If we could turn to the book of Revelation, chapter 2. We will read from verse 1.
To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:
These things saith He that holdeth the seven stars in His right hand, He that walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks:
I know thy works, and thy toil and patience, and that thou canst not bear evil men, and didst try them that call themselves apostles, and they are not, and didst find them false;
And thou hast patience, and didst bear for My name’s sake, and hast not grown weary.
But I have this against thee, that thou hast left thy first love.
Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I come to thee, and will move thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent.
But this thou hast, that thou hatest the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.
To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God.
And chapter 3, verse 14.
And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the beginning of the creation of God:
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
So because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew thee out of My mouth.
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art the wretched one, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich; and white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eyesalve, to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see.
As many as I love, I reprove and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.
He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.
Shall we just bow together in a word of prayer?
Dear Lord, we do want to thank Thee that Thou art here in our midst, and that we are gathering together unto Thee. We thank Thee for this ministry in song to our hearts. Lord, we thank Thee for receiving something of Thyself.
We now want to ask, Lord, as we come to Thy Word, that Thou wilt take Thy Word and make it live to us. Deliver us from somehow bypassing Thy Word, or evading the challenge of Thy Word. Allow that Word to find its target, Lord, we pray, in every one of our hearts.
We pray, Lord, that the Spirit of grace and power may be upon us all tonight, speaker and hearer. May, Lord, this time be a meeting with Thyself. May it be a life-changing time for some of us. May it be, for all of us, Lord, a receiving from Thee.
O Lord, we commit ourselves to Thee. Wilt Thou, in human weakness, make Thy strength perfect, as Thou hast promised? And this we ask in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
The burden that has been on my heart is centred in those words of the Apostle Paul contained in Philippians 1:9:
And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment;
So that ye may approve the things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and void of offence unto the day of Christ.
The burden that has been so much on my heart is this whole matter of the love of God. On that first night, other than the introduction, we spoke about the divine command: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength”; and the second great commandment like to it: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
Then last night we spoke about the divine challenge, that summing up of the Gospel of John which brings us, as it were, to the heart of the matter: “Lovest thou Me? Tend My lambs. Feed My sheep. Tend My sheep.”
Now this evening, I want to dwell upon what I have entitled “The Divine Diagnosis.”
Thou hast left thy first love.
Because thou art neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm,
I will spew thee out of My mouth.
Now, that is a solemn word. But there is hope in it.
I want you, first of all, to look at the divine goal. I said to you that first evening, when we talked about the divine command, that there are certain books in the Bible which, as it were, go over a whole lot of previous material and almost seemingly say the same thing again, but generally with an added note which is all-important.
Deuteronomy is such a book. We saw that the added note was the love of God: not only that He has chosen us because He loves us, but that we should love Him with all our heart and with all our soul.
First and Second Chronicles are such books. They go over all that we have from Genesis to the little book of Ruth—and that is a lot of history and a lot of God’s ways with mankind. But they go over the whole history again, especially the four books of the kingdom—First and Second Samuel, and First and Second Kings—and add the matter of Zion, Jerusalem, the house of God, and priestly service.
The Gospel of John is such a book. It is not the same as the first three Gospels, which we call the Synoptic Gospels. They give us the historical facts and tell the whole story from different angles. John’s Gospel certainly completes the picture by presenting the Lord Jesus as God, but it is much more than that.
The Gospel of John is a summing up of everything, as if the Holy Spirit is saying, “With those first three Gospels, you have a tremendous amount, but you still have not come to the heart of the matter.” In that wonderful Gospel, we are brought to the simple fact that it pleased the Father that in the Son all the fullness should dwell.
The book of Revelation is also such a book. Indeed, it is quite remarkable because it sums up the whole Bible. It goes right back to Genesis and traces the whole story—not in a full historical way, but by taking the spiritual theme and, as it were, drawing all the strands together.
There have been an awful lot of books written on Revelation, and I have often felt that the more you read books on Revelation, the more muddled and confused you become. You feel sometimes like putting an ice pack on your head and then going back to the book of Revelation for relief.
There are so many conflicting, complex theories built upon this book. Sometimes I cannot help feeling that it is because Revelation is taken as though it were independent of all the other books of the Bible. Yet you cannot really understand the book of Revelation—though I do not claim to understand it fully—without an understanding of Daniel, Ezekiel, Joel, and Zechariah. It draws from these books, and many of its pictures were previously given to those prophets.
