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[0:00] So we're back tonight to our life of David series. We had taken a break this past week when Thomas Davis was visiting us and we're reading the same passage if you were here two weeks ago, that we read two weeks ago, but this time we're going to focus on the second part instead of the first part like we had done.

[0:19] And when you look at all of it actually together, what you see is that this is a story about joy and it's a story about what it means to have joy in the presence of the Lord.

[0:33] So let's look at that three things tonight. First is the paradox of God's presence and then secondly the nature of joy. And then finally we'll ask how do you get joy?

[0:47] So first the paradox of God's presence and this is really just to recap last time a little bit, especially if you weren't here, this is really the first part is important in understanding the second part, so we have to recall it a little bit.

[1:01] The context in 2 Samuel 6 is that David has gone to the very border line of Israel, Kiryat Jereem, and he has gathered 30,000 people to march towards Jerusalem, the city of God, with the Ark of the Covenant.

[1:19] God's presence symbolized in the sacrament of the Ark of the Covenant. And this is a party, you notice in the reading, they've got all sorts of instruments, there's dancing, there's celebration.

[1:31] And what the writer wants you to have in your mind, and you can tell this from the details, is that this is actually the beginning of a new era that's gonna shape all of Israelite history until Jesus comes.

[1:46] This is in some ways the center point of the Old Testament because what you have is David's just been anointed the king and he is God's king, he's the one that God chose in the chapter just before this.

[1:59] And now Jerusalem is becoming the city of God because the Ark of God is entering into the city of God and God is now establishing his presence in the land that he had promised.

[2:12] And so when you look at the details, this feels on first glance like the Abrahamic, like Abrams Covenant is being fulfilled. The people are being blessed with God's presence, like God said, in the land they're being given and they're given the city and they're multiplying and there's a great celebration and it's even more than that, there I mentioned last time, there are seven references in this to the quote, Ark of God, and then there are seven references to the Ark of the Lord.

[2:42] And seven plus seven is 14. And seven, of course, it comes from creation, the creation days and the reason that there's two sets of seven is because it's trying to signal to the reader very subtly that this is meant to be read like new creation.

[3:00] Is this the moment where new creation is being established, creation all over again? The Ark of the Lord seven times, the Ark of God seven times, we have 14, that's the number of new creation throughout the Bible, the Abrahamic Covenant being fulfilled.

[3:14] Is this, is it today? And it's not. Because remember, Uzzah reaches out his hand on the threshing floor of Nikon and he touches the Ark and he falls dead.

[3:27] And the party stops and we can't go back through all that that means, like we did two weeks ago, you can see that two weeks ago. There's lots of rule breaking here that leads up to Uzzah's death.

[3:42] The way they handled the Ark of God was inappropriate. Uzzah being there was against the Deuteronomic Law, all sorts of things, but this is not really about the rules at all.

[3:52] And that's what we saw last time. What we see in Uzzah is that in the face of God, in God's presence, sinners are unfit.

[4:05] And God's presence is deadly. In the, as we saw in the Catechism tonight, the depths of human sin go deeper than we can even know. And that means when we stand in the holy presence of God, even in the midst of the party, we're unfit.

[4:21] And God's presence becomes deadly. And in verse 10, David actually realizes it and he says, how can I bring the Ark to Jerusalem? And what he's realizing in that moment is this can also happen to me.

[4:37] You see, David wakes up and he realizes, I'm not different than Uzzah. And so he's afraid of the Ark and he puts it into the house of Obed, Edom, the Getite. Now, we're in part two tonight.

[4:50] And part two is attempt number two to try to get the Ark to Jerusalem. This is the second try. And it's been some months, three months, and David went to Jerusalem without the Ark.

[5:02] It's about three miles away. They had made it from the 11 mile border. They had made it seven, eight miles. And then Uzzah dies and they put the Ark in the house of a Gentile, Obed, Edom, the Getite for three months.

[5:16] Three miles away from Jerusalem. Now, David's now gonna go get it. And the question here is why does he try again? And I think there's two reasons.

