This is the most enlightened place here. But I would rather that you were able to hear me, so we hope this thing is working. Thank you. Can you hear me in the back? All right. Praise the Lord.
Now, about this matter of kingship, I just want to say a few more things to explain the burden before we enter into the Word of God.
The burden that is upon my heart concerning kingship is not so much to try to define or describe the role of kingship—how to rule and reign with Christ, however wonderful that part of it is. The burden is rather upon my heart that, by the grace of the Lord, we should come to understand more clearly how we are going to get there, to that position of kingship.
In other words, the process of the making of the king. This is what I sense a burden for in my own heart.
Because the real act of ruling and reigning with Christ as His kings is yet to come in the full sense, when the King of kings will return and take over all power and authority upon the earth and establish His kingdom.
But in this age in which we are still to be found, we are more in a sort of preparation time for that great day when He will come and reign, and we will reign with Him. So we are in a training programme where God will allow us, to some extent, to experience and to know what it is to reign and to rule: what it is to take our responsibility on this earth for our nation and our people; what it is to confront the enemy and to overcome him by the grace of the Lord; what it is to exercise spiritual authority and make use of spiritual weapons which have been provided for us.
But what I do feel a burden for is that we would understand this process of being made into a king, and that we would hang on and endure in that process, so that we will be able, when the glorious day soon appears, to reign with Christ, to be kings along with the King of kings, and participate in His glorious rule and reign upon the earth.
In recent years, there have been different kinds of schools going on: schools of evangelism, schools of discipleship, schools of prayer, and even schools of prophets. And I suggest we enter into the school of kings while we are here. Does it not appeal to you? A school of kings certainly appeals to me.
I come from a country where we have a real—you know, it is a queen now—but you poor folks here from America, you have only got a president. We have a queen, and we have kings in this part of the world where we come from. So it appeals greatly to me to participate in a school of kings.
I want you now to turn to the Scriptures. We will read out of the experience of David, from 1 Samuel.
1 Samuel 13:14
But now thy kingdom shall not endure: the Lord hath sought Him a man after His own heart,
and the Lord hath appointed him to be prince over His people,
because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee.
A man after His own heart, as ruler over His people.
1 Samuel 16:1-13
And the Lord said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul,
seeing I have rejected him from being king over Israel?
Fill thy horn with oil, and go:
I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite;
for I have provided Me a king among his sons.And Samuel said, How can I go?
If Saul hear it, he will kill me.
And the Lord said, Take a heifer with thee, and say,
I am come to sacrifice to the Lord.And call Jesse to the sacrifice,
and I will show thee what thou shalt do;
and thou shalt anoint unto Me him whom I name unto thee.And Samuel did that which the Lord spake,
and came to Bethlehem.
And the elders of the city came trembling to meet him, and said,
Comest thou peaceably?And he said, Peaceably:
I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord.
Sanctify yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice.
And he sanctified Jesse and his sons, and called them to the sacrifice.And it came to pass, when they were come,
that he looked on Eliab, and said,
Surely the Lord’s anointed is before Him.But the Lord said unto Samuel,
Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature;
because I have rejected him:
for the Lord seeth not as man seeth;
for man looketh on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looketh on the heart.Then Jesse made Abinadab to pass before Samuel.
And he said, Neither hath the Lord chosen this.Then Jesse made Shammah to pass by.
And he said, Neither hath the Lord chosen this.And Jesse made seven of his sons to pass before Samuel.
And Samuel said unto Jesse,
The Lord hath not chosen these.And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children?
And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest,
and, behold, he keepeth the sheep.And Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him:
for we will not sit down till he come hither.And he sent, and brought him in.
Now he was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to.
And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him: for this is he.Then Samuel took the horn of oil,
and anointed him in the midst of his brethren:
and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.
So Samuel rose up, and went to Ramah.
Let us just commit this time to the Lord.
Lord, we ask of You that we should not, in any way, get into a kind of superiority in speech—which would be impossible with the kind of language that I am going to express myself in. But we would rather stand in trembling, weakness, and fear, and trust in You that Your Holy Spirit would come and pierce our hearts with Your own words.
