CHRIST BUILDING THE HOUSE
Bruce Ikin
Hebrews 3: 1-6; Ruth 1: 3-6, 15-21; 1 Samuel 1: 4-11; Malachi 3: 8-10, 16, 17
Our attention has been drawn to the greatness of Christ, who He is, and I desire to interest you a little in what He is doing now, what He is doing in building the house. In Matthew’s gospel we see that He is building on the appreciation of Himself. We see in chapter 16 how He draws out Peter after asking questions of His disciples. Peter speaks spontaneously of his own impression of the glory of Christ, he says, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (v 16). That was delightful to the Lord Jesus and He used that to speak of building His assembly. He is building – this passage speaks of what He has built. Peter speaks in His epistle in the gain and the good of what the Lord Jesus had revealed to Him and what He saw on the mount in the presence of the Lord Jesus, as adjusted by the voice out of heaven. You see how Peter speaks in His epistle of what Christ is doing, He is building a house. It is to those who come to Him. The greatness of His Person comes out in this passage and we are to consider who He is. Note that in relation to the house it is written to “holy brethren”. What is suitable to the presence of God would search us as to the answer to that question. This is written to “holy brethren”; that is arrived at through exercise; it is arrived at through discipline and through God working with us individually, and through overcoming. We are to consider the One who is building, we are to consider who He is in the greatness of His Person, He is the “Apostle and High Priest of our confession”. In the Old Testament you had two, the apostle and the high priest; you had one to fulfil what was needed in the authority, that was needed to produce what was suitable to God’s presence; and you needed the priest in order to be able to approach God in His holiness. But there is One who is suited to fulfil both, that is the Lord Jesus. He is the One whom we are given to consider, He is the One who is the object of our consideration. There could only be One who could qualify in this way and that is the Lord Jesus.
But, not only that we see that He is Son over God’s house. We have been hearing about the One who was engaged in His Father’s business. We see One who wrought a work in the intimacy of His love for His Father and in the consciousness of His love for Himself. We see how the Father loves the Son, and has “given him all things into his hands”, John 13: 3. How capable His hands are; do we put our trust and confidence in Him that He is going to see what is due to God right through to the very end? He is the One who is constituted to do it. How wonderfully He is qualified to do that in the glory and greatness of His own Person. He is magnified here in our affections, the Lord Jesus in the greatness of His Person as Son over His house.
What I wanted to draw attention to is our responsibility. There is a little touch here which struck me very much recently as contemplating this verse, “whose house are we”. Does it stop there? If it stopped there we may say we can claim this and claim that, but following that is the “if”, the “if” of consequence – “if indeed we hold fast the boldness and the boast of hope firm to the end”. That does not exclude persons but what the Lord Jesus is looking for is material that is marked by these qualities, boldness and boast of hope, firm to the end. I was struck with that, “to the end”, and God through Christ is working to an end, and He is using material to His own ends and He wants to use you and me. You may say, I can understand the assembly. You might think it is something right out there somewhere, or you might think abstractly about the house, but the scripture says, “whose house are we”. That means that God is desirous that you and I should be included in the ”we” and that you and I should be qualified as material of this quality, quality so valuable to God. We have been reminded as to the need for humility: God uses humble persons, God uses persons who have finished with themselves and are engaged with the greatness of God, the greatness of Christ, and who resort to the Holy Spirit.
I read in the Old Testament of persons who God loved, who God used in His own ways to an end. I read of Naomi and Ruth – Naomi was a person who was returning and she was returning in very sincere humility. She was not afraid to acknowledge that she had gone out but that Jehovah had brought her home empty. Are we free to acknowledge that we have failed God in the greatness of what He has called us into, “partakers of the heavenly calling”.
Naomi comes to it that what she went in for, what she pinned her hopes on had failed her, it had died out, her hopes had died out naturally. She still had ears, she still knew what was going on. It says, “she had heard in the fields of Moab how that Jehovah had visited his people to give them bread”. Have you ears to hear what the Spirit is saying? He has in mind that you and I, if we are away like Naomi, should be revived in our affections, revived to what is living, revived to what the Lord Jesus is doing in His greatness, because He is going to see things through. But will you and I be part of it vitally? Naomi returns and Ruth is seen here in committal. It was not easy for her. Naomi did not make it easy for her, in fact you might say Naomi said things which seemed to be quite negative as if she were testing her. The Lord Jesus loves to test His work. You may say, I am very tested in my locality, by my local brethren, but what is the result of the test? The Lord Jesus would test you that it should bring out the best in you; Naomi tested Ruth and it brought out the best that was in Ruth’s heart. Think of how the Lord Jesus when there were those thinking of going away, He says, “Will ye also go away?” (John 6: 67) and what is Peter’s answer? In the ardency of Peter’s affection he says, “Lord to whom shall we go?” Would that be your answer? Ruth says, “Do not intreat me to leave thee” – as if there is a certain extremity in the way that she is expressing herself – “to return from following after thee”. Her attraction here is to Naomi. She seemed to find solace and resource in the man of great wealth. Here she sees that there is something loveable about Naomi, about one who is returning, someone who is returning to what God is doing, what the Lord Jesus is doing. She says, “for where thou goest I will go”. What a thing it is to find others who are looking to what the Lord is doing and set their hopes there. You may say, everything else has failed. Naomi could not offer anything of natural excitement to Ruth. She could not give her a promise that she would have this and that, but the wonderful fact that really what excluded all that was natural there was what God was doing, and that attracted Ruth. She says, “where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried”. God loved that, God used it. What is the end of it? We see those who hold boldness and are firm to the end. We see what the end is. You see it in the last chapter, a worshipper is coming to light: there is what is for the house, and not only that, but God built upon what was seen in Ruth in that what comes to light is Obed and David. Think of it that God’s king began with this return and with this committal of Ruth to what the Lord Jesus, in type, was doing!
