THE FAMILY OF GOD

[Roger T. Forster]

Reading: John 1:49-51; 1 Timothy 3.15-16.

ABRAHAM'S four altars helped us to discover the face of God behind the universe. Isaac's four wells revealed to us the finger of God. So God has a face and a hand. Now Jacob's four pillars are going to help us to discover something about God's family.

These four pillars represent the house of God, God's place of relationships. If God has a face, that means that He is a Person, and if He extends His hand, it is to do things, but primarily to take hold of men and women and bring them into a relationship with Himself. So this particular habit of Jacob's, of setting up pillars everywhere he went, is going to help us to understand something of those relationships in the house of God.

Jacob is sometimes a very difficult character to understand. He seems to have an ability to do everything wrong! That is very encouraging, for the Church of God is made up of people like that, and that is why he is one of the best people to teach us what the house of God is all about. Of course, all these three great men that God used were very weak and fallible, but it was through these men that God was bringing such tremendous truths to us. Abraham was very easygoing, but that is just the sort of man God uses in His Church. He has a wonderful way of dealing with hopeless material, so He takes all the easygoing, sanguine [36/37] Abrahams and puts them up on the Cross, saying: 'It is all right, Abraham. If you trust Me you will go right through.' Then there was Isaac, who was full of self-pity, but God can use that sort of material. It is a wonderful thing to be in the house of God!

But perhaps Jacob seems to us to be the worst of all. For instance, he was so tied to his mother's apron-strings that he was not married before he was seventy-seven! Well, you cannot do much with that, but God can, and that is the tremendous thing about the house of God. Who is in this house is what really matters, and that is God Himself, through our Lord Jesus Christ.

THE PILLAR AND GROUND OF TRUTH

1 Timothy, verse 15, is a very difficult verse in some ways, for it says: "The house of God, which is the church of the living God" -- and then, is there a full stop or a comma? In the Greek we cannot tell. Perhaps there is a comma and the verse goes like this: "The house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." Ah, so the Church, the house of God, is the pillar and the ground of truth! But perhaps there is a full stop there, so that the verse reads like this: "The house of God, which is the church of the living God. The pillar and ground of the truth; and without controversy great is the mystery of godliness; God was manifest in the flesh ...", and that is Jesus, who was "justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory". So perhaps Jesus is the pillar and ground of truth! Perhaps the answer is that both are the pillar and ground of truth. The Church is the pillar and ground of truth, but so also is the Lord Jesus, because all that matters about the Church is the Lord Jesus, and all that the Church is is found in the Lord Jesus. The Church is His Body. He fills all things, and He is the truth and the ground of truth, but He is found in us, so we are the pillar and the ground of truth. Perhaps that is why Paul, when he writes to the Corinthians, says: "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that body, being many, are one body: so also is the Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:12). There the Body is called the Christ. All that matters about our bodies is what is inside them, and if they had no one inside them, they would not be worth anything at all. In fact, they would soon fall to pieces. They would not exist, and if the Lord Jesus did not exist today, neither would the Church; but He does exist, and is alive for evermore, so that is why the Church is still in existence, and what is in Him is the pillar and the ground of truth.

Now, if we had followed the story of Jacob and looked in the first place where Jacob's pillars are mentioned, in Genesis 28, and noticed that he put up a pillar on the ground where he had slept, we would have found that he said: "This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven" (verse 17). So, the place where he set up his pillow to become a pillar was the Church, the house of God, and to make quite sure that we would understand this he poured oil over the top and anointed it. He 'Christ-ed' it. And this setting up a pillar he did four times in all. Now, you notice that it is not just the pillar that is the house of God, but the pillar and the ground.

Many churches have two things: a steeple pointing to the sky, and a graveyard. So, believe it or not, has the Church in the Scriptures. It has a ground in which there has been a burial, and it has a pillar which points up to heaven. The ground is the place where the Lord Jesus has died and been buried, and the pillar is where He is risen again and ascended to His Father's right hand, and that is the pillar and ground of truth. As we live in the Lord Jesus we live in His death and burial, in His resurrection and ascension, and it is all that which is the Church. There is that in Jacob which has to be identified with Christ's death. Although Jacob was seventy-seven, he was feeling lonely on that first night away from home, for things had come to a bad end and he was afraid. He had reached an end of himself, and he was tired of trying to do God's work for Him. But in his tiredness he lay down, and there he was finished. There was nothing more that he could do. Then God gave him a dream, and he saw a ladder set up between heaven and earth. He could see that there was something else apart from his tiredness and his deathliness, and it was something that God had raised up which opened heaven. That is why Jacob rose from where he slept, and on the ground of his death he established the ladder that he had seen in his vision. God could do something in that dead man because Jesus also rose and went up to His Father's right hand.

