With the eye of inspired prophecy,
Ezekiel looked beyond all the struggles and trials and heartaches
and bitter tears which must be endured by God's elect in this
world. He looked beyond Satan's fury
and the world's opposition, and looking beyond these things,
he saw the Church in its ultimate conquest and final triumph. In
this last chapter of the prophecy, the Holy Spirit moved Ezekiel
to describe the fullness and the completion of God's Church,
the Holy City, in its final glory. When the end comes, all God's
elect shall be saved. The holy city shall be fully
inhabited. As you read through this chapter,
if you have taken the time to read it today or if you take
the time this evening, you can't help noticing that Ezekiel is
building up to a climax. He's building up to a climactic
end all the way through the chapter. He's leading us to this glorious
final word that he gives. And this is the climax of his
vision. He saw the church of God in her
ultimate glory, the holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem, in the
splendor of its ultimate majesty. And this is how he describes
it. It was round about 18,000 measures. And the name of the
city from that day shall be the Lord is there. Ezekiel's final
word in his prophecy is this. The name of God's church, the
New Jerusalem, is Jehovah Shammah. If you have a marginal reference,
that's the way it's given. Jehovah Shammah, which means
the Lord is there. Now that's my subject for this
evening. Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is there. when Ezekiel measured
the city, in his vision he tells us that the circumference of
the city was 18,000 measures. That's exactly 32,000 miles. Now he's telling us that the
city of God is perfect, exact, and exceedingly large. But the
figure is not to be taken as a literal figure. It's not to
be looked upon as though Ezekiel saw a literal, physical, earthly
city and went about and measured it with a literal measuring reed
and came up with a literal size for the city. Ezekiel is talking
about the latter-day glory of God's church, the New Jerusalem. He obviously is not talking about
an earthly city, a city that's 32,000 miles in circumference. He's telling us that this heavenly
Jerusalem, this city of our God, when he shall make all things
new, shall be a large city indeed. It will be a city whose inhabitants
are gathered from the four corners of the earth, those elect ones,
those redeemed centers out of every nation, kindred, tribe,
tongue, and people throughout all the earth. That multitude
which shall make up this glorious city is an elect multitude which
no man can number. And the name of the city is Jehovah
Shammah. The Lord is there. Now the church,
the city of God, is given many, many names in the scriptures.
Let me just read you a few in the scriptures. You can jot down
the references and look at them later. Jeremiah, in Jeremiah
33, 16, tells us that this city of God, the church, shall be
called the Lord, our righteousness. It's the city of righteousness.
Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 62 in verse 4 that the church of
God shall be called Hephzibah, which means the Lord's delight. And he tells us also it should
be called Beulah, which means married to the Lord. Again, the
prophet Isaiah in chapter 62 in verse 12 tells us that the
church of God shall be called the holy people, the redeemed
of the Lord sought out. That's a good thing for us. A
city not forsaken. The apostle Paul in Galatians
4.26 tells us that the church of God is Jerusalem, which is
above. He tells us in Hebrews 12 that
it is Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem. And when John saw this city of
God, he described it very much the way Ezekiel did. He saw the
bride, the church, the Lamb's wife, and he describes it in
these words. He said he saw that great city,
the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having
the glory of God. Now, all of those names describe
not a literal earthly city, but rather the church of God, the
people of God. that vast multitude of chosen,
redeemed, called people, those who are born again by the grace
of God. They do not describe God's church
as the world sees it. Look at this assembly. The world
doesn't see it this way. Those words do not describe God's
church as they see themselves. But those words describe God's
church as it really is, as God sees it. as it shall be in the
latter day, and as the world shall in that day behold it."
