I would like to ask you to turn with me once again to Revelation, the last book in the Bible, chapter 12. We will read verse 17.
And the dragon was angry with the woman,
and went to make war with the remnant of her seed,
who keep the commandments of God
and have the testimony of Jesus.
Then turn to Revelation 19:10. Speaking of John the apostle:
And I fell before his feet to do him homage.
And he saith unto me, See thou do it not:
I am thy fellow bondman,
and the fellow bondman of thy brethren
who have the testimony of Jesus:
do homage to God;
for the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.
Then turn to the most familiar place, John’s Gospel. We will be looking at John 13–17 today, but I thought it might be good to read a few verses as we begin, to give you the flavour of what we are burdened about.
John 13:34–35:
A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another;
even as I have loved you,
that ye also love one another.
By this shall all men know that ye are disciples of Mine,
if ye have love among yourselves.
Then John 15:5–8:
I am the vine, ye are the branches:
he that abideth in Me, and I in him,
the same beareth much fruit:
for apart from Me ye can do nothing.If a man abide not in Me,
he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered;
and they gather them,
and cast them into the fire,
and they are burned.If ye abide in Me,
and My words abide in you,
ask whatsoever ye will,
and it shall be done unto you.
Herein is My Father glorified,
that ye bear much fruit;
and so shall ye be My disciples.
Finally, John 17:20–23:
Neither for these only do I pray,
but for them also that believe on Me through their word;
that they may all be one;
even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee,
that they also may be in Us:
that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them;
that they may be one, even as We are one;
I in them, and Thou in Me,
that they may be perfected into one;
that the world may know that Thou didst send Me,
and lovedst them, even as Thou lovedst Me.
Father, we thank You for Your Word. We believe Your words are spirit and life. We thank You that we can come again this morning, waiting before You and asking You to breathe upon this Word that we have read.
Make it alive. Make it real. Make it have substance to us this morning, that we would, above all, see Jesus high and lifted up, and hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
Once again, as we come, we pray that the weakness of the vessel will not hinder the spoken Word. We pray that the weakness of our flesh will not hinder the received Word.
We tell You again, as Peter said, “Lord, Thou hast the words of eternal life. To whom shall we go?”
We commit this day. We commit Your Word into Your trustworthy Holy Spirit, that He would move once again, reveal the living things of Jesus to us, and in our spirit, that it might be said of us at the end that we have the testimony of Jesus.
For we ask these things together, in that mighty name, that name above all names. Amen.
I have been exercised before the Lord, as most of you know, about this word testimony. Now, I hope I do not have to say much about where we have been, but just for a moment, let me say that what we have been burdened with, what we have been exercised with, is much broader than individual testimony.
Individual testimony is important. We can never demean or minimise a living testimony and knowing the Lord Jesus in an individual way. It is vital.
Having said that, if you miss what is so clear in God’s Word from the beginning to the end—that what He is after is broader in scope, fuller in measure—then you have missed, I believe, the heart of God in all of Scripture.
For what He is after is an expression of Himself in fullness, in a people corporately expressing all that He is: Him filling all and in all, as we read in Ephesians 2.
So that is sort of where we have been. This thought has been with me. I read the verses again today, or at least a few of them from Revelation: those who “have the testimony of Jesus.”
I think you maybe have some sense—at least I hope you do—of the impression that seemed to make upon my spirit some months ago. I have said it, and I will say it again: in the end, using a play on words, in the end the issue is, Do we have the testimony of Jesus?
It is a very fragile thing. It is a thing that, as we read in Revelation 12, there is great spiritual warfare and conflict over. The enemy goes after those, as we read in Revelation 12:17, and pursues them.
We even read that when the Lord Jesus spoke of His church for the first time, He said, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” It would not have been spoken unless the gates of hell were going to try to prevail against it.
The Lord Jesus never uttered anything in vain. But when He thought of this expression among His people, this corporate expression, He said, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
I think that is something we ought to weigh soberly: how great the attack is.
We have looked at two things before. We looked at the testimony revealed, and we looked at the Old Testament. We said from the beginning that Psalm 78:5 declares that God “established a testimony in Jacob.”
That is what Israel was to be: set apart from all the peoples of the world in the Promised Land, expressing something of His fullness as they were together discovering all that He was. This, in the beginning, was the first movement of God: the testimony revealed.
We also talked about the end of the Old Testament: the testimony recovered. The sad history of the Old Testament—not only to depress you today, but I hope to lift you up, at least at the end of the day—is that this people whom God called unto Himself to be that peculiar treasure and that peculiar testimony, in the end failed.
