Good, good to see everyone.
We are going to start by reading our theme verses together. We could turn to 2 Corinthians 3 and read verse 18. Now, I have fifty-five short verses to read together before we pray.
2 Corinthians 3:18:
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image
from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
And then, if we could turn to the Gospel of John, chapter 17. We will read together in verse 22.
John 17:22-24:
And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one;
I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity,
that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me.Father, I desire that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am,
in order that they may behold My glory.
And then, if we could turn to 2 Peter, chapter 1. Our brother Mac referred to this passage yesterday evening. Chapter 1, verses 16 and 17.
2 Peter 1:16-17:
For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,
but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory:
“This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Finally, if we could turn to 1 Kings 8. Speaking of that moment on the Mount of Transfiguration, of that cloud that Peter had referred to: 1 Kings 8, verse 12.
1 Kings 8:12:
Then Solomon said, “The Lord has said that He would dwell in the thick cloud.”
Let us bow forward to prayer.
Lord, we thank You that we have come into the presence of the living God, just like the song has said. Thank You, Lord, that You still speak.
Lord, we put this time into Your hands. We pray, Lord, that You might have the liberty to speak to each one of us—speaking and listening. Lord, that all of us would acknowledge that You are here.
Lord, we thank You that You have the power to remove us, to put us aside for just this next hour and a half, that we might be able to hear what You are saying. Thank You, Lord, for that faithfulness.
Lord, we love You. We put this time in Your hands, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So, brothers and sisters, we have been considering this passage in 2 Corinthians 3. I have to begin by saying that I was with our brother Mac last February when we first got the email describing what the topic was.
We were having a meal together, and I forget if he raised it or I raised it, but one of us raised the thought that we were not really sure what the brothers meant by this. But as we looked, and as I searched into the Word, I began to realize what a perfect topic this is for this time.
We all need to have a vision of the glory of the Lord, because in these days the enemy is trying very desperately to hide all the wondrous things of God from us. He has got our eyes looking down all the time.
But it would be wonderful for us this weekend if the Lord would cause our hearts again to look up and see that there is a pillar of cloud that has been leading us the entire way. He has never abandoned us, and He is still there.
In this first passage, 2 Corinthians 3, Mac went over it yesterday evening. I just wanted to highlight a couple of things that Mac had shared.
The first was that the Lord wrote this topic verse for all of us. It says in the verse that we all. That means that those of us who have come with hearts strangled by the worries of the world—well, this verse is for us.
All the burdens of life, the challenges that we are facing—maybe we are bowed down by our own failures. But the fact of the matter is, this verse is for us.
Before we begin, we have to claim this verse for ourselves. If we do not do this at the beginning, what the Lord is saying will pass us by. This verse is for all of us, and the intention behind the verse is for each one: no one is to be left behind by the work that God is doing.
In the verse, we are told that the Lord’s heart is to transform us. In all the baggage that we have brought, and all the stumbling that we have gone through this past year, the Lord has never changed His intention.
That intention is that you and I have been made for a purpose. We were created with this in mind: that the glory of the Lord would inhabit these earthen vessels and then shine forth for His purposes.
So, brothers and sisters, He is at work. No matter what we have brought today, no matter where we have gone, we have to claim this in this moment for ourselves.
It is important also that we couple this verse with the verse that we read in John 17, when the Lord was giving His last prayer on this earth. What He was praying to His Father was, “The glory that You gave to Me, I am giving to them.”
This is the Lord’s heart. It was something that belonged to Him, and in His heart He desired to give it to us. He prayed further, “Lord, Father, I want for them to be with Me where I am, so that they might behold My glory.”
As we are reading this verse, we have to remember that this is not merely a lesson of life. This was the desire in the Son of God’s heart, just as He was going to the cross for you and for me: that we might have the ability to see His glory.
This is in God’s heart. This is the Lord Jesus Christ’s heart for you and for me—for all of us. I would hope that, before we begin, we might claim this, because there is a protection there.
This is a command uttered from the voice of the King of kings and the Lord of lords for you and for me: that we might see something of glory.
Now, brothers and sisters, our brother also mentioned yesterday evening that glory is very hard to describe. It is very hard to describe.
I read through some things that some brothers have written, and what I realized in the end was that glory needs to be revealed to us. Our prayer over this next weekend is that the Lord might show us something of that glory.
I remember when I was a teenager, there was a song that Dana wrote. I was listening to the song, and it was a stepwise walk deeper into the heart of God.
