Gooding, David: 4 - A Dwelling Place for God

I'm Jim McKendrick. You stressed the... the necessity, if you will, or the, the theme of unification is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. In a practical way, how does that get accomplished when there are believers who would dearly love the Lord Jesus Christ, who have differences on certain doctrinal issues that may cause them to be divided, you know, one from the other? Um, as a for instance, just, you know, without getting into any details, there was a young brother in the assembly a number of years ago who, um, dearly loved the Lord, but who had certain doctrinal things concerning, uh, dreams and revelations of God and et cetera, which were not found in the scriptures. And in the process of time, he led some of the people in the assembly away from the assembly into other churches that, uh, et cetera. And of course, the elders and others were concerned about this situation. Here's a, here's a dear brother, and I, and I loved him, and we could have fellowship along certain lines, but there was an area, there was a time in our life when we had to separate one from another. So the person of Christ, while he unifies, he himself said he comes with a sword, and his teaching would, you know, divide. How do we handle that on a practical level? Well, you, sir, probably have much more experience than I do, because I suspect you may well be an elder in a church. Is that true? I have been. You have been? Oh. Eh, I have never been. Present- presently I do not. I see. I have never been. At the time of this incident, I was, all right. Uh, my immediate comment on that is that the positive way to unity is loyalty to the Lord Jesus. That is what produces it. Having said that, then the New Testament, as I see it, the apostles give us many practical, uh, uh, exhortations and and guidance as to what happens if believers, in one sense or another, misbehave. For instance, uh, in the matter of, uh, sexual immorality. Paul, who pleads for the unity of believers, that you all speak the same thing and and so forth, in First Corinthians, nonetheless deals with the question of a man that is called a brother and professes to be a believer, if he commits certain grievous, uh, sins, must be disciplined. Eh, uh, do see. So not merely for sexual immorality, but for exploitative commercial, uh, practices, uh, covetousness, as Paul would quote it. The man has a ruinous reputation in the world as a ruthless businessman that, uh, keeps very n- not very c- close to, uh, uh, business ethics. You'll see. Is such contrary witness to to the spirit of Christ that a church has the right to discipline him. You'll see. Now, it is certain that, uh, in the course of history, some Christian churches have exercised the best business of excommunication for the most trivial things, and sometimes for, uh, personality disagreements and all sorts of things. But for the serious things laid down in the Word of God, even for the, uh, uh, preserving the unity of the people of God, if a man, uh, persists in, because he has a few special doctrines, breaking the practical unity of a church. That in itself is a serious thing. My final comment would be that in this fallen world, our object must be positively to obey the Lord, mustn't it? So if people accuse me of being sectarian, you see, because, for instance, I believe in believer's baptism and not, uh, infant, uh, baptismal regeneration, you see. And they accuse me of being separatist. I say, but look here, I must obey the Lord. I try in that sense to be pers- per- uh, uh, positive, do you see? We are not obliged in loyalty to the Lord to go along with every wind and sleight of doctrine and into things that have no profit. Witness the epistles of Paul to Titus and Timothy. This would be the liberal element, both within the church and out of the church, would cry for unity and compromise on the truth. In this kind of unity, we cannot put up with. The unity must be in the Lord Jesus Christ and in honor of what he has said in his word. Well, yes, we must, uh, we must, um, uh, be loyal to the Lord in our doctrine. That is most certainly so. The Apostle John talks about those that have gone out from us, who never were of us, people that deny the deity of the Lord Jesus. Uh, loyalty to Christ demands that, uh, they be excluded, and, uh, other such things you, you meet. Uh, do see, that is undoubtedly so. The other side of that question is that some people have gone to the other extreme, haven't they? For instance, the basic, uh, symbols, take the basic symbols that we were talking about a moment ago of the, uh, bread and the wine. I can't say what I thought in America, uh, but I know parts of the world where if you don't belong to our denomination, you're not allowed to take the bread and the wine. Now that seems to me to raise a very serious problem. The bread and the wine are emblems of our Lord's sacrifice. And if we ask on what grounds do we partake in the actual benefits of his sacrifice, then you, uh, the answer is through faith in Christ solely. To deny the symbols of those benefits to people who already have the reality, simply on the ground that they don't agree with your methods of church discipline or, or your, your theories about church, do you see? Uh, that seems to me to be, uh, getting toward danger signs and, and signals, and that Paul might, the Paul who wrote Galatians, might be very uncomfortable with it. To add to faith in Christ as a condition for partaking in the holy emblems. If a man who claims to be a believer is so s- uh, grievously sinned that he has, so to speak, forfeited all a credibility as a believer, that's another matter. But a believer that is w- walking godly before the Lord but hold slightly di- a a a different view of church, uh, government or something from a from what I might hold myself. To deny him on those grounds participation in what is the representation of the basic matter of salvation would seem to me to raise a very serious question, you see. We must guard against both extremes, would be my answer. Question over here by Steve. Steven Swain. I have a question. It's a technical question. Perhaps you can comment on, um, the use of the phrase the throne of the Lord in first Chronicles twenty nine twenty three, the th- the throne of his father David, Luke one thirty two, and then, uh, Hebrews one two, the right hand of the majesty on high, if there's a difference, or perhaps you can just comment on that. Some, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, theologians, highly respected theologians, have said, would say to your question, yes, there is a very different, there's a very big difference between those. There is the throne of his father David, that is the throne, the literal throne of the nation of Israel. And that Luke one is talking about that, eh, the throne of Israel in the day when Israel will be restored at the second coming, and here that throne will be set up on earth, and that Christ is the heir to that throne over Israel, do you see? As a separate thing from the throne of his father upon which he now sits. And also from the phrase used in Matthew twenty five, that when the Lord comes in with his holy angels and the glory of the father and shall sit upon the throne of his glory, that this is our Lord's exalted throne. So they make a difference, our Lord seated on his own throne in glory, and our Lord, so to speak, sitting on the throne of Israel on earth. Now, far better theologians than I hold that view. I myself find it a little bit difficult, uh, unless you're going to think in terms of a sheer earthly big seat in Jerusalem. Do you see? If you're thinking in those