Episode Transcript
For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah shall no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I will not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains may depart, and the hills be removed; but my loving kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall my covenant of peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will set thy stones with fair colours and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy pinnacles of rubies, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy border of precious stones. And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children. In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression; for thou shalt not fear and from terror, for it shall not come near thee. Behold, they may gather together, but not by me. Whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall because of thee. Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the fire of coals and bringeth forth a weapon for his work. And I have created the waster to destroy. No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper. And every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.
Isaiah 54:9-17
Shall we just bow together in prayer? O Lord, we do want to thank Thee that we are found here in Thy presence and as we come to Thy word, Lord, Thou hast given us that marvelous promise that the spirit of truth will himself lead you into all truth. Now, Lord, we want to rely upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit, both, Lord, enabling me to speak Thy word and all of us to hear Thy word that, Lord, we may be guided into Thy way for us and into Thy truth for us. Lord, that light may shine into our hearts and upon our way. Lord, hear us as we give now this rest of the time we have together this morning into Thy hands. Come, Lord, and let Thy presence be known amongst us in Thy word and through Thy word we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
This passage was one of the passages that was given to us as a company as we entered into the new year. And I want to underline one particular phrase in it that you will find in verse eleven. “Behold, I will set thy stones in fair colors and lay thy foundations with sapphires.”
I remember that the Lord spoke to us prophetically a year ago and said that there would be some who would disappear from our midst during this year. And it has come to pass. When God speaks to us, it is very, very easy to have a half opened ear, somehow to think, well, it's not me, it's not me. But it's very often those who have only a half open ear - it is exactly for them, and the enemy is trying to close their ear to what God is trying to say.
One of the things that used to appall me, having a pagan background, in christian circles and still does, and I have always hoped that it would never come to pass in this company, is that the most amazing things can be ministered from the word of God, which, by and large, no one expects anything to happen over it. In other words, I have heard the most incredible words given about the church as the organic body of Christ in a structure that is so formal and so organized that there was no possibility of anything organic. And not a soul in the congregation ever expected that word to be anything but an ideal. No one took it seriously. None of the leaders ever brought it up for prayer and said, “God has spoken to us.”
We cannot possibly allow this thing just to be said as a kind of routine. God speaks to us every Sunday morning and every Sunday evening. It's part of our routine. And we get into the routine where we have itching ears. We listen, we listen, we listen, but we don't have itching feet. We have enlarged ears so that we hear and hear and hear and hear and hear and hear and hear.
But no one ever expects anything that God says. Now, the problem is this, that if someone stands up, especially in charismatic circles, and says, “and the Lord says”, there's at least a little more likelihood that people will listen.
But the ministry of the word is as essentially charismatic as anything else. When God says something, whoever He says it through, it has to be weighed, not put into deep freeze, not put into cold storage, not somehow as, “Well, now, be careful. Be careful. We mustn't move too fast.”
If God says something, the first thing we must always do is say, “Lord, what is it that you're saying?” How else can God speak to us? What is the tragedy of church history? That at the very beginning of every movement, God spoke, and people heard and prayed and found out what it was He was saying and did it. But within a matter of years, they'd got into a position where they listened and listened and no longer did anything. I remember some years ago when God gave me a word and I only say myself simply because I happen to have noted it down afterwards, just afterwards, about our way as a nation. God said to us in that word, “I will destroy all the paths that they have known and they will search for them, but they will not find them. Everything that people put their trust in for years and years will just disappear.” But then the Lord said to his own, “but I will be with you and I will lead you more safely through the mountainous wilderness than ever I led my people in days of old.”
