THE FATHER'S HOUSE AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
THE FATHER’S HOUSE AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Luke 15: 20 - 24; Luke 17: 11 - 21; Luke 18: 15 - 30
There are two passages in the gospel of Luke, beloved brethren, to which I should like to turn: Luke 15: 20 - 24; chapter 17: 11 - 21; chapter 18: 15 - 30. It appears to me that the more we get instructed in divine truths the more we see that there are certain things which must be.
Scripture does not present truths in an arbitrary or fragmentary way, but shows us that certain consequences must follow from what God is, and the way in which He has revealed Himself. I can compare it to astronomy. In the solar system, when an astronomer knows the place and influence of the sun, he knows the course which other bodies in that system must take. It is simple to see that the courses of the subordinate bodies are governed by the influence of the sun. These things afford us an illustration of the truth. In proportion as you get acquaintance with God you see that other things must be, because of what God is.
God is the centre of the moral universe, as the sun is of the solar system, and He has set His creatures as it were in orbits. Anyone who knows astronomy has an idea of what would ensue if a planet left its orbit; but that is what has taken place morally. Satan — a creature — fell from his orbit, the fallen angels from theirs, and man from his; the results we know.
But what we see is that God has revealed Himself in a power in which He is able to recover, not to put man back on the old footing, but to put all on an infinitely more blessed platform than in creation, because God is revealed morally, and that of necessity puts all on different ground. Now that we have the [p. 199] revelation of God in His blessed being and ways we find a vastly more perfect system of blessing.
What I want to say a word about is of what must be true in Christianity. From the nature of the revelation of God you have an inner and an outer. The inner is a calling entirely above and outside of man’s natural being and path here on earth. It flows from the revelation that God has been pleased to make of Himself. If God has been pleased to reveal Himself, as He has, the privilege must be commensurate with the revelation. But it is also true that the Christian is on earth, not under law and prophets, but in the kingdom of God — and this is the outer — for we are left down here to fill up the rest of our life in flesh for God’s will.
It will be noted that two things are presented in Luke — the Father’s house and the kingdom — and we shall see the place and importance of each to the Christian. Neither one nor the other can be held exclusively; you must see both.
I should like for a moment to refer to Matthew 16: 16 - 19, where you get exactly the same principle. There are manifestly two ideas there. One is Christ’s assembly; the other, the kingdom of heaven. The one is the inner, and the other the outer. The one refers to us corporately, the other individually. The Christian has part in both, and it is important to apprehend both.
The truth as to Christ’s Person had been revealed, and now there was a rock upon which Christ could build His church. The “rock” is the confession of Christ as the Son of the living God — in the glory of His Person. The soul has the sense of His supremacy. That is the rock, so to say, in the soul of the believer.
Christ’s assembly is a corporate idea, and the structure is here. Saints are all component parts of the structure, and it is a great thing to enter into the fact — as otherwise we drop down to congregationalism. Christ’s assembly is not simply a congregation, but a [p. 200] structure of which each saint is a stone. A congregation might be characterised by the holding of certain truths, but it would not be thereby a structure — there might be no building.
But we have also in Matthew 16: 19 the thought of the kingdom and the place which the Lord has in regard to it. He gives to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven. He says, ‘You are to act for Me on earth’. Christ is as man the great Luminary set in heaven to rule or govern on earth, and Peter was to act down here in the light of heaven. We have to act down here under the authority of Christ in all that is connected with the service of His name.
Both things are true to the Christian. He is a stone in the structure as the result of the work in his soul, that is the inner; but he has an outer sphere, too, the kingdom, where he has to act under Christ’s authority on earth.
I come to the gospel of Luke. Now, beloved friends, I have something to say here, and I trust to be enabled to say it. We read, “Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it: and let us eat, and be merry”, Luke 15: 22, 23. I do not think this scripture presents the height of divine counsel, but it is a most wonderful revelation of the grace of God, and the pleasure of God in recovery.
What would have become of man on earth if God had not come out to recover? The pleasure of God is in recovery. It is what chapter 15 conveys. We have in the chapter every divine Person active in grace. It is the administration of grace. The shepherd seeks the sheep, the woman sweeps the house, the father runs to meet the prodigal.
If God reveals Himself in such a way, I judge the privilege must be commensurate with the revelation. The delight of God is in recovery, and the first movement [p. 201] in a soul means its recovery for God, but things could not stop till the prodigal is brought to share in the delight of the Father. God has come out in grace. Philosophy never had such an idea of God; that was reserved for Christianity.
God has come down because man could not get up; he was lost, ruined — had left his orbit; he was, so to speak, like a wandering star; but God does come out in infinite grace to recover, and He brings the prodigal into His own joy in recovery.
