Then the Book of Revelation has the same end in view.

• Take these books together and we see really what John's ministry had in view, that there should be first love at the end.

• There was first love at the beginning, but it is a question of first love at the end.

• There is one thing to notice, that is, that it will never be there unless we are in company with the Spirit. First love at the end is expressed in that cry "Come".

• It is a more testing cry than perhaps we realise. To really say "Come" to Christ challenges my own heart as to how far, if Christ came now, it would rob me of things I am living in.

• If I am seeking life and satisfaction in anything here, then I will have some reserve about Jesus coming. My cry will not be the whole-hearted "Come" that must result if Christ is my life now.

• The test of Christianity, and I answer to it very poorly myself, is as to finding all-sufficiency in Christ now.
  • "For me to live is Christ" Paul says, "and to die, gain".

• He was looking for the Lord's coming, but even to die would be gain. What a thing first love is, therefore! It means that your whole heart is entwined around the Saviour.

• So that, when you think of Him coming, there is not anything that would tend to hold you back, nothing that would cause you to hesitate in the slightest degree in saying "Come" to Jesus.

Ephesus

So the first challenge is as to first love as in the word to Ephesus. "I have against thee"

• – think of the Lord having something against us!

• Has He something against me? I could not say I am yet marked by first love. I would like to be. You think of the Lord looking at us now, and He may say 'I have something against you'.

• He may say 'You have done well, you have done many things for Me, and I appreciate everything you have done and everything you are doing, but I have one thing against you – that I am not everything to you'.

• I would like Him to be everything to me and I believe one great point in current exercises is that He should become everything to many.

• Let us go through with these exercises. Let our works be complete before His God. What else could be the end in the way God is leading us and the way the Spirit of God is leading us, but that Christ should really be our life?
  • "For me to live is Christ".

• Only a person like that can honestly and truly, without any reserve, say "Come" to Jesus. I would like to be able to say it, without any reserve, as the one great longing of my soul.

And so He says, "I have against thee". As long as we are not giving Him the supreme place there will always be that.

• It is not that the Lord is hard at all; it is because He loves so intensely. How He feels it if we do not love Him with a corresponding intensity!

He therefore says, "Remember therefore whence thou art fallen". We have to remember that we cannot measure the drop when first love is gone.

• Whatever else there may be down here, it is of small value compared with first love.
  • "Remember from whence thou art fallen and repent".

• Repent? But I do love the Lord! But do you love Him with your whole heart? Is it first love? If not, you have something to repent about.
  • "Repent", he says, "and do the first works".

• There is a lustre about works that flow from first love. You cannot do first works without first love.

• Even in human affairs, how sensitive love is! If one partner in marriage is only doing a thing because it is his duty, the other partner soon realises it, and the value of what is done diminishes.

• The extraordinary thing is that the Lord says that if there is not repentance the lamp will be removed.

• He may allow time, but He is such a Lover that He cannot regard any testimony as worthy of Himself except that which flows from first love. We would like there to be a real testimony for the Lord at the end.

Now, the other features, I think, flow out of this, and help us as to what goes to make up first love.

Smyrna

So, to the second church, He says, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life".

• In human affairs we regard that as the proof of true love. True love would be faithful unto death.

• It is a comprehensive word. It bears on much that we are thinking about at the present time, as to fellowship and what is due to the Lord's name down here.

• It is easy to take an easy path. But the Lord says,
  • "Be thou faithful unto death".

• It is not that we inflict sufferings on other people. The idea of the altar is that I am prepared to suffer myself.

• Pharisaical separation would inflict sufferings on other people – Laying burdens on men that are grievous and hard to bear.

• But the idea of the altar is that the Lord Jesus bore all the sufferings and cost Himself, rather than sacrifice one iota of what was due to God in His nature and character. And the Lord says to us,
  • "Be thou faithful unto death". Be in fellowship with the altar. 1 Corinthians 10: 18.

• He was faithful unto death. He addresses Himself to this assembly, as the One who became dead and lived. And this is the word for us: "Be thou faithful unto death".

• And in principle, this has to go on even if we are not faced with actual death. Paul says,
  • "I die daily".

• He denied himself, denied popularity, denied all that men would esteem good. He was as the offscouring of all things. If he had been prepared to sacrifice principles he would never have been the offscouring of all things.
  • "All in Asia have turned away from me", he said.

• Why? Because he was prepared to be faithful unto death. Those in Asia did not give up their Christian profession, but they were not prepared to go to that length. But first love would go that way.

Pergamos

Then when we come to the third item,

• "To him that overcomes, to him I will give to eat of the hidden manna".

• Sweet thought, the hidden manna, the life of Jesus here as treasured before God. It is called in Hebrews,
  • "the days of His flesh".

• He has left us a model that we should follow in His steps. We are called upon to walk as He walked.
  • "He that says he abides in Him ought to walk even as He walked".

• The manna sustains us in that path. We feed on Jesus in the blessedness of His pathway here.

• But then what governs the person is the white stone. Our relations with Christ are on the basis that we are seeking His approval only. How long it takes us to be free from looking for man's approbation!

• But the overcomer in Pergamos is seeking only the approbation of Christ; in everything to please Christ!

• He could say that He did all things that were pleasing to His Father. A feature of first love is that we do all things with a single eye and heart to please the Lord.
  • "Walking worthily of the Lord unto all well-pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing by the true" or full "knowledge of God".

Thyatira

In Thyatira an important principle comes in. We know that the last four churches go on to the end in character.

• Thus elements of the beginning of revival are in this church where indeed it began historically.

• I am not speaking now of Luther's time but the period that preceded it – the underlying state that made way for Luther to come forward. The Lord says,
  • "All the assemblies shall know that I am He that searches the reins and the hearts", verse 23.

• He is presented in verse 18 as the Son over God's house, the Son of God, His eyes as a flame of fire, and His feet like fine brass.

• I believe this is the secret of revival, that souls get a sense that the Lord sees them through and through – He is searching the reins and the hearts.

• He takes account of works, but He is looking at the motives, and present exercises are to help us, each one, to come under His all-searching gaze, and allow ourselves the consciousness that He sees us through and through.

• Everything is naked and laid bare before the eye of Him with whom we have to do. Hebrews 4: 13.

• Let us allow Him to search our hearts. We shall learn, if we do so what we are by nature; we shall come to it in our own judgment.

• We shall take the place that Paul took, the chief of sinners, recognising that we deserved to be hanged upon a tree. Our old man has been crucified with Him.

• Our hearts are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Yet there is something else through God's grace.

• Our hearts have been purified by faith, to the end that the Christ may dwell through faith in our hearts.

Christ is looking into our hearts, not only to expose to us the evil, but to see if He is there.

• If first love is existing, and He is looking into your heart, He will see Himself in your heart.

• Let Him shine out in your life and He will see that too, but what He is looking at is your heart. Is He in the centre?

• What a thing it is when this One whose eyes are as a flame of fire, sees us through and through and finds Himself enshrined in our affections!

• It is the reins and the heart. The reins refer to the kidneys, the purifying organs – purity of motive.

• The Lord would keep us under His all-searching gaze, that our motives might be kept pure – that our kidneys spiritually might be functioning properly and rejecting every selfish motive,
  • that Christ only might be the spring of thought and action. That is the basis of recovery; it begins within.

The Lord Jesus speaks of Himself as being loved before the foundation of the world by the One whom in Manhood He could address as Father. John 17: 24.

• As to the abstract relations of Deity we cannot penetrate into them, but we know there must be relations of infinite love, for God is love.

• Then, if we think of the eternal purposes of love, all centred in the Lord Jesus;
  • all looked on to the Incarnation; all things were created by Him and for Him, all in view of the Incarnation.

• God's plans thus centred in Jesus, and centred in Jesus as in Manhood. In Manhood He has this wonderful title, the Beloved.

• I say we cannot penetrate the infinite love that marks the relations of Deity but we can understand how divine love centred in Him
  • and how the thought of the incarnation was ever present in purposes which centred in Jesus. But think of Him coming!

  • "Coming into the world" He says.

• No one could impose that on Him, His coming into the world. Read what JND says about that in the Synopsis on Hebrews 10, referring to that statement the Lord made as about to become incarnate.

• "Coming into the world he says, Sacrifice and offering thou willedst not; but thou hast prepared me a body … Lo, I come … to do, O God, thy will".

• He came to die. In dying He was the glorious Antitype of all the offerings of old. How much He was loved as coming into that new condition!
  • "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee". And then the word,

  • "I will be to him for father, and he shall be to me for son", Hebrews 1: 5.

• And if such a One came forth, the One who was with God and was God, if such a One became flesh, how God, as it were, exulted that He should come into that relationship, so as to be able to say,
  • "Thou art my Son" … "I will be to him for father, and he shall be to me for son".

• You can understand what an Object He was as thus born; how heavenly hosts were moved to praise!

• And then see Him at His baptism, "Thou art my beloved Son"!

• What an Object of affection at that point, Himself beginning to be about 30 years of age, the age when all the faculties of a man are fully developed! What delight to God!
  • "Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight".

  • "Growing up before him as a tender sapling, and as a root out of dry ground", Isaiah 53: 2,

• and now in the full vigour of Manhood, God could say to Him, "In thee I have found my delight". Think of Him further, that He could say,
  • "On this account the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again … I have received this commandment of my Father".

• What Object He was of the Father's love as He moved on to lay down His life, saying,
  • "the cup which the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?"

• And then think of His coming forth from death –
  • "raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father".

• Think of the joy then between the Father and the Son! All the work of suffering now behind – the atoning sufferings – that cup of bitterest woe. It was all over. Love had sustained it all.

• And the triumph too in His being raised from the dead by the Father's glory. He says, Psalm 40: 3,
  • "He hath put a new song in my mouth".

• The Lord Jesus rose from the grave with a song in His mouth which, speaking with all reverence, could not have been sung had He not become incarnate.

It is wonderful to think of the One by whom all things began to be, by whom all things subsist, coming into a position where He could have experiences which were not possible in the glory of Deity;

• His coming into a condition where He learned obedience from the things which He suffered, and was able to have experiences of the deepest sorrow;

• it says, of one momentous hour, that He began to be sorrowful and deeply depressed; and exclaimed,
  • "My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death".