[5:27] One, he sees, we're told, he saw that God had actually blessed the house of Obed, Edom. And David woke up. And what he realized was, yes, the presence of God is deadly.

[5:41] Because I'm unfit, David knew that. But he said at the same time, but I look at what's happening at the house of Obed, Edom, and I realize God actually wants to bless his people. It's not that God wants his presence to be deadly.

[5:55] He realized that God was blessing a Gentile, not even an Israelite. And he woke up and said, you know what? God wants to be with me. He wants to be with his people.

[6:06] And so he goes to get the Ark for that reason. The second reason is because as soon as David realizes he's not fit to be in the presence of God, but that God wants him, he takes six steps, not seven.

[6:22] You see? And seven, seven is the number of perfection. It's the number of creation. It's the number of everything being exactly as it should be creation order. And so David says, takes six steps at the beginning of this passage and says, I will not take the seventh, the complete cycle of steps without offering sacrifice.

[6:43] And so you see, he wakes up. He realizes, I'm not fit to be in the presence of God, just like Uzi wasn't fit. And if the presence of God is gonna turn from deadliness to joy, I need mediation.

[6:58] I need something to go between me and God. And so before he takes a complete cycle of steps at the very beginning, he offers a sacrifice. And God accepts that and blesses David and the party goes on.

[7:11] And we see that God's presence is deadly because of our sin, but he at the same time is the very thing we were made for. We were made to be in his presence.

[7:23] And so you've got the great paradox. And the only way that his presence turns from death to utter joy is by a mediator, by a sacrifice. And when that happens here, David dances.

[7:38] He dances before the presence of God. The joy of the Lord has come. Now secondly then, the joy of the Lord. What is it? It's nature.

[7:49] And you can see a hint of what it is, more specifically in verse 12. In verse 12, it says that he went to the city of David with rejoicing.

[8:02] The older translations would say there with gladness. And there's a specific reason for that. And let's try to define joy in the presence of God and then come back to that word because it's really important.

[8:16] And it's simply this, you can make a long definition or a simple definition of joy in the presence of the Lord. Here's a simple one. Joy in the presence of the Lord is delighting in God from the heart.

[8:30] You know, it's being truly satisfied with God in a way that you can't be satisfied with anything else. It's delight in God.

[8:43] It's just, as our confession says, it's enjoying God. And that's what it really means to have joy in the presence of the Lord. Now that is an internal state. It's an emotion actually, or an affection, was the older term, an affection of joy.

[8:59] An internal state, a condition of the heart that is at such delight with God that the heart is at rest and enraptured at the same time with being in the presence of God.

[9:13] Now, sometimes, sometimes in life, when you're in a place in life where you have joy in God, that joy moves from being inside to outside.

[9:26] It gets externalized. And we know that that's not all the time because the promise of the New Testament is that you can have joy in God and be absolutely sad at the same time.

[9:39] You know, your external condition can be one of utter sorrow and grief. And yet the promise is there's a possibility of joy at the same time.

[9:50] But sometimes, the external joy becomes externalized as well. And external joy externalizes as external joy.

[10:00] And that's exactly what we're reading about here tonight. And that's why the word, in verse 12, the old word, the King James is gladness or mirth. And that's the old English term, mirth.

[10:13] It reminds you, it feels like you're reading Tolkien when you say that word. Mirth or merriment is an even older way of saying it. It's a word for festival joy.

[10:23] You know, it's when the internal joy of delight in God gets shared with people all around you and all of a sudden, deep, passionate external joy breaks out.

[10:36] And you know, I think the closest analogy to something like what we're reading about here in normal human life is the best wedding you've ever been to.

[10:46] You know, think about the best wedding you've ever been to, whether that was your wedding or your son's wedding, your daughter's wedding or your best friend's wedding, whatever it might be. And you know, you sit there at the table, at the head table, perhaps, and you had a glass of wine, and you looked out and you saw her, him, your beloved one, the one you love, who you came for, them dancing.

