If you will turn with me this evening to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16—Matthew’s Gospel. We shall read from verse 13.
Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?”
And they said, “Some say John the Baptist; some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”
He saith unto them, “But who say ye that I am?”
And Simon Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
And Jesus answered and said unto him, “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father who is in heaven.
And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Then, if you will turn to the Ephesian letter, chapter 2, and verse 19—Ephesians 2, from verse 19.
So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God,
being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone;
in whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord;
in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
And then lastly, in the first letter of Peter, chapter 2, from verse 1.
Putting away therefore all wickedness, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings,
as newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation; if ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious:
unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious,
ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Because it is contained in Scripture,
“Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious:
and he that believeth on Him shall not be put to shame.”
For you therefore that believe is the preciousness.
So we bow together in a word of prayer.
Heavenly Father, we want, very simply, as we come to Your Word this evening, to recognize once again that without You we can do nothing. We can speak words, we can define truths, we can explain doctrines; but Lord, unless You are the power and the life, the beginning and the end of this ministry, then, Lord, it will be to no avail eternally speaking.
Dear Lord, we pray: redeem this time from all irrelevance. Redeem it, Lord, from all futility. Redeem it from all vanity. Redeem it, Lord, from just words. We pray, O Lord, that You will so be present with us that we shall meet with You and shall know Your Spirit working deep within our hearts.
Lord, to that end, we do by faith take that anointing which is ours through the finished work of our Lord Jesus, made such a glorious reality in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Both for speaking and for hearing, we take that anointing, that, Lord, Your purpose for this time may be fulfilled in its entirety. And we shall give to You all the praise and all the glory, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
The passage that we read together in the Gospel of Matthew contains those words with which I imagine everybody is acquainted here this evening. It is in Matthew 16:18: “Upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
This incident, recorded here, that took place at Caesarea Philippi, is of profound significance. It was the first time that there was a clear, dogmatic, categorical revelation of the Person of the Lord Jesus. Before then, there had been intimations, some inferences, some sort of almost tremulous, querulous reachings out as to whether He was the Messiah, as to whether really He was the One that God had promised.
But here, for the first time amongst the disciples, there was a revelation given in absolutely categorical and dogmatic terms: “Thou art the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
And immediately Jesus revealed the goal and aim, the purpose of His coming and of His work: “Thou art Peter”—a small rock, as it were, a splinter of the rock, a stone—“upon this rock,” the massif of the rock, “I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
“Thou art; I will.” It is marvelous when you see it like that. “Thou art the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
Yesterday evening we considered the unchanging purpose of the Lord Jesus: “I will build My church.” I will not go over any of that. All I want to do this evening is move on to another consideration: the glorious nature of the church which He is building.
“Thou art Peter. Upon this rock I will build My church.” God is working toward one end, and one end only, and that end is glory.
Now, glory is probably the most difficult matter to interpret or explain. Everybody has their own idea as to what glory means. It is a somewhat old-fashioned word. For those of us who come from the old world, glory belongs essentially to that world. We think of massed choirs and bands, and reigning monarchs or emperors, and rewards being given, or medals being pinned on chests, or whatever else.
We think of glory in that way: some marvelous spectacle of authority and power and majesty. Somehow or other, I think that must have seeped over here, even on the Fourth of July. Somehow it got into these parts as well.
I do not know what you think about as glory, but it is an extremely difficult word, term, or idea to define. Particularly, it is important for us to understand it because, from beginning to end, the Bible speaks of glory.
It may not be altogether clear to many of us just how much the Bible talks about glory, but it is on every page of the revealed Word of God.
You know, we forfeited glory by sin. We all know the words. They almost belong fundamentally to what we call the simple gospel: “For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.” But nobody seems to think about it.
By sin, by the Fall, we have forfeited the glory of God. In other words, inferred in that simple statement of fact is this truth: you and I were made for glory.
Something came in right at the beginning of human history which caused us to forfeit that for which we were created. In other words, human beings are not really, in the end, fulfilled human beings until they are glory-bound.
We are only shadows of an idea. We are only the palest reflections of actually what God intended. God did not mean us to be miserable little creatures, disease-ridden, infection-laden, crawling around in mourning and sorrow, in pain and suffering, bounded by death, limited by corruption.
Is this what God intended for mankind? Was this why He made us? No. When God created the first human beings, it was with His own glory in mind.
He constituted the human being in such a way that they could be glorified from head to foot. From the crown of their head to the sole of their feet, He created us and constituted us in such a way that, in the end, we could enter into the glory of God; that the glory of God could enter into us; and that we could be transfigured by the glory of God.
This is not some kind of spotlight of God’s glory shining on us, so that if we move out of it we immediately revert to nature, but when we are in the light we sort of glow with a kind of light. This glory that God intended us for was something that was going to come from within, and which would shine out in an irradiating light that would simply transfigure flesh and clothes or anything else.
This was God’s intention for us. But we still have not answered the question: what is glory?
If we were created for glory, and if we have forfeited the glory of God through sin, and if the Lord Jesus came—and it was said of Him, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth”—if this One came to reveal and manifest and express the glory of God, and is going to bring in the end, through His finished work on the cross, many sons unto glory, what is glory?
Of course, glory must have something to do with rewards. It must have something to do with fulfillment. It must have something to do with position—with crowns and thrones and medals and tribute. But this is the smallest part of glory. This is just the symptom, if you like, of glory. The real matter, we have not touched. What is glory?
