Welcome to the podcast of the White Church in Adelaide, South
Australia. People would come and say
something's different there. Yeah, That was the presence of
God. You're like the teaching or the
music or whatever or the coffee, whatever your preference is
there, but they're coming a bit. No, no, no.
There's something more to it. There's something more.
What was it? It was the presence of God.
And we're saying that that closeness, that presence is what
we should be desiring. And Dan, when he was reading out
this morning from Jeremiah 29, if you seek me, you will find
me. When you seek me with all your
heart, God says, hey, if you're actually seeking my presence,
you're going to find it. You're going to find it and I
hope your desire, as I asked you at the beginning, who wants more
of the presence of God? You want to know.
You want to know and you want other people to say there's
something different about you. There's something on you that
that I don't get and I don't see anywhere else.
And maybe this whole concept of the presence of God could be a
bit foreign. Is that, well, what does that
even mean? What does that look like?
What does it look like to have the presence of God?
Psalm 1611 says that in the presence of God there is
fullness of joy and blessings forevermore.
So it looks like joyfulness. We, we were reading out in our
prayer meeting, Psalm 103. Forget not all God's benefits.
Who forgives your sins? Who heals all your diseases in
the presence of God? There's forgiveness of sins,
there's healing of our bodies. There's hope, as we were reading
in Jeremiah 2911. There's hope, there's purpose.
Isaiah, when he's in the presence of God, receives A
commissioning and a calling from God in the presence of God.
In Psalm 84, it talks about hope.
It talks about strength in the presence of God.
So what does, what does the presence of God look like when
it looks like what God is like? It's it's Jesus talked about it
like this. He said it's the Kingdom of God,
it's the Kingdom of heaven. It's where God is reigning and
ruling and he's bringing freedom.
He's bringing hope, He's bringing joy.
God can do more in one moment in his presence than any number of
hours of preaching could ever do.
You can have one encounter with him, one moment where he's so
close and it could change your entire life forever.
Do we believe that? Great.
I'll stop preaching. And then you guys just go get
your presence with God, right? So the question here that I have
from going on from this is how do we now get more of the
presence of God, right? It's a good question, right?
So if we all say, yes, I want more of the presence of God on
my life, I hope your heart is for this church.
I want more of the presence of God.
I want, I want people to walk in and say there's something in
here. There's something in this
church, there's something going on.
What is it? Well, like it's the presence of
God. What you're sensing there is the
presence of God. It actually talks about this in
the book of Corinthians. Paul's writing about prophecy
and he says if you're all prophesying and you're all
walking and moving in the Spirit and God is present, he's going,
Somebody who doesn't know Jesus is going to walk in, they're
going to be convicted. They're going to fall down and
worship the Lord and they're going to declare God is really
among you. How cool is that?
Like you can be in such a meeting where God is so tangibly
present that somebody who doesn't know anything about God
could walk in and go, whoa, God is there.
That somebody could walk into your house, your neighbor, you
invite them in for a coffee and they walk in and they're like,
whoa, God is here, God is here. How awesome would that be?
Hey, so how do we get more of the presence of God?
Well, if you've got your Bibles, I want you to turn in them to
One Chronicles, chapter 13, One Chronicles 13.
One Chronicles is in the Old Testament.
It's a historical book, so let me find it.
And this story, it's also echoed, if you're taking notes,
it's also echoed in Second Samuel Chapter 6.
So the kind of chronicles and the books of Samuel and Kings
are kind of the same, pointing to the same period in history,
just kind of 1's written about 3 or 400 years after the events
took place. So we're reading the later
version of history, but we are going to reference back to
Second Samuel 6. Does that make sense?
So one Samuel 13, one Chronicles 13, sorry, in the Old Testament,
we also have to remember that when God was present, what he,
what he talked about my presence, his presence was
represented by an ark, ARK, not like Noah's ark, right?
An ark as in like a giant box and it was covered in gold.
It had angels on the top and that represented the presence of
God. Where that was God was in the
Old in the Old Testament, right? So now we know that God lives in
us by his Holy Spirit. But in the Old Testament, God
kind of lived in a box. That makes sense.
