We turn this evening to a number of Scriptures: first, in the prophecies of Isaiah, Isaiah 44.
Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, and He that formed thee from the womb:
I am the Lord, that maketh all things;
that stretcheth forth the heavens alone;
that spreadeth abroad the earth; who is with Me?
That frustrateth the signs of the liars, and maketh diviners mad;
that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish;
That confirmeth the word of His servant, and performeth the counsel of His messengers;
that saith of Jerusalem, She shall be inhabited;
and of the cities of Judah, They shall be built, and I will raise up the waste places thereof;
That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers;
That saith of Cyrus, He is My shepherd, and shall perform all My pleasure, even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and of the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.
And then in the prophecy of Zechariah, Zechariah 4, from verse 1 to verse 10.
And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep.
And he said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have seen, and behold, a candlestick all of gold, with its bowl upon the top of it, and its seven lamps thereon; there are seven pipes to each of the lamps, which are upon the top thereof;
And two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.
And I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are these, my lord?
Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, Knowest thou not what these are? And I said, No, my lord.
Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain; and he shall bring forth the top stone with shoutings of Grace, grace, unto it.
Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you.
For who hath despised the day of small things? For these seven shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel; these are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.
And then in the little prophecy before Zechariah, Haggai 2, from verse 6.
For thus saith the Lord of hosts: Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land;
And I will shake all nations; and the precious things of all nations shall come; and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.
The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine, saith the Lord of hosts.
The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, saith the Lord of hosts; and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.
And then in the New Testament, in the book of Revelation, Revelation 3. We will read from verse 11.
I come quickly: hold fast that which thou hast, that no one take thy crown.
He that overcometh, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out thence no more: and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from My God, and Mine own new name.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.
And in the same book, Revelation 14, from verse 1.
And I saw, and behold, the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with Him a hundred and forty and four thousand, having His name, and the name of His Father, written on their foreheads.
And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and the voice which I heard was as the voice of harpers harping with their harps.
And they sing as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four living creatures and the elders: and no man could learn the song save the hundred and forty and four thousand, even they that had been purchased out of the earth.
These are they that were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they that follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. These were purchased from among men, to be the firstfruits unto God and unto the Lamb.
And in their mouth was found no lie: they are without blemish.
Shall we just bow together in a word of prayer? I do not know whether it is possible to switch down these stands just one degree.
Our Father, we have already asked Thee that Thou wilt meet with us this evening, and all we want to do now is to bow in Thy presence and to recognise before Thee that our natural minds cannot receive the things of Thyself. But we do praise Thee that they are spiritually discerned.
We would ask Thee, beloved Lord, for that gracious ministry of the Holy Spirit amongst us, leading us into all truth, taking of the things of our Lord Jesus Christ and making them real to us, glorifying the Lord Jesus.
O Father, we need that spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him granted to us. We stand by faith in that anointing which is ours. O speak, and hear us, that together we might know, Lord, a divine imparting of Thyself to us through Thy Word. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
We have been speaking, in the sessions for which I have had responsibility, on this whole matter of reigning with Christ. We have covered four things in God’s dealings with His people.
The first is the foundational phase, as we see it in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
The second phase is when God starts to deal with His people in relation to their possessing their possessions: going over into the land and really possessing their possessions. That is all part of reigning with Christ, all part of being an overcomer, all part of true kingship: to really possess our possessions in the Lord; to inherit the promises of God through faith and patience; to go in, as it were, and experience the resources and provision of God in the Lord Jesus Christ—the fullness that is in Him, the power that is in Him, the wisdom that is in Him, and the grace that is in Him.
Then we saw the third phase of God’s dealings with His people, as we see it in the lives of David and Solomon. It is impossible to be an overcomer, to reign with Christ, and not have some direct, intimate involvement with the purpose of God—that purpose which has always been in His heart: that He might find a home among us, that He might build His eternal dwelling place in us, living stones built together.
