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Pastor David Mitchell
All right. Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Hey, how's everybody doing out there?
Our family's a little under the weather. And but the Lord is good.
He who knows it kind of feels like symptoms of an old fashioned cold, actually. That's probably all it is.
But I hope you guys are weathering it. OK. And thanks,
Dave, for your Sunday school lesson. As usual, it was fantastic. And good to have all you guys on today.
We got our home folks on. We got our our regulars out in the Internet world on today.
So good to have all of you with us. I got the ability to use a little bit of PowerPoint since we're doing it from home today.
So let me share my screen. And we'll we'll be able to take a look at kind of what we've been talking about here.
Let's see. All right.
I think that's the right view. If not, I'm sure
Ben or Dave will let me know. But we've been in Roman chapter 15 and a lot of what the chapter talks about is different imperatives for those of us who were born again, how the
Lord wants us to live after we're saved. And you've heard me quote
Charles Spurgeon on the fact that an effect can never be the cause of the cause. Right. So the cause of our salvation is when the
Holy Spirit calls us and regenerates us. Everything else is an effect. And so a lot of Romans 15 talks about the effects.
What changes in a person when they're saved? What are the symptoms of salvation?
You might look at it that way. And the first part of the chapter talked about a lot of those. And then we get down to verse 16.
And it talked about the offering up of the Gentiles being acceptable unto the Lord. And of course,
Paul was always speaking to a mixed group, almost always. And he would speak to the
Jew first and then the Gentile in the room. And he was always having to convince the
Jews that God would even save a Gentile, of course. And that's what Paul meant when he said that Jesus died for all men.
He meant all kinds of men, Jews and Gentiles, not just Jews. And almost everywhere that word all is used in the
New Testament epistles of Paul, it's the word pos and the usual meaning is all kinds of rather than just all as in English.
We've learned that, right? But here he's telling the Jews that he was the apostle to the
Gentiles and that God will accept the offerings up of the Gentiles. So we've been taking several Sundays to talk about what are the offerings of the
Gentiles. And now we're at a second major point, which is, well, how does the believer priest,
I'm sorry, how does the priest of the Old Testament picture the New Testament believer priest?
And that's kind of what we've been talking about very recently. And so let's look a little bit at this cool picture.
I remember years ago when I was saved,
I met Dr. Erwin Freeman. We called him Brother Rocky Freeman. And he was just an amazing preacher and teacher of the word of God.
He preached in every free nation of the world. He was very famous when he was with us. He's in heaven now, of course.
But he was an authority on the wilderness tabernacle. In fact, he taught on this subject in seminary, various seminaries in the country.
And in fact, one of the last times he was in our church, I think I'm right about this, Ben, we videoed him teaching on the tabernacle so that it could be used in the seminary course.
And John Karpiak has a copy of that. We need to get that thing digitalized, don't we?
That would be a good thing. But I'll never forget he was talking about the array of Israel as they marched through the wilderness, when they would stop, when
God would tell them to stop for a while. If you could see it from the sky, from God's viewpoint, it was in the shape of a cross.
And you can see that depicted here in the wilderness tabernacle is right in the middle, that little small square in a rectangle in the middle there is depicted on this picture.
And this has all 12 tribes of Israel as they surrounded the wilderness tabernacle.
Isn't that a beautiful thing that from God's viewpoint, it was in the shape of a cross? Now here's kind of an aerial viewpoint of the wilderness tabernacle.
And you can see some of the things we've talked about. All of this was designed to be folded up and carried, of course, and it had to be taken care of by the
Levites and Aaron's particular family specifically.
So as you would enter into this door that you can see down here on the bottom right, the first thing you would come in contact with is this large outer area.
This little area out here sort of depicts, as we talked about last time, this sort of is a picture of us as the tabernacle of God.
The Bible says our bodies are the temple of the living God. This picture is our outer man, our physical body, which is not good or evil.
It is fallen, right? And so it tends towards sin, the old man does.
And we know that our new man, when we're born again, we are re -gened. We're given
God's genes rather than the genes of our parents. The old man still hangs around, and we're kind of a trinity like God is.
We have a body, a soul, and a spirit, and that body is the outer tabernacle.
And this outer court pictures our body. So what's supposed to happen as you move in towards past the altar and past the brazen laver, and you get into this little area, this is divided into two parts.
You can see down in this little area, the first part is called the holy place, and the farthest inside is the holy of holies.
And that's the area where only one man could go one time a year, one day a year, and that's the high priest.
All of this had to be sprinkled with the blood of the altar here, which pictured Jesus Christ's death on the cross, of course.
And the brazen laver pictures the water of the word, the water of the word of God.
And it's a beautiful picture of how the word of God cleanses us.
It must be a part of this. We know that salvation can only happen with two items.
One is the water of the word, and the other is the Holy Spirit takes those two things for any human to be saved.
And that's a fascinating thing to think about, because the word of God part always has a human touch on it.
So God chooses, more often than not, when he does miraculous things, he chooses to do it together with his children, which is us.
And even in the salvation of souls, which is perhaps the highest miracle God ever does, is to save a depraved human from a depraved race, and to open their eyes, and they come alive.
It's an amazing miracle when a human being is saved. But it has a human component, because the word of God, if you think about this old book here, this old book, men were the penmen.
