Please turn to the 9th chapter of Hebrews.
Hebrews, the 9th chapter, and I think that
I'll ask you to read it with me,
down to verse 14.
I'll read the 1st verse, you the 2nd,
so unresponsibly, to and including the 14th verse
of Hebrews 9.
Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances
of divine service and a worldly sanctuary.
And after the 2nd veil, the tabernacle which
is called the holiest of all.
And over it the chariot beams of glory
shadowing the mercy seat, of which we cannot
now speak particularly.
But into the 2nd went the high priest
alone, once every year, not without blood, which
he offered for himself and for the errors
of the people.
Which was a figure for the time then
present, in which there were offered both gifts
and sacrifices that could not make him that
did the service perfect as pertaining to the
conscience.
But Christ, being come and high priest of
good things to come, by a greater and
more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that
is to say, nor of this building.
For if the blood of bulls and of
goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling
the unclean, sanctifyeth to the purifying of the
flesh.
Let's have a moment of prayer.
Now, Father, we thank thee for these eternal
words, eternal salvation, eternal sacrifices.
We thank thee that thou hast in mind
not tomorrow or the next day or the
next century, but all the eternities to come.
Pray thy blessing now to be upon us
while we hear the word and attempt to
speak it.
We are unworthy of both or either.
We are unworthy to speak and we are
unworthy to hear, but if we can't be
worthy, O Lord, at least help us in
a worthy manner to speak and to hear.
For Christ's sake.
Amen.
There are certain basic truths which all other
truths rest upon.
And if we don't get and hold those
certain basic truths, then we can't know the
others, and we can't know the others unless
and only by constant reference to these basic
truths.
And one of them I'm developing Sunday night,
that God made us for himself.
He made us that we might know him
and that we might live with him, and
that we might enjoy him.
But the race has been guilty of revolt.
Men have broken with God, and the Bible
says we are alienated from him.
These were strangers to him, the human race.
And they have ceased to love him and
ceased to trust him and ceased to enjoy
his presence.
Now I'd like to, and I suppose this
will come up later on as I go
through the book, but I'd like to press
home this truth that God is everywhere.
The presence of God is everywhere.
David said, Whither shall I go from thy
spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy
presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art
there, and if I make my bed in
hell, thou art there.
And if I take the wings of the
morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of
the sea, even there will thy hand lead
me and hold me.
So there is no getting out of the
presence of God, that's an impossibility.
But the manifest conscious presence of God is
something else.
And it's the manifest conscious presence of God
that we are to enjoy.
It isn't enough to live by faith.
If by faith we mean naked faith without
any manifestation on God's part.
David was not hesitant to pray that the
Lord would show him a token for good.
I do not believe that it's any proof
of spirituality whatsoever, nor that it's any magnification
of the doctrine of faith, when we bat
everybody down and shut them up and insist
that they are to hang upside down like
hibernating bats, and be cold and quiet and
asleep, without any response from God or any
proof that anything is going on.
I believe that since I'm a personality and
God is a personality, that we can have
personality intercourse, intercourse between one personality and another
personality in love and faith and conversation, to
speak and be answered.
I believe this.
And it is, I repeat, no proof that
we have great faith, that we are ready
solemnly and glumly and grimly and coldly to
live our lives saying, I believe, but never
having God give any response to our faith.
There ought to be a response.
I know that there are times when we
walk by faith and not by sight.
We never walk by sight, but we walk
by faith sometimes, when God, for his own
goodness, has hidden his face a moment from
us.
But he said, for a small moment I
have hid my face from you, but with
everlasting kindness will I gather you.
So we must have again that presence, we
must learn to live again in that presence,
and that manifest presence, that conscious presence.
The difference between revival and every other state
of spiritual state that your church may know
is the difference between the presence of God
and the manifest presence of God.
God is with the dead his church in
this city, that is, God is present there.
Where should I flee from thy presence?
Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
If I make my bed in hell, thou
art there.
And the poorest and the worst church in
the world, wherever it might be, let's humbly
hope it's not this one, wherever it might
be, God knows I don't know where it
is.
I only know wherever the worst church is,
God's presence is there.
But the worse the church, the less it
manifests.