Then we came to the fourth phase in God’s dealings with His people: the phase of recovery. When that which God has brought in, that which God has initiated, somehow or other comes into decline, there has been departure from God. Compromise and mixture have come in. That which is not of the Lord has somehow got in with that which is of the Lord, until, in the end, that which is not of the Lord takes over that which is of the Lord.
The whole thing becomes an unholy mess: a kind of institutional, formal thing that moves in the name of God and yet somehow has not got the power of God within it. It is “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.”
Then we thought how God starts to raise up men and women who become overcomers. We looked at the life of Elijah. That was the last session, I think, that we had. We touched on the lives of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.
We saw that the heart of the whole matter is not merely to have a ministry that is a purifying force, of earthquake power and divine power—tremendous and necessary as that is—but fundamental to it all is the necessity of having an ear to hear what the Lord is saying.
We must hear the still, small voice of God. If we have not got that ear to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches, we shall get mixed up in all kinds of things that somehow seem to be biblical, that even seem to have to do with recovery, but are not.
They may have all the outward techniques, the methods, and everything else, but somehow or other they are not really a true recovery movement. We need ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches: an ear for the still, small voice of God.
Now this evening I want to come to another part of this fourth phase of recovery. The ministry of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel produced, by the grace of God, a remnant amongst the people of God in exile who were prepared to return to the land, to build Jerusalem, to rebuild the cities of Judah and Galilee, and to rebuild the house of God, whatever the cost.
It was, make no mistake about it, the fruit of the ministry of those men—first Jeremiah, then Ezekiel, then Daniel—that there arose a remnant prepared to return whatever the cost.
This remnant is represented by names that I suppose most of you would be familiar with: Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi. All these names were household words amongst them.
There was a first return under Zerubbabel. There was a second return quite a few years later under the leadership of Ezra. Then, quite a few years after that, there was a third return under the leadership of Nehemiah.
Very interestingly, the captivity and exile took place in three stages, and the return took place in three stages. There were three returns, until the work of rebuilding the land, repopulating Jerusalem, and rebuilding the house was completed.
Now we find this little word remnant a lot in the prophets. Isaiah uses the word a lot; Jeremiah sometimes uses it; others of the prophets use the word remnant. The remnant is really the Old Testament equivalent to the New Testament overcomer. They were the overcomers.
They were those who, when the majority had departed from the Lord or settled down to a second-best thing—something good, but not God’s purpose—were the minority who saw through to the purpose of God and committed themselves to it.
They were the ones who really pioneered a way for the Lord.
When we look at Isaiah 62:10, that is exactly what this remnant of return did.
Go through, go through the gates;
prepare ye the way of the people;
cast up, cast up the highway;
gather out the stones;
lift up an ensign for the peoples.
Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the earth,
Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh;
behold, His reward is with Him, and His recompense before Him.
And they shall call them The holy people, The redeemed of the Lord:
and thou shalt be called Sought out, A city not forsaken.
They were the fulfilment of this prophecy of Isaiah. There are some of the people of God who do not even know that there is a need to go through the gate. There is another section who know they ought to go through the gate, see the real need to go through the gate, but never go through it.
Then there are those who go right through the gates and get on with God. These were the ones who were the fulfilment of the prophecy. They went through the gates. They prepared the way of the people. They cast up a highway. They gathered out the stones—the obstacles and hindrances—for others to come.
There was nothing elitist about it. There was nothing superior in themselves about this. They did not look down upon all the rest and say, “No one else is going to come. We are it.” They gathered out the stones so that the others could come.
The first wave that went back made it easier for the second wave that came back. The second wave made it easier for the third wave to come back. Do you understand? They were gathering out the stones, clearing away obstacles and hindrances, making a highway for the people.
They were lifting up an ensign for God, so that anyone who had an ear to hear and an eye to see could understand what the purpose of the Lord was. The purpose of God could never be fulfilled in captivity. It could never be fulfilled in the metropolis of the Babylonian complex. It had to be in Jerusalem. It had to be within the promised land.
