Our Old Testament passage is chapters 28 and 29 of Exodus, but as you can see, these are very long passages or very long chapters. So rather than reading all of both chapters, I will read some sections from each chapter.

Chapter 28 is concerned with the garments that the high priest wore and a little bit about the garments that the regular priests wore in their service in the tabernacle. I’ll just read verses 1 through 4 to begin with.

So first, chapter 28, verses 1 through 4. Then bring near to you Aaron, your brother, and his sons with him from among the people of Israel to serve me as priests. Aaron and Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, and you shall make holy garments for Aaron, your brother, for glory and for beauty. You shall speak to all the skillful, whom I have filled with a spirit of skill, that they may make Aaron’s garments to consecrate him for my priesthood. These are the garments that they shall make, a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a coat of checkerwork, a turban, and a sash. They shall make holy garments for Aaron, your brother, and his sons to serve me as priests. They shall receive gold, blue, and purple, and scarlet yarns, and fine twined linen.

And then if we were to read on in chapter 28, we would read all of the details of how those various garments were to be made. And then coming to the end of the chapter, picking up at verse 40, these are the final instructions concerning the priest’s garments.

Verse 40, chapter 28. You shall make for them linen undergarments to cover their naked flesh. They shall reach from the hips to the thighs, and they shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they go into the tent of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister in the holy place, lest they bear guilt and die. This shall be a statute forever for him and for his offspring after him.

Chapter 29, the concern of this chapter is the ordination or the consecration of the priests who would serve in the tabernacle. So first I’ll read verses one through nine. Now this is what you shall do to them to consecrate them that they may serve me as priests. Take one bull of the herd and two rams without blemish and unleavened bread, unleavened cakes mixed with oil and unleavened wafers smeared with oil. You shall make them a fine wheat flour. You shall put them in one basket and bring them in the basket and bring the bull and the two rams. You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and wash them with water. Then you shall take the garments and put on Aaron the coat and the robe of the ephod and the ephod and the breastpiece and gird him with the skillfully woven band of the ephod. And you shall set the turban on his head and put the holy crown on the turban. You shall take the anointing oil and pour it on his head and anoint him. Then you shall bring his sons and put coats on them. And you shall gird Aaron and his sons with sashes and bind caps on them. And the priesthood shall be theirs by a statute forever. Thus you shall ordain Aaron and his sons.

And then the rest of chapter 29 has the details of how the priests were to be ordained and the various sacrifices that were involved with that. I’ll read the last few verses of chapter 29. These have to do with the daily offerings that were to be offered at the tabernacle and later at the temple.

So starting in verse 38, chapter 29. Now this is what you shall offer on the altar. Two lambs a year old, day by day, regularly. One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight. And with the first lamb, a tenth measure of fine flour, mingled with a fourth of a hin of beaten oil, and a fourth of a hin of wine for a drink offering. The other lamb you shall offer at twilight, and shall offer it with a grain offering and its drink offering as in the morning, for a pleasing aroma of food offering to the Lord. It shall be a regular burnt offering throughout your generations at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting before the Lord, where I will meet with you to speak to you there. There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by my glory. I will consecrate the Tent of Meeting and the altar; Aaron also and his sons, I will consecrate to serve me as priests. I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord, their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord, their God.

So keep your place there in Exodus, and let’s turn to Hebrews chapter seven for our New Testament reading. And as you have noticed, I’m sure, many of our New Testament readings have been in Hebrews, because Hebrews explains to us all of the significance of the tabernacle and the priesthood that we have been reading about in Exodus.

So Hebrews chapter 7, verses 23 through 28. So chapter 7, verses 23 through 28. The former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them. For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need like those high priests to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath which came later than the law appoints a son who has been made perfect forever.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Many of you will already be familiar with this concept, but in the Old Testament, God provided three kinds of offices or leaders for the people of Israel. He gave them prophets, priests, and kings. And the people of Israel needed each one of these offices for their salvation and for their faithfulness to the Lord.

And the same is true for us. As Christians, for our own salvation, for our faithfulness to God, we need someone who can perfectly fulfill each one of those offices for us. We need a perfect prophet who will make known the word of God to us. We need a perfect priest to offer a perfect sacrifice on our behalf in order to take away our sin. And we need a perfect king to rule over us, to defeat his enemies and our enemies.

And of course, Jesus, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, He is the one who fulfills all of these three offices for us. As our Savior, as our Lord, He is our great prophet, priest, and king.

As a prophet, Jesus declares to us through the scriptures the will of God for our salvation, for our growth and grace. As a priest, the Lord Jesus offered up himself as a sacrifice to atone for our sins forever. And as a priest, he continues to make intercession for us before his Father in heaven. As a king, Jesus rules over us for our good. He fights and he conquers all of our enemies.

Because these two chapters in Exodus are all about the institution of the priesthood, what I want to consider with you today as we consider these chapters is what do these chapters tell us about the priestly role that Jesus has fulfilled and continues to fill for us? What does it mean that Jesus is our great high priest?

As we have been looking at all the details of the tabernacle, we’ve been seeing how they all point in one way or the other to the coming of Christ. Today, the details have to do with the priesthood, the people that would serve in the tabernacle. And so since the priesthood in the Old Testament was a type of, since it pointed towards the true high priest, the Lord Jesus, we’ll look at these chapters by asking the question, what do these chapters teach us about Jesus, our great high priest?

There are three truths about Christ as our priest that we can glean from these chapters from Exodus. First of all, as our high priest, Jesus was appointed by God. So Jesus was appointed by God to be our priest. Secondly, as our high priest, Jesus was and is holy. And thirdly, as our high priest, Jesus is compassionate.

So first of all, as our high priest, Jesus was appointed by God. In this very long section of Exodus, in these two chapters that we are taking together, obviously we will not dwell on all of the details because there are too many. But in chapter 28, what is described for us is the special clothing that the priests were to wear as they ministered in the temple. So God had a purpose, a plan for their clothing. They were not to wear ordinary clothes, but they would be clothed in this very special way. And chapter 29 describes how the priests would be ordained to this office.

But before all of that, the very first thing that the Lord tells Moses at the beginning of chapter 28 is who would serve as the priest, or who would serve as priests. The Lord gave that responsibility, that privilege, that office to Aaron. Aaron, of course, was the brother of Moses, and it would be Aaron and his sons who would serve as priests in Israel.

So look at verse one in chapter 28. Verse one in chapter 28. This is the Lord speaking to Moses. Then bring near to you Aaron, your brother, and his sons with him from among the people of Israel to serve me as priests, Aaron and Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.

It’s just assumed here at this point, but it becomes clearer later in scripture that there would be one priest who would be the high priest or the chief priest. He would have the greatest responsibility, the greatest privilege of all the priests, because he would be the chief of the priests. And the high priest, the first one would be Aaron. He was the first high priest. And then the office would be passed down to one of Aaron’s sons and to one of his sons. And so it went from Aaron to Eleazar to Phineas and so on.

You’ll notice that Aaron was not chosen to be the high priest as a result of a democratic election among the people of Israel. Aaron did not run a successful priesthood campaign. He wasn’t elected to serve as high priest by popular vote. Rather, he was elected to this office in a very different sense, and that is he was elected by the only one whose vote matters, and that is he was elected by God, by the Almighty God, the Sovereign Lord. It was his choice, his appointment. He is the one who made Aaron the priest.

And in doing this and choosing Aaron to be the high priest, the Lord was laying down an unbreakable and inviolable law. And that is this: It is God and God alone who chooses the man who will serve as priest in Israel.

The book of Hebrews puts it this way, Hebrews chapter 5 verse 4, “And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was.” So there were no self-appointed priests, at least legitimately. There were no democratically elected priests, but there was only the priests and the priests whom God had chosen.

Now, sadly, the Israelites did not really understand this until they learned it the hard way. Later, as we read through the Old Testament, we read about the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites. And in one episode, there is a man named Korah, who is a Levite. And he couldn’t stand the fact that only Aaron and his sons were to be priests. He was jealous that only they could be a priest. And so Korah decided to do something about that.

He gathered 250 men to himself, and together they accused Moses of wrongfully denying them and the rest of the Israelites the privileges of the priesthood, the access to God that only the priest could enjoy. And as a result of Korah’s rebellion against God and his will for the priesthood, what happened was, as you know, God caused the earth to open up under Korah and his family, and he and his entire family were sent down alive to the depths of Sheol. And so that was what God thought of Korah’s idea that everyone should be a priest.

The lesson was this, according to the words of Moses. This is what Moses said after this incident with Korah. In Numbers 16:40, he said, “no outsider who was not of the descendants of Aaron should draw near to burn incense before the Lord, lest he become like Korah and his company.” And so only Aaron and his sons could be priests. Later in Numbers, the Lord himself says this to Aaron, “I give your priesthood as a gift and any outsider who comes near shall be put to death.”

And so a priest was, or to serve as a priest, that office, it was an honor that no one could take upon himself. Only God could appoint him to serve as a priest.

That was true for Aaron, and that was true for Jesus as well. He was appointed by God. He was set apart by God in order to serve as our high priest. Hebrews chapter five, verses five and six say this: “So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, ‘you are my son, today I have begotten you.'” Verse six, “as he says also in another place, ‘you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.'”

I believe that one reason why the Lord was so clear and so insistent on this point that only he would choose who the priest of Israel would be is because in this way, the Lord was teaching his people that salvation, that eternal life would be found only in the Savior that he himself would choose for his people, the Savior that he would raise up for his people. It’s as though through this law that only God could choose the priest, it’s as though the Lord was saying to the people of Israel, “you need to understand that your hope, your hope of my dwelling with you forever, your hope of the forgiveness of your sins, your hope of eternal life and salvation, it depends upon the ministry of the priesthood, and it depends ultimately upon the ministry of the one true priest who is yet to come. And therefore, I, not you, will choose who will be your priest.”

Again, it is as though the Lord was saying to the people of Israel, “I know your hearts, you Israelites. You would choose your own priests. You would make yourselves priests. But the only priest that I choose, the coming Messiah, only he can bring you eternal salvation. And so you must know that it is I who will appoint and give you your true savior, and so the priest is the man of my choosing, not of yours.”

And so it’s significant that Aaron was chosen by the Lord to be the high priest because that was the way in which God would bring salvation to us. He would choose the man who would be our high priest, and that is Jesus. So first, Jesus was appointed by God as our high priest.

Secondly, as our high priest, Jesus is holy. He is holy.

In chapter 28, after the Lord told Moses whom he appointed to serve him as priests, he told Moses how the priests were to be clothed for their ministry in the tabernacle. And that is the concern of all of chapter 28. You can go home, you can read that whole chapter. You can look at the pictures online of what the priest’s garments looked like to give you a better idea of that.

But these are the garments that Aaron was to wear and the high priest who came after him. Verse 4 gives us a summary of the various parts of the outfit that the high priest was to wear as he ministered in the tabernacle. This is chapter 28, verse 4. These are the garments that they shall make, a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a coat of checkerwork, a turban, and a sash.

The breastpiece, or it’s called the breastpiece of judgment, this was a piece of cloth that was folded over. It was square, about nine inches by nine inches. It was made out of gold, blue and purple and scarlet yarns. It was made out of fine twined linen. And it was laid on top of the ephod on the chest of the high priest.

Now the breastpiece had two very important features. The first was there were fastened on it 12 precious stones that were arranged in four rows of three stones each. And on each of these stones was engraved the name of one of the 12 tribes of Israel. So literally, the high priest bore the names of the tribes of Israel before God as he ministered in the tabernacle, and we’ll come back to that point in a few minutes.

The second feature of the breastpiece was that it contained the Urim and the Thummim. The Urim and the Thummim. This is one of these mysterious details that the Old Testament gives us, but doesn’t give us much information about it. What exactly were the Urim and the Thummim? Nobody knows for sure, there’s no description of what they were. But whatever they were, they were used by the Israelites to determine the will of God in certain circumstances. When you read on in the Old Testament, you’ll read how from time to time the Israelites would consult the Urim and the Thummim to seek God’s will for a particular decision that was to be made. And so, whatever they were, they were part of the breastpiece that was worn by the high priest.

The ephod was like the breastpiece in that it was also made of the same material. It was made out of gold, of blue, purple, scarlet yarns, fine twined linen. This was the outermost garment that the high priest wore. And so it was on top of the ephod that the breastpiece was laid. And under the ephod, the priest wore a blue robe, and under the blue robe, he wore what is called a coat in checkerwork. And then under that, the high priest and all of the priests, they wore linen undergarments. This was literally the underwear that God appointed for them and even designed for them to wear in their ministry in the tabernacle. The chapter also describes the turban that was worn on the head of the high priest.

Now, about all of these various garments, the Lord says this in verse 2. So look at verse 2, chapter 28. Notice how the Lord describes these garments that Aaron was to wear in his high priestly duties. They were holy, they were glorious, and they were beautiful.

So first, the garments were holy, and they were holy because only the high priest could wear them, and they could only be worn as he ministered in the tabernacle. And so just like everything else that’s connected with the tabernacle, the priest’s clothing also was holy, and that’s because the tabernacle was holy. And as we’ve seen, the tabernacle was holy because that is where the holy God dwelt. That is where the Lord made his presence among his people. And because God is holy, everything in the tabernacle was holy, down to the priest’s garments that he wore when he ministered there.

They were also glorious. They reflected the glory of God. You may have noticed that all of the materials that went into making the priest’s clothing, they were the same materials that were used to make the tabernacle. Fine twined linen, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and gold and so on. Just as the tabernacle itself was a reflection of the glory of God, so the priest’s clothing reflected God in his glory as well.

And the same can be said for beauty. The tabernacle was beautiful. And it was beautiful, like we’ve said, most of all because the Lord is beautiful, because that was the Lord’s dwelling place. And so the tabernacle was beautiful. And the high priest showed forth the beauty of the Lord as he wore the beautiful garments that God himself designed.

And so in this way, the garments that the high priest wore, they showed forth, they expressed the splendor of God, His greatness, His glory, His beauty, His holiness. And this was one of the basic functions of a priest. This is one reason why God gave to Israel a priest. It was in order to represent to the people of Israel who God is, to represent God to the people of Israel. And one way that He did this was with these garments that He wore.

However, the more important function of the priest was not to represent God to the people, but it was to represent the people before God. And it’s for that reason that what is stressed above all else in both chapter 28 and chapter 29, what is stressed, what is emphasized is the absolute requirement that the priest had to be holy. He had to be holy because he was representing the people of God to the Lord.

And so chapter 29, again, we only read part of it. You can read it at home to get all the details. It describes the ordination of the men who would serve as priests. And everything in that ordination service, all of the sacrifices, the blood that was sprinkled on the priests, this was in order to set apart these men as holy, as those who would serve as priests before God. In fact, their ordination is called a consecration, and that’s what it was. They were consecrated. They were set apart. They were made holy, distinct from the rest of the people of Israel as one who was serving God in a unique way. And so they were made ritually holy so that they could serve as priests for the people of Israel.

Now, it’s important to understand that the priest had to be holy as he represented the people of God before God, not because the people were holy. In fact, the people were not holy. They were unholy. They were unrighteous. They were sinful. Rather, it’s because he represented a sinful people before a holy God that he had to be holy in order that the sacrifices, the worship of people who were unrighteous, unholy, people who sinned, in order that they might be acceptable to God, in order that their persons might be acceptable to God, they had to be offered through a priest who himself was holy.

This is what is meant by the words that were engraved on the gold plate that was on the turban that the high priest wore on his head. The words that were engraved on that gold plate are, “holy to the Lord, holy to the Lord.” But listen to how the Lord explains this to Moses. So this is verse 38, verse 38 in chapter 28. “It shall be on Aaron’s forehead,” that is the gold plate, “and Aaron shall bear any guilt from the holy things that the people of Israel consecrate as their holy gifts. It shall regularly be on his forehead that they,” that is the people of Israel, “that they may be accepted before the Lord.”

And so in order for an unholy people to be accepted before the Lord who is holy, they needed to offer their sacrifices to him through a representative who himself was holy. In other words, the holiness of the priest was a requirement for the people of Israel in order that their worship and that they themselves would be received by the Lord. And so the priest had to be holy.

And even today when we hear the word priest, we think of someone in theory who is holy. When I was a seminary student and I met someone for the first time, they asked me what I do and I told them that I’m going to seminary. So often their first response was, “oh, so you’re going to be a priest.” And I thought to myself, “well, no, I’m married. Priesthood’s definitely not an option for me. I’m Protestant. I’m not going into the priesthood.” But just being called that by other people kind of made me feel a little strange. I felt like in their eyes, there must be a halo over my head. There must be a divine glow coming out from my face. And somehow I’m unlike them. I am holy because I’m studying to be a priest, or so they thought.

But of course, that’s not the case; even as a pastor, I’m a sinner like everyone else. That’s one reason why I’m glad to be called, not a priest, but a minister of the gospel, a minister of God’s Word. I’m just one sinner ministering to other sinners and showing them the one who gives us forgiveness and eternal life.

But the priest, at least ritually, ceremonially, the priest had to be holy. But that was the problem. That was the problem with the entire institution of the priesthood that God ordained. The reason why those priests could never bring an eternal salvation, the reason why their ministry would never result in the forgiveness of the sins of the people of Israel, at least forever, was because they were not truly holy. The priests were men. They were sinners just like the rest of the Israelites. Of course, they were made ceremonially clean and holy, but there was still always the need for a perfect priest, a holy priest, to represent sinners before a holy God.

And of course, that is the priest that Jesus came into the world to be for us. He came to be the high priest that the Israelites lacked. He came to be the high priest that we desperately needed, one who was perfect in every way, one who personally possessed in himself a holiness, a righteousness that is acceptable by God. And of course, Jesus is holy in this way because he is very God himself, because He is the Son of God. He is personally holy.

Hebrews chapter 7 describes Jesus as our high priest in these words. These are the words that we heard from our New Testament reading, verse 26, chapter 7: “Jesus is holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.” You could not say that about Aaron or any of the high priests. Verse 28: “For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a son who has been made perfect forever.”

And just as the Israelites were accepted by the Lord by the ministry of the high priest who was ceremonially holy, ritually holy, so we are accepted by God in the person of Jesus Christ because of his inherent, his intrinsic holiness and righteousness.

The high priest was clothed with the garments of holiness when he presented the sacrifices to the Israelites. But compare that with Jesus. Jesus, the true high priest, when he offered his sacrifice, that once-for-all sacrifice of himself upon the cross, what were the garments that Jesus wore at that time? Well, he had nothing on. Jesus wore nothing. He was naked. And why is that?

Well, humanly speaking, historically speaking, it’s simply because that’s how the Romans crucified their victims. They took off all their clothes to increase the shame that they experienced as they were lifted up on the cross in order to die that excruciating death naked. But there’s a deeper meaning to that as well in the case of Jesus. It’s because he did not need any outward garments of righteousness. His garments of righteousness were his very own intrinsic holiness and righteousness that he possessed in himself as the holy, the innocent, the unstained Son of God.

All of this means something wonderful for you. It means that because of Jesus Christ, if you are trusting in him as your savior from sin, it means that God will receive you in Christ no matter how bad your sin may have been, no matter how far you may have strayed from the Lord, no matter how sinful and unrighteous and ungodly you may have been. When you, by the grace of God, repent and come to Jesus, when you come to Him confessing your sins, seeking forgiveness, God forgives all your sins. He forgives every sin that you are guilty of, no matter how heinous, no matter how bad, and He can do that because of who Jesus is, as both High Priest and Sacrifice, because He is holy, because He is the innocent, righteous Son of God. His priesthood and His sacrifice are sufficient to cover all of your sin, all of your guilt, and to give you a perfect righteousness before God.

If your faith is in Jesus Christ, you have a perfect and eternal salvation because you have a perfect high priest. He not only interceded for you at the cross when he offered up himself a sacrifice to take away your sin and guilt, but the Bible tells us that Jesus continues to intercede for you. He pleads for you before the Father in heaven by virtue and on the basis of his once for all sacrifice. And so he continues to serve you as your great high priest. And because he is holy, his service is effective in your salvation and taking away all your sins. So as our high priest, Jesus is holy.

Thirdly, as our great high priest, Jesus is compassionate.

Aaron and his sons and all the priests that would come from them, they were human in every sense of the word. Of course, they were human beings. They were men just like us. But when we say that someone is human, we also imply that they’re imperfect; they sin just like we do. And that was true for Aaron and his sons. No matter how exalted their office was, they were fallen human beings. That’s why they had to be clothed in these garments of righteousness. That’s why their holiness was only a ritual holiness. That’s why in their consecration to the office of priest, they were sprinkled with the blood of sacrifices to make them ritually holy and pure. But they were still sinners.

However, as sinners, as men, they could sympathize with those whom they represented, their fellow Israelites, because they too were weak and frail. They too were tempted. They too struggled with sin. And so they could have compassion on the people for whom they ministered, because they knew what it was like to be human, because they were men themselves. Hebrews 5:2 puts it this way, speaking of the high priest: “he can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.” And so the Israelites knew that though this high priest occupied this great office, nevertheless, he was really no different from me. He could sympathize with me. I could even perhaps confess my sins to him, and he would understand.

Well, Jesus also served and continues to serve as our high priest, and he serves as our high priest as one who is human, one who is man. Now, Jesus is divine. He is true God. He always was true God, even in his conception, his crucifixion. He continued to be 100% divine, yet he was always, since his incarnation, true man, truly human, and his humanity was a sinless humanity. Nevertheless, though he was sinless, though he was righteous, he experienced the struggles and the temptations that you and I face in this world. Hebrews makes that very clear. Hebrews 2, verses 17 and 18: “Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”

And so Jesus never succumbed to temptation, praise the Lord. If he had, we could not have him as our Savior. Nevertheless, Jesus was tempted, and he suffered. He suffered. He lived in this world in which there is grief and pain and loss. He experienced all of those things. In fact, there is no form of suffering that you can endure in this world, no matter how extreme, whether it is spiritual or physical or emotional suffering, there is no kind of suffering that you can endure about which Jesus cannot say, “I know what it’s like to go through that.” He knows.

Now that doesn’t mean that Jesus suffered in exactly the same way that you have suffered in all the exact same circumstances, but it means that because He suffered as a man to a degree that no human being has ever suffered before or ever will, because He suffered as a man, no matter your exact circumstances, He knows your pain. He knows what it’s like to live in this fallen world. He knows what it’s like to experience temptation. And for that reason, he can sympathize. He is compassionate. He knows what it’s like to endure sorrow and grief. He knows what it’s like to endure the physical pain that he suffered, the emotional pain that he suffered. He knows what it’s like to be tempted.

One of the beautiful pictures of this description of the priesthood is how the high priest wore the names of the tribes of Israel on his chest, on the breastpiece. Actually, he wore them in two places. There were two onyx stones on his shoulders that were inscribed with the names of the tribes of Israel as well. But the breastpiece and the names of the people of Israel, or the tribes of Israel, were over his chest, over his heart. In fact, that’s what the passage tells us. In chapter 28, verse 29, it says, “So Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel in the breastpiece of judgment on his heart when he goes into the holy place to bring them to regular remembrance before the Lord.”

Well, as your high priest, Jesus does the same thing. He bears your name on his heart. He knows everything that you are going through, and he brings you to remembrance when he prays for you before the Father. And can you imagine a better friend than that? Someone who knows you perfectly, someone who knows what it’s like to go through whatever you may be suffering, one who has himself suffered and been tempted, but one who is merciful, one who always has you on his heart and who prays for you continually before the Father in heaven, before the one with whom he has most intimate fellowship. He prays to you, to the one who hears and answers all the prayers of his son.

And this is the kind of friend that you have in Jesus. He is a faithful, he is a merciful high priest. And so he is our great high priest. And as our priest, he is God’s choice for our salvation. He is holy and he is compassionate.

Let’s pray.

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Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 27. Exodus 27. And this is God’s inerrant and infallible word. So let’s give attention to the reading of God’s word this morning.

You shall make an altar of acacia wood, five cubits long and five cubits broad. The altar shall be square and its height shall be three cubits. And you shall make horns for it on its four corners. Its horns shall be of one piece with it, and you shall overlay it with bronze. You shall make pots for it to receive its ashes, and shovels and basins and forks, fire pans. You shall make all its utensils of bronze. You shall also make for it a grading, a network of bronze, and on the net you shall make four bronze rings, four bronze rings at its four corners. And you shall set it under the ledge of the altar so that the net extends halfway down the altar.

And you shall make poles for the altar, poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with bronze. And the poles shall be put through the rings, so that the poles are on the two sides of the altar when it is carried. You shall make it hollow with boards. As it has been shown you on the mountain, so shall it be made.

You shall make the court of the tabernacle. On the south side, the court shall have hangings of fine twine linen, 100 cubits long for one side. Its 20 pillars and their 20 bases shall be of bronze, but the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver. And likewise for its length on the north side there shall be hangings 100 cubits long, its pillars 20, and their bases 20 of bronze, but the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver.

And for the breath of the court on the west side there shall be hangings for 50 cubits with 10 pillars and 10 bases. The breath of the court on the front to the east shall be 50 cubits. The hangings for the one side of the gate shall be 15 cubits with their three pillars and three bases. On the other side the hanging shall be 15 cubits with their three pillars and three bases. For the gate of the court there shall be a screen 20 cubits long of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twine linen embroidered with needle work. It shall have four pillars and with them four bases. All the pillars around the court shall be filleted with silver. Their hooks shall be of silver and their bases of bronze. The length of the court shall be 100 cubits, the breadth 50, and the height five cubits with hangings of fine twine linen and bases of bronze.

All the utensils of the tabernacle for every use, and all its pegs, and all the pegs of the court shall be of bronze.

You shall command the people of Israel that they bring to you pure beaten olive oil for the light that a lamp may be regularly set up to burn in the tent of meeting outside the veil that is before the testimony. Aaron and his son shall tend it from evening to morning before the Lord. It shall be a statue forever to be observed throughout the generations by the people of Israel.

Our New Testament reading is Romans 12:es 1 and two. Romans 12 1 and two.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

What is the most important thing about you as a Christian? Well, it could be that your sins are forgiven. Of course, that is a wonderful thing, but that’s not the most important thing about you as a Christian. It’s thought that you are going to go to heaven when you die. That too is a great thing, great reality. But that is not the most important thing about you as a Christian.

