Lindsted, Leonard: The Court Wall ~ Exodus 27:9-19

Your Bibles this afternoon to the book of Exodus chapter twenty seven. Those of you that have been exposed to teaching or study on the tabernacle previously will recognize in anything that I say as not certainly being the first words you've ever heard on the tabernacle. And those of you that are going to listen to this kind of study for the first time, uh, these will not be the last words that you shall hear. The subject is inexhaustible, mainly because it pictures so beautifully the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And for that reason, if for no other, means that it is absolutely inexhaustible. I am not going to be involved with a lot of detailed study of it. In fact, I've told some of the fellows in our homiletic studies, never begin a message with an apology. Uh, some have gotten up and said, uh, I really oughtn't to be up here. Um, I'm ill prepared, and I shouldn't be here. And of course, when a person is like that, everybody is aware of that, that he shouldn't be there. So, you know, you just waste time going into that sort of thing, but I'm going to start with an apology. My apology is, first of all, to Moses, because when I see him, and I shall see him, and we shall discuss the tabernacle, I'm sure sometime, he'll want to know why I didn't cover it more thoroughly. Well, for one reason, they took care of the conclusion of it. We'll never get into the holiest of all, mainly because Milo has shortened the camp by one day. I don't know whether that was through a mistake in the mimeograph or what, but we will not get into the holiest, but we will get into some of the other areas. All right now, Exodus chapter twenty seven, beginning at verse 1, or verse nine, we shall start for this afternoon. Tonight we'll be looking at verse one. And thou shalt make the court of the tabernacle for the south side southward. There shall be hangings for the court of fine twine linen of a hundred cubits long over one side, and the twenty pillars thereof and their twenty sockets thereof shall be of brass. The hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver. And likewise for the north side, in length there shall be hangings of a hundred cubits long, and his twenty pillars and their twenty sockets of brass, the hooks of the pillars and their fillets of silver. And for the breadth of the court on the west side shall be hangings of fifty cubits, their pillars ten, their sockets ten. And the breadth of the court on the east side eastward shall be fifty cubits. The hangings on one side of the gate shall be fifteen cubits, their pillars three, their sockets three. On the other side shall be hangings fifteen cubits, their pillars three, and their sockets three. And for the gate of the court shall be a hanging of twenty cubits of blue, purple, scarlet, and fine twine linen wrought with needlework, and their pillars shall be four, their sockets four. All the pillars round about the court shall be filleted with silver, their hooks shall be of silver, and their sockets of brass. The length of the court shall be one hundred cubits, and the breadth fifty everywhere, and the height five cubits of fine twined linen, and their sockets of brass. All the vessels of the tabernacle, and all the service thereof, and all the pins thereof, and all the pins of the court shall be of brass. There is one New Testament verse that I would like to link up with these passages. If you're making any kind of notes, I would suggest that you write this particular reference down from the New Testament. It's First John four seventeen, a very short passage, but I think it would be well to tie it in with the teaching of the court wall. This reference to First John four seventeen is simply this: Because as he is, that's Christ, so are we in this world. Because as he is, so are we in this world. Now, in case I don't get to you through the course of the message and the study, I want to tell you exactly what I believe the typical teaching of the court wall and the pillars and the crowns, the sockets of brass, the pins and the cords, and this gate, of course, what they typically signify. I believe that there is a twofold message for us. First of all, this entire structure around the tabernacle proper gives us a very beautiful picture of the person of Christ, and I might say it's what the world sees in the Lord Jesus, or what they saw in him. And then for our secondary understanding of these, uh, passages, I believe that we can put it like this, what the world should see in you and me that professedly know. Because the court was something which the eye of men rested upon, first of all, as they approached it. And as we think of our Lord Jesus, we want to think of him as how the world may have viewed him, and we want to think also the tremendous ministry of the testimony of the believer as the world sees the Christian in this world, as the world looks upon you and me. In order to expedite our study, I'm going to eliminate some of the