I think it is quite unnecessary for me
to spend any time by way of introduction
in speaking of the object of these meetings,
but rather shall we let the meetings speak
for themselves.
and the message which we have defined the
nature of our gathering.
So let us immediately come to the point.
What we have in view is what we
believe to be God's all-inclusive purpose.
Christianity has many aspects and Christian people are
occupied with those various aspects.
Evangelism, teaching and building up Christians, contending
for the faith.
There are movements which are entirely occupied with
prophetical matters relating to the coming again of
Christ and so on.
All these are right, but they can and
often do become things in themselves.
And while being so good and right, they
very often make Christians into sections.
Circling round some interpretation or some teaching or
some specific object.
And the inclusive and supreme object of God
in and through and over all is very
often lost sight of.
It is that we might seek to bring
that object more definitely into view that we
are coming together in these evenings.
Our concern then is with God's inclusive object.
And I'm sure that you will agree with
me that the value of any one aspect
or side of teaching or work will very
largely be governed by its relationship to the
whole purpose of God.
And the value will be more immediate if
that whole purpose is seen and kept all
the time in view.
God does not commit himself wholly to any
one part of his purpose.
He only commits himself wholly to the all
of his intention.
And so we desire to find God committing
himself.
It does really become necessary for us to
know that to which he will commit himself.
The inclusive object to which we refer is
inherent in the words which we are taking
for our background from the chapter which has
been read this evening.
The few simple words from Ezra chapter 6
and verse 3.
Let the house be built.
That is God's all-inclusive object.
You notice that Ezra traced this
decree back through and beyond the instrument, the
ruler who made it.
He traced it back to God.
He pointed out that this decree while made
by an earthly ruler originated with God.
He said God put it into the heart
of the king.
This came from God.
And being shown that it originated with God,
the rest of the story shows how God
committed himself in sovereign ways to that thing.
God instigated this.
God supported this.
God consummated this in spite of numerous and
great difficulties.
If that is true, we want to discover
where that can be true in our time.
How that can be true.
The one thing that I believe all Christians,
true Christians, people of God, would seek after
and know in our time is that which
God has instigated.
That which God takes upon himself to support
and see through.
That which in spite of everything, a great
vast everything, God will finish it.
I say it is that that we want
to discover.
How God will commit himself.
Now that brings us to a vital and
fundamental principle of biblical interpretation.
A thing that everybody who handles the Bible
ought to recognize.
And this ought always to be present when
we take up our Bible.
It is simply the eternity of God.
That perhaps does not convey very much to
you as I say it.
But the great fact that there is no
time with God.
All time as it is with us is
present time with God.
There is no past, present, future with God.
He is the eternal God.
From eternity to eternity thou art God.
God may accommodate himself to the time periods
of men and their selves.
But he himself dwells in eternity.
His thoughts are eternal thoughts.
His purpose is an eternal purpose.
The architect has the whole plan before him.
The builder only has the day to day
part or parts.
Those who only see the parts may be
confused.
They may not understand.
They may even begin to make the part
the whole.
A writer of one of the New Testament
letters or documents introduced his thesis in this
way.
God who at sundry times and in different
manners spake unto the fathers through the prophets.
God did speak in times and different times.
In different manners and different portions.
But with God the whole from eternity to
eternity was present.
And every part that came from God had
the whole in it.
You must ever remember that when you are
handling the Bible.
Otherwise you will wrongly divide the word of
truth.
The full design of God governs every part
where he is concerned.
God's mind does not grow.
There is no progress with God.
He is full and complete and final at
all times.
God has brought his thoughts into time by
means of models and figures.
But they are only models and figures of
spiritual and eternal realities.
And the principle is this.
That whatever comes from God at any time
from our standpoint.
From this world's standpoint.
Whatever comes from God has in it the
eternal and complete thought of God.
It has in it the whole of the
spiritual mind of God.
We have to look through the immediate form
of presentation to discover that spiritual and eternal
thought that lies there.
This house.
Let the house be built.
This house is only an earthly, temporary, limited
representation of the vast, eternal, spiritual thought
of God.
A poor representation.
It will pass.
But God's thought will never pass.
What lies behind it will have no end.
It has come out of eternity.
It will go on to eternity.
Now the whole Bible is just a manifold
expression of this principle.
Beginning to end the Bible in its numerous
forms of presentation and representation.
Type, symbol, figure.
The whole Bible is one comprehensive expression in
numerous and various ways of this one idea
that lies here inherent in this word house.
Let us get behind the figure.
Behind the representation to the great spiritual truth.
The reality.
Here it is.
Out from eternity.
Out from unknowableness.
Out from incomprehensibleness.
Out from inaccessibility.
God resolved to presence himself in
a creation of his own making.
