Please turn with me to the letter to the Colossians, at the end of Chapter 1. I am going to read from verse 12.
Giving thanks unto the Father, Who made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light;
Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love;
In Whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins:
Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
For in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him;
And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
And He is the head of the body, the church; Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence.
For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell;
And through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens.
And you, being in time past alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil works,
Yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and without blemish and unreprovable before Him.
I would like to add to that, in the last book of the Bible, Revelation Chapter 5. We have not time to read both Chapters 4 and 5, so I will just read from verse 1 of Revelation Chapter 5.
And I saw in the right hand of Him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the back, close sealed with seven seals.
And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a great voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?
And no one in the heaven, or on the earth, or under the earth, was able to open the book, or to look thereon.
And I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open the book, or to look thereon.
And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion that is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath overcome to open the book and the seven seals thereof.
And I saw in the midst of the throne, and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, having seven horns, and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth.
And He came, and He taketh it out of the right hand of Him that sat on the throne.
And when He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
And they sing a new song, saying, Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation,
And madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth.
And I saw, and I heard a voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands;
Saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honor, and glory, and blessing.
And every created thing which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in them, heard I saying, Unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honor, and the glory, and the dominion, for ever and ever.
And the four living creatures said, Amen. And the elders fell down and worshipped.
Just a word of prayer.
Beloved Lord, we are here this evening in Your presence. We are conscious that we are gathering together unto You, Lord. And, dear Lord, we want just very simply to recognize that You have made a provision for us this evening: for the speaking of Your Word, for the translating of Your Word, and for the hearing of it.
Into that provision, we stand by faith. Manifest Your power in all our weakness, Lord. Grant that somehow this time will be a meeting with Yourself; that the Word of Christ will come to dwell in us richly in all wisdom.
O Lord, we need You. We are living in tremendous days. We can become almost immunized to the turmoil and tumult and noise all around us. O Lord, we pray that You will, by Your Spirit, challenge us. Wake us up, Lord. Make us alert and alive to You.
By Your Spirit, O Lord, bring us into a new place with Yourself, we pray. And we shall be careful, dear Lord, to give You all the praise and all the glory for answering this prayer. We ask it in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
My responsibility in the theme of these days is the eternal purpose of God as seen in Christ, and particularly to do with the letter to the Colossians.
I said on the last occasion when I spoke that there is no eternal purpose apart from Christ. God is not dealing in a whole number of things. He is dealing in and through a Person. This eternal purpose of His is centred in our Lord Jesus.
There is no salvation apart from Him. There is no new birth apart from Him. There is no Christian life apart from Him. There is no growth apart from Him. There is no fulness apart from Him. There is no completion apart from Him. There is no hope of glory apart from the Lord Jesus. There is no church without the Lord Jesus. There is no bride without the Lord Jesus.
God has given us everything of Himself in the Lord Jesus, and nothing outside of the Lord Jesus. We can build Christian organizations and institutions; we can call them churches; we can do a thousand and one things. Christendom itself is a monument to this. But it is not necessarily the work of the Holy Spirit.
The work of the Holy Spirit always begins with the Lord Jesus, and it always ends with the Lord Jesus. The initiation is through Him, the introduction is through Him, the power to go on is in Him, and the completion is through Him.
That is basically the message of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Colossians. I spoke last time about Christ as the heir of all things, the firstborn of all creation. The firstborn is always the heir. When it speaks of the firstborn of all creation, everything that has been created was created through the Lord Jesus and for the Lord Jesus.
Even more remarkable, the statement begins, “In Him were all things created.” Now think about that. In Him were all things created. It speaks about things in the heavens and things on the earth, things visible and things invisible. Everything was created in Him. It is amazing just to consider it for a moment.
Thrones, dominions, principalities, powers—all were created in Him. Everything that is created was created through Him and for Him. He is the heir of all things. He is before all things. And in Him all things hold together. It is simply tremendous when you see it like that.
Then it goes on to say that He is the head of the church, the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. Something happened to that whole natural creation, and something happened to man as he was originally created. But the Lord Jesus is the firstborn from the dead. He is the head of a new man, as we heard this morning.
A new beginning—a new beginning. The Lord Jesus is once again the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. It is wonderful when you begin to see it like this. Every child of God here in this place this evening, every one of you who has been born of the Spirit of God, is in this new beginning. You are in this new man. You are part of this new creation.