We were asking that He might give us vision of the beauty of the Lord, and then give us vision of our lives as royal priests. I remember that at one point in the song, there was what sounded like a synthesizer harp. You know, it was the eighties and nineties, right? So this is how it was then.
The music starts to change, and then the lyrics read, “Give us vision of His longing for a bride.” This is really looking into the heart of God.
But there was another verse to come, and the verse tells us, “Give us vision of the glory of the Lord.”
What we see, brothers and sisters, is that this matter of glory is really looking into the very heart of God. It is the substance and the nature of Who He is. Everywhere He is, there is this glory.
The Lord’s desire for all of us is that we might see it. Should we see this glory, brothers and sisters, I think that it would not only change our lives individually, but it would change a generation.
This is the kind of moment when you see something, or hear something together, that suddenly frames every other step of your life. From then on, every decision we make, the way we see ourselves, and the way we see the things that the Lord is doing, are framed in this vision of the glory of the Lord.
Might the Lord show us how crucial this particular topic is for this time.
This happened to John the apostle. John was the young one, and his eyes were opened to see some things as he walked with the Lord Jesus.
Then, as decades passed and the other apostles went to be with the Lord, John began to see a second generation, and maybe even a third generation. He began to hear things secondhand, and he began to hear things thirdhand. The religious world began to take shape.
John wrote that he saw these things firsthand, that we beheld His glory, that it was something that they saw together.
We might ask, with our outward eyes, what was so marvelous? What was so glorious about this Man? We look at Him, and He would not have been anything to us if we had seen Him walking down the street.
But what John was saying was that, as they walked with Him, they had the chance to look into the core nature—the substance—of Who He was. And they saw glory.
Peter said the same thing. Peter said in 2 Peter that they were eyewitnesses of His majesty.
Peter went on to say that he remembered the day that they were on Mount Tabor, the Mount of Transfiguration. He was there, John was there, and James was there.
He said, “I saw the Majestic Glory, and the voice that spoke out of the Majestic Glory.”
What did they see on that day on the Mount of Transfiguration? They had gone up, and all of a sudden it was as though the outward man of the Lord opened a little, revealing Who He was.
Suddenly before them, this bright light came forth. It was so bright that it was blinding in some way. In the midst of it, as they got their bearings again, they realized that Moses was there, and Elijah was there.
Moses and Elijah were talking to Him, as our brother was mentioning this morning. They were talking to Him while Peter, James, and John were speechless for the moment.
Moses and Elijah had come to see something of this glory: that the glory is approachable, and the glory is not meant to keep us away.
The glory, in fact, draws us nearer to something that is in His heart, so that we can begin to talk to Him and commune with Him about the things that are in His heart.
Moses and Elijah had not simply gotten used to the glory, because I am not sure you could. But Moses and Elijah saw themselves in the light of the glory, and they felt very comfortable there.
Brothers and sisters, Peter saw this suddenly, but with his worldly eyes he was distracted. Moses and Elijah were standing there with the Lord Jesus, Who was transfigured.
In Peter’s moment of fleshly vision, he said, “We should build three altars.” I think you and I might have said something similar. If we did not say it, we may have thought it in our hearts: “We will build an altar for You, Lord, and then we will build one for Moses, and we will build one for Elijah.”
At that point, the cloud came down—the Majestic Glory. It came down and covered them all. It covered Moses and Elijah.
Out of that cloud, the voice came forth: “This is My beloved Son.”
Now, brothers and sisters, what was this Majestic Glory? What was this glory in the cloud?
We read in 1 Kings 8 that Solomon referred to this Majestic Glory in his day. He reminded us that the presence of God would be in this cloud, called the cloud of glory, or, as some Jewish scholars called it, the Shekinah glory.
The glory of the cloud was because of the presence of the Lord. If we were to go back to the Mount of Transfiguration and, for a moment, fingerprint the glory, what we would realize is that the glory has always been there.
To borrow another term from medicine, if we radio-labeled it—meaning that sometimes in medicine we can put a radioactive tracer on a cell and follow that pattern through the body—we could trace it.
As an example, if we cut something out of someone’s leg that we are worried about, we can put a radiotracer in and follow where the flow goes, perhaps to a lymph node.
Or, if you are not into science, you can think about labeling a shark and watching it go through the entire Atlantic Ocean. If we, for a moment, labeled the glory with a tracer and followed it backward in time, we would realize that from the beginning there was this glory.
