I would like, for the moment, to focus upon the twenty-eighth verse of Ezekiel 1:
As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain,
so was the appearance of the brightness round about.
This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.
The appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. That fragment seems to me to sum up all these prophecies. Not only does it particularly apply to the first chapter, but it can be taken all the way through. Everything in these prophecies is governed by what is there: the glory of the Lord.
There is a very practical and immediate relationship between ourselves here and this word—this word and ourselves. I am quite sure, let me say, that most of you, at any rate, have a deep and strong sense of the need that the Lord should do a new thing.
I think that is very widespread. But that new thing may be given different interpretations. In the whole evangelical world, there is much prayer and talk about revival. That perhaps is only another way of expressing the sense of need for the Lord to move in a new way and to do new things.
Others would put it in other ways. Nevertheless, there it is everywhere amongst Christians. Wherever we go, the Lord must do something. The Lord must move. The Lord must do a new thing. The Lord must take a fresh step.
And those of you who are here this morning are not less burdened with that concern than others. It is our prayer and our sense, surely.
We need to be very intelligent and understanding about this matter. The Lord has His ways and His means, and we need to know something about them if we are going to be in line with the Lord in any movement that He purposes to take.
That is why I say this word is very appropriate to this situation. Whenever God has moved with a view to a further step in His divine purpose, He has focused that movement by bringing His people—bringing the instrument, in the first place, and then, through such an instrument, His people—to a fresh apprehension of His glory.
That is a statement which will bear investigation and confirmation. God’s one end in all things is glory. Make no mistake about that. You want to know what God is after, moving toward, in all things? That embraces countless details—in every realm, personal life and corporate life, in the nations, in every direction and connection. The answer is that God’s end is glory.
And if that is so, it is to be noted that He sets and establishes that principle always at the outset of every movement. He puts it there as the thing which is going to govern that movement, that step, or whatever it is He is about to undertake. It is going to be governed by that end which He brings to every new beginning.
That may sound a little difficult for the moment, but take some instances.
We will all agree that when God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, that was a new movement of God. There is no doubt about that. Clearly, it cuts and defines a breaking into human history on the part of God with something new, or a further stage in the divine programme, in view.
Stephen tells us that the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in the Chaldees. The God of glory—the end toward which God was moving was glory: His own glory in a people, to be manifested among the nations. And so, as the God of glory, He appeared unto Abraham. He put the glory there as the principle, the law, the basis upon which He was taking that step and was going to follow it through.
Centuries later, according to what had been revealed to Abraham, the Lord brought that people out of Egypt and brought them to Sinai. There a fresh step was taken, changing them from a rabble crowd, an unconstituted and unorganised mass, into a corporate nation.
That was the new movement at Sinai. By the law, the testimony, and the regulations given in the mount, the people were constituted. And it was done in glory. Moses went into the mount, saw the God of glory, and came down with that glory on his face.
Again, God had put the principle of everything at the beginning of His new movement. He was moving on the pathway of glory.
A further stage in the divine plan was reached in the days of David and Solomon. The temple was indeed a development of God’s designs in representation.
And it is all in glory. The issue there is glory. The glory of the Lord filled the place. It was a glorious time with the glory of the Lord; it was a glorious place. All this is just enunciating and preserving this principle: God is moving all the time with this governing thought—glory.
But we are told that the day came when the glory departed from Jerusalem—went away. We know why. And that brings us to the prophets of recovery, and to this prophet Ezekiel in particular.
Here, at the opening of these prophecies, on the day when the glory was eclipsed amongst the Lord’s people, as it lifted up and departed from Jerusalem, the Lord in glory appeared to Ezekiel. This is the likeness of the appearance of the glory of the Lord.
It is impressive that this comes right at the beginning of the prophecies, is it not? Now everything that follows is going to be the outworking of that law of glory. God is concerned, and in these various ways He is showing His concern, for the end—that glory should be reached.
You have that in the Old Testament. Come into the New, and everybody will agree that the incarnation is a new movement of God—the birth of the Lord Jesus into this world. That is indeed a great step forward in the divine programme.
