Message 1

Welcome to this week's message from the Church at Chelsea Westover.

Our core values are vibrant worship, intimate fellowship, fulfilling service, and clear biblical truth.

We pray that this message changes your life.

Let's tune in to today's message and see what God has in store for you.

To the boldness, through the boldness that Christ has given to us.

I want to tell you what, I am excited to be here.

We are going to have a visitation of God.

God's not going to come for a visitation.

I believe he's going to come for a habitation.

He's looking for a place to dwell.

And we are the tabernacle of God today, which we'll be talking about this week.

I woke up on Tuesday, this past week, on Tuesday at 3 o'clock in the morning with some words going through my head, and I couldn't get back to sleep.

All I could remember is holiest of holies, and come boldly before the throne of God.

And I thought to myself, where do I heard those words?

I couldn't get them out of my mind.

And they connected them with a song that I heard 30 years ago, and I've never thought of those words or heard that song for 30 years.

I laid awake for three hours, those words going over in my head.

And God spoke to me and said, Randy Spencer, you are going to experience the holiness of God.

You're going to go into my holiest of holies, and you're going to experience the presence of God.

And I said, God, thank you.

And I as soon as it got light enough out, I picked my phone up and texted my daughter, and I said, You know all the songs that have ever been written.

She's a singer herself.

And I said, Where's the song that keeps going in my head about the holiest of holies?

And you can't approach God's throne.

And she sent a link back to me that it was a song that truth sang some 30-some years ago, back in the 80s, that uh uh that they sang, and then she sent a link to that song.

And um I had to go downstairs, down to the basement, and that link came through.

My wife picked the phone up and she pushed the button on it and was listening to it upstairs.

Well, I was downstairs and I heard this incredible sound coming from somewhere.

I thought there was a fox in the hen house out back.

I really did.

And I went to the window and looked out, everything looked okay.

I walked upstairs, and my wife was in the bedroom, three floors up, having a glory spell with tears rolling down her face, her hands raised up while that song was playing, and she said, We're going to experience God's presence.

It tu it down at uh at Birmingham, Alabama.

You folks, if you want to experience God, he is waiting.

He desires for you to have a fresh encounter with him.

And we are going to have this week, if now I can't force this.

All I can do is set a stage.

I loaded up a U-Haul and we got all the furnishings of the tabernacle.

They're pretty much life size and to scale, and they're going to be in here on Friday night.

And if you would come and walk through this with me, to where?

We're going to the holiest of holies, folks.

I'm telling you, we're going through the inner veil because Jesus has made us access to come into his very presence.

That's what we long inside there.

I look back at Israel and I think of all the thousands of lambs that had to be slain, the turtle doves and the bullocks and all the blood that had to be shed, and all the rituals and all the formality that they had to go through.

And through one man, this supernatural, this gifted man of God, came down from heaven and laid himself on an altar called the cross, and he paid it all once and for all.

He put an end to all the sacrifices and said, Now you can come into my holy presence of Almighty God and have fellowship with him.

It's up to you, folks.

I can't force you, I can't push you, but I want to tell you what, God's given an invitation.

If you'll step out, if you'll come and learn about these pieces of tabernacle, each piece of the furniture represents a step of approaching God.

Now, praise God, we don't have to go through a veil, we don't have to go into a physical curtain, we don't have to go through animal sacrifices.

We can come now boldly through the blood of Jesus Christ into his presence and feel God's presence.

And I think we all need that.

Amen.

We need to have a habitation of God coming into this tabernacle and dwelling within us.

Well, tonight, you know what this is?

This is the shofar.

And the I every time every time, just wait a minute.

Every time, every time Israel was called to worship, the priest blew the trumpet.

You say, Spencer, can you blow that trumpet?

No.

No, I can't.

But I've tried.

And um, I tried to give it to Levi, the high priest here, but he said he got a sore throat and he's not able to blow it.

But I want to tell you what, tonight, I need to practice this afternoon.

Tonight we're gonna because when the gates coming into the presence of God, they blew the ram's horn.

The chauffeur said, It's time to worship.

Time to come in the presence of the Lord.

Father God, Lord, this is your week.

God, I pray that you would supernaturally come.

God, I pray that you would empower us, Lord.

Oh Holy Spirit, come and indwell us like we've never been indwelt before.

And we'll give you praise for what you're about to do in each of these people's lives, Lord.

