Now, shall we take the Word of God? We are going to go for rather a ramble through Scripture, beginning at Genesis 12.
Genesis 12:7-8:
And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land:
and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him.
And he removed from thence unto the mountain on the east of Beth-el, and pitched his tent, having Beth-el on the west, and Ai on the east:
and there he builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord.
Then Genesis 35:1-3:
And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there:
and make there an altar unto God, who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.
Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments:
and let us arise, and go up to Beth-el;
and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.
Then turn back to Genesis 28:11. This is Jacob:
And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set;
and he took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep.
And he dreamed; and behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven;
and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac:
the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.
And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south:
and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land;
for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.
And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.
And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place!
this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
That, of course, was Beth-el. Verse 19: “And he called the name of that place Beth-el.” That is what Beth-el means: the house of God.
Now go back again to Genesis 22. You probably will not understand quite what we are doing just now, but I trust you will later.
Genesis 22:1-2:
And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham:
and he said, Here am I.
And He said, Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah;
and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
Then verse 9:
And they came to the place which God had told him of;
and Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood.
And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham:
and he said, Here am I.
And He said, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him:
for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns:
and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead of his son.
And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh:
as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.
Now, that was Mount Moriah. Turn to 1 Chronicles 21:15.
And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it:
and as he was about to destroy, the Lord beheld, and He repented Him of the evil, and said to the destroying angel, It is enough; now stay thine hand.
And the angel of the Lord was standing by the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem.
Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell upon their faces.
Verse 27:
And the Lord commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.
Then 1 Chronicles 22:1:
Then David said, This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of burnt-offering for Israel.
That was Mount Moriah again—exactly Mount Moriah. Then 2 Chronicles 3:1:
Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, which he made ready in the place of David, in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
Mount Moriah. Now go back to Exodus 40:6-7:
And thou shalt set the altar of burnt-offering before the door of the tent of meeting.
And thou shalt set the laver between the tent of meeting and the altar, and shalt put water therein.
You will see, I trust, that everything has to do with an altar and the house. All these Scriptures we are looking at concern that.
Now Ezra 3:1:
And when the seventh month was come, and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem.
Then stood up Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and his brethren the priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and his brethren, and builded the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt-offerings thereon, as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God.
And they set the altar upon its base; for fear was upon them because of the peoples of the countries:
and they offered burnt-offerings thereon unto the Lord, even burnt-offerings morning and evening.
Verse 6:
From the first day of the seventh month began they to offer burnt-offerings unto the Lord:
but the foundation of the temple of the Lord was not yet laid.
We should really read quite a bit more, but let us read from verse 8:
Now in the second year of their coming unto the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, began Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and the rest of their brethren the priests and the Levites, and all they that were come out of the captivity unto Jerusalem;
and appointed the Levites, from twenty years old and upward, to have the oversight of the work of the house of the Lord.
Then stood Jeshua with his sons and his brethren, Kadmiel and his sons, the sons of Judah, together, to have the oversight of the workmen in the house of God:
the sons of Henadad, with their sons and their brethren the Levites.
And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the Lord, after the order of David king of Israel.
And they sang one to another in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord, saying, For He is good, for His lovingkindness endureth for ever toward Israel.
And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.
But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, the old men that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice;
and many shouted aloud for joy:
so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people;
for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off.
Then two last references. Ezekiel 40:47:
And he measured the court, a hundred cubits long, and a hundred cubits broad, foursquare;
and the altar was before the house.
This is all about the house of God again, and the city. Then Ezekiel 47:1:
And he brought me back unto the door of the house;
and behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward, for the forefront of the house was toward the east;
and the waters came down from under, from the right side of the house, on the south of the altar.
So this great river of life came from inside the house, from the altar, and flowed out through the city into the whole land, so that everything was changed by this river.
Well now, this evening we come to the conclusion of these studies on why you are at Alford House. Some years ago, when we considered this matter, we also considered mission, missionary societies, missionary organisation, and so on. But we decided this time not to look at that. Perhaps sometime, when the Lord leads us, we will.
Now, we have said a lot. Yet, in answering the question we have asked ourselves—“Why are you at Alford House?”—we have still not touched the real key to everything.
We have said that the headship of Christ is vital. We have said that the church, His body, is a heavenly thing, something out of heaven, of a different order altogether from anything down here. We have said that His church is an organism and not an organisation. We have said that the church is the fellowship of Christ, and so on and so forth.
But we have still not actually touched the key to the whole matter. We have answered the question, but the point is: How does it all come to pass?
We can go to theological courses, Bible colleges, or come here on a poorer level, and learn something about the church and its nature. But the fact remains: in the end, the practical question is how—not only why, but how?
