Welcome to From the Pulpit in Classic Sermons.
Each week we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers in the
Christian faith.
And powerful sermons from modern preachers too.
This week we have David Ravenhill with his
message, The Presence of God.
I would say, joy to be with you
this morning.
As I tell people as I travel around
the world that it's always good to meet
the rest of the family.
And I'm your brother, whether you like it
or not.
And your brothers and sisters are mine, and
I can't do anything about that either.
But we're all redeemed by the same blood,
all part of the same family.
All going to that one great eternal abode
in the presence of God.
Let's just look to the Lord in prayer,
shall we?
Father, we just confess again our need of
you.
Lord, unless you build a house, we labor
in vain.
And so Lord, come and do what you
promised to do.
You said, I will build my church.
Lord, we recognize this is your church.
We recognize your leadership, your headship, your lordship.
Father, we bow again in submission to you
today, Lord.
Have your way, we pray, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I want to speak to you this morning
on the presence of God.
My wife and I had the privilege of
raising our family in the city of Christchurch,
New Zealand.
And if you are familiar with that city,
you know that it is built around a
wonderful old Anglican cathedral.
And not too many blocks away, there is
a museum called the Canterbury Museum.
And as you go into the entrance of
that museum, there is a verse of Scripture
taken from the book of Job, Job chapter
26, verse 14.
And it says this, Lo, these are a
part of his ways, but how little a
portion do we hear of him.
Lo, these are a part of his ways,
but how little a portion do we hear
of him.
I've spent many hours in that museum when
our children were younger.
We now have grandchildren.
But going down the various corridors, looking at
all the display cabinets, admiring all of God's
creation.
I've seen children grab the hand of a
parent and point to some animal, a bird,
a reptile, and say, what's that, or where
does this come from, and so on.
And yet in all the hours that I've
spent in that museum, I don't ever remember
anybody attributing all of that handiwork to God
himself.
And so that verse is a fitting verse.
These are a part of his ways, but
how little a portion is heard of him.
And while that may be a good verse
for a museum, it is a tragic verse
to put over the house of God.
And yet I think we could write it
over many congregations.
I'm not sure about Singapore, but I know
in America, we could write it over dozens
and dozens of congregations.
These are simply a part of his ways,
but how little a portion we hear of
him.
I was given a book a number of
years ago by my father, a book by
one of my favorite authors, Dr. Martin Lloyd
-Jones.
In the preface of that book on the
Sermon on the Mount, he makes a statement
that I have told Bible school students is
worth at least one semester.
In most Bible schools and seminaries, that normally
gets their attention.
And the statement is simply this, there is
nothing so likely to lead to error or
heresy as to begin with the parts rather
than the whole.
Let me say that again.
There is nothing so likely to lead to
error or to heresy as to begin with
the parts rather than the whole.
There is incredible insight and wisdom behind that
statement.
And years and years of experience as that
man was one of the great writers, great
teachers, expositors of our day.
I was in India back in 1986, I
think.
We were living in New Zealand at the
time.
And I was ministering there just for a
week.
A friend of mine was in charge of
a Bible school and invited me to come
over and speak.
And there in the compound of the school,
there was a brand new Jeep, belonged to
the director.
And I was trying to get across the
importance of that statement to those students.
That again, there is nothing likely to lead
to error or heresy as to begin with
the parts rather than the whole.
And I said, if I came to the
school and using the Jeep as an illustration,
I said, suppose as a visiting lecturer, I
spent the entire year speaking about the carburetor
on that Jeep.
And I talk about all the different types
of carburetors, you know, single barrel, two barrel,
four barrel, six barrel.
If you're into drag racing, I talk about
the evolution of the carburetor into fuel injection.
An hour after hour after hour, day after
day after day, week after week after week,
month after month.
All I do is stress the importance of
the carburetor.
At the end of that year, you have
a graduating class and they spread out all
over India and they establish the carburetor movement.
A group of churches that emphasize carburetor theology.
The following year, there's another guest speaker.
He comes, he's got a revelation on another
part of the engine, let's say the distributor.
