Samuel No.4 Lessons from a faulty conclusion

Well, now let's turn to the scripture, shall we? The Word of God. 1 Samuel chapter 4. 1 Samuel chapter 4. Do you remember that in chapter 3, God spoke to the boy Samuel in the night, and God told him Eli's family would be judged for their sin. And in the morning Samuel told Eli, because Eli asked him to tell him everything, all that God had said.

And Samuel was obedient and told Eli. And now we read in chapter 4, 1 Samuel chapter 4, the fulfillment, or part fulfillment of this prophetic word. Now the Israelites went out to fight against the Philistines.

The Israelites camped at Ebenezer and the Philistines at Aphek. The Philistines deployed their forces to meet Israel. And as the battle spread, Israel was defeated by the Philistines who killed about 4,000 of them on the battlefield.

When the soldiers returned to camp, the elders of Israel asked, why did the Lord bring defeat upon us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the Lord's covenant from Shiloh, so that it may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies. So the people sent men to Shiloh, and they brought back the ark of the covenant of the Lord Almighty, who is enthroned between the Cherubim. And Eli's two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God.

When the ark of the Lord's covenant came into the camp, all Israel raised such a great shout that the ground shook. Hearing the uproar, the Philistines asked, what's all this shouting in the Hebrew camp? When they learned that the ark of the Lord had come into the camp, the Philistines were afraid. A God has come into the camp, they said.

We're in trouble. Nothing like this has happened before. Woe to us.

Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? They are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the desert. Be strong Philistines, be men, or you will be subject to the Hebrews, as they have been to you. Be men and fight.

So the Philistines fought, and the Israelites were defeated, and every man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great. Israel lost 30,000 foot soldiers.

The ark of God was captured, and Eli's two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died. That same day a Benjaminite ran from the battle line and went to Shiloh, his clothes torn and dust on his head. When he arrived, there was Eli sitting on his chair by the side of the road watching, because his heart feared for the ark of God.

When the man entered the town and told what had happened, the whole town sent up a cry. Eli heard the outcry and asked, what is the meaning of this uproar? The man hurried over to Eli, who was 98 years old, and whose eyes were set so that he could not see. He told Eli, I have just come from the battle line.

I fled from it this very day. Eli asked, what happened my son? The man who brought the news replied, Israel fled before the Philistines, and the army has suffered heavy losses. Also your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God has been captured.

When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell backwards off his chair by the side of the gate. His neck was broken and he died, for he was an old man and heavy. He had led Israel for 40 years.

His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant near the time of delivery. When she heard the news that the ark of God had been captured, and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she went into labor and gave birth, but was overcome by her labor pains. As she was dying, the women attending her said, don't despair, you have given birth to a son.

But she did not respond or pay any attention. She named the boy Ichabod, saying, the glory has departed from Israel, because of the capture of the ark of God, and the deaths of her father-in-law, and her husband. She said, the glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured.

May the Lord give us understanding of his word. Now I'd like you to have your Bible open at 1 Samuel and chapter 4. They're always visiting friends and strangers who are in at the tab, Sunday by Sunday. Let me explain, it's our purpose to work through Scripture.

I try to explain it, show its relevance for the 20th century, and as I've said so many times from this pulpit, I've got nothing else really to say but what's in this book. We're going to work from a large context, but I think if you listen carefully to that very clear reading from John Milne, you'll grasp the area where my thinking will take you this morning. But let me direct you specifically to the seventh verse of 1 Samuel 4. The Philistines were afraid.

A God has come into the camp, they said. We're in trouble. Nothing like this has happened before.

I want to address you on learning from a faulty conclusion, learning from a faulty conclusion. You will have discovered if you listened carefully to what was brought to our attention a moment or two ago, that the repetitive phrase, the Ark of the Covenant, comes again and again and again in this chapter, the Ark of the Lord, the Ark of God, ten times. And really you're not going to understand anything that follows unless you plug in your concentration at this moment, because I must explain what the Ark of the Covenant is.

You see when the Israelites were going back to Egypt, in a very remarkable way in the wilderness, they were told by Moses under the authority of God to make themselves a tabernacle, not like this building, a sort of portable temple. Within the temple was to be placed this holy furniture, and the most significant piece was the Ark of the Covenant. It was a box, about two and a half by two and a half by four feet.

And within this box were placed the Ten Commandments and various other significant objects. And the lid of the box was made out of solid gold. It was skillfully fashioned by a craftsman by the name of Bezalel.