terms, uh, of a big seat like, uh, well, you don't have a queen here, do you? So your honored, respectable president, eh, he sits on any old seat, perhaps, I don't know. We keep a special, uh, seat for the queen in England, and when we speak of ascending the throne, well, we could mean one of two things, and each one of them in its place. We do refer to a big chair that is kept in London in a certain place, and uh, the dear Queen climbs up on this chair and sits on it sometimes with a crown on her head, you see. She ascends a very literal chair in London. But in other contexts, when you talk of the Queen ascending the throne, you mean when did she begin her reign? Whether she's seated on a chair or not, you see. So I can say the Queen occupies the the the throne of England at this very moment she does, but she's probably in bed, I suspect. You see, and she's not sitting on the throne, that little chair, all the time. Now, therefore, when we read these terms in scripture, I think we have to use our judgment as to what is being implied. If our Lord is seated on the throne of glory in heaven, so to speak, on the Father's throne, does that mean there's a big chair up in heaven? And he sits on this big chair. Or is this a metaphorical phrase for that he occupies the throne of the universe, the throne that is rightly God's? And therefore, if it means he own he he he occupies the government, so to speak, of the universe, that is king, I don't see why he shouldn't also hold, in that sense, the throne of an earthly Israel without necessarily sitting on a, on a big high chair in Jerusalem. Does that come where, somewhere near answering your question? Tom Wilson. Uh, to get back to the question of unity, uh, it just struck me that the illustration that you used of David uniting the nation, David became the focus. None of the people that came to him were forced to come. They came of their own volition, out of a love for him. And I think that we could take the same thing and apply it as far as the, uh, uh, the church today is concerned, that as we draw closer to the Lord, it's, it's affection for him that's going to draw us closer to one another and, and, uh, result in unification. Oh, that is so. Thank you very much for that comment. That is so, and a positive way of producing unity, therefore, is that. Eh, be it said, all I would add to that is that we, because of the naughtiness of our hearts, and sometimes persuade ourselves that we love the Lord and are being loyal to him, when there ain't a great deal of evidence in our lives. If you love me, he says, keep my commandments. But that said, it is, of course, the person of Christ that is the key to our unity. And you can see it among the people of God, uh, if the, if the Holy Spirit takes a passage of his word and talks to the heart of the believers. It's got to be a very cold heart that doesn't respond to Christ. Uh, Mark Colchin. Uh, said in a negative way, just jumping on that, uh, the verse that comes to my mind, First Corinthians chapter eleven and verse eighteen and nineteen, for first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that you, that there be divisions among you, and I partly believe it. For thus there must be also heresies among you, that that they which are approved may be made me- made manifest among you. Can you comment on that verse regarding unity and what Jim was bringing out before? Well, that that is, as you know, sir, a a difficult verse. I tend to take a very practical, uh, way of thinking about it, uh, meaning that in this fallen world, there must be, in the sense that our Lord said, it cannot be but offenses come. Do you remember that phrase of his? It cannot be but that stumbling blocks come. Woe to that man by whom they come. It is, in that sense, inevitable in this world. And when thus there come heresies, the original meaning of that term is not merely difference of doctrine, but party spirits that split the place. Perhaps in one sense, because it is a fallen world, that is inevitable. They will come. The epistles are, are warning that such a things will happen in the last days. People come professing to be members of the church, but heaping to themselves teachers having itching ears and all that stuff, you'll see. But it does sometimes have the, uh, proper, uh, benefit under God's mercy. When you get serious wrong doctrine about the person of Christ, and there comes a split, if you see what I mean, has to be, it does, in that sense, serve to emphasize what is vital to the Christian faith. So John says, one John two, the, of those that had gone out from him, you'll see, they had gone out from us, he said. Now, if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but now they have gone out from us that they might be manifest that they are not of us. And John presumably is speaking us in the sense of apostles. These were men who were teachers in the church, professing teachers in the church, professed therefore to be in sympathy with the apostles, but in fact they weren't, and took to teaching doctrines that contradict the very foundation of a apostolic faith. And they went out, both perhaps, first of all, doctrinally and then physically. It served to make manifest that they were not of us. And that is a thing that is, um, on time very necessary in the church, isn't it? If you get folks that, in the name of Christian theology, teach, uh, that Christ was mistaken, and that Christ was a sinner like everybody else, and deny his bodily resurrection, and deny his atoning sacrifice, and deny his literal coming again, and you don't take a stand against it, you are indeed compromising the fundamentals of the faith and confusing the world outside as to what Christians stand for. So at that level, yes. You'll see. And in that sense, it is inevitable, it seems to me, that such heresies will come, and they have come in the course of the church. You'll see. Uh, yes, I guess that's what's driving my question. What Thomas says is certainly true. They voluntarily gathered themselves unto him, but I can't, uh, help but think of the mixed multitude that, uh, went out from Egypt along with the Israelites. Oh, surely. Who were drawn by the sensational, uh, workings of God amongst his people. Mm-hmm. And that the, the church will attract those that do not know Christ or do not have a desire for that. Mm-hmm. That'll manifest itself in time. Oh, surely. It will, sir, indeed. And to follow the usage of Paul, uh, of Pa- uh, Peter and Jude, there are certain men crept in unawares. Uh, true believers don't do that, there's no need to. If you're a true believer, you don't need to creep in unawares. But some do that, and then come up with their permissive morality. Yes. I have a question. I'd like to know, uh, uh, in, uh, Bob Greenig, and I'd like to know in uh, Galatians four twenty five and and and twenty six, it seems to talk to us about the um, the New Jerusalem being our mother. And then in Hebrews twelve twenty two, it seems to be a, uh, the New Jerusalem seems to be a meeting place. And then in Revelation twenty one seems to be a bride. Could you make a little comment upon those three distinctives? Yes, at first sight it seems a little confusing, does it not? But it's important to remember that when these terms are used, they're being used metaphorically. And therefore it is, uh, possible, uh, to have metaphors that on the surface appear contradictory, but are not in the truth that they represent contradictory. So Christ is the, uh, is a stone, but he's also a bridegroom, and he's a shepherd, you'll see, uh, uh, but uh, in addition to that, he is a whole host of things. Now, at first sight, how can you be a bridegroom if you are a stone? But