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[00:00:00] The first book of Chronicles and chapter 15.
[00:00:06] I'm only going to read a verse or two, but I trust that you will remember the incident that here is recorded in chapter 13 and in chapter 15. Perhaps if the Lord speaks to you, you will want to read those two chapters to get the whole background of what we are going to say in chapter 15, verse one. David made him houses in the city of David, and he prepared a place for the ark of God and pitched for it a tent. Then David said, none ought to carry the ark of God, but the Levites. For them hath the Lord chosen to carry the ark of God and to minister unto him forever. And David assembled all Israel at Jerusalem to bring up the ark of the Lord unto its place, which he had prepared for it.
[00:01:10] I think you will remember something of this incident.
[00:01:15] You remember that when David had captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites, the greatest object, the greatest desire of his heart, as you all, I think, know, was to build the temple from when he was quite a young man. His one desire, the great desire and object of his life, was to build a permanent place as a sanctuary for the Lord.
[00:01:50] And if, as many of us believe, psalm 23 and other psalms such as that belong to the early part of his life, then even then, he had begun to speak about the house of the Lord.
[00:02:03] And we see that even then, his great desire was to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
[00:02:10] And within these two chapters to which such prominence is given by the Holy Spirit in the history of David, we find that, first of all, his desire seemed to be near its fulfillment. And then there was a tragedy. And for three months, everything was halted with this awful pall that hung over the whole nation.
[00:02:40] And then three months later, David discovered that he had misunderstood something. He had been careless.
[00:02:52] And when he put that something right, then the ark was brought up, and the Lord committed himself, and the glory of God was seen in Jerusalem.
[00:03:07] I think you remember something of the story, how, first of all, when David had taken Jerusalem, it had become his capital city.
[00:03:18] The first thing he wanted to do was to bring the ark of the Lord up. The ark of the Lord, you see, in the Old Testament, was the personal symbol of the presence of God.
[00:03:34] Where the ark went, there was the Lord. For the Lord had said that in only one place could they call upon his name. And his name was to be called upon. Where he dwelt above the mercy seat between the cherubim and to the people of God. Under the old covenant. The ark of God just simply was the visible emblem of the presence of God. It spoke to them of God himself personally dwelling in the midst of a people.
[00:04:12] And David's great desire was to get that ark up before anything else happened, before he'd built the temple, before he had laid even really the foundation of the house. He wanted to get that ark up into the city. And here in chapter 13, we discover he goes about it. He calls a great feast from the ends of Israel right to the very far borders. He asks everyone to come and gather for a great festival at Jerusalem. And evidently, there have not ever been days like it in the history of the people of God. They journeyed from far and near to come to Jerusalem. So it says, all the heads of the fathers houses all came together for this great historic event. After all, it was to be one of the great foundation stones in the history of God's people under the old covenant.
[00:05:07] And you remember that they built a new cart.
[00:05:15] This cart was evidently very much like the carts of the surrounding nations that they lost stands and so on. And it was a new cart. And they were young bullocks that were to bring the cart up.
[00:05:31] All was perfectly new. Everything seemed to be perfectly right. It was the people of God, evidently, who made the cart. I expect the bullocks belonged to people of God. All seemed so perfectly in order. Everything seemed to be fitting. Seeming. Nothing seemed to be out of order, contradictory.
[00:05:53] And so the great procession started. Why? David says that first he put those in front to sing and to blow trumpets. There was a band in front and a band behind and a much singing joy. And everything seemed to be going all right until they got near to Jerusalem, just a mile or two outside of Jerusalem. And all of a sudden, as the cart was pulled over, some ruts or something in the road, so suddenly it lurched. And the ark of the Lord slid a little. And one of the Levites running beside Uzzah.
[00:06:31] Put his hand out to put it back.
[00:06:35] And immediately he died.
[00:06:41] And the effect upon the whole time was electric.
[00:06:48] No praise. The music stopped. Death had come onto the scene.
[00:06:54] And David was so broken hearted that he felt that this was most obviously the hand of the Lord. And he turned aside the Arkansas into the house of a foreigner, obed Edom, and left it there for three months.
[00:07:11] And over the whole nation hung this great question mark. Why?
