to our affections. It is only to Philadelphia that the Lord says, “I have loved thee”. He does not say that even to Ephesus, but He says to Philadelphia that He will make certain ones to come and acknowledge, as He says, “that I have loved thee”. Hence that is intended to have its own effect upon us, and to promote in every one of us, young and old alike, the desire to provide conditions that are lovable, as we have been hearing, whatsoever things are lovable. There are things that are lovable, things that Christ loves, and He is looking to us, to the assembly, to provide those things.
And so He says here, “These things saith the holy, the true”, and the first thing is “holy”. You can understand the importance of that, because we are in a world that is extremely unholy, and flesh in us is unholy too; but then the Holy Spirit is not unholy, I need not say, He is essentially and absolutely holy, and He has taken His abode in us in order that conditions that are suited to Christ and pleasing to God may be wrought out and maintained in us. And it is, if one might so say, a whole-time occupation for us to see that that is secured. So the Lord here says, “These things saith the holy”, and then, “the true”. One has often remarked, and I think it is worth pointing out, that we get “the holy” in John 6, and “the true” in John 7. In John 6, when the Lord had challenged the disciples saying, “Will ye also go away?”, Peter says, “We have believed and known that thou art the holy one of God”, v 69. Why does he say that? When asked, “Who do ye say that I am?”, Matthew says that Peter said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”, Matt 16: 16. Mark says that he said, “Thou art the Christ”, Mark 8: 29. Luke says that he said, “The Christ of God”, Luke 9: 20. But in John he says, “We have believed and known that thou art the holy one of God”. Why does he say that, “the holy one of God”? It was, I believe, the impression they had received from companying with Christ; they saw in Jesus a Man who was in every way according to God morally, and absolutely pleasing to Him. Of course, as we think of these things and speak of them we are greatly challenged, because we are all made to feel how far short we come of the divine thought, but then the divine thought is set out in Jesus, and the more He is held in our minds and in our hearts’ affections the more, without being occupied with it, we shall become like Him. We are to be like Him for we shall see Him as He is; indeed Mr F E Raven said6 we must be like Him in order to see Him as He is; and if we want to see Him as He is, we may well keep it before our hearts that the Spirit of God would work with us to bring about moral correspondence with Christ.
Well now, the Lord says here that He has the key of David, He “opens and no one shall shut, and shuts and no one shall open”. I suppose “the key of David” refers to Him as the One who is able to introduce us into the full thought of the service of God, which was what was so dear to the heart of David that he laboured to secure it, but now the Lord says, “I know thy works”. It is very interesting that to the assembly which is characterised by love for Christ, the Lord simply says, “I know thy works”, as though to those who love Him that is quite sufficient. We do not want to have our works enlarged upon. If He has anything to correct we are quite prepared to receive the word of correction, but for Him to say, “I know thy works”, is sufficient for us. Now He says, “I have set before thee an opened door, which no one can shut, because thou hast a little power”. That is power, dear brethren; that is not weakness. “A little power” is not weakness, it is power. It may be only a little power but nevertheless it is power; and I believe it is important to realise that, that this is not weakness, it is a little power, and the power consists, I believe, in the practical recognition of the Spirit. This is the assembly that is in the good of the recovery of the truth, and the Spirit is in His true place, recognised fully, and so the Lord says, “Thou hast a little power, and hast kept my word”. Now do we keep the word of Christ? This is not His commandments. His commandments are essential and they stand, but then “the word” is whatever He may say to us at any time. What He said yesterday, what He is saying today, what He may say tomorrow if we are still here, that is the word of Christ. Now the one who loves Christ, the assembly who loves Him, will normally have an opened ear to whatever the Lord is saying, and will be concerned to keep it in the sense that we keep it in our minds, and then that we follow it up and allow ourselves to be governed by it, “Thou … hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name”.
