It always seems amazing to me how quickly these times go. At the beginning, we think, “We have a whole week together. I’ll speak with John; I’ll have fellowship with so-and-so.” Then suddenly the whole week has gone, and we have come to the last time.
I must say that I have never before known such English weather at any one of the conferences—or Danish weather. This morning, when I got up and looked out the window and saw all that dripping, dripping greenery, I thought I was in Richmond Valley, not Richmond, Virginia. But for us, of course, it has been a little easier, because for the first time I have actually felt cool at one of these times.
It has been a real joy for me, and I know I speak for Johannes as well, to have been with you here and to have enjoyed the fellowship and the sense of the Lord’s presence with us.
I would like to read a verse or two in that chapter to which we have turned a number of times over this past week: Isaiah 62.
Isaiah 62:1-2
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.
And the nations shall see thy righteousness,
and all kings thy glory;
and thou shalt be called by a new name,
which the mouth of the Lord shall name.
Isaiah 62:6-7
I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem;
they shall never hold their peace day nor night:
ye that are the Lord’s remembrancers, take ye no rest,
and give Him no rest,
till He establish,
and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
Isaiah 62:10-12
Go through, go through the gates;
prepare ye the way of the people;
cast up, cast up the highway;
gather out the stones;
lift up an ensign for the peoples.
Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the earth:
Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh;
behold, His reward is with Him,
and His recompense before Him.
And they shall call them The holy people,
The redeemed of the Lord:
and thou shalt be called Sought out,
A city not forsaken.
So we bow together in prayer.
Lord, we just want to thank Thee as we come to the end of this week of being gathered together in Thy presence. We want to thank Thee for all Thy grace, for all Thy love, and for the way, Lord, Thou hast met with us.
We thank Thee for those who have come to know Thee as Lord and Saviour. We thank Thee for every single one in whose life issues have been settled. We thank Thee, Lord, for any glimpse of Thyself that has been given to us, for any sense, Lord, that Thou hast met with us in new and deeper ways. We give Thee thanks and praise.
As we come to this last time, Lord, we do pray together: wilt Thou fill it, Lord, with Thyself? As we return to Thy Word, wilt Thou cause Thy Word to live to us? Lord, write it in our hearts. Somehow, Lord, get through something to us.
We thank Thee for the anointing which is ours in the Lord Jesus. Once again, Lord, whether Peter or hearer, together we stand by faith into that anointing, that, Lord, we may receive from Thee. May this be a meeting with Thee. May it be, in some way, something that Thou dost do in our lives and in our life together as Thy people.
So, Lord, we turn to Thee with thanksgiving and praise, and know, Lord, Thou hearest our prayer. We thank Thee in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I want, finally, this morning, to take that little phrase in Isaiah 62:10: “Go through the gates.” I want to ask myself: What does this really mean? What does it mean in practical experience?
Now, we have talked all this week about Zion. We have talked about the meaning of Zion, a little of the significance of Zion, and, for instance, about the building of Zion—the necessity for us to cooperate with and obey the Holy Spirit in this work of Zion’s building and completion.
We have thought a little about the travail for Zion: the tremendous need for those who really are committed to the Lord in this matter, and are watchmen whom He has set on the walls of Jerusalem, who will never hold their peace day nor night.
Just as He has said, “I will not hold My peace for Zion’s sake, nor will I rest for Jerusalem’s sake,” so these watchmen on the wall are not to hold their peace nor take any rest until He does this thing.
We have talked about the work of Zion: the whole matter of liberation, the freedom that the Lord has brought us into and which we are to proclaim to others. We are, as it were, in the name of the Lord, really to loose the bonds of wickedness, undo the bands of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke.
That may be in general in our communities and in our nation; it may be in unsaved lives that come to us; or it may be in our own lives. We are told to take away the yoke from our midst. We have such a work to do in love and care for those whom God gives to us and brings to us.
Of course, last night we talked about the destiny of Zion: that glory for which Zion is destined, foreordained, elected—the glory of God—and the character of Zion, which is the Lamb Himself.
Well now, that is a tremendous amount, isn’t it? And I have omitted one thing, which I hope you noticed. I have omitted to talk about the battle of Zion.
It is just because Zion has got to be built, and just because we have been entrusted with such a tremendous ministry in liberating men and women in the name of the Lord, and seeing that we stand ourselves as God’s free men and free women—claiming that salvation of God and that freedom which is ours in the Lord Jesus—just because we are destined for glory, that there is such a battle over Zion.
The enemy will do every single thing within his ability and power to frustrate God’s purpose concerning Zion. He will cause faction. He will cause division. He will create antagonism. He will bring about rebellion and evil in nations. He will do things in communities. He will do things within believers and within the life of a local church.
