"And when the
seventh month was come, and the children of Israel were
in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as
one man to Jerusalem. Then stood up Jeshua the son of
Jozadak, and his brethren the priests, and Zerubbabel the
son of Shealtiel, and his brethren, and builded the altar
of the God of Israel, to offer burnt-offerings thereon,
as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God. And
they set the altar upon its base; for fear was upon them
because of the peoples of the countries: and they offered
burnt-offerings thereon unto Jehovah, even
burnt-offerings morning and evening. And they kept the
feast of tabernacles, as it is written, and offered the
daily burnt-offerings by number, according to the
ordinance, as the duty of every day required... From the
first day of the seventh month began they to offer
burnt-offerings unto Jehovah: but the foundation of the
temple of Jehovah was not yet laid... Now in the second
year of their coming unto the house of God at Jerusalem,
in the second month, began Zerubbabel the son of
Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and the rest of
their brethren the priests and the Levites, and all they
that were come out of the captivity unto Jerusalem, and
appointed the Levites, from twenty years old and upward,
to have the oversight of the work of the house of
Jehovah... And when the builders laid the foundation of
the temple of Jehovah, they set the priests in their
apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph
with cymbals, to praise Jehovah, after the order of David
king of Israel. And they sang one to another in praising
and giving thanks unto Jehovah, saying, For he is good,
for his lovingkindness endureth for ever toward Israel.
And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they
praised Jehovah, because the foundation of the house of
Jehovah was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and
heads of fathers' houses, the old men that had seen the
first house, when the foundation of this house was laid
before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many
shouted aloud for joy: so that the people could not
discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of
the weeping of the people; for the people shouted with a
loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off... Now when
the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the
children of the captivity were building a temple unto
Jehovah, the God of Israel; then they drew near to
Zerubbabel, and to the heads of fathers' houses, and said
unto them, Let us build with you; for we seek your God,
as ye do; and we sacrifice unto him since the days of
Esar-haddon king of Assyria, who brought us up
hither." (Ezra 3:1-4,6,8,10-13; 4:1-2)."And I also say unto
thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will
build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail
against it... From that time began Jesus to show unto his
disciples, that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer
many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes,
and be killed, and the third day be raised up. (Matt.
16:18,21).
We have read those two
portions of the Word of God, not because we are going to
dwell upon them in particular, but because they bring
very clearly and definitely into view the matter upon
which the Scriptures as a whole come with very great
weight and forcefulness. Both in the Old Testament in
type, and in the New Testament in reality, this thing is
made very clear, namely, that the Cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ is meant by God to lead immediately and directly
to the Church, and that, when the Cross and the Church
are really brought spiritually into view, then an intense
state of conflict is set up. That is stating very briefly
what, as I have said, the Scriptures throughout make very
clear.
You will at once
recognise that those three things are clearly seen in the
passage in the book of Ezra. They set the altar in its
place. That is the Cross. They came to build the house of
the Lord. That is the Church. And when the adversaries
saw it, they drew near. That is the conflict.
In the passage in the
Gospel by Matthew, chapter 16, you have it again.
"Upon this rock I will build my church."
"From that time Jesus began to show unto his
disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem and suffer
many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes,
and be killed, and the third day raised up." That is
the Cross; and the Cross and the Church being in view,
the conflict is begun. And so you will find it
everywhere.
Go further back in the
Old Testament to the twelfth chapter of the book of
Exodus, and you have the same thing, remembering that the
book of Exodus opens with a presentation of the sons of
Israel, and you know that the sons of a prince with God
are found in bondage and are about to be emancipated.
Typically the Church is in view. Chapter 12 brings the
Cross in as the ground of that emancipation, but it is
all surrounded by intense conflict. The battle is joined
when the bringing out of those elect people is begun, and
the ground upon which the battle is really fought out is
the ground of the Cross. You come to the book of the
Acts, and it is just the same: the Cross, the Church and
the Conflict. It is the three C's all the way through the
Scriptures. Well, then, we need to see God's mind about
this matter.
In the thought of God,
the Cross of the Lord Jesus is meant to lead immediately
and directly to the Church. Any apprehension or teaching
of the Cross which does not lead directly to the Church
is either a misapprehension or only a partial
apprehension, and it will inevitably result in a limited
spiritual life and a limited spiritual service! The
Cross, in God's intention, is never an end in itself. It
is a way, it is a means, it is a basis, it is intended to
lead to something else.
You go to another part
of the Old Testament type of this. You remember when
David, provoked by Satan to number Israel, to take
account of natural resources, brought that awful judgment
upon the people, the angel with the drawn sword smote up
and down the land and was about to strike at Jerusalem
itself, when the Lord intervened and said: It is enough,
stay now thy sword. David was then by the threshing floor
of Ornan, the Jebusite, and Ornan was threshing wheat,
and David drew near and bought the threshing floor and
built an altar unto the Lord, an altar by which this sin
was dealt with, this iniquity was removed, by which the
Lord was given His place, and that threshing floor of
Ornan where David built the altar became the site of the
temple in Jerusalem. It was the very foundation of the
temple. If you dwell upon that a little more you will see
how many elements of tremendous significance there are in
that.
