Could we turn to the book of Genesis once again? I want to read once more a passage in Genesis 28, from verse 10.
And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran.
And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep.
And he dreamed; and behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
And behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.
And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
And behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.
And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.
And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
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 Beth-el: but the name of the city was 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.
Then Genesis 31:13:
I am the God of Beth-el, where thou anointedst a pillar, 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 9–15:
And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, Who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.
So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, the same is Beth-el, he and all the people that were with him.
And he built there an altar, and called the place El-beth-el: because there God was revealed unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother.
And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him.
And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and He called his name Israel.
And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; and the land which I gave unto Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land.
And God went up from him in the place where He spake with him.
And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where He spake with him, a pillar of stone; and he poured out a drink offering thereon, and poured oil thereon.
And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him, Beth-el.
Let us just bow together in a further word of prayer.
Lord, we are so thankful that we are here in Thy presence. We do ask Thee that Thou wilt truly come right into this time and drive out every single thing that, in any way, could hinder us from hearing Thee or receiving from Thee.
We thank Thee, Lord, for that angelic ministry we spoke about last night. We thank Thee above all for the ministry of the Holy Spirit. O Father, how thankful we are that we can depend upon His gracious presence amongst us, ministering to us of the Lord Jesus.
Do it, Lord, we pray. Take of the things of the Lord Jesus and declare them to us. Lead us into all truth. Let this be a time of spiritual illumination and a time when we receive something from Thyself, Lord.
O Father, we commit ourselves to Thee, taking that anointing which we need both for speaking and for hearing, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Now, this morning, I would like once again to take up this matter of the purpose of God in Jacob. This will be the last time I will speak about the purpose of God in Jacob.
We have seen that there is, in the life and story of Jacob, a fivefold purpose of God. First, it was that he should possess the land God had promised him. He had covenanted this land to Jacob and to his seed.
Everything within the clearly defined boundaries of that promised land had to do with the purpose of God. Everything was centered in that land. Although that purpose was to encompass the whole earth and all the nations of it, that land was where the purpose was centered. It was the focal point for its realization among the nations.
There the kingdom would come. There the throne would be set up. There David and the Messianic line would come. There the city of God would be found, and within it the house of God.
Everything was provided in that land, from the great horizons and dimensions of God’s eternal purpose right down to the practical details: fruitful trees, wheat and grain, water coming down from the heavens, iron and copper in the hills, and all the thousand and one other things necessary for life.
Well, that was one purpose. Now, we also have been given a land. We saw that the reason God calls His redeemed people Jacob and Israel is because the purpose of God for Israel has very great meaning for us.
We also have a land, promised by God to us—a clearly defined land. It is the Lord Jesus. Within the Lord Jesus is every single thing you and I need: to be saved, to know a full salvation, to know every bondage broken, to know deliverance from captivity, to be conformed to the image of God’s Son, to know full sanctification, to know what it is to be crucified with Christ, and to live in the fullness of the power of His resurrection life.
All these things have been provided within Him. Outside of Him, nothing—only counterfeit and error. Inside of Him, within Him, God provides everything.
Everything you and I need for the building of the house of God, everything we need for the building up of the body of the Lord Jesus, is provided within Him. The Head provides everything. That oil flows from the Head right down to the hem of the garment and includes every single member of the body.
All that you need—gift and equipment for the building up of the church of God, all that you need of the anointing to serve God, all that we need for the purpose of God individually and corporately, specifically and generally—has been given to us in our Lord Jesus. We must go in and possess it.
If we just sit there praising the Lord and say, “We’ve got it all, we’ve got it all, we’ve got it all,” like some parrots do amongst the Lord’s people, it may be perfectly clear that they have not got it all. They are pathetically impoverished.
They cannot worship the Lord. They do not know how to overcome. They do not know how to build one another up. Often they do not even know how to open their mouths publicly and lead us in prayer. They cannot praise the Lord. They are terrified. They cannot go out and witness to neighbours, friends, or people they have never met before. They are paralysed. Yet they say they have it all.
Of course, we have got it all. God did not say, “I will give you a little bit of the land, and a little bit, and a little bit.” He did say that they would take it little by little, but the whole land was clearly defined from the very beginning.
Its boundaries were defined from the great sea to the river Euphrates, from the river Litani and the mountains of Lebanon down to the river of Egypt, the Wadi El-Arish in North Sinai. All this was given to the people of God.
And so we have clearly defined boundaries. Well, we must not stay on that any longer; it is all recorded anyway.
The second thing about this purpose of the Lord is that Jacob should become a people, that he should become a nation. One should become a thousand, and a little one a strong nation. This is exactly what happened to Jacob.
The purpose of God for us is also that we should be fruitful and multiply. The question I asked you was very simply this: have you at least become two? Has there been a multiplication whereby, instead of one, you are now two? Do you have a child in the faith—someone who has been influenced toward God and brought to God through your life and testimony?
That is another purpose of God for us. It is not that we should be alone: “I and the children whom God hath given Me.” We should be those who have a spiritual family, those who become fruitful branches in the vine.
The fruit of the Spirit has within it the seed of multiplication. When God starts to do this wonderful work of transformation, other people are attracted and are born of God.
The third thing about the purpose of God was that we should be a blessing. Many Christians are not a blessing. Like Jacob, he was not a blessing. He stole the blessing; he did not give a blessing. He was not a blessing—he stole it. He did not give; he acquired.