details of it, uh, for the sake of time, but I think one of the first things I would like to, uh, take up for a moment at least is the material that is mentioned here. We have three particular materials in connection with the pillars, which were made out of wood, and there was a very imperishable kind of wood called acacia wood, but there were three other materials that are linked with it. Uh, there was the brass, secondly, there was the silver, and there was the linen. Now, these three materials together give us a very beautiful picture of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, because in the brass, which we have, uh, as a type or a symbol of the judgment of God against sin, the righteous judgment of God on sin. Whenever you see brass mentioned in scripture, it always has the idea of judgment having been executed by God on sin. As we go into the tabernacle proper, we find that the s- the basis of the standing of the boards was not brass, but it is gold. But out here in the courtyard, we find that it is brass because it is here where sin came into the world, and sin was dealt with in the world, and you and I are saved in the world, and our standing before God is on the basis that my sin has been judged. There is absolutely no standing before God unless sin is judged. It is not a question of how moral a person might be or how good his character is. He must have a foundation, and that foundation is supplied by God. It is taught by the brass, uh, socket upon which these pillars rested. The silver, of course, Exodus chapter thirteen verse twelve, gives us the price of redemption, and that means it's a righteous payment for our salvation. When we come down to the linen, we find in Revelation chapter nineteen in verse eight that linen symbolizes the righteousness of God, the righteousness of Christ, and in the case mentioned in Revelation nineteen, it's the righteousness of saints. So these three things together, the brass, the silver, and the linen, give us three great testimonies concerning the redemption of God. The brass, that is the basis of redemption, and the silver gives us the price of redemption, and the linen gives us the results of redemption. That you and I have the privilege as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ to display the righteousness of Christ in our lives. That's a wonderful occupation. Then coming down to the pillars, and we don't have a great deal of time to spend on that either, but I think I'd like to mention a few things about the numbers of these pillars. You see, eh, the cubit was actually about a foot and a half in length, and there were sixty pillars in all that went all the way around this tabernacle proper. And if we were to take a study of the meaning of numbers, and this can be very enlightening, we would find that perhaps the simplest way to look at that would be ten times 6. Now, whenever you see the number ten in scripture, it always has the idea of responsibility. It has the idea of responsibility in a double way, Godward and manward. You see, I've got ten fingers, and I'm responsible to serve God. That's the the Godward aspect. I'm responsible toward man too. I have a responsibility toward you. I have ten toes in my feet. I'm responsible to walk for God, but my walk also touches my fellow men, fellow believers. And so ten has the idea of responsibility worldwide. And the number 6, of course, is man's number. It was on the sixth day that man was created, and so six gives us man's number. Seven is a number of completeness. And you remember that the woman in the fourth of John confessed to having had so many men in her life. I think there were six to be exact, but you know, the seventh was just before, and that was the Lord Jesus. She had six men in her life, and not one of them really satisfied her. She never found satisfaction until the seventh man came into the picture. That's the Lord Jesus. And he embodied everything that her heart ever desired in the way of love and affection, and a sense of really being owned and, and valued and appreciated. She found that in the Lord Jesus. So you see six is man's number, it's just one short of seven, isn't it? Now we know also in the study of numbers that the number one is the number for God. Our God is one God. That doesn't mean one like one thing. The idea behind the, the number one in scripture is the unity of it, the sovereignty of it. You see, one is the basis of all mathematics. You cannot have any kind of numbers apart from one. It's the beginning of everything. If I have enough one dollar bills, I could have a million dollars. Now, if you don't believe that, start shelling them out. But you got to have one before you can even have two. You got to have one. You got to have two before you have three. I don't care how high you go, it starts with one. And the difference between six and seven, man in his incompleteness, and seven, which speaks of divine completeness, is one, and all that man lacks is God. Man, be he ever so great, never rises