I've seen you through this tabernacle prayer bring healing, bring fresh fellowship, bring forgiveness of sins and repentance and tears and salvation and brokenness and contrite spirit.

God, you can do it to each and every one of us, and we need it desperately.

And I'll thank you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You know, it's not by accident that all this is happening at your church right now.

And even Granny going home to be with the Lord, this is God knew what he does, God knows what he's doing.

He knows exactly what he's doing.

And God knows that even the Wilson family may need our prayers more than ever before.

Which this is a week of prayer meeting with God.

God knows what he's doing, and God knows that it's gonna take your pastor's time.

He needs to be with the Wilson family ministering to them.

And and and Benji, the our song leader, he needs to be with his grandma during this time.

And I want to say, whatever, I I'm not here by accident.

And Pastor Lovett, listen to me.

If I can be a pastor to your people, I'll I'll take care of the flock.

Well, I'll I'll feed them, I'll take care of them.

If you need to be, you need to be with that family, you need to encourage them.

Is it all right with you?

Maybe I could just be your pastor this week.

And and and and and maybe that's the reason that God brought this all together.

And you know, if you have if you have a need this week, call me.

I'll come to your house.

What else do you do with pastors?

Well, you make them uh uh an apple pie or something like that.

I I can come to your house.

I'll you go to the hospital, I'll be there for you.

I'll be there to minister to you.

I'll do anything.

The only thing I don't do is weddings.

Amen.

No one's planning on getting married this week, so uh I will be a pastor to you to free your pastor that they can be with the family that needs them today.

And God will put all the pieces together, no doubt in my mind.

Well, I'm gonna tell you what.

If we're willing to meet him, his greatest desire is to meet with us.

The Bible says those who seek the Lord will find him when they search for him with all of their hearts.

And we want to start searching.

God's not playing hide and seek, he's not trying to hide and conceal himself someplace and say, oh, see if he could find me.

No, God's desire to find us and meet us and be with us is greater than we could ever imagine.

As Susan said, everything that that uh God went through in order to be with us, he's proven that he wants to fellowship with us.

He's done everything he possibly can do, but he can't force you to seek him, he can't force you to find him.

He wants to show all his glory and manifest his presence.

Wouldn't it be neat to be able to say as Isaiah did in Isaiah chapter 6, verse 5, I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord Almighty.

Isaiah 6:5

Wouldn't you like to see him?

Just if God showed up in his Sekina glory to the tabernacle and in the temple, and God showed up in a cloud and a fire, don't you think he can do it today?

God is still just as real today as he was back then.

He wants to meet with us.

But Israel had to walk through a process.

Israel had to take a journey and had to take steps and they had to come by the right way.

So also there's a way to the cross today.

It's not up to us to choose how we want to meet God.

God has prescribed a program.

And he said, I'm not trying to hide from you.

I want you, I desire you.

Psalms chapter 34 tells us, Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints.

Psalms 34 · chapter mention

But there's no lack to those who fear the Lord.

The young lions shall lack and suffer hunger, but those that seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.

That's awesome.

You want to have God provide for you, you want to have every blessing, you want to be in right fellowship with God, then seek him.

He wants to be found by you.

Walk with him.

Oh, and we want to see the Shekinah glory.

I found this this week.

You know, the word Shekinah is not a biblical term.

Uh, it was it was coined by a Jewish rabbi when he was trying to explain the pillar of cloud and the fire that came down.

And he called it the Shekinah glory because Shekinah simply means looking for a cause to dwell.

And what God was doing is God was looking for a cause to come to dwell among his people.

As Susan also said, from the way back in the Garden of Eden when sin came into this world, God created this whole world so that he could fellowship with us.

He seeks after us, he's looking for us to fellowship, to commune with us.

And sin came, and this holy righteous God could not come into a world cursed with sin.

So we had to make a way.

He wants to be us with us so desperately.

He came in his Shekinah glory.

What was it?

It was a divine visitation of the presence of the Lord God on earth.

What an awesome thought.

And I want to tell you a little secret.

You don't have to find the presence of God now going into an earthly tent.

He's not found in a tabernacle, he's not found in a tent, he's not found up way up on a mountain.

You know where he's found today?

Right as close as your heart.

Because we are the tabernacle of God, and he invites us to come into his presence and that he indwells us and lives within us.

So, what I want to challenge you to do, our mission this week is to have a fresh encounter with God, to pursue God.

Wouldn't it be neat to be a God chaser?

