The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him.
John, to the seven churches that are in Asia.
That which thou seest, write in a book, and send it to the seven churches: unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamum, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.
—Revelation 1:11
To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:
These things saith He that holdeth the seven stars in His right hand, He that walketh in the midst of the seven golden lampstands:I know thy works, and thy toil and patience, and that thou canst not bear evil men, and didst try them that call themselves apostles, and they are not, and didst find them false;
and thou hast patience, and didst bear for My name’s sake, and hast not grown weary.But I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love.
Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I come to thee, and will move thy lampstand out of its place, except thou repent.But this thou hast, that thou hatest the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God.
—Revelation 2:1-7
We have been led at this time to be occupied with Revelation, or the unveiling of Jesus Christ. We begin again by taking note of the fact that this book has that as its title and as its very comprehensive content.
Here is the book which reveals Him inclusively and comprehensively, as coming forth at last to settle all those issues which have lain beneath the spiritual conflict of this universe through all the ages.
There has been a mighty conflict in process. This has had earthly repercussions. All that has been taking place here has been related to a great conflict in heaven.
The issue in all that long-drawn-out and many-sided conflict has been none other than the issue of God’s intention as to the government of this earth from heaven: His purpose, in the first place, concerning His Son as the appointed Lord of lords, King of kings, supreme ruler in heaven and earth; and, in the second place, the eternally chosen and elected vehicle of that government, which we now know as the church.
These two things, as two parts of one whole, have been behind and have been the occasion of all this tremendous turmoil and conflict through the ages. This book is a revelation of Jesus Christ, coming forth to settle that issue once and for all, and finally.
In this book, we see the processes of that settlement—how it is headed up in different connections and relationships, a steady progressive movement until, at last:
The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ.
The settlement—the issue—is settled, and He is established with His church forever in an unchallengeable supremacy. Well, that is the revelation of Jesus Christ in very few words.
Now, for three sessions we have been considering the introduction to that. First, in noting how everything in this book is consummatory: it gathers up everything from the beginning of the Bible all the way through. There are some four hundred allusions to the Old Testament. It is very comprehensive, and quite clearly it is the bringing of all things to consummation.
Then we went on to contemplate the two aspects of the Lord Jesus as presented in Revelation 1, as foundational to all that is to follow. First of all, His personal victory:
I am the First and the Last, and the Living One; and I became dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.
—Revelation 1:17-18
His victory. We spent quite a lot of time seeing what that victory was and how it was accomplished.
Then we went to the second aspect of this foundation: His person—that is, His character. This matchless description of Himself, which we have in Revelation 1. We saw that it is upon the basis not only of what He has done, but of what He is in His intrinsic character, nature, and worth, that He has the right to decide anything—to judge either church, or nations, or the devil himself.
His authority is based upon what He is—His real character. That is always a law with God. Power rests upon what a person is more than upon what a person does. With God, a matter of authority, dominion, government, trust, and responsibility always depends upon the character of the person in view.
With the Lord Jesus, that is perfectly evident. He triumphed because of what He was, and therefore He is in the right for judgment of all others, because no one can ever point to anything in Him upon which Satan could fasten and say, “That is a contradiction.”
Again, we spent time upon the character of the Lord Jesus and the challenge of that character to everything.
But when we have said all that we can say—and a great deal more could be said about Revelation 1—all that is but preparatory to what follows. It is as though the Spirit of God had laid down a foundation for everything that is now going to transpire, as though He had said, “Now, this is our ground for everything; and it is upon that, and from that, that we move to everything else.”
Notice that the first movement of the Spirit, here described symbolically as the seven Spirits of God—meaning, undoubtedly, the Holy Spirit in sevenfold expression—is toward the church: to deal with the church inclusively and comprehensively upon the basis that He Himself has laid down.
That is a thing that we must bear in mind, and which will become more and more apparent as we go on.
Now, if Revelation 2 and 3, which contain this first movement toward the church, have any relation to our own time, then surely with them we are in the presence of the most solemn and momentous issue.
What is taken up in the first place, where the church is concerned, is nothing less than the very testimony of Jesus itself in this universe. The testimony of Jesus—that is the supreme and ultimate thing for all history and for all realms, seeing what that testimony is: the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ everywhere.
That is the testimony of Jesus. And that matter is the first thing that governs the Spirit in moving toward the church.
