2 Chro No.3 The Glory of God's Presence

I'm going to play a song for you, and I'm going to ask you to sing along with me. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for your presence and for all that you've done for us. A knowledge that you love us and have a concern for each one of us.

We do want to proclaim your majesty. We do want to make your praise glorious. Help us as we feel our way through this service to increasingly sense that God is here, and that to bless us with the Spirit's power.

In the name of Jesus, Amen. The second book of Chronicles and chapter 5. We're going to read the whole chapter, but not now. We're just going to read the last few verses.

Talks about worship. Hundreds of years before Jesus was alive. Talks about instruments that were used in worship.

Let's read from verse 13, shall we? Second Chronicles chapter 5. Some are still hunting it out down here. And verse 13 together. Alright? 1, 2, 3. The trumpeters and singers joined in unison as with one voice to give praise and thanks to the Lord.

Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments. They raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang, He is good, His love endures forever. Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud.

And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud. For the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God. Right.

Let's go. Let's read together then. This lovely chapter that speaks about God's presence.

Which we all want to feel more and more in our lives. 2 Chronicles 5. When all the work Solomon had done for the temple of the Lord was finished. He brought in the things his father David had dedicated.

The silver and gold and all the furnishings. And he placed them in the treasuries of God's temple. Then Solomon summoned to Jerusalem the elders of Israel.

All the heads of the tribes and the chiefs of the Israelite families. To bring up the ark of the Lord's covenant from Zion, the city of David. And all the men of Israel came together to the king.

At the time of the festival in the seventh month. When all the elders of Israel had arrived. The Levites took up the ark.

And they brought up the ark and the tent of meeting. And all the sacred furnishings in it. The priests who were Levites carried them up.

And King Solomon and the entire assembly of Israel. That had gathered about him were before the ark. Sacrificing so many sheep and cattle.

That they could not be recorded or counted. The priests then brought the ark of the Lord's covenant. To its place in the inner sanctuary of the temple.

The most holy place. And put it beneath the wings of the cherubim. The cherubim spread their wings over the place of the ark.

And covered the ark and its carrying poles. These poles were so long. That their ends extending from the ark.

Could be seen from in front of the inner sanctuary. But not from outside the holy place. And they are still there today.

There was nothing in the ark. Except the two tablets that Moses had placed in it. At Horeb.

Where the Lord made a covenant with the Israelites. After they came out of Egypt. The priests then withdrew from the holy place.

All the priests who were there. Had consecrated themselves. Regardless of their divisions.

All the Levites who were musicians. Esau, Haman, Jethuthan. And their sons and relatives.

Stood on the east side of the altar. Dressed in fine linen. And playing cymbals, harps and lyres.

They were accompanied by 120 priests sounding trumpets. The trumpeters and singers joined in unison. As with one voice to give praise and thanks to the Lord.

Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments. They raised their voices in praise to the Lord. And sang.

He is good. His love endures forever. Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud.

And the priests could not perform their service. Because of the cloud. For the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God.

Well isn't that exciting. Nothing miserable about going to church. In those days.

Chronicles in chapter 5. 2 Chronicles in chapter 5. Where we're going to be talking about the presence of God. The glory of God. Really we set the scene last week.

When we were thinking about the grandeur. And the majesty of God. If I was to say the name Solomon to you.

And you're reasonably versed in Scripture. The word that would be at the back of your mind. Would be wisdom.

Because he was known as the wisest man in the world in his time. Another aspect of his life that we touched on. In our first study from this book.

Was the worship that Solomon wanted to offer to the Lord. And then as one of the consequent blessings. Because he asked for wisdom.

The Lord gave him great wealth. But perhaps the second most important thing. For which Solomon is held in repute in biblical history.

Is not only his wisdom. But his work. And his work was.

His life's work was. The erection of what was in effect. The most remarkable wonder of the ancient world.

I refer to the construction of the temple. And it's to that that our chronicler. Our historian refers.