Many Christians are like that. We believers are always stealing other people’s blessings. We are always moaning, always groaning, always self-centred, always attracting attention to our own problems and needs.
Now, I am not saying that those needs must not be dealt with. Sometimes they are not dealt with because we do not open up to one another and do not allow God to do something in our lives—in fellowship, in the ministry of the church toward us, in real prayer and faith.
But we all know the kind of people some of us can be. Somehow or other, we rob everybody of a blessing. They are happy and joyful until we arrive. Boy, we bring down the temperature to zero. It is minus degrees before very long, spiritually.
Our very presence, the atmosphere around us, robs people of a blessing. They can be so joyful and full of praise until we appear, and then—boom—they are down under.
We are acquisitive people. Our whole philosophy is, “Gimme. Give me, give me, give me, give me. I want, I want.” We judge every meeting by what we get out of it. We judge every bit of work done: “What do I get out of it? Did I feel satisfaction? Did I get some joy?”
Well, that was Jacob. Jacob became Israel, and when he became Israel, he became a blessing. He blessed Pharaoh. He blessed Egypt. He blessed his sons. He blessed his grandsons.
All of us have been blessed in this man. We have received a tremendous blessing. We have been surnamed by the name Israel.
The fourth thing was that we should be princes with God and with men, that we should come to the throne, that we should reign with Christ. It is a costly thing.
Many people want to reign with God. They have an authority complex in them. They want to be masters of things. They want to be on top. But Jacob tried to get on top by himself, and all he ended up was underneath.
The more he tried by his natural strength to be on top, to reign, to influence things, and to dictate the course of things, the more he came to be at the mercy of circumstances, situations, wrong people, relationships, and his own nature—until God changed him.
When, through that costly experience, he became Israel, then at last he had power with God and with men.
Then the fifth thing—and this is the one we dwelt on last night and to which I want to return this morning—is that the purpose of God for Jacob was that he should build the house of the Lord.
We see very simply that the whole life of Jacob is bounded by this place, Bethel—as we say in English; Beth-el in Hebrew—the house of God.
It is interesting how the Lord really spoke to him and revealed Himself to him. This is even more interesting because the great theme that we find throughout the Word of God from this point onwards—the house of God, the tabernacle of God, the temple of God, and so on—has its first mention here in Genesis 28.
That is always important: to find where a thing is first mentioned and to understand its significance when it is first introduced to us.
What Jacob saw of the house of God was very interesting. I dwelt on it last night and will not go over it again this morning, except simply to say that he saw a ladder set up on earth, with its top reaching heaven, uniting earth to heaven and heaven to earth.
He saw angels—not, as most people understand it, descending and ascending—but angels ascending and descending. Then he saw the Lord.
In Hebrew, it is difficult. You can either say that the Lord was over against him, toward him—literally, upon him—or you can say that the Lord was over against it, the ladder, toward it, upon it. That is why my version says, “above it.”
It has probably been deliberately put that way so that we should understand this: first, that ladder represented the house of God. The angels ascending and descending represent intercourse between earth and heaven—something to do with the throne of God, the will of God, the counsel of God, and the authority of God.
Angels are servants of God, messengers of God, carrying messages, going up the staircase and coming down the staircase. How interesting!
Somehow it had a lot to do with Jacob. There was a relationship between Jacob and the Lord, the ladder and the Lord. Do you understand? Somehow, in all of this, we understand what the house of God is.
The house of God is the meeting place of God and man. Jacob called it, “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
There is an awful lot more that one could say on this matter of the house of God, but I think we will leave it, except for one point. Someone said to me that some people believe angelic ministry is over. I said something about angelic ministry last night.
I do not want you all suddenly to go diving overboard on angelic ministry. That would be tragic. But I must tell you that I am very thankful that Billy Graham wrote his book God’s Secret Agents on angelic ministry, because it is long overdue.
When people tell me that angelic ministry is over and finished with the canon of God’s Word, the canon of Scripture, I ask: what else has gone out with the canon? It seems that nearly everything of a real and vital nature has gone out with it—gifts of the Spirit, equipment of the Spirit, the glory of the Lord touching anybody on earth, and angelic ministry.
They entirely forget at least one or two things. One is this: in Hebrews 1:14, speaking of angels, it says:
Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?
Well, are you an heir of salvation? Then you have somebody ministering to you. Praise the Lord. That is all I can say. I am very thankful for this angelic ministry, and I only wish the Lord would give them a chance to get these bugs out of this place.
But there is, to me, no doubt about it: when we meet together for the service of God, the worship of God, and fellowship, the angels are immediately positioned. It is not just an Old Testament idea. We tend to think of it as some myth of the Old Testament. It is not.
Why does Scripture say, “Try the spirits, whether they are of God”? It is a very strange thing if the Lord is simply saying there are spirits and the Holy Spirit. I do not think spirits and the Holy Spirit can be put on the same level. But there are fallen spirits and angelic spirits.
Often, these things come to us suddenly and we say, “Oh, praise God, it is the Lord.” Of course it is the Lord. We leave the operation of the whole thing to Him. It does not bother my head two hoots as to how He does it.
I only know that suddenly something comes to me and I say, “Yes, of course, that is clear.” Whether it is an angel who has been at work on me, I do not know, or whether it is the Lord in me. I leave it to the Lord.
