We come this evening to the remaining half of the compass, all of which has to be crowded into as short a time as possible. Therefore, not very much detail can be carried with us.
I think that the outline which you have before you, on the whole, really does speak for itself. It presents what the Bible is all about.
It is all about the eternal glory which God determined and purposed should fill His whole creation, and which should be centred in His Son, and from His Son radiated through a people known to us now in Scripture as the church, which is Christ’s body.
We have looked back into the past eternity and, with the Word of God, seen the eternal Son with the Father in His glory—the glory which He had with Him before the world was, to use His own words.
We have also, by the Word of God, taken up those expanding counsels of God to have a people in fellowship with His Son, sharing that glory, and ultimately manifesting it, or ministering it.
We have seen the interruption in the divine purpose by sin—the great rift which came in heaven and on earth. All this we have seen by the Word of God, which is not our imagination, something that we are making out. The Word of God does show these things.
Then, when the rift—the action of Satan first, and then the complicity of man with him—suspended the glory, God reacted. The divine purpose moved forward to take all the measures necessary to see that His purpose would not ultimately be destroyed or frustrated.
And so we saw, right down from the eternity which is yet to be, where the glory is in fullness, unclouded and unshadowed, the light thrown along the ages right to the beginning. By means of that light, a shadow—a shadow of a man—the life of the eternal glory, the shadow of the man Christ Jesus, is to be discerned all the way through.
Right from that point where the glory was interrupted, God introduced, shall we say, in shadow form—but everything was a shadow of Him—this Man, with a capital M, a very big capital there.
And with Him, the cross. So that in and by that Man, the glory was going to be secured; but by the cross, because the fall had come in. It would be the cross as the instrument by which God would do it.
We have seen two great aspects of the cross in this connection with the glory: the mediatorial aspect—mediation—that is, the altar, the sacrifice, the priest, filling the Old Testament and especially introduced in the first section of the Old Testament as laying the foundation for everything else.
Then, in the second large section, we have the whole principle of authority introduced: the kingship. It was not only corruption that came in—pollution and defilement—it was positive animosity, antagonism, rebellion.
The only way to deal with that is by a centralised, supreme authority. That principle was introduced at the point known to us as the Book of Joshua, and runs right through to the Book of Esther, a large section of the Old Testament.
Then the third section, which we call the prophets, brings in the principle of representation, or presentation, bringing back into clear view God’s whole intention and standing so powerfully, so mightily, against all that is contrary to that intention of God.
The Old Testament comes up in that way: the priest, the mediator; the king, the authority; the prophet, the representation of God’s thought.
And as we have seen, in every case nothing was made perfect. Indeed, over all, at a point, failure was written. While there was a deposit to be carried on, the thing was not final, initiatory, or effective in God’s purpose of bringing in the full glory—only in hints, types, figures, and symbols.
So we come at last to the point where it is all brought to perfection. We come to the Man Himself—the Man Himself—the man Christ Jesus.
He is brought to us in full view in those four books known to us as the four Gospels, Matthew through John. It is the Man Himself. He has come at last, not now in type, figure, or symbol, but in personal reality and actuality.
The shadow has now become the substance. That which pointed to Him has become that to which it pointed. Here He is on the scene.
That will—“having made known unto us the mystery of His will, that we should be unto the praise of His glory”—that great, capital-letter Will is embodied in this Man.
You know the words of Scripture about that, do you not? Let me read them to you.
Therefore, when He cometh into the world, He saith,
Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not,
But a body didst Thou prepare for Me;
Then said I, Lo, I am come
(In the roll of the book it is written of Me)
To do Thy will, O God.
A body to do Thy will. According to what has been said before: a body to do Thy will. A Man embodies the will. He is the embodiment of God’s will.
If you can put Jesus Christ out of God’s universe, then you have utterly defeated God’s eternal purpose and made glory impossible. But if you cannot put Him out—and a good many have tried, and are trying—then God’s purpose is most certainly going to be realised.
It is embodied in One who cannot be put out, as we shall see as we go along. We must recognise the significance of the Lord Jesus, God’s Son in bodily form.
