These verses of God's word speak of the everlasting state, regarding which so little is revealed in Scripture. That period will necessarily follow the millennial kingdom, when, as written in 1 Cor. 15:24,2524Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. 25For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. (1 Corinthians 15:24‑25), " Christ shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father," that " God may be all in all"-the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, one God. In the kingdom it will be God in government-a vast sphere of glory administered by the Son of man. In the eternal state it will be the perfection of the nature of God, displayed and enjoyed by the Church and all the redeemed-the vessels of mercy. How very sweetly this truth falls on the ear of the renewed and wrapt soul:-" Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and he their God!" But if the blessed God will thus take delight in men, thus redeemed and in that unclouded glory, vessels full of the Holy Ghost in unhindered power of joy and praise, what does the whole current of the revealed word, from Gen. 3 to the end of Revelation, convey to us but the same blessed display of the heart of the God of all grace? We shall find that all along, in each dispensation, arid with every hindrance to it on man's part, there is the delight of the Lord to dwell with men according to the measure in which he could reveal Himself. His good pleasure was that they should know Him, come to Him, walk with Him, worship Him, and fear Him, that there should be communion together. The glory had to vindicate its own title, had to withdraw from evil, even to remove from the earth (as in Ezek. 10:1818Then the glory of the Lord departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubims. (Ezekiel 10:18)); but, oh I in dealing with self-will and rebellion in the creature, in what ways did the blessed Lord God act for restoration, for recovery of the loss to His people of His presence and mercies! What were all God's appointed means under the law, for the cleansing and restoring of His people'? What the same gracious care for the Church and each member of the body of Christ revealed in the New Testament?- The priesthood of Christ, the washing of water by the word, the working of the Spirit of God in the souls of the elect-what does all this make manifest to us but the unfolding of the affections of God (I speak as a man), the revelation of the heart of Him, who calls Himself Love? He does not call Himself Holiness-that is His nature-but He calls Himself, Love, His nature likewise. And what a powerful way of attracting our affections and drawing out our hearts to Him who first loved us, is this revealing to our souls through Scripture, in the Spirit's energy, the depths of the love of God! As we sing at times—-
"In the desert God will teach thee
What the God that thou halt found:
Patient, gracious, powerful, holy-
All His grace shall there abound."
It is an easy and delightful work to gather vivid illustrations, both from the Old and New Testament, of this blessed truth-the good pleasure of our God to dwell with and have intercourse with His people. The first place in which a people are seen in relationship with God, such as Israel then had, occurs in Ex. 40, to which I would advert. But I would pause for a moment over Genesis 3, though it be but an individual, " the first man, Adam;" because at the hour of the fall and the entrance of sin and death into the world, there is a most blessed exhibition of what mercy and grace could do. The voice in verse 9, " Where art thou 7" is not one of judgment and anger, but a voice of love, pleading with guilty man and opening an ear in his soul to hear of the coming One, the seed of the woman! What a display of what God is in Himself, acting worthily of Himself, and what a pledge and pattern to His people, that the first man fallen, ruined, and dead in sin, should be brought out to seek and follow God and holiness (it was innocence before), not in a life that could be, and was forfeited, but according to the power of eternal life through " the second Adam, the Lord from heaven!"
In the chapter of Exodus we find a striking exemplification of our subject. The sin of the people had risen to its height. His voice from the glory had to say, " that I may consume them," the stiff-necked people! The magnificent pleading of Moses (type of a greater Intercessor) had cried, " Let my Lord go among us, for it is a stiffnecked people:" the very reason why the riches of grace should flow out. The tabernacle had been set up and we read (ver. 34), " Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle, and Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle." The cloud showed the Shekinah, symbol of majesty, as God could then reveal Himself; but, oh I the grace, the long-suffering, the tender care and mercies (ver. 36.-38) of the Lord, who only waited for the opportunity to testify of what He was to them! May our hearts learn more of His ways. " He made known His WAYS unto Moses, his ACTS unto the children of Israel." (Psa. 103) '2 Sam. 7 affords a still fuller and richer illustration. King David's intention seemed good even to Nathan (ver. 3), but it was not according to God. And what a word have we in verses 6, 7, expressive of the Lord God's tender living grace to that poor people! " Whereas I have not dwelt in any house, since the time that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt even to this clay, but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle." Let His people be moving from place to place, He will move with them. Let them be stationed, He will have a house built for His name (ver 13), to be dwelling with His people! David, type of Christ as a warrior king, could not do this work; and the Lord turns to David's personal history with much beauty and wondrous grace, " also the Lord telleth thee that he will make thee an house!" No wonder king David could pour out his heart in worship. (Ver. 18.) When the temple was built (1 Kings 8:10,1110And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord, 11So that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud: for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord. (1 Kings 8:10‑11),) we find how the "glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord," testifying of God's good pleasure to dwell among His people. What a serious weighty consideration for conscience, that we in the fuller light, in " the habitation of God in Spirit," realize so feebly the power of the presence of the Lord; that worship is so inadequate, that walking in the light is so little known in power. Alas 1 it is so. But it is not according to God, and His revealed good pleasure. It is man who has soiled and corrupted everything his hand has touched from the beginning I And since, when we come to the New Testament, the God who inspired the prophets and servants, Himself stood on this earth, the lowly humbled Man, and came to tabernacle amongst men, we do, indeed, discover in a more blessed way the heart of God. We come to the cross, and we behold that blessed One bearing all the wrath of God, undergoing death (and destroying that stronghold of the enemy), and accomplishing redemption by putting away sin forever from God's sight-eternally glorifying God. The moral nature and being of God everlastingly glorified in the putting away of sin! We go on to see Him raised from the dead-the Head and Creator of a new creation, till by faith we behold Him as Man in heaven, from whose face shines out the living glory of God. Oh, what a reconciliation! what a way for God to dwell with men. Every ray of that glory on which we love to gaze tells of the power of His mighty, efficacious work for us-of the full and infinite love of God. And when we approach the Pentecostal hour, we reach the strength and glory of the matter, as far as earth could then show it. God the Holy Ghost descends from the ascended Son of God, the glorious and victorious Man. And what does this signify? " He shall glorify me," Jesus said. He quickens, He gathers together the children of God, the co-heirs, He forms the Body, the Church: He dwells there. " the habitation of God in Spirit."
Tremendous responsibility to man! Unspeakable blessing, condescension, and grace from God. What the quick entrance of apostasy-what the more and more ripened condition of apostasy -judgment on the churches-the word amply reveals to us. But God's love and purpose cannot be frustrated. Where He fixes His affections there can be no disappointment. Jesus comes to take the Church, to present it to Himself (as God), " not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing," to introduce it to the Father's house, that inner shrine of glory which, I believe, cannot be manifested. It is the place of the communion, the joys of the heavenly Father's children. Then the kingdom and manifestation of glory on the earth, which leads on to our subject of a new heaven and a new earth in Rev. 21 God's delight to dwell with men. " The tabernacle," doubtless, will be the Church itself, and God will dwell with men. And, oh! what words for the soul, " God himself shall be with them and be their God."
Oh that the hearts of the saints could be more occupied with God-
what He is to us; more breathe of that spirit and that scene into which they may be so very quickly introduced. " Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus."