If you return with me again to the Gospel of 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 Book of Revelation, chapter 3, from 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 bow together in a word of prayer?
Heavenly Father, when we come to Your Word, we just want, Lord, to confess that unless You are the power and the life and authority in the speaking, and the ability to hear what You are saying in our hearing, then, Lord, this time will be to no avail.
Lord, our prayer together is that You will stand against any futility in this time, any vanity in it, anything, Lord, that would not be the fulfilment of Your plan and design for our gathering this evening.
Dear Lord, we would together simply open our hearts and, by faith, take that anointing which You have given both for speaking and for hearing, that Your purpose in this time may be fulfilled and the name of our Lord Jesus glorified. We ask it in that Name which is above every other name, the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
In these previous evenings, we have been considering this tremendous statement of our Lord Jesus, as it is recorded in Matthew 16. As I have said in the last three evenings, this incident is of profound significance.
It was the first time that there was a dogmatic, categorical revelation concerning the Person of the Lord Jesus, and the first time He, in reply, gave a revelation that was dogmatic and categorical concerning the aim and purpose of His coming and work.
When He provoked the declaration of Peter, He asked, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” They said, “Well, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, some say Jeremiah, others say one of the other prophets.” Then He said, “Who do you say that I am?”
Peter immediately said, “Thou art the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Immediately Jesus answered, “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jonah. Flesh and blood hath not revealed that unto thee, but My Father Who is in heaven. I say to thee, thou art Peter—Petros—a part of the rock, a stone, a splinter of the rock. Upon this rock—petra, the massive rock—I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
This was a tremendous and profoundly significant statement, both on Peter’s part and on the part of our Lord Jesus. In these last evenings, we have been considering it.
We spent one evening considering the unchanging purpose of Christ. It has not changed all down through the ages. He has declared and revealed what is the purpose and aim of His work: “Upon this rock I will build My church.”
He has not deviated from that purpose. He has not been diverted from that purpose. That purpose has not been frustrated—not only by outward, external assaults upon His building work, but even by internal divisions and factions, apostasy, and error.
Still, the purpose of the Lord Jesus remains this night, in 1985, unchanged:
Upon this rock I will build My church;
And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
Nor is this purpose going to be frustrated in the days that lie ahead. Whether we have antichrist systems that are universal, whether we have false prophets and Antichrist himself—the very incarnation of the devil—it is not going to change in any way the purpose of the Lord Jesus.
He has made it perfectly clear that the gates of Hades are not going to prevail against this building work concerning His church. So we have tremendous encouragement.
We have even more because, in fact, the Word reveals to us that in those last days—not in a universal or inclusive way, including every single born-again believer, but as in every other age defined in the Word of God—it will be in a remnant worldwide that the purpose of God concerning the church will be fulfilled.
For this, we have to be tremendously thankful. It says, “Because iniquity shall abound, the love of the many shall wax cold,” but it does not say the love of all shall wax cold. There may be an apostasy in the church, but in another place it tells us, “The bride hath made herself ready.”
So we find that on the one side there is an apostasy, and on the other side there are those who, by the grace of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit, make themselves ready—prepare themselves for the Bridegroom, prepare themselves for the coming of the Lord.
Then we considered the glorious nature of the church which Jesus is building. This is not some traditional system, some hoary institution, some antique organization that Jesus has produced and that we call the church.
This glorious concept, this glorious reality, this glorious entity which is called in Scripture the church of God—this church is a vessel of glory. It is a house for glory. It is to be an instrument of glory.
Glory, as we considered on that particular evening, is not some pomp and show that many of us from the old world always imagine glory to be. Glory is the manifested presence of God at home. That is when God has finally come home for good and manifests His absolute satisfaction, His absolute joy, His absolute sense of rest.
Glory is the most marvellous thing in the whole Bible. After all, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We were made for glory, and the church consists of those whom God has redeemed, delivered, and brought to a new birth, to be in the end the vessel of God’s glory in Christ.
We have been called by the God of all grace to His eternal glory in Christ. Now, that is just tremendous. Everything the Lord Jesus does in the building of this church is with glory in view.
All the materials He uses—as I coined a word in English, which perhaps I could only do over this side—are glorifiable. There is nothing He uses in the building material of that church that cannot be glorified.
The foundation must be the right foundation, which is Jesus Christ. It must be built out of the eternal life which God has given us in and through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not the old man, the old creation, or the old order; it is the new man, a new creation, a new order. It is destined for a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
This is tremendously encouraging for us to realize: when God saved us, He did not merely save us to sit on a cloud and play a harp for all the ages to come. God wants to form us into a vessel in which, and through which, He can manifest His glory in all the endless ages that are to be.
That is something worth thinking about, and it is something worth suffering for. If it means that our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us an eternal and exceeding weight of glory while we look at the things which are not seen, then it is really worth having light afflictions—even if sometimes they seem a little more than light afflictions.
If we compare them with what God is doing through them, they are absolutely nothing to be compared with what God is producing through them.
So, my dear brothers and sisters, we have considered something about the glorious nature of the church which Jesus is building. This is not some petty little boring thing.
Just because our meetings are sometimes dull, and because we are all such boring people at times, does not mean that the church which Jesus is building is dull and boring, or is going to be eternally dull and boring.
No, my dear friends. Because of our rebellion, and because we do not settle issues with the Lord, we turn much of our gatherings into very boring and dull affairs. But when the Lord is present in anything, it is never dull and it is never boring.