these are different aspects of his character, uh, expressed in those different metaphors. Now, the Jerusalem that's above is the mother of us all. Paul is talking here using Old Testament, the story of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac as a prototype. And he says that Sarah represents the Jerusalem which is above, which is the mother of us all, and is free. How does that make sense? How can Sarah be the mother of us all? The way that Hebrews were thinking, you could use the term son of to represent somebody who shows the same character as. So a son of Abram is a person that shows the same kind of faith as Abram shows. A child of Sarah would be the so- somebody who shows the same kind of faith as Sarah showed. You'll see. Abraham and Sarah were the two people in whose lives God hammered out the principle of justification by faith, daring to believe the word of God, the promise of God, as distinct from trying by your own effort to produce the promise of God, instead of trusting God to do his work. And, uh, Paul, uh, says that, uh, when Abraham and Sarah concocted that scheme of trying to fulfill God's promise themselves by, uh, Abraham's taking of Hagar, the slave girl, the product was not a freeborn child, but a slave. He was a child of a slave woman, or was a slave technically in the family. And, uh, uh, Erwundu for God. God wants a child born of the free woman. And the child was born of the free woman, Sarah, because Sarah corrected her former mistake, and instead of trying by her own effort to affect the p- promise of God, she learned to trust the God of the impossible and, uh, uh, uh, produced eventually Isaac by God's own power. In that same sense, those who insist on trying to keep the law for salvation and rely upon their merit only produce in themselves slavery. Whereas those who follow Sarah and Abraham and learn to put faith in him who justifies the ungodly, their faith is counted for righteousness, but the forthwith they form part of the great community that shall inhabit eternity, a community of all like, uh, Abraham and Sarah, whose found very foundation is that same faith in God. So that's one aspect of the community. All who are there will be built on that foundation. But secondly, it will say, eh, Hebrews, uh, twelve says, yes, it is a meeting place where God himself shall dwell. And interestingly enough, in passing, let's notice that Paul, uh, the writer to Hebrews doesn't say we shall come to it, he says we have come to it. We have already come to it. We are already citizens of heaven. Our citizenship is in heaven. And, uh, while we don't indulge in mysticism, we have a certain amount of communion, at least I do. I hope you do, with Abraham and Sarah, for instance. I say to myself as I read Genesis, good old Abraham, I know what he's talking about, you know. Know what you're talking about, Abram, my boy. I am marvelous. Might have that experience too, so to speak. Oh, ah, we've already come to that glorious city. One day you should be literally physically there, you'll see. So these are different aspects. On the other side, of course, we're not there yet. And like Abram, we are pilgrims still looking for the city, whose builder and maker is God. Bob Feebig, this, this afternoon you used the terms justification by faith and justification by works. I wonder if you could comment on, uh, the teaching today of the lordship of Christ required for salvation versus, uh, easy believism. In other words, there are those that say you cannot be saved if you, unless you first make Christ the Lord of your life, as opposed to those that say, well, all you have to do is believe and you're saved. Well, the shortest comment is that the only way of salvation is to confess Jesus as Lord. Now, those who say, and I myself was brought up by God-fearing men, let that be said, who thought that repentance was a Jewish term, and to preach repentance was to preach works, and that in the day of grace this was inappropriate. So you mustn't preach repentance, you only preach a, a faith in Christ. They meant it well, but this was dispensationalism gone to seed. You'll see. Uh, uh, uh, because, uh, Paul went about everywhere he told the church at Ephesus, and that was certainly a Gentile church predominantly. He said he went everywhere preaching repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus. Amen. We must preach repentance. Amen. Secondly, yes, it is through faith, but it is faith in Christ, and the validity of our faith posed in Christ depends on who Christ is anyway. We have to confess him as Lord. Now, I can't speak with any authority of what happens over here, but some I have been someone told me at one stage when he was discussing this thing, and he was persuaded of this doctrine that you can be a believer without confessing Jesus as Lord. And when I quoted to him Romans ten and nine, he gave me the explanation that had been given him, that here the word Lord doesn't mean Lord of our lives, it simply means you confess Jesus as Jehovah. Because in Old Testament Hebrew, Yahweh, the name Yahweh, Jehovah, is in the ancient Greek Septuagint translation, translated in Greek by Kurios, which means Lord. And that comes about because Jews, by the time the New Testament was written, uh, and by the time those early translations were made, wouldn't pronounce the name Yahweh anywhere where it occurred in the text. They said Adonai, which means Lord. They do it today still. So the Greek translators, being Jews, uh, translating into Greek, uh, put kurios for Yahweh. So to come back to that, my friend said, ah, but Romans ten and nine simply means that if thou confess that Jesus is God, you see, is Jehovah, not that he's Lord of your life. I found that bordering on the comical. Fancy coming to God and saying, now, Lord, Lord God Almighty, I now declare I do believe that Jesus is your son, the son of God, in fact, God incarnate, but I'm not intending just at the moment to make him Lord of my life. Thank you for salvation. I can have salvation if I merely admit that he is the son of God. Really? What are you being saved from? Forgiveness of sins? You want forgiveness of sins? Well, the first commandment is, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. Fancy coming to God and saying, I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, God incarnate. I'm obliged by your law to love him with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength. Thank you, God, that I don't need to do that. I'm here for forgiveness. Forgiveness for what? I'm, I'm going to ask for forgiveness with the intention for the moment of carrying on with the biggest sin there ever is and could be. For not loving him with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength. One thing to say, but I, I want to love him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, but I'm a weakling. Have mercy on me. But to say I don't need to receive him as Lord of my life. I can be forgiven even if I have no intention for the moment of loving him as my Lord and God. That's nonsense. And I would have thought dangerous nonsense. And the problem we have today, particularly with children going to camp. The problem we have today is children going to camp, and they come home from camp, and they they claim that they were saved. And, uh, it's not really clear what had happened, and they're not really clear what had happened. And so it becomes a danger because that later on, when they, uh, grow up a little bit more and they want to be baptized and come into fellowship, and you ask them, well, how did you get saved? And there's no real clear understanding, uh, in their minds as to how they got saved or really