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THE HOUSE OF GOD (1)

FL The subject of the house of God has been suggested, especially in regard to the principle of separation, which the holiness proper to the house of God involves.

JT The first mention in Scripture of the house of God comes in in connection with Jacob in Genesis 28. It might be a help to refer to that chapter, and also to consider how the faithfulness of Moses manifested itself in the house, of whom Jehovah said “my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house”, Numbers 12: 7. Exodus 32 and 33 furnish us with the account of how he acted in the presence of sin.

RSS That is very much in line with what has been the local exercise.

JT I suppose we have in Jacob, in figure, one who, although in the house of God, was unsuited to it as to his state. He said “How dreadful is this place”, but he judged rightly that the place was the house of God and the gate of heaven.

RSS What do you think he had in mind when he said, “this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”?

JT I suppose it was the sense of the presence of God that impressed him.

RSS Then the thought of the presence of God is connected with the house, His dwelling place.

JT Yes; and man being the object of interest in it is another thought that is maintained throughout in connection with it. The angels of God were ascending and descending on a ladder, but Jacob was the object in view.

FL This being the introduction of the thought ^[p. 400] of the house, are we not greatly helped in seeing that the features are moral? I mean that there was no company of people, nor was there any idea of a structure, of a tabernacle, or any such thing; it was a question of man in the presence of God and of access to heaven, and what is introduced in that way is maintained all through.

JT Yes.

GWH Jacob had the sense of being unsuitable to the place.

JT Yes, but we see that on his return after the twenty years experience under the discipline of God, he recognised what was suitable. He realised that the house was holy, and hence that it was needful to make moral changes in his household; Genesis 35: 2.

WCR Being unaccustomed to the presence of God, would be the reason that he felt it to be a dreadful place. His state was not up to it.

JT Yes. We know he had faith and was an object of interest to God, yet he was not in accord with the house. He represents a great many, I fear. The twenty years that followed became the period of discipline, and when he finally returns; God says, “Arise, go up to Bethel”, the place where God would appear to him. So he journeyed thence, having put away the strange gods that were among them. God in that way, I think, teaches us in the history of Jacob, that whilst we may have part in the house of God, it must be on God’s terms and not on ours.

FL Showing that the house of God is never conformed to us, but we are to be brought into conformity to it.

HG Jacob had faith, but he was not suitable. It says, “Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, for ever”; and one feels that the sense of exercise in regard to holiness is greatly ^[p. 401] lacking.

JT God asserts His holiness, and therefore it is plain, that if we are to be in His house it must not be on our terms. It must be on His terms, as already said.

CB One fears that often we are so busily occupied with our own pursuits that it takes, not only twenty years of our sojourn here, but sometimes longer before we understand the house of God?

JT Yes, no doubt, but it is a great point to see that God would have us there on His terms; and so Jacob had to be crippled after the flesh, and typically to receive the Holy Spirit, having his name changed before he went there.

BTF On what does our connection with the house of God depend? Is it receiving the Holy Spirit?

JT Yes; we must be there on God’s terms, but then in order to be brought in according to His terms it is needful to have to do with God in our souls individually: so that Jacob, I believe, is the great model typically, because of the discipline he went through. Hence in returning after the twenty years God met him on the way and continued to show His deep interest in Jacob, but God’s interest in us is one thing, and what is suitable to His house is another thing. So in Genesis 32, God cripples him after the flesh; “Jacob was left alone and there wrestled a man with him”; note it was a man that wrestled with him. Angels met him on the way but a man wrestled with him. It was God who wrestled with him, but God in man; so that the dealing is in that way between God and us, only God in Christ, and the flesh is crippled. I am not to be in the house of God on the ground of the flesh, but on the ground of being ennobled by the gift of the Holy Spirit. By receiving the Spirit, my name is changed and I receive power, so that I go into the house of God, in that way as a prince;

^[p. 402] for that was the significance of Jacob’s new name, but then also as holy, and this latter question was raised, because of what followed, that dreadful experience at Shechem, when Jacob had descended to the level of the earth, building a house, and where his daughter got into such shame and disgrace; Genesis 34. All these things happening emphasise the necessity for holiness, for the house of God is holy.

