Last week we looked at the first chapter as bringing before us different things which give character to the saints as living stones.

• I now pass on to show how the living stones are brought together so as to be built up a spiritual house.

It seems to me that the first chapter might be summed up as putting off the old man and putting on the new, in the way in which Peter presents this great truth of Christianity.

• In the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians it is taken for granted that saints have put off the old man and have put on the new. Of course we have to begin with forgiveness of sins, but we do not stop there.

• The great turning point in a soul's history is when he puts off the old man and puts on the new.

There was a time when we regarded ourselves as in the flesh; we cultivated and gratified ourselves in that character; that was the time past of our lives.

• Now having been born again by the incorruptible seed of the word of God we view ourselves in a different light altogether.

• If I look at myself as in the flesh I cannot see a point upon which my eye can rest with any kind of satisfaction. I see every form of corruption developing itself; the old man corrupts itself according to the deceitful lusts. It would be dreadful for us to think we were identified with that man before God.

• I know of no anguish more terrible than of one finding out what he is according to the flesh and thinking he is identified before God with that old state. It is enough to sink one into the depths of despair in the experience of his soul.

• But what a relief to awake to the blessed fact that our old man has been crucified with Christ; that man with all his corruption and depravity has gone from before God. Thank God for it! Seeing this, we put off the old man.

• How do I look at myself now? Well I regard myself as a subject of the gracious work of the blessed God. I have been born again, I have been brought into the blessing of the gospel, I have received the Spirit, I am now being formed in holiness and love as one of God's chosen and redeemed people, I have put on a new character. It is a great moment when the soul comes to that point.

And all this is very practical. People may say these things are not practical. I grant they are not exactly practice, but they are very practical. We must be practical before we can practise.

• We put off the old man, we take the ground of not belonging to that man any more; we are born of incorruptible seed; we are God's redeemed people, and we are being formed in holiness and love as our true character according to God.

• It is a great thing to start thus, and the effect is we are empowered to lay aside what is connected with the old man. So the second chapter begins by saying,
  • "Wherefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings".

• These five things have to be laid aside; they do not belong to the new man. If I have put off the old man how can I go on with his deeds? A great many Christians try to correct the old man without putting him off. You first put him off and then you lay aside his deeds.

• If Christians do not lay these things aside, they will not make any headway. All these habits and dispositions of the old man must be laid aside, and the effect is that as new-born babes we desire the sincere milk of the word that we may grow thereby up to salvation.

It is very serious that there is not a greater desire amongst the children of God for the sincere milk of the word.

• It shows that many who take the place of believers have not put off the old man with his deeds, nor have they come into separation from the world.

• We shall not desire the sincere milk of the word if we are not prepared for separation from the world. The sincere milk of the word nourishes the soul in the knowledge of things that subsist in God's resurrection world – things that are established in Christ at His right hand.

• How can a worldly person take any interest in these things? It is a very serious thing to be worldly; it brings death into the soul. We cannot afford to be worldly, we cannot afford to waste our time thus.

If we desire the sincere milk of the word I am sure we shall get it, and our souls will be nourished in the love of God, and God will bring us intelligently into that world of which Christ is the Centre.

• If we love Him we shall surely desire to apprehend all that blessed system of things of which He is the Head and Centre.

• But if people are not prepared to leave the old world they will never reach the new. If Columbus had not left the old world he would never have discovered the new. Anybody can see that. But who is going to leave this world till he gets some idea of a better one?

The way God gives an appetite for the sincere milk of the word is by causing us to taste that the Lord is gracious. That is what it begins with.

• "If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious".

• What does that mean? Well, it seems to me that the graciousness of the Lord – His goodness – comes out in a special way in the Gospel of Luke. Just look at a section of it for a few moments.

• Read Luke 7: 11-16. It has been said that the woman represents humanity. Here the Lord was looking upon humanity in presence of the terrible reality and desolation of death, and His heart was touched with compassion. He was good.

• The presence and pressure of death is a great reality, but the Lord came down from heaven to meet it all and He has abolished it in His own goodness by going into it for us. We have found out His goodness in compassion. He has placed Himself in contact with death and has annulled its power.

Now read Luke 7: 36-50. Here we find the question of sins, and the Lord is good; He comes with frank forgiveness for all His debtors – for Simon as well as the poor woman.

• What a wonderful thing that the Lord should bring forgiveness for every debtor! We have tasted of that; we have tasted of the goodness in which He said,
  • "When they had nothing to pay he frankly forgave them both".

Then in chapter 8: 26-37 we get Satan's power in the man possessed by demons. Some may say that people are not possessed by demons now!

• There is no demon I am more afraid of than my own will. Satan gives energy to the will of man. Man in himself is a very impotent creature, but he becomes the agent or instrument of mighty forces of evil.

• The Lord delivered that poor captive of the power of evil, so that he was found sitting at the feet of Jesus clothed and in his right mind. The Lord was good. And we have tasted of that goodness. We have proved how He can deliver from all the power of darkness here.

Then in Luke 8: 43-48 we get the woman with the issue of blood. That seems to be figurative of the weakness of the flesh.

• Virtue went out of Him for the healing of the woman. There is power in the Lord to make us superior to the will of the flesh and to its weakness. How good He is!

In chapter 9 we see in picture that the world is a desert; it does not afford satisfaction to the heart. But the Lord made these five thousand sit down, and He gave satisfaction in the desert.

• We may have had to say many times, "We are here in a desert place", but have we not proved the Lord is good? Have we not tasted that He is good?

Then the goodness of the Lord is brought out beautifully in the good Samaritan in Luke 10: 30-35, where He puts Himself in contrast with man.

• The priest and the Levite passed by on the other side; they were not good; they would give nothing to a penniless and perishing man. But the Lord was good; He would give everything, and charge Himself with the care of such a one. How blessed to know Him in His supreme goodness!

• We shall certainly not know what it is to come to Christ as the Living Stone, if we have not tasted and proved His goodness. And the effect of this is to make us independent of anything in this world, and conscious that we have a resource in Him for everything.

• Would not that give us a desire to pass into God's world? He comes to us in goodness and in relation to our need, and then we are called to leave what is of the world and go to Him in His own circle of things.

That is what we get in verse 4, "To whom coming as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men but chosen of God, and precious".

• I do not think any one will enter into the blessedness of this until his heart is free to be attracted to Christ as Mary's was in Luke 10: 39. No doubt she had first tasted that the Lord was gracious, and the result was she was attracted to Himself.

• Then we get another side. Tasting that the Lord is good comes out very fully, as I have said, in the Gospel of Luke, but coming to Christ as the Living Stone answers more to what we get in the Gospel of John.

• Turn to John 1: 10-11. I read these verses to show that this gospel views Christ as being rejected by man from the very beginning; He has no place here. The world does not know Him, and His own people according to the flesh will not receive Him, but He becomes the subject of divine testimony as in verses 29-34.

• Here we see the Lord presented in quite a new character. He is the One who takes away the sin of the world and who baptizes with the Holy Ghost; He is the Son of God. That is, He is not looked at here in relation to man's need but in relation to God's thoughts.

• He comes into the world to take sin out of it, and then He gives the Holy Ghost, and as the Son of God He becomes the subject of testimony. When John said
  • "Behold the Lamb of God",

• it was the sincere milk of the word. All the word of God bears testimony to that Person.

• The two disciples spoken of in verses 35-39 had their hearts nourished by the sincere milk of the word, so that they left John and came to Jesus. They came to the Living Stone. John the Baptist's ministry had been the best thing on earth to their hearts, but they came into the presence of what was superior – they came to the Living Stone.

• Then when Peter was brought to Christ, verse 40-42, the Lord said to him,
  • "Thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation a stone".

• Those who came to Christ were living stones; and as we have Him presented in this gospel the Father was drawing the living stones to Him.

We see in John's gospel very plainly that Christ did not get a company from the world. The world did not know Him and His own would not have Him, but He got a company from the Father. It is very important to see that. So we get in chapter 6: 37,

• "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out".

• And in verses 44, 45, "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him …".

• The Father gives, and the Father draws, and the Father teaches. That is how Christ gets a company; He gets them really from the Father.

If we look to ourselves as living stones we have to trace our origin to a divine source; we had our origin in the Father's purpose.

• We are told that the Lord knew what was in man: He never trusted anything but what was of the Father; and that is the only thing that can be trusted. Everything that is of man breaks down.

• The great point is that the Father introduced a Person into this world who had no link with the world. He was altogether distinct from the world.

• His disciples never suggested that He should take a place in this world. They were ignorant in many points, but they were conscious that He had nothing to do with the course of this world. I believe if any person got a sense of who Christ is it would be impossible for him to connect Christ with anything in this world.

• In Christendom Satan has worked from the very first to connect Christianity with this world, so there are religious bodies with fine buildings, and they vie with one another as to which can make the best show in this world.

Coming to Christ as the Living Stone is the outcome of the fact that Christ has an attraction for our hearts that draws us away from everything in this world and of man.

• It is impossible to bring a risen Man into connection with things here. Are we prepared to come to Him outside everything in the religious world?
  • "To whom coming as unto a living atone disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious".

• God has singled Him out in the most wonderful way. In Psalm 89 we read,
  • "I have exalted one chosen out of the people".

• God sent that blessed One into this world, and when here He singled Him out and exalted Him to His own right hand in glory. It is to that One we must come in order to being built up as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood.

• We come to Him in the affection of hearts that have been taught of the Father. God is now bringing something to pass in this world far more glorious than Solomon's temple. That was a poor thing compared with God's mind for His saints today.

• How sad it is that so few of God's children know what it is to get away from man and man's world and to come to Christ and God's world!

God would have us built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

• He would bring our souls into intelligence of His delight in Christ, so that all that Christ is, and all that He has made known to us of God, might become the material of praise before Him in His house.

And then, having taken our place inside, we shall be able to go out as in verse 9 as royal priests, to

• "show forth the virtues of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light".

• The holy priest goes in, and the royal priest comes out in testimony here. The only business of a Christian here is to show forth God's virtues or excellences.

• We are put in a place of priestly testimony before the world. The only knowledge this world gets of the virtues and excellences of God is what it sees in the saints. Let us see to it that we come out as royal priests, so that there may be a witness for God in the midst of a world that has cast off the knowledge of Himself and rejected His beloved Son.

• May we know what it is to taste that the Lord is good, and to see how He ministers to our every need, so that we may be free to come to Him as the Living Stone and be built up a spiritual house for God's glory and praise!

I want now to bring before you five things that have a place in the House of God as presented in this epistle.

1. The first is that the gospel of the glory of the blessed God is the test of everything. It is the light in which everything is discovered in its true character and it becomes the test of everything.

• In the verses I have read from chapter 1 the apostle speaks of many different kinds of wickedness which are exposed by the light. And then he goes on to say,
  • "If there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God",

  • or as it should read, "The gospel of the glory of the blessed God".

• I want you to consider that the glory of the blessed God has come out in glad tidings to men, and that in connection with the House of God.

In Old Testament times there was no shining forth of the glory of God in relation to man. There were gleams of light sufficient to make a man like Moses pray,

• "Show me thy glory".

