Let us turn to some Scriptures.
First Peter 5:10-11. These are the verses we have been considering in these evening times:
And the God of all grace, who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ, after that ye have suffered a little while, shall Himself perfect, establish, strengthen you.
To Him be the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Then turn to the Old Covenant, to Deuteronomy 12.
Deuteronomy 12:5-7:
But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes, to put His name there, even unto His habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come;
And thither ye shall bring your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, and your tithes, and the heave offering of your hand, and your vows, and your freewill offerings, and the firstlings of your herd and of your flock:
And there ye shall eat before the Lord your God, and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your hand unto, ye and your households, wherein the Lord thy God hath blessed thee.
Verse 11:
Then it shall come to pass that to the place which the Lord your God shall choose, to cause His name to dwell there, thither shall ye bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes, and the heave offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which ye vow unto the Lord.
Now turn to Isaiah 11:10. It is a wonderful verse:
And it shall come to pass in that day, that the root of Jesse, that standeth for an ensign of the peoples, unto Him shall the nations seek; and His resting-place shall be glorious.
Then Isaiah 60:7, the last part of the verse:
And I will glorify the house of My glory.
This is a different word in Hebrew. The other word is the normal word for glory, but this word has the idea of beauty as well. It is not just glory, but beauteous glory. Some versions have it, “I will beautify My house with beauty.”
Verse 13:
The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine, and the box tree together, to beautify the place of My sanctuary; and I will make the place of My feet glorious.
Psalm 132:8:
Arise, O Lord, into Thy resting-place; Thou, and the ark of Thy strength.
Verses 13-14:
For the Lord hath chosen Zion;
He hath desired it for His habitation.
This is My resting-place for ever:
Here will I dwell; for I have desired it.
One other Scripture in the Old Covenant: Haggai 2:6-9.
For thus saith the Lord of hosts: Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land;
And I will shake all nations; and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.
The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine, saith the Lord of hosts.
The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, saith the Lord of hosts; and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.
Then turn to the New Covenant, to Ephesians 2:20-22:
Being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief corner stone;
In Whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord;
In Whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
Finally, back to Peter’s first letter, 1 Peter 2:4-6:
Unto Whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious,
Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Because it is contained in Scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on Him shall not be put to shame.
Shall we pray together?
Beloved Lord, as we have remembered You and all Your great love for us, we come very simply now to You and ask: Lord, will You take the ministry of Your Word and use it to bring illumination and understanding to all our hearts?
Only Your Holy Spirit can do that. Lord, we pray for that spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Yourself to be granted to us this night. We need, even if we have seen these truths, to see them more deeply and more clearly than ever before.
We need to see their application to our lives, to our homes, to our families, and to our assemblies. Lord, only You can do this. We thank You that You have provided us with an anointing, and into that anointing of grace and power we stand by faith this evening, for both the speaking of Your Word and the hearing of Your Word.
Dear Lord, meet with us. Touch our hearts, Lord. Bring us into a new way with Yourself, a new understanding of Your purpose in our day and generation. We shall give You all the praise and all the glory, for we ask this in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, I think now it is too late for me to go over anything that we have said before. But I have had this little phrase in 1 Peter 5:10 so much on my heart for this time: “The God of all grace, who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ.”
I had no idea what the Lord really wanted for these days until just a few days before we met together. But I believe the Lord gave me something very clearly from Himself. I do not apologize for it. I believe it is the Lord Who gave it to me, and therefore there has to be a clear reason for His giving of it.
Glory is a very misunderstood, devalued word in Christian circles. We use it in a very light-hearted way: “Glory! Oh, good, glory!”—without really understanding what we are saying.
There is no substitute word for glory. Majesty, magnificence, splendour—these words do not really convey the reality and truth that are in this word, glory. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal this to us.
But once the God of glory appears to a child of God, that life is spoiled for anything less than the glory of God: the city of God, the Messiah of God, the kingdom of God, the throne of God, the people of God, the redeemed.