But that is not what I want to say this evening. The book of Revelation has come, by divine ordering or foreordination, to be the final book of the canon of Scripture. It is interesting that until the fourth century it occupied different places. Sometimes it was attached to Acts, sometimes to the Gospels. It was questioned by many as to whether it should be in the canon. But finally God brought it to the place it ought to occupy: the last book of the sixty-six books of the Bible.
The wonderful thing about Revelation is that it covers the whole of our life. I am not going to say anything about its prophetic nature, or what it might say about future things, 666, Antichrist, the false prophet, the beast, and all those things that have fascinated Christian hearts and minds for years.
What I want to say is this: John the Apostle was imprisoned on the Isle of Patmos in a forced labour camp. He was a political detainee. He was being worked to death. It was the policy of the Roman Empire that if people were dangerously political, they put them away and worked them to death.
Rather like the Nazi concentration camps over which used to be written, Arbeit Macht Frei—“Work frees you.” The idea was that by working people to death, they somehow produced value for the empire and got rid of political problems and dangers.
John the Apostle, we do not really know why, was imprisoned on Patmos in such a forced labour camp. It was the last place on earth where you would expect a man to have visions. Most people think that if you are going to get a vision, you need to go up some glorious mountainside, away from the noise and battle of the city and the problems of daily life, with glorious views, marvellous sunrises, glorious sunsets, and twittering birds. Then, finally, suddenly, God shows you all kinds of things.
But God does not do it this way. He gave some of the greatest revelations ever committed to human beings to a man chained to a soldier. There he sat, dictating letter after letter after letter, which have come to us as almost the high-water mark of revelation: Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, and so we could go on.
Those marvellous letters of the Apostle Paul were not written in some wonderful retreat. They were written under house arrest, with a Roman soldier chained to him day and night, under the most adverse and contrary conditions.
It was so with John the Apostle. What he was doing, we do not know. But on a certain day—he called it the Lord’s Day, whether it was Sunday or the day of the Lord, we are not absolutely sure, and it does not really matter—he suddenly heard a voice behind him.
Turning round, he saw seven golden lampstands alight. In the midst of the seven golden lampstands he saw the risen, glorified, ascended Messiah. Then he was told, “Write these messages.” One after another, the Lord Jesus gave John a message for seven churches, all in what we call Asia Minor.
After that John saw vision after vision after vision: visions horrific in some ways and glorious in others—dragons, serpents, beasts, false prophets, martyrdom, persecution, worldwide anti-Christian systems, and restrictions upon buying and selling unless one was registered with them.
He saw the nations of the world brought together and a world government emerging. He saw a great prostitute riding on the beast. He saw the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and 144,000 sealed upon their foreheads. He saw the martyrs under the altar of God crying, “How long, O Lord, before Thou dost avenge us?”
He saw that great sign in heaven: a woman giving birth to a man-child who, when born, was caught up to heaven so that the dragon could not swallow him. What amazing visions—visions that have intrigued, perplexed, and often divided believers down through the years.
It ended with the destruction of the whole anti-God, antichrist system, and Satan himself thrown into a bottomless abyss. Then John saw coming out of heaven the New Jerusalem, adorned as a bride for her husband.
Now, what has all this got to say to us tonight? It has quite a lot.
First of all, I would like you to note one wonderful thing. Whatever we may feel about prophetic interpretations of Revelation, one thing seems reasonably clear: the first three chapters and the last two chapters correspond in a most remarkable way.
In the midst of the seven golden lampstands was the risen Christ. We are told expressly in Revelation 1:20 that those lampstands represented seven local churches, and we are given their names.
There are people who believe that they represent different stages of church history. I find that a fascinating and instructive interpretation. Revelation seems to admit a number of interpretations which are valid. Only the Word of God could do that. It is like a diamond: you turn it different ways, and it flashes different lights from its different facets.
You cannot do that with Shakespeare. You cannot do that with Goethe. You cannot do that with Mark Twain. I thought I had to get in an American somewhere.
You cannot do that with ordinary literature, even when it is the work of genius. But when you have the Bible, it is quite remarkable.
There are those who believe the seven churches represent different phases in church history. It is fascinating and instructive, but I cannot help feeling that, though it is valid, the basic interpretation is that you have seven churches selected to represent the whole church of God in time, on earth, and in given places.
These were not churches merely by name. These were real churches. They had all the problems of the church down here on earth: immorality, division, false teaching, faction, lukewarmness, and all the many problems that beset us. Yet these seven churches were selected to represent the whole church of God in time, on earth, in given localities.
