God, we are subjects of Thy pity, of Thy compassion, this morning. We do not even know what to ask of Thee, or we perhaps do not really know our truest need. We think we know sometimes. There are things which are very real to us as needs. But, Lord, it is true: Thou knowest all the truest needs of our hearts, and only Thou knowest the rest according to Thy knowledge.
Speak, Lord. Make it personal; make it individual, as well as collective. While Eli did not hear the voice of the Lord, even in the tabernacle, there was one who did. Pick us out for speaking this morning, as Thou didst Samuel. May we be called by name. May we know that the Lord is speaking to us.
Do not allow our minds and thoughts to be diverted onto other people, so that we shall say, “That is something for them.” Do keep it direct, that afterward we can truly say, “The Lord has spoken to me.”
Now, for all this that is needed, Lord, in us and for us, Father, do that by the wisdom, the power, and the grace of Thy Holy Spirit. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
By now, I think you know that there is a book in the New Testament which is called the Letter to the Hebrews. Perhaps you think you know something about that. I am going to read again.
We are getting very near to the end of this time of gathering ministry. I feel that it is very necessary for things to become very definite, concrete, and that we should, at this time, expect the Lord to be focusing things on very clearly defined issues.
But once again, let us read at the beginning of this letter, Hebrews 1:
God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners,
hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son,
whom He appointed heir of all things,
through whom also He made the worlds;
who being the effulgence of His glory,
and the very image of His substance,
and upholding all things by the word of His power,
when He had made purification of sins,
sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.
And Hebrews 12. I trust that it has not lost its music:
Ye are not come unto a mount that might be touched.
But verse 22:
Ye are come unto Mount Zion,
and unto the city of the living God,
the heavenly Jerusalem.
When you go away from this convocation, I wonder what you are going to say about the ministry and the messages. “Brother Tom—well, his subject was the overcomer. Brother [unclear]—well, I do not know that I can put it into a phrase. We know what he has been leading us to. The other man—well, his subject was Zion.” Is that what you are going to say? Lord, be merciful to you.
I could almost wish that we forgot that word Zion as such, if it represents a subject. Look through Zion, because, you see, what we have in the beginning of this letter is: God has spoken—not in Zion, no, through Zion—He has spoken in His Son.
If we have used the Old Testament name, which is always a type and a symbol, if we have used it to help us by gathering up all the historical associations of that name in the Old Testament, let us still remember that it belongs to the “not”—not as a name, and as a place, and as a thing, and so forth. It belongs to the “not.”
What belongs to the “but” is what lies behind that name: its spiritual value, its spiritual meaning. And if we were asked, “What is that?” we have got to come back and answer: God has spoken in His Son.
What is behind, through Zion, is His Son. He has spoken in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He made the worlds. God has spoken.
How has He, at the end of these times, now spoken? The speaking of God, from a certain point in history on to the end, is in His Son.
It is necessary to say, not merely about His Son, not the teaching or doctrine of Christ, but the Person—in the Person—He has spoken. A Person! Try to get hold of that. It is Christ that God speaks in Him.
Let us try to break that up for a few minutes. You see, Zion, if you are going to use the word, the name, again—Zion is, in representation, the fullness of Christ. That is what this letter is about: fullness and finality in Christ.
Zion, as a name, represents that: the fullness of God’s Son. And that fullness is God’s speech. For and in this dispensation, God’s speech is the fullness that is in His Son.
Now you remember, when you go back to the beginning of the Old Testament and God has intervened in history, there is what is called the creation. It all begins with that word: “God.” “In the beginning, God.” And then what? God speaks.
And God said, Let there be light.
God spoke, God spoke, and out of His speaking everything came.
You come over to your New Testament, and although it is not so arranged chronologically—quite for a good heavenly reason, the Holy Spirit’s wisdom—the Gospel of John really does stand at the beginning. The other three begin on this earth, in history, at Bethlehem, or in the case of Mark, at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus.
But John overleaps all time, goes right back to the deepest beginning, and he opens with this:
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
And the Word became flesh.
Here, in this new beginning, in a new creation of a new order, God speaks: the Word.
We have heard something this week about the Logos of God, or the Word of God. I am not trying to add, certainly not to improve, but I am going to say a little more about that.
The word there, as you know, in the beginning was the Logos. The Logos was with God. The Logos was God. And the Logos became flesh and tabernacled among us.
Beginning with the Logos, John has taken that word, of course, from the Greek, which in the Greek world had its own particular meaning. First of all, in the Greek mind, the word logos meant a thought—a thought, something in the mind. That is where it begins: a thought, or, if you like to make it general, thought.