And he had, emerging from the lid, in a very brilliant fashion, sculptured two cherubim, angelic beings, so to speak, made out of gold. And the remarkable nature of this brilliant piece of gold sculpture was such that the wings of the cherubim came over their backs and round their heads and virtually touched one another. And in that area between the wings and the lid of the Ark, the mercy seat, it was reckoned that God's presence would reside.

And time and time again you find in Exodus chapter 25 verse 22 is just one illustration. The presence of the Lord is depicted as manifesting itself by the Ark of the Covenant. When it was placed in the tabernacle, it was shielded off from the rest of the tent-like sanctuary.

It was placed in what was known as the Holy of Holies. And there were occasions, as I say, when God obviously made his presence known. The lid of the Ark was known as the mercy seat, and there once a year the high priest would come and he would place blood that had come from the sacrifice of an animal, and an atonement would be made for the sins of the people.

Now this is all that really you have to remember. The Ark of the Covenant was the most significant, the most holy piece of furniture in all of Judaism. It was the kernel of the Jewish faith where God made himself present with the people, all right? Now here's another thought.

How many of you know what superstition is? Well obviously everybody. I was reading an article in Time magazine some while ago, and it was referring to pilots on international jet lines, fixed one country therefore and another. And as they take these great giants into the air, some of those pilots with all their sophistication, with all their knowledge of mechanics and communications, they will have a little mascot.

For one of them it was a paw of some dead animal. For another it was some necklace that he put obviously around his neck. And the idea was that somehow or other, maintaining that, having that in their cabin, they would be preserved from crashing the jet.

Superstition dies hard. And you can turn your religion into a superstition quite easily. I know folks who use a crucifix just as a sort of means of, they believe, securing their safety.

There are many ways in which religion can degenerate, and one of the most interesting and the most regular is by making a superstition out of it. Now you can do that with your Bible. I've known people whose approach to the Bible is very much a superstitious thing.

You know, it's a holy book, and if you have it with you, well, you're all right, you're safe. If you've got one in your house, never mind the fact that you don't read it, it is there. And so it preserves your safety.

Superstition. Now what's that got to do with these Israelites? Well you see, this Ark of the Covenant became to them a very superstitious thing. They believed that God somehow was so involved with that piece of furniture, that if they took it into a situation which was dangerous, they were bound to be the winners.

And so you find in the beginning of this chapter that there's a war that they're responsible for on this occasion, Twix them and the Philistines. They don't do very well. Four thousand men were told are killed, verse two.

And when they come and they have some sort of think-through as to the events that have happened, they arrive at the conclusion that the problem really belongs to the Lord. Why did the Lord bring defeat upon us before the Philistines? Now the answer was, as some bright Hebrew spark suggested, let us bring the Ark of the Lord's Covenant from Shiloh. Let's get Him on the act.

Superstition, you see. Bring the Ark of God and you've got the God of the Ark. Now the superstitious mentality, it dies hard.

Bless the bombers, bless the battleships, bring the bishops in. Let's have a little bit of superstition with our modern warfare. You see, in principle, I mentioned these things just to show you that these folk, if you think they were cavemen, were no more primitive than we are, in the way that we behave sometimes.

And so this Ark of the Covenant, representing or seemingly so the presence of the Lord, is taken from Shiloh to the scene of the battle. And we discover, verse five, when the Ark of the Lord's Covenant came into the camp, all Israel raised such a great shout that the ground shook. Hearing the uproar, the Philistines asked, what's all this shouting in the Hebrew camp? When they learned that the Ark of the Lord had come into the camp, the Philistines were afraid.

A God has come into the camp, they said. We're in trouble. Nothing like this has happened before.

Now you remember the address title this morning? Learning from a faulty conclusion. Learning from a faulty conclusion, the conclusion of the Philistines and the Hebrews, that God had come on the scene. Let me try and break up this particular verse into three aspects.

And first of all, I want to show you that this reaction of the Philistines bespeaks a fantasy that was detrimental. It bespeaks a fantasy that was detrimental. A God has come into the camp, they said.

We're in trouble. Now the fantasy was that God was with them. When Mary and Joseph left Jerusalem on one occasion with the almost teenage Jesus, as they returned to Nazareth, they thought that the youngster was in their company, but they were so mistaken.

He wasn't there, he was back in Jerusalem, and they set off for their northern village out of the company of Jesus. And there is many a person who has repeated the mistake of Joseph of Mary. They've assumed for some reason that God is with them.

Bring the ark of God, and you'll get the God of the ark. Not a bit. God will not lure himself to your superstitious fancy.