The Lord Jesus said in John 17 that this is an eternal glory: “You loved Me then, and that glory that We had I am sharing now with them, those who believe in Me.”
If we chased it backward in time, we would realize that there was glory at the very beginning, from eternity past. If we followed that glory forward in time from the Transfiguration, we would realize that there is a development.
Let me reword that. That glory is always there, but by Revelation 21 we realize that there is a city, and that city is illumined by the glory of God.
If we trace through the entire Bible, what we realize is that the glory and the presence have always been there. When we read the term from glory to glory, we can look at it longitudinally: from the beginning until the end, the presence of the glory of the Lord has always been there.
It is what He has done to us to incorporate us into that story.
What we would like to do in these two sessions is borrow from these two men who were on the mountain: Moses and Elijah. How did they know the glory of God? How did they know that they could stand there in the glory, participate, and commune with the Lord Jesus?
What can we learn about that as we walk through our lives and see the Lord changing us and manifesting the glory that He has deposited into us?
We would like to start first today with Moses. As we speak on Moses, we would like to share about the portion of the journey that goes from eternity past to the moment when the glory is deposited so wonderfully into human hearts.
Tomorrow, we would like to share on Elijah and how the Lord works in us so that the glory—the treasure in earthen vessels—can be manifested as the light of the world.
So much so that one day our Lord Jesus will look from heaven and see all these little lights of His glory being manifested, and the time will be fulfilled. We will be built together as living stones into this house of God, illumined by the glory of the Lord.
Today, we would like to share first about Moses, and in particular about this cloud and Moses’ interactions with this cloud.
If we trace back as far as Genesis 1, we read that the Spirit of the Lord was hovering over the earth. I do not know exactly how that looked, because the Bible does not describe it perfectly for us, but we can imagine that it would be a cloud hovering over the earth and surveying.
From the very beginning, the cloud of the presence of the Lord was described.
As we move forward through time, we remember that when Pharaoh gave chase to the people of God as they were leaving the land of Egypt, and Pharaoh was about to catch them, this pillar of cloud stood between Pharaoh’s chariots and the people of God to protect them.
Throughout time, the Lord came down to the earth among us in this cloud.
We mentioned that the old Jewish leaders gave the cloud this term: the Shekinah glory. The word Shekinah means a settling presence, or the presence of God dwelling among us.
What they were describing was that the presence of God in the Old Testament could come down, dwell among us, and settle in our presence. But it also suggested that it could lift as well, because it would come and it would go.
The presence of God was sensitive to the fact that the world was a world of sin. It was on holy ground that He could come down and be among us.
We realize that at certain times throughout history the Shekinah glory would come down. It was at times when there were hearts that prepared the way for Him.
As we go forward, I would like to share on three parts in the Old Testament where the Shekinah glory—the glory of God—came down into our presence. What was our heart’s attitude at that moment that permitted the glory of the Lord to be among us?
The Lord never forces Himself on a people. He is among us, sometimes quietly, but there is a heart attitude that welcomes Him.
I think in these days it is important for us to see in our hearts that something in us must welcome Him into our presence.
So, brothers and sisters, if you could turn with me to the book of Exodus, we will start with our first moment of the settling presence of God in Exodus 33.
This first story of the glory of God coming among us was just after a great failure, which is, of course, reassuring to our hearts.
The Lord had just been with Moses on Mount Sinai, sharing with him the Ten Commandments and the pattern on the mount. Then, as they came down, Aaron and the people had formed the golden calf. It was a moment of great failure.
It was after this, in Exodus 33, that Moses set up a tent. It is in verse 7.
Exodus 33:7-11:
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, a good distance from the camp,
and he called it the tent of meeting.
And it came about that everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.And it came about whenever Moses went out to the tent, that all the people would arise and stand,
each at the entrance of his tent, and gaze after Moses until he entered the tent.And it came about whenever Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend
and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses.Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend.
When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.
Then Moses said to the Lord:
See, Thou dost say to me, “Bring up this people,”
but Thou Thyself hast not let me know whom Thou wilt send with me.
Moreover, Thou hast said, “I have known you by name, and you have also found favor in My sight.”
Moses asks for three things.
First:
Now therefore, I pray Thee, if I have found favor in Thy sight,
let me know Thy ways that I may know Thee,
so that I may find favor in Thy sight.
Second:
If Thy presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here.
Third:
I pray Thee, show me Thy glory.
