Could we turn to the book of 1 Chronicles, chapter 29? We are going to read two portions today: first in 1 Chronicles, chapter 29.
And David the king said unto all the assembly, Solomon my son, whom alone God hath chosen, is yet young and tender, and the work is great: for the palace is not for man, but for the Lord God.
Now I have prepared with all my might for the house of my God: the gold for the things of gold, and the silver for the things of silver, and the brass for the things of brass, the iron for the things of iron, and wood for the things of wood; onyx stones, and stones to be set, stones for inlaid work, and of divers colours, and all manner of precious stones, and marble stones in abundance.
Moreover also, because I have set my affection on the house of my God, seeing that I have a treasure of mine own of gold and silver, I give it unto the house of my God, over and above all that I have prepared for the holy house.
Even three thousand talents of gold, of the gold of Ophir, and seven thousand talents of refined silver, wherewith to overlay the walls of the houses: of gold for the things of gold, and of silver for the things of silver, and for all manner of work to be made by the hands of craftsmen. Who then offereth willingly to consecrate himself this day unto the Lord?
Then the princes of the fathers’ houses, and the princes of the tribes of Israel, and the captains of thousands and of hundreds, with the rulers over the king’s work, offered willingly. And they gave for the service of the house of God of gold five thousand talents and ten thousand darics, and of silver ten thousand talents, and of brass eighteen thousand talents, and of iron a hundred thousand talents. And they with whom precious stones were found gave them to the treasure of the house of the Lord, under the hand of Jehiel the Gershonite.
Then the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly, because with a perfect heart they offered willingly to the Lord: David the king also rejoiced with great joy.
And then in 2 Chronicles, chapter 1.
And Solomon the son of David was strengthened in his kingdom, and the Lord his God was with him, and magnified him exceedingly.
And Solomon spake unto all Israel, to the captains of thousands and of hundreds, and to the judges, and to every prince in all Israel, the heads of the fathers’ houses. So Solomon, and all the assembly with him, went to the high place that was at Gibeon; for there was the tent of meeting of God, which Moses the servant of the Lord had made in the wilderness.
But the ark of God had David brought up from Kiriath-jearim to the place that David had prepared for it: for he had pitched a tent for it at Jerusalem. Moreover the brazen altar, that Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, had made, was there before the tabernacle of the Lord: and Solomon and the assembly sought unto it.
And Solomon went up thither to the brazen altar before the Lord, which was at the tent of meeting, and offered a thousand burnt offerings upon it. In that night did God appear unto Solomon, and said unto him, Ask what I shall give thee.
And Solomon said unto God, Thou hast showed great lovingkindness unto David my father, and hast made me king in his stead. Now, O Lord God, let Thy promise unto David my father be established: for Thou hast made me king over a people like the dust of the earth in multitude. Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people: for who can judge this Thy people, that is so great?
And God said to Solomon, Because this was in thine heart, and thou hast not asked riches, wealth, or honour, nor the life of them that hate thee, neither yet hast asked long life; but hast asked wisdom and knowledge for thyself, that thou mayest judge My people, over whom I have made thee king: wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee; and I will give thee riches, and wealth, and honour, such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee, neither shall there any after thee have the like.
So Solomon came from the high place that was at Gibeon, from before the tent of meeting, unto Jerusalem; and he reigned over Israel.
Just a word of prayer.
O Lord, how glad we are when we turn to Thy Word, that Thou hast Thyself promised that, Lord, the Holy Spirit will make this Book live to us. We have already told Thee, Lord, we want to meet with Thee. We want, Lord, to receive from Thee.
We do not want this time, Lord, just to be a time of academic intake or learning. Lord, we want it to be a time when we meet with Thyself, when there is an unveiling of Thyself to our hearts, when we receive of Thee.
And Lord, we are very glad that Thou hast always perfected Thy strength in weakness, and Thou seest our weakness, both speaking and hearing. O Lord, we pray that we may know the perfection of Thy strength and power in our midst, making known unto us the things of God, making them so real to us, Lord, that they come into us and become flesh and blood.
O Father, hear us. We thank Thee for that river of Thine which flows from the altar. We have no other plea, Lord, than that the Lord Jesus died for us, and that in Him we have also died and have been made to walk in newness of life by Him.
O Father, let that river of life flow out from the altar this day, and let it touch every single one of us, we ask, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Now, I will not go over what we said last night again this morning. If there are any who were not with us yesterday evening, I can only suggest that you listen to the tape, because I want to go on and say just a little more about this book of Chronicles and what it has to teach us.
Suffice it to say that this book of Chronicles is an interpretation, indeed, of the whole Old Testament. There are a number of books like that. Deuteronomy is an interpretation of the first four books of the Bible. John is an interpretation of the first three Gospels in the New Testament.
Chronicles goes right behind all history, from Adam to the coming back from Babylon. Indeed, you could say from Adam to the coming of the Lord Jesus. It tells us what is the secret of God’s purpose. What is the thing behind everything?
If you carefully go through Chronicles, reading it either in a very modern colloquial version or in the older version, you will discover that every single reign of every king of Judah is judged by his attitude to the house of God.
Now, we know from archaeology that some of these kings were great kings, and you would not learn that from the Bible. Some are given only a few verses and dismissed, but in fact they were very great kings, with times of great prosperity outwardly, great building programmes, and so on. But Scripture bypasses them and overlooks them all because of their attitude to the house of the Lord.
In other words, if you and I had been there, we would have written history differently. We would have said, “Now, this man is a big man. This man is a really big name. He has a great organisation. He has everything at his fingertips.”
