Marching Close to God Numbers 1:49-64

We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

All right. We're going to stand up and do some motions.

Ms. Caitlin is going to lead you today.

I'm only 90 percent confident in my motions.

You're really good at motions.

Now we're up.

I think I'm making you, you make me Lord Jesus, every breath I take I breathe in you.

Every step I take I take in you, you are my way, Jesus, every breath I take I breathe in you.

It's a mercy, it's a grace, everywhere I look I see your face, your love has captured me,

oh my God, you've done a great thing.

You are my hiding place, you always fill my heart with songs,

of deliverance, with love around I am all free, I will trust in you, I will trust in you.

Let the weak say I am strong in the strength of the Lord.

You are my hiding place, you always fill my heart with songs,

of deliverance, whenever I am afraid I will trust in you, I will trust in you.

Let the weak say I am strong in the strength of the Lord, I will trust in you.

So you're used to it.

Well what startles you?

I submit to you that God should startle you.

If you are comfortable with God, you have a problem.

If you are comfortable with Bible study, comfortable with worship, you have a problem.

In fact, your problem may be greater than those who are uncomfortable coming to church.

If you're comfortable coming, you could have a bigger problem than those who are not comfortable.

So we're going to read from Numbers chapter 1.

Numbers 1 · chapter mention

We're going to look at camping near the tabernacle.

I left my paper Bible, so no one will be able to guess me.

I'm going to use an electronic Bible because I left my paper Bible in the office.

If anybody gets there before me, you can read it.

Numbers chapter 1 beginning in 49 through 2.2 is what we need.

Numbers 1 · chapter mention

Only the tribe of Levi you shall not number, or shall you take their census among the sons of Israel.

But you shall appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of the testimony, and over all the furnishings,

and over all that belongs to it, they shall carry the tabernacle, and all its furnishings,

and they shall take care of it, they shall also camp around the tabernacle.

Okay. And so the Levites...

Did you have to...

Okay, go ahead. Sorry.

So when the tabernacle is set out, the Levites shall take it down, and the tabernacle who camps the Levites shall set it up.

But the laymen who comes near shall be put to death.

The sons of Israel shall camp each man by his own camp, and each man by his own standard, according to their armies.

But the Levites shall camp around the tabernacle of the testimony, so that there will be no wrath on the congregation of the sons of Israel.

So the Levites shall keep charge of the tabernacle of the testimony.

Thus the sons of Israel did, according to all which the Lord had made Moses, so they did.

Now the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,

The sons of Israel shall camp each by their own standard, which the banners of their fathers' household,

they shall camp around the tent and meet in kind of distance.

Okay. So we've got the tribes, and I'm going to get into a huge history lesson here, because that's not what we're focused on.

We've got the tribes, and they're going to camp around the big tent, right?

The tent is where God meets with Moses, where God meets with his people, the holy of holies.

They're going to camp. And what we just read is, the Levites are going to camp on the inside near the tent.

Jason, did you catch why the Levites are going to be the ones who camp on the inside near the tent?

Arden, did you get it?

Okay. So it said, the Levites are going to camp on the inside near the tent,

in order to keep God's wrath from pouring over against the rest of the people.

Okay. So the Levites are essentially a protector, if you will, of all the other tribes.

They would break down the tabernacle. They would set up the tabernacle, right?

And with the help of the Chorites, if I said that correctly, they would transport the tabernacle.

Okay. And so they would camp around the tabernacle to protect the rest of the tribes.

If you'll notice in 2.17, those of you who are following along in your Bible, it says,

Then the tent of the meeting shall set out with the camp of the Levites in the midst of the camps.

Just as they camp, so shall they set out, every man in his place by their standards.

So, based on what we just said, when they're marching, where do the Levites march?

Did you get that? Are you with me?

With the tabernacle, right? Right around the tabernacle.

So now we've got the whole of Israel, 12 tribes, hundreds of thousands or millions of people,

whatever the actual number is at this time, and as they're marching, right,

the Levites, great big tribes that they are, march around the tabernacle and everybody else is outside that.

Understand? Where they camp, the Levites, with some help from some of the workers, set it up.

And when they set it up, they camp right around it.

Why? Why the Levites specifically? That's our question.