Praise the Lord, the glorious nature of that which He is building needs to grip us. We are called to glory. We forfeited glory through sin and the Fall; now, by the grace of God and a new birth, we have been put back into this glorious path that leads to the glory of God.
The question really comes down in the end to this: the more of Christ there is in me, the more glory there is going to be. The more of me there is in me, the less glory there is going to be, if you get what I mean.
So we want to see less of me and more of Him. I know you all say “Amen,” but I want to say there must be less of you and more of Him.
In other words, God has to do something, and of course He does it through one another. You tread all over me and I tread all over you, and this is the way that God decreases you in order to bring more of the Lord Jesus in—and the same with me. This is the work God does.
Yesterday evening, we talked about the invincible nature of the work of Christ. We got into some other hot water, I think, yesterday evening. One or two people have sought to roast me on some of the things that were said yesterday evening, but I do not apologize and I am not going to recant.
The fact of the matter is that the work the Lord Jesus is doing is unconquerable. Two or three Americans told me that they did not understand “invincible.” Why did I use the word invincible?
I thought that everybody, even of minimum intelligence, would understand the word invincible. Someone else said to me, “What about that dreadful word indestructible? What does it mean?”
Well, it simply means this: the work of the Lord Jesus cannot be overcome by darkness or by evil, nor can it be destroyed. It is unconquerable and indestructible.
I hope that is perfectly clear. I am so sorry; I should have said it at the beginning of yesterday evening instead of leaving you for a whole hour bothering your heads: “What did he mean? What did he mean? Invincible, indestructible; invincible, indestructible.” Well, now you have got it. You can listen to the tape and perhaps get something out of it now.
Invincible and indestructible. It is a marvellous thing that whatsoever the Lord does, it is forever. If the Lord really does something in my life, in my personality, in my being, it is forever.
It may have cost something. It may have been through suffering. It may have brought me into much tribulation and much affliction. But if the Lord is doing it, it is forever. It can never be destroyed, and it can never be conquered.
To extend that: if the Lord is doing that in us—in my relationship to you and your relationship to me, in our relationship with one another—then again, what He is doing is forever. It cannot be conquered or destroyed. This work of the Lord Jesus is invincible and indestructible.
When we look at the history of the true church through these last nineteen hundred years or more, we make the most amazing discovery: in every generation, the Holy Spirit has done something.
One day, when we are in the glory and the whole story is told, some of you know that the Book of Acts was never finished. The record has, in one sense, gone on from chapter 28 all the way through.
It will be very exciting one day when we sit down and hear all the other chapters of the Book of Acts, right through to our own day and generation. Would that not be exciting? Especially if you discover that somewhere or other we are all in that chapter which has to do with our generation.
But the story is unfinished, because all the way down through these nineteen hundred years, the Lord Jesus has been building upon this rock with Peters. He has been building this church.
Poor old Peter—Satan thought he had got him at one time, but it turned out that there was something invincible in Peter and something indestructible in him. That invincible and indestructible something surfaced in the end.
Brothers and sisters, what an encouragement for us, we who are so much like Peter. We can fail in the same order and capacity as Peter. But if we are born of God, there is something in us which is eternal, something in us which is invincible, and something in us which is indestructible.
All through these nineteen hundred years between Pentecost and today, the Holy Spirit has been marvellously watching over this building operation.
I have to say that there are times when it apparently seems that the Lord allows every move of His Spirit, after the first generation, when it gets to the second and third generation, to crystallize, institutionalize, and in one sense die.
I did not mean by that, as some have wondered, that I was saying God has finished with every single denomination. Not at all. God blesses, God uses, God visits, God saves, and God does marvellous things in all kinds of groups of God’s children.
But I suggest to you that one day, when we are finally in the glory, we shall discover that all the materials out of which the city of God has been built were discovered, exploited, mined, and fitly framed in the first generation of the successive moves of the Holy Spirit.
There is consistency and continuity about the first generation of every move of the Spirit in church history—something which links it all together. There is something progressive in the way God has recovered various aspects of truth through these different ones.
Nor has this thing ended. I do not know why so many folks end with the Brethren movement at the beginning of the nineteenth century. I suppose it is partly because of E. H. Broadbent’s The Pilgrim Church. That is where he ended, and to a certain extent, for those who like history, they find that book so tremendous that that is where they end.
But in actual fact, it has all gone on since then. There have been successive moves of the Spirit of God right down to our own day. Furthermore, I suggest to you that there are going to be more moves of the Spirit of God before the Lord comes, if He tarries.
It was Kenneth Latourette who said that the whole of church history is an ebb and flow. Each flow of the Spirit has, as it were, taken the church that much further. Then there has been an ebb, but never so far back that what has been recovered is totally lost again.
Then there is another flow which carries the church forward, and he suggested that in the end the final flow would carry the church into the rapture. Well, I do not know. There are some who do not even believe in the rapture. But I have sometimes wondered whether there will not be such a work of the Holy Spirit.
It is a very interesting thing that Peter says in 2 Peter concerning the word of prophecy being made more sure to us. He says that we do well to take heed “as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day-star arise in your hearts.”
I find that very interesting—the day-star arising in your heart. If he had only said, “until the day-star arrives,” that would have been perfectly clear: the objective coming of the Lord. But it almost seems as if Peter is suggesting, by the Holy Spirit, that in the last phase of church history there will be special experiences for the people of God.
