The House of God
Ministry by C. A. Coates
– Part 6

These 13 challenging and fascinating addresses cover the whole range of teaching on the House of God in both the Old and New Testaments. The reader will be rewarded for time spent patiently going the through them.

G.A.R.

It is on my mind to bring before you, so far as I am able, some of the important and blessed things connected with the House of God. No one can read Scripture without seeing that the House of God is prominent both in the Old Testament and the New.

• It is most important to see that God has a place on earth. We all understand that heaven is God's throne and dwelling place, but what I should like to make clear is that God has a place on earth where He dwells in grace and blessing and, I may add, in holiness.

• He has a place on earth where He is known, and where His testimony is maintained. The House of God is "the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth", 1 Timothy 3: 15.

The passages we have read contain the first intimation that Scripture affords of the House of God. It has often been said that in connection with the first mention of anything in Scripture we get a key to the whole subject, and I have no doubt it is so in this case.

• But before looking at these scriptures it may be well to travel rapidly over the previous chapters of Genesis. They are deeply important and instructive.

From the fall to the flood we do not get any thought of God having a place here. Man had been driven out from the garden of Eden, and the cherubim with flaming sword barred his access to the tree of life.

• The earth was under the curse in consequence of man's sin, and man was a fugitive and a vagabond in it.

• What marked the men of faith in that day was that they "walked with God". This is said of both Enoch and Noah.

• They recognised that God had no place here, and they walked with Him apart from the whole course of things in the world of the ungodly. Noah preached righteousness and in building the ark was a practical witness of coming judgment.

The flood came and swept away the world that then was. There was an end before God of the whole state of the world, and of all flesh.

• Noah and his family were saved in the ark – a figure of the death of Christ – and the first thing that he did when he stepped out of the ark was to build an altar and offer burnt offerings upon it. Genesis 8: 18-22.

• This is the first altar of which we read in Scripture, and I understand Noah's act to mean that he claimed the earth for God, and put it on the ground of the burnt offering.

• The flood had come upon the earth as under the curse; there was, so to speak, an end of that order of things; and the earth was presented before God in connection with the sweet savour of the burnt offering. I need hardly say that the burnt offering is a type of the death of Christ.

• God smelled an odour of rest and said in His heart that He would not "curse the ground any more for man's sake". He answers the faith in which Noah had claimed the earth for Him, and takes up relations with it. He promises that
  • "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease".

• He covenants blessing for the earth, and every living creature upon it. God is the "Lord of all the earth" – a title which occurs again and again in Scripture.
  • See Joshua 3: 11; Zechariah 4: 14; Zechariah 6: 5, etc., and compare Psalm 8: 1, 9, and Exodus 19: 5.

I have no doubt the full answer to Noah's faith will be in the world to come. There is a day coming when all the effects of the curse will be removed, everything on earth will be put into covenant relationship with God, and His Name will be excellent in all the earth.

The time for this had not come in Noah's day, nor has it come yet. From Genesis 8 onward, faith has ever claimed the earth for God, but the time has not come yet for Him to take possession. In His dispensational and governmental ways, and in view of all His purposes of love and grace, He has not yet taken possession.
• The present world is accurately pictured in Genesis 9: 11. Three things are prominent.

1. Nimrod "began to be a mighty one in the earth", and founded a kingdom.

2. Then men built the tower of Babel, saying, "Let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth". Men took possession of the earth, and sought to make themselves a name.

3. And, what was worst of all, God's servant, who in faith had claimed the earth for Him, failed to hold it for Him, but used it for self-gratification.

Alas! this is very much the history of the present world. It is the time of Nimrod and Babel still. Men are in possession of the earth, and hence it is a scene of confusion.

• And as for God's witness, Noah's failure is perpetuated in the church. The things of the earth are used for self-gratification instead of being held for God. I speak, of course, of the general Christian profession.

• God's Name is not yet excellent in all the earth, but it will be in the world to come. It has been a characteristic of faith in all ages to look on to the world to come.

Then God maintains His title to the earth and His right to dispose of it as He will, in the call and blessing of Abram.

• "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee", Genesis 12: 1.

• And when Abram reached Canaan the Lord appeared to him, and said,
  • "Unto thy seed will I give this land", verse 7

• Depend upon it that in due time God will dispose of the earth as He will, in spite of men and of all the power of evil. And when He does so there will be blessing for all the families of the earth. Genesis 12: 3.

• When man in self-will takes possession of the earth he dispossesses God of all His rights; but when God asserts Himself and takes possession of the earth He will give it to man, and fill it with blessing, so that His Name may be excellent in all the earth.
  • See the promises to Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 12: 1-7; Genesis 13: 14-17; Genesis 15: 7-8, 18-21; Genesis 17: 8; Genesis 18: 18; Genesis 22: 17-18; Genesis 26: 2-4.

• In making Abraham "heir of the world", Romans 4: 13, God asserted His right to dispose of the earth as He would.

Then in connection with Isaac we get wonderful instruction as to the way in which the promises will be fulfilled. Isaac was to be the heir – the child of promise – type of Christ.

• And it was on the ground of death and resurrection that He would take the inheritance. In figure Isaac died and rose again. God can only take possession of the earth so as to fill it with blessing on the ground of death and resurrection.

• Sin had to be put away, which could only be by death, and the power of death had to be broken, which could only be by resurrection.

• But on the ground of death and in the power of resurrection Christ will take up the earth – so long filled with man's assumption and sin's confusion – and will fill it with blessing and with the knowledge of God.

• When Christ takes up the inheritance all the families of the earth will be blessed and God's Name will be excellent in all the earth.

Abraham was called to be the heir of the world in faith, but to be actually possessed of no part of the promised inheritance.

• He owned God as being "the God of the earth" as well as "the God of heaven", Genesis 24: 3; he had the blessing of "the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth", Genesis 14: 19, 22.

• Though he had actually nothing, he was blessed in the favour that would give him everything. In the sense of this favour he was content, though he knew well that there could be no possession of the promised inheritance until the world to come.

When we come to chapter 28 we see God making known to Jacob His purpose about the land and about the blessing of all the families of the earth.

• Jacob finds himself in the presence of God's grace and faithfulness – in presence of God's thoughts and purposes in all their blessed reality. He was, in a sense, outside the world, and for the time, apart from all the workings of his own mind.

• Everything that passed before him was of God. Hence he said,
  • "This is none other but the house of God".

In one way Jacob went beyond Abraham and Isaac. No doubt they held in faith the divine communications which had been made to them, and those communications formed the ground of their intercourse with God.

• They built altars, but Jacob went further – he set up a pillar. God, revealed in grace and faithfulness, was to have a place here – a testimony here – and this in figure, in the power of the Holy Ghost.
  • "He set up a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel" [the House of God].

• A pillar means witness or testimony. See Genesis 31: 52. There was to be a place here for God – a witness to the blessed reality of His grace and faithfulness.

• He was God of heaven and earth, and He would carry out His own purposes of grace and blessing in spite of all the evil and weakness that was in the world and in man. The anointed pillar was the witness of this on earth. It was the testimony of God here – the witness of His purposes, His grace, and His faithfulness.

• And thus it presents to us the great fundamental idea of the House of God, God has a place here where He dwells in blessing and testimony; His house is here.

We see three things in Genesis 28 in connection with Bethel which give us a very good idea of the House of God. In the first place a link was established between heaven and earth.

• The House of God has a direct link with heaven; it is the "gate of heaven". God in this way makes the gate of heaven accessible to men; that gate is not a long way off; it is here on earth.

• In Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple, over and over again he said,
  "When they shall pray toward this place … hear thou in heaven", 1 Kings 8: 30, 32, 34, 36, 39, 43, 45, 49.

• In that day the House of God was the gate of heaven – the link between heaven and earth. It will be so again in the millennium. All the families of the earth will go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, Jehovah of hosts, and the House of God will be to them the gate of heaven.

But I do not want to occupy you merely with the past and the future. I should like you to realise that the House of God is on earth at the present moment, and that it is the gate of heaven. Read Acts 2: 1-4.

• The House of God in its present aspect dates from the day of Pentecost. The one hundred and twenty disciples, indwelt by the Spirit, were constituted the House or dwelling place of God.

• The Holy Ghost came upon them from heaven – from a risen and glorified Christ at the right hand of God – and linked them with heaven. There was a company upon earth linked with heaven in the most wonderful way.

• But that company is still here; the Holy Ghost has never returned to heaven; the saints have never ceased to be the House of God.

• When one receives the Holy Ghost – consequent on remission of sins through faith in the Lord Jesus – he belongs to a company which is divinely linked with heaven. He may have everything yet to learn, but he is of the House of God, and the sooner he realises this the better.

It is a blessed reality that heaven and earth are linked together by the fact that the House of God is upon the earth.

• In Stephen we see that a man full of the Holy Ghost could look up stedfastly into heaven; there was no cloud between him and heaven. By the Spirit we can look up into heaven and see there a glorified Man – the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us.

• The Holy Ghost links us with heaven and with the One who is there. Is it not wonderful to see that there is that upon earth which is directly linked with heaven?

I hope no one will suppose that in speaking of the House of God I have any thought of applying this term to a material building, or even to any particular company of saints.

• The House of God is composed of "living stones", and every saint on earth indwelt by the Spirit is of that house.

• Would to God that we all understood this, – and were more exercised as to our behaviour in
  • "the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth!", 1 Timothy 3: 15.

Another thing in connection with Bethel, Genesis 28, is that God's grace and faithfulness were known there.

• "I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed … and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed".

• I quite admit that what is said here does not go beyond the earth, but it is wonderful grace. For us everything takes a higher character, for we have to do with
  • "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ", Ephesians 1: 3.

• It is not "the land whereon thou liest" now, but God directs our eyes to heaven and to His treasured store of spiritual blessings in Christ. Who can measure the expanse of those blessings?
  • "All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us", 2 Corinthians 1: 20.

• What transcendent grace to man, who was once persuaded by the devil to believe that God was withholding something good from him! God answers that lie of Eden by bringing in all the blessing of a universe of bliss in Christ and bestowing it as a free gift upon man.

Then God's faithfulness was known at Bethel as well as His grace.

• "Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of", verse 15.

• Along with the unconditional promise of grace there was the assurance of God's immutable faithfulness. All that Jacob would do and be was well known to God, but in presence of all that God's faithfulness was made known as the security of his blessing. It is a great characteristic of the House of God that His grace and faithfulness are known there.

If you turn to 1 Kings 8 you will see these two things in connection with the house that Solomon built. Read verse 41-43.

• This is a remarkable scripture for Old Testament times, for it contemplates the report of God's Name going out from the house to all people of the earth, so that "the stranger" should come out of a "far country" attracted by that blessed Name.

