So we come to the conclusion of this time together, in which we have been seeking to see that the one all-inclusive revelation in the Bible is that of God’s intention and determination to have a habitation on this earth.
There are, as we have said, many figures, many types, and many names used in a symbolic way of that habitation. Perhaps the most outstanding is that of God’s house. But no matter how many symbolic titles and representations there may be, they all embody one thought and one purpose: God’s desire to dwell with men.
When things were, at the beginning of the Bible, in such a condition as to make it possible for God to pass the verdict, “It is very good,” then God was found present in communion and fellowship with man.
We are not told very much about how He was present. We are told that He walked in the garden in the cool of the day, that He talked with man, and made known to him His thoughts. We know little more than that, so far as the story tells us.
It may very well have been much like the forty days after the resurrection, when He came, showed Himself, spoke, and went; and came again, and went; and came again—coming and going, speaking and showing. Very probably it was like that at the beginning, all making so clear that that was His thought, and according to His heart: to be present, and to be able, in personal presence, to commune and communicate.
So soon, He had to withdraw. In a sense, morally He was driven out—shall we say, expelled? Conditions changed. They no longer corresponded to His mind. They no longer made it possible for Him to say, “It is very good.” The change made it necessary for Him to withdraw.
Again and again through history, we are told of God’s effort to recover a condition suitable to and well-pleasing unto Himself, that He might return.
He gave to Moses a pattern—a heavenly habitation. When all things were made according to the pattern, it was again as though God said, “It is very good,” and He returned and filled the tabernacle. And again, it could not be abiding. It was in figure and in type, and in a measure; but things were not fully and finally according to His mind in the people themselves.
Later, He gave another pattern to David: a temple, a representation again of the heavenly habitation. When all things were made according to that revealed pattern, God came and filled the temple, again showing that this is what He is ever seeking.
And again, things changed. We have the sad story of the glory departing and removing, going away, and that thing remaining just an empty shell—a cold, unreal formality.
The Old Testament closes on the note of failure in this great purpose of God—failure, yet promise. We have it right at the end, in the last phase of the Old Testament:
Who is there among you that saw this house in its former glory?
Is it not in your eyes as nothing?
The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former.
Yet once more I will shake; and the desire of all nations shall come.
He is the Desire of all nations. Do you remember that it is in the Letter to the Hebrews that those words are taken up by the writer and applied to the shaking of everything here in this house, which is but a representation—that is, a type, a figure, a symbol—in order that the spiritual reality might take its place?
Well, if we pass from the Old Testament to the New, we find the next consummate movements of God in relation to this purpose. There are three major expressions of this divine thought—others minor, but three major.
One is Israel. We have not understood Israel until we have recognized that Israel was chosen among the peoples of this earth as a nation for one whole and only object: that God should find in that people a habitation for Himself, suitable to Himself.
He strove, He laboured, He suffered. He showed His infinite patience and mercy and long-suffering with that people because His heart was bound up with His object: that He might realize His eternal thought and have a habitation here.
I repeat, we do not understand the dismissal of Israel from the divine programme until we have recognized their utter and final failure to fulfil that vocation. Their failure to fulfil it came to its consummation in the expulsion of God incarnate, when they said, “We will not have this Man.”
So, for the dispensation at least, God has left that house, and it remains desolate to this day. But God has not abandoned His purpose.
The second great expression, and perhaps we may call it the inclusive expression, of His thought is in the incarnation itself: Emmanuel, God with us. In the Person of His Son, He has found His sanctuary, His temple, His tabernacle.
The Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory.
The third major expression is in the advent of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church.
We have not understood the incarnation until we have related it to this eternal thought: finding in man a habitation, making man the place of His dwelling. And further, we have not understood the deepest significance of the advent of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church, in which the Holy Spirit takes up residence, until we have related that to this one thing: God is here. The Church is that place of His dwelling, and He has come to His temple.
When we have said that, everybody in reading can see how gloriously fulfilled that was on the Day of Pentecost. Verily, the Messenger of the covenant had come to His temple. Verily, God was present on that day—and did not depart. He came to stay.
It is God incarnate Who says, “I am with you all the days, unto the consummation of the age,” come to stay in the Person of His Spirit. It is quite clear that, in the Church general, that is the divine thought.
But then we find that what was true of the Church universal, in God’s intention, is true of the churches local. One thing was to characterize local companies of God’s people: God should be found there.
That is, as you see, our third message: the ultimate criterion. I do not imply ignorance on your part when I remind you that “criterion” just means the principle which determines the standard of judgment. That is, that which decides the matter, or is the ground upon which you decide any matter—the standard, the measure, the principle by which everything is determined.