Austin-Sparks said many years ago, and I remember it: “Glory is the manifested presence of God.” Not just the presence of God, but the manifested presence of God.
In other words, God created us for Himself, that we might become, in the end, vessels of glory. We might become vessels in which He might manifest His Person, through which He could display Himself, reveal Himself, express Himself.
Now, dear friends, when we really look at this matter of glory, we find it everywhere in the record. It was the God of glory who appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, in Ur of the Chaldees—the God of glory.
We tend to think of it as just a little phrase: the glorious God appeared to Abraham. But you see, when the God of glory appeared to Abraham, it spoiled Abraham for anything other than God’s glory.
It was as if he caught a glimpse of the meaning of being a human being, of the call of God; as if he saw something of God’s original destiny for man; as if somehow, as he beheld the God of glory, he saw the city of God.
Although he never lived in a city—he never, after he left Ur of the Chaldees, ever lived in Jerusalem, which was down on this earth—he wandered about from place to place in a tent. Yet he became a citizen of a city. He went out looking for the city which hath the foundations, whose Builder and Architect is God.
What happened? He did not read a book. But when he saw the God of glory, he saw the glory of God. He saw that the glory of God was somehow or other essentially, substantially linked to a people. It was linked to a city. It was not detached.
It is a very interesting thing that the very first time we ever hear of the glory of God touching the earth, as recorded in the Scriptures, it is when the tabernacle was set up on earth.
When the tabernacle was finally set up exactly according to the pattern which was given to Moses, the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle like a smoke, so that nobody could enter in. It was the first time that the glory of God had ever actually touched the earth since the Fall.
Is that not significant? It was as if God was saying, “This represents the same thing that Abraham saw. This, in another way, is the city. This is the house of My glory. This is the vessel of My glory.”
It is interesting that later on, when the temple was built, according again to the plan that was given by God to Moses, only in a more concrete form—Solomon built it—you will remember that when the dedication came, when the priests were about to enter into the temple, the glory of the Lord filled the whole temple, and the priests could not even stand up to minister.
All they could do was bow down with their foreheads touching the ground in the presence of the glory of God. For the second time, the glory of God touched the earth, as if God was re-emphasizing a tremendous truth: that this glory of His is not just an individual matter; it is something to do with redeemed people built together to be a habitation of God in the Spirit.
Friends, wherever we look, we find this tremendous thing. It was, as John said, the glory of God that they beheld in the Lord Jesus. It is for glory that we have been saved and called.
Let me give you a few Scriptures. Maybe you would like to note them down and go away and reflect on them. I can think of no better way of using this time.
1 Peter 5:10: “And the God of all grace, who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a little while, shall Himself perfect, establish, strengthen you. To Him be the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”
What marvelous words. Listen to it again: “The God of all grace, who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ Jesus.” Now there we have a clue. Where is this eternal glory? It is in Christ Jesus. And what is God calling us to? He is calling us to become partakers of that eternal glory, sharers in that eternal glory, in the Person of our Lord Jesus.
Oh, what a calling! What a calling!
Or let us look at another Scripture: Ephesians 5:27. These are phrases that many of us have read many times, but maybe it has never come home to us: “That He might present the church to Himself a glorious church”—a church of glory—“not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”
Or, as I have already quoted, Hebrews 2:10: “For it became Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”
Bringing many sons, or children, unto glory. Children that have gone through the discipline of the Lord, brought to maturity—many sons unto glory.
Or I think of an even more marvelous verse in Romans 9:23. Oh, how I find this an amazing verse. I know it will bring problems for some.
What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction:
and that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He afore prepared unto glory?
Glory, mercy, glory. Oh my, what a marvelous thing. I know some of you are going to have some problems on the negative side of it, but forget that for one moment and get on to the positive side.
Forget the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction. If you are a child of God, saved by the grace of God, think of this: you are a vessel of mercy, afore prepared unto glory. Why? That He might manifest the riches of His glory in you, a vessel of mercy.
Oh, dear children of God, what a calling is ours. It would be wonderful enough to be found in the presence of God for all eternity, in all the ages to come—to be found in the presence of God, enjoying His grace, enjoying His love, enjoying His works, enjoying just Him. It would be enough.
But to think that He has called us to be partakers of His glory, that we should, with the Lord Jesus and in the Lord Jesus, become sharers of His eternal glory—I say that this is tremendous.
If any of us have ever known that marvelous knocking out of us by the Holy Spirit, when, in some moment of revelation, in some new experience of the mercy and grace of God, we have been completely knocked out of our minds for a while and walked, as it were, on air—and we have not yet been glorified—what in the world will it be when we are glorified?
Even the ugliest features will become beautiful when we are glorified. It will be something so tremendous.
I do not know if any of you have ever known that feeling of satisfaction when you fulfill something that is in your being and personality—something perhaps given to you—and after many years you finally do it. There is such a sense of rightness about it, such a sense of satisfaction, such a sense of fulfillment.
What do you think it is going to be like one day when we are filled with the glory of God, when we are glorified, when the very thing for which God originally created us, and for which our Lord Jesus came and died for us, is finally fulfilled?
My dear friends, there could not be anything more wonderful in the whole world.
People look at us Christians and feel we are such a pathetic lot. Well, normally speaking, we are. I mean, we are. We are always groveling around in the mud, turning over the verminous rubbish around us all the time: “Lord, have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us.”