Now that word that came to me was at a time before the ‘73 war, it was before many of the other things that have happened in the world since. At that time things were steady. For years I remember old Mister Sparks had said that there's going to come a time of shaking and change in the end. But the kind of change that was coming then was just a sort of a murmur. But my word, the changes that have come since. Now when God speaks, I remember it very well because at that time someone just came in with a hymn straight afterwards and it was never taken up in prayer, no one sought the Lord about it. I think it sunk into the consciousness of some. But you know, when God speaks it's important. How else can God direct us? What's the point of having prayer meetings and saying, “Lord, lead us, Lord, show us Thy way, Lord.” How does He do it? In a kind of nebulous airy fairy way? Up there somehow? No, it comes in all different ways. It comes in an intuitive awareness, but it also comes through the word.
Otherwise this ministry of the word is just a little bit of routine. We might as well dispense with it.
We're just being like the nations all around us. You must have a pulpit, must have a ministry or it wouldn't be a decent meeting. But to expect anything to come out of it, to expect consequence, to expect result? Now don't you think that's a real danger, that God can speak to us and we just rumble on? And then what happens is this: God has to continually bring us back a year later, two years later, three years later, four years later, and we say, “Well that's funny, the Lord spoke about that. Do you remember such and such a time…” That goes on for a while and then He no more speaks. There is a crystallization. You see in your personal life — I remember something that was given to me as advice when I was first saved. “If the Lord says anything to you, do it. He will never speak to you about another matter till you obey what He's talking to you about now.” Oh, how many times I was told that. And how glad I am that it burnt something into my heart, that if God said something to me, then I must listen to it and I must obey Him, whatever the cost, because there would be no further light, no further progress, no going on. I would crystallize. I would become static. I would turn into a pillar of salt.
It is part of our mentality so often to hear things that we do not expect ever to put into operation. We all like encouraging words. We all like the kinds of words that lift us, the kind of words that open a little window into the future and give us a kind of rosy feeling where, praise the Lord, we're on the right side. But a very large part of ministry, if I understand this book aright, is to direct us in the way now, to preserve us from evil, to keep us in the way of the Lord, to keep us moving on with God, keeping us alive unto God. And dear friends, listen to me in this matter. In the days that lie ahead, being alive will not be enough.
The enemy has up his sleeve all kinds of things which thus far have been restrained by God Himself. But as those things come into the atmosphere, you and I will need to be more than alive to God. We shall need to be empowered by God. Nothing else will carry us through to the completion of His purpose. Now, having said that, look at this wonderful word that was given to us on New Year's Eve as we move into a new year. The sister who mentioned it said that she wondered whether this was a personal word to someone here in the midst. I don't think so at all. It may well be, if I know the Lord, because when the Lord speaks, sometimes five or six people get blessed. I've known the Lord speak specifically sometimes in a gathering and found that for five or six people, it's completely been the word of the Lord. Only the Lord can do that kind of thing. And maybe there are those that it was specifically for, but I do believe it was for us as a company.
“I will set thy stones in fair colors and lay thy foundations with sapphires.”
What a wonderful promise! Now, you will notice straight away that this is all to do with building.
So it isn't some lovely little sentimental picture that I shall have an enormous amount of jewelry draped upon me. Sapphires, garnets, pearls, rubies. I like the word, the old word, ruby, much better than carbuncle. But you know, many people get the idea, oh, we're going to have all this on our hands, round our wrists, round the neck, embroidered on garments. No, it's to do with building. The Lord says, “I will set thy stones in fair colours and lay thy foundations with sapphires. I will make thy pinnacles, or windows, of rubies and thy gate of carbuncles.”
It's all to do with the house, it's all to do with the city. It's all to do with the building work of God. That's the first thing. And the second thing is to whom is God speaking? This is the one that God is speaking to, in verse one of Isaiah 54, “Sing, o barren, thou that didst not bear, break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord.” And then he goes on, verse four and five, “Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed, neither be thou confounded for thou shalt not be put to shame; for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth and shall not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more. For thy Maker is thy husband, the Lord of hosts is his name, and the Holy One of Israel is thy Redeemer. The God of the whole earth shall he be called.” This is Israel. This is the Israel of God. This is the redeemed community of God. This is the people of God. This is the wife of the Lamb. This is the church of the living God.