Then, of course, there follows, quite clearly, the patent conclusion that has to be drawn: the church’s responsibility for that testimony. It is not something detached and unrelated, abstract and apart in itself. The church was chosen in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world to be the vessel and vehicle of the testimony of Jesus.
What is here in the second place is the great and honourable responsibility of the church in relation to the greatest issue in this universe: the divinely appointed place for Jesus Christ in the whole system of things.
These two things lead on, as is made perfectly clear, to the ultimate government of the world from heaven by Christ through the church. Those three things are not small things.
If that is what is here, then I am justified in saying that, when we begin with this first movement of the Spirit to the church, we are faced with the most solemn and momentous matters.
And, taking it with all our human insignificance, smallness, and weakness—all that we are, that we would be, and are not, but would be—we are a part of the church. Therefore, we must not think too objectively at this time.
When the Spirit says to the churches, the Spirit is speaking to us here, in this place, concerning these very matters in this time. What is here, then, is for the enlightenment of the church as to the meaning of things that happen.
Dear friends, things are happening, and things are going to happen. That is what it says right at the beginning. Things are happening, and things are going to happen. We are in the midst of these happenings now.
There are movements of tremendous significance, very potent in this creation, with an impact of spiritual forces upon this earth. A lot of things are happening, and a lot of developments are in process. We shall see more and more of these things happening.
The important thing is that we understand the meaning of these happenings. It is a tremendous thing to understand what is happening to us—to be conscious that things are happening to us, perhaps happening to us spiritually.
In our spiritual experience and life, we are conscious of being taken into and through things that are difficult to bear and to understand. “I do not know what it is that is happening to us. Why are we involved in this stress, this pressure, this tension, this conflict?”
If we are really God’s people, going on with God and putting Christ in His place, we are involved in something. Every one of us personally is affected by it. It strikes upon us individually in some way, always.
It strikes upon every relationship of our lives—upon our family, upon our home, upon our business, upon our relationships with other believers. It strikes upon the whole question of spiritual fellowship. It strikes upon the work of the Lord; it strikes upon the local companies.
Yes, things are happening. It is like that. We are involved in something. There are great spiritual movements on foot.
I repeat: it is of tremendous importance that the people of God know the meaning of what is happening—why we are passing this way, what the Lord is trying to do with us, what the Lord means by what is taking place.
Yes, it is tremendously important that we have understanding of these things.
“These things will happen.” That is what is here in these messages. The Lord is moving in, so to speak, and is bringing everything to some particular issue.
That is a very impressive thing, you know: that the Lord seems to be concentrating upon one specific issue.
I do not know how you felt when I read again that first message to the church at Ephesus. I will tell you how I felt as I read it:
I know thy works, and thy toil and patience, and that thou canst not bear evil men, and didst try them that call themselves apostles, and they are not, and didst find them false.
Remember, the same writer, John, who had responsibility in the church at Ephesus, had written in his letter:
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
—1 John 4:1
They had done it. “Thou didst try them that call themselves apostles, and they are not, and didst find them false.”
Then again:
Thou hast patience, and didst bear for My name’s sake, and hast not grown weary.
What more do you want? What more can you ask? You want more than that? You are very exacting. What can You expect of people more than that? What are You asking for?
Is that how you feel? You have to react like that in order to get to the heart of it all. They have given You all that. You have got all that, and that means a lot, you know. It means a lot for any church in a day of persecution, as in this case.
They have got all that. What more can You want? What more can You have? And, with all that, You come back to say, “With all that, I am on the point of removing your lampstand out of its place.”
Something, with all that, which, not being present, does not justify My preserving you. Is that not terrible, in one way? That ought to drive us to our knees. What is it that, with all that, is essential to our continuation as vessels for God?
We have to come back to that before we are finished. I say it is important that we understand why such people can be dealt with by the Lord in condemnation, yet in correction, with an effort at encouragement and confirmation to get at something else that is essential.
Dear friends, there is one thing that such a contemplation and consideration will bring home to you and to me: the Lord is never satisfied with the comparative. He must have the absolute.
The Lord will never ultimately settle down to accept something good—something good. He is going to have the best.
A church may be good in many respects. A group of the Lord’s people may have many commendable things, even things which the Lord commends. But, in the final analysis, His attitude is: “A good thing, or many good things, is not what I set out to have at the beginning. I set out to have something not good, but the best; not comparative, but absolute; not partial, but complete.”
