Whosoever shall call on the name of the
Lord shall not be disappointed.
We have not a single complaint, Lord.
You're so good.
So we bless you, my God, for the
mercies that are ours every day.
However able we are to recognize them, you've
been good to us, Lord, even in these
immediate days.
Thank you.
And indeed, it is well with our soul,
Lord.
Come and uplift those that are fatigued, my
God, and breathe afresh upon the inner man
and grant us something of your inexhaustible life
and its strength, Lord, even to discuss, to
handle, to contemplate difficult things.
So do we bless you, Lord.
What a precious high calling of God we
have in Christ Jesus, and what a precious
grace, my God, to meet it.
So come, Lord, bless your servants, bless your
people whom you've gathered to yourself in these
days.
Enlarge us, stretch us, my God, establish us.
Thank you, Lord.
Give us glimpses of the eternal reward, and
we even now enjoy its contemplation.
And we bless you, Lord, for what I
have not seen and you have not heard,
that you have laid out for those who
love you.
We bless you, Lord.
Precious God, if you're proud of invisible witnesses
over us tonight, we wouldn't be a bit
surprised.
And if we could even put in our
request, we would desire that, which would be
a token of the statement that we're about
something, my God, in which they have a
stake and an interest.
And they're looking down with more than just
mild curiosity.
They have a better understanding and appreciation of
what is represented here.
And we welcome, my God, their being together
with us in these days.
Thank you, Lord.
Precious God, may their souls be gratified as
they see an encouragement and a hope pointing
toward the thing for which they sacrificed and
gave themselves.
Now approaching fulfillment.
We thank you, Lord.
Amen.
Well, I like what we started with this
morning of what the prophet represents and how
he blows the whistle on the things that
are unreal, sane, false, synthetic, compromised, the things
that constitute the lie.
And if people continue with it, constitutes death,
death even while they live.
Not death as final termination, but death even
while they live.
Any restriction, any stupefaction, any constricted life is
a measure of death.
Any falling short of the full life that
God intends for men and women in their
humanity and with God, any loss of that
is the incursion of death.
Headaches, tiredness, fatigue, depression, moods, even moods.
Anything that restricts the life is some expression
of death.
So the prophet is totally committed to life
and has an uncanny ability to discern and
to pick up those elements of death that
had become so normative that people learn to
live with it as if it's customary.
The prophet will not tolerate it.
He'll cry out, he'll demand, he'll intervene and
intercede for the fullness of life.
Paul was a full-orbed man.
I love the breadth of Paul.
Even as your prophets have written, he says
in Acts 17, indicating that he was not
so hyper-spiritual that he couldn't touch something
of the world's culture and its thought.
Fluent in that language and there's a breadth
of the man.
And maybe that's what, I'll put it this
way.
After misspending my first year as a believer,
trying to bring to the Bible the analytical
literary skills developed in universities, thinking was that
kind of literature, I was going to do
with God what I did with Shakespeare.
And we got nowhere, spinning my wheels.
Someone just said to me one day, Art,
do you know what the whole Bible is
about?
I said, what?
He said, it's how to live.
Well, that was a stunning thought, how to
live and to live fully.
Jesus said, I've come to bring you life
and that more abundantly.
So we need to contend for life.
And be against every kind of pharmaceutical deadening
and stultifying thing that even children are taking
now because they're hyper and whatever it is
to quiet them.
So where does the prophet get his perspective?
What is the basis by which he sees
by comparison the things that are contrary to
God?
He has a particular vantage point of seeing
where it would not be an exaggeration to
say he sees as God sees or he
sees with God's seeing.
And that's a remarkable vantage point.
So I'm just tempted, I'm toying with the
thought of looking at a statement in Exodus
that God himself describes as the place in
which he would meet with those who come
to that particular locus in the tabernacle of
God.
And there he would commune with those who
meet with him there.
Remember that the condemnation of the false prophets
is that they get their word from each
other.
And they say that they had a dream
or that the Lord had said, but he
did not send, he did not speak, and
he was not the author of that dream.
They coined it out of their own humanity.
They did not get it from the counsel
of God.
They were not in the place with God
in fellowship in which his communion and communication
would be given that they could then relate
and speak.
Where is that place of counsel?
So kind of interesting to go back to
a place of beginning where on the mount
Moses is given the design of God, the
pattern that should be maintained.
Chapter 25, I'm looking at 24 with that
scripture about the mount, on the mount, be
sure that you build it according to the
pattern.