Here we see, brothers and sisters, the first example that we will share concerning the Shekinah glory coming among us.
Moses had set up a tent. This tent was not the tabernacle, and it was not the temple. It was just a tent, set up outside the camp a little distance away.
If you or I had been one of the people of God living in our tents, perhaps sitting there chatting with a neighbor, we might suddenly have seen Moses leave his tent and walk over to the tent of meeting.
You and I would have stood up, sort of at attention, and waited. We would have watched Moses walk into the tent.
When Moses walked into the tent, we would have seen the Shekinah glory come down and stand at the entrance of the tent. We would have stood there and worshiped.
The tent had a very good name, and it was very simple. It was called the Tent of Meeting.
What it tells us about the glory is, as we mentioned before, that the glory was not meant to keep us away from Him. The glory was not meant to separate us.
I remember when I was a boy, I went miniature golfing with my brother. I am a big sports fan, and we were miniature golfing on hole number nine—probably a par-three miniature golf course.
When the miniature golf course ends, it is right next to where people start. We got there, and I looked up at the family on course number one. It was Magic Johnson.
I stood there, and he was tall. I stood there looking at him, and my dad was talking to Magic. He said, “Boys, say something to him.”
My brother and I just stared at him. We could not say a word. There was something about Magic to us growing up which was glorious, even though it was an earthly glory.
What we see is that, on earth, glory causes us to feel separated—to somehow feel that we cannot approach. But what we realize with the glory of God is that He is always wanting us to draw near.
The problem for us in the Old Testament was sin. Sin was a barrier to our drawing near to Him.
It is like when we watch a movie about someone who goes to jail and a loved one comes to visit. There is a glass there. One person is on one side, and the other person loves them so much that they come to visit, but they are on the other side.
There is this barrier between them, and they have to speak through a microphone or a phone.
I remember watching a movie with my boys called Paddington 2. Has anyone seen Paddington 2 with your kids, maybe?
Paddington gets sent to jail. By the way, he is a teddy bear who can talk. Paddington makes friends with all the convicts. There are all these big, burly guys who have tattoos on their faces.
They draw near to Paddington, and Paddington’s family comes. They are trying to talk to Paddington through this glass door. Paddington’s father sees his new friends and pushes a button on the wall. The light turns off, and he tells the mother, “I do not want Paddington with these guys. They do not have two brain cells that they can rub together.”
On the other end, the biggest, burliest guy says, “Mr. Brown, you pushed the light button. The microphone button is to the right.”
The idea, brothers and sisters, is that Mr. Brown loves Paddington. He came to talk to Paddington, but they are separated by this glass, and on the other side Paddington is with all these hoodlums.
In a normal world, Mr. Brown would not come to be with those hoodlums. But because of his love for Paddington, he comes.
It is a silly, silly example, but what we see is that the Tent of Meeting is a place where God comes to meet with people.
We were sinners, and He should not come among those who rejected Him. But because He loves us so much, He comes as close as He can.
The glory comes up to the face of the mirror, but there must be a veil there, because we are two separate substances: glory on one end, sinners on the other, separated by this veil.
But at the heart of the glory is the Tent of Meeting. Somehow in His heart, He thought, “I cannot be apart from them. I am going to draw as close as I can to draw near to them.”
Brothers and sisters, what was in Moses’ heart that would cause the Lord to come this way?
As Moses was talking to the Lord and the Lord would come by, we begin to see a hint of Moses’ heart. What would cause the Lord to come today and be among us?
There are three things that Moses had in his heart.
First, he told the Lord, “I really want to know You, because I do not know You as well as I should.”
If we asked ourselves, brothers and sisters, I think we would be honest with ourselves: we do not know Him as much as we could.
Moses came and said, “I would like to know Your ways, that I can know You.” His heart is just so simple.
There is a little cycle there that is interesting. He says, “I want to know Your ways that I may know You, that I may know Your ways.”
When we begin to know the Lord’s ways—why He does things the way He does, how He does things—we begin to know a little about His heart.
As we begin to know a little more about His heart, we begin to see a little more about His ways. Over time, we get to know a little more about Him.
This Tent of Meeting is not a one-time experience in which we learn everything. Our brother Mac was sharing about this. It is a learning in the moment that goes on for our entire journey.
Moses had this heart when he came: “I would like to know You, and I would like to know Your ways. I know that this is going to be a continuous process throughout all of our days.”
This is the first matter of our heart’s desire that would welcome the glory of the Lord into our midst.
