Ezekiel 43:12

This is the law of the house.

The law of the house

A Church to be rightly constituted must be scriptural. It must be formed and fashioned after the pattern of the true temple--founded not on the authority of man--not on the traditions of the elders--not on the opinions of the fathers--not on the decrees of princes or of popes--not on the acts and statutes of the realm, but on prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone. It follows from the very nature, institute, and objects of a Christian Church. Its nature--that is spiritual. Its institute--that is Divine. Its ends--glory to God in the advancement of the immortal interests of man. It must be the Bible--the Bible only--the Bible wholly, which must form the basis of our Church and of our creed. Laying our hand upon this volume, and recognising in it a revelation of the mind of God, we must say, “This is the law of the house. Behold, this is the law of the house.” That point proved, we press the obvious inference, that in Scripture we must find the warrant, and from Scripture we must plead the rule. The rites and institutes of men, however wise, expedient, or politic, will not suffice. In vain shall we teach for doctrines the commandments of men--in vain appeal to the traditions of the elders, if we cannot appeal to the “law and to the prophets.” In vain shall we assert the authority of the fathers, if we cannot allege the “oracles of God.”

I. The outer order of the sanctuary. The solemnity, reverence, decorum, requisite in everything connected with the service of the temple. Our comings to, attendance on, and goings from the house of God--even these may not be overlooked. Among the lesser sanctities, if I may use the term, they have their place and their importance, assisting, as they do, to solemnise the mind, and give to our assemblies the air and the behaviour of “meetings of the saints.” The Church on earth should be as though it were the miniature of that which is in heaven; and men, on coming in and looking round, struck with the sacred aspect of the scene, should be constrained to say, “Surely God is in this place. This is none other than the house of God. It is the gate of heaven.”

II. The ordinances of the house. By these, you will understand the appointments of the Lord the King, relative to the rites and ceremonies of our religious worship. They are of two kinds, viewed in reference to the common or the Christian world. Common they are in reference to the first; sealing they are in reference to the second. Under the former, we enumerate praise, prayer, the reading of the Word, the preaching of the Word; under the latter, we enumerate the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Looking to the record, it is enacted and ordained, that “the people praise Him--that all the people praise Him--kings of the earth, and all people--princes of the earth, and all judges--young men and maidens, old men and children--that they praise the Lord.” And, finding it thus written in the law, we must enter His gates with “praise,” His temple with thanksgiving, and mingle all grateful and all earthly honours with the nobler strains which swell the sanctuary above. Again, looking to the record, we find it written, “Ask, and ye shall receive, seek, and ye shall find.” “I will that men pray everywhere.” “O Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come” And acting on the letter of the law, we must around the altar of the sanctuary bow the knee of our hearts unto the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and, from this our house of prayer, send up in concert with the saints, each Sabbath day, the voice of supplication in sweet memorial before the throne of God. And thus, on reading in the law, I find it written to the same effect of all the other ordinances. Of one and all of them, it may be said that they are enacted and ordained, and ought in consequence to be acknowledged, honoured, and obeyed.

III. The laws of Christ’s house. These are His statutes and decrees in reference to the rule and government thereof. They may be considered either in regard to Christ, His royalties and rights as King, or to ourselves, our powers and privilege as freemen of the Lord. And first of all, it is enacted and ordained, that Christ shall be the King and Head of His own house. I look into the law and find it written, “The government shall be upon His shoulders.” It is His, and His alone, to order, institute, ordain--to give the law, in short, respecting everything connected with the doctrine, discipline, worship, government of His own Church. Again, it is enacted and ordained in reference to ourselves, that every man is answerable to Christ for his religious belief. I look into the record, and I find it ruled, “Call no one master upon earth. One is your Master, even Christ.” I look again, and find it written, “Prove all things. Hold fast that which is good.” “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” I look again, “So, then, everyone shall give account of himself to God.” On the force of these authorities, I am clear to say, this is a law of the house, that every man think for himself, judge for himself, decide for himself, in matters of religious belief. Let there be perfect liberty, fullest freedom, influence, or interference--none beyond the influence of reason, righteousness, and truth. (H. M. Brown.)