why they're, how they know they're saved. So it's a real problem. Well, I'm sure that is so, sir. Our Lord is on record that little children can believe, and I have a sister whose age is undisclosable, but she's older than I am, and she says she was saved when she was five and has lived, uh, now for eighty years to prove the truth of it. Amen. We'll see. But on the other side, we don't always help young people if we force them into professions of salvation when they haven't understood what's happening anyway. And therefore, when they grow older, they feel a bit like hypocrites, and they feel there was nothing in it, and they're much more difficult to reach then than they would have been if one had let them develop naturally. Well, thank you for those questions, and our time is- One more over here. Oh, one more. John McKillop. Uh, Revelation three twenty one, is to sitting on his throne. Would you say something about the importance that it's only to the overcomer out of that legacy and position that is granted to sit on the throne? So that is a a a very important and perceptive question, and it's so important that perhaps you ought to raise it again tomorrow in the question time and be the first on the list so that we can discuss it at some length. I think that is a very important question. It, uh, will involve us in understanding what the term overcomer means, and that is a matter of such a wide importance. I'm not trying to get out of your question. I would rather urge you, if you would be so kind not to detract from our speaker's advertised time, uh, uh, to raise it tomorrow as number one on the list, uh, so that it can be dealt with, uh, and discussed by us all at length. I think that is so important, it would be a pity to rush it now and give sort of a half an answer when it deserves a big one. Would you be happy with that, sir? Good. Do- please remember, I- I'm so old I shall forget, but please remember, and when it comes to question time, all of you are witness. We will take this question first and, uh, give it, uh, the, uh, attention that it deserves. Hey, brother, could I suggest that since we didn't, uh, feed, uh, we weren't. Heaven, we look forward to those moments in glory when we shall see him, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. This same Jesus in whom we are have been speaking of this evening through thy word and through conversation. Lord, that we pray that you would move our minds and hearts once again to bow and worship him and to live for him until that moment when we will see him. Bless our time this evening. Give our brother help, and once again ourselves, our Father, that we would hear thy voice. Give us the understanding and the illumination that the Spirit of God can only give us, that, Lord, we would be hearers of the word and, Father, also doers. We pray this for the sake of our Lord Jesus. Amen. Good evening. We're in one Chronicles thirteen, And surely, as, uh, I begin, my feeling is that we stand on holy ground. And yet, oh, what ground this is we stand on by the grace of our God through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We stand on it by faith and confidence in him who has brought us into such glorious things as we have heard. I was asked to take up the subject of the wrong bringing up of the ark in the wrong way. And as I begin, I just find it that it is important, I think, as we've been talking about unity, and I am certainly open to be corrected, that our hearts need to understand something about what we've been talking about, about unity around this King David. And it's easy for us to miss, I believe, the tremendous emphasis of it, as was brought forth before regarding the fact that there were two kings. Both had been, as it were, anointed of God, but yet one had the kingdom wrestled from him. And in his place, in one Samuel sixteen, God now anointed a man after his own heart that would reign according to God's own heart. And I find at the emphasis that we must ever keep before us is that which drew the faithful to the person of David is that he was God's anointed. And I see in Romans one where it says that God has declared his son, the Lord Jesus, to be the son of God by the resurrection from the dead. And so we must ever be careful regarding this issue about being gathered around the man, for it's not necessarily just a man, he is none other than the Son of God himself. And as David would be a prototype of that one, we must ever remember that what was the authority whereby people would gather to him and allow him to become a captain over them was the fact that he was God's anointed. I find something lovely in the New Testament regarding the one who has gathered us to himself, and in doing that has brought us to God. And there I read this of that lovely one, saying, God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the world, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. And the wonder and the beauty of it all is this, that that first man created in the image of God, who so slandered God through his going over to the enemy. How lovely this other man who came, who was not just a man, but fully God, the Son of God. He, blessed be God, was the expressed image of God's person, and it is to that one that we are drawn, and it is to that one that God would have us gather to, to whom coming as to a living stone. Blessed be our Lord Jesus Christ. I find it important to emphasize that because I feel that one of David's greatest errors in the way that he now attempted to bring up the ark with all of the right motives and so on was the fact that he failed to act in the express image of the name of the God by whom he had been anointed. And that is a dangerous thing, isn't it? That man would draw man after himself and not after God. And I find that this is a very dangerous thing, and it is something that characterized the day that we live in. In verse one of chapter thirteen, we read that David, when he had consulted with the captains of thousands and hundreds and with every leader, David said to all the assembly of Israel, if it seems good to you, and if it is of the Lord our God, let us send out to our brethren everywhere who are left in all the land of Israel, and with them to the priests and Levites who are in their cities and their common lands, that they may gather together to us, and let us bring the ark of our God back to us, for we have not inquired at it since the days of Saul. Then all the assembly said that they would do so, for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people. You know, this issue of unity, I just was thinking, how far do we go in maintaining unity? And what is unity based on? Later on, we find that when it came to David's grandson, they told him, listen, you lighten the yoke on us. Your father made burdens too unbearable for our hearts. You lighten the yoke on us, and we'll serve you. And you know, we've been hearing a lot about how this one would have his father cut him, his brothers beat him, and though the burden was heavy, yet he served. He simply wanted some explanation, help in understanding why it was so costly to serve the Lord Jesus Christ in this fallen world. You know, it's a dangerous thing when our loyalty to God depends on what seems right in our own. It's a dangerous thing when our loyalty to God is based on how well things are going according to our own understanding of things and according to how well things seem to be in our own eyes. You know, they went on after they rejected Royal Bomb, and in rejecting Royal Bomb, they rejected really the promises that God had made in his anointed David, and they said, every man, O Israel, to his own tents, for what inheritance