Here it is, it's in 25 verse 8.
After all of the details, and it's very
detailed, we don't have the time to go
into it, the dimensions, the size, the stones,
the building materials, everything is so specific, even
the oil in a later place in Exodus,
how to make the anointing oil and the
strict injunction that there should not be any
other made like it.
Don't try and come up with some substitute
that seems to be like it.
It has got to be the authentic thing
according to the prescription of God.
And he tells you in what measure to
use this spice, that spice, and that it's
got to be tempered altogether, ground in a
pestle and a mortar and ground very small.
It's a remarkable, intricate, detailed statement that makes
you to suspect that there's a purpose for
God in these details that go beyond the
immediate issue of what was to be built
in the generation of Moses.
But that God is speaking to all generations
in symbolic terms that we need to understand
and to perceive that there is a pattern
and it's a sanctuary for me that I
may dwell among them.
If you'll excuse my reference, another word for
sanctuary is tent.
According to all that I'm going to show
you as the pattern of the tabernacle and
the pattern of all its furniture, just so
you shall construct it exactly.
And then it goes on, they construct an
arc of acacia wood, two and a half
cubits long, one and a half cubits wide,
one and a half cubits high.
Cubit is about 18 inches.
I've never understood, maybe someone can help, why
the measures are irregular.
Instead of two feet long, it's a foot
and a half.
It's a cubit and a half.
It's as if the corresponding half that you're
constructing here for me on earth is to
be found in heaven.
And the day will come when what is
above will come down on below and the
two will be joined as one.
Where does it say that at?
I don't know that it does say that,
but I'm trying to suspect, understand why we're
given, being given here, measures of a remarkable
kind.
You would think that they would be complete,
but they seem to be in part and
fragmentary.
And of course, it's all out of the
divine wisdom of God, whose mind and will
is past finding out.
But whatever it was, there's no explanation, only
the injunction.
So, and according to this, you shall build
it.
Don't vary.
Don't be expedient.
Don't cut any corners.
You shall overlay it with pure gold inside
and out.
You shall overlay it.
You shall make a gold molding around it.
You shall cast four gold rings for it
and fashion them on its four feet and
two rings should be on one side, two
rings on the other.
Of course, you shall make poles of acacia
wood and overlay them with gold.
You shall put the poles into the rings
on the sides of the ark to carry
the ark with them.
And the pole shall remain in the rings
of the ark.
They shall not be removed from it.
Acacia wood is the lowliest scrub brush wood
to be found in the wilderness.
It's not your handsome oak.
It's twisted and gnarled by the elements in
the wilderness.
It's the most common, the most available, the
most ordinary, and the most unattractive building material.
And yet, that was the wood in which
the ark of God was to be made.
But it's to be overlaid both on the
inside and the outside by gold.
Gold is the symbolic metal representing deity.
So the wood is never directly touching the
things of God because it's overlaid with gold.
If that's not a picture of the saints
and the diversity of the saints made up
of scrub brush and ordinary roughage to be
found in the wilderness, then I don't know
what is.
But the privilege and the honor that out
of this ordinary material, God constructs an everlastingly
beautiful and glorious sanctuary for his presence.
All of this is his dwelling.
And so the poles and the rings, that
it's to be borne that a man's hand
will not touch it, but it's to be
borne on the shoulders of the Levites and
the priests.
Can you imagine that that's your lifelong function
and ministry, is to bear that ark no
more, no less.
And you can't begin to function in it
until you're 30 years of age.
And when you're 50, you retire.
God takes the 20 best years of a
man's life and does not count it to
extravagant an investment that only in those years
shall he serve me as priest.
And he's bearing the ark on foreshoulders.
We know what happened when David, forgetting these
injunctions, put the ark on a cart.
And as it was being moved and began
to be jostled, and it seemed to threaten
to overturn, a well-meaning guy put his
hand on it, boom, and perished.
Man's hand shall not touch it.
The oil, you shall not make another like
it.
Upon man's flesh, it shall not be poured.
The garment of the priest, if we had
time to go into this, and the way
in which they even ascend up to the
place of ministry is not on steps, but
on a ramp.
Even that detail is given.
Why?
Because in raising the leg, if it had
to go from step to step, the flesh
of a man's thigh might have been seen.
But on a ramp, he can take mincing
little steps and not reveal his flesh.
Remarkable.
Tell you what, dear saints, this is more
than just Old Testament archaeology.