• It shows how God would have the testimony of His Name as great in grace to sound forth from His house.

Then the thought of God's faithfulness is also very prominent in Solomon's prayer. Read verse 15, 20, 23-24, 56.

• Everything of which God had spoken had come to pass. The house was the standing witness to the faithfulness of God.

Now let us turn to the House of God in its present aspect. Read 1 Corinthians 1: 4-9. The apostle is writing to

• "the church of God which is at Corinth",

• and we know from another scripture that the church of the living God is the House of God.

He first thanks God for His grace given to the saints in Christ Jesus, that in everything they had been enriched in Him, and that the testimony of Christ was confirmed in them. They were in the blessed knowledge of the grace of God, and the testimony of that grace was confirmed in them.

• Then he also speaks of the faithfulness of God. They were proving themselves very unfaithful to the grace and light which had reached them, but the apostle fell back upon divine faithfulness as the security of their blessing.

• He speaks of their being confirmed to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we believe not, God abides faithful; He does not give up His thoughts with regard to His saints. If we are self-willed and wayward we shall come under the faithful discipline of God.

• Jacob went on in his own course for a long time, but he had to suffer for it under God's discipline until eventually he was prepared to return to Bethel. God is faithful; He will bring His saints – it may be through much discipline – to His own end. He will divest them of all that is unsuitable to Himself so that they may be blameless in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ.

• If our every blessing springs – as it surely does – from grace, our security and preservation in those blessings is altogether of the faithfulness of God.

The third thing in Genesis 28 to which I desire to call your attention is that, in figure, what God had made known of Himself was set up here in testimony. Jacob set up a pillar, and poured oil on the top of it, and called the name of that place Bethel – i.e., the House of God.

• This was surely figurative of the testimony of God's grace and faithfulness being set up on earth in the power of the Holy Ghost.

• We have seen that Solomon's temple was intended to be the testimony of God's grace and faithfulness for all the nations of the earth. And if we turn to Christianity we find how very characteristic this is of the House of God today.
  • Read 1 Timothy 2: 1-7; 1 Timothy 3: 15; 2 Timothy 1: 12; 2 Timothy 2: 13, 19.

We see in these scriptures how the testimony of God's grace and faithfulness is in His house today.

• The testimony of God as a Saviour God is in His house, and it sounds forth from that house that He will have all men to be saved. God is dwelling here in infinite grace to men, so that in His house prayers are made for all men.

• Spite of man's wickedness and sin's confusion God has a pillar here – the testimony which is maintained in the power of His Spirit, and which not all the power of evil can overturn. Is it not an unspeakable privilege to be part of that testimony, through His infinite grace?

Then in the second epistle the last days are contemplated – times of declension, departure, and even apostasy. In presence of all this, divine faithfulness becomes the bulwark and security of the believer, and of those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

• The testimony of God's grace and faithfulness is here, and it will be here so long as there are saints on earth indwelt by God's Spirit. No power of evil can overturn God's pillar. The House of God
  • "is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth".

• May each one of us get a deeper sense of the blessedness of being identified with this holy testimony!

Now just a few words in conclusion, about Jacob! He got the light of God's house, but for a long time he was not very much affected practically by it.

• He went down to Padan-Aram, and served there for his wives and his cattle. He was preserved and became fruitful there. God did not leave him, but fed him all his life long, as he said at the end. Genesis 48: 15.

• But, though prospered and cared for by God, he was a long way from the pillar which he had anointed. He was building up his own house, and not thinking much of God's house. It is one thing to be fed and cared for by God, and another to be near the pillar – to be identified wholly in heart and ways with God's testimony, that is, with God's house.

In the days of Haggai God's people were neglecting His house. They said the time had not come that God's house should be built, but they were dwelling in their own ceiled houses!

• The result was that they had no prosperity. They sowed much and brought in little, they clothed themselves but were not warm, they earned wages to put it into a bag with holes. See Haggai 1: 2-9.

• If we do not make the House of God our chief interest we cannot expect spiritual prosperity. If God has a house here, that is the true centre for the man of faith.

• It is a great moment for our souls when we realise that God has a place here, and that we are called to know Him and to have to do with Him as One who has a place here. The House of God is the chief interest on earth for every saint.

The twenty years that Jacob spent in Mesopotamia were years of disappointment and discipline.

• "Thus I was; in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep departed from mine eyes. Thus have I been twenty years in thy house; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy cattle; and thou halt changed my wages ten times", Genesis 31: 40-41.

• When he came to look back on it all it did not yield him much satisfaction. And if saints live in their own interests and neglect the House of God, they are sure to feel, sooner or later, that their course has been a failure.

God disciplined Jacob for twenty years, and at the end of that time he was prepared for a call to Bethel. God said to him,

• "I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me: now arise, get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy kindred", Genesis 31: 13.

• God does not say, 'I am the God of Padan-Aram', but "I am the God of Bethel". If God sets up a testimony in this world He does not depart from it. He never departs from His original thought and purpose.

• His people may lose sight of His purpose and grace and faithfulness, and be content to be cared for and prospered by Him in their circumstances here, but God never gives up His own testimony, and the true blessedness of every saint is to cleave to it.

There were great hindrances in the way of Jacob's return to Bethel. In the first place there was his bad behaviour to Esau twenty years before. He had taken a human way to get Isaac's blessing, and though he got the blessing he had to suffer for the way in which he got it.

• If believers take what seems to be a short cut to blessing they always find that it leads them a long way round. Jacob was twenty years away from the promised land and the House of God in consequence of taking a human way to reach a divine end.

We do not like to face things. If there has been a dark page somewhere in our history we do not care to go back to it, and have it all out with God. This hinders many from making spiritual progress.

• Through the grace of God Jacob faced the dark page in his history. He had to say to God about it in secret, and he had to meet Esau. And in all this he learned what God would be for him in spite of his own failure.

Then there was another thing. It comes out in Genesis 35: 2-4 that there were things in Jacob's household and amongst his surroundings that would not do for Bethel.

• If people have been living at a distance from the House of God they are sure to have picked up many things which are not suitable to the holiness of that house. It is very easy to pick up such things, but difficult to throw them down.

• Probably it was the consciousness of this which made Jacob so slow to come to Bethel even after he entered the land. He had to have more and bitter discipline to prepare him for the second call to Bethel.

"And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, that appeared to thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.

• "Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be ye clean, and change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will there make an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.

  "And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem;" Genesis 35: 1-4.

• Shechem is a fine place for saints to reach. It is the place of uncompromising decision for God – the place where the soul says, "O God, my heart is fixed". It is the place where Joshua said,
  • "Choose you this day whom ye will serve … as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord", Joshua 24: 15.

The "strange gods" and the "earrings" had to be put off. Jacob felt that holiness became God's house for ever, and he had reached a point when compromise was no longer possible – the House of God must be his chief interest.

• "The strange gods" and "earrings" were hidden "under the oak which was by Shechem"

• – suggestive of the cross as that by which the world is crucified to the saint, and he to the world.

• Then Jacob was ready for Bethel, and there he built an altar. God appeared to him and renewed the promises. The House of God retained its own blessed character as at the beginning; His grace and faithfulness were known and enjoyed there.

And finally, "Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, even a pillar of stone; and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon", chapter 35: 14.

• He returned to his original testimony. That is what we have to do today. We have to cleave to the thought that God has a place here. His house is upon the earth, for His saints are here indwelt by His Spirit.

• God's house is the gate of heaven, and His grace and faithfulness are known there. God's testimony is here in the power of the Holy Ghost. May we know what it is to return to that testimony – to cleave to it – to be fully identified in heart and spirit with it!

• Every saint belongs to the House of God. May that house be more and more our chief interest! Then shall we be happy and blessed.
  • "They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures", Psalm 36: 8.

It has been often remarked that the people never spoke of preparing a habitation for God until they were redeemed and saved. They were in the good of redemption and in the joy of God's salvation when they said,

• "I will prepare him a habitation".

• It is a redeemed and caved people who have to do with God's house. I want to speak tonight of redemption and salvation as that which prepares us for the House of God, and I trust the Lord will help me to set this before you.

God has been pleased to take up the children of Israel and to work out in the things that happened to them a series of wonderful pictures for our instruction.

• The children of Israel were in Egypt as a people set apart for God; that is, they were circumcised, which I take to be a figure of people who are set apart by the work of God in them. This helps us to understand the way in which Egypt is presented in this book.

• From one point of view Egypt may be regarded as a place of resource – we read of treasures in Egypt, and of the wisdom of the Egyptians.

• In another aspect we may look at it as a place where the pleasures of sin are enjoyed for a season.

• But it was not a place of resource or pleasure to the children of Israel; it was the house of bondage. The natural man finds all his resource and pleasure in the world, but those who are born again find it to be a house of bondage.

• The one born again cannot find satisfaction in the world, for all the things which are found there, and the principles which rule there, tend to keep him in ignorance of God and in darkness as to the grace of God, and thus in bondage of soul.

• The great object of the enemy is to keep souls in bondage – to keep them as to their own consciousness in the flesh and under the law so that they may never have joy or peace or liberty. In fact the great object of Satan is to hinder souls from coming into the good of the House of God.

• No greater contrast could be conceived than that which exists between the house of bondage and the House of God. God would have His people to be happy and full of joy; Satan would keep them in misery and gloom.

• God would have believers to be in divine peace; Satan seeks to keep them in unrest and distress. God would have His saints in the perfect liberty of His holy love; Satan seeks to keep them in the bondage of self-occupation.

The things of the world may seem attractive for the moment, but you will find that they bring you into bondage of soul.

• If you go in for the things of the world you will find that you cannot enjoy the things of God; you are thus held in bondage by what is paltry and sinful and kept out of the enjoyment of the blessing of the House of God.

• Do you think a worldly believer enjoys the blessings of God's house? Certainly not. He is held in bondage by what is really vanity.

Now let us travel rapidly over the way in which God made Himself known for the deliverance and salvation of His people. Read Exodus 3: 1-8.

• God made Himself known as dwelling in a bush, and this in good will to men. You remember the scripture which speaks of
  • "the good will of him that dwelt in the bush", Deuteronomy 33: 16.

• This is surely a striking figure of the incarnation. God has been pleased to come down in good will to man to deliver men from bondage and to bring them all the blessings of His grace. The Son of God has become man in order to bring about this deliverance and blessing. The incarnation is really the foundation and pillar of all our blessings, for it is that which gives infinite value to the sacrifice of Christ.

Now turn to chapter 4. Read verses 1-9, 30, 31. I think we see here in picture what has come to pass by the death of Christ.