That, I say, is a conclusion to which we are driven if we read this rightly. We have to face that.
Now then, here we have to answer one question: Do these messages to the seven churches in Asia have an application to the church today?
Of course, there are schools of interpretation, to which I referred earlier. I will not even mention their technical names. There is one school that holds and concludes that what is here in this book was confined to the time of its writing. It was just a matter of contemporary history. It had to do wholly with the churches in Asia as they were at that time.
Very well. If so, it may be interesting to read it, to know what happened and how things happened. We get over all the difficulties that way.
Then there is the next school that interprets all this as having commenced in late apostolic times and being spread over to the time of the coming of the Lord. That is, all these seven churches are like seven phases of history which fill up the gap between the two comings of the Lord.
Then there is the third school, which holds that it all belongs to the end—to the end of the age and afterward. All this is going to come up as the day of the Lord draws near, and it is all going to be made clear and settled in the last phase of this age, and then what follows.
I would say here, not by way of convenience or compromise, that they all hold truth. They all hold truth, and they all hold error—or, if that is too strong, they all hold weaknesses and flaws. But I am not going to discuss them. That is not the point at all.
What I am after is this: if this is the Word of the Lord, if this has come from God, if this is the Word of the Holy Spirit, you can confine it to no particular time. It ranges over all time in the principles which it emphasizes.
You are not dealing here, ultimately and conclusively, with anything that belongs to any one fragment of time. You are dealing with the thoughts of God which govern all time.
Wherever and whenever you have those things that are found in these churches, which are condemned by the Lord, at any time in history, they are still condemned. Condemnation does not belong to one place or one time. These are principles of universal application.
Wherever you find, and whenever you find, that which the Lord here commends and is seeking to have, that is an eternal something which encompasses all time. I hold that as the answer to all interpretations: we are not dealing with mere history, locality, and phases in time. We are dealing with eternal principles.
I am certain that is the sum of the significance of this book. We have pointed out that it goes right back to the eternal counsels of God and to what took place then—what He decided, and what has been disputed, challenged, and fought over through all the ages.
Now, on the threshold of the ages of the ages, that is being settled as much in Ephesus as anywhere else, and the same everywhere else as in Ephesus. These are not issues for some period or some place.
We are in it as much as Ephesus in apostolic times was in it. This is to us because the Word of the Lord is forever. He speaks, and when He speaks, He expresses an eternal mind and a universal thought.
This book clearly encompasses all time—past, present, and what remains of the future. It does so in one inclusive respect: this issue of the utterness, not the comparativeness; not the partialness.
The issue is the utterness of the place of the Lord Jesus. That is the truth. That was the issue for Ephesus, no doubt about it. We shall see that as we look into this message.
It is the full revelation of Jesus—the full revelation of Jesus. This is no partial revelation of Him. He is here in fullness, and that is the challenge.
Churches are not being challenged upon something about Jesus, or upon some even true part of Jesus. They are challenged upon the fullness of Christ. The fullness of Christ—that is the issue, and that is where we are in this book.
So I repeat: this book holds principles for all time.
He is heading up, we have said, toward a final conclusion all these outstanding questions and controversies through the ages, heading on at last and saying, “Now we are going to settle this, and settle it forever.” And where does He begin? He begins with the church.
Rightly so. In the right order of God, He begins with the church. He cannot pass to the nations, calling them to account, until He has dealt with the church. He cannot even dispossess the evil powers of their place and cast them out until He has done with the church.
There is a tremendous principle involved in that. Without giving a mystical interpretation to this—that is not my intention at all, because I believe this is historical in a wide sense—nevertheless, the principle does apply in this way: you and I will never see the evil powers and the evil one cast out of our realm while there is something wrong with us before the Lord.
Is it true? If he has some rightful foothold in us, there is no hope of his being cast out. You have got to take the ground from him before you can do that. That is true in principle.
In dealing with any life where Satan has really got power, you have got to get down to know why he has got that power in that life. There is something there that is of himself, and it has got to be removed before that life can be set free.
That is the meaning of our Lord’s own word:
The prince of the world cometh: and he hath nothing in Me.
—John 14:30
Hence, the prince of this world is cast out. See the basis? It is like that.