Once the God of glory appears to us, we see in the God of glory the Messiah. We see in the God of glory the city of God, the bride. We see in the God of glory the treasure that God puts into our lives through all the difficulties, afflictions, and tribulations through which we pass.
It is a tremendous thing. It is no wonder to me that it is the God of all grace Who calls us to this eternal glory. We are not worthy of it. We do not deserve it. We are sinners who fell short of the glory of God.
But He is the God of all grace. He has taken hold of the worthless debris, the flotsam and jetsam that you and I are in this world, and He has brought us into a new way with Himself.
It goes right back to Abraham. When God took hold of him, and ever since, He has been taking hold of people and bringing them into His purpose.
Is it not an amazing thing that you and I have joined people like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and David? I could go on and on and on. It is amazing to me: the company of the elect of God, called by the Lord, chosen by the Lord, saved by the Lord, called into His eternal glory in Christ.
Well, it is a wonderful thing to know the Lord. These two words, grace and glory, go together. They are twins—divine twins. You cannot part them. You will never come to glory without the grace of God. Grace and glory belong together.
We talked about being called to His eternal glory in Christ on the first evening. On the second evening, I spoke about Christ in you, a certain hope of glory. Last night, I spoke about the path to glory—the path of which there is only one. There are no alternatives. You and I have to travel it if we are going to come to the glory of God.
Tonight, I want to take this little phrase in Haggai: “I will fill this house with My glory.”
It is an amazing thing. You have the intimation of this: if only it were just the Lord and me. But you have the intimation that it is more than me, more than you, that is involved in this thing.
Listen to Colossians 1:27: “Christ in you.” I deliberately did not say this the other evening. One of the best things about the old version is that you had thee, thou, you, and ye. When “you” was used, it was plural.
Now everyone uses “you,” so you do not know whether it is an individual or whether it is plural. But it is Christ in you, and you, and you, and you—not just Christ in me.
The glory of God is far too great for one person. The glory of our Lord Jesus, this eternal glory in Christ, is far bigger. I cannot reveal or manifest it adequately in myself. It needs all the saints through the whole of time, all the redeemed, to express the eternal glory of God in Christ.
You have an intimation there that this matter of Christ in us, that certain hope of glory, has a relationship to others. It would be much easier if it were just me. For one thing, you can be deluded when it is just you. You can coast along and do your own thing.
But, oh, it is the others. It is the saints that are the problem. Once you have other people journeying on the same path, and you have to be related to them, disciplined by them, and somehow stay with them, that is the biggest problem we have.
You have the same thing in Hebrews 2:10, when it says about the Lord Jesus that He is “bringing many sons unto glory.” It is not enough to bring you as a son—whether you are a lady or a man, you are a son of God, a child of God.
It is not just a question of bringing you personally to glory. He is bringing many sons to glory. Therefore, in every generation there has to be relationship—relationship to other believers, to others who are journeying on the same path to glory.
Now that brings me to this whole matter of the house of God. It is amazing to me, the typology that you have in the Old Testament. I hope I am not going too fast for you, but there is such a lot to say.
The typology of the Old Testament is amazing. It is not going too far to say that this matter of the tabernacle, or the temple, is a focal point of God’s eternal purpose in the Old Covenant.
You will find it everywhere, everywhere. Once your eyes are opened, you will discover that this question of God’s resting place, God’s habitation—I prefer the word home; it is a good Anglo-Saxon word, better than habitation—God’s home, God’s dwelling place, is everywhere.
Chronicles is an example. Most Christians do not even ask themselves why we have the two books of Samuel, the two books of Kings, and then go over the whole thing again in the two books of Chronicles. Why does the Lord go over the whole thing again?
Because Samuel and Kings, those four books, are all to do with the throne and the kingdom. But Chronicles says that at the heart of the kingdom is the home of God. We see everything in Chronicles from the viewpoint of the house of God, the home of God, the resting place of God.
