You all can say a lot of things today, because everyone here is a stalwart. You know, I will not have to worry about crushing you a little bit. You have got to be real strong after a lengthy meeting this morning to be able to come again this afternoon and look alive and awake.
We are going to continue with number nine on the ark of God.
The first Scripture we will read is Hebrews 10:19.
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.
There are a couple of excellent books by Andrew Murray and F. B. Meyer on The Holiest of All. I recommend them to you. But I want to ask a question or two in the typology of Scripture. Of course, the writer here is using some typology.
“Boldness to enter into the holiest,” the place where the ark of God is. Remember, that is our subject. We shall be talking about the house of God today considerably, but it is not the house of God per se that we are interested in. It is the ark of God in its relationship to the house of God—in Solomon, and also in its relationship to the house of God.
And in the typology of Scripture, how in the world could we ever have the right to enter into the holiest of all? Who alone had this right? The high priest. And who is the type of the high priest? I mean, the high priest was a type of whom, and who is the antitype of the high priest? Jesus.
You might say, because we are in Christ, we have the right to enter into the holiest. But we need something more than that, and I want us to see by the end of the discussion today what that something more is.
The second Scripture we shall read is in 1 Peter 2.
Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings,
As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:
If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
To Whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious,
Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
I would venture to say everyone here today knows that the mother term for the church is God’s spiritual house. Well, what that really means very often escapes us.
“Lively stones”—living stones—really says, stones that are alive. The contradictory quality of that little phrase: stones that are alive. Did you ever see a living stone? I did not, except in the church.
Now, I am going to say something that might turn somebody off, but I will take a chance. You folks are fairly mature, and you have heard some of this hard speaking before.
Five years ago, I took one of Dan Smith’s little books, God’s Spiritual House, and I offered it to a brother because I really thought he needed it. I will have a little more to say about giving books to people who need them in a minute, too.
I really thought he needed it, and he said, “Oh, I knew all about that ten years ago.” That is what he said. I would like to be in his shoes, to know all about that. I do not expect to know all about that ten million years from now. But he spurned the offer of the book.
Now, this brother has a personality that very quickly relates to people. He can get next to people in an awful hurry, and he really thinks that he is related to them in Christ.
But as far as God’s spiritual house is concerned, I might liken his shape to that of a cube that has been sliced a little bit eccentric—almost catty-corner. It leaves lots of edges, if you will think about it.
By the time the Lord, if the Lord ever gets through fashioning that brother so he is a living stone in God’s spiritual house, He is going to have to cut off here, cut off here, and cut off here. He is going to be a very small stone. It will be a very small stone before he ever gets in the kind of condition that God can fit him into living fellowship with other members of the body of Christ as a living stone.
He does not know this. The first hymn we sang today was, “Open My Eyes, That I May See.” Dear friends, we need our eyes opened.
At least we will have gotten somewhere today if you can come up to me afterward and say, “At least I know that I need my eyes opened.” It is a tremendous thing to be fitted as a living stone into God’s spiritual house, and it has to do with the ark of the covenant, the ark of His strength, and the ark of His testimony.
Let us look at another Scripture that says something about the spiritual house: 1 Timothy 3. The quickest way we are going to begin the process of getting fitted in is to realize how little we do fit, and that this is a spiritual process.
First Timothy 3:15.
But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God,
Which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
Most Christians can tell you very quickly that the house of God is just another name for the church. Yes, and so is the body of Christ just another name for the church. So is the bride of Christ. There are three or four other names for the church in Scripture, but every one of them has a meaning that we must enter into by revelation, and a challenge for us to enter into a new relationship with God and with His people by life process—and, as we heard this morning, by the real work of the cross.
Paul is saying here that the house of God is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. The thing we want to get out of this is twofold.
First of all, it is a pillar of the truth. Now, what in the world is a pillar? Support. All right? Without the church, without the house of God, the truth as it is in Jesus falls to the ground. It has no support. It is ineffectual. It is meaningless.
Most of us here know by this time that what God is not doing is just saving people from hell so He can take them to heaven. It is vastly more than that, and there is a tremendous revelation given to us, and we need all of it, because there is a tremendous thing going on.
Many of us are not aware of the fact that the truth of God suffers drastically when the evidence of its working power is not found wherever we go in the earth.