To understand this matter, we need to look at the history of this people at this period a little more closely. I know people do not like history too much, but if we look at it just a little, I think we should be able to draw out one or two very real and vital lessons.
First of all, let us have a look at these people of God in exile. Of course, the beginning of it was terrible. At the beginning there was tremendous suffering. Many were put to death. Many were harmed and injured. Eyes were put out, tongues were cut off. The most cruel things were practised upon those people in the very early days.
But within a matter of a generation, they had settled down marvellously in Babylon and in all the cities of the Dispersion. Before very long, all the people of God in exile were Aramaic-speaking. They had ceased really to speak Hebrew anymore, and were speaking the language of captivity, Aramaic.
They had businesses. They had schools. They had comfortable houses. There were even Jewish suburbs in Babylon and in some of the other great cities. They had synagogues where they went to worship the Lord. They gathered round to hear the Word of God preached and to receive instruction in the Word of God.
It was quite remarkable. From archaeology, we know that a number of banking houses went into Jewish hands. We know that quite a lot of the commercial life of Babylon went into Jewish hands. This is not a strange phenomenon.
In captivity, in dispersion, the people of God managed to get into a very comfortable, affluent, progressive position. As long as they were not rebels, as long as they did not contradict decrees of the government, they were left entirely alone. They were allowed to worship in freedom. They were allowed to instruct their children in the law of God. They were allowed to keep the customs of their nation.
It was all very comfortable. But even more remarkable—this is perhaps the most interesting thing of all—the prophets had warned the people of God again and again that if they hankered after idols, if they became involved in the worship of Baal and the other fertility gods of the nations around them, then in the end the judgment of God would fall upon them in tremendous severity.
God waited century after century after century, warning them, warning them, warning them. But the high places came into being; the fertility cult practices were everywhere; Baal was worshipped as well as the Lord.
In the end, God, finding that they would not listen to Him, decided on a homeopathic cure. Now, I do not know whether you know anything about homeopathy, but homeopathy is a certain type of medicine that believes that like cures like. God sometimes is a good homeopath.
When He finds that a person will not listen to Him, He gives them a dose of the thing they want. If they hanker long enough after it, God says in the end, “All right, have it.” He granted their request, and sent leanness into their souls.
So what did God do? He sent the whole nation to the heart of idolatry. Since they longed for idolatry so much, He deported the whole nation—the royal family, the nobility, the aristocracy, the professional class, the artisan class, the whole lot—into the very centre of idolatry.
There, surrounded by false worship, surrounded by idols of every shape and description, the people of God were cured of idolatry forever. From that captivity, no Jew has ever bowed down to an idol. Homeopathy. Rather wonderful, is it not?
God cured them by giving them a dose—an overdose—of the very thing they longed for. When they came into the heart of Babylon, they were cured of idolatry.
Through the ministry of Ezekiel, we believe, they began to gather together in places of worship. They began to gather for instruction in the law of God. They began schools where boys were taught to read and write, and where they were taught to study the Word of God.
They began to experience a purity of worship they had never known in the land. Divorced from the house of God, the house of God destroyed; divorced from Jerusalem, Jerusalem raised to the ground; taken away from the promised land into a far-off place of exile, they learned what worship really was.
They learned that worship was not just dependent on place and land, but was a matter of relationship to God wherever you were. They found that the Word of God had a spiritual content, and not merely an outward content.
These dear people in exile, in the Dispersion, had a very comfortable, happy life. That is, the great majority did. Then the remnant returned. Why did they return?
I have no doubt that many who stayed behind argued with those who went back and said, “Look here, we are in a new phase. We no longer need Jerusalem. We no longer need a temple. We no longer need all the festivals that we used to have. We have come into something spiritual now. That is what matters.”
“We have got the inward thing. We know what it is to be saved. We cannot have the Day of Atonement with animal sacrifice. We cannot have the morning and evening sacrifice anymore. But we know something spiritual now. We have come to know the Word of God. For the first time, the Word of God is being written in our hearts and minds. For the first time, we are living by the Word of God in foreign and alien surroundings. See how God has blessed us.”