So look at Leviticus 10, if you're following along in your Bibles.

I'll read it for the interest of time.

Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, Aaron was basically the high priest at the time, okay.

They took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, they placed incense on it

and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them.

And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord.

Then Moses said to Aaron, it is what the Lord spoke, saying,

By those who come near me, I will be treated as holy, and before all the people I will be honored.

So Aaron therefore kept silent.

So in other words, Aaron's sons, who also were priests, they did it wrong.

They came before the Lord with fire in their hands, but it was not authorized by God.

They were not called by God to do so.

And God poured out fire on them and they were killed.

Now if you follow this story a little bit longer, Aaron is not even allowed to have a funeral for them.

Or mourn them.

Because they dishonored God. They were not holy toward God.

If you go into the book of Acts, there's some people there called Ananias and Sapphira.

Okay, and so if you're following along, you've got blanks there.

Ananias is spelled A-N-N-A-N-I-A-S. So it's Anna, Nias, but it's all one word.

A-N-N-A-N-I-A-S. Ananias.

And then Sapphira was his wife.

S-A-P-H-I-R-A. Sapphira.

And they are killed.

Killed. Two L's.

For lying about their giving.

So the story goes like this.

I'm not going to go to the reader right this second, some of us know it, some of us don't.

There was a period of time when the church was in need.

They were suffering and the people that were attached to the church were suffering.

And people began to take care of that need.

They started to sell their property, sell their personal belongings, and donate the money to the church.

In particular, there was a man named Bartavus.

He sold a piece of property that he owned and he donated 100% of the money,

everything that he got out of selling that property to the church.

Because of people doing that, the church was totally taken care of.

There were no needs. Everybody was taken care of.

But people had to keep doing that to make sure there were no needs, right?

Or otherwise God had to miraculously provide it in some way.

So Ananias and Sapphira saw what Bartavus did.

They went and sold a piece of property that they owned.

And then they came and they gave some of the money.

But they lied and said it was all of the money.

But it wasn't all of the money.

So they let them believe, let everybody believe that they were giving all the money as Bartavus had done.

But it wasn't all of the money. So they had lied about it.

Because they lied about it, God killed first him, then her, if I got the order right, on the spot.

They died. Dead. And the men carried them out dead. Right?

And it was because they lied about their giving.

The ramifications of God's holy nature, there are a lot of factors in why it's important that God is like this.

And if you take this out, if you look at God, you say God's not like that.

God's nice. God's cushy. God's got a giant 80 foot teddy bear that I can sit on his lap and eat cookies and feel good about myself.

If that's who you make God out to be, then there's a real problem with that imagery.

Because of what happened to Ananias and Sapphira. What happened to Aaron's sons.

The Levites needing to camp around the tavern and protect everybody else. Right?

So some of the factors are God's power. You realize God has literally unlimited power.

He's omnipotent. That means he can literally do anything.

As somebody who said, is God so powerful that he can make a rock that he can't lift?

And the answer is, yes, he could make a rock that he can't lift, but then he could lift it.

And then he could make another rock that he can't lift, but then he could lift it.

God's power is omnipotent. There is no limit. Right?

Could God erase all of creation, all of the stars, all the moon, everything, just wipe it away from existence, including every person.

And then in a split second, create another? Yes. Absolutely. He's omnipotent. He has no limit to his power.

But what he did to Son of Aurelius was the most. Amen. He can do that like that?

He can do literally nothing. Exactly. And he can do it again.

God's sovereignty. God is in charge. Okay? So power is one thing. A car has power.

But when a car sits there, it may have, I don't know, 300 horsepower, 400 horsepower, whatever.

What does it do? Just sit there. Just sits there. That's it.

Put a key in, start it up, put in gear, give it some gas.

Now stand in front of it, rooted, put your feet rooted in cement, stand there while that car rides over you.

It will snap your calves in two. At whatever point you bend, you're going to be broken.

And then you're going to be scraped off. You're going to die. Right? Because you cannot hold back that power.

But something has control of the power. And in case of God, God's control is his sovereignty.

He knows exactly what's right. He knows how to do it. And he can do it. He is able to rule everything.

Also God's love. It's not right that people disperse God.