And it is the ground of the truth. The ground of the truth. Now, what is this, the ground of the truth?
You might say, “Some brothers and sisters would say, ‘I hear you, brother, and you are falling right into the hands of the Catholic Church.’” There are some things we can learn from the Catholic Church. This is one of them: the ground of the truth.
We teach our students—we have one course in mathematics we call geometry—we teach our students to reason. And you must have a premise from which you reason. That premise is your ground.
I remember a clergyman’s joke in which a Scotchman entered a church a little bit late, and the preacher was already preaching. He whispered to his neighbor, “What’s his ground?” And the neighbor said, “He has no ground. He’s swimming.”
Dear friends, our feet are just right off the ground unless we are knowing, in a most practical kind of way, fellowship with other Christians in an expression of Christ that approximates, in some measure, what God means when He says, “the house of God.”
Now let us go to Psalm 27. A very familiar psalm, but tremendous in its meaning. Verse 4.
One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after;
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.
For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion:
In the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me;
He shall set me up upon a rock.
Now, this is a psalm of David’s early days, when he was fleeing from Saul—not from the Lord. A little later he was fleeing from the Lord when he went down into Philistia, but right here he was fleeing from Saul.
The Spirit was upon David from the day that he was anointed king—great many years, more than twenty years, before he ever really became king. But at any rate, as he fled from Saul, he touched the Lord in a wonderful way. The Spirit of God was on him.
And he says, “There is one thing I really desired of God: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord.” Now, the house of God at that time was not a place where men dwelt. So David was a real prophet.
But in his heart there was a hunger. He could see that there was one safe place, one real refuge for him and for anyone on whom the seal of God had been set in this earth. Because of the multiplicity of enemies and foes, even those of his own household, he desired not only to know the Lord—and he thirsted after God—but he wanted to dwell in the house of God.
He knew he could find there the satisfaction of his heart and the safety that he found nowhere else on earth. He said, “That I may behold the beauty of the Lord.”
Well, David foresaw a day when men could dwell in the house of God, where the beauty of the Lord would be seen, where God could be inquired of, and where there was a hiding place and refuge. Keep that in mind.
Psalm 132.
Lord, remember David, and all his afflictions:
How he sware unto the Lord, and vowed unto the mighty God of Jacob;
Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed;
I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids,
Until I find out a place for the Lord, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob.
Lo, we heard of it at Ephratah: we found it in the fields of the wood.
We will go into His tabernacles: we will worship at His footstool.
Arise, O Lord, into Thy rest; Thou, and the ark of Thy strength.
Notice, this is the God of Jacob. David is saying, “When I was out there in the woods, being chased as a partridge, my life was in danger. I made a vow, and when God would deliver me, I would not rest. I would make it the first business of my life to find out a place to set up a permanent house for the God of Jacob.”
And he says, “We heard of it.” Deep in the hearts—and listen to this, dear friends—deep in the heart of the Israelite of David’s day was a yearning.
Out from the common people there was a rumor, a myth, a desire that one day God would raise up a champion in Israel, and he would build His house. Israel would be the head of the nations and not the tail, as it had been for some three hundred years.
And, dear friends, I am only speaking of these things today because, in the hearts of those who really seek the Lord—those in whose hearts are the highways to Zion—there is a sense, there is a speaking, there is a yearning for the kind of fellowship that is represented by the house of God. It is there.
I am not imposing upon you ideas because I have a due style of the Scriptures, or because I have merely had some tremendous revelation. I am speaking what I know to be the heart cry of those who really love the Lord Jesus and long to serve Him in the fullest way in this earth.
It was there in God’s people that day. That cry, that yearning, that strain, is in the hearts of God’s people today.
Now let us look at 1 Kings, chapter 5. We must have a little background leading up to this.
In our last eight messages, we have traced the history of the ark. We have seen it being put to shame for three hundred years in Israel, while every man did that which was right in his own eyes. We have seen how God began a new thing with a travailing instrument, Hannah, and through her prayer and desire Samuel was given, the gift of God.
We have seen how Samuel turned the hearts of the people back to God; how the people took the ark down to fight against the Philistines, and it was taken; and how it came back. While it was gone, the tabernacle at Shiloh was empty. The glory had departed.
