It is a privilege for me to be with you again, and I should like to turn you to the book of Acts, Chapter 2.
The book of Acts, Chapter 2, from verse 41:
They then that received his word were baptized: and there were added unto them in that day about three thousand souls.
And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers.
And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.
And all that believed were together, and had all things common;
and they sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, according as any man had need.
And day by day, continuing stedfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart,
praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to them day by day those that were saved.
Shall we just bow in a further word of prayer?
Lord, we want to thank You that when we come to Your Word, You have not left us to our own talents, energies, or devices. Lord, You have provided us with an all-sufficient anointing of grace and power, both for the speaker of Your Word and for the hearers of Your Word.
And Lord, we want to avail ourselves of that anointing which You have given us through the finished work of our Lord Jesus, and made a reality to us in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
Father, will You grant that this word of mine will be under that anointing, and may our hearing be under that anointing, so that, Lord, this whole time shall be a meeting with Yourself.
Now, Lord, deliver us from all the busyness and weariness of arrangements to come to this time, and the journeying and travelling, and all the many things that could make this time difficult for us to be able to really take in what You are saying.
Shut us in with Yourself. Revive us, renew us, quicken us, Lord, we pray, that it may be a time redeemed by Your presence and working. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I want you to turn to one verse in the small passage that we read together in Acts 2, verse 42:
And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers.
I feel that the Lord wants my contribution in this time to be centred on this simple but fundamental statement at the beginning of this amazing record of the early church. They continued steadfastly in four things:
These are the four absolutely essential and fundamental characteristics of anything God does corporately amongst His people. There is no way that the people of God can do with only one, or two, or three of these constituents. All four are absolutely essential and fundamental in any work of recovery in which the Spirit of God may be involved in our day.
And it is very interesting that, all over the world, there is an attack upon these very things. Sometimes we find one, two, or even three of the constituents, but not always all four; and yet the four are interrelated.
I feel very burdened that I might be enabled, at least for my part, to communicate to you something of the importance of this. Very simple—but all the really profound things are simple. They are often so simple that we, looking for some great complexity, miss what God is saying.
I want this evening to take the first of these constituents: the apostles’ teaching.
They continued stedfastly in the apostles’ teaching.
Now, what is the apostles’ teaching? Is it something specific? Something, shall we say, different from the Old Testament? Is it something different from the Gospels? Is the apostles’ teaching something that present-day apostles might, for instance, be engaged in, and therefore may have nothing to do with the Word of God? May it be interpretations that they feel have their apostolic authority? What does it mean that they continued in the apostles’ teaching?
It seems quite clear to me that the apostles’ teaching is the crowning work of the Holy Spirit in the revelation that we have in the sixty-six books of the Bible. Just as the four Gospels are, as it were, the focal point of the whole of the Old Testament, so all the apostles’ teaching—which actually includes the four Gospels—is the crowning work of the Holy Spirit in this revelation that He has given to us, which we have come to call the Bible.
If we look, for instance, at some Scriptures, I think it becomes pretty clear. From that point, we can say quite a lot more. Turn to Luke 24:27:
And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself.
Then in Luke 24:44:
And He said unto them, These are My words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms, concerning Me.
The law of Moses is the first five books of the Old Testament. The prophets are another great section in the Jewish arrangement, including what Christians call the historical books as well as the prophetical books. The Psalms is the Jewish way of speaking about the writings. So we have here the whole Old Testament, and the Lord Jesus interpreted in all these thirty-nine books the things concerning Himself.
When we turn, of course, to the rest of the New Testament, we discover that the apostles’ teaching is all to do with this. I only want to give you a few examples, but take the Roman letter, Chapter 1, and Paul’s opening statement:
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,
which He promised afore through His prophets in the holy scriptures,
concerning His Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,
who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead; even Jesus Christ our Lord,
through whom we received grace and apostleship, unto obedience of faith among all the nations, for His name’s sake;
among whom are ye also, called to be Jesus Christ’s.
Then take Romans 16:25:
Now to Him that is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which hath been kept in silence through times eternal,
but now is manifested, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, is made known unto all the nations unto obedience of faith;
to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever. Amen.