The thing that is most important about you as a believer in Christ, as a Christian, is this. By the grace of God, you are now a worshiper of the true God. That is why God saved you. That is why God has forgiven your sins. That is why he will bring you into his heaven to be there forever and ever. It is so that you might worship him. So that you would be his worshipper beginning in this life but extending into eternity.

Jesus said that these are the people that the Lord is seeking those who will worship him. The father is seeking such people to worship him. Jesus said, “And it was for the same reason that the Lord delivered the people of Israel from Egypt from the bondage and the misery that they were experiencing under the cruel hand of Pharaoh. It wasn’t just so that they might experience the freedom, the joy of being liberated. That was a wonderful blessing. Of course, it was good for the people of Israel. But there was a greater reason even for that. So often when Moses would go to Pharaoh and say to him, let my people go or thus says the Lord, let my people go, he would follow it up by saying that they may serve me that they may serve me in the wilderness. So even then, even then the father was seeking such people to worship him.

And this is what the tabernacle is all about. Tabernacle, of course, we’ve been studying it now for several weeks. It was the place in which the Lord made his dwelling among the people of Israel in the wilderness. But it was that place. The Lord was there so that they could worship him, praise him, glorify him.

In our passage this morning, there are three parts of the tabernacle that are described for us here. The bronze altar, the courtyard, which was surrounded by the walls that are described for us, and the oil that was to be used for the golden lampstand. Today we’ll look at some of the details uh in this passage. We’ll focus a little bit on the altar and the wall of curtains that surrounded the courtyard. Uh but I want us to step back and consider the tabernacle in its entirety. The tabernacle uh as a whole, what it was, what it was for. And we’ll do that because there are lessons for us today as believers on how we are to worship God. How we are to think about the worship of God.

Lessons that this tabernacle and not only what this passage says about it, but what other scripture says about the tabernacle. It was the place where the Israelites worshiped the Lord. And so, what can we learn about our worship as Christians today from it? So, that will be our concern this morning.

But before we begin to draw some of those lessons, let’s take a look at some of the details of this passage. It is this passage that does describe for us different parts of the tabernacle. The Lord says in verse one, he says to Moses, “You shall make the altar of acacia wood 5 cubits long and 5 cubits broad. The altar shall be square and its height shall be three cubits.”

The altar was the largest piece of furniture or the largest item that was connected with the tabernacle. Dimensions are given to us in cubits. Translate that into feet. Picture a square about 7 and 1/2 ft wide and long. It was about four and a half feet tall. Like the ark and the table for showbread, the altar was made of wood. But unlike those other things, it was covered with bronze. And there was a practical reason for that. The bronze would not have melted when it was exposed to the heat of the fire that was continually burning in the altar. So, it was covered with bronze but made of wood.

Uh there were four horns on the altar, one on each corner. And we know from the scriptures that a horn often symbolizes uh strength or power, but it’s not exactly clear why there are horns on the altar or what they meant in connection with the altar. There’s no explanation given us uh for that. But the horns do play an interesting part in the history of Israel. When we read on in the New Testament or the Old Testament rather, the altar came to be seen and and the horns of the altar came to be seen as something that would protect somebody who was under the judgment of execution.

And so in First Kings, for example, when Solomon was carrying out judgment against the men who had sinned either against him or against his father David, two of those men at different times, Adonijah and Joab, uh they fled into the tabernacle and they grabbed the horns of the altar hoping that that would save them from the justice from the judgment that was coming to them from Solomon. Um, as it turned out, it did work for Adonijah. He was spared death at that point, but it didn’t work for Joab. He was put to death even though he sought refuge by grabbing hold of the horns of the altar. And so, it plays that role uh in the history of Israel.

One way we might describe the altar is to say that it was essentially a large grill because this is where all the animal sacrifices would be burnt or roasted. The sacrifices that are described for us in the book of Leviticus, the burnt offering, the grain offering, the sin offering, the guilt offering, the peace offering. These would be offered up. The ones that were to be burnt or roasted, these would be offered up on this altar. They would be grilled there. And so the altar was the place where these sacrifices were burnt. And the fire of the altar was to be burning continually night and day.

In order for the priest to carry out this continual burning of sacrificial meat, they needed tools for the work. And so Moses is also instructed by the Lord to make pots for the ashes. He used to make shovels and basins and forks pans. And these also are all made out of bronze. And just like a grill today, the altar had a grading on it. And that grading would be the place where the sacrificed animals would be laid to be burnt. And like the other items of the tabernacle, the ark of the covenant, the golden lampstand, the table for the showbread, the altar was to be carried with poles. And so Moses was to make poles to be inserted into the rings so that the altar could be carried that way.

After Moses is told how to make the altar, the Lord tells him how to uh make the walls that would surround the tabernacle, which created a large courtyard um or large space immediately around the tabernacle itself. And so there was to be four walls.  They would be made uh pillars and curtains, curtains made of fine twine linen. Uh the pillars would be about seven and a half feet tall. So unless an Israelite was going into the tabernacle, normally he would not be able to see what was in it beyond the walls. He might see the top of the tabernacle. He would see the smoke rising from the altar, but normally he would not see what was happening inside the courtyard or inside the tabernacle area.

The eastern wall was different from the other three walls because it contained a gate. This was the area or the gate through which the Israelites and the priests would go in and out of. It was made of fine twine linen as well, but the gate would be embroidered with needle work out of blue and purple and scarlet yarns. So, it was decorative.

Moses was also instructed to make tents out of or 10 pegs out of bronze. We don’t know for sure, but it’s a safe guess that the 10 pegs were used to secure ropes which would stabilize the pillars and the curtains. Um and so usually uh when you see pictures of the tabernacle in the courtyard, you’ll see uh ropes coming out from the pillars and secured into the ground by these pegs.

Uh the dimensions of the court were 150 ft by 75 ft. So imagine a large rectangular uh area enclosed with these pillars and and white curtains and Inside the tabernacle itself is the bronze altar and between the tabernacle and the bronze altar there would also be a basin uh for ceremonial washing. Um the entire size of it just to picture in your mind how big the whole courtyard would have been would be about four tennis courts lined up side by side. So that gives you a picture of how big the tabernacle area was.

Now, one noteworthy thing about the entire tabernacle structure was the relative simplicity of it and and we’ve mentioned this before although it was made out of the finest materials, gold, silver, bronze, fine twine linen, these very expensive uh yarn dyed with scarlet blue and purple and so on. Despite that, despite the fact it was elegant and It wasn’t overly imposing. It wasn’t overly ornate. It wasn’t garish or goddy or ostentatious. It was relatively simple and elegant.

However, the most beautiful thing about the tabernacle, what made it truly a thing of beauty was that the Lord himself dwelt there. It was God himself that beautified the tabernacle that made it something that was truly beautiful.

And this is the first lesson that we can take from the tabernacle for our worship of God today. What makes our worship when we gather together as we are now? What makes our worship service truly a thing of beauty is the beauty and the glory of God himself who meets with us. The God whom we worship. It is his beauty. It is his glory that makes our worship something beautiful.

Now, this is not to say that we ought not to have beautiful things associated with our worship. If it’s possible to have a beautiful sanctuary, then that is good. There’s certainly nothing wrong with it. And it is proper fitting that we would have one if possible. It’s good to have beautiful music and worship. But what’s most important by far is that our hearts are filled with the beauty of God himself. Again, that’s what makes a truly beautiful worship service. It’s the invisible beauty, the invisible glory of God, the beauty of his truth, the beauty of his gospel, his love, his mercy, the the glory of his son, Jesus Christ.

And for that reason then as Christians if we do we don’t have a church building to worship in as many Christians do not have in the world today like Christians in Uganda for example some before they had a little building they worshiped under a tree. As Christians we can worship God under a tree. We can worship God in a plain jane cinder block building and still our worship service can be beautiful because it would be filled with the beauty and the glory of Jesus Christ the one whom we worship. So that’s the first lesson for our worship service or our understanding of worship today is that it is the Lord himself that makes a worship beautiful not all the trappings of it but God himself that beautifies his worship.

The second lesson about worship that we can take from the tabernacle is that we must worship God together. The tabernacle was the one and only place where the Lord would dwell among his people and it was the one and only place where the Lord commanded the Israelites to bring their sacrifices to worship him. Later in the Old Testament, the Lord will explicitly command his people that they are not to offer their sacrifices anywhere except at the place where he appoints, which was the tabernacle. And so with the tabernacle, the Lord was focusing his worship in one place.

And for that reason, worship was a communal or a corporate affair. It was something that the people of God, the Israelites, that they did together. Of course, individual Israelites or groups of Israelites would bring their sacrifices uh to the temple at different times and yet the tabernacle but there would be other Israelites doing the same thing at the same time. So they would worship together. In other words, under this arrangement, this arrangement that was commanded by God, worship was not an individual, a private matter. It was not even primarily something that was done by families separated from other families, but rather God’s intent for worship, the worship of his people is that they would worship him together as his people corporately as a body.

And you see the same communal worship in the New Testament among the first Christians. Just as the Holy Spirit by his power brought individual people and families to faith in Jesus Christ to belong to Christ, so he also brought them together that they would belong to one another as the body of Christ.

And so Acts tells us about how Christians worship together regularly. Acts 2:44 and all who believed were together and had all things in common. And what did they do together? Verse 42, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers. uh very consistent with that. The New Testament tells us that as the gospel was preached, as people came to faith in Jesus Christ, as they were saved by the grace of God, they were naturally united to a local congregation or they formed a congregation, a church.

And so the New Testament has no category. There is no um New Testament teaching uh or possibility of a Christian who is separated from who is not meaningfully involved with a local congregation, a local church, a body of believing Christians. And so from the tabernacle to today, God’s will has always been that his people should worship him together as a body.

And so Hebrews 10 says, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. and all the more as you see the day drawing near. And so for you as a believer in Christ, this is God’s will for you. Not only that you should believe in Christ and follow him and serve him, but that you should worship God with other believers, with the people of God, with the church. It is God’s will for you that you are meaningfully involved and active in a local congregation of the people of God. It has always been the will of God that his people should worship him together. And the tabernacle points us to that.

A third lesson that the tabernacle teaches us about worship is that worship should be joyful. Now, here we’re bringing in other scripture passages, not directly from Exodus chapter 27, certainly implied in everything that is said in Exodus about the tabernacle, but we’ll look at some other passages. But the point is that worship, worshiping God should be a joyful affair.

Just as the design of the tabernacle was relatively simple, the worship that took place there was also relatively simple. It was not overly elaborate or complicated, it consisted mainly of the sacrifices that the people of Israel brought to the temple or to the tabernacle to be worshiped. Later when the temple is built and perhaps sometime even before that music would be added to the worship of God. But for now, for this time of wilderness wandering, at least the worship that took place at the tabernacle was focused on the sacrifices.

The Israelites and the priests slaughtered the animals that uh that they brought into the tabernacle. The priests would offer them up on the altar. At least for some of the sacrifices, the Israelites would eat them uh there. uh at the temple or at the tabernacle rather. So the worship was simple but we can say that it was supposed to be a time of rejoicing.

Moses speaks of the worship that would be first at the tabernacle then later at the temple in Deuteronomy. He says this, “And there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice you and your households in all that you undertake in which the Lord your God has blessed you.”

When we read the Psalms, we read how the psalmist described the worship of God at the temple as intensely joyful. Psalm 43:4. Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the liar, oh God, my God. Psalm 84:es 1 and two. How lovely is your dwelling place, oh Lord of hosts. My soul longs, yes faints, for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.

What was true for the temple then that the psalmist sang about was true for the tabernacle uh here in Exodus that as the Israelites would go there to worship it would be a time of rejoicing rejoicing before the Lord.

We have spent some time now as we’ve been going through these chapters in Exodus looking at all the various details of the tabernacle and the stress that we have the stress has been on on the holiness of the tabernacle. It is a sanctuary. It is a place where an infinitely holy God met with his people. So it was holy. And we might get the impression that for that reason, it was an austere and joyless place. We might get the impression it was a place where the priests ministered with grave, unsmiling faces, that the people brought their sacrifices with fearful hearts or heavy hearts.

But in reality, it was supposed to be a place of joy, celebration. This was the Lord who redeemed them, the Lord who chose them, who brought them out of Egypt, who loved them. We might put it this way. The tabernacle was a serious place. But as CS Lewis described, heaven, it was serious about the business of joy.

That should characterize our own mindset, our own understanding or attitude when we come into the presence of God to worship him together. We should come both with awe and rejoicing. We should come with a sense of reverence because we are coming into the presence of almighty God and we have seen how he is a holy God. But at the same time our hearts should rejoice. We should exalt in the Lord in the salvation that God has accomplished for us in his son Jesus Christ and what he has done for us. And so our worship should be reverent, yes, but also joyful.

Our fourth and final lesson that the tabernacle teaches us about the worship of God is this. We must worship God with a sacrifice. And we’ll spend a few minutes on this.

Ever since Adam and Eve sinned against God in the garden, ever since that time, ever since they were then alienated us from God because of their sin and guilt. Since then, the only way that man can approach God is with a sacrifice. A sacrifice with blood. Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve, they offered sacrifices to God. Uh the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when they worshiped the Lord, they made an altar, they offered sacrifices to God. We saw in Exodus how after God gave his law to the Israelites, Moses and the Israelites, they constructed an altar and they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on it.

And now here through Moses, the Lord is instituting a permanent well till the coming of Christ, a permanent institution of an altar of a priesthood of worship that would be centered upon sacrifices, bringing sacrifices, blood, the blood of animals shed to the Lord. And this cements this truth that After the fall, you and I or any man cannot come into the presence of God without a sacrifice.

At the church where I served as an intern for one year on this pulpit they had at the front of the church, there was a gigantic Bible uh laid on top of the pulpit. I mean, it was huge. It was probably about that big. It probably weighed like 10 or 15 pounds. Um, and it was right there on top of the pulpit for everyone to see. And the reason why or the point of having that pulpit Bible so prominent, it wasn’t because the pastor needed to read the Bible without glasses. That wasn’t the reason. But the point of this oversized Bible was to communicate the truth of the centrality, the premacy of the word of God and the worship of God’s people. That the Bible is central. This is the God’s word and therefore that communicated that to everyone who came there for worship.

And in a similar way, the altar was conspicuously large and present in front of the tabernacle of God. And it would have communicated to the people of Israel the centrality, the necessity of sacrifices, that they could only come into God’s presence with the blood of a sacrifice. That the tabernacle in the sense or the altar stood between the Israelites and the tabernacle itself. In other words, there had to be bloodshed for the Israelite for the priest to go into the presence of the Lord.

And so the altar and the sacrifices taught the Israelites that if they were to come into the presence of God, they needed the blood. They needed sacrificial blood to cover their sins. The New Testament puts it this way. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. If there is no forgiveness of sins, we cannot worship God. So if we are to worship God, we must come with the sacrifice, with the blood of a sacrifice.

A couple of weeks ago, I said as we were looking at the uh at the Ark of the Covenant that the best thing, or rather, I think we’re looking at the tabernacle as a whole. But the best thing about the tabernacle is that it no longer exists. That’s the greatest thing about it. And that’s because we have Christ. We have Jesus, the one to whom the tabernacle pointed.

And it’s the same truth with this bronze altar. There’s no more need for an altar on which to sacrifice animals to the Lord. And that’s because the son of God, Jesus Christ, has come in order to be the one perfect sacrifice uh that all those animal sacrifices were only types of and pointed to. Jesus Christ came to be the one who would shed the blood that would forever truly remove our sin and guilt before the Lord forever.

The book of Hebrews explains how the altar and the tabernacle and the priesthood, it says in verse 101, they were but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities. So the true form of all of these realities was Jesus Christ in the fullness of time. He came to fulfill everything that the tabernacle, the altar, the sacrifices, everything that they represented to the people of Israel.

But until Jesus came, there could be no end to the sacrifices. And so every day, every week, every year, the Israelites had to spill the blood of animals in order to worship God, in order to come into his presence. Think of that for a thousand years or so. Think of how many animals were sacrificed, how much blood was shed. And these sacrifices never came to never came to an end. They were repeated over and over and over. And the fact that they were repeated over and over and over uh taught the Israelites that they were insufficient to truly take away sin. They could never completely atone for the sin and the guilt of the people of God.

But Hebrews says in 9:26, Hebrews 9:26 that Jesus has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. There was only one shedding of blood that could atone for your sin, for my sin. There was only one sacrifice that could forever take away the guilt of your sin. It wasn’t the blood of a bull or a goat, but it was the blood of the sinless son of God. Only his blood can atone for your sins, can cover your sins. And if your faith is in Jesus Christ, if your hope is in the son of God as your savior, then know that his once for all sacrifice on the cross, his once offering up of of himself on that heavenly altar, that that was one and done, a sacrifice that forever takes away your sin.

However, it’s still true that we must come to God with a sacrifice. Only now it’s a different kind of sacrifice. It’s not the blood of an animal because we have been justified. We have been forgiven by the blood of Christ. But we come to the Lord with the sacrifice of our lives. We consecrate ourselves to God.

The New Testament uses the language of sacrifice to describe the devotion, the consecration that we are called to to give to God as his people whom he has redeemed. Romans 12:1 says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” 1 Peter 2:5, you yourselves are like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

So as a believer in Jesus Christ, this is what you are called to. You are called to devote yourself wholly entirely to the service of the worship of God through Jesus Christ as a sacrifice. You are a sacrifice. But that raises the question for us. Good to examine our lives and to ask this question. Am I giving myself to the Lord service and worship and obedience?

We should ask ourselves, would I be willing to die for Christ? Is my devotion to him so complete that I would be willing to die for him? Think about that. It’s perhaps for us to answer that abstractly, to say yes, of course I would be. But think about what if that situation never came up. Would you be willing to lay down your life for the sake and only for the sake of Jesus?

But perhaps an even harder question, and I’ve heard it put this way, this something that another preacher has said that it may be even a harder question to ask ourselves. Are you willing to live for him? Are you willing to live a life of self denial, self-sacrifice, service, dying to yourself for the sake of Christ. That’s what it means to bear the cross of Christ. It means to die to yourself that you might live to him. And so, just like the sacrifices of the burnt offerings that were completely consumed on the altar, so you and I as Christians are called to be completely consecrated, consumed in a life that serves Christ, that honors him, that is given to him.

And this is what God has always demanded of his people. Wholehearted, whole soul devotion to him. One of the primary complaints that the prophets had against the people of Israel is that they went through all the motions of offering sacrifices to God and worshiping him and yet their hearts were far from him. It was simply a religious ritual. It was just external obedience to the letter of the law. There was no heart there. Their heart was far from God. And this kind of heartless, faithless, hypocritical, going through the motions, this was the kind of worship that God condemned. It wasn’t truly worshiping God.

And so Samuel will tell Saul in 1st Samuel 15:22, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams. What God wants from his people is obedience from the heart. Not just going through the motions of the Christian life, but from the heart, giving ourselves to the Lord. David says in Psalm 51, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise.”

We no longer bring to God animal sacrifices. We no longer offer up goats and bulls on the altar. However, we can be as guilty as the Israelites were of a kind of formalism, superficialism, hypocrisy in our worship. I mean, who among us has not been guilty of this? Who among us has not come to church? Simply going through the motions, singing the words of a hymn, but maybe not even thinking about it, hearing a sermon, but maybe not even listening or really taking it to heart. We’ve all been guilty of this kind of hypocritical, formalistic worship that the Lord condemns.

Part of the good news of the gospel is that God has not only given us his Jesus Christ to forgive us of that sin and many other sins. But with Christ, God also gives us his Holy Spirit. He gives us a spirit to create in us a new heart to give us a true zeal, a true love, a true desire for Christ, for God. And by the grace of God, by the work of the Holy Spirit in you, you can worship in a way that pleases him, that honors him.

And as you come to the father to worship him, as you come in the name of Christ by the grace of God, as he gives you a heart that is filled with gratitude for him and for his sacrifice of himself to save you, as you worship God in this way from the heart, giving him thanks, rejoicing in him, you are bringing to God the best sacrifice. You are bringing to him a far greater sacrifice than all the goats and the bulls that were slain upon the altar. But you are bringing from the heart a sacrifice of praise, of worship, of thanksgiving to God. And that is the worship that pleases the father. Let’s Pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 26, and it is a long passage. We’ll read the whole chapter. And as we do, we’ll always keep in mind that this is the word of God. This is God’s infallible and inerrant word.

So let’s hear God’s word this morning. Exodus chapter 26.

Moreover, you shall make the tabernacle with 10 curtains of fine twine linen and blue and purple and scarlet yarns. You shall make them with cherubim, skillfully worked into them, the length of each curtain shall be 28 cubits, and the breadth of each curtain four cubits. All the curtains shall be the same size. Five curtains shall be coupled to one another, and the other five curtains shall be coupled to one another. And you shall make loops of blue on the edge of the outermost curtain in the first set. Likewise, you shall make loops on the edge of the outermost curtain in the second set. Fifty loops you shall make on the one curtain, and fifty loops you shall make on the edge of the curtain that is in the second set. The loops shall be opposite one another, and you shall make 50 clasps of gold, and couple the curtains one to the other with the clasps, so that the tabernacle may be a single whole.

You shall also make curtains of goat’s hair. For a tent over the tabernacle, 11 curtains shall you make. The length of each curtain shall be 30 cubits, and the breadth of each curtain 4 cubits. The eleven curtains shall be the same size. You shall couple five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and the sixth curtain you shall double over at the front of the tent. You shall make fifty loops on the edge of the curtain that is outermost in one set, and fifty loops on the edge of the curtain that is outermost in the second set. You shall make fifty clasps of bronze, and put the clasps in the loops, and couple the tent together that it may be a single whole. And the part that remains of the curtains of the tent, the half curtain that remains, shall hang over the back of the tabernacle. And the extra that remains in the length of the curtains, the cubit on the one side and the cubit on the other side, shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle, on this side and that side, to cover it. And you shall make for the tent a covering of tanned ram skins and a covering of goat skins on top.

You shall make upright frames for the tabernacle of acacia wood. 10 cubits shall be the length of a frame and a cubit and a half the breadth of each frame. There shall be two tenons in each frame for fitting together. So shall you do for all the frames of the tabernacle. You shall make the frames for the tabernacle. 20 frames for the south side, and 40 bases of silver you shall make under the 20 frames, two bases under one frame for its two tenons, and two bases under the next frame for its two tenons. And for the second side of the tabernacle on the north side, 20 frames, and there 40 bases of silver, two bases under one frame, and two bases under the next frame. And for the rear of the tabernacle westward, you shall make six frames, and you shall make two frames for corners of the tabernacle in the rear. They shall be separate beneath, but joined at the top, at the first ring. Thus shall it be with both of them. They shall form the two corners. And there shall be eight frames with their bases of silver, 16 bases, two bases under one frame, and two bases under another frame.

You shall make bars of acacia wood, five for the frames of the one side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the frames of the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the frames of the side of the tabernacle at the rear westward. The middle bar, halfway up the frames, shall run from end to end. You shall overlay the frames with gold and shall make their rings of gold for holders for the bars, and you shall overlay the bars with gold. Then you shall erect the tabernacle according to the plan for it that you were shown on the mountain.

You shall make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twine linen. It shall be made with cherubim, skillfully worked into it, and you shall hang it on four pillars of acacia overlaid with gold, with hooks of gold on four bases of silver. And you shall hang the veil from the clasps, and bring the ark of the testimony in there within the veil. And the veil shall separate for you the holy place from the most holy. You shall put the mercy seat on the ark of the testimony in the most holy place. And you shall set the table outside the veil and the lampstand on the south side of the tabernacle opposite the table, and you shall put the table on the north side.

You shall make a screen for the entrance of the tent of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twine linen embroidered with needlework. And you shall make for the screen five pillars of acacia, and overlay them with gold. Their hooks shall be of gold, and you shall cast five bases of bronze for them. That finishes our Old Testament reading.

We’ll come back to that, but first let’s hear from the New Testament, and that passage is Hebrews chapter 9, verses 1 through 10. Hebrews 9, 1 through 10.

Now, even the first covenant had regulations for worship in an earthly place of holiness. For a tent was prepared, the first section in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the presence. It is called the holy place. Behind the second curtain was a second section called the Most Holy Place, having the golden altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden urn holding the manna and Aaron’s staff that budded and the tablets of the Covenant. Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail.

These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties. But into the second, only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. By this, the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet open, as long as the first section is still standing, which is symbolic for the present age. According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

So let’s turn back to Exodus chapter 26 for our sermon text this morning. I doubt that many of you have memorized many verses from Exodus chapter 26. If you have, good for you. In fact, this might be one of those Old Testament chapters that when you get to in your yearly or whatever your Bible reading plan is, when you get to it, you just kind of skim through it. Maybe you have a study Bible with a picture of the tabernacle in it, and you just look at the picture of the tabernacle and call that good and skip the chapter. You’ve got an idea of what it looks like.

You might even ask yourself when reading a chapter like this with so many precise details, you know, really, how important is it for me to know all of these details about the construction of the tabernacle, even to the length of the curtains that covered it? Well, this is where we need to remind ourselves that the scripture testifies of itself, that it is God-breathed, that all scripture is God-breathed, breathed out by God, profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. And we know that God has a good reason for including a chapter like this in the scriptures. It is for our good to build us up in faith, to point us to Jesus, and so for that reason, because it is part of the scripture that together makes us wise unto salvation, for that reason, we will spend some time considering the details of this chapter.

We won’t go into great depth, but we will consider the construction of the tabernacle. But then we’ll consider the significance of the tabernacle. What did it mean for the people of Israel? And what does it mean for us today as the people of God who belong to Christ?

As we begin to look more closely at this chapter this morning, I’m encouraged by what the author to the Hebrews wrote when he was writing to whatever congregation he wrote to about the tabernacle and the makeup of it and the details in it. He says in Hebrews 9:5, of these things we cannot now speak in detail. So if the inspired author of the Hebrews glossed over some of the details in his writing about the tabernacle, then I think we’re on safe ground to at least skip over some of the details that are given to us in this chapter. But we do want to have a rough picture of what the tabernacle looks like, and that is provided for us in this chapter.