God's outside of our box. But yeah, anyway, if we could
put that up, one Chronicles 13 one.
So David, King David, he's a king.
He's consulting with the commanders of thousands and of
hundreds and with every leader. And David said to all the
assembly of Israel, if it seems good to you and from the Lord
our God, let us send abroad to our brothers who remain in all
the lands of Israel, as well as to the priests and Levites and
the cities that have pasture lands that they may be gathered
to us. Then let us bring again the ark
of our God to us, for we did not seek it in the days of Saul.
Let us bring again his heart's desire.
Let the presence of God be in our midst.
Same desire as we've all said, Yeah, let the presence of God be
in our midst. We're going to bring the ark of
God back. I want it in my midst.
Next verse if we can. And all the assembly agreed.
We all agree, right? It's good to have the presence
of God, for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people.
And so David assembled all Israel from the Nile of Egypt to
Lebo Hamas, to bring the Ark of God, to bring the presents from
Kiriath Jerem. And David and all Israel went up
to Ballah, that is, to Kiriath Jerem, that belongs to Judah, to
bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name
of the Lord who sits enthroned above the cherubim.
And they carried the ark of God in a new cart best for our God,
right from the House of Umbinadab.
And Ooza and Ohio were driving the cart, and David and all
Israel were celebrating before God with all their might.
And his presence is fullness of joy, with song and liars and
hearts and tambourines and cymbals and trumpets.
And when they came to the threshing floor of chitin, Ooza
put out his hand to take hold of the ark, for the oxen had
stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was
kindled against Ooza, and he struck him down, because he put
out his hand to the ark, and he died there.
And that place is now called. And David was angry because the
Lord had broken out against Ouzar, and that place is now
called Perez Ouzar to this day. And David was so afraid of God
that day, and he said, How on earth can I bring the ark of God
home to me? So David did not take the ark
home into the city of David, but he took it aside to the House of
Obed Edom the Gedite. And the ark of God remained with
the household of Obed Eden in his house three months.
And the Lord blessed the household of Obed Eden and all
that he had that last sentence, really cool, right?
Like where the presence of God is, there's blessing, right?
This guy accidentally landed with the presence of God and yet
there's now blessing on his life, which is amazing.
So here's it's a bit of a tragic story where this is only half of
the story that I want to cover, but the first half seems pretty
tragic if you think about it. They started off with the best
intentions. We want the presence of God.
We want God in our midst. We want to bring God in.
We want God on our lives. David's like I want the presence
of God here with me. We can start with the best
intentions. What's tragic to me is they had
the best intentions, they had the best heart.
We want the presence of God. We need him.
They they're rejoicing, God's coming.
And yet somehow they still missed it and they got it
woefully wrong to the point that somebody unfortunately lost
their life. Isn't that that that stirs me to
kind of go, man, I want the presence of God, but I want to
do it the right way. They've they've tried, tried.
You can have the best intentions.
God, I need your presence. But then somehow we can still
miss it. But I said this is only half,
only half of the story. So if you want to flick over to
One Chronicles 15, this the ark stays in Second Samuel 6.
It says it stays there for three months.
So now we're picking up the story. 3 months later.
David built houses for himself in the city of David, and he
prepared a place for the Ark of God and pitched a tent.
We're just going to pause there for a SEC.
This first thing David's doing now is he's preparing something
to host. The presence of God requires
some change for us to say, hey, I want the presence of God.
I hope as you say, yes, I want more of the presence of God,
that your hand instantly also goes up and I'm prepared to
change for it. I'm prepared to change things so
that more of the presence of God can be evident on my life.
If you read and if you remember the first story, he's just like,
yeah, we're just going to get the presence of God in this
second story. He's going to know I'm going to
do some preparations. I'm prepared to change things so
that I can get more of the presence of God.
And so then he goes. Then David said that no one but
the Levites may carry the ark of God, for the Lord had chosen
them to carry the ark and to minister to him forever.
We're going to do some kind of compare and contrast on what
they tried to do to bring the presence of God and then what
they did the second time, right. And so we're going to do it as
we go. The first thing David said that
no one but the Levites may carry the ark of God, for the Lord had
chosen them to carry the ark and to minister to him forever.