All I know is that angels are sent to minister to those who are heirs of salvation. I personally am very thankful for their service. At the end of the age, when we finally realise what we have been saved from by angelic ministry, I think we shall thank God for these wonderful beings whom He created and who remained faithful to Him when so many fell.
Whatever we may say, the Lord Jesus put it quite clearly in John 1:47 and 51. When speaking to Nathanael, He said:
Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!
Literally, in whom there is no Jacob. Then He said, “Believest thou because I said unto thee, I saw thee underneath the fig tree? Thou shalt see greater things than these.”
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
In other words, the Son of Man is the staircase. He is the ladder. He is the means by which earth and heaven are united. He is the means by which the counsel of God comes to this earth, by which the will of God is done on this earth, and by which the mind of God is expressed and revealed on this earth.
This is the church, and we are in Him. Is that not wonderful? We are one body in Christ. We are growing into a habitation of God in the Spirit.
Now, enough of what we said last night. I want to say something more about this whole matter of the house of God, of Bethel. I want to look at it from another angle, in the hope that God, by His Spirit, will bring some revelation to us in this time.
First of all, I think we learn two or three things from Jacob about the house of God. First of all—and I could dwell the whole morning on this one simple, strategic matter—God revealed Himself to Jacob.
This matter of the house of God was a revelation of God. It did not come by mugging up certain truths or certain doctrines. It came by a revelation of God.
This is not to despise doctrine. This is not even to despise theology. Some people are always pooh-poohing theology, even though they know nothing. You cannot do without real theology. We are witnessing whole movements going off the rails because they have no theology.
What we sometimes call theology is nothing other than some kind of sophistry. But real theology, you cannot do without it: the person of God, God in three persons, the nature of our Lord Jesus, the nature of His atoning work, and all these things.
But on this matter of revelation, it was revealed to Jacob. See what it says in Genesis 35:1:
And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, Who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.
Then verse 7:
And he built there an altar, and called the place El-beth-el: because there God was revealed unto him.
God was revealed unto him.
You know, I am so sad when people talk about the house of God as a pattern, the church of God as a pattern, and all they get stuck on is elders, deacons, the Lord’s table, functions, and gifts—as if the whole thing were a bit of machinery.
When it comes to us as a revelation of God, the whole thing is so part of Him. It is something almost beyond our power to set up. When you can set up a church, you have no church. The church has to be born; it is not set up.
You can get believers together on the right ground, but you have not got the church functioning. You have got the church potentially. You can have the pattern in your head very clearly, but sometimes, when you have the pattern in your head over-clearly, there is a real problem: you ourselves become the great problem to its being born and organically produced.
We are all, by nature, people who like to get things off the ground. We like to get things moving. If I may say so without appearing rude, this side of the Atlantic is infinitely more given to this matter than our side.
We are so old-fashioned, so square at times, and so reserved and cautious. But this side, there is a freedom in the very atmosphere. There is this kind of success complex: “Let us get it off the ground. Come on now, we will get this thing off the ground.”
You get a few believers together on the basis of, “Right, right, we will do that. We will do it. We will get this thing off the ground by God’s grace, of course, but we will get it off the ground.”
All over this country, and all over Europe and Britain, there are the ruins of things that were got off the ground. At the beginning there is dynamism, human personality, and a kind of charisma—not charismatic, I mean a kind of human charisma. The thing has power. It has something—a sense of destiny and a sense of direction.
In ten years, fifteen years, twenty years, we see the ruin. We see lives that are damaged. We see all kinds of terrible things, as if the fowls of the air have flocked to sit in its branches.
Then we say, “What is wrong?” Many people give up altogether and say, “I do not want to hear about the house of God. I do not want to hear about the purpose of God. I never want to hear again about the church.”
One sister at a conference in Richmond, Virginia, had been in one of these movements. She was so sick when my dear brother, Manfred Haller, spoke on the church that she had to get up. She felt actually physically sick to hear it.
Yet she had enough of the Spirit of God in her that, when she got out to lie on the grass outside the auditorium, she looked unto Him and said, “O God, why has something that used to thrill me so much now made me physically filled with nausea?”
Then God met her and delivered her. But what a work the enemy is doing in this thing.
For the first time, people begin to see what the house of God is. They begin to see what the body of Christ is. They begin to see the need for the church of God to be recovered and to function in the last days before our Lord comes—not universally, with every single believer, but at least with some expression of the body of Christ all over the earth.
Now everywhere we go, we find neurotic people, nervously exhausted people, people on the brink of nervous breakdown, people so sick that they cannot meet together. They cannot even pray, they cannot read the Scriptures, and they certainly cannot hear anything about the purpose of God.
What a work the enemy has done. Let us go back to the root. Our origin determines destiny.
Something born of God will reach heaven.
If it is an Ishmael, however like Abraham he is, he will never be the son of promise. He will never inherit. But if it is Isaac, he may have faults, yet the grace of God will finally bring him through to the place where he inherits.
This matter of revelation is all-important. Please hear me on this. Do not just say, “Oh, revelation, revelation. Mr. Sparks used to speak about revelation. Yes, yes, yes.” There are other people who speak about revelation. “Yes, yes, yes.” Of course, we expect someone to speak to us about revelation at one of these retreats or conferences.
