"From spoil won
in battles they dedicated gifts to maintain the house of
the Lord." 1 Chronicles 26:27.
From this passage of
Scripture we gather that the House of the Lord is
constituted out of our conflicts. The Lord builds from
the fruit of conflict. Thus it was in the temple, given
through David to Solomon. When that temple was completed
it stood as a monument to universal victory; its very
substance declared triumph on the right hand and on the
left. The silver and the gold, and all the precious
things which it comprised, had been taken in battle and
wrought into the House of God. What is an illustration in
the Old Testament is true in the reality of the New. The
greater Son of David, the greater than Solomon, who
"is here", builds the House from the spoil of
His own warfare, and the warfare of His saints.
I was impressed as I
read in this first book of Chronicles, chapter 17:9. The
Lord is speaking to David, and one of the things which He
says is: "And I will appoint a place for my people
Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in their
own place, and be moved no more; neither shall the
children of wickedness waste them any more, as at the
first, and as from the day that I commanded judges to be
over my people Israel; and I will subdue all thine
enemies". You notice that the Lord refers to the
judges over Israel. The Lord raised up judges, as you
will remember, to do that which Israel had failed to do
completely under Joshua. Under Joshua they were meant by
the Lord to utterly destroy all the nations in the land,
and completely to subdue every enemy. They failed to do
that. They suffered enemies to remain, they compromised,
and then the Lord raised the judges to save them from
the terrible results of their having failed to make a
complete work of destroying all their enemies. But the
judges failed, and the Book of Judges is a sad story of
the work still incomplete. The Lord raised up the judges
to do that which had not been done, but again the judges
did not perfect the work. And it is tremendously
interesting and illuminating to notice in 1 Chronicles 18
and 19, when the Lord had spoken to David about building
the House, how he definitely and positively took in hand
to overthrow all those other nations which the judges had
not overthrown; and they are mentioned in these two
chapters. Go over them and you will find a list of the
very nations and peoples mentioned in the Book of Judges;
and David, through the vision of the House of God, seems
to be moved instinctively by the Spirit of God to see
that the House can never be realised until these enemies
are subdued, until they are entirely overthrown. The Lord
fulfilled His word to subdue all his enemies, and those
very nations were taken in hand and dealt with. When the
Lord had given David victory on every side round about,
then he handed the plan to Solomon to carry out the
building of the House, and the spoil of those battles was
the material for the House. The enemy had the resources
for the House of God, and the enemy had to be despoiled
that the House might be built. That could lead us a very
long way and be very illuminating. I want to seek to
reduce it to a few words and a small compass which,
nevertheless, will provide you with a great deal for
future helpfulness and contemplation.
The
Twofold Building
There are two aspects of
the building of the House of God. We are rather inclined
to take more account of one than the other. There is the
numerical side. When we think of building the House of
God, we think of the gathering in of people, the adding
of souls by their salvation and being brought into the
truth, and so we think only of the House of God being
built in the sense referred to by Peter: "Ye also,
as living stones, are built up a spiritual
house...", that is, we think of the numerical side,
the gathering of the individual stones and their coming
into their place in the spiritual edifice. Well, that is
a true side to the building of the Lord's House, but it
is only one side, and only half of the truth. There is
another side which is equally important, without which
that will be altogether an inadequate thing; that other
side is the spiritual and moral side of the building of
God's House. You may have a great number of individuals
saved and still fail to have the truest meaning of the
House of God. You may have a congregation and not have a
church. You may have numbers, and not have the House of God spiritually. The House of God is not only a
numerical thing, it is a spiritual and moral thing. That
is, it has a character, and that character is what makes
it in very essence the House of God. It takes its
character from its Head and will eventually, in its
consummation, be recognised - not as a great multitude
merely of saved souls - but as something which bears the
character of its Head, the Lord Jesus. The time is coming
when the Lord will cause His Name to be upon His own;
that is, we shall receive a white stone, and in that
white stone a new name; we shall have a new name, and we
shall be called by His Name, His Name will be in our
foreheads. That is all symbolic language, and its meaning
is just this: the Lord Jesus will be so fully manifested
in His own that as you look at them you will say: 'That
speaks of the Lord Jesus.' You will recognise so much of
Him, He will be so much in evidence, that you will simply
have to say: 'That is the nature of Christ.' You have met
Him in them, and in meeting them you met Him. And so He
will be universally revealed through His own. His Name is
His character, what His Name embodies spiritually and
morally will be resting upon them, they will take their
character from Him, and so there will be one universal
displaying of the character and nature of the Lord Jesus.
It will not dispense with His own individual personal
being, but His people will be a channel of His own universal
expression.
Character
Through Conflict
The building of the
House of the Lord, therefore, is not only a gathering of
people but it is a spiritual and a moral building up, and
that is only brought about through conflict. The Divine economy
has been so ordered that, although the Lord Jesus has in
Himself secured a universal triumph over all His foes, the foes
are still left for us to deal with. The enemy, although
defeated, has still been left for the saints to have
something to do with, and the Lord has not put our foes
out of the universe, though in Himself He has triumphed.
