Now, this evening, shall we take the Word of God and look up the different references to the testimony of Jesus?
Who bare witness of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, even of all things that he saw.
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.
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.
And I fell down before his feet to worship him. And he saith 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.
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:
so that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ;
who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye be unreproveable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God is faithful, through Whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now, those are all the references there are to this phrase, the testimony of Jesus or the testimony of Christ. There are a number of others that we shall compare with it.
You will notice that, in some versions, this is translated “mystery.” Some ancient authorities do put “mystery,” but here we have:
And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.
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.
There are two other references in Revelation. We have not the word testimony, but we have the closely related word, witness—or testifier, if you like. It is the same word.
And from Jesus Christ, Who is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.
Well now, those are just a few of the references, to refresh your memories from last week.
All these seven points which we have here on the board, which we have considered in these past months, are bound up with this phrase, the testimony of Jesus.
Unfortunately, in some of the modern colloquial versions, the meaning of this little phrase is entirely obscured. It appears for the most part in the book of Revelation, and elsewhere only a few times.
It is not the testimony or witness that we bear to Jesus, but the testimony that the Lord Jesus Himself bore. That is what we considered last week—something of its nature.
It was not merely that the Lord Jesus defined for us God’s true character. He Himself, in Himself, expressed that character. In other words, it is not simply that He drew a picture for us in words of what God was like. We see God in flesh and blood in the Lord Jesus. That is the testimony of Jesus.
Again, it is not just that He proclaimed God’s eternal and original purpose for mankind. It is more than a proclamation. The Lord Jesus, by word, explains something of what was in God’s heart in the beginning—in the creation of this world and in the creation of man—but He did far more than that.
In Himself, in the most practical circumstances and the most concrete situations of life down here on this earth, He revealed to us what God’s eternal purpose is all about. And He realized in Himself that purpose, so that we can truly say that the eternal purpose of God centres in and is summed up in our Lord Jesus Christ. That is what the testimony of Jesus means.
Or again, we can say that He did not merely preach to us God’s redeeming love and salvation. He was Himself the very embodiment of divine love—love incarnate. He is Himself the salvation of all God’s people.
So it is not only that He did something, but that He is something; not only that He acted, but that He was. You understand? That is the testimony of Jesus.
He not only pointed us all to the way back to God, but He was, and is, Himself the means and the way back to God.
We could sum it all up very simply in this way: the Lord Jesus not only gave light; He was the Light. He not only gave life; He was the Life. He not only gave love; He was Love. That is the testimony of Jesus.
We spent the whole of last Thursday thinking about that. This world—its darkness, its perversion, its corruption, its blindness, its alienation from God—the lie that is woven into the very fabric of human society: the world founded and built basically on a lie.
It was into that world that the Lord Jesus came, not only to proclaim truth, but to reveal the truth—to be the Truth. It was not only His words, but His very presence.
We looked at the Gospel of John and saw how John takes eight great claims that the Lord Jesus makes—all the great “I am” statements—and then the eight signs, with many other incidents, all of which he uses to set forth what we call the testimony of Jesus.
The Lord Jesus is not just doing this and doing that, working miracles for the sake of miracles. By His very presence, He is dynamiting a whole kind of society, a whole kind of world, a whole world-order—a system that has come to be accepted by men, a philosophy that is in the very being of man. He, by Himself, by His very presence, dynamites the whole thing.
That is the testimony of Jesus. Supremely, we see it in the cross, when He gave His life for us.
That is why you have that wonderful little word which perhaps few of us have really understood:
For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, Himself man, Christ Jesus,
Who gave Himself a ransom for all; the testimony to be borne in its own times.
There you have it. It was the testimony which He bore in due time, supremely in the giving of Himself—a ransom for us all; the Mediator, the middleman, between God and fallen humanity. That is the testimony of Jesus.
When the Lord Jesus was exalted to the right hand of the Father, that testimony of His was committed to the church. In other words, the testimony of Jesus is vested in the church on earth—the church, I said.
The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach.
I want you to underline that little word, began. The former treatise—that is the Gospel according to Luke—I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began to do and to teach.
The book of Acts is the continuation of the doing and teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, we have it all in the epistles; it all came out of this. He continued to do and to teach, but through what? Through His body.
