One of the great blessings that I had in my life, back in 1964 when I was saved, was that I was able to attend three Keswick conventions here in the United States—in 1964, 1965, and 1966.
It is such a joy to be here in these present days, because we are hearing ministry along that same sort of line—precious ministry. They have a regular routine they go through every day. The only one we do not do is Friday night, when you have a missionary calling, where we ask all the young people to stand up and go to China as missionaries.
Well, now all the Chinese missionaries have come here, so that problem is taken care of. But it is precious to be here and to share together in these times.
I would like us, once again, to begin in Isaiah 11, just a few verses: Isaiah 11:10-11.
Then in that day the nations will resort to the root of Jesse,
Who will stand as a signal for the peoples;
And His resting place will be glorious.Then it will happen in that day that the Lord
Will again recover the second time with His hand
The remnant of His people.
Then I would like for us to turn, if you can find it, to the book of Zechariah—one of the minor prophets during the return from the captivity—and read some verses in Zechariah 4. I know we are all very familiar with these wonderful verses.
Zechariah begins by being awakened by the Lord. Of course, he is awake, but you can be awake and not be awake.
So the angel who was speaking with me returned and roused me, as a man who is awakened from his sleep.
And he said to me, “What do you see?” And I said, “Well, I see, and behold, a lampstand all of gold, with its bowl on the top of it, and its seven lamps on it, with seven spouts belonging to each of the lamps which are on the top of it; and also two olive trees by it, one on the right side of the bowl and the other on the left side.”
Oh, the two hands, right? Then I said to the angel who was speaking with me, “What are these, my lord?” Then go to Zechariah 4:6.
This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, saying,
“Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says the Lord of hosts.“What are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become a plain;
And he will bring forth the top stone with shouts of, ‘Grace, grace to it!’”“The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house,
And his hands will finish it.
Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you.”
Oh, Lord, we want to see again Your mighty hands, even the hands of Zerubbabel—now just a picture of the hands of Christ—finishing the work with shouts of “Grace, grace.” So we look forward to this final recovery.
Lord, thank You for being with us during these times. We do ask that You would give us refreshing by Your Holy Spirit and understanding into some of these tremendous truths, yet mysteries, as we share the Word of God together. In Jesus’ precious name.
Now, the burden that I had was to share, as it were, the sovereign aspect of God’s recovery—the sovereign side, God’s side—because the brothers are talking about possessing possessions and all of that down on the earthbound side. Of course, you cannot separate one from the other.
But looking at the sovereign side here, the word that we have seen in these two passages is this: it is the sovereign hand of God that recovers—the sovereign hand of God. Both in Isaiah and in Zechariah, we see the hand of God at work.
Of course, it is always easiest for us, is it not, to see the sovereign hand of God in hindsight—starting at the end and looking backwards to realize what He has done. That is what Isaiah 11 records. It has come to that second recovery.
That recovery, we know, is the return of the Lord Jesus—the recovery when the millennium sets in. In that second and final recovery, we will look back and say, “Oh, we see the hand of the Lord. How He did this, we cannot imagine. What an amazing recovery!”
How did He scoop up all of these Gentiles from the nations? How did He scoop up and bring back all of those stubborn Jews, those who have been blinded? How did He gather it all back to this glorious place called Zion? Looking back, we say, “Wow, we see His hand.”
Of course, the problem is seeing His hand now. That is a different story, right?
So, looking back, I tried to put it this way. There are some theologians, actually from the early centuries of the church, who spoke about the right hand and the left hand of God.
The right hand of God, of course, is Jesus at the right hand of God—who is the right hand and who is going to complete this building work. But there is the left hand of God, which theologians have called different things. They also call the left hand of God the Holy Spirit.
He is also a hand to finish the work, a hand as loving and gentle as the right hand. But you cannot always see that hand working. This hand, when He shows up—Jesus appears—and we see the miracle. This other hand is working, but we do not always see it.
So, you see, in the recovery work there is that which becomes obvious to us, but a lot remains mysterious to us. How did we get from here to there?
We have been talking about the desire for all of us—and especially the burden in my heart for young people—to start to ascend Mount Zion, to start to go up onto higher ground.
Just like the disciples, we are all there at the foothills of Caesarea Philippi when they confess that Jesus is the Christ—a salvation confession. But it was Peter, James, and John who went further up the mountain with Jesus to the Mount of Transfiguration, saw the glory of Jesus, and understood something of God’s recovery work in a fuller way.
Now, all of us, when we get saved, start out down in the foothills of Mount Zion. But now we need to take that upward, higher ground. We need to begin to ascend, spiritually speaking, in our understanding.
Here in Zechariah 4, I read this because it shows the left hand working, does it not? You see the right hand of Zerubbabel rebuilding the house of God, and shouts of “Grace, grace.” We see that.
But then Zechariah says, “Wait, wait, wait. What are those two things there—the two olive trees and the oil going in? What is all that?” Oh, that is the left hand.
How is this house going to be restored and recovered? Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord.
This unseen force is as powerful as any force, because do not forget: the Holy Spirit is omnipotent—able to create, recreate, and recover. He is working behind the scenes even now.
As Isaiah boldly says, “Behold, the Lord is doing a new thing. Will you see it?” Right now, He is trying to get you up off the earthly land and up into Heaven’s tableland.
Because there we rejoice as we see the recovery work, because we see some of the mystery behind that recovery work.
As you know, when the children of Israel came back from captivity, what did they do? Well, they started building. They built an altar and sacrificed almost every animal they could find. Then they built the foundation.
Everything was cool until those bad boys—the governors of Samaria—saw what was going on and said, “Hey, King Ahasuerus, these guys are building something because they are going to rebel and take over and not be part of your kingdom.”