Logos is first of all thought, or a thought. Then, keeping to the Greek, it is the expression of the thought—the thought put into expression, maybe words, but what is in the mind expressed, given expression. That is the content of logos.
It might go beyond that in the Greek, but in the Bible it certainly does. It is true: Logos, the Word, was a divine thought, something in the mind of God first, before ever there was expression or utterance.
Something that was the mind of God. You say, “In the beginning was the mind, the thought of God.” What a large world that door opens up, does it not? We have got the whole of our New Testament there: the mind and thought of God behind everything else.
But then that mind and thought of God was expressed, given expression. God said, out of His thought, out of His mind, God said. Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians:
God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness,
shined in our hearts.
God said by expression. What happened? That is the point. That is the Word. You see, follow me closely. I am going to perhaps be exacting on you for concentration for a little while.
When God expresses His mind, it is not something just in language, in verbiage, in diction. Whenever God spoke, and whenever God speaks, something happens.
God’s speaking, according to the Bible, is always an act.
He spake, and it was done;
He commanded, and it stood fast.
The Word of the Lord is an act. In this letter, you come to Hebrews 4:
The word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword,
and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit,
of both joints and marrow.
God’s Word is an act. It is a fiat. Something happens. God’s thought, put into expression, resolves itself into something that was not before.
And you can never be the same after God has spoken. Even if you refuse it, resist it, there has been a crisis. So Jesus will say, “The words that I have spoken unto you, they shall judge you in the last day.” Do not believe in Me? The words that I speak—you will have to meet those in the last day.
Because this is something not just said, but something put into the universe, which is a crisis. The Word of God is a crisis. The Word of God is an act.
But that does not exhaust the word Logos as used by John, and as the Word of God in the Bible. The third aspect—the third aspect to the Word—is person.
It takes up its residence in a person. It becomes personal. In other words, it becomes incarnate. The mind of God, the expression of God, is incarnate. It is in a Person.
Any encounter with Jesus Christ is a crisis. Any encounter with Jesus Christ is meeting God. God was in Christ. It is an encounter with God.
It is not just what Jesus says, although that, of course, is an expression of the mind of God in words. But you see, it is a personal encounter that has to be—not an encounter with what is written in the first place, not an encounter with words, though they be divinely inspired words. It is an encounter with a Person.
So the Word became flesh: encountered.
Shall we go over it again? The incarnation of the divine thought in a practical issue in history—in an act, in a fiat. Saul of Tarsus: was not his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road a fiat? The whole dispensation answers that very loudly. It was an act of the incarnate and glorified Word of God.
This is the Logos. God hath spoken in His Son, who is then the embodiment of His mind, who is the expression of that mind, who is the incarnation of that mind.
And this whole letter, so-called to the Hebrews—or, to Hebrews—is just an analysing of that, or a summing up of that: God speaking in His Son.
God speaking in His Son—and all that follows from chapter 1 at its beginning right through to the end—is just the exposition of God speaking in His Son. You must read the letter in the light of that: God is speaking.
So, when you come to get the purport of this section from verse 22 onward, what have you? You have the gathering up—the gathering up of that speaking of God in His Son—and concentrating it.
If you break up the section, you see it is a concentration of what is true about the Person of the Lord Jesus. And you must look at Zion like that. It begins there: “Ye are come unto Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.”
No, that is symbolic language. We are come to the Son of God in all this meaning.
All that follows, which I am not going even to touch upon—I know you would like me to talk to you about the spirits of just men made perfect, and the great company of angels in festal array. You would like to know something about that. Perhaps you would like to know a little more about the church of the firstborn, who are enrolled in heaven. I am not going to touch on any of that.
I am keeping here this morning: God speaking in His Son—the thought of God expressed, the thought of God incarnate, personified. So that Zion, as a typical word or name, is the embodiment of all that.
God speaks. Or, in the Old Testament, God spoke in Zion. He spoke out of Zion. You go through the Psalms, and you go through Isaiah’s prophecies, especially the last chapters of those prophecies. You see how God is speaking out of Zion.
It even comes to this:
The Lord shall roar out of Zion.
God speaks out of Zion. In other words, out of His Son, He has spoken in His Son.
Now, having stated that, that is the position. You see, I am trying, at the end of this ministry, to become focused, concentric, at the real heart of all this.
Now, what is the heart of all this according to the statement at the beginning? God, at the end of those times, in these times, in this time, has spoken. How? Son-wise. In His Son.