• But the glory of the blessed God was hidden at that time, and it is important to see why. It was really in the goodness of God that His glory was hidden.

• The fall had taken place at the very beginning of man's history, and all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. Now, if the glory of God had come out in the presence of corrupted flesh it could only have been for its destruction. Therefore in the goodness of God the glory was hidden.

• The glory was veiled because God was dealing with man in the flesh and, in a certain way, making allowance for man in the flesh. We cannot help seeing that in the Old Testament.

• For example, the Jews spoke to the Lord about divorce, and the Lord said, Yes, Moses allowed you to put away your wives
  • "because of the hardness of your hearts".

• There was an admission of man's state and provision made for it in that way. But there could not be anything like that in Christianity.
  • God makes no allowance for the flesh now; there is no provision now for allowing the hardness of man's heart.

• It is very helpful to see that, because it shows the great privilege to which we are called – to walk in the light of the glory of the blessed God. Nothing could be more wonderful than that.

Read in connection with this Isaiah 40: 3-9. That is a very remarkable scripture, because it indicates the way in which God would provide for the comfort of His people on the one hand and the display of His own glory on the other.

• The chapter begins, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people …".

• Many of God's children have not divine comfort, because they are still entangled with the flesh. They are conscious of a thousand imperfections in themselves, and are made to realise every day of their lives what poor failing creatures they are, and how unsatisfactory their ways are to God, and having all this before them they do not know much of divine comfort.

• But God would comfort His people by showing them how He has set that imperfect and corrupt flesh entirely aside, so that everything might be placed upon a new footing.

• In a certain way that was so when His Son came into this world. The presence of the Lord Jesus here – the Son of God, the Holy One of God – was morally the setting aside of every other man.

• There was no man after the order of Adam to the pleasure of God. That came out in the Old Testament; there was
  • "none that doeth good, no, not one".

• But God brought His own beloved Son into this world, and the moment He came into view at His baptism the heavens were opened, and the Spirit descended and rested upon Him, and the Father's voice said,
  • "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased".

• The glory of God was there, and, for the first time, the Godhead was revealed; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all brought to light in connection with Christ, not in connection with man in the flesh.

John the Baptist had come, according to Isaiah 40, to cry that all flesh was as grass, and to call people to repentance. And then this blessed One, God's beloved Son, appeared, and in Him the glory of God in grace.

• So, as we read in the Gospel of John, the apostles could say,
  • "We beheld his glory",

    and in the second chapter

  • He "manifested his glory",

    and in the eleventh chapter He said to Martha,

  • "Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe thou shouldest see the glory of God?"

• The glory of God shone out in that blessed Person. In Him we see God's glory in the midst of a scene of evil, and of Satan's power, a scene of distress and ruin and death. The glory of God shone out in grace in all its blessed supremacy in the Person of Jesus.

• It is a great thing to see that, because the effect is we do not think much of any other man, and we think a very great deal of Christ.

But there is another thing. The bringing into this world of the glory of God in the Person of His beloved Son did not settle the question of sin and sinful flesh.

• The cross was needed for that, and that blessed One by His own death glorified God in regard to sin, and made an end of that sinful flesh which is such a discomfort to every saint. It may work out in a different way in each one of us, but the great source of discomfort with us all is the flesh.

• The Holy One of God was made sin so that sinful flesh might be condemned and cleared away. And not only that, but in the very place where sinful flesh was cleared away the glory of God in holiness and love shone forth in all its brightness.

• We see the glory of God at the cross, coming out in all its holy splendour in the very place where sin was being judged. The glory of the blessed God came out in that wondrous death. Flesh was removed in judgment; God was revealed in holiness and love!

And then, further, we find in Isaiah 40 that the Spirit of the Lord was to blow on the flesh. That carries us a step farther. That is what the Spirit of God does in your soul and mine. He brings us to God's mind about the flesh.

• What is God's mind with regard to my flesh? It is that it must needs come under condemnation and death; and it has done so in the Person of Christ upon the cross.

• And now, as a believer on the Lord Jesus, having received forgiveness through His Name, God has given me His Spirit to blow upon the flesh in my heart and mind, so that I may see the worthlessness of it and the impossibility of improving it.

• We are thus brought into concert with the mind of God, and then there is no hindrance to our souls being in the light of the glory of the blessed God. If I want to go on with the flesh, to gratify it or to display it, I am hindered from being in the light of the glory of the blessed God.

• But God works by bringing in Christ, and by condemning the flesh in the death of Christ, and by giving us the Spirit to blow upon the flesh in order to bring us into harmony with Himself that we may be
  • in the light of the "glad tidings of the glory of the blessed God".

Then it necessarily follows that those glad tidings become the standard of everything. It is very different from having the ten commandments or merely rules and regulations of any kind.

• Our souls are put in the presence of the holiness and love of the blessed God, and we are now called, as Paul says to the Thessalonians, to
  • "walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory".

• That is the only standard in the House of God.

• Many of us are content to walk like decent men and women in this world, and satisfied if we carry out certain precepts and do not step across a certain line which we draw for ourselves.

• But true Christianity is very different to that kind of thing; it is that we are brought into the light of God's holy love, and that becomes the standard of everything. Hence the apostle says,
  • "If there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine; according to the glad tidings of the glory of the blessed God".

• Everything contrary to that standard is condemned in God's house. I cannot enlarge upon it, but the importance of being in the light of God is incalculable.

• We are not in the House of God in legality but in perfect liberty, and joy, and blessing, because of the way God has made Himself known in Christ and by the cross and by giving us His Spirit, and then our knowledge of God becomes the standard of everything.

2. Then in chapter 2 we get a second thing that is in the House of God. The testimony of God is there. We read,

• "God our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For 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".

• That is God's testimony. The first thing is that God should be known in the hearts of His people, that we should be in the light of the glory of the blessed God. And that is preparation for testimony.

• The testimony, so far as I understand it, consists in giving a true account of God in this world. That is really the testimony of saints as forming the House of God – we have to give a true account of God.

• Remember the terrible state this world is in. It is ignorant of God, and has refused Him in every possible way. God has been turned out of this world, so far as men could do it,
  • but there is a divine Person here who cannot be turned out of the world, and He forms the saints into God's dwelling-place,

• and the only knowledge of God in grace and righteousness and love the world gets comes through God's house, which is the place where His testimony dwells, and from whence it goes forth.

• God is a Saviour God who desires that all men should be saved, and the Man Christ Jesus is the Mediator through and in whom all His grace has been expressed. The Mediator gave Himself a ransom for all, and this is the manner of God's approach to men in grace.

• The full glory of the blessed God has come out in the way of grace to men; and the testimony of it is maintained in the House of God. Nothing could be more wonderful.

Through the failure of man and the ruin of the church the light has been greatly dimmed, but I am inclined to think that God has maintained His own testimony all through from Pentecost until now.

• Not that you are likely to find the record of it in church history, for if the testimony of God was maintained in the dark ages it was probably in those who were not much in view of the world or of ecclesiastical historians.

• People are very much mistaken if they suppose that church history can be relied on as giving a true estimate of what there has been for God during the nineteen centuries of Christianity.

• We may look at the history of the dark ages and think there was nothing for God. But we are not justified in coming to such a conclusion. I admit there was very little public proclamation of the gospel, but God's house was here, and His testimony was here in the power of the Holy Ghost.

• Perhaps only a few obscure individuals, entirely unknown to fame, were in it, but God's testimony was in this world.

I dwell upon this because I want to ask every one here, Do you covet to be in the line of this blessed testimony?

• The great thing is that we should be in the testimony of God – that it should be the earnest desire of our souls to be expressing somewhat the true character of God in this world. That is the great dignity that saints have as forming God's house.

• We are here to present God in His proper character and true light as a Saviour God – One who will have all men to be saved, One who is approaching men by a Mediator and on the ground of ransom. We are here to render testimony to what God is in blessed grace to men.

• He dwells here in His saints in grace and blessing towards men, and it is impossible to be spiritual or pious without being evangelistic. It is the true testimony of the church of God.

• The truth of the church and the truth of the gospel have sometimes been regarded as though they were two different lines. But the true note of the church in this world is its testimony to the blessed God – that it is here sounding out the grace of the blessed God amongst men.

• Man may dislike the testimony and turn from it with contempt, but to be identified with that testimony is the great dignity that the saints have as forming the House of God.

• When I speak of the House of God I do not mean any particular company of saints. It requires every believer in the world who has the Spirit to make up the House of God; it would be incomplete if you left out one believer indwelt by God's Spirit.

3. Now there is another thing. The third point that I want to touch upon is that in the House of God man gets his right place. I do not think that man is in his proper place and dignity anywhere but in the House of God.

• What we see in the second chapter of this epistle is man restored to his proper dignity. Man has fallen and become alienated from God, but is seen here in his true dignity. What is the dignity of man? So far as I understand it, the true dignity of man is to be in intercourse with God.

• People think very much of being presented at court. A person admitted to intercourse with the king is looked upon in the world as a person of dignity. But the greatest dignity is to be admitted to intercourse with God.

• I think we sometimes look at prayer too exclusively on the side of our need and dependence; that side is perfectly true, but think of the great dignity and blessedness of being admitted to have personal intercourse with God!
  • "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour".

  • "I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting".

• The saints are to occupy this wonderful place of intercession, and I think the best time of one's life is the time spent in intercourse with God. That is the time of real honour and dignity. If you see a man who is accustomed to have intercourse with God you see one who is in the greatest dignity that is possible for a creature.

• We are called to be so in the liberty of intercourse with God that everything that comes under our eye becomes an occasion of intercourse with Him.

• You look around in the world and everything becomes an occasion of intercourse with God – whether it be men, or kings, or the mercies of the way, or its trials. You sit down to your meals; they become occasions of intercourse with God.

• I am referring now to chapter 4: 3-5,
  • "Meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer".

• One might think that partaking of food was a very common-place affair, but the wonderful thing is that God puts His people in such nearness to Himself that there is not a single thing that comes under their notice that does not become an occasion of intercourse with Himself. I think in that way man is recovered to his proper dignity and maintained here for the good pleasure of God.

• This is characteristic of the House of God; these things cannot be sectarianised; they cannot be limited to anything less than the whole company of saints.

• I put it to myself and to you, Are we really exercised to maintain individually what is proper to God's house; or are we content to live on a lower platform than that to which grace has called us?

• There is nothing legal or burdensome about it; God has thrown round our hearts the golden chain of His blessed grace and love that we might be drawn to Him and bound to Him, and that it might become the joy of our hearts to be in intercourse with Him and intercession before Him as to everything here.

4. I now turn to the end of the third chapter. The apostle's object in writing was that Timothy might know how to behave himself in the House of God.

• We are not Timothys, but we all have a place in the House of God, and it is as important for us as for Timothy that we should know how to behave ourselves there. Saints often forget that they have a place in the House of God, and it is well to have our minds stirred up by way of remembrance.
  • We belong to the House of God not only when we come together but at all times, and we have to behave ourselves as those who belong to that house.

• After speaking of the House of God as the pillar and ground of the truth Paul passes on to speak of
  • the "mystery of godliness:" [or piety] "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".

• It has been said that the mystery of godliness is enshrined in the House of God. I cannot go into this wonderful verse in detail; it is too big; but it is deeply interesting and profitable to see what is the mystery of piety.