We may have given a good explanation and a good answer to our question, “Why am I at Alford House?” We may have satisfied ourselves about it all. But we must be very careful. In answering our question accurately, soundly, and scripturally, we may still be in a fool’s paradise.
The how, in the end, is the almighty question. If you like, it is the million-pound question. How can we see the church recovered in practical expression? How can we see the testimony of Jesus, which we have considered in the last few weeks, recovered and restored? How can we see God really moving in such a way as to express Himself in terms found in the New Testament?
What is the secret, the key, to the source of the life of God in which everything lies in heaven?
Now, the key is twofold. It is the Cross and the Spirit.
When we say, “the Cross and the Spirit,” in that one simple sentence we have encompassed the whole of the New Testament. Indeed, I would even go further and say that you have encompassed the whole of the Bible.
The how is answered in that one simple statement: the Cross and the Spirit. Not the Cross alone, nor the Spirit alone, but the Cross and the Spirit.
The church, the body of Christ, is a spiritual organism. It may have a tremendous amount of organisation, but it is the original source of its organisation that counts. It is an organism, and its organisation develops from the life of God that is within it.
It cannot be put together by man. It cannot be set up by man. People talk about “my church,” “my people,” “my meeting,” “my pulpit,” and so on. Ministers often speak that way. But it is quite foreign to the New Testament. The Apostle Paul, who perhaps more than anyone might have felt entitled to speak about “my churches,” never refers to them in that way—not at all.
I remember a young man coming a while ago and asking us how we ran the place. Michael Fishbaine asked him what he was, and he said, “Oh, I am the same as you. I run two or three churches.” In that simple statement, he gave everything away. There was no need to say another word.
Not only is the church a spiritual organism which cannot simply be put together or set up by men, but—and this is tremendously important; may the Holy Spirit reveal it to our hearts and not merely to our heads—man, as he is, has got to be removed entirely by the work of the Holy Spirit through the Cross.
He has got to be thoroughly dealt with. Far from putting people into some kind of Bible college simply to refine what is in them naturally, the Holy Spirit’s work is to destroy and break up what is in us naturally—to remove altogether what we are.
That is the paradox: what we are must be dealt with so that what we are may be used. The Apostle Paul was broken up in the desert—completely broken up. Yet, in the end, the Holy Spirit used his mind in an unparalleled way.
The old Paul’s mind could not have been used with all its native wit, intelligence, and genius. But when it was broken, when he was removed, when he was broken up, then the Holy Spirit could fall upon him and use him.
How different that is from much of our modern method of training one another for the service of God: “You have this capacity; you have that ability. Come on then, consecrate it to the service of God. Dedicate it.” That is the idea. And, of course, the results are seen in the church, where we have man’s work instead of the Spirit’s work.
Most of it appears to be so much God’s work, but it is not. It is wood, hay, and stubble—perhaps gilded—of our own nature, and not the gold, silver, and precious stones of the nature and character of Christ.
Before the church can be expressed in the simplest way, the Holy Spirit has got to remove man—that is, you and me as we are altogether. Now, that is the crux of the problem. Make no mistake about it.
The crux of the problem is not getting people interested in the matter of the church. It is not getting people to meet together, though I must say the flesh finds it tiresome after a while. After a few years, when we have got used to it all, the flesh wants to get away, get out of it, or find something new and novel.
But believe me, there is no problem in getting people together. The problem is to get people to present their bodies a living sacrifice to God. Then the Cross starts to break us open, and the Holy Spirit can fall upon us and really use us.
I say, one life like that is worth a million. You can have conference after conference after conference. You can have missionary society after missionary society. You can have all the studied ranks of Christian workers. But have one man like the Apostle Paul—one man in a community, one man devoted to God in such a way that he can be broken open and used—and he is worth all the rest put together.
Never before in the history of the church have we had as much money as we now have, strange enough, in spite of all the appeals we see on every side. We have never had as much accumulated money in Christian hands as today. Nor have we ever had so many councils, committees, and boards cluttered up with titles and wealthy people.
Never in the whole history of the church have we had so many Christian workers. Never have we had the media that we have today: the printed page, recordings, television, radio, means not only of communication but also of transport, which bring the whole world into a small area that can be easily encompassed.
We have never had anything like it before, and yet we are losing the battle. Open any missionary magazine or read any survey or statistics, and everyone will tell you that we are losing the battle. The population explosion—millions!
What is the difference between us and the early church? One hundred and twenty unlettered, untaught people—never been to university, no councils, committees, or boards cluttered up with titled or wealthy people, no Bible colleges, theological courses, or anything else.
