Being Built Up Together

Now, the priests are still a picture just like the rest of the tabernacle. They were living there, walking around there, but those priests were not separated from the tabernacle. When God looked down upon them in the picture that they were, he did not see priests serving in the tabernacle and ministering to the Lord, for God saw a living city being pictured. And those priests were part and parcel. They were warped and roofed…that’s a scriptural term. They were intermingled with, and they were pulled into, and they were one with that tabernacle. What part of the tabernacle were they? The stone. Can you prove that? Why, we’ve been leading it for years. The priests are under the head of Jesus Christ, have been built together as one, and are the very building of the temple itself.

Listen to this. Listen carefully. If you want to read it with me, it is 1 Peter 2.  If some of you are worried about whether or not you can have the life of the church and the body life of Christ because you’re new babies and you’re new Christians, you listen to this. If someone says to you, “You can’t be a church,” you quote them this. Wherefore, laying aside all malice and all guile and all hypocrisy and all envy and all evil speaking. Brethren, laying aside that last step, laying aside the self, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby, eat the bread, light the lamp, and offer the incense. If so be that you have tasted, that’s the bread. You taste the Lord. To whom is it coming? Now, who is the whom? That’s Jesus. We come to Jesus. What is he? He is a… What’s the rest of the verse? He is a living stone. Which living stone? The rejected stone. That’s what it says right here—rejected indeed by men. And which stone was rejected, brothers? The head of the corner.

Alright, now, are you ready? Listen to this. Ye also as what? As living stones are what? Are what? Read it, brother. Are being built up…into what? The real house. The tabernacle’s not real. The temple’s not real. You are being built up into the real house as living stones. Wait a minute; what are the living stones? A holy priesthood. I’m not even sure the priests of the Old Testament saw this. They walked around those stones built so neatly and perfectly together, and they were in perfect coordination around that place. In that place, as they worked together under the voice of God, living, eating, drinking only what was inside the house, and God was saying of them, they are the real stones of the real house. They have been built together into a holy priesthood, and that holy priesthood has become living stones, and those living stones are the real house of God. In that house, together mingled, together we are one to show forth the image of God and to have the authority. Brothers and sisters, you are to be built up into one living house. Say praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Because this is going to be the last praise the Lord you have for quite a while.

Let’s go back and look at those boards. What are those boards? They’re what? But what are they really? Priests, who tasted the Lord and have been built up as a holy priesthood. Those boards are stones. Those stones are the priesthood built up together to become what? A spiritual house. God wants a single one, only one, unified spiritual built-up house, built of flesh and bone, that is spiritual, but that is built. Brothers, this is the line of God’s building. This is his purpose in and for you. This is why God created you.

Each board is made of gold that overlaps wood. Down here, separating the dirt is the silver socket for each board. How many sockets, brothers? Socket here and socket here. One and a half and one and a half, and they are to be joined one to the other. And then, at the top, and between the middle and the top, and then at the middle, and between the middle and the bottom, and at the bottom, there are golden rungs. What holds these boards up? Two things. They are joined to one another. At the bottom is a rod. Now, you remember there was a verse I read you couldn’t understand. The rod runs halfway through the entire length of the wall from one end to the middle. There’s another one coming this way that also comes. Then another rod comes through, and another one, and they end in the middle. Then there are two more rods here, and two more rods here, but there is a solid rod that runs from end to end in the middle. All of this is rods of wood overlaid with gold. Brothers and sisters, this is so deep, and it is so borne out in the New Testament as to what the church really was. So unlike man and so unlike religion. This is the building up of a geographical, practical, visible church. This is the daily living, the practical outliving of the church. This is God’s eternal purpose for and in the church.

Okay, the rod that goes from end to end is something of the unity of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to make this very clear to you, because you have not had much experience to know this. You remember in January when you dropped it, and you decided to come together? You remember? Nod your head. This is my understanding. Brothers, could you have made it? I’m going to tell you something. I’m not going to say it because this is sovereign. I don’t feel that any group of brothers and sisters can come together and long keep unity without one of two things. They’ll either split or get organized. It’s just impossible. Why? Because it’s only the wood and not the gold. It’s only the wood and not the gold. God has to overlay the wood with gold. I have said it before; I will say it again. Man cannot be in unity. There is no way for human life to be unified. You will split and divide, unless you get under human authority, and eventually God will step in and divide that to break its power.