So we could say that Acts, the book of Acts, is the continuation of the testimony of Jesus—the Head—through the body, His church.
It starts with these very words:
Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Then again, I think we ought to note very carefully this little phrase, which it is easy to pass over: holding the testimony of Jesus.
In Revelation 12:17 we read, “and hold the testimony of Jesus.” In Revelation 19:10, “thy brethren that hold the testimony of Jesus.” This word hold is just the normal word have. Some versions simply say, “have the testimony of Jesus.”
What it means is this: the testimony of Jesus has been vested in these people. They hold it. They have it. It is not something which originated with them, nor something initiated by them or in them. It was something they received.
It is the testimony of the Lord Jesus which has been committed to their keeping. It has been vested in them. They hold the testimony of Jesus. That is why it is so sad that, in modern colloquial versions, the meaning has been so completely obscured.
You have the same idea in the golden lampstands. Turn to Revelation 1:12. This whole book is about the testimony of Jesus.
And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And having turned I saw seven golden candlesticks.
The Authorized Version says “candlesticks,” but the more correct term is lampstands. In the ancient world they did not have candles; they had little oil lamps. The golden lampstand in the tabernacle was a seven-branched stand into which fitted seven lamps.
The stand holds the lamp, and the lamp contains the light. That gives us a little light upon why certain brothers, known to us in the past, always insisted on “lampstand.” The whole idea is connected with holding the testimony of Jesus. The perfect picture is the golden lampstand, which holds the lamp that gives the light.
The church’s function in this world—and I do not think any Bible scholar would contradict this—is testimony. She is not merely to proclaim the truth, but to express the truth in her own being.
Not just simply to shout the Word of God from the rooftops, but by her very existence, by her very way of life, by her very being, she is to reveal and express the truth of God. The truth is in her.
That is why the Spirit of God says in one of the epistles:
Ye are all sons of light, and sons of the day.
It is in you. You are not just giving it; it is in you. Jesus said:
Ye are the light of the world.
And He said of Himself:
I am the light of the world.
The thing has got to be in us.
We can take it further than that. We are not only to preach Christ, to bear testimony to Him, witnessing to Him in office, school, college, home, amongst friends, or out on the streets. We are to reveal Him in our being.
That is the thing that counts. More damage has been done, has it not, by people opening their mouths? We all know such folk who speak inadvisedly about the Lord when their lives do not tally. In that office, in that home, wherever it is, the Lord’s name is held in disrepute.
This is what we mean by holding the testimony of Jesus: something of His authority and power; something of His risen life and fullness; something of His sensitive, tender compassion and love; something of His destiny and His glory expressed in and through us.
That is what we mean by the church holding the testimony of Jesus. It is not just that we are a collection of religious people. Nor is it merely that we are a collection of people who are born again. Thank God, we are born-again believers, but that is not all God wants.
It is not so hard for the Lord to collect a group of people who are born again, but that is not the candlestick; that is not the lampstand. It is more than that. It is a people united with Himself, disciplined by Himself, with something of Himself inwrought into the very fibre of their beings.
They express the authority and power of the name of Jesus. They become evidence of the risen life and fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ. They become, as it were, a vehicle—a vessel—through which the compassion and love of God can be expressed, not only to each other but to the world outside.
There is a tremendous amount in Scripture about this once you see it. When you do not see it, it all seems a bit up in the air. But once you have seen it, the whole of the New Testament starts to live with a new meaning.
Take the reference in 1 Corinthians 1:6. Why did Paul say this to this poor and pathetic church at Corinth, with so much trouble, division, and carnality amongst them?
Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you.
Here he starts off refusing to accept things as they are. There are people who believe in that kind of realism: “Oh, you must accept things as they are.” That is where they begin, and they are always in a mess. They lead the rest of us into a mess too.
The apostle Paul is a realist of God’s kind. He starts with the real position, which is in Christ, and he says, “The testimony of Christ has been confirmed in you.” That is why you have these gifts. That is why you are saved. That is why you are named with the name of Christ.
Then he goes on and says He will confirm it to the end too. God is faithful, through Whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son—not fellowship with His Son, but the fellowship of His Son.
