Gooding, David: 2 - 1 Chronicles 11–13

And now shall we begin our study this evening by reading again in the first book of Chronicles, and tonight in chapter eleven. Chapter eleven, the first book of Chronicles. Then all Israel gathered themselves to David unto Hebron, saying, Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh. In times past, even when Saul was king, it was thou that ledest out and broughtest in Israel. And the Lord thy God said unto thee, Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be prince over my people Israel. So all the elders of Israel came to the king to Hebron, and David made a covenant with them in Hebron before the Lord. And they anointed David king over Israel according to the word of the Lord, by the hand of Samuel. And David and all Israel went to Jerusalem, the same is Jebus, and the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, were there. And the inhabitants of Jebus said to David, Thou shalt not come in hither. Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion. The same is the city of David. And David said, whosoever smiteth the Jebusites first shall be chief and captain. And Joab, the son of Zeruiah, went up first and was made chief. And David dwelt in the stronghold, therefore they called it the city of David. And David dwelt in the stronghold, sorry, and he built the city round about from Millo even round about, and Joab repaired the rest of the city. And David waxed greater and greater for the Lord of hosts was with him. Now, these are the chief of the mighty men whom David had, who showed themselves strong with him in his kingdom, together with all Israel, to make him king, according to the word of the Lord concerning Israel. And this is the number of the mighty men whom David had. Jashobeam, the son of a Hekmonite, the chief of the thirty. He lifted up his spear against three hundred and slew them at one time. Verse twenty six. Also the mighty men of the armies, Asahel, the brother of Joab, and so forth. Chapter twelve and verse one. Now these are they that came to David, to Ziklag, while he yet kept himself close because of Saul, the son of Kish. And they were among the mighty men, his helpers in war. They were armed with bows and could use both the right hand and the left in slinging stones and in shooting arrows from the bow. They were of Saul's brethren, of Benjamin. Verse eight: And of the Gadites, they separated themselves unto David to the hold in the wilderness, mighty men of valor, men trained for war, that could handle shield and spear, whose faces were like the faces of lions, and they were as swift as the rose upon the mountain. Verse fourteen: These are the sons of Gad, were captains of the host. He that was least was equal to a hundred, and the greatest to a thousand. These are they that went over Jordan in the first month, when it had overflown all its banks. And they put to flight all them of the valleys, both toward the east and toward the west. And there came of the children of Benjamin and Judah to the hold unto David, and David went out to meet them, and answered and said unto them, If you be come peaceably unto me to help me, mine heart shall be knit unto you. But if you be come to betray me to mine adversaries, seeing there is no wrong in mine hands, the God of our fathers look thereon and rebuke it. Then the Spirit came upon Amasai, who was chief of the thirty, and he said, Thine we are, David, and on thy side, thou son of Jesse. Peace, peace be unto thee, and peace to thine helpers, for thy God helpeth thee. Then David received them and made them captains of the band. Verse twenty three: And these are the numbers of the heads of them that were armed for war, which came to David to Hebron, to turn the kingdom of Saul to him, according to the word of the Lord. Chapter thirteen, if you will. David consulted with the captains of thousands and of the hundreds, and even with every leader. David said unto all the assembly of Israel, If it seem good to you, and if it be of the Lord our God, let us send abroad everywhere unto our brethren that are left in all the land of Israel, with whom the priests and Levites are in their cities that have suburbs, that they may gather themselves unto us, and let us bring again the ark of our God to us. For we sought not unto it in the days of Saul. And all the assembly said that they would do so, for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people. Verse seven, Verse six, and Dav- verse six, And David went up and all Israel to Baalah, that is Kiriath-Jearim, which belonged to Judah, to bring up from thence the ark of God, the Lord that sitteth upon the cherubim, which is called by the name. And they carried the ark of God upon a new cart and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, and Adsa and Ahio drave the cart. Verse nine: and when they came unto the threshing floor of Chidon, Adsa put forth his hand to hold the ark, for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Azza, and he smote him because he put forth his hand to the ark, and there he died before God. And David was displeased because the Lord had broken forth upon Azza, and he called that place Peretz Azza unto this day. And David was afraid of God that day, saying, How