Well, may the Lord help me. I feel extremely disjointed this evening, but I want to speak about the Lord Jesus tonight in three ways: the eternal purpose of God as seen in Him.
First, Christ as the secret of God—God’s secret. Secondly, Christ as the image of the invisible God. Then, the Lord Jesus as the Redeemer, Reconciler, and Inheritor. I do not know whether we shall get there, but by the grace of God we will trust the Lord for all of this. I just hope that I do not send you to sleep.
Christ: the secret of God. This word mystery is found three or four times in the Colossian letter. You find it in Colossians 2:2-3:
That their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, even Christ, in Whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hid.
Is that not marvellous? These phrases are so tremendous. There is almost a universe in every phrase—spiritually, a universe in every phrase.
In Colossians 1:25-27, Paul speaks of the mystery:
Whereof I was made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which was given me to you-ward, to fulfil the word of God,
Even the mystery which hath been hid for ages and generations: but now hath it been manifested to His saints,
To whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Or again, in Colossians 4:3:
Withal praying for us also, that God may open unto us a door for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in bonds.
This word mystery, in the Greek, in the original, simply means secret. It is not something fathomless, something beyond us, something absolutely impossible for us to understand. It is a secret which is revealed to us.
Paul borrowed this word mystery from something common in Hellenic, or Greek, culture. There were mystery cults. You had to be a member of these cults. You had to be an initiate. You had to be someone who had been initiated into the cult, and then you had a right to understand the secrets.
It was strange. It was all over the Hellenic world. The apostle took this, and listen carefully to me: for the church, for the believer, for the redeemed, what he was saying is this: if you are born of God, you have a divinely given right to understand the mystery—the secrets.
There are a number of secrets. There is the mystery of Christ; He sums up nearly everything in Himself. There is the mystery of Israel, which for many people is a total secret. I am talking about Christian believers. The mess over Israel is unbelievable. People have the weirdest ideas about Israel. Either it is all finished and done with, or it is all going to happen only in the millennium, or whatever else. But it is a secret, and only the Holy Spirit can reveal it.
There is the mystery of lawlessness, which we are now beginning to witness ourselves. All around us, in human society, in world society, we are seeing something. It is not gangsterism as such. It is not just terrorism. It is living life and producing a society that is outside the revealed law of God. It is against what God has revealed as principles for living and for life.
But I must not stay with these things. I want to talk about God’s secret, even Christ. He is God’s secret.
Think, for instance, of the mystery of the incarnation. Can anyone understand the incarnation? That is something which the most intelligent person in the world cannot understand by intelligence alone.
The secret of God is withheld from the wise and understanding—that is, the humanly wise and understanding—and revealed to babes. Have you been born again?
It is not that God is saying, “Are you stupid? Are you so stupid that you are dumb? You can only wail; you cannot even articulate yet. Then I can reveal things to you.” I do not think it means that.
He said, “To babes and sucklings”: those who are so young, they are dependent; those who are so young, they have not yet got concepts. To these, God reveals His secrets.
To the wise—the Einsteins of the world—the secret of God is withheld. From the Freuds of the world, the secrets of God are withheld. From all the great intelligences of the world—Darwin, Karl Marx, Mao Tse-tung—this is nonsense to them. It is not revealed. They cannot understand it. They cannot pierce it. They cannot somehow come to know what it is all about.
But to the simplest child of God, born of the Holy Spirit, the incarnation is a reality. I do not believe you can trap this in a formula. We speak of the Trinity. It is a word not actually found in the Word. I believe in the Trinity, but I prefer to speak of the triunity. That is also not found in the Word. The fact is found in the Word, not the word itself.
But all I know is this: you cannot reduce the Lord Jesus to being merely a human being. He was a human being, but you cannot reduce Him. How could it be that in Him all things were created if He is a human being? How could it be that things visible and invisible, things in heaven and on earth, were created in Him? How can all things hold together in Him if He is a mere man?
Here you have a mystery. Here you have a secret. I do not think my little mind will ever comprehend it—not in a million years, in eternity, in the ages to come. But what I do know is that in Christ I meet God.
In 1 Timothy, it speaks of the mystery of godliness. It is a secret. How did God conceive the Lord Jesus? How did God become a baby, as helpless as a baby in the arms of a human being? How is it possible that God was carried from place to place as a baby?
