THE GOSPEL CONVEYED IN COLOURS
[p. 485] THE GOSPEL CONVEYED IN COLOURS
Isaiah 1:18; Joshua 2:18,19; Leviticus 13:29,30; Song of Songs 1:6
I wish to speak about colours, that is, as they stand related to the gospel. God has in the creation furnished Himself with a language, or languages, and amongst these is the language of colour. I have selected this well known scripture in Isaiah first, as it furnishes us with a group of colours — contrasts — but affording a language of great significance for the gospel. We have scarlet, and crimson and white, which I may call a colour. Then we have yellow in the book of Leviticus; and we have black, which I also refer to as a colour, in the Song of Songs. There are other colours mentioned in Scripture for which there would scarcely be time to refer, although I may, in the course of what I have to say, make reference to some of them; for they are all mentioned as affording a divine language: though each reference may not always have the same significance.
Scarlet, for instance, has varied meanings. The one I have in mind now is its arresting power to the eye, which is a matter that should concern the sinner; for the suggestion is that there are sinners whose sins cannot be hid, they are so deep-dyed in the person that they cannot be concealed. Take the woman in Luke 7, she is said to have been a sinner of the city, that is, her sins were exposed. Anyone whose eye fell upon her in the street would know her character. Simon the Pharisee knew — and he thought that the Lord did not know; but the Lord did know, He knew far better than Simon. He not only knew that she was a sinner, as Simon knew in a general way, and a sinner of the deepest dye, but He knew the number of her sins: He says to Simon, “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven” (verse 47). He does not say — ‘which were many’, but “which are many”. So it is, with everyone like her, or somewhat like her, you are exposed. Sins like scarlet are long-practised; they have called in question the rights of God, they have dishonoured God, and man. They are seen, they are known by Him, recorded in heaven, and known there, and when the books are opened, of which Scripture speaks, it will be found that they are many more than the keenest Pharisee’s eye would count; they are all there.
Now, that is a suggestion that should come home to every sinner. You may think your life has been so well concealed that people do not know; but in truth they do, for what is secret is made manifest. The Lord declares that everything is to be made manifest; “that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops”, (Luke 12:3). So that things are much better known, especially our sins, than we are apt to think, and certainly God knows them, and in His eye, at least, they are scarlet: they have caught His eye. Not that He cannot bear long with men in regard to their sins; He has borne wonderfully with them through the centuries, but nothing has missed His eye. Certainly the scarlet colour in the sins of men and women has been seen by Him; not one has been missed; and He would remind you of this today; and, further, that He is ready to deal with your sins and to relieve you of them in spite of their deep-dyed character. He would invite you to reason with Him, “Come now, and let us reason together”, He says. Can anything be more suggestive of God’s patience than that He should invite a sinner, such as the woman to whom I have referred, and many like her — to reason with Him? You say, Why reason? Well, God would impress you with His consideration for you. He is not arbitrary; God’s revelation of Himself brings this out; He is very considerate.
[p. 487] Take His reasoning, for instance, with Jonah in the last chapter of that prophet’s book: how God condescended to reason the matter out with him! “Doest thou well to be angry?” He says to Jonah.