So Ahasuerus wrote an edict. Now, what happens when one of those guys writes an edict? He cannot change it. It is there for life. So he said, “All right, stop building.”
Of course, the brave children of Israel—just like brave Christians—stopped working, just like the world told them to do. They stopped working for a while until these two prophets came along.
This one guy was the young guy, so I call him Zeki. Zeki had been looking at that foundation for fifteen years. There was no work being done. He said, “What is going on? Do we not love God?”
Then God said, “Let Me show you what is going on. The left hand is working—not by might nor by power, but by the Holy Spirit.” So Zeki prophesied: “Okay, brothers and sisters, thus says the Lord: Build the house of God. The Lord will be with you, and Zerubbabel will finish building it. Sing, and we will all say, ‘Praise God!’”
Now, Haggai was the left hand in this whole thing. Zeki was young and very fervent, very positive. Haggai said, “Fellows, have you ever considered what has been going on in your life over these last fifteen years?”
“You know how you have wages and you put them in your pockets with holes? The wages fall down into your socks. Have you ever noticed that you are working twice as hard and your harvest is less and less?”
“If you have not noticed that you are having more problems with disease and opposition, and that the circumstances are almost overwhelming, may I suggest—consider this: I have caused the drought. I have caused the famine. By My left hand.”
“For fifteen years, you have been trying to work against My left hand. You cannot do it. It is because you have decided, ‘Well, we cannot build the house of God, so let us build some nice houses ourselves.’”
So they built paneled houses. They were working away: “Oh, we love the Lord. Oh, we cannot wait for the house of God to be built. That is why we came back.” But meanwhile, they were building their house there on Hollywood and Vine.
They were spending a lot of money and effort and everything on those paneled things. The Lord said, “Do you not see? You have been working against God.”
“Now go up on the hills. Stop going to Lumber Liquidators to get your wood. Get up on the mountain and get those trees that you need to build the house of God. It is time to get back to work.”
As soon as they got back to work, God said, “Do you see that? You thought perhaps this building of the house of God was Mickey Mouse work. Maybe it was not quite so vital. But I tell you what: the latter glory of this house will be greater than the former glory.”
“You just wait and see what I can do if the remnant will just climb the higher mountains, go, and start the building.” In other words, the question was obedience, was it not?
How much do you think the left hand of God needs to work in our lives before we finally obey what we know we should have done a long, long time ago?
Of course, the Holy Spirit was also working behind the scenes. Ahasuerus said, “Never in my life will they be able to build.” So the Holy Spirit said, “Shut him down.” He died rather young.
Along came another king, Darius. When the bad guys—the snitches from Samaria—said, “Hey, they are building again. Let us send another letter out to Babylon,” Darius looked it up and found out that Cyrus had given them permission to build.
So Darius sent word back: “Yes, you can build it. Let me send you ten million dollars just to help out.”
But you see, the whole left hand was working. Do not think God is not working behind the scenes in our lives. This is a wonderful story, even if it is just the backstory of the first recovery of the captive ones back to Zion.
Can you imagine what the left hand is doing secretly to restore us to that second Zion, that heavenly Jerusalem, that glorious abiding place with the Messiah at the center? This is wonderfully what we are seeing here.
This kind of thing has been going on throughout history. Our brothers have been sharing the story of the children of Israel going down to Egypt and coming out. There is so much backstory there, right? So much left hand that we cannot see.
Back fifty-one years ago, when I came to this place—and there was no air conditioning; it seems familiar somehow—I remember sitting next to Stephen at times. I heard him sing two songs that I had never heard anywhere else.
As it turned out, there was this man you heard about, Vern Fromke. One of the things he did was publish books. Actually, it was eight-and-a-half-by-eleven paper folded twice and stapled, with Scripture songs in it.
I remember Stephen and this company of crazy guys. These guys could not sing at all, but fortunately those five sisters they talked about—now, they could sing.
One of the songs I remember Stephen singing was this:
When God moveth, none can stay His hand.
When God moveth, none can stay His hand.
When God moveth in this land,
When God moveth, who can stand?
When God moveth, none can stay His hand.
I thought, “Wow, what a great song. I wonder who made that up.” But when you look into Vern Fromke’s little eight-and-a-half-by-eleven folded paper, you find out it was written from Scripture.
That is a Scripture from what book in the Bible? Got any idea? Of course you do. It is Daniel—your favorite book, right?
“None can stay His hand.” And who said it? Was it Daniel, or Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego—whatever his name was? No, it was Nebuchadnezzar.
After going crazy for seven years because he was proud of what he had built, Nebuchadnezzar came back to his senses and said that the Lord is the only God we should worship. When He moves, nobody can stay His hand.
Brothers and sisters, it is very vital that we see something of the revelation of what God was doing. That is why I was trying to share last time: the Holy Spirit is working all things together for good according to His purpose, to conform us to the image of His Son.
There is so much Holy Spirit work going on there. This Holy Spirit, this loving Spirit, this patient Spirit, this sensitive Spirit—He is working on us night and day, twenty-four-seven. That hand is at work.
We often see the right hand of God as we open the Scriptures. We see a promise of Jesus. We receive grace, mercy, and the love of Jesus. We press on in faith as we see the Lord Jesus ahead of us. But do not forget that there is this other hand working in this wonderful way.
When we are talking about recovery, and these names of different people are mentioned in the Bible, all of them came to a crisis where they had to grow from being “see-at-ers” to “see-throughers.”
I think we already heard the story about Joshua and Caleb. The other ten tribal leaders saw the giants and said, “Oh, giants.” Then they looked in the rearview mirror and they were little grasshoppers.
Joshua and Caleb saw through the giants to the Lord, who was bigger. You see? That is what I am saying. We have to step up on Mount Zion. We have to grow spiritually so that the Lord can reveal more of these things to us.