And whether you read it, or whether you hear a preacher on the radio, or TV, or a missionary, it has a human component to get the word of the gospel to other people.
That has to be a part of it. Nobody is saved without that. And that can raise questions,
I know, and they're interesting to talk about, and the answers are there, but it does,
I mean, it does require, you want to talk about the darkest corners of Africa, it requires a missionary.
It is not true that over in Iran, despite what your friends are telling you, most of them Charismatics, and with the
Charismatics, they're like the Greeks, they have to have something new every day. So they invent doctrines and stories, and those stories, they're kind of like Catholics in this sense, their story becomes as authoritative as the
Bible to them. Not to us, but that's how they think. So I have so many friends in that group, either the
Pentecostals or Charismatics, so many close, dear friends, and so I say it with a smile on my face, because I love them, and they love me.
They think I'm wrong, and I think they're wrong, and, you know, we can't both be right. We could both be wrong. We're not both right, but the
Word of God can guide us in that too. You just have to keep studying the Scriptures, and here's the thing I would ask everyone to do, all you guys know this, is grow up.
I mean, lay aside the stuff that you've been spoon -fed from your denomination, because it's full of things that are not true.
It's got some truth in it, but it's got a lot of stuff that's not. Charlotte and I left the denomination we grew up in years ago, and we took the word
Baptist off our church sign, because we're not like modern Baptists. So you have to grow up and just realize that this is the only authority right here.
The church beliefs that comes from a seminary somewhere with PhDs who are not even preachers, most of them, they're
PhDs, and I guarantee you there's some of them that aren't even saved. They're just scholarly, and they love the scholarship of the
Scripture, and I had a few of those at Baylor when I went there. One of them was named Dr. Christian, and he wasn't one as far as I could tell, but anyway, this is the authority.
So if you'll get a copy of the Ten Rules of Bible Interpretation, we can make that available to you if you just put it out there in the chat if you don't have it.
If everybody that loves each other will go by those rules and shake hands and say this, look,
I will no longer cheat on these rules just to win an argument, because the truth is more important.
That's what Brother Otis Fisher and I did for 13 years, and we had maybe, I don't know, 10 or 20 things we disagreed on when we met.
We only had two when he went to heaven, and one of them was whether they could see us or not, and I think
I was right, because I said yes, he said no. We never agreed on that one, but Otis, now you know I'm right.
Okay, so anyway, but my point is, if you take things in context and you use all the other nine rules of Bible Interpretation, you know, especially the grammar and the word studies you can do,
I mean, Greek is like math. There's so many arguments that can be solved just with the Greek, and you can get software.
You don't have to go to college and learn Greek if you don't want to take the time to do it. Get Logo software. It will show you.
If you want something free, the Blue Letter Bible has great
Greek tools in there, and it's like math, so it solves all these things, but anyway,
I believe the answers are there. If you want to talk about your charismatic friends that believe that there are people in Iran right now and places like that, that the
Holy Spirit is just coming to them and giving them a vision of Jesus and then saving their soul, and you'll hear about it out there.
I don't believe it. It's not what the Bible says happens. I mean, you guys know
I believe God is sovereign, right, but I believe not only does he elect or choose who's going to be saved, he also has a sovereign method for how he saves people, and it's his sovereign plan, and it's described in the
Bible, and Jesus himself talks about the water and the Spirit, and Apostle Paul talks about it, and it's all through Paul's epistles, and so you see those two components through the
Gospels as well, that you have to hear the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit has to open your eyes and ears to be able to hear it.
It takes both, so that's a rabbit trail for today, but I mean, I just, I, listen, if that's not true, why do we even need missionaries, and why do they die and give their lives, and their children die of all kinds of diseases, and their wives go crazy because they lost their kids?
I'm speaking, I'm thinking of William Carey. They asked him one time if he spoke in tongues, and he said, my tongues are that I've translated the
Bible into 21 dialects. I believe it's 21, something over 20 dialects.
He wouldn't have had to do that if the gift of tongues was available. He would have just spoken in tongues, and they would have heard in their language and been saved, but that gift is one of the ones that the
Apostle Paul specifically says would cease when the perfect comes, and by the way, this is the perfect right here.
It's the word of God. The written word is the perfect that Paul talked about. I know that because Greek is like math, and it's in the neuter.
If it were Jesus, it would be in the masculine. If it were the rapture, it'd be in the feminine. If it's in the neuter, it's a thing, and this is the only thing on the planet that's perfect, so when that was all put together somewhere between 1 and 230
A .D., somewhere in that time period, gifts of tongues prophesying in the sense of telling the future, words of wisdom, those kinds of sign gifts that were given to the apostles to authenticate their message ceased, the
Bible says, and so Chrysostom wrote around 230 in his commentary on the book of 1 and 2
Corinthians. When he got to the part about tongues, he said, I can't really speak to what specifically this was because it no longer exists in the church today, so that's history.
Church history, the word of God, all of it proves it, so this big, huge movement today, and so many of your friends will either allow it or do it or believe in it.
It's all fake. It's got several sources. It doesn't mean your friends are all demonized, though some of them are.
I've seen them. Listen, you want to see one, go out on YouTube and check out some of the videos of Kenneth Copeland when he gets demonized.
You can see it. I mean, it's happening, but that's not always the case. Sometimes it's just a learned psychological response because the places they go, they teach that, so they teach them how to do it.