There will be special preparatory experiences because of what we shall go through. The day-star will arise in our hearts, as it were, first, and there will be a quickening by the Holy Spirit within us in the light of the Lord’s coming.
I merely make that suggestion to you. But the fact of the matter is that this work is invincible, and we have to use keys if we are really going to see the gates of Hades not prevailing against the building work of the Lord Jesus.
Now this evening I want to move on. More than one person has said to me, “After what you have said, do you mean to suggest that everyone who is not in a group or fellowship that sees what the church is has no possibility of being in the city of God?”
I never said that. But I must say, to get you into even more hot water: what did God mean? What did the Holy Spirit mean in using the illustration, or picture, of stones being built together?
Why use that at all? Why not simply use the picture of the family and children? Why use the picture of stones?
You see, a house is not made of one stone. You can have a marvellous rock levelled out as a foundation, and one single stone on it. If I said to you, “This is my house,” you would think I was nuts.
It would be perfectly clear that it was a beautiful stone on a beautiful foundation, but that is not a house. Has anyone ever heard of one stone making a house, or one brick making a house? Of course not.
But suppose we had a heap of stones, and there was the foundation beautifully levelled, and there was a great heap of stones. If I said, “This is my house,” you would still think I was nuts.
You would say, “That heap of stones is not your house, surely.” I might say, “What else is a house made of? In Jerusalem it is made of stone. Here are the stones. Here is the foundation. All the materials are here. This is my house.” You would say, “He is mad.”
Suppose all the stones were beautifully cut, but still just a heap. It does not matter if the stones are beautifully cut; if they are still a heap, it is not a house.
Suppose I brought you to this beautiful foundation, levelled down, and all the stones were beautifully cut and neatly stacked in a Germanic, Teutonic manner—absolutely up to here, beautifully done, all shaped and so on. If I said, “This is my house,” you would still say, “He is mad.”
Just because he has Teutonic or Germanic order does not mean it is a house. He has the stones there, but that is not a house.
But this is what we sometimes imagine fellowship to be. As long as we have just a few believers together, shoved together anyhow, fighting each other, colliding with each other, all upside down, everyone doing their own thing—that is the church. I mean, it is not the church.
Why does the Holy Spirit use the symbolism of a foundation, a chief cornerstone, and living stones being built first on the foundation, then built up as a spiritual house, and then being built together? Why does it speak of us being fitly framed together, growing into a holy temple in the Lord?
It has to mean that there is something to do with relationship to one another. It has to have something to do with our relationship to the Lord first and foremost, and then our relationship one to another.
Therefore, I do not think I am wrong in suggesting that if you and I are going to be in the city of God, there has got to be some kind of relationship not only between me and the Lord, but between myself and other believers. That relationship has got to be tested.
If you and I think that everything is going to be like a little paradise—you are a believer, I am a believer, and we shall waltz along together, walking on air into the kingdom simply because we are believers—no, no, no.
My relationship to the Lord and my relationship to you are going to be tested. Do we not find our relationship to the Lord tested when circumstances dictate we should go one way and the Lord directs us to go another? Is that not a test of our relationship with the Lord?
Shall we go by sense, sight, and common sense, or shall we follow the Lord? That is the testing of our relationship.
When the Lord says, “Give up this thing,” and you and I argue with Him and say, “No, no. Why should I? There is nothing harmful in it. There is nothing bad in it. I need it. I will never be a happy person unless I have this,” and the Lord repeatedly says, “Give that thing up. I want it. Lay it down”—is that not a testing of our relationship with the Lord?
Will we really trust Him and obey, or will we trust ourselves and our instinct and allow the principle of self-preservation to win the day?
In such a manner, the Lord tests our relationships with one another. When we all think each other is pure, holy, trustworthy, and absolutely honest, we can at least get on with each other a little better.
But when we discover there is a slight crookedness in Brother So-and-so, or just a slight little bent in Sister So-and-so, we are shocked to the foundations. “This is the end of fellowship. I cannot have any more fellowship with So-and-so.”
It is a mercy the Lord has not revealed everything there is to know about Brother So-and-so and Sister So-and-so. That is all I can say. My goodness me—if you knew what the Lord knew, there would not be an atom of fellowship anywhere in this auditorium.
Is that not true, those of you who are honest? If we were all known as the Lord knows us, where would our fellowship be? There would not be any fellowship at all. There would be as many churches as there are people in this auditorium. We would all have our own little fellowship.
Of course, the problem is that we do not know ourselves. Most of us are so self-righteous that we believe we are not crooked and somebody else is crooked. We do not know how sick the Lord gets over the crookedness in us.
Some of us will not even face the reality. We cannot face it. We feel our whole spiritual life would drop to pieces if we were really to see ourselves as God sees us.
So, dear brothers and sisters, this matter of our relationship one with another is something that God tests.
May I make one other point that may or may not help you? It speaks in 1 Peter of the trial of your faith being more precious than gold that perisheth, being found unto glory and honour at the appearing of our Lord Jesus.
The word trial, the Greek word translated in the King James Version as “trial,” is rendered in some newer versions as “the proof of your faith” or “the proving of your faith.” But in many ways that does not fully translate the Greek either, because it is a trying, but it also has the sense of approving.
Let me try to explain what I mean. God never puts on trial something that cannot be proved. Have you got it?
In other words, He will never subject your faith to any kind of trial if it is not real faith, because at the end of it you will not have anything. But if you have the faith which is the gift of God, then you can go through the trial of your faith, because God will prove that you have faith which is His gift.