But the remnant who returned had seen something. We find it all summed up in a very wonderful psalm, Psalm 137. Here is a psalm that reveals the heart of the overcomers who returned.
By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat down, yea, we wept,
when we remembered Zion.
Upon the willows in the midst thereof
we hanged up our harps.
For there they that led us captive required of us songs,
and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget her skill.
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
if I remember thee not;
if I prefer not Jerusalem
above my chief joy.
But why were these people so bound up to Jerusalem? Why? What is so important about Jerusalem?
It is a very interesting thing that all the great capital cities of the world are built on great rivers, great crossroads, or natural harbours. Jerusalem is the only capital city of the world that is built neither on crossroads nor with a great natural harbour, and on no great river. You call the Kidron a river? I mean, only God could have chosen Jerusalem.
It has no natural advantages at all to make it a capital. Babylon was magnificent, with its boulevards, avenues, great canals, boats coming up from the sea, and the great river flowing right through it. It was a tremendous place, with its great banking houses, commercial centres, stock exchange, hanging gardens, botanical garden, and zoological garden.
Babylon was a magnificent city. It took a day or two to travel across it. The people of God may have said, “Surely we understand from Daniel that Babylon is going to be one of the great empires of the world. Is it not better for us to be in Babylon?”
“We will be a testimony in Babylon. We will have our meetings in Babylon. We will sing our songs of Zion in Babylon. Maybe some of them will come in. We may even get them saved.”
But the remnant had an understanding of the purpose of God. Now listen to me carefully: they had an understanding of the purpose of God. They had vision.
They understood what the Lord had said through the prophets. Listen to what the Lord said in Isaiah 9.
But there shall be no gloom to her that was in anguish,
in the former time He brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali;
but in the latter time hath He made it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light:
they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given;
and the government shall be upon His shoulder:
and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of His government and of peace there shall be no end.
How could that be fulfilled if there was no Galilee? If Galilee was raised to the ground, how could the Messiah come to Galilee? How could it be Galilee of the nations? How could the people who walked in darkness see a great light?
It could not be fulfilled by the people of God having their comfortable existence in Babylon or in the cities of the Dispersion. They might sing all the songs of Zion they wanted there, but it was the remnant who said, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”
Then again, listen to the prophet Micah in Micah 5:2.
But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah,
out of thee shall One come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel;
whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.
But Bethlehem, in this period, was ruined. It was destroyed in the time of the exile. There was no Bethlehem. How could the prophecy of Micah be fulfilled by the people of God staying in Babylon, or elsewhere throughout the empire of the Persians and Medes?
How could the Scripture be fulfilled that we have read from Isaiah, when the Lord said of Jerusalem, “She shall be rebuilt,” and of the house, “Thy foundation shall be laid”? Where could the foundation of the Lord’s house be laid if it was not in Jerusalem? Could it be laid in Babylon? Could they raise up some great temple of the Lord in Babylon, reinstitute the sacrifices, and bring back the feasts there? It was impossible.
My dear friends, what I am trying to say is simply this: the vast majority of the people of God had a very comfortable, affluent existence in exile. Not only that, they had a pure form of worship for the first time since Moses.
It was very easy for them not to see the purpose of God. Indeed, it was very easy for them to see the purpose of God in taking them into Babylon as bringing them into a new spiritual plane—the inward as against the outward.
But it was this remnant, the product of the ministry of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, who saw that the whole purpose of God was dependent, literally, upon their returning to the land and rebuilding the house of God; rebuilding Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the cities of Judah, and Galilee. There could be no fulfilment otherwise.
It was a tremendous call. Those people who set out from Babylon really laid their lives down. There was no glamour and no romance. It was hard, hard work. When they got back to the land, they found everything in a ruinous state.