shall I bring the ark of God home to me? So David removed not the ark unto him into the city of David, but carried it aside into the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. And the ark remained with the family of Obed-Edom in his house three months. And the Lord blessed the house of Obed-Edom and all that he had. And may God bless us too with a good understanding of his holy word. Now, last night we began our study of the first and second books of Chronicles, and the thing that chiefly caught our eye was the glorious description of the great golden age of peace and bliss and plenty that dawned upon Israel in the days of Solomon the king, when, according to the ancient historian, Solomon, son of David, sat on the throne of the Lord. Chronicles itself points out to us that that golden age in Israel's history soon passed away. Though the chronicler is not the pessimist that some people have imagined him to be. For though he records the golden age passed away and was ruined by men's sinfulness and folly, yet at the end of his second book, he tells us that after seventy years of exile and servitude in foreign countries, God raised up the spirit of Cyrus the Persian, the Medo-Persian, and Cyrus gave edict that the Jews were to be allowed to return to their country and begin to rebuild and restore and work again to that golden age which they had so sadly lost. And that, to my mind, is a comforting little detail in inspired Holy Scripture. For, as I remarked last night, the books of Chronicles are the last books in the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament. And therefore, it is not without significance, surely, that when we come to the very last verses in the whole of the inspired Hebrew canon of the Old Testament, God ends his Old Testament with a word of hope and glory. The ancient, glorious golden age that had been, ruined and wrecked as it had become, shall one day be restored. And as we think of Cyrus, the man who gave command for the beginnings of the restoration to take place, we think of the inspired prophecies of Isaiah, do we not? Where God announces that though Cyrus had not known him, God had anointed him as a kind of Messiah to set go- going the processes of restoration. What a God of hope we do have, and I assure you, my brothers, my sisters, in spite of all the wreckage of sin, were it ten million times as bad as it ever will be. Yet God will have the last word. There shall come seasons of refreshing and the times of the restoration of all things that have been spoken by the prophet. And as we allowed our imaginations to roam and our hearts to throb over these things last night, we thought long and hard about that phrase in the last chapter of First Chronicles, where it is said, as I remind you, that Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord. It had our hearts a bubbling over because it pointed straight. How could you re- how could you, uh, stop it as a Christian? It pointed us straight to our blessed Lord, who at the very moment as we sit here, sits in a sense infinitely superior to Solomon, sits this very moment on the throne of the Lord. Ah, thank God, one day we shall join him there. And then we noticed that the book of First Chronicles traces for us the stages in human history by which man, starting from Adam, eventually rose to that high pinnacle where a man of flesh and blood sat upon the throne of the Lord. And we began last night to be interested in those stages, because for all our vivid imaginations, we're men of women of realism, aren't we? And we be asked, we began to ask ourselves, by what kind of realistic program will God bring man to sit upon the throne of the Lord? And we noticed in the first stage, the great move forward was the rise of Israel out of the nations, God's answer to the idolatry of the ancient world. An idolatry, of course, that plagues us still, but I mustn't be tempted to talk about it. But then we noticed that in that first stage, as is a pattern in this book of Chronicles, after that great progress of the rise of Israel from among the nations, there came a serious setback. The very first man that was anointed king in Israel, Saul, son of Kish, proved an unqualified disaster. Disobeyed the very God that had had him anointed, and went over to the other side and dabbled in his demonism. And it raised in our minds the first basic question. Man shall sit upon the throne of the Lord, shall he indeed, but by whose authority? And it was at once evidence to us that man shall not lift himself to that high position by his own steam or authority. How impossible it should be that God should place upon that throne any disobedient human being. Then, as we thought of our own wretched disobedience, we began to feel pessimistic once more, and recalled the sorry tale that by one man's disobedience sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so death are passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. We recalled the wretched dominions under which we have slaved, the dominion of sin, the dominion of death, and the dominion of the law. And then our minds took fresh courage and hope. For we found that after Saul, the first king, went astray and had to be demoted, God found