You know the kind of thing: we have all the time got to grovel around here, when we are sons and daughters of the King, destined for glory.
Oh, it is absolutely true that we are not worthy. It is absolutely true that we are sinners. It is absolutely true that we need the mercy of God. But we are vessels of mercy, afore prepared unto glory.
Oh, my dear friends, I feel sorry for the world. People say, “Oh, you do not know what it is like to be a Christian: so many afflictions, so many tribulations, so many problems.” So what?
So what? Supposing you had all the tribulations, all the afflictions, and all the problems, and no glory too—no destiny for glory. Think of that.
For our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.
Of course, if we do not see the glory to which we are called, all we can do is make a lot of our light afflictions. They are not light any more; they are exceeding and eternal weights.
We are pursued all the time by the enemy, and then we have our brothers and sisters to put up with. Fellowship is a bore. It is one long, unceasing, unending train of difficulties. Why should we put up with it? What is the point of it—being trapped with all these little minds and little hearts, with all their little problems?
Of course, everybody else has little problems.
My dear friends, if we see the glory to which we are called, all this pales into insignificance. If God is, by His grace, doing a work in your personality and in mine, and in our life together, in our relationships one to another, which is preparing us for glory, then we would welcome every single affliction.
We would welcome these things as friends, as aids, as help. We would see that it is the very grace of God to take this little pinpoint of time in which you and I live, this little short life, and within it pack so much discipline, so much training, in order to bring us to glory.
Oh, the glorious nature of the church which Jesus is building. It is the most tremendous privilege in the world to belong to the church, to be of the household of faith, to be a fellow citizen with the saints. It is the greatest privilege granted to any human being.
Friends, oh, how wonderful these things are when we consider them. I think of those words with which almost the Bible ends, in Revelation 21:11, where it speaks of the new Jerusalem, the city of God, coming down out of heaven, having the glory of God.
It has happened. Finally, it has happened. The city of God, produced through all the long millennia of time, through all the merciful dealings of God by His Spirit with human beings redeemed through the finished work of the Lord Jesus—finally, it is done.
The work is complete. All the scaffolding is removed. All the rubbish is taken out. And finally the bride appears: the city of God, complete, perfect, having the glory of God.
It says she needs no light of sun or moon, for the glory of God did lighten it, and the nations will walk in the light thereof.
Dear friends, I cannot think of anything more wonderful in the world than to be called to eternal glory in Christ Jesus.
Now, to come to our subject: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church.”
Everything Christ builds—let me put it another way. I could not do this in Britain, but since in America you speak another kind of English, I am going to have an attempt. All the materials Christ uses in the building must be glorifiable.
Now, I can get away with that on this side of the ocean.
Now listen. This brings us face to face with some serious issues. This means there is a whole lot of material that is excluded: wood, hay, and stubble. It may be very beautiful, but it is excluded.
It represents all the ingenuity of man, all the genius of man, all the energy of his fallen talents and nature, but it is excluded. However glorious it may appear to be from a human point of view, however clever man may be in organizing, however clever he may be in speaking, however clever he may be in producing empires or systems or whatever else, it is all excluded from this eternal building which the Lord Jesus is building.
Every bit of material which He uses has to have within it the capacity for glory. He will include nothing—nothing, I repeat it, nothing—that cannot be glorified.
Therefore, dear friends, you and I need to take very real account of this matter: “Thou art Peter. Upon this rock I will build My church.”
Consider, for a few moments, the rock itself. It may be good, before I go any further, just to say a few things about building. Not that I am a builder, but I come from that part of the world in which this Book was written, and I have seen quite a lot in my own experience of the kind of things that this Book talks about.
In Israel, for instance, nearly all the buildings in the past were built of stone—hardly anywhere ever built of wood. In Jerusalem, even today, all buildings are built of Jerusalem stone. It is a law passed by the municipality of Jerusalem that no building, whether it is a high-rise building or a small one-storey building, can be built unless it is built in Jerusalem stone.
Now, Jerusalem stone, out of which the temple was originally built—we do not need American stone. There are some stories circulating about stone being prepared in the State of Indiana, as if we, who are so intensely patriotic and nationalistic, would accept American stone for the temple of God in Jerusalem when we have such beautiful stone of our own.
But in Jerusalem there are four kinds of what we call Jerusalem stone. There is white Jerusalem stone, which is beautiful, somewhat colourless, but very soft. There is yellow Jerusalem stone, which is harder and more interesting, but still not so strong. There is grey Jerusalem stone, which is strong but very uninteresting. Then there is the most beautiful of all Jerusalem stone, the red stone, which has been called by the Arabs “Jewish hardness.” That is their name for it.
This is the most sought-after and the most highly prized of the stone that is used in Jerusalem for building.
Now, in the old days, when you built a home, you did not, as in the States, go along to some building contractor, and he went somewhere else to get the materials and brought it all in by van or lorry—or whatever you call the thing in American English. Normally, they would build the house on rock.
The rock that the house was built upon, if there was enough of it, would also become the quarry for the stone of the house that was being built on the rock. So you built your house, as it were, from stone that came on site or nearby.
Someone went round a property that was theirs with the stonemason, and he looked at the stone. He said, “This is good-quality stone. Now, if we were to level this area here, we can use quite a bit of the stone for the building, and we can make this the foundation of the actual house.”
