"...having
foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus
Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of
his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which
he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved... to the end
that we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who
had before hoped in Christ" (Eph. 1:5-6,12).
"For
we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in
them" (Eph. 2:10).
"And
now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with
the glory which I had with thee before the world
was" (John 17:5).
We are
at this time being directed to take account of God's
spiritual house, and in our previous meditation we were
thinking of the first and pre-eminent feature of this
spiritual house, in which we, in Christ, are living
stones, as being the proclamation or setting forth of the
exaltation of God's Son. We noticed that everything, so
far as God's house is concerned, takes its rise from that
exaltation. What happened on the day of Pentecost was the
spontaneous outflow of that exaltation of God's Son to
the right hand of the Majesty on high, and the secret of
life, of power, of victory, in those first days of the
Church's life and history was this very fact. Its life
flowed out from this; its testimony was this, that Jesus
as God's Son was exalted to the throne on high. You know
that was the testimony of Peter on the day of Pentecost.
You know that was the note of Stephen. You know the
Apostles continually testified to that great fact, that
God had made Him Lord and Christ, that He was exalted. I
repeat, everything came out of that, and it resolves
itself into the great element of assurance, something
which is always very necessary; and never was there a
time when it was more necessary than now.
The Assault upon Assurance
In our
previous meditation, we referred to the fact that the
great spiritual enemy has pursued his ambition for world
dominion along the line of the propagation of a lie, his
great "fifth column" propaganda, and he has
made great headway by the campaign of lies to the
undermining of assurance and confidence.
There is
another thing which he has done and is doing in a
spiritual way, which is so clearly seen at present
working out along temporal lines, and is indeed the
confessed and published strategy of those who are now
being driven and used and governed by Satan toward world
domination by the elimination of Christ. They have put it
on record that their strategy is to work secretly within
the national life of their enemies steadily through the
years, with a view to bringing about internal
disintegration by the breakdown of confidence: and how
they have done it and are doing it! I do not want to
dwell on the earthly, temporal and political side of
things, but it does disclose the principles of Satanic
activity, this working subtly and secretly behind the
scenes within the life of their enemies with a view to
destroying confidence, and so bringing about collapse
from the inside. Indeed, the phrase which is in print in
that connection is, We will make our enemies defeat
themselves! Well, they have done it in many countries.
Now,
take it as a clue to what is happening spiritually. Oh,
how Satan has pursued that course right through history,
to destroy confidence, for confidence is a tremendous
factor. You see how nations seek to bolster up and
stimulate assurance within their own borders in order to
secure strength against their enemies. What will they not
do to reassure people, to put confidence into people?
Satan knows that an assured people set him the biggest
problem and represent the most impossible situation for
him. Now, if you look at those first days of the Church's
life, one outstanding feature was this assurance. They
were men without questions, people without doubts. They
could speak with authority because their hearts were
settled; they were not divided inwardly. There were none
of the seeds of internal disintegration. The basis of
that assurance and settled position was just this, that
the Holy Spirit had come and in them had mightily
registered the fact that Jesus was on the throne.
"Jesus... by the right hand of God exalted."
They had no question about that, and therefore all doubts
were set at rest. The exaltation of the Lord Jesus, when
it becomes something settled in our own hearts, is a
mighty factor in testimony, in life, in service, and
unless we have it we are altogether at a discount.
Now, in
days such as these in which we are living, the strategy
of the enemy is to undermine assurance. I am not speaking
about world things now, but spiritual assurance. The
House of God is therefore built by this means, the
assurance that Jesus Christ is exalted, and you cannot
build without it. In the case of David and Solomon, we
noted how the bringing in of that house for the Lord God
which was to be exceeding magnificent, all sprang from
the fact that God had secured both His king and the
throne for His king. God made a covenant with David. God
took an oath with David that of the fruit of his loins
should one sit upon his throne, and his throne should be
established for ever. Now, that is transferred, as you
know, to the Lord Jesus. It only had a merely figurative
and very imperfect fulfilment in Solomon. Solomon came to
a shameful end, but in the days of his glory he was a
figure of another. Thus in the book of the Acts we have
those words quoted from the Psalm:
"The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right
hand, till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy
feet" (Acts 2:34-35).
The
Apostle uses those words in connection with this other
word to David: "David... being therefore a prophet,
and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that
of the fruit of his loins he would set one upon his
throne; he foreseeing this spake of... the Christ,"
spake of this One; and God has fulfilled His word, not in
a shadow, not in a type, but right up to the hilt in this
greater Son of David. David's greater Son is on the
throne of thrones, and out of God's securing of His King
in glory and exaltation, the history of the Church
begins, and the supreme note by which the Church is built
is the note of absolute assurance which comes from what
God has secured in glory in His Son.