Lord, embrace us this night in such a way that we would not go untouched from this meeting; that we may come to Your feet and experience a transformation in our lives. Lord, we desire You to speak in Your own way by Your own Holy Spirit.
We thank You and praise You for that provision which You have given us in Your own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We do declare in our own weakness that we trust in Your ability to get through to us tonight with a word from Thyself. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Now, the first lesson in this royal training programme, which deals mostly with the heart of the king, is this:
God is seeking for a heart to glorify His name.
A heart to glorify God will qualify for kingship. God’s choice of a man to become king is based on the potential in that man of giving glory to the name of the Lord. In other words, God is looking to find that kind of heart which will glorify Him in each and every circumstance. That kind of heart is a basic qualification for kingship.
When Samuel came into the house of Jesse, he looked at these impressive fellows: Eliab, Abinadab, and then Shammah. But they did not qualify to become king, to become chosen to be king, because God could see that these men had no heart to glorify God.
Look at verse 7:
But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance,
or on the height of his stature; because I have rejected him:
for the Lord seeth not as man seeth;
for man looketh on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looketh on the heart.
Their appearance and their height of stature were of the order of Saul. We will come back to that in a minute. That kind of appearance and that kind of heart, which was to be found in King Saul, is ever constituting a danger of robbing God of His glory.
God will not choose anybody who has this danger in him, that he will rob God of His glory.
If you look up in 1 Samuel 9, when Saul was appointed to become king in Israel, it says in verse 2:
And he had a son, whose name was Saul, a choice young man, and a goodly:
and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he:
from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.
No one more handsome; taller than the whole people. He was certainly very impressive. But he had a wrong heart, a wrong kind of heart.
He was, as it says in the Danish family, “a head higher than the people.” I do not know whether you can say that. He was a head higher than the people, but he should have been a heart wider than the people.
I remember when I was invited a few years ago to speak at a conference in Stockholm, Sweden. I saw this little—what do you call it?—flyer, a piece of paper with the announcement of the meeting. I found a picture of myself, and I was announced to be the main speaker. But in Danish, it means the head speaker.
When I saw it, I was frightened in a way, because I only believe in one Head, and that is Christ, the Head of the church. So I said to these people, “Would you do me a favour? Please do not announce me as the head speaker. If you want to announce me as some kind of speaker, would you announce me as the heart speaker?”
Because, you see, I believe in speaking. It does not matter too much about your head, your wisdom, and the superiority of your speech. On the contrary, this is a hindrance many times, because it is robbing God of His glory.
God wants people who have the right kind of heart. He is not concerned about your head. He is looking to see whether you have got the right kind of heart.
Now, by the way, God is not against handsome people. So all you handsome guys here, just relax.
It is a great comfort to see that even when David stood before Samuel, in 1 Samuel 16:12, it says that he had beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance. But he had something more than that: he had the right kind of heart.
God is seeking after a heart that will glorify His name. Everyone who is seeking for a name disqualifies himself for kingship.
In fact, when we meet this spirit where people are seeking for a name, or building—even within Christendom—an empire, big organisations, impressive things, we touch something very terrible: namely, the spirit of Babylon.
Anybody and anything that is designed to have a name has been influenced by the Babylonian spirit.
If you go back to the beginning, in Genesis 11:4, it says:
And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower,
whose top may reach unto heaven,
and let us make us a name.
Oh, it is a sad thing that this spirit and this desire have crept into the church, that people and groups of God’s people are trying to build something for themselves and trying to make themselves a name. Such people would never qualify for kingship, because God is seeking for a heart that will glorify only His name.
Some of these American television-star preachers—well, I have not got the gift of judgment to put upon other people, so do not misunderstand me. But when I am watching, now and then, these impressive names and learning about these impressive organisations and stations that are being built, there is only one thing in my heart: these people are never going to be kings with the King of kings.
So much of the glory of God is being stolen away today, even among God’s people. If we have not got a heart to glorify God, we will not qualify for kingship.
