If you would turn with me to the prophecies of Isaiah, chapter 43, I will read once again these very well-known verses, the first and second verses of Isaiah 43.
Thus saith the Lord, that created thee, O Jacob,
And He that formed thee, O Israel:
Fear not: for I have redeemed thee,
I have called thee by thy name; thou art Mine.When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:
When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned;
Neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.—Isaiah 43:1-2
And then in Isaiah 45, from verse 2:
I will go before thee, and make the rough places smooth:
I will break in pieces the doors of brass,
And cut in sunder the bars of iron:
And I will give thee the treasures of darkness,
And hidden riches of secret places,
That thou mayest know that I, the Lord,
Which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.For Jacob My servant’s sake,
And Israel Mine elect,
I have even called thee by thy name:
I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known Me.I am the Lord, and there is none else,
There is no God beside Me:
I will gird thee, though thou hast not known Me:
That they may know from the rising of the sun,
And from the west, that there is none beside Me.
I am the Lord, and there is none else.I form the light, and create darkness:
I make peace, and create evil:
I the Lord do all these things.—Isaiah 45:2-7
And then in the same prophecies, Isaiah 54, from verse 11:
O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted,
Behold, I will set thy stones in fair colours,
And lay thy foundations with sapphires.And I will make thy pinnacles of rubies,
And thy gates of carbuncles,
And all thy border of precious stones.And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord;
And great shall be the peace of thy children.In righteousness shalt thou be established:
Thou shalt be far from oppression; for thou shalt not fear:
And from terror; for it shall not come near thee.Behold, they may gather together, but not by Me:
Whosoever shall gather together against thee
Shall fall because of thee.Behold, I have created the smith
That bloweth the fire of coals,
And bringeth forth a weapon for his work;
And I have created the waster to destroy.No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper;
And every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment
Thou shalt condemn.This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
And their righteousness which is of Me, saith the Lord.—Isaiah 54:11-17
Shall we just bow together in a word of prayer?
Heavenly Father, once again, as we come to Your Word this evening, we want to recognize, Lord, our absolute dependence upon You. Lord, unless You are the anointing grace and power, both for me in my speaking and for all of us in our hearing, it will all be, Lord, in vain.
We shall hear words, we shall hear truths, we shall hear doctrines; but Lord, unless You are the One in our midst—the power and the enabling energy of the speaking and the hearing—then, Lord, it will be to no avail.
Dear Lord, by faith we stand in that anointing which is ours through the finished work of our Lord Jesus, and made a reality to us in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Heavenly Lord, will You grant that this evening we shall meet with You, and that You will be able to deposit something more of Yourself in every one of us?
We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
The little phrase that we have been considering in the times that I have had responsibility in these evenings is found in Isaiah 43:1: “Thou art Mine.”
We have considered a fourfold way in which we are His. We are His by creation: “Thus saith the Lord, that created thee, O Jacob.” We are His by redemption: “He that formed thee, O Israel, fear not: for I have redeemed thee.” And we are His by calling: “I have called thee by thy name. Thou art Mine.”
These are three ways in which we have considered that we are, in a special way, His. His by creation—I will not say any more about that now; we have mentioned it three evenings already. His by redemption: He wants to form Israel out of Jacob. Wonder of wonders, to take Jacob and form Israel out of him by His own redeeming grace and power.
Then last night we considered the truth that we are His by calling. Although superficially it seems that the calling—that we are to walk worthily of this high calling, this prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus—has to do with salvation, when we actually look at it, we discover that it is far greater than even our so-great salvation.
Our salvation is the means by which God puts us back into His original purpose. Then His call becomes elevating. It is the God of all grace Who has called us unto His eternal glory in Christ. It is through the gospel that we are called to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus.
In another place, it speaks of walking worthily of the call that we have received to His own kingdom and glory. In another place, it speaks of us receiving the promise of the eternal inheritance. Everywhere we find this in the New Testament.
The thing that so excites me is the thought that, when we come to the end of the Bible, we find in its last chapters the whole matter summed up in a twofold way. We see the city of God, and at the same time the wife of the Lamb, the bride of Christ. This city of God and this wife of the Lamb are one and the same.
This is not an individual. It is made up of all those who have realized their calling by the grace of the Lord Jesus, by appropriating the grace of the Lord Jesus, and by appropriating the power of the Holy Spirit. They have finally come to the goal, to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
It is an amazing thing to me to think that Jacob is the Lord’s by creation. Even in his fallen state, the Lord still claims him as His, because the original pattern of the human being is still there, in spite of being in a fallen state.
God claims us to be His by creation. But even more wonderful is the thought that we are His by redemption, not only by creation. My whole genetic history, the personality I have, the temperament I have, all that has gone to make me a person—a human being distinct from others—is not a mistake, not an accident, and not a coincidence.
The Lord has been behind you and me, and He has redeemed us. His plan is to form Israel out of us Jacobs. Glory be to His name.
