Would you turn with me to the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Philippians, chapter 3? I want to read from verse 8.
Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord:
for Whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ,
and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law,
but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith:
that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death;
if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.—Philippians 3:8-14
And I would like to read from the last book of the Bible, Revelation, chapter 21, from verse 1.
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away; and the sea is no more.
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them, and they shall be His peoples, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God:
and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away.
And He that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And He saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true.
And He said unto me, They are come to pass. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.—Revelation 21:1-7
Verse 9:
And there came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls, who were laden with the seven last plagues; and he spake with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb.
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God:
her light was like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal;
having a wall great and high; having twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:
on the east were three gates; and on the north three gates; and on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.
And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.—Revelation 21:9-14
Beloved Lord, we would not be so stupid as to think that we can speak without the anointing, or that we can translate without the anointing, or that we can hear Your Word without the anointing.
Lord, we are not relying or dependent upon our talents, gifts, natural energy, ability to understand, or brain power. We need You, Lord. We need You in a very real way, that, Lord, in the anointing there may be a revelation of our Lord Jesus.
Dear Father, we praise You for the Lord Jesus. We thank You that in Him everything is centred, both now and for eternity.
And we want, Lord, very simply to commit ourselves to You and to stand by faith in that anointing grace, power, and wisdom which has been given to us through the finished work of our Lord Jesus, and which is made a living reality and experience in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
We stand by faith in that grace and power, that it might be made manifest that it is not of ourselves, but it is all of You. We pray that You use this little time this morning to reach our hearts with further understanding and further revelation of Yourself.
We ask all this in the name of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah. We shall be very careful, Father, to give You all the praise and thanksgiving for answering this, our prayer. Amen.
Well, I think you all know that we have been dealing with this passage in the Philippian letter of the Apostle Paul, as his testimony is recorded in Philippians 3.
I have already said, the last time I spoke, that I consider this testimony to be far and away the most remarkable testimony in the whole Book. There are, of course, remarkable testimonies in this Book all the way through, from Genesis to Revelation. But it seems to me that this testimony of the Apostle Paul is the most extraordinary of them all.
My responsibility has been this little word: the prize. “I press toward the mark,” or the goal, or the aim, or the end, “unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
I mentioned that, obviously, this prize has something to do with the Lord Jesus. It is the prize as it is found in the Messiah, Jesus. Furthermore, it has something to do with the high calling of God.
Once we begin to understand that, I think a whole lot of things fall into place. We speak of rewards. I remember, when I was first saved, hearing people talk about how they were going to rule over areas of the earth, and this, that, and the other—one thousand and one things they were going to do, how they were going to enjoy themselves, and all the pleasures that there were in the coming kingdom.
It seemed to me to be somewhat self-centred. I understand how weary we all get with life down here, and how we look forward to that hymn which says, “I’m there to rest forever.” I am not at all sure that we are going to rest forever, if by that you mean lying in beds of ease for all eternity.
It seems to me that God had a purpose in the creation of this universe, in the creation of the worlds around us, the planets and everything to do with them, and above all, in relation to this little planet and mankind. He has never forsaken that purpose.
That was His original purpose. It is what is called in the Word of God the eternal purpose of God. Few Christians have any understanding of that eternal purpose. They seem to think that the eternal purpose of God is that you be saved.
Of course, you cannot be in the eternal purpose of God without being saved. That is true. There is a sense in which even the calling of God has something to do with being saved, since that is the introduction, the gateway, the doorway, into the eternal purpose of God.
But that eternal purpose of God has something to do with the Lord Jesus. It is centred in Him. It is focused in Him. There is not a single aspect of God’s eternal purpose which is not centred in the Person of the Lord Jesus.
In Him, everything is centred. Therefore, you understand those words upon which our dear brother Stephen spoke yesterday morning: knowing Him. How in the world is anyone to attain, or obtain, the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus without knowing Him?