Eliab, Abinadab, and Shammah had very impressive names. Eliab means “God Himself.” I know that this can be a very good spiritual name with a very good spiritual significance, but I could not help thinking of somebody going around with a sign on him: “God Himself.”
Abinadab means “father of generosity.” Very impressive, is it not? Father of generosity.
And Shammah—that is the most terrible of it all—because literally Shammah means “fame.” Fame.
Now you can see why God could not choose these people to become king. Because of their impressiveness, their majestic names. You know I am speaking spiritually here. There was something in these men that God just did not dare to choose to become king of Israel, because He could see that these men would constitute a danger. Somehow, down the line, they would rob God of His glory.
God is very jealous when it comes to His glory. He will not share it with anybody.
So, if we want to qualify for kingship, we must develop—we must train—our heart to give glory unto God.
It is wonderful to me that the name David means beloved. You can sense that it is another world. It is a quite different quality. Beloved speaks about relationship. It speaks about a heart relationship. It is a name that speaks about the heart: beloved.
Now, I do believe that when God is choosing people and using people, this is the principle. This is a point where God will never bend and never give in. He will always make sure that He will get the glory.
In 1 Corinthians 1, it is very interesting, because I used to have this idea about God that He would pick anybody and use anybody. I know He can if He wishes to do so, but in a way I believe that He has some criteria, some basic principles, concerning those whom He is going to choose and use in His ministry.
In 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, it says:
For behold your calling, brethren,
how that not many wise after the flesh,
not many mighty, not many noble, are called:But God chose the foolish things of the world,
that He might put to shame them that are wise;
and God chose the weak things of the world,
that He might put to shame the things that are strong;And the base things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose,
yea, and the things that are not,
that He might bring to nought the things that are:That no flesh should glory before God.
So God is really looking carefully when He is choosing somebody that He is going to use. Do they have this potential of giving glory to God, or will they boast? It depends upon the kind of heart that God will find in them.
Even when we speak about Israel—and I do agree completely with our brother earlier that God has chosen the people of Israel because He loves the people—when you go to Deuteronomy 7, this is where it is also stated that God had chosen Israel because He loved the people. But there is something else to it.
Deuteronomy 7:7-8
The Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you,
because ye were more in number than any people;
for ye were the fewest of all peoples:But because the Lord loveth you,
and because He would keep the oath which He sware unto your fathers.
It is interesting that the Lord is saying He did not choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.
Why did God choose the smallest people of all peoples? Why did He not choose the Chinese people—the most people of all people? We would think, in our human thinking, that that would be more impressive if the Chinese people were the chosen people of God.
But God chose those who were the fewest, because this was a possibility for Him to have all the more glory. This is what we can see in history right now, and you are going to see it even more as we come to the conclusion of this age: what God is doing with Israel, with three million people.
This little people—when God begins to work and goes on working with them, we will come to see the glory of the Lord. The whole world will marvel, because they will reason and say, “How come that these small people can survive, can go through?” They will come to understand that it is because of God. God will reveal His glory through this tiny, little people.
So here is the basic principle in the process of the making of a king: a heart that will glorify God.
This heart can be found in David. He had a heart that worshipped the Lord.
You can see it in the fact that he was chosen to become a professional musician and worshipper at the court of King Saul. He was only chosen for that position because he was the very best in the country. Only the best man would be good enough to come to the court of the king and entertain the king by playing music and singing.
So David was picked out of the whole country and appointed to become a professional worshipper, a professional musician at the court of King Saul. That was not just because he had the anointing.
Some people tend to believe that if we are to worship the Lord, we must have a charismatic experience. It is very good to have that, and very needed, because we need the Holy Spirit to worship the Lord. But we also need to train and exercise our heart and our spirit to give glory to God.
It is not just something that happens in a certain atmosphere, in a meeting where we come together as the people of God and the Holy Spirit seems to be there and anoint the gathering. Then we start to sing and glorify the Lord.
No, it is something we have got to train for. We have got to train and train, and exercise and exercise again, our heart and our tongue to sing the praises of God.