Now, what's funny to me is you can't teach a gift, but yet they teach it, so a gift is not something you teach people.
It's something God gives them, and I've got great friends that are in this movement, and I ask them, you know, isn't it funny that God only puts them in buildings that say
Charismatic or Pentecostal, and he doesn't put them among the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Methodists.
You just don't see them getting that gift, and then the gift in the Bible was languages of signification, the scripture says, which means world languages, not gibberish, so anyway,
I don't know where you guys stand on that, but I've studied it for 40 years, and I know what the scripture says, and I know what church history says, so we need to tell the truth to our friends in a nice way, though.
We have to be, you know, you can't do it like I do it when I'm preaching, because when you're preaching, you have authority to get all fired up, but when you're one -on -one, it's different.
You got to do it with a smile on your face and realize that, you know, you've got to listen to their viewpoint, too, and you will learn things, you know, you'll learn things about all kinds of things from their viewpoint, but they can learn from you as well.
Now, with regard to this needing the water and the word, the labor there has the water in it, and then from there, you pass into this area that's divided into two.
There's a tent here, and then there's also a curtain here, and it divides the two inner areas, so let's take a look at that.
If you can see inside this now, you wouldn't be able to see past this blue curtain. I'm colorblind.
It's probably purple. I don't know. The Bible tells us what color it is, so it's blue, but anyway, you wouldn't see back here, because only the high priest would have ever seen this, but this area we've talked about already.
This is the table of showbread on the right as you enter this holy place, it's called, and I made a mistake the other day, by the way, if you want to make note of it.
I said it had manna on it. It's not the same as manna, really. It's showbread, but it is correct.
As I said, it pictures the body of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross that he gave his body for us.
It's a picture of the fact that Jesus is the bread of life. Now, the manna picture is that too, but that's not what was on this table.
It was the showbread, and in the Hebrew, it literally means face bread, and there's a lot of theories on what it means.
Why is it called face bread, but I believe, you know, my personal belief, my mentor,
Dr. Freeman, told me that Jesus was God's seen, and the Holy Spirit is God felt, more than that.
That's simplified, I know, but I mean, if you see the face of Jesus Christ, you're seeing God, right?
So, the face bread, it's a picture of Jesus, and then over here on the left side, you see the seven candlesticks,
God's perfect number seven, and so the candlesticks picture that Jesus was the light and is the light of the world, the light of all that is.
He's the light that came into the world, and the darkness comprehended him not, because man is depraved, and so forth, and then you get down closer to this curtain, where you're about to enter into the
Holy of Holies, if you're the high priest, and you have to walk right by the altar of incense, and that pictures, it does picture the prayers of the saints, but it more specifically, everything in this room pictures
Jesus, so it more specifically pictures that he is our priest, he is the one who's our advocate, and before the
Father, and when our prayers hit heaven, Jesus is always reminding, not that he has to remind him, but I'll just say it that way, as a human would speak, he's always reminding the
Father that we're covered by the blood, and we're saved, because the accuser, Satan, will come and say we're not, because he looks at our actions, and Jesus looks at the blood, and so does the
Father, and so you have to pass by the incense, which is the prayers of the saints going up together with Jesus, and the
Holy Spirit magnifying our words into the glorious language of the
Father, which we have a meager amount of adjectives to praise him with, but the
Holy Spirit magnifies that as he tells the Father what our hearts are saying to him, so that's a beautiful picture of all these things, and inside here, let's look at the next slide, it would look kind of like this, except this light would be way brighter, because that is the
Shekinah glory, it would be resplendent light, and you see the
Ark of the Covenant in there, I think that the angel's wings were more this way than this way, but that's the best picture
I could find, because I like the way it showed the glowing in there, a lot of the pictures don't show that, but the
Ark of the Covenant now, what's in there with it, what's inside that room?
Well, first of all, there is the Ark itself, and it contained the tablets of the
Ten Commandments, the Bible teaches that it contained the second set, you know,
Moses threw the first tablets down and broke them, but the second set that God gave him,
Jewish scholars believe it also contained the shards of the first tablets as well, but I think
Scripture indicates that they are wrong about that, I don't know why they want to include that, but they do, but I think it was just the second set of the
Ten Commandments, and then there's the foundation stone underneath the
Ark, and then there's Aaron's rod that budded, was kept inside there, not inside the
Ark, but beside it, and there's the jar of manna, and it's interesting that that was miraculous in itself, that that jar of manna lasted all through the wanderings, because the manna that they were given to eat, you know, rotted by the next morning, but this one lasted, and it was inside this area, and then there was the
Torah, which is the writings of the Law of Moses, and you can see Scripture here indicating to me that the shards were not included, because it says there specifically, 2
Chronicles 5 10, there was nothing in the Ark except two tablets, which Moses put therein at Horeb, when the
Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of Egypt. It indicates tablets, indicates that they're still whole, they're not broken up, so I think just the two new ones were in there.
Now, with regard to the other things, Moses commanded in Deuteronomy 31 25, the
Scripture says Moses commanded the Levites which bear the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, saying, take this
Book of the Law, this is the Torah, the first Law part of Moses' writings, and put it in the side of the
Ark of the Covenant, not in it, but beside it, and that it may be there for a witness against thee.
