I want to bring a number of fragments of the Word of God together: one in the Old Testament, and the others in the New.
From the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, Chapter 32, verses 31–32:
And Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold.
Yet now, if Thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written.
To the New Testament, to the letter of Paul to the Philippians, Chapter 4, verse 3:
Yea, I beseech thee also, true yokefellow, help these women, for they labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and the rest of my fellow-workers, whose names are in the book of life.
The letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 12, verse 23:
Ye are come unto the general assembly and church of the firstborn, who are enrolled in heaven.
The book of Revelation, Chapter 13, verse 8:
And all that dwell on the earth shall worship him, every one whose name hath not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that hath been slain.
Revelation 17:8:
The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, they whose name hath not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world.
Revelation 20:12 and 15:
And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne; and books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged out of the things which were written in the books, according to their works.
And if any was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire.
Revelation 21:27:
And there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie: but only they that are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
The Lamb’s book of life. You will see that with that last fragment we are near the end—the whole story of the ages of this world. Things are being gathered up for the end. Everything is being drawn together and put into very precise and concise form. It is a very great and comprehensive everything.
Because here, in these words concerning the end, we have two words which are the key not only to the whole Bible, but to the whole history of God’s relationship with this world. Those two words are the Lamb and life.
The Lamb’s book of life is the whole clause. The Bible is all about the Lamb and life. We are going to begin where this fragment ends: life. For that is the great word; that is the all-inclusive thing. Life—that is the issue from beginning to end.
The Bible is a record, from its commencement to its very close, of a tremendous conflict. It is a book of conflict. Forces inimical to one another are found ever active, relentlessly active, throughout this whole volume and throughout all the history that it covers.
If we ask, “What is it all about? What is all this contention? What is the meaning of this whole thing?” the answer is found in that one word. That is the issue about which the contention is going on. It is what the Bible calls and means by life.
Life. For the Bible’s meaning of life, as it is mentioned in such passages as those we have read—the book of life, the Lamb’s book of life—is quite a different thing from what we call life, what man calls life, what the world calls life.
This Bible word is a very discriminating thing. It divides the whole race, at all times in the history of the race, into two categories: those who have that life, and those who have not that life. It is one great discriminating factor in the history of mankind.
Life or its opposite, death. Again, what the Bible means by death is not what man thinks of as death. Just as this life is so much greater than the world means and understands by the word, so the Bible word for death is a very much bigger thing than just the body dying and going into the grave.
This word is a very discriminating word. It decides between man and man, this class and that. There was a point, the Bible shows, at which this great divide commenced.
The opening chapters of the Bible bring that historic event out very clearly. God had created man, and we understand from much more of the Bible that man was not complete when he came from the hand of God. There was still something to be added to make him complete.
He was complete so far as he went, but that was not far enough to satisfy God. In the symbolic presentation of a great spiritual and divine truth, God put that something which was needed to make him complete in a position where man could, on certain terms and on certain grounds, have it and become complete.
But it was possible for man not to come onto that ground, but rather to ignore it, violate it, and fail to come to the terms of its possession. So he was put on probation, under test, about this thing—this something that was for his completing.
We know the story. He failed. He disobeyed. Then that which was the symbol of this supreme, superlative, consummate factor for his completing was put away beyond his reach. He was separated from it, so that he could not have it in his disobedience.
The great divide took place. There is that which God made for man, now in an enclosure, and he cannot have it in that state of fallenness. Here is he, out in the world, incomplete.
We have words that we use to define that. We say that man, in his own heart of hearts, is not a satisfied creature. He is a dissatisfied creature, a discontented creature, always wanting something that he feels belongs to him and that he ought to have.
He labours, strives, works, and does everything to try to get hold of that something, but it eludes him all the time. He knows that until he has it, he is not complete. There is something lacking in his very being which keeps him in this imperfect state.
The Bible calls that condition vanity. Now, our English word conveys a different idea from what the Bible means by vanity. Vanity with us is perhaps self-importance, self-consciousness, getting oneself up in a way to make an impression, and so on. We call it people’s vanity, and we say that they are very vain. But the Bible does not mean that by this word.
The Bible means something that cannot be put into one word. It means that you are always craving and working and striving for something that eludes you. You never get it. You never put your hand on it. You go on through life like that, and then die.
