The Blessed Necessity of Gathering in the Presence of God

The Shepherd's Church

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Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church Podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

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Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

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You could tell it as the story of God's glory and how it's going to be revealed from the very beginning to the very end. You could tell the story as the tale of two cities.

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Eden being the unpopulated city, New Jerusalem the garden city, and Revelation being the one that's finally filled.

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There's lots of different ways you could tell the story of the Bible, but today I'd like to tell the story as God's presence with His people.

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Now, we're gonna be doing something a little bit differently today as you've noticed on the slides. We're not gonna be going through all the verses, so if you want, write them down because they're not gonna be on the screen.

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You can reference them later. I just felt like there were so many verses that it might get a little bit distracting to keep throwing them up there, so I wanted for us to be able to just focus on what

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God is saying about His gathering. Let's begin with creation.

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God created the world for His glory, but to share

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His presence with us. God purposely created everything that we see in existence so that He and humanity can dwell together.

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God, in His grace and love, decided to create a universe where He could share His presence with us.

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So when God personally and intimately fashioned the first man and the first woman, He was sharing

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His presence with them, and the goal was that they would live in His presence forever. And yet we know that the

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Bible tells us that they sinned. Now one of the beautiful parts about the biblical story is that it doesn't come crashing to an end whenever humanity does what humanity does, right?

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God made us to be in His presence, and then we ruined it. And God would have been perfectly just if He would have ended the entire creation project in that moment and said, enough.

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I gave these people so many gifts, so many blessings. I shared my presence with them, and they turned their back on me enough.

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God could have said that, but God, in His grace, decided to pursue us. So two chapters into the

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Bible, we have God purposely creating the world to share His presence with us. Chapter 3, we ruin it. We got about two steps off the starting line, and we ruined it.

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Now what's the rest of the story? Well, from Genesis 3, 15, until Malachi chapter 3, which is

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Malachi chapter 4, the last chapter of the Old Testament, we have God, in His grace, pursuing sinners.

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So that's the second section of today's message, and the second section of the Bible is that God is pursuing sinners to share with them

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His presence. Now the question is, how is

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God going to do that? Because God is holy, and we are not.

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His righteousness cannot dwell with our sins. So how is God going to share

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His presence, pursue sinners, with His person? How's He going to do that?

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He's going to look forward to the day when He sends His Son Christ, and Christ dies upon the cross and forgives our sins, and God, in the meantime, in the

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Old Testament, is going to look forward to that and on the basis of that, He's going to pursue all of the people that we see in the

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Old Testament scriptures. He's going to use borrowed credit from Christ to pursue all the people we read about in the

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Old Testament. So for instance, right after sin, God pursues Adam and Eve, sacrifices an animal and clothes them in their nakedness.

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Right after Cain sins, God pursues Cain and tells him the gospel. Right after the sin of man has proliferated across the face of the earth,

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God pursues Noah, and He gives Noah this gospel message of, how can you be saved?

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To gather as a small little church inside of an ark. I'm using the word church there on purpose.

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A little community, a little gathering that's made safe, even while the world around it is going crazy.

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God pursues Noah. He pursues Abraham, even in his idolatry.

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We read in the book of Joshua that Abram was not this righteous person that God looked down and said, you know, he's more righteous than everyone else.

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It says that Abraham was an idolater in the region of Chaldea, in the city of Ur.

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So God pursued him in spite of his idolatry, in spite of his brokenness, and he brought him into a good land, and he made promises to Abraham that Abraham didn't deserve.

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I will be your God. You will be my people. I will bless you, and I will multiply you, and I will make your family or make your people so numerous that it's like the stars of the heavens.

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Abraham couldn't possibly deserve even God to look at him, and yet God in his grace pursued him for his glory to share his presence.

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You think about Isaac, Abraham's son. He pursued him when he's getting ready to be sacrificed. You think about Jacob, God pursues him when he's on the run after he's tricked and swindled his way into getting all of this stuff.

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You think about Joseph, God pursues him in a prison cell. You think about Israel, who is made like Joseph and that everything they touch is blessing.

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They're fruitful. They've multiplied, but yet they get stuck in this prison situation in Egypt like Joseph, and God comes to them, and God promises them that I'm your

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God, and I'm gonna deliver you. He's pursuing people even in their brokenness and in their sin. He pursues

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Moses. Moses kills somebody, runs off to Midian, and thinks, my life is over.

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From age 40 to 80, Moses is kicking stones in the middle of a Midian desert dealing with sheep and everything else when he was born in an

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Egyptian palace, and God comes to him and says, I am who I am. God pursues sinners.

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He sends Moses back, and he tells him, I want you to get my people, and I want you to get them out of that place because that place is not where they belong.

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And I want you to take them to this mountain where what? I'm gonna come down from heaven and dwell with them. I'm gonna share my presence with them.

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After that, God tells them to build a tabernacle. Why? Because living up on top of a mountain was too far away from his people.

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So he wanted to come down. If you read in the book of Leviticus and the book of Exodus, among all of the details, there's this fascinating little point.

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It says that the tabernacle was to be built and constructed and put in the middle of the camp, and all of Israel was supposed to surround the camp.

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Why? Because God wants to be right in the very epicenter of his people. He wants to be right in the midst of his people because he wants to share his presence with us.

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The book of Exodus ends with this event, Deuteronomy 40, 34 through 35, and this is what it says.

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Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

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And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory filled the tabernacle.

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The book of Leviticus, as you turn over, begins sort of the same way. The Lord called Moses and spoke to him from where?

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The tent of meeting. You see what's happened? God has come down from the mountain of Sinai, and he's now inside the tabernacle speaking to Moses from within, dwelling in the midst of his people.

