In our progress from the first service until we arrive at this point, we have been speaking of the man after God’s heart—David—various aspects of his relationship to the Lord, and, overall, the fact that his was the unique ministry of unifying the children of Israel.
You remember how the hour finally arrived when he wanted to build the house for the Lord. I think that, if there has been anything that I have pondered in looking over various individuals—Moses, Joshua, now David and Solomon—it is how they went just this far, and yet somehow God, at a strategic point, used someone else to pick it up and go on.
They went just so far. Moses, you know, did not enter into the promised land. Joshua led the people in the campaign by which much of the land was possessed, but not all of it. Here we come to David, with his intense desire and longing to build the house, a place for the permanent dwelling, as it were, of the Lord. The prophet comes and says finally, “No. Your son is going to do it.”
Now, in order to sum up and tie together, I want us to see David in this final role as a father. We are going to see, as he speaks to his son Solomon, something that I believe will take us into what I like to call the real unifying factor.
Remember, we said in our last time together that God is bringing together people, knitting them together—the vision, the purpose. But we ask the question: What is big enough? What is it in God’s economy that really knits and binds, that which becomes a real unifying factor?
I trust I have not something just of my own to push, but I believe it is something that, for some years, God has kept burdening on my heart. I cannot help but believe, as I have gone among the Lord’s people now for some twenty years here and there, that there has been one continuous groan in my heart: “Oh, dear Lord, raise up some real fathers of the faith—men with a father heart.”
The man who will have a father heart toward the children of the Lord. I do not know, but it seems that apart from that, you never see a family really coming into operation. It takes a father to have a family.
And I sometimes wonder if there is any higher unity than that which you find expressed in the proper function of a family.
Would you go way back in our horizon now? I always call it a framework of reference, but I think horizon is a better term. Would you go back with me into an ultimate horizon, way back before time?
I wish we could catch and continue on in the spirit of Ephesians—the way back to the beginning, long before the planet Earth had been peopled, before Adam had been placed here. Go back into the very heart of the Godhead itself. There is something of a unity expressed there that is very wonderful.
Did you ever imagine yourself praying too much to one member of the Godhead, as though to make the others jealous? I have had folk on different occasions come and say, “Sometimes I get worried. I get so occupied with the Lord Jesus, I wonder what the Father thinks.”
Well, I do have something that I think is quite important for us to get hold of. There is a wonderful function of unity that goes on in the triune God.
There are people, I think, who would get stalled with the Spirit as a goal, somehow centering around Him. By that I mean being preoccupied with the Spirit Himself. But if I understand—and I think it is a sense that God keeps pressing—when we become preoccupied with the blessed Holy Spirit, it is always His determination to say, “Look, I am here to reveal the Son.”
“I am a nameless servant out to get a bride. But look, here is Isaac. Rebekah, look at Isaac.” You see? Can you find, over and over again through the Word, this preponderance of emphasis that the ministry of the Spirit is to reveal, to lift out, to exalt, to unveil, to make the Lord Jesus altogether lovely?
Now, you know that. And so you come to the Lord Jesus, and you begin to behold, and you begin to become utterly alive to Him and His loveliness and His worthiness and all that He is. And do you know what He does?
Do you know what He does when you center, as it were, upon Him? It seems to me I hear Him saying, “Look, if you are fixing—if you are focusing in upon Me—I am a window. If you see Me, you are looking right on to see My Father.”
And, oh, how the testimony of the Son as He moved among men was continually, “My Father.” “The words that I speak, My Father.” He turns us on continually to Him.
And so you get to the Father. You know what the Father does? You know what the Father does? I hear it in Ephesians. I do not think I am just reading into it, but I hear Him say, when you have become preoccupied with a fixation upon His Son, “Look, I have ordained that My lovely Son shall have the preeminent place.”
“All that I am doing, I am doing through Him. I have given Him the place, the central place. You go read it. All things shall have their summation; all things shall have their fullness, their summation, in Him.”
Is there something in this that would speak to us, though? The Father, living to find the full expression, as it were. I cannot think of any father, any true father, any father in the fullest and rightest sense, but what this is his desire and delight: that he lives his life all over again in his son; that is, in fulfillment.
And I do not mean making a dentist out of your son, now, or something that you never achieved. I know we have a tendency to bring the Father down to some of our limited conceptions of a father. Well, let us go back. Let us go back and get a glimpse now of Him who, from the beginning, has ordained and planned such a place of preeminence for His Son.