This was actually happening in the life of David. If you go to 1 Samuel 16 again, and verse 16:
Let our lord now command thy servants, that are before thee,
to seek out a man, who is a skilful player on the harp:
and it shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee,
that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well.So Saul said unto his servants, Provide me now a man that can play well,
and bring him to me.Then answered one of the young men, and said,
Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite,
that is skilful in playing,
and a mighty man of valour, and a man of war,
and prudent in speech, and a comely person,
and the Lord is with him.
He was a skilful player of the harp. It was not just a recent charismatic experience. I have never heard about people—there may be some, I do not know—who became skilful professional musicians through just a charismatic experience. It does take some training, does it not, to become skilful players of the piano or the harp?
So what happened was that David, out in the field tending his father’s sheep, was training—playing the harp, singing the praises of God, and giving glory to God—while he was quite alone.
There was no audience. There was no meeting. There was no family conference. There was no atmosphere-creating circumstance, whatever. He was quite alone. He only had these dirty-smelling sheep around, which were not much of an inspiration to begin to sing or play.
He was there alone, night after night and day after day. Nobody came to see him and say, “Oh, you wonderful David, you play so wonderfully. You are a great musician.”
He was there all alone, but his heart went out to glorify God. With all his strength, with all his soul, he played and he sang and he cried unto God. There was no audience.
He was on the royal training programme.
It is a hard thing to give glory to God when you are alone in your kitchen, in your garden, lying under the car, or walking in a noisy place. But if you are going to attain and enter into kingship, this is where it starts.
You must learn to glorify God and to be a true worshipper of Him at all times, in every kind of circumstance, wherever you are. You must have this kind of heart that will go out and glorify God and worship the Lord.
We only have to read a few of David’s psalms to realise why this man was called a man after God’s own heart. Oh, how he glorified the Lord and worshipped the Lord.
God can get His glory in many ways. God has tens of thousands of angels who adore Him day and night. But the angels are more or less programmed in that way, so to speak—to use computer language.
At least, God is not quite satisfied just to listen to the angels. I dare say He would rather listen to this shepherd down there on the fields in the night, surrounded by the sheep—and the sheep possibly also singing their own type of song. It would not have been all that much of a blessing to listen to.
But God is not satisfied with angels praising Him. He can force even His enemies to give Him glory.
We have the example of King Nebuchadnezzar. God forced this man down on his knees, this mighty king, and finally he had to give God glory.
We have Pharaoh. If you look up in Romans 9:17, it says:
For this very purpose did I raise thee up,
that I might show in thee My power,
and that My name might be published abroad in all the earth.
God can force even His enemies to give Him glory. But He is seeking those who have a heart to worship Him, a heart that would freely and willingly offer Him praise and worship and glorify Him. Those are the ones who qualify for kingship.
Those whom God uses have to realise that they were not chosen to be impressive, or to impress men, but they were chosen to glorify God.
Moses is an example. He was mighty in the wisdom of Egypt. He was a prince. That is rather impressive, is it not? But God had to take away all that impressiveness through forty years in the wilderness, until Moses also became a shepherd, like David, and came to a position of utter weakness where he could serve God without bringing God’s glory into danger, without risking God’s glory.
When he saw the vision of the burning bush and the fire, he realised that all the fire had to be from God. He was just this old bush.
Through forty years of experience, the prince of Egypt, mighty in wisdom, had become an old, downtrodden bush. Now, in this vision, all the fire was the glory of the Lord.
I think it came to him that from now on, when God started to use him, he must remember that all the fire must be from the Lord and all the glory must be unto the Lord.
It is amazing to me that when God overcame Pharaoh and the Egyptians, and led His people out of bondage, He sent an eighty-year-old shepherd with a wooden staff and two donkeys. By this delegation to the royal court of Pharaoh, God overcame the Egyptian empire.
One old shepherd with a staff and a donkey—that was God’s way of overcoming Pharaoh. Because God must have all the glory.
Nobody would be able to say, “Oh, who did this marvellous work? Who led the people out of Egypt?” Nobody would be able to say, “Well, this was this old shepherd, you know, with his staff and those two donkeys.” Nobody would believe it anyway. They had to understand that this was a miracle. God was manifesting His glory.
Do we have a heart to glorify God?
