FROM THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE TO THE HOUSE OF GOD
[p. 329] FROM THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE TO THE HOUSE OF GOD
The text of this psalm is found in the words, “Come and see the works of God” (verse 5). It presents to us in outline the history of the work of God for His saints and in them, and it also indicates the nature and end of His ways with His people. It shows how we are brought from the house of bondage to the house of God — a progress which begins with the knowledge of redemption, and ends in praise and worship in God’s house, and in the soul being formed in moral suitability to Him.
I trust every one here has been “enlightened” (Hebrews 10: 32) by the grace of God, and brought into the peace and joy of redemption. This is brought before us in verse 6 of our psalm, “He turned the sea into dry land; ... there did we rejoice in him”. This clearly alludes to the passage of the Red Sea. It is impossible for any soul to make spiritual progress until redemption is known, and God believed in as a Justifier and Saviour God.
Death is a deep and awful sea which engulfs everything; man has no standing there. But in the death of Christ it is turned into dry land, so that it is now the firmest ground that anyone can set his feet upon.
If Jesus our Lord has been delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification, it is the most blessed witness that God is for us in righteousness, grace, power and love. At the Red Sea, God was for His people against all their enemies. Whichever way the people looked — at the dry land on which they walked, at the waters which were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left, at the cloud which overshadowed them — they saw the evidence that God [p. 330] was for them. He was between them and their foes — their protection from every evil.
God is for us against every creature that would seek to hinder Him from carrying out His purposes of blessing in regard to His saints. God is for the believer against all the power of evil — omnipotence is on his side against every foe. Every Israelite who put the blood of the lamb on his doorpost and lintel fell in with the righteousness of God. There was a necessity for death as the ground on which alone He could take up His people for blessing. Having taken this ground, God could be for them against all their foes.
I trust you have recognised that the death of Christ alone could be your shelter from judgment. But it may be you are not yet out of the region of Pharaoh’s power. You are conscious of a thousand imperfections in yourself, and the discovery of these imperfections causes you many an unhappy hour, and suggests many a doubt and misgiving to your mind. You will never be free from these doubts and misgivings until you see that your righteousness and place with God are set forth in Christ. But when you see this it will settle every question, and put your soul altogether beyond the reach of the enemy. You have to pass through the sea by faith.
Let me put this matter in a very simple way. Suppose you were to die and to pass the judgment-throne, and that you found yourself on the other side of death and judgment without a stain of sin upon you, and not only “whiter than snow”, but in all the acceptance and beauty of Christ, and with the smile of God’s eternal favour beaming upon you, would you not be sure that every question was settled? Would you not be able to say, ‘Thank God, this is the beginning of a blissful eternity’? Would you not be assured of the love and favour of God?
Well, now, let me turn your eye to another Person. You are not actually beyond death and judgment, but Christ is. In deep, divine love he entered into death and bore the judgment of God. He “was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification”. All that was due to us passed upon Him; He has endured and exhausted it all, so that the believer can sing,
‘Death and judgment are behind me’.
And now Christ is our righteousness; we are received by God in all His acceptance. Thus we enter into everlasting favour. We think not of ourselves, but of Christ. I am not beyond death and judgment, but Christ is, and I am entitled to know by faith that He was raised for my justification. What a blessed answer to every doubt and fear is found in that risen Christ!
If you read Romans 4 and 5 you will see how wondrously God has wrought that we might know Him and trust Him as the God of our salvation. We believe on God “who has raised from among the dead Jesus our Lord”. It was God who gave Him to die; and when all the blessed work of atonement was finished, God raised Him from the dead for our justification, so that being “justified on the principle of faith” we might have “peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. God has settled every question in His own way and at His own cost. We believe on God; it is not only that we believe texts of Scripture, but we believe on God.
We believe on God (Romans 4: 24); we have peace towards God (Romans 5: 1); we are reconciled to God (Romans 5: 10); we boast in God (Romans 5: 11).
These four things give us in a very full and blessed way the portion of the believer. God is the Object of his faith and the Source of his joy. He knows the meaning of the words, “He turned the sea into dry land: ... there did we rejoice in him”.