He refers to those “of the synagogue of Satan”. There are two of these seven assemblies in Revelation 2 and 3 that are approved of God: one is Smyrna, the other is Philadelphia, and in both of them you get mention of the “synagogue of Satan”. That is a striking thing, dear brethren, that where you have conditions that are approved of the Lord, Satan is not far off, he is entrenched there, so to speak, if he can get in; there is a synagogue of Satan there. “I make them of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews, and are not, but lie; behold, I will cause that they shall come and shall do homage before thy feet, and shall know that I have loved thee”. What a word that is to us, dear brethren! It is the Lord’s estimation of real assembly conditions. Are we concerned about those conditions here in London? In each of our local subdivisions are we concerned that conditions characterising the assembly that the Lord can really approve of and take pleasure in are found amongst us? Are we united to one another? Is there any difference between brother and brother or sister and sister or brother and sister? Are the conditions right? Are we going on in a mere formal way or are we concerned that conditions should be such that the Lord can say genuinely and from His heart, “I have loved thee”? That is what we want to aim at; I am sure we want to aim at in all our localities that the conditions in our relations with one another as well as in our response to Christ are such that He can say, “I have loved thee”. And so it is open to us; He says, “I will cause that they shall come and shall do homage before thy feet, and shall know that I have loved thee”.
Now there is another word, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience”. He has referred to His word, but now He emphasises it that He is having to be patient. He has not got His rights yet, He is having to be patient. We need to be patient; we need to be patient, too, with one another, because the work of God is going on, and I think we may say without any fear of contradiction that the work of God eventually is going to triumph; there is no doubt about that. The testimony is not going to end in weakness, dear brethren; it is going to end in a measure of power in unity of love amongst the brethren. And so He says, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience”; the Lord is going on in patience. Think of the patience He has had to exercise these nearly two thousand years, and the patience He has to exercise with each one of us and with every local company; what patience the Lord has to exercise! We do well to be patient with one another, dear brethren; we can well afford to be patient. Not to pass over nor gloss over what is wrong, that is not love for one another at all; we need courage and faith to expose what is wrong, to judge it first of all in our own souls and then have power to expose it in others if need be. The Lord says, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee out of the hour of trial, which is about to come upon the whole habitable world, to try them that dwell upon the earth”. How encouraging it is that the Lord should give us this promise! You may say, ‘Well, He said this many years ago and He has not come yet’. Perfectly true, beloved brethren, but then the word of God always has a present living voice to those who read it. Indeed Mr James Taylor said years ago that when he read the Bible he always liked to put himself in the presence of it and allow it to speak to him; he did not put his own thoughts into what he read, he allowed himself to be before it and allow God to speak to him in what it was that he was reading.
“Because thou hast kept the word of my patience”. Do we get weary of it, dear brethren? Do we get weary of this period of waiting or is it renewed by us every first day of the week? The Lord comes in in faithfulness and grace every first day of the week and reminds us that He has His eye on us and His heart is toward us, and His word always holds good, “I am coming again and shall receive you to myself, that where I am ye also may be”, John 14: 3. What a word that is, beloved brethren! We know it so well in the letter of it, but let the spirit of it really get hold of our hearts! That is what the Lord is saying to us now today, “I am coming again and shall receive you to myself, that where I am ye also may be”. And so He goes on here, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee out of the hour of trial, which is about to come upon the whole habitable world, to try them that dwell upon the earth”. The Lord knows perfectly all that is coming; there is not a single thing going to arise in the history of this world that the Lord is not fully cognisant of already. He knows perfectly all that is coming, and He would have us restful in the sense of it. We may say, ‘We wonder what is coming next’; well the Lord says, ‘I know what is coming next, I know all about it, you need not be disturbed; just go on, keep the word of My patience’. He will always have a word for us according to the need of the moment. “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee out of the hour of trial, which is about to come upon the whole habitable world”.
Now He says, “I come quickly”. You may say, ‘It does not look like it’. It is just a question of how the Lord regards things; a thousand years, as Scripture says, is with the Lord as one day and one day as a thousand years. The Lord can extend things if He pleases or He can cut things short very suddenly if He pleases; indeed, He is going to do it, dear brethren. As a matter of fact He is going to do it in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, that is how quickly it is going to happen. We want to be on the alert to realise that things are going to happen very suddenly and very quickly; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye the Lord will come forth and bring forth out of their graves those who have fallen asleep. What a comfort for those who have been bereaved; in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, the Lord will come forth in indisputable power and call forth out of the graves those who have fallen asleep through Jesus and quicken and change the bodies of us who are alive and remain. And so He says, “I come quickly: hold fast what thou hast, that no one take thy crown”. What is our crown, dear brethren? Our crown, I believe, is what we cherish most. What do we cherish most? That is a challenge for every one of us; that is our crown, what we cherish most. I believe what we should cherish most is this, that what is genuinely proper to the assembly in faithfulness to Christ and love for Him should be found with us and maintained right through to the end, whatever arises.
