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So let us begin our study this evening by reading in the first book of Kings and chapter one verse one. Now King David was old and stricken in years, and they covered him with clothes, but he get no heat. Then chapter uh eight of this same book, one Kings chapter eight. verse thirty seven. If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, if there be blasting or mildew, locust or caterpillar, if their enemy besiege them in the land of their cities, whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be, what prayer and supplication soever be made by any man or by all thy people, Israel, we shall know every man the plague of his own heart and spread forth his hands toward this house.
Then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive and do and render unto every man according to all his ways, whose heart thou knowest. For thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men, that they may fear thee all the days that they live in the land which thou gavest unto our fathers. Moreover, concerning the stranger that is not of thy people Israel, when he shall come out of a far country for thy name's sake, for they shall hear of thy great name and of thy mighty hand and of thy stretched out arm, when he shall come and pray toward this house.
Hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for, that all the peoples of the earth may know thy name, to fear thee, as doth thy people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have built is called by thy name. If thy people go out to battle against their enemy, by whatsoever way thou shalt send them, and they pray unto the Lord toward the city which thou hast chosen and toward the house which I have built for thy name, then hear thou in heaven their prayer and their supplication and maintain their cause.
If they sin against thee, for there is no man that sinneth not, and thou be angry with them and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captive unto the land of their enemy, far off or near. Yet if they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they are carried captive, and turn again and make supplication unto thee in the land of them that carried them captive, saying, We have sinned and we have done perversely, we have dealt wickedly. If they return unto thee with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies which carried them captive, and pray unto thee toward their land which thou gavest unto their fathers, the city which thou hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name, then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven, thy dwelling place, and maintain their cause.
And forgive thy people which have sinned against thee, and all their transgressions wherein they have transgressed against thee. And give them compassion before those who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them. For they be thy people and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest forth out of Egypt from the midst of the furnace of iron, that thine eyes may be open unto the supplication of thy servant, and unto the supplication of thy people Israel, to hearken unto them whensoever they cry unto thee. For thou did separate them from all the peoples of the earth to be thine inheritance, as thou spakest by the hand of Moses thy servant, when thou broughtest our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord God.
And the Lord give us good understanding of his word. Now, it is the fact, is it not, that we do not know the name of this historian whom God inspired to write for us the record of the first and second book of Kings. But whoever he was, he certainly opened his two-volume history with an exceedingly dramatic statement, did he not? King David was old, says he, and he got no heat, and they covered him with blankets as best they could to warm the poor body. But the great David, who once had gone forth menfully to meet the giant Goliath and had won victory after victory for the people of God, was now elderly and old at the end of a long and vigorous and varied life.
He lay in bed, a shrunken, old, withered man, and he got no heat, and he was terrible cold. And then they got a funny kind of a hot water bottle to try to warm him up, of which I shall not tell you anymore. And you see, but every device they used to keep the poor old boy alive in the end failed, and great King David died. You know, I fancy there were a lot of people in Israel that, when that happened, felt the very bottom had dropped out of the world. The younger generation couldn't remember an earth without King David at his center, and the old ones look back with tremendous longing and joy, you know, like old men and women do.
To the good old days in the past, you'll see, when David first came on the scene and all the campaigns he had, they were tremendous, and the enemy he slaughtered and the giants he overcame, they were colossal days. We've not seen anything like that for a long while, the old people said whenever they got together, Josie. And as for the young folks, he was their raving hero, he was, Josie, for he it was that wrote all the new lyrics, and they were tremendous. Everybody sang King David's psalms and lyrics, you see. So do I, I have to confess today, they laugh still, don't they? All the blessedness of the man whose sins are forgiven, whose iniquities are covered, to whom the Lord will not impute unrighteousness.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Why? He was the top of the pops, if there were such thing in those far off days, was he not? Everybody sang King David's hymns and... It was David that had brought the nation out of virtual obscurity and strife and division and united the nation together. It was David who had had that stroke of genius and captured old Jebus City and turned it into Jerusalem, the great capital of the free re- newly united nation, the Jerusalem that lasts still. If you go to Jerusalem, you'll see the bits and pieces of the stones with which David built Jerusalem of his day.
David had been everything. David had done everything. And you can understand why they did their very best and tried their hardest to keep King David alive. What do they do without King David? How should they keep things going and keep them at the same level, let alone expand them if David wins? In spite of all their efforts, David died. And it raises a very big question, doesn't it?
Because truth to tell, the men that came after him, well, some of them were half decent. There was Solomon, and he brought Israel to the great age of glory. In his youth he was sensible, but he died a silly old, a wicked old man and went down into depths of folly. And some of the men that came after him were good men, but a lot of them were very moderate men and average men, and a good deal of them were very bad men indeed. And by and large, the nation went from bad to worse until the whole lot ended up in Babylon. And it raises a question, doesn't it? You see, if you can't have David live to a thousand years and the poor old man has got to die, but, um, why didn't God raise up a whole succession of Davids?