It was not man, but it was God—it was God—Who gave up His testimony to Babylon. Can you imagine how that must have broken His heart?
This is almost what the psalmist meant when he said, “We ponder things too great for us.” How that must have broken His heart.
But the good news at the end of the Old Testament is this: though man is unfaithful, God abides faithful still. 2 Timothy 2:13.
What a glory it is, because this is His very thought and His very purpose: He is the God of recovery. He sends out the call of recovery, and He sovereignly moves. To prove that it is all of Himself, He moves upon the Gentile kings, and then He calls back to Himself a people.
Thank God, there were those people who responded: Zerubbabel, Nehemiah, Ezra, Daniel—who prayed, who opened the windows to heaven and prayed.
Well, I do believe God is looking for a people who will respond. It seems to me that that call of recovery is going out again.
Where are those that have the concern of Nehemiah? It says that they wondered that one was raised up who had a concern for the things of God.
So this is where we have been. I know some of you get a little frustrated with me, with my introductions. Well, it is hard to change an old dog.
We have been burdened most recently with this matter of the testimony of Jesus in the New Testament. We shared that in the New Testament all types and shadows disappear, and we come to the very heart of God. That is the testimony realized.
We shared two points last week, and those points were simply these:
The testimony of Jesus is realized in a Person, and that Person is the Lord Jesus. You remember, I made you all suffer through the grammar lesson and said how that preposition of is so full of meaning, so deep in thought. It is, in the first place, the testimony of Jesus.
One sister put it to me like this afterwards. I apologise if I did not make it clear enough: the testimony of Jesus is Jesus.
Now, as one pretty famous person said, that is the meaning of “what is, is.” Well, this is the thought.
Then we looked at the second point: not only is the testimony of Jesus revealed in the Person, but the testimony of Jesus is revealed in a people. That is glorious news.
God, in His wisdom, although all the fullness resided in the Lord Jesus, reveals the mystery of God, which is Christ Jesus, and then reveals the mystery of Christ, which is the church.
Somehow, in the great love and economy of God, He has chosen that in a people—His church—there would be deposited that testimony of Jesus, and it was to be expressed through that vessel.
It was not to be expressed only in some small measure, but, as we read in Ephesians 3:10, unto the principalities and the powers; and not in some small degree, but according to the manifold wisdom of God.
That is what He is after. For those of you who are new faces, and those of you who maybe did not listen too well, you are at least somewhat up to speed.
Today we are looking at the third point of that third message, if you keep all these numbers straight. That is, the testimony is to be realized in practice.
You know, I do think some people just like theory. Some people just like theory. They can talk about the testimony. They can describe the riches of Christ. They can describe the mission of the church. But when it comes down to it, in fact, there is no practical manifestation in their life, or among others, or with others, where that is an actual reality.
Do you understand? It is not just to be a theory. I really want to hit this point home in the few points we are going to look at. It is not just to be a theoretical thing.
I think often believers wax eloquent on the body of Christ and all the members and what they are like, but when it comes to practical functioning together and moving in unison with the parts and the pieces, you do not see any manifest reality of it.
And in the end, brothers and sisters—and this is the whole burden for this morning—the testimony of Jesus is to be practically realized. That is the end of it.
Let me speak from my own experience, if I can bore you more. Let me speak about one thing I found out. Most of you know, at least by now, that I am an engineer. You can feel sorry for me. You can feel more sorry for my wife, but I am what I am, as Paul said.
I hire engineers, and I train engineers, and they are the most theoretical people in the world. Too much theory.
I will never forget: we hire young engineers, and they think they know it all. It is amazing. They come out with all this theory. They think they have got it straight. They think they know how to be engineers, and then we bring them into the office and train them to be engineers.
Now stay with me right here, because when you become an engineer—and I am going to apply this to the church; I am not recruiting engineers, not a single one of you—when it becomes reality is in practice, along with other engineers, functioning together, taking what you know in theory and bringing it into practice.
It is the same for any profession. We can learn about things, but unless they are practically manifest, unless there is some practical testimony, some practical expression, then it is just theory.
I think most everybody understands, but we do not realise how much theory we have. We are good theoreticians, if that is the right word. Was that the right word? My wife is squinting. That is usually painful. She is the English major; I am the engineer. You can understand our dilemma.
But when it comes down to it, all that we know is to be brought into a living expression and reality, where that thing that is spoken is real among us.