[00:07:16] Why is not Jerusalem the place which the Lord has chosen from the beginning to be the place of his dwelling? Could there be anything more noble, more divine, than to desire to build the Lord a sanctuary permanently at the heart of his people, in the very place which he had chosen to dwell.
[00:07:44] Was there anything wrong about some young man having the interests of God so much at heart. That when it seemed that the ark of the Lord was going to suffer damage, he put his hand and stopped it?
[00:08:02] That the kind of God that we worship. And we know there's a very big lesson here.
[00:08:12] For, you know, in those three months. There is one thing we can say about David. With all his faults, he was teachable.
[00:08:20] And that is the basis of all real spiritual character. When a person cannot learn, and will not learn either through their mistakes or through anything else, the Lord can't use them. They have to be shelved.
[00:08:39] The basis of all spiritual character and usefulness to the Lord is to be teachable.
[00:08:46] Now, David. David was eminently a teachable mandehead.
[00:08:52] And rather than digging his feet in and sort of stubbornly holding on to his position. Well, after all, surely there can't be anything wrong. And this was a new car. The Bullocks had never had a yoke on them before. All was so fresh and new. What more could you acquire? But David began to search the scriptures.
[00:09:15] And he found in the book of the law in numbers, he found that it said that none other should ever carry the ark of the Lord. But the Levi God had given explicit instructions. That that ark was never to be moved in any other way than on the shoulders of men who were Levites.
[00:09:50] Now, when David discovered that three months later. There was a great change. He called all the people together again. He said, I have discovered something. I have discovered that we made a terrible mistake.
[00:10:03] I have discovered that we should never have put the ark of the Lord upon some philistine contention.
[00:10:10] The Lord has explicitly ordained that it should be carried by Levites. And so he begins to discover the Levites. And if you go read through chapter 15. He finds them all. And a whole group of them are gathered together. And instructed and carefully separated, sanctified. And then they go back to the house of Obed Edom. And by the way, the house of Obed Edom had been greatly prospered in those three months. And they took upon their shoulders the ark and carried it up into Jerusalem. And this time the Lord was with them. It says, the Lord was so with them that David was almost beside himself. You know the story of how he danced and danced and danced and danced? That doesn't come from just sentimentality. That's because something inside him is so witness to something. David was a spiritual man. And something inside of him so leapt, it leapt. This was, after all, one of the great foundation stones of the history of the people of God.
[00:11:14] The Ark, for the first time, was home in its right place at the heart of the nation for the first time in history. And furthermore, nation, or at least the leaders of the nation, had learned a deep and bitter lesson that I don't think they were ever likely to forget.
[00:11:40] Now, what is the lesson of all this? Is God so harsh?
[00:11:45] Does he actually deal so severely with those who have his interests at heart that at times they would put out their hands, steady the ark? Well, what is this to teach us?
[00:11:58] I think it has a tremendous amount to teach us.
[00:12:02] I believe it teaches us simply this, that if the ark of the Lord is the symbol of the presence of God, and this story is the committing, the Lord's committing of himself to his own in a new way as his dwelling place, then the heart of it all lies not in the nation, but lies in the nucleus at the heart of the nation.
[00:12:32] It lies on a few men chosen of God to carry the ark.
[00:12:38] That's the lesson. And the Holy Spirit so wanted to record this lesson explicitly and. And with great clarity that it required the death of Uzzah when he touched that ark.
[00:12:55] You know as well as I do that historical events are as much prophetic as the word. This is a prophetic event in the history of God's people.
[00:13:06] Something happened to this man and it got right to the root of something. Now, the lesson is this, that when God is going to do something and when God is going to commit himself to his dwelling place in order to build it, before ever the first stone has been put on the foundation, you've got to have those light Levites at the very heart of the whole thing. The Lord's presence is bound up with a few Levites who will carry the Arkansas upon their shoulders for the rest of their days.
[00:13:46] Now, why do I emphasize this? Because it is contrary to a subconscious attitude and idea amongst the Lord's people and amongst us today. It is this, and we hear it again and again, that before God can move, every single one of his people has got to be devoted to him. This is not true.
[00:14:09] It is not true.