God will never test your relationship with the Lord Jesus if it is non-existent. Only when it is there in reality will He prove it, so that it becomes stronger and stronger.
Nor will He put our relationship with one another to the test unless there is a real relationship there between us. If there is a real relationship, then the Lord will prove it, in order that we get to know what is in one another and determine to know nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified in one another.
Now I would like to speak about a further matter this evening—simpler, but still I believe it will draw all these strands together. I want to speak about what I have called the challenge of the divine Builder.
What an amazing message this is from the Lord Jesus to the church of Laodicea. Do you know how He begins it? He does not say, “These things saith the risen, glorified Christ.” He says, “These things saith the Amen.”
I think that is a most extraordinary way of putting something. Normally, we do not think of an amen saying anything. Our amen comes at the end of a statement, normally.
The way many people in the Western world use the word hallelujah is a little odd when you understand it in its Hebrew context, but it has become such second nature to everybody that there is nothing wrong with it. God knows what we mean when we talk about singing hallelujahs.
Hallelujah in Hebrew simply means, “Praise ye.” “Praise, all of you.” That is all it means. It is a command to one another. It has nothing to do with God in that sense; we are saying it to each other: “Hallelujah. Praise ye. Let us praise. Praise ye the Lord.”
Amen comes from the Hebrew and means, “I believe. I have faith.” You cannot say amen to something you do not believe.
That is why it says in 1 Corinthians 14 that if someone prays in a tongue and there is no interpretation, how can you say, “Amen”? How can you say, “I believe”? Amen means, “I believe,” or “I have faith,” or “Even so.” It is so.
When the Lord Jesus speaks to the church at Laodicea, He addresses it as “the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the beginning of the creation of God.”
As Brother Stephen said this morning, if we look at the matter of the seven churches from the prophetic standpoint, we have the whole of church history. Then, with the Laodicean church, we have the last phase of church history—the phase we are in today.
When we look at the description of the Laodicean church, we see it on every side, do we not? “Oh, we are rich. We have need of nothing. We have arrived. We are a very prosperous, well-organized kind of church.”
But, according to the Lord Jesus, this church at Laodicea is lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. His description in Revelation 3:17 is that it is wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.
That is some catalogue: lukewarm, wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. It is to this church that Jesus speaks as the Amen.
What does that mean? In none of the other churches does He describe Himself as the Amen. What He is saying to this church is very simple: “In spite of your condition, I am the Builder of the church. I am the Amen.”
“I am the ratification of the will and counsel of God. I am the One Who can complete the thing. I am the One Who can finish it. I can fulfil the purpose of God concerning you.”
“These things saith the Amen” to the church at Laodicea. This should be a tremendous encouragement to us.
Instead of throwing in the glove, as so often comes because we know that, because iniquity abounds, the love of the many is going to wax cold; because the Lord said, “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?”; because the Apostle Paul said there shall come a great apostasy before the final phase of the end times begins—we throw in the glove.
We say, “Well, it is going to be a Laodicean condition anyway.” But the Lord Jesus speaks to this Laodicean condition of the church and says, “These things saith the Amen,” followed by, “the faithful and true Witness.”
I personally believe that this has some reference to the testimony of Jesus. We might say, “The Laodicean church has lost the testimony of Jesus. It is not there anymore.” But Jesus says, “These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the beginning of the creation of God.”
The Amen, the beginning—the beginning of the creation of God. He is the foundation. He is the chief cornerstone. He is that great stone which has been laid for a foundation. He is the beginning of this new man, this new creation, this new order.
That is why He says to the church at Laodicea, “Do not give up. Do not give up. I am still working. I am still building. I am still prepared to complete and fulfil the whole counsel of God concerning you.”
We need to let that sink right into us tonight.
Christ, at the end of the Book of Revelation, says in Revelation 22:13:
I am the Alpha and the Omega,
The first and the last,
The beginning and the end.
Alpha and Omega—the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet. We would say A and Z, or, as you say in these parts, A and Zee. He is not only the first; He is the last. He is not only the beginning; He is the end.
Now He comes as the Amen—the Amen to the whole purpose of God, the Amen to the whole counsel of God, the Amen to the whole programme of God.
He comes to this church, which is anything but complete, anything but holy, anything but what it should be in Christ, anything but what it should be in its impact upon the world around it. And He says, “These things saith the Amen.”
Can I take it one step further? This is not a very pleasant thing, but since it is scriptural, we shall consider it.
Jesus said, “I know thy works, that thou art neither hot nor cold. Thou art lukewarm. Because thou art neither hot nor cold, I am going to spew thee out of My mouth.”
This sounds rather pleasant in the King James Version. The King James Version has a marvellous way of making some of these things, over the centuries, seem much more pleasant. Nobody speaks today about spewing something. That is not very pleasant.
It comes as a great shock to us to think that the Lord Jesus, speaking to a church in a particular place and in a particular condition, says, “Because you are neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you right out of My mouth.”
That is exactly what the church at Laodicea needed to hear, because they were so dignified. Everything about their Christian life had become very genteel.
They were rich. They had gotten great knowledge. They were, as it were, the court of Christian nobility: “We are something, we Laodiceans.” Jesus says to them, “Because you are neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you right out of My mouth.”
Dear brothers and sisters, I want you to see that when Jesus described Himself as the Amen, it was a note of glorious grace and encouragement. He was really saying, “I do not want to have to vomit any of you out.”