have we in David? Oh, my brother, my sister, as we've been hearing, surely the Apostle John said this regarding he who overcomes is he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God. For this very reason, that the fact that he is the Son of God validates every promise we've heard. And I tell you, there is none other that could ever settle my heart that one day I'll reign on God's throne with God's Son, other than the very Son of God himself. Who could make such a promise to you and have any meaning, were it not the person of the Lord Jesus Christ himself? And John would say that this in the light of what he has done and in the light of what he bore, that these things might be yours and might be mine. For what is the heart of God, after all, tell me? And what is a sovereign who would rule according to God's own heart, if it were not that he, as God's anointed, might be able to bring every blessing that's in the heart of God down to creatures like you and me, yay, to sinners undone, saved by the very grace of God. That's what the heart of God is, and what a son with that, who said this, the Good Shepherd, as we've heard, giveth his life for the sheep. I lay down my life for the sheep, he said, for this commandment I have received of my father. What a savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. And of him John said, his commandments, they are not what? Burdensome. What could be burdensome in the light of what he paid and in the greatness of all that he has accomplished for God and for our blessing in the counsels of God, blessed be his holy name. May God give us a heart to love his son and to want to serve him with all our hearts. So here we come and we find again David, what he d- he did in bringing the ark in, he made a very fundamental mistake, didn't he? Well, he didn't consult God. And what a dangerous thing it is for the one who was God's anointed that would communicate the greatness of God to the people of God, that the people of God might be wholly dev- A failure it is when we fail to consult God, and we begin to communicate that which springs from man, that which springs from man's wisdom, that which is man's method, that which is man's ways, and so on and so forth. And that was a very fundamental mistake that David made. But there's something wonderful here, I find. You know, with Saul, he failed to consult God, and God did try and deal with that man. Ultimately, Saul went to the other side, as we've heard. But blessed be God with this man, God's correction worked. And you know, it's an encouraging thing with you and I, isn't it? That when we think of John there in Revelation chapter one, and he looked up and he beheld that one from whose mouth proceeded that sword, and he fell down as if dead, and he felt the right hand of that one saying, my sword is not to destroy you. I tell you, the sword of my mouth for you, it's to open and let you into glory. And what a lovely thing it is to look on the face of our Lord Jesus Christ and find that that one is the one who laid down his life that we might be saved. Yea, I will, prayed he, that where I am, there they may be also, that they might behold my glory. Anyway, as I come to this, I just, uh, had several thoughts concerning my mind, uh, this message. I trust the Lord will help in the direction that it will all come. It'll come to his glory. But what is the right way of bringing God to us? Well, the right way is that way which w- s- so, which would so glorify God that all that behold him would cast themselves wholly upon him. You know, that can only happen when God is glorified. But when man interjects that which comes from himself, that becomes the wrong way. For the wrong way will leave the creature short of that wholehearted surrender of trusting, loving devotion and confidence in this God who is so glorified. That is the wrong way to bring the ark up. And as we consider everything that happened here, and we consider what was neglected here, and obviously we have the Levites. They weren't bearing the ark. And not only we have the Levites not bearing the ark, but we have the ordinances or the statutes of God were also neglected, the rings and the spades. The little things, isn't it? It's an easy thing to get to the point where we start thinking the little things aren't important. My brother, how do we define that which is important? Well, I'll tell you, anything that belongs to God and speaks of his son, I don't care how little it might seem, it is very important to the Father. For he has called us into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. And as I consider our brother's exhortation that we look at this in the light of the significance of what it meant to those after the captivity, I would say this. They were being told, regardless of what the opposition is, don't ever consider anything that God has instructed you to hold as insignificant. But may you be willing to bear the burden of it, no matter what the cost, for all of it, when done God's way, according to the counsel of God, will always glorify the one who so commanded it should be thus done. And I find that that is of absolute importance. Now, concerning the Levites who were neglected here, I would just turn your minds to Exodus thirty two, where the Levites were brought into special blessing. Over against this nation that God desired that they should be a nation of priests unto God, they forfeited it there, didn't they? By erecting the calves and worshiping the calves and so on. But when Moses came down, he said, whosoever is on the side of the Lord, gather themselves to me. And we know that the tribe of Levi came. And it's interesting right there what characterized the beginning of this priestly blessing on this tribe. And it was that they put the sword to their own natural ties, their own brethren, because they had more heart for God than they did to their own brothers, to their own family. And if something is necessary in order that God is to be glorified amongst his people, is what we've been hearing. We need to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our strength, with all our affection, with all our soul. For he must be glorified as the only one who is worthy that life, human beings, would cast their all in confidence on him and his faithfulness. There is true human blessedness, and anything short of that, as we said, would destroy and bring a man to ultimate what? Perdition, chaos, and ruin. And so the very character of the Levite was that he would so care for God, and so devoted to God was he, that he would put the sword to everything else that would stand in the way of the glory of that blessed one. You know, it's interesting that the last time the ark had been transported was in one Samuel chapter six. and there the reason that the ark had been lost was for that very failure. Men in Israel cared more and honored their sons more than they honored God. And you know, God became an it. It's happened in America today, doesn't it? It worries me in my own family, with my own sons. So much affluence, so much materialism, so much involvement in sports and all these other things in life, you know? The tendency to compartmentalize God to just one hour Sunday morning. And I tell you, if we're not careful, all of a sudden God is not a living person, not a living reality to the heart, but he becomes nothing more than what? An it. Perhaps it will save us. Well, it never saved them. And so the ark was taken by the Philistines, but you know, it's interesting. You read now about the Philistines, and when it came to now these beasts, these oxen, now they would, uh, lay that ark on the new cart that they made, and they would yoke it to these