Reading:
Ezekiel 40:2-4; 43:10-11.
You remember it was at
the time when everything which had formerly been God's
means of setting forth in type His thoughts in the midst
of His people, had been broken down and lost, and the
people were far out of touch both spiritually and
literally with those things (the temple and Jerusalem,
etc.), that the Lord took up His servant Ezekiel, and in
the visions of God brought him back to the land, setting
him upon a high mountain, and showed him in vision the
city, and that great, new, spiritual heavenly house. Very
full and very comprehensive and very detailed was the
vision and the unveiling that was given, and the prophet
was taken to every point, every angle, and through the
whole of that spiritual temple step by step; in and out,
up and through, and around, the angel with the measuring
rod all the time giving the dimensions, the measurements
of everything; a most exhaustive definition of this whole
spiritual house. And then, further, after being shown all
the form and the ordinances, the priesthood, the
sacrifices and everything else, the prophet was commanded
to show the house to the house of Israel and to give them
all the detail of the Divine thought. In our previous
meditation we pointed out, in that connection, that
whenever there is a departure from Divine thoughts,
whenever there is a loss of the original revelation of
God, whenever the heavenliness, the spirituality, the
Divine power of that which is of God ceases to operate in
the midst of His people, and whenever the glory departs,
the Lord's reaction to such a state of things is to bring
His Son anew into view; and we followed through to see
how that, in just such a time in the history of the
Church in the first days, when things changed from the
primal glory, John was used by the Holy Spirit through
his Gospel, his Letters, and the Apocalypse, to bring the
Lord Jesus in a full, heavenly, spiritual way anew into
view; reminding ourselves, in so doing, that John's
Gospel is practically the last New Testament book that
was written, so that in spiritual value and significance,
it stands really after everything else written in the New
Testament. That is to say, it represents God's breaking
in again with a fresh presentation of His Son in terms of
heavenliness and spirituality, at a time when things have
gone astray.
I just want for a few
minutes, as I feel constrained, to stay with that: and we
have the Gospel of John opened before us, at the first
chapter. And note that this is God coming back in
relation to the fullness of His thought for His people,
and the meaning is just this: Christ is the fullness of
God's thought for us, and the Holy Spirit (represented by
the angel in Ezekiel), has come with the express object
and purpose of giving and leading us into the detail of
Christ, so that we get a comprehensive and detailed
expression of the Divine thought in Christ and are
brought thereinto.
Now you notice with John
1 you get the fresh, great, eternal presentation:
"In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God."
That is the eternal
background of Divine thought. Move on a little:
"And the Word
became flesh, and tabernacled among us."
That is the Divine
thought coming out of eternity and being planted right in
the midst in a full and comprehensive way; all God's
thoughts summed up in His Son, the great Eternal Thought,
and centred in the midst of men in the Person of Christ.
And then you move (and I am not touching all that lies
between these points) to the end of that first chapter
and you have by implication something that is very
beautiful, if you recognize its significance. It is the
word to Nathanael. It is always interesting to notice
that it was to Nathanael. Had it been to Peter, James or
John, we might well have concluded that it was for a sort
of inner circle. But, being Nathanael, he is in the
widest circle of association with Christ, and therefore
what was said to him is said to every one.
"Ye shall see
the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon the Son of man."
BETHEL—THE
HOUSE OF GOD
Now for the implication:
we are instinctively carried by those words right back to
the Old Testament, to the book of Genesis, and Jacob
immediately comes into view, and we remember Jacob on his
way between two points, as it were in an in-between
place, between heaven and earth; neither wholly of the
earth nor wholly of the heaven, but an in-between place.
That night, in that in-between place, somewhere in the
open he lay down and slept; and, behold, a ladder set up
on the earth, the top of which reached unto heaven, and
upon it the angels ascending and descending, and above
the ladder the Lord; and the Lord spoke to him. And Jacob
awaked out of his sleep, and said, Surely the Lord is in
this place; and I knew it not; this is none other but the
house of God! And he called the name of that place
"Bethel", or the House of God.