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This is, in the book of Leviticus 1, verse 1, the closest fellowship that God has had with man since the

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Garden of Eden. God is pursuing them, restoring fellowship with them, bringing his presence to them.

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Now, the people of Israel told, I want you to move. And isn't it so funny? Human beings, we tend to put our faith in the wrong things.

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Is that not true? Move away from Mount Sinai. So what do they think?

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God's not going to go with us. Why? Because the only place they'd ever seen God show up was at Mount Sinai. So now they're thinking,

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God is stuck, God is located in this place, but he's not going to go with us. What does God say in response to them?

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He said, my presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. He's saying, don't worry, Moses. Don't worry,

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Israel. I'm not stuck at this mountain and limited to that. I'm going to go with you wherever you go, and I'm going to be your

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God wherever your foot strikes the soil. So God reiterates his promises.

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Again, Leviticus 26, 11 through 12, I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you.

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And I will walk among you, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. This is at the end of the book of Leviticus, and that's significant because this book that's filled with sacrifices and laws and rules so that the people will be holy,

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God knew they wouldn't. God knew that they would not be holy. They would not obey. They would not follow, and yet he makes this astounding promise that I know you're going to sin, but I'm going to still be your

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God, and I'm going to still walk among you. It reminds us of the Garden of Eden where God walked with his people.

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Here it is again, garden language of God walking and talking with his people.

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What an astounding bit of grace from God. Well, what happens?

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They follow God's cloud by day, his fire by night. They go up to the edge of the wilderness.

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God tells them to send spies into the land, and then what are they going to do? Well, we know what they do.

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They reject God. They say, God, we know you're big and you're mighty, but look at those Canaanites.

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We're like grasshoppers compared to them, so they reject God, and yet God had another opportunity to abandon his plan of pursuing his people, and he does not.

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At the end of Moses' life, after that entire generation was dead in the wilderness, the people now are thinking, okay,

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God's going to go with us wherever we go so long as we've got this guy named Moses. But what happens when

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Moses dies? What happens when the holy man isn't here to lead us anymore? Is God going to be with us then?

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Look at what God says in Deuteronomy 31 .6, be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, the

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Canaanites, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you, who will not leave you or forsake you.

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So just in the same way that God is not tied to Mount Sinai, he's not tied to a particular charismatic leader or person,

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God is with the people of God. God is graciously pursuing his people with his presence, and that ought to be comforting to all of us who feel abandoned and feel alone and feel like we're walking by ourselves, because if you're a

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Christian, you are not. We see that as soon as they enter into the

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Promised Land, God pursues Joshua, the angel of the Lord comes. We see that God creates these miracles, the sun standing still in the sky.

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We see that God is pursuing judges through that era. We see that God is pursuing them even in the installation of Saul, the king, and then

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David, the king, and we see all of this happening all the way until the time that we get to the temple, this stationary house for the white -hot presence of God to dwell.

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Solomon is the one who's tasked with building the temple, and this is what God says to Solomon. Concerning this house which you are building, if you will walk in my statutes and execute my ordinances and keep all of my commands by walking in them, then

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I will carry out my word with you which I spoke to David your father. I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will not forsake my people.

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God's presence is incomprehensible to Solomon. Have you ever thought about that? The wisest man on earth, the smartest guy, he's the guy that said, cut the baby in half, and he found out whose mom was really the right mom.

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That seems crazy. God says that he was the wisest man on earth, and yet he is baffled by the presence of God.

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He's baffled. When he looks at the heavens, he says, how are you, God, going to dwell with us? I know who we are.

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How are you going to be with us? This God who made the Pleiades and the

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Orion and decorated the galaxies with his light, do you ever become spellbound and confused and even baffled and bewildered over the fact that God not only chose you but spends time with you?

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Have you ever thought about that? It's so easy for us to say, yeah,

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God chose me. I mean, I choose me too. God's not like us.

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He sees every dark fallacy, every sick part of you, and he still chose you.

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And he didn't just choose you and send you off to some spiritual boarding school. He chose you and brought you into his house, and he loves you and spends time with you.

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I mean, who could be higher and bigger than God, and yet he comes down on our level? I believe this is why

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Solomon was so confused even. This is what Solomon says, but will

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God indeed dwell upon earth? The heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain you, how much less this little house which

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I have built. Yet you regard the prayer of your servant and to his supplication, oh

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Lord my God, to listen to the cry and to the prayer which your servant prays before you today that your eyes may be opened towards this house, night and day toward the place of which you have said my name shall be there, to listen to the prayer which your servant shall pray towards this place.

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He is astonished. He's astonished. And that's honestly the way we should feel when we walk into a church, astonished that the presence of God has chosen to dwell with us.

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Bewildered. The Lord responds dramatically to Solomon in 2

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Chronicles 7. He says, Now when Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices.

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Can you imagine being there? Like that gives new meaning to a fiery prayer. And the glory of the

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Lord filled the house. The priests could not enter into the house because the glory was so full in the

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Lord's house and all the sons of Israel seeing the fire come down and the glory of the Lord upon the house bowed down upon the pavement with their faces to the ground and they worshipped and they gave praise to the

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Lord saying truly God is good, truly His loving kindness is everlasting. I think when they looked at the fire fall from heaven and consumed the sacrifices,

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I think they got it. Because in that moment, the fire should have fallen on them.

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In that moment, they should have been the ones that were punished, not this calf, not this lamb, not this bull.

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It was me who should have been punished and yet God in His mercy received that lamb so that they could be in His presence.

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And they said, truly He is good, truly His loving kindness is everlasting.

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How good could this God be that He would look on me? And the story of the

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Old Testament doesn't improve, at least from the human side of things.

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God throughout the Old Testament is so faithful, so gracious to His broken people.