We have seen how it came to Kirjath-jearim through the ministry of Samuel. The Lord got a king in Israel, Saul. Saul was rejected. David, the man after God’s own heart, was raised up and given the throne.
The first thing David did when he was declared king in Israel was to take that ark down into Jerusalem, after he had taken Jerusalem itself. Zion—Jerusalem, and that elevated portion called Zion—had been in the hands of the enemy all this time, three or four hundred years, longer than that. It had never been taken.
When David came to the throne, being prophet, priest, and king, having a spiritual impact as well as political and military wisdom, he was able to take that stronghold of the enemy. Then he brought the ark down into Jerusalem, and it was in a tent in Jerusalem.
The people still went off to Gibeon to worship. The ark was in one place and the people were in another place. We have made a lot of this in a heavy sermon.
If you go among God’s people today, you go where the people are. You can find some food, because the table of showbread is there. You can find some light; the candlestick is there. You can find some cleansing; the laver is there. The Word of God is preached. You can even find the mercy seat, in a sense, because the altar is there. People are getting saved.
But there are a couple of things you cannot find. You do not find the glory of God—the real glory, the release of the overshadowing glory of the Lord. Nor do you find the speaking that comes out alone from the oracle where the ark of the covenant is.
God’s people, it seems, are in one place and the ark is in another place. God at this time needs tents in Jerusalem, in the church, that will receive the ark—where there is the speaking, the glory, and the real mercy seat.
David then numbered Israel under the temptation of the enemy. God brought a judgment upon Israel. The judgment was stayed in Jerusalem, at the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, and David said, “Right here is the place where I will build the house of God.”
Now remember—and you must keep this in mind, or you will give up like so many others have given up after they have seen the vision of the house of God—the house of God was built right here where the judgment of God had fallen and where there was utter human failure.
Dear friends, I want to give you the utmost encouragement. If you know yourself just as I know myself, it is the most encouraging thing in the world to realize that God builds, first of all, where there is utter human failure.
As a matter of fact, there can be no expression of the house of God until men have learned that God is not after the consecration of their natural gifts, and that everything they have by nature completely fails when it comes to this realm of things.
The other thing is that this is the place of judgment: the cross. The cross is an active, vital element of tremendous efficacy wherever you have the house, and the judgment is on human nature.
Many of our hearts fail us because we try to serve God and discover our service is rejected. It is a wonderful place to be. You have learned a tremendous lesson if you have learned that everything you are and everything you have out from your natural self—including those gifts the fundamentalists would say you can consecrate to the Lord for His use—is of no use to Him whatsoever. As a matter of fact, He judges them.
So it is well to remember that. David piled up an enormous treasure, and he intended to build the house of God. God said, “No, you cannot build it. You are a man of blood. You have shed too much blood. I will raise up your son after you, and he will build My house.”
God is after a house, but it is not the house which is in view. It is the house for the ark—a place for His testimony. It is His satisfaction. So hard for us to get to that.
We understand this in most love relationships. My wife and I understand it. We would much rather buy something for the kids than we would for ourselves. As a matter of fact, I give the spending money to my dear wife to buy something for herself, and it usually never gets to the store where she buys something for herself. She goes out and buys something for the kids.
You think she is being unselfish? Not really. She enjoys that vastly more because she loves the kids. I do not chide her too much because I get a great deal of satisfaction out of the same thing.
But in any true love relationship, we understand, even from the natural point of view, that giving satisfaction to the beloved is immensely more fulfilling than having the satisfaction ourselves.
Till we come to the Lord. Then we cry out to God for so many, many things, and we think that we are going to be happy by getting what we want. It just does not work that way. Just does not work that way.
So the Lord told David, “You cannot build the house. Let Solomon build it.” When Solomon grew up, here was this immense treasure: a hundred thousand talents of gold and a thousand thousand talents of silver, brass without weight, wood, nails, and iron without weight for the nails of the house. Iron was a pretty precious commodity at that time. Do not sneer at it. Steel was hard to come by.
So David had all of this wealth. We said last time that if you want spiritual wealth, set your heart upon God’s house and God’s people, and you will find that it can be passed on to them.
If you have the disposition, the dedication, and the right kind of heart, there is an immense spiritual wealth for us to pass on to God’s people. But wherever you go, the striking thing I find among the people of God is their poverty. I do not mean natural poverty. We have a lot of rich Californians; you have a lot of money.