I want to analyze the problem of these Philistines and these Israelites, because they both were under the same fantasy, and it was detrimental to both of them. I haven't time to do it in detail, but here are some thoughts, and then you can continue the analysis. It seems to me that what these two groups of men did was they mistook the sign for the substance.

They mistook the sign for the substance. The ark of the covenant, well, God was the substance, the ark was just the sign. The Bible can become exactly the same to people who handle it wrongly.

They can have a sort of superstitious mind even inquiring into the Bible. They can know the contents of the Bible, the Word of God, but not know the God of the Word. And that's exactly the same problem as the Israelites and the Philistines were suffering from.

God is with me. Why is God with you? Well, you know, I know the Bible. I listened to a preacher.

I went to Sunday school. I know the Word of God. My friend, I do not care whether you know the Word of God fundamentally or not.

My prime concern as a preacher is, has your knowledge of the Word of God led you to the God of the Word? Because the Pharisees, they were knowledgeable about the Word of God, but they hadn't got a clue who God was. And when God was manifested amongst them, they didn't even recognize Jesus. What is more, they linked pedigree to power.

But what do I mean by that? Well, you see, they went to Hophni and Phinehas, didn't they? They bypassed Eli. He's old. He's on the scrap heap, so to speak.

He's waiting to die, so let's get Hophni. I mean, after all, they're the clergy. They've got the dog collar.

They've got the degrees. Let's bring them on the scene. They've got a noble pedigree.

They trace it back to Aaron. Is there anyone then more gifted, more suitable, to help us to turn this, to turn this situation round, so that this time we rout the Philistines and not vice versa. We've got the right men.

But you see, pedigree is not the same as power. You can have a man who's related to one of the greatest evangelical preachers of all time, and he can't help you one little bit. Why? Because he may have the ancestry, but he doesn't have the spirituality in Hophni and Phinehas.

Well, their story was abhorrent throughout the whole of Israel, the way that they were behaving. You see, the problem with these commanders of the Israelite army was that they went for those who they thought were the, the religious leaders in their day. They didn't go to the Lord and ask for his help.

They bypassed the Lord and they went to the men. They linked pedigree, I say, to power, and they got it wrong. There's something else, it seems to me, that was completely false in their reasoning, that contributed towards their fantasy.

And before I come to it, I've got to explain a word. It's the word numinous. It's a very interesting word, and it's good that we learn new words, even on a Sunday morning.

Numinous, really, the definition defines it as a realization of the power of God. You know, when Jacob's been asleep and he has that vision, as he's moving to his relatives, away from his homeland, he realizes that God has been in the place. You remember? Surely this is the place of God, and I didn't know it.

He had a sense of God's presence, numinous. Now, the problem with these people is, the Philistines, that they associated noise with numinous. Verse 6, hearing the uproar, the Philistines asked, what's all this shouting in the Hebrew camp? Go to verse 5, when the ark of the Lord's covenant came into the camp, all Israel raised such a great shout, that the ground shook.

And the conclusion was this, because the folks were so happy, and there was such a riot, that God was in the place. My friend, I tell you that noise does not always indicate the presence of God, neither, incidentally, the silence. There's a holy silence, and there's a silence that's a barren silence.

There's a noise that's acceptable in the heavens, for God has gone up with a shout. There's noise on the day of Pentecost, but all noise is not necessarily an indication that God is there. The priests of Babel were not exactly mute and calm, but with all their bubblings, all their shoutings, there was not one trace of deity there.

Remember this, my friend, that noise is not always indicative of the presence of God, nor is speech always an indication that praise has been offered. Praise can sometimes sit silently on a person's lips. Sometimes words are broken in their back as they try to convey the deepest of feelings.

There are times when God can make His presence felt, and there's not a whisper of sound. There are other occasions, and it seems as though the whole of the Jerusalem Philharmonic has come into action to praise this God. You see, worship has many permutations, and never latch onto one extreme and say that that is where you expect God always to manifest Himself.

These people lived in a world of fantasy. They mistook sign for substance, linked pedigree to power. They confused noise with the numinous, and as a result, they said that God is in the camp, and they couldn't have made a more erroneous conclusion.

The fantasy that was detrimental. But let's go on, because this response of the Philistines with which the Israelites associate themselves bespeaks not only this fantasy, but it denotes a tragedy that was monumental. A tragedy that was monumental.

It was said a God has come into the camp, and anything else was right, but not that conclusion. So let me analyze what happened as a result of the Hebrews having the insensitivity of hauling the Ark of the Covenant into that battlefield. Well, that monumental tragedy can be worked out in at least three and probably even more ways.

