Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.24 → restored 4.22
Use the player's Original switch to compare.How Diffio restores old speech recordings
On the book of Exodus and chapter nineteen. If you wish to do any preliminary reading for Saturday's lecture, then I suggest you read chapter twenty four, and should you have time, chapter twenty five. This evening we begin at Exodus chapter nineteen. We should read this chapter and then some lengthy passages from the New Testament. With the New Testament you will find will comment, sometimes word for word, upon the passage of Exodus that we read. Exodus chapter nineteen then. In the third month, after the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai.
And when they were departed from Rephidim and were come to the wilderness of Sinai, they pitched in the wilderness. And there Israel encamped before the mount. Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel, you have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, how I bear you on eagle's wings and brought you unto myself.
Now, therefore, if you will obey my voice in deed and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me from among all people, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel. Moses came and called for the elders of the people and set before them all these words which the Lord commanded him.
And all the people answered together and said, all that the Lord hath spoken, we will do. And Moses reported the words of the people unto the Lord. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go unto the people and sanctify them today and tomorrow, let them wash their garments and be ready against the third day.
For the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people unto Mount Sinai. And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves that you go not up into the mount or touch the border of it. Whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death. No hand shall touch him, but he shall be surely stoned or shot. Whether it be beast or man, it shall not live. When the trumpet soundeth long, then shall they come up unto the mount.
Moses went down from the mount unto the people and sanctified the people, and they washed their garments. And he said unto the people, be ready against the third day, come not near a woman. And it came to pass on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud. All the people that were in the camp trembled. Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the nether part of the mount. Mount Sinai was altogether on smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.
When the voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai to the top of the mount, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mount, and Moses went up. The Lord said unto Moses, Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish. And let the priests also, which come near to the Lord, sanctify themselves, lest the Lord break forth upon them. Moses said unto the Lord, the people cannot come up to the Mount Sinai, for thou didst charge us, saying, set bounds out about the mountain and sanctify it.
And the Lord said unto him, go, get thee down, and thou shalt come up, thou and Aaron with thee, but let not the priests and the people break through to come up unto the Lord, lest he break forth upon them. So Moses went down unto the people and told them. And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord, the thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods but me. From the New Testament, some verses, please, in the Gospel by John in chapter twelve.
Gospel by John in chapter twelve. Verse twenty three. Jesus answers them saying, The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone. But if it die, it beareth much fruit. He that loveth his life loseth it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me.
Where I am, there also shall my servant be. If any man serve me, him will the Father honor. Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name. There came therefore a voice out of heaven saying, I have both glorified it and will glorify it again. The multitude, therefore, that stood by and heard it, said that it had thundered.
Others said, an angel has spoken to him. Jesus answered and said, this voice hath not come for my sake, but for your sake. Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself. Finally, for the moment, from the epistle to the Hebrews and chapter twelve. Hebrews chapter twelve and verse fourteen: Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord.
Verse eighteen: For you have come not unto a mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and unto blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which voice they that heard intreated that no word more should be spoken unto them, for they could not endure that which was enjoined. If even a beast shall touch the mountain, it shall be stone. And so fearful was the appearance that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake.
But you have come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to the innumerable hosts of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not when they refused him that warmed them on earth, much more shall not we escape, who turn away from him that warneth from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth.
But now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more will I make to tremble, not the earth only, but also the heavens. And this word, yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain. Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace whereby we may offer service well pleasing to God with reverence and awe. For our God is a consuming fire.
God himself oppress- impress upon our hearts the reality of his word. Tonight we are to consider together the topic, the goal of redemption. And it is a topic which, in our less thoughtful moments, we might easily make a mistake about. It would, would it not, be desperately easy, having read the early verses of Exodus and relying upon our memories, to imagine that the goal of Israel's redemption was nothing other than Canaan, their glorious inheritance.
An easy impression to gain, an easy mistake to make, but for all that, an exceedingly serious mistake to make. For the goal of Israel's redemption was not Canaan. Not its butter, however good, not its honey, however sweet, not its milk, however pure, not even its freedom and independence, however much longed for. Canaan and all its glorious delights was not the goal of Israel's redemption. The goal of Israel's redemption was, of course, nothing other than God himself.
