So we do together now. Look to see, because our beloved Lord, I know that we know only very little—that Thou Thyself—
Then we were looking together at the ministry of Ezekiel as representing a certain part of the very clearly defined groups of ministries that you find at the end of the Old Testament.
You had Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel in one group. You have Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Malachi, Zechariah, and another group; Ezra; and you have other groups—two small groups that we will leave.
Ezekiel is, perhaps, one of the third great moves of God in the recovery of all that was lost in the exile and captivity.
At that point, everything was lost. It would seem as if the very purpose of God had been brought to nought, and all the faithfulness of God had ended concerning the children of Israel—all that He had ever promised to their fathers. The nation, the king, the city of God, the house—everything had gone.
God recovered, as it were, in a man called Jeremiah. This man lived right through the last full reign and into the captivity, and was able to discern very clearly exactly what would happen to the people of God.
Ezekiel knew Jeremiah. Indeed, many believe that Ezekiel was one of Jeremiah’s disciples. There is no doubt about it: Ezekiel learned a tremendous amount from Jeremiah, and you find it even in phrases and words very reminiscent of Jeremiah himself.
Daniel had a different kind of ministry to Ezekiel. Daniel’s ministry was purely ministry of the Word. It was purely outline, purely the presentation of truth.
Nevertheless, Daniel was a vital embodiment of what he taught. More than any other prophet, Ezekiel had to do something more. He had to, as it were—to put it rather crudely but simply—build sand castles and knock them down. If you read through the book, he had to act out himself certain things that were going to happen to the people. Seemingly very foolish—yes, yes, yes—but he was illustrating a great fact.
This man, while his whole specific function was only to outline, was in himself the embodiment of all that he taught. God made real, in a detailed and practical life, every word that came out of his mouth.
This we have to remember in our days, if indeed we should ever discover such a ministry as Ezekiel’s. If it is only an outline of truths—the eternal principles of God—and if it is a prophet before the rebellious house of all that God really is after, and the pattern of what we call the way of God amongst us, let us also remember that behind such a ministry there must always be a tremendous cost.
God’s ministries always identify with God, and God’s ministers are always identified with God. The two are inseparably linked and embodied.
So we have noted that Ezekiel’s ministry is the outlining; Daniel’s, persistence. You do not find in Daniel the same prophetic voice and demand that you find in Ezekiel. Daniel is never called a prophet in the Old Testament. Daniel is a statesman.
Daniel is known not for the great decisions that he said, but for the fact that he was the instrument through whom God’s purpose was established.
So we find that these two great men, Ezekiel and Daniel, have a tremendous contrast. One is purely the outline of all God wants; the other is the way in which the same is embodied.
We have been looking at Ezekiel this morning, and we have noticed that the theme through his prophecy is the glory of the Lord.
He is not concerned merely with practical things. I think you do not find anything practical in Ezekiel’s ministry here. You are not coming down to marriage and employment and work and relationships and all that. He never touches it. He is all the time portraying something that God is after—eternal, ultimate, and absolute.
This morning, we saw that about this ministry. We found these features.
First of all, we found that it was the house of God—the sanctuary, the temple of God—which was the place and the dwelling for the glory of God. The first thing in chapters 40 to 48, which deal with the positive side—the constructive side—of Ezekiel’s ministry, is the city. The last thing in chapter 48 is the city. So the city bounds the positive side of Ezekiel’s history.
But the heart of Ezekiel’s ministry is the temple. The city is there, but the temple is central.
We find that everything is involved in and bound up with the house—the glory of God.
Besides the house, there are these things:
Those are the things that Ezekiel portrays. Those are the things that Ezekiel underlines.
Now, I want you to note this evening that we are going to look at it in a somewhat different light tonight.
I want you to see that, first of all, Ezekiel outlines for us what is the heart desire of God. That is the temple, and all that means: the home of God.
“This is the place of My throne, and the place of the soles of My feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever.”
—Ezekiel 43:7
Where? In the temple. In the house.
So we see, first of all, the object of God—the house of God. Secondly, we must see the way that God realizes His objective. How? By the altar.
There is no other way of becoming part of the house of God, of the temple of God, of being, first of all, quarried and then being fitted in and built, than by the principle of the Lord’s cross.