• Think of Jesus – God over all blessed for ever, One with the Father and the Spirit in Deity – coming into a condition where He would have such experiences,
  • and going through them all, even the atoning sufferings, when deep called unto deep at the noise of God's cataracts!

• Think of Him coming through all that, and the joy of coming forth, and, we might say, the relief of all being over!
  • "He hath put a new song in my mouth".

• JND asks whether we can join in the stirring song that He sings when in resurrection He comes forth from all the sufferings?

Think of the Father's joy too, now that all is over, for who can know what the Father suffered to see the Son suffer? We cannot measure that at all. Genesis 22 is just a type,

• "Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest".

• Think of the Father's joy that it was all over. What joyful exultation! We might say, it goes on, it never ceases; and we are to be brought into it.

• Similarly, think of the joy of the Holy Spirit! Think of the Holy Spirit's part in the whole matter from the time when it was said to Mary,
  • "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and power of the Highest overshadow thee, wherefore the holy thing also which shall be born shall be called Son of God".

• How the Holy Spirit had moved throughout, coming upon the Lord at His baptism, leading Him in – Matthew says carrying Him, and Mark driving Him, into – the wilderness;
  • how right through His pathway the blessed Spirit was with Him, and then by the Eternal Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God. Hebrews 9: 14.

• Can you fathom what all that meant to the Holy Spirit? Scripture speaks a great deal of the Holy Spirit's feelings, even from the outset of creation according to Genesis.

• But think of what it meant to the Holy Spirit when Jesus offered Himself by the Eternal Spirit without spot to God! So we can now think of the Holy Spirit.

• If there is joy on the part of the three Divine Persons, set out in the parables in Luke 15, over one repenting sinner;
  • think of the supreme joy when Jesus went into heaven, victorious over death, the joy at the terrible sufferings being past!

• And a glorious Man, the Beloved being up in glory. We cannot attempt to measure it, the joy of the Father's heart, the joy of God.

Matthew

In all these matters we can see how Jesus is the Beloved. And really Matthew is a gospel of the Beloved.

• It opens as the book of the generations of Jesus Christ, Son of David, and David means 'beloved',
  • and Solomon, David's Son was, too, "beloved", 2 Samuel 12: 25.

• So Matthew's gospel is the gospel of the Beloved, the One who is the Root and the Offspring of David. Solomon was in the type son from birth, God said,
  • "I will be his father, and he shall be my son".

• So he was a son from birth, as it were, and beloved on that account. That is one view of Christ.

• Another view is the David view, and David became beloved because of his moral worth.

• Both these views centre in Christ, and Matthew has specially that latter side in mind in the passage I read. God says, "Behold my servant".

• He tells us to look at Him; we need to take account of this word "Behold". Fix your whole vision on Him.
  • "Behold my servant, whom I have chosen",

• that is the David view of it. David had been "chosen out of the people", chosen because of his moral worth. God says,
  • "I will make him firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth".

• We need to keep both views of Christ in our minds, to know Him as the Only-begotten, the only Son of the Father, but then as loved because of His moral excellency.

• "in whom my soul has found its delight".

• Has your soul ever been moved when you looked upon Jesus? God would love to see all our souls moved thus. In view of His moral worth and beauty, who would not worship the King? God says,
  • "My Beloved in whom my soul has found its delight".

• We do not often read of God's soul being moved, but it is moved in regard of Christ. And it is because He is the Beloved that He is the King. God says,
  • "I will put my Spirit upon him".

• That means that He is the King, He is the Anointed.
  • "And he shall shew forth judgment to the nations", Isaiah 42: 1.

• You make Him your King! God wants us to do what He has done. God says, "My Beloved" with a view to our saying 'Jesus is our Beloved'.

• God says, "I will put my Spirit upon him;" He is the Anointed, He is the Christ, He is the Head over all things in heaven and on earth, the only Man worthy to be so.

• And God would have us to view Him in just the same way. The Father wants us to be in communion with Himself in His thoughts concerning His Son. He has given us His Spirit that it might be so.

He has put His Spirit upon Him, but in the greatness of the Father's grace He has put His Spirit upon us too that we might be in communion with Him in His thoughts of the Son.

• In what is said about the Son here there is no suggestion – nor could there be – of publicity.
  • "He shall not strive or cry out". He was here to glorify God Himself.

  • "A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench", Isaiah 42: 3. How tenderly He regarded the work of God!

  • "Destroy not him with thy meat", the apostle says, "for whom Christ has died", Romans 14: 15.

• A weak brother with a conscience about meat or drink is just a smoking flax; but there is something that is burning.

• Observe the tender and graciously gentle way the Lord deals with all those in whom there is a work of God, however small; in great contrast – sad to say – to other things we know only too well.

• Oh! to take character as learning from God's Servant, His Beloved! Think of the tender way the Lord has ever dealt with His own! Whoso handles them roughly misrepresents his Master.

• Peter failed about seven times that we know of. There was great failure there; what a bruised reed Peter was! But then the Lord would never break a bruised reed. Man in the flesh is a broken reed.