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And yet Solomon at the end of his life is bowing down to an idol and you think, how could that be? And then

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Solomon's son gets a moment of pride and he rips the kingdom in two and you have this now dual kingdom.

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One of them is completely obliterated by Assyria, never to rise again. And then the other one is sent into exile, is beaten over the head multiple times, almost completely destroyed multiple times and then finally they come back to the land and rebuild their temple.

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But yet when you read in the book of Malachi, they're complaining about it. If it were not for the faithfulness of God, if it were not for the mercy and the grace of God, you and I would not be here today.

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This human project would have ended long ago because we have provoked God more times than we can even describe.

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That's not the end of the story in the Old Testament though because the next section that we'll look at is the prophets. The prophets are these wonderful people who look at the world as it really is and yet by the

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Holy Spirit look to the Messiah and they see what the world will become through him.

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So they're standing sort of with one foot in the old world and one foot in the new world looking to what

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God is going to do. How's God going to dwell with man? Clearly this arrangement in the Old Testament cannot last forever.

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So how is God going to do it? Well, let's look at Zephaniah 3 .14

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-7. Sing aloud, O daughter Zion. Do you know when this was written they were being persecuted and they were getting ready to be exiled and he's telling them to sing?

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Why? That's one of the most interesting and yet crazy times to ever tell someone to rejoice and yet he does.

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Sing aloud, O daughter Zion. Shout, O Israel. Rejoice and exult with all of your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem.

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The Lord has taken away the judgments against you. He has cleared away your enemies.

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The King, capital K, of Israel, the Lord is in your midst and you shall never again fear evil.

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On that day when Christ comes it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear not,

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O Zion. Let not your hands grow weak. The Lord your

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God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save and this is some of the most beautiful language in all of the

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Old Testament. He will rejoice over you with gladness and he will quiet you by his love and he will exult over you with loud singing.

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This God who sees us for who we are, he knows our sin, he knows our frame and yet on the basis of what

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Christ is coming to do he's going to sing over you. He's going to quiet you in his affections. Unbelievable.

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Let's look at what Ezekiel 37 says. Verse 26 through 28. I will make a covenant of peace with them and it will be an everlasting covenant with them and I will place them, multiply them and I will set my sanctuary in their midst forever.

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At this time the temple is destroyed. Ezekiel's looking to the end of the exile, yes, but he's also looking to the coming and the fulfillment of what

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Christ is going to bring and he's saying this old temple is done. God's going to bring a new temple, his sanctuary and it's going to be in their midst forever.

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My dwelling place will be with them and I will be their God and they will be my people and then the nations will know that I am the

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Lord who sanctifies Israel when my sanctuary is in their midst forever.

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God through Ezekiel is prophesying that there will come a day, future to Ezekiel, when the temple of the

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Lord will be built and it'll never be torn down and we're not waiting on that day still to happen in the future.

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The temple is Jesus Christ, the true temple of God who came, that's why the gospel of John begins the way that it does in verse 14 of chapter one.

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The word became flesh and he dwelt among us and we saw his glory as of the only begotten of the father full of grace and truth.

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When you see that word dwelt in the English, that word is a Greek word called skene which means tabernacle.

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They took a noun, John did, and he turned it into a verb. He's saying that the word became flesh and he tabernacled among us, he sanctuaried among us, fulfilling

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Ezekiel 37. Jesus came and became the sanctuary of the living God in our midst and that is forever, forever.

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Except it's even better than the temple, is it not? The temple is where God dwelled three rooms deep, separated from you and I.

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Where only the high priest, only once a year, could go into the awesome presence of God after great washing and purification and sacrifices and all these things.

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You and I would not interact with the presence of God in the way that a high priest would and he would not 364 days out of the year.

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And yet, Jesus Christ comes, bringing the presence of God unfettered, unbroken, unrestricted to those who know him.

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This is why Matthew opens up his gospel after very important genealogy where he begins with these simple words.

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Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son and they shall call his name

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Emmanuel, which is translated what? God with us.

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You see how the whole Bible is about God being with us? Sharing his presence with us?

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Pursuing us? Now we have to understand something else.

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So we've got that part. The whole Bible is about God bringing his presence. Now the question is, who gets to have his presence?

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Who gets to enjoy his presence? That's the next question we need to ask and there's really, there's four biblical categories when we talk about God's presence and who gets to interact with it.

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There's four and I'm gonna begin because I like happy endings with the most terrifying and we're gonna transition to the most exhilarating.

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Who gets God's presence? Well, first, the people who are in hell get

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God's presence. The people who are what we have always been taught have been abandoned by the presence of God have not been abandoned by the presence of God.

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Let me make an argument for you. Matthew 10, 28 says, do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul but rather fear him, notice, and if you have the

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NASB, capital H, who is able to destroy both the body and soul in hell.

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God does not abandon those who are in hell. God does not leave them absent in hell. He is perpetually destroying them.

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You see, if God truly is omnipresent, omnipresent means that he's everywhere all at once.

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It means there's no place that God cannot be. Then how can there be a single millimeter of space where God does not inhabit?

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There can't. There is no place in physical or spiritual reality where God cannot be present and if we know that, then we have to say that God's presence in a different way than what we experience as believers is physically or is really there.

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The second thing is his justice. God is a God of justice. God does not turn his eye, does not turn his head to sin.

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God is not like an unjust judge who hears the crime and then lets them off.

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No, God is the one who will look right at the injustice and punish it for what it is.

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And because we know God is omnipresent and because God is a God of holy, righteous judgment and because we know not everybody will become a

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Christian, we know that there is a space called hell where God's presence is and that presence is not a blessing to those people, it is terrifying to them.

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The benediction in the Bible is number 6, 24 through 26, God make his face shine upon you and give you rest, bring you peace.