But God says, “Oh, no. He is nothing. That is all just transient. That just belongs to time. It was all show. It was all the flesh. It was all human resources. That does not go into the city of God.”
But this king, who had a difficult time, did something as far as the house of God was concerned. So we have quite a lot about him. We have quite a lot about Hezekiah, Josiah, Jehoshaphat, and other such kings.
Therefore, we have seen that the key to these two books of Chronicles is the house of God: the dwelling place, a home for God. This is the thing that God has been after all down through the ages. It lies behind history; it lies behind the creation of man; it lies behind God’s redeeming purpose, His saving purpose.
He has saved you with a very great objective in view: not just that you might be forgiven, not just that you may be filled with the Spirit, but that you might be built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit. You may become the home of God for all eternity: the place where God is at home, the place where God reveals Himself, the place where God manifests Himself, the place from which God rules and reigns, the place where all the beauty of the character of the Lord God is to be forever expressed.
That is God’s plan for you. That is a high calling. That is no small, mean thing. That is something tremendous. And when you think that we are such worthless, insignificant, sinful creatures, how much more amazing is the grace of God!
How amazing is the grace of God, not only to forgive us and justify us, to declare that we are righteous, but to bring us into this relationship with Himself for all eternity.
There are a number of things I would like just to underline this morning from these two books of Chronicles in general. The first thing I would like to underline today is the sovereign purpose and power of God behind the building.
In other words, God’s sovereignty, His almightiness, His omnipotence, His infinite power, was thrown behind this plan to get this house of God built. That is why, when we look in this book of Chronicles, we find that behind all history there is a flow, a mighty flow, of God’s power and might.
Now, the pedigrees—those genealogies in the first ten chapters of Chronicles, which many people find so terribly boring—are just an illustration of this. You see, we have all kinds of people, if you read them carefully, and lots of them just go out of the purpose of God. They had a relationship with God, but as far as the purpose of God goes, they go out.
Marxists speak about the inexorable march of human history. They speak about the onward march of some impersonal thing called history. But we believers have something far more wonderful. There is flowing from God sovereign power.
God had a purpose which He is not going to be frustrated over. Come wind, come weather; if all hell comes out against God, He is not going to be frustrated in this purpose. He has had this in His heart from the beginning. What was it? To provide a bride, if you like, for His Son; to produce a home for Himself in the Spirit.
Satan seemed to come in and destroy that, to frustrate that. He has not. He has only made the grace of God the more wonderful, because God sent His own Son—the very One for whom we were destined in the beginning. He sent Him to lay down His life to bring us back to Himself.
So God has not been frustrated. God, through His Son, has given us a salvation by which His original purpose for us can be fulfilled. Do you get that? That is marvellous, is it not? It is absolutely wonderful.
It gives us a tremendous panorama of our salvation. It makes us realise that salvation was not just something isolated. Behind it lies this inexorable onward purpose of the sovereignty of God. He is not going to be frustrated.
I cannot understand these people who tell me that somehow or other the church is in ruins, that it is all hopeless, all fragmented, all divided, all in pieces, and now all we have to do is go on personally with the Lord.
What did the Lord Jesus say in Matthew 16:18?
Upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
And just to make absolutely sure that no one could misunderstand our Lord, He said, “And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” Who are these Christians who tell us that the gates of hell have prevailed against Him? What do they mean? Are you going to side with the devil in this matter?
There are plenty of Christians who are just propaganda machines for the devil: “It cannot be done. It cannot be done. It is all mystical, mystical, idealistic talk—about our being built together, about our really coming together, really knowing the oneness of the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing something of what it is to go on with Him and to grow up into Him as the Head.”
“Oh,” they say, “that is all mystical. Be careful of it—mystical, idealistic stuff.”
The Lord Jesus said, “Thou art Peter.” There was no one shakier than Peter. There was no one more impetuous and impulsive than Peter. He was always putting his foot in it, as we say in Ireland. He was always opening his mouth and putting his foot in it.
The fact of the matter is, with Peter, he was always somehow in the front. He had not, at that time, the stability, the power, and the roots to go through. It was more on the surface. It was the flesh. It was his own resources. Peter is just like us all.
If the Lord had said, “Thou art John; upon this rock I will build,” we would have understood a lot more. We would have said, “Ah, that cuts a lot out for us. We do not have that devotion to the Lord. We do not have that intimate leaning upon His breast that he had.”
But the Lord took Peter. Peter, after all, is like us all. He loved his Lord, but he said things quickly and thought about them afterwards. He was always in the front line, always taking the lead. It was not just ambition; it was that he really loved his Lord and wanted to be wholly with his Lord.
How lovely that the Lord said, “Thou art Peter”—a little stone, a fragment of the rock—“and upon this rock,” petra, the great mass, “I will build My church.”
And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
What does Chronicles teach us? It teaches us simply this, if we take Ezra and Nehemiah in with it too: even in spite of all, God’s purpose is going to be fulfilled. Even if the people of God are sent into Babylon and dispersed into every part of the earth, yet still the purpose of God will be fulfilled.
If only in a handful—if God has to raise up children from the stones—He will do it. Do not think that God is perplexed. He is not perplexed at all.
My dear child of God, if the Lord cannot get His way with us, He will get it with someone else. He will raise up, if it needs be, a new generation altogether that has nothing to do with us. Why, He might even do something in Jewish circles altogether apart from Christendom that will finally give Him His purpose and plan in the end. He is going to do it.