The one ultimate criterion of the house of God, universal or local, is just this: God is there, and you find Him there. That is the dominant thing about it.
It is not the methods, the manner, the performance, the rites, the formalities, the ceremonies, and all the other things. It is, either in them or through them or apart from them, without them: God is there. You meet God. You cannot go in there without meeting God. That is the ultimate criterion as to whether it is a house of God.
It is not a place, but a people, in the midst of whom God, in the Person of His Son Jesus Christ, by His Spirit, is present—and known to be present. Because is it possible for Someone to be present without your knowing it? Well, it may be if there is something wrong with you, but it ought not to be so.
It ought to be that where God is, we know it. We meet Him.
The criterion is not any one, or any number, of the many things that men think are necessary to compose a house of God. Our vocabulary and phraseology are all at fault in this matter when we speak of the house of God. We refer to a building, to a place, and so on. But the criterion is not those things at all. It is just this: you meet God there.
And if not, then it cannot bear that name, because it does not fulfil that function. We may as well dismiss the thing. Why try to hold it together if it is not like that?
Now this brings us to the question of the ground on which God is present.
May I just say here in parentheses that God may be present in varying degrees—in greater or lesser degrees. The churches in the New Testament make it perfectly clear that that is true. It is not at all difficult to discern that the Lord was more in one place than in another, that there was a greater measure of the Lord and His glory in this place than in that. For instance, Philippi over against Corinth.
But surely the thing that ought to govern us is not that the Lord should be there anyhow, but that He should be able to be there without reserve or restraint, wholly giving Himself. Surely that is the matter.
That is the thing that ought to concern us individually: the Lord should be able to be with us individually without reserve, just free to commit Himself. And surely that ought to be the concern of every company of the Lord’s people in every place—not this or that or some other thing for existing, but the maximum of the presence of the Lord.
Now, I venture to say, dear friends, that if that really were the governing and dominating concern, it would be the key to many problems, the solution of many problems, the clearing up of all the difficulties. If we were all set on this—that the thing which matters more than anything is that the Lord should have an absolutely clear and free way to fill this place with His glory—whatever gets in the way of that has got to get out of the way.
This is to be a mighty motive in our lives. We have got to become related to this eternal thought of God, to see it, and it has got to become our passion—so much so that whatever may frustrate it, obstruct it, or limit it cannot be tolerated.
That is the challenge of this message. But in order that it should be like this, God must have conditions which, on the one side, will not involve Him in man’s disorder. For God will not allow Himself to be involved in man’s disorder; He will not commit Himself to that. And, on the other side, they must be completely suitable to Himself.
May this not explain much of the reserve of the Lord that we Christian people everywhere are finding so difficult either to understand or endure? The cries, the appeals, the pleadings, and the praying day and night for a visitation of God—and God seems so reserved and so slow.
Maybe God cannot commit Himself to man’s order of things without becoming involved in something that will dishonour Him. I put it in the form of a question, but it is shown in the Bible that that is so.
The cry of the prophets to the people was to put things into such an order and state that God could come. Something could be taken account of in our praying. There must be something for us; there might be something for us to do.
Prepare ye the way of the Lord;
cast up a highway for our God;
gather out the stones
which would injure His feet should He come.
Maybe there is something.
Now Satan, from the beginning, as we were seeing last night, in this continuous controversy and conflict over this one thing—to prevent God from having an abiding place—Satan from the beginning has sought to put man in the way of God.
Man was created for this purpose: to be God’s habitation, that He should dwell with man. Therefore Satan’s great stroke and effort has ever been to turn that man of God’s creating against the purpose of God, and put man in the way of God to frustrate God.
That is the long and terrible story, is it not? Of God being hindered by man, and by the conditions created by man.
Jesus saw that. Jesus saw quite clearly that Satan’s interference with man was in order so to change man that God could not come and dwell in him.
At the end of John 2—which ought never to be divided from John 3—we find this comment about the Lord Jesus: that He would not commit Himself to man, because He knew what was in man. He would not commit Himself because He knew all men, and knew what was in men.
What a terrible thing that man, who was intended to be God’s very temple, should be in such a state that God cannot and will not commit Himself to man.
And I said John 2 ought never to be separated from John 3, because immediately you move on into what is in John 3, you come upon this: “Ye must be born again.”
What is the point? This throws a new flash of light upon new birth. It says that God must have a new kind of man to employ.
