In the meetings of this conference, we have been occupied with God’s message for our time, as conveyed to us through the book which goes by the title of Nehemiah.
This evening, in as concise a way as we can, we shall seek to gather up the message and the lines that we have been considering.
I want to turn you over to the New Testament and read some verses from the Book of Acts—Acts 15:12-18.
And all the multitude kept silence; and they hearkened unto Barnabas and Paul rehearsing what signs and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles through them.
And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Brethren, hearken unto me:
Simeon hath rehearsed how first God visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name.
And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written,
After these things I will return,
And I will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen;
And I will build again the ruins thereof,
And I will set it up:
That the residue of men may seek after the Lord,
And all the Gentiles, upon whom My name is called,
Saith the Lord, who maketh these things known from the beginning of the world.
There is a marginal alternative, as you notice, for that last clause: “Who doeth these things which were known from the beginning of the world.”
That paragraph which we have just read is the New Testament counterpart of the Book of Nehemiah. You see, it refers to the tabernacle of David—its fall and its rebuilding.
And the quotation, as you will also see, is from the prophet Amos.
Now, the prophet Amos prophesied when that tabernacle, or temple, of David was about to be destroyed—on its way to fall. He was a prophet of judgment, judgment upon the sins of the people of God.
That judgment was going to culminate in the destruction, or the fall, of David’s great temple, representative of David and his people: their overthrow and their captivity.
And with that imminent, Amos prophesied that there would be an afterward. The Lord would return and build again the tabernacle of David which was fallen, that the residue of men upon whom His name was called might seek after Him.
Here we have that prophecy quoted and cited in the Book of Acts by an apostle. It is full of significance and impressiveness. Note how the apostles interpreted the prophecy of Amos.
David’s tabernacle, or temple, did fall. We know that. The Book of Nehemiah sees it in ruins, with the city and the city wall. It had happened.
A remnant had returned from that judgment and captivity and is there, in Nehemiah with the companions of Ezra, found rebuilding the temple. These two books contain the story of the building again of the temple.
But the apostles were not at all satisfied that that was what Amos fully meant. They saw in that no exhaustion of the prophecy of Amos—only, perhaps, a very poor and partial fulfilment for a time.
The apostles saw that there was a much fuller and larger fulfilment than that which took place in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. Their interpretation of the prophecy of Amos is here in the Book of Acts. To find the prophecy of Amos on the way to its full fulfilment, you have to read this book.
I repeat: these words are the New Testament counterparts of what we have in Nehemiah. The Book of Acts itself is that.
We ought to be impressed, and duly impressed, with this fact to begin with: the apostles saw that prophecy in the Old Testament was certainly not all that God had in mind when He inspired the prophet to utter it. God had something very much bigger than that in His mind.
No one saw it until the Holy Spirit came, took hold of these apostles, and gave them the fuller meaning of the prophetic utterance.
I would like to survey and gather up the various features and factors in this presentation of truth. There are several particulars.
Firstly, there is what the tabernacle, or the temple, represents. That comes out so clearly in the New Testament. It is really the heart—and more than the heart—it is the whole sphere of what we have in the New Testament.
Christ answers to that in fullness, as Himself the sanctuary of God. He used that very word of Himself: “Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up again.” It is a tremendously impressive statement. This He spake of His body.
We know, without fresh study, the truth of the New Testament: that Christ Himself answers to that whole vast thought of God—to have a dwelling place amongst men. That is realized in the first instance, in a perfect way, in God’s own Son: Emmanuel, God with us.
God tabernacled in Christ. God was in Christ. As the apostle says, “God was in Christ.”
God, looking upon Him, was able to find in Him that of which He had once been disappointed when He made the world, when He created all things, and when He made man and finished His work.
He looked on all His work and said, “It is very good.” And God walked in the garden. God took pleasure in dwelling there with man. It was the beginning of the answer to a great hope and desire in the heart of God concerning His creation.
And then He was robbed of it. Man let in that which was contrary to God, and God had to withdraw.
But in His Son He found the recovery and restoration of that which had fallen—that sanctuary which had fallen. We have spoken before of its being fallen down, ruined, and laid waste; and God had to withdraw.
After the long centuries of many representations and types, His own Son came—His new-creation Man, His full thought. Looking on Him, He could say, “My beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”
I believe that carries more than being pleased with Him. It implies, “In whom I am well pleased to dwell; satisfied. Here is that which gives Me a resting place.” My beloved, in whom I am well pleased. It is very good.
He answered the eternal desire and thought of God. He is the sanctuary recovered which had fallen down. It is Christ. That is what comes out in the New Testament.
You want to know where God is, or you want to know where to find God? Only in Christ—but truly in Christ.