It is the city of God, the city of the living God. It is called
Jehovah Shammah. The Lord is there. It is as though
Ezekiel were saying in the last day, when the end of all things
has come, all the wandering worlds shall look upon God's city, and
they shall say, Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is there. That's where
he is. We're here, he's there. The Lord
is there. The blessedness and the glory,
the happiness and the security of God's church on earth and
in heaven is the presence of God with her. This name Jehovah
Shammah given to the church means that God dwells with us. The
Lord is there. It is true God dwells with all
of his creatures in a general way. He is everywhere at all
times in all things because he's the omnipresent God. It is also
true that he is everywhere in a providential way ruling all
things to accomplish his will. But when the Spirit of God calls
the church by this name Jehovah Shammah He means for us to understand
that the Lord is there in a special way of grace, exercising his
grace, his power, and his goodness to make himself known. Therefore,
the psalmist saying in Psalm 46, God is in the midst of her,
she shall not be moved. God shall help her. And that
right early, the heathen rage. The kingdoms were moved. He uttered his voice, the earth
melted. The Lord of hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our refuge. The prophet Zephaniah says, the
Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty. He will save. He will rejoice over thee with
joy. He will rest in his love. That
is, he'll rest in you, the object of his love. He will joy over
thee with singing. And the Lord himself declares
by the mouth of Zechariah, I will be unto her a wall of fire round
about and will be the glory in the midst of her. All of these
promises God has made to his church collectively. They are
true of all who are in the church, but these promises are equally
made of God to every believer. everyone who is a member of that
glorious church which is the family of God and the city of
God. The Lord God says concerning
Merle Hart and Hubert Montgomery this is their name Jehovah Shammah. The Lord's there. The Lord's
there. He's with you. He's with you
always and at all times. Now let's look in this book of
God and see this name Jehovah Shammah. where all it might be
found. Obviously, I'm going to leave
out much more than I'm going to include, so we can go home
sometime tonight. But wherever we find the Lord,
our God, present, the name of the place where he is, is Jehovah
Shammah. For the name Jehovah Shammah
simply means the Lord is there. Now, where is the first place
we can look upon and say the Lord is there? Where's the first
place? Think with me. The first place
you can look and you can say, yes, the Lord is there. If you'll
open your Bibles to Genesis chapter one and verse one. Genesis chapter
one and verse one. In the beginning, God created
the heaven and the earth. The Lord was there. He was there. This is the first thing then.
Jehovah Shammah. is a name suitable for God's
original creation. For the Lord was there in great
patience, if you'll read these first three chapters of Genesis,
in great patience, the Lord God, our glorious and great creator,
took six days to make the world and all things in it. I don't
really know why. He could have spoken everything
into existence all at once, had it been his pleasure to do so.
But this I know, the Lord was preparing a place where he might
place man, a place where God and man might walk together in
high and holy communion. God planted a garden eastward
in Eden. That's astounding, isn't it?
God planted a garden. He planted a garden rich, fertile,
and well-watered before he ever made Adam. He made a place suitable
for Adam, a place just exactly such as Adam needed. And then
God created man in his own image and after his own likeness. And
the scripture tells us that the Lord took man and put him into
the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. I don't know
what Adam did to dress it and keep it other than simply receiving
the benefits of it. For God prepared everything.
It was surrounded with rivers of water. Everything was fully
matured when God spoke it into being. And the Lord God placed
Adam in this garden, but still God was not done with his bounty
upon man. The Lord God put Adam to sleep
and he took one of his ribs out of his side and he made of that
rib a woman for the man. Yes, God made Eve for Adam, for
his happiness, for his satisfaction, for his completion. And the Lord
God brought Eve and gave her to Adam, her husband. The first
wedding ceremony performed in the world was performed by God
himself. God brought Eve to Adam and they
became husband and wife forever thereafter. The Lord God took
the woman he had made and gave her to the man he had made, and
placed them in the garden he had made, and the earth was a
place of majesty, beauty, and splendor in those days." The
other day I was riding along, Brother Henry and Brother Earl
and myself, in the mountains of West Virginia. We were going
over to look at a camp, thinking about having a campground Bible
conference this summer. Over in Bluestone, West Virginia,
we took the back roads, went way up on top of the mountain.