They did not even possess the principle of a theological seminary, those one hundred and twenty. And yet those one hundred and twenty turned Jerusalem upside down, and indeed turned the Roman Empire upside down, and comparatively speaking took the gospel over the whole world.
Within one hundred years of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, there was a church in India, a church in China, and a church in these islands. It is an incredible story.
The secret to it all was that they knew something of the Cross and the Spirit.
The church knows, after all, no uncrucified men. There is no such thing as an uncrucified Christian. Every single man or woman who has been saved and placed in Christ is crucified. That is inherent within salvation.
It is not a question of trying to crucify yourself. You and I are crucified, and that is a fact. Do not argue with it; it is a fact. You may not be in the experience of it, but it is a fact.
Why? Because of Who was crucified—not you. Jesus Christ was crucified, and God put you in Jesus Christ when He was crucified two thousand years ago. Therefore, there is not one single person who is in Christ, by the grace and foreordination of God, who is not crucified, whether he has entered into it or not.
The fact is inherent within your spiritual position. That is the fact. The church knows no such thing as an uncrucified Christian. So we are all crucified with Christ; and thank God, we were all buried with Him; and thank God more than ever, we were all made alive together with Him.
Within Him, He is the new Man, risen from the dead, the firstborn from the dead, the firstborn among many brethren. This is the whole meaning of the church.
Furthermore, we are not only alive in Him; listen: we are living members of Him. We are the fellowship of Christ—living members, living parts of Him and of one another. So amazing is the whole nature of this thing.
Now, of course, I do understand that this is the fact. Have we entered into it? That is the point. We can only enter into it by the Cross and the Spirit. The measure in which we possess what is ours in Christ will be the measure in which we know this experience.
The measure in which we are prepared to allow the Cross to work in our lives will be the measure in which the Holy Spirit is able to bring us in. So, my dear friend, take great note of what we have to say this evening.
The church, the house of God, all that we have talked about here, lies inherent within the resurrection life of Jesus Christ. It is within the life. Can I put it this way? It is the very life of Jesus Christ.
Born at Nazareth, tested through thirty-three years, anointed by the Holy Spirit when He was baptised in the river Jordan, tempted by the devil, and finally going through to the Cross, into the grave, and out on the other side—that is the life that is in you and me.
It is not different. It is not that we have another degree of life, another kind of life, another type of life, and that when the Lord Jesus died suddenly another kind of life came into existence. Not at all.
Do you remember the words of the Lord Jesus: “How am I straitened”? The life was in Him, but He could not give it. There they all were: eleven faulty, failing disciples. He wanted to give them Himself. He wanted to get into them.
He could see that they could do nothing but fail. They were learning it all up here, but what a mess they got into, and how quickly they could deny what they had learned—like you and me.
We can come to Bible study on a Thursday evening. We can get it all out here and blame the preacher, poor people! But if it is not able to get into you, he cannot get it into you any more than anyone else can.
We can learn, and learn, and learn, and learn; but until the Cross came as a fact, there was no possibility of that life getting into us. When the Cross came, the life was made available to us.
That is the secret of the Cross and the Spirit. In other words, many of us live in a kind of pre-Calvary Christian experience. We are walking about with Jesus, listening to His words, watching His acts, excited by His miracles.
“Oh, if only I could have a sign; if only I could have this; if only I could have that.” But the thing is not in us. It is not in us because we are not prepared for the Cross.
These seven points we have considered are, in fact, all the evidence of the life of God—the Spirit of life unchecked and unhindered in His people. When the life of God is unchecked and unhindered, when the Spirit of life can move freely, then these seven things are immediately expressed. You cannot help it.
That is the unfailing way in which you and I can test a thing amongst the people of God. Now, the key to that life is the Cross.
Well, we do not always like this. People speak of it as being heavy. But I do not think there is anything very light about the bloodiness of the Cross.
It is, after all, a gibbet. It is a scaffold. What do you expect it to be—something light, something you can dance about? Of course not. The Cross is a scaffold. It is a guillotine. It is a place of death.
How much easier it would be if we did not have to go that way—if we could jump into Pentecost without Calvary; if we could get all the glory, excitement, and fullness of Pentecost without the scaffold, without the shed blood, without the smoke and smell of burnt flesh.
Oh, it would be wonderful if we could get into Pentecost that way. And that is why there is so much counterfeit experience and so much strange fire: people want to get around it. They do not want to pay the price. They do not want to face the facts, face reality, or face themselves.
They want to jump into Pentecost without Calvary. It cannot be done.
The Cross is the secret of the birth, the growth, and the expression of the church. It has ever been the only way to the house of God.