The risen Lord in the midst speaks to each church. He encourages them, comforts them, strengthens them, corrects them, rebukes them, and warns them. To each church He ends in the same way: “To him that overcometh will I grant this or that.” “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.”
When we come to the last two chapters of the Bible, the scene has changed. It is no longer the church on earth in time and in given places. Suddenly, we are looking into eternity.
We find this most wonderful thing 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 old version used to say “candlestick,” which is a very unfortunate translation. It is “lampstand,” and I think that has been corrected in modern versions. A lampstand has a stand and a lamp that fits into the top of it. The menorah, the seven-branched lampstand in the temple, had seven branches, and upon the top of each fitted a lamp.
When John saw those seven golden lampstands, he saw exactly that—not candlesticks, but lampstands. When John saw the city coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God, he heard this word: it has no need of sun or moon to lighten it, for the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof.
The sevenfold lamp is the Lamb. What is the stand? The city. The city is the stand. So at the end of Revelation you have the lampstand again, only this time it is not to do with earth, time, locality, or place. It is to do with eternity.
Then you find the same word, “to him that overcometh,” in Revelation 21:6-7:
And He said unto me, They are come to pass. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.
Not merely “My child,” but “My son.” God is saying, “I want someone who has not only been a baby, but has grown up from childhood to be My son, that he may inherit these things and administer these things.”
You have the same word about hearing in Revelation 22:17:
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let him come.
Surely this correspondence between the first and last chapters is no coincidence. Here we have something that spans the whole book of Revelation, with all its complex and mysterious visions. Surely it has tremendous bearing upon all of us.
The Lord depicts the whole scene through which we shall pass in this age. The key to the whole thing is not merely being saved, nor merely serving the Lord. It is being involved in the building of His church. That is the key to the whole age, the key to the ages of time.
It is as if God is saying to us all: do not simply regard those last visions in the Bible as wonderful, glorious ideals and pictures. If you are going to be part of that bride, if you are going to reign with Christ forever and ever, if you are going to come to His throne and sit with Him in His throne, then you have got to be involved in all that He is doing on earth, in time and place, with other brothers and sisters.
What is the divine goal? The divine goal is a bride-city.
What an extraordinary combination of contrary matters this is. You do not normally think of a bride and a city as having a relationship. No man speaks of his wife as “my city.” No one would think of speaking of Washington as “my bride.” It just does not make sense, does it? We are used to it because it is in the Bible.
Some people say this city is a literal city. I have no doubt there will be a city, because there will be a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness. Somewhere the headquarters of God are going to be located. If there are going to be nations, and righteousness from end to end of the earth, somewhere there is going to be a capital, a hub of administration, the centre of everything.
But what I question is whether the city in Revelation 21 and 22 is, in the first place, to be taken literally as a city. If you look carefully at it, it is an extraordinary city: as long as it is broad, as high as it is long. It is one thing for it to be 1,800 miles long and broad; it is another for it to be 1,800 miles high.
I know in this country you build high, but even you have not gone up to that yet. No doubt there are plans for doing something somewhere up in space. God forbid.
But I do not think that is what this city is talking about, because it only has one street. We sing hymns that say we are going to tread the golden streets, but there are no golden streets. There is only one golden street. How do you get one street in a city so immense and so high, unless it is a spiral that somehow gets in all the gates as you go up? It does not make sense, does it?
Then it is transparent as glass. Who wants to live in a city transparent as glass? It is bad enough having your friends in and out the whole time. To live in a house that is glass, so people can see clean through it and you can see everything everybody else does—oh, I do not know. I know we shall be different in those days, but still, I would have thought privacy was part of something to do with man and woman.
You have never heard of a city produced out of gold, precious stone, and pearl, have you? That is a sure sign there cannot be any crime anywhere, or they would be hacking it to pieces. You could not have such a city.
Taking all these things into consideration, we have to come to a conclusion: we have a spiritual reality, a spiritual entity, an eternal reality represented by these wonderful symbols.
A bride represents the most intimate love and union known to mankind. A city represents administration and commerce. A capital city represents the central administration for a whole nation and empire.
In the most incredible way, when you come to the end of the Bible, God brings together two things that were there in Genesis. He said to man, “Have dominion. Subdue the earth. Replenish it. Rule it.”
Then He put man in a garden and said, in effect, “Keep and guard this garden.” If man had not failed, God would have said that the time had come to add an allotment to the garden, and another allotment, and another. Slowly man would have moved out from the garden to subdue the whole earth.