I know Christians who do not know the Lord. Oh, they know Him in conversion. They know Him in an initial way, and they have never got beyond it. They do not know the Lord. They cannot speak about the Lord as Someone they actually know.
It is unbelievable to me that the Lord Jesus is far more interested in us knowing Him than we are to know Him. He will do everything to reveal Himself, to manifest Himself, to explain Himself.
He is the Alpha and Omega. That is, He is the alphabet of God. He is the language of God. He is the means by which and through which God gives Himself to us. God reveals Himself to us. Jesus is God’s language.
That is why the Apostle John, probably the nearest of all the apostles to the Lord Jesus in spirit, heart, and mind, used that incredible Greek word, Logos.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.—John 1:1, 14
Logos. Try to explain it. Logos is intelligence articulated. Did you get that? Logos is a Greek word which means much more than just a word. It means what is in the mind and in the heart expressed, articulated, in a way that you can understand.
Now think of the Lord Jesus. He is the heart and mind of God articulated. He is the mind and heart of God, to use a dreadful Americanism, verbalised. He is the heart and mind of God made explicable, understandable.
Can you imagine a child of God who does not want to know Him?
This amazing testimony of the Apostle Paul—if there is one thing that all of us must surely agree on, it is this: he is eaten up with a desire to know the Lord. He longs for the excellency of the knowledge of the Messiah Jesus. He longs to move on and on and on.
The Lord Jesus, to some people, is so small that He is virtually an idol that can be carried around. He can only say what they say. He can only think what they think. He can only go to the limit of their understanding of things. This is not the Lord Jesus.
God has no beginning and no end. He is supreme intelligence, and Jesus is the means by which He reaches us. He articulates His mind. He articulates His heart. This is the Lord Jesus.
Is it any wonder that the Apostle Paul says, “That I may know Him”? “I count all things but loss. I count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings.”
In other words, to understand the eternal purpose of God, you have to know the Lord Jesus—not just initially. You have to get to know Him: who He is and what He is.
We can only bring it down to Sunday school language: just as you get to know a person. You have to walk with Him. You have to be yoked together with Him. You have to learn of Him. You have to hear Him. You have to obey Him.
It is this that has caught this incredible Apostle Paul. In one sense, it has unravelled him. You understand me? It has knocked him out. It has unravelled him and then, by the Spirit of God, put him back together.
So he says in these words, “I do not count myself yet to have laid hold; but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind and pressing forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the mark,” or the goal.
The Greek word is very interesting: skopos. We get the English word scope from it. “I press on toward the aim, toward the end of the Lord, toward the goal that God has set, toward the mark.” It is often used of a race. It is the goal at the end, the mark at the end, the finishing line.
“I press on toward the finishing line. I press on to what is not just a finishing line, but what is the scope of all that God desires.”
That is why I said, in my estimation, it is gaining Jesus’ bride. He is yours by the free gift and grace of God in every way, but all those rewards are found in Him and through Him. There is no reward apart from Him. It is a question of gaining Him, of knowing Him.
Could there be anything more amazing than that the Bible—these sixty-six books, spanning some twelve hundred years of history in their writing, different periods of time, different backgrounds, and different areas in which the Book was written, part in Egypt, part in Babylon, and most of it in the Holy Land—ends with a marriage?
I can understand the world looking at us and saying, “Oh, that is a fairy tale. That is all it is. It is a fairy tale.”
But God uses Sunday school language—language that the simplest person in the world, the most uneducated person in the world, and the most academically brilliant person can understand. Everyone understands a marriage. Everyone understands a wedding.
What is it that God is saying? That somehow or other, our salvation is a means to an end. It is to bring us back into His original purpose for the universe, His original purpose for this earth.
By the grace that He makes available to us, by the power that He makes available to us, through the things which we suffer, we are being prepared for this end of the Lord.