Gideon, when he was faced with this enormous army of the Midianites, had to reduce his troops to three hundred lousy soldiers. Out of this splendid army of the Israelites, he only had three hundred left.
In the Scripture, the reason is quite clear. There is nothing you can misunderstand this night. Even if you wanted to do it, you cannot. It is so plain. You cannot misunderstand the message.
Judges 7:2
And the Lord said unto Gideon,
The people that are with thee are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hand,
lest Israel vaunt themselves against Me, saying,
Mine own hand hath saved me.
God will take no risk. He will not give away His glory. When He is choosing people to work for Him, He will make sure that those people are in such a position and in such a situation that they will give God the glory.
Now, it is interesting with Paul also. When you go to 2 Corinthians 12, concerning the apostle Paul, I believe that God had to provide Paul with a miserable public image. I believe it is a fact. It is true.
When he speaks about it himself, he reveals how people were almost laughing at him. He was so weak. He was not at all impressive. He could have been, because in a way, by nature, he was qualified to be superior in speech and make an impression upon his audience and upon people.
But something happened to him when God took him into His service. He became a man who had a miserable public image, in order for God to secure that all the glory would be God’s and no glory would become Paul’s.
When God uses a man for such mighty things as Paul was used for, He has to provide him with some strange things. It is amazing to me that those whom God is using most are sometimes very strange people. They have some peculiar things. They have things in their lives, perhaps in their characters, that make you say, “I cannot understand why God is using this servant, because he is not at all impressive. On the contrary, he is a bit strange.”
How can God use a man like this?
I mean, take a man like Brother Bakht Singh. The first time I met him, I had to go out and laugh a bit. Here came this man—and I had not been in India, so I did not understand Indian culture too much—but here came a man in a white suit, with bare feet in sandals.
He came in, and the first thing he did was take off his sandals, kneel down, and begin to pray. Then he got up, took the Bible, and began to preach in English, and I could not understand a word of it. He had a throat disease or something. He could not speak plainly and clearly.
I did not get even twenty percent of the message. But in the end, I had to come down upon my knees, because there was such a conviction that night in the audience. We all had to kneel down. We all had to bow down. We saw God without even understanding what had been said.
In a way, it really touched my sense of humour. But I had to understand that when God is using somebody in that way, as this brother had been used, sometimes there is something that goes with it which we cannot understand and which we do not like.
Because God must have all the glory.
A few months ago, I came to Jerusalem to be a part of the prayer body. I had been in Jerusalem before, but I always had a thrilling sense when I went to Jerusalem. This is the holy city. This is where the Lord will come back.
You imagine that people would certainly be on the alert, expecting the Lord to come soon. Maybe they would already have been dressed in white robes with palm branches, looking at the Mount of Olives. Any time it could happen.
Then I was so disappointed when I learned about the true situation of the body of Christ in Jerusalem. I came to see how insignificant we are as the people of God, how little we can do.
A group had settled there—eight people coming from the States—claiming that they were the last prophetic voice to proclaim the end-time events to occur in Israel. There are so many people coming to Jerusalem claiming that they are one of the two witnesses that you could build a whole denomination out of all those claiming they are the two witnesses.
When you look at the Messianic believers, they are completely cut off from the Gentile believers. The Gentile believers do not like that the Messianic believers try to express their Christianity according to Jewish culture.
On the other hand, the Messianic believers do not like the Gentile believers because they are too charismatic—most of them, anyway. The Arab believers have problems accepting the Jewish believers because of the whole situation.
So this was complete disillusionment. All my illusions were disappearing out of the open window.
Then a strange thing happened. Right in the midst of all this, we were to pray for Israel, Jerusalem, and the body of Christ. In a strange way, my spirit was quickened. In a strange way, I was renewed within.
I even had to go out in the corridor and laugh a little in between, because I came to realise, “This is ridiculous.” Here we are, all these different groups of believers, and we are in the Holy Land. This is the place where all these wonderful things and events are to take place, and we cannot even get together and pray together or bless one another.
We sit in our own small sections, and we think that we are the people whom the Lord has sent to Jerusalem with a special measure. I had to laugh at all this. It was so ridiculous.
