A passage in the book of Revelation, beginning at Revelation 4:1.
After these things I saw, and behold, a door opened in heaven, and the first voice that I heard, a voice as of a trumpet speaking with me, one saying, Come up hither, and I will show thee the things which must come to pass hereafter.
Straightway I was in the Spirit: and behold, there was a throne set in heaven, and One sitting upon the throne; and He that sat was to look upon like a jasper stone and a sardius: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, like an emerald to look upon.
And round about the throne were four and twenty thrones: and upon the thrones I saw four and twenty elders sitting, arrayed in white garments; and on their heads crowns of gold.
And out of the throne proceed lightnings and voices and thunders. And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God; and before the throne, as it were, a sea of glass like unto crystal.
And in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, four living creatures full of eyes before and behind.
And the first creature was like a lion, and the second creature like a calf, and the third creature had a face as of a man, and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, having each one of them six wings, are full of eyes round about and within: and they have no rest day and night, saying,
Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God, the Almighty,
Who was and Who is and Who is to come.
And when the living creatures shall give glory and honor and thanks to Him that sitteth on the throne, to Him that liveth for ever and ever, the four and twenty elders shall fall down before Him that sitteth on the throne, and shall worship Him that liveth for ever and ever, and shall cast their crowns before the throne, saying,
Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God,
To receive the glory and the honor and the power:
For Thou didst create all things,
And because of Thy will they were, and were created.
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.
Now, this evening, rather than go over anything of what has been said, I want to go straight on to the next point, which I feel we ought to make, and one of which I am quite sure there is much need of instruction. It is all summed up in this phrase: the testimony of Jesus.
I believe the Lord has spoken to us in the past year or two a number of times about the testimony of Jesus and about the golden lampstand. I am also quite sure that many of us use the phrase “testimony of Jesus,” if we use it at all, without really understanding its significance. It is the kind of phrase that, once you get hold of it, you can use without really understanding exactly what it means.
It is this subject this evening I want, by the grace of God, to deal with. Everything depends, I am quite sure, upon the illumination that the Holy Spirit can give to us as we turn to His Word.
All the seven points which you see here written upon this board are all bound up with the testimony of Jesus. It is a phrase used mostly in the book of Revelation, and elsewhere only a few times in the New Testament.
Unfortunately, in modern colloquial versions, the phrase has been completely obliterated and rendered “giving testimony to Jesus” or “witnessing to Jesus.” This is rather sad. I do not quite understand why it has been interpreted in this way, since it is a very simple genitive: the testimony of Jesus.
The word testimony in the New Testament is the word also rendered witness. In Greek, there is no other word for martyr. Our English word martyr comes from the same word as testimony. A witness is a martyr; it is the same thing. You have to understand by the context whether it is a witness who has lost his life for his testimony.
In spite of the fact that modern colloquial versions have obscured the meaning of this phrase, it is, in my estimation, of very great importance and significance indeed.
Let us take our Bibles and look at all the references we have to the testimony of Jesus. First of all, Revelation 1:2:
John, who bare witness of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, even of all things that he saw.
Then Revelation 1:9:
I John, your brother and partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and patience which are in Jesus, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
Revelation 12:17:
And the dragon waxed wroth with the woman, and went away to make war with the rest of her seed, that keep the commandments of God, and hold the testimony of Jesus.
Revelation 19:10:
And I fell down before his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am a fellow-servant with thee and with thy brethren that hold the testimony of Jesus: worship God; for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
Then turn back to 1 Corinthians 1:4-6:
I thank my God always concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus; that in everything ye were enriched in Him, in all utterance and all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you.
Then 1 Corinthians 2:1. In the English Revised Version you will find this rendered “mystery of God,” but in the Authorized Version, the American Standard Version, and the Revised Standard Version, it is rendered “testimony of God”:
And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.
Compare that with what has gone before. Then turn to 2 Timothy 1:8:
Be not ashamed therefore of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner: but suffer hardship with the gospel according to the power of God.
Then two other references in Revelation. Revelation 1:5:
And from Jesus Christ, Who is the faithful witness.