And you notice that that was addressed to an outstanding representative of the Jewish nation—Nicodemus, who was in a sense a portrait of Israel, which had claimed to be God’s house, had appropriated God, and had sought to lock God up to themselves and make Him their exclusive God.
It is here in Jerusalem, to such as these, that Jesus, knowing what was in man, would not commit Himself unto them. Then to a representative of such a nation, as speaking to the nation, He says, “You must be born from above.” Why? In order that God the Holy Spirit should come right in and take up residence.
And that is John 4. It is all a wonderful sequence. It all centres in this one eternal thought. This thought unlocks the whole Bible everywhere: oh, for God to be in man, in the midst of man.
That is why new birth came in at that point where He would not commit Himself, because He knew all men, knew what was in man. So the question immediately arises: To whom will God commit Himself?
Let us try to show this by taking up the prophecies of Ezekiel for a few minutes.
You know the last words in the prophecies of Ezekiel—the last sentence, the name given to the place:
The Lord is there.
And the book closes there. Then the thought and purpose of God is attained: the Lord is there.
Now, leaving aside the controversy over Ezekiel’s temple and house—as to whether there is to be a literal rebuilding of the temple on the site in Jerusalem when all this Arab world has been swept aside and the Mosque of Omar has been obliterated from Jerusalem, and a lot has to be done yet, though nothing is impossible with God—whether it is to be like that, or whether all that is realized in the Church spiritually, leave that controversial matter aside for the moment.
It does not come in whether this be true or not. The book of Ezekiel stands for today with much positive application, teaching divine principles which are eternal and belong to no particular age or place. They are very clear.
And in relation to this whole end—where it is to be, when it is to be, how it is to be—well, the end is this in any case: the Lord is there. The whole of these prophecies is a progressive movement towards that end.
They begin with the prophet saying that he saw visions of God—visions of God. Then what follows in the prophecies are those visions of God.
The visions of God, as you will note, are progressive towards that consummation. The stages, the phases of that progress, show the principles—the ground on which that end will be reached: the Lord is there.
The first vision, which in a sense is inclusive of all the rest, is the vision of the throne: the throne above the firmament, and upon the throne above, the likeness as of a man.
That, of course, could occupy a whole evening or more. But what does it signify? The first, the fundamental, the all-inclusive vision or reality by which this end of God shall be reached is the absolute exaltation, enthronement, and authority of that Man—with a capital M—the Son of Man, on the throne above the firmament, where Stephen saw Him.
A Man on the throne: Christ glorified, Christ exalted, Christ in possession of all authority in heaven and on earth. That has got to become a practical reality in all matters and details if God is going to reach the end: the Lord is there.
It is the fundamental governing thing. The Lord will be there according to the measure in which this is true: that Jesus Christ is exalted, that Jesus Christ has His place as the exalted One, that He is on the throne, and that the authority is recognized as being in His hands.
There are many ways in which that can be put. In the Church at the beginning and in the churches, it meant this: they did not have meetings, committees, and councils for deliberating on what they were going to do. They had prayer meetings, submitted everything to the Holy Spirit, and took all their instructions from heaven.
It proved to be a very effective thing, did it not? Yes, God was there. That is the effect. That is reality. The Lord was there. The place where they were gathered was shaken by His presence. The Lord was with them.
All on the ground of their testimony that this Jesus had been set at the right hand of the Majesty on high. But that was not just an objective fact, or even teaching or truth. It was a practical reality in all the details of everyday life.
Jesus was referred to, and Jesus was deferred to in all things. His authority was applied authority, not theoretical.
That stands first—the first inclusive figure. We move on and find a man whose appearance is as the appearance of brass, with a measuring line and rod in his hand.
And what do we come to? We find the great temple area, this great square of the temple. From the outermost corners of that great square temple area, we draw diagonal lines, corner to corner, corner to corner; and at the point where those lines meet and cross, right at the centre of that area, is a great brazen altar.
Central and universal, gathering all things within and without: a man of brass, an altar of brass. Do you know that brass symbolizes righteous judgment, or righteousness unto judgment—judgment unto righteousness?
Right there, at the very heart and centre and core of everything, where everything meets us and from where everything radiates, is the cross. The cross, where everything is brought to judgment and judged according to God’s standard of righteousness and holiness.
That is the ground on which He will be present. We are so familiar with the teaching of the cross, but here again, we can only rightly apprehend and understand the meaning of the cross of the Lord Jesus when we see that it relates essentially to this one matter: God’s presence.