Then I remembered what happened to Abraham when the Lord came and confronted him with a promise, in Romans 4. This is one of my favourite Scriptures. I do not think I am allowed to have any favourite Scriptures. In a way, all Scriptures are favourites. But this is a special Scripture for me.
It says from Romans 4:16:
For this cause it is of faith,
that it may be according to grace;
to the end that the promise may be sure to all the seed;
not to that only which is of the law,
but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham,
who is the father of us all.As it is written, A father of many nations have I made thee,
before Him whom he believed, even God,
who giveth life to the dead,
and calleth the things that are not, as though they were.Who in hope believed against hope,
to the end that he might become a father of many nations,
according to that which had been spoken,
So shall thy seed be.And without being weakened in faith,
he considered his own body now as good as dead
(he being about a hundred years old),
and the deadness of Sarah’s womb:Yet, looking unto the promise of God,
he wavered not through unbelief,
but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God,And being fully assured that what He had promised,
He was able also to perform.
This Scripture about Abraham came to me. He was confronted with this glorious promise that he was going to have a son. Sarah was also there. He was in the tent; she was listening when the messenger of the Lord brought this promise to Abraham.
She began to laugh, because it was so impossible, so overwhelming. It was almost ridiculous. Her husband was almost one hundred years of age.
The messengers of the Lord said to Sarah, “You laughed.” She was fearful and said, “No, I did not laugh.” And He repeated, “Yes, you did.”
It is such a funny story, really. This is one of the typical proofs that God has a sense of humour. Here was this man, and this New American Standard Bible says that he was “as good as dead,” just waiting for the funeral home to conclude his life. And now here comes the promise: “Next year you are going to have a son.”
It is amazing that instead of being depressed by all the facts, it says that he grew strong in faith, giving glory to God.
Now, this was why God allowed it to come at that late hour. Because this would certainly bring glory to God. If anything would bring glory to God, this would be a glorious experience. Everybody could see that Abraham and Sarah had nothing to do with this. This was God wonderfully moving.
So I began to rejoice. I became so happy when I was in Jerusalem, because I began to realise that when things are going to happen, there will be nobody we can point out and say, “Well, it was because that group prayed so much, and this group was so strong in ministry, and they were so unified and prepared and on the alert, expecting the Lord to come at any moment.”
No, they are not. Come, Lord.
You know, it is interesting: when the temple is completed, I think we brought it up this morning, in Zechariah 4:6-7:
Then he answered and spake unto me, saying,
This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying,
Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.Who art thou, O great mountain?
Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain;
and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof
with shoutings of, Grace, grace unto it.
Not, “Well done, Christian Fellowship in Richmond.” Not, “Well done, all Christian fellowships around the world.” Not, “Well done, Church of God.” No. Never.
With the shouts of “Grace, grace, grace, grace.”
God will have all the glory. Nobody will be able to say, “We did it, Lord,” or, “We participated in it. We had something to do with this miracle, Lord.”
Oh, if we could have a heart that would bring glory to the Lord in any circumstance.
In Revelation 4:10, we get a look into the heavenlies, into heaven, and see these twenty-four elders standing at the throne of God.
The four and twenty elders shall fall down before Him that sitteth on the throne,
and shall worship Him that liveth for ever and ever,
and shall cast their crowns before the throne, saying,Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God,
to receive the glory and the honour and the power:
for Thou didst create all things,
and because of Thy will they were, and were created.
Now, these are people who have something to do with being kings. At least, they have a crown. It is wonderful to see in our part of the world when kings and queens appear and they have their crowns. You have not got anything like that. The president has no crown. But the queen, she has a beautiful crown.
When these twenty-four elders are worshipping the Lord—this is in verse 8—and day and night they do not cease to worship the Lord, when they bow down, they take off their crowns.
Now, the crowns are supposed to be the reward. Paul speaks about the crown of righteousness that all those who faithfully have run the race and followed the Lord will receive on that great day.
But when they come before the Lord and see Him in His majesty, they realise that they have never done anything at all to deserve a crown. He did it all. All that we did, the prophet says, “You did for us.”
