I think it is quite unnecessary for me to spend any time by way of introduction in speaking of the object of these meetings. Rather, shall we let the meetings speak for themselves, and the message which we have define the nature of our gathering?
So let us immediately come to the point.
What we have in view is what we believe to be God’s all-inclusive purpose. Christianity has many aspects, and Christian people are occupied with those various aspects: evangelism, teaching, building up Christians, contending for the faith. There are movements which are entirely occupied with prophetical matters relating to the coming again of Christ, and so on.
All these are right. But they can, and often do, become things in themselves. While being so good and right, they very often make Christians into sections, circling around some interpretation, some teaching, or some specific object.
The inclusive and supreme object of God, in and through and over all, is very often lost sight of. It is that which we might seek to bring more definitely into view, that for which we are coming together in these meetings.
Our concern, then, is with God’s inclusive purpose. I am sure that you will agree with me that the value of any one aspect or side of teaching or work will very largely be governed by its relationship to the whole purpose of God. The value will be more immediate if that whole purpose is seen and kept all the time in view.
God does not commit Himself wholly to any one part of His purpose. He only commits Himself wholly to the whole of His intention. So, if we desire to find God committing Himself, it has really become necessary for us to know that to which He will commit Himself.
The inclusive object to which we refer is inherent in the words which we are taking as our background from the chapter read this evening: the few simple words from Ezra 6:3, “Let the house be builded.” That is God’s all-inclusive object.
You notice that Ezra traced this decree, through and beyond the instrument—the ruler who made it—back to God. He pointed out that this decree, made by an empire ruler, originated with God. He said, “God put it into the heart of the king.” This came from God.
Being shown that it originated with God, the rest of the story shows how God committed Himself in sovereign ways to that thing. God instigated this. God supported this. God consummated this, in spite of numerous and great difficulties.
If that is true, we want to discover where and how that can be true in our time. The one thing that I believe all Christians—true Christians, people of God—would seek after and know in our time is that which God has instigated, that which God takes upon Himself to support and see through, that which, in spite of everything—a great, vast everything—God will finish.
I say, it is that that we want to discover: how God will commit Himself. Now that brings us to a vital and fundamental principle of biblical interpretation.
I think that everybody who handles the Bible ought to recognize this, and it ought always to be present when we take up our Bible. It is simply the eternity of God.
Perhaps that does not convey very much to you as I say it. But it is a great fact that there is no time with God. All time, as it is with us, is present time with God. There is no past, present, and future with God. He is the eternal God.
From eternity to eternity, Thou art God.
God may accommodate Himself to the time periods of men, but He Himself dwells in eternity. His thoughts are eternal thoughts. His purpose is an eternal purpose.
The architect has the whole plan before him. The builder only has the day-to-day part or phase. Those who only see the parts may be confused. They may not understand. They may even begin to make the part the whole.
A writer of one of the New Testament letters introduced his thesis in this way:
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake unto the fathers…
God did speak in times, in different manners, and in different portions. But with God, the whole, from eternity to eternity, was present. Every part that came from God had the whole in it.
You must ever remember that when you are handling the Bible; otherwise, you will wrongly divide the word of truth. The full design of God governs every part where He is concerned. God’s mind does not grow. There is no progress with God. He is full and complete and final at all times.
God has brought His thoughts into time in models and figures, but they are only models and figures of spiritual and eternal realities. The principle is this: whatever comes from God, at any time from our standpoint—from this earthly standpoint—has in it the eternal and complete thought of God.
It has in it the whole of the spiritual mind of God. We have to look through the immediate form of presentation to discover that spiritual and eternal thought which lies there.
This house—“Let the house be builded”—is only an earthly, temporary, limited representation of the vast, eternal, spiritual thought of God. It is a poor representation. It will pass, but God’s thought will never pass. What lies behind it will have no end.
It has come out of eternity; it will go on to eternity. The whole Bible is just a manifold expression of this principle. From beginning to end, the Bible, in its numerous forms of presentation and representation—type, symbol, figure—is one comprehensive expression in numerous and various ways of this one idea inherent in this word, house.
Let us get behind the figure, behind the representation, to the great spiritual truth or reality. Here it is: out from eternity, out from unknowableness, out from incomprehensibleness, out from inaccessibility, God resolved to present Himself in a creation of His own making.
