"And David said, Solomon my son is young and tender, and the house that is to be builded for the LORD must be exceeding magnifical, of fame and of glory throughout all countries: I will therefore now make preparation for it. So David prepared abundantly before his death." 1
Chron. 22:5.
"And the man said unto me, Son of man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears, and set thine heart upon all that I shall shew thee; for to the intent that I might shew them unto thee art thou brought hither: declare all that thou seest to the house of Israel." Ezek. 40:4.
"Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing? The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts." Haggai 2:3,9.
"Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body." John 2:19-21.
"In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." Eph.
2:21-22.
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." 1 Cor. 3:16-17.
"And after that I looked, and, behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened... And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God." Rev. 15:5, 21:3.
"And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. 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. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." Rev. 3:14-22.
There seems to be a very forceful
significance about the way in which the Lord introduces
Himself to the church at Laodicea. You notice the state
of things represent a state of spiritual blindness, which
means that the truth is not seen, especially the truth as
to their own state, a state of self-satisfaction,
self-fulness, self-confidence, self-sufficiency,
self-glory. As the Lord sees them He sees a lie and a
deception, just exactly the opposite of the way in which
they see themselves. They think they are rich, He sees
that they are poor; they think they have glory, He sees
them as being rejected; they think they know, He sees
that they are in blind ignorance. The whole thing is,
though they do not recognise it, a falsehood from every
standpoint and the opposite of what the Lord would have
and requires. There was an utter falling short of the
divine mind.
To a state like that the Lord
presents Himself as the Amen: “These things saith
the Amen...” (Rev. 3:14). We understand that word to
mean the Verily, the Truly. It is a word which was
frequently on His lips in the days of His flesh. Whenever
He was going to present something of particular and
peculiar meaning and value, and importance; something
that could not be set aside; something that must be taken
account of; something that would govern, determine and
fix destiny, He prefaced the statement with:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you”. It is the
same word as is used here—“Verily”,
“Amen”, “most truly”. I think one
version puts it “Of most certain truth I say unto
you...”. “These things saith the Amen.”—that is final, that is settled, that is something
you cannot get past; it is presented to you as God’s
last word.
Here then is what God presents in
Christ. The Amen becomes personal. It is not a word now,
not a saying, not an utterance, but a person. “These
things saith the Amen.” It is the designation of the
Person, the One Who in Himself is God’s final
standard, the Verity, the faithful and true Witness.
Christ comes before this church and, in effect, He says,
I am the standard, there is nothing after Me, I have the
final word, I represent the uttermost thought of God: you
have to stand and measure yourself by Me. So you see the
lie in the presence of the truth, the deception in the
presence of the “verily”, all that is falling
short of God’s thought in the presence of the full
revelation of that thought in Christ. The way in which He
introduces Himself to the Laodicean church is most
significant. So the false is measured by the true. The
one side of the balance is the Amen and the other side
their state, with which they are so satisfied, which they
think to be so perfect, so glorious. Over against the
Amen, they go up in the balances and there is an exposure
which calls for repentance, rectification and adjustment.
That forms the background of our
consideration and of our spiritual exercise and ministry
for all the Lord’s people at this time. It is seeing
God’s truth as revealed in the person of His Son, as
over against things as they are, which men may think to
be all right while they are utterly contrary to that
presentation. Ezekiel the prophet, in a day when the
temple in Jerusalem was in ruins, was shown a spiritual
temple measured out by a man with a golden measuring
reed. We know how exact were all the measurements, how
thorough was the work of measuring and presentation to
the prophet; how the prophet was led in, led through, led
round, led out, led up, set down, all under the
government of this angel with the measuring reed. He was
shown the outside, he was shown the inside, he was shown
from above. From every angle, every aspect, every detail,
this spiritual temple which was God’s mind exactly
expressed, a temple which has never yet been on this
earth in a literal form and expression, was shown to him.