It also speaks to the fact that, when we meet together, this has to be our corporate hope as well: that we might know Him together, and that we might know His ways more together.
Then Moses says, speaking corporately, “If You lead us forward, if You do not come with us, do not lead us out.”
If the Lord led us forward, He would obviously lead us in the right way. But what Moses was saying was, “We do not simply want to know the right way.”
“You could teach us the right way, and we could, as a group, as a people, go in the right direction. But if You do not come with us, do not lead us out.”
“We do not want to go in the right way if You are not with us.”
That is to say, in our hearts, what matters most is not directions. It is not the map.
What Moses was saying is, “You lead us out because You are with us. We do not want to go out without You.”
What we see here, brothers and sisters, is a heart that longs for the presence of God all the time—not just the Ten Commandments, not just the stones that were broken, because the Lord is going to restore those.
It is not just the directions. Moses was saying, “Lord, we need You to be with us, because the glory is in You, not in our correct behavior, our right way, or our outward testimony. The glory, Lord, is in You.”
So, “Do not lead us out if You are not going to be with us.”
The third thing Moses had was, “Show me Your glory,” which is the prayer of our hearts for this weekend.
Show me Your glory.
Brothers and sisters, it speaks to this very important point: we have to want this.
We have been to so many conferences where a group of responsible brothers gave a topic about what we should want. We come to the meeting and the messages are coming.
But it speaks to this core point: we must want this for ourselves. It does no good to come and just listen to teaching that we do not want, then leave here checking off a box that we did our duty.
But, brothers and sisters, Moses had a heart’s longing to see the glory of the Lord.
How many times have I gone through my life—even given messages about topics that I did not want? Brothers and sisters, this should not be.
What we see as the Shekinah glory came down into Moses’ company is these three things:
We see these three defining qualities of the glory coming among us. This was seen more academically in Moses’ three points, because he was speaking.
But then, if you turn around and see Joshua, Joshua was a young man. He probably was not as articulate, and he may not have had the comfort or liberty to speak at the time.
Moses is talking to the Lord. When Moses leaves, Joshua, who was supposed to be his attendant, might have been nowhere to be found.
Joshua did not leave the tent.
Joshua’s heart was bowed in the presence and the glory of the Lord. He was awestruck.
Brothers and sisters, this is a lesson to me and, hopefully, to us: we have to have hearts still willing to be awed by the glory of the Lord.
One of the great works of the world in these days is to make it so that we are no longer impressed with anything.
I watch my sons, and we are watching something on television. My youngest son will say, “Oh, the graphics are so unimpressive.”
To me, I am looking and thinking, “Wow, this is amazing.” But, brothers and sisters, all the technology now is hardening our hearts.
In Joshua, what we see is a heart that is soft, willing to be moved and awed by the presence of the Lord.
Might we still have that? If we have it, might we hold on to it for the treasure that it is: a childlike heart, willing to be moved by Him.
A couple of years ago, I do not know what came over me, but I went home. I actually think it was after a Harvey Cedars conference.
I went home and told the Lord, “I never want to shed a tear at the podium again. I am just not going to do it.”
You know what? I think the Lord did something. But I will tell you that I also realized that something was taken away.
I am not saying everyone is wired differently, but, brothers and sisters, to be willing to be moved by the Lord is still very important—to be awed by Him and to have that sense.
When we are in His presence, we need that sense of bowing, knowing that Someone is here, and that I really do not belong in His presence—that there is Someone of glory Who loves me.
Here we see in these two a heart that longed for the Lord’s glory. This is the first settling: the heart in which the glory is welcomed.
The second is just a number of chapters later, in Exodus 40. In Exodus 40, it is a different story of a different tent.
Moses finishes the tabernacle. It is an interesting story because the entirety of chapter 40 is about preparation.
The veil was prepared, the laver was prepared, the lampstands were prepared, the altar was prepared, the court was prepared—the outer court and the inner court—the anointing oil, and finally the ark.
Everything took accurate preparation, moment by moment, all of the necessary details.
When everything was finished, what we read in Exodus 40:34 was:
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting,
and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it,
and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle,
the sons of Israel would set out.But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day when it was taken up.
For throughout all their journeys, the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day,
and there was fire in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel.
It is a story. If you want to read Exodus 40, you will read all the details twice of what Moses and the people of God did to prepare for this meeting place.
It speaks of the preparation and offering of our hearts. It speaks of being prepared, as Brother Kong has reminded us, to be ready.