It comes through obedience to what you have seen by the grace of God. This enables the Lord to increase the capacity of your character to receive further, to see the situations for you to see through instead of merely see at.
You remember that wonderful verse from Habakkuk:
O Lord, I have heard the report about You and I fear.
O Lord, revive Your work in the midst of the years;
In the midst of the years make it known;
In wrath remember mercy.
Why was Habakkuk saying that? If you open the beginning of the prophet, you see him all confused. He is looking at the situation: the Chaldeans are charging down into Judah, and the children of Israel are compromised in sinful ways.
Habakkuk had a wrestling match with the Lord: “Lord, what is going on here? How can You allow those Chaldeans to come down into Judah? Surely those evil people—we know we are evil people, but they are eviler people! How can You allow them to do what they are doing?”
What did the Lord say to him? “All right, Habakkuk, listen. I am doing something right now that, if I told you, you would not believe.”
That is all He told him. So Habakkuk said, “Okay, I am getting up on the wall, the tower there, and I am going to wait until the Lord explains this to me.”
The Lord said, “Okay, now hang on a second. It is going to take you a little while to see the vision clearly. But when you get this vision, you are going to be able to help all the other saints who are going into captivity for the next seventy years.”
Then Habakkuk prayed this prayer. But do you know what Habakkuk 3:4 says?
His radiance is like the sunlight;
He has rays flashing from His hand,
And there is the hiding of His power.
Oh, the right hand, like the rays of the sun—you can see His right hand moving. Then he says, “There is the hiding of His power.” What is going on? You can see the sun arising in God’s right hand, but there is the hiding of His power.
With that hidden power, He is going to bring Babylon into its own judgment for the way it treats Judah. God is working, and He is going to bring back the children.
At the end, what does Habakkuk sing?
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength,
And He has made my feet like hinds’ feet,
And makes me walk on my high places.
Even though there are no cows in the barn, no olive trees harvesting, and no wheat in the fields, yet will I rejoice in the Lord. Yet will I rejoice.
You see, Habakkuk saw what was going on behind the scenes, and he fell down and worshiped his God. Brothers and sisters, we often do not see this left hand of God at work, but when we see it, we praise and worship Him: “Faithful God, faithful God.”
The brothers have already told us about Joseph: a slave to Potiphar, then a slave down in prison, then brought up to prime-minister status in Egypt. Still, he did not quite understand: “Why has all this happened to me? All I did was dream two dreams, for crying out loud.”
I am convinced he never understood until he saw his brothers. The Lord said, “That is why I did this, so that you could save your dad and your whole family. They meant it for evil. I meant it for good.”
Joseph saw it then, right? It was so obvious.
How about Ezekiel? God said, “I am going to destroy the temple.” Ezekiel said, “Oh my goodness.” Then God said, “What do you see, Ezekiel?” He said, “I see dry bones—dry bones, very dry; a lot of bones, very dry.”
God said, “Yes, watch this.” Life started coming in. The muscles joined, and the sinews—and I will leave David to give you the recipe. But the main thing was that the breath of God returned.
The Lord said, “Do you not understand? That is what Israel is right now, and they need recovery. Just a bunch of dry bones, just like Christian dry bones.”
Have you ever gone into a church that tries to worship and you feel like you are in a funeral? You just want to get out of there. You can feel the funeral pall come upon you. You get the cough of death.
What is going on here? They are singing, they are worshiping, but they are dead—until the Lord recovers the breath of the Holy Spirit.
That is what happened in the charismatic movement, brothers and sisters. There were so many faithful churches, just dead as a doornail. They sang songs, but there was no life.
I remember when I was still in seminary and this whole movement was just beginning. One of my friends said, “Hey, let us go to the Assembly of God church. I have never been to one. It is illegal for Baptists, is it not?”
We went on a Sunday afternoon, so we would not violate any rules. There was a man named C. M. Ward, a Pentecostal preacher, doing his radio show locally in Louisville, Kentucky.
We walked in a little late and had to sit in the very back row. They were singing, “When We All Get to Heaven.” As a good Baptist, I had sung that song a hundred times.
But these people sang the song like the bus was coming to take them away:
When we all get to Heaven—
Hallelujah!
I said, “Oof, I want to be on that bus.”
When we see the Lord moving, even by His Spirit, what a wonderful thing this is.
There is a lot of mystery to our life. For young Christians especially, that is when it gets confusing. You know that Jesus loves you, Jesus saves you, Jesus blesses you, Jesus feeds you, Jesus takes care of you, and all that stuff—which is true.
But then when it hits the fan and there are tough times, you say, “Oh, maybe I am not saved. Maybe I am out of the will of God. What did I do wrong, Lord?”
Then the world adds whatever it adds onto you, so that you get plowed right under. That is why we need to grow in our faith in the Lord Jesus, and in faith in His hand to do whatever recovering needs to be done.
All I can say is this: if you can figure out the ways of your God, your god is too small. You are in for a surprise.
Some people lose their faith because they learned about a god of prosperity. When things go wrong, they lose their faith. Or they learn about a god who heals one hundred percent of the time, and when something goes wrong, they lose their faith.
They do not understand that there is a whole mystery dimension. I mean, we are a mystery. How did you get here?
We have Brother Lucio speaking tomorrow. He came all the way from Brazil. How did he get here? Then we have David Ping coming all the way from the country of California—that foreign country. How did he get here?
It is a whole web of mystery. It is hard to define. Listen, I am a mystery. How did I get here?
At nineteen years old, I married a Tar Heel girl. Now, I am from New York. As a matter of fact, just like Abraham, I was led out of Babylon, because the name of the town where I grew up was Babylon, New York.
