If we could turn in the Old Testament to Genesis 28, we will read from verse 11.
And Jacob 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.
And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.
And he called the name of that place Bethel: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.
And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on,
so that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God:
and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house:
and of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.
And then, in Genesis 31:13:
I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto Me:
now arise, get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy nativity.
Genesis 35:1, 6-7:
And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there:
and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.
So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, he and all the people that were with him.
And he built there an altar, and called the place El-bethel: because there God revealed Himself unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother.
I have been speaking about Jacob, and the fact that, of all the biblical characters and personalities, there is certainly none who has had greater influence upon all that has followed than Jacob.
In fact, the name of Jacob, and the name that God gave him when He transformed him—Israel—has become the name of God’s people forever. God’s people are not called Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Samuel, or David; but they are called Jacob and Israel. All the way through the Bible, God speaks of us corporately, collectively, as Jacob and Israel.
We have spoken a little about the love of God in Jacob. The last time I spoke, I spoke about the purpose of God in Jacob. Why did God put His hand upon him? What was the purpose of it? We know that He loved Jacob. He said, “Jacob have I loved.” But what purpose had He for Jacob? What was the goal? What was the objective of all God’s dealings with Jacob?
They were fivefold. We dealt briefly with four of those five aspects of God’s purpose concerning Jacob, because we learn, as the people of God, a tremendous amount from it.
First, it was that Jacob should possess a land promised and covenanted to him and to his seed by God. That was the first thing. We saw there the need for us. We have a land too.
Jacob had a clearly defined promised land. God defined the boundaries, and within that land God said everything in His purpose was to be centred. In the end, it was to mean blessing to the whole earth; but the purpose of God was centred in that land and initially had to be realized in that land.
That was where the kingdom would come. That was where the throne would be. That was where the city of God would be created. That is where the house of God would be built. That is where the Messiah would come. All that we know to be the purpose of God was within that land.
Now, we also have a land, and the boundaries of that land are clearly defined. It is the Lord Jesus Christ. Within Him God gives us everything, and outside of Him God gives us nothing. In Him, all fullness; outside of Him, nothing. In Him, all the blessings; outside of Him, only counterfeit or emotional, transient things.
In Him is the realization of the purpose of God; outside of Him, a life wasted. Inside of Him, a life with purpose and value; outside of Him, a life wasted.
Oh, what a need there is for us to discover the land that is ours, and to know that we have got to put our feet down and possess it in the name of the Lord. We know the Angel of the Lord will go before us and lead us into greater and greater discoveries of what is ours in Christ, but we need to rise up in faith and possess what God has covenanted to us—and possess it in fullness.
The second aspect of God’s purpose for Jacob was that he should become a people. God told him that he was to be fruitful and multiply, and said that his seed would possess the east and the west, the north and the south; and that in him and in his seed all the families of the earth would be blessed.
Fruitfulness and multiplication is a principle with God. It is not optional. It is not a luxury. It is not something left to the kindergarten. It is not something that we relegate to Billy Graham evangelistic campaigns. It lies at the very heart of the purpose of God for every redeemed child of His.
You and I should be fruitful. The Word of God should increase in us and should multiply from us. Now, that is a very big thing. You and I need to recognize this. It is all very well to nod our heads and agree with everything for everybody else, and then suddenly the punchline comes: it is for us.
Are you fruitful? Is the fruit of the Spirit in you? And if the fruit of the Spirit is there, are you able to let go of the fruit so that the seed falls into the ground and multiplies?
Fruit and multiplication. Then we spoke about Jacob becoming a blessing. Many of us are no blessing. We are here for the blessing, but we do not create blessings. We do not pass on blessings. We do not bless one another.
We are acquisitive people, like Jacob. He never gave a blessing at the beginning; he only stole blessings. Most believers are like that. We come into groups of believers, and we are there to get the blessing. Everything centres round us. We do not realize the problems we are to everybody else.
What a work God had to do in Jacob to make him a blessing, so that in the end he could bless Pharaoh, the greatest emperor and potentate in antiquity. He could bless the sons of Joseph, and the Bible gives us the last picture of Jacob blessing those two sons. Or think how he blessed those twelve sons of his in Genesis 49.
This man became a blessing. There is not a single one of you who has not been blessed through Jacob. You may think of him as a swindler, a supplanter, a twister, and a deceiver, but there is not a person in this place who has not been blessed through Jacob. You have been blessed in him and in his seed.