Go right back to the beginning, and you have Abraham building an altar. Where does he build the altar? Between Beth-el, the house of God, and Ai, which means a heap or a ruin. The ruin of the old nature is up behind him; he has the house of God in front of him; and between is the altar.
So many people want to try to make the ruin the house. God will not have it. He will not have it. This is God’s argument with His people all the way through the centuries: He just will not have it.
What about dear Jacob? He sees a vision. He sees a ladder going up into heaven. Most people think of it as a lovely picture. Do you know what it is? Angels ascending and descending—not coming down and going up, but going up and coming down.
What is it? It is a picture of the house of God. God is standing on it. The ladder is the means between heaven and earth—the means of communication, communion, and union.
Jacob may have been a twister and a deceiver, but he saw the point. He was spiritually shrewd. He said, “My goodness, this is the house of God, the gate of heaven.” But he also said, being an honest man, “How fearful is this place!”
Once we begin to see what the house of God really is, it is a fearful place to our flesh. Later on, Hebrews says Jacob worshipped at the end of his life. The fear of God had done its work. His flesh had been dealt with, so he was a worshipper.
Worshippers are never critical murmurers. We can always tell the flesh in the children of Israel because they continually murmured against the Lord. That is the flesh. Worship is a sign of the Spirit.
Take Abraham again. He takes his only son to offer him up. He goes up to Mount Moriah, and there he offers him. Suddenly the Lord appears. His son is saved, and in his place a ram is offered unto the Lord.
Later on, that very place became the site of the altar of burnt offering—the altar before the house of the Lord, the temple. That very place, which you can see today, became the spot for the house of God.
We read in Exodus, “See that thou put the altar in front of the tabernacle.” If we were all Israelites and came into the outer gate, I might say, “Stop, stop. What do you see?” You might say, “I do not see any of the tabernacle.” No, no—that is all right. Then what do you see?
“I see a great altar.” Right, that is it. Before you can get to the tent of meeting, before you can get to the tabernacle, before you can get to the house of God, the altar blocks the way.
But when you have come to the altar and accepted all that the altar means, what comes next? A laver. It is the laver of regeneration; it is the washing of the Word.
In other words, one thing is through the old man, and the other is that which is from above. One is the Cross, dealing with what we are naturally; the other is a new nature and a new life from God. One is earth; the other is heaven.
Before you can get into the house of God, before you can even get into the church, as it were—before you can see it, know it, and enter its wonderful and blessed ministries—the first thing is the altar; the second thing is the laver.
One is negative; the other is positive. One clears the ground; the other brings in what is of God. You cannot get away from it.
When they rebuilt the temple in the days of Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, the very first thing they did was to set up the altar. You might say, “Do not be silly. What is the point of having an altar? First get the foundation, the walls, and the roof up. Then have the altar.”
But no. The Lord says: first thing, altar; second thing, foundation; third thing, building. What a spiritual principle! God starts with the Cross.
Once the altar is in its place, the Holy Spirit comes in. The work on the foundation starts, the building goes up, and the whole books of Haggai and Zechariah are woven into the matter.
It does not matter where you go. You come to Ezekiel’s great vision, and you have the same thing again. As soon as he is there, there is a great altar right in front of the house.
Then, after he has seen everything marvellous about this new house, this new temple, he is taken down and what does he see? A great river beginning with a little trickle—a little tiny bubbling stream.
Where is it coming from? From the altar. Where is the altar? Before the gate, the door of the house of God. Then it begins bubbling up. That little stream becomes an Amazon-like river that changes everything by its fertility and life-giving power.
All from the altar. No altar, no river.
Calvary produced Pentecost. Pentecost did not produce Calvary. Calvary produced Pentecost.
It does not matter where you turn; you will find it. In the notes you will receive, you will find a number of Scriptures in Ephesians and elsewhere which speak of the same side of it: the blood of the Lamb, the blood of Christ, and then suddenly and immediately the work of the Spirit.
“In one Spirit,” and then what? “Built together,” growing into a holy temple in the Lord. It does not matter where you turn; you will find this same matter.
The Lord Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He spoke of His body. We know that.
Of course, the greatest example of it all is when the Greeks came. They were Gentiles—not even God-fearers, but absolute Gentiles. They came and said, “Sir, we would see Jesus.”
Because they were fearful that the Lord, being a Jew, would not have anything to do with Gentiles because of ceremonial uncleanness, they came to Philip, who had a Greek name. Philip went to Andrew, and Andrew and Philip came and told Jesus.
The Lord Jesus answered with these wonderful words:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone;
but if it die, it beareth much fruit.