Their spiritual poverty—the immensity of the Word of God, all of the riches that are in Christ, all of the impact of a life that has something real and vibrant of the Lord in it—is missing.
Why is there such leanness? Because God’s people have lost the vision of His house. You have got to say right at this point, “Lord, there is something I am not seeing. Do not let me go out of here wondering what in the world the brother is talking about.”
Some of the things we are going to say here, as quickly as we can, might just help us to see what this house of God really is and what it is all about.
So Solomon prepares to build the temple. Very quickly, we are going to run through some things here. Remember, our subject is not the house of God.
About seven or eight years ago, I brought a series on the house of God. It did not go over. Well, it went over with a dull thud. We were not ready. I am not sure we are ready yet. But I think more of us are probably ready to hear, understand, and respond to the Lord.
Dear friends, if you do not enter into that relationship with the Lord and His people in His house, believe me, what little wealth you think you have will be gone in a few years.
I have known people—not a few, and I will say it again—who once knew all the doctrine of the house of God. They were in a local expression that was moving into an expression of the house of God. Something happened; I do not know exactly what. They went their way.
During the past five years, the Lord has brought me into contact with one after another of them. The striking thing is that they have lost all the wealth. They have lost the vision. They have lost the impact.
Dear friends, I have one covenant with the Lord: “Lord, take me out of this earth before You ever let that happen to me.” I could not stand living on this earth in that kind of spiritual condition. I could not stand it.
So Solomon, in chapter 5 of 1 Kings, prepares to build the temple. Now there is one other thing we need to see.
David brought in the kingdom, and God’s people were brought into a place of safety and rest, so that we are told in 1 Kings that they dwelt, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, in Judah and in Israel.
The second thing that happened after three hundred years and better of every man doing that which was right in his own eyes—and this is tremendously important—was that the people were now in a position where they were commanded and ordered in the will of God.
This is tremendously important. Do not even talk about the house until Christ is Lord, until the kingdom of God’s Son is firmly established in our hearts and in our midst. Do not talk about the house. That is why you do not hear much about the house.
Among God’s people today, that is pretty much the state of things. We will have more to say about that before we are through. Every man is doing that which is right in his own eyes, and the vision—as our brother Norman told us last night—of what is the real hope of His calling is lost.
Dear friends, let me tell you: to enter in and realize the hope of God’s calling demands an expression of the house.
Now, do not go to sleep on me. Pinch yourself; wake up. Not too thrilling, but it is tremendously important, and the Lord does have something to say to us here today.
Once the kingdom is established in the hearts of the people, and they are ordered and commanded so that each one is not doing what is right in his own eyes, then the house comes into view.
First Kings 5:2-6.
And Solomon sent to Hiram, saying,
Thou knowest how that David my father could not build an house unto the name of the Lord his God for the wars which were about him on every side, until the Lord put them under the soles of his feet.
But now the Lord my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent.
And, behold, I purpose to build an house unto the name of the Lord my God, as the Lord spake unto David my father, saying,
Thy son, whom I will set upon thy throne in thy room, he shall build an house unto My name.
Now therefore command thou that they hew me cedar trees out of Lebanon; and my servants shall be with thy servants: and unto thee will I give hire for thy servants according to all that thou shalt appoint.
Is that tremendous? Solomon is sending for vast amounts of cedar.
In the tabernacle, what kind of wood did they use? Anybody remember? Acacia. But when you saw the tabernacle and looked inside and outside, did you see very much acacia? It was covered with gold.
Now he is asking for a lot of cedar. Do you suppose we are going to see a lot of cedar? No, it is all covered with gold. But, dear friends, the cedar is there. This is vitally important.
Trees, as we know, almost everywhere, universally among Bible scholars, represent man—humanity. Humanity is very precious to the Lord.
God is building a house, and He is using men. These are real men. One of the difficulties I have when I go among people who know something more than just the elementary stages of the Christian life is that I quit meeting men. I meet near angels. They are a hybrid kind of creature that is barely recognizable as men.
Friends, I want to clear the atmosphere once and tell you: God, in His working to build His house, does not make us unhuman or inhuman. As a matter of fact, some of us right here in this room, if we are going to become a part of the house of God, are going to have to become vastly more human.