It is nothing less than the taking up of the eternal will—the will of God before the world was, the determination of God then as to how things should be—taking that up in His own person and making Himself responsible for its realisation.
And He has done it. The will is done.
Lo, I am come to do Thy will.
That passage which we have just read goes on to say that that will has been done, by which will He has perfected forever, once for all. It is perfectly done. He has done the will of God.
It is a great thing, dear friends, for you and for me, if only we can grasp it—not as a statement, or a truth, or a doctrine, but if really we can grasp it by faith in our hearts—that the Christ whom we have received within us as God’s children is there as the One who has perfectly done all God’s will.
God looks upon Him in that way. He has done God’s will. He has perfected God’s will. God’s will is perfected in Man in this universe.
When we tonight take this—not in reality, but in symbol—we are testifying to the fact that we have taken into our very being One who has perfected the will of God. As we eat, He is becoming a part of us in that way.
I know the danger associated with making such a statement. Perhaps it needs safeguarding. It is not literal feeding and making Him, in that sense, a part of us. But our union with the Lord Jesus inwardly and spiritually means that we are linked with the accomplished will of God, and our life rests upon that.
All the rest—all the rest—about training and discipline springs out of something that is already done. We have a perfected salvation to rest upon.
That is perhaps the greatest difficulty for many Christians to believe. They still think that something has to be done in order that they should be safe. Well, it has not. It is all done. The rest is only the working out of what has been done.
We ought to rest upon this: the will has been perfectly done. The strength of Scripture is, “By which will”—by which will—“we are sanctified once for all.”
Because the will has been embodied and the will has been done, the glory has been recovered in Him. The glory has been recovered in Him.
He said to the Father, “I have glorified Thee on the earth.” There was a point in His time on earth when, in the presence of three disciples, on a mountain, He was transfigured before them. He was glorified. The glory came upon Him—spirit, soul, and body.
As we have often pointed out, so far as He was concerned, He was fit to go to heaven immediately and be there in the natural glory of the Garden of Heaven. Nothing more, so far as He was concerned, needed to be done.
God glorified Him because in Him God saw a perfect Man, morally and spiritually. For you and for me, He stayed. He came down the mountain in order that what was true of Him might be made true of us, and that by way of the cross.
It is very wonderful. God, having perfected Him in that way as Man, has given us the guarantee that you and I will be like Him. The guarantee that you and I will be like Him.
When He shall appear, we shall be like Him.
That is the mediator—the mediator of the glory.
The authority—the authority—answers to the next section of the Old Testament. This is in the Book of Acts.
He said at His resurrection:
All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth.
The authority, the kingship, was received at the hands of the Father. Again, because He was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name which is above every name; and in the name of Jesus every knee should bow.
The authority has been given to Him. That is where we begin the Book of Acts: the authority received and vested in Him—a kingship, lordship, sovereign headship.
That authority is installed in heaven. In heaven.
And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He parted from them, and was carried up into heaven.
When He had given commandment to His disciples, He lifted up His hands and blessed them. While they were looking, He was received into heaven.
They were not as miserable as people could be, going back saying, “We have lost Him.” Not at all. It says that they returned glorifying God.
The glory was installed in heaven. I am very glad about that. It would have been dangerous down here, but it is hardly in danger up there. I mean, just now, it is installed where it is unreachable and untouchable by all adverse forces. It is in heaven.
The authority is in heaven, and no power against it can get there to interfere with it anymore. The Scriptures have something to say about the very purging of the heavens by virtue of the blood and the cross of the Lord Jesus. They have been purged. They have come under the mighty effect of His work on the cross, and no corruption can get there anymore.
There is no interference with this authority. Everything is dealt with. Yes, blessed be God, it is out of reach of anything or anyone against it.
All we say about the fact that Jesus is in heaven glorified is that the headquarters of everything is in heaven, and the authority is exercised from there.
You may say, “Yes, that is beautiful. There is a beautiful idea, wonderful teaching; but how about the proof?” The evidence? Well, read the Book of Acts—that is all. Read it.