And the word comes right the way through to those who've really seen the purpose of God and seen something of their destiny in Him. “O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted. Behold, I will set thy stones in fair colours and lay thy foundations with sapphires.” It is marvelous to have this promise of the Lord granted to us.
“For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my loving kindness,” steadfast love, mercy, “shall not depart from thee, neither shall my covenant of peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.” Now, how do I understand this? Well, if I turn to Revelation 21, I find that the wife of the Lamb, the bride of the Lord Jesus, the new Jerusalem, the holy city. It speaks in verse 19 of chapter 21, the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all manner of precious stones. And when I read of those precious stones, I find they are fair colors and I find the whole harmony is glorious.
One layer after another after another after another. No wonder the Lord called it foundations.
One foundation after another underlying this whole city. The gates of a pearl each, the city itself of pure gold, transparent as crystal. My, so that's what the Lord is driving at. That's what the Lord is after. That lifts my whole christian experience, my christian life, onto another level, into a new dimension. And it means that we here, in this old house, we are not meeting here as some nice little social christian unit or one more chapel to all the others that are already in the area, one more christian meeting place. God brought us together simply as believers in this area, without any label, without any middle wall of partition, without any membership, so that we might encompass the whole people of God in this area. For what? That he might build us together as living stones into a spiritual house, to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God acceptable to Him through Jesus Christ.
If you are here just so that your little need can be met by meeting other people, I suggest to you that you're on the wrong level. When things become tough here, you'll flit off to some other group somewhere. But what does it matter? The way we judge anything is how much life there is, how much is going on there. So what's the point of being here? We might as well go somewhere else. There's more life somewhere else.
But if it is a question of God really doing a work in our lives and in our life together, then we've got to stay together on the basis of that, of the Lord Jesus and what he has done and what he is, and go through thick and thin. And if I read this chapter aright, there's a lot of thick and thin to go through.
First of all, there's barrenness. I am very interested, when I read the scripture, that all the greatest souls that were ever born have been born in unusual circumstances. In other words, every time God's purpose touched human life, it seemed as if the enemy made that womb barren. It doesn't matter whether it was an Isaac, it doesn't matter whether it was a Samuel. These are two of the great turning points in the history of God's dealings with human beings.
It's as if the Lord sort of said, now, I have a special purpose in this marriage, in this family, in this home. And the enemy said, right, then I will bring in all that speaks of death, all that speaks of barrenness. I will make them cold. I will make them inhibited. I will make them sterile. I will make them barren. I will make them fruitless. I will do everything in my power.
And you know, the Lord is so amazing that He lets the enemy do it. This is the message of this chapter. It's something that many christians, when they read, they subconsciously put it out of their mind. They won't have it. You see, the Lord says, for “I have created the waster to destroy.”
And He's just been talking about the waster. “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.” And He says that He is the one who creates the weapons, the very weapons of the enemy. Oh, some christians can't go that far. You've got to be a good Calvinist like me to believe that God could possibly create weapons and allow the enemy to have them. Or that he could create a waster to destroy. So that when the enemy says he wants to put his clammy hands of death on so and so, “Do so. Do so. I've got enough in them. Do your worst.” Like Job, when the enemy says, “Oh, let me get at Job. I'll have him in such a state.” And he did, due, unfortunately, to his believing friends.
But out of it came stone set in fair colours, foundations laid of sapphire, windows of rubies, gates of carbuncle, and all his children taught of the Lord. There's much here, in barrenness. So that's one thing. So if you've been praying for years that God will use you to save other people, and somehow, so far, in spite of all your concerns and all your endeavor and He hasn't, don't give up. The Lord has a word for you. “I will set thy stones in fair colours and lay thy foundations with sapphires.” This is the enemy's work in your life, making it impossible for you and only possible for God.