Jesus, our Lord Jesus, has committed Himself. He said:
Upon this rock I will build My church;
And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
Oh, dear child of God, I often hear people saying, “I wish I knew the will of God for me. I wish I knew the will of God for me.” Listen: you will always be in a mess when you take it in a self-centred way. “What is the will of God for me? What should I do? What should my career be? Where should I live? How should I go?”
Listen, first of all, turn the whole thing the other way round. Invert the order. First get hold of what is God’s will. What is God’s will? Then a whole lot of things will fall into place.
Once you begin to see what God’s will is, once you begin to see what His will is for His people, what His will is behind all history, this will give you a clarity that you have never had before in your life. Do you understand?
We are so self-centred, you see. We believe the Lord revolves around us. “He is there for me. He is there for me. The Son of God is for me, just to clear a way for me to live in this life. Salvation, of course, is for me. Everything is for me. I am the centre of the world. The Lord is there, and the Father is there, and everyone else is there. The Holy Spirit is even there for me. I am the centre of it all.”
Get rid of that idea. It is the Lord who is the centre, and you are revolving around Him. Come over onto the other side. Begin to see it like that.
Now, there are lots of Scriptures about this. It says, for instance, in Ephesians 1:9-10:
Making known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him, unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ.
Here we have what the will of God is. Here is the mystery of His will, and He has made it known to us. What is this mystery of His will? To sum up all things in Christ.
Christ—everything. Everything and in everyone. Christ, all and in all. This is the purpose of God.
So we do know that the will of God for us is always along the line that I must decrease, He must increase. There must be more and more of Him. That is one way we can always find out whether it is the will of God for us or not. Does it glorify me? Does it satisfy me only? Or is it really the Lord who is getting something out of this?
Again, I think of Colossians 1:9-10:
For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray and make request for you, that ye may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.
Oh, dear child of God, there is nothing more wonderful than to be in the centre of the will of God. I do not just mean for you personally in detail, but I mean to be in the centre of God’s will concerning this home for Himself in the Spirit.
Listen, when you get there, surely everything else will start to fall into place. Because there you are right in the centre of the main tide of the purpose of God through all history.
I find it the most thrilling thing in the world. I cannot understand Christians who get all tied up and laid down. When you think of it, look at me. I am just a little tiny human being, a little bit of clay, flesh and blood—a dot amongst the billions and billions of human beings not only who are alive but who have ever lived.
And yet little me, by the grace of God, can get right into the centre of the flow of the purpose of God from eternity to eternity. I can feel a great current that takes me forward.
You know, once when we flew from San Francisco home to London, we flew in a 707. The pilot told us that this was one of the first times they had begun that flight, and it was about the furthest that the 707 could do without coming down to refuel.
They said, “Do you know why we can do this? We can do this because we get into the slipstream. We get into a flow of warm air which rushes up to the Arctic. So we get up into it, and the flow of air carries us right the way up; then we put the engines full blast on and come down to London.”
I am not a technical person, so those of you who are, forgive me if I put it crudely. But the fact of the matter is this: that little plane got into a mighty current of air, and that current of air just swept it along.
You, child of God, can get into not a current of air, but into the current of the Spirit of God. You can get into the flow of the divine life of God. You can get into the sovereign power and might of God Himself, which will carry you through, because God has a great purpose. You will be in it.
Do you remember how Zechariah says in Zechariah 4, when he sees that whole vision of the olive trees and the lampstand all of gold, and he asks, “What is it all about?” The angel said to him:
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, Grace, grace unto it.
Now, some of you who have had real charismatic experience may say, “Well surely we do not have grace; we have glory.” Grace—glory. But no: there will be such difficulties, such problems, that will make the whole thing impossible by human standards, only by the Spirit through faith.
And when it is done, the only thing we shall be able to cry is, “Grace!” The grace of God has completed the work. He laid the foundation, He developed the building, He brought the headstone, which is the Messiah, into place. It is all His work.
Oh, how wonderful it is to be in this building. I do not care where I am. I do not care whether I am a little stone somewhere in some corner, buried out of sight, or whether I am a bigger stone somewhere else, or whether I am in an arch, or where I am, as long as I am in the building.
All I want is to be somewhere sandwiched between the foundation and the topstone. That is all. When I am between the foundation and the topstone, glory be to God, I am in the purpose of God. I am at the heart of the yearning of God’s heart from eternity to eternity.
I am right where He wants me to be. The salvation of His Son is not just to save me or make me a pretty little object. It is to bring me into something which is going to be forever and ever and ever the instrument of the purposes of God.
How wonderful it is, dear child of God: you have such a high calling. Why drop out? Why drop out?
That brings me to this point. These pedigrees, these genealogies in the first ten chapters, are all about people who dropped out. How many people were really connected with the purpose of God, and then went out.
Take Adam: he went right out. Take his son Cain: he went right out. Or Saul, and many others that are listed there for you.
There are extraordinary little comments inserted in these pedigrees. You look and it says of some person that he trusted the Lord and did valiantly. Why is that put in a pedigree? Because it meant something for the Lord. That man had great problems, and we do not even know who he is, but there it is: he trusted the Lord and did valiantly.
A lot of people just went out. It says of Saul that he went out because he inquired of a medium. He compromised. He touched another world, the enemy of God, and he went out.
Oh, do not drop out. There are plenty of dropouts in this world, but there are plenty of spiritual dropouts. They become Christian cynics. They get so disillusioned and disappointed by everything and everybody that they just become cynics. They become critics. They become Christian agnostics.