Now, that can only be done on the job. You cannot go away to school and learn it. Do not take me wrong when I say that. I worry sometimes—people are going to throw something at me. I am not against school whatsoever.
But you cannot, in the end, learn it in school. You must learn it among the saints. There, among the saints, you discover what it means to be a practical and living expression of the testimony of Jesus. That is the whole of it, and that is reality.
We have often said, and will say again and again, the best place of learning—if you want to learn about the Lord Jesus—the best place of exercise, if you want to be exercised in your faith, the best place of demonstration of whether you have life or not, is right among the people of God, with your fellow believers.
There, as you are built up together a holy habitation in the Lord Jesus, and as you discover something of His fullness there, you discover the reality of practical expression.
Well, I hope that is clear. What we will do this morning is consider three points.
First of all, we will turn to John 13–17. I think maybe you begin to get it from those few selections we read.
Brothers and sisters, I want to say there is nothing quite like these chapters in the Bible. They are set apart. We first see this grand scene of the Lord Jesus at the Last Supper, taking this place of absolute humility.
We see the opening scene where the Lord Jesus gets up from dinner, or from the table, or from the meal. He takes a linen towel and girds Himself, and He begins to wash the disciples’ feet.
That is an amazing story. How has the Highest taken such a place of humility? It is almost unthinkable.
Yet when we come to these last weeks of our Lord’s life on earth, we begin to see in this the greatest scene: the Lord Jesus taking a slave girl’s place.
Let us read John 13:1:
Now before the feast of the Passover,
Jesus knowing that His hour was come
that He should depart out of this world unto the Father,
having loved His own that were in the world,
He loved them unto the end.
How beautiful.
Brothers and sisters, the first point we want to look at is that the testimony is practically expressed through divine love. That is the first thing.
The whole context of this great chapter, John 13, when we see our Lord Jesus taking this place of humility, is that He loved His own right through to the end. If you look at it in any other context, you miss, I believe, the central thought of this passage.
The first thing the Lord Jesus demonstrates that is vital to a practical expression of the testimony of Jesus is divine love. Without it, it is impossible. Without it, it is just words.
But in the end, what is essential—absolutely essential—is that there would be among the people of God and in the people of God a demonstration of divine love.
You notice I keep putting that adjective at the front: divine love. There cannot be a testimony of Jesus without God’s love. You may say, “Brother, that is way too elementary. We were hoping for more.”
But I believe it is profound. In the end, when the hour had come—when what you would think would be pressing upon the Lord was His demise at the hands of His own creation—His focus was instead upon demonstrating divine love to His own people.
That is what He did. That is amazing to me. He took that linen towel and put it around Himself, and He knelt down at the feet of those disciples and began to wash their feet.
No wonder Peter was stunned. You may think you could do better than Peter, but you would not, believe me. Peter knew Who was before him. He knew it was the Lord of glory. He knew this was the Son of God. What was He doing, taking this place of a slave girl, washing the disciples’ feet?
You can imagine what was going through Peter’s mind. He must have thought, “Lord, what are You thinking?”
But this is what He was thinking: the demonstration of divine love is essential to the testimony of Jesus.
When He got up, He said to them, “Look at verse 12, the latter part: ‘Do you know what I have done to you?’” What a question.
Ye call Me, Teacher, and, Lord:
and ye say well; for so I am.
If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet,
ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.
For I have given you an example,
that ye also should do as I have done to you.
Brothers and sisters, this is the lesson of John 13: divine love is an absolute essential, or there is no practical manifestation of the testimony of Jesus.
He goes on to say, “Look at John 13:34–35.” This is the follow-up teaching that is in the same vein and brings home the central point that the Lord Jesus was trying to leave with His own as He was about to leave them.
A new commandment I give unto you,
that ye love one another;
even as I have loved you,
that ye also love one another.
By this shall all men know that ye are disciples of Mine,
if ye have love among yourselves.
By this—in this—is testimony. In this is the practical expression by which people will know there is something different about us: if you have love for one another.
This new commandment can seem to take us as believers down a path the Lord never meant, because it begins to conjure up in our thinking that we are compelled and commanded—and we are commanded—to love one another.
But I think at once it is the highest command and the most impossible task. Notice that little phrase: “As I have loved you.”
Did you ever notice that? Things like that trouble me. I wish I were less detailed and could just gloss right over that thing and think my human love, my human comfort, and my human affection toward the saints was enough.