Did He suspend His Godhead? Was He purely man, only to become God? That would be as nonsensical as many of the other theories. The fact is, you have a mystery. You have a secret which human intelligence cannot comprehend. But when we are children of God, we have met God in the Lord Jesus.
I could go on and on. I do not take anything away from Dana or from Father Stephen and give them a little more problem, but when I think of Romans 16 and almost the last verse, it speaks of the gospel according to the mystery.
I used to think, every time I preached the gospel, “I am so stupid.” Here I am preaching the gospel, and I know very well that to those who listen, it is stupidity. I am talking about God coming into this world, being born of a woman, and dying on the cross. These people in front of me look at me as much as to say, “Are you intelligent? You are trying to tell us something like this, like some Greek myth, that the gods have come down to us.”
But it is through the foolishness of preaching that God saves men and women. Is that not so? You feel sometimes, “Well, we must try to be more clever.” Yet the more clever we try to be when we preach the gospel, the less people are saved.
I remember very well a well-known academic coming into a meeting at Halford House when we had four missionaries from the Congo. These missionaries were the simplest people you had ever seen. One of them was black; three of them were white. The white missionaries were far more simple than the black brother.
I have never forgotten them singing “Count Your Blessings” in some dialect of the Congo. As one of them thumped on the piano, they went out of one key into another, and another, and another. I thought to myself, “Oh God, of all the meetings that this academic atheist should come into, he has come into this one.”
I spent the whole time uptight in myself, thinking about this atheist, this academic, and what he would think. “What a loony lot in this place.”
Afterwards, this man came to me with tears running down his face and said, “This is the first time I have ever seen something real in Christianity.”
I remember that wonderful brother, Harry Shaw—Kenneth Harry Shaw from Monotoke—who came then to Halford House. He was a Cambridge don and a classical Greek scholar. I remember how he got saved.
He went with Father Harrison when they were young undergraduates in Cambridge. Father Harrison took him to a meeting because one of the very learned Christian ministers was going to preach. But he did not preach; he was ill. The man who replaced him was W. P. Nicholson.
Now, that does not mean anything to you, but W. P. Nicholson was Irish. He was the funniest preacher you had ever heard. He could not help it. He was known all over Britain as one of the funniest preachers.
Brother Harrison told me, “I sat next to Harry Shaw and I thought, ‘Oh my God, what have I done? He is damned to hell now. He will never, ever come.’” Yet Harry Shaw got saved that day in the midst of all the laughter and the preaching of the gospel. He got saved.
It is amazing, the mystery of the gospel. Yet for the simplest child of God, the gospel is the sweetest sound on earth. It means life. It means salvation.
All I really wanted to say was this: you and I can never, with this brain of ours, understand some of these things. But in our spirit, we touch God in the Lord Jesus. We come into His salvation. We experience what it is to be born again. We experience what it is to grow in the Lord.
As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.
It is the same process. You saw Him. You responded in faith. You received Him. Now every further step on the Christian way—in your life, your progress, and your growth—is when you see the Lord afresh and respond to Him in faith. Then you find that you have moved forward.
Then I think of the church. I will not say too much on this because our brother is already dealing with it. But all I want to say is this: what a mess we have made of the church, because we have never seen it. It is a secret.
We consider the church to be something from the old covenant which can be put together and set up with all its organization. The church does have an organization, but it is a different kind of organization. The organization comes from within the life. Do you understand?
Just as your body has an organization—an incredible organization; at present, mine is breaking down—normally these bodies of ours have an incredible organization. I always use the illustration: your body says, “You are getting too warm,” so you perspire. I did not read a book that said, “Now perspire when you get too warm.”
Something inside—an inbuilt organization, so complex, so sensitive, so fine in its thermostatic control. When you get cold, you start to shiver; you generate warmth. It is an inbuilt thermostatic control within your body.
There are a thousand and one other things we could talk about. Your body is an incredible organization. So it is with the church when it is a living organism, born of God.
That is why Stephen said the church has to be born. It has to be born of God. When the church is born of God, you have within it an organism, and within the organism you have an organization which expands and contracts as necessary.
But when you put the whole thing together, then it becomes top-heavy. Then it becomes an institution, and then it kills the spiritual life within it. It is a secret.
Christ in you. Christ in me.