Here is this company of called-out people in Corinth. What are they to be? Just a collection of dear little believers? A collection of people proclaiming the gospel simply to the unsaved? A gathering concerned merely with their own transformation and sanctification?
No. They have to be a lighted lampstand in that darkened, wicked, and perverse city. They are there to show what God is like, to reveal something of the true character of God, to express in themselves something of God’s eternal purpose, and to show the love of God. That is how we get 1 Corinthians 13.
They have to be the very embodiment of it—not in a sentimental way, with lovely rosy skies and twittering birds, but in the dark, seamy, vice-ridden city of Corinth. There may have been rosy skies and twittering birds, but there was also the darkened evil side of Corinth. It is there that there is the testimony of Christ.
Turn to Ephesians 3:9–11:
To make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God Who created all things;
to the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God,
according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Here is a mystery, is it not? What Paul is saying is this: “Look here, you gathered-out saints, you sinners saved by grace in Ephesus, do you know what God is doing with you? He is actually educating the invisible angelic hosts through you.”
Those dark experiences you sometimes go through, those inexplicable pressures that come to bear upon you—there is a whole host, invisible to you, all around you, watching.
The far greater company is not the seen company but the unseen company, in every true church gathering. They are all there, in their serried ranks, watching. They are being instructed both by our falling and by our rising. God is teaching them.
Some of you may say, “Oh dear, this is going a little too far.” Well, I will give you two passages. The first is 1 Peter 1:12:
Which things angels desire to look into.
So there they all are—thousands of them here this evening—desiring to look into these things. God bless them. They have not been permitted, as we have. This is our privilege: sinners saved by grace. We are becoming the flesh-and-blood vehicle through which God allows them to see.
Take also 1 Corinthians 11:10:
For this cause ought the woman to have a sign of authority on her head, because of the angels.
Think that one out. People say there is no need for it. Well, there is something to do with the angels. They are looking; they are watching. We do not understand fully what is happening or why, but there is some reason.
This testimony of Jesus is not just to do with the flesh-and-blood things we can see around us in Richmond. Of course it has a lot to do with Richmond, but not just with Richmond. It is to do with the unseen—both the fallen angelic hosts and those who are still servants of the Most High.
Turn to 1 Thessalonians 1:7:
So that ye became an ensample to all that believe in Macedonia and in Achaia.
For from you hath sounded forth the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith to God-ward is gone forth.
They did not just talk; they were an example. That is the testimony. Something happened. It is the faith and love which is in Jesus. These dear folk in Thessalonica had become something—not merely by word, though thank God they had something to proclaim, but corporately, in their very being.
Then turn to Romans 16:19–20:
For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I rejoice therefore over you: but I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple unto that which is evil.
And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.
That is what the Lord does. He takes fallen, sinful human beings, saved by His grace and joined to His own risen, triumphant Son; then, through their very frail experience, their circumstances, and the situations into which corporately He allows them to come, He bruises Satan under their feet.
Again and again, all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
We have mentioned Acts 1:8: “Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be My witnesses.” That is not merely a question of running around giving a little word of testimony on a platform here or a pulpit there. It is more than that.
We are bearing the testimony. It is in us. It is perfectly right and true to say that we witness to Him and speak of Him, but what good is that if the testimony is not in us? It is to be something much more than a few personal words concerning the Lord Jesus and His saving grace.
That is the value and power of the church. Turn to Matthew 28:19–20:
All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth.
Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit:
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.
There you have the whole thing. That is the testimony of Jesus. He has Himself borne it; now He has ascended to the right hand of God the Father. Now He tells us to go, and He says He is with us. The testimony of Jesus is committed to us.
You have it again, in slightly different words, in Mark 16:15:
Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation.
When you look at it like that, something very wonderful happens concerning this whole matter of testimony. It is much more comprehensive than merely preaching the truth or defining the truth, either personally or corporately. It is something far, far more than that.
You have it again in Revelation 12:11:
And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony.
What was their testimony? Their testimony was that, although they may have felt quite different, the facts concerning the Lord Jesus Christ were absolutely true and eternally so. That is how they overcame.
That is why martyrs could die at the stake or in the lions’ arena. They overcame by the word of their testimony. In death, they knew that they were one with the Lord Jesus Christ, and they proclaimed that.