[11:09] And there's this deep internal joy in your heart at that moment, but there's also this radical at-root external joy out in front of you.

[11:21] And it feels for just a second like you're suspended in a world where there are no problems. And that's when internal joy gets externalized as joy that shared, festival joy, mirth or merriment.

[11:34] And what we're reading about here is extreme festival joy. And so David dances. Now, we could get actually a little deeper into a definition of joy in the presence of the Lord here by considering also, and this is what the passage is really here for, to point out the opposite of joy in the presence of the Lord.

[11:59] And the opposite of joy in the presence of the Lord is presented here through a character, and that's Mikkel, David's wife. And you can see here that it says she's the daughter of Saul.

[12:13] She was not part of the processional. So note that she never went out with the Israelites to do the party, the 11 mile journey to bring the Ark of God finally, the fulfillment of the covenant into the city.

[12:28] She didn't go. And now she's standing in the palace. It says from on high, she's looking down on all of them. And it literally says she despised him in her heart.

[12:39] The word there can also be, she's, she found him to be despicable in her heart as she looked out at David. Okay, if you listen or read about this passage when it comes to this, this is a short aside.

[12:54] Sometimes people will say actually that the way to interpret this is to see that Mikkel was actually right and David was wrong. And that's quite sometimes a popular way to read the text.

[13:09] And so that's out there. So let me just say, why might somebody read it like that? Well, one of the reasons is because when she says to David, you know, look at you today, you uncovered yourself before the young women, the maids that were assisting in the bringing of the Ark.

[13:25] And you stripped down to a linen ephod. A linen ephod was a shorter garment. So in the decorum of the day, typically men and women both would have their legs completely covered.

[13:36] But a linen ephod did not cover your legs. It covered just above the knee. And so that's probably what she's referring to, that it's a short garment. And she thinks that he's made himself a fool.

[13:48] She says a stronger term than even fool here. And it has a connotation that it's because it's as if in the decorum, the culture of the time, he stripped almost naked.

[14:02] Now, there's a deeper reason, however. And maybe she's right about that. That's the question. That he didn't act appropriately. And he embarrassed himself and her.

[14:13] But even more than that, and this is what the commentators that go this route are really saying. This that David has a broken home. And he had married Mikkel under pretty bad circumstances.

[14:28] A few chapters prior to this. He had almost forced her into a marriage. And David has multiple wives. And he has concubines. And David does have a broken home.

[14:39] And that's part of the story of David and Solomon. That their house is broken and they're bad husbands. And we see that over and over again. And so people will say, is Mikkel actually right about this?

[14:50] And look, it's partly true that David's home is broken. But that is not what the writer is trying to show us. And let me show you why. If you look at the text carefully, Mikkel is written, the story of Mikkel here is to show the opposite of what joy before the Lord looks like.

[15:06] And here's how we know. There's clues, very clear clues. First, it titles her. It says, she is the daughter of Saul. And Saul's dead.

[15:18] Saul's been dead for some time. But when the writer wants to identify this queen, he doesn't say she is the queen of Israel.

[15:28] It doesn't say she is the wife of David. Instead, it's saying she is the daughter of Saul. Meaning, it's not just about biology. It's trying to point out where her heart is.

[15:40] Because in 1 Chronicles 13, 1 Chronicles 10 to 15 follows this story. It's a parallel story. You can go read it very similar with more detailed story to what we just read there.

[15:52] And it says in 1 Chronicles 13, 3, in the days of Saul, the people did not seek the ark. Meaning, in the reign of Saul, nobody cared about the ark, the presence of God.

[16:04] They didn't care where it was. They didn't care who had it. And you see, she is the daughter of Saul. Meaning, in her heart, it's telling us she is completely indifferent to the ark.

[16:15] She didn't wanna go. She didn't watch it come. And as the ark is enthroned in the city of Jerusalem, she doesn't care about that. She wants to talk about something else.

