A beautiful couple we have here.
Congratulations.
Nicely.
What wonderful singing and a warm atmosphere.
I think it's terrific.
Mind you, I had to stop singing myself
to hear you.
You don't believe that, do you?
I make such a noise that I can't
hear anybody else singing when I'm singing.
I hope my accent doesn't put you off
while I'm speaking.
It's a good thing that I'm a bit
noisy sometimes.
An old lady came to me recently, somewhere
in some country or other, and she said,
she said, Thank you very much, brother.
First sermon I've heard for 35 years.
I know you'll hear me.
I hope my accent doesn't put you off.
Coming from Birmingham, Bromagem we call it, in
England.
I attempted to sing the solo years ago
when Ernest Woodhouse and I used to work
together.
And his voice gave out.
So he said, you'll have to sing the
solo, brother.
So I sang a solo.
And I said to him, what did you
think of my execution?
He said, I'm in favour of it.
No, he said, no, brother.
He said, you've got a nice mellow voice.
Well, I was a bit suspicious about that.
So I looked it up in the dictionary.
It said, mellow, overripe or rotten.
I hope my voice or my noise doesn't
put you off.
But the fluid all of you will hear,
the Lord's voice and the Lord's call.
Because that's what we are talking about and
reading about in God's words this morning.
I haven't yet made up my mind what
I'm going to speak about during the week.
By the end of the week, I should
probably have made up my mind.
I'm a little bit Irish, you know.
My grandfather was Irish.
I think it's an Irish name.
My grandmother was Welsh.
And it took the first month she was
a Welsh woman.
And that's why, being such a mix-up,
I had to be born again.
It's a good thing to come to the
Lord and get a new life in Christ.
Now let us read the words together.
From Numbers, chapter 10.
The tenth chapter of the book of Numbers.
The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Make thee
two trumpets of silver, for the whole east
shalt thou make them.
Thou mayst use them for the calling of
the assembling, and for the journeyings of the
champs.
When they shall blow with them, all the
assemblers shall assemble themselves to thee at the
door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
And if they blow but with one trumpet,
then the princes, which are the heads of
the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves unto
thee.
And when you blow an alarm, then the
camps that lie on the east part shall
go forward.
When you blow an alarm a second time,
then the camps that lie on the south
side shall take their journey.
They shall blow an alarm for their journeys.
And when the congregation is to be gathered
together, you shall blow, but you shall not
sound an alarm.
Verse 9.
If you go to war in your land
against the enemy that oppresses you, then you
shall blow an alarm with a trumpet, and
ye shall be remembered before the Lord your
God, and ye shall be saved from your
enemies.
Also in the day of your gladness, and
in your solemn days, and in the beginnings
of your months, ye shall blow with the
trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the
sacrifices of your peace-offerings.
They may be to you for a memorial
before your God.
I am the Lord your God.
Verse 29.
And Moses said to Hoveth, the son of
Raguel, the Midianite, Notice, father-in-law, we
are journeying unto the place to which the
Lord said, I will give it you.
Come thou with us, and we will do
thee good.
For the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel.
And he said unto him, I will not
do.
Verse 33.
They departed from the mount of the Lord
three days' journey, and the ark of the
covenant of the Lord went before them in
the three days' journey, to search out a
resting-place for them.
And the cloud of the Lord was upon
them by day when they went out of
the camp.
And he came to pass.
And when they asked it forward, it noticed
him.
Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be
scattered.
Let them that hate thee flee before thee.
And when it rested, he said, Return, O
Lord, unto the many thousands of Israel.
To the Lord bless to us the readings
from his holy word.
Amen.
My Lord calls me.
He calls me.
To the thunder that trumpets sounds within my
soul.
I ain't got long to stay here.
So goes the song, spring low, sweet chariot,
which I'm sure you all know so well.
God has been calling his people through the
years in different ways.
And very often he calls his own by
a vision or a dream, by an appearance
of the angel of the Lord, by the
presence of the Lord without any appearance.
