I'm happy to welcome you this morning to
this house, which was revealed to the Prophet
Jesus.
And I'm sure that as you have read
these six chapters, you have found very great
difficulty in getting a clear picture of the
home.
I have tried many times to draw a
plan of this house with all its details,
and its correct measurements.
Up to the present time, I have not
succeeded.
That is not because it is impossible.
I expect that there is some architect here
this morning who might succeed.
But I have come up against the Lord
in this matter.
Or the Lord has come up against me.
I have got my paper on my board.
And I have got all my instruments.
Then again and again, I have started on
this plan.
And I have not found that I could
get on very far.
It was as though I was trying to
do something that the Lord did not want
me to do.
I wonder if you have had that experience.
You try to do something, but you just
have no life in it at all.
The thing becomes dead.
And if you are spiritually sensitive, you just
have to say, well, the Lord is not
in this.
And that has been my consciousness every time
I have tried to reduce this thing to
a plan on paper.
And that is the point at which I
begin this morning.
Because I believe that contains a very important
principle.
As we read these chapters, we find ourselves
in the presence of a great mess of
details.
It is very difficult to cope with all
the details.
If we were to try to deal with
that in these sessions, we should find that
we had undertaken an impossible task.
For one thing, we would have to be
here till next year.
And for another thing, we might begin to
lose our sense of life in it.
My point is this.
It would be very easy for us to
fall into the very mistake that we must
most carefully avoid.
There is one thing that you and I
must be very careful to avoid.
And that is to resolve spiritual things into
a technical system.
To be taken up with the technique of
the house of God.
That is a very great peril.
And I do want to emphasize that this
morning.
If we were to resolve this into merely
a technical system, we could easily destroy the
life.
I therefore urge you brothers to be very
careful on this matter.
Be very careful not to reduce the house
of God to a
technique.
Immediately if it is resolved into a system,
then it is in danger of losing its
life.
That is the very thing that has happened
again and again in the history of the
church.
Before you get to the end of the
book of the Acts, you find that that
thing is happening.
The whole present system of Christianity was beginning.
And as you know, Paul wrote his last
letters to Timothy to restore the spiritual nature
of things.
He sought to show that the offices of
the church are not just offices.
They are spiritual men.
Already men had begun to make spiritual things
into an earthly system.
And during the past centuries, God
has done something of a spiritual character.
He has given a fresh revelation of the
spiritual nature of things.
And for a time, things went on in
that spiritual life.
And then men took hold of it and
reduced it to a fixed system.
They brought it out of the heavenless onto
the earth.
And in doing that, they killed the spiritual
life.
That is the history of so many things
in Christianity on the earth today.
Many of them did begin in real spiritual
life.
They were in spiritual power.
And out from them went a river of
life.
But then men took hold of them and
organized them into a system.
They introduced a technical element into things.
And in doing that, they killed the life.
So that the things remain just an empty,
cold, dead shell.
That is the ever-present peril in things
of God.
I do urge upon you to be alive
to that peril.
And to guard very carefully against it.
Especially those of you who have responsibilities.
Do beware of this danger.
It would be so easy for this beautiful
thing that God is doing to be just
a technical system.
You might have all the rules and all
the principles and lose the life.
I'm quite sure that you will allow me
to say that to you.
It is the peril that I have been
fighting for many years.
It has been my definite business to try
and avoid that.
We do not want people to go about
saying, this is how it is done.
This is how they do it in Taipei.
And this is how they do it in
Honolulu.
May the Lord deliver us from there.
You cannot just put people into a system
and make them live.
Well, you, I'm quite sure, see the importance
of that.
Now we come back here.
Of course this whole presentation does show how
exact and how careful God is.
It shows how particular the Lord is about
the smallest detail.
We recognize that.
That is the law of the house.
God is most particular about the smallest thing.
Every little thing has its own measurement.
It is a measurement which is given to
it by God.
You are not allowed to make that smaller
or larger.
That must exactly express the mind of the
Lord.
Well, as we have said, there is a
tremendous mess of detail here.
But every part of it represents God's particular
concern to have things according to his mind.
We recognize that.
But we must at the same time In
this vision of the house, God was not
presenting a system.
He was not presenting an organization.
He was presenting a person.
This is the person of his son.
This is a spiritual house.
Not a system of truth.
The supreme characteristic of this house, what to
do with it, is life.
Now we look at that from both sides.
Life will demand exactness in behavior.
Life will demand exactness in order.
But we can have the order without the
life.
It is possible for the system or the
technique to destroy the life.
It is possible for the system or the
technique to destroy the life.
Since you have the technique of the Bible,
it is easy to lose the life of
the Bible.
It is easy for the Baptist to create
a system like Judaism.
The law of this house is the holyness
of life.
That is how Ezekiel first saw it.
You will see that there were two views
of this temple given to Ezekiel.
First of all, he saw it as a
whole as from a distance.
He was given to view it from the
very high mountain.