He will do anything and everything he can to frustrate this purpose of the Lord concerning Zion.
That is why it is a tremendous comfort for us to know that the Lord has set His King upon Zion, the mountain of His holiness. That is a blessed and wonderful fact.
All I am saying this morning is this: this battle is tremendous. The key to the battle in the United States of America, as well as in the rest of the world—make no mistake about it—is Zion. The issue is the earthly Zion and the spiritual Zion.
These are the two great issues of world politics—and, well, politics, economics, everything else, really. It is the heart of the matter.
Mark my word: if the United States does the wrong thing by the earthly Zion, the United States will fall. Just as surely as the British Empire has been eclipsed and disappeared because of her attitude toward that earthly Zion, so the United States will also collapse.
It is very, very hard. I am quite sure most of you are good patriots. It is very hard for patriotic Americans, as it was for patriotic Britishers, ever to believe that that great domain upon which the sun never sets would finally shrivel to a little island off the coast of Europe. But it happened.
The same thing will happen to the United States, as surely as I stand here, because the issue is earthly Zion as well as spiritual Zion.
This marvellous country, in which God has done so much, and which has been the bastion of freedom in the world for a number of decades, has also come to its crossroads—just as Britain came to the crossroads in 1946 and 1947 and had to choose between material well-being, oil, economy, living standards, or morality.
And we chose oil. The result was the eclipse of Britain.
So with the United States, you have come to the same issue. Many believers do not realise it, and they are perplexed and confused that you have also come there.
Now, you may not agree naturally, because we are touching things which are political. But in the years to come, you will see that what I have said is true. I really believe that. I believe I have the mind of the Lord in this matter.
The dear United States is at the crossroads. That is why you and I need to pray. Do not think your freedom is something that will always automatically be America just because of its Founding Fathers. It is something based upon obeying the law of God and honouring the will of God. We learned it bitterly.
The other matter which lies at the heart of everything is spiritual Zion, even more than earthly Zion. This creation of a home of God, this dwelling place of God, this preparation of the Bride, lies at the heart of all human history. It lies at the heart of the creation of the universe. It is the very centre of everything.
All the battles, all the shaking, and all that is coming upon the face of the earth has this in mind. All the antagonism of the enemy, all this lawlessness, all this mystery of lawlessness, all this disorder spreading throughout the whole world, has at the heart of its antagonism this hatred of God’s Zion—this insistence and determination to liquidate God’s Zion somehow or other; to overcome it, to divide it, to break it up, to frustrate the purpose of God.
Blessed be the name of God: He has His King in that Zion already. And the King is the guarantee that Zion will be completed.
That is a tremendous comfort to us all, because we are now in the beginning of the great shaking at the end of the age, which is spoken of in Matthew 24, Luke 21, and Hebrews 12.
Hebrews 12:26-28
Yet once more will I make to tremble not the earth only,
but also the heaven.
And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken,
as of things that have been made,
that those things which are not shaken may remain.
Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken,
let us have grace,
whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe:
for our God is a consuming fire.
What a comfort, what a comfort. God has a King in this Zion, and the King is the guarantee that the purpose of God for that Zion, and for the uttermost parts of the earth, is going to be realised and fulfilled.
Therefore, dear ones, I would rather be with the King than anything or anybody else. Even if the whole church becomes apostate, even if the whole world comes against God and His Christ, I would rather be with Him, for God—one with God—is a majority.
In the end, the Lord is going to fulfil and realise His purpose in full. Now we are in the shaking, and we are going to suffer a little from the shaking. Make no mistake about that. God’s sun shines on both the righteous and the unrighteous, and His storms come upon both the righteous and the unrighteous. To a certain extent, because we are at the end of the age, we are going to suffer from that shaking.
But, you know, we have tremendous privileges and advantages.
I am tremendously thankful that I am alive in the last part of the age. People are always telling me how they would have loved to have been alive when Moses went across the Red Sea on dry ground. They say, “Oh, how much I would have loved to have been there and seen those miracles, or seen the pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness, and manna day by day.”
They tell me they would love to have seen the sun and moon stand still at Gibeon and in the valley of Aijalon. Others tell me they would love to have heard the Lord preach the Sermon on the Mount. They would love to have been present when He fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, or to have seen Lazarus raised from the dead.
Some others tell me they wish they had been there on the Day of Pentecost. They say that then they would have known; then they would have received the blessing and been certain.
Well, my dear friend, in my humble opinion, I am not in the least bit desirous of having lived in those days. I would not mind having been part of those things and having seen those things, of course. But I think it is the most wonderful privilege in the whole world to be alive in the last generations of the age.