Outwardly, they believe everything; inwardly, they believe nothing. Oh, there are plenty of them, plenty of them. They just do not really believe anything, and yet they are frightened outwardly to say that they do not believe.
God preserve us from being dropouts. May we be right in the purpose of God, right through to the end.
Now that is one thing. The second thing I want to say that we learn about this matter is the need for deep and costly preparation. If this house of God is going to be built, there is a need for deep and costly preparation.
We have it all here in the book of Chronicles. One thing we have in 1 Chronicles 11:4-9 is that David had to take Jerusalem. There could be no building of this house of God until Jerusalem itself was taken, and Jerusalem was a Jebusite city.
Now, the Lord had said, “Every place where the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you.” He had said that to Moses. He had said it to Joshua.
Wherever they put the soles of their feet down and said, “This is the Lord’s,” it happened. Through faith, then, there was a real preparation.
Dear child of God, if you want to be in this building, if you want to be built together for a home of God in the Spirit, if you want to contribute something towards its building, let me tell you that it will ever and only be by grace through faith. By grace through faith—never any other way.
It was all grace. God said, “I will send the angel of My presence before you, and he will be like a hornet. He will drive out all these enemies, and you shall possess the land.” It was grace. But then comes your responsibility: faith.
“Every place where the sole of your foot treads upon, that will I give you.” You have got to put the soles of your feet somewhere, and that is what they did.
You remember the river Jordan? It was overflowing at full harvest tide. I always think the Lord has humour. If only He had allowed it to be in the dry season, where the river was a little smaller, they could have come down and said, “Well, we cannot get across this, but it does not look too bad. Maybe it will dry up a bit more and we will be able to wade across somehow or other.”
But no, it was full harvest time. Do you not think that as those priests put the ark of the covenant down to the water, the devil was whispering in their ears, “You are going to look a couple of fools in the sight of these people. All you are going to do is get your feet wet. You are going to stand in the water and nothing is going to happen.”
And do you not think one of them might have thought, “Now, Lord, give us a sign. Give us a sign. As we move down, let the water go back just a little. Then we will know You are with us, Lord.”
I know many people like that. They say, “Lord, I cannot take this step of faith until You just give me a sign, until the water goes back a little.” But if I know the Lord, He lets the water come out to meet you.
I bet you as those priests came, a great tidal wave came out, as much as to say, “Ha, ha, ha! You are not going to get across.” And the priests of the Lord just put their feet down into the water, through the water, onto the riverbed. The instant the soles of their feet touched the riverbed, the water stopped.
Of course, there are people who always think that the thing they must do is to do it quickly. They say, “Now then, you put the soles of your feet down. You say, ‘Lord, I take this.’ Now come on—do it, do it.”
And if it does not happen instantly, they say, “Oh, the Lord is not with us. What is wrong? There must be sin in the camp or something else.” But when they came to Jericho, they had to go round once a day for six days, and on the seventh day, seven times.
The masterly thing of the Lord was that there was not a single bit of conversation. Have you ever found that when you take a step in faith, conversation is not always a good thing? People come and they talk and say, “Well, do you really think? Oh, I wonder. I am not sure.”
Conversation is not a good thing. What do you think those people in Jericho thought as they looked over the walls and saw this great crowd of people going round? Did they say, “What are they—tourists from Egypt?”
One old divine once said there were only two ways of looking at those walls. One was, “These walls will never come down.” The other was, “What a lot of dust there will be when these walls come down.” There are only two ways of looking at the wall.
But on the seventh day, on the seventh time, when the trumpet of the Lord blew and they shouted with a great shout, the walls fell flat. By grace through faith.
Those children of God were judged all the way through by what they took and what they did not take. Some places they found chariots of iron and said, “It is too hard.” What a tragedy! They only needed to use the soles of their feet. They did not have to battle with chariots of iron. They just had to put their feet down on that valley and say, “Chariots or no chariots, this is the Lord’s valley.”
And it would have been the Lord’s valley, but they said, “There are chariots about.” There are many Christians who, when they come to something that may mean great deliverance and great victory, take one look at those rumbling chariots, like the tanks of our day, and say, “No, no, no. This is no good. This is a bit too much.”
But you only need to use the soles of your feet. When they came to Jerusalem, they said, “Jerusalem? Impossible.” And for four hundred years Jerusalem remained a Jebusite city, until David came. David used the soles of his feet, and when David used the soles of his feet, Jerusalem was taken and Jerusalem became Jerusalem.
Now, if you and I are going to know anything about building, the first thing that has to be taken is not just the land. We have to take Jerusalem. Do you understand that? It is not enough that you enter into the fullness of grace. You have got to take a particular place in the land which the enemy will do every single thing to stop you from taking.
What is that? It is the purpose of God to have a home for Himself in the Spirit. In other words, it is our being built together in a particular place at a particular time. You have got to take it.
If you do not take Jerusalem, you may know something of the fullness of God, but you will not be in the central stream of the purpose of God.
Then again, may I say something else about this need for deep and costly preparation? All this gold, this silver, this brass, this iron, these precious stones, this wood—it was nearly all the spoils of victories. The spoils of victories.
Now, dear child of God, however small your victory is, it yields spoil. Did you know that? You have got a big problem on. I do not know what it is. Maybe it is a problem about worldliness, and you have had such a battle over this thing.
You loved this thing. It was the very essence of your life before you were saved. You have got saved, and now suddenly you feel uncomfortable. It is not that other people have said anything to you about it, but the Holy Spirit has been dealing with you about that particular issue.