This is insight of the holiness of God
and what is sacred that is not to
be given in any other place.
And though the ark itself is lost, but
the details pertaining to it and the priesthood
and the ordination and all those things convey
a sense of God that is not to
be found in another place.
The only people I know who have retained
any sense of this and want to see
it reestablished and are even now making some
of the utensils for temple use are these
many Orthodox Jews.
And they have brooded over this inheritance, and
we have discarded it.
And so we don't exhibit to them any
kind of priestly demeanor in what we are
about.
Jesus is the High Priest and the Apostle
of all confession.
And as you know from the Apostolic Foundation's
book and tapes, my reiterated contention that there's
no apostolicity without a priesthood.
There's no propheticness without a priest, priestliness.
There's no evangelism without priestliness.
Priestliness is the necessary sine qua non, the
Latin term, of the necessary and indispensable condition
by which the other follows.
No priesthood, no apostleship.
What we have today are men presuming to
be apostles who don't even give the faintest
tincture or intimation of a sense of priestliness.
And I'm not in any way saying that
they have to go into the law and
that the law, no, they have to go
into the essence.
They've got to come into the sense that
is deposited for us in these remarkable scriptures
that something might come in to their being
that will temper and touch every word they
speak, every gesture that they make, every look,
that even in their silence they are an
indictment.
This quality needs to come into the church.
And so we do well to see how
fastidious God is in the details that he
requires, even in the furniture of the sanctuary,
just the furnishings.
And we know that the sanctuary itself was
explicit of the material with which it's made
and the poles.
And here's a whole Levitical people whose function
is only to carry it for it is
a thing that moves.
It's mobile and the glory of God and
fire by night and his presence by day
leads, leads this people as they bear this
great sanctuary that his presence might dwell with
us.
If you go, if you go, don't go
up with us, don't send us.
Your presence is necessary.
And this is where my presence will reside
in the tabernacle, in the sanctuary that you
shall make according to the pattern given you
on the mount.
And then we come to the chief article
of furnishing in the tabernacle.
You know, there are three courts.
There's an outer court with the brazen thing
for water, for washing.
Then there's the brazen altar for the sacrifice.
That's the place of foundational salvation.
And there is a greater deal of activity
with priests, with the sacrifice and the cutting
away and the washing and all of these
things.
Then is the second compartment called the holy
place.
And there is much less activity, but there's
the showbread and the showbread table and the
bread.
And what else?
There's the menorah because now you've gone out
from the open air sunlight into an enclosure.
And the only illumination is the menorah of
God, the seven branch candlestick.
And by that light is another kind of
seeing.
We're talking about where does, how does the
prophet see?
Where does he, how does he have his
sense of things that puts him in such
opposition and contradiction to the world?
Because there's a contest about reality.
There's a rivalry between the powers of darkness
and their wisdom and God as to what
in fact constitutes that which is real.
So the prophet is the guardian and the
spokesman to even to commend to God's people,
the vision of the reality given of God
for everything in the world that is external
and seen contends against it.
That's why Paul says, I see that which
is invisible and eternal.
I see the invisible weight of glory.
I do not look upon the things which
are seen.
He takes an effort because the things that
are seen are voluptuous and engaging and seductive.
That's why they are that they want you
to be engaged with your eyeballs and then
your senses, then your thought, then your conduct,
and then your action.
I despise going to Bemidji to go to
a supermarket or Walmart or any such place.
It's an agony.
I want to get in and out as
quickly as I can with a minimum of
time and even almost have to shut my
eyes from having to look.
I do not look, Paul says, upon the
things that are seen.
Another remarkable statement.
I make it my business to avoid allowing
the visible things to engage me as if
they constitute reality.
The reality that I see because I avert
my eyes from that which is seen is
that which is both invisible and eternal.
And because I see that which is eternal,
I see the eternal weight of glory and
I see it so vividly and so as
the constituting the uttermost reality of how I
see that it makes my present suffering both
momentary and light.
Well, what's the reason for your suffering?
Because you have this insane propensity and the
powers of the air hate you for it
and they will afflict you for it because
you're not one of the boys, because you're
not playing the game, because you're not seduced
and taken up with visible things, rewards and
titles and prestige and comfort and creature comfort,
all the kinds of things that the world
is about to seduce the souls of men
and turn them from God to themselves as
the God of this world.
It's a battle for conflicting realities and the
world seems to have all the marvels.