Then I want you to note that there are two functions. The first is bound up with what we shall call the river, and the second is bound up with the city.
The river speaks of ministry. It speaks of ministry of life—service, if you would like to put it that way. The city speaks of government, of administration.
The features are all along this line: the church—the house—the cross applied; the inheritance; the river, ministry and service; and the city, government and administration.
That is really what we find here.
Today in Christianity, everyone talks about the river of life and forgets everything else.
Everyone talks about the river of life. We are all on about service. We all know what is talked about: service, starting more, working for God, and so on. That is the great emphasis. It is a very needed and rightful emphasis in its context.
But our present-day Christianity has torn everything out of its context and has made it the thing.
The river comes out of the heart of God by way of the altar of God. That is the only way that it comes out. There is no other source for the river, and there is no other means of its outflow.
It comes out of the house of God by the side of the altar.
So we have got to ask ourselves tonight some very actual questions. We are going to forget something of the features of the people, ministry, and administration, and get down to how it involves us.
The third thing is this: do you not agree with me that the city of God is something which is to come, but the river of God is something we ought to be experiencing now?
In other words, this whole question of ministry and service should be our experience today. It should be our experience now.
Now the question we have got to ask ourselves is simply this: what is the effect and impact of my life and your life upon others?
Here we must touch the heart of it. Does your life have any impact whatsoever upon others?
Is there a river of life flowing out of me?
Is my life so being used by God that it is life wherever it goes? It may be that it is life in relation to everything. It may be that it causes the desert to blossom. It may be that there are unhelped people who can no longer be useless because of my presence in the office or my presence in the home.
There is something about our life which has an impact. We have all to face this—myself as much as anyone else.
The whole point is this: it is not a question of power. It is not a question of special activity. It is a question of what comes out from us.
It is not a question of what we are doing; it is a question of what we are.
Now then, why, if this river begins as a little trickle—insignificant and hardly to be seen—and becomes, within a few thousand cubits, such a mighty volume of water that a man cannot pass through it, full of profit—what is wrong with my life? What is wrong with your life? What is wrong with us as a company?
You cannot turn to the Scriptures that talk about fruit-bearing—a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold—and hide in that. But at least, the least is certainly called for.
We cannot hide in it. No, no. We have got to face the whole thing.
If I have never brought a person to the Lord, if I have never influenced another toward God, if I am not encouraging and strengthening my other brothers and sisters, then there is something perfectly wrong with my life. There is something radically wrong with my life.
God expects, and indeed has so constituted us by His Spirit, that every one of us should be the very channel of His life. We should be the very means of life to others.
It is interesting that in the chapter in Ezekiel, later on, the trickle has become not a streamlet, not a rivulet, but mighty.
In this country, because of so much rain, we cannot see the effects that a river has. But if some of you had ever seen a river in a different type of country, you would understand just what a river can do.
I remember the first time that I ever saw the River Nile. I did not know it was there. In fact, I rather thought we had another hour in the flight before we would arrive.
There below us was the most amazingly compact triangular group, with one huge black ribbon running through it. On either side was desert, and one river cutting through—oh, just vegetation. That is the effect.
Wherever that river goes, because it has an inherent quality in it, it will produce life.
There is absolutely no use for your life or my life if we cannot get out of it that function, or ministry, or position. The whole point is that every one of us has been constituted so that out from this inner man should flow rivers of living water.
Those rivers of living water will be evidenced in barren terms, in vegetation, in a desert blossoming like a garden.
To put it practically: other lives challenged, other lives brought to life, and out of faint, helpless faith lifted up into life.
There is something so wrong when I know that the world is thoroughly put off by me—can only call me cantankerous, peculiar, and weird. Something is very wrong. There is something very wrong when brothers and sisters can only get the impression that you are difficult.
No, we have to ask ourselves this question. It is a very practical question, because ministry comes down there.
Where does the river of life come out? Oh, how the Lord’s people love to hide from this! “I am not going to look at anyone but myself.” Hide from it.
We are going down into the open.
I see here, then, that there is a river which issues as a little trickle, and that within a few thousand cubits it becomes a mighty river of life, giving life to the whole dead land.