They die with this feeling: somehow I have missed what was meant for me and what I was meant for. It is vanity. It is all in vain.
That something was this life spoken of by the Bible—that peculiar, particular, unique thing that God meant man to have.
Now, dear friends, it is not my desire for one moment to indulge in theories and philosophies of life, to get out into that world of mental concepts. I must bring this thing to the test all the way along, step by step. We must have the evidence and the proof of what we are saying.
In this little hall tonight, with this comparatively small company of people, the majority, if asked and if able to do so, would stand up with beaming faces and say, “I know it is true that since I received that gift, my heart has been satisfied. I have found what my nature craves for, what my life wants.” Oh, the way of satisfaction!
This can be put to the test at any time. If you do not know, you can put it to the test in this very hall. I know it.
This great divide took place at a certain time in the history of the race. From man’s disobedience, there was withheld from him this great completing factor. His life became marked by this vanity—in his heart, in his labour, in all his quests. It was something that he could never get hold of, eluding him all the way.
This is the factor, the great transcendent reality, which becomes the final, the ultimate criterion of everything. That is why the Bible ends on this note.
As just an aside, a parenthesis, if you have not done it—you Christians, or anyone else—take the book of Revelation and underline the word life or living. See what your book looks like when you have done it. It is a great issue.
Because this is the last book of the Bible, and because we are moving here to the end of everything in the history of this present world, this matter of life comes up in clear, strong relief. It becomes the issue. It is the one thing to which everything else has moved, about which everything else has been speaking, and to which it has been pointing.
All the Bible and all history have centred in this one tremendous issue. It is the ultimate criterion. The passages that we read show that the great divide, in its greatest size at the end, comes to this: on the one side, the great multitude who go away into judgment—those whose names are not found written in the Lamb’s book of life.
On the other side is a great multitude, a great multitude no man can number. These are before the throne of God and the Lamb. These are they whose names are found in the Lamb’s book of life. They have this life.
It began right back there, the divide. It has become the criterion of the ages, and at last it is the criterion of eternal destinies: this question, this matter of life.
This, dear friends, is the total and consummate explanation of the incarnation of God’s Son. That is, the total explanation of why the Son of God, Whom we know as Jesus the Christ, came into this world in man-form.
He stands right at the centre of history, this One from heaven. He stands with one arm outstretched, reaching back over all the past to that tragedy at the beginning—that terrible tragedy. He reaches with one hand right back there, and with the other He reaches right on to the end, to the consummation.
Standing in the midst of the ages, embracing all history and mankind, He cries, “I am come that they might have life.”
I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.
—John 10:10
The clear implication is that they had not got it. There was no need for Him to come from heaven if they had got it. They had not got it. The explanation of His coming is all summed up in this one word: life. “I am come that they might have life.”
It is the full meaning of the incarnation of God’s Son. Of course, I could go on for a week of years speaking about this life—what it is, its character, and so on. I am not going to say more about it for the moment than just to bring you to this fact: this divides men.
You either have this particular life or you have not. You have not got it by nature, by your natural birth. You have another kind of life, of which the Bible speaks, and the original language of the Bible makes it perfectly clear by the different words it uses for life.
There is that word which means the life of all men naturally—the word from which we get our scientific word biology: the Greek word bios, animal life, just ordinary human life. All people have that by natural birth, but that is not the word and that is not the thing spoken of here in the Lamb’s book of life.
It is another word altogether, because it is another thing altogether. No person by nature possesses it. You may have the highest birth, the best birth naturally, and come from the best stock; but nature shouts this one thing: you cannot inherit this life from your mother or your father.
The problem and perplexity of heredity, is it not? Saintly parents, saintly grandparents, maybe generations of saints, and yet this generation—a black sheep, no saintliness at all.
Oh no, you do not inherit this even from godly parents. They may know this life; they may have it; it may have done for them the great thing that it does. Yet you are born of them and you have not got it. You cannot just rest upon what your parents have.
You may be brought up in an environment of godliness and Christlikeness, but that does not mean you inherit this life. It is something that you yourself, alone with God, have precisely to receive as a gift from Him.