And the better the church, the more it
manifests.
You go into some churches and when you
sit down you are conscious of a presence.
You go into other churches and when you
sit down you are conscious of the beauty
of the music, the stained glass windows, the
sonorous tones of the minister and all the
rest, but you are not conscious of the
presence of God necessarily.
There is such a thing as God manifesting
himself, and God wants to manifest himself to
his people.
Now how does he do it?
Well, he did a work we call redemption.
It is the work to effect reconciliation.
You see, the liberal churches, and I find
now that I'm going to have to ignore
my notes, but the liberal churches are always
talking about how nice it is to turn
and say hello to our Heavenly Father and
to realize that this is our Father's world
and that all the stars sing about him
and the little buttercups talk about him.
It's all very wonderful, but the simple fact
is man and God are enemies, until there
has been reconciliation by a sacrifice which God
has satisfied with.
The difference between Cain and Abel wasn't that
Cain was a bad man and Abel a
good man, they were both bad men.
The difference between Cain and Abel was that
Abel knew he was bad and Cain didn't
know it.
So Abel brought a sacrifice as much as
to say, O God, I should die like
this lamb.
And Cain came saying hello to the All
-Father any sacrifice.
He would have made a wonderful prayer Sunday
morning while he intoned through his blessed nose
a prayer without blood and without sacrifice and
without the cross and without the lamb, because
he brought the flowers and the fruit and
said, I like you, God, here is a
present.
And God turned his back on him, but
Abel came and in humility brought the lamb
and bled it there on the altar and
looked up and said, O God, I'm not
worthy.
And God smiled and sent fire to the
altar and witnessed that he pleased God.
Witnessed that he pleased God not because he
was a good man, for he wasn't, but
because he took the bad man's place in
the presence of a holy God.
Cain displeased God not because he was a
worse man than Abel, they were both sinners,
born of the same fallen parents, but because
he assumed he was all right when he
was wrong.
He assumed there was nothing between him and
God and Abel knew there was.
There is the difference.
So the Lord sends by redemption, he affects
this reconciliation, and he brings us into right
relation to him in order that he might
bring us into conscious relation, that we might
be conscious of each other, God of us
and we of God.
And he wants to perfect this experience of
the oneness of man and God.
The Old Testament tells us how this is
and gives us a shining picture of God's
plan.
That is what we read in the 9th
chapter of Hebrews, that tabernacle, or tent as
it is called in some translations, for it
was a very flimsy affair made out of
hides and the walls of wood and was
portable, could be knocked down and carried.
The tabernacle, I don't believe much in charts,
I think more or less charts are for
children, but if you could get at least
an idea in your mind, and picture this
in your mind, it would help you.
And if you get it in your mind,
it will be in your mind long after
the chart has been put back on the
shelf.
But here was this tabernacle in the wilderness.
It was an oblong affair, wooden walls made
of acacia and a roof over it, part
of it, of skins.
And it was divided up, first of all
outside of this, out in the Gentile world,
let's think of these people.
The thrones outside the walls.
They were the busy rank and file of
revolted men.
They were the Torontonians and the Chicagoans and
the New Yorkers and the Londoners and the
rest of them all over the world.
They are those outside the walls, outside.
They were without hope and without God in
the world, is what Paul says about them,
terrible, terrible Paul.
Would he get chased out of town if
he came here and began to tell the
sinners in Toronto that they had no God,
they were without hope and without God in
the world, and that the spirit of disobedience
worked in them?
They'd run him out.
They did many places, and I suppose they
wouldn't here, and I don't know any place
where they wouldn't.
But we don't want to hear this.
We want to hear how nice it is
to know God, but we don't want to
know that until we're converted through Jesus Christ,
we're outside the walls, we're Gentiles without hope,
sinners without hope outside the walls.
These people, sinful people, they get and they
spend, they marry and they give in marriage,
they build and they plant, they sow and
they harvest and they tear down and build
up and beget others like themselves and die.
That's humanity, that's the way it is.
But they're not concerned very much about God,
very rarely think of God, except when they're
making political speeches or when it's convenient to
use God.
Then there's the lower court, that's the court
of the Gentiles.