I heard somebody say just recently, for example, they said, how does it seem right Adam and Eve, man?

They got cursed for kicked out of the garden and everything and had to work and pain of pregnancy.

And they fought with each other about who would be in control.

And then all the wars and everything that's developed, all the sinful nature of humankind.

How is that curse right for that one little thing that Adam did, which was to sin against God, right?

To take up a tree of the knowledge of evil when he wasn't supposed to.

And they said, well, that seems like a big deal. No, you don't understand. This is God.

He's all-powerful and in control of everything.

And if you would walk up to somebody who's all-powerful and in control of everything and sin right in their face, right?

Just take a really big, really mean dude and spit in his face and see what happens.

Right? That's just not the way it works.

So God's not mean, but he is all-powerful and he's all-sovereign.

And his love demands that people receive for what they have done.

Also his mercy.

God, if God is not going to punish somebody who does wrong, then there's no room for God's mercy.

Mercy just ceases to exist. If there's no punishment for wrongdoing, then there's no need for mercy, right?

And then grace.

Because God not only doesn't punish people sometimes, that's mercy, but on top of that, he gives us the blessing.

His Holy Spirit in our lives, salvation, heaven when we die, lordship, like he tells us what to do when we do it.

All of those are great blessings.

And so if he doesn't punish, if there is no punishment, then there is no grace either.

Right? God's justice. He must deal out justice for when things are done wrong.

God's bigness. He's everywhere, all the time, all-powerful, all-capable, knows everything, etc.

God's bigness.

God's involvement with man.

He can just ignore what you're doing and that is no problem, right?

He could have ignored what Aaron Suns did bringing on Holy Fire.

But then what? Pretty soon everybody's bringing on Holy Fire.

Pretty soon people are killing people, people are raping people, people's incest, or whatever.

The world back then could have gotten to be more like the world is sometimes now.

Because God is involved, he doesn't want to overlook it.

And more, we can go on. God fully understands what's at stake.

Not your life here on earth. That's not what's at stake.

What's at stake is eternal life. Right? It's eternity. Grace given eternity.

So God's righteous anger, God's wrath, which is his violent opposition to what's wrong, means he opposes what's wrong.

God's separation, people being separated from God, God pulls back from people who are in sin.

People withdraw from God when they're in sin. I'll give you 10 seconds.

And the Bible says the wages of sin is death. That means there is a distance between a person and God when they sin.

And all of that is wrapped up in whether or not God is holy like the Bible says he is.

Okay, question.

How many human also know about what's going on in Ukraine and Russia? Ukraine and Russia? Yep.

A lot of people would probably, a lot of Christians would probably think, well that's God's wrath, so they're going to do something wrong.

What I think is it's God calling the people to come back home.

Well, war is a none too subtle reminder that this is not our home.

All wars are reminders of that. That's a good word.

Okay, so only God's, there's blanks, chosen chosen. That's a phrase I want you to remember.

There is this chosen, who, by the way, who is chosen by God to be saved? Don't over think it.

Everyone. Everyone, right?

Generically speaking, everyone is chosen. But when is a person really chosen by God to be saved?

When would you call them chosen? Beautiful.

Beautiful. When they, right, when they repent and turn their life over to God. It's well said. It's very well said.

So at that point they become chosen. But of the chosen, there's a chosen chosen.

Right? So the people, the Israelites coming out of Egypt, they were all chosen.

God said, out of Egypt I call my son. All twelve tribes were chosen.

But only the Levites were the chosen chosen. Okay?

Which is why they walked around the Taranackos, why they protected the rest of the people from the wrath of God.

So it's the chosen chosen. And only the chosen chosen may encamp, which means to make your dwelling near to God.

And in so doing, we protect the rest. I say we, I hope I'm in the chosen chosen, right?

But the chosen chosen protect the rest of people. Saved or unsaved, it doesn't matter.

Because the church is still here, that is to say the church, as Kishan and so perfectly put it, repented and turned their life over to God.

Because the church is still here, the world is protected from the final wrath, so separation from God.

God is going to blow it up. God is going to roll up the heavens. God is going to destroy and regenerate the earth.

And because the church is still here, that time is withheld. 1 Peter 3.18 says that God is patient with us.