[00:14:11] Again and again you hear people in letters to christian periodicals and amongst us as well, responsible people, ministers and pastors and christian workers, saying, oh, dear, we're held up, you know, by so and so and so and so. So and so won't move. So and so hasn't seen. So and so will not yield. So and so is doing so and so. And, you know, because of all that, the whole work is at a standstill. Everything has stopped.
[00:14:46] There may be a certain amount of truth in all that. After all, Akan can be a troubler of the whole of Israel. That is true, there is truth in it. But believe me, that in the purpose of God, in the purpose of goddess, he requires only and always a nucleus of those utterly abandoned to himself. And he will commit himself to the whole nation if he's got a nucleus.
[00:15:12] Now if anyone is going to question that, very quickly let us look over history.
[00:15:20] When God was going to call out a people for the benefit of the whole inhabited earth, he took Abraham and two people and he required them to do something that he didn't require of anyone else in the whole inhabited earth. He required them to get out of their home, out of their city and out from their father's house. He led them in such a severe way that they lost everything. Even when Tiara went with them, all went with them. It wasn't the will of God and he had to separate them.
[00:15:51] He wanted two people in their family. That's all. Abraham, Isaac, Abraham, Sarah and Isaac.
[00:15:59] Even Ishmael was a mistake. He wanted three people. And when he got three people, he could bless the nations to the ends of the earth.
[00:16:11] Now you take Joseph. Why couldn't Joseph have a nice easy time like the rest of his brothers, all his other eleven brothers, there they were, they were having a good time. Why must Joseph be shown dreams? And because he was shown dreams, get a little bit swell headed and talk about it. And because he talked about it, sold into slavery. And because he was sold into slavery, put into a dungeon. Why should Joseph go through it all? Why should one go through it all? Because that one was going to be prepared of God to save the whole nation. Not only was he going to be used to save Egypt, he was going to be used to save his own kith and kin.
[00:16:53] Oh, Joseph may have said, why does the Lord put iron into my soul? Why doesn't he do it into those, my other brothers? They did it to me, they should be dealt with. Why does the Lord discipline me? Why has he taken me such a hard way? It is the principle again of the nucleus. That's all you've got that one man going a hard way. And what happens? The rest gets far from being judged. The rest get fed, they get saved. There comes a day when they come cap in hand to Joseph. They don't know it's Joseph they implore, naked on their knees, they say, joseph, give us food, we must.
[00:17:29] And the Lord has taken Joseph. Such a way that he's got the whole of Egypt at his fingertips. He's got all the wealth. He's got all the food that they need.
[00:17:39] He can give it to them.
[00:17:41] There was another day in the history of God's people, and we're dropping away great portions of history.
[00:17:47] When, as you well know, the Midianites were in possession of the land. And a man called Gideon was raised up of the Lord, and he had a great army of 30,000.
[00:17:55] Well, you would have thought he could have done something with an army of 30,000. The Lord said, you've got too many there.
[00:18:02] Get rid of them all. But Mayor Gideon says, how can I get to always of the Lord? You go down and speak with them. Anyone who wants to go home can. Oh, well, quite a lot went home, but he was still left with a large number. The Lord said, all right, take them down to the brook and we'll find out who's responsible or not.
[00:18:23] I take them down to the brook. He says, now tell them all have a drink. All have a drink.
[00:18:30] Those that get right down and lap the water like dogs, you can send them home. They're no use to us.
[00:18:36] They are more concerned about satisfying their own selfhood than the others. But those that cup it in their hands and lift it up are the men we want, because they've got the interests of God's people at heart. They're watching 300 men.
[00:18:55] But you might well say the 300 men said, oh, look at them all. Cowards. Look at them all going home, tails between their legs. Look at us. And why should we have to suffer? Why should we possibly face death? Why should we have to go out to battle when all the rest of them are home with their wives and their children are getting on with their jobs. And here we are all bound up with Gideon, just 300 others. We might be massacred tomorrow evening.
[00:19:21] Why? Why? Why?
[00:19:23] Because the Lord wanted just 300 that were absolutely devoted and abandoned to himself. And through them he was going to deliver the whole nation. The Lord never discriminated against the rest.
[00:19:37] Never discriminated against the rest. He wanted that group to bless the rest.