Now, don't you think that's interesting? See, that's what the Law is, it's not something that saves us, it's a witness against us, because we can't keep it perfectly, and that was given to the
Jewish. Jewish people had this, but I don't think they saw it perfectly until Jesus explained it in places like the
Temple, like the Sermon on the Mount, where he showed them how difficult keeping the
Law really is. You know, you say, don't kill, thou shalt not kill.
I say, if you hate your brother, you've killed him already. I mean, it's a much deeper, more difficult or impossible thing to keep the
Law perfectly, and that's why Jesus is the only one that ever did. So here's a bird's -eye view of the tabernacle again, and it's kind of interesting because those are some of the things that we've talked about.
All right, let me see if I can stop sharing now, and let me get rid of the
PowerPoint, and get it out of my way, so we can go on a little bit farther here. All right, now,
I hope that was helpful. I think it's kind of cool that the Lord ordained us to have church from home today, because I couldn't have shown you those things if I were preaching in church today.
Let me get a drink, we'll go. I apologize, because I can't see the chat, so I don't know if you guys are asking questions, or actually,
I can see the chat. I don't normally have time to down there look at it, though, but I see what
Roger wrote. They think the first edition of the law is more valuable. He said, just kidding, that's good.
All right, I can't watch this thing, but anyway, it's great to see all you guys. All right, so here's where we are.
We talked about Numbers 18 .5, if you want to turn there. This is where it begins to talk about the role of the believer priest with regard to what he did in the
Old Testament, and it's all of these things are a picture of things that are spiritual and real, and are happening in our lives today.
Those were pictures, or types, or signs of those things, and we're living it now.
So those were physical, almost like a parable. It's not really a parable, but it's like a parable in the sense that it's a physical picture of a spiritual truth, and so forth.
The first thing they were supposed to do is they were given charge of the sanctuary. Now, the charge means that they had custody of it, but they were to be on watch of it, preserving it, taking care of it, and the interesting thing says that they needed to take charge of the altar in particular, so that there would be no wrath anymore upon the children of Israel.
Well, why does it specifically mention the altar? And if you can remember the diagram that we showed you, it's the first thing you see when you go into the wilderness tabernacle.
That's where the blood was shed of the sacrificial animals, which were pictures, or types, of Jesus Christ and the offering that he gave for us once and for all, and so that is what removes wrath from God's children.
So, it's a picture of the blood of Jesus that removes the wrath of God's children, and it implies strongly that there will be wrath if the charge of the sanctuary and the altar are not kept.
Now, what's interesting about it, too, if you want to take that out another level, we are believer priests, and that's kind of what we're talking about here today, is that what does a priest do?
He reaches up and takes the hand of God, reaches down and takes the hand of sinful men and women, and boys and girls, and tries to bring the two together.
That's our job. We can't save people, but we can certainly try to win them over to God.
I don't mind the old term soul winner. It's in the Bible. He that win his souls is wise, the
Bible says. It's not just a fundamental independent Baptist concept. They use it a lot, but I mean, their understanding of it is a little different than mine, because I think
I understand the gospel. I'm not sure that I did back when I was an independent Baptist, but anyway,
I'll leave it at that. But that's our role, is to tell the gospel to people, and as we tell the gospel, we're showing them the table of showbread, which is the eye and bread of life,
Jesus says. We're showing them the candlestick. I'm the light of the world. We're showing them the incense going up before God, that he is your advocate before the
Father, and you cannot save yourself, and you're not saved by works. You're only saved by everything in that room, and the only thing in that room is
Jesus, okay? And it is interesting that the incense can picture the
Holy Spirit as well, though. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, the Bible says.
He's also the Spirit of God, and he connects the two and connects us with the two and with each other, and so you can't be saved without the bread of life, the light of the world, and the
Holy Spirit, and Jesus being our advocate. Everything in that room is what it takes, so yes, we have to take charge of that, or else wrath comes on people.
Think about that. We have the great duty of being the light that they can see now.
Jesus is in us, and we now are the light of the world, and we have to shine brightly.
So verse 6 is where it brings in the Levites, and now the ones that specifically worked at the altar and especially inside the holy place, they had to be sons of Aaron, but the
Levites were his greater family, and they could help with the charge of the tabernacle to pick it up and move it and carry it and all the different things that they did, and that's described there in verse 6, and they were like a gift from God, not only to Aaron and his children, but to all of Israel, and it says that they were given as a gift for the
Lord to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation. So that's the whole, when you looked at that picture, that whole big rectangle that included all the details, they had the charge of that, of helping to carry it and take care of it.
All right, so the Levites are in charge of specifically the outer tabernacle, and that picture is the outer man, our old man, if you want to put it.
I don't like calling it the old man because we're saved now, and I know we have the old man, but that old man is supposed to be in control of our new man.
So we're supposed to be a spirit -controlled, soul -controlled body and controlled from the top down, and our spirit dwells with Christ, and when we're spirit -filled, the body will not sin because we won't let it.
When we get carnal and we're not spirit -filled, we're always indwelt by the spirit, but sometimes we are not one with Christ, and we walk out on our own, and we can sin at that point.
That's the old man, and that's what the outer court pictures, and it's kind of interesting.
It's the physical, visible body, and now the soul is the interface of that body with the spirit, and if you want to look at the whole thing as a picture of us, the outer court pictures our old man, the holy place pictures our soul, and the holy of holies pictures our spirit being able to dwell with the holy spirit and become one with him and come boldly before the throne of grace by the blood of Christ, and so all of it's pictured.
