Reading:
1 Chron. 22:1-19; 28:5-7; 29:20, 22-25, Acts 2:30-36;
7:47-49, 1 Pet. 2:4-5; Heb. 3:6; 12:5,9; Eph. 1:20-23.
I
have been very much occupied of late with this matter of
sonship in the House of God, and am led to the conclusion
that something of this is to be the Lord's message at
this time. There are many aspects of this spiritual
house. How many of them we shall be able to consider must
remain to be seen.
It
is quite certain that this matter is very relevant to
what is happening at this present time on the earth. In
particular, there is a very real and living message in it
for the Lord's people, and I trust that we shall seek to
adjust ourselves to that fact and not regard this as just
some further measure of Bible teaching which may be more
or less familiar.
Christ Exalted on High - The
Keystone of Testimony
We
shall begin with what the Scriptures so clearly indicate
as the point of commencement of the House of God, namely,
the exaltation of the Son to the place of supreme
authority and glory. The spiritual house, (which house
are we,) prospectively exists for this very purpose of
proclaiming and rejoicing in the fact of the exaltation
of God's Son. The passages which we read from the Old
Testament, which are prophetic, pointing on to the
spiritual house, all bear out this fact and show it in
type in a very wonderful and clear way. David's greatest
son - for God had given him many sons - was brought out
into clear view as the one chosen of God to be exalted to
a place of glory and power above that which had been
given to any before him; and it is interesting to note
that, while Solomon was ordained and chosen of God for
that position, he did not come out as distinguished for
it until someone else made a bid for that position. You
will remember the little incident of Adonijah, who subtly
worked to get the throne, to get what God had appointed
for Solomon. By that subtle movement to
usurp the throne appointed for another, Solomon was
distinguished at once, brought out and proclaimed as the
one chosen by God. That is only in passing; but it is
interesting to notice that it was when God's Son and
God's appointment concerning His Son was assailed, and
His place sought after in a conspiracy, that the Lord
Jesus was marked out, brought out into the light as the
One whom God had chosen. That is something which recurs.
There it was in the case of Solomon. It was so in the
case of the Lord Jesus at the beginning of this
dispensation. That will happen again at the end when
Antichrist makes his bid for world domination, and then
God will bring out His Son as the One chosen and anointed
for that position, and all will then be manifestly put in
subjection under His feet, as they are now spiritually
and potentially.
The
house which was brought into being through and by
Solomon, came in specifically on the basis of Solomon's
exaltation, on the ground that he was the appointed one
and that God had summed up all things in him. When
Solomon was brought into his place, then the house came
into being; and all the things that are said about
Solomon are very wonderful things. They all speak of his
glory, of his power, of his wealth, God's thought for the
one who shall have the throne, and the house becomes the
very symbol of the glory of the Lord, the exaltation of
the king. The house which is to be built for the Lord is
to be exceeding magnificent. That house reflects the
king, the one who is the son over the house in type.
We
foresee by these Old Testament scriptures just what we
have in the New Testament, and so we can come at once to
this first and primary thing about the spiritual house of
which we are called to be living stones, that our very
existence is for the proclamation - in what we are as
well as in our testimony - of the exaltation of God's
Son.
Now,
everything begins there, with the exaltation of Christ,
and that firstly in heaven. It was when He was at the
right hand of God exalted that the Church had its
beginning. Everything came out from that, and in the
beginning things in the Church spiritually were very
glorious and very wonderful. I have no doubt but that
angels took account of what was then going on to the
glory and praise of God, and we have also reason to
believe that demons were tremendously impressed.
Everything took its rise from the exaltation of God's
Son, this even "greater than Solomon."
The Essential Counterpart of the
Heavenly Exaltation
But
for us, while that remains true, and has
many blessings associated with it, to have practical
beginnings the exaltation of the Lord Jesus has to be an
inward thing, and the beginning of everything for us
necessitates there being a counterpart of that Son's
exaltation in heaven in our hearts; that what God means
by His having glorified His Son is a thing of spiritual
reality within us. He comes to absolute enthronement with
all things in subjection to Him. You notice how the
account of Solomon's enthronement concludes. "And
all the princes, and the mighty men, and all the sons
likewise of king David, submitted themselves unto Solomon
the king" (1 Chron. 29:24). He was doubly enthroned
- "They made Solomon king the second time." Now
you have your ground, if there is one, for a "second
blessing"! You talk about second blessings. Here you
are, this is what it is, the second thing. What God has
done in heaven is done in our hearts. We have reason to
rejoice and feel greatly blessed that God has raised
Jesus from the dead and set Him at His own right hand.