It was not necessarily that there was sin in the earth which meant it had to be subdued. It could simply be that life is a riot. Remember that. You cannot have life so that every single thing simply goes unchecked. Life has to be trained, pruned, and disciplined.
When God said, “Let the living things be,” they began to grow everywhere wildly in a great riot. There were not the same weeds, thistles, and thorns, for those came in with the curse. But there was, nevertheless, a riot of life. Man was to subdue it.
Dominion was one of the first things God ever said to man: “Have dominion.” It is one of the themes of the Bible. Why did God create us? That we might reign; that we might learn how to have dominion; that in union with Himself we might learn, first in the kindergarten of paradise, the kindergarten of Eden, the elementary and fundamental lessons.
Had man not fallen, he would have moved on to learn more, and at some point would have been transfigured in glory. He would have obtained the glory of God. He would have succeeded instead of failing.
He would have been like Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. It was not a spotlight of light coming out of heaven and shining upon Him. Something happened inside of Him as a man, and His whole skin and body radiated glory. His clothes were transfigured, and His flesh was transfigured. It was like the sun being switched on inside of Him.
Do you know that is what you were made for? Only we sinned and fell short of the glory of God. That is what you are destined for. Is that not wonderful?
We were to have dominion over the wild beasts as well as the domestic animals. Then God would have said, “Now, into a new dimension—a spiritual dimension. Now you must learn to rule in the invisible, where there are invisible thrones and powers. Now you must learn to reign there.”
Man fell. But all through the Bible you have this theme of government, dominion, authority, and kingship.
God sent His only begotten Son to save us and bring us back into His original purpose. What is God doing with us? He is seeking to make us kings and priests unto Him.
Alongside the matter of reigning, you have the matter of the bride. In Genesis 2, you have the institution of human marriage. We know from the way God speaks about it later that this was instituted to represent the spiritual reality for which human beings were created.
Marriage is only “till death do us part,” but this marriage of which God speaks is forever. Marriage was instituted for time, but the marriage between the Lamb and the wife of the Lamb is for eternity.
At the end of the Bible, these two themes are brought together. The bride is a city, and the wife of the Lamb is the New Jerusalem. You have not only the most intimate, loving relationship and union known to mankind—only in a spiritual way, forever, between God and His own, between Christ and His bride—but also the city which is to be the eternal centre of God’s administration for all the ages to come.
We do not even know what God will do in the ages to come. We do not know whether there will be new universes. When God has filled this universe with His glory, He might say, “I think We will create another universe with a sort of new principles.” Well, will it not be exciting? I do not know. We have to be careful, because it is all speculation.
Some people seem to think God has exhausted Himself. “Do not pray too much to God. He gave you intelligence. He is old. He has to lie down in the afternoon. You must not bother Him too much.” Is that not subconsciously the way we think of God—that somehow He is worn out and tired, and this world has really taken it out of Him?
It is nonsense. Nonsense. God has not started yet. You just wait.
People get so excited with pictures of Mars, Venus, and the rest. It all looks like some moonscape. I cannot think of anything more ghastly. Yet this wonderful planet God has created, with its infinite and delicate balance, is incredible. Do you think God has exhausted Himself? Never, never, never.
Even this universe is only a pale reflection of what God originally intended. One day, as the Apostle Paul said in Romans 8, when bondage to corruption is finally broken, somehow the trees will evolve into something else, and other things will evolve. What does it all mean? We only know that the prophets speak of lions lying down with lambs, children playing with adders and asps, and beasts feeding together.
That is only the beginning. God is not going to have us forever and ever merely looking at animals eating straw with one another, and then singing a hallelujah chorus for a thousand years, and then going back to look at the animals again. It is nonsensical. No wonder people laugh at us and say, “What a boring eternity those Christians are going to have.”
The best amongst us will say, “But the Lord is so glorious and beautiful that merely to look at Him will be satisfying and fulfilling.” Yes, but God is not proud. God does not stand there saying, “I want to be admired. All of you stand round Me and forever tell Me how wonderful I am.”
God is—may I say it reverently—inherent genius. The genius in mankind is the palest reflection of divine genius. God has been inhibited by the Fall. I wrestle with human language, but He has been inhibited in what He wanted to do. We have a parenthesis of sin and time.
One day that whole parenthesis will be over, and the first and former things will have gone forever. Then God will turn round and say, “Now, My bride, let us get on with it. Let us go out into the ages.”