God's Rest in His Son
Assurance
comes from heart rest. Here again let us mark and how
full of truth, exactitude, the Scriptures are everywhere
- that it was no accident or chance or hap that Solomon,
the man who was chosen for this position, had the name of
Solomon. Solomon means "rest." Now you notice
Stephen, referring to Solomon, says a rather interesting
thing in Acts 7:47-49.
"But Solomon built him a house. Howbeit the Most
High dwelleth not in houses made with hands; as saith the
prophet: The heaven is my throne, and the earth the
footstool of my feet: O what manner of house will ye
build me? saith the Lord: Or what is the place of my
rest?"
Then
Solomon had another name - Jedidiah, "Beloved of
God." That is what we read in Ephesians - "hath
made us accepted in the Beloved." You see, the Lord
Jesus takes up Solomon on both his names. He is God's
rest, "the place of my rest"; and He is the
Beloved of God, the Beloved of the Father. So that, in
the very first place, God gets all that His heart is set
upon, with regard to what His house is to be, in the
Person of His Son, and it is out of this that the house
corporately, of which we are parts, takes its rise. It is
built upon that heart rest which God has in His Son.
Now, you
and I have to come to the same place as God in regard to
the Lord Jesus before we can really be an expression of
His house. We are His spiritual house: "Whose house
are we." But that does not mean that God just puts
us together as bricks. He must have living stones, and
that phrase "living stones" implies, as the
context shows in 1 Peter 2:5, that it is by a living
relation with the chief Corner Stone that the house is
built: "unto whom coming, a living stone... ye also,
as living stones, are built up a spiritual house."
The parts are one with the Corner Stone, all of a piece,
so far as their nature is concerned, one with Him in what
He is. As the building, we have to take our character
from that chief Corner Stone which God has chosen.
"I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect,
precious." God works to Him and from Him. You and I
work to Him and from Him. But what is this that gives the
House its character? It is God's full and perfect
satisfaction in His Son which gives Him rest. God rested
from all His works on the seventh day, and God beheld all
things which He had made, and they were very good. Now,
carry that right through in this spiritual connection
with God's house, and long, long after you hear this
word: "that he might present it (the church) to
himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or
any such thing." That is only saying, It is very
good! The thing which first of all satisfies God's heart
is that His Son has answered to all that He has ever
required in a spiritual and a moral way. That is God's
rest, and the exaltation of the Lord Jesus is God's seal
to the fact. God is satisfied, God is at rest. Thus it is
that, as the Lord Jesus is just about to step out on that
last bit of the journey which is to see Him crucified, He
says, "Father, glorify thou me with thine own self
with the glory which I had with thee before the world
was" (John 17:5). Glorify thou Me! Yes, that is
coming almost at once by the darkest part of the road. It
is the way to the glory. This last step, the Cross, is
the final stage and summing up of all that has been in
the satisfaction of God's heart.
The Value of the Blood of Jesus
What I
am coming to in all that I have said is this, that it is
by His precious Blood that God's absolute rest in the
Lord Jesus is secured. Oh, beloved, you and I need ever
more and more to apprehend the supreme value of the Blood
of Jesus! The value of the Blood of Jesus is the great
factor at the end time. It is the supreme factor in heart
rest, and heart rest is the only ground of victory; and
therefore Satan is always seeking to rob the children of
God of heart rest on spiritual matters. I am going to
make this appeal to you all at this time, although
something more will have to be said at some other time
about it; but I do want to make this appeal to you, that
we ought to be at the place where the matter of our
relationship with God in acceptance, in peace, in rest,
in fellowship, is an absolute thing now. We must not
allow the other side of our spiritual experience to cross
that dividing line and come into the realm of our
assurance. I mean, there is that other side where the
Lord is conforming us to the image of His Son. He has a
great work on hand in us, and, as He takes it in hand, we
discover as never before what a work it is. We discover
ourselves, discover the depths of iniquity that are to be
found in our fallen nature. It becomes a terrible thing
to us. But never allow that which comes to light by God's
handling of us to cross over into that other place of our
acceptance, our standing, our peace with God. So many
people fail to keep that line clearly defined and they
accept all kinds of accusations from the enemy because
the Lord is dealing with them in this way. They feel so
bad, so worthless, so useless, so utterly impotent and
evil, and suppose therefore that their relationship with
the Lord is interrupted, and the Lord is not pleased with
them, and all that sort of thing, and they lose their
rest. I believe that is why a lot of people have turned
strongly against the subjective side of God's working,
because they have seen many Christians altogether
breakdown in their assurance under it. You come to a
place where you know the Lord has accepted you and that
you have peace with God; your sins are forgiven, and you
are blessedly at peace, enjoying the Lord. Well, you are
there for a time, and then you come into touch with
something that has to do with spiritual progress and
fuller life in Christ, and all that is bound up with
that. Now many, as soon as they begin to touch that, lose
their old basic assurance and joy, and because of that,
there are those who have turned, not only against simple
salvation and rejoicing in the Lord as Saviour, but all
that is beyond besides. They will not have any more. They
will not have what is subjective. That does not justify
their position, but it does say that we have to be very
careful about this matter: and we have to stand up to
this thing. We have to take this position, and no doubt
some of you have taken this position - Well, I know I am
beginning to know something of the depths of evil in my
own nature; I am coming to see what I never would have
believed to be true of myself. I have never had worse
times about myself, the hopelessness of myself, than I am
having now. I am seeing more and more that in me, that is
in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing! and so on, but...
