Lord, let there be, in the midst of Thy people, a song welling up. Let there be a new day coming, in which Thou art truly bringing forth a priesthood unto Thyself.
Oh, how we thank Thee. We praise Thee this morning for bringing each sister and each brother together, that we might just worship Thee; that we might sit before Thee and claim that Thou wilt teach and that Thou wilt instruct.
Help Thyself to us this morning, Lord. Take away any strangeness. Take away anything that would hinder the full flow of Thy own revealing, and we will be sure to give Thee the praise, the honor, and the glory. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
We were saying last evening, in our first time with you, that God is restoring to the church the real spirit of praise—the spirit of joy, rejoicing, and thanksgiving.
It is more than singing a song until everybody gets there, and then getting into the message. It is hard for people to worship the Lord if the Lord has not really done a new thing in their hearts, to fill up a well and bring them into season. We are really called to be a priesthood unto the Lord.
I have been quite impressed in recent months with the fact that God’s way of selling things is so different from ours. I have some friends who are such conscious representatives of the business world. In our time, you can sell almost anything if you advertise it enough.
I would like to believe that some of the stuff being produced today really is not worth producing, but through the amount of promotion and advertising, you see a thing and hear about it enough. Then you push your cart down the supermarket aisle—what do you do? You just automatically reach for it. Watch yourself.
Everything is promotion today—good promotion.
You know, God does not spend much time promoting. He puts all His energy and effort into the product. How many of you realize—how many of you know—that if the product is what it ought to be, you do not have to promote it?
Satisfied people do what? They talk. They promote.
It is interesting: in much of the gospel work today, we are trying to get people interested. We have had to really promote. I spoke about youth crusade days last night, and some of the advertising we had to use was always, “Tremendous! Colossal! Gigantic! Enormous!” There was always overselling.
Then folk would get there, and they had the big letdown—the big letdown. But the way of the Lord is so different.
He always produces the product, and the product has its own peculiar way of going.
That is what He did with Israel. He called His people out unto Himself. They were to be a people. We will look over in Exodus for a moment.
Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians,
and how I bare you on eagles’ wings,
and brought you unto Myself.Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed,
and keep My covenant,
then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all peoples:
for all the earth is Mine:and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests,
and a holy nation.
These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
This was said last evening, and I feel the Lord would have us carry along a little further. God’s normal order of things has been so missed; it has been so misunderstood. We have come short so long in our mentality that we have failed to see what God’s way and His normal order were.
We have had all this declension, and then God has had to use means by which to bring things back to His normal order.
We said last evening—and I want to repeat it again—that when God brought this people out of Egypt and brought them unto Himself, He gave them something of the normal order of His expectation:
God, who works and influences through His people, will always have some of these characteristics evident. Whenever there is departure, declension, or defection from the normal order of things, God sometimes uses what we call emergency means.
We have had so much emergency that we cannot distinguish it from normal order. This is my burden in these hours with us: somehow the Lord will help us to hold clearly what I believe is the normal order of what He is after.
A people who are a peculiar treasure. Now, you look at yourself and say, “There is not much treasure in me.” But I believe the treasure is the Lord Himself in an earthen vessel.
You see, the vessel is not so much; it is the treasure. It is a peculiar treasure. It is the deposit—the increase of the Lord Himself in the lives of His people—that becomes the treasure.
Of course, that makes them different. I do not believe in being peculiar for peculiarity’s sake. You do not really have to try. Just praise the Lord. Just walk with the Lord, and you will be different enough without taking on any eccentricities.
It is a wonderful thing when you can distinguish your natural eccentricities from that which God has wrought as divine treasure. We see far more vessel, far more of the old vessel, than we need to. It is the treasure—the increase of the Lord Himself—that is sufficient to make us different from the rest.
So the first mark, then, is that of being a peculiar treasure because of the increasing measure of the Lord Himself, the jewel that He works out in our lives by the Spirit.
The next thing that we noticed was a kingdom of priests. This priesthood consists of those who know the life of the altar. It was said last night: the life of the altar, and giving unto the Lord the spiritual sacrifices, is a blessed thing.
I do not know how far we will get these days, but I would like to emphasize that it is not just a priesthood; it is a kingdom of priests. When I get the picture of the kingdom, I get that which has this orderly arrangement of priesthood.