He says, “I come quickly: hold fast what thou hast, that no one take thy crown”. Now there is a word to him that overcomes. You might say, ‘Why is any overcomer necessary in Philadelphia?’. Well, just that we have got to overcome, because all the tendencies of the present moment are to make us either give up or just relax and become supine. We do not want that, dear brethren. One of our hymns used to talk about supineness, but at any rate that kind of thing can easily mark us, supineness, but then the Lord says, “I come quickly”. There is no time to be supine, no time to be careless about these things, or haphazard. “I come quickly: hold fast what thou hast, that no one take thy crown. He that overcomes, him will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more at all out”; that is, the Lord is going to see that the overcomer stands out in prominence. Not that any one of us desires prominence; it is not that at all. The Lord is not encouraging any feature of self-importance or self-assertiveness or anything of that sort, but He does say, “He that overcomes, him will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more at all out; and I will write upon him the name of my God”. How one would love to have the name of God written upon one! I remember Mr James Taylor saying once, that if you had been in the assembly with Paul and Mr Darby and had heard them speak to God, you would have had an impression of the new and living way; nothing religious, nothing formal, but simply men, sons of men, perfectly at home in the presence of God and speaking to God in the liberty and joy of nearness, in perfect reverence and yet in holy liberty. What that would be, dear brethren! And it is what should be found marking us: “him will I make a pillar”, someone who stands out prominently, not that he is seeking prominence at all, but that the Lord will say, ‘This is what I can do’, and it is what He can do with any one of us if we are available in His hand.
“Him will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more at all out; and I will write upon him the name of my God”, that is, God is seen in that person. Why should it not be so? We are born of God, dear brethren, we are begotten of God. Do not let us forget what we are. Why should we not be true to what we are? Let it come into expression, and let that which is inconsistent with it be judged so that it does not come into expression. That is all that has to go on day by day in our lives here: be true to what God has made us and see that what is not consistent with it is judged in the power of the Spirit, and then as we go on on these lines such a one may become a pillar in the temple of Christ’s God, “and he shall go no more at all out; and I will write upon him the name of my God”. That is, that God can be seen livingly expressed in that person, and then, “the name of the city of my God”, that is a matter of our administration. We are going to have a care meeting shortly and things have to be attended to in the assembly. What kind of administration is it? Is it in keeping with the city of Christ’s God? That is the kind of administration that should be in evidence; the Lord would love to see it, “the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down”—it is a descending movement—“from my God, and my new name”. I am not sure whether I can say definitely what is to be understood by “my new name”; at any rate it is something the Lord is prepared to write upon the overcomer. He does say, “Go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”, John 20: 17. It may be that His new name is Christ in relation to His God, Man perfectly in relation to God, but I just leave it for I cannot speak positively or authoritatively in regard of it. At any rate He says, “I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven, from my God, and my new name”. Well now, that is what the Lord proposes to the overcomer.
What is the alternative? I just add one more word, dear brethren, and I believe it is a true word and an important, sobering word, and that is that we are either in character Philadelphia or else we are Laodicea. I believe it is right to say that. The first three addresses to the assemblies, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, while, of course, they have their bearing upon us at all times being the living word of God, yet at the same time they relate historically to a phase of assembly history that is past. Then you get Thyatira which, to speak plainly, is Rome, and then you get Sardis, which is Protestantism, and now we get these last two. Now which is it? These last two, Philadelphia and Laodicea, represent the moral conditions that are found at the end in those who occupy church position, and there is nothing between the two. We are either in character Philadelphian or else we are Laodicean, one or the other. Let every one of us, dear brethren, face the challenge of it, because I am sure it is absolutely right that there is nothing between the two, and that in the end we are either in character Philadelphian or we are Laodicean. Not that you would say, ‘I am Philadelphia’, or anything of that sort; you would immediately prove that you were Laodicean if you did; at the same time the great point is that we ought to be concerned that the features portrayed in Philadelphia are seen now. That is what the Lord is looking for, and I am sure every one who loves Christ would respond to this word. He says, I am going to make certain ones come and confess that “I have loved thee”. Now would we like to be lovable to Christ or not? Let every one face it, dear brethren, would we like to be lovable to Christ or not? If so, we had better make up our minds to study what is pleasing to Him and to judge and refuse in the Spirit’s power all that is displeasing to Him, for His Name’s sake.
LONDON
28th May 1968
From Ministry of the Word, 1968
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