Now I want to call your attention to the interesting fact that the word “flood” in this verse (Authorised Version) is really “river”; so that the verse reads, “He turned the sea into dry land; they went through the river on foot”. That is, this verse brings together the thought of the Red Sea and the [p. 332] Jordan. It has often been pointed out that in God’s purpose the two coalesce, though in the ways of God the wilderness came between. From Exodus 3: 8 we see that the thought of God was to bring His people out of Egypt into Canaan. If He brought them out of the sphere of bondage it was that He might bring them into the sphere of blessing. We may be satisfied with the relief side of the gospel, but it is deeply important that we should go on to apprehend the purpose side. It is just as much in God’s mind that we should come into fullest blessing as that we should come out of condemnation and bondage. In other words it is as much God’s pleasure that we should be “risen with Christ” as that we should be justified.
The death of Christ clears us of everything that was against us as children of Adam, so that Christ risen is our righteousness. This answers to the Red Sea. But, on the other hand, the same precious death that clears us opens the way for us to be introduced to life and blessing in association with Christ according to God’s purpose. This answers to the Jordan.
There was a marked difference between the Red Sea and the Jordan. At the former the people learned God’s salvation for them in presence of all the power of the enemy, but at the latter the one object present to their view was the ark of the covenant (see Joshua 3). The people crossed the Jordan as being in association with the ark. It was no longer a question of protection from the power of evil, for there was neither water nor enemy in sight, but of association with the ark.
The word “for” occurs many times in Romans (see Romans 4: 25; Romans 5: 6, 8; Romans 8:26,27; Romans 8:31,32; Romans 8:34), but in Colossians the characteristic word is “with” (see Colossians 2:12,13; Colossians 2:20; Colossians 3:1; Colossians 3:3,4). If we enter into the land of God’s purpose it must be as in association with Christ, who is dead and risen.
It is entirely outside all that belongs to flesh, or to life in this world. A dead and risen man has severed all his links with things here, and lives in another order of things altogether.
I do not enlarge upon this, but I should like each one to see that in the mind of God the two things go together — that His [p. 333] saints should be justified, and that they should be risen with Christ.
Then in verses 8 and 9 of our psalm we get the wilderness. “Bless our God, ye peoples, and make the voice of his praise to be heard; Who hath set our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to be moved”. If we are in the light of God’s love and purpose we shall be assured that He will care for us in the wilderness. There was no resource in the wilderness but God, and He did not fail His people. They failed, but God did not cease to care for them, to give them bread from heaven, and water from the flinty rock, and to preserve them so that, though wandering forty years in a desert, they became neither ragged nor footsore.
Joshua and Caleb did not murmur; they were in the wilderness according to God, and had true wilderness experience — that is, experience of a faithful and forbearing love that never turned aside. They found that the manna and the rock sufficed for every need, and at the end of the journey, with ‘Garments fresh and foot unweary’, they could tell how God had brought them through. Flesh was proved in the wilderness and found worthless, but faith proved what God was and found Him faithful. Joshua and Caleb might well have said to the people, “Bless our God, ye peoples, and make the voice of his praise to be heard”. Flesh fills the wilderness with murmurings, but faith fills it with praise.
It is a great thing to be assured of God’s care. He says, “Let your conversation be without love of money, satisfied with your present circumstances; for he has said, I will not leave thee, neither will I forsake thee. So that, taking courage, we may say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not be afraid: What will man do unto me?” (Hebrews 13: 5, 6). God is our Resource, not worldly possessions. If we look upon things here as our resource we shall want to increase them as much as possible, and covetousness will come in.
There are times coming when saints will be put under great pressure. Satan will seek to make it impossible for them to get a living unless they identify themselves with what is [p. 334] opposed to God. But in those times God will not fail His people.
There may be persecution and trial in many ways-we may have to go “through fire and through water” (verse 12) — but we may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper, and I will not be afraid: what will man do unto me”. God triumphs in redemption first, and then He makes his saints triumphant in the wilderness (see Romans 8: 31 - 39). The Holy Spirit marshals the whole array of the power of evil, and shows the saint triumphant in presence of it all. “In all these things we more than conquer through him that has loved us” (verse 37).