Well, I think that at least gives us some idea about the teaching of the apostles. It is not something different from the rest of the Word of God. It includes everything that has gone before and is, as it were, the crowning exposition, the crowning revelation, the crowning interpretation, of God’s purpose for this universe.
In 1 Corinthians 10:11, we have something of the same thing:
Now these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.
If we turn to Hebrews 1:1, we read:
God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners,
hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.
What is the point? I think it should be clear to anybody who is of a reasonably spiritual balance that the apostles’ teaching is, in fact, all to do with the Bible, as we now call it.
When you look at the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, take the epistles from Romans right the way through to Jude: we have virtually all apostolic writing. We are not sure about Hebrews. We do not know who wrote Hebrews. There have been some very interesting suggestions: some believe that it was Apollos, some believe it was Stephen, and of course the general traditional view is that it was Paul. But that is something we are not going to go into.
The fact of the matter is that we have, right through to Revelation—the last book of the New Testament—apostolic writing, apostolic teaching. Take the four Gospels: Matthew was an apostle, John was an apostle, and that only leaves us with Mark and Luke. We know that Mark’s Gospel is the voice of Peter and the hand of Mark. We know that Luke’s Gospel is actually all to do with Paul and Paul’s teaching, and we know that Acts is also.
So we have the whole twenty-seven books of the New Testament, which can be described quite genuinely, correctly, and accurately as the apostles’ teaching. Those twenty-seven books are based upon the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, upon the interpretation that Jesus gave of those thirty-nine books.
In my estimation, here we find the early church, right at its beginning, with all that power of the Holy Spirit, all the multiplication going on, and all the vibrant, risen life and power of the Lord Jesus being expressed and manifested. And we find that the first essential, fundamental characteristic was that they continued steadfastly in the Word of God.
They continued steadfastly in the way in which the Holy Spirit was using the apostles to crown the whole revelation that God has given to us in and through the Lord Jesus.
They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching. We need, my dear brothers and sisters, to continue steadfastly.
I am appalled by the ignorance that there is amongst many of God’s children concerning the Word of God. People, generally speaking, who know the Lord can talk about certain passages of the Bible. These they know well; they are well-thumbed. But when it gets into other portions of the Word they do not know, they are lost. It is like being in the deep end of the pool: they just flounder.
They have no idea what it is or what it is to do with, and they feel so afraid of it that they quickly swim back to what they know and stay in the areas that they know. But it says that they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching.
Turn to 2 Timothy, and that very well-known statement of the Apostle Paul to Timothy, Chapter 3, verses 15-17:
And that from a babe thou hast known the sacred writings which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness:
that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work.
Now, I think this is well worth our stopping for a while and looking at. The apostle does not mince words. Here he has a young apostle; here he has someone who is going to take over from him. He believes that this young man is God’s appointed, ordained successor. He pours into him the secrets of his heart.
He could have easily said to him, “Now, my dear Timothy, my son in the faith, you have grown so far; you have experienced so much. You do not need the Word of God. You need deeper ecstasies. You need greater experiences. You need, as an apostle in these days to come, to be caught up, like I was, to the third heaven and hear things which you must not repeat.”
“Because then you will always have some kind of stick with which to beat the people of God. You will be able to tell them there is more that you cannot possibly tell them, which you know, because you have had experiences that are not even in the Book.”
He does not say that. He says, “You know the sacred writings.” Sounds very legalistic—the sacred writings which are able to make you wise unto salvation. Oh, would to God that every child of God was wise unto salvation.
It is one thing to be saved; it is one thing to be converted. But are we wise unto salvation? Are we discovering the full extent of our salvation? Are we discovering the full power that is in our salvation? Are we finding the purpose of God in being saved? Are we pressing on to the goal of our salvation?
These sacred writings are able to make us wise unto salvation—not just a simple gospel, but to make us wise to the full purpose of God in having saved us. What is the goal of your salvation?
Then he goes on and says:
Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness:
that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work.
