God’s
rights concerning His house have always been
challenged. God had created this earth as a place
where His rights would be recognized. That is why He
gave man certain commandments. He gave them to man
to bring him to the place where he would respect God’s
rights. Through the recognition of God’s
rights, obedience to God, man was to grow into all that
which had been ordained for him from God.
However,
it happened differently. The adversary appeared and
the battle for God’s rights started. This
happened in the form of a simple question: “Hath
God said?”
“Now
the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field
which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman,
“Yea, hath God said, ‘Ye shall not eat of every
tree of the garden?’” And the woman said
unto the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the
trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which
is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ‘Ye
shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye
die.’” And the serpent said unto the
woman, ‘Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know
that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be
opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil’”
(Gen. 3:1-5).
There
we have the questioning of God’s rights. The
will of man is to stand in the place of the will of
God. What is religious modernism other than
that? The authority of the Word of God is
opposed. Human thoughts judge that which is of God.
One
king of Israel dared to say: “Who is the
Lord?” This is what things are like for God
after the fall. This is what He has to take into account,
but that which He is also strong enough to overcome.
In
the New Testament we see the same fight over the rights
of God in His house. The Lord says: “It is
written, ‘My house shall be called a house of
prayer: but you have made it a den of robbers” (Matt.
21:13). And in saying this, He explains the parable
of the vineyard owner.
“Hear
another parable: There was a certain householder, which
planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged
a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to
husbandmen, and went into a far country: And when
the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to
the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of
it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat
one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again,
he sent other servants more than the first: and they did
unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto
them his son, saying, “They will reverence my son.” But
when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among
themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill
him, and let us seize on his inheritance.” And
they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and
slew him” (Matt. 21:33-39).
God
has planted a vineyard and has put a fence around
it. This vineyard is His property. Nobody
therefore has any rights in this vineyard except
Him. Then He hired it out to husbandmen and sent His
servants after a while, to fetch the fruit, His ‘rights’. The
husbandmen, however, beat them and killed them and
murdered His Son in the end. This is robbing
God. This is misuse of His rights to the
extreme. The Pharisees recognized that this parable
was meant for them. They gnashed their teeth. They
did not consider repenting. Only a short while later, and
the Lord has to say about Jerusalem: “O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and
stoneth them that are sent unto her! How often would I
have gathered thy children together, even as a hen
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would
not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.”
(Matt. 23:37,38). What was once God’s house, is His
house no longer. God has left it. His house is
somewhere else. It is in the hearts of those that
have opened themselves to Him. “WE are His
house.” And Christ is the Son over God’s
house (Heb. 3:6).
The
connection, which the Lord Jesus Christ makes between
Himself and the ministry of the prophets, shows us:
Firstly,
that the prophets and the Son of God stand in a very
specific relationship to each other as far as the will of
God is concerned. They were sent in view of the
rights of God; they were killed because of the rights of
God.
Secondly:
The church as the house of God is there where the rights
of God are recognized and given to Him.
But
is there something more disputed than His church? Where
is she? Is she there, where people that call
themselves Christians come together? Yes and
no. Fellowship is one of the characteristics of His
church. But not fellowship outwardly, but oneness in
spirit. Spiritual fellowship cannot be made.
It is foolish to think that one could join the church,
because one agrees with the message or structure of an
assembly. The church is more than the union of
religious people. The church consists of those to
whom the Lord has brought new life, in whose hearts He
has become Lord, of those who have learned to worship Him
in Spirit and in truth. The church is not our
house. It is His house. He, however, is the
Lord of heaven, Who has judged this world and has done
away with it for ever. How could we serve Him with
that which He has rejected? How could we dare to
bring Him that which has been judged through the
Cross? How long will it take until the eyes of the
children of God are opened to the fact that the church of
our Lord Jesus Christ must be heavenly through and
through, that the church has nothing at all in common
with this world?
If
we did not take into account the power of the Holy
Spirit, we would despair. The natural man cannot
understand that his role is finished, that the new birth
is an absolutely new life, in which all our natural
opinions will have ceased. The soulish and the
spiritual are so mixed up even in advanced believers,
that only the Holy Spirit is able to divide
them. But a division must come. In God’s
house there is no room for anything of man. Any
so-called goodness of man, his religious disposition and
his seemingly unselfish efforts are all a big
deception. If God’s rights are to be of
account, then all our rights, however skillfully covered,
have to come to an end.
This
takes us to Moses. He stands before us as a prophet.
How zealous he was for the rights of God! God showed
him His house on the mountain. But at the foot of
the mountain he erected an altar and sacrificed. By
doing so he respected the rights of God. His altar
is nothing else but the explanation that the way to God’s
mountain (and therefore to God’s house) is via the
Cross of Calvary. Lightning and thunder surrounded
the mountain. It was so terrible, that even Moses
trembled. Why? Because no one can come close to
God and serve Him except he whom God has called. God
takes care that the mountain is fenced off, that nothing
may come close to Him, that access to Him is only through
the power of the Blood.