Dear folks, I think it is worth being saved to be in that. A little affliction here, a little suffering there, a few bad circumstances, a few inexplicable problems—quite honestly, when we are there, we shall laugh about it.
We will sit down and have a good laugh, and I will say, “Do you remember that inexplicable problem that you spent so much time crying over? Look what it has done.” You will be radiating glory. You will hardly be able to talk. You will say, “It was worth it.”
“Oh, the love of God—the love of God that gave me that problem, the love of God that brought that inexplicable thing into my circumstances.” You will not say, “How can a loving God do this?” You will say, “Oh, it was the love of God. I see it now.”
It was a pinprick of time. He brought all that into my experience, pressed me almost beyond measure, and drove me to Himself. I found out His love for me, and I began to love Him. Oh, I cannot tell you how thankful I shall be for every single thing He did.
It has brought me to the throne. It has brought me into the bride. It has brought me into a union with the Lamb which is forever and ever.
I feel sorry for Christians filled with bitterness and distrust. They think God is some Victorian grandfather who hates them, loves them to be miserable, and piles problems upon them. If you look only at time, of course it can seem like that. But if God shows you an eternal horizon, suddenly it is light affliction, which is but for a moment, working for us an exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory;
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen:
For the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.— 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
Yes, dear friends, Revelation is the most precious book in the Bible. It may be the most mysterious and the most complex book, but surely it is the most precious. That is why it says everyone who reads this book will receive a blessing.
Many people have not received a blessing. They have come and said, “This blessing certainly escaped me. I got so worked up, almost to a spiritual neurosis, over this book. I cannot understand it—trumpets, bowls, plagues, vials, seals. Where is the blessing?”
I will tell you where the blessing is: in an understanding of the profound simplicity of Revelation. Forget for a moment the complexity and mystery. Think of the bride and the city. Oh, what profound simplicity.
The whole Bible is a love story. God loves you.
He does not want one of those bureaucratic, eternal civil services, where people sit behind computers or machines with mask-like, humanless faces and give you a form to fill in. God says, “Do not think of My administration like that. I do not want that kind of administration.”
“I want an administration that comes out of love. They have loved the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. They have loved their neighbours as themselves. They have laid down their lives as I laid down My life. They have followed Me the whole way.”
“Now I want to bring them into a union with Myself which is eternal—an intimate, personal, direct union. They belong to Me in a most direct manner. They are My bride. They are My wife. They are My family. They are Me. And together, We will reign from the throne of God.”
Dear people of God, I think that is something worth considering.
No wonder the Bible says that you have such a high calling. Did you know it? Did you know God has saved you with this calling in view? He wants to bring you to the throne, but not in a cold, dutiful, mechanical manner. He wants to bring you to the throne by the way of love.
The sphere of our practical involvement in this bride-city is tied to those seven golden lampstands in the first three chapters of Revelation.
It is as if the Lord is saying, “Do not think you can simply float through life. Do not think you can go through with unsettled issues, never knowing spiritual discipline or authority, never knowing submission to fellowship, never knowing what it is to be built one to another, never knowing what it is to submit one to another, never knowing what it is to go through together.”
It would be a wonderful thing, in many people’s eyes, if God could wave a magic wand in a fairy tale and suddenly say, “All these difficult Christians, may they be perfect.” Then suddenly, in a flash, we would all be wonderful. Human personality is not like that.
If I may speak in human terms, God took the greatest risk He ever took when He created man, because He created man spirit, soul, and body. In creating human personalities, God created something so beautiful, so complex, and, when it goes wrong, so diabolical.
It takes a lot of training, discipline, and education to bring fallen men and women, saved by His grace and born of His Spirit, through the school of Christ to the place where they can reign with Him and be His bride. God is being very careful about this matter.
I have no doubt that this is one reason He deals in the way He does with some of His choicest servants. He takes an Apostle Paul, whom we could have had down here to write a few more letters, and at the early age of sixty-six he is martyred. Think what more we could have obtained. We would have kept him. God takes him.
God takes Watchman Nee and puts him in prison for twenty years, only for him to die at the end of it. What a waste, we say. Why does He do it?
As I have often said, I can think of many of us who could have done with a spell inside. It might have cured us of a lot of things. But we could have done with Brother Nee’s ministry, counsel, and fellowship. Not God.
God has special candidates for special positions. He brings into those lives all kinds of things because, in the end, He is carefully training and educating them for an eternal vocation.