We are seeing with our eyes things that all the prophets prophesied and longed to see. I am sorry for the thousands and thousands and thousands of believers who lived all the time between Pentecost and the beginning of this century, because they really did have to walk by faith. Most of these things were not fulfilled then.
Although we are going to be part of this shaking, and we are going to feel it and suffer to a certain extent in a very real way as a result of it, we have advantages.
We have a special grace provided for us for the end of the age, a special power provided for us at the end of the age. I would not be at all surprised if we know some special angelic ministry at the end of the age. I do not want anyone to get this wrong, but there is going to be tremendous heavenly activity to keep us alive and to keep us in the will of God.
God is, if I may so use the expression, committed to this matter: Zion is going to be fulfilled. He has given Himself to these things. He has said it all through the Book.
In the end, in spite of all the antagonism of the enemy, this whole hatred of nations and people, this resistance against Himself and His Messiah, He is going to fulfil His purpose. The earth is going to be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. It is going to happen. All flesh is going to see the glory of the Lord, because the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
So come wind, come weather: we are on the victory side in this matter. It is better to be with the King and in His Zion than anything else in this world, because God is in this matter.
Come the antichrist; come the false prophet; come these great political systems at the end of the world; come the Gog and Magog war; come the other wars prophesied in Scripture. What does it matter?
Some people get so worried. They say, “Oh, I do not feel like being blown up.” Dear friend, what does it matter if you get blown up? In one single moment, you will be in the presence of the Lord.
Does it really matter? I would much prefer that, thank you, than to lie for months and months on a sickbed. After all, it may be a moment of pain—one single moment—but then you are in the presence of the Lord. Let us look on the brighter side.
We are the Lord’s, and we have Someone in us who is eternal. No bomb can blow Him up. No bombs can destroy that union with Him. No persecution or suffering can do so either.
A brother was telling me this morning about Jerome of Prague, one of those great saints and martyrs in the Zion of God. You will remember that, when under torture, he recanted, confessed to all his heresies, and renounced the Lord Jesus.
He was so miserable that, after some time, he went back to them and said, “I want to take back my recantation, because life is not worth living. Before, I had joy and peace and life; but now I am just empty and unhappy and alienated from my Lord.”
They said, “Very well. We will tear up your recantation, and we will burn you at the stake.” When they burned him at the stake, he put the hand that had signed the recantation into the flames first and said, “Cursed hand that denied my Lord,” and died in triumph.
That is the kind of grace God gives to people at the end.
You see, we all get terribly afraid. A lady who went to Charles Spurgeon said, “Mr. Spurgeon, I am such a miserable Christian.” Being a big man, he looked down at this little lady and said, “And what is wrong with you?”
She said, “Mr. Spurgeon, pray for me.”
“What am I to pray for you, my dear sister?” he said.
“Oh,” she said, “Mr. Spurgeon, I am afraid of dying. I am so afraid of dying. Pray that I may have dying grace.”
The old Puritans used to speak about dying grace—grace for dying. Spurgeon drew himself up to his right height and said, as only Spurgeon could, “Sister, you do not need grace for dying. You need grace for living.”
With that, he prayed for her, “Lord, give my sister grace for living.” And she got it.
Then he said to her, “When you come to die, you will get the grace for dying. God never gives you grace for dying a month before you die. He gives you grace for living. Then, when it comes to whatever trial has come to you or upon you, God gives you the grace.”
Dear friends, this Zion—this spiritual Zion—is so important to God, and the powers of darkness see it as so vital to their interests to destroy, frustrate, or liquidate. Do you not think we believers ought to wake up? Do you not think that you and I should begin to wake up?
If this is so important to my Lord, and if this is so important to His enemy, then it is important to me.
That is what this matter means about going through the gate. I want to underline a few things that I think, practically, it means to go through the gate.
Obviously, one would think here of going through the gate from the city to outside the city in order to build the highway. But it does not really matter how you look at it, because you cannot go out to build the highway that is spoken of here—“Cast up, cast up the highway; prepare ye the way of the people”—unless first of all you have been committed to the life of Zion and have had your own experience in Zion.
The first thing that it means, surely, is this: a true, growing, personal knowledge of the King.
Going through the gate—what is the point of trying to do the Lord’s work if we do not have a growing personal knowledge of the King? Every one of us must have a relationship to the King who is in Zion. We must personally have experienced His salvation. We must be personally experiencing the greatness of His salvation.
We must be knowing and experiencing some resources which are ours in that so-great salvation. We need to know His life. We need to know Him as life, and to know Him in a progressive manner. We need to know Him as power.