The faithful witness. It is very easy to read this kind of thing again and again as a Christian and never think of what it means. What does it mean: the faithful witness? The word witness, again, is just the same word—martyr, testify if you like.
Revelation 3:14:
These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness.
The faithful and true witness.
It seems to me reasonably clear from these passages that this phrase, the testimony of Jesus, does not refer merely to some general and ordinary witnessing on our part to the Lord Jesus Christ, but to something far greater and of much deeper significance.
I believe it refers to that testimony which the Lord Jesus Himself bore, and indeed expressed in Himself, in His very being. The testimony of Jesus was to God’s true character.
In all the falsity of ideas about God—about the nature of God and about the existence of God—He bore testimony to the true nature of God’s character. He bore testimony to God’s will and to God’s purpose from eternity to eternity, in a world which had lost every idea of the aim or objective for which it was created.
He bore testimony to God’s eternal and original purpose for man and for the whole creation. He bore testimony to God’s ways and to God’s heart, to God’s redeeming love and salvation by which God could and would restore and reconcile a fallen humanity—degraded, perverted, alienated, if you like—to its original glorious destiny.
It is into this world—this world we know, blind, disobedient, and sinful, which has long since forfeited the right to God’s mercy and forgiveness—that the Lord Jesus came. A world, mark you, that is founded upon a lie.
We must get rid of all sentimental ideas about this world: its beautiful sunsets, its twittering birds, the magnificence of things here and there. They are all there; there is no doubt about that. But the fact is that this whole system of things into which you and I have been born is founded and built on a lie.
Instead of finding its centre, its meaning, its very existence, and its very life in God, it now finds its life and existence in selfhood. This has crept into every sphere and every part of the creation. It is a world founded and built on a lie, and this lie has poisoned the very lifeblood of humanity. It is in us.
Now, my dear child of God, whoever you are, however long you have been in the way, the nearer you get to God, the more you find this lie in our bloodstream. Think of it. The moment the Lord takes action with us, what is our first reaction? To fall flat on our faces and worship Him? Never. Our first reaction is, “Why did He do that to me?”
We distrust God. We always believe the worst about God. We rebel against God. We react against Him. Why do we do this? It is our spontaneous reaction. Our spontaneous reaction is not always to believe the best about God—to believe that He is doing it for our best, that He is leading in the best way, that He can undertake.
Otherwise, I dare to say that as many issues as there are people in this room tonight, including myself, would be settled here tonight. All this holding on to ourselves, all this refusal to let go—behind it all lies this poisoned bloodstream, this lifeblood that has been poisoned, which is in us all. We do not trust God.
We believe He is a grabber, a grasper, someone who must dictate to us—someone who does not really want our joy and well-being, but actually wants to make us miserable, empty, and negative, if it is at all possible.
Some perhaps are not so deeply poisoned as others. But I am quite sure that when we begin to discover the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, this is one of the things that becomes very soon apparent to us all: our very lifeblood has been poisoned by a lie.
The values of this world have been inverted. We as Christians, as part of our lifelong education by the Holy Spirit, must be brought to true values—to see things that are real values as against what we have thought to be valuable. This world’s values are inverted values.
It is a world in which meaningfulness has been lost. When you go to work in the morning, you look around the compartment or the bus, or round the office, or wherever it is: all those people rushing here, rushing there, going through life, all through a routine of activity, to drop dead at the end. Some do not bother to ask where they came from or where they are going. They are caught up in a great machinery called life—its meaningfulness lost.
What is the point of it all in the end? If you accept these false values, then you can be slightly happier sometimes, until death comes, or illness comes, or something else comes; and then suddenly you are face to face with reality.
It is a world lost to God, lost to eternal life, and lost to the glory of God. It is a world relegated to the iron-like bondage of sin and death—a prison house of darkness and blindness. That is the world you and I know: a world whose vicious principle is self-centredness, inflated by pride, and alienated from the life of God.
It is into that world—this world—that the Lord Jesus came, bearing testimony to the genuine reality of all things, bearing testimony to the true character of it all.