But I think it is even more amazing to think that we are His by calling. He is not interested in our merely being created, exceptional as we may be, or redeemed. Lord, yes, that is His grace. But He wants us, in a particular and specific way, to be His own peculiar possession.
He longs that you and I should come to occupy that position with Him in the throne, and be able, in a spiritually intelligent way, to reign with Him; to administer the will of the Father with Him; to supervise the tremendous works of God in a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
That is our calling. What a wonderful thing it is just to consider for a moment that we are His by that calling. It is not just and only that we might be saved for eternity, but that we might come to the goal, to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Now tonight, I want to consider the last part of this statement in Isaiah 43:2:
When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:
When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned;
Neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
He claims us as His through overcoming. There are rivers to be forded. There are waters to swim through. There are fires to be endured, and flames to walk through without their kindling upon us.
All this lies between us and the achievement of God’s intention and purpose for us as the called, redeemed, and created of God. The only way that you and I can come to that place of joy, that place of complete fulfilment and total realization, is this path. There is no other path.
“It is through many tribulations that we enter into the kingdom of God.” There is no other way. Many, many years ago, Samuel Rutherford, in prison in the British Isles, wrote a letter. In it he said, “Men want Christ cheap. They want Him without the cross. But the price will not come down.”
There is no other way for you and me to reach the throne of God, to become part of the city of God, to be part of the bride of Christ, unless we face the simple fact that there are rivers, waters, fire, and flame.
Nor do we face these things alone. It is not as if He said, “I am tipping you out. Get on as best you can. You have rivers to ford, waters to swim, fires to walk through, and flame. Just see how you can go.”
He says, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee.” So this is not a question of being tipped out to overcome the best we can. This is learning how to overcome by keeping in step with the Overcomer, the One Who is already the Victor. He is the key to our overcoming.
First, I would like to say something about this whole theme of overcoming in the Bible. I think, really, the brother whose theme it is ought to be giving this kind of message; but since the burden was given to me, I will trust the Lord and look to Him that somehow He will put something into your hearts.
In my estimation, the theme of overcoming is the most realistically practical theme, other than our salvation, in the whole Bible.
There is a threefold cord that runs right through the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Wherever you turn, you will find it. The first strand, and the most important strand, is the Person of the Lord Jesus: the Saviour, the Messiah, the King, the Redeemer.
You will find Him on every page, from Genesis right the way through to Revelation. There is not a page in the Bible in which you will not find the Lord Jesus. He is there all the way through the Bible, from beginning to end.
The second strand is intimately linked and entwined around the first strand. You will never find the second strand apart from the first, and the second strand is the people of God—the redeemed people of God.
Everywhere you look, right away from Genesis through to the book of Revelation, on every page you will find the object of God’s love. You will find that it is not only the Lord Jesus upon Whom the Father has set His love, and to Whom He has purposed that all things shall come, but also a people that He is creating through the work and Person of the Lord Jesus.
Wherever you look in the whole Bible, you will find the church—whether in picture form, in Noah and the seven other members of his family in the ark; in Abraham and his family; in the nation produced in Egypt; or in the people of Israel as they go over into the land to possess it.
Then, when you come to the New Testament, you see the realization and fulfilment of so much in the gathering out of the church, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the manifestation of the body of the Lord Jesus. Right the way through the whole Bible, you find this marvellous picture: the church, the redeemed people of God.
When you come to the end of the Bible, you find the Lamb. He is the glory of the city. The nations walk in the light of that glory. We discover that it is not just the Lamb alone, but the wife of the Lamb: this holy city, this New Jerusalem, this bride of Christ joined to the Lord Jesus.
It was always the purpose of God to use the church to glorify the Lord Jesus, just as it was through the Lord Jesus that the church was produced. It was the purpose and design of God that the church, as the body of Christ, should be the means for holding the testimony of Jesus amongst the nations, reaching out all over the earth so that men and women could come to know God through and in our Lord Jesus.
But that is where we come to the third strand. Wherever we look in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, we find the people of God fail. It sounds horribly negative, but most of us have lived long enough amongst Christians to know the truth of it.
We have no sooner touched the glory of the Lord, the power of the Lord, and the life of the Lord, than apparently we begin to fail. We break up, we divide, factions arise, error comes in, and all kinds of things happen. Is that not true?
So you have the third strand: the overcomer. All the way through, from Genesis to Revelation, we discover that God takes a remnant of His people—sometimes so small that it is only one person, sometimes just a family, sometimes just a few, sometimes more than a few.
But He takes a remnant, and He uses the remnant to fulfil the purpose He had for the whole. So that at the end of the Bible His purpose is fulfilled concerning the Lord Jesus, even when the majority have failed, by the remnant that had been faithful by His grace.
Now, I have to watch time. Stephen and I have been very naughty about time in this conference. I do not know whether it was the weather, or what it was about this particular conference, or whether my voice has slowed down in its connection so that I have not been able to put in quite so much as fast as I normally do. I do not know.