• The Lord Jesus would deal so skilfully and gently with His own that they would never be broken. Peter having failed, the Lord turning round looked at him, and Peter went away and wept bitterly.

• But the Lord in resurrection grace appeared first to Peter, that very bruised reed, that it might not become a broken reed.

• Beloved brethren, that is how we need to deal with each other; we learn this from the Lord. So when He comes to His own He says, "Peace be unto you".
  • They had all forsaken Him and fled. But He says, "Peace be unto you".

• "Not as the world gives give I unto you". The world would not treat failing servants like that. The world would dismiss them in disgrace.

• But the Lord says, "Peace be unto you". How we love His voice! Peter might have thought, 'It is all right saying Peace to the others, but it cannot mean me'.

• He had thought he was the best brother, but he found he was the worst. But the Lord saw Peter privately, to make sure that when He said, "Peace be unto you" Peter should not feel that he was excluded.

Psalm 45

Now I pass on to Psalm 45. It is "An instruction". God would instruct each one of us as to making a song of the Beloved, and this song would help us.

• It is a Psalm; it is as the result of beholding God's King, that the pure heart and mind begins to make a song of the Beloved. It is a delight to God to hear songs of the Beloved going up.

• The heading of the psalm says. "Upon Shoshannim" which means Lilies. That is how saints become lilies, by being occupied with the Beloved.

• There is not much of the lily character about those who get occupied with the wrong man. They put on other features.

• But if you get occupied with God's Beloved, 'so spotless, pure in all His ways', you become like that. The lily suggests purity, chasteness, fragrance.

• Let us give our whole attention to this One whom God calls attention to, and we shall become lilies. It says in the Song of Songs,
  • "He feeds his flock among the lilies".

• What environment for the feeding of the flock, so that they are found nourished in features so pure and chaste, their affections bound up with and taking character from Himself!

• So in this song, which one might call an objective view, the heart wells forth with a good matter and ranges over the glories of the King, the Beloved.

• God's thought of a king is that he is the beloved of His people, and that he reigns in love, not by fear. He has the willing allegiance of the hearts of all His people.

• So this Psalm of the Beloved goes over the glories of the King,
  • His moral glories,

  • His glories as the warrior King who overthrows every enemy,

  • His glories on the throne and as wielding the sceptre, and

  • His glories as in His palace – it is a wonderful thing to be in the palace for that is where the queen is.

• And so God would help us tonight to make our composition concerning the King.

• If we do so we shall delight the heart of God, be a help to the brethren, and full of testimony to men, able to speak well of Christ among men.

• The Spirit would enable us to compose our song of the Beloved.

Song of Songs

But in the Song of Songs the spouse takes the matter to herself; it is not now the Beloved but my Beloved.

• What an amazing thing it is when the heart realizes that the One who is God's Beloved and the Beloved can be my Beloved; so that each one of us can say,
  • "My Beloved is mine" and then "and I am his".

• You may say, 'That is really the assembly speaking', and I do not deny that in the fulness of it, it is the assembly.

• But I believe we need to come individually also into the relationship of the wife, the spouse. It should be something that is real to us every day,
  • "He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit".

• According to Romans 7 we are to be married to Another, who has been raised up from among the dead; so that we are to be able to say individually,
  • "My Beloved is mine and I am his".

• This is the secret side of the intense affections which exist between the spouse and the Beloved.

• How our hearts enter feelingly into this passage as not only knowing, but possessing, Him as our own. "My Beloved is mine and I am his". What rapture!
  • "In his shadow have I rapture and sit down; and his fruit is sweet to my taste".

• Then she can describe him. She says,
  • "My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand".

• He is Chief to God, He is Chief to the Father. The Father has made Him Chief and so that is what He is to me,
  • "the chiefest among ten thousand".

  • "His bearing as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars".

• How choice a bearing and even under the greatest pressure!

• As when before Pilate He went out after being scourged – and a Roman scourging is a terrible thing – crowned with thorns, a purple robe upon Him, blows had been given Him on the face. He had been spat upon – He went forth,
  • "Jesus went forth without" it says "wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe".

• And Pilate was so greatly impressed with the bearing of Jesus –"his bearing as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars" – under the onslaught of the greatest provocation, that Pilate as it were involuntarily says,
  • "Behold the Man!"

• God had said, "Behold my servant", Pilate exclaims in wonder at the majesty and moral greatness with which Jesus went forth, "Behold the Man".

• In the midst of such truly unique and regal majesty, shining through all the mockery, Pilate became the more afraid on account of Him. He says finally, "Behold your King!" So we can well say,
  • "His bearing as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars; his mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, yea, this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem".

• The idea of friend is a bosom thought and, of course, where things are right no man can have a bosom friend to compare with his wife.

• If things are right she shares all his secrets. And that is fully so between Christ and His spouse.

• When we come to this point, what would not Christ trust us with! We become each His confidant. And of course the Church is that 'par excellence', the confidant of Christ.

• How wonderful then to be in the assembly, where all are lovers of the Lord Jesus!

