His Chariot — Hattie Hammond

Humility, Worship, and Union With Christ

We want to be truly lowly. We want to truly bow down. To get down to your manger bed, we must truly bow down. We're sure it wasn't a high and lifted up place, and in our spirits we want to come down with that sweet, holy little babe tonight.

So touch our spirits, doing us whatever is necessary to make us one with thee, truly one with thee in spirit. Gather in all our thoughts, precious Lord. We wouldn't in any sense of the word want to be separated from thee in thought.

We want all of our worship to be thine. Let us truly adore. Let us call to everything within our triune being, every part of our humanity to come before thee in this wonderful opportunity that you give us, that all of our being would be united with every member of the body of Christ, and with the spirits of just men made perfect who are already in thy presence, with priests and prophets before us who gave him praise, who sang his worth, who told the story in the power of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.

Let our singing be with the angels. Let our ministry be with the prophets. Let our worship be with the priests. Oh, let everything within us give to the extent of the capacity thou has given us that our cup might be full, then he'll be satisfied.

We just seek this little Lord Jesus that you will be satisfied with us tonight and with our little meeting together. We're not many, but we who have come bring you our hearts, and we want to tell you now that we love you, and just the best we know how, we surrender up ourselves to thee.

We're not here with our hands full of myrrh and gold and frankincense, but we come, Lord Jesus, bringing you our hearts, bringing you our love, bringing you our devotion, and all the gifts that thou has given us to offer, we bring them from our chests one by one, and lay them at thy most holy feet.

We know you accept all we bring. We know you accept us. We just want to sing to you, Jesus, and we know thou will hear us. Oh, help us to sing with all our hearts and worship you with all our love. In Jesus' precious name, everybody said, amen.

No words to give thee praise to thy name, but we yield ourselves to the dear Holy Spirit to gather from our hearts, carry to thee those unutterable feelings and emotions and thoughts that we can't express.

We only know he's won our hearts, and we find in him all that is so lacking in us. We run into him. We would hide in him. We will rejoice in him and delight in him, our all and in all. Oh, precious Lord Jesus, I pray the meeting shall be filled with thy presence, and each heart shall just rejoice in thee alone.

Intercession for a Sinning World

Oh, we do want you to receive something from our hearts this Christmas season, Jesus. We would like in some way to make up and compensate for those who don't know you and haven't found you and have never knelt at your manger bed or brought their hearts to thee.

We want to pray for a sinning world. Oh, Jesus, we ask thee for mercy but thou has shown such mercy. We ask for pity. Oh, how thou dost pity them. We ask thee somehow thou will draw them to thyself. We know thou dost draw.

There isn't one single thing we could ask you to do that you aren't doing it exceedingly abundantly beyond any capacity that we could express or any thought that we could think, any capacity that we have for prayer or for asking, for utterance.

But, Lord, we just want to stand by thee in faith and pray for a poor sinning world. We want to pray for all who are in such need of thy grace. We want to pray for all who would like to express a deeper love for you.

We want to pray for all who have said, I want to love him more. We want to ask for all of us here who have that very same feeling in our hearts. We want to love you better, Jesus. We want you to possess us more fully at this Christmas, this Christ Mass.

Oh, we want the whole Mass to be the surrender of ourselves, the offering up of ourselves to you, Jesus. You have that. Just as far as we know how to give it or express it, you have that. But you know how to open us and deepen the capacity for thyself.

You know how to enlarge us. You know how to make room in us, precious Lord, that you can be more glorified in us, that you can receive more fellowship from our hearts, that our lives can be richer in thy grace, better clothed, better adorned, more richly graced with all that thou art.

We seek this, O King of kings. We ask this, thou majestic one, and pray that thou will let all of our thoughts be full of your majesty, full of your beauty and full of your love. And these days while we're meditating on your condescension, your humiliation, O Jesus, we pray that you will get the reactions in us that you want.

Move over every part of our triune being. We bring them before thee for the Holy Ghost to breathe upon them and move over them and bring out of us the surrenders that you want. O Father, let this meeting be especially blessed.