more than six, and he's always one short of being what he should be. So you see, when you and I come to the Lord Jesus Christ as lost sinners and trust him, then incorporated into the believer by faith is God, is Christ, and we're accepted and beloved, and I have my completeness in him. And so putting these numbers then, six times ten, we get sixty pillars. And it speaks of man's responsibility worldward. There was only one man that ever satisfied God that way, and that was the Lord Jesus. And then coming down to the court wall, we find that there were, uh, 300 cubits of linen cloth all the way around that wall, that, but thirty cubits, of course, was, uh, allotted to the gate. We don't have time to speak about that, but the two hundred eighty cubits, if we were to divide it up, we'd find seven times forty. And forty in scripture is always a number of testing. Uh, Satan came out and tested the Lord Jesus those days in the wilderness. There were forty centuries before, uh, I think it was Goliath showed up, and he was forty days presenting himself, and forty is always a number of testing. forty centuries before, and then forty centuries, and another forty. If you want to go into a lot of study on the numbers, I think they're very great, but I'm not going to go into a lot of those details, except to say that seven times forty gives us our Lord Jesus Christ being perfectly tested in this world, and they couldn't find a flaw in him. Now, they wouldn't have to look too long at me to find something, but they could look forever and ever at the Lord Jesus. He says, which of you convinces me of sin? And they've never been able to do it. And then, a little word about this gate. You know, it was exceedingly wide. It was, uh, twenty cubits long. That'd be about thirty feet wide. That's quite a size gate, isn't it? You know, it'd just about take about anybody that ever wanted to come through. And there was only one gate, because there's only one way to God. Only one way, and Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes unto the Father but by me. Only one gate, not two. There's not two ways to heaven. But I'll show you something that I think is really interesting. This gate, twenty cubits long and five cubits high, we have four times five to get the area of this gate. When we come over to the, uh, door going into the holy place, it's ten by ten. Now, actually, the area of the gate is the same as the area for the door into the tabernacle proper. The only difference is this is wider and this is higher. You see, this is the sinner's entrance, and this is the saint's entrance. And what is God trying to teach us? He's telling us here that as far as a sinner's concerned, God's arms are open widely to embrace him. And the gate is low, it is wide to embrace any who might come. None can ever say it was too high, too narrow. But when you come to the door into the, into the holy place here, or into the first structure of the tabernacle, we find that the accent is upon its height. It is narrow, and it is higher, because this is a saint's door, and there are certain qualifications that God demands for his people if they're going to serve and honor him. Then, of course, we had the, um, linen itself, and for one passage in that, I would like to refer you to the book of Hebrews, chapter seven verse twenty six. There's a lovely passage here. I never read it without delighting in it. Hebrews seven. For such a high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens. Now, who among us today could give us the history of the Lord Jesus Christ in this many words? God does. He gives you everything about his son in the- in these few words here. It's an amazing thing. When God speaks about his son in his incarnation, this is what he tells us. He was holy. He was holy in his birth. Hebrews chapter seven verse twenty six. We're in the New Testament. Then the next thing is harmless. That has to do with his life, his earthly walk. And when it comes down to the expression he was undefiled, this has to do with his death, undefiled in death. And then it mentions separate from sinners, or rather separated from sinners. And this has to do with Christ and his resurrection. And then it says, made higher than the heavens, and that is Christ in glorification. That gives you the whole scope of the Lord Jesus, the beautiful linen of the character of Christ. You know, if you and I were to come up to the tabernacle in those days, we'd have seen this great expanse of white circling around and around, and if we were to think of the Lord Jesus, we'd have to say like this, like the words of Peter, he says, uh, in the Lord Jesus, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. Pilate had to say that this man was a righteous man. He could find no fault in him. Paul could say of the Lord Jesus Christ that he knew no sin. And John could say, in him is no sin. Those that inspected the Savior had to come up with one great statement, in him was no sin. But you know, if we simply would have looked