Some years later Jacob was fleeing from his uncle, Laban (Genesis 31), but Laban caught him up and was very angry. However, at last they came to an agreement in that place. They buried their differences there, and heaped a lot of stones upon the place. This pile of stones could be translated 'grave', and on the top of the grave they put a pillar, which they called 'Watchtower', and said: 'God will watch over us.' Do you see it again? [37/38] There was a place of burial, and a place which rose up to God Himself.

Later, in Genesis 35, Jacob reached Bethel again, and we read that Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and was buried there. Then Jacob raised up another pillar, poured on oil and wine, and called it the house of God. Once again there was a burial, and something rising up to meet God.

Then, also in chapter 35, Jacob moved down towards Bethlehem, and on the way his wife, Rachel, died. He placed her in the grave, and on it he placed a pillar. Once again there was a ground of burial, and once again there was a resurrection that rose to God.

On each of these four occasions Jacob is showing us something about the house of God, but it all comes out of his own negative experience.

1. DEATH TO ISAAC'S HOUSE

Let us move back into that house of Isaac for a few moments, and there we find Isaac and Rebekah, of whom we thought last time. They were not very close in their spiritual life, and now we see Rebekah listening at the tent door to Isaac, who is complaining that he cannot see any more and that people might be taking him in, which, in fact, is just what Rebekah is doing. Then Isaac tells Esau to go out and get the venison, after which he will bless him. Rebekah hurries out to Jacob and says: 'We must do something in a hurry, for God's purpose is going to be lost. If we do not do something quickly, you will not get the blessing, and it is quite certain that God means to bless you. I had a vision about it, but if we do not do something about it, everything will be lost.' So they quickly make up some food out of a little kid and flavour it up with spice to make it taste like venison. After all, Isaac's taste is not as good as it used to be, so it is all right. 'Come on, Jacob,' says Rebekah, 'you go in and take it into him. It is all in a good cause. We are doing God's will, and we must cheat your father somehow.' 'But, Mother,' says Jacob, 'I have a smooth skin, and Esau is a hairy man.' 'Oh, that is nothing. Just put these skins on.' So Jacob comes in to Isaac, Isaac is deceived, and Jacob receives the blessing. 

When Esau arrives and Isaac understands what has happened, he lets out a great cry, the cry of a man who knows that God is greater and has accomplished His will, despite his hardened heart, his resistance and ignorance. This is a house full of intrigue, unhappiness and deceit, and of man trying to do God's will for him. Ah, Jacob, that is not the house of God! There is hatred in that house, and Esau is going to kill you. You are not learning much about relationships in this family, Jacob! Rebekah had better deceive Isaac again by saying that Jacob must go and get a wife from her brother's family. Isaac believes her, but really Rebekah does this to save Jacob's life from Esau. Is that the house of God?

It may be that the church you are in has difficulties, but God is trying to teach you something from that church. He is trying to show us from the negative what exists in the positive, and that in Christ there is another, totally different, realm of relationships, but we do not understand them, nor appreciate them, until we discover the negatives first of all. That is why the Church always looks a mess, and why there is always pain and difficulty in relationships. God is showing us what the house of man is like so that we might understand what He has given us in Christ. I do not think that any of us are spiritual enough to believe in our relationships in Christ until we have experienced the negative, and it is not a matter of just changing from smooth flesh to rough flesh, for it is all flesh. But the Church is Christ, and that is where our relationships are, with God and with each other.

Jacob lay down on that first night, tired of trying to do God's will with clever ways, intrigue, and deceit, with forcing himself, trying to get round people and keeping them in ignorance. It was all hopeless, so he said: 'I will go to sleep. I cannot go on!', and that is the death of a man who has seen that he cannot do the will of God. It is in that moment of despair, despondency and darkness that we get a vision of Christ. The ladder is Christ -- the Lord Jesus said so in the first chapter of John's Gospel. Christ is a ladder set up from earth to heaven. You see, Jacob had been trying to take steps horizontally to get God's work done and His will accomplished, but there is really only one step to take, and that is the vertical one, which is the Lord Jesus. That step has the will of God accomplished in it. It has an opened heaven. It has the voice of God, and not the voice of Isaac, Rebekah or Esau, nor of all the members of the church shouting at one another. In Christ there is the voice of God and He says: 'I will give you ...' In the vertical ladder God gives, and when He gives we only have to take. That is the house of God. If for us the house of God is a place where we are doing all the engineering and are trying to accomplish God's work for Him, then we have not really discovered that the Church is Christ; but once we have discovered that we hear God continuously saying to us: 'I will give ... I will give ...' It is the giving God who is found in His house. [38/39]

