04.03. Who Is Touching The Ark?
Isn’t it incredible that these people who knew God in such an intimate way, these people had gone round a city without a gun? This people, inspite of the mockering, the despising, went round one day, round another day, another day, another day. On the last day, they went round seven times. In total, thirteen times they went round. - That’s pretty unlucky isn’t it? - And they kept dumb and they stood all the criticism of the people that were watching. And all they had to do the last day was to "shout with a great shout." Why? Because God was there.
God says, I want a tabernacle and there at the mercy seat will I meet with thee.
God wants me to meet with Him. It’s more than me preaching for Him. It’s more than me being a missionary for Him. He wants to meet with me. He wants to reveal Himself to me. He wants to talk with me. He wants to come in and work in this being of mine! A lady called me from the border of Mexico today. She was weeping and said, "God has called us here. God has really blessed us, but oh, we want to be great soul winners." And she went on. I said, "My dear, look the first commandment. Is not, Thou shalt be a soul winner. The first commandment is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength." There are lots of missionaries that don’t love God. There are lots of missionaries that should have returned
from the field six months after they got there. They’re doing the thing mechanically. And it’s hard to endure that kind of burden when they are doing it mechanically. But when they do it under the anointing of God. When they do it with the love of God... Oh, it is so different. Can you imagine the procession accompanying the ark of the Lord? They had harps, and psalteries, and timbrels , and cornets and they’re having a great time. And suddenly, death came. You wonder that David was afraid? And he said, "How shall the ark of the Lord come unto me?" Do you ever wonder if you’ve gotten insensitive to what God’s trying to say to you? Do you ever wonder when a certain thing has happened that somewhere in your nervousness, you put your hand up to steady the ark, and somehow the sensitivity went, and the compassion you had went, and the concern you had went... All this man did was try to steady the ark of God. Oh mercy, how we’re trying to steady the ark of God these days. We don’t just want to steady it. We want to do some new thing.
We’d paint it.
We’d put a musical box inside of it.
We’d put the priest in some new garments.
We’d try to make it more acceptable! The power and the presence of God were resting on that tabernacle. And while they were obedient, they had success. Are we steadying the ark of God in the way we are presenting the gospel these days? The gospel is still the power of God unto salvation to all who believe. I heard somebody say, "Well, you know, there’s a different approach today". Is there? Is there really? Is there any difference between the grief of somebody who’s heartbroken today and the grief of somebody who lived three thousand years ago? We say, "Human nature is changed". Human nature has not changed! Human nature is still a sinful nature. Human nature still needs God. It seems though, God is trying to check us, but we won’t take the checking. We won’t take the warning. And again I say to you, the most distressing area, I believe, is the area of the church itself. We are trying to steady the ark.
We don’t want God Almighty to govern the whole thing.
We want a little bit of flesh in it.
We want a little bit of humanism in it.
We want a little bit of organization in it.
We want some of our skill in it.
And God holds off.
The word of God says, "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God." Oh, I’m aching on the inside to see somebody that really, really, really has no confidence in the flesh.
Isn’t it horrible when we try and subsidize God’s cause with a few dollars here, in a collection there, and something else. Now, either God is God, or he isn’t. As I’ve said before, this book is either absolute or it’s obsolete. There is no middle course. It either has all the answers or it has no answers. I’ve got to get to the place where I say, "Lord, you can strip everything else away from me, and, ‘On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand’". I’m not going to steady the ark. I’m convinced God is going to do a new work. I’ve talked the last few days with a brother I love very dearly, and he’s at a crossroads in his life, and I know others who are men that you think are at the top of the tree. You think they should be satisfied with what they’ve got. And they’re not. They are men who don’t try to steady the ark by organization and saying you must do it this way and you must do it that way. They are suddenly realizing there is a new dimension that God wants to bring to our generation. A new revelation. A new unfolding of the Word of God.
Before long, you remember, that David went and slew the oxen and they took the fatlings, and they made a sacrifice to God. And then he danced before God. Why? Because he got rid of many of his obstructions. The Lord is very merciful. Do you know how merciful he is? He’s so merciful, He’ll strip us right down to the place where we haven’t a thing to stand where we haven’t a thing to lean on - the place where we are in nakedness and in despair.
You know the church that was rich and increased with goods? That’s where the church is today. She’s rich, she’s increased with goods, she’s in need of nothing. Which church was it Jesus spewed out of his mouth?. "I would rather that you were hot or cold so then because thou are neither hot or cold , I’ll spew... " (He didn’t spew the cold one out of his mouth, it had never been in.) It was His church that He spewed out of His mouth. It wasn’t a heathen religion, it was His church. They were neither hot nor cold. They were kind of midstream. And because they were neither one thing nor the other, He vomited them out. He didn’t vomit the cold church out. He didn’t bother with it. God will not stand for mediocrity.
Some eager, keen, young seminary fellows, were asking after a meeting, "Well, what’s the secret, the real secret of abounding in the Christian life ? What’s the secret of not being a failure? What’s the secret of not letting your branch get withered up?"