but that is the Lord's matter. That is for the Lord to
deal with. I am not going to allow that to encroach upon
my absolute acceptance with God, my basic standing before
God. I am not going to allow all the problems of
sanctification to come over and destroy the great
assurance of justification! You must be very careful to
keep that line clearly defined, because, if I am not
mistaken, that is just the work of the devil to destroy
the power of the Church and I believe that that is the
heart of Rev. 12 - "They overcame him because of the
blood of the Lamb" - and who is it they are
overcoming? The accuser of the brethren. He is seeking to
cast them down by accusation, and their answer to his
accusation is the Blood of the Lamb. What is that? God
satisfied, God at rest, and I at rest on the basis of the
Blood. They overcame him and he is cast down. They are
not cast down when they maintain their position there.
The Blood is not something just for initial salvation: it
is something for final triumph; it is the final thing.
The value of the Blood is a tremendous thing to keep the
Lord's people strong and assured, confident, and with the
ringing note of authority; God's basis of satisfaction,
the Blood of His Son making possible His exaltation.
Well,
this is all to do with that necessary, indispensable
element of assurance by which the Church is built. The
spiritual house goes forward on that line. I believe that
that is the secret of the remarkable progress at the
beginning. "The Lord added to them daily those who
were being saved." The Church grew in a way in which
it has never grown since, and the great factor in the
building of the house then, in the growth of the Church,
was that there was this note of absolute assurance and
confidence. They were a people who had heart rest, and
who knew that Jesus Christ was enthroned. For them that
settled matters in their hearts between themselves and
God. That is all going back to our previous meditation,
but it leads us right on to this further thing which the
passages we have read bring specially before us. It is
that the spiritual house has its existence for the very
purpose of answering to God's own desire, ministering to
God's own pleasure and glory. There are these phrases in
Ephesians: "That we should be to the praise of the
glory of his grace"; "to the praise of his
glory," should exist to satisfy God's heart, to
minister to His glory, to His pleasure. In this way, the
spiritual house is to be God's answer to all that has
happened in history.
God's New Creation
In the
first creation gathered up into the first Adam, we have
seen God surveying His working and saying, It is very
good! Then followed breakdown, chaos, ruin in the
creation. Out of a ruined creation, God lifted a nation,
and the greatest thing that was ever said of Israel, I
think, is in that little phrase. "Israel my
glory." What a thing to say! Israel My glory! And in
the early days of Solomon, Israel was God's glory. Again
comes breakdown, failure, ruin. Finally we see God coming
back again, coming back on Israel, coming back on
creation with a new creation in Christ Jesus. Firstly, as
to Christ Himself personally, and being able to say, as
we have seen, "My beloved, in whom I am well
pleased," I am fully satisfied. In other words, it
is the new creation seen in Christ, and God saying, It is
very good, I am well pleased.
But then
there comes in the Church, the Church which is His Body,
which is an extension of the new creation from Christ
personal to Christ corporate, and the last thing in view
about this Church is its coming down from heaven having
the glory of God, or, to use the other words,
"presented unto him a glorious church," or
again, "when he shall come to be glorified in his
saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that
believed" (2 Thess. 1:10). That is the end. So that
this is God's final answer. There is not going to be
another chaos and ruin in the creation. This is God's
last answer to all that has gone before of ruin and
breakdown. It is the Church, this spiritual house, a new
creation.
What the Church Is
What,
then, is this spiritual house? What is this Church? Let
us not have an objective mentality about this, thinking
of it as something somewhere outside of and apart from
ourselves. What is it? The answer is a very simple one.