That is the testimony. Just as the Lord Jesus said, “I and My Father are one,” so we can say, “He and we are one,” whatever we feel, whatever the circumstances, whatever the situation.
Do not forget that the Lord Jesus said that before Gethsemane, before He went to the cross. “I and My Father are one.” It was tested in Gethsemane in a way that you and I will never be tested—to the ninth degree—when the Lord Jesus said:
If it be possible, let this cup pass away from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.
That is the word of testimony: “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” There is union. That is union.
Do not ever think that union means that the devil never comes to you and that you never have doubts. The very presence of doubts can be the glorious arena of the setting forth of the triumph of the Lord Jesus.
It is the “nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt” that proclaims the victory.
We have come a wide circle. Here we are back at 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.
What really is the testimony of Jesus? Turn to Revelation 19:10. The last part of the verse says:
The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
For many years I have been mystified by this little phrase. I have always felt that somehow this was the most comprehensive thing said about the testimony of Jesus in the Bible. It is the last thing said about the testimony of Jesus, and, as we would expect, it gathers everything together.
“The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” I often wondered just what it meant. Does it mean something to do with the prophets in the Old Testament, the prophets in the New Testament, or John himself?
If you look through the different versions, you will find that although basically they say the same thing, there is a wide variety of translation. Moffatt says, “The testimony of Jesus is the breath of all prophecy.” Another says, “Witness borne to Christ is the inspiration of the prophets.”
But I believe we shall get nearer to the heart of the whole thing if we put it this way: the testimony of Jesus is prophetic in its content.
The spirit of prophecy here is not the Holy Spirit. It is the human spirit—spirit in the sense of an influence or import. The testimony of Jesus is prophetic in its content.
Think of what we said last week and what we have said tonight. That is comprehensive. What we are saying is this: the Lord Jesus is the divine Prophet, and in Him the Word of God is proclaimed and expressed. The mind of God and the heart of God are expressed in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Prophecy, in its biblical sense, is not merely predicting the future. One aspect of prophecy is prediction and foretelling, but the main idea behind prophecy in the Bible is the revelation of the mind of God concerning His people or His way.
It can be the interpretation of history. It can be the explanation of the present. It can be the prediction of the future.
Take your Old Testament and look: you will find that some of the prophets speak about the past. They may say to the people, “This and this and this is going to happen to you because of that and that and that.” In other words, they are interpreting history. They are prophetic.
The Lord Jesus is the supreme Prophet—King, Priest, and Prophet. He is the One Who interprets history, explains the present, and gives significance to the future.
When the Lord Jesus came into this world, suddenly the whole of history was interpreted—certainly the history of God’s chosen people under the old covenant.
Why did God take Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees? Why did He take him through a howling wilderness? Why did He bring him into a land which he never really possessed, though he was promised it? Why did He covenant with his son Isaac, who was born in such extraordinary circumstances?
Why was Jacob chosen and not Esau? Why did God, the Angel of His presence, wrestle with Jacob and change him into Israel? Why did Joseph go down into Egypt? Why was Moses hidden in the bulrushes?
Why did God bring ten great plagues upon the Egyptian people, the greatest civilization of the ancient world? Why did He bring out of Egypt that people, that poor tribe of slaves? Why did He open the Red Sea? Why did He go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night?
Why did Sinai smoke with fire? Why did the voice of God sound like a trumpet? Why were the Ten Commandments given to that strange people? Why did God choose the Jew?
Why did God do all this? Why, in the last book of the Old Testament, is the whole of Old Testament history and revelation hung up in a few words:
Jacob have I loved.
That same contradicting, rebellious people—God sent them into captivity, and brought them back, again and again. Why did God do it all?
I say there is really no explanation until Jesus came. When Jesus was born in the royal line of David, suddenly the whole of history was explained.
He explained what the Quakers used to call “the bad seed,” and He explained the good seed. Why was Cain a murderer? Why was Abel accepted? The Lord Jesus was the explanation of it all, by His very presence. Do you understand?
It is much more than that. Take the Lord Jesus: there He is, facing the whole system of the temple with its priesthood, its sacrifices, its many orders and ranks—Levites, priests, its magnificent temple, its services, its holy days, its fast days—and the whole thing comes into collision with Him.
