NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 61
NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 61
It is a solemn and blessed fact that every christian is called to be a component part of God’s house. As the stones were taken out of the quarry to build the temple, so every christian is a stone. I do not say that every stone is built in. I just call attention to the great fact that each christian is called to contribute a part to the spiritual house. Christ has been rejected from the earth, and He has no place in it now but in the assembly built by Himself. Each one is called to share in forming a place for Him. This is the first point; the next is that each one is built in, and this is by coming to Him, the living Stone. This is the step we learn from Matthew 14; Peter desires from affection to join the Lord on the water at the other side of death, above all the power of evil; in doing so he learns his own weakness, and then the Lord stretches forth His hand, and draws him to His own side. He does not calm the sea as in chapter 8. It is [p. 114] a wonderful moment when we come to Christ at the other side of death. You received the Holy Spirit when your faith rested on Him risen from the dead; but now you join Him there, and like the man in John 9, who had been blind, and who was brought into the solitude of light, you know Him as the Son of God. The history of the queen of Sheba illustrates this coming to Christ in glory, and it has the same effect on us as seeing the glory of Solomon had on her; there was no spirit in her; she was introduced into Solomon’s private circle; you cannot know Christ except in His own house. In christendom the most pious go to church to thank God for their salvation; they have no idea of the favour and blessing of being in God’s house. Jacob had to learn the great moral difference between El-elohe-Israel and Bethel. At the latter he knew something of the presence of God.
It is inside with Christ as in John 14, that we acquire ability as the royal priesthood, to show forth the virtues of Him who hath called us out of darkness into His marvellous light.