Would you return with me to the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 16? We will read from verse 13.
Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?”
And they said, “Some say John the Baptist; some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”
He saith unto them, “But who say ye that I am?”
And Simon Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
And Jesus answered and said unto him, “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father Who is in heaven.
And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Then, if you will turn to the Old Testament, to Zechariah, chapter 4, from verse 1.
And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep.
And he said unto me, “What seest thou?” And I said, “I have seen, and, behold, a candlestick all of gold, with its bowl upon the top of it, and its seven lamps thereon; there are seven pipes to each of the lamps, which are upon the top thereof;
and two olive-trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.”
And I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, “What are these, my lord?”
Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, “Knowest thou not what these are?” And I said, “No, my lord.”
Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, “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 with shoutings of, Grace, grace, unto it.
Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you.
For who hath despised the day of small things? For these seven shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel; these are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.”
And then, again, in Psalm 46.
God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change,
And though the mountains be shaken into the heart of the seas;
Though the waters thereof roar and foam,
Though the mountains tremble with the swelling thereof.
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved:
God will help her, and that right early.
The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved:
He uttered His voice, the earth melted.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Come, behold the works of the Lord,
What desolations He hath made in the earth.
He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth;
He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;
He burneth the chariot in the fire.
Be still, and know that I am God:
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Many times in the evenings for which I have been responsible for the ministry, we have been centring our thoughts upon this profoundly significant incident which took place at Caesarea Philippi, recorded in Matthew 16.
You will remember, as I have stressed on both previous evenings, that this was the first point in the three years our Lord Jesus had been with the twelve when there was a categorical, dogmatic revelation concerning His Person. Until then, it had been implied or inferred, but there had never been an absolutely dogmatic and categorical revelation concerning the Person of the Lord Jesus.
It was then that Jesus provoked them by asking, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” They said, “Well, some say this, and some say that—some say Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets.” Then He asked, “But who say ye that I am?”
Peter immediately, by the Spirit of God, made this tremendous declaration: “Thou art the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus responded by saying, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed that to thee, Simon Bar-Jonah, but My Father Who is in heaven. And I say to thee, thou art Peter.” That is, a stone—a fragment of the rock, a portion of the rock. “Upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
On the first evening, we considered the unchanging purpose of Christ: “Upon this rock I will build My church.” Last night, we considered the glorious nature of the church which He is building: “Thou art Peter; upon this rock”—a vessel of glory, a vessel of mercy, afore prepared for glory.
Now I will not go over any of that. I want to move on this evening to another matter.
I want to speak about the invincible and indestructible work of Christ.
“Thou art Peter; upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
Something eternal; something invincible; something indestructible; something incorruptible.
How marvellous it is to belong to the Lord. What a wonderful thing it is to have been delivered from the powers of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.
What a wonderful thing it is to be taken from the transient, from the corruptible, from the mortal, from the sinful—from, as it were, a time-bound existence—and transferred into another dimension: the incorruptible, the eternal, the indestructible.
It is marvellous to consider this, particularly when we consider Peter. “Thou art Peter.”
Yesterday evening I turned you to one of two Scriptures—we could have turned to others as well—that speak of this rock as the everlasting rock. We have a hymn, Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, taken from one of these verses. Everlasting Rock, eternal Rock, Rock of Ages.
It is upon this rock, as a foundation and out of this rock, that the Lord Jesus builds the church: something eternal, something incorruptible, something indestructible, something invincible.
For myself, I find this a tremendous encouragement, because whenever you look in the world, you see what can be destroyed. You see the corruptible, the time-bound, the things that are changing all around.
I find it even more remarkable that the Lord linked Peter with this eternal building work of His when we consider Peter himself. Peter was the one who was going to lose everything.
He was the spokesman for the other twelve. He seemed to be in the forefront of everything. He was the first one to make the declaration concerning the Person of Jesus. But in the end, it was Peter who apparently lost everything.
It was like some huge nuclear explosion that wiped away, in one single moment, the whole of his apparent spiritual life. It all went. His self-confidence, his self-manufactured spirituality, was all blown away—and it was a little servant girl that did it.
If it had been one huge Roman guard, or one of those monstrous guards that the high priest had, who got him by the throat and said, “Now, you are a Galilean. Were you with this Jesus of Nazareth?”—I could understand Peter suddenly saying it. But some little slip of a girl came walking up to him and said, “You know, you have got a Galilean accent. Weren’t you one of those who was with Jesus? I thought you were with Jesus, weren’t you?”
And he did immediately quake before this little slip of a thing. He said, “No, no, no, no. I never knew the Man. I had nothing to do with the whole thing.”
Three times they came back. Each time, evidently, more certain: “I cannot get away from your face. I have seen that face before. I am sure you were with Jesus.”
Peter must have had a face that made an impression. “I have seen that face before. I am sure you were with Jesus.”
“No, I never knew Him. I never did. I tell you, I never knew Him.”
Three times he denied his Lord. And you will remember the gospel story: when the cock crowed, Peter remembered the words that the Lord Jesus had spoken only a few hours before: “Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny Me thrice.”
Peter went out and wept bitterly. But before that, you will remember, Jesus was taken from the high priest to be imprisoned for a while before being taken to the Sanhedrin. In that moment Peter had never said a single word. All He did was look.