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This is not the benediction in hell, this is the malediction where God is crushing you, where God is destroying you, and yet the most awful part of it is that you are not consumed.

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It's the ferocious and furious presence of God without protection, without a mediator, without Christ.

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It is what all of us would feel if we come into the presence without being clothed in Christ's royal righteousness forever.

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You see, hell is not terrifying because God is absent, it's terrifying because he's there afflicting eternal miseries on those who hate him.

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Why do you think the demons tremble? They don't tremble because of the flames, they don't tremble because the worms and the maggots and every other image we have in the

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Scriptures, they tremble because the furious presence of God is there. All of his justice without protection, all of his holiness without a mediator, all of his wrath without anyone to mitigate it, hell is intimate time with God without a savior forever.

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In that sense, no one escapes from the presence of God, not even those who are in hell.

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That's the first category. And again, I said I'm going to start with the most terrifying. From conception all the way to cessation of life, we're going to be in the presence of God in some way.

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I pray to God that no one in this room would reject Christ and end up in that realm. The second category, though, is more encouraging.

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It's how God's presence is being given to every single person on earth, indiscriminately even, while they live here on earth.

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From the time that you're born until the time that you die, every single person on earth has some association with the presence of God, even if they don't realize it.

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Every atheist, every agnostic, every Buddhist, every single person on earth at some level lives in the presence of God.

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Let me show you. Psalm 139, 7 through 12. David says, where can I go from your spirit?

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Where can I flee from your presence? He can't. If I ascend to heaven, you're there.

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If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you're there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, down in the deepest

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Mariana Trench, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand will lay hold of me.

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If I say that surely the darkness will overwhelm me and the light around me will be my night, even the darkness is not dark to you and the night is as bright as the darkness and light are alike to you.

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No one escapes from the presence of God while they live on this earth. Not the atheists, not the

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Buddhists, not the Methodists, not the Presbyterian, not us. You see, there's no hiding when it comes to God's presence.

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And we're people who like to hide. Can you imagine what it would be like if every single person you've gossiped about this week heard your conversation?

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Can you imagine if your wife saw that woman that you were flirting to at the smoothie bar? Can you imagine if your boss knew the office supplies that you stole?

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The report you lied on? If other people heard your thoughts? If other people saw the things that you daydream about in your mind?

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Can you imagine how miserable that would be if nothing in our life was a secret?

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We sinfully are grateful that that's not the case. We are grateful that that level of accountability does not cling to us and yet there's no hiding with God.

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Everything you've done has been exposed before God. He is always there. He's known every thought, every intention, every behavior, every motivation so that every sin you've ever committed has been done with Him watching.

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Every sin you've ever committed has been done in His presence. And you imagine the grace and the kindness that He's been a first -hand party watching you rebel against Him and He has not struck you down.

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This is long -suffering, persevering presence that God gives to all people throughout their life.

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Some are going to be saved and they're going to turn from their sin and they're going to experience an even better presence.

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Some are going to remain in their sin and they're going to experience that hellish presence that we talked about before but no one lives outside the presence of God.

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No one. That's the second category. We're getting more positive.

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We're getting more thrilling. Now we're going to talk about the presence that He gives to us believers because that's additional.

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We all live in the presence of God but believers get something better. Believers get something more full, more sweet, more satisfying.

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We get the adoptive presence of God. We get the parental presence of God where He chose us and brought us into His family and saved us from the wrathful presence that He's going to give to all of us in eternity and we get more than just His allowing us to exist kind of presence.

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We get His fatherly love as believers. We get the

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God who chose us and brought us into His family and loves us unconditionally so that we'll never be orphaned again.

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So that we'll never be forsaken. Never left high and dry. None of that will happen to you and I as Christians.

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Look at what Paul says in Romans 8, 15. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry out

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Abba, Father. That word Abba, Father is sort of the word that you use as a toddler when you're crying out Daddy.

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When my kids cry out to me, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy when I come home and I see how much joy they have that's how

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God lets us approach Him because of Jesus. We get to be

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His kids and His presence can never be removed from us.

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Never. It breaks my heart to no end when

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Christians act like, believe like and talk like that they can lose their salvation.

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God didn't do everything that He did to save you in order to leave you. Look at what

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Paul says just a few verses down in Romans 8. 38 through 39. For I'm convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor any created thing is going to be able to separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. Notice what it says at the end. You're not only going to be inseparable from God but you're also never going to be separated from His love.

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Have you noticed that? It's not only that you get God's begrudging presence and He has to put up with you like we do some of our family members.

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It's true. We get God's smiling face. We get God's loving grace.

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I want to read you a couple passages. I'm not going to read them. I'm going to summarize them. I want to read you things that you get as Christians now because of this.

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Because Christ went to the cross because He took your sin on Him because He died in your place. These are things you get.

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These are promises that you have as a Christian. His spirit lives within you.

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John 14, 16 -17. Your anxieties now melt away because of Matthew 6, 25 -34.

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His presence crushes your fears. Isaiah 41, 10. His presence causes you to never cower in the presence of your enemy.

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Psalm 23, 4. So that you'll be strong and courageous. Joshua 1, 9. So that you will conquer temptations.

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1 Corinthians 10, 13. So that you'll look to Jesus as a sure and steady refuge.

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Psalm 46, 1. So that you'll have power and self -control. 2 Timothy 1, 7.

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So that you will run and not grow weary and you will walk and never faint. Isaiah 40, 31. So that your paths will always be straight.

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Proverbs 3, 5 -6. So that you'll never be abandoned. Deuteronomy 31, 8. So that you'll always feel His love. Romans 5, 8.

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So that you'll be refreshed and never empty. Acts 3, 20 -21. So that you'll always be His people. Revelation 21, 3.