It pictures us. It also is a picture of Jesus. The whole, the entire tabernacle is a picture of Jesus Christ and everything he does and his finished work and everything, so why does it picture us and him?
Some theologians say it only pictures Jesus. Some probably say it only pictures us, but it's both because he is the man.
He is also a man, and so he has a physical body that we can view with our eyes and feel and touch and see and walk with, which would be pictured.
He also has a soul. He also has a spirit, and he also was filled with the holy spirit, so it pictures him, and it pictures us.
Now, if we look at verse 7, therefore thou and thy sons with thee shall keep your priest's office for everything of the altar, so only
Aaron and his sons could deal with the shedding of the blood. The others could help bring the animals in and help with the hard work and so forth, but these were the ones who had to do the sacrifice, and also they're the ones that worked inside the veil, which means the next area, the holy place, not the holy of holies, but the holy place.
The sons of Aaron worked inside there. That's where they served, and it says,
I've given you your priest's office unto you as a service of gift, and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death.
We talked about that last time. You don't have a stranger come in that place, and that just pictures the fact that when we worship
God, we have to worship how he says to do it, not like we want to do it. Cain was an awful picture of trying to worship
God in humanism, and Abel served the
Lord and offered a blood sacrifice, and Cain killed him because he was jealous because God received
Abel's because it was done God's way, and he rejected Cain's because it was done man's way, and it's such a beautiful picture of this.
Now, in 2 Chronicles 28 7, it says, And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city, even in Jerusalem.
But they brought him not into the sepulcher of the kings of Israel. And Hezekiah, his son, reigned in his stead.
Now, most of you heard me speak even recently about the great revival that happened under Hezekiah, one of the greatest revivals that ever happened in the history of the world,
Old Testament or New Testament, even including in the church age, and Hezekiah began to reign when he was 25 years old, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was
Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. And he did that which was right in the sight of the
Lord, according to all that David, his father, had done. He, in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the
Lord and prepared them. Now, here's what I want you to think about, because now we're coming in to more detail of the duty of the believer priest.
The very first thing that had to happen, and you have to, if you understand the context of King Hezekiah, there had been a time period where Israel had stopped doing the things of God.
They were worshipping in forests, worshipping trees, and worshipping false gods, and they had stopped keeping the
Feast of Israel, including the Passover, and they didn't even know where the Word of God was.
It was in a dusty place somewhere, and they had to find it, and they did find the
Word of God, and they read it, and the people shouted to God when they heard the Word of God again, and it brought great revival.
But the very first thing that had to happen, as it says in verse 3, and once again, we're in 2
Chronicles chapter 29, verse 3, in the first year of his reign, in the first month, he didn't waste any time, did he?
He became king, and the first month of the first year that he was king, he opened the doors of the house of the
Lord and repaired them. Now, what does that mean? The very doors of the temple were in ill repair, which means they hadn't been using it.
They'd just been sitting there, and nobody using it. It's hard to even imagine. Now, this was not the wilderness tabernacle, but everything that was in the wilderness tabernacle was also in the temple.
And so, now it all pictures the same thing, and here the doors wouldn't even work properly.
Now, is there anything for us there? It's kind of interesting when we talk about winning souls to Christ, we can use the
Romans road, right? So many of us have that memorized, and it's a great tool, good scriptures to use to show someone how the
Bible says salvation works. And I used to like to include
Revelation 3 .20. Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If any man hear my voice, I will open the door, and I will come in and will sup with you.
And then I had, to me, it's one of the most beautiful salvation verses in the Bible. And then
I had a brother who'd been saved longer than me said, David, that's not a salvation verse.
If you read the context, it's talking to people that are already saved. It's talking about them getting right with God.
And so, I read the context and I said, wow, yeah, it kind of is talking about that.
But you know what? A few years later, when I stopped being so legalistic because of the leadership of the founding pastor, who was very legalistic,
I realized, you know, don't tell me the Holy Spirit couldn't use that verse in the heart of a lost person.
If the Holy Spirit has regenerated them and opened their ears and eyes, or even if he's just tracking them down, and I don't know the different state,
I don't know how he does all of it, you know, but I know he works in their heart and life for a whole lifetime until the day of their salvation.
He did with me. Holy Spirit worked on me before I was saved, and that's because I was a lost sheep.
I wasn't a goat, right? Same with you. But at some point, they have to hear the gospel.
To hear it, God has to open their ears, and that's the work of the Holy Spirit in the calling, the effectual calling process.
But the minute that ear is open, and it doesn't mean that that has to open, and then they hear the gospel for the first time.
What it means is they've probably heard the gospel from their mom, like I did, their whole life, from as early as they can remember, and from my grandmother, my whole life.
Bible preachers on the radio, my whole life. I'd heard it, went to Christian college. I don't know. I went to Baylor.
Let's don't call that a Christian college. But my whole life, I heard it. But you know what?
I never really heard it. But it was in my brain, right? That's part of the tabernacle.
That's the outer core, right? Part of my physical body. It was in there. All the Holy Spirit had to do was open the hearing of my intellect, where I actually heard what the words meant, because the words were in there already.
So the human part, the Word of God part, was already in my mind. And when the Holy Spirit added his components,
I was saved. Well, in the process of that, prior to that,
I'm sure someone had read to me the verse that says, behold, I stand at the door and knock.