Those wonderful words, “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings”—our brother spoke fully, I think, on that matter yesterday morning. All I want to say is this: there is no way that you can reach the end of the Lord, the goal of our salvation, and obtain the prize without knowing the Lord Jesus.
It is the Holy Spirit’s work. Never be afraid of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit’s blessed work to unveil the Lord Jesus before us through the Word, as we heard last night—to somehow reach us with a revelation of Himself, so that we fall in love, so that we are completely knocked out by the love of God for us, the grace of God toward us, and the mercy shown to us.
This is this wonderful word: “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection.” No one will ever come to the goal and obtain the prize without the power of His resurrection, for everything you need is in that resurrection life of the Lord Jesus.
And no one will ever come to that throne, ever come to that glory, who is not prepared for the fellowship of His sufferings. We can be joyful, we can have laughter, we can have humour, but we shall always have tribulation.
If we are faithful to the Lord Jesus, there is a sharing of His sufferings. We are in a world that is alien. We are in a world that hates Him and therefore hates us. We are facing powers—satanic powers, principalities, powers, world rulers of this darkness, hosts of wicked spirits in heavenly places—that hate anyone named with the name of the Lord Jesus.
I find it somewhat sad, really, that most Christians have no idea of this eternal purpose of God.
The general idea is that you and I get converted. Once we are converted, we should pray at least once a day for a few minutes. We should at least once a day read a passage of the Bible, however small. We should once a week at least go to a meeting of other Christians, likewise converted, likewise praying, and likewise reading the Word.
If we are radical, overboard, extreme nuts, we will try to win others to the Lord. Then one day, after so many years—the span is normally seventy years—we shall float away somewhere into the atmosphere.
Nobody quite knows where, but we are going to go somewhere in the atmosphere, and there, in some kind of glorified nightgown, with a harp, we shall play songs forever and ever and ever.
No wonder the world ridicules us. No wonder the world says, “You mean that God sent His Son into the world to save you so that you could sit on some damp cloud, playing a harp forever and ever, in a kind of glorified nightgown?”
Now, do not get me wrong. There are harps; they are all mentioned in the Word. There are these kinds of gowns in which they are dressed in white linen. It is all there. But nobody seems to understand the significance of it.
Do you mean to tell me that all that God is interested in is an eternal hallelujah choir forever and ever—not just a thousand years, but ten thousand years; not just ten thousand years, but a million; not just a million, but a billion; forever and ever without end? A choir?
Now, I do not want to upset the musicians amongst us. I have no doubt that we are meant to worship, and that we shall have tremendous times of worship. But to think that the eternal purpose of God comes down to a kind of eternal choir singing “Hallelujah”—and furthermore, what kind of God is this, that He is only interested in people worshipping Him? No, no, no.
This world, in its disfigured, polluted, marred state, still reveals the intelligence of God and the beauty of His character. Somehow or other, as I see it at least, this is only the first thing. It was ruined by sin, ruined by the fall of man.
No one has any idea what God has in store for us. God has not retired. It is not as if He got so old, like me, that He now feels like retiring altogether and vegetating quietly in some small place.
We get the idea that God has exhausted Himself creating this universe, then creating mankind, and then putting up with them after they fell into sin. Now it is all over. There is no more. He has exhausted everything.
Dear child of God, you have no idea what is in store for the saints, for those born of God. The Apostle Paul refers to it when he says, in my own words, “Nobody has any idea what is in store for us.”
I do not know what will happen when this natural creation, subjected to a cycle of futility and corruption, is liberated from it. What will it become when the knowledge of the glory of God covers the earth as the waters cover the sea? Can you imagine anything more amazing?
All of this is summed up in a wedding. It is almost as if the Lord is saying, “Do not bother your head about what you are going to be clothed in, or whether you are going to recognise one another, or whether you are going to eat food and how you are going to prepare it. Do not bother your head about all these silly little things.”
It is enough for you to know that there is a marriage, a wedding, and that this is the goal of your salvation. There will be other rewards as well; I do not have any doubt about it. But it is firstly, supremely connected with the Lord Jesus.