another man. I have found David, a man after mine own heart, who shall fulfill all my will. And he turned the kingdom to David, son of Jesse. And very soon we bade him goodbye in our thoughts and traveled on to his greater son, in whom is all our hope that God's plan shall eventually be achieved and realized. Our hope for us disobedient sinners lies here, that if through one's man's disobedience the many were constituted sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be constituted righteous. And therein lies ultimately our hope of glory, is it not so? I recall to you how Paul describes these things, having first lifted our vision to the days of restoration and te- and tell- having told us that creation itself waits for the revealing of the sons of God, for creation was made subject to vanity, but shall one day be released from her bondage to corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. And having held in front of our vision the wondrous prospect that one day we who have been called and justified shall be glorified. For being children of God, we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ our Lord. Then, then does Romans eight uh tell us the ground of our hope for all that glory. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect when it's God who justifies? Who shall condemn us when it is Christ who died, he rather is risen, who is at the right hand of God, who maketh intercession for us. And with God's realistic salvation behind us, therefore, we come back in our thinking, first of all, to the history again this evening, and begin to look at chapter the second great stage of First Chronicles, beginning in chapter eleven. We shall find that it follows the same pattern as the first stage. There is first a signal and notable advance on the road to man sitting on the throne of God's glory and bringing in the golden age of peace. Then that notable advance will be followed by a serious setback. The advance was made as soon as David came to the throne and took the form of the unification of all Israel. Notice the very words of chapter eleven verse one, then all Israel. The adjective and the noun go closely together. All Israel, that is to say, all Israel, as distinct from the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin or the ten tribes of Ephraim and the rest. All Israel is a quasi-technical term for the nation as a whole. Mark then what is happening now, as recorded in this verse. For the first time for many years, the nation is at last to be united. All Israel came to David to make him king. You see, for years now, since the death of Saul, two tribes had followed David in Ziklag and then in Hebron as his royal headquarters, but the rest of the ten tribes had followed the descendants of Saul, and the nation had been divided. Now that division comes to its end, as David, by his genius, unites the nation. All Israel came to make David king. We shall see the importance of it if we think just for a moment. First of all, you'll remember last night we, we dwelt for a moment or two on all those lists of names in the beginning of First Chronicles, and all those lists of names at the end of First Chronicles, hundreds and thousands of names, and that got our minds thinking about the multi-million myriads of names of people in this planet. Hm. How would you make sense of them all? How would you take those multi-myriad names, and instead of la- allowing them to form one sheer chaos of self-seeking and ruthless ambition, with each individually seeking his own things and caring nothing for the things of others. How would you take those myriad names and stop them from warring and s- ravaging the earth and build them into a symphony of harmony, blending all their personalities so that their personalities are not spoiled, as the manner of totalitarian societies is to do with the individual. And yet, uh, the individual personality not running amok and being a loner, but blended in a symphony with every kind of personality and ability and gift, to make a glorious concert of living and of praise to the glory of God. How would you do it? Well, you see, if it can't be done, we might as well give up hope, mightn't we, right now, of ever seeing any paradise. And if in those far off days all Israel could not be unified, what hope would there be that the nations of earth would ever be unified? Shall I be wicked? And if Christians can't be unified... Unified. If assemblies allow themselves to be split asunder and torn in pieces and quarrel, what credibility would our Christian hope have that one day we shall all be unified around the Lord? Oh, you say it'll be different when we get home to heaven. There's nothing wrong, is there, in having a little bit of heaven on earth. What realistic proposals has God for bringing about that basic unity with which there can be, without which there can be no paradise? And the answer to it in this chapter eleven of First Chronicles is twofold. The first answer for the unity and unification of Israel is King David himself. He was the answer. All Israel came to David, and they said, David, we, we want to make you king. They hadn't forced it on them. They came voluntarily to make him king. And why? Oh, they said, David, using