As Jacob said, the Lord was in this
place and I knew it not.
It's a terrible thing when God is there
and you don't realize it.
The present Christ, as though he were absent,
is a terrible thing as well.
There standeth one among you whom you know
not.
But through the years God has been calling
his own in a general way with the
trumpet sound as we were reading in the
scripture portion just now.
The silver trumpet sounded.
So that's what I'm talking about with the
help of God's Holy Spirit this morning.
The trumpet sound, the trumpet call, the call
of God to his own.
Trumpet!
And you know, some of you friends come
from Scotland.
One dear brother who was a bit deaf
and I wasn't a preacher, but we had
to do something about it, he brought a
new little hearing aid, you know, it was
a kind of little trumpet thing that he
put into his ear.
And the minister in the clerk hadn't seen
one of these before.
And this brother was sitting on the front
seat with his little thing on his lap,
you know.
And before the preacher gave his message he
says, now be careful brother, I want to,
you.
Well that isn't the kind of trumpet we're
talking about this morning.
It is the call of God.
Well now, remember that when the Lord appeared
to Gideon and said, go and this thy
might hath not I sent for thee, Gideon
got hold of his trumpet when he was
quite sure it was the Lord who was
calling him.
And indeed he made very, very sure.
It was a good thing to make absolutely
sure that the call is of God, and
not of the flesh or of personal ambition.
He knew the thing was of God, he
got hold of his trumpet, he got on
the hillside, and he blew the trumpet.
And what do you think he blew?
I don't know.
Now what do you think he blew?
So sir, this is what he blew.
Well he doesn't say so actually in the
word, in the actual phraseology, but I'm quite
sure this is what he blew.
Who is on the Lord's side?
Because it's only one of those, that is,
that they had acknowledged defeat at the hands
of the enemy, the Midianites.
They were hiding from the enemy, made themselves
dens and caves in the earth, and they'd
given up.
But this man certainly was victorious in God,
God appeared to him and called him to
deliver his people from the hands of the
enemy.
And he blew with his trumpet and said,
Who is on the Lord's side?
And there was five over yonder in the
valley that heard the call by the basher,
and they gathered at Gideon.
And others heard the call of God, and
they gathered.
And there were many, many thousands who gathered
with Gideon that day, ready to put the
enemy to flight by the power of God
and his truth.
In the past God has called in certain
ways, and today he is calling again.
Of course, his first call is to command.
God now commanded all men everywhere to repent.
And unless we obey that command, repent of
our sins, and pick our sins, and turn
to Christ for salvation, we shall never have
our ears attuned to the call of God
through life in its various forms and ways.
The word was here in verse 2 to
Moses, Make thee two trumpets of silver.
And silver always speaks in the word, or
generally anyway, of redemption.
And this was a call to those who
were the redeemed of the law, who brought
them out of Egypt with his strong hand
and mighty arm, and set them on their
way with trust into the promised land.
They were the redeemed of the law.
And the silver trumpets were made so that
God through them should call his own to
do his will in various ways.
And of course the unsaved, who know nothing
of God's redemption great in Christ, will never
hear the call of God to worship, or
to fight the enemy, or to carry on
victoriously to the promised land.
And sometimes the sounds of this world we
hear, and they kill our ears.
Visions of this world fill our minds, and
we sometimes, who are the redeemed, fail to
hear God's call.
Now the call of God for the gathering
of the congregation was the first trumpet sound.
Inversely, to hear the word of the Lord.
You shall blow with these trumpets, or the
assembly shall assemble themselves to the entrance door,
the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
It was God's will that his people from
time to time should gather together to hear
the Lord, his holy word, his standards for
his people, read out first publicly, so that
they should make no mistakes.
And of course this has been God's purpose
through the years.
And although we hadn't come together this morning
at a trumpet call, although I was in
a conference in your country here some years
ago, twenty-five years ago, and the conference
director stood on the hillside every morning and
awakened us with a trumpet call, one of
the well-known hymns you know.