If he could raise up one, he could raise up a whole succession of Davids, couldn't he? And Israel might have been maintained at the zenith of her power and glory. Why, if God could raise up a David, did he then, uh, allow his successors to be, on the whole, such very poor creatures? But then if you start asking questions like that, you'll ask the same thing about Christendom, I suppose, wouldn't you? Why in the beginning wasn't that's a thrilling book to see the tremendous exploits of those spiritual giants, Paul and Peter and James and John and Stephen. What a tremendous thing they did in the earth, you'll say.
Then they all went and died. And the men and women that came after, well, truth to tell, there were some giants now and again, but for the most part they were pretty ordinary pygmies, weren't they? Of average size, and some of them were sub- subnormal, you'll see. And, uh, in the end, well, things went from bad to worse, didn't they? To the great dark ages before the Reformation. And though on the whole, you'll see the Reformation was a good thing and restored things somewhat, yet, uh, century after century has seen decline, hasn't it? Sometimes into the most abysmal darkness. And the same question applies, doesn't it? If God could raise up one Paul, why didn't he raise up a whole succession of Pauls?
And we could have had Christianity at the tip top, like it always was at the beginning, all the way along, and things would have been marvelous, wouldn't they? Well, why didn't he then? And you know, you can bring it nearer to hand, can't you? You'll say, in my youth, I would, uh, you know, when I was beginning to preach, and sometimes it still happens, uh, you'll see, um, I've, uh, taken home after the meeting to my elegant host and hostess, and in the per- uh, process of making conversation, they would say, did you know Moody? Moody? I'm not that old, even if I look at I'm not that old. No, I didn't know Moody, of course I didn't. And did you know Stonehouse?
No, of course not. No. Ah, they say, ah, those are tremendous men they were, those great men. Oh, what fantastic times we had. There's no preachers around like that today. And I say, no, you're perfectly right, of course, Josie. And ha, and under my breath, I have to confess to you, I'm s- I'm very tempted to say, and please tell me what went wrong. Why didn't you carry on the same standard? But I, I, you know, restrain my tongue. Why did the Lord go and let those great men die and, uh, hand over things to such pygmies as me, you'll say.
What went wrong? Well, at least before we ask what went wrong, we could, uh, listen to the historian, couldn't we? Perhaps all, after all, God never did intend to keep David alive forever, and perhaps God's own solution for maintaining his people was not even to raise up a succession of David. Had God any provision for his people? Could they have been maintained at the high level to which David brought them? And the answer is, yes, they could have been. For Solomon, David's son, in his early days, perceived what God's provision was, said before God, I am but a baby, God.
I don't know how to go out and to come in before your people, nor have I the wisdom to lead them. Grant me your wisdom. And the solution to which God, uh, guided Solomon was this. Not a succession of Davids, but the building in Jerusalem city of the house of the Lord. That was the solution. And we have read from Solomon's great prayer at its dedication, in which Solomon lets us see how he perceived the glorious function of this house of the Lord that God had bidden him build in Jerusalem.
It is the cure all ills, as far as Solomon is concerned, as he stands with his hands raised before God in public, before the assembled nation. He doesn't say, Lord, put it in the heart of your people always to obey me. Of course not. What sane man would. He says, Lord, put it into the heart of your people always to look toward this house, no matter where your people get to, for we're all a sinful lot, and we all come short. We are plagued in our own hearts, and as a nation we go astray, given to perversity constantly, and we get ourselves in all kinds of trouble.
But Lord, he says, however extreme the trouble, however far the banishment, whatever the plague is upon the heart or upon the land, if thy people turn and pray toward this house, then hear thou in heaven and forgive their sin, and in thy tremendous mercy restore thy people to thy presence and thy blessing. For Solomon, the secret of the whole thing to maintain Israel as they should be maintained was the building of the house of the Lord at Jerusalem.
And we can't listen to Solomon, can we, though we are much more advanced, and some of us think we're a bit wiser than he was, but you see, we can't listen to him praying like that, but what as Christians, we begin to remember our own Christian provision, don't we? Listen to Paul talking to Timothy. Paul is getting an aged man now, and he's soon got to hand over everything to his younger fellow worker, Timothy, and people like Titus and the elders at Ephesus and what have you. And he says, these things I write to you, Tim, hoping to come to you shortly. But if I tarry, that people might know how they ought to behave in the, thee, in the, thee.
in the house of God. So let's pause there as number one station on our pilgrimage tonight. Let's pause there and ask ourselves the simple question, what exactly does the Bible mean when it refers to the house of the Lord, the house of God. You'll see the building that Solomon built for God in the ancient world is called by various names. Sometimes it is called a temple, but rarely so in the first and second book of Kings. It is normally called by the term the house of God.
Nowadays, as a Christian community, of course, we wouldn't dream of thinking of the buildings in which we meet as a house of God or a sanctuary. The house of God is the people of God, is it not? But still the question arises, what do you mean when you refer to the people of God as the house of God, and what is the house of God anyway? We are used to the term church, or we're used to the term the flock of Christ or the bride of the Lamb. What exactly do you mean when you talk about the house of God and how to behave in the house of God? That, to answer that question, it would be helpful to go back to one of the earliest experiences that the saints of God had of what the house of God means.