In the wilderness we are preserved and proved. God preserves us that we may learn what He is, and He proves us that we may learn what we are. The wilderness is the place of discipline, but it is also where we prove God’s blessed care and mercy. We learn in the wilderness to sing Psalm 136, “his loving-kindness endureth for ever”. In connection with this read 1 Corinthians 10: 13, “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above what ye are able to bear, but will with the temptation make the issue also, so that ye should be able to bear it”. While suffering His people to be tested and proved so that they may learn what the flesh is, God is faithful to consider the weakness of His saints. If you cannot stand a severe testing you will not have it, or if suffered to have it you will have special succour and consideration. God will test and prove His saints, but He will not allow them to be crushed.
There are two things we may count on: the purpose of God and the love of Christ. God is bringing us as many sons to glory, and there is One at His right hand interceding for us in love. We have to take heed that we do not depart from the sense of this. “See, brethren, lest there be in any one of you a wicked heart of unbelief, in turning away from the living God” (Hebrews 3: 12).
In the wilderness we learn the faithfulness and loving kindness of God, and the love of Christ which never fails.
Then we have also to learn there the utter worthlessness of [p. 335] the flesh; we cannot bring the flesh into the blessing of God, nor connect divine purpose and blessing with it. In the wilderness we learn experimentally what the flesh is, so as to come into concert with God’s mind about it, that in result we may be freed from it in spirit so as to enter consciously into association with Christ.
It is in view of this we get the provings of God. “For thou, O God, hast proved us; thou hast tried us, as silver is tried. Thou broughtest us into a net, thou didst lay a heavy burden upon our loins; Thou didst cause men to ride over our head; we went through fire and through water” (Psalm 66: 10 - 12). God subjects us to testing that the true character of the flesh may be discovered to us. When silver is tried the dross is brought to the surface that it may be removed. God does not prove us that He may find out what we are but that we may find it out. The Lord knew very well how little Simon was to be depended on, but Simon did not know it, so he had to be sifted as wheat (Luke 22: 31). He thought he could stand any test, but when he was put in the crucible the dross came to the surface.
When we are under testing we are often inclined to blame our circumstances, our surroundings, and a thousand things rather than to judge ourselves. But in the end God brings home to us that it is ourselves as in the flesh who are all wrong. When God brings us into His net we cannot escape. Many a backslider and self-willed believer has had to prove the truth of what He said to backsliding Ephraim — “When they go, I will spread my net upon them” (Hosea 7: 12).
“We went through fire and through water”. Fire tests everything; wood, hay, and stubble will not stand. What is the good of ideas and phraseology in a day of testing? Sooner or later God burns self-sufficiency and self-satisfaction out of His people. Then water is a figure of death. It is a solemn thing to pass through death — to be made to realise that there is not an atom of anything in us, that is, in our flesh, for God. Most believers will admit that they are not what they ought to be; they are conscious of failure and imperfections, and [p. 336] they strive against this, and pray for grace to be more consistent, but they do not seem to learn fully that in them, that is, in their flesh, good does not dwell.
At the end of thirty-eight years in the wilderness the children of Israel were as bad as the first day they entered it. They “spoke against God, and against Moses” (Numbers 21: 5).
“Then Jehovah sent fiery serpents among the people, which bit the people; and much people of Israel died” (verse 6). Death passed upon them. Man incorrigibly bad must be rejected by God. Do you find that the grace of God improves you? Nay, you find still the evidences of an unalterable depravity in your flesh. You may try to get over it by confession of your faults and failings, but this does not lead to any improvement. You have to learn that it is not this or that which needs to be corrected, but that yourself — the source of all the evil — must go in judgment from before God. When you arrive at this you are just on the verge of an “abundance” (Psalm 66: 12). You are prepared to see the serpent lifted up — to see in the death of Christ the condemnation and removal of sin in the flesh.
All the exercise — the going through fire and through water — is to bring us to see the absolute necessity for the death of Christ as the end of our history before God. If God brings the dross to the surface in the experience of our souls it is that we may learn how He has removed it all in the death of Christ.
“Unless ye shall have eaten the flesh of the Son of man, and drunk his blood, ye have no life in yourselves” (John 6: 53). We have to appropriate the death of Christ as that which brings to an end all that we are, while at the same time it expresses in the most blessed way the love of God. We are freed from ourselves by the death of Christ that we might live in the love that freed us. Beloved brethren, have we reached the point that we delight to appropriate the death of Christ in this way?
Then, again, we read, “He also who eats me shall live also on account of me” (John 6: 57). Not only has He come into [p. 337] death to remove all that we are, and to bring divine love into a place where we can feed upon it in the most blessed way, but He came here to bring all that is heavenly and divine within reach of our hearts in Himself that we might feed on it, and be formed by it — that it might become the life of our souls.