“If you will only respond to Me, if you will only hear Me, not one of you will be outside of My building work—not one. I will recover every one of you. I will keep every one of you. I will see that every one of you is in this building, because I am the Amen.”
“I will see that the purpose of God concerning you, and the purpose of God concerning you in your relationship to one another, is fulfilled—if you will only hear Me.”
But, brothers and sisters, the tragedy in the church today is that we have itching ears. What are itching ears? This is another lovely King James phrase.
It means that we have ears so large, but they sort of flap; they have a kind of itch. When something itches all the time, you are very conscious of it. Whatever it is that is itching, you are conscious of that part of your anatomy.
These ears are itching all the time because they want to hear, hear, hear. They want to hear all the time. They do not want to do. They want to hear, hear, hear.
They never hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. They only hear what they want to hear.
They want to hear novel doctrines. They want to hear new things. They want to make new discoveries in truth—but nothing that will disturb them, only that which will enable them to sit comfortably in their seats and go to meetings and hear, and hear, and hear.
Brothers and sisters, do you not think this is a disease amongst us? A terrible disease.
The strange thing—the paradox—is that never before has there been such a need for the people of God to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches, and never before has there been such a time when we are prepared simply to sit and listen.
What Jesus is really saying is this: “There is no need for anyone to be vomited out of My mouth. No need, My dear friends.”
I do not believe this means that you lose your salvation. One or two people have been a little disturbed with me, and a number have said, “Do you mean to tell me that there are two classes of Christians—those who are in the city and those who are not in the city?”
Well, I have to say yes. I do not understand the Word in any other way. It has nothing to do with inequality.
A baby in a family is as much loved as a son. Sometimes the baby gets more attention than the son. But the fact of the matter is that the baby can never take over the family business, and the son can.
It is not as if babies are normally unhappy creatures. As long as they get attention, they are normally quite happy. I do not know why everybody gets so upset over the idea that there are going to be so many babies in the kingdom of God. They are all going to be terribly happy.
But the fact of the matter is, you cannot turn a baby into a bride. Is that not obvious? There is no way you can do it.
If men and women are saved by the grace of God, because He loves us so much, He will never take away that salvation. God is not some dark ogre Who is always coming down on the side of taking away from us rather than giving to us.
No, God comes down on the other side. He will keep us in as much as He can. He will not take away your salvation. But if you will not be part of His building work, you will be saved, but you will be vomited out as far as the building goes.
It is for this reason that the Lord Jesus does not say, “These things saith the Judge,” or, “These things saith the Holy One,” or, “These things saith the Lion of Judah.” He says, “These things saith the Amen.”
In other words, He is trying to get over to you and me a message: “If you will only hear what I am saying,” the Lord says, “I will be the Amen on the purpose of God for your life. I will be the Amen in your being built into that eternal building that God is building—if you will only hear.”
Now, dear brothers and sisters, look for a moment at the counsel of the Amen. It is very interesting the way it is put:
I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich;
And white garments, that thou mayest be clothed, and that thy nakedness may not be manifest;
And eyesalve, that thou mayest anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see.
Here is the counsel of the Amen to the church at Laodicea. Do you want Him to be Amen in your life? Do I want Him to be the Amen in my life? Do I want to see Him ratify and fulfil the purpose of God concerning me, concerning you, and concerning us both?
Then I must listen to His advice. The Amen has counsel to give. He has advice to give. His advice is threefold: gold, garments, and vision.
Gold, of course, I think all of you know, is symbolic of the life and nature of Christ—symbolic of the divine nature.
Notice that He says, “I counsel you to buy of Me.” We do not buy this gold. This gold is God’s unspeakable gift to us. This is the free gift of God’s grace.
How then does the Lord Jesus say, “I counsel thee to buy of Me”? He means that the price of knowing this gold in you, which is given to you by the grace of God, is experience.
You will never know the gold come into your life and be deposited in your life in an ever more full way unless you are prepared for deep experiences. That is the cost. That is the price.
You will go ways others will not go. You will go through things others will not go through. Listen to the Old Testament:
O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted,
Behold, I will set thy stones in fair colours,
And lay thy foundations with sapphires.
There are times when we go through tempest, tossed and not comforted. That is the price of knowing the free gift of God—the Lord Jesus in us.
“I will give thee the treasures of darkness,” says the Lord in another place in Isaiah. Where do these treasures come from? They are treasures within the dark places of the earth. For them somehow to come to us, we have to know the fellowship of His sufferings. We have to know what it is to walk in step with Him, sometimes through difficult ways.
“I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire.” Brothers and sisters, that city is made out of gold. That is one of the materials which is indestructible.
According to 1 Corinthians 3, some build upon this foundation gold, silver, and precious stones. It can never be destroyed. Others build on it wood, hay, and stubble, and it is all burnt up.
Here is the counsel of the risen Messiah, the Amen, to you and me in the Laodicean phase of the church: “I counsel thee, I advise thee, to buy of Me gold refined by fire.”
Is it not interesting that when we come to that other passage which we have considered a number of times over these days, Zechariah 4:12, we read:
And I answered the second time, and said unto him, What are these two olive-branches which are beside the two golden spouts, that empty the golden oil out of themselves?
And he answered me and said, Knowest thou not what these are?
And I said, No, my lord.
Then said he, These are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.
Here is an interesting thing in the Hebrew. It does not say “oil.” In Hebrew, oil is shemen. There is no trace of this word in the Hebrew text here—only the word zahab, gold.
