Ezekiel 43: 1-7 (forever)
Exodus 3: 1 - 6, 13, 14
2 Samuel 15: 30
We are privileged to enjoy, beloved brethren, the fact that God has come to dwell; as He speaks of it, “the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet”. What a thing that is to think of the greatness and glory of God, as we have it in Exodus 3, and yet He has come into a position where He is near to us, where we know that He has come in the Person of Jesus. The soles of the feet, naturally, to us, are very sensitive. You take your shoes off, and if you have to cross some rough road or rough pebbles or wherever it is, we all know that it is quite a sensitive matter. There is an immediate reaction from the soles of the feet. And here is God speaking about Himself; He says, “Son of man, this is the place of my throne,” firstly, “and the place of the soles of my feet”. There are wonderful types of Jesus in this reference here. The brethren who are older know it well. First we get “the glory of Jehovah came into the house by the way of the gate whose front was toward the east”, that is, it is the rising of the sun. It is the glory of Christ coming in in all His power. It is like what is referred to in Psalm 19 as to the greatness of the One who has a circuit, commencing at the beginning of it and going round to the end of it. What a wonderful thing that God has made Himself known in Christ; made Himself known in love and in grace. That is the sensitive character of the appearance of God in Jesus, in the One who is His beloved Son. We were speaking in the reading about God’s appearance to others in various ways and by various names, but in Christianity our great favour, beloved brethren, is that He has made Himself known in Son, “in the person of the Son” (Heb 1: 2), in Jesus, and that is a wonderful matter. “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us”, John 1: 14. That is, He was there and known as a perfect Man, a sinless Man, but the Person that was there was none other than God Himself. That is the triumph and beauty of Christianity, that God Himself in the person of Jesus has descended and come into a place where He can speak of the soles of His feet. God is sensitive as He comes to dwell amongst His people. And we need to be sensitive; we need to be alert; and, as we have in Exodus, we need to be holy.
Ezekiel speaks of a future day. The greatness and the glory of the One who came in “by the way of the gate whose front was toward the east” shows the way in which God has come to us, and it is not only that He comes in in His might and power as the Son of righteousness, as He will do in the day to come, but He is coming in in all His life and light. The coming in from the east also brings in hope for man. That is maybe basic to the glad tidings, but it is basic to our lives all the time, beloved brethren. Do you never get down in your spirit? Do you never feel that sometimes things are overwhelming, things that have to be faced are a bit difficult? Do you look to the One whose glory comes in by the way of the east? It is the divine intention that we should keep our eyes upwards, keep our eyes in relation to the Man in the glory.
“The Spirit lifted me up”. This is a great book. I hope the young people will read Ezekiel sometimes. They may think it is a bit mysterious, but you will find frequent references to the Son of man, showing that God is towards us in relation to Christ on our side. Christ will reign; He will be universally known as the Son of man, of course; but here is a man being addressed, “Son of man”, Ezekiel, a man who was faithful, a man who went out carrying a captive’s baggage (chap 12: 7), one who felt the captivity, one who felt the fact that there had been public breakdown in Israel - and in our day there has been public breakdown - and he is moving in relation to the Spirit of God: the Spirit of God lifted him up. It is a wonderful matter. You read chapters 10 and 11, dear young people, and you will find that this man is identified. God showed him the glory of God which not only rose up in the house but it leaves the house in chapter 11; it goes away up into the mountain. Follow these things up, dear young people, and you will find that there is great blessing in it. But then you find that the glory of Jehovah fills the house. He is filling the house with His glory, filling the house with the glory of God. Does He feel that? Of course, He feels it! A Man is established there in heaven, indeed, a Man who has the right to go up above all the heavens, that is, to be reinstated in the place where He was before He left heaven. What a momentous thing that is!