The first extended account of such a house is given us in the book of Genesis, isn't it? It was Jacob the patriarch who had the vision of the house of God. Just let me remind you of that famous story. Jacob had just, uh, swindled his brother Esau out of the blessing, you'll say, and Esau, not taking it kindly, had threatened to murder him, and Mamah had warned, uh, Jacob, and Jacob had found it convenient to leave home, and Mamah had given him directions. Here he was to go to her brother Laban down in the foreign land, and off he'd gone to make his living, you'll see. He's rather late leaving home, but he was leaving home for the first time to get his permanent job abroad.
His head was doubtless full of schemes and what he was going to do and where he would get to and what job he could have. When being tired out, he lay down to rest, and he took a stone of the place for his pillow, must have been pretty tired, and lay his head upon the stone, we'll say, and uh, schemed till he could scheme no more and fell asleep. And there, as he slept, he saw, and there was a ladder, not let down from heaven with the bottom almost reaching earth, but a ladder, if you please, erected on earth, and the top of it was going towards heaven.
And the angels of God were ascending on the ladder and descending in their quiet and impressive efficiency, in their thousands. And God he saw standing. And where was God standing? Well, you have your pick. You can translate the Hebrew as you please at this juncture, and some would say that God was standing at the top of the ladder, and the Hebrew will bear that translation. But the Hebrew would also bear the translation that God was standing at the side of the ladder. And perhaps Jacob's own comment when he woke up settles the question for us, does it? For when Jacob woke up from this vision, he said, surely God is in this place.
Now, it had been no news to Jacob to discover that God was in his heaven. Most days of the week, he preferred it so, that God should be a long, long way off, particularly when he was pushing a very hard bargain with, uh, Esau and cheating him out of this and that. It was marvelously convenient to have God a long way off in heaven, you'll say. The startling thing to Jacob was that God was in this place, and I didn't know it. Oh, how the echo comes down the century, how many one of us would have to confess it, even if we know the theory. When we get into our difficulties in life and we get churned up and overburdened with care, and we suddenly wake up to the fact that we thought we knew and had forgotten.
God isn't just in his heaven. God is in this place. Oh, my brother, my sister, this very moment as I speak with you. God is in this place. What a wonderful thing it would be if we woke up to it a hundred percent, wouldn't it? God in this place. And I knew it not, said Jacob, surely this is the house of God. What you mean by the house of God, isn't it? God is in this place.
But what for? Says Jacob, this is the house of God. This is the gate of heaven. And when he used that expression, as you perceive, he wasn't thinking of the gate of heaven as the way in. I don't know what views Jacob had about going to heaven, but certainly he didn't, wasn't anxious to go just now. It's like a lot of us, he was a young chap, you'll see, going out to get his job, and he wanted to get married before he went home to heaven. Ah, and he was looking forward to having a house of his own, a car of his own, and children of his own before going to heaven. I mean, there's a lot of who feel like that, isn't there? Ask if they'd like to go to heaven today. Well, they say, oh, well, yes, but um, what a mercy. I nearly, I was ill, so very ill, and and uh I nearly went to heaven, but God had mercy on me.
I say, a funny place heaven must be, mustn't it? What? Oh, you'll say God had mercy on me, so I didn't have to go to heaven. After all, uh, you'll see. And they're thinking, aren't they? Yes, it would love it to go to heaven when you're old and worn out and can't do anything sensible, but just for the moment, I mean, there's such a lot of interesting things to do, aren't there, down here. We necessarily want to go to heaven. Well, Jacob didn't anyway, we'll say not at the moment. So what did he mean by this is the gate of heaven? Well, he was thinking of that other function that a s- a gate had in an ancient city. The gate was the place where the elders sat to administer the city.
Go to Israel today, uh, to some of the ancient sites, and they'll show you, now this is the gate, and it isn't just a wall with a door in it, it's a big square building, and as you go in, uh, and you're in this big, uh, sort of, um, area, and round the wall are the seats where the elders of the city used to sit in order to administer and to govern the city. See. You see, Jacob had just had revealed to him not only that what God was in this very place by his elbow, but see what God was doing there. At his very elbow was the center of the whole administration of heaven.
God, as I would take it, at the bottom of the ladder, and with the angelic hosts going out from the divine presence to, uh, do his, uh, work and will, and the work and will done, they would return, descending to the divine presence and folding their wings, wait their further orders. Oh, what a spectacular thing that was. And if tonight we could be given the same vision, would it not overwhelm us? What kind of a civil service do you imagine is necessary to maintain our universe? What kind of a civil service necessary for the angels to minister to us who are on our way to glory, heirs of salvation?
What kind of a civil service necessary to look after the children, for the, uh, angel of the children has permanent and constant access to the immediate divine presence. The angel doth always behold the face of my Father, which is in heaven. God in this. Jacob sensed he was at the very center of the administration of heaven and earth. And he took it seriously. He said, well, God, if you're real like that and you're concerned with me, and you have given me this renewed promise that you're going to be with me and fulfill all your promises that you gave to Abraham through me and through my succession.
Oh God, if you take me out and keep me and bring me back, then you'll be my God. And some people have, uh, criticized him, haven't they, for being so mercenary minded as to be concerned with his wages and his living and thus and thus and thus. I don't know, I think it might do us all a bit better if we were concerned to take God to our factory and our office desk and wrote above our desks or the kitchen sink where we peel the potatoes, God is in this place. And now it begins to make sense, doesn't it?