If this be the function, this movement within the Godhead, is it not a touchstone? Is it not something for us to reckon upon as we look out and see that which can be a function among the brethren? Nothing for himself; not drawing that which would just improve himself.
What a church it would be. What a group of people, if something of this could really be operating. Do you think?
We get hold of the Spirit of God unveiling the Son; the Son saying, “I am but the window, the reflection. If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father”; but the Father always turning us out to the Son.
I have groaned for some twelve years, I think, since this just began to burn: “Oh God, oh God, raise up some fathers—real spiritual fathers—not only as regards a home, but as regards the larger fellowship of the household of the saints. Real fathers.”
Apart from this, I guess every time I have reacted toward someone in this family, the Lord seems to say, “That is not a father heart. That is not a father heart.”
But when I have been too quick to condemn, I sense Him saying, “Fathers, provoke not your children unto wrath.” Maybe we will get in this afternoon to some of the ways in which we provoke people because there has not been wrought within us this kind of functioning, this relatedness. You see? Bear with it.
Well, let us turn to the story we have in 1 Chronicles 28:20. I think I can say what I have on my heart in not too long a period this afternoon. I think we are already realizing that we have had a very blessed time with the Lord.
Chapter 28, 1 Chronicles. I want us to get a glimpse of David in this aspect as a father. He cannot build the house that he longs to build, the dwelling place for the Lord. But he does not pout. He does not sit back hurt. What better could there be than to build it through your son—to extend yourself?
This has been something of what we have been wanting to say all this week. Oh, how you get the continuity from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, right on down—David, now Solomon. Something of a wonderful stream, a wonderful flow, in which the anointing of God and His purpose work to bring about full realization.
So we read, 1 Chronicles 28, beginning with verse 20:
And David said to Solomon his son, Be strong and of good courage, and do it: fear not, nor be dismayed:
for the Lord God, even my God, will be with thee;
He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee,
until thou hast finished all the work for the service of the house of the Lord.
Chapter 29, verse 1:
Furthermore David the king said unto all the congregation, 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 things to be made of gold,
and the silver for things of silver,
and the brass for things of brass,
the iron for things of iron,
and wood for things of wood;
onyx stones, and stones to be set, glistering stones, and of divers colours,
and all manner of precious stones, and marble stones in abundance.
Well, he leaves all of this. Over in verse 9 we pick it up again:
Then the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly,
because with perfect heart they offered willingly to the Lord:
and David the king also rejoiced with great joy.
Wherefore David blessed the Lord before all the congregation:
and David said, Blessed be Thou, Lord God of Israel our Father, for ever and ever.
Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty:
for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is Thine;
Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted as head above all.
Both riches and honour come of Thee, and Thou reignest over all;
and in Thine hand is power and might;
and in Thine hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all.
Now therefore, our God, we thank Thee, and praise Thy glorious name.
Well, I am just wanting somehow to point the finger. We get a little bit of background now. If there is anything that constitutes the unifying factor, that is something that becomes the means by which God Himself expresses unity. Here in the Godhead we have a tri-unity.
Let me go back and see if we can make this practical, and maybe this will all unfold what I am trying to say.
I wonder, through the years as we have moved among the Lord’s people, why it is that systems of thought seem to captivate and control certain groups of people. Why are these systems of thought so irreconcilable? Is there an answer? How can we bring God’s people into the thing that will be a unified house—a people in which God can really dwell and find the fullest expression of a house?
I wonder if you have ever noticed that every individual, maybe not conscious of it, has some controlling touchstone in his life. We all say quite glibly, “Oh, God is my touchstone.” By a touchstone, I mean God is my beginning point, and from Him I make all my reckoning.
That is quite true and wonderful. But I think, before we get through this afternoon, we will say that there is a sense in which to make such a statement is to say something all right, but it is too broad a base. What do you mean by a touchstone?
Some years ago I had a plot of ground, some eighty acres, and I was subdividing it to sell lots. Now, I will not forget: I had never realized before, when you start surveying, the absolute importance of a beginning point.
That morning, when three surveyors came out and began to go over the plot of land, they hunted six hours for the first beginning point. At twenty-five or thirty dollars an hour, you can see why I was eager.
The thing that had happened was that the road out in this area—you know, in some areas the roads kind of change a little bit—had not been surveyed for a long time. The cornerstone, or the marks that they were looking for, was not on this side of the road. Somehow the road had shifted, and it was on the other side.