Did you notice those amazing words in Revelation 21? “He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.”
Now, what are these things? If you look carefully at this vision, the last vision recorded in the Book of Revelation, it becomes perfectly clear that it is the holy city, the bride, the wife of the Lamb. “He that overcometh shall inherit these things.”
You will notice that this amazing chapter and vision begins with a new heaven and a new earth. We are also told that one whole set of things has gone forever. The Lord says from the throne, “Behold, I make all things new”: a new heaven, a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, a new Jerusalem, a new man.
It is simply amazing when you begin to look at it like this. It is all there. This new heaven and this new earth, this new creation, has at its centre a capital city. That capital city is the holy city, the new Jerusalem. It comes down out of heaven, having the glory of God.
Now, I always get asked questions whenever one speaks about this. “Well, it is a literal city, is it not?” Yes, there will be—I have no doubt about it—a literal city. But there is one thing upon which I personally am very clear, and I remember Mr. Sparks was too: this city is not a literal city as described here.
It is fourteen hundred miles long, fourteen hundred miles wide, and fourteen hundred miles high, and has only one street. Now, I am told by some that you have a spiral, the thing that goes up. How in the world do you reach the things in the centre of the city if you have this spiral thing going round? Twelve gates.
Apparently, it is obvious that it is symbolic. It is a cube. Now listen carefully: if you remember the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies was a cube. Do you remember the temple? The Holy of Holies was a cube.
And here you have it: God will tabernacle amongst men. In other words, this city is the heart of a new creation, of a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
However we see the millennium, and however we see the eternal ages that follow, the fact remains that you have at the heart of it this city. This city is a capital city, and at the same time it is described as the bride, the wife of the Lamb. Twice we are told that she is adorned as a bride for her husband.
When He said, “He that overcometh shall inherit these things,” if you read Romans 8:16-17, we find these wonderful words:
The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God:
and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him.—Romans 8:16-17
This is the same word we have in another place where the Apostle says, “If we suffer,” or “if we endure, we shall also reign with Him.” Now, there is an if in this thing. You notice it? “If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him.”
This, to me, is amazing. Heirs of God—how is it possible? Joint-heirs with Christ? It is almost as if God includes us as equals: joint-heirs with Christ.
We know from Hebrews 1 that Christ is the heir of all things. The Lord Jesus is the heir of all things. Here we are told that we also, if the Spirit of God has been shed abroad in our hearts, with this own relationship to Him—“Abba, Father”—are also heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.
That means His destiny is our destiny. That means everything that God has purposed for Him, we shall also share. Unbelievable.
This is what has caught the Apostle Paul. He is not just a theologian. He is not some preacher. He is not even just a mere apostle. He has caught something. He has seen something.
What he has seen, as I have said a little while ago, has unravelled him. Has anybody ever really seen the Lord and remained the same? I do not know of anybody.
When Jacob saw the Lord, when he saw the face of God, he was never the same. He said, “I have seen the face of God, and I have lived.” It is true of every single child of God through the history of God’s dealings.
The Apostle Paul has seen something. Dear child of God, if somehow you are blind to this, why do you not simply humble yourself in your heart and say, “Lord, I am blind as a bat on this matter. I am saved. I am converted. I have no understanding of Your eternal purpose.”
I believe the Lord is so interested in revealing something of Himself to you, so that you come to know Him in a deep and full way.
Well, I find this amazing grace. Could I ever believe that God would take a person like me and make me His heir? Think of it. Do you think how amazing it is? Think that God has taken you and made you an heir—His heir.
Everything that belongs to God—you are His heir. Everything that was vested in the Lord Jesus as the heir of all things—you are a joint-heir with the Messiah.
How incredibly sad it is when we are somehow rather trapped in the littleness of our understanding. It takes vision, such as the Apostle Paul had, to inflame us, redirect us, and change us.