God would sit down, as it were, with the deepest-dyed sinner in the world, and reason the matter out with him. He will let you speak. If you go into your closet and take up this word in Isaiah 1:18; and bring it before God as your licence to appeal to Him; if you knock at His door, and say to Him — I am come with this licence, you have promised to reason with me — God will open the door. You will have a time never to be forgotten. Maybe you have never done such a thing as this. There is nothing, in a way, that interests God more than when a man or woman or child takes up a promise of His, or takes up a licence that He grants which is open to all, and comes to Him with it, knocking at His door, as it were, to present it. This eighteenth verse of Isaiah 1, though written hundreds of years ago, has been taken up by thousands of anxious sinners. God thus opens the door and says to you: What have you to say about all this? He will let you say what you have to say. He will let you reason the matter out with Him. You may say to Him: I was led into that conduct I have been ashamed of, by bad company. God will say, I know that: I will make full allowance for that! Whatever you have to say He will listen to, and He will show you that He has taken full account of everything, that He is not arbitrary at all. He will show you that you have been standing in your own light since the time your responsibility began; He will show you that you have been deceiving yourself, that you have been your own enemy all these years. He will tell you all that and more, He will show you how He had thought it all out, long ago. He has thought out how He can sit down and reason with you, and send [p. 488] you away with a perfect clearance, with the whole matter settled, so that He becomes greater in your eyes than ever you thought He was. After the reasoning, God becomes greater to a converted sinner. That is one feature of the gospel, that God might be known; that He might be known in the heart of the sinner, as, indeed, He was known in the heart of that sinner to whom I have alluded. How she wept out her sins, expressing her deep gratitude for what had come to her!
That is how this colour scarlet stands; and the opposite is that you become “whiter than snow”, as David said (Psalm 51:7); that is the contrast. The reasoning ends in your consciousness of being whiter than snow in the presence of God. Indeed God would, as it were, say to you when the reasoning is over, Now look, I do not want you to go away from Me at all. This is not a mere transaction, this reasoning — you are perfectly suitable to Me, and you can stay. Indeed He would say: “I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself” (Exodus 19:4); and He says, I would like to enter into a contract with you. That is exactly what He said to those sinners, the Israelites whom He brought out of Egypt; not only would He bring them to Himself, but He would enter into a covenant with them as He would with you, so that there might be mutual relations established between God and your soul, a bond never to be dissolved. Is that not worth while? You are “whiter than snow”, He says; that is beyond natural understanding. That whiteness is in the realm of God, it is like the whiteness which marked the raiment of the Lord Jesus on the mount of transfiguration, it was beyond the natural mind: it was “exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them”, (Mark 9:3). It is the divine side; it means that I am fit for the light, the brightness of the light that radiates in the face of Jesus; I can [p. 489] stand before it without a tremor: I am made perfectly clean. The righteousness of God indeed — not mere righteousness in the human sense — but the righteousness of God is upon me, and not only is it upon me, but I am made it, “made the righteousness of God in him”, that is, in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). What a marvellous thing! God “hath made him [Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him”.
Then there is the crimson, another of the family of red colours — as if God would deepen the thought. Crimson is remarkable. Scarlet is brilliant; crimson is deep and full; but God says of your sins: “Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”. Now, carry that thought into what I have read in Joshua, where you have such a sinner described — a sinner of Jericho. She lived on the wall, her house was on the wall — fortunately for her! I apprehend that beneath this woman’s exterior — bad as her character was — there was something answering to fellowship; for we find the work of God in most unlikely people. The servants of God found her; was it accidental? No; there is nothing accidental in the ways of God. Things may be so in our minds, but not in God’s. Something will happen, either for good or evil, that will prove to you that your presence at the gospel preaching is not accidental but according to divine ordering. You may get blessing unexpectedly; or, as rejecting the gospel, you will be found more responsible than ever; you are a greater sinner than ever if, after hearing the gospel, you remain a Christ-rejecter.
The messengers of God did not enter into Rahab’s house accidentally; it was divinely ordered. She had flax in her house; it was spread out on the roof. Potentially she had means of righteousness in her house: she had the means of making a cord strong enough to let down the servants of God, so that they [p. 490] were unhurt and unharmed in their escape. There was something of God there. It may not occur to you for one moment that there is anything of God in you, and yet your presence here may be a proof that there is. Others have been watching you: you have not given up the theatre, maybe, or the card-table or the race-track, yet something about you is different; there is some hankering after God; you are not indifferent when people speak to you of Him: you are not a persecutor of God’s people. The people of God have noticed all these things, and they say, There is hope for that person.