And long before Israel reached Canaan's land, God himself took drastic steps, no less than to come down to the wilderness and stand upon Mount Sinai in the view of all, that he might make it clear to Israel exactly what was the goal of their redemption. Hear him spell it out in the ears of Moses, to have it told to Israel. You have seen, says he, what I have done unto the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you. Oh, not to Canaan.
I brought you unto myself. And long, as I say, long before they ever reached Canaan, God himself took the trouble to come down from his heaven to explain it in simple and direct words that the goal of redemption was God himself. Why did he take so much trouble, you say? Well, it was an exceedingly important point. Israel had been redeemed from Egypt and redeemed from the wrath of God upon Egypt. But then, pray, why was it that the wrath of God ever descended upon Egypt in the first place?
What was wrong with their treasure cities? What was wrong with their gold? What was wrong with their art and those glorious pyramids that we still admire to this present? What was wrong with their science? What was wrong with the way they lived? Nothing wrong with all those things as things. Their wrong consisted in this, that Egypt went about its ways, enjoying all those lovely things, but enjoying them without God, enjoying them as though they were ends in themselves, as though they were the goal of living, when they weren't the goal of living, nor ever had been designed as the goal of living, but were but the love gifts of a creator by which he might charm the hearts of men and bring them to himself.
But Egypt had grown defiant in her worldliness and content with her own material and artistic treasures, had defied the living God and cared not to know him. God's wrath had been visited upon that land, and Egypt, Israel had been saved. And here they are on their wilderness journey, en route to their own glorious inheritance, and God himself bethinks of the dangers that might lie ahead of them, even in Canaan itself, if now he didn't explain to them explicitly what the goal of redemption was. When they got there to Canaan, oh, with what joy should they see those lovely things, green grass and dappled cows and milk with its cream frothing over its fresh warmness over the milk pails, and houses made of stones, and vineyards, if you please, and a lovely landscape, and all these glorious things.
And in that very moment, there would have been a desperate danger that Israel, redeemed from the poverty of her slavery in Egypt, should have got it into her head that these things were the goal of redemption and gone after them to enjoy them, head over heels to enjoy them, bit by bit have forgotten the God who gave them. And had Israel done that, then in that moment, though they were physically released from Egypt, they would have but, they would but have transformed Canaan itself into another superior kind of Egypt, and have gone on to live in as worldly a spirit in Canaan as ever the Egyptians had lived in Egypt.
Do we not readily see the danger? I'm sure we do. We have noticed it in our own hearts, have we not? Redeemed, delivered from this world with all its iniquity, saved, forgiven, justified, and on our way to heaven. Who among us hasn't sensed the danger in his own heart? And it is not merely, is it, that sometimes we might be tempted to regard the material pleasures of life or the intellectual pleasures of life as the goal of living, so that we become engrossed with things material or intellectual or aesthetic and forget God.
It is sometimes, and you'll gather it if you watch us closely, that even in our holy and spiritual exercises, we mistake what is the goal of our redemption and imagine that the goal of our redemption is our joy and our peace. So you will see us when days come in which we are enjoying the peace and the love and the tranquility of being a Christian, then we sing loudly the praises of God. But let days come when our relationship with God brings us into trouble and difficulty, persecution and loss.
Let days come when God has to discipline us for our perversities, and you will watch how readily we cringe and and begin to give up. We're not interested anymore. Interested in God if he gives us peace and joy, the lovely blessings of our heavenly canyons. Not necessarily interested, uh, in God himself. We're like sometimes, aren't we? Or perhaps I am and not you. Like that, uh, that Irish young gentleman who, being a penniless soul and rather careless where he parked his car, went and parked it in the wrong place and incurred a heavy fine.
And not being able to pay, he was in a difficulty. But then his rich uncle came home from America and paid the fifty pound fine. And thereafter, the old, feeble old uncle from America would come round and visit the young man, and you could see the young man's impatience rising. There would be uncle sitting him down there in the drawing room of a summer's evening when he wanted to be out playing tennis. And afterwards, the young man explained to his friends, stupid old fellow, oh, I know he paid me a fifty pounds fine, but he thinks that just because he's paid a fifty pounds fine, I've always got to sit down and talk to him when he comes.