And they say, that's the door of your heart, David. Probably my mom told me this verse one time, or my grandmother.
He's knocking at the door of your heart. If you just open it, he'll come in. Well, I didn't want to open it, so I didn't open it.
And day after day went by until I was 24 years old. I was in my car driving to work one day, and the
Holy Spirit opened my ears first, my ears of understanding. And then
I could hear that verse that I had been told previously, and Jesus saved me.
So think about this, though. What if we use that verse in its true context?
Okay, so what if we're already God's people, which is what Israel pictured? I mean, maybe they hadn't been going into the temple.
Maybe the door didn't even work. They hadn't even been using it, because they had not been going to the temple.
But there's still a picture of God's people. And so perhaps that picture is a backslidden
Christian of today, someone who knows the Lord. You were saved at one point, but you just haven't been walking with him closely lately, right?
Well, let's see what is pictured here when it says that he opened the doors of the house and repaired them.
I would ask the question, you know, do we have times in our lives when we have broken doors?
So let's listen to what God says about this, these doors that were broken, and look at Revelation 3 .13
if you want to turn there while I get a drink right quick. All right,
Revelation 3 .13, he that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the churches.
So the context of chapter 3 in the book of Revelation is obviously it's written to the
Christians in this chapter. It's written to churches, churches talking about the true church, not a building.
So the Spirit is saying something to believers. And if we drop down to verse 14, and unto the angel of the church of Laodiceans write, these things saith the
Amen, that's Jesus, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God, that's
Jesus Christ. It's interesting that Jesus is called the beginning of the creation of God, and the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
So he was there present with the Father and with the Holy Spirit at the very beginning of the creation.
So if you go back, I mean, it's kind of funny to talk about it, but you go back before that, you didn't even have time.
You didn't have space. You didn't have stuff. You just had God, and Jesus was there, right? Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
God's always who he is. He's always dwelt as a triune being. The proof of that is
God is love, and love has to have an object. So you had to have the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Listen, there's so many people now trying to come out and say the
Trinity is not true, the Catholics invented it. That's not true. Early church fathers talked about the
Trinity hundreds of years before the Catholic church was damaged by Constantine giving government money to the church.
That's where, as you think of the Catholic church, that's where the bad part started. But hundreds of years before that, church fathers were talking about the
Trinity. They were quoting the scripture in 1 John where it talks about the Trinity and names it.
It says these three were one. It's a lie. It's a modern lie, but it's an ancient lie, too.
The Arians were the first heresy I can read about in the first century of the church, and they didn't believe in the
Trinity. Of course, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons drew on their knowledge from the
Arians and their modern -day Arians. It's nothing new, right? But he called himself the
Amen. Have you thought about that? Look at verse 14 there. These things say the Amen. Why would
Jesus call himself the Amen if he is the one who created everything? The book of Colossians says that Jesus created everything and that everything was made by him and for him.
So everything in the physical universe, including time, everything was made by Jesus and for Jesus.
So why would he call himself the Amen? I mean, an Amen is something someone says to something the preacher already said, right?
Or maybe you, as a brother or sister, say something and some other brother says,
Amen, that they sang it to something you already said. Well, it's because Jesus said, I never did anything or said anything
I didn't see the Father do. So when Jesus created the universe, it's the Amen.
He's saying Amen to the Father's plan, and he's carrying it out. Isn't that cool? You ever thought about that?
But he is the beginning of the creation of God, and he says, I know thy works that thou art neither cold nor hot.
I wish you were cold or hot. So here the Laodicean church is known as the lukewarm church.
Look at verse 16. So then because you are lukewarm and neither cold or hot, I will vomit you out my mouth,
Jesus said. So we can get lukewarm, and you know what causes that is when the doors of that tabernacle get in disrepair, and we're not using it because when you walk into that tabernacle, you walk right by the blood of Jesus Christ, which is already given for you once and for all.
You walk right by the laver, which pictures the word of God that you have not been spending any time in at all, or you wouldn't be lukewarm, and you then go inside, and you see the show bread.
You see Jesus. You see the light of the world. You pray, and he's your advocate, and the Holy Spirit takes your prayers before the
Father, and you can't possibly be lukewarm. So a lukewarm
Christian is a person who needs to repair the doors of the tabernacle. Guess what? That is the priest's job.
So your first job as a believer priest is to repair the door. Now, let's keep reading a little bit.
He says, I know your works, you lukewarm person. You're neither cold nor hot.
I wish you were. The fact that you're lukewarm makes me want to spew you out of my mouth.
That's not talking about losing your salvation. That's talking about vomiting, all right? But look at verse 17.
Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing. Now, see, that's the state of the modern church.
I mean, you look at these megachurches, and the only reason I talk bad about them is I'm jealous. I mean, like, they got like 40 ,000 people.
I got like 40 people. Yeah, I'm jealous of them, right? So I have to badmouth them all the time. But I just, you know,
I was a businessman before I got saved. And when I got saved, I tried to read as many of Rocky Freeman's books as he would hand me.
And under his guidance, he was my seminary. I remember reading a book on church growth.
Hold my cold. You'll thank me for that later.