That was not inside the great box-like
structure properly, it was outside, and it was
called the court of the Gentiles.
That's people interested in religion.
A lot of people are interested in religion,
you know.
They're interested, but they're far from God nevertheless.
Maybe they're practicing religion, maybe they're practicing heathen
rites of various kinds.
Maybe they're telling their beads with unconsciously moving
lips on the bus or airplane.
Maybe they're paying respect to religion.
When the baby is born or when somebody
is married or when somebody dies, weddings, christenings
and funerals, they manage to get to church.
You know, there's a rather cynical expression that
some people go to church three times in
their lives.
The first time they throw water on them,
the second time they throw rice on them,
and the third time they throw dirt on
them.
And this seems to be about as far
as it goes with some people.
They make it to church three times.
These are the Gentiles outside, but they're religious
Gentiles.
They pay token respect to religion, but they're
giving no regard to God's way or God's
cross or God's redemption.
Then there's the inner court.
Here in the inner court there were two
affairs.
One was an altar and one was a
laver.
It was a great brazen altar.
It wasn't a pretty thing at all.
It was a kind of topless furnace with
a grate underneath where you could put a
fire, and then you could put beasts there.
You could put a beast on that altar
and put your fire under there and stir
it up hot, and the beast would go
up in an ugly smoke.
That was the altar, and there the lambs
were offered, and there the beasts, and there
the red heifer, and there the creatures that
were brought to sacrifice.
This isn't pleasant at all.
I don't think that that part of the
tabernacle where the altar and the laver were,
were pleasant places to be.
I don't think a priest's job was a
pleasant job.
I don't think so.
And these poetic, artistic ministers who insist that
religion is such a dovetail, lovely, flowery affair,
they call it slaughterhouse religion.
They say, We don't believe in slaughterhouse religion.
We don't believe that God Almighty was pleased
because Aaron and his sons caught a heifer,
cut her throat, bled her out in basin,
sprinkled things with blood, and then offered her
body on that altar.
We don't believe that.
We think that it must have been an
unpleasant, a terrible thing.
Well, there is one place that must have
been and must be more unpleasant and more
terrible, and that's hell.
The scripture tells us that if a man
is not redeemed by the blood of an
acceptable sacrifice, he is most certainly going to
spend his eternity in hell.
And when we nice it up and sugarcoat
it and line it up nicely and take
away the slaughterhouse element from it, we've taken
away the cross.
It must not have been a very pleasant
thing to see a man die on a
cross outside of the hills of Jerusalem.
It must not have been a pleasant thing
to see them die there.
When our Lord died, the poets have made
it so beautiful that we can have the
pictures around and send them out on Easter.
But it wasn't a beautiful sight at all.
Here was a man stripped naked, hanging in
the hot April sun, and here was a
man who was bleeding from his hands and
feet and side and forehead and down over
his face.
Here was a man whose beard was plucked
in spots by the enemies who had pulled
his beard.
Here was a man twisted and suffering and
writhing in the agony and groaning in the
pain of it all.
Here was a cross and a man on
a cross.
Why was the man on a cross?
Because there was one thing worse than that,
and that was hell where men were going.
And so God sent his only begotten Son
that that man might go to the cross
and stop the gates of hell and shut
them up so those who believed in him
should not perish but have everlasting life.
So let's not get too nice about all
this.
Of course there was a slaughterhouse there, and
of course there was a slaughterhill there where
a man died.
But a man died in terror because sin
is a terrible thing, and a man died
in pain because sin is a painful thing.
A man died ostracized and forsaken because sin
brings ostracism and forsakenness.
God turned his back on that hill while
that man died there because he will turn
his back on every man who doesn't die
with him, and every man who does not
take advantage of the blood he shed.
So there is that altar, and it isn't
a very pleasant thing.
Flies were about it, and sticky blood and
old, dried blood, and ashes, and the pitiful
pieces of what had been a beautiful animal
lying about.
But there was another piece of furniture there
in that inner court, and that was the
laver.
The laver was filled with water, and everything
could be washed there.
As you entered and moved in, you first
came to the altar, and there the lamb
died.
Then when you passed the altar you came
to a great bowl, if I might respectfully
suggest it looked like a huge punchbowl, standing
up there and filled, and they washed there.