It says very simply in the Scripture, “And Jesus looked upon Peter.” Peter went out and wept bitterly.
That was all that was required to ignite the God-given faith that was in Peter. Everything else had gone: all his self-manufactured spirituality, all his self-engineered Christian growth, all that he had built over three years. All that he apparently was—the whole thing was blown away in a moment.
But that God-given faith, that faith which is the gift of God, was deeper than his threefold denial. It only took one single look from the Lord Jesus to ignite that indestructible, incorruptible faith which was the gift of God to Peter. In that moment he went out and wept.
Judas went out and wept also, but found in himself no God-given faith. Peter had something that was God-made. In another way, there was something of the rock in Peter, deeper than all the façades, all the self-manufactured Christianity, and all the self-engineered spiritual life.
There was something deep in that man which, when all the rest was blasted into fragments, enabled the real thing finally to come to the surface.
That is the process God has to take with us before He can build us into this eternal building. None of that self-manufactured Christianity can get into this. None of that façade, all that projected spiritual image which so often we seek to make in order to make ourselves acceptable to one another.
God has to destroy it all, dynamite it all, blow the whole thing up, so that the real rock-like nature of that new man may finally be expressed.
I say that God has done a work in all of us that has to go the same way as Peter’s. So deeply and so fully is Peter, in many ways, spokesman for us all. He is, in many ways, representative of us all.
What we see happening in Peter actually has to be true in some way or another of every one of us who has been saved by the grace of God. We may not have so dramatic an experience as Peter. We may not have so sensational an experience as Peter. We may not feel so deeply.
But if we are honest, the Holy Spirit has to dynamite our self-manufactured spirituality, because it is not the real thing. Oh, that the Holy Spirit may produce the real thing.
Very often, when we project the other, we effectively obstruct the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives.
So, when it comes to this matter, “Thou art Peter; upon this rock I will build,” it is tremendous comfort to me to hear the Lord Jesus saying, “Upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
Jesus said to Peter, just before he denied the Lord, on the evening in which he denied the Lord three times, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.”
Most of us would have written over Peter’s denial, “There goes Peter’s faith.” The breakdown would be taken as the end of his trust in the Lord. But Jesus knew. Jesus said, “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.”
Even when Peter denied the Lord, his real faith never failed. He took one glimpse of the Lord, and that real faith was once again ignited and drove him back, with tears, to his Lord and Master.
Brothers and sisters, it is a marvellous thing to understand. “The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
We would have thought the gates of hell had prevailed against Peter when he went into that experience of denying, with oaths, his Master and Lord. But in actual fact the gates of hell did not prevail.
What happened? God used Satan to sift Peter as wheat. God got the wheat, and Satan got the chaff.
And that will always happen. It always happens. God uses the powers of darkness, the forces of death, to challenge us, to destroy what is not real, to shake to pieces our own self-manufactured life, until we fall back in the end into what is really of God in our being.
Then, once we have got back, as it were, to zero—down to the foundation—God, by the Spirit, begins to do the eternal, invincible, indestructible work.
When you and I are saved, there is something indestructible about it. Some people say you can be saved and lost. I know that may introduce an element of controversy, but I personally do not believe it.
I think they went out from us because they were not of us.
When someone has been saved by the grace of God, they may lose everything apparently of their Christian life, but if they have really been born of God, like the prodigal son, they will only end with the Father.
It may take them years, and they may spend all their substance on riotous living and ruin everything that was worthless anyway. But in the end, they will come back to the Father’s house. They will come to their senses. They will come back to the Father. Why?
Because there is something deposited in them which is not of this world and does not belong to this earth. It is from heaven.
“Upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” This rock is the everlasting Rock, the eternal Rock. It is out of this that the Lord Jesus is building the church. Thank God for that gracious ministry of the Holy Spirit.
I think of the words of the preacher in Ecclesiastes. He says, “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever.”
Oh, brothers and sisters, is that not a wonderful thing? Whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever.
I would rather have the Lord do one thing in my life than do a million things myself. My million things will all pass away with time, but the one thing God does in my life—that is forever. Nothing will ever destroy it. Nothing will ever overcome it. It is invincible, indestructible, incorruptible.
I say, then, it is better to surrender to God and let Him do one thing in my life than run around the whole globe doing a million things, only to find at the end that it all disappears—wood, hay, and stubble, burnt up in the end.
How much Christian work comes into this category? I think about seventy-five per cent of Christian work is wood, hay, and stubble. It will all go.
It is man’s talent, man’s energy, man’s organisation, man’s zeal—all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Work done for God, but not the work of God.
But when it is the work of God, it is forever. Many people work for God, but when it is merely human effort, it disappears.
So, brothers and sisters, I find this a tremendously interesting and marvellous thought: the invincible and indestructible work of Christ.
What Christ builds in you and in me belongs to the new creation. Actually, it does not belong to this creation. It does not belong to this old world. It does not belong to this old man. It does not belong to the first Adam at all.
What He is doing in you and me, what He builds, belongs to the new creation, to the new man, to the new order, to the new Jerusalem, to a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
The church which Jesus is building, all down through the centuries of these last two millennia, is not a human conception. It is not of human constitution. It is not a human creation.
