Brother Gary Sunday Morning 9/9/12

Brother Gary Sunday Morning 9/9/12

Psa 84:1  To the chief Musician upon Gittith, A Psalm for the sons of Korah. How amiable are thy tabernacles, O LORD of hosts!

Psa 84:2  My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.

The Tabernacle was 15 feet wide and 45 feet long with a division at about thirty feet where the Holiest of Holies was.  The court yard was about fifty by 150 feet.  The brazen alter was outside the tabernacle; the brazen altar represents the sacrifice that Jesus made for our sins.  The laver, also without the door, represents the washing of the water by the Word.  We are washed as we read the Word of God, repent, and measure. 

The door also represents Jesus.  I met a man on the plane that was from Ecuador and was headed for Corvallis.  He was a foreign exchange student that was going to meet a family in Hamilton that had five children and 24 chickens.  As we neared Missoula he took out various things from his backpack: beads and strips of leather and cloth, and wrapped them around his arms.  After he got about everything on he turned to me and said, “I am so nervous, I don’t know what to say.”  That was one of fifteen to twenty five times that he told me this. 

I told him to thank them for the invitation to come.  We got our luggage and stepped onto the sidewalk and there was no one there to meet him.  He had a phone number so I called.  Andrea Shay was on Reserve Street five minutes away. 

We have an invitation, whatever our needs in this audience that are vast and varied, we have an invitation from Jesus to come and dine.  We have an invitation to have the light of God which is the candlestick shine into our hearts and onto our path. 

There is a slight difference between being directed by God and being guided by God.  Perhaps you have felt the direction of God helping you to know that you shouldn’t be somewhere.  There are times that you feel that you need to spend extra time in prayer or put a track in your pocket for the day. 

There is also the guiding hand of God.  The Holy Spirit will come and guide you into all the truth.  Probably everyone in this audience knows that there is one God and knows that baptism means water baptism by emersion.  They may know that the Word of God is God’s word; we need to know how to study the Word.  We can have the light of the Candlestick guiding us.  This is the light of the Word of God. 

Many, before they are saved, have something in their heart that they want to give back to God.  God ordained the golden altar for us to come back after being saved and give everything to God, our life a living sacrifice. 

When we get saved, we come and confess our sins and give Him all our sins.  There is something after we have been saved where we want to give everything back to God.  The believer’s altar is where we come to present ourselves a living sacrifice.  There are times when we need to renew our consecration.  As we live we gather, gains or losses, we want to give Him back everything.

The Holiest of holies is the place where God comes and writes His law on our hearts.  His spirit comes and dwells with mankind.  This place we experience His perfect love to us and we come to have perfect love.  Without perfect love in our heart from God, there will never be perfect love to mankind.  Where there is perfect love there is no keeping track or agendas.  We love because He first loved us and we are commanded to love one another. 

Then David dealt with the longing of the soul.  For many years I didn’t understand that both my flesh and my spiritual man needed God.  God created your flesh to need God. 

Psa 84:2  My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.

The Soul longs for God.  This is an old message; David felt this way 1000 years before Jesus Christ was born.  Sister Dorothy Howard Davis as a girl wrote the song, “I have a longing in my heart for Jesus.”  Our heart and our flesh cry out for the living God.

One reason that David brought nature into this passage is because the birds by nature do what they were created to do.  They build a nest, lay and hatch eggs, and raise their young.  Man is a creature of choice. 

When man was created he was created with a soul and was given a charge to take care of the garden.  He was given a charge to do and a charge of something not to do.  Because of Adam’s sin, a nature was passed on to everyone that is born to choose their own way. 

This is the reason that as Paul taught us, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.  Until a child reaches the age to know that God requires obedience, they are innocent before God.  When they understand the requirement but choose to disobey then they lose contact with God.

Frequent the house of God.  This doesn’t necessarily mean frequent the place that we gather to worship.  Wherever you are, thank God that He made you, and then as you worship be found thanking and praising God. 

Psa 84:3  Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O LORD of hosts, my King, and my God.

Psa 84:4  Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. Selah.

Psa 84:5  Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them.

Each of us reaches the place where we realize that “My challenges are greater than my strength.”  There is a side of the real world that strong men and women are not strong in.  This is the reason that Jesus came.  We have all said, “I really wanted to do right by that situation but I didn’t have strength.” There is a way to have strength in our soul for dealing with 2012.

If you will worship then you will gain strength.  Many don’t know what real worship is.  They may think that it is giving money or coming and sitting in the pew, or worshipping God on the mountainside.  You can worship God many places, but in order to worship God there is a factor that must be brought into this.  We must worship God in Spirit and in Truth. 

You love to fish and hunt, but just being out there is not worshipping.  You can worship by and in a creek, but God has to be there.  You must bring your feelings, thoughts, and heart into the attitude of, “God, I want to worship you.” 