My dear friends, it sounds very legalistic to me. It really does. He does not mention the Holy Spirit. He does not mention the Lord Jesus. Now, does he mean that we do not need the Holy Spirit? Of course not. Does he mean we do not need the Lord Jesus? Of course not. Then why does he not say so?
He is not dealing with some kindergarten child. He is not dealing with some two-day-old convert. He is dealing with a man who has an apostolic ministry, who is going to step into his shoes. Why does he say to him so clearly, as if it is absolutely fundamental, “These sacred writings are able to make you wise unto salvation”? The man of God may be complete through these Scriptures; he may be furnished completely unto every good work.
It is perfectly right that we should understand that simply to study the Bible as a holy book is not going to get us anywhere, unless we are humble enough and broken enough to depend upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus Himself said that the Spirit of truth shall lead you into all the truth. And James says:
But if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting.
In other words, if you and I know that we cannot understand, by our own intellect or our own intelligence, this revelation that God has given to us, then we will understand that we cannot just get hold of these Scriptures and somehow get on top of them, analyse them, investigate them, departmentalise them, systematise them, and everything else.
The Holy Spirit is the only One who can unlock the revelation within these precious words of God. If we understand that we have not got the kind of wisdom from above which is necessary to understand what God is saying through these writings, then, in dependence upon the Holy Spirit and upon that wisdom which God gives liberally and does not argue with us, lecture us, or nag us about, we can take this Book.
And this Book can become, by the Holy Spirit, through the Lord Jesus, the power of God to change our lives. This Book can become the means by which you and I are joined to God in Christ. We find that this Book lives to us. It forms us, changes us, corrects us, encourages us, and instructs us.
Especially those of us who have had any charismatic experience—and I am not against charismatic experience at all—would probably say, “Now, just wait. There is something very wrong here. I think this must be one of Paul’s off days.”
“Because he said that through these Scriptures the man of God might be made complete. Now, I do not agree with that. It is only through the Holy Spirit, or through a personal encounter with the Lord Jesus, that the man of God may become complete.”
I do not agree. I am sorry? He must have gone to bed in a bad mood. The Spirit and the Lord were not with him when he wrote that particular thing. It is pure religion. It is legalism, no less, no more.
How in the world can Scriptures make the man of God complete? How can mere Scripture furnish completely the man of God unto every good work? That is nonsense. Only the risen Christ can furnish the man of God completely unto every good work. Only the Spirit of the Lord coming upon a person and indwelling a person can cause that man of God to be furnished completely unto every good work.
My dear friends, it is quite obvious from all the rest that the apostle said that he believes very definitely that we have to know the Lord Jesus—not know about Him; know Him. It is perfectly clear that the apostle said elsewhere that we are to know directly, in our own experience—not second-hand or third-hand—the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.
But it is also as clear to me that the Lord Jesus only gives that knowledge of Himself through the Word of God. It is the Word of God that is made alive to us by the Holy Spirit, and then something happens within us.
If we were to begin to understand this, it would change so much our concept toward the Bible. They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching.
They really did study the Word of God, but not just with their mental capacity and ability. They came to it in dependence upon the Holy Spirit, and the Lord was able to make this Book live to them.
As I begin to understand that, a whole lot of other things begin to fall into place. I find that it is through faith. He says it here in 2 Timothy 3:15:
And that from a babe thou hast known the sacred writings which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
So now we have the Word of God, we have the Lord Jesus, and we have living faith. The only way we can understand, discover, and experience our so great salvation is through the Scriptures when we exercise living faith.
It says in Hebrews 4 that it did not profit those in the wilderness because the preaching of the good news concerning the promised land was not mixed in them with faith. Because it was not mixed with faith, it did not work.
How often you and I find that the Word of God just does not do anything to us because there is no living faith in us. Because there is no living faith, the Bible remains a religious book. It remains just Holy Scripture—no less, no more.
I find it amazing when I begin to look into this. I find, for instance, in Colossians 3:16, the apostle’s inspired word:
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another.
He does not say, “Let the Word of Christ instruct you.” That would be good enough. He does not say, “Let the Word of Christ bless you.” That would be marvellous enough. He does not say, “Let the Word of Christ challenge you.” Well, that is necessary. He says, “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you.”