I mentioned that there are two things here that we are told about inheriting. I find it very interesting. God says, “I will be his God, and he shall be My son.”
Now, He did not say, “I will be his Father, and he shall be My child.” He said, “I will be his God, and he shall be My son.”
Mr. Sparks got into an awful lot of trouble by saying that there was a difference between the Greek word for children and the word for son. He used to say that sonship has to do with maturity, and being a child is to be a babe—kindergarten.
He got books written against him, pamphlets written against him, and all kinds of things said. Maybe at times it was taken a little too far, because in Greek you cannot make a big distinction between these two words. Nevertheless, there is a difference.
A babe can never take over the family business. A babe is a babe. That is a relationship to father, but he—or she—can never take over the family business. If they inherit it, they would not know what to do with it.
You need a son. A son remains a son. “I will be his God, and he shall be My son.” There is within that a very interesting implication of maturity, of growth, of going on, of pressing on, of forgetting the things which are behind and pressing on to the things which are before.
It is all there within this: “I will be his God, and he shall be My son.”
Beautifully, it is prefaced with this word: “I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.” Is this not something to do with knowing the power of His resurrection? It is the same idea.
Think: if you and I are going to grow, how? Only by quenching our thirst in Him. Do you know that the most blessed condition in which to be as a child of God is to be hungry and thirsty?
Because the Lord said:
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
—Matthew 5:6
When a person has no thirst and no hunger, there is a disease there. Every healthy person thirsts. Every healthy person hungers.
You move on when you are thirsty. The Lord is marvellous in this. He will quench your thirst. He will meet you in wonderful ways. But then He will make sure, through circumstances, through relationships, through all kinds of problems, difficulties, and tribulations, that He brings you to the place where you thirst again.
In order to meet your thirst: “He that is athirst, let him drink of the fountain of the water of life freely.” There is no embargo on this. You can drink as much as you want.
There were two things that I wanted to dwell on before I finish. The first is a capital city.
A capital city, as I said the other evening, is the centre of government and administration. It is the place where national policies are defined and carried out. Washington. London. Beijing. Moscow. Paris. You could go on and on. A capital city.
What is the Lord trying to say to us when He speaks about this holy city coming down out of heaven, this new Jerusalem having the glory of God? When He speaks of Himself as tabernacling amongst the nations of the world?
This city is, as it were, the Holy of Holies. There is no temple there. There is no chapel there. There is no synagogue there. There is no place of worship, for the whole city is the temple. It is the dwelling place, the eternal dwelling place, of God.
From out of that capital city, all the purposes of God for a reborn, recreated heaven and earth will be administered and fulfilled. Maybe beyond that—I have to be careful because this is speculation—but I do not think the Lord is going to stop there.
Will He create new universes, new worlds? It is not like the Lord to stop. The Lord does not get weary and tired like I do and you do. He does not have to lie down, take a holiday, go on tour, or take time off to get His breath back. He is supreme energy.
I wonder what He has in mind. Anyway, forget that. Come back to this: the heart of it is this city.
What does this city mean unless it means that God is looking for candidates to rule? He is looking for candidates who can reign with Him in the ages to come.
Mercifully, He has not told us what is contained in those ages to come, except that it will be glory: without sin, without death, without mourning, without crying.
But He is looking now for candidates. He saved you with a calling. The calling was not just that you be saved. The calling was that you should reign with His Son.
Now, I do not want to be flippant, but God help us if the average Christian ever gets to reign. They cannot reign. They cannot overcome anything, most people. They just come and sit in pews, seats, chairs. You come, you sit, you listen, you go. You come, you sit, you listen, you go.
Now and again, we get a peep out of you. You may take part somewhere. Sometimes we get another little peep out of you, and you might say a few words in worship. Now and again, we get even better: someone may open up and request something for some need. But that is about as far as we go.
Some people cannot control their own home. Their kitchen is a mess, and if the kitchen is not a mess, their bedrooms are certainly a mess. They cannot even control their pets. Some people cannot control their business.