Can you imagine the activity of the enemy? Do you not think that he understood better than they that the rebuilding of that house, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the rebuilding of the cities of Judah and Galilee were somehow directly related to the coming of the Messiah?
He did every single thing to undermine them, to unsettle them, to compromise them.
It took them twenty years from the day they laid the foundation of the house of God until it was completed. It was the glorious ministry of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah that stirred up the people to get on with the job.
They were ordinary people, those people who went there. Haggai speaks to them and says, “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your ceiled houses, while this house lieth waste?” Even though they paid the price to go back, you see, when they got back the enemy was busy compromising them and getting their priorities mixed up and inverted.
Now, dear people of God, I want you just to see this clearly, and then we will draw some lessons out of it. I have put up here on the board a little history lesson. Those of you who can hardly see it should not really sit so far back! Forgive that. You can come forward afterwards if you want to make notes.
All it is, is for your help. I want you to see that it was in 536 BC that Zerubbabel returned, leading the first great company of overcomers, if you like—of pioneers—back to the land.
They laid the foundation of the house of God with great joy and great weeping. Then began all the battle over it, and it took a whole twenty years before it was completed.
Then notice the next important date: 458 BC. Ezra, the scribe and priest, led back a second great company of pioneers. This time the house of God was already complete and functioning. Ezra went back to teach and to reinstate the festivals, and to see that the people of God really understood the meaning of the Word of God.
Then, in 445 BC, Nehemiah went back, leading another party of pioneers. His great task was to rebuild the ruined walls of Jerusalem, and thus complete the recovery. First the house, then the law of God, and finally the walls of the city. Thus the work was completed.
Now, what I want you to notice is the book of Esther. I know I am going to upset some people this evening. Forgive me. Every time I speak on the book of Esther, some people get upset.
The book of Esther is one of the great question marks of the Bible. The rabbis argued over the book of Esther right up to the third century after Christ. They asked whether the book of Esther had any right to be in the canon of the Word of God, among the inspired books.
Why? Because in the whole book, the name of the Lord is not mentioned once. God is not mentioned once. The things of God are not mentioned. The Word of God is not mentioned. Nothing is mentioned. Everything is heathen.
We find Esther being led to marry a king. I know some lovely books have been written on Esther and her beloved husband, but I have to tell you in all honesty that Esther’s husband was one of the most debauched men in history.
And if God led her to marry him, no doubt about that, then I do not know what to say. He was a heathen, not a believer. Then, a few years later, Ezra was busy requiring foreign wives to be put away from their Israelite husbands. Think that one out.
A few years before, we had the Lord leading Esther to marry an ungodly, unbelieving, and not very moral man.
Of course, people tell us about the beautiful name of Esther. I must ask forgiveness of anyone here called Esther; it is a beautiful name. It is said, of course, that the Hebrew equivalent is Hadassah. But the rabbis say—and I have to feel that they are right—that Esther has not got too much to do with the Hebrew word Hadassah. It is much more likely to be the name of the goddess Ishtar.
So now we come to a perplexity and a confusion. We find God leading one of His dear children to marry a man who was not even of the Lord, in order to save His people in exile.
For those of you who feel that I am going too far, let me say something for your comfort. I am afraid it is only for those who understand a little Hebrew. The name of the Lord is not openly mentioned in Esther, but it is there.
There are four turning points in the story of Esther, and in the Hebrew, at those turning points, the first letter of each word spells the name of the Lord: Jehovah. Is that not wonderful? So hidden behind it all is the Lord.
Now I want you to note where Esther fits in. She fits in, and scholarship is now agreed on this, between the first and second returns from exile: during the reign of Xerxes, or Ahasuerus, from 486 BC to 465 BC. Somewhere in that period, the events described in the book of Esther took place.
Now, my dear friend, I come to the point. Please listen to me very carefully. If you want to argue with me, listen carefully first to what I have to say, and then you can argue.
Whether the people saved by the miraculous intervention of God through the life of Esther lived or died made absolutely no difference to the purpose of God.
