The Lord And The Spirit In Relation To Testimony
THE LORD AND THE SPIRIT IN RELATION TO TESTIMONY
There are two sides to our position here, the side of public testimony to God and to the truth, involving the acceptance of a place of outward weakness and smallness and reproach, and on the other hand the position of spiritual privilege in the service of God in the assembly in which the greatest things are capable of being entered upon in the power of the Spirit. In these scriptures I have in mind to show, by the Lord's help, how the Lord and the Spirit enter into the position in relation to the testimony. The book of Revelation has in view the maintenance of the testimony of God on earth in the presence of every form and degree of opposition which Satan and man can raise up. The book traces the course of the testimony from the time of the assembly right on till the appearing of the Lord in power and glory, and shows how it goes through in complete triumph, though on the principle of suffering. The book is written to the seven assemblies, although the greater part of it does not directly refer to the assembly. At the same time it is written to the assemblies in order that we may fill our part in the testimony faithfully as in the light that God will carry through the testimony in faithfulness after we are gone, when the opposition and suffering may be more intense than anything that we ourselves experience. And hence it is intended to stimulate us with the desire to be faithful to the truth which God has given us.
And so John in opening his address to the assemblies invokes grace and peace upon them, first from “him who is, and who was, and who is to come”, which is a very majestic presentation of God. That He is comes first, for however great man may assume to be in opposition to what is of God, it is the privilege of the saints and the resource of faith to remember that God is. He always is. He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, but it says, “He that draws near to God must believe that he is”. He is. Of no man could it be said that he is in that absolute way. Man is born into the world, has a short span of life and then dies, but God is, a most majestic statement, just as the Lord Himself said when here, “Before Abraham was, I am”.
Then God was, that is to say, He may be known historically in all that He has proved Himself to be in the past. How a man like Daniel proved Him and how many others proved Him in the past! All that is to enter into the light that we have in our souls, that God not only is but He was. Then He is to come. John first of all invokes peace “from him who is, and who was, and who is to come”; and then he says, “from the seven Spirits which are before his throne; and from Jesus Christ”. It is remarkable that the whole Godhead is brought in, involving the three Persons, and yet the Spirit placed before the Lord. It shows, if one may so say, how unjealous divine Persons are, because the order in the Name in Matthew 28 is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Lord coming before the Spirit, but in this passage the Spirit is put first. There is something similar in 1 Corinthians 12: 4-6, and Ephesians 4: 4-6, where the order is the Spirit, the Lord, and God. In “the seven Spirits which are before his throne”, the idea is fulness of divine power in the Spirit, fulness of divine resource, all that there is in God available to men in the Holy Spirit for the maintenance of what is due to the throne. It is well to bear in mind that the rights of the throne are at issue in the testimony. The throne represents the supremacy of God, His supreme rights in the creation to have things according to Himself, for His own will to prevail everywhere. We know well enough that it does not prevail everywhere at the present time.
So the Lord told the disciples when they prayed to say, “Our Father who art in the heavens, let thy name be sanctified”. That was the first thing. “Let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done as in heaven so upon the earth”. That was to be before their minds, that God's will was to prevail, as, thank God, it will in the day to come. But the Spirit, from the point of view of the testimony, is here among the saints in this relation, that He is before the throne, here on the earth with the saints in order to maintain in divine power and divine resourcefulness all that is due to the throne of God. If a brother or a sister refuses to join a union, what he is doing is that he is maintaining the rights of the throne. It is the rights of the throne that are in question, and in all his weakness and timidity, it may be, he is standing for the rights of God against man, against the world. But then the Spirit is with him in divine power and with divine perception of all that the position needs, to give the needed support. It is a wonderful thing to take account of that.
Before I refer to the rest of this passage, I would just refer also to chapter 4, because there it enlarges on the thought of the throne. John tells us that he heard the first voice which had spoken to him, saying, “Come up here, and I will show thee the things which must take place after these things”. “Immediately”, he says, “I became in the Spirit; and behold, a throne stood in the heaven, and upon the throne one sitting”, that is, the Spirit enables John to see the throne and Him who sits upon it. He would have him understand that whatever appearances might be in the world, however much the rights of God might be challenged by the will and doings of men, the throne stood unassailable, and there was One sitting on it. He was in no way to surrender the thought of the supremacy of God and His right to have His own will done on the earth, and not only so, but he was given to see “round the throne twenty-four thrones, and on the thrones twenty-four elders sitting”. This, of course, in its fulness runs on to a future day, but then what is actually future finds its answer among the saints now in so far as they are walking in the truth. We are not in heaven yet, but we are set, you might say, in heavenly places. God set not only the sun in the expanse, but He set the moon there and the stars. Our position for the moment is actually on the earth in testimony, but we are placed there by God as belonging to heaven and to be influenced and governed by what is heavenly. And here round the throne and connected with it are twenty-four thrones with elders sitting on them. The elders are, of course, the saints viewed as those who have had experience with God, and that is a wonderful position that we may take up humbly at the present time, and do take up in our assembly exercises, that God in grace has given us the privilege of being identified with His throne. He could certainly make good His rights without us if He wished, but it is God’s way to bring His saints into sympathy and accord with Himself as far as possible and He gives us the privilege of having part in the maintenance of what is due to His throne. Every time matters are taken up in assembly that is what it is in principle; it is a question of the throne and the saints exercised to maintain what is due to the throne and to maintain it in dignity and wisdom and holiness and power that belong to heaven.