beasts, and they would put the beasts over against their young, and they would sit there and they said, well, if they forsake their young and they go back to the land of Israel, then we know God is sovereign. But if they go naturally to their young, yay, we know that chance is at work, and there is no such thing as a sovereign Lord. Well, you know what I find there? That men did not drive those oxen. Those oxen there in loyalty to their maker willingly forsook their young and willingly chose to be faithful to their maker more than to their own offspring. And I find there's a tremendous difference there between what was happening here with David, for he failed to consult God's word, and failing to consult God, the king who should have manifested God and God's government and rule, yay, God's very throne to the people. Now he would interject with his own negligence, doing things his own way. And he would put the cart on these oxen. But you know, this time these oxen had no choice, did they? They were driven by man. And they were driven by the power of man. And it was a very different situation than the one back in First Samuel six. You know, we're not meant to be robots, are we? And God is not interested in robots, and God is not interested in man using man's methods and man's rules and man's fear and man's ways to, uh, herd the people of God into coercing them into some kind of outer appearance of loyalty to God. It doesn't work that way. You see, it's not the natural, we've heard, that's going to do it. It's going to be what? That which is of the spirit, that which it comes from God by the power of God. And so I find in the way these oxen went and these oxen stumbled. You know, my brother, my sister, if the path of wanting to serve God is not rooted in the glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus, and the glory of God is revealed in the person and the work of Christ, you'll stumble, you'll never make it. We'll never make it. And you know, there you have Uzzah. And Uzzah now, obviously typified by all this, no preparation on David's part, just acting naturally, acting impulsively, acting good motives, good intentions, but impulsively without preparation. It's a dangerous thing in the things of God, isn't it? We live in a day where, I remember I was in prison, I didn't even mean to talk about this. There was a fellow there, got into trouble, ended up in prison. Guy was a hard-working guy, reputable guy, but, you know, one thing led to another. He had an opportunity to do something with drugs and fly an airplane and this and that, and he did it. He got caught. Just a couple of years before, his wife, driving out of the driveway, backed up and ran over a two-year-old neighbor boy. Killed. Woman never recovered emotionally. Now her husband ends up in prison. Lo and behold, she had a seventeen-year-old stepbrother. He was about forty years old, she was thirty-eight years old. They had two children, one twelve, one fifteen. She finally came to visit him about six months after he was there. He couldn't figure why she hadn't come. When she showed up, she told him she'd been sleeping with her seventeen-year-old stepbrother. The man was devastated. The next day, he went back to the visiting room, talked to her, pleaded with her, begged her. They were professing Christians. And he came back and he shared everything with me, and he said, these were her words. I've prayed about it. I've prayed about it. I've prayed about this thing more than I've prayed about anything. I tell you, I'm so happy. I'm happier than I've ever been, and I know God would never deny me something so pleasing that has brought so much happiness to me. May God keep us from impulsiveness or that which comes natural in our interpretation of what God's government and God's will is for our lives. Here was Uzzah, and now as Uzzah was going, driven by man, driven by man's opinion, by man's methods, by man's ways, here a man, Uzzah is there, and behold, the oxen stumble, and as the oxen stumble, I tell you, it's not God in all his glory that is the object of Uzzah's vision. No, my friend, it is simply being driven by the dictates of man. And lo and behold, as oxen stumble, he looks at that ark which represents God, the God of glory, and he considers that God a God who can fall like an ordinary man. I don't know about you, my brother, but I don't think I'd ever allow myself to be cut for a God who cannot stand on his own. You see, if God is not glorified, ultimately our apprehension of him will suffer, and our devotion to God will only be as great as our apprehension of the heights of his glory. Lower that glory, and you will, of necessity, lower man and lower God. And you have now, as far as Uzzah's concerned, a God whom he must hold up. Oh, what a sad thing in this world. World of danger, world of uncertainty, world of suffering, world of pain, world filled with enemies, world filled with powers we don't understand anything of, feeble and small as we are. Oh, what a horrible thing it is. Lest there be no God who can stand over everything, walk on the sea. Yea, and when we cry to him, oh Lord, save me, I perish, he can take us by the hand and lift us above all things, yea, one day take us to the very glory. Sad thing it would be, isn't it, if God would have to be held up by man. We have it everywhere today, don't we? We want to keep our young people in the assemblies. We want to see our assemblies filled with numbers. We're affected by these things around us where such and such a church started in nineteen ninety one with only seven, and now we're in nineteen ninety eight and they've got fifty seven thousand five hundred and one. Don't forget the one, they'll get offended. And we want to be like them, don't we? And so we start incorporating methods and ways and man's tactics, as if our God needed to be held up, and the gospel of his glorious son could not stand on its own merit. I'd just like to read to you the wonder of Solomon's prayer. When that temple was finished. Let me just read it to you regarding the stranger and what it was that was to draw that stranger. Moreover, concerning a stranger who is not of your people Israel, but has come from a far country. Here's why he came, for the sake of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm. When they come and pray in this temple, then hear from heaven your dwelling place and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, that all peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people, people Israel, and that as do your p- and that they may know that this temple which I have built is called by your name. May God help us to preach the gospel and preach it in all of its lovely beauty. May God help us to not make it a shallow presentation based on man's words and man's little packages. May God help us, like Paul, to be able to say we are free from the guilt of the blood of all men, for we have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God, and after having done so, may we offer no apologies for those who have no heart for God and personally refuse to be drawn by the person of God's Son. I tell you, my brother, my sis- my, there's no sisters here. I tell you, my brother. Paul said in one Corinthians chapter two, I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and being crucified. That your faith should not stand under the impact of the persuasive words of man's wisdom, but that your faith might be the product of the power of God, God's work in the heart, and not of man. God was very faithful to David, I find. For David was a man after God's own heart. And yet, if this had succeeded, the one that would have been glorified would have been