THE HOUSE OF GOD AS MADE KNOWN TO JACOB
THE HOUSE OF GOD AS MADE KNOWN TO JACOB
Genesis 28: 10 - 22; Genesis 31: 13; Genesis 35: 1 - 15
It is on my mind to bring before you, so far as I am able, some of the important and blessed things connected with the House of God. No one can read Scripture without seeing that the House of God is prominent both in the Old Testament and the New. It is most important to see that God has a place on earth. We all understand that heaven is God’s throne and dwelling place, but what I should like to make clear is that God has a place on earth where He dwells in grace and blessing and, I may add, in holiness. He has a place on earth where He is known, and where His testimony is maintained. The House of God is “the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3: 15).
The passages we have read contain the first intimation that Scripture affords of the House of God. It has often been said that in connection with the first mention of anything in Scripture we get a key to the whole subject, and I have no doubt it is so in this case. But before looking at these scriptures it may be well to travel rapidly over the previous chapters of Genesis. They are deeply important and instructive.
From the fall to the flood we do not get any thought of God having a place here. Man had been driven out from the garden of Eden, and the cherubim with flaming sword barred his access to the tree of life. The earth was under the curse in consequence of man’s sin, and man was a fugitive and a vagabond in it. What marked the men of faith in that day was that they “walked with God”. This is said of both Enoch and Noah. They recognised that God had no place here, and they walked with Him apart from the whole course of things in the world of the ungodly. Noah preached righteousness and in building the ark was a practical witness of coming judgment.
The flood came and swept away the world that then was. There was an end before God of the whole state of the world, and of all flesh. Noah and his family were saved in the ark — a figure of the death of Christ — and the first thing that he did when he stepped out of the ark was to build an altar and offer burnt offerings upon it (Genesis 8: 18 - 22). This is the first altar of which we read in Scripture, and I understand Noah’s act to mean that he claimed the earth for God, and put it on the ground of the burnt offering. The flood had come upon the earth as under the curse; there was, so to speak, an end of that order of things; and the earth was presented before God in connection with the sweet savour of the burnt offering. (I need hardly say that the burnt offering is a type of the death of Christ.) God smelled an odour of rest and said in His heart that He would not “curse the ground any more for man’s sake”. He answers the faith in which Noah had claimed the earth for Him, and takes up relations with it. He promises that “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease”. He covenants blessing for the earth, and every living creature upon it. God is the “Lord of all the earth” — a title which occurs again and again in Scripture (see Joshua 3: 11; Zechariah 4: 14; Zechariah 6: 5, etc., and compare Psalm 8: 1, 9, and Exodus 19: 5).
I have no doubt the full answer to Noah’s faith will be in the world to come. There is a day coming when all the effects of the curse will be removed, everything on earth will be put into covenant relationship with God, and His Name will be excellent in all the earth.
[p. 7] The time for this had not come in Noah’s day, nor has it come yet. From Genesis 8 onward, faith has ever claimed the earth for God, but the time has not come yet for Him to take possession. In His dispensational and governmental ways, and in view of all His purposes of love and grace, He has not yet taken possession. The present world is accurately pictured in Genesis 9: 11. Three things are prominent. Nimrod “began to be a mighty one in the earth”, and founded a kingdom. Then men built the tower of Babel, saying, “Let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth”. Men took possession of the earth, and sought to make themselves a name. And, what was worst of all, God’s servant, who in faith had claimed the earth for Him, failed to hold it for Him, but used it for self-gratification.
Alas! this is very much the history of the present world. It is the time of Nimrod and Babel still. Men are in possession of the earth, and hence it is a scene of confusion. And as for God’s witness, Noah’s failure is perpetuated in the church. The things of the earth are used for self-gratification instead of being held for God. I speak, of course, of the general Christian profession. God’s Name is not yet excellent in all the earth, but it will be in the world to come. It has been a characteristic of faith in all ages to look on to the world to come.
Then God maintains His title to the earth and His right to dispose of it as He will, in the call and blessing of Abram. “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee” (Genesis 12: 1). And when Abram reached Canaan the Lord appeared to him, and said, “Unto thy seed will I give this land” (verse 7). Depend upon it that in due time God will dispose of the earth as He will, in spite of men and of all the power of evil. And when He does so there will be blessing for all the families of the earth (Genesis 12: 3). When man in [p. 8] self-will takes possession of the earth he dispossesses God of all His rights; but when God asserts Himself and takes possession of the earth He will give it to man, and fill it with blessing, so that His Name may be excellent in all the earth. See the promises to Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 12: 1 - 7; Genesis 13: 14 - 17; Genesis 15:7,8; Genesis 15:18-21; Genesis 17: 8; Genesis 18: 18; Genesis 22: 17, 18; Genesis 26: 2 - 4. In making Abraham “heir of the world” (Romans 4:13), God asserted His right to dispose of the earth as He would.