In this way we come into an “abundance”. “Thou hast brought us out into abundance” (Psalm 66: 12). We see there is a life to which no condemnation can possibly attach, but it is in Another, not in ourselves. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus; He gives us the consciousness that in Christ Jesus we are as completely to God’s satisfaction as we were to His dissatisfaction in the flesh. “The water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life” (John 4: 14). How blessed to have this well of living water springing up in the soul and carrying us in spirit and affection into the region of divine love, “The love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8: 39).
Is not this a place of “abundance”? The footnote (d) reads, ‘Runneth over’. Psalm 23: 5 is the same word. Those who submit to God’s provings, and learn the necessity and import of Christ’s death, enter into this, “But the rebellious dwell in a parched land” (Psalm 68: 6). In the place of abundance we are clear of all the dross because we have appropriated the death of Christ to free us from the flesh, and now we feed on that blessed One and are identified with Him in life before His God and Father, and this constitutes us a worshipping company.
“I will go into thy house with burnt-offerings; ... I will offer up unto thee burnt-offerings of fatted beasts, with the incense of rams; I will offer bullocks with goats” (Psalm 66: 13, 15). We come before God and the Father identified with all the perfections of Christ, and those perfections become in our hearts material for praise by the Spirit. We are in the sweet savour of Christ and His sacrifice. There may be different measures in which this is apprehended by saints — one [p. 338] may have, in figure, a bullock, another a sheep, and another a turtle-dove or a pigeon (see Leviticus 1) — but that which is apprehended is the same for all. It is the excellence, preciousness, and perfection of Christ. “Through him we have both access by one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2: 18). God would have us to come near to Him in conscious identification with Christ. The youngest saint of God is entitled to lose sight of himself in God’s presence, and to be absorbed with Christ. The provings of the wilderness prepare us to come to what God has already reached in Christ and by His death — that we may be in spirit free from the flesh and happy in the presence of God. It is not possible to be in presence of God known in grace and love — in presence of the Father and the Son — without being worshippers. Worship is the appreciation of divine Persons, and that in creatures must be adoration. It is not that we bring anything to God, but our souls bow before Him in adoring appreciation of Himself as made known to us in His beloved Son. It is the attitude our souls take in presence of what God has made known of Himself to our hearts.
Then the one who has been constituted a worshipper is competent for testimony. “Come, hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul” (Psalm 66: 16). There is beautiful moral order in this. The soul is brought into the blessedness of approach to God according to His own grace and revelation of Himself. He has learned God in the triumph of redemption, in His faithfulness in the wilderness, and in the favour of His house, and now he is competent to declare what God has done for him.
There are four characteristic features of the house of God: (1) Satisfaction. “They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house” (Psalm 36: 8). God brings His saints near to Himself to satisfy them with that in which He finds His own pleasure — with all that subsists in Christ His beloved Son.
(2) Testimony. This I have already referred to.
(3) Holiness. “Had I regarded iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not hear” (Psalm 66: 18). “Holiness becometh thy house, O Jehovah, for ever” (Psalm 93: 5). As we feed upon the fatness of God’s house we are taken up with what is pure, and lovely, and of good report, and we become formed in suitability to God. We are separated in heart and mind from what is evil. Much that passes for holiness at the present day stands completely discredited in presence of Scripture. It is no uncommon thing to find people professing a high degree of sanctification, and yet going on with much that is contrary to God’s mind in both doctrine and practice. This is a very poor kind of holiness.
(4) Dependence. “But God hath heard; he hath attended to the voice of my prayer” (Psalm 66: 19). In connection with right behaviour in the house of God, Paul says, “I will therefore that the men pray in every place, lifting up pious hands, without wrath or reasoning” (1 Timothy 2: 8). We cannot be maintained in satisfaction, holiness or testimony apart from prayerful dependence. A redeemed, satisfied, holy, and dependent people can bear witness to the grace and faithfulness of God, and can give a true testimony to what He is, and what He has done for them, because they know Him and have had blessed experience of His perfect ways. If at the beginning of the wilderness we are called to “Come and see the works of God”, at the end thereof we can but exclaim with praise, “What hath God wrought!” (Numbers 23: 23).