But I would like to take you for a very quick ramble through the Bible. It will be very quick; you will not even have time to note anything down. I want you to get this. I am not going to give you everything—just a very quick ramble through the Bible on the whole question of the overcomer.
Take Shem. Shem had sons—many other sons, not only the Messianic line. I do not know if you realize that. And they failed. What happened when we come to Ur of the Chaldees? We find them scattered everywhere, all over the place.
Then He takes one man. The God of glory appears to Abraham and says, “Get thee out of thy father’s house, and out of thy kindred, out of Ur of the Chaldees, into a place that I will show thee.” It is the remnant again. The majority have failed; the one God takes hold of fulfils His purpose.
Later on, we have a whole family. They number at least seventy. Now we find that in this family there is every kind of trouble—you cannot believe it: rivalry, jealousy, immorality, rape, fornication, lying, deviousness, murder.
If ever there was someone who learned through his family what he was like, it was Jacob. He never realized his own nature until he saw himself in his own sons.
Then the Lord takes one. He gives this one a dream. Well, actually, we would say, “That was very unwise, Lord. You should not have given him that dream. You made him so big-headed.”
He saw all these stars, some of them bowing down. It is enough to make anyone big-headed, is it not? Then he saw all these sheaves, and they all bowed down to his sheaf. Well, it is enough to make anyone big-headed.
But you see what the Lord was doing. He was taking one member of the family to save the whole family. The rest turned against that one member of the family, Joseph. They sold him into slavery. He went down into Egypt. It broke his old father’s heart.
There in Egypt, Joseph went down into Pharaoh’s dungeon. The iron entered into his soul, and he was left there rotting while the word of the Lord tried him, until the Lord’s time came for him to be taken up and given the supreme place of power and authority in the whole Egyptian empire.
It was Joseph. God used Joseph not only to save the Egyptians, but to save his own family. Otherwise there would not have been a Messianic line. Just as God had taken hold of Abraham, now He takes hold of Joseph and saves that line for His own purposes, that He might fulfil His purpose through the few for the whole.
If you come a little further down, we find, in a little while, that we have a nation. A whole nation has been produced in Egypt, in spite of the fury and anger of the powers of darkness through the Pharaohs and the murder of the Jewish boys at birth.
They have multiplied and multiplied—as apparently folks here have multiplied and multiplied and multiplied. There is something in God’s people, I do not know what it is, but it is something.
Then the Lord takes them out. He hears their groaning. He hears their cries and tears. He says, “I will come down. I will save them. I will redeem them with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. I will take them out of Egypt.”
He judges Egypt with ten great plagues, until at the end Pharaoh says, “Go.” Then, when they are out and God reveals Himself to them and finishes the whole of Pharaoh’s army, almost immediately they begin to complain and murmur.
They talk of stoning Moses. They go on and say that they want to go back to Egypt. It was better in Egypt. The Lord says, “What can I do with My purpose? This people that I formed for Myself, this people that is going to be the vessel of My salvation to the ends of the earth—look at them.”
What happened? A whole generation died in the wilderness. Not in negativism—no, not at all. They had the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. They heard the thunderings of the Lord’s voice in the mount.
They saw the tabernacle set up. They saw the water come out of the rock. They saw the manna coming every day for those forty years, except on the Sabbath. They were able to collect two portions on Friday, what we call Erev Shabbat, to take them over the Sabbath.
Never did their feet swell. Think of that. Never did the soles of their sandals wear out. Think of that. Never did they lack clothing. In forty years, has it ever occurred to you? They had no tailors. They had no cloth. Where would they spin the stuff in the wilderness?
Is it not amazing? Here were these people who had angered the Lord and were going to fall in the wilderness because the Lord said they could not go over into the land—the promised land, the place where He had caused His name to dwell. Yet there was no negativism.
This is so much like the Christianity we know. When we begin to see something, we like to devalue Christianity. We sort of say, “Oh, it is nothing. That evangelist—all those big meetings and healing. Do you not know all the money that is bound up in the world? It is nothing.”
You like to devalue it all. The Lord never devalues it. The Lord goes on leading. The Lord goes on saving. The Lord goes on healing. The Lord goes on providing. But they will not inherit. They have turned away from their so-great calling.
What does the Lord do? He takes a new generation of children. That is the generation of another spirit, that will go over into the land and show that the great purpose of God—to bring the Messiah to the earth—is going to be fulfilled. Once again, we see the same principle: the majority fail; God takes up a remnant.
Well, I could go on and on. What about Gideon? I do not have to tell you the story of Gideon, do I? When the land had so many Midianites, Girgashites, Ammonites—well, all the “ites” everywhere around of all kinds—Philistines and all of them, it seemed as if they came from every corner to sit on God’s people.
Then the great army gathered itself. Gideon had thirty-two thousand warriors. “We will do it. Leave it to us.” The Lord said to Gideon, “Do they think they are going to beat all these ‘ites’?”
“Take them down to the spring at Harod, and tell everyone who is a little bit afraid, ‘If you want to go home, you can go home.’” And twenty-two thousand went home.