By orderly arrangement, I mean that the priests have learned their functions. They have learned their order in relatedness.
I believe, beloved, that an hour is coming when our hearts will delight to see men coming into the order of priesthood. It is a delightful thing.
I cannot go into it any more than to say that we are a kingdom of priests, and there is the loveliness of His order. When the Holy Spirit takes the baton to direct the choir, He brings the crescendo and the diminuendo, the legato and the staccato—all of this because He has produced a kingdom.
There you have the government of the Spirit producing the order of priesthood, giving the sacrifice of praise in all of its expression. This is part of the normal order that God will bring in. He is bringing it in.
And then finally, He says, “A holy nation.”
I cannot get away from the fact that when God is really, really in a thing, there is a holiness of life. We have all reacted in past days. I grew up in holiness churches. It was so legal; it was so outward.
But I thank God that some impressions have been left indelibly: God is a holy God, and He wants a holy people—not in the stiff, rigid, legal part of the way, but a people who know the Lord Himself as their holiness, their righteousness.
This will be a mark. I thank God that I see this beginning to take place, because wherever the Holy Spirit is working to bring us into the normal order, God is doing it.
When things fall below this, God has to use some emergency measures to bring them back. We were saying that the normal life of the church has got to bring forth praise.
In this kind of life, you see two things operating. You see an openness and an honesty before the Lord. You see a people who know fellowship with Him—real fellowship, real participation in the Lord, in the rejoicing, and in the praise.
In turn, you see that God gives them a knowing. He teaches them. He instructs them in His ways, because this is the function in our spirit. The other thing that functions is conscience.
This represents an open way to the Lord. Man, in the beginning, as he fellowshipped in the garden with God, had a doorway—not a closed door, but a doorway, an openness. He talked and fellowshipped with God in the very beginning.
It was only when sin came that consciousness of conscience came to work. The blood has always been applied to make access, to produce openness again.
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus.
A cleansed conscience produces, once again, an openness and an entrance back into the very presence of the Lord.
We are not so conscious of conscience as we are conscious of the Holy Spirit producing an openness. That is the first thing; it is the leading part of our spirit, taking us back in.
Then in our spirit we have fellowship—the capacity for fellowship. God is Spirit. Our spirit joins His Spirit in fellowship: worship. Out of this, God takes the initiative to lead, instruct, and bring His people into the divine scene.
This is the normal order. Last night, after we had worshipped, someone said, “I do not know how I did along without preaching in a meeting,” or the top of it, so to speak. Well, the problem is to call back to the normal order.
When God brings a people into life in the Spirit—openness, honesty, fellowship with Him, giving to the Lord, ministering unto Him—then He ministers to the people.
The church at Antioch illustrates this:
And as they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Spirit said,
Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.
Our kind of function, in the normal order, is ministering to the Lord. And who does the ministering to the people? The Lord Himself has a ministry to the people.
We have had many folk coming into our fellowships and into the church life in Indianapolis in the last few weeks. It is poor, but I guess it is a little better than average. One of the things that has been rather interesting is to hear the testimony.
We had a young fellow from seminary who came down for the weekend. I had known Butch for ten or twelve years, I guess, and watched him grow up. Not much was said. He just fellowshipped.
But when he sat in the morning service, where we gathered to remember the Lord around His table, there was a real spirit of praise, real thanksgiving, real openness. I did not think it was anything special, but the Lord was surely honored and glorified. There was a free flow.
For about an hour, we just sat in praise, thanksgiving, and worship to the Lord. Then followed the ministry.
At the close, when we were ready to go and he was getting in his car to go back, he said, “Well, I have been in lots of communion services before, but never something living like this.”
He said, “I came to be preached at, but I have found the Lord’s way of ministering to my heart.” He said, “Thank you. I have seen something new.”
God’s way is a way of the church ministering unto Him.
A couple of days later, I got a letter from him. He said, “Would you mind if I told the seminary that I do not think I can stay in seminary any more? I will go to a better seminary, if there is such a thing.”
He wrote back and said, “I just cannot put it into homiletics and all this sort of thing. I think God is calling me for the life of the church. Can I come and get a job and help support and work and do whatever?”
Well, this is happening all the time. God is working.
You know, it is possible to study abnormal psychology so long that you do not know what is normal. I really have been perplexed with some of this educational process. I have met so many people with all that background, and they do not know what is normal.