their Hebrew metaphor, you are, uh, we are thy bone and thy flesh. We're one with you, and you're one with us. Waking up to the fact they made him king. And irresistibly, we think of the Lord Jesus, do we not? Key to the unity of believers, not to be found in external organization. To be found at its heart, the secret of it all, the blessed Lord Jesus Christ himself, King David's greater son, isn't he? Oh, what a lovely thing to look down on your faces tonight, if you'll allow a man to say so. And to see all your varied faces and all your varied personalities and gifts, sizes, shapes, colors, and all the rest. And to perceive by the eye of faith the unity that God has already begun to make out of you, and how? Because he has not only sent his son to save us, a wonder of wonders, made us one with his son. Wherefore he is not ashamed to call them brethren. For both he that sanctifies and they that are sanctified are all of one piece. For as much as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, he himself also took part of the same. Oh, blessed divine unity and wonder within God's great creation. This new thing that is the body of Christ, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. And said the Israelites to David, and actually, to tell you the truth, David, they said, your majesty, you know, even in times past, when Saul was king, well, he was king in name, they said, you know, but what is name after all, and position and office, well, they're good. But actually, even when Saul was king, you know, he tended to sit on his seat and get all things muddled up, and it was you that actually led out the troops and fought the battles and beat down our enemies and set us free. And of course, they were thinking of those notorious occasions, such as when, uh, Goliath stalked the earth and promised slavery to the defeated Israelites. And Saul sat skulking in his tent. In spite of being king with a crown on his head and a throne to sit on. And it was David, wasn't it, that actually went out and met the enemy and fought the battle and set Israel free. Oh, what is it that brings us together tonight, my brothers, my sister? Not some sophisticated theology so much as it is this, that you found in Christ the one that really fought your battle. A tyrant of sin and death, and Satan himself came with his eternal threatenings over your head, and you discovered that it was Christ, and none other than Christ, that went out and fought your battle and took his life in his hand and laid down his life to deliver his sheep. You find it so, my good man, and you, my good woman? And you say, Christ is my only hope, for he was my savior, who else? Well, I found that too. You know, we've got enough in common to build a whole eternity of paradise upon. Mm. And then they observed, of course, well, actually they said, of course, uh, and it was the Lord God that said unto thee, thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be prince over my people Israel. So do mark what was happening when it says that they came to make him king. They were merely following God's initiative, of course, because God had long since made him king, yes? It wasn't that Israel came with a suggestion to God Almighty and said, if it please you, God Almighty, we would like to suggest that you, uh, uh, follow our advice and make, uh, we suggest that we'd like David as king. No, of course not. God had already made him king. And for some long years they had withstood God's, uh, declared and exhibited intention, and now at last they bow their knee to what God had proposed. And we do the same, don't we? If it is true that we make the Lord Jesus king, it is simply because God first made him king. Oh, let all the house of Israel know, said Peter on the day of Pentecost, this Jesus whom you crucified, God has made him both Lord and Christ. And gladly we follow suit. Thus did Israel find themselves to be with a common heart and a pulse that beat at, beat at the same rate in their love for David, and thus they found unity. And David, we read, made a covenant with them before the Lord, that he should be their king and they his people. And as we think of that, how could we avoid thinking about our blessed Lord, David's greater son? And has he not made a covenant with us? Some say no, of course. And yet, my brothers, as week by week, he takes the cup and himself hands it to us, says this cup is the new covenant in my blood. How could I possibly avoid concluding that he has made a covenant with us, under the terms of which he proposes to govern us. For as we take that cup regularly, as I hope we do take it regularly, we do recall the terms of the covenant, surely. And the terms of the covenant are... I will write my laws on their hearts, and on their minds will I inscribe them. Just like David made a covenant with Israel to be their king. They should obey his law. So does our blessed Lord say, even as he hands us the cup of the covenant, I will write my laws on your hearts, on your minds will I inscribe them. Your sins and iniquities I will remember. No more. There is no more practical spiritual exercise this side of heaven to attend the Lord's Supper and take from the Lord's hand the cup of his kingly covenant. For the