I am not just talking about God. The Lord Jesus, by His very presence, suddenly made men and women realize that they were not meant for this. Suddenly, prostitutes, publicans, and sinners began to wake up to the fact that this was not life, that they were lost, and that there was more than just an ideal: there was a possibility of something. He awakened something in people. It was the testimony that He bore.
Do you understand what I mean? It was His very presence, as well as His preaching, that somehow brought another world to bear upon people, another kingdom to bear upon people, another life to bear upon people.
It was not merely that He interpreted and defined for us something about God—about His true nature and character. It was not just that He revealed, proclaimed, and declared God; He showed us what we were made for. He showed us the dark side of the coin as well as the bright side.
If you study your Bible, you will find this in many places. Confine yourself to the Gospel of John. John 3:31-36 says:
He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is of the earth, and of the earth he speaketh. He that cometh from heaven is above all. What He hath seen and heard, of that He beareth witness; and no man receiveth His witness.
He that hath received His witness hath set his seal to this, that God is true. For He Whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for He giveth not the Spirit by measure. The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand. He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.
Then John 5:30-37:
I can of Myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous; because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true. It is another that beareth witness of Me; and I know that the witness which He witnesseth of Me is true.
Ye have sent unto John, and he hath borne witness unto the truth. But the witness which I receive is not from man: howbeit I say these things, that ye may be saved. He was the lamp that burneth and shineth; and ye were willing to rejoice for a season in his light.
But the witness which I have is greater than that of John; for the works which the Father hath given Me to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear witness of Me, that the Father hath sent Me.
John 8:12 says:
Again therefore Jesus spake unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life.
When the Pharisees said, “Thou bearest witness of Thyself; Thy witness is not true,” Jesus answered:
Even if I bear witness of Myself, My witness is true; for I know whence I came, and whither I go; but ye know not whence I come, or whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man. Yea, and if I judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent Me.
Yea, and in your law it is written, that the witness of two men is true. I am He that beareth witness of Myself, and the Father that sent Me beareth witness of Me.
Then John 18:37:
Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art Thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.
Turn back to John 3:19-21, which acts as a commentary upon these other passages:
And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved. But he that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, that they have been wrought in God.
The testimony of Jesus is much more than merely a testimony by lip or words. It is much more than the truth He proclaimed. He not only bore testimony; He was that testimony Himself. It was not only on His lips but in His very being.
He was Himself the very expression of what God was like and what God wanted—the kind of Person God is and the kind of man God wants. The moment we look at the Lord Jesus Christ, we see two things, somehow together, inextricably together, and yet quite distinct.
We see in the Lord Jesus the kind of Person God is: the heart of God revealed and the mind of God revealed. And we see in the Lord Jesus the kind of man that you and I should be. Immediately, we see the kind of Person God is, and the kind of person God intended you and me originally to be. That is the testimony.
You have this in all kinds of Scriptures:
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.
Again:
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
It was not just what He preached. In Him, in His very being, was the testimony. He was full of grace and truth. We beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father.
Again, John 14:9:
He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.
And John 12:45:
He that beholdeth Me beholdeth Him that sent Me.
Or Hebrews 1:2-3:
Hath 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.
It is beyond us, really. That is the kind of Person God is, revealed in the Lord Jesus. How can any finite created being understand God? We cannot. God is Spirit. God is infinite. God is vast. God is holy and incomprehensibly beyond us.
No little created intelligence can ever fathom God or even understand God. But in the Lord Jesus Christ, God has a human form. Suddenly, God becomes focused. God becomes understandable, if you see what I mean.
He has a colour to His eyes, a colour to His hair, an actual shape to His face, hands that worked at a carpenter’s bench. There were lines on His face that betrayed the years of labour through which He went, and so on and so forth. He could weep. He could hunger. He could thirst.
We see the kind of Person God is, but we also see the kind of person God wants. If you read those terrifying chapters—Matthew 5, Matthew 6, and Matthew 7—which we normally call the Sermon on the Mount, and begin to measure yourself by them, every one of us comes short.
There is only one Person of whom the Sermon on the Mount is a perfect example, and that is the Lord Jesus. In every single part of it, He perfectly and absolutely expressed the kind of man God intended us to be originally.
No wonder the Apostle Peter later, writing a letter, says:
Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow His steps.