Then in connection with Isaac we get wonderful instruction as to the way in which the promises will be fulfilled. Isaac was to be the heir — the child of promise — type of Christ. And it was on the ground of death and resurrection that He would take the inheritance. In figure Isaac died and rose again. God can only take possession of the earth so as to fill it with blessing on the ground of death and resurrection. Sin had to be put away, which could only be by death, and the power of death had to be broken, which could only be by resurrection. But on the ground of death and in the power of resurrection Christ will take up the earth — so long filled with man’s assumption and sin’s confusion — and will fill it with blessing and with the knowledge of God. When Christ takes up the inheritance all the families of the earth will be blessed and God’s Name will be excellent in all the earth.
Abraham was called to be the heir of the world in faith, but to be actually possessed of no part of the promised inheritance. He owned God as being “the God of the earth” as well as “the God of heaven”, Genesis 24:3; he had the blessing of “the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth”, Genesis 14: 19, 22. Though he had actually nothing, he was blessed in the favour that would give him everything. In the sense of this favour he was content, though he knew well that there could be no possession of the promised inheritance until the world to come.
[p. 9] When we come to chapter 28 we see God making known to Jacob His purpose about the land and about the blessing of all the families of the earth. Jacob finds himself in the presence of God’s grace and faithfulness — in presence of God’s thoughts and purposes in all their blessed reality. He was, in a sense, outside the world, and for the time, apart from all the workings of his own mind. Everything that passed before him was of God. Hence he said, “This is none other but the house of God”.
In one way Jacob went beyond Abraham and Isaac. No doubt they held in faith the divine communications which had been made to them, and those communications formed the ground of their intercourse with God. They built altars, but Jacob went further — he set up a pillar. God, revealed in grace and faithfulness, was to have a place here — a testimony here — and this in figure, in the power of the Holy Ghost. “He set up a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel [the House of God]”. A pillar means witness or testimony (see Genesis 31: 52). There was to be a place here for God — a witness to the blessed reality of His grace and faithfulness. He was God of heaven and earth, and He would carry out His own purposes of grace and blessing in spite of all the evil and weakness that was in the world and in man. The anointed pillar was the witness of this on earth. It was the testimony of God here — the witness of His purposes, His grace, and His faithfulness. And thus it presents to us the great fundamental idea of the House of God, God has a place here where He dwells in blessing and testimony; His house is here.
We see three things in Genesis 28 in connection with Bethel which give us a very good idea of the House of God. In the first place a link was established between heaven and earth. The House of God has a direct link with heaven; it is the “gate of heaven”. God in this way makes the gate of [p. 10] heaven accessible to men; that gate is not a long way off; it is here on earth. In Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple, over and over again he said, “When they shall pray toward this place ... hear thou in heaven” (1 Kings 8:30; 1 Kings 8:32; 1 Kings 8:34; 1 Kings 8:36; 1 Kings 8:39; 1 Kings 8:43; 1 Kings 8:45; 1 Kings 8:49). In that day the House of God was the gate of heaven — the link between heaven and earth. It will be so again in the millennium. All the families of the earth will go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, Jehovah of hosts, and the House of God will be to them the gate of heaven.
But I do not want to occupy you merely with the past and the future. I should like you to realise that the House of God is on earth at the present moment, and that it is the gate of heaven. Read Acts 2: 1 - 4. The House of God in its present aspect dates from the day of Pentecost. The one hundred and twenty disciples, indwelt by the Spirit, were constituted the House or dwelling place of God. The Holy Ghost came upon them from heaven — from a risen and glorified Christ at the right hand of God — and linked them with heaven. There was a company upon earth linked with heaven in the most wonderful way. But that company is still here; the Holy Ghost has never returned to heaven; the saints have never ceased to be the House of God. When one receives the Holy Ghost — consequent on remission of sins through faith in the Lord Jesus — he belongs to a company which is divinely linked with heaven. He may have everything yet to learn, but he is of the House of God, and the sooner he realises this the better.
It is a blessed reality that heaven and earth are linked together by the fact that the House of God is upon the earth. In Stephen we see that a man full of the Holy Ghost could look up stedfastly into heaven; there was no cloud between him and heaven. By the Spirit we can look up into heaven and see there a glorified Man — the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. The Holy Ghost links us with [p. 11] heaven and with the One who is there. Is it not wonderful to see that there is that upon earth which is directly linked with heaven?
