WHAT THE LORD SAYS, AND WHAT THE SPIRIT SAYS
The Lord speaks and the Holy Spirit speaks. To each of the seven assemblies, in chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation, the Lord has something to say, and to each of them it is said: “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to assemblies”. The Lord speaks; and the Spirit speaks; and there is no discrepancy in what they say. The Lord speaks here as One who walks in the midst of the seven golden lamps, and whose eyes are like a flame of fire. The Spirit does not address Himself, as the Lord does, to a particular assembly. The Lord speaks seven times, and each time He has something different to say. When He has said what He has to say, He urges everyone to hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies, that is, that the Spirit has certain things to communicate to the assemblies everywhere. But the thought of the seven assemblies highlights the responsibility of each assembly in each locality. In referring to assemblies in this way, I do not attribute to us by any means the prerogative to be the assembly, recognising, however, the fact that we live in privileged days when certain truths have been recovered as to the Lord and the ground on which the truth of the assembly can be arrived at with those who are available; the Lord and the Spirit taking account of it and ensuring that there is one voice, one word of the Spirit to guide those who walk in this way in the light of the assembly. Thus, the Lord speaks in John 16 of the Spirit, and he said: “he shall guide you into all the truth”. So we should all pay great attention to the voice of the Spirit speaking to the assemblies.
Some object to the use of the expression, authoritative ministry; but if the Spirit speaks, dear brethren, what He says must be said with authority, because the Spirit is God; and if He speaks, He does so by means of one or more people. He is pleased to speak through available servants to convey His thoughts; that is why we must exclude from our minds any thought that there is not currently such a thing as authoritative ministry; this would imply that the Spirit does not speak any more to the assemblies. If He speaks, He does so with authority; and we should take to heart to hear what the Spirit says and to recognise that He speaks with authority; that He is God.
It will be asked: How to discern if what we receive by the ministry is the voice of the Spirit? This raises an important question. The Lord says, “He that has an ear”, implying suitable moral conditions on our side. The Lord said on one occasion, “How can ye believe, who receive glory one of another, and seek not the glory which comes from God alone?” (John 5: 44), showing that certain moral conditions produce an inability to receive what God says. He said elsewhere: “If any one desire to practise his will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is of God”, John 7: 17. So you can see, according to these and other similar passages, that this question of whether what we are hearing is the voice of the Spirit or not awakens serious moral questions with each of us: “He that has an ear”. Each of us should be constantly in exercise before God and with the Lord as to what might prevent us from recognising what the Spirit says to the assemblies. Seven times the Lord says, “He that has an ear”. He addresses each in relation to the conditions He finds there, with a view to an adjustment related to the needs that these conditions present. Then He leaves them with this word: “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies”; and we can be assured that the Spirit will not stop speaking until the Lord’s return. I suppose that the last thing that the Spirit will say, with one voice with the bride, will be: “Come”, as we read: “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come”.