I mean to say, there are limits, aren't there, to your gratitude? How easy sometimes it is for us to take God's blessings and feel disposed towards him in that kind of fashion. Forgetting that the whole goal of redemption is not redemption's blessing, but the Redeemer himself. My goal is God himself, as the hymn writer said, not peace or joy. My goal is God himself.
So then let us survey in our mind's eye this marvelous situation, this wonderful happening that took place in the deserts of Sinai. This was in fact the goal upon which God had set his eye when first he accosted Moses, you remember, and said to Moses, Moses, this is the sign I will give you that I'm with you, that when you have brought Israel out from Egypt, you will come to this place and you will worship me on this spot. I should need a veritable seraph's tongue now to describe the situation to you as it should be described.
When God himself, uncreate, master of the universe, in all his glory and magnificence, took the trouble to come down to a barren desert side to seek the friendship and the love of his creature man. There was Israel, see them now, ex-slaves, a few months ago toiling in the brick kilns of Egypt, a rough and ready host if ever there were one. See them now as Moses marshals them into their companies, and they've all their clean linen on for the occasion, and Moses leads the people out of the camp, leads them out to meet God.
Oh, what volumes it will tell us about God. He has redeemed the people, but like an impatient lover, he cannot wait till at last they arrive in Canaan before he comes to meet them. He will leave his jewel-bespangled throne and come down to the wastes of the Sinai Mountains, agog with love and interest, to put his proposition to the men whom he has redeemed. It's no wonder that later rabbis, pondering this scene, used the language of romance to describe it. They call it Israel's nuptials.
And indeed, it's not only the later rabbis, but some of the inspired prophets themselves describe the, the scene in those glowing terms, do they not? Why Jehovah says, do you not remember the day of my apostles, how I went after you in the wilderness? As a man courts and woos and seeks a young lady, so God himself came down from his heaven into that barren wilderness side to seek a s- a race of scarcely civilized slaves. He was a wooing them in the day of his espousal.
First of all, he summons Moses to his presence to tell Moses what Moses shall say to the people and what proposition he shall put to them. Moses, the go-between between the lover and his love. Moses, he says, you will first of all remind them what I've done for them. You will bid them remember and perceive what I did unto the Egyptians. For Moses, they know me, but they know me only vaguely.
I was the God, you know, on that dark, dark night in Egypt, when the destroying angel passed through the land. They shed the lamb's blood, but it was only a literal lamb, and its blood was paltry and worthless. And they were saved from judgment on that night because I, the living God, in my love for them, though they scarce knew me, I stretched myself over their door, placing my very person between them and judgment, and so I saved them. Moses, tell them first what I'd done for them. When their hearts are welling up with the gratitude for their deliverance, then Moses, please, Moses, put my proposition to them, and put it, Moses, in winsome terms, for I want them to, to accept it, Moses.
Tell them this, I have a proposition to make to them. I've brought them to myself on eagle's wings. They don't have to say yes now to what I've got to say. Ask them whether they'll have it. But if they will have it, and if they will obey in my voice indeed and keep my covenant, tell them this, Moses. Tell them that I'm the God who owns the whole earth and all that is therein. Tell them that really it was I who owned Egypt and its treasure cities.
Tell them it's I who owns the spice of Africa and the jewels of the mines. Tell them that I own the planet, I own it all, and myriads of star systems beside. And tell them this, Moses, of all I have, I would like them to be the treasure I value more than anything else besides. As we hear those staggering words, certainly our sense of values begins to change, doesn't it?
Oh, what men, what women. Pharaoh had counted them mere bits of stuff, mere human machines. And as he built his treasure cities, if one or other had fallen under some great concrete block, well, what did Pharaoh care? They were mere people, mere human beings, mere slaves. And Pharaoh loved his gold and his silver more than he cared for them. But values are reversed here. God, who owns all gold, silver, and pearls, and every precious thing is proposing to these people that they shall mean more to him than any and all treasure besides.