Look, I want to tell you something. It is very easy to have a real knowledge about the church, about the body of Christ, and not to be aware that it has come to a merely mental appreciation.
What a wonderful thing it was when Abraham saw the city of God. Do you know how he saw the city of God? We have no record. It is quite extraordinary that he went out from Ur of the Chaldees, no mean city, to seek for the city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God.
We are nowhere told how the revelation came. How did he know about the city? Did he read a book? No. Did he go to theological seminary? No. Did some preacher talk about it? Not as far as we know. How did it come?
We have only one all-important clue:
The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham.
Somehow, when the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, he saw in the God of glory the city of God, which has the glory of God. He saw the city of God. He saw the Zion of God. He saw the new Jerusalem.
He saw that city which hath foundations in the person of God, in the glory of God, in the God of glory.
Is it not interesting that this dear man Jacob, with all his business acumen, his capacity for deceit, his capacity for swindling, the strength of his nature, and the strength of his will—this man saw the Lord?
When he saw the Lord and saw angels of God ascending and descending on that staircase, on that ladder, to do with the Lord, he said:
How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
He saw in the Lord the house of God and the gate of heaven. Later, to make it even clearer, when he built an altar he called the place El-beth-el: God of the house of God.
This is the great problem with us: we have got the house of God without the God of the house of God. We have divorced the whole matter of church truth from the Lord. We have made it something detached. We have made it a thing. We have made it a system. Anyone can set it up. It is so clear and so defined.
However much we define certain truths about the house of God—its elders, its functions, and its authority—we have to come back to this simple fact: it comes by spiritual birth.
Get the people of God together, and that is the first step. But then they are going to have to go through the fire. In the fire, the thing is born. It is either aborted or born. If it is born, all hell can come against it, but it will reach heaven.
This matter of revelation is so important. Is it not interesting that when our Lord spoke to Peter the apostle, the very first thing He said to him was:
Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father Who is in heaven.
What was the revelation that came to Peter?
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
That was revelation. Then the Lord said:
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 have been bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
Is it not interesting? He began with revelation. The moment God revealed something about the person of the Lord Jesus, immediately the church of God came into view.
We must keep this sequence. Once we get divorced from the fact that this whole matter of the church is something organic, something that has to be produced by the Spirit of God, something that has to be born of God, we are lost.
No wonder the apostle Paul, writing his letter by dictation to the Ephesians, was going through these marvellous things which have tickled, fascinated, and overwhelmed theological minds for some nineteen hundred years. Still they have not come to the end of it.
He suddenly stops and says, “Stop. I think we should have some prayer.” So whoever was writing the letter says, “Yes,” and down they both get and they start to pray.
What is the apostle’s prayer? “Lord,” he says, “do not let this letter that I am writing to these people become a little promise box. Do not let it, Lord, become sermon material. Lord, preserve this from just being a compendium of doctrine.”
Grant unto them a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know.
“O Lord, I am so afraid they will study this letter and get it all up here. Bring it by divine illumination.”
No amount of head knowledge will ever build the church.
I must tell you something. I travel everywhere, and naturally people who have any concern about the house of God or the church of God know a little about the ministry God has given me, so they say, “Please, come to us.”
In all my journeys over quite a few years, I have found a tragic thing. I have found little, tiny, small companies all over the place that have been in existence for years and years and years, and have got so much knowledge about the church that it is incredible. Yet the church is not there.
They seem to feel that they are the depository of this truth. “We have seen it,” they say. But when you are there, you find it is not working.
Head knowledge can become, in the end, the undoing of us.
What we need is dynamic revelation: the kind of revelation that slays us, the kind that brings us down on our faces, the kind of revelation in which, whenever God revealed Himself, they fell as one dead and God had to touch them and say, “Stand up.”
Revelation. No amount of head knowledge will ever substitute or suffice. Indeed, I have to tell you that those who have the greatest head knowledge about this matter can be the greatest threat to its coming into being.
The second thing I want to say about Jacob is that not only did it come to him by revelation in such a way that God could do something, but it was an intercourse between heaven and earth, not merely a knowledge.
Something actually happened. It does not say that he saw angels of God who ascended and descended. No, it says, “angels of God ascending and descending.” The whole thing was continual intercourse between earth and heaven—something happening, a tremendous communication link.
The next thing I want you to underline is this pillar. Is it not interesting? Do you notice that every single instance concerning Jacob, when Bethel comes into view, mentions the fact that he anointed a pillar?
For instance, look at Genesis 28:18:
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.
Then Genesis 35:14:
And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where He spake with him, a pillar of stone; and he poured out a drink offering thereon, and poured oil thereon.
Now, what on earth has this got to do with the house of God? Here is something else very wonderful. Turn to 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.
The pillar and ground of the truth. He does not use the word “pillar” here as a pillar that holds up a ceiling. He uses the word, as it is used in Hebrew, of a pillar set up as a monument.
What is such a pillar? You have in Washington what you call the Washington Monument. Strangely enough, you erstwhile colonials, in getting away from the history on the other side of the Atlantic, have in fact gone right back to it in a whole number of things.
That monument set up in the centre of Washington goes right back to antiquity—back to the Babylonians and the Egyptians, when they used to set up great pillars as a witness, a testimony, a memorial.