Therefore, it is accompanied with glory—heavenly glory:
Glory to God in the highest.
We have sung it in our hymn this morning. Glory marked the inception of this new mighty movement of God, because the end of that thing was indeed going to be glory. He had come for the recovery of the glory of God in this earth. That is heaven’s song.
And we move on still. Again, we will all agree that the day of Pentecost is another great step forward in the plan of God. God is moving on. This is a clear mark in that progress of God through the ages. Pentecost was a step of God from heaven.
And what glory—God’s glory! John tells us quite clearly that the coming of the Holy Spirit was upon the basis of Jesus being glorified. He said that the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified, implying that when the Spirit was given, Jesus was glorified. It was on that ground.
You see, God is moving on this all the way along.
So we could go on. We think of the individual instruments of God’s new movements. We will agree that a new movement was in hand through Peter—no doubt about it, a real new movement. Although Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, we must remember that Peter opened the door both to Jews and Gentiles for the new dispensation, in Jerusalem and in Caesarea.
So mighty a new movement! But Peter had his ministry set in this glory. He tells us, as we have been seeing these days, that he was with Him in the holy mount; they beheld His glory. That had been a tremendously dynamic thing in Peter’s life, no doubt about it.
The Holy Spirit interpreted everything to him. On the day of Pentecost, he got a new Bible because he got a new light, and heaven had opened. Heaven had opened upon this great principle of glory, which accounted for Peter’s ministry, Peter’s work, and Peter’s endurance to the end.
That is perfectly clear in the case of John, who was with him for so long as his fellow apostle and coworker in Jerusalem, at least. Again, we recognise, when we come to the beginning of the book of Revelation, that we are in the presence of a new movement—a new movement of recovery, of the glory which had become so limited and obscured in the churches.
The Lord came to John in vision in Patmos, and it was such a glorious thing. The visions were so glorious that more than once John was down in utter prostration before the Lord and had to be lifted up, helped to rise, because of the overwhelming impact of the visions of glory.
And you are all anticipating that I am going to bring Paul into it. I just say this again: that this wonderful ministry, so full, so rich, so glorious, was all born in the day when he saw the glory on the Damascus road. It came out of that. The Lord put the glory there—that is the point.
On every occasion when He was going to move again with some new step in His purpose, all these things which I have mentioned are stages of God in His age-long purpose. Every one of them is based upon an apprehension—a new apprehension—of the glory of the Lord by those who were concerned.
So their ministry became, in the case of prophets and apostles, really a ministry of the greatness and glory of the Lord. And as those to whom they ministered saw that, they became a people with tremendous significance in this world.
It was this apprehension of the glory of Christ that gave character, meaning, power, and value to their being here in this world. All this, then, has but one meaning: God’s end and God’s object is glory, and everything that He does is governed by that.
Now, dear friends, this is something that must really take hold of us, and of which we must take hold.
Oh, if there is to be real issue from our being together, it should be this: that the glory of the Lord should take hold of us, or that we should become mastered by this truth—that in all things, in all things down to the minutest thing in our life under the hand of God, He intends that to work out for glory.
God in everything is working with glory in view. Do you believe that? Yes, you believe it as a statement, as a truth. Perhaps you believe it in your heart, but it is not always easy, you know, to believe that. It is not always easy because we just do not see how it can be. Indeed, what we do see convinces us that anything but glory can come out of this.
Oh, that the Lord would just grip us with this—grip me, grip you with this—individually and as companies of His people, where we are. What He is doing, what He is allowing, is under the control of this one law and principle: it is going to be for His glory, or He intends it so to be.
That is what He has in mind and will do, if He is not finally thwarted in His purpose. Well, everything may seem to contradict this.
We come to the prophecies of Ezekiel, and there is plenty that seems to contradict this glory. You cannot get away from it. You just cannot get away from the fact that this is in the first chapter. It is not reserved to the end; it is there at the outset of all that is in this book.