Now, there is a rod that runs from one end to the other, holding those forged together in unity, but brothers and sisters, that’s half of it. That is the life of the Lord himself in you, by which you must live for unity. This, you think, well, praise the Lord…no, brother, it’s so much more than that. The Lord…this is the center and the heart of the Lord. There has never been a denomination that has not split and fractured. If you went to the churches in this city, the denominational churches, you would find out one of two things. Every church in this town has probably split, or it is under an absolute crown. The denominational headquarters came in, bought the land, built the building, set up the finances, put the preacher in there, and he went out and got the people. Or the church split. The Plymouth Brethren got started in the 1880s. I was told that in the early 1900s, they had split 500 times. They had 500 different sects, not churches. 500 different splits, and I was told that the recent estimate is that the Plymouth Brethren by 1967 or 68 had had 1,500. By 1915 or 1920, 500. By 1968, 1,500. By the year 2000, who knows? The Roman Catholic Church has divided on numerous occasions, but it has kept its unity through absolute human oligarchy. Put a group of people in a city, and you will either glue them together with cement or they will divide.

God had a church upon this earth that knew no division. When that church lost its love and left Christ as Life, it began to pick up teaching and to defend itself, and it began to have relations with the world under Constantine, and it gave up the only source in the universe for unity, the Life of God; it began to fraction and die. Satan knows this and rejoices in it. He is the one who would scatter the brethren, and God wrote upon this earth a group of people who live in unity. Who are under the oil poured down from heaven on Aaron and from the head of Aaron down upon the full body. That alone is the one who can live in unity and say, oh, how blessed it is when brothers live together in unity. This is what Satan will seek to destroy. Then he has a testimony: “You can’t do it. You can’t do it. You can’t do it.”

The early church was a testimony to the unity of the Lord’s body. It had not been chopped up and dismembered. It was built together in each city as one. Many people have accused the early church of having divisions in it. No, it had strife within it…even in 1 Corinthians, some of you follow Apollo, some of you follow Paul, some of you follow Peter, and some of you are the most sectarian of all. You’re going to be the Jesus-only group. But the letter starts out being addressed to the church in Corinth, and not to the churches. When you have real insight into that letter, you see that the problem of the strife within it was the carnality of the brothers and sisters. They were living…and Paul, in the first half of that letter, is speaking of soul life. That they were living by self-life. That letter is an appeal to return to living in the Spirit, by living by the life of the Lord.

Now, shall we just come together and say, praise God, we shall be in unity? No, I’ll tell you, we have to eat the bread and let the gold come in, that God might have a bar all the way through us. A bar that starts here, goes here, and goes here. A bar of gold mingled with wood. A bar that goes through every member. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus—the mind of the Spirit in you. You have got to live by the bread, the light, and the incense, that you might live inside the deepest part of you, that you might draw from the living spring of another life, that you might dwell together in unity. You must live under the headship of the Lord and let the oil pour down, and then, brothers and sisters, you’ve got to be built up together practically, as practical as the twelve, as practical as the early church. Down here, each board sat on how many sockets? Two. Two sockets. Not one. Brother Bob, would you come stand up here? Now, I understand that. Come over here, brother. Brother Bob is a great athlete and very strong. I’m not ever going to pick on him. Brother Bob, you look strong, brother. Would you do me a favor, brother? Just stand there on one foot, would you? Stand there on one foot. No, pick it up. Pick it up. You may sit down, brother.

Brother Bob lost all his balance, power, and everything else when he stood on one foot. He was so easily pushed and so easily turned. Brothers and sisters, you have come to the day that you have got to turn back from the church or built up in it. Today is that day. If you have dealt with the altar (if not, you’ll just have to wait and catch up later), if you have dealt with the laver, if you have come to begin to eat, be enlightened and offer the incense, all that the veil might be ripped, then today, the Lord wants to begin building up the tabernacle. Your days of independence are over. Utterly, completely, totally over. You are going to have to be built up with brothers and sisters.

Now, what do we mean by this in a practical way? In a really practical way, that God might have a living testimony of men and women unified together without a human head, and yet living in unity? Receiving instruction and direction from God. A tabernacle moving through the wilderness into the land until it’s solidly built on the ground as a temple. It means all that we have said until now, plus it means being built up together. Being built up together. Brothers, you’re going to have to be built up with another brother.