That is what we call the testimony of Jesus. But I want to take it further this evening. To me, it is even more clearly seen in the eight great claims that the Lord Jesus made, and upon which John based his Gospel: those tremendous claims, eight of them—“I am.”
It is not without significance that the one who saw the visions in the book of Revelation, and who uses this phrase, “the testimony of Jesus,” more than anyone else, is the one who in his Gospel gathers everything around these eight great claims of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the notes you will find the references to the eight claims, but I think most of you know them:
John sets them down one by one, not haphazardly in his Gospel, but with a great design. Into it he weaves eight great signs and a number of other incidents. The whole thing John tries to do is to set before us the testimony of Jesus.
Jesus did not say, “I give the bread of life,” or, “I produce the bread of life.” He said, “I am the bread of life.” He did not say, “I am the culmination of the history of the Old Testament.” He said, “I am the history of the Old Testament. Before Abraham was, I am.”
He did not say, “I point to the door.” He said, “I am the door.” He did not say, “I give the life.” He said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Not merely that He will raise us one day, but that He is the resurrection and the life—not just what He preaches, but what He is in Himself.
This is the testimony of Jesus.
I would like to give you just a few samples of what the testimony of Jesus means in practice from the Gospel of John. If you turn to John 2, what have you got? The very first sign is the turning of water into wine.
There are many Christians, I have often thought, who should have a great problem about this. After all, if the Lord had followed the right thing, He should have turned wine into water. But He turned water into wine, and, just so that no one could get away from it, it was the very best vintage wine.
Those who knew quite a lot about wine said, “Thou hast kept the good wine until now.” The really good old vintage was brought out at the end. What was the Lord Jesus doing? Of course, this is no excuse for us to go on the bottle at all.
The whole point the Lord Jesus was making was this: it was corruptible into incorruptible. It is the testimony of Jesus. In the East, water is the most dangerous thing in this world. Leave it in a stone jar for more than a day or two, and it stagnates, and a whole village can be wiped out with cholera.
It was corruptible. But, my dear child of God, you can leave wine for year after year after year, and the higher the percentage of alcohol, the safer it is. It is incorruptible.
It says expressly in John 2:11:
This beginning of His signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory.
Not miracle—sign. A sign is more than a miracle: it is a miracle with significance. Who can change corruptible into incorruptible? My poor old body! I am not so old, but I have an old corruptible body, and it is getting older all the time. You have too. But one day the Lord Jesus, oh, the glory of it, is going to turn it into something incorruptible.
Turn to the last part of John 2, and what have you got? You have the Lord Jesus going into the temple and doing something which has upset some people. He seemingly lost His temper. In the white fury of His anger, He deliberately made a scourge of cords, turned over all the tables, and caused pandemonium in the outer court of the temple.
He said:
Make not My Father’s house a house of merchandise.
Would to God that many of us Christians could hear the Word of the Lord in this matter. Then He said:
Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
The testimony of Jesus. This that you see—all these buildings, this is nothing, said the Lord Jesus. This is the temple. Destroy it, and in three days I will raise it up: an incorruptible, eternal temple, a habitation of God in the Spirit, in which all nations shall find their house of prayer.
Then you come to John 3. One of the greatest Bible teachers in Israel comes to the Lord Jesus by night. He tries to discuss with the Lord Jesus His claims, the basis of His miracles and signs, and so on. The Lord brushes the whole thing aside and says:
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Then He goes on: he must be born of water and of the Spirit. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Here is the testimony of Jesus.
The Lord Jesus comes into a situation that is cultured, educated, religious, pious, and decent; and suddenly the light of God shines into a darkened heart—decent, upright, moral, pious, but dark and alienated.
Suddenly dear old Nicodemus must have spun like a top. “What do You mean?” he says. “Born again? Must I enter into my mother’s womb?” Of course not. That was a very silly thing to say.
In the end Nicodemus understood it all. He was converted in the end. But do you see where the light first shone? Into a cultured, religious, educated, pious man, who thought he was doing everything required of him. Suddenly, it was the testimony of Jesus.