Ephesians

Now I pass on for a moment to Ephesians. We have been talking today of home life, and here we have it. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has

• "marked us out beforehand for sonship through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he has taken us into favour in the Beloved".

• This is home life: "taken into favour in the Beloved". Our home is in His bosom, the bosom of the Father's affections, and the Father takes us into favour in the Beloved.

• That love which embraces Him embraces us in Him. The Father's love embraces all. Now that is home life.

• The Spirit is here that it might be a great reality to us. Let us go in for it! The Spirit will be entirely with us to help us in going in for this, to know our true, our eternal home, in the Father's presence,
  • consciously embraced with Jesus in the Father's love, taken into favour in the Beloved, in whom we have redemption through His blood.

• Nothing at all to hinder. Love has removed all hindrances and we have redemption through His blood; the blood of the Beloved, and the forgiveness of offences
  • "according to the riches of his grace which he has caused to abound towards us in all wisdom and intelligence, having made known to us the mystery of his will".

• Now this bears out what we have been saying today, that things begin with home life properly speaking, and work out from that.

• So that to those who know home life, and their place in divine affections and thus know that they have eternal life, living now in eternal relationships,
  • God causes the riches of His grace to abound towards us in all wisdom and intelligence making known to us the mystery of His will.

• That is to say that those who know these home conditions are trusted with divine secrets. It is again the bosom Idea.

• These divine secrets are comprised in the mystery of God's will, and He takes us into conditions of home life with the closest relations with the Son and with the Father;
  • and with our hearts thus bound up in divine love, we abiding in God and God in us, He delights to introduce us into the secrets of divine love, what divine love would tell us.

• And, you know, what love would tell us, only love can take in; only love can understand what love conceives.

• It does not call for a brilliant brain to understand it. In Ephesians 3 Paul prays that the Father would strengthen us with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that the Christ – the Beloved – might dwell, through faith, in our hearts, being rooted and founded in love.

• It does not even say founded in the letter of scripture, but founded in love – in order that we might be fully able to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of the Christ which surpasses knowledge. Ephesians 3.

• What is necessary to acquire divine intelligence is love. We are to be rooted and founded in love, in those affections proper to divine home life.

• And from that point you can understand everything, all that love planned.

• So it says the riches of God's grace have been caused by Him to abound towards us in all wisdom and intelligence, having made known to us the mystery of His will.

• We may not understand much about this mystery, if as yet we do not know much about home life.

• Maybe we do not yet know what it is to abide in love and to abide in God and God in us. It may be just a verse of scripture to us.

• But if we are abiding in God and God abiding in us by His Spirit, our heart is there; we dwell there.

• A man when asked as to where he lives states his home, not his business, address.

• So a Christian going about his daily work, fulfilling the responsibilities of this life, ought to be able to say in answer to the question where do you live?
  • 'Well, I dwell in God and God in me. I carry out my home duties and my business duties as coming out from where I really live'.

• What a wonderful thing it would be if that were true of us all!

• So, as I say, that is the way of divine intelligence, the more we know of this divine home life the more we shall be able to apprehend the whole scope of the mystery of God's will,
  • that which He is about to bring into display, a universe headed up in Christ.

• Let us then be rooted and founded in this inward side of things, with Christ as our Beloved, and we embraced with Him in the Father's love.

Of course, the first verse of Genesis goes back before that. We do not know when angels were created but they come into that first verse,

• "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth".

• Angels are created beings. When God founded the earth, in view of His purposes for man, the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

• Another thought about the acts of God is that they are always marked by perfect wisdom. It says in Proverbs, in chapter 8, where Wisdom is speaking,
  • "Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old";

• so that, whereas man may tell us that the creation happened by chance, and has moved on in an automatic kind of way; Scripture denies that.

• It tells us that God possessed wisdom "in the beginning of his way, before his works of old"; that means that everything was according to plan.

• Everything that God has done has been according to plan; and from Proverbs we learn that, from the very outset, wisdom's delights were with the sons of men;
  • that is, so far as this present creation is concerned, man was in view from the beginning, before the "works of old".

• And, of course, Colossians confirms that, because it says all things were created by Christ and for Christ. Primarily, Christ was the Man that was in view before the works began.

• Paul's doxologies enter into all this; in his doxology to God as Creator he says, the Creator is "blessed for ever". Who can say that now but a Christian?

• Speaking of God as Creator "who is blessed for ever" – not only because of His goodness expressed in creation; but as Christians we know the meaning of the creation;
  • "All things were created by him and for him".

• This world was not created as a stage for display of man's glory and power; men are using it that way at the moment.

• They strut feverishly across the world's stage for a little while for the display of themselves, but they soon perish for ever and their name with them.

• But the Christian knows that all things were created by Christ and for Christ – every mountain and hill and river and valley and island, all things visible and invisible, were created by Christ and for Him.

• And He is soon going to be manifested, the One who is "before all things", and we shall see then fully that all things created by Him were for Him.

Then we are told in Ephesians that God

• "created all things, in order that now to the principalities and authorities in the heavenlies might be made known through the assembly the all-various wisdom of God according to the purpose of the ages".

• If we know that now as a reason for the creation, it ought to put us all on our mettle, on the alert.