He has left them for us to deal with in His triumph, and
it is thus that you and I get our spiritual and moral
development. It is by conflict, by battle, by grim and
terrible warfare spiritually, that the moral excellencies
of our triumphant Head are brought out in us. We triumph
in His victory, but we know that faith is so tested in a
conflict, so deeply tried in a battle, that it is
something more than just objectively holding on, or
believing in something in Christ; that very exercise of
faith brings out from Him, into our own souls, the
strength of His victory. We are made morally one with Him
in His triumph by a test of faith which is so grim and so
terrible that nothing that is not of Him in us would be
sufficient to carry us through. It has to be wrought into
our very being, and that is done through conflict in
which faith is drawn out; and so, spiritually and
morally, we build through conflict, through adversity, in
the Divine and sovereign ordering of our lives.
The moral side of things
is that which comes out in exercise, exercise of faith in
the value of Calvary's victory. It is one thing to have a
theoretical appropriation of Calvary's victory and say in
an hour of emergency: 'I take the victory of Calvary.' But
very often nothing happens, and although you take a
position like that, you find yourself called upon to hold
on, and hold on, and hold on, and during that time of
being called upon by the Lord to hold on, faith is being
tested, Calvary's victory is becoming something not
objectively taken hold of but inwardly established, and
at last that victory is in us as it is in the Lord. But
it has become a moral quality in our being, and in the
next time of testing it is not a trying to get hold of
something, it is there with its roots in us, something
has been done in us, it has been made a part of us.
The
Battle over Revelation
Now this works in
various ways, and in numerous directions and connections.
You receive an enlightenment, an unveiling from the Lord in
relation to truth; an opening of the heavens to see
Divine truth as you have never before seen that truth;
perhaps it is a new, an entirely new thing, or perhaps it
is new light upon an old thing. In any case, it is a new
illumination; enlightenment which comes to you with all the
freshness, and all the joy, and all the inspiration, and
all the uplift of the opening of the heavens; and for a
time you delight in it, you glory in it, you bathe
yourself in it, and you have nothing else to talk about
but the new revelation which has come to you. And then a
point comes where you go right into an awful conflict in
connection with that very light. It seems that the
first glory of it has gone and you are left asking all
sorts of questions about it. You are cold, dead, dark;
the thing has lost its grip and looking at it now from
this standpoint, the standpoint of this experience, you
wonder whether after all it was right or not. What
strange creatures we are! Things which have come to us as
the mightiest things in our experience can, in given
circumstances, be the things which are questioned by us
as to whether they are really true at all, or whether we
simply picked up something and ran it for a time; there
was a freshness about it, and its freshness was its own
momentum to carry us on; now it is all unreal, and we go
into a time of conflict over truth given to us by the
Lord. In that time of conflict we are searched, our
hearts are looked into, we are tried. Remember Joseph:
"Until the time that his word came to pass, the word
of Jehovah tried him." The Word of the Lord tried
him; and we have to go over the things which we have been
saying and believing, and have to ask ourselves all sorts
of questions about them.
The Word of the Lord
tries us, but it is in that conflict that spiritual and
moral elements are developed, features are brought out.
Conflict secures the spoil for further building, and then
we come back again, not only on to the original ground of
our apprehension of that truth, but on to a very much
higher, and into a much deeper and stronger apprehension
of that thing, so that it is more to us than it was
before, because we have gone into the battle with it, and
we have come out with spoil for building; there have been
fresh heavenly factors put into it. Something has been
introduced into the original thing, through the conflict,
which has given it extra value; it is the power of
resurrection. Thus the truth of God comes as from God,
with all its Divine glory, beauty, strength, and we
rejoice in that light for a season, and then we go into
death with that very light; but in the battle, in the
conflict, the death, the being searched, tried, tested,
found out, and driven down to the place where, if that
goes, we go, because it is our life, then the power of
resurrection begins to operate and we come back with that
thing stronger than ever, and in addition with spoils for
building. We know the value of that thing as we had never
proved it before, because we had never been into conflict
with it, we had never tested that armour, never tried
that sword; but now something of value has been given to
it which we never knew until we went into the conflict
with it. It does work that way with an enlightenment. How
many people we have seen leap to the light! They
have embraced it, could talk about nothing but the new
revelation that had come to them. We are very glad, we
are delighted when people do this, but we say: 'Yes,
presently they will be tested on that, and that thing
will test them.' Then they go into a time of awful conflict
and darkness, full of questions as to whether or not,
after all, the thing is true, is right. Now the Lord
is putting the thing inside. Before it was very largely on the
circumference; it was, in a sense, in a measure,
objective; but now the Lord is planting the thing into
them, and them into it. They will come through and say:
'Before, it was something given to me but it belonged to
someone else, now it is mine.' Thus they begin to build
with the spoil resultant from the conflict.