The spiritual house of God is Christ Himself. Yes, but
not Christ personally alone, but Christ in you, in me,
the hope of glory. Oh, it is just here that all the
mistakes have been made about the Church, with such
disastrous results. The Church, the House of God, is
simply Christ Himself in undivided oneness found in all
those in whom He really dwells. That is all. That is the
Church. Seek to root out of your mentality any and every
other idea of the Church. It is not Christ divided into a
thousand or a million fragments amongst so many
believers. It is still one Christ. You and I are not the
Church. It is Christ in you and in me that is the Church.
We still remain what we are outside of the Church still
on our natural ground, but it is the measure of Christ in
us that constitutes the Church, a spiritual Church, a
spiritual house, the one Christ by the one Spirit in all
those in whom He dwells. That is the Church. God has
never seen in that Church, in that Temple, anything but
His Son. He is the Temple of God and you and I can never
belong to the Church save as Christ is in us. I know that
is a simple thing to say, but if we would just fasten on
that and see what that means; it is one of the great
factors of unspeakably great power against the enemy, if
only we would live on that basis, if only we would abide
there.
There
are two ways of approaching the matter, and I see again
the great success of Satanic propaganda in this matter. I
do not know what you older Christians think about it. We
can only speak of what we have recognized in our
lifetime, but we have lived long enough to recognize the
course of things, and to me it does seem, and it more
than seems, that, in the last few years, the last few
decades, there has been a far greater development and
growth of suspicion amongst Christians than there used to
be, so that today it is almost impossible to speak
anywhere without people wondering if you are quite sound.
It is in the atmosphere. It seems to me that there is a
constant alertness to scent something that is not quite
sound, and anything that is of God is prejudiced by that
attitude, that state of things. The real truth of God is
not getting a chance because this suspicion has spread
over all the world, among all Christians. Is this quite
right? Is this quite sound? Is this quite true? What is
the snag here? What is the error in this? It is like
that. That is the positive line, that has become the
positive line, and, beloved, I believe that this is one
of the marks of this Satanic propaganda to bring about
collapse from the inside, because it means that there is
internal disintegration, there is no cohesion, the people
of God are broken up into thousands of fragments by this
very spirit and atmosphere of suspicion bringing about
prejudice, and the Church cannot move together as a solid
whole. There are very few Christians indeed who can move
a hundred percent together, as one, simply because of
this. Satan brings it into the most intimate circles of
Christian life and fellowship, all the time bringing up
this horrible element of uncertainty, question. Yes, he
has got into the inside, and he is bringing about
internal disintegration and collapse in a very quiet way,
but subtly working through the years, and he can win many
bloodless battles along that line. He can take territory
very easily along that line and hold it and gain his end
of dominion.
Take
another earthly expression of this spiritual background
of things. Do you not see, beloved, that over there there
is no room whatever for a second thought or a second
mind? Anybody through the last seven years who has had
another thought, another mind, a second idea, has been
eliminated. You may not there have two minds. You have
got to subjugate your mind to this other mind, this
dominating mind. You must not have an opinion, you must
not reason, you must not speak in any way that cuts
across the prevailing mind, the mind of the dictator.
There is no room for anything that is second. It is one.
Satan knows the almost infinite value of oneness, and
that is a secret of progress, of success; a ruthless,
murderous elimination of every second voice, to have only
one voice, one mind, one will, dominating all others.
Dare you think otherwise? Dare you have a mind of your
own? Well, have it, but make very sure that you never let
it be known. That is the regime, and what power there is
for the object in view!
Well
now, that is an earthly expression of a spiritual system.
Bring that into the realm of the Church. Why is the
Church paralysed, weakened, held up? Why can it not go
forward terrible as an army with banners? Because there
has been this disintegrating work secretly going on
within its borders, so that suspicion is the order of the
day. I suggest to you that, for the sake of the overthrow
of the Satanic kingdom which is to be brought about by
and through the Church in union with its Head, its Lord,
in glory, for the sake of that and unto that end, you and
I should make the opposite our positive course. Let us
not be forever suspiciously asking, what is wrong? What
is doubtful? What is unsafe here? but positively, What is
there of Christ in this? On that I fasten! What do I see
or sense of the Lord Jesus in this matter? With that I
engage, I co-operate. Oh, if we would only take that as
our positive course, Satan would soon be losing ground,
the Church would soon be coming up a glorious Church. One
thing which characterised the Church at its beginning was
oneness. They spoke the same things, they were all of one
mind and one heart, and what ground the enemy lost! But,
as soon as the enemy began his secret 'fifth column' work
of propagating internal doubts, suspicions, prejudices,
he very soon brought the Church down out of that realm of
reigning life and scattered its power. Oh, we must pray
the Lord that the one Christ, the one Spirit, shall be in
the ascendant in us! We shall not be living either upon
the ground of what we are naturally - for we shall always
be affected by what we are naturally, but upon the ground
of what there is of Christ in one another; neither let us
be dwelling upon the ground of possible error, possible
false teaching, and possibility of it being there all the
time and almost looking for that more than anything else.