God calls you Jacob and Israel. You may not know it, but you have been gathered into the Israel of God. Though God knows you and me to be Jacob, we have been gathered into the Israel of God, into the blessings of God, the life of God, the salvation of God, and the purpose of God. Jacob has become a blessing to us all.
The fourth thing about this purpose was that Jacob should have power with God and with men. Dear Jacob! The only way he had power with men was to manipulate them, engineer circumstances, or outright steal. He cornered even his twin brother until, in the end, he stole his birthright and deceived him out of his blessing.
He had power with men, but it was the wrong kind of power. In one sense, you could say he had a kind of bargaining position with God. God went along with it, as we shall see another time. God went along with Jacob, as He goes along with you and me.
Jacob says, “If You will give me food to eat, clothing to put on, look after me wherever I go, and bring me back to my father’s house, then You shall be my God.” Oh, dear Jacob, how humble he is! May the Lord be blessed by such a relationship. Evidently, the Lord should really have bowed down and worshipped.
“Then You shall be my God. And this pillar—I will build You a house. And of all that I have, I will give You the tenth.” Oh my, the Lord should be so thankful to this man. Such grace, such ingenuity, such zeal, such ability!
Of course, we are horrified when we see it down in writing, in black and white. But most of us are just like this when we are young in the Lord. We say to the Lord, “You do this, this, and this, and I will do this for You. If You bring me through this thing, I will give You a tenth for the rest of my life”—as if the whole lot did not belong to the Lord to start with.
But we are all like this, and the Lord humours us. I suppose you could say he had power with God. The power he had with God then, at the beginning, was because God loved him. God loved him so much that He was prepared to allow Jacob to manipulate Him.
He knew exactly what Jacob was up to, but He allowed Jacob to say his little party piece. It was as if the Lord said, “Yes, yes, yes—struck. The bargain is struck,” because the Lord knew that in the end He was going to get him. And He did get him.
In the end, He got him at the place called Jabbok. There something happened, and there the Lord said to him, “Thou shalt no more be called Jacob”—Yaakov, supplanter, twister—“but thou shalt be called Israel, because thou hast had power with God and with men.”
In other words, Jacob came to the place where he was a prince with God and with men—not through shady deals, deceit, or his own natural acumen and shrewdness, but by the wisdom God gave him and by the life of God in him, the Spirit of God filling him.
So he became a man with power, who had power with God and with men. He could bless Pharaoh, and it was a real blessing. That is power with God and with men. You cannot bless Pharaoh unless you have power with God. You cannot bless anybody unless you have power with God.
Once you have power with God, and your relationship with God is clean, strong, and direct, then you become a blessing to others. Then you have derived power with men. Your power with men is derived from your power with God.
We in the church of God suffer so much from this authority complex. I suppose it is the natural ambition that is in all men. We want to be something. We want to be leaders, elders, pastors, apostles—anything with some kind of weighty authority attached to it, where we feel we have arrived.
So much in this world is dependent upon title, status, position, or some kind of human training, but this is not authority. A man can have all of this and no spiritual authority.
Real authority comes when a man is touched at the heart of his being and his hip, spiritually, is dislocated. Then, when that happens, he has power with God. Because he has power with God, he has power with men.
Now I want to go straight on, because we will never get through this last point. The fifth thing about the purpose of God for Jacob was that he should build the house of God.
Actually, Jacob never built the house of God. He never, in fact, came to the city of God physically. He may have visited the city—it was then a Jebusite city—but he certainly never obtained it or possessed it.
But it is a most interesting thing that, throughout the record we have of Jacob’s life, his life is bounded by this matter of the house of God. When he fled from his family, at the first time God appeared to him and revealed Himself to him in a dream, he called that place Bethel: the house of God.
Ever afterwards God spoke to him and said, “Remember, I am the God of Bethel, the house of God—the God of the house of God. I revealed Myself to you there, and you anointed a pillar there.”
What is all this about? It is an interesting fact—and I think most of you know—that wherever a matter first appears in Scripture, it is of very great importance. This is the first time in the Bible record that the words “house of God” appear, and it appears in connection with Jacob.
This man was anything but a worshipper, anything but a blessing. His strength of will, natural energy, and resource were so strong as to hinder and frustrate the purpose of God if left to himself.
There is a tremendous amount in the Bible about this matter of the house of God. I am very glad that Manfred has had this burden from the Lord to bring to us. It releases me. Otherwise, I should wonder what I should do when coming to talk about the house of God.
I only want to touch upon it from another angle—an angle which may come to some with real illumination and may put the whole matter into a new perspective.