motivation that we shall require to keep his laws is evidence in the very wine of the cup that reminds us of his blood and sacrifice for us. So we say with Paul the Apostle, the life I now live, I live in faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Oh, we shall not forget it, you know. For all eternity, we shall not forget it. When Holy Scripture says that God will not remember our sins anymore, we should be careful to notice what he means and what he doesn't mean. God will never forget, uh, we have been sinners, will he? Will God, halfway through eternity, suddenly look upon his son and say to himself, what are those marks in his hands and in his feet? Wonder where he got them and why? Can't think now. Never, brethren. Nor will you find yourself saying any such thing. Can't think what the marks upon his brow are, and those nail prints in his hands, what are they? Where, how did he get them? Not to the end of eternity, with all its endless ages, will you forget it. The secret of unity and harmony and glory and paradise in heaven is the blessed covenant sacrifice of the Savior. But if David himself was the secret of Israel's unification, there was a practical expression of this thing. As the historian now goes on to tell us, David is almost his first act as king, according to Chronicles, that is, gathered all Israel together, went up to the town hitherto called Jebus, where Canaanites were, stormed the town of Jebus, took it over, and refounded the place as Jerusalem's, Jerusalem City. And they called it the city of David, alias Jerusalem. Now we could, uh, uh, uh, afford to sit back a moment, uh, and recall all that we know about Jerusalem. To see that what happened on this occasion carried significance for the rest of the whole of history and will carry significance to the rest of eternity. We think of that literal city of Jerusalem that David founded and lasted until it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. In those happy days, it proved the center for all Israel, did it not? And there was David's genius. In selecting a capital city, he could easily have offended some members in Israel, couldn't he? Suppose he'd have gone and put it in Zebulun somewhere. Well, I suspect the Benjamites would say, who are the Zebulunites to have a, a the capital city? And if he'd have founded it in New York, the Londoners would have said, well, I know where is New York anyway? Ha. So he took a city that wasn't in any Israelite hand at the moment, and no one, no tribe had conquered it yet. Ha. No one's land. And there he took it afresh and put the city, and the city belonged to everybody. Of course, the men of Judah came up, and Jerusalem was their city. But if you please, even the men of Ephraim came up, and that was their city as well. It was everybody's city. All the tribes belonged to Jerusalem, and Jerusalem belonged to them, and it proved the center gathering place for the tribes of Israel. What a charming fascination it had on their hearts, did it not? When, for instance, at the time of the feasts and the pilgrims came up to Jerusalem stringing their old guitars over the campfires at night and singing the psalms of ascent. And then as they came over the brow, uh, towards the city and saw Jerusalem city in its glory, perhaps for the first time, they would burst out that song of delight, our feet shall stand in thy streets, O Jerusalem. Center of unity, whither the tribes go up. Thus it was for Israel an expression of their unity. I know Nebuchadnezzar wrecked it because of Israel's folly. Daniel agonized in prayer over it, did he not, and received the promise it would be destroyed, it would be restored. It had been restored in part when our blessed Lord came. How shall this planet Earth ever forget that God's incarnate Son came one day riding the donkey into Jerusalem, and they cried, behold thine, thy king cometh. Israel rejected him, and Jerusalem was eventually given over the t- to the Gentiles, with the Savior's express announcement that Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. But simultaneously, as he bade his apostles to go and preach the gospel, he told them they were to begin at Jerusalem. Why Jerusalem? Why? Because the gospel we preach is not a mere man-made philosophy. The gospel is the message of how God's Son came to our earth, and a few paces outside the wall of that medieval city, God's incarnate Son was crucified for us and for this world's redemption. We still talk perforce of Jerusalem. But tonight we can afford to forget those things, because we think of Jerusalem at a higher level, do we not? Important as earthly Jerusalem is, there is a heavenly Jerusalem, is there not? Of which Paul spoke in Galatians chapter four when he said, the Jerusalem that is above is our mother. And the writer to the Hebrews tells us that as believers we have come to Mount Zion, to the new Jerusalem. Hm. And talking of cities, Paul tells us that our citizenship is in heaven. And one of these days, I guarantee it, you're all expecting, aren't you, and hoping. I trust, absolutely sure of the fact, that your feet will tread the golden streets of the new and eternal Jerusalem. Let's ponder the wonder. For here we are at the very hub of a great age of peace