The Lord’s way is really moving us off of the abnormal to bring us back. Do not be surprised when you get into a movement where God deposits a full measure of Himself into the lives of His people for the daily crucible, and He begins to bring about a people who are more alive to praise and worship.
The best meeting of the week is the meeting in which we gather to remember, lift up, and exalt the Lord. But there is an order in it that God is producing, and finally there is a true holiness of life. He is after this.
When I look at what the Lord was after in calling this people out, then you get some glimpses of how they missed it. But before we see how they missed it, I would like to take you to one little picture of what I would call normality: 2 Chronicles 20.
God is able to install the order of worship in Jerusalem and bring the people back to the Lord. You get a little better picture of the normal order of God’s way.
Just as surely as a people reach anything of divine normal order, you can count on the enemy to make an attack. He will move in to hinder. He cannot stand the praises.
The old song we used to sing says, “Hell’s foundations quiver at the shout of praise.” You go around with a moaning, poor-me, gloomy spirit—there is no quivering in hell at that.
It is when God’s people come to life and praise that the enemy makes his attack upon a people fulfilling something of divine normality.
It came to pass after this also, that the children of Moab, and the children of Ammon, and with them other besides the Ammonites, came against Jehoshaphat to battle.
Then there came some that told Jehoshaphat, saying, There cometh a great multitude against thee from beyond the sea from Syria; and, behold, they be in Hazazon-tamar, which is Engedi.
And Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek the Lord; and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.
And Judah gathered themselves together, to ask help of the Lord: even out of all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord.
Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord, and reminded God of His covenant, His possession, and His purpose.
O our God, wilt Thou not judge them? for we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon Thee.
They were about to be swallowed up by the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the children of Seir. What did they do? Their eyes were upon Him.
They did not know what to do, but their eyes were upon Him. This is the normal order. All Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, their wives, and their children. They were ministering to the Lord.
In an hour of crisis, the enemy was making an attack. I think we do well to remember that the Lord has won the battle.
The simple word for us is this: as we believe, God begins to work. As we stand for what we believe, God begins to work mightily.
But sometimes it is at this first point—believing—that we grow weak and begin to turn our eyes again to the multitude or to the challenge. Yet it is the standing, just a little longer—not that we have to win, but that the Lord who has won is stating the fact.
This is not a marching order to go out and invade. The word means, “Stand.” Just take what is already yours.
We are so quick to pick up and assume that something really depends on us. The peculiar, delightful way of the Lord is to bring us into a dependence upon His way.
Then upon Jahaziel the son of Zechariah, the son of Benaiah, the son of Jeiel, the son of Mattaniah, a Levite of the sons of Asaph, came the Spirit of the Lord in the midst of the assembly;
and he said, Hearken ye, all Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king Jehoshaphat: thus saith the Lord unto you, Fear not ye, neither be dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s.
Tomorrow go ye down against them: behold, they come up by the ascent of Ziz; and ye shall find them at the end of the valley, before the wilderness of Jeruel.
Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you, O Judah and Jerusalem: fear not, nor be dismayed: tomorrow go out against them; for the Lord is with you.
Because they had been ministering unto the Lord, the Lord taught them what needed to be done.
The Lord gave them one step at a time. That is the hardest thing for us. They were told, “Go out by the ascent of Ziz.” “What am I going to do when I get out there?” Well, that is your problem.
As we believe, God begins to work. As we stand for what He has said, He begins to work mightily.
I have heard a brother emphasizing over and over again how the Lord shines His light on one footstone. You take a step. Then there may be darkness between, and He shines the light on the next one. You take the next step.
Not the whole path—step by step, as He orders it.
And Jehoshaphat bowed his head with his face to the ground: and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell down before the Lord, worshipping the Lord.
And the Levites, of the children of the Kohathites and of the children of the Korahites, stood up to praise the Lord, the God of Israel, with an exceeding loud voice.
They should have been preparing for battle, should they not? They should have been devising means to win. Foolishness! They are called a peculiar people—worshipping the Lord when, in the eyes of men, they ought to be doing something else.
And they rose early in the morning, and went forth into the wilderness of Tekoa: and as they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem: believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe His prophets, so shall ye prosper.
And when he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed them that should sing unto the Lord, and that should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army, and say, Give thanks unto the Lord; for His lovingkindness endureth for ever.