Here is a book with twenty-eight chapters, just full of the exercise of that heavenly authority by the heavenly Man, Jesus Christ.
The first expression of that authority, as we noted in the Old Testament, was the unifying of disrupted and disintegrating elements.
Here were men who, in physical proximity to Him while He was here in the flesh, were twelve fragments without any kind of organic relatedness or oneness. Indeed, they bore all the marks of disruption in the natural realm. They were quarrelling, contentious, envious of one another, and trying to have the upper hand over one another.
There was nothing about them that spoke of a fixed oneness of heart, mind, and spirit. When the Holy Spirit came upon Christ exalted to heaven, these men became a unity. They were bound in a wonderful oneness of spirit.
Unification, basic to this authority of Christ being exercised, united a disintegrated body and brought it together again. You see, it is essential to all that follows.
This kind of kingship, this kind of lordship, this kind of sovereign headship—Jesus as Lord, absolutely Lord, within and without—is essential to all the work which follows.
We find that in the kings of the Old Testament. In David, particularly, there was the unification of the nation. They came into a wonderful wealth, wonderful richness, wonderful power, and wonderful dominion over all forces against them. It was their solid unity, because of one reigning, governing head, that led to that glorious reign of Solomon.
And a greater than Solomon is here. So much came out of this unity. We cannot make too much of spiritual oneness—how important, how essential it is to all that follows in the Book of Acts.
Immediately Satan got to work to try to counter that oneness. Some people complained that they were not being looked after, and so on. At once, he was seeking to break things up again, to destroy the oneness, because he sees what a potent factor that is.
It is a testimony to the absolute triumph of Jesus over the work of the devil. It opens the way for the glory, whereas every other state of things is so shameful and such a sad denial of the triumph of His cross.
Oh, you and I ought to make very much more of this matter of spiritual oneness, fellowship, and unity than we do. But it is a realm of tremendous battle. The enemy is out against it.
I must not stay with all the details. Lordship—this authority—coordinates. You can see it in the Book of Acts, cannot you? A wonderful coordinating, causing the various parts to work together harmoniously toward one end.
It is just remarkable in this book how the Holy Spirit, in the authority of Jesus Christ, makes this work in with that.
Here is a man in one country who really wants spiritual help. He is praying for guidance and for light, asking how he can come into God’s full mind. He senses that there is something very much more into which he should come, and he is praying about it.
Away in another country, the Spirit touches and takes hold of the very man to meet that need, and coordinates this thing. You see, it is like that through this book, is it not?
It is the sovereign working of the Lord Jesus being exercised in coordinating things, in administering the matters of His church so that all the needs are met. Wonderful, is it not?
Then there is the overruling even of adversities and the works of the enemy. If there is one thing more than another in this book that is impressive, it is the way in which the sovereign Lord overrules evil.
He overrules the works of the devil. He overrules the works of evil men and causes all these things that were intended to be against Him to fulfil the very end that they wanted to stop.
Yes, this is a book of the authority secured in Christ. Who can read the book without saying, “It is the book of glory”? It is the book of glory.
You want to say, “Glory be to God,” as you go on from chapter to chapter, do you not? It is just like that. Oh, glory be to God for that. It is glorious all the way along.
It is simply because Jesus is on the throne. The authority has been established in Him.
A word about the third section: representation. That, of course, is found in those many books of the New Testament, from Romans to Jude, with many letters in between.
But what do they really amount to? Please recognise this: when you take up Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, or any of these letters, you are not reading them merely as letters in themselves. They are all part of one whole.
The one inclusive, all-governing object of them is to bring this Man into view as God’s model. From many angles, the Holy Spirit is working to make that model good—to fulfil it in the church.
Every letter is an aspect of Christ. If the Holy Spirit can get us according to that aspect, He has got us according to Christ. Christ is there in heaven as the model, the pattern, and the Holy Spirit has come and is now saying this, and this, and this, through these letters.
All of this bears upon the whole matter of conformity to Christ. We are told that this was in the mind of God before man was created: we were foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son.