But then there is the extension of that. The apostles saw, after all the mystery, all the misapprehensions, and all the failure to see while He in flesh was with them, that at last they saw Him as glorified.
They saw the counterpart in spiritual reality of David’s temple, which, when it was complete, was very magnificent and very beautiful—perfect as a type. The Lord filled it with His glory, just filled it with His glory.
So here, on the Day of Pentecost, Christ is in glory. Christ is in heaven, filled with glory; and out from Him, the sanctuary in heaven filled with glory, the glory proceeded to take up its residence in that extension of Christ.
By the Holy Spirit, Christ is extended. He comes to dwell in believers—in born-again believers. And as He remains one, never divided into so many, remaining one, He constitutes them with Himself the dwelling place of God.
The Day of Pentecost sees that extension: God coming to occupy the larger realm known to us as the church. There was something at that time which bore all the marks of God’s good pleasure.
The men and the women were not perfect in themselves, but there was so much of Christ there that God was smiling upon it. God was well pleased to be there. The whole scene at the beginning of that book is one in which God is able to say, “I am well pleased,” finding His home, His rest, and His satisfaction.
That is what the apostles saw as the fuller fulfilment of the prophecy: “I will build again that which is fallen, the tabernacle of David.” Christ, God’s sanctuary, is then extended to a chosen people taken out of the nations for His name, who also become known as His temple, His holy city, His dwelling place.
That is where we begin with the Books of Nehemiah and Ezra. That is where we begin with the Book of Acts. The thing is now transferred from earth to heaven.
That may be one, amongst other reasons, why the Lord did not let them stay permanently in the earthly Jerusalem. In a very effective way, the Lord was saying, “Here we have no continuing city; we seek one to come.”
Our city is not of this earth. So He allowed earthly Jerusalem to become a scattering place for the church, because now the Jerusalem is in heaven and not on earth. Perhaps they were inclined again to make it an earthly thing.
The Lord said, “No, not at all. My city, My Jerusalem, My temple, is not down here; it is in heaven. It is My Son.” They came to see that.
Then, in this Old Testament book, we proceed to the wall—the wall which was particularly Nehemiah’s work of reconstruction. The wall represents the landmark between Christ and His church and that which is of the world, apart, outside, and contrary.
We have said much about it, but it cannot be too strongly emphasized and stressed, dear friends, that there is that very sacred demarcation. To overlook or override it is once again to spiritually nullify all that God intends as to His dwelling.
You cannot break down that wall without breaking down the real house of God. The fall will reach the temple, and the breaking down will be thorough once the wall is broken down. God will not be found there if the wall is destroyed.
It does really represent a great spiritual truth: that Christ and His people are a separated people from this world.
The great work of all the enemies—as with Nehemiah’s enemies, so with the enemies of Christ and His church—is always to remove that landmark, that distinguishing factor, and to override it and bring in what is of the world.
It has been like that all through the centuries, and perhaps more so today than ever. In many ways, religiously as well as secularly, there is an effort to bring in the spirit of the world, the methods of the world, the principles of the world—something of this world which lies in the wicked one—into the sacred ground and area where it is God and Christ alone.
Do it, and you will find God has gone—God has gone. God is withdrawn, as truly as it was literally the case in the Old Testament. So it will be in the spiritual realm of the New Testament.
There can be no preserving, may I put it like this, of the presence of God if we let that world under the evil one come in, in any shape or form. That wall must be maintained intact. That demarcation must be preserved unsullied. That landmark must remain strong and unbroken.
Let us lay this to heart. The most vital thing where you and I are concerned, where any company of the Lord’s people is concerned, and where the whole church is concerned, is the presence of God. It is just the presence of God.
There are not a hundred and one things that go to make up Christianity. Ultimately and supremely, it is the presence of God.
The presence of God in you, in me, and in all others—that we meet the Lord in one another, and others meet the Lord in us. By our presence here on this earth, the Lord has a way of satisfying Himself, His desire of showing Himself and what He is like.
That is the vocation of the church. That is the vocation of the believer. Let us take this to heart. Concentrate upon this. Well, this is where the Spirit of God concentrates: the presence of God.
Oh, let us be diligent and devoted about this thing. Of course, we know—we do know—if we lose the Lord’s presence, or the sense of the Lord’s presence, everything is hollow and empty. Is that not true? It is a hollow shell.
Your tabernacle in Shiloh might still remain as a structure, but the Lord is gone. It is a hollow shell. So, in any life where the Lord has to stand back, or in any assembly where He is outside the door, or in His church where He cannot commit Himself, it is a hollow thing. Life is hollow without the Lord.
It does matter. We know that very well. But oh, that we may realize that the great thing which is to justify our existence is that the Lord shall more and more be known and met in us and where we are.
I would take that as the very heart of this conference—for individuals, for companies, and for as many of the Lord’s people as could hear it and receive it.