Just because there are men and women, flesh and blood, who belong to this church which He is building does not mean that it is human in origin or human in its constitution. It is not. It is built out of eternal and indestructible material.
Now let that sink in. Because if it really began to dawn upon us tonight, we would suddenly begin to see God differently.
Most of us have arguments with God. He may be speaking to some of you about letting go of something, but you will not let go. You want to hold on to that thing, whatever it may be. You do not realise that you think God wants you to be miserable.
He is telling you to give up something which, in any case, is transient. “Well, if God wants me to do that, He wants me to be a monk or a nun. He wants me to be a miserable, afflicted Christian.”
God does not want that at all. What God wants is for you to let go of something because it is transient; it is corruptible, so that He can bring you into the indestructible and incorruptible.
But if you and I do not see it like that, we will argue with God every step of the way. We will feel, “Why should I go this way? Why should I go that way? Why should I give this? Why should I lay that down? Why should I do the other?”
We somehow think the Lord has a vested interest in our being afflicted. If God would create all things, what a lot of afflicted people—miserable people—would join us! Religious, sombre, dark in every way: in look, in face, in manner.
But God has no interest in that religion. God is altogether interested in the indestructible and incorruptible.
If you and I will only do what He says, we shall come into the invincible and indestructible.
If you and I begin to see this, we shall stop arguing with God again and again. We shall understand something of what it is that God is trying to do with us. We may not understand why He leads us in certain ways; it will still require faith to obey. But at least we know that He is building something indestructible and incorruptible—and I, for one, want to be in it.
I can go to a million universities. I can get a thousand degrees. But it will not help me to do anything invincible, indestructible, or incorruptible.
I can have so much theology that it comes out of my ears. But, my dear friend, it will not help me one single iota into the indestructible and incorruptible.
The only way you and I can move into the invincible and indestructible work of Christ is to open to Him, work with Him, and be one hundred per cent committed to Him.
Then He will unfailingly lead us into the invincible and indestructible. He will work in us that which can never be corrupted, that which can never be destroyed, and that which can never be overcome.
The church which our Lord Jesus is building is built out of eternal and indestructible material. This church came from heaven.
On the day of Pentecost, it came in the Person of the Holy Spirit. It came from heaven; it did not start down here. It came from the throne of God.
When Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on high, He received the promise of the Father and poured forth the Holy Spirit. Then the Holy Spirit was poured forth upon the earth, and in the Person of the Holy Spirit came the indestructible, invincible church.
It came in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Certainly, the one hundred and twenty units in the congregation became one hundred and twenty members of the body. There is a great difference between being one hundred and twenty units in a congregation and being one hundred and twenty members of the body.
Those disciples were always rivals until that day of Pentecost. They were always asking who should sit at the right and who should sit at the left in the kingdom to come. “Who should be first? Who is the greatest?” It was always a question of who was the greatest.
They even got the mother of two of them to go to Jesus—a typically Jewish family matter. She was the aunt of the Lord Jesus, and she suggested to Him that it might be good, in the kingdom to come, if all the high positions were kept within the family.
But on that day of Pentecost, Peter stood up. Before then there might have been an argument: “He cannot speak. He denied the Lord three times. Let James speak. Let someone else be chosen.” But no: Peter stood up, and by the Holy Spirit he opened his mouth and preached the Word. The eleven stood with him.
In fact, that is exactly what happened. For the first time, they were members of a body. Peter was the mouth; they were the members. They were absolutely one hundred per cent behind Peter.
Peter did the preaching. No one said, “Why should he preach? Why cannot I go?” They never thought about it. As far as they were concerned, God had used Peter; they were there with him. They were members of Christ and members one of another. The church had come in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
This church, which came in the Person of the Holy Spirit, has always been governed from heaven. Its Head is in heaven, and the members are on earth. But the Holy Spirit brings and communicates, as it were, the mind of the Head to the members of the body.
This is something totally beyond even some Christians’ understanding of the Lord. They say, “Oh, you must use your common sense. God has given you common sense.” And, my word, they may commit the church to their common sense.
Actually, common sense is the rarest thing amongst believers. I do not find common sense so common amongst believers.
I would have thought that if our Head was in heaven and we are on earth, and our Head knows everything while we do not, then common sense would tell us to get on our knees and communicate with Him. He knows exactly what we can do in any given situation.
This is what turned the world upside down. This church that came from heaven was in touch with the Head in heaven by the Holy Spirit. It got its direct instruction from the Head in heaven.
When there came a certain need, it was the Holy Spirit Who said, “Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.” In other words, all the time it was heaven giving direct instruction, and they were moving in it.
Even when there was a great dispute in the early church over the question of money—normally money causes problems amongst Christians—in the end they heard from heaven, gained clarity, and moved ahead. It was governed from heaven. It was sustained from heaven.
Then there was persecution, and it felt as if the whole thing would be snuffed out. But it did not happen. Everywhere the church was sustained from heaven. This thing is invincible.
Down through the years, it has been recovered from heaven. Every time the church has become institutionalised, traditionalised, systematised—has become just a human society—then at some point the Holy Spirit has broken in again, taken hold of people, turned them inside out and upside down, and anointed them with His power.