Have you ever asked yourself why we have this extraordinary phrase throughout the Old Testament: “The place where I will cause My name to dwell,” or, “The place where I will put My name”?
Do you not think that is an extraordinary phrase? Most Christians are so used to their Bible that they never ask these questions. The place where He puts His name; the place where His name dwells. But a name does not dwell in a place, surely. What does it mean?
For one thing, names in the Bible have far greater meaning than the way we use names today. We often choose names for our children because they are pretty or have a nice sound. Not in the Word of God.
In the Word of God, people’s names were often prophetic of their whole destiny and their whole character. A name represented the person.
God’s name represents His heart and His mind. It represents His character, His being, His purpose, His kingdom, His throne, and His redemption.
“I will cause My name to dwell there.” In other words, the Lord wants something that represents Him, that expresses Him, that expresses His heart and His mind—a place where He can be absolutely Himself; where He can rest, not visit, not merely bless, not merely use, but be at home.
In the Old Covenant, you have this whole amazing thing. So much of the Old Testament is to do with the building of the house of God, the rebuilding of the house of God, or the completion of the house of God. It is everywhere. Take Zechariah, Haggai, Malachi, Isaiah—the great evangelical prophet. Everywhere you turn, you find this extraordinary thing.
Jerusalem, God’s chosen city, was the place where His habitation, His dwelling place, His resting place, was built.
All that has a tremendous amount for us. I do not know whether this comes to you as clearly as I long for it to come to you by the Holy Spirit.
There was a prophet named Zechariah. He was very much involved in the completion of the second temple.
You remember how he had a vision one day. He saw two olive trees. He saw a golden lampstand with seven branches and seven lamps, and he understood immediately: this was the menorah, the lampstand in the temple.
On either side was an olive tree, and branches came out of the olive trees. Gold—liquid gold—came out of the olive trees to the lampstand and became fuel for the light. Your version says “golden oil,” but there is no “oil” in the Hebrew. It is gold.
Zechariah, like so many of us, was more interested in himself and his ministry than in the heart of the thing. He said to the angel, “Who are these?”
The angel said:
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 with shoutings of, Grace, grace, unto it.
Then it speaks about the plumb line. In other words, it is all to do with the building. His hands had done the work; his hands would complete it.
Certainly we understand that this whole vision is not just to do with the house of God as a theology. It is to do with a building programme. It is, if I may put it in my own words, a divine, eternal building programme.
The lampstand is not just representative of the church. It represents something more: the practical application of the church.
So many of our assemblies are all caught up with truth. That is all we ever see. We are not bothered about evangelism, outreach, souls dying around us, or reaching out to the world. All we are concerned about is a theology of the church. That is not the church.
The church is the place where things are built into Christ, related one to another, and grow up into the Head, the Lord Jesus. That is the church.
For the church is the place where man meets God and God meets man. It is a place where the nations come, the unsaved, the Gentiles—as it used to say in the old version, the heathen. They come into this house of the Lord, for it shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.
This is something that hits us and impacts us. Suddenly, we begin to realize that this is not just a truth upon which we are focused or centred. This is a building programme.
God takes this symbol of the seven-branched golden lampstand as the symbol of this building programme. There have to be Spirit-filled men and women. Without Holy Spirit-filled men and women, there can be no functioning church. It is only a theology.
But where the Holy Spirit pours the life of Christ into a few believers, a building begins to take place. A relationship begins to be produced by the Holy Spirit. And there is light.
I hope I am not inclusive here, honestly. But we are basically second-generation. That is the greatest danger in the history of the church. That is where we turn living power into systematized theology.
“I will cause My name to dwell there.” Do you believe that you can have the building of the church without compassion for the dying world? Do you mean to tell me that you can have a church that could not care at all about the nation in which it is found? That is a contradiction in terms.
“I will cause My name to dwell there.” Take the New Testament, the New Covenant.