And then last thing every night we put
to sleep by singing a peaceful lullaby or
some beautiful song in keeping with the message
of the day.
But generally we don't come together now by
the trumpet sound.
I do hope and trust that we come
together at the call of God.
We hear his voice calling us from time
to time to gather together with his people,
as we do during this week of conference,
to hear his word read to us, to
know his laws and statutes and standards and
his will for our individual lives.
Remember in the book of Malachi, although the
general trend in those days was godlessness and
lack of response to the love of God
and the righteousness of God, there were a
few who did respond, who feared the Lord,
who accepted his salvation and grace.
The first thing they did was to gather
together around the Lord.
The Lord himself was the centre of their
gatherings.
They fought on his name and God was
very pleased.
They read his word, they fought to do
his will and God looked down from heaven
and said these people are my people and
they shall be my people forever.
And in the day of judgment I will
not condemn them, I will spare them.
As a man spares his own son that
serveth him.
And he says I have a book made
and the book shall be called the book
of remembrance and I will remember them forever.
God expects us to meet together and to
read his word together.
You remember our Lord Jesus went into the
synagogue and opened the scriptures of truth and
read them publicly to the people there.
And when in those days they had a
letter, not only a prophecy from a prophet
or a word from the Lord of Moses
to be read publicly in the place of
gathering in the Lord's name.
But when they had a letter from an
apostle, somebody used to stand up and say
dearly beloved brethren we just had a very
nice letter from our dear brother Peter or
our dear brother Paul, the apostle Paul and
we're going to read it publicly.
Please take special note because our brother Paul
or whoever it was as the case might
be has we are quite sure been inspired
by the Holy Spirit to write what he
has written not only for our consumption but
for all the churches around and when we've
read it 15 times then we're going to
send it to the church of Laodicea and
they'll read it and then it's going on
to the church of Hephaestus and then it's
going round to the church of Lottery and
this is what they did.
These were accepted as words of God because
holy men of old faith as they were
moved, borne along, carried along by God's Holy
Spirit.
And God has always wanted his people to
hear his word through his servant, his men
of God his prophet and his apostle and
God still does today.
But take not the assembling of yourselves together
as the manner of some is but exhorting
one another and so much the more not
the less, so much the more as you
see the day approaching.
Well there was not only the trumpet sound
for the gathering together of the children of
Israel to hear the word of the Lord
read but there was another one in verse
4 the trumpet sound for the calling together
of the princes, the leaders shall we say
the elders of the tribes of Israel.
It was very very important that the leaders,
the elders should gather together to get some
special instruction from the Lord to get some
exhortation from the Lord's servant Moses or Aaron
as the case might be.
And of course these elders from the various
tribes gathered together.
I like to see elders from various assemblies
gathering together to discuss together the word and
some perhaps unifying action without spoiling the principle
of the autonomous local assembly.
When the apostle Paul called together on his
journey to Jerusalem in Acts chapter 20 it
is recorded the elders of the church of
Evers he exhorted them to see the flock
of God over which the Holy Ghost had
made them elders.
And you remember the words of Titus was
the elders that are among you I exhort.
And there is a word here from the
trumpet sound not only for the general consumption
of God's people to gather together like this
but for the elders to come together and
have times of spiritual exhortation and preparation together
for his holy service.
In verses 5 and 6 there was the
trumpet sound the call of God to his
own to journey forward.
And this was called an alarm.
The trumpet sounded first of all and six
tribes would move up and the ark of
the covenant would come in the middle borne
on the shoulders of the Levites and the
Prophets and then there would be another trumpet
sound and six more tribes would bring up
the rear guard.
That is how it happened.
So you notice it's called an alarm because
you see sometimes it is a very dangerous
thing to stay where you are.
God wants to move us on.
We must never be satisfied with our Christian
experience.
The trumpet sound within our soul God wants
us to move right forward onto the promised
land and all that is for us in
Christ.