Therefore, sometimes He will take us out of the running and put us aside. Sometimes He will do exactly what He has done with our brother, or with others, in different ways. It adds up to the same thing: He is training us with an eternal vocation in mind.
Dear brothers and sisters, this matter of the church down here is very, very important. It is all-important.
I will leave this matter except to say one other thing. Notice that to every one of those real churches, in spite of all their sordidness and problems, God speaks to those “that overcome.”
Some people do not like teaching on overcomers. They say it is separatism or elitism, as though we were making an elite group. I understand that. If we speak of an elite group who know that they are overcomers and that the rest are not, then it is very wrong indeed.
But I remember Mr. Sparks once called overcomers “the advance working party.” That delivered the whole idea from elitism and put it into its proper perspective.
God takes people who will give Him everything. He takes them right the way through, and pioneers a way by them—like Joseph going down into Egypt, and then the rest of the brothers coming into the blessing. It is not elitism, but it is training.
Now, do you begin to see something? I do not know if you do. But this matter of love is essential. No man and no woman will be an overcomer except by divine love.
You will count the cost and fall out. You will find the sacrifice too much, the warfare too fierce, and the problems too inexplicable. You will fall out. It is only those who have first love that will ever be overcomers.
No lukewarm Christian will ever be an overcomer—not in a million years. You can have all the understanding of the Bible so that you can write theological treatises. You can understand the purpose of God so that you could preach from now till next week on the eternal purpose of God. You can have knowledge of church truth so that you can distinguish the things that differ and put everything in its place. But if you do not have first love, you will never be an overcomer.
By the grace of God, you will never come to that throne of His to reign with Him. You will be saved. You will be in the kingdom. But you will not reign with Him, for if we do not suffer with Him, we shall not reign with Him.
Now do you see what I meant when I entitled this message “The Divine Diagnosis”? You may have thought, “Why did he not call it ‘The Divine Goal’? That is what he has been talking about.” Ah, just wait. I do not want to leave you with the divine goal. Too many of you know something about the divine goal. What I want to underline is the divine diagnosis.
At the beginning of Revelation, in the messages to the seven churches which represent the whole church in time, on earth, and in given places, the first message to the first church concerns love, and the last message to the last church concerns love.
We cannot escape that.
I have this against thee, that thou hast left thy first love.
Repent therefore, and do the first works; or else I will come and remove thy lampstand out of its place, except thou repent.
I know thy works. Thou art neither hot nor cold.
I would that thou wert either hot or cold.
But thou art lukewarm; therefore I will spew thee out of My mouth.
Ephesus was a church which, if we compare it with other churches, was marvellous. Listen to what the Lord says of it:
I know thy works, and thy toil and patience, and that thou canst not bear evil men, and didst try them that call themselves apostles, and they are not, and didst find them false.
Good discernment. “Thou hast patience, and didst bear for My name’s sake.” What a beautiful thing: they had endured. Then He says, “This thou hast, that thou hatest the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.”
That is some commendation. If we judged the normal fellowship of God’s people by this standard, many would come off well. We would say, “Here we have a reasonably good standard.” Most of us would be very happy if the churches we were in came up to this standard.
Work for God. Toil for God. Patience in adversity and problem. Discernment over error, false teaching, and false leaders. Endurance, not growing weary. That is some commendation.
Yet, in spite of it all, the Lord says, “No. I will be through with this thing. I will turn My back on it. It is a sham.” They have left their first love.
Dear child of God, do you think the Lord might say that of you? Could He be saying it of me? Could He be saying it of us?
Why is He seemingly so harsh? Why? Because He loves so much. That is why.
He has loved you and me, and us, so much. He has given so much for us that He cannot bear anything to be substituted for love. Love demands love. Love requires love. There is no other alternative.
You cannot satisfy someone who loves you with work, toil, patience, and discernment. It is obnoxious. If a person loves you, they want your love first, and then those other things. Otherwise, if those things are a substitute for your love, they become something that pains them, grieves them, quenches them, and makes them sick.
Oh, the lukewarmness of our present-day Christianity. How comfortable we are. How affluent we are. We have our routine. Everything goes. We feel, “Look, do not go too far for us. We go twice on Sunday and once in the week. Is that not enough in our busy lives? Please do not disturb us.”
But God says, “I wish that you were cold.” What a thing for God to say to the church at Laodicea: “I wish you were cold.” This lukewarmness I hate. I wish you were either white-hot or frozen solid. But this lukewarmness I cannot bear.