I hope no one will suppose that in speaking of the House of God I have any thought of applying this term to a material building, or even to any particular company of saints. The House of God is composed of “living stones”, and every saint on earth indwelt by the Spirit is of that house. Would to God that we all understood this, — and were more exercised as to our behaviour in “the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth!” (1 Timothy 3:15).
Another thing in connection with Bethel (Genesis 28) is that God’s grace and faithfulness were known there. “I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed ... and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed”. I quite admit that what is said here does not go beyond the earth, but it is wonderful grace. For us everything takes a higher character, for we have to do with “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1: 3). It is not “the land whereon thou liest” now, but God directs our eyes to heaven and to His treasured store of spiritual blessings in Christ. Who can measure the expanse of those blessings? “All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us” (2 Corinthians 1: 20). What transcendent grace to man, who was once persuaded by the devil to believe that God was withholding something good from him! God answers that lie of Eden by bringing in all the blessing of a universe of bliss in Christ and bestowing it as a free gift upon man.
Then God’s faithfulness was known at Bethel as well as His grace. “Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into [p. 12] this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of” (verse 15). Along with the unconditional promise of grace there was the assurance of God’s immutable faithfulness. All that Jacob would do and be was well known to God, but in presence of all that God’s faithfulness was made known as the security of his blessing. It is a great characteristic of the House of God that His grace and faithfulness are known there.
If you turn to 1 Kings 8 you will see these two things in connection with the house that Solomon built. Read verse 41 - 43. This is a remarkable scripture for Old Testament times, for it contemplates the report of God’s Name going out from the house to all people of the earth, so that “the stranger” should come out of a “far country” attracted by that blessed Name. It shows how God would have the testimony of His Name as great in grace to sound forth from His house.
Then the thought of God’s faithfulness is also very prominent in Solomon’s prayer. Read verse 15, 20, 23, 24, 56. Everything of which God had spoken had come to pass. The house was the standing witness to the faithfulness of God.
Now let us turn to the House of God in its present aspect. Read 1 Corinthians 1: 4 - 9. The apostle is writing to “the church of God which is at Corinth”, and we know from another scripture that the church of the living God is the House of God. He first thanks God for His grace given to the saints in Christ Jesus, that in everything they had been enriched in Him, and that the testimony of Christ was confirmed in them. They were in the blessed knowledge of the grace of God, and the testimony of that grace was confirmed in them.
Then he also speaks of the faithfulness of God. They were proving themselves very unfaithful to the grace and light which had reached them, but the apostle fell back upon divine faithfulness as the security of their blessing. He speaks of [p. 13] their being confirmed to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we believe not, God abides faithful; He does not give up His thoughts with regard to His saints. If we are self-willed and wayward we shall come under the faithful discipline of God. Jacob went on in his own course for a long time, but he had to suffer for it under God’s discipline until eventually he was prepared to return to Bethel. God is faithful; He will bring His saints — it may be through much discipline — to His own end. He will divest them of all that is unsuitable to Himself so that they may be blameless in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. If our every blessing springs — as it surely does — from grace, our security and preservation in those blessings is altogether of the faithfulness of God.
The third thing in Genesis 28 to which I desire to call your attention is that, in figure, what God had made known of Himself was set up here in testimony. Jacob set up a pillar, and poured oil on the top of it, and called the name of that place Bethel — i.e., the House of God. This was surely figurative of the testimony of God’s grace and faithfulness being set up on earth in the power of the Holy Ghost. We have seen that Solomon’s temple was intended to be the testimony of God’s grace and faithfulness for all the nations of the earth. And if we turn to Christianity we find how very characteristic this is of the House of God today. Read 1 Timothy 2: 1 - 7; 1 Timothy 3: 15; 2 Timothy 1: 12; 2 Timothy 2: 13, 19.
We see in these scriptures how the testimony of God’s grace and faithfulness is in His house today. The testimony of God as a Saviour God is in His house, and it sounds forth from that house that He will have all men to be saved. God is dwelling here in infinite grace to men, so that in His house prayers are made for all men. Spite of man’s wickedness and sin’s confusion God has a pillar here — the testimony which is maintained in the power of His Spirit, and which not all the power of evil can overturn. Is it not an unspeakable [p. 14] privilege to be part of that testimony, through His infinite grace?
Then in the second epistle the last days are contemplated — times of declension, departure, and even apostasy. In presence of all this, divine faithfulness becomes the bulwark and security of the believer, and of those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. The testimony of God’s grace and faithfulness is here, and it will be here so long as there are saints on earth indwelt by God’s Spirit. No power of evil can overturn God’s pillar. The House of God “is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth”. May each one of us get a deeper sense of the blessedness of being identified with this holy testimony!