Oh, we must trust the Lord about this matter! I do
believe, beloved, that the safest way, the way of our
protection from error, is to go on with the Lord. Our
position must be - I am going on with the Lord where I
find the Lord, and I am going to trust the Lord in the
matter of error, and, as we walk with the Lord, we shall
sense, without looking for it, where the error is, and we
shall be warned by the Spirit, we shall know. We must
move on the positive basis, that of the Lord Himself, and
that is glory in the Church, when it is the Lord.
"Christ in you, the hope of glory."
We know
quite well, in simple ways, that this is true. We meet
one another, we have never met before. We discover very
quickly by our spiritual sense that we belong to the
Lord, and then we have a very blessed time simply on that
ground. We flow together because we are the Lord's, and,
if only we stood there, we would go on having a blessed
time; but presently we begin to discuss some doctrine and
find we do not agree. All the glory goes out, the
fellowship breaks down. Oh, the Lord hold us into
Himself!
Now, I
am saying this spiritual house is Christ, and all that is
not Christ has got to be kept in its own place, and we
have got to seek to remain on the basis of Christ as in
us and as in one another, and this is the glory of God,
that we should be to the glory of His grace. That is
where it begins - His grace. It seems to me, it has
seemed to me through the years, (I do not know whether I
am right in doctrine now or not, it is a forgivable
mistake if it is error), but it has seemed to me through
the years very often, that the Lord Himself has taken
pains to keep me on the basis of grace, and by that I
mean He has so often let me know in experience that, but
for His grace, I am a lost man in experience, not a
doctrine, not as truth. Oh, today, it would be a bad
thing for me if it were not for the grace of God! Yes, to
appeal even today to the Blood, to the grace of God,
because of that precious Blood, today, after so many
years of knowing the Lord! Yes, it is grace today, and it
is that that brings glory to God, allowing us to know how
base, how foul, we are, and letting us know that that
makes no difference to Him because of the Blood. That is
glory to God. I do not know what the deepest note in your
heart is today, but that is the deepest note in my own
heart after these years. Ah, it is the grace of God that
is the glory of my heart, the glory of His grace.
He is glorified by our recognition of His grace and our
abiding on the basis of His grace. The glory is soon
taken away from the Lord when we get on to any other
ground; what we are and can do and what we are doing. The
Lord will very soon put a stake in our flesh when we
begin to get exalted like that. He is being robbed of
glory. He is glorified by our transfiguration, our
conformity to the image of His Son. Paul says,
"We... beholding as in a mirror the glory of the
Lord, are transformed into the same image" (2 Cor.
3:18). The glory is connected with the change,
transformed into the same image. He is glorified as we
are changed into the image of His Son. He is glorified
when our lives are becoming fruitful. "Herein is my
Father glorified that ye bear much fruit" (John
15:8). And the fruit, in the first place, is the fruit of
the nature of the Lord Jesus, the fruit of the Spirit,
love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness,
faith, meekness, self-control. "Herein is my Father
glorified." Fruit in service, of course, but fruit
in life, and He is glorified by the endurance of the
saints.
Ah, yes,
let us lay this to heart as our final word. If only we
recognised it. There is a great deal of glory brought to
the Lord simply along the line of endurance. At times we
can do no more. The only thing to do is to give up or to
hold on; to let go, or to endure. Peter has a lot to say
about that. "This is grace, if a man endure."
and just to endure brings glory to God. It will be a
great story, it will be one of the large and glorious
volumes in the library of heaven, the story of the
endurance of the saints, how much glory it brought to
God. Oh, the story will be a romance! How many people
were influenced by it, how many unbelievers came to
believe because of the endurance of some saint in the
time of suffering! How many other saints were mightily
supported as they saw the steadfast endurance of another
under fiercest trial! How much the Lord got out of just
sheer endurance! Yes, this is to the glory of God, if we
endure. The Lord get glory in the Church by Christ Jesus
unto all ages forever and ever, and may we indeed be a
house for His glory in these various ways.