Oh, a personal, growing knowledge of the Lord. Going through the gates does not mean that you have some church doctrine. The Lord preserve us from church doctrines divorced from the Lord. They do nothing but trouble.
All over the world there are New Testament-pattern churches as dead as anything institutional or organised. Everywhere people say, “I have got the pattern.” There are a thousand and one patterns built on the Book of Acts or upon Timothy, and every one is in division from somebody else.
There is such a thing as church truth. The church is true and mightily important, but we ought to see it as in Him.
Ephesians 2:21-22
In whom each several building, fitly framed together,
groweth into a holy temple in the Lord;
in whom ye also are builded together
for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
It is all to be found in Him, through Him, in union with Him. Then the church becomes a glorious matter. It becomes a matter of life in Him, a matter of order in Him, a matter of His authority and headship, and a matter of relatedness to one another in Him.
This is very important. This going through the gate is, firstly, a matter of a personal and growing knowledge of the King.
It is a wonderful thing when a person’s heart and life is filled with the Lord Jesus. These are the people who win others.
Sometimes Christians can be—and I grew up, of course, in a pagan home, so I know it from the other side. I know how my family used to think about Christians, and how they talked about Christians. I have to say that, for the most part, they were very true. The Christians we came into touch with were a bunch of hypocrites.
I remember Mother and Father talking about them, and distrusting them. Father knew people with whom he made business who went off to church and swindled people left, right, and centre. People came down and banged on the front door wanting money, and we knew they were the wealthiest people in the neighbourhood. They could have met the whole need themselves, but they came to unsaved people like ourselves to ask for money to build their church tower, their church organ, or whatever else.
You do not have quite so much of that, I think, on this side. I do not know. But we have a lot of it on our side.
But what a wonderful thing it is when a believer knows the Lord—really knows the Lord—and goes on knowing the Lord. A change comes in that person’s life, and, as the Bible says, “The beauty of the Lord our God” is upon them.
Then neighbours begin to take note. Friends begin to wake up. Relatives see something so attractive in that person. They see a life of sacrifice, a life of love, a life of caring.
Dear friends, this whole matter of Zion is not a doctrine. It is not a system, and it is not just triumphalism. It is a matter of knowing the Lord.
This Zion is called the Bride of Christ, and I do not know what a bride means if it is not a matter of love. If somehow Zion is not in love with her Lord, as her Lord is in love with her, then something is wrong.
So, for me, the first thing about going through the gate is that here are people who have so fallen in love with the Lord that that first love has never left them. That is the thing which is their priority: never to leave their first love. That is why they go out of the gate to build the highway. They are in union with their Lord. They are identified with Him.
There is a second thing I would like to mention: going through the gate is a life laid down for the King.
If we turn to Mark 8—and, by the way, I should have given you a Scripture for that other point—in Philippians 3:10:
Philippians 3:10
That I may know Him,
and the power of His resurrection,
and the fellowship of His sufferings,
becoming conformed unto His death.
That is what it means to go through the gate: to know Him, the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings.
Mark 8:34-35
And He called unto Him the multitude with His disciples,
and said unto them,
If any man would come after Me,
let him deny himself,
and take up his cross,
and follow Me.
For whosoever would save his life shall lose it;
and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake
and the gospel’s shall save it.
In one of our modern versions, they put it like this, and it is very good: “If any man would follow Me, let him give up all right to himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.”
You know, taking up your cross is not your rheumatism, your arthritis, your migraine, or some other headache or illness that has come to you. People sometimes used to speak about bearing the cross as if it were something like that.
But it says, “Take up his cross.” It is really His cross made yours.
When a person took up the cross, they were sentenced to death. They were bearing the great crossbeam to the place of execution. They had no further life. Their life was not their own. Their time was not their own. Their health was not their own. Their will was not their own. All right had been given up.
That is exactly what it means to go through the gate. It means that this whole issue of self-sensitiveness has been dealt with by the cross of the Lord Jesus.
The Apostle Paul said in the second letter to the church at Corinth, “We have the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead.”
In other words, our trust is in the power of His resurrection, although we have in ourselves dying in our body.
A life laid down—what does a life laid down really mean? It means a life at His disposal. No further argument. A life at His disposal.
We have gone through the gate. Our life is laid down for the King and for His purpose, and we are at His disposal.
There is no more wonderful word than the words of the mother of Jesus, when she said to the servants at the marriage feast of Cana:
John 2:5
Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.
If every believer were to make that their motto—“Whatsoever He says, I will do it”—it would be a wonderful thing.