The
Battle over Vocation
The same thing is true
in the matter of service and purpose. The Lord gives a
burden as to His intention, the purpose unto which He is
calling us as His servants, and the vision captures us,
the purpose lays hold of us, and for the time being we
have nothing to think about or talk about but the burden which He has laid on us; the whole sense of vocation and
service has mastered us; we have a vision. Well, we go on
with that for a time, by the momentum of the vision and
then it seems that the vision fails, or we get into such
a realm of conflict over that vision, and such a battle
rages, that the thing seems to go into death, and we pass
through a deep and dark experience in which the whole
question comes up again: Was there anything in it after
all? Have we not been mistaken? Is this the thing to
which the Lord has called us? Was it not something we
leaped at and, after all, the Lord did not mean it for
us? Have we been wrong? I expect most of us know those
experiences of conflict, of battle over the vision, but
it finds us at length in a stronger place than ever
before in relation to that Divine purpose.
Our history is just
that; many times we have been into death and conflict
with our vision, in which experiences it seemed that the
vision went altogether. Many questions arose about it,
but we came through and we found ourselves more solidly
bound up with that Divine purpose than ever we were. We
have gone into conflict and there have emerged spiritual
and moral elements by which there is a building up as a
result of the trial.
The
Battle over a Position Taken
We take a position, we
declare ourselves - and how easy it is in meetings and in
conferences to take positions, amongst the fellowship of
the Lord's people to declare ourselves - that we are
going in a certain direction, that for us this is to be
the course for ever: 'I never, no never will leave
Him'. We can sing these things glibly in hymns:
to-morrow may find us reviewing the whole thing, looking
round to see if there is not some back-door way out. It
is true: these hearts of ours are at best inconsistent.
We take our attitudes, we take our positions, make
declarations, and for the time being, in the strength of
that, we go on, and then we are challenged as to our
position.
See how this is
illustrated in the history of the children of Israel:
"Then sang Moses and the children of Israel:
"Then sang Moses and the children of Israel..."
They got to the other side of the sea and all Israel
sang. What did they sing? A song of absolute victory.
You would have thought that they were in the land
already, but it was not long before they were murmuring
against the Lord and Moses. They were tested, challenged,
tried by the position which they had taken, and then went
through a dark time. So we, whenever we make a
declaration, shall sooner or later be tested by it. (I
hope the effect of what I am saying will not be that you
will say: 'I will never declare myself again!' If you do
take that attitude it may simply prevent the Lord in
His purpose). It is necessary, in order to get the spoil, that we
go that way. The qualities are only going to be drawn out
in that way, and it is quite right that in the measure of
devotion we have, we make a declaration, take a position;
the Lord calls upon us to do that, it gives Him the
ground for testing us out. Somehow in the order of
things it seems that the Lord requires declarations
before He can do much. If you have never declared
yourself, have always had a reservation, have been so
cautious, the Lord has never been able to do anything
with you. It is when we take our feet off the bottom and
launch out into the deep, and say that we are out with
the Lord, that the Lord can begin to do things. We are
tried by the position we have taken, and tested by our
commitment, and those qualities are brought in which are
building qualities, the spoil of battle.
Recently I was reading the
following:
"Many people
are wanting power. Now how is power produced? The other
day we passed the great works where the trolley engines
are supplied with electricity. We heard the hum and roar
of the countless wheels, and we asked our friend, 'How do
they make the power?' 'Why', he said, 'just by the
revolution of those wheels and the friction they produce.
The rubbing creates the electric current.'
"And so, when
God wants to bring more power into your life, He brings
more pressure. He is generating spiritual force by hard
rubbing. Some do not like it and try to run away from the
pressure, instead of getting the power and using it to
rise above the painful causes.
"Opposition is
essential to a true equilibrium of forces. The
centripetal and centrifugal forces acting in opposition
to each other keep our planet in her orbit. The one
propelling, and the other repelling, so act and re-act,
that instead of sweeping off into space in a pathway of
desolation, she pursues her even orbit around her solar
centre.
"So God guides
our lives. It is not enough to have an impelling force -
we need just as much a repelling force, and so He holds
us back by the testing ordeals of life, by the pressure
of temptation and trial, by the things that seem against
us, but really are furthering our way and establishing
our goings.
"Let us thank
Him for both, let us take the weights as well as the
wings, and thus divinely impelled, let us press on with
faith and patience in our high and heavenly
calling."
(From "Streams in the Desert")
That is only another way
of stating the case. Light and power come from conflict.
And so the Lord builds His House with the spoils of
battle, and allows the enemies to remain for our
overcoming, inward enemies and outward enemies, in order
that He may get the beauty and the glory for His House.
The Lord lay His finger
upon this word, and show us that when He gives a vision,
an illumination, a call when we respond and then reverses
come in. Difficulty and opposition are no contradiction
of God's revelation or call, but are intended to bring us
into something which is more than merely an emotional
realm in relation to truth and service; they must bring
into a place of strength where we can be counted upon.
Says the Lord Jesus, "I will build my church; and
the gates of hades shall not prevail against it" -
because of its moral quality. Because of its moral virtue
it is established for ever.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1966, Vol 44-2.