A Heart in Harmony With the Throne of God — Al Whittinghill

The Old Heart and the New Heart

You know, the story is told that Dr. Christian Bernard, the first person to ever do a heart transplant, after he was visiting that first person he ever took their heart out and put a new one in, he went to them after that surgery, and as he was talking to the patient, as he was able to finally talk, he said to that patient, would you like to see your old heart?

And the story is told, Hal, that the man said yes, and he went into the other room, the doctor, and brought out a big, gross laboratory bottle, and in that bottle was an old, tired, worn out muscle, and as they looked at that together, they both got tears in their eyes, because they realized it was the first time in human history, what a historic moment, that a man had ever really seen his own heart.

And the man looked up in a profound moment and said to the doctor, he said, doctor, I'm glad I don't have that old heart anymore. Well, it's maybe the first time in human history, but I'll tell you, when the Lord Jesus takes his word and does heart surgery, many, many times it's easy for those who are his people to see their own heart.

And you know what? It's a tired, worn out thing, like an adamant stone. But the Lord says, I'll have mercy on you. I will take out of you the old heart, and I will put within you a new heart, a heart that can know me, a heart in which I'll write with my fiery finger the very words of life, the very laws of God, and you shall know me from the least to the greatest of you.

Well, the Lord's done some surgery this week, and as I've been thinking about how he'd want to send us out of here, I wish you'd turn, in your Bibles, to Isaiah, chapter 57. Did you know that God had two throne rooms?

Let me just read Isaiah 57, verse 15. Some people say that there are two Isaiahs, but I believe that the second part of Isaiah was so different after he saw the Lord. After he saw the Lord high and lifted up, it changed his perspective to heavenly.

It humbled his personality, and it gave him a holy purpose, so that when he wrote these words directly from the heart of God to us, he's giving a revelation to us about that person who has a new heart.

Listen to this, verse 15. For thus says the high and lofty one that inhabits eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and a humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

This mighty God that we've been glorying in all week dwells in the high and holy throne room with a particular sort of heart, and that is a humble, contrite, broken heart. That's the one he will revive.

That's what's in heaven right now. He's dwelling there in the heavenly Jerusalem, the Zion above, with humble, broken, contrite, revived people. But look at Isaiah 66, verse 1 and 2, and you'll see his other throne room.

The Heavenly Throne and the Contrite Heart

He says what Stephen is quoting when he is stoned. Stephen is quoting this verse in Acts chapter 7, verse 49, and it so infuriates the people who are placing confidence in a physical temple that they stone him.

He says these words,. Thus says the Lord, again he's speaking, Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house that you will build for me? And where is the place where I will rest?

Where's the place that man could ever make for a habitation of God? And then he says, For all these things, meaning that men can build, my hands have made, and all those things have always been. But here it is.

But to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at my word. When he hears the word of God, he's moved on the inside. He's stunned by what he sees. He's walking in fear of God.

He respects the Lord. And this is the person, God says, that I will establish my throne room in. You see, in the world system, when something is broken, you put it aside or you put it in the yard sale or you might give it to the church.

But in the kingdom of God, it's just the opposite. You see, he sets unbroken things aside. And it's the precious broken things that he uses to confound the wise and show the world his great glory through vessels of clay, just channels who are weak and who let him establish his throne in their heart.

God has two throne rooms, one in the highest heaven and one in the lowest of hearts. It's like those royal kings in England, as an illustration. They used to have a magnificent throne room in the capital city of their kingdom and it filled those who came into it with great awe.

But when the king wanted to go out among his kingdom, he would leave that throne room and go out with a smaller throne, ivory, perhaps with gold inlays. And he would set up a tent to meet his magistrates and landowners.

And when he met with them, he sat on that throne. And you know what? When he sat on that portable, mobile, humble throne, it had all the authority that the big throne had because he was on it. That's what our Lord Jesus did.

Christ’s Incarnation and Enthronement in the Believer

He emptied himself. The fullness of the Godhead bodily came and was tabernacled, veiled in flesh, the Godhead sea, hail incarnate deity, God in the flesh, Emmanuel. He was tabernacled among us. And occasionally during his ministry, you'd see him pick up the corner of that veil.

And when they did, he was transfigured before them and all the glory of heaven's holy of holies shone out and they were stunned because they didn't know who this really was in that earth suit that was really a man, but yet God in the flesh.

And you know, he was crucified. His blood was shed for me, for you. Buried, raised, ascended, enthroned by the Father. And so now as he sends his Holy Spirit back into the world, we say, come into our hearts, Lord Jesus, but he doesn't just come as some ambiguous spirit.

He comes to enthrone himself in your throne room, to the broken, to the humble, to the contrite, to those who come and who know they need the cross and they know that they're a sinner that has no hope apart from the precious blood of Jesus.

They open up, they tear the veil of their flesh and into their inner man, that SO man, that spirit man, comes the risen, radiant Lord Jesus Christ and is enthroned. And the Father's throne room finds a place in us.

You see, it's the secret place of your life. You have an outer court, you have a body. You have a soul that's like a holy place. You have a volition and intellect and the aspects of your soul. But in the inner man, the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord.

In that secret place of the Most High, he wants to live. The Bible says you're not your own. You're bought with a price. You have the Holy Spirit in you if you're a Christian and it's of God's doing. He's placed him in there, in the hidden man of the heart.

You're an ambassador. You have the word of a king. And in your heart, he wants to be enthroned in majesty and in power. And he wants to establish his lordship, as it says in Romans 14, 8 and 9. To this end, Christ was crucified and buried and revived that he might be the Lord of the dead and the living.

He wants to establish thy kingdom come on this earth and thy will be done on earth as it is being done in heaven. Because forever, O Lord, your word is settled in the heavens. But we have the privilege of settling it on earth.

It's an awesome thing. When he comes, Romans 5, 17, we can reign in life. Not we reign, but him reign in us. We reign in life by the Lord Jesus, this same king. He wants Christ in me to be the hope of glory.

Revival and the Atmosphere of God’s Throne

And this is what he wants to do. And we've got to come into an inner agreement with this throne room with that throne room. If you want to know what's supposed to be in your heart, if you want to know the attitude and the atmosphere and what's supposed to fill your heart, then you need to look at what's going on in the throne room of God.

Whatever wouldn't fit there, mustn't fit here. Whatever's going on there has got to fit here. And that's the great key, isn't it, of being a true vessel of revival. You know what revival is? It's when God gets so sick and tired of being misrepresented by the church that's known by his name that he decides to show up in person and clear up the discrepancy.

It's when he expands his throne room and his glory comes. And it's really, you think of any aspect of revival, and that is when his throne room is felt and known. We sensed it last night. The royal majesty of his holy presence.

It was stunning. I was surprised, actually, that we could stay on our feet because those who see him best and know him most dearly and clearly are on their faces. Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is within you.

Luke 17, 20. And then he said, the kingdom of heaven cometh not with observation. That means that you don't just, it doesn't just come as you just make lists and methods of how to do this and you come and you hear seminars.

It comes by revelation. It comes not by observation. It comes as God unveils himself to your eyes of your heart. And you see him high and lifted up. You see him, as the old song says, beyond the sacred page, I seek thee, Lord.

It's when you've heard something, heard something beyond the human ear. I hath not seen, e 'er hath not heard, but God's prepared good things and he shows them to us by his spirit. He wants in your heart the same atmosphere, the same attitude, the same adoration, the same attention that you see, the same authority that you see around the throne room of God.

This is his will for your life. You see, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, saith the Lord. And so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts. We must have an elevated perspective.

We must come into his holiest of all through prayer and through the word and through fellowship with other believers and have our hearts tuned to see and know who he is and to live in the harmony of that atmosphere.

My perspective must be changed. There must be a reality shift in me. It's the upward call of God. I've got to be like Paul who says, we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.