You can begin to see what Solomon saw. He had the charge of maintaining the people of God, with David gone. But if this were true, if the transcendent Lord really was prepared to come and dwell in this house, which says Solomon, I have made, center of the vast administration of the universe. And that's all you would need, isn't it? For the maintenance of the people of God. Remain so still.
Let great men come and thank God for them, and when their time arrives, let great men go. The constant is this. We are the house of God. And I write Timothy two so men and women shall know how they ought to behave themselves in the house of God. That isn't some legalistic description meant to bind us hand and foot, is it? This is glorious gospel that you in your church and I in mine, wherever we are, have within hands length the living God, God in this place.
But not only did Solomon build a house, we are told in the Book of Kings quite a lengthy description of that house of the Lord that Solomon built. And as a device for refreshing your memory and also keeping us awake at this late hour, you might care to turn and look at some of the descriptions that are given of this house of the Lord. They come in one Kings chapter six. And though they are very ancient descriptions of a literal house of stone and wood and gold and silver, then eventually they shall convey lessons to us. You'll see chapter six. it came to pass in the four hundredth and eightieth year, after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month that he began to build the house of the Lord.
And the house which King Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof was three cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits. And from those verses, verse one down to verse ten, is a description of the house in terms of its basic structure. And the sum of it is that there was to be just one house. Of course, to make it practical, there had to be many side chambers where the priests could do their work, and priests had different kind of work, and some had to make the showbread, and some had to make the incense, and some had to look after the trumpets, and some had to look after the hearts, and some had to do this and that and tother, and so they all had their little rooms where they to work and do their several tasks.
But while there were many side chambers, there was to be just one house. That was the structural arrangement. And then verses eleven, twelve, and thirteen are a plea for obedience in this particular. And then from verse fourteen to the end of chapter six is a description of the interior decorations and installations. The ladies like this bit, of course, they're experts at their own interior design, aren't they, in their house? And of course, you only have to ask them about it, and then for the next half hour they'll give you a flowing commentary, uh, o- o- o- of the scheme of it and why the kitchen is there and how handy it is to have the bathroom there, you'll see, and uh, and why the uh wallpaper is this color and the carpet something else, you'll see.
It's interesting topic, isn't it? And of course, everybody in your church is absolutely thrilled and interested with the account of the decor of the Lord's house in First Kings, aren't they? They constantly read it. I'm sure they do, because who would, what lady wouldn't be interested in people's houses and its decor and installations, you'll see. Well, anyway, uh, uh, the basic thing was this, that inside there were two parts to it. There was the holy place and the most holy place. Inside was the very throne of God, and the wonder of it was that outside the bell where there was an altar where Israel's high priest could come, and if you can take it in, he was allowed to address the living God himself, who made his presence known on top of that Ark and mercy seat.
You just imagine the fantastic thing that God was saying to those ancient Israelites, that they could come and put suggestions to him, who is the Lord transcendent, Lord governor of the whole universe. And he allowed his little creatures on, uh, six foot of clay on two legs to come and stand before him and put their prayers and their supplications and their suggestions to him, and thus to share with him in his almighty government. It is an astonishing thing, isn't it? It's still true, of course, and in those days when we really believe it, we act on it, don't we? For you see, if when we meet in church, we are a house of God, who could measure the sublime privilege being allowed to come and put our suggestions before the Almighty's throne and cooperate with God in the prosecution of his work and in the government of his people.
And then it was marvelous to be inside because of the decor, the leading motif, you'll see, in the decoration, and it wasn't chrysanthemums particularly. It was, you'll see, it was, uh, palm trees, over and fast, and cherubim. When you walked in, oh, there were cherubim everywhere, you'll see. It's interesting to go into people's houses, isn't it, and see the things they like. Some people have got birds everywhere, uh, there, there, right there, in a big way on birds. And some have got flowers, and some have got modernist painters, you'll see. They like them, you'll say, but some go for the colonial style. And in the House of the Lord, why, you, you didn't have to walk two inches in, but what you saw, the leading motivation. They were all living things, you'll see.
There were trees, and there were open flowers, and then there were these cherubim, cherubim, cherubim, cherubim, everywhere cherubim. And if you'd have been allowed to go into the holiest of all, there were not only a couple of cherubim on the ark, but in Solomon's house there were two mighty great olive wood cherubim that stood up facing you when you went in, if you went in, with their wings outstretched from wall to the middle, from the middle to the wall, mighty great cherubim, cherubim everywhere there were. And it wasn't just to make the house look pretty either. You say, what was that for? Well, as other parts of scripture tell us, you'll see the cherubim were the living creatures.
In the Revelation chapter four where God's throne is seen and pictured to us, it is said it is resting on the backs of the living creatures, and they are the cherubim. For this you must know about God and his government, his throne rests on, and we're using the picture and metaphorical language of scripture, aren't we? Rests on the living things. This is not a set of doctrines, this is the living God. What would you suppose the decorative motif of his house to be? This is the living God. Everywhere around the walls in the holy place, in the most holy.