That which is of the earth is earthly. Poor Nicodemus: “How can it be?” he says in the end. “It cannot be by human ingenuity, creativeness, or cleverness,” says the Lord Jesus. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.”
That thing which has poisoned mankind—which has poisoned and destroyed even the best and most decent of mankind—that thing I am going to take into Myself on the cross and die for. Then the way will be opened for the Spirit of God to come into your heart when you are washed and cleansed from your sin, and cause a new birth, so that you are no longer born of earth, earthly, but born of heaven—born from above.
You go on to John 4 and you have the woman of Samaria. She bounced along to the well with her pot on her head, fetching water. She had had a bit of a life, no doubt about it. She had probably had a number of sorrows in her life. Marry five husbands without some sorrow, I should think.
She had had her fair share of sorrow, trials, and troubles; and jauntily she goes along. The Lord Jesus says to her, “Could I have a cup of water?” That was the first thing: testimony of Jesus.
Our ideas of the testimony of Jesus are quite different. We would have thought that He stood there and pierced her through with a holy look, so that she shrivelled and suddenly all her five husbands flitted before her eyes. But none of that at all. The Lord Jesus says in a quite spontaneous way, “Could I have a cup of water?”
“Sir,” she says, “art Thou a Jew?” Yes, He was. “How is it that Thou askest drink of me, who am a Samaritan woman?” She had no dealings with Jews; and it was doubly so with her. Only prostitutes or women who were outcasts ever went to the well at that time of day, and secondly, they would never speak to a man.
Then they had a marvellous religious and theological discussion. “Our fathers say we should worship in this mountain,” she says, “and You say we should worship at Jerusalem.” Jesus listened to it all and then suddenly said, “Go, call thy husband.”
She was flummoxed, a bit flustered. “I have no husband.” “Thou saidst truly,” said the Lord Jesus. “Thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband.”
In a single moment the whole façade fell down like a pack of cards. It was not done in the religious way, the Pharisaical way, hauling some woman into the presence of the law, caught in the very act, and saying, “What shall we do? Stone her?”
It all began with a request on His part. Do you see the testimony of Jesus? Out of this extraordinary meeting came one of the most wonderful things in the Gospel according to John: what true worship is—not here, nor there, but in spirit.
You can go on, jumping over chapters and chapters, until you come to John 11. There you have one of the greatest mysteries of all: the mystery of the death of Lazarus. You know the whole story.
They besought the Lord Jesus to come, but He did not come at first. He deliberately stayed back. The Lord Jesus knew exactly what He was going to do: He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead.
He deliberately stayed back until it was absolutely certain. It was certified. His death was clear to everyone. It was not just a fainting fit. He was in the tomb, the stone was rolled over it, it was sealed; the whole thing was certain. Then He came.
You know how Mary and Martha broke their hearts at His feet, and how the Lord Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Then He went down, and the most extraordinary thing happened. My dear friends, this is the testimony of Jesus: suddenly the Lord Jesus began to cry.
It is, of course, the shortest verse in the Bible:
Jesus wept.
It is the shortest verse in the Bible, but it is the most profound mystery in the whole Book. The Lord Jesus knew that He was going to raise Lazarus. Why then did He weep? I will tell you why He wept.
The Lord Jesus, with His heart so sensitive, so compassionate, so sympathetic, knew what He was going to do with Lazarus. But it was the whole thing that had happened to man which broke upon the Lord Jesus in an altogether new way.
Man was never made for death. He was never made for all this corruption, death, misery, and emptiness. Suddenly the misery of it all, the unhappiness of it all, overwhelmed the Lord Jesus. God never intended that. God never intended death in His scheme of things as we know it.
Jesus wept. And then He raised Lazarus.
In that incident, you have been introduced into the holiest place of all, and I defy anyone to understand it. There you are face to face with the kind of Person God is.
I will put it in another word from another Gospel. Perhaps it sounds sentimental, but if the Lord Jesus had not said it, perhaps it would be:
Not even a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father.
Go away and think about that. It does not mean God is sentimental, but it means that everything that happens in this groaning, misery-struck creation touches God.
Every aeroplane crash, every train crash, every bereavement, every sickness, every cruelty to children, every time there is cruelty to an animal—whatever it is, animal to animal or human being to human being—in this sin-struck world, the whole thing somehow touches God. God is sensitive to it.
You have got it in these two words: “Jesus wept.” This was not what God intended. This is not what God purposed. This was not that for which mankind and all this creation were made. It was something altogether different from this.
I have only taken a few examples from the Gospel of John to show you a little of what I believe the testimony of Jesus means. It was not just something to do with what He proclaimed, the truth He proclaimed. It was not only the truth He proclaimed, and not only the actions He performed; it was His very presence that made the powerful and incisive impact upon the world.
I do believe that the Lord Jesus sometimes did not have to say a single word. You have it in John 8. Here comes a great mob, all very respectable religious leaders, hauling some miserable woman and flinging her at His feet. They say, “We have got her in the very act. The law of Moses says she should be stoned. What dost Thou say?”
He never answered a word. No sermon on them. No great platitudes about turning the other cheek. Not a word. He just bent down and started to write in the ground, and we do not know what He wrote. In the sand, He just doodled.
One by one they went out, from the eldest to the youngest. Dr. Campbell Morgan said they went out from the eldest to the youngest because the eldest had the most sin: he had lived the longest. Out they went, one by one.
That is what I mean when I say it was not just the truth He proclaimed nor the actions He performed. It was His very presence. When He stood before Pilate, He answered not a word.
And out of that hardened Gentile governor came the word, almost wistful:
What is truth?
What is reality? It was torn out of him. Some people think it was sarcasm; I do not. It was the presence of Jesus. It was the testimony of Jesus. He was there.
Have you ever found that? Surely every one of us who has known the Lord in some little measure has found that, whenever we have really touched Him, things have just been different.
When He has come near to us, when He has spoken to us, when some new light has come to us from the Word of God, the truth has set us free:
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Is that not so? It is the testimony of Jesus.
It was what He was in the final analysis. He not only bore testimony to the life of God which God was giving to man; He was that life. It was that life which was the light.
The light the Lord Jesus gave is an altogether different kind of life. It is not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; it is the tree of life. It was not just up here—knowing this is wrong and that is right. It was a kind of life that became light.
John 1:4:
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.
Again, John 8:12:
I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life.
Think of that. It is a most extraordinary phrase: the light of life. Not the light of intelligence, but the light of life. This is what the Lord Jesus had.
If you and I wanted to sum it all up, I think I would sum it up in the words of the Apostle John in 1 John 5:11:
And this is the testimony, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.
Then 1 John 5:19-20:
We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we know Him that is true; and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.
I think here tonight we shall end, but I want to end on this note. The testimony of Jesus, in its ultimate analysis, in the final analysis, is that the life of God—eternal, the very life of God Himself—was in Him.
When you and I receive Him, when we are born of God, that life comes into us, and a union takes place.
We have to take the testimony of Jesus much further next week, because that is why it is bound up with the lampstand, and the lampstand is bound up with the church. But it all comes back to this: first of all, life was in Him.
Then through His death and resurrection it came to us. We have been joined to Him, and He to us. If I am joined to Him and He to me, and you are joined to Him and He to you, then something has happened between us.
We are all in the same Christ, and the same Christ is in all of us. We have all got the same life, and the same life is in all of us. We are born of God into a new family. We have become members of Christ and one of another.
That life was withheld from man when he fell. You have it in the simple words of Genesis 3:22-24:
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever—therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
From that time man fell and life was withheld from him. From that time, the cherubim became the symbol of the divine veto.
Whether you know this or not, it is a fact that in every great civilization in the world some form of the cherubim has existed—from the great Chinese winged dogs to the winged lions of Assyria, to those of the great Incas, to the Sphinx of Egypt. This idea has spread throughout the whole world and permeated the whole of civilization: fearsome creatures that guard the way, as it were, to the gods in mythology.
But we know that the cherubim are a symbol of the divine veto. Man’s eternal life is withheld by God from the likes of you and me.
Later on, another symbol came, even more dramatic in its content: the veil of the tabernacle. A great heavy veil divided the holiest place of all from the holy place, and on that veil were woven and embroidered cherubim. It was the divine veto.