You have to understand this to understand all this talk in Scripture about building. “Upon this rock I will build My church.” Jesus did not mean, “Now we have got the rock here, but we will import the stone from a few miles away.”
What He was really saying was this: “Here is the rock. We are going to quarry living stones out of this rock. This rock is going to be not only the foundation of the house, but we are actually going to take the materials for the stone out of this rock and build it on the rock.” You get it?
Of course, today it is a little different. Naturally, stone is bought. I remember when I bought my home in Jerusalem. It was only partly in being when I bought it. In the 1948 War of Independence, a few shells had landed on the house and blown parts of it to smithereens, and a few more had come in in 1967 and done an even better job. So, when I took it over, it needed to be rebuilt.
I remember the day when the lorry arrived with an enormous amount of rocks, which were then tipped out in front of what was going to be, in the end, the front door. There was this huge pile of rocks, twice my height, which were then carried in by labourers inside the house. I could hardly believe it.
Then a little old gentleman, who I found out later was in his seventies, came and began to inspect the rocks. He began to put them all in certain piles—some here, and he threw some over there.
Now, some of the ones he threw away, I thought were very beautiful. The colour was beautiful. There was a vein in them that was very beautiful. I could even see that in the rough rock. So I went over and rummaged around, and took one or two of them out.
Considering myself to have a somewhat artistic temperament, I thought, “Well, I am not going to have him throw these things away. I paid for this.” Distrusting him, I thought to myself, “I suppose he is going to build something himself. He is going to get these things out by night, by donkey, and then he is going to build a little summer house somewhere.”
I ferreted a few out and took them over to him. He could speak no English and no Hebrew, which was a bit of a problem. So I sort of said to him, “Very good, very good.”
“No,” he said. I understood quite clearly it was no good.
Then I noticed a very interesting thing. He took up the stone and threw it with force down, and it split into two. Then he beckoned to me: “Come.”
I went with him, and then I noticed the most extraordinary thing. I had noticed before a kind of little ritual. Anyone who did not understand it would have thought it was occult, but it was not occult at all. He sat cross-legged, took a rock up, and held it to his cheek.
Then he would either throw it over there or put it down here. In some extraordinary way, this old stonemason knew whether there was a fault in the rock, and he was not going to waste all his time cutting the rock and shaping the rock if there was a fault in it.
Then the work began. Many, many months. All day long—to this day I can hear it sometimes in my ears—chip, chip, chink, chink, chink, chink, chink, chink, chink.
All day, from seven o’clock in the morning to four o’clock in the afternoon, every day, six days of the week: chink, chink, chink, chink, chink, chink. On he went until, slowly, these extraordinary shapeless lumps of rock became square.
Once there were a certain number of those stones, the work began of setting them in place. Then they were shaped. When finally a whole wall took shape, toward the end of the whole operation there was another kind of chink, chink, chink. This time it was facing the whole thing.
A neighbour across the way also has a very nice house, but one of the top architects in town said to me when we were doing it, “Oh, I am so glad you are doing the stone the way you are doing it, the age-old way.”
“Why?” I said.
“Well, do you see your neighbour?”
“Yes,” I said. “It is a beautiful home.”
“Yes, but,” he said, “have you ever noticed the stone?”
“No. I just took it that it was yellow Jerusalem stone.”
“No,” he said. “That stone is sawn. And because it is sawn, it will never live again.”
“Your stone has within it all the living quality of living stone. It does not matter,” he said, “if this house is here for seven or eight hundred years. The living quality of that stone will come to it. The wind, the rain, and the sun will only bring out what is in the stone. But when the stone is sawn, you will never get the living quality in it again. It is destroyed.”
So I learned a number of lessons there.
Now, having told you all that, let us come back to the subject once more: “Upon this rock I will build My church.” What is the rock?
Some people say that the rock is the affirmation of Peter: “Thou art the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” This is partly true, but it is not the whole truth. The Bible itself tells us who is the rock.
If you look in Deuteronomy 32:15, we read, in the latter part of the verse, “and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.” Or turn to Isaiah 26:4: “Trust ye in the Lord for ever; for in the Lord, even the Lord, is an everlasting rock.”
So I understand that God Himself is the Rock. When Jesus said, “Upon this rock I will build My church,” I believe He was really saying, “Upon God in Me.” If you understand, it was God who was in Christ. That is the foundation of this eternal building work of the Lord Jesus.
That is why it is not wrong to say that the affirmation of Peter is the rock: “Thou art the Christ. Thou art the Messiah, the Son of the living God. God is in You. You are God the Son. You are the Rock.”
The second thing I want you to look at is this question of foundation. Here we have something very interesting. It is, of course, the Rock, as it is put in 1 Corinthians 3:11: “For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
That seems quite clear, I think. Or again, look at Ephesians 2:20: “Being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone.”
Or look at 1 Peter 2:4: “Unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious.” Now here you have three things: Jesus is called the foundation, the chief cornerstone, and the living stone. Is that not interesting?
If we turn back to the Scripture from which all this came, Isaiah 28:16, we get the clue to it:
Therefore thus saith the Lord God,
“Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone,
a tried stone, a precious cornerstone of sure foundation:
he that believeth shall not be in haste.”
Now here you have it all brought together. Jesus is this foundation, the chief cornerstone, the foundation from which the whole building takes its character.
I hope that is clear. One other thing about this rock: first, the Rock is really God. Secondly, it is God in Christ. Christ is the sure foundation. Christ is the only foundation. He is the chief cornerstone, the living stone.