Somehow we got on the wrong track. We got on the wrong track, and we thought that the Lord needed angels for His house. He cannot use angels. You know, He has got more angels than He knows what to do with. He needs men—men who respond to Him and learn the lessons.
The kind of people that He can use are people who know that they are human beings, and they will never be anything else. We will say more about that before we are through.
But I want you to know that this house was not built entirely of gold. Gold is the divine nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank heavens, He is building that into us. He is covering the manhood with gold.
As we said before, some of the gold is showing through in this company. It is a wonderful thing to see God’s people with, you know, a little gold leaf—maybe with gold, anyway—instead of something that is just the old man.
The cedar is very necessary, and Solomon thinks it is so necessary that he goes a long way off and imports it in.
Now let us notice the second thing about the house. First Kings 6:2. God needs people. Every time, if your heart is right with God and you have the mercy seat firmly ensconced in the depths of your soul, every time you meet any kind of person, you know what your first reaction will be? “Gee, here is some material for the house of God.”
You will get a totally different look at humanity. One of the things that is wrong—we were speaking at school the other day of the approach of certain members of our faculty and counseling staff—is that they no longer see people as people. They measure people by everything that is wrong with them.
As far as they are concerned, anybody who is not fit to go on and get a PhD in something is really not fit to be a member of the human race.
Dear friends, when the true revelation of the house of God breaks in upon your spirit and your soul, when you see the vilest specimen of humanity, you will be saying, “Hey, that fellow has a better chance of becoming a member of God’s house than that PhD—a much better chance.”
Because the grace of God is tremendously operative in the earth. That is why He looks upon men. God did really love the world. He really did.
Maybe you think you believe John 3:16, but I would venture to say, if I had some way of really telling how many of us really believe John 3:16, I would find out that most of us do not.
For this one reason: we do not realize how very real and human we will be one day in the new heavens and the new earth—what the fundamentalists call heaven. There will be people there: people, real everyday common people.
Yes, His servants shall serve Him, His name shall be written in their foreheads, and they shall reign forever. There are going to be a whole lot of real common people. Abraham Lincoln had the right idea. He said, “God must have really loved the common people. He made so many of them.”
First Kings 6:2.
Many of us do not fit into the house of God because we are such excellent people. It is not our deficits that keep us out; it is our excellencies, breeding a spirit and an attitude that make us impossible to fit in.
And the house which king Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits.
You know the most astonishing thing about this when you really look at it? Its size. It is small.
The house of God—Solomon’s temple of universal fame—was only ninety feet long: threescore cubits. The breadth was twenty cubits, thirty feet wide, and the height was thirty cubits, forty-five feet high. It was not very big. It was not a whole lot bigger than this building right here. Did you know that?
Most Christians are astonished to find this out. Friends, by comparison with many buildings of that day in Babylon, later on when Daniel was down in Babylon he saw a lot more grandiose buildings.
No, the house of God is not very big. The Lord Jesus said the same thing. He said, “Broad is the way that leadeth unto destruction, and many there be that enter in thereat. Narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
He was saying, in effect, in comparison. That is what my friends among whom I work are always telling me: “The thing that is wrong with your religion is that you believe that so few people are going to heaven.”
But that was not my idea. Few compared to the vast multitude, yes. One day there is going to be a multitude which no man can number, in the billions. I know it will not compare with the billions that are lost. The Lord will explain that to you and me someday, and it does not bother me too much anyway.
I somehow cannot get affected by the hysteria I find in the Christian church about all the people who are not receiving Christ. Is it merely that my heart is hard? No. It is because I know God, and the righteous and merciful, holy, heavenly One is going to explain it all to me someday. Until then, I will trust Him.
This house was small. What is it about the house? The first thing about the house that makes it so valuable is its intrinsic value—overlaid with gold, within and without. The quality. It is just the quality.
The Lord is taking some tremendous chances, and a lot of people cannot figure out why the Lord is not now doing things wholesale. Why, in so many places where there are so many people going their separate ways, He is not happy with that; and why He insists on this quality.
One brother said to me a few years ago, “Well, if the Lord was just half as particular as you think He is, why, nobody would ever get anywhere with Him.”