Most holy.--

Holiness

Separation is the root idea of holiness in the Old Testament, and Ezekiel insists that the separation between the holy and the profane shall be more sharp and emphatic. All the profane things are to be put farther away. Indeed, the object of the whole system of ritual that is brought forward in the concluding Chapter s of this book--the aim was to put all profane things outside the sphere of Jehovah’s worship. As you know, this was ceremonial, ritualistic. But the deep significance of the arrangement cannot escape you--you know that all this has been fulfilled in its largest signification in Christ and in His Gospel. Christ has come, the Lord of righteousness, to bring many sons unto glory, and He will never rest until He has brought multitudes to the splendid perfection of His own spirit and example.

1. In the first place, Christianity insists upon holiness of character--most holy--the man is to be that. Christianity commences with the spirit of the man, the will, the mind, the conscience, the disposition, with the very essence of the personality. Jesus Christ begins with “Marvel not that I said unto you, Ye must be born again.” The first conception of holiness in character is that a man gets a clean heart, and that there is renewed within him a right spirit. Christ said, being clean within, profoundly spiritual, and righteous in mind, you go outside and work that out in all the complex relationships and multiplied responsibilities of practical and daily life. That is another splendid phase of Christian ethics. It gives us executive force and skill to carry out splendid ideas and noble patterns. I was reading the other day of a critic who had just returned from the Continent criticising one of the Spanish cathedrals. He said it was the embodiment of splendid ideas, but the ideas were everywhere poorly carried out. There was blundering in the fine lines, and the rich ornamentation was tawdry and vulgar. When I read that, it struck me that the race had failed in morals in a similar fashion. The ancients had splendid conceptions and ideas. When Jesus Christ came into the world there was the majestic morality of Sinai. When He came into the world there was the exact and masterly jurisprudence of the Roman, but everywhere great ideas were carried out poorly, fine lines were blunderingly touched, and noble maxims were reduced to triviality and vulgarity in practical life. What did Jesus Christ do? He gave the race eternal and invincible energy, by which, in practice, they could bring to pass the purest and loftiest ideals. “What the law could not do”--the law of the Jew, the law of the Roman--“what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” And so we in Christ are first cleansed, exalted, made to catch the loveliness of our Lord, and then He sends us forth with a strange, indwelling Spirit, by which we accomplish the virtues that we see lamentably impossible to the natural man. And, mind, you are all to be holy, most holy. The conception of Ezekiel is that this is not for a few, but for all. “This is the law of the house, that the whole limit thereof shall be most holy.”