The Bible says so much about the house of God. I do not know how much you really know about your Bible. I take it that you all read your Bibles, or study your Bibles—I hope so. But to really know the Bible is another thing from just reading it, or even studying it piecemeal.
One of the most interesting things is that we have not gone very far into the Bible record when we come to four books: 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 2 Kings. In Hebrew, these are the four books of the kingdom.
Here, by the Spirit of God, the human writer, inspired by the Spirit of God, goes right back over history and traces the history of the people of God with the kingdom in view. He traces the whole matter of the people of God with this great purpose of God: that they should have power with God and with men.
It is the kingdom. This kingdom is to be a blessing. This kingdom is to be the throne of God. This kingdom is a picture of the kingdom of God, which will finally come in great power and glory. This kingdom represents the authority of God.
Then, for those who think—and there are not so many—you go on from 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings, and suddenly you come to 1 and 2 Chronicles.
We suddenly find another human writer, just as much inspired by God, who goes right back over the whole thing again and starts all over. He goes even further back. He goes right back to Genesis and traces the whole history again.
People say, “Well, is that not extraordinary? We have already done all that in 1 and 2 Kings. We have got the whole lot in 1 and 2 Chronicles, with a few additional pieces about Israel, the northern kingdom. We could do without it.” So how come we have 1 and 2 Chronicles, and then add another two books, Ezra and Nehemiah?
According to rabbinic tradition, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah were all written by the same person, and I personally think that is right.
What is now in view? Why go over the whole thing all over again? This time, it is not the kingdom that is in view; it is the house of God.
The first four books deal with the whole matter of the kingdom. Everything is related to the kingdom. Everything is seen in the light of the throne. The second set of books—the second four books—deals with the house of God, and everything is seen in the light of the house of God.
Everything is seen in the light of God’s dwelling place. Everything is judged as to that house of God. Every single king is judged by his attitude to the house of God and by what he did concerning the house of God.
Surely we come here to a tremendous matter. We come to this matter of the house of God, and we find it in dear Jacob’s life. Here we have the first mention of the house of God, and it was something to do with a dream he had when he was running away because of his stupid sinfulness.
We have no record that he repented or turned to God, but God in His grace appeared to him in this place. Jacob said, “How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and the gate of heaven.”
He set up a pillar—the very stone he had slept on—poured oil on it, and called the name of that place Bethel: house of God.
When we come to the New Testament, we find this matter of the house of God everywhere: the body of Christ, the temple of God, the bride of Christ, the wife of the Lamb, the vine of God. It is not so apparent at the beginning of the Gospels, but the further we go on, just as in the Old Testament, the clearer the matter becomes.
This simply means that every single child of God here this morning—God not only wants to bring you to the stone and bring you into the kingdom; He wants you to be part of His house.
Let us go back to Jacob and see if we can understand something from Genesis 28. I want you to note very carefully this revelation, this dream in which God revealed Himself to Jacob.
First of all, you will notice that he saw a ladder between earth and heaven. It says, in Genesis 28:12:
And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven.
Is that not beautiful? It was set up on earth. It did not come down from heaven. It was set up on earth, and its top reached heaven. That is the first thing.
The second thing is almost laughable in one way, but it evidently had tremendous impact upon Jacob. Angels were going up and down the ladder. It was a pretty wide ladder.
Here is a very interesting thing: they were not coming out of heaven down to earth, which we would naturally think, especially if we are very spiritual. They were ascending and descending. They were actually going up from earth to heaven and then coming down.
Was it the same angels? We do not know. Perhaps angels were going up the ladder with a request or some communication and coming back with the answer. Or perhaps some angels were going up from the earth into heaven and disappearing, while other angels—different ones—were coming down from heaven to earth.
Remember, this is the first time we get the phrase “house of God” mentioned, so it evidently must be of great significance: a ladder set up on earth, its top reaching the heavens, and angels of God ascending and descending on it.
Then we have an even more remarkable thing, especially in the Hebrew: “And the Lord stood”—and here we have our problem—on it, above it, beside it, over it. We cannot really say.
Some versions say, “beside him.” You could not very well say, “on him.” But the little Hebrew word al means “toward,” “unto,” or “upon.” We do not know whether it is “upon it” or “upon him.”
Surely the Lord knew exactly what He was doing. He could have made it clear if He wanted to. But here we have a ladder set up on earth, its top reaching the heavens, angels of God ascending and descending on it, and the Lord either standing over it or beside Jacob.
Does it mean anything to you? Let us introduce a few things that I think we must all agree on. First, this dream must have something to do with God. Secondly, it must have something to do with the authority and throne of God. Thirdly, it has to do with His purpose being fulfilled.