For Ezekiel it was a spiritual thing, and it remains that
until now. Then the comment to Ezekiel was, “Son of
man show the house to the house of Israel, that they may
be ashamed...” (Ezek. 43:10). There is one temple on
earth, another temple of spiritual revelation; one that
has failed to answer to God’s thought, the other
that is the expression of God’s thought; the other
brought into view in the day when the one is destroyed.
That is not only prophecy but it is
also a figure. Adam was the former temple, and the first
Adam is in ruins as regards what God intended he should
be, His temple—made, formed for His dwelling. In the
day when the first Adam is in ruins, the last Adam is
brought into view as God’s perfect temple in Whom He
will dwell for ever, and where there will be no ruin. It
is the temple and the tabernacle of God that is before us
as the mind of God expressed in Christ.
Israel stands as a type for all ages
and dispensations from the beginning onward, touching the
whole thought of God. We have referred to Adam. Well,
Israel sets forth in type what God’s thought was
concerning Adam. The central and supreme thing in
Israel’s life was the temple, and that had a
backward aspect as well as a forward aspect, it looked
right back to God’s intention at the beginning in
the creation of man, and looks right on to God’s end
when that intention is fully realised in Christ and His
body, the church. When Adam was made it was the result of
these counsels of the Godhead: “Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). All that
that means we do not know, and we dare not speculate upon
it, but this we can most certainly conclude that if God
determines to make something in His Own image, after His
Own likeness, it will be exceeding magnificent, it will
be the expression of His thoughts which are always
surpassing thoughts.
Even in this poor, marred,
death-stricken creation we are able to discern and detect
and trace the marks of God’s mind. We look upon the
beauties—as they still remain in large
measure—in this earth and there we see expressed or
reflected the thought of God and we wonder, we marvel. We
sit down before a simple flower and marvel. When God does
something for Himself it bears the marks of what He is.
David was right when he said: “...the house that is
to be built for the Lord must be exceeding
magnifical...” (1 Chron. 22:5). “Let us make
man in our image, after our likeness...”. What was
it for? It was to be a house of God, that God might dwell
with men and be in them. He made man for that purpose,
for His Own glory. Trace the various and numerous
references to a house of God, a dwelling place of God,
and you will always find that, sooner or later, you come
upon the revelation of the glory of God in connection
therewith. The house will, sooner or later, be filled
with His glory. That is the great climax of this purpose.
Israel’s temple is but a type
of Adam in intention, to be indwelt by God and filled
with God’s glory; that in him and through him the
glory of God should be displayed. If we have any doubt
about it in the backward look, surely all those doubts
are dispelled immediately we take the forward look. We
take a look at the one Man as we see Him on the Mount of
Transfiguration, and we see Him crowned with glory and
honour. Then we are told that He is but the first, and
that He is bringing many sons to glory, and that we are
to be joined with Him, as members of His body with the
same glory. There is no doubt whatever that Adam was
created for this very purpose, and man is in existence to
be God’s temple. The temple, then, is a type of man
according to God’s purpose in a backward look.
The temple of Israel came to ruins.
Why? We know one thing, and one thing only, which was
responsible for it all. The Lord had always, from the
time that He had chosen Israel, laid down with tremendous
emphasis the law that there was to be no fellowship with
the nations round about, because of the spiritual
alliances of those nations with evil forces. It was not
just a matter of being unfriendly, of being exclusive,
having nothing to do with people. The Lord saw deeper
than that. His dealings with the Egyptians were only a
secondary thing. The primary thing was against all the
gods of the Egyptians. So in Canaan it was the
relationship of the nations with satanic forces which
made it necessary for them to be blotted out. So the
Lord’s people had to be kept clear and clean of all
such fellowship and alliance because of the spiritual
kingdom.