That is the declaration of Scripture. Now, with the Son established as the model and the pattern, the Holy Spirit comes by means of instructions, exhortations, warnings, and all that is in these letters, saying, “This is the way in which to be conformed to Christ.”
These are the things by which Christ is to be reproduced in you. That is all I can say about that aspect of representation.
Do remember that these many letters, from Romans to Jude, in some way or another bear upon that one thing: God has His pattern Man, and the Holy Spirit has come to conform us to the image of that pattern—to work it out in His people.
If I had time to dwell upon every one of those letters, which I have not, you would see that every one of them deals with this matter of Christlikeness in some way or another. It is all about Christlikeness. It is all about doing this thing in an inward way in believers.
First of all, it is getting rid inwardly of all the ground that cannot be glorified—all that is contrary to Christ, all that is a contradiction to Christ.
That can never be glorified. It means getting rid of it and reproducing Christ, making Christ everything, and steadily increasing the measure of Christ in us unto the great consummation of glory.
But the crown—the crown—is inward first, and then the crown is outward.
We have in the letter to the Philippians, chapter 3, the statement that these very bodies, this body of humiliation, shall be made like unto the body of His glory—His glorious body.
It is inward first, and then it is crowned outwardly with a glorified body, the body of His glory. Now, that is what God made man for: to have a body of glory.
But it is a moral matter; it is a spiritual matter. It has got to begin inside with Christlikeness, or the nature of God.
The vessel and vehicle of all this, we are saying, is the church. The church then becomes the vessel and vehicle of the ministry of Christ—not in an atoning way, but in another sense, mediating.
That is, taking up that great work which Christ has done by His cross and declaring it to the world; standing between the Saviour and those needing to be saved; between the glorified Christ and their whole situation, which needs to be changed.
The church comes in there. That is the church’s vocation, the church’s mission, the church’s business: to stand in the gap between the Saviour and the sinner and to mediate, to mediate by proclamation, by testimony, by life, His salvation to others.
He can do it without us, but He has chosen to do it through us, by means of us, that they should know—and only know—by means of the church; that they should see—and only see—by means of the church.
The church is a mediatorial instrument—not in atonement, but in this work of making the atonement known and transmitting it.
That is not done officially. Whenever you get down alongside a sinner seeking the Saviour, and you pray with that one, something is given in help; something is mediated. You are not the Saviour. You cannot save anyone. But Christ comes through you, and they are helped by means of you.
The church is here on this earth, as a whole, for that purpose. How poor is my setting forth of this truth tonight. I can only do this much, indicating that the church is also here to mediate the authority of Christ.
The authority of Christ can only be known in and through the church in this dispensation. That Christ is on the throne has got to be made known by the church.
Oh, are we failing? Are we failing? Is it true that we are really here registering this sovereign lordship upon this world, upon these situations, upon these works of the enemy? That is what the church is for.
The Lord recover us to the place of His throne authority—not in any official way, but in a true spiritual way.
The mediation and the authority are proved in representation. They will know what the Lord is like only by means of you and me, by means of the church. The church is here to let them see what the Lord is like.
Oh, Lord, help us. How little they see what He is like. But that is what we are here for. We must speak to Him about this. They will not know unless they see Him in His people.
We close, then, this very hurried, scanty survey with the great triumphant consummation of all which we have in the Book of Revelation.
This book gathers everything up right from the beginning of the Bible. All these things are gathered into it. First of all, the great Person in His threefold capacity is presented, and then He overshadows the whole of that Book of Revelation.
Here He is as Mediator in terms of the Lamb slain—the Lamb slain and the Lamb in the midst of the throne. That is the great mediatorial capacity of this Man, this Son of God.
But not only that: the full power of His cross is there in the full authority of His exaltation. The Book of Revelation is the book of the authority of Jesus Christ. Right from the beginning, it is just that.
He is judging. He is adjudicating. He is deciding. He is passing sentence. He is gathering everything before His throne. He is testing the nature of everything. He is in the place of authority in that book at last.
There is the great pattern by which everything is being tested.