You know that when we had a 10
-day period of fasting and 24 hours around
-the-clock prayer at an earlier time in
Ben Israel's history and we came out of
that and on the first day that we
came out of that 10-day fast, the
Lord said, go to Bemidji State University and
conduct an evangelistic outreach.
No sweat, Lord.
I've been at the University of California, I've
been at Berkeley, I've been at UCLA, I've
been at Cal, I've been at Yale, I've
been at Harvard, I've been at Tubingen, I've
been at Aarhus, you name it, the universities
in the world where I have spoken and
contended for the Lord.
Bemidji State did stuff.
So we got into a van, we were
all revved up, I tell you with that
fasting and that prayer at 24 hours o
'clock that if we could have at that
moment spoken, the word of God would have
breathed out of us.
The whole university would have gone down flat
like the walls of Jericho, not just the
student body, the administrators, the faculty.
The only catch was we had to ride
for 30 minutes to get to Bemidji.
All through the countryside but as we started
to come into Bemidji and started to see
the buildings and the visible structures of that
civilization and then came with inside of the
university itself and the arts building and the
great dish outside, whatever they call that, I
could feel the virtue just going out of
me.
So that by the time we set up
the microphones and came into the student union
building for the first meeting at 12 o
'clock, there was nothing in me left.
I had been robbed by the things that
were seen.
The world had done a number on me
and I never felt more foolish and more
stupid to have thought that we have anything
to say at that university but the clock
was ticking away and there were the Venezuelan
people.
I was to begin and the word was
on eternal judgment.
Try that out at the student union building
sometime.
While the bell rings and they're going from
class to class and they're coming in hungry
and they're going to the pop machines and
they're getting their corn chips and this and
that and going through and there's some jerk
standing there looking as awkward as all get
out with a and his people positioned that
way you have to begin.
I began and it seemed so futile and
weak and inept but it was enough to
to gall some of the instructors to remarkable
anger.
I could almost see the smoke coming out
of these guys ears and they turned to
look at this evangelism in their dining room
and one of them got up from the
table and said where do you get the
authority to do this?
Good question.
That's how foolishly the whole four days of
outreach started.
We didn't see any visible fruit and on
the last day in a we were fasting
again through that time on the last day
in a fast I went from door to
door in the dormitory knocking on doors and
inviting them to a meeting that night of
a kind I said I don't care what
your Christian background you have never seen anything
like what we're going to see tonight just
by faith that God in the end is
going to bring a great climax and when
those doors opened you found students male and
female in compromising positions and we're going from
there which is also a drain looking upon
that which is visible and finally we came
together that night and I had no message
that Lord this is the climax and I've
been advertising you and that what you're going
to do will exceed anything that they may
have ever known from their Christian life and
for which reason they're coming on that boast
and I have no message and so it
went finally had to start the meeting I
opened with prayer I looked out on maybe
I don't know what 50 75 100 people
and had nothing more to say and a
hand went up there's one of the Venezuelan
people art do you mind if I share
the Lord showed me something this morning of
my devotional time I said no I don't
like come and share and then someone else
had something and someone else had something what
the message was that night was the body
of Christ the Venezuelan people sharing the verse
sharing something out of devotional time sharing the
thought sharing the prayer until finally it was
time to conclude I thought what what an
inadequate presentation I thought we're going to see
power and all of just these homey little
things being expressed so but I've got to
end with an invitation so I'm looking at
the guys in the front row there are
four guys that they they were looking like
they're just waiting up to me to work
me over this is going to cost us
something my my Jewish nose was going to
be massaged and I gave the invitation weak
and inept and this guy started to get
out of his seat I thought here it
comes and he said I've never seen or
heard anything like this in my life what
must I do to be saved all four
of them are in ministry today and so
we prayed with them they came to the
Lord and we're about to pack up and
they said how about getting baptized I said
what they said there's a lake right here
at the university it was pitch black out
I'm wearing my my preaching pants no bathing
suit they wanted to I said well we
have been this we're going to buy a
lake next week or we can arrange the
time but we think that it ought to
be now so we let left the ladies
in the building to pray while some of
us as men went out into the lake
took our pants off and went in and
our bbds and baptized thinking what a what
a what a slim result for so great
an investment 10 days of prayer and fasting
around the clock and all we got before
but to learn later that those four are
in and have remain in full-time ministry
and pray this God that may turn the
world upside down my point is you'll never
be more foolish than accepting your obedience and
when you when your eye is open to
see you'll feel the virtue going out from
you so there is a place of seeing