Rahab has the “cord”, and the Spirit of God tells us in the Scriptures that she “sent them out another way”, (James 2:25). I have known persons who went to the card-table, to the race-track, or to the theatre, who would tell a christian not to go that way. They were themselves under the power of these things, but they would advise others not to go to them. I have known people like that. Why would they advise others not to go that way? They had a judgment of the thing that yet held them in bondage. Maybe there is someone here like that. The gospel comes to deliver you, that you might not go that way. Rahab sent the spies “another way”, and it was the right way; they were preserved in it. Though you may be advising young people, or others, not to go your way, you are still going that way; and the gospel is to turn you, to show you that the ways of the world are “the ways of death”. “The way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from hell beneath” (Proverbs 15:24); and, moreover, the wise man in the book of Proverbs says that people are caught by the woman who stands at the door of her house, and invites them in; and of the one who turns in thither he says, “he knoweth not that the dead are there” (chapter 9:18). How many are like that! They do not know the depths of these things; that “[p. 491] the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell”.
Now Rahab was a subject of the work of God, but in extraordinary circumstances, not having lost her name of disrepute. She still bears it; but she has got this “thread”. There are three words used in this chapter about this remarkable thing that she had in her house; it is called “a cord” first, in verse 15, which is a suggestion of something having strength. It was that by which she let down the spies; it was of such strength that they risked their lives on it. What confidence they had! Then it is called a “thread” (verse 18); then it is called a “line” (verse 21). All that is needed when the word “scarlet” is attached to it, is the thought of a “thread”, and then the “line”. There would be a testimony in the thread or line in her window of the reality of Rahab’s faith. Indeed, without the work of God in your soul, evidenced in faith, the gospel must be a dead letter in your ear. It is the work of God in your soul that makes possible the effect of the gospel; for it is, as we are told, “the righteousness of God which is ... unto all”, and it is on the principle of faith, to faith (Romans 1:17). Where does the faith come from? It is the result of the work of God. We may thank God for that. The work of God in Rahab’s soul implied that she had faith, in spite of the terrible name of disrepute that attached to her; and her faith caused her to listen to the spies. She listened to the truth; she needed salvation. She knew judgment was coming. Do you know it? It is at your very door; we hardly realize how near it is. The wrath of God has been revealed from heaven for centuries, but it is about to be poured out. This woman knew it; she knew that the judgment of God was coming immediately against Jericho, which signifies the world.
I have been speaking about people in whose souls God is working, or has worked, but who are clinging [p. 492] to the world. The apostle Paul says to such as you, that, “if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged”, (1 Corinthians 11:31). The matter is in your own hands. Did you ever judge yourself? Sit on the throne one day, or one night, and make yourself the culprit! Be the judge yourself; if you do it rightly, you will never be judged with the world. It is a terrible thing to be judged with the world in all its guilt, from the death of Abel onwards. How am I to escape? By judging myself and accepting the gospel. The apostle Paul in urging you to judge yourself would tell you that the Lord sends discipline upon you, sicknesses, financial troubles, family troubles, etc. He sends all these things upon you that you might judge yourself. These things mean that the Lord does not wish you to be judged with the world. Rahab wished to avoid the pending judgment on Jericho, and she escapes it. How? She accepted the word of the spies, she believed the gospel: also, she used what she had. They did not give her the cord, she had it: typically, it is the effect of the work of God. It may be you have faith, but you have not realised it. Nor did that woman in Luke 7; the Lord says to her: “Thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace” (verse 50). So this woman had the thread. Look through your wares and see what you have — I mean spiritually. See if you have not something like this cord. It means something had taken place. Rahab had flax: dried, scorched, spun; that can be made a cord. All that is a matter of exercise. This woman may have done all that without any thought of what it meant, but God knew it was to be used, and she had it ready when the spies came. The very thing you have made yourself is to be used.
The thread is scarlet. It is not said to be scarlet at first, because the point then was the strength of it, it was sufficient to let the spies down; but the second point is that it was something to catch the eye.