When in the first verse of this fifth chapter. He says. When all the work Solomon had done.

For the temple of the Lord was finished. Then he brought in all the furnishings. And so on and so forth.

So in this fifth chapter. Leading on into the sixth also. You get this marvelous rehearsal.

Of what happened in Old Testament times. When something was dedicated to the Lord. And you get this grand description.

Of hundreds, thousands of people coming together. Enjoying the Lord. And the thing that strikes as of great importance.

At least for our purposes today. Are the verses right to the end of the chapter. When in the thirteenth and half way through.

We read. The temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud. And on to the fourteenth verse.

And the priests could not perform their services. Because of the cloud. For the glory of the Lord filled the temple.

The glory of the Lord filled the temple. Yet you know. From what we've discovered in earlier teaching.

Solomon himself has realized. That the presence of God is so great. It cannot be confined to any one building.

Yet we have this instance of. God localizing his presence in this temple. Even though because he is omnipotent.

Omnipresent. He's still aware of what is going on elsewhere in the world. But there's a very special sense.

In which God draws near to the Israelites. He lets his presence and his glory be known. And it's a tangible visible thing.

Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud. Then the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God. And I want to talk to you about the presence of the Lord.

You see, in the Old Testament you get many references. Don't you? To God coming very close to the people. Special leaders were signaled out.

As being those who would have this remarkable privilege. In the 33rd chapter of the book of Exodus. We have the spotlight placed upon Moses.

We're told about his spiritual disciplines. What he used to do early in the morning. And in the 7th verse we are told.

That Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp. Some distance away. Calling it the tent of meeting.

Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting. Outside the camp. And whenever Moses went out to the temple.

All the people rose. And stood at the entrance to their tents. Watching Moses until he entered the tent.

As Moses went into the tent. The pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance. While the Lord spoke with Moses.

Now you get further instances of this. In the latter chapters of Exodus. And as you move on into Deuteronomy.

And here is evidence of God. Making his presence felt to a man. To a community of people.

Even before the erection and the dedication of the temple. Well what do you make of all these things? I mean is this localizing of the presence of God? And is it something that you just expect to discover in Old Testament times? Moses and Solomon. Very special people.

These were very critical days in the history of Israel. As they were developing. So one perhaps would expect an immediacy.

As far as God is concerned. That this is not to be discovered today. Well there are those who are prepared to settle for that conclusion.

But I reckon in one sense it's hastily drawn. Why do I say that? Well back again to these last two verses of 2 Chronicles 5. Which I want to etch upon your memory. The glory of the Lord fills the temple of God.

Now let's take that in our memories. And look further into the New Testament. And I bring you to a verse of the Apostle Paul.

As he's writing to the church at Ephesus. And in the third chapter of this remarkable letter. He has this to say about God.

Now remember he's not writing to Jews. Although he has a Jewish community in mind as well. But basically he's writing to Gentiles.

He doesn't have in mind a temple. But what he does have in mind are communities of Christians around the Greek world. And particularly in this case at the Greek port city of Ephesus.

And he says in the 20th verse now. To Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. According to His power that is at work within us.

To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus. Throughout all generations forever and ever. Here is identified an atmosphere.

Glory. Here is the direction of that glory indicated to Him. Here is its locality in the church.

Here is the time factor throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. There was glory in the temple.

The presence of God was felt in the days of Solomon. There is to be glory in the church of Jesus Christ. His presence is to be felt.

Not only during the ministry of Paul. But down all the subsequent days, months and years. Of the story of the Christian church.

To Him be glory in the church. For all generations forever and ever. So the question that needs to be put and answered is this.

Is there a correspondence between temple glory and church glory? Now why is that question important? Well it's important for this reason. A. W. Tozer, who must have been having a bad time when he wrote this, describes a typical person's attitude to church. He's writing in Canada a decade and a half or so ago.

But this could well be the assessment of those 200,000 people or nigh on who will come into Montague Precinct and the Gilborne Centre every weekend to do their shopping in the town of Worthing. Ninety percent of them will never regularly attend church. Ask them what they identify church as being.