Now I have to bring the company alongside of that, and I have to ask myself: here in this company, should there not be constituted a watershed from which mighty rivers should be flowing out into the whole locality and area? What impact might that river of life make upon the barrenness and darkness around us?
And I come to the point: why is it not so?
Some of us have prayed and prayed and prayed, and it is still not so. Some of us have done everything we thought we could do, and still this is not so.
Here is the answer. There are two reasons. First, the source of the river is in the house. Second, it comes out by the altar.
The simple point is that this river flows out as I see my relationship to the Lord Jesus.
There can only be a trickle of water, and a trickle of water can do a lot. In the desert, I have sometimes seen a little drip on the ground which has produced a little garden. We often look at these little gardens and think, “How wonderful.” But, you know, they are only little trickles.
Whereas God has great rivers flowing out. God’s people ought not only to get to the right place, but to remain there.
What is this now? What is this basis? It is the basic ground of the house of God.
If we come onto that ground, we shall know something about it. No, I am not talking about it merely up here. That is the problem with most of it. It is not the thrill—oh, no—of being part of the church and all the rest of it.
It is getting rid of the things—all the shadows, everything which in any way produces alienation, distance, difficulty, and suspicion. Those are the things. Come out of those.
Of course, if you wait for everyone else to get rid of their suspicion and their difficulty, you will wait forever. You are the one who has to begin. You have to pay the price. You have to come in. You have to set aside the barriers. You have to let down the curtains. You have to let the sun get in.
You see, the house of God has no walls of opaque material. In Revelation, you see through them. So to live in the house of God is to live in a glass house.
A lot of us do not want people looking in and seeing. No, no, no. Do not have that. There is something individualistic about it. Again, such a problem.
That openness amongst my brothers and sisters—no, no. Sometimes over the most stupid, stupid little things, we will not have it. That is everything that puts a shadow over the house.
How we have got to live ourselves in the house of God.
There are many others who rather think that you must wait for somebody to come and gather their arms around them and bring them in and push them all the way. But that never happens. God takes one, and in obedience sets one, walks one, places one; and then the others come to the place where they are really prepared to be built in.
But sometimes we have to wait a long time before we get through on this point of being prepared to dwell together.
The Lord may choose to put you in a place that is not prominent, so that people say, “My, what a good time so-and-so is having.” And the Lord is trying to put me in a place where no one ever sees, and no one ever notices whether there is any real faithfulness there or not.
That is the Lord’s business, and not yours to settle. The Lord has placed every one where He has ruled the place. Are you willing to be any man?
It is when you come onto that ground, and also that standing, that we have got the first great place settled in the question of the river.
It is simply a question of the river coming out of Christ within us. But it is Christ within us in relation to other people—not just Christ in you as a person.
When I step down off the pedestal and come to you and say, “You are my brother, you are my sister, you are my kith and my kin. I belong to you; you belong to me. Thank God for that,” then something happens.
As soon as I close up myself and say, “So-and-so, keep aside from me. All right, I will forgive so-and-so, but there is going to be a definite distance,” then the river is hindered.
The moment I start in self-pity—thinking of how I have been wronged and how disappointed I have been in my brother—we get to the place where we feel so wounded, so disillusioned, so disappointed. We say, “Well, they do not care. Maybe they only want me for what they can get out of me.”
The enemy can start working through, through, through, and in the end leave us shut up in ourselves.
It is not so much that we think they are all wrong. It is rather that we feel ourselves, but no one will feel for us.
But if you did that merely to please the other person, you would be denying yourself, in fact, in this fellowship.
No, we are not going to laugh there. There are a lot of very real difficulties and issues in our own hearts. Before the world, we are striving to be on this ground, on this foundation, where every single child of God has a place.
It is the love, the foundation of life. I am going to search around, and I am going to be done with that. “I will change that. I will care for them.”
I will fill my time with all this love—taking up the needs of others, looking after others, and so on. I have no time to think about myself. Then the horrors of the night I shall be preserved from.
That is the way it is. That is how the house of God is too.