For you, it is huge. For others, it is nothing. But for you, it is huge. You say, “Well, what does it matter? What does it matter if I do get through? Who is going to gain from this?”
I tell you, you get through, and the spoil is for the house of the Lord. There is gold that comes into your life that can come no other way—the gold of His nature. There is silver that comes into your life—something more of His redeeming work. There is brass that comes into your life—something of His power. Iron comes in. All these things come into your life through victories.
Do you get it? If you turn to 1 Chronicles 20:2, just as an example, the last part of the verse reads:
And he brought forth the spoil of the city, exceeding much.
Then 1 Chronicles 26:26-27:
This Shelomoth and his brethren were over all the treasures of the dedicated things, which David the king, and the heads of the fathers’ houses, the captains over thousands and hundreds, and the captains of the host, had dedicated. Out of the spoil won in battles did they dedicate to repair the house of the Lord.
Out of the spoil of battle. Oh, there is such a battle for life if you are a child of God. If you know anything of fellowship with one another in a growing way, what a battle there is. It is as if all hell is out to fragment us, divide us, somehow trip us up, and ensnare us.
But every time we know a victory of the Lord by faith through grace, then there is spoil for the house of the Lord. There is gold, there is silver, there is brass, there is iron, there are precious stones—all these qualities of Christ.
How do they come into our lives? They come at great cost. They do not just come while you sit there and do nothing. Some people feel that until they are spiritual, they can do nothing. Dear child of God, you will sit there till kingdom come and never be one whit more spiritual.
If you say, “I cannot take part. I could never praise the Lord in a company like that. I could never open my mouth and pray—not until I am more spiritual,” dear, dear one, you will never be more spiritual until you open your mouth and praise the Lord in the midst of the people of God.
You will never, never know anything more of the Lord until you take a step in faith. Behind it all lies pride. Some of us will not speak another language until we are perfect, so we never learn it.
If you say, “I am not going to make a fool of myself,” you will never get anywhere. You will never walk unless you learn at all. When you learn, you stumble and you pick yourself up and go on. You fall and you get up; after a while you start getting up yourself. You go, and then you fall, and you are walking.
So it is here in this matter. We have got to learn these deep lessons. We have to gain victories in these things. They may seem very small, but victory in small issues has very big things in it. Never forget that.
The devil will tell you, “It is something very small. It does not mean anything to you.” No, dear child of God, that thing may be very small in itself, but once you have settled it, you will find a gateway opens to a huge universe of spiritual wealth, and it will all be yours increasingly.
Yes, it is the spoils of victory over enemies of God that go into the building of this house.
Then again, I want to say that there is very costly sacrifice. These things do not just come. If you read in 1 Chronicles 22:14, David says:
Now, behold, in my affliction I have prepared for the house of the Lord.
“In my affliction.” David knew a great deal about affliction. There was much in his life that can only be described as affliction: years and years and years of being hounded in the wilderness by Saul.
He could have killed Saul so often—two or three times—but he refused to do so because he would not allow the arm of flesh to help the work of God. That meant more affliction for him.
There are times when the Lord tries us. He says, “You can polish this thing right off. Just do it now. If you just take this action, you will finish it and you will be on the way.” But to do that would be to introduce another level, another realm, into the work of God: the realm of the flesh.
When you say no, you introduce yourself to much more affliction. But there is sacrifice in this whole matter. Do you really think the gold comes easily?
Jesus said to the church of Laodicea, which thought it was so rich and great and powerful and needed nothing:
I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich.
Why did He say, “I counsel thee to buy of Me”? How can you buy something which is given you by grace? Well, I believe the cost is experience. You do not get gold apart from experience. The gold comes to you by grace, but experience is the price.
Sometimes you must go into death for, by the grace of God, the gold to be given to you. There are many ways in which we grow.
Take 2 Corinthians 4. Let us read verse 7 first:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves.
Then he speaks of the perplexity:
We are pressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not unto despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.
Here is an experience. We say, “A Christian? Perplexed? No Christian ought to be perplexed. Indeed, an apostle perplexed? We do not want apostles to be perplexed. We want apostles to be clear. We want leaders to be clear.”
Yet Paul says, “Perplexed, but not unto despair.” There is some affliction there. It does not mean that he is not clear about the Lord. He may be very, very clear about the Lord, the ways of the Lord, and the purpose of the Lord, yet be greatly perplexed at times, and the Lord allows it.
Why? Because there is treasure in that vessel, and the only way to get the treasure out is to break the vessel. The only way you can break the vessel is by being pressed on every side, perplexed, pursued, smitten down, bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus.
Dear child of God, in Christ there is treasure in you—unsearchable riches of Christ. But how do you get them out? How do you get them contributed?
For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.
Light affliction, employed by God, to bring about and produce an eternal weight of glory.
There is a need for deep and costly preparation if you and I would be part of this building. One other thing in this matter: there is an unswerving purpose of heart.
No man or woman will ever be prepared to pay the price of being in this building work of God unless they have an unswerving purpose. Put it another way: a single eye for the Lord.
If you are double-minded, if there are two ways about you, you will go out. You will be a dropout. Get that double-mindedness dealt with, if you have it. Get that serving of God and an idol dealt with. It is time to do it. It will destroy you. It will totally destroy you. You will be a dropout as far as the purpose of God goes.