I think I told you before that I came to the Lord through the life story of C. T. Studd. One of the most wonderful things about C. T. Studd was that, after he had given his whole life—first in China, then in India, and finally in the Congo, from which he never returned, now called Zaire—he died in faith.
When he lay dying, he said to Jack Harrison, who was led to the Lord by one of the older brothers in the company from which I come in Richmond, England, “I have one great joy. I have been a man of many faults and many weaknesses, and have fallen into sin many times, out of which the Lord has delivered me and redeemed me. But my joy is this: that of everything the Lord has ever told me since I was saved to do, I have done it by His grace.”
I think that is the most wonderful thing to be able to say at the end of one’s life, because, as John the Apostle said:
1 John 2:17
He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
It is a wonderful thing. But, you know, our problem is the will of God, is it not? Very often we are fearful of what the will of God may hold for us.
So the whole issue of our life comes up. “I have got my rights. I have got my rights. I do not mind going to church now and again. I go to the conference—I will suffer it for a whole week! Well, I mean, I have got rights. I have got rights.
“And if you think that by giving up rights I have got to commit myself to that poor, weak, tumbling lot of believers in my locality—no, I do not want anything to do with that.”
Now this is where the real issue comes.
Some people tell me, “The Lord tells me to do this,” and “The Lord tells me to do that.” The interesting thing is that I never see them subject to any other person. It seems they have a hotline to Him, and they are just told what to do regardless of any other believers or any instituted or ordained authority in the church.
There seems to me something very, very wrong when people are, as it were, their own authority.
Well, it is not so, is it? If we really have a life laid down, what it means is that, for the first time, we can be subject one to another. Sometimes we can surrender our own way to the Lord and really have to go a way about which we are not quite sure.
Life is like when we were children. Sometimes Father or Mother said, “Do so-and-so,” and we definitely thought that was not the best thing. We had such a to-do about it, but Mother said, “Do it.” Then we had another little to-do about it, and she said, “Do it.” Finally, we did it.
Now we have no argument about it. We look back and say, “My word, how wise Mother was,” or, “How wise Father was.” You understand?
So, it is a life laid down. It is at the command of the King.
There is a third thing that it seems to me going through the gate means, and we find it in a number of places: it is being fitly framed together.
Psalm 122:3
Jerusalem, that is builded
as a city that is compact together.
Ephesians 2:21
In whom each several building, fitly framed together,
groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.
Ephesians 4:15-16
Growing up in all things into Him,
who is the head, even Christ;
from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together
through that which every joint supplieth,
according to the working in due measure of each several part.
What does all this mean—this being fitly framed together? The Apostle Peter puts it in another way:
1 Peter 2:5
Ye also, as living stones,
are built up a spiritual house.
In other words, this matter of going through the gate is not only a matter of a growing personal knowledge of the King, and a life laid down for the King at His disposal. It is a matter of being bound to one another in Him, and having a relationship to one another in Him.
To be fitly framed together means exactly what it says: fitly framed together. We are not to live a separate life, an independent life, a self-sufficient life, as if all that matters is the Lord and me, with no regard to other believers.
This is where our problem comes. If I say, “The Lord and I, we get on well together,” sometimes I can be deceived. It can be an excuse because my relationship with my brothers and sisters is not right.
That is why our Lord stopped us even praying when He said that if we do not forgive others their trespasses against us, neither will our Father in heaven forgive our trespasses.
In other words, you cannot just say, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name,” and remain in an unforgiving state toward other brothers and sisters. We have to have a relationship with other brothers and sisters.
What does it mean to go through the gate? Surely it means to find Christ as the foundation in our own locality upon which we can find other believers.
In my locality, where I live, surely there must be other believers in Him. Somehow or other, we can find each other in the Lord. We can be built together in the Lord and know something of what it is to be fitly framed together and knit together.
Now, of course, we may have problems in this matter, but I think it is a very, very important point to make.
How can we be fitly framed together unless we open up to one another? If we are not prepared to open up to one another and share our life together, we are not going to get anywhere.
All of us have a kind of inner reserve, a kind of inhibition on this. This is a whole battle of bondage. We just feel something: we cannot open up. Sometimes we even want to.
There are a number of stages in this matter. First of all, there are many of us who do not want to open up. We who are English are very much more this way inclined. We do not like opening up to people. We do not like people coming into our kitchen.
In an English home, if anyone walked into your kitchen uninvited, it would be the most dreadful, horrifying act. We meet you at the door and say, “Make yourself at home.” Of course, if you walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and took a cola, we would be horrified.
We say, “Make yourself at home,” but we mean, “Make yourself at home within limitations.” We mean, “Make yourself at home within the living room.”
