“Let us build,” said men of old, “a city and a tower, whose top may reach to heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered upon the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11:4).
“I will build,” said the Son of God, “My church; and the gates of hell [Hades] shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).
“Let us build,” is doomed to failure, collapse, catastrophe.
“I will build,” is indestructible, permanent, eternal in glory for ever.
In studying Scripture you see these two influences at work—God’s work and man’s; God’s standing invincible and for ever, man’s buildings ever and always erected upon the sand, only to fall and perish.
Alas! even in saints of God you see the two influences at work. Time tests all religious movements and that adversely. All committed to men’s hands fails and breaks down. Are we then pessimists? Do we prepare ourselves for defeat and failure? A thousand times, No! By very contrast the building of God stands pre-eminent, rearing its head above the storms.
“Like some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the gale and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its base the rolling clouds be spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.”
Take the great religious movements of the Old Testament. We have Moses, the lawgiver, a sublime figure, filling a unique and magnificent place for God. He is succeeded by Joshua, a fine man, a gallant fighter, but he lacks the power and greatness of Moses. Great as Joshua was, he was not the giant Moses was. Then came the nameless elders of Joshua 24:31, and then you get the awful debacle of the Book of Judges, ending up with such terrible stories as the concubine of the Levite of Bethlehem-Judah being cut up into twelve pieces; and of the way in which the Benjamites captured their wives, the book ending with the description of the awful state of things, “In those days there was no king in Israel every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).
Is that all? Is God defeated? Certainly the contrast between Moses and Judges 21:25 needs no moralizing. Is God defeated? Nay: Ruth follows Judges. There we get humble and obscure people, in whose hearts God has worked, and who are altogether delightful in their setting. We get Naomi, Ruth, Boaz, the line for David set, and in truth for “great David’s greater Son,” the Lord from heaven.
Run down the ages, and we get Malachi writing the last inspired book of the Old Testament, and silence falls for nigh four hundred years. The lamp of faith burns low. There is no national testimony. Things seem as dead as possible. Is God defeated? Nay, Luke lifts the curtain, and we get Joseph, “a just man”; Mary, the honoured mother of our Lord according to the flesh, whose Magnificat shows that, humble as she was in distant Nazareth of Galilee, her mind was deeply saturated in and formed by Scripture, for her song is a veritable mosaic of Holy Writ; Elizabeth and Zacharias, Simeon and Anna, and there were others, whose names we know not.
Then the Son of God comes, and by and by Pentecost arrives and the Holy Spirit descends on the believers, and the Church of God is formed on earth.
Then we get Paul in the New Testament answering to Moses in the Old Testament—Paul, the chiefest of the apostles, the chief instrument of inspiration, as witness Ephesians, Colossians, Galatians, Philippians, etc., etc. Then you get Timothy, like-minded with the apostle, yet like Joshua of old in contrast to Moses, not so great a character in contrast to Paul, followed by the “faithful men” (2 Tim. 2:2), answering to “the elders that outlived Joshua,” and then “greedy wolves” entering in “not sparing the flock.”
Is God defeated? Nay. The end will be glorious. The end of the Church’s history will be more glorious that its start. The Second Advent will be greater than Pentecost. The Holy Spirit coming down to form the Church, will give place to the Holy Spirit presenting the Bride to the Bridegroom in the cloud.
“Let us build,” but they had brick for stone and slime for mortar. A good thing when it all has to perish, as it will one day.
“I will build,” yes, and when the summoning shout of the Lord Jesus is heard in the air, such will be its irresistible power that every bit of His building, every saint of God, dead or living, from the day of Pentecost, will be caught up—His glorious Church as well as the Old Testament believers—“all that are Christ’s at His Coming.” All the malevolence of hell will have been spent in vain. Christ’s triumph will be secure.
And that Coming draws very nigh. It may be “perhaps today.” We are on the very threshold of His return. “Surely I come quickly,” is His challenge to our affections and our hearts leap up in response and cry, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”