Thank you very much. I hope that my outfit has made you comfortable. So we came in pretty hot.
We were just traveling. And so my wife said, well, just think about being a camp speaker. And so this is Greenwood Hills.
Christ is enough and beautiful little pictures from. The book of Colossians. Well, we're really happy to be here.
It was about 2 years ago. A year and a half or so in the month of March I spoke in Detroit and I was speaking on the tabernacle.
And someone from the assembly here knew the Josephs, Abraham, Beulah, Joseph. And somehow they got in touch and Beulah.
She's very, very outgoing and so she recorded all this stuff and took all these pictures and sent them out and then some interest was generated from that.
We also do the lesson called the Living Stones. Some of you may be familiar with that. Years and years ago, an evangelist by the name of Owen Hoffman passed along a bunch of object lessons.
To me because I was interested in doing gospel work among children. And so I've been using object lessons since, 1,992.
And one of them had to do with minerals that fluoresce. They're called dead stones are living stones and the living stones when they're exposed to ultraviolet light do a very amazing thing.
They actually change, they convert right in front of you and become cold light energy. And it's quite fascinating.
And so I've done that quite a bit. And I have some things online with it. Couple years ago I had a stroke and had some health challenges and I realized that There's no one under 95 years old.
In the country, maybe even in the world that actually uses the living stones object lesson. And so.
I kind of set out that if. I were to kick the bucket. Somebody else will be able to take on this.
You know, perhaps several somebody else's. And so what we did is we hooked up with museum and were able to make a large purchase of some living stones.
And Franklin, New Jersey is a good place. To be able to get living stones. We were just up there a couple of weeks ago.
Okay, just the middle. Okay, thank you.
And so it's quite fascinating, with a group of children at a camp and you pull out these rocks and what a camp and you pull out these rocks and what what child does not like rocks right and what child does not like rocks, and you bring up pretty ones and all this and then you turn off all the lights and put on the
black light and these stones change right in front of you and turn amazing colors and so on. You can get a lot of science on the internet about the Living Stones, but just not very much on the spiritual side of it.
And it's just a beautiful, beautiful, spiritual example. Of the gospel. Because you've got a rock.
And the mineral itself. If it's got a certain activator in it and so on, when you expose it to the light.
Right? Then it receives the light. And once it receives the light, it becomes a light.
And it turns beautiful right in front of you. And so just a lot of really wonderful spiritual applications we've developed about 20 different ones with that.
But anyway, that's one of the things that I'm in the process of doing as far as ministry is concerned is working with the living stones object lesson.
And I've already passed it on to a couple of brothers and we're continuing to pass it on to some more.
I see that the slide behind us is something you guys are real familiar with and I'm really glad.
I guess we could probably talk a little bit about that. Couple years ago also. There was a man who was getting older when I say that I mean is eighties and he was traveling along with traveling around with a tabernacle.
You ask for prayer. For someone to pass that on to. And so I contacted this brother and decided to be very interested.
You know, I, studied tabernacle for many years and really liked that ministry. It's a wonderful object lesson.
And so I'd like you to consider to pass it on to me. And I prayed a lot before this, just asking the Lord to to not give it to me.
If it's gonna be a burden. I don't need my life. You know what I mean?
More cumbersome. None of us do, right? We have enough junk. So I just wanted him to say no if it really wasn't of the Lord.
Well, he learned that I did a lot of camp ministry and VBSs and he said this tabernacle is not for that large chambers had it, Lydon Sheridan had it.
Bill Gusterson had it now. For 30 years. And it's more of a.
I like an antique, you know. So you really don't want anything. You don't want that to be at a camp where kids can play with it and so on like that.
And so I commenced to building a tabernacle. And I have built a half scale tabernacle.
And so it's not only a half-scale tabernacle, what I mean by that is that if the furniture was 2 qubits, it's one.
If the furniture was, you know, whatever size it was. One cube at 18 inches, then it would be 9 inches and so on like that.
So it's about half size. But then as far as the curtain, which is, you know, 75 by a hundred 50 great big current we have a little sample of that and the tabernacle building itself, I designed it to fit on a stage.
Similar to this stage here. Our home assembly. Has a stage that is 15 by, 6.
I wanted to fit it upon that. And then, we have an F 1 50 that we travel with.
So it also had to fit in the back of an F 1 50 because we're gonna take it around to camp.