There is some tale of judgments and woe and terrors. You are not left to wade through it all and then, at last, find that God comes out with things in His own hands and manages to survive. You are told right at the very beginning that everything is governed by God’s glory. Everything that is going to happen, everything that is going to be said right until the end—the governing thing is the glory of God. It is there as the very foundation of everything.
So we must take note of that. What is God’s end? Well, Paul has seen it and has given it to us in a conclusive fragment:
Unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen.
You cannot get beyond it. That is finality. That is there unto the ages of the ages: glory in the church by Christ Jesus. There it is.
Now, coming to Ezekiel, there is much here to help us as to God’s own concern for His glory. We may have a concern for the Lord’s glory, but the Lord has a far greater concern for His glory than we have. This book is full of God’s own concern for His own glory.
So, with precision, Ezekiel comes into view. Notice how precise it is—even to the day of the month and the year. The word of the Lord came unto Ezekiel, the son of Buzi: where he was, how he was. It is like the Lord moving so exactly, so meticulously, in this matter and laying hold of this man.
Remember, it had to be a laying hold of him, because it resulted in a complete change in the whole vocation of this man. Ezekiel was a trained priest. He belonged to the priesthood, and he was a young man who expected that, through his life, he would fulfil the ministry of a priest.
This broke in and upset his whole career and his whole vocation. He had to change his whole manner and method of life from priesthood to prophecy.
It was something very strong in this man’s case. It is interesting to notice that his name, Ezekiel, means, “God will strengthen.” God will strengthen. Thank God.
For the glory of God, that is very necessary, especially in conditions such as those in which Ezekiel lived.
Ezekiel, as a young man, was carried away with the captives to Babylon and was with the captives by the river Chebar, he tells us. And from what we know, it was a pretty hopeless situation.
We know something of the conditions in Jerusalem from the prophecies and ministry of Jeremiah. Things were pretty bad there. Oh, Jeremiah had his heart broken because he ministered in Jerusalem.
But there are reasons for saying that, whatever it was like in Jerusalem, it was more difficult in Babylon—so far as the people to whom Ezekiel ministered were concerned. They were recalcitrant. They were difficult people.
We read Ezekiel’s encounters with them, the things to which he had to resort. I do not want to stay with too much detail, but it is very necessary for us to get the setting of the glory of the Lord for our encouragement.
Here he is with these captives. And, you know, a man who has to bring home to a people the reasons for their condition and the judgments of God, who has to speak faithfully in the name of the Lord without compromising on any principle at all, is a man who will put his own life and future in the balance of his ministry and be very unpopular.
He will not condone any wrong. He will not compromise on any principle in order to preserve their favour and his own position. A man who really has the glory of God at heart, at any cost, is a very unpopular man. Make no mistake about it. He is an unpopular man, and Ezekiel was an unpopular man among the exiles.
So unpopular that he had to resort to all sorts of seeming tricks to gain their attention, to get a hearing. Look at the things to which he resorted. He had to do spectacularly unusual and unnatural things, sometimes seeming to act the fool, to draw attention. People would look in his direction. No, he was having a hard time to get a hearing, to have any attention at all.
A most unpopular man, perhaps, in the country. It was a desperately difficult situation that he was in—none of his own people there.
In the midst of such a situation—and I do not think I exaggerate; indeed, I could add much more to it from these very chapters—in the midst of such a difficult and seemingly hopeless situation, for the time being, Ezekiel says he was with the captives by the river Chebar, and the heavens were opened, and he saw visions of God.
He saw visions. There is no situation so hopeless as to make it impossible for the glory of God to break in. It says that, does it not? No situation that can shut God out, or that is too impossible for a fresh manifestation of His glory.
Do you not take heart from that, if it is true? Well, here it is. Here it is. It is an amazing thing when you take the whole setting, the whole circumstances, and the whole situation. You could say, “Well, that is altogether beyond any hope.”
That had broken Jeremiah’s heart. That had brought the wrath of God in this way—destroyed Jerusalem, carried the people far away. What can you hope for in such a situation? And right in that Ezekiel says, “I saw the heavens opened, and visions of God.”