He saw it comprehensively in that way.
He saw its broad outlines.
He saw its boundaries and its inclusiveness.
And then the Spirit took him in.
And he saw it from the inside.
He was shown all the details from the
inside.
It is important that we see it in
that way.
The first thing that we see from this
heavenly standpoint is the great size of this
house of God.
The whole area of the house was revealed
to Ezekiel.
And it is, as we saw yesterday, a
very great thing.
We must be very careful not to make
Christ or his church smaller than it really
is.
We must not make Christ smaller than
it really is.
The Christ that belongs to us.
The Christ of our locality.
We must be very careful that we don't
make Christ smaller than God has made him.
And we may not make the church smaller
than God has made it.
This is not our little church.
It is not anybody's little church.
This is much bigger than our thought.
It goes much beyond our imagination.
This is a very great Christ and a
very great church.
Here again we must guard against a peril.
That is the ever-present peril of reducing
the size of Christ and the church.
Reducing the church to the measure in which
we have seen it.
The measure of the church is not our
measure of understanding it.
The measure of the church is not the
measure of our comprehending it.
The prayer of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians
concerning the church was that they should have
an enlargement of comprehension.
He prayed that the church might know what
is the breadth and the length and the
height and the depth.
This is a knowledge which surpasses all human
knowledge.
If there was one thing about the Apostle
Paul more than another, it was just this
thing.
He was always overwhelmed with the greatness of
Christ and the greatness of the church.
So we must see it like
that.
And always guard against the peril of reducing
Christ and the church to our own
size.
That is to the size of our knowledge
of it.
You and I have yet to learn far
more about the Lord and his church than
ever yet we have seen.
And the realization of that fact should always
save us from littleness.
Here then is the compass of gratefulness.
This fills all things and all things are
to be filled into it.
This house is to affect all things to
the uttermost bound of the earth.
That is what we come to of course
when we come to the river.
The river is the influence or effect of
this house.
It is what goes out from this house
to affect the world.
And it is to affect the whole world.
So that stored up in this house there
are all the potentialities to affect the uttermost
bounds of the earth.
You notice that this house, the whole dimension
of the house is square.
It has four sides.
I'm speaking now about the whole area of
the temple.
Really everything is made up of squares.
We are not going to deal with that
at the moment.
We are dealing with the whole temple area.
It is one great square.
Four sides which are equal.
Now you remember what we said about the
number four.
When we were beginning we pointed out that
the number four is the number of creation.
Four embraces the whole creation.
And this house represents the new creation in
Christ.
Paul tells us that he is to fill
all things.
And all things are to be filled into
him.
Or to use another phrase of Paul.
In Ephesians 3, 9.
To make all men know.
To make all men see what is the
stewardship of the mystery.
Do take note of that.
To make all men know what is the
stewardship of the mystery.
That does not necessarily mean that all men
will accept it or understand it.
We must be very careful that we do
not confine church truth as we call it
to just a few.
Now we are the people who have seen
the church.
We stand on the ground of the church.
We hold the truth of the church.
We have seen the meaning of the body
of Christ.
Many other Christians have not seen it.
They do not stand on that ground.
Therefore what conclusion do we draw?
We must be the church and they are
not.
You see that is a very artificial conclusion.
We have got to be very careful of
that danger.
There may be a difference in apprehending the
truth.
There may be a difference of position as
to the church.
But the will of God is that all
men should be made to know.
To make all men see what is the
stewardship of the mystery.
You cannot get outside of all men.
That is the range of God's will.
And we must enlarge our hearts and our
minds to God's measure.
This is something the Lord would say to
us.
I might just stay here to say that
I have had very deep exercise before the
Lord early this morning.
I felt that I must put this whole
thing back.
And extricate myself from this mass of material.
And ask the Lord now what really is
it you want me to say?
What do you want these people to know?
And these are some of the things that
he has definitely put on my heart to
say to you.
You cannot make Christ too big.
You cannot make the church too big.
Provided it is God's church and not man's
church.
So we have here the comprehensiveness of Christ.
I said that Paul was overwhelmed with that
consciousness.
He was constantly crying out under that tremendous
overwhelming of the greatness of things.
He spoke of all the depth of the
riches.
Of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
How unsearchable are his ways.
He spoke of the exceeding riches.
Paul was overwhelmed with this greatness.
What it amounts to is this.
That a real apprehension of the church will
make us big and not small.
There is nothing that will save us from
littleness more than a true apprehension of Christ.
If we become little or if the work
becomes little in its mind it has not
really apprehended Christ.
So that is the first thing that we
see here.
How great this is.
It represents the whole of a new creation.
In the ages to come it will fill
all things.
And all things will be affected by it.
That is a glorious vision.
We must therefore be very big people.
Big in spirit and big in heart.
Then we notice the three-fold purpose of
this house.
First of all it is the place of
God's glory.
Chapter forty-three.
Verse seven.