First of all, the structure was not a huge structure. It was about 45 feet long, 15 feet wide, and 15 feet high. So I think it would probably pretty easily fit in this sanctuary. Maybe a couple of them could. It was not that big.

The tabernacle was covered with four layers of coverings. The first covering was ornamental. It consisted of two sections of curtains that were joined together. And this curtain was made out of a very high quality linen, what the scripture calls fine twine linen. And this curtain was decorated with blue, purple, and scarlet embroidery. Now those colors, blue, purple, and scarlet, these were made from very expensive dyes. In fact, the words are referring to the dyes themselves. But that’s fitting. This is the tent of the great king. This is the tent of the Lord. It is only fitting that it should be made of the most exquisite material available.

The embroidery on this first set of curtains included images of cherubim. These cherubim were depictions of the real cherubim that are described in the scriptures as something like God’s royal attendants, the angelic creatures who guard the place where God is or guard that which is holy. These are the same creatures that are depicted on top of the Ark of the Covenant who are, there’s two cherubim on the mercy seats looking down upon the Ark of the Covenant.

One thing that I found interesting as I read about this description and what commentators have said about the tabernacle is that this first curtain, which would have been the one visible from inside the tabernacle, that it was probably predominantly white and a very pure, bright white color. And then the blue and purple and scarlet cherubim would have been embroidered into this white background. Most pictures that I’ve seen are the artistic renderings of what the tabernacle may have looked like. Most pictures that I’ve seen showed this curtain as being mostly blue or purple in color, but I think it’s fitting that it should be white. White is the color of purity and holiness, and this would be the main color that the priest would see when he walked into the holy place, or the high priest would see when he went into the most holy place, this bright white surrounding the most holy place with cherubim, with bright red, blue and purple yarns embroidered into it.

In any case, that was the first covering. The second covering over the tabernacle were curtains made of goat’s hair that were laid on top of the first covering. And then, so you had the first covering, then you had goat’s hair as a second covering, and then on top of the goat’s hair curtains, there were two additional coverings, and these served to protect the inside of the tabernacle from the elements, from the rain and wind and so on. The first of this outer covering was a covering of tanned ram’s skins, and then on top of that, the fourth covering was a covering that was made either from goat skins, as the English Standard Version renders it, or it was made from the hide of sea mammals, like sea cows or manatees. A few scholars don’t know for sure exactly what kind of leather material this was.

What supported all these coverings and gave shape to the tabernacle were the upright frames. These were made of acacia wood, and acacia wood would have been accessible to the Israelites where they were in the wilderness. They were covered with gold and they were set upon silver bases. And the frames formed three walls of the tabernacle. And so there was a wall on the north, on the south, and on the west. The eastern side of the tabernacle had no wall. It would have a veil or a screen. And that’s because that was the opening for the tabernacle. That’s how the priest went into it. To strengthen this framing, Moses was told to make bars of acacia wood and these bars would run horizontally through the frames in the three walls of the tabernacle.

And then the Lord, after that, told Moses to make two additional curtains. The first was like the first covering of the tabernacle, it was made of fine twine linen, so very bright, pure white linen. It also had blue, purple, and scarlet embroidery worked into it, and it also included depictions of cherubim. This curtain was held up by four pillars of acacia wood, and these pillars were overlaid with gold. And it served, this first curtain, it served as a veil or a partition that separated the two rooms of the tabernacle.

So the room that was to the west, this was the innermost sanctum, the innermost room of the tabernacle, and this was called the most holy place. The most holy place contained the holiest of all the articles in the tabernacle, and that was the Ark of the Covenant. In this room, its dimensions were a perfect cube. It would have been 15 feet high, 15 feet deep, and 15 feet wide.

The second room that was created by this veil, this partition, was the holy place. And in the holy place, there were three items. First, there was the table for the bread of the presence. This was on the north side of the room. Opposite that, on the south side of the holy place, was the golden lampstand, which we looked at last time we were in Exodus. And then, against the veil that separated the most holy place from the holy place, against that veil, in the holy place was the altar of incense. And so the first curtain was the veil that separated the holy place from the most holy place.

The second curtain that Moses was commanded to make was the screen that was placed at the entrance of the tent on the east. And just like the veil inside the tent, it too was made of fine twine linen and it was embroidered with red scarlet and purple embroidery. However, unlike the veil, and this is one of the details that if you hear closely or read closely that you might catch, unlike the veil that separated the Most Holy Place from the Holy Place, the screen that was at the entrance of the tabernacle, it did not include pictures of cherubim. And the reason for that is because it was further removed from the Most Holy Place. Only as you entered into the tabernacle did you see the cherubim guarding access to the most holy place and to the Ark of the Covenant because this is where God would make his presence be in that most holy place on top of the Ark.

Again, if you were listening closely to the chapter, if you have an ear for details, you may have noticed that the pillars that were holding up the outer screen of the tabernacle, they were placed not on bases of silver, but on bases of bronze, and this is because these pillars were further from the most holy place. And so the idea was, the closer you got to the most holy place, the closer you got to where God’s presence was, the throne room of God, where the Lord would dwell there in his tent, the closer you got to that place, the more precious, the more valuable would be the materials that surrounded it. And so this gives you an idea, I hope, of what the tabernacle looked like.

I’ve said this before, but I believe it bears repeating. The most remarkable thing about the tabernacle was not how imposing it was visually. It was not because it was so immense in size or because it was incredibly ornate. Now, it was not an unattractive structure. It was very elegant, very beautiful. It was made out of the finest materials, but it was relatively small and simple, relatively unadorned. And perhaps the reason for that is because the Lord knew, he anticipated that anything bigger than this, anything more decorative or ornate would have drawn the attention of the Israelites to the structure itself, to the beauty of the temple itself or the tabernacle and not to the Lord, the one who inhabits the tabernacle, the one who dwells there.

This is the most important thing about the tabernacle. Not what it looked like, not how ornate it was or how small or how big it was. The most important thing about this tent was that this is where God dwelt among his people. In fact, the Hebrew word for tabernacle is mishkan. This means dwelling place. So this was literally God’s dwelling place.

And this brings us to consider the significance of the tabernacle for the Israelites. What did the tabernacle mean for the people of God? Well, it signified two truths, at least two truths that we’ll consider this morning, to the people of God, about God, and as we consider these truths, we’ll see that these two realities or truths may have been difficult for the Israelites to harmonize or to reconcile in their minds.

So the first truth is this. The first truth that’s given with the tabernacle is this, that God is present among his people. Above all else, the tabernacle meant that the Israelites had the Lord God living among them. Every nation had their gods, their idols, their false deities, but Israel had the true God, the living God, the God of Israel, who created the heavens and the earth, the sovereign Lord of all things. And he was the God who entered into covenant with Abraham and his offspring. He promised Abraham and his offspring after him, I will be your God, you shall be my people. And so this was the covenant God who had made Israel his people.

He was the God who revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush. He was the God who made His name known to Moses and through Moses to the people of Israel, that He is Yahweh. He is the Lord, the Great I Am. He was the same God who heard the cries of His people as they called out to the Lord in the throes of their misery, as they suffered under the cruel hand of Pharaoh. He was the God who became their Savior. He led them out of Egypt with signs and wonders.

And this God made his presence known to the Israelites after he brought them out of Egypt. He was with them in the pillar of cloud by day, the pillar of fire by night. But now with this tabernacle, the Lord God, he was going to do something new and wonderful for his people. He was going to make his home with them. He would be with his people in a way, with the closeness that he had not been with them before. His tent would be in the midst of their camp, in the midst of their tents.

Earlier, as we have been going through Exodus, way earlier, back in chapter two, when the Israelites cried out to the Lord to deliver them from their bondage to Pharaoh, Exodus 2:23 says, their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And now God was coming down to them. God was going to come down to his people, to be with them, to live with them. Just as they dwelt in tents, so the Lord would dwell in his own tent, in his holy tabernacle.

In fact, one way to look at the tabernacle is to see it as God bringing heaven down to earth. As the Lord tells Moses over and over, the earthly tabernacle had to be built exactly to the pattern shown to him on the mountain. And the book of Hebrews tells us that this meant that there was a heavenly tabernacle. Hebrews 8:5 says this, they serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. Now this doesn’t mean that there was a physical tabernacle in heaven, but it means that just as heaven itself was the dwelling place of God, just as heaven itself was God’s tabernacle, his cosmic tabernacle in heaven, so the earthly tabernacle would be his dwelling place on earth. So in that sense, it was a copy and shadow of the heavenly reality.

And this truth that the tabernacle was kind of piece of heaven that was brought down to earth was signified to the Israelites by the cherubim, the cherubim that were embroidered into the fine twine linen that covered the tabernacle, that were on the veil that separated the holy place from the most holy place, the cherubim that protected the Ark of the Covenant. These were depictions of God’s heavenly attendants. And so here they were now on earth in picture form, guarding the place where the Lord dwelt among his people.

And because the tabernacle was portable, it meant that everywhere that God led the Israelites, he would be there with them. And so before all else, the tabernacle meant that God was with his people. And this was their hope, this was their comfort, this was their strength. As long as God was with them, as long as the Lord was with them, he would protect them from their enemies. As long as the Lord was with them, he would fulfill every promise he has made to them, especially that promise that he would bring them into the promised land.

Later in Exodus, as we’ll see as we move on, when the Israelites sinned against the Lord, when they made the golden calf and worshiped it, the Lord’s judgment against his people was that he would not go with them into the promised land. And Exodus describes this word from God to the people of Israel, this judgment that he would not go with them. Exodus describes this as a, quote, “disastrous word.” It was a disastrous word for the people of Israel because they knew that if God did not go with them into the promised land, that they would fail.

Now, thanks to the mercy of God, thanks to the intercession of Moses, he did go with his people into the promised land. But then later in the history of Israel, when the Lord had to cast his people out of the promised land because of their unbelief and idolatry and sin, sent them into exile into Babylon, what made that exile in a foreign country so terrible for the Israelites was not just that they were living in a foreign land, but it was that they were cast out of the land in which the Lord himself dwells. And so exile from the land of Israel was exile from God’s presence.

And so the promise that the Lord gave to his people that he would return them to the land, this was more than just a promise that they would return to the land that they love, that they grew up in, that their fathers grew up in, but it was a promise that he would bring them to the place where he would be with them once more, that he would dwell among them once more in the promised land. And so one of the defining characteristics of the nation of Israel was that God was in their midst, that God lived among them. Psalm 46:7 says the Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. Isaiah the prophet said, shout and sing for joy, oh inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. And so that reality that the Lord dwelt among his people, that began with the tabernacle.

But at the same time, so that’s one truth, one reality that the tabernacle meant for the people of Israel, but at the same time, there was another reality that was communicated to the people of God that was just as true, and that is that the God who lived among them was a holy God. And so the tabernacle communicated the holiness of God.

Now what do I mean by the holiness of God? The holiness of God, first of all, means that God is set apart from all that he has created. That God, because he is uncreated, because he is eternally existing, he is no part of his creation whatsoever. He is absolutely distinct from what he has made. Our confession puts it this way: God is a most pure spirit. This is the holiness of God, that He is absolutely distinct from all that He has made. He is not bound by time or space. He cannot be seen. He is eternally existing. He is infinite in His being. He is holy. He is holy.

Why are the cherubim, these angelic creatures, why are they looking down at the ark of the covenant? Why are they not looking up towards God? It’s because even though they are pure angelic creatures without any sin or unrighteousness, nevertheless, because they are creatures, they are not worthy to look up into the face of God. That is the holiness of God. They must bow before him.

And so whatever else we say about God, the one thing that is supremely true about him is that he is holy. He is holy. And one aspect of the holiness of God that the tabernacle signified was his perfect righteousness. He is morally pure. He is infinitely pure. There is no unrighteousness or sin in God. It is contrary to his very nature. And therefore scripture says that God is of purer eyes than to behold evil. He cannot look at wrong.

And so, because God is holy, because he transcends his creation, because he is righteous, and because man is unrighteous, the very tabernacle in which God dwelt among his people was also a constant reminder to them that there was a great distance between God and them, that there was this immense gulf between an almighty, infinitely holy God, and they, a sinful and unrighteous people.

And the tabernacle reminded them of that in many ways. Because God was holy, the tabernacle was holy. Only the consecrated priests could even go into the tabernacle, and most of them could only go into the holy place, the first room. Only one man, the high priest, could go into the most holy place, into the very presence of God, and he could only go into that holy place once a year. And he could only enter into that most holy room with the blood of an animal sacrificed, blood to atone for his own sin and to atone for the sin of the people of Israel.

And so that curtain, that veil that separated the most holy place from the holy place, this was not merely a partition to make two rooms, but this was a barrier, a shield to protect the holiness of the inner sanctum where God dwelt, but it was also to protect the Israelites from the holiness of God, lest they should be destroyed by it. And so for the average Israelite, though it was a wonderful thing that the Lord dwelt among them, that his tabernacle was in the midst of their camp, nevertheless, there was something forbidden about it. They could not enter into it. They definitely could not enter into the most holy place. They weren’t even able to lay their eyes upon the articles that were in the tabernacle. They were covered up when they were carried so that they could not be seen. And so the tabernacle was something that was unapproachable for the average Israelite. Only the high priest could see that one most holy room once a year. This was not like the White House, where you can have a tour of it and see some of the rooms of the White House. This was always off limits to the average Israelite.

And so, yes, the tabernacle meant to the people of Israel that God was living among them, that His dwelling was with them, but it also communicated to them that they could not come into his presence because of his holiness, because of their unrighteousness. So it also was a standing reminder to the people of Israel of this distance between a holy God and a sinful people. And so you can see how these two truths may have been difficult for the Israelites to harmonize or to reconcile in their minds.

And so put yourself in their position. Here in the very middle of all the tents in the camps, you were blessed to have the tent of Almighty God right there with you. This is your God. He has taken you to be his people. This was his dwelling place. He’s always with you. And at the same time, everything about the tabernacle communicated to you as an Israelite, that you had to keep your distance, that there was, you could only go so far to approach God and no farther.

In the passage from Hebrews that we heard earlier, as the author is describing the layout of the tabernacle and how the high priest could only enter into the most holy place once a year, the author of Hebrews says this, this is from chapter nine, verse eight, he says, by this, and he’s referring there to the law that the high priest could only enter to the most holy place once a year, he says, by this, the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing. Then in parentheses, which is symbolic for the present age, or another way to translate that would be, which is symbolic for the age then present.

And so what these verses in Hebrews mean is this. The fact that the most holy place where God dwelt in the tabernacle, the fact that it was forbidden to the Israelites, the fact that it could only be accessed once a year by the high priest with the blood of a sacrifice with him, this was God’s way of teaching the Israelites that he was going to do something even greater than dwell in a tent among his people. As Hebrews says, the way into the holy places was not yet opened, not yet opened.

In other words, for those who had faith to see, for those who had understanding, whom God had given eyes to understand and see, the tabernacle, the worship at the tabernacle, it testified to the truth that all of that was just a temporary arrangement, that one day, there was a promise implied in it, that one day God would open up that most holy place, that one day he would welcome his people into his presence in a way that they could not come to him at that time. And it would be not just for the high priest and not just once a year, but the day would come when that most holy place would be open for all. And then the tabernacle would no longer be necessary. It would be obsolete, a thing of the past.

And of course, that day came. That day came with the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, the son of God. And specifically that day came when that place where God dwelt was opened up to his people. That day came, that moment came when Jesus was crucified upon the cross.

In his gospel, Matthew tells us that when Jesus died on the cross, the very moment that he yielded up his spirit to God, the very moment when he had completed that atoning work of suffering and dying for sinners such as us, that very moment when he had made reconciliation between God and us, Matthew tells us that, behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Now, of course, by this time, the tabernacle had been replaced with the permanent temple in Jerusalem, but the basic layout of the two structures was the same. But this curtain that God caused to be torn in two, this was the very curtain that separated the holy place from the most holy place.

And so with the death of Jesus Christ then, God has brought about what he promised all along with the tabernacle, and that is that you and I, ordinary sinners, that we can now come into the presence of God by faith in Jesus Christ, through his blood shed for us, that we can come to be in his very presence in a way that no Israelite could in the past. As the book of Hebrews explains, Jesus was the greater high priest. He entered into the greater tabernacle, the tabernacle of God’s presence in heaven. He offered up a greater sacrifice than the blood of bulls and goats. He offered up the blood of his own body, his own self, a perfect sacrifice to take away sin forever. And because Jesus accomplished that on the cross, he has forever opened up the way for you and me to come into the presence of God.

In one way, it’s ironic that this morning we are spending an entire sermon on Exodus chapter 26 on the tabernacle. It’s ironic in one way because the best thing about the tabernacle is that it no longer exists, that it’s completely obsolete. It’s no longer necessary. It’s a thing of the past. Instead, we have something much greater. We have Christ. He is the true tabernacle, and he is the one through whom we come into the presence of God.

Of course, God is still as holy as he ever was. That’s one lesson of the tabernacle that we ought to still take to heart today. But the difference is this, that as a believer in Jesus Christ, you know that your sin, your unrighteousness has been taken away from you because Jesus bore it at the cross. The holiness, the righteousness, the perfect purity of the Son of God himself has been given to you, imparted to you, imputed to you, so that you, though you in yourself are still a sinner, still unrighteous, nevertheless, clothed with the perfect righteousness and holiness of Jesus, you can come into the presence of a holy God, because in Jesus Christ, you are holy. And so there is no more barrier. God is no more this unapproachable God to whom sinners such as you and I cannot come near. He is no longer that, but he calls us into his presence.

And so as a Christian, you have a privilege that even the high priest did not enjoy. You can go into the presence of God every day of the year, not one day of the year. You don’t have to take the blood of a sacrificial animal with you. You only have to go to God in the name of the one whose blood was shed for you, whose sacrifice is sufficient to take away all your sin forever. And part of the glory, the beauty of all of this is that as we come into the presence of God through Jesus Christ, we come not just as a servant of God. We come not just as a worshiper of God, and that is what we are. We are God’s servants, we are his worshipers, but we are so much more than that. We come into God’s presence as his beloved child, as his son, as his daughter. And so now you and I, through Jesus Christ, come to God as our heavenly father.

What an amazing blessing, what an amazing privilege we have as those who belong to Jesus Christ. But do we use this privilege? Do we take advantage of this blessing that God has given to us? Do we come to Him always when we have need? Do we take advantage that God is there waiting for us to come into His presence to seek His grace, to seek His favor and blessing?

We worry about our lives. We fret and are concerned about our circumstances. How will God take care of us? What are we gonna do about this or about that? But instead of worrying, we can go to our Heavenly Father in prayer. We can lift up our needs and concerns to Him. We can cast our burdens upon Him. He promises that He will care for us.

Instead of being driven by fear, fear of the unknown, fear of life’s possibilities, we can go to God for courage, for hope, knowing that He is watching over us, He will care for us.

Instead of relying on our own limited resources of strength and wisdom to be faithful as Christians, to live life in this world as God would have us, to fight sin, why do we not go more often to the Lord, to find in Him that infinite, inexhaustible supply of strength and grace and wisdom that we need for living faithful lives as followers of Christ?

Instead of seeking our happiness, our contentment, our significance in the things of this world or what we might accomplish or do in this world, why do we not go to the one, come into the presence of the one who alone can fill our hearts from the limitless abundance of the riches of peace and joy that he will give to us when we come to him?

And so we have this amazing privilege that we can come to God anytime and be filled with the light that he gives us and with every blessing that we need. But how often do we forego that out of our own unbelief?

Listen to what Hebrews says again. This is from Hebrews chapter 10. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith.

As a Christian, you can draw near to God with full assurance of faith. And Christ, he is your assurance that God is there. He is with you. You can come into his presence. He promises that he will never leave you nor forsake you. Christ is your assurance that God will receive you to himself, into his gracious and loving presence when you come to him by faith in the name of Jesus.

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Deuteronomy chapter 30, verses 11 through 14. And this is the infallible and inerrant word of God. For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that you should say, who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it. Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it. But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart so that you can do it.

We’ll turn now to Romans chapter 10, Romans chapter 10 for our New Testament reading. And this is also our sermon text today. Romans 10 verses five through 13. Romans 10, five through 13. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith that we proclaim. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Confessing Faith

Well, since today we had the privilege and the blessing to witness the baptism of Riley and also to hear her profess her faith in Christ, I thought it would be appropriate for us to take a break from our study of the book of Exodus, which we have been going through, and instead to turn to this passage from Romans, this passage in which the author, the Apostle Paul, he deals with the significance of a person confessing their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

As you know, there are many varieties of faith in this world. There are all kinds of belief systems. There are all kinds of religions that call for faith. Even a worldview or a philosophy that denies the existence of God, that requires a kind of faith as well for somebody to embrace it, to believe it. And of course, there are all sorts of things in this world that we are tempted to put our trust in, to put our hope in. We might look to things such as money, success, a relationship to give us that purpose, that significance, that joy that our hearts desire. And when we put our trust in these kinds of things, when we look to these things and hope in them, we are exercising there too a kind of faith.

And so there are many kinds of faith, but there is only one faith that brings us salvation. There is only one kind of faith by which our sins are forgiven. There is only one faith that brings us eternal life, and that is faith in the person and in the work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And this morning, we have heard Riley declare to us that she affirmed those questions that I put to her. She proclaimed before us her faith, her faith for her salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the question I want to ask you is, how about you? Is your faith, is your hope in the Lord Jesus Christ alone? This is a big question. There is nothing less than your eternal destiny. Nothing less than heaven or hell hangs in the balance on this question. Is your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior?

Now, not everyone who says that they believe in Jesus has true saving faith. The faith that brings us salvation, the faith by which our sins are forgiven, is more than merely saying, I am a Christian, or it’s more than merely saying, I agree with what the Bible tells us about Jesus. In our passage this morning, the Apostle Paul, he gives us a picture of what true faith looks like, the faith that unites us to Christ, the faith that brings us salvation. And there are three things true about saving faith that we can draw from this passage.

And the first truth about saving faith is that saving faith rests upon the person of Jesus Christ. Saving faith relies upon the person and the work of Jesus Christ. For any of us to entertain the hope of salvation, for any of us to be qualified that we should spend eternity, not in hell, but in heaven with God, one thing is required of us, and that is that we must be righteous, we must be holy. And that’s because God is holy. If the Bible tells us anything at all about God, it is that God is righteous, God is holy. Isaiah 6 says, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is filled with his glory.

And at the same time, if the Bible tells us anything about ourselves, it is that we are not holy, we are not righteous. In fact, we are the opposite of righteous. In the eyes of a holy and righteous God, we are unrighteous, we are sinful. Listen to how God in the scriptures, in his word, listen to how he describes the moral character of man. And this applies to all of us. By nature, this is true of all of us by birth.

Romans chapter three, verses 10 through 12. None is righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. And then Romans 3:23 says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

I think you’ll agree with me, this is not a pretty picture. This is a far cry from the way that we like to think about ourselves, the way in which we flatter ourselves. We like to think of ourselves that basically, fundamentally, we are good people. We are decent, we are moral, we are good people. Of course, we’ll acknowledge we have our imperfections, we have our faults, we have our little peccadillos. We’re not perfect, however, at heart, we are good. That’s the way we like to think of ourselves.

But God knows our hearts perfectly. He knows us better than even we know ourselves. His standard is perfection, and He measures us by that standard. And His judgment on us, His assessment, His infallible evaluation of the moral character of our own hearts is that we are not good. We are not basically good people. Rather, at heart, we are corrupt. We are bent toward evil. We are sinners. We are sinners. And because God is infinitely holy, and because we are by nature unholy, sinful, if we are to be saved, somehow we need to be made righteous. Somehow we need to become what we are not morally and spiritually, we need to become righteous. Because only he who is righteous can live with a righteous and holy God in heaven forever and ever. All who are unrighteous must be cast out from the presence of God and from heaven forever.

In our passage in Romans this morning, the apostle Paul sets before us two potential ways that we can obtain a righteousness by which we can be saved. The first way he calls in verse five, the righteousness that is based on the law. So here’s one way for us to obtain that righteousness that we need for salvation. This is a righteousness that comes from our obedience to the commandments of God. In other words, the righteousness that we need in order to be with God in heaven forever for our salvation can be ours if we are successful in doing all the works that God requires of us in his commandments, in his law. So that’s one way to acquire righteousness.

The other way to acquire the righteousness that we need to be saved is what Paul calls in verse six, the righteousness based on faith. And this is the righteousness that belongs to the one who has faith in Jesus. In verses five through eight of our passage, Paul wants us to see that both of these ways of obtaining righteousness, first, the righteousness that comes by perfect obedience to the law of God, secondly, the righteousness that comes by faith in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, Paul wants us to see that both these ways of righteousness were presented to the people of God, to the people of Israel in the Old Testament scriptures.

And so in verse five, Paul says this, he says, for Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. What does he mean by the law? The law of God is everything that God requires of us. It includes the 10 commandments and the 10 commandments are a summary of everything that God requires of us in our thoughts, our words and actions, how we are to please God and reflect His perfect righteousness. And God gave a promise that was implied with the law, and not even implied, but also explicit, a promise that if you will just keep all of God’s commandments perfectly, if you will keep his law perfectly throughout your life, you will acquire for yourself a righteousness by which you will attain eternal life. That’s what he says in verse five. The person who does the commandments shall live by them, that is, eternally.

Now, because God is perfectly righteous and holy, the standard to his law that he requires of us is nothing less than perfect conformity, flawless obedience, without the slightest deviation whatsoever from the law that he has given to us in the scriptures and the law that he has also revealed to us in our conscience. Unlike many schools and colleges, there is no grade inflation with God. Either you get an A++ because you have kept his commandments perfectly, or you get an F-, because you have broken his commandments, or even because you have broken one of his commandments.

Our confession of faith describes the kind of obedience that is required by the law of God. If you and I are to gain eternal life by keeping God’s commandments, this is the kind of obedience that is required. It must be personal, exact, entire, and perpetual. In other words, if it is your hope, if it is your desire to make yourself righteous in the sight of God by keeping his commandments, this is what you must do. From the very moment that you are born until the very moment that you die, you must never break a single commandment of God, not even in thought. You must keep his law perfectly and not even in the slightest way to transgress it or to break it.