And so it says, “On the thrones twenty-four elders sitting”, and then it adds, “out of the throne go forth lightnings, and voices, and thunders; and seven lamps of fire, burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God”. Again we get the Spirit of God presented in this remarkable way as the seven Spirits of God, as though where the testimony is in view, and the maintenance of the rights of God, God would impress us with the fact that fulness of power and of perception is available for us. What a comfort that is if He is here presented as seven lamps of fire, not, as the note says, the idea of a utensil but rather the light itself. In the Spirit there is divine light on any position that may arise in regard of how it affects the rights of God. “Seven lamps of fire, burning before the throne”. This is something we can and should rely upon every time. I think we may say that of recent years the Spirit of God has entered very definitely into the matter of trade unions, and has thrown light upon it, showing the real nature of the issue. It is the Spirit of God that has entered into the matter in order that the rights of God should be maintained here on earth by the saints, and that we should be in power in moving in relation to those rights, in the sense that no less than God Himself in the Spirit is with us in the matter.
But then this matter of our position in testimony is also entered into by the Lord, and that brings us back to chapter 1, where John not only invokes grace and peace from God and from the seven Spirits which are before His throne, but “from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth”. That is, the Lord has entered into the position of testimony. We know how thoroughly he entered into it as having become Man, as being anointed and sent forth into this world. In the fourth chapter of Luke we read of His speaking in the synagogue at Nazareth and they “wondered at the words of grace which were coming out of his mouth”. And then He went further and brought the truth to bear upon them, and immediately the position was changed and they led Him forth to the brow of the mountain upon which their city was built, to cast Him down. He was there in the testimony and He was suffering opposition from men. They could not cast Him down because His hour had not yet come, but there at the very outset of His public testimony He was made to feel the spirit of enmity and hostility that was to be encountered. So we are told in this passage that He is and has been the faithful witness. We see in the temptation that no allurement that Satan could bring to bear upon Him, to which men before Him had succumbed, found any entrance into the mind and heart of Jesus. He would not succumb; indeed He could not, for He is incorruptible, but He was there in testimony, He met the tempter, not in the power of His Godhead, but in the dependence proper to the manhood into which He had come. So He has experienced every element that enters into the testimony, open hostility and seduction too; every form of opposition the Lord has encountered and has been faithful in it. Never was that more seen than in His death. How faithful He was in His death! Not only was He not turned aside from all that the cross would be for Him, but in His death there was the most faithful setting forth of what God is, the absolute repudiation of sin, the recognition of the judgment due to sin, and then the entering into the place of judgment Himself and bearing it so that we might be saved, and in doing so, the perfect expression of divine love. What a faithful witness He has been at all cost to Himself! He is presented in this chapter as being in manhood in the place of testimony to which the saints are called, and faithful in it although it involved suffering.
But then He is now seen as triumphing, “the first-born from the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth”. So the Lord is presented in this position of testimony, faithful in it, tested in it, but now glorified. Faith recognises Him as prince of the kings of the earth. And then, as Christ is brought forward, the Spirit of God through John calls forth a note of praise from the saints. “To him”, he says, “Who loves us, and has washed us from our sins in his blood...”. That is to say, we are never to go back to them; we are no longer to be marked by that which necessitated our being washed in His blood. “To him be the glory and the might to the ages of ages. Amen”. The object in view at the present time is that the priestly service of God should be maintained whatever arises on the earth. That is one serious element in connection with trade unionism, and any other unholy association, that it robs the saints of their liberty Godward, and it robs God thus of His portion in them. The Spirit says of Christ that He has made us a kingdom of priests; that is to say, He brings us under His own protection with a view to the service of God in its true priestly character being maintained.
I believe it is as we embrace that in our minds that we can rely on the Lord exercising the power which He has to deal with anything that arises on the earth that threatens this service. It is so precious to Christ that God should be served in a priestly way in holiness, notwithstanding unholy conditions around, that I am sure we can count upon Him to exercise His power to make a way through whatever arises in order that that service might be continued to the end. That shows, I think, how the Lord and the Spirit enter into this matter of the position here in public testimony. It is to be maintained in suffering; suffering is to be expected, it is to be accepted. The Lord understood that suffering was before Him, and it says, “when the days of his receiving up were fulfilled, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem”—not to go to heaven, but to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the place where He would be delivered into the hands of men and be slain, but when the days of His receiving up were fulfilled “he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem”. That is, He would accept the suffering and the reproach that the maintenance to the end of the testimony would involve, but He would do it in the light that He was to be received up.
LONDON
29th March 1952*
* the next address has the same place and date—two addresses apparently on the same day.
From Words of Grace and Comfort
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