WCR Perhaps it would help us if you would open up a little how we arrive at holiness.

JT I think discipline is the great means whereby we come to it practically. God has in view, that we should be partakers of His holiness, and so discipline is brought in to that end. But the believer first learns righteousness; that is how he apprehends God first; and then it is righteousness unto holiness, but discipline helps us in arriving at it. I believe that when a man is converted he gets everything in principle; if it were possible to analyse his thoughts, it would be found that the germ of everything is there by which he should answer to God, but it takes a long time for these things to be developed and formed and the development is aided by the discipline of God, so that one arrives not only at the practice of righteousness, but also at the practice of holiness; of this latter it is said, “without which no man shall see the Lord”. (Hebrews 12: 14) We may hear about Him, but seeing the Lord depends on holiness.

GWH Do you think we get gain from discipline until we recognise the interests of God?

JT Well, I think we come back through discipline to the original germ, so to speak, that is in our hearts as a result of the light. I apprehend that there is nothing new added. The light coming to a man at conversion contains normally all the germs to be developed.

GWH So at the end of Jacob’s twenty ^[p. 403] years of discipline his mind reverted back to the beginning.

JT That shows the gain of the discipline.

RSS God reverted to it also, as we see in the chapter you have been quoting, Genesis 35, “God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there: and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto 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 clean, and change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress and was with me in the way which I went”. You are thinking now of conversion, not exactly new birth, or would you include the two in what you are saying?

JT New birth is not conversion.

RSS No, new birth is the sovereign work of God.

JT Paul was sent to the Gentiles to open their eyes that they might turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God; that light contains everything that is to be answered to.

GWH Why should such a period intervene between Genesis 32 and 35?

JT It shows the danger, even after you receive the Spirit, of turning aside to earthly associations, I think. What would you say?

GWH A painful moment had to be gone through in his history, the strange gods had to be put away, but evidently it was a very great gain in his soul.

JT It shows that recovery was complete. In this connection it may be said that where discipline is necessary in the house, those under discipline have to see that things must be on divine terms, not on theirs. If I am to be there it must be on God’s terms.

WCR That ^[p. 404] is righteousness and holiness?

JT Yes.

WCR It is possible, I suppose, to be righteous and yet not holy?

JT I think that is right, so God disciplines us that we might be holy.

WCR The only way you can partake of it, I suppose, is by His own nature being formed in us.

JT And that goes on collaterally with the discipline.

WCR The latter produces it?

JT Well, it aids it.

BTF In comparing the history of the Old Testament saints with the history of the New Testament saints, they would not be the same, would they? That is, we find Old Testament saints falling into that which would not be expected from those who had the Spirit?

JT But then these things happened unto them for ensamples. One of the most dreadful mistakes that can be made today is to disparage the Old Testament. It is of the enemy, because if you get rid of the Old the next thing is you will get rid of the New. These things happened unto them as types, it says, and they are written for us, not for them, but for our admonition “upon whom the ends of the ages are come”. (1 Corinthians 10: 11) Hence the importance of paying attention to the Old Testament, and God does not repeat Himself. We are to learn from Jacob’s history, and if we do not learn from it what is taught there, we do not learn it at all, because God has appointed that means of teaching us that particular lesson. It is most important then to pay attention to the instruction set down for us in these wonderful chapters of Genesis that we are considering, in order that we might be in the house of God according to His terms.

BTF I see that, and I was just asking for a little further ^[p. 405] light.

JT I was not making those remarks directly in answer to what you said, but in a general way, because it is so important that we should respect the authority of the Old Testament in these days, as the apostle said to Timothy, “Every scripture is divinely inspired, and profitable for doctrine”. (2 Timothy 3: 16).