Well, at the beginning of the Book of Acts it was like that. There was no doubt whatsoever that the Lord was in His holy temple. The Lord was there.
But, on the one side, it was because the Holy Spirit had made that so distinct mark of difference between that people and the world. On the other side, notice how no sooner did God have that pleasure and satisfaction than the old enemy started up his old tricks.
Ananias and Sapphira were instruments inspired by Satan to let the worldly, commercial principle into the church. Then again, there was that impingement upon what was of God for personal ends, for earthly and worldly ends.
One man sought gifts by the laying on of hands, that he might be able to do something; and the apostle said, “Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right before God.” No place for you in this.
But you see, the enemy is busy—busy again—trying to find some crack, some crevice, some place through which he can force himself and his evil system into the area defined for God alone.
You and I, like Nehemiah, must be very, very diligent and watchful. See that the Lord does not have to stand back because we have let something in that is not of the Lord. Well, that is the next thing: the wall.
Then there is something that we have not said much about as to this Book of Nehemiah. We only mentioned it yesterday in an analysis: the place of the Word of God.
If you look again, you will see that there was a phase, or a point, at which the Word of God was restored to its place of full authority. They searched for the Word of God, they brought it in, and they made it the governing thing for their life in all departments.
The authority—the absolute authority—of the Word of God. Perhaps little need be said about that. I am not simply talking fundamentalism, about the inspiration of the Scriptures and that sort of thing. It is something very much more than that.
I suppose most of us believe that the Bible is the Word of God and that the Bible ought to govern the life of the Christian. But that means very much more than a general statement or belief.
This Word of God has hidden in it, buried in it, the pattern for God’s purpose. Christ is there as the model, in every respect, of God’s sanctuary. He is hidden in all the Scriptures. He is there.
That is the Word of God. It is not the letter; it is what lies behind the letter—what the Spirit has put into the letter—and that is Christ. That is Christ. He is the pattern.
Your approach to the Word of God, to the Bible, dear friends, must always be with one question in mind: What has this to say to me about Christ? What is there here that can teach me more of Christ?
Go positively and to the contrary. On the one side, yes; on the other side, that is not Christ. The Bible is divided like this. But the authority of the Word of God is not just the authority of letters; it is the authority of the living Word within the written word.
And He is there. He is the pattern there in all the Scriptures, and He is the absolute authority as the living Word for the church, for the people of God.
That is a statement of truth, and it must be applied. There is nothing superior to the Scriptures. There is no revelation superior to the Scripture. Make no mistake about it.
There is nothing—a revelation from God—that is superior to the Scriptures, that puts the Bible on one side in any fragment at all. If the Bible says something, that is what the Bible means; that is what it says.
That is what it says. And you are superior to that, or you violate that, to your own peril—and with the effect of putting you outside of that in which the Lord is fulfilling His purpose.
But enough about that for the moment. There is something more than that in this Book of Nehemiah which I think is very, very important and instructive.
You look at Nehemiah 8. You will see that when the Word of God was recovered, brought back into its place, and made the governing authority in the life of the people, it had to be interpreted.
These people had been in captivity for seventy years, and they had forgotten their own native tongue and learned a foreign language. When they came back after seventy years, the new generation and the old people did not understand their own language when it was spoken—their old native language.
So they appointed some thirteen interpreters, in addition to the Levites. Bad enough for you to have one interpreter! But on that day, or in those days, as the Scriptures were read, the Levites and then thirteen extra men stood among the people.
As the Word of God was read, they gave the meaning and the sense. They said, “You hear that? Now that means this. That means this.”
And in that I see a wonderful spiritual principle. Because I see that happening in the Book of Acts. By reason of our alienation—our spiritual alienation—we do not understand heavenly language.
It is difficult enough, when we are brought back, to understand the things of the Spirit. We are having to learn a new language all the time, as a new generation born again.
But here in this Book of Acts is this wonderful thing: these apostles were the interpreters. Filled with the Holy Spirit, taught by the Holy Spirit, governed by the Holy Spirit, they were interpreting the Old Testament in a way that those most familiar with it did not understand.
It is one of the impressive things: what they saw in the Scriptures with which they were familiar. Here is an instance—Amos.
The orthodox Hebrew would say of the prophecies of Amos, “Of course, that referred to the remnant returning, and Haggai, and that time when they rebuilt the temple. Of course, that is what Amos referred to.”
It is only common sense, they would say, to see that Amos was talking about that, and that fulfilled the prophecy of Amos. Now here are Hebrews in Jerusalem, filled with the Holy Spirit, seeing what no orthodox Jew saw in that prophecy.