Man, we in this world chase everything but God.

Man, we church finances, we chase our career, we chase our families, and we we we we we chase our our fortune and our fame.

God said, if my people would just be God chasers, just pursue after the Lord, run him down, say, God, we want you more than anything else.

Like David cried out, go, God, I long to be with you like a deer, pants after water, so my soul pants after you, oh God.

Do you want him?

Let me ask you something.

Are you hungry for him?

You're hungry for him.

That's what God, he wants to touch us.

Oh, every born-again Christian ought to have a burning, all-consuming passion to know God like they've never known him before.

He loves us so much.

It ought to be that we want to see.

We'll never have a real God until we see him face to face through Jesus.

We'll never be able to long for the we need to long from the very depths of our soul for the divine breath of God that breathed life into us at creation and breathed into the nostrils of the first man, Adam.

We ought not to ever be satisfied till we see him.

Like Isaiah, I've seen the king.

Like John saw him when he was taken, the revelator's taken up into heaven and saw all the glories of God presented before him.

God is opening his nature and opening his character and opening his holiness to us and saying, Come on in, seek me, search for me.

And I'll tell you the downside of God's glory.

Listen very carefully.

When you get to the downside of God's glory, what's going to happen?

You're going to see yourself like Isaiah saw himself as wretched and sinful and undone.

Because the bigger God gets, the smaller we become.

And the bigger and glorious he becomes, we understand our sinfulness and we understand that we have no right to go to God.

But then all of a sudden Jesus shows up and says, He's not worthy, but my blood has covered his sin and he comes in the righteousness of Christ.

That's what God wants to do to us.

He wants to bring us into his presence through the Son Jesus.

We did this tabernacle prayer at Calvary Baptist Church several years ago when God gave me this idea of reforming the furniture of the tabernacle, and we put it together, and we started at 7 o'clock at night, and we had folks go through in groups after I had taught on the tabernacle prayer.

And folks, we had over 350 people all night long, but we didn't close down, we didn't get it closed down until 7 o'clock in the morning.

People were coming and walking through there.

And weeks after we had the tabernacle prayer on Sunday morning, people would stand and give testimony about how God touched them.

There were healings that took place, there were families that were restored that took place, there were salvations that took place, there was a breakthrough of bondages and addictions broken when people were willing to come into the presence of God and sense God and feel God's presence in their lives.

Well, let's go and let's just take a look.

Man, there's man, there's just so much going on.

When you talk about all, we're not gonna, we're not gonna be detailed, because there I I did a tabernacle study one time and I rebuilt the tabernacle and talked about all the colors and what they mean and all the sizes and all the hoops and all the pins, and we went to Ephesians, or excuse me, Exodus chapter 25, 26, 27, 28.

Exodus 25 · chapter mention

Four chapters was designed for God to give Moses instructions on how to build this thing.

We went through all of that, took months.

We're not gonna do that.

We're not gonna look at details, we're gonna look at symbols and what it means to walk through this process of meeting God.

We're gonna be talking about prayer and how we can approach God through the tabernacle furniture and how we can make it a regular part of our lives, how we can make it part of our worship and part of our devotion.

What does the Old Testament tabernacle look like?

And what is a tabernacle anyway?

Well, I looked up the Greek word tabernacle, and the word is the simple word in Greek is oikos, and the Hebrew word is myschan.

Oikos simply means dwelling.

Let me show you a New Testament scripture that talks about this.

John chapter 1, verse 14.

John 1:14

The word, which is talking about Jesus, became flesh and dwelt among us.

The word dwelt is oikos, which means Jesus was tabernacled among us.

And then we find John, or excuse me, Paul writing about our physical bodies in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 1, and says, For we know that if this earthly tabernacle of this house were dissolved, we have a home eternal in the heavens, not built by hands.

2 Corinthians 5:1

A house in heaven.

What Paul was saying is, we are a tabernacle.

This body is a tabernacle, because we live within this.

And also, not only do we live within the tabernacle, but God Himself lives within the tabernacle.

He dwells into our hearts.

So what is a tabernacle?

It's simply a place of God's dwelling.

And is it some antiquated Old Testament reference to some little building out in a wilderness?

And yet someone says, Well, how's that relevant to us today?

Why do we go back and look at a tabernacle in a wilderness in a desert place and relate it to us?

Because God, listen to me, this is the most incredible thought.

It just blows my mind.