So that means that throughout your entire life, you must love God and worship Him and serve Him with all your heart. It means that you must never say anything that is remotely dishonest or untrue. It means that you must never act in a way that is self-centered or selfish. It means that you must never entertain an impure or an unclean thought. It means that you must never say anything or even think anything that is hurtful against another person. And you must keep all of God’s commandments in this way with the entirety of your whole being, your heart, soul, strength, and mind.

Now, the problem I hope that you’ll see as you examine your own heart, I hope that you’ll see that this is an impossible standard. That you and I have not kept this standard. We fail to keep it every day. We cannot keep it. It is utterly impossible for us to keep the commandments of God perfectly because of our sin. Because our hearts, as I said, are bent toward evil. We are by nature corrupt. And we do the very opposite of what God commands us to do in his law.

But this was the way to eternal life that foolishly the Jews in Paul’s day sought to acquire righteousness for themselves. This is the way they pursued salvation by keeping God’s commandments. They thought they could do it. And so in verse three, we didn’t read verse three, but it’s right before our passage. Paul says that the Jews were seeking to establish their own righteousness by their obedience to God. And for that reason, as long as they relied upon their own works, their own efforts in keeping God’s commandments, because that was impossible, they could not do it, but as long as they thought that they could do it, they were condemned by their sin, they were lost, they were without hope in the world.

And the same thing is true for every single human being, every single person who tries to make himself acceptable to God, who tries to establish his own righteousness, who tries in the sight of God to make himself good enough, moral enough in order to be saved, in order to have the hope to go to heaven. Every person who seeks to establish his righteousness or to seek salvation on the basis of his works is equally lost.

And so what that means is is that if you are hoping that by keeping the Ten Commandments, if you are hoping by keeping the Golden Rule, or by being a good church member, or by living a moral and upright life, if you are hoping that by being a nice person, being a good person, being a decent person, or if you are hoping that at least making sure that my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds, if you are hoping that that will be the basis upon which God will accept you as righteous, you are wrong. You are just as lost as the Jews were in Paul’s day who were seeking to establish their righteousness on the basis of the law of God. You are, in fact, without hope. You are lost and condemned as a sinner if you are seeking to gain God’s pleasure in that way. And so that first way to obtain righteousness, the way of works, of making yourself right before God, this way literally is a dead end. It leads to nothing but eternal death.

But what about the second way that Paul lays out for us here? The second way that we might be counted righteous before God in His sight? This is what Paul calls in verse six, the righteousness based on faith. And listen to what Paul says about this second way of obtaining righteousness. He says in verses six and seven, but the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead.

Paul, I think you recognize that Paul is quoting from that passage from Deuteronomy that I read to you earlier. And the gist of Paul’s interpretation of that Old Testament passage is this, that the righteousness that is based on faith completely abandons, completely forgoes any attempt or any effort to do what only God can do. The righteousness that is based on faith is not gained by some kind of superhuman effort to ascend into heaven or to descend into the abyss. These things represent the futile, the impossible efforts of man to establish a righteousness by his own works.

And what Paul is saying here in this passage is this, that anyone who seeks to save himself in this way, to establish his own righteousness, to make himself fit for heaven, anyone who seeks to do this on the basis of his works, his obedience, his goodness, really he is denying what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. It is the pride of man that seeks to do this, to seek to do what only God has done. We cannot bring Christ down from heaven. Only God can send his Son into the world. We cannot raise Jesus up from the dead. Only God can raise up his Son from the grave.

And so rather than doing anything, the righteousness that is based on faith is ours simply by receiving what Paul calls the word of faith. But what is the word of faith? It is the gospel. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which God has brought near to us through the preaching of that gospel. And the gospel is the good news that God has done for us in Jesus Christ what we could not do for ourselves. He has accomplished for us salvation. Paul says in verse eight, but what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith that we proclaim.

And so Paul is saying that the scripture sets before us these two mutually exclusive attempts or ways that we can obtain righteousness before God, one is based on our own works of obedience, the other is based on faith, faith in Jesus Christ. And the question for you and me this morning is this, where is your trust? On what, on whom are you relying for salvation? For the hope that when you die, you will be welcomed into God’s heaven. What are you relying upon? What are you trusting in? Are you trying to establish your own righteousness by your efforts, by your goodness? If so, you are relying on the works of the law. Paul says in another place in the scriptures in Galatians chapter three, for all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to do them. But if your trust is in Jesus Christ, if you have forsaken every attempt to establish your own goodness or righteousness before God, if your hope and trust is in Christ and what he has done for you, then you have the true hope of heaven. You have the righteousness that comes by faith.

And one of the points that I want you to see from what Paul is saying here is this, is that this faith in Christ, this is more than just agreement in the head. This is more than just a consent to what the Bible says, but it is a reliance upon, a resting in, leaning upon a person, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and in what He has done for you, for your forgiveness.

The illustration that I’d like to use in the new members class, and most of you have heard this before, so bear with me. Riley’s probably heard it three times already by now, but she’ll hear it again. But the illustration I’d like to use in our new members class is that, picture yourself at the airport, and this is an illustration of what faith really is, it’s more than just agreement with what the scripture says. But you’re at the airport, you’re waiting at the gate for your airplane. And you can see the airplane at the end of the jetway, it’s a massive 747. And I come up to you and I ask you as you’re waiting for your flight, I say, do you believe that this gigantic machine, this huge thing, that that can actually safely fly you to your destination? And at that point, I would expect you to say yes, I believe that. After all, you’re at the airport, you’re at the gate.

But, as far as I know, you haven’t really trusted in that plane yet. You haven’t really put your faith in that plane until you walk down the jetway, get on the plane, sit down in your seat and buckle up. At that point then, you are truly exercising faith. You are resting in, you are relying upon this plane to take you safely to your destination. And that is the nature of true saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You are resting wholly upon Christ and His works and trusting in what He has done for you. You are trusting your eternal destiny to Him. And by trusting in Him, you can know that He will truly, safely bring you to your eternal destination, to glory in heaven forever.

And so saving faith first rests upon the person and work of Jesus. Secondly, saving faith confesses the truth about Jesus. Paul says this in verse nine. He says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. To confess something is to acknowledge with your words that something is true. And so if a criminal confesses to the police that he truly did rob a bank, that is his confession. He acknowledges verbally that it is true that I committed this crime. Well, Paul is talking about a different kind of confession, of course. He’s talking about what he calls the good confession, the confession concerning Jesus Christ.

And what is it specifically about Jesus that we are to confess in order to be saved? It is the truth that Jesus is Lord. And so to confess that Jesus is Lord means to confess that you believe that the man, Jesus Christ, He is also, at the same time, the incarnate Son of God who came into the world. He is the one who has been resurrected by the power of God, who is seated now at the right hand of God the Father Almighty in heaven, that he has received from the Father all power, all authority, all dominion, and that he is the supreme ruler and king over all things. That is all that is involved in confessing that Jesus is Lord. It is, in fact, to confess that He is God. He is God in the flesh.

In verse 13, Paul says, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. The Lord there is referring to Jesus. For everyone who calls on the name of Jesus will be saved. And he’s quoting from the Old Testament from the prophet Joel. And in the Old Testament, whenever the word the Lord is used, it’s referring, of course, to God. God is the Lord, the Lord is God. And so when Paul says here, whoever calls on the name of the Lord, referring to Jesus, what he’s saying is that Jesus himself is the Lord of the Old Testament. He is the God of Israel, the God of creation, who has come in the flesh.

And so to confess that Jesus is Lord is to believe and to confess with your lips the truth about who he is. Not just, certainly not a myth, not just a man who lived a wonderful life in history, not just a man we make much of in Christianity, but truly a man who came from heaven, a man who is God and man at the same time. This is why any teaching that calls itself Christian but denies at the same time the full deity of Jesus, that Jesus is truly God, that is not Christianity. That is a false gospel that leads people not to salvation, but to destruction. And so to believe the Jesus of liberal theology, to believe the Jesus of the Gnostic Gospels, the Jesus of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, this is not to confess that Jesus is Lord, this is to deny that Jesus is Lord, and this leads not to salvation, but to destruction. The only confession of Jesus that can save you is a confession that acknowledges that Jesus is true God and true man, that he is Lord.

And this confession is not a confession that is made merely by the lips, but it is a confession that comes from the heart. Paul says in verse nine, if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. So it’s not only to confess that Jesus is Lord, but to believe in the heart that God raised him from the dead. And that’s a shorthand way of saying to believe in the heart everything that is true about Jesus and the scriptures. Not only that he was raised from the dead, but that he came into the world, that he lived a life of perfect obedience, that he suffered on the cross that sacrificial death to atone for the sins of all who come to him in faith, that Jesus was raised from the dead. To believe in your heart in his resurrection is to believe everything that is true about Christ, that he is the one whom God has given to us as a sacrifice to atone for our sins, to bear the guilt, to bear the sin that is ours so that we could be free from that judgment forever. And if you believe in your heart that Jesus lived, that he died, that he was raised for you. If you believe in your heart that he came to take away your sin, that he gives you eternal life, then you will be saved. That is the promise that the scriptures make to you, that God makes to you. Paul says in verse 10, for with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

What we saw today is something that’s very important. We saw someone whom the Lord has brought to faith in Christ, we saw her confess her faith in Christ, verbally, to acknowledge, to say, to proclaim to us and to God that she believes in Jesus. It’s so important to do that. In fact, it’s so important that Jesus says, whoever refuses to do that, whoever shrinks back from confessing faith in Jesus before others, Jesus will deny him before his Father in heaven. In Matthew, Jesus says, so everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. And this is why we asked Riley to confess her faith publicly, to acknowledge verbally before us, before the world, that she believes in Jesus Christ, that he is her savior. So it’s not enough to believe in Jesus and stop there, but you must confess your faith in Jesus.

Now, it’s true, we are saved by faith alone. And so if somebody like Robinson Crusoe on a deserted island where there’s no other people, if he comes to faith in Christ, obviously he can’t confess it to anybody. He is saved. God can save anyone who may not be able to verbally confess their faith. God can save an unborn child. He can save an infant. He can save someone with a severe mental disability, someone who’s nonverbal. God is able to save anyone by the grace of the new birth by the Holy Spirit. But for most of us, we are to confess our faith in Jesus. It’s not to remain a private thing, but we publicly acknowledge that he is our Lord and Savior. You see how closely this passage brings together faith in the heart, confession with the mouth. These are the things by which we are saved.

And a word to the younger children in the church. My hope and prayer is that one day, you who are young, who have not yet confessed your faith in Jesus, my hope and prayer is that you will come up and you will do the very thing that Riley did today. That you will acknowledge before us, yes, I believe in Jesus, that He is my Savior. And my prayer is that when you do that, it will be a confession that comes from the heart, that you truly, genuinely believe that Jesus is your Savior. And what a glorious promise Jesus gives to all of us. What a wonderful promise He gives to us. That if you confess your faith before man, He will acknowledge you. He will confess you before his Father in heaven. And so saving faith confesses the truth about Jesus.

Finally, briefly, saving faith calls upon the name of Jesus. One of Paul’s concerns in this passage is to show that this way of righteousness, this way of salvation is open to all people. It is open to all people. And of course, the categories he uses are Jew and Gentile. This was the great division between groups of people in that day. There were Jews and then the rest of the world, the Gentiles. But this salvation is for both Jew and for Gentile. And so it is for all kinds of people. Paul says in verse 11, for the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. Verse 12, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.

And so what a wonderful picture we have here of the incredible goodness, the grace of God, that he is ready to bestow his riches of salvation, of grace to every single person who calls upon him. You know, sometimes people say Christianity is so intolerant, it is so bigoted, that the Christians would claim that only Christians can have the hope of going to heaven. But I say, look at the tolerance of God here. Every single person, if he only comes to faith in Christ, if he only acknowledges the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord, will be saved, regardless of race, regardless of gender, regardless of social background, regardless of social status.

It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter what your family history is. It doesn’t even matter how many bad things you have done, how greatly you have sinned, how far you have strayed from the Lord. None of that matters, no matter who you are. If you call upon the name of Jesus Christ, you will be saved and God will pour out upon you the infinite riches of his grace and mercy and love. It will be yours forever and ever.

Have you called out to Jesus? Have you called out to Jesus to be your savior? Confess your sin to him. Turn away from your sin. Call out to him as the one who died in your place that you might be forgiven. And you will receive the hope, the gift of everlasting life and know that Jesus answers all who calls to him. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Let’s pray.

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Our Old Testament reading, and this is our sermon text as well, so you might wanna keep your place there in your Bibles. The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 25, verses 31 through 40, and this is the inerrant, the infallible word of God.

Let’s hear God’s word. You shall make a lampstand of pure gold. The lampstand shall be made of hammered work. Its base, its stem, its cups, its calyxes, and its flowers shall be of one piece with it. And there shall be six branches going out of its sides, three branches of the lampstand out of one side of it, and three branches of the lampstand out of the other side of it. Three cups made like almond blossoms, each with calyx and flower on one branch, and three cups made like almond blossoms, each with calyx and flower on the other branch. So for the six branches going out of the lampstand. And on the lampstand itself there shall be four cups made like almond blossoms with their calyxes and flowers. And a calyx of one piece with it under each pair of the six branches going out from the lampstand. Their calyxes and their branches shall be of one piece with it, the whole of it a single piece of hammered work of pure gold. You shall make seven lamps for it, and the lamps shall be set up so as to give light on the space in front of it. Its tongs and their trays shall be of pure gold. It shall be made with all these utensils out of a talent of pure gold, and see that you make them after the pattern for them which is being shown you on the mountain.

And now let’s turn to Revelation chapter 21, Revelation chapter 1, for our New Testament reading, Revelation 1, verse 12 through 20. Revelation 1, verses 12 through 20. Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands, one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead, but he laid his right hand on me, saying, Fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one. I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades. Write, therefore, the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

You can turn back to Exodus 25 if you haven’t already. This is our sermon text. And as I said, we are working our way through the book of Exodus and we are in the section of Exodus now where the Lord is giving instructions to Moses on how the tabernacle and all of its furniture, all the items in it are to be constructed. Of course, the tabernacle was the place where God would dwell among his people in the wilderness. And also when they came into the promised land, God would be in the midst of his people in the tabernacle.

And as we’ve gone through these instructions, you probably noticed that God is working from the inside out. The first thing that he told Moses how to build was the Ark of the Covenant. And the Ark of the Covenant was located in that innermost part of the tabernacle, the room that is called the Most Holy Place. And then after that, the Lord gave instructions, which we saw last week, on how to make the table that would hold the bread of the presence or the showbread. And that table was located in the room adjacent to the Most Holy Place, a larger room, and that larger room is called the Holy Place.

And this morning we are still in the holy place. And the next item that the Lord will tell Moses how to build is the golden lamp stand. And so the golden lamp stand would also be set up in the holy place. It would be situated across from the table that held the bread of the presence. And so our subject today is this golden lamp stand.

If you know what a menorah is, then you already know the Hebrew word that’s translated golden lampstand – it is “menorah”. And since we often see menorahs at the end of the year during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, we can have a rough image in our minds of what this golden lampstand and the tabernacle more or less look like. Of course, we don’t know exactly what it looked like. All we have are the instructions here, but at least we have a rough idea of what its appearance was.

Like the Ark of the Covenant, like the table for the showbread, the Holy Lampstand was to be constructed of pure gold. This is fitting. This is right. This was God’s dwelling place. Only gold is fit for the majesty of the Great King.

The central stem or trunk of the lampstand had three branches shooting off from one side of it, and it had three branches going off the other side of it. And at the top of each branch, and at the top of the central stem as well, a lamp would be placed there. And so there would be a total of seven lamps on top of the lampstand that would give light to the most holy place, or to the holy place rather. The lamps, by the way, were not attached to the lamp stand, but they were placed on top of it. They were removable. And the main trunk and the six branches, the lamps would have been set on top of those.

The lamps would have been bowl shaped. There would have been, the bowls would have held the olive oil, which was used to burn the candles. And there would have been a wick that was placed in each of the lamps. And of course, that’s how they lit the, that’s how the golden lamp stand was lit. And that’s what gave light to the tabernacle. It was decorated, both the trunk and the branches were decorated with almond flowers. Each branch had three flowers and the trunk had four flowers on it. And we’ll talk in a little bit about the significance that this looked like a tree.

After describing how the lampstand was to be built, the Lord also told Moses to make the various utensils that would be necessary for maintaining the lamps, the tongs and the trays. And so everything together, the lampstand, its utensils, it was to be made out of one talent of pure gold. One talent of gold would be about 75 pounds. And so this is a very sturdy, very stable lampstand.

And again, at the end of the passage, the Lord tells Moses what he tells him over and over again, as he is giving him instructions on how to build the tabernacle, he says, see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain. Everything about the tabernacle, everything in it had to be made exactly according to that heavenly pattern that the Lord showed to Moses on top of Mount Sinai.

How this lampstand was to be used and maintained. And so I’m gonna read a passage from Leviticus, Leviticus chapter 24, verses one through four. This also shows us or tells us a little bit more about the lampstand. In that passage, we read this, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, command the people of Israel to bring you pure oil from beaten olives for the lamp that a light may be kept burning regularly. So it was olive oil that was burning. Outside the veil of the testimony and the tent of meeting, Aaron shall arrange it from evening to morning before the Lord regularly. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations. He shall arrange the lamps on the lampstand of pure gold before the Lord regularly.

And so it was the responsibility of Aaron at first, and then his sons after him, it was the priest’s responsibility to keep the lampstand burning. And the lampstand was to burn regularly, which I take to mean that it was to be constantly burning. The lamps were to be always, day and night, to be lit. It was a kind of eternal flame that never stopped giving lights within the tabernacle.

Now, one purpose of having a lamp stand and candles in the tabernacle was very practical, and that is to light up what otherwise would have been a very dark place. As we’ll see later as we go on to read about this tabernacle. It was covered with all kinds of different coverings, and there were so many coverings on top of the tabernacle, there was no way that any light would have been able to penetrate into the rooms inside. And so, because there were no windows, there was no sunroof on the tabernacle, there had to be a way to light up the interior, and so that was one practical reason for this lampstand.

However, as with everything in the tabernacle, the real significance of it, the important meaning of it was symbolic. And what the light signified was the light of God. The scriptures tell us that God is light. 1 John 1:5, God is light and in him is no darkness at all. 1 Timothy 6:16 says that God dwells in unapproachable light. And so the light that was burning or shining from this lampstand day and night represented the truth that God is light, that he is light. And the lampstand symbolically showed the light of God in different ways.

First of all, the light from the lampstand would have reminded the Israelites that God’s light is truth. God’s light is truth. And that’ll be our first point this morning.

The scriptures associate the truth of God with light. The psalmist says in Psalm 43:3, send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me. Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling. The word of God, the scriptures, which we know are true, perfectly true, inherently true. They are also called light. Psalm 119:105, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

So God’s truth is light, the word of God is light, but the world in which we live is one that is enshrouded in great darkness. When Adam and Eve, when they believed the lie of Satan, when they rebelled against the Lord in the Garden of Eden, they plunged themselves and the entire human race to come after them into the depths of darkness. And so for that reason, by nature, we do not have light. We are not born with light within us, but we are born spiritually blind. Apart from the grace of God spiritually, we live and we walk in total blackness. 2 Corinthians 4:4 says, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers.

That was certainly true in the days of the Israelites. The false gods, the false worship of all the nations that surrounded the people of Israel. This showed forth their innate spiritual blindness and all the evil practices that they did and all the ways in which they worshiped idols and sought to manipulate and to placate their false gods in their worship. They showed that they were a people living and walking in darkness. It was only to his people Israel, to his beloved redeemed people that the Lord showed his light to them. He made himself known to them as the true and the living God. And so that the light that emanated from that lampstand and the tabernacle was a light that was shining in the midst of a dark world, a world enshrouded in darkness, a world full of idolatry and sin.

And that is as ever true today as it was then. Man in his natural condition is blind. Man born in nature, he is born to live, to walk in darkness. And this is why every religion, and this is not a popular thing to say today, this goes against the spirit of the age, but every religion that does not confess and worship Jesus Christ as the incarnate son of God, that religion is a product of deception. It is a product of spiritual blindness. There is no light in it. Every philosophy that is based upon human reason, every philosophy that is not grounded upon the truths revealed in the scriptures is nothing but an expression of man’s spiritual blindness. Every worldview that does not have Christ at its center is also devoid of light, it is darkness. And in some, we can say that every way in which man expresses his unbelief, whether it is through the evil deeds that he does or whether the false worship that he engages in, his rebellion against God, his sin, these are all ways in which humanity shows itself to be enveloped in a great spiritual darkness.

This is what we are by nature. And one implication of our natural spiritual blindness is that we are not only blind to the truth about God, but in our spiritual blindness, we are kept from seeing the true significance of all things. We cannot see the true meaning, the true significance of anything if we do not understand the truth about God. In other words, when we fell with Adam in our sin, the capacity even to reason, to think properly and rightly was corrupted and damaged. To know anything at all with true understanding, we must begin with the truth of God. We must begin with the truth that God is the creator of all things. He is the Lord of all things. If we are blind to the truth about God, we are blind to the truth about everything. Psalm 36:9 says, in your light, in your light do we see light.

And so an unbeliever, one who has not come into the light, one who still walks and lives in darkness, he lives in the same world that we do to be sure, but he is blind to the true meaning of things. He does not see the truth to which all creation testifies. He does not see the truth that all creation reveals about God, that he is good, that he is wise, that he is the creator. And for this reason, the simplest child who knows by faith that God is the sovereign creator and Lord of all, that child, because he knows the truth about God, he possesses infinitely more light and knowledge and truth than even the most learned, brilliant philosopher and scientist who denies the truth about God.

And that’s because by faith, the believer sees the world as it truly is. The believer sees the world and all that is in it for what it truly is. It is the creation of God. It is the creation that is ruled over by God. The believer sees himself as he truly is. He is an image bearer of God. The believer sees his life as it truly is. It is a gift of God to be spent giving glory to him. And this is true knowledge. This is true light. And this knowledge, this understanding is a gift of God’s grace. Again, the psalmist says, in your light do we see light.

When God brings us to himself, when he sheds abroad in our hearts the truth concerning him and his son, Jesus Christ, then our eyes are opened and we can see things not only about God ourselves, but the whole world in its true significance, in its true context. And until then though, we remain in darkness. And one thing that means for us is this, is that if you today, if you believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord, if you truly have embraced the truth that He is the incarnate Son of God, that He died upon the cross to take away your sin and your guilt, if you believe in your heart that He was raised from the dead on the third day, if you believe that the Bible, the scriptures, that this is the very Word of God, then if that’s the case, then rejoice, give thanks to God, praise Him, because He has brought you from darkness to light. You have been shown grace and mercy in order to see these things, to believe these things. By nature, we cannot see these things, but by the grace of God, we do.

And so the light of the lampstand would have reminded the Israelites that the Lord, their God, was light. He was their light in a dark world. And of course, like everything in the tabernacle, the truths that are expressed there find their greatest fulfillment, their greatest expression in the Son of God, the one who came into the world as God in the flesh. Jesus said in John 8:12, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. And so there’s no longer a lampstand in a tabernacle in the wilderness somewhere giving off a little bit of light, but there is something far more brilliant than that. And that is the son of God who came into the world, who is light, whose light continues to lighten this dark world and his light is truth. So the lampstand would have shown that God’s light is truth.

Secondly, the light of the lampstand would have taught the Israelites that God’s light is righteousness. Just as the scriptures associate God’s light with truth, so the Bible also identifies God’s light with his righteousness, his purity, his holiness. The prophet Malachi says this, but for you who fear my name, the son of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. The son of righteousness, that’s S-U-N, not S-O-N. His Son of Righteousness. And so, God, when He visits His people, according to this prophecy, both His light and His righteousness will shine forth like the sun. And so, in the Scriptures, God’s light is equated with His goodness, His righteousness, His purity.

And the light shining forth from the lampstand would have testified to the Israelites of the holiness of God simply because of where it was located. It was located in the tabernacle and the tabernacle was sacred. It was holy because God is holy. And so the light of God, the holiness of God, these things could not be separated. They cannot be separated.

And so imagine yourself as an ordinary Israelite. You’re living in the wilderness with this tabernacle that has been set up in the midst of all the camps of the Israelites. And you walk by it and the veil happens to be open a little bit. And so you can see coming from that tabernacle, you can see the faint light of the golden lampstand shining from within it. And that light would remind you that a good, a righteous, a holy God dwells in that tabernacle. That that is his home.

And with the coming of Christ into the world, the light that once shone only among one people has now shed abroad throughout the entire world. John says of Jesus in his gospel, the true light, this is John 1:9, the true light, which enlightens everyone was coming into the world. There is not just a lampstand for the people of Israel, but the true light, Christ has come into the world to bring light to all the nations of the world.

Later in John, we read these words of Jesus about his coming into the world. You know this verse very well, John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. But then three verses later in verse 19, Jesus adds this, he says, and this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.

Now, what Jesus says here contains a very important truth. Very important biblical truth, and that is that faith and unbelief, these are not fundamentally matters of mere head knowledge or lack of it, but faith and unbelief are matters of morality, of right and wrong. Because the light of Christ is righteousness, because it is righteousness, those who reject that light do not do so because they lack the intellectual capacity to understand it, but they reject the light because, Jesus says, their deeds were evil, and they do not want to come into the light. In other words, to believe in Jesus Christ for salvation, to come into the light of His righteousness, this means more than just agreeing in your mind or in your head that He is the Savior of sinners, but it means to turn from sin, to repent of sin, to forsake it, and to embrace that which is holy and righteous and good. That is what it means to come into the light. It’s far more than just apprehending with the mind the truths about the gospel. But it is forsaking sin and coming into the light and embracing Christ and all of his righteousness.