Then the whole thing has happened again. It has been Pentecost all over the earth. It has been the early church all over again: the same kind of fellowship, the same kind of signs and wonders, the same kind of impact upon the world.
Church history is so exciting when you see it in the light of this. This church not only came from heaven in the Person of the Holy Spirit; it is going to be completed from heaven.
What does it say in Zechariah 4? “Before Zerubbabel this great mountain shall become a plain, and he shall bring forth the headstone with shoutings of ‘Grace, grace, unto it!’”
So it is our risen, ascended, glorified Lord Who is finally going to put the finishing touch to this church, in spite of all the antagonism and opposition of demons and men. He is going to do it.
And I will tell you one other thing about this church: when finally it is finished and completed, it will appear from heaven, coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God.
Consider the history of the church. One hundred and twenty gathered in an upper room, and we hardly know any of their names. We know the twelve; we know that certain others were possibly there. But actually, we have no list of the names of the one hundred and twenty.
As far as we know, none of them had ever been to university or had higher education. None of them was particularly sophisticated. Yet those one hundred and twenty, when the Holy Spirit came upon them, were destined to turn the whole of Jerusalem upside down, then Judea, then Samaria, then the Gentile world.
In the end, the Roman Empire was turned upside down. This thing, which began with one hundred and twenty on the day of Pentecost, has outlasted the greatest empire of its day—the Roman Empire. Today, it is still with us.
I find this amazing: the church today, with all its sins, all its faults, and all its weakness, is actually on the earth more widespread, more virile, more powerful than at any time in its history.
There has been no point in the church’s history when there have been so many assemblies of God’s people all over the earth as there are today. I do not suppose that at any single time there have been so many people being saved as there are today.
Of course, we have a much greater population, and from that point of view we could be said to be losing the battle. But the work has always been by the Spirit.
Over the whole history of the church, concerning the testimony of Jesus—the lampstand of gold which Zechariah saw—we have to write: “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 his hands shall bring forth the headstone with shoutings of grace.”
All the way through what we call the Dark Ages, there were groups that perhaps will not mean much to you: the Paulicians, the Bogomils, the Albigenses, the Waldenses, and Priscillianists. But, my dear friends, one day we shall meet these people when we sit down together in the kingdom of God.
We shall find an incredible consistency and continuity all the way through the centuries of church history which binds all the first-generation believers together in one common bond.
It is a most interesting thing that every move of the Holy Spirit has basically produced the same features. There have been the same features as in the early church: divine authority, divine impact, divine outreach, and so on.
When the whole church seemed to be so institutionalised and traditionalised, the Spirit of God took a bold black man called Martin Luther and simply ran a plough through the whole thing.
He turned the whole system upside down and inside out. Before long, there were whole numbers all over Europe and in Britain who were beginning to discover the saving grace of God again and beginning to relate to one another in Him by a tremendous hope.
Then it crystallised. Oh, it gives you a laugh.
We think of the Puritans today because their names have been so blackened—great legalists. But the early Puritans were anything but legalistic. They loved the Lord, and they knew the Lord. Because they lived in such an immoral society, the people around them said that they were legalists. But in actual fact, they were filled with the Lord Jesus.
Within a generation, they too had become formal. Then God raised up more, and the new thing went forward.
The same thing happened in the Charismatic movement. People would suddenly fall on the floor before God and have an experience of the Lord. Someone would stand up and prophesy, or someone would have a revelation from God. They were filled and stirred with the power of God.
[The recording is incomplete at this point.]
It does not matter where we go; we find the same thing. I will probably bore you if I go all along and talk about the Anabaptists and all the amazing things.
At one time, so many were drowned in sacks—women and children—in the fountains of cities in Switzerland and other places in Germany and Central Europe. But it was invincible and indestructible.
God did something with those believers that, in the end, was to influence the whole household of faith.
Or take the Methodists. It is an amazing thing what God did with the Methodists.
John Wesley did not even want to leave the Church of England, but they turned him out of the churches. One day George Whitefield went and stood in a graveyard on his father’s grave. They reckoned they could not turn him off that.
He preached in the open air to thousands upon thousands. All over Britain and here in the United States, thousands upon thousands were saved in what came to be known as the Great Evangelical Awakening through Wesley and Whitefield.
It was the Holy Spirit. When the thing became institutionalised, systematised, and just a human society, there was just the whole experience all over again.
Or take the Brethren movement. The same thing happened simultaneously in about ten to twelve different cities in the British Isles. Similar things happened without any connection with one another. Suddenly it happened, and all these people began to emerge and discover something about purity of worship, purity of fellowship, and the Lord.
Oh, I think of the Pentecostal movement. I know some people would not include the Quakers, but you cannot dismiss Pentecostalism from the whole. The Holy Spirit has used the Pentecostal movement to bring more people into the salvation of God than probably any outpouring of the Spirit in the long centuries of church history.
That movement went all over the world, and in it came a new recognition of power and a new recognition of the Person of the Holy Spirit.
Then I think of some of the Brethren—like G. H. Pember and T. Austin-Sparks—and what God showed them, and how they stood in such a lonely way for most, if not all, of their lives, preaching the whole counsel of God.