In something which amongst many other titles and
designations is called a house.
God determined to come out from all that.
Vast, unknowable, inaccessible, eternal.
And presence himself.
Presence himself to make himself known.
To make himself accessible.
To dwell in a house.
But as we take hold of that truth.
For it's a truth.
From the beginning of the Bible to the
end.
That is the truth that is running all
the way through.
That is the thing that is governing everything
as we shall see, I think, as we
proceed.
As we take hold of that great truth.
And move with it through the Bible.
All the way through.
We begin to make a discovery about it.
That while it is a wonderful idea.
An amazing thought.
It is something much more than a thought
and an idea.
But something very much of the heart of
God.
Not only of his mind.
But of his heart.
Something greatly cherished by God.
Something with which God's greatest interests are bound
up.
It turns out, if I may put it
like that.
It turns out to be not something objective
to God himself at all.
But a very part of himself.
An organic expression of himself.
Of his thought.
Of his heart.
Of his will.
I think that one of the most staggering
statements in the Bible is this.
The church of God which he purchased with
his own blood.
God purchased this thing called the church with
his own blood.
That will defeat and defy every attempt to
comprehend and balance.
Blood is the very vitality of any organism.
This thing.
I am calling it that for the moment.
This thing has the very life of God
bound up with it.
God has given his life for it.
There is something more than a matter of
objective interest.
The very heart of God is in this.
His own life.
Himself.
What is it?
This thought?
This thing so near to the heart of
God with which all his interests are bound
up?
It is God present amongst men.
God related to an organism as
the inhabitant.
The occupier.
The indweller of that organism.
That surely is the simple plain meaning of
a house.
It is something to be dwelt in.
To be lived in.
It has no meaning unless it is inhabited.
God's thought.
You may call it house or what you
like.
The Bible has many names for it.
God's thought is this.
To be there.
Present.
Indwelling.
With the object of making himself known and
understood.
And with the object of having blessed fellowship
with that which comprises the house.
I have said that the Bible contains the
history of that thought through the ages.
Yes.
The Bible therefore throughout and entirely is the
embodiment of this one eternal divine concept.
It begins with a very simple primal expression
of the thought in a garden.
The man and the woman and God present.
Walking in the garden.
Talking.
Communing.
Making his thoughts and intentions known.
A picture of happy fellowship between God and
man.
Man and God.
Man in relationship with God.
In terms, may I use the word, of
friendship.
And on a basis of commission.
To be God's regent here.
For the development and fulfillment of his purposes.
Everything speaks of peace.
And order.
And beauty.
And all that the human heart longs for.
It's there in this simple first representation.
God has created for himself a house.
And is in it.
And is walking in it.
And talking in it.
From that point, this divine intention has a
long and chequered history.
All the actions of God are related to
that thing, remember.
And all the reactions in history that we
have in the Bible are against that one
thing.
To drive God out.
To exclude God.
To make a condition to which God cannot
permit himself.
Where he cannot be present.
That's the Bible.
It focuses upon this one eternal desire of
the heart.
But where does it end?
Yes, it is a long and chequered history
through which this intention passes.
But in the end, it's realized.
And it is realized in two ways.
Firstly, it is realized in himself as incarnate
in himself.
We have not yet recognized the supreme significance
of Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
Until we have recognized that in him this
eternal conception finds its realization.
He is Emmanuel.
God with us.
God has reached his object.
He himself has made for himself an abode.
God was in Christ.
Reconciling the world unto him.
In that first and fundamental way, God reaches
his end.
And we discover that the house is not
an it.
It's a him.
It's a person.
And then he proceeds from the one to
the many.
From the individual to the corporate.
And an elect body is brought into view
in terms of a dwelling place for God.
The end of the Bible.
Again, the end of the Bible is again
in symbolism as much as the beginning was
a city and a garden.
And the music of these words.
The tabernacle of God is with men.
And he will dwell with them.
They shall be his people and he will
be their God.
That's where your Bible ends.
History is consummated.
Well, I have said that this divine intention
explains the Bible from every angle.
All the actions and all the reactions are
centered in this one thing.
That God may have a place for himself.
And be there in these terms of fellowship
and peace.
I say again, there is nothing in the
Bible that is not related to this all
-governing purpose and thought of God.
Here is the object of God's concern.
And of God's jealousy.
If God was jealous over a temple in
Jerusalem or over Jerusalem or Zion.
As the prophet so strongly said, think you
that his jealousy was exhausted in an earthly
temporary representation of something?
Nay, it was because of the something represented
that God was jealous.
And it was this.
What then is the house of God's question
is raised.
Isaiah raised it.
Thus said Jehovah, Heaven is my throne.
The earth my footstool.
