Mt. Rose OPC

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.

The post The Good Confession appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

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.

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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.

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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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The Old Testament reading this morning is Exodus chapter 24, verses one through eight. And this is God’s holy, his infallible, his inspired word. Exodus chapter 24, verses one through eight.

Then he said to Moses, come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar. Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him. Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and 12 pillars, according to the 12 tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient. And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.

And now turn to Hebrews chapter nine, verses 11 through 22. This is God’s inspired commentary on the passage that we just read, at least part of this is. Hebrews 9, 11 through 22. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not enforced as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore, not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you. And in the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Last Lord’s Day, as we looked at the passage before this in Exodus, we considered how the destination that the Lord had set for the people of Israel was the promised land, the land of Canaan. That was why the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt. It was in order to give to them, to bring them into this land that he had promised their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And so the destination was one reason why the Lord brought his people out of Egypt.

But there was even a more basic, more fundamental reason why the Lord brought his people out of Egypt. And that more basic reason was that so his people would worship him, so that they would worship the Lord. When Moses told Pharaoh that he must let the people go, he said to Pharaoh, it was so that they might offer sacrifices to the Lord. That is to worship him.

And the same is true for you and me as Christians. We have a destination, we have a heavenly destination, that eternal glory that God is preparing for us, that is where the Lord is ultimately leading us to. But even heaven serves a greater goal than for us simply to be there. And that is that we are there, we will be there in order to worship the Lord, to praise Him, to magnify His name. This is why God created you. You were created to worship him. That is your purpose. That is why God has redeemed you through his son, Jesus Christ, so that you would be a true worshiper of God. And this is the reason that he is preparing for you an eternal home in heaven, your destination. This is why he is bringing you there, so that there you might worship him forever and ever.

And that raises a question for us. How do you think about your Christian faith as a believer in Christ? Do you think mainly of all of the wonderful benefits and blessings that God gives to you, not only in this life, but far much more in the life to come? Is that how you primarily think about your faith, what you have received from the Lord? Or as a believer in Christ, do you think about your faith as a Christian in terms of what pleases God? What honors God? What may I do in order to bring the most praise, glory, and magnification to my God and my Savior?

We should all rejoice in the good gifts, the blessings of salvation that God has given to us. However, we want a faith that is fundamentally God-centered, not self-centered. We want a faith that is oriented to God, that heart that seeks what brings glory to God. We want His name to be magnified in us and through us. And there is one thing, there is one thing more than anything else that will center our thoughts, our lives, our hearts on God, and that one thing is worship, it is worship.

And what’s described here in our passage is a worship service. Really, it’s the first worship service described for us in the Bible. And although there are many ways in which this worship service is very different from what we do when we come here on Sundays to worship God, nevertheless, much of it is the same, especially the very elements or essentially what they are doing in this worship service, it is very much the same. And that’s because the God that we know and serve and worship, the God that has made himself known to us in his son Jesus Christ, this is the very same God, the very same Lord who delivered his people out of Egypt so that they too would know and serve and worship him as their God. He is the same God, he is their God, he is our God.

And so this morning, for that reason, we can look at this worship service and we can draw some lessons from it about our own worship. And so we’ll look at each part of this worship service and we’ll see what each part means for us as Christians, as we too are called to engage ourselves in this most important activity in worshiping God.

So first of all, in this worship service, there is a call to worship. Look at verses one and two, I will read those verses to you. Then he said to Moses, come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar. Moses alone shall come near to the Lord, but the others shall not come near, and the people shall not come up with him.

Now we’ll look a little bit closer at these verses later, but for now, just notice this one thing, and that is, it is God who calls his people to worship him. It is the Lord who summons His people to Him to praise Him, to worship Him. And this is at the heart of true worship. True worship never originates in the heart of man. Idolatry, the worship of false gods, this comes from the heart of man, but not true worship. True worship is initiated, it is created by God and His call when He calls us into His presence to praise Him. And so God summons his people to approach him, to approach him with reverence, with awe, in order to give him praise, thanksgiving, and honor. That is his due for who he is.

And we are reminded of this every Sunday when we begin the worship service here at Mount Rose. We hear the voice of God summoning us through the scripture, through his call to worship. And so he calls us into his presence to worship him. So that’s the first part of this worship service.

The second part is the word of God. Verse three says this, Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And then in verse four, we read this, and Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. And then later in verse seven, it says this, then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And so Moses first, he declared verbally, from what he remembered, the words of God to his people, but then he wrote it down in a book. And from that book, he then read the words of God to his people.

And this book that Moses wrote, this was essentially the first Bible. It was a lot smaller than our Bibles today. It would have been no problem to read through it in a year. You could probably have read through it in 20 minutes. But it was kind of the first Bible. It contained four chapters of the Bible, what we have now. Chapter 20 was the Ten Commandments. And then chapters 21 through 23 are the various civil laws, judicial laws that we’ve been looking at. And so these four chapters were the rules of the Lord, the words of God that Moses wrote down in what he called the Book of the Covenant.

Now, the fact that God had Moses write down his words, this is extremely important. It’s even a bit surprising because God could have revealed himself as he has been doing, he could have revealed himself directly to his people. He could have continued to speak directly to his people, or at least through the mouthpiece of Moses and Aaron. But instead, he chose to give his word to his people in written form, in a book, