WEBVTT

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 I often hear Christians, when discussing major events and usually tragic events, they ask,

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 do you think that God is judging us? Or they'll ask a similar question, what do you think

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 God is saying in all of this? If it's a flood or an earthquake or a major disaster somewhere in

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 the world, either internationally or locally, often people will speculate on this question,

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 where is God in all of this? What is He saying to us? Is He judging us? Is He repaying us for

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 something we have done against Him? The problem, of course, and there are many problems with that

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 kind of thinking, one problem is, well, what happens when nothing goes wrong? What happens when

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 there are no tragic events? Does that mean that we're pleasing God? Does that mean that everything

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 is going well? Not necessarily. And what about those outside of the region where the disaster or the

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 or the problem has taken place? What is God saying to them? I think it's very dangerous to go down

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 that road. But that's not to say that God is not present in all events. God is involved in the world

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 that we belong to. And that's something that is hugely comforting and hugely encouraging for all

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 of God's people this evening. When David returned to Ziklag, his hometown, the town that had become

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 his home, albeit temporarily, he could have asked those same questions because the town had been

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 raised to the ground. It had been burned. And all the people that he and his men had left behind,

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 their wives and their families, their children, they had all been taken away by the Amalekites.

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 It was a complete disaster. And it all happened on David's watch. So David could easily, and we

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 could understand, David beginning to ask, well, maybe God is judging me for something. And if he

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 had gone down that road, then he could have found something because he was in the wrong place.

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 He had made a bad decision. He had come to the wrong conclusion. And he found himself in a very

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 awkward position. I think we have to rewind at this stage just to recap for the benefit of those of

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 you who are perhaps less familiar with the story. This is David's early days. He's not King David

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 at this stage. King David comes in 2 Samuel. He is David who is on the run. And pursuing him is the

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 king of Israel, who's called Saul. And he hates David. He hates him with a passion because, A,

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 he's jealous of him because of his gifts. And secondly, he knows that God has promised and

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 prophesied that one day David will be king after him. And Saul is going to try his best and not let

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 that happen. Very foolish to stand against God's will and God's plan and purpose. But that's what

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 Saul completely, irrationally did. So for months and months and months, Saul mustered all his forces

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 and their one objective was to destroy David, which meant, of course, that David's one objective was

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 to survive. He was on the run day after day pursued by Saul. And there was only one thing that David

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 could lay hold on, and that was the promise that went all the way back to that day when Samuel had

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 promised him and anointed him as king over Israel. He knew because God had said that one day that he

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 would be king over Israel. And come what may, that was going to happen. And that actually did happen.

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 Now, we can say from the comfort of our nice chairs here, well, why did David not believe that? Why did

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 he not just continue to have faith in God and everything would have been okay? Because God was

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 going to be always true to His word. And it didn't matter what kind of danger David faced,

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 matter what kind of life-threatening situations that he had to endure, he should have known that

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 God would be true to His word. Well, it's easy to say that, isn't it, after the event and from the

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 comfort of our position here. But we're not David. And I guess for a while, it was clear that God

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 had made His promise and one day he would be king over Israel. And so David was prepared to endure all

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 kinds of hardships. But when that goes on for month after month, it gets really wearing.

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 And it looks like, if you read back in chapter 26, 27, it looks like it got through to David.

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 And he gave in to his own fear and he decided to do something quite irrational, although

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 understandable. You see, by this stage he had collected a whole bunch of men who were on his side,

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 people who had come from all places, from different places in Israel who wanted to support him.

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 So he had them to look after as much as himself. Things were not easy at all.

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 So he made a very foolish decision. He decided that instead of continuing to face the threat of

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 Saul every day, he would cross the border into enemy territory, the Philistines,

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 because he figured that there, if he managed to persuade the king of the Philistines to give

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 him refuge, that he would be safe from Saul. Saul would think twice before entering into

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 Philistine territory in order to catch David. That was just more than David's life was worth.

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 And so he did that. He went into Philistine territory and sure enough, the king Achish,

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 he welcomed him. He thought he had scooped a trophy because here was David, who everybody was

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 predicting would be the future king of Israel, and it appeared that David was now switching sides.

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 David asked for a place to stay. Achish said, of course, come and I'll show you. I'll give you a

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 whole city where you and your men and your wives and your families can all settle down amongst us.

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 And so he gave him the city of Ziklag. And David settled there, and he stayed there for a year and

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 four months. But that didn't make things easy for David because in order to prove his support for

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 the Philistine king, David had to take his men to all kinds of different places and conduct wars

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 against ethnic minorities in that land, destroying them.