Then there is the speaking, and we have the speaking today, speaking out of the house, the greatness of what the Spirit of God would give us. These things are all suggestive. They bring in the prophetic character of what the Old Testament is to us at the present day. “And I heard one speaking unto me out of the house; and a man was standing by me”. How great it is to have divine support as we are in the realm of what is superlative, what is excellent, what is heavenly, and above what we are ordinarily accustomed to down here. Then “this is the place of my throne”. Now that is another type of Christ, the One whose title it is to be the King, the One whose title it is to be royal. On the throne means He is royal. “This is the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel”. God has come to dwell and He will dwell eternally. He will be with us in nearness, but He will be with us in Christ as Man. How wonderful it is to realise that God is with us in all the sensitiveness that marks who He is! He has come near to us in a Man that we might know Him thus, but He has come near to us like this so that we might understand that it is so sensitive. We are in a vessel, beloved brethren, the assembly, that exceeds all that preceded in relation to God’s thoughts. What it says about Christ and the assembly is: “and gave him to be head over all things to the assembly, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all”, Eph 1: 22, 23. How sensitive that is, to realise that our association with Christ involves our association with God. It is a sensitive matter, that God has come so near to us that He speaks about “the soles of my feet”. Now we often refer to the Song of Songs. Some brothers have given a word on Lord’s day morning, as to the greatness of the Bridegroom, the Beloved, from the crown of His head to the soles of His feet “he is altogether lovely” (Song of Songs 5: 16), but “the soles of my feet” brings in the total sensitiveness that God has in mind for us as being near us because it is His dwelling. That is the point of it. “This is the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever”.
Well, Moses in Exodus had to learn this, and we have to learn in relation to the presence of God, because what we are naturally is rough. It is against God in some sense, naturally I am speaking of, but God has refined the believer to make him not only blessed on the basis of righteousness, but to know, through that, holiness. So Moses is told to take his sandals off; that is, he went barefoot. “Draw not nigh hither: loose thy sandals from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground”. The presence of God requires it, beloved brethren. The presence of God requires that we should not be entrammelled. Now in speaking of this setting of the Scriptures in relation to the sandals, it requires that we should not be entrammelled by what is natural and ordinary, never mind what is fleshly. These things are to be discarded. I am not speaking literally; I am speaking morally and metaphorically. We have to understand that the presence of God as gathering together to meet one another in the assembly in our gatherings is a sensitive matter, and we come to find that the presence of God demands that the natural be set aside. That is what Moses had to learn.
So he comes and he sees this thorn-bush. The young people would understand that, if a thorn-bush were set fire to, it would blaze up and in five minutes it would be gone, and all you would see would be dust and ashes; but not so in this example. Here is God intending to come and dwell amongst us - how wonderful that is - in conditions that require that the sandals come off our feet, “for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground”, the presence of God.
Now, it is not just that we are speaking of God the Father who has never left the position of Deity, not just that we are speaking of Christ in all His beauty as Man, His position as Head of the assembly, His position in glory and all that He is in beauty and attractiveness, and what He is to us as our Saviour and our Friend and our Shepherd; but we are speaking also of the Holy Spirit. We are speaking of One who is here today amongst us, One who is taking charge of things, in some sense, in the area in which we operate in the wilderness, and He is very sensitive; and it requires that we take the sandals from off our feet, leave what is natural. It is not a place for what is ordinary; it is a place for making way for the Spirit of God, for the dwelling of God because God is coming in to dwell: that is, coming into the midst of the thorn-bush which is not consumed. What a great thing that was! “And Moses said, Let me now turn aside and see this great sight, why the thorn-bush is not burnt. And Jehovah saw that he turned aside…” and He called him, “Moses, Moses!” When a person has his name called twice, God intends something special to be announced as, for example, Samuel. He is just a boy and he served in the temple; he opened the doors of the temple. It was a difficult time because things were failing in Israel. The whole regime of the judges had descended in blackness and darkness upon the people and even the priesthood was being indolent and lazy, and it was a very sad time, but God was speaking in His own way and He spoke to a boy and He spoke in such a way that he showed that He was going to transform things by bringing in His own man, His own king, David. That is what He foretold through the prophet. So here was this boy, and he had his name called twice, “Samuel, Samuel!”, 1 Sam 3: 10.