Tremendous things are bound up with that for us. But the
"second blessing" is that this becomes
something of reality in us, and that what is true in
heaven as to all things put under his feet, submitting
themselves to Him, is true within the kingdom of our
lives. That is the way of the fullness of the blessing.
All
things, as I have said, spring from that, begin there.
Life itself begins in reality when Jesus is absolute Lord
within. We do not come into the fullness of blessing when
Jesus is not more than Saviour. The fullness of the
blessing is known when He is Lord and has everything
within us under His feet, submitting to Him. It is the
way of blessing. You see, all the blessing that God meant
for man, the fullness that was to be man's inheritance,
was lost because Satan, seeking to usurp the place of
God's Son as Lord, by his propaganda worked subtly and
made man believe that he would lose everything by
remaining in subjection to God. 'Why not be as God
yourself?' said he. In other words, Why have a life
limited by being subject to God and dependent upon Him!
Along that line, man lost all the fullness, and now all
the fullness comes back by being absolutely subject to
God's Son, and submitting to Him in all things. That was
the great lie of Satan, and this is why Satan does not
like Jesus Christ being Lord, and why he so strongly
contends against any ministry that has in view that
object, of bringing the Lord Jesus into His rightful
place as supreme Lord in God's house. It is because by
that his lie is exposed and the work which he achieved
through his lie undone.
The
whole question is that of the universal Lordship of Jesus
Christ, and it is that which is coming out today as never
before in the history of this world as the supreme issue.
Who is going to be Lord in God's universe? Who is going
to have world dominion? The enemy is still seeking to
reach that end through man along the line of the lie, and
we have never before known of his method being so
tremendously, so universally and so insidiously employed
- the lie! So much so, that for months past, this world
has rocked on this question. Who can be trusted? Who can
be believed? Who is speaking the truth? What man can you
have confidence in? There has spread over the earth such
an atmosphere of discrediting by lies that men almost
look at those of their own household and wonder whether
they can be trusted. That is a terrible reality in many
lands. They dare not open their lips within the most
limited circle, because truth faileth, trustworthiness
has been smitten almost to the ground. The lie, the
propaganda of lies: and all, mark you, with this one end
in view, namely, to get a grip on the dominion of this
world. That is Satan's work behind what we see going on,
and when Jesus Christ comes into His place as absolute
Lord in you and in me, something results which declares
that Satan has been defeated; the lie is exposed. The
truth is that subjection to Jesus Christ is not a
miserable life as a vassal. It is a life of triumph, a
life of victory, a life of glory, a life of fullness. It
is the blinding work of the enemy with men, to make them
think that to belong to the Lord, to have the Lord in
their lives, means they are going to lose all that is
worthwhile, and be shut down, and all the time be poor
cringing creatures, hardly able to lift their heads up,
going about as beggars. That is Satan's lie. The Old
Testament brings it out here so clearly that, where all
things were subject to, submitting themselves to, God's
appointed king, it was a time of fullness such as the
people had never known: and so it is when Jesus is Lord
within as in heaven.
In
those days, following that great day of Pentecost, the
Church knew something of liberation, enlargement,
enrichment, glory, power and fullness, and it all sprang
from the fact that Jesus was Lord. They lived upon that
ground and in the appreciation of that great fact. Life
commenced there, testimony commenced there and commences
there, and all our service for the Lord should spring out
of this. There is no true service which does not spring
out from this fact of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. You
see, every revival or great spiritual renewal has been by
the Lord coming back into His place. Go again over the
Old Testament, and you have instance after instance when
the Lord was brought back into His place - it was a
wonderful time. Think, for instance, of the days of
Hezekiah, of Josiah, when the Lord was given His place
anew in a wonderful way. They came back to re-enthrone
the Lord as Lord in their midst in an utter and full way,
and they were great days. If you pass your eye over
history, you see that all real spiritual awakenings -
call them revivals or renewals - have circled round this
one thing, that the Lord was brought back into His place.
He was given His place as absolute Lord, and people went
down before Him. That was the secret of it, and it is
like that.
What
is true in history, true in the wider way, is true in the
individual life. So much of our trouble, our declension,
our spiritual weakness and failure, is because He is not
Lord. We are thankful to know Him as Saviour, we believe
that He is in heaven glorified, but there is a good deal
of controversy within us on points. It all amounts to
this one issue, namely, the utterness of His Lordship
within, and, when those matters and controversies are
settled, we find a new uprising of life. You can always
have a little revival in your own heart on any one point
where the Lord has a controversy with you. Test it. It
may be only one point, but you know that one thing is
holding you up. You have to get clear on that one thing,
and when at last you go down with that thing under the
Lord and put it under His feet, you have a little revival
in your own heart and you come out with new life, new
testimony, new release. Spread that over all things, and
the kingdom has come. It is just like that.