Do you mean to tell me that one day we are all going to reign with Christ? Would that not be a recipe for disaster? Would we not have the same kind of mess that we have now here in the States—apart from anywhere else? I am not American, so I must not say anything more about the mess that I think you are in, and the bigger mess that I think is coming.
But let me simply say this: the average Christian is totally incapable of reigning. Do we think that reigning means we just sit with the Lord and look pretty?
Do you know, all He wants is someone sitting by Him like a puppet, a robot, an automaton? They just sit there and they are a trophy of His grace, like the old hunters used to have round the walls with their horns. They used to say, “I shot that one; I got that one; that one is earlier, that one is later, this one is just recent.”
Do you really think that believers will be trophies of His grace? No, of course not. The fact of the matter is: we are called to reign.
Anyone who is called to reign—be it a president, king, prime minister, or whoever—has to be trained. There has to be education. There has to be discipline. There has to be training.
In the old days, the crown prince would go through unbelievable discipline in order to reign. In a special way, the crown prince was singled out for special chores, special disciplines, special training, and special education—all with one thing in mind: reigning.
This explains so much in the Word of God, where the Holy Spirit speaks of the need for us to grow in the Lord. To reign with the Lord, we call it overcoming. I will speak about that tomorrow evening, but I am only saying that overcoming is something tremendous.
We have all got a kind of fear of it, basically. We feel, “Oh dear, that is special.” Well, I am going to leave that until tomorrow.
But look here, let me put it another way: there is no way you and I can reign with Christ if we remain a babe or a kindergarten child. We cannot even reign with Christ if we are spiritual adolescents.
Can you imagine an adolescent becoming president of the United States? I will say no more. Can you imagine what will happen if adolescents take the place of rulers? Then we shall have a mess.
Not that it means older people are any better, because older people are often adolescents when they are sixty. It is a question of training, a question of education, a question of discipline.
There is no way that you and I can reign in the ages to come unless we are trained, disciplined, and educated. I wonder if I have made myself clear enough. I think I have.
The ability to rule is not just a question of having a whole number of principles at your fingertips, a book of rules by which you can go. God wants the kind of people who can rule with Him, who have learned to discern His will and His mind in the circumstances of this fallen world.
That is why I have often said that intercessors are those who are being trained by God to rule. I know that intercession has been devalued—the very meaning of it—in the same way that being born again has been devalued.
As if just a few prayers here and there constitute an intercession, or getting all worked up is intercession. But real intercession requires the ability to read the mind of God, to discern the will of God in any given situation, and then to stand with Him that it be done.
This is learning to know Him.
We all know what it is to have people in positions of authority who have no character. Spiritual character is essential in this question of reigning with Christ.
There is no such thing as instant spiritual character, as if the Lord could wave a wand over you and immediately you become full of spiritual character. Full-grown spiritual character cannot be produced that way.
Spiritual character comes in a deep and hard way: through difficult circumstances, unpleasant relationships, and all kinds of ways in which God puts us to the test and teaches us how to discern His will and His mind, and how to endure.
Such are those whom the Lord will bring to the throne.
Now, if you are frightened by what I have said, please remember that God is unbelievably gracious.
If you will only say, “Here I am, Lord. Take me,” He will take you. You may be rotten, impossible, all over the place—very unlikely material for ruling and reigning with Christ.
But if you will only say to the Lord, “Lord, this is me. I am a mess. But You saved me. I am a saved mess. I am a converted mess. Would You please take me in hand? Would You train me from this day?”—the Lord will start your education from today.
He is so interested in candidates for this city, for this capital city, that He will take you in hand. Do not be surprised at some of the things that happen to you. You will say, “Well, I do not know why this has happened, and that has happened, and the other has happened.”
No, do not be at all surprised. You asked the Lord to take you in hand, and He is doing just that.