The Lord Jesus
appropriated that and made it to apply to Himself in His
words to Nathanael, and, in effect or by implication,
said, I am Bethel, the House of God; I am that which is
not wholly of the earth, although resting on it; not
wholly of heaven in My present capacity, though related
to it; I am here between heaven and earth, the meeting
place of God and man, the House of God, in Whom God
speaks, in Whom God is revealed—He speaks in His
House, He is revealed in His House—I am the House of
God: the communications of God with this world are in Me,
and in Me alone: "no one cometh to the Father but by
me". He might well have said, although it is not
recorded that He ever did so: the Father comes to no one
but by Me.
Now, it is just that
House of God, as represented by Christ, that is our
thought as leading up to the practical testimony in
baptism: Jesus—God's House. We know, of course, that
every other house in the Bible is only an illustration of
Him. Whether it be the tabernacle in the wilderness or
the temple of Solomon, or any subsequent temple which was
intended to fulfil the same function, or anything that in
more spiritual terms in the New Testament is called the
Church, it is not something other than Christ, but it is
Christ. In the thought of God it is just Christ and there
is nothing other than Christ and nothing extra to Christ
which is the Church or the House of God.
The point that we feel
the Lord is seeking to emphasize in these meditations is
how He has bound up everything in a final way,
conclusively and exclusively, with His Son, and that
there is nothing to be had of God except in Christ, and
by revelation of the Holy Spirit at that, as Christ is
revealed by Him in our hearts. So that the Lord Jesus,
being God's House, fulfils every function which is in
type set forth in these other houses on this earth.
You begin with the Most
Holy Place, the Holy of Holies. In Him is the Holy of
Holies, where God verily and personally and actually
dwells, has His habitation. God is in Christ, and in no
other does He dwell in the same sense. It is going to
become true that the Father will take up His abode in us.
But, beloved, there is a difference. By the Father coming
to dwell in us, we are not constituted so many more
Christs. We are not in the same sense indwelt by very God
as was the Son. The difference we will see in a minute.
The indwelling of God in Christ is unique, and the Most
Holy Place is in Him alone.
In Him is the oracle;
that is, the voice, the voice that speaks with authority,
and final authority. The final authority of God's voice
is in Christ, and in Christ alone. The three disciples
were in a very exalted position, both in their souls and
in their bodies, on the Mount of Transfiguration. It was
a wonderful, wonderful experience, a tremendous spiritual
happening. But even so, when you are in a very exalted
and elevated spiritual state, full of spiritual
aspirations and spiritual expressions, you may make most
grievous mistakes. So Peter, with the purest of motives,
the highest intentions, said, "Lord, it is good for
us to be here: if thou wilt, I will make here three
tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for
Elijah." And while he yet spake—as though God
stepped in and did not give him a chance to finish, but
said, Enough of that—while he yet spake, the cloud
overshadowed, and there came a voice out of heaven
saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased; hear ye him." 'Don't you begin to give
expression to your thoughts and ideas here in this
position: the final word of authority is in Him; you be
silent to Him. Your spiritual ecstasies must have no
place here; you must not be influenced by even your most
exalted feelings.' God's authoritative voice in Christ is
the final word of authority. It is the oracle that is in
Him, as in the sanctuary of old. So we may go through all
of that tabernacle or temple and take it all point by
point, and we see Him as the fulfillment of it all, as
the House of God where God is found, and where God
communicates.
THE
CORPORATE HOUSE OF GOD
Now, what is the House
of God in its fullest sense, in its corporate or
collective sense? It is, to take up that wonderful phrase
with its almost two hundred occurrences in the New
Testament, all that is meant by "in Christ". If
we are in the House of God, we are only in the House of
God because we are in Christ. To be in Christ is to be in
the House of God, and not to be in Christ Jesus is to be
outside of the House of God. He is the House of God. We
are brought into Him.
But to be in Christ
means a total exclusion of all that is not Christ, and in
a previous meditation we strove to make one thing so
clear, and that is, the altogether and absolute
'other-ness' of Christ from ourselves, even at our best.
How utterly different He is from man, even at man's
religious best; different in mind, in heart, in will;
different altogether in constitution, so that it takes us
a whole lifetime, under the tuition of the Holy Spirit,
to discover how different we are from Christ and how
different He is from us. But God has ranged that
difference absolutely from the beginning. It does not
take God a lifetime to discover the difference. He knows
it, and therefore He has put the absolute position from
His own standpoint right at the beginning. He has, in
effect, said, The difference between you and Christ is so
utter and final that it is the width and the depth of a
grave! It is nothing less than the fullness of death.