and glory that shall last eternally. Think then, if you will, for a moment of what Paul says about it in Ephesians. In chapter two, he reminds us, doesn't he, that once we were strangers. We were without God, being Gentiles, and without Messiah, and therefore having no hope in the world. You know, it's not the worst thing you can say about a man or woman, is it? But perhaps it's the saddest, that they have no hope. Take your brave secularist, secularist, or your confident, uh, atheist. And when all is said and done, literally, they have no hope. Or they have hopes that civilization will improve somehow or other, but the next, uh, day their scientists remind us that twenty million years from now the sun will explode, and, uh, in that second, planet Earth will be eliminated, and the whole human phenomenon will end in nothingness. That's according to them, not according to Bible, that's according to them. Listen to them, and listen to what they're saying. They have no hope. And there's many a man and woman who are not agnostics, atheists, or secularists, but because they don't know the Savior, they likewise have no hope. Sometimes we take ours for granted, don't we? We've forgotten the days when we were alienated at a distance, without God, without the Messiah, having no hope in the world. And now you that once time were afar off have been made nigh by the blood of Christ, and no more strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints. You say, on what basis can I become a member of this great Jerusalem community? That is the function of Galatians chapter four to tell us, is it not? For there Paul argues what must be the basic principle of relationship between the individual and God for everyone that is to be a member of that eternal city. And that basic, uh, principle is this, what the theologians call justification by faith? Not my merit, not my works, but I come in my bankruptcy before God and own my complete ruin. Then God points me to the Savior and his atoning sacrifice, and as I put my faith in him, I am justified and accepted before God. Why is that a principle of paradise? Well, because, ladies and gentlemen, you can't live in God's presence unless you trust him utterly, entirely, and implicitly, and own up to the fact that as creatures of God, you are utterly dependent upon him. Any other stance is a lie. However, secondly, it's a recipe for unity, isn't it? Do you know what makes you one with me? I don't want to insult you, but you'll know much better than I am. That's a very realistic basis for oneness, I tell you. For all have sinned, and there is no difference. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And thank God there's no difference in this too. Are you say, so am I? For there is no difference between Jew and Greek. The same Lord over all is rich to all that call upon him, and whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. All justified on exactly the same terms. And now, if you will, hear the wonder of what Hebrews twelve tells us about this great Jerusalem. You have come, says Paul, not you will one day come, you have already come. To Mount Zion, city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. And in that context, Paul is reminding his Jewish readers of what happened in the wilderness as they were marching from Egypt, uh, to Canaan. They had been redeemed, you see, with the blood of the Passover lamb and baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and started their way towards Canaan. When God came down personally and literally, till his feet stood on Mount Sinai, and poor little Mount Sinai and our tiny little planet shook in its orbits as Almighty God came down from his heaven and stood on it. And pray, what had God come down from heaven to Sinai for? To tell Israel what the goal of their redemption was. You say, why ever did he need to do that? Surely Israel had enough sense to see what the goal of the redemption was. Oh yes. Well, what was the goal of Israel's redemption? Well, you say Palestine, of course, and the Promised Land. Oh, you're wrong as well then. Well, the goal of redemption was not the Promised Land. That was the destiny, it wasn't the goal. The goal of redemption, says God to Moses, pray Moses, bring the people out to meet me and tell them this. You have seen what I have done to the Egyptians and how I bear you on eagle's wings and brought you You to to myself. God himself is the goal of redemption. Therefore, he did not wait until they got to Canaan to remind them it was so. What use if they got to Canaan and forgot the living God? And what use, my brother, my sister, getting home to the New Jerusalem if you've forgotten the living God? The goal of redemption is God himself. And long before we get home to heaven, God has come down in the person of his son to tell us what that goal is. Ah, and more than that, listen once more to the writer of Hebrews. You have not come to a mountain like Sinai, black with thunder and fire and tempest. You come to the city of the living God, the great new Jerusalem. You've already come. The great God of heaven has come down, you'll see, in the person of Christ to win your love and affection, and already he bids you enter the very holiest of all into