I would like to read four verses from
the first chapter of the book of the
Revelation.
Look at the Revelation chapter one and verse
twelve.
I turned to see the voice which spake
with me, and having turned I saw seven
golden lampstands.
And in the midst of the lampstands, one
like unto the Son of Man, clothed with
a garment down to the foot, gelt about
at the breasts with a golden garland.
And his head and his hair were white
as white wool, white as snow.
And his eyes were as a flame of
fire.
And his feet like unto varnished brass, as
if it had been refined in a furnace.
And his voice as the voice of many
waters.
And he had in his right hand seven
stars.
And out of his mouth proceeded a sharp
two-edged sword.
And his countenance was as the sun shineth
in his strength.
Revelation of Jesus Christ.
We have already indicated that this
whole book, which bears those words as its
title, is gathered into one tremendous consummate
issue, that of the government
of this universe, heaven and earth, as determined
by God, centered in his Son, Jesus Christ.
And this book is the revelation of the
processes and progress in the culmination of this
world's history unto the final establishment of that
government.
In that setting, this afternoon, we were occupied
with the victory of God's Son, as in
this first chapter.
This evening, we take this short section, these
four verses, which set forth the character which
lies behind that victory.
It's a mighty victory.
We have seen his declaration of himself as
the living one who became dead, but is
now alive unto the ages of the ages,
sets forth the greatness of his victory.
We have seen it was no small power
that was exercised and exerted by the great
Roman Empire for the destruction of the kingdom
of Jesus Christ.
And the vision of that empire in the
book of Daniel, it is rightly symbolized by
iron, symbol of great strength and power to
break everything.
And the great strength of that, the mightiest
of the empires, was directed toward and concentrated
upon the extermination of the testimony of Jesus,
which testimony was that he is Lord.
That Jesus survived the exhausting of that mighty
power, triumphed over death and is alive unto
the ages of the ages, is no small
testimony to the greatness of his victory.
Combined with the Roman Empire was the Jewish
nation.
It would take a lot of time to
tell and describe the conditions of the Jewish
nation in the times of the New Testament.
I myself have been very deeply impressed as
I have read in you during the past
week the account given by the great Jewish
historian, Josephus, about the wickedness of the Jews
at this time.
As a Jewish historian, he says that there
never was anything so utterly wicked as the
condition of the Jewish people in New Testament
times.
A terrible thing to say and he shows
how that was.
And it is only an exposition of what
the Lord Jesus meant when he said this
wicked generation, this wicked generation, the downright wickedness
of those people.
Not only in their crucifying the Lord Jesus,
but their condition behind all their religion, their
moral condition, using that word in its most
general sense.
And they, as we know, exhausted their malice
to destroy the Lord Jesus and all that
he represented.
If Saul of Tarsus was really their representative
and agent, he himself tells us in many
words how utter he was in his determination
that there should not be left a relic
of Jesus of Nazareth.
He prosecuted this way unto the death of
men and women he cast into prison.
All that vicious, behemoth hatred, malice concentrated
upon Jesus Christ as Lord.
All that and what more?
Behind it, around it and over it, Satan
and his vastness drawing upon all their resources
to quench this light, to finish this test,
to blot out this name, obliterate this way.
And he says, I am he that liveth.
I became dead, but I am alive unto
the ages of the ages.
What a victory!
We could almost say, is there anything left
over which he can triumph?
If he has done that, if our Christian
faith is true, if what we declare as
to the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ
is true at all, it's a far, far
greater and vaster thing than we have comprehended.
And that is the message here.
And as we said before, that is the
blessing of this book.
If he can do all that, what cannot
he do?
That's hope for the end.
But when we have said all that about
his victory and the much more that we
could add to it are true.
This fact remains.
The victory, the throne, the government of Christ
and the Church is based upon his essential
character.
It is not just objective and official.
That is, it is not just something that
is done by the exercise of superior might
as might.
It is something that is accomplished in virtue
of his glorious character.
It rests upon that.
Here is a combination of two things which
mark you always go together with God.
The combination of power and character.
Nature and strength.
With God, character is power.
And power is character.
He seems to have written this large in
the universe, in nature.
It almost appears that he has established it
as a law that these two things go
together.
You see, all that God does combines these
two things.
You go into the Alpine country.
You are on the one side impressed with
the massive and awesome strength of the mountains.
The terrific force, volcanic force which heaved them
up and the mighty strength that they represent
as they power over you.
It is awesome.
And yet, as you say to climb their
massive, in their crevices and on those slopes
you find the beautiful edelweiss, the
beautiful flower.