In something which, amongst many other titles and designations, is called a house, God determines to come out from all that is unknowable, inaccessible, and eternal, and to present Himself—to make Himself known, to make Himself accessible—to dwell in a house.
But as we take hold of that truth—and it is a truth from the beginning of the Bible to the end, running all the way through and governing everything—as we take hold of that great truth and move with it through the Bible, we begin to make a discovery.
While it is a wonderful idea, an amazing thought, it is something much more than a thought or an idea. It is something very much of the heart of God—not only of His mind, but of His heart—something greatly cherished in God, something with which God’s greatest interests are bound up.
It turns out, if I may put it like that, to be not something objective to God Himself at all, but a very part of Himself—an organic expression of Himself, of His thought, of His heart, of His will.
I think that one of the most staggering statements in the Bible is this:
The church of God, which He purchased with His own blood.
God purchased this thing called the church with His own blood. That will defeat and defy every attempt to comprehend it. Blood is the very vitality of any organism. This thing—I am calling it that for the moment—has the very life of God bound up with it. God has given His life for it.
There is something more than a matter of objective interest. The very heart of God is in this thing: His own life, Himself. What is it—this thought, this thing so near to the heart of God, with which all His interests are bound up? It is God’s presence amongst men.
God related to an organism as the inhabitant, the occupier, the indweller of that organism—that surely is the simple, plain meaning of the house. It is something to be inhabited, to be lived in. It has no meaning unless it is inhabited.
God’s thought—you may call it house, or what you like; the Bible has many names for it—is this: to be there, present and indwelling, with the object of making Himself known and understood, and with the object of having blessed fellowship with that which comprises the house.
I have said that the Bible contains the history of that thought through the ages. Yes, the Bible, therefore, throughout and entirely, is the embodiment of this one eternal divine concept.
It begins with a very simple, primal expression of the thought: in a garden, a man and a woman, and God present—walking in the garden, talking, communing, making His thoughts and intentions known.
It is a picture of happy fellowship between God and man, man and God—man in relationship with God, in terms, now use the word, of friendship—and on the basis of a commission to be God’s regent here for the development and fulfilment of His purposes.
Everything speaks of peace and order and beauty, and all that the human heart longs for is there in this simple first representation. God has created for Himself a house, and is in it, and is walking and talking in it.
From that point, this divine intention has a long and chequered history. All the actions of God are related to that thing, remember; and all the reactions in history that we have in the Bible are against that one thing: to drive God out, to exclude God, to make a condition into which God cannot commit Himself, where He cannot be present.
That is the Bible. It focuses upon this one eternal desire of the heart of God. Does it end? Yes, it is a long and chequered history through which this intention passes, but in the end it is realized.
It is realized in two ways. Firstly, it is realized in Himself as incarnate in His Son. We have not yet recognized the supreme significance of Jesus Christ as the Son of God until we have recognized that in Him this eternal conception finds its realization.
He is Immanuel, God with us. God has reached His object. He Himself has made for Himself an abode.
God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.
In that first and fundamental way, God reaches His end. We discover that the house is not a thing; it is Him. It is a Person.
Then He proceeds from the one to the many, from the individual to the corporate. The redeemed body is brought into view in terms of a dwelling place for God.
The end of the Bible, again, is in symbolism, as much as the beginning was: a city and a garden. And the message of these words is:
The tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them, and they shall be His peoples, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God.
That is where your Bible ends. History is consummated.
Well, I have said that this divine intention explains the Bible from every angle. All the actions and all the reactions are centred in this one thing: that God may have a place for Himself and be there in terms of fellowship and peace.
I say again, there is nothing in the Bible that is not related to this all-governing purpose of God. Here is the object of God’s concern and God’s jealousy.
If God was jealous over a temple in Jerusalem, over Jerusalem or Zion, as the prophets so strongly said, do you think that His jealousy was exhausted in an earthly, temporary representation of something? Nay, it was because of the something represented that God was jealous. And it was this.
What, then, is the house of God? The question is raised in Isaiah:
Thus saith the Lord, Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool: what manner of house will ye build unto Me? And what place shall be My rest? For all these things hath Mine hand made.