Now we find something very wonderful in 1 Peter 2:5: “Ye also, as living stones.” Is this not interesting? It is exactly the same word used of the Lord Jesus: “Unto whom coming, a living stone”; “ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house.”
Now, what is all this meaning unless it means this: that God has done something so marvelous in the Lord Jesus, through the finished work of the Lord Jesus, in the Person of the Lord Jesus, that He can communicate to us His own eternal life.
He can give to us eternal life. He can beget us again unto a living hope. He can bring us, as it were, into some union with Himself in the Lord Jesus, so that He is the Rock, Jesus is the foundation, and we become the living stones quarried out of the Rock, which Jesus, as it were, builds into an eternal habitation of God in the Spirit.
And the whole project is for glory.
Dear brothers and sisters, I find this simply marvelous. Now, I do not know about you. Maybe you are bored stiff, but I find it really quite remarkable: “Upon this rock I will build My church.”
We are living in a world in which everything is changing, in which even things that seem to have lasted for centuries and centuries are disappearing; where we have no sense of security, no sense of continuity, no sense of enduring stability.
But, brothers and sisters, if we know the Lord Jesus, if we belong to Him, then we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken. The King Himself is unshakable, and therefore the kingdom is unshakable.
Dear brothers and sisters, we are involved in the building work of the Lord Jesus upon this eternal, unshakable, invincible Rock. Jesus is building His church.
Now let us take this a step further. “Upon this rock I will build My church.” I would like to underline the strategic nature and importance of foundation.
It says in Ephesians 2:20, “Being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone.” The first thing about this building is relationship to the Lord Jesus.
Before ever we can have a relationship with one another, we must have a relationship with the Lord Jesus. That means we have to be built upon a foundation.
Who is a true apostle unless an apostle is someone who is an obedient channel for the Lord? All others are false apostles. Who is a true prophet unless he is an instrument, a vehicle for the Lord to speak? All other prophets are false.
We are built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets, but it is the Lord Jesus Himself who is the chief cornerstone. It is relationship to the Lord Jesus Himself which is the strategic and essential thing about building.
So often we try to get relationship with one another before we have got clear on our relationship with the Lord Jesus. Therefore, our relationship with one another cannot stand the strain.
My dear friend, when we first meet each other, we all seem so sweet and pure and loving and compassionate. Give us a few years with one another and we are nearly finished with one another.
We know all that there is to know. We know that so-and-so opens their mouth, and we are going to hear the same old phrases once again. “Oh dear, they have started again.” Or somebody is going to go on the same old rigmarole they normally do. Or so-and-so’s bee in the bonnet is going to come out in a time of fellowship, or whatever it is. We are sick to death of each other.
If we do not have a strong relationship with the Lord Jesus, we shall never have a strong relationship with one another. If we do not hold fast the Head, we shall never find the Body.
But much more important than that, the Body will never function if we do not hold fast the Head. When we all hold fast to the Body, we can all go off the rails, as so many movements of the Spirit of God have done through the course of church history.
Everybody is held together in such a way that they have moved, almost without anyone perceiving it, off the foundation, off the way, out of the will of God, further and further and further away, until the enemy and demons have possessed the thing and made it cultic.
Nobody has seen it. The only guarantee of safety and security is a strong relationship with the Lord Jesus.
So the first thing is being built on the foundation—not being built up as a spiritual house, but being built on the foundation. The first thing is downwards, if you understand what I mean. The first thing is not outwards; it is downwards. The first thing is not horizontal, as it were, in our relationship with each other.
Our first priority is our relationship with the Lord. “Upon this rock I will build My church.” This vessel of glory is built upon Christ alone as foundation, and on nothing else.
If we say, “Christ plus this,” or “Christ plus that,” it is not the foundation. We have added to the foundation, and the whole building work of God stops.
Now let me be quite clear about this. I do not want to be misunderstood. There is a minimum doctrine. There is the triunity of God. There is the Person of the Father, the Person of the Son, and the Person of the Holy Spirit. Upon this we cannot compromise.
There is the Person of the Lord Jesus, His saving work, the Person of the Holy Spirit, and His work. There is the Word of God—its authority, its inspiration, its accuracy. Upon this we cannot budge.
But when we have said that, that is the minimum truth in Christ upon which we stand, so help us God. We are not going to add to that some interpretation of Scripture, some view of the coming of the Lord, some particular line of theology which is open to question, and make that the gateway for fellowship.
“All others we will have no fellowship with—only if you see as I see exactly.” If we do that, God will still bless us. God will still use us. God will still save amongst us. God will visit us in many, many ways. But as far as building goes, there is no building.
For the Lord will never commit Himself to building anything on any other foundation than Jesus Christ alone.
I can, of course, say, “Well, this church is going to be built on Jesus Christ plus colour. If you are black, you are in. If you are white, you are out. If you are white, you are in; if you are black, you are out. If you are yellow, you are in; if you are white, you are out. If you are brown, you are out; if you are white, you are in.”
Oh, my friends, there are thousands of churches all over the world split on the colour issue, split on the race issue, split on the nationality issue, split on the social-class issue. That is not the foundation.
There is only one foundation, and that foundation is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Sometimes we make it a matter of experience. Now, of course, there is foundational, essential experience, which is to be born again. I cannot bring anyone into the church who is not born again. To do so is to bring a Trojan horse into the church. It would be ridiculous. It is like committing suicide.