Well, that is the great issue with which so much in time and so much in eternity is bound up. I take the middle word of the three: the Lamb’s book of life. The book.
You will have noticed from the passages we read—and they are only a very minute selection—that this is a Bible idea, this book idea. It may be symbolic. I do not stay to be troubled with whether it is literal or symbolical. There is something here that has a very real meaning.
What does it mean? Well, what I mean by what I have just said is this: I do not think that God has to keep a book in order to remember, literally keep a book in order to remember. God knows everything and remembers everything that He wants to remember.
We are sometimes impressed with some people’s prodigious memory: the names they remember, the faces they remember, the incidents they remember. My, we are greatly impressed by some memories that people have, what they have stored up there that they can call up at any moment.
But think of God. If this is true of finite man, how much more infinitely true must it be of God? He does not forget—only what He wants to forget. Thank God, there is that which He wants to forget.
He wants to forget, and He does forget. The Scripture tells us that He will remember the transgressions of His people no more. No more. He will put them behind His back; He will cast them into the depths of the sea; He will put them out of memory. He can do that.
We wish that we could forget a lot of things. God can forget what He wants to forget, but what He does not want to forget—He has the righteous, it says, in everlasting remembrance.
Very descriptive ways of saying these things occur in the Bible:
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee.
Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands.
—Isaiah 49:15–16
The book, whether it be symbolic or literal, need not be argued. It is certainly a way of putting into vivid, illustrative form this great truth of God’s remembrance—God’s having in remembrance.
What is it that He has in remembrance when it comes to this book, the Lamb’s book of life? There are many books. We read about them: books were opened, and another book was opened. The books—ah, there are the books of tragedy and the books of doom and judgment; but another book, which is the book of life.
Here is something that God has always in memory, something that He knows, something that He identifies. When we want to confirm, ascertain, and make sure as to people, we go to the books, to the records.
We go, in our country here, to Somerset House, where all the birth certificates are. We want to identify: here are people who bear a certain name; is it so-and-so? Well, let us go and see. See the book. We identify people by the book. The book is a book of identification.
In the Lamb’s book of life, speaking again symbolically, are those whom God identifies as belonging to this certain category, being of this certain kind, being in this particular class, and being different from all the rest—marked out as singular people.
God knows. God knows. God has them, so to speak, on record.
You notice all the words that we read about this. Paul, speaking of these fellow workers, these yokefellows and those who had helped him, spoke of them whose names are in the book of life. Hebrews speaks of those whose names are enrolled in heaven. Revelation says just that.
Now then, the work of identification is going on. Can you be identified by the book? Does the book identify you?
Are you one of those who, for eternal life and eternal glory, are remembered by God, held in everlasting remembrance? Oh, it is a big thing, you know, not to be forgotten by the Lord.
In the Old Testament there is an illustration of this in two goats: one brought in and offered as a sacrifice unto the Lord, and the other, with the sin of the people transferred to it by the hand of the priest, driven out into the wilderness, into the land of forgetfulness—forgotten.
Poor goat, out there wandering far away from the habitation of men, in utter desolation without a friend, might well, if it could speak, be heard to say, “I am forgotten, forgotten, forgotten of all men, and forgotten of God.” It is a desolate thing to be forgotten like that.
No wonder the dying thief on the cross, with the vividness of a sense of reality breaking upon his soul, cried to Jesus next to him:
Jesus, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom.
—Luke 23:42
“Remember me.” Something to be remembered in the kingdom of God. The big thing is to be remembered. It is a terrible thing to be forgotten.
When the Lord Jesus on the cross fulfilled literally the type and symbol of that goat driven out, the sin of the world was laid upon Him. He was spiritually, in the desolation of His soul, driven out; and for that awful moment, forgotten of God.
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
—Matthew 27:46
That is a terrible thing. Thank God, that is not necessary for anyone, because the Lord Jesus has removed that necessity and made it possible for you and for me to be enrolled in heaven, to have our names in the Lamb’s book of life.
But it is not just being enrolled as those who have life. It is more than that. You notice the last reference to this Lamb’s book of life is connected with the holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem—a great type of that redeemed company at the end.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews, as we read, says that we are come unto the church of the firstborn, whose names are enrolled in heaven. The last connection of this very phrase is with what is symbolically called the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven. In other words, that redeemed company.