Diminishing manpower. Diminishing manpower. Don't you notice that in the second verse, references made to four thousand who were killed on the earliest skirmish that prompted these men to clumsily take the Ark of the Covenant onto the scene of battle? But when you go to the tenth verse, which describes the affairs after the next battle has been fought, we compute just the enormous loss that it was to the Israelite soldiers.

The slaughter was very great. Israel lost 30,000 foot soldiers. When God is not in the camp, my friend, be it the camp of Israel of yesteryear, be it the Church of Jesus Christ of the 20th century, when God is not in the camp, I argue, there's diminishing manpower.

I listened to half a program on the BBC yesterday evening. My wife was watching me get so incensed that she insisted it was turned off before I put a brick through the screen. The program was called Credo, I believe.

It was an apology of a program. They were dealing with the concept of heaven and bringing it, if you please, up to date. So where did the BBC go to have commentary? Actually, it was the ITV.

Let me get that right. It was the ITV. Where did they go to get commentary? Well, they went to the prophets.

Obviously, you go to Cambridge if you want to know what God is saying. Clare College. Fitzwilliam College.

The Professor of Divinity. And they all concurred with this particular pronouncement that heaven really is not a reality to be expected by people today. You see, we've got so sophisticated in the 20th century that we can preempt, we can empty the gospel of any idea of resurrection and personal existence after death.

And I was asking myself as I was listening to these very learned men, why were they wearing their dark collars? Why did we see one or two of them engaged in prayer? If this God does not really exist in the way that Jesus taught, if the Lord Jesus was not raised from the dead, then according to someone who was more intellectual than the lot of them put together, our faith is in vain. And the ITV commentator had the cheek to say that church attendance was falling. Christianity was in the decline.

The miracle is that there was anything left at all of Christianity in the United Kingdom if these men have their way. I don't want to go to a church where my leaders are telling me that the very historic aspects of the gospel no longer obtained in the 20th century. Of course, the churches are empty if there's no authoritative voice to declare the old-fashioned gospel of Jesus Christ and to tell us of that great transaction that took place on Calvary's cross.

Get rid of that, what have you? The tragedy was monumental. The manpower diminished. It always does when God isn't in the camp.

The priesthood had failed. That was the second thing. Not just Hophni and Phinehas, but the old man Eli, verse 13.

A pathetic picture you get, don't you, of this man? His eyesight is defective. Speaking of his spiritual vision, which was also impaired. He's old and he's corpulent.

He's beyond the day of his prime when perhaps he had a much clearer understanding of what God wanted for him. The years have gone by and the priesthood has failed and a word has come to Eli that his boys Hophni and Phinehas would be wiped off the map and there would never be again any descendant of his who would mouth the word of the Lord. That's what happens when God is not in the camp.

When you don't seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, when you equivocate when your older boys come and say that they can live a life that is incompatible with what you know to be the Word of God, but because they're your boys, you compromise upon it. What you do is you evacuate God from the camp. For you see, the Holy Spirit is sometimes referred to as a dove and the dove cannot come to an impure nest.

And that applies not only to Samuel's house, to Eli's household, it applies to you and to me, my brother and sister, in our family circles, here in our local church. This God does not brook fellowship with those who are unclean and unholy and who will compromise deliberately upon His Word. The tragedy I say was monumental.

Manpower diminished, the priesthood failed, the ark had been removed, the mercy seat was taken away, the law and the Ten Commandments are displaced from Shiloh. And what man, I ask you, what man can continue to preach about God if the mercy seat is not in view? If I can't tell you that Jesus Christ, God's own Son, fulfilled all that the ark of the covenant stood for, if I cannot tell you that it is His righteous life that met the requirements of the law that was encased in that ark, if I can't point you to the shed blood of Calvary, then what gospel have I got? I would have failed as a priest, I would fail as a preacher, because as I said 10-15 minutes ago, there is nothing that an evangelical preacher can declare but the evangelical Word of the Living God. The tragedy was monumental.

The manpower diminished, the priesthood failed, the church died. You see, the church here was at Shiloh, that's where the sanctuary was, wasn't it? That's where the tabernacle was. And yet you read that when Jeremiah comes along and ministers the Word of the Lord in the book that bears his name in the seventh chapter and the twelfth verse, references made to Shiloh.