The absence in the original of the definite article does not make any difference, because the very next statement is, “whom He appointed heir of all things.” So this Son is His Son. We note that and pass on.
The governing law of God speaking is sonship—His sonship. That is the thing which governs God in all His speaking. Are you getting it? Thank you.
And this has already been said: sonship is not a beginning thing; it is a final thing. It is an ultimate thing.
Waiting for our adoption,
to wit, the redemption of our body.
The end which governs all God’s speaking in Christ is sonship. If you like to change the word, it is adoption. It is put at the end: sonship, adoption—an end, an object toward which God is moving by the speaking in His Son.
By birth, we are children. By adoption, we are sons. Remembering the difference in conception: someone holding a little baby yesterday, not of the family or even of the same race, said, “You see, I have adopted her.”
Oh, no, that will not do here. That will not do here. That is not the scriptural conception of adoption. As you have been told, and ought to know by now, the scriptural meaning of adoption is someone already in the family by birth who has grown to maturity.
Then comes the day of maturity, coming of age—the celebration, the festivities, the coming-of-age day—when the father takes his own child, now mature, puts the toga on him, invests him with the symbols and insignia of authority, to be as the father.
Everyone meeting that adopted son has to reckon with the father. He is, in effect, the father. He has been adopted—or the word really in Hebrews is “placed”—placed in this position of responsibility because of maturity.
We have to come back to that from another standpoint as we go on. What I am saying is that that is the end to which God is working. His beginning is beginning—His beginning is the new birth, bringing in a family.
It is not easy to marshal all this into a good order that you can get hold of, but I think you will figure it out as we go along. Even in the born child there is the Spirit of adoption. The adoption has not come yet, but there is the Spirit of adoption.
As Paul says in Galatians, because we have the Spirit of adoption, we cry, “Abba, Father.” I think once here I told you what that really means. What does Abba mean? Why put the two things together? Is it just two words of different languages—Abba, one language; Father, another? Is it a matter of supererogation? What is it? Oh, no.
Abba is the quality, not the relationship. It is the quality of a child—a little child. When a literal child turns to its father and says, “Dear father,” you have Abba. It is a heart relationship: Abba, dear Father, something very close, very intimate.
It is a mark of spiritual infancy. Of course, that is the first thing we lisp, is it not, when we are really born from above? We do not say, as we kneel, “Almighty, most terrible and fearful God.” Our first lisp is, “Abba, Father.”
That is the beginning of the Christian life. We have the Spirit of adoption, although we have not come to the adoption yet. It is coming. The Spirit of adoption develops us for adoption. That is the whole course of the spiritual life, you see.
I am saying that the final object toward which God the Holy Spirit is working is what is called adoption, sonship. It is governing everything. It is governing everything.
What is God doing? Well, Hebrews will tell you, will it not? All the discipline of the child of God—the children of God—is governed by this one object: sonship.
My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord,
nor faint when thou art reproved of Him;
for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.
To be received, to be placed—the discipline of the Christian life. And what child, or what potential son, is he who has no discipline, whom the father chasteneth not?
The writer uses a very strong word, as you know, about those who are not true sons. They are illegitimate children; they come into a false position if they be without discipline.
There is a tremendous revolt against discipline in this world: the throwing off of authority and all control, all government, all discipline—revolt against it everywhere, especially in youth. Well, the Word says that is how it is going to be at the end: disobedient to parents, and so on.
This does not augur well, does it, for God’s final purpose of a family—not mere infants, but grown sons—for eternal responsibility, governmental position in the kingdom in the ages to come.
The dealings of God with us are in this way. Oh, look again, if you want this illustrated, look again to the history of Zion. What a disciplined thing Zion was, was it not? God was having no nonsense with Zion.
God was tolerating nothing less than His full thought in Zion. When Zion deprived Him of what He had brought Zion into being for, He then set Zion aside, showed that He had no longer interest in that as a thing.
He disciplines Zion. Read again the Psalms; read again the prophets. They are all concerned, as we shall show, with Zion. What discipline! Through the years, and finally the seventy years of exile and captivity—the discipline of the people of Zion.
Can we just look for a moment? As I did say a little while ago, you look at the last chapters of Isaiah, and you will find that they are all concerned with Zion, these final chapters.
Let us look at Isaiah 61. Oh, we are very near the end, are we not, of Isaiah, and we come to 61. You can go to Isaiah 60 if you like:
Arise, shine; for thy light is come,
and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
But go to Isaiah 61:
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me;
because the Lord hath anointed me.