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So that you will always seek Him above all else. 1 Corinthians 16, 11. So that you will keep His word. John 14, 23.

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So that you will have fullness and joy and pleasure forever. Psalm 16, 11. And so that His power will course through you.

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Galatians 2, 20. And so that you will dwell in His presence forever. 1 Corinthians 3, 16. Look at all we've got!

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This is for us! And we didn't do anything to get it.

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All by His grace, we've been given this mountain of blessing and benefit. And yet, as amazing as all of that is, that's not it.

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There's more of His presence that He wants to give you. Because you and I were not created as individuals.

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We were not created to just be a collection of eyes. He also wants to give us blessings in the church that are unrepeatable.

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Unrepeatable. That can never be given to anyone who doesn't make the commitment, the priority to be when the church gathers.

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To be here. As amazing and wonderful as all these blessings are, as wonderful as His adopting love is, as great as it is for your personal quiet time in the morning, your private prayer, your car rides where you're screaming, hymns or songs or whatever, all that is great.

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But the best presence that God has to give you is still better than that. Because His best presence,

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His sweetest presence, His most powerful, palpable presence is shared with the church.

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Did you know that? Out of all these blessings that we just talked about, an even greater manifestation of God's presence is given to the gathered church.

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So that the corporate presence of God is the sweetest. And it's only available to His people who gather.

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Now there's a few things I want to talk about in this section. Now we've talked about the grace that He's given to us as believers, now let's talk about His presence that's available to the church.

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There's maybe five or six, I can't even remember. Different things. Buckle up your seatbelt because we're doing this.

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The first one is that God's peculiar presence is at the place where the people worship.

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His presence is at the church. Scripture not only acknowledges this in many different ways, but it gives us the attitude that you and I ought to have through David.

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And look at what David says. The thing that I ask the Lord. This is David's prayer.

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That I will seek after. That I'm going to commit myself to. That I will dwell in the house of the

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Lord all my days and I will gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and inquire in His temple.

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David is saying that out of all the things that I could be doing in my palace, out of the fine fancy meals that I could be having, out of all the things like riding into battle,

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I know that David loves that. Like all of the things that David got as blessings in the world. He would throw them all away to be in the house of God.

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Because it's better. Because God's presence is more palpable in the place where the people of God worship.

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His presence is nearer in the place where we seek Him. So you could give

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David all the horses, all the palaces, all the food, all the wine, all the gifts, all the treasure, all the kingdoms, and they're but rubbish.

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Because being in the house of the Lord all his days was what David, that's what curled his toes, that's what caused him to be exhilarated.

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The question, even as we're just looking at this, is do we feel like that about the church?

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Do we say, I would rather be in the church than anywhere else on earth? You could dangle in front of my face

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Duke Carolina tickets front row for the last year of Mike Krzyzewski's career, and I don't care, I'm going to be in the presence of God because God's presence is better than that old silly basketball game.

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Do we believe that our kids are blessed more being here by being in the presence of God than by any extracurricular activity that the state of Massachusetts says that they should do on Sunday to defame the

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Lord's day? Would we be willing to do anything to be in the presence of God?

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It says a lot about who we are, doesn't it? Because David was called a man after God's own heart.

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Are we people after God's own heart? Because if we are, the priority that we will have is that we will run to the presence of God.

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We will be knocking on the door trying to get into this place before even the doors are open because we want to be in the presence of God.

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And God doesn't just, when we go from the Old Testament to the New Testament, abandon his people.

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Actually, it gets better. His presence is more accessible in the New Covenant. Do we look at the church like David?

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And if we don't, which I'd say is pretty normal given where we live, given the society, given the things that we've been grown up to prioritize,

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I'd say it's pretty normal that most of us, all of us, don't view the church like David.

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Why not? And if not, why not repent? God's presence is here.

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God's presence is in this place. There's nothing better. That's the reason why

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David loved the temple so much. That's why God commanded people to go to the temple so much, is because God is there. And God loves you, and he wants you to have the best things in the world.

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You want the best for your kids, right? Jesus says, a great father doesn't give his kids rocks. Like, hey,

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Dad, I'd really, really love to go on a fishing trip with you. Well, here's a piece of gravel. God doesn't do that, or fathers don't do that.

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Neither does God. God wants the best gifts in the world for you. What is the best thing in the world for you?

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To be in his presence, to be at his church. This is why

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Jesus said, second thing, that we get his peculiar presence whenever we assemble, is why

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Jesus said, where two or three have been gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst.

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Nobody in here can accuse Jesus of not knowing his theology. Nobody in here can look to Jesus and say, yeah,

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Jesus, you're going to be with everybody who's a Christian because you said you're going to send your spirit, and he's going to live and dwell in us, so why do you even need to say this?

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This seems silly. You're with everyone who call upon your name, right? But yet Jesus is distinguishing that when two or three are gathered, and Matthew 18 is a passage about the church, when two or three are gathered in the church, he is there.

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Why did he make that distinction? Because he's trying to tell us that his presence is better and sweeter and more palpable, more tangible to the people of God who prioritize the church.

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You don't need lights and chairs and guitars, and you certainly don't need fog machines and everything else that the church says that they need nowadays.

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You know what you need to have the church? You need a loaf of bread, a glass of wine, and a cup of water, two elders, and one congregant, and there the presence of God is more powerfully displayed than anywhere else on earth.

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It's not a small group meeting. It's not coffee at Panera. I've even heard...

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I've even heard a dear Christian woman years ago talking about her relationship with her boyfriend, how they live together, but when two or three are gathered in his name, there he is in their midst.

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It's not Christian camp. It's not a Christian concert. There's lots of places that we can try to rubber stamp this on and say that, no, this is where this applies.