The Lord led me out of Babylon. I married this North Carolina girl. It is not Linda, the candy. No, this is Julia. That is my girl—sixty-two years now.
Do not clap. Clap for the Lord, because there is a lot more to the story.
I married Julia, and her parents found out. Oh boy. We just ran off and got married at nineteen. It is a good age to get married if you want to get into a lot of trouble.
You know what my biggest trouble was? I had to move down to North Carolina—that “hey y’all” land. I could not understand what they were saying.
No, no, no. I got into the fire, the iron furnace, because Julia did not tell me that her dad not only really loved the Lord, but was a well-known Baptist witness who went around bringing hundreds, indeed thousands, of people to the Lord Jesus Christ through his personal witnessing.
He was an anointed man of God, and I had to come down here and live under his influence for a long time.
The only thing he said to me was not, “Danny, you have got to become a Christian, you dirty rotten sinner. Why did you marry my daughter? We were hoping at least a Southern boy would marry her. A Yankee married my daughter!”
He did not say any of that. He said one thing: “Dana, welcome. You can go to school down here.”
So Julia and I continued our college down here. He said, “One thing, please: on Sunday, would you please come to Julia’s church, our church?” I said, “Yes, that is a good deal.”
Now, I was this New York swashbuckling guy. I drove an MG, smoked a pipe, and had my tweed suit on because I was a philosophy major—and not a Christian at all.
Under the pressure of the witness of my father-in-law, I only lasted a year before I got saved. That is a whole mystery story in itself.
But after I got saved, I will tell you more mysteries. My mother came down two months after I got saved for our college graduation. I talked to her and tried to explain what happened to me, how I got saved. I had to speak in tongues about it, you know what I mean? She had no idea what I was talking about.
She came down maybe Wednesday or Thursday. On Sunday, after the service—every Baptist church always gives an invitation—here comes my mom, the opera singer from New York, down to the front to accept Jesus.
I was blown away. I mean, I am just a little fish. My mom—big, big woman.
She went back home. The next thing I heard, two weeks later, my dad got saved. My dad was a psychiatrist, a Harvard graduate, a New York psychiatrist, and he got saved. He got down on his knees and accepted Jesus Christ.
I could not believe it. What kind of mystery is going on here?
My sister came down for the summer to one of those Keswick things I told you about. She got saved down here, which left the elder brother.
You know, I was the prodigal. I had an older brother. He would not dare come down South. He knew there must be a honey trap down here or something. There was something going on down there.
Do you know what my father-in-law did? He grabbed one of his old friends, Sam Harget, and they got a Piedmont flight up to New York. They rented a car, drove out to Babylon, witnessed to my brother, and he got saved.
They got back on the plane and came back home. That was my whole family in six months.
Now, there is a mystery there, but there is a hand of God working. I did not understand all that was going on. I do not know how I got here fifty-one years ago. I do know that the hand of God was working.
My dad told me a couple of years later, “Dana, here is what happened.”
My dad’s father was a famous professor of anatomy and physiology. My dad grew up for his first seven or eight years in Peking—Beijing. My grandfather was a professor at Peking Medical College.
He was a professor at Stanford who received a Rockefeller grant. The Rockefeller Foundation paid for his teaching in Peking, transportation, family—everything.
Then the Rockefeller group said, “Now we want you to go down to Bangkok, which was Siam back in those days, and we want you to start the medical school there.” So my grandfather went down there with a couple of other men and actually started the medical school in Bangkok.
My father could not live there in Bangkok. If you saw Bangkok in 1925, you would know why. So they sent him off to Baguio City in the Philippines, to an Anglican boys’ school, where my father was all alone for two years.
Every day they had a chapel service, as Anglicans are wont to do, and the boys would have to read the various lectionary readings.
My dad said, “I was there one day without believing in God, without knowing God. My father was an atheist, a total scientific atheist. They got to a portion, and something happened.”
Restore to me the joy of Thy salvation,
And take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.
My dad said that as a twelve-year-old boy, or whatever he was, he teared up and said, “God, take not Your Holy Spirit from me.”
Forty years later, he got saved. Now that is the left hand of God. That is how long God will work to do what He is going to do.
That He recovered my whole family is by the mercy of God. But there was a promise way in the background that I did not know anything about: “Take not Your Holy Spirit from me.”
Blessed is the man who steps up high enough into Mount Zion to where he can see the hand of God moving, as God explains what He is doing to him.
What I want to share on tonight is something a little higher up the mountain. You might know you are saved down here, and you might begin to see the hand right here, but you have got to go a little higher up Mount Zion to know something I want to speak about tonight.
It is a deeper mystery. Behind the recovery, there is a deep mystery: God’s heart cry for Zion.
Now, I am sorry if you have a particular doctrine that has made God impersonal, because you will never see this until you understand that God has deep, deep emotions.
We need to see what it was that caused Him to rend the heavens and send down His Son—to reveal His heart to us—that He desired mercy and not judgment upon people deserving of judgment.
God’s heart is so strong for this thing called Zion. We must talk a little bit about Zion tomorrow.
Indeed, God is love. You know that. God sets His hands upon us. But we also know that judgment is coming. Why is that? Because God is righteous. God is holy. God is love. God is truth.
That which stands with Him in glory on Mount Zion must be recovered: righteousness, holiness, love, and truth.
There is a lot of recovery work when we get saved. We are broken sinners, and when we get saved, we are still broken. So many things—sins, traumatic things, the flesh, all these things—the recovery work to bring us to Zion is immense. But only God can do it.
When we look at Isaiah 11, it is part of something much bigger. All Bible teachers say that if you read Isaiah long enough, you will see that Isaiah actually has two foci.
One is the Messiah, the coming Messiah. Isaiah is called the Old Testament evangelist because he prophesies so often of this Immanuel and this Messiah.