But the Lord Jesus added this little phrase, as He was often wont to do: “As I have loved you.” Can you imagine the degree of that? The profound depth of that love?
This is not a commandment we can take up with natural affection. There has to be divine love empowering us. The very word is agape. I do not want to give you a Greek lesson, but agape is God’s love.
This love that will be a manifest testimony that we are disciples of His does not have its origin in us, does not have its resource in us, and does not have its energy out from us. It is altogether divine in origin, nature, and energy. You must remember that.
I do not think anything illustrates it better than the end of John’s Gospel. You may argue with me about Peter and John. You may be a John person; I may be a Peter person.
But Peter, in one way, demonstrates the best of natural devotion. He was the only one who said to the Lord Jesus before His cross, “Though others may deny You, I will not. I will even die for You.” You remember that infamous statement.
But when you come to the end of John, you begin to learn a lesson that I think is vital. That lesson is that Peter, in his deep devotion, in his real human love for the Lord Jesus, utterly failed in the end. Utterly.
Then we see that grand scene of John 21, when the Lord Jesus is on the shore, calling them to Himself, and He begins to press: “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?”
That was the one issue. Peter, do you really have that kind of love? Do you really have that kind of capacity?
And he could not answer. He said, “Lord, I am attached to You.” A different word: phileo. “I am attached to You. That is the best I have. It is a human emotion. It is a feeling. It is an attachment that comes from ourselves.”
The Lord Jesus, making His point, said, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?” The Lord said agape; Peter said phileo. “Lord, I am attached. It is the best. It is the best I can do.”
Then the Lord said, “Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, are you attached to Me?”
Peter grieved in spirit and said, “Lord, You know all things. You know that is the best I have got. I am attached to You.”
The Lord made His point. Brothers and sisters, His last command given—do you think we have the capacity or the energy to do it? Do you think?
Unless, in the end, divine love comes into us, is worked out of us, and is expressed through us, there will not be any abiding testimony practically expressed.
Let me read to you someone’s quote that explains the difference here. Vine, in his Dictionary of New Testament Words, says:
Christian love, whether exercised toward the brethren, or toward men generally, is not an impulse of feeling.
I remember growing up, there was a song—I cannot get it out of my head. Do you realise how much rubbish gets into your head and you cannot get it out? That song: “Feelings, nothing more than feelings.” You do not want me singing, do you?
We think Christian love is about human feelings. But listen to what Vine says:
It does not always run with the natural inclinations, nor does it spend itself only upon those with whom an affinity is discovered.
I will confess this: there are certain people I like. There are certain people I would rather not spend afternoons with. I will put it mildly.
But Christian love, agape love, divine love that is absolutely essential for the testimony of Jesus to be manifest, is never based on those with whom we have an affinity.
The second thing about divine love is its focus. You will notice the focus is others. You will notice the Lord Jesus’ instruction was to love one another. You will notice the Lord Jesus washed the disciples’ feet.
He said, “Do you know what I have done to you?” You will notice, as He begins to speak of this last and great commandment, that you would love. “By this will you be known as My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Brothers and sisters, I cannot think of something more important to be said about divine love, because divine love is not self-focused. It is always other-focused.
I believe in our generation a great error has crept into this world. I do not mind saying it, because it is my generation. I will not pick upon you older, more wise and stately people, but I will pick upon myself.
Something happened in the sixties and the seventies, and the whole focus changed to be upon ourselves. The whole thing became me, me, and mine.
Even psychology changed its course. Everything became self-esteem. That became the most important thing, the most important thing in the world. You can hurt someone’s self-esteem. Everything revolves around ourselves.
But brothers and sisters, when it comes to divine love, when you look at the Lord Jesus as the example and when you look at the command, you begin to realise that love is other-focused. It is always other-focused.
When divine love comes into us and takes hold of us, in one sense we are assured of God’s love, we forget about ourselves, and we begin to be motivated to love one another. That is the secret of divine love.
Some of you may disagree with me here, but I will say it. I know the neighbour passage. We have some different thoughts here among us, in Matthew 22.
You remember when the Pharisee came to the Lord Jesus and said, “What is the greatest commandment of God?” First of all, He said it is to love God, the first and greatest commandment. Then He said, secondly, like it, is to love thy neighbour as thyself.
Somehow in Christian philosophy we have taken on this teaching of the world. We have begun to absorb it. I will put it even more strongly: we have drunk the laced Kool-Aid. Do you understand?
Maybe some people do not know what that means. We have taken the world’s philosophy and brought it into the church, and the phrase as thyself has become the preeminent part of that verse.