It's a negative illustration. God is using Jeremiah to warn Jerusalem and its inhabitants of what will happen when they compromise upon His Word, when they don't give Him the holiness that it is due. He says in the twelfth verse now of Jeremiah 7, go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for my name and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel.

The ark of the covenant, it never came back to Shiloh. Churches die, my friends. Candlesticks are taken away.

Those of you who know the book of Revelation will understand my reference. Why do churches die? They die as the priesthood fails. They die as manpower diminishes.

But in a word, churches die when God isn't in the camp. Because when God isn't in the camp, there's no power, and there's no gospel. So we've looked in these verses at the fantasy that was detrimental, the tragedy that was monumental, let me conclude.

Because more happily, I want to turn this reaction of the Philistines and the Israelites and suggest they reveal a possibility that is fundamental, a possibility that is fundamental. Verse 7, the Philistines were afraid that God has come into the camp. They said, we're in trouble.

Nothing like this has happened before. What if God does come into the camp? I want you to bathe yourself in the prospects of that. I want you to enter into the reality of God actually coming into the camp.

God being present with his people. You see, unless he's present with his people, we don't really want to go into the future, do we? I don't. Moses argues with God as he's ordained to the ministry on the second occasion, and he says on the slopes of Mount Sinai, if your presence does not go with me, then don't take me any further.

A godless tomorrow is unacceptable to Moses. If God is not in the camp, if God is not in the camp, then Sunday school teaching is a drudgery. Preaching is just a theatrical performance.

Prayer meetings are just a ritual. If God isn't in the camp. Ah, but I said I'd invert it and I'd speak more happily from the context here.

God being in the camp. You see, this is not just a possibility. This can increasingly be a reality.

The Lord in this place. Do you believe it? Here is the Apostle Paul. He gives us an insight, there aren't many in the New Testament, into how the early Christians went about worshipping the Lord.

We find them in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, gathered together in similar fashion, though perhaps not in such a large company as we are this morning. And Paul, he proposes a strange comes in amongst them. And everything's been going well.

There's been the proclamation of the Evangel. People have been alive to the presence of God. There has been contribution one after another.

And as this man comes and he listens to some of the revelations that are shared, he realizes this isn't an ordinary place. He turned in casually. Perhaps he thought it was a Coliseum or just some meeting of Romans.

But no, it wasn't. It was a church. They didn't know what the buildings were because of course they had no marked buildings like we have.

So it was quite easy for a man to make a mistake. He turns in and he listens and he sees what's happening and he realizes that there's never been anything in his experience like this before. It's utterly different.

And here along, says the Apostle, he's thrown down on his feet. He's thrown down on his knees. He's prostrate on the floor.

The Lord, the Lord is in this place. He speaks to me. That's what happens, you see, when God is in the camp.

And this is what we must have more and more because when God is in the camp, there is a manifestation of his glory. No longer could anyone come along and say as Eli's daughter-in-law said, Ichabod. That's not the name.

That's not the phrase that described the evangelical church. It mustn't be. It cannot be.

I've given my life to ensure that it is not. Not the glory of God has been part of it, Emmanuel. The presence of God is with us.

When God is in the camp, he manifests his power. You feel it sometimes. Maybe when, certainly I have, when I've been a member of a congregation.

And perhaps a little diminutive preacher, I'm thinking of one, I'll not name him. Almost a hunchback of a man has walked into the pulpit. I watched it happen five years ago in Guildford.

And suddenly that hunchback, he grew. He was off on flights of eloquence which were not naturally his. He was in the heavenlies and he was bringing with his words that which is invisible into visibility.

That which was beyond us, he was making near to us. That which was future was becoming a little bit nearer as God revealed himself and his power through the ministry of a man. That's what can happen when God is in the camp.

He speaks with power. And you know he's there. But when a prayer meeting becomes electrifying and you're not trying to persuade people to come, they're queuing up to get there.

Why? Because God's going to come down and you mean business with him. And you want to cry for your relatives and their salvation. Don't tell me those things don't happen.

I know they do. I've read too much and I've traveled too far to think that that's just an academic yearning. When God's in the camp, he manifests his glory.

Praise becomes natural. You don't have to coddle the saints and balance one type of person over against another and what their whims are and what their wishes are. Sometimes pastoring is like trying to run in an egg and spoon race, wondering what will happen if you stumble and the egg falls and there's a smash on the ground.

Just keeping people happy. That's not it when God's in the camp. You don't need to keep them happy.

There's a joy unspeakable and it's full of glory. There's a rapturous praise that sometimes gives vent in a noise that reaches heaven and sometimes it's just the inner promptings of the Spirit as heart intertwines with heart and silently serenades God. It's what happens when God's in the camp.