We
say all of this in view of the rights of God. There
is a burden on our hearts to make clear that God’s
house is only really God’s house if it is filled by
Him alone. We see this in the
tabernacle. Because of the veil it is separated from
everything outside. Inside, however, everything
speaks through the large altar of the rights of God, the
right God has over all life, of His sole and exclusive
right.
When,
after Solomon, the worship of God began to waiver, when
other gods were worshipped, prophetic service amongst the
people increased. Why? We have said before that
the prophets stood for God’s rights in a special
way. When therefore a prophet raised his voice in
the old covenant, we know that something was not in
order, that God was working to win back that which was
lost, to save the spiritual from being covered up by
formalism and tradition. This stepping in for God marks
Elijah in a special way. When he says: “As
the Lord liveth, before whom I stand,” it means:
The Lord and I are one; the Lord stands on my side
because I stand on His side; your attitude towards me
reflects your attitude towards the Lord. And all
this happens in view of winning back the rights of
God. Now Elijah was not an important personality. We
judge him wrongly if we ascribe him a personality which
he did not have. The Lord shows him to us when he
was discouraged, sitting under the juniper tree:
“But he himself went a day’s journey into the
wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree:
and he requested for himself that he might die; and said,
‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I
am not better than my fathers’” (1
Kings 19:4).
And
James confirms this, by saying: “Elijah was a man
of like nature with us” (James
5:17). But the Lord has chosen him. His calling
has to do with the rights of God. Because he stood
on God’s side, God stands with him. The Lord
defends His honor in His prophet. He seeks to
safeguard His rights in those that are His
messengers. For example, consider Elijah and the
widow of Zarephath.
“And
the word of the Lord came unto him (Elijah), saying,
“Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to
Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow
woman there to sustain thee.” So he arose and
went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of
the city, behold, the widow woman was there gathering of
sticks: and he called to her, and said, “Fetch me, I
pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.” And
as she was going to fetch it, he called to her, and said,
“Bring me, I pray thee, a morsel of bread in thine
hand.” And she said, “As the Lord thy God
liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal
in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I
am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it
for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.” And
Elijah said unto her, “Fear not; go and do as thou
hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and
bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy
son. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, “The
barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse
of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain
upon the earth.” And she went and did according
to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house,
did eat many days. And the barrel of meal wasted
not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the
Word of the Lord, which He spake by Elijah” (1
Kings 17:8-16).
Now
when Elijah comes to the widow, she has just enough flour
and oil for one cake, but Elijah tells her: “First
make me something to eat.” This looks like
selfishness. But the Lord and he are one. Is
the widow ready to recognize this? Is she willing to
honour the Lord in His prophet? Should God have His
right at the peril of herself possessing nothing any
more? The woman obeys. What a victory! It
is the recognition of the rights of God that leads to the
jar of flour not becoming empty and the cruse of oil not
drying up. The recognition of the rights of God has
opened the door to wonderful experiences. Not that
her faith did not have to go through depths. That
happened when her son died. Then she could see life
out of death, the power of resurrection, something which
not everyone has the privilege to see. She had
recognized God’s rights and had given Him the first
place. Then the Lord manifests the power of
resurrection.
“And
it came to pass after these things, that the son of the
woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick; and his
sickness was so sore, that there was no breath left in
him. And she said unto Elijah, “What have I to
do with thee, O thou man of God? art thou come unto me to
call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?” And
he said unto her, “Give me thy son.” And
he took him out of her bosom, and carried him up into a
loft, where he abode, and laid him upon his own
bed. And he cried unto the Lord, and said, “O
Lord my God, hast Thou also brought evil upon the widow
with whom I sojourn, by slaying her son?” And
he stretched himself upon the child three times, and
cried unto the Lord, and said, “O Lord my God, I
pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him
again.” And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah;
and the soul of the child came into him again, and he
revived. And Elijah took the child, and brought him
down out of the chamber into the house, and delivered him
unto his mother: and Elijah said, ‘See, thy son
liveth’” (1 Kings 17:17-23).
Let
us see this in the light of the house of God. The
house of God is the place where He is everything, where
the Lord has been recognized in the power of His
resurrection, where we come together as living stones, in
whom heavenly life has become a reality.
Let
us not think that we will be spared
difficulties. How Moses suffered! How Elijah
was persecuted! The presence of the Lord does not
mean that we will be spared suffering. On the
contrary. We will be slandered, denied and
persecuted. We will be abandoned and hated. We will
not be spared this. This does not mean that the presence
of God is not with us. We find it in the life of the Lord
in us. We find it in the ability to be calm. We
find it in the peace and joy in the midst of all storms
and tribulations. That is enough. That is worth
more than all recognition and outward
confirmation. But when the Lord comes, we will
appear with Him, and because we have sought His rights
and have given Him His rights, we will exult and rejoice
in the universal reign of our Lord, Who will be “The
Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with
Him are called, and chosen, and faithful” (Rev.
17:14).