Now, how can this Book dwell in me? How can this Scripture come out of the page and live in me unless it is by the Spirit of God? Unless it is the risen Lord Jesus who brings this Book into me and starts to make it flesh and blood?
I find the same thing in James, in the letter of James, which is considered by many to be the most legalistic of the letters of the New Testament. But he says in James 1:21-22:
Wherefore putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.
Now, that is a marvellous phrase: the implanted Word. In other words, this Word actually gets into you and takes root in your life. It germinates in you, takes root, grows, and bears fruit.
This is exactly what Jesus said in the parables. In Matthew 13, He spoke of the parable of the sower. In one place He tells us that the seed is the word of the kingdom. But then He uses the most extraordinary phrase. Again and again, although the seed is the word of the kingdom—the Word of God—He says, “He that was sown.”
It is as if this Word of God becomes so one with the person whom God saves that they are the Word of God. It gets into them and begins to do a work in them. It begins to conform them to the image of God’s Son. It begins to bring revelation to them. It floods their being with divine light. It changes the whole course of their lives.
I think of Hebrews 4:12:
For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Oh, brothers, what a need there is for the motivating forces in us to be revealed to us. How many of us actually have no idea what is the motivating force in our Christianity? It would be a terrible shock to us to discover that it is self.
See the division amongst us. See the factions amongst us. See all this rivalry that there is. Here is the writer of Hebrews—if it is the Apostle Paul—speaking about the Word of God being living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword. He speaks of it as being alive and creative, like a two-edged sword dividing.
This does not sound like dusty Holy Scripture, sacred writings. It is almost as if it is alive.
Why is it that for some Christians their Bible is as dead as a doornail, and to another Christian their Bible is alive and creative and always doing something in them? Isn’t it interesting?
I think we have to look very much into this whole matter. Here in the early church, none of them wanted to try and be the boss, in one sense. The Word of God was doing something in them.
This does not mean that we do not have leadership, that we do not have authority. But what it means is this: in so many of our little fellowships, they become platforms for people to throw their weight around—little petty kingdoms and even more petty dictators.
Very few people have ever seen the motivating forces that are behind it because the Word of God has never divided between soul and spirit. It has never been allowed to be quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Everyone has some ambition. Those who say they have not are liars. Everyone has some kind of ambition, but the difference is whether you know it.
If you know that you have these ambitions, and you know where they are coming from—not the Spirit of the Lord always, but something egocentric, self-interested, self-advancing, self-glorying—then, for the first time, you will call upon the Lord to deliver you. But when you are unaware of it, you go on beating the people of God, go on fleecing the sheep.
So I believe that this matter of continuing steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching is of tremendous importance. This Word, which I have just spoken about as dwelling in us, as being the implanted word or inborn word—in Peter’s first letter, 1 Peter 1:23, this is what he says:
Having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth.
He says that you and I are born of God through the Word of God, which is able to bring us to birth. God uses His Word to bring us to birth.
I do not really know of any person who has been born of God—truly born of God, and not in this devalued way that it is often spoken of over here in North America—but truly born of God, for whom it has not been the Word of the Lord, however simple, that has somehow come to them in power.
Suddenly they realise they are sinners, or they realise they are going to a lost eternity. They realise Jesus is the only One, they say; or they see the Lamb of God who bore away the sin of the world. Something else dawns upon them.
It is amazing to me that you may have tremendous humanly inspired literature, but I have never known a statement of Shakespeare that has delivered an alcoholic from his drink. I have never known even something from The Taming of the Shrew that has brought a broken marriage back together again.
But I have found that this Book gets into people, and it is amazing what it does to them. Wherever I go in these days, where there is so much divorce and so much domestic unhappiness, one hears, thank God, of cases of people to whom the Word of the Lord has come and healed a marriage, healed a home, brought someone out of drugs, brought someone out of juvenile crime, brought someone out of alcoholism, and changed their lives.