God will add to it more and more in this tabernacle. When God's in the camp, he manifests his glory. When God's in the camp, he manifests his awe.

Listen to the Philistines. I think this is my favorite comment in this chapter. When they heard, when they learned that the ark of the Lord had come into the camp, the Philistines were afraid.

God has come into the camp, they said, we're in trouble. Holy trouble. When God comes amongst his people as he did on the days of Pentecost and read right through the Acts of the Apostles, if you think that that was a one-off, then those who were outside the church were afraid of the very men and women who were in the church.

They durst not, the authorised version of the Bible puts it, they durst not join that community. Why? They were afraid that as they were saturated, sodden in sin, they could have no truck with these people who had been made holy through the blood of Christ. You see, there's an awe, there's a fear that men have for those who are possessed by the Spirit of God.

When God has come into the personal camp and made himself known, as when Herod quivered in the sound, under the sound of the preaching of John the Baptist, like a leaf that trembles in the wind. How do you explain it? How do you explain these great men? How do you explain Luther who had the whole of the Roman establishment there trembling? Luther had no power. Luther did not have greater education than they had.

But when his voice spoke out from Germany, the whole of Europe listened. Why? Because God had come into the camp and manifested himself in the power of this man's personality. God, I pray, grant it.

Grant it here. But you know, my friend, for God to come in our camp, we must make him welcome. You come to our house, I want you to be welcome.

I really do. If you put on airs and graces that are not your own, then it's false. If we do the same, then it's false.

We want you to feel at home. Now our God is like that. He's a personal being.

Does God feel at home amongst us here? I ask myself many, many times, Lord, in the very atmosphere of this tabernacle, do you feel at home? Because if he's not at home, then we're doing things wrong, aren't we? Lord, we want you to be at home amongst us. No compromise in our lives. We don't want to grieve your Holy Spirit.

We want you, O Lord, to come here and manifest your power so that all shall go out from this place, realizing that they had Emmanuel, an encounter with the Living God. So I've gone full circle, you see. I've taken you to a very nondescript verse, and yet as I've studied it during this last week and prayed it through, it spoke volumes to me, learning from a faulty conclusion.

The Philistines were afraid. They said a God has come into the camp. We're in trouble.

It was a fantasy that was detrimental. And in Israel, it was a tragedy that was monumental. But for you and for me, it reveals a possibility that is fundamental, that we might know the presence of God amongst us here, and sinners might be converted, and people might grow in grace and in the knowledge of God, that we as brothers and sisters may fall deeper and deeper in love with one another, as well as in love with Him.

And the net consequence of our unity shall be that here, in the Tab, the Lord commands the blessing, because He can enter the camp and feel at home, release His power and His glory. If that's what you want, say Amen. Then let's pray.

We're going to sing that little song as the deer pants for the water brooks. So my heart yearns after you. We'll have the words on the projector if you don't know it in a second.

Sing this not sentimentally, it's scripture. Sing it if you mean it from the depths of your heart, and ask that God will meet with you afresh. Let's stand and sing as the deer once again.

To see our Lord God who reveals Himself to us through the law and through the gospel, within the veil I now would come, into the holy place to look upon thy face. I see such beauty there. And to that Charles Wesley makes reference in the hymn we're now going to sing.

Oh thou who camest from above, the pure celestial fire to impart, kindle a flame of sacred love on the mean altar of my heart. For I know we're asking God to come into the camp. Jesus confirm my heart's desire to work and speak and think for thee.

So let me guard the holy fire and still stir up thy gift. In me sing this if you mean it with full-blooded enthusiasm, a glorious hymn which pins in well the burden of scripture this morning. Our Lord you hear our yearnings.

We want God in the camp. I want you Lord in the camp of my private life. I want you in the camp of my marriage.

I want you in the camp of my lifestyle. I want you in the camp of the fellowship of Christians to which I belong. Lord I express it in a personal way that my brothers and sisters are saying the same.

Come down amongst us. Manifest your glory and in the very manifestation create terror and awe in the hearts of those who know not the gospel and with great love help us to be able to share it. Our lives so compatible with all that we are taking to others that people realize that we have been with the Lord Jesus and are communicating his gospel and in some sense his personality.

So help us Lord. Send us on our way those who must go now rejoicing in your goodness. But as most of us stay to take bread and wine, bless brother Andrew as he ministers at the table and may we sense your presence as we eat and drink together for Jesus Christ's sake.

Amen.