Some of them call today for prayer. I’m sorry for some of the situations they are in, but it’s the only way they’ll grow in grace and in the knowledge of God. They’ve been leaning too much on what they have, and now God’s going to dry up their source so they only have God on whom they can lean. They’ve had so much flesh, they’ve had so much ability, they’ve had so much organization, they’ve had so much security that God says, "Well, let me pull it all away". Doesn’t the word say, "Trust ye in the Lord forever, for in the Lord is everlasting strength?"
I think one of the shocks in eternity will be to discover how little we’ve ever used of the available power of God. Not for our own mean, silly self! There’s a world out there that’s dying. Does God have resources to meet this generation? Come on! I learned to my horror while I was just in Brooklyn from a man who is a professional in his realm, a very fine Christian man, he said that last year the churches in America spent close to two billion dollars on radio and TV preaching. Two billion! Do you know how many people they’ve reached? Less than 4% of the national family! Less than 4% of Americans listen to the gospel. Can you imagine how many mission stations that would have built? How many churches that would have built in some other country? I think we are putting our hands on the ark.
We are rather afraid that we might go a bit overboard, you know. Doctrinally, someone comes up and says, "Well, steady a minute" and he hardly knows he’s putting his hand on the ark. We’re just afraid, it seems, of some new revelation, some new demand that God will make upon us, not just individually, but collectively. Again, I was shocked to realize that this man, Uzzah, did not smash up the ark, he didn’t tell all the people to rebel, he didn’t tell the priest to do it . All he did was steady the ark thinking he was doing God a favor. All he did was disobey. Is that all? Well, that’s all that Adam did in the garden; all he did was disobey. He didn’t curse God. And it seems the hardest thing that we have to learn in our lives is to learn how to obey in the very, very, very simple things that God challenges us with.
I still say, you know, if I were a kind of a Protestant pope, I’d close every church down for a month. We’re preached to death. Why do we keep going to conferences? You can’t handle the lot you’ve got, why do you want some more? The next conference you go, whether it’s this weekend, or next week... you’ll have more light!... and therefore more to answer for at the judgment seat. Haven’t you got enough to answer for? Aren’t there areas in your life where you still have not obeyed?
"It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God," the Word of God says. Robert Louis Stevenson said, "I only know one thing worse, and that’s when you fall out of the hands of the living God". And that happens. There comes a time when God says to a nation, "All right, you’ve been putting your hand on my truth. You’ve been withholding my truth". You say, "Well, we’ve given money to missions". So we have. But you know, we had a National Day of Prayer last week. No. We didn’t have a National Day of Prayer. We had a national suggestion! If we would have had a National Day of Prayer, the president would have said, "Every factory is closed down. Every school is closed down. Every shopping mall is closed down,. Everything is going to stop. It’s time we listened to God. It’s time we humbled ourselves before God." But when God wants it that way, which He does, we put our hand on the ark, and say, "We’ll steady it and make it a little bit more convenient". Dear God. There was a time they were so concerned about revival they even put sackcloth on the animals. If you wore a sackcloth they would think you were a crackpot! If you don’t think so, get a potato sack and cut a hole in the top, pull it over your head, get your wife to cut some holes so you can put your arms in and go to church like that. And say, "This is an outward sign of an inward sorrow I have. I don’t care about the style of my clothes".
I don’t care what you think or anybody else thinks. We’ve got to have revival. We’ve got to have a move of God. And we haven’t had it after all our financial efforts and all our genius’ of evangelism and all the other things. We get so far that we put our hands on the ark. There’s going to be a conference shortly and I’m not in any way troubled that I wasn’t invited. They’re going to meet and go through a rigmarole again. Workshops, workshops, workshops. There’s a workshop for this and there’s a workshop for that. The hardest work in the whole world is prayer! And there’re no workshops on prayer! The ark is falling. We’re going to steady it. We’ve got a new idea. Every magazine I pick up now, Christian magazine, is how to make your church grow. I’m looking for one that says how to take your church deeper! Somebody said to a preacher, "You’ve the biggest church in... How big is your church?" He answered, "Three miles wide and an inch deep". I think that’s true of a lot of them. Three miles wide and an inch deep. And while it’s humorous, it’s tragic! Are we going to change the style? Are we going to keep steadying the ark? Are we going to say, "No, no, no. We are not going any further like this. We are not going with this cart you’ve got it on. We are going to do it God’s way". And it looks silly to carry it on your shoulders. It looks silly to walk around when you could mechanize the thing, or organize the thing, or make it more attractive.
How can you make God’s presence more attractive?! That’s about the height of insanity! ISN’T GOD HIMSELF AND HIS HOLINESS ATTRACTIVE? Do you know what we need to do? We need to do what David did. We need to take all the implements. We need to take the cart and break it up and we need to get hold of the bullocks and chop them up and have one big Holy Ghost bonfire and say,
"Lord God, I am going to live on the stretch for You from now until I die. Whether I die tomorrow or ten years from now, I’m going to meet with You as I’ve never met with You before. I’m going on the stretch for You as I’ve never been on the stretch before."