And now again, it is the twofold interpretation. Zion is here, pointing on to the Other One who used these very words and applied them to Himself.
Now Isaiah 62. Cut out the numbers—61, 62. The chapter division is artificial:
For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace,
and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her righteousness go forth as brightness,
and her salvation as a lamp that burneth.
Remember, your amplified rendering: until her right standing with God goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burneth. The nations shall see thy right standing with God, and all kings thy glory. “I will not hold My peace until that happens.”
This is the cry of the prophet. You can go on in these last chapters of Isaiah if you like. Perhaps we should not spend too much time with that. But there it is.
What I am going to come to in that very connection is this: Zion was the burden, the concern, the heartbreak of the prophet. Prophetic ministry only focuses upon Zion. Got that?
Certainly the Old Testament prophets are pointing to something else. The work of true prophetic ministry relates to this divine thought that is enshrined in this word Zion, as we have it in the Letter to the Hebrews: to have this, amongst the nations, this expression of the fullness of Christ in sonship, in a corporate body.
That is the end toward which God is working and carrying out all His work of discipline.
I do want to apply this in a practical way. You see, we, rightly so—perhaps rightly so—are concerned with the work, what we call the Lord’s work. Concerned with evangelism, getting souls saved—nothing wrong with that. That is all right. Do not think I am undervaluing that.
The work of preaching and teaching, and having meetings and conferences, and all that we can compass by this phrase, “the work of the Lord”—we are concerned about that, very much concerned about it.
Perhaps you ministers are very much concerned about your ministry—that is, the next address that you are going to give, and you are filling up your notebooks now. You have got a congregation in view: the work of ministry, of evangelism, or whatever else may come within that term, the work of the Lord.
But you are very much more than anything else concerned with that. You must be in the Word; you must be given to the Word.
My brethren, you are going to forgive me, because I say I am trying to focus this thing right now. We have been having something in these evenings that I consider to be the very essence of the Lord’s interest. It is the same thing that I am talking about, only under another label: the overcomer.
The essence of the divine thought and intention. Brother [unclear] has been laid on his back for many weeks, and we should not have got that if he had not been.
And so you must know that the Lord sometimes sees it is far more economical to take us out of the work, and to keep us in it, to lay us aside from all our busyness for Him, to get the essence. He is after the essential, the intrinsic.
Men are after the big. Pragmatism governs so much of Christian work. If you do not know what I mean by that word, it means: if a thing is successful, then it is right.
That is shallow thinking. A people has got a lot of success—is it right? Many things are apparently very successful, growing, increasing. Everybody says, “My, that is the thing.” Is it? That is pragmatism.
If a thing is successful and popular, and everybody is flocking to it, it must be right. All right—Jesus of Nazareth. How they flocked! They followed. He said, “Ye seek Me, because ye did eat of the loaves and fishes.”
Because they saw the signs and wonders. A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after signs. They flocked for that. But short-lived! Presently they are all forsaking and being sifted out. He is being left alone.
All the marks of success are being withdrawn. From this world standpoint, the last is this: is this a successful movement, with Him hanging on the Cross? Is that pragmatism?
We know today, we know today: no, no, not that. Not because people are flocking here or there, crowding, rushing; not because a thing seems to be gaining much ground, becoming big—not necessarily.
Wait for that. Wait through the tribulation, and then you will get a great multitude which no man can number. But that is not pragmatism in this earthly sense. You see what I mean?
The discipline—the discipline of being sifted down from the husk to the kernel, from the chaff to the wheat. And wheat corn is bruised, says the prophet Isaiah. Wheat corn is bruised.
He is after the true, genuine grain. And the constitution of that is something that is being ground into powder, being bruised. Does this explain something to you in your own history? It is very true. It is the Word, you see.
Therefore, there is this section in Hebrews about sonship: the chastening of the Lord. Chastening of the Lord. And chastening, for every one of us, may mean something different.
What would be chastening to you would not be to me, but what would be chastening to me would be to you. You can get away with lots of things, but the Lord knows where to find you out. You cannot get away.
I might be able to force myself through some things by sheer natural soul-force. I do not know whether that is true now, but I might be. Perhaps in the past it has been true. But the Lord knows just how to chasten me, and that is chastening for me, and perhaps for no one else—that thing.
Oh, do not just bring that word chastening into a narrow definition. It is the thing that gets us, individually finds us out, in which, to me, there is real discipline.