I can imagine some of those close to Gideon saying, “Gideon, this is a terrible mistake. I mean, a stupid mistake. Twenty-two thousand have gone. You know the camels are like the grains of sand on the seashore—of the Midianites, let alone the people. What are we going to do?”
Gideon said, “That is all right. We have ten thousand. They are the best.” And the Lord said, “What did you say? Ten thousand? No, no, no. Too many.” “Too many, Lord? What are You going to do?” “You get them down and tell them all to have a drink.”
In the end Gideon ended up with three hundred, and the Lord used the three hundred to overcome all the Midianites and drive them out of the land. It is the same thing all over again. You see what I am trying to say.
When Saul comes with his kingdom—King Saul—he is made king, and he has the whole kingdom. It seems as if it is absolute. God says, “This man has failed. He will never inherit My kingdom.”
Then He takes, not the finest of Jesse’s sons—the six-foot-four one with broad shoulders and bulging muscles. Samuel keeps saying to Jesse, by the Lord, “There must be another.”
Jesse says, “Well, I mean, how many have you seen now?” Samuel had gone through them all. “No, there is David. David is the darling of our family, but David is only a kid. He is a cheeky kid too. But he is only a kid.”
“I mean, he will be a good strong man one day, but he is only a kid.” Samuel said, “Let me see him.” So Jesse sends one of the servants out to find David. “There is someone to see you, David.” And David comes in.
Samuel says, “That is the man.” I think Jesse then dropped it. He said, “My sons are great big strapping fellows, and you take this youngest boy of the lot?”
“No,” Samuel said. “Let me anoint him. This is the man after God’s own heart. This is the man who is going to inherit the kingdom, and whose name will go right through to the very end, connected with the Messiah Who is to come: Son of David.”
It is the same principle again.
When all the children of God are taken into exile, they settle down to a very comfortable life in exile. They did have a comfortable life. One of the wonderful things about living in Israel is all our latest research, because we have such a long history—three to four thousand years as a people.
We now have people investigating every single aspect of our history. Some of the most interesting things we discover concern what it was like to live in Babylon when they were exiled under Nebuchadnezzar.
We find that very swiftly the Jewish folk had got the banking system in their hands, the postal system in their hands, and much of the commerce in their hands. Amazing, is it not? In this marvellous great metropolis of Babylon, they had wonderful homes.
They had, as they felt, a much purer form of worship. They had no temptation anymore, though they were in the seat of idolatry, to worship idols. They had the synagogue, where they went and prayed, worshipped together, and studied the Word of God.
The Lord said, “How will it be possible for My purpose to be fulfilled if the majority remain—if all My people remain in exile? They can worship Me. It is true. They are purer from idolatry now. They are purer than they have ever been since I took them out of Egypt.”
“But what about the prophetic word of Isaiah? ‘The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the nations.’ Remember the word: ‘Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.’”
It is connected with Galilee and the way of the sea. But there was no Galilee. Galilee had been destroyed. All the towns and villages had been devastated.
Or again, what about the prophet Micah, who had already prophesied at that point?
But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
Which art little to be among the thousands of Judah,
Out of thee shall One come forth unto Me
That is to be ruler in Israel;
Whose goings forth are from of old,
From everlasting.—Micah 5:2
But how could He come out of Bethlehem? There was no Bethlehem. It had been razed to the ground, and the whole population had been exiled.
Then a little tiny remnant of the millions in exile—we know almost exactly the number—sixty-six thousand people, in three waves, went back to the land. Sixty-six thousand. No wonder everyone laughed about it. No wonder everyone thought, “What is this?”
But they went back to the land. They rebuilt Jerusalem, rebuilt Bethlehem, rebuilt the towns and villages of Galilee, and repopulated the land, so that in the end the whole great dispersion—the great mass of people in exile—came into the blessing of the coming of the Messiah.
I could go on and on. You see what I mean by a ramble? I come to the New Testament, and we have exactly the same thing.
We have all the work of the Lord Jesus: the ministry of the Lord Jesus, and finally the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross—His death, His burial, His resurrection.
Then we have His ascension and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. The whole thing has begun, and suddenly one hundred and twenty members of the congregation become one hundred and twenty members of the body. The whole of Jerusalem is turned upside down; then all the towns of Judea are turned upside down; then it gets into Samaria, and they are turned upside down.
Finally, it gets to Caesarea, into a drawing-room meeting of a well-known Gentile officer, packed with Gentiles. It was the beginning of the great Gentile evangelistic mission of the church—the most successful evangelistic mission ever launched by the church. That is why you are all here today.
It was all the result of that little drawing-room meeting that Peter addressed in a Roman Gentile officer’s home in Caesarea, when the Holy Spirit fell upon the Gentiles and they were saved and brought into the family of God.
But, my dear friends, we have not gone very far before we begin to find that things are not so good. We find things such as Nicolaitanism—whatever that was. The Lord says, “This thing I hate.”