2. DEATH TO LABAN'S HOUSE

But Jacob still has a lot to learn -- and I think that is true of most of us! God sends Jacob down to Laban. Well, if Jacob was a twister, Laban was a double-twister! If we have to learn something like this from God, He will get us all involved with someone who is twice as bad as we are, or, at least that is how it will seem to us. But God is trying to say something to us, and it is that word which we are so deaf to hear, because we always think that God is saying: 'Laban is a double-twister!' Somehow, though, that does not seem to live in us, it does not do anything in us, and it does not create anything in us because we are not really hearing what God is saying. He never tells Laban off. All He has to say is to Jacob, and when Jacob really hears the message, then he can finish his apprenticeship and go home, but it takes him many years.

You remember that he wanted to marry that little ewe-lamb, Rachel -- because that is what 'Rachel' means -- and you can imagine what a nice girl she was. But Rachel had a sister, Leah, which means 'bleary-eyed', or 'cross-eyed', so you can imagine what she was like! For seven years Jacob served Laban for Rachel; then the marriage night came -- and in the morning he found that it was Leah and not his little ewe-lamb after all. It must have been a terrible psychological shock but, you see, Laban was a double-twister. You know now what it feels like, Jacob, to be twisted, and you thought you could do the will of God by twisting your brother! It must have been a terrible thing for Jacob to realize that outwardly he could embrace Leah, but to find that internally he was not really joined to her in his own heart's love. Has God shown you that in the Church? Outwardly we can embrace so much, and then it suddenly dawns on us: there is no heart relationship. We have gone through all the outward motions, but our love for Christ is so thin, and our love for the brethren is so weak. 'Oh, I thought I loved that brother so much, but suddenly God has shown me that it is an empty form.' Well, these were the things that Jacob was learning.

Then there was the trouble over Jacob's wages. They were changed ten times! And when he agreed with his uncle to take all the spotted and blemished animals, Laban said: 'Oh, yes, I will sign the paper. Where is it?' and whispered to one of his sons: 'Go quickly and take the spotted and blemished animals three days' journey away.' So when Jacob went to get his animals, all the spotted ones had gone. But God gave him a dream: 'I am still going to give you a lot of spotted animals', but do you think that Jacob could trust God? Oh, no, he had to help Him on a bit, so he tried an old wives' trick of taking some sticks and peeling off the bark, putting them in the troughs of the animals so that they all got dazzled as they went down to drink, and that was supposed to produce spotted animals. Well, it did, because God had said they would be, but He did not need Jacob's help nor any old wives' trick. Jacob was trying to help God again, but all he did was to make the sons of Laban angry with him. He became a very rich man and decided that it was time to go back to Canaan, so off they went, but he did not say 'good-bye' to his uncle. So Laban was angry and hurried after him, but when, on catching him up, he could not find the images that had been stolen by Rachel, his anger cooled down a bit and he and Jacob buried their differences. They put a lot of stones on the ground and Jacob set up his second pillar, both of them saying: 'God will watch over us, whether we do each other harm or not, and whether or not we cross this sign to damage one another. God will look after our interests.'

That is the second thing about the house of God. While we are looking after our own interests all the time, whether we have Leah or Rachel, whether we have the right wages or not, whether we have outdone Laban, or whether he has outdone us, we are not understanding the relationship that exists in the house of God. 'I will watch over you. I will look after your interests, for I know what your best interests are. I will look after your reputation, and your justification. Stop trying to outdo one another!' The house of God is the place where Father looks after His children's interests.

When I go home, my little boy of four and my little girl of two are quite likely to have a squabble, and they fight with one another, but they never solve any problem by fighting. I resolve the problem. I pull them apart and make sure that the board of education is applied to the seat of learning! Thus I look after their interests. They get a fair deal, and what is really good for them. That is true of the house of God. Do you not think that the Father knows what is best for us? Do you think that He is not interested in our interests, although natural fathers are interested in their children's interests? Surely the house of God is such a place as that!

So a pillar was raised up on the death of the differences between Laban and Jacob: 'God will watch over us.' Christ has His eye on it all and will ensure our interests in being conformed to His Image. [39/40]

3. DEATH TO REBEKAH'S HOUSE

But there are still many things to learn, and Jacob has to move on. He has to meet Esau soon, and he is afraid. He prays: 'Lord, You told me to meet Esau, for it was You who sent me back to the land of Canaan. Now please look after me!', and then he goes out and divides his company up into little bands. The first psychological trick is to send a few animals along, the second is to send a few sheep, and the third is to send a few donkeys, and on it goes. As the first servant meets Esau he says: 'To my lord Esau, from Jacob.' So does the second, and the third, and Esau wonders how many more are coming! His anger gets less and less! Ah, Jacob, you cannot trust God, can you? You just have to trust in yourself! That is not the house of God. The house of God is Jesus, and there is nothing else to trust in but Him. There is no point in trusting yourself, for it is not there. It has been crucified, put underneath and buried, so you had better trust in the resurrected Christ, the ascended Lord.

