In this sermon, the speaker shares a personal experience of preaching the word of God in Venezuela. Initially feeling inadequate, the speaker is surprised when four individuals in the front row respond to the invitation to be saved. These individuals later go on to enter full-time ministry. The sermon emphasizes the importance of not being seduced by worldly desires and comforts, but instead focusing on the battle for conflicting realities between God and the world. The speaker also mentions a previous period of fasting and prayer in Venezuela, which resulted in the baptism of four individuals who went on to serve in ministry.

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