The things that you see are temporary. The things you don't see, they're eternal. And that's what he wants to enthrone in you, brother and sister. And when that happens, then that's when the conforming power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's the secret of the saints of old. They lived in the throne room of God. Elijah could walk into the king and say, the Lord before whom I stand. As the Lord liveth, I will say what the Lord speaks to me.

He lived in the throne room that you cannot see. That's what the early church did. They were drunk with the majesty of the presence of the throne room of God. They lived in his presence. It says in Psalm 77, thy way, O Lord, is in thy presence.

It's walking in the presence. In thy presence is fullness of joy. This is not something we struggle to attain. This is something that is a pure gift of grace. As we are seated in the heavenlies, that's where your home is.

That's where you are if you're a Christian. You're living in the heavenlies and you're seated with Christ and by faith on the life side of the cross. But you never forsake the cross because it's to the broken and the contrite and those who take up the cross that the light shines through.

There's no searchlight so bright as the one that shines from the top of Mount Calvary. He wants to shine that through your heart. There's a revelation, you see, that God wants to give. When Paul saw Jesus high and lifted up, he fell off his high horse and fell in the dirt and said, who are you, Lord?

Because such was too great for him. And Jesus said, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. He changed his perspective and he gave him a new center of everything. Flesh and blood cannot reveal it to you, but my Father, which is in heaven.

That's what he wants us to see. Have you seen beyond your church activities? Have you seen it this week? Have you seen that you have the privilege of living without ceasing in the throne room of God and that he is saying, come unto me and come boldly by the blood of Jesus to the throne of grace.

It's a throne though. Come to the throne of grace and there you'll find that your needs are totally in me, Matt. Everything that I am, you're a joint heir and all the wonderful truth we heard last night about how you're a spiritual millionaire.

But you see, you got to have a new heart to appreciate it. And you got to guard that heart because who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Who will stand in his holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart who guards his heart.

And doesn't take liberties with the holy things of God as he's pressured by the power of the world. I have been so moved lately as I've been studying about the harp. I've always kind of taken it lightly that there were harps in heaven.

I said, we're not going to sit around all day and play harps like you hear the world talking about. But then as I was reading in the book of Revelation, studying that throne room, I saw above the sound of all of the praise and the adoration and above all the glory of it in Revelation 14 and 15, it says in those first verses, as that man, as John is caught up and he says, I looked and lo, a lamb stood on the Mount Zion and with him 144 ,000 having his father's name on their foreheads, Revelation 14 one.

And I heard the voice from heaven as the voice of many waters. How loud is it? And the voice of thunders. And I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps and they sang as it were a new song before the throne of God.

Amazing, in the Old Testament, they'd have sometimes a thousand harps and they'd be harping. You read about harps in the Old Testament how that was so identified with worships, how they had songs of mourning, songs of praise, dancing with harps, praying with harps.

The whole Psalms were written to be sung on the harp because the harp is a picture of the human heart. You ever heard anybody say, boy, that struck a chord in my heart. Oh, you have the string, you strum the strings of my heart.

Well, it's an instrument of praise. That's why it says that we're to be singing and making melody in our hearts to the Lord. He's given me a new song and there's a instrument of praise in here in the inner sanctuary that's supposed to match up with what I'm reading here.

Revelation 15 verse one, I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues for in them is filled up the wrath of God. And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire and them who'd gotten the victory over the beast and over his image and over his mark and over the number of his name, they were standing on this crystal sea having the harps of God.

And they sang the song of Moses, the servant of God and the song of the lamb about deliverance, about coming out, those who see him most clearly in the universe. And you'll see it back in chapter five.

They're singing about the atonement. They're singing about the cross. It's the only thing you see. Nowhere else, nowhere else do we know the activity of the saints in heaven and those redeemed ones who've washed in the blood, even the heavens he's washed in his blood.

So you see, harps are amazing thing. It's interesting that the new harps they're making in Israel, they said for years that the voice of the harper would cease in Israel and they hung their harps on the willow and Israel went into captivity.

And they said, but when we come home, they would always say this, just before Messiah comes, you will hear the sound of the harp in the land again. And today they're making harps in Israel and they have 22 strings, some of them.