[16:26] That's the first thing. The second thing, if you look down, you can see in the bracket, verse 16. Verse 16 is when we're told, she looked out the window and she hated David.

[16:37] But then there's a bracket. And verse 17, 18, 19 are about something completely different. So it just mentions, Mecall looks down and hates David, but then it goes to verse 17, 18, 19, and there you have the covenant ceremony of the enthronement of God's presence.

[16:57] And we're told that David makes a sacrifice and he puts the ark in the tent and he gives food, cakes, and meat to all the people. And you know what's happening there?

[17:07] This is a ceremony very similar, a covenant ceremony very similar to the one that happened after the Exodus, after crossing the Red Sea. And it's saying that when God's presence comes into God's land, people will not go hungry anymore.

[17:23] It's a sign of new creation. So everybody in Israel gets cake and everybody in Israel gets bread and meat, the opposite of the wilderness wanderings. When God comes to be in his city with his people, this is what you can expect.

[17:36] It's the same thing as when you look at the miracles of Jesus. You know, Jesus feeds 5,000. The point is not that he's there to prove his divinity. The point is that when Jesus Christ comes to town, people don't go hungry anymore.

[17:50] That's the sign of new creation. And so you see the bracket, verse 16, she hated what she saw. But 17, 18, 19, the great covenant ceremony of the enthronement of God in the middle of Israel and nobody's hungry and everybody's rejoicing.

[18:06] But then verse 20, you see it's a bracket. Mikkel hates David, the beauty of God coming to Israel. Mikkel hates David, verse 20. She hates what's happening.

[18:16] She hates the ceremony. So you see it's not just about David. She's indifferent to the coming of the presence of God into the city in such a way that that's actually the thing she despises most.

[18:30] And that's why it's bracketed in that way. Now the third thing is this, it says at the very end of the text, and this is hard to read, it says, Mikkel, the daughter of Saul, had no child until the day of her death.

[18:40] And some commentators have come and said, that is because of the broken home situation. You know, it's a broken home. She didn't want to be with David. And so biologically, she would never have David's child.

[18:54] But that's not all what the text is pointing us to. Instead, it's saying this is the daughter of Saul. It's telling us this is how the bloodline of Saul will end. Because God had said your bloodline Saul will end because you've rejected the presence of the Lord.

[19:10] And so this is the fulfillment of that. The Saul bloodline dynasty will end because Mikkel, who is the daughter of Saul in her heart, she doesn't care about God.

[19:23] And so the bloodline will ultimately end. And look, in all that, what we see is this. God wants his people to enjoy him, and to pursue him, and to seek his presence.

[19:37] It's very simple. God wants his people to want him. And Mikkel is the opposite. Now, one more thing here before we move on to the final point, and that's this.

[19:47] You can actually even get underneath that a little bit further, the opposite of joy in the presence of the Lord, by looking at exactly what she says. To dig underneath it a little bit more.

[20:01] And you see, when David returns to bless his household, she says this, how the king of Israel literally gloried himself today, uncovering himself before the eyes of his servants, his female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows, shamelessly uncovers himself.

[20:20] Now, we've already seen that she's indifferent to the coming of the ark, into the city, the presence of God. And now what we learn is that she's saying, David, this is your glory.

[20:33] You uncovered yourself, you stripped down to a short garment, and you did it dancing around the ark, and you did it in the presence of all these women. You see what's happening?

[20:45] She's saying, look, I'm here watching because I want to see a certain decorum. And what she's really despising is not simply that he wore a short undergarment, but that he took off his royal robe.

[21:04] And so all he's wearing is what was underneath, but the issue is not exactly that it was short. The issue for her is that he took off the royal garment that signified him before the people as the king.

[21:18] And what's happening here is actually a play on words. Earlier in 1 Samuel, when the ark left Israel, when they lost it, Israel was given a new name, they were called Ichabod.

[21:33] And Ichabod means the glory has left. And so whenever the ark is away, Israel gets the nickname Ichabod. Well, Mikkel knows that. And so she's actually using a pun here.