The Cross and the Lordship of
Christ
Well,
this, His spiritual house, has been brought into being
for no other purpose or no greater purpose than that -
just to stand entirely in the enjoyment of the
proclamation of the exaltation of the Lord Jesus. When
you come to think of it, is not that the primary and
deepest meaning and purpose of the Cross? The Cross may
do many things, touch many questions and many issues, but
when you get down to the meaning of the Cross at its
deepest, it relates to the deposing of other gods. That
was the great issue in the twenty-fourth chapter of
Joshua, you remember. In reviewing the whole situation,
Joshua has all Israel before him, and he begins with the
history of Israel right back in the time of Abraham's
father. 'Abraham's father lived in Ur of the Chaldees and
served other gods. Then Abraham came out from the serving
of his father's gods and crossed over the river and came
into the land. After this your fathers came into Egypt
and there they worshipped the gods of the Egyptians; but
at length they also came out over the river to serve the
Lord.' The whole issue was other gods and the river
between the other gods and the Lord every time. Now then,
what about you? says Joshua. Are you going to allow the
river really to stand effectively for what it means? Are
you going to allow that river really to stand between you
and the other gods which you worshipped and served in
Egypt? "As for me and my house, we will serve the
Lord." What about you? So the river was always
related to other gods. The Cross, in its deepest meaning,
touches other gods, other lords, other objects of worship
receiving the good of our lives, and deposes them all,
and brings the Lord into His place, so that we say,
"As for me and my house, we will serve the
Lord." That is the meaning of the Cross. It touches
everything that stands in the way of the absolute
Lordship of Jesus Christ. It gets right down there.
The Lord Jesus Exalted as our
Kinsman
But
then there is this other or further very
blessed fact about the exaltation of the Lord Jesus. He
is exalted as our Kinsman. The exaltation of Christ is
the exaltation of our Brother. That comes out, you see,
in the record. David said, "Of all my sons, (for
Jehovah hath given me many sons), he hath chosen Solomon
my son to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of Jehovah
over Israel" (1 Chron. 28:5). Then later, when
speaking of Solomon's enthronement, the record says,
"And all the sons of David bowed down and did
obeisance to Solomon and submitted themselves unto
him." A great thing - his brethren all looking up to
him as on the throne and acknowledging him as king. That
is a permanent factor in all the types about the
exaltation of the Lord Jesus.
In
the book of Samuel, again, you have that time when
Absalom had usurped the throne and brought a great deal
of misery and suffering upon the people to whom he had
promised so much; and then Absalom was slain and the
people were stranded. For some time everything was in a
state of suspense, until there arose a questioning among
the people, and someone said, "Why speak ye not a
word of bringing the king back?" That became a
rumour, and it got out over to where David was. David
heard what was being said, and he took hold of it and
sent a message to Zadok and Abiathar for the people,
expressing himself thus: I am your flesh and your bone;
ye are my brethren: why speak ye not a word of bringing
the king back? His appeal for his place was on the basis
of his kinship and they brought him back on the basis of
that appeal.
Now,
what is the meaning and value of that? Well, God has
exalted our Brother, God has exalted our Kinsman, and
that Kinsman is God's Son, and He, as the Apostle puts
it, is going to bring many sons to glory because He is
the first-born among many brethren. The exaltation of our
Kinsman means that the family is coming to exaltation.
His enthronement is the earnest of ours; and, beloved, we
are never sure of coming to our exaltation, our fullness,
until we recognize the Lord Jesus in His place as our
Kinsman-representative. It is an exalted family, it is a
household, you see; God's house for the Son, and then
sons. But the Son must have His place before the sons can
have theirs; but, having His place, the sons have theirs
guaranteed to them. Our Kinsman is exalted, and that says
a great deal; because He is not exalted just as a despot,
just as an officially appointed monarch whether we like
it or not - God has chosen Him, selected Him, put Him in
that position: now then, Bow the knee! Oh no; He is our
Brother, our Kinsman, and there is such a tie, such a
link, such a oneness of life, that He cannot be there
apart from us. There is an inward spiritual oneness with
Him in His exaltation which spells something very big.
Perhaps
I can illustrate it best by reminding you of Mordecai.
You remember Haman again, in the train of these many
usurpers, and Haman's devilish device to destroy all the
Jews. Mordecai is in the place of rejection, ruled out.