HG In regard to your remark that at conversion we have the germ of everything, I was thinking that when we receive the Spirit there is that which in a certain sense is almost miraculous; there is the positive displacement in our souls for the moment of earth; heaven is transcendingly real, the flesh is inactive, and we are holy and distinctive, because we have received the Spirit. There is not very much formed subjectively, but we have to learn, in order to be here for God, that Christianity after all is heavenly, and we have to learn deliverance as regards the flesh, and the Holy Spirit forms us so that we grow experimentally and intelligently in relation to what the light presented to us.

ANW Why is not the reception of the Spirit in this day so evident as in pentecostal days?

HG I was thinking of the conscious reception of the Spirit by the believer. Heaven is before that man. A man who is really converted does not think a thing about earth, heaven is everything to him. And, for the time at least his resolve is ‘I will never sin again’. The flesh is abhorrent to him. He is holy. But then afterwards he has to learn; the truth has to be worked out experimentally; it has to be formed in the man’s soul experimentally in order that he may be maintained in continuity along the line which he learned in a miraculous way in connection with the reception of the Spirit.

ANW I mean, Simon could see that by the laying on of hands the Spirit was received; Acts 8. What did he see?

JT The effect was very patent. Of course, we ^[p. 406] speak of having the Holy Spirit now, and I have to take your word for it maybe, but at the beginning the change in a man consequent on the reception of the Spirit was very obvious. Still, the effect of the Holy Spirit being received is to be seen today, thank God!

WB-t It is very interesting to see in regard of Jacob at Bethel in Genesis 28, that he got up early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had made his pillow and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil on the top of it. It seems to denote the answer of the man to the light that he had received. I was thinking of this as an answer to what was said about the work of the Spirit in a believer at the time of his conversion.

JT And then in chapter 35 there is not only the oil poured on it, the recognition of the Spirit typically, but a drink offering is poured on it also, suggesting, I think, that Jacob was now in reconciliation. Twenty years before he was an object of interest to God, but now he is for God’s pleasure. I suppose that is how we are to be in the house.

RSS What is the significance of the drink offering?

JT I think it is for pleasure and satisfaction.

RSS For God’s satisfaction. David would not drink of the well of water at Bethlehem. He poured it out before the Lord.

JT It works out in this way; we are, as amongst the brethren, either the occasion of satisfaction to God and to them, or we are the occasion of grief. I think it is a very profitable and practical question to ask oneself which are we in the house of God.

HG Jacob really said in connection with making his pillow a pillar, ‘You were for me, and now I am for You’. God considered for me as on that pillow, but in setting up that pillar there is the witness that ^[p. 407] I am for God. I think the pillar is the only right answer to God’s interest in him.

JT The thing really finds an answer in our daily experience as walking together. According to Genesis 28 I am an object of interest to God and the saints as much as in chapter 35, although in the former case I am not giving pleasure or satisfaction, and the question is whether I am content with being an object of interest, claiming the care of God, or whether I am to be for His pleasure, ministering joy to God and His people. When the Lord came in, the disciples were glad. Well, that is pattern, and by it I learn that my presence should make the saints glad.

FL I take it in setting up his pillow as a pillar, and pouring the drink offering on it, that he for the moment went far beyond what was his actual state. It is something like the children of Israel in Exodus 15; their song was far in advance of their actual state. It was what was the result for the moment of all that went before, but it was not yet developed or worked out, as you said. Hard discipline followed we know in their wilderness history. It is encouraging in regard to ourselves that even when we are, it may be, away from the Lord the chastening that comes upon us is turned by the Lord to practical profit. So with Jacob, when finally a man wrestled with him he was prepared for spiritual advancement because of the work that had been done during the previous twenty years.

JCS I was just thinking that perhaps one great feature in the house of God, in contrast to the kingdom, is that whilst the law of the kingdom is righteousness, the law of the house is holiness; what God purposes to do is to surround Himself with a company of people who have morally His own character, and He will not tolerate in His house any element that does not really fall into line with ^[p. 408] what He is. Would you suggest that there is a difference between being of the house of God, which every person who has the Spirit is, and coming in the experience of our souls into the blessedness of the place where God dwells, where He surrounds Himself with that which is perfectly agreeable to His heart and eye?