He uses a Greek word which is really dreadful. He says, “I will vomit you out.” It is so vulgar, but that is what it has brought the Lord to. He does not spare words. He does not use nice words.
What a thing for the Lord to say to a believer: “You make Me sick.” I am not being funny. That is exactly what one modern version says: “You make Me sick. I shall vomit you out.”
Some of you may be shocked when you hear a person like me say this, and think, “Well, I did not come to hear that kind of thing. That is not nice.” But do not have an argument with me. Have an argument with the Lord, because I am only saying exactly what He said.
Lukewarmness. This church said, “We are rich. We have gotten riches. We have need of nothing.” Do you feel like that? “Oh, we love these conferences. We are rich. We have gotten riches. We have need of nothing.” We feel sorry for those poor people in this denomination and that denomination, but we are something. We have got it. We have seen.
Note the threatened action: “I am coming to thee, and will remove thy lampstand out of its place.” “I will spew thee out of My mouth.”
We often take Revelation 3:20 as an evangelistic message:
Behold, I stand at the door and knock:
If any man hear My voice and open the door,
I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.
I myself found the Lord on that verse, so I am very thankful for it. But it is not, in the first place, an evangelistic message. It is addressed to a New Testament church, a real church from which the Lord had been cold-shouldered out—not by outright frigidity or outright antagonism, but simply by lukewarmness.
He was outside, knocking. “Behold, I stand at the door of the church here, of the living church, of the house of God, and I knock. Is there anyone who can hear Me? If any man hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and sup with him, and he with Me.” It is the renewal of love.
There can be no genuine fulfilment of God’s purpose, no reaching of His goal, without love. That is the message of Revelation. All those other wonderful visions and mysteries can wait for another time. But the message that runs right through it is this: more essential than all the others, if you do not keep within your first love, you will never come to the throne, never reach God’s goal, and never be part of His bride.
May I say something about the essential nature of first love? Let me say a few words to explode false ideas.
First love is a quality of love. It is not an indication of its sequence in time.
Most people think of first love as puppy love, calf love: the first sort of affection, the first explosion of emotion, when you were all wide-eyed and walking on air. That is not what the Lord means at all.
First love is not an indication of its sequence in time. It is a quality of love. It is a sensitive, total love, committed to the object of its love totally and completely.
What does it mean? It is the kind of love that is ready for any sacrifice, at any time, in any place, for the one it loves.
It will go anywhere, be anything, do anything, spend anything, out of love for that one.
First love is ready for a week of prayer, a night of prayer, ready to put aside the routine and wait on God. That is first love. It does not immediately raise a million objections: “Oh, we cannot do that. We shall upset this. We shall upset that.” No, no, no. First love says, “We will do it.”
First love will take a person to fall into the ground and die in a place like New Guinea, somewhere in the Amazon, or in some industrial, dark area of a North American city.
Such is first love. I cannot tell you how moved I was some years ago when I was taken by an old and godly servant of the Lord—a sister who had served the Lord with Rees Howells and others for many years, and then in the latter part of her life in Israel—to a little unknown place in the mountains of Benjamin, north of Jerusalem.
There I met three aged Moravian sisters. The leader of them was eighty-four years of age. I had not, for many years, touched the Lord in a person as I did in her.
On the day I went, they had spent the whole day washing the clothes of the thirteen lepers under their care. The Arab women and men who came in would not touch the clothes, so these sisters did it instead.
Day in and day out, for forty-two years, that sister had cared for lepers. One had no legs, no arms, and was blind in one eye. Another had no feet, only one hand, and no nose. They had to be carried to the bathroom. They had to be fed. Everything had to be done.
No one knew of them. No one sang about them. No one wrote about them. They were not popular. They had never been thanked. They came from a mother house in Eastern Germany, from which they were cut off, so even their money was very little.
I was more humbled by my visit to them than by many other visits I had paid to other servants of the Lord.
I mention it because I saw in that sister a first love. She never said, “Oh, this terrible work. Get people to pray for us.” She was radiant.
When the sister turned to me and said, “Do you know what they have been doing all day? Washing the clothes of the lepers,” I could hardly believe it. They were radiant, full of the Spirit of the Lord.
Three seeds that had fallen into the ground and died. I cannot help feeling that such must somewhere come to Zion. Somewhere, sometime, there must be recognition.
That is first love: no thought of being popular, being written about, being famous, or having everyone say, “Was that not wonderful? So-and-so laid down his life. Did you see it?”