Then, by one of those marvellous acts of Divine
sovereignty which make even a sleepless night of the most
tremendous value in history, the king could not sleep one
night. Would that all our sleepless nights were as
profitable to the Lord as his was! He commanded to bring
the book of records of the chronicles, and they were read
before the king; and he read something about Mordecai.
Someone had lifted up his hand against the throne and a
certain man, a Jew, had brought the thing to light and
saved the king's life. Then the king said, "What
honour and dignity hath been bestowed on Mordecai for
this?" Then the story develops and it comes to the
point where Haman goes home one day to his wife and all
his friends and tells them of what had happened. He, who
thought the king was going to honour him, has been made
to honour Mordecai, and as he tells them this, the
discerning answer made to Haman was this: "If
Mordecai before whom thou hast begun to fall be of the
seed of the Jews, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely fall before him." If he is of
the seed of the Jews, you cannot prevail, your days are
numbered! There is something about that, you see. It is
this kinship with the Jews on the part of the exalted one
which secures both their deliverance and the enemy's
undoing.
Oh
yes, this kinship with the Exalted One means for us
deliverance and the overthrow of the enemy. There is a
very great deal bound up with the exaltation of the Lord
Jesus, and Satan knows it. He knows that his days are
numbered when Christ is exalted in any life. When we come
to that exaltation-union with the Lord Jesus in our own
hearts, Satan is in despair. It is like that.
The Need for Diligence and
Discipline in the Light of a Day
to Come
Well
now, we must stop somewhere, and I think we might just
stay here by pointing out that this house, with all the
significance of sonship, the Son and the sons in God's
House, has a present spiritual meaning. It is something
which has to be realised in a spiritual way now. It
indeed is the great spiritual matter for all the children
of God. If we ask, What is the issue in this dispensation
where God and His people are concerned, the answer surely
is this, that there shall be a house, a spiritual house,
which stands in the good of the exaltation of the Lord
Jesus. That is the issue, and that is to be a spiritual
thing now.
But
I also want you to remember that, so far as manifestation
is concerned, this lies in the future; and upon that
hangs this wonderful and terrible little word 'if.'
"Christ as a son, over God's house; whose house are
we, IF..." Hebrews 12
which treats of God's dealings with us as with sons, has
a big "if" there also. "If ye endure
chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons." It
is rather a strange way of putting things. It almost
looks as though you are not a son if you do not endure
chastening. Well, that is what it means. The
"if" is in view of the fact that you and I have
not yet come to the fullness of sonship. It will be the
fullness of sonship in manifestation which brings in the
House of God in all its glory. It is something future, it
is prospective. If... if...
You
notice, in that connection, how Israel in the wilderness
is so often called up as a warning. They did not become,
in God's intended sense, His house. They have perished in
the wilderness. They did not suffer chastening. They
would not let God deal with them as with sons along the
line of child-training. They did not come to their
adoption as sons. They fell short of the glory of the
inheritance of the full purpose of God; and that is
brought over to Corinthians and to Hebrews as the
warning. We are His house if... if... if...
Now,
what is the significance of this? Oh, it is this, that
what God's Son is in glory, He becomes in us now
progressively; that Christ is being more and more
enlarged in us as the Son over God's house. I think it is
so patent, as hardly to need pointing out, that the
course of our spiritual experience under the hand of God
is always with this one thing in view. All our
difficulties with the Lord, all our bad times, are on the
principle of submission to the Lord, with a view to the
Lord having His place. Is it not like that? The Lord is
finding us out by child-training. Take up the child and
put the child under training, and you will discover what
is in the child, whether the child is going to be
compliant or not, whether the child is going on with you
or not. Put the child under discipline, and you will find
out all the revolt that is in the child's nature. That is
how the Lord is dealing with us.
This
word "chastening" is unfortunate, because it is
confused in our minds with punishing. It means nothing of
the kind. God is not punishing His children at all. The
true meaning is child-training, and Satan always turns
God's dealings with us into punishment in our minds. It
is not that. What He is working at with us is to bring us
to the place where He is utterly Lord and can do as He
likes with us, and we have no question at all. None of us
has reached that point yet, but that is what the Lord is
doing, and there is a big "if," you see. We can
say we are not going to have any more of this discipline,
we are not going on with it. Well the throne is in view,
not only for Him but for us. The Lord has a great purpose
for His sons in union with the Son as joint-heirs and as
fellow-rulers in His universe. It all springs out of the
fact that Jesus Christ is Lord in heaven and in us, and
then that this Lordship is wrought into us in a perfect
way. All our training is in that direction. So it is
prospective, it is future, and the "if" is
there. We are God's house if... May the Lord so triumph
in us that the "if" greatly loses weight and
power and place, and eventually ceases to be at all, and
we are His house.