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I remember in high school, or in middle school, actually, we had this thing called

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Around the Flag where we would go and pray. All the Christians that were in my school, so there was like two of us there, and we would pray because I guess we were trying to scare the world and, you know, make them tremble into surrender.

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That even, something so virtuous as that, where we would be meeting to publicly pray to the

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Lord in front of our school is not what this verse is saying. When two or three gather in the church, there

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I am with you. When we think about that, there's nowhere else on earth that we should rather be.

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Right? I don't, and this is going to sound harsh, I don't care where we have to go and what we've got to do.

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It's not more important than being with God and his presence. And this is practical for my family.

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I got this several years ago, and I wish I had gotten it sooner. When my kids ask me, can we not go to church today, and they haven't asked me that in a long time, but when they do,

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I tell them no, we're going to church because the presence of the living God is there. We're not skipping that.

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When Addison and Jackson want to fuss and run and play, we fight their little sinful natures to the bone.

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Not because we want them to grow up and be moralist or legalist, because we want them in the presence of God. That's why we want kids in this room, because we want kids here in the presence of God.

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I don't care if my yard needs mowing. I don't care if I've got family members from out of town. I don't care if we're on vacation and my kids want to go to a water park, we'll go after church.

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We're going to church. I don't even care. I thought about this last night, and I wanted to know if I could actually, with integrity, say this statement, and I think

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I can. I don't care if I'm out to dinner on Saturday night and my house burns down. We'll get a hotel and we'll go to church the next day.

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Insurance can wait. My house can wait. My problems can wait. I can't wait, because I need to be in the presence of God.

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There's nowhere else where that happens. There's nowhere else where I get that. I can stand there and frown and cry over a bunch of smoldering pieces of board, or I can come to the house of God and get into God's presence.

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It's not because my family is holier than thou, it's just we know what

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God wants us to have and we want to have it. That's it. If I were to say to you today,

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I have buried a million dollars right in the middle of a forest in the White Mountains and the only time you could get it is

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Sunday morning at 10 o 'clock, how many people would not be here in this church today? What does that say?

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What does that say? Do we have the integrity to say, you know what, I'm going to pass on a million dollars because silver and gold have

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I none, but this is better than that. God's presence is better than all the riches that moth and rust are going to destroy and all the trinkets that are going to end up in the world's garages and dumps.

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What on earth could ever steal us away from this place if we know that God is here? And if that's true, will we be willing to ask the hard question to say, why do

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I cave to my priorities that aren't that?

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Will we have the integrity to ask ourselves that question? Will we have the integrity and the courage to live differently?

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That's what repentance is. I'm going this way, now I've got to go this way.

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Will we have the courage if we really believe that God is here and he is? And if that really is important to you, why would we miss?

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Why would we not be here? That's the second thing. The third thing, it's not just general.

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It's not just God has promised to be here in some general way. God has promised to be here in specific activities that we do.

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He has actually blanketed his presence all over the gathering. From the moment we enter the building until the moment that we leave the building, it has been infused with the presence of God by his grace.

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We get more of God's presence when the word of God is preached. And I'm not talking about ear scratching, ear tickling, you know, live your best life now.

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I'm not talking about that, that's garbage. I'm talking about when the word is preached. When God's word is declared, the saints of God are blessed.

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In a way that doesn't happen on Monday when you're listening to John MacArthur on podcast or R .C. Sproul on Tuesday. It happens here when the word of God is preached.

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That's why the celebrity pastors can't replace the local church. 1

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Timothy 4 1 -2 says, this is Paul talking to Timothy, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing in his kingdom to preach the word.

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Be ready in season and out of season. What that means is, I don't care if people want to hear it or they don't want to hear it.

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Preach the word. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

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Don't miss the point here. Paul thought it was so significant to say to Timothy, I'm going to charge you in the presence of God to preach the word.

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Why would he say that? Because the presence of God is there when Timothy's preaching the word. Paul is making this grave for Timothy.

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He said, don't you dare scratch their ears. Don't you dare capitulate to what culture wants you to say.

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Don't you dare pass on sin or holiness or all of the things that are in the scriptures.

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I charge you in the presence of the living God to declare the word. Why? Because preaching is different than every other form of communication on earth.

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It is. A rousing politician speaking and motivating a crowd is not the same.

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A tech guru who's announcing the latest gadget on stage, not the same. Some talking head bloviating nonsense on Fox or CNN or MSNBC or all of them is not the same.

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When a man stands behind the pulpit and declares the word of God, he is doing so before the court of the living king.

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And the spirit uses it in your life and in my life. You will not believe.

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I can't speak from your experience. I can speak from mine. You will not believe how I wrote this.

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I read this like 10 times before today. I prayed over this. And as I'm preaching it,

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God is ministering to me in this. It's as if I'm sitting right there with you and all of us are audience to the king of kings.

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The word has an effect. It does not come back void. That's because the word is different than any other form of communication because it's filled with God's creative activities.

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By the word that he spoke the world, by the spirit he inspired the world, the word, and when we declare the word, it ministers to you.

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The spirit of God is using the preached word to bring concepts into clarity in your own life, to bring conviction on areas of sin, to bring encouragement on areas of doubt.

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The word has an effect upon the saints of God and if you miss it, if you avoid it, then you're missing out on something.

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Funny stories, anecdotes, and feel -good narcissism does not replace the preaching of God's word and God uses it.

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He uses our weakness to accomplish his glory and that's so astounding.

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The next thing, God's peculiar presence when we sing. God's peculiar presence is with us when we sing.

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It's not the same in your car when no one's listening and you can sing however you want. It's not the same when you're doing the dishes.

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I hate doing the dishes. So often I'll sing old -timey country music. I'll sing Johnny Cash. I'll sing

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George Jones. I'll sing all that stuff that my grandpa made me listen to when I was a kid and I made fun of it and now

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I love it. Not the same. It's not even the same when you lead your children in family worship.