They declared that there would come a day when believers everywhere would come to see what the church was.
I remember when Austin-Sparks first used to talk about the church, people’s mouths used to drop open. They could not know what he was talking about.
Forty or fifty years ago, the church was somewhere that you met somebody else in, or where you left your handbag. It was a place that rang bells on Sunday or had some military-type ceremony. It was an ecclesiastical structure with stained glass windows. That was the church; most people understood it that way.
Anyone who spoke about the church as living stones, as members one of another, as the body of Christ—people were at first startled. I remember when I first saw this and began to preach about it. People said, “How come we have never heard of this before?”
It is inconceivable now, in 1985, that the whole household of Christ talks about being members of the body of Christ, talks about body life, and talks about functioning as the body of Christ. It is inconceivable that only thirty years ago nobody talked about the body of the Lord Jesus.
But Austin-Sparks was another who saw something of the nature of the church and declared that the Holy Spirit was going to recover something. He died in faith, but God has done something.
There are weaknesses and failings all over the globe in this matter. I hear the most extraordinary statements made. People come to me and say, “Oh, we have got a body in Chicago.” I do not know what they are talking about. It sounds like the good old Mafia days: “We got a body in Chicago.”
What do they mean, “We have got a body”? That is a whole New Testament to me. But it has become so much the terminology that people have got that they even misuse the phraseology.
People say they are apostles. I remember once in Jerusalem a brother coming after me with a letter which said that so-and-so, giving his full name, was “an apostle in the church of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I was sorry when I saw it.
Oh, the work of the Holy Spirit down through the years! Brothers and sisters, this invincible, indestructible building work of the Lord Jesus.
Wherever we turn in the last nineteen hundred years, we see the evidence that it is the work of the Holy Spirit. We see that it has been initiated from heaven, recovered from heaven, empowered from heaven, and directed from heaven. Therefore, brothers and sisters, it is going to be completed from heaven.
This work is invincible. Let the world go out against it: it is invincible and indestructible. Let the whole of hell mobilise: it is going to find itself impotent in the face of the building work of the Lord Jesus. He is going to finish this work. It is invincible, indestructible, and incorruptible.
Now, that does not mean that I will necessarily be in it. It may be that I shall long so much for the transient, so much for the earthly, so much for my own manufactured Christian life and service, that I will put myself out of the building work of the Lord—not out of salvation, but out of the building work of the Lord Jesus.
But whether I am in it or not, I want to say this quite clearly: whether I am in it or whether I am not, this work is going to be completed. It is invincible, indestructible, and incorruptible.
There is no one less than the Lord Jesus Himself Who is the Builder of this church. Do you think He is going to admit defeat at the hands of the powers of darkness and say, “We cannot finish this thing. Dear Father, this is too big a battle even for the human world”?
If it means raising children of God from the stones around us, God will do it. He is going, in the end, to complete this work. It is invincible. It is indestructible.
Now, brothers and sisters, I must tell you something else, with the possibility that some will be upset. I believe the Charismatic outpouring has been the greatest move of the Spirit of God in this last generation.
I know there are people who do not like the word “Charismatic,” and immediately say, “That is dreadful. You are misleading all the young people amongst us.”
But, my dear friends, in the years ahead, if the Lord tarries and church history is written up, you will discover that the Charismatic movement is one of the greatest revival movements in the history of the church.
It has brought hundreds of thousands into the kingdom of God, and untold multitudes of believers into a new aliveness to God and a new awareness of God. It has reinstated the word church and the word body back into the vocabulary of the household of faith.
It is this Charismatic movement, with all its failings and all its faults, that God has used to move over the face of the whole earth, to prepare the people of God for the last days that we face.
Every single denomination, every single work of God, once it has gone beyond the first generation into the second and the third, has crystallised and institutionalised, and then has excommunicated the new move.
There is something in our nature that, when God does something amongst us, makes us exclusive and say, “Well now, if anything happens, it must be what we have got.”
I had to smile many times when I was in Scandinavia in earlier years, when the leaders of the Pentecostal churches were so adamantly anti-Charismatic. Here were people who had the same experience as the Charismatics, but they said, “It cannot be of God. It cannot. It has to be the devil, because it did not happen through us.”
The Lord is no respecter of persons.
In one of our readings this evening it says, “Who hath despised the day of small things?” It is a very interesting thing, when we look at the whole history of the church, how it has always been a day of small things in which every new move of the Spirit has begun.
So small, so insignificant, so few—a little number—until it has grown and grown and grown until the whole world has been affected.
Think of the Methodists. They laughed at the Methodists. They called them enthusiasts; then they called them Methodists.
“Oh, the Wesleys and the Whitefields! These enthusiasts, these rabble-rousers, these people going out and preaching in the open air.”
But this movement of the Spirit was to sweep over the whole face of the earth. Prisons were reformed, hospitals produced, and the whole standard of national life lifted up. Who hath despised the day of small things?
Think of the Quakers. They laughed at the Quakers: “They are strange people. They wear strange ways and all of those things. They meet in funny little meeting houses, and there they quake and tremble.”