[00:19:44] That's all.
[00:19:46] And here you've got it again. Why? I do believe that if we looked and knew the condition of the nation at this time, there would have been many things that would have shocked us, many things that we would have said, oh, but the Lord can't commit himself to this nation. Look at this, look at that. Look at the other.
[00:20:02] Then we might have said, well, surely there are many people doing far worse things than Uzzah. After all, Uzzah has given up his time to walk with the ark of the Lord.
[00:20:11] Surely. It seems very unjust. There's probably cases of sin over here and cases of sin over there, and dear old Uzzah, he's given up his time to walk along alongside the ark because he's got the interest of the Lord at sin at his heart.
[00:20:26] Now, when he touches it, what happens? He dies. Is that justice?
[00:20:32] Is that right?
[00:20:34] No. The Lord is emphasizing a big lesson that we must all learn. It is very simply this, that the Lord must have a group like those Levites. When he's got the Levites recognized, functioning in their place, everything's all right. Those men had to have it on their shoulder. They couldn't get away. Oh, I think it would have been very nice to have been the others, you know. Very nice. You see, we come along to the festival. We enjoy it. We watch for a while, and when we get a bit tired, we go off to have something to eat and drink. But those Levites don't. They have the long, weary, dusty journey of carrying the ark right up to the end. They can't stop. They can't have a drink. They can't please themselves. All the others can come and look on and say, oh, I feel a bit tired now, dear. Let's go home. And off they go. But the Levites can't.
[00:21:29] They are devoted to the Lord. Every minute, every ounce of energy, it's the Lord's.
[00:21:38] I would like to know what those Levites thought that day as they went up into Jerusalem. One thing I'm quite sure they weren't all the time thinking, oh, dear, look at them all.
[00:21:53] And a nice time, and we're having a really rough time a bit later on. It says that David apportioned some of them the rest of their lives to minister before the oak.
[00:22:07] Some of them were bound to the courts of the Lord for the rest of their lives. All the others could all go and have their little vineyards and their little olive yards and their plots of ground all over there where they chose. Very nice. And they'd all discriminate against the Lord, and that was their right. Quite legitimate, quite all right. They had that. But the Levite couldn't. He was bound to a certain spot, to a certain place for the rest of his days.
[00:22:36] He was there.
[00:22:38] Well, I wonder what that really has to teach us.
[00:22:46] What has that really to teach us? It teaches us three things about these people, about the character of these people.
[00:22:56] The first thing that I have already more or less implied and mentioned is that they were holy, devoted and surrendered to the Lord.
[00:23:08] Now it was, mark you, it was not just a little. Do you know that from that day they were dependent upon the Lord's house for their daily sustenance.
[00:23:21] They had nothing. They had to depend upon the Lord to give them everything.
[00:23:27] All their time was the Lord. They were at his disposal in their entirety.
[00:23:35] They were devoted to the Lord.
[00:23:38] You know, when the Lord moves, it doesn't matter where he moves, at what time he moves. In the history of humanity he has always moved when he's got a few people absolutely and wholly given up to himself.
[00:23:54] You take these things we call revivals.
[00:23:58] There is no revival on record where you have not got behind it two or more that gave up everything to the Lord. Everything, everything.
[00:24:11] It doesnt matter where you look.
[00:24:14] Everything was surrendered to the Lord on the part of a few. And multitudes came into the blessing.
[00:24:21] In every great move of the spirit of God it has always been the same. You get just a few that abandoned themselves wholly to the Lord and the Lord gives himself to the rest.
[00:24:35] Now that is a spirit of devotion and it's no good out arguing about it. Look here, I'm not sort of trying to make you all feel bad.
[00:24:50] You're quite entitled to having your christian life as you wish. If you don't wish to be a Levite, that's all right, quite alright. The Lord will bless you. He'll bless you. He'll bless you a lot.
[00:25:04] One day you will discover that all your blessing and all the way that you've gone and the facility and the blessing and the abundance of it and the ease of it has all come through way of a few who did not go that way. All you will discover in the end that the city itself has been produced out of such material that has had to be exploited.