It is not only that you are going to get into it because you have life. You are going to have the franchise of it conferred upon you.
You remember that wonderful Psalm 87:
His foundation is in the holy mountains.
The Lord loveth the gates of Zion
More than all the dwellings of Jacob.
Glorious things are spoken of thee,
O city of God.
I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon as among them that know Me;
Behold, Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia:
This one was born there.
—Psalm 87:1–4
What is the psalmist talking about? Oh, this man says, “I was born in great Egypt.” Egypt was one of the oldest and most wonderful civilisations in history. Someone else says, “I was born in Philistia, and Philistia has a great history.” Another speaks of Tyre, the great city of Tyre. Yet another says, “You fellows are boasting about your birthplace; I was born in Ethiopia. You remember the Queen of Sheba?”
They are all boasting, but then the psalm says:
Glorious things are spoken of thee,
O Zion, city of God.
This one and that one was born in her.
—Psalm 87:3, 5
That is what Jesus meant by being born from above—born again. The franchise of the New Jerusalem, the franchise of the very metropolis of divine government, is conferred upon you. It is the freedom of the realm, the freedom of the city.
You know what that meant to the apostle Paul when, once a prisoner, the Roman centurion was about to scourge him. Paul said, in effect, “Do you know what you are doing? Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?”
The centurion thought he would get round it. “Well, yes, but there are Romans and Romans. With a great sum obtained I this freedom.” Paul said, “I was free born.” The man had to give way to that. He just had to let go.
Free born. He held the franchise as a freeman of the great Roman government and realm. Yes, we, dear friends, when we are enrolled in heaven, in the Lamb’s book of life, have conferred upon us all the rights and freedoms of the heavenly city.
Born from above means something more than all the glories of earth, however great they are. The Lord Jesus spoke about this when He said, “The children are free.”
When we pass hurriedly to the end—the Lamb’s book of life: life, the book, the Lamb’s book of life—where did that idea come from, the Lamb’s book of life?
Oh yes, the Bible has a lot to say about this. Very early in the Bible, you come on the lamb of sacrifice. You come on this idea as early as Abel, in the very first family of that race referred to. Right from that point on, all the way through the Bible, the Lamb is in view. The Lamb is in view. You cannot get away from this Lamb anywhere.
Where did this come from? This was born in the mind and heart of God before the world was. We read tonight, “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
This is something that extends to embrace all time. God knew, when He made man and this world, what would happen. He knew what would happen. He had to know; He could not help knowing. But He deliberately did it—the mystery and wonder of His ways.
Knowing what would happen, how man would disobey, how sin would come in, and what the consequences for the human race would be—the long history of that sinful rebellion—He knew it before ever He started.
But then He foresaw. He also, in His heart and in His mind, chose to meet it all in what is called the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world.
It is an eternal thought. It is a timeless thought. It covers and embraces all that has come in in time. The Lamb, the Lamb. Yes, small in itself, but what an immensity of involvement in this little Lamb.
There is nothing that can come into time—sin, oceans of sin, mountains of sin—but they go down before the Lamb. The Lamb is big enough for it all. The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world: God’s own unique and all-sufficient provision for man, for mankind.
So John the Baptist saw Jesus walking and cried:
Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!
—John 1:29
It was to that Lamb in the thought of God that he was referring. God’s Lamb—not all the lambs on Jewish altars slain, but the One Whom they typified. God’s Lamb. Behold God’s Lamb.
Out from the eternal past, here He is in time, walking before you, here present: the Lamb of God, Which taketh away the sin of the world. Identified by John the Baptist, God’s own precious Lamb.
God’s own precious Lamb—precious to God not only because He is His Son, but because God finds the redemption of His whole creation in the blood of that Lamb. He sees the removal of all that has come in to challenge His rights in creation.
Oh, He sees all that His heart has ever eternally been set upon made possible and secured by the Lamb. We shall dwell upon the Lamb for ever, and we shall. But this Lamb is very precious, very precious.
There is a very terrible story in the Old Testament which brings out the tremendous value and importance of a lamb. It is one of the very terrible stories of the Old Testament, and I am not going to give you names, in kindness especially to the one particular person.