And tell them, Moses, says God, that if they will have it, I will not only love them and value them and treasure them after that fashion, but I'll have them to be in a special relation to me. I would give them the privilege of being a kingdom of priests to me, and they should minister to me. They should be selected that life for them should be a constant ministering to the pleasure of God and a being to my satisfaction, they shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
Moses, go and tell them that. And I imagine Moses shook, as he frankly admitted it later on, shook in his shoes, and for several reasons, and not the least of them this. He found it so fantastic. How would those ex-slaves believe him? Oh, go down that mountain and tell them that God was about to give them a chariot or two. That he would do a miracle, and hey, presto, there would open a gold mine in front of their feet. And even that, these ex-slaves, poverty stricken in the past, would find difficult to believe.
But tell them that they meant to God Almighty more than anything else beside could ever mean. How would you ever get it to seem real to them? Real enough for them to believe. Maybe that's a problem that you had. I was talking recently at a student conference of some of those glorious and wonderful things of which Saint Paul writes to us in the Epistle to the Ephesians. And when I had done, a disarmingly frank student said to me, yes, well, that's lovely, of course, but it's also airy fairy, isn't it?
And truth to tell, if you stand next to Jesus Christ and hear him pray, can you take it in? Father, thine is mine, and mine is thine. All that the Father has is mine. Our minds creep out into the vastnesses of space. The incalculable riches of this universe, and if there be any other. Can it be true what he next says?
That which my father has given me is more to me than all besides. Or can it be true that we mere mortals, formed of clay and dust, formed on this temporary, impermanent little planet, not only destined to be redeemed, but mean something to God Almighty, and mean so much to him that we mean more than all besides.
How could you take it in? Said God, Moses, it's important that they believe you, these people to whom now I send you. I want their hearts, Moses. I want them. Everything will depend on whether they believe you. I tell you what, Moses, you go down and speak to them and bring them out of the camp, and I myself will come down, and I will stand in all my glory upon the Mount Sinai, and I will speak to you in their hearing so that they shall hear my voice and they will believe you.
But it was our Lord Jesus did it, did he not? He came down to our world with this fantastic message that this little planet of ours has been flung into space and is maintained by who knows what complicated mechanisms. But the whole of it is here for this, that God wants the love of our human hearts. He proposes that we be his, more to him than all besides. Therefore, Christ Jesus our Lord stood by the men of his time and said, now of course, this is asking a lot, isn't it?
You believe in God? Well then, gentlemen, believe in me. As he stood with them there on the streets of the city, there came a voice from heaven. Not some imagined psychological happening within the minds and brains of those local people. There came a voice objective from heaven, and men heard it. Some, of course, didn't understand it and said that it thundered. And there came a voice.
Said Christ, that voice didn't come for my sake, you know, it came for your sake. This is the battle of the universe, where God himself enters the planet to plead and strive and compete for the heart of man. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw men of all kinds to me. The prince of this world be judged and cast out. Then consider with me for a moment the awe of the situation.
It would be so easy, wouldn't us, brought up in our Christian atmosphere, to forget the wonder and the awe of Sinai's Mount, and to imagine to ourselves that the God whom we worshiped is somehow changed from the God who Israel worships. Who is he that makes such fantastic proposition to our hearts? It is written that on this occasion, that God came down on the third day, and the whole mountain was out, so to speak, on fire and blazed with fire, and yet with darkness and a cloud.
There come came thunderings and lightnings and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud. Till Moses himself said, I exceedingly fear and quake. The people themselves would have been fain to run away and hide themselves in their tent from the majesty of the God that had come down to meet them. Our God, says the writer to the Hebrews, is still like that. Our God is a consuming fire.
Oh come, if it unsettles us, if it makes us tremble, then all to our good. Let us not seek by our irreverent ways and undue familiarity with God to bring down God to the level of our next door neighbor. Such, in the end, would be to belittle our own status and our own treasure. He remains the God awful in his holiness, incalculable in his might, fearful in his wonders. Comes to seek of me the love of my poor heart.
And coming, he spoke these words: I come to ask them that they love me with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and have none other God, but me. Consider then the proposition in its detail. Put it to them, says God, for I mean what I say.
If they will obey me and hear my voice indeed, then I propose to them not some haphazard, will of the wisp kind of relationship, a relationship that shall depend upon the emotion of the moment. I propose to them no less than a covenant, that I, Almighty God, and they, my redeemed people, that we shall together enter a covenant between ourselves. That I shall be their God, and they shall be my people, and we'll seal it, and we'll sign it.