But the other focus is Zion. You cannot read the latter part of Isaiah without realizing that Zion is very much in the heart of God—that God wants us to understand this and desire this.
You can see immediately the parallel with the New Testament, because the New Testament has two foci: the Lord Jesus and His church.
It is the same idea that we can see here. Understanding Zion helps us understand what God is doing as He is recovering the church.
In Hebrews 12:22, the writer says:
But you have come to Mount Zion
And to the city of the living God,
The heavenly Jerusalem,
And to innumerable angels in festal gathering.
Hebrews is God’s word, first of all, to recover Jewish Christians. Many Jews got saved. They believed in Jesus as the Messiah, that He died and rose again.
But these Jewish Christians were about to go through the trauma of their culture and life. The writer to the Hebrews writes just a few years before the whole city of Jerusalem is destroyed, the whole sacrificial system is destroyed, the house of God is destroyed, and their whole faith is shaken.
Around 68 AD, this apostle to these Jewish Christians wants to recover them. They had first believed in Jesus and, by the grace of God, had found themselves in Mount Zion. “You have come to Mount Zion.” But they had lost that.
In the beginning, they were willing to sacrifice their homes, be imprisoned, and stand for their faith. But time had gone by. Now times were tough, and they began to wonder, “Gee, my family is against me. My culture is against me.”
“Maybe if I kind of slide back in, and I am a Christian but still do the sacrifices and go down to the temple and do all that, maybe then they will stop persecuting me.”
The writer of Hebrews is trying to help them believe. He says, “Why have you fallen backwards? Why are you trembling again at the foot of Mount Sinai?”
“How can you possibly run the race looking unto Jesus when you are weighed down with the laws of Mount Sinai? Get out of Mount Sinai. You have already come to Mount Zion, and it is time for you to stand in Mount Zion.”
“You are able to enter the throne of grace upon Mount Zion, where the Lord will give you mercy and grace to help in anything that you have. That is where you belong—not down there at the bottom of the mountain by the law, trembling, but up there where you have confidence.”
You know the Lord, and He listens to your need and understands you. You are supposed to be following the new Apostle and High Priest. Moses was good in his day. The high priest was good in his day. But now you have the Apostle and High Priest.
It is time to start living higher up on the mountain before Judaism falls apart like a house of cards.
Paul also uses the same exhortation as he speaks from the example of the children of Israel to the Christians in Corinth. In 1 Corinthians 10:11, he says:
Now these things happened to them as an example,
And they were written for our instruction,
Upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
Paul is applying the children of Israel’s time in the wilderness to where the Corinthians were. The Corinthians were saved, but they were down at the bottom of the mountain.
They had been saved by the Passover Lamb, and as Paul says, they had also gone through the baptismal waters of the Red Sea. They had been saved, baptized, and come out of Egypt.
But they were in the wilderness, circling. They were circling because, as a unit, they could not make it in. Corinthians, you cannot make further progress because you need to be stripped of the flesh that is standing in the way of your spiritual growth.
The left hand of God lovingly has to bring our flesh to the cross. Paul was saying, “You are going to wander in the wilderness, go back to Jordan, then circle back around and go back to Jordan, until you realize that going through Jordan is to be crucified with Christ.”
“To come out into the promised land is to live in Him now in resurrection life.”
How many Christians get to that Jordan and cannot get through? They are still trusting in their flesh and its power. They know Galatians 2:20—“I have been crucified with Christ”—but their life does not show that they understand it.
We have the most precious, loving left hand of God, the Holy Spirit, who has to bring us to the end of ourselves. It is better if we come willingly, but most of us come begging and scratching all the way.
Paul says, “I give up. I cannot do it. This body of death is killing me.” The Lord says, “You have been crucified. That body of flesh is dead, and you are raised to newness of life through Jesus Christ.”
“Now live by the Holy Spirit. You live in Christ now. You do not live over on that other side in the wilderness. Get through Jordan and get up there into the promised land.”
Paul is telling the Corinthians that they need to get there. There is the rest of God—not in the wilderness, but in the land of Christ.
The idea is for them to begin to feed on the milk and honey of Christ and the land, and all of those wonderful things; to begin to possess their possessions, as our brothers are preaching to us from Joshua.
That is the picture of the church. Through history, in your personal life, and even more in our corporate life, stage by stage He recovers us. As we decrease and Christ increases, our fellowships grow.
I hope you are in a body of Christ where there is spiritual ascension and growth. I hope they have made it, as a whole, at least through Jordan, to know the real life of Christ in the assembly when they get together.
But even there it does not stop. Once we get into the land and taste the milk and honey and blessing, we find cities that we did not build but now own. We find vineyards that we did not plant but now harvest.
Is it not blessed to be blessed by Jesus and be saved? Everybody who gets saved loves Jesus one hundred percent—but for totally selfish reasons. And that is okay.
I was so glad when I got saved. My sins were forgiven. I felt a whole new life ahead of me. It is wonderful to begin like that.
We begin in those blessings, but after a while, what should be happening? As we grow in thanksgiving and praise to the Lord, maybe it dawns on us at some point: “I wonder what the Lord wants.”
That is what should have happened. But they never came to a resting place, even when they got into the land. Why? Because the Lord says, “Until I have My resting place in Zion, you do not have rest.”
“When I rest, you rest. When I rest, you rest from your enemies.”
But no, no, no. They got in the land, and for four hundred years everybody did what was right in his own eyes. They had no king.
They went up and down like a yo-yo. Sometimes it was a great country. Sometimes it was divided and weak. Every time they got weak, foreign groups came in, invaded Israel, and took away things and flocks. Sometimes they were under deep oppression.
Then they cried out and were saved—up and down, up and down, up and down—because everybody did what was right in his own eyes.