You remember that in rabbinical tradition Psalm 23 is given to David when he was a shepherd lad. How amazing that a boy could write that Psalm, I think, at his age:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
But the most remarkable thing is:
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
What is this little lad talking about? Where did he get this from? “The house of the Lord”? Where was the house of the Lord? There was no house of the Lord. What is this boy talking about? “I will dwell in the house of the Lord.” He is a shepherd boy. He knows all about killing bears and lions and keeping the flock from foes. What does he know about the house of God?
The rabbis used to say that Jesse, the father of David, was by trade a weaver of the veil of the tabernacle. If that is true, and I have often thought about it, it may be that that dear old father of David used to say, “It is about time we had a real place for the Lord. That old tent has served its purpose.”
I do not know, but somewhere in the youth of David, by the Spirit of God, he came to see the house. Later on, he was to say in Psalm 27:
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.
What a purpose this man had—unswerving. He would not be diverted one way or the other. He had many failures and many faults, but David had an unswerving purpose, and by the grace of God David was not a dropout. He was within the purpose of God right through to the end.
That is why that lovely Psalm 132 was written about David:
Lord, remember for David all his affliction;
How he sware unto the Lord,
And vowed unto the Mighty One of Jacob:
Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house,
Nor go up into my bed;
I will not give sleep to mine eyes,
Or slumber to mine eyelids;
Until I find out a place for the Lord,
A tabernacle for the Mighty One of Jacob.
There is purpose.
There are three other things I only want to touch on, but they are all important. If you turn to 2 Chronicles 1, you will see that the tabernacle and the ark had parted.
Second Chronicles 1:3 tells us that the tent of meeting of God was at Gibeon, and the ark of the Lord was in Jerusalem. They had parted.
Now, the ark of the Lord stands for the presence of the Lord—the committed presence of the Lord. The presence of God is everywhere, but the ark symbolises the committed presence of the Lord.
Of course, we see it most beautifully in our Lord Jesus, in whom there is both Aaron’s rod, the golden pot of manna—He is the Bread of Life—and the unbroken law, the law fulfilled. Of course, He is also the mercy seat, but that is by the way.
The fact is that this is a symbol of the committed presence of 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.
Somehow, the presence of the Lord and the tent of meeting—which is a symbol of us, if you like, in Christ, a symbol of our being in Him and together with Him—had parted.
All through church history, the ark of the Lord and the tent of meeting have been getting parted. Have you noticed it? Right from the beginning, it seems that the devil has worked unceasingly to divorce the ark of the Lord from the tent of meeting. Then comes a division among the people abroad: “Where shall we go? What shall we do? Shall we turn to the Lord at the tent of meeting? Shall we turn to the Lord at the ark?”
Oh, the time-honoured rule is this: when the ark and the tent of meeting get parted, always follow the ark.
In other words, it is best and safest to follow the Lord, and not just the outward organisation or system.
May I just say something about this? I think it is quite important. When God did this building, the tent of meeting had to come to the ark, not the ark to the tent of meeting.
This is a very, very important thing. It may help some of you, and I can only touch on it. I leave it to the Spirit of God to do the rest for you.
But the fact is this: there is this cry all the time, “We need revival. We need revival. We need revival.” Is it not so often that we want the ark of the Lord to come to our tent of meeting? We want the life to come to our denomination, our fellowship, our circle.
It is not that God does not want to revive these people, but the only way it can happen is by bringing the circle to the living Lord. This may require quite a few changes.
Some people want revival without any changes. They just want it to go straight into the old ruts and flow it all along. “Come, Lord, get into the old thing, give us a bit of life, bring a few more members in, send up the collection, and generally help.”
I am very unkind. Believe me, I have been in the Lord’s work long enough to know how often that is the thing. I have had ministers say to me, “You know, we can hardly live now. Our congregation is dropping, the collections are poor, and all the length of it. We need revival.”
That may seem very, very unkind, but it is the truth. God help us to get on another level. We need to see the place, too, if we are going to go on. Let us give it the best way: these folks really please the testimony of the Lord, you see, and they say, “It is this testimony of the Lord. We need revival.”
But God says, “No, I do not need the ark to come to the tent. The tent has to come to the ark.” Many changes may be required. If the ark has not gone wrong, it depends. Bring the tent to the ark.
In the end, it was not the tent of meeting that actually went to the ark; it was all the holy vessels that were hastened to it. Do you understand?
I mention it because many of us want God’s revival, renewal, or whatever we call it, on our terms. But the Lord—let me tell you a true story.
In the west of England, in a hilly area called North Devon, where there is much wild open country called Exmoor, there is a very beautiful resort—two resorts, Lynton and Lynmouth. Lynmouth is on the mouth of the river Lyn, and Lynton is up on the top of the cliffs.
Quite a few years ago, about 1952, there were three days of horrendous rain up on the moors. The water filled up, and finally a huge wall of water, sixty feet high, crashed down upon sleeping Lynmouth.
It carried away two-thirds of the town into the sea. Cars were taken out over a hundred miles into the Irish Sea. Many, many people lost their lives. Many were never found again, including believers.
When an inquiry was held, it was found that the course of the river Lyn had been changed by man sixty or seventy years before. They had changed the course of the river Lyn and had given it a new course.
When the flood came, the river went back to its old course.
Every time God has visited His people in the history of the church, the tide of life has come back to the old course: the primitive testimony, if you like, the New Testament course.
We change things, but then we say, “We do not like God going this way. We would like it to come this way—not this way. It is more convenient.” Oh, convenience.
We have built a new way for the river. But when the tide of God’s blessing comes—really comes—that tide goes to the old course. He says, “No, you come back to Me. I do not come to you; you come to Me.”