He speaks of the church of Ephesus as one of the very best, yet says, “Repent, or I will remove thy candlestick out of its place. Thou hast left thy first love.”
He speaks of another church and says that in this church there is a Jezebel teaching the deep things of Satan. Or there is another church that is so affluent, so knowledgeable, and so arrived in its own estimation that it does not need the Lord.
He is outside the door, knocking. It is the Laodicean church. Can you believe it? He is the Head of the church. He is the Saviour of the body. He is the One Who has constituted the church. He is the Builder of the church. Yet in His own church He has been shut out.
He says:
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.—Revelation 3:20
So now you begin to understand why the Lord has one message, and one message only, to these seven churches—whether they represent the whole church in this age, as some people believe, or seven local churches symbolizing the whole church on earth and in time.
There is one single message to every one of those churches: “To him that overcometh will I grant this, and this, and this.” “To him that overcometh.” “To him that overcometh.” “To him that overcometh.” Seven times the Lord says it to every one of these churches.
Before the veil is drawn aside and we see the whole course of the purpose of God in this age, we see persecution, dragons, serpents, great worldwide systems symbolized by the figure 666, false prophets, antichrists, and all these terrible things—a false prostitute church riding on the back of this Babylon called the mother of mysteries, the harlot.
Before the curtain is even drawn aside, the risen Lord in the midst of seven churches says, “My dear ones, the only way I am ever going to fulfil My purpose will not be through the majority, unfortunately. It is through the remnant.”
“To him that overcometh, to him that overcometh, to him that overcometh.” When we come to the last chapters of Revelation, they are almost introduced with these words:
He that overcometh shall inherit these things;
And I will be his God,
And he shall be My son.—Revelation 21:7
You must be careful that we do not take it too far. But a son is more than a baby. A baby cannot take over the family business; a son can. Do you see what I mean?
A baby is a baby—precious, loved, named with the name of the family—but cannot, at that age, take over the family business. But a baby can grow up, and he is a son to the end of his days. When he grows to maturity, he can take over the whole family business.
“He that overcometh shall inherit these things.” What are these things? The city, the bride, the new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. “He that overcometh shall inherit these things; I will be his God, and he shall be My son.”
What is an overcomer? I cannot think of any teaching that has sometimes been more horribly abused and misused than the teaching of the overcomer.
People have got the idea that somehow or another we are overcomers simply because we see this teaching, or because we belong to a particular group. Sorry, but it is not true. The Lord never said, “To those that are overcomers.” He said, “To him that overcometh.”
It is within the context of the whole that we overcome, and it is in relation to our other brothers and sisters that we overcome. An overcomer is a survivor.
Dana was talking about burnt-out veterans. Well, it is a question of how burnt out you are. If you are totally burnt out, you will cease surviving.
But an overcomer is not just a survivor. I do not want to give you the impression that is all. That would be to devalue the whole thought and significance of the overcomer. But there is within it something like that.
Are you still in the race? By the grace of God, you are an overcomer. Are you still on the course? Then by the grace of God, you are an overcomer. Or have you been knocked out, fallen out of the way, absolutely puffed out? You are finished.
An overcomer is more than a survivor. He is a victor. By the grace and power of the Lord, he obtains the victory.
I used to love one thing that delivered this whole matter of overcoming for me, which Mr. Sparks said many, many years ago when talking about it in ministry. He said, “You know, the overcomer is not an elite, superior group that look down upon all other believers because they feel they have something the rest have not got.”
He said, “The overcomer is an advance working party. They are the working party sent ahead of the others to do all the dirty work so that the rest come into the blessing.”
Now, I do not know how far we can take that, but it certainly delivers us from the whole idea of elitism and superiority. It brings us back to the heart of the matter: those who lay down their lives for the rest. That seems to me to be the overcomer.
Can I take it a step further? This vision of the city, this vision of the bride, that we have in Revelation 21 and 22—the bride, the city—I do not need to say to you, I think I have said it in other years to those of you who have been present, how amazing it is that we have these two quite different ideas wedded in one entity.
I have never heard of a bride being described as a city, and I have never heard of a city described as a bride. We would all think a man was crazy if he said, “This is my wife—my city.”
Some ladies do look like fortified ramparts, with huge great walls and everything else, but still, I have never heard a husband introduce his wife as, “My city.”
Therefore, we have to take note of this extraordinary wedding of two quite different ideas. The bride suggests love, intimacy, union, and fellowship. The city suggests government, administration, commerce, and empire.
You have the two things wedded into one. We are told that this city, in which the throne of God is for ever and ever, is at one and the same time the bride of the Lord, the bride of Christ.
This city, this bride, is made up of overcomers. No one who is part of that city or that bride is not an overcomer. Everyone who makes up the bride and the city is, by the grace of God alone, an overcomer. They have possessed what they were called to.
Now we go back to last night. They have realized their calling. They have fulfilled their calling. They have reached the goal, the prize of the high calling of God in Christ.