Ask the younger generation particularly. Well here's Tozer. The musty smell of churches.

The slow and solemn step of the minister. The subdued choir to the worshippers. And the fact that many enter a church only to pay their last respects to the dead.

All add up to the notion that religion is something to be dreaded, like a major operation. Suffered only because we are caught up in a crisis and dare not avoid it. Now one thing is obvious to you.

If you were listening to the reading of Scripture, that could not have been the assessment of the Hebrews in the day when Solomon dedicated his temple. It wasn't musty. It smelled new.

It wasn't dead. It was alive. It wasn't quiet.

It was noisy. And there was, not just by the inferential deduction of some preacher who's bathed in a course of logic, there is a felt experience of the presence of God. The glory of the Lord.

Fill the temple and interrupt to the priests as they engage their priestly activities and they were not able to perform their service because of the cloud. For the glory of the Lord covered the place. Now look, if you couldn't say that Tozer's words were descriptive of this, neither can you say that Tozer's words are descriptive of the apostolic church whose story is written wonderfully in the Acts of the Apostles.

We get insights as to the activity of the emerging local churches in the epistles that Paul and John and Peter write. When there's description given of worship, it's a remarkable thing that the Apostle Paul is driven to the public house, if you please, for his metaphor. Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess.

Don't engage in a riot. When alcohol has gone into your bloodstream to the extent that you're no longer in control of what you're doing. But, says the Apostle Paul, there is that in drunkenness that corresponds to the spirit-filled life.

There is in the conviviality of the public house that which ought to correspond to the fellowship in the local church. Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be drunk with the spirit. And what happens when you come together? Well, says the Apostle Paul, over here and over here there are people so filled with the sense of the thrill of God's presence that they lead in prayer, they lead in song, ministering one to another.

And just in case you think that Ephesus is an exception to the rule, then you go to Corinthians in the twelfth chapter and the fourteenth chapter. What is it, brethren, when you come together, every one of you hath? The Apostle makes it very, very plain that worship in those days was an exciting thing, a very wonderful thing. Yes, it was the exposition of Scripture.

Yes, it was the declaration of the great doctrines of God. But along with that Scripture, along with the declarations of the doctrine, there was the felt presence of the living God. Glory in the church to Christ Jesus throughout all generations.

Well, you see, that's the Apostle Paul. And he was an emotional man. I very much doubt whether he's an emotional man in the sense that psychiatrists work out one person's psychology over against another.

I reckon he was more of a cerebral man, more of a mind man than a heart man. But there were times when he's so taken up in wanting to praise the Lord that he almost runs out of language next stalling the Lord in the letters that he writes. But here's Peter, the bishop.

And you find him towards the end of his life and he's putting pen to paper too. And he's describing his own experience of God. And he uses those remarkable adjectives.

Full of glory. Abounding in glory. Unspeakable joy and glory.

And that's what he's discovered, not only himself personally, it's descriptive of the Jewish messianic congregations. And the day when the Apostle Paul, who's the apostle to the Jews, the Apostle Peter, who's the apostle to the Jews, is writing of his experience of what is anticipated as being the norm. Glory in the church.

To Christ Jesus. Throughout all generations. All right, just shake your head a moment.

Because I want to give you two pieces of information which will be new to some of you and a reminder to others of you. It's fairly technical, but it's also easy to grasp provided you concentrate, which is one of the reasons why we expound Scripture. I want to talk to you about the Hebrew word shekinah.

It's a word which actually, if you translate it into English, it's got the idea of cover. The idea of hovering. If you go to the 29th chapter of the book of Exodus, there you will find an example in the English Bible of the Hebrew use of that word, or the translation of that word.

Exodus 29 and verse 45. I'll read from the 42nd verse. Actually, it's verse 43.