It speaks of the importance of preparation for the glory to come among us.
I love the story because every part of this tent was prepared in different ways by different people. In the end, it all came together. Then they brought the ark in, and the glory of the Lord came in. The glory of the Lord settled.
The Shekinah glory came in, and suddenly Moses could do nothing. He could not even go in, because the glass barrier of the prison was still there: the veil.
My oldest son is eighteen, and he went to college. When he came back the first time, I came home and realized that my wife had cleaned the whole house.
I sat there thinking, “This is clearly not for me.”
What I noticed and realized was that there was a sense that he was coming home.
That preparation in the house is really to tell the Lord, “This is Your home.”
We do all these things—the laver and the anointing, our responsibility to bring the showbread. There are so many details. If we read carefully about the anointing oil and how it needed to be made and prepared, we might think, “Why so much detail?”
Sometimes, when I was a teenager, I used to think, “Why do we have to do it this way? Is there not an easier way?”
What we realize is that, when Moses was preparing it in all the little things, he was not preparing the house for Moses.
He was preparing the house because he wanted the Lord to know, “This is Your home. We are going to get Your home ready the way we know You like it, so that You have a place here in our company.”
Brothers and sisters, when I visit someone’s house—I stayed with one of my good friends these last couple of days—no matter how good a friend, I cannot come into my friend’s house and start saying, “You should move that table out of here, and I will go get a table that I like and move it in.”
It is because it is not my house.
When Moses came into this tabernacle—and when any of us come into the house of God—what we realize is that this is not our house, even though the Lord lets us live here and, in many ways, it is our house.
But really, we are telling the Lord, “We are prepared. We are ready because You need to come home. This is Your home.”
All this preparation for the Shekinah glory to come had one message: Come home.
Yet, when He came, the veil—the glass, the prison glass—was still there.
This story also shares something else. Throughout all their days, whenever the cloud would pick up, they would get everything ready. Whenever the cloud would go, they would go. Whenever the cloud would stop, they would stop.
We remember in the Bible that there was always an order in which each tribe would be situated.
We remember the time when they were coming into the Midian desert and Balak was telling Balaam to go and curse them. Balaam was trying to do it for money.
He goes up to the mountain and looks out over the desert. He sees the glory, the cloud, and then he sees all the tribes camped as they should be around the cloud.
He could see it and said, “You are like trees around the water. You are all planted around the Lord.”
The glory, the Shekinah glory, helps all of us know where our place is, so that we are all aligned together.
No one feels that I should be here and you should not be there. So much in our day and age, when we are looking at ourselves and do not have a sense of the glory—and when the glory is only a memory in our hearts of something we saw ten or fifteen years ago—we begin to look at our own glory.
Boy, is that dangerous.
We begin to believe that we should have this particular place or that particular place. We do not have our eyes lifted up.
We do not see the glory that has always led us throughout all our generations: the pillar of cloud that has been so faithful throughout all their journeys.
The cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle.
This reminds us not only that we are preparing His house so that His glory can be among us, but also that the glory is how we see ourselves.
The glory gives us alignment. It reminds us that we are all together for Him.
We are all wired a little differently. The Lord is showing us different things of Him in different ways and at different times. But sometimes we focus too much on that.
We do not look up anymore. We are looking down at ourselves, and then we get all tangled up.
In this second settling, we realize that this has to be His home. Not only is it His home, but it is our home. When we are in this home and camped around this home, we know how we should be one to another.
This is really a wonderful thing, and so important.
The third example moves for a moment away from Moses. We turn back again to 1 Kings 8.
In 1 Kings 8, we come to a third settling, before we turn to the Lord Jesus.
It is when the temple is finished by Solomon. It is also in 2 Chronicles 7, but we will stay in 1 Kings.
The temple was finally finished after King David had it in his heart to build the temple and had prepared all the supplies. Solomon had finished it.
Then, in verse 10:
And it came about when the priests came from the holy place,
that the cloud filled the house of the Lord,
so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud;
for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.Then Solomon said, “The Lord has said that He would dwell in the thick cloud.”
Here we see that Solomon had finally finished a house, a physical building. It was no longer a tabernacle traveling through the land. This was a physical building in a particular place.
When he finished it, the glory of the Lord again came down into their presence. There was a heart that wanted Him and welcomed Him.
When this was done, Solomon offered up a prayer in verse 22. It tells us how we can live in the presence of God. It is really wonderful.