When Israel entered into
relationships with the nations round about on a friendly
basis, the glory of the Lord departed from the house of
the Lord, the temple lost its glory and remained a mere
shell for a time, while prophets pleaded, entreated,
warned, and we get the long and terrible story of
Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and others, calling back to a
break with these nations, a purging, a cleansing. That is
why, when a remnant returned, Ezra and Nehemiah laboured
so ardently to get out the mixture from the people in
their merged relationships, because the principle was
still there that any kind of spiritual alliance was
spiritual fornication and God could have nothing to do
with it. Israel’s persistence in complicity with
those nations led to the ruin of their temple.
It is again a type with its backward
aspect, God creating for His temple, He being in touch,
in fellowship, and communion. Then there came complicity
with Satan, resulting in the ruin of the temple, the ruin
of that race and that man, personally and corporately.
Now you must remember that there is
a sinister purpose behind all this. If God created man
with the purpose of indwelling him (I am not saying that
when Adam was created God indwelt him in the full sense
as He indwells the believer now, as He indwelt Christ,
but that was the object in view), the impressive thing is
that through the ages the one dominating ambition of
Satan has been to indwell men. It would be speculating to
get back beyond the record of the Word of God. Some have
done that and spoken about Satan losing his body, being
cast out of his body, and becoming a disembodied spirit
with one eternal longing to inhabit a body. That is
deduction from certain things in the Word of God that
demons are always seeking to possess bodies. There is no
doubt about it that demon possession is a dominating
objective of the forces of Satan, to get possession of a
body. When the demons pleaded as they were being cast
from the man that they should not be cast into mere air,
but be allowed to enter into the bodies of the swine, it
seems clear that a disembodied state for them evidently
represented something full of terror, and Satan has as
his main objective the entering in and possessing of a
temple. He will enter in at last into the Antichrist.
You see there can be no such thing
as a vacuum. If God is not in, Satan will be in sooner or
later. You will remember the illustration given by the
Lord Jesus of this matter, about the house from which the
demon had been cast out, he wandered in solitary places
and found no rest. He returned and found that the house
was still empty, and he took seven other demons worse
than himself and entered in. The disaster came because
the house was not occupied already.
All this bears upon the point that
Satan is represented as clamouring to possess, to enter
in, to have a temple, a habitation. It is the counter of
God. God made man in order to inhabit him. Satan is
seeking to get God’s place in man. Complicity with
Satan proved to be the ruin of man, the ruin of the
temple, just as is illustrated in the Word in the case of
Israel and their temple. Complicity with Satan behind the
nations meant ruin of their temple.
What were the results? The results
were that in the case of the temple of Israel God
withdrew. The temple was overthrown, the enemy of Israel
came into the place of power, and Israel and the vessels
of the temple were possessed by the enemy and used for
his glory and pleasure. It is all very clearly typical
and illustrative. First of all when Adam brought about
the ruin, God withdrew. Then the temple lay waste,
broken. Then the enemy assumed the place of power over
the temple and the man and all that which in man had been
to the glory and service and pleasure of God was taken,
and has ever since been used to the satisfaction of
Satan. That is how we find man.
What was the governing law of all
this, illustrated in Israel, actual in the case of man?
The governing law was heart fellowship with God by
faith.
If you get hold of that one thing
you have hold of a key that opens almost everything, if
not everything with which we have to do. It is HEART
fellowship by faith. In Adam it was a question of his
heart relationship with God, his heart fellowship with
God by faith. Everything hung upon that, and everything
still hangs upon that. We shall see what that means. We
just mention it here and pass on for a moment, and then
return to it presently.
Next we come to certain prophetic
hints. The temple is in ruins, God withdrawn. But it is
not left there. As we saw at the outset, when
Israel’s temple was in ruins Ezekiel was shown a
spiritual temple, perfect to a detail. It is a hint, and
it is something more than a hint. In the day when the
temple was broken down the word of the Lord by Haggai
was: “Who is left among you that saw this house in
her first glory? ...is it not in your eyes as nothing?