• In the first place Moses' rod was thrown down and became a serpent – indicative of the fact that through man's sin the power that is seen in this world is that of evil.

• But when Moses took the serpent by the tail it became a rod again in his hand. Christ has come in grace and undergone all the judgment to which man had become liable in consequence of the power of evil, and in this way He has broken that power for ever. Everything that once was the evidence of the power of evil is now the witness of the power of God.

• It was so in measure when the Lord Jesus Christ was in this world. If men were sick, lame, blind, palsied, leprous, possessed with demons, and even in death itself, all this was the evidence of the power of evil. But in the presence of the Lord Jesus all these things became witnesses to the mighty power of God acting in good will toward men.

• And all in some way foreshadowed the wondrous triumph of the cross. It was at Calvary the Lord Jesus met the whole power of evil and triumphed gloriously. Now in resurrection He can say,
  • "I am he that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death", Revelation 1: 18.

• All power is in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ on the ground of redemption, and it is exercised in grace and good will toward men. It is a great thing to know this. God is acting in infinite grace, but at the same time He is acting in a power that can sweep aside everything that stands in the way of the blessing of His people.

Then the leprous hand represents the defiled state of man as a sinner. To meet this, perfect cleansing has been brought in according to all the value and efficacy of the death of Christ.

• There is no reason why any defiled sinner under heaven should not be cleansed.

And, finally, the water of the river was turned into blood.

• The river Nile was the life of Egypt, and in its water being turned into blood I think we see in figure that the whole life of the world, and of man as in the flesh, has come under judgment before God.

• All this is set forth in the way of perfect grace toward man, and it is in this way alone that the good will of God could reach man in blessing. But it is very solemn because it all shows that if men refuse Christ there is no hope for them.

When Aaron "spake all the words which the Lord had spoken unto Moses, and did the signs in the sight of the people … the people believed, and … bowed their heads and worshipped", Exodus 4: 30-31.

• They heard God's glad tidings and believed. In this we see an illustration of the hearing of faith by which souls come into the light of God's wondrous grace.

Now let us pass on to chapter 12. Read verses 1-14. There are four thoughts connected with the passover which are of the deepest importance.

1. First, shelter;

2. second, food;

3. third, instruction;

4. and, fourth, that all is in view of a new place.

The passover was the beginning of months to Israel, and it is the true beginning of every soul in the knowledge of Christ.

• What it sets forth goes beyond believing the proclamation of forgiveness in the name of the Lord Jesus. It is more the personal appropriation of Christ. It is where the soul really begins in its knowledge of Christ.

• There is no proper start – no true spring in the soul – until we know what it is to appropriate Christ not only as shelter but as the food of our souls. It is one thing to believe the glad tidings and another to appropriate Christ as the satisfaction and strength of our souls.

• God would have us to begin with Christ. Not to struggle through a thousand exercises and come to Christ, as it were, at the end; but to begin with Christ and go through every exercise in the light of Christ and as those who have fed upon Him. How often it is otherwise with us, but this is God's way.

• We need motive power and spiritual strength if we are to move on in the things of God, and the reason we have so little of this is that we are not sufficiently nourished with divine food.

I will not enlarge at this time on the shelter provided in the blood of the lamb. As natural men we were exposed to the judgment of God. But the blood of Christ is a perfect shelter from judgment, and it is available for every man. Blessed be God for that!

Then there is food. And it seems to me that two thoughts are suggested to us here – contemplation and appropriation. They had to take a lamb on the tenth day and keep it up till the fourteenth day.

• The lamb without blemish was first the object of their contemplation, and then as roast with fire it became their food. It is a wonderful thing to contemplate the Lord Jesus as the Holy One of God, the Lamb without blemish and without spot, the One foreordained before the foundation of the world.

• Then we appropriate Him as having come under judgment on our behalf.
  • "Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire".

• We feed upon Christ as the One who came in deep divine love under holy judgment for us. He alone could sustain that judgment, and because He has done so the very judgment to which we are exposed has become the evidence to us of the love of Christ, for He has endured and exhausted it.

• We can never disconnect the thought of the judgment from the divine Person who bore it in the greatness of His love. The judgment of God upon sin is infinite, but Christ has borne it in love that He might become the food of our hearts. God would have us to be nourished upon the love of Christ.

Whenever God means to put people in motion He always feeds them first. See 1 Kings 19: 5-8; Hebrews 13: 8-13. We need to be nourished – to have our spiritual affections sustained and invigorated by the knowledge of Christ in the blessed love in which He came under judgment for us.

• As our hearts are nourished with the personal perfections and love of Christ, holiness becomes a necessity to our souls. Everyone who is affected by the love of Christ feels that he must be apart from that for which Christ died. He eats unleavened bread. It becomes a satisfaction to him to cleanse himself from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, and to perfect holiness in the fear of God.

Then as to ourselves there is true repentance – eating the bitter herbs.

• We judge ourselves not in misery of soul but in the presence of divine love and in communion with God. This is the deepest kind of self-judgment.

I come now to the thought of divine instruction. "The blood shall be to you for a token".

• Not only does the blood shelter me but it speaks to me. The blood of Jesus speaks volumes. The words, "When I see the blood I will pass over you", are often commented upon, but there is another side –
  • "The blood shall be to you for a token".

• The blood is a token of certain things to us. God would have the death of Jesus to speak to us volumes of divine instruction. I cannot dwell upon it – it is a great subject in itself – but I may say that there are three things of which the blood is a token to me.

1. First, that I am under death;

2. second, that the grace of God has reached me there;

3. and, third, that divine righteousness is in my favour. Our souls need to be instructed in the blessed reality of these things.

The fourth thing about the passover was that it was all in view of a new place.

• "And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste; it is the Lord's passover".

• The soul has to apprehend that it must now take an entirely new place. The shelter, the food, the instruction are not to qualify the believer to stop in Egypt to the glory of God; they are to prepare him to move into an entirely new place. We are to be a marching people.

• If one really feeds upon Christ and is instructed in Him, it must give the consciousness that one is not of the world, and not under the law, or in the flesh. In spirit we do not belong to this order of things at all.

• We belong to another system of things altogether – God's system. We begin to see that we belong to a new world. Then we gird our loins and take our staff in our hand.

Now read chapter 14: 1-16, 29-31. Pharaoh and his hosts represent all the power of evil intent upon preventing God from having His people for His own pleasure.

• The people were made to realise the terribleness of the enemy and their own helplessness, and then they learned God's salvation.

• What was salvation for them? God made a way by which they could come into an altogether new place – outside Egypt, beyond Pharaoh's power, and in full view of all His gracious purpose, so that they could say that Jehovah was their strength and song and had become their salvation, and that they would prepare Him a habitation.

The staff of Moses was uplifted and the sea divided. This is a figure of the death of Christ as that which has opened a way into an entirely new place. If you have never viewed the death of Christ in that aspect before, it is for you now. The way has been opened up and it is available for everyone.

• The sea has been turned into dry ground. Naturally, death is a place where we have no footing – like the sea; but in the death of Christ God has turned it into dry ground. There is solid footing on which faith can travel into a new place where divine light and favour and blessedness are known.

What is the character of that new place, and what do we find there? Well, in the first place, I think it is easy to see that if a person touches resurrection ground he leaves sin, the world, and Satan's power behind.

• When I speak of touching resurrection ground I mean coming to the apprehension of it in Christ risen. I am afraid many Christians have very hazy ideas as to what is beyond death; but God would have us to be well acquainted with resurrection scenes. None of us know anything about resurrection except as we have apprehended it in Christ.

• The Lord often spoke to His own about resurrection, but they never understood it until they apprehended it in Himself as the risen One. Resurrection is not an abstract idea, but a blessed reality substantiated in the Person of Christ.

• Christ is beyond death – raised for our justification, raised by the glory of the Father, raised to be our righteousness, our life, our joy, our salvation, for evermore.

Christ fills the resurrection scene, and we come into it as being of Him and in Him. We are brought to a Person who has nothing more to do with sin, the world, or Satan. All these have been judged in His death; and He is now our strength, our song; and our salvation.

• The power that brings us into the apprehension of our new place in Christ is the power of God's salvation. When Jonah said "Salvation is of the Lord", the fish vomited him out on the dry land – figure of a resurrection place.

In connection with this I will read one or two scriptures from the New Testament. 2 Timothy 1: 8-10.

• God has "saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began; but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel".

• "I endure all things for the elect's sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory".

• And again in Titus 3: 5-6, we read that
  • "according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour".

• These scriptures show that salvation is in Christ Jesus and that it is connected with an entirely new order of things.

• We come into it by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. Baptism is in figure burial to the order of things that exists in the world that we may live in another order of things by the renewing of the Holy Ghost.

• It is through being renewed by the Holy Ghost in mind and affection that we can enter into those blessed things which subsist in Christ Jesus.

All this is most important in connection with the subject of the House of God. Salvation is in view of the House of God, for immediately after they had said,

• "The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation", they went on to say,

• "I will prepare him a habitation".

• It is so also in other parts of scripture. For example, in Psalm 27 David says,
  • "The Lord is my light and my salvation", and then he goes on to say,

  • "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple".

• Again in Psalm 132 God says,
  • "I will also clothe her priests with salvation".

• And in Isaiah 61: 10, where we read,
  • "He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation",

• the same verse speaks of being decked as a priest [margin]. This shows how intimately salvation is connection with priesthood; that is with the privileges and service of the House of God.

• Salvation is the garment that fits one for priestly service, and I think it would be right to say that salvation is enjoyed in the House of God. We come into the House of God in the beauty of God's salvation and enjoy the blessedness of a circle which is morally far removed from sin, the world, and Satan's power.

• Salvation is the moral beauty of saints in which they are suited to the habitation of God's holiness. It is written that
  • "The Lord taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation", Psalm 149: 4.

The proper effect of the wonderful grace made known in the gospel is that, as nourished by the perfections and love of Christ, and as divinely instructed by His death, we are prepared to leave Egypt, and to come, in spirit, to apprehend Christ risen and ascended.

• There we find the House of God with all its blessing and privilege. We cannot come into that house in a natural way – , we can only really enter upon the privilege of God's house as those who have been beautified with salvation. May we all know more of the reality of this!

There are two things which it is well to note before passing on to the thought of God dwelling among His people.

1. The first is that He covered them in the presence of all the power of the enemy,

2. and the second is that He carried them through the difficulties and necessities of the wilderness.

• In chapter 14, when Pharaoh and the Egyptians were pressing upon the people – the cloud removed and went behind them. We read in 1 Corinthians 10 that they were "under the cloud". God, as it were, put His wing over His people to shield them from the power of the enemy.
  • "How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings", Psalm 36: 7.