that needs to be sought and then we
have a vantage point with the world and
I believe that that place is the tabernacle
of God it's where he is it's where
he was literally at this time and where
he may be symbolically in the description of
these requirements verse 17 you shall make a
mercy seat of pure gold two and a
half cubits long one and a half cubits
wide again these are regular measures and you
shall make it make two cherubim of gold
make them of hammock work at the two
ends of the mercy seat and make one
cherub at one end and one cherub at
the other end and and you shall make
the cherubim of one piece with the mercy
seat at its two ends and the cherubim
shall have their wings spread upward covering the
mercy seat with their wings and facing one
another the face the faces of the cherubim
are to be turned toward the mercy seat
and you shall put the mercy seat on
top of the ark and in the ark
you shall put the testimony which I shall
give you the ten commandments and there I
will meet with you and there there I
will meet with you from above the mercy
seat and from between the two cherubim which
are upon the ark of the testimony and
there I will speak to you or give
you instruction about all that pertains in commandment
for the sons of Israel a remarkable description
why does God require this mercy seat with
a cherubim on one end the term and
the other hammered out of pure gold and
anyone who has had experience in the truth
of the body of Christ knows what being
hammered out of pure gold means and it's
one with the mercy seat itself but one
on one end and one on the other
end and facing each other and at the
same time looking down through the mercy seat
to the ten commandments and the pot of
manna and Aaron's rod that butted that is
below or within what does all that mean
there I will meet with you and in
no other place but above that mercy seat
and between the cherubim there I will meet
with you well I think that the two
cherubim represent all that is contrary and opposite
in the genius of God's creation male and
female jew and gentile prophet and teacher think
of any tension and inherent and resident opposition
that comes from the differences that God himself
creates and God is saying I'll meet you
in the place of tension I'll meet you
in the place where the natural outworking of
the differences that I created will be the
most viable and and forceful reality if you'll
not turn away from it if you'll face
each other and because your tendency will be
to run and this guy doesn't understand he
doesn't have the prophet's breath he doesn't see
the ultimate thing and the teacher's ready to
run because the prophet is being inspired by
a ketchup label and where does he get
that in this picture and how dare he
say I have the sweeping generalization and say
that this means that what they are in
themselves is by nature so volatile and so
oppositional but God says have them to face
each other look look each other straight in
the eyeball but at the same time look
down to the place of mercy I can't
think of a more profound requirement where alone
where God will be met there I'll meet
with you and no other place I'll meet
with you if you'll be willing for the
conditions represented by these by these charitables beaten
out of pure gold if you're blanched if
you balk if you don't like the requirement
if you don't want to look straight on
if you or if you refuse to consider
looking also at the same time at the
place of mercy I'll not be above and
I'll not be between there I will meet
with you and there I will commune with
you and there I will speak to you
and give you instruction and in commandment for
the sons of Israel I'll give you my
word I'll give you my prophetic mind I'll
give you my thought I'll give you my
instruction you don't have to conjure something up
or catch what is the consensus that is
now popular or pick up what someone else
is saying and then you play it in
order to obtain popularity if you'll meet with
me in that place I will give you
that a precious dependency and a precious promise
because only that instruction is viable only that
instruction is life-giving only that instruction can
meet the need of an hour and the
time as God in his great wisdom knows
it and in his great grace gives it
in that place I will meet with you
so the tabernacle may be lost historically maybe
we'll not see it again but the wisdom
of what is symbolized by it remains for
this piece of furniture is the ultimate place
of the holiest of holies there's the outer
court there's the holy place but this is
the holiest place of all and only one
priest can enter it once in the year
and there's no menorah there's no lamp light
the light of the holiest place of all
is the shekinah presence of God himself who
dwells there that remarkable so you go from
daylight to to oil light and menorah to
the light of God himself the question is
in what court are we and someone has
probably rightly said most Christians are still in
the outer court we're still in the place
of salvation praise God for it without it
you can't proceed further but pity if we
would be fixed in that place and not
come into the the the riches of illumination
that come in the holy place from the
menorah and the showbread of God real bread
real teaching real learning about the kingdom of
God the realities of the body of Christ
the mystery of the kingdom even the mystery
of Israel and the church ought to be
found in the illumination of that menorah what
then will be reserved in the ultimate place
that is the holiest place of all where
there's one piece of furniture only it's this
piece where he waits and he dwells above
and between and there he will meet with
us intimately and in no other place and
there I will give you and in no
other place will I give you that's why