And like the carburetor man, he talks about
the importance of the distributor, what it does,
the components that make up the distributor.
He gives you the Greek word for distributor
and the Hebrew word for distributor.
He gives you books to read about the
great distributor developers and so on.
There's exams and tests about distributors and so
on.
At the end of the year, once again,
these students have been steeped in distributor theology
and now all over India, there's a brand
new movement called the Distributor Churches.
The following year, there's a guest speaker.
He takes out of his pocket a little
gadget about three and a half inches long,
four inches.
And it's white at the top, black at
the bottom.
And he begins his class by saying, I
want to tell you the most important part
of a car engine is this little thing
here.
Without this, it's impossible to please God, I
mean, start the car.
And he talks about the importance of the
carburetor.
Sorry, about the spark plug.
And hour after hour after hour, all they
hear about is this little spark plug.
He says you can have a brand new
Ferrari.
That thing may cost you a million Singapore
dollars or more.
It's capable of doing 200 plus miles an
hour.
It's got Connelly leather seats and so on
and so forth, Pirelli tires and Bose stereo
system that will blow you from here to
Indonesia.
But he says if you take out that
little plug, that car will not even move.
So I'm here to tell you the most
important part of a car engine is this.
And of course, they are absolutely convinced.
They've never heard of a carburetor, never heard
of a distributor, never heard of the block
or the pistons or anything else.
And this man convinces them because of his
eloquence that this is the most important thing.
Again, at the end of the year, you
have a graduating class now and you have
the spark plug movement all over India.
And of course, spark plug churches gather together
and they have spark plug conferences and they
call in their spark plug speakers and they
perpetuate the spark plug theology.
Meantime, across town, there is a carburetor conference
going on and next month, there's going to
be a distributor conference going on and never
the twain shall meet.
I know that's rather humorous, but tragically, it's
true.
You see, in America, at least, we have
movements.
We have an entire movement devoted to faith,
another movement devoted to prosperity, another movement, signs
and wonders, another movement, holiness, another movement, evangelism,
another movement into inner healing or whatever it
may be.
And there is nothing so likely to lead
to error or heresy as to begin with
the parts rather than the whole.
If you put all those parts together, you
have a person.
His name is Lord Jesus Christ.
He said, I am the way, not a
part of the truth.
I am the truth.
And as I've studied the lives of great
men and women of God over the years,
I've come to this conclusion.
They all had one common denominator, and that
was an insatiable longing for the presence of
God.
That was the one thing.
You see it in the life of Paul
that I may know him, not just about
it.
Paul had his theology down pat.
He's still confusing people as to what he
really meant on certain things and so on.
But he didn't say, I know what I
believe.
Obviously, he did.
He said, I know in whom I have
believed.
It was a relationship.
It was Paul's passion to know him, not
just know about him, not have all his
theology or eschatology and so on figured out.
But he wanted to know, again, that intimacy
with God, that longing, that desire.
Writing to the Colossians, he says that he
might have preeminence in all things.
It's not faith.
It's not prosperity.
It's not some facet of truth.
It is the truth.
It is to have the place of supremacy,
the place of centrality in our Christian life.
And you go to all of these great
men in the Word of God, and again,
that is their longing.
Jeremiah says, if you're going to boast about
anything, don't boast about your prosperity, your riches.
Don't boast about your wisdom or your intellect
and so on.
Don't boast about your strength, your ability to
shred phone books.
But he says, boast in this, that you
know and you understand me, saith the Lord.
That's what it's all about, isn't it?
It's not about human strength.
It's not about our mind and our education
and so on.
Those may be good things, but ultimately, it's
about how do I know him?
How much do I know him?
We see men like David who time after
time throughout the Word of God expresses his
longing for the presence of God.
Who have I in heaven but thee?
And there is nothing on earth I desire
beside thee.
I still think that's one of the most
challenging verses.
I've been stuck on it for many, many
years.
It's very easy to agree with the first
part of the verse, who have I in
heaven but thee?
I have a father there, mother, a few
relatives and friends and so on.
But basically, it's easy just to say, who
have I in heaven but thee?
The second part of the verse is the
challenging part.