But then there are a thousand and one experiences. Some people believe in a second blessing. I am all for them. The more second blessings there are, knowing the Lord’s people as I do, oh, how I wish they would all have a second blessing. They need to be changed.
But some people do not believe in second blessings. They say they think all that is required is to be converted. Well, I cannot kick them out just because they believe only in conversion. I am very sorry.
They are like spiritual pygmies, spiritual dwarves. They got converted, and that is where they have stayed forever after—like Lot’s wife, turned into a pillar of salt. They had one kiss, and that was the marriage.
One experience of the Lord, and no more. Anything beyond that is emotionalism.
But, my dear friends, there are thousands of blessings. I believe in a second blessing. I believe in a third blessing, and a fourth blessing, and a fifth blessing, and a sixth blessing. There are so many blessings.
Some people say that you should have a baptism in the Spirit. I am all for it. I would like to see every single believer immersed in the Person of the Holy Spirit. After all, people must be sick of seeing me. Would it not be lovely if I were immersed in the Holy Spirit? You could not see me—only the glory of God, only the power of God, only the life of God.
Supposing you were immersed in Him and all I could see was the beauty of the Lord. Would it not be marvelous? It would certainly help in our relationships.
You might say, “Yes, yes, yes. I am going to accept everyone who has had a baptism in the Spirit plus tongues.” No, I believe in tongues. I have no problem with tongues.
People tell me that tongues went out with the canon of Scripture. Not. Well, I will not say any more about this matter of tongues, but if it went out with the canon of Scripture, I will eat my hat. That is all I can say.
It is the most extraordinary thing. If I look at church history, how do you explain its reappearance with the Anabaptists, with the early Mennonites, with the early Huguenots, with the early Methodists? How do you explain it?
People say it all began in Azusa Street in 1906. I do not know where they got the story from.
But some people say you cannot have fellowship, you cannot enter in, unless you have been baptized in the Spirit and you have the evidence. Then I am going to shut out all kinds of people from the foundation. What am I to do?
Personally, I wish everybody spoke in tongues. I think it would make them much nicer people. Now, not everybody agrees with me on that. They feel that is the thing that makes them not such nice people.
But the fact of the matter is, if you have been brought in by the Lord Jesus, I cannot put you out.
Though I might find a great ecclesiastical officer who is not born again, what am I to do? Am I to be polite and say, “Yes, he is in,” when it is perfectly clear he is not in?
There are some people from respectable denominations, in some of our eyes, who are most definitely not in the family of God. There are other people who do not come from denominations respectable in our eyes, but who are in.
I think we are going to meet a number of popes in the kingdom, much to the shock of some of my Protestant brothers. I do not know whether the Lord will segregate them up there somehow, keep them all apart for peace’s sake, or whether the old argument will start all over again up there. I do not know.
But my point is this. More recently in Britain, a certain bishop was ordained in a certain cathedral, and he does not believe in the virgin birth, or the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, or the atoning death of the Lord Jesus.
He went on radio, reported by all kinds of people. I heard him myself with my own ears describing on the radio the resurrection of the Lord Jesus as a cheap conjuring trick with bones.
After this, a bolt of lightning struck the cathedral where he was inducted and caused two million pounds’ worth of damage.
An Israeli journalist—only we Jews could be so fleshly—asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, “Some people say that this was a divine act. What do you think, Your Excellency?”
And he said, “I do not believe in divine intervention.”
After that, there was a thunderstorm over York which dumped two feet of water on the same cathedral, so that the BBC had to appeal to people to come in and bail the water out of the cathedral, already damaged by the lightning.
Some believers in Liverpool asked God to shake England, and we had an earthquake. Have you ever heard of such a thing? England never has earthquakes. But after they prayed and got a promise from God, “I will shake,” within two hours the whole of the north of England was shaken, including that cathedral.
Well now, I do not know why I am telling you all this. But you see, it is perfectly clear to me that there are some gentlemen who occupy high ecclesiastical office within the so-called church who are not in the household of faith. They have no business to be there.
As a Jew, I just cannot understand it. I cannot imagine anybody selling cars and telling you, “These cars we are selling do not work. If you take one of the cars we have got in the salesroom out and take it round the corner, the wheels will drop off, because it just does not work.”
It has an appearance, but there is another idea really behind the whole thing. I cannot think why anybody would be selling cars if they do not work. As a Jew, I cannot understand how anybody gets into the church and cannot sell the gospel. They tell us that it does not work. That is the most extraordinary thing I have ever heard of.
So my point is this: I think we might find some popes within the household of faith, and some bishops of Protestant extraction outside of it.
The fact of the matter is, this foundation is Jesus Christ alone, and only God knows those who are born of God fully. I cannot debar one of those saints except on grounds of heresy, on grounds of apostasy, or on grounds of immorality. I have no right to bar a single child of God.
If God has received somebody, how can I reject them?
This foundation, then, I suddenly discover, is a very big discipline, because there are all kinds of people God has received that I might not want to receive. No, I am being very honest.
There are all kinds of people that God saves, and I sometimes think, “Oh my goodness, what a load of trouble.” But God, in His great love and mercy, has made that same person a vessel of mercy, afore prepared unto glory. Now, what do I do?