We think that unless we love ourselves, unless we cherish ourselves, unless we focus on ourselves, we cannot love God and we cannot love one another.
Now, some here may differ with me on this, but I believe the Bible does not teach self-love. It assumes self-love. Do you understand the difference?
The Lord said, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” You already love yourself. I will go even further, and some of you may be offended and walk out: even we love ourselves so much, we are so miserable most of the time.
I would go on to say—and I have been through depression—depressed people love themselves. God’s deliverance, divine love, takes us out.
Now, that does not mean we do not have compassion. But let me say to you: self-love is assumed, not taught.
I had a book. I would say I would loan it to you, but I am afraid I would never get it back. Paul Brownback, the president of Citadel Bible College, wrote this book in 1982, and the book is titled The Danger of Self-Love.
Again, if you can talk to me sweetly or something, maybe I will loan you the book. As a matter of fact, Linda went online to Amazon and found out the book is out of print. We found we could get six of them for thirty dollars, so we are considering it.
Nevertheless, when I read it in 1982, it was a profound, eye-opening experience to me. Just as some of our brothers said this morning at the opening and at the table, the focus is not me. Is that not good news?
In divine love, the focus is always Christ and always others.
So, brothers and sisters, I hope this is clear. It is vital to the testimony of Jesus that there would be divine love demonstrated in our midst. That is vital. It is the command of the Lord, but it is, in fact, divine love.
In the end, what we should be praying every day is, “Lord, Your love be in me and manifest out from me. Let it be in us in a corporate expression and manifest out from us.”
In that is the practical realization of the testimony of Jesus. I believe that is a vital principle.
The second point we want to look at today is this: the testimony of Jesus is not only expressed in divine love; it is expressed through divine life.
It was never meant for you to live the Christian life. I know you have heard me say this before, but it was never meant for us to live the Christian life.
If you turn to John 15, you begin to get a sense of what this means. Look at John 15:5:
I am the vine, ye are the branches:
he that abideth in Me, and I in him,
the same beareth much fruit:
for apart from Me ye can do nothing.
Do we realise that? “For apart from Me, ye can do nothing.” This is the Lord Jesus speaking before He left, to His own, in this most private sharing of His heart.
He began to speak about abiding life. He began to speak about another life. He began to say, “I am the vine, and you are the branches.” The life that comes out of the vine goes into the branches.
When that life has its free flow into the branches, then there is much fruit produced out of divine life. You get the point.
It is never our life. It is never imitation life.
I happen to be a coffee drinker. It is one of the things my doctor and I are fighting over. I refuse to give it up. If it takes me out early, it takes me out. But I am a coffee drinker.
I use all of these imitation substances in it. I do not use real cream. I use this imitation powdery stuff—sickening. Just lick the spoon sometimes; you will get what I mean. And it is imitation sugar stuff. It is not real.
But I do not know; I have gotten used to it. I wonder, dear ones, if we have not gotten so used to imitation that we do not know the real when we see it.
In the end, it is divine life. It is the life of the vine that comes out into the branches and, through the branches, is practically manifest. That is the Christian life.
It was never me at all. I was never expected to live it. It was altogether to be a discovery of the Lord’s life in us.
To ensure that, if you read the rest of John 15 and 16, you see the Lord does the most extraordinary thing. He says, “I go to the Father, but if I go to the Father, I will not leave you comfortless. I will send to you the other Comforter,” speaking of the Person of the Holy Spirit.
“And He shall be with you, and He shall be in you.”
Brothers and sisters, I do not know what you could imagine would be one of the greatest things God could do, but think of it: He sends God the Holy Spirit to take up His permanent abode in us.
Full time, God’s Holy Spirit. It is no wonder, when you read 1 Corinthians 3, it says, “Do you not know that you are the temple of the Holy Ghost?” Or the Holy Spirit, whichever you like.
God’s very Spirit is given to us so that we could live this divine life full time.
I just heard Thursday before I left my office that one of my largest firms hired my favourite lawyer. They recognised that they needed a full-time counsellor.
Extraordinary for an engineering or architecture firm, do you not think, Terry? Fellow sufferer in the journey. No, that is your wife I am speaking to—fellow sufferer in the journey. You missed my inflection.
Full-time counsellor. Tremble at that thought: God the Holy Spirit coming into us to take up permanent residence. What more could you add?
Jesus said, “You will not need another teacher. He will teach you everything I have told you. He will show you Myself. He will lead you into all truth.”