Would you not think that was an extraordinary way of answering a quite simple, straightforward request? “We would see Jesus.” What has all this talk about falling into the ground and dying to do with it?
Surely He could have said, “No, I am too busy,” or, “Yes, I will give them two minutes.” Why does He say this? Because it is this whole matter again.
The Lord Jesus is saying, “Wait, wait, wait. They can come and see Me, they can come and talk with Me, but they will not get anything. They know Me after the flesh. Just wait. When I have fallen into the ground and died, there will be thousands of Greeks in My body.”
Greeks and Gentiles from all over the world will come and become fellow members of the body when I have fallen into the ground and died.
If you go on in that passage, you find that the Lord spoke of His death, saying:
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself.
How could it not be clear to us? It is the Cross, then the Spirit. As I said, Calvary precedes Pentecost—not only historically, but also in collective and individual experience.
We cannot come into any real understanding and experience of the church until we first come into a real experience of the Cross.
Now, if you feel out of it, do not blame others. We all get into this terrible habit of the children of Israel: murmuring. It is always so-and-so, or so-and-so, or so-and-so, and the Lord hears every word.
He knows where there is dishonesty, and He knows where we are causing trouble. We have got to be done with that. It is better to own up and say, “I am in fault in this matter.”
There may be faults in others, but the fact of the matter is that if the Lord can get His way in me, there could be a great change—a great change.
This matter of the Cross is tremendous just here. We say that we feel out of it, excluded, this or that. It is amazing what happens. Some people feel that things in messages are aimed at them.
Sometimes people come and say, “That was aimed at us.” To tell you the absolute truth, you may not even have seen them there. If you were to say, “I did not even notice you,” that would be the end!
Anyone who has ever done any speaking knows as well as I do that sometimes you do not notice people at all. You are only conscious of the message God has given you.
People say, “They are all so narrow.” Yet we can spend the whole evening giving examples of this kind of thing in a humorous vein, because really, in truth, it is rather funny when it comes down to it.
The fact is that we have only ourselves to blame if we do not really come into it. People say, “Oh, they are so unfriendly.” But, on the whole, the dear person never does a thing. He does not even say boo to a goose. He expects everyone to come to him instead of going out and doing something himself.
Such simple little things. The root of the whole matter is this: we—I, you—must first come into a real understanding and experience of the Cross before we can share the church.
There are a few things I would like you to note as we sum up all these studies.
First, the tragic results of bypassing the Cross and setting up the church can be seen only too clearly in the complex situation which we face today. Look at it.
Do we honestly believe that all these isms, -ites, and everything else that go by the name of the church are really God’s mind? Is it not rather extraordinary that they all claim to be built on the pattern of the New Testament?
No wonder the agnostic says, “Does God know His own mind?” We have complete opposites claiming to be built on the pattern of the New Testament. What a complex situation! What has gone wrong? Why has not that organic something come to be?
Again, why is it that we have around us everywhere, in Europe and America, all the encrusted denominations under the sun? Once they were great works of the Spirit of God. But what has happened to them?
A work that began in the Spirit has ended in the flesh. Everywhere there are the monuments to be viewed.
May I say something else to ourselves? We have many groups that claim to be really New Testament, to have left everything in order to start again. What do we find? We find soundness, but deadness; stultifying organisationalism, as great as anything that has been left behind.
That is the complex situation that has resulted from bypassing the Cross. Now listen: the Cross would cut that out entirely. Why? It would smash the very root of it by striking at the source, which is man, so that the Spirit might come in.
It would slay the force that keeps it going: misguided loyalty of some kind.
The second observation I would like to make is this: the absence of the church in practical expression causes all the gifts, functions, and ministries to lose the greater part of their meaning and purpose.
It also means the dissipation of spiritual values. For the most part, they are not confirmed. Take evangelism, for example. What tremendous evangelism there could be if the church were in its right place, and everywhere people who had come to the Lord could be seen and cared for.
Of course there will be those who go back. Scripture tells us that there will be those who fall by the way. You cannot stop that; it is as old as Adam. People have always loved the world and put the world before Christ. I am sorry to say it, but it is a fact.
You will always get some spurious conversion and superficial confession. They are not necessarily insincere, but they do not go deep enough. You will always get that.
But do you not agree that the absence of the church means that so many gifts—the teaching ministry, the prophetic ministry, many other ministries, and the gifts in each one of us—for the most part lose their place?
The third observation is this: knowledge of the doctrine of the church, however sound, accurate, and full, does not bring it into practical expression.
We all know groups that have got it absolutely tied up in here. They could give you a clear definition of the church and anything else, but I do not know the first thing about their practical experience.
