“… He who built all things is God” (Heb. 3:4, NKJV)
We already know that the Bride is symbolically likened to a building (1 Cor. 3:9), or a city (Rev. 21:10). Earlier in Rev. 3:12 the Bride is referred to as “the city of My God, the New Jerusalem”. A building or city is built with physical stones (Gen. 11:3; Ex. 1:14; 2 Sam. 12:31), and thus the Bride, as construct, will be built with “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:5). What exactly does this mean?
Before we attempt to answer this question, it’s important to briefly introduce the importance of the skill of building in Scripture, in physical as well as spiritual terms.
The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery has the following to say about the act of building: “To build is to exercise a primal urge to impose human order and control on the materials with which the world presents us. It is an implied resistance to both inertia and decay, and it answers to a deep-seated human need to produce something tangible and permanent.” (p. 128).
Throughout Biblical history reference is made about building in various forms and with all types of materials, including the dictum in Ecclesiastics: there is always a “time … to build” (Ecc. 3:3). In the Bible building is always closely linked to God’s builders’ hand: “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it …” (Ps. 127:1a).
Apart from the examples of that which is built in Scripture, the Bible also presents us with a God who builds! God is after all the Master Builder of the entire universe. To Job he asks, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone …” (Job 38:4-6). In Isa. 48:13 He spells it out: “Indeed My hand has laid the foundation of the earth, and My right hand has stretched out the heavens …”. Yes, Ps. 104:2b-3 tells us how He “stretch[es] out the heavens like a curtain” and “lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters”. Look at the ecstasy of the Artist Creator as it is illustrated in Prov. 8:26-29: “While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields, or the primal dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there, when He drew a circle on the face of the deep, when He established the clouds above, when He strengthened the fountains of the deep, when He assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters would not transgress His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth …” – all pertinent building actions.
Building is also the primary metaphor-action with which God’s manifold works are described. He for instance “builds” the Woman he takes from Man: “And Jehovah Elohim built the rib that he had taken from Man into a Woman; and brought her to Man.” (Gen. 2:22, Darby). Analogous to this He builds Jerusalem (Ps. 147:2), and builds the remnant of Judah (Jer. 31:4 & 27). On a symbolic level He builds a safe environment for his people (Ps. 69:35; Isa. 44:26), in fact: Salvation in itself is God’s building project: “We have a strong city, Salvation City, built and fortified with salvation. Throw wide the gates so good and true people can enter.” (Isa. 26:1b-2).
The most important concrete building projects, down to the smallest detail and entailing absolute precision, is that of the tabernacle and the temple.
Obviously the natural precedes the spiritual (1 Cor. 15:46), and thus God’s building projects in the New Testament become more and more spiritual, but in no way less real. Every believer is now individually built and developed as a temple (1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19), “rooted and built up in Him” (Col. 2:7), but all believers are also built up, in corporate terms, as tabernacle (2 Cor. 6:16), as “the house of God, which is the ecclesia of the living God” (1 Tim. 3:15). As “members of the household of God”, we are “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:19b-22). Through various actions God builds up the House of the Body: Rom. 14:19; 15:2; 1 Cor. 8:1; 10:23; 14:3, 5, 12 & 26; 2 Cor. 10:8; 12:19; 13:10; Eph. 4:12 & 29; 1 Thess. 5:11.
In Heb. 3:4 the crux of all of this is neatly spelled out: “… He who built all things is God”.
Fundamental to this is Jesus’s promise to Peter in Matt. 16:18: “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” That Rock, we know by now, is “the rock of Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4). The ecclesia, or Body of Christ, is built on/in/through the revelation of who Jesus the Christ is. And the building blocks are then obviously rhema words! The Godly identity of each person in the Bride forms the “living stones” that 1 Pet. 2:5 speaks of.
God’s greatest desire is to build a city with rhema words! According to Heb. 11:10 he dreams, through father Abraham, of a city “which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God”, and “having the glory of God” (Rev. 21:11) in exceeding measure, a house with many rooms that He built Himself (John 14:2-3).
It would benefit the reader of these teachings to go back to the teaching of Day 587-589 and read it again. That specific teaching provides an exegesis of the difficult and often misunderstood John 14, the section where Jesus explains to His disciples (and to us), that He is leaving (verse 3), will prepare a place for us (verse 2), but will come back again and live among the believers (verse 23). In that teaching we pointed out that John 14 suggests that Jesus left to prepare a place for us, but that this place is not a house in heaven, but a topos within Him. HE is after all the Way. We are familiar with the place, we know the way. IN HIM we live, move, and have our being (Acts 17:28).
It is however important to note that Jesus did leave to prepare a physical place for us, but that this is clearly a spiritual space or topos or “building … of God” (2 Cor. 5:1), “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heaven”. We long, says Paul, “to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven” (verse 2). This happens while we’re still alive, as was explained in detail in the teaching of Day 610.
- Selah: Make sure you understand John 14 in terms of the building metaphor.
- Read: 15-18; Prov. 6-7.
- Memorise: 6:6-19.