Personally, I use the American Standard Version of 1901. Is that not strange—for me to use an American Standard Version instead of the English Revised? Actually, the American Standard Version is better than the English Revised, I must say that straight away. But I am talking about years ago: 1881, the English Revised; 1901, the American Standard Version.
I am not against modern versions at all. But one of the sadnesses of modern versions is that you cannot tell in English when “you” is plural and when it is personal and individual.
In the old version, if it were personal, it would be, “What is this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in thee, the hope of glory?” But it does not say that. It says, “Christ in you,” because that is plural. Christ in you, and you, and you, and you—Christ in each one of us. That is the hope of glory.
The glory of God is far too much for one single human being to contain or express. It needs all the saints together.
Then again, think of Colossians 2:19: “Holding fast the Head.” Oh, my goodness me, here is a secret. This is part of the secret: Christ dwelling in us, and Christ as the Head.
Our Lord Jesus, in the body in which He was here on this earth, and in which He will return, is at the right hand of the Majesty on high. How can He dwell in you and in me unless it is by the Spirit? It is a secret that can only be revealed.
You have a whole kind of Christianity which is personal and purely objective. “He is at the right hand of God, and that is my Saviour and my Redeemer, but He does not speak to me. I have the Book, and I must study the Book, but it never comes alive to me. That is getting mystical.”
But if Christ dwells in you, He is bound to speak to you. What a strange thing: the Lord Jesus is in you, and you never hear Him making His Word real to you, applying His Word to you. If He is in you, and with the eye of your heart you never see Him, that would be very odd—very strange. Yet, to the child of God, this is a divine right.
In Colossians 2:19, it speaks of problems they had in Colossae, in the church at Colossae, and then it says:
And not holding fast the Head, from Whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God.
It is very interesting that whenever trouble hits an assembly or a fellowship, the first thing we all try to do is hold one another. Then we get into trouble. In fact, when error comes and we all try to hold one another, slowly we all move off-centre.
The only way you discover the body is by holding fast the Head. When you hold fast the Head, you discover the body. And the body increases with the increase of God.
This is some secret—this mystery. Do you not think so? I think so.
The only certain hope of glory you have is Christ in you. So the more there is of Him in you, the more glory there will be. So simple. The less of Christ in you and the more of you, the less glory. Very simple, is it not?
Then I think of this universe. Perhaps we see it most clearly here. Take the whole universe. Do not despise the universe.
The Bible, from the first chapters of Genesis to the last of Revelation, emphasizes the fact that God is the Maker of heaven and earth and all that is within them. Do not think for a moment that God is going to throw away this universe. Even when the whole thing is renewed through fire, there will be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
The most amazing thing is that this whole universe was created through the Lord Jesus and for Him. Even more: in Him it was created. What does that mean?
When it says, “All things hold together in Him,” it is as if He is the basic energy of the whole. Einstein never discovered that. The greatest scientific minds have not discovered that. Yet this is a secret that the simplest child of God can understand by the Spirit of God.
The mystery of God. When we speak of Christ as God’s secret, He is the key that unlocks everything. Did you get it? Here is the key that unlocks everything.
He unlocks the secrets of the universe. He unlocks the purpose in the universe. He unlocks the destiny of the universe. He unlocks the fall of man, God’s original purpose for man, and then man’s fall. He is the key that unlocks the redemption and salvation of man. He is the key that unlocks the eventual glorifying of man in Christ, in union with Him.
He is the key to everything. He is the key to the church, the key to the growth of the church, the key to the completion of the church. He is the key to the bride and everything to do with the bride. He is the key.
Well, I do not know whether that is too much for most of you this evening, but that is my first point.
The eternal purpose of God as seen in Christ: He is God’s secret. There is no other way for you to understand the universe, everything within it, man, God’s original purpose, the redemption of man, and the reconciling of all things unto Him.
I love that phrase. In the Greek, it is, “to reconcile all things unto Himself.” Amazing.
Now I would like to speak for a little while about Christ, the image of the invisible God. You have it in Colossians 1:15: “Christ, Who is the image of the invisible God.”
Turn also to Hebrews 1:2-3:
God, having at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son, Whom He appointed heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds;
Who being the effulgence of His glory, and the very image of His substance, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.
This word, “image of the invisible God”—first of all, you must understand that God is, by His very nature, invisible. I think all of you know that. It is spoken of a whole number of times in the Word.
