Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1083
Delivered
“Thus says the Lord, Hea ven is My throne and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you build unto Me? And where is the place of My rest? For all those things has My hand made, and all those things have been, says the Lord; but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembles at My Word.” Isaiah 66:1,2.
THAT is an excellent answer which was given by a poor man to a skeptic who attempted to ridicule his faith. The scoffer said, “Pray Sir, is your God a great God or a little God?” The poor man replied, “Sir, my God is so great that the Heaven of heavens cannot contain Him and yet He condescends to be so little that He dwells in broken and contrite hearts.” Oh, the greatness of God and the condescension of God! I hope we shall be led to think of both this evening while we meditate upon the Words of the text. We have no time nor need of a preface. The text first of all teaches us that God rejects all material temples as the places of His abode. But, secondly, it informs us that God has made a choice of spiritual temples where He will dwell.
I. First of all, then, let us think a little of GOD’S REJECTION OF ALL MATERIAL TEMPLES. There was a time when it could be said that there was a House of God on earth. That was a time of symbols, when as yet the Church of God was in her childhood. She was being taught her A B Cs, reading her picture books, for she could not as yet read the Word of God, as it were, in letters. She had need to have pictures put before her, patterns of the heavenly things. Then, even then, the enlightened among the Jews knew right well that God did not dwell between curtains and that it was not possible that He could be encompassed in the Most Holy place within the veil—it was only a symbol of His Presence.
The fiery cloudy pillar was merely an indication that He was there in that Tabernacle where He was pleased to say that He peculiarly revealed Himself. But the time of symbols is now passed altogether. In that moment when the Savior bowed His head and said, “It is finished!” the veil of the Temple was torn in two so that the mysteries were laid open. The most august of types I might consider the veil of the Temple to be, but the dying hands of the Savior grasped that veil and tore it in two from top to bottom—and then the secrets within, which were all the more secret because they were symbols—were made bare to the gazer’s eyes and no longer did God deign to have a place on earth that should be called His House, nor any symbols of His Presence whatever among the sons of men!
And now it is sheer legality, a defunct ceremony, Judaism, carnality and idolatry to go about and say of this place, “This is the House of God,” or of such a chapel, or such a stone erection, “This is the Altar of God,” or of any man who chooses to put on certain tag rags and ribbons, “This is a Man of God,” a priest of the Most High! This is all done away with and put away forever. Now, as the Church has attained her maturity, she lays aside these childish things. Those orders of Divine service which were symbols and nothing more, having answered their ends, are abolished and superseded and God pours contempt upon the superstitious veneration of their relics.
By the mouth of His servant Paul, in Hebrews, He bids us look not to the shadows but to the substances, not to the symbols but to the great realities. So, Brothers and Sisters, one reason why God says He dwells not in temples made with hands is because He would have us know that the symbolic worship is ended and the reign of the spiritual worship inaugurated at this day. As our Lord said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “The hour comes, when you shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship Him.”
But our text gives, from God’s own mouth, reasons why there can be no house at the present time in which God can dwell and, indeed, there never was any house of the kind in reality—only in symbol. For, say now, where is the place to build God a house? Look abroad, you ambitious architects that would erect God a house! Where will you place it? Will
you place it in Heaven? It is only His Throne, not His house! Even all the majesty of Heaven is but the seat on which He sits. Where will you place the house, then? On His seat? Build a temple on His Throne! It cannot be! Do you say you will erect it here, on earth?
What? On His footstool? This whole globe is but His footstool! Will you put it where He shall put His foot upon it and crush it? A house for God upon His footstool? The very notion contradicts itself and men may forever forego the idea of building a house where God shall dwell, or a place where He shall rest. Fly through infinite space and you shall not find in any place that God is not there. Time cannot contain Him though it range along its millenniums! Space cannot hold Him for He that made all things is greater than all the things that He has made! Yes, all the things that are do not encompass Him. He is without bound or measure—beyond all that He has already made—even though the astronomers tell us that so grand is the scale of the visible universe opened up by the telescope that the scenes suffice to baffle the imagination and overwhelm the reason!