And so Moses had his name called, because there is a declaration of a relationship, a name of relationship from God that was to transform the people who were labouring under the bondage of Egypt, the burden of sin. He was going to transform them and bring them out. He gets this wonderful revelation: “the thorn-bush burned with fire, and the thorn-bush was not being consumed”. Wonderful matter that God has come amongst us and we have not been consumed! In Malachi you get, “For I Jehovah change not, and ye, sons of Jacob, are not consumed”, chap 3: 6. God has come in Christ to be near to us, but to be near to us in a very sensitive way, in a way that would call out the rejection of what is merely mundane and ordinary, and bring us into an elevated level of what is different, by the Spirit of God. So we get the revelation of the name of God in His glory. Moses says, ’What shall I say unto them as to thy name?’. “And God said to Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: I AM hath sent me unto you”, Exod 3: 14. That was the Name. “I AM THAT I AM” is an expression of God Himself in His eternal existence, His continuing existence. That is a thing that we find difficult to follow and take in in our human, finite minds, but it is a fact, beloved brethren. The continual and eternal existence of a Being, a beloved Being, that wishes to be near to us demands that we are on holy ground. What a revelation it was! And it is not just the name “I AM” - which the Lord Jesus, of course, alludes to in addressing the scribes and Pharisees. If you read John 8, you find that he says, “Before Abraham was, I am”, v 58. There was the Creator Himself, there was God Himself in their presence, and they did not want Him. They rejected Him, cast Him out. But then “THAT I AM”, expressing the substance of God without saying what it is. Moses was to tell the children of Israel: “I AM hath sent me unto you”. It was translated, of course, as Jehovah, and that is the expression of “I AM”, the great “I AM”.
Well, it is a very sensitive matter, beloved brethren. That is what I am trying to stress, that “the place whereon thou standest is holy ground”, and we need to see to that. Things become difficult. I know when you are working, and in business, and at the school, things become difficult because you are up against people that are unregenerate, that is that they are not believing on Jesus, indeed, the very opposite very often; and some can be quite violent, and some can be quite obnoxious. Some can be quite opposed to anything as to the name of Jesus or the name of God, but you confess the name of the Lord Jesus and you will find power and strength in it, dear young people. You will find that there is a way that can bring you through, and therefore you find that God is making Himself known in this sensitive way, and we need to maintain what is holy and just, even in the presence of what might be totally against us. There is a testimony in that.
Well, finally, just a touch as to David on the same grounds. In 2 Samuel, David was being cast out of Jerusalem because Absalom, the spirit of anti-Christ, was coming in, and here is David going up by the ascent of the Olives. He wept as he went up. Do we feel sufficiently, beloved brethren, the conditions that are around us in the religious area? There are dignitaries in the churches that are denying the manhood and deity of Christ. There are some dignitaries in the churches around us that are denying that Christ rose from the dead. There are persons in the churches who are allowing matters that the Scriptures specifically states should not be done, and they are allowing them to be done. So much of what is in Christendom is crumbling because it has not made way for Christ or the Spirit of God and, beloved brethren, we need to maintain a way for Them. We maintain it in the spirit of humility, in the spirit in which David moves here, going out. He is not staying to battle with Absalom in the city. He is separating himself from it. Of course, some would say that he had to flee, but God was with him. It was God’s intention that David was king; there was no doubt about that. And God could have come in for David in His power and overthrown Absalom, which He did eventually; but David is showing us, as a type of a believer, that he is feeling this position and he is separating from this obnoxious position of Absalom taking over. There are persons and dignitaries that only profess the name of Christ. We need to maintain the reality of being near to Him and feeling the position while Christ is cast out.