The king formed a choir. Would you like to be in this choir? They were at the very front, in full exposure at the cliff, facing the enemy. What were they doing?
The foolishness of God is wiser than men. Man, in his wisdom, thinks he knows how. But even the foolish thing that God does is wiser than man’s greatest wisdom.
They went out singing, praising the beauty of holiness. God is a holy God, and when He works in the midst of His people, He will always produce holiness and righteousness.
And when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set liers in wait against the children of Ammon, Moab, and mount Seir, which were come against Judah; and they were smitten.
I can just hear them down in the valley, looking up at that peculiar thing. One commander says, “Careful now. These people always trick you. This is just a trick.”
Then the Moabites began to argue with the Ammonites, and they slew one another. The peculiar people of the Lord did what? They stood singing, worshipping, praising, announcing the Lord in His goodness.
Where was the battle? The real battle was up there.
Do you not see, beloved? The real battle is in the heavenly realm. The Son of God is being challenged by the enemy. All the way through, the throne of God is challenged.
When God can bring a people to look to Him, trust Him, and give Him His rightful place, all He has to do is one simple thing, and the enemy is defeated.
The real issue is this: when Satan challenged God concerning Job, what did he say? “Doth Job fear God for nought?”
Satan said, in effect, “Look how You have blessed him. Anybody would serve You if You blessed him as You have blessed Job.” So the Lord removed the hedge and allowed Job’s possessions to be taken away.
Job maintained his integrity. Then the enemy came back and said, “Maybe things do not mean so much, but look—he is still strong and healthy.” Another hedge was removed. Satan could not take Job’s life, but Job went into the crucible of terrible suffering.
What was the battle going on in the heavenly realm? Can God get someone to love Him, praise Him, serve Him, and worship Him without being bribed?
That is the issue. Does God drive people? Is it pie in the sky? Is He worthy in Himself?
Is He just pretty good because of what He does for us? Does that cause us to praise Him?
Oh, when circumstances are nice, when everything is going well, it is easy to give thanks: “Thank You, Lord, for all You have done.” But Job, I believe, was able to stop the mouth of the enemy and say that all he really needed was a glimpse of God Himself.
What God does is not the final issue. They can find within, in knowing the Lord, the reason for worship. This is all a matter of knowing the Lord—knowing Him and His worthiness.
In the final, quiet thing that we read in Revelation, the song will be, “Worthy art Thou.” This is worship: “Who is worthy?”
We sing and give thanks because of what He has done, but always come to see who He is. We love Him because of who He is. We pray, worship, and adore Him because of the worthiness of the Lord Himself.
The same battle exists today. Can God get a people—can God get a people—who will learn to put away the arms, as it were, and pick up the real issue? The real issue is the acknowledging that He is Lord. He is the Head of this kingdom. It is all in order, and we are praising Him.
At that moment, He sets ambushments. The struggle and quarrel go on among the enemies, and they destroy one another.
Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord.
Now, beloved, this is not getting hold of a little technique. It is not getting hold of a method. This is my concern: we are so technique-conscious, so method-conscious.
We read the testimony of someone else who praised his way through, and then we try to evolve through techniques and methods. God’s way is working from the inside out.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit:
A broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.
It starts inwardly.
Any time I merely try to mouth the technique—you know what I mean by that, do you not?—it is not God’s way.
Adam was placed as the first ruling king, the first one through whom God was going to accomplish something. There had already been a revolt in the heavenlies. I cannot go into all the story, but in this respect, God is after a people who move in divine order.
Here they were, shut up to the Lord, looking unto Him and not at the multitude.
Some years ago, the Lord was always bringing me to this understanding: “Lord, if I knew what You were going to do when I got out by the cliff, I could see the next step.”
But He seemed to say, “You are delivered into dependence—delivered into dependence—utterly, utterly cut loose from your knowing what is going to happen when you get out there. Not your worry. Just depend on Me.”
It is a way of continuing dependence upon the Lord.
What we always do is develop our capabilities and our methods to take the place of dependence. We come to a situation where we have all the books and all the things that we know. Because we experienced a wonderful victory last time, we try to use it the next time.
But have we learned this continual life of being delivered into dependence? Or do we say, “If I could just get an experience at the altar that would really fix me up—if I could just once and for all arrive at that point—then I could be independent”?