Riding along there, we all three about at the same time made a
statement similar to this. If it wasn't for sin, I could
live here forever. If it wasn't for sin, we could
live in this world forever. This earth, there's nothing wrong
with it except sin. That's all. God made the world
and now the slime of the serpent's trail is everywhere in the world. But as God made it, oh what splendor
there was in this earth. We cannot begin to imagine. We see the earth after the fall,
after the calamity of the fall, after the judgment of God in
the flood, but oh what it must have been like before those things
took place. One of these days God's going
to do it all again. He's going to destroy this earth,
the present heaven and the present earth. And he's going to make
all things new. And yes, it will be a literal
heaven and a literal earth, but make you in a splendor and glory
and majesty beyond even what it was before the fall of our
father Adam and our mother Eve. The best, the most glorious,
the most blessed thing in that day and the best, most glorious,
most blessed thing in that world to come. was this thing. The
Lord is there. The Lord is there. There was
much in Eden, and there's much I could have talked about, but
the thing I want you to see about the blessedness of paradise is
that Adam and Eve heard the voice of the Lord walking in the garden
in the cool of the day. Every evening, perhaps every
morning, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came down to
visit with the man he had made. Came down to visit with him,
to chat with him, to speak to Adam and his wife. He spoke on
such familiar terms that after the fall, Adam and wife heard
his voice and understood perfectly well who it was. The Lord Jesus
came in Adam's presence. He came to the man who had been
made in his own image and after his own likeness and walked with
him in sweet communion. Man walked with God and God walked
with man. This was the bliss and the glory
of Eden. This was the great incomprehensible
privilege and inexpressible happiness of Adam and Eve in their innocence. The Lord was there. The Lord
was there. Though Adam fell, the Lord didn't
forsake his creation. God still came to his own. He
still made himself known. Though he would destroy the world
with the flood, he commanded his grace toward Noah. He commanded
Noah to build an ark. He put Noah in the ark and he
shut the door. And while the floods came and
destroyed the world that God had made, there's Noah in the
ark. And the Lord was there. The Lord
was there. There was a flood falling all
around, waters falling out of the sky, the deeps breaking up
beneath, the world drowning under the wrath of God. And Noah is
in that little boat that he had made by God's command. But he
wasn't alone. God was with him. The Lord was
there. After the flood subsided, the
Lord God continued to meet with his people. He continued to make
himself known. He called a man by the name of
Abraham. After a while, he gave him a son by the name of Isaac,
and Abraham and Isaac went up to the Mount Moriah to worship
God. And as they went up to the worship, the Lord God, they met
the living God. The Lord was there. Abraham called
the name of that place Jehovah Jireh. Sometime later, Jacob
was fleeing from his brother Esau, scared to death, scared
to death. He knew Esau was thirsty for
blood. And it was his blood and he deserved
to die. But while Jacob was out in the
wilderness, he laid down one night and he had a dream and
he saw a ladder, a ladder that reached from earth to the heaven.
And the angels of God were ascending and descending upon that ladder.
And the Lord God spoke to Jacob and he told him, I'll be with
you and I'll multiply you and I'll bless you and I'll keep
you. And Jacob woke up and he said, this is the house of God. And I didn't know it. And he
called the name of that place Bethel. For the Lord was there.
The Lord was there. Wherever men and women met and
worshiped the living God, wherever men were found in whose hearts
was faith toward the Lord God, wherever you found men and women
who believed God in those ancient days, the Lord was there. I can't
take time to speak of the tabernacle in the wilderness, the blessings
of the land of Canaan, the times of the judges, the times of the
kings and of the prophets in Israel. I can't talk to you about
the presence of God in the temple, the presence of God in the priesthood,
in the most holy place, in the Ark of the Covenant. But some
4,000 years after Adam had fallen, some 4,000 years after the fall
of our father Adam, the entrance of sin into the world, in a little
filthy cow stable, in a little Judean town called Bethlehem,
a child was born. And the Lord was there. The Lord
was there. Turn over to the book of Colossians,
if you will. Now, this is the second thing
I want you to see. Jehovah Shema is a name most appropriate for
the Lord Jesus Christ, that man who is our savior. That one who
was born at Bethlehem is wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the
everlasting father. the Prince of Peace. That baby
is himself God Almighty wrapped up in a body of human flesh.
That child who was born in Bethlehem was and is the Son of God given
to redeem fallen sinners. His name is Emmanuel, God with
us. Jesus Christ the man is Jehovah
our God and Jehovah Jesus is Jehovah Shammah. For wherever
Jesus Christ is, the Lord is there. I wish I could somehow
communicate to you the wonder, just a little bit of the wonder
of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. That baby, oh,
the world celebrates this time of the year, the birth of Christ,
the historic fact, but understands nothing of the reality of Christ's
incarnation. That baby, in his weakness of infancy, a
baby who had to be diapered like any other baby, a baby who had
to be fed like any other baby, A baby who had to be nurtured
and taught and trained like any other baby. A baby that had to
learn to walk like any other baby and learn to talk like any
other baby. That baby is himself God. He's God. But preacher, how can
that be? Only God himself could accomplish
it. But while he is that baby crawling
around at his mother's feet, while he's that baby being fed
and nurtured and trained and diapered by his mama, he's God
who rules over all, blessed forever. He's God. Always was, always
has been. And when Christ Jesus came into
the world, He was no less God when he was a baby on his mother's
breast, or when he hung upon the cursed tree, than he was
when he said, let there be light. And there was light. He's God.