There is no passing over. Death and the grave are the
end. On the one side, therefore, is the utter end of what
you are, and if there is to be anything afterward at all,
that death must stand between, and anything subsequent
can only be by resurrection: a passing out of yourself
and into Him as through a death and a resurrection. So
that, in that death, you are regarded as having passed
out of the realm of what you are, even at your best, and
as having passed into the realm of what He is. The depth
of a grave lies between you and Him, and there is no
passing over. It is an end. To get into the House of God
means that.
THE
ALTAR
Thus you notice, coming
back to John 1, the truth is here set forth in a
representative way. It is more fully and clearly
developed later in the New Testament when the Holy Spirit
has come for that purpose—He has come to take up
what Christ has said and lead it out into its full
meaning—but in John 1, long before you reach the
House of God, you have this word reiterated,
"Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin
of the world." Before you can get to the House, you
have always to come to the altar. That is how it is in
the tabernacle and temple. You can never get into the
sanctuary, into the House actually until you have come to
the altar. The lamb, God's lamb, and the altar, stand and
bar your way to the sanctuary, and that lamb speaks of
this dying in our stead, this passing out as us. We are
identified firstly with Christ in His death, His death as
our death. Then in virtue of His precious Blood which is
sprinkled all the way from the altar right through to the
Most Holy Place, in virtue of that precious Blood there
is a way of life. It is His Blood, not ours; not our
remedied life, not our improved life, not our life at
all, but His. It is Christ and only Christ in the virtue
of whose life we come into the presence of God. No High
Priest dare come into the presence of God, save in the
virtue of precious blood, the blood of the lamb, blood
from the altar. Behold the Lamb of God! That stands right
across the path to the House, the death in judgment, what
we are. Well, these are hints from which you are seeing a
great deal more, I expect, than I am able to say.
But what is particularly
in view at this moment is this matter of being in Christ,
and therefore being in God's House. The House of God is
Christ, and if we speak of the House of God as being a
corporate or collective thing in which we are, it is only
because we are in Christ. Those who are in Christ are in
the House of God, and are the House of God by their union
with Him. They have come into the place where God is, and
where God speaks; where God is known, and where the
authority of God is in Christ absolutely, and we are
carried in thought at once into Colossians, to Paul's
word—"He is the head of the church". We
see the Body and its Head. Christ's Headship means the
authority of God vested in Him for government.
BAPTISM
Now you see two things.
There is the first step toward the House, namely, the
altar, the death, and that is what baptism is intended to
set forth. It is that we take our place in Christ
representing us, as the end of all that we are in
ourselves. It is not only our sins that are taken away;
it is ourselves, as so utterly different from Christ. From
God's standpoint, it is an end of us. Let us
understand that. That is God's standpoint. In the death
of Christ, God has brought an end to us in our natural
life. In Christ's resurrection and our union with Him, from
God's standpoint it is no longer we who exist. It is
only Christ who exists, and the Holy Spirit's work in the
child of God is to make that which has been established
in its finality real in us. We have not to die; we are
dead. What we have to do is to accept our death. Failing
to see that, we shall all the time be struggling to bring
ourselves to death. It is a position taken which is God's
settled, fixed and final position so far as we are
concerned. That is the meaning of reckoning yourself
dead. It is taking the place that God has appointed for
us, stepping into it, and saying, I accept the position
which God has fixed with regard to myself : the Holy
Spirit's business is to deal with the rest, but I accept
the end. If ever you and I should come to a place where
we turn away from the Holy Spirit's dealings with us,
what we are doing is something more than just refusing to
go on. It is refusing to accept the original position,
and that is very much more serious. It really is a
reversing of a position which we once took with Him.