His expression of life. Yes. That's how he governs ultimately, you know. Do you know how God gets apples to go on a tree? Doesn't send a note down in the appropriate time, please, apple, now tree, there's an apple. He gives the tree apple life. And the life he gives it brings the apples. Do you know how he governs his people? He gives them his own life. He begets them again by his Holy Spirit, and by that very life of God within them, he governs them. The living God, known in the life of his people.
You can't read it, can you? You can't visualize that tremendous decorative motif in the house of God, but what you think once more of Paul's words to Timothy, these things I write hoping to come to you shortly, but if I tarry that you may know how people ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the... the church of the living God. Oh, what a wonderful thing it would be if, by God's grace, we could recapture the reality that an assembly is not just a place where we come as an evening club.
It's a place where we can know the presence of the living God, sense the vibrancy of his life. And then after that, look at uh uh seven. there was, you'll see, uh, in addition to the Lord's house, chapter seven, verses one to twelve, says there was another complex in the neighboring court, and that was the king's house, his own personal palace, the rooms of his harim, and sundry of the state rooms, the hall of judgment, and the hall of the forest of the cedars of Lebanon, and so forth and so on, and the king's bench division of the law, you'll see.
Because for the government of Israel, there was a twin unit of government, where's the house of the Lord here with a living Lord in residence, and there was the king's house who was charged to see that the people obeyed the laws of the living God. So that was the king's house. And finally, in chapter seven verses thirteen to the end of the chapter, there were the, uh, uh, installations in the court, and they were basically two. There were, in the first place, two great pillars, free-standing pillars, standing outside the porch of the house of the Lord. Oh, they were magnificent things to see.
Well, it wasn't the pillars that were so magnificent, but it was the, uh, capitals on the pillars. I hope you like art. Wow, they were good, you'll see these pillars, uh, you'll see big round pillars, and they had network on them in the, uh, stone, and in the network there were pomegranates, you'll see, and the, uh, capital seems to have been a three-tiered capital, and it had, you'll see, lily work. So there was at the top of the pillar, lily work coming out and branching out like the tops of lilies. Oh, that would have been beautiful. And then the great orb with the nets over and the pomegranates, symbols, of course, in Israel's day, the pomegranates of fruitfulness and the lilies of beauty, you'll see.
And these great capitals, marvelous work by the masons, you'll see, were kept up there on these great pillars. They were such big decorative pillars that they gave names to them. One was Jojakin, and the other was Boaz, and there they stood. So it was a very impressive thing as you came marching towards the house of the Lord, and you saw the front door. I go through a lot of front doors. All kinds of front doors. I could tell you about some of them, you see, but styles and tastes differ, don't they? You can't always judge the kind of people that live inside for what the front door is like, can you? Of course you can't. Uh, but if you came to, uh, say, Buckingham Palace, no, I better not speak of that, not here.
I remember where I am. Now, if you, if you came to the house of the Lord at any rate, why, you didn't slip in by some mean little back door. No, there were these two great pillars. Ooh, you were meant to go, ooh, look at that. For the beauty, the sheer beauty of those capitals. Wow. Yes, beautiful and attractive. And then in the court, of course, the special emphasis that Solomon had put there was this enormous great labor. In Moses' tabernacle, Moses was concerned with the big altar and the shedding of blood because Moses was concerned about the way into God, forgiveness and redemption.
But you'll scarce read about the altar in Solomon's house. What you will read about is this enormous great labor on the backs of oxen, you'll see. Colossal great thing. And then ten subsidiary labors on wheels. You are never far away from a supply of water, you'll see. If you wanted some water for cleansing, you had the ten labors all on wheels, could be anywhere you liked in the tryst, you'll see. Well, of course, if you had a lovely big house like that, you'd need to keep the thing clean, wouldn't you? And ceremonially clean. And Solomon was concerned, of course, and so was God, to keep his house clean, you see. Yes. Shall that, uh, ancient decorative motif and ceremonial have a message to us?
Well, yes, of course. Oh, what about our verse? These things I write unto you, hoping to come unto you shortly, says Paul to Timothy, but if I tarry long, that you may know how people ought to behave in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the... the pillar and ground of the truth. Now let's get that clear. The church isn't the truth, you know. The church is simply the pillar that holds up the truth for men and women to see and to admire.
Yes. Just like the pillar in s- pillars in Solomon's temple were there to hold up the beautiful great capital. So it is the task of the Church of God to stand as a pillar to hold up before the public's view the sheer truth of God in all its beauty and in all its fruitfulness, so that men and women coming might be impressed and delighted with the truth of God. It is a function of the church. Unless you think I'm now indulging in arbitrary, fanciful allegorization and all such evil things, uh, let me remind you of what Paul says about the other apostles at Jerusalem.
Paul happened to be writing a, a, a, an epistle on justification by faith and how the whole doctrine had been obscured by false teachers in the province of Galatia, you'll see, and people were teaching things contrary to the plain truth of the gospel and saying that circumcision was necessary to salvation, other such things that would have ruined the gospel. And he says, when I got to Jerusalem, I had a word with, uh, John and James, who seemed to be... who seemed to be pillars. Went and looked to see whether they'd grown a little bit wobbly in the meantime. Some pillars can, you know, they have that tendency to get a bit wobbly, and that won't do if you're meant to be holding up the truth of God's gospel before the world.