• A mystery means something that is hidden – something that does not appear on the surface. Piety has its own secret and divine spring. If we look at the clock we see the right time indicated by the hands, and that shows that the spring and mechanism within are working properly. The motive power is hidden, but can be recognised by its effects.

• Piety is that everything in our lives down here is regulated according to God, and this will only be as our hearts are under the power of the mystery of piety. Now that is what we get in this verse. In one word it is Christ – He is the spring and energy of all true piety. The great thing is to have Christ dwelling in the heart by faith.

• The form of piety can be very well imitated, and in the second epistle the Holy Ghost tells us of some who have the form of piety but deny the power thereof. They have not got the true spring of it.

It is important for us to see how to get our piety invigorated. I think there is room for more piety in every one of us; but how is it to be brought about?

• If the clock is out of order will any amount of tinkering with the face and hands put it right? No, you must get to the spring and the works – to the hidden part – and put that right.

• It is no good trying to put right this detail and that in a legal kind of way. The great thing for us is to know and have more of Christ – to have Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith. If we get more of Christ in our hearts there will be more of Christ expressed in our lives. Christ expressed in the life is true piety.

• There was in that blessed One the expression in this world of a life that had all its springs in God. And now He has been received up into glory, so that in the power of the Spirit He might become the divine spring of everything for God's pleasure in the hearts of His saints down here.

• You will find practically, beloved friends, that when Christ holds and occupies your heart it is very easy to live piously. You do not find it a great effort to keep clear of the snares of the world or the lusts of the flesh.

• But when Christ declines in the heart it becomes difficult to keep on the right side of the border line, and not to drift with the desires and lusts of the flesh and of the mind. We need more of the mystery of piety – Christ Himself in the heart as the regulative power of everything.

5. Now a few words on the fifth thing. In the House of God the Spirit speaks. Chapter 4 begins,

• "The Spirit speaketh expressly".

• This is characteristic of the House of God; there we get the voice of the Spirit. No doubt the epistles are the voice of the Spirit in a certain way, but it is important to remember that only the Spirit of God can give application to things at the moment when they are needed.

• A man of ability might commit to memory the whole of the New Testament so far as the letter is concerned, but this would not give him any idea of its divine application.
  • The Spirit of God is the only One who can give present application of the needed truth at any particular moment.

• The Spirit spoke in the early days in the assembly and He has not ceased to have a voice in God's house. The Holy Ghost is here and has a voice on behalf of Christ in the assemblies.

• Of course I am not supposing for a moment that He makes new revelations now; there is no such thing as that. The whole truth has been set forth in the holy Scriptures, and we can thank God that the form of sound words is with us in Scripture.

• But then we need particular truths at particular moments; we need things to be divinely applied to our souls, and the Spirit gives a voice in the House of God to that which the saints need – that which is consistent with their present condition, and with the ways of God in leading them on in their souls. We shall have that to the end.

It is of immense importance that we should hear what the Spirit says to the churches, as in Revelation 2 and 3,

• "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches".

• When God speaks of having an ear He certainly means a moral condition – a state of soul that can discern what is of the Spirit.

• Nothing could be more sad and solemn than the deafness of God's people. There is nothing more solemn than to find believers – those you cannot doubt are children of God – deaf to the voice of the Spirit. We need exercise about this.

• In the epistles to the seven churches, it has often been pointed out that in the last four churches the word,
  • "He that hath an ear"

• comes after the promise to the overcomer. That implies that only the overcomer will have an ear for what the Spirit says to the churches.

• What is it to be an overcomer? It is very simple: an overcomer is one who responds to Christ. There are no two saints exactly alike in their circumstances, or condition, but there is not a saint in the world to whom the blessed Lord does not present Himself, and those who respond to Him become overcomers.
  • If Christ presents Himself to a soul and there is response to Him it necessitates that the soul should break away from what is not Christ.

  • If He presents Himself and there is no response, how sad it is!

• Christ does not fail at some time or other to present Himself to every one of His own in the world, and if there is response to Him it brings the believer into some degree of separation.

• Then there will be a further presentation of Christ to the soul, and if there is response to that a further manifestation still, and thus the Lord would lead on and draw His own to Himself.

• If there is response to Christ in our hearts I am sure we shall be overcomers, and the effect will be that we shall have an ear to hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies.

Let us remember that the living voice of God by the Spirit is in His house today. There is such a thing as divine ministry in the House of God, and the voice of the Spirit is heard there. What we need is an ear to discern that voice.

• We are not to receive everything as truth; we ought to be discriminating, and full of discernment. Would to God that the saints were more critical in a spiritual way! Every kind of error is presented now, and Christians do not seem able to discern it.

• We do not want the carping criticism of the natural mind that makes a man an offender for a word, but that spirit of discernment that knows how to separate what is human from what is divine. God says,
  • "If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth", Jeremiah 15: 19.

• We need to be particular and critical in that sense. We have to exercise our senses upon things, and not go on as if everything we heard was sure to be right. On the other hand, it is a very poor thing to be merely acute in the discernment of what is wrong.

• We need to gain increasingly an appreciation of what is of God; we need an ear for the voice of the Spirit, and exercise so that we turn away from that which is not according to the Spirit. In that way we should distinguish between good and evil, choosing the good and refusing the evil.

These five things characterise the House of God.

1. The glad tidings of the glory of the blessed God is the test of everything there;

2. God's testimony is there – the testimony of what He is in grace as the Saviour God;

3. men have their true dignity in God's house, as being admitted to intercourse with Him;

4. then the mystery of piety is there – Christ is there in the hearts of the saints;

5. and finally, the Spirit has a voice there.

We are exhorted to walk worthy of the calling wherewith we are called, but we shall not be able to do so unless we have some idea what that calling is.

• The calling has to do with the present time; it is the mind of God as to His saints now.

I cannot enlarge much upon it, or even give a full outline of the calling, but I may suggest that three things, at any rate, have a prominent place in it.

1. The thought of "one new man";

2. The fact that we "have access by one Spirit unto the Father";

3. The truth that the saints are "builded together for an habitation of God in the Spirit".

• I should like to say a few words on these three things.

We may not be up to our calling, and that to our own great loss, but the calling remains. The moment we speak of our calling we are looking at things altogether from a divine standpoint.

• The calling of God's saints is always perfect in itself, and worthy of God. And our knowledge of God is very much dependent on the manner in which we apprehend our calling. It is a great thing to be in the intelligence of our calling.

• We may feel that we are "less than the least of all saints", but it is blessed to be taken into the secret of God, and made to know His thoughts with regard to His saints.

1.The first thing to apprehend is that a new man has come into being. We shall not advance very far into Christianity if we do not apprehend this.

As to the actual condition of the world when Christ was here we may say that there were two men on earth – the Jew and the Gentile:

• the Jew, as such, making his boast in the law of commandments in ordinances, and professedly drawing nigh to God according to his privileges;

• the Gentile, on the other hand, openly giving himself up to "lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness", Ephesians 4: 19.

• Outwardly there was the greatest possible difference between the Jew and the Gentile, but in reality they only presented two phases of the behaviour of the same man. See chapter 2: 2-3. Both were characterised by
  • "the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts".

• This was fully brought out by Christ's presence here, and by His cross. The Jew was no more prepared to receive God than the Gentile.

God must have a "new man" – a man of an entirely new order. Hence the necessity for the death of Christ.

• The new man could not be linked with the old. If there was to be a new man there must be an end of the old.

• If the Gentile is made nigh in Christ Jesus it is
  • "by the blood of Christ".

• It is by that which bears witness of death – of the end of man after the flesh. The enmity between Jew and Gentile is annulled really by both being set aside.

• If the Messiah went into death as rejected by His people, what became of all the pretensions oŁ the Jew? The same death which removed everything that disqualified the Gentile for approach to God has set aside all the pretensions of the Jew.

• Man in unrestrained lust, and man subject to commandments in ordinances are alike ended in death, to make way for "one new man".

Christ and the cross are God's great tests for men.

• Christ crucified is a stumbling-block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks; but to them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 1 Corinthians 1: 23-24.

• The cross brought to light that there was nothing in man for God.
  • "If one died for all then were all dead".

• Man is often large before our eyes; we are easily influenced by what is of man in the way of wisdom or religiousness. But the cross is the power of God to deliver us from all that. Our every blessing is in Christ, and we have also found in Him the perfect revelation of God.

• The testimony of God, in one word, is Christ, and God is forming a new man to be morally descriptive of Christ. In the cross there is the entire setting aside of man in the flesh, that there might be a new man with a new mind. 1 Corinthians 2: 16.

It has been brought before us that the death of Christ is not only the end of man in the flesh, but that the love revealed in His death is the formative power of the new man.

• We learn the love of God in that precious death, and as we learn it we are formed by it according to God. See Ephesians 4: 24. The effect of the love of God is to form us in
  • "righteousness and holiness of truth",

• and this is the character of the new man.

In Ephesians 3 we get the state that corresponds with our calling, and here the apostle prays,

• "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith", verse 17.

• All that subsists in Christ as the Head and Centre of God's blessed world dwells in the heart, and no other man has any place there.

As having heard Christ, and been instructed in Him as the truth is in Jesus, the Christian has put off the old man, which corrupts itself according to the deceitful lusts;

• and, being renewed in the spirit of his mind, has put on the new man, which according to God is created in truthful righteousness and holiness.

• The Christian definitely parts company morally with the old man, and puts off all his habits and ways.

Instead of Jew and Gentile there is now "one new man" formed after God. It takes all the saints on earth to make up that "one new man".

• In the calling wherewith we are called differences of nationality, race, or colour have no place. There is "one new man" formed in Christ, and if this were entered into in faith and by the Spirit it would necessarily bring about practical unity and peace amongst all saints.

2. Now a few words as to "access by one Spirit to the Father".

• What strikes one in this statement is the fact that it contemplates the saints quite outside the range of the flesh. We are viewed as in a circle of things where everything is of God.

• It is blessed to know that if we have access to the Father it must be so. We could not bring any imperfection to the Father. It is through Christ; it is by one Spirit; and it is unto the Father. Divine Persons, if we may so say, fill the scene.

We have access to the Father as those who can be in His presence entirely upon the ground of Christ.

• We approach according to the blessedness of our calling and acceptance as it is set forth in Christ, and thus we come to the Father as worshippers.

• Then it is "by one Spirit". The Spirit is necessarily exclusive of the flesh in every form of its activity. And inasmuch as it is by one Spirit that the whole worshipping company has access to the Father, there must be in that circle perfect and divine accord.

• One could not think of a jarring note in the Father's presence! Jars proceed from flesh, and flesh can never have access to the Father. Any movement of flesh – any wrong feeling, etc. – should be thoroughly judged and set aside, or it will certainly hinder us from having access to the Father.

• A saint in whom there is the activity of unjudged flesh should beware of coming to the assembly. It is a very solemn thing to bring unjudged flesh before the Lord. The Corinthians found this out to their cost.

In chapter 3 what corresponds with access to the Father is

• "being rooted and grounded in love", in order that ye "may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height", verse 18.