Or again, look at this word he speaks about in verse 14. “Thou shalt be far from oppression, for thou shalt not fear.” Now, I find this very interesting. That's a very strange way of putting it, isn't it? Thou shalt be far from oppression? For thou shalt not fear? I take it it means the oppression will be there, but you won't fear, so it won't do anything to you anymore because it doesn't mean anything, does it? Of course, if you're far from oppression, you won't fear. But it doesn’t say that. He says, for thou shalt not fear as if, because you don't fear, the oppression is far away.
You found such a place of safety, such a place of security, such a place of absolute solidity in the Lord that you don't fear anymore. And the enemy's work of oppressing you is just useless.
And terror. It shall not come near thee. They may gather together, but not by me. “Whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall because of thee.” Now, dear friend, weapons formed against you, tongues rising against you in judgment, people gathering together against you, oppression and terror. Barrenness. That's a formidable list. It really is a formidable list.
But oh, what is the Lord doing?
Very, very simply. If you turn to Isaiah 45 and verse two and three, “I will go before thee and make the rough places smooth. I will break in pieces the doors of brass and cut asunder the bars of iron. And I will give thee the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places that thou mayest know that it is I, the Lord, who called thee by thy name, even the God of Israel.”
What a wonderful word. What is it? He says, out of dark places will come treasure. Out of secret places, that is, places hidden deep in the earth, will come riches. How is precious stone formed? It is formed by tremendous heat and tremendous pressure in the dark places of the earth. “I will set thy stones in fair colors.” Dear people of God. It's not as if the Lord is saying, I will give you precious stones. He is saying something far more. “I will set thy stones in fair colours.
I will lay thy foundations with sapphires.” That's something more. But there is a price.
“O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted.” There are few believers that can stay too long not comforted. It is part of our natural makeup as human beings that if we're in the mill, we need some comfort, the milk of human kindness, as Shakespeare put it. But the Lord says of these out of whom these fair, these precious stones are coming, this wealth, this treasure, He says, “O thou afflicted, afflicted, tossed with tempest in the middle of the storm and not comforted. Behold, I will set thy stones in fair colours.” Well, then I begin to understand something. I begin to understand that there are times when in circumstances, in my situations, in our circumstances as the people of God, in our situations, there are weapons formed against us, tongues rising against us in judgment, people gathering together against, a kind of enemy activity going on.
Praise the Lord. All I can say is this. It will not stop the Lord from fulfilling His purpose. Not for one single moment. No, far more. Far, far more. The Lord will use those very things to perfect His work. There was no other way in which that kind of treasure could be formed in you. Now, what is this treasure? This treasure isn't you. It's not me. We know that, if we know ourselves at all, we know we're nothing. What is the treasure? The treasure is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Look again in Colossians 1:26-27 “even the mystery which hath been hid for ages and generations, but now hath it been manifested to his saints to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you the hope of glory.”
Now we know that the apostle Peter said in I Peter, chapter five, and I think it's verse ten that the God of all grace has called you unto his eternal glory in Christ Jesus. We know by reading the last chapters of the Bible in Revelation 21 and 22, that this city, this bride of the Lamb, this wife of the Lamb, this bride of Christ, when she comes down out of heaven, has the glory of God. And we are told that the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof, and the nation shall walk in its light. Well, we know that the end is glory, and glory is not having medals pinned on your chest.
This whole thought of glory is one of the hardest matters in the word of God to really explain. But I think it's best to explain it as the manifested presence of God. Fancy, so you were created for that. Let me just give you one word that will help you perhaps on this. When Jesus was transfigured on the mount, you remember, it was glory. It wasn't a spotlight of glory shone on Him, but something was turned on in Him. And His very, His skin, His body glistered. He was transfigured. And even His garments shone with a radiance. It wasn't a spotlight on Him, but something happening within Him. Now, the Lord Jesus reached the glory where Adam and all of us fell short.