Well, now, baptism is
that altar where God regards us as having died in Christ,
and we simply step in there and say, That position which
God has settled with reference to me is the one which I
now accept, and I testify here in this way to the fact
that I have accepted God's position for me, namely, that
in the Cross I have been brought to an end. The Lord
Jesus took this way and set baptism right at the
beginning of His public life, and, under the anointing of
the Spirit, from that moment He absolutely refused to
listen to His own mind apart from God, to be in any way
influenced by anything arising from the dictates of His
own humanity, sinless as it was, apart from God. All the
way along He was being governed by the Anointing; in what
He said, what He did, what He refused to do; where He
went, and when He went; and was putting back every other
influence, whether coming from the disciples, or from the
Devil, or from any other direction. His attitude was,
Father, what do You think about this: what do You want:
is this Your time? He was saying, in effect, all the
time, Not My will, but Yours; not My judgments, but
Yours; not My feelings, but what You feel about it! He
had died, in effect, you see; He had been buried, in
effect. His baptism had meant that for Him, and that is
where we stand.
THE
LAYING ON OF HANDS
But then there is the
other thing. When that position has been accepted in
death, there is the rising. But, as I have said, it is
the rising in Christ, and from God's standpoint it is the
rising, not only in Christ, but as under the Headship of
Christ, or, in other words, under that full and final
authority of God vested in Christ, so that Christ is our
mind, Christ is our government, His Headship! And when
believers in New Testament times had taken the first step
in baptism, declaring their death in Christ, and had come
up out of the waters, representative members of the Body,
not always the apostles, laid their hands upon their
heads and prayed over them, and the Holy Spirit signified
that they were in the House. The Anointing which was upon
Christ as Head now came upon them in Christ; not a
separate anointing, but anointed in Christ (2 Cor 1:21;
1 Cor 12:13).
But what is the
Anointing? What was the Anointing in the case of Christ,
when He accepted a representative life and for the time
being declined to live and act on the basis of Deity and
Godhead, in order to work out man's redemption as Man?
What did the Anointing mean? Well, in His case it is so
clear. The Anointing meant that He was under the direct
government of God in everything and had to refuse to
refer or defer to His own judgments and feelings about
anything. The Father, by the Anointing, was governing Him
in everything, and He, apart from that, was altogether
set aside. And when He said, "If any man would come
after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross
daily, and follow me"; or again, "Whosoever
doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be
my disciple" (Luke 9:23; 14:27), He was only saying
in other words, 'You can never learn Me unless the Cross
is operating continually to put you out and make way for
Me, so that you can accept My mind, and the Cross means
that you have to be crucified to your own mind about
things: your mind has to come under the Cross; your will
has to come under the Cross; your feelings and your ways
have to come under the Cross daily, and that is how you
make a way for learning Me, My mind, My government, My
judgment, My everything. That is the school of
discipleship, the school of Christ.'
I was saying that, on
the resurrection side, the Headship of Christ under the
Anointing becomes, or should become the dominating factor
in a believer's life, and the laying on of hands on the
head is simply again a declaration that this one is under
the Headship, this head comes under another Head, this
head is subject to a greater Head. Thus far, this head
has governed its life, but no longer shall this head
govern its life; it is to be subject to another Headship.
This one is brought under Christ as Head in the
Anointing. And the Spirit attested that in the first
days; the Spirit came upon them, declaring that this one
is in the House where the Anointing is, to be under the
government of the Head of the House.
The spirit of it all
finds expression in that word in the Letter to the
Hebrews, "But Christ as a son, over God's house;
whose house are we" (3:6). I think it is unnecessary
to say any more. We are just going on the way of the
heavenly revelation of Christ; and, in baptism, we take
the position of accepting God's position so far as we are
concerned, namely, that this is an end of us! If in the
future, what we are in ourselves seeks to assert itself,
we should revert to this and say, 'We said once for
all—an end of us!' Preserve your attitude toward
God's position.
Then afterward the
gathering around and the laying on of the hands of
representative members of the Body is a simple testimony
to the fact that in Christ such as bear the testimony are
in the House of God, under the government of Christ
through the Anointing, and that His Headship constitutes
us one in Him.
May the Lord make all
this true in the case of all of us, a living reality, so
that we really have come to Bethel and can say in our
rejoicing in Christ, Surely the Lord is in this place! It
is a great thing when we come to a spiritual position
where we can say, The Lord is in this place. I am where
the Lord is: this is the House of God! And that simply
means a living knowledge of what it means to be in
Christ, under His Headship and Anointing.