• Think of God creating "all things in order that now …" – we think of Christ filling all things in a future day, but what about now?

• You may say that creation is not serving any purpose now; but that is not so at all. Everything is working out according to God's will, the counsel of His will.
  • And so, "God … created all things, in order that now to the principalities and authorities in the heavenlies might be made known through the assembly the all-various wisdom of God".

• Wisdom is seen in creation; but God's all-various wisdom is seen in the assembly. And that being so, there is no need of regimentation and sameness in the assembly. God's great thought is unity in variety, "all-various wisdom".

• Even as to the gifts, there are distinctions of gifts, but the same Spirit, that is diversity in unity;
  • "Each according as he has received a gift, ministering it to one another, as good stewards of the various grace of God;", 1 Peter 4: 10.

• There is a great service for each believer which is inimitable and has its own uniqueness, and we are to minister to one another the various grace of God.

• There is great variety, and there are great things going on at the moment; creation is not in any way in vain at the moment;
  • all things are working together for good to those who love God; and all things are working together in relation to those who form the assembly,

  • so that even now the all-various wisdom of God might come into display before principalities and authorities in the heavenlies, even though the earthly authorities take no notice of it.

• All this should magnify the Creator in our minds and, as I say, help us as to the doxologies, because the fact that God possessed Wisdom in the beginning of His way enters into the doxologies in Romans.

• His purposes were conceived before the work began, His purpose as to Christ and the assembly.

• So Paul in those doxologies speaks of the Creator, and of Christ; and the riches of wisdom of God's judgments and ways in chapter 11 saying,
  • "For of him and through him and for him are all things: to him be glory for ever".

• Then at the end of the epistle he speaks of
  • "the only wise God … to whom be glory for ever".

• So that our hearts should be full of praise. The separate doxologies all merge into one another.

And then if we think of that great beginning, the Incarnation – Creation was in view of the incarnation – again there is a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God, and they say

• "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men", Luke 2: 14.

• It is wonderful to think that each step in God's ways has brought forth praise. Praise has not failed at all. The enemy would rob God of His praise but the praise has been there.

• What praise there was in the beginning of Luke – what utterances! Who of us here could compose such things as were composed in chapters 1 and 2 by persons filled with the Holy Spirit? All this was evoked by the incarnation.

• So at the time of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 –
  • "Every day … praising God and having favour with all the people".

• What praises were resounding in Jerusalem!

• We have often thought that probably there was a meeting place in every street; thousands were converted, and there would be praises to God from every street after the coming down of the Holy Spirit.

And all this is to culminate in the great Hallelujahs of Psalm 150. We read Psalm 150 in the light of Christianity;

• that is to say, not only in the light of the world to come – although we love the world to come and speak of it –

• but we read the Psalm too in the light of the notes of universal praise that will continue all through eternity.

• We know that what will give the lead to this universal ascription of praise will be the glory accruing to God from the assembly in Christ Jesus, the assembly giving the lead.

• In the assembly there will be ascribed glory to God in the highest, and the whole universe will become responsive in praise to God, every other family taking its cue as it were from the assembly. So the Psalm says,
  • "Hallelujah! Praise God in his sanctuary".

• We may regard the sanctuary as His own supreme dwelling-place, but, so far as regards the created sphere, His sanctuary in that eternal day will be the assembly.
  • "Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in the firmament of his power".

• In the expanse of God's power there will be the features of light and rule corresponding to the great light, the small light and the stars of Genesis chapter 1: seen in Christ and the assembly, the heavenly city, being placed there by divine power.
  • And "Praise him in his mighty acts; praise him according to the abundance of his greatness".

• What a time to look on to! Scripture speaks of the end; Paul says, "Then the end", 1 Corinthians 15: 24. What an end!

• God has been the Source of beginnings, but what an end! The end is universal praise; the Son delivering up the kingdom to Him who is God and Father;
  • the mediatorial kingdom is terminated with a view to God Himself being "all in all"; the Eternal King, the King of the ages, the One to whom we render "honour and eternal might" in praise.

• We look on in that sense to the eternal day, the King of the ages; it says "to him be honour and glory to the ages of ages", 1 Timothy 1: 17.

Now all this is to be known in the assembly now in a spiritual and anticipative way. We may touch the eternal day in our spirits now.

• You say, 'How can we do it?' Well, the verse in Revelation 21 shows how we do it.
  • "And he that sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new".

• That is the last of God's mighty acts to bring out these greatest notes of praise. And then He said to John,
  • "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to him that thirsts of the fountain of the water of life freely".

• That shows that we can touch it at the present time. The One on the throne made an announcement, "Behold I make all things new", and then He turned with a word in private to His bondman, John. As John records,
  • "He said to me, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to him that thirsts of the fountain of the water of life freely".

• That means that if your soul is thirsty for those eternal conditions, you will surely get your thirst met. The eternal conditions are presented to us in order that this soul-thirst may be met.

• This is not the thirst of the sinner in connection with his need, but the thirst to possess God in the fullest way that the creature can,
  • to have God in His fulness, "filled to all the fulness of God", reaching to the eternal scene.