If every single Jew in exile had been annihilated, the purpose of God would still have been absolutely safe because of the first return.
You will remember that the plot to murder all the Jews throughout the lands of exile was based upon this condition: wherever there was a majority of Gentiles, they were allowed to fall upon their unarmed Jewish neighbours.
There was only one place where the Jews were in a great majority and were armed, by divine and imperial permission, and that was in the land. They were safe.
Are you beginning to follow what I am trying to say? Everything that happened in the book of Esther was the grace of God. Everything.
There was blessing. There was salvation. There was deliverance. There was a knowledge of the Lord. There was reading of the Word of God, understanding of the Word of God, perhaps even some witness among Gentiles. But now we must try to apply what I have been saying.
What about our situation? We have also seen the foundation of the Lord’s house laid—at Pentecost.
We saw all that preparation for the house of God. We saw, on that day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit coming and turning one hundred and twenty units of a congregation into one hundred and twenty members of the Body.
We saw that church of God, filled with the power of God, joined to the risen Head, moving through Jerusalem as thousands upon thousands were saved, with a company of priests and Levites joining themselves to the Lord.
We saw that house of God spread throughout Judea and Samaria, and then to the Gentiles, until in the end it went right through the empire and ended up in Rome.
Oh, what glorious days they were! When Peter could say to a crippled man, “Silver and gold have I none; but what I have, that give I thee.” Power! When Ananias and Sapphira fell dead for playing with the things of God and lying to the church.
My dear friend, if the Lord were to deal with us in that way, there would be many a funeral. My goodness! If the Lord were to deal with all of us in relation to playing with the things of God, we would have many a funeral. We are all guilty one way or another.
But all the power of the house of God! When even the shadow of one of the apostles fell on people, they were healed. Those were days of glory. Those were days of fulfilment. Those were days like David and Solomon.
Then the church fell into Babylonian captivity. Now, that is Martin Luther’s phrase: the Babylonian captivity of the church.
All the Dark Ages: the darkness that spread, the foreign and alien practices that came in, the mixtures that came in, even a mother-goddess complex—the whole thing weaving its way in and becoming part of it.
Until God, by His Spirit, raised up a protest against the whole thing in men such as John Wycliffe, John Hus, Martin Luther, and Ulrich Zwingli.
Through these weak men, who laid down their lives for the truth that they saw and the vision that they had for the purpose of God, God began a work of recovery. People went back. For the first time, things began to be recovered.
We have seen successive movements of recovery down through the history of the church. It would take too long for me to speak about that tonight, and it is not my purpose anyway.
But what I am trying to say is this: the situation that faces us today is very much like that of this remnant.
We have a large majority of the people of God—dear ones, saved by the grace of God, born of His Spirit, knowing even what it is to be filled and anointed with the Holy Spirit, with purity of worship sometimes, reading the Word of God, and possessing spiritual character and maturity.
Yet they live in a place where the purpose of God can never, never be fulfilled.
People sometimes say to me, “Why did the Lord bless Esther?” That is a good question. They say, “I cannot understand it. How does the Lord bless Roman Catholics?”
My dear friend, I enjoy myself with my Catholic brothers and sisters. We have wonderful times. Some of the most faithful ones in Jerusalem are Catholic. They love the Lord. We do not argue about it; we just love one another and move together and pray together.
But people say, “I cannot understand it. It must be a dead system. Did you hear that the mother superior has just had a visitation of the Lord? She got up after it and said, ‘Praise the Lord!’ It must be dead. The Lord does not do that kind of thing in that kind of place.”
Then you get the Episcopalians. People say, “How can anyone go on with the Lord among Episcopalians? They sprinkle children. How can anyone experience the Lord among them? They should join the Baptists.”
Then someone says the Baptists should join the Brethren, because they do not have the Lord’s Table every time they meet, or freedom of worship around the Lord’s Table. And another says the Brethren should leave their gatherings because they do not believe in spiritual gifts.