I find it one of the most exciting things in the world when I go to Southeast Asia and to Borneo, and sit amongst all those headhunters. I find it, at times, very funny as well. They took me into one of the longhouses, and I could not help but stare at these bags of skulls that were hanging up.
One of the brothers—they had only just found the Lord in those days—said to me, “Don’t worry, they were all Japanese.” They were all Japanese soldiers, poor things, who had stepped out behind a tree to relieve nature and had never been seen again; their heads were in the longhouses.
But it is amazing to me. These people could not marry: a young man could not marry a girl unless he brought back a head in a string bag. Now, this was only a generation ago. That is how he used to have to do it.
He would bring back a trophy, and his prospective bride would inspect the head to see if it was an old, elderly seventy-year-old or octogenarian, in which case she thought he was not much good, or whether it was a young man. Upon this, she would say yes or no.
And then, when I go now, I look at those beautiful faces shining with the beauty of God—transformed. It has gone right the way through that tropical rainforest. Some of them take two days to come to meetings, with babies strung in sacks under their arms, and they sit there and listen for two or three hours. They just do not want to go away.
What I find so beautiful is their faces. Nobody can tell me that this is not the power of God’s Word. It has taken savages, people who gloried in murder, people who believed that it was part of their cycle of life to take a man’s head off his shoulders and hang it up like a trophy in the new home.
And now we find these lovely people. I must be careful—I am digressing. But one of the most lovely things was when they came to me in Bandar, in the capital of the little kingdom of Brunei, and said, “We have a gift, and we want to send it to Israeli widows and orphans.”
These people, all through the tropical jungle, had collected money. I did not want to handle it, so I told them that they must take it to Singapore, to the Israeli embassy there, and give it, because there is such a fund.
But I must tell you, I thought how amazing it was. Here were the very people who made widows and orphans, collecting money for widows and orphans. Isn’t that amazing? Now tell me what the Word of God does.
When William Tyndale first understood that the Word of God needed not to be veiled in some holy language that nobody could understand—it was Latin at the time—he said that he would live until the day when he could put into every ploughboy’s hands the Scriptures in his mother tongue, in a manner that he could understand.
That man was strangled for his labour in Antwerp, and his body burnt. But within one year, when, as he died, he cried out, “O God, open the King of England’s eyes,” within one year the king who had ordered his execution decreed that, through the whole realm of England and Wales, in every parish church, a copy of the Scriptures in English should be chained to a lectern, and anyone who could read was at liberty to read it to the people.
It is said that great crowds used to gather in the parish churches, turning their backs upon the preacher. This is recorded history. The vicars and priests complained to the king that, as a result of his decree, they were preaching in the pulpit while everybody had their backs on them and were listening to one of their number read the Scriptures.
Because they found the Scriptures far more interesting than the preacher.
And what happened was that the Scriptures did a work in the whole of those islands that, in the end, of course, came over here as well. It was the Word of God. The Pilgrim Fathers—their lives were fashioned by the Word of God.
The power of this Book, once we are humble, once we are dependent upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit, once we are seeking God for revelation—the power of this Book to change not just lives but whole communities, not just communities but whole nations—is manifest in evidence in history.
Oh, my dear friends, I find this so exciting, so marvellously exciting. I just wish with all my heart that you and I had the same attitude towards this.
This Book not only brings us to birth. This Book not only comes to dwell in us. This Book not only changes us, but we are told that we are cleansed through this Book. Jesus said:
Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you.
And Ephesians 5 tells us about the cleansing of water through the Word. This Book does an amazing thing.
The old psalmist said:
Wherewith shall a young man cleanse his way?
By taking heed thereto according to Thy word.
There is no way that dirty thoughts can ever be got out of a young man’s mind, or a whole desire for something that ought not to be there, except by the Word of God. Cleansed by the Word of God.
Now we begin, I think, to understand in a new way such a statement as this: that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work.
I am so thankful myself for this Book. I am always thankful that at the very beginning of my Christian life, when I had never read the Bible, when I was twelve years of age—actually, I was almost thirteen before I had a Bible, because for the first year we only had a little Gospel of John, and nobody thought to give us a Bible.