That God looked down at Israel and saw all the sin of mankind, and he desired so much to live with his people, he devised a plan.

And everything in heaven, the tabernacle is in heaven.

We're going to talk about that.

And what God did was make a little heaven on earth by taking the furnitures of heaven and bringing them down into small scale and putting them on earth so that he had a place to dwell among his people.

So he lives inside the holiest of holies and he made a process for mankind to walk through these steps to get into the presence of God.

Here's what blows my mind: that God loves me so much that he left the glories and the splendor and the beauty of heaven and came down to live in a tent.

That just blows my mind.

This awesome, eternal, sovereign God left everything in heaven because he loves us so much and wants to talk to us and wants a relationship with us.

He came down and lived in a box.

Inside the Ark of the Covenant, on the mercy seat, God says, I will live behind curtains.

I will live among stone and the rot and the wretchedness of this earth to be with my people.

I want to tell you what, when I realize that God loves me so much that He wants to do all that to talk to me, to commune with me, to fellowship with me.

You know, one of the greatest struggles that you and I have, and one of the greatest struggles I've found through the last 40 years of ministry, is people struggle to pray.

And what is prayer?

Prayer is talking to God.

God wanted so much to talk to you that he was willing to leave heaven, live in a tent, to be able to fellowship with you.

And listen to this, this is even, this even blows my mind even more than living in a tent.

He loved me so much, he left the beauties of heaven to come down and live inside this wretched tent.

He lives inside my body because he wants me.

He loves me.

He's searching relationship with me.

He wants to talk to me.

He wants to visit with me.

He wants to know me and fellowship with me.

And one of the greatest struggles that every church member has is spending time talking to him.

What do we call it?

We call it prayer, or maybe we call it our quiet time.

We have our 15 minutes set aside with God every morning.

I want to tell you what, it's a challenge to pray for an hour.

I'll be honest with you.

Until God revealed the tabernacle system to me, it was difficult for me to freelance my prayers and freestyle.

You know, I pray for the missionaries, I pray for my family, and I, the Lord, lead, guide, and direct me, and God meet this need and pray for this person's illness.

And in about 15 minutes, my mind is wandering and I'm going in a thousand different directions.

Man, through the tabernacle prayer, there was a process to get to the presence of God.

And God says, if you honor my furniture and you honor my process and my steps to me, you I'll tell you what, this hour that we're asking you to do, to come on Friday to spend an hour with God.

It'll go so fast.

It'll be amazing how you can pray for an hour and then end up in the very holiest of holies, in the presence of God and feel it.

Because there's things that have to happen before we rush in.

The Bible says angels rush in where are we rushing, fools rush in where angels fear to trot.

We go plowing in to the presence of God and don't understand that God says there's a way to get to me.

Remember, Jesus said to his disciples.

He said to his disciples when he was facing the hour of death in the Garden of Gethsemane, he said, Watch with me and pray here.

And he went up into the uh garden and began to pray.

And when he came down, what did he find?

The disciples were sleeping.

And those words burn in my heart every time I read them.

When Jesus looked to his disciples sleeping, and he said to them, Can't you even pray with me?

In my hour of torment, in my hour of decision, I'm facing the greatest decision that ever will be made of humanity.

And can you not even watch and pray with me for one hour?

I want to ask you, church, if God did all that to come to talk to you, would you not?

I'll tell you, I'll tell you one thing with in relationships, husbands, how many husbands do we have here?

Put her hand up.

I want to tell you what, you kind of work a deal with your spouse and say, honey, uh, you know, we're gonna have a little quiet time when we get up in the morning.

And I uh we'll talk together for 10 or 15 minutes, and that ought to be good.

And matter of fact, if I'm around at mealtime, I may say uh a few little words to you there.

I'll tell you what, that relationship's not gonna be very sweet.

I'm telling you what.

The number one problem in marriages is communication.

When husbands and wives don't communicate, there's major problems, folks.

When we don't have a connection, when we don't speak, men, we're in trouble.

And the relationship is built by every husband wanting to communicate and love and follow.

I'm gonna tell you, do you know what it's like, guys, to have a cold shoulder?

When your wife is not talking to you, and every time you try to talk to her, she just kind of flips around and just kind of looks the other direction.

That's not a pretty picture.

Mama ain't happy, nobody ain't happy.

And he wants, you know, and if you're not talking, if you're not fellowshipping, and you're not having a having a relationship with your wife.

It's not a good marriage.