The bride shares the name of her Husband: Jesus. Take the home of God: it is a home that shares the name of Jesus. Take the city of God: it is the name of the Lord that is in that city. Take the body of the Lord Jesus: it does not have a different name to its Head. It shares the name.
Now do you begin to understand why, when we come to the last book of the Bible, John the apostle turns around because he hears a trumpet sound behind him and a voice speaking?
Turning around, he sees seven golden lampstands. They represent seven churches in seven different localities—one church in seven localities. Do you understand?
It is a lampstand. But listen to this: Jesus says to Ephesus, of all places, one of the better churches, “If you do not repent, I will come and remove your lampstand out of its place.”
Does that mean the thing ceases? Its routine? Of course not. The Bible studies will go on. The prayer meetings will go on. The breaking of bread will go on. All the routine of the church will go on. But the lampstand has gone.
What does that mean? Listen to me: what does it mean? It means the building has stopped. The thing has become a memorial. It has become a gravestone. It has died. The building work of the Holy Spirit has stopped.
This is the testimony of Jesus. That lampstand, all of gold, represents the testimony of Jesus.
We hold that testimony just as the lampstand holds the seven lamps. What is the point of a lampstand if there is no light? We hold the sevenfold lamp and its light—light to believers, light to the afflicted, light to the poor, light to the world.
It is not easy to speak from a subject like this. It is painful.
What a beautiful thing the Spirit of God said to Isaiah the prophet: “And His resting-place shall be glorious.”
In the Hebrew, it is simpler. I do not know why it is not translated this way. It simply says: “His resting-place shall be glory.”
When they set up the tabernacle, the moment everything was completed and everything was in place, the glory of the Lord came, and they could not enter because of it.
When they set up the temple, when everything was in place, when the ark of the covenant had been brought in and all the vessels of the temple were in their place, the glory of the Lord filled it. The priests could not stand to minister.
It was a wonderful picture: His resting-place shall be glory.
What a wonderful word that is in Psalm 132: “Arise, O Lord, into Thy resting-place; Thou, and the ark of Thy strength.” That is the presence of the Lord.
Then it says, “For the Lord hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for His habitation. This is My resting-place for ever: here will I dwell.”
I just do not know whether this comes home to you in the way I wish the Spirit of God would enable me to put it.
There is no temple in the city. The Lord God and the Lamb are the temple. There is no need of the light of sun or moon, for the Lord God and the Lamb are the light of it. It is there the glory of God lightens it.
I say this is so tremendous. For me it is. I pray that it may be so for you.
I was a Baptist—and a very zealous one. I thought there was nothing like the Baptists.
But when that day came, I saw what the church was. In a single moment of time, I was not a Baptist.
It is not that I am against the Baptists or anybody else. I believe in the Anglicans and the Episcopalians because of their parish church. I believe that is local—absolutely right. One church divided by where you live. Hello! I do not have any problem with that.
I am a Presbyterian because I believe in elders, and I believe in the conferring of elders with elders. Well, I am with the Presbyterians.
I am with the Baptists because I believe there is no other kind of baptism than the baptism of a believer. I imagine that is the Jewish form of it in many ways. They tried to tell us that it was not, but now we know from the latest archaeological discoveries that it was very common.
I am a Quaker because I do not believe that things are institutional. I am an Open Brother because I believe that the priesthood of all believers must be given place. I could go on and on. I am a Pentecostal because I believe in gifts, and even the charismatics are on the map.
When I saw what the church was, I saw that it included every born-again believer. I belonged to them; they belonged to me. In that moment, I ceased to be a Baptist and became a Christian.
When you look at this whole matter of the home of God in the Spirit, do you remember the Lord Jesus in John 2?
The Jews said to Him, “What sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things?” Jesus answered them:
Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
The Jews said, “Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt Thou raise it up in three days?” But He spake of the temple of His body.
John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us.” Jesus is the fulfilment of the typology of both the tabernacle and the temple. Do you get it?