at this white wall encircling the tabernacle, did you know all that would have done? Would have kept us out. The wall kept out. It did not include anything. There was no way of getting in there through the wall. And if Jesus Christ would come into the world only to have lived, all that would have done would have been to condemn us. We would have been condemned in our sin if he would have lived, and that's all. But he not only lived, he died, and therefore there's a gate, there's a way of approach that goes in. But the life of Christ in this world would never save anybody. Mark that down. It would have condemned us. It's the death of Christ that opens the door. Now, we don't want to take any more time to look at these pins and cords and things, but there's some very lovely lessons with them. Uh, we had a longer period, we could go into those. I'll just simply give you the meanings of these things as I see them. The sockets give us the work of Christ, that's our security, and the pins and cords which supported each one of these, uh, wooden pillars gives us the support of Christ, and the silver rods and the hooks that gave additional support, that gives us our unity because all believers are tied together to make one body in Christ. And then the fine linen hangings that give us the life of Christ. But now, I'd like to go to the last part of my little message this afternoon dealing with the court wall, and that is how it affects you and me as a believer in the Lord Jesus. Because as he is, so are we in this world. Now, how are we in this world, anyhow? I think we can get some good lessons from the study of these pillars. You know, these pillars did not grow like that. There was a time when these pillars were identified as being trees at the base of the wilderness or the mountains here. And when God gave the instructions for Moses to go about the construction of the tabernacle, you know what it meant? It meant that men had to go up into these mountain regions with their axes and their hammers and their saws and whatever it took, and they began to fell these trees. And these trees came crashing down, and when they came falling to the earth, they were severed from their natural root system. They no longer derived their nourishment from the wilderness beneath. In fact, it's, it's really striking, to say the least, that in the tabernacle, you never read of a floor in it. Now, can you ever think of a, of a woman moving into a house today that didn't have a floor in it? You would reject it. Even the most optimistic of you would reject a house that didn't have a floor. I've been in some awfully poor houses in my life, and they all had some kind of floor. It's true that you could see, you could see through the cracks. In fact, we lived in one that had cracks so wide in the floor that when you tried to sweep the trash out the door before you got to the door, it all dropped through the crack. And that was quite helpful. There was no floor in the tabernacle. You know why? There were nothing but foundations. Everything that God has for his people is supported by a foundation, not a floor. But you know, these trees, they had a little foundation, but it was a root system, and it was, these roots went down into the soil, into the earth, and there they derived their moisture, there they derived their nourishment. They were dependent upon that root system. And once the woodcutter's axe came along and cut that little tree down, it was goodbye to the old environment, believe me. Then, of course, these trees were stripped of their natural branches and hewn and cut and worked on till they formed and fashioned a pillar, and it was set in a socket of brass. Then this pillar had a function. It was to hold up this linen wall, but the first thing I want you to notice is that the tree that was cut off from those trees out there at the edge of the forest reminds us of you and me. By grace, we're cut off from the old. I don't derive my nourishment and my strength from the old manner of life anymore. I've got a foundation. I'm resting in a socket of brass, as it were. I'm being supported by the death of Christ. The death of Christ has given me a real foundation, and I'm not dependent upon the old system anymore. That's the first lesson I see about that. And then the second thing is, these pillars all had one job. You know what it was? To hold up that white linen wall. What's your job as a Christian? Well, you say, I wish you wouldn't have asked me that. I got married six months ago, and my job is to make my wife happy. Bless your little heart. What's your job? You say, well, my j- I'm an automobile mechanic. Bless your heart. What's your job? Well, my job is this, and my job is that. You know what the job of these pillars was? It was to hold up that white wall of linen, and that reminds us of the job that every Christian has, and that is to hold up in his life the character of our Lord Jesus. That's, that's my job. We had some neighbors in Wichita by the name of Goldsmiths. I'll