No amount of knowledge necessarily means that the church is there. Nor does any amount of trying. Have we not all met people trying desperately to build the church and to bring it into being?
The fourth observation is this, and we shall spend just a little longer on it: the church lies inherent within the life of Christ. We have said that already. That life is made available by the Spirit.
The church lies inherent within the life of Christ. It is not in His death. There is nothing in His death that constitutes the church.
That death of His was the judgment of God upon our sin. It was the propitiation by Christ for our sins. That death secured redemption for us, the forgiveness of our sins. We are justified through His death. We have an eternal and legal standing with God through His death.
Further, that death means the removal of fallen man altogether—the clearing, if you like, of the ground for God. That is what the Cross means: the death of Christ has cleared the ground of you and me. Hallelujah—we are gone!
God says, “First thing I will do is save you, and the second thing I will do is remove you.” We can talk about the Cross, but do we understand burial? You bury the person out of sight. The body is gone.
God says, “I have saved you to remove you.” Anyone who is unsaved is not removed. They are very much there in the sight of God—in all their ugliness, sins, iniquity, and the abomination of their iniquity. They are there in the very sight of God, blatantly to be seen.
But you and I, we have been saved and removed. Blessed be His name.
The church is not in His death. The church may have been produced by His death, but it is not in His death. The church is in the life of Christ.
That life will develop, expand, and grow, and the result will be the house of God. You cannot stop it.
If that life can get into two or three believers on the same foundation, in Christ, in the same place, brought together, then once that life starts to flow it will result in the house of God. You cannot stop it.
It is the new Man. The new Man is not the dead man. The new Man is the One alive from the dead. Everything is in the life of Christ.
So it is not knowledge or trying that counts. That can end in a substitute for the real thing. I can get it all up here, be saved, and then try to produce it. The more I try, the more possibility there is of producing something artificial.
I can put it all together according to the plan, and the more organising ability and capability I have in the things of God, the more possibility there is of such a thing resulting.
This is what it means when Scripture says that every man’s work shall be tried by fire. Whatever we have done in this place, or anywhere else, is all going to be tried. No one will escape. We will all be equal then. The fire will test us.
What comes through is what is of God—not what appeared to be of God, or what is of man. What is of myself will come out.
It is an ever-increasing experience of His life, individually and corporately, that counts—not knowledge, but experience.
Furthermore, this is very, very important: it is the Holy Spirit alone who can bring the resurrection life of Christ into us and express it through us, initially and progressively. No one else can do it.
It is the Spirit of Him that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead dwelling in us. Then what happens? By the Spirit we put to death the deeds of the body. We put to death the deeds of the body, and all the time we are looking to be delivered from it, yet we have to do something by the Spirit.
Then what happens? We are joint-heirs with Christ by the Spirit of adoption. It is the body.
In Ephesians 1:19-23, when Paul speaks of “the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe,” according to the working of His mighty power when He raised Christ from the dead, it is the Spirit again.
The Lord Jesus was raised by the Spirit of God. What happens? God made Him head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
Everything is under His feet. He is head over all things, and we are His body. It is glorious.
In Zechariah’s great vision, he saw the great lampstand all of gold and was concerned about the two olive trees on either side and the olive branches. He wanted to know where man came into the picture.
But the Lord says, as it were, “It is not where you come into the picture. It is a picture of Me coming into the picture.” What did Zechariah see? A lampstand. That is Christ.
The branches are emptying gold out of themselves—the material for the lampstand. The whole matter is on a quite different basis.
We cannot overestimate the fact that it is impossible to know the life of Christ apart from the Holy Spirit. Through the finished work of Christ—that is Calvary—the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is able to make the life of Jesus Christ, eternal life, the very life of God Himself, available to every saved sinner.
It does not matter who you are: if you are a saved sinner, the life of Jesus Christ is made available to you. You cannot know it apart from the Spirit. You can only know your own life.
For all our prayers and beliefs, we may get into a state; but, my dear friend, it will leave you empty and neurotic. But if you know the life of Christ, you may be carried sometimes into the third heaven and hear things not lawful to utter. That will be the sign of it: it will shut you up.
Instead of running around talking, talking, talking, and exposing yourself, it is something of God. When the Holy Spirit really works, my word, it is a tremendous thing—tremendous.
There is nothing more wonderful than to know the Holy Spirit really. He was the One who brought light out of darkness, form out of emptiness. He was the One through whom man was created in the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is the Holy Spirit who has watched over the purpose of God from the beginning of time until now. It is the Holy Spirit who brought to birth our Lord Jesus Christ, having already inspired the prophets throughout all the different phases in the history of God’s covenant people.