When the Lord Jesus was raised from the dead, it was as though another kind of temple was now raised. Then we begin to understand something.
You listened while I was reading Ephesians 2, and I am sure you noticed how amazing these things are. First of all: a home of God in the Spirit.
You and I are meant to be God’s home by and in the Holy Spirit. Quench the Spirit, grieve the Spirit, and the whole thing is just a theory.
A home of God in the Spirit. You and me. We have been saved by the grace of God. We are meant to be a home of God in the Spirit.
Here is the second thing: a holy temple in the Lord. Have you ever heard of such a thing? A holy temple in the Lord.
The Lord Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” A holy temple in the Lord. Are you in Christ? Well, I am in Christ. That means you and I have a relationship.
We may not like each other. We may be temperamentally different, racially different, culturally different. There can be a thousand and one things that could be a middle wall of partition between me and you, and you and me.
But it has all been done away by the finished work of the Lord Jesus. The most wonderful thing is that, as I am in Christ, so are you in Christ; and as Christ is in me, so He is in you. Now we have an incredible relationship with one another.
I find, by the grace of God, that I am in Christ, but I do not have a personal Christ. I think it is a terrible term—“a personal Christ”—as if you have your own tailor-made Christ, one Who is accommodating to you, one Who is adjusted to you.
Oh, there is my Lord Jesus. He is the Saviour and Lord of us all. I am in Him and you are in Him. He is in you and He is in me. We have a twofold relationship. We are in the same One, and the same One is in us.
Now we have a spiritual, organic relationship. I belong to you; you belong to me. Why do I belong to you? Why do you belong to me? Because I belong to the Lord Jesus, and you belong to the Lord Jesus. You have been born of the Spirit of God, and I have been born of the Spirit of God. Now we have a relationship.
A holy temple in the Lord. The whole building, fitly framed together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. Is this not amazing?
Then listen to this: “In Whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.” In Whom? In Christ.
Are you following me? Well, do not have a sleep. If you are following me, listen carefully: “Groweth into a holy temple in the Lord”; “fitly framed together”; “builded together into a habitation of God in the Spirit.”
It is a process. That is where all our problems come. That is the whole point of our problem. If only somehow this whole thing were a fait accompli—something accomplished, something already done, completed. No, no, no. This is something you grow into. This is something you are built together into.
Now we have the problem. If I could only choose the people with whom I could be built together into God’s home, it would be so much nicer, because I could choose. But it is not like that.
God takes people so different from us, puts us together, and we have to stay together. That is the biggest problem in church life.
If I could only say to you, “Goodbye. The Lord is calling me to another fellowship just down the road.” The point is, I find it a little too hot with you. It is a little too difficult. I would prefer to go to this other place.
But of course, I will not stay there. Normally, it is out of the frying pan into the fire, because your problem goes with you. You are the problem.
When you go somewhere else, you take the problem with you. Oh, I hear it all over the place: “The testimony of Jesus has gone. The headship of Jesus has gone.”
Very easy to say that. “So we are going to go with the testimony of Jesus, are we? We are going to go with the headship of Jesus.” I do not find any such thing in the Book.
If there are believers living in your locality who are founded on the foundation of the Lord Jesus, you have to stay there. There is no fire escape.
It is like being in a pressure cooker. You cannot get out; you can only let off steam now and again. You are being cooked together into a wonderful meal.
Oh, dear brothers and sisters, how deceitful we all are. “I do not find the Lord here.” My, my.
It is a very interesting thing to me that when the Lord spoke to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, He never once said, “Now, you who are faithful, leave.”
Even where there was Nicolaitanism—that meant a hierarchy, a hierarchy developing in the leadership—the Lord said, “I hate this thing,” but He never said, “Leave.” He said, “Overcome.”
Even where there was a Jezebel teaching the deep things of Satan—can you believe it?—the Lord never said, “Leave.” He said, “Overcome.”