There are some nice, very patient, forbearing, long-suffering temperaments, you know, and they can be spoken to, treated, and they do not ruffle a bit; they just go on. But with someone else, the Lord brings a rather awkward person into the home. My word, that person is disciplined! You see what I mean?
Chastening discipline is what it means to us individually. But whatever that is, you may say, “Well, why does the Lord do this with me? Look, He does not do that with all these other people. They are getting away with it.”
Until I went into the house of the Lord, and saw things from His standpoint: the Lord is dealing with me, and letting all these other people go in that way, but He has got me.
Do I revolt and say, “It is not fair. The Lord is not fair. He does not do this with other people”? Oh, no, this will not do. He is focusing upon this end—this sonship matter, for adoption, for eternal responsibility.
Well, get hold of that, and we will go on, with Zion again in the background. Let us pick out one more thing about it.
I expect you well know, of course you do, that in the very blood and constitution of a true Israelite, a true Hebrew, a true Jew, there is a consciousness or sense of destiny.
“We are the chosen people, and we are chosen for God’s purpose and intention.” It is not something that we have taken on as an ideology, as a philosophy of our existence; it is in our blood. They cannot get away from it. It is themselves, is it not?
Like that, a true citizen and child of Zion has this inwrought sense and consciousness of destiny.
It is the reason, the ground, why they have been able to suffer so much, why they could go through their persecutions and survive, why they could endure so much. It is not because they make up their minds, not just the strength of their will. It is something born in them, part of their very being.
It is elemental to them that they are a people of destiny. They hold on to it; they cling to it. They are still at the Wailing Wall. It is born out of this.
All right, well, that belongs to the “not.” Here we are with the “but”: “Ye are come unto Mount Zion.” We have come to Zion in this sense.
There is, by right, if it is a true citizenship in heaven, if one was born there, if it is a true child of God, something about such a true child of God that, although they may not define it, they may not know even the Scriptures about it, within them they have this sense of destiny.
There is some purpose governing our salvation. There is some meaning beyond our present comprehension for which we have been called. There is something in us, in our very constitution, that says, “Called according to His purpose.” A sense of destiny.
This is essential to Zion. This is what the New Testament is all about, and this is what this Letter to the Hebrews is all about. This is true sonship.
We do not like these ideas. We do not like this language. But, you see, with the Jews—the true Jews—there was this element in them of selectiveness. You like that language, do you?
Something separate, something different, something other; something not general, but particular. The inwrought consciousness of being called and chosen for something which we call destiny.
And only that will keep us going through the discipline. Only that will keep us going through the suffering, the adversity, the perplexity.
Have you not been, as I have more than once, and more than many times, at the point where you would have despaired? Left to yourself, you would have given up and gone out, taken another way, and even washed your hands of Christianity. Have you never been pressed?
But if you have not, all right, thank the Lord. But there is such pressure, you know. And even this man, with all his wonderful experience and knowledge of the Lord, came to a point where he said, “I was pressed out of measure. I despaired even of life.”
Oh, you despaired? You were always telling people not to despair. You were writing about the God of hope, and you tell me you despaired? You tell people to be in the ascendant, on top, and you say, “I was pressed beyond my measure”? Yes, all right.
Perhaps you do not know all that. You know a little of it. But the children of Zion are held by something. They are held by something.
It is this indefinable something which we call destiny. There is a hold on us that will not let us go. There is a grip upon us that, even when we say we are going, we cannot do it.
Even when we come to the depths of despondency, we do not go out after all. We do not. That is all. We decided to, but we do not.
No, it is not something to analyse and put into a system of teaching or doctrine, but it is some deep reality that is holding us. We are children of destiny, called according to His purpose.
Oh, I would like you, if you want a little Bible study, to go through and underline that word according—according, according, according to. What a word that is with Paul.
Well, according to something, Zion was elect, chosen, separated, made distinct, because of destiny—its great purpose. And there was that in its very constitution, in the very blood, a sense: there is something beyond unto which we have been called.
I am going back to the prophets, you see. The prophets were supremely concerned with Zion, just because of Zion’s destiny. Oh, how burdened they were about Zion.
And, of course, in their case, their burden and their concern for Zion was the recovery of Zion. Zion had lost that. Zion had ceased to be what it was called to be, what God intended. It had lost it.
Now, the prophets are all concerned with the recovery of Zion and Zion’s testimony. That is prophetic ministry. I think we open up another hour or two, could we not?
“Oh, prophetic—what do you mean? Foretelling?” Foretelling events? All right, if you like to have that, okay. But the real essence of prophetic ministry is the recovery of the fullness of Jesus Christ which has been lost.