In Romans 8 God's saints are seen as under the shadow of His wings, and thus secure from all the power of the enemy.

• "If God be for us, who against us? … Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?"

• The whole universe is challenged. No hostile power can touch the saints, for God is for them; every accusing voice is silenced if God has justified His saints. In His sovereign love and mercy He has overshadowed us with His wings. He has blessed, and no power of the enemy can reverse it.

Then in the verses we have read from Exodus 19 God says,

• "I bare you on eagles' wings".

• This seems to apply to the path through the wilderness. In presence of the power of the enemy they were covered by His wings, but in the wilderness they were carried upon His wings. There was not a necessity or a difficulty in the wilderness but served to prove the care and sustaining power of Jehovah.

• He did not intend His people to carry the burden of wilderness difficulties; He intended them to prove how blessedly He could carry them through everything. What answers to it for us is
  • "Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you", 1 Peter 5: :7.

• God's care is the answer to all the difficulties of the wilderness. Were the people hungry? God gave them bread from heaven. Were they thirsty? He gave them water from the rock. Were they treading the sands of the desert? He took care that their feet did not swell nor their raiment wax old.

• At the end of the wilderness "garments fresh and foot unweary" told how God had brought them through
  • "In his love and in his pity he redeemed them: and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old", Isaiah 63: 9.

Most of us here have, I trust, the joy of knowing that God has covered us in the presence of all the power of the enemy.

• Now we have to prove how He can carry us through the wilderness.

Then He adds, "And brought you unto myself".

• This is the secret that lies behind the grace and the ways of God. He wants His people for Himself. Nothing can be more wonderful than that the blessed God should want us for Himself. How could we understand it, if we left out the thought of His love?
  • "I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee", Jeremiah 31: 3.

• And all is in view of our being brought under His control.
  • "Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people".

• God reveals Himself by the gospel in supreme grace and love in order to break down all our self-willed distrust of Him so that we may come under His blessed control.

That was God's thought in reference to Israel, and I have no doubt that it will be accomplished in a coming day. Israel with God's law written in their hearts will become His peculiar treasure –

• "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation"

• – and they will be in this world for His glory and praise, setting forth His excellencies before the nations.

• But in the meantime we come into this wonderful place of favour and testimony.
  • Christ has "once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God", 1 Peter 3: 18.

• That gives the idea of being brought into priesthood; the Jews' idea of a priest would be that he was a man who drew near to God.

It is very interesting to see that in God's mind all the people were to be "a kingdom of priests".

• The thought of a special priestly family came in subsequently after the failure of the people, but God's mind was to have
  • "a kingdom of priests".

• And it seems to me that it was from that point of view that God regarded the people when He said,
  • "Let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them", Exodus 25: 8.

• It was His mind to dwell among a kingdom of priests.

The first thing that strikes one in connection with the tabernacle is that all the material was given by the people, and all was directly connected with their affections.

• "Of every man that giveth it willingly with his heart ye shall take my offering", Exodus 25: 2.

• All the precious things which they were to bring represented, I suppose, the preciousness of Christ as known in the hearts of the saints by God's blessed work in them. This becomes the material for the house, if we may so speak. It is said in 1 Peter 2: 7,
  • "To you therefore who believe is the preciousness".

• God puts the preciousness of Christ and the knowledge of Himself in the hearts of His saints, and it is thus really that they become living stones for His spiritual house. As Christ is built up in the souls of God's children there is divine material for the House of God. Compare as to this 1 Corinthians 3: 10-17.

If God has given us gold, silver, or precious stones – if He has given our hearts the knowledge and appreciation of the preciousness of Christ, and of Himself as revealed in Christ it is not only for our individual enjoyment but to qualify us to be contributors to His house.

• Of course we have to take up the thought now in a spiritual way. Every saint is intended to be a contributor to the House of God. Each saint contributes according to the measure of His knowledge and appreciation of the preciousness of Christ. This is a very simple yet divinely beautiful thought.

Looking at it in this way how appropriate to our lips are the words of David when he and the people presented their offerings for the temple!

• "Now therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious name. But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee", 1 Chronicles 29: 13-14.

• If God had not manifested Himself to us in grace, and made Christ to live in our affections by His Spirit, we could bring nothing to His house; it is of His own that we give Him.

• And every true saint is qualified, in measure, to contribute to the House of God. The youngest and the feeblest believer ought to entertain the thought of this.

• We must not think of the House of God in a material way but as a spiritual structure.

Now I pass on to say a few words about the tabernacle, and in venturing to do so I may say that I have no thought of going into the types in detail, nor of speaking dogmatically on any point, for I feel that I have almost everything to learn on this subject.

• But I should like to suggest one or two thoughts which seem to have a place in connection with these interesting types.

There are two things which I should like to remark upon.

1. The house itself; and

2. what it contained.

As to the house itself, it was composed of boards covered with gold and standing upon sockets of silver. See Exodus 26: 15-30.

• This seems to intimate clearly that God's house stands on the basis of redemption, and that it is composed of those who are in Christ. No one can really understand his place in the House of God until he knows what it is to be set up on the ground of redemption and to be in Christ.

• The very basis of everything for our souls is that God has been glorified in the death of Christ about sin and sins; all that we were as in the flesh has been removed from before Him in holy judgment.

• Then, on the other hand, we are in Christ; our souls have come into the apprehension of Christ as our righteousness and our life; we can be near to God in the blessed consciousness of what Christ is made to us.

• The saint in all his relations with God realises that he is on a new footing altogether; he is on the footing of redemption and he is consciously in Christ. He is conscious that his righteousness, satisfaction, sanctification, and strength are not in himself but in another Man – even in Christ.
  • And "if any man be in Christ there is a new creation".

  • God "made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him", 2 Corinthians 5: 17-21.

• This gives us in New Testament language the thought of the silver sockets and the covering of gold.

It is thus that the saints are qualified to be builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit. Ephesians 2: 22. Note the words, "builded together!"

• The saints were never intended to be separate units, nor was it ever in the mind of God that they should be divided into great or small church systems.

• No natural dividing influence could be stronger than the difference between Jew and Gentile. But the great point in Ephesians 2 is that the Jew and the Gentile were
  • "builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit".

• Sectarianism is built up on the recognition of man in the flesh – not on the silver sockets which speak of a holy work in which that man has been entirely set aside by God.

Then in Peter we read, "To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ", 1 Peter 2: 4-5.

• We may not see much of it, but that is the great work of God in this world; He is building His saints together and building them up as a spiritual house that He may dwell in them by His Spirit. It is a great thing for us to see what God is doing and the end that He has in view.

When we come to what the house contained, we find three prominent things which formed what may be called the furniture of the house –

1. the ark,

2. the table,

3. and the candlestick.

• The golden altar was more connected with approach; hence we do not get it mentioned until after the consecration of the priests.

• I do not suppose that the children of Israel were capable of entering very much into the signification of these things, but they are full of instruction for us.

It has often been remarked that the things which were in the holy place are rather typical of things which will be taken up in Israel in connection with Christ. I do not doubt the truth of this

• but it is also true that these things have a signification which is applicable to the present time. What is set forth in connection with the table and the candlestick is made good in principle in the House of God today.

As to the ark of the covenant, it seems to speak of the setting forth of the glory of God in Christ. The shittim wood suggests the thought of humanity, but it was all covered over with gold.

"God's righteousness with glory bright,
Which with its radiance fills that sphere,
E'en Christ, of God the power and light". Hymn 88

God has set forth all His glory in Christ. Psalm 40 naturally occurs to one in connection with the ark of the covenant. Read verses 7-10.

• We get in these verses seven things which to a large extent constitute the glory of God – His will, His law, His righteousness, His faithfulness, His salvation, His lovingkindness, and His truth. All came out in Christ – the ark of the covenant – and all find their expression in Him as the risen and glorified One.

• It is most wonderful and blessed to see that God has been pleased to make known the glory of His nature and of His attributes in Christ. He has come out in the Person of the Son as Man in this world, and now the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Christ as the risen and glorified Man.

• The whole revelation of God is in Christ; the glory of God shines in His face. If God's will, nature, righteousness, faithfulness, salvation, lovingkindness, and truth are brought to light there is certainly the shining forth of His glory, and our hearts find it all in Christ.
  • "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him".

I connect all this with the familiar verses in 1 Timothy,

• "These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly: but if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

  "And, without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory", chapter 3: 14-16.

• The mystery of godliness is really the manifestation of God in flesh. And this mystery is enshrined in the House of God. God is known there according to the full glory in which He has manifested Himself in Christ.
  • In another day it could be said, "In Judah is God known; his name is great in Israel. In Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling-place in Zion", Psalm 76: 1-2.

• But all this is true in a spiritual way in the assembly. God is known there; the ark of the covenant is enshrined there.

And this is the mystery of godliness – the true spring of all piety. There is no true piety except what flows from the knowledge of Jesus Christ come in flesh. Hence the apostle says,

• "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world", 1 John 4: 2-3.

• And in his second epistle he warns the elect lady not to receive anyone who did not bring this doctrine of Jesus Christ come in flesh.

• The spirit of antichrist would take away the ark of the covenant, and destroy all the springs and power of true piety in the souls of men.

Christ is the ark of the covenant; in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, Colossians 2: 9, as the One who has been "received up into glory".

• And the knowledge of Christ in this blessed way is found enshrined in the House of God.

• The most prominent characteristic of the House of God is that He is known there according to the blessed revelation of Himself that shines out in Christ. God dwells in His assembly and is known there; the mystery of piety is enshrined there.

• It is a great thing for us to apprehend that as saints we are brought into a circle where God is known and where God dwells.

It is in Christ that God puts Himself in communication with men.

• "There will I meet with thee, and will speak with thee".

• God has spoken in the Person of the Son, and all that He has said is treasured in the assembly. The knowledge of God and of His mind is found in the place where He dwells. See Psalm 27: 4.

When we come to the table of shewbread it seems to me that we get the thought of the saints being brought into association with Christ. It is noticeable that we do not get the number of the cakes in Exodus.

• As a matter of fact there were twelve cakes, each composed of two tenth deals of fine flour. See Leviticus 24: 5-6.

• It has been often said that the number twelve is connected in scripture with administration – twelve tribes, twelve apostles, twelve gates, and twelve foundations in the holy Jerusalem – and no doubt the shewbread speaks of the place which Israel will have in a coming day. I do not dwell upon this.

• There were "two tenth deals" in each cake, and this gives the number twenty-four in connection with the twelve cakes. When the priesthood was set in order by David, 1 Chronicles 24, there were twenty-four courses, and this number is taken up in the twenty-four elders, Revelation 4, 5, who represent, I suppose, the whole company of heavenly priests.