Which is what we do in the United States, right? That should be the name of the church: “I Do Whatever I Want Christian Church.”
“Do not you try to discipline me. Do not bring any correction, because I can find another church where I can do whatever I want.”
How are we going to grow like that? Even in the promised land of Christ, how are we going to grow?
That makes it really a mysterious question: how could a shepherd boy, looking under the stars, ever begin to say, “You know, I think God wants something”?
David began to think on Zion and that it was on the Lord’s heart. I do not know if it formed itself in a cogent way, but somehow he looked up at the stars and said, “We are in Israel here, but there is something bigger that is supposed to be happening here.”
Somehow David began to find the Lord’s heart for Zion. Who else among the children of Israel even thought that God might want a resting place?
It was in the Scriptures. In Deuteronomy, it says, “When I get into the land and you settle all your possessions, build Me My home in My designated place.”
They got into the land, but for four hundred years they forgot about finding God His place, did they not? Until David came along.
My goodness, what a story about Zion. What a strange story about Zion. There is so much mystery regarding Zion, starting with Melchizedek back in Abraham’s day.
At fifteen years old, David slays Goliath with his sling, cuts off Goliath’s head, and takes it to Jerusalem. What? But that is what it says in 1 Samuel 17:54.
Then David took the Philistine’s head and brought it to Jerusalem.
When he did that, actually there was no Jerusalem. This is a writer looking back. Back in those days it was Jebus, the city built on an outcropping of rock that came up from some volcanic eruption of the past, or whatever.
Because it stuck out, it was a hard place to overtake. A little city up there, Jebus, went, “Ha, ha, you can never get us because we live way up here.” They were impenetrable until David took things in hand.
Was David sensing something there? Why would he drop Goliath’s head off outside Jerusalem? Was he sensing God’s heart twenty years before he became king, when he went and took Zion for God’s city?
Think about that. Many of you have instincts of things that please the Lord, things that He wants. You have instincts that have not been uttered. Words have not been formed, but there is something in you that wants and desires something more. You just cannot quite shape it.
David was in this kind of thing. Some people say it is possible that Golgotha, the place of the skull, was where Goliath’s head was buried outside Jerusalem—the place where Jesus crushed the skull at Calvary.
There is a lot of mystery in Zion. I do not know about all these things.
Zion became more and more significant. It was significant in Israel because of two things: on Zion was David’s throne and God’s throne.
That is exactly what God wants. It makes Him so happy. His throne is there and David’s throne is there. His throne is there, and the Messiah is from the Son of David. I think you get the picture of why He loves Zion so much.
David had to learn through discipline, right? If you are going to bring the throne of God up—which is the ark—you have to do it the right way. He did not do it the right way at first.
But immediately after he became king of all the tribes, he said, “Okay, we have got to take Zion.” People said, “What? No, Hebron is much better.” David said, “No, this is the city. We have got to take Zion, that outcropping right over there.”
How did he know? One of his men went up through the water tunnel, got up there, opened the city gates, and they took over the city.
Eventually David took the ark with him:
Lift up your heads, O gates,
And be lifted up, O ancient doors,
That the King of glory may come in.Who is the King of glory?
The Lord of hosts,
He is the King of glory.
The King of glory came into Zion. From that moment on, when David went out to fight, God magnified David and his victories because He found a resting place.
God wants that resting place. It was a holy place. David found a secret place where he could go, a resting place, an inquiring place—the place he spoke about so often in his psalms.
David found a resting place because he found God’s resting place.
Then Solomon came along, and they built the city larger. Not just Mount Zion now; they added two more mountains—Mount Moriah and Mount Ophel. It was a much bigger city.
They built the temple on Mount Moriah and Solomon’s palace. It is all recorded there. It was a bigger palace than Trump is going to have after he leaves the presidency. Huge palace he had.
They had such prosperity in Jerusalem. The temple was so beautiful. Everything was so wonderful. And Zion got pushed into the background a little bit.
They moved God out of Zion and took Him into the temple. A good spot to be, of course. Zion is Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is Zion. They are interchangeable—but are they interchangeable?
They are both a physical place, but one has spiritual import to it, and the other is a physical place: Jerusalem.
As Jerusalem grew, it actually took years to rediscover God’s heart for Zion.
They had to split into two kingdoms. They had to commit idolatry. They had to be corrupted as a people. They had to go into captivity, and Jerusalem and its temple had to be destroyed.
Then you began to hear the cry of a remnant for Zion.
Maybe it was because when they were thrown into captivity in Babylon, their captors said, “Sing us those happy songs of Zion. ‘We’re marching to Zion.’ Come on, sing those songs.”
They hated doing that. They hung their harps upon the willow trees because, “How can we sing Zion songs when we are captive here?”
“Oh, we long for Zion. We wish we could be in Zion. Where is Zion? We need Zion. Why did we ever leave Zion?”
Through some psalmists and prophets, they began to see Zion: “Zion, my heartbeat. Zion, my heartbeat.” They began to understand it.
The cry for recovery of Zion was in God’s heart, but unheard—until, in difficult times, some of that remnant began to hear God’s cry for Zion.
Do you hear what I am saying? Do you think God has a cry in His heart? What is it—that everybody would be happy, that we would live in a utopia, and that the Dow would go up over sixty thousand? No.
What is God’s heart? “Just give Me Zion. Give Me My house with My people, with My glory. That is what I want.”
People could not hear that in the good times. It took the tough times for the left hand of God to squeeze them until they began to long for Zion.
We see in the Scriptures that God’s eternal love for Zion began to be heard in the prayers and psalms of the people.
Let us look at Psalm 48. It was written by somebody who understood God’s heart.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,
In the city of our God, His holy mountain.Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth,
Is Mount Zion in the far north,
The city of the great King.God, in her palaces,
Has made Himself known as a stronghold.