It doesn't say patient with lost people, patient with unsaved people. It says God is patient with us that we might be saved.

So those blanks there were because the church is still here. Because the church is still here.

So real quick, I'm going to give you a history lesson that's going to go by fast. If you don't remember it all, it's okay.

But I want you to kind of see how this unfolds. We're talking about how did they get this status?

How did the Levites become the chosen chosen? Now that blank there is for you to write any words in there.

You can write little sentences if you're kind of a compulsive note taker and you want to write it all out as much as you can.

Or you want to go like ABC or draw a diagram or whatever you want to do to try to remember the gist of what I'm about to explain.

So Levi, who was what's called the progenitor, he was the first of the Levites. He was Levi.

He was a brother who avenged his sister Dinah by killing all the males of an entire city after they agreed to be circumcised,

after some of them had taken her and raped her. So some men from the city raped Dinah.

And Levi and his brother were mad about it. And they said, that's not right. We're going to do something about it.

They went to the city and the man who raped her wanted to marry her. And that was a custom in their day.

If you find a woman in the field and you rape her and you marry her, it's not wrong. That was a custom.

I don't agree with it. That is certainly not right today. It's not what God would ever want.

It's not the way God would ever want it, he said. But that was the way it was.

So they said, well, we want to marry her. He said, well, you can't marry her because you're not Israelite.

She said, geez, we married outside our kind. We don't do that. And they said, well, we're willing to become your kind.

What do we got to do? And they said, what would you got to do? You got to all be circumcised.

And to be circumcised is to sniff the foreskin of the beans. And it is crippling.

So when they do that, men are in such grove men when they do it, they're in such pain that they're basically non-functional for three days.

During that three days, he and his brother went, they all did it at the same time, so the city was crippled.

And they went and killed every man in the city. Now before you say that's horrible, it is horrible, by the way.

And they were punished for misusing God's teaching to punish these people.

At the same time, they raped, some of them raped their sister. And so he was wrathful. He was angry.

He used God's tradition to destroy an entire city. Now that's their namesake. That's the namesake of the Levites.

But God did not give them this most honored position for that. They were not the chosen chosen because of what Levi did then.

In fact, he was punished for it. Now when Aaron made the golden calf,

Moses gave an invitation to anyone who would come and stand by God.

So he made the golden calf, and there were some events that followed after that, and there was a lot of debauchery.

That means sinful, nasty behavior going on. Right? And Moses says, God said to Moses, say, who will come and stand with me?

And he said, who will come and stand with me? And the Levites did.

The Levites did, and they were used to kill 3,000 men, family, and friends as punishment for the evil

that had been done in worshiping that calf and the other things surrounding it.

But they did not earn their status because they responded to the invitation because they served God then.

They were chosen by God from God's already chosen people. You can read about this in Numbers 3, 11, 16.

God ransomed them. He bought them, essentially, by what happens in Numbers 3, 11, 16.

Patrick, you will go there and read it real quick, just so we understand what it is.

Anybody already there that's thinking ahead? Numbers 3, 11. Not bad for an electronic Bible. There it is.

Okay. It says, Again the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Now behold, I have taken the Levites from among the sons of Israel,

instead of every firstborn, the first issue of the womb among the sons of Israel, so the Levites shall be mine.

For all the firstborn are mine. On the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt,

I sanctified to myself all the firstborn in Israel, from man to beast. They shall be mine. I am the Lord.

So when God destroyed all the firstborn in Israel, He had a right at that time, I'm sorry, in Egypt,

a right at that time to destroy all the firstborn in Israel, but He did not.

Therefore, by His extension, He said, They belong to me, all the firstborn in Israel.

But instead of taking all the firstborn in Israel, God took the Levites.

They are the chosen chosen. He traded them for the firstborn of Israel, all the tribes, for the Levites.

God ransomed them. He didn't ransom them any more than He ransomed you or me, but that's what made them able to encamp near God.

Which means, if you're ransomed by God, you could camp near God.

But if you're not ransomed by God, you're playing at this, or if you've forgotten about how holy God is,

you don't really care, then I would not recommend it.

An illustration from paintball. I went out to play paintball, and there was a young man there, probably like 21 years old,

and I played quite a bit of paintball back in the day. I haven't played in a long time now.