the immediate presence of his divine majesty. You may already come into the city. And if it is our hope that one day we shall be there bodily, we shall make it a practice, shall we not? Constantly to approach that city of the living God and find our fellowship and communion with God in that innermost place that is the most holy of all. Oh, friends, what bigger thing could a creature have than to be made for the Creator and redeemed and brought and introduced personally to the Creator himself. And finally, let us think of the vision that John saw, of that new Jerusalem, the city that shall fill eternity and form God, his eternal headquarters, his administrative headquarters of the new world and the new heavens, and any number of new worlds and new heavens that eternity shall see. Uh, I like the direction it's coming, don't you, when John saw it. It wasn't going up from Earth, uh, with everybody saying, goodbye Earth, glad to get rid of you, going off to heaven, you know. No, it was going the other way round. It was coming down out of heaven towards Earth. Oh, the magnificent schemes that God will have when at last eternity dawns. We shan't be sitting there twizzling our heavenly thumbs, shall we, for lack of something to do, bored for lack of activity or interest. What schemes God will have for the administration of the new earth and the new worlds that shall be. And for himself and his son, he shall have this glorious thing, the Jerusalem, the new Jerusalem, performing two functions. It shall be, says John, a tabernacle for God Almighty, that he may dwell among the nations of the earth. So that just like Israel could come to that little tabernacle and watch, look at its tapestry and its beautiful designs, its gold and its silver, and in the beauty of those material things, learn something of the unseen God, though it were mere material. So shall the redeemed of the Lord. So shall you. So shall I. Who form that great community that is the city. Shall function as the tabernacle of God. So untold millions of the nations that yet shall be, shall be able to come to you, my brother, and you, my sister, and look at you and see not just a bit of old tapestry, nor a lump of solid gold, but to see a jewel of God's redemption, polished clear and fine, and in your personality, and in your testimony, and in your activity, and in your government for God. Discover the glories of the still and always invisible. Oh, what a wonderful paradise God is in process of forming, having redeemed you, and now perfecting you in holiness against that day. And if we shall form for God a tabernacle for him to dwell in, in that new heaven and earth. We shall form, says scripture, that eternal city, the new Jerusalem, made up of the redeemed, shall form for Christ a bride. For the Father, a tabernacle. For the Lamb, a bride. And when we think of brides, of course, uh, us being us, then the romantic side comes to the fore, doesn't it? Yeah, well, for your comfort, there will be a wedding, the marriage supper of the Lamb, and how delightful it shall be. But beyond that, that new Jerusalem shall form a bride for the Lamb of God, as Eve was made to form a helpmeet for Adam. She made to help Adam as his partner, equally in the image of God as he, to develop earth and make something of it for God, with Adam as king of the earth and Eve as his queen. So even now is God preparing us who know the Savior and are redeemed, and fashioning us so that eventually the image of God shall be perfected within us. We conform to the image of God's Son, shall form for Christ the King, for Christ the second Adam, his queen, his Eve, his bride, his wife, along with him to develop and to rule all those unimaginable projects that God will have in hand for the great new earth and new heaven, that shall be. And if you don't like shouting hallelujah about it, uh, uh, uh, audibly, well, my brother, my sister, as we bow in prayer, shout your hallelujah to God personally in the quiet of your heart. Let us pray. O God our Father, we do praise thee with united hearts for these lovely stories, not only charming in their content themselves, but coming to us inspired of God, and with the imprimature, these are the true sayings of God. We thank thee for these ancient prototypes. We thank thee more for the reality that we have in Jesus Christ, our Lord. We thank thee thou hast not left us in the dark altogether to surprise us with what the glories of heaven shall be, but thou hast treated us as friends, and thou hast told us already what thine intentions are for us in Jesus Christ, thy son. As tonight we thank thee for him and for his redemption, we pray thy Holy Spirit will continue to make him ever more real to our hearts, that we, being drawn the nearer to him, may be drawn the nearer one to the other, and find in Christian fellowship the reality of spiritual unity in Christ that shall be a foretaste of the glory that yet shall be. Grant it so that in our joy and in our Christian unity together, we may be a beacon of realistic hope to those who sit outside and in their sin are without God, without Christ, and without hope. To that end, bless thy s- the study of thy word, we beseech thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.