Habitation of God!

To say it’s made all the difference in the world for us is the understatement of the day, if not of a lifetime. The eating of the bread, signifying the breaking of your body and the necessity for us to partake and participate with you and in you. This is as close as we come to paying for our sin, as we eat this bread.

Thank you, Jesus, for the cross and for what it’s done for us, amen. The meal continued on, but after a spell, he picked up the cup and he said, this is the new promise. This is the new covenant, and it’s provided by my blood.

He said, this do as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. It’s all about remembrance of him, amen. ♪ I stand, I stand in awe of you ♪ ♪ I stand, I stand in awe of you ♪ ♪ Holy God, to whom all praise is due ♪ ♪ I stand in awe of you ♪ Thank you, Linda, very, very much.

I’m continuing my thoughts on the Holy Spirit, and although I won’t mention the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, very often this morning, he’s still the theme. It’s about him that I am riveted. It’s about him that I’m focused these days.

Heaven. I had a man years ago that I was ministering to. I’d led him to the Lord very, very early one morning in the hospital, and he was overcome with the disease of cancer, and I would go to him every morning at his home, and I would take my Bible, and I would read promises to do with healing, restoration, because that was the theme of my visit to him.

I wanted desperately for this man to survive. He and I were the same age, and that had a huge effect upon me, and so I was always there reading scriptures, and this one morning, I went to him, and he said, pastor, can I ask you a question? I said, sure, what’s that? He said, what is it about heaven that’s so disturbing to you? I thought that was a strange question. I said, I’m not disturbed about heaven.

Oh, I think you are. He said, you’re not talking to me about heaven. I think we both know that I’m gonna see it before you.

He said, you never talk about it, but he said, I’m thinking about it, and I’m praying about it, but I need you to talk to me about heaven. You’re my pastor. I didn’t know the Lord before you, so whatever I know about the Lord and about scripture, he said, you gave it to me.

He said, now, you better talk to me about heaven. Heaven’s on the mind of a lot of people. Jimmy Swigert passed away this past week, and for the last couple of weeks, that family, I guess it was, were playing a song that he had been singing over the last couple of years, and the song was Heaven is on My Mind.

I’m Thinking About Going Home. Heaven is a very unique topic. I need somebody to turn off the air conditioning, please.

I’m freezing up here. Can somebody look after that? Thank you, Alan. You wouldn’t believe how hot it was here this morning.

If I was preaching on hell, we could have just left the temperature where it was, but we turned that thing on, and then it doesn’t seem to know when it should be backing up. It gets really excited about bringing the temperature down. I think it all wants to turn us into popsicles.

Heaven is a topic that’s on the minds of so many people. It was on Swigert’s mind, and it was very clear that he realized that his passage was pending, and in fact, it took place. And we can’t go there immediately and check it out and see how things are going.

Heaven, heaven is such a distant thing for so many people. For people who don’t know the Scriptures, heaven is just a fairy tale concept. They don’t think there is such a place.

They think the last thing that happens is the final thud of their heart. But if you know God’s word, and if you know Jesus, it isn’t just the Bible. It’s the experience of the word.

It’s not just, well, I know what it’s in the book. No, I know it in here. I have it in my knower.

I know that I know, I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that I will see him with these eyes. That’s gonna take place. But still, heaven is somewhat of a distant place for us.

No matter how much you believe in it, you know very, very little about it. And in the Old Testament, they were just as much enamored with the idea of heaven as any one of us would be. And I found this Scripture.

I confess to you, I don’t remember ever seeing it. And if I did, of course, I’ve seen it in the past. Of course, I’ve read it, but it did not hit me.

It didn’t resonate with me. So when the new king, in the new international version, Isaiah 64, in verse one, this is the cry of the prophet. Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you.

And I like another translation called the New Living Translation. Oh, that you would burst from the heavens and come down. How the mountains would quake in your presence.

So when Jesus was, he said, in my father’s house, are many mansions, I’m going there. And they saw him go up. And is heaven up? We know so much more about the universe now through powerful telescopes.

Heaven is everywhere out there. If you’re in China, which way would you have to go to go up, right? And so, but here are these people, here’s Isaiah, not saying, I wanna go up to heaven. He’s realizing that he can’t do that until another day, until another era of his journey with the Lord.

He’s saying, but you can come down to me. So his cry is, oh, that you would just burst heaven apart, come on down here and make it heaven for me right here. I’m here to suggest to you today that whether you know it or not, you’re already experiencing heaven.

You’ve already started your journey on it. And to bring some force to my concepts this morning, I wanna look at the story of Jacob. I ministered along this line probably a year ago about the experience that Jacob had when he ran away from the family, ran for his life.