It is a recovery and reinstating the testimony of Jesus in the church. Well, that is our evenings, is it not? That is true prophetic ministry.
Do not bring prophetic ministry down to this from that, to something else. The gift of prophecy—what is the gift of prophecy? What is the gift of prophecy? Only foretelling? It may be that, or it may never be that, and still be the gift of prophecy.
The gift, the function, the anointing of prophecy is the recovery of the full testimony of Jesus—the recovery of all that Zion means as the fullness of Christ.
And any ministry that does not have that as its objective—clear, strong, and definite—is not prophetic ministry.
Well now, we come near the end of this morning. Again then, Zion is the embodiment of the spiritual values of Jesus Christ. Underline that word spiritual, then. Test everything, test everything, by spiritual values.
Not from the standpoint of pragmatism at all; from the standpoint of its spiritual value, which means its eternal value.
The ministry of any brother—my own or anyone else’s—is not going to be judged by the number of conventions or meetings at which I speak, and the amount of Bible teaching that I give, or he gives. It is never going to be judged by that. Understand that.
You may have your diaries full of engagements, preaching engagements. You may be on the way to becoming a very, very busy Bible teacher. You may be very busy, and you may have no time for anything else.
And yet, with it all, the sum total is not going to be judged, dear friends, by how much you have done in that way. It is going to be judged by its eternal spiritual value.
What the essential spiritual value is when this life is gone, when I am gone, when you are gone, when all the teachers are gone, and we arrive in heaven and discover what was taken up then in our lifetime and is there.
The things which are seen are temporal;
but the things which are not seen are eternal.
The preachers, the teachers, and the conferences—the things which are seen are temporal. But the things which are not seen are eternal. That is the standpoint of Zion: the essential spiritual value of everything.
Now, you dear creatures, really burdened in heart that every bit of your ministry shall have a spiritual, eternal value—not the address, not the address merely.
A principal of a theological college, but a real man of God, said to his students, “Do not be concerned with the winning of your sermon, but be concerned with the winning of the people.”
Meaning, of course, their spiritual life. No, it is not whether my address is successful, accepted, or not. It is: what is the spiritual, lasting value from an eternity and heaven standpoint of anything?
Surely our ambition ought to be that, when it is all over here, when it is all over—there are no more conferences down here, no more ministries and addresses down here, and we all gather above—our ambition is to find there people who say, “Look here, I would not be here but for what the Lord did in me through your ministry.”
That is it, is it not? Oh, focus upon that. But Zion is, let me repeat, the embodiment of spiritual value—not a place, not a sect, not anything temporal. That is not Zion.
No, it is the concentration of intrinsic spiritual values of Jesus Christ. That is Zion.
On what note shall I finish this morning? Well, with all that in view, of course the right note would be God’s jealousy for Zion.
The prophets shared the jealousy of God over Zion. The Lord said:
I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy,
and I am jealous for her with great wrath.
Where is God’s heart? Not on any temporal expression of the old Zion—that is the “not.” But God’s jealousy, God’s concern, God’s wrath, relates to the true, intrinsic spiritual values of His Son, Jesus Christ.
He is focused upon that. He will look after those spiritual values. If we go after the spiritual values, that ought to comfort us, and ministers especially.
You see, people may repudiate, may discredit, may go away and leave us. All right, that is discipline—pretty hard. But wait a while.
Perhaps in their own lifetime they will come back, or they will confess: “I got something from you which has been my real salvation. I did not recognise it at the time, but I know now that what you were saying, what you were doing, was the thing which has become my deliverance, my salvation, in the time of trouble.”
God will look after the spiritual values if you are concerned more with spiritual values than with building up something big down here. That is where His jealousy is.
Sooner or later, His roar will be shown from Zion, in that sense. The enemies will have to bow; they will have to surrender.
Every knee shall bow,
and every tongue confess.
All the enemies of Christ are going to be very much humbled. God is going to roar out of Zion. But let us be quite sure that is Zion in this sense. Ye are come to that.
And leave it now for now. The Lord interpret, we pray.
We do pray that, Lord, this very hour may be used by Thee to produce those essential eternal values. Let it not just be an hour with ministry, more or less appreciated. May there be something wrought, something planted, put inside us constitutionally, that shall appear in heaven and in glory as the divine fiat, the Word of God, which did something.
So help us. Seal this time, then, in that way, forgiving all mistakes and errors and faults in the human, and take charge of Thine own interests, for Thy name’s sake. Amen.