It is a combination of strength and beauty.
Nature has done it.
Balanced these two things.
Come to the English countryside.
You see the massive, towering oak tree and
nestling at its roots the beautiful violet.
Just nature, not arranged, quite spontaneous, strength and
beauty, power and character in balance and combination.
And we could go on like that, drawing
upon creation for illustration.
But you go back through your Old Testament
you find in the typology and the symbolism
all that comes from heaven, this wonderful balance
of strength and character.
Here it is.
In all this and particularly in this passage
before us we have God saying, if there
is to be power, dominion, victory, ascendancy, might,
there has got to be goodness.
And if there is goodness, that is the
greatest might.
It's the nature of Christ that is set
forth here, which is the foundation of his
kingdom, of his throne.
So you turn to this description or portraiture
of him, you notice the power lying, his
eye as a flame of fire, his voice,
the voice of many waters, the sound of
many waters, his mouth out of which proceeds
a sharp two-edged sword, his countenance as
the sun shineth in its strength.
All that is the symbolism of power.
But go back again to character, his garment
down to the foot, the girdle about his
breast, the whiteness of his hair and
the purity represented by the refined brass of
his feet.
All that speaks of the other side.
It speaks of his nature, his character.
Now it is that we are going to
be occupied with for the time at our
command tonight.
But may I remind you that we are
here in the presence of one who is
called the Son of Man.
We ought to be duly impressed with that.
He is not here in this book called
the Son of God.
He is there.
But for the purposes of this book, his
title is that of the Son of Man.
We are familiar with that title in the
Old Testament, in the prophets, in Ezekiel, in
Daniel.
And we are familiar with it in the
Gospels.
In the Gospels only the title is used
of him 85 times, no fewer.
In the Old Testament, as applied to the
prophets, it is Son of Man.
In the New Testament, as applied to him,
it is the Son of Man.
What they were partially, he is absolutely.
And we know that the very title itself,
Son of Man, or the Son of Man,
is related to God's full thought for his
people.
In the prophets, as we have pointed out
already today, their business was the recovering of
God's full thought for his people.
And so they were representative of that thought.
Son of Man.
And that very thought of God, or those
thoughts of God, had to be wrought into
their very experience and life and history.
They became the embodiment of those thoughts.
Hence, they were made a sign unto the
people of God.
And that is the essence of this very
title, Son of Man, a sign of God's
thought for his people.
When you come to the Lord Jesus, you
find that in the full and utter and
final way, he is the Son of Man
in this sense, that he embodies to the
full God's primal conception for man.
What God ever had in his mind, in
conceiving the humanity idea, the manhood conception, as
a special and peculiar creation, that is realized
and expressed in this one, whose title here
just means that.
The Son of Man.
The one in whom all God's thought as
to man is realized.
We're in his presence here, as you notice.
I saw one like unto the Son of
Man.
Then the portrayal.
We look all so briefly and inadequately at
the features of this Son of Man.
I turned, and having turned, I saw one
like unto the Son of Man clothed with
a garment down to the foot.
Now, of course, there has been a division
of opinion as to what that garment was.
Dr. Campbell Morgan said it was the garment
of the governor.
Other equally able expositors have said it's the
garment of the priest.
I'm not at all concerned to take sides
in that matter.
It doesn't trouble us which it was.
What we want to get at is the
meaning of a garment at all.
Not what kind of a garment it was
exactly, but why a garment at all down
to his feet.
Whatever the robe was, whether of governor or
of priest, it speaks of character.
For garments always did, from the beginning, speak
of character.
They were the symbol of the man.
That's true right up to date.
The garments, the dress, betray the person.
I won't dwell upon that too much.
It's dangerous ground.
But nevertheless, it's true.
Right from the first garments that ever man
wore, made by God himself, garments have always
been the symbol of the person, indicating what
kind of a person, or sometimes what the
person thinks of himself or herself.
That is character.
I mean, in the days of the Lord
Jesus, they loved to wear long garments and
make broad their phylacteries.
They pretended to be something, but they were
not, but that was their character.
Character was a pretense, but that was the
people, revealed in the way they dressed.
See the point?
Here, whatever the garment was officially, undoubtedly, it
was symbolic of the person.
Does not say so.
I have no doubt that in the light
of things which follow in this book, that
it was a white robe.
It was the white linen.
That would be true of priests or of
governors, and we know from this very book,
the white linen is the righteous acts of
the saints.
And we know from the Old Testament typology,
the white linen garments always spoke of the
character of righteousness in the presence of God.