I want you to see something else. This bride, this city, is produced out of only three materials, and three materials alone: gold, precious stone, and pearl.
There is no other material in this bride, no other material in this city. From top to bottom, from side to side, it is produced out of gold, fine as crystal, transparent as crystal; precious stone worked upon into twelve great foundation layers of the city upon which it is built; and pearl worked into twelve gates.
These three materials in the Bible stand for one thing only. They stand for, or symbolize, the nature, life, and excellences of the Lord Jesus.
I do not think I need to pursue that matter anymore. Most of you will understand that gold is always symbolic of the divine nature; precious stone is symbolic of the excellences of the nature of the Lord Jesus perfected through suffering; and pearl is the deepest and most profound form of suffering of all.
The interesting thing is this: God has to produce those materials in you and me in one short life.
If you and I are going to be part of that city, part of that bride, then God has to produce in me and in you—in us Jacobs—gold of His life and nature, the precious stone of His excellency, and the pearl of the fellowship of His suffering.
If you want a Scripture for this, let me give you just one. In Revelation 3, when the Lord spoke to the church at Laodicea, in verse 18, He said, “I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined in the fire.”
This is most remarkable. If it was not the Lord Who said it, we would have a real problem about it, because surely we would say this gold is God’s unspeakable gift to us. We cannot buy it. What did the Lord mean about buying the gold of His life?
We receive His life through the grace of God. How then are we to buy it? The price—listen—the price is experience: rivers, waters, fire, flame.
How is God going to produce in me the gold of His nature? How is God going to produce in me the precious stone of the life and nature of the Lord Jesus? How is He going to produce a pearl in me?
Now listen very carefully, because I expect you are nearly as bad as I am. Rivers, water, rivers, fire, flame.
In waters and rivers we find gold, and we find pearl. If anyone has a problem about this, I turn you to Genesis 2. There, in a mysterious little word, it says that if you follow the river, you will come to the land of Havilah; and in this land you will find gold, and the gold is good.
Water, river, gold and pearl. How are precious stones formed? By intense heat and pressure: fire and flame.
What is God saying to me? What is He saying to you? God is just saying this: there is a cost attached to fulfilling the calling.
There is a price to pay, and the price that has to be paid is this: the path to the city lies through fire and water.
There is no other way for anyone to become part of the bride except through fires and through waters. There is no other way for you to be built up into the city, for the materials to be produced in your life.
This is the horrifying thing: we have only one short life in which all those materials can be produced, and many of us have already thrown away one half, or two thirds, of that one short life—playing at church, paddling around in superficiality, contented with a compromised kind of worldly spiritual life.
One short life. In the ages to come, if we have ever paid the price and let the Lord lead us through the waters, through the rivers, through the fire, and through the flame, we shall thank Him on bended knee, with tears running down our faces, that He ever led us through such a way to obtain the glory that has come to us in Christ.
Why do you think any one of us will say, “Oh dear, was it not a price? Oh, I mean, do You know what we suffered?” When we are in the glory of the Lord, the eternal glory of God in Christ; when we are enjoying the eternal inheritance; when we are sharing the throne with the Lord Jesus; when we have that intimate union with Him—do you think one of us will talk about afflictions, tribulations, sacrifice, cost, or price?
We will say, “It was all the grace of God—the grace of God, the abounding grace of God—that took us through rivers and waters, and turned the rivers and waters into the producing of gold and pearl.”
We shall thank God. If I may put it like this, we shall kiss His feet. We shall weep at His footstool and say, “Lord, thank You, thank You, thank You, that You ever took us through those rivers, that You ever took us through those waters, that You ever took us through those fires and that flame.”
For in the waters the gold was produced. In the waters the pearl was formed. In the fire the precious stone was produced. Thank You, Lord.
It is the Spirit of the Lord dwelling in us, coming upon us, Who enables us to turn all these things to eternal value.
We have made such a misery of the Christian life, have we not? “Oh dear, it is such a hard business being a Christian. We are all against the tide, going against the current. It is so difficult, is it not, to be a Christian?”
Dear friend, if we only had the vision of the apostle Paul, we could say:
Our light affliction, which is but for a moment,
Worketh for us a far more exceeding
And eternal weight of glory.—2 Corinthians 4:17
You say, “Well, you know, my circumstances are far worse. I would like to put the apostle Paul in my home with ten screaming children and a husband that is no good, or whatever else; or put him in my office, where everything goes wrong all the time; or put him in my fellowship, where everyone is at sixes and sevens.”
I do not know what you are talking about. That affliction? He was stoned, beaten three times with the thirty-nine stripes, left dead at least twice, shipwrecked, and spent at least four years in prison.
I do not know whether I would consider it light affliction. These days, most people would have written a book or two on it. I do not know whether I would call it light affliction, but just wait.
Is it not a question of what standard of value you are using? If your life is bounded by the things of time and sense, it is not light affliction. It is total affliction, consistent affliction, tribulation without end, and it is making your whole life a misery.