God dwells in unapproachable light. That means that you and I, if we came near to Him in ourselves, would be shrivelled up—like electrocuted. There is no way you and I could approach God in ourselves.
Then there is something else: God is unknowable. There is no way your finite little mind and my finite little mind can comprehend Him. I do not know about you, but I think of myself, when it comes to God, as having a brain the size of a pea.
How in the world am I to understand God? God has no beginning and no end. Every single person I know has a beginning and an end. You all had beginnings, and you will all have ends. It is part of life, is it not? Everything has a beginning and everything has an end.
It is impossible for us to comprehend Someone Who never had to begin, Who always was there. You say, “Where did He come from?” Well, that is the point. He was always there. You cannot fathom it. You cannot take it in. No beginning, no end, infinite, uncreated, living in unapproachable light.
For us human beings—even if we were not sinners, even if we were not fallen—God is unknowable and incomprehensible. Our little minds could not take this in.
No man hath seen God at any time. John 1:18. But it is not just there; it is all through the Word.
If you know your Bibles, one of you is bound to say, “Who did Adam talk with in the garden?” If God is unapproachable, unknowable, incomprehensible, entirely beyond this, who walked in the garden?
When He spoke, Adam, before he sinned, did not hide himself. Who spoke to Adam and Eve? Who spoke to Abraham when “the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham”? Who wrestled with Jacob when he said, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved”?
Who spoke to Moses when he said, “Lord, show me Thy glory”? The Lord said, “I will hide thee in the cleft of the rock. Thou shalt see Me from behind, but not My face.” Who was it?
Who did Isaiah see, high and lifted up, Whose train filled the temple? If no man has seen God at any time, if God dwells in unapproachable light, who is this One, long before the birth of the Lord Jesus, Whom so many of the saints in the old covenant actually saw?
It is remarkable with Abraham on one occasion: the Lord came with two angels, and Sarah cooked them a meal. Interestingly, it was not a kosher meal as we would understand it. She put milk and meat together.
The Lord said, “About this time thy wife shall surely bear a son.” Sarah was in the tent preparing the meal behind the tent flap, and she laughed. The Lord said, “Why did you laugh?” Immediately Sarah said, “I did not laugh.”
I always find that one of the most humorous stories in the Bible, because it was all through a closed tent flap. The Lord was saying, “You laughed, Sarah. Why did you laugh?” She did not open the tent and say, “I am so sorry.” She just said, “I did not laugh.” Then the Lord said through the tent flap, “When your son is born, you will call him laughter—Yitzhak, laughter.”
Who was it?
The amazing thing is that the Lord Jesus is called the image of the invisible God. The word image is difficult for us because we immediately think of idols or icons. But the word is really impress or imprint.
I have a ring here. If I took off this ring, which has a family emblem in it, and pressed it into wax, there would be an image. That may not help you much, but it means that the Lord Jesus is the exact impress of the substance of God.
I know it sounds almost impossible, almost blasphemous to say it, but that is what the writer of Hebrews says: the very, exact imprint or impress of the substance of God.
In other words, when you see the Lord Jesus, for the first time you can know the unknowable. You can understand the incomprehensible. For the first time, you see God—if I may put it that way—with a human face. You see Someone to Whom you can relate, and suddenly you begin to understand Who God is.
The Lord Jesus: the image of the invisible God. Do I make any sense at all to you tonight, or are you having a little snooze back there?
The impress of God’s substance. What an amazing statement.
Let me take you a step further, if I may. The Lord Jesus is called by the Apostle John, “the Word.”
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Then listen. He says:
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.
This word translated Word—Logos—has the whole idea of something verbalized, articulated. Let me put it another way: if I think but do not speak, you have no idea what is going on in there. If I feel but do not express anything, you have no idea what is going on in there.
Jesus is the mind and the heart of God revealed. For the first time, you understand what is in the mind of God, because it is verbalized. It is the thought of God in expression—His thought expressed in a way that you and I can understand. It is His heart expressed in a way that you and I can understand. The Word of God.
It is wonderful to think about it, to consider it. The eternal purpose of God is seen in Christ. How could you ever, ever—not in a million years of study—understand Who God is and what is right outside or apart from the Lord Jesus?
The Lord Jesus is the impress of God, the imprint of God. He is the Word. He is the mind and the heart of God expressed in flesh and blood. Believe it or believe it not, it is in flesh and blood that this mind and heart of God are revealed to us.