Dear brothers and sisters, this whole matter of foundation is so important. God will not commit Himself to building apart from that foundation. If you and I are not clear as to the foundation for our fellowship, and the foundation for our being built together, then surely, in time, the enemy will shake us out.
We have to be absolutely clear as to this matter of foundation. We have to understand that this foundation is nothing physical. It is the foundation of our Lord Jesus Christ: “Upon this rock I will build My church.”
If there is going to be any possibility of glory, we have got to be on that foundation. Not only have we got to be found on that foundation, but we have got to stay on that foundation.
If you and I are going to become that house for God’s glory, that house, that eternal home of God in the Spirit, which is finally going to manifest His presence, His glory, then we must remain on that foundation.
Now there is yet another thing I would like to pass on to you, and that is this: it is not only a question of foundation. Jesus said, “Upon this rock I will build My church.”
We read in 1 Peter 2:5, “Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house.” So it is not only a question of being built on the foundation, but of being built up as living stones—a spiritual house.
Now we come to the marvelous word of the Lord Jesus. This is what I meant yesterday when I said to you that Catholics make a tremendous amount of “Thou art Peter. Upon this rock I will build My church,” and Protestants react enormously to it and say, “No, no, no, that is not right. It has nothing to do with Peter as the first pope.”
In actual fact, the truth is in between. When Jesus said, “Thou art Peter,” He used the Greek word Petros, which means stone, or a portion of the rock. When He said, “Upon this rock I will build,” He used the word petra, which is the word for the massif of the rock.
I mean, that could be the size of this whole auditorium, and this Petros could be the size of this podium, this little pulpit.
We think of it sometimes—I do not know why; this is our Protestant background, many of us—we think Jesus, “Upon this rock,” means this auditorium, and “thou art Peter,” a little stone that you can hardly see, which effectively rules out any idea of Peter being a living stone in the building.
You get it? What Jesus was really saying was this: “Thou art a living stone. Upon the massif of the Rock, this foundation which is Myself, I will build you and others as the church.”
I find this a tremendous cause of encouragement, almost to the point that it would melt me to tears, to think that God said it to Peter. If He had said it to John, I could have understood it. John was such a different character—so faithful, so devoted, so one hundred percent.
But Peter—he was truly a vessel of mercy. He was going to deny his Lord three times. This Peter, Jesus said these wonderful words of grace to him, knowing that he was going to deny Him three times.
He knew, “One day you will remember this. In spite of all the shakiness of your character, in spite of the fact that you will have your ups and downs, I am going to produce, through a new birth by the Holy Spirit, a living stone. I am going to make you a vessel of mercy, afore prepared unto glory.”
“I am going to build you with other living stones into this house. I am going to give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. You are going to have authority, with the other saints, to see that My purpose is worked out and fulfilled on this earth.”
It puts an altogether new complexion on this declaration of our Lord Jesus, this revelation of the goal and purpose of His coming and work. It means that the worst of us can become living stones. It means the most impossible temperament in nature—God can do such a miracle in that we become a vessel of mercy.
A vessel of mercy, that He might manifest and express the riches of His glory.
Peter—the first to open the door to the three thousand on the day of Pentecost; the first to open the door for the Samaritans; the first to open the door to the Gentiles in Caesarea. Peter.
Peter, who so often went forward and then backwards, and backwards; who again and again somehow sensed the truth and blurted it out, and meant it from his heart, with his whole heart, but who had not got the capacity within himself to follow it through.
This Peter was a vessel of mercy that God made into a living stone—eternal, invincible, immovable—so that in the end he was martyred. When they came to crucify him, he said, “Turn me upside down. I will not die in the same way as my Lord.”
This Peter, this vessel of mercy, finally got into his very being the living-stone quality that Jesus said he would be. Is that not an encouragement to all of us?
It is not that Peter did not have his problems. He had plenty of problems. When he came back from Caesarea, he had a very hostile reception in the church at Jerusalem. My word, I bet there were some straight things said there. I would love to have been a fly on the wall.
I know our people. I can just imagine some of the things that went backwards and forwards.
I remember another time when dear Peter had decided that everything could be eaten if you gave thanks. Then some of the others got hold of him, and he got into such a mess over the whole thing he wondered, “Well, what shall we do?”
He withdrew, and Paul got so mad about it that he stood up and rebuked him publicly. Now, can you imagine that? Here we are in a real old collision. Can you imagine it? Here we are in the church, and two of the leaders argue with each other in public. The least Paul could have done would have been to do it in private.
Then there is dear old Peter writing his letter some years later and saying, “Our beloved brother Paul has written letters very hard to understand.” But he was still his beloved brother Paul.
He still had his problems with Paul, evidently.
My dear friends, this is all to do with building. We have got this idea that everything has got to be lovely, all has got to be harmony, all has got to be peace. We flow together. It is a kind of glorious, divine United Nations. We sort of all do everything together with one another in accord, in peace, with one mind, in one word.
It is not like that at all. It never was. Until the Lord comes, I do not think it ever will be.
I think this is all part of the shaping, the cutting, and all the rest of it.
Well, my dear friends, you see, the real point is this: these living stones are what the Lord is using to build this church. Living stones. This is not wood, hay, and stubble of our own natures. This is the living-stone quality.
In other words, it is the new man; it is the new creation, born of God. That is the thing the Lord Jesus is using in this whole matter.
Now, when God starts to cut us—you know, when we are first saved, we are just a rough rock. We are new men, all right, and we are a new creation, all right, but we tend to think we are a finished product. We are not.