God's condemnation of the false prophets that have
not stood in my council I have not
given them their words I have not given
them their dreams and I've not sent them
but they say that that I have sent
them and they say that the thus sayeth
the Lord and they say and they say
but they have not been in my council
they have not come into my presence to
receive what only I will give him in
one place only because they have no stomach
for the tension they have no stomach to
look the opposite member in the face they
want to do their own thing they're self
-exalting independent unilateral what's the word autonomous they
are God's man of faith they are the
apostle because unless you look face to face
not not not in just a gritting of
your teeth until the moment passes you are
fixed forever in that posture symbolized by the
mercy seat of true cherubim beaten out of
the gold of the mercy seat itself and
forever looking upon one another not with impatience
that they might be uh free to do
their thing but to know that there's no
thing that they can do independent of the
one with whom they are in ultimate tension
because they are so opposite one to another
like male and female like black and white
like jew and gentile like prophet and teacher
God is the author of those contradictory oppositions
and and he who has created them is
waiting for something because the tendency is to
run from tension and not to look and
not just with a as I said as
out of a resignation because you have to
but with a loving look you love that
face he's different altogether from you but he's
also equally as much God's creation as yourself
and without him you yourself are incomplete maybe
we can even include the cloud of individual
witnesses they're incomplete without us not yet made
perfect waiting for something from us and with
us maybe the one and a half cubits
is waiting for the other one and a
half cubits to be joined and to be
made the full measure there's mystery here but
I believe that this is suggestive and why
why am I speaking it because God is
saying how can you be in the world
and for the church a voice of reality
and bring a moment of present truth to
those who don't want to hear don't want
to see it if you if you're not
in the place in which you're in union
and intimate fellowship with my heart and receive
my thoughts and and my my seeing and
my reality in that place then because I
will give you instruction on what to speak
to the sons of Israel you'll have a
word how many how many are there that
are coming from the one court to the
other each one is a portal and a
sacrifice in the history of the cross and
a suffering and a kind of cumulative thing
to which we're bidding to come and it's
priestly to enter and what does it say
in Hebrews that the Lord himself has once
and for all entered the holy place and
brought the blood of his own sacrifice to
sanctify it once and for all and that
we're bidden to enter and dwell in that
place because he has done it once but
he's done it for all so how many
of us have entered the holiest place of
all through his blood not our qualification but
his and not only entered to look around
and take a couple of photographs and show
people where you've been but to dwell enter
to dwell and to have your essential being
there that Jesus could say to Nicodemus no
one has no one has descended who has
not first ascended even the son of man
who is in heaven saying that to Nicodemus
confusing him completely and bewildering a ruler of
the Jews by being right opposite him in
Jerusalem and saying the son of man who
right now while I'm speaking to you physically
here I'm at the same time in heaven
not only am I at the same time
in heaven that's where I am essentially that
is the essence of where I am the
fact that I'm down here speaking to you
is the secondary truth of my life the
primary truth is I'm in heaven while I'm
yet here in the earth I'm in the
sanctuary of God while I'm yet here in
Laporte Minnesota or Oshkosh or Timbuktu or Brooklyn
New York or wheresoever you are and you'll
trail clouds of glory with you and you'll
communicate a sense that will bewilder the Nicodemuses
to whom you're brought because they're so categorical
they have their principles and you're in a
transcendent place beyond that you're seeing by another
eye how do they say it you're you're
moved by another drummer you're hearing another beat
and when you represent its ultimate reality how
often does the prophetic man come into congregations
where they are celebrating and having a ball
and amens and hallelujahs and the worship is
coming off the wall and loud and everybody
is rejoicing and you say what am I
doing here these guys have it all together
I'm the one who's awkward I'm I'm the
despicable strange kind of a man who's out
of time and out of joint these guys
have it all together but while you're waiting
to be called on the Lord is giving
you a sense of something from where he
is in the holy place a sense of
seeing beyond what those people are able to
see and that they're rejoicing is really false
it's prompted it's soulishly proctored and engineered to
establish a certain kind of atmosphere but the
truth of their lives is altogether a contradiction
to their ostensible celebration and you are required
to speak that truth you are required to
speak what you see beyond and through their
apparent celebration of the actual condition of their
life together as God himself sees it for
he has flashed it upon your soul in
the holy place and then the moment comes
that you're called on and you have a
choice to be prompted by the q c
u e given by the environment that has
been created especially by the worship team that
wants to draw you into their nexus and
into their mode of celebration that you would
affirm them and confirm them in that unreality