He says in verse 29:
That Thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day,
toward the place of which Thou hast said, “My name shall be there,”
to listen to the prayer which Thy servant shall pray toward this place.
What Solomon was saying to the Lord was, “This place where Your glory rests is the place where we can come and pray to You.” It was no longer a tent, but it was still the place of meeting.
Then, in verse 33:
When Your people Israel are defeated before an enemy because they have sinned against Thee—
Verse 34:
Hear Thou in heaven, and forgive.
Brothers and sisters, the Shekinah glory was a place where they could come to ask for forgiveness. The glory is the place where we come to repent.
This is interesting, because we also read in other places, like Mount Carmel, that when the offering was made, it was as though fire came down and consumed the offerings.
Sometimes we have a little sense of fear in coming into the glory of the Lord. But what Solomon was praying was, “This place where Your glory rests must be a place where Your people can come and ask for forgiveness.”
As we came to the conference this weekend, how many of us need to ask for forgiveness? Every one of us.
There is something in us. In fact, in this very chapter, it says, “Which of us has not sinned?” We have all sinned.
But the wonderful thing about this glory is that we are not cast away.
The glory was the place. They knew, even in the Old Testament, that because of the Lord’s love for us and His desire to meet with us, this would be a place where we would come to ask for forgiveness and repent.
Then, in verse 35, he prays concerning famine, when the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because we have sinned.
In verse 36, Solomon prays, “Hear in heaven, and forgive us.” Then he says, “Teach them the good way in which they should walk.”
Brothers and sisters, if there comes a time when our life is drying up—which we will share about a little tomorrow—when our life is drying up and we have no food, we feel like we are starving, and we are searching everywhere for that peace, the place of glory is a place to which we can come.
The Lord will hear our prayers, forgive us, and then teach us.
That means not just tell us, but teach us. The difference between telling and teaching is that something is changing in us so that we understand Him.
He is teaching us the good way in which we should walk. When we are lost, it is not only that we might be found, but that we might also find in Him the way in which we should go.
The glory is drawing near for us so that we can go on and go further.
But the last one is the best. Actually, that is just my opinion. You might like the second one.
The last one is in verse 44:
When Thy people go out to battle against their enemy,
by whatever way Thou shalt send them,
and they pray to the Lord toward the city which Thou hast chosen
and the house which I have built for Thy name,
then hear in heaven their prayer and their supplication,
and maintain their cause.
This means that you and I are doing His will and going out into danger for Him.
When the Lord’s glory is in our midst, the Lord gives us purpose—the purpose of His heart. We are given a reason to be.
Wherever we are, whatever we do, we have purpose. We know we are going out into danger, and there is going to be difficulty. We begin to faint, and we call back home, to where the glory is.
Brothers and sisters, the Lord will maintain the cause. He will remind us in our hearts of purpose, meaning, a journey, and an end.
How many of us in these days need the Lord to maintain our cause, to remind us again of the purpose for which we were made and how we can go further?
He repeats it again in verse 59, and it is even more wonderful. He says, “Hear their prayer,” and then says, “Maintain their cause as each day requires.”
What he was petitioning of the Lord in the presence of glory was not merely for a lifelong cause or the maintaining of their lifelong purpose.
He was praying, “With every day, every day, Lord, maintain their cause for that day, as that day requires.”
Sometimes we wake up in the morning and think it is just a day, just a moment. But we forget that in that day, in that moment, there is a cause.
There is a purpose for which we woke up and the Lord woke us up. There is a reason for which He is going to walk with us.
It is the presence of His glory among us that helps us see that He has given each one of us a purpose and that He will maintain our cause for that day.
What we see in this moment, where Solomon was praying for us, is that the Shekinah glory is an inspiration for every day. How much we need it.
If we could see Him, that inspiration would keep us going—not just lifelong, but for that day and for that moment.
Just like our brother Mac was sharing, for the moment He would maintain our cause.
This was something that the people of God could hold on to. As we are sharing about this verse, I remember that when I first read it, I thought, “What in the world did the brothers mean by this?”
But I am beginning to realize that it means for us today that He would sustain us. He would give us meaning, and in that meaning there might be some peace.
Brothers and sisters, is this not really a wonderful thing?
But no matter what, the people could not enter into the Holy of Holies. They could not do it.
Why? Because there was a veil.
If we go back and see all these moments where the Shekinah settled into their presence, we realize that 2 Corinthians 3:18, our theme verse, only works because of one word: unveiled.