And I’ll read it for you. Genesis 28, Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. And when he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had gone down.

And taking a stone, he put it under his head and laid down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth with its top reaching to heaven. And the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

There above it stood the Lord. And he said, I’m the Lord God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land in which you’re lying.

The whole world doesn’t even believe that still. United Nations told the people of Israel, get out. Unbelievable.

They’re not going anywhere. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth. And you will spread out to the west, to the east, to the north and to the south.

All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I’m with you. I will watch over you wherever you go.

I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I’ve promised you. Jacob wakes up and he proclaims this.

Surely the Lord is right here. He’s in this place. And I never knew it.

I sensed the Lord was in this place. I knew it. There’s a lot of churches you could go to these days and that would be their experience.

Maybe the Lord was there. I don’t know. I don’t know.

I feel sorry for them. The Lord is in this place. And I had no idea.

He was afraid. He started thinking God is here. And he says, how awesome is this very place? This is none other than the house of God.

This is the gate of heaven. This is the first time in scriptures that God’s house is mentioned. Friend of mine wrote a song many, many years ago, Bruce Ballinger.

We have come into this house and gathered in his name to worship him. We’ve come into this house. I don’t know exactly what was on Bruce’s mind when he wrote that.

I hope he meant, I hope he meant, not we’ve come to this building. Jesus said, where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I. In other words, where two or three are gathered in my name, there’s the house of God. There am I. I’m riveted with this thought this morning.

I prayed it in the back prayer room this morning before this, I prayed this out loud. We proclaim, oh God, this day, we are meeting in the name of the Lord. And that immediately brings us into the presence of God.

It just does. So he makes this exclamation. He says, this is none other than the house of God.

And then he comes down, he drills down, and he says, this right here is the gate of heaven. I’ve said this before. I know I’ve said it here a long time ago.

Wherever Jacob had chosen to sleep that night, he was gonna experience this. So he says, this is the gate of heaven. If he’d laid down 20 miles that way, 13 miles that way, wherever he chose to lay down that night, that was what he would have called the gate of heaven.

That’s the good thing about the Lord God. Wherever you are, he’s there. He’s omnipresent.

He’s omnipresent. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, you can’t escape his presence. So wherever he slept, he would have called that the gate of heaven.

The gate, a gate is a form of door. There’s a gate out here outside our building. We close it during the week.

It tends to discourage people wandering around, leaving their refuse, their beer cans, or whatever junk. They leave us some pretty dumb stuff here. And the gate actually slows people down.

The gate is a form of authority. As the door in your house is a form of authority. Jesus said, behold, I stand at the gate door.

Behold, I stand at the door and I knock. And if anybody, are you there? Hello, are you home? If anybody within that house hears me, please open the door and I will come in. Because you see, the door or the gate is a place of authority, is it not? Somebody comes through your door, unwanted, uninvited, they’re trespassing.

Interesting story back in Exodus chapter 33. The Lord has something to say to all of Israel. And Moses says to every man who’s the head of his family, you go now and stand at the door of your tent.

Because God is gonna speak to us. Why was the dad, the father, the grandfather ordered to stand at the gate of his house? Because he was the authority of that house. And his response was on behalf of those who normally dwelt within that tent or the tents also that were attached nearby to it.

The door is a door of authority. So when Jacob said, I never realized it, this is the gate that separates my world from God’s world. Is that wording okay for you? This is like the boundary line.

And I never knew how close. I didn’t know how close I was to God. What’s the distance from this side of the gate to this side of the gate? Well, the gate right out here, it’s about a one inch.

It’s boards about one inch. So you could say that there’s only an inch between the world and the property that belongs to this church. It’s only an inch.

But that dynamic of that gate or that door that Jacob is acknowledging is not an inch, brother. It’s ginormous and it speaks of authority and power. This is none other than the house of God.

This is the gate. I’m taking a leap in my mind now when I’m saying to you, what does that say about this church this morning? Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there’s the gate. This church represents the doorway to everlasting life.

Now, wait a minute. Jesus said, I am the door. But the apostle Paul reminds us that we are in him and he is in us.

In John 14, Jesus said, the day’s coming when I’m leaving, but the Holy Spirit’s gonna come. And he won’t just be with you, but he will be in you. So when we gathered together, two or three gathered in his name, we were proclaiming this is the gateway.

This is another location, if you would, of where Jacob could have slept if he’d had, he could have flown on a Scud missile and landed over here in Vineland. This could have been the gate of heaven for him that night. This, in this house, is a beautiful place because of who’s here and our proclamation, two or three gathered in his name, this becomes the gate of heaven.