As though God were saying, you first have
to come by the cross and by the
blood, by the altar and by the laver,
by the lamb that died and by the
washing of water by the word.
So they came and moved on in.
That was the inner court.
After that there was another.
This was shut off by a veil, a
huge veil shut this one out.
Nobody could go in there except the priests.
Worshippers could come in where the altar and
the laver were.
After they had come by the cross and
by the cleansing, then they would come into
the holy place.
Except a man be born again, he cannot
see the kingdom of God.
Except he repents, he cannot see the kingdom
of God.
That holy place, this was the privilege they
now enjoyed.
And there were three pieces of furniture in
that holy place.
One was the little tablecloth, and the other
was the lights, the candlesticks, seven of them
burning there.
The other was the little table with bread
on it, and the other was an altar
of incense.
Now, it's not difficult to know what all
this means.
I think the Church Universal agrees that that
light was the light of the Holy Ghost,
the light that lights every man that comes
into the world.
He, our Lord, said, I am the light
of the world, and when you have come
by the cross and been cleansed in your
enlightenment, says God the Holy Ghost, in giving
us this little object lesson, he says you
can be enlightened.
The light of the world is Jesus, and
the light of the Holy Ghost shining there,
the sevenfold spirit shining, made it light.
But there was bread there too, it was
called shewbread, or the bread of the presence.
Wonderful, I think, the bread of the presence.
He was there and he was feeding his
people, unseen, but feeding his people the bread
of the presence.
Jesus said, I am the light of the
world.
So you'll come by that cross and by
that cleansing, and then you are fed the
light of the world.
The 6th chapter of John tells all about
that.
They said, Give us bread, and they first
said, Our fathers ate bread, yes, but the
bread your fathers ate was only a temporary
bread.
But I have come that you might have
bread, and if you eat of it you
shall never die.
And they said, Give us that bread, and
he said, I am the bread of life.
Then many turned and went away, they couldn't
take that, it was too doctrinal, too strong.
If there had been a preacher preaching like
that, they would have said, Well, we love
our brother, but let's get rid of him.
We think that that's too strong to say
that Jesus is bread, that I eat of
him.
But that's what it says here, nevertheless.
It says that in figure and type in
the Old Testament, it says it in blunt
language in the New Testament.
And the Church has agreed to it at
least nominally down the centuries, for we have
our communion service, and we eat of the
showbread while the light of the Holy Ghost
shines around about us.
And then there is the altar of incense.
What was that?
Sweet-smelling incense was laid on that altar
and burned, and that little room was filled
with the sweet-smelling incense.
That was prayer.
Isn't that a beautiful picture?
This is what this Church ought to be.
It ought to be a place that is
lighted by the light of the world, shed
forth by the sevenfold Holy Spirit.
And where we gather at intervals to eat
of the bread of life, not only on
Communion Sunday, that points it up, but all
the time, every Sunday.
And then where the altar of incense sends
up its sweet spirals of fragrant perfume, sweet
to God and pleasant in his nostril, and
the sound of prayer pleasant in his ear,
and the sight of an enlightened people gathered
together pleasant to his eyes, this is a
Church, brother and sister.
And that's the only kind of Church I'm
interested in.
I am not interested when you have to
go out and bring somebody in from the
outside and say, Will you come and perform
for us?
Can you imagine a priest bringing a clown
and saying to the clown, Now come, clown,
into the holy place.
Be reverent now, and do it for Jesus'
sake, but come, clown, into the holy place.
And when that clown came in, here was
light, the light that lighted every man, light
that never was on land or sea.
And here is the bread, reverently we may
eat and live forever, here is the altar
of incense where we can send up our
prayers to the ears of God, and now
the clown will do his part.
And of course, a big crowd will be
there to see the clown.
But I wouldn't.
I'd walk five miles to keep from seeing
him or hearing him, and I wouldn't walk
one inch to see him, and I wouldn't
give one dime to support him.
What do I mean by that?
I mean all of this extra-scriptural, unholy
crap that's been dragged into the Church in
recent times.
We have grieved the Holy Ghost and muted
the lights, and the bread has gotten stale,
and the altar of incense has lost its
fragrance.