JT I think that is just the difference between Genesis 28 and 35. In Genesis 28, whilst Jacob recognises the house, that it is God’s house, and sets up the pillar, pouring oil on it, yet he has himself before him in it: He made a bargain with God, but that is not for God’s pleasure; that is not the kind of man that He looks for in His house. Therefore the discipline, the experience of the years when he served Laban, brings about the change, and I think the drink offering represents the advance he had made; he was now typically in reconciliation and hence suited to the house of God.

WB-w Had he got the Spirit typically in Genesis 28?

JT Well, I am not prepared to say that; the house of God is introduced there as a matter of light. I think chapter 32, where Jacob is at Peniel, is the point at which the Holy Spirit is recognised, in figure of course; his name is changed there.

WB-w So in chapter 28 you apprehend the house as a matter of light in the soul?

JCS Another thought that would come into view in connection with the first introduction of the house would be that of intercommunication between heaven and earth, which Jacob lost in going down to Padan-aram. He was out of touch with heaven. Here, in chapter 35, he has come back in principle to the house of God, and is in the good of it and he gets heavenly communications.

JT Hence you get a full revelation. If you look at chapter 35, there is a full revelation made ^[p. 409] to Jacob. God appeared to him, revealing His name. In chapter 32 he had inquired after the name of the man who wrestled with him, but the name is not given, whereas in the later chapter “God said unto him, I am God Almighty; be fruitful and multiply”. There He announces Himself formally as God Almighty, and I think it suggests the full privilege or blessedness of the house of God that His name was fully revealed there. The Lord says “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it”, (John 17: 26) which latter He did when He said, “I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”. (John 20: 17) I think Genesis 35 suggests the full blessedness of the house, and being there in accord with it.

RSS So the house of God is the fruit of divine revelation, yet it is also competent to sustain that revelation. God brings about a moral answer to every quality that has been revealed in Christ, so His house comes into harmony with what He is as revealed.

JT It is said to be the “pillar and base of the truth”. (1 Timothy 3: 15)

RSS We lay a good deal of stress on the thought that the house is the dwelling place of God, which is true, but is it not true also that God purposes that we should find our dwelling place there, that it should be the home of our spirits down here?

JT Quite so.

WB-s “Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee”, Psalm 84: 4.

ANW In connection with our brother’s remark about the kingdom, what is the difference between being put right in connection with the kingdom and with the house. Discipline is connected with the house as I understand it?

JT But I suppose that discipline stands in ^[p. 410] relation to the kingdom too. Matthew 18 is, we may say, the law of the kingdom, and 1 Corinthians is the law of the house. The law of the kingdom involves your conduct towards a brother; the spirit of grace is to characterise you. You are to forgive him “until seventy times seven”. (verse 22) The house involves holiness, and would be in view in the Father’s discipline, “that we might be partakers of his holiness”, Hebrews 12.

WB-s Prior to the section of Scripture we have read, in the earlier part of Exodus, the teaching is more in type setting forth the kingdom. God acts towards His people in grace, but in the section we read it is more in connection with the house.

JT Yes, and it is very interesting to see that a young man, Joshua, remains in the tabernacle, so to speak, permanently. He was Moses’ minister. The house seems to be the sphere in which men are in immediate relation with God.

WHF Would you call the house the inside, and the kingdom the outside?

JT The kingdom is more what you are publicly in your individual capacity.

BTF Was your thought in connecting Moses with this that in the house there was the man who was pleasurable to God, and who has God’s mind?

JT Yes, as a minister, but Jacob cannot be viewed in that way. He represents simply a believer having part in it, not exactly as ministering to God in it. But Moses is, as I have said, a minister, a servant in the house, and I was encouraged to suggest this, because he is referred to in Hebrews as one who is faithful in all God’s house. Therefore he becomes an example for us. He stands alone for God when evil occurs; he is uncompromising, and the result is that the situation is saved, not only for God but for the people, because there is a place established for those who seek the Lord. Everyone ^[p. 411] who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle which Moses pitched. It does not say that he was told to pitch this tabernacle, and that shows all the more what a man of God he was. He knew what to do. I refer to the incident recorded in Exodus 33: 7 - 10.