Yes, the Cross is a
foundation, a basis, and it is the basis of the Church.
They set the altar in its place and then they built the
house of the Lord. I repeat, the Cross of the Lord Jesus
in the mind of God is intended to lead directly to the
Church, and unless it does that there will be progress
only within certain very limited dimensions. There will
be a straitened spiritual life and a service to the Lord
which is lacking in those greater fulnesses of Divine
meaning and intention.
I am most anxious that
you should see more than I am saying, that you should
really grasp the significance of this, and not just take
it as something said. It can be put in many different
ways.
We can put it like
this, that the Lord Himself sees through the Cross a
great heavenly object, and that object is His Church.
"Christ loved the church and gave himself for
it" (Eph. 5:25). There is your precise statement
that, in the giving of Himself, which is the Cross of the
Lord Jesus, there was an object in view, and that object
was the Church. "Christ loved the church and gave
himself for it", and if you and I are going to come
into God's meaning of the Cross, it will be something
more than the forgiveness of sins, something more than
justification by faith, something more than the
possessing of eternal life, something more than
deliverance from Satan and hell, and entitlement to
heaven. If we come into God's thought concerning the
Cross, we shall very soon come into a heavenly revelation
of the Church. The one must follow the other if we are
right in oneness with the Lord's thought.
The
Result of an Imperfect Apprehension of the Cross
In saying that,
beloved, one is touching a good deal of tragic history.
There has been a great deal of teaching of the Cross,
preaching of the Cross. It has been faithful, it has been
sincere, but for want of seeing this very thing, namely,
what the Cross is meant to lead to, the results have been
very unsatisfactory. That is to say, vast numbers of
those who have come into those elementary benefits (if I
may so call them,) of the Cross of the Lord Jesus have
just remained there, elementary Christians all their
lives, and there has been no touching, or very little
touching, of the great situation on the earth which is
such a terrible denial of God's thought about His people.
You look at the
Christian world today, the people of God upon the earth,
and what do you feel about the situation? The more you
look, the more you know, the more your heart aches and
the more you are driven to despair. The conflict between
true children of God is the most terrible thing. They are
all at variance with one another, they are suspecting one
another; suspicion runs rife amongst the people of God.
They even go as far as to pray hard against one another.
This is not against the enemies of the Lord as
pronouncedly so. One could say much, and not exaggerate,
about the situation, for the more you know, I say, the
more you feel what a situation of impossibility it is
amongst Christians on the earth. Ought these things to be
so, brethren? No, we cannot accept that situation as
representing God's thought.
Then something is
wrong. There is some explanation. It ought not to be so.
Why is it? The answer is here. There has been a
misapprehension or an imperfect apprehension of the Cross
of the Lord Jesus, for the Cross of the Lord Jesus was
intended to meet such a contingency and make it
impossible; and yet all those concerned have accepted the
Cross, that is, they have embraced those elementary
values of the Cross, that Christ died for their sins,
that by His precious Blood, by faith in His atoning work
there is justification from all sin, acceptance with God,
deliverance from judgment. Yes, they have accepted the
Cross; but all that is but the beginning, the foundation.
It is intended to lead to something very much more than
that. The Cross is a means in God's thought to a great
end, and none of us as the Lord's people must be
satisfied with just the means. We must be supremely
concerned with God's object through the means.
The
Cross Effects a Clearing of the Way for God's End
As a foundation, as a
basis, there are various directions in which the Cross
has its meaning. We must recognise these because they
represent the clearing of the way for this that God is
going to bring in.
It is interesting that
there in the case of Ezra and those with him, those who
came back from the captivity, that they spontaneously,
instinctively turned to the building of the house of the
Lord, as though it was the accepted thing, the thing
taken for granted. It was the thing that had to be done;
they simply gave themselves to it. But in order to
prepare the way they put the altar in its place, and you
notice what is said about that - "for fear was upon
them because of the peoples of the countries". This
is setting up that which gives assurance, an assurance
that they can go on, that they can be established, that
they can accomplish the work, that they can build the
house, and although the enemies prevailed for a time, it
was never the Lord's thought that the work should cease.
That altar had secured a way, had secured the
accomplishment of the work. If only they had recognised
and stood by all the significance of that altar, they
would never have stopped building the house for those
years, for you know that eventually when the work was
resumed, it was because the Lord stirred up the spirit of
Zerubbabel and Joshua, and further exhorted the people
through the prophet in the words, "Not by might, nor
by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts"
(Zech. 4:6); meaning this - You may be weak, a mere
remnant back from captivity, there may be the enemies,
the peoples of the countries round about all against you,
but that altar has secured a way for the Holy Spirit, and
in all your weakness you can go on. It is "not by
might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of
hosts".
That is exactly how it
worked out in the New Testament. Here were these few poor
people in Jerusalem who had proved themselves so weak and
impotent, having failed at every point and broken down in
all directions. Now the Cross is an accomplished fact,
giving a way for the Holy Spirit, and that handful of
weaklings, not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit
of the Lord of hosts, go right on in the building of the
house against terrific odds; but the work goes on.
They put the altar in
its place and instinctively turned to the building of the
house. The altar cleared the way, and the Cross is just
that by which a way is made, getting rid of things that
hinder the realisation of God's purpose.