[p. 493] Something was to be seen when Israel’s hosts marched around Jericho, as they did for seven days, and the last day seven times over. You can understand that these spies would look up and see this scarlet thread. It would remind them of the faith that was inside. Every time they passed by there it was, and would they not say in effect, Thy faith hath saved thee? And that is what the Lord would say to you, as you believe in Him. He is the Judge, He it is who will overthrow the world; He it is who would bring it down. He would say to you, “Thy faith hath saved thee”. That means that He can see the scarlet thread — not inside, but outside the house on the wall. I wonder if you have put this up yet. It may take the form of confession of the Lord Jesus; there are many ways in which the scarlet thread may be displayed; and as soon as you let it be seen the Lord would say to you that it indicates your faith. That scarlet thread belonged to nobody but Rahab; it was hers, and because of it, all that were in her house were saved.
The scarlet thread is what catches the eye. It is not now a question of its latent power, but of the colour of it, that it was to be seen; it was her faith. The idea is reduced when the colour is mentioned; for a thread is much weaker than a cord which is a strong twisted thing; it is more than a thread; it is composed of twisted threads. So that the idea being reduced according to verse 18, is in order to show the sinner, and Rahab was a great sinner, that the least bit of faith is enough. It is your faith; it is faith that God has given you, it is yours. Thus Rahab was saved and her house. Joshua took care of that, and the two spies were used to bring out Rahab and those with her, so that she was not judged with the world. Oh, I do warn you worldly christians and world borderers! You may be drifting so far that you are in danger of being judged with the world;
[p. 494] and the Lord is pained. He disciplines you so that it may not be so.
Yellow is something extraordinary in the way of sin. Maybe there is an infidel here, a sceptic, a modernist, or a unitarian. It is in the head, and points to evil working in the mind. The word “yellow” is only used here in Leviticus 13, and once elsewhere in Scripture. It is used here very significantly; it refers to sins, including modernism, relating to christendom, where men work out evil things mentally. This is a question of what is in the head of a man or woman. The schools are full of it — this leprosy in the head — and the children are imbibing it; that is what the devil is aiming at. If there is one who does not believe in the deity of Christ, or in eternal punishment, or in the inspiration of the Scriptures, or the facts of the gospel, due to the influence of what men have evolved out of their heads by the devil’s power, this word is for you. It is the worst kind of sin. The priest searches no further; as soon as he sees the yellow hair all is settled. The person is a leper. What is he to do? He must go outside the camp and put a covering on his lip, and say, “Unclean, unclean!” He has to admit the leprosy. As soon as he admits and confesses it, the next chapter tells us how he may be cleansed, so that he does not need to stay outside the camp. I cannot speak more of that now; I am mainly speaking of what is set forth in the colour.
Now in Song of Songs we have blackness, and the speaker tells us the cause of it. It is a question of the governmental dealings of God. Many are under the governmental dealings of God. “The sun hath looked upon me”, she says. She is a believer; and not only so, she is comely, as she says in verse 5, “as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon”. She is comely, a true believer — but under the governmental dealings of God she is [p. 495] black, and it is known; she knows it herself. It may be there are some like that here. They have turned away from the people of God, and allowed their wills to govern them; they have got into the ways of the world; they have gone into business and into debt, and there they are; instead of being white and ruddy, like the Nazarites of God, they are black, and the saints know it, heaven knows it. The sun has looked upon them.
Well, this book tells us how all this is altered. This woman had an appreciation of colours. If you look at her description of Christ in chapter 5:10, you will see this. “My beloved is white and ruddy”, she says. White is a symbol of purity, as we had it in Isaiah 1:18; “white as snow”; it means purity according to God; but in the setting of this book, which is highly poetical and full of feeling and holy sentiment centring in Christ, we have a blend of whiteness and ruddiness, it is beautification. “My beloved”, she says, “is white and ruddy”. So that whiteness and redness have a different meaning now; combined, they mean beautification.