But the point is this: do not think that because God blesses His people in a place where His purpose can never be fulfilled, that He does not love His children or is not building something in them. He will bless. He will do wonderful things.
There are things you can learn from the book of Esther. It is one of the most marvellous examples of divine providence in the whole Word of God. But it was not the line of the purpose of God.
We have a big problem, because plenty of people get a blessing and say, “That must be right.” I do not think that necessarily follows. The Lord will bless anybody where He finds an open heart. It does not matter where they are.
I would like to take you to some strange places if I had the opportunity. I could take you to some Orthodox services. Most of you would die a million deaths with the smell of incense, the strange liturgy, and everything else. Then I could take you to a brother in Nazareth, an Orthodox priest, radiant with the Lord—absolutely radiant for the Lord—and sometimes he comes along to meetings with us. Everyone loves him.
People would say, “But he needs your form of church.” But the Lord blesses His children wherever they are found.
My friend, we need more than that if we are really to see something happen.
There have got to be people who have an understanding of the purpose of God, and people who are prepared to lay down their lives.
God deliver us from superiority. God deliver us from that terrible sin of criticism of the rest of the people of God. That is not our business.
Those people who returned must have been tempted at times to feel bitter about their affluent cousins and relatives. When they had no bed to lie down on, no roof over their heads, and jackals and hyenas howling around at night, they must have thought, “It would be nice to be back within those lovely city walls of Babylon.”
But these were people who had paid a price. They did not destroy their reward by criticising those who had not paid the price.
When Haggai speaks to them, he does not say, “Now, you dear people, you have left everything, and God is so pleased with you because the rest are sitting in their comfortable houses with their comfortable businesses.” No. The Lord was very hard on them because they had allowed their priorities to be inverted.
He said to them, “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your ceiled houses, while this house lieth waste?” Do you see what has happened? You are putting money into a bag with holes in it.
Think of that: taking your wages and putting them into a bag with holes in it. All the money disappears. You may have a pay rise, but inflation rises too. You are putting it into a bag with holes in it. You simply put it in the bag and it does not remain.
How much Christian work is like that? This is speaking to those who have returned, you see—who have returned, seen the purpose of God, and yet somehow become disappointed and disillusioned.
The problems, the difficulties, personality clashes, differences of opinion—we become, somehow or other, disappointed. Or we see things among so-called recovery movements that are quite wrong, and therefore we begin to react against the whole thing.
But, my dear friend, what is the point of paying such a price and then allowing yourself to become disappointed and deciding that it is better to be back in Babylon? Better to go back and have your own ceiled house, and put your wages into a bag with holes.
How about our Christian work and activities? When we have seen the purpose of God and committed ourselves to it, it is just like that: an awful lot of energy, an awful lot of activity, and nothing to show.
Dear child of God, if you are one of those who has seen the purpose of God and committed yourself to it, make sure your priorities remain right.
Well now, I think I ought to start to come to a close. But you see, the idea of the lampstand has come to be complete.
Zechariah 4 says that there is a great lampstand, all of gold—the menorah of the Old Testament, in the tabernacle and temple, and of Revelation 1, 2, and 3.
What does this lampstand represent? It represents the testimony of Jesus. What has the testimony of Jesus to do with a building programme?
As soon as Zechariah sees this lampstand, with all its light coming from its seven lamps and the gold flowing through it, and the two olive trees on either side, left and right, he says, “What does it all mean?”
The angel says, “Do you not understand this? This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ saith the Lord of hosts. ‘Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain; and he shall bring forth the top stone with shoutings of Grace, grace, unto it.’”
I ask you, by the grace of God, will we be part of that remnant? Will we be so dealt with by the Lord that, when the work is completed, we shall have only one word on our lips: “Grace!”
You would have thought there would be glory, would you not? If you are a good charismatic, you might say, “Surely it is a victory. It is done. Let us stand up and sing a tremendous hymn.” No, no. They said, “Grace, grace unto it.”