Look here in Colossians chapter 2 and verse 9. Colossians 2 and
verse 9. For in him, that is in Christ,
dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead. Look at this word,
bodily, bodily. in Christ Jesus dwelling, present
tense, ever since he came into the world, even to now and forevermore,
in Christ Jesus, in his body, in his body dwells all the fullness
of the Godhead. Can you grasp that? All the fullness
of the Godhead. Another way of reading the text
is, in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead in a body. In
a body. All the fullness of the glorious
being whom the heavens cannot contain dwells in that man who
is Jesus Christ our Lord. That man is God. God is that
man. God is that man. All the fullness
of the eternal Godhead dwells in the body of that man who is
our Savior. Throughout the 33 years of his
life, God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. In all
that he said and all that he did and all that he experienced
from the moment that he came from the virgin's womb or from
the moment he came even into the virgin's womb by the immaculate
conception of the Holy Spirit until that moment when he was
seated again in the body of his flesh at the throne of his father's
glory, Christ Jesus was all the while performing the work of
our salvation. And wherever you see him, Wherever
you see him, whether it's in the manger at Bethlehem, or whether
it's on the seaside, or whether it's walking the streets of Jerusalem,
or whether it's on the cross of Calvary, or whether it's on
the throne of glory, wherever you see him, the name of that
place is Jehovah Shammah. The Lord's there. The Lord's
there. Let me show you. When this babe
comes forth from his mother's womb, the Lord was there. In Hebrews chapter 10, Hebrews
chapter 10 in verse 5, when this babe came forth from its mother's
womb, the Lord was there coming to save his covenant people.
His name is called Jesus, for he shall save his people from
their sins. Wherefore, when he cometh into
the world, when he cometh, I heard Brother Griswold preaching on
this one time years ago. And he made it so clear, he said
that it's in the present tense. So that just as the Son of God
was breaking the womb of the Virgin Mary as he came into the
world, this is what he said. Lo, I come to do thy will, O
my God. When he cometh into the world,
he saith, Sacrifice an offering thou wouldst not, but a body
hast thou prepared me. That body prepared by the Holy
Ghost in the womb of the Virgin, and burnt offerings and sacrifices
for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, coming into the
world, Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of
me, to do thy will, O my God. The Lord Jesus Christ came into
this world And as he came, he's the second person of the blessed
Trinity come to fulfill the covenant of his grace to accomplish redemption
in this world. It is that will which he came
to perform by which we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all. When that baby was eight days
old, like the law commanded, he was carried by his mother
and father into the temple to be circumcised. And he was carried
into the temple to be circumcised on that eighth day because he
was made of a woman made under the law to redeem them that were
under the law. And as he was being circumcised,
the old man Simeon saw him and he said, Lord, now let your servant
depart in peace. I've seen your salvation. My
eyes have seen your salvation. And the Lord was there. The Lord
was there. There is the Lord God in the
temple. fulfilling the law that the Lord
God had made of his covenant people. In order to redeem us
from the law's curse, our Lord Jesus must first fulfill the
law's commands. And when the holy man was tempted
in the wilderness, the Lord God was there, both suffering from
and overcoming the power of Satan and his horrible temptation.
Look in Hebrews chapter 5, Let me show you something. Hebrews
chapter 5 and verse 8. By being tempted, by suffering
temptation as a man, our Lord Jesus learned something. He learned
something, Merle, he could never know had he not become a man.
He could never have known it had he not become a man. He learned
obedience. He learned obedience. He learned
obedience, West, for you and me. He learned obedience as a
suffering substitute. Look here in Hebrews chapter
five, verse eight, though he were a son, yet learned he obedience
by the things which he suffered and being made perfect. That
is now being made because he's learned obedience. He's now made
a perfect sacrifice, a perfect substitute. He became the author
of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him. Turn over
to chapter 2 of Hebrews. Having been tempted, now our
Lord is able to succor, to help his tempted children. That word
succor, it means to help, but it means more than to help. It
means to help with feeling. It means to help with compassion.