If we let God into those palaces—oh, yes.
Psalm 48:12 says:
Walk about Zion, and go around her;
Count her towers.
Consider her ramparts;
Go through her palaces,
That you may tell it to the next generation.
Oh, that the next generation knew how beautiful Mount Zion is.
For such is God,
Our God forever and ever;
He will guide us until death.
Wait a minute. He is talking about Zion. No, he is talking about God. Wait, he is talking about Zion. No, he is talking about God. There is something there.
Now, if you are looking for Zion, you can look at Isaiah and the other prophets. But nowhere do you find Zion exalted to the place where God’s heart is as in the Psalms of Ascent.
Those fifteen songs are all about, “Let us go up to Zion. Let us get up where we belong. Let us be recovered to Zion. This is God’s heart. This is our heart. We see it.”
Let me read Psalm 132:8, 13-14:
Arise, O Lord, to Your resting place,
You and the ark of Your strength.For the Lord has chosen Zion;
He has desired it for His habitation.“This is My resting place forever;
Here I will dwell, for I have desired it.”
Listen to that psalm and realize the tragedy of which he is speaking. Why? Because there was no ark. It was lost in the captivity.
This writer is pleading. I know we can only put so much Jewish rabbinical tradition into this, but do you know why Jewish rabbis say that the remnant went back? They went back not only out of love for God, but to build the house of God.
Why? Because they believed—hoped against hope—that once they built the house of God, somehow they would find the ark, and the Shekinah glory would return.
According to the Jewish rabbis, the Shekinah glory was a felt, tangible experience that anyone had when they came to Jerusalem and Zion before the captivity.
They say that the Shekinah glory remained on Zion until it was destroyed by Babylon. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine walking into somewhere and saying, “Wow, what is that I feel? There is something here. There is something holy here. There is a presence here, even though it is unseen.”
That is why the children would sing, “We rejoice. Let us go up to Zion, the city of our God. There is oil and wine. There is food in Zion. There are happy times in Zion. Let us go.”
They would sing the songs as they ascended up to Zion, remembering the times when it was a feast.
We do not know who wrote Psalm 132, but we know something. This brother may have been one of the older brothers, one of the older Levites, one of the older songwriters, who remembered a little bit what it was like to touch the Shekinah glory.
The remnant built the house of God. They fixed it up, adorned it, put the gold in it, and had everything in it except, in the Holy of Holies, they did not have the ark.
They did not know that the ark was in Washington, D.C., in a big warehouse.
They even put the altar of incense in the Holy of Holies, trying to say, “Now, God, come down and be here.” But there was no Shekinah glory.
But the Shekinah glory came when Jesus walked into that temple. Suddenly, everybody turned out, children began to worship, and people started to be healed. “What is going on here?”
They felt the Shekinah glory when Jesus came in there. That is His resting place, although He was kicked out.
One of those older brothers prayed this prayer, which was given back in Numbers when the ark was going through the wilderness. When the clouds stopped moving, they would blow the trumpet and say:
Arise, O Lord, to Your resting place,
You and the ark of Your strength.
That is Psalm 132:8. They were hoping. They were praying that something would happen. Oh, what a heart these people had.
Is it not amazing how it took the captivity for the left hand of God, by the Holy Spirit, to surface and create that remnant cry: “Oh, God, for Zion. More than anything else, for Zion, Lord, we pray.”
That desire has always been there, but it is unheard by most of His people. He will answer our cry as soon as He hears us requesting Zion.
Recovery happens when two cries meet.
Have you ever cried for Zion? Not exactly that way.
As I travel around many different places, I go to many fellowships. Occasionally, I go to a prayer meeting where somebody is weeping for Zion, and I just start to cry.
It is hard to explain. They are weeping for the church, but no—they are weeping for something more than just a church. Jerusalem is the church, but Zion is something special.
Every one of these prayer meetings is in the church. They are praying about church things. But here is somebody with such a heart who says, “God, we want Your presence. We want what glorifies You. We want what You desire. What do You want, Lord?”
Most people never ask that question. Sometimes we pray for revival because things are so tough. You cannot blame us. We desperately need revival.
But who says, “God, what is on Your heart? What do You want? How can we be Your resting place?”
God just says, “Can you be My resting place? Can I be at home with you? Can I share My heart with you?”
God has to cover His heart, because we would abuse it. But of course, God has such a heart for Zion.
Our heart in these last days is this: Could Zion be glorified again? Can glory come back to Zion?
Here is another little psalm. Let us read Psalm 87:1-2:
His foundation is in the holy mountains.
The Lord loves the gates of Zion
More than all the dwelling places of Jacob.Glorious things are spoken of you,
O city of God.
Think about that—Selah.
Psalm 87:5 says:
But of Zion it will be said,
“This one and that one were born in her”;
And the Most High Himself will establish her.
Who found this heart? Who heard this secret? “The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the tents of Jacob.”
Of course, you know who it was. One of the sons of Korah. How did that happen?
The sons of Korah were a Levitical tribe that had been ejected from Levitical service for several hundred years because, back in the days of Moses, their father Korah rebelled and was swallowed in the ground.
Can you imagine being a Levite and being unemployed? A Levite who was supposed to take part in the care of the tabernacle and then the temple, and you have been cursed?
Can you imagine how the other Levites thought about you? I suppose they farmed and did various things. They were under that curse for centuries.
But their hearts were broken—broken. They could not be part of the ministry there in the temple. Because of that, their hearts began to yearn for Zion. Their hearts began to long for Zion.
Then one day, we understand or imagine, David suddenly heard a psalm and said, “Wait a minute, who wrote that song?” They said, “Why, one of the sons of Korah.”