I then read from Hannah because she was also one who was tested, tested by what was opposed to her – you may say unnecessarily so. Hannah felt what was impoverished among the people of God. Mr. Lyon used to remind us of broken hearted churchmen. Hannah a woman here, but she was broken hearted as to what was happening amongst the people of God and she sought an answer to it that there should be something for God. She had to suffer for it, she was prepared to be misunderstood, but Hannah spoke in her heart and God looks upon the heart. Hannah had the secret in her heart that it was not through pride that God would look upon her, it was in humility. You see that in her song in chapter 2, in the outpouring of heart. It says, “she continued praying before Jehovah” (v 12): it was not a ‘one-off’ matter. Our brother has been referring to what continues right through to the end and here Hannah was continuing praying until the desire of her heart was met. Eli marked her mouth – only her lips moved, he thought she was drunken. Eli was not right, Eli was taking his ease, there was what was decadent, there was what was decayed, there was what was corrupt. There was a seat outside the temple, it should not have been there; there were beds there. What was corrupt was going on, but Hannah desired that there should be an answer for the heart of God. It was the result of her desiring that man child and giving him to Jehovah, on a basis of sacrifice, of committal, of her being bold, not in the boldness of the flesh, but the boldness of committal, her eye upon the hope. Thus God used that. How do you use it? In chapter 2 he says, “I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind; and I will build him a sure house; and he shall walk before mine anointed continually” (v 35). That is what God had in mind; He had that in mind before there was anything expressed by Hannah, but He used the feelings and the committal of Hannah to His own ends. He was building upon it, right through. How God, through Christ, is building upon desire and experience expressed in humility in the day in which we are, soon to be completed, the Holy Spirit’s work in relation to the assembly completed, the preciousness of what it will be for the heart of Christ, the preciousness of what is going to be expressed for God, God’s dwelling place.
I read in Malachi because there we see again what was impoverished amongst the people of God. There was a carelessness, people were saying, “Behold, what a weariness!” (1: 13). You may say, it is weary to go to the meeting, it is weary to be engaged with these things; people were saying that. God in His message, in His word through the prophet, was saying, ”Ye are cursed with a curse, and me ye rob, even this whole nation”. But what is the answer? “Bring the whole tithe into the treasure-house”, God’s house, bring it in – it is full committal, being engaged with the greatness of Christ and being dedicated to it. I am searched as I speak about it, but what God is saying here was, “Bring the whole tithe in to the treasure-house, that there may be food in my house”. What is He doing from His own side? What is His resource? What is His resource in Christ? It is that He is going to open the heavens and there is going to be, as the note makes clear, ‘superabundance’. As you make way for what God is going to do, you see that it eclipses all that might satisfy, but really cannot satisfy me naturally, what engaged me in my energies, in my affections. You see what God can do far exceeds that in superabundance. That is His resource, but He is waiting for a response. Was there a response to His plea? Was there a response to His word “rebuke”? Yes there was. What was it? “Then they that feared Jehovah spoke often one to another; and Jehovah observed it, and heard”. What a thing it is to hear young brethren speaking about Christ and their experiences. God would look upon that and use and build upon it, build upon your desires, build upon what is attractive to you in Christ as you speak to one another, as you speak to older brethren, as the older brethren speak to one another, as we speak about these wonderful things in our gatherings in sincerity and reality, God looks upon that. God looks upon reality and He writes it down. It says, “a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared Jehovah, and that thought upon his name”. What was due to God? It says, “they shall be unto me a peculiar treasure, saith Jehovah of hosts, in the day that I prepare”. What was the end of this period? It was, as you read in Luke 2, the same quality of persons, seen in Simeon and Anna. It was “divinely communicated to him by the Holy Spirit, that he should not see death before he should see the Lord’s Christ” (v 26). That is what he was waiting for, that is what mattered to him. All that mattered to him was that he should see, “the Lord’s Christ” and what spontaneous uplift of heart goes up to God as a result of him having that wonderful fresh view of Christ. It says he, “blessed God” (v 28).
It says of Anna, “who did not depart from the temple, serving night and day with fastings and prayers; and she coming up the same hour gave praise to the Lord, and spoke of him to all those who waited for redemption in Jerusalem”, she gave praise to the Lord. Think of what went up in God’s house, what was here left as a result of the exercises of Malachi, the word that came through Malachi, the probing of God in His voice of admonition and the answer to it in persons who spoke to one another in relation to the greatness of Christ. What it is to find one another to appreciate one another to find those who have the same purpose of heart, waiting for the same Saviour, waiting for the same Lord, looking for His coming. Do you relish and love their company and find joy in their company? Anna was like that. Simeon and Anna had no account in this world’s estimation, they had no place in the court, they had no place in the assemblings of the Pharisees and the scribes who were so full of their self-importance. These persons, Simeon and Anna were not full of self-importance, they were full of Christ waiting for Him. May we be more exercised, dear young brethren, older brethren, that we may increase and grow in our appreciation of Christ and be formed after Him until He comes.
For His Name’s sake.
Sunbury
April 2003