Let me try to illustrate it for you. You see a poor derelict on the
streets. filthy and polluted and obviously
hasn't got anything. And you go by and you are called
upon to give him something. So you reach in your pocket and
you give him a dollar or ten dollars or fifty dollars, whatever
you give him, you give him something. And you go on your way. You give
it to him principally because you feel sorry for him or because
you want not to be bothered with him anymore. or because you don't
want to be embarrassed by not giving it to him, so you give
him something and you go on your way. Now, you've helped the fellow,
but you haven't done anything for him. You've helped him, but
you've not entered into his sorrow. You've helped him, but you've
not felt what he's feeling. The word sucker implies that
our Lord Jesus helps us with feeling. Now, you pass by on
the street and you see a poor derelict bum, a wino, a cripple,
filthy and polluted. And you see something familiar
in his eyes. That's that boy that left home
20 years ago. He hadn't seen or heard from
since. And you help him. There's a big difference. You
pick him up and you kiss him, you embrace him, you take him
home with you, you help him, not just with what you have,
but with your heart, you help it. That's what Christ Jesus
has done for us. Look here in Hebrews chapter
two, verse 17. Wherefore, in all things it behooved
him, it was necessary for him to be made like unto his brethren. that he might be a merciful and
faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation
for the sins of his people. For in that he himself hath suffered,
being tempted, now he is able, he is able to do what he could
not do had he not suffered temptation. He is able to succor them, to
succor them with a heart who understands exactly what you're
Bob Ponson, he's able to get down where you are and feel what
you feel, whether it's sickness or abuse or persecution or slander
or misunderstanding or being forsaken. He's able to get down
where you are and with his heart, reach your heart and help you
up. He's able to succor them that are tempted. Look in chapter
four of Hebrews, verse 15. We have not an high priest which
cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. I like that
word touched. Sometimes I speak to people and I realize
that what I'm saying just doesn't touch you. It just doesn't touch
you. It may please your ears, Bobby,
but it just doesn't touch. I want to touch you with what
I'm saying. And let me tell you, brother, Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, is touched with the feeling of your infirmities. Touched.
His heart touched. We don't have a useless high
priest who's hard and calloused and unmoved, but we have a high
priest who's a man like ourselves, though he is himself God. And
he is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, for he was
in all points tempted, like as we are, though he never had a
sin. Though he never had a sin. And the Lord Jesus was tempted
in the wilderness of Satan so that he might show us how to
overcome the tempter's power. Constantly he turned to the word
of God and spoke a word of faith. It's written. It's written. That's the way to overcome. That's
the way to do it. Faith. Faith. Believe God. Just believe God. Christ showed
us the way. He showed us how. But you don't
know what my temptation is. Oh, I know what his was. He showed
us how we overcome the tempter's power in all situations by faith,
by faith in Christ Jesus, taking God at his word. Throughout the
course of his life, our Lord was there establishing perfect
righteousness for us as a man, righteousness by which we might
be accepted forever in his presence. And when we see him at last,
hanging upon the cursed tree, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, suffering ignominious, horrible agony until at last
he was dead. The name of that place called
Calvary is Jehovah Shammah, for the Lord was there. The Lord
was there. It pleased the Lord to bruise
him. He put him to grief. When God made his soul an offering
for sin, it is written, he shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days. He shall see of the travail of
his soul and shall be satisfied. And the pleasure of the Lord
shall prosper in his hand. When you look upon the scene
of woe, And you see the Son of God suffering a substitute for
sinners. Above all other places, the Lord
was there. I jotted some things down today
that I thought about while I was preparing this message with wonder
and astonishment. God was there punishing sin,
and God was there being punished for sin. God was there satisfying his
justice, and God was there the one upon whom justice was satisfied. God was there bruising the cursed
one, and God was there the cursed one being bruised. God was there
forsaking the sufferer so that he cries, my God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me? And God was there the sufferer
forsaken. God was there pouring out the
vials of his wrath and damnation, and God was there drinking wrath
and damnation dry. God was there killing the sinner's
substitute, and God was there the sinner's substitute who was
killed. The Lord was there. As yet I've
said nothing of all that might be said, and should be said,
and shall be One day, we'll spend a great long day hearing the
Lord Jesus Christ himself, who suffered at Calvary, telling
us what he suffered and what he accomplished, telling us things
we cannot now enter into and cannot perceive. And if he should
tell us, we couldn't understand. But he shall tell us and explain
to us by his own lips what he's done for us. Then but not till
then shall we fully know how much we owe. But now we'll turn
from the scenes of Calvary where the Lord suffered and look for
a moment at those for whom he suffered. So thirdly, I want
you to see that Jehovah Shammah is a proper name for every elect
center in the world, because wherever you find one of God's
elect, the Lord is there. The Lord is there. Is Jehovah
Shammah the name of God's elect? Certainly it is. It's the name
of all the elect considered as a whole. Then certainly the name
Jehovah Shammah is a proper, suitable, appropriate name for
each one of those elect sinners. The Lord is there wherever the
sinner is, long before the sinner is called
by his grace. He's there long before conversion
ever takes place. He's there from the beginning.