Remember Stephen, in that magnificent message which cost him his life, so significant in this very connection, quoted these words from Isaiah. It was almost the consummation of that great discourse, working up and heading up to this.
Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands; as saith the prophet, Heaven is My throne, and earth the footstool of My feet: what manner of house will ye build Me? saith the Lord.
The heaven of heavens cannot contain Him. What manner of house? There are some things there to take note of. Firstly, it is an affirmation of the infinite greatness of God, requiring something infinitely great. No magnificent temple of Solomon, or of any other builder, can answer to this demand.
It requires something very great—something, in other words, which will show forth the greatness of God.
The apostle Paul, more than anyone else in the Bible, saw the meaning of this house and exhausted all the language at his command to try to speak about it. You know, the Greek language is a very comprehensive language. It has a tremendous number of words and ideas, far more than our English.
Paul was hard put to it, with his knowledge and command of that language, to put into expression this house: the breadth, and length, and height, and depth; the unsearchable riches. These words, this language with which he is wrestling, cannot express how great this is.
But note this—and here is one little thing where we are getting very near to it, or it is getting very near to us. There are two or three things which the apostle Paul makes perfectly clear as defining the nature and purpose of this house.
It is that in which the knowledge-surpassing love of God is manifested. God conceived this object in order that, in it, the knowledge-surpassing love of His heart should be manifested.
Then Paul passes on to grace: the riches of His grace, the glory of His grace. He brings that all into relationship with His house, that in the ages to come, in that house—body, call it what you will—the infinite grace of God should be displayed to a wondering universe.
He does not stop there. He passes to wisdom: the infinite wisdom of God to be shown to principalities and powers in this house. He wants a big house to comprehend that: the greatness of His love, the greatness of His grace, the greatness of His wisdom—God present in such terms of self-manifestation.
This is not mere language. You have it; it is here plainly stated in the Scriptures.
But I must pause there, because another thing is implied here: the implied misapprehension of man. Man has a way, you know, of catching on to big ideas, wonderful conceptions, and taking hold of them.
Man has got this idea; he has taken up this idea of a house for God, a dwelling for God. But man has given it a twist and brought into it a false interpretation. Man has tried to capture God and put Him into a house of man’s own making.
By so doing, man limits God, confines God, possesses God, and makes God exclusive to some particular house made by men—a building on the earth, an institution, something like that.
Then comes this terrible propensity in man to make God his property and the property of his particular kind of house: the rise of a terrible exclusivism. “If you do not belong here, go this way, then you are outside the place.” You see what I mean?
My dear friends, that is a misapplied, false interpretation. You see, that was Israel’s tragic blunder, against which the prophets raised their protest.
It was that into which Jesus came, and like new wine in old wineskins, burst the whole thing. But in so doing, He lost His life. They had made God’s house an exclusive thing. They possessed God. That was their blunder.
As Jesus was walking away into the eternal spiritual reality, He said, “Your house is left unto you desolate.” Your house. That is an awful indictment: “Your house.”
We must take this all very seriously because it was, from one point of view, in relation to this misapprehension, false interpretation, and caricature, that Jesus came to correct it.
He did so in two ways. Firstly, He corrected it in His own Person. Do you want to see the house of God—what it is? Look at Him.
Then He did it in His teaching. The Gospel by John, if you recognize it, stands in the whole biblical purpose to show how Jesus supplants and transcends all earthly and material representation.
It makes perfectly clear that He supplants and takes the place of the temple in Jerusalem. He supplanted and took the place of the priesthood, became the High Priest Himself, and offered Himself a sacrifice acceptable to God.
Thus, not only fulfilling all types, but showing that God has never been satisfied until Christ offered Himself, He supplanted and transcended all the Jewish feasts. You notice, right through John’s Gospel, the feasts of the Jews are constantly referred to, and Jesus figures in them over against them.
Jesus takes the place of the manna in the wilderness and is the bread of God come down from heaven. Jesus takes the place of the water from the smitten rock and says:
He that drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.
He that believeth on Me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water.
He takes the place of the lights in the temple and says:
I am the light of the world.
He takes the place of all the old shepherds of Israel and says:
I am the good shepherd.
He takes the place of Israel and builds a new flock out of His own blood.
I lay down My life for the sheep.
