Who's Touching The Ark - Part 3

Why do you need to defend the Bible? All this man did was put his hand up to stay the ark and immediately he was slidden. What do you think we're doing with the gospel today? Dressing it up? Painting it up? Somebody told me this week of a Christian group, a rock band, a Christian rock band. But anyhow, whatever they are, they go around and now they've got sequins on their coats. Well, why not? Johnny Cash has them. And all the other guys have them. I mean, if the world can have them, can't we? Glitter? I mean, if we've no other glitter, we may as well stick it on the outside if you're not on the inside. Anyhow. And we try to study the ark of God. We're trying to put some improvement on the ark of God. We try to do it, I think, with the translations we make of the word of God. We try to make some of those words just a little bit more easy. As I said to some preachers I've preached with this week, that if we go back, and maybe mentioned it here before, if we go back to Bible language and call sin what it really is. Instead of saying to somebody, you say, that girl's a whore, you say, no, no, she's a call girl. You say about a dirty, filthy sodomite, oh, no, no, he's not a sodomite, he's just gay. There's nobody wicked, they're just weak. There's no iniquity, it's just infirmity. No backsliders anymore. That's a dirty word. A lot of people out of fellowship, but backsliders, you don't use that word. Oh, how smooth. I remember reading the story of Mr. Whitfield, where he was particularly angry one day. I'd like to have heard Whitfield, I think it'd have been right up my alley. He got mighty furious about the possessions the devil had. He was always running the church to pull down strongholds. He was always seeing the enemy doing his evil work, getting people to submit to him. And one day he said, I'm going to shoot the arrows of God into your hearts. And he mentioned an arrow, and he pulled the arrow back like this, and the congregation ducked, you know. Well, that's the way to preach. If you can get them to do that, at least you've got them halfway down to the ground, and maybe when you get them halfway down, you can push them the other half. But the anger of the Lord was kindled against this man, and not only smote him, but killed him. Come on, in God's name, what are we doing with the gospel today? Hmm? Isn't it getting more emasculated? Isn't it getting more Hollywood style? Don't you miss the absence and the glory of God? Why, they've got the very presence of God in fact, and that's all we need. There's an old hymn that says, God's presence and his very self, an essence all divine. I'll ask you again, I've asked you before, when did you last go out of the sanctuary? Tiptoe, because God had revealed his holiness and his majesty. We go out very much the same way we came in. Go out, we say, hey, I like your dress. Someone like that in Sears myself, wish I'd have got it. Or I like some other trivial thing that's got nothing to do with eternity and nothing to do with God. Oh my. Notice in verse 5 now, go back a minute here. David and all the house of Israel played before the Lord, and all instruments made of fir, wood, even hearths, and psalteries, and cymbals, and coronets, and on cymbals. Now that, there is his ecstasy. Now come down to verse 9. This same David was afraid of the Lord that day, and he said, how shall the ark of the Lord come to me? That's a big switch. He's excited, they have their band, music, everything, they're having a whale of a time, and then suddenly God intervenes, and suddenly his all emotional life does a somersault. He realizes what an awful God he serves. What a God of majesty, what a God of glory. One minute everybody's excited, the next minute, wouldn't that be something, it'd be like going into that experience, you know, when Ananias and Sapphira went to church. That must have been a great morning. I would have enjoyed that, I think. I said, well Lord, why did you stop with two hypocrites? I'm sure half the congregation, you could have wiped them out at the same time, it would have been more spectacular. But God doesn't do it that way. But what I'm trying to say, rough as and tumbled as it may be, because I've had such a hectic day today, that the anger of God was kindled for a very simple thing. He did not take a hammer and break the ark. He didn't say, this old piece of furniture we can do without. Do you know the ark is the only thing that was taken out of the original tabernacle and went into the temple of the Most High God? Do you know afterwards in the book of the Revelation it says they've preserved the testimony of God in an ark? Now scholars will tell you that the ark was destroyed in the second invasion and the burning of Babylon, and what have you got, and maybe it was. And yet God's presence, and that's what matters. It isn't a case of having a wooden box here. What it's telling us is that God makes their place his habitation. Now, as I said to somebody today, this is awesome, this is breathtaking, when you say, well I'd like to go and I wish we had a box, and you can say God's presence is there. He's there in His holiness, He's there in His majesty, He's there in His glory, be careful how you handle this thing. Well we don't need a box, we don't need a presence. Why? Because it says you are the habitation of God. There's only so much of God's holiness in this meeting as you and I fill with the Holy Spirit of God, the pure Spirit of God. He doesn't dwell in temples, oh you can make Him a thousand crystal palaces like they've done on the West Coast there, so what? You can't sanctify a building in the New Testament since they didn't do that. Why, even Solomon said, and I guess he built the most expensive building ever made, money in the world, he used gold to walk on, he used gold on the walls, he was the most extravagant building ever made, he used gold more easily than we use cement. And he built the altar, and he had all the priests in total correct display there. And yet when he made this intercession to God he says, look, I've put up this building, I've done everything according to your commandment. We've even got an altar, we've even got a sacrifice on the altar. Now what's missing? Nothing, except the fire of God. What good is a house that I've built if God's presence isn't there? What's the good of making a showpiece and saying, we've got the best scribe, we've got the most brilliant preacher, we've got this, so what? In God's name, does it matter? Don't you think we're putting our hands on so many things these days? You've got to start this way and finish that way, and do something else. We're getting so mechanical. Since that, when did the gospel need trimming up? I had to go to a meeting this week, there was a five piece ban there. It was banned, B-A-N. If I had the authority to do it, it would be B-A-N-N-E-D, banned. I had to ban the whole thing. Oh, how they swerved and jazzed and what not. They didn't do that too long after I really got going.