That whole system shuts out a blind man who has been given his sight. It excommunicates him. What does the Lord Jesus do? He goes and finds the man, and says to him:
I am the door; by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.
It was the explanation of the present.
Ye have made My Father’s house a den of robbers.
When He had called it:
A house of prayer for all the nations.
When you see that wicked, evil man, outwardly so pious, good, respectable, and religious—Caiaphas—and his aged and more vile father-in-law Annas, representing the whole religious world of their day, and then you see Jesus, you have an explanation of present-day religion and life.
The Lord Jesus gives significance to the future. Death has lost its sting. One day the dead in Christ shall arise, and we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them.
These poor old bodies that we have, though redeemed, shall have the redemption of the body. It is all foretold. The Lord Jesus has given significance to it. If Jesus has not been raised from the dead, your faith is vain.
Here is the significance of it all: He is coming back, and with Him is coming the kingdom.
That is the testimony of Jesus. It is prophetic in its content.
Dear children of God, you and I hold this testimony. It has been entrusted to us. It is prophetic in its content.
God is not just interested in getting people together to come to Bible studies and prayer meetings, and then go out on the streets evangelizing. He wants that, but there is something of far greater significance than that. He wants that to be the overflow of something deeper and fuller.
That deeper and fuller thing is the testimony of Jesus. God wants, as it were, to interpret history through His church, explain the present through His church, and give significance to the future through His church—if necessary, sometimes even predict it.
That is what the churches ought to be. What a tragedy when we look around the Christian world and see what has happened. Oh, my goodness me! It is like Petticoat Lane on market day instead of Pall Mall at the coronation—cluttered with all kinds of little things, petty and narrow.
The testimony of Jesus explains why the Lord would plunge a company into all kinds of inexplicable things and experiences; why He will take this one and that one within a company and deal with them personally—that He might show forth something, and then history has meaning.
I would love to stop with church history, because I think this is exactly so. It does not matter where you turn. The Waldensians, when it was a real movement of the Spirit of God, explained what God was doing.
The same was true of the Reformation. Think of the way the Lord engineered things—politically, economically, everything was right for the Reformation. Wycliffe was the forerunner; John Hus was another. Then Martin Luther appeared on the scene and burst the thing wide open.
Interpretation of history—prophetic in its content—the testimony of Jesus.
We can say much more about that, but I hope it gives you some little inkling of what the testimony of Jesus is. It is prophetic in its nature. That does not mean that we all become prophets—though would to God we all were; it would be a wonderful thing.
But it does not merely mean that. It means that our life together is prophetic. It is the revelation of the mind of God. Everything according to His mind; everybody needing the expression of His will. Prophetic: not just what we say, but what we are.
In the Old Testament we see something of this typified in the tabernacle. First of all, you must have read again and again the phrase, “the testimony.”
And thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee.
And He gave unto Moses, when He had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.
The testimony in the Old Testament was the two tables of stone, written with the finger of God.
What Scripture do you think of in the New Testament? John 1:1:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
There you have it: the testimony of Jesus.
Those two tables of stone, those Ten Commandments—you know what they are. They are the moral law of God. Although they seem so negative to us, they are the expression of the life that is in God.
It is all summed up in this word from Deuteronomy, which the Lord Jesus also used:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
The ten commandments are summed up like that. That is the testimony. Think of the Lord Jesus: He is God’s moral law. Negatively, “Thou shalt not.” Did He sin in one single way? Did He fall short in one single way?
Positively:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
Did He fulfil it? Absolutely. The testimony of Jesus.
The Ten Commandments are the Word of God written with the finger of God. That is the Lord Jesus.
The next phrase we find is “the ark of the testimony.” Take Exodus 26:33:
And thou shalt hang up the veil under the clasps, and shalt bring in thither within the veil the ark of the testimony.
This ark of the testimony, as you all know, was a box of acacia wood. Acacia wood is rather like cedar wood: it never corrupts; it never rots. All that acacia wood was overlaid with pure gold, so that you could not see the wood, but only the gold.
Who is the ark of the testimony within which the Word of God resides? John 1:14:
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.
And verse 18:
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.