If you walk around and come to the kitchen, help yourself to this and help yourself to that, we will be horrified. We have real problems in this matter of opening up to one another on our side, because we have a natural reserve as people. We are very inhibited and extremely polite.
You always have to ask. In fact, to be really polite at table, you are not supposed to grab anything on the table. When I was a child, I was never to ask for the salt.
You say, “Well, how do you get the salt then?” I was told that the way you get the salt is to say to whoever is next to you, “Would you care for the salt?”
Then they say to you, “No, but would you care for the salt?” In this very polite way, you finally get the salt.
I remember a brother of mine went to a titled lady, a friend of mine. We were at table together, and, of course, she sat him next to her. At the beginning of the meal she said to him, “Would you like the salt?”
He said, “No, thank you very much,” and went on eating.
Then she said to him again, “Would you care for the salt?”
He said, “No, thank you. There is plenty in the food. I do not need it.”
The third time she said, “Would you care for the salt?”
He said, “No, but would you?”
“Yes, I would.”
You see, we British, we English, are very reserved in these matters. We find it very hard to open up to one another. You have all that in the background of what is right, correct, and polite. We are normal people. We are loving people. We are warm people underneath it all. But we have all this politeness and etiquette and so on.
It is very difficult for people to open up to one another. We feel it is not quite right. Sometimes we feel someone should ask us.
But the next problem is that, when we really want to open up to one another, we often find we cannot. This is where the bondage comes in, unless we are all together in this matter—and especially the more responsible brothers—watching this whole thing all the time, as they stand against this kind of bondage in the atmosphere.
Let us assert and declare that we are standing fast in the freedom of Christ. We find that this bondage sort of creeps over everything.
But this matter of being fitly framed together means that a living stone cannot be built against another living stone unless they get to know each other. We have to open up to one another. We have to get to know each other. We have to understand one another. We have to become sensitive to one another.
This is a very important matter in going through the gate. We have got to be fitly framed together. We have got to find the foundation, which is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone.
Not Jesus Christ plus some doctrine about the Lord’s Table; not Jesus Christ plus a doctrine about the Second Coming; not Jesus Christ plus some experience of the Holy Spirit; not Jesus Christ plus the gifts; not Jesus Christ plus some other idea.
We want to find a foundation which is Jesus Christ, where every born-again believer in that locality can simply come together and find his other brothers and sisters.
When we have found that foundation, we have got to be fitly framed together. We have got to find relationship to one another, and this is where all our problems begin.
Often, we find it very difficult to get to know some people we like, and there are some people we do not like. That is natural. There is no good condemning ourselves over this. There are some people we find easy and some people we find not at all easy. Some temperaments we find incompatible.
It is where we find the incompatible temperament that we need the cross. If you and I get on like a house on fire naturally, where do we need the cross? But if we are incompatible, my word, we need the cross. We know that the only way through is the cross. Our only way to lose ourselves is the cross.
The Lord is very faithful in this matter. Instead of it all being in the head, and us all singing about the cross, singing about fellowship, and singing about marching to Zion, suddenly we find, “Here I am with some brothers and sisters I get on very well with, and some I do not get on with at all—and some in between.”
All of a sudden, all this talk about the cross and all this talk about the inclusiveness of Christ becomes an issue, a reality. Either it has got to come into my experience, or it is no good.
Christian circles are filled with people—indeed, all of us—who sing things, profess things, and have no experience of them. We really believe in these things, but we have no experience of them because we are not prepared to be put into the situation where they have got to become a reality.
Being fitly framed together is not some lovely, fairy-type thing where the Lord waves a wand over us and suddenly we all come together, fitly framed in beautiful harmony, sweetness, and peace.
No. There is much collision, much stuff, much dirt, much cutting, much shaping. It is a costly business, being fitly framed together.
Have you ever watched a carpenter fitting things together? I am not a carpenter, but my word, there is an awful lot of work that goes into it. If the wood could feel, I am sure it would scream at times because of what is done to it and the way it is worked with.
Bit by bit, I am sure the wood would say, “Why? Why?”
The carpenter says, “Because I am fitting you together. That is why.”
“Well, I am not sure I want to be.”
But then the comment is, “What is the use? You are no longer a tree. You are no longer a tree. You are a piece of wood. What do you see—a piece of wood? You are meant to be framed together.”
If you are a real believer, you are in between, you understand. You do not belong to the world anymore, and yet if you do not go on to be fitly framed together, you are not coming into the purpose of God—the great object of your salvation.
Then you are in an in-between state, which is the most miserable of all. All the time in your Christian life, you feel you are missing something. You feel, “It is wonderful—the blessing here and the blessing there—but I feel I am missing something.”