“But David went up by the ascent of the Olives”. Have you ever, dear young people, gone up by the ascent of the Olives? It was a resort that the Lord Jesus frequented. It was a place where He moved frequently. It was a place evidently where the Lord Jesus could resort to the presence of His Father in restfulness and peace and quietness, but it suggests to us an area where the Spirit of God can help us in times of problems and difficulties. Do we do that? Have you been up the ascent of the Olives? What a thing that is! When there is a problem to be solved, the solution is there. The Spirit of God will indicate it. Christ as Head comes in, and the power of the Spirit to show what should be done, but we need to feel, therefore, the movement in relation to the ascent of the Olives. It is a wonderful thing that the Lord Jesus moved in that area in dependence on His Father and found rest amidst all the conflict that was against Him from the religious element of the day, the scribes and the Pharisees. That was a real thing to Him because “He came to his own, and his own received him not”, John 1: 11. They did not want Him. Here He was in all His meekness and all His lowliness and all His perfection, going about healing, raising the dead. Think of the sensitiveness of that! That is the soles of the feet, God drawing near to us. He comes to Nain, and He finds a widow and her only son was carried out dead. The Lord Jesus felt that. It is the soles of the feet of God Himself, coming in, coming in nearness and in compassion. He “touched the bier” and made the young man sit up, the power of life in Christ, Luke 7: 11-15. Then at the grave of Lazarus you find the same thing, John 11. The soles of the feet are there. How wonderful that is! The ascent of the Olives is a wonderful thing to lay hold of. The Lord Jesus did these things, but the Spirit of God would give us power in the testimony to move on the ascent of the Olives that we might understand the Spirit’s power to help us as not only seeing what the breakdown is, but going out of it and finding God. That is our resource. But the Lord Jesus shows the soles of the feet in John 11; Lazarus had died, and these two sisters, how they felt it! When the Lord comes to the sepulchre, He says, “Where have ye put him? They say to him, Lord, come and see”, v 34. The awfulness that the Lord saw in relation to the results of sin! “For the wages of sin is death”, Rom 6: 23. The Lord saw that. As a Man, He felt it. “Jesus wept”, it says, v 35. How He felt it! That is the soles of the feet coming to light, the place where God was coming to dwell in compassion with us, and there are many, many other examples.
Well, going up by the ascent of the Olives, David “wept as he went up, and had his head covered, and he went barefoot”. How touching that is! He feels the sensitiveness of it. He feels the need for the presence of God. Do you think David had not read about Moses? Do you think David had not read about the burning bush, had not heard about the holy ground that Moses stood on? Of course, he had. And here is David going up barefoot, up this ascent, “head covered, and he went barefoot”. Well, we feel the present position, beloved brethren. It is not to overwhelm us, but it is to make us feel sensitive, not only as to the way God has come in amongst us, but in the way in which we will approach God, in which we will return to God on holy ground and find that there is a way in which we can come out of the breakdown and find Christ by the Spirit, that He is outside the camp. “Therefore let us go forth to him without the camp, bearing his reproach”, Heb 13: 13. There was a time when Moses took the tent of meeting, after the idolatry amongst the people of Israel, and pitched it outside the camp, Exod 33: 7. That was to indicate, as Paul says in Hebrews, “Let us go forth to him”, go forth to Jesus, and this is what David is doing in type here. He is doing that in type as a believer, moving by the ascent of the Olives, going up barefoot, with his head covered, feeling the reproach of the position. As Mr Percy Lyon used to say, ‘broken-hearted churchmen’. Beloved brethren, do we feel, what is around? We would be able to speak to people, and God would grant repentance and bring in what would be real and living. We would trust that that would be increasingly so. “And all the people that was with him, covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up.” Well, that is the position of the testimony in the wilderness in which there is a suffering people but in which there is a people who are going to reign with Christ. The people who suffer with Christ will reign with Christ. We reign with Christ on Lord’s day morning. As you come to break bread at the Lord’s supper and remember Him, the Lord takes us forward and, by the power of the Spirit, we understand the manifestation of His presence. How real it can be and how exhilarating it can be as it takes us there apart from anything that is down here of a worldly character, of a character that is denoted by religious opposition to Christ in the time of His absence.
May we be encouraged, beloved brethren, that there is a need for sensitiveness on our part. If God has come in in Christ in all the feelings and compassions of a Man to dwell with us, there needs to be compassion and feeling on our side if we are to be near and dwell with Him. May He help us together for His Name’s sake!
Peterhead
26th March 2011