What manner of house will ye build unto
me?
And what place shall be my rest?
For all these things hath my hand made.
You remember Stephen in that
magnificent message which cost him his life.
So significant in this very connection.
Quoted these words from Isaiah.
It was almost the culmination of that great
discourse.
Working up, heading up to this.
He says, Acts chapter 7, if you know,
verses 48 to 50.
Solomon built himself up.
What manner of house will ye build me?
Said the Lord.
The heaven of heavens cannot contain him.
What manner of house.
There are some things there to take note
of.
Firstly, it is an intimation of the infinite,
infinite greatness of God requiring something infinitely great.
No magnificent temple of Solomon or any other
builder can answer to this demand.
It requires something very great.
That, in other words, which will show off
the greatness of God.
The Apostle Paul, more than anyone else in
the Bible, saw the meaning of this house.
And exhausted all the language at his command
to try and speak about it.
And you know the Greek language is a
very comprehensive language.
It has a tremendous number of words and
ideas.
Far, far more than our English.
Paul was hard put to it with his
knowledge and command of that language to put
into expression this house.
The breadth and the length and the height
and the depth.
The unsearchable.
These words, this language with which he is
wrestling, cannot express how great this is.
But, note, and here is the wonderful thing.
Where we are getting very near to it
or it is getting very near to us.
There are two or three things that the
Apostle Paul makes perfectly clear as defining the
nature and purpose of this house.
Firstly, that it is that in which this
knowledge surpassing love of God is manifested.
God conceived this object in order that in
it the knowledge surpassing love of his heart
should be manifested.
And then Paul passes on to grace.
The riches of his grace.
The glory of his grace.
And he brings that all into relationship with
this house.
That in the ages to come in that
house, body, call it what you will, in
that the infinite grace of God should be
displayed to a wandering universe.
He does not stop there.
He passes to wisdom.
The infinite wisdom of God to be shown
to principalities and powers in this house.
It wants a big house to comprehend that.
The greatness of his love.
The greatness of his grace.
The greatness of his wisdom.
God present in such terms of self-manifestation.
This is not all language.
You have it.
It's here plainly stated in the scripture.
But I must pause there because another thing
is implied here.
It is the implied misapprehension of man.
Man has a way, you know, of catching
on with big ideas.
Wonderful conceptions.
And taking hold of them.
Man has got the idea.
He's taken it up.
This idea of a house for God.
A dwelling for God.
But man has given it a twist and
brought into it a false interpretation.
Man has tried to capture God and put
him into a house of man's own making.
By so doing, limiting God.
Confining God.
Possessing God.
And making God exclusive to some particular house
made by man.
A building on the earth.
An institution.
Something like that.
And then this terrible propensity of man to
make God his property.
And the property of his particular kind of
house.
The uprise of a terrible exclusivism.
That if you don't belong here, go this
way.
Then you're outside the pale.
See what I mean?
Idea taken hold of but misapplied.
A false interpretation.
You see, that was Israel's tragic blunder.
Against which the prophets raged and stalled.
It was that into which Jesus came.
And like new wine in old wineskins, burst
the whole thing.
But in so doing, lost his life.
They had made God's house an exclusive thing.
Their own.
They possessed God.
That was their blunder.
And as Jesus was walking away into the
eternal spiritual reality, he said, Your house is
left unto you desolate.
Your house.
That's an awful indictment.
Your house.
We must take this all very seriously because
it was, from one point of view, in
relation to this misapprehension, false interpretation, this caricature,
that Jesus came to correct it.
He did so in two ways.
We have pointed out, firstly, he corrected it
in his own person.
In his own person.
Do you want to see the house of
God?
What it is?
Look at him.
And then he did it in his teaching.
The gospel by John, if you did but
recognize it, stands in the whole biblical purpose
to show how Jesus supplants and transcends all
earthly and material representation.
It makes perfectly clear that he supplants and
takes the place of the temple in Jerusalem.
He supplanted and took the place of the
priesthood.
Became the high priest himself and offered himself
a sacrifice acceptable to God.
Thus, not only fulfilling all types, but showing
that God had never been satisfied until Christ
offered himself.
He supplanted and transcended all the Jewish feasts.
You notice how through John's gospel the feasts
of the Jews are constantly referred to and
Jesus figures in them, over against them.
Jesus takes the place of the manna in
the wilderness and is the bread of God.
Come down from heaven.
Jesus takes the place of the water from
the smitten rock and says, He that drinketh
of the water that I shall give him
shall never thirst.
He that believeth on me out of him
shall flow rivers of living water.
He takes the place of the knights in
the temple and says, I am the light
of the world.
He takes the place of all the old
shepherds of Israel and says, I am the
good shepherd.
He takes the place of Israel and builds
a new flock out of his own blood.