• That is, Paul would have us become capable of apprehending the whole scope of the Father's counsels, of which Christ is the blessed and eternal Centre, that we may be thus enlarged in worship and praise before Him.

Then I am sure that the practical outcome of having access to the Father by one Spirit would be that, we should become very diligent in endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace.

• It would tend greatly to promote practical unity amongst saints.

3. I have dwelt upon these parts of the calling because they are connected in an intimate way with the fact of God dwelling here in His saints. This comes out very distinctly in the last four verses of the chapter.p>

• "Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;

  "in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit", Ephesians 2: 19-22.

The way in which the spiritual house is looked at in 1 Peter does not go beyond what was realised on the day of Pentecost. That is, the remnant of Israel was added to the 120 disciples and, as indwelt by the Spirit, constituted the House of God.

• But this did not suffice to give full expression to the truth. In order to present the House of God in its complete character it was necessary that Gentiles should be brought in.

• This did not take place historically until Cornelius and his friends received the Spirit as recorded in Acts 10, and afterwards Paul was expressly sent by the Lord to the Gentiles. So that, as in the scripture before us, Gentiles can now be addressed as being
  • "of the household of God", and as being "builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit".

The whole company of saints on earth indwelt by the Spirit are builded together, so that God may dwell here. He dwells in His saints in the way of blessing and testimony.

• His grace, His attributes, and His nature are known in His house, and are expressed there in testimony.

• It would be well if we were more impressed by the seriousness and blessedness of this part of our calling. So that, as partaking of His character, and formed in His nature, we might be able to give a more true expression here of what God is as revealed in grace in Christ.

We are exhorted to walk worthy of the calling wherewith we have been called. This involves that we become

• "followers" [imitators] "of God, as dear children, and walk in love, even as Christ also hath loved us", Ephesians 5: 1-2.

• Nothing could be more blessed than to know God as those who are in the full light of His favour and love, and then to be here to give expression to what He is in the midst of a world of selfishness and hatred and lust – a world, too, where all are in darkness as to God, and where every serious mind feels the darkness, though pride of heart and will often prevent the acknowledgment of it.

• We are put in the light in order that the light may shine from us. The House of God is filled with divine light, but the light is there that it may shine forth in blessing and grace towards men.

• The work by which God brings us to the knowledge of Himself is a hidden and secret one, but it is intended to be manifested and to come abroad in testimony. See Mark 4: 21-22. The divine candle is not to be put under a bushel or under a bed, but to be "set on a candlestick".

It is said of the holy Jerusalem that

• "the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof", and what follows is,

• "And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it", Revelation 21: 23-24.

• What the holy city will be in the coming day of glory, the House of God is morally now – the light of the world.

• Hence the apostle prays that we might be "filled unto all the fulness of God", so filled with the knowledge of God that we might be capable of giving a true and full testimony to Him now morally, as we shall in the ages to come.

In connection with this it is very interesting to notice the purpose for which the gifts of the ascended Christ are given. Read Ephesians 4: 7-13.

• Now turn to Psalm 68: 18. I want you to notice the words,
  • "That the Lord God might dwell among them".

• In the New Testament we read that the gifts are
  • "for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ …";

• but in the Old Testament they are connected with God dwelling amongst men.

• The two thoughts go together; the saints are the body of Christ and they are also a habitation of God in the Spirit. The perfecting of the saints goes on as they increase in the knowledge of God, and all the gifts further this.

• The substance of all true ministry is the setting forth of divine Persons in their manifold activities, and in all the varied grace in which they have been pleased to make themselves known to men.

Apostles have a special place as sent by Christ to make known in unity of testimony the whole truth of Christianity. Whatever we know of Christ, and of God as revealed in Him, we have got in one way or another from the apostles.

• Prophets are those by whom the truth is brought home in present application to the consciences of men;

• evangelists make known the grace of God which brings salvation to all men;

• and pastors and teachers feed the flock of God, and nourish souls by the ministry of the word.

• But the action of all these gifts is to the end that God may be known and expressed in His saints – that He may dwell here in blessing and testimony.

God is near to us in the utmost conceivable favour. All the action of the Spirit, and every exercise of divine gift, tends to make this more and more a reality to us.

• There is no shade of distance between God and His household, no cloud upon the favour in which He dwells in His saints.

I am perfectly conscious how feebly I have entered into the great reality of the fact that we are a habitation of God in the Spirit, and how little I have apprehended all that hangs upon that fact, and hence I can only put it before you in a very feeble way.

• But I desire to know more of it in spiritual intelligence and power, and I believe there is the same desire in your hearts, by the grace of God.

• I trust we may with prayerful exercise meditate upon these things, and be greatly enlarged in our knowledge of God, and of the wondrous way in which He is near to us in blessing and love!

The first thing for us is to get an apprehension of the calling wherewith we have been called, and then it is important that we should give good heed to the exhortation of Paul, who could say that he was

• "the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles … I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace", Ephesians 4: 1-3.

John presents the truth of the House of God in a different way from either Peter or Paul. He brings before us God's house viewed as a family of children – a household.

• He speaks of saints as children of God, and shows that God dwells in them. In that way they form God's house.

• It may be well, perhaps, to glance briefly at what is presented in the first two chapters.

We are living in a wonderful moment, for "the Word of life" has come very near to men in the Son of the Father.

• That holy One was heard, seen, contemplated, and handled by a chosen company of men called to know Him and be with Him in the days of His flesh. They saw in Him eternal life with the Father, and had fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.

• What they saw and heard they have made known to us, that we may have fellowship with them, and that our joy may be full.

The apostles were privileged to be in peculiar nearness to divine Persons with a view to their subsequent testimony. They learned that

• "the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand", John 3: 35;

• and they contemplated One who loved the Father, and who was here in infinite devotedness and capability to carry out in every way the Father's pleasure and to glorify Him. Fulness of joy is connected with the apprehension of this.

• It is not now demand on God's part and utter failure to meet it on man's part, making it necessary that God should be hidden behind a veil and surrounded with clouds and thick darkness.

• All that is in God's mind and heart has been told out by the Son of His love, found in this world as a Man: One able also to secure a perfect answer to it all on the ground of redemption in the deepest blessing of man. So that now God is in the light, and there is eternal life for men in His Son.

All this has now become the light of men. Light has come into the world. All that goes to make up the light of God – love, holiness, righteousness, etc. – has shone forth, and we now walk in the light as He is in the light.

• The effect of doing so must be profound self-judgment, for we find everything in ourselves – according to the flesh – which is contrary to the light.

• Men love darkness rather than light because they do not wish to judge themselves; but the Christian does not shun the light, he loves to walk in it; and the more light he gets the lower down he goes in self-judgment.

• And so, as a beloved servant of God used to say, repentance goes on deepening all through the lifetime of a saint. But along with this there is the deepening consciousness that
  • "the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin".

• The consciousness is maintained in the soul that everything we have to judge has been removed by the death of Christ. Our consciences are purged, and we have
  • "no more conscience of sins", Hebrews 10: 2;

• we have the abiding consciousness that everything which the light of God exposes as being contrary to Him has been taken away by the death of Christ.

If we sin there is necessity for confession on our part; we must have it all out with God, and

"if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness", 1 John 1: 9.

• The advocacy of Christ comes in here.
  • "And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous", 2: 1.

• If a believer sins it becomes a matter of consideration with divine Persons how he can be brought back to the proper state and feelings of a child of God.

• The question is not taken up in a judicial way, but in the home of divine affections – it is "with the Father" – in order that the one who sins may be restored to the right feelings and conduct of a child of God.

• It is not a question of clearing the conscience, but of rectifying the state of soul, and all is founded on the fact that Jesus Christ the Righteous is the propitiation for our sins. Chapter 2: 2.

• So far as propitiation is concerned everything is settled, and now the One who has settled everything is entitled to speak in love to the Father about the one who sins, because He has maintained righteousness with regard to the sin. This is in view of our moral cleansing from all unrighteousness.

The effect of walking in the light and of being cleansed from all unrighteousness is that divine love becomes active in us.

• "He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him", chapter 2: 10.

• What we have heard from the beginning is the presentation of Christ, and He has become the commandment to us. He does not enjoin anything that has not been exemplified in Himself. He could say,
  • "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you", and immediately afterwards,

  • "This is my commandment, That ye love one another as I have loved you", John 15: 9, 12.

• The one who says that he abides in Christ
  • "ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked".

The children of God are characterised by these things – they have joy in the knowledge of divine Persons, and they walk in righteousness and love.

• But in these things there is growth, hence we find three different classes addressed – fathers, young men, and little children or babes.

• The fathers have known Him that is from the beginning. They have come to the apprehension of Christ as the starting point of every divine thought. The purpose of God was formed in Him before the foundation of the world.

• Whether we think of creation, redemption, the peculiar blessings of the assembly, or what will characterise the world to come, everything has its beginning in Christ. He is the origin and starting point of everything that is of God in the universe.

• To know Him is to be put morally outside the whole world of human thoughts, and to see everything in relation to Him who is the Beginning and Head of God's universe. In that circle there are no snares or dangers; all is blessed and perfect and of God.

• Hence there is no warning addressed to the fathers such as is addressed to the young men and babes.

To the young men he says, "Ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him", 1 John 2: 14-15.

• The young men are regarded as strong – as being what we might speak of as established believers. There are a good many who are well-grounded in the truth of Scripture, and the testimony of God has its place with them, but with whom there is danger of the truth failing as to practical application.

• It is one thing to be able to expose error, or refute a gainsayer, by Scripture; but quite another to apply the truth in self-judgment to all one's ways and associations so as to be kept in entire separation from the world. Many of us can understand this very well. We are informed about a great many things that have not yet had their divine application in our souls so as to practically affect us in our walk and ways.

• It is astonishing how much one may know of the truth, and how diligent and faithful one may be in refusing anything like bad doctrine, and yet at the same time many links with the world and its things may be kept up, and the door may thus be standing open for the introduction of much that is not at all of the Father.

• The spirit of the world may come in with those who have much, light – nothing really keeps it out but Christ – and the world is the sphere of sin. If a man loves the world he sins.

It is sometimes supposed that the babes are most in danger of worldliness, but as a matter of fact it is the young men who are warned against the world.

• Young souls fresh in the joy of grace are not so much in danger of the world as those who perhaps know more, but whose joy has somewhat declined. It is then that the spirit of the world very often asserts itself again.

• It is the spirit of the world – the inward working in our hearts of the principles which make up the world – that we have to watch against. It is easy and convenient to many of us to stand apart from gross forms of worldliness. But there may be outward separation and yet much of the spirit of the world in our hearts.

• The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life are things that work in the heart – the very principles of worldliness within. These are things we have ever to be on the watch against. This corresponds very much with the word in verse 1,
  • "These things write I unto you that ye sin not".

• The world is the sphere where sin works; it is really sin systematised; it is the sphere where provision is made for the gratification of every lust of man. Let us beware of the spirit of it! It is most important that the light of God should have its practical application in the way of separation from the world.

With regard to the babes, what is said is that they know the Father, and that they have received the unction, thus becoming the subjects of divine teaching.

• The youngest babe in the family of God is on this footing. He knows God in grace, and he is taught by the Spirit to find all truth in Christ, and to abide in Him.