I assure you, the Lord is many, many times more particular than any of us think He is. As a matter of fact, He settles for only one thing. The Lord is the narrowest person I know. He says, “I want Christ, and I will take nothing else, no matter how excellent it looks to you.”
The quality of this house is a major key. God is striking it. It is not very big. For those who have no eye for quality, they would say, “My, there are a lot of bigger, more grandiose, and wonderful buildings.”
But the house that Solomon built is exceedingly magnificent. The Lord says, “Exceedingly magnificent.” That is language we do not use anymore, but it communicates. And it is.
When we see God’s house, when we see the beauty, the order, the glory, and the wonder of it—what people were and what they become, the dwelling place of the living God—our hearts bow in worship and in rapture. “Lord, could You really do that? That beats anything I could ever think of, that You could really do that.”
That is what I think about what He has done in some of you folks, too. I do not see how He has done it, but He has done it, and He is doing it.
They cut out the stones. They made them perfectly square. They polished them, and when they brought them in and put them together, everything fit perfectly. There was no sound of an axe or hammer—the quietness of it all, the unobtrusiveness of it all.
You know, I have met people—not a few—who claim to be living stones and have told me, in so many words, “I really do not need to be associated with what you call an expression of God’s house, because I am a living stone. I am out here in the quarry.”
This is quite a common teaching among a lot of people: “I am out here in the quarry, and the Lord is doing all the work. One day He is going to take me and quietly fit me into the house, and there will not be a sound of an axe or a hammer.”
The only problem is, you never see these people in the proximity of any other stones without seeing that, gee, the Lord is going to have to do a tremendous amount of work to make them fit in anywhere.
They are not quite so smoothly polished, so cubical, so beautiful, so well formed and fashioned as they think for the house of God. As a matter of fact, when they walk in among God’s people where He is doing His work, they have to start at zero—zero point zero—and be fashioned right from the ground up.
As a matter of fact, they have just been blasted out of the quarry by the tremendous power of God’s redemption. God’s redemptive power is a marvelous thing—the power of God unto salvation. We are blasted out of Adam into Christ, but all the work that needs to be done remains.
They think they are lying there proudly, deceived. Friend, there is only one way—only one way—to test whether or not we are really being fashioned. That is to get in among God’s people and see if we can stand the test: the patience, the humility, the being set at naught, the losing of our rights, all of our prerogatives given to someone else; and still be humble, sweet, gracious, and go on with the Lord and His people.
I do not know about you, but I have failed a hundred thousand times. Every time, the Lord has knocked off an edge.
There are a lot of other things I would like to say about this house, but we are getting close to the end of our time, so I want to skip a few things. First Kings 6:22.
And the whole house he overlaid with gold, until he had finished all the house:
Also the whole altar that was by the oracle he overlaid with gold.
And within the oracle he made two cherubims of olive tree, each ten cubits high.
Everything gets overlaid with gold. How about the stones? They get overlaid with gold too. You bet your life they do.
Someday I am going to fulfill that promise to spend at least an hour, probably two, on the cherubim. Do you think the cherubim really were angels? Do you really think so?
Let us look for a minute at Exodus 20. I have got to make this point. I will make it again later.
And God spake all these words, saying,
I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above,
Or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Look at that: any likeness of anything that is where? In heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth.
When Solomon made the temple, he made the likeness of a number of things. He put the laver on twelve oxen. But when they built the tabernacle, what about that?
The ingrained fear of the Lord and His hatred of idolatry was in them, and they made no likeness of any living thing in heaven above or in earth beneath. But what was there inside the holiest of all? Cherubim. Think about that.
Now you find two cherubim inside. What conclusion do you make, then? What conclusion have I just laid the ground for? What is the conclusion? That the cherubim were not any living thing. That is the inevitable conclusion.
Well, what in the world are the cherubim then? Cherubim, we are told, were there at the Garden of Eden, swords blocking the way. What are the cherubim?
Dear friends, let me tell you what the cherubim are in essence. They are God’s thought for mankind. They are the thing that God will create out of a race of people in the new creation.
They represent the real hope of His calling. God will have a creature race, somehow not mingled. Be careful of any doctrine that talks about the mingling of God and man. There is no mingling.