If your pillar gets wobbly, the big capital that is the truth can fall down in the mire, can't it, and get itself in disgrace. And I went and had a word with John and James, who seemed to be pillars, says Paul. Yes, Christianity has the same metaphor, doesn't it? Task of the house of God to hold up the truth of God before men. What about the other thing in the court? The great labor. It offered cleansing by water, didn't it? You know, there are two types of cleansing, even for us as Christians, aren't there?
One, John one seven says that the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanses us from all sin. And blood cleanses our hearts from an evil conscience. Blood cleanses us from the guilt of sin. Then Ephesians chapter five says that Christ loved the church and gave himself for her that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water through the word. And what does water cleanse? Well, not our consciences from guilt. Water cleanses, well, let me cite the verse, that he might present the church to himself, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, you'll see.
And spots and wrinkles, they're things that, uh, corrupt our beauty, aren't they? Gentlemen, you know what happens one of these days. Uh, you'll say you're sitting and you weren't expecting a marvelous banquet, but your wife announces that this is thought to do a big banquet, and when you're half enjoying yourself, she says, did, oh, I meant to tell you, dear, I had a little accident with the car today, you see. I wa- I saw Mrs. Smith across the road, and I was, uh, leaning out and having a word with Mrs. Smith when a stationary lorry backed into me, you see, and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I damaged the car, and you say, you've done what? You say, how many times have I got to tell you, woman, to look where you're going?
You mean to say you ruined the front of my new, brand new Mercedes-Benz? But of course, then you get over it, don't you? And you say, were you hurt yourself, my dear? No. Oh, that doesn't matter. Oh, Mercedes-Benz, that's only a bit of tin and iron, and anyway, that can be repaired, and I'll pay it for you. You don't have to pay. And, and, and then you give her a big kiss and, and you've forgiven her for the guilt of having, uh, been driving carelessly, you'll see. But if the next day, when you come down to breakfast and you're looking over the top of your newspaper, do you see? Oh, you say, like, yeah, you've got a nasty red place on your cheek there. What is it? Is it a boil or something, or what is that? You don't say, ah, well, it quite disfigures you, but I forgive you, do you?
You don't forgive your wife for having a boil on the cheek, of course not. They're not things you forgive. Well, what do you do then? You say, well, carry on, I don't mind. Get another one if you care. Of course not. You say, eh, you'll have to go to the doctor forthwith. You've got to get rid of that because, my dear, it's quite spoiling your beauty. Yes? So when we come to Christ, there's cleansing by blood from the guilt of sin, but in addition, there needs to be the cleansing by water. That is the removal of all those ugly blots, blemishes, wrinkles, and other such things that quite positively pervert, pervert our personalities, yes. And Paul takes up the theme, doesn't he?
He was writing at one stage to his colleague Titus, you'll see, in Crete. He said, between you and me, Titus, you know the Cretans are a bad lot, evil beasts they are, slow bellies and always liars they lot are, really, is it? Uh, well, the dear believers have got converted, or supposed to have been, but how would you handle an assembly where the folks were by character, you know, evil beasts and and liars, and you never could rely upon them? They'd say they'd turn up to meetings and never did turn up. You know, liars, always liars, and uh uh and slow bellies and that kind of thing, you see? How would you cope with them? And Paul says, well, have patience, Timothy, uh, Titus, my boy, he says, because we were like that once upon a time, weren't we?
We also were evil and hateful and hating one another and living in malice and envy, to tell the truth. We weren't much better. But after that, the love and kindness of God towards man appeared, not by works which we did in righteousness, but by his mercy he saved us how? You say by the blood of Christ. Well, not this time. But he isn't thinking about the guilt of sin, he's thinking about the perversity of our characters, the our, uh, uh, tendency to be disobedient and horrible generally. And how does God deal with that? He saved us by the washing of regeneration. And then the constant renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom he, mark the metaphor, poured upon us.
I have a certain sympathy in my heart with old Solomon, you know. What would you have done if you had been put by God in charge of a whole nation like Israel? And goodness me, they could be perverse sometimes, they could be, you know. I'm positively disobedient. I could understand the man putting the emphasis not on the blood of the sacrifice, though that, of course, still was necessary, but on the washing by water, because he was concerned with the natural disobedience of the heart of God's people. If we are concerned about behaving in the church of God, the living God, the house of God, how men ought to behave, then there too we shall have to put a big emphasis, aren't we?
We shall have to have a gospel that not only can offer people forgiveness of guilt, but positive regeneration and turn disobedient sinners into obedient saints. Hmm. Well, that was the decorative motif. And where's my chairman? So, may I have ten minutes? I may have ten minutes, and I believe it is true that if you stay for ten more minutes, you'll get two cups of tea instead of one afterwards, we'll say. They look all right. They look more or less a little way, yes, yes, yes, they look more or less away.