never forget them. They had a, a parking lot business downtown in Wichita, and they had a great big sign over that parking lot business. I'll never forget that either. And this is what it said. We preach Christ for a living and park cars to pay expenses. Wasn't that a noble way to look at their work? We preach Christ for a living. Christ is our living, and we're just doing this in order to pay expenses. They had the right perspective. You see, we're not put in this world to go our way and to achieve our own goals and our own desires, and then call upon Jesus to help us in achieving what we want to do. But our job in this world is to support the character of the Lord Jesus. I don't know of a higher calling. There's not a man or a woman in this place. I don't care what your professional, uh, work may be, or whether it's non-professional, but it can't come up to displaying the character of the Lord Jesus. I don't know of anything greater than that. If you know of anything greater, you tell me at the close of the meeting, and I'll gladly let down the linen wall, what little I'm holding. And then you notice something here, that it wasn't one pillar holding up the whole wall of white linen. I meet a lot of Christians, you'd almost think they were supporting the whole tabernacle. They got the big eye in themselves, you know, boy, you know, take a look at me. You know, each little pillar had a certain section to hold up, and he was holding it up because there was somebody next to him holding up something, and over on this side there was a pillar holding up something, and I thank God for the saints I've known in my life who were holding up the character of Christ in their life, and oh, what a great blessing they've been to me. I thank God for them. And don't you notice when you're in a camp like this? I look around, I see the Christians walking around, their faces are all smiling, and they're happy, and they're enjoying the fellowship. That's because, you see, God has brought us together. There's a common bond that draws us here. Oh, it's nice to be at the camp. It's nice to see whatever is to see around here and enjoy whatever there is to enjoy, but I think the greatest joy is that I meet fellow believers in the Lord Jesus who've got the same desire, and that is Christ. Christ is the, is the real reason that we're here. And then, of course, I like this picture that dear old brother Fox painted. My, he was a great old brother. I ordered a model of the tabernacle from him a good many years before I got this chart, which he painted, and he made a model of it. It was a terrible model, and I sent it back, and I got a refund. I got a snappy letter, and he says, what's wrong with my tabernacle? He says, everybody else thinks it's great. He says, what's wrong with you? Fine fall with my tabernacle. So I wrote down eight or nine things that were scripturally wrong with his model, and, uh, I thought, I'm sure glad that man lives in California. Well, I went out there for some meetings, and lo and behold, I met him. But fortunately, he, like myself, had a bad memory, and he didn't know me from anyhow. And, uh, he got to be a good friend of his. He had me over to the house for several meals, and and he'd look at me, and I thought, oh, he's just, he's going to remember. But he never did. I was so thankful. When I get home to heaven, you know, he's going to be glorified too, and he'll understand, but at the time I was scared about... You know, he made a, uh, a model in which every pillar was sticking out like this. I said, you know, you've got your, your, uh, court wall and a whole bunch of little bitty segments. He says, it's not that. I like the way he must have taken the hint because I can see the pillars are all behind the, uh, court wall, though I wish he would have put some supporting cords this way, but I didn't want to stretch my luck too much. You know, there is a limit, but I'm very grateful that he has this out like this. You see, the, the pillar isn't seen. It's simply the linen wall. Oh, what a lesson there is for us in that. To be able to display Christ in a way that people will really be aware of him and not so much of us. I don't know whether some of you were ever acquainted with a man by the name of Elmer Breckenridge, lived outside of Kansas City. Some of you do know. But I'll tell you, friends, I don't know of a man that ever displayed Christ more fully than he did. And I'll never forget, one day we were sitting down talking, and he says, Len, he says, you know, I can't remember ever leading one soul to Christ. But I don't know of anybody that displayed Christ more than he did. I was getting my gas tank filled one day in a little bitty village near where he lived, and as the attendant was putting the gas in, you know, it was a long time ago, and he's putting the gas in the tank, he looked up and he saw Mr. Breckenridge crossing the highway, and he says, there goes Christ. I says, who? He says, he says, that, that's Christ. I says, no, I said, that's Elmer