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What a blessing that is when you sit down with your children and you teach them the hymns of the faith. You teach them

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Rock of Ages. Mighty Fortress is our God and you see your boys come alive because they see this castle in their mind and they see this great savior who slays the dragon.

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Like what a blessing that is and I'd say please, if you're not doing that with your kids, sing with your kids.

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If you're not doing that with your wife, sing with your wife. It's gonna feel awkward maybe at first but it's a blessing but even that pales in comparison to when we gather in the presence of the

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Lord on the Lord's Day and the saints of God sing. You're singing during the week to the

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Lord as a pack of crackers that gets you through to the meal. That's what it is.

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Don't live off the crackers. Eat the crackers but don't live off of them.

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Come here and sing. Shout for joy. Why do you think we say shout and make a joyful noise?

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Again, I've made this joke many times. It's true. I don't care what you sound like. Make a noise. That's the standard.

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The Bible doesn't say that you have to sing like a professional singer in order to sing with joy. Praise God for that.

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Now all of us can sing with joy even though we don't sound great because it's not about our aesthetics.

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It's not about how we sound. It's not about your neighbor who has an opinion about you or maybe they don't.

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You think they do. There's only one time in your week where you get to sing in the presence of your

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King. Only once. There's only one time in your week where you get to sing and the

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King interacts with you in a corporate, in a beautiful, in a gracious, in a special way.

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There's only one time you get to do that. 52 times a year. That's it. Why would we miss that opportunity?

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Listen to what Paul says. He says, Cautions 3. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful.

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Amen. Let the word of Christ dwell within you with all wisdom, teaching, and admonishing one another with what?

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With psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing with thankfulness in your hearts.

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We're not called to go to a church where we can get lost in the music and we're not called to go to a church that necessarily pumps music so loud that no one can hear you sing and that's a good thing, you think, because you can't sing.

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We're not to go to churches based off of our own musical preference. Think about our consumeristic culture.

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How many of us, maybe not us, how many people, how many Christians have chose a church the same way that they choose a

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Spotify playlist? I like that style, but I don't like that one. That's not what it's about.

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Our singing is one of the most spiritually significant events that we could ever do. When we come together to worship, when we sing the psalms and the hymns and the spiritual songs, we are making the church stronger.

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It says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. What? By singing. So if you want the word of God to dwell within you richly, sing the songs of Scripture.

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Sing the hymns. Sing the spiritual songs. If you want to have God's presence down into your bones, don't lip -sing the words.

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Don't mutter them while you're thinking about the football game after church. And don't worry and don't sit there in panic or fear that someone's going to hear you sing.

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Care nothing about that. If you want the word of God down into you, sing these truths. It's one of the spiritually significant things that you could ever, ever do.

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Don't avoid it. Don't avoid it. There are times

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I look up and I see Derek physically distracted because I'm singing. And I'd have it no other way.

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We sing the songs differently. I've got a little bit of a southern rock twang. He's better.

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He's more for congregations. I'm more for maybe a blues club or something. But when

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I sing, I don't care if I'm distracting Derek or not. No, sorry about that, brother. All I care about is that I'm giving this to the

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Lord. And I know that he's committed himself to bless me and to draw me into his presence and to make his word dwell down deep within me when

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I sing. So I'm going to in faith do it with all my heart. And I pray that we'd be a church that would blow the roof off this place.

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I pray that we'd be a church where the nations would be able to hear our voices because it's spiritually significant.

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The next thing that we'll talk about. Isn't this amazing? God's here.

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He's here when we preach. He's here when we sing. He's here when we gather. Oh, I've been waiting my whole life to preach this message.

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God also shares his peculiar presence when we feast at the table. Look at what

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Jesus says in John 6. Truly, truly, that means he really means it. Truly, truly,

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I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life.

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Now we know Jesus is not talking about his physical body and his physical blood. We're not saying that the elements of the table are transitioning form from bread and juice to body and blood.

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We don't believe that. And we also don't believe that Jesus physically comes down with us because Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God.

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And Jesus is not going to leave his throne in order to come down here and dwell with six million different churches, physically speaking.

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But that does not mean that what we're doing is just a bare memorial. That doesn't mean that. We do not go up there to get an after -church snack.

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We do not go up there to do something spiritually insignificant. We do not go up there just to have good feelings and Hallmark card emotions.

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We go to partake in the grace of Christ because he graciously shares himself with us at the table in a way that cannot be repeated anywhere else on earth.

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Why? Is it because the bread is significant? No. Is it because the juice is significant?

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It's a good name brand, but no. Is it because the wine is significant? No, $10 bottle.

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Why? Because God has chosen in his covenantal grace to make these things significant by his choice.

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He has chosen to make the bread significant. He has chosen to make the wine significant.

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And when we take them in obedience to Christ, he communicates grace to his people that cannot be had in any other way.

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I remember watching people during the COVID stuff and they were talking about how it's OK that we missed the

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Lord's table. We don't want to get COVID. I would rather die of a stupid disease than miss the Lord's table. To live is

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Christ, die is gain. I'm going to go to heaven. I don't have to be afraid of anything. But what

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I do have to do is prioritize the right things. If Jesus is at the table and he's communicating his grace to me,

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I want to be there. And I dare anybody to stop me. I want you to have that sort of attitude.

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That sort of David -like attitude. I want to be in the house of the Lord above everything else. I want to be at the table above everything else.

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If you skip church, whether it's for convenience or whether it's for something else, and there are legitimate reasons to not be in church,

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I don't want to make it like that. There are legitimate reasons.

