THE PRESENCE OF GOD
D. L. Stewart
Numbers 7: 89; 8: 1, 2; 2 Samuel 7: 19; Daniel 6: 10
I wondered if we could just take account of these three men who resorted to the presence of God. They would be examples for us. It is wonderful that the presence of God is available to us, that is, He desires men to resort to Him, not only in need but at any time. We sang yesterday about the matchless grace that finds delight in men. The whole purpose and working out of God’s ways is in view of His tabernacling with men, a wonderful thing.
‘That Thou should’st take delight in me,
Yet be the God Thou art,
Is darkness to my intellect
But sunshine to my heart’.
Daniel resorted to the presence of God in a time of crisis. We know that it was his habit to resort there, but the verse reads, “And when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and, his windows being open in his upper chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled on his knees three times a day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime”. The detail is remarkable. He was not overwhelmed by the crisis. It is always a test to us as to how we behave in a crisis; it brings out where we are; it brings out the work of God, or it brings out the absence of the work of God. The attack was on Daniel here but he realised that the attack was against God. It is an amazing thing that these men had planned to annihilate the thought of men approaching God. You think of the audacity of the enemy, for he has not small ideas. Paul says, “We are not ignorant of his thoughts”, 2 Corinthians 2: 11.
They had actually planned to annihilate the matter of men resorting to the presence of God. In the crisis Daniel resorts there just as he had always done. Even in the midst of Babylon he had an upper chamber and his windows were open towards Jerusalem. In his prayer in chapter 9 he speaks of God’s sanctuary; that was in his heart, not his own safety. God can change the course of nature if it is a matter of the safety of His people, but in this section it is the way in which God comes in for the protecting of this matter of approach to Himself.
In 2 Samuel 7 David went in and sat before Jehovah. It says of Daniel that he kneeled. Daniel had not an official place to go to, he went to his house, and it was a little sanctuary in Babylon where he could approach God. But David went in and sat restfully before Jehovah and that at the time of the greatest disappointment that he could have experienced. From his earliest days he had in mind “a place for Jehovah, habitations for the Mighty One of Jacob”, Psalm 132: 5. It filled his thoughts; his objective was God’s rest and God’s service. But he gets the word through Nathan that he was not to build the house, and we see how he carries himself in the disappointment. Things had not gone just quite the way he wanted them to go.
He wanted to see things filled out and prospering in his locality, as it were, in his area of things, but it did not quite go that way. He got light, of course, as to Christ typically, light as to sonship, light as to Solomon, that he was to build the house. You delight in the way he takes it, the way he bows to God’s sovereign choice of the son to build the house of Jehovah.
The brethren know this passage well, how he expresses his own thoughts of God, the names and titles he uses and the wealth that enters into it. It seems to be the result of the way that he took the word of God. So he went in and sat before Jehovah. He is perfectly restful as to the matter of God going to work out His own thoughts in His own way.
Then in Numbers 7 it is a time of wonderful prosperity. It was on the very day that Moses had completed the setting up of the tabernacle that these princes came forward with their offerings of
such wealth. It must have been a marvellous moment in the history of Moses. The work was complete in accordance with the commandment of Jehovah, every detail in accord with the pattern, and it had been brought to Moses to come under his scrutiny. It was a time of wonderful prosperity. In some sense there was never a day in Israel like it, it is like Pentecostal times, when everything was secured in its first flush of glory, the glory coming in and filling the tabernacle, and these princes coming forward with all their wealth, dedicating it to the service of God. It was at that point that Moses went in to speak with Him. It does not say that he went in to pray, he just went in to speak with God. There was wonderful nearness and intimacy as he went in there in relation to the fulfilment of the divine thoughts in the people of God. The heart of Moses must have been filled and satisfied.
But as he goes in he heard the voice speaking to him from off the mercy-seat. What he discovers is that the great purpose of this whole arrangement, the tabernacle system, was that God should have a place where He could speak, where His voice would be heard, as He had said in Exodus 25: 22, “There will I meet with thee, and will speak with thee”. A wonderful moment had arrived for God when He had conditions and a place and a throne in the midst of His people. God spoke to Moses, and then Moses spoke to Him. Moses, as it were, takes the second place. He had gone in to speak with Him, but God claims the right to speak in His house. Then what comes out is that, whatever results have been secured in the people, everything must relate to Christ—“When thou lightest the lamps, the seven lamps shall give light over against the candlestick”. God says, as it were, If this result is to be maintained, everything has to centre in Christ, every
light has to be related to Christ. I trust we may be encouraged in these things.