The first thing is this. In the original time David
consulted with men, he said, hey, what do you guys think?
Hey, what do you, what do you guys reckon we should do?
Oh, we should build a cart. That's a great idea.
Some genius puts up his hand. Hey, I've got this awesome idea.
It's got four wheels. Let's put the presence of God
and we can do it. In this second one, David says,
hey, no, God has commanded the Levites to carry it.
And I want you like my first point is this.
If we want the presence of God, we must make sure that we are
committed to God before we're consulting with men.
We must make sure that we're committed to what God has said
and how God wants us to carry his presence before we go
consulting with men, before we kind of go and say, hey, what's
your great idea for how we should bring the presence of God
in? Maybe it's, maybe it's, yeah, I
don't know. Maybe it's new songs, different
songs. Maybe it's better coffee.
I don't know. I'm just using that as an
example because I like coffee and I can, I feel like I can
have a go at coffee. But we must make sure that we're
committed to what God is saying rather than consulting with men.
In the first case, David consulted with men and they had
some great ideas, but it wasn't God's way.
And we must make sure that we're committed to God's way.
We're picking this, picking this Bible up and we're saying, God,
what do you say about your presence?
What do you say about how we get more of your presence rather
than consulting with people? And then it goes on verse 3.
And David assembled all Israel at Jerusalem to bring up the ark
of the Lord to its place, which he had prepared for it.
And David gathered together the sons of Aaron and the Levites,
of the sons of Coath Urile, the chief with 120 of his brothers,
the sons of Murari, Isaiah the chief, 220 of his brothers.
And it goes on. I'm going to skip all the names
because there's a lot of names and a lot of numbers.
We're going to go verse down to verse 12.
David said to them, you are the heads of the fathers, houses of
the Levites. Consecrate yourselves, you and
your brothers, so that you may bring up the ark of the Lord the
God of Israel to the place that I've prepared for it.
So my second point is this. So firstly, we're committed to
God before we're consulting with men.
Secondly, if you go and we're going to go, if you go back and
read all those numbers, David doesn't just say I just, I just
want the Levites. He's because I want the Levites,
the heads of families, I want the priests, I want the people
of Aaron. In other words, if you Add all
those numbers up, there is 868 people now involved in carrying
this arc. In the first story, there was 3.
There was three guys. It was a few in this whole, In
this second version, it's the whole priesthood.
It's the whole priesthood. And so when if we want more of
the presence of God, we must understand that the whole
priesthood must be involved, not just a few.
If you want to see more of the presence of God in your home,
then it requires the whole priesthood in your home, not
just dad, mum or child. Does it make sense in my house,
the presence of God, Yes, I have an ability to bring that is the
head of my house. But if I want more of the
presence of God, it requires my whole priesthood, my whole
family to be involved, not just a few.
As we mentioned and Dave encouraged us in our prayer
meeting this morning that we all come participating.
We all come ready to prophecy, ready to speak, ready to
encourage, ready to pray. Why?
Because if we want more of the presence of God, it requires the
whole priesthood, not just a few.
So David says now not just do I am I committed to God, but I
need the whole priesthood. The whole priesthood must be
participating. The whole priesthood must be
involved in bringing the presence of God.
And that means when we come to our gatherings, when we come
together, we're all coming with the heart of God.
I want to be used by you. I want to participate in what
God is doing. I'm not just going to sit back
and spectate at what you are doing.
I want to be involved. I want to be on the playing
field. I want to be doing what you've
called me to do, and I want to carry the presence of God, the
whole priesthood, verse, verse 13, because you did not carry it
the first time, the Lord our God broke out against us because we
did not seek him according to the rule.
Verse 14. So the priests and the Levites
consecrated themselves to bring up the ark of the Lord, the God
of Israel. Third Point, we're committed to
God. It's carried by the whole
priesthood, and we're living consecrated, not casually.
In the first scenario, they were just casual about the presence
of God. It's yeah, we'll just throw it
on a cart. We'll just get it there.