Angels—the very word in Hebrew means servants, messengers. It has something to do with His will being communicated and His purpose being fulfilled and done. In other words, we have a picture of intercourse, communication, interchange, and service between earth and heaven, heaven and earth, God and man, man and God.
Do you not see that this is what the house of God essentially is? It is the instrument by which God wants to communicate. That is why we must be fruitful and multiply. It is the means by which God wants to communicate His mind and His will. It is the instrument by which He wants His will to be done and His kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.
The church is not some place with pews or seats where we sit in serried ranks and stare at one another, or stare at some man at the front doing everything. There may be times when we have to sit in rows, and times when we have to look at somebody—as you are doing now, sadly enough, poor thing.
But that is not the church. The real meaning of the house of God is that it is to do with the Person of God. It is His house, His habitation, His dwelling place, His place of rest.
What did we sing together in Psalm 132:13-16?
For the Lord hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for His habitation.
This is My resting place for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.
I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread.
Her priests also will I clothe with salvation: and her saints shall shout aloud for joy.
Here is the ladder, with angels of God ascending and descending: communication, intercourse, interchange, service. All of it is wrapped up in this incredible vision of this ladder, set up on earth, whose top reached heaven.
Oh, would to God that everything called a church was something like this: that there was angelic activity; that there was communication with God, not one way—for us to Him and never expecting an answer—but the kind of interchange and communication where we not only speak with God, but hear God; where we know the will of God and do the will of God.
Now I want you to turn to the New Testament, to something even more remarkable. I am very conscious this morning that, in speaking on this kind of matter, we really do need the revelation of God. We need it always whenever we speak, but in a matter like this we particularly need it.
Listen to these words in John 1:51. These are the words of Jesus to Nathanael:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
Is that not a most remarkable statement by our Lord? You may say, “Surely the Lord had not got this thing of Jacob in view.” Oh yes, He had. Listen to John 1:47:
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!
In Greek, He used the word, “in whom there is no Jacob.” “Behold an Israelite in whom there is no Jacob.”
Nathanael said, “Whence knowest Thou me?” Jesus answered, “Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.” Nathanael answered, “Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.”
Jesus answered, “Because I said unto thee, I saw thee underneath the fig tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these.” Then He said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”
What was the Lord Jesus saying to Nathanael? He was saying, “You know the purpose of God for Israel? You know the purpose of God in the transformation of Jacob into Israel? It was that above the Son of Man might be an opened heaven and angels of God ascending and descending.”
Who is the Son of Man? Our Lord Jesus. He is the Son of Man, the Messiah, the Son of the living God. He is God’s ladder. He is the ladder set up on earth whose top reaches heaven: the means of union between heaven and earth; the means of communication between earth and heaven and heaven and earth; the means by which the will of God can be done on earth and the kingdom of God can come.
No wonder it says in Ephesians 3:11, “According to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Another version says, “According to the eternal purpose which He set forth in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
This eternal purpose of God, this will of God, has been purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. It has been set forth in Christ Jesus our Lord. It has been secured in Christ Jesus our Lord. It has been realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is how you and I come into it.
If you and I are joined to this Messiah, if we are in this Christ, then we begin to understand what the house of God is. It is a place where the angels of God ascend and descend.
We have to be very careful that we do not say too much about angelic ministry, although for too long angelic ministry has been totally ignored and forgotten by the people of God. I am very glad that Billy Graham has written that book on the angels of God. It has put the record straight.
None of us would be here but for the angels of God. The old Jewish belief and concept was that you could not have a quorum—you could not have ten people meet together for worship—without the angels of God assembling.
As soon as the quorum was reached, the angels of God stationed themselves around them and helped them in their worship and service. We believers forget this.
Why do you think we sometimes sing hymns such as, “Angels in the heights adore Him,” and then say, “Angels, help us to adore Him”? We forget everything. It is all lovely poetry: “Angels, help us to adore Him.”
But the angels of God are here, stationed all around, protecting us, coming between us and the enemy, seeing that the will of God is done, bringing messages to us, and all kinds of things. It is amazing.
Now we must be careful. We do not want to go overboard. I know some will immediately jump overboard on anything like this. Thank God we do not see too many of these angels, or we would have problems. We would have a few more denominations than we have already.
But the fact remains that there is such a thing as angelic ministry. This house of God has something to do with the throne of God in heaven coming to earth. It has something to do with the will of God in heaven being done on earth. It has something to do with the kingdom of God coming on earth.