Okay, so anyway, you know, he, that book
I read on church growth, it was interesting, because from my viewpoint as a businessman, already in running family business and two degrees in business,
I said, wait a minute, that book, that's just a book on marketing. That's not how God builds churches.
And so I just chunked it, you know, and I learned some neat things. I did learn about a cycle that every church group's always gone through, where they start out with God's sovereign, and their first love is
Jesus. And then they add a little bit more man, a little more manishness, a little more manishness. And before long, they're
Arminian, and they think man does it all, and then get up here, and all of a sudden, it's a dead church, right?
That was a good thing I learned from that book. But the truth is, God has to build the church, so I'm good with that.
So, but you look at a mega church today, don't you think, with all the money that they have, and all of the beautiful buildings, and the activities,
I mean, they keep you busy every night of every week, you got to be at church. That's not biblical, by the way.
And it wears people out, and it makes them more carnal, not more spiritual, because they're so tired, they don't have any family time, and their wife may be hanging out with other men in the church more than the husband, because they're all doing two different ministries, and the wines of problems.
All of this stuff is out of God's order, they're not doing it God's way, they're doing it how they want to do it. And here's what they think, they think that they're rich, and increased with goods, and don't need anything.
In fact, most pastors don't need anything, they know everything. I know, because I am one, but I mean, it's hard to teach a pastor anything.
But look what Jesus says about it, you know, they know not that thou art wretched, miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.
Now, that's God's viewpoint, first part of it is human's viewpoint. The human viewpoint is, I'm rich, increased with goods,
I don't need anything, don't even need to learn anything. God's viewpoint is, you're actually wretched, you make me want to vomit, because you're lukewarm, you're miserable, because you're walking in the flesh, you're poor, you don't have spiritual riches, because you're walking in the flesh, you're blind, and you're naked, because you're not walking in that temple, and you don't see that candlestick over there, which is the light of Jesus Christ, so you're becoming blind again.
Naked means you might not even be covered by the robes of righteousness, maybe you're not even really saved if you're living that way.
We have to ask the question, but here's what he counsels, Jesus counsels them to do.
I counsel you to buy of me gold tried in fire.
Now, the word buy here doesn't really mean you can buy or pay to get your salvation, it means obtain it, obtain it, and buy gold tried with fire that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed, that's the robes of righteousness that you're given by the
Holy Spirit at the moment of your salvation, and the shame of your nakedness would not appear.
That's kind of interesting to think about us in this life we live now, it's a struggle, and I'm so thankful the
Holy Spirit illuminated a particular verse in my life, I don't know, two, three years ago, the one where it says that we have this treasure in earth and vessels, and then it goes on to say, so that God may be glorified, it's like the
Holy Spirit said, David, you do realize the struggle that you have with the flesh is ordained of God, it's supposed to be that way.
All of us, we all struggle with that, and we're not perfect, and we sense it, and Satan wants to use that to cause us to quit, stop walking with the
Lord, because we just messed up, right? And yet, it's part of God's will for us to have that struggle, and it's not that we should sin more so that grace may abound,
Paul answered that question, we should never have that thought or desire, but the fact is we will have sin, and when we do, it brings us closer to God, and I know that sounds wrong, but it's not wrong, because you immediately, this is exactly what
Jesus is calling us to do here, is when we get to the place where we think we're rich, and increased, and good, and have need of nothing, but we're really, from his viewpoint, we're lukewarm, then, you know, we need to be drawn closer to the
Lord, because of the fact that that's happened to us, so it's an opportunity, it's an opportunity to be closer to God than we've ever been before, and he said,
I counsel you to make this happen, you know, to buy of me gold tried with fire, and remember the robes of righteousness, put them on, keep them on, you need to add some experiential righteousness to go along with that position of righteousness that I gave you,
God says, and the shame of your nakedness not appear, you know what's interesting about that, what
I was just talking about, this walk that we have in this weird schizophrenic way, where we have an old man, and we are the new man, but the old man hangs around, well, this is pictured here,
I mean, the nakedness pictures our old man, which is the outer cord of that tabernacle, by the way, the nakedness is the sin showing through, right, it's what it pictures, but when we put the clothing of the robes of righteousness on, it covers all of that from God's viewpoint and man's viewpoint, and we need to walk that way more often, we need to walk spirit -filled and walk with the covering of the robes of righteousness, so that when people see us and they have a need, some sinner that's not covered by the blood yet has a need, and they're looking around, who do
I come to for help, they'll pick someone that's not like them, which is hopefully you or me, and they will see the robes of righteousness, they won't see the nakedness, which would be exposed if the robes were removed, or if we didn't put them on like we're supposed to, and that's what that pictures, and then it says, anoint your eyes with eyesalve that thou mayest see, so a lukewarm
Christian is a Christian's having trouble with their eyesight, they're having trouble with their ears again, even though the Holy Spirit's already opened all that when they were called, and they're just not walking right,
I mean, the door of the tabernacle, they're not even going through it, they're not seeing Christ, they're not spending time with him, they're certainly not in the
Holy of Holies, where the God, the Father dwells, they're not going in before God the Father and praying and spending time with him, and so they're lukewarm, and look what he says now in verse 19, as many as I love,
I rebuke and I chasten, so the fact that, you know, if you're a church member who's not saved yet, you might have some of these same symptoms, if you're a church member who is saved, you really are part of the church, but you're backslidden, you might be kind of like you were before you were saved when you ran with the goats, you kind of look like them again, right, it could be that way, but God says if you're a sheep and you're walking the wrong way,
I love you, and therefore I'm going to rebuke and chasten you and bring you back into the fold, isn't that wonderful, so that's where it turns it into a blessing, because this very sin that got us in this place,
God will use it to bring us even closer to him after the chastening takes place, be zealous therefore and repent quickly, be zealous about it, do it quickly and do it with all the heart and repent,
I mean change your mind, get back to the mindset you had when you first got saved of how glorious your walk with the
Lord was and how hot you were as a Christian, you were a warm Christian, you weren't lukewarm, you know, hot with zeal, get back to that place, and now here's the context that verse 20 is found in,
Revelation 3 20 at this very point says, behold
I stand at the door and knock, what door, the door of a saved person's heart, a lukewarm saved person that hasn't been even using the door of the tabernacle and walking through it and it's in disrepair, the very first thing that believer priest needs to do is repair the door, that's your heart, and Jesus is standing there, he never left you, you can't lose your salvation, he didn't leave you, he's standing there knocking, and if anyone, and the word man is not in the
Greek, if any, if any of God's children hear my voice and open the door of the heart,
I will come into him and will sup with him, that means have supper with him or fellowship with him and he with me, and that fixes the lukewarmness,
I guarantee it, because you're having supper with Jesus Christ immediately with him, fellowshipping immediately with him, and that's what lights the fire, that is the fire, that is the light, to him that overcometh in the way that this described will
I grant to sit with me in my throne even as I also overcame and am set down with my father in his throne.