And so we cannot separate faith and repentance. To believe in Christ is not merely to believe in your mind, but it is at the same time to turn away from sin, to turn towards God in obedience. A person who only believes in Christ with his head, a person who only professes with his lips that Jesus is Lord and yet has not truly submitted to him in faith as Lord. A person who confesses to be a Christian and yet there has been no true change of heart. There is no fruit from his confession of faith. This person is still in darkness. He has not yet come into the light.

John puts it this way in 1 John 1:5-7, this is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. And so if we walk in the lights, if we are truly children of the lights, we embrace Christ in all of his righteousness. We forsake our sin. We come to him for that new life that we might live lives pleasing to him.

And that’s the good news of the gospel, that for every single person who does, by the grace of God, turn to Christ and repent of his sin, that person is cleansed from all unrighteousness and brought into the light of God, that light which is eternal life. And so the light of the lampstand would have reminded the Israelites of God’s righteousness.

Thirdly, the light of the lampstand would have reminded the Israelites that God’s light is salvation. Even apart from the light that the lamps gave off, the figure of this lampstand just by itself was a symbol of salvation. And that’s because it resembled a tree. It had a trunk, it had branches going out from it, the almond flowers on it were like the flowers of an almond tree. And of course, as a tree, it would have reminded the Israelites of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden.

After Adam and Eve sinned against the Lord in the garden, the Lord banished them from that paradise. And he did so lest they would eat of the tree of life and live forever. Naturally, the Israelites, like all people who came from Adam and Eve, they were sinners. They were sinners who were barred from the tree of life. They were barred from taking that fruit that would lead to eternal life. But by putting this figure of a tree in the tabernacle, God was in this way, he was holding out to the Israelites the hope that one day they might eat of that tree of life and live forever. And so in that way, the lampstand was a figure or a symbol of the salvation that God was preparing for his people.

But even more than that, the light of the lampstand would have signified to the Israelites that their salvation is with the Lord. In the minds of the people of God, the light of God was already associated with his salvation. When the Lord led his people out of Egypt, he did so. And when he brought them into the wilderness, he did so with a pillar of fire by night. So God was light to them as he delivered them from Egypt. In Psalm 27, David says, which we read, which we sang, the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? He is light and salvation.

When the prophet Isaiah spoke the words of the Lord concerning the coming Messiah, he described the salvation that the Messiah would bring as light to the world. He says in Isaiah 49:6, I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. And Jesus proclaimed, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. And so for those who come to Christ, the light of God, the light of Christ is salvation. It is eternal life.

On the other hand, the Bible warns that for those who do not believe, their judgment will be eternal darkness, eternal night. If you ask someone from Alaska how long they’ve lived in Alaska, he or she may not answer you in terms of years, but in terms of winters. And so sometimes when someone asks me, how long did your family live in Alaska? I’ll say we lived there for 12 winters. And after the long, dark days of each winter, or each winter, those long, dark days, they become a little more oppressive, a little more depressing. It’s not hard to imagine the unspeakable spiritual agony that it would be to be cast into a place of utter darkness, a place where there is no light ever. And that’s how Jesus described hell. That’s how Jesus described the eternal abode of the condemned, that it is a place where there is no light. He called it the outer darkness. There is only weeping and gnashing of teeth there.

And so we are born by nature in spiritual darkness. Apart from the grace of God, we are bound for eternal darkness. And that is our condition as sinners. But praise be to God. Thanks be to God that he has given us a son. He sent his son into the world to bring us light, to bring us salvation. John 1:4 says, in him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the golden lampstand, and the tabernacle with its seven candles burning day and night, that would have reminded the Israelites of that ancient promise of God, that promise that belonged to them, that one day he would raise up a savior for them, and he would bring them eternal life. The light of God was for the light of his people, or for the life of his people.

Now, the golden lampstand, we don’t hear too much about it in the scriptures after this passage, here and there, but not a lot. But it does make a different, or another appearance in the Bible, and that is in the book of Revelation. When John is given this vision of heaven, he sees the exalted Lord Jesus and all of his divine glory in heaven. And there’s a lampstand, actually there are seven lampstands there. And this was the passage that we read from the New Testament. Let me read verses 12 and 13 from Revelation chapter one. Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me. And on turning, I saw seven golden lampstands. And in the midst of the lampstands, one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest.

And then later, thankfully, Jesus explains to John the meaning of the seven lampstands. Jesus doesn’t explain everything to John and to us in Revelation, but he does explain to us the meaning of the seven lampstands. And what they stand for, these lampstands in Revelation, what they represent is striking, it’s remarkable, it’s not, strictly speaking, the light of God. But Jesus says this, as for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

And so the lampstands represent the seven churches of Revelation, but by extension, by implication, they represent the church of God, the church of Christ. And so what this means is that the light of God signified by the lampstand in the tabernacle, that God is truth, he is righteousness, he is salvation, this light now emanates from the people who have been redeemed by Christ, who belong to Christ. And so as Christians, you and I, we are God’s lampstand. We are the light of the world. That’s exactly what Jesus taught us. Matthew 5:14, you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

And so the lampstand in the tabernacle that stood for the light of God, God has now been pleased to make his people that lampstand. His people are that lamp by which his light shines through the world. The light of his truth, the light of his salvation, the light of his righteousness. It shines in this world of spiritual darkness through his people, through the church.

And this brings us to a question that we must ask ourselves, given that this is true, is my life as a believer in Jesus Christ, is it a light that is shining in the spiritual darkness around me? Ephesians 5:8 says, at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. We need to ask ourselves, do I walk as a child of light? Do those who know me, that know I am a follower of Christ, do they see that I not only profess to be a believer in Christ, that I profess to be a Christian, but do they see in my life a person who is walking with the Lord Jesus and in that way giving true light to the world?

Now, none of us reflect the light of God, the light of Christ, as we should. As long as we have sin, which is to say, as long as we are in this world with our sin, we will in some way always be only dim and faint reflections of the righteousness, the holiness of God. Nevertheless, it is God’s will that by our confession of Christ, by our worship of Christ, by our serving and loving our neighbor as Jesus did, that we shine as light in the world, that we reflect the light of God, that people may see in our lives, that reflection of who God is, that he is truth, that he is righteousness.

Philippians 2:14 through 15. Do all things without grumbling or disputing that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom you shine as lights in the world. And so, as by the grace of God, as you walk in the light of Christ, you, as a believer in Christ, shine this light of Christ into the world, a world that is covered with darkness, a world that has been plunged into the blackest of nights. As the beloved and saved people of Jesus Christ, you are the new lampstand of God, giving light to the world.

Let’s pray.

The post The Light of the World appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

Our Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 25, verses 23 through 30. And this is the infallible and inerrant word of God. Exodus 25, 23 through 30. You shall make a table of acacia wood. Two cubits shall be its length, a cubit its breadth, and a cubit and a half its height. You shall overlay it with pure gold and make a molding of gold around it, and you shall make a rim around it a handbreadth wide and a molding of gold around the rim. And you shall make four rings of gold and fasten the rings to the four corners at its four legs. Close to the frame, the rings shall lie as holders for the poles to carry the table. You shall make the poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold, and the table shall be carried with these. And you shall make its plates and its dishes for incense and its flagons and bowls with which to pour drink offerings. You shall make them of pure gold and you shall set the bread of the presence on the table before me regularly.

You can keep your place there since this is our sermon text and turn to the New Testament to Acts chapter 17 for our New Testament reading. Acts chapter 17 verses 22 through 31. This is the Apostle Paul’s address to the Areopagus in Athens, after he had seen all of the various idols that the people of that city worshiped. So Acts 17 verses 22 through 31.

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus said, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, To the unknown God. What therefore you worship is unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being. As even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine image is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

In this section of Exodus, God is giving Moses very detailed instructions on how the tabernacle was to be built. And just to remind ourselves of the overall significance of the tabernacle, we can say that there were two things that made the tabernacle a glorious thing, a place of glory. First of all, the tabernacle was the place where Almighty God, the creator of heaven and earth, where he made his dwelling place on earth among his people. The Old Testament sometimes refers to God as the one who is enthroned upon the cherubim. The two cherubim, as we saw last week, they were made out of pure gold and they were on top of the mercy seat, which itself was on top of the Ark of the Covenant. And it was there in the tabernacle above the cherubim that God said that he would be present among his people. And that in itself is sufficient to make the tabernacle the most glorious structure ever built by human hands. It was because this is where the Lord dwelt. He was with his people. His home, you could say, his tent, was among the people of Israel in that tabernacle.

But the second thing that made the tabernacle a thing of glory was that it was full of symbolism. Many of the elements of the tabernacle pointed to spiritual realities concerning the character of God, concerning God’s work of salvation for his people. And these spiritual truths that were symbolized and represented in different ways by the tabernacle, they would find their fulfillment and their fullest expression in the person of Jesus Christ and in the work that he has done for our salvation and his incarnation, his life, his suffering, death, and resurrection. And we saw this last week when we looked at the mercy seat that was on top of the Ark of the Covenant. We saw how the death of Jesus on the cross was the fulfillment of everything that the mercy seat signified. And that is the mercy seat signified that an atonement was necessary, that there had to be a propitiation, a satisfaction for the wrath of God in order for us as sinners to be saved. Our sins have to be atoned for. And the mercy seat pointed to that. And so in that way, as the mercy seat pointed ultimately to Jesus Christ and his saving work for us, the tabernacle really preached the gospel. It was, in a symbolic way, it communicated the truth of what Christ would come to do, not only for his people among the people of Israel, but for his people throughout the world.

Now, having said that, this is where, as readers, as students of the Bible, as Christians, we need to be careful how we interpret and understand the symbolism of the tabernacle. In the history of the church, there have been very well-meaning scholars and theologians who have found all kinds of Christian truth in the tabernacle that probably was more the product of their own fertile imagination than it was the mind of God. For example, the church father Origen, he found much meaning in the precious materials that were used to construct the tabernacle. He wrote, faith is to be compared to gold, the preached word to silver, patience to bronze. Another example, Gregory the Great said the ark symbolized the church. And the four rings on the four corners of the ark represented the four gospels. And there were four rings on the four corners of the ark because the gospel was going out to the four corners of the world. Others said that the Ark actually represents the incarnation, because it was built with two materials, wood and gold. The wood stands for the humanity of Christ, the gold for his deity. And yet, just as Christ is one person with two natures, so the Ark is one Ark made out of two materials, wood and gold.

As we hear these things, of course, we say amen to the biblical truths that are being explained with these various kinds of interpretations. At the same time, we need to ask, are these kinds of allegorical, fanciful interpretations, is this where the scriptures naturally lead us? It’s hard to see how it does. A better way to study the tabernacle and everything in it is to allow the scriptures themselves to guide us in our interpretation of the symbols of the tabernacle, of what they represent. Does the Bible itself suggest or indicate a symbolic meaning to some feature of the tabernacle? And if so, how is that ultimately fulfilled in Christ? And so that is the guiding principle that should direct us as we seek to understand the true meaning of the tabernacle in light of the coming of Jesus Christ. And that’s how we will proceed as we look at the various parts of the tabernacle.

Last week, we already began to look at parts of the tabernacle. We looked at the Ark of the Covenant, the most important part of the tabernacle. Today, we will look at the table that was in the holy place of the tabernacle and the gospel truth that this table, but particularly the bread on the table, the gospel truth that is communicated to us by it is this: that through Jesus Christ, through the Son of God, we have been given the blessing of intimate and unbroken communion with God. So God is with us. And this is, as we’ll see, what the bread and the table indicate to us.

So first, let’s take a look at this table that is described for us in the passage. After the Lord told Moses how to make the ark. And remember, Moses is on top of Mount Sinai. He had entered into the cloud in the top of the mountain. He’s with the Lord 40 days and 40 nights. And throughout that time, God is giving him instructions on how to build this tabernacle. So first he tells him how to make the ark. Then he moves on to what will be in the room that is next to the room where the Ark is. And so the Ark is in the innermost part of the tabernacle. That’s called the Most Holy Place. And then the room adjacent to the Most Holy Place that’s separated by a curtain, that’s referred to as the Holy Place. And in the Holy Place, it’s a bigger room. It’s the room that the priest would enter into first before going into the Most Holy Place. But in this holy place, there were three items or three things there. There was the table for the showbread, which we will look at today. There was the golden lamp stand, and there was also the altar of incense.

So our concern this morning is the table for the bread. Like the ark, it was made out of acacia wood. Acacia wood was easy to find in that area where they were around Mount Sinai. It was overlaid with pure gold. It wasn’t a huge table. Its dimensions, as given to us in cubits, of course, but in feet, it was roughly three feet long, one and a half feet wide, and just over two feet tall. So you can picture it being about the same size of a typical coffee table that you might have in your living room. So it wasn’t huge. It’s not exactly clear what the two moldings and the rim were for or what they looked like or where they were placed on the table. The rim may have just been for a very practical purpose to be around the surface of the table so something couldn’t slip off of it. But in any case, like the Ark, the table was to be carried with two poles, two poles that were covered with gold. And these poles would be inserted into the four rings that were fastened to the table. One interesting little detail, specifically with the Ark, Moses was told that the poles were never to be separated from the Ark. They were always to be with the Ark. But here, the poles could be taken in and out of the ark. Presumably that’s because the less handling of the ark, the better, because it was the most holy object in the tabernacle.

Now, unlike with the Ark of the Covenant, I’m not aware of any movies that give us a good visual of what the table looked like. I’m not aware of any movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark that’s all about the table for the showbread. However, there is a fascinating picture of what the table may have looked like that is given to us later in history. In 82 AD, the Roman Emperor Domitian, he built what is called the Arch of Titus in Rome. And he built this arch as a monument to celebrate the great military victories of his older brother Titus, who served as emperor before Domitian. And one of the victories of Titus was the conquering and destroying of the city of Jerusalem in 70 AD. And so in order to commemorate that military conquest that Titus accomplished, this Ark of Titus has a sculpture built into it, and in this sculpture, we see Roman soldiers carrying away some of the holy articles that they found in the temple that was in Jerusalem before they destroyed it. One of those articles is the golden lamp stand, and it looks very much like a menorah, like you might picture, like you’ve seen before. But also in that sculpture, there is a sculpture of the table that we are considering today.

Now, the lampstand and the table that were found by the Romans and plundered by them in 70 AD, these most likely were not the original equipment, not the original table that was made by the Israelites in the wilderness. However, they may have been accurate reproductions. And in any case, if you look it up online, I think you’ll find it interesting to see what may have been an accurate representation of what this table looked like and what the golden lamp stand looked like after reading about it in the Book of Exodus. But along with the table, Moses was to make various kinds of dishes. So there were plates, presumably for holding the bread as it sat on the table. There were dishes for the incense, the frankincense that was to be put on top of the bread. There were different kinds of pouring vessels of different sizes. The priests would use these for their drink offerings as they offered sacrifices to the Lord. And all of these were made out of pure gold, nothing but the finest material for God’s tabernacle. So they were all made out of pure gold.

Now, the most important feature of the table is not something about the table itself, but the most important, most significant thing about the table was what was placed on top of it, and that was the bread, what is called here the bread of the presence. Verse 30 says, and you shall set the bread of the presence on the table before me regularly. It’s very, very helpful for us as we read this passage in Exodus to read another passage from Leviticus that gives us a lot more information about this bread. So I’ll read Leviticus chapter 24 verses 5 through 9. You’re welcome to read along in your Bibles if you like. This is Leviticus 24 verses 5 through 9. It says, You shall take fine flour and bake 12 loaves from it. Two tenths of an ephah shall be in each loaf. And you shall set them in two piles, six in a pile on the table of pure gold before the Lord. And you shall put pure frankincense on each pile that it may go with the bread as a memorial portion, as a food offering to the Lord. Every Sabbath day Aaron shall arrange it before the Lord regularly. It is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever. And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, since it is for him a most holy portion out of the Lord’s food offerings, a perpetual due.

And so we learned a lot more about this bread from this passage of Leviticus. First of all, we learned that there were 12 loaves of bread. No doubt that was to represent the 12 tribes of Israel. And the text doesn’t say for sure, but most likely this was unleavened bread, particularly since the bread would be stacked on top of each other. So these were not really thick loaves of bread, but flatter loaves made out of unleavened flour. And given the specific quantities of flour involved, we can guess that each loaf was about 12 inches in diameter, about four inches thick. And so you can picture then this table made out of gold, and on top of it were two piles of bread, six loaves on each pile or in each pile. And so that can give you a kind of a visual image of what this looked like.

Now, the bread, you’ll notice if you remember from the Leviticus passage I just read to you, it’s called a food offering. It’s called a food offering. Now, it would be a mistake to think that what was meant by this is that somehow the bread was given to God by the Israelites in order to feed God. That’s not how the Israelites understood the Lord, because that’s not how the Lord revealed himself to them. But that was the reason why the pagans made food offerings to their gods. It was because they were hungry. They were thirsty and they depended on their worshippers to give them food and drink, just like a dog is dependent on his owner to feed him and water him. So the idols, the false gods of the pagans, they needed their worshippers to supply them with their daily bread, their sustenance. But nothing could be further from the truth when it came to the true God, the living God, the Lord, the God of Israel. He is the creator, he is the sovereign Lord of all. There is nothing that God needs from man. In fact, there is nothing that God needs from any of his creation, of all that he created. He does not need anything from it. His creation did not somehow complete him or make him more whole. He was perfectly, infinitely bliss as God, as the triune God before he created anything. And so he needs nothing from creation in the way we need things from creation. In Psalm 50 verse 12, the Lord says, if I were hungry, I would not tell you for the world and its fullness are mine. In other words, I do not need you to keep me alive or to feed me. I do not need anything from you. I am the Lord.

This is why I had us hear the passage from Acts chapter 17, when the apostle Paul preached the gospel to the pagans in Athens, he saw all of their idols, all of the temples there. And the Apostle Paul said this, the God who made the world and everything in it being Lord of heaven and earth, he does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. It is the Lord who gives us life. It is the Lord who feeds us, not the other way around. And so when the Bible calls this bread of the presence a food offering, it was not in the sense that the pagans offered food offerings to their idols. In fact, the bread in the tabernacle was a symbol of the very opposite. It was a symbol of God’s provision for man. You know, later in the history of Israel, that’s given to us in the Old Testament in first Samuel chapter 21, the show bread or the bread of the presence, it became the literal provision for David and his men. On one occasion, you remember that David and his men were fleeing from Saul. Saul was chasing David with a murderous intent to destroy him. And David and his men needed food to eat. So they went to the tabernacle, and Ahimelech was the priest in those days. He had no bread to offer David. All he had was the bread of the presence, these holy loaves of bread in the tabernacle. It was only supposed to be eaten by priests, but since David needed it to eat, the priest gave him the bread. And of course, we learn from Matthew chapter 12 in our Lord’s teaching there that Ahimelech did the right thing. It was right for him to feed David even with this bread that was only for the priests to eat because there was a higher law and that was to show mercy and compassion to those in need. But the point is, is that when the Bible calls this bread a food offering, it doesn’t mean that the Lord was fed by his people, rather the bread was a sign of God’s provision for his people.

But the bread symbolized more than that. The greater significance of the bread was not just that God is the one who gives us our daily bread, but it also represents the truth that God was in the midst of his people. He was present with them. And the Israelites, because he was with them, they could enjoy communion and fellowship with him as their God. Again, from Leviticus chapter 24, verse eight, we read this. It is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever. He’s referring to the bread there, the bread. It is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever. And so the bread had everything to do with the covenant that God made with his people. And that covenant that God entered into with His people, Israel, at the heart of that covenant, the promise of the covenant was that God said to His people, I will be your God, you will be my people, but at the very heart of that was that promise of fellowship, communion. The Israelites could know God as their God and enjoy that blessedness of communing with Him. If you remember, in our look at Exodus back in chapter 24, when the Lord confirmed his covenant with his people, he called Moses and Aaron and his sons and 70 of the elders of Israel up to the top of Mount Sinai. And this is right after he made his covenant with Israel. And Exodus 24, 11 says, they beheld God and ate and drank. And so this covenant that God entered into with his people, this covenant that brought them into a true communion with him as their God, how was this covenant confirmed? How was it sealed? It was with a meal. They shared a meal together. They ate together. The elders ate in the presence of the Lord. Of course, the Lord did not physically actually eat anything, but figuratively speaking, they shared a meal together.

And so, since this bread is in the tabernacle, which is a place where God dwelt among his people, and since the Lord uses the language of covenant to describe the bread, therefore what the bread of the presence stood for above all else was that communion and fellowship that the Israelites had with the Lord their God. The Puritan Matthew Henry puts it kind of quaintly, he says, he supped with them and they with him. But this life-giving communion that God gave to his people, that he brought his people into, this is one thing, at least one thing, that separated the true God from all the idols and the false gods of the nations around Israel, those false gods that they worshiped. God was not and is not a distant and aloof deity. He is not temperamental. He is not unpredictable or arbitrary in his dealings with man. He is not the kind of God that the Israelites had to appease with their sacrifices in the hope that he would not destroy them. That is how the pagans thought about their gods. I happen to be reading right now Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, and throughout that poem, the Greeks are constantly making sacrifices to the gods in the hopes that they might somehow placate them and save themselves from their capricious and impulsive anger. It seems at times the gods of the pagans were more like divine bullies that had to be appeased than they were anything like the true God.

But the worship and the service of the true God, the Lord, was nothing like that. Rather, for the Israelites to serve the Lord, to worship the Lord, to offer these sacrifices was to be a joy because he had made himself known to them. God had revealed himself to the Israelites as a God who is good, who is merciful, who is kind, who is compassionate and loving. This was the God who heard their cries for deliverance as they suffered under bondage and their slavery to Egypt. This was the Lord who answered their cries, who had mercy on them. He chose them of all the nations of the world. He loved them. He saved them. And he did so that he might bring them to himself, that they might find their eternal life, their blessedness, their joy, in having fellowship and communion with him as their God. And so God’s covenant with his people Israel, it was a covenant of communion and fellowship. You know, it’s indicated also by the name of this bread. The bread is called the bread of the presence. In Hebrew, presence, the word is literally face. So you could say the bread of the face, that is the face of God. And so the bread was always present before the face of God. And that stood for the truth that the Israelites lived their lives before the face of God. His face looked upon them. His face shone upon them for good, for blessing. And so the bread represents that fellowship that the Lord brought his people into.

And yet there were limits to that fellowship. There were boundaries that had to be set by God because he is a holy God. And so there were boundaries of how closely the Israelites could approach the Lord. The bread itself was holy. It was only to be eaten by the priests. It was kept in the holy sanctuary. It was kept in the holy place in that sanctuary. Only the holy priests could eat it. They had to eat it in a holy place. And so there were limits. But when God sent his son, Jesus Christ, into the world, he sent him into the world so that we might enjoy a fuller, a greater, a richer communion with him than the Israelites could enjoy under the old covenant as described for us here in Exodus. And with the coming of Christ, with the coming of the son of God, with God himself coming to us in the person of his son, taking on human flesh, coming to live among us, to walk among us, God no longer dwells in a separate tabernacle or a temple. He is no longer separated from us by this curtain that barred our entrance into the most holy place, to that place of most intimate fellowship with the Lord. But he has come to us in his Son, Jesus Christ. When Jesus was crucified, that curtain was torn asunder so that we could come into the presence of God through Jesus Christ. He even dwells in us. He dwells in us by His Holy Spirit.

Now, God is still as holy as He ever was. He is no less holy than He was in the days when He made Himself known to the Israelites. But now, He has given us His Son, Jesus. And being covered with the righteousness of Christ, we may approach Him without fear or dread. In fact, God calls us to draw near to Him, to come to him, to approach him with confidence, with joy, knowing that he receives us. Hebrews 10 says this, therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. So God, through Jesus Christ, he calls us to enter into that holy place in order to enjoy that communion that we now have with him. And so just as the bread was always there on the table in the tabernacle as a reminder to them that God was with the Israelites for their good, he loved them, he was among them, so as a believer in Jesus Christ, you have the promise, the assurance, that God, he is with you. He is always with you. He loves you. He is your father in heaven.

About 10 years ago, I read a book, an autobiographical book written by a young man who grew up in what was an extremely broken home. The author actually went on to become the vice president of the United States, but the book had nothing to do with politics, really. It was just his story of the kind of circumstances he grew up in that were so broken and so devastating to him and to others. And so when he was a kid, his biological father left his home. And from that time on, his mother was either married to or romantically involved with a series of men. And it’s very sad how he tells the story. He got to like some of the men who lived in his home for a time, but he never got too close to them because he knew that someday they would be gone. And this man would be replaced by the next man who would be his mom’s boyfriend or husband. And as he writes in the book, he looks back on his childhood. He sees that what he really, really wanted was just a dad who would always be there for him, that he could count on, who would never leave.

And maybe some of you have had a similar experience. Maybe you’ve never really known what it is to be loved by a human father, one who is there always, who never leaves. The gospel is the good news that Christ has done everything for us that we might come to know the true father, the father who is always there, whose love is steadfast, who loves us with a perfect love, who has loved us from all eternity, and who will love us for all eternity. The gospel is the good news that God sent his only begotten son into the world that you and I might be adopted as his children, and to know that perfect fatherly love that only God can truly give to us. Jesus laid down his life for sinners, sinners such as you and me, that we might be forgiven, that we might be brought to God. And we come to him now in Jesus Christ, not as those who deserve condemnation. Yes, we do, but we are no longer under condemnation because Jesus has taken that for us. But we come to God as our father. He receives us as his son, as his daughter. And so one thing that the gospel means for you is that God is always there. He is always there. He has promised, I will never leave you nor forsake you. He is a perfect father. And if your hope is in Jesus Christ, this is what God is to you, your father in heaven, the one that you can come to always at any time and enjoy that perfect fellowship with him through Jesus Christ. And because He is your Father in heaven, His love for you will be your joy and your life forever and ever. Let’s pray.

The post The Bread of the Presence appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

Our Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 25, verses 10 through 22. And this is the infallible and inerrant word of God. Exodus 25, 10 through 22. They shall make an ark of acacia wood, two cubits and a half shall be its length, a cubit and a half its breadth, and a cubit and a half its height. You shall overlay it with pure gold inside and outside, shall you overlay it, and you shall make on it a molding of gold around it. You shall cast four rings of gold for it and put them on its four feet, two rings on the one side of it and two rings on the other side of it. You shall make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. And you shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark to carry the ark by them. The poles shall remain in the rings of the ark. They shall not be taken from it. And you shall put into the ark the testimony that I shall give you.