They thought that everybody in Britain had a Bible, but in my family we did not have one. I remember the excitement with which I first began to read the Word.
I am so thankful for some of those godly people who may not have understood all that I now understand, but who were so filled with a spirit of grace, love, and faith. I remember one of them said to me, “Do not come to this Book with a proud spirit, demanding that it yield to you its secret. Ask God for wisdom, and He will give it to you.”
That is what I did. I never opened the Bible without asking the Lord, “Please help me to understand what is here in this Book.” I found this one of the most exciting things in my whole life: the Word of God.
I was brought up to understand that the Bible was a collection of myths, inaccuracies, legends, and was basically untrustworthy. I remember the excitement with which I found, when I was, I suppose, in my late teens, that the first chapters of the Bible corresponded to the last chapters of the Bible.
I made an incredible discovery. I found that the first three chapters and the last three chapters minutely corresponded. Then I made an even more remarkable discovery: I found that if you dropped the third chapter of Genesis and the twentieth chapter of Revelation, you had the beginning and the end of a letter—first, something introduced; then, something completed—without sin, without the fall.
Well, I felt as if I had touched electricity, as if somehow I had put my finger on a wire that was alive. It was such a shock to me. I thought, “All these people talk about the inaccuracies and irrelevances of the Bible, and this cannot be.”
Then I tried to find out: when did Revelation come to be the last book of the sixty-six books of the Bible? I made another amazing discovery. I found that there had been enormous debate about the book of Revelation for nearly four centuries until finally it came to the last place. It was sometimes attached to Luke, sometimes attached to the letters of John, but it was not in the last position until the fourth century, when it was finally universally recognised as being part of divine revelation.
Then I thought to myself, this is quite amazing. The Bible begins with a marriage and ends with a marriage. It begins with a human marriage; it ends with a divine marriage. It begins with the marriage of Adam and Eve; it ends with the marriage of the Lamb and the wife of the Lamb.
To me, that was mind-blowing when I discovered it. Then I found another thing which stunned me. I read that if you take your Bible—apart from any dictionary you might have at the back of it—and part it literally in the centre, where do you come? The Song of Solomon.
The Song of Solomon has been called by liberal theologians a bawdy ditty. Some have gone so far as to say it is pornography in the Bible. But actually, the rabbinical tradition concerning the Song of Solomon, which I personally believe is absolutely right, was that it was an allegory given to King Solomon in a vision. It was an allegory of the love God has for His redeemed covenant people.
Here I found another amazing thing: the Bible begins with a marriage, it ends with a marriage, and in the heart of the Bible is another marriage. It is an amazing story.
I began to look at the Song of Solomon and found that it was a series of ways in which the bridegroom began, as it were, to educate—if you like, to instruct—his bride. Do you remember? She was so proud when she had got him. She let her hands droop with perfume, adorned, and she luxuriated.
When he came knocking, she said, “Oh, I am resting.” He knocked a little more. “Well, I had better get up.” And he was fed up with her and had gone. Do you remember?
It begins with a statement that is characteristic of much of our very shallow Christianity:
My beloved is mine, and I am his.
You know, so many of our hymns are like this: “Oh, that will be glory for me.” Glory for me—it is wonderful. A great old hymn, but the whole accent is me. There is another one that has a chorus: “Mine, mine, mine, I know He is mine.”
It is marvellous, but it is true. It is a certain type of Christianity. It is valid, genuine; but the whole accent is on, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.”
After he had dealt with her for a while, he fled from her. She went out and searched for him everywhere until finally she got him again. Then, this time, after more dealings, she says:
I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.
That is a different emphasis. Now it is not, “He is mine; I am his.” But still she is not ready, and he has to deal more with her. Then, at almost the end of that little revelation, she says:
I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me.
No more “my” or “mine” comes into it: “I am my beloved’s.” Then, interestingly, the bridegroom turns round to her and says, “We have a little sister. She is too immature, too young; she cannot marry. What shall we do with her?”
I think this is the most extraordinary thing. Here we have a Bible. They talk about all these legends, myths, untrustworthiness, and inaccuracies, and now we find that it begins with a marriage and ends with a marriage, and in the centre is a marriage. What is it all about unless there is something of tremendous importance here—a correspondence?
