Scripture: Psalm 95:1-7; Psalm 96:8-9
Text: Exodus 25:8: "And let them make Me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them."
Late one Saturday night back in 1890, the famous German chemist, Hoffman, arrived in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. The next morning he went to see the scientist, Sir William Thompson. Arriving at Sir William's home, he rang the doorbell, and a maid answered.
Hoffman asked if Sir William was at home.
"Sir," she said, "he most certainly is not."
"Can you tell me where I might find him?" he asked.
"You will find him in church, sir," she said, "where you ought to be."
What's so important about being in church on the Lord's day?
Why have religious people across the centuries built churches in the first place?
Why should there be any special place designated as the place to go to meet with God?
God met with Moses on the backside of the desert.
He spoke to Job while Job was sitting among the ashes.
He heard the cry of Jonah when Jonah was deep in the sea in the belly of a great fish.
Jesus met Saul of Tarsus while Saul was on the road to Damascus.
The Psalmist thought the matter over and realized that there was nowhere a person could go to get away from the Presence of God. "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit: or whither shall I flee from Thy Presence?" he asked. Then he said, "If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell (or the place of departed spirits), behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me."
Reverend John Carper, one of our former district superintendents, spent much of his time as a chaplain during World War II with the soldiers right in the midst of battle and within the area of impact of the enemy artillery. He said the realization came to him during the battle for North Africa right in the midst of the fighting that one could not be where God is not so long as God is within one's heart.
There are many people who express the opinion that they can worship God just as well out on a riverbank fishing or out on a mountain trail or down along the ocean beach or elsewhere as they can in church. There is a little poem that I have seen in many places about how one can worship God in a garden; and, indeed, out in the field, tilling the ground, with the beautiful sky overhead and a fresh breeze blowing across one's face is a wonderful place to feel the Presence of God.
Why, then, a particular place of worship, a special place to meet with God?
If we raise the question, "Why?", perhaps we should also ask why we should have a special place for doing anything?
Why should a mechanic have a garage in which to do his work? You can work on a car under a shade tree or alongside the road out under the hot sun or wherever it happens to break down.
Why should a cook have a kitchen in which to do his or her cooking? You can barbecue a whole hog out in the open, or cook your breakfast over an open campfire or cook a pot of beans and potatoes over a few little pieces of wood piled between a couple of large rocks.
Why should a doctor have an office and little rooms in which to see patients and an operating room in which to perform operations? When Dr. and Mrs. Sloop went to Crossnore in the mountains near Banner Elk some years ago and began to minister to the needs of the people there, they performed their surgery during the early months out under an apple tree and, if the weather was rainy or snowy or too cold, perhaps in a farmhouse kitchen or wherever was convenient for their patients.
Why should teachers have schoolrooms in which to do their teaching when Jesus, the greatest teacher the world has ever known, did His teaching wherever He happened to be, whether walking along the road or sitting in a boat or on the side of a mountain or in a house?
To even ask these questions is to see the answers almost at once!
The greatest need the human soul has is to be in a right relationship with God! The greatest thoughts the human mind can meditate upon are the thoughts of God! The most important sound a human being can hear is the Voice of God!
The most important news in all the world is the good news of the Gospel!
The most important place in all the world a person can be is in the Presence of God!
And, therefore, someone has said that the most important pathway in all the world for a person to travel is the pathway from his or her door to the place of worship, to the house of God!
Much as a garage is an aid to a mechanic in his work; much as a kitchen is a help to a cook in her work; much as an office and special rooms are a help to a doctor in his work; much as a classroom helps a teacher be more efficient in his or her work, so does a special place of meeting help us come into the Presence of God and help us in our worship of God.
We look upon Abraham of old as our spiritual ancestor, as the "father of the faithful." If you study the Scriptures, you may have noticed that normally wherever he settled, he first built an altar, a place to worship God, even before he dug a well or set up his tent.
When God brought the Hebrew people out of Egypt, and they were safely in the wilderness, He said to Moses, "Let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them."
He had been with them all along the way and they were aware of it, but there was need of a special place where they could come and stand in His Presence as He met with them. Thus, God gave Moses instructions about the construction of the tabernacle in the wilderness; and when the tabernacle was finished, the glory of the Lord filled it. When the need arose for Moses and the people to go into the Presence of God, no longer did Moses need to go up to the top of Mount Sinai while the people stood before the mountain. Now, wherever they went, the known Presence of God was in their midst in the tabernacle.
So, too, with the construction of the great temple in Jerusalem by King Solomon. When it was finished and dedicated, the glory of God filled the building and God revealed His Presence there.
The altars, the tabernacle, the temple, and the synagogues represented to the Hebrew people the Presence of God in their midst. While the Presence of God was everywhere in one sense of the word, God especially revealed Himself to His people in those places which were established for worship.
"Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them," said the Lord to Moses. Thus, in the Scriptures, the house of God was the place where the Presence of God dwelt; and if you wanted to meet with God, the natural place to go was to His house.