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 David had to compromise his own values. What he knew was right in order to preserve his own safety.

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 That was a step too far. It always is when we have to compromise what we know is right

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 in order to do the easy thing or in order to preserve our own safety or our own reputation

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 or our own comfort or whatever it is we're trying to preserve for a Christian, God has to come first.

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 And sadly, God was left out of this decision. But that didn't mean that God had finished with David

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 or that he had rejected him. God still stuck to his plan that one day David would be king

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 after Saul of Israel. And that was going to happen. What happened was that as time went on,

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 a war was gathering between Israel and, guess who, the Philistines. There was going to be a

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 there was going to be a massive conflict. And David was on the wrong side with his men. And it

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 looked as if David was going to be sucked into this war on the wrong side. Akish thought this was

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 great, that David, one of the Israelites and all his men would be helping him to win the war against

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 his own people. But then the other rulers of the Philistines came to Akish and they said,

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 Are you kidding? Is this, are you for real? This cannot happen. This man is an Israeli.

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 You're about to take an Israeli into battle against the Israelites. How do you know that

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 he's on your side? How do you know that he's on our side? What happens if in the middle of the

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 battle he turns against us, then we're all destroyed. You are crazy. Send him home. And Akish had to bow

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 to the pressure of the majority. And he had to say to David, Look, I'm sorry about this, but I'm

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 going to have to send you home. You're just a liable. These guys think you're a liability to us.

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 We're going to have to send you back to Ziklag. You cannot be part of this war. You see what was

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 happening? God is intervening because if God hadn't done that, if that hadn't happened, David

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 would have found himself in a massively awkward position. He'd have found himself warring against

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 his own people and against the people of God, all because he had made a foolish decision in the

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 first place to come and live in Philistine territory. So the king sent him back, him and his men,

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 to Ziklag. When they got there, that's where we take up the reading of this chapter,

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 when they got there, Ziklag was raised to the ground. It was destroyed. The people who David

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 had left had been kidnapped by the Amalekites. Who knows where they were? Who knows whether

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 they had killed them? Who knows what condition his families, the families were in. They had no idea

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 all they saw. It must have been absolutely devastating for David and his men to arrive to

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 such carnage. The men, once they'd regained their composure, they wanted to turn on David and they

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 wanted to kill him because this happened under his watch. He was responsible for all of this in

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 their eyes. And you would have thought that if David had gone down the road that we started on

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 and asked, well, is God judging me in all of this? The answer may well have been yes.

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 The fact is, the answer was not yes. God was not judging David. God continued to have a plan

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 and a purpose for David because he is faithful to himself. And so I want to, I find it fascinating,

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 and I would like to just focus this evening for our encouragement and our edification

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 to think about how David reacted to this horrendous situation by finding refuge in the Lord

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 His God. That's what we read. He found refuge in the Lord His God. And he did two things. He found

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 refuge in God and he also asked for something called the ephod. Now I know this might be strange

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 to some of us this evening and I hope that by the end of the evening we'll have a little bit more

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 understanding of what it is. But before we come on to that, let me, let's just focus on the God in

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 whom David finds refuge. David strengthened himself in the Lord His God. First of all,

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 he's described as His God, His God. And I want us to pay, just stop there for a few moments,

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 just to think of that special relationship that there was between David and God. It wasn't like

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 all of his men had all different gods and they all went to worship their gods and David meanwhile

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 went to worship his God and they were all, they all happily coexisted, worshiping different gods.

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 That's the way that the world wants us to think. It's the way that the world likes to think.

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 Everybody to their own religion and none, each one of them of equal value. We hear it all the time.

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 Except a thinking person will be asking, well, that cannot be.

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 Because surely God by very definition is unique. The Creator high above everything else, exalted

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 above and beyond everything else. Reason and logic alone tell you that if God is God,

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 there can only be one God. But that's not what it means. It means that there was a personal,

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 unique relationship between David and God in which he was able to say, oh Lord, you are my God.

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 Oh, earnestly, I will seek you, Psalm 63. The Lord is my refuge and my strength. The Lord is my light,

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 the light of my salvation. That's the kind of unique personal relationship that David knew

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 and possessed with the living and the true God. And it is that same relationship that there is

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 between you and the Lord through the Lord Jesus Christ this evening.

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 I just want to remind you, we've heard all of this before, but we need to be reminded

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 of the fact that God is faithful to his people. And just as we regard him as our God,

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 he has called us his treasured possession in Jesus Christ.