These people were put into prison. At one time, two-thirds of the preachers in the Quaker movement were in prison in Britain.
Do you know what they did? They converted the whole clientele in the prisons, and the prison became Bible school.
When they came out of prison, those who had found the Lord in the prisons became evangelists and prophets, pioneers for this work of God. They were irresistible people—irresistible.
They turned the whole face of society upside down and brought in every kind of reform, not as a priority but almost as a consequence of the gospel which they preached, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the signs and wonders which were wrought.
“Who hath despised the day of small things?”
It is so easy to despise the small thing. There was a day when it was the hardest thing in the world to be associated with Martin Luther. To be associated with Martin Luther was considered so disreputable, so foul, so low-class, as to put you out of the running.
Within a generation, it had become a highly respectable thing to be a Lutheran.
In the early days of the Quakers, it was the most disreputable and vulgar thing to be a Quaker. But within a generation it was a highly respectable thing to be a Quaker. The same was true with the Methodists.
I am very amazed now that it is respectable to be Pentecostal. But it is not respectable to be Charismatic—not yet.
Every single new move of the Spirit of God has been disreputable and vulgar. It has been a day of small things to be despised. It has been something to be laughed at, something in which all the weaknesses and failings can be held up to ridicule, something that can be disproved by the thousand and one things that apparently are not like it.
But within a generation or two, the verdict of history is this: it was a move of God.
Is it not strange? We slay the prophets and then build their tombs. Jesus said that about the Jewish people, and it is absolutely true of Christians as well.
Every single generation, we have stoned, if not literally then certainly in spirit, all the leaders of every new move of the Spirit. But within a generation, we are building their tombs, writing books about them, telling stories about them, using them as sermon material, and all the rest of it.
But, brothers and sisters, “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it.”
Jesus is the One. When we look over this, on this third night of considering the subject, do you know what it means to me? Marxists speak about an inexorable, irreversible onward march. I say there is an inexorable, irreversible tide of God.
That tide of God which began on the day of Pentecost and has flowed down through the centuries of this age is not over. It is not over. It is going on.
May I illustrate? In Britain, where I was born and brought up, there is in the West Country a very beautiful area of North Devon. There was a beautiful fishing village, so picturesque with all its thatched cottages, which was a great tourist attraction: Lynmouth.
Many years—about eighty years—before the tragedy that overtook it in 1952, clever people changed the course of the River Lyn. They decided that it would be much better if the course of the river was moved over some hundreds of yards, thus giving valuable ground for building.
Eighty years later, nobody realised that once the river had been in another place. But in 1952, in the late summer, it rained for almost a month without stopping.
High up on Exmoor, the water built up on the moor until, in the end, on one memorable and tragic day, a huge wall of water crashed down the Lyn Valley—thirty-five or forty feet high.
When it came to the little village of Lynmouth, it went back to the original riverbed and swept away over half of the village, sweeping out cars and people eight miles into the sea.
I think it is a tremendous illustration—sad, the story, but a tremendous illustration—of what happens in every real move of the Holy Spirit through church history.
Men have changed the course. It seems to them more respectable to change the course of the river and make it go this way. Then they turn it into their own methods and techniques.
But every time the Holy Spirit has again become sovereign, the river has returned to its original bed. So you find all the way through church history the features of the early church reappear.
It does not matter whether you read John Wesley’s early journals. When Wesley speaks about the early movement, he never speaks about the Methodist Church or the Wesleyan Church. He would have died a million deaths before he spoke about that.
He spoke about journeying to the people of God in Leicester, where he would preach the gospel, sustain them, and build them up. Then he would say, “I am moving from the people of God in Birmingham, and I am going to the people of God in Coventry.”
It was just like the early church. The same is true when you read George Fox’s journals. He speaks of the people of God in different places. He says, “I am going to be found amongst the elect in such-and-such a place. I will be leaving them here and going there.”
So it has been with each of these early beginnings. You find the same fellowship, the same authority, and the same divine impact.
What can we say about this? I think we can underline what I would call the irresistible and overcoming grace of God.
Is it not interesting? Listen again to Zechariah: “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 with shoutings of ‘Grace, grace, unto it!’”
“His hands laid the foundation; his hands shall also finish it. Who hath despised the day of small things?”
Oh, dear family of God, every time it has been a day of small things in which the Holy Spirit has set forward this building work of the Lord. We can despise it, but it has been a day of small things in which He has set forward the work—and He is going to complete it.
The Holy Spirit is in charge of this work. I think that is the most comforting thought of all. Jesus is the Builder, and the Holy Spirit is in charge of the work. It cannot fail.
I want you to notice that on either side of this lampstand there are two olive trees. I do not think I have to say too much to you about the olive trees. They are always symbols of God’s Spirit upon anointed men.
Actually, the two olive trees in Zechariah 4 stand, on the one hand, for Zerubbabel, and on the other hand for Joshua the high priest: the governor and the high priest. These two great ministries, with the lampstand and the prophetic ministry, bring king, priest, and prophet together in one.
You can never have the church without the kingly, priestly, and prophetic ministries in operation, and the lampstand—the Spirit of prophecy. It is always so. All the way through the history of the church, you will find these three things reasserting themselves every time.