and it's very tempting so to do but
you take a deep breath like a man
going to the guillotine because to speak the
present truth as it is in Christ Jesus
contrary to what men think it is that
would altogether unseat their unreality and blow the
whistle on its fraudulence and bring them back
to square one to start all over again
when they think they've attained something is nothing
less than a death obedience to speak what
you see from God is death and when
you speak it they stop breathing it's like
a car coming to the crest of a
hill to find that there's another car out
of the lane and approaching it head-on
and you slam your brakes with such force
that that the very thing violently shudders to
avoid that collision and that's what you're seeing
they're violently shuddering because something has come that
something's got to go either that man has
got to go and his word with him
or we in one fell swoop in one
moment have got to believe that that man
is from God and that he's bringing something
out from the sanctuary and the holy place
of God of the truth of our lives
a moment of truth has come either we're
going to bow to it and surrender to
it and repent for what we were celebrating
which is false or we will call this
false and get rid of the awkward man
and the moment it's a shudder of collision
in a single moment of time that has
been brought by your obedience praise God on
the on the occasion that I'm remembering that
I'm describing so vividly they broke and went
down like dead people they broke there was
a cry not in the moment in the
several moments that it took to make a
decision for or against the word whether it
was come from God as true or was
just a man speaking out of his own
humanity it took a while but when they
made a decision a cry broke out of
that congregation and they went down and that
cry was the dearest music that I had
ever heard they went it ascended right up
to God it was it was infinitely superior
to their famed worship that had proceeded with
all their musicality instruments and amplifiers this cry
was true worship it was a moment of
truth received from God and and the heck
of it was that there was a meal
to be served after the meeting and I
had to stay and remain and talk with
these same people and look at them over
the same table who had brought this jarring
and dislocating word and I have to say
praise God for the for the maturity of
that people to receive it and to recognize
before God we've got to go back to
square one we've got to begin afresh we've
taken a devious route we were prompted we
we found easy ways to simulate a sense
of overcoming as if we have it together
but we realize that we don't have it
together at all the fact of the matter
is that that episode was in Australia and
what the Lord showed me was that with
all of their buoyant celebration there was the
deepest sense of insecurity and lack of self
-worth and deep depression and despondency in that
congregation thinly gilded over with a charismatic uh
kind of celebration and that that deep self
-hatred and insecurity goes back to the earliest
history of Australia when it was founded by
the dregs brought out of English prisons to
populate and be a labor source for this
colony they've never recovered from their origin and
you can't gild over that you've got to
face the truth of that and work your
way through that in the grace that has
come in the power of his blood and
the new man that we are in Christ
Jesus but to celebrate independent of that reality
is something false they were put on the
path of reality and truth and now they
could be a witness to their own nation
that has to crunch beer cans in their
bare hand and win the Wimbledon titles and
sweep the opposition off the rugby field because
they're macho and they've got to prove that
they are larger than life than men because
there's a deep-grained national sense of inferiority
that goes back to their to their origins
I did not know that I was not
speaking out of that kind of knowledge I
was only speaking out of an inward seeing
and a sense of something that God was
giving in the moment that was the greater
reality and the greater truth than what was
purported to be true this is critical to
meet with God in that place and to
find your perspective and receive what I will
give you in command of an instruction to
speak to the sons of Israel not what
your mind dictates or your intelligence or your
appraisal or critique of the need of the
situation what I will give you in the
holy place well may the Lord revive
the awareness that such a place yet exists
that he waits yet to be found in
such a place and that he dwells in
the tension of opposites and it's above the
place of mercy for how shall we relate
to each other in our differences except by
the mercy of God and how shall we
relate to each other significantly except we look
through the mercy seat to the tablets of
the law within the righteous requirement of God
it's not by slighting them or ignoring them
that would that we're in the place that
God is wanting it's taking full cognizance of
what is in the ark it's the law
it's the righteous requirement of God you don't
circumvent it you don't slap it off you
don't dismiss it as legalism you have an
obligation to the righteousness of God you've got
to relate to each other in the context
of righteousness not on the context of convenience
or a glib word brother a little pat
on the back like a full gospel bear
hug as if that constitutes reality it's righteousness
it's it's examining the differences it's working your
way through them what what that means for
male and female who has done that what
that means for jew and gentile in the
church one new man who has done that
what that means for the motley representation that
was to be found at Antioch where there