And if you’re visiting us today, welcome. Welcome to the gate of heaven. This is the gate.

Don’t just tarry at the gate, but enter in. Enter into the household of God, enter in. So Jesus said, I am the door.

I am the gate. I’m the way, the truth, the life. Now, in the gospel of John chapter one, we have Jesus speaking to a man whose name is Nathanael, and Jesus says a peculiar thing as soon as he meets him.

He says, now there’s my kind of man. There’s a man in whom there’s no guile. And rabbi, you’re the son of God, you’re the king of Israel.

Jesus said, behold, I saw you under the tree. Does that mean that Nathanael wasn’t very far away and could see him? No, he saw him. He saw him in his spirit.

If Nathanael wasn’t that far away, it wouldn’t be such an anomaly for him to say, you saw me? Well, of course I saw you. You were standing underneath that tree. No, I was standing so far.

I wasn’t anywhere near here. And you saw me under the fig tree. And he said, you are the king of Israel.

I’m acknowledging you. If you saw me like that, you’re not a clairvoyant. You’re the king.

You’re the one we’re looking for. And Jesus said to him, because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these. We usually focus on that little verse there because we love anything that speaks of power.

That’s who we are. We’re the Pentecostal, looking for the power. And that’s fine.

That’s good. You’ll see greater things than these. What is the greater things than these? Jesus goes on.

I tell you, I tell all of you the solemn truth. You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending. Wait, we just read that in Genesis, didn’t we? Jacob falls asleep.

And he’s at this awesome place, the gate, the door. And he sees angels ascending and descending. I did a little research.

I did a little searching around. And I found this little phrase that I don’t remember hearing about it before. Well, I did hear it about four years ago.

I’ll explain that. But four or five years ago, I had an invitation from London, Ontario, where I pastored many years ago. And here it turns out that some teenagers from those days, young people, who were in that church and experienced the presence of God, they have continued to love worship because that church was all about worship and evangelism.

There was nothing else. There was nothing else. We didn’t have any departments in the church.

We didn’t have any ladies groups, men groups. We had nothing. We had worship and we had evangelism.

People were getting saved. It was wonderful. And these kids caught on to this.

And now they have this ministry and they call it Open Heaven. That’s what they call it. And I was invited to go up and speak to one night as the group of Open Heaven gathered.

There were all kinds of pastors there. They all brought a lawn chair. And this group began to sing and worship the Lord there underneath the stars.

It was absolutely incredible. They call their ministry Open Heaven. And they’re invited now to go down the Toronto airport and people gather.

They have worship times and they call it Open Heaven. So that’s the only time I ever heard that terminology before. But I started checking out and digging around a little bit and I found some writers of commentary on scriptures and what they kind of capsulized, Jacob’s experience there in the dream, the way they capsulated it was, Jacob experienced the Open Heaven.

For Abraham was a closed heaven. Yeah, he met the Lord. He heard his voice.

But heaven, Abraham never had that experience. He had talked to his son about his experience without a doubt. Son, I’m a man of promise.

You’re an inheritor. You’re gonna be people of promise. And well, what about the place that God? Well, I don’t know about that son, but it’s all about our land.

And so Abraham was not focused on heaven as much as he was focused on the land and how God had promised him and his wife in old age and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But here now Jacob gets excited because he saw that heaven was open. And what’s the meaning in my head? What’s the meaning of the angels ascending, descending? Well, they’re spiritual ministers.

The book of Hebrews speaks of them being spiritual ministers and that doesn’t mean we’re all looking for angels to come around and minister to us. They’re here to guide and to help. And I don’t know a whole lot more.

I haven’t done a lot of study about angels. I think they’re wonderful, but I don’t focus on them. But the fact that God’s ministry angels were ascending and descending, to me that just opens up a landscape that I can hardly get ahold of it.

Their ministry to Jacob that hour was that there’s an hour coming when the heavens are gonna be open and the angels are gonna be ascending and descending. As they’re descending, they’re bringing about a sense of the presence of God, the glory of God, the masterly of God. And then when you see the angels going up, they’re really saying, come with us, come with us, come with us.

This to me is a beautiful picture. Jacob was seeing something that magnetizes my mind to realize Jacob was seeing a prophetic vision of the hour of the church of Jesus Christ because you and I this morning are at the gate. We’re at the gate, the very gate.

You’re the light of the world. You’re the salt of the earth. Wherever you go this week in food land, wherever you go, you’re dwelling at that gate, the house of God.

Wherever you go, you take that with you. This is not a brag. I’m telling you, I’m encouraging you to speak.