Covering the unrighteousness of man, that no flesh
should appear before him.
Here, right in the very first thing, describing
this person, the son of man, you have
him enfolded and then wrapped in a character
of spotless purity.
And it is that that gives him his
regal position.
It's his holiness, his purity.
It's enough to say that, leave it.
But this robe is girt up with a
golden girdle around his breast, powerful of
significance.
Well, a girdle is always the symbol of
strength.
Gold in the Bible is always a symbol
of what is precious among minerals or metals.
Precious.
And the breasts are always the symbols of
devotion.
If you put those three things together, what
a wealth they contain.
Here, this one is characterized by a passionate
devotion to that which is precious to God,
the pure gold.
The strength of this one, the strength of
this one, is that he is girded with
this passion for what is precious to God.
And it runs right through this book.
It comes right out at the other end
with the city.
It's an underlying, fundamental thing.
And, as I repeatedly say, it is the
key to the throne.
His throne is established in his character, by
his character.
And all victory is that where God is
concerned.
This is going to be a very searching
thing through this book.
It's going to be a very deciding thing
everywhere in the churches.
We shall meet it again when we come
to the churches and the will of God.
It's a deciding thing as to the rise
and the fall of the church, the rise
and the fall of individual Christians, and the
rise and the fall of nations, their character.
How much of the character and nature of
Christ is there, is going to be the
deciding thing?
Come back to that again.
Well, there it is.
The strength of devotion to what is precious
unto God.
Remember that.
That is the secret of spiritual victory in
any life.
His head, his hair, white as wool, white
as wool.
What is this?
Well, here we have another combination.
Surely our age, you get this figure in
the book of Daniel, and it's the Ancient
of Days that describes this one.
You get age if you like eternity.
Not always true that white hair is the
mark of age, but usually it is.
Symbolism is a very common one.
It speaks of that which outlasts time, that
which transcends time, that which is not of
time, but which is of eternity.
And it speaks of purity.
And seeing that this is his head and
his hair, the strict and exact interpretation of
the symbolism, we have the permanence, the endurance,
time-outlasting power of truth, of purity.
Here are his judgments, his thoughts, his mind.
There is nothing impure in his thoughts.
Nothing unclean.
How exact the word is.
White as white wool.
Though to doubly emphasize utterness of this purity,
cleanness.
Dear friends, though we may not be very
much enamored of the symbolism, truth behind all
this is tremendously important.
Fact is again that his kingdom, which is
an everlasting kingdom, is that because his judgments
are right, and because it is founded upon
absolute truth.
It is a mind that is free from
everything of mixture and duplicity, what is contrary
to God.
The Apostle Paul, writing to the Philippians, said,
Whatsoever things are pure, think on these things.
That's the mind of Christ.
That's a mind of a character of Christ.
Let this mind be in you.
Whatsoever things are pure, think on these things.
Whatsoever things are lovely, well, here it is.
That is what he is like.
A mind that is the mind of Christ,
not our mind, is something that is a
very strong thing where God is concerned.
You know, if we can only get the
viewpoint of the Lord, if we can only
see as the Lord sees, if only we
can get the mind of the Lord about
a person or a situation, we are in
a tremendously strong position.
Let me put that the other way, so
much of our weakness and our failure and
breakdown is our wrong-mindedness.
Isn't it like that?
We've got the wrong attitude of mind.
We haven't the singleness of mind for the
glory of God.
We are affected by how things touch us.
No, he was never like that.
He was never like that.
And that character of right judgment, of absolute
truth, absolute truth, was the strength and is
the strength of his government, of his kingdom.
Let these things come out of the Bible
and out of this high symbolism to us
as spiritual lessons, spiritual instructions.
Do you want to go on and go
through and endure and abide?
Do you want spiritual strength?
There is not something that he can give
you, that he can give you as from
the outside.
Oh, how we ask for power, how we
ask for strength.
It's something that he can do in us.
He'll make us strong by making us good.
What a lot that explains of his dealings
with us.
So often when we ask for strength, he
puts us through an experience that is going
to change something in us, of our character,
our attitude, our mentality.
That's his way.
His eyes were as a flame.
Well, all we need to say here is
these eyes symbolizing his discernment, his
discernment, his real discernment and perception and grasp
of things and seeing into things and seeing
through things and arriving at right conclusions due
to the fact that his mind was what
we have said it is.
Like that.
You know, dear friends, discernment is a tremendous
thing in the Christian life.
Oh, what lot of mistakes we make for
want of real spiritual discernment.