And there was a guy there, and he was scoffing, laughing, about the policy of the paintball field that you're supposed to wear a mask.

So you have big masks that cover your whole face, and they're a little inconvenient.

They give you that great peripheral vision. They make you sweat in your face, that kind of thing.

You fog up, it's kind of humid out. And he was laughing about that requirement.

And so he had some little goggles like this that he was going to wear, and this is what I wore too,

and I got hurt doing it as well at a different time.

And so he went out on the field, and the very next game that he played was out on the field,

he got shot in the face right here, right below the goggles. No mask.

So then his face swelled up really bad. So he went into the place where he read the mask from, cost like five bucks for the day.

And he went in there and he said, well, I should have done it. I shouldn't have been laughing about it.

Now I got hit in the face, my face is all swollen, so I'm going to have to wear a mask, or I'm not going to be able to play anymore.

So then he paid the five bucks, they handed him a mask, he tried to put it on. Guess what?

He couldn't do it. He couldn't put it on. He put it on his face, and it hurt so bad, like shooting pains in his head because his face was swelled up.

So here's the bottom line. You're not able, I'm not able to encamp near God. That ransom has to be paid.

We can think it's kind of funny. We can laugh about it and go halfway in for God. We can get comfortable near God.

We can think, well, you know, God, Jesus died across my sense, so now whatever I do is fine.

Or I'm mostly going to do what's right, but when it gets right down to it and I really want to do something that I shouldn't,

or I really don't want to do something that I should do, I'm going to do what I want to do rather than doing what I know God wants me to do.

If that's the way you see God's holiness, then understand by the time you go to put on the mask, by the time you go to totally trust in the ransom, it's too late.

You won't be able to put on the mask. You'll be in too much pain, you'll be too far away, whatever, from that.

So just the same as he laughed about it and then couldn't do it, we can do the same thing. Don't do that. Let's take God very seriously.

First Corinthians 3 verses 15 to 20. This is that passage of scripture where Paul is writing to the Corinthians and he's saying,

1 Corinthians 3:15–20

whatever a man builds with after he is saved, after Jesus has started the foundation, that's, if it's burned up, he'll suffer loss.

This is verse 15. If any man's work is burned up, he'll suffer loss. But he himself be saved, yet so as through fire. What are we talking about?

We're talking about the chosen who will be saved, yet as through fire, because the stuff that he built with after he got saved was not God's stuff.

We're talking about the difference between the chosen and the chosen chosen. That's what we're talking about.

The chosen will face a certain amount of burning off as we get saved. That's what he said. If any man's work is burned up, he'll suffer loss.

But he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. Then he goes right on to talking about the solution to this problem.

He says, do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, that he may become wise.

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God, for it is written, he is the one who captures the wise and the craftiness.

And again, the Lord knows the reasonings of the wise, that they are useless.

In other words, you've got to put the recognition of God's holiness up above whatever you think about what you should do.

God is holy, and you can be among the chosen chosen if you recognize his holiness and live affordingly.

The truth is, some people think that they can encamp near the tabernacle. Watch your blanks there.

Some people think they can encamp near the tabernacle. That's your blanks. And get away with it.

They think they can be less than holy and be okay.

Now they've got their reasons, their excuses, they're wise in the ways of the world, so they're getting by for right now.

So I know why I do what I do. For example, I know I only lie in the least, only little times.

Never when it's important, never when it really matters. I only do that because I was hurt as a child when I grew up,

or I was betrayed by this person, or I have psychological issues, or I have anxiety, or I have stress.

And that's the only reason I do these things I shouldn't do, and I only do them by accident or whatever.

But they know they do them, and they're not taking any steps to stop it.

Some think they can camp near the tabernacle and get away with something. They think they can be less than holy and be okay.

Our holiness, our right to a camp near God, we get it when we are saved, ransom, like the Levites were.

We cannot get unsaved. We're not talking about that. We're not talking about losing salvation.

What we are talking about is we can lose our holiness, which is our usefulness to God.

The whole book of Leviticus, practically, talks about cleanliness and uncleanness.

And when you see cleanliness, cleanliness, you can use. Think like a bowl.