• If the soul is athirst for that, the One on the throne says to such thirsty soul, that he will get what he is thirsting for.
  • "I will give to him that thirsts of the fountain of the water of life freely".

• You may be thirsting to touch eternity, in your spirit. God wants you there; He would help us to be there.
  • And unless we touch that in our spirits and touch it freely, God does not get fully His praise.

• We can be sure God will get it in the day when it will be actually said, "Behold, I make all things new",
  • but the Spirit is here to bring eternity into the present, to give us a foretaste of it now.

• So Paul could already say,
  • "The old things have passed away; behold all things have become new".

• They had already become new for Paul in the power of the Spirit. And it is only as that is so that God gets adequate praise at the present time.
  • So we touch finality. We not only touch beginnings but the end.

• That is the way to glory to God in the assembly in Christ Jesus now. And it is in some way an adequate return to God now and, as I say,
  • God desires it more than we could, and if we are thirsting for it we may reach it now in the power of the Spirit. God says,

  • "I will give to him that thirsts of the fountain of the water of life freely".

• We should go in for these things until we know them freely, really touch these eternal matters freely; and then God will be given such an outburst of praise at the present time that will give pleasure to His heart.

• There will be incense and a pure oblation offered to the great King in every place, Malachi 1: 11; and full hearts poured out to Him as anticipating the eternal day.

• We may all reach that in our spirits at the present time. If there is any hindrance it is with us.
  • Who can withstand the One on the throne, the One who has done all from the beginning, and who finally says, "Behold, I make all things new"? Who can stand against Him?

He says, "He that overcomes shall inherit these things and I will be to him God, and he shall be to me son".

• Let us go in for these things, dear brethren, not only for our sake, because there is no full satisfaction of heart for us unless we reach that, there will still be thirst of some kind unless we reach that
  • – but also for the heart of God.

• And then on Lord's Day morning the experience will be cumulative because we shall expand in the knowledge of God in His greatness and blessing,
  • and in the eternal day God Himself will be our eternal portion.

• We shall possess untold blessing – every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ – but we shall not be occupied with our blessings, but with the Blesser,
  • and in being occupied with the Blesser we really touch the greatest thoughts of all – God Himself being our portion.

• So there is an ever-expanding yield for God and all for His glory; there are 14 doxologies to God in the epistles and Revelation, and not one of them is a repetition, 14 notes of praise to God, each distinctive.

• What enlargement in and response in the gain of the knowledge of God! We read four of these doxologies today.
  • In fact if you count those relative to the Lord Jesus, there are 19 or 20; if you count also those to both God and Father, there are about 25 or 26. But to God as God there are 14.

• And you see how much we need to know God in each aspect of His glory, and the more we know Him as Father and know the intimacy of home relations the more we shall know how to glorify Him as God in the vast range of His glory as God.

• We must begin with knowing Him as Father, and the more we know of that the more we shall want to know His glory in every respect. And that is what is involved in Psalm 150.

• The assembly has a peculiar place as giving character to the praise of the universe. What a wonderful thing to be in that now, in the sphere where no failure of man can deprive God of His response!

• We need to go forward with God, to go forward in the knowledge of God. We may be detained. And so in chapter 22 the word is,
  • "Let him that does unrighteously do unrighteously still; and let the filthy make himself filthy still".

• Let us not be detained by these things. He says, "The time is near". There is no time to be detained, you cannot afford to waste a minute,
  • "The time is near. Let him that does unrighteously do unrighteously still".

• Do not get occupied with persons' unrighteousness; do not get occupied with the evil that has surged in at the present time, do not feed on it, there is not time; the time is near. Jesus is about to come.

• So that whatever folly and evil is being done by others even in Christ's name, he that is with God will pray for the deliverance of such; but you have not time to stop and look at it and be occupied with it; the word is
  • "Let him that does unrighteously do unrighteously still".

• That is to say, I am not going to be detained by it.
  • "And let the filthy make himself filthy still".

• I am sorry about them and sorry for them, but I have not time to stop, the time is near.
  • "And he that is holy, let him be sanctified still".

• If through grace there is holiness with us, let us get on with that.
  • "And let him that is righteous practise righteousness still".

• 'Our path is on with earnest haste', for the Lord is coming quickly. Think of the way He presents Himself
  • "Behold, I come quickly, and my reward with me to render to every one as his work shall be".

• We do not want to miss the reward.
  • "Hold fast what thou hast that no one take thy crown", Revelation 3: 11.

• He will "render to every one as his work shall be". We must hasten on, and, as to every work we have to do, let us get on with the work.

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end".

• Well, in the light of that what can you do but fall on your face? In the previous chapter God is speaking from His throne. He says,
  • "I am the Alpha and the Omega the beginning and the end".

• He had said, "Behold I make all things new"; but here it is Jesus saying it, the One who is coming quickly, He is saying the same words.

• He is God over all blessed for ever, this glorious Man, and He has a right to say the very same words as God Himself. He says
  • I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

• Do you know Jesus like that? If you think of Jesus like that, all you can do is to fall on your face, prostrate before Him.

• He is the One with whom you have to do. We all have to stand before His judgment-seat.
  • "My reward with me to render to every one as his work shall be".