This time God and Jacob came face to face and Jacob's thigh was touched so that he limped away. Jacob really learnt something then: 'I cannot trust myself.' When, a few months later, Dinah, his daughter, was defiled by the son of the leader of Shechem, and her brothers took their swords and went through the city of Shechem, destroying everything by a very foul trick, Jacob said to them: 'You have made my name stink. This was not the way to do it!' I think Jacob had learnt a lesson! You cannot get Dinah's virginity back with a sword, and you cannot make the Church pure by cutting people with the Bible. You can get your revenge, but it does not purify, and if you try to destroy one another with the sword -- 'I am right and he is wrong' -- that attitude has to be put right out. This person has a wrong doctrine' -- and so we divide one another with the Word of God. That cannot do God's work, for something has been lost which can only be recovered by death and resurrection. That is the Church. It is not a confidence in what I can do, nor what I can do with the Word, nor what I can do by calming Esau's anger down. It is done by setting up a pillar again and recognizing what the Church of God really is.

Do you remember that I said that this time it was Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, who was buried? That nurse came with Rebekah all the way from the distant land to the house of Abraham. She had nurtured Rebekah and her children, and Jacob learnt a lot from Rebekah! He was very much like his mother, and Deborah had helped that to continue. This dear old soul was still alive, even after Rebekah had gone! Well, Jacob is an old man now, but his nurse is still around. You are going to be in trouble, Jacob, until Deborah is in the grave! She was the nourishment of what he was by his mother, the conditioning of what he had through Rebekah. It has taken a number of years, Jacob! You have tried to do God's work for Him, but now you have learnt that what has been cherished by Rebekah's nurse can only go to the grave. What you are by your mother's flesh, by your nurse's conditioning, has to go, and it is only there that you can set up the pillar once again.

You see, the Church of Jesus Christ is the place where God says: ' I will keep you, not that nurse. I will bring you through. You were here many years ago, but now I have brought you back.' Do you know that the Church of Jesus Christ is the place that will keep you? Jesus is the 'keeper of Israel', and He will not let us go, but what He salvages is always without the flesh.

4. DEATH TO JACOB'S HOUSE

Lastly, you remember that Jacob has to place his beloved wife, Rachel, in the grave. They are on their way down to Bethlehem, but they do not quite get there, for Rachel is with child, the labour pains begin, and Rachel cries out in her pain: 'Oh, this is the son of my sorrow!' But, although she dies, Benjamin, the 'son of my right hand', lives. On the one hand, he was the 'son of sorrow' to his mother. On the other hand, he was the 'son of my right hand' to Jacob. On the one hand, the Lord Jesus is the 'Man of sorrows' who lays the foundation of the Church in His death, and that means our death, for we were crucified and buried there with Him. On the other hand, He rises up as the 'Son of My right hand', and there is the pillar again. There is Christ on the Throne, the One who must have the first place in the Church. The Lord Jesus says that when we are prepared to take His glory, it will mean the death of our glory, for that was what Rachel was to Jacob. The wife is the glory of the man, and as his glory is placed in the grave, so, by the power of the Man of sorrows, we see, at the right hand of God, the glory of the Son of Man who says to His Father: "Father, the glory which thou gavest me I give to them." The Church of Jesus Christ is the place of the glory of the Lord Jesus, and not the place of our glory.

In our companies both these sorts of relationships exist. Thank God for the negatives, for they are driving us to that relationship with Him where [40/41] we find the true family of God, the true appreciation of His house, and the sons will delight the Father's heart throughout eternity. We are learning from each other just what a great salvation it is that Christ has procured, and what satisfaction it will give God when we bring our earth-learnt truths into heaven's eternal glory. It is never us, but Christ raised up in us, that makes us God's family where He can be at home. Let us go back to our churches and be willing to accept that a lot of the chaos of Jacob's house will be found there, but seek to live by faith in Christ and be able to demonstrate that God is building a different sort of house. Do not be disappointed with your fellow-believers! God took a long time over Jacob. Probably your fellow-believers think that He is taking a long time over you, too, but we are all in together, and He is in it with us. - R. T. F.
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