I'm reading 3 and 5 from my pulpit notes. Make linen under garments as a covering for the body, speaking about Aaron and what he needs to wear, reaching from the waist to the thigh. Aaron and his sons must wear them whenever they enter the tent of meeting or approach the altar to minister in the holy place so that they will not incur guilt and die.

And I am showing my age because I'm reading you from the wrong chapter. Let's go back again to the 43rd chapter of Exodus. We're in trouble because I don't even think they wrote the 43rd chapter.

I'll give you another example from the 33rd chapter of Exodus. Here is Moses who puts up, perhaps, this is a better illustration actually, so I'm glad that I'm not the first one. Here's Moses who puts up a request to the Lord in the 18th verse, Exodus 33.

Then Moses said, Now show me your glory. Show me your glory. And then in the 21st verse the Lord responds to Moses, There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock.

When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back, but my face must not be seen. And in the following chapter you get the fulfillment of what God had promised when in the 6th verse we're told the Lord passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

I told you, Shekinah has the idea of hovering, of covering. Here is a sense of the presence of God falling upon a person, covering a person. And within the experience there is a display of the character, the very being of God.

Not all of Him, that's impossible, just the back parts, says the historian, trying to find language to put into Hebrew, trying to find an expression that will describe this most unique and wonderful experience, the Shekinah glory of God descending on Moses, the Shekinah glory of God coming into the temple. It is the felt knowledge that God is. That's how I would describe the Shekinah.

Now, when you move to the Gospels, what do you read about our Lord Jesus? Well, you read language which is very similar to Old Testament expressions about the glory of God. For instance, in the first chapter of John's Gospel, we read that when the Lord Jesus came on earth, the Word was made flesh and tabernacled. Do you remember that in the Authorized Version of the Bible? He tabernacled amongst us.

The idea is exactly the same as the presence of God mediated through the Lord Jesus Christ drawing into this world the Father localizing His presence in the person of the Son. You say you don't like that expression, it seems clumsy. Well, I can do no more than refer you to a question put to our Lord Jesus later on in John's Gospel when He's asked, show us the Father, and the Lord Jesus says, Have I been so long time with you, and you have not known Me? You've got the picture.

Here's Moses. Show me your glory. The glory of God overshadows Moses.

Here's Solomon on the completion of the temple, and there is that of God which is so perceptible. The chronicler writes the record, The glory of the Lord filled the temple of God. And when Jesus was born, the angelic host sang glory to God in the highest.

And when John the Aged writes his Gospel referring to the birth of the infant Jesus, he says, We beheld His glory. The glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Temple glory has its correspondence in the New Testament.

Church glory. What does it mean if you unpackage the phrase church glory? It means being so aware of the presence of the Lord God through the ministries of Jesus Christ that you find yourself, as does the Apostle Paul, when he's writing to the Ephesians in the second chapter of that epistle, in some smelly dungeon, possibly in Rome, saying that God comes so near to him that he bows the knee before the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you remember? I bow the knee before the Father in whom all the world, from whom all the world takes its name and owes its allegiance in terms of deriving life from the Father.

Let me give it to you in the actual words that Paul writes. For this reason, it's the first verse of the third chapter, for this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ's Gentiles, for the sake of you, for this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles. He goes on to speak about, in the 14th verse, kneeling before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

Paul has a felt experience of the presence of God. To this, the Holy Scriptures possess in marked degree this feeling of actual encounter with a real person. The men and women of the Bible talked with God.

They spoke to Him. They heard Him speak in words. They could understand the world's own prophets, the unbelieving psychologists, those eyeless seekers who seek for a light that is not God's light have been forced to recognize that at the bottom of religious experience there is a sense of something there.

But better still, by far is the sense of someone there. It was this, that filled with abiding wonder, the first members of the Church of Christ, the solemn delight which those early disciples knew sprang straight from the conviction that there was one in the midst of them. They knew that the majesty in the heavens was confronting them on earth.