You've come to this now long enough speak
unto the children of Israel that they go
forward and God will move us onto the
promised land.
Now the promised land is not heaven that
cannot possibly be a type of Canaan you
know.
The promised land is Christ.
Christ is the believer's land and we are
to possess all that is in Christ for
us even now.
And we are to make Christ not only
our Savior from hell but the Lord of
our lives.
We are to possess him so that he
is the life of our very lives.
For you have died to the apostles I
receive and your life is given with Christ
in God and Christ is our life.
We are to go on and possess the
land and Christ is the believer's land.
Let us hear the alarms of that.
It is dangerous to play trumpet in the
Christian life.
Indeed.
And should we go backwards if we attempt
to do that then one of your American
Christian cartoonists once drew the picture a very
good cartoon it was of a young man
sitting in a canoe with a ukulele and
he was playing away and he was not
bending to the oars and he was going
down with the tide and there was a
notice on the bank to the rapids and
he was having a wonderful time but he
was just doing nothing except going down towards
the rapids you see and the title of
the cartoon was What must I do to
backslide?
And the answer was nothing.
And the call of the Lord is for
us to move forward to go on and
take the next step.
So walk, says Romans chapter 6 and verse
4 So walk, so make progress in newness
of life.
God wants to lead us on to possess
all that there is in Christ for us,
for in him is a full salvation and
Christ is the believer and life and all
in all.
And you remember we were reading in chapter
29 in verse 29 of this same chapter
that Moses gave an invitation to Chobab who
was one of his in-laws to come
along with him to the land that God
had promised, Canaan.
Interesting to notice by the way that he
was on speaking terms with his in-laws
in this particular cartoon.
And he said, come thou with us and
we'll do thee good.
We are journeying to the land of which
the Lord says I will give it you.
Come with us and we will do you
good.
Now when he said we will do you
good it didn't mean to say that he
could be any blessing to anybody.
He explained it.
He said what goodness the Lord will do
to us that will we do to thee.
And the Lord has promised to bless his
throne because we're going God's way to God's
land and we're getting God's blessing.
God's blessing runs deep in the channel of
his will.
If you're alone and can't get there go
in to possess Christ and all that he
can be to you then of course you
undoubtedly have God's blessing.
And so that's it now.
I'll go my own way.
I'll go to my own land.
And he was a fool.
He refused God's blessing because he refused God's
will and God's way and he didn't get
to God's will.
Self-will is an awful man.
And it only brings ruin at last.
Anyway the call was for them to go
on further to the land.
And as we read in the end of
the chapter as they went forward to the
land that God had promised them that call
of the trumpet sounded so the Lord made
his presence known.
There was the Lord's victory and there was
the Lord's rest.
There was the Lord's presence and there was
the Lord's guidance.
And all these blessings and many more were
theirs as they moved forward at the trumpet
sound to possess the land that God had
promised to them.
And God's call to us today is to
go on in his victory to his rest.
You remember as the ark went forward because
on this occasion the ark went first.
Not in the middle.
The usual procedure was for it to go
in the middle.
On this occasion it went forward because they
didn't know the way and it proved to
be their guide.
You see they followed where it led.
It sought out a resting place for them
every day.
And every day on the way to the
land of rest every day they found rest
around the ark of the covenant in the
presence of the Lord.
And as they stepped forward following the ark
of the covenant Moses prayed a morning prayer
for the children of Israel.
And this was his morning prayer.
Very brief.
Perhaps a bit briefer than yours.
And it was like this.
Rise up O Lord let thine enemies be
scattered let them that hate thee flee before
thee.
Amen.
And so you see every day as they
journeyed they entered into God's victory over their
enemies.
And of course that's the way it is.
Pondering to the conflict course.
Going on to possess all that is in
Christ for us.
And enjoying Christ's victory to start with.
Because every spiritual triumph since the cross-work
of Christ has been through the cross-work
of Christ.
And ever will be too.
