The House Of God

by G.S. WEBSTER | Category: General | Jul 1959

"The house of God" is a term which is greatly misunderstood and misapplied by many believers today. To very many it means a material building in which people congregate for religious purposes. Oftentimes several such buildings are found within a stone's throw of each other, all with the same claim of being the house of God, although these people differ greatly in doctrine. We might ask, Where do such people obtain the idea that their buildings are God's dwelling places? Unhesitatingly we would reply-certainly not from the Scriptures of the New Testament. In 1 Kings 8.27, when Solomon had built a material house for God, we read the heart-searching words by that king, "But will God in very deed dwell on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee: how much less this house that I have builded!" The answer to Solomon's question undoubtedly is that God did do so, when men were prepared to build as He would have them, always remembering that "the palace is not for man, but for the LORD God" (1 Chronicles 29.1).

King David gave to Solomon the pattern he himself had received in writing from the hand of the LORD (1 Chronicles 28.19). Prior to this God had given to Moses the pattern for the building of the tabernacle in the wilderness, which was the house of God in that day (Exodus 25.8, 9; Numbers 12.7).

It should be noted that there was only one house of God on the earth at one time, and we do not find in the Scriptures the plural word "houses" of God.

From all over Palestine the people of God converged upon Jerusalem at stated times in the year because there, and there alone, God had placed His name, and His house had been built according to His own pattern.

When a Boy of twelve years the Lord Jesus went up to Jerusalem for the Passover with His parents (Luke 2.41-50). Later when they missed Him from the company who were returning home, they returned to Jerusalem and found Him in the temple. His answer to their query was, "Wist ye not that I must be in My Father's house ? Christ loved the house of God and was ever jealous for the things of His Father. When He saw the rulers of the people turning the house of God into a place of merchandise, He was filled with righteous indignation, and having made a scourge of cords He drove out the animals and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and "His disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of Thine house shall eat Me up" (John 2.15-17). Later, when nearing the end of His earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus lamented over Jerusalem, as we read in Luke 13.34, 35. They had rejected Him and God had rejected them and left that which had been His house, and the Lord called it "your house." The Lord's words were, Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." How sad indeed!

Was this then the end of the precious truth of God having a house in which to dwell in the midst of His people? By no means. Whilst it is true that, in the present dispensation, as Stephen stated, " Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands," yet, as the Epistles clearly show, God still dwells with a people who build according to the divine pattern-of such Paul wrote in Hebrews 3.6, "But Christ as a Son over His (that is God's) house: whose house are we, if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end," while Peter, in 1 Peter 2.5, writes, " Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." Also in 1 Peter 4.17 it is recorded, " For the time is come for judgement to begin at the house of God: and if it begin first at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of God." The pronouns "we" "ye" and "us" in these passages clearly demonstrate that in the New Testament there was a people designated the house of God, a people divinely gathered though scattered geographically, and the house of God is ever a possibility where people conform to the pattern contained in the New Testament.

Where then in the New Testament do we find the pattern of God's present house, for, as we have shown, anything will not do for God? Let us go back in thought to Jerusalem, not to the material temple which had become desolate, although many were still doing service of a sort there, but to see the pattern of the New Testament house of God. Here we find the disciples of the now risen and exalted Lord Jesus Christ gathered together at the command of Him, to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given. In His prayer to His Father in John 17, besides other things He said, concerning His disciples, "I have given them Thy word ... sanctify them in the truth : thy word is truth." These beloved disciples who were prepared to become a habitation of God in the Spirit are seen in Acts 1 and 2 "waiting for the promise of the Father." When the day of Pentecost was now come the Holy Spirit of God descended, and the sound of the rushing of a mighty wind filled the house where they were sitting, and divided tongues as of fire appeared and "sat upon each one of them " (Acts 2.1-8).

Two things took place simultaneously here; each disciple received the gift of the Holy Spirit and was baptized by the Lord Jesus Himself into the Body, and the assembled company of disciples became an habitation for God, God's house. This was the first church of God, the church in Jerusalem. It was not simply a little group of believers.

Later we read, "They then that received his word were baptized; and there were added unto them in that day about three thousand souls. And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers" (Acts 2.41, 42). Being saved from hell did not bring those three thousand into the church nor house of God and neither did baptism in water. Having been baptized, they were then added to the one hundred and twenty who were already together and became part of the church of God in Jerusalem, and of the house of God. They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine. In 1 Timothy 3.14, 15, Paul writes, " These things write I unto thee . . . that thou mayest know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."

As the testimony spread in those days other churches were planted, and so we read of the churches of God in Judea (1 Thessalonians 2.14), and the Churches of Galatia (Galatians 1.2), but though there were many churches of God there was only one house of God. Peter's letter was to a large area, to saints in churches of God in five provinces of Asia Minor-many churches, but only one spiritual house which included all those churches and also churches elsewhere. "Each several building fitly framed together groweth into a holy temple in the Lord" (Ephesians 2.21). What a pleasing sight for the eyes of the Lord to look upon, men and women gathered together according to His word in churches of God in various cities, towns and villages and yet one house, one temple, a spiritual house composed of living stones, with God dwelling in their midst, according to His own word, "I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (2 Corinthians 6.16)!

G.S. WEBSTER | Jul 1959
General