They were in the very presence of God and the power of the conviction to arrest attention and hold it for a lifetime, to elevate, to transform, to fill with uncontrollable moral happiness, to send men singing to prison and to death has been one of the wonders of history and a marvel of the world, writes Tozer in a more optimistic mood. What is the correspondence between temple glory and church glory? It is this, that as in the temple the presence of God was known and mediated in His sovereignty and visibly. So in the New Testament times, so today in your heart, in my heart, the touch of God can be felt upon the soul.

Habakkuk 2 and verse 20 says, The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the nations be silent before Him. When our Lord Jesus was on earth, there was an occasion when temple glory and church glory merged.

I refer to His experience on the Mount of Transfiguration. You read of it in the 17th chapter of Matthew and in other parallel accounts in the Synoptic Gospels. Our Lord Jesus is there with His disciples and suddenly, just three of His disciples, Peter, James and John, and suddenly His appearance is changed.

It's transfigured. It's whiter than the whitest white that is known in the world, says the Gospels, as they record what they experienced subsequently. There's illumination.

There's luminosity. There is a sense that in the Lord Jesus everything that the Hebrews knew in earlier healthy days, in their spiritual history, has now been fulfilled through the Saviour. Why does Jesus come into the world? To disclose who God is.

But is that just an intellectual thing? Well, certainly it affects the mind. It hits the mind first of all, but not just the mind. That's why I took you to Paul in his dungeon in Rome.

I bow before the Father. And the idea there in the original word is that the whole of the prison is so filled with a felt sense of the presence of God that Paul can do nothing else but bow. You see, the temple had great advantages, didn't it? It was a sort of focal point.

That's why Solomon built it. It became the headquarters, so to speak, of the Jewish faith. And there at times, increasingly in Solomon's day and with less frequency until eventually there was no glory left in the temple because the Hebrews had defected.

They had despoiled God's revelation by not maintaining all His rules and regulations. But in those days, in those earlier healthier days, God made His presence felt amongst the Hebrews. There is a sense in which God made His presence felt when our Lord Jesus was on earth.

But you remember the conundrum that He sets His disciples just before His arrest. He's in the garden, He's in the upper room and He's spelling out for them what's just behind the corner, so to speak. It's right that I be taken away from you.

It will be to your advantage that I'm taken away from you. Well, why? If I'm taken away from you, then I will come to you. And here the disciples are perplexed as to what the Lord Jesus is referring to.

How can He mean this? It's to our advantage if He's taken away and if He's taken away, He will come to us. If He's no longer there in bodily form, then how can we contact Him precisely? If He's away in bodily form, then He will release His Spirit into the world in such a fashion that it will not be localized in any one building as the temple gives an example of. But wherever there are Christian people, individual or corporately gathered together, there the Lord Jesus will manifest His presence.

Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am. Go into all the world and preach the gospel and lo, I am with you always. You see the correspondence? Church glory? Temple glory? The disadvantage of temple glory over against church glory? For the former God manifested Himself in the temple, one locality, to the Jews.

But now our Lord Jesus, who has revealed Himself both to Jew and Gentile, is spiritually present as He allows His Holy Spirit to move into the hearts of men and women so that when people gather together in the new era, there can be the felt sense of the presence of God. But there is that which was in the Old Testament transferable to the new. The Old Testament is not giving you a picture of something that is dour and miserable and so solemn, though there is a sacredness and solemnity and quietness at times.

But it is not the joyless, boring thing that some people believe that Christianity has sunk into today. And neither was apostolic Christianity a dour, joyless thing. It couldn't be.

Why? Because there was this felt sense of the presence of God. And I am so convinced that what needs to be taught in the church increasingly is that we can expect God to release His power amongst us. What does this mean? J. I. Piker makes a few suggestions, but then never answers the question, even though he's put one or two suggestions.

Does it mean shivers down the back? A dreamy, off-the-ground, floating feeling? Tingling thrills and exhilaration such as drug takers seek? Or is knowing God a special sort of intellectual experience? Does one hear a voice, see a vision, find strange trains of thought coursing through one's mind, or what? Well, I wish that Dr. Packard actually said, having given these illustrations, which he's obviously not too persuaded about, what exactly is meant by the felt presence of God? But maybe the hymn that we sang a little while ago will help us. Underneath me, all around me, is the current of His love. These 18th and 19th century hymns were birthed in revival.