• Seducers may seek to move him away from the grace of God, and to turn him from Christ, but, having the Spirit, he is able to discern that this is the enemy's work. He may not be able to answer subtle arguments, but he knows God in grace, and he realises that to give up Christ is to give up everything. He abides in Him.

All this is introductory, and the moral effect of it is developed in chapters 3 and 4. The Father has in love given us the place of children of God. We have kindred nature with God, as born of Him. The fact of one really appreciating Christ is the proof that he has kindred nature with God.

• Men in the flesh do not appreciate Christ. Hence we read,
  • "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons" [children] "of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God", John 1: 12-13.

• If Christ is received and appreciated it is evidence that one is born of God and has kindred nature with God. God has pleasure in those who appreciate Christ; it is a delight to him to see hearts that really value Christ. The Lord said,
  • "The Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God", John 16: 27.

• In that way we come under the Father's love; we come into view as children of God. He has given us capacity to appreciate and love what is delightful to His own heart. Is it not amazing – if we think of what we were – that the Father should have wrought in us so that we might be according to God in nature and able to appreciate His beloved Son? We may well say,
  • "Behold what manner of love!"

We are children of God, but what we shall be has not yet been manifested. When Christ appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. We shall be like Christ in the circle of divine love and complacency for evermore.

• We shall be divested of every trace of that which we derived from the first man, and we shall be like Him – the Heavenly One – who is soon coming out of heaven as the Second Man. We shall be in every way suited to the Father's eye and heart like Christ.

• This blessed hope has an intensely practical effect in moral cleansing. The purity of Christ is the standard. It must be so, for if we derive morally from God as being His children, nothing will really satisfy us short of what is altogether delightful to God. This is found in full measure in Christ. Purity and righteousness are found absolutely in Him.

• We cannot be too simple in making Christ our only standard; we must not allow the religious world, or even our brethren, to become in any way our standard. If others are content with a lower measure of purification than that of Christ Himself we must not drop down to their level. We must keep the eyes of our hearts simply and steadily upon Christ.

• Those who abide in Him do not sin; they are not lawless. The only right thing is to abide in Christ, and the one who does so escapes from the power of evil and comes under the blessed influence of good. He practises righteousness and loves his brother.

It is thus that the children of God come into manifestation here. A people marked by righteousness and love must be the children of God. They are begotten of Him, and He abides in them, and they know it by the Spirit which He has given to them. Chapter 3: 24.

• "God is in the generation of the righteous", Psalm 14: 5.

• It is a very wonderful thing that there should be a company of people in this world in whom God dwells. He dwells here in His house, and His house is composed of His children, who come into manifestation as those in whom righteousness and love are expressed. They manifest God's blessed character in this world, where lawlessness and hatred abound.

• I know of no more practical truth than this, that we are called the children of God, and that as such we are to come into manifestation here. Love is the spring of righteousness. All that is right is the outcome and activity of the divine nature; it all springs from love.

Love is a thing we have had to learn, because naturally we had no idea of it. Natural love never gives people a true thought of divine love. We have to learn that love in the death of Christ.

• "Hereby perceive we the love, because he laid down his life for us".

• In chapter 4 John enlarges upon it. He speaks of love absolutely –
  • "God is love"

• – and then he shows how it has been manifested toward us.
  • "God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins", verse 9-10.

• In God's house we find ourselves in an atmosphere of love; it is the home of love and the school of love. We may only be on the lowest bench in the school, but how blessed it is to know that God has brought us into His house that we may learn and experience His love!

• In natural things the home circle is where a child learns love. Children are born with capacity for affections, but the affections have to be developed in an atmosphere of care and love. Many a one goes through life with a hard and loveless nature because he was brought up in a cold, hard way.

• But no one could say that the House of God is a cold place; it is filled with the warmth of His blessed love. We are brought into the family of God – into the children's place – that we may learn those deep affections that have their spring in the Father, and have had their manifestation and expression through the Son, and which are known now in our hearts by the Spirit.

• As we thus learn divine love and live in it we become capable of expressing it towards one another, and,
  • "if we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us".

• This is how John presents the truth of the House of God; he speaks of God dwelling here in His children. Is it not wonderful that God should be dwelling here in His saints? – that His nature should be coming out in all our relations one with the other? In John's gospel when it is said
  • "No man hath seen God at any time" it is added,

  • "The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him".

• But in the epistle it is,
  • "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us".

• The same blessed God who was declared by the only begotten Son now dwells in His children who love one another. In this way God is set forth in a world where no man has seen Him at any time. His nature and character are expressed here in His children, who form His house.

• Then there is also the testimony of His grace towards men in general.
  • "We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world".

• John is in perfect harmony with Paul. Paul speaks of the testimony that sounds out from the House of God when He says,
  • "God our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. For 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", 1 Timothy 2: 3-6

• John speaks of the same blessed testimony when he says,
  • "We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world".

• That is the testimony that sounds out – the evangelical testimony – the blessed witness of grace towards all. The youngest babe in the family of God knows the grace of God, for it is said to the babes,
  • "ye have known the Father".

• The Father is that blessed Name in which God is revealed in grace. Those who know the Father are left here in testimony to His grace.

• God's house is here as a living witness to Himself in this world. He dwells here in blessing and grace towards men; what He is as the Saviour God is expressed by and in His saints.

In God's house His love is known and believed, and His children abiding in love abide in God and God in them. Fear dwells not in that holy circle; perfect love has expelled it.

• God was the first to love, but the effect of His love known in our hearts is that we love. This great miracle God has brought to pass on earth, that there are those who love Him and His children, and who keep His commandments without finding them to be grievous.
  • What victory over the world is seen in this!

  • What a setting aside of lust and lawlessness!

  • What a blessed witness for God!

• And all this is morally the outcome of believing that Jesus is the Son of God. For this involves the entire setting aside of man in the flesh, and our moral purification from that man by the water aspect of Christ's death as well as expiation by blood.

• He came by water and blood, and the Spirit bears witness. It is by the Spirit that we understand in our souls the meaning of the water and the blood. The Spirit is the truth of it in our souls, hence the one who believes on the Son of God has the witness in himself.

• The effect of the presence of the Spirit here is that God's witness is here. The witness is that God has given to His saints eternal life, and this life is in His Son. May we ponder much these great and blessed realities, and know better what it means to be able to say,
  • "And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding that we should know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life".

• Nor let us forget that last solemn word,
  • "Children, keep yourselves from idols!"

I desire to say a little on the subject of discipline. God disciplines His household, and in thinking of the House of God we must not leave Out the chastening that is exercised there.

• It is one immense gain of being in the House of God that we come under His discipline. The exhortation,
  • "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord", Hebrews 12: 5,

• is quoted from Proverbs 3: 11. The word "chastening" in that verse is one which often occurs in Proverbs, where it is generally translated "instruction", but a few times "correction". It is noticeable that it often occurs in connection with "wisdom".
  • "To know wisdom and instruction", chapter 1: 2;

  • "To receive the instruction of wisdom", chapter 1: 3;

  • "Fools despise wisdom and instruction …", chapter 1: 7.

Christ is the wisdom of God, and in blessed grace has been made wisdom to us.

• Man in the flesh was an offence to God, but Christ the wisdom of God removed that man by death.

• Then, on the other hand, every thought of God has been established in Christ at His right hand, so that He may be known in the glory of grace by man – known in the beloved Son, who alone could reveal Him.

• Christ is the wisdom or resource of God to bring all this about. He has removed what was offensive to God, and in Him is established everything that is pleasurable to God, and He is the revelation of all the fulness of the Godhead.

But this entails the practical setting aside in God's children of that which is contrary to His nature and pleasure.

• If everything unsuitable to God was condemned and removed sacrificially at the cross, it is necessary that everything in us of that character should be set aside morally. That is why instruction – chastening – come in.

• God is bent upon having His children in moral correspondence with Himself. It is not enough that we should see that He has effected certain things by the cross, and established certain things in Christ. We are to be in moral correspondence with God and with what He has effected.

• He wants us to know the power and reality of these things in our souls, so that we may be
  • "partakers of his holiness".

• So chastening comes in. God deals with us so that the flesh may be practically set aside, and Christ formed in us under His eye. "Wisdom" is the mind of God set forth in Christ, but then "instruction" comes in on our side that we may be in moral correspondence with "wisdom".

There is a verse which brings three very important things together.

• "Buy the truth, and sell it not; wisdom, and instruction, and understanding", Proverbs 23: 23.

Wisdom is presented to us in the ministry of Christ; instruction is that moral process by which God brings us into accord with what is ministered to us; and the result is understanding
• "the knowledge of the holy is understanding", Proverbs 9: 10

• – we are brought into the knowledge of God, and of those holy things in which He finds pleasure.

Discipline affects us in three distinct ways; it is either preventive, or corrective, or instructive.

• The same discipline may affect us in all three ways, or one element may be more prominent than the others. Generally the three things go together, more or less.

I will give an example of preventive chastening in the case of people who were walking wrongly, and another in the case of one who was walking well.

• "Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths", Hosea 2: 6.

• When God's people get into a wrong path He often comes in and puts a hedge across the way. He builds a wall that we may not be able to proceed farther in the road where the folly of our own hearts is leading us.

• Many of us have deep cause for thanksgiving that God has blocked up our way. We do not always see where our way is leading us, but God regards our way. He has regard to the moral consequences of things, and in mercy He blocks up many a road that seems all right to us.

• He takes notice of things which are likely to turn us aside. There is that element in God's chastening; it tends to preserve us from evils or dangers that, perhaps, we do not anticipate. In that way it is preservative.

We see another instance of preventive chastening in the case of Paul.

• "And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure", 2 Corinthians 12: 7.

• We might have supposed that Paul would not need discipline of this kind! But after he had been in the most wonderful divine privilege God anticipated a danger, and discipline came in to prevent the working of the flesh. If Paul needed preventive discipline it is pretty certain that we do.

• God graciously preserves us by His chastening from things which we do not ourselves anticipate. The thought of this is very encouraging to a true heart; we are under the blessed supervision and care of God. It delights my heart to know that God guards me by His gracious discipline from unknown dangers, and checks my proneness to turn aside and give place to the flesh.

• I do not know where I might have got to but for the discipline of God.

Another distinct action of discipline is that it is corrective. There is an element of correction – that is, of setting right – in all discipline.

• There is always, to some degree, the thought of rectification in it. We see this in Psalm 119: 67.
  • "Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now have I kept thy word".

• The Psalmist was corrected by the discipline of God; he was recovered from going astray.

Very often there is something in us, or in our ways, that is not pleasing to God, and He discovers it to us by some form of discipline. He alone knows the true state of our hearts, and how to touch us in a corrective way.

• We note many of the faults and failings of our brethren, and we think we can weigh them up, but, after all, we know very little about them!

• It is wonderful to think that God takes account of us, and knows how to touch us for correction. I do not mean punishment by correction, but setting right. God's object is always to put us right.

Then again we read, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes", Psalm 119: 71.

• There we get the thought of instruction. God wants to bring us info the knowledge of Himself, and of His mind with regard to things. If our ears are open to discipline – Job 36: 10 – we get instruction in the mind of God.