Uh, and just to complete the story. If that was God's provision for his people, I now suggest a way of looking at the story of First and Second Kings. But it seems to me the writer has a thesis. This was God's provision to maintain his people. Then what did they do with it? Well, the thesis is the simple one, that where Israel lived in the good of that great provision that God had made for them, they prospered. When they neglected it and transgressed it, then they came to trouble and ultimate disaster.
When in their trouble they came back to God and looked towards that house, then there came revival. And that's a simple message, isn't it? It's an obvious one, but God has spent two whole books of the Old Testament conveying the message to us. Let me rapidly sketch in some of the history. The first set of plans said there had to be only one house, many side chambers for convenience of work and that kind of thing, but one house. There came a king over the ten tribes of Israel.
His name was Jeroboam. He was Jeroboam the first, and his sin was what? God had gave him leadership of, had given him leadership of the ten tribes, but Jeroboam became afraid in his heart that if the ten tribes continued to go up to God in Jerusalem, to the temple of the Lord there, they might eventually abandon him and go back to obeying the kings of Judah. So he said, I'll tell you what, that's old fashioned, you know. That's old fashioned going up to that Jerusalem house. That's, that's old fashioned. The modern thing is to have two houses down here in Israel, you see. So he made a house of God in Bethel and another one in Dan, you see.
You can see the remains of it to this present if you go to Dan, dismal sight, you see. And where God had made one house and one divine headquarters, Jeroboam's sin was that he set up other headquarters and stopped the people going direct to God. That was an affront on the first and basic principle of the house of God. Basic principle of the house of God is that every believer has direct access to God.
It didn't mean that the people were to disobey their king. It did mean that Israel would obey their king so long as the people themselves had direct access to God. Jeroboam came between the people and God and inserted himself and his houses. It led to disaster, and the melancholy comment of the historian is this, that from the sin of Jeroboam with which he caused Israel to sin, from that sin Israel never recovered. And what will that teach us?
That will teach us that whatever our organization, the first basic thing to hold on to for dear life is the great gospel fact of our direct dependence upon the living God. I confess to you, I have fears in my own heart. Sometimes, sometimes they run like this. Why are the people coming? I hope they're not coming to wait on me. What a broken reed that would be.
I hope they come to wait for and on the living God. And if ever we get our eyes off him, simply our put our eyes on big men or whatever, or have you, we have begun the downward slippery slope into a desert of spiritual poverty. There was a fellow called Ahaz at one stage. He was a king in Judah. He was in, uh, political trouble, and he went up to Damascus to meet the, the, the, the, the king of Assyria.
And up in Damascus, he had to look around the temples, and he saw some new ideas. So he wrote a postcard home to the high priest at, uh, at Jerusalem. He said, uh, uh, high priest, uh, uh, sir, he said, I- I've seen some new schemes for altars and things up here, rather like the modern view. Here's a, here's a diagram. Would you have one made by the time I get back, you'll see. Uh, and when he got back, uh, they had this new altar thing, and he had a look round and saw the labor standing on its oxen, you'll see, and he had the bright idea to cut it down and put it on the ground, you'll see. Well, that made a change, didn't it? You just imagine the impertinence of altering what God had provided.
You mustn't be surprised that a few decades later, comparatively speaking, God allowed the king of Babylon ca- to come up, and he smashed the laver to bits. He smashed the pillars to pieces. And Israel went into captivity. And that should serve as a warning to us, shouldn't it? To undermine that real fact, the authority of it, the authority of God's holy word, by which we purify our hearts by obeying the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren. To demote the authority of the word of God and put it down on the ground, like many have done in our day and age.
Of course, to court utter disaster. Uh, but I mustn't leave you on that tired note, may I? Uh, let me tell you, remind you there were four revivals in the course of the history. And uh, in each of them you'll see a principle at stake. There was a revival under Elijah. Oh, what a man Elijah was. I don't think he ever went, went near the house of Jerusalem, uh, because he ministered in the ten tribes up north. But while he never went near the house of Jerusalem, he lived in the reality of it. Not just for him a matter of a few decorations on the wall of a building, flowers and palm trees and cherubim.
He lived in the reality. He knew the living God. When the nation was sunk in its idolatry, worshiping old Baal, Elijah challenged them to a contest on the top of Mount Carmel to decide who was the true God. And you remember the story. He said to the priest of Baal, you build your altars, you see, and you put your sacrifice on them, and you call upon Baal. And, uh, I'll build my altar and I'll call upon my God, and the God that answers by fire, let him be God. Well, the priests of Baal built their altar, didn't they?
And they called upon their God. But the historian knows there was no voice, nor any who answered, which isn't to be surprised at. Who was Baal, anyway? Baal was the old pagan deification of the storm god. Baal, sometimes represented as a bull, was the deification of the principle of fertility. Both of them impersonal natural forces. But you see, by this time Israel had sunk into such idolatry as the other nations had sunk to.
And leaving the living God creator, they had gone over to this absurdity, the idolatrous interpretation of the universe, the worship of the impersonal forces of nature. And our modern world has done the same, hasn't it? Atheists fight a cartloads. They don't like to retain the knowledge of the living God. They say they want to be free. But they have to admit that the ultimate powers that control them is not man. If there's no God, the ultimate powers that control us are the blind, impersonal forces of nature.