It's also in a relationship with God.

If you can't walk with him and talk with him and meet with him and share with him and share with him your intimacy.

When the Bible says pray without ceasing, I'm talking about driving down the road, talking to God, meeting with God in the quiet place, talking to God about your concerns and constantly in fellowship with God so that daily you're walking with him.

That's what God wants to prayer.

I'm gonna put it in here.

We got when uh when we find in the scriptures the the call for prayer, let me put this someplace where we don't drop it here.

When we find in the scriptures, come on, Mike, hang in there.

Find in the scriptures a call to prayer.

C.W.

Gordon said this prayer is the is the greatest thing that we can do for God and the greatest thing we can do for man.

Greatest thing we can do, and we have struggled with it.

Let's ask God, please help us to be able to work through this and be able to come into your presence and be able to meet with you.

Talk about the tabernacle and the power of what is what is involved in the tabernacle?

So there.

Well, the tabernacle, as I've already said, is an old testament idea with an eternal reality.

It is absolutely performed in heaven.

The earthly tabernacle was a reproduction or replica of what already exists in heaven.

So when when we get to heaven, a tabernacle, much grander and much glorious and more magnificent than what we can ever imagine.

But what God said was if I'm gonna go to earth, I'm gonna take a piece of heaven, I'm gonna take a form out of heaven, and I'm gonna take it in a little minuscule scale, and I'm gonna put it down on earth so that I can have a place to visit, a place to go.

So he created this miniature scale, this copy.

If you have your Bibles and turn quickly with me, I can't take a whole lot of time and read the scriptures, but I'm gonna show you what the Bible says about the tabernacle, the earthly tabernacle.

What was it?

It was a scale model.

Where do we find this?

We find it in Hebrews chapter 8.

Hebrews 8 · chapter mention

This is the main point of the things which we are saying.

We have such a high priest who is seated in the right hand, talking about Jesus in the throne of the majesty of the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary, and listen of the true tabernacle.

What is the true tabernacle?

It's Jesus in heaven.

He's the tabernacle that's there, the real place which the Lord erected, and not man.

Man made it- Moses made it the physical replica, but God made the tabernacle in heaven.

And then it says in verse 5, who serve notice what it says, the copy.

The tabernacle of Israel was simply a copy of what heaven looked like.

John the revelator, when he went up into heaven, was blown away as he looked out over heaven, and he tries to describe all these magnificent pieces that he saw, all the furniture and everything about it.

He was blown away with the covers and the lights and to be able to approach the mercy seat and see God sitting upon a throne.

Yes, he saw a tabernacle.

Notice in verse 5.

And he says, You serve the copy, the shadow of heavenly face.

That's what this is, is the shadow of what is already in heaven.

Well, let's go to uh on down to chapter 9.

We don't have time to read a whole lot of that, but go to verse 8.

And the spirit, uh the Holy Spirit indicating that the way into the holiest of holies was not yet made manifest, which the first tabernacle was still, uh, while the first tabernacle was still standing, verse 8 and verse 9, it was symbolic of the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered, which cannot be regarded to the conscience.

What he was saying was there's a copy, there's a symbolism, there's a scale model, and it shows you how God is to approach his people.

Look in verse 23.

Therefore, it is necessary that the copies of these things in heaven should be purified by these.

But the heavenly things themselves are much better sacrifices than these.

Look in verse 24, for Christ has not entered the holy place made of hands, which Moses made.

No, which are what's he said about them, which are copies of the truth, but into heaven itself.

So what God is saying to us is he's made a way for us by replicating what is in heaven and bringing it down to earth, and he makes it into these departments, into these compartments.

Exodus chapter 25, verse 22.

Exodus 25:22

God says this.

He says, There I will meet you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are on the ark of the testimony, about which everything which you which I give to you.

So God is basically saying, You want to talk to me?

You want to meet with me, then come my way, come my steps, meet with me in my procedures and not your own.

Simply saying, I'll meet you there.

For 77, verse 13, thy way, oh Lord, sanctuary, oh God, is the sanctuary, I don't know if we can pull it up or not.

If you have the PowerPoint and you could show the the kind of the format of the tabernacle, I just kind of want to give you a visual of where we're going this week with this whole thing and show you this incredible process that God has given to us.

Here we got them.

These things are the outer walls.

We're gonna be talking tonight as I blow the trumpet.

The first thing we do before is that we're gonna go to the bottom.