I don’t know how many times I said it this week when a person said, well, have a good day. And I always turn like I’m surprised. I say, well, thank you.

And God bless you. And they’re astounded. That’s my calling.

My calling is to act out. I live at a gate where Jacob discovered he was so astounded and overcome. I need to be astounded.

I need to be overwhelmed. But I need to get accustomed to it and to take that message and to take that sense wherever I go. My heart and my hope would be that if I meet somebody at food land or your favorite no thrills groceries, wherever I am, that people will sense this guy lives in a unique situation.

Who is this guy? It’s like the, you know, the Lone Ranger in Tonto. Who is that masked man? He’s got the mask on. Who is that guy? I wanna be that guy that somebody says, I don’t know what it is, but there’s something special about that man.

Somebody came to my house recently. I gotta be careful how I tell this story. They came, they’re recognizing that I have a challenge.

I told everybody about this house because I wanted to be an extension of the church. It’s too big an extension. You know, when there’s a drought on, my flowers weep and my vegetables cry and the weeds go, hey, this is beautiful.

My vegetables are this high and the weeds are this high. I dare not go away for a day. I come back and say, what is this? So at any rate, a fellow shows up at my door and I’ve asked him to help me with the gardening.

There’s more to the story than that. Just leave it there. I know precious little.

How did I come that he came to my house? I heard about him through somebody else. Leave it there. And he came to my house and I said, I need your help.

And I didn’t have to say that. He only had to look around. I said, I really need your help.

I need it really bad. He smiled and he gave me some reply back. Well, that’s why I’m here.

And then these are the words that came out of my mouth. I said, because I didn’t know this before. If somebody told me, I didn’t get it.

If you look through here, you’ll see a lot of daylight. I don’t know if somebody told me about him. They only said he’s a good gardening young fellow.

He’s a good guy. He’s young and he’s strong. I said, well, that’s the kind of guy I need.

I said, hey, you’re a Christian, aren’t you? He said, I’m a believer. And he said, I know who you are. And you know what? We were locked in right now.

It was so obvious to me as I talked to a young man who came with rakes and shovels and picks or whatever and weed cutters. It was so obvious to me. He’s more than a young man who’s got energy and integrity and character.

I was facing a young man who was very obvious to me. He lives at the gate. This guy, he’s a young fellow.

I’ve never met his mom and dad. I found out where their farm is. I’m gonna go someday as just a person to buy some fruit or something.

I wanna see what these parents look like. And if it’s the right time, if it’s convenient, and if it seems like a piece of integrity, I’m gonna tell them what I think about their son. I’m gonna say to them, I have an idea of your awesome parents.

Young fellows can be raised in an ungodly home and they can turn out pretty good. This kid that you raised is something more than that. This kid is like a Jacob.

He lives at that gate. Jesus said, the time’s coming. Then you’ll see heaven opened.

Dear Lord, I just love those words. We live in an open heaven. It wasn’t just about the gate.

It was about what was going on beyond the gate. It was about a ladder, a stairway. Picture a massive stairway.

A way that leads to the very throne room of God. And the angels coming and going, signifying. There’s room for you.

Signifying, don’t be afraid. I just came from there. Do I look like I’m all burned up and scared? Come and join me.

The fact that they were coming down. They were coming down, heralding sounds of blood. Pastor, do you really mean that? You remember the angels who came and ministered to the shepherds in the field? What was their goal? To come and bring good tidings of great joy.

I don’t know how the angels fit in all of this. And again, I don’t want to run down that trail. I don’t want you to start thinking about angels.

That’s the smallest part of that. That’s just, that’s about this much of the story this morning. It’s not about the angels, but they were all part of the majestic picture of an open heaven.

And where is the open heaven? Hey Jacob, it’s where you chose to sleep that night with a rock for a pillow. Dear Lord. John 14.

If you love me, you will be a man of character. You’ll be a person of integrity. If you love me, you’ll walk the line and you will sing a song made famous by the man in black.

Because you’re mine, I’ll walk the line. I took that totally out of context. Wasn’t in my notes.

But this is significant, John 14. If you love me, there’s a question. If you love me, then you will do this.

He doesn’t want to say, if you love me, you’re gonna get power. No, no, no, no, no. If you love me, you will walk in integrity.

Because integrity is another gate, you know. Character is a gate to the magnificent landscape of the glory of walking with him. Without integrity, you don’t walk with him.

Without character, not seamless perfection, but living near enough to the cross that the blood is still affecting you. If you’re somebody who continuously begs forgiveness and says, Father, I repent of that. If you love me, you will follow my teachings.

You will be a man, you’ll be a woman of the word. And if you do that, I will intercede on your behalf. You do this for me.