So we actually developed all this stuff out, made it so that the taller boards would have hinges and fold over and made so the pillars could be slid in and so on like that.
And so we've been traveling with that. This is our first year. We developed it over the last year this far as the tabernacle was concerned.
And we're really, really happy with the results. We did a month of ministry out in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania.
And just the children really seem to get it. You know, you wonder teaching that tabernacle to children?
Well, it makes sense. What God did is he took 3 million illiterate slaves that came from a pagan society and he taught him about himself through the tabernacle.
And so, you know, you know how you find out if children are understanding. You asked them, right?
You asked them, do you know what this means? And it's one of the problems I think is that we just teach and teach and teach without asking questions to the children and we don't know whether they're getting it or not.
With the Lord Jesus say about that in Matthew 13. He said that the you know when the someone hears the word of the kingdom and they understand it not.
What happens? It's like it falls on hard ground and Satan's ready to go and pluck the seed of the word of God.
Right? And steal that away that. Precious word, this design to give us everlasting life is taken away.
So anyway, we're just really happy with the kind of results that we're getting. We've had like 4 sessions with it.
And we're just very very excited to go to storybook I would up there probably for 2025 years now.
Just doing ministry off and on there and Craig and Nancy Rollinger retired last year. And so they were looking for someone to do the girls.
Tant. And so we've been doing team camps, we've been doing girls and boys camps.
But in 40 years of camp speaking, I've never done an all girls camp. And I'm not scared.
I actually have, we raised, 9 children and 5 of them were girls. And so we've, you know, it was little unbalanced.
You know, we had 4 boys, 5 girls, but we had 4 boys, 5 girls, but we didn't have a male cat.
But he ran away. And so I don't know why. But anyway, we're looking forward to, going up and teaching these, younger girls and I'm very excited about going up with my son-in-law.
It's just very fulfilling to me about 15 years ago. Our daughter was dating an unsaved boyfriend.
Now that's kind of a sticky thing, you know, you've got a teenager and you've got a relationship with them and they're not doing anything wrong.
But They're dating a guy that doesn't know the Lord. And so we had many.
Conversations about that and tears flowed and so on as we talked with our daughter Rachel. And, so we invited.
Rachel and Derek. Out to a conference on the East Coast. And they came with our family and everything.
And Derrick came in and he sat in on a chalk talk. That we were doing and the Lord saved him.
Had Catholic upbringing. He saw the chalk talk so that salvation was not of works that you needed to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to be safe and he trusted the Lord right then and there.
But he was kind of a secret disciple for fear of the Mcneil's or something, but he didn't tell anybody.
But his life started changing. He start come the assembly and somebody said to me or my oldest son said dad did you know notice the change in Derek?
He's the Lord saved them. And so we're really happy about that. This is about 15 years ago.
And since then, he's really developed an interest in the work of the gospel and he's very, very interested in the assembly and has convictions about New Testament Assembly gathering and so on like that which we couldn't be happier about and now he just was.
He was selected as an elder working there and just raising a family so we have the 3 daughters, Hannah and Mariah and Ellie with us.
And Rachel and Derek. Have been married for, oh, I think it's about 12 years.
Is that right Liz? Something like that. 1112 years. Hard to keep track of all of them.
And so they also gave us our first grandson. We have 8 granddaughters and we love them all.
We're very happy with them. But we have now a grandson. And his name is Ethan.
He was born naturally. 11 pounds, 14 ounces. Home birth. And so the Lord does very special things for a girl that's 5 foot 4 or 2 or so.
But anyway, little Ethan. His we've always liked to name the children based on something going on with their birth right so Seth our oldest son we had a miscarriage before him and Seth means a pointer we thought well that's a good name because then pointed to the place of the child that was a
miscarriage and so on. And so we were wanting, you know, name that baby Derek named that baby daddy.
And so it was like a couple of days. He's praying about several names. And when he looked up the name Ethan.
He realized that it means. Firm and strong. So we thought, well, yeah. 11 pound 14 ounce baby that fits pretty well.
So that's he got his name. He's happy. I wish they were here. I could brag on them some more.
We're glad to have the 3 grand. Daughters with us were so happy that they're going to camp and they've traveled a lot but But what a delight for a father-in-law now to go and this the first time we spoke together.