Now just a few words in conclusion, about Jacob! He got the light of God’s house, but for a long time he was not very much affected practically by it. He went down to Padan-Aram, and served there for his wives and his cattle. He was preserved and became fruitful there. God did not leave him, but fed him all his life long, as he said at the end (Genesis 48: 15). But, though prospered and cared for by God, he was a long way from the pillar which he had anointed. He was building up his own house, and not thinking much of God’s house. It is one thing to be fed and cared for by God, and another to be near the pillar — to be identified wholly in heart and ways with God’s testimony, that is, with God’s house.
In the days of Haggai God’s people were neglecting His house. They said the time had not come that God’s house should be built, but they were dwelling in their own ceiled houses! The result was that they had no prosperity. They sowed much and brought in little, they clothed themselves but were not warm, they earned wages to put it into a bag with holes (see Haggai 1:2 - 9). If we do not make the House of God our chief interest we cannot expect spiritual prosperity.
[p. 15] If God has a house here, that is the true centre for the man of faith. It is a great moment for our souls when we realise that God has a place here, and that we are called to know Him and to have to do with Him as One who has a place here. The House of God is the chief interest on earth for every saint.
The twenty years that Jacob spent in Mesopotamia were years of disappointment and discipline. “Thus I was; in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep departed from mine eyes. Thus have I been twenty years in thy house; I served thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and six years for thy cattle; and thou hast changed my wages ten times”, Genesis 31: 40, 41. When he came to look back on it all it did not yield him much satisfaction. And if saints live in their own interests and neglect the House of God, they are sure to feel, sooner or later, that their course has been a failure.
God disciplined Jacob for twenty years, and at the end of that time he was prepared for a call to Bethel. God said to him, “I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me: now arise, get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy kindred” (chapter 31:13). God does not say, “I am the God of Padan-Aram”, but “I am the God of Bethel”. If God sets up a testimony in this world He does not depart from it. He never departs from His original thought and purpose. His people may lose sight of His purpose and grace and faithfulness, and be content to be cared for and prospered by Him in their circumstances here, but God never gives up His own testimony, and the true blessedness of every saint is to cleave to it.
There were great hindrances in the way of Jacob’s return to Bethel. In the first place there was his bad behaviour to Esau twenty years before. He had taken a human way to get Isaac’s blessing, and though he got the blessing he had [p. 16] to suffer for the way in which he got it. If believers take what seems to be a short cut to blessing they always find that it leads them a long way round. Jacob was twenty years away from the promised land and the House of God in consequence of taking a human way to reach a divine end.
We do not like to face things. If there has been a dark page somewhere in our history we do not care to go back to it, and have it all out with God. This hinders many from making spiritual progress. Through the grace of God Jacob faced the dark page in his history. He had to say to God about it in secret, and he had to meet Esau. And in all this he learned what God would be for him in spite of his own failure.
Then there was another thing. It comes out in Genesis 35: 2 - 4 that there were things in Jacob’s household and amongst his surroundings that would not do for Bethel. If people have been living at a distance from the House of God they are sure to have picked up many things which are not suitable to the holiness of that house. It is very easy to pick up such things, but difficult to throw them down. Probably it was the consciousness of this which made Jacob so slow to come to Bethel even after he entered the land. He had to have more and bitter discipline to prepare him for the second call to Bethel.
“And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, that appeared to thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother. Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be ye clean, and change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will there make an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid [p. 17] them under the oak which was by Shechem;” Genesis 35: 1 - 4. Shechem is a fine place for saints to reach. It is the place of uncompromising decision for God — the place where the soul says, “O God, my heart is fixed”. It is the place where Joshua said, “Choose you this day whom ye will serve ... as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24: 15).
The “strange gods” and the “earrings” had to be put off. Jacob felt that holiness became God’s house for ever, and he had reached a point when compromise was no longer possible — the House of God must be his chief interest. “The strange gods” and “earrings” were hidden “under the oak which was by Shechem” — suggestive of the cross as that by which the world is crucified to the saint, and he to the world. Then Jacob was ready for Bethel, and there he built an altar. God appeared to him and renewed the promises. The House of God retained its own blessed character as at the beginning; His grace and faithfulness were known and enjoyed there.
And finally, “Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, even a pillar of stone; and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon” (chapter 35: 14). He returned to his original testimony. That is what we have to do today. We have to cleave to the thought that God has a place here. His house is upon the earth, for His saints are here indwelt by His Spirit. God’s house is the gate of heaven, and His grace and faithfulness are known there. God’s testimony is here in the power of the Holy Ghost. May we know what it is to return to that testimony — to cleave to it — to be fully identified in heart and spirit with it! Every saint belongs to the House of God. May that house be more and more our chief interest! Then shall we be happy and blessed. “They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures” (Psalm 36: 8).