So that in connection with the table of shewbread we may see a figure of the whole priestly company identified with Christ in the presence of God, and covered with the frankincense of His own blessed perfections.

• Israel in connection with Christ in a coming day will be a kingdom of priests for God's glory and praise; they will shew forth His excellencies before the nations.

• But today the saints have a peculiar and blessed place of association with Christ both before God and in this world.

In Hebrews 1: 9 we read that Christ is anointed with the oil of gladness above His companions

• In Hebrews 2: 11, "For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren".

• And again in chapter 3, "We are made companions of the Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end".

• The wilderness tests everything, but those in whom there is a work of God are companions of the Christ. He sustains them as a sanctified company in the presence of God as those who are in association with Himself. The message He sent to the disciples was,
  • "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God", John 20: 17.

Then, on the other hand, we have a place of association with Him as God's children in this world.

• "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons" [children] "of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not", 1 John 3: 1.

• He puts His saints in His own place before the Father, and then He puts them in His own place in this world. Wondrous and precious grace! May we be more willing to occupy the place that really belongs to us, through divine love, as priests and children of God!

If Christ brings us to the Father's presence you may be sure that He brings us there without stain or reproach, in perfect suitability to the Father's holy love, so that we are before Him as objects of delight to His heart. It is a great thing to have this before us and especially when we come together for the exercise of priestly privilege.

• The Father takes account of Christ in the saints; Christ comes under the Father's eye in the saints, and thus they are objects of delight to His heart. God would not have His children to come before Him as sinners, nor even as failing believers.

• Of course if there are unsettled questions in the soul, those questions must be settled before one can take up priestly privilege. But it is God's mind that we should know and enjoy our place of association with the Son of His love.

Christ has a sanctified company of those whom He can present holy and unblamable and irreproachable before God for the satisfaction of God's love. God's house is furnished with such a company for His own good pleasure.

• It may be said that very few have apprehended these great thoughts of divine love! Alas! this is only too true.

• We do not eat the fatness of God's house. We do not enter into His blessed thoughts. God's house is well furnished; there is no poverty there; it is a wealthy place. May we be more familiar with it!

Now I pass on to the candlestick. It was made of gold and had seven lamps which gave light over against it. Exodus 25: 37. That is, the object of the lamps seems to have been to throw light upon the candlestick itself.

• The candlestick of pure gold I take to be a figure of Christ as the subject of the Spirit's testimony in the House of God. "He shall glorify me", was the Lord's word with reference to the coming of the Comforter.

• The candlestick was one thing, the seven lamps another, and, I may add, the light given was a third. For this latter was dependent on the service of the priests; it was their responsibility to maintain the light.

The testimony of Christ is in the House of God by the Spirit, and this is what I connect with the candlestick. It is a wonderful thing to remember that the testimony of Christ is here in spite of all Satan's efforts to dislodge it.

• The Apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians says,
  • "I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ; that in everything ye are enriched in him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you; so that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ", chapter 1: 4-7.

• No one could say that the testimony of Christ was very bright at Corinth, but the saints there were God's assembly – God's house – and the testimony of Christ had been confirmed in them so that they came behind in no gift.

• The candlestick was there, so to speak, with all its vessels, but the lamps very much needed trimming. Fitness for priestly service was wanting and the lamps were burning very dimly. Paul had to use the golden snuffers in writing his first Epistle to Corinth!

• When he came to write the second it was more like pouring oil into the lamps! He was pouring into their hearts by the Spirit the blessed ministry of Christ well fitted to brighten all their souls in the testimony of Christ.

There had been a want of priestly care and priestly sensitiveness at Corinth, and the result was that, though the candlestick was there, the light was much obscured.

• The testimony of Christ remains still in the House of God, and saints get the light and gain of it in proportion as they walk in self-judgment and separation from evil.

• In Christendom generally the Holy Ghost is so grieved and quenched that the testimony of Christ is very little known. But I do not want to occupy you with failure, but with the furnishing of God's house in its own proper and blessed character.

The House of God is the place where the Holy Ghost glorifies Christ. The youngest believer ought to have the consciousness that he belongs to a circle where the Holy Ghost makes everything of Christ.

• We have to see to it that we do not grieve or quench the Spirit. Priestly sensitiveness and priestly exercise are needed.

What is the testimony of the Christ? Well, it is the blessed witness in the power of the Spirit that everything for the pleasure of God and the blessing of men is established in Christ.

• Saints are in Christ Jesus, who is made wisdom to them from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. God has firmly attached His saints to Christ – the One in whom all His promises are yea and Amen.

• He is bringing those taught of Himself to recognise that man after the flesh has no place with Him, but that Christ is everything, and in all.

To be in the light of all this involves a great deal. If Christ is to be everything the cross must come in on all that I am as in the flesh – it must draw the line between me and the world.

• If I am not prepared to judge myself and to break with the world the light will burn very dimly so far as I am concerned. There must be the practical acceptance of the cross.

• The Apostle Paul after speaking to the Colossians about being complete in Christ goes on to speak of circumcision and burial. The Christian to be in the good of the testimony of Christ must put off the body of the flesh and have done with the world.

• Of course in saying this I am not referring to the Christian's actual departure from this life but to a great moral reality which he comes to in mind and spirit. If I am complete in Christ I must part company in spirit with what is not Christ.

• It is not that one gives up the world like a monk or a nun, but Christ comes in and displaces self and the world.

These three things present in figure three great characteristics of the House of God.

1. God is known there as revealed in Christ.

2. The saints are before God for His pleasure in association with Christ.

3. And the testimony of Christ is there by the Spirit.

• What we need is to be more exercised about these things –
  • not to be content to see them in Scripture, or to hear them talked about

• – but to be exercised as to the blessed reality of them, and as to how far we have entered into these wondrous things which form the divine furnishing of God's house. That house is furnished with things well calculated to fill our hearts with divine satisfaction and joy.

We have looked at the tabernacle itself and what it contained on a previous occasion. I now desire to bring before you a few thoughts in connection with the altar and the consecration of the priests.

• One feels a difficulty in taking up subjects so great and suggestive, and can only trust that the Lord may graciously give what will help to feed our souls.

The altar occupied a most important place. It was not part of the furniture of the house, and yet it was not outside the precincts of the house. It formed the connecting link between the house and the congregation. It was where God spoke to the people generally.

• "I will meet you, to speak there unto thee. And there I will meet with the children of Israel", Exodus 29: 42-43.

The altar seems to me to represent Christ as the One who has glorified God about sin and sins in such a way that He is now free to approach men in all the blessedness of His grace as a Saviour God.

• The altar was at the door of the tabernacle; it was connected with God's dwelling-place on the one hand, and it was in view of the people on the other. In that way it corresponds with what is said of the Lord Jesus in 1 Timothy 2,
  • "There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time", verse 5-6.

• It is by Christ that God approaches men and speaks to them in grace. If God speaks to men in grace it must be in connection with the One who has given Himself a ransom for all.

• The furniture of the house speaks of things which are known within the house, but the altar speaks of what is proclaimed, if one may so say, at the door of the house.

The testimony that sounds out from God's house is that God will have all men to be saved, and that the man Christ Jesus gave Himself a ransom for all. Christ is made known in the proclamation of grace as One who has had to do with the sins and liabilities of men.

• There is but one Person in the universe who could sustain the fire of God's holy judgment upon sin, and that Person has come under it in grace to men. His resurrection has proved that He was greater than all the death and judgment that He came into.

It is by way of the death of Christ that God comes out to men in the testimony of His grace. On the basis of ransom He can speak of repentance, and forgiveness, and peace to every sinner under heaven.

• God views the whole world at the present time from the standpoint of Christ and His death; hence every testimony of God to men is full of grace and blessing.

• Everything that God has to say to men in grace is based upon atonement; it is from the altar that God speaks in grace to men.

In chapter 29 we come to the consecration of the priests. I do not go into the anointing of Aaron separately. No doubt in this he is a figure of Christ personally. I pass on to what relates to the priestly household.

In the first place they were brought to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation and washed with water. verse 4.

• This seems to be a figure of purification from our defiled state as sinners – what is often spoken of as moral cleansing. It is not cleansing from guilt.

• With reference to guilt we are justified by His blood, but we need to be morally cleansed from our defiled state as in the flesh.

I need hardly say that there is no such thing as being cleansed actually from the presence of sin in the flesh so long as we are here in mortal bodies.

• But we can be cleansed morally; that is, separated in heart and spirit from the sin that dwells in us, and brought to judge our whole state as in the flesh. We can come into the apprehension of the death of Christ as that in which our sinful state has been condemned and removed from before God in holy judgment.

• So that it is possible for us to be in moral separation from flesh of sin, and to be in mind and spirit with God on an entirely new ground and in an entirely new state. We cannot bring sinful flesh to God; it has been condemned in the death of His Son.

God effects this moral cleansing by bringing what is of Himself into the souls of His people.

• We are perhaps in danger of thinking of moral cleansing too much in a negative way, but I am sure that evil is only judged as good is brought in.
  • Job said, "Now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes", Job 42: 5-6.

• It was as God was before him that he truly judged himself.

The same thought is suggested in John 3: 5, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God".

• What is of God is brought into the soul, and this leads to the judgment of what we are according to the flesh and moral separation from it – it brings about moral cleansing. There can be no true cleansing in this way except as that which is of God is brought in. Hence in John 15: 3 the Lord says,
  • Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you".

• The word which He had spoken unto them was the blessed revelation of Himself and of the Father, and by bringing that in He cleansed them morally from all that was evil here – bringing in the good and thus giving power to judge and separate from the evil.

Then in putting on the priestly garments, Exodus 29: 8-9, we seem to get a figure of being set before God in a new state. This is a great spiritual reality in Christianity.

• God brings us to judge ourselves as in the flesh, but that is not His end. His end is that we may be brought into a new state before Him. In Romans 6 after speaking of Christ as having died to sin and living to God, the apostle goes on to say,
  • "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus our Lord".

• God would have us to be conscious that we are in relation to Him apart from sin. We judge the world and the principle that rules in it – sin – and we take account of ourselves as being alive to God in Christ Jesus. The saint is thus alive to God on a new footing and in a new state.

• We could not live to God as identified with sin, but as being dead to sin and alive in Christ Jesus we are before God for His pleasure.

In writing to the Colossians Paul develops this further, and speaks of the saints being risen with Christ.

• If we look at Christ on the cross it is a scene of death; we see there the condemnation and end of all that we are as in the flesh. He has died as having come in grace under all our liabilities, and as having been made sacrificially what we were actually.

• If we see this how can we want to strut about and hold our heads up as men in this world?