Oh, that we could see something more about this whole matter of the house of God.
I could go on and on about this. Jesus said in John 2—of course, as Stephen reminded us the other day, these Gospels, books, and letters were not originally written in chapters and verses—but if we were to read straight on without chapter and verse, before very long we come to this:
Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
The Jews therefore said, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt Thou raise it up in three days?
But He spake of the temple of His body.
When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.
Is that not marvellous? Go right back into the Old Testament, if you want, to Isaiah 8:13-14. Isaiah had already told us in Isaiah 7:14, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel”—God with us. Then it says:
The Lord of hosts, Him shall ye sanctify;
and let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread.
And He shall be for a sanctuary;
but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel,
for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Not “He shall build a sanctuary,” but “He shall be for a sanctuary.” Have you discovered that the church is nothing other than our Lord Jesus?
It is not something apart from Him, something alienated from Him. He is the sanctuary of God. He is the temple of God. We are in Him. He is the chief cornerstone, and we also, as living stones, are built up together to be a spiritual house, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Oh, the glory of this matter—the glory.
Come back to my original verse: that God might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He afore prepared unto glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.
So this house of God: vessels of mercy are brought into it. We have become part of this sanctuary. We have been made one with Him. I say, this to me is absolutely tremendous.
I will not say more on this matter. I want to take up another aspect of it, going back to Genesis 28, because our brother is talking quite fully about the house of God. But I hope you begin at least to see something: the church, the house of God, is not merely a matter of elders and deacons, having the Lord’s Table on a certain day of the week, authority, submission, covering, and I do not know what else.
Do not get me wrong. There are elders. There are deacons. There are apostles—or apostolic work, shall we say. There is such a thing as authority, true submission, and real covering. All these things are true.
But if we simply say that this is the church, we have prostituted the whole matter. We have demeaned it and devalued it into a system, a movement, an organization. But the church of God is Jesus. It is Christ. It is our Lord.
That is why it says in 1 Corinthians 12:12:
For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.
“So also is Christ.” Not, “So also is the body, of which Christ is the head,” but, “So also is Christ.” Christ is this whole. He includes all the members of the body in Himself, just as my head cannot do without my body. My head needs my body to express itself.
It is a wonderful picture—which we must not push too far—of Jesus as the Head and we as the body, included in the Christ. How wonderful.
We have the same thing in Romans 12:4-5:
For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office:
so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.
Not “of Christ,” but “in Christ.” We can see something, I hope. At least the Holy Spirit is present.
Take Ephesians 2:21-22. He speaks first about Christ Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone:
In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord:
in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
Where is this habitation of God? In the Spirit, in Christ. Where are you? You are builded together, if you are obedient and committed, totally builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
“Fitly framed together” takes some business. It is some business, is it not? It does not all happen overnight. God does not wave a wand, and then we are all beautifully fitly framed together, builded together, a fully fledged house of God. I am afraid there is an awful lot of work, and that work is costly.
Coming back to Genesis 28, let us add a few more things about this dream that came to Jacob. First of all, I want you to note one very simple but all-important factor.
God says it not once, but again and again in this record of Jacob: He speaks of revealing Himself to Jacob.
I believe more deeply and more fully than I can ever put into words that we believers have to see the Lord Jesus before we see the church.
Most of our problems in Christian circles over this matter of the church—with all its different patterns and organizational things, both contemporary and traditional—have been that we have seen “the church,” in quotation marks, and not seen the Lord.
God revealed Himself to Jacob, and ever after He says, “I am the God of the house of God, who revealed Myself to you.”
Has God revealed this matter to you? Have you seen it in terms of seeing the Lord? I do not mean literally, physically seeing the Lord. I mean seeing the Lord with the eye of your heart. Have you really seen the Lord?
It does not matter how young or old you are. I first saw the Lord when I was thirteen years of age, one year after my conversion.
Have you ever seen this matter? I am not asking for some visionary experience, even a dream such as this. It does come to some, thank God for that. But I am talking about what we find under the new covenant: the eyes of your heart being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling.
Manfred has been speaking to us from Matthew 16:18, and this is the point he made. I only want to underline it again, because it comes so much in this passage in Genesis. The Lord Jesus said:
Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven.
If we had a little more revelation like that, it would be tremendous. No amount of head knowledge will ever substitute for revelation. No amount of self-will, however strong and seemingly spiritual, will ever be a substitute for revelation. Nothing can ever substitute or suffice in place of revelation.