“They are always longing for Zion. They always have a heart for Zion. They always wish they could be there.” David said, “Well, they are going to be here from now on.”
He set them up as one of the courses of worship in the house of God because their songs were so precious.
Why does God love Zion above all else? That sounds very prejudicial today, right? Every Christian in every tent should receive a participation trophy.
No matter if you are good or bad, carnal or spiritual, everybody says, “God loves us all.” And He does. He loves every child of God, whether carnal, disobedient, or whatever. He is going to work on them by His left hand, you better believe it.
But why does He love the gates of Zion more than all those other tents? Because His heart can only find rest there.
For God’s heart to find rest is a place of glory. Those privileged to be dwelling there are respected by those around them because they say, “Wow, there is something special about those who have been born there in Zion.”
Oh, how the sons of Korah yearned and yearned for Zion.
I do not know what your circumstances are. I just want to say this: if you have ever found or attended an assembly in Zion, by His mercy, you would remember it and even miss it today.
There are so many fellowships represented here, and I do not want to get in trouble. But if you walk into the house of God and can sense that God is at home, it is unforgettable.
That was the honey pot that got me sucked into the Richmond Family Conference way back fifty-one years ago. When I came here, I found home.
There are other places where there is more slapdash stuff going on—music and all kinds of things. But these songs we sing each night are pretty simple songs, are they not?
They are not the complicated songs that sometimes get thrown out today. Pretty simple songs, for the most part. But, boy, the way you guys sing them, full of the Spirit—it is almost like that Assembly of God bus. Folks are really worshiping the Lord.
If you have had to, by circumstances, settle for some other tent where you meet with brothers and sisters, then your heart probably is yearning for what you once tasted, just like those old saints who returned from captivity.
The sons of Korah have so many songs. You know this one:
For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside.
I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God
Than dwell in the tents of wickedness.For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
The Lord gives grace and glory;
No good thing does He withhold
From those who walk uprightly.
And the highways to Your city run through my heart. That is a son of Korah. Do the highways to Zion run through your heart?
I hope you understand a little bit of what I am trying to say tonight. There is higher ground to be taken, brothers and sisters, and the Lord desires His dear children to enter in.
One more passage: this one is from a prophet, not a psalmist. It is old Zeki again—the one who said, “Not by might nor by power.”
In Zechariah 8, Zechariah prophesies:
Then the word of the Lord of hosts came, saying,
“Thus says the Lord of hosts,
I am exceedingly jealous for Zion,
Yes, with great wrath I am jealous for her.”Thus says the Lord,
“I will return to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.
Then Jerusalem will be called the City of Truth,
And the mountain of the Lord of hosts will be called the Holy Mountain.”
This is God. What He has to put up with, He is going to recover. But what He desires—do you sense it sometimes? “I am exceedingly jealous for Zion,” says the Lord of hosts.
God is not looking for a place up on a mountain. He is not looking for a physical building or a physical place, even Mount Zion physically in Jerusalem.
What He is looking for is what He says right there: “I want you to be called the City of Truth, because truth dwells among you. I want you to be a holy mountain.”
Oh, may the sanctifying Holy Spirit pierce our hearts with the repentance that would be necessary for God to have His holy mountain.
This young prophet cried out. We notice, as we look at these three—the sons of Korah, the older post-exilic writer, and here is Zechariah—something important.
These people were not just chosen and then God revealed something to them. No. They had to have the character in their hearts to be able to hear the heart of God.
It is even more than seeing the hand of God. Often, perhaps looking back, we can see the hand of God. But this is an even higher step.
Can you feel the heart of God? What a place to be. It breaks your heart. It breaks your heart.
You feel the heart of God and sense the love that He has for His children. It is overwhelming.
When I see young people—how many kids do we have going out in the morning? Seventy-five kids? I want every one of them that comes here. I do not want them scattered out over the earth because they have never felt the heart for Zion and the assembly of the saints.
What a tremendous opportunity this is. But, oh, brothers and sisters, we are going to have to talk next time about things perhaps hard to understand.
God is waiting for intercessors who get up on the walls of Jerusalem and cry until God gets His Zion.
We will talk about it more next time, but in Isaiah 62:1—Lance opened my eyes to this—he says:
For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
And for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet,
Until her righteousness goes forth like brightness,
And her salvation like a torch that is burning.
When you look at the context, you see that is not Isaiah. That is the Messiah.
“I will not keep silent until Zion is full of glory.”
Then in Isaiah 62:6-7, He speaks to us:
On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen;
All day and all night they will never keep silent.
You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves;
And give Him no rest until He establishes
And makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
These intercessors are there on the walls, praying for glory to come back to Zion. They shall be called Hephzibah.
I love that word: Hephzibah. Anybody name your kid Hephzibah? Wonderful name. “My delight is in her.”
What a name—for God to say, “Dear sister, you are Hephzibah. My delight is in you.”
And Beulah—Beulah. Lance always says things differently. You read it and it says “Beulah.” We all know Beulah means “married,” but not Lance, who says, “Be-oo-lah.”
Married at the feast—the Messiah and His bride. That is Zion right there.
The Lord is doing a recovery work. It is a profound work, a sovereign work, and a mysterious work in many ways.
But the higher you climb up the mountain, the more you begin to see these precious things, worth more than gold: God’s heart for Zion.
Lord, we want to pray tonight. We cannot appeal to hearts or force hearts to love what God loves. We know our loves are still so selfish and so worldly.
Oh, Lord, we ask that somehow we might climb high enough to love You so much that we might say, “Lord, how could we please You?”
How, in our assemblies, can we be more pleasing to You? What is it that You want us to cry out for in these last days?
Oh, Lord, we pray that people tonight will be apprehended by seeing just a glimpse of the amazing, loving heart of God. We pray in Jesus’ name.