“I have only got one short life. Why should I have all these troubles?” But if you look to the eternal, then you will thank God.
Because the waters that He is leading you through—in them you will find the gold and the pearl. The rivers will not overflow you. Sometimes you will only have your nose above water, but still, you will come through.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; neither will the flame kindle upon you. You will not lose anything. We are all afraid of fire. We are afraid of what we will lose in the fire.
You will not lose anything that is of value. In fact, you will neither be burned, nor will the flame kindle upon you. Dear friends, this is the path of the overcomer. There is no other path.
I think of God’s people all down through the ages. We could spend hours speaking of servants of God who, in different circumstances, have come to the place where, in some river that should have overflowed them, they instead found the gold or the pearl.
I think of George Matheson. When he was a young man in the Church of Scotland, he was so wholly given to serve the Lord. He needed at his side, in the work, a bride. He had a childhood friend, saved at the same time as he, and it seemed as if everything was going to be beautiful.
Then one day he had trouble reading the Scriptures. He went to the doctor; the doctor sent him to a specialist; and the specialist said, “I am very sorry, Mr. Matheson, but you are going to lose your sight within six months.”
When he went back to his fiancée, within a week she broke the engagement and walked out of his life. He had nothing, except that he knew God had called him.
He went to his study, and on the day she married another man shortly afterward, he wrote the hymn:
O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from Thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.
Gold, precious stone, pearl. One day George Matheson will thank God that he lost his bride, because he discovered gold that is forever.
I think of Amy Carmichael and her great work, and the way the Lord was using her to salvation—so many marvellous things happening in that southern part of India.
Then one day they went to look at an extension of the work. The man who should have come with the key did not come on time. They could not find the key. When finally he came, the tropical dust had fallen, and when he put the key in the gate and opened the door, nobody knew that coolies had dug a trench on the other side of the door—six feet deep and four feet wide—which should not even have been dug there.
They all stood aside to let Amma, as they called her, step in first. She stepped in and fell into the trench, breaking a hip, an ankle, and her arm.
They dragged her out, put her in the jeep, and drove her fourteen or more miles over a rough road to a makeshift hospital. They set her leg and said, “Do not worry. In a few months you will be as right as rain, back in the work.”
On her sickbed she wrote the first of her books, and she entitled it Rose from Brier. She said in her book, “I feel a cheat. I am just here for a little while, but God has shown me so much through my being put on my back that I want to share it with others.”
She little knew that she was going to be on her back, immobilized, for twenty-seven years. Out of that terrible, inexplicable thing came a ministry to the suffering amongst God’s people that is unparalleled in the whole history of the church.
There are no other books that I find I can give to those who have inexplicable suffering like the books of Amy Carmichael. She found pearl.
There are many others one could think about. I think of Mr. Sparks, who, in himself, as I knew him, was such a warm man. Most people thought of him as austere and distant, almost royal. But when you knew him, he was a very warm man, who could love and joke.
The one thing humanly that he always wanted was acceptance, and the one thing that he never got throughout his ministry was acceptance. Rejected, rejected, rejected, and rejected again, and again, and again.
In all the rivers he went through, the waters he passed through, the flame and the fire, he discovered gold, pearl, and precious stone.
My dear friends, it does not matter where we turn. In our own generation, we see these things. I think of dear Brother Nee. For twenty years in solitary confinement—was that not a river? Was that not water? Was that not fire? Was that not flame?
Why did the Lord keep him for twenty years alive in solitary confinement, only to take him at the end? Why such waste? But it was not waste.
In the rivers, gold. In the waters, pearl. In the fire and flame, precious stone. At the end, it is all in the city. It is all in the bride.
Dear brothers and sisters, we must finish. I have two more things I just want to underline, literally, and they will not take long.
The first thing I want to underline is what I have already mentioned: the divine and unfailing promise. “When thou passest through the rivers, I will be with thee.” Divine, unfailing promise.
He said, “Go, and make disciples of all nations. And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.” No, my dear friend, it is the promise of the Lord that is so glorious: “I will be with thee.”
Then, dear friend, think of the discoveries we are going to make. When in the river we find He is with us, when in the waters we discover He is there—that is why they cannot overflow us.
I always used to say, in days gone by, perhaps a little irreverently, that those disciples in that boat were in the safest place on earth when He was asleep in the boat. I would rather have a sleeping Christ in a boat than a wide-awake, unsafe captain.
Supposing it had gone to the bottom? They would have had another experience of being raised, would they not? They would have had a wonderful experience. In fact, I have often thought that perhaps they would have learned to walk on the water long before Peter did.
Lose the boat, but they cannot lose their lives—not with the Master of all creation in the boat with them.
No, my dear friends, when He says, “I will be with thee,” He will be with you. It does not matter where it goes. If He is leading you, do not be afraid. The river is meant for your blessing.
Do not just see it as some great evil, dark, terrible circumstance—some great affliction and tribulation. Look upon it as the means by which more gold is going to be produced in your life, and more pearl, and more precious stone.