We have Cleopatra’s Needle in London, filched from the Egyptians about one hundred and fifty years ago, standing on the Thames Embankment. There are others, too. In the Place de la Concorde in Paris, there is a great column, again a memorial and a witness.
What I am trying to say very simply is this: we have something here that speaks about a testimony or a witness. It is a symbol of testimony or witness.
The house of God is nothing if it is not a testimony to spiritual experience. If it is merely the showing out of a pattern that is correct and true, it means nothing. We all know such things that are as dead as the dodo.
You cannot have a testimony unless you are alive. When I give testimony, it is from living experience. You cannot be a witness in a court of law unless you are alive and unless you have had firsthand experience of what you are witnessing to.
This pillar is firsthand experience. It is original experience, not secondhand experience. It is not something passed down by somebody else. It means that this company of people has somehow been brought into something direct, something original.
They are holding the testimony of Jesus. The book of Revelation is so interesting in this wonderful phrase: “holding the testimony of Jesus.”
I always find it very interesting that in Revelation 1, 2, and 3 we have an extraordinary vision given to the apostle John when he was in a forced labour camp on the Isle of Patmos.
In this vision he saw the Lord in the midst of seven golden lampstands. He is expressly told, “These lampstands are seven churches.”
These seven local churches, however you look at them—whether you look at them as covering the whole of church history, which is one interpretation and a very interesting one, or as selected to represent the whole church of God in time and on earth in any given generation—represent the testimony of Jesus.
It is interesting that when God speaks to the church at Ephesus, He says:
Repent and do the first works; or else I come to thee, and will move thy lampstand out of its place, except thou repent.
I have often thought that the only thing wrong with that first church was that it had lost its first love. Everything else was present.
I would love to know whether anyone spotted the fact that, because they had lost their first love, the lampstand had been removed, if the Lord removed it. I think the Bible studies would have gone on. The prayer meetings would have gone on. The evangelistic outreach would have gone on. The elders would have met. The deacons would have done their jobs. They would have had the Lord’s table. The whole routine would have rumbled on, and no one could tell the difference.
The lampstand had gone, and yet the thing could rumble on.
As far as we know, the lampstand was still in its place with the Laodicean church, because there were seven golden lampstands. Yet in the Laodicean church Jesus was outside knocking:
Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.
What is this lampstand? Surely it is something that holds a lamp. I do not like “candlestick” in the King James Version because it is not true either of the Hebrew or of the Greek. It is a lampstand, not a candlestick.
The lampstand is the Jewish menorah, the seven-branched lampstand we had in the tabernacle and in the temple, and of which Zechariah speaks.
What is the point of that lampstand? It gives light. That is the point, is it not? The lampstand holds the seven lamps, and in the seven lamps is the light.
When you come to the end of the book of Revelation, you find the same thing, only it is not so clear. It says about the city of God, the new Jerusalem:
And the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof.
What is the lampstand? The city is the lampstand. Connecting those churches in time and on earth with that eternal reality are the words, “To him that overcometh.”
Every one of those churches has the same message: “He that overcometh.” Then, at the end, the first thing God says about this city is:
He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.
That means there has been growth. He can take over the business. He can come with Me into the throne and really help in the administration of the whole universe. He is not a babe who is a son, but a son who has grown up, educated, trained, and able to take responsibility.
Come back to this matter of the pillar. The church is the pillar and ground of truth. What it means is not merely written truth, important as that is, important as this Book is. It is the truth recorded in this Book which has become flesh and blood in us.
Something has happened. Jacobs are becoming Israels.
That is the pillar and ground of the truth. Do not talk to me about great church truth unless, at the heart of the whole thing, there is a transforming work in men and women by the Holy Spirit.
If, with all this church truth, God is taking hold of Jacobs and making Israels, then I know that here is the pillar and ground of truth. Something is happening. Here the truth of God is having an outworking. Here the truth of God is finding root. The Word of God is growing and multiplying.
Then I want you to note that oil was poured upon this pillar. I find this very interesting. I do not have to belabour this point, do I? Every single person here, however little they may know the Word of God, knows that oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
Jacob takes oil and pours it on this pillar. A most extraordinary thing. We are so used to it that it does not mean anything to us, but I find it quite extraordinary if you think of it for the first time.
Here is a patriarch taking a stone that he had used for a pillow, setting it up as a pillar, taking oil and pouring it upon it, and calling upon the name of the Lord.
These things happened for our admonition as examples, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. What does it mean? Simply this: hear me in this matter.
You will never know the birth, the building, and the completion of the house of God apart from the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit.
When people are afraid of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, they can know all the church truth in the world, but I can tell you dramatically: there will never be any practical outworking whatsoever.
This is where, again, the enemy has done his greatest work, putting fear into the people of God. This fear is not only demonic. It has something to do with the house of God.
It is interesting that whenever we touch the house of God, we say, “How dreadful is this place!” Why? Because we, as Jacobs, know it means the end of us. That is why.
Many seemingly pious and godly people are frightened to death of the Holy Spirit. As soon as you speak about the Holy Spirit, they say, “Oh dear, are we going to get something Pentecostal now? What does he want? Just swing on the lamps? Roll on the floor? Become crude and vulgar? Noisy?”
“I do not want anything to do with it. Speak to me about Jesus. Speak to me about Jesus.”