I taught him how to do chocolate. I taught him how to give the gospel, you know, sort of took him under my wings many years ago and here we're able to preach the word together.
And so that's just, you know, just a real delight. We listen and I travel a lot.
To small assemblies and by small I mean 10 to 15 families. And, we, we've done this before we were married, like, 39 years ago when we were and engage we would travel some and the whole idea is that I was taught that small assemblies could really use encouragement
and help. And so I, you know, learned how to do that. We did gospel work and we traveled and so on.
And so, In the last couple of years, we've really had a burden. That assemblies would do more outreach.
You know, years and years ago, remember all the old eventually some of you that are older what they do is they come and pitch a tent or have meetings at the chapel and they'd have him for a week or 2 weeks or 3 weeks and if somebody gets saved 4 weeks, 5 weeks, right?
And so that was very exciting. And so the evangelists were out doing this kind of thing.
And then the seventies and eighties hit. And people could have intense people quick coming out to meetings.
And so this whole idea just sort of died out. And now we have the conferences with the Bible teachers, which is really great because the Bible teachers come and they educate all of us and they counsel all of us and we should have stronger marriages and stronger assemblies.
But where are the evangelists? And so we just had a real burden for helping us to do more outreach, more evangelical outreach, more evangelical outreaches.
And so the evangelist Does it necessarily do the evangelism, right? He teaches people how to do the evangelism.
Every Christians to do the work of the evangelist, but it's those who have, you know, been in the work and have the gift and so on that teach others to do the work.
And so we're, just excited about how this tabernacle has opened so many doors for us.
And that was my burden to to build it is right around this time. Some of you may know my cat would we pray together every morning and we've been praying for years about the assemblies having more outreach and more gospel outreach.
And so we're getting calls. And actually what they're doing down. In, Springfield, Missouri where my cat wood is, is they're having a VBS.
You can be praying for them. They're having a VBS, then they're having what's called Route 66 day.
75,000 people are gonna be the streets of Springfield, Missouri and they're gonna pass out tracks and pass out flyers for a family meetings for you know evangelistic outreach and we're going to meet at a motel that can hold 200 people.
Stick the tabernacle up and have a series of gospel meetings. And the whole idea is to bring your family, bring the children, bring your neighbors, bring those who you work with that you praying about and you've spoken with and and just let them come into a meeting where somebody's going to give the pure
gospel of the grace of God. And so that got set up and, also we're gonna meet with the Rice Lake Assembly next week.
Which the Lord just start opening these doors. So I got a call from Paco Ramirez and he said, Tim, can you come here?
And, Tom Butte's also. And so it's, We're gonna do is after a storybook pack up the tabernacle, bring it down to Minnesota and set it up at the Rice Lake Assembly and have a series of gospel meetings.
And it will be Saturday. 2 meetings, Sunday, 2 meetings, but have 4 meetings on the gospel on the basics of the tabernacle.
And then they called me again. They said, can you come and help with our Vincent ministry in, in Kansas and we're just thrilled about this because it's what we've been praying about.
It's the opportunity that we wanted to really encourage the Lord's people to get excited about the gospel, to be bold, to share the message of Christ and to share it intelligently.
One Assembly asked me to come to, they said, Tim, could you come and tell us everything that an unsafe person needs to know in order to be saved because when I share the gospel I want to make sure I've got all the things they need to know.
And so, you know, I'm the evangelist that's going to teach them to evangelize and we're traveling up there and we stop at a loves truck stop.
And so soon as I walk over into the drink area, you know, a guy stand there and he just starts talking to me.
You know these people. They just have they know everybody. There's no strangers. So they'll just come up and they'll share personal things about their life and they don't know you from Adam.
Well, this was going on with this guy and the Lord was like Share the gospel with them, share the gospel with them.
And guess what? I wish I could tell you all it went really really well. I shared the gospel with him, but I froze up.
And I was a little bit ashamed and you know that when the conversation kind of turns they may say something.
That's a little off color, you know, and it just the devil just gets into your thoughts and makes you think this person's not gonna care anyway.
And so anyway, that's the kind of thing that took place that day. So I had to go and confess that mister not ashamed of the gospel who is going to talk to you about what you need to know about the gospel.
Blue it on the way up here. So anyway, I'm confessing to you guys again.
And, let's turn to, first John. Like to look at a couple of things.
