Monday, November 16, 2015

"The Rights of God" # 29

Bethel - God's House (continued)

When we speak of the house of God, we speak of the church of Jesus Christ, of His holy Temple, nothing earthly, but something heavenly. The house of God is connected to heavenly fullness. Those that have become living stones have come to know this experientially. They know it on the basis of the love that binds them together on the basis of the life that fills them all. In Hebrews 12:22 and 23 we read: "Ye are come to the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven." That is the church. It is a heavenly assembly. It is an assembly of those who have been born again. And as long as she is on this earth, she is in reality a representative of heavenly things, through whom the Lord wants to reveal Himself to the world. If there is to be a practical expression of the heavenly reality that fills the church , then it is necessary that all believers come to a living realization of the unity of all members of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. only together do we arrive at the fullness of God. The fullness is given to us in as far as we, the many, are one body. That is why every division means loss to us and for the time being also loss to the Lord.

In the Old Testament no one was allowed to come to the temple with empty hands. What do we have, we who are His temple? Nothing else but himself. Only that which is of Christ is worthy to be presented, because our unity is only based on that which is of Christ.

Let us look at the house of God from different angles. Firstly from the point of view of fellowship. We have already spoken about it. Fellowship in Jesus Christ is what makes the church so wonderful. It is only through fellowship that the church is formed. Who could have brought together into one new man those who are so different according to nationality, social standing and gender? That which came into being through the Cross is so wonderful, so unfathomably great, that all human efforts to  create fellowship have remained poor, bungled attempts. For exactly this reason the devil tries to destroy this fellowship. He does not want that that which Christ has brought about to become visible. He creates divisions, denominations and even uses the truth, divided into truths, just so that the unity does not become visible, and so that the power that is in unity does not become effective.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 30

[some of the blog posts are short this morning. I am using an old keyboard because my usual keyboard is broken and cannot be fixed. Its space key doesn't work any more. And any time one uses another keyboard it makes the fingers slower and with many mistakes made. I have ordered a new keyboard. Hopefully it will arrive sometime this week.]


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