[00:25:39] So you see, I want you to see that that great characteristic of these folk, they were given up to the Lord wholly at his disposal. It doesn't matter where you look, they're holy at his disposal. They are bound to the Ark. The Ark is on their shoulders. Never can they excuse themselves. They are bound to it. As the Lord said, they shall watch over it, they shall clean it, they shall carry it, they shall guard it. That was their function. And then another characteristic, very simply are just these last two characteristics. The second characteristic is what we could call responsibility.
[00:26:18] These people were wholly responsible. Wholly responsible. Not just a little, but wholly responsible. Now, you know when you go back to Gideon's day. And those men drinking the water, how they drank the water, how revealing that is. This whole question of responsibility is intensely practical. Many people consider that they're themselves responsible. They think they're responsible for the things of the law. They're no more responsible than some inanimate object.
[00:26:46] They haven't got the first ideas of responsibility because responsibility in its essential character is always seen, always seeing.
[00:27:00] So you see, you wonder, what are the characteristics we want to see in a few that will give themselves so that all the rest may come into the blessing? We want to see those who will abandon themselves to the Lord. Those who will surrender themselves to the Lord, give themselves up. They've laid everything on the altar. Home, family, time, career, health. It's all gone in one bell swoop. It's been given over to the Lord.
[00:27:30] That's what we need abandon to each other. And then responsibility. What does that mean, responsibility to the Lord? It means that everything's on your shoulders. Everything depends upon you. If you don't carry the arm, no one else will.
[00:27:42] Everything is dependent upon you. You've got to always be there, always there. Always there. I like these people who are so responsible, and then they're not there when you want them.
[00:27:53] That's not responsibility. Responsibility is that you're always there. Always.
[00:28:00] It comes down to all kinds of things, you know, punctuality, behavior, attitude, attendance, availability.
[00:28:12] All these things are part of responsibility. All part of responsibility.
[00:28:18] I'm so interested when I see people who evidently think that they are so responsible, and then, well, responsibility is a very practical thing. If you're carrying the ark, you don't excuse, you can't excuse yourself. Now, don't all feel hurt about, but be honest about.
[00:28:40] If you're not going to carry the ark, say so.
[00:28:44] Say so.
[00:28:47] Be prepared to follow your own course in that way.
[00:28:53] But I'm pointing out this, that whenever God commits himself, he's got to have those that are holy ghetto.
[00:29:04] And it's no good. You, as so many of us, we don't like to feel that we're out of anything at all. And so we would prefer to say that we're responsible. We talk about others who have not seen and so. And so being rather a hindrance or an incumbent. What stupid talk. What stupid talk. And yet it always from the mouths of those who themselves are not responsible. Essentially, they do the minimum and they think that they're responsible. Responsibility is to do the maximum.
[00:29:39] That's responsibility.
[00:29:41] If one's just trying to do the minimum, there's a lot of self ambition.
[00:29:46] It's perfectly obvious.
[00:29:48] It's not devotion to the. So there's a question of responsibility, and it will come right down to those of you who give yourselves fully to the Lord as to where. When you're absent and when you're not absent, and when you're, if you're punctual, if you're not punctual and the way that you behave and your whole attitude to the work of God and all other kinds of things, responsibility, these Levites had to carry it on their shoulder. They were watching over it day and night. Theirs was the duty. And I might also say that these people never had about them any spirit of we are and you are not.
[00:30:25] I believe that's one of the hallmarks of this kind of service. These people who look upon themselves in an inner circle and think that they must themselves shut out others or discriminate against others, or look down their noses at others or talk disparagingly about others. What utterance it all is, really.
[00:30:50] These people are nursing fathers and mothers. That is the essential character of the Levite. He took upon himself the whole nation as his child.
[00:31:03] You don't turn out little children because they're difficult, because they're dwarfed, because somehow they're not growing up as they should do. You don't turf them out the back door and say, oh, we can't have any do with you. You are a difficulty. Out you go. I won't talk with you. I won't have fellowship with you. You displeased me. You haven't seen, you talk in the wrong way about the things of God. Oh, no, I won't have anything to do with you.
[00:31:26] That kind of attitude so prevalent among so called responsible people, that's not, that's not anything near the characteristic of such a group.
[00:31:38] Paul speaks of nursing fathers and mothers.