Now, that's kind of an astounding verse, it's interesting brother
Otis showed me the word set there and rather than the word sat, and in English it makes a difference because set normally is a passive word in English, which means someone bigger than you had to set you there, it's not like you sat down, and Otis said the father set
Jesus at his right hand, Jesus didn't sit there, he was set there by the father, and he said the reason is because he lived a perfect life and he was obedient to the cross and he rose from the dead and he took the blood and sprinkled it on the mercy seat in heaven, the real one that the one down here was a model of, and because of all that God set him at his right hand, but I find it interesting that it says here that he tells us to overcome just as he overcame and was set there.
Well, you know me, I know that it's impossible to lose one's salvation if one has it for real, if he ever had it, he can't lose it.
There's a thousand proofs of it, then I spent so many hours in my young years, hours and hours sitting on the front porch of a church of Christ, a little old lady or a little man all over the town, sitting on their front porch and they were beating me to death with their
Bible, showing me all the church of Christ stuff about how you could lose your salvation. Funny thing is, when
I would get home and start studying, I only had like five verses and I realized I had like 200 or more verses that proved they were wrong and I just didn't know them yet, right?
So, I had to learn all that, but that's the best way to learn it maybe. So, you cannot lose your salvation, but I will say this, a true born -again believer is an overcomer.
It's just part of who you are. You remember how I've said Jesus, the Holy Spirit, I should say, gave us over 33 things and did over 33 things to us at the moment.
He called us and regenerated us and one of the things that He did was He made us to have the spirit of an overcomer.
We don't quit. We don't quit. Now, we've got to, sometimes we get lukewarm, sometimes we hadn't been going through that door into the place where Jesus is in our heart, in that middle area of our soul, where our soul connects our old man to the new man and to Jesus and the
Holy Spirit, my father even, and we're just not going through the door. We need to repair it, and that's what this whole message today is about, is repairing the door.
That's the first job of the believer priest, is repairing the door of his own heart. To him that overcometh,
I will grant to sit with me in my throne, which is where? At the right hand of God the
Father, which is not really in the third heaven, but the Shekinah glory is there. A little bit of His resplendent glory shows through that opening to where He is outside of space and time, but His presence is there and we sit with Christ right there, but we have to be overcomers.
So, you got to ask yourself today, am I an overcomer? Because if you're not, you're not saved. All saved people are overcomers.
Now, don't make the mistake. You can have seasons of life where you go many months when you're not overcoming, and Satan will come to you and say, you're not saved, look at you.
Don't buy into that one. Just go to 1 John 1, 9 and read it and ask yourself, do I believe this verse?
Do I believe it? Everything's about faith, isn't it? If we confess, if we agree with God that what we've been doing is sinful, if we confess our sins, agree with God that they're sinful, if we confess our sins,
He is faithful, which means He'll do it every time, and just, which means it's right for Him to do it because He gave
His Son for you, and that blood has been applied to the mercy seat, sprinkled all over everything, once and for all, and applied to you when the
Holy Spirit saved you. You're covered with that blood, so it's right and just for Him to do it. So, He'll do it every time, and He's just and right to do it, to do what?
To cleanse us, to forgive the sin, but also to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, which is all the ones we forgot to ask forgiveness for, right?
He didn't say ask forgiveness anyway. He says confess it, agree with Him that it was sinful, and then it says you are totally clean, and God the
Father sees you as if you never sinned. Believe that and get up and go again. That's what an overcomer does.
Does that make sense? He that hath ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit sayeth unto the churches.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, I think that's a good thought to leave us with today.
I've enjoyed being with you. I appreciate you allowing me to teach from home today. I'm a little bit under the weather, but I hope the
Lord speak to your heart, and this will be something you can use this week, and we will see you next time. I'm going to turn it back over to Brother Dave.