[21:45] She says, sure, you're no longer Ichabod because the glory has come. But she says, oh, how you made yourself glorious today by shaming yourself.

[21:56] And you see what she's saying? It's kind of complicated. She's saying, when the ark came and the glory was restored to Israel, your glory went down.

[22:07] It was proportional. When we can't say Ichabod for Israel any longer because God has come, but now you're the Ichabod. And you see what she loves?

[22:18] Here it is. You placed yourself today on a plane of equality with all the commoners when you took off your royal robe.

[22:29] And that means if God's presence coming, means you being lower in status in the eyes of everybody else, I don't want anything to do with that.

[22:41] And see, the ultimate point is that her desire is that her queenship is made much of in the eyes of the other women. She hates David because he stripped off his royal robe and became like everybody else before God.

[22:55] And so she's saying, if the ark coming means our glory goes down, then that's shame. That's not glory. And so she redefines the meaning of glory and shame in the eyes of Israel as it's been defined throughout the whole book of 1st and 2nd Samuel.

[23:11] Now, here it is. That means that the opposite, the opposite of pursuing joy in the presence of the Lord is the very common human mistake of pursuing happiness.

[23:28] That's Mikkel's mistake. She pursues happiness in her life and not joy. And it's an incredibly common human mistake. And here's what it means, chasing happiness.

[23:39] Chasing happiness is picking something in your life. Some status, some public image, some security by way of financial gain, some ideal family, some ideal relationship, some ideal job, some type of success, some type of image.

[24:00] And chasing after it at all costs to the point where you think if I get this, it's going to make me happy. And Mikkel here is chasing happiness by way of the pride of public nobility and public image.

[24:14] And that is exactly the opposite of pursuit of the joy of the Lord. Why? Because when you chase happiness, it's like you've built a tiny little boat in the midst of the absolutely rugged ocean.

[24:31] And your tiny little boat is made out of little planks of some little God that you're chasing after. And it's so narrow, it's so thin, it's like a little canoe.

[24:42] Because when the tidal wave comes and you're standing in the midst of the ocean, that circumstance that you did not get, that relationship that failed you, that image that was broken because somebody came in and was better than you, whatever it may be, when that wave comes down and your boat is made out of such narrow material, little bitty happinesses, that it has to tip over and you drown.

[25:07] And you see what it's saying is that when you actually chase after the face of God in your life, by making delight and rest in God, your ultimate desire, then your boat can't tip over because God can't die.

[25:26] And that joy, not little happiness, can't be lost. And so the point of this passage is that joy in the presence of the Lord is what you were made for.

[25:39] And it's so much better than chasing all the little happinesses that we do in the 21st century and in 1700 BC, wherever it may have been, in the life of Michele and others.

[25:51] Pursuing joy is an unshakable stability in the midst of a shaky world. Now, how do you get it finally? We'll close with this. Don't be afraid of this number, but there are five things here.

[26:05] But I'm just gonna run through them quickly. Five things here that this passage says about how you get this joy. And the first thing is this. You've got to start by doing an idolatry, a happiness assessment of your life.

[26:21] You've actually got to take time in your life to sit down and to assess your life for little happinesses that you might be chasing after that have become totalizing, that have become like little gods to you.

[26:35] And that's what happened in the first passage when David saw what happened to Uzzah. All of a sudden, David said, I don't think I can take the Ark to Jerusalem. Why?

[26:46] Because he realized I've got the same problem. I'm not fit to be in the presence of God either. And Michele does not do an idolatry assessment of her heart.

[26:58] And that's the first thing. You've actually got to take time in your life to assess your idols and ask, where am I chasing after happinesses that are not gonna ultimately give me joy?

[27:09] That if I don't get them, will sink me internally and externally. The second thing is this then, we learn here. You then, when you know your idol and you confess it before God, you've got to then humble yourself.