[00:31:42] That's what you need. People who can deal with difficult children, people who can accommodate themselves to difficult children, people who can take a lot and go on loving, people who refuse to discriminate. Oh, how easy it is when you're going through it to say, what about so and so, he or she? They have so much. They had this, they had that. They can choose. They have such a good time of it all.
[00:32:10] Oh, it's so easy to feel, me, me, I'm going through it for them. Why should I?
[00:32:18] That's no levitical spirit. The very heart of the Levite is to give himself to the Lord for the rest.
[00:32:29] That's the heart of levitical service.
[00:32:32] Now, those are three characteristics. And with that we leave it that are found in these, in this story, this historical. It's prophetic. It's prophetic because of the absence of it. In the beginning, the Lord would not go up into Jerusalem. You can have a lovely contraction, a lovely organization, beautifully put together, absolutely perfectly oiled, wonderfully drawn, much better than on the shoulders of men. In some ways looks much nicer. And yet the Lord will not go with it.
[00:33:06] But get a few failing, faulty people who, in a full knowledge of what they are, have devoted themselves entirely without any reserve to the Lord. And it means that, believe you me, it means that day and night you're on call to the spirit of God, you get that and you get those characteristics about them, and then you discover the Lord begins to break out. He commits himself. He gives himself to a far greater and larger number. Well, we will end there. There's an awful lot more that we could say, but we won't say it. We'll leave it all now, Lord, we pray, taking me by faith and eating, spiritually eating of God, receiving God, receiving Christ.
[00:34:04] If you do that, Christ becomes part of you. You become part of Christ.
[00:34:10] Now it says, blessed is he that has washed his robes, that he may have right the tree of life. Unless our sin has been dealt with at the cross, unless the blood of the Lord Jesus has cleansed our sin forever away, we have no right to take the Lord Jesus as the life of God.
[00:34:29] You know, at the very last chapter of the Bible, it speaks of a tree of life which is going to be in the midst. It speaks, of course, again, a symbolic language. It speaks of a tree of life that will be the healing of all nations.
[00:34:44] Now, you know this word right, he may have right to the tree of life. This word right is a very wonderful word. It's translated in the New Testament. Power or authority or privilege, what does it mean? It means that anyone who's been washed in the blood of the Lord Jesus and has taken the Lord Jesus as God's forgiveness of his sin and cleansing from his sin, has a right to the life of God.
[00:35:13] That's what sin cut us off from. Sin, separated us from the life of God. Oh, if only we could get to the root of this. What's wrong with man today? Everyone knows there's something wrong with man. There's a vacant something, there's a vacuum, there's an emptiness. Oh, it doesn't matter what realm you are, however interested in life you are, you know that there's some underlying unhappiness, something somewhere that just doesn't make sense. It doesn't add up. Now. Now, watch. Wrong. What is it?
[00:35:47] It is simply that you and I were made to see God, to become part of God's son. And if we don't, there's something wrong, and we know it. We may not know exactly what is wrong, but we know there's something wrong somewhere. You see, we're not what we were intended for. We're not getting to the place that we were intended to get to. And we know it.
[00:36:16] The Lord Jesus is the process. Oh, I wish we could speak a lot more, but we can't. The time's gone, so we've got to finish. I wish we could speak a lot more about the tree of life. And with the white tomb, you see, this tree of life is not just a person. The Lord Jesus. It's a kind of man.
[00:36:34] The kind of man, the Lord Jesus. The tree. Trees. In the Bible, all speak of men.
[00:36:41] And you see the Lord Jesus when he spoke of himself as the tree of life. Mendes, to see a kind of man.
[00:36:49] We are the kind of men that betray the knowledge of good and evil express.
[00:36:56] The Lord Jesus is the kind of man that we have life expresses.
[00:37:01] And you see here, if we've been washed in the blood of the Lord Jesus, we've got a right to the tree of life, and you were changed. You see, the blood of the Lord Jesus does only one thing. It settles legally the whole question of sin.
[00:37:21] But the life of the Lord Jesus does something far more wonderful. Even the blood of the Lord Jesus, although they're linked wonderfully together, intimately together, the life of the Lord Jesus changes us. Now, it's one thing to know that your sins been forgiven, but to be the same person inside, still have all the old hate, all the old lust, all the old evil. Evil, all the old self centredness, all the self assertiveness and all the rest of it inside. And you know, oh, believe me, this is true. There are thousands of christians that are just like that.