You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold. Two cubits and a half shall be its length and a cubit and a half its breadth. And you shall make two cherubim of gold. Of hammered work shall you make them on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end and one cherub on the other end. Of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another. Toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you. There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.

Keep your place there in Exodus and turn with me to Romans chapter three for our New Testament reading. Romans 3, 21 through 26. Romans 3, 21 through 26. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

It’s been a couple of weeks since we were last in Exodus. And so just to review what’s happening at this point in the book, we’ll just set the context for you. The Israelites are at Mount Sinai. The Lord has just made his covenant with them. And God has called Moses by himself to come up to the top of the mountain to meet with him and to receive these instructions that he will give to him. And Moses tells us that he entered the glory cloud, that cloud that was on top of Mount Sinai in which God’s presence dwelt. He went into the presence of the Lord there. He was there for 40 days and 40 nights.

And the first thing that the Lord told Moses was that he was to take up a special offering of all the various materials that would go into making the tabernacle and all the various parts of the tabernacle. And then in verses eight and nine, the Lord tells Moses to tell the Israelites to build this tabernacle exactly after the pattern of the one that the Lord showed to Moses on the top of the mountain. And so in verses eight and nine, which we did not read this morning, but just right before our passage, verses eight and nine say, and let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst, exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and of all its furniture, so you shall make it.

And so the Lord tells Moses how to build this tabernacle. And then verse 10, chapter 25, and all the way to the end of chapter 30, almost all of that consists of the very detailed thorough instructions that the Lord gave to Moses on how to build the tabernacle, how to construct its furniture, that is the various items that were in the tabernacle, how to build the priest’s garments, how to make the altar of incense and the anointing oil and all of that. Many people have made the observation that whereas it took God only six days to create the entire universe, it took him 40 days to explain to Moses exactly how the tabernacle was to be constructed.

So clearly, this is a matter of great importance to God. And one reason for that, one reason why the Lord gave Moses such detailed, such lengthy instructions on how to build this sanctuary was because this would be the place that the Lord would dwell among his people. Only God could determine what the sanctuary or the tabernacle would be in which he would dwell with his people here on earth. And so this was not to be constructed by the imaginations of the Israelites or by their own design or thoughts, but it was God’s house and He would build it, or He would have it built according to His design.

But not only that, but the tabernacle and everything in it and everything associated with the tabernacle also served another purpose, not only to be the dwelling place of God among his people, but the tabernacle was a source of revelation. It was revelation to the people of Israel concerning the truth of God. The tabernacle not only communicated the truth concerning the character of God, what kind of God he was, what he was like as God, but it was also symbolic in many ways of the salvation that one day God would accomplish for his people through his son, Jesus Christ.

And so the tabernacle revealed to the Israelites the truth concerning the gospel, concerning Christ. In fact, one author says this, he says, every detail points to some aspect of the character and work of the person of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and in its complete form, it is probably, he’s talking about the tabernacle here, it is probably the most comprehensive, detailed revelation of Jesus, the Son of God, and the plan of salvation in the entire Old Testament. Now, whether that is true or not, perhaps, but whatever we may think of that, the truth is that the tabernacle was indeed a revelation of Jesus Christ and of his coming, of his work, of his person, all that he would do for our salvation. And so it is very significant, very important for us to spend some time looking at the details of this tabernacle.

Now, just by itself, as a structure, just taking it for what it is, the tabernacle wasn’t particularly awe-inspiring. It wasn’t a particularly imposing or impressive building. Our family, one time, was able to visit a life-sized recreation of the tabernacle. It was in Amish country, in Pennsylvania, and someone had built, as best as he could, a replication of what the tabernacle might have looked like, according to the dimensions and everything that are given to us in scripture. And it was very interesting. It was very beneficial to see it and to walk into it and see what that might have been like in those days.

But the building itself didn’t leave the kind of impression on us that you might have after you see some magnificent structure like the Cathedral of Notre Dame or the Taj Mahal or the Burj Khalifa. That’s the world’s tallest building in Dubai. And so the tabernacle itself was rather modest in size. It wasn’t awe-inspiring just by virtue of its appearance. But what makes it truly awe-inspiring, what makes the tabernacle truly the most glorious structure that has ever been built by human hands is this, that it was both the dwelling place of God on earth among his people, and it was a revelation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, before his coming. And so that’s why we will take some time to study the tabernacle because of what it reveals to us about God and about the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we’ll start with what is the most important part of the tabernacle, the place where the Lord started in giving his instructions to Moses, and that is the Ark of the Testimony or the Ark of God, the Ark of the Covenant. And so first of all, let’s just get a picture in our minds of what this ark looked like, because it’s described for us here. And so let’s try to get a mental image of what this ark would have looked like to us. In verse 10, the Lord says to Moses, they shall make an ark of acacia wood, two cubits and a half shall be its length, a cubit and a half its breadth, and a cubit and a half its height.

And so the ark was basically a chest or a box. It was made from the wood of acacia trees and getting wood from acacia trees would have been very easy for the Israelites where they happen to be in the wilderness at this time. The dimensions of it are given in cubits. A cubit is about 18 inches. It’s the length from the elbow of a man’s arm all the way up to the tip of his finger. About 18 inches, give or take, or so. And so the ark, if you can imagine, it would have been just under four feet long and just over two feet wide and two feet tall.

It was covered with pure gold. It rested on four feet, and on each of these feet was a ring so that poles could be inserted into the ring so that the ark could be carried without being touched. And the reason for that, as we’ll see, is the ark was holy and no human was to touch it. God designed the ark to contain the two tablets on which he had written with his very own finger the law, the 10 commandments that he gave to the people of Israel. That’s why it is called the ark of the testimony. Look at verse 16, or that’s why it’s referred to as containing the testimony. Verse 16 says, and you shall put into the ark the testimony that I shall give you. And so the testimony—those are the two tablets with the Ten Commandments.

And it’s also why the Ark is called the Ark of the Covenant, because the Ten Commandments were the substance of the covenant that God made with his people Israel at Mount Sinai. And because the Ark contained the Ten Commandments, it is called the Ark of the Covenant. We know from other scripture, from the book of Hebrews, that the Ark also contained the jar of manna that the Lord instructed the Israelites to set aside, and it also contained the staff of Aaron that budded.

On the top of the ark is a lid—was what was called the Mercy Seat and we’ll talk more about the Mercy Seat in a few minutes. But this lid or covering was made of pure gold and on top of the Mercy Seat were two cherubim which were also made of pure gold and they were all made of one piece with the lid or the cover, the Mercy Seat. Well what do we know about these cherubim? Well they’re not the cute chubby little creatures that may come to your mind when you hear the word cherubim. These were angelic creatures. They were very often in the presence of the Lord. So they were there with the Lord in the presence of his holiness and they kind of served as guardians of holy places.

The first time that we meet the cherubim is in Genesis chapter 3, after the Lord cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. If you remember, to the east of the garden at the entrance, he placed cherubim there to guard the entrance. He also placed a flaming sword that turned this way and that in order to guard the way to the Tree of Life. And so the cherubim were God’s angels, they were God’s attendants, and they guarded that which was holy. And in this case, they guarded the Ark of the Covenant. The most outstanding feature of these two cherubim is that they are looking down. They are not looking up, but they are looking down, and that’s because God was above them. They are bowing their heads in reverence and awe before the Lord. So these two cherubim are looking down as they guard the Ark of the Covenant.

Since we are considering the Ark of the Covenant this morning, I just can’t help but mention that when I was a kid, my very favorite movie of all time was Raiders of the Lost Ark. I wouldn’t rely on that movie for a lot of factual information about the Ark of God. No, the Ark wasn’t almost captured by the Nazis. And no, the Ark isn’t being stored in some government warehouse in the deserts of Nevada. As cool as that may be, that is not true. But if you can remember from the movie what the Ark looked like, you get a pretty good sense of what it probably looked like in real life. It seems that the producers of the movie tried to make it as close to the biblical description as possible. And so if you can picture for that—picture in your mind what the Ark looked like in that movie, you get a sense of what it looked like at this time as well.

But far more important than what the Ark looked like was what the Ark represented, what it stood for, for the people of God. And there are two truths, two spiritual truths that the Ark symbolized that we will consider this morning. And the first truth is this. The Ark signified, it represented to the people of Israel God’s presence among them. In fact, God was with them right there above the Ark of the Covenant. So God’s presence with his people. Look at verse 22. The Lord says, there, I will meet with you. And from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.

And so the Lord would make his presence, he would be, he would cause his presence to be right on top of the ark, above the cherubim. That’s why the Old Testament refers to the Lord at times as being enthroned on the cherubim. Psalm 99.1, he sits enthroned upon the cherubim. Let the earth quake. And that was the whole point of the entire tabernacle was to tell the Israelites that the Lord was with them. It was where the Lord was actually with his people, in the tabernacle. And the specific place where the Lord dwelt was in that most holy place in the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies. And in that Holy of Holies, the place where his presence was, was on top of the Ark of the Covenant.

And if there was anything that set apart the people of Israel from all the nations of the world, it was just that, that among them, God was with them, that Almighty God, the God who is infinite and eternal, the one who created the heavens and the earth, the one who is Lord over all that he has made, the one who is high and lifted up, the one who is enthroned in heaven, the one who inhabits in eternity, that this God, he graciously chose to live, to dwell among his people, that his presence would be with them on earth, among the people of Israel. And that is one of the spiritual realities that defines us as the people of God today, that as Christians, as those who have been redeemed by God through His Son, Jesus Christ, we have the blessing, the privilege of being a people among whom the Lord dwells.

God is with us. He is with us as our God, and we are His people. We saw a couple of weeks ago from the Gospel of John that John says about Jesus, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And if you remember that word that is translated dwelt among us in the Greek, in the original Greek, it literally means he tabernacled among us. He made his tabernacle among us. And so God is with us even in a far greater way than he was with his people Israel. Now he was with his people Israel in the Old Testament. He truly did dwell among them. They saw his glory. He was present with them in the tabernacle, but in a far greater way, God has come to make his dwelling among us.

When he took on human nature, when he became one of us, he became man and lived among us. And although Jesus has since been exalted to the right hand of God in glory, although he is now at God’s right hand, reigning over heaven and earth with all the dominion and authority and rule that the Lord has given to his son, Jesus, nevertheless, Jesus is still truly and really as present with us as he was with his disciples when he walked among them in the world. He is with us by his Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 3:16 says, do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in you?

And this is the truth that is a tremendous comfort to us when we experience suffering in this life, in times of adversity, in times of confusion, when all seems dark, when we are grieving, when we are suffering, God is always with you in all of that. He promises that as a believer in Jesus Christ, he will never leave you nor forsake you, that he is as truly with you as Jesus was with his people when he was here on earth. And so as a Christian, you are never God forsaken. It may feel that way at times, it may seem that way at times, but Christ is always present with you.

Robin and I went to a funeral yesterday morning, a funeral for a young Christian woman. She was 22 years old. She died after a five month long battle with cancer. And her dad asked her before she died if she was afraid to die. And her answer to her dad was, I’m not scared to die because I know that I’m going to be with the Lord. And that was her hope as a believer in Jesus Christ, that at her death, which at the time was coming very soon for her, that she would be brought into the glorious presence of her savior, Jesus.

And so it was a funeral that was very sad, but it was also very hopeful. But what she said was true even before she died. She was yet to be in the glorious presence of Jesus, but as a believer in Jesus Christ, the Lord was with her even in this life, even in her suffering. He was present with her through all that she endured up to the day that she died. And if your faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ, that is the promise that he gives to you as well. The son of God who loved you, the son of God who came from heaven and earth to save you, to redeem you, the son of God who gave his life for you, who offered himself on the cross in your place for your salvation. He is with you. He has not left you. He has not abandoned you, but he is with you throughout your days in this world. John 14:23, our Lord says in that verse, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. Jesus, the Son of God, the Father, they come and they make their home in you as a believer in Jesus Christ. And so God is with us just as he was with the people of Israel then.

And there’s one particular aspect of this truth that God is with us that is represented by the Ark of the Covenant, and that is this, that the Lord is with us as his people in order to give us victory over our enemies. The book of Numbers tells us that whenever the people of Israel moved from one location to another in their wilderness wanderings, that Moses would proclaim these words as the Ark of the Covenant set out to go with the people of Israel. This is what Moses would say. He said, arise, O Lord, and let your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate you flee before you.

Later when the Israelites crossed the Jordan River in order to go into the land of promise to begin driving out the Canaanites who lived there in order to take that land that God had promised to give them, it was the Ark of the Covenant that led the way as a general leading his armies into battle. And when the Israelites captured the city of Jericho, as they marched around the walls of that city, before they blew the trumpets which caused the walls to fall down so that they took over the city of Jericho, the ark of the covenant was in their midst.

And so the ark stood for the people of Israel, not just as the presence of God, their savior with them, but as the presence of their conquering king, the one who would fight their battles for them, the one who would give them victory over their enemies. And so the truth that the Lord was with his people to fight for his people, to be their champion, that was also signified by the Ark of the Covenant.

However, it was not as though the Ark itself was a kind of magic charm that forced the Lord to do the will of the Israelites. That was a mistake on the part of the Israelites to view the Ark in that way. And they found that out the hard way. You remember from the book of 1 Samuel, how one time the Israelites were fighting the Philistines, and the elders of Israel, apart from any direction from the Lord, they took it upon themselves to take the Ark of the Covenant and to bring it into the camp of the Israelite armies, thinking that that would be a certain destruction for their enemies.

And the Philistines thought the same thing. Everybody thought that the Philistines would certainly be destroyed because the Ark of God was with the people, the armies of Israel. But you know what happens? Instead of certain victory, Israel suffered a resounding defeat from their enemies. They were routed. Worst of all, the Ark of God was captured by the enemies of Israel.

I mentioned the movie, The Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the whole premise of that movie was that if the Nazis could only get their hands on the lost Ark of the Covenant, they could then rule the world because none of the armies of the world could stand before this Ark that they had found. And that’s exactly how the Israelites thought. If we can have the Ark, there is no military force that can stop us. But they misunderstood. The ark was only a means of showing forth the power and presence of God when he was pleased to dwell with his people and to bless his people when he was pleased to do so. And if the people of God were unfaithful, if they were unbelieving, if they were like the Philistines, an ungodly and unbelieving people, the Lord would not be with them with his ark for their victory.

And there is a parallel in our own lives today and that is this, that we cannot presume on the presence of God to be with us for blessing simply because we profess to be Christians or simply because we say we believe in Christ or because we wear a cross or because we have some superficial association with the church. God will not be used as a magic charm in order to fulfill our desires or to accomplish our will.

But the good news is, is that if you truly belong to Christ by faith, if by the grace of God you have repented of your sin, if you have turned to Jesus, if you have entrusted yourself to Him as the only one who can save you from sin and guilt, if you are resting in Him as your Savior, then the promise is for you that Jesus is with you. He will always be with you. And He is with you in Jesus Christ as your conquering King. Just as the ark signified for the Lord or for the people of Israel that the Lord fought for them, so Jesus Christ, he is your victor over your enemies. Christ has conquered for you sin and death forever. He has conquered for you the powers of Satan and hell forever. And so he is with you, he is for you, for your blessedness and joy forever and ever.

So that’s the first spiritual reality that was signified by the Ark of the Covenant, that the Lord was with his people. Secondly, the Ark of the Covenant signified that God provided atonement for his people. So God was present with the Israelites, but he was present with them as he truly is, that is, as God. He was present with them in the fullness of his divine holiness and righteousness. And that was a problem for the Israelites, because by nature, they were not righteous, they were not holy. Just like us, they were sinners.

That explains the reason that the poles were put into the rings on the side of the Ark, never to be removed, because the Ark was never to be touched. No human hand could touch the Ark of God, because it was a place where the Lord dwelt. It was holy. It shared in the holiness of God himself. In fact, the holiness of the Ark is shown by the fact that it was never even seen by ordinary Israelites. It was only seen by one Israelite and that only once a year when the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies to offer sacrifices there.

Most of you are familiar with the story of Uzzah in the Old Testament. When King David was bringing the Ark up to Jerusalem, Uzzah was one of the men who was driving the carts that the Ark was placed on as it was being transported to Jerusalem. And that in itself was a mistake. The cart was not, or the Ark was not supposed to be carried on a cart, but it was supposed to be carried with its poles. But the second mistake was much worse. When the oxen stumbled, the cart tipped, and to make sure that the ark didn’t fall off the cart, Uzzah, instinctively, he reached out his hand to touch the ark to steady it, and as soon as he touched it, the Lord struck him down dead. And the Israelites learned their lesson. The next time they carried the ark, they were using the poles to carry it, just like the Lord had told them to do.

But the ark was holy because God is holy. This was the Ark of the Covenant. As long as the Lord dwelt among his people in the tabernacle, this was the location, the presence of a holy God on earth. So how could a holy God dwell among a sinful people? Well, the answer was in the Ark itself, or better yet, the answer was on the Ark itself. The answer was that covering or lid that was on top of the Ark, what is called the mercy seat. The phrase mercy seat, that is a translation of a Hebrew word. The root of that Hebrew word and its verbal forms means something like to cover over sin or to pacify or to make propitiation.

And so the word that’s translated mercy seat denotes something that satisfies the wrath of God, something that propitiates or deals with the wrath of God in order to put away sin, so that there can be true atonement, true reconciliation, true restoration between a holy God and a sinful people. That’s why in the New International Version, if you read that version, it’s not called the mercy seat, it’s called an atonement cover, which is a very good translation, because it was the place where atonement was made between God and his people.

And we know that that is the case with the mercy seat or the atonement cover because of the yearly sacrifice and cleansing that the Lord commanded the Israelites to do on the Day of Atonement. On the Day of Atonement, among other sacrifices, the high priest would take the blood of a bull that he had slain as a sin offering for himself, and he would take that blood of the bull that was slaughtered, he would take it into the most holy place of the tabernacle, and there he would sprinkle the mercy seat seven times with the blood of the bull. And then the high priest would take the blood of a goat and he would sacrifice that or he would sacrifice the goat as a sin offering for the whole people of Israel. And he would take the blood of that goat. And again, he would go into the most holy place and he would sprinkle the mercy seat with that blood in the very same way.

Leviticus 16:16 says, thus he shall make atonement for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins. And so he shall do for the tent of meeting, which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleannesses. In other words, because of the blood that was shed and then was sprinkled on the mercy seat, the sins of the people of Israel were atoned for. They were forgiven so that a holy God could dwell in the presence of an unholy sinful people.

And when you consider that it was the Ark of the Covenant where this mercy seat was placed, and at the same time, it was within the Ark of the Covenant that the 10 commandments were placed, you have this most wonderful combination of symbols. In the Ark, you have the 10 commandments, which represent the righteousness of God, the holiness of God, and at the same time, a reminder to the Israelites that they have broken God’s law, that they are not holy.

But on top of that was the mercy seat. The mercy seat that was sprinkled and covered with the blood of sacrifices, that turned aside, that propitiated the righteous wrath of God against an unholy people. One author put it this way, when God came down to dwell with his people, he would not see the law that they had broken, first of all, but he would see the saving blood of an atoning sacrifice. And so here’s a wonderful picture in the ark itself of God’s grace towards his people. We have broken the law that was in the ark and yet the blood shed on the mercy seat makes atonement for us.

And of course, this was only a—this was only a picture of a greater spiritual reality. That is the promise that one day God would provide the blood of a greater sacrifice, blood that would not need to be shed year after year after year, but blood that would be shed once for all. The blood not of a bull or a goat, but the blood of a man, a holy man, a divine man, a God man, the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed upon the cross when he suffered and died there, that is the blood that makes true atonement, that truly brings the forgiveness of sins, that propitiates, that satisfies the wrath of God against us for our sin.

Earlier, I read to you from Romans chapter three. In Romans chapter three, the Apostle Paul speaks of the death of Christ for our redemption. And in verse 25, he says this, speaking of Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. Propitiation—it’s a big word. It is something that satisfies the wrath of God. And here it is the blood of Jesus or Jesus who satisfies the wrath of God because of our sin.

And here’s the wonderful thing. The Greek word that Paul uses to name what Jesus has done, the word propitiation, that word in Greek is the very same Greek word that is used to translate the Hebrew word for mercy seat. In other words, what this verse in Romans, Romans 3, verse 25 is saying is that the true mercy seat, the true atonement cover was not the lid on the ark, but it was the one to whom it testified. It was Jesus Christ. He is the true mercy seat, the one who takes away our sin, the one who atones for our sin.

And so the Ark of the Covenant then, it was a declaration of the gospel to the people of Israel. It was proclaiming the good news that one day there would be bloodshed that would take away their sin forever. And Paul says that God put forward Christ to be that atoning sacrifice. God put him forward. Another way to say that would be that God publicly set him forth. God publicly declared he has set forth Jesus his son as the means of redemption for sinners. No more is the mercy seat hidden away in a tabernacle behind a veil. No more is it hidden so that no one could see it except the high priest. But God has publicly put forth his son Jesus for all to see, so that all who come to him, everyone who believes in him, might have eternal life.

And that is true for you, for you who hear my words today. If you belong to Christ by faith, if you have come to him as your savior, your sins are forgiven. The blood that Jesus shed atones for your sins. God’s wrath has been propitiated. He’s been satisfied. He no longer looks upon you as you are in your sin, but he looks upon you as you are in Jesus Christ, forgiven, cleansed, and restored to him.

And all of this shows us one of the most important truths of scripture when it comes to our salvation, and that is this, it is God who saves us. When we consider what God had done for the Israelites in showing them the work of salvation that he would accomplish one day through his son, when we consider what Jesus Christ has done for us, all we can say is, to God alone be the praise, to God alone be the credit for our salvation. It is God who designed the ark. This was not the product of Moses or the Israelites. It was God who provided the sacrificial blood. It was God who sent his son, Jesus Christ, into the world. The incarnation, the life, the obedience, the suffering, the death, the resurrection of Jesus Christ for man’s salvation from beginning to end, it is all the work of God. It is not the work of man.

And so your part in all of this is simply to come to Jesus, to entrust yourself to him, to believe that he is the one who alone can save you from your sin. And having come to him, you have the promise that he dwells with you, that his spirit abides in you. And so Jesus, he is our mercy seat. Go to him and find mercy and grace with God. Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 25, verses one through nine. Exodus 25, one through nine. This is the infallible and inerrant word of God.

The Lord said to Moses, speak to the people of Israel that they take for me a contribution from every man whose heart moves him, you shall receive the contribution for me. And this is the contribution that you shall receive from them. Gold, silver and bronze, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twine linen, goat’s hair, tanned ram’s skins, goat skins, acacia wood, oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, onyx stones and stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breast piece. And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst, exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and all of its furniture, so you shall make it.

Let’s turn now to 2 Corinthians chapter nine for the New Testament reading. 2 Corinthians nine verses six through nine. I decided to shorten the New Testament reading from what’s printed there in the bulletin, Second Corinthians chapter 9 verses 6 through 9.

The point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. As it is written, he has distributed freely, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. So you can turn back to Exodus chapter 25 for our sermon text this morning.

Last week for Easter Sunday, we took a break from the book of Exodus so that we could focus our thoughts on the resurrection of Christ and the hope that we have for our own resurrection when the Lord Jesus returns from heaven. And so today we are returning to our study of the book of Exodus. And we are considering a subject this morning from our passage, and it may feel like something of a letdown after having just celebrated the glorious truth of the resurrection of Christ.

And that’s because our subject today is our giving to the church. It is though we’re going from the sublime to the mundane, from the hope of the resurrection, the glorious reality of the resurrection, to the Christian’s responsibility to give to the church.

And I had that thought in my mind this past week, and I noticed that there was actually good biblical precedence for the seemingly abrupt transition from the resurrection glory to the much more prosaic subject of giving. In first Corinthians, the apostle Paul, he spends all the chapter 15 unpacking the wonders, the glories of the resurrection of Jesus and declaring that because of his resurrection, we have this promise, this hope of victory over death.

And so he extols the wonders of the resurrection of Jesus. And then immediately at the beginning of chapter 16, he starts to give instructions to the Corinthians about their giving to the church. And so in one moment, Paul takes us up to heaven, so to speak, and then the next moment, he brings us back down to earth, as if he were saying, and speaking of the resurrection of Christ, by the way, set aside some money every Sunday so that when I come, I’m ready to pick it up to take it to Jerusalem.

But the fact that Paul doesn’t hesitate to deal with the subject of giving in virtually the same breath in which he deals with the subject of the resurrection shows us that in God’s eyes, our giving to the church has everything to do with the grace and the salvation that God has given to us. In other words, the Bible doesn’t treat the topic of giving as something that is less spiritual or less spiritually significant or important than any other truth that is connected with our salvation and our worship of God. And so our giving to the church has very much to do with our redemption, with our knowing God, serving him, worshiping him as our God.

You see this truth also in the context of our passage this morning. A few weeks ago, for a few weeks, we were in chapter 24 of Exodus. And if you remember, that chapter describes for us a very, very important event in the history of Israel. That was this worship service in which God made his covenant with his people Israel at Mount Sinai. And as part of that covenant making worship service, the Lord called the leaders of Israel up to Mount Sinai and he revealed his glory to them. He gave them a vision of himself, of his heavenly majesty to the elders of Israel.

And after that, God called Moses back up to Mount Sinai. And Moses describes that the appearance of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain. And then out of the cloud, God calls Moses to come into his very presence. And as we’ll see in the weeks to come, as the Lord speaks to Moses face to face, he tells him about all of the details of this tabernacle that the Israelites are to construct so that God can dwell among them.

But the very first thing that the Lord says to Moses after he calls him into his presence, the very first thing that God says after he has revealed his covenant or made his covenant with Israel, after he has revealed his glory to the elders of Israel, the very first thing Moses or that God says to Moses is this, Moses, I need you to take up a special offering.