Because we read of some in the coming
day in the Revelation 12 we read of
them who are going to overcome Satan by
the blood of the Lamb.
Their victory then is going to be through
his victory of two thousand years ago through
the blood of the Lamb.
It was a glorious triumph on the cross.
Proved by his mighty resurrection on the third
day and his ascendance in authority to God's
right hand in the glory.
And so the call was for them to
go on and possess the Lamb.
And then of course in verse 9 there
was another trumpet sound.
And this was God's call to fight the
enemy.
If you go to war in your land
against the enemy that hath threatened you then
you shall be blown along with the trumpet
and you shall be remembered before the Lord
your God and you shall be saved from
your enemy.
When the trumpet sounded they had to gather
together and go out in the name of
the Lord and face the enemy.
It's always good for the child of God
to do that feat.
Because we're all tempted it's a very tactical
thought Every Christian has temptation in one way
or another.
The only thing for us to do is
to respond to God's call and face the
enemy.
And when we do we shall find that
his strength is made perfect in our weakness.
Indeed that the victory of Christ over the
enemy is our victory today.
And today we face the enemy in his
strength.
There were four leperous men at the entering
in of the gate of Samaria you remember,
when Samaria was being besieged by the Syrians.
And they were dying starving.
But the people inside the city were besieged,
they were all dying and had all the
horses and the cats and the dogs and
whatever was available.
They'd even got so far that they'd begun
to eat one another's cheese.
They were just about at the point of
death.
And these four lepers they said well why
do we sit here at the gate of
the city we shall die.
So another one said well why go in
there they're all dying in there.
If we go there we shall die as
well.
And a third one said that it's a
chance that if we go and face the
enemy we shall be taken as prisoners and
they might keep us alive.
That's our only chance, that we go and
face the enemy.
And when they went and faced the enemy
they found that God had overcome the enemy.
And they entered into God's victory.
Think of that.
And my dear Christian friend if only you
had faced the enemy, in the name of
Christ you'll find that he's already overcome the
enemy for you.
And his triumph at the cross is your
triumph today.
So shall you be saved if you obey
the Pontiff's order.
So shall you be saved from your enemies.
It's a great thing in Christian living to
be saved from your enemies.
I think some of you might have heard
of some dear brother gone right under through
an attack of Satan.
Or some sister that has denied the faith
through an attack of Satan.
Or some younger person whose life has been
ruined and testimony has been ruined because of
an attack of Satan.
You know the one that you're thinking about
now.
And it happened to some that him that
thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
Let us respond to the Pontiff's call.
Let us respond to the call of God.
And praise the enemy for rejoicing Christ's victory
over the enemy.
And he by dying through death.
And him that hath the power of death
the devil to deliver us to a subject
of bondage.
And then of course in verse 10 there
was the call of God in the day
of gladness.
They had special days of rejoicing in those
days and we still have days of rejoicing
today.
They had fellowships of joy.
They had feasts of tabernacles and they dwelt
in booths and they waved branches of palm
trees and they danced around and praised the
Lord.
They had fellowships of joy in those days
and the Pontiff's call called them to them.
We have fellowships of joy today.
Isn't this one?
This is the beginning of the third week
of fellowships of joy.
You have an abundance of it here and
I'm quite sure you make the most of
it and God blesses you through it.
And when God calls us to rejoice together
in him then we should do just that.
Now it's good to meet one another and
have fellowship together.
As iron sharpeneth iron so the countenance of
a man his fellow.
We're pleased to see one another.
Well if you're not pleased to see me
I'm jolly pleased to see you.
And we are encouraged by one another's company.
But the great thing is we meet the
Lord where two or three are gathered together
in my name.
There am I said he in the midst
of them.
This is the blessing.
This is the blessing meeting him.
And our fellowships of joy should not just
be joy through fellowshiping together with one another.