And there is nothing on earth I desire
beside thee.
David is a king.
Looked over that vast kingdom.
He had the power, the position to have
whatever he wanted.
And you and I, again, face that every
single day.
There are billboards screaming at us.
If you don't drive this sort of car,
live in this sort of a house where
these sort of clothes have this sort of
a watch or whatever it is and so
on and so forth, you know, you're not
going to be satisfied.
And David was able to bypass all of
that.
And he says, I can look past every
single billboard in the country because, he says,
there's nothing on earth that I desire beside
thee.
What a statement.
Who have I in heaven but thee?
He says.
And there in the Psalms over and over
and over again, David expresses that long as
a deer pants for the water brook.
So longs my soul for thee, O Lord.
I was with a wonderful man of God
some years ago.
And we were ministering together up in the
Northwest in America.
And he touched on that psalm.
And I have still not forgotten what he
said.
He said the only reason the deer is
panting is because the deer is being pursued.
He said David as a shepherd boy would
sit on a rock.
And in the early hours of the morning,
the deer would saunter by down into the
valley, drink their fill, disappear into the forest
or thicket somewhere.
And this would be a sort of routine.
But he says on this occasion, David is
sitting there and suddenly the deer comes flying
by.
And he can hear the heaving and the
panting of that deer as it's being pursued
and chased by maybe a mountain lion or
something.
And he says that deer knows instinctively there's
only one place of protection.
And that's to find its way into the
water brook because there in the water brook
it can shake off the scent or its
scent.
And the predator cannot pick up the trail.
And so he says the water brook becomes
a place of protection.
But he says not only that, he says
the water brook becomes a place of satisfaction.
Because there in the water brook he can
replenish that thirsty, tired, exhausted, weary body and
drink in that cool life-giving water.
And he says I believe David wrote this
when he was being pursued by Saul.
And Saul has made threats on his life
and David is running, fleeing.
And David knows there's only one place of
protection to come under the shadow of the
Almighty.
That's the only place.
But he says it's a place of protection
in the presence of God.
But not only that, a place of satisfaction
because the river of God is full of
water.
And there we can drink in again the
Spirit of God and find refreshment.
And David again goes on and on and
on about this longing that he has.
Just a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house
of the Lord than to dwell in the
tents of wickedness and so on.
If you have your Bible this morning, turn
with me to the book of Exodus.
Exodus chapter 32.
And here we find another man who has
this longing for the presence of God.
His name is Moses.
And we find him in this chapter in
the presence of God.
God has summons him to come up the
mountain.
And there he is in the presence of
God.
God has been speaking to him.
In the meantime, the children of Israel have
become restless.
Moses has been gone for many, many weeks.
And they go to Aaron, Moses' brother.
And they said, listen, we don't know what's
happened to Moses.
He's obviously died.
We need a God that will go before
us.
We need new leadership and so on.
You know the story how Aaron bows to
the pressure, gathers together all the jewelry from
the ladies, throws it into the fire and
out popped the golden calf.
At least that was his explanation.
It wasn't quite that simple, but it's amazing
what we say when we're backed into a
corner, isn't it?
He said, you know, it wasn't my fault.
I just, you know, it just sort of
happened.
And around that golden calf, there really is
nothing less than a sexual orgy that is
going on.
The people are out of control.
The worshipping as the nations round about them
worshipped, and most of their gods were fertility
gods in those days, still are in many
of our nations.
And so much of their worship again was
unclean.
It was based, it was essential in its
nature.
And God is angry with what he sees.
Not only is it because of the immorality
and not only the idolatry that is going
on, but they've done something that is possibly
the most serious thing of all.
And that is they touch the glory of
God, because it says there they've attributed all
of the great acts of God to this
creation of their own hands.
Notice it says in verse 8, they quickly
turned aside from the way which I commanded
them.
They made for themselves a molten calf.
They've worshipped it, sacrificed to it and says,
this is your God, O Israel, who brought
you out of the land of Egypt.
In other words, this creation is what delivered
you.
This is the one that turned the Nile
to blood.
This is the one that brought lice and,
you know, plagues of frogs and so on
and so forth.