Even with the Laodicean church, so lukewarm that the Lord said, “I am sick of you. I will vomit you out,” He never said, “Leave.” He said, “Overcome.”
In other words, this building together of believers is the place where all the problem is centred. It is our relationship to one another that determines whether we are overcoming.
We do not become partakers of other people’s sins, but we wash their feet. We love them. We care for them. We do not become embittered.
Have I told you this story? It is a good one.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, that great preacher—I was always told he was called the Prince of Preachers because of his silver tongue—about a third or halfway into his ministry, when he was already at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, began to receive a letter every Monday morning.
The letter was very courteous. It was addressed to Mr. Spurgeon, and it pointed out his grammatical mistakes in the sermon, his mistakes in diction, and then the content of the message.
The great Charles Haddon Spurgeon began to have nightmares because he could not find out who it was. It was obviously someone in the congregation. The letter came by hand, by courier, every Monday.
It robbed him of all his confidence. In the end, he decided he must get behind the scenes and nail this brother or sister—in the name of the Lord! He began to indulge in spiritual warfare and all this kind of thing.
Then one day the Lord said to him, “Do you want Me to remove your treasure?”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “What do You mean, my treasure? This is demonic.” I am putting it in my own words.
Then the Lord said to him, “This is how I am producing treasure in you.”
From then onwards, Spurgeon, to the end of his life, received that letter every Monday morning and, as far as I know, never knew who sent it.
You know that difficult person you have to live with? Did you know that God is using them to produce treasure in you?
You know those difficult people in the office? Did you know that God is using that unsaved man or that unsaved woman in the office to produce treasure in you?
Did you know that God is using them to make you face the reality of yourself? It is only in this kind of relationship that we discover who we really are.
I remember a man sending me a letter on one occasion. He was a very big man in Christian circles. At the end of this long letter, he said, “You know, I am the most humble man in the world.”
This brother, we all knew, was the proudest thing. He had no idea. He had come up against another big leader, and he said that leader was arrogant and proud. Maybe that explains some of your situations.
I remember another lady. She was Irish—that is a very good thing! I will not give her name, but it was a wonderful Irish name.
She used to say, “You can tell me anything, because I can keep a confidence.” But we all knew: tell Auntie, and the whole town will know within one hour—especially if you add, “I am telling you this in confidence.”
It is amazing, is it not? Some people are incredibly long-winded. If you tell them they are too long-winded, they get very angry and upset. No, we do not know ourselves.
How do we get to know ourselves? By relationship. It is not in some high mountain retreat where we are alone with the Lord, in some wonderful place of sunrises, sunsets, and twittering birds, that we suddenly see ourselves.
It does not come that way, because most of us do not want to see ourselves. We have an idea of ourselves that is quite false. It is unreal. The façade has to be destroyed by relationship with very difficult people.
It is no easy matter. I am telling you, it is no easy matter. We would rather yell, “Now me and the Lord will go places. I and the Lord, I am on the pathway to glory—just me and my Lord.”
It does not work. The Lord sets the solitary, the loner, in families. There we suddenly discover that we have brothers and sisters whom we have not actually chosen. The Lord has chosen them.
Oh, that is why so few are Calvinists. They prefer to be Arminians in this matter. They like to think it is just an accident. It is no accident.
Your wife is not an accident. Your husband is not an accident. Your children are not an accident. Your parents are not an accident. The boss at work is not an accident. Your employees are no accident.
In the house of God, if there is one place where relationship can be very painful, it is in the house of the Lord.
What a wonderful thing it is when brothers stay together. No brothers in leadership can ever stay together without cost. Someone has to lay down their life.
I do not know whether this comes home to you with life and clarity, but when I read in the apostle Peter’s first letter, in chapter 2, I read something so amazing.
“Unto Whom coming, a living stone”—that is the Lord Jesus—“rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious. Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God.”
This living stone, the Lord Jesus, is the cornerstone. A cornerstone is not the house.