[00:37:56] The blood of the Lord Jesus cleansed all their sin away. But inside, well, it's dreadful, because the life of the Lord Jesus has never got inside and has never started to change them. But you see, our salvation is not half a salvation, it's a full salvation. Not only do we have the cleansing from sin and forgiveness of sin, never to face the judgment of God on the question of sin, but we have the life of God.
[00:38:29] As we look at the Lord Jesus, as we receive the Lord Jesus, as we feed upon him, he says, my blood is drink indeed, and my flesh is meat indeed. As we feed upon his flesh spiritually and feed upon his blood as we receive him evermore into our beings, so we're changed from glory to glory. So we're conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus. So other people begin to say, my, there's something like Christ about that person. Not something pious necessarily. Not something religious, something so human, so rightly human, so just like Christ. The only way it can be described when in our offices and homes we're known to be religious, it is our condemnation.
[00:39:17] But when people have no other way of describing what they see than that we're like Christ. That is our commendation.
[00:39:29] People should be able to tell very swiftly the difference between what is just religious and what is real.
[00:39:40] Yes, the tree of life. Right to the tree of life, a changed life. Oh, this terrible thing, what we call it's there. Terrible. Now you see, Christ is the alpha. Christ is the process.
[00:39:55] He's not in the beginning of the crystal life. He is the process of the crystalline. Once you've come to Christ, a process starts. What is the process? To get you off of one basis onto another, to wholly change you. To produce a new kind of person inside of you.
[00:40:15] Oh, there's lots. Such a lot we could say about the tree of life, the kind of people we are. Well, Christ, you know, we can receive him as a person. No good just receiving him for the cleansing of our sin. We must continually receive him. The more we receive him, the more we shall grow like him. That's why John the Baptist said he must increase. I must decrease.
[00:40:40] The two can't increase together. Some christians seem to think that they can remain the same and the Lord Jesus will increase. It's not seven.
[00:40:50] One has got to go.
[00:40:54] When you become a Christian, you receive the Lord Jesus not only at the beginning, but as the process.
[00:41:00] And you receive him also at the end that he may enter in by the gates into the city. What is this city? It is simply a picture of God's final goal. What is this goal? This goal is what is called in the scripture, a blind for God.
[00:41:20] Humanity was never made just for earth.
[00:41:24] Humanity was never made just to eke out its existence in pleasure, toil and so on. And humanity was made in an especial way to become the very clothing of God.
[00:41:44] That is the only way I can describe it. The very clothing of God. God wants humanity to be something that is an integral part of himself. That's what we were made for.
[00:41:57] And the city of God is. Is the most wonderful way in the scripture that it is symbolized having the glory of God. God inside, no light there. The land is the light. No temple there, no church.
[00:42:14] The land is the church, the land is the temple. This city and God have infused into an eternal use that is the result of receiving Christ ever, ever more deeply through life. The end is into the city.
[00:42:37] Into the city.
[00:42:39] The goal of God's humanity is himself to become part of him.
[00:42:49] Many of the different religions of the world have dimly seen this to be the goal and have spoken about returning to God, being in the end merged back into God.
[00:43:04] God has revealed to the Lord Jesus much more clearly that the end is to become part of God himself.
[00:43:16] Blessed is hedgest that has washed his robes, that he may have right to the tree of life, that he may enter in by the gates into the city.
[00:43:28] I wish we could spend time on why it is by the gates, but we won't this evening. Perhaps another time though. But talk about that by the gate into the city.
[00:43:40] Jesus is the alpha, Jesus is the omega. Jesus is the first, Jesus is the Lord.
[00:43:50] Jesus is the beginning of the christian life. Jesus is the goal of the christian life. The beginning is to have our sins washed ways that forgiven by God because we receive Christ.
[00:44:06] The end is to become the bride of the Lord Jesus.
[00:44:13] May the Lord help us to understand that and to understand that God would reach us this evening through the Lord Jesus and would have us reach him through the Lord Jesus.
