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