You say, why? Because there's 22 Hebrew letters. And it says in Samuel, they can prophesy even with the harp. Worship and praise and singing to the Lord Jesus in your heart and making melody, singing.

There's something more to music and worship than meets the eye. Oh, it's deep. Oh, it's awesome. And it's powerful as the kingdom of heaven is within us. You see, I'm told. So I start on this search of finding out about harps and pianos.

And I've been asking musicians. I asked Patricia some things and I heard this. I don't know about music, but I heard this. That if you take a harp and the C note, by the way, are painted red, isn't that something?

And if you were to strike a C note on this chord of a harp and put a silent harp beside it, very soon it's that word for tremble in Isaiah. Those strings, just the C notes would begin to vibrate. They call it sympathetic vibrations.

It would begin to tremble because of that picking up of that harmonic, that harmonic that would come and fill up that note. And soon that first harp would pick up the vibrations of that second harp. And there'd be a resonation like a vibration.

You see, if your heart is silent, brother, yesterday a brother stood and he said he had no song in his heart. Well, brother, if you have no song in your heart, hold your heart, your harp up next to what's going on in heaven.

You read about what's going on there. You see, to this man will I look, the one who trembles at my word, the one who trembles. And you see, when you hear his word, how do you tune your heart to sing his praise?

Come thou fount of every blessing. He saw it, he saw it. Tune my heart to sing thy praise. Streams of mercy, never ceasing, they speak to me about your grace. Lord, your praise, and take my heart, seal it for thy courts above.

How do you tune your heart? Well, only three ways that I can see. An open Bible in the presence of God. Beyond the sacred page where he speaks the living word, the rhema of God. As you're in the scriptures and your heart is lifted, you're brought into a growing agreement with the mind of God.

Renewed in the spirit of your mind, and sanctified by the renewal, not removal, of your mind. And as you learn his thoughts, and the mind of Christ finds through the very word of God, and you hide that living word in your heart, your heart is tuned to agree with God.

Agreeing with God in a daily deepening basis is simply a deepening in, maybe I'm wrong, brother. Correct me later, a deepening daily repentance. Turning from my old ways of thinking. My old and exchanged mind, as we heard.

Where it's the mind of Christ, instead of the mind of this world and the flesh, and all that I've ever had. And the other way to tune it is prayer. Time alone with God. Not just reading the word and having heaven open, but hearing his voice.

At the voice of the Lord may all the world tremble, it says. And those who tremble at my word, who hear that holy resonation of the living God opening to us the Holy Spirit, taking the things of Christ and showing them to us.

And as I am in prayer, being still, holding my heart next to that throne room of God, and knowing him, my heart begins to tremble. And I'm changed. And the third thing, other godly saints. As I fellowship with them, as we heard last night, I need you and you need me.

And God will take that something of who he is and show that in your heart and in your mind as you see that blending of heavenly will and sharing of heart and sympathy and honest communication and a meeting together at the throne of God and the power of his presence released in your life corporately.

The secret strength of all those saints and the secret strength of the saints that you love and know is they have a life in the throne room of God. How about you? Have you this week heard something from the other side, what you call, have you not seen?

It's not just us ascending into the hill of the Lord. It's his throne room, in a sense, descending to the humble and contrite heart and enthroning himself in his majesty so that as you go forth, as Miss Christensen prayed, that you can see the radiance of his light.

The lamb is the light thereof. A body, a person incorporate all as they have their reality shifted. Well, you see, the Lord wants us to humble ourselves. He wants us to become a habitation of God for his Holy Spirit, a dwelling place for who he is, to live and move and have his being.

I will dwell in them. I will walk in them, not heaven later, but a foretaste now. As more and more every day, the veil, I come to the Lord with an unveiled face, beholding as in the word of God, the very face of the Lord Jesus, and as I worship him, I am being changed even by the Spirit of God into that same image that I behold in the mirror of the word.

As I see him in his light, I have light. F .B. Meyer was once, as an old man studying, and he said to a younger preacher, he said, when I was young, I used to talk about spiritual gifts and I would see them on shelves.