The thing that was so strange was this: going over to the neighbor’s, living out on the edge of the city, and cutting into his yard, I had often noticed a flat stone over which grass had grown. It had a chiseled mark like a cross. I had looked at it, called it to my wife’s attention, and we had often said, “Well, that must have some meaning.” But it did not have any particular significance to us.
Finally, we did what we should have done. We went down and got some old abstracts from the office and finally discovered that the thing we were looking for was this stone with the mark in it. Suddenly it took on—I had known about it all the time—but suddenly it took on a new meaning and significance, something that had been so commonplace.
I would like to stop here for a couple of hours. I believe that there are, in all the circumstances of life, things about us that are so utterly commonplace and that we know about; and yet it takes something—something happens all of a sudden—that brings that which is so utterly common into new significance, brings it into value and meaning. Are you following me?
Well, it only took two hours to finish off after we had a touchstone. But it is quite something: if you start six inches off, you go thirty feet, you are six inches off here, six inches off there—you are just off all the way along. If you are off at your beginning, your touchstone—do you see that?
I wonder if there are not some people in the religious world today who will pick a touchstone, as we say, in God for their reckoning, but because the touchstone is incomplete, is inadequate, they end up with something less than God really planned or intended.
May I illustrate what I mean? I think it has always amazed me how, when I begin to talk to certain folks, there is an overshadowing consciousness of one thing in God—one thing about Him that seems to stand out and overshadow other things.
I have met, and I think you have met, individuals in whom the sovereignty of God overshadowed everything. God was sovereign. Now, we know He is sovereign, and we rejoice in what we understand of His sovereignty. But it is quite interesting that when a person starts with sovereignty in God as the primary or controlling touchstone, something happens.
Starting with sovereignty as a touchstone, the first thing we know, we have developed a systematic approach and reasoning which is going to end us out, if I may use Brother Sparks’ term, in a nice little whirlpool. And here we are.
Is sovereignty an adequate touchstone in God from which to begin? Is that the primary thing about God that ought to determine and control? If sovereignty overshadows, we get around—and you see, the mind is so constituted, the law of the mind is so constituted—that we begin to carry it to its ultimate extreme.
And if you have ever been in this system of reasoning and all that is involved in it, you know that it has one inevitable end: God, who is sovereign, will do what He wants to do. It brings fatalism, just as sure as we are here. There is no other inevitable end. It brings fatalism.
And so, out of reaction from the folk who start with God’s sovereignty, you have others who pick another touchstone. Whether in reaction or just out of sheer good judgment, they start with another touchstone.
Back in the days when Charles Finney came on the scene in New York State, every place he moved—you read all about his early ministry—he met folk who were sitting back, “What will be, will be.” The thing had gone to seed: an ultra-sovereignty, carried in a systematic reasoning to its ultimate end.
And Finney, as a lawyer, began to cry out for some way to deal with this. So he went back into God—if you read his Systematic Theology—and he picked another touchstone. That is all I can call it. He said that God is moral.
And from the touchstone of morality, looking out at all that the universe is, he said there were some things that were right and that limited God. This is a moral universe. God, in His benevolence, is actually limited by the fact that He is moral. There are some things He cannot do because God is moral.
Now, if you have never read it, or somebody has not stumbled you with it, when Calvin said that God, without blinking an eye, could cast a million infants that had died into hell, there is something within me that cries out, “Calvin, that is not the God I know.”
I cannot accept that. Are you following me? I do not want to get too theological. Listen, it will blossom a little later, I trust, and we will get out of just clear, plain knowledge. I tell you, if you can realize what is happening, what has happened through the centuries.
So there is something within me that cannot help but react, and I look around and begin to say, “God is moral. He is moral.” Maybe that does not mean much, but God has to do what is right. The law of the mind says there are some things that are right and some things that are wrong. Do you follow? God is moral. This is a moral universe, and you cannot put the God that we know into this cast.
Finney, with tremendous logic, and oh, how in that day, when he moved among the hyper-Calvinists and began to present something of the responsibility of man—the response that man must make—God began to breathe upon it, and he shook them out of that awful fatalism.
And so you have issuing—and, of course, it had its root and beginning long before Finney came on the scene—a man by the name of Arminius. You know, you have read about him. Way back, he challenged some of the earlier extremes. But here you have another system of thought developing, which makes room for human responsibility to respond to the individual.
And it develops into a system which becomes another nice little whirlpool. By contrast to fatalism—which is, “God will do it all any time He gets ready and pleases”—here you have that which is developed into humanism: all man, all man on the throne.