• It is not only that our evil ways are corrected, but we gain in our knowledge of God and of what suits Him; we acquire knowledge of His perfect ways. David, disciplined by the death of Uzza, learned God's statutes. 1 Chronicles 13: 7-14; 15: 2.

• There is sometimes a good deal of levity about us in regard to divine things, and we have to be sobered by affliction or sorrow, so that we may learn what is according to God's mind.

• We are apt to be influenced by others, and to shape our course on the model of what we see round about us; but this will not do in divine things.

• God calls us apart by discipline that we may learn His mind, and be prepared to act more entirely with regard to His will.

The discipline of God is preventive, and corrective, and instructive – it tends to make us more intelligent in the mind of God. These three things go together.

It has been observed that there are three distinct kinds of chastening.

1. We may suffer from things which are common to men,

2. or we may suffer trials which are peculiar to the path of faith,

3. or we may have to suffer in different ways the consequences of our own wrong-doing.

There are many trials that are not confined to saints.

• Trying circumstances, suffering and weakness in body, and the sorrow of bereavement are common to men generally. The unconverted have these trials as well as believers.

• But the blessed thing is that God takes up all these things, which are connected with the wreck and ruin of things in this world of sin and death, and makes them work divine profit and benefit to His beloved children.

I do not suppose there is one here without some kind of sorrow or trial.

• God's discipline is a matter in which we are all personally interested; it has a practical bearing upon every one of us. How blessed to know that these sorrows and exercises are instruments in our Father's hand to bring about the profit of our souls!

• Men of the world in presence of sorrow often harden themselves to bear it in a stoical way, but if we get hard and callous we miss the good of God's discipline. God would not have us to accustom ourselves to trials and get hard under them.

• There is nothing stoical in Christianity; every proper natural feeling and sensibility has its place, but these feelings become the occasion for the development of tender and precious spiritual affections – the sensibilities and feelings of Christ.

We may see an example of beautiful divine tenderness and care in Philippians 2: 25-28.

• "Yet I supposed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, and companion in labour, and fellow-soldier, but your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants.

  "For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick. For indeed he was sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.

  "I sent him therefore the more carefully, that, when ye see him again, ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful".

• All this exercise and care, called forth in Paul and in the Philippians by the sickness of Epaphroditus, and the grief of Epaphroditus himself, not because he was sick, but because the Philippians had heard of his sickness, is perfectly beautiful. Spiritual affections came into exercise all round.

• This is a very blessed result of God's discipline, of which we do well to take account. Times of sorrow and suffering give opportunity for the love and care of the saints to come into activity.

• It is a common thing to hear one say, in reference to some season of great pressure or sorrow, 'I never knew before how much love there was in the saints'.

• We find the compassion and care and love of God in His children, and in this way we are spiritually enlarged in the very moment of pressure. We get this in Psalm 4: 1,
  • "Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress".

God cares for us in every detail. He cared that an old man should have his overcoat before winter. 2 Timothy 4: 13. He keeps His eye on us in all the discipline that we suffer under His hand.

• There is always the care of His love behind it all. May the comfort of this be ever in our hearts!

Then, again, it is in trial and sorrow that we learn in an experimental way the sympathy and succour of Christ – His love as Priest. He enters into every feeling of weakness and suffering.

• When He was here, healing thousands of people of various diseases, He felt and bore in His spirit all that He removed by His power.

• And even if it were death itself, we see Him in that matchless scene at Bethany – how can one speak of it? – in company with a bereaved heart; the blessed Son of God entering into it all and weeping with those who wept!

• And now He has gone up to the right hand of God to intercede for His tried and disciplined saints down here. The intercession of Christ ever goes along with the discipline of God, to the end that it may effect a divine result in our souls. It is all in deep, divine love.

The pressure of sorrow turns one away from the world and rebukes the natural self-importance of the flesh, and this leaves room for the blessed Lord to come to the heart in all the tenderness of divine sympathy and love to establish a personal link between Himself and the sorrower that could not be formed in any other way.

• The Psalmist could say, "Thou hast considered my trouble; thou hast known my soul in adversities", Psalm 31: 7.

• A friend who comes near to you in time of pressure or trial makes himself very dear to you. A poor mortal like yourself cannot do much for you, but you feel the preciousness and comfort of a friend who in some way feels for you in your sorrow.

• But think of the blessed Lord, with perfect knowledge of your sorrow, and of all the detail, of which you would be ashamed to speak to a human being, because it would so expose your weakness that you could hardly expect to be understood, coming near to you in perfect divine love and sympathy to endear Himself to you in your need and pressure!

• Of what deep and precious value is that holy discipline which thus becomes the occasion for our hearts to make personal acquaintance with Christ!

It might, no doubt, be said that in the enjoyment of proper Christian privilege we should be found in a divine and heavenly sphere of blessing far above all pressure and trial and sorrow!

• Blessed be God, there is a sphere where no trial or sorrow can come, but how do we reach it? There is but one way, and that is in company with Christ. But how and where do we first learn His company?

• Let us take the two going to Emmaus as an illustration. They were filled with grief, and were going back to their own things, far away in heart from the resurrection sphere in which Christ was. His love was set upon leading them to Himself in that new place upon which He had entered as the risen One.

• But His way of doing this was first to come near to them in their sadness, that He might establish a link between Himself and their sorrowing hearts. He knew their grief far better than they could tell Him about it, and He came near to them to lead them from the place of their sorrow to the circle of His own joy and peace in resurrection.

• That is how He brings us to His own side. He comes to us in priestly grace in our circumstances of need and sorrow, and makes Himself known to us there that He may draw us to Himself in a sphere where need and sorrow can never come.

We get the thought of this in Revelation 3: 20,

• "I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me".

• Divine love in Christ touches me where I am in all the reality of my weakness and need, compassed with infirmity, and feeling every sorrow and trial. I need Him to sup with me – to succour me by His grace, and thus to make Himself precious and indispensable to me.

• There is this wonderful thing about God's discipline, that it furnishes opportunity for the love of Christ as Priest to touch us where we are, and to so knit us to Himself in affection that we may travel in company with Him to a spot where sorrow and sin can never come. It is good to contemplate this.

• We sometimes look at the discipline of God too much in a judicial way, as if one did wrong and got a thrashing for it, as he deserved. We need to consider the blessed results which God intends to bring to pass by His discipline.

In this connection I may say that we are dependent upon Christ as Priest to give us divine understanding of the discipline of God.

• "There was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David inquired of the Lord. And the Lord answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites", 2 Samuel 21: 1.

• I suppose that, according to the due order, David inquired of the Lord by means of the priest. See Numbers 27: 21; 1 Samuel 23: 9; 30: 7, etc.

• It is only as we are in nearness to Christ that we have divine intelligence as to God's discipline. He can give us understanding in all things, and enable us to discern why we are under discipline, and what is the instruction or correction which it is intended to effect.

I have referred to things which are common to men – trial in circumstances, sickness, and bereavement –

• but in Hebrews 12 it is another order of discipline that is more especially in view.

• The Spirit of God has before Him a kind of discipline which is peculiar to saints. We may see a sample of it in Hebrews 10: 32-34.
  • "But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; partly, whilst ye were made a gazing-stock, both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used.

    "For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance".

These beloved saints had to pay a great price for being Christians. The fact that they took their stand as confessors of the Lord Jesus cost them a good deal in their circumstances here.

• It must be remembered that they had been accustomed to look for the manifestation of God's favour in their circumstances here. It must have been a peculiar trial to them to find that, after becoming Christians, they had so many hardships to suffer.

• But the things that befell them were on account of being in the path of faith. Many sorrows and difficulties are escaped by those who do not tread that path.

• Paul would not have had such a long catalogue of hardships to recount – see 2 Corinthians 11: 23-27 – if he had not been in the path of faith.

There are many exercises and sorrows which are only felt by those who seek to walk in the will of God and to be agreeable to the Lord.

• The enemy would seek to use such things to dishearten and discourage us, and if possible to divert us from a course which is pleasing to God.

• But the great thing for us is to remember that all these things are really helpful discipline for us. The hand of God is in them, and the love of God, and our exercise and prayer should be that we might have grace to profit by them.

• We are sometimes so anxious to escape from pressure or trial that we have not patience to learn the lessons God intends to teach us by these things. We should always count upon it that there is great gain in being disciplined by God, and we should seek to secure it.
  • "Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of thy law", Psalm 94: 12.

• The particular exercise of the present moment may never return again, so that if we do not get the good of it now we may miss it for ever. If we looked at things more from that point of view, we should desire with diligence of heart to learn the divine lesson in things that happen to us along the road.

Another kind of discipline is when we suffer the governmental consequences of our own sin and folly.

• There are also moral consequences which we suffer in the experience of our souls, as when joy and peace are lost in consequence of getting away from the Lord.
  • "God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting", Galatians 6: 7-8; see also Romans 8: 6, 13.

If we give place to that which is of the flesh we have to suffer for it.

• We may often learn the moral nature of things by their effect upon us. If we discover that certain things take us away from our joy in the Lord it is a solemn warning to us. To suffer in that way is a very serious discipline – more to be deprecated than any other kind of affliction.

• We ought to be wise, and observant of the moral effect of things, so as to take warning as soon as we find that they bring a shade upon our spiritual joy and communion.

• If we find that something brings what is, morally, death and corruption into our souls we ought to turn from it at once – we have learned its character by its experimental results. If we continue to trifle with it we play the part of fools.

Many things can be judged by their results.

• If we find that a certain line of things tends to biting and devouring one another, we may be quite sure that it is the line of the flesh.

• If we find that another line of things tends to develop love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, we may be equally sure that is the Spirit's line.

• We prove things by their moral effects.

If God deals with us governmentally on account of our wrong-doing it is our wisdom to humble ourselves under His mighty hand.

• The same remark applies to discipline exercised in the assembly, whether it be admonition, rebuke, or withdrawing from a wicked person.

• If I am admonished or rebuked by my brethren I ought not to resent it, but to be thankful for the occasion it gives me to be exercised about my ways. When under all discipline, of whatever kind it may be, it is important to keep in mind that God has said,
  • "To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word", Isaiah 66: 2.

All discipline is to the end that we may be partakers of God's holiness.

• Wonderful activities are going on in connection with the saints. Christ is being ministered to us through gifts and in the power of the Spirit;
  • then there is the work of God in us, and His ways with us, working together to bring about self-judgment and separation from the world, so that Christ may be increasingly magnified in us.

• The holiness of God absolutely rejects the world and the flesh, and finds its complacency in Christ, and the object of all God's discipline is that we may be partakers of His holiness.

• The great end of discipline is to make room in our hearts for Christ. As He is formed in us, and as we grow up into Him, we become partakers of God's holiness, and thus more and more suited to His house, of which it is written,
  • "Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, for ever".

The scriptures before us should awaken profound interest in the heart of every Christian, for they speak of the Son of God, and of the saints as forming what He calls, "My assembly".

• Though Christ was cast out of the world nearly nineteen centuries ago He still has a place here, for His assembly is here, and in that assembly He has a place and a voice. In Christ's assembly He is necessarily supreme, and this in a way that is exclusive of everything not of Himself.

I desire to say a little about the foundation on which Christ builds, the material with which He builds, and the character of the structure which results from His building.