The Psalmist expressed a common feeling when he wrote, "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord." It was to enter into the Presence of the Lord that he was thinking of when he wrote, "My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord ... 0h, send out Thy light and Thy truth; let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy tabernacle!"
Jesus from early youth to the closing week of His earthly life from time to time went to the temple, and Luke tells us that it was His custom to go into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
While we may sense the Presence of God in many different places and while alone, yet the need of all of us to come together in a special place for worship and to meet with the Lord is so great that the Scripture says plainly, that we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together.
The need for a sense of the Presence of God and a right relationship with Him is the greatest need the human soul has. To have an awareness of the reality and Presence of God and to know that we are in a right relationship with Him enables us to face whatever life brings with peace and confidence and to face the future with everlasting hope.
But when a personal relationship with God is absent, when we have no sense of His Presence or awareness of His reality, then life eventually becomes empty and meaningless, a noisy merry-go-round of earthly activities that fill up our days, but do not fill up our hearts and lives and finally leave us stranded empty-handed on the barren shores of an unprepared for eternity!
It has been said that France began her years of downfall that resulted in the bloody French revolution when the people of France lost their vital contact with God and the religion of the people became only an empty form rather than one of personal experience.
And historians seem to be pretty much agreed that the only thing that saved England from the same tragic fate during the days of John Wesley was the fact that religion came alive again as an experience in which people once again had personal dealings with God.
Something tragic happens to any human society or people when the Presence of God is no longer felt and when people no longer meet God in personal experience.
Edna St. Vincent Millay sets forth this truth vividly in her "Conversation At Midnight" when she wrote,
"Ricardo said, 'Man has never been the same since God died.
'He has taken it very hard. Why you'd think it was only yesterday, the way he takes it.
'Not that he says much, but he laughs louder than he used to, and he can't bear to be left alone for a minute, and he can't sit still....
'He gets along pretty well as long as its daylight; he works very hard,
'And he amuses himself very hard with the many cunning amusements this clever age affords.
'But its all no use; the moment it begins to get dark, as soon as it's night,
'He goes out and howls over the grave of God.'"
A lot of the loud noise of our generation, a lot of the hustle and bustle, a lot of the endless efforts to stay busy at something and to have the radio or TV blaring at us throughout our waking hours, a lot of the restlessness and the inability to get quiet and still so that we can think deep thoughts and meditate upon the meaning and purpose of life: all of these are symptons of spiritual emptiness and a loss of a sense of the Presence of God!
A folk singer used to begin his version of an old song by saying, "When I was just a little boy, watching my mama work in the garden, an old woman came over the hill and called to her, 'There's a meeting tonight! Are you going to the meeting tonight?'"
What meeting was she talking about? A meeting at the church of a group of people? Yes. But more than that, it was to be a meeting with God! It was a meeting in the house of God, and God was expected to be there.
The older folks here at Bethlehem still refer to what we call revivals as the 'big meeting.' Many times since I have been pastor here, some of the older folks have asked me when the "big meeting" was going to be.
Well, in many ways our big meetings aren't as big as they used to be. Aunt Flossie Beauchamp was telling me last week about a big meeting here at Bethlehem some years ago when the services ran on for about two weeks, two and three services a day, and at the close of them there had been around a hundred converts.
It wasn't the length of time they ran, however, or how long the preachers preached, or how many people attended that made them big meetings, however, in the truest sense of the word.
What makes a meeting a big meeting or not is whether or not God is there - whether or not the people who come really meet God, have an awareness of His Presence, hear His voice and have personal dealings with Him! Any meeting is a big meeting if a person meets God in it. No meeting is a big meeting if God is not present.
Carlyle Marney, the well-known Baptist preacher of the past generation, said that he came upon his father, in his late seventies, one day in a pensive and brooding mood. Talking as if to himself, his father said, "I sometimes feel that if I could go back to the point of my beginning the faith-life, I could keep it solid."
This surprised Carlyle. He had thought that his father's faith-life had been solid across the years. He asked him, "But, Dad, has't it been solid for you?"
"Faith for me," his father said, "has been riddled with holes and gaps, and there are days I do not know."
"Then when is it right?" Carlyle questioned.
And he answered: "At the meeting! It's always right when I can get to the meeting!"
Carlyle then understood that across the years of his father's earthly life, it was not just some fixed habit or sense of loyalty that had sent his father down the hill to the little church building whenever the church bell rang though he had already spent twelve hours working in the mill. It was his need for a meeting with God, a meeting that would patch up the broken places in his imperfect faith, restore unto him a sense of the Presence of God, give him a fresh vision of the meaning of life, and enable him to see beyond the suffering and tragic shell of earthly life to a kingdom not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens, where there was no sin, no suffering, no sorrow and where God wiped away every tear from every eye!
This place where we are gathered this morning is a place established in which to meet God.
Jesus said that where two or three were gathered in His Name, He would be present in the midst of them.
God said that we would seek Him and find Him in the day when we search for Him with all our hearts.
God is here and He will gladly meet with us and have personal dealings with us - if we have ears to hear His voice, eyes to see what He would reveal, hearts that will respond to His love, feet that will walk in His way, and wills submissive to His will.