The reality is to be totally, helplessly cast upon God all the time.
We will not minimize whatever experience has reality. Thank God for it. But if it does not deliver you into dependence, it comes short.
As we believe, God works. As we stand for what we believe, God works mightily. As we praise, God sets up ambushments hidden to our natural sight.
While Moses was away, Aaron and the people began to murmur and complain. They looked around at the circumstances: “Where is this man Moses, who brought us out? Where is he?”
Moses was inquiring and waiting before the Lord. While he was away, they were complaining. They came to Aaron. You can always find someone who will be sympathetic with your heart—sometimes even someone in the service of the Lord.
Aaron went soft and allowed them to build a golden calf.
Imagine a people who had come out of Egypt with such miraculous power demonstrated, who had crossed the Red Sea and seen the enemy swallowed up. Not many days later, they were camped at the foot of Mount Sinai, with Moses away.
They pleaded, “Make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him.”
They thought it was Moses. They had forgotten. Aaron told them to bring their golden earrings, and they made a golden calf.
Then they began to worship. They had their feast around it: dancing, drinking, playing, nakedness—all that went with it.
God spoke to Moses and reminded him of what the people had been doing. Moses went down into their midst.
When people have come short—when the people who should have been a priesthood people have failed to fulfill the thing God wanted in the line of His purpose—one of the means God uses to bring His people back in line is what we call intercession.
The spirit of intercession begins to manifest itself. There will be prayer, thanksgiving, and worship. But God looks for a man to stand in the breach. He looks for someone through whom He can bring men back when His people have missed.
I believe we do well to expect that the spirit of travail and intercession will be the means by which God burdens and exercises hearts, in order that His people can be brought back, once again, into the normal order of things.
Just as surely as His people miss, there has to be the spirit of travail and intercession.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, that thou broughtest up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:
they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them:
they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed unto it, and said, These are thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:
now therefore let Me alone, that My wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.
I believe Moses was on the spot in that moment. Did Moses have a heart for the purpose of God, or did he have private ambition?
Not one of us will ever get by this testing somewhere down the road. Are we really concerned for what the Lord is after, or would we carve out a little kingdom—a little place to demonstrate my ministry or my own ability?
I believe it is one of the most crucial things happening in the religious realm today. The minute someone begins to manifest gift, and the blessing of the Lord is upon him, and ministry begins to function, it is so easy to build up something around himself and for himself.
I weep over it. I know the danger. I keep asking, “Oh, dear Lord, awaken Your people and Your servants. Do not let us lose the thing You really want by building some little thing.”
It seems difficult in some of the cities where we go to bring people into the full line of His purpose and the divine order of things, because every man is doing his little thing.
Anything less than a dedication and devotion to the building of the church the Lord wants—the house that He wants—is merely building a little pool of my own. It is the most subtle, the most difficult thing.
God made a large-sized proposal to Moses: “I will blot all these people out and start over. Instead of Abraham being the founding father, it will be Moses.”
But Moses refused.
I believe God had wrought something in his life. Private ambition had to be dealt with. Building something for ourselves had to be put away.
Moses began to intercede before the Lord—the real spirit of claiming that God would bring His people back to the order of things.
I am afraid that after I had dealt with a people like this, my tendency would often have been the same: “Well, praise the Lord, let us blot them out, Lord. I have had a lot of trouble with them.” But that is not the spirit of the Lord.
And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why doth Thy wrath wax hot against Thy people, which Thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
When God had spoken to Moses, He said, “Thy people.” Moses turned and said, “Oh no, Lord—Thy people.”
Whose people were they? Does anybody want them?
If there had been anything sticky in Moses, anything of personal ambition, it might have sounded good to his ear: “My congregation. My following.” But he said, “Thy people.”
“Yes, Lord, I brought them out of Egypt—but they are Thy people. Thou art the One who brought them out.” He refused to take a position other than that which God had given.
Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, saying, For evil did He bring them forth, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from Thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against Thy people.
Lord, Your integrity is at stake. If You blot them out, Egypt will say that You brought them out to destroy them, not to fulfill Your purpose.
Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Thy servants, to whom Thou swarest by Thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.
He reminded the Lord of the promise and the covenant that had been made. “Lord, You have made some promises, and You do not go back on Your promises. You cannot blot out Your job with these people.”