Breckenridge. He says, no, he says, that's Christ. I says, no, that's Elmer Breckenridge. He says, no, that's Christ. I said, what do you mean? He says, you know that man? He says, well, everything is Christ. He said, you can't talk to him five minutes till he's talking about Christ. He said, I don't care what you're doing, he said, he always gets over on Christ. It's Christ beginning and end, he says, that's Christ. I told my wife about it. She says, well, whenever you cross the highway, she says, they sure don't get mixed up. How about you when you cross the highway? How about you when you're at school, when you're at work, at home? Our job is to display the character of the Lord Jesus. That's what God has put us in the world for. There's no better way to do it than to make Christ foremost, the people see him. Then, you know, I like this ministry of these pillars. Notice how straight they are. You notice that? And they're all tied together by silver rods. That tells us that the Spirit of God has baptized all believers into one body. It took all of these individual pillars to make one tabernacle court. Don't ever walk out of here saying, well, you know, everything hangs on me. It doesn't. Why, the greatest preacher that ever lived, people missed and mourned him when he left this world, but I tell you, the work of God went on. My preaching partner went home to heaven. I didn't think I could ever preach anymore when he was gone, but I've managed to do it some way. Every one of them had an important task, but not one of them had it all. But they stood in a straight line, and that tells me that they were united in their, in their ministry. You know, I'm, I'm getting tired to see Christians that are stepping out of line, and they're wanting to call attention to some doctrine or some idea they're trying to force. They don't, they don't find any loveliness in being conformed to the Spirit of God and be conformed to the Word of God. And I'll tell you something else. You didn't come here one day and see a pillar resting on a socket of brass, and then come back next day and see the pillar gone, and it was sticking out there in the mountainside again. I tell you, once they left the mountainsides and got over here, they never went back. That's the trouble with a lot of people today. They're looking back at what the things were that they left. And I never forget one of the last sermons that A. W. Tozer preached, and oh my, how that man could open the word of God. The last sermon that A. W. Tozer preached, he told about his son who was in the service during World War II, and he was on one of these big battleships, and out of the sky came one of these Japanese zero planes, one of these suicide planes, and it was bearing down upon the ship with one thing in mind, and that is to crash upon the deck of the ship and blow it to smithereens. And in the nose of that airplane coming down was a bomb to go off, piloted by one pilot, and he never intended to go back. And you know, they raised their anti-aircraft guns, and they fired, and they fired, and they fired, but somehow, someway, this, this plane eluded all of the attempts to shoot it down, and they says, oh, we're going to be hit, we're going to be hit, and that thing crashed on the deck, but it never exploded because the bomb had a malfunction, and it didn't go off. And they rushed to this plane, and they opened up the broken parts of it, and in the cockpit was a fifteen-year-old Japanese boy, scared to death, and he was literally chained in the cockpit. He had enough gas to get out to the ocean and not come back. He was on a one-way trip. He never made provision to go back. He wasn't coming back. He had a mission to accomplish, and he was going to do it. And I would to God today that we that are in this world would say, I have left on a mission. I am not going back. I've got a station in this world, and my job in this world is to uphold the character of the Lord Jesus. I tell you, if the people in Freeburg found me stone drunk tomorrow morning, you know who would be the loser? You say, why, man, your name would smell the high heaven. That's true, but you know who would be the loser? The Lord Jesus. They find some fault on him. And don't you think the devil wouldn't like to see you step out of line? Wouldn't he like to see you become obnoxious in your ministry? Remember this, our ministry is to display the life of Christ in our bodies, and if we do that, I'll tell you, that's the reason why God lets us live here. Well, last of all, what time did I start anyhow? Two o'clock? That's Three o'clock. I've only been going a half hour. It seems like three hours, I know. I'm not asking what it seems like, I'm asking how long I've been speaking. How long has it been? Half hour? Oh, that's pretty good, and I'm just about finished. That's unusual. I want you to make a note of that. Just a couple of last parting words. You know, these linens that stretched around the tabernacle, they were as white on the outside as they were