We'll take the quickest route. We'll just put it on there.
Drive down the road or the dusty plains or whatever it is.
We'll just get it there as quick as we can.
That's all good. Doesn't really matter.
And over here, Dave's like, no, no, no, no, no.
You need to consecrate yourself. The word consecration simply
means to live set apart, set yourselves apart to live holy.
The word holy means to be set apart.
It's interesting. In the first version, they put
the ark of God on a cart. You know, that's exactly what
the Philistines, their enemies, did when we approached the
presence of God casually. We end up living exactly the
same as the world and there is no distinction.
There is no distinction. And yet the second time, David
saying, hey, no, you need to be consecrated.
You need to live set apart. You need to live in such a way
that there is a marked difference between you and
everyone else. We must approach God.
To the Philistines, when they put the ark of God on a cart,
there was no reverence. It's just the ark.
It's just this thing. And this second time, David's
like, consecrate yourselves because we're going to walk in
reverence of a holy God. Like God has commanded us to do
this. And we can't take this casually.
We must live set apart. We must take this thing
seriously. And so I would encourage you
again, we, we started with actually, if you want to host
the presence of God, it requires some change, right?
We, we require some preparation. And this is one of probably
those areas where we're like, actually, where in my life do I
need to live more consecrated? Do I need to live more set
apart, more distinct from the, the world and, and other ways of
living? Where?
Where do I actually have to align my life to what God says?
So goes on and it says and the Levites carried the ark of God
on their shoulders with the poles, as Moses had commanded
according to the word of the Lord.
My 4th point is this, that it was carried on godly shoulders,
not on worldly structures. Carried on godly shoulders, not
worldly structures. See, in the first instance, it
was just some genius who came up with an art cart.
And so let's just put it on a cart.
It's cool. It's a mechanism to carry
something. Yeah.
We, we can engineer this, right? It's basically what they're
saying. We can engineer the process to
get the presence of God. And over here he's kind of
going, no, no, no, no. The ark must be carried on godly
authority. Shoulders represent strength and
represents authority, represents order and government.
God has a way that things should be ordered.
God has a way of things being structured.
He has a structure for the home. He has a structure for church,
godly government, and it's when we honour and submit to the way
that God wants to order something.
That's where we find the presence of God.
That's where we can find the presence of God right in in our
in our homes. When the husband is loving his
wife like Jesus loves the church, laying his life down for
her and for his kids. And when she is submitted in the
same way as the bride is submitted to Christ, that's
where God says I can honor that with my presence because that
was the way that I designed it. And in the church, when where
there's elders who are ruling well, shepherding under the
great under shepherd, and they're caring and loving God's
people just like he loves them. And when the people are also
submitted to eldership, it's submitted to godly authority.
They're saying, yes, we're submitted to you as we're
submitted to Christ. God says I can be there because
that is how I designed it to work as our God has designed
this thing to be carried on godly authority.
And his presence is more evident when we're walking according to
his way of ordering things rather than just what we think
seems good or worldly ways or or other other systems of
engineering of how this thing might work.
Verse we'll go to .5. This one is actually from Second
Samuel 6. So it won't be up here, but they
where are we? Oh no, we'll jump down to verse
25. So David and the Elders in One
Chronicles 1525 S David and the elders of Israel and the
commanders of thousands went to bring up the Ark of the Covenant
of the Lord from the House of Obed Eden with rejoicing.
And because God helped the Levites who are carrying the ark
of the covenant of the Lord, they sacrifice 7 bulls and seven
Rams. In second Samuel 6, it says that
every six steps they sacrifice. Have you considered that?
That's I think I've done more than I don't know what my watch
says 2790 steps so far today. It's not very many, but 123456
sacrifice, 1, 23456 sacrifice. And they did that for the entire
journey. You know, in Second Samuel 6,
the contrast to this is that it says the two guys were driving
the cart and Ohio was out the front leading it.
The point that I want to draw your attention to is this, that
carrying the presence of God requires us to keep in step with
what God wants to do, not run ahead of what God wants to do.
So this guy Ohio thinks, yeah, I know where we're going.
I'm just presuming and assuming exactly what God wants to do.