You say to me this afternoon, “Well, Brother Pronk, there are some good things in both. How do you get them married? What do you do? What is the answer? Where do you turn? Is there an answer?”
I said some two days ago, this has, I guess, been one of the great things that has concerned me since we first began to move out among God’s people: longing for a unifying factor, something that would bring about the basis by which men could come to move with a larger focus.
You see all of the quarreling between the Calvinists and the Arminians. I have read the books that are out, some of them anyway, on how to get them married, but I have never been satisfied. I never felt like it had much of the breath of revelation, or what God had.
“Well, you have a system of your own,” you say. It concerns me. What do we have in God? What do we have in God that is different from just a touchstone of sovereignty, or, let us say, that of morality?
Before I get to what I want to say, let me take a couple of other touchstones. You do not have to move very far before you sense there are others with a prevailing or overshadowing consciousness.
I meet sometimes individuals who are power-conscious. Oh, how the mentality of the need of power has gripped so many religious circles today. Invariably, you go back and find that they have come back to a touchstone in God which produces this sense, this awareness, and this means.
Someone has said, and I think it is true, that all of the major religions of the world go back to God—their God-concept, or whatever He is—and they find a touchstone.
Have you ever met somebody whose overshadowing awareness is that God is Spirit? That is their touchstone: God is Spirit. That is about all He is. They have never come to see Him in personality, but He is some kind of vague monstrosity—I use the term. He is Spirit, but that is all.
I want to be very kind this afternoon, but there is sweeping over our country today a people whose primary awareness is that God is Spirit, but they do not know Him, as we are going to see, in personality. He is Spirit.
And I do not wonder that, starting with that as a touchstone, you will hear some of them say on the radio, “Put your hand on the radio as a point of contact.” That is the system of reasoning that has to follow.
It is nothing other than Brahmanism coming over to our country in another form. That is all it is. I have been in some of it; I know. Now, I am not saying that people have done it deliberately. But it is quite something when you see that the controlling fact, the underlying thing in the universe, is just spirit.
Just as surely as you follow that touchstone—the spirit—you will find some people coming to another little whirlpool. It is an inevitable thing.
Well, you are bewildered, I know. You say, “Brother Pronk, you kind of lost me. But where would you start in God? What do you think is proper? What do you think the Scripture reveals as the proper touchstone in God, which will hold this in balance, which will give a proper perspective? Everything else begins to take its part, fit into the whole.”
Now, you see, the reason I used the illustration I did is because you all know the touchstone. You walk down the road like I did. You have looked at that stone, you have seen it again and again, you have voiced it in your prayer.
And the minute I announce to you what it is, you are all going to say, “Yes, Brother, I have known that since I was born again.” But I would that somehow it could take on new significance in the light of what I am trying to say.
Let me illustrate it this way. I think there are many facets in a diamond. We get hold of all the various facets. We look at God and get hold of maybe the facet of God as sovereign, but it is just a facet. We get hold of God being moral, but it is just a facet.
There are other touchstones I could take. God is a Redeemer. Once man has fallen and needs a Savior, you have the lovely facet of His redemptive work. But if you start with God as being primarily a Redeemer, and if that becomes the overshadowing work and activity—if God is primarily a Redeemer to you—without realizing it, sin becomes central, and you shift the whole burden of responsibility.
All God’s primary goal is to get people saved. And that is the blight that has settled down on Christendom today because, now, do not misunderstand: we have taken one facet of God and His activity as a touchstone. God is, before, above, and beyond all else, a Redeemer.
I sat down with a dear brother one day. He said, “I wish you would go and talk to my daughter, eighteen years old. She does not seem to have much of a heart or an interest for the Lord.”
I went to Linda and sat down. I could not make much headway. She seemed unconcerned and disinterested.
A few months later, something happened to this friend of mine, who was a very eager beaver, evangelical, here and there in meetings continually. One day he got a call from a pastor not too far from where he lived. The pastor said, “I wish you would come down and visit me in my office.”
When he got there, the pastor said, “I have a family on my list. I wish you would go and visit. They have a desperate need.”
Art, being an eager soul winner, said, “I would be glad to go. Give me the name. Who are they?” He said, “Well, I did not put the name down. Here is the address.”
When my friend looked at the piece of paper, he said, “Hey, wait a minute. That is my address. You must have made a mistake.”