But to do it where no one sees you, where no one really knows, and perhaps where nobody seems to care—that is first love.
Thou hast left thy first love.
Thou art lukewarm, neither hot nor cold.
This is a quality that God looks for in you and me. Think of 1 Corinthians 13. Many of you have those words written on some plaque or parchment on the wall because they are so wonderful. But I wonder whether anyone has noticed the searing nature of the words.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,
I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge;
And if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.— 1 Corinthians 13:1-3
Forget the sentiment for a moment. These words are searing.
If I had the tongues of men and angels—which many would desire—but have not love, I am become sounding brass. A noisy gong, as the New American Standard Bible puts it. I wonder how many noisy gongs there are here. How many clanging cymbals?
Again, listen to this: if I have the gift of prophecy, and knowledge, and know all mysteries—all mysteries—and all knowledge, and have not love, I am nothing. A noisy gong. A clanging cymbal. Nothing.
If I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
First love. First love.
What an indictment: years of work, zeal, study, energy, even faith to remove mountains; sacrifice, even revelation; and it amounts to nothing.
What is the divine solution? God does not give a diagnosis without a solution.
Here it is: “Remember therefore whence thou art fallen.” Did you hear that? Remember from where you have fallen. Go back and think. Remember. That is the first part of the solution.
Here is the second part. In Revelation 2:5: “Repent.” Twice He says it. In Revelation 3:19: “Be zealous therefore, and repent.”
Do not think that you cannot repent. When God tells us to repent, every one of us can repent. Some people think you only repent when you are converted. No. God says to believers in the church at Ephesus, “Repent, or else I am coming to thee, and will remove thy lampstand out of its place, except thou repent.”
What is repentance? It is to turn—deliberately to turn toward God and say, “Oh God, forgive me. I repent of this thing.” It is not merely a failing or a weakness. It is not something for which I can make excuses.
We are all people of excuses. “Oh Lord, You know I am so busy. You know I have so many circumstances. You know the problems with the family. You know the problems with so-and-so.” But the Lord says, “No, I do not want excuses. Repent.”
Be zealous therefore, and repent.
And do the first works.
What does He mean by the first works? He means all the things you are doing at present, only done with first love.
Maybe you must give your goods. Maybe your body will be burned one day. Certainly you should have faith to remove mountains; we have plenty that need removing. You ought to have knowledge of mysteries. Would it not be wonderful if one of you had knowledge of all mysteries? I would like to talk with you. All knowledge. I wish you had the tongues of men and angels—but with first love.
No wonder the Apostle says, when he ends this marvellous word, “Make love your aim.” Or, as another version puts it, “Pursue love.” Pursue love. This is the most excellent way.
Dear brothers and sisters, it is never easy to talk like this, but we have to at times.
Would to God that every one of us was still in our first love. But if we are not, may God get through to you and me this evening.
May there be tears shed and hearts melted. Somehow, may God bring us back into that first love, so that we will not be amongst those whose love waxes cold because iniquity abounds, but shall be those who put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.
The divine diagnosis: “Thou hast left thy first love.”
Repent, and do the first works;
Or else I come to thee, and will remove thy lampstand out of its place, except thou repent.
Shall we pray?
Have a moment of quietness, shall we?
Dear Lord, we pray in Thy great compassion and love, be gracious to us this evening.
Thou knowest our hearts altogether, Lord. There is nothing we can hide from Thee. Thou knowest their condition. Thou knowest the condition, Lord, of all the companies of Thy children represented in this place tonight.
O Lord, we pray that we may have an ear to hear what Thou art saying, and a will to obey Thee and to respond to Thee.
Dear Lord, work in our hearts, we pray, by Thy Spirit. We are living in days of great danger, crisis, and change. We pray, O Lord, that we shall be those who, by Thy grace, are overcomers.
Lord, we pray tonight: if we have left our first love, bring us back—whatever the cost, whatever it means.
However much we must humble ourselves, if we have to go to one another and confess things, if we have to apologise to one another, if there are things that need to be forgiven, forgotten, and cleansed away, O give us grace, Lord, we pray, that we may have no obstacle in returning to our first love.
Help us to understand, for each one of us, if this word is applied to us, what repentance means. Thou didst say, “Be zealous.” Help us, Lord, to understand what it means for us to be zealous and to repent.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and by Thy Spirit move in all our hearts, Lord, we pray. Thou dost love us so much. Win us again to Thyself. We ask it for Thy name’s sake. Amen.