This speaker, as she begins to speak, knows she is without it, but she knows the Beloved has it. That is to say, one in such a case judges himself; he has not a word to say in self-vindication, but he has much to say about Jesus. The feminine speaker in Song of Songs comes herself also into beautification, for Christ takes her in hand. If there is anyone here “black” under the government of God, as she was, I would urge you to read this book, to study it. It will bring you to see that the Lord Jesus has means not only of purifying you, of removing the blackness, but of beautifying you. He will make you a nazarite, whiter than snow! Jeremiah in his plaint in Lamentations 4:7 speaks about the Nazarites of Zion, and what they had been. He says, they were “purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies”. That is what they were, but now he says that they are black, they are “blacker than a coal” or as the margin reads, “darker than blackness”.
Is anyone in the sense of being black, unfit, feeling that he does not shine amongst his brethren, that he is not among the lilies? I would urge him to look into this book. It is within the range of the gospel, for why should I be black when others are white and ruddy? If I am to be in the assembly of God, it must be as corresponding with Christ. Can I afford, as one of His, to be outside the range of His assembly where every moral beauty is reflected from His face as it shines there? I cannot. Then read this book and you will see how one who is black becomes white and ruddy, and the form like sapphire, as Jeremiah says. Not only is there beautification in relation to these colours and combinations of colours as seen in the countenance, but their form is like sapphire. That becomes possible, and a certainty, as in faith I face my blackness, as did the feminine speaker here: she faced the matter. She knew her comeliness that she was a subject of the work of God; but she becomes black by the government of God which overtook her. Many have met with disaster in that way in recent years through the working of the will, through the desire to be rich, to better themselves in this world; and if we are found on that line the government of God will overtake us, and we shall lose our colour and become black instead of being whiter than snow and more ruddy than rubies.
There are other colours, as indeed the purple, and one can hardly finish without referring to that. It is one of the most distinguished of colours. It alludes to royalty. Scarlet does also in another setting, but scarlet alludes to the earthly glory in which Christ will appear as He reigns on mount Zion gloriously. He will take on all the glory of this world as according [p. 497] to God; but the purple is more imperial glory, for not only is He king of Israel, but King of kings. He comes out of heaven as “King of kings”, in Revelation 19:16; the purple alludes to that. Now what is the answer to all that? No doubt, as most of you know, it is suffering now; purple alludes to suffering. The Lord Jesus as led into the Praetorium was clothed by the soldiers with a purple robe (Mark 15:17). It is also called a scarlet robe elsewhere, showing how intimately the two colours are linked together, both referring to royalty; but the purple alludes to suffering. It is a question of whether one takes sides with Jesus. He has done everything for us, now it is given to us “in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake”, (Philippians 1:29). It is reigning morally; for the man who suffers and is prepared to suffer, is never overcome, he is always reigning in a moral sense, always in victory. The further down he goes in men’s eyes, the higher he is in heaven’s eyes. The Corinthians were reigning as kings, as men in the world reign, but Paul said to them, “I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last” (1 Corinthians 4:9); he says, God has done it. Why? God was honouring them. Paul says, “we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day”, (verse 13). That is the thought. The apostles were wearing the purple, and any spiritual eye could see it. They were sufferers with Christ, and sufferers with Christ will reign with Christ.
Other colours are mentioned, such as blue, green, bay, etc., but those spoken of have been specially before me. I think you will, conclude that if these scriptures are followed out they furnish a language with which to preach the gospel to sinners and to saints. There is not a saint on earth who does not need the gospel. The most spiritual saint needs the gospel. There is “the gospel of God” (Romans 15:16), “the gospel of your salvation” (Ephesians 1:13), “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God” (1 Timothy 1:11), and “the gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8), and other special designations of the gospel. Is there anyone who would say he does not need these features of it? I am sure every spiritual man and woman would say the contrary; and not only do they love to hear it, but each one says, I need it. It is essential to our enjoyment of the knowledge of God and our testimony here that we should be grounded in the gospel in all its features.