So giving is something that is very important to God. God has a great concern that his people should give of their resources to him and to the work that he is doing in the world, his work of salvation. And God has a great concern for the way in which we are to give our wealth to him. Giving to the church, giving to the Lord is not supposed to be a burden, a grim duty, a joyless sacrifice. Rather, there are many blessings that come to us as we willingly, joyfully, generously give to God some of the wealth that he has first given to us. And as we look at this passage this morning, we’ll consider several of the blessings, of the benefits that come to us as we give to the Lord.

First of all, when you give to the church, you bear witness to your faith in Christ. One way in which you bear witness or testify to your faith in Christ as you give to the church is that in giving to the church, you are saying, you are testifying that you belong to God, that you belong to Christ, that Jesus is your Lord and Savior. Notice in this passage in verse 2 that twice the Lord says that these contributions are for him. He says in verse 2, speak to the people of Israel that they take for me a contribution. From every man whose heart moves him, you shall receive the contribution for me.

This was a special offering that God commanded the Israelites to give. And they were to give these offerings, these contributions to the Lord himself, to him. I’m always a little nervous when it comes to preaching on the subject of giving to the church, especially if we happen to have visitors coming to the church, and that’s because in the minds of many people, what the church really wants, or even worse, what the pastor really wants is other people’s money. And when you consider how many corrupt ministers or preachers or televangelists there have been who have enriched themselves from what the people have given to their churches or organizations, it’s understandable that a lot of people think that way. A lot of people have this idea that the church is mostly interested in their money.

But when you give to the church and the church is faithful with those offerings, you are really giving to God. You are not giving to man, but you are giving to God. The Lord commanded the Israelites to give their contributions to him. And that’s because they belong to the Lord. The Israelites did not belong to Moses. They did not belong to the elders, but they belonged to God. He was their Lord. He was their savior. He was the God who created them. He was the God who saved them from their bondage in Egypt. He was the God who entered into covenant with them. He was the God who promised to be their God and to make them his people forever and ever.

And so by giving their contributions to the Lord in response to this call, the Israelites were confessing that truth that the Lord is my God. All that I am is due to Him. All that I have, I have received from Him. He is God. He is my God. And in the same way, when you give to the church, you are confirming and expressing this truth that God is your God and your Savior. You are acknowledging as you give to the church that you belong to the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, that you have been purchased by His blood shed on the cross, that you are His by virtue of His saving work, that you have been adopted by God as His son or daughter. And you bear witness to all of those truths when you give to God through giving to the church.

And also when you give to Christ in that way, as a demonstration of your trust in Him, as a confession that He is your Lord and Savior, as a acknowledgment that all that you have, you have first received from Him, this pleases the Lord. This pleases God when you give to Him in this way.

And so that’s one way in which you bear witness to your faith in Christ when you give to the church. Another way is that by giving to the church, you demonstrate, you show that you trust in His promises to provide for you, that you believe, you have confidence in what He has said in His word, that He will give you in this life all that you need.

Let’s look at what the Lord called the Israelites to give to Him. So I’m gonna read verses three through seven. And this is the contribution that you shall receive from them. Gold, silver and bronze, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twine linen, goat’s hairs, tan ram skins, goat skins, acacia wood, oil for the lambs, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, onyx stones and stones for setting for the ephod and for the breast piece.

So these are all the materials that would be needed in the construction of the tabernacle. And as we’ll see in the chapters to come, the tabernacle had various kinds of furniture in it. There was the Ark of the Covenant. There was the golden lamp stand. There was the table for the showbread. There were curtains in the tabernacle. There were frames and bars that supported it. There were different kinds of coverings that went over the top of it. There was the whole courtyard with the curtains that went around the courtyard. In all of that, there was also the garments that would be made for the priests. And all of that was to be made from these various materials.

And you’ll notice that almost everything that is listed here was truly valuable. Of course there is gold, silver, and bronze. There is, we may not think much of it, blue and purple and scarlet yarns, but in fact these things were also extremely valuable at that time. And that raises the question, well, how in the world did these Israelites who just weeks ago were slaves in Egypt, how is it that they have become so wealthy with all of these nice and expensive items?

Well, it’s because the night that they left Egypt, at the Lord’s command, they asked the Egyptians to give them their valuables, their treasures, and the Lord gave them favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so they let them have what they asked for. It was probably the case that after the 10 plagues, the Egyptians were so happy to see the Israelites go that they were more than willing to give them their gold and silver and all of this stuff. It wasn’t so much of a goodbye gift as it was a good riddance gift. Please don’t come back.

But these were basically all the wealth that the Israelites had in the world. These things that they received from the Egyptians. They wouldn’t have had very much else because they were impoverished slaves. But now the Lord is saying through Moses to his people, give me your gold, your silver, your bronze, your blue and purple and scarlet yarns, your fine twine linen, all of these expensive, valuable things that you have received from the Egyptians. Now I want you to give them back to me.

And the typical Israelite probably would have thought at that time, but wait a minute, this is all the wealth that I have in the world. This was my savings for getting my family’s feet on the ground once we got into the promised land. And so the Lord was calling his people to give sacrificially. This was not an easy thing for the Israelites to give up these expensive items that they had received from the Egyptians. But as they did so, they were showing that their trust was in God. They gave sacrificially of what they had received, trusting, believing that God would provide for them, that they would not go hungry, that they would not go unclothed, that they would not go without shelter. And so as the people gave up their wealth in response to this call, they were showing forth their belief, their trust that God would provide for them.

In the teaching of our Savior Jesus, he said that one of the true distinguishing marks between one of his disciples, a Christian, one thing that would separate a believer in Christ from a pagan, from a Gentile, would be that the Christian would trust in the care of his heavenly Father for the things that he needed for this life. And so Jesus taught this in Matthew 6, therefore do not be anxious, saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Jesus says, God will provide for you. Do not be anxious.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow. How many of you have mastered that one? Not to be anxious, not to worry, not to be concerned how you’ll make ends meet, how you’ll provide for yourself and so on. I certainly haven’t mastered that, but Jesus gives us every reason why we can give to the church with perfect confidence, perfect trust that he will give to us, he will provide for us everything that we need in this life. And because our giving is an exercise of our trust in Christ, our faith in his promises, one indication of our spiritual health is how faithful we are to give to the church.

A healthy Christian is a giving Christian. He gives as he is able. He gives cheerfully, sacrificially, generously. On the other hand, a Christian who holds everything back, who gives nothing to the church except maybe a small pittance, a nominal amount, that is an indication of a real spiritual problem. His heart or her heart is not in the right place.

At least in this point in the history of Israel, the Israelites, their heart was in the right place. Later in Exodus, we read that the people responded so generously, so positively to this call for this special offering, that the workmen who were building the tabernacle, they told Moses that they were receiving too many materials, that the people were giving too much. And so Moses had to announce to everyone, stop giving, nobody give anything anymore. We have everything we need for building the sanctuary, we can’t handle anymore.

Have you ever been in a church, or have you ever heard a pastor say that? Stop giving, you’re overwhelming us with your generosity. I haven’t heard that before. Unlike with Israel, the church today usually doesn’t struggle with an overabundance of offerings. In fact, if you look online, the different kinds of studies and surveys show that typically the average Christian or churchgoer gives somewhere between two, to 4% of his income to the church. That’s not a huge amount, to put it mildly, at least for most people, that would be far below what they could really give if they were giving as generously as they should.

But how is your spiritual health in this area? How are you doing in this way? If someone was able to see all of your resources, your finances, how you handle your money, and not just your money, but your possessions, your time, your energy, all your resources, would they say of you, here is someone who truly believes what he says, that he believes in the Lord, he trusts in God to provide for him. Look how he gives himself, herself, look how he gives his resources to the church. Or would they say, well, he says he belongs to Jesus, but he spends all of his money on himself. He spends all of his time on his own interests and hobbies and pursuits. And that seems strange to me. How important really is his faith to him if he’s wholly devoted to serving and pleasing himself with what he has? And so giving to the church is a way for you to bear witness to your faith and trust in Christ.

Secondly, when you give to the church, you give expression to your joy in Christ. You’ll notice in this passage that strictly speaking, the Lord did not command anybody to give him anything. Rather, Moses was to tell them this. Verse two, from every man whose heart moves him, you shall receive the contribution for me. And throughout Exodus, we see this idea that the people were to give from a willing heart as their heart moved them. Moses says in chapter 35 verse five, whoever is of a generous heart, let him bring the Lord’s contribution. In chapter 35 verse 21, and they came, everyone whose heart stirred him and everyone whose spirit moved him and brought the Lord’s contribution. And so this was a truly, this was a free will offering.

But compare that with the other Old Testament teaching about giving, which is the tithe. The tithe was the rule that the Israelites were to give a 10th or 10% of their produce to the Lord. When it came to the tithe, that was something that was strictly commanded. That was the law. There was no language like every man whose heart moves him shall bring the tithe. Now, of course, the Israelites were to bring the tithe with glad hearts, with generous hearts as well, but the tithe was a law that they were to obey. It was not something like, if you feel like it, if your heart moves you, if you are stirred to give, then give.

And when the New Testament addresses this issue of a Christian’s giving to the church, the Old Testament model that the New Testament looks to is not the giving of the tithe, the 10% law, a rule that 10% is the standard for giving for Christians, but the New Testament looks to this other principle that we see here in Exodus, that people are to give, God’s people are to give to God freely, generously, joyfully, as their heart moves them. And so Paul had this passage in mind. He had other passages from the Old Testament in mind when he says in 2 Corinthians 9, 7, each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And so it’s not 10%, but it’s give cheerfully, give generously.

When I lived in the state of Montana in the mid 1990s, for a few years, there was no numerical speed limit. On the highways, at least during the daytime, the speed limit was literally reasonable and prudent. And so when you saw a highway sign, there was no number on it. It just said, daytime speed limit, reasonable and prudent. Now, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, that didn’t last too long because, surprise, surprise, people who like to drive really fast and the police had different interpretations of what reasonable and prudent actually meant.

But when it comes to our giving to the church, as Christians living in the new covenant age, in the same way, God has not given us a numerical standard as the rule for our giving. Now, 10%, the tithe, that is a good rule of thumb to be sure, but many people could give more than 10%, and there may be some people who cannot give as much as 10%. But the standard that God gives us is not a number. It’s not reasonable and prudent, but it’s something like joyful and sacrificial. That’s the rule for God’s giving for his people, joyful and sacrificial.

Well, what does that mean for you in particular? How much should you give? Well, to answer that question, the first thing you do is by the grace of God, you fill your heart with the truth of what God has given to you. You fill your heart with the truths of God’s saving grace to you, how he has loved you, how he has redeemed you, that he has given you his son. You rejoice in the forgiveness of your sins, the new life that he has given you, the hope of glory.

And then having your heart filled with thanksgiving and gratitude to God for what he’s given to you, you give to God what you want, what you want. But you will give joyfully and sacrificially from that frame of mind, from that heart, and if you are giving out of a genuine spirit of joy and gratitude, the amount that you give will take care of itself. But if you are really giving out of a joy or out of joy and thankfulness, it’s not going to be a token amount. It’s not going to be a pittance, a small amount, because how can that be when you consider all that God has given to you, all that Jesus has given to you as your savior? And so giving to the church is a way for you to express your joy in Christ.

Thirdly, when you give to the church, you are investing yourself in the work of Christ in the world. To me, one of the really remarkable things about this passage is that God involved the Israelites in building the tabernacle in the first place. Think about that. God is God. He is able to do all things, he could have easily constructed a tabernacle or spoke a tabernacle into being in heaven, a prefab tabernacle, if you will, and simply plopped it down in the midst of the Israelites, and they would have a perfectly constructed, God-constructed tabernacle in their midst.

But that’s not how God chose to do it. Instead, He calls his people to give of their resources, give of their wealth, take up a collection of all of this different material. And then as we’ll see, he gives Moses detailed instructions on how this tabernacle is to be built. And so God used his people to build this tabernacle for him. And God works in the same way today.

As he is establishing his kingdom, the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God’s redeemed people, as he is building this new tabernacle of the saved people of God, God continues to use human means to accomplish his purposes. He uses preachers of the gospel, very human preachers. He uses very human people to serve and minister in his church. And he continues to use the giving of his people to support the ongoing work of the ministry of preaching and proclaiming Jesus Christ.

Again, God does not have to work this way. God is God. He could miraculously fill the bank accounts of all the missionaries and churches and pastors in the world. But instead, he doesn’t do that, he calls his people, he calls us, you and me, to support the work that he is doing through his church in bringing his people to salvation.

Jesus said in Matthew 6, 21, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. If you give nothing to the kingdom of God, if you give too little or nothing to the work that Christ is doing through his church, if you give no time on your parts, no efforts on your part, no energy on your parts, it’s no wonder if your heart then will be far from where God’s heart is. Your heart will be far from the kingdom of God. But that is not God’s will for you as a Christian.

God’s will for you as a Christian is that you would delight in the very things that God delights in, that your heart would be filled with love for the very things that God delights in and that he loves. And the way to do that, the way to cultivate a heart like that is to invest in the work of the kingdom of God, to invest yourself in the work that Christ is doing through his church, to give not just of your money, your wealth, but your talents, your time, your resources, in order to see the work of the church to advance. And so giving to the church is a way for you to invest yourself in the work of Christ in the world.

Fourthly and finally, when you give to the church, you confirm the truth of the gospel. As we go on in our study of Exodus, we’ll be looking at the tabernacle and we’ll be considering all of, perhaps not all of the details, but many of the details of the construction of the tabernacle, how it was to be made, what all of those details signify. But the primary significance, the primary meaning of the tabernacle is actually given to us here in this passage, and that’s in verse eight.

In verse 8, the Lord says to Moses, let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst. That I may dwell in their midst. So it was God’s will to dwell among his people, that his presence would be there among the Israelites. Now, of course, it’s not as though the sanctuary would somehow enclose God or contain him as though he were there but nowhere else. We know that can’t be true. God cannot be limited to one place or one point in his creation. He is infinite in his being. Even the entire creation itself cannot contain God.

King Solomon acknowledged this truth in his prayer of dedication for the temple that would be built some 450 years after this. King Solomon said, but will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain him. How much less this house that I have built. And the same is true with the tabernacle. This little tabernacle certainly could not contain God. However, in a very real way, this is where God would make his presence known. This is where he would dwell. He would be present in the tabernacle in a way that he was not present anywhere else on earth. So he truly would be with his people. This would be his tent.

And it’s significant that his sanctuary was in the form of a tent, and that’s because the Israelites themselves were living in tents in the wilderness. So the holy tabernacle was God’s tent. And wherever he led them in the wilderness for them to set up their own tents, well, God himself, the Levites would set up his tent, his tabernacle, and he would dwell among them. In fact, you could say God tabernacled among his people.

In fact, that’s exactly what the Apostle John says about Jesus. In John 1 14, he says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. The Greek word there that is translated dwell is literally the word to set up a tent. And so what John is saying is that Jesus, he tabernacled among his people when the word became flesh and dwelt among them.

It was the same Lord who dwelt in the tabernacle among the Israelites, that Jesus set up his tabernacle, his body, in the midst of his people. And for the Son of God to do this, the Son of God who himself is very God, the Son of God who shares with the Father in all of the divine attributes that makes him God, for him to set aside his outward divine glory, for him to give up for a time his divine prerogatives in order to take on our human nature, to dwell among us, to be with us in the person of Jesus Christ. This was an act of profound, profound condescension of self-abasements.

Our minds cannot really grasp in its entirety what it meant that God himself came to us in the man Jesus. And though Jesus was always God, he was never anything less than completely divine. Nevertheless, in his incarnation, in the life that he lived, a life of humility, of service, especially in his suffering, especially in his suffering, the curse of death of the cross and becoming sin for us. Jesus lowered himself, the son of God. He made himself nothing. And he did so for our sake, for our salvation.

And when you, as a believer in Jesus Christ, in the name of Christ, when you give to the work of the church, when you give to the Lord in a way that is sacrificial, you are showing forth that truth, that your Lord, your Savior, He sacrificed everything for you in coming down to us and in bringing us salvation, in dying for us.

Paul speaks to this in 2 Corinthians chapter eight. He says, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich yet for your sake, he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich. And so when you make yourself a little poorer, when you impoverish yourself a little bit and giving to the work of the church so that others may be enriched, you are reflecting in a small way the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. He gave up his life for you that you might live and you show forth that life giving death by your own willing and sacrificial giving, including your giving to the church.

And what greater privilege can there be as a Christian? What greater privilege can be yours as one who belongs to Christ that you can show forth in this way, that you can reflect a little bit of the wonderful thing that your Savior did for you and sacrificing everything, even his very life and making himself poor in order that you might become rich in him. J.C. Ryle said this, he said, a giving Savior should have giving disciples.

And so giving to the church is a way for you to confirm the truth of the gospel. And so giving is not a burden. It is not a grim sacrifice, a joyless duty. You shouldn’t feel pain when you’re writing out your check to the church, but it is a blessing. And when you give from the heart, when you give out of faith, when you give with joy, you will find that in giving, you are really receiving. You are receiving blessing from God.

And that was the lesson that the Lord was teaching the Israelites here in this passage, as he called them to give of their wealth, to build this tabernacle. And this is the same lesson that Paul would teach the Corinthians. This is the lesson that the Holy Spirit teaches us through his word. The point is this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So God causes his grace to abound to those who give joyfully, who give sacrificially to him as they give to his church. Let’s pray.

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Our Old Testament reading and our sermon text this morning is Job chapter 19, verses 21 through 27. And this is God’s inspired, inerrant, infallible word. Let’s hear the word of God. Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me. Why do you, like God, pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh? Oh, that my words were written. Oh, that they were inscribed in a book. Oh, that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever. For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh, I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me.

You can keep your place there and turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 for our New Testament reading. 1 Corinthians 15 verses 12 through 22. So 1 Corinthians 15, 12 through 22. Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection from the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.

When I was a kid, I loved Easter. Of course, for me at that time, Easter had absolutely nothing to do with Jesus or the resurrection, but I loved Easter baskets full of candy and chocolate bunnies and Easter egg hunts and all of that. But when I came to faith in Christ as a young adult, I came to love Easter for much better reasons. I loved hearing about the empty tomb, the resurrection of Christ, singing the great Easter hymns, greeting others with “He is risen.” I do love our Easter breakfast too before the congregation, before our worship. So that’s another reason to love Easter.

There are countless reasons why as Christians we should rejoice and celebrate that glorious day when our Lord Jesus emerged from the tomb. One reason we should love Easter is because the resurrection of Christ is the guarantee that our faith and hope as Christians are not in vain, that all that we do as believers in Christ, all that we live for as Christians is not in vain. The empty tomb is the guarantee that what we believe is true, that we are truly serving the living Lord Jesus.

As we heard in our New Testament reading from 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul says, if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still on your sins. But praise the Lord, that is not the case. The tomb that contained Jesus for those three days, it was empty on that Easter morning, it is still empty today. Paul says, in fact, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. The tomb is empty, and one day the whole world will know what we now know by faith, and that is Jesus Christ. He is the true, the living Lord of lords, King of kings. He is the savior of all who come to him in faith. So praise God for the resurrection of Jesus.

Another reason why we should love Easter is because the empty tomb reminds us that in the face of the suffering and death, the suffering and death that we must all endure in this world, the greatest hope that God gives to us is this, the promise of our own resurrection, our own resurrection from death to life on that great day when the Lord Jesus will come again into our world. In fact, this resurrection hope has always been the hope of God’s people. Even in the Old Testament, before the coming of Christ, there were hints, prophecies, promises that God’s ultimate purpose for his people was to raise up their dead bodies from their graves to new bodily life forever and ever.

To give just one example of how the Old Testament saints also hoped in the resurrection, listen to the words from Isaiah the prophet. He declared to the people of Israel, your dead shall live, their bodies shall rise, you who dwell in the dust awake and sing for joy, for your dew is a dew of light and the earth will give birth to the dead. In fact, we find this resurrection hope in one of the most unlikeliest places in all of the Old Testament, and that is in the book of Job.

So much of the book of Job is taken up with Job’s lament of the incredible suffering that he endured. The grief and the pain so overwhelmed Job because of his suffering that he even longed to die. And so often when we read Job, we are struck with Job’s, what seems to be his complete despair, his hopelessness in the face of his suffering. And so many of the passages in Job are very dark and grim, but like a single shaft of brilliant sunshine piercing through the dark clouds of a storm, Job in the midst of his suffering and despair, he declares a hope that we now recognize as the hope of his own bodily resurrection to new life in the presence of God forever. Job’s hope was an Easter hope. And that will be our subject this morning as we look at this passage from Job. First, we’ll consider the suffering of Job. Then we’ll consider the hope of Job. And thirdly, we’ll consider what I’ll call the greater Job.

So first, the suffering of Job. If you’re at all familiar with the book of Job, you know how he was afflicted with tragedy upon tragedy. He was filled with pain, with misery, with anguish. We won’t get into the background of Job’s suffering, but the author of Job tells us that God, for his own holy, wise, inscrutable purposes, he allowed the evil one to afflict Job. He allowed Satan to, afflicted Job with wave after wave of calamities.

First of all, a band of Sabeans stole all of Job’s oxen and donkeys and slaughtered some of his servants. And then fire came down from heaven and incinerated all of Job’s sheep and killed more of his servants. And after that, a raiding band of Chaldeans stole all of Job’s camels and killed yet more of Job’s servants. And even as the news of these disasters was still ringing in the ears of Job, the most devastating news of all came to him. And that is a great wind destroyed the house of his eldest son. All 10 of his children were in the house and all 10 of his children were dead.

And then the evil one was allowed to destroy Job’s health. He was afflicted from head to toe with loathsome sores, sores for which all he could do was sit in a pile of ashes and scrape himself with a shard of pottery. And on top of all of that, Job’s wife encouraged Job, I should put that in quotation marks, encouraged Job with this inspiring counsel, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” Thank you, Mrs. Job, for those uplifting words. I’m sure Job was very happy to hear those.

And if all of that wasn’t enough to overwhelm Job with grief and misery, his three good friends traveled all the way from foreign lands to take turns lecturing Job on what a terrible and unrepentant sinner he was. And in the midst of all of that, the night that may have plunged deepest into the heart of Job was the utter silence of God. Job longed for his innocence, his integrity, his righteousness to be vindicated by God. But up until the very end of Job, there was nothing but silence from heaven. No wonder Job cursed the day of his birth. In chapter three, he says, let that day perish on which I was born and the night that said a man is conceived. Let that day be darkness. May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Job would rather not have lived at all than to have lived and suffered all that he suffered.

Now, none of us here will ever suffer the way that Job did, but by the same token, none of us will escape suffering in this life. To live in this fallen world is to experience pain, heartache, sorrow, loss, and misery. It may be the death of a loved one. It may be a disease or the loss of property. It may be the hurt and the pain that is caused by others, or the betrayal of a friend, or the shattering of your dreams and hopes in this world in one way or another, we all suffer trouble and affliction in this life. And what’s more, even when we enjoy good times, even when we bask in the sunshine of God’s smiling providence and enjoy pleasant and enjoyable times in this world, even so the storm clouds of our own mortality are always gathering on the horizon. And each one of our lives, whether they are long or short, each one ends in that greatest trial of all that confronts us, and that is our own death.

And so Job is kind of like a mirror for us. His suffering is extreme, but we see in his suffering the unpleasant but inescapable reality that to some degree we must all suffer in this world that is cursed by sin and death. By the time we get to chapter 19 in Job, Job seems defeated, resigned, without hope. As one person said, there was a feeling of sadness that pervades everything that Job says in this chapter, at least the first part of the chapter. He speaks of how his three friends have only tormented him. God seems to be his enemy. His other friends and family have failed him and forgotten him. Even young children despise Job and slander him. His body is still ravaged with these loathsome sores. He is a man in despair. He is a man who has lost hope. In fact, he says in verse 10, speaking about God, “my hope has he pulled up like a tree.” God has taken all hope away from me, Job says.

In verse 21, Job no longer tries to argue with his friends. Instead, he just begs them for mercy. He says, have mercy on me. Have mercy on me, O you, my friends, for the hand of God has touched me. And in verse 22, his anguished cry to his friends is, why are you still teaming up with God and persecuting me? Have you not yet had your fill of my flesh? Haven’t you already eaten me up enough?

And that leads Job to express his deepest longing in all the midst of his suffering. The thing that he wanted most of all was that he would be vindicated, that his innocence, his righteousness would be shown to be true, that the whole world would know that it was not his own sin as his friends accused him. It was not his own sin that brought all of this suffering upon him. And so in verse 23, he wishes, he longs that the truth of all that he has said concerning his own integrity, that those words would be written in a book so that even if his generation didn’t acknowledge it, at least future generations would acknowledge that Job was a righteous man. But that leads him to say in verse 24, better yet, don’t write in a book, a book will perish with time, but inscribe my words on something that will last. Engrave them in a rock with an iron pin and lead so that they will testify to my integrity forever.

Little did Job know that he would get something much better. His words would be included in the Holy Scriptures, which are far more enduring, eternally enduring, but far more permanent than even words inscribed in a rock. And then we come to verses 25 and 26. And these are the greatest words in all the book of Job. Because here, by some miracle of faith, when all seems hopeless, Job takes hold of the promise of God that not only will God himself vindicate him, but he will vindicate him and restore him in the most wonderful way possible. And that is Job will be raised from the dust of death to resurrection glory.

And that was the hope of Job. He says in verse 25, “for I know, I know that my Redeemer lives.” This is Job’s profession of faith. He knows that he has a Redeemer. He knows that he has a savior and he knows that he lives because his Redeemer is none other than God himself. And Job goes on to say in verse 25, “and at the last he will stand upon the earth.” His Redeemer will stand, which probably means here in this context that God will stand as though He were taking a stand in a court of law, as though He were bearing witness and testifying to all of creation that Job is righteous, that Job is and forever will be a true man of God.

Depending on your version of the Bible, you’ll notice that there is a footnote after the word earth. The Hebrew word there literally means dust. And as it often means in the book of Job, dust most likely here refers not to the ground or the earth, but it means the dust of the grave. It refers to the dust to which all bodies, including Job’s, must return to after death. And so Job sees that somehow his vindication from God, his redeemer, will take place at his grave.