God’s presence. Everything has got to come to judgment according to God’s standard, and what cannot pass must be consumed on that altar. But as God can be established in heaven, there is the great discriminating work of the cross.
On that, God will be present. Yes, “The Lord is there” comes right back to this: How far has everything been brought to that great judgment of Calvary and determined as to its acceptance by God?
Oh, dear brothers and sisters, how searching this is for all things in us, in you, in our fellowships, in our assemblies, in our churches—everywhere. Can this pass the judgment of the cross? What does the cross say to this and to that? How does this stand in the light of Calvary?
The answer will determine just how much God is going to commit Himself. That is important. That is important. We cannot get away from that. This man of brass will see to it. He will measure the altar, and he will measure everything according to the altar.
We must leave it there: God’s thoughts of righteousness.
And then we move with that man to the house—the house. And you who know the vision of the house, all that is said about it here, will be familiar with the dominant feature of this whole matter of the house.
The dominant feature of this vision of the house is measurement. This man with his rod—his measuring rod—is moving everywhere, measuring, measuring, giving the measurement for everything within and without and round about. It is measurement, measure, so meticulous.
The man of brass is doing it. What is he doing with his rod? He is defining it according to Christ. He is measuring according to Christ.
That is going to be the measure of everything, you see.
God hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man Whom He hath appointed.
The Man of brass brings everything in the world to judgment according to Himself. If that is true of the world, and judgment is coming to the world, it must begin at the house of God.
Now, to resolve this into one statement just means this: if it is to be, “The Lord is there,” it will be according to the measure of Christ—just how much there is of Christ there, no more, no less, will God commit Himself.
It is not this or that, or many things that men think constitute a place for God. It is only one thing: how much of Christ is there? Let that go right into our hearts. How much of Christ is there in you, in me?
Does not this explain the infinite pains that God takes and His preparedness to sacrifice so much in order to increase our measure of Christ?
Why will He take a useful or very busy servant away from his work and shut him up? Why? We say, “What a loss.” We say, “What a tragedy. The Church suffers.” God knows. It matters more to Him that there should be an increase of Christ there for eternal purposes than perhaps the doing of a lot of busy things for Him.
There must be an explanation. There must be an explanation for the strange providences of God. May this be it? May this be it? I put it again in the form of a question.
The Lord is prepared to make any sacrifice. The Lord is prepared to take any pains to increase the measure of His Son—not just for its own sake, but in relation to the thing to which He has given His heart: to find a state suitable for His own presence.
You and I are all prepared to say immediately that where there is most of Christ, there you meet the Lord indeed. The two things go together: the Lord is there.
The Lord is there. That often means the ruination of ourselves to make place for Him.
The house is measured, not just as a whole, but at every point, at every corner, at every movement. And we know from the Letter to the Ephesians that it is the measure of Christ—a measure of Christ.
Finally, in the vision, we come to the river—the river. When He is on the throne and has His place, when the altar is in its place and judging and governing everything according to God’s righteousness, and when the house is measured according to Christ, what do you expect?
Out from that house will emerge and break a river. Life will issue and proceed in ever-increasing fullness, to make everything live whithersoever the river cometh.
It is the Day of Pentecost. He has got His house. Christ is on the throne. The cross has done its work. And the river proceeds spontaneously.
I just raise the question again. It is no criticism, no judgment of mine; it is really an exercise. But, you know, Christians have been praying and pleading for years for revival. Revival—that is the word.
It happens when God has His conditions. May the delay explain that He has not got His conditions? However, it is a question.
It may be a very objective subject of interest, but, dear friends, it has a very immediate application. What you and I desire—I am sure I speak for you as I do for myself—is that out of us should flow rivers of living water.
Oh, that there might issue from us this stream that makes everything live. When we pray with people, life comes into them. They feel refreshed and renewed. When we speak to them, that is the effect. We move about the world, and out of our movement people begin to live, and life comes.
That that is true also of our churches, our assemblies, our companies. Oh, it is life—life flowing out, reaching far out. There is no limit to the possibilities of a little company ordered according to God.
There is no limit to the range. The influence of that little company in some little corner may go to the ends of the earth, may be ministering Christ far, far beyond your own quarters, if God has His conditions.
It just happens. You do not have to organize great campaigns to do it. It happens if it is like this: the river.
Note, it comes out of a measured sanctuary. It comes down by way of the altar. It is from the house according to Christ—which house has been judged by Calvary as to how it stands before God—that the Spirit comes, the Spirit of life.
Well, that is enough. The deciding factors, then, as to the presence of God—more or less; God grant that it may be more and ever more—are:
The Lord is there.