You wouldn't make soup for yourself in a bowl that was all nasty and full of yesterday's junk.

You'd clean that out first. Well, that's what it's like for God.

Uncleanness or unholiness is when the bowl is unclean.

And we don't want to be unclean. We want to be clean.

We want to do everything we can to seek after holiness.

And if we don't, if we're not fit, the ramifications are his holiness.

We'll act out. The Romans 11, 16, and 23, which we won't go there and read it right this second.

You can read it later if you want.

The Bible talks about how we get our holiness from God through Jesus.

That's how we get it. We get it when we are saved.

We can lose it. We can lose our holiness.

Indeed, we could give it back. God gives it to you, and you could give it back.

And it's not talking about not being saved anymore.

But God bestows on you a holiness when you get saved.

It really comes from Jesus' righteousness.

And you can waste it. You can lose it. You can give it back.

Fear, then, is our protection from losing it.

Another paintball story way back in the day.

I don't know if I can date myself over here.

Almost 30 years ago now, I went out paintballing with some friends of mine.

And then one of our friends got it going at their work.

And all the people who came to his work were there.

And one of the guys that came up before us, he got there about half an hour before,

they had already played one game.

And as we were coming in, he was leaving the paintball field.

And we were like, where are you going? We just got here. We haven't even started yet.

He's like, yeah, we played one game. I've got to go to my car.

And we're like, when are you going to go to the car for?

He said, I've got to get a pair of socks.

And I'm thinking, you're not wearing socks.

Your feet's going to get chafed. That's a problem. Whatever.

But that's not why he wanted the socks.

He went to the car and he got his socks and he came back.

And I didn't think anything of it.

And then a little bit later, we were standing around during the break talking about it.

And somebody mentioned, you know, what happened?

Why did you need socks? Did your feet get wet? Whatever.

He said, oh no. He said, I got my socks right here.

And he pulled up the crotch of his pants.

And he's like, and we're all like, what are you talking about? Right?

Why did you get socks stuffed on your pants?

In that first game, he had been shot in the privates by a paintball.

And he realized that the thing to do then was to put socks down his pants.

So if he got shot in the privates again, the socks would stop his testicles from being injured.

So he went to go get socks.

So after the break, three or four guys went to go get whatever they had in their car and stuffed it down their pants.

So if you don't want to get shot in the privates, sometime while you're playing paintball,

by the way, I have been shot in the privates two times while playing paintball.

One of them was the first time that ever happened to me, which was way before that.

Took me out of playing for about a month.

Because I had pain in my privates.

So if you don't want to get shot in the privates and it hurt while you're playing paintball, you put something in there.

Most professional players wear a cup.

Just like a sports star does or whatever.

So his fear was drummed up because he got shot.

By the time you get shot in the privates by God because you have not respected God's holiness, it's too late.

So what I'm asking you to do and what the Bible is asking us to do is to fear wasting or reckless attention to God's holiness.

We should pay attention.

God is holy.

Some folks are camping near the Tabernacle without the necessary quality.

They don't have holiness.

They gave that up.

So what do you do if that's you?

We have two choices.

You can repent.

That means turn back to God.

That's where we started at, as Kishan so wisely explained to us.

We became the chosen when we repented and turned our lives over to God.

And you now realize you no longer have God's holiness that he gave you at that time.

All you have to do is, in earnest, actually mean it, repent and turn back to God.

Okay, God, I repent.

I turn back to you.

You can use that word or don't.

And then beg God to graft you into his holiness, either for the first time, if you're getting saved for the first time, or again.

Then you accept the free gift.

You become the church, which is the chosen of the chosen.

I believe that a lot of people out there who are telling me they're saved, many of them probably are.

I don't judge who's saved and who's not.

That's not my job.

But what I can tell you for sure is if they're not worshiping God, if they're not studying his word, if they're not sitting, if they're not giving,

I would say tithing, even, if they're not doing the things of God that God has called us to do and they have no respect for that,

then this is what I know.

They're not the chosen of the chosen.

They may be the chosen, which means they'll go to heaven when they die.

And God will even abide with them to some extent all the way through.

But they will also be under his wrath.

And at some point, time may pour out on them and they may be destroyed out of this light, as we talked about on Sunday.