There is no mingling of the old Adam nature with God, never in a thousand years. God has brought in the cross. But let me tell you, there is a new manhood in Christ. There is a new manhood in Christ.
This manhood is typified by the ox, the eagle, the lion, and the face of man, all on the same head. We are going to leave that for now. But remember, this kind of manhood, this kind of person, not only has access, but has the right to dwell where? In the holiest of all.
By the blood of Jesus Christ, you and I can have the old Adam nature completely covered and, in effect, blotted out by God, so that we can enter into the holiest and even grow there.
None of us will ever learn, I suppose, on this earth to dwell there twenty-four hours a day, but make it your goal for twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes, anyway.
Dear friends, there is the presence of the living God in which we have a right to dwell—in His house.
Here is the problem, and here is the crux of the matter: you only learn to dwell in that presence, you only learn the meaning of the cherubim and a manhood that God can approve of, as you learn to dwell in His house.
Dear friends, Satan hates, like nothing else on this earth, people who talk about the house and who have some knowledge of its meaning. A great many problems, insurmountable problems, that we find among God’s people wherever we go vanish when you get an expression of the house.
There is so much I would like to say about the house. This house is an ordered place. Everything has its function. Everything that He put in there had a function, something it was supposed to do.
Every Christian has his function. Dear friends, when we talk about the people of God being ordered and commanded according to His will, that frightens some of us until we know the meaning of real order.
I will say it again as I have said it many times: yes, there are those who have to tell other people what to do. But the real order in the house of God comes from simply being in your place, doing what you were fitted to do. That is order.
Not the feather duster trying to be a mop. When you get anything like an expression of God’s house, the minute people get out of order, it becomes painful. What a training. How obvious it is to everybody.
There is a total intelligence. Let me tell you that the foremost face of this cherubim is that of a man, signifying intelligence—spiritual knowledge and understanding. A total intelligence of the cherubim will come to bear on that disorder.
The person who is trying to function, of course, in a capacity for which he has no gift from God will know it, and everybody else will know it too. It sets things in order in a marvelous way.
Now, chapter 8 of 1 Kings. The house was finally finished—seven years in building, seven years signifying completeness of time, perfection. We are coming to an end here now.
First Kings 8:3-11.
And all the elders of Israel came, and the priests took up the ark.
And they brought up the ark of the Lord, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and all the holy vessels that were in the tabernacle, even those did the priests and the Levites bring up.
And king Solomon, and all the congregation of Israel, that were assembled unto him, were with him before the ark, sacrificing sheep and oxen, that could not be told nor numbered for multitude.
And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the Lord unto His place, into the oracle of the house, to the most holy place, even under the wings of the cherubims.
For the cherubims spread forth their two wings over the place of the ark, and the cherubims covered the ark and the staves thereof above.
And they drew out the staves, that the ends of the staves were seen out in the holy place before the oracle, and they were not seen without.
And there they are unto this day.
There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when the Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt.
And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord,
So that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud: for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord.
How different from when David first tried to bring it down into Jerusalem. He tried to carry it on a new cart, like the Philistines—just like the ark is trying to be carried in Christendom today on the shoulders of anybody but a functioning priesthood.
The priests took up the ark. They brought up the ark of the Lord, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and all the holy vessels. The priests and Levites brought them up. Then the ark was brought into its place, into the oracle of the house, to the most holy place, under the wings of the cherubim.
The staves were drawn out. There they were under this state. There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb, when the Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel as they came out of Egypt.
When the priests came out of the holy place, the cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud. The glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.
You might say, “I do not know. If the glory of the Lord fills the house, I do not know if I can minister.”
I have been in a few meetings back East among the Holiness people where there was something of the testimony, in spite of the fact that there was a lot of wrong doctrine. They were the forerunners of the people who built this place. As a matter of fact, some of them with whom I had some fellowship, their name is right down here in the little chapel—the Zellers.
Every time we got to preaching with a little power, everybody wanted to quit ministering and get up and run around and shout. They did not understand why I insisted that there should be some order and people should sit down. If you wanted to be blessed in your seat, fine. If you wanted to be blessed quietly, fine.
Dear friends, the wonderful thing about it is that today the glory of the Lord can fill His house, and we can, with open face, behold the glory of the Lord. We do not have to stop ministry.
