"The Rights of God" # 22

God's Rights In His House

Genesis 2:15-17

God's rights concerning His house have always been challenged. God had created this earth as a place where His rights would be recognized. That is why He gave man certain commandments. He gave them to man to bring him to the place where he would respect God's rights. Through the recognition of God's rights, obedience to God, man was to grow into all that which had been ordained for him from God.

However, it happened differently. The adversary appeared and the battle for God's rights started. This happened in the form of a simple question: "Hath God said."

"Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, "Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" And the woman said unto the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, "Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.' " And the serpent said unto the woman, 'Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.'" (Genesis 3:1-5)

There we have the questioning of God's rights. The will of man is to stand in the place of the will of God. What is religious modernism other than that?! The authority of the Word of God is opposed. Human thoughts judge that which is of God.

One king of Israel dared to say: "Who is the Lord?" This is what things are like for God after the fall. This is what He has to take into account, but that which He is also strong enough to overcome.

In the New Testament we see the same fight over the rights of God in His House. The Lord says: "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you have made it a den of robbers" (Matt. 21:13). And in saying this, He explains the parable of the vineyard owner.

"Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it. and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying: "They will reverence my son." But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, "This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance." And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him" (Matt. 21:33-39).

God has planted a vineyard and has put a fence around it. This vineyard is His property. Nobody therefore has any rights in this vineyard and except Him. Then He hired it out to husbandmen and sent His servants after a while, to fetch the fruit, His "rights". The husbandmen, however, beat them and killed them and murdered His Son in the end. This is robbing God. This is misuse of His rights to the extreme. The Pharisees recognized that this parable was meant for them. They gnashed their teeth. They did not consider repenting.Only a short while later, and the Lord has to say about Jerusalem: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her! How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as to a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." (Matthew 23:37-38. What was once God's house, is His house no longer. God has left it. His house is somewhere else. It is in the hearts of those that have opened themselves to Him. a"WE are His house." And Christ is the Son over God's house (Hebrews 3:6).

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 23)