The book of first John we have beautiful beautiful pictures of the tabernacle John loves loves loves tabernacle language John 1 14 and the word became flesh What's that?
It's the tabernacle. And dwelt are tabernacled among us. That should be our cue to the fact that John really loves tabernacle teaching.
And so they're here in first John. We have some little. Little sections that we wanna read about.
And talk about with the tabernacle quite quickly here. Thank you for, having us in a short notice and it's been a just a joy to be here and to be with Fred and Ruth.
So, here in the tabernacle, we're going to look, this is the gate, right?
The one way. And that of course, the colors there all represent the Lord Jesus, the Messiah, how to know him, the blue, the scarlet, the purple and the fine find Lenin to speak of the person of Christ.
And then there's the first thing that they're confronted with. Well, it's sacrificed.
That's the first thing that every man is ever going to be in confronted with with God. What are you bringing?
Of course, we need to have the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to say, my lamb is the Lamb of God.
Like Able and not come the way of Kane with the fruit of our own hands. And then the labor here and this is the place for the priest.
They have a one time washing. The priest where they would pour the water from head to toe and there Moses would do with Aaron with his sons and the one-time washing that's a picture of the washing of regeneration the renewing of the Holy Spirit and Titus 3 5.
And then they would have to wash their hands daily. And the lay for the labor that's even the language that's used in John chapter 13 Peter says Lord bathe me from head to toe and was a Lord say if I'd lived you You've already been washed.
You only need to wash your feet and your hands. And so that's the picture of of the labor there and the priest.
They would go to this, they would come in through the gate. They would go to this, they would come in through the gate.
First thing they do, go and wash their hands. They would come in through the gate. First thing they do, go and wash their hands. Then they would go and sacrifice.
Then they would go into the holy place where they would spend their time and they would have to wash their hands as they're on their way and wash them as you come in and out and back and forth and back and forth.
And if they didn't, they would die. Very, very important. So the washing of the hands is a beautiful picture of the Christian sanctification.
Now if we could see the next slide.
And the breakaway here we have the holy place and this is only for the priests those who have been cleanse with the one time cleansing and white robe and those who are coming and washing their hands they could go in they could operate this would be about 30 feet long about 15 feet tall and they would go in and
there would be about 30 feet long about 15 feet tall and they would go in and there they would see the bread, about 15 feet tall and they would go in and there they would see the bread the table of fellowship which is called the bread the table of fellowship which is called the showbread then they would see the bread, the table of
fellowship, which is called the show bread. Then they would see the lamp stand, the only source of light.
Everything else is all covered up and the only source of light in there is a divine source and that's the lamp stand.
And then we have the altar of incense and this is they where they would put the perfume the salted perfume that was only for God and as it would go up it would be a sweet savor to his nostrils and he would think of Christ.
And then of course in here we have in the Holy of Holies. Between the cherry of them would be the kind of glory.
It would represent the presence of God and it would speak of no one could go before the presence of God except Aaron once a year on the day of atonement.
Now you know all this because you learned it in your Sunday school class I believe but anyway that's the picture there of the the arc and the mercy seat.
Okay, next slide.
Good go back one. Yeah, there we go. All right, and so this is a priest inside the holy place and this is their daily job within the big walls here of acacia wood about 30 inches wide and 15 feet tall.
And here would be the big veil that would, one day be rent in 2 when the Lord Jesus would say it is finished.
But right now, the men are shut out from the presence of God just like in the garden. They're shut out from all the privileges and of being able to be in the presence of God.
And so here we have the lamp stand for light. We have the table for fellowship and we have the altar of incense which speaks of the intercessory work of the Lord Jesus Christ that forever will be the sweet saver of the person of Christ that God will accept his people with.
So now let's look at first John. And we're going to read this. The starting is the beginning.
And we're going to start with what John says. About the word of life and he is the one who manifested.
Himself that which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes and I have looked up on and our hands have handled concerning the word of life.
And the life was manifested and we have seen it and bear witness and declared unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifest to us.
That which we have seen and heard we declare to you that you may have fellowship. And so here we have the table of showbread, the place of fellowship.
Now it's the fellowship of the father and the son. He says we may have you may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his son Jesus Christ.
And so it is a fellowship of the Father and the Son. And then he says, these things have we, written to you that your joy may be full.
