Sheryl Brady - If You Want It, Go After It

On your way down, just touch somebody and say, «If you look over here and see that I’m gone, that’s because I’m going after God. I’m going after God. Amen.» Have you all been enjoying our worship series? I’ve been enjoying it, and I really feel like we’re on target with it because the whole desire for us to speak about worship in the life of a worshiper was so that we didn’t come out here with the intention to tell you what Shabbach means, what Barack means, what Tehillah means, and I’m not talking about Barack the president, and I’m not talking about tequila. I said Tehillah, okay? That’s right; we’ve got to get it straight. But our goal was to whet your appetite, as it were, to understand the things of God and to develop a desire to really go after God and recognize how much you need Him. Actually, one of our biggest goals was for church to not be something that you just experience in this room but something that you live out in your life at home, with your family, or whether you’re single—however you do it. You should not just experience it in this building; it should become a lifestyle for you. That was our desire, and I feel like we’re helping paint that picture.

When we talk about some of these things, you’ll hear them, and you’ll be familiar, especially if you were here and enjoyed the Wednesday night Bible studies that Bishop was conducting for us earlier in the year. He talked about the Ark of God and the Tabernacle. Whenever we discuss the Ark of God, we are talking about the presence of God. So, whenever you see the scripture referencing the Ark, what are we discussing? The presence. The Ark of God was a piece of holy furniture, carried around throughout the Old Testament. It symbolized the very presence of God and God’s covenant with His people.

The design of the Ark was also very significant because it was wood overlaid with gold. Now, wood represents humanity, so the wood there symbolizes God’s humanity. The gold it is overlaid with represents God’s divinity. I want you to picture with me: it had gold on the top and gold on the bottom, with the wood in between those two gold pieces. The gold on the bottom represents God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself; the gold on the top represents Christ being glorified, and the wood in between represents the holy thing that Mary gave birth to—the wood, which represented the flesh. It was corruptible, but the gold was pure, divine, and eternal. Altogether, it represented God and man merged in Christ Jesus. Now, you need to take all that home and study it out. I just gave you a big chunk of meat right there that you could take home and explore.

There were three things inside the Ark of God. The first was Aaron’s rod that budded. I’m not going to break that down; I’m going to tell you to go home and get your Bible program out or use my favorite program, which is Google because it’s the best to me in the world. Look up, «What is Aaron’s rod that budded?» In case you don’t know, that’s the first thing that was in there. The second thing was a tablet, or tablets of stone. The third thing was a pot of manna. There were also two angels called cherubs on top of the Ark. Whenever they carried the Ark anywhere, they had to carry it on staves. If you wonder what a stave is, staves were very long sticks, and they would put the stick through the handles on the Ark so they could carry it on their shoulders.

Whenever the enemy looked up and saw God in motion, they were horrified; they were petrified. The Bible says that when the Philistines were ready to kill the Israelites, they looked up and saw the Ark of God coming. They heard the Israelites shouting, and when they heard and saw that, they were terrified because they knew that if the Israelites brought God into the battle, there was absolutely no way the Philistines could win. Once God came into the battle, look at somebody and tell them, «The battle belongs to the Lord.» Everyone who fought with them knew that if they had the Ark of the Covenant, there was no way they could be defeated. The Ark of the Covenant is what empowered them to come through the wilderness. We preached about wilderness wanderings last week. The Ark of the Covenant brought them through, helped them march through the Jordan, and supported them as they marched around the walls of Jericho until the walls began to fall. Whenever God fights with you and for you…