This is one that ultimately slew the firstborn.
This is one that parted the Red Sea.
This is one that is responsible.
And one of the most dangerous things that
you and I can do is touch the
glory of God.
God will share everything with us apart from
his glory.
He'll give us his love, his patience, his
kindness, his righteousness and so on.
But my glory, I will not share with
any man.
They were taking again the glory of God,
robbing God of his glory.
That along with the immorality and idolatry, we
find God as angry, I think, as you
ever see him in the wood of God.
And he says there in verse 10, Leave
me alone, Moses, that my anger may burn
against them, that I may destroy them.
And I will make of you a great
nation.
Moses here has the opportunity of replacing Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob.
If you've ever studied this portion, this is
the most amazing situation that here Moses literally
can take the place of Abraham.
Abraham would have been forgotten.
God would have established a new nation.
The father of that nation would have been
Moses.
And he would have gone down through the
years as the leader of the nation of
Israel, the most important man, if you like.
And yet in the pressure of that situation,
Moses does not bow.
He is a shepherd.
He is interested in seeing his people again
forgiven.
And he begins to pray.
We pick up his prayer in verse 13.
He says to God, remember Abraham and Isaac
and Israel, your servants to whom you did
swear by yourself.
You said to them, I will multiply your
seed as the stars of heaven.
All this land that I've spoken, I will
give to your seed, and they shall inherit
it forever.
And so on the basis of covenant, we
find that Moses begins to intercede.
And basically what he says is this, God,
listen, we have contracts.
If we were to use today's terminology, we
could say, God, we have a contract here,
a contract that you made with Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, and it's got your signature on
it.
See right here.
You can't back out of this.
You can't renege on your promise.
We can take you to court, if you
like.
We've got your name on these contracts.
After all, God, you're supposed to be the
great promise keeper.
You're supposed to be the one that says
that I never change.
With me, there's no variable.
There's no shadow of turning.
You're the one that says I am the
Lord and I change not.
You're the one that says all the promises
are yea and amen in Christ.
You're the one that says my word is
more important than my very name.
God, you cannot do what you said you
would do, and if you do, we'll never
trust you again.
If you break your promise, if you renege
on these promises, how will we ever know
if you mean it from now on?
If you're going to be fickle like that
and change your mind, these are covenants.
These are promises we've held on to for
400 years in bondage, that God was going
to keep His word, and now if you
change it, we will never know again if
your word is reliable from this day on.
And so basically, that's his argument.
And God says, you got me.
Verse 14, the Lord changed His mind about
the evil that He said He would do
to His people.
We now go to the next chapter, and
it is now God's turn to remind Moses
that He is a covenant-keeping God.
Moses reminds God of His covenant.
Now God reminds Moses of His covenant.
Verse 1, And the Lord spoke to Moses,
saying, Depart from here, you and the people
who you brought out from the land of
Egypt to the land which I swore to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, To your descendants
I will give it.
I'll send an angel before you.
Drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite,
and so on.
So it's now time for the children of
Israel to advance towards their goal of going
into the promised land.
This was a dream, again, that they had
nurtured over the years.
This was the thing that kept them going.
If you like, this was the carrot at
the end of the stick that sort of
kept the donkey moving ahead, so to speak,
through all the years of bondage and servitude
and so on.
And it was this promise that one day
we're going to be free.
One day we'll have our own land, a
land that flows with milk and honey.
And God says to Moses, This is the
day.
I want you to begin to advance towards
that goal.
And I can imagine a ripple going through
the camp as they heard, as they began
to pack up their possessions and got ready
to begin to advance towards the promised land,
the excitement of that.
Again, we have a description of what the
land was like.
It says in verse 3, It was a
land flowing with milk and honey.
It wasn't literally, of course, flowing with milk
and honey.
They were not wading across rivers of milk
and trying to walk through knee-deep honey
and so on.
But that was descriptive of God's abundance, God's
blessing.
Deuteronomy 6, I think it is, you have
God describing what the land is like there.
Let me read a little bit of that
to you.
Verse 10, It shall come about when the
Lord your God brings you into the land
which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob, to give you great
and splendid cities which you did not build.