Let it be especially adorned. Let it be undergirded. Let it be overshadowed. Let each heart present come into thy presence. Come into the circle of thy glory. Come under the shadow of your uplifted hand to bless.

And let thy word be to us, the power that will change us. We ask it in Jesus' precious name. Everybody said, all right, shall we ask his blessing and his word? Dear Jesus, we give ourselves to thee again as we come to thy precious word.

The Incarnation as God Manifest in the Flesh

We ask thee to cover us and clothe us and overshadow us Jesus, into thy sweet presence that your voice can sound in the deep of our being. Your voice can be heard in every part of our life. Open to us the scriptures.

Speak these things into our heart. We want to know the things concerning thy son into whom dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. God manifest in the flesh. God tabernacling among us. This wonderful word made flesh.

Dear Holy Spirit, thou who didst say these words, speak them into us tonight in the power of the Holy Ghost. In Jesus' precious name we pray. Amen. Amen. Yes, this is a lovely group tonight. God bless you.

Thank you for coming. And I'm just praying for every one of you and just loving you good and asking the Lord, please, please to let you have the best Christmas you've ever had in Him. Not in anything else.

Not in gifts. Even though we're giving gifts and receiving gifts and that's perfectly all right. That's perfectly all right. But our joy is not in that, is it? But in Him. Our joy is not in the celebration, in the beauty.

Apart from all of the commercialism, we never want that to enter our spirit. But anything else, in our feasting, let it be in Him. In all of our joys, all of our delights. Whatever we do, whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do, let it be.

What? Yes, because it's His birthday. It's His birthday, not ours, is it? So whether we get a toothpick or a bar of soap, it's His birthday. Let's see that He gets something from us, shall we? Thanks, all two of you.

Solomon's Chariot in the Song of Solomon

Let's come to this lovely thing. The third song of Solomon. We'll begin reading at the seventh verse. Behold His bed, which is Solomon's. Three score valent men are about it, of the valent of Israel. They all hold swords, being expert in war.

Every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night. Solomon made himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon. He made the pillars of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with love.

For the daughters of Jerusalem. Forth are ye daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon, with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladness of his heart.

King Solomon made himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon. Now there are three things in this portion that I read to you concerning Solomon. As we said two weeks ago, the first thing is his bed, and the second his chariot, and the third his crown.

Last week we considered his bed. This week his chariot. King Solomon made himself a chariot. He didn't make his bed. He's God. In the beginning, say it, was the Word. Go on. The Word was with God. The Word was God.

Yes, he... Go on. With God. Yes, he always has been. He's God. He always has been. And his dwelling place is where? Where is that bed? In the bosom of... What did we decide to say? Divinity. In the bosom of divinity.

Yes, hold the three as one, not just the bosom of the Father, lest we think only of God the Father. But in the bosom of divinity, hold the three as one, where there can be no separation. All right. Now, but his chariot.

Christ as the Chariot of the Incarnation

And when you think of a chariot, what do you think of immediately? Conveyance. Yes, that which conveys him. That which conveys him. And where was he conveyed from? Well, from where? All right. To where?

To where? To where? Where did he come? Now, all right, now let's do a little thinking here. Let's do a little thinking now, and just one scripture will clear the whole thing for us. What was he with the Father?

The Word. All right, now you're on your right track. The Word. Yes, we've been saying it. In the beginning was the Word. Yes, that's where he was, and that's who he was, that's what he was. And he's come out of the bosom of divinity, and the Word is made flesh.

Yes, flesh. King Solomon made himself a chariot. He made himself a chariot. The Word is and dwells among us. And, oh, can we, each one of us can, as to the limits of our capacity, but, oh, we are so limited, aren't we?

We are so limited in the presence of divinity, and especially in the presence of his divine incarnation. The Lord allows little tiny flashes of the truth, of the incarnation to come to us, but what we don't know about the incarnation so far exceeds what we do know.