Then I begin to understand everything. I find that in the beginning of the Bible there is this human marriage, which we are told is a kind of picture of the divine. It was instituted to reveal something eternal, not just for time, but for eternity.
Some of you will have heard me say this before, but you will remember how it is all introduced in Genesis 2. It begins like this: there was no helpmeet found for Adam. In Hebrew, this means there was no one who mirrored Adam. There was nobody who answered to him—not meaning somebody who nagged him, but somebody who actually answered to him, in whom he could see himself.
Then the Lord said that He would bring all the animals before Adam, that he might name them. Most of us think, “Oh, isn’t that an interesting little story?” The whole story of all the animals coming before Adam and his naming them one after the other.
When I first read the Bible, I could not understand it. I thought, “Well, it is a very foolish thing for the Lord to do. Why did He do that? He had created the animals. Why did He not say, ‘Now, Adam, this huge thing coming up here with these huge ears—this is an elephant’?”
Adam would have said, “Elephant. Yes, Lord.” Then, “Here comes a giraffe, this long creature up here. This is a giraffe.” But no, the Lord did not do that.
It says there was no helpmeet found for Adam, and God said, “Now, what is this, Adam?” Adam looked at it and said, “An elephant. I am going to call it an elephant.” The Lord said, “It is an elephant,” and on it went.
“Here, this is a giraffe.” “All right, Adam, it is a giraffe.” “And this?” “It is a cat, Lord.” “And this?” “Well, this is a porcupine, Lord.” “All right, porcupine.” “And this is a dog, Lord.” “A dog.”
I am not sure that every one of the creatures would have gone past. Possibly the cat came and stayed with him, or the dog came and sat by him. But what was the Lord trying to do? At the end of it, it says, “There was no helpmeet found for Adam.”
Later, when I began to understand it, it became perfectly clear to me. God did not want to say to Adam, “Now, Adam, you are only half there. Your other half is not there. You are not complete yet.” He was going to bring the animals before him. If there was anyone Adam could live with, all right.
Adam sees the elephant: “Very interesting, Lord, but I could not live with it.” Then the giraffe: “No, Lord, I could not live with that.” The cat: “It is a pet, but I cannot live with it.” The dog: “Lord, it would be a marvellous friend—man’s best friend—but I could not live with it.”
Then comes the orangutan, which means in Malay, “the man of the forest.” I think Adam probably stopped for a while and thought, “Well, that is the nearest thing to me.” But then he said, “No, Lord, that is an orangutan.” The Lord said, “It is an orangutan,” and it went.
Then the Lord put him to sleep, opened his side, took out flesh and bone, and created a woman. When Adam awoke, he did not say, “Oh, now what is this?” Adam said, “This is me.”
In Hebrew, man is ish; woman is ishah. In other words, he said, “This is me. This answers to me. Now I see myself. This is quite different from all the others. This one and I, we two can live together. We can share life. We can complement each other.”
I find it quite amazing when we come to Calvary. John the Apostle—here we are back in the apostles’ teaching—John, who understood more deeply than all the others the real significance of the Person and work of the Lord Jesus, tells us that, at a certain point on the cross, after the darkness which had come over the whole face of the earth for so many hours, Jesus cried out a great cry.
In Greek and in Hebrew, one word: “Finished.” The veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
Then John tells us—and it seems terribly significant to him, of tremendous importance—that when a soldier came to see if Jesus was dead, he drove a spear into His side, and out of His side came blood and water. Then John says that he who bears witness of this, his witness is true, as if it was of tremendous importance.
Writing in one of his letters, John says:
And there are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one.
Now, what did John mean? Someone says, “Well, it is our salvation, isn’t it?” But just wait. Our salvation had already been completed. When Jesus Christ said, “Finished,” there was nothing more to be added. So why did the soldier have to pierce His side, as if there was yet something more to be done for our salvation?
No, my dear friends, it was the Lord Jesus as the last Adam who died on the cross, and now the second Man. His side was opened. He was asleep—put to sleep, as it were, by God—and now His side is opened.