That is saying something. I am afraid not too many of us, dear friends, know how richly, powerfully, and wonderfully the glory of the Lord can fill His house.
Someday, someday. Well, in our last retreat, we had a small taste of it, did we not? Would you agree? A small taste of it. There was a wonderful breaking in, and just easy access to God in His glory for most of our hearts. But, friends, that was just a trickle—just a trickle.
Christians today are educated in privation and leanness. I am sorry; I must tell it like it is. They learn to walk out of meetings and say, “Well, the Word was good, and the singing was good, and the attitude was good, and the ‘spirit’ was good.” But their hearts are not ravished by the wonder and the glory of the ark and the speaking of God.
Friends, I am going to tell you, and I am going to keep on telling you, that is what Christianity is supposed to be. This was a type only. The priests had to quit ministering because of the glory that filled the house.
Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 3 that glory is not glorious any longer because of the glory that excelleth. Then he said, “We with open face beholding the glory of the Lord are changed from glory unto glory into His image.”
Why are we not knowing that glory? I am going to give it to you in a word: that ark will only come to its place of rest in the house which God builds.
That brings up some real practical questions for some of us. Some of us are in places where we feel we cannot be a part of such a fellowship. I have not got a lot of easy answers for you. If you are expecting them, you are not going to find them from me or from anybody else. The Lord has the answer.
It may involve things that I could not possibly ask you to do, but He can. Whatever He asks you to do, you see to it that you do.
Say in your heart of hearts, “Lord, what that brother is saying is true: that I can be really fitted into an expression of Your house so that the ark can come in and rest, and I can know the glory, the speaking, and all the rest.”
Friend, there is a tremendous rest of it. Next time we are going to talk about the rest of it. What was the result in the kingdom when the ark came into its rest? What was true, for a little space?
The Lord was a long time getting it there. In the four hundred and eightieth year after the people came out of Egypt, God finally had the thing His heart was set upon. He had a house, exceedingly magnificent, into which He could bring that ark, pull out the staves, and the ark could rest.
This matter of chronology kind of confuses us. If we are waiting for a day to come when the Lord has His house, I have got a word for you: He has got it already. All He wants to do is fit you into it.
The real reason we are not enjoying the house of God is not because we are not bound up with a local expression of it, but because we are not fitted for it. It is possible to know that ordered relationship with other Christians—however few or many, it does not matter—in response to Him.
Then the real glory of the Lord Jesus Christ breaks upon us, and, friends, we will be spoiled for everything else—absolutely, utterly spoiled.
A lot of people are coming around with answers as to why God’s people are not having the blessing they ought to have. Quite a few people come to me with their answers, and they come and bring me books.
Let me tell you what it is kind of like. You will have to forgive me for this if you brought me a book lately.
What if somebody walked up to you while you were walking along the street? You were dressed reasonably in a business suit and tie and thought you looked pretty spiffy. This fellow walks up, and you see that he is ragged. His shoes are down at the heels, his toes are sticking out, his pants are torn, his coat is dirty, his hat is oil-begrimed, and his hair is unkempt.
He walks up and says, “You need this, and I can tell you need it.” You look at it, and it says, How to Get Rich in Two Weeks.
You look at the gentleman and say, “How long have you had this—three months?” Good. You have got to bite your tongue to keep from saying, “Well, how do you expect it to do me any good if it has not done you any good?”
Friends, this is what you will find everywhere among the people of God today. They have got easy answers. They will come to you with books that will explain fully to you, and are bound and guaranteed to bring you into the fullness of all that they would have you experience.
You look very carefully at what they have got, and it is heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking: the smallness, the limitation, the poverty, the lack of dedication, the lack of joy.
No shout of a king, no reigning in life, no rejoicing with a solid, deep, real joy that no man or nothing in the world can take away.
Friends, I have got an answer for you. It is not a good one; it is a tough one. Right at the entrance to the court of that house, there is what? What is the first thing you do when you walk into the courtyard of that house?
You encounter a big altar. That is what you encounter, and that is the reason it is not so easy. That altar is set for the undoing. It is a cross. It is a death. But all the reward is in life.
So next time we will see something of the meaning of that house—the fullness, the fullness that was there in the kingdom of Solomon. After we look at that, we will get right at the end of that next message: a greater than Solomon is here.