Yes, Jesus is the answer to God’s eternal quest. But Jesus, as the New Testament goes on to show, does not stand alone. Jesus in corporate, organic expression is the house of God.
Where and what is the house of God? It is where there is spiritual, organic, vital union with Christ—no more, no less.
So Paul says:
In one Spirit were we all baptized into one body.
Jesus fulfils all the functions and expresses all the features of God’s presence—God’s presence in the midst of men.
This is a statement, but it is also a challenge. How great is that house? How definite is His house? It is built upon the love of God. That is testing enough.
The very object and purpose—let me repeat—of this house is for the expression of the love of God. If that love of God is not present, if it is contradicted, the house ceases to be what God intended it to be.
The explanation of Israel, who were once called God’s house as a nation—the explanation of why they were set aside—is this: here is the infinite love of God brought into this world in the Person of His Son, and what does He meet? Infinite hate.
Love: “Your house is left unto you desolate.” The infinite grace of God: all this theology and doctrine about justification—not by works, by faith, and so on—it can be so cold, after all. It can become legalistic and righteous in a sense of hardness.
Yes, but remember that all that is there in the Word of God in order to magnify the grace of God—not of works, the grace of God.
The house of God, dear friends, therefore exists on the basis that men and women have discovered, first of all, that their deepest and most terrible need is the grace of God. They have come into the knowledge of that grace, and the one word uppermost in their vocabulary is grace.
It is the most wonderful word in the language of earth and heaven: grace, grace, grace. It is that that constitutes the house of God. You and I are living in the meaning of that wonderful word, grace. God is very near to us. That is where we shall find Him.
God beholdeth the proud afar off, because the proud have no sense of their need of grace. Pride is an abomination to God simply because it is such a contradiction to the grace of God.
To this man will I look: even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at My word.
There is your house of God. That is the atmosphere of the heart of God. So, you see, it is not a thing. It is not a place. It is not something that man makes. It is a spiritual thing.
On what ground does it rest? It rests on the ground of the cross. The cross. The house ever came after the altar and stood as the background to the altar. The church of the New Testament is the background to the cross of Christ. It comes by the cross.
The cross—what does it do? It sets aside man and makes room for God. It puts man out that God may be all and in all.
The intention of the cross is to make possible the realization of God’s eternal thought: to be there. Where the cross is wrought most deeply into the life of a people, there most fully you will meet the Lord.
You will not meet the Lord in uncrucified men and women. In the presence of the flesh, God stands back.
I close with asking one more question: What, then, is the dominant necessity? The answer is twofold.
The dominant necessity for the realization of God’s desire—the bringing in of this house in its beauty, its love, its grace, its fellowship, its peace, its order, its divine manifestation—is a Christ-consciousness.
A Christ-consciousness. Oh, that does not convey much, I know, as stated. But, dear friends, what you and I need more than anything else, perhaps, is more of this Christ-consciousness.
Are we not ever and always rebuked when we hear Paul saying:
The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that One died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him.
Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh.
I say we are always rebuked by that. I am, you know. Do we not know one another so much after the flesh, instead of laying hold on whatever there may be, even remotely, of Christ in one another and making the most of that?
We do the other thing. We make the most of one another’s faults and weaknesses and un-Christlikeness, and there is plenty of it, God knows. Oh, for this Christ-consciousness! If we would give ourselves more to this—laying hold of what there is, be it very small, of Christ—and making the most of that, the house would be built.
God will find His house and commit Himself if we will do that. God help us.
Having said Christ-consciousness, it means house-consciousness. House-consciousness—that is the wrong word. It is fellowship-consciousness. It is relatedness-consciousness. We are members one of another.
The hand cannot say to the foot, “I do not need you. I can do without you.” Call it house, call it body, call it what you will: it is this corporate consciousness that is needed today to destroy all this disintegrating, divisive kind of thing.
Well, we must leave it there tonight. But would to God that something of the impact of this might come upon our hearts, lift us out of our all-too-small conceptions of God’s heart, and govern our attitude in relation to all who rest upon the love of God, all who rest upon the grace of God, all who have come to see and acknowledge that it is by the wisdom, and only by the wisdom, of God in solving all the human problems—their own and others’—that God will at last find what He is seeking: a place to dwell.