We have been born of God, but there is a lot of discipline. Jesus Himself was made perfect through the things which He suffered, even though He was without sin. So it is with us. You and I have to know the cutting work of the Lord.
To be shaped as a stone requires a lot of work. I saw it: the chink, chink, chink, and the chip, chip, chip. The Holy Spirit goes at it all the time. And what do you think He uses as a chisel?
Well, very often our brothers and sisters are the chisels that the Holy Spirit uses—with the chink, chink, chink and the chip, chip, chip. We do not really like it very much.
Sometimes it is employers or employees that the Lord God uses at work. Sometimes it is husbands, sometimes wives, sometimes parents, sometimes children. But it is all the same thing: the chisel, and the chink, chink, chink, and the chip, chip, chip.
It never stops—day in, day out, week in, week out. Sometimes, after a while, we say, “I am going to get out of this. I am getting out of it. I will go to the ends of the earth and be a missionary—anything to get away from this chink, chink, chink and this chip, chip, chip.”
But this is what God does: cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting. There is a lot of work that has to be done.
Then, when God has got the stone cut, He has to shape it. The stones are all different shapes. If you came to my home, I would show you them all. Some are this shape, some are that shape; some are small, some are shaped when they go into an arch. They are all different shapes.
Sometimes we have an argument with the Lord: “What do You think You are doing with me? I have seen what You have done with Brother Stephen and Brother Yohanan. That is the shape I want to be.”
But the Holy Spirit says, “No, no, no, no, no. You are going to a different place. I need a long stone here, and very narrow. Sorry.”
Or sometimes you are in an arch, and the Lord says, “It is no good you being a rectangular stone. I have got to shape you like that. Otherwise I cannot build the arch.”
Oh, this house is going to be a house of glory, so beautiful. But, you see, we do not always understand what the Lord is doing with us—shaping and cutting.
“Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us an eternal and exceeding weight of glory.” Brothers and sisters, it is this work of the Lord that He is doing so graciously in us.
It is in our homes, in our families, in our places of work, but above all, it is in our relationships with one another in the church. It is so easy to say goodbye to one another and go off to another fellowship to find more pleasant fellowship.
But you can escape all the disciplinary work of God in cutting you and shaping you by doing that.
Dear brothers and sisters, it is not only cutting and shaping. You have to be fitly framed together. In the old days, they had no mortar. I could take you to some buildings near me where you cannot even get a knife in between the stones. They are so marvelously framed together, without any mortar, without any cement. That is the old type of building.
You know, that requires some skill and some patience. I watched the old man putting in the stone, and I thought, “Oh, it is in at last. He has been working on that for two or three days.” Then he would shake his head, go over and look at it, come back again, and carefully ease it out.
He would take it over and do a bit more chink, chink, chink, and chip, chip, chip, because it just was not quite right. Then it goes back again, fitly framed together.
Brothers and sisters, what a job it is to get fitly joined together. You cannot build a house unless stones find a relationship to each other—one stone to another, to another, to another, to another. Slowly the walls go up, and the floors, then the next floor, the next storey, until the roof. It requires quite a lot of work.
So, brothers and sisters, we must come to an end. A building site is normally a messy place. I have very rarely ever been on a building site which is like a garden—all beautiful, where you could sit and the birds sing and the butterflies flutter about, and you can have a cup of tea and really relax.
I have never been on a building site like that. There were pools of water here, piles of lime over there, and sand over there.
If my home was anything to go by, we bought it in 1977, and three years later it was completed. When you think of all the stone that had to be chipped and cut and put into place, of course it took three years.
Do you know that for about two and three-quarter years, the place was one big mess? There were pools of water, piles of lime, piles of mortar here, piles of sand here, wood stacked up here, enormous mounds of rocks being chipped away, chippings over here, which every now and again were carried out by a donkey.
And so it went on. I used to come in and think, “Will this place ever be done?” I used to sit in what now is the living room and think, “Will we ever, ever be able to sit in here and have a cup of tea? I mean, it looks absolutely dreadful.”
The smells of all the things, and then there was that wretched old donkey going in and out, leaving his hallmark wherever he went. I mean, it was a messy place.
If anybody had said to me, “This is a house of glory. This is going to be a thing of beauty,” I would have thought, “For someone, I do not know. Will it ever be done?”
Then, when they had got most of it done, there were no windows in the actual openings, no doors. When we got the windows and the doors in, we did not have any water. When we did get cold water, we did not have any hot water.
You know, building places, building sites, are messy places.
Now, what in the world are we all expecting in this matter of the church being built? We seem to think God is going to wave a wand over us all, and suddenly there is the house with all its beautiful tiles. We so believe that He can do that, even the roses are rambling up round the door all overnight. Everything is perfect.
I am afraid that will only be when we get to glory. Down here, it is a messy business, this building site.
All the work of God, the chippings, all the signs of activity, all the signs of the discipline, all the signs of the shaping, the cutting, the fitly framing together—brothers and sisters, Christ is building His church with eternity, with eternal glory in view.
He builds it upon the Rock and out of the Rock. What He does is forever.
Do not give up. Do not go out. Do not just leave. You are a vessel of mercy, afore prepared for glory.
Give yourself to God afresh, that He might do this work in you, whatever it takes. Because what the Lord is doing is forever, and the affliction is light and transient.
May God help us. Shall we pray?