Zechariah 6:13. He shall build the temple of the Lord; and He shall bear the glory.
The first part of this sermon appeared last month; it contained the first of two heads: “Every true believer is a temple of God”.
2. The glory of building, beautifying and completing the temple belongs exclusively to the gracious Redeemer.
(1) Christ as Mediator has paved the way for the erection of the temple of God.
That the God of heaven, glorious in every perfection, ruling by His power and receiving the praises of cherubim and seraphim, should nevertheless dwell with men – that He should select our globe, impure as it is, to be the scene of His wonderful works and condescend to take up His residence in the bodies or souls of creatures so vile, so unrighteous, so apostate as we are – these are mysteries for which we search creation in vain to find a satisfactory explanation. The Bible, and the Bible alone, gives us the key to the mystery. It is true, that once there was a time when God, in perfect consistency with His holiness and rectitude, condescended to dwell with men and to talk with them as a man speaks to his friend; but when Satan invaded the creation, and when man had apostatised from his Maker, a principle of enmity was introduced between them.
While man disliked to hear the voice of God and fled from the presence of his Maker, he was at the same time legally disqualified from appearing with acceptance in His holy presence. It was in this gloomy emergency, that the Son of the Highest, Emmanuel, “the man whose name is the Branch”, interposed, undertook our ransom, offered to come to suffer and to die. Thus, through His merits and mediation, He opened a way of access; through His finished work, pardon and peace and eternal salvation are conveyed to guilty men, and God is just while He justifies the sinner.
In this view, Christ bears the glory of having paved the way for the erection of a spiritual temple in this guilty world. He removed the difficulties that stood in its way. He, by an all-perfect righteousness satisfied the law’s every demand. He made it honourable. He magnified it before all worlds. By His atoning death, He paid the price – the ransom which God’s justice and God’s holiness demanded. He paid the price of man’s salvation, and by His precious blood reconciles him to his Maker. Thus, with perfect consistency – in complete harmony with all His attributes and with all His rights of government – Jehovah dwells with men; Jehovah selects our guilty globe as the scene of His bright manifestations; Jehovah erects His temple in our world: in its unholy domains He reveals Himself as at once the object of worship and the source of every blessing.
He dwells with men. Believers are brought into the relationship of children – of accepted children – and the spirit of adoption is bestowed on them. The privileges of adoption are imparted to every one of them, and every true believer becomes a monument to the praise and glory of His grace.
(2) While the glory of paving the way for the erection of spiritual temples belongs to Christ, the glory of building these temples by His Holy Spirit, belongs also to Him.
Christ, by the Holy Spirit, begins, carries forward and completes the building of the spiritual edifice. It is the glory of the gospel dispensation that it is complete in all its parts. It reveals to us clearly a ground of acceptance in the finished work of the Redeemer; while, by means of spiritual regeneration, it prepares the soul for the enjoyment of God.
The gospel is, in one obvious sense, the gospel of the grace of the Saviour; yet in another sense it is even more obviously the dispensation of the Spirit. Christ ascended that He might give the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the grand agent in beginning, carrying forward and completing the structure of the living temple. Under the guidance of the Spirit of God, the sinner is led to contemplate, with new feelings and views, the great economy of the gospel. He is awakened to a sense of his own vileness; he is humbled to the dust with the conviction of those sins that have exposed him to the wrath of his Maker. He is led to hate sin, not merely because it is destructive, but because it is hateful in the sight of God, yea, the abominable thing which His soul hates.
Under the guidance of the same Spirit, he is led to receive by faith the mercy of the gospel. Looking around him for a place of refuge from the coming storm, he can find none; he feels himself a solitary sinner in the presence of his great and righteous Judge. Trembling for fear and ready to sink in despair, he is conducted from the thunderings and the lightnings of Sinai to the peaceful regions of Mount Zion, where – contemplating God as enthroned in love – he receives, with satisfaction and delight, a suitable and full salvation.
Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the process of sanctification is carried forward. Having been created anew unto holiness, having had a principle of faith and of hope and of love implanted in his soul, he grows in spiritual attainments. He dies unto sin and lives unto righteousness. His powers are employed in the service of his Maker. He delights in the law of God after the inward man. He is a living epistle of Christ, known and read of all men. He fights the good fight; he perseveres in the way of well-doing. He adorns the doctrine of his Saviour. He bears the image of his glorious Creator and Lord before the world. He lets his light shine clearly and consistently before men and, “denying ungodliness and worldly lusts”, he seeks to “live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world”. He advances in spiritual knowledge, and in all gracious attainments. His path is like the morning light, shining more and more unto the perfect day.
This, in plain language, is how the spiritual temple is begun, carried on and completed under the ministry of the Spirit. And thus Christ is honoured and glorified. He is honoured in them that believe. He is honoured in their glorifying in His cross; He is honoured in their following His example. He is glorified in their exhibiting, though faintly, the features of His moral image; He is glorified in guiding them by His counsel; He is glorified in leading them forward step by step in their spiritual career. Thus holy temples are built to the Lord, and “all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord”. And “ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people, to show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light”.
(3) The glory of building the temple belongs to Christ, because He has provided those means by which, under the ministry of grace, the temple is built.
We discern the wisdom of God in the constitution of nature and in the arrangements of providence, in the relation of causes to effects and of means to ends. Similarly in God’s spiritual kingdom and in the government of that kingdom we find a connection between causes and effects, means and ends. It is true that the temple of the Lord was built in a manner fitted to vindicate the glory of God. No sound of an anvil or hammer was to be heard in its construction; and in the building of the spiritual temple, it often happens that the sound of human instrumentality is not to be heard. All human agency is in itself feeble and insufficient, and God is honoured and the Saviour is glorified by making the weak things of the world confound the wise.
Nevertheless, it is an established principle that, weak and inefficient as the instrumentality may be, God has appointed that means are to be used. While the great Master Builder is carrying forward His own work, subordinate instruments are employed. Ministers and teachers and parents and friends are employed under the agency of the great Architect, in a manner very different from how the Architect Himself works; yet these are also engaged as humble instruments, while the grandeur of the work ensures that He who is its author and finisher has the whole glory of it.
The means and the instrumentality are His own appointment – diligently perusing the lively oracles of inspiration, searching in that field for hidden treasure; it is by earnest and persevering prayer; it is by regular and constant attendance on the house of God; it is by sitting down from time to time at the table of the Lord and eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of Christ; it is by the exercise of deep, holy meditation and self-examination. It is by the use of such means as these that the spiritual building is carried forward, and when Christians converse together on the things of God. And the glory of prescribing these means, the glory of furnishing these means, the glory of giving the opportunity for using these means, and the glory of crowning them with success belongs exclusively “to the man whose name is the Branch”.
Along with that subordinate instrumentality, the various dispensations of providence are wisely overruled for advancing the same great scheme. The casualties that affect families, the revolutions that affect the nations of the world, the changes that mark the external history of the Church; the chequered scenes of every day, the prosperity that shines on our dwellings and the adversity that darkens all around – these and similar dispensations, arrangements and vicissitudes are all made to combine with other divinely-appointed means for carrying forward God’s gracious design. This happens under the guidance of Him who is Lord of the spiritual house – into whose hands has been committed the government of all things, to whom all power in heaven and in earth has been given. It is subject to His great mediatorial sway. And as illustrating the grace and glory of it, “the man whose name is the Branch,” does, by His grace, carry on the building, beautify and adorn the various parts of the structure, till at length “He shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it”.
(4) The glory of erecting spiritual temples belongs to Christ, inasmuch as He constantly superintends them, takes a tender interest in their concerns, sympathises with them in all their vicissitudes, and completes the purposes of God ultimately in regard to them.