One word on the “best robe”; I think you cannot leave out in this the thought of state. If you do not allow that this thought is involved, you put the best robe over the prodigal’s rags, and it is not the thought of God to cover thus the moral ruin of the prodigal. He provides something entirely new. If he is accepted in Christ, Christ is also in him. It is not in my judgment the same as the wedding garment in Matthew 20. That was a necessity — a man had no business to be at the feast without it. It was an insult to the king to disregard what was provided for the guest. The man without the wedding garment said virtually, ‘I am fitted to be here by suitability of my own’. The wedding garment is divine righteousness for a sinner — the only title to be at the festivity. The best robe was put on after reconciliation had been effected. It formed no part of the prodigal’s first inheritance, but was what the Father brought out; it is Christ — not only as covering the prodigal, but Christ in the prodigal. The result is the prodigal is perfectly fit and conscious of being received. He is there in the state suited to the place. He is at home there. That is what I mean by the inner, and that is the glory of the Christian, and I compassionate any Christian who has no sense of his glory. My glory is what I am with the Father, not what I am in the world. How far do we know what it is to be withdrawn from the outward of our life here and to retreat into the inner — [p. 202] our place with the Father? It is quite true I want help in the details of things here, but that is not enough. I want to retreat into my glory — for I am not unsuited to the Father’s house, and can participate in the joy of the Father. He has brought me into His joy, and in a state in which I am not unfit for His house.
Now I come to the outer (chapter 17: 11 - 21) — the kingdom of God. The instruction in regard to the kingdom begins, I think, with the healing of the leper in chapter 17 and goes on to chapter 18: 30. It is an exceedingly important truth in its practical bearing on our everyday walk down here. The leper that returned appears to me a beautiful illustration of the kingdom of God.
The Lord had come to relieve man of the judgment that rested on his body, of which leprosy is a picture. A divine Person had come entirely outside of legal ordinances. He relieved ten lepers, but only one of the ten enters into the kingdom of God. And how? He entered within the sway of divine goodness revealed in Christ; that marked him, and he is sent on his way in peace. What a wonderful revolution in that man! Law will not do for him now. God has come down in divine goodness; now he has got back healed to the One that relieved him, and he gives glory to God.
The Lord says, “Where are the nine?” and to this one He says, “Arise, go thy way”. He had his individual pathway on earth under the sway of divine goodness. Immediately after, when the Lord was demanded of the Pharisees when the kingdom of God should come, He answered, “The kingdom of God is among you”. Divine goodness was here in power, but man did not apprehend it. He was lost in the dark insensibility of unbelief. The believer is relieved of the judgment that was resting on him, and the Holy Spirit dwells in his body. If he dies he goes to the Lord. Death is now the servant of the believer, and his body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. In his [p. 203] pathway here the Christian is, in the abiding sense of divine goodness, sent forth in peace to act in the power of the Holy Spirit for God in this world.
I would just refer to the next chapter, 18, where two blessed truths come out. Little children have part in the kingdom of God, they are to be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We do not bring up our children under law, but in the light of divine goodness revealed in Christ. Nothing is to be put between them and the goodness of the Lord. They are in relation to the Lord here, and we learn in 1 Corinthians 7 that they “are holy”, they are entitled to be in the congregation.
We all have to begin completely anew for the kingdom as a little child. There is no good in anything we had before. We begin now from the top and have to look at everything in the light of divine goodness.
Then in the latter part of the chapter we find that riches which give a man importance in the world, and are the token of material prosperity, make it difficult for him to enter into the kingdom. The tendency naturally is that when a man is compassed with material prosperity he does not care for the moral, that is, the revelation of divine goodness. There is a conflict always going on between the material and the moral, and man’s soul is the battleground.
It is very difficult to touch a rich man with the revelation of divine goodness. God can touch him, for nothing is impossible with God.
Material prosperity is no good beyond this world; you cannot carry this world’s goods beyond this world; when death comes a soul must leave all, but divine goodness will stand a man in stead for eternity.
One word more. The principle of kingdom is government. The disciples remind the Lord of the surrender they had made. Peter says, “Lo, we have left all and followed thee”. What is the answer? Whatever surrender had been made for the kingdom of God’s sake a man would get “manifold more” in this present time. Retribution is connected with the kingdom of God; you not only get future advantage, but present blessing; you are a hundred-fold better off in the kingdom of God.
Man is uncommonly fond of material prosperity, but I ask any believer, Is it not far better to have your soul in the sense and light of divine goodness than to have all the material prosperity the world could afford? — to know that you can be here for God, that all is light beyond, and when everything fails here, you will be received into everlasting habitations? That is the end to the Christian in the kingdom of God.
We have thus the inner and the outer. Truth is revealed to us to govern us in our pathway down here, and there is light in Scripture both as to what we are by God’s calling and what we are as men down here. The two must be put together in the soul; but I am privileged to retire from the outward here into the blessed secret of what I am with the Father in His house according to His love, participating with Him in His own joy in recovery. THE PRIVILEGE IS COMMENSURATE WITH THE REVELATION.