And he sums it all up:
This was the likeness of the appearance of the glory of the Lord.
Dear friends, difficult as it is for us to take hold of this and really believe it, this may be a message to us. Sometimes we are very near to despair over the whole situation.
Let it come to us as a message from the Lord. You may be in the place where you are, in the company of the Lord’s people, and things create such difficulty that you sometimes get near to giving it all up.
Ezekiel might well have done that, and had far more occasion to do it than you or I have. But right in there, there was the likeness of the appearance of the glory of the Lord. The heavens were opened.
We have thought and said much about open heaven. All I will say about that at this moment is that, if there is any indication at all that the heavens are open, that is always the most hopeful thing in any situation.
You may be having difficult times in your company of the Lord’s people—lots of difficult people. Ezekiel had some. You may be having much discouragement. There may be things that you feel to be very wrong, and so on and so on.
And yet, when you come together and give yourselves to the worship of the Lord, there is a wonderful sense, perhaps, that you just become occupied with the Lord. For the time being, at any rate, you let the other things go, and the Lord becomes central. The heavens are open.
The heavens are open. At last, dear friends, there is every hope for your assembly; there is every hope for the future. There is nothing more hopeless than a closed heaven.
Look at Calvary. There was darkness over the face of the earth, and Jesus cried with a loud voice:
My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
Heaven was closed because of what He was doing there—taking the sin of the whole world. Heaven closed down, shut up. No way through.
That is the most hopeless situation that could ever possibly be. The brokenness of that situation killed Him—killed Him. That was the final stroke that brought about His death. It was not the nails. It was not physical. It was not the action of men. It was the broken heart.
Because He had lived His life all the way through with a clear way through to the Father—an open heaven. He had it, you see, all His days. He had an open heaven. He was in communication with heaven, with the Father. He had never known, until then, one moment when He could not get through in an instant.
Here, that all ended. No way through. No response. No answering voice. A closed heaven—as hopeless.
If you and I have any answer to prayer, any little indication or token that the Lord has not forsaken us, given us up, or shut down on us, then we have something. Heaven is still open, and that is very hopeful for the future.
Oh yes, let us cherish the open heaven of our times of worship. Many dark things may be abroad, many difficult things—situations like Ezekiel’s, perhaps, with subtleties, problems, difficulties, and perplexities. And yet, we come together and focus upon the Lord and sense His presence. That is an open heaven.
And an open heaven is always a sign that there is hope yet. Let us hope it. There is still a future for glory. The Lord forbid that ever we should come to a time when we are closed down by heaven and we cannot get through.
“I saw the heavens opened.” And that meant God had not finished with things yet. God had not closed down.
Yes, there may be judgments, and the following chapters show the judgments. There may have to be judgments; there may have to be disciplines; there may have to be chastening. There may yet be a lot to be done.
But whatever it is, it has got to be cleared up, perhaps by the jealous wrath of God for His glory. Hard things may have to be gone through—sufferings and afflictions because of the wrongs. Nevertheless, nevertheless, it is all governed by this: a hope of glory.
A hope of glory, if heaven still remains open.
“I saw visions of God”—that is, visions given by God. What did Ezekiel see? What was it that comprised those visions of God?
Well, as we have seen in chapter 1, he saw a throne. Then he saw the likeness, the appearance, of a man upon the throne above. Then he saw a twofold symbolic medium of that throne: the cherubim and the wheels. I just mention these things for the moment and pass on, coming back for further consideration later.
Then, as we know, he saw a house—the house he was commanded to show to the people of Israel. He saw the house in latter glory. He saw the river coming from under the threshold, circling the altar, passing through the courts, and away down, broadening and deepening and making everything live whithersoever it came.
Then he saw the land and the inheritance possessed. Finally, he saw the city, and described there:
The Lord is there.
At the end of it all, the Lord is there. All these things are related to the glory. They are the result of the government of that One on the throne above.
But I want to emphasise and stress particularly that all that is in this book is the result and expression of that throne and the Man upon it. It is the inclusive factor in the whole book.