It has to be unveiled.
In the Old Testament, for all the wonderful hints of what was coming, they could not really enter in fully because of this prison glass—talking through a microphone.
So what could be done about that?
We know that if we follow the radiotracer of glory through time, going back through eternity past, we would see that tracer highlighting God: Three in One.
Over time, if we followed that radiotracer forward, we would realize that at a moment in time there was an interesting bifurcation—not a break; that is the wrong word—but a bifurcation.
In the Lord Jesus, if we saw Him on earth, we would see that He glowed with that tracer. The glory was in Him, though it was hidden from us.
But little moments, something would sneak out and people would notice. You might be walking by and not notice something, but then He would say something and people would think, “Did you feel that? Did you feel that in your heart?”
There was something about Him that was a little different.
We remember that on the Mount of Transfiguration, for just a moment, that crack was opened and light burst forth.
Now, brothers and sisters, the Lord Jesus was a dwelling place for glory.
I remember when I was in college, I drove a little car. It was really little, and it was a stick shift. I took great pride in the fact that I could squeeze it into a space just a little larger than my little car.
One day I was trying to get home, and I had to use the restroom. I had to park in this little space. There was a car there, and I squeezed in, thinking to myself, “There is no way he is getting out.”
But I told myself that I would try to move it later. Of course, I forgot. The next day, I came out and there was a letter on my windshield.
On my car at the time, I had a little witness sign—a little fish. I had put it on my car.
This guy wrote a letter to me and basically tore Christianity to pieces. He mocked me, and he signed it, “A former,” and then put the little fish.
I read this and kept the letter. I think I even taped it on my wall as a form of punishment to myself.
I remember going home during the holiday and talking to my dad. I told him, “Dad, this happened, and I kept the letter. I really feel so terrible because I dragged the Lord’s name through the dirt.”
My dad said to me, “You know, the Lord is glory Himself. Nothing you do will change that.”
I remember that so vividly because it is true. The Lord Jesus was glory Himself.
Even though there were those who mocked Him, gave Him a fake reed to be His scepter, put a crown of thorns on His head, He was always glory Himself.
Of course, we remember that upon Him rested the presence of His Father.
Then, on that day when He was crucified, we remember that at twelve o’clock it was as though the sky closed up. It was all dark.
Around three o’clock, suddenly—we do not know how it happened, because no one could see—it was as though the Shekinah glory lifted off forever.
There had been that fellowship, and for that moment it lifted off of Him.
The only way we know that this separation happened was because of what He said. We could not see it. No one could describe it. But the Lord Jesus knew what happened.
We all remember what He said: “Why have You forsaken Me?”
In that moment, there was a separation because an amazing thing happened, as our brother shared this morning.
He loved us, and He had to deal with this veil, because there was no going forward otherwise.
In that moment, as He took all of our sins upon Himself and the glory—the presence of God—lifted off Him, the veil was torn in two.
Then, in our hearts, all of us who believe in Him, there was a cleansing and a winning-over of a sinful heart, so that there was a resting place of holy ground in our hearts.
We remember seven weeks later, when the followers of the Lord were together on the day of Pentecost, the wind and the fire came and settled on people.
Somehow, where there had been no holy ground before, suddenly there was a place won over by the precious blood of the Lamb.
There was a settling into our hearts of the Spirit of God.
All of a sudden, in earthen vessels there was deposited a treasure. It was an amazing work.
If we were able to follow that tracer and look, we would see that all of us—this broken people, coming with all our problems and mistakes and errors—had holy ground.
On that holy ground rested the presence of God and the glory.
What we see, brothers and sisters, is that the glory was meant and intended to dwell with us.
But because of our sin and our ways, a new way had to be made.
We are reminded in this story of glory of the heart that welcomes the Lord:
We are reminded that we go through all this preparation. We are made ready. We are ready in our hearts because this is Your home.
This is the place where we want Your glory to find its resting place forever.
We are reminded again that as we journey on this way, He is always with us. He has won a place in our hearts in the end, so that His presence can rest among His people.
From the Three in One to all of us messed-up people, and then, by the Lord’s mercy, tomorrow we might read a little about how those earthen vessels can be dealt with so that the glory might shine forth and we could be the light of the world.
In the end: a bride made ready.
Let us bow for one prayer.
Lord, we thank You, and we bow in Your presence. We thank You for all the wonderful things You are doing. We give You glory.
We thank You, Lord, for loving us so much. We love You, Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.