So when they worship Him, they cannot keep the crowns upon their heads. It is impossible, because they realise that it was God who did it.
They lay down the crowns. I could not understand how they could do that day and night, because once they put down the crown, that is it. But as they bow down and put down their crowns, before they rise up, the Lord picks up the crown and puts it on their heads again. So it goes again and again, day and night. What a wonderful picture.
Then they realise suddenly, “Oh, we have got the crown still,” and they take off their crowns and lay them down at the feet of the throne.
Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God,
to receive glory and honour and power:
for Thou didst create all things,
and because of Thy will they existed, and were created.
They do have a heart to glorify God.
When the Lord is speaking about His servants in Luke 17, He says:
When ye shall have done all the things that are commanded you, say,
We are unprofitable servants;
we have done that which it was our duty to do.
You remember that Scripture? “We are unprofitable servants. We have done only that which we ought to have done.”
And in another Scripture, when the Lord comes back, He points out in Matthew 25 all those who gave Him food when He was hungry and gave Him drink when He was thirsty. They will look at one another and say, “Well, Lord, we do not remember that we have done anything. Do you?”
Oh, people with that kind of heart, like David—he was so taken up with the Lord that God could use him as king. There was no risk.
Oh, was there a risk? Yes. Even in David’s life, once in his lifetime, David failed in this respect. I think you know what I am referring to in 2 Samuel, when David finally came into supreme power, had subdued all his enemies, and was reigning and ruling over Israel.
This is 2 Samuel 24.
And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel again.
And the king said to Joab the captain of the host,
Go now to and fro through all the tribes of Israel,
from Dan even to Beer-sheba,
and number ye the people,
that I may know the sum of the people.And Joab said unto the king,
Now the Lord thy God add unto the people,
how many soever they may be, an hundredfold,
while the eyes of my lord the king yet see it:
but why doth my lord the king delight in this thing?
Oh, here came the temptation. When David had come to supreme power in Israel and had subdued all the enemies, there came this thought into him: he wanted to know how strong he was, how great his army was.
Joab tried to keep him away from it because Joab discerned it. But now David had come into the position where he would try to rob God of His glory.
You know what came upon David and his house and his throne because of this great sin. It says in verse 10:
And David’s heart smote him after that he had numbered the people.
And David said unto the Lord,
I have sinned greatly in that I have done:
but now, O Lord, put away, I beseech Thee, the iniquity of Thy servant;
for I have done very foolishly.
Oh, brothers and sisters, may we have a heart that will glorify God. May we develop that heart which is already ours in Christ. May we train that heart. May we exercise that heart. May we use our heart to glorify God.
Because those are the ones that God will bring into kingship. Those are the people that God will use to do mighty things. Those are the people that God will put into this tremendous privilege and glorious position of being kings with the King of kings and sharing in His authority, His reigning, and His ruling.
So, brothers and sisters, this is the first lesson: Do we have this heart? Let us seek to glorify God.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, we come to You once again. You know our hearts, Lord. You do not see as men see, but You look at the heart.
Lord, we pray that You will find this heart in Your people today: a heart to glorify Your name.
Lord, we confess and declare tonight that it does not matter if we are impressive. It does not matter what we are, if we could only be such a people that would seek with all our hearts to worship the Lord and to glorify His name.
Father, we know that we need to exercise. We need to train. We need to commit ourselves to this royal training programme.
So we ask that, even while we attend this conference, You would please quicken this to us, Lord. Would You remind us to glorify Your name? Would You remind us to worship You? Would You remind us to give You glory in every circumstance?
Lord, if we are being blessed, may we give You the glory. If we are going through some kind of trial, may we give You the glory. If we are doing some practical things, may we give You glory while we are doing them. Lord, if we are suffering in some areas, may we glorify You while we are suffering.
Lord, would You please make our hearts glorify You while we still attend this conference? Lord, like David, may we be skilful worshippers. May we, even when we are lonely—lonely in our room or elsewhere—may our hearts go out to glorify You and to worship You.
Lord, be gracious to us, in Your own name. Amen.