Basic energy, the weak atomic power, the strong atomic power, electromagnetism, gravity, and anti-gravity, if there's such a thing. All right, you live your forty years and the sun shines on you and you feel happy. You haven't got any God. You're an atheist, but you get yourself into trouble, and in the moment of your trouble, you go and stand on the top of your mountain, and you cry. You cry to gravity to help you. Cry to your electromagnetism. Cry to your weak and strong atomic powers, and there's nobody there to hear you. There are no, is no God.
You stand alone in the universe. And the universe, once more, that's going to crush you the very breath out of your body one day, or destroy you by a virus or something, and when it's done it, it won't even know it's done it. So for our neighbors and our friends who live without God and have no hope in the world. And alas for a Christendom that's gone after its atheistic evolution. We have one theologian in my country in a certain university which should be nameless. He's a theologian, and he doesn't even believe in God. We have the message, don't we?
What is the church? It's the house of God, church of the living God. Oh, my brothers and sisters, we have the word message the world needs. How shall we get it to him, to them? We can't content ourselves to stay within our little humble group, can we? We've got to get out where men are. We've got to get out where the priests of Baal are. To get to the masses that are dying without hope, and show them the reality of the living God. How would you show them that?
Hm. The old priests of Baal jumped on their altar up and down, and Elijah mocked them. We should call a little bit louder. I think your God may have gone on holiday, perhaps, or perhaps he's gone to the toilet. The Hebrew is a little bit, uh, you know, down to earth. He's gone to the toilet or something. He doesn't hear. Cry a bit louder. But they cried, there was no voice to answer. Then Elijah prayed. He put the sacrifice on the altar and doused it with barrels of water, called upon God to answer. The God that answered by fire, let him be God. And the fire came down and, uh, accepted the sacrifice. Israel knew who was the true God.
How do we know who the true God? Ah. There is one place on earth where you may hear his voice. And it's not a sacrifice of an animal upon the altar. It's the place of Calvary, where the sacrifice was offered for humankind, and God accepted the sacrifice, isn't it?
I was in Russia not so long ago. With this I close. I'm not going to take you through the whole of the Books of Kings, of course not, wouldn't dream of that. Of course I wouldn't dream of keeping you late. But anyway, uh, I was in Russia not so long ago addressing a school, you'll see, at the invitation of the headmistress, a secular state-run school. She invited me to come and preach on Christianity, you'll see. So I did that, and afterwards the deputy head came up and uh, and said, you know, what do you think about um, um, UFOs, she said. Uh, I said, well, we we we haven't had any our way. At least we've had a few, but the government says they're not the genuine things, so I don't know, madam, much about them.
Oh, she said, we've had a large number our way. I said, that's fascinating. She said, yes, and there was one recently who came, and uh, the in- the people inside the UFO told the local people that Buddhism is the true religion, not Christianity. I said, that's remarkable, madam. She said, well, what do you think of it then? Well, I said, that's interesting because I said, you know what, madam, in Buddhism, some forms of Buddhism, they teach you that, uh, people that have been collected so much merit that they can be excused coming back again in the, in the, uh, reincarnation, they are, so to speak, available to get in contact with us here on Earth and help us towards our destiny, you see. You know, they're kind of disembodied spirits, madam, I said, aren't they?
Or, or they could even be demons. What do you think, uh, they could be? I said, you know, really it's not a problem to me. I said, I was in Japan not so long ago, and one dear Buddhist lady said to me, well, why do you Christians say that Jesus is the only way to God? And I said, what I told her, madam, was this. I said, well, actually, you'll see, uh, my dear good lady, I have no, no, no difficulty in making up my mind because I have a practical problem, you'll see. I said, Madam, I'm a sinner, and as far as I can read, all religions tell us to try and be good, you'll see, and thus to earn our salvation. But my trouble, Madam, is this, that I haven't been good. So I'm stymied before I start, and uh, uh, you'll see, what I want to know is how can I find forgiveness in a way that will uphold my own values and uh, the values of the law, and yet be able to be forgiven, you see, without saying sin doesn't matter.
And I said, madam, you'll see why I say Jesus Christ is the only savior, because he's the only one that offers it. And I can tell you for sure, you'll find only one that will ever come alongside you and say, I am your creator. You have sinned against God. You deserve the penalty of sin, and I, your creator, died for you, that you may be forgiven.
There's nobody else will ever talk to you like that. Jesus Christ is the only one in the market, if I may put it crudely. How do you know the true God? It's the message of the fire that came down from heaven and consumed the sacrifice. It is the message of Calvary. Here speaks your living God. Rather than let you perish, he gave his son to die for you.
And it was Elijah himself in touch with the living God who made the living God thus a reality to his content and started the great revival that for a time brought Israel back to God. I should, of course, have liked to talk to you about all the other revivals. I haven't the time. As I said, enough to whet your appetite if you haven't been studying First Second, First and Second Kings recently, to work out the thesis. There was the house of God, there was its provision. The thesis of the historian is this, that where people used it, they prospered. Where they went against it, they failed and came to disaster.
When they returned once more to avail themselves of the provision God had made, it led to outstanding revival, and so it will do for us even in our advanced day. And the Lord bless his word to all our hearts for his name's sake.