We should really consciously meet to the Lord
and the word is in his lips rejoice
in the Lord and again I say rejoice
and you cannot help but rejoice in your
circumstances when you live at part of a
palm or anywhere near and there's a bathing
pool and a lake and there's palm trees
and there's lovely food and there's fasting and
blessing.
You can't do anything else but rejoice in
your circumstances but never let these drown the
Lord himself from the eyes of your soul.
May you see him and hear his voice
in all the ministry and may you find
your joy in him.
And they sounded the trumpet for fellowships of
joy for days of gladness.
You know when they had their fellowships in
the catacombs under the city of Rome for
fear of their lives they had no circumstances
in which to rejoice.
They had a very grim poor experience.
But they still had fellowships of joy because
the Lord himself was their joy.
And if you start every day with the
Lord Jesus looking into his face.
If you start every day listening to the
Lord Jesus reading what he says to you
from his word.
And if you go along every day walking
in the light with the Lord Jesus and
if you learn constant communion with him practicing
the presence of the Lord Jesus all through
the day and you end the day in
conscious enjoyment of the presence of the Lord
Jesus then your joy will be in the
Lord and that will supersede any joy in
any circumstance on God's beautiful earth.
May the Lord himself be our fortune.
At the dedication of the temple they had
one hundred and twenty priests blowing with their
trumpets for the festival of joy.
And when Nehemiah had built the wall of
Jerusalem he told the priests to get the
trumpets out and polish them up and hang
them on the wall and blow and blow
and blow so that the people would really
rejoice in the Lord.
And we read on that occasion this very
interesting verse.
And God made the people rejoice with great
joy.
If they wanted to be miserable and physical
and rumbling they just couldn't be.
God eliminated all that nonsense and he made
them rejoice perfectly and God made everybody happy.
And as we come together at the contest
then may God have his way with us
and make us happy and rejoicing in him.
Well isn't time to conclude the message this
morning just to say there was a call
for worship by the trumpet sound.
On the days of solemn assembly when they
gathered together solemnly to remember the Lord their
God and all the way the Lord had
led them.
This is what many of us did this
morning.
Around the Lord's table we had a solemn
assembly of worship and thanksgiving when we partook
of a remembrance soup.
And later on in verse 10 the trumpet
sounded for the days of special renewal and
when they were called upon at the beginning
of certain months to rededicate themselves to the
Lord and to his service they were to
obey the trumpet sound and when they were
called upon to make some sacrifice for God
then the trumpet sounded again.
Well God calls us similarly today and one
of these days there's going to be a
very very definite trumpet sound.
For God's trumpet shall sound and the dead
in Christ shall be raised and the living
in Christ shall be changed and that corruptible
shall put on incorruption at the trumpet call
of God this mortal shall put on immortality
we shall meet them and we shall meet
him we shall be gathered together with them
in clouds and we shall live together with
him in the clothes wherefore comfort one another
with these words.
We have looked at some of God's trumpet
sounds to his own calling them to worship
calling them to give to him his portion
calling them to march forward in their godly
lives to the land that God had promised
them calling them to face the enemy.
Thank God the last trumpet sound will be
the best of all he'll gather us into
his presence and we shall be with him
and like him we go no more out
of his presence forever.
What a day of rejoicing that will be
when we all see Jesus, hear the trumpet
sound and live with him eternally.
So God we bow before thee
now in the name of the Lord Jesus
and thank thee that thou hast through the
years been calling thy people in certain ways
and we have heard the trumpet sound in
the ears of our soul today for thou
art calling us to thy son for a
full life a life more abundant thou art
calling us to go forward and possess all
that there is in Christ for us thou
art calling us to victory over our enemies
and thou art calling us to rejoice not
in our circumstances so much as in our
Lord Jesus our Saviour.
Give us grace now in these moments to
respond to thy call, to show our love
to thee to do thy will by thy
grace, to go with our Saviour always and
may the grace of our Saviour and thy
love our God, the fellowship and the enabling
of the Holy Spirit be with us all
this morning and always until the trumpet sounds.
Amen.