Here on the desert sand we will make it. And I will remain forever true and faithful to my pledge, uh, plight antro. And if they will have it, then I expect them solemnly to promise me now that they will be faithful forever to their plight antro. Can you not see why later rabbis called it a kind of a betrothal scene? They who observe these things, and they also who read them from the newspapers, have the impression that when young man and young lady come together, thus to form for each one and the other within human terms the goal of living.
They do not content themselves with the will of a wisp of passing emotion, saying, yes, we'll have each other today because it's Monday and we like each other, and not tomorrow because it's Tuesday and things have gone wrong. Or at least that's how they didn't used to do it. They rather, because their love is of that type, seek to have some word given, some pledge, some guarantee, some covenant, if you will. And the one assures the other that their love is a real and deep flowing thing, a matter not merely of emotion but of the will, and they pledge themselves, the one to the other, for better and for worse, until death do them part.
Even such a proposition did God make to Israel, that he would be their God, and they would be his people, and they should write it out in a covenant, and the covenant would be signed, sealed, and settled. One God. To have no other God but him. To cast all idols from the heart. To cleave to him, and to him only.
Oh, I know you'll say to me, but that was the old covenant, Mr. Preacher, and we who are Christians live under a better covenant with better promises and a new covenant indeed. Indeed you do. But shall its standards be any less? The goal of redemption, a covenant given of God. Yea, the blessed new covenant. In which I give myself to the free love of Christ. And he takes me. And I take him.
And in the taking of him. Promise that my faith will be in him, in him only. That I will cast all idols from the throne of my heart and make him verily the goal of all my activities. Sit down, says God. For Moses, you must, and please you must. As you love those people, you must, Moses.
You must now make your preparations and make them carefully and make them exactly. Go down and sanctify the people. Put bounds to the mountain. Sanctify the commoners, sanctify the priests, tell them to wash their garments, tell them to sanctify themselves and be ready against the third day. For without holiness, no one shall see the Lord. Our hearts pound with the wonder of it.
Is it possible? I mean, is this friendship between God and these ex-slaves possible? Is it even realistic? Where shall they find holiness sufficient to stand before him and be loved with by him and consort with him? Why, even at the level of human marriages, when on a time there has been some kind of fairy story romance, and some prince from the palace has found a little working girl in the slums and liked her and proposed marriage, and wiser heads have shook their learned brows and said, so will it work?
There are such different levels, you know. Do you not remember that when John the Apostle, who had leaned on the breast of the Lord Jesus in the days of our Lord's flesh, saw him in his resurrection glory, John fell at his feet as one dead. Follow holiness, says Epistle to the Hebrews in chapter twelve.
Follow that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. Go down, Moses, and sanctify them. When we consider in what disaster that first covenant ended, what breaking of heart, what pain on God's side, what sorrow and misery on Israel's side. We might have feared for ourselves, might we not?
Had we not found that greater than Moses, who came down from God's presence and sought us and found us. Before he went back to heaven, stood with his own around him and said, Father, you gave me authority over all flesh that I should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given me. Now, Father, I have finished the work. While I was with them, I kept them, and none of them is lost except the son of perdition.
And now I come to thee. Keep them, Father. Sanctify them in thy truth. Thy word is truth. And for their sakes, I sanctify myself. They may be one in us. Oh, what glorious words. For this whole scheme is not some fairy story to be dissolved in the hard light of a Monday morning. Our blessed Lord has visited the planet.
He knows the strength of the power of this world, the wiliness of the way that the world thinks and all its charm, those constant forces which drag at our hearts to drag them away from God, our goal. He came to seek us, and he died to save us, and he has now set himself apart and gone up the mountain. He gave himself to this holy ministry of sanctifying us. But one day we may see the Lord. All wonder of it.
See Moses bring them out, out of as near as he could get, bringing them out of their camp, their men and their young ones, and they come as far as the boundary would let them. Moses goes up the mount into the very presence of God to represent his people. And I'll tell you something more wonderful still. There stood a woman in a garden one day. Ah, how bitter her tears. How churned her personality in days gone by with forces and powers that she could not have controlled.