I lay down my life.
Yes, Jesus is the answer to God's eternal
quest.
But Jesus, as the New Testament goes on
to show, does not stand alone.
Jesus' incorporate organic expression is the house of
God.
Where and what is the house of God?
It is where there is spiritual, organic, vital
union with Christ.
No more, no less.
For we were all baptized in one spirit
into one body.
Jesus fulfills all the functions and expresses all
the features of God's presence.
God's presence in the midst of men.
This is a statement, but this is a
challenge.
Not knowing how great is his house, but
how spiritually definite is his house.
It is built upon the love of God.
That's testing enough.
The very object and purpose, let me repeat,
of this house is for the expression of
the love of God.
And if that love of God is not
present, is contradicted, the house ceases to
be what God intended it to be.
The explanation of Israel, who were once called
God's house as a nation.
The explanation of why they were set aside.
Here is the infinite love of God brought
into this world in the person of his
Son.
And what does he mean?
Infinite hate.
Love cast out.
Your house is left unto you desolate.
The infinite grace of God.
All this theology and doctrine about justification not
by works, but by faith and so on.
It can be so cold after all.
It can become legalistic and righteous in a
sense of hardness.
But remember that all that is there in
the word of God in order to magnify
the grace of God.
Not of works.
The grace of God.
The house of God, dear friends, therefore exists
on the basis that men and women have
discovered first of all that their deepest and
most terrible need is the grace of God.
And they have come into the knowledge of
that grace.
And the one word uppermost in their vocabulary
is grace.
It's the most wonderful word in the language
of earth and heaven.
Grace.
It's that that constitutes the house of God.
You and I are living in the meaning
of that wonderful word, grace.
God is very near to us.
That's where we shall find him.
God beholdeth the proud afar off because the
proud have no sense of their need of
grace.
Pride is an abomination to God simply because
it is such a contradiction to the grace
of God.
To this man will I look.
Here's your house of God.
Him that is of a broken, a humble,
a content, that trembles at my word.
That's the atmosphere of the house of God.
And so you see it is not a
thing.
It is not a place.
It is not something that man makes.
It is a spiritual thing.
On what ground does it rest?
It rests on the ground of the cross.
The house ever came after the altar and
stood as the background to the altar.
The church of the New Testament is the
background to the cross.
It comes by the cross.
The cross, what does it do?
It sets aside man and makes room for
God.
It puts man out that God may be
all and in all.
The intention of the cross is to make
possible the realization of God's eternal thought to
be there where the cross is wrought most
deeply into the life of a people.
There most fully you will meet the Lord.
You will not meet the Lord in uncrucified
men and women.
In the presence of the flesh God stands
back.
I close with asking one more question.
What then is the dominant necessity?
The answer is twofold.
The dominant necessity for the realization of God's
desire bringing in of this house in it's
beauty, in it's love, in it's grace, in
it's fellowship, in it's peace, in it's order,
in it's divine manifestation is a Christ consciousness.
A Christ consciousness.
Oh, that does not convey much I know
as it's stated.
Dear friends, what you and I need more
than anything else perhaps is more of this
Christ consciousness.
Are we not ever and always rebuked when
we hear Paul saying, the love of Christ
constraineth us because we thus judge that one
died for all, therefore all died that they
which live should henceforth live not unto themselves
but unto him.
Henceforth again we know no man after the
flesh.
I say we are always rebuked by that.
I am, you not, do we not know
one another so much after that.
Instead of laying hold on whatever there may
be even remotely of Christ in one another
and making the most of that, we do
the other thing.
We make the most of one another's faults
and weaknesses and un-Christ-likeness, and there's
plenty of it, God knows, but all for
this Christ consciousness.
That we would give ourselves more to this
than laying hold of what there is, be
it very small of Christ and making the
most of that.
Christ consciousness.
The house will be built.
God will find his house and commit himself
if we will do that.
God has done.
And having said Christ consciousness, it means house
consciousness.
House consciousness.
Is that the wrong word?
It's fellowship consciousness.
It's relatedness consciousness.
That we are members one of another.
And the hand cannot say to the foot,
I don't need you, I can do without
you.
Call it house, call it body, call it
what you will.
It's this corporate consciousness that is needed today
to destroy, destroy all this disintegrating, divisive kind
of thing.
Well, we must leave it there tonight.
But word to God that something of the
impact of this might come upon our hearts.
Lift us out of our all too small
conceptions of God's house and govern our attitudes
in relation to all, all who rest upon
the love of God, all who rest upon
the grace of God, all who have come
to see and to acknowledge that it is
by the wisdom and only by the wisdom
of God in solving all the human problems,
their own and others, that God will at
last find what he is seeking, a place.