And he said unto me, Son of man,
this is the place of my throne and
the place of the soles of my feet
where I will dwell in the midst of
the children of Israel forever.
And the house of Israel shall no more
defile my holy name neither they nor their
kings nor by their whoredoms and by their
dead bodies of their kings in their high
places.
You notice that it is the word glory
that leads up to verse seven.
Verse two.
And behold the glory of the God of
Israel came from the way of the east.
Verse four.
And the glory of the Lord came into
the house by the way of the gate.
Verse five.
And he said this is the place of...
this is the place of my throne.
This is the place of the throne of
glory.
Now the glory had left Jerusalem nineteen years
before this.
It is not returning to the literal earthly
Jerusalem.
It is returning to the spiritual house.
The glory left the earthly Jerusalem when God's
Son was rejected.
And it had never come back to the
earthly Jerusalem.
But it did come back to the spiritual
house on the day of Pentecost.
This house is the house of God's glory.
And you notice from the whole of that
seventh verse that the glory is the glory
of holiness.
It is not just some bright shining.
It is a spiritual condition.
No defilement has a place here.
No dead bodies have a place here.
There is no death or corruption here.
The glory is the glory of holiness.
Where corruption and death have been removed.
Do remember that the glory depends upon the
spiritual condition.
It depends upon the holiness.
This then in the first place is the
place of His glory.
And then it is the place of His
government.
This is the place of my throne.
It is the seat of His government.
Remember that this is a heavenly house.
The seat of His government is not in
a church on the earth.
Whether that be in Rome or in anything
else.
The seat of His throne is in heaven.
We only come under the government of God
when we come into a heavenly position.
Now that is a very strong statement.
It carries very much with it.
We really only come under this government of
God when we are in a heavenly position.
And I am sure that you would agree
that it is a very important matter to
be under the government of God.
What hope is there for any of us
or for a church that is not under
the government of God?
Well, what we have in the book of
the Acts just states this very clearly before
us.
There the church is under the government of
heaven.
And it is a very effective church.
When the church got under the government of
man, it lost its effectiveness.
The government then requires a heavenly position.
But this is a church or a house
that is holy according to Christ.
That is necessary for a heavenly government.
The government of the Lord will come by
way of things being just according to Christ.
This is the place of my throne.
What place?
The place that is according to Christ.
Everything here in this vision is Christ.
Christ stands over everything.
Everything takes its measure and its character from
Christ.
And this is the place of the throne.
And then this is a house that is
entirely ordered by the Spirit.
You notice the place of the Spirit in
this.
The Spirit lifted me up.
The Spirit brought me in.
The Spirit took me out.
The Spirit took me round.
All this is in and by the Spirit.
This is the revelation of Christ by the
Holy Spirit.
And this is the constitution of the church
government where the whole church governs itself.
The whole church selects its minister.
The whole church votes on everything that is
going to be done.
That is democratic government.
None of these systems have a place here.
They are all merely official.
The government of this house is the government
of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit may use men.
He may choose those who are called elders.
But there is a great deal of difference
between the official and the spiritual.
You can be what is called an elder
officially and not be an elder spiritually.
If you are an elder spiritually, you are
bound to become that officially.
Your spiritual measure will be recognized.
And whether you are made an elder or
not, you will be one if you are
spiritually one.
The government I am saying is spiritual.
The men of the New Testament were described
as men filled with the Holy Spirit.
They were the apostles, they were the elders,
they were the deacons.
That was the thing that made them what
they were.
Men filled with the Spirit.
And then the third thing.
This house is the channel or vessel of
God's life.
Out of a house like this house, life
flows.
It is from this that the life flows.
You do not have to stop the life
flowing.
You do not have to make this life.
This life comes from a stream.
You do not go and collect buckets of
water.
And then try to pour them out from
this house.
There is nothing artificial about this.
There is nothing second hand about this.
There is nothing of man's doing about this.
The life just springs up.
And it flows out.
It flows out of a house like this.
A house where the Lord's throne is.
A house where the government of heaven is.
A house where the Lord is.
Out from that house, the life flows.
The testimony itself is in that life.
John said, this is the testimony.
Do you want to know what the testimony
is?
The testimony is not a system of doctrine
and teaching.
The testimony is not a technique.
This is the testimony that God has given
unto us eternal life.
And this life is in His Son.
The testimony is in the life.
And when the testimony is in us, when
the life is in us, the testimony is
in us.
So the test of everything is life.
That is a certain statement.
Life is that which determines the presence of
the Lord.
Life is that which tells whether things are
according to Christ.
Life tests whether this service is the service
of God.
Life tests everything.
The question is, is it ministering life?
Is this thing a living thing?
And is it pouring out life?
Pouring out life to the ends of the
earth.
If that is not true, there is something
wrong with it.
It may be a very wonderful technique and
system.
But there is something wrong with it.
Everything is tested by life.
I think we shall have to leave it
there this morning.
I haven't got my pretty little picture yet.
We can leave the Lord with us tomorrow
morning.