Always remember this: the first chapter of the Book of Revelation is a setting forth of Christ in symbolic terms as the standard by which God judges everything afterwards. He begins by judging the churches by the presented standard.
All those symbolic things which are said about this One who is presented—His hair white as wool, His eyes as a flame of fire, His feet like burnished brass—are spiritual realities.
His hair white as wool, for instance, means that His thoughts and judgments are absolutely flawless. His mind is without any kind of mixture of good and evil. There is no compromise, no diplomacy, no policy. It is on right, fair principle—divine principle—by which He judges. There is no favouritism, nothing of that kind.
His hair is white as wool, His eyes are as a flame of fire. He knows everything, and by perfect knowledge He can judge. He is not judging by faulty judgment. He does not fail to know all or see all. No, He sees right through everything.
Here He is presented in this comprehensive symbolic way as a standard.
It is as though God were saying to these seven churches, “Now then, how do you measure up to the standard?” That is the ground. Then, from the churches, He moves to the nations; and then He moves to the great hierarchy of Satan, the very kingdom of the devil himself.
It is all on the basis of this Man and on the basis of what He has done by His cross. The Man shall overcome.
There is a strange mingling of the lion and the lamb. The angel says, “The Lion that is of the tribe of Judah hath overcome.” John turns to see this Lion, and when he turns, he sees a Lamb.
It is a strange mixture of symbols, but you see the point. It is by the cross that He triumphs. By the cross, He exercises His authority. The cross is the means of His power, His dominion.
Here it is, then: the authority, the mediation, the representation. And how does it all finish?
Everything has now been dealt with that is hostile to God, inimical to God. It has all been dealt with, and the glory comes back.
The angel says to the apostle, “Come hither. I will show thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” He carried me away into a great and high mountain.
You know what John was expecting to see: the bride, the Lamb’s wife. And he showed me the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, having the glory of God.
Having the glory of God. That is again the symbol of this church, in the light of which the book goes on to say the nations walk and derive their values from this.
God has got His end in view. So Revelation is linked with Genesis, the long story between laying down the principles by which the end should be reached. And here it is: it is reached.
You say again, “Yes, wonderful, wonderful conception of things and presentation of truth. How do we know?”
Well, I have said it before, and it is the simplest thing to say, but it is a very real thing, a very true thing. Come to the Lord Jesus in reality, making Him your Mediator, your Saviour, making Him your Lord. Let Him be your pattern, to which the Holy Spirit is conforming you, and glory begins in your heart.
Anybody who has had a true new birth or a true conversion, who has really come to the Lord Jesus and made Him Saviour and Lord, knows that glory begins with them.
Some of you have had your first taste of glory today. You have come to see. You have had your first sense of it. Has glory begun? Are you not happy? Are you not thanking God?
You may not put it in my language or in these terms, but what is the answer? “Oh, praise the Lord. Oh, glory be to God for this.” Glory has begun.
As you go on with the Lord, there will be difficult times. There will be bad times when it is hard to get through, hard to accept. But every time you get clear of those things, you will find a new uprising of glory.
Every victory brings fresh glory. Every emergence from ourselves—and that is where the glory never is—brings more glory. We are the trouble of the glory, are we not? We are the ones who get in the way of the glory.
Oh, if only we could get rid of ourselves, it would be glory. Yet every time we get over a bit more of ourselves, there is a little more glory. It is like that. There is no fiction about it. We know it to be so.
Thank God, we are moving on to that hour, that moment, at the last, the last peak and the breaking through into the final glory, when He shall come to be glorified in His saints and to be marvelled at in all them that believe.
Is that not wonderful? That is what He says. He is coming to be glorified in His saints and to be marvelled at.
Marvelled at. “Isn’t this marvellous? Would you ever believe that possible of me—a so-and-so?” It is perfectly marvellous: marvelled at in all them that believe.
That is the end—the glorious consummation. It rests upon the Saviourhood of Jesus Christ, the lordship of Jesus Christ, and conformity to His image by the Holy Spirit.
These things, made real enough, bring us back for the glory which He has secured.