I love to meditate on, to study and preach about the subject
of prevenient grace. Grace that goes before and prepares
the way for God's saving grace. You who are born of God, you
can kindly enter into what I'm talking about. you who are not, if you're one of his, he'll show you what I'm talking
about in his time. Long before we ever heard his
voice, or knew his name, or worshipped at his throne, or breathed out
his praise, or called upon him in prayer, even from the beginning,
wherever we were, the Lord was there. He was there. Mark, he'd
been with you since you came into this world, preparing the
way for you to be with him forever. That's the glory of his redeeming
grace. I look back at my childhood and
my youth and I see so many things that
looking at them, they cause so much pain and heartache to so
many people. I felt so much shame and reproach
upon myself and so many others. Circumstances of life, the place
where I was born, the parents to whom I was born, the way in
which I was raised, and the way in which I wandered. He was there
in it all, preparing the way for that time when he would come
and be merciful. But then there is that appointed
day of mercy. There we are, naked, polluted,
cast out into the open field, rotting in our own blood daily. Nobody cared. Lots of folks pretended to care,
nobody cared. Lots of folks said they cared,
nobody cared. Locke's folks talked about caring, nobody cared. Oh,
yeah, somebody cared. The God who brought us there
cared, and he said, I pass by thee, and I spread my skirt over
thee, and behold, thy time was the time of love, and I said
unto thee, live. Yea, I said unto thee, live.
And he said, I raised you up, and I gave you a name, and I
put jewels on you. And I washed you, and I adorned
you, and I made you beautiful, and I made you to prosper, and
you became a kingdom, and I made you to be comely through my comeliness
that I put upon thee. And even now we go through our
days of this earth. You ever feel like, I know you
do, you get, boy, you get so down. It's so bad. Somebody asked me a while back,
said, don't you ever get down? Yeah. There's just so many folks
depending on me. I try not to show it. Yeah, you
get down. You just feel like nobody cares.
You feel like nobody understands. You think your wife can't possibly
understand your feelings and your thoughts. And you think
your husband, he couldn't possibly understand what you're going
through. And you think the heavens are brass and God won't hear
you. And Christ is not there. And you think it's all been a
delusion, and that you surely are not one of God's own, or
you wouldn't be going through what you're going through. You
feel like there's no life. You feel like there's no spirit
in you. You feel utterly dead because
of your afflictions, either inward or outward. Trials get so heavy,
you think you can't bear them anymore. Listen to this. In Isaiah
63, verse 9, in all their afflictions, he
was afflicted. All of them. In all of them.
All of them. And the angel of his presence,
you know who that is, don't you? The angel of his presence saved
them. In his love and in his pity,
he redeemed them, and he bared them, and he carried them all
the days of old. He remembers our flesh. He remembers
that we're just dust. And He gathers us like lambs
in His bosom and carries us in His arms. In all your trials,
children of God, in all your trials, the Lord's there. He's
there to support you, to comfort you, to lead you, to deliver
you. He's there to instruct you. He's
there to guide you. He's there to be with you. Rejoice
there! The Lord's at hand. The Lord's
at hand in all trials. And when the time finally comes,
the appointed hour is brought, that God's elect must leave this
world. Now there's an hour appointed.
Thank God I won't live past that hour. And I won't die before
that hour. There's an hour appointed. when
this man shall leave this world. The time shall come when I'll
drop this robe of flesh in the ground and rise to be with my
God. And in that hour the Lord is
there. He's there. Go to the dying believer's
bed. I'll tell you what you can call
the name of that bed. It's Jehovah Shammah. The Lord
is there. He's there. He said, let not your heart be
troubled. You believe in God? Believe in
me. In my father's house, there are
many mansions. And I go to prepare a place for
you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again
and receive you unto myself that where I am, there you may be
also. And somewhere not too far down
the road, Merle, he's coming to get you. He's coming to get
you. Nothing to fret about that. Nothing
to worry about that. The Lord who is there is coming
here to take you there. And in the process, the Lord
is there. He's there. He's there. That's his name.