When you begin to move around and minister to many groups, you see all kinds of things. You see groups come together; you see groups break up. You see house gatherings one year and disappeared the next. You see companies that have been going for some years suddenly disappear altogether without trace.
I want to tell you something: half, if not two-thirds or three-quarters, of the disappearance of these things is due to the fact that at the very beginning what we called revelation was head knowledge.
People cottoned on to something. They heard something, got very excited, and began to look at the book. It did not come as revelation; it came to the head. This is why we can become dead, barren, fruitless, stagnated people.
We have got it all up top. We can talk endlessly about the church and look down our noses at other believers. “They do not see,” we say. It is us that do not see.
Revelation comes as a pulverization to our self-life. It does not inflate us so that we can say, “We are the house of God—nobody else.” When it comes to us, we become like dust at His feet. The place is dreadful. Our self-life is almost terrified.
Is it not interesting that later, when God changes Jacob to Israel, he called it Peniel: the face of God? There are degrees of revelation.
When God appeared to dear Jacob here, it was a real revelation. It did not touch the heart of the matter in Jacob, though. Jacob said, “How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven.”
Then, setting up a pillar and pouring oil on it, he says, “Now, Lord, if You will clothe me, feed me, protect me, and bring me back to this place, then You shall be my God. I will take this pillar and build Your house here. Of all that You give me, I will give a tenth.”
He had had real revelation, but it had not gone to the heart of the matter. Many of us have had real revelation, but we must never think that because something has been revealed, it has gone to the heart of the matter.
We then begin to manipulate the very truth we see. We begin to glory in it all. It is a dreadful place, but before long we are bargaining. One side of us is afraid, and the other side of us is inflated.
One side of us is shocked, almost fearful of what it might cost. The other side is ready for a bargain. “All right then, Lord, I see this matter of the church. If I commit myself to this, what are You going to do for me? Are You going to bless me? Are You going to give me a ministry, Lord—a really big ministry?”
“I will be one of the first that has seen it in this group. I want a ministry, and I want gifts.” We do not put it like this in so many words, but this is what we think. God knows.
“Now, Lord, thank You very much for showing me this matter of the church, the house of God. I am going to commit myself to this. I know it is going to cost, but if I do and pay this great, great cost, will You remember that I was one of the first in this company when You come to think about eldership?”
“Or later on perhaps, sending me out as an apostle? Or maybe a few other things, Lord—a few powerful gifts, like prophecy and things that will materially and substantially influence them all. I want to feel useful, Lord. I want to get on.”
“Now I have seen something, and I am committing myself to it. If You will look after me—food, clothing, security—that is all I ask, Lord. Just look after me. Then we will be back here together, Lord, and I will build this house for You.”
Do not think that even when real revelation comes, it touches the heart of the matter. There came another experience after God had dealt with Jacob by cornering him through circumstances and situations, where finally he came to a place called Jabbok.
There God revealed Himself again, and this time He pulverized Jacob. Jacob was not ready for it at the beginning; now he was ready for it. When God dislocated his hip, something happened to the twister, the deceiver, the man with his incredible strength of will and resource.
He became Israel, and then God said, “Now then, go back to Bethel.” Jacob went back to Bethel, and, as we read in the account this morning, he again set up a pillar and anointed it.
He had gone full circle. First he saw something, set up a pillar, anointed it, and said, “This is Bethel.” Then he had to go through all that experience by which God dealt with him through circumstances, situations, and relationships, until he was a changed man and came back again to Bethel.
Revelation is a principle, dear people of God. I do hope this really gets into you. Knowledge puffeth up; love buildeth up.
The difference is that knowledge can be accumulated from books and from sheer mental exercise, even in spiritual things. Love comes when God reveals His face to somebody. In the revelation of the face of God, that person is changed.
It is the cross at work and the Spirit at work. When the cross and the Spirit—the Spirit and the cross—are at work in a believer, it is not knowledge but love.
Then you know that you are nothing and He is everything. Then you know there is all of grace and none of works. Then you know it is His election and not your choice. Then you know it is His faithfulness and not your faithfulness. Then you know that it is His power and life, and not yours.
Revelation is one thing. Here is a second thing: a pillar. He set up a pillar. In Hebrew, this word “pillar” means a memorial pillar—a testimony, a witness.
He set up, in the place he called Bethel, a pillar: a testimony, a witness. I find this very interesting because the Apostle Paul speaks in 1 Timothy 3:15:
But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God,
which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
What does this mean? This pillar he set up was, in New Testament words, I think, the testimony of Jesus. It was a witness.