The pastor looked at him and said, “No, there is no mistake. Three times in the last six months, your wife has been to visit me. She tells me of a husband who is so busy, continually out in meetings, eager to do things for God, but she says they do not have a husband and a father at home.”
And he said, “I called you because I would like to have you visit this particular home that is in such need, and maybe stay there a little while with them—long enough to be a father.”
I tell you, something began to get hold of him. He went home, and he began to weep and cry out before the Lord. You know what God showed him? What I have been trying to say for some months.
And he came to me and said, “Oh, Brother, I see that I had a touchstone in God that controlled and seemed to determine and overshadow. For this reason, I have been on the go. But I found out who God deeply is, before, above, and beyond all else that He is. I have got more than a facet.”
God is the Creator. Have you ever met a Mason who has built a whole religious system around the architectural ability of God? I tell you, it is quite a system of reasoning, and it is a religion built from a certain touchstone in God.
I could go on the list of all the various facets. God is a Creator. God is a Provider. He is a good God, and He does long to provide for the needs of His children. He is a Sustainer. God is sovereign. He is a Ruler. He is a Judge. God is the redeeming One, the sanctifying One, the begetting One.
You can take all the various facets, but hear me: none of these facets becomes an adequate touchstone from which we can reckon all of the purpose and come to a final picture of what God is really after.
One day, a jeweler friend told me—I will never forget it—as he held a diamond in his hands, “Did you know that every diamond that is properly cut has a window?”
When you look in the window of that diamond, you can see all the symmetry, all the relatedness, of all the facets. By looking in the window, it all takes on symmetry and relationship.
I had been waiting for that illustration. It was just what I needed. I want us to look in a window this afternoon, to see that which will give significance and relatedness to all of the facets: who God is, what He is, and why He does what He does.
I call it the ultimate touchstone: that which determines and governs everything else and gives it meaning. You say, “What is it? What is it?”
Let me illustrate what I mean. Look at my little boy and my longing to see him grow up as he ought to. I realize, having counseled with others, that it is so important at the beginning stages, at the beginning, to hold a strong sovereign hand—a tight hand at the beginning.
We do it so differently. They are so sweet. They are so innocent. We are so loose. We are so free at the beginning. Only later, when some of that begins to react, the parent begins to exercise a tighter hand.
But you follow God’s own way, God’s own working: it is always in those earliest, earliest years, the tight hand, very sovereign. You see?
Now, the reason I am afraid of sovereignty as a touchstone in itself is that if I am primarily sovereign, and that is the controlling thing, then I could go out and I have, in a certain sense, the power to break my little boy all to pieces. I am big enough, strong enough, yes, over him to do that.
But sovereignty is not the primary thing here; nor do I let him have complete moral choice to the extreme. I do not give him free rein.
There is one thing that conditions my sovereignty over him and my morality over him. You know what it is?
Someone says, “Love is a good touchstone. Let us start with it. God is love.” Oh, that is true, but it is not adequate either. Because if you start with love, have you ever seen where it ends? Have you ever seen where love is? Look at the liberal. Look at where love is.
It becomes a wishy-washy, sentimental sort of thing—love without any guidelines, love without any character, just love for love’s sake. Now, God is love, but there is something behind that which conditions His love. You follow me?
God is light. God is life. All of these facets and all of these things. But there is one thing, before and above and beyond all else, that God is in person, that gives meaning to everything that He does.
Well, shall we go to the abstract office to find out? You see, I do not want to give you a big build-up, but I know I have been through this so many times. Folks say, “Oh, what a little letdown. I knew that all the time.” I have got to make it significant—the reason you need this touchstone—or you will start with something else.
Well, I have already indicated it. The Lord Jesus came to reveal. One day, when Philip came to Him, he said, “Philip, have you been so long with Me?” What did Philip want? The Father, the Father. He said, “Philip, if you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.”
I am afraid of any system that starts with less than the Father and His lovely Son. Personality is what I am asking. Did you ever stop to think that God has given us the most full and wonderful and complete revelation in the person of His Son? “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”
Now, if I am wrong, I want somebody to tell me. I have asked for at least ten years. I do not want to go on sharing with others unless I am right. I long, if I know my heart, that God will bring about in my own life such clarity that I will be able to help others to come to that which is truly ultimate in God.
But I believe this does something. I will show you why. As a father, my sovereignty can rightly be limited or governed. It is not unlimited sovereignty. He possesses it, but there is something that limits and governs the sovereignty. What is it? His father heart—father nature, if you please.