Now we see what God is like. We see Him touch a leper. From the moment leprosy came to that man, not a soul touched him—not his mother, not his wife, not his children. Nobody touched him until Jesus touched him. That is what God is like.
We see them bringing a woman taken in the very act of adultery—something so disgusting, in one sense, that religious people would even do it. But they took her in the very act. No doubt they waited. They knew what was going on with her and whoever it was. They waited, then dragged her off and flung her into the presence of Jesus.
They said, “The law says this woman should be stoned. We are witnesses; we have taken her in the very act of adultery.” Jesus stooped. This is the very Word that God had given, the very commandments God had made. He stooped and, with His finger, He wrote in the sand.
One of the questions I want to ask when I get to glory is: what did He write in the sand? We do not know. But He wrote in the sand, and then He said:
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
They went out, beginning with the eldest, because he had the most sin. In the end Jesus turned to her and said, “Is there no one here to condemn you?” She said, “No one.” And He said, “Go, and sin no more.” That is what God is like.
When Jesus came to the wedding at Cana of Galilee, His mother came to Him in a panic. I do not know whether they were relatives or close friends, or why His mother was so involved, but she was.
Like all mothers, she said to Him, “Do you know the wine is running out?” I do not know what had happened to them—very poor foresight. Jesus said to the men, “Go and take from those great jars. It is all right.” And He turned the water into wine.
That is exactly what Jesus does with every human life that is sinful and corruptible, with its terrible tendency to go wrong all the time. Jesus turns it into wine.
I know some people get very upset about this. They feel the Lord Jesus must have been mad to turn water into wine; much better if He had turned wine into water. I have heard it many times.
I always remember the lady who came up to a preacher who had preached on this and said, “I do not think you should have preached on this, because this is leading people astray.” He said, “But, my dear sister, Jesus did turn the water into wine.” “Well,” she said, “I would have thought more of Him if He had not.”
That is the problem with prejudice and bigotry. Why did Jesus turn water into wine? Because that is exactly what He does with you and me. He turns the corruptible into the incorruptible, the mortal into the immortal.
He takes your life and my life, so given to going off the rails, and He puts within it a power that is abnormal, almost unnatural, to keep us on the path. When we do go, He brings us back again and again. It is wonderful, is it not? This is what God is like.
Now you begin to understand Who God is. For the first time, you see into the heart of God. For the first time, you see into the mind of God.
When Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman,” that was perhaps the hardest thing of all. It was bad enough when He said, “I am the bread of life; he that eateth Me shall live for ever.” That must have been unbelievable for people.
It would be easier to say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” or to say, “I am the door of the sheep.” But when He came to, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman,” that must have been the most difficult of all the things He said.
Everybody knew the vine was a picture of the covenant people of God. What did He mean when He said, “I am the covenant people of God”? It sounds impossible, but He explained it:
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me.
Jesus did not say, “I am the trunk and you are the branches.” He said, “I am the vine.” That is everything. Somehow you are in Me. You have become part, as it were, of what I am. This is the church again. It is amazing—so wonderful.
We could spend the whole night until tomorrow morning talking about the Lord Jesus as the image of the invisible God. Invisible is invisible: you cannot see it, you cannot take it in with these eyes. But Jesus is the impress, the imprint, of the invisible God.
What was invisible is made visible in the Lord Jesus. It comes through the prism of His life, His character, and His nature. Now we begin to see the heart and the mind of God.
Is it any wonder that the writer of Hebrews spoke of the Lord Jesus as being “the effulgence of His glory”? That is an old-fashioned word. The old Authorized Version says, “the brightness of His glory.” It simply means the radiant outshining.
Jesus is the radiant outshining of the glory of God. That is why John put it like this:
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father.
In 2 Corinthians 4:6, we read:
Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, Who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
No human being could understand the glory of God, but in the face of Jesus Christ we receive the light of knowledge, the illumination of knowledge.
Is it any wonder that the apostle says, “As we behold, as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory”? The Lord Jesus, being the image of the invisible God, is the effulgence of God’s glory—the radiant outshining of the glory of God.
You have been called to that. Is it any wonder that Paul says by the Spirit of God, “Christ in you, the hope”—not vague hope, but the certain hope—“of glory”? Is Christ in you? Can you say, by the grace of God, “Christ is in me. He dwells in me”?