Jehovah Shabbat. Now, let's expand the scope of
our vision a little bit. Fourthly, the name of God's church
upon the earth is Jehovah Shammah, for the Lord is there. He said,
Matthew 18 verse 20, wherever two or three of you gather together
in my name, there am I in the midst of you. He's speaking to
the church considered as local assemblies like this, just a
Small band of believers come together in the middle of the
week to worship the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, I'm
there. I'm there. In Matthew 28, in
verse 20, he speaks of the church collectively, the church universally
scattered throughout all the earth. And he says, Lord, I am
with you always, even to the end of the world. He's there. This is the security of God's
church. Her name is Jehovah Shema. The
Lord is there. Oh, Satan in the world, under
many names, under many heads, ever since the beginning of time,
have endeavored to destroy the church of God. Cain rose up against
his brother Abel. Ishmael rose up against his brother
Isaac. It's always been that way, always
will be. The seed of the serpent has always
despised and persecuted the seed of the woman. Esau rose up against
Jacob, always been that way, always will be. Pharaoh rose
up against God's church in Egypt. They were out. He had sent them
out of Egypt and he thought, well, I'll go catch those felons. And I'll destroy this band of
renegades, these rebels who have defiled my name and mocked my
name and taken all the goods of Egypt with them. Why, they
can't go anywhere. There's a Red Sea out there in
front of them, and there's mountains around them, and I have this
mighty well-trained army. I'll go and swallow them up in
my fury." He didn't know one thing. The Lord was there. The Lord was there. There's nothing
Pharaoh can do. And he didn't learn until he
was in the mud in the Red Sea. The Lord was there. It was that
way all the way through the history of the nation of Israel. Those
little ragtag fellas all over the place, wandering here and
there in the wilderness. And even after they were brought
into the land of Canaan in the times of the judges, they were
constantly being fought and attacked and beaten and taken into captivity. But their captors never realized
the Lord was there. Why, Israel was like that bush
that Moses saw. He turned aside and he saw a
bush burning with fire. The bush was real and the fire
was real. And all things considered, the
bush should have been consumed in the twinkling of an eye. But
the Lord was in that bush. And this is what I'm saying with
regard to God's church. Whether you find the church of
God in prison or in dungeons, or whether you find them scattered
out in the fields and in the woods and in the caves of the
earth, Whether you see them burning as human torches to light up
the Colosseum and make a party for some insane emperor, or whether
you see them burned at the stake to make a pagan queen happy,
or whether you see them slandered and maligned in the streets,
God is with his own. The Lord's there. The Lord's
there. And God's church will prevail.
This is the security of Zion. The Lord is there and he has
promised he that toucheth thee toucheth the apple of his eye."
This is the power of God's church, the power by which she carries
on and succeeds in her labors. The Lord is there. William Carey announced that
he was going to India to serve as a missionary to preach the
gospel to the Hindus, and William Carey was a poor uneducated in
the eyes of the world, illiterate in the eyes of the world, cobbler's
son. And some fella, I can hardly
remember his name, Sidney Smith, I believe it was. Sidney Smith
said, well, this cobbler's son is going out to conquer the learned
philosophies of the Hindus. The world will soon forget the
cobbler. The world forgot Sidney Smith,
if that was his name, I don't remember. But the world remembers
William Carey. For William Carey went like David
in the name of the Lord, and the Lord was there. And yet,
to this day, the work he performed in the name and power of God,
though the world had no recognition for it, though the world despised
it, though the world mocked him, to this day, the work continues
to be done. because the Lord is there. That's
the way God's church carries on its work. We depend not on
the strength of men, not on the riches of the world, not on the
abilities of the leaders, not upon the persuasiveness of the
preacher, not upon the training the preacher might have, not
upon the skills and the technicians that the preacher might use,
not upon all the mechanics and all the tricks and all the work
that men perform in order to build up religion. We depend
on the power of God and the power of God accomplishes God's work
exactly as he would have it done. This is the peace and unity of
the church. The Lord is there. The Prince
of Peace is there that brings peace. I hear folks talking about fighting
and fussing, carrying on in church all the time. I'm going to tell
you something. I'm going to tell you something.
If there's a fuss and fight in my house all the time, my wife
and I can't live together in peace. Somebody in my house doesn't
know the Prince of Peace. That's all there is to it. Where
the Prince of Peace is, there's peace. It's just that simple.