Now listen: if you read your Bible with those rose-coloured spectacles, those blinkered spectacles, off, you will see that the Bible speaks about the person of the Holy Spirit on every single page. You cannot get away from it.
Who else can take the things of the Lord Jesus and declare them to us? Who else can lead us into the truth as it is in Jesus? Who else can join us to Jesus in a practical, realistic way? Who else can enable us to build up the body of the Lord Jesus? Only the Holy Spirit. Yet people are terrified of the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes people get revelation and do not even know that the revelation has come by the Holy Spirit.
How gentle the Holy Spirit is. How dove-like. He comes so gently to us. Sometimes His touch is so gentle.
There are other times when the Holy Spirit is like fire—power. He comes; you are knocked, you are cleaned out.
People say to me, “Now, do not talk to us about gifts. I believe it all went out with the canon of Scripture, along with angels.”
I do not know how people read the history of the church. When people tell me this, they are caught in a corner. They have to say that every expression of gifts right through church history is demonic.
They altogether forget that in the fourth century there were the Montanists, who used to prophesy and speak in tongues and do all kinds of things, much to the upset of the institutionalists.
They forget the Paulicians and the Waldensians—names they did not take themselves, but which were given to them by their enemies. They forget the Priscillianists of the south of France. They forget the Waldensian church.
They forget that these people all had gifts, and that was one reason why the institutional church—the Catholic Church at that point—persecuted them so fearfully. They said, “These people have some kind of power that demonises them. They are supernatural.”
They forget about the Anabaptists. Even dear Martin Luther withdrew because of the terrible excesses of one particular group of Anabaptists in Germany, when they began to say, “We are beyond the law. We can live in sin. We can have free love.”
They prophesied and they spoke in tongues. Martin Luther was so hot about it that he withdrew completely from them. But you never hear about it, do you? Some of the Baptists would not like it, but their beginnings were all charismatic. I find it terribly funny myself.
But the whole thing is suppressed. “Oh no, no, no. You must never hear anything about that.”
Then the Huguenots—what about the prophets of the Cévennes? When the Holy Spirit came upon those people fleeing from those wicked dragoons who were murdering, hounding, and martyring them on every side, young teenagers would sometimes prophesy, “Go not this way; go this way.” They followed and were saved.
How do you explain that? Demonic? Demonic power went out with the canon of Scripture?
Then what about the Quakers? They did not sing—very un-Pentecostal. They did not have music; they said it was of the devil. They did not have the Lord’s table or baptism. In their meetings they sat in quietness.
That is the only thing some people know about the Quakers: that they sat in quiet silence. They do not realise they were called Quakers because they quaked.
As they sat in silence, they would tremble with the power of God. Suddenly someone would stand up and prophesy in the name of the Lord. Another brother would take the Word and give a revelation which God the Spirit had given him from the Word. Then another would preach and expound the Word, and someone would fall on his face in the meeting and find God.
It scandalised the authorities. How did the Lord’s people amongst the Puritans and the Nonconformists respond? They said, “It is demonic, it is demonic.” Of course.
A century later they were saying this was one of the most wonderful things that ever happened. It changed the face of Britain and the colonies, transformed and reformed prison life, brought in nursing, and I do not know what else.
People do not know church history. That is half the problem. If they knew it, they would understand. Mark Twain said, “We learn from history that we never learn from history.”
What about some of the others? What about the early Methodists? Have you ever read the journals of Wesley? He says, “I was preaching at such-and-such a place when suddenly someone fell down and spoke in a tongue. I do not know what it was.”
He said, “Is this of God, or is it not?” It happened again and again in early Methodist meetings.
Then what about the Irvingites, so disliked in 1840? People think all this came in with the Pentecostals in 1906 or 1907. Whatever you may feel about the Pentecostals, the thing is as old as the hills.
The only thing the Pentecostals did was finally define it clearly once and for all. Now we have what we call the charismatic movement, swept over the whole world. People say, “Oh, be very, very careful. It is dangerous. It is dangerous. Error.”
Listen, I want to tell you something: every single thing that has life is dangerous.
You had Ananias and Sapphira within a few weeks of Pentecost. You young mothers know very well that if your baby did not have accidents, it would be dead.
The reason you have to use diapers—whatever you call them here; we call them nappies on our side—is because the baby is alive. That is why.
Every time there is a new movement of the Spirit, anything happens and people say, “Oh, look at that. Oh dear, dear, dear, dear. How dreadful. This is the enemy. I will not have anything to do with it.”
Do not have anything to do with it, and you will not be in the building of the church. It is as simple as that. I am not saying, “Be charismatic.” What I am saying is this: let the Spirit of God do what He wants to do in your life.
Let Him come upon us. Let us know something of this wonderful thing that God is seeking to do all over the world. The thing may die or crystallise. In the end, it may become a denomination. But thank God for the real value that has come through it.
When I look at church history, I see only one thing. I am a Calvinist in theology—not meaning that hyper-Calvinism which is not Calvinism.
You know, the idea that you should not preach the gospel to anyone? A load of codswallop. John Calvin preached the gospel more than anybody. So did John Knox; he put such fear into the people in Edinburgh that they did not want to hear him.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was the great Calvinist of the modern era. He preached the gospel four times a week, and thousands and thousands of people were saved. He used to say, “I am a Calvinist on my knees and an Arminian in the pulpit.”