The perfect humanity of the Lord Jesus; the perfect deity of the Lord Jesus: the ark of the testimony.
We also find a reference to the veil of the testimony. Look at Leviticus 24:3:
Without the veil of the testimony.
This was the veil that parted man from God and God from man. It separated the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place; the tent of meeting was divided.
Can you think of a Scripture? Surely most of you thought of Hebrews 10. Here you have the ark of the covenant, the ark of the testament, in another way.
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus,
by the way which He dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh.
The ark speaks of the perfect being of the Lord Jesus, but the veil speaks of His sacrifice—wounded for us, opened, torn—so that we can go through. The veil of the testimony.
Finally, in this Old Testament picture, we find it all summed up in the tabernacle of the testimony. Take Numbers 9:15:
And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up, the cloud covered the tabernacle, even the tent of the testimony: and at even it was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until morning.
The tabernacle of the testimony. The first thing you and I would have seen, had we been living under the old covenant, was the tabernacle. Beyond the altar and beyond the laver, we would have seen the tabernacle. That was the tabernacle of the testimony.
Beyond that was the veil of the testimony; beyond that, the ark of the testimony; and within that, the testimony.
What Scripture can we give for the tabernacle of the testimony? One I thought of amongst many is Ephesians 1:22–23:
And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
There you have it, dear children of God: the testimony of Jesus. We hold the testimony of Jesus. Like the tabernacle, it is within us. You go through the tent of meeting, through the veil, through the ark—it is within, at the end.
We will end tonight with what is, after all, in the Bible, the supreme symbol of the testimony of Jesus. Of all the furniture in the tabernacle or the temple, the piece selected finally through the Word of God as the supreme picture or symbol of the testimony of Jesus was the golden lampstand.
It does not matter where you look in your Bible: this golden lampstand may not appear many times, but when it does, it is always significant.
You first find it in Exodus 25:31–40. It is pure gold, beaten work, of one piece.
In Exodus 27:20 you read about the oil, and we are told that it is to burn continually, never to go out, day or night, unto all generations. That lamp is never to be allowed to go out—ever.
We are told about the oil: how it is to be crushed, how it is to be prepared—pure oil of the finest kind, pure olive oil.
When we move over the tabernacle, the temple, and that whole period of history to Zechariah 4, we find the prophet speaking about recovery and rebuilding. It is all to do with the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the temple, the recovery of the house of God, and the reinstitution of the services.
The prophet is burdened and bothered. What does he see in a vision? He sees a golden lampstand. He does not see a house; he sees a golden lampstand. He sees two olive trees on either side that feed it with gold—literally. Modern translations add the word “oil,” golden oil.
The two olive trees empty gold out of themselves. Poor old Zechariah does not quite understand. He asks the angel what it means, but the angel ignores his question about the two olive trees and says:
This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain; and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings of, Grace, grace, unto it.
The whole thing has to do with building—the completion, recovery, and completion of the building. Then he says that the seven eyes of the Lord will rejoice when they see the plummet line in the hand of Zerubbabel.
The plummet line has to do with doing everything according to plan. You do not need a plummet line if you do not bother about plans. But if you are concerned about the plan, you need a plummet line.
It says:
The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it.
Then Zechariah asks again, “What about the olive trees?” The angel says:
These are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.
In other words, Zerubbabel and Joshua—king and priest, the two great ministries. We are made kings and priests unto God.
Is it not interesting that the golden lampstand comes into view just at that point in the history of God’s people: just before the coming of the Messiah, just when it was absolutely necessary for the house of God to be completed? It is the testimony of Jesus.
The next time you find the golden lampstand, you take another leap. You come down in Revelation 1, 2, and 3.
A tremendous amount has happened. The whole point of history has been reached and fulfilled in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, in His death and resurrection. Now the risen, ascended, triumphant Lord is in the midst of seven golden lampstands, and He is talking to each one of them.
He has a message for each one of these lampstands. Then we find that they are seven churches. Do you not think all that has tremendous significance?
Take another leap, and where do you come down? Revelation 11. It is a mysterious chapter. You have the two witnesses; you have the temple; and the angel says, “Rise, and measure the temple of God.”
Then we see the temple, and then we see two witnesses. We are told:
These are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks standing before the Lord of the earth.