It is well to consider the death of Christ in this way, but we must not stop there. God has operated in that scene of death and has raised up Christ from the dead, so that now a resurrection scene is opened up to us.

• There is but One Man in that resurrection scene, and by faith of the working of God who raised Him from among the dead we are risen with Him. We get the consciousness that we live along with Christ before God.

• It is clear that this puts us in an entirely new state and on a new footing, according to which we have priestly fitness to approach God. We appear before Him as in association with Christ, and thus invested with suitability to His holy presence. We are made meet to take a priestly place. The thought of this seems to be suggested by the holy garments.

Then certain offerings had to be presented – a bullock for a sin offering, a ram for a burnt offering, and another ram which was properly the ram of consecration – and in each case Aaron and his sons bad to put their hands on the head of the victim.

• This speaks of our appropriation of, and our identification with, Christ in the various characters which are set forth typically in these different offerings: Aaron and his sons were washed and arrayed in the priestly garments by Moses, but neither the washing nor the clothing was presented to them as an object.

• Neither the one nor the other was the ground of their confidence nor the object of their contemplation. It is not by these things that sin is removed from before God, or that sweet savour comes before Him in connection with the maintenance of His glory.

• The death of Christ was needed for this; or rather I would say, Christ in the place of sin and death for the glory of God, and in absolute devotedness and love. This is what was presented, in figure, for the contemplation and apprehension of the priests.

The blood was put on the lintel in Egypt for shelter, but the sinner putting himself under shelter of the blood and the priest putting his hand on the head of the sin offering are two very different things.

• One is more like the view of the death of Christ which is presented to us in Romans, and the other that which is spoken of in Hebrews.

• In Romans we are cleared in view of the righteous judgment of God, but in Hebrews we are cleared according to the holiness of the sanctuary. One has to do with relief and the other with approach.

• Christ has made purification of sins according to the holiness of the sanctuary, so that with purged consciences and hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience we might be free to draw near to God.

• The priest putting his hand on the head of the sin offering is a figure of the saint appropriating – and identifying himself with – Christ as the One who has glorified God about sin and sins according to the holiness of His sanctuary.

• The death of Christ has cleared us from righteous judgment, but it is also the ground on which we can approach God in all the glory in which He is known in His sanctuary. Our sin brings no stain to that holy presence; we come there as witnesses to the blessed efficacy of a sacrifice wherein God has been glorified.

Then the ram was slain and burnt upon the altar as a burnt offering. The priestly company was identified with that which was a figure of Christ in all the fragrance and sweet savour of His offering of Himself.

• Not only has sin been removed, but all the perfection and devotedness of Christ has been placed on the altar fire that the sweet savour of it might come out and ascend with infinite acceptance to God and the Father.
  • "Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour", Ephesians 5: 2.

• To apprehend this and to identify ourselves with it is an important part of our preparation for the exercise of priesthood.

Then the second ram was properly the ram of consecration. Aaron and his sons had to lay their hands on the head of this ram also, and then its blood was put on their right ear, on the thumb of their right hand, and on the great toe of their right foot.

• In this we see the precious blood in another of its many and various aspects. Saints must not think that the blood is only for shelter; its meaning and preciousness continue to open out in new and varied forms all through the soul's history.

• The believer who walks with God has a continually growing sense of the preciousness of the blood of Christ; his thoughts of the blood are continually expanding; year by year it speaks with fresh power to his heart; it becomes more wonderful and blessed in the vision of his soul.

• The person who thinks less of that precious blood year by year is certainly travelling on a dangerous road.

It seems to me that the blood of the ram of consecration speaks of the blood of Christ as the witness of His absolute personal devotedness to God.

• And the putting it on the ear, the thumb, and the toe of the priests seems to suggest that the mind and heart of the saint – to which the ear is the avenue – and his service and walk are all to come under the influence of the devotedness of Christ.

• We hear a great deal in these days about higher life and consecration, but it is to be feared that in the majority of cases those who take up that line of things are rather occupied with their own consecration and devotedness.

• But what God desires – and what every believer should covet – is that we should come under the influence of the devotedness of Christ. That is the true and divine power of consecration. The Apostle Paul had come under the influence of the devotedness of Christ when he said,
  • "The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again".

• The apostle had come under the influence of the love of Christ – that love held him in its power. The devoted and self-sacrificing love in which Christ had come into death for the glory of God held all the avenues of his soul, was the spring of his service, and the influence that regulated his walk in this world. The blood of the ram of consecration was upon his ear, his thumb, and his foot.

• This is the man who prays for us in Ephesians 3 that we may
  • "know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge".

• God would have us come under the influence of the love in which Christ came into death so that in result the universe might be filled with the knowledge of God – with His glory and with His love.

• If we come under the influence of the devotedness of Christ we shall be truly devoted, and at the same time we shall think less and less of our devotedness.

The next thing is that the blood and the anointing oil were sprinkled upon Aaron and his Verse 21.

• The blood coming in in connection with the oil in this way is very instructive. It sets the precious blood before us from another point of view – as the ground on which the Spirit is given.p>
• So that in this chapte, Exodus 29, we see the blood in three very distinct aspects.

1. First, as put upon the altar, verse 12, 16, to meet the glory of God – that is, to make atonement.

2. Second, as put upon the ear, thumb, and foot of the priests – the witness, in figure, of the personal devotedness of Christ.

3. And third, in connection with the oil as the ground on which the Spirit can be given.

• The gift of the Spirit is a very great reality, though but little recognised by many believers, and but little understood in its divine greatness by many who have in a certain way recognised it!

• How could such a thing be except on the ground of redemption? The gift of the Spirit is a most wonderful and blessed witness of the effect of redemption. It is on the ground of redemption that the Christian's body is now the temple of the Holy Ghost and a member of Christ. What infinite possibilities are thus within the reach of saints!

• Christendom is spiritually withered and dry because of its practical infidelity as to the presence and power of the Holy Ghost. Very few Christians really recognise in a practical way the presence of the Spirit of God. They have certain things in their creeds about the Holy Ghost, but practically they do not recognise His presence.

• It would be a great thing for us all if we got a deeper sense of the reality of the gift of the Spirit. Who could set bounds to the spiritual blessings and capabilities of people indwelt by the Spirit of God?

Then the fat, and certain inward parts, and the, right shoulder of the ram of consecration,

• "and one loaf of bread, and one cake of oiled bread, and one wafer out of the basket of the unleavened bread that is before the Lord"

• were put in the hands of Aaron and his sons and waved for a wave offering before the Lord. Verse 22-24.

• The word consecration really means filling the hands. The priests were presented before Jehovah with their hands full of things which spoke of the perfections, devotedness, and love of Christ. All that had gone before led up to this.

• If we have been morally cleansed from the world and from ourselves according to the flesh, and have been consciously invested with priestly fitness as alive to God in Christ Jesus and risen with Christ
  • – if we have known what it is to contemplate Christ as the sin offering and the burnt offering and to identify ourselves with Him in those characters

  • – if we have come under the influence of His devotedness, and have received the Holy Spirit – and all this sets forth what is true of the Christian as such

• – it all leads up to our being brought to the presence of God with our hearts full of the preciousness of Christ

• It is well for the sinner to say, "Nothing in my hand I bring", but the saint comes with his hands full – God has filled his hands with the excellence and preciousness of Christ.

Then that which had been waved upon the hands of Aaron and his sons was burnt upon the altar, "over the burnt offering" as it properly reads.

• The sweet fragrance of what Christ is in His own blessed Person and sacrifice and the sweet fragrance of what He is in the hearts of His saints go up together in the same divine acceptance.

Finally, Aaron and his sons had to eat the flesh of the ram, and the bread that was in the basket, by the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. Verse 31-35.

• They had to "eat those things wherewith the atonement was made, to consecrate and to sanctify them".

• In Egypt they ate of the lamb roast with fire; this corresponds with the saint feeding upon Christ that he may be spiritually nourished and strengthened to come out of Egypt. But the feeding upon the ram of consecration answers to saints being nourished upon the love of Christ in order to be strengthened for approach.

• That is, in the one case they ate in view of going out, and in the other in view of going in.

• I do not think people will move out of Egypt unless they feed upon Christ as the lamb roast with fire, and, on the other hand, I do not think saints will have spiritual energy to approach God unless they feed upon Christ as the ram of consecration.

May we know more what it is to feed upon Christ in that wondrous devoted love in which He has taken up everything for the glory of God, so that in a day that is quickly drawing near the whole universe will be filled with divine glory and with the knowledge of God!

• God would have us to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge that we might be filled unto all the fulness of God.

As soon as the consecrated company is secured we get the altar cleansed from sin and hallowed. Verse 36, 37.

• Then the ordinance of the continual burnt offering. Verse 38-42.
  • And finally God says, "I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, that brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them: I am the Lord their God", verse 45-46.

The things we have had before us are only shadows in themselves, but they are shadows of great and blessed realities.

• May God enable us to enter into the great spiritual realities of which these things are types.

I desire to speak a little tonight about the House of God in connection with the kingdom.

• This looks on, in great measure, to a day that is yet to come, but there is much in it of present value for our instruction.

The tabernacle was movable and provisional. It was intended to be carried about, and was only for the time. It did not represent an established or permanent order of things.

• The house, properly speaking, could not be built until the kingdom was established. When the kingdom was established and mount Zion secured under David the house came distinctly in view.

• In Psalm 78: 68-70 we may see the connection between God's choice of David and of mount Zion and the building of His sanctuary. Jehovah dwelt in Zion as the rest of the kingdom – see Psalm 132: 13-14 – and this prepared the way for His sanctuary to be built by Solomon.

The effect of the kingdom being established in the hands of David was that the people were delivered from every enemy.

• "Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree".

Jehovah put all the enemies under the soles of David's feet, so that when Solomon came to the throne he could say,

• "Jehovah my God hath given me rest on every side, so that there is neither adversary nor evil occurrent".

At the present moment the kingdom is not set up in public manifestation, but it has been established in the victorious power of grace. Christ – the true David – has laid low every enemy and silenced every foe.

• He has been made sin in order to put it away by the sacrifice of Himself, He has died for our sins, He has annulled death and him who had its power, He has redeemed from the curse those who were under it, He has spoiled principalities and powers, He has put all our spiritual enemies under the soles of His feet, so that we may have "rest on every side".

• Through redemption the enemy's power is completely broken.

Then, again, the effect of the kingdom being established was that the people were commanded and ordered according to the pleasure of God. You remember how it is said in the book of Judges,

• "In those days there was no king in Israel every man did that which was right in his own eyes".