The Word itself doesn't tell us anything apart from revelation. The themes of the Spirit are only spiritually discerned. We read the story of the coming of Jesus into the world, and a little babe is born, and he's given the name of Jesus.

But when we stand in the presence of this tiny little babe, God manifests in the flesh. Who among us can comprehend the distance spanned between the Word and flesh? Who among us can understand the humiliation of the Lord Jesus Christ?

And when we speak of his poverty, his poverty, though he were rich yet he became poor, his poverty, the stripping of the Son of God, the laying aside of the free use of every power, of all of the glory that he had with the Father before the world was, became flesh.

The Word became flesh, himself with flesh, tabernacling in flesh and walking among us. We can't comprehend all that it meant, but the dear Holy Spirit can hover over us, and he does, and take us into the sweet mystery until everything within us vibrates with the beauty of creation.

The price paid, the debt we owe, the self-giving of Almighty God, of divine love to come where we were. He had to come a whole lot lower in Bethlehem's manger than he came in the Garden of Eden when he came down and walked and talked with Adam in the cool of the evening.

That was one kind of fellowship, but we had fallen so low, but he came where we were. I'll touch more on that on Sunday morning, the Lord willing. The Word of God with the Father, this Divine One executing all the will of the Heavenly Father.

Baked and it was done. Not anything that was made was made without him. The Word of Divinity. Flesh. None of the essential union that he had with the Father. He lost absolutely none of the divine essence.

He's still God. He's still divine. He is still the second, dare I say, member of the Trinity. He is still all that he was when he was in Heaven with the Father. He's still all that he was as the Word.

He's still all that he was as Jehovah, as the angel of the Lord. He's still all of that. He's lost nothing, absolutely nothing, of all of that divine essence and essential union. He still is all of that.

And ten thousand thanks to this whole Son of God. Never in any way ever did he lose any of that. Never was his essential glory touched. Never. And his essential glory is the essence of his holiness. That divine center which makes him God, never was that touched.

And never was any union that he had with the Father marred or touched or destroyed in any way whatsoever. He retained all of that. He held all of that. He is still God, one with the Father. He's still one with the Holy Spirit.

Christ Reveals God and Fulfills the Tabernacle

He dwells in light unapproachable. No one has ever seen God. Jesus came to bring us God. He came to show us God. Is God manifest in the flesh? Is God in any other manifestation? In his desire for fellowship with us, the union that he desires, the call that he has placed upon us, the tabernacle in the wilderness in every way is a type of God manifest in the flesh.

Everything about the tabernacle, in his desire for fellowship with us, the union that he desires, the call that he has placed upon us, the tabernacle in the wilderness in every way is a type of God manifest in the flesh.

Everything about the tabernacle, the study of the tabernacle is most beautiful. Every tiny little cord, every little thread, every little stitch of embroidering, the coloring that is used, the badger skin on the outside, every covering, the holiest of all, the inner courts, the outer courts, the posts, the pillars, is Zion.

Everything about it is a type, in one way or the other, of God manifest in the flesh. But when God came into that tabernacle, he dwelt in the Shekinah glory, in the holiest of all. And there were times when that light seemed to be brighter than at other times.

And there were times when there seemed to be seeping through the veils and the coverings, and Israel knew that God was with them of a truth. But it was so unsatisfactory, there was no union between God and man.

God was just in the midst of his people in the Shekinah glory, but there was no union between God and man. And the only way for that union to be accomplished was for God-life to be brought, and in union with nature.

And the only way for God-life and God-nature to become one with human nature, we couldn't become like God, so God had to become like us. He had to. Jesus says, Father, prepare me a body, and I'll go down.

And he came, he came. The Word... What? Flesh. It became flesh. That's a wonderful thing. The Word became flesh. That's a wonderful thing. It became flesh. The Word became man. It would be too bad for the woman.

It really would. It would be too bad for the woman. But the only ghost he uses is the right word. He knows how to change all that is necessary to cover us and hide us and clothe us and bring us in to all the privileges that are ours in this wonderful union.

He doesn't say that the Word just was clothed upon with a body. If it would say that, how many excuses we would have for the manifestations of human nature. Oh, he was God, but he just had a body, but he knew nothing of human nature.