• Wonderful thing, the mystery of the Person of Christ. In the eternal state the Son shall be placed in subjection that God may be all in all; and yet, nevertheless,
  • the Son is what He is: the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

• Although retaining Manhood in the eternal state, and although He takes a subject place
  • and His glories as Man – as the Christ for instance – recede so that God in His supreme greatness may be before all, that God may be all in all, yet He never ceases to be God Himself.

• Think of the King on the throne making a proclamation, "Behold, I make all things new", and then, seeing His beloved bondman there at His side,
  • He says to him "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end".

• John would thus know that if he were to distinguish Persons, it was really Jesus speaking then; but He is not speaking in the display of His own glory, in a sense, but speaking on behalf of God.
  • He is God and yet He is speaking on behalf of God.

• The One on the throne will for ever be Jesus. All that is to be seen of God will be seen in Him.
  • The glory of the Father shines in Him, in Him we know the Father; the Father is a separate Person, but we know the Father in the Son.

• As to the glory of God in His nature, the effulgence of God's glory, we see it in the Son. We also see God's majesty in the Son.

• Earlier it speaks of the great white throne and One sitting on it. We are not told who the Person is but it is God, and yet the One in whom God is seen is Jesus.
  • "In him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily", Colossians 2: 9.

• It is not His glories as man that are being displayed but what He is as the One in whom all the fulness dwells.

• And on that great white throne, it says, is One from whose face the earth and the heaven fled.

• Now we can look on the face of Jesus with unveiled face – that is the privilege of those who form the assembly. But think of that face in its majesty –
  • "from whose face the earth and the heaven fled, and place was not found for them".

• It is good to get some sense of the majesty of God in the One in whom is all the fulness of God, the One who says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega"
  • – all that can be expressed is seen alone in Him, all that can be expressed of God and His mind and will, all that can be expressed orally, all that can be expressed in writing; He is the Alpha and the Omega.

• All this makes us consider how great a matter was the Incarnation!

• And when we think of Jesus as the glorified Man in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily,
  • and who is the Alpha and the Omega the very expression of everything that is to be known of God,

  • and He is the First and the Last, none was before Him and none will come after Him,

  • and He is the Beginning and the End, the Source of everything;

  • He is the Beginning, before all and the Source of all other beginnings and He is the End.

  • To Him our worship will flow eternally.

• And He is the Beginning and the End for each one of us individually.

• We have to begin with God as creatures in repentance, and faith, and then as brought into the family, we learn the Father and the intimacy of family relationships;
  • but we end with God, extolling Him in the greatness of His eternal Being.

• He is the Beginning and the End, not only to each of us but, to the whole universe.

Now I read two scriptures that speak of Jesus as the Beginning but I do not propose to dwell at length on them as I have been led in the other direction;

• but it speaks of Him as the Beginning, the Firstborn from among the dead.

• We need to remember that new creation is based on resurrection.

• Everything connected with the old man is passed away; old things are passed away from God's sight, as Revelation 21 states,
  • "the former things have passed away".

• They had already passed away in Paul's mind and heart and they should have done in our minds and hearts. The old things have passed away.

• Our old man has been crucified, and is dead and buried, vicariously, and should never be revived.

• Jesus is the Beginning: there is to be nothing but what takes character from Him, from the risen Man from among the dead; all the old order left behind and gone in the grave.

• Think of Jesus as the Beginning of a system of life, life out of death. He is the Beginning of that vast scene in which God will rest, which is all in the power of His resurrection,
  • and where there is nothing but Christ; He gives character to everything.

• That is the Tabernacle system, every item in it speaks typically of Christ; there was nothing but Christ there.

• And thus it is true abstractly of the new man today, Christ formed in the saints; for speaking of the new man, it says Christ is everything and in all.

• If only we could be true to the death of Christ, recognising that our old man has been crucified and buried, we should have a sphere even now on earth where in actual fact Christ is everything and in all.

Then in the last passage which we read, from Revelation, the Lord says,

• "I am the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God".

• We can think of Him thus as the Source of it, for even as to the first creation all things began to be through Him. As to the new creation, it says
  • "that he might form" or create "the two in himself into one new man".

• Thus even as to new creation, Jesus is the great Operator, Creator, creating us in Himself into one new man.
  • So He is the Beginning as the Source, but then again He is the Beginning as the Pattern.

• Jesus has become the Pattern of the new order, new creation; all takes character from Him.

Well, may God so help us that our appreciation of Christ and our appreciation of God Himself may be increased; remembering though we cannot fully grasp it,

• that Christ is so great, that not only is it said of God as such that He is "the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end",

• but it can be said by that coming Saviour, "I come quickly … I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end".

• That is the One, of unspeakable greatness, who is our Saviour, our Lord, our Head. Let it sink into our hearts!

• Then He goes on to the language of love,
  • "I am the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning Star".

• This truth does not nullify the other. That One who is so near to us and loved by us is the bright and morning star and the Root and Offspring of David.

• In His own Person He is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, and He is the Beginning and the End.

• Let us then, because of our nearness to Him, bow down and worship before Him, and give Him that assembly response from our hearts that no other company but the assembly can give, for His Name's sake!