I will tell you what you are missing: you are a piece of wood that once lived and has died, has been cut, and is meant to be fitly framed in the temple of the Lord.
We have got to let Him do this work. Many people are butterflies. I probably said this before: I call them spiritual butterflies. They are very beautiful, these believers, sweet like butterflies.
You have some beautiful butterflies here, especially in Virginia. I have seen some magnificent ones where I have stayed, just outside Richmond—really magnificent butterflies. I wish we had a few like that where I come from, but I reckon the weather we have would kill them all off.
But the thing about butterflies is this: you may be very beautiful, my dear friend, but you flit from place to place. How can you ever be fitly framed?
People go to this meeting, then to the next one. They hear a sermon here, then they are off to another place because they have heard there is a bit of blessing down the road at the Methodists. Then they go there. Then they are off to the Church of Christ, and then to the Episcopalians. “Oh, wonderful.” Then off to the Baptists. “Marvellous.” Then back to the Methodists.
Then they are here, and then they are there, and they come in here and say, “Oh, Zion! Zion! Wonderful, wonderful. We are the Zion of God.” Then off they go, flitting off again.
Next year they will be back again for one meeting out of the seven, and then they will say, “That was good. That was good while it lasted.”
But they never get fitly framed.
The lovely thing about being a spiritual butterfly is that you have no responsibility. You can avoid all the collisions, all the problems, all the difficulties, all the battle, all the warfare, and just flit from blessing to blessing.
But you are deceiving yourself. That blessing is not real blessing. It is an enemy device to keep you from the real work that God would do in your life. The real work is to be fitly framed together, and that is a little bit different from being a butterfly.
There is another thing: every part functioning.
If you are going to go through those gates into the city and be fitly framed together, there comes a place where every part has got to function. Building a highway is not just men with shovels; there are a lot of other things.
I have never studied or majored in engineering or science, but I know this from observation: a tremendous number of different skills, abilities, and kinds of equipment go into the building of a highway.
There is the hard, heavy work. Where I come from, and especially in Israel, those real heavy works are often done by forty, fifty, or sixty men with shovels, really gouging out. Then come the big machines to start the work. We do it a lot more by hand, in the old-fashioned way.
But when they have come and gone, all the other skills come in, and in the end the whole highway takes shape. There is a lot of skill in it.
In this Zion, we have not all got the same function. We have not all got the same gift. We have different functions and different gifts. It is one Lord, one Spirit, and one aim: building up the body of Christ.
But there is tremendous variety and diversity of gifts and function, as it says in 1 Corinthians 12.
Ephesians 4:16
From whom all the body fitly framed and knit together
through that which every joint supplieth,
according to the working in due measure of each several part.
The New American Standard Bible puts it more simply: “According to the proper working of each individual part.”
The proper working of each part. Every part has got to work properly.
What would you think about a city in which whole departments do not function properly? You never get the roads swept. When the lights go out, no one comes around and puts the lights back on or attends to them.
My family live in a very highly rated area of Richmond in England, in Surrey, and yet in the last few years we hardly ever get our roads swept—perhaps once in six weeks. If a light goes out, it will stay out for a whole month or two before someone finally comes to put it right. It is the collapse of urban society.
As for dustmen—now, we call them dustmen. I think that is a lovely word. I think you call them garbage collectors, do you not? I think that is an awful word: garbage collector. Of course, it is a perfect description, but we have such a lovely word for it: dustman. We call it a dustbin, not a trash can or garbage can.
But one single department of the city—if all those dustmen go out on strike, or refuse to work, or do their job badly—how the whole city suffers.
The whole city suffers if the roads are not kept up, if the lights are not kept in order, if the roads are not swept. In a city there are a tremendous number of different functions and departments, and we have all got our parts to play.
The trouble is that we tend to think that preaching is the thing about Zion. Sometimes we think that prayer is the thing. But there are lots of different functions.
We need the preacher. We need prayer. We need many other things—very practical things. Sometimes it just comes down to going around and caring for somebody.
What a wonderful thing it is when a brother is in the ministry of the Word and cannot always give so much time at home, and someone comes and mows the lawn for him. That is a wonderful thing because, in God’s sight, it simply means that brother has become part of that ministry. He has released that one to do a bit more.
I am not saying that all of us who are in the ministry should shelve all responsibilities at home. But there are times when we just cannot do it because we are away for quite a while.
What a wonderful thing it is when others come and do something very practical. It is not some great, spiritual thing. “What is the point of going to mow so-and-so’s lawn? Now, if you asked me to spend a night in prayer, maybe that would be something. Or if you asked me to give a thousand dollars, maybe that would be something. But mow a lawn?”