May the Lord help us.
There are two other things I want to touch on in this lesson from this book. What is the need? Vision. The need of vision.
Is there anything more beautiful in the book of Chronicles than this picture of young Solomon offering up a thousand offerings on the brazen altar and then going to bed? In the night, the Lord stood by him in vision and said, “Ask what I shall give thee.”
Has God ever asked you a question? Sometimes God asks you a question through the lips of another human being. You do not really realise it is the Lord asking you the question.
Can I tell you something? We often give the game away by our answer. You reveal very, very much about yourself in the way you answer the question.
If we are going to see anything about building, the first thing we must have is vision. The church has suffered from people who have studied church doctrine and then tried to put it into practice.
Oh, the world is cluttered with New Testament patterns. All over the place you have got a New Testament pattern here, some pattern there, a New Testament pattern over there. They have all got New Testament patterns built upon Scripture.
Sometimes we find these New Testament patterns more deadly than something which is definitely not a New Testament pattern. Sometimes we find, in some circle which we cannot by any stretch of the imagination call a New Testament church in practice, more of the presence of the Lord, more blessing, and more life.
Go along to some of these New Testament things and it is as cold as a graveyard. Not that any graveyard could be too cold in these parts, but you know what I mean. It is as cold as death.
What is the problem? “Surely we have got a New Testament pattern. Surely, once you have got the regulations, once you have got the pattern, once you have got everything according to Scripture, surely the Lord must be delighted.” Not at all.
The Lord has a horror of New Testament patterns unless it is the pattern that comes from within the life.
My body has a pattern. It has two eyes, two ears, two hands, two legs. It has got a pattern, certainly. But I was not put together by a book. My mother did not read a book saying, “Now then, you have got to be like this. Do not forget, two legs, two hands, two eyes, two ears, a nose.” None at all.
I had the pattern inside. The pattern is in the life. You get it?
You know what a daffodil is? I have to be careful with our terms, because they may be different from yours. But if I were to plough up a whole big field here—two, three, or four acres—and plant thousands and thousands of onions, and in the centre one daffodil bulb, all those onions would come up as onions, and the one would be a daffodil.
You would never make the daffodil an onion, though it might look rather like one. Recently we had a man in England whose wife was a little unwell. She had some daffodils flowering indoors, and he took them out and set them near the vegetables. He took them, shredded them, and had a good meal.
They were so nice. Daffodil bulbs and onion bulbs are very much alike. Now, would you think that thousands and thousands of onions around one little daffodil would make it an onion? Oh, no.
Thousands and thousands of onions, with all their fellowship, influence, and interaction, might make that one little daffodil feel a bit lonely, and it might look a little like an onion. But it cannot, because it has daffodil life and the rest have onion life. So the onions come up onions, and the daffodil comes up in beauty as a daffodil. There is a pattern in the life.
Now, you have to see this. This whole thing began with God standing by Solomon, and he saw the Lord.
Isaiah and his great ministry all began when he was in the temple and he saw the Lord, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. The wonderful thing is that he was evidently bowing in prayer, I suppose, lifting up his hands to God. Then all of a sudden he looked, and there was like a fog everywhere.
“I cannot see the temple any more.” Then he looked more carefully and he saw. Isaiah began to go up, come up, and up and up, and he saw the Lord high and lifted up. The Lord filled the whole temple. The temple was lost in the Lord.
Did you see the temple? Some people only see the church. They say, “The church is up here,” and that is the whole trouble. But when we see the church as the Lord—oh, that is different. When we see the church as Christ, when we see such being in that, when we think of the church as the Bride, I think that makes all the difference in the world.
So, dear one, I want to say something to you. If you want to see God do something in the way of building, wherever you live, amongst you, whether here in this area or elsewhere, begin with this: start asking the Lord for vision.
May He give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the Lord, the eyes of your heart being enlightened, that you may know—not know about, but know. May God grant this.
May I say one other thing? Note the order. First, he offered a thousand burnt offerings on the altar; then he got vision.
Many people strain and stress. They strive to get this thing. They say, “I want to see this thing.” My dear, God does not show anything lightly to people. First, it is important that you know something of the cross in your life.
A thousand burnt offerings—no small offering. That was something total, something absolute. Have you yet come to an experience of the cross? Do you know what it is to lay down your life? Do you know what it is to be identified with the Lord Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection?
Do you know anything about that at all? About bearing about in your body the dying of Jesus, that His life also may be manifested? I tell you, vision comes out of that. There has to be a division between soul and spirit.
Lastly, may I just say this: the need of wisdom.
I said a moment ago that your answer to a question reveals a lot about you. God came to Solomon and He said, “Ask what I shall give thee.” It would be so interesting if the Lord stood before every one of us here. This would not be a collective thing. He would not say, “Ask what I shall give you all.” He would come to each one of us.
He would stand before us and say simply—no long revelation, no long message—just one direct question: “Ask what I shall give thee.”
How interesting that would be. I would love to know what you would ask. That would be some indication of the kind of person you are.
Supposing the Lord stood before you just now, forgetting everybody else in this room, and said, “You tell Me what you would that I should give you. What would you like?” Of course, you would supremely want a reason.
Solomon could have asked for power. He could have asked for authority. He could have asked for popularity. He could have asked for riches. He could have asked for the death of his enemies. He could have asked for long life.