David, and not God. You know, it's an amazing thing how easy we can fall into patterns of doing things in a way that goes totally contrary to what we really want to do. May God preserve us, that our ministry might always link the heart of the hearer to God and not to ourselves. It is a horrible thing, and I bring you to Ephesians chapter four, the Lord Jesus Christ that gives gifts to his church, and he gives gifts to his church, but it's him that gives it, it's the head that gives it. For what purpose? That the saints might be equipped, that they might be able to minister, minister for the glory of God, to find their purpose, as we've been hearing, in the great body of Christ, till all of them come to the full stature of the measure of Christ. What a horrible thing it is for a man to use a gift of God to crown himself with glory, rather than bringing God to glory, that God's people might be brought to God to have confidence in God and God alone. May God keep us from that. I tell you, there's much of it around America in assemblies with elders. I don't want to get into trouble here, you know, I've heard things, oh my goodness, I've had people come to me from another continent wanting me to come and preach the gospel over there. We've got a lot of problems over there, brother, I've heard something. Uh, do you believe in elders? Excuse me? Do you believe in el-? I said, what are you talking? Well, I heard you didn't believe in elders. Well, throw the Bible away. I don't believe in the Bible then. It's amazing what things can be said and how things can be distorted. But I say to you afresh, God never intended for men to drive his people. And the great function of elders and godly elders is this, that they might ever communicate the heart and the will of God to the eyes of God's people. That the assemblies of God might ever see the Lord, know his presence, know his name, be gathered to him, be obedient to him, be loyal to him, and not to man. It is a travesty to make God's people dependent on men. Go to Acts twenty and see Paul. You'll not see my face anymore. And they wept. And I don't know about you, but many times, I'll even confess, I've called a brother on the phone asking for help. And, you know, my calling the brother on the phone asking for help was really just the closest I could get in my own ability to get to Paul. Because if I could have gotten to Paul, I would have said, please help me out, tell me. What's the answer here? What's the truth of this here? How do I handle this here? What do I treat here? And you know, those men who had experienced that man's ministry in that day, I tell you, they felt weak, they trembled. What are we going to do without you? He said, I commend you to God, not to man. And as far as elders were concerned, he said, watch out for from you among your own self. Perverse men will arise, drawing what? What? Disciples after what? Themselves. Oh, what a horrible thing it is to keep souls from dependence on the living God. He said, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance amongst them which are sanctified. I tell you, there was a centurion in Matthew eight who said it in a lovely way. I also am a man under authority. You know, he got out from under that authority, and as far as I could see, he had no authority. Well, I find there's only one authority, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ and his word. May we ever teach it as his word, and may all that we long to do in ministering his lovely person and his lovely truth be with a desire that those who hear it might be drawn to him. Him. Oh, how faithful God was in dealing with David. A man after his own heart. He wanted to bring God to the people. Oh, what a lovely picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, what a price he paid that he might bring God to us. What a lovely savior, our blessed Lord Jesus. Well, we find the right order later. We go into chapter fifteen, and David himself says, the Levites, consecrate yourselves. Oh, my brother, what an amazing thing it is that the holy God of the universe has so deemed that his glory be born on the shoulders of Levites who separate themselves for him. The apostle closed that Corinthian epistle saying, if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. Let me ask you, carrying the burden of the glory of God on this world, costly, we've heard. What is it that will make you carry it even though it might cost you? Everything. I tell you, unless we carry it in such a way that owning his glory and seeing him glorified is more important than our own lives, he won't be glorified. And you know, he said in Leviticus ten, I must be regarded as holy in them that draw near to me. What is it that will make you and I bear the burden of maintaining the glory of God in this world? I'll tell you what it is. It is the very glory of that God that shines in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ, who himself came here, and he established the glory of God. And how did he establish it? Well, I'll tell you how he did it. He was obedient unto death and didn't stop there, did it? Even the death of the cross, forever demonstrating that being faithful to the Father was more important than any cost as far as this world was ever concerned. Blessed be God for the results of that faithfulness. Wherefore, God hath exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Oh, what a place for God to call us to bear his glory on our shoulders in this world, no matter what it costs. The place where his own son bore it in obedience unto the death of the cross, that we might forever know who this God is, that our blessing lies wholly in the heart of the grace of God and has nothing to do with man, his wisdom, his message, or his way. And it is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one he fully manifested and manifested hanging on that cross, for it was him who had said, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. He calls us to follow him wherever he might now lead us. The Christian faith is not not, is not that fraudulent thing that we hear of today, where men will bring God into their life simply to get their way. No. The Christian faith is not us praying in the name of Jesus, holding hands, that any, wherever two or three of us agree as to anything here or not, God's gonna do it. If I have enough faith, God will do it, God will do it. Take the cancer away, take the cancer away. That's not Christian faith. Christian faith is this. The God who spared not his own son, how shall he not freely with him give me all things? And if that God deems that I bear cancer, then let me bear it faithfully to himself. For he is worthy that I should trust him even unto death, even though he slay me, said Job, yet will I trust him. What a faithful God is our God. You know, there are several comparisons here, and obviously my time's already up, but again, we talked about, we heard something about morality. There's something more important than morality. If something characterizes America today, they are unities of purpose. Let us lay aside our differences. Oh, it doesn't matter if you believe you need to be baptized to be saved, if you need to climb, uh, whatever Roman cathedral on your knees to be saved. It doesn't matter what our differences are. Let us lay them aside. Let us focus on what we have in common. We all believe in the same God, and so let's come together that we might make vows, that we might be better fathers, that we might be better husbands. Let's make promises. I've only met one promise keeper, and I thank God for the promise keeper who shall never, ever, ever fail his promise to me. Every other promise keeper I've met