...The glory of this latter house shall be greater than
of the former...”. It is a prophetic hint. That
house has never yet been in greater glory than
Solomon’s, and whether there has to be a literal
temple of this earth with glory greater than that of
Solomon’s temple will not concern us very much, we
have looked higher and we have seen the veil drawn away
and the temple or tabernacle in heaven appearing and then
coming down from heaven—“The tabernacle of God
is with men.” Solomon’s temple is not going to
drop out of heaven, or anything like that. It is a
spiritual temple that comes out of heaven. The latter
state is greater than the former. There are many of these
prophetic hints.
In connection with what do they
hint? Christ! They look on to Christ. Only Christ can
transcend all that has been, and He does, because He
fulfils all types. The last Adam is greater than the
first, the last temple is greater than the former. All
prophecy leads on to Him. So Christ comes into view when
the temple is in ruins. Christ is presented as God’s
eternal reality, not a type, nor a pattern, but a
reality, of which these others were but patterns and
types. He is seen as God’s temple: “Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up... But
he spake of the temple of his body.” Adam, we are
told, was a type “of him that was to come”, and
if Adam was to be God’s temple it was only in type.
The types have broken down. Christ is the reality; He is
God’s temple. God dwelt in Him, and dwells in Him
Who is the Verily of God, the Amen, the last Adam, the
positive, the final, the conclusive.
Then, when you see Christ brought in
as God’s eternal reality in the matter of God’s
dwelling place, God’s temple, God’s habitation,
you have to remember that as that temple is revealed here
on earth it was governed by a number of laws. His life
was governed by various spiritual laws. There are the
laws of the House of God, the laws of the temple, and
Christ being as God’s dwelling place was governed by
these spiritual laws. It is those spiritual laws that we
have to consider presently, but what we want to do at the
moment is to see that Christ on earth sets forth what
God’s temple is, and if we are going to be living
stones, built into that temple, if we are to be built
together, a habitation of God, what is true of Christ has
got to be true of us as to the laws which govern the
house of God. To put it in another way with Paul, there
must be a conforming of us to the image of God’s
Son, so that we, with Him, form one temple, one house of
God, one habitation of God through the Spirit.
That brings us to one of these laws.
We look back again to trace the inception of ruin. Where
and how did ruin begin? It began before ever it touched
this creation, it began before ever it came to Adam. We
are allowed to look through and see what the inception of
ruin was, and we gather from what the Word of God says
that it was pride of heart: “For thou hast said in
thine heart... I will exalt my throne above the stars...
I will be like the Most High.” It was pride of heart
which was the inception of ruin, in the case of Satan,
and in the case of the first Adam the first personal and
representative habitation of God. We need not trace it
through again. We are familiar with the story. Whatever
we have to say about Adam’s reaction to Satan’s
temptation, it all resolves itself into a matter of pride
of heart. What is pride? Or, to put the question in
another way, How did that pride of heart express itself?
What were its features? The features are exactly similar
with Satan and Adam. When once pride of heart is there
you have the same results: firstly, independence;
secondly, possession; thirdly, self-centredness in the
fullest sense; (that is, having things in oneself, no
longer in another, no longer outside of oneself: I can! I
know! I will! I have!); fourthly, self-exaltation “I
will be”). There you have pride analysed at its very
root: independence—no longer a dependent being;
possession—possessiveness, taking hold, getting it
into our own hands; self-centredness and self-exaltation.
That is pride of heart. It is the explanation of ruin.
What were the immediate results?
First, death. Satan became the very seat and centre of
death and “death passed upon all men”, by
complicity with him. We need not analyse death but merely
state the fact. Secondly, darkness. What is spiritual
darkness? Well, we have referred to Laodicea—blind,
but not knowing it. That is deception, to be blind and
not know it, and then to believe, to be convinced that
you see, that you know. A deceived heart led him astray.