Actually, it says in the Hebrew that these golden spouts are emptying gold out of themselves. That is the most extraordinary picture. That is why the translators thought, “Well, there is a mistake here. They must mean golden oil.” So they supplied the word oil to make it more sensible.
But in the Hebrew original, it says that these golden spouts empty gold out of themselves. In other words, it is the life and nature of Christ which, by the Holy Spirit, becomes the light, the glory, the flame in the lampstand.
“I counsel you to buy of Me gold refined by fire.” There is no other way for gold to be produced than by a Holy Spirit-indwelt and anointed life.
Please listen carefully to this: there is no other way for the life and nature of the Lord Jesus to be reproduced in a human being except by the indwelling and anointing of the Holy Spirit. No other way.
You can know all about it. You can know the truth. You can know the doctrine. You can talk about it and think about it, but it will never, ever be produced in you. The Holy Spirit is the One Who produces it.
He not only needs to dwell in you; He needs to anoint you. The problems that come against the believer are so enormous that it is not enough merely to be indwelt. We have to be anointed. We have to be empowered, so that we can overcome the circumstances Satan creates around us and all the problems and difficulties.
We have not got that kind of power within ourselves. We have to be clothed with power from on high. There is no way for this gold to be produced in you and in me except by the indwelling and empowering of the Holy Spirit.
So, dear brothers and sisters, shun any kind of devaluation of the Person and work of the Holy Spirit. It is Satan’s work to devalue the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, even to cast aspersions upon Him, so that people become afraid of the Holy Spirit and afraid of anything to do with Him.
The very words “the power of the Holy Spirit” then drop out of our vocabulary. We only speak of resurrection life and resurrection power. This is absolutely meant, but Scripture speaks about being anointed with the Holy Spirit, being filled with the Holy Spirit, and men filled with the Spirit.
If you and I are afraid of the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, the enemy can work in such a way that he stops the gold from being produced in us.
Then we grow in our heads more and more and more. We get to know all these wonderful teachings and doctrines. We sit and listen, take it all in, and study. We know all the doctrine about the church, the eternal purpose of God, and the second coming of the Lord—but there is no actual gold being produced in us.
How can it be produced apart from the Holy Spirit? There is no way.
People say to me, “Go carefully on this matter. There are so many counterfeit things and fleshly things around conversion.” But is there any subject like evangelism for flesh?
There are thousands of so-called conversions which are decisions, but not real conversions. Some churches in these parts and elsewhere are filled with people who have never had a real experience of being born again.
Without even knowing what they were doing, they put their hand up at something and thought they were saved. Nobody ever counselled them or explained anything to them.
One minister once said to me, in quite a big city in the south of this country—and this was a fundamentalist denomination—“I estimate that over two-thirds of my deacons are not even born again.”
The way they behaved, I think he was absolutely right. They were like a bunch of businessmen. They had not the slightest idea of spiritual things or spiritual principles.
How in the world have all these people got into the church who are not even born again—in a fundamentalist denomination? How has it happened?
Then people say to me, “Be careful. Do not go too much on those things. There are such a lot of counterfeits and such a lot of flesh.” My dear friends, we are all used to the matter of evangelism and the kind of flesh that goes in for evangelism very often, and the money racket that is sometimes attached to it. It is enough to make you sick. But we are used to it.
When it comes to the Spirit—oh, my word—“Now be careful. We know somebody who went right off their rocker. You have got to be very careful about the Holy Spirit.”
Well, I think it is worth risking a few people going off their rocker if it means that the majority of us get somewhere with the Lord. I think it is a tremendous thing not to be afraid of the Holy Spirit.
If the Lord Jesus, Who was born of the Holy Spirit, had to know the Holy Spirit coming upon Him when He was thirty years of age in order to enable Him to die daily for three and a half years, and finally to go to Gethsemane and offer Himself to God without spot or blemish by the eternal Spirit; if it was the Spirit of God that raised Jesus from the dead, then, brothers and sisters, I need the Holy Spirit. You need the Holy Spirit.
There is no way for this gold to be produced apart from the Holy Spirit.
Then notice the white garments: “White garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself.” Why does Jesus say, “You must buy of Me white garments”?
It is very interesting that in the previous chapter of Zechariah there is the whole story about Joshua standing before God in filthy garments. Satan comes into the presence of God and accuses him before God.
He says, in effect, “Do not listen to him. He has done this, and this, and this. He has thought this, and this, and this.” God says to an angel, “Take off those filthy garments from him, and put rich apparel on him, and put a clean mitre on his head, that he may stand before Me in My presence.”
In other words, God justified him.
Brothers and sisters, it says in Revelation 19 that the bride hath made herself ready, and she is clothed with fine linen—white linen, bright linen. Then it says, “This fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.”
Can I explain something? In Revelation 15, I think in verse 4, it speaks of God’s righteous acts—the very same word. It says, “The righteous acts of God have been manifested.”
What does it mean that the saints do righteous acts? Let me put it this way: most of us are passive Christians. Why? Because we are weak on justification. That is why.
We all think that we should be stronger in sanctification if we are going to get on with the job of the Lord. But, in actual fact, shall I tell you how the enemy gets everybody sitting in their seat and doing nothing? He whispers in their ear, “You are not worthy. You are not worthy. If you do it, you are presuming.”
“You are not worthy to take part. You are not worthy to take part in prayer. You are not worthy to voice worship. You are not worthy to witness. You are not worthy to take some kind of responsibility.” We say, “Yes, yes, that is absolutely right. I am not worthy.”