But it's all for us, it's for you
and me, it's for us here as a
Church, it's for this Church, and it's for
everyone.
The light of the world and the bread
of life and the right to ask what
I will and have it done for me.
Now, a little further explanation might be that
here is the Church and the Kingdom.
And the traveler finds light, and the child
finds food, and the priest is able to
pray.
So you are a traveler on your way
home, but you have light.
It's terrible traveling at night without any light.
I never remember but once in my life
making a little trip over a hill in
the state of Pennsylvania when there was no
light at all.
Now, mostly there's a little bit of light,
the stars give a little bit of light,
and refraction gives a little light from somewhere.
But this time I would deliberately put my
hand like this, and I couldn't see my
hand moving in front of my face, literally
so.
I went by instinct, I knew where my
home was, and I knew the role of
the hills, and so as a young lad
I found my way by a sort of
instinct back to my home.
But it was completely, totally and hopelessly dark.
Just as dark as the inside of a
sealed box.
Without light, some kind of light, even a
little bit of light, the night can be
horribly, frightfully dark.
And Jesus said the dark night came when
no man could work, and the New Testament
talks about the moral and spiritual state of
the world as being that of a dark
night.
We travelers desperately need light.
I remember as a boy going out fishing
with an old fellow, and suddenly our light
went out.
But the old man was an old woodsman,
he wasn't worried.
It was terribly dark down there in the
swamps, we could never have gotten out.
But he had a bit of a stick,
and on the end of that stick was
a little fire, but the fire had gone
out.
So what he did was to wave it.
As he waved it, it glowed.
And he went ahead waving this thing round
and round and round, and it gave a
nice little circle of light, and we went
on our way.
I look out and I see these men
with their tiny little gel sticks, shaking them
around, and this one has a little light
here, and this one has a little light
there, but the landscape is dark, dark.
He carries his own light, and that's a
terrible thing.
But the light of the world is Jesus.
And the Christians have not their little light,
but they have their light of God.
Travelers find the light, and the child finds
food, and the priest is able to pray.
Now, that's the church.
And for that church I will give everything
that I have.
And if I knew that that kind of
church could be in the world now again,
that is, the churches could become that kind
of church, I wouldn't hesitate to give the
blood out of my veins.
I don't boast about it, but I think
I could say that, that I would gladly
do it, and I know that I have
many other thousands of friends who would, too,
if we could have the church again, the
church again, purified and cleansed.
So when we walk in, we know we
are walking in where the light shines, where
there is bread to eat and where there
is prayer to be made which goes to
the ear of God with acceptance.
That's the church.
I love thy kingdom, Lord, the house of
thine abode, the church our dear Redeemer saved
with his own precious blood.
I love the church, for this is what
the church is.
It's a company of people committed to this
faith, to this kind of belief.
Now, there is yet further penetration, but I
am deliberately stopping short of the inner, inner
holy of holies, the sanctum sanctorum.
I am stopping short of that because I
want to talk about that next Sunday.
But we let it rest at that now
and point out that the altar is here,
the Lamb that once was slain, he didn't
stay dead, he rose again, but his sacrifice
remains efficacious forever.
The cleansing blood is here so you and
I can come, come on into that presence.
The question is, have we done it?
The question is, are we doing it?
I hope that it may be so that
we have, but if there should be those
who haven't, then I point to the cross
where he died, to the blood that cleanses,
to the Holy Ghost who gives the light,
to the living Lamb that gives the bread,
and tell you that you have a right
to enter and be a priest of the
Most High God, as certainly as Melchizedek or
Aaron.
That your prayers can rise, cleansed by blood,
enlightened by the Holy Ghost, into the very
presence of God.
How can I enter that very farthest-in
presence and habitually live in the presence?
I'll tell you next Sunday, because I must
close now.
In the meantime, I'll be going down to
North Carolina and preaching down there to a
company of preachers.
They've got a retreat down there.
Vance Havner says, preachers ought to advance, not
retreat.
But I'm going down to that retreat, preaching
twice a day, and I'll be back here
the latter part of the week.
In the meantime, I'll have in mind you,
and I'll have in mind this marvelous secret
of entering the presence and living there all
the time.