It is the testimony of Jesus again. These two, whoever they are or whatever they represent, are slain at the end, and their bodies lie dead until God raises them up from the dead; then they ascend into heaven. It is the testimony of Jesus again—the golden lampstand.
Take another leap, to Revelation 21 and 22. What have you got there? The holy city—the holy city of God, the New Jerusalem, the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
If you look very carefully into those two chapters, what do you find? You find that the city is one great lampstand. That is all.
It has many figures. We see it first as a wife, then as a city. We see pearls and precious stones, all kinds of things. But I remind you that it is gold—pure gold, like unto pure glass.
We are told in Revelation 21:11 that her light is like unto a precious stone, a jasper stone. That word light is the word light-giver, light-bearer. It is the word for sun or moon.
Then, in Revelation 21:23:
And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb.
The flame of fire in the lamp is the glory of God. The glory of God is in the Lamb. Who is the Lamb, and where is the Lamb? The Lamb is in the lampstand—the sevenfold lamp, Jesus, held by the stand.
Then Revelation 21:24 says:
And the nations shall walk amidst the light thereof.
There you have it. It is the seven-branched golden lampstand.
That is the explanation of eternity to come: the nations shall walk in the light of it. The testimony of Jesus is not just something to do with time alone, but with eternity.
I do not think it is hard for us to see that the lampstand is the symbol of the testimony of Jesus: the pure gold of His nature and character; the deep, inwrought travail and suffering out of which the lampstand is produced—beaten work.
Every branch is beaten out in turn, not added, not soldered on, not brazed on, but beaten out of one piece. Deep inward travail and suffering produced it.
We see it in the absolute unity of the whole thing: one piece. That is what it says—it shall be of one piece.
We see it in the pure oil of the Spirit of life, and we see it in the lighted oil: the light of His life.
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.
I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life.
You have it all in the golden lampstand.
There we shall end this evening. Next week we shall take up the last little piece, and we will think about the book of Revelation and the holding of the testimony as far as the churches are concerned.
I think we have come quite a way now. If the Holy Spirit has been able to write anything into our hearts at all, then one thing we can be certain of is that, though this phrase, the testimony of Jesus, does not occur many times, it is one of the keys to the whole Bible.
That is why this book of Revelation—the last book, the book that sums up everything in the Bible—uses this term more than any other: the testimony of Jesus.
Oh, dear children of God, dear family, if only God can do such a thing in us that we are consistent with holding the testimony of Jesus.
All those works of darkness, all that belongs to the shadow, all that belongs to another system and another world—oh, if we would only let the Holy Spirit deal with it.
Of course, the church down here will always be a kind of melting pot, a place where the scum comes to the surface, where the rubbish is cleared out, and all the rest of it. We do not expect a perfect church down here; we are not meant to.
But oh, that the testimony of Jesus could be held. That is what we shall think about next week. When the Lord, in the midst of those seven golden lampstands, speaks to each one, He judges everything in relation to the holding of His testimony. To each one He says:
He that overcometh.
All in relation to the testimony. He that overcomes.
May God give us all grace that, by His life that is within us, we might overcome and sit down with Him in His throne. Shall we pray?
Lord, Thou hast spoken to us in the past year or two a number of times about this golden lampstand, and we have all been perplexed by it, Lord.
Even when we understood quite a measure, we have been concerned, Lord, as to whether we really understand it. We pray, Lord, that by Thy Holy Spirit Thou wouldst bring home to us the meaning of it: the testimony of Jesus.
Burn it into our hearts, Lord. Write it with Thy finger upon the fleshy tables of our hearts. Let it get into us, Lord, and do its work individually and corporately.
Thou hast also spoken to us, Lord, about those who can bear the ark of the testimony upon their shoulders. We remember that, Lord, and we pray that Thou wouldst help us to understand more of what it means to shoulder the divine thing, to hold the testimony of Jesus.
Our beloved Lord, our greatest desire, all of us, is that at the end we may be in the city and part of the bride. We may be in that lampstand in whose light the nations will walk.
O God, give us grace, we pray, every one of us, by Thy life within us, by Thy victory on Calvary, by Thy Holy Spirit, to overcome and sit down finally with Thee.
We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.