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But when you're missing church for flippancy, when you're missing church because you just slept too late or because you just have got too much to do at work or because of whatever else, you're actually doing damage to your own life and to your own soul.

01:00:16

You miss the presence of God that's here at this church and at every faithful church. You miss the presence of God that's when we gather.

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You miss the presence of God that's communicated when we preach. You miss it when we sing. You miss it when we feast.

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It's like choosing to starve yourself when there's a $10 ,000 steak perfectly prepared, that Japanese Kobe beef, right in the next door with a fork already ready, saying, come and eat.

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Uh -uh. I've got something else better to do. I don't...

01:00:53

This, again, is going to sound harsh. I want you to hear my heart. I want this for you. I want this for the church.

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I want this for us. I don't care if it's culturally acceptable in this country to miss church or to only come twice a month.

01:01:06

I don't care about that. I don't care if it's New England and we only have five good days a year that we can go outside and be in the sun.

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You probably think I'm being over the top. But if God's here, where are you going to go?

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You know the sun doesn't even make it into heaven. That flaming ball of gas dies out and it's Christ who lights his people forever.

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That insignificant ball of fire in the sky can wait. God's presence is here.

01:01:45

Next, God's peculiar presence when we baptize and make disciples. Do you feel privileged yet?

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Out of all the things that Christ has given you in your individual faith, and yet you get to come here in the microwave of his grace.

01:02:01

Do you feel privileged yet? Look at what Matthew 28, 19 through 20 says.

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Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the

01:02:14

Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

01:02:21

There's two things going on here. Number one, when the church of Jesus Christ baptizes someone, they're baptizing them into the name of the

01:02:29

Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. They're baptizing them into community with God and community with the saints.

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That's presence. That's fellowship with God through something, this seemingly insignificant act.

01:02:42

Is there anything magical about our water? Did we go and buy the fancy water in the grocery store, the

01:02:51

Le Bleu? Did we buy that? No. Do we have ionized water? Do we hook up electrodes to it and give it a kick?

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No. The water is significant because God has deemed it to be so, and he has decided through baptism to invite us in to the community of God.

01:03:10

Oh! What a significant thing. The second aspect of this passage is he says he's with us always, and I don't want you to misunderstand what that means.

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He is not saying that he is with you as you loaf around in your hammock on Sunday morning. He is in the individual

01:03:29

Christian way, but he's not in this corporate way. He's not promising if you play lawn darts on the beach on Sunday that you're going to get the presence of God in this way.

01:03:38

He's not promising that. He is promising that when you baptize and when you make disciples and when the church does these activities, he is with us in a way that can never be repeated anywhere else on earth, can never be implemented anywhere else on earth.

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Those things are true for us when we gather. His unique presence is shared in this church.

01:04:03

His unique presence is shared when we gather. His unique presence is shared when we preach, when we sing, when we hear, when we do, when we feast, when we pour the water, when we make disciples.

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He has so thoroughly saturated this place, the gathering of the saints, that it is the most glorious environment that you could ever possibly be in.

01:04:26

To miss it. To miss it is to do the most spiritually inconsequential thing that you could ever do.

01:04:38

To be here. Every week will change you.

01:04:45

Now, I want to land the plane. I think that this probably is the most important sermon that I've ever preached and I don't say that lightly.

01:04:56

If you know me, every Bible verse is my most favorite, so I get that my credibility is shot in this area.

01:05:04

But I was thinking about this last night as I was praying over the sermon. If you grab hold of this and you really understand what's happening here in this place when the saints gather and you believe that this church is a church that preaches the gospel and sings the gospel and does these things rightly and you commit yourself to come here, you will change.

01:05:27

I'm not saying that you'll wake up tomorrow and everything will look different in the same way that Addison was three years old two days ago and now she's four and there's not a whole lot different with her, although this morning

01:05:39

I did have a moment where I almost wept because she's four. It's not like watching the grass grow and you're like, yeah,

01:05:47

I think it grew. But if you take the sun away from the grass, it'll certainly die.

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If you take the water away from the grass, it'll certainly die. Over time, a committed Christian who puts themself in the church, who puts themself under the word being read, the word being preached, the word being sung, the word being heard, if you do that, it'll be the most spiritually consequential thing that you could ever possibly do.

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I believe that with all my heart. And that's why I think this is the most important thing I've ever delivered on.

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My prayer is that you would take these things to heart. My prayer is that you would ponder these things.

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What does it mean that God is here? What does it mean that I get to come into his presence? What does that mean for my life?

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And I'd ask you even to think about what your life would look like if you made that a priority. Now, I'm not talking about legalism, and I'm not talking about mysticism.

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I'm talking about you getting into God's presence because God's presence is the best thing for you.

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I'm talking about the attitude of David, where he says, I was glad when they said to me, I was happy when they said to me,

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I was overjoyed when they said to me that I got to go to the house of the Lord. That's my prayer for us.

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Let's pray. Lord, all the blessings that you've given, your commitment to be here, right now in our presence.

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The fact that you've invited us into yours. The fact that you have given such trivial things as preaching.

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You've endowed that with your grace so that it communicates more of your presence. Bread and juice, communicating more of your presence.

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Water poured out on top of the head, communicating more of your presence. Lord, the fact that you've taken our things and you have made them to be spiritually consequential and you have promised that you would be present with us as we gather.

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Lord, it's incomprehensible so that we should say with Solomon, how can this church hold the very presence of God when heaven and the highest heavens cannot do so?

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And yet, Lord, you have turned your face towards this place and you have answered our prayer.

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And you are here. God, would you give us hearts to see it? Would you give us hearts to know it?

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Would you give us hearts to comprehend it? Lord, would you give us anticipation and eagerness to be in this place so that we can be communing with the triune

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God? Lord, would you cause us to have courage to fight our temptations when other things seem more pressing?