They saw that it was not fulfilled in Nehemiah or his time. Its fulfilment is in Christ, in our times. If you look again at the preaching of these apostles, it is just like this. They are saying things about the Scripture that no one, without the revelation, illumination, and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, would see in the Scripture.
And in that way they became vital. So I take that up as a very important thing, because we are in this dispensation of the spiritual and the heavenly.
Dear friends, I have said with great emphasis that there is nothing extra to the Scriptures in themselves. But oh, what a need there is for men filled with the Spirit to interpret the Word of God according to the mind of God.
You have any amount of man’s interpretation and exposition, but how little we have of real Holy Spirit illumination of the Word of God. And the other does not get us very far, does it?
But anything that really is a touch of the living Spirit upon the Word—oh, how it helps, how it quickens, enlivens, and lifts into riches, as we are able to say, “Oh, I never saw that. How wonderful that is.”
We need the interpreters who see God’s meaning in the Word and through the Word. We need this New Testament ministry.
Pray that the Lord will recover this, amongst other things, in His recovering work in this time. As He brings back a people, as He brings back His sanctuary, as He brings back His wall of demarcation, pray that He will bring back spiritual interpreters of His mind and of His Word.
Pray that He will bring back those who will fulfil a ministry of real illumination and regulation to His church. Pray that God will secure such men. We need them badly. We do not just need technical teachers and preachers; we need interpreters, by the Holy Spirit, of the Word of God.
We pass to the remaining things. We spent the whole afternoon on one of them: the absolute government of the Holy Spirit.
The Word of God and the government of the Holy Spirit—these are the two great governmental factors in the house of God, amongst the people of God.
I am not going to stay to say much more about this matter, but we must remember that all through that Book of Nehemiah there is a secret, mighty energy at work, and that is the energy of the Holy Spirit carrying out the divine plan to its full realization.
That is what we have here in this Book of Acts. The Holy Spirit has got it in charge. He has taken charge of the divine purpose. He Himself, by His own energy, might, and wisdom, is carrying it out.
Oh, what a romance of the Spirit that book is. How differently He does things from how men would do them. What He does, men would never think of.
You have to say, “Well, I would never have thought of that,” if you see the Spirit moving—how He does it, His strategy. The Spirit is in charge.
There is a great need for this recovery too. I need not argue that. You and I need the recovery of the absolute authority and government of the Holy Spirit in every respect.
The local company needs that wherever it is, and the church of God needs that. Other lords have dominion. Other heads are in His position. The Holy Spirit is not, today, able to exercise Himself because there are other forces at work which are not of Him.
We believe that. We must pray in all our praying for God’s recovering work that this shall come back with His purpose.
Finally, there is the matter of local expressions. The last phase of this Book of Nehemiah sees the people settled in the cities of the land.
That which corresponds to that, of course, in the New Testament, is the churches over the world—the local companies.
What we have to say about that is that it is the outcome of something. It is the outcome of Jerusalem being rebuilt. It is the outcome of there being an archetype, there being a model in existence from which all that is local and scattered can take its character.
Now here, you see, there is that spiritual thing secured on the Day of Pentecost: Christ and His church, His members, a model in those beginnings—just a model.
And then, because that is in existence, because it is there, the local churches take their character from that. They are but an extension of the full thought of God, a local expression of that which is there spiritually.
Dear friends, if all that I have been saying about the purpose and desire of God for a dwelling place, about the character of that dwelling place, its spiritual and moral nature, its separateness and distinctiveness, its absolute separation from the world, the government of the Word of God, and the government of the Holy Spirit—if all these things go to make up the whole purpose of God, and are the features of what God Himself has secured in His Son—then in every locality where His people are, there should be that in representation, an extension of that.
Those things should be true where there are the Lord’s people. It only requires two of you to be a representation, you know. The Lord said that; I did not.
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
That strikes a familiar note now: the Lord is there. It only takes two in Christ to be a microcosm of this whole wonderful thing that God is after.
You two in your home—you deplore, perhaps, that there are not others, no larger assembly there—but there are two of you. The Lord can be there, because He is in you two.
And your home can be a dwelling place because He is in you two—a dwelling place of God. In that, all that I have said can have its expression.
The Holy Spirit can be in government and authority. The Word of God may be the rule of your life. All this is providing the Lord with a place for Himself and His pleasure, and He can take pleasure in being there.
Let us remember that. There may be only two somewhere; that is the possibility of two, the Lord has said. If there are three, so much the better; and if there are more, better still.
But the principle is the principle—not the multitude, but the principle—providing the Lord with that which makes it His pleasure to be there: a heart for the Lord, two hearts for the Lord, where the Lord alone is Lord.
The Lord grant that out of this there may be inspired in our hearts such a purpose and such a meaning in life that we shall say, as one of old, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
And if you want to know what serving the Lord means, it means giving to Him that upon which His heart is set. And this is it.