Self-pity goes together with self-preservation. I know many people who do not suffer so much from self-pity, but what they do say is, “If I give myself wholly to this, it is going to kill me. It is going to take all my money, all my time, all my energy. It is going to be a tremendous demand.”
If I give myself to serve and do not expect them to come to me, but go out for them, it can finish me.
Oh, how we have stumbled over this question of self-preservation—whether we are going to lose our lives in the house.
I do not mind telling you that the Lord promises that if you are going to be part of the house, you are going to lose your life. You are going to be at the disposal of everyone else. They are going to say things about you. They are going to make comments. You have got to settle it.
You have got to settle it in your heart: you are going to give yourself, whether it is costly, to the ministry, to the building of the house—whatever side it takes you.
And it will take a lot of hard, difficult time. Yes, you will lose your life—your business life, your private life, your personal life. But something will be given back to you that is better and much happier.
That experience, though, is the test that I have got. When self-pity and self-preservation come before the Lord, then the issue is exposed.
Through such things, the Lord challenges me to challenge you. That is how the Lord builds us together. Those are the issues that we have got to settle.
It is no good coming onto this ground with uncertain issues which will be swept off it. You do not come on because you think you are going to be loved—that will not fit you. You do not come on thinking that the Lord is going to give you a ticket for good health.
You come on because it is the Lord’s ground.
The river comes out of the house of God by the altar. But what is this altar?
This altar simply stands there as the expression of the heart of God. We have already, I think, covered in many ways the altar. But everything on the side of it concerns the river.
How can little people become big people?
If you and I become part of the house of God, we have got to become big people—no little people, no petty people. The cross is the only way by which we are made great in Christ’s greatness.
The altar is the key to the river, and the river flows out by the altar.
This river has so many inherent qualities. It is not only that it turns the desert into a garden; not only that on every side trees are found; but those trees bear fruit.
There is something absolutely in the water because the water issues out of the sanctuary.
“And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow every tree for food, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof fail: it shall bring forth new fruit every month, because the waters thereof issue out of the sanctuary; and the fruit thereof shall be for food, and the leaf thereof for healing.”
—Ezekiel 47:12
It came out in a certain place, because it did that.
We should be people of a positive kind of life—not negative, not gloomy, not critical. We should be people who are very pleasant in their impact.
Well, there we are. That is the river. That is what we have to ask: how does my life shape up to this? How do we as a company shape up to this?
John provides us with the wonderful statement, recording the words of the Lord:
“He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.”
—John 7:38
That is the simple opening. Do you believe that? What is it for? Is it really a revelation?
Do you believe that the principles embodied and spoken about this evening are really true?
If they are, then we have the key to the matter before us. There is no other way of really getting the river flowing than for you and me to have our lives adjusted to it.
The river will flow out. Forget it—you do not have to manufacture it. It starts at the heart of the house of God.
May the Lord really bring us to the point where the river flows out from the house according to the Word of God.
Another question is this: is self-consciousness really so wrong?
I think we all suffer from self-consciousness, except for one or two extreme cases who prove the rule. Most of us suffer from self-consciousness—some perhaps in a hindered way.
What do you say about this question? Self-consciousness is being too conscious of self, not unkindly. Those of us who are painfully shy know this.
There may be a right kind of self-consciousness, in inverted commas. Perhaps we should find another word for it.
When the Lord has given you a really good view of yourself, I think you start to show a bit more restraint. You cannot do what you used to do, and you cannot quite behave in the way that you used to behave, because you have seen yourself through the Lord’s eyes.
That is different from being preoccupied with yourself. The question is not what we do, but what we are.
Self-consciousness is much more than what the dictionary would define in a narrow way. When it becomes an inward-looking condition, it is one of the things by which the enemy paralyses people absolutely.
There are people who cannot look you in the eye because they are so conscious of themselves.
In Genesis, the first thing that happened after the fall was that man became conscious that he was naked. It was not merely fear; it was the consciousness of himself. And the result was guilt, shame, and hiding.
Whether we can associate self-consciousness with humility is another question. But self-consciousness, as we commonly know it, is not only the basis of fear; it is a paralysing thing.
That self-consciousness nearly always springs from pride: a fear of being known, a fear of being shown up, a fear of making an awful mistake in front of everyone.