Because that is very simple to understand: everything results from the fact that there is One in the place of supreme government and authority. And for us, and for them, and for all time, by the final appointment of God, that One is the Lord Jesus, the Son of God.
The great inclusive act was His being exalted to the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. We see Jesus crowned with glory and honour. God raised Him and set Him at His own right hand, far above all rule and authority, principality and power, and every name that is named.
Everything comes out of that. If that is true, everything is all right. It will be all right in the end.
Everything that is here is the expression of that throne and the Man upon it. And, dear friends, this is very up to date, is it not? Very up to date.
I have spent time speaking of the conditions in which Ezekiel fulfilled his ministry and spent his lifetime—the place, the state of things. Well, yes, he had a very difficult situation, but the church has got a pretty difficult situation now, and things are far from easy today.
As then, so now, there is very much that is wrong and very much that is evil. And who will say today that the glory of God has not waned amongst His people?
Ezekiel was in a difficult time. But it was at that time and in those circumstances that this expression of the throne came in—came in on a new movement of God. Or shall I say, this apprehension on the part of an instrument of the supremacy of that throne and the Man upon it had this wonderful result: in time, the whole situation was changed. God had something for His glory.
It had a tremendous effect upon Ezekiel. So this vision—the open heaven, the throne, and the Man upon it above—saved him in his day from despair. It saved his ministry, saved his testimony, saved his life.
Only that will save us. Only that can save us today.
I perhaps sound a bit pessimistic. I do not want to be a pessimist. But you cannot be acquainted today with the state of things under even what is called Christianity, amongst Christians, without sometimes feeling fairly hopeless about it.
It may all be wrong, and I do not want to speak about myself. It may be partly due to me. But I confess to you that, in recent months, I have almost despaired of the Christian situation. I have seen it and wondered, “Is it possible that the great revelation given to us of the church, which we have here in the New Testament, can in any way be realised in our time?”
Look at the divisions. Look at the quarrelling. Feel this awful atmosphere that has spread and spread and grown.
When I first went to the United States in 1925, there seemed to be such an open, clear way everywhere for something new of the Lord. The atmosphere seemed so clear. I have seen the situation and gone back there today, and it is not personal: everybody is suspecting everybody else.
A spirit of criticism has got into the most devoted Christians about other Christians and Christian things. But if people are really most devoted to the Lord, you cannot have half an hour’s conversation with them without somebody getting it. Somebody is criticised; somebody is mentioned for warning; somebody is suspect.
It is like an awful miasma that has crept over the whole world, and you cannot go anywhere without finding it. You find it amongst Christians.
You cannot go into religious bookshops without seeing line upon line of pamphlets and books occupied with denouncing something. Denouncing something—men giving their whole lives to this kind of horrible work of trying to expose what they consider to be error because they do not agree with it.
Now, that is strong language, but it is not too strong. It is a state of things, and you might despair of having something that you have seen to be God’s purpose.
You cannot—the Lord will not let you. If you have seen the Lord, if you really have seen the Lord, you just cannot give it up. You may say, like Jeremiah, that you will not speak in this way any more. He did. He was determined that he would never speak again in this matter.
But he said that while he kept silent, the fire burned; then he spoke with his lips. It is out again. You cannot give it in.
You and I have often resolved that we just had to stop talking about it and give it up because it does not seem to work. Things seem to go from bad to worse, and worse to awful. And yet, here we are again. Here we are again.
Yes, I have been calculating very much in recent weeks as to how much I would say—calculating to keep back a lot and help myself. We are back here again, in full view of God’s declared purpose. The Spirit will not give it up and will not let us give it up.
However bad the situation is, heaven is not closed yet. The Man on the throne has not evacuated the throne yet. There is hope.
But we have got to have the mastery of that great reality—that He is still there where God put Him. And if this is true, as difficult as it sometimes is to believe it or to see it, at any rate He is far above all rule and authority and principality and power and every name that is named—Stalin, Khrushchev, or anybody else—far above every name in this age and in that which is to come.
Only as that gets hold of us, and in return we take hold of it, will there be any prospect at all. But that is the prospect.