He asked for none of these things. In many ways, these things would have made quite a difference: power, riches, security, health, long life, the death of his enemies. He was twenty-one years of age and had the most hard and cruel and cunning enemies. Joab was one, but others too, all around this young man, ready to assassinate, ready to do anything to get rid of him.
He could have asked for health. “But I am not a healthy person.” He did not. He asked the one thing: wisdom.
I must say that I think this is the forgotten quality. I hardly ever hear people asking for wisdom. I just do not hear people asking for this—not even responsible people in the work of God. I do not hear them asking for wisdom. They ask for power; they ask for performance; and there is nothing wrong with that.
But you see what the Lord said? He fell over Himself almost. “Solomon, because you have asked this thing, not for yourself, but that you might rule this people for Me, I will give you all the rest.”
“You shall have everything because you asked for this. I will give you wisdom such as no one has ever had before thee, and I will give you all the rest: power, authority, riches, the death of your enemies, health, and long life. I will do it all because you have asked for this.”
That is the value that God puts upon wisdom—above everything else.
The Scripture is very interesting in this way. In Proverbs 4:7 it says:
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom:
Yea, with all thy getting get understanding.
Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore, get wisdom.
Or again, Proverbs 9:10:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Oh, where is this fear of the Lord? Where is this fear of the Lord? This is the one thing Solomon had. He feared the Lord, and that is why he asked for wisdom. For the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
This fear of the Lord is not some cringing thing that depraves you or robs you of dignity. This fear is a loving, sensitive reverence and preference for the Lord, so that you would not dare do anything that would upset Him or grieve Him.
Wisdom. Oh, how we need wisdom.
Many years ago, when I was a lad, first saved, and did not know a single thing about anything to do with the Bible or Christian things at all, round the corner from us in a huge mansion lived a Swedish lady whom I knew as Auntie Dagmar. She was a dear believer.
She took me and my sister, both of us, under her wing. Some of the first lessons we ever learned from her were some of the deepest, I suppose, and have lasted all the way through the years.
I remember she said to me once, “Now, my boy, you ask the Lord for wisdom. You ask Him every morning and every night.” She said, “I will give you a Scripture,” and she gave me James 1:5:
But if any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, Who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting.
I used to pray every morning and every night, “Lord, give me wisdom,” quoting that Scripture. I am so glad that I did. I still do.
I have found again and again, when we ask the Lord for wisdom, in the most wonderful way—not necessarily a dramatic way—the treasures of knowledge and wisdom which are hidden in the Lord Jesus Christ are made available to us.
Is it not interesting? In 1 Corinthians 1 it says:
But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, Who was made unto us wisdom from God.
Then it goes on, but the first thing He is made unto us is wisdom. Still, we put enough on wisdom. I do not believe the house of God will ever be built until we see this.
I will close by telling you a story. What is the difference between wisdom and knowledge? Do you know the difference between wisdom and knowledge? I cannot tell you the difference; I can illustrate it.
Behind Halford House we have what you call a truck farm; we call it a market garden. The old man who farmed that area of acreage—not very big—was an uncle of Dan Archer. He was an absolute character. This man became the basis for the whole series on the BBC which has run for years: The Archers.
When he came, he had a beautiful fuchsia tree about this high. It had been there for years and years and years. Halford House, by the way, dates from 1710, but we had had this fuchsia for many years. It was a thing of great beauty.
This year it always came out and got all these leaves, and then just about the whole lot fell. More buds came and then just as they were about to open, they all fell. We could not understand it at all.
So we had two of the leading botanists in the British Commonwealth at Halford House. We went to them and asked, “Could you please explain what is wrong with the fuchsia?”
Independently, they both came. It was very interesting. They plucked the leaves and looked through them at the sky. They looked very carefully at the bark, inspected the bloom, and then they said, “Well, it could be this,” and mentioned a Latin name that long. “Oh, it could be that.” “It is probably this,” and they mentioned another name.
Then one of them told me the whole history of the fuchsia: where it came from, how it had been developed, its different family lines, and finally how we got this particular beautiful variety. But still, we were no nearer knowing what to do with the fuchsia.
So someone said, “Why do you not go up and call Dan Archer?” I went up and got Dan Archer. “Dan, it is tumbling down.” He took one look at the old fuchsia, looked at it, looked at the leaves, looked at the bark, and said, “You know what? That needs a dose of Epsom salts.”
Now, I suppose most of you know Epsom salts are for your stomach. Of course, we laughed. “Now come off it. What is it really?” He said, “I am not joking. It is an interesting sort. You give it one tablespoonful of Epsom salts per day for four or five days. Work it in. Voilà!”
I did not want to tell the whole company this. “Do not think I am crazy,” I said. But he said, “Get some salts.” So we got the Epsom salts. We did it three or four days running. Within two weeks, that bush was back to normal, with one flower after another.
You see, the first two had knowledge, but the second had wisdom. The first knew all about the plant. They knew all the possibilities of disease, the root diseases, what happens, where it came from, its family background—all knowledge: facts, facts, facts, facts, facts.
But Dan Archer had wisdom. He knew what to do with the facts. He said, “That bush is diseased, and I will tell you what to do. Take it some salt.” That was wisdom.
In a few moments, the thing was done. Many Christians have knowledge. They know the facts; they have not got wisdom. They do not know how to apply.
Some people know all about the church. They can tell you the foundation, the ground, the nature of the church, being built together, the ministries of the church, the gifts, and everything else. But they have not got wisdom. They do not know how to apply the facts.
How, in fact, can the fact become experience? How can we work on the facts? That is wisdom. Therefore, generation. And may the Lord help us.