We fell short through sin. Jesus succeeded where we all failed. And that's where He's bringing us. He's bringing us, bringing many sons unto glory. But it's not just an individual thing. It is something to do with our relationship to one another in the Lord, our being built together, our flowing together, our care for one another. Oh, the enemy will do anything and everything to alienate us, to divorce us, to distance us from one another by doubt, by suspicion, by insinuation, by just a sense of disillusionment or a sense of the dullness of everything or whatever else. You know, we get a kind of feeling, oh, I don't know, is it worth it? But it is worth it.
I imagine that if you were in a storm of such magnitude as the one described here; afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, I don't know whether you could take in too much.
I am not a good sailor, so I know very well that if I was caught in such a storm as this, I know exactly what I would be doing. I would have no time to think of anything or anybody, nothing at all. And I think when we're in a storm like this, that's very much how we are. We can't think of anything or anybody. The comfort hasn't come. The end hasn't come. We can't see land, we can't see the sky, we can only see the sea, and that is no pretty sight in a storm of that magnitude. But out of it comes something for God that can come in no other way.
I will set thy stones in fair colours and lay thy foundations with sapphire.
It is a tremendous thing to be part of the building of God's house, to be really in what God is doing. But, you know, we can start to find that as a kind of teaching, because in the end, all these other things we've talked about, at least I've talked about the last couple of weeks, they all have a vital relationship to this matter. If there is no light, building will cease. The thing will become a theory, an ideal. It's only when there's light shining in and through us, the whole illuminated, that we're kept awake, alive, alert, watchful, moving with God. And this matter of fire, dear friends, there'll be no building of the house of God when it becomes a theory. We shall just be a bunch of saved civil servants. We've got it up top. We know it by regulation, we know it by the book, by rote. But we cannot move with God.
What we need is light and fire, and not only light and fire, we need vision, we need an understanding. Get clear on this thing. Let's not contradict what God has shown us. Let's open our hearts more and more to what it is that He has given to us. Otherwise, within a few years, there will be precious little as far as the Lord is concerned. You do not think that the enemy, who has watched the progress of this company over some 26 years with horror, in spite of all our weakness and of all our failings and of all our mistakes and blunders and all the rest of it, you don't think that the enemy will just treat us kindly, do you? No.
He has a vested interest, apart from any light that God has given us, because of the prayer ministry. It has not been forgotten in hell. You cannot take national things and international things in the name of the Lord and shake things to pieces in prayer, as we have by the grace of God done, without hell making this whole company and work marked.
Is it not interesting that every real work of God which has crystallized into a denomination, those which were most greatly used of God, have sometimes become the scenes of the most incredibly erroneous doctrine? It is as if the enemy, hundreds of years later, is working because he's never forgotten what happened at the beginning. And so he's worked ceaselessly to bring it right round to a contradiction of that with which it began.
No, we have an enemy. Well, praise the Lord for his interest.That's all I can say. If he's still interested, praise the Lord for it. There's value somewhere. But let's pray that the value may be now and not the past. It may not just be that there's something that the enemy said, that was there then I'm going to destroy this group. I'm going to tie them up in knots. I'm going to do everything in my power to divide and to bring them down. No, there's only one answer for us. It's to go on with the Lord.
And the Lord is very gracious and I think it's very wonderful that at the beginning of a new year He should say, “My covenant of peace will I not remove, says the Lord that has mercy on thee. O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted. Behold, I will set thy stones in fair colours and lay thy foundations with sapphires. All thy windows shall be rubies and all thy gates of carbuncles and all thy children shall be taught of the Lord.” We're so concerned about the new generation, the young generation. Not only the children, but the young teenagers. But the promise of the Lord is this, that if we're faithful to Him, all our children shall be taught of the Lord.
And that's infinitely better than anything else because if they're taught of the Lord, it means we have an original work. They're not getting it second hand. They're taught of the Lord.
Well, praise Him. What a promise for us. We need it. May God do this in us all, young and old.