And I thought that as I grew, that I could reach up and get the best gifts because they were surely on the shelves for the ones who've grown. But he says, the more I walk with the Lord Jesus in his presence, I realize that it's not the highest shelves that have the best gifts, it's on the lowest shelves.

You have to go down. I must decrease that he might increase. And you see, it's the old precious cross, his cross taken, not just a cross, the cross, no longer I, but Christ owning that. The cross revealed to me, a sinner is pardoned.

The cross revealed in me, a saint is purified. The cross revealed through me, a savior is proclaimed to a world that has no answers except for the one that he's put in your heart as a stewardship. But you have to have the throne room of the lamb there.

Revelation Four: The Sovereign Creator on the Throne

I want to finish by taking you to that throne room in Revelation chapter four, because I believe the Lord wants to raise our perspective to his. I believe that he wants us to sing and make melody in our hearts.

You see, too many of us live in the wilderness of the logical. We live in just the dull regions of the explainable. We want to explain everything. And we've lost that great wonder and astonishment and the awe that I think is really the fear of the Lord because we sense who he is in the holiness of his presence.

Words like astonishment and wonder and amazement and admiration and fascination, do these describe our worship? It's because we've lost touch with the throne room of God. Lord, tune our hearts by time in your word alone as you take the scriptures and open them.

The burning heart will begin to burn as you take the things and show to us the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, as you open to us and give us a listening heart as we pray and as you open up, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out.

When was the last time you were totally amazed alone in the presence of God? You didn't have any words. All you could do was just be in awe. Has it happened to you recently? We're supposed to live there.

We're supposed to live in that holy presence. And we all, we all prone to wonder. Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. But here's my heart, oh God, take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above.

We've come to the Mount Zion, to an innumerable company of those who've been washed and sealed. And it's the blood of sprinkling. And we come boldly to the throne room. And that's where we live today.

And out of that emanating of that throne room, the King that's there sitting on the throne in our heart, even though it's a humble and a mobile little tent that you're in right now, in you is his throne room.

And what is in his really permanent throne room, it says in Revelation, thrones and throne. And soon in the end, you don't see those thrones because they're all absorbed back into his. And that's what's gonna happen to you.

But until that day, we need to get a vision, a revelation like Isaiah of the Lord Jesus high and lifted up. I wanna take you to Revelation chapter four and I need to hurry here, but I wanna just say that John the beloved, he knew Jesus as well as anybody on this earth.

He saw miracles. He walked with him. He knew so much of what we think we know on a tangible level. But when he was on Patmos and he was praying in the spirit on the Lord's day, he heard a voice. And as he looked around, he saw him, who's the high priest of the throne room of the kingdom of heaven.

And he wilted. He became as a dead man as he saw him, whose eyes were as a flame of fire, whose voice was like the many waters, whose hair was white like wool, whose face was brighter than the noonday sun.

He who laid his ear on his chest at the last supper, he could have heard his natural heartbeat in his chest. But when he saw Jesus as he is today, with the glory he's had with his father since before the foundation of the world, he fell at his feet as a dead man.

And the Lord Jesus in grace, fear not, I am he that was dead and I'm alive forevermore. I wanna show you something. And so in Revelation chapter one, he shows himself to John. It's the revelation, singular, of the Lord Jesus Christ, the whole book, the consummation.

And you see in those first three chapters, he's revealing himself where he loves to live, in his churches. The candlestick is the presence of God. The candlesticks being like the word of God that golden table of bread being the fellowship of the saints and the prayer altar.

Those three things that teach me about the throne room of God. And so as he wants me to learn to live in his throne room, he says to John, come up here. And in chapter four, he says, verse one, after this, I looked and behold, a door was opened in heaven.

That's what you have opened before you. At any time, from any place, we have access. The veil, when the Lord Jesus was crucified, was torn from the top to the bottom, right down the middle. They say it took 3 ,000 priests to hang that veil.

That's how heavy that veil was in the temple. But God tore it, saying, the way into the holiest is now open because the blood of the one prophesied has been shed and whosoever will may come to me. And it says, after this, I looked, behold, a door was opened in heaven.