Why has the Lord Jesus got this title, cornerstone? Look into your Old Testament and you will find it again and again: prophecies about the cornerstone.
Is it a stone we put in museums? Is it a work of art that we put in magnificent halls? No. It is a cornerstone. It has to do with the building programme.
A cornerstone is important, significant, tremendously important, but it denotes a building programme.
Now the second thing: a cornerstone and one other stone is not a home. You have got it?
“Oh,” you say, “I want to get my relationship right with the Lord Jesus. That is the thing that matters—my relationship with the Lord Jesus.” A cornerstone and one stone is not a home.
You have to have all the living stones, not merely relationships to the cornerstone. There has to be a house.
You can have a whole great beautiful pile of stones. If you are German or Dutch, they will be perfectly put together. If you are English, there will probably be a pile. But a pile of stones does not make a house—not even when it is tidily stacked.
The stones have to find their relationship to one another in relation to the cornerstone—in other words, in relation to the Lord Jesus.
I remember so well, years ago, when my home in Jerusalem was renovated. During the 1947-48 War of Independence, they had stored all the ammunition up in my loft.
Some clever Arab sniper managed to fire something that blew the whole roof off the back of the house as well. So they had to renovate.
I remember going down, and in those days it all came by donkeys. All these rough rocks came in panniers on either side of a whole chain of donkeys and were dumped in front of the main door of the house.
This old stonemason, who could not speak a word of English, would come with a boy. They would pick up the stones and take them inside.
I have never forgotten how he took up these stones. To this day, I do not understand it, but I remember the problem I had over it. He would take up a stone, look at it, put it up here, sometimes there, and then throw it away.
Others he put over here. I looked at what he was throwing away and thought, “I know what he is up to. He is going to take those back to his own home. I am not Jewish for nothing!”
I thought, “That man seems such a nice man, such a sweet man, but he is a crook.” So I looked at the stones. They were beautiful. Jerusalem stone is very beautiful. It ranges from grey to yellow, through to greenish colours, orange, and red.
I looked at the stones he was throwing away. They were absolutely beautiful. He obviously realized what I was thinking, but he could not explain himself. He could only speak Arabic.
In the end, the engineer, the supervisor over the whole thing, came to me and said, “I understand you have a problem with these stones.” I said, “Yes.”
He said, “All these stones have flaws. If he were to spend a week cutting them, chipping them, chiselling them, and then at the last moment they split, he knows.”
“The stone which the builders rejected.” He spent weeks. I shall never forget it.
To this day, as soon as I think back to that old man, I can see him in my mind right now: chink, chink, chink, chink, chink, chink—hour after hour. The old hands at work.
One of the town architects, one of my neighbours, came to me and said, “Oh, I am so glad that you are doing this the old way.”
He said, “Your neighbour, who is one of the wealthiest men in the world, a multimillionaire, saw him at work and said, ‘It is dead. The stone is no longer living. It is dead. It will never show colour.’”
He said, “The way you are doing it, all through the day and through the seasons, you will have different colour.”
It is true. My neighbour’s stone does not matter whether it rains, whether there is mist, or whether it is sunny—it is always the same colour: dull yellow.
But the stones that this old man did, they breathe life. When it rains, they go deep orange-red. So beautiful. Living stones.
Living stones require handwork. It takes time.
Now you folks over here—and I must say in Europe too, because they are following you in this—all believe in instant things: instant coffee, even instant tea now. May the Lord forgive us all.
Instant everything: instant cream, instant cake, instant sponge, instant this and instant that. We all want instant holiness, and we want instant building together. There is no such thing.
The Lord has to work. It takes time. It is handwork. Chink, chink, chink, chink. You think you are getting nowhere. It takes time.
“Unto Whom coming, a living stone, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God.”
Well, I must bring all this to a close. I think our time has gone already. But this building work, this lampstand, this testimony of Jesus, denotes work—a building work.