And so I'm just, I'm just going to, I'm leading this thing now.
He's not, he's not staying in step with the presence of God
saying, OK, we're are we still going this way?
Yep, we're still going this way. Are we still going this way?
Yes, we're still going this way. He's just out the front.
He's like, no, we're going this way.
It's up to me. I'm making the decisions, right?
Keep in step with the Spirit of God.
I hope as a people, as a church, we want to be people that come
in and we just like, oh, this is just how we do church.
This is we're just presuming on God.
This is how things happen. Do some songs, we'll do a
preach. We'll have some coffee.
It's going to be good coffee. We'll have a good conversation.
We'll pray for somebody. We'll go home, which is I know
how God works. I have no idea how God works in
Galatians. It tells us to keep in step with
the Spirit. In John 3 verse 8, when Jesus is
talking with Nicodemus at night and he says, you know, it's like
the wind. You have no idea where the wind
comes from and you have no idea where it goes.
It says, So it is as somebody who is born of the Spirit, you
actually don't know and it requires you to actually keep in
step with the Spirit and kind of going, God, is this still the
way we're going to go? Yes, great.
Because you know, the thing with going every six steps is that
then you're able to very quickly kind of, oh, we've got to go
over there. OK, We're turning where if, if
you're just, I'm out up front, the guy's behind me.
Hey, we need to turn left. Like I'm already miles down the
track. We've got to keep in step with
what God wants to do. We've got to be seeking him
continually. God, is this, is this what you
want me to do? Is this where you want me to go?
Is this the job that you want me to be in?
Is this, is this what you're wanting me to do with my money?
Is this how you want me to leave my family?
Keep in step with him being responsive to what he wants to
do rather than just assuming and kind of go, we've got an order
sheet to our meetings. I've got a way that I do my
family and we we have routines and stuff like that, But I've
also got to remain flexible in my routine and say, God, is
this, is this still true? Is there something you want us
to do that's different to this so that I can catch more of your
presence? You're still with me, Yes.
Good. Cool.
So they're going to be committed to God, committed to his ways.
It requires the whole priesthood.
It requires us living consecrated.
It is carried on godly shoulders, requires us to keep
in step. And the last one is this in the
same verse where it talks about sacrificing 7 balls and seven
Rams. And in the second Samuel, it
talks about the oxen as well. In the original story that had
two oxen who drove the cart, who pulled the cart?
Ox, if you're reading through the Bible, actually represents
hard work. And so the original version, it
was driven by self effort. It's hard.
It's my hard work that is pulling the presence of God.
Maybe if we just do another chorus of that song, we'll get
the presence of God. Maybe if I just preach a little
louder, the presence of God will come.
Maybe if I just, maybe if I just say Amen a few more times, the
presence of God will come. Maybe if, maybe if I don't know,
I just I spend another hour in prayer and the presence of God
will come. It's driven by self effort to
pull the presence of God. You know what's interesting in
the second version is it requires more oxen, more hard
work, but this time the hard work isn't pulling the cart.
The hard work is offered on the altar.
Romans 12 verse one says in view of God's mercy, offer your
bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.
In the first version I'm trying to pull the presence of God by
my own self effort. In the second story, the one
that actually does the presence brings the presence of God.
I've offered my entire life before Him and said you can have
whatever you like. If you need me to sing the
chorus 100 times to that song, so be it.
If you need me to pray for another hour or not, I'm yours.
If you need me to give more of my money, it's yours.
If you need me to give more of my time, it's yours.
I'm offering my life as a living sacrifice.
No longer am I trying to pull the presence of God, but I'm
offering my entire life to God and saying you can have it all,
you can have it all. We're not trying to make
something happen in the original version, but we're just saying
God, whatever you would like to do, whatever you require of me,
I'm yours. Does that make sense?
To bring the presence of God requires us to sacrifice and to
offer ourselves before God. Would you mind standing,
standing with me this morning? What's what's incredible about
these two stories on the presence of God, it's that it
wasn't always immediately evident which one was going to
succeed. If you think about the first
story, there's rejoicing, the presence of God is coming.