There was a king who had very much. He had multitudes of flocks and herds; he had his wives, his children; he had everything that a wealthy king could possess. One day he espied a woman whom he desired to have for himself, but she was married. Her husband was alive.
The king meditated this thing and came upon an awful decision: “I will get rid of her husband, and then I will have her.” So he schemed and devised an awful thing. He put that husband into the battle, saw that he was in the front rank, and at a certain time the others were told to draw back and leave him alone to be killed.
And it happened. He took the woman to be his wife. But God’s eye had seen. God spoke to one of His servants, the prophet, and said, “Go to the king.”
The prophet went, and he wrapped the whole thing up in a parable. He said there was a wealthy man who had flocks and herds and everything that the heart could desire. He lacked nothing, nothing whatever. One day a traveller came to him, and he had to provide a meal.
Instead of taking from his multitude of lambs, he went and took the one little ewe lamb of a poor man over there who had only one, and he loved it. It came in and had its meals with him; it was a member of the family. He cherished it, fed it, cared for it. He loved it. It was his only ewe lamb.
This man, who had his thousands, went and took this one ewe lamb, slew it, and gave it to his friend.
When the prophet got to that point in the story, the king broke out in wrath and anger. He said, “As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall die.” The prophet said, “Thou art the man.”
Then the prophet said, “Thus saith the Lord, The sword shall not depart from thy house for ever, because thou hast done this thing. In thine own family will be thine enemies.” You know what happened with Absalom, do you not? It was true.
Well now, I leave the story. But what is the point that we are making? Oh, there is wrapped up in that Old Testament story a far bigger story, a far bigger story.
Do you know, dear friends, that for two thousand years there has been a people on this earth from whose house the sword has never departed? All the tragedy of this world, all the horror of the persecution, all the stories that even recently have been written—that is only a fragment of two thousand years of the sword having never departed from their house.
They killed God’s one Lamb. God had blessed that people richly and abundantly. They had all that He could give them, and they took His one Lamb and slew Him. The sword has never departed.
My point is this: this Lamb of God is very precious to God. Upon our attitude toward this Lamb, our eternal destiny hangs: life or death, justification or condemnation, heaven or hell—in the balances of how we treat this Lamb of God.
I think I have said enough to bring the tremendous issues of life and death, of eternity, into this word: the Lamb’s book of life. I can only make the appeal to you.
Thank God, the answer can be given from so many hearts here tonight. But what about any others? Go through one by one, one by one, when the Spirit of God comes and stands before each one. Is your name in the Lamb’s book of life? Is it?
The old children’s hymn asks, “Is my name written there?” Is your name enrolled in heaven? Notice: how do you know? How do you know?
Well, how do you know that you are where you are, sitting where you are as an active person, able to hear what I am saying and see what there is to see? You say, “I am alive.” How do you know it? You say, “Why, of course, I was born.”
But what life were you born with? Is it this world’s life? How do you know whether you have this other life? Have you the experience, the knowledge, of being born again?
Some of us know that it is true. It might not be possible to put our finger upon the exact moment or day when it happened, like a bolt from the blue, right out from heaven. It may have been a course, a process, something that went on for a time, but emerged in this: “I know that I am saved. I know today that I have eternal life.”
Whether it be in a sudden moment or whether it be on some other line, you must be able to stand in this category and say, “I know that I have passed from death unto life. I know that I have been born from above. I know that I have eternal life.”
“I have accepted the Lamb of God and all that He has done for redemption, and my redemption, as my sin-bearer. I have embraced that Lamb, brought Him into my life. I know.”
If you have not put it in this way, you know what this means: “My name is in the Lamb’s book of life.” Can you say this? Thank God, so many others can say it.
Oh, may it be true of everyone here. Should you have any doubt or question about it, dear friend, do not let this day close and pass without your getting alone with Him.
Say, “Lord, all that is meant in heaven by that word, Lamb—the Lamb of my redemption, the Lamb for sinners slain—I by faith receive into my heart. I ask Thee, enrol my name in the Lamb’s book of life.”
Do that if you have not done it. And for the rest, let us rejoice that we are of the company of those who have eternal life, and will join in the choir at the end:
Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain.
—Revelation 5:12