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 Now the reason I emphasize that is because you will never come to God with confidence

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 if you don't have confidence in that relationship that God has created through Jesus Christ.

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 God was his God. The Lord was his God, and he is ours tonight through Jesus.

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 But then I want us also to think about the name, the Lord. See these names in capitals,

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 you know this already, I'm quite sure. Verse 6, David strengthened himself in the Lord,

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 his God. That word Lord is in capitals. Anytime you see that, you know that it is the English

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 version of Yahweh, which is the name that God gave himself when he met with Moses in the burning

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 bush. I am. I am unchangeable. I am eternal. I am faithful to myself and to my promise.

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 God does not change from day to day with our unfaithfulness and with our, with the way in which

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 we very often change. David strengthened himself in the Lord, his God. That word Yahweh was such a

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 precious name. It was unique to the people of Israel, and it was the name by which God bound

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 himself in covenant love and in covenant commitment to his people. And even although there were many

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 times in the history of the Old Testament when his people wandered away from him, yet time after

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 time God brings them back to himself in order to fulfill his plan to send Jesus into the world

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 amongst them to give his life on the cross. God is faithful. The Lord was his God. The same is true

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 as true 2,000 years after Jesus as it was in David's time. And it applies to you and I this

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 evening through the Lord Jesus Christ. So that's the first thing he did. He found refuge in the Lord

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 his God. But then in verse 7, David said to a biathlete of the priest, the son of Ahimele,

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 bring me the ephod. Bring me the ephod. And the first question of course is, well, what is an ephod?

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 The an ephod was an item of clothing. It was a waistcoat. Gareth Southgate has done two things.

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 Whatever he's done for the fortunes of the English team, and I'm sure we'd all agree that he has

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 done tremendous work with them. We're not particularly concerned about that this evening.

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 He's also put waistcoats back on the map. I can guess that many people will be buying waistcoats

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 from now on in order to somehow emulate his clothes. But I have to say that his ephod or his waistcoat

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 is rather different from the ephod that we're talking about here or that David wanted here.

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 Because for one thing, the waistcoat that Gareth Southgate wears is kind of boring.

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 It's one color. The waistcoat that the high priest wore that is described here was entirely different.

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 It was made of the choicest, most expensive materials, including gold and purple. You

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 have to close your eyes. This is one of these places in the Bible. You have to close your eyes

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 and just imagine this. It was gold and purple and blue and scarlet cloth and finely woven linen.

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 So it was like a sleeveless vest. It was like a waistcoat without the buttons. It was fastened

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 on the shoulders and it was fastened by six onyx stones on one shoulder and six onyx stones on

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 the other. Again, close your eyes. Imagine this six onyx stones, one shoulder, six onyx stones on

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 the other. And the reason for that is actually quite important because each of the onyx stones

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 represented the 12 tribes of Israel. You see, this ephod was worn only by one person.

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 Even David wasn't allowed to wear it. It was worn by the high priest. Now, I'll explain to you what

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 the high priest was and why this is so important in a moment. But this was part of his clothing.

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 The high priest had to wear this ephod that had the six onyx stones on one shoulder, six onyx

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 stones, and each of them represented one of the tribes of Israel. He is carrying on his shoulders

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 as it were the responsibility for each of the 12 tribes of Israel.

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 But that's not where it ends, because on the ephod there was a wide belt that kind of fixed or

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 fastened the ephod to the body of the high priest. You weren't undergarment, of course,

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 but you had a belt. And you also had another thing called the breast piece. If I know this in

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 Exodus, by the way, you had a breast piece. And again, there were 12 precious stones on the chest

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 embedded into this breast piece. And so each of the 12 precious stones again represented the 12

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 tribes of Israel. So the 12 tribes of Israel were on his shoulders and next to his heart,

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 representing his duty as a high priest. Now the high priest was the single most important figure

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 in Old Testament Israel. And the reason for that was because he represented the people

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 before God, and he also represented God before the people. See, there was a big problem

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 between God and the people of Israel. He was perfectly holy. They were not. He was perfectly

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 righteous. His righteousness burned with fire. The people of Israel were sinners. And so there had

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 to be a separation, even though God chose to dwell amongst the people of Israel in the Holy of

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 Holies in the middle of their camp. There had to be a separation in which no one could ever

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 approach the presence of God except one person. And that was the high priest. The high priest's job

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 was to mediate between God and the people of Israel and to make sacrifice on their behalf. It was

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 always the priests that brought the sacrifice that carried the guilt of the sin of Israel

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 every day. And at special times, sacrifices would be made, and they would be made by the priests

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 overseen by the high priest, wearing this elaborate clothing that represented so much,

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 that represented his job and his responsibility. But inside this breast piece on the Ephod,

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 there was something else. There was a pouch. And the pouch contained two things.