This house of God is not something to do with me first. It is something to do with Him. It is not something to do with my destiny first and foremost; it is His destiny. Who is destined for the throne? Our Lord Jesus. Upon whom shall all the glory be poured and rest? Our Lord Jesus. Who will be the centre of the whole of eternity? Our Lord Jesus.
A testimony of Jesus. We hold the testimony of Jesus. There is something else in this: you cannot give testimony, and you cannot hold testimony, without it being alive.
A witness has to be alive. You cannot be a second-hand witness. You cannot say that you heard somebody say, who heard somebody else say, who saw somebody do something. That is not really witness. Witness is firsthand, is it not? “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me.”
This matter of a pillar means that everything to do with the house of God has got to be alive. It is not dead forms, regulations, or even merely truths. It is alive.
These people are seeing the Lord. These people are walking with the Lord. These people are in the One who is the ladder from earth to heaven, where they hear God, see God, work with God, and know God.
Would to God that every company represented here was such, however small. Would to God that, instead of merely gathering around some teaching, idea, or concept, we ourselves were being changed from Jacob into Israel.
We have our own everyday experience. We can talk about the grace of God and the ways of God because it is up to date. It is not last year, ten years ago, or twenty years ago. It is not something we heard last year at the conference. It is something alive to us now. We are holding the testimony of Jesus.
You cannot hold the testimony of Jesus in a dead way. You can only hold it if you are alive to God, walking with God, in touch with God.
Why, even the church at Ephesus: the Lord said to it, “If you do not repent and come back to your first love, I will remove the lampstand from out of its place.” What did He mean?
The church would have gone on. It would have been a good church too—sound. It would have had prayer meetings, Bible studies, evangelistic times, all the routine of the church. It would all have rumbled on, but the lampstand would have gone.
What has gone? The testimony of Jesus. The routine continues, but the testimony has been withdrawn. It is no longer held.
There are so many companies of God’s people where, almost unknowingly and unwittingly, the testimony of Jesus has been withdrawn. Why? Because they have lost their first love.
First love is vision. First love is seeing Someone. First love is being caught by the glance of Somebody. It is an eye-to-eye, face-to-face matter. When we lose that, we have lost the testimony of Jesus.
That is a very high standard, is it not? The pillar. Thirdly, let me say something else: he poured oil upon it. Oh dear, he poured oil upon it.
We all know what oil is about, do we not? The Holy Spirit. Here we have another very interesting thing. Not only is it a matter of revelation, not only is it a matter of holding the testimony of Jesus and being alive to God, walking with God; he poured oil upon the pillar.
You cannot hold that testimony of Jesus and realize the vision God gives you except through the Person of the Holy Spirit. Never denigrate the Person of the Holy Spirit. Never devalue Him.
Half our problems as believers is simply this: we think of the Father as a Person, the Son as a Person, and the Holy Spirit as not a Person. We think of the Holy Spirit as some agent, some power, some agency, some instrument.
It is the most wonderful thing in the world when you suddenly realize that the Holy Spirit is a Person.
When you suddenly realize that the Holy Spirit can be grieved—you cannot grieve an influence; you cannot grieve an agency; you cannot quench something—He is a Person.
The Holy Spirit never makes a lot of Himself. That is our danger. He never draws attention to Himself, but He is the Person of God the Spirit.
There is nothing more wonderful than to know the Holy Spirit as the third Person of the triune God. It will move you to tears, melt your heart, and bring you to a lowly place.
I have no time for people who dispatch the Holy Spirit into some corner of their theological minds as some kind of dangerous teaching that we must be very careful of.
Dear friend, I remember Mr. Sparks saying years ago at Halford House that the end of the age would see a new understanding and experience of the Holy Spirit that would carry us through the last phase of world history.
I firmly believe that what they call the charismatic has been such. With all its excesses, failings, and so much else, it has been an outpouring of the Holy Spirit—perhaps only a little drop, a few drops, of what God will do in the years ahead. But do not let us despise it.
Do not let us belong to that great company of people who stone the prophets and, a hundred years later, build their sepulchres. The whole of church history is filled with people who, when the Holy Spirit moved, would have nothing to do with it.
“Excess, excess,” they said. “Have you heard this? Have you heard that? They did this, they did that.” A hundred years later, they are preaching about it from their pulpits: John Wesley—oh, he is just wonderful; George Fox—marvellous; Martin Luther—wonderful. They would not join them at the time. They would have nothing to do with them at the time.
Do not let us belong to such people. Let us not become part of a system or a movement, but let us take all that God is doing.