You make what I did on the cross count for you. And if you’ll do that, I will be a mediator for you. You don’t have to go to the priest.

You don’t have to count beads. You don’t have to light candles. I will mediate for you.

I will talk to the Father, and I will ask him that he will honor you with a privilege only given to those who live at the gate. I will ask of the Father, and he will give you another comforter. I’ve been comforting you with my words.

I’ve been leading you. You’ve been following me. You’ve been under confusion at times.

I say things, you say, Lord, you’re confusing me. It’s okay, it’ll make sense because I’m sending you another teacher. I’m sending you another one to be with you, a helper.

And he won’t leave you. He will be with you forever. Even the spirit of truth, that’s who the helper is, whom the world can’t receive and neither knows him, can’t see him, but you know him because he’s with you now and at the gate.

He’ll be in you. There it is. He, the Holy Spirit, will be within you.

I’m heading to the No Thrills grocery store, and he’s with me. And because he’s with me and because I love the gate, because I love to be at the gate, and he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share as we loiter right there, nobody else can ever know. Oh, pastor, I know.

No, you don’t. No, no, no. You don’t know what I know.

How many think you know April? You don’t know her. You haven’t seen her without her makeup. I, oh, that wasn’t in my notes either.

Because you’re mine, I walk the line. You think you know me. You don’t know me.

He knows me. You know him, Jesus said. He’s with you now, but he’ll soon be in you.

Dear Lord, has this stuff hit us with enough earthquake, enough tempo, enough blaze, enough glory, enough picture, enough anything? 2 Corinthians chapter four, think about it now in light of what I’ve been saying this morning about dwelling at the gate and experiencing the open heaven and the privilege that angels show us. The apostle says, we have this treasure in earthen vessels. Dear God, we’re fortunate.

Don’t use the word lucky. I don’t like that word. I’m not lucky.

I’m forgiven, and I’m blessed. We have this treasure. What’s the treasure? Dear Lord, what’s the treasure? You better brought lunch for five days in a row.

You wanna hear about what’s the treasure? One of the glories of the treasure is living at the gate and experiencing the open heaven. That’s one of the, that’s part of the treasure. It may be the smallest part of it.

It’s getting warm. You’re fanning yourselves. That means it’s time to quit.

I told somebody I’m gonna make sure that the cold air is turned off, and Tim looked at me, and you could see him, I could just see his mind going, you’re gonna turn off the cool, and it’s gonna get hot in here. And I said, I said, I get going, I get preaching. I have no idea if it’s cold, it’s hot, or whatever, but I said, I know.

As soon as I start to see people fanning themselves, I know. Blessed is the man who knows when he’s done. I got so much more I wanna share with you about this.

This is a huge topic, you know. I’m never gonna run out of sermon material. This is just, I’ve never enjoyed, I see the fan.

Don’t stop fanning, because that’ll just, that’ll say, David, David, shut up. Dave, shut up, Dave. Just start waving it really hard.

I mean, now, shut up, Dave, now. I’ve never enjoyed studying the word of God like I am now. I mean that with all.

I’ve never dug so deep. I’m not trying to impress you. I should’ve dug this deep a long time ago.

I’ve been a rogue. I’m finally discovering how much gold there is down in that mine shaft. I’ve got about 10 sermons on the go all the time right now.

This is ridiculous. It’s just so exciting. What an hour to be alive.

The scriptures have never come more alive than they are right now. Can you say amen? If you don’t say amen, she’ll be fanning for another 20 minutes, yeah. Stand with me and we’ll sing a song.

♪ He’s so good to me ♪ Are we okay? ♪ He’s so good to me ♪ We love him for one reason. He first loved us. You don’t have to say any more in that sentence.

Why do I love him? He first loved me. If you want me to expand on that, that’ll take me another day. He loved me first and his love captivated me.

He wooed me with a love that says, David, I’ve lowered my expectations on you. You’re a rough chunk of coal, but I’m gonna make something good out of you. He first loved me and he loves you and you have the privilege of having discovered the gate.

Jacob put a stone there so he’d remember. I don’t need a stone. I have Jesus, the rock, the cornerstone.

Hallelujah. Heavenly Father, thank you for the unsearchable riches of your divine truth. Thank you, Lord, for what we discover when we slow down.

It’s not about reading it cover to cover. It’s about digesting one word at a time and discovering how delicious your message of love is to us. Now, as these people depart from this house, may they be kept safe in this unbearable heat.

But may today be a day of glory and majesty and help us remember wherever we go today, the gate, the fragrance of the gate, the beauty of the gate, the glory of the gate is with us. Amen and amen.