How great that blindness is is seen by the universal
repudiation of it. The most difficult thing is to get the
natural man to believe that he is blind. Try any educated
person today, try the modernist, try the scholar, try the
religionist who is not born again, and your work will be
of the hardest, if not the most hopeless to convince them
that they do not know, that they never can know until
they are born again. It is the most heartbreaking thing
to try to get people to see. They think they do see, they
cannot agree that they do not see. They simply get over
the difficulty by saying: Oh, well, that is your
interpretation of things, it is not my interpretation, it
does not mean that I know less than you do. The very fact
that blindness is repudiated by the natural man is the
proof of its depth, of its strength, of its power. Its
universal deception makes it necessary for a miracle to
be wrought in order that they shall see. God’s
attitude and Christ’s attitude to those of this
world is that they have no eyes, they are born blind.
Thirdly, bondage. Here again it will not be admitted, but
there is bondage to the Devil. The fact of the bondage is
manifested by a refusal to entertain any such suggestion,
and therefore by refusing to take any course which would
prove it. You and I have discovered how great that
bondage is by seeking to escape it. We know because we
have sought to escape. You never know how great the
bondage is until you try to get out of it. The men of
Israel did not know how great their bondage in Egypt was
until they contemplated escape, and then they discovered
that bondage was a greater thing than they ever imagined,
and they would never have believed the tenacious grip it
held. We should never have believed it until the prospect
and promise of liberation came to us.
Then self-responsibility was the
result; that is having to take responsibility for making
your own way. After the ruin man had to earn his bread by
the sweat of his brow. He had to make his own way, to
take responsibility to live, and it was a terrific thing.
Up to that point God had taken responsibility, provided
everything. Life was a very simple thing. There was no
anxious thought about wherewithal of any kind. But
immediately afterwards he had to take responsibility for
his own existence on the earth, and work by the sweat of
his brow to keep body and soul together. These are the
consequences of pride of heart, leading to ruin.
Of course at that point Christ comes
in, the last Adam, with redemption and recovery. How? If
pride of heart was the explanation of ruin, humility of
heart is basic to revelation and recovery. This is a law
of the house of God in which He will dwell. “I am
meek and lowly in heart.”
I would like to introduce here a
whole set of Scriptures. If pride of heart is
independence then humility of heart is dependence, and
when Christ is introduced as representing God’s
temple, God’s dwelling place, then a law of
God’s house, if it is to be built and maintained and
not come to ruin, is the law of humility, and that is
seen in the case of Christ from His birth. Everything
about His birth speaks of meekness, lowliness, humility.
His home and upbringing, His entering upon His ministry,
His daily life, His manner, speak of humility. There is
nothing self-important here, no pride of heart:
“Behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is... lowly,
and riding upon an ass....” That is how He came.
What a life of utter dependence upon the Father He lived.
If ruin came by pride, and pride
showed itself in possession, or possessiveness, then
humility will be self-emptying, and self-emptiness. If
pride of heart showed itself in self-centredness then
humility is God-centredness. This is Christ, the house of
God. If the issues of pride of heart were death, then
humility is life. If pride of heart worked out in
darkness then humility is light. Do you want to know?
“The humble shall hear thereof, and be glad.”
Meekness is essential to spiritual knowledge. If pride of
heart led to bondage, then humility is liberty. If pride
of heart meant that God refused to take responsibility
for that man, and left him to take responsibility for
himself, humility means that God assumes the
responsibility again to look after those who humbly trust
Him.
We will come back to this later but
we have gone thus far in order to indicate what the Lord
is trying to get us to see. God’s temple, God’s
dwelling place governs history from the eternal counsels
of God. Christ sets forth what that is, and in Him we see
the laws which govern the habitation of God, and these
laws are the opposite of those which obtained and
governed in the leading to the ruin of the house of God.
The first law is meekness, humility and all that that
means.
There is a power about this divine
humility which is capable of bringing the pride of Satan
to the dust and destroying all the works of the Devil.
“He was crucified through weakness.” But what
that crucifixion wrought in the universe! “He
humbled himself.” But to what effect! Satan has
surely to rue the day that he participated in the
humiliation of the Son of God. There is something mighty
about humility and something terrible about pride.