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 It contained urim and thumim. Now I know that this is all very mysterious,

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 and I think it's meant to be. It's meant to arouse our intrigue and our fascination.

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 Urim and thumim were kept in this pouch.

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 And when the people of Israel wanted to know God's will on some question that they needed to

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 know the mind of God, they needed to ask God about, they would take the urim and the thumim,

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 and they would ask God, what do you want us to do? Like here in this case, what do I do?

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 Lord, what do I do? Here's my city is destroyed. My wives and my families, they've all been taken away.

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 I don't know where they've gone. Should I pursue the Amalekites or not? Is it a waste of time or not?

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 Have you completely rejected us or not? What do I do? And the way that David found out

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 what the mind of God was, was to use the urim and the thumim that were contained in this little pouch

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 that was on the breast piece that was on the effod. That's why David wanted the effod,

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 so that he could find out the mind of God. And so he takes the urim and the thumim,

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 and they are the means by which God reveals to him that he does want them to pursue the Amalekites.

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 Now you're asking, I know what you're asking. You're asking what were the urim and the thumim.

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 What was it? I have no idea. Nobody does. Whatever they were, God doesn't want us to know.

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 It's something that the Israelites used way back in the Old Testament,

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 and he doesn't want us to know what they were. What he does want us to know tonight

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 is what all of this looked forward to. What it all foreshadowed. Number one,

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 the High Priest foreshadowed the coming of Jesus into the world. The New Testament gives the title

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 of our great High Priest to Jesus. Why? Because he is the one who ultimately represented us

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 before God, and he carried the sacrifice of himself to God on the cross.

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 And as High Priest, he made perfect satisfaction by his death on the cross,

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 as he took our guilt, and as he paid the ultimate price that God demanded as the payment for our

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 sin, which was his life. No wonder the writer to the Hebrews calls him our great High Priest.

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 We have our great High Priest. But then there's more than that, because all of these garments

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 that fill us with such intrigue and fascination, again, they point us to the work that our great

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 High Priest does, even tonight. We saw this this morning as we thought about Jesus in heaven,

00:27:33.519 --> 00:27:39.119
 sitting at the right hand of God. The Bible tells us where he makes intercession for us, and what

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 that means is that he is part of this worship this evening. Do we think about Jesus as being part of

00:27:46.480 --> 00:27:52.480
 our worship when we come together in St. Columbus morning or evening? Do we remember that he is

00:27:52.480 --> 00:28:00.319
 part of what we are doing? He in heaven and we on earth, but we are in him. The Bible tells us

00:28:00.319 --> 00:28:08.559
 that he has raised us with Christ, and he has made us to sit in heavenly places in Jesus Christ. So

00:28:08.559 --> 00:28:15.839
 there's a sense in which he is with us as we worship God, but there's also a sense that we are in him

00:28:15.839 --> 00:28:24.000
 as he sits at the Father's right hand this evening. There is this unique connection between God's people

00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:32.480
 and the Lord Jesus Christ, in which we too can come to him in all our agony sometimes.

00:28:34.319 --> 00:28:40.799
 And when things go disastrously wrong, as they did for David on this occasion, does it mean that he

00:28:40.799 --> 00:28:46.480
 has rejected us and cast us off? No, it doesn't, because he's faithful to his covenant, just as

00:28:46.480 --> 00:28:54.079
 he was in the Old Testament. How do we know? Because we have a great high priest, the Lord Jesus

00:28:54.079 --> 00:29:03.120
 Christ who has given himself for us and who now sits at the Father's right hand on our behalf.

00:29:04.480 --> 00:29:10.559
 So what this story, along with so many others in the Old Testament, they look forward,

00:29:10.559 --> 00:29:18.000
 they prefigure the coming, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of the Lord Jesus

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 Christ, our privileges in him as we come to him this evening. David said to Abbaethar,

00:29:26.639 --> 00:29:34.720
 bring me the ephod, and this was his way of coming. I should say this was God's way in which David

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 was able to make an approach to God. We have that same privilege this evening, and the ephod was

00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:51.200
 what we might call a means of grace, a means by which God spoke to David, and a means by which

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 David was able to approach God through the mediatorship of the high priest. We have the same,

00:29:58.720 --> 00:30:05.680
 we have in fact a greater privilege because our great high priest has paid the ultimate price