It is what He is as a Father. He allows sovereignty just so far, and He says, “That is the picture.” As a Father, He extends responsibility, morality, just so far; but it is limited, it is governed, it is always controlled by something that He is before.
When He loves, it is a Father’s love. When He moves out to create, the reason for creation is that He will bring to His heart one day a vast family. So He creates Earth here as a place where He is going to begin it all.
And He starts with a son, a created son, when He reaches into the dust of the earth and forms Adam, and makes possible by capacity that Adam might move from mere created relationship to begotten relationship.
But let us stop for a moment. Let us remember that all of God’s dealings with the human race are through two men: the only created son and the only begotten Son.
That is very important because there are a host of people today who love to talk about the fact that we are begotten sons. And we are begotten, but ours is an indirect begetting, in and through Jesus Christ.
The first time I ran into that, I was out in Salt Lake City. I have always loved to visit the Mormon Tabernacle just to hear the choir—I mean, the music, the organ. I had taken the tour through the grounds.
One brilliant lawyer, who happened to be taking the tour that day, was giving a masterful address. I knew that there was something about Mormonism more than the majority of people had realized, and he got into it that day.
When he started in his masterful explanation, he said that God had a whole reservoir of spirits in the heavens, and out of His wonderful plan and purpose, He is clothing them one by one in human flesh. We wiggle through this earthly scene down here, being tested and proved and perfected; and as we pass on through, we make the complete cycle back to the reservoir. Putting off this body, we go back to the reservoir of spirit.
Before we got through, I found out his touchstone that afternoon. I said, “Well, what about the Lord Jesus?” After he dismissed everybody, he said—he was a wonderful man—“Well, is there any real difference between Him and me, between Him and the rest of us? He is a begotten son,” he said, “and we are all begotten. He just had a couple thousand years’ head start, and He will always be ahead of us.”
And immediately it seemed that the Holy Spirit began to say to me, “He has a unique relationship with the Father. He is the only begotten of the Father.”
You will run into this. There are cults and groups that are sweeping. There are sonship groups; I run into them all the time. They read certain pages in a chapter, and I get a whole barrage from them. Well, let me answer it.
Do not forget that God has dealt with the human race through two men: the first Adam, the only created son, and our relationship to him is by way of created life. But, oh, there is the only begotten Son, and our begetting is in and through Him. It is very wonderful.
So you see, once you begin to get a touchstone, you move back to say that it is the Father through the Son, by the Spirit. But you start with personality. God is more than a vague monstrosity.
I have been wanting to say one thing this afternoon, and I will close. There is a unifying factor. I have seen men in the last five or six years who have tried somehow to bring Arminians and Calvinists into a lovely wedding, tried every possible way to bring about a reconciliation. I do not believe there is one in that.
I believe God’s answer in the Scriptures is to take us back to who He Himself chiefly is, before, above, and beyond all else. When you start where Paul did, not with God in creation, but you go back before the foundation—you go back way back, as you have it pictured in Ephesians—Paul says:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You get hold of the loveliness of this relationship, this relatedness: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. You bring it down in the practical working of our relatedness with one another. You have the cross at the very heart of it. Long before the cross is an accident in history, it is an operating principle in the Godhead.
Well, you have a theme larger than four walls. I am thrilled when I see David fulfilling, looking on to the fulfillment of all he desires in his son.
My heart begins to cry, “Oh God, the selfishness of men who are doing something for themselves, unto themselves, but never quite realizing how the fullness and completeness of all can be expressed many times as they are multiplying themselves.”
Mother, you may be so eager to have child evangelism classes, run out and do some things for God, but, oh, mother, what a privilege is yours in multiplying yourself in the little ones at your feet.
We need spiritual mothers, spiritual fathers. And I see it in David: the man who got so close after God’s heart began to have a father heart. Of course, it is in fullness in God, but there is a dim reflection.
And this is why, in my final words, I just think if we are looking throughout the areas around about for family, for living expressions, lives to come to the place where they are a household of the saints, there are going to have to be some fathers.
May God make a father out of you, a mother out of you.
Dear Lord, only Thou canst interpret what we are trying to say.
How wonderful it is when once we behold this relatedness, this function in the triune God, and it lays hold of us. Calvary is more than the cross, more than just the historical place. It becomes a working power; it becomes an operating principle.
We do nothing for ourselves, but unto Thee, unto Him. Make it to be real, dear Lord. We will be sure to give Thee the praise, the honor, and the glory, for we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.