And then Job’s hope reaches even higher. He says in verses 26 and 27, “and after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself and my eye shall behold and not another.” Now the Hebrew here, the original language of this passage, the Hebrew, it is notoriously difficult to translate. By the way, if you feel like in your life you don’t have enough suffering, study Hebrew and your misery index will go up a few notches, I promise. And so the Hebrew here is a little unclear, but in our English versions, our English versions faithfully capture the sense of what these verses are saying.

In some way after death, Job will behold with his very eyes, his redeemer, who was God himself. But because the Hebrew is difficult to read in different ways, it can be read in different ways. Some people have suggested that Job’s hope here is that he will see God in some kind of disembodied state. In other words, that it will be Job’s spirit that beholds God. Again, you may have in your Bible a footnote that says that “in my flesh” can be translated “without my flesh.” Literally, it’s “from my flesh.” However, Job does say, “my eyes shall behold his divine Redeemer.” That certainly implies that Job will have a body with eyes.

But more importantly than that, when we read the words of Job here, when we read his hope in the context of the Old Testament, in the context of the Old Testament hope of resurrection, and especially when we read Job’s words here in the context of the New Testament promises of resurrection, then we can confidently say that Job’s hope here was not that his body would remain in the dust forever, but his hope was that when his Redeemer stood by his grave, he would also raise up Job in a new body, so that truly in his flesh, in his renewed flesh, in his raised flesh, with his very eyes, Job would behold his Redeemer, the Lord God.

And this has been the understanding of the church from the earliest days, that Job’s hope was an Easter hope. He grasped by faith, for a moment at least, and however indistinctly it may have been, Job did grasp the glorious truth that on that last day, God would raise him up from the grave in a body that is imperishable, incorruptible, immortal. In other words, Job proclaims a hope here that can only find its fullest meaning in his resurrection from the dead.

And there is a remarkable detail at the very end of the book of Job that I believe confirms Job’s hope in the resurrection. In the very last paragraph of all the book of Job, we read that the Lord restored to Job everything that he had lost. In Job 42:12, we read this: “And the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. And he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys.” Verse 13 says, “he had also seven sons and three daughters.” And what’s very interesting about those two verses is that Job gave twice as many sheep, camels, oxen, and donkeys than he had before all of his suffering began. However, God gave him the same number of children that he had earlier before they died, that is 10 children, seven sons and three daughters.

When I was in the process of becoming a pastor, I had to take all kinds of exams with my presbytery, Hebrew and Greek, church history, apologetics, theology, and so on. And one of the exams that I had to take was an English Bible exam. Just because you go to seminary doesn’t mean that you necessarily know the English Bible all that well. And the last question on the English Bible exam was something like this: Why did God not give Job twice as many children at the end of the book when he gave him twice as many livestock? I had no idea what the answer to that question was supposed to be, so I left it blank. I did pass the test, but when the minister graded the test, he sent it back to me and he wrote out the answer for me. He said, the reason was because Job would receive his first 10 children back in the resurrection. And so in that way, his children would be doubled. And I believe that was Job’s hope.

You may know that when the composer, George Friedrich Handel, when he wrote his magnum opus, The Messiah, he actually meant that to be a piece or a work to be performed for Easter, not for Christmas. Of course, traditionally we hear and sing The Messiah at Christmas. What I didn’t know about The Messiah is that Handel did not write the lyrics to it. He had someone else put the words to the music. That person’s name was Charles Jennings. And Jennings was absolutely correct, both biblically and theologically, when in one of the songs in the Messiah, he joins the words of Job with the words from 1 Corinthians 15. So I’ll just read what that song says: “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.” And so that’s from Job. “And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” That’s from Job. And then from 1 Corinthians: “For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep. Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

As a believer in Jesus Christ, the hope of Job, Job’s Easter hope, this is your hope as well. This is your hope in the face of the suffering and the death that confronts all of us, that we all must experience in this fallen world. God does not promise you that he will heal you from your sickness. He does not promise you that he will take away disease from you. God does not promise you that he will give you better circumstances or a better life, that he will take away whatever afflicts you. God does not promise you that he will deliver you from all the different ways that you suffer in this world. But God does make this promise to you, that when the Lord Jesus Christ returns, he will raise you up in a new body. He will raise you from death to life in a new body that is free from suffering and pain forever. He will give you everlasting life in a new world, a new world in which there will be no more pain and suffering and death forever and ever. This is your hope as a believer. This is your hope in the resurrection, the same hope that Job had. And the certainty, the infallibility of that hope is grounded in the very thing that we are celebrating today, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In his own way, Job gives us a picture of the Christ who is still yet to come. Job was a righteous man, just like Jesus. He suffered the attacks of Satan, like Jesus. He was mocked and mistreated like Jesus. He prayed for his enemies like Jesus. And in that way, he became a mediator between God and sinners like Jesus. And in the end, Job was vindicated by God like Jesus.

But unlike with Jesus, in the final words of the book of Job, we read nothing about his resurrection from the dead, but we read only of his death. The very last verse of the book of Job says this, “and Job died, an old man and full of days.” It doesn’t say, “and Job lived happily ever after,” but it says, “and Job died.” There’s an ancient hymn in the church from the fourth century that says something like this, “Christ conquered death where Job could not.”

Job was a man of faith. By the grace of God, he proved himself to be patient and faithful to the Lord in all that he suffered, but even with his faith, he could not overcome death. It would take the greater Job. It would take the suffering of the greater Job to overcome death for us. And in the most wonderful and unexpected and mysterious way, the Lord Jesus Christ defeated death by willingly succumbing himself to death. The death that Jesus died on the cross was the death of death itself. And so by the suffering of the greater Job, he did what Job could not do by his suffering. He has brought death to death. He has overcome the grave forever.

And Jesus did so, not for himself, but he did so for you and me, for guilty and sinful people like you and me. And if your faith and trust are in Jesus Christ, He died the death that you deserved. He suffered the wrath, the judgment of God that you deserved. And if your hope is in Jesus Christ, you are free from that death. Your sins are forgiven because Jesus died for you on the cross. And in his death, he conquered sin and death and hell and Satan for you, for your salvation. And when Jesus rose from the dead, when he emerged from that tomb alive, he emerged as the victor, the conqueror over Satan, sin, death and hell forever and ever for you. He is the triumphant Lord who has brought you eternal life and has conquered the grave for you.

And so the hope of Job is your hope. The resurrection of your body on the last day. And this is guaranteed. This is certain. Not only because God promises it in his word, but it is certain because the tomb of Jesus is empty. Because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead to new life. And one day, because of that one day, your grave, wherever your body ends up, after you die, your grave, one day, will be as empty as the tomb of Jesus is today.

So what is Easter to you? What do you love about Easter? Is it all about your Easter traditions at home or the coming of spring, getting dressed up for church? Not that any of those things are wrong, but does Easter mean more to you than that? Is Easter the source of your hope as a sinful, suffering mortal who must one day succumb to death? Do you look to the resurrection of Christ or the empty tomb as the source of your hope?

Put your trust and hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. Put your trust in the one who was crucified for you, who was resurrected for you, who is the savior from sin and death so that you can say with Job, “I know that my redeemer lives and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eye shall behold, and not another.” Let’s pray.

The post Job’s Easter Hope appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 24, verses 9 through 18. And this is God’s holy, inerrant, and inspired word. Exodus 24, nine through 18. Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet, as it were, a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness, and he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel. They beheld God and ate and drank.

The Lord said to Moses, come up to me on the mountain and wait there that I may give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandment which I have written for their instruction. So Moses rose with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. And he said to the elders, wait here for us until we return to you. And behold, Aaron and Hur are with you. Whoever has a dispute, let him go to them.

Then Moses went up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day, he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights.

Our New Testament reading is 2 Corinthians 3, verses 12 through 18. I made a mistake in the bulletin. I put chapter four, but it’s 2 Corinthians 3, verses 12 through 18. 2 Corinthians 3, 12 through 18.

Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, the same veil remains unlifted because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day, whenever Moses has read, a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

You can turn back to Exodus chapter 24 for our sermon text. There are some places in the world that you just have to see with your own eyes to appreciate how stunning, how beautiful they really are. Videos and pictures, no matter how lifelike they may be, they just can’t convey the majesty, the grandeur of a place like the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls or Mount McKinley. You have to see those places in person to get the full effect, to really understand just how wonderful they are.

And if you’ve been able to visit one of those places in person, you know what a powerful impression it makes on you to stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon and to look over that amazing part of God’s creation. It’s not just to see a pretty scene or pleasant scenery, but it’s to see something that is truly full of glory, full of wonder. And if there is such amazing beauty and glory in these natural wonders, how much more glorious is the God who created them?

And if beholding with our eyes something in creation can fill us with such a sense of awe and wonder, then what must it be like to behold the one who created those things, the creator? What must it be like to see him in all of his glory? Because God is infinite and unlike this creation and even the most stunning thing that we may behold in this creation, God, He is infinite in glory. He is infinite in beauty and in majesty. And for that reason, for you and me to somehow see God with our eyes, there would be no experience like it. There could be no greater experience than for us to behold the creator, the Lord, the one who made all things.

In fact, one of the ways that the Bible describes for us the hope that we have as Christians, one way that it explains to us what heaven will be like is to say that one day as the redeemed people of God, we shall behold God with our eyes. We shall see him. Jesus gave the promise, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. This is what theologians have called the beatific vision. That day when we shall no longer behold or apprehend God by faith, but that day when we shall see the Lord in all of his glory and splendor and beauty.

1 Corinthians 13:12 says, for now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. And this is our hope as Christians for the world to come, for the life to come. Seeing God now in this world is not our experience. However, there are a few instances in the scriptures when God did allow his people to catch a glimpse, as it were, of God himself, to see with their eyes, the Lord, at least to see in parts, as he revealed himself to them.

And one such instance in which God made Himself known visibly to His people is described for us this morning in our passage. This is when the Lord called to Himself Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel. He called them to come up to Mount Sinai and to worship Him there. And verse 10 says that they saw the God of Israel.

Now last week we read about the events leading up to this, Moses and the leaders of Israel. When they saw the vision of God, this was after these events took place that we saw last week. Before they went up on the mountain, Moses led the people in a worship service in which God’s covenant with his people Israel was formally inaugurated. You remember that Moses read the law and the commandments to the people of Israel. The people responded by saying that they will do everything that’s written in God’s word. They pledged their obedience to God.

And then oxen were sacrificed to God. Moses sprinkled what he called the blood of the covenant, the blood of those oxen that were slaughtered. He sprinkled that on the people. And that meant that they were to keep the covenant with their God upon pain of death. And so by this covenant making worship, by this covenant making ceremony with the blood of the oxen sprinkled on the people and all of that, God was confirming to the Israelites that he was their God and they were his people. That is the heart of that covenant relationship between God and us. He is our God, we are his people.

And so our passage this morning picks up with what took place after that. And we’ll focus this morning particularly on verses 9 through 11. And this is the vision of the Lord that was given to Moses and the others who were with him. But we’ll go over the rest of the passage briefly before we zero in on verses 9 through 11. And so let’s look at verses 12 through 18 just briefly.

Beginning at verse 12, we can assume that after Moses and the elders of Israel saw the Lord, after they ate and drank before him, that they went back down the mountain. And then in verse 12, the Lord calls Moses to go back up the mountain. Only this time, he takes just one person with him, and that is his assistant, Joshua. And Moses leaves the people of Israel behind. He leaves them in the charge of his brother Aaron and Hur.

We’ll find out later in Exodus that if Moses thought that the people of Israel would be in safe hands with Aaron in charge, he was badly mistaken. That’s when the golden calf disaster took place, when they worshiped the golden calf. But when Moses and Joshua go up the mountain, they see the glory of the Lord in the form of a cloud covering on the top of the mountain. And after six days, the Lord calls Moses to come alone into the cloud. And so Moses by himself, he enters into the presence of God.

And at some point, then the Lord gives him two tablets of stone on which God himself with his very own finger wrote the 10 commandments. And by the way, these Ten Commandments, they are given on two tablets of stone, not because one tablet of stone contained the first half of the Ten Commandments and the second tablet of stone contained the second half of the Ten Commandments, but it was customary in the ancient Near East when a covenant was made between two peoples that each party to the covenant would have their own copy.

And so that’s what’s taking place here. God gave Moses two tablets of stone. One was the copy for the people of Israel. The other was the copy that belonged to the Lord. In this case, the Lord gave to Moses both copies. And so this is when God gives the 10 commandments on these two tablets to Moses. And then verse 18 tells us that Moses was on the mountain for a total of 40 days and 40 nights.

Now, again, what I want to focus on with you this morning is this vision that God gave of himself to Moses and Aaron and to the other leaders of Israel. And the first truth to take from this vision of God is this, that is to see God is to know him. To behold God is to know him and to be known by him. We need to keep in mind that God gave these Israelites this vision on the mountain. He gave them a glimpse of his glory as part of the worship service in which he made his covenant with them.

And again, the purpose of God’s covenant was to bring His people into a relationship with Him so that the people of God would know God, they would know the Lord, they would delight in Him as their God, and God, on His part, would know His people Israel, and He would delight in them as His people. Again, that’s the heart of the covenant relationship that God makes with His people. And one way that this communion or fellowship between the Lord and his people was expressed was in this meal that the leaders of Israel ate before the Lord. And so in verse 11 it says, they beheld God and ate and drank.

Now, the fact that the people of Israel here, that they ate and drank in the presence of the Lord, this is not just an interesting detail in the passage, as though Moses is telling us that he and the people who were with them, they’d been up on the mountain ever since morning time. Now it was getting late in the day. They were hungry. They took out their brown lunch bags and they had a bite to eat. That’s not what’s happening here.

Rather, in that ancient culture, to share a meal together was very significant. It was very meaningful. It was something that bound people together. It was an expression of communion or fellowship between people when they shared a meal together. And we can relate to that because to a certain extent we know from experience that that is still true today.

I remember one year when I was in high school, I absolutely dreaded lunchtime because none of my friends had the same lunch period that I had. And the last thing that I wanted to do was to eat lunch all by myself. That’s very lonely. But I also wasn’t confident enough just to sit down at a table full of kids that I didn’t know and have lunch with them. And so that was quite a dilemma for me because we naturally want to be with friends when we eat. And that’s because sharing a meal together is an exercise in fellowship or communion with one another.

And that was especially true in biblical times. And so in the scriptures, we see sometimes when people make a covenant with one another, that there is a meal included as part of that covenant ceremony. And so, for example, in Genesis chapter 26, when Isaac and Abimelech, the king of the Philistines, when they make a covenant with each other not to attack each other, the Bible says that Abimelech, and this is Genesis 26:30, made them a feast and they ate and drank.

And something like that is also taking place here on Mount Sinai, only this is a covenant, not between two peoples, but a covenant between God and His people. And so the fellowship or the communion that takes place here is these elders of Israel, and Moses, as they eat this meal together, it is a communion and a fellowship, not only with one another, but with the Lord. They are sharing a meal, if we can put it this way, with God Himself. They are expressing their fellowship with Him.

And we do the same thing today as the people of God. When we worship God, we also have a sacred meal, a covenant meal, in which we commune with the Lord, and that is the Lord’s Supper. When we take part in the Lord’s Supper, we are experiencing not only communion with one another as fellow members of the body of Christ, but more primarily, we are enjoying and engaging in that communion and that fellowship that we have with Christ himself as he is present with us in that sacrament.

Now, I say all of that because it is in the context of this sacred meal, in the context of this covenant meal that the leaders of Israel saw the Lord. Verse 11 says, they beheld God and ate and drank. And so what this means is, is that their seeing God was part of that communion that they had with him as their covenant Lord, as their God and savior. And the same is true for the promise that God gives to you and me in Jesus Christ, that one day we shall see him face to face.

That promise that one day we shall see God, that is not a promise that we will behold God in all of his glory and majesty as a tourist might behold the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls, admiring it from afar. No, God will give us a glorious vision of himself as he envelops us and blesses us with his gracious and loving presence. And for us to see God in his glory will be to bask in the eternal, the infinite love that God has for us in his son, Jesus Christ.

And so this promise of seeing God is all about being in the presence of the one who loves us, who is our God, who will love us forever. Think of it this way. What is it that lights up a baby’s face more than anything else? It’s the sight of seeing her father looking down and smiling at her. And that is what it will be like for us only a million times greater to see the face of our father smiling at us as we gaze into his loving countenance.

And in fact, that is what makes the promise of God a beatific vision. The word beatific is an adjective that describes something that imparts blessedness or happiness. The great theologian, Jonathan Edwards, he called the beatific vision the hapifying vision. I suppose he made that word up, the hapifying vision. And he called it that or it’s called the beatific vision because there will be no greater joy, no greater happiness for you and me as the children of God than one day to see with our very own eyes what we only see now by faith and that is the beaming face of our heavenly father as He brings us into His glorious presence forever and ever.

And so to see God is not just to behold Him in His glory and greatness, but it is to be brought into His loving presence, to be embraced by Him as our Father. And one day we shall experience that fully and perfectly in the world that is to come. And so to see God is to know Him and to be known by Him.

The second truth about beholding God is this, to see God is to be made like Christ in His righteousness. In order for any of us who are sinful by nature, and of course that means all of us, in order for any of us who are sinners, in order for us to see God in his majesty and glory, we must be made holy. Jesus said, blessed are the pure, blessed are the pure at heart, for they shall see God.

You’ll notice in this passage that there isn’t a whole lot of description about what Moses and the others with him, what they actually saw when they beheld God. In fact, the only thing that is described for us in this passage is the floor, the platform upon which God was standing or sitting. In verse 10 it says, there was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. The word sapphire is referring to a deep blue mineral or stone called lapis lazuli. Only here the stone is clear; verse 10, it’s like the very heaven for clearness. So God was standing or sitting upon some sort of bluish crystal floor or platform.

But you’ll notice there’s no description of what God himself looked like. It would be like if you were invited to meet the president at the White House and when you got back, somebody asked you, well, what was he like? And you said, well, let me tell you about the carpet in the Oval Office. It was spectacular. But you had no words, I suppose, to describe what it was like to meet the president. It’s as though the vision of God was so overwhelmingly glorious that Moses could only find the words to describe the floor at the feet of the Lord.

Matthew Henry makes this very apropos comment. He says, our conceptions of God are all below him and fall infinitely short of being adequate. In other words, what Moses describes for us here, the floor upon which God was sitting. In the same way, we can only begin to describe what God is like. We can only reach up so much in our descriptions of who God is, his essence, his character, and so on.

Well, later in verse 17, when the people of Israel saw the Lord from afar, Moses describes it this way. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. But this is not what Moses and the others with him saw when they were up on the mountain. It was something different. Verse 10, again, they saw the God of Israel. Verse 11, they beheld God. God did not just appear to them as fire or a cloud on top of the mountain, but in some visible form, in some way, God appeared to Moses in a way that they could behold him, that they could see him. It’s just not described for us.

But however God did appear to them, we can say this for sure, that they did not see God in all the fullness of his divine glory and majesty. They did not see God in the fullness and perfection of who he is as God, because if they had, if they had seen God in the fullness of who he is, they would have been struck down dead immediately. Because when it comes to seeing God, one of the consistent teachings we find in the scriptures is that in this life, no one can see God. No one can see God in the fullness of his glory and live. The book of Exodus teaches us that.

Later in chapter 33, when Moses says to the Lord, please show me your glory, the Lord says that he will show him not his face, but his back. And why was that? Because the Lord says, you cannot see my face for man shall not see me and live. The New Testament teaches the very same thing. 1 Timothy 6:16, speaking of God, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see.

And why can we not behold God with our eyes in the completeness or fullness of his majesty and glory? The reason is this, it’s because of our sin, because of the corruption of our hearts. Almighty God, he is infinite in his holiness and righteousness. Habakkuk 1:13 says that God is of purer eyes than to behold evil. He cannot look at wrong. And in our sin, we are unholy. We are unrighteous. And so for you and me to have an unfiltered vision of God means that we would be destroyed in an instant by his holiness.

I remember several years ago being at my cousin’s house for a family get-together. And my cousin, he collected all of his scrap lumber and several logs, and he made this huge bonfire. And as the night went on and more wood was added to the fire, the coals at the bottom of the fire just got hotter and hotter and hotter. Eventually, by the end of the night, you could toss a soda can into the fire, into the coals, and within seconds it just melted and evaporated, just was vaporized by the heat of the fire.

And that’s kind of a picture of what would happen to us. The searing intensity of the holiness of God would be so overwhelming that it would annihilate any person who came into his presence. And this is why so often in the scriptures for those who did see God, at least they saw him in a partial way, they were often left with a sense of dread and fear. For example, when the angel of the Lord appeared to Manoah and his wife, those are the future parents of Samson, Manoah says in Judges 13:22, we shall surely die for we have seen God.

And the most famous example of this, of course, is when the prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter six, when he sees the Lord in his glory in the temple, Isaiah cries out, woe is me, for I’m lost, for I’m a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. It’s remarkable sometimes when you hear or read about somebody claiming to have seen God or to have seen Christ, and the way they describe it is almost as if they had seen a celebrity walking down the street, very casual, very informal.

Well, what happens in the scriptures when someone sees the Lord? When God appears to someone in the Bible, that person says, woe is me, I am undone. It is something that overwhelms us with dread and fear because of who God is. But here in this passage, not only did the Israelites not perish when they came into the presence of God and saw him, but in fact, they went on to eat a covenant meal in the presence of the Lord.

You can almost hear the surprise in the text itself that the people were not destroyed. In verse 11, it says, and he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel. They beheld God and ate and drank. Almost as if Moses is saying, how could this be? How could they behold God and go on to eat and drink in his presence?

Well, part of the answer was that this was not a full revelation that God gave to Moses and the others with him, just like later in chapter 33, the Lord will hold back from fully revealing himself to Moses. He will only show him his back and not his face. So here too, he did not reveal himself in all of his glory to these Israelites. But another reason why Moses and those with him, why they were able to see the Lord with their eyes and live, why they were not overcome with the holiness and righteousness of God because of their sin, another reason why they could see God and live was because they were literally covered with the blood of the sacrifices that they had slain earlier.

Remember, before this vision of God, Moses took the blood of the sacrifices, he sprinkled that blood on the people, and that blood signified, among other things, that blood signified for them the fact that they were cleansed from their sin. The Lord had atoned for their sin. And so with that blood, covered with the blood of the sacrifices, the people could go before the Lord and come into his presence and even see him.

And the reason why you as a believer in Jesus Christ, the reason why you can have the hope that one day you will see God, you will see Him in all of His glory and majesty, and the reason why this will be for you a true beatific vision, a blessed vision and not a death sentence, is because of the blood of Jesus Christ that was shed for you upon the cross. If your hope and your trust are in the Lord Jesus as your savior, not only does his death on the cross take away from you the guilt of your sin so that you can come into the presence of God without fear of condemnation, but also Jesus Christ has given you the gift of his Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is at work in you to purify you from the sin that remains in you.

And the Spirit does his work of sanctifying and purifying you as a Christian as he directs your gaze towards Christ. And so it’s not only true that in order for us to see God, we must be holy, but it’s also true that when you and I, by faith, behold the Lord Jesus Christ, we are made more holy. By faith, even now, you can see God. Again, not with your eyes, but with the eyes of faith, you can behold God as he makes himself known to you in his son, Jesus Christ, as Jesus is made known to us in his word.

And so to fix our gaze upon the Christ that is given to us in the scriptures, to look to Him, to set our eyes upon Him, this is to be transformed more and more into His image. We become what we look at. We become what we gaze at. And when we look at the Lord Jesus Christ, we become more like Him. That’s what the New Testament reading tells us in 2 Corinthians 3:18. And we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

And this is where you are much better off than those Israelites on the mountain. Now to be sure, to have been one of those 70 elders, to have been there with Moses and to have seen the glory of God as he revealed himself there, that would have been a life-changing experience, a true mountaintop experience. And so, however God revealed himself to the Israelites, it would have been an incredible thing to experience beyond words.

However, as amazing as that was for them, God has given you, as a believer in Jesus Christ, something even more wonderful, even more amazing, and that is that he has revealed himself to you in the person of his son, Jesus Christ. And so, no, you have not yet seen Jesus with your eyes, but with the eyes of faith, as you look to Christ, what you see as you look to Christ is a fuller, a greater, a more glorious, a more perfect, a more wonderful, more beautiful revelation of God than God ever gave to any of the saints in the Old Testament, including here when he revealed himself to Moses and the elders on Mount Sinai.

As wonderful as that was, Moses and those others with him, they would have loved to see what you see by faith. God revealed in his son, Jesus. When Philip, the disciple, said to Jesus in John 14:8, Lord, show us the father and it is enough for us. Jesus replied, have I been with you so long? And you still do not know me, Philip. Whoever has seen me has seen the father. Whoever has seen me has seen the father.

And then John earlier in his gospel, he says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. And so if you believe in Christ, you have seen the father. You have seen God as he has revealed in his son, Jesus. You have seen in the life, in the ministry of Jesus, the grace and compassion of the father towards sinners.

And the more you put Jesus in your sights, the more you set your gaze upon Christ, the more you will understand the character and the love of the father, the more and more you will grasp the depths of the love that God has for you in his son. But this is all by faith. This is by faith. The world says, those who do not believe in Christ, the world says, seeing is believing. And so the unbeliever says, if God will just show himself to me, if he will appear to me, of course I would then believe in him, but he is invisible. I don’t see him. I don’t know if he exists. If he would just make himself known, if I could see him, then I would believe.

But God says, no, it’s the other way around. Believing is seeing. Believing is seeing. God says to us and to the world, if you would see my glory, if you would see me for who I am, if you would see my truth, then believe. Believe in my son, Jesus Christ. And you will see. Because God has revealed himself to us. He has made himself known to us. And it is only a sinful, willful blindness that keeps someone from beholding the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said to Thomas, have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. And if this faith is yours, then God promises you that one day what you perceive by faith, you will then see by sight. And that is that beatific vision, that haplifying vision, that one day what you know is true by faith, what you behold only with your eyes of faith, God will show you in fullness, his glory, his greatness, as he has made himself known to you. And you will see his glory as it shines out through the face of Jesus Christ. That is our hope as believers. But even now, we can see God as we behold him by faith in his son, Jesus. Let’s pray.

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