This Jesus of Bethlehem, who had come to seek and to save that which was lost, had entered her life and brought the real meaning of love and sanity and peace and health. It was like a heaven begun on earth. And now he was gone. Nothing as he thought, but a dead body. Where all such visions must end. Nah, it wasn't even a dead body, but an empty tomb. Oh, what was the point of living? Why exist?
Why be made? And since the heart must have something to cling to, to give meaning to life, we thought for a dead body, at least we'd try and make the memories do of happier times. You feed on the memories and shut out the realities, the grim realities of life, and so comfort her heart till it was her turn to lay in the tomb. And turning, she heard that voice saying, Mary, why do you weep?
Dry your tears, woman. For I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. And he's gone in, my brethren. Gone in a prouder than Moses. Gone in to represent Mary Magdalene and all the faithful. Gone in as a bridegroom goes home to tell his father of the wonderful bride he has. Gone in to prepare the way. He has forged a relationship that shall never be sundered.
And the Almighty and the Eternal that was rightfully his Father has become our Father too, and his God is ours. So God proposed to them a covenant and provided for their sanctification and to crown it all. Ah, to crown it all. He proposed that so much he loved them. No, he wouldn't wait until they got to Canaan.
If they would fall in with his proposal, if they would indeed keep his voice and have his covenant, if they would sanctify themselves and obey him and be his, then he himself, impatient of their love, would come down. He'd have them make a dwelling place, an abiding place, yes, here on the very desert sand, and he would come and live with them and travel with them as one of them all the way home to Canaan's inheritance. Oh, the marvel of it. So much did he want them.
They built him a tabernacle, it has long since perished. But listen, if you please, to an even greater proposal. Said our blessed Lord as he sat with his own disciples in the upper room before his death. You believe in God, don't you? They did, as Orthodox do. Believe also in me, he said, for I'm going to tell you something, and it will strain your belief. So therefore I appeal to you, now to believe in me as you believe in God himself.
I'm telling you of something in my father's house, and how could you know it if I didn't tell you? Not all your philosophy and science combined could find out what my father's house is like. But I have come from there. Believe me when I tell you that in my Father's house are many abiding places, and I go to prepare a place for you. I wonder, will they have to adapt heaven somewhat to receive human beings? Tell me if you know, was heaven made for humans?
Or was it that when God designed the human race, he designed them in such fashion that they could eventually be changed? And beings made for the murky atmosphere of our little temporary planet. Be changed in such fashion as they still remain human and yet be able to inhabit the very dwelling places of God. I know not, for it lies in the future, and he's gone to prepare a place for us, and says he, I'll come again and receive you to myself, but where I am one day, there you may be also.
Glorious, but I'm still in the wilderness. Ah, but listen. Departing Lord is going on to speak, and he says now, I tell you what, if a man really loved me, my Father will love him. And if you love me, you know you will keep my commandments, of course you will. And my Father will love you. And we, the divine persons, will come and make our abiding place with you.
Again, you see it, don't you? The love of God's heart, impatient as love always is. Oh, he can't wait till he gets us home to heaven. He must have a tabernacle with us now. He cannot stand at heaven's door and greet us when at last we arrive. He must come down to the desert and dwell amongst us as we travel, and walk each patient footstep with us the journey through. But he must have a tabernacle to do it in. He proposes that tabernacle shall be the heart of them who love him.
Oh, tis heaven begun, you say. Is this what redemption is? Not merely heaven some way off out there, but heaven now begun. The divine persons come out upon the road to meet us, to live with us from Monday through to Sunday, and travel with us the road home to glory. But it is so. For the story has told us how God came down to Sinai in the wilderness and said to them, you've seen it, how I have borne you on eagle's wings, and I have already brought you to myself.
The New Testament, taking up the story, says, we have not come to a mountain like that, that burned with fire, dreadful and terrible, so that Moses himself said, I exceedingly fear and quake. A mountain so terrible that needs to be set around with bounds, and if anybody transgressed them and came too near, he was to be shot through or stoned. No, we have not come to a mountain like that, but we have come. And notice, if ever you noticed any grammar or care for syntax, many people don't, but for a moment get rid of your fears of grammar and pray notice the tense of the verb.