Out of His side God takes blood and water, and by the Spirit of God He creates the bride. When Jesus is raised from the dead, it is as if He is saying, “This is Me.”
On that Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the hundred and twenty, it was as if the Spirit brought the water and the blood—the blood of the atoning work of the Lord Jesus, the water of His life—into those hundred and twenty, fashioned them as a body, fashioned them as an organic entity, and presented them to the Lord Jesus.
It was as if Jesus said, “This is Me. We two shall be together forever.”
No wonder, then, that at the very end of the Bible we find:
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.
The first picture in those first three chapters that we have of the Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit of God hovering over the chaos and formlessness.
Again, in Hebrew, the word is the word used of an eagle or a great bird of prey looking for a place to nest, to lodge. It cannot find it. The Holy Spirit cannot find anything that He can call home, anything that He can call His nest, anything that He can call His habitation.
All the way through the pages of the old covenant, we find the Holy Spirit using, blessing, empowering, inspiring, instructing, and directing, but never living—until Jesus is born.
When Jesus is born, the Holy Spirit is there. When Jesus is baptised, heaven opens and God says, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The Holy Spirit comes down upon Him in the form of a dove and dwells, abides, on Him.
For the first time, the Holy Spirit has found a home. And on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to make His home in one hundred and twenty members of the body of the Lord Jesus.
All through the history of the church, from that Day of Pentecost to this day, every successive move of the Holy Spirit, every fresh, as it were, outpouring manifested again in church history, has been the Holy Spirit finding, in the first generation, a home to dwell in—to reveal the Lord Jesus, to express the Lord Jesus, to make the body of the Lord Jesus a living reality on this earth.
So when we come to the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22, and almost the last verse, we read these wonderful words:
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.
It is as if the Holy Spirit is no longer hovering, looking for a nest, looking for a home. He has found it.
So, my dear friends, here is a constituent of the people of God, of anything the Lord would do in recovery in our day and generation. It is a characteristic. It is an essential constituent. They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching—in the Word of God.
I think that we are in great danger in this latter part of the twentieth century of devaluing the Word of God. So very rarely do we find real Bible studies anymore, as if it is something old, something boring. Of course, I know the way some of them are done: they are boring. But they do not have to be.
If you look at any single move of the Spirit of God in church history, you will discover that it began with a rediscovery of the Word of God and a rediscovery of the power in God’s Word.
Each move has gone forward in so far as the Word of God has been the supreme authority and has lived to people. Once it becomes just sacred Scripture, just somehow doctrine merely, then that move of the Spirit has died.
So I pray that God will make this a living reality to you all in these days.
One last thing, and I finish. When we come to the book of Revelation, we find a phrase that is unique to the book of Revelation, and we find it again and again:
The word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
It is as if that is the focal point of all the conflict. As if, all through the great battle that has raged over this question of the purpose of God and its fulfilment, it has been centred upon the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
But it seems to me that we have an indication here that, in the last part of world history, the focal point of all the battle that we are going to face will be on the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
That is why you and I need to allow God to do the work He needs to do in us now. That is why, whilst we have freedom, we should study the Word of God, memorise the Word of God, and meditate on the Word of God.
God’s people were always taught that they were to meditate in this Word of the Lord day and night; that they were to wear it between their eyes, bind it on their arms, and put it on their gateposts and upon their doors; that whether they sat down, rose up, or walked in the way, they were always to have this Word of the Lord before them.
May the Lord make this a living reality to every one of us. There is no other way for us to become complete. There is no other way for us to be furnished completely unto every good work. There is no other way we shall be kept from deception, delusion, and all the works of darkness that will abound at the end of the age, except through the Word of God being made alive to us through the Holy Spirit.
Shall we pray?
Lord, You know we really do honour Your Word. We pray, Lord, that none of us will fall into this trap of putting it off until we have time.
God, will You do Your work in us all, the work only You can do—a work, Lord, by which You can somehow bring Your Word to live in us.
We commit ourselves now to You, Lord, dear Lord, in all our weakness and in all our need. In the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.