WB-w In Jacob is it more a state suitable, whereas in Moses it is a question of principles in the house?

JT And service in it.

WB-w Standing by right principles?

JT Yes, quite.

BTF He was in perfect accord with God.

JT Yes, he had been with God, as has often been pointed out, and Aaron had been with the people. If we listen to what this, that, or the other one says in connection with discipline we are sure to be in error. It is in taking counsel with God, and then dealing with the thing according to His mind that we shall act for God in it.

WB-s It required redemption to be accomplished before the house could be set up. It is in Exodus that you get the formal habitation brought in.

JT Quite; “Let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them”. As has already been brought out, Genesis suggests principles, but when you come to Exodus, redemption being accomplished, you have the material and the structure, where God can dwell among them. He dwells with men in that in which He has pleasure. All is founded on redemption and the material of the structure is typically the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the effect of His work in the saints.

JCS So that whilst redemption is the basis of the house, it requires more than that; there must be conditions suited to God’s dwelling there.

JT You must have material and then the wisdom and skill of the architect to put it together;

^[p. 412] then the anointing. All that enters into the thought of God’s dwelling.

GWH Discipline in connection with the house has intelligence in view. It has been said in connection with Hebrews 12, that discipline was to the end that we might be prepared to receive divine communications through the discipline, or rather being exercised thereby, we get the mind of God and can act intelligently in the house.

JCS Discipline in itself does not confer anything, but the object or purpose of it is that it might make room for something. You spoke of receiving everything in initial form. I thought discipline perhaps came in in order that it might help the development, and make room for that which God has in germ placed in our souls.

JT That is the point exactly, and I would suggest something there that might help. In Genesis 8 it is said that Noah sent a raven out of the ark, which did not return. Later, he sent forth a dove and it adds “from him”; and further it adds she returned to him into the ark, it does not say the raven was sent out from him. “He sent forth a dove from him ... ... and she returned to him into the ark ... ... then he put forth his hand and took her and pulled her in unto him in the ark”. He sends her out the second time and she comes back with an olive leaf in her mouth as if to suggest that the overwhelming judgment of God had destroyed everything but that which was of the Spirit. The olive is undoubtedly a type of the fruit of the Spirit, and that remained, and was brought back to Noah into the ark. We see the same principle in the bush that burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed, and we may say that what is not consumed is connected with the house of God, that remains, it survives the judgment. And so the olive leaf, I think, refers to what is of the Spirit in the saints,

^[p. 413] and whatever may go over our souls, what remains is that which cannot be consumed, all else must go.

JS So discipline is the displacement of that which is of the flesh, to make room for the work of the Spirit.

ANW So if the pitcher be broken it is to make room for the light.

FL The olive leaf is the evidence that what was brought back was divine and established in the root. That is, the leaf could not be brought back from anything not rooted and living, so it is in the perpetuity of life. I think that is very helpful, in connection with what you are bringing out, to see that there is one perpetual thought in regard of the house of God; that is, it really connects itself with purpose. In Exodus 25, God says, “that I may dwell among them”, but that really is because it is an outflow of what was in His mind at the outset, from before the foundation of the world. So when we come to Revelation 21, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them. It is a thought connected with the purpose of God. In that light the house of God is a most marvellous thing.

JT The kingdom is mediatorial and for a purpose; it ceases, but essentially the house remains.

JCS So God is building up today morally all that enters into the construction of His house, and that is eternal in its character.

JS It is remarkable that the dove returned with a leaf plucked off, not a floating leaf. This confirms the remark as to its living connection with the root.

JCS Returning to Jacob again, following the course of discipline to which God had subjected him, I thought perhaps we get the purest answer when he changes his garments, signifying, I suppose the putting off of that man, of all his greatness, and humbled in the presence of the God that revealed Himself to him in relation to His house.

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