We are called the Lord’s remembrancers, standing with Him for His full purpose.
It is in the midst of seeing others in their declension and missing that God burdens our hearts to stand with Him for the real order of things—the thing He wants.
God used Moses. Moses went down from the mount. He took the tables of stone that God had written upon, broke them, ground the calf into powder, put it in the water, and made the people drink. It was bitter drinking.
Then Moses spoke to Aaron.
And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought a great sin upon them?
And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on evil.
For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him.
And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off: so they gave it me; and I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.
Have you ever discovered your rationalizing and excusing capabilities?
“The people wanted it. The people brought the gold. I cast it in, and out came the calf.” Was that the whole story? No.
And he received it at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made it a molten calf.
Things do not just jump out. Every one of us has a fashioning room—right down here. You know it, do you not? All the reasoning and rationalizing of this fashioning room.
But when we go to explain it, we say, “Well, the people…” Oh, how God needs to deal with our hearts and our deep motives—the exposure of why we do the things that we do.
Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Whoso is on the Lord’s side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
I love this. Moses was saying, “I stand with the Lord for His full purpose. Come and stand by me.”
That day was a crucial hour in Israel. The whole people were to be a priesthood people. But because of their declension and failure, God was now giving some priests to the people who should have been priests. The tribe of Levi was separated out.
They were separated out to stand with the Lord for the full purpose of God. This is a principle in God’s working.
When something is down here, and the people who should be up here have failed, God separates a people. The Levites were separated out as a means—not for themselves, not for anything that they themselves would gain—but because God, looking upon the whole, could see a group within it that would stand. Thus, I believe, He could accept the rest.
Years ago, when the Lord first began to deal with my heart about this, I saw what I think we call the principle of the overcomer. The normal course has been missed, and God uses those who will stand with Him.
It was not an easy thing for them. They had to take the sword, and three thousand fell that day. That is a two-edged sword.
The sword never cuts this way without first cutting this way. I never let the sword touch my brother unless it has first touched my own life. The two-edged sword.
This is true in our relationships in the home—mother, father, spouse. God will have a people in whom the knife has cut, separated unto the Lord in a deep way.
The reason they could separate themselves unto the Lord was that God, through them, might realize His full purpose.
I used to be so upset with the overcomer teaching when I first ran into it about twenty years ago. I would meet little nuclei of people interested in overcoming—for whom? It had so much self in it.
“Well, what will happen to the rest of the world? We are going to overcome. We are going to escape. We are going to make it through.” Something in my heart reacted toward it all the time. That is not the end. That is not God’s way.
The separating is unto the Lord, that it might be for the rest of the people. Do you see the difference?
It puts God’s thought into right perspective. God is using them, as it were, to bring back the normal order of things that He wants. No exclusive thought—“I escape, so I get something.” The spirit is, “Dear Lord, I choose not to resist the separating work. Let the sword work.”
In the midst of it, God has someone in whom He can trust His heart and His purposes.
The normal order of things is this: God brings His people unto Himself, that He might work through them for the needs of the whole.
We must quit. I have taken too long.
Lord, oh, how we thank Thee and praise Thee for Thy wonderful purpose, Thy working, Thy order, Thy plan, and Thy design in the things Thou art bringing through.
If we could get our eyes off the awful state of religious things, we would not escape, as it were, for ourselves. Take away the escapism. Give us the spirit that we see in Moses.
When he finally came back again to meet Thee, once again he spoke and cried, “Oh, God, if it would be possible, blot me out; but somehow bring Thy people—bring Thy people back into the line of Thy purpose, the normal order of things.”
Oh, that we would have the Calvary heart. That this spirit would pervade our being this morning, dear Lord.
We thank Thee, Lord, that little by little, as we learn to worship, walk, fellowship, and live a life unto Thee—ministering unto Thee—Thou dost speak. Thou workest Thy own separating work.
We hear the call: “Who is on the Lord’s side?” Who is on the Lord’s side? Come and stand. Help us always to stand with Thee for righteousness, for the true holiness of things.
I believe Thee this morning for my brothers and sisters, that Thou wilt help them to see what Thou art doing in our hearts and in our lives as we learn to stand with Thee; that somehow Thou mightest bring in and accomplish the full order.
Thank You, Lord. We praise Thee.
In Jesus’ name, we ask it with thanksgiving. Amen.