But the Word, God, became flesh. Flesh. So that all flesh gathers to him and finds all our need in him. There's none can say he belongs to us. There's none who can say that he is of us. The Word became flesh.

He enters into the needs, the needs, the deep crying, so that every common need of him can come and drink of him. She says, I too am flesh, so I may come. The poor black man can say, I am flesh, I may come.

And they say, I am flesh, I can come. The Indian can say, I am flesh, I can come. Every tribe and every nation can gather around this Holy One and say, he belongs to me. The same substance that I'm made of is me.

Isn't that wonderful? He understands me, he knows my need. He's tempted in all points, like as we are. That makes him sexless. That makes him ageless. Hallelujah. That makes him ageless. He's just flesh.

The little children can come, can come. The elderly can come, the little newborn babe can be brought to him. And isn't it wonderful that every last one of us can find all our need met in him. He made, King Solomon made himself a chariot.

Human Nature as Christ's Chariot

Now if he stayed in his palace, he wouldn't need a chariot. But he needed a chariot to convey him out. Built just exactly like we are, his chariot is of the very same substance that in his holy nature he is sinless.

There isn't one single thing in our nature that we can't find its counterpart in him. That's why we love him. That's why every nation and tribe and people of all the world run to him. It was heat of the earth and wove at holy hands.

The other day I was speaking of women, those little creative instincts that God has given us. A woman can take a piece of string or a piece of yarn. Crocheting especially has always been very interesting to me.

As a child I watched my mother. She could carry on conversations. She could talk to us. She could just discuss anything. And that little old needle just going and produce the most beautiful things. Just one little string.

Look at that beautiful thing. The dear son of God took up that fragile stuff called dust and in his creative hands just wove from that fragile dust a beautiful thing. When it came from his creative hands he had a temple.

He called the temple of the Holy Ghost. He built it. He made it. He created it. He designed it. It is the work of his own hands. Some of the old forefathers had the idea that the body was an evil thing.

And they put it through all kinds of tortures and subjected it to all kinds of suffering. They wanted to get rid of the evils that they thought was in their body. But the body is not an evil thing. The body is designed and created by God himself.

And I don't think God aimed of his own creation, do you? I don't think he's ashamed of his own designs. He created it for his own glory to be the servant of the real spirit, the real man that God himself expected to bring this body.

And man became a living soul. This body, in this structure, all from man in personality, act, and emotions, and in all range, capacity for essential union and fellowship with God. And when Jesus came where we were clothed upon with the same fabric, after the same design, it's his creation, it's his thought, it's his masterpiece from the very beginning.

Christ's Cross, Resurrection, and Union With His Bride

So when he came where we were, clothed himself with flesh and took upon him human nature, real close to us, and that's his chariot. And in that chariot he expected to ride, to ride, he expected this chariot to convey him through the earth, convey him to his cross, to convey him nature.

He would so identify himself with us that throughout all eternity, while he would always be the divine son of God, he will always be the God-man, the God-man. When the word says God, the world, that he gave, he gave, gave something that he will never, never have back again in his son.

As I said, nothing of the, nothing of the essence of God, but he was all divine in his first manifestation with the Father. But he's changed his, his, his mode of existence. All eternity he will be God, the God-man, the God-man, the head of a new creation.

But in his cross, in his death, in his burial, in his resurrection, in his ascension, he has gone back to the right hand of the Father, back to the bosom of divinity where he was, back to all of the glory that he had with the Father before the world was.

He's gone back into all of that. He is all that he was, but he has established a union with us from which he will never, never be separated. And because of it, he has opened up the way to bring us in his chariot where he is, that we can be with him, we can be one with him, we can be where he is, we can behold the glory that he had with the Father before the world was.

And in his union, in the union with Christ and his bride, we're going to be ushered right in as the bride of Christ, that holy company, that compose, that holy one, the bride of Christ. We're taken right in with him where he is.

If I may put it this way, now we speak of the Father, the Son...