• Then I hope to show how Christ's assembly really gives character to the House of God.

Many at the present day seem to think that Christianity is a development of Judaism, but there could be no greater mistake.

• Christianity is the introduction of what is wholly new and altogether divine in the Person of the Son of God. We are slow to get hold of this. We do not readily perceive that
  • "the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees", Matthew 16: 6,

• and human sentiment, verse 22-23, are things of which to beware.

• But if we savour the things that be of men we are far from the savour of "the things that be of God".

• The leaven of the Pharisees is human religiousness, and the leaven of the Sadducees is human intellect working in connection with divine things. Both are to be dreaded and shunned as elements ever opposed to what is of God, and human sentiment is no better in result, however well it may appear on the surface.

• In contrast to these the confession of a divine Person come in flesh into the world is the Rock on which the assembly is built. When Peter said,
  • "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God", the Lord said to him,

  • "Thou art Peter," [a stone] "and on this rock I will build my assembly".

• It is impossible for the power of evil to prevail against a structure founded on that blessed Person and the confession of Him.
  • "The gates of hades shall not prevail against it".

The first and second chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews correspond in great measure with what we get in Matthew 16. The Person of

• "the Christ, the Son of the living God"

• is brought out there in a wonderful way, and we also get what answers to "My assembly", chapter 2: 11-12.

• It seems to me that Christ's assembly is to the House of God what the inner shrine was to the temple, and that it corresponds with what is spoken of in Hebrews as the sanctuary.

• It has not to do with testimony manward so much as with service Godward. But this I hope to touch upon presently.

The full revelation of God has come out in Christ the Son. This gives Christ an altogether unrivalled place in the estimation of every one who has been taught of the Father!

• Godhead glory shines out in Him before our adoring hearts! I do not speak of this merely as christian doctrine, but as something which has become a very great reality to us. It is our deep joy to know the blessed God revealed in His beloved Son.

• God has spoken to us in the Son, and He would have us to look at the wonderful record contained in the gospels in the intelligence of the Holy Ghost to see the revelation of Himself in it all.

• God has set Himself forth here; He has spoken in the Person of His beloved Son in order to win the hearts of His poor fallen creatures.

Then whatever came out in the life of Jesus here was uttered in a far deeper way at the cross. What a telling forth of God's heart was there!

• The death of the Son of God is the mighty voice of divine love to man. The ruin, need, guilt, and condemnation of man the sinner only serve as the dark background to show in stronger light the love that would reach him and bless him in spite of it all.

• When all were in utter darkness and ignorance of God He spoke in that amazing hour of Calvary, so that He might be known and loved and worshipped by all who have ears to hear what He has told of Himself in the Person of the Son.

The revelation of God necessarily carries with it salvation for man. God has spoken to us in the Person of the Son, Hebrews 1, and the "great salvation" began to be spoken by the Lord, Hebrews 2.

• Salvation is man's inheritance according to the grace of God. The portion of men in God's mind is to be "heirs of salvation", and those who despise their birthright are profane persons like Esau, entirely alienated from God.

• Salvation for man is bound up with the revelation of God because that revelation has come out in the way of redemption. The heart of God was toward man, but certain terrible questions stood in the way.

• Sins, death, and the curse seemed to bar the blessing of man, but the Son has removed them all out of the way.
  • "When he had by himself purged our sins" He "sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high", Hebrews 1: 3,

• and men can now find salvation in the knowledge of God.

Then there is another thing – the rights of God are all taken up in His beloved Son. There are two things in this connection – the inheritance and the throne.

1. God has appointed the Son "heir of all things"; He will take up His inheritance in the Person of the Son.

2. Then the throne – the rule of God – will also be taken up in the Son, so that God's inheritance may be filled with order and blessing under His rule.

• The glorious Person who is great enough for all this, and the knowledge of Him by the Father's work in souls, is the Rock on which the assembly is built.

When we come to Hebrews 2 Christ is viewed more on our side. He presents in Himself all the great and glorious characters which were set forth in typical persons of the Old Testament.

• God was pleased to make certain men prominent in Old Testament times in order to set forth in them something of what Christ would be. It was only an outline, but Christ fills it up.

For instance, Psalm 8 is quoted. "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet".

• Adam was a figure of this, as head of creation, with everything put under him, but Christ fills it up in a far deeper way than was ever true of Adam. Christ is the true Head, and everything in God's universe is put under Him, though we do not yet see this actually brought to pass. In the meantime
  • "we see Jesus … crowned with glory and honour".

• Solomon was figurative of this; no king had glory and honour as he had, but Christ is the true Solomon.

• Then He is the Captain of salvation; that answers to Joshua. Joshua was the captain of salvation to bring the children of Israel into the land, but he was only a type; Christ is the great antitype and reality; He leads the "many sons" to glory.

Then in verses 11 and 17 Christ is the true Aaron – the One who makes reconciliation, and the Head of the priestly family.

• In verses 12 and 14 He is the true Moses to declare God's Name to His brethren as Moses made known Jehovah's Name to the children of Israel, Exodus 6: 1-9, and as the One who brings God's people out of the house of bondage that they may be in relation to the House of God. Then we read,
  • "In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee".

• In this He takes David's place. David gave a voice to God's praise in the midst of Israel, but David – though a wonderful figure – was only a failing man after all.

• Christ in perfect devotedness to God has occupied every place between the throne of glory and the dust of death, that He might fill all things with the praises of God. Ere long He will be the Singer of praise in a reconciled universe, but at the present time He sings God's praise in the midst of the assembly.

• Then in verse 13 He is the true Abraham – the Head of the family of faith. This wonderful divine Person, known in souls by the Father's work, is the Rock on which the assembly is built.

I desire now to turn for a few moments to the consideration of the material with which Christ builds.

• This is a great and interesting theme, because it brings before us the whole subject of the Father's work in souls. The Lord said,
  • "Thou art Peter" [a stone],

• indicating that Peter was a bit of the material with which He would build His assembly. Peter got this character in two ways;

1. first, by divine calling, as we see in John 1: 42.
   • "When Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone".

2. Then in Matthew 16 he is addressed as Peter – a atone – in consequence of his confession of the Christ the Son of the living God,
   • and this confession is attributed not to Simon's discernment but to the Father's revelation.

All saints are living stones for Christ's assembly by divine calling. That is what we are in the thought and intention of divine Persons.

• But we have to become living stones characteristically, if I may so say, and the Father's work is essential to this.

• Peter was a kind of pattern man: he confessed the Christ the Son of the living God by the Father's revelation; but no doubt he had afterwards to reach what was involved in his confession in the history of his soul.

• We often get things first as divine light, and then we have to be brought into the spiritual reality of them by the work of God in our souls.

• These two things must ever be kept in view –

1. what we are by God's calling,

2. and what we are by God's work.

• The first is all that is in God's mind for us; the second is the measure of our experimental entrance upon it.

• The first is altogether divine and perfect; the second is often very imperfect, because the Spirit is grieved and the work of God hindered.

A beloved servant of the Lord, now with Him, used to speak of Matthew 14 and 15 as being the soul's education for the assembly.

• We learn by the imprisonment and death of John the Baptist that lawlessness and lust are in the ascendant in the world and will not tolerate any divine restraint.

• Jesus departs into a desert place; He leaves the ordered system of things, where lawless lust refused God, and in the desert He heals the sick and feeds the hungry multitude.
  • As the righteous One He withdraws from all the lawlessness that is here,

  • and as the gracious One He attracts need to Himself and satisfies the desire of the needy. He becomes the resource of needy man, outside the world as a lawless system. Each of us has to learn Him thus.

Then He walked on the sea to the disciples whom He had sent "before him unto the other side".

• He made Himself known to them in a power and supremacy that could attach to none but the Son of God. See Matthew 14: 33.

• Peter recognised that the Lord could not only walk on the sea Himself, but He could empower Peter to walk there too. Nothing would satisfy the ardent affection of the disciple but to be in association with the blessed One who attracted his heart. The truth was not yet made known that
  • "He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one", Hebrews 2: 11,

• but Peter anticipated it in his affections. It is affection such as this which constitutes one a living stone for Christ's assembly.

• The soul under the power and attraction of the Son of God is prepared to leave everything that is suited to man naturally, in order to be in association with One who has become its supreme object!

• How much we know of that attraction, and how much we possess of the ardent affection that thus responds to it, let each heart answer for itself!

Then in chapter 15 the Lord exposes the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees, and shows the impossibility of anything for God coming from such a defiled source as the heart of the natural man.

• But if there was nothing for God in the heart of man, there was everything for man in the heart of God,
  • and this appears in the healing of the daughter of the woman of Canaan, who had not the slightest claim to anything, and again in the healing and feeding of the multitude.

• How blessed it is to be thus turned altogether away from man to God! No one is prepared as material for Christ's assembly until he comes to this.
  • "The leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees"

• clings to one until by a divine work in his soul he turns altogether from man to God.

• It would be a pity if we deceived ourselves by supposing that we knew all about this. Most of us, perhaps, are only beginning to see the necessity for this great conversion, and how much is involved in it. Thank God if we have got so far!

Do not be deceived by orthodoxy. The Pharisee was orthodox to the backbone, but he would ally himself with the free-thinking Sadducee in opposition to Christ!

• Christ is the only one who is of God and for God, and the introduction of Christ means the setting aside of man in the flesh altogether.

• Neither the Pharisee nor the Sadducee will hear of this for a moment, and hence they are ever in deadly hostility to the Christ of God.

• If anything has place in our souls which is of man, whether it be ritualism, rationalism, or human sentiment, it is a point of weakness which Satan can attack and overcome.

• But if we are brought in the consciousness of our souls to realise that everything of man as in the flesh has been set aside in the holy judgment of the cross, and that everything that is of God and for God subsists in Christ, there is no point of attack furnished for Satan.

• He finds nothing in Christ that he can work upon or overthrow. The assembly, as built by Christ, is composed of those who are in the life of Christ by the Spirit and who own no other, and therefore the gates of hades cannot prevail against it.

• Satan can overthrow everything that is of man, but he cannot prevail against what is of Christ.

The Lord said to Peter, "Thou art Peter," [a stone] "and on this rock I will build my church".

• There is something in common between a stone and a rock; a stone is a small piece of the same material as a rock. Peter was a bit of the Rock, and that is what saints are.

• As taught by the Father to appreciate Christ, and to turn from what is not Christ, we are of kindred nature with Christ.
  • "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", Hebrews 2: 11.

If we look around in the world we see that people generally have little or no interest in Christ; His things are dry and unmeaning to them.

• But there are hearts that thrill with joy in the sense of His blessedness and love

• What makes the difference? Just this, that it has been well-pleasing to the Father to reveal something of that blessed One to babes. Matthew 11: 25.

• It is infinitely better to be the smallest, feeblest babe, to perceive the greatness and glory and love of Christ than to be the most honoured person in the world without any appreciation of Him.

• It is good when Christ can say to one, Thou art Peter – you are of kindred nature to Myself! Of course it is necessarily so if He is our life, and in the Spirit we own no other. The Father has taken us up to bring this about in us.