Here is the second thing I want to say. It is not just a capital city; it is a bride. Here is something we do not associate with a capital city.
We do not associate a capital city with a bride, with a wife. What is the idea? Simply this: God is not interested in an eternal bureaucracy, an eternal civil service.
They may know all the rules, all the principles, all the laws, and know how to apply them. They can do it methodically, without heart, without compassion, and without love. God wants people who reign with His Son who have a heart.
And the one thing that a bride speaks about is first love: union and communion, sensitive service.
I find it amazing. Why does God say from the very beginning that we should love Him? You cannot tell somebody, “You must love me.” Have you ever tried?
You tell someone, “You must love me. I am your father. You love me.” You cannot get love that way.
Why is this enshrined within the Jewish way?
Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord:
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.—Deuteronomy 6:4-5
I think it is because God loves His people. Love will never be satisfied with service. Love will never be satisfied with knowledge. Love will never be satisfied with anything other than love.
When the Lord spoke in the second giving of the law—Deuteronomy, we call it, the second law-giving—He said, “The Lord did not choose you because you were great amongst other peoples, because you were this, that, or the other. The Lord your God chose you because He loved you.”
You cannot explain love. I am always amazed at who loves whom. I think, “I wonder what so-and-so sees in so-and-so,” but for them, that person is walking on a cloud. Love is an extraordinary thing.
You cannot tell me why God loves this people. It is extraordinary. There is only one answer: God loves because He loves.
Why did God so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son? He did not get much out of this world. It is amazing when you think about it.
First love. Last night, Dana, in that extraordinary message that the Lord empowered him to give, spoke about first love as being enveloped by the love of God. That may well be. I have never thought of that before.
But what I do know is this: first love is the kind of love in which you never think about the problems, the difficulties, the time, or whatever else.
When you are in love, you will go a hundred miles, spend all the petrol—gas at today’s price—and not even talk about it. You do not arrive at the other end and say, “I spent so much on the gas to get here today,” do you?
No. First love is that you do it all and do not even think about it. It is a pleasure. You want to do it. First love means you will go anywhere. You will bear any discipline. You will bear any problems. You will put up with all kinds of things simply to be with the person you love.
That is first love. First love is not puppy love. First love is a quality of love. When you have that kind of quality of love, then everything else falls into place.
That is what the Lord looks for more than anything else: that kind of love. Not your dutiful service, not your responsible service, not just all that you put up with, not your knowledge.
What the Lord looks for above everything else is someone who loves Him. Listen: do you mean to tell me that you believe there is going to be a bride next to the Lord Jesus who is only there for what she gets?
She is there for His glory. She is there to get the fullness. She is there to get the expansion of things. She is there to get all that comes with being wedded to the King. Never.
Why do you have the Song of Songs, with all the discipline that little shepherdess went through to bring her to the place where finally she thought about others? Why? Because love will always beget love.
Do you mean to tell me that all the Lord wants is a people next to Him that look like some kind of Hollywood star—beautiful hair, wonderful eyelashes, beautiful eyebrows, wonderful nails, marvellous toenails painted beautifully—and sits there with a wonderful figure and nothing between the ears?
Is that the kind of bride that the Lord Jesus—that the Father—wants for the Lord Jesus? An empty-headed female? All she can do is twitter, sit there, and look pretty? Never.
He wants someone who is growing up. He does not believe in child marriage. He wants those who have grown up in the Lord, who can be wedded to the King of kings.
He does not just want people who can reign, who can administer His kingdom, who can administer His rule. He wants people who have a heart, who are filled with love. They are there because they are in love with Him and have never fallen out of it.
That is the bride.
All of us, at some stage in our experience, will fall away from our first love. I have never met a person who has remained in first love all their life, all their service.
But thank God for the Holy Spirit, who understands us all and arranges things in such a way that we become so dry that we long for the Lord to touch us.
So it is: this bride, this wife of the Lord, she also has to grow. She also has to come to spiritual maturity.