I want to say one other thing about this irresistible grace of God. What Christ builds in each generation goes into the city. Nothing is lost.
I have wrestled for many years in my own mind as to why one denomination does not remain faithful and pure right the way through to the end. I do not know whether any of you have had this problem.
I have thought to myself so many times, “Why in the world cannot the Lord keep one of these moves of the Spirit alive? Surely He would be able to do it.”
Then I have looked at church history. I love history. I have made it, in one sense, a study—perhaps not a deep study, but a certain study.
I have come to the conclusion that God is not interested in keeping the thing alive after the first generation. Now, I know that will shock some people, but I have come to that conclusion.
It is as if, in the first generation of every move, from the beginning right the way through, God obtains, by the Holy Spirit, certain material, and that material has gone into the city and will never be lost.
In other words, we shall find the overcomers in every generation. They have followed the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. They have been one hundred per cent faithful and committed to the light which God gave—the revelation in their own generation.
Now, I am not saying—and let me make this quite plain and clear; this is the problem with this kind of ministry, that I have to qualify everything one says so many times—I am not saying that God has finished with any denomination.
What I am saying is that God goes on using various things, even though they are institutionalised and traditionalised. You will find the Lord in the most incredible places.
When I say incredible places, I mean incredible places. I have been in Greek Orthodox monasteries and found the Holy Spirit at work, and men in those monasteries in whom I could hardly believe, from the way I had been brought up, that the Lord would be working.
There may be a tradition of a thousand years, but the Lord saves, the Lord stays, and the Lord blesses. He is building. I do not know how else to say it.
Each move of the Spirit requires faith—to really understand what God is doing. It requires faith to commit myself to what God is doing. It requires a life laid down very basically, to be identified with what the Lord is doing.
Of course, within a generation it becomes respectable, and then there is no longer a sacrifice attached to it.
So, as I see it, nothing is lost. Sometimes when the enemy comes in like a flood and it looks as if all the greatest people in the church have been martyred, and somehow the whole thing has been submerged and broken up, it looks as if everything is lost. But it has not.
The real values are in the city, and at the end they will all be there.
In principle, I see it in Revelation 12. What is born of the woman—that man-child that will rule the nations—is caught up to the throne of God. Satan, the dragon, does not get one single toenail. It is caught up in its entirety to the Lord.
There is one other thing about this that I find a great comfort: there is a homing instinct and dynamic in the life of God. I love to think about this.
I think to myself, the eternal life that I have here in my heart and body, which is the Lord Jesus—the life of the Lord Jesus—this life I have came from heaven. It did not originate down here. It came from Him.
You must sense, if you know what I mean, that it has caught me on the rebound. It is like a boomerang movement. It caught me and saved me, and now it is carrying me back to where it came from.
I do not know if that helps you. It helps me.
I remember years ago, when I lived in England, every spring, in the second or third week of May, we would wait for the swallows. They always came within about ten days.
We would always know they were there because they would dive all over the garden with their squealing cry. They had come all the way from South Africa, nine thousand miles away.
They came right up the whole coast of Africa, through West Africa, up through Spain, and finally reached the British Isles. Can you believe it?
I remember a very sad occasion one year when the wall upon which they always built their nests had been taken down. It was evidently unsafe, and the building inspectors said, “We will take the wall down and rebuild it in a really safe and strong condition.”
Unfortunately, it happened to be down at the time the swallows arrived. I have never forgotten the sight of those swallows alighting, or trying to alight, on a non-existent wall. They were actually hovering, as if something inside them told them, “This is home.” But there was no place there.
What was it? When these birds went to Africa in the autumn of the previous year, it was the first time they had ever made the journey. When they came back, it was only the second time. How in the world could they know exactly the place where they were born?
They had no sort of Swallows’ Automobile Association or traffic direction which would say, “This is the way. This is where you were born—in such-and-such a house, in such-and-such a place.” But within them was a kind of life, and this life somehow had within it the dynamic of bringing them right back.
It is like the salmon that are found in the western Norwegian rivers, in the Scottish rivers of the western islands, or on the west coast of Ireland. Do you know where they spawn? Right away in the Caribbean. That is where they come from.
Yet they come right across the Atlantic, and they go right up a river. They will jump up rapids, over and back, over and back, and then they will finally come back to the spawning pool in which they originated.
What in the world is it in them that takes them right back to the very spot? It is a homing instinct. It is a dynamic, as it were.
I want to tell you, the people of God, if the Holy Spirit is in you, He is the homing instinct in every one of us. He has come from the throne of God. He has brought us into salvation through the finished work of our Lord Jesus—the salvation of God—and He will not rest until He has got us back to the throne of God.
That is the irresistible and overcoming grace of God.
So, dear friends, we must finish. Time, I think, is gone, and I imagine you have really had enough of this.
When we come to that magnificent statement of the Lord Jesus, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it,” it would be very nice to leave the whole matter there and say, “Well now, this is the invincible, indestructible, and incorruptible work of the Lord Jesus. This is the irresistible and overcoming grace of God that is going to get us back and finish the work.”
But, brothers and sisters, it is interesting. The Lord Jesus said, “Unto thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”
In other words, the Lord Jesus is saying, “Take the keys.” Gates can either be locked or unlocked.