We feel our garments are dirty. We feel we are naked. I am not being funny, because it is here in Scripture. What does it mean that the shame of thy nakedness may not be made manifest?
How would you like it if you suddenly realized you were sitting in this place without any clothing on? You would immediately become very self-conscious. “Oh, my goodness!”
Would you think of praying if you were naked? Of course not. I am not being funny; I am being serious. Would you think of worshipping if you were naked? Of course not. Would you think of witnessing if you were naked? Of course not. Would you think of taking any responsibility in the church if you were naked? Of course not.
You would only be conscious of your nakedness. You would only be conscious of exposing yourself. You would only be conscious that somehow you were not clothed in the right way for this job to which God was calling you. You are not in the right condition; therefore, you cannot act.
Why are the majority of the people in all our fellowships silent spectators? Because they are weak on justification. That is why.
They are not clear on the fact that God has declared them absolutely righteous in His sight, because Jesus was made their sin, that they might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Because we are weak on this matter, we cannot stand before Satan and we cannot stand before God. The moment Satan begins to breathe his accusations, we say, “Yes, yes, yes, yes. That is right. That is right.” Therefore, he ties us up.
Jesus says to the church at Laodicea, “Why have you become lukewarm? Maybe because you are weak on justification. Satan has tied you up in so many knots that your fervour and devotion have finally cooled right down into an awful, depressed state of defeat.”
“I counsel thee to buy of Me white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that thy nakedness may not be made manifest.”
Righteous acts—once we become clear on our justification and the fact that Christ is our righteousness, we can begin to serve the Lord unselfconsciously.
We begin, in the most wonderful way, to be able to take part: to pray, to worship, to take responsibility, to become a functioning member in the body of Christ. Brothers and sisters, what a need there is here.
Then what about this other thing: eyesalve, that thou mayest anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see?
This Laodicean church was as blind as a bat. Of course, they did not think so. They said, “We see. We have knowledge of the mystery. We understand the Scriptures. We have had marvellous Bible studies. We have seminars on the deep things of God in this place.”
“We are a very special church—very favoured, talented, blessed. We see.”
The Lord Jesus said, “You are blind.” He did not even say, “You are partly blind.” He said, “You are blind.”
“You are so blind, you cannot even see that the Head of the church has been put out of His own church and is knocking on the door. He is outside your church and you do not even know it. That is how blind you are.”
“You think the Lord Whom you worship is there in your midst, pleased with everything, and you have expelled Him, so that He is outside knocking on the door: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock.’”
Brothers and sisters, I go to many, many places, and sometimes I feel like weeping. It is not a question of understanding doctrine. I have been in places where people understand very good doctrine, but I have a terrible sense that Jesus is outside. He is knocking.
The burdens of His heart are not their burdens. The trouble of His Spirit is not their trouble. He is outside, and they do not even know it.
“I counsel you, I advise you, to buy of Me, at the cost of experience, eyesalve, that you may anoint your eyes that you may see.” It may be a terrible shock when we first begin to see.
But, brothers and sisters, this again is the work of the Holy Spirit. Paul prayed that the spirit of wisdom and revelation might be granted to us, the eyes of our hearts being enlightened that we may know.
Oh, that we had eyes to see. It is not only that we need to see the Lord and see the purpose of the Lord. We need to see things as they really are.
We need to see where there is need among us so that it can be met. We need to see where the Lord is crying out, as it were, that we should go, stand, and testify. We need to see.
The counsel of the Amen. It is interesting that our Lord Jesus says to them, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.” Those words sound hard, but if I put them another English way, I do not think they will sound so hard and they will be just as correct: “As many as I love, I correct and discipline.”
The Lord loves us; He corrects us. If the Lord loves us, He disciplines us. The Greek word for discipline is child-training.
If you really love a child, you will discipline the child. You will not let it run wild. You will discipline the child. It will cost you something—more than the child—but because you love that child, you will not indulge in anything other than proper child-training.
Here again we find something tremendous. It says, “The bride hath made herself ready.” How has she made herself ready? She has made herself ready by following the advice, by heeding the counsel of the Amen.
She has bought, with experience, gold refined by fire—His life and nature in her by the Holy Spirit. She has bought the white garments, clothed herself with them, and started to become responsible and do the works of God.
She has bought eyesalve, and for the first time she begins to see things as they really are. She not only sees her Lord—where He is and what He wants—she not only begins to see the purpose of God for her Lord and for the church, but she begins to see the conditions around her.
She sees people without hope, people who are helpless, people bound for a lost eternity. She begins to see some of the conditions among those who are hopeless unless the Lord steps in.
Brothers and sisters, what counsel this is. That leads me finally to say that we must hear the appeal of the Amen.
This message to the church at Laodicea begins, “These things saith the Amen.” He says:
I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire;
And white garments, that thou mayest be clothed, and that thy nakedness be not made manifest;
And eyesalve, that thou mayest anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see.
As many as I love, I correct and discipline.
Repent therefore, and be zealous.
Be zealous. That means get to white-hot heat. No more cold, no more lukewarmness. Be zealous.
Then He says, “Listen to the appeal”:
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.
You know, this is normally used as an evangelistic Scripture. I found the Lord on the basis of this Scripture many, many years ago, so I am very thankful it was used evangelistically.