If you can, His being in you is the certain hope of glory.
Well, I must finish. Otherwise, as always, the clock beats us. In just a few minutes, I want finally to consider Christ as the Redeemer and Reconciler.
It is all very well to speak of the whole universe being created in Him and holding together in Him, that He was before all things, and that everything created was created through Him and for Him. But look what has happened. Man has fallen. When man fell, something went through the whole universe.
The amazing thing about the eternal purpose of God is this—listen carefully: He does not produce a church to be an end in itself. The church, with the Lord Jesus, is to go into the ages and come into the fulfilment of all God’s purpose.
But we do not know what that purpose is. We honestly do not know. We are asked all kinds of questions. Will we dress in clothes? What kind of clothes will we wear? Shall we eat? Especially the Chinese always ask me that. Shall we eat in the ages to come? Will we recognize one another?
What will the relationship be in the ages to come between husband and wife, since marriage is only until death parts us? Is there any special relationship? What will happen? We do not know. We can surmise certain things. The Lord Jesus ate fish after He had that resurrection body. He said something, but does it tell us very much? Honestly, I think only this.
God had a purpose for this universe. That purpose was arrested and paralyzed by the fall of man. When sin entered this world, the whole purpose of God for the natural creation was paralyzed, put on a shelf almost. It was subjected to an endless cycle of futility and corruption that has gone on and on and on.
A whole number of Oriental religions are based on this: the wheel—Buddhism, Shintoism, Hinduism. They are all built on this thing that the world is a wheel that goes on; everything that was will be, and so we go back and back and back. But that is the fall. That was not what God originally intended.
In Revelation 21, Jesus says from the throne, “Behold, I make all things new.” Then He says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” As He speaks of something altogether new, He is going to dwell in the midst for ever—not visit, not bless, not use, but dwell for ever.
Finally, we see the glory of God coming, as the prophet said, the knowledge of the glory of God covering the earth as the waters cover the sea.
The wonderful thing is that it is all centred in the Lord Jesus. He is the Redeemer—the One Who, by the payment of a ransom, wins back to the original owner what has been lost. Not just you and me, but the whole natural creation.
I think to myself, “Do you mean to tell me that God, in creating this universe, has exhausted everything He could do?” My goodness me, if only we could understand God—if we could understand His heart and His mind. He has waited all these years to get on with the job.
We do not know what the job is. We do not know whether He will create new universes and new planets, or whatever He will do. But I can tell you one thing: it will not be boring.
I have known the Lord for over fifty years, and I have never found the Lord boring. I feel so sorry for young people. They tell me, “I find it all so boring.” Yes, yes, yes—you find God’s people boring. Some of God’s people are terribly boring, because we get lukewarm and apathetic and affluent, and we sit on our behinds and do nothing.
Saved couch potatoes. It is a sad thing. No wonder sometimes people get bored and say, “Oh, it is so boring.” Then they think of heaven: “No excitement. Nothing. We are going to sing for ever and ever and ever and ever.”
We do not even know whether we will eat. That would at least be an interval between the singing. We could get together for a meal, a banquet or two, and then go back to singing again.
When worship is wonderful, when you are really lost in worship, it is almost as if time stops and you move into eternity. There is no doubt we shall worship the Lord. There is no doubt we shall be lost in wonder, love, and praise. There is no doubt that even the rehearsing of the whole old story will be wonderful.
That is what I want to hear: the whole story from the beginning rehearsed in the halls of glory—how it all happened, who was involved, how people prayed, the names we never heard about which are known to God.
Father Stephen said that the Book of Acts is an open-ended book. Well, I want to hear the rest—not from some church’s story. I want to hear it from the Lord Himself, telling the whole story from the beginning and calling upon the different witnesses: “Now come and tell your little part of the story over here.” They will not be able to exaggerate because He is there. They will tell it exactly as it is.
Will it not be wonderful? Just think—exciting. I think it will be. But there is far more than that. We do not even know what the Lord is going to do.
All He wanted was a marriage. He wanted a people for His Son, to be one with His Son, and to have been trained to reign with Him. We are talking in Sunday-school language and pictures, as it were.
But what are they going to reign over? What are they going to do? What is it in the ages to come? All we know is that these wonderful things are stored up beyond our imagination by our heavenly Father and by our Saviour and heavenly Bridegroom.