Age has taught me to enjoy the simpler things of life.  When you look at a flower, you see intricate beauty.  Just looking at the flower is not worship, but when you look at the flower and realize, “It is God that created that flower.”, then you can worship.  When we look past the tangible; that is worship.

There is something about when a baby comes into this congregation.  When you see a baby, it doesn’t matter what the color of the skin is, that life came into being because there is an eternal God in heaven that made that life. 

Strength comes from worshipping God.  If you don’t worship then you will fail.  If you don’t worship, then you will become religious.  You cannot be saved without worship.  God wants us to Worship Him.

There is strength from obedience.  There is something about returning and giving God thanks for Jesus.  Thank God for life, for the Word of God and for the plan of Salvation.

When we look into the Word of God we see the shew bread, Jesus.  When we meet the Word of God which is the candlestick, it always speaks to us to obey.  ‘Obedience is better than sacrifice.’  There is strength in obedience.  Obey in the little things then you will always obey in the big things.

Prayer gives strength.  Twice Jesus instructed His disciples to pray:  “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name…”  When He was just beginning His ministry and then again just a little before He went to Gethsemane.  When His disciples asked Him to teach them to pray he went back and gave them instruction to not only pray but importune.  When you really need something from God pray, pray again and again. 

Jesus then left us that marvelous text, “Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you…”

There are things that you can receive from God today by simply asking.  The easies thing to get in this world today is bible salvation, if we confess he is faithful to forgive.

After saying, “Ask.”  He said, “Seek…”

There are some things that you will never get from God without seeking.  You and I don’t draw the lines that we will never go past.  We need to seek until we find.

There would be those in this audience that are knocking on heaven’s door.  “Oh God, we have a great need.”  (Some never see their own needs.)  Let me turn the thought around to: “Oh God, I have a great need.”  There is not an individual living that doesn’t have needs.  Many would minimize their problems, “I have a little problem with this.” 

The thought came up of having tender feelings.  My dad was one of those men that set his sails to go and it didn’t matter who did or thought what, he went. 

I told my wife, “Karen I am in my sixties and I have very tender feelings.”  I need to see that as my having a great need.  I am too old to be distracted with anything that I received from whichever side of the family.  I’ve prayed, “God help me to not be so tender or so bothered by those that are rude.”  I’ve asked, but have I knocked on Heaven?

May God help us to have such a longing from God that we go beyond just asking, to seeking and knocking.  I don’t mean to reach the place where I’m insensitive or don’t care.  We need to really care.  If you and I don’t care for our children or grandchildren, then who will?  If we do not care for that young girl that is in a care facility at the age of 21, debilitated by drugs and alcohol, then who will?

It is sometimes difficult to go past the thought, “I need to pray for this need” to knocking on heaven’s door.  How we need God, we need an anointing and inspiration! 

There was bread in the Tabernacle and pure olive oil.  Bread dipped in oil represents taking the Word of God and having the Holy Spirit come while you are studying.  The Holy Spirit can cause the judgment of God to be really sweet. 

Judgment can be tough; people can mock you and belittle you.  But God isn’t that way.  When God comes to us and we are saying, “I am longing for you.”  He says, “I have bread over there with oil and promises that will help you.

Psa 84:6  Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools.

Every one of us is going to have great losses and disappointments, difficulties in life.  I know a lot of this congregation and know that many tears have been shed for disappointments and difficulties in life.  There would not be one person in this audience that wouldn’t have difficulty in their life.  It is easier many times to talk about another’s difficulties. 

Many in this audience are entering into totally new seasons in their life.  God is faithful to help us to know what the lines are in these new seasons and when we are on the edge of the line or over the edge.  You will probably have difficult people in your life.  You probably have family members that will be difficult.  We have a difficult neighbor.

As I go through this valley of difficulty, God help me to go through it weeping.  You can get a tough upper-lip, but in your difficulty say, “God use this to humble me and help me to understand others that have been in difficult situations that I haven’t been very charitable to.”

The desert: every once in a while God helps us to come to the realization that there should be greater depths in our life.  God says, “You’ve passed through this valley one too many times.”  It is easy to see desert places in others:  Wasted time, weep and make that desert a pool.

Psa 126:5  They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

Psa 126:6  He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

Psa 84:7  They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.

In the first person, “My soul longs for strength.”  Every soul that is in this audience this morning longs for God.  Our bodies and our natural man longs for God.  This natural man is just the house that our soul is living in until it is called home. 

Our soul longs for God because God has made our soul to have an anticipation.  It is just like our neighbor Stevie who is 50 years old and anticipates his birthday.  He starts telling me two months in advance that His birthday is coming. 

These children don’t have to be very old until they get excited about birthdays.  Gyme, for his birthday, anticipated a gift and a cake. 

You and I want to still have birthdays, but are willing to forget the gift.  There are things that we desire, but our greatest desire is spiritual things.  Nothing in this world will satisfy.  Nothing of this world will satisfy.  We need God and the Word of God. 

Your soul whether you know about it or not is thinking, “If I can just find God…  I need God no matter what else I have.”