That was a very important PS.
By the way, you don't have to build
these ones.
I can imagine when they heard, Listen, I'm
going to give you great and splendid cities,
there was a sigh that went up.
Listen, I couldn't build another city if you
paid me.
Because their entire life had been one of
servitude, of building cities for Pharaoh.
In fact, the psalmist says, I've relieved your
shoulder of the burden.
The margin says, literally, I've taken the brick
load off your shoulder.
This was a nation bowed down.
From the moment you could work as a
little child, again as a slave, you had
to carry bricks.
And they were just bowed down.
Again, He's my glory and the lifter of
my head.
They were a nation stooped down, weighed down
with anxiety and fears and so on and
so forth.
And God says, I'm going to give you
great and splendid cities.
God is no man's debtor.
God keeps the books.
And He says, I'm going to give back
to you all those cities that you built.
I'm going to give you great and splendid
cities.
And you don't have to build them.
Then He says, houses full of good things
which you did not fill.
In other words, not old derelict houses that
need a lot of refurbishing and all the
material inside needs to be thrown away and
you've got to start all over again.
No, these are houses loaded with good things.
He says, hewn cisterns which you did not
dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did
not plant.
What an incredible promise.
This again was the dream, what we would
say in America, the American dream.
I'm sure you have that same dream, the
Singaporean dream of having your own little house
somewhere or apartment or whatever, all paid for.
In this case, it was a little better.
They weren't all sort of next door to
each other.
You had a little bit of land, houses
and vineyards and olive trees.
You weren't all squished up against each other.
You had your own water supply in the
backyard.
You didn't need to have desalinization processes and
so on.
You had a well there and abundance of
clean water and so on, all of that.
I mean, this was an incredible promise that
God had given to the children of Israel.
Then God drops a bombshell.
He says, by the way, Moses, as you
go in, you're going in without My presence.
I will not go with you.
Notice there in verse 3, Go up to
a land that flows with milk and honey
for I will not go up in your
midst because you are a stubborn people or
an obstinate people lest I destroy you on
the way.
Moses now is faced with a dilemma.
What do I do?
Do I go in to the presence of
God or do I stay?
He had two choices.
We've described one of those choices already.
Again, houses and lands and vineyards and olive
trees, great splendid cities, everything that in the
natural man would love to have, but no
presence of God.
Now, if you had to make a decision
this morning, what would your choice be?
If you were faced with a situation that
Moses is faced with, do I go in
and take the children of Israel in?
This is the thing that has kept them
going over those 400 years of bondage.
You say, well, that's very carnal, that's very
materialistic, houses, lands and vineyards.
Well, let me sweeten the deal a little
bit.
I'll send an angel before you.
Not a demon, an angel, an angel that
will do signs, wonders and miracles, things that
you're incapable of doing.
When you run into a rough patch, all
you've got to do is call on the
angel.
He'll drive out the Hittite, the Perizzite, the
Jebusite and so on.
He'll do all these signs, wonders and miracles,
but still not have the presence of God.
That's choice number one.
Choice number two is to stay where you
are.
Let me describe where you are.
The Bible calls it a waste howling wilderness,
a place of intense heat by day, freezing
temperatures at night.
The sun will not smite thee by day,
nor the moon by night.
Again, the temperatures would plummet.
It was a place of scorpions, the Bible
says.
It was just the most desolate place.
There were no cities.
There was no vegetation.
There was no possibility of looking after yourself
apart from the supernatural supply of manna.
It was not exactly the American dream or
the Singaporean dream.
Again, just a waste howling wilderness.
Moses, of course, had an advantage that the
children of Israel didn't have as he is
faced with this decision.
You see, Moses was raised a son of
Pharaoh's daughter.
Moses grew up in the finest home in
all of Egypt, the equivalent in America of
the White House.
He had the finest education.
He didn't go to school.
The teachers came to him.
He rode around in the latest model chariot.
He had all the finest clothes of Egypt.
After all, he was a king's kid.
He was a kid that had incredible privilege.
He had everything going for him, everything that
money could buy.