And the possibility is that you can read back from the 20th century into these hymns and sing these hymns without actually ever having entered into the experience that they describe. I'm not saying that you can't have had the experience. I'm saying that it's possible to sing these hymns and not to know, increasing the experience of the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

There is a great correspondence between temple glory and church glory. Solomon prepared for the erection of the temple. It was thorough.

If you want church glory, then be prepared in your spiritual disciplines to give the same amount of care and thorough preparation as Solomon did to the construction of this physical edifice. This temple that Solomon was engaged in building and this glory which filled this temple. Solomon ensured, and it was preceded by heartfelt and enthusiastic praise.

These men and women, they came together. They had their hymns. They had their repetitive themes.

You read the example of it there. The goodness of the Lord, the mercy of the Lord, enduring forever. They repeated.

They had a hymnology. They put care and enthusiasm into the way that they presented the singing aspect of worship. This was no slipshod sort of thing.

This was no cavalier performance. They were going to be in the presence of this God and so they prepared their hearts as they prepared the building. And then it came.

He came in all his power. The Shekinah moved in amongst them. And then the priests are disturbed.

They can't continue to do what they're doing. Their business is legitimate. But you see there are times, and it happens in revival, when the priests, the pastors, the preachers cannot even continue the exposition of Scripture.

Why is this? Well, the Shekinah has come. There is a sense, a felt sense, of the presence of God. Listen to it in the days of Whitefield, Whitefield, one of the great men of God of yesteryear, as he makes a reference to the presence of the Lord as he's engaged in ministry.

He says, Mr. Gilbert Tennant preached. He's a great preacher of yesteryear. Then I began to pray and to give an exhortation.

In about six minutes, somebody cried out, He has come! He has come! And could scarce sustain the manifestation of Jesus to his soul. Whitefield continues in his journal. Having heard the crying of others for the like favour, obliged me to stop, and I prayed over them as I saw their agonies and distress to increase.

At length we sang a hymn and then retired to the house where the man that received Christ, continuing praising and speaking of him until near midnight. My own soul was so full that I retired and wept before the Lord and had a deep sense of my own vileness. Most of the people spent the remainder of the night in prayer and praising.

It was a night much to be remembered. You see what had happened? A felt sense of the presence and the glory of God and the liturgy, an acceptable liturgy, had been disturbed. And they gave way to what was the concerns of God to achieve on that particular occasion.

As it was in Whitefield's day, so it was in the day of the Acts of the Apostles, so it was in the day of Solomon. These are things that are transferable. Temple glory to church glory.

There's an acknowledgement of who God is. He is good. There is an acknowledgement of what God does.

He shows mercy forever. And with this I conclude. There's also that dread realisation that God could be grieved and his glory be removed.

The glory departed from Israel, they said, at an earlier stage before the reign of Solomon. The ark had gone. And a woman who died in giving childbirth refers to the son in terms of Ichabod.

The glory has departed. And the sadness of the reign of Solomon, the kings that followed was this. Though God had made his presence felt in the temple, they had been so fast and loose with spiritual disciplines that God turned his back on the people.

And they suffered as a result. Says my dear friend R.T. Kendall, when we meet together to worship God, God is not looking for aesthetic beauty, but for the presence of the ungrieved spirit in each worshipping member of the congregation. That's it.

The presence of the ungrieved spirit. God comfortable with you. God comfortable with me.

And as a result, the glory comes. And there is a felt realization that God is in the place. And whether you're an extrovert or an introvert, whatever the variation in your chemistry, so to speak, at the psychological level, you will go out knowing you've met with God.

Now when the early church came together and someone haphazardly found himself in the community of the redeemed, Paul says, they fell down recognizing that God in truth was amongst you.