[27:23] And David here, when he takes off his royal robe and he strips down to a linen ephod, he's, you know why he does that? Because he's actually realized in the midst of seeing Uzzah touch the Ark that he's just like everybody.

[27:39] And that means that this is a call actually that each of us realize our co-equality before the Lord. Co-equality, twofold equality. Here's your twofold equality before God.

[27:50] One, God sees you as equally dignified as a human being as everybody else in the world. And God also knows that you are equally, equally a sinner all the way to the bottom.

[28:05] You know, you're equally as dignified in the eyes of God and equally as broken and sinful in the eyes of God. He shows no partiality both in what you are and how you are morally.

[28:16] And so David realized that. And so what we see here, when David dances, he's got self-forgetful humility because he knows what he is before God.

[28:27] And he says, I'm just like the maids and the servants and everybody else all around me, I'm exactly the same. And so he can take off his royal robe. And so we've got to humble ourselves. We've got to get away in our hearts from the stifling game of comparison and competition in order to have real joy in the presence of the Lord.

[28:48] Third to five, third. That means then after that, that we've got to enter the presence of God with earnest expectation. Now here it is, I think this is the big one.

[29:01] David realizing who he was and his humble equality with everybody else before God, he chose to enter the presence of God.

[29:13] And here's the question I think that this raises tonight. Do you come to worship week after week to enter into the presence of God?

[29:26] Now what do you hear for? Do you take time in your daily life to actually say, I'm stepping across the threshold now and entering into the presence of God?

[29:37] And this passage in other words, this parade, this party in the presence of God, I think is a call to all of us to wake up and ask, do I really want to be in God's presence?

[29:50] Is that the point of me being here? And it is the point. It is the point. That's exactly what the passage is saying. And David saw Uzodah, he saw God say to Obed, eat him, I want to be with my people.

[30:03] And he woke up and he said, have I quieted my soul to enter into the presence of God in my daily life? Fourth, four or five then. We see here that we've got to subordinate then decorum to sincerity and worship.

[30:25] Now, when you're standing in the presence of God with great expectation, God is foregrounded and everything else is backgrounded. And here David dances, he forgets who he is.

[30:38] He strips off his royal robe and that's a call to us. And David dances and that does not mean that we need to dance in church.

[30:50] That's not the point at all. Actually, we never see one instance in the Bible of anybody dancing in the weekly prescribed worship, not one. They didn't do it in the temple.

[31:01] They didn't do it in the tabernacle. They didn't do it in the new covenant worship. And we don't see it at all in the early church as a act of public Sunday worship. But here's more an analogy of more of what is happening here.

[31:14] Let's say that there's a nation out there under severe persecution for a century from an atheist state and Christians are being murdered left and right.

[31:25] And all of a sudden one day there's a new order, a new president, a new king, a new monarch and the Christians are pronounced free and the king is a Christian and he wants to celebrate the church.

[31:37] And after a century of hundreds and thousands of Christians dying for their faith, all the Christians hear the news and what do they do? They go out into the streets and they dance and they celebrate with one another.

[31:49] And you better dance if that's the situation. And that's exactly what we see here. We see festival dancing three to four times in scripture. When they cross the Red Sea, they sing and they dance. When they bring the ark into Jerusalem, they sing and they dance.

[32:02] It's not an aspect of weekly worship, but of a huge redemptive historical event. And so there could be parallels in our time of something like that as well. But you see what the actual point is.

[32:14] The point is not the dancing. It's that David is with the people of God. He's serious about worship and he recognizes God loves to be approached from the heart.

[32:24] And that means as W.G. Blakely put it, does the presence of God move you? Do you come with great expectation to be in the presence of God, to be moved by the presence of God in whatever way that might look like in the midst of worship?

[32:39] In other words, as Blakely puts it, it's a grievous thing to stifle the heart by a culture of pageantry and decorum that is overemphasized.

[32:53] Fifth and finally, the last thing here. You know, you can come before the presence of God in humility, in expectation, with sincerity.