So what you do then, alternative to repent if you're not going to, is run.

Run away.

That's all you can do.

Get away from the tabernacle.

Get away from God as far as you can, as fast as you can.

Do your best to stay out of his presence and avoid the coming wrath.

But know this, as David wrote in the book of Psalms in Psalm 139, wherever you flee, he is there.

If you are saved, he has called you to holiness.

And you can hide in your closet and do what God says you should not do.

And the price is the same as if you did it in the middle of the marketplace.

Right?

So you can run, as David said, where can I go from your spirit or where can I flee from your spirit?

To the bottom of the sea?

To the tops of the mountains?

There is nowhere.

If you are the chosen, your only real choice is to become the chosen chosen.

Live as holy as you possibly can and avoid the pouring over the wrath.

And know this is the beautiful thing, it's kind of funny because this is something that came up in the game that I ran on Sunday.

Know that as somebody who is the chosen chosen, you are protecting those who are outside.

As long as we are still here, and then one day Jesus is going to come again and say,

Come on chosen chosen, we are out of here. And the moment we are gone, the world is in trouble.

Because the wrath of God will pour out in a mighty way.

And that is a thing you don't want to see.

To the holy, it is great comfort to know that God is everywhere.

But to those who receive the free gift of salvation or to those who accept it and refuse to be holy,

it should scare them.

It should scare you. What startles you?

It ought to be God because he is powerful.

And this ain't no joke. This ain't no game.

You may think Pastor Dan is kind of freaky, kind of weird, does silly stuff.

Half the time what I am doing is I do because I am afraid of God.

I am being honest with you. I am afraid.

I am afraid to not do what God wants me to do.

Not because God is going to destroy me, because he is not.

Because I am the chosen. I am saved.

I know where I am going when I die.

But I want to be holy the best I can.

And whether I screw it up, I repent and turn back to God.

Like the Bible says, what value is salt if it has lost its saltiness?

Can I get your saltiness back?

Repent and turn back to God.

You weren't salt to start with. He made you salt of the earth.

If you are saved.

And then you repent and turn back to God and He will make you salt again.

There is no way, no science in this world that can return saltiness to salt.

Or that could take dirt and make it salt.

They have not discovered any science yet that can do that.

But God, He takes dirt and makes a man.

He sacrifices his own son to that man.

That man recognizes it and becomes the chosen.

Then that man becomes the chosen chosen.

And the salt of the earth.

I am going to break it briefly and we are through with our lesson.

Ariana and I have made fresh, fresh a couple of hours ago, cookies and frosted them.

And they are in the cafeteria.

So we will go there and take a look at them.

And then we are going to, we have enough to include the children in that.

But we will get ours first to make sure.

Kind of smooth it over a little bit.

Alright, let's break.

So in heaven I am grateful that something stirs in me that I get a little afraid when I am going the wrong way.

Like I put my hand on a burning stove.

I am grateful that I don't have to get to the point where it feels hot and the wealth starts coming up.

Before I realize I am about to burn myself.

I recognize you God as supremely powerful, supremely knowledgeable, supremely capable.

And I want to be holy the best I can as you are holy.

I don't want to go outside of your will for my life anymore than I have to by my ignorance or by my weakness.

And so please Lord, please.

You do what it is that you want to do.

Use your people.

Use us as a shield for the rest of the world.

Use us as a shield to protect them.

To deliver the gospel so that people can become their chosen.

And then the chosen chosen.

If that's, if they are willing.

And for us Lord, for anyone who is in this room and needs your repentance, I pray that you just bring them up right now.

Shake them a little bit.

And let them repent.

Let them turn to you again.

Say I want to be God.

Say everything that I do.

It's no joke.

God is holy.

If I offer a strange fire, if I can't be too close to the holy God, I may be destroyed.

I am certainly no protection for anybody else.

Lord let us be your chosen children.

We pray this in Jesus name.

Amen.

Thank you very much.

This concludes our research.

Did you see where the recording came from?

It was actually down there.

It was plugged in up there.

Oh.

Okay.

Is it recording still?

I hope so.

Yep, sure is.

I didn't mean to burn it.

No, I turned it on.

Before I left.

So it looks like it's fine.

Yes, it was recording.

So if you ever need to...