It cannot be boring. If human beings can put on fireworks which get very exciting on July 4 and at other times, can you imagine what the Lord will do? Those things will be nothing compared with what the Lord will do.
My dear friends, that is why I read that marvellous chapter in Revelation. It is Colossians 1 all over again, only in vision form.
John saw a throne, and around the throne a rainbow like an emerald. Then he saw four living ones, representing, I believe—as Brother Sparks always said, and I believe he was right—the natural creation; and the twenty-four elders representing the government of redemption from both covenants.
He saw in the hand of the One Who sat on the throne a scroll with seven seals. He knew exactly what that was. That was a testament, a will, an inheritance. It was all to do with inheritance—heirship, if you like.
A voice of a mighty angel said, “Who is worthy to take this testament, this scroll, this will, and open the seals?” There was absolute silence.
The four living ones, who had been in perpetual motion, stopped. The twenty-four elders stood. Not a sound.
I have been once or twice in times when thousands of people, for some reason or another, have suddenly stopped. I remember, many years ago when I was young, being at a big air show. One of my mother’s closest friends was de Havilland’s chief test pilot.
I remember his plane going round. There were thirty-five thousand people watching. As it came across, to this day I have it imprinted on my mind, it stalled. Suddenly it turned upwards and went back. The two engines slowly came out, almost in slow motion. You could not hear a sound—not a sound. It was as if everything was frozen.
It was only when it fell to the ground and you saw the two pilots fall out of it, and then you saw the two engines coming towards us, that suddenly people began to run.
Absolute silence. John burst into tears because he understood that it was all to do with the will of God for the universe and for man being fulfilled.
Then an elder came—one of the twenty-four; I do not know which one—and said, “Do not weep, John. Look: the Lion that is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath overcome.”
John looked for this Lion, and instead he saw a Lamb—a little Lamb in the midst of the throne. To his amazement, this little Lamb was as though it had been slain.
This Lamb, as though it had been slain, took the scroll out of the hand of Him Who sat upon the throne. Of course, He began to break the seals.
Then the whole great assembly burst into praise. What a song.
Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with Thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation,
And madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth.
That taking of the scroll in the vision, that breaking of the seals, leads right through the whole Book of Revelation: through serpents and dragons and martyrdom and beasts and false prophets and a thousand and one other things; great world empires, and all the rest of it, until you come to the end.
Then you have the city of God coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God. It was the Lamb. Nobody else could have done it—not Abraham, not Isaac, not Jacob, not Moses, not Elijah, not Isaiah. Nobody. Only the Lord Jesus.
He took the scroll, and in that moment the purpose of God for the universe was secure. It was in the hands of the only One Who could fulfil that will of God.
Dear brothers and sisters, is it not worth belonging to the Lord Jesus? Stephen will talk about the church, and Dana will talk about the believer and the eternal purpose. But as it touches both the church and the believer, all I want you to see is this: there would be no church and no believer but for that little Lamb.
What an incredible picture it is: a Lion. A lion is a magnificent creature. Personally, I like the tiger even better, but you never had tigers in Israel; you only had lions. There were many lions, though they died out in the sixteenth century.
What a magnificent creature the lion is—a male lion with a great mane, the way it stands there, shakes its head, throws back its head, and roars. The Lion of the tribe of Judah. I love it.
The Lord Jesus is no little spineless person. He is a Lion. He has taken on the powers of darkness, taken on Satan, taken on the whole fallen world, taken on a demon-infested world, and beaten them all in His death on the cross. That is a Lion.
But it was a little Lamb. Nothing could be more different. Lambs and sheep do not roar. At my cottage, I have them all around me. They drive me mad—the bells ringing all the time. But there is no roar with lambs. They are little creatures. They are sweet creatures.
I have never understood sheep. They put their heads in the bottom of the one in front, and then they all walk together down. It is extraordinary. I could tell you many, many things about sheep.
This was not even a sheep. A little Lamb. I listen to the little lambs cry all the time. It is no great lion roar.
But there is something so amazing here. Jesus is both the Lion and the Lamb. He is both the King and the sacrifice in one.
He takes the testament, the will of God, and says, “I will break the seals.” You and I are in the breaking of the seals. Thank God, it is in the hands of One Who is absolutely worthy.
Worthy to be enthroned. This is your Saviour. This is your Redeemer. This is your heavenly Bridegroom. This is the Lord Jesus.
Shall we pray?