But on this matter, you have to be a believer in the absolute sovereignty of God. God is doing something in church history. He has not just left the whole thing in a mess.
I believe God is absolutely sovereign. Now, if God is absolutely sovereign, how on earth can He not keep alive a movement of the Spirit for more than two generations?
Why is it that in every single movement of the Spirit, within twenty years you have a major division which splits the thing into two? Why does the Lord step back and say, “All right, Satan, have it”?
I can only believe one thing: God is supremely disinterested in keeping something alive after generations.
What He does is something in our own generation. In that generation He gets gold, precious stone, and pearl that goes into the building of a city and is never lost or destroyed.
When one day we are in the city of God, in the Zion of God, in the house of God, part of the bride of God, we shall see all those who were ever in every one of these movements at its beginning. We shall have a wonderful unanimity.
We will not all be fighting, as people think. It is the followers in the second and third generation who fought each other like cats and dogs.
We shall find an amazing blending of ourselves together in oneness, because God has been doing something.
Now I want to say something else about this whole matter of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said:
Your fathers killed the prophets, and ye build the sepulchres.
I must tell you that is as true of church history as it is of the history of the Jewish people. Every single generation, when God has done something, it has been unpopular. “Do not touch it. Do not have anything to do with it. It is excessive. Imbalance. This, that, and the other.”
Then, within one hundred years, they are talking from the pulpit about it.
It was not a popular thing to be with that crackpot—what some called a drunkard, a bibulous old monk—Martin Luther. They said all sorts of things. But within one hundred years they were saying from the pulpits, “Oh, that man of God,” and speaking of how he went to the church door and nailed the ninety-five theses.
Everyone said, “Oh, how wonderful. How marvellous.” Our fathers murdered the prophets; we garnish and build their tombs.
It was not popular to be with the Puritans. Then a century later, everyone was talking about the Puritans and what they won for us. It was not popular to be with George Fox. Within a century or two, everyone was talking about George Fox. It was not popular to be with the Wesleyans. Now it is a very respectable thing to be a Methodist.
It is amazing.
I want to be a person who serves the counsel of God in my own generation, whatever the cost.
This matter of the Holy Spirit—listen—how can we really know the building of the house of God if we do not know not only the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but the empowering of the Holy Spirit?
How can we know it if we do not know not only the gracious inward work of the Holy Spirit, bringing to us the nature and life of the Lord Jesus, but also that great baptism of power, that enduement with power from on high, for service?
It is not only a matter of character. This house of God is a matter of expressing something. Angels of God are ascending and descending.
It seems to me that only when we are alive to God and to the Holy Spirit can there really be that kind of manifestation of the Spirit in a right, balanced, and glorious way, which means that God can say something.
I remember so well how much against tongues I was at one time. I was never, thank God, antagonistic, but I always used to say about tongues, “It is kindergarten.”
I entirely forgot that the apostle says:
I thank God, I speak with tongues more than you all.
Oh, Paul in the kindergarten! He said, “It is better to prophesy. I would rather prophesy in the church than speak ten thousand words in a tongue.” But he said, “I speak in tongues more than you all.”
I used to say, “I do not want the gifts. I want Christ.” I see it all very differently now. I see gifts as the Lord Jesus.
It all happened very sadly. I was speaking in Norway in a very large congregation, and the Lord came in with great power in that enormous congregation.
I sat down at the end of having spoken, and the dear brother leading the meeting—mostly Lutherans—got up and was about to close the meeting when I heard the most beautiful sound I had heard for quite a long time.
Such a sense of the Lord came to me that I opened my eyes and looked all over the congregation. There I saw a sister standing, quietly pouring out her spirit to God in an unknown tongue.
Then into my heart came the longing: “O God, if that is speaking in tongues, I want it.”
You see, this whole matter of gifts has been so prostituted by theatrical, sensational delivery: “Thus saith the Lord,” and everyone quakes, you know.
I have a brother, a dear brother and a godly man, who became so fed up in one meeting with a sister standing on a chair and shrieking at the top of her voice. She was actually standing on a chair, shrieking out, and the elders did not do anything about it.
He said, “Lord, what shall I do?” He told me the Lord told him exactly what to do. He went over and took the chair and began to rock it. That shut her up, no doubt.
We do not need to suffer this theatrical thing, as if it is all unnatural. The use of gifts—the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, the expression of God-given faith, discerning of spirits, prophetic gift—all these things can be absolutely natural.
Why, I know that some people are unnatural in prayer. W. P. Nicholson, that uproarious Irish evangelist, used to say, “I do not understand why people talk to the Lord in such an artificial way. They do not talk to one another like that.”
“I do not say, ‘My dear, bring to me my porridge, and put on it sugar and a little milk.’”
It is extraordinary. Some people have the idea that when you speak to God, you have to be unnatural. Some of them are like aeroplanes on the runway: they sort of go off, and then you suddenly hear them coming down.
This does such damage to the whole matter of spirituality, as if spirituality is essentially artificial, as if when we pray or praise the Lord we have to put on a special voice or a special tone. Sometimes we copy someone whom we feel is especially anointed. It is a tragedy.
Why can we not be normal? Of course, when we are together, if people are going to hear us, we have to lift up our voice so that everybody can hear. That is obvious, is it not? Otherwise, the church is not going to be edified.