Now fellowship with God is different from union. Union is different from communion when we get saved we're attached God cannot.
Cannot deny himself. That we are in Christ and we're safe, right? We're saved.
But communion is another thing. Fellowship with the living God walking with him. Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the day and their innocence and the Lord Jesus has restored that.
It's a fellowship though that is maintained and we're going to go on and we're going to see that.
And so, that first part is about the table. And verse 5, this is, this is the message which we have heard from him and declare to you that God is light.
Okay, so now we have the source of light. That God is life. He's the one who has uncreated light.
These bronze in the world and it that darkness does not overcome it as John would say.
Then he says, if we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
So to walk in a life of sinfulness. To walk in darkness and to say we have fellowship with the Lord is hypocrisy is dissimulation.
Our so anyway. It says if we walk in the light, we'll see that's what the priests are doing.
They're walking in the light as the priest, they're there with fellowship and they're all serving and learning of the Lord as they're in here daily and night and they're using the the perfume to go into the altar there the bread sits there it's the bread of the face that represents fellowship and they
get to eat it every Sabbath and here they get to trim the lights and work with the oil and the wicks and and to do all that they do that twice a day with the lamp stand.
And so here they are in the light and so walking in the light as he is in the light. Compromise his person does he?
He's in the light. His presence is there in the light. We have fellowship not only with God but with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son.
Cleanses us from all sin. Now the idea here is the blood of Jesus Christ his Son keeps on cleansing us.
It's a beautiful gospel verse because we can talk about what we're depending on to cleanse us of sin.
What child can understand something like that? That they can have all their sins cleansed away by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And it's wonderful that that's what this verse says. It says it cleanses us from all.
All sin. It doesn't just cover our sins for a year. Like the day of atonement.
But it cleanses us, keeps on cleansing us forever and ever, every sin that we've ever committed.
If anybody believes that you could lose your salvation, it's because they don't understand the gospel.
When God caused the Lord Jesus to die for us, he reached into the future and took My bag of sins, past present and future and put him up on the Lord Jesus and he died and paid for every one of them.
Now, what can I do out here in the future? That God missed is there any sense the Lord Jesus didn't pay for?
And if I'm trying to get back in, what has to happen? Does the Lord Jesus come back and pay for him by shedding his blood again since without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
Oh no, they were every one of them past present and future. God knew them. I was like a big bag of stint and God placed them up on the sin bear the Lord Jesus Christ and he could not say it is finished until everyone was paid for.
And praise the Lord for that. And so it goes on now it says. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
See, there's 2 cleansings in chapter one. There's the cleansing of sin.
That's all my sins and then we have the cleansing of the day by day cleansing the washing of the hands if you will the washing of regeneration was a cleansing and now the washing of hands.
Well, how is it done? How do we teach young people to maintain fellowship with God and to walk in the light?
We have to teach them how to confess sins because they're gonna fail. And if they fail and don't understand how to come back and draw near to God, then they're gonna keep failing and they're gonna draw away.
Instead of near because they're failure right but here if we teach them you can be cleansed you come to God in honesty and sincerity and and truly want to walk with him.
Just tell God that you did it and what it was. And walk with him again and so we can teach them.
So here we have the cleansing of the priest and the labor the day by day. Cleansing which we all have to do And then if jump down to, chapter 2, verse one, my little children, these things are right unto you that you may not sin.
But if any man sins, we have what? An intercessor. We have an advocate. Someone who's called by the side.
That is the altar of incense for all eternity beloved the Lord Jesus and his pleasing the Father will be efficacious on our behalf in that wonderful, but he's our advocate.
He seated at the right hand of the majesty on God of God accepted completely and that's what God sees and that's what we have when we do send.
And then in verse 2 in closing, we have the great, Mercy Seat Ark and Mercy Seat.
And we'll go to that other slide real quick.
Beautiful picture of the arc of the covenant.
Yeah. And so here is a great propitiation, right? That it's the righteousness and justice of the throne of God and what are these mighty cherry of them these great warriors and guardians of the holiness of God doing.
They're looking down at blood. They're seeing blood was shed. A price was paid.
And he's our propitiation. That word basically means that he is satisfied the righteous demand of God for now and forever against our sin.
And so he's our propitiation and not only ours but for the whole world as it says here in, verse 2.
Well, thank you for your time and Continue in the presence of the Lord in prayer.