was a man called niger who was black
and minayan who was a roman and paul
who was a hebrew and one from cyprus
a whole motley composition of the mediterranean world
was found in one church and when they
were found worshiping the lord together the holy
spirit said separate unto me a piece of
that reality that i can now bring into
a world that is at each other's thoughts
because of the differences that are never reconciled
you come to them and and depict what
you have obtained in and being with one
another face to face not walking and and
seeing the issues of righteousness through in that
relationship because you receive you see it also
and through the place of mercy and there
i'll meet with you and from there i'll
send you and from there i'll be with
you i'll give you my words i'll give
you my unction my anointing my authority because
this is life-saving what you are finding
is what the world is desperately dying for
and for the want of and it's in
it's and that's where i dwell you like
that yeah i like that yeah but that's
where i dwell and where i dwell is
liberty grace unction wisdom all that i am
is to be found there if you'll come
to the place where i wait for you
above the mercy seat between the wings of
the cherubim there i am and that in
the nexus and where the what do they
call these where it lines up like like
uh the vectors that's the word where the
vectors meet that's where i am where the
opposition is at its greatest where the tensions
are most incisive and painful because you've not
flinched from it and you continue to look
face to face and know that there's a
righteous requirement under that mercy seat and i'm
looking through the place where the blood of
my son has been sprinkled there i will
give you an answer to that very predicament
that arises out of your opposition that is
not to be found in any other place
and then you have a message then you
are a message then you can come to
a world that's divided like uh the balkans
and the syria what is it the albanians
kosovo and serbia and and this ethnic cleansing
and bloodletting and the tribes in africa where
over a million were hacked to death with
machetes it was a genocidal bloodbath of black
against black so lord if there's such a
place that is eternal of which all this
made according to the pattern given on the
mount yet remains as a spiritual place that
can be abound and that is a very
genius of what the church is in its
diversity of what christian marriages in itself in
its gender opposition in what what life is
in the tension between our children and their
parents from different generations wherever we look lord
i remember it as a teacher there was
a tension between the teachers and the administrators
they were the enemy we were we were
the guardians of truth they were the administrators
wherever it is wherever we look tension and
conflict palestinian and israeli the church is god's
answer there's a greater reality and it's got
to be in wrought in meeting with the
lord where he is so lord thank you
for tonight now we can go on with
the subject of what the prophet is and
represents what he communicates and that is an
issue of life and death people that are
living in a lie that are in unreality
and in deception they're dead while they yet
live and their eternity we don't even want
to consider there's an urgency my god for
a moment of truth that can come to
them from sent ones who come to them
from the place of truth which is the
place of your dwelling but that's what you
yourself are so grant us a fresh heart
my god to be priestly to press in
and deeper than what we have known if
we're only yet lingering in the outer court
and still celebrating our salvation as if it's
the sum all and the be all rather
than the beginning of all and to come
in and through into the deeper place where
the light of your menorah shines to give
us illumination on the mystery of israel and
the church the kingdom of god has been
something more and other than just the subjective
and inward standard but the theocratic rule of
god out of zion and then an even
deeper thing beyond the table of showbread however
nourishing that is to where you yourself are
the light the shekinah glory of god the
presence of god for those who come and
dwell in that inmost place maybe what you're
saying is the you're giving us the structure
and the tenth of shem however much that
is so lord or whether it's so this
is indescribably precious and unknown and i'm asking
for a faith lord that believes for it
and that it's accessible even now that there's
a place that we can find and maintain
and dwell where you are and if we
will avoid coining our own thoughts and forming
our own words which is the rest of
god to enter this place is to enter
the rest which the brother who visited us
and no longer with us was denigrating because
it was it so jarred his spirit he
could not stand to be in the room
but that this is the rest of god
for in this place you cease from yourself
i will give you instruction you won't have
to fabricate it so lord we bless you
thank you for the specific description the reality
of what what is stated here stir our
hearts to seek it to find it to
dwell in it and to speak from it
and to serve out from it that which
issues out of yourself to those who meet
you in that place the world is dying
for this for this we thank and give
you praise in jesus name tonight let there
be those who enter the holiest place of
all who would think themselves disqualified but need
to be reminded it's not your qualification it's
his by his blood he entered in a
new and living way once and for all
you're not exempt you're invited this is the
normative place of our dwelling our speaking our
being our service our life enter and come
into the rest by faith in jesus name