Money was no option.
After all, he was royalty, possibly being groomed
to be one of the pharaohs.
And yet the day came when the Bible
says that it didn't satisfy as we've heard
so often there was a God-shaped blank,
if you like, in the heart of Moses.
The Bible says that Moses chose to suffer
affliction with the people of God rather than
all the treasures and pleasures of Egypt, and
he turned his back on that.
And as we have the saying in America,
I've been there and done that.
He knew that no house, no vineyard, no
olive tree, none of those things could satisfy.
There's only one form of satisfaction.
It's the presence of God.
And so he does what Moses does so
well.
He begins to pray.
And he says now in verse 13, Now,
therefore, I pray thee, if I found favor
in your sight, let me know your ways
that I may know thee, so that I
may find favor in your sight.
Consider, too, that this nation is thy people.
Now, notice his prayer is not one of
compromise, but he says, Let me know you
that I may know your ways, or let
me know your ways that I may know
you.
What a strange prayer, don't you think?
I say a strange prayer given the circumstances
because my prayer would have been totally different.
I have to be honest.
If I was Moses, I'd have said to
God something like this, God, let's reason together.
After all, you're the one that suggested it.
Come, let's reason together.
So I'm going to take you up on
your offer.
You know, let's talk man-to-man, face
-to-face.
Let's be real.
God, there's a part of me that loves
houses and lands and vineyards and all the
normal, natural things, but there's a part of
me that wants your presence as well, so
why don't we have some sort of compromise
here?
Oh, I know we get on your nerves.
You know, you're still upset.
Boy, you said you were so mad the
other day, and I know we sometimes say
things, we get emotional, and afterwards we regret
because we just said too much in the
heat of the moment, but now that you've
had time to settle down and so on,
I mean, you accused us of being stubborn,
and God, I say this reverently, I think
you've been a little stubborn yourself here.
I mean, that would have been my argument.
Lord, some sort of compromise.
It would be nice if you came every
once in a while.
I know we get on your nerves.
You don't need to hang around us all
night.
In fact, the fact is, God, I'll tell
you a secret, and I know you know
secrets anyway, but we get along pretty well
without you most of the week.
Oh, we've got our degrees, and we're educated
and so on, but we need you in
times of crisis.
You're a present help in time of trouble,
but the rest of the time I get
by with my degree.
I mean, that would have been my argument.
God, let's compromise.
I mean, why don't you come up, you
know, and see us every once in a
while, the great feast days.
It would be nice if you came there.
Moses doesn't mention houses, lands, and vineyards.
All he says is, God, I want to
know you.
Teach me your ways, Lord, that I may
know you.
And as the Bible says, deep calls unto
deep, and God responds, and he says to
Moses, my presence will go with you, and
I will give you rest.
And Moses said, how can it be known,
and I think this is one of my
favorite verses in the Bible, how can it
be known that I've found favor in your
side, I and thy people?
Is it not by thy going with us,
so that we, I and thy people, may
be distinguished from all the other people who
are on the face of the earth?
Moses said there's only one thing that distinguishes
us.
It's not our long sideburns.
It's not our kosher diet.
It's not even our Ten Commandments.
It's not even our feast days.
It's not even our tabernacle.
The only thing that makes us unique is
the fact that your presence dwells in our
midst.
And if your presence doesn't go, we just
end up with a form of godliness, but
there's no power.
And I'm sure in Moses' mind, he was
thinking the nations ran about.
They had their temples.
They had their priests.
They had their sacrifices.
They had their holy days.
They had their songs and rituals and so
on that they went through, but he says,
listen, we have the presence of God, and
they don't.
And if you take away your presence from
us, Lord, we're no different.
We may dress differently.
We may eat a different diet.
We may do this and that, but we're
really no different.
The only thing that distinguishes us, the only
thing that sets us apart is your presence.
Lord, we can't live without your presence.
You've been listening to From the Pulpit and
Classic Sermon Series.
This week you heard David Ravenhill with his
message, The Presence of God.
Tune in next week to hear Billy Graham
talk about the second coming of Christ.
On From the Pulpit and Classic Sermons.