2. And then we come to the other point, “the extended range, the whole limit thereof round about shall be most holy.” There had been, as Ezekiel says, only a wall in Solomon’s temple between God and profane things, but in the new temple there was to be a larger area. Profane things were to be pushed farther back and farther back still, until they went over the brink of the world. From every quarter of the universe they should be driven. There is no fulfilment of this conception except for the whole planet, everyone in it, and of every law and every nature. “The whole limit thereof round about shall be most holy.” What does the religion of Jesus Christ say? Make everything in God’s great world to be true, just, beautiful--commerce, art, science, government, fashion, amusements, gold, friendships. Let the natural world stand, lout bring into it great ideas, and take care that you make these ideas prevail, until science, commerce, literature, and entertainments, wealth, and government, all become as fine gold, like unto transparent glass. Don’t narrow us. Let the horizon of sanctity be as wide as the horizon of nature. Let ethics grow, and civilisation grow. That is the great conception of this work. You know that a good many men object to morality; they say it is so dull, that there is no growth in morality. If you get natural science, there is growth and development; but if you come to the Ten Commandments, the only thing is going on repeating them from one generation to another; you never get any further. You might just as well object to the multiplication table. I tell you in some ways there is no advance in morality; it is quite correct. It is not by an enlarged decalogue that there is to be an expansion of ethics. I tell you another thing. There is going to be no discovery of any new principle of ethics. Addington Symonds says the future of the world depends on the method of morals. He goes on to say, this world would be put on centuries if we could discover in the field of morals some new principle like the law of gravitation discovered by Newton, and so, if there should be any ethical Newton, to discover a new principle, it would put the world on by generations. Brethren, the life of God in Jesus Christ is the constraining law in morals, as the law of gravitation is the master law in the field of nature, and there is nothing more in our opinion to be discovered. So in the principle “the love of Christ constraineth us,” and after that there is no new law to be discovered in the range of ethics. Where is the improvement to take place in the limit round about us? Where is it? In making the extraordinary sanctity of the few the sanctity of the mass, in bringing noble ideals to bear on the lowliest things, in making personal morality to be public morality. The time is coming when a man will put his soul into a convict’s sackcloth because he cherished a sullied imagination. The time is coming when there will be no more wife beating, when a man will put himself upon the treadmill for a month for having given her an ugly look. The time is coming when a capitalist, a lady, would rather put on the cast-off garments of a leper than put on a purple that was stained by a workman’s tear or blood. The time is coming when a man would rather pick his master’s pocket than waste his time. There shall be such a spirit of magnanimity and charity, that a man will stand in the church porch and do penance for having in a moment of meanness given a three penny bit at the collection. “Oh,” you may say, “that is a touch of the grotesque.” I give you that, that you may remember it. Just as during the last fifty years the best thing of all is that the conscience of the race has grown, in the next fifty years the conscience of the race will continue to grow, and there shall be a code of morals, character, and etiquette more superb and delicate than any that we know today. Now, I say that is exactly the direction in which you have to work. Take your Christian conscience and perfect it by fellowship with the Great Ideal, and when you have done that take it into the world with you. Don’t let any of the bad things continue. They must all go; all the bad things, however cunningly disguised, you must detest them. Precious in many ways as they seem to be to society, you must damn them. There must be no pleading for anything that is base and vile. It must go though appreciated by every age. Drop it into Gehenna. Mean that all common things shall be lifted up, that common things shall be transfigured. In visiting an art gallery the other day, I noticed that some of the greatest pictures had not a splendid thing in them. The ordinary artist, when he wants to be effective, paints a breadth of golden harvest, or he gets a kingfisher in, or he imagines some iridescent bird or other, some bird of paradise, or he paints a tree in blossom, or the captivating rainbow. But if you notice, some of the greatest painters that ever lived never touched these things. I noticed one of the pictures there. It was a railway object into it but the black earth, the cutting, a ploughed field. They got no brown earth, the red earth, but they touched it with that supreme touch that you can see the blossom in the dust, and the rainbow shine out of the cloud, and the picture without a brilliant thing in it was altogether bathed in imagination, poetry, and beauty you want to give everything in your life the transfiguring touch of righteousness. Then you don’t want a few great things to make it admirable and spectacular. (W. L. Watkinson.)

Holiness, the law of God’s house

I. Let us expound the law of the house. Note the text carefully. It begins and ends with the same words: “This is the law of the house: upon the top of the mountain the whole limit thereof round about shall be most holy. Behold, this is the law of the house.” These words make a frame for the statute; or a sort of hand on each side pointing to it. And what is this law of the house? Why, that everything about it is holy. All things in the church must be pure, clean, right, gracious, commendable, God-like. Observe that this law of the house is not only intense, reaching to the superlative degree of holiness, but it is most sweeping and encompassing: for we read, “Upon the top of the mountain the whole limit thereof round about shall be most holy.” Holiness should be far-reaching, and cover the whole ground of a Christian’s life. He should be sanctified, “spirit, soul, and body,” and in all things he should bear evidence of having been set apart unto the Lord. We notice, once again, that this holiness was to be conspicuous. The church is not as a house sequestered in a valley, or hidden away in a wood, but it is as the temple, which was set upon the top of a mountain, where it could be seen from afar. The whole of that mountain was holy. We should be a peculiar people, distinguished by this as a race dwelling alone, that cannot be numbered among the nations. We might instructively divide holiness into four things, and the first would be its negative side, separation from the world. There may be morality, but there can be no holiness in a worldling. Holiness next consists very largely in consecration. The holy things of the sanctuary were holy because they were dedicated to God. You tell me of your generosity, your goodness, and your pious intentions--what of these? Are you consecrated, for if you are not consecrated to God you know nothing of holiness. But this does not complete the idea of holiness unless you add to it conformity, to the will and character of God. If we are God’s servants we must follow God’s commands: we must be ready to do as our Master bids us, because He is the Lord, and must be obeyed. I must add, however, to make up the idea of holiness, that there must be a close communion between the soul and God; for if a man could be, which is not possible, conformed to the likeness of God, and consecrated to God, yet ii he never had any communication with God, the idea of holiness would not be complete.

II. Let us examine ourselves by this law. Ask yourself questions, founded on what I have already said. Do I so live as to be separated? Is there in my business a difference between me and those with whom I trade? Are my thoughts different? Next, let each one ask, Am I consecrated? Am I living to God with my body, with my soul, with my spirit? Am I using my substance, my talents, my time, my voice, my thoughts for God’s glory? Next, ask the question, Am I living in conformity to the mind of the holy God? Am I living as Christ would have lived in my place? Then, again, do I live in communion with God? I cannot be holy and yet have a wall of division between me and God.

III. What are the bearings of this law of the house? Those bearings of the law to which I now refer are these:--If the Church of God shall be most holy, it will have as the result of it the greatest possible degree of the smile and favour of God. A holy Church has God in the midst of her. Where there is holiness God comes, and there is sure to be love, for love is of the very essence of holiness. The fruit of the Spirit is love, both to God and man. That love begets union of heart, brotherly kindness, sympathy, and affection, and these bring peace and happiness. This, of course, leads to success in all the church’s efforts, and a consequent increase. Her prayers are intense., and they bring down a blessing, for they are holy and acceptable unto God by Jesus Christ: her labours are abundant, and they secure an abundant harvest, for God will not forget her labour of love.

IV. Let us take order to secure obedience to the law of the house. I believe that Jesus is always working in His own way for the purity of every true Church. His fan is in His hand,”--see it moving continually,--“and He will thoroughly purge His floor.” God’s melting fire is not in the world, where the dross contains no gold, but “His fire is in Zion, and His furnace in Jerusalem.” “The Lord will judge His people.” Church members are under peculiar discipline, as it is written, “You only have I known of all the nations of the earth, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities.” If churches are not holy they cannot be prosperous, for God afflicts those who break the law of His house. Now, cannot we give earnest heed that this law is regarded among us? Let us set to this work at once. Here is the first exercise for us: let us repent of past failures in holiness. We shall never overcome sin till we are conscious of it and ashamed of it. Having owned our error, let us next make the law of God’s house our earnest study, that we may avoid offences in the future. Let the inspired page be your standard. Never mind what your minister tells you, observe what the spirit of God tells you. When you have studied the law of the house, then next be intensely real in your endeavour to observe it. Then let us cry for a sincere and growing faith in God concerning this matter of holiness. And then, lastly, let us pray to be set on fire with an intense zeal for God. I do not believe that there is such a thing as cold holiness in the world. Get rid of zeal from the church, and you have removed one of the most purifying elements, for God intends to purge Jerusalem by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning. Oh, to be baptised into the Holy Ghost and into fire. (C. H. Spurgeon.)