But in God’s sight, such a practical little job can mean a lot to the kingdom—a lot to the King.
Sometimes these things in Zion come out in very simple, practical things: visiting a sick person; caring for the children of a mother who is called away for some other thing; simply looking after one another—not in a busybody way, but in a loving, caring way.
These are the ways Zion gets built up. Often our heaviness is due to all kinds of little things that have got us down. When people come in and lift them, it is wonderful. It is real fellowship.
That kind of fellowship can be worth more than a whole heavy word on the Book of Jonah. I have been subjected to very heavy words, especially when I was younger, from different brothers. They would say, “Brother, you understand what the message of Jonah is. It is this, and this, and this, and the consequences are this. You should do so-and-so.”
But I think sometimes coming in the other way is much more real fellowship. Your heart opens to that kind of person straightaway because they are really helping. It is love. Then you can share the things of God in the most wonderful way.
People say to me, “Well, functioning—how do we function?” We learn by experience. If you think you are only going to function when you are perfect, you will never function. You will never function.
I remember when I first learned to walk. My word, how I fell over! I smashed up so much. But I am awfully glad they put up with it, because I would never have learned to walk.
If I had been old enough to be self-conscious and could have said, “I might walk, I might walk—I am going to wait till the day when suddenly I jump out of the cot and walk,” the muscles in my legs would have withered away. I would never have walked.
I had to learn by experience—putting one’s fingers in the switches, putting one’s hand in the fire, touching the iron on the ironing board. All these things, you know, our parents said to us, “Do not touch that.” But, of course, we touched it.
Then we learned. Oh, we wailed when our fingers were caught somewhere, but we never touched the iron or anything like that again. From that day to this, I have had the most healthy fear of hot irons.
I am being serious. You must learn by experience. Your brothers and sisters, if they are really loving, will help you. They will bear with your joys and come with such encouragement, even when you make mistakes.
If you are honest, you may be corrected. But if you say, “Because you correct me, I will leave,” it is the wrong attitude.
When you were a child and you made mistakes, your parents corrected you because they loved you. They were trying to help you, because they knew that if you were not helped, you were only going to make mistakes.
Some of us are too exhibitionist, and some of us are too withdrawn. The Holy Spirit brings this up. He tells us, “This, this, this.” We learn from one another. This is all part of being fitly framed together.
Going through the gates is very practical. You cannot go through the gates of the city without getting to know one another, without being built together with other believers, as well as this matter of knowing the King and laying down your life.
Lastly, we must see the will of God done on earth as it is in heaven. Going through the gate means that, at long last, I have come to that situation where I have got to commit myself to the King—not just to the truth, but to the King in Zion.
That means we have got to see the will of God done on earth. We have thought and talked about that prayer:
Matthew 6:10
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
as in heaven, so on earth.
In that wonderful Psalm 110:2, it says:
Psalm 110:2
The Lord will send forth the rod of Thy strength out of Zion:
rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies.
That is the kind of thing we want to know and experience, because Zion is a movement of the Holy Spirit concerning liberation.
Where do we start? We start with one another. We see that we are liberated. Then we go out into our locality. We start, in the name of the Lord, to know what it is to take an intelligent view of what is happening in our locality, to see what is happening in the field, to see what is happening among us in the cities, and, in the name of the Lord, to know something of prayer warfare in the Spirit and ruling in the midst of the enemy.
Oh, that God could keep us a little bit different, liberating. We are the salt of the earth. We are that light which is not hidden under a bushel, but set on a stand. We are a city set on a hill that cannot be hid.
Jesus said to Peter:
Matthew 16:19
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven:
and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth
shall be bound in heaven;
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth
shall be loosed in heaven.
This Zion, and being part of it, is all a matter of truly knowing the rule and reign of the King—how to discern and feel that spiritual rule.
May the Lord help us in this.
The Lord Jesus said:
Isaiah 62:1
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.
May God burn much into your heart and into mine. Since we are born of God, may the Lord give us grace finally to go through the gate and commit ourselves to the King.
Father, we just lift up our hearts together now to Thee. Thou knowest all, Lord. Thou seest, Lord, everything that is happening in the nations and in this nation. Thou knowest, Lord, we consider this matter of Zion and this matter of prayer.
But, Lord, may we really come together. O Lord, help us.
Lord, help us by Thy grace not to stand on the circumference, not to be spectators, not to glory in the truth and not obey it, but, Lord, to be hearers of the Word and doers of the Word.
Lord, wilt Thou help us to really go through those gates, whatever it might lead to for each one of us? Help us, Lord, deliberately, in that childlike faith and obedience, to go through the gates and commit ourselves to Thy King in Zion.
This we ask in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.