• God raised up saviours for the people in their distresses, but there was no king to order them according to God's pleasure. The king was placed over the people to rule them for God. We read of Solomon that he was set on Jehovah's throne to be king for Jehovah his God. 2 Chronicles 9: 8

• Christ has that place for us now. Not that we know Him exactly as King – He is Lord to us – but I speak of the principle. The day of His glory here – of which Solomon's reign was figurative – is yet future, but we sing oftentimes: –
  "Christ of God, our souls confess Thee,
  King and sovereign even now!", Hymn 464.

It is a great thing to come under the control of that blessed One. He has established His right to control us by going into death for us.

• We must admit that He has a right to command and order us, and it is our happiness and security to be under His sway. We have no business now to do what is right in our own eyes.

• In the kingdom of God we are put under the blessed control of divine grace and love expressed in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that we may do what is right in the sight of God.

But what is all this in view of? If the king destroyed the enemies' power, and controlled the people for God's pleasure, it was all in view of the House of God being built.

• It is interesting to see that from the very beginning of David's history he had the House of God before him. I think we may gather this from Psalm 132. In the time of David's afflictions he devoted himself to
  • "find out a place for the Lord, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob"; and he says in verse 6,

  • "Lo, we heard of it at Ephratah; we found it in the fields of the wood".

• When he was living in Bethlehem and wandering in the fields – long before he came to the kingdom – the House of God was before him, and he came to the kingdom really to prepare for the building of the house.

In connection with this read 2 Samuel 5: 3-7; 2 Samuel 6: 12. David's first act after being anointed king over Israel was to take

• "the stronghold of Zion: the same is the city of David",

• and one of his next acts was to bring up the ark of God
  • "into the city of David with gladness".

• The Lord had chosen Zion; He had desired it for His habitation. He had said,
  • "This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it", Psalm 132: 13-14.

• David acted in victorious power to secure the place that God had chosen, and then he brought the ark to rest there. Zion spoke of the victorious power and supremacy of David, and it represents all the grace and blessings that have been secured in a risen and ascended Christ on the ground of redemption.

• God's purposes of grace had to be established in Christ risen and glorified on the basis of redemption before His house could be built.

It may seem in the actual history of things here as though the enemy held the field, and that nothing of God's will was established.

• But as a matter of fact the enemy's power is completely broken, and God's purpose and grace are established in the most glorious way in Christ as the risen and exalted One. This is known by faith and in the Holy Ghost, so that it can be said to believers now,
  • "Ye are come unto mount Zion", Hebrews 12: 22.

• The House of God is built upon the impregnable basis of a victory which has broken the enemy's power, and a Person who has annulled death and brought life and incorruptibility to light, One in whom God's purpose and grace are established – Jesus Christ the Son of God.

David thought and wrought from the very beginning in view of the House of God, and in this he was a type of Christ.

• Christ came here to secure a place and material for God's house. He secured a company in order to make them "living stones" for God's spiritual house.

• Then He accomplished redemption, and went to the right hand of God, in order that the Spirit might be given to those who believed, and that they might thus become God's dwelling place here.

It is well to note that when the ark was brought to the city of David there was "gladness", and the people had a good time. Ssee 2 Samuel 6: 1819. They were caring that God should have His place, and the result was that they were blessed and enriched.

• If we want to have a good time we must be like David, who said,
  • "I have set my affection to the house of my God", 1 Chronicles 29: 3.

• If we do so we are sure to have prosperity of soul.

In a coming day Christ will be the King of righteousness and the King of peace, and in connection with Him the millennial temple will be built, the glory will be brought in, and everything on earth will be ordered for the pleasure of God.

• But in a certain way, as I have suggested, we know Him in these characters now – as the true David who in the victorious power of grace has put every foe beneath His feet so that there might be full blessing for all who believe on His Name, and as the true Solomon in the blessed rest and peace of resurrection.

• These things are hinted at in picture in the Old Testament; we enter by faith and in the Spirit into the reality of them now; and in a quickly coming day they will be publicly displayed in power and glory.

In 1 Chronicles 22: 7-10 we see that it was in David's mind to build the house, but he was not suffered to do so because he had "shed much blood upon the earth".

• This is an interesting scripture, because it points to a distinction between two characters which are united in Christ. Christ is the Man of war and the Man of rest and peace – He is the true David and the true Solomon.

• David came in victorious power to meet and destroy every enemy, and Christ has taken up this character – He has maintained all the rights of God with regard to sin, and in view of the blessing of man.

• Then Solomon [peaceable] was a man of rest, and in his day God gave peace and quietness. Christ is now in the blessed peace of resurrection, having vanquished every foe. As the risen One He said to His disciples,
  • "Peace be unto you".

• No disturbing element can ever reach the shore of resurrection. There is rest on every side, and neither adversary nor evil occurrent.

• One might say that typically David was the king of righteousness, and Solomon the king of peace. Both are united in Melchisedec – figure of Christ as the One who
  • "shall build the temple of the Lord; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne", Zechariah 6: 13.

It was reserved to Solomon to build the house, but David was the one who secured the place for it, and who provided the material. He could say,

• "Now, behold, in my trouble I have prepared for the house of the Lord an hundred thousand talents of gold, and a thousand thousand talents of silver; and of brass and iron without weight; for it is in abundance: timber also and stone have I prepared".

• David secured the kingdom when he took Zion, and then all through his reign he was providing for the house – treasuring the spoils of forty victorious years to that blessed end.

• It suggests to me that all the fruit and spoil of Christ's victory, and all that has accrued to Him as the exalted One, goes to enrich and beautify the House of God. In that way the kingdom contributes to the house.

Then towards the end of David's life he discerned the place for the altar of burnt offering. Read 1 Chronicles 22: 1.

• The circumstances were most solemn and striking. David had sinned in numbering the people, and a plague from Jehovah was upon Israel. Everything on the line of man's responsibility had entirely broken down, and the unhappy king could only plead his own guilt and pray that God's hand might be upon him and his father's house, and not upon the people.

• It was then that in blessed grace and sovereign mercy he was commanded to set up an altar to Jehovah in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, and Jehovah answered him there by fire, and bade the angel put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.
  • "Then David said, This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel"

• It was the place of grace and love and sovereign mercy when human failure was complete and on man's side everything was forfeited.

• The house as built by Solomon did not therefore stand connected with man's ruin and failure. That failure was indeed complete, but on the ground of the burnt offering God came out in supreme grace and mercy and made choice of a place where He might dwell in blessing amongst His people.

I desire now to point out one or two things in connection with the temple which had no place in connection with the tabernacle.

• The temple adds considerably to our conception of the House of God, for in connection with the temple we get the thought of God's house as a dwelling place for men.

• In the tabernacle there was no provision for men to dwell in God's house – there was not even a seat there for the priests. But in the temple there were "chambers", see 1 Kings 6: 5, 10, which suggest the thought of men dwelling in the House of God.

• That house was not only to be a place of approach to God, but a dwelling place for men. I need not remind you how often this thought is taken up in the Psalms.
  • "I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever", Psalm 23: 6;

  • "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lordall the days of my life, to behold the beauty" [graciousness] "of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple", Psalm 27: 4;

  • "Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts; we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple", Psalm 65: 4;

  • "Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee", Psalm 84: 4.

I have no doubt that the Lord made reference to the "chambers" of the temple when He said,

• "In my Father's house are many mansions:" [abodes] "if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also", John 14: 2-3.

• The Lord turned from the place on which the dark night of His rejection and death was settling down to speak of His Father's house, and a dwelling place there for His own. He would have companions in the home circle of divine love! He came here to secure those who should be His companions in the blessed abodes of His Father's house.

• As we trace His holy pathway through this gospel we see how He secured them. It was by superseding everything else in the estimation of their hearts. He was here as the great Object and Centre to which the Father was drawing men. See John 6: 44-45.

Everything that had attractiveness or dignity in the estimation of pious people, or that was entitled to their veneration, was eclipsed by the Son of God.

• Moses was a great figure before the mind of the Jew – and rightly so – but he was put in the shade by Christ.
  • "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ", John 1: 17.

• John the Baptist was a remarkable servant of God, and esteemed to be such by the pious, but he spoke of Christ as One whose shoe's latchet he wa
  • "not worthy to unloose", John 1: 27.

• The temple is seen to be only a figure of Christ as the true Shrine of divine glory. John 2: 21.

• Jacob's well – a great object of regard to the people of Samaria – was superseded by Christ; He could give."living water", John 4.

• The pool of Bethesda with its miraculous healing was a striking witness in the midst of all the failure that God's mercy endured for ever, but Christ was greater and better than the pool, for He could make whole one who was not able to benefit by the pool. John 5.

• Christ was superior to the manna, John 6: 49-50, and He was superior to the feast of tabernacles, the greatest feast of the Jewish year. John 7.

• In John 10 as the Shepherd He displaces the fold – the whole organised system of Judaism.
  • Everything that was in any way entitled to have place in the hearts of the people was excelled and displaced by Christ.

• Then in chapters 11 and 12 we see Him in His own proper greatness and glory.
  • As Son of God He raises Lazarus,

  • as Son of David He rides into Jerusalem,

  • and as Son of man is glorified by going into death that He may not abide alone.

• He displaces every other object for those taught by the Father that He may hold their hearts entirely for Himself by His own mighty attraction. God ministers Him to us now by the Holy Ghost that everything else may be put in the background for our hearts. God is working to this end, and in this way is securing companions for His Son in the many abodes of His house.

The disciples who were drawn to Christ when He was here gained nothing as to this world. In following Him they came under the shadow of death, and became heirs of reproach and hatred.

• Instead of coming into the light of the day of His glory they entered the dark shadows of a night which reached its deepest gloom in the garden and at the cross. How solemnly suggestive are those words in John 13: 30 –
  • "It was night!"

• But in that dark moment the Lord took occasion to speak to them of a new place in His Father's house. He said,
  • "I go to prepare a place for you".

• It was necessary for Him to pass out of this world through death in order that we might have a place of association with Him in the Father's love.

• Of course we shall not actually be in that blessed place until we are with and like Him in bodies of glory. But His going through death to the Father has prepared a place there for us. Hence in resurrection He could say
  • "Go to my brethren, and say unto them; I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God and your God".

• What marvellous grace and love! He has secured companions for Himself in the "chambers" of His Father's house. Our place is there, and it is our privilege to be "in spirit there already".

When the house was built, and the ark and holy vessels brought up into it,

• "the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord", 1 Kings 8: 10-11.

• And when we consider the Father's house of John 14 we find that glory dwells there. The Father's house is where the Son is, and He says,
  • "Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world", John 17: 24.