There are two ways we can translate this statement of the Lord Jesus. One is: “Upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
Another way we can translate it is: “Upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not hold out against it.”
One is the idea of the gates of hell assaulting the building work of the Lord Jesus but not prevailing. The other is the building work of the Lord Jesus assaulting the gates of hell, which are not able to hold out.
I think both translations have a valuable truth in reality to impart.
You see, there are some people who are going to be involved in the building work of the Lord Jesus who are locked within the gates of hell.
A gate, by the way, in the Bible is symbolic of a council, a judge, or government. In the old days, in the old cities of that part of the world, the elders would sit in the gate.
They were not doing nothing, just lazing around. That was the court. That was the place of arbitration. Any day when there was a problem, people would go to the gate, find the elders, sit before them with the whole problem, and look to them for judgment, counsel, or arbitration.
Now, to be absolutely correct, it is the gates of Hades. But what in the world does that mean to anybody? Hades is a Greek word for the departed spirits.
The translators of the Revised Version felt it was incumbent upon them to be absolutely literally accurate and translate it “the gates of Hades,” which means virtually nothing to most people.
I think the old Authorised Version—the King James translators—were much nearer when they fixed upon “the gates of hell,” because what is really meant by this is the gates of death, the power of death, or the gates of the forces of darkness.
Put it another way: “Upon this rock I will build My church, and the councils of hell, or the powers of darkness and death, shall not prevail against it.”
Or let me put it another way: “Upon this rock I will build My church, and the council, judgment, or policies of the forces of death and evil shall not hold out against My building work.”
Now, this would be just marvellous if we could stop here. Then you would go away saying, “Well, that was a very good word, was it not, about all that invincible, indestructible work of God? Thank God, we can be in this thing.”
We could just sit down like those old invalids in chairs and be carried by angels into the kingdom. We could be borne along on a wonderful sort of indestructible, invincible tide of God’s grace.
But, my dear friends, there are keys. Keys are not an ornament.
Keys are the most valuable symbol of authority. They represent authority. You do not give keys to anybody you want. You only give keys to a responsible person.
Why? Because keys represent authority. With keys you can unlock something. With keys you can lock up something.
Most of us never think twice about keys until we have lost them. It is so easy to use a key when you have got it. You go in and out of a car in a moment’s time; you go in and out of a home in a moment’s time; you go in and out of a safe in a moment’s time.
But when you have lost the key, what takes a few moments becomes hours and hours of sweat and desperation.
Brothers and sisters, this whole matter of the gates of hell prevailing against the building work of the Lord Jesus is a matter of keys.
I have to ask myself a question when I look through church history: why does the Lord, in spite of what He said, seemingly allow the gates of hell to prevail against this building work in every generation? Why?
I will tell you why: because the Lord is not interested in producing a whole eternal kindergarten.
He is not interested in a whole great eternal mass in which there are thousands of little spiritual babies, who all love Him and say darling little things, but who cannot do a single thing in the kingdom.
He is interested in members of the body of His Son—living stones—who can learn how to exercise the authority which is theirs in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Therefore, He will allow the gates of hell to prevail at times, only for the Holy Spirit in the next generation or so to start all over again. He will allow those gates of hell to prevail unless there are people who will help to use the keys.
It is interesting that in every beginning move of the Spirit of God in the church, you have had men of authority. You have had kingly ministry and priestly ministry. You have had it again and again, whichever way you look at it.
This all comes back to the fact that you and I cannot lock up something that heaven will not lock up.
Some people, because of the way it is translated and because of the difficulty of the tenses, read, “Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” So they think that we can go round in the name of the Lord and say, “We are locking this thing up,” expecting heaven to fall in line and lock it up.
I have been in meetings where things have been locked up, and it is perfectly clear a week later that they are not locked up. “Oh, but they were locked up according to the Word.” But you cannot lock up what is not the will of heaven to be locked up.
The tense is this—listen very carefully: “Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven.”
In other words, you can only ratify the will of the sovereign God. You can only fulfil what is the purpose of God in any given situation.
Therefore, you and I have got to have hearing ears. We have got to know what is the will of God in any given situation, and once we know it, then we can use the key.
Then we know one thing: it is the will of our Lord, glorified Head, the Builder of the church, to obtain material for His church. At present it is locked, as it were, within the gates of hell—the counsel of darkness, of Satan—which says, “No, thus far and no further.”
But it is for us to say, in the name of the Lord, “These gates are going to open, and out from within them are going to come multitudes and multitudes into the saving grace and power of God.”
At other times, hell will make an assault upon a fellowship, an assembly, a work of the Lord, or some group of saints who really believe in the Lord. There comes a time when we have to stand up in the name of the Lord and deal with demonic activity in the name of the Lord.
[The recording becomes unintelligible.]
May the Lord speak to every one of us. I feel that there is a kind of passivity so often found amongst us all over the world—such a passivity, a kind of long-form Calvinism.
“The Lord must do it. He is the only One Who can do it, and He will.” That is very good. But, you know, the Lord says, “My dear children, this invincible and indestructible work—you must decree according to My will, and I will act.”
Let us look for the purpose of God. We are not just to sit passively by.