It was the Holy Spirit who fell upon the Lord Jesus Christ at His baptism and anointed Him. It was the Holy Spirit through whom He was transfigured on the mount. It was the Holy Spirit who enabled Him to offer Himself up on the Cross.
It was the Holy Spirit of God again who raised the Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, from the dead.
Then listen to this: it was when the Lord Jesus ascended to the right hand of God the Father that He received, for sinful men and women like you and me—saved by the grace of Jesus Christ, by the grace of God—the promise of the Holy Spirit, God the Spirit, and poured Him forth.
That is Pentecost.
My dear friend, I think you have a very poor idea of Pentecost if your idea of Pentecost is only a little flame of fire, a little bit of fullness, jumping up, being able to preach, and being gifted. Is that your idea of Pentecost? You need to revise it.
The idea of Pentecost is nothing less than this: the Holy Spirit fell upon saved human beings. None of us knows the fullness of it. If only we did. If only our poor eyes could be opened to see what happened at Pentecost; if only somehow by faith we could claim what happened for us all at Pentecost.
It was the making available of the life of Jesus Christ to every saved sinner, by joining those so redeemed to the one Christ in one body through Himself, the one Spirit.
By that means, He made real in them and through them the authority and power of the Head, the gifts of the Head. “When He ascended on high, He gave gifts unto men.”
Why is there a gift for everyone? Because we are joined to the Head who has given the gift. It does not matter what it is; it is there. Take it. It is in you by the Holy Spirit. The gifts and the ministries are of the Head.
It is the Head, dear friend, that counts. He has given it. But more than that, He is making available to us the character of the Head.
Oh, that is more than gifts. You can have a thousand gifts, and one day they will mean nothing. What you need is the character of the Lamb. That is where we all fall short.
We all know what it is to have a gift. You can judge me a thousand times on this: you can have a gift, but the character is lacking. So it is just a mark. Even if I am a good cover-up and get away with it, there will come a day when I will not, and the character will be seen for what it is against the gift.
That is what the Apostle Paul said: “Lest, having preached to others, I myself should be rejected.” Terrible.
He makes the very presence of the Head real in that body. That is the meaning of Pentecost. Do you not see it?
Do you really think that all that happened on the day of Pentecost was that a few people spoke in tongues, one hundred and twenty people, and then everyone got excited and said, “They are drunk”? Is that Pentecost? Never.
Pentecost was this—and I would die on this: at that moment, the Lord Jesus, who had been straitened in one human body, suddenly became one hundred and twenty human bodies, with the possibility of all multiplication.
Certainly, in the Book of Acts, the authority and power of the Lord Jesus crucified—praise God—were once again walking upon the earth.
“By what name have ye done these things?” said the rulers. “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead.” Authority!
Even in one place, handkerchiefs were taken from the Apostle Paul, and people were healed. Even the Lord Jesus did not do that. He said, “Greater works than these shall ye do.” It is the body.
And character—look at Stephen, with the face of an angel. What happened? Were these poor people religious fanatics? No. It is terrific.
That is really what we mean by the church. All these seven points are bound up there. Would you not like to know the Holy Spirit like that?
I am not interested in all this other business. My dear friends, much of it is kindergarten nonsense. If you want to go there, the Lord will be perfectly happy. But let me tell you this: if you want what He wants, you are in for something. You will lose your limbs on it. You are in for it.
Why? Because it is the Cross. It is the Cross.
The Holy Spirit, in all His glorious power and infinite fullness, refuses to fall upon anyone who refuses the Cross. Oh, He will give you experiences, blessings, and all kinds of things here and there, but He will refuse to do any building work for the city.
Nothing is going to get into that city which has not come the same way as its Master. That is terrible.
Do you not think, dear child of God, that that is right? I do. I tell you why: it would be much nicer if I could say to you, as some say, “Now then, you can just jump off it. Just jump in, just like that.”
No, I say it is not. You can jump into an experience, but if it is of God, you are in for something.
The Lord has never allowed anything to get into the house which has not gone by way of the altar. Never! Do not think, my dear friend, that you are an exception. None of us are exceptions to that—none of us at all.
If you want to be used of God, if you want what God has put in you to be eternal, if you want to find it in the end in the city, you have got to go by the Cross.
Why is that right? It requires faith. I could take a great jump and have a glorious excitement. I might then feel marvellous. There is no faith in it; it is feeling.
But if I come up against a scaffold, with all the blood, all the smoke, and all the slaughter, and it says to me, “This is the way. You come here. You go this way, and you will know glory,” that requires faith.
I shrink back. “Oh no, no, not that—not that.” The Lord Jesus did: “If it be possible…” Surely there is some other way. But there is not. There is not.