• That is the glory which fills the house. Of old,
  • "the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud";

• the glory absolutely excluded man in the flesh. But now we find a blessed company secured by divine love and in divine righteousness able to behold the glory without a veil.

• The glory that the Father has given to the Son is infinitely great. It is nothing less than the glory of giving effect to all the counsels of divine love.

• The accomplishment of all the unnumbered thoughts of blessing and grace that filled the heart of God before the foundation of the world – of all the holy counsels which originated in the Father – has been entrusted to the Son; and this is the distinctive glory of the Son given to Him by the Father who loved Him from eternity.

• It is the glory of the Son to bring out and establish the glory of the Father in the fulfilment of all the purposes of His love. That glory fills the "abodes" of the Father's house, and we are brought there to behold the Father glorified in the Son.

• Christ's "brethren" are the companions of His rejection and reproach in this world, but they are also His companions in the circle of ineffable rest and love where He is with the Father, and where His glory appears.

• I repeat, we are not there actually yet, but in spirit it is our privilege to taste the holy joy of being brought by the Son into the "chambers" of the Father's house.

Great is our privilege as called to be dwellers in God's house. We behold there the beauty [graciousness] of the Lord. Psalm 27: 4, and we get the consciousness that His place is our place.

• We have not only a way of approach, but a home – a dwelling place. Christ's place with His Father is ours – the home of our hearts – the place of our rest.

• The House of God is a place of satisfied desire, of freedom from care, and of continual praise. See Psalm 84: 1-4.

• I should like the thought to be deepened in our hearts that we have a place in God's house – in the circle where His love and glory are known – that we may be drawn more in spirit to dwell there, so as to be still praising Him.

This brings me to another thing in which the temple suggests more than the tabernacle. We read in 1 Chronicles 25: 6 of many of the Levites who

• "were under the hands of their father for song in the house of the Lord with cymbals, psalteries, and harps, for the service of the house of God, according to the king's order to Asaph, Jeduthun, and Heman".

• There was no song in connection with the tabernacle. The Levites had to carry the tabernacle and the holy vessels. What was typified in this still continues concurrently with the privileges of the house.

• That is, we have to bear the burden of the testimony of the Lord with all its afflictions in this world. If people think they can serve God without having some burden to carry they are mistaken. There is divine resource and power to carry what is of God in testimony through the world, but it is well rightly to estimate the seriousness of being God's servants here.

In 1 Chronicles 25 we find the three families of the Levites – Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun belonged to the three different families – no longer bearing the burden but raising the song.

• In figure we may say they had reached the favoured hour when their toil was over, and they could happily and restfully raise their song in the House of the Lord.

• No doubt this anticipates the day of glory, but there is a sense in which our hearts may know something of it even now. It is possible to retire from the pressure and contrariety of the wilderness, and even from the bearing of burdens in service and testimony here, and to reach a spot in spirit where we can sing as those who participate in the fatness, blessedness, and joy of God's house.

• If we come under the influence and into the rest of divine love there cannot fail to be a responsive song in our hearts. If the Lord says,
  • "I will declare thy name unto my brethren", He also says,

  • "In the midst of the assembly will I sing praise unto thee".

• According to God's Name so is His praise. See Psalm 48: 10.

No doubt there is a day coming when all this will be realised in a wonderful way, when the blessedness of God's house will be the joy of Israel and of the millennial earth.

• But there is even now what answers to it in a spiritual way.

• The kingdom of God has been established in Christ at the right hand of God, and in the power of the Spirit down here, and consequent upon this the House of God is here.

• May we be divinely instructed as to the blessed service and privilege of that house!

In turning to New Testament Scriptures with reference to the House of God, we notice a great contrast between what we find here and what is found in the Old Testament.

• In the Old Testament things are presented in shadow and in dead types. There was no life in either the tabernacle or the temple; they were material structures of wood, stone, gold, etc., and were only types and shadows, though deeply instructive for us in many ways.

When we come to the New Testament everything is living. That is the great distinction between the Old Testament and the New.

• The Old Testament had regard to man in the flesh, and we are told here that
  • "all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away".

• There could not be anything very precious in connection with that. But in the New Testament Christ is introduced, and that brings vitality into everything.

• In the Old Testament there are shadows, types, and promises, like so many fingerposts pointing on; but nothing came into divine reality and vitality till Christ came. When He came into this world everything that was of God and for man's blessing was presented livingly in Him.

But we do not begin with Christ here after the flesh, but with Christ in resurrection. As Peter says in this chapter,

• God has "begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead".

• Resurrection is our starting point; we begin there, because nothing could become living in our souls until the question of death had been settled. Life and incorruptibility had to be brought to light.

When the Lord Jesus was upon the earth all the goodness of God was expressing itself in His beloved Son towards men in their need and condition as sinners in this world, so that wherever there was pressure or distress there was goodness and power residing in that blessed One to meet it.

• But it was only provisional; the leper was cleansed and the sick were healed, but, after all, the leper died and the sick man died. Death was not removed from man.

• The children of wisdom were attracted by the goodness of God displayed in His beloved Son, but life could not really be brought in for man apart from the death of Christ. Life and incorruptibility were brought to light in Christ risen after redemption had been accomplished.

• Hence we start with resurrection, and therefore the apostle uses this wonderful expression,
  • God "hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead".

Everything living is connected with resurrection. It is a great thing to apprehend this.

• Everything was living in Christ personally when He was here in this world, but life could not be brought in for us until He had gone into death and annulled its power and come out in resurrection.

• There is now a risen Saviour, and God has begotten us to a living hope by His resurrection from the dead. That is where we start.

• It has been demonstrated that everything connected with man in the flesh is a failure. People go to work now to build up that man. Everything in the religious world tends to set that man up again,
  • but God does not work to set up man in the flesh; everything of that man ends in death.

  • "Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return".

• That is man's condition and its end. He may be ever so good and religious, but death comes in on him.

• If we want life we must have a man in resurrection. Even Christ after the flesh had to pass away; the silver cord had to be loosed and the golden bowl had to be broken; everything was scattered that had been in connection with Christ after the flesh. Matthew 26: 31.

• We can well understand that hope died in the souls of the disciples. Instead of seeing Christ come to the throne of His father David, they saw Him hurried to the cross. But God came in and raised Him from the dead. That is God's great starting point.

• When we get a sense that God has begun everything in connection with Christ risen from the dead –
  • that He has started on that new ground and in that new place, and has established all His thoughts after such a fashion that no power of evil or death can ever touch them

• – we come into contact with a system of things where all is living, and we have part in it through infinite grace.

It is thus we are begotten to "an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you".

• This is in striking contrast to an earthly inheritance according to the flesh.

• I think the inheritance in the mind of the Jew would be connected with the fulfilment of all the promises of God; and the Jew had to learn, and so have we, that instead of God's promises being fulfilled in a natural way according to the flesh they are all made good in a spiritual way in Christ risen.

• Every Christian has to see that before he will make much headway in the knowledge of divine things. Everything breaks down on this side, but everything is established on the resurrection side.

We all ought to be interested in the promises. People do not make enough of the Old Testament promises. The promises display all the goodness of God; it does not lessen my interest in them to see how much they are connected with Israel.

• When God brings His blessing into the world no doubt Israel will be the centre; but to me the promises unfold what wonderful things the goodness of God will do for men, and that interests me very much, because it makes me acquainted with God and His blessed thoughts of love and mercy.

• The promises are all established and confirmed in Christ risen.
  • "All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us".

• Instead of looking for things to improve down here – trying to leave this world better than we found it – we look up to heaven for all the blessed things which are soon coming forth from thence.

• Things are going to the bad here, but what we look out for is the introduction of all that is good and blessed from heaven – things that cannot be corrupted or defiled and cannot pass away.

• Christ is the great storehouse of divine beneficence, and He is going to bring it all into this world. When the goodness of God comes out it will be glory; but in the meantime we look up there and see it all established in Christ, and that is the secret of our joy.

"Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations".

• What a paradox that is! To be greatly rejoicing and at the same time in heaviness through manifold temptations! It is very easy to explain it. We must draw "the vanity line", as an old servant of the Lord used to call it.

• The man who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes had a good chance of trying what was in the world, and he summed it all up as
  • "vanity and vexation of spirit".

• But when we cross "the vanity line" we get into a resurrection scene, where all the promises of God are confirmed in a risen Christ. The Christian as to his circumstances and condition is in the vanity scene, but in mind and heart and spirit he is in the resurrection scene. He has his portion there, and knows it, and exults in it, though he may be in heaviness as to this scene in which he is subject to trial and pressure.

• There are these two things always to take into account. The Christian is in a scene where there are manifold trials, and yet his heart has travelled into another scene where there is nothing but joy. We rejoice in Christ and in all that is established in Him. It is a great thing to know where to turn for joy.

• If we get a little bit of gratification from things under the sun we pay the penalty. There are always two bitters to one sweet. If we get lifted up by things connected with the vanity scene we get a corresponding depression. What is it worth, if we are only lifted up to be cast down?

• But if we cross the line and get into the resurrection scene, where Christ is, and see all the blessed goodness of God treasured in Him, we greatly rejoice. It is a joy, beloved friends, which has not a single bitter ingredient in it. There is unmixed joy on that side, though on this side there may be heaviness through manifold temptations.

• We have to learn how to distinguish between the two scenes. We are strangers in the place where Christ has been rejected, and our home is where Christ is. The Christian in spirit and affection crosses the line into that blessed scene. And he becomes "living" in proportion as he enters into those things.

Then in 1 Peter 1: 8 we have a wonderful setting forth of what a Christian is in his affections. There is no death there; all is living; the fact that the Christian loves One whom he has not seen is a proof of vitality.

• "Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory".

• People say that is transcendental. When anything is presented that lies outside the sphere of man's vision it is called transcendental. Transcendentalism in human philosophy is very like a man trying to fly. Transcendentalists try to rise above the level of things here by the activity of their own minds, but there is a force of gravitation that holds them down.

• The Christian is not at all like that. The centre of gravitation has changed for the Christian, for it is where Christ is, at the right hand of God. There is a mighty power in the risen and glorified One to draw the Christian up there as to his affections.

• For the Christian, there is really a greater power in Christ viewed thus, than all the influence of things here. It is a blessed reality, beloved friends; Christ a glorified Man in heaven is a reality, and the great question is, Are we interested in Christ, and in what is established and treasured in Him?

• It is no good being sentimental; if we really love Christ it will be proved by our wanting to know everything that it is possible to know of Him. Do not tell me people love Christ very much if they neglect their Bibles, or the ministry of the word, or the coming together of the saints. These things are the tests. Psalm 111: 2 says, referring to God's works, that they are
  • "sought out of all them that have pleasure therein".

• If we take pleasure in Chr