If any of you have had building done, you will surely know that there is always a mess when builders are at work.
What is this that we have amongst us? Why is it that people are always looking for the perfect church? I do not understand this idea. Everybody is looking for the perfect church.
I think it was an old monk who once said to a man who was looking for the perfect church, “When you join it, it will not be.”
But we all have this idea: we are looking for the perfect pattern, the perfect church. Brothers and sisters, the perfect church is the city. That is the end product.
The church in expression on earth is always imperfect—always imperfect. That is the hallmark of the church on earth. It is imperfect. It is a mess. It is a builder’s yard.
There are bits and pieces all over the place. It does not look nice. It is not tidy. It is a building work that is going on. But people say, “Oh, I am looking for something perfect.”
Friend, give this thing up. You will become perfect by being in the messy building work. That is how you will be perfected.
Let me put it another way, if it helps you. Everyone thinks the church in the New Testament was so perfect. Perfect! What kind of glasses are you using?
Take Corinth. They got drunk at the Lord’s table. How they managed to do that on grape juice, I do not know, but they got drunk at the Lord’s table.
They were gluttonous and greedy at the Lord’s table. I can just hear decent twentieth-century believers saying, “I am leaving. I am not staying with this lot. Drunkenness! I am not going to be within a hundred miles of this assembly.”
A boy sleeping with his mother. The church divided into four sections: three named after great spiritual leaders, and one exclusive: “We are of Christ.” Leave it anyway!
Take a good church, Ephesus: Nicolaitanism; they had left their first love. Take another church and suddenly there is Jezebel, teaching the deep things of Satan. Can you believe it? “Out! I am out!”
The early New Testament church was not perfect. There was a couple who stood up and gave their testimony. One dropped dead. When the other partner came in, she dropped dead too.
Can you imagine the next church meeting? Some people saying, “Peter, I think you are a bit severe. I mean, causing Brother Ananias and Sapphira to die like that.”
No, my friend. The early church was not perfect. It was a mess.
God was doing something in the mess, because it was a builder’s yard. That is why all the bits and pieces were around. But God was doing something in the lives of those people: perfecting them for glory, building them up into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up sacrifices to God.
Well, dear child of God, what is the challenge in all of this? Very simple: you cannot come to the eternal glory of God in Christ alone.
It is with your other brothers and sisters that you come. It is through them that the Lord will do such a work in you, and through you, a work in them.
When the Lord has found His resting place, built it, completed it, then His glory comes.
This is God’s home, the place where He dwells forever. Hard to believe, is it not, when you think of ourselves—that we should be the dwelling place of the Lord forever.
What the Lord will do in eternity to come, we do not really know. All we know is that He has a purpose, and that purpose was arrested by sin and by falling short of His glory.
There will come a day when the house is complete, the bride is perfected, and the city of God will arrive. With it will come the glory of God.
Then the Lord will say to us, “Now we will get on with the job. What was in Our mind at the beginning in creating mankind, We will now get on with the job.”
Then that glory of God in the children of God, in the people of God, will spill out into the whole natural creation and into the whole universe. How marvellous.
Dear child of God, do not give up. Do not throw in the glove. Do not let the enemy defeat you.
We are, by His grace, in the train of Christ’s triumph. Stay there, and you will, by the God of all grace, reach His eternal glory in Christ.
Shall we pray?
Dear Lord, we know that it takes a committal on our part to really be built together, to have a relationship with one another in You.
Lord, this world is filled with division amongst Your people, disarray amongst Your people, factionalism, and so much else. Oh, Lord, have mercy upon us.
Will You challenge our hearts this night? Since we are candidates for glory, since by Your grace You have chosen us to be those who will share in the eternal glory of Christ—Lord, challenge us by Your Spirit.
Bring in our hearts a committal to Yourself and, for Yourself, to one another. That however poor our assembly is represented here, may we stay together and move together until You have done the work of building in us.
Lord, help us. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.