is a liar. I haven't met another one who was faithful. Unities of purpose, motives, that we might be better this, that we might be better that. Well, we need an evangelist. Well, let's bring in a man. Let's hire a man. Whatever happened to dependence on our blessed head, and getting on our knees as assemblies and crying out to him from whom everything the body needs flows, and waiting on him and looking to him for him in his appointed time to fill and meet the need. You know, we're being trained for glory, we've heard of it. What a sad lot we shall make there if every time we had a need here, we resorted to Bible college, seminary, hired pastors, hired this, hired that. The call one eight hundred California Joe. They all come from California, it seems. What a sad lot we'll make, isn't it, if every trial and every need was met through human wisdom, through human methods, through human ingenuity. May God help us afresh, that we might remember. John twenty twenty, Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. Oh, my brother, we need to see more of the Lord. You know, later in chapter fifteen, all Israel was filled with joy. All Israel, unity. One Corinthians one ten tells us what our unity is. Our unity, and the ground of our unity, is to be of one mind, of one mouth, and of the same judgment concerning the name of who? Our Lord Jesus Christ. May God help us to gather to him. And when his name is held, I tell you, that's where the Christian unity is found and it is maintained. Just like to say something again regarding this issue about the Levites that were neglected, the priesthood. Something that characterizes evangelical Christianity today is the neglect of the priesthood of all believers. Now, in, in, in Revelation, you find that first it was a practice. There they practiced the deeds of the Nicolaitans, Ephesians. By the time we get to Pergamos, what was a practice had become a doctrine. You have there those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans. I suggest to you that the Reformation threw out the doctrine, but they never got rid of the practice. Part of the great problem that we have today is there is a neglect of the priesthood. This is the character upon which God will glorify himself in the midst of his people, on the shoulders of who? Consecrated Levites who live for his glory and sanctify themselves for that purpose that they might be what? Of use to God. Priesthood, priesthood. One Peter chapter two, Priesthood, holy priesthood. We come in, we come to him, that we might be able to go out as a royal priesthood to show forth the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. My brother, here's the key. I repeat, to the degree that God is glorified, to that degree we become worshippers. To that degree we enter into devotion and sacrifice for him, for to the degree that we esteem him worthy, to that degree we can function in our holy priesthood. But you know what happened when God is affected? Uzzah all of a sudden did something, didn't he? He reached out to hold God up, and he dared reach out and touch that ark without... blood. Blood. Revelation one five: Unto him who loves. See? To him be the glory. To him who made us, what? A kingdom of priests unto God. How did he do that? He loosed us from our sins in his own blood. You neglect the priesthood of all believers, and it's an attack on the gospel. It's an interesting thing my brother said to me this morning at breakfast. The first thing that will go in the church is the gospel. And I find the first thing that went here when God's glory was affected by man's ways and man's methods and man's presentation is what? The approach to God. It was a bloodless approach to God. You've got a bloodless Christianity going rampant in America today. And the man talked about it. People whom you ask, how are you saved? They can't tell you. Well, I got saved one day, my dog got hit by a car, and I was so sad when my dog got hit by that car, I just fell on my knees and said, oh God, help me, please. I've heard stuff like this. I've heard it. The gospel goes, my brothers, my, my brothers. May God help us again to remember our God is manifest in the express person of his son, our Lord Jesus Christ. And how did he manifest him? He was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. May God help us in this tremendous importance of our lives as priests of God, that we might handle the things of God as the things of God. They prove the heart. They m- they reveal whether we look to ourselves, whether we look to man, or whether we do things simply because it is right in the sight of the Lord. May God help us to not neglect the priesthood, for when we do, it is an attack on the blood of Christ. May we ever remember we are not our own, and what makes us not our own is the tremendous price that was paid. The blood of Christ as of a lamb. Blessed be him who saved us by the blood of his son. Such a price from such a God demands our life, our heart, our all. Blessed be the name of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. May God help us to depend on him and to look to him. I'd like to read something just for a minute, please. There's many other things. I just thought of David finally as we went in the second time and he danced, and how do you pronounce his wife's name? Michelle, Michael, how you pr- huh? Michael. And you know, she saw him, and there he was, you know, and he became base, and she despised him. You know what he said to her? I'll become baser still. In the eyes of who? In the eyes of the slaves. The amazing wonder the Lord Jesus Christ left heaven's glory. Tell me, how far did he humiliate himself? How base did he become? Tell me, who did he identify himself with? And there was David the king now saying, I'm nothing, and thank thee unto God, he's enabled me to bring the ark in a way that has brought all the glory to him, and I, though being the king, the highest, most powerful of this world, I am nothing in the presence of this God. You know, she hated him. She hated him. And there are many that despise him today, and they don't count the Lord Jesus as worthy of what? Of all. May we have a heart that says he is worthy of all. It says this, Michael wanted decorum and dignity as befitted the royal station. What a glorious sight was the king, said she, as he shamelessly danced for the slaves to see, like the vainest in all the nation. But King David made answer, it was the Lord that I honored by dancing so, who had chosen me king and thy house abhorred, and the joy of his presence he hath restored, and my gratitude I must show. With the strut of a king, I will make no boast in the presence of heaven's Lord. I will count myself base as the lowermost, and the servants who serve in Jehovah's host will give honor for my reward. But to Michael, who wanted to to walk in pride when the Ark of Jehovah came, was the life-giving blessing of God denied, for she brought forth no child to the day she died. Who might honor and bless her name. There are Christians in churches that I have known who would shudder and blush with scorn to hear praise to their Lord with emotion shown, and they can't understand why they walk alone, having never a soul newborn. But the blessing of fruitfulness still belongs to the souls who fear not to shout of the Savior who died to endure their wrong and redeemed from vileness to heaven's throne, and their children are all about. Blessed be the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. May he be the one that we gather to, that we delight to honor, for it is he that the Father has raised to the highest place in the universe. Blessed be his name. Maybe a brother can close in prayer.