But the Spirit is concerned with taking a greater place in us, so that we have the capacity to discern His voice and, as a result, to be in the current of what He says. There is also the fact that the Lord speaks, and I wish to refer to what He said to Laodicea, before coming to what He says in Philadelphia. The Lord speaks with great severity in the terms that He addresses Laodicea: “because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spue thee out of my mouth”. A solemn word that should come home to all of us, so that none of us is marked by lukewarmness. I heard recently, in connection with 2 Timothy 2, where it speaks of vessels to honour and vessels to dishonour, that there is a broad category of believers who are neither a vessel to honour, nor vessels to dishonour. That cannot be. Scripture envisages one or the other. Not being a vessel to honour, nor a vessel to dishonour, is very much like the condition of Laodicea, “neither cold nor hot”. The Lord finds no pleasure in this. He places before us, in 2 Timothy 2, certain lines according to which we have the opportunity to be vessels to honour: “sanctified, serviceable to the Master, prepared for every good work”. Is it not, dear brethren, that we aspire to become those who love Christ? Would not each of us like to become a vessel to honour, sanctified, serviceable to the Master, prepared for every good work? We would not be able to do that by simple mental activity, or even by reading the Word; it is a matter of going to the Lord in relation to all things; this is what the Lord particularly brings out in addressing Laodicea. He says to her, “I counsel thee to buy of me”, which involves a personal transaction with Christ. You can rest assured that the Lord will not ask an exorbitant price. It will not require anything beyond our means; but He says, “I counsel thee to buy of me”, which implies a personal transaction between Him and me, and the need for me to give up something. Be sure there is something to give up, the Lord says, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold purified by fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white garments, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness may not be made manifest; and eye-salve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see”. Then He says, “I rebuke and discipline as many as I love”. He speaks in terms that appeal to the hearts of those who are willing to listen to his voice. He says again: “Behold, I stand at the door and am knocking; if any one hear my voice and open the door, I will come in unto him and sup with him, and he with me”. No suggestion of reproach or anything that might hold us back from setting us in motion.
The Lord takes account of our works. In Smyrna, He says, “I know thy tribulation and thy poverty; but thou art rich”. To Pergamos, He says: “I know where thou dwellest”, as if to say: I know all your conditions and the difficulties of the position. And to each of the other five assemblies He says: “I know thy works”. It is something which we all have to face: each in these five assemblies must take this for himself, for the Lord says, “I counsel thee”, and also: “I rebuke and discipline as many as I love”, and again: “if any one hear my voice and open the door, I will come in unto him and sup with him, and he with me”. He is looking at our works. Will they bear his scrutinising look? There probably is what the Lord can approve; there is no want of giving His approval to whatever pleases Him. But is there anything that displeases Him? Laodicea says: “I … have need of nothing”. We could well say there will never be anything like that said, and yet we may have an attitude of mind that manifests that this is our thinking, not being ready to receive adjustment or help. Laodicea says: “I … have need of nothing”, and the Lord says, thou “knowest not that thou art the wretched and the miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked”. I do not apply this to anyone of us here; I apply the word to myself and am thinking about the need for every one of us, if there is tendency to think that nothing is needed or that there are things we do not need, to look at the root of the matter. The Lord says, in a way, I know better than you what you have: “I counsel thee to buy of me gold”—the expression of divine glory; it is actually love. Do I express love? Am I formed in love? The Spirit, by Paul, says, “If I … have not love, I am nothing”, 1 Cor 13: 2. Do I have love? What measure of love do I possess? In what measure am I able to help the saints? Do I have love?
Then, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold purified by fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white garments, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness may not be made manifest”. Garments are the way in which we appear among others. Are we marked by the Spirit of Christ? This word probes us deeply. Then, “eye-salve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see”. How much we need the Spirit to see what the Lord says! In the first chapter of Revelation, it is said: “I turned back to see the voice which spoke with me”; that is to say, it is a matter of seeing what the Lord says as well as hearing it.
I think, dear brethren, that the word of the Lord addressed to Laodicea is of a kind to affect us. If we are not lukewarm in our hearts, the Lord would like to make His appeal to our minds and in our hearts. He says: “I rebuke and discipline as many as I love”. If I am rebuked, love is behind; if I am chastened, love is there too: “I rebuke and discipline as many as I love; be zealous therefore and repent”. The} Lord does not propose anything difficult. He is available to anyone who repents. Then He says: “Behold, I stand at the door and am knocking”; He is outside, He has been left outside. But He is ready to stand at the door and knock, knock, knock. And He says, “if any one hear my voice”. It is the voice of the Lord. If my ear is deaf to the voice of the Lord, I will never hear the voice of the Spirit. Thus, he says: “if any one hear my voice and open the door, I will come in unto him and sup with him, and he with me”. So that the Lord envisages an overcomer; one who responds to his voice, he becomes an overcomer. And He says, “He that overcomes, to him will I give to sit with me in my throne; as I also have overcome, and have sat down with my Father in his throne”. I believe the Lord is referring to the fact that He moves here as a testimony to God, in the midst of the lukewarmness of leaders in Israel, the Pharisees and others. They professed to go on in God’s things, but they were lukewarm, and the Lord had been victorious among them in this way. Christ is the great Overcomer: He says, “be of good courage: I have overcome the world”, John 16: 33. He presents himself, as the great Overcomer, to those who learn from Him to overcome. If therefore we are victorious, if we have heard the Lord’s voice and are subject to it, and if we repent of what we need repentance from—and I have no doubt that this is the case for most of us, if not all of us—we will become overcomers; and He says: “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies”.