And the first voice which I heard was of a trumpet talking with me, which said, come up here. In chapter four, you see him seeing something. In chapter five, you see him seeing something. And it's something so astonishing that it just blows him away.

These chapters are put here for a purpose because in chapter six, you see those judgments begin to fall. And if you were looking at the judgments, your heart would wilt. You'd wonder what's going on. But God put these two chapters here, I believe, like an anchor of the soul to say there's never a panic in the throne room of God.

Tune your heart to these awesome things. And there's two things that John sees. And here they are. You see him see in that first chapter four, he says, verse two, immediately I was in the spirit and behold, a throne was set in heaven.

And one set upon the throne. Did you know that the book of Revelation mentions the word throne 46 times more than any other book in the whole Bible? The throne. Did you know that the second most repeated word in the book of Revelation is the word lamb and it's 28 times more than any other book in all the New Testament?

And did you know that the third most common word is the word worship, which is 24 times? And that you put those three together and the stress of the book is worship the lamb on the throne. That's what's happening in the presence of deity.

That's what's happening in the hearts and minds of those who have the most intelligent view of him in all the universe. So John is caught up and he sees, behold, a throne. And one set upon this throne.

It was like to look upon him like Jasper and Sardine. And there was a rainbow round about the throne in sight like an emerald. We see that the one who sits on this throne is a covenant-keeping God. This is the one that suggests Genesis 9 with the covenant rainbow of Noah that I am the God who never breaks his word.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my promises are sure. And round about this throne were four and 20 elders sitting clothed in white garments and they had on their heads crowns of gold. And out of this throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices.

What an awesome sight it is. And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne which are the seven spirits of God. And before the throne was a sea of glass like unto crystal. And in the midst of the throne and round about the throne were four living creatures full of eyes, before and behind.

And the first beast was like a lion and the second like a calf. And the third had a face as a man. And the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And these four living creatures each had six wings round about him.

And they were full of eyes within and they rest not day or night. Here's the atmosphere of heaven. And they were crying like Isaiah heard, holy, holy, holy, thrice holy, Lord God Almighty, which was and is and is to come.

And when those beasts gave glory and honor and thanks to him that sat on the throne who lives forever and ever, the four and 20 elders fall down seven times in the book of Revelations, God's number. They fall down off there.

When they see him on their throne, when they see him on his throne, they fall off their throne. And when you see him on his throne, and when I see him, I will slither off of my throne and allow him in everything to have the preeminence.

And the four living creatures, they fall down before him that sat on the throne. And they worship him who lives forever and ever. And they throw their crowns like celestial Frisbees before the throne of God.

And they're saying, thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power, for you have created all things and for thy pleasure. It's not my pleasure. It's not how much pleasure you're getting or how much pleasure your wife is getting or how much pleasure your kids are getting from your life, but how much pleasure is God getting?

Is, have you seen it that the way he gets pleasure is that you let him enthrone his very majesty in your life. That's why they're created. And so you see in chapter four, sovereign God, creator, and you learn there's a throne there.

And in a simple picture, you see, what is sin? Sin is simply being away from that throne. The one who made you has a right to reign in your life. And if you're away from that throne, independent, out of touch, it's sin.

Doesn't matter how good man calls it, it's sin. They've all gone their own way. And repentance in its simplest essence is coming back to that throne. Tears without coming back to the throne is just presumption, but it's coming back to this throne of God.

And falling and saying, thou art a covenant-keeping God. I was made for your pleasure. I was made for your glory. Enthrone yourself. That's the holiness of God. And we see in this chapter four, God praised as creator, sovereign Lord.

Revelation Five: The Suffering Lamb and the Atonement

But then he sees something else in chapter five. And the praise even eclipses that of four. And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and without on the backside, sealed with seven seals.

If you know your Bible, you'll know that's the Redeemer scroll, the Goel scroll, the Kinsman Redeemer. It's the consummative book that God will redeem the earth and bring in everlasting righteousness.