His hands laid the foundation; his hands shall also finish it. O child of God, if you understand the two olive trees—one on the left, one on the right—you see that this is reigning with Christ.
The branches empty gold. Many translations have put “golden oil,” because they could not understand how gold could be emptied or how gold could become oil. But for those of us who understand the things of God, it all makes sense.
The gold is the nature of Christ. It is the life of Christ. It is the light of Christ. It becomes life and light in the lampstand.
Dear children of God, are we involved in the matter? Tell me something: when the time of the Lord’s coming comes, what would you like to be able to say?
Would you like to be able to say, “Lord, thank You. I had a small part in the fulfilment of Your purpose”?
Would you not feel it a wonderful thing if, when the Lord comes, you had been taken out of your little routine world and caught up in this tremendous purpose of God?
When the Messiah finally comes, when those blessed, nail-pierced feet stand upon the Mount of Olives, do you not think it would be wonderful to feel in your heart, at least, to hear from Him His word to you: “My child, you had a part”?
That would be the greatest commendation that any one of us could have. For me, it would be the most wonderful thing in the whole universe: to hear from the Lord just that word—“You did not fully understand. You did not understand what it cost you, or why you had to go the way you went. But you were part of the fulfilment of My purpose.”
I am sure that when our Lord and the children of Israel entered into heaven, if Ezra was there, and Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel, and Haggai, and Zechariah, and all that great company who went back to the land, the Lord must have said to them, “My dear ones, you were part of the fulfilment of My purpose.”
By living in Nineveh—by living in Babylon—how could the prophecy of Malachi concerning the house of the Lord ever have been fulfilled? You were part of it.
There are three types.
There are those who are ignorant of the purpose of God altogether. I am amazed when I go around the world to find so many dear people, sometimes forty or fifty years old in Christ, who do not know the first thing about the purpose of God.
They may be blessed, they may be filled with the Spirit, they may know something of the Word, but when it comes to the purpose of the Lord, absolutely nothing. They are content to stay in exile conditions.
Then there is a second section of the people of God: those who have seen the purpose, but read too many books on it. They can even give a little talk on it. They can explain something about it. They can give you a helpful time.
But they never commit themselves. I wonder whether some of the people I meet here and there are like that. They swallow every book that has anything about the purpose of God, and yet they never commit themselves.
Always tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow—like the South American mañana. Always tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes. Tomorrow they will commit themselves. Tomorrow they will begin to give themselves to the purpose of God. Tomorrow they will take those things of the Lord in faith and possession. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
The Lord will come, and all their tomorrows will be gone.
Then there is the third section: those who, having seen the purpose of God, commit themselves to it. It cost them everything.
It is only in this land that we can begin to understand what fulfilment is at the end of the age.
I do not believe that there is any way to be part of the fulfilment of God’s purpose except, one: vision; two: the laying down of your life; and three: the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
May the Spirit of the Lord come upon us.
It is no use just having understanding, and even laying down our lives, unless the purpose of God falls upon our very hearts.
By the Spirit we shall return. By the Spirit we shall rebuild the house of God. By the Spirit we shall recover the Word of God. If you love Me, by the Spirit we will see the walls of Jerusalem finally rebuilt.
For the coming of the Messiah, nothing, nothing, nothing must be allowed to stand in the way.
Father, we have thought of things that are hard for us tonight. I pray, Lord, that Thou wilt put into every one of us the spirit of inquiry—not of one another, but of Thyself.
Lord, wilt Thou grant that many of us shall begin to understand Thy heavenly purpose, and so hear that on-high calling to return.
For those of us, Lord, who have seen something and have committed ourselves, where our priorities have gotten out of place, get them into their right place. And, God, we pray that we shall be part of the fulfilment of Thy purpose in our day and generation.
May we be part of those who are rebuilding the house of the Lord, that we would have a place as living stones built together into a habitation of God in the Spirit.
O Father, may this be our prayer and our heart. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.