If only, if only we had this spiritual
discernment, we were able to perceive, to recognize,
to discern, to understand the meaning of things.
What a lot we would be saved.
There's a great deal of strength in spiritual
discernment.
There is.
People who are always making confusion and messes
because they lack real discernment.
They're in a state of weakness.
Able to see the meaning of things, see
through beyond appearances what is on the outside
because his spirit is what it is.
His mind is what it is.
He is able to rightly discern everything.
Oh, we are going to come on to
this when we come to the churches.
He is seeing through and seeing things as
they are truly.
No deception can come through those eyes.
No, he's in the mighty strength of clear
discernment.
His eyes are as a flame of fire.
There is nothing but truth there.
No falsehood.
No carnal mindedness, to use Paul's phrase.
Therefore, he can see.
The pure in heart shall see God.
Shall see God.
See, what we see depends upon the state
of our heart.
His eyes as a flame of fire were
that because of the purity of his heart.
His feet were as varnished brass, though it
had been refined in a fire.
How meticulous is the description.
Well, feet simply, we know, represent a man's
ways, a man's goings, and a man's quests,
what he's after, what he's aiming at, that
toward which he's moving, the object of his
movement, that's just the symbolism of feet everywhere,
the Bible, the goings of a man.
Here we have brass, varnished brass refined in
a fire.
Brass is always in the Bible, as you
know, the symbol of strength, and the fire
is always the symbol of purging.
Then brass becomes righteousness, the strength of righteousness,
which has come out of the fire.
Righteousness, the Old Testament says, is the girdle
of his loins and the foundation of his
throne.
Here again, the quests, the objects, the interests,
the movements, the ways, the goings of the
Lord Jesus are all ways, purged ways, cleansed
goings, no self-interest in this, nothing but
the pleasure of God, I come to do
thy will.
Oh my God, his ways are all tested
in the fire, purged of all unworthy motives.
His voice was as the sound of many
waters.
This is very beautiful, sound of many waters.
What is the sound of many waters?
Not of much water, of many waters.
They're all coming from all directions, this way
and that way, the other way.
Rivers and the rivulets are all coming, converging,
and blending, and harmonizing.
And this one has its note, and that
one has its note.
The other one has another note, and yet,
in their converging and coming together, they form
a beautiful harmony, like a choir of many
notes, sound of many waters, diversity and unity,
unity and diversity.
Now you say that's all a beautiful picture,
and it sounds all very nice.
What do you mean?
Go back to your gospels, and sit and
listen to the Lord Jesus, or follow Him
with open ears.
Listen to His voice, and you will hear
sometimes the note of deepest sympathy and tenderness,
His kindness.
Where a situation calls for that note, it
comes.
Gentleness and kindness and sympathy and understanding.
Leave her alone.
Against my burial she's done this, and many
other instances of the sympathetic, understanding, kindly voice.
But we dare not take the time for
it all, but you will find sometimes there's
a shock or rebuke, like a clap of
thunder, and out they go, convicted.
From the oldest to the youngest, they've been
smitten mass with a flash of lightning from
His mouth.
There's sympathy, there's judgment, there's condemnation.
Oh, there's every note in His voice.
He's the combination of them all.
His voice is the sound of many waters.
You and I have heard that.
Sometimes we have heard His voice of sympathy
and consolation.
Sometimes we've heard His voice of rebuke.
Sometimes of exhortation and encouragement.
It varies, but His is the voice as
the sound of many waters.
You're going to come up against that when
you come to the seven churches.
You'll find there are seven notes in His
octave.
So the churches, a wonderful harmony, leave it
as the voice, as the sound of many
waters.
And out of His mouth proceeded a sharp
two-edged sword.
A letter to the Hebrews, chapter 4, verse
12, interprets that for us.
The word of God is quick, powerful, sharper
than any two-edged sword, piercing to the
dividing of soul and spirit, joint and narrow,
laying bare the thoughts and the intents of
the heart.
Two-edged sword, discriminating, dividing, putting things in
the place to which they belong.
That belongs there and that belongs there.
And you have to put those things in
their right place.
And don't confuse things.
And call something by a name that does
not belong to it.
Dividing, asunder, sharp two-edged sword.
This is His character, that He cannot have
confusion and mixture and contradiction.
Two things that do not agree.
That is the character of the Lord Jesus.
And mark you, there's a great deal of
spiritual strength in that.
One thing that God has always hated is
mixture.
Is mixture.
Is contradiction in the same place.
Speaking with two voices at the same time.