When the oil is poured upon the pillar, let us learn not to get all departmental about what you have got to know, what you have got to do, the methods, the steps, and everything else. Thank God for anybody who has entered into any blessing through so many steps, but, dear friends, there are lots of us who never did. There were no steps; we were blown in.
The point is, God is sovereign, and the Holy Spirit is sovereign. The way He comes is sovereign to us. He may bring you one way and me another, but thank God if we are in the good of it. That is the thing that matters.
If we are filled with the Holy Spirit, anointed with the Holy Spirit, gifted by the Holy Spirit, equipped by the Holy Spirit—that is the thing that matters. We want the pillar anointed with oil.
We do not want to argue about the steps to getting there, or the techniques, or everything else. All we want to see is the pillar with oil poured upon it.
That pillar, that testimony of Jesus: the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon the house of God, poured out upon the body of the Lord Jesus. You and I need to know that, because if the house of God is going to be built, it is going to be built not by might nor by power, but by His Spirit.
I think our time has really gone, but you begin to see this matter of the house of God and Jacob. Here is the purpose of God for Jacob.
This is the purpose of God for you. He loves you. Because He loves you, He has elected you. Because He loves you, your election has to do with the house of God.
Do you not think that you should make your calling and election sure? What a terrible thing it would be if God provided us with all the grace and we did not come through.
When I come to the time when I shall speak about the face of God and Jacob, you will see that the most wonderful thing about this man was that, when his opportunity came, he got hold of that Angel of the Lord. He got Him in a wrestling clinch and would not let Him go. That was the grace of God in Jacob.
If he had said, “Oh well, I will not bother. I am rather tired. Anyway, Esau is coming tomorrow, and I am very neurotic about this. I think I need at least to lie down for a while. I cannot spend the whole night playing with this angel. I do not know what He is here for in the first place,” he would never have come into the blessing.
Many believers are so calm, you know, so calm. There is a time to be calm, but never mix up the rest of faith with the laziness of unbelief.
Never, ever mix up natural power and energy with the violence that God gives us to storm the kingdom of heaven.
If this house of God is going to be built, there is a lot of building work to be done, and you and I have got to come there.
I must finish. I would like to finish by introducing the next phase in this matter of Jacob by saying this: here we are. This is the purpose of God in Jacob.
The purpose of God was that he should possess the land God covenanted to give him—the promised land; that he should become a people; that he should be a blessing; that he should have power with God and with men; and that he should build the house of God.
The problem with Jacob was not ignorance. He was clear. It was not even error. He was not in error. It was not even excess. There was no excess. The problem with Jacob was Jacob.
Do you know what the problem is with you? Do not say it is me, or Brother Kong, or whoever else leads in your company, or your husband, your wife, your children, or your parents. Do not blame them.
The problem with you is you. This is a lifelong problem. You may run to Australia, but you will take the problem with you. You may go to Alaska, but the problem will go with you. You may go to Israel, but the problem will go with you.
The problem is you. Jacob is the real problem: the strength of his natural character, the power of his own will, the bondage to himself, to his opinions, to his conceptions, to his own shrewdness, to his acumen.
He could not help it. As soon as he saw the value of something, he had to manipulate. He had to get it off the ground. He saw the value of the birthright, and immediately, as soon as the opportunity came, he got it. He saw the value of the blessing and deceived his old blind father and his twin brother to get it.
He saw something about the house of God, and immediately he started bargaining. That is the problem.
Make no mistake: God has a tremendous purpose for you, for me, and for us together, but the problem is us. I think we are learning this in our groups, are we not? Oh my, how well learned the problem is that it is me, it is you.
Thank God for the God of election and grace. He does not let go. He does not give up. He goes patiently on, putting up with us all the way through, till He loves us from Jacob into Israel—from those who have been twisters, bound to themselves, to those who are princes with God.
Shall we pray?
Dear Lord, we pray that Thou wilt burn something of this into our hearts. We need revelation, Lord—a real revelation, not just mental appreciation, but the shining of Thy Word into our hearts, so that in it we see Thyself.
Oh, for that light of the knowledge of Thy glory in the face of Jesus Christ. Lord, do this kind of thing with us, whatever it costs, however it comes, even if unexpectedly. Do it, Lord.
Grant that we may not be people who have mental concepts, mental appreciation, head appreciation of spiritual things and of great truth. Grant, Lord, that we may be people to whom Thou hast revealed Thyself.
In whom and through whom we see the house of God, so that we hold together the testimony of Jesus, so that we know the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Lord, do this work, we pray, of building Thy house. For this we ask in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.