I think perhaps I had better stay there. There is so much, and we can lose the real value by getting too much. My point at the moment is that to see the glory is always a strategic movement of God in a difficult and unpromising day and situation.
I think that was the meaning of the transfiguration. It was a difficult day. Things were closing in on the Lord and His little band of men. The atmosphere was impregnated with hatred. It was a difficult day, and the cross was immediately before them.
How shall they face it? How will they survive it all? The strategy was the transfiguration. They saw His glory. Although for a time afterward it seemed to be eclipsed, as we have said, when He was risen from the dead they understood all things.
And I am quite sure the transfiguration took on its full meaning in the light of the resurrection.
Stephen was having a pretty hard time, was he not? Things were going very hard with all the church in Jerusalem in those days. That wonderful young man, Stephen, was dragged outside and done to death with such vicious hatred of the Lord Jesus.
It was a difficult time for Stephen and for the others. And Stephen saw the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. It saved the situation for him.
And I think it had a much wider reach than just himself. I think it handed on something—handed on something. There was one man there who became a very potent factor in the church at all times, tremendously affected by what he saw in the face of Stephen and heard through the lips of Stephen. He never got over it. He never got it out of his mind, and he never forgave himself.
He clearly says, “I was standing by and giving my consent.” Seeing the glory was a saving thing in a dark and difficult day.
Paul is in prison. Paul is in prison, at the end of his long and fruitful life and ministry, with all those many churches—more than we have tabulated by letters addressed to many churches. He had been used to bring into being many converts, and many who owed everything spiritually to him and his ministry.
Now he is in prison, shut up. He cannot go to them, and churches are in a state of decline. Many are turning against him and away from him, as he says. A lonely man, a lonely man:
Only Luke is with me.
If ever a man was in difficult natural circumstances in every way, what a situation for a man like that! Fancy coming to an end like that. What saved him?
It is, my dear friends, astoundingly impressive. Right in that, knowing it all—knowing his own position, knowing his own prospects, which were pretty poor for this life; knowing the state of things far away in the churches; getting news of dissensions and disaffections, and the seeming breakdown of his work; disappointment with believers and with churches, and all that is enough to crush a man in despair—I say it is an amazing thing that out of that, in the midst of that, he has an open heaven and says:
Now unto Him be the glory
in the church and in Christ Jesus
unto all ages for ever and ever.
He is saved by the glory. He is delivered by the glory.
But for this apprehension of the glory, it might have been otherwise. Here he writes of this One, this Man, in the glory on the throne above, far above all rule and authority. Caesar may be there next door, governing the whole world and bringing it under his mighty and evil hand, seeming to be able to carry out his evil designs against the church of Jesus Christ.
But Paul, right alongside Caesar and Caesar’s city and stronghold, says that God “set Him far above all rule, and authority, and every name”—Caesar or any other—in this age or in any other, putting all things in subjection under His feet. That is a vision—a saving vision—of the glory.
And I think, just by way of reminder, it was that which saved John in his difficult and desperate situation in Patmos. Well, it was indeed something to break a man’s heart and to send him into deep sorrow and dark depression: John, one lonely survivor of the whole apostolic band, cut off from his beloved churches, alone, isolated, exiled, with all the conditions which must have accompanied that exile.
Well, that is enough to make a man despair and feel that he has lived his life in vain, and that there really is no hope. But he had an open heaven, saw visions, and what visions he saw! It was the open heaven that saved him.
The Lord give us that: a new apprehension of the throne and the Man upon it.
If anything has been said that would have been better left unsaid, we ask Thee to cover and nullify that, O Lord.
Whatever has been right according to Thee, do make it more than words and ideas and statements. Make it light. Make it our salvation. Make it our strength in this difficult day.
O Lord, in this day—this very day in which we gather together—may Thou lay hold of us, and may we be able to lay hold in a new way of the throne, of all rule, of the Man above all upon it.
We ask that the glory may come back into our hearts, and into our assembly, and amongst Thy people. In the name of the Lord Jesus.