The voice of the Lord to the various assemblies is mainly a word of adjustment, and we need to be sure to be obedient to it, otherwise we will not be in a suitable position to hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies, that is to say to receive the universal ministry that the Spirit gives currently; because that is what he is doing now. Do not doubt it. It is a question of authority. There is such a thing as the voice of the Spirit speaking with authority to all the assemblies; and the Lord desires us to be adjusted as far as that is necessary, so that we have ears to hear to what the Spirit says to the assemblies.
I want to speak briefly about Philadelphia. The Lord addresses this assembly in a tone of authority, but also in a very attractive way, for He sees in her an expression of the assembly for Himself. “I will cause that they shall come and shall do homage before thy feet, and shall know that I have loved thee”. He sees in Philadelphia what is attractive to Himself, what is proper to the assembly. He will bring those who are enemies to do homage before it, and He will make them know that He loved the assembly. Is that not attractive? Do we not want to give ourselves up entirely to secure and maintain conditions characteristic of the assembly in its beauty, as it is in the eyes of Christ, responding to His voice, so that we are conscious of bearing those features in us that please Christ? It is up to us to take on these features in our measure, wherever the truth of the assembly is expressed by saints who together, pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace with those who call upon the Lord out of a pure heart. In every place where these conditions are arrived at, what is important is to ensure that we provide and maintain what the Lord seeks. The important thing is to maintain it and that is where we are put to the test. Thus, the Lord says, “I have set before thee an opened door, which no one can shut, because thou hast a little power, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name”. “Little power” is not weakness, it is power characteristically. That is what we have to understand. And that power lies in the fact that we recognise the Spirit. That is what brought us the recovery that started about a hundred and thirty years ago, and that is what the enemy is constantly trying to undermine. And that is what enters into current exercises, whether we discern the voice of the Spirit, or do we live in the past? The ministry given by the Lord cannot be grasped unless we make way for the Spirit; hence the need for urgent attention to the exhortation: “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which ye have been sealed for the day of redemption”, Eph 4: 30. It is only if the Spirit is in liberty unreservedly with us, that we will discern what He says to the assemblies and will move forward with the truth. Thus it is said: “thou hast a little power”. If on the public side, there may be only a small evidence of power, it is power nevertheless, an important feature. The Lord says of Mary of Bethany, who was sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to His word: “Mary has chosen the good part”, Luke 10: 42. She was listening, not to something that the Lord had previously said, but something fresh. That is the idea contained in keeping his word. His commandments are obviously an established thing; they are in the charter, shall we say, and must be kept. But His word is what He is currently saying (it includes what He has said in the past, and what He will say tomorrow). Thus He said, “thou … hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name”. Nothing that is due to the Lord, nothing that implies His rights or pleasure in His people, was in any way neglected in Philadelphia. The Lord says again: “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience”. The Lord knows that continuing day after day with perseverance puts us to the test, and this more and more, because the tests involved in the truth become more and more serious and rigorous. We must expect this, for the Lord sits as the one that refines, and the refining is necessarily very trying; it is a process that involves the work of fire. But what is in view in this refining work? It has often been said that the refiner sits down in front of what He refines and is satisfied only when he can see his image in the metal he is refining. As a result, the process continues and puts us to the test. Every day of the week, the brothers go to work and they discover tests of increasing difficulty. All of this calls for perseverance. The Lord says, “thou hast kept the word of my patience” or endurance. The Lord waits patiently. He has known supremely what it was to persevere. It is said in Hebrews 12: “consider well him who endured so great contradiction from sinners against himself”. On one occasion, while He was still on earth, the Jews said of Him: “He has a demon and raves”, John 10: 20. Shortly before, the Jews had said to him in front of him: “thou hast a demon”, John 8: 52. Think of Jesus who endured such contradiction from sinners against Himself: He “endured the cross, having despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God”. Now He says, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience”. The Lord enters fully into the exercises of His saints at present, but He gives us the appropriate message, saying, “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”.