How can you deal with the world in judgment, or with the great kingdom of Satan—which will be dealt with in the third place—until the church is put right? For presently it will be the accuser of the brethren who is cast down. But that will not happen until the ground of his accusation has been dealt with in the brethren.
You have got it? His is not a physical power. This is not just objective power. He is a spiritual power. His strength and his hold rest upon a condition—by condition.
Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not; and do thou, when once thou hast turned again, establish thy brethren.
—Luke 22:31-32
Why did Satan have his request granted to sift Simon Peter like wheat? And he did it—mark you, he did it very thoroughly. But because the Lord saw there was something in Simon Peter that had got to be dealt with, something over which Satan had a right.
The Lord dealt with that, and you have an authoritative Simon Peter after that—a man in spiritual ascendancy indeed, who cares for neither men nor devils. That was not the original Simon.
Do you see the working of this law? Power rests upon character.
If the church is God’s eternally chosen vessel for the administration of the kingdom of God by Jesus Christ, it is going to come to a spiritual position which justifies that government and that control. Hence, the Lord must begin with, and be thorough and exact with, the church.
He will not just accept good things and sit down satisfied. The ultimate issue is bound up with these messages—no less an issue than that.
If we are called, dear friends—we call to mind the wonder and amazement of it, though perhaps familiarity has lost some of its impress upon us—we are called into fellowship with Jesus Christ to take the place that the principalities, powers, and world rulers of this darkness now hold.
It is not so difficult to understand if you think about it. This world is governed spiritually. There is no doubt about this. It is a spiritual government that is behind all that is happening here.
Even men who make no profession whatever of being spiritual, or Christian in any particular sense—who never give us anything to indicate that they are born-again people and know the Lord—nevertheless see through and know that there are forces of evil behind the movements in this world. They say it. They speak of it.
And so it is. Back of all this there is spiritual government of this world: the world rulers of this darkness, principalities and powers, and hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenlies.
The ultimate vision of God’s purpose realized is the church, in the symbolic presentation of the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city, taking that place and occupying that place. It is difficult for our minds to move from literal symbolism to spiritual meaning, but that is what it means.
The church is a heavenly body with a heavenly calling to occupy a heavenly position—a heavenly government with Christ in the ages to come. If I have not misread my Bible, that is what the church is called to, and that is what we are called to.
You cannot have such a calling and such a vocation, such a divine intention, without the Lord being very exact—very exact—and, as I say again, being unprepared to accept what is merely comparative.
Well, here we have the seven messages, and I have not got to Ephesus yet. But here we have the sevenfold symbolism and representation. We must note, first of all, seven churches in Asia.
Yes, but there were plenty more churches in Asia besides these. All the churches in Asia are not mentioned when you have mentioned these. Were the others all right? Did they not need mention? Was there nothing wrong with them? Is that what it means?
Why seven? Why select just seven?
Well, because seven is always a representative number, that is all. Seven is the number which symbolizes spiritual completeness. It represents spiritual completeness, or fullness.
So these seven, selected here, are lifted out, so to speak, to be representative of all others—as the whole church. What the Lord says to the seven, He says to the whole.
It is here a representation of the whole church. That is all that is meant by selecting seven: to embody a complete expression of spiritual principle.
If that is true, then it is more than Asia. It is the whole church. What was in Asia, inside of Asia, in these seven, is only taken as a kind of sounding board or platform for the church universal at all times.
These are united in the right hand of Him who walks up and down in the midst of the golden lampstands.
United in His right hand—He holdeth them in His right hand. You notice, He holdeth them in His right hand. The right hand is another symbolic idea: it is the place, firstly, of honour; then of authority; and then of strength.
He holds them all there in His right hand, in His authority and in His strength. The word “holdeth” is used here in a very strong way in the Greek, different from other words which mean merely to have. Here it is what we might call, “He has a grip on this.”
He has a grip on this. He is in charge, in possession. He has not let go what He intended. He is not regarding this loosely, carelessly, indifferently, or weakly.
This whole matter of the testimony of the church and the churches is with Him something very definite, very positive. He holds them in His right hand, in His honour.
The golden lampstands. The golden lampstands—that is essentially a divine idea.
As we said earlier, gold in the Old Testament is always the symbol of that which is most precious among metals. When you speak of gold there, you always have the idea of preciousness—something that counts.
Here is, in the churches, that which is precious to Him; that which is precious to God; that which is of intrinsic value; that which is incorruptible.