on the inside. Think about it. They were just as white on one side as they were the other. This business of two kinds of righteousness, you know, one kind of Christianity that I have out here, and then I have another kind when I go to the chapel, and you don't find that in the scripture. The same all time. I tell you, it'd be great if we had one of these microphones stuck in some of our houses, and we grin like possums at here in the chapel, and my, you'd think, my, they're, they're so holy. You know, those Christians, they're, they're really, they're really a sanctified bunch. Look at Linston, he almost looked like a Christian himself. And they get home, you know, and then the, then, then the game is over, you know. You say, hey, where in the world is the paper? I had it here a while ago. Hey, wife, where's the paper? I told you ten times, don't take it till I get through. Of course you wouldn't do that. My, two kinds, two kinds of righteousness. One that we display when we get to home. Brother, it's so good to see you. Ha, I really missed you. What's your name? You know, then we get home, you know, boy, oh boy. Now my wife isn't here, so I can really get going on this because if she's here, it does change my sermon somewhat. Oh, don't I feel the plague of it? Don't I feel it? So ashamed. When I look at this linen, I say, oh, the blessedness of our Lord Jesus. Those that viewed him from afar could find no fault with him, and those that were up very intimately near him, like John, they said, John, you know him better. What do you got to say about Jesus? And John says, I find no sin in him. I find nothing in him that's wrong. Thank you, John. We appreciate that. We appreciate it. And then the last thing, you know, no stranger was allowed to come up and put his hands on this court wall. You know what happened to him if he did? He died. Doesn't say that a machine gun came peeking out of a hole and filled him full of lead. I don't know how he died, but it just says he died. He turned up his toes like b- like fried bacon, and that was it. They carted him off. Hey, you remember when the church started off, and there was a couple of people that sold their stuff, and they thought, we want to get in on this thing, you know, everybody's getting into the glory, you know, what they're giving God, and so they sold something and says, well, who knows, we'll get in on the limelight, we'll keep back a little bit, you know, hey, yeah, yeah, we sold it for a... boy, carted them off. You know, that shook up the church. I tell you, it'd be a lot of assembly shook up if God started doing that again, wouldn't it? I don't know whether it'd be anybody around to bury the elders. I mean, elders to bury the people. Hey, I tell you, there'd be a lot of scared Christians, wouldn't there? You know, it doesn't take anything to get into a bunch of Christians today, you know, why when you get in from the world and get into an assembly of believers, why they say it's almost like being out there in some places. No, nobody ever put his hand on that. God took care of it. Don't you worry about the work of God. He's going to get the job done. Did you know that? I used to get so scared when I was first going out preaching. I thought if I didn't do this and I didn't do that, God would never get the church completed. Well, I've lived long enough to realize he's going to get the job done whether I ever preached another note or not. And if you never witness for Christ, he's going to get the job done anyhow. But he's going to use somebody else. I say, Lord, I just want to be in on it. I want to be in on it. What about you? Are you standing for anything? I want you to notice that every one of these pillars is standing up straight. They're not leaning over this way. They're not wobbling. They're standing up. Are you standing for anything? Now, I haven't been to a football game, and I don't know when, except I think I saw Kyle make a touchdown the other day. I noticed when people go to football games, they all carry flags, you know, and they hold it up, Dallas Cowgirls or something. Well, you know, I'm a, I'm a cowboy. Did they score? No, they didn't. Oh, well, where can I hide my flag? They all put up their flags. I wish that we could put up our flag and let people know whose side we're on. So nobody ever attempted to take the court wall down. They couldn't destroy it. But there came a time when God said, it's time to move on, and when that pillar of cloud moved on, you know what they did? The Israelites came around, began to disassemble the tabernacle, and the, and the court wall was taken down. One of these days, Jesus is going to come, and we're not going to be around anymore to display our Lord Jesus Christ. Those days will be done. I want to make the most of the time that I have. How about you? So I think the court wall and the pillars have got a message for us, and that message is what people saw in the Lord Jesus and what people should see in you and me, that professedly known as Savior.