Not we shall come at long length. That says holy writ, we have come, already come. We have come to Mount Zion. Oh yes, I think it, as we have sat here this evening, isn't all our imagination or the emotion of the moment. There have been angels' wings are fluttering round, my brother. We have come. We are within touching distance, not now of the hand, but we have come whither our spirits may make contact with the very spirit of God.
And we've come to the mount of the living God, to the innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven, to those just men of past ages whose spirits are now made perfect, we have already come. Ah, there, my brother, is Abram. If only you could see him. Don't you feel yourself that's at this moment near to Abram? I do. Oh, I read his story of all those centuries ago, how that Abraham saw the glory of God and came out of his Ur of Chaldees and lived a pilgrim, and he believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
And I say in my heart, good old Abraham, Abraham, I know what you meant. I know how you felt. I know that experience too, though when I get home to heaven, you may be too big to know me and recognize me. I know what you mean, Abraham. I too have come. I too have believed, and I stand justified by faith. Oh, Abraham. Oh, David, ah, how you sin, David. We've no throw stones to throw at you, man. All those lovely words you penned when you discovered forgiveness, all the blessedness of the man whose sins are forgiven.
David, we sing them. We sing them ourselves, not merely as some matter of ancient history. We sing them already. We know what you mean. We have entered into the experience. We have come. Yes, Moses, now in a brighter sphere than ever, who walk and talk with the Savior, who saw him on the Transfiguration Mount. When there came for our fellow humans, Peter and James and John, there came from that glorious majesty a voice, and they heard it. Moses.
Ah, but we know what you mean, Moses. We know how you felt when the glory of God came down on that tabernacle. You felt you couldn't stand before his presence, and you heard his voice. Now you see him. Presently we shall. But already, as we still walk the wilderness journey, we too have come unto Jesus, mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood that speaketh greater things than that of Abel's.
We have come with holy awe and reverence. And Moses, we are not any longer afraid, for we know ourselves at home. Happy people, if already here walking this planet and going around your workaday lives. Happy people indeed, if you can say, yes, I have already come. For at Sinai, he shook the world once. But he has promised, says the writer, he has promised yet once more will I shake, not only the earth, but the heaven as well.
This once more signifies that when God Almighty again shakes this heaven and earth, they shall disappear, fragmented into millions of fragments. And then what? Ah, they can't last forever, this present earth and heaven. This was only the staging. Then shall we enter that eternal mountain of God and dwell with him eternally. And because we are in spirit already there, we may watch with un- without undue perturbation the beginnings of the shakings that one day shall dissolve our planet forever and forevermore.
God uses word then that he may deliver us from overmuch enchantment with the temporary things of life. God uses word that we may take the love gifts of God and all those lovely things that he has given us, perceive them to be what they are, the gifts of a heavenly lover, who through them seeks our hearts, who through them even now seeks to lead us to himself, goal of our being. He jealously craves our undivided loyalty, our unvarying love.
That we may say, like the two on that road to Emmaus, that the stranger would have gone on, O Lord. The day is far spent. Don't go further. Come in and abide with us and walk, if you will, the rest of the way home to glory with us. Shall we pray? Now, Lord, we bring thy word to thee.
Our hearts are moved as we think of it, moved with that emotion that is common to our human hearts. Lord, this emotion will die and pass. We earnestly pray that by thy spirit thou will cause to remain in our hearts as a reality, this thy marvelous proposal. We thank thee for the realistic provision thou hast made in the new covenant of Jesus Christ our Lord, so that these things are not fairy tales nor dreams.
We thank thee for the extent to which we have proved them real. That we know what it means to have the Savior abiding in our hearts. Lord, thou knowest how easy it is for us to stray in this wilderness and lose sight of our objective. Thou knowest how wayward and fickle our hearts and our emotions are. Therefore, now use thy word, we beseech, that in good days and in evil it might abide within us, being luminous with the very truth and spirit of God, may lead us to thee, that as the years pass, thou our goal might become ever more evident and clearly defined before us, that we might love thee now and ever more perfectly, until at length we reach home together with thee, love thee unceasingly forevermore.
To this end, bless thy word, we beseech you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