But surely we can be normal. Surely we can be natural. Lift up your voice a little.
He poured oil upon it. Have you?
We do not want excess. We do not want imbalance. But we do want the Holy Spirit. If we do not have the Holy Spirit, where can there be any building?
This building of the house of God is in a spiritual dimension. Its bottom may be on the earth, but its top reaches heaven. It is angelic ministry, which you cannot even see.
Essentially, this house of the Lord joins the body to the Head, Who is at the right hand of God the Father.
If this is essentially in a spiritual dimension, we are going to meet spiritual antagonism. We are going to find ourselves in a spiritual conflict. We need supernatural equipment.
Otherwise, things of Satan will be imposed upon us, and we shall take it as flesh and blood. Before long, we shall be at sixes and sevens with one another, in factions arguing and fighting, blaming one another, forming little cliques, and all the rest of it.
May the Lord help us. We need oil poured upon this pillar, and thank God, He has done it.
The church was born when the Holy Spirit came and God poured out the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that you do not yourself need to experience that pouring out personally.
I could speak for hours on this subject, but I will not. The fact remains that there is a distinction between the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the empowering of the Holy Spirit, and we must make that distinction.
That is why Jesus, many days before Pentecost, breathed upon the disciples and said:
Receive ye the Holy Spirit.
If they had not received the Holy Spirit then, why did He do it? If they had actually received the Holy Spirit, when Thomas was gathered with them a week later, surely the Lord would have said, “Thomas, you missed something very important. Now I am going to breathe upon you. Receive the Holy Spirit.” But He did not.
In other words, the Lord was making a distinction between two aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit: the indwelling and the empowering, for the sake of posterity.
Just because the work of the Holy Spirit all came at once on the day of Pentecost does not mean that we must not make a distinction between the indwelling and the empowering of the Holy Spirit.
Thank God when it happens to a person at the same time. I have seen some. But I have to say that the vast majority of us know what it is to be born of the Spirit, and later to know the Holy Spirit really coming upon us.
Now, do not let fear of excess, fear of imbalance, fear of what is crude and vulgar and soulish and counterfeit stop us from doing the right thing.
Just because there are thousands of divorces, we do not stop getting married. Just because people die of food poisoning, we do not stop eating.
Why should we draw back from the blessed person and ministry of the Holy Spirit simply because there is so much counterfeit, so much mixture, and so much that is ugly?
Oil poured upon the pillar—that is something about this house of God.
I believe it has a lot to do with angels descending. You can have angels ascending, taking all your messages and everything else to the throne, but something about the Holy Spirit coming upon us makes us alive to angels descending. We get the return. Do you understand?
We not only speak; we hear. We hear what the Spirit is saying, and we know something of fellowship. We do not just go off on our own and do what we say the Spirit is telling us to do. We fellowship for security.
There is so much in this whole matter.
Well now, dear ones, I think that is enough for one morning. But what a tremendous amount there is about Jacob. Would you believe it? This first mention of the house of God contains all these things that we find right through the New Testament: the pillar, the oil, and one last thing—grace.
You know what it says in Zechariah 4. When the prophet saw that lampstand all of gold, the seven-branched lampstand, and realised that it was all to do with the building work, then the Lord said:
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain; and he shall bring forth the headstone with shoutings of, Grace, grace, unto it.
The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it.
Then He says a lovely thing:
For who hath despised the day of small things?
Every movement of the Spirit of God was a day of small things. It is easy to despise the day of small things when we are just a small company, but it is there that the building work normally takes place.
This work is going to be finished. Why? Because it was the grace of God that elected Jacob, the grace of God that persevered with Jacob, the grace of God that changed Jacob into Israel, and the grace of God that gives a place to Jacob in the house of God forever.
Grace began the work. Grace continued the work. The grace of God will complete the work.
May God give us faith. The Holy Spirit began the work, and the Holy Spirit has continued the work. If it had not been for the Holy Spirit, church history would be very different.
Again and again there has been another Pentecost, with the Holy Spirit breaking into human beings, taking hold of this one and that one and the other, and suddenly the whole thing becomes alive with God.
Men find God. They hear God. They see God. They touch God. It is angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man, and open heaven.
That is how it will be at the end—not universally, in the sense that every single believer will be in it, but as always, at the end of every age, by men and women who are an advanced working party.
Nothing in themselves, not some superior elite, but those who have laid down their lives for the Lord and for those who are apathetic, indifferent, and lethargic.
God help us. God help us that we may ourselves see the Lord in this matter and be able to say—not merely, “the house of God,” but “God of the house of God.”
God of the house of God: “I will set up a pillar. I will pour oil upon it. I will there make an altar and call upon the name of the Lord—El-beth-el, God of the house of God.”
Shall we pray?
Lord, we really do need Thee in these things, to be preserved from misinterpretation or misconstruction. Yet, at the same time, Lord, may this matter be burnt into our hearts by Thy Holy Spirit.
Lord, breathe upon all fear of Thy Holy Spirit. Lord, if it is that we feel this is a dreadful place because we know it will mean the end of what we are naturally, give us the grace to go through, so that Jacob may become Israel.
Lord, help us then, and may revelation come to us as it has never come before on this whole matter of Thy house. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now, what is the number? I have got so many pieces of paper up here from other times. Two, three, eight? Ah, no, neither. Well, another place.
Yes, please.