None of us can obtain the life of God. That veil was only removed when the Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself—His own sinless and incorruptible life—for our sin. Then, in His resurrection, by the Holy Spirit, He offered Himself to us as the very life of God, as life eternal.
The moment the Lord Jesus offered Himself as a sacrifice to God for our sins—His perfect life—that moment the veil in the temple, with those embroidered cherubim, was torn in two from top to bottom by the hand of God. The way was opened.
God was offering this life again to men and women by His Son. The divine veto had been lifted—had been lifted.
I say that that is wonderful.
He that believeth on the Son of God hath eternal life.
Listen to the simplicity of the words, but, oh, the experience of agony behind them—the years of preparation from eternity.
Or again, listen to the words of the Lord Jesus:
He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath life in himself.
When we next see a picture of heaven in Revelation 4 and Revelation 5, which we read, a glorious and dramatic change has taken place.
Instead of the cherubim acting as guards to the way of life, withholding it from man and barring the way, suddenly they become worshipping ushers to redeemed men and women.
A whole innumerable multitude of the redeemed—ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands upon thousands—pour in, and the cherubim no longer bar the way, but usher them in. First they begin with the elders and the song, and finally they say, “Amen.”
That is the testimony of Jesus. That is it: God in Christ has finally and forever triumphed.
Here we are, you and I. We are in the history of it. My dear friend, think of it: if you had lived in Abraham’s time, you would have been much farther back. Here you and I are towards the end of this age, this glorious age—the age of the grace of God.
We still know something of a world that is upside down. We still know something of inverted values. We still know something of a world founded on a lie. We still know something of a lifeblood that is poisoned. We still know something of meaningfulness that is lost all around us on every side.
We are in the world, but we are no longer part of it.
Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
We are still here, and in the wisdom of God, unless He comes, we must all die. We have all still got to experience something of that which was never intended to be part of this creation, and from which the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ delivers us.
But that is why the glorious promises are given to us: changed in the twinkling of an eye; the dead in Christ rising first; we who are alive and remain caught up to be with them.
It is all so wonderful. It is the testimony of Jesus. Sometimes it is very hard for us to believe that God has the final word in this thing, that the ultimate triumph is Christ. But it is.
That is why we have the book of Revelation. We shall see next week that we have martyrs under the altar. Think of it: the lid is lifted up, and a cry comes out, “How long?”
The voice comes back with absolute calmness from heaven: “Till the number of the martyrs is fulfilled.” And the lid is put down.
For us, it seems, “Oh dear, dear, dear.” But it is comforting in another way. It is all according to the sovereign plan of God, all in hand. The triumph is His—absolutely.
You get that book with its great conflict, its satanic antagonism, its world system of evil, antichrist, here a worldwide counterfeit church, there everything seemingly going wrong in one way. Finally, the last picture is of the city coming down out of heaven, adorned as a bride for her husband.
The ultimate triumph is with God. This is the testimony of Jesus.
As we shall see next week, this is the testimony that you and I hold. We hold it: the testimony of Jesus—those who hold the testimony of Jesus.
Thank God, the Lord Jesus, our glorified and triumphant Head, has gone into the heavens and is seated at the right hand of God the Father, beyond the reach of Satan, beyond the reach of all the powers of darkness and evil. He is there; He has triumphed.
Now it is our place to hold the testimony of Jesus without compromising, whatever the cost or whatever the price, until finally we see the day of God’s ultimate triumph dawn. And we shall.
I do hope that the Lord has helped you to understand a little of this involved and difficult subject. I hope the Lord will help you to understand a little what this phrase, the testimony of Jesus, means.
Shall we pray?
Now, beloved Lord, we do lift up our hearts to Thee, and we praise Thee for that testimony of Thine. Lord, there would be none of us here this evening were it not for the way that Thou didst come into this world and the way that Thou didst give Thyself for us.
Now, Lord, we pray that we may be given divine illumination by Thy Spirit upon these things, that as we search Thy Word and as we seek Thee, Lord, so it may dawn upon us something of the meaning of this phrase.
Illuminate us, Lord, by Thy Spirit, we pray, and we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.