[33:05] But that's exactly what Uzi was like. You know, Uzi had expectation and humility. He was trying to save the art from touching the ground. And he touched it and he died.

[33:19] And that means that there's gotta be a fifth thing. You know, if you want the joy of the presence of the Lord, there's got to be one more thing. And remember, these two stories have got to be read together.

[33:30] How can the deadly presence of God turn into the joy of the Lord? And here it is. We learn in this passage, you've got to have a priest and you've got to have a lamb. And that's the only way.

[33:41] And did you catch it? David, if you've read through the Old Testament, maybe you picked this up, but it says David takes off his royal robe and he's wearing a linen e-fod.

[33:54] And a linen e-fod, only one other type of person wears a linen e-fod as an office in the Old Testament. And that's the priest. And you see, the king, the king has stripped himself of his royal robe and now he's taking on the role of a priest.

[34:12] And there's a great tension in the Old Testament that a king cannot be a priest and a priest cannot be a king. You know, you need a king to judge the land and righteousness. You need a priest to mediate for the sins of the people, but both cannot be done by the same person.

[34:28] The king who's a sinner cannot also be the mediator, but the mediator can't be the king. But right here in this moment, where it almost looks like the Abrahamic covenant is being fulfilled, you've got the king who strips off his royal robe and stands as a priest before God.

[34:43] He's the priest king. He's the first, well, Melchizedek and now David, the only two priest kings in the Old Testament. And here it is, but look, there's also a second thing. That's, and if you read First Chronicles 15, the parallel passage, we learn that when David, the priest king in his linen ephot is the high priest in this moment, he takes seven bulls and seven rams in the sacrificial ceremony, the enthronement of God and sacrifices them.

[35:12] And when you take seven and you take seven, you've got 14. All over it, you've got the number of new creation, meaning this text is trying to say, if you want to enter into the joyful presence of the Lord, you need a priest king who can both rule you with justice, who's perfect himself, but also has the power of mediation.

[35:37] But you also need a sacrifice that marks off the new creation, a 14 fold sacrifice. And here it is, this is the end of what we have tonight.

[35:47] When you turn over to Matthew chapter one, the first sentence of Matthew chapter one identifies Jesus. And what does it say? What's the first way that Jesus is identified?

[35:58] It says, Jesus Christ is the son of David. And you get to the end of Matthew chapter one and how does it identify Jesus? He is the one who came 14 generations before Abraham, 14 generations between Abraham and David, and 14 generations from David to Christ.

[36:16] You see, you've got the greater than David, the true priest king, and you've got not seven plus seven, but 14 times three, you've got more than you could ever imagine.

[36:28] You've got the number of new creation tripled in him. And you see, what this text is pointing to is that he is the priest king who also became the sacrifice.

[36:40] Now, if you're here at Sunday Night Worship, it's very likely that you know that story. And you know that he is both priest and king and sacrifice who gave himself. You know, you could say of David, he did not consider equality with the people, something to be held onto, but he made himself nothing by stripping himself of his royal robe and taking the likeness of a servant in front of the female maids.

[37:03] But Jesus Christ didn't consider equality with God, something to be held onto, but made himself nothing. He is God come to earth as human being to be both priest and sacrifice.

[37:15] And here's the question tonight, and we'll close with this. You know, if you believe that story tonight, the story of the resurrection, do you seek the presence of God in your daily life?

[37:29] You know, you have the possibility of deep joy in the presence of the Lord, but the question is, are you chasing after the presence of God in your life?

[37:40] Are you seeking him? Seek him, and you will find him if you seek him with your heart. And that's the question that the passage leads us to, and it's verse 12, verse 11 and 12, when God blesses the house of Obed Edom, remember, God wants to be with you.

[38:02] He wants to be in your presence, and that's why Jesus came. And so the question we're left with is, am I, are you chasing after the presence of the Lord? Let's pray together.

[38:14] Father, we ask now that you would turn our hearts to seek after the presence of you, the living God, that we would have deep, deep joy and delight being with you.

[38:28] And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.