There's dancing in the second story, it's exactly the same.
It looks exactly the same initially looks exactly the
same, but then it gets to a point where things start to
wobble in the first case and you actually find that God is more
of a hindrance than a help. In the first thing, God's anger
breaks out and it seems like God is hindering the whole process
and David gets frustrated he's getting angry.
In the second case, it says this, and God helped the
Levites. Isn't that amazing?
When you turn your attention to him, when you take these things
to heart, when we put these things in place and say, God, I
truly do want more of you in my life, more of your presence, and
I'm willing to change to get there.
God says I want to help you by the power of my spirit, I want
to help. And then the other amazing thing
about this is that in one, the presence of God is a loss, it's
sidelined. And in the other, the presence
of God lasts and is sustained with David, it stays with David.
And so I'm sure that's all of our hearts, if that, if that is
in your heart, if you're like God, I want your presence to be
sustained on my life. I want it to last.
I wonder if maybe you're willing to raise your hands and just
say, God, I want you. I want more of you.
Father, we, you see the hands that are in this place.
You see us in our hearts and say, God, we want more of you
and we're prepared to do whatever it takes.
We're prepared to change what you need us to change.
And so we also ask, Lord, we're thankful that you will help us
as these stories show that you will help your people carry your
presence. And so we thank you for the
presence that we've experienced this morning, for your
closeness. And we thank you that in your
presence there is fullness of joy.
In your presence there is hope for evermore.
In your presence there is blessing.
In your presence there is strength.
So even right now, whatever we might need, we take hold of it
in your presence. Whatever we might need, we know
that it is found in your presence.
And so, Lord, we honour you, we're going to say come be more
present in our life and teach us how to do it in Jesus name,
Amen. Awesome job man.
Let's just give Justin a clap. Thank you for what the Lord is
doing through this man. I mean, I mean that man, I do.
You're a blessing to this church.
You're a blessing to to us, our family.
And we love you, man. You know, the the white church,
The reason that you know, we will start to to call this the
white church. You know, we felt that that was
from God. But it's funny when you think
about that picture of the six steps and look, you know, like
we want to follow God. This is we want a church to be
built here that we are constantly looking and, and
saying, Lord, what do you want us to do?
Where do you want us to go? That's the church that he's
building here, but he is building, right?
And so I'm thinking about this this week.
It means that like things just can't always just stay the same.
Like if we have an idea of what God's wanting to do in US and
through us, we have to implement and implement and implement and
build upon the thing that was implemented.
Otherwise things just get lost and we go nowhere.
So this is coming into a new year.
This is going to be a season for us intentionally building and
putting things in place that we feel in God and making sure that
we're stirring one another in these things to be doing these
things and seeing these things. You know, I read, you know, that
they were devoted. They were devoted to the
apostles teaching. We've just heard, you know, the
word of God, the the apostles teaching.
Where did they get their teaching from the Lord?
It's, it's the Lord's word, right?
So they were devoted to the Lord's word.
They were devoted to the breaking of bread.
They were devoted to fellowship, and they were devoted to prayer.
This is not a checklist of the things that we need to do in
every Sunday meeting, right? But it's a pattern for us to to
build and for us to experience God's presence and for him to
build in our midst. And so as we close this meeting,
now, we're going to have a time for fellowship.
And fellowship is important because the early disciples were
devoted to fellowship, and that's important for us.
So please stick around if you can't, if you can have some
fellowship, have some coffee, have some cake.
Let's trust that God will speak in us and through us.
If you've got words for people, if you've got encouragements,
please give those to people. But we are, again, we are a
House of living stones built together.
And so we have to be together for your stone to be in our
midst. And it's not just on a Sunday
meeting. You know, let's not get
sidetracked to think that we're talking about Sunday.
We are talking about a lifestyle of being devoted to the Lord,
being together in fellowship, praying together, unpacking his
word, breaking bread together in our home.
So not just here, guys. That's the church that Jesus is
building. Amen.
Love you guys. Thank you for joining us for
today's message. For more information about The
Way Church, please visit ourwebsite@thewaychurch.com dot
AU. Have a blessed day.