And in the house of God, in the church of God, I'm telling you,
there's peace. Churches all the time fussing
and fighting and carrying on, always got a scrape going, always
somebody mad at somebody, somebody's offended, somebody's upset. Somebody
doesn't know God. Somebody doesn't know God. God's
people get along. The Lord's there. And where the
Lord is, people live in peace. Truly, if the Lord God is among
us, his presence will inevitably secure certain desired consequences. I find it a little bit humorous
watching men drawing up creeds and confessions of faith And
their reason is always this. When we're gone, we want the
church to stand true. And that's a good reason. When I'm dead and gone and you're
all dead and gone, I hope God will have a witness faithful
and true in this place. But you can't secure it by paper.
You just can't secure it by paper. Southern Baptist Convention is
proof of that. They look at it and say, well, that's pretty
good paper. Let's put it on the shelf over there. We'll talk about
what those fellows used to believe. Say, well, put it on paper they've
got to abide by it. Read history. No, no. But I'll
tell you what, if the Lord's there, truth is there and truth
is preserved. I told a fellow one time, if you've got God, you don't
need the paper. And if you don't have God, I
don't care how much paper you got, it ain't gonna do anything.
He's not going to do a thing. We want to preserve purity in
the church, so we'll draw up a church covenant. We'll draw up rules of conduct. We'll draw up laws of discipline. If the Lord's there, the father
of the house will take care of it. He'll take care of it. But, preacher, we've got to maintain
a pure church. If we had one very pure, none
of us would be in it. The Lord God takes care of his
family. He takes care of his own through the preaching of
the word, through the administration of the word of God, by the power
of his spirit. He disciplines his family. He
divides the wheat from the chaff. He separates the wheat from the
tares. And the Lord is there. You don't
have to have rules for folks to live by, but there's a preservation
of love. And when the Lord is there, there's
a preservation of life. This is the beauty, the glory,
and the attraction of God's church. The Lord is there. The Lord is
there. We have no denominational affiliation
to back us up. Don't want any. We have no entertainment. Never intend to have any. We
have no ceremonies or rituals to impress men. Never will tolerate
any. We have no social functions to
keep folks busy on their what road to hell. Don't ever intend
to plan any. They don't ever intend to. We've
got to have the WMU and what on earth they call all those
things. Got to have every kind of society under the world to
keep folks active, you know. If you don't keep them active,
they're liable to realize that they're lost and undone. So we'll
keep them active, keep them busy. That'll keep them happy. No,
we don't have any social functions. Won't have any. We don't have
any stained glass windows. We don't have any pictures or
any crosses or any candles burning. We don't have any robed choirs
dressed up to sing. Folks dressed up look like they
ought to be able to sing with a heavenly chorus and can't carry
a note any better than I can. But we don't have any. Don't
have any. We don't have anything to impress men. Nothing. But I'm gonna tell you something
I believe maybe we've got. The Lord is there. The Lord is
there. Well, I don't see it. One of us is mistaken then. One
of us is. The Lord is there. A few years ago, I never told you
this before, I was thinking about coming here as your pastor. Some folks told me, and some
of you have expressed the same sense, didn't look like any possibility
of things going on. Wasn't. Wasn't. No possibility. No way under the sun. No, but there's a way above the
sun. The Lord is there. The Lord is there. I just touched
the hem of the garment. Jehovah Shammah is too big, too
great, too glorious for me to fully proclaim. When I'm done
preaching, there'll be plenty of room for preaching still.
Let me give you this one last thing, just very briefly. Jehovah
Shammah is the name of God's church in her everlasting glory. There is a day coming when all
God's elect shall be gathered in. The city of God shall be
complete. The house of God will be full.
The church of God will be finished, then cometh the end. Our Lord
Jesus Christ shall descend from the heavens with a shout, with
the voice of the archangel, and there'll be a resurrection of
the dead. The righteous and the wicked will be called up before
the throne of God, and somewhere in there, there's going to be
a judgment seat. Those who believe shall be rewarded
for Christ's righteous obedience. which is their obedience. And
those who believe not shall be punished with eternal damnation
for their works of unrighteousness. And the Lord Jesus shall make
a new heavens and a new earth. And when all things of time have
passed away, when all sin is no more, when Satan is no more,
and sorrow is no more, when time is no more, There shall yet be
a city foursquare which shall cover the earth. It is the bride,
the church of Christ, the Lamb's wife, the Holy Jerusalem. And
the glory of that city is this. The Lord is there. The name of
that city shall be called Jehovah Shammah. The Lord is there. Will you be there? I know this. I know this. All God's elect
will be there, all of them. Every redeemed ransom sinner
in all the world will be there. Every believer, every believer,
everybody who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ will be there,
and the Lord will be there. Amen.