Have you noticed another lovely thing? Listen to this. Listen carefully:
When thou passest through the waters,
I will be with thee;
And through the rivers,
They shall not overflow thee:
When thou walkest through the fire,
Thou shalt not be burned;
Neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
Did you notice that one little word? Through, through, through.
You are not meant to permanently dwell in the waters. You are not meant to be sort of at sea all the time. You are not meant to be living in the fire, in the furnace. It is through. “I will be with you.” It is true.
Think of it: as you walk through it, you will obtain something that one day is going to be the substance for glory.
Well now, my dear friends, that was the last but one thing, and here is the last. At the very end, think for a moment. At the very end, the rivers have been crossed, the waters have been swum through, the fire and flame have been endured. What is the end?
The bride has made herself ready. The city is built up. It is completed. The whole work is done.
That leads me to these wonderful words in Isaiah 45. The Lord says, “I will give thee the treasures of darkness, the hidden riches of secret places.” Then He goes on to talk about Jacob and Israel, whom He has called. He said, “I have called thee by thy name, I have surnamed thee. You are Mine.”
Or I think of these other wonderful words in Isaiah 54: “O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted. Behold, I will lay thy foundations with fair colours.”
Then He goes on to describe the sapphires, the rubies, the carbuncles, all thy borders of precious stones; the peace of your children shall be great; and those that oppressed you will be far away.
Dear people of God, I hope that in my weakness at this particular conference you have received something from the Lord.
We began by talking about Jacob, and Israel being formed out of Jacob. When we come to the end, to our amazement, we find that the old twisted, devious, supplanting Jacob has become an overcomer.
I see him in my mind’s eye: old, white-haired, bent, and walking with the beauty of the Lord our God upon him, shining out of his eyes, shining through that old face of his that has seen so much sorrow and so much suffering.
It is the glory of the Lord. Jacob has finally become pure in heart, and he is going to see the Lord’s face. He is going to serve Him, and the Lord is going to write His name on his forehead.
Dear Jacob has become a blesser. We see him there on his deathbed. He lifts his hands and puts them on the boys. It is a beautiful scene in Genesis 48 and 49. He says, “Lord, bless the lads.”
They were so young, the two boys, Ephraim and Manasseh. This is no trite, “God bless you.” This is a blessing that is with us to this day.
Jacob blessed his twelve sons in the end with such insight, with such understanding, that we have it to this day as an understanding. He has become a worshipper.
Dear friends, if God can do it with Jacob, He can do it with you, and He can do it with me. It is the God of Jacob Who is the key to the formation of Israel out of Jacob.
But, my dear friends, it would be marvellous enough if God only formed Israel out of Jacob. That He called Jacob—can you imagine that? This devious, twisted man, who only ever took and never gave—God called him with a high calling.
He called this Jacob to His eternal glory, to obtain, to receive, the eternal inheritance. So amazing, is it not?
That is where I get my comfort tonight. I think, “Well, if God can do it with Jacob, He can do it with me.”
Here I am. I have gone through some rivers and some waters, and I have gone through some fire. I suspect there are many more rivers and waters to go through, and more fire to pass through.
But I think to myself, if God has made available to me His grace and His power, I will not turn back. I must go on, forgetting the things which are behind. I will press on toward the mark, toward the goal, the prize of the high calling of God in Christ.
It is worth it. For all the water, more pearl. For all the fire and flame, precious stone. Why? If I were to accumulate all these things here, I would have to leave them all when I die. But this is forever.
It has been placed in a vessel that is eternal, that is forever: that throne of God, that bride of Christ.
Dear people of God, may the Lord enable you in a way that you have never understood before, and may He give you a glimpse of that old life of yours. Do not think it means that you will never know weakness, never know failing, and never know sin—not at all.
But what it does mean is this: that by His grace and by His power, you will go on, and on, and on, like Jacob, until finally God has realized and fulfilled His purpose for you.
Shall we pray?
Lord, You know that we all feel, in some measure, like Jacob. But, Lord, we are so thankful that You have called even Jacob to Your eternal glory. You provided all the grace and all the power for Jacob to become Israel.
Lord, we want to thank You this night. We pray that in some way You will get Your Word right into us, Lord. None of us likes suffering or likes affliction, but Lord, if we can see it swallowed up in life, if we can see it, Lord, as that which You will use to produce more and more of that eternal and exceeding weight of glory, then, Lord, we want to go with You the whole way.
We want, Lord, from this night on, to commit ourselves to You, whatever the cost, Lord—to commit ourselves to You so that You can do the work in us You long to do.
O heavenly Father, every one of us is a potential part of that city, a potential member of the bride. We pray that not one of us may come short, not one of us may turn aside; but Lord, we may be those who, taking hold of Your grace and Your power, will know that overcoming life of Yours that will bring us finally into Your presence with exceeding joy.
Lord, we give to You all the praise and all the glory. Write this matter on our hearts, Lord, we pray, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.