• If Christ has thrown self and the world and man in the flesh into the shade in the estimation of our hearts it is clear proof that we have been the subjects of a divine work. It is as being such that we are material for Christ's assembly – divinely formed material for a divine structure.

• The Christ, the Son of the living God, is now before us, and the consciousness of belonging to Him and being of Him puts us in spirit outside things here and in moral separation from man in the flesh and his world.

I have no doubt it was as the ascended One that the Lord built His assembly.

• "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my God and your God", John 20: 17.

• This was the message He sent by Mary after He had made Himself known to her in resurrection.

• He had secured the living stones, and now He placed them in a new and wondrous association with Himself outside the whole course of things here. His death had severed all their links with the world, and now He opened up another scene before them, in which He placed them in association with Himself in the presence of His Father and His God.

• It is as being in this holy and divine association with Christ, morally outside and apart from everything that is of man in the flesh, that Christ's assembly subsists for His pleasure.

• He has secured a sanctified company of brethren, "all of one" with Himself before the Father. Brought into His life and into His relationship, to have part with Him in the Father's love – sons with Him who is
  • "the firstborn among many brethren"

• – His assembly shares His place and glory as the risen and exalted Man.

• What an immense compass of blessing and privilege is brought before our hearts if we ponder the fact that we are Christ's assembly – appropriated in a peculiar and special way as His own by the risen and exalted Man!

Then if we participate in His life and place Godward we are also His assembly for His service and interests here.

• "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you", John 20: 21.

• He was here altogether for the Father; we are to be here altogether for Christ. As of His assembly we know and own no man after the flesh. We belong to a circle where
  • "Christ is everything and in all",

• and where we lose sight of all national, religious, and social distinctions. We only recognise Christ, and His saints as having Christ in them, living in His life.

• We have no one to consider or think of but Christ, no interest but Christ's, nothing to display but Christ. We are outside everything selfish and sectarian; we, as in the flesh, have disappeared, being not only dead with Him but buried.

• As quickened with Him and risen with Him we live in His life, and are His assembly.

• Beloved Christian, let this thought take possession of your heart, and see if it does not make the things of earth very small for you! You belong to a circle where Christ is everything as object and in all as life, and no other man has any recognition. You are of Christ's assembly.

Ever since that resurrection day of John 20 Satan's energies have been put forth to hinder saints from getting a true appreciation of the greatness of the Christ, the Son of the living God, and from getting a divine appreciation of what it is to be His assembly.

• Satan knows that if these blessed realities were known by the Spirit in our hearts there would be something there against which no power of evil could prevail. What is of Christ cannot be overthrown by the gates of hades.

• May our hearts be thoroughly arrested and held by the power of this great fact, that we are called to be of Christ's assembly.

Turn now to Hebrews 3: 1-6. "Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus; who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house.

"For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honour than the house. For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God.

"And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after; but Christ as a Son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end".

• We have already seen that Christ is the builder of His assembly, and in the scripture before us He is spoken of as the builder of God's house. God in the Person of the Son is the builder of His own house, and when it is built the Son is over it.

• This suggests a close correspondence between Christ's assembly and God's house, as viewed in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Christ is in relation to the House of God in two characters, of which Moses and Aaron were types.

1. He is Son over God's house, and in this He takes the place of Moses,

2. and He is also the "great priest over the house of God", Hebrews 10: 21 – the true Aaron.

• He orders and maintains everything for the pleasure of God in His house. It must be clear to everyone that if Christ has an assembly He will certainly maintain in that assembly everything that is of God and for God,
  • so that in Christ's assembly everything is maintained that is proper to the true and blessed character of God's house.

Christ the Son is supreme over the House of God. He is the only One who has authority there – the only One who can appoint and order whatever has place there.

• Everything that has not its source in the word of the Son is in one way or other the outcome of the action of man's will, and it has no place really in the House of God.

• For Christians to act in their own will in connection with God's things is like the sin of Dathan and Abiram, who rebelled against the authority of Moses.

• Christ is the true Moses, and it is a serious thing to rebel against or slight His authority.

Then in Hebrews 8: 2 He is spoken of as the

• "minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man".

• The service of God is all ordered by Christ in this character.

• There were holy vessels of old in the sanctuary; we read of five thousand four hundred "vessels of gold and of silver" brought back from Babylon when those returned to Jerusalem who had been in captivity. Ezra 1: 11.

• The saints as sanctified ones are now the holy vessels. We are set apart in all the efficacy of Christ's death, and brought into association with Him as risen, so that we may be holy vessels for the service of God in His sanctuary.

• We are morally formed as holy vessels by being brought into the knowledge of God according to that declaration of His Name which has been made by Christ in resurrection.

• It is most blessed to see that there is a circle where the Son of God is Minister; to see this gives us a great thought of the assembly – it helps us to realise what He meant in saying, "My assembly".

He ministers to the satisfaction and joy of God His Father, and there are two sides of His ministry.

1. First, He has declared His Father's name to those whom He has sanctified by His death. He has made known God's name in all its blessedness as known by Himself.

• We know the Father by the One who has glorified Him, and on whom His affections rest. He has brought out all the Father's glory and He is the Object of the Father's love.

• How the consideration of this takes us outside the circle of our need, and carries us into the circle of the Father's love! He said,
  • "I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them", John 17: 25-26.

• It is in this way by the ministry of the Son that we are morally formed as holy vessels for the sanctuary. If the Father's love, and Christ the blessed Object of that love, are in us we are morally qualified for the service of God in His sanctuary.

• But it is by the ministry of the Son that this is brought about; He is "the minister of the sanctuary"; He orders everything in that holy circle.

2. Then the other side of His ministry is,

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

• There is first the making known the Father's name, and the formation of holy vessels by that revelation, and then there is a response. According to God's Name so is His praise. Psalm 48: 10.

• The revelation is declared by the voice of the Son, and the response to it is also voiced by Him. Have our souls ever been exercised about entrance into a circle where the voice of the Son of God is heard?

• He sings in the midst of His brethren who form the assembly. If we are His brethren He is in us, according to John 17: 26 – "I in them". His singing is the suited and divine response to the Father's name and love.

• If we have a place in the sanctuary it is because we have been formed by the declaration of the Father's name made by the Son, and we are there to hear how the Son praises in the Father's presence, that we may sing as He sings.

• Do we know anything of what it is to be thus formed and filled by Him who is the "minister of the sanctuary"?

What would a company thus formed and filled be to the Father's heart? It would be a worshipping company such as He seeks. John 4: 23.

• The Son of God presents His brethren in the sanctuary, all of one with Himself, for the satisfaction of the Father's heart.

• May we understand better what it is to be His brethren, and to belong to the circle where He ministers. Then we shall know better the meaning of the words, "My Assembly".

In conclusion I desire to say a few words about Christ as the great Priest over God's house. He is presented in that character in Hebrews 10: 19-22.

• This is in connection with our privilege of drawing near. God delights to have His saints near to Himself, enjoying the liberty of His house.

• He has not only manifested His love in the gift of His beloved Son, but He has given the Holy Spirit as the powerful Witness of His love in our hearts. We are assured by a divine Witness of the efficacy of Christ's work, and of the unspeakable love of God as the source of all our blessing.

• There is not a cloud on the love of God, or a spot on our consciences to keep us from enjoying it. There is nothing to keep us at a distance from the blessed God, but everything to attract us into nearness to Him.

Everything connected with our old state and history was dealt with and removed in the death of Christ, but that is not all.

• The revelation of God has come out in the death of His Son, who came into death, not only to banish every cloud and remove every spot, but in order that there might be a way paved with divine love over which our souls might travel adoringly into nearness to God.

• It is "a new and living way"; it lives in all the blessedness of divine love, and Christ is the One who has opened it up.

• He had to remove in holy judgment all that we were, but in the very place where He did so He disclosed the depths of the heart of God, that we might live in the love of God.

The One who has done all this is the "great priest over the house of God".

• He is the great Centre and power of attraction by which those who love Him are withdrawn from every rival influence and led into the blessed privilege of approach to God.

• He attracts those whom He has sanctified – His brethren – because they are kindred to Himself, and in being drawn away from everything else to Him they give spiritual evidence of being, in truth, His assembly.

It is as we "draw near" that we realise the blessedness of Christ the Son as the "minister of the sanctuary".

• He leads our hearts into the holy love of God, and into the vast and glorious purposes of that love which find their Centre in Himself and their circumference in a universe of bliss filled by Him with the knowledge and praise of God.

• He thus secures a company in the intelligence of what is in the mind of God, and knowing the love of God, and therefore capable for the service of God in praise and worship.

• Thus the House of God is furnished with a company morally suited to its greatness. Nothing less than Christ's assembly would be morally suited to the greatness and blessedness of God's house.

• God's house is filled, in the sense that there is a company there capable of entering into His mind and the thoughts of His loveable to trace adoringly the perfection of His ways in Christ – and thus able to give Him now the praise and glory that is due to Him.

• Those who thus fill God's house are the sanctified company of which Christ speaks as "My Assembly".

I desire to encourage myself and you as to the reality of the presence of the Lord with His own.

• I believe it is a great characteristic of faith, and particularly in a day of general failure, to stand in the consciousness of this.

• I do not mean merely holding to the statements of Scripture, or regarding the words in Matthew 18: 20 as a principle or ground of gathering.

• What we need is to be encouraged in the sense of the Lord's presence in the way of support.

In Matthew 18, the Lord speaks of being with His saints in the way of support. When the Holy One and the True says to Philadelphia,

• "thou hast a little strength",

• it is not reproach but commendation. The secret of having strength is the consciousness by the Spirit of the Lord's presence with us.

• When Paul was before Nero no man stood with him, but he could say,
  • "the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me", 2 Timothy 4: 17.

• Others failed him, but the Lord did not fail him. He had the consciousness of being supported by the Lord.

• We, in our day, are in difficult times, but it is our privilege to be here in the blessed sense of the Lord's support. The Lord is here to support His own.

• I dare say you have noticed that there is no ascension recorded in Matthew. The Gospel ends with,
  • "lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the age".

  • "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth"

• – to support His saints and servants.

There are certain things in the world that are of the deepest interest to the Lord Jesus Christ. I wish we were more conscious how the heart of the glorified One is interested in what is going on down here.

• His Name is here; His interests are here; and His saints are identified with His Name and His interests.

• If we are in affection and purpose here for Christ, we need not have any misgiving, however great the difficulties may seem to be. Let us be encouraged in the Lord; He is with His saints. He will not abandon what is so dear to His heart.

• He takes pleasure in seeing His saints cherishing His Name and interests, and He delights to give them the support of His own presence in so doing. He is with His saints to protect us from the power of evil, and to encourage our hearts in all the blessed resource that is in Himself.

He says, "That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven", Matthew 18: 19.

• It is "two of you" – that is, two of Christ's assembly.

• He had before spoken of His assembly, saying
  • "I will build my assembly, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it", Matthew 16: 18.

• In Christ's assembly no other business is entertained but the interests of Christ. He has called us out from this world that He might entrust us with His interests, and that we might be wholly for Him in the day of His rejection.

• And if we are on this line it is impossible that He should fail to support us. The weaker we are the more necessary and certain is His support if we are set for Him.

May we be more familiar with His blessed presence.