God hates it.
There's one thing about God that is true.
It is that He is of one mind.
He is perfectly clear as to what He
means and what He wants.
Two-edged sword divides, puts things where they
belong.
And there's a great deal of strength in
doing that, dear friends.
And His countenance was as the sun shineth
in its strength.
Of course, the countenance is the sum of
all the features, isn't it?
It is the expression of the person.
It is possible, of course, to hide yourself
behind an expressionless countenance.
But in the main, generally, the countenance is
the betrayal of the person behind it.
The expression of the life within.
So the countenance here is the sum of
all His features.
When you sum up everything, what do you
have to say?
There is no darkness at all.
There are no shadows here.
It is as the sun shineth in His
strength.
In Him was light.
In Him is no darkness at all.
There is no variableness with Him.
Neither shadow cast by turning, by changing, by
being of true mind.
He is all light.
No darkness.
No shadows.
Now, dear friends, we've said all this, but
we've got to sum it up.
We have set out to show that the
end of it all is not only Christ
in the place of absolute sovereignty and lordship
and kingship and dominion, but His church with
Him.
His church with Him.
The city means anything.
It is the church with Christ enthroned.
If we are to come there, let us
not make it too objective and far off,
belonging to some remote or near future time.
Let us see that He's at work upon
this thing in us now.
Paul has given it in the Revelation, entrusted
to Him, and has told us that we
were foreordained to be conformed to the image
of His Son.
The Holy Spirit had this in view when
He first drew you and me to the
Lord Jesus.
And if He has meant anything in our
lives at all, this is the thing that
He has been engaged upon and is engaged
upon to conform us to the image of
God's Son, working into us the character of
Christ with a view.
With a view.
Oh, I wish I could remember this always.
Wish you could remember it always.
When He's trying to do something inside, in
the life, in the nature, in the character,
to change it.
When He's dealing with something that is not
Christ, and hammering it, and battering it, and
shattering it, giving us an awful time because
of what we are in ourselves.
It is not just for destruction.
He is seeking to make room and way
for the Lord Jesus in our characters.
That out of this shall come something that
is more like the Lord, of patience, of
love, of thoughtfulness, and generous impulse, and all
that that is Christlike to bring that in.
But not that that has an end in
itself.
Because it's that kind of person and that
kind of church that is going to be
His instrument of government in the ages to
come.
Christ loved the church and gave Himself for
it that He might present the church to
Himself.
A glorious church not having spot, or wrinkle,
or any such thing.
That's the governmental vessel and instrument of the
end.
It's a thing of character.
And its character is taken from the Lord
Jesus.
The whole thing begins with the church.
When we have said that, we have just
got to the end of the contemplation of
Himself personally.
The Lord leads us on in this.
We shall see how all this is brought
down to the seven churches.
And that everything there is tried, tested, and
dealt with on the basis of this personal
portraiture of the Lord Jesus.
Now, does this soul throw some light upon
what He's doing?
All that He is allowing in our lives,
and all that He is working at in
us.
Why is it?
If we suffer, we shall reign.
And it is through the suffering, the tribulation,
that we are going to come to the
throne.
And through much tribulation, we shall enter the
kingdom.
Come to reign together with Him.
It is necessary for us to see the
Lord Jesus.
The revelation of Jesus Christ.
We should see Him.
I suggest to you, I urge upon you,
dear friend, that your constant and earnest prayer
shall be, Show me Christ.
Let me see the Lord Jesus.
Not objectively in some vision, but by the
Holy Spirit, let me see what Christ is.
May make me more and more uncomfortable as
to myself, but then ever remind me that
the work of the Holy Spirit is to
reveal Him and then make me like Him.
For we shall be like Him as we
see Him, as He is.
That must be our prayer.
May the vision of Christ break upon our
hearts.
See His glory and His beauty.
See what God desires and is working at
where we are concerned.
And all again, all again, with the throne
in view.
For whether it be a literal throne, whatever
the reigning means, I think we are learning
just now that government and ascendancy is a
spiritual thing.
It's a spiritual thing.
This stone that wrecked the Roman Empire was
cut out without hands.
That simply means that the kingdom of Christ
is a spiritual kingdom, not made by man.
And it's a much more powerful thing than
all the kingdoms and dominions that man made,
whether they be Nebuchadnezzar or the Caesars.
A spiritual kingdom is a far more powerful
thing than all temporal systems.
That is the truth that you and I
have got to learn.
The transcendent importance and power of spiritual life
and spiritual character.
Shall we sing?