Then He says, “I come quickly: hold fast what thou hast, that no one take thy crown”. What a word for us, dear brethren! The Lord wants to see us crowned. If we cherish the idea of furnishing and maintaining until the end the true features of the assembly under Christ's eye, this will constitute our crown, and the Lord desires to see us crowned. When I say: us, I do not pretend that any of our local companies is Philadelphia, but I would like, and I am sure that all with me desire it, to be among those the Lord can see with a crown. It is as if He said: You have cherished this desire in your hearts, continue to the end with this desire, let nothing take it from you, so that I will have the joy of seeing you crowned.
Then he says, “He that overcomes”. Why the need to overcome in Philadelphia? Because of the power against the truth, it is essential that we take it to heart to be overcomers. You take on the truth and you walk in the truth, you support it by walking in full agreement with it; this is the way to be an overcomer. But all this depends (and it is very serious) on having ears to hear, that is to say to have the necessary moral conditions in me—“He that has an ear”—and if I must have ears to hear what the Spirit says, I must necessarily see to the moral conditions in my soul and go to the Lord as to that. I could say like Laodicea: “I … have need of nothing”. If I go to the Lord, He will tell me: “that thou art the wretched and the miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked”, and on the other hand, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold … that thou mayest be rich; and white garments … and eye-salve … that thou mayest see”, And while you are having these transactions with the Lord, you are brought to perfect accord with the thoughts of God, with the thoughts of Christ, in relation to the assembly.
Thus it is said: “He that overcomes, him will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more at all out”. A pillar, in the scriptures, does not exactly give the thought of support; it is what is prominent, as a testimony to something. Four times, in this verse, the Lord refers to “my God”. It is the outpourings Christ's heart in relation to God, and His glory and pleasure; and He says, “He that overcomes, him will I make a pillar in the temple of my God”. The Lord also says, “I will write upon him the name of my God”. Do we understand what we are brought into in the ministry? We had ministry related to the names of God; let us look for the grace to grasp it, so that in our thanksgiving and in our worship of God, it is clear that we know something of God, clear also that His name is written about us.
Then there is the question of administration, “the name of the city of my God”. Why have we had so many exercises related to the administration in the assembly? Is it not because the Lord desires to be able to write upon us the name of the city of His God? All these things come in those who are available and we need to make sure we are available.
Then He said, “my new name”. I do not feel able to say much about it, but the fact that the Lord desires to write about those who are available: "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”, is something precious to the highest degree. It may refer to what Christ is to His Father and His God. By grace, we know something about Christ’s God and Father. Christ is for us; maybe we are called to know something of what Christ is for his Father and his God.
Above all, I would like to stress that there is the voice of the Lord and the voice of the Spirit, the voice of the Lord for our adjustment of moral conditions, if necessary, and to encourage us to persevere when these conditions are in accordance with His name; the voice of the Spirit, so that we are led together until the moment when “the Spirit and the bride say, Come”.
May the Lord bless the word to us!
DORKING
25th February 1961
From Paroles d’Édification Mutuelle, December 1961
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