The Lord Jesus put it so beautifully when the Pharisees tried to test Him. They said, “What is the greatest commandment?” He said:
Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one:
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.
The second is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.—Mark 12:29-31
Do you know what He went on to say, as recorded in Matthew? He said, “On these two commandments the whole law, and the prophets, hang.”
In other words, everything in the law of God, in the Word of God, and in the prophetic interpretation of the law is explained and summed up in these two commandments: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
Has it ever entered into your heart, into my heart, what this means? It means that anything else means nothing.
Oh, you say, “That is far too extreme a statement.” No, it is exactly what, by the Spirit of God, the Apostle Paul said in the passage we all know so well:
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.—1 Corinthians 13:1-3
First love is summed up in this same passage:
Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Love never faileth.—1 Corinthians 13:7-8
Union and communion is a picture of the bride—at least, what the Bible means by a bride. Two people become one, and out of that unity, that union, comes communion.
In relation to our Lord Jesus, it simply means that you and I become one with Him, and out of that union comes communion. It is a shared life, a shared destiny, a shared purpose.
Well, may the Lord help us in all of this. I only wanted to bring back this sensitivity in service. I find it very interesting that the Lord could have left it all with the holy city, the new Jerusalem, the great capital city. That would have been marvellous.
But He speaks of a bride, the wife of the Lamb, as if He says, “I am not interested in some great knowledgeable bureaucracy. I want someone who is there because they love Me.”
Dana mentioned C. T. Studd. I came to the Lord through C. T. Studd. I really do not know—it was the first Christian book I ever read. I had never read anything else, never read a Christian book, never read the Bible.
It was the first book I ever read, and the only reason I read it was because the old Sunday school teacher gave every one of the boys a book and did not give one to me. So I had to go up to him afterwards and ask why he did not give it to me.
He said, “I am sorry, I forgot.” I do not think so at all. I think he was frightened of my mother and thought great trouble would come if he gave me a Christian book.
I read it simply because I was denied it. I read the whole book in one week, and at the end of that week my whole life had been changed by one man whom people thought was an autocrat and unbelievably difficult to live with: C. T. Studd.
For this reason, I have always believed that the fire of God is the most important element in service.
C. T. Studd was, as the doctor said when he denied him any right to be a missionary, “a museum of diseases.” Yet C. T. Studd went first to China with the Cambridge Seven, then to India, where he was with the Groves family—Anthony Norris Groves—and then finally to the Congo. He never went back to Britain.
He changed my whole concept of Christianity, and above all, of Christ. I thought Christ was some weird rebel. I even used to say to the boys at school who were Crusaders, “I do not believe He even existed. I think it is a myth.”
But that one single life changed me. What was it that caught C. T. Studd? It was the same thing that caught the Apostle Paul.
He laid down his life in completeness. When he came to die, Norman Grubb told me that, as he lay dying, he said, “Well, I had many faults and many weaknesses that have been imposed upon all my fellow workers, but there is one thing I can say: of all that He told me to do, I have done every single thing.”
That is a wonderful way to die. It is the evidence of love. It is the evidence of the fire of love that can consume a human being.
I have seen it a number of times since in different people who have really had that same kind of experience. May the Lord help us.
“Forgetting the things which are behind, I press on to the things which are before. I press on toward the aim, the goal, the mark, unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Shall we pray?
Lord, we ask that You write these words on our hearts. There is none of us here that comes up to this standard of love, of being able to reign or rule. We are all poor material, Lord.
But, dear Lord, You have saved us, and we are so thankful that we belong to You. Lord, we know that there is every possibility that You can take us and do a work in each one of us that will ensure that we obtain the prize of Your high calling in our Lord Jesus.
Oh, touch our hearts by Your Spirit, Lord. Give us a fresh revelation of the Lord Jesus—of His beauty, of His grace, of His glory. Reveal Yourself to us, Father, in Him.
And somehow spoil us, Lord, for anything less than Your best. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.