00:30:06.319 --> 00:30:15.839
 in his death on the cross. It was also a means whereby God was

00:30:17.440 --> 00:30:24.000
 willing to make his will known to David and to his men. When David asked the question,

00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:30.880
 should I pursue the Amalekites, then the answer was yes. This was God's way in which

00:30:31.759 --> 00:30:39.279
 God guided him into the right kind of action, and this of course proved a turning point for

00:30:39.279 --> 00:30:46.960
 David, where he would eventually come back into his own territory and fulfill God's purpose for

00:30:46.960 --> 00:30:56.960
 him once again. So is the Bible. The Bible is what we have tonight, by which we know God's will

00:30:56.960 --> 00:31:02.559
 for our lives. That doesn't mean that the Bible is going to answer every specific question that

00:31:02.559 --> 00:31:12.240
 tonight you or I might be bringing to God, and yet as we live in the light of the Bible, and as we

00:31:12.240 --> 00:31:19.440
 allow God's light to shine in our hearts and in our lives, then we can expect God to guide us

00:31:19.440 --> 00:31:28.319
 because we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. These are our privileges. This is our massive,

00:31:29.120 --> 00:31:36.240
 the tremendous relationship that we have with God in which God dwells within us,

00:31:36.240 --> 00:31:44.960
 and in which God is pleased to make his will known as we live in the light of his Word.

00:31:46.319 --> 00:31:53.359
 Our means of grace tonight are prayer by which we can speak to God personally.

00:31:54.160 --> 00:32:01.519
 It also means that we have his Word, the Bible, which is as relevant today as it ever was.

00:32:01.519 --> 00:32:06.559
 We have our church here where we can have fellowship with other Christians, and we can

00:32:07.599 --> 00:32:14.400
 study God's Word together and be enriched and strengthened in our faith, and we can be reminded

00:32:15.039 --> 00:32:22.559
 of what God is doing in all the world, in other parts of the world. We can be reminded

00:32:23.119 --> 00:32:30.559
 of what God has made us and done for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that's what God has given us

00:32:30.559 --> 00:32:38.319
 in the Old Testament. God gave His people the ephod, the high priest, the ephod that was to

00:32:39.599 --> 00:32:45.759
 remind the people of Israel of their special relationship to Him, that was to strengthen

00:32:45.759 --> 00:32:52.240
 the people of God, and that was to restore them even when they made bad decisions and to bring

00:32:52.240 --> 00:33:00.720
 them to a place of reconciliation to God once again. Today we have the Lord Jesus Christ,

00:33:01.279 --> 00:33:06.480
 and everything that He has done for us. We have His Word, the Bible, and the Old and the New Testament,

00:33:07.279 --> 00:33:17.120
 and we have access to this grace in which we stand. May we tonight make use, and that's the question

00:33:17.119 --> 00:33:24.079
 that each one of us, including myself, must ask on a day by day basis, may we tonight make use

00:33:24.079 --> 00:33:32.879
 of these amazing privileges that God has given us. He has spoken to us. He has called us to be

00:33:32.879 --> 00:33:42.639
 in the Lord Jesus Christ, and He has promised to be in us and with us forever more as we face all

00:33:42.640 --> 00:33:50.960
 the challenges of living in a very difficult world, a difficult world where we will be required to make

00:33:50.960 --> 00:33:58.640
 the kind of awkward decisions that David and all of these characters in the Old and the New Testament

00:33:58.640 --> 00:34:07.360
 were made, and we have to learn from their lives and their example. Sometimes we learn from their

00:34:07.359 --> 00:34:14.960
 bad example, and we are inspired at the same time by the way in which God drew them back

00:34:15.599 --> 00:34:21.359
 into fellowship with Himself. Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for

00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:27.759
 your Word to us, and we thank you for all the privileges that we have this evening. We thank

00:34:27.759 --> 00:34:35.519
 you that we have our great high priest in the Lord Jesus Christ who has loved us and given Himself

00:34:35.519 --> 00:34:44.960
 for us, and we pray to never lose sight of Him. We pray to come to Him in prayer, confessing our

00:34:44.960 --> 00:34:51.920
 weaknesses and our failures, and asking for His guidance in every detailed decision that we have

00:34:51.920 --> 00:35:00.079
 to make. Our Father, we confess that we do not take enough of our perplexities to the Lord in prayer,

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 and we ask that this reminder will be an encouragement to us to come to you afresh

00:35:08.239 --> 00:35:32.239
 and asking for your guidance in Jesus' name. Amen.