We tried to set this forth in a fuller way in a book, The Gold of the Sanctuary, but that is it. What is He after? What is His thought about the church and the churches? What is His thought about us as companies of the Lord’s people?
His thought is that there is where we are—or there ought to be where we are—something of transcendent preciousness to Himself and to the Father; something of real value. Real value. It is that He is after.
These symbolic representations of lampstands of gold simply say this: here and there, in the intention of God, there shall be a representation and an embodiment of that which is supremely precious to God.
If it is like that, then of course that will explain a very great deal—why the enemy would like the gold to become dim, why there is such tremendous conflict over the purity of any corporate expression of the church.
It is purity that he seeks to corrupt. To corrupt—to spoil the fine gold, and rob the Lord of the preciousness.
Oh, let us be very much given to this. See to it that, so far as we are concerned, we take this responsibility.
I am not one of those who can conclude that the angels of the churches are the single ministers of the church. I do not believe that, because it contradicts so much that is in the New Testament. But I believe that the angel of the church is simply the principle, or focal point, of responsibility.
We are all responsible people in the church, and we are all called to take responsibility for the church. So I say, may the Lord help us, every one, to take responsibility where we are and where we are concerned, to see that there is something precious for the Lord.
Gatherings and companies are not merely preaching places or teaching places, with a lot of truth and head knowledge of divine things. Rather, in character, there should be something very precious to the Lord.
Could it be said, “There is something there that is very precious to the Lord”? If that were spoiled, if that were lost, something of real value to the Lord would go. It must be like that, dear friends.
Very practical. But, you see, this is what the Lord is after: intrinsic value, not comparative value; not the size of things at all; not what is external, but intrinsic values—the gold refined in the fire, that which is precious to the Lord.
Seven golden lampstands. That is a better translation than “candlesticks,” because a candle burns itself away, whereas the lamp is run by a supply—an endless supply—from outside of itself.
However, that is by the way. The function of the lampstand is the point. What is it? Of course, obviously, it is light.
By the Holy Spirit it is qualified: it is light, but it is light by the power, the illumination, the energy, and the resource of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit’s testimony in the heavenly place, where there is a company, small or large, of the Lord’s people—light is there.
I cannot emphasize the importance of this enough, although it seems so obvious. This ought really to concern our hearts; it ought to be a burden upon our hearts.
Where we are as the Lord’s people together, however few, people should be able to see Christ. People should really see Christ because we are there.
Is not that searching and challenging? It is just a matter of seeing the Lord Jesus.
I am not speaking of seeing a lot of people going to meetings in a certain place, hearing certain things, and wondering what is happening amongst them. But you meet those people—you meet more than those people.
If you have any idea of God at all, or of what God ought to be like, if you have any information as to God’s character and nature, you see it in those people. You meet it in those people. You have got it right in their very presence.
That is what it is. That is the essential function of the lamp. It is not an ornament. It is not a cold, dead something. It is not a form and a shape. It is a living light—a living light.
That is what the church is here for, and the churches are but local representations of the church. It is that there, where the Lord’s people are, there is found that which is Christ—just what is Christ.
Yes, these are the seven golden lampstands. I must stop there, I think, before we come to Ephesus after all.
But that is enough to search our hearts. It begins to show us; it begins to lead us to this thing that the Lord cannot do without.
With all the works, the labour, the patience, the conscientiousness, the integrity, the hatred of evil men, the testing of people’s professions, the judging that things are right and wrong—oh, there is something intrinsic which is more than all, without which the Lord cannot be satisfied and the vessel is not justified in its continuance.
That is a very solemn thought. May the Word this afternoon provoke us to this.
I would close this part by saying again that, as with Ephesus, so with us all, there can be no substituting of something good for the best.
I am sure that searches us here in this place. There may be a lot of good things. There may be many good things, and we may be doing a lot of good things.
But remember: there is a full thing for which God brought us into being—a full thing for which He brought us into being. He will never, never allow anything less than that. He is going to hold to that at last.
“Why did I bring you into being? This—for that? Something else, quite good? Yes, nothing wrong with that at all, quite good. Is that all? Is that all?”
That is His interrogation here:
Repent, and do the first works.
—Revelation 2:5
We shall have more light on this as we actually look into this message to the church in Ephesus. Lord, hold our hearts.