“Behold, I have graven thee on the palms of My hands; Thy walls are continually before Me.” “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.” “He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of His eye.” “My sheep hear My voice . . . and they follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.”
In their desolate state, the Saviour takes a tender interest in all the concerns of His flock. He watches over its individual members, He pleads their cause in the presence of His Father and their Father, His God and their God. He presents the merits of His oblation in the presence of His Father, on the throne of majesty and grace, and this appeal pleads with a silent but resistless eloquence. While thus, in His intercessory character, the Saviour watches over the Church at large and its individual members, He condescends to watch over their minutest concerns, and to adapt Himself to these concerns He bends towards them the eye of a brother; He marks the heavings of a broken heart; He sympathises with those who experience need and sorrow; He pours into the wounded spirit the balm of consolation; He is present to heal; He guides by His counsel, and afterwards will bring them to glory. And thus it belongs to Christ to bear the glory of building the temple.
He loves to watch over the various vicissitudes that chequer the lives of individual Christians, to guide them in the paths of righteousness, to soothe their sorrows and to multiply their joys. He loves to mark the progress of the spiritual edifice, as it swells from the vale of corrupt humanity below, to preserve its fair proportions and lovely features safe from the ravages of time and the assaults of marauding foes, to maintain the inscription entire. “Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever”.
Application.
The subject we have attempted to illustrate enters deep into the Christian system, and into the economy of the Christian life. It speaks abundant comfort to those who are members of Christ’s body and the subjects of His saving grace. It speaks terror and alarm to those who are “not of this building”, to those who belong to the synagogue of Satan rather than to the temple of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are two views to which I would briefly direct your attention, as arising clearly out of the subject we have considered, and as bearing a close connection with our present circumstances and future prospects.
(1) The subject displays, in a very pleasing manner, the glory of the great Redeemer.
It belongs exclusively to our great and gracious Lord to remove the obstructions to the erection of the temple, to lay the foundations of the building, and to rear its superstructure. His is the glory of it; His perfections, as God, are all engaged and displayed in erecting it; and His character and love as Mediator are especially connected with the advancing process. Thine, O blessed Emmanuel, is the kingdom; Thine is the power; Thine is the glory. On every stone of this spiritual temple Thy name is inscribed in legible characters; and the charter of its privileges and hopes has been sealed by Thy blood.
In the histories of this world and in the records of human triumphs, the names and the honours of the victors stand associated with garments rolled in blood, with the desolating progress of armies, and with a vast expenditure of treasure. In the records of the spiritual Church of the firstborn, the victories of our great Emmanuel are to be seen in countless multitudes of immortal souls emancipated from the enemy; in the rescue of numberless victims from spiritual slavery; in the establishment of an empire of love and grace; in the erection of thousands and millions of “spiritual temples” – to the glory of the God of the temple and the grace of the great Redeemer.
And this, Christian believer, is a theme which ought ever to animate your soul to admire and love the Saviour and to keep Him enthroned in your heart. Though you do not have His physical presence, He is nevertheless present in the temple. He is the light and the glory of it; and it is because He lives that you shall live also.
(2) While this subject tends thus to exalt our views of Christ, it tends also to elevate our conceptions of Christian character.
There is something in the very idea of a temple that is associated with holy and sacred pursuits, with holy and hallowed enjoyments. In the moral estimate of every nation, sacrilege is stamped as a crime of no common magnitude; and from the precincts of a temple have been excluded, with the consent of all, everything impure and everything degrading.
The thought that Christian disciples are consecrated to God, that they are dwelling places of Jehovah, and that all the powers are sacred to Him: such a thought elevates our views of the Christian character. Away, away, even from the outer courts of that temple, every unholy thought, every impure affection, every low and selfish pursuit, every mercenary and impious aim, every sensual lust, every circumstance that is at variance with the holiness of the temple! “My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves”. “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”