But I have now lived long enough to discover that, in the first place, this was not an evangelistic Scripture. This was a message of the Amen to those who knew Him, those who were born of Him, those who were saved by His grace.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” It is pathetic. Here is the Lord of the church, the Head of the church, the Saviour of the body, and He is outside the church.
They are worshipping Him. They are gathering in His name. They have prayer meetings and Bible studies, probably evangelistic meetings, women’s meetings, children’s meetings, and all the rigmarole of the routine of the church—and it is all in His name.
They baptize people in His name. They pray in His name. And He is outside.
Listen again:
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock:
If any one hear My voice,
And open the door,
I will come in to him,
And will sup with him,
And he with Me.
Why do you think He added that? Why did He say, “And will sup with him, and he with Me”? What do you do when you sup with somebody?
You sit down and have a meal. What do you normally do? Do you normally sit down and chew on your steak like a cement mixer so that you cannot possibly even talk with them? That is not the idea.
In the old days—and indeed it is still so in the Orient—you take time over a meal. The whole idea of a meal is fellowship, communion.
During the course of a meal, you can talk. You can express things, and someone else can express things back to you. “I will sup with him, and he with Me.”
This is not some rushed, quick-food establishment where you are in—boom, boom—and out. I know that on this side of the world you have this kind of thing rather a lot, but this is not the idea here.
It is not, “If any man hear My voice and open the door, I will have a quick bite with him, and he with Me, and we will be out.” This is not what Jesus said.
He used that beautiful phrase, “I will sup with him.” Time. Time. And to emphasize it: “he with Me.”
The very thing that was not found and did not characterize the church at Laodicea was fellowship with her Lord—understanding her Lord’s heart, understanding the burdens that were in His heart.
These very things that did not characterize the church at Laodicea, the Amen says, “If you will only hear My voice, I will bring you into such a fellowship with Myself that you will be part of My building.”
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.
It is interesting the way Jesus ended all these seven messages: “He that hath an ear.” Brother Sparks used to say, “We have a spiritual organ for hearing—an ear.”
I think that is true, but I sometimes feel as if the Lord were saying, “If you have only got one ear that can hear, and you will only hear with that one ear, do not come in.”
“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.”
Brothers and sisters, we are moving onward now into the close of the age. The night must come at some point when no man can work. The building work of the Lord Jesus will go on, but the time for panic will have begun.
Men’s hearts will fail them for fear, for expectation of the things that are coming upon the face of the earth. Do not think that this will not affect believers. Many of their hearts also will fail for fear because of what will come upon the face of the earth.
In that time of fear and panic, you will not be able to hear in the same way that you can hear now.
That is why the Lord says, before the storm even begins—before the storm even began with those seven actual churches—“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.”
This is the Amen. “Thou art Peter. I know all that is in you—all your capacity for denial, all your capacity for failure, all your capacity for sin. Thou art still Peter.”
Upon this rock I will build My church;
And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock:
If any man, or any one, hear My voice, and open the door,
I will come in,
And will sup with him,
And he with Me.
Dear family, we finish, really. I wonder how many of us feel that there is some measure in which the Lord Jesus is outside tonight.
There may be some issue that has put Him outside in your life—some unsettled issue, some argument you are having with the Lord—and He is outside, and He is knocking.
I wonder whether, in the matter of our fellowship one with another, issues have come up that have estranged and isolated us in such a way that actually the Lord is outside knocking.
I wonder if this Word is for you:
Behold, I stand at the door and knock:
If any man hear My voice, let him open the door,
And I will come in to him,
And will sup with him, and he with Me.
How simple it is. You just have to open the door. I know I got saved on this: just open the door.
“Lord, I am not going to shut You out anymore. Come in. Be the Amen in my life. Be the Head in my life. Be the Saviour to the uttermost in my life. Be everything.”
Shall we pray?
Dear brothers and sisters, let us bow our heads in prayer. Let us just be quiet for a moment. Hear those words of Jesus:
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 hot nor cold.
Because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold,
I will spew thee out of My mouth.
I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich;
And white garments, that thou mayest clothe thyself,
That thy nakedness may not be made manifest;
And eyesalve, that thou mayest anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see.
As many as I love, I correct and discipline.
Repent therefore, and be zealous.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock:
If anyone 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, to him will I grant to sit down with Me in My throne,
Even 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.
If there are those of you this night who really know that somehow, in some way, Jesus is outside on some issue, and you want to open the door, perhaps the easiest way you can indicate that is by quietly standing.
You will say to God, “There is something I have just got to open the door to You.”
Do not do it lightly. There is something you know you have got to say to the Lord: “Lord, I open the door.”
Dear folks, in your own heart, quietly, just say, “Lord, You know whatever it is. You know the issue.” I doubt whether any one of you is unaware of the issue.
You can, in your own heart, express that. Say to the Lord, “Lord, I open the door. Come in.”
Dear Heavenly Father, will You, by Your blessed and powerful Holy Spirit, help every single one in this place tonight who has indicated that they feel that You are outside, but who have heard Your voice and are opening the door according to Your Word?
Father, Lord, by Your Holy Spirit, come in and sup with these dear ones, and bring them to sup with You. Give them overcoming power, and may they become part of Your building work, Lord, wherever it is to be done.
Lord, we commit these dear ones to You, and all the rest of us as well. We all want not to be spewed out. We want to be those in whom the Amen sees that the purpose of God is fulfilled.
So, dear Lord, do this work, we pray, and we shall give to You all the praise and all the glory, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.