Lilly in the Bog

My text today, friends, is in Psalm 24, about the King of Glory. You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. Hear now, is the Word of God, and may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of His Holy Word.

The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof, the world, and they that dwell therein. For He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully, he shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of His salvation.

This is the generation of them that seek Him, that seek Thy face, O Jacob, a sailor. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates, even lift them up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of Glory, Salah. Well, we don't see much of the King of Glory in our churches today.

Why, you'd be hard to experience the power of God in a meeting today because of our pride and indifference and disobedience. The churches in the land lie under the remedial judgment of the withdrawn presence of God among us. He who is pure cannot dwell with those who are impure.

He who is holy cannot abide with those who are unholy. We can make our excuses and say, we have become desensitized to sin because of the sinful society we live in. Or, if I want to watch my favorite TV show, I can't help it if there's sex and nudity in there.

That's just life today. That's just how it is. You just have to take the good with the bad.

Well, that's a cop-out, friends, because you can choose not to watch that filth to begin with. And we can't complain of us being stained with sin because of today's society. The Apostle Paul lived three years in Ephesus, and the Apostle John lived there.

He wrote the Gospel of John there, and his remains are buried there. Ephesus, at the time, was one of the most morally corrupt cities of the ancient world. When I visited the excavated ruins of that city years ago, and as I walked that main thoroughfare of that city, which in its heyday had over a quarter of a million inhabitants, as it was a chief city of commerce, as I stood on that main thoroughfare of the Agora, directly on my left was the impressive public library of Celsus, and directly to my right, right across the street from the library, was a public brothel owned by the city, with a woman's footprint in the ground marking the entrance.

And the city received funds from the proceeds of that brothel. And also in that city was the Temple of Diana, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, where the worst kind of pagan worship took place, the most vile and disgusting forms. And in all that corruption, and in all that moral filth, and in all that devilry, and in all that pagan idolatry, the Apostle John and the Apostle Paul stood out like two holy white diamonds against the black velvet of sin.

You can be as holy as you want to be, brother pastor, or you can live a compromised life as much as you want to, but don't blame society on your lack of holiness, rather blame it on your laziness. You'd rather spend your free time playing golf, or watching your favorite ball game, plopping yourself in front of a big TV screen, and sitting there until you rise, become wide as saucers, and your brain the size of a pea. How many hours have you logged in daily, on your knees in your Bible, and on your face before God in prayer? Listen, friends, it's been estimated that the average pastor only spends 10 minutes a day in prayer.

10 minutes, if that's true, what does the average Christian spend? Two minutes? Maybe five minutes? Five minutes as we hurriedly run out the door saying, bless me, bless mine, and bless all I have? In Psalm 24, we have a pattern for revival, for personal revival, and corporate revival, and even national revival, if we apply these truths to our lives. We see this pattern in verses 3 through 5, where the Word of God declares, who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully, he shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Here we see two planes, a horizontal plane and a vertical plane.

The horizontal plane is our relationship to our fellow man. The vertical plane is our relationship to God. On our horizontal plane is our dealings with man.

Have we wronged another? Have we lied to someone? Have we cheated someone in our business dealings with them? Do we have a root of bitterness toward another, where every time we see that person, we seethe in anger? Do we have an unforgiving heart toward someone? How was our dealings with our fellow men? These mentioned are sins of commission, things we have done. But what about our sins of omission? Have we witnessed to our neighbors and co-workers like we ought? Do we go out in public and hand out gospel tracts and share the gospel, or are we silent and secret Christians? Do we spend our free time on our knees in intercessory prayer, crying out to God in desperation and with tears over the lost and perishing in our community? Do we even pray for our lost loved ones enough? I'm an old man with a pacemaker, but every night I climb my bones out of bed and open my Bible and seek my God from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m., and it has been during these times that God speaks to me most clearly. What counts costs, and what costs counts.

A daily quiet time with God must have a sacrifice attended for God delights in sacrifice. Why, He sacrificed His only begotten Son to suffer and die on a bloody cross for my sins. He held nothing back on Calvary.

How can I hold anything back from Him? Are we praying enough? Do we pray for other nations around the world? I have a world globe, and I've often used it in my quiet times through the years. I'd sit with that globe in my lap, and I'd hold my hand over a nation. I'd place my hand over a nation like Africa and pray over it and weep over it.

I noticed one day as the sun came into my study and shone on that globe that it was stained all over. I walked over to it and looked down at it, and I realized that through the years that globe had been stained with my tears. Do you have a stained-teared globe, friend? Or do you spend your free time selfishly on sports and entertainment and things of this world while eternity waits? So we must have a clear horizontal plane of clean hands, our text says.

Next, we have the vertical plane. This represents our relationship to God, our walk with God. What's the temperature of our walk with God lately? Are we in a red-hot love relationship with Jesus? Or have we, like the believers in Ephesus described in Revelation who have left the first love? Has our intimacy with Christ gone cold or worse, lukewarm like the Laodiceans? Billy Graham was saved under the preaching of Mordecai Ham, and a young Billy Graham asked him one day for advice in ministry.

He said, Brother Ham, do you have any advice for this young preacher, any words of wisdom or help for me that I need to know that you can pass on to me? And Mordecai Ham looked him in the eye and said, Billy, don't ever lose your sweetheart love for Jesus. Let me ask you, friend, have you lost your love for Jesus? Have you let your love for Jesus grow cold? Have other things or other people pushed them into the background of your life to where that sweetheart love is a stale thing? In other words, how's your walk with God lately? Are you on the full stretch for God? Are you on the out and out for God? D.L. Moody used to sign his name with the letters O.O. after it, like you'd put D.D. for Doctor of Divinity. And one day, a fellow minister noticed how Moody had signed his name for someone D.L. Moody O.O. And the minister asked Moody, he said, why do you put the letters O.O. after your name? And Moody replied, because I'm on the out and out for Christ and the gospel.

Well, Psalm 25, 14 says, The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him. Is Christ preeminent in your priorities so he can be prominent in your life? Does he have first place as Lord? Or are you backing away and shying away from the lordship of Christ in your life? Who sits on the throne of your heart, friend, self or King Jesus? So we have mentioned here of this vertical plane as a pure heart. Well, these two planes, the horizontal in our dealings with man and the vertical in our walk with God represents the pathway to ascend into the hill of the Lord.

And when these two planes meet in harmony, when the vertical crosses the horizontal, they form a cross. Christ is the King of Glory. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of Hosts.

He is the King of Glory. I'll finish my message, friends, with a story. My homiletical mentor, Dr. Stephen F. Offord, shared with me when he was pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in New York City in the turbulent 1960s.

He was taking a cab from the airport to his church, driving through busy traffic when the cab driver asked him, Hey, man, what kind of work do you do, man? Dr. Offord replied, I'm a pastor of a church in Manhattan. The cabbie said, I minister in this wicked city. Oh, man, how can that be? So how can you do it, man? Stephen Offord said, I perceive by your accent, you are Jamaican.

I have preached many times on your lovely island through the years. Let me ask you, my friend, are you familiar with the bogs there? Oh, yes, man. Those bogs are dangerous.

They're quicksand. You can sink in it. Stephen Offord then asked, Are you also familiar with those fantastic white lilies that sometimes grow in that bog? Oh, yes, man.

Those pure white lilies really stand out in that black bog for sure. Well, said Stephen Offord, my dear fellow, I am that lily in a bog. And that's what we should be, friends, as believers in a corrupt society.

We shouldn't make excuses, but we should go all out for Christ. We should be a lily in the bog for Christ Jesus until he comes again or calls. Let us pray.