You have got to go that way if you really would know the Spirit of God. I am sorry. You know, to be absolutely honest, I am sorry.
But it says in the Book that everyone who goes that way will know a committing of God to them such as others will never know. Those who know the Cross and the dark will, in the end, find it all there in the city.
We come then to the end of this matter. You want to see the church in practical expression on earth in our day. We want to see the testimony of the Lord recovered and restored. We want to see God’s will not merely as a thought and concept, but as factual reality.
We want to see the glory of the latter house exceed that of the former. Then we must face it: the Cross is all-inclusive.
All that you and I are, all that we are, must be brought to the Cross—to the altar—as a living sacrifice. It means the end of what we are and what we want, that He might have what He wants.
It is quite simple: so that He may bring in what is of Himself and establish it.
We have got to know what it is to be rent, to be broken, to be reduced to ashes, to fall into the ground and die, to decrease, if He is going to increase, multiply, be glorified, and be exalted.
Now, do you want merely the success and prosperity of your own home, your own circle? Is it only your own spiritual growth, fullness, and satisfaction that you seek?
Are we content to centre everything in our own ceiled houses while the house of God lies waste and in ruin? Do we want position? Do we want industry? Do we want comfort? Do we want friendship? Do we want fellowship? Do we want popularity?
Then we must go our own way. Goodbye.
We must go our own way. The house of God will never be rebuilt by such. That is the very reason why, for so long, it has lain waste.
No. If we would see the house of God rebuilt, we must face and accept the Cross and, by the grace of God, never go back on it.
It will be rebuilt in the measure in which you and I die. Now, that is no comforting message unless you have got faith in your heart.
That is the message that came to the people when they went back to rebuild: blood, toil, sweat—you have got to lay down your life. What? This is your glory. You shall have an everlasting name.
You will be instrumental in bringing the Messiah. You will be instrumental in the purposes of God, even though it is all hundreds of years away. You will be the precious material out of which God will build His city, which will be for ever and ever, and in whose light the nations shall walk.
And I tell you this—and I really do close—the house must be built.
Ah, my friend, no matter if I die tonight or you die tonight; no matter if every one of us became apostate this night or angrily rejected Him—no matter what happens, the house of God is going to be built.
It will be built whether you are in it or not, whether I am in it or not. That we can say with absolute and dogmatic certainty.
We have seen enough in world history to know that God never will fail in His purpose. We have seen miracles worked before our eyes.
Do you think that the thing which lies nearest to the heart of God—nearer than anything else to His heart—is not going to be fulfilled? Do you see that He can take back an earthly people to a place, upon a ground in the earth, according to His Word which He promised thousands and thousands of years ago, and not fulfil this other thing which was lying on His heart from before times eternal?
Will He not give it significance for eternity to come? No. The house of God is going to be built. It must be built.
The topstone will be brought forth one day with shouts of, “Grace, grace, unto it!” I pray God that I may be there. I pray God that you may be there.
Would it not be wonderful if we were all there to see the topstone slide into its place, and to know that we are not spectators, but part of it?
Oh, my friend, I would rather go through hell to be in that than bang a tambourine for the rest of this time and dance for glory. Really.
The endless city! I would rather have gone into hell itself with Him and come out in eternal values.
It will be accomplished, and it will be fulfilled:
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Just as the mountains stand round about Jerusalem as a perpetual reminder of the faithfulness of God; just as the sun shines by day and the moon shines by night as a perpetual reminder of the faithfulness of God; just as the rainbow in the day of storm and trouble is a perpetual reminder of the faithfulness of God—so will God be faithful to this His purpose, and will do it.
May God give us grace to come to the altar, that the Holy Spirit may fall upon us.
The Word of the Lord is this: Him that seeks My joy, that one will I give My power to, and will fill with My Spirit.
Lord, hasten it in its time. Let us pray.
Now, Lord, there is not one of us that does not shrink from anything like an altar. We would much prefer, Lord, to know that light-hearted and carefree existence.
But Lord, we know that Thou art seeking those who would be good soldiers of Thine. We pray together, Lord, that Thou, by Thy Spirit, would give every man and woman in this place faith—faith to die.
So, Lord, the Holy Spirit can commit Himself in an unparalleled way to every one of us. Oh Father, Thou knowest our need of Thy Holy Spirit—our need of His power, our need of His fullness, our need of His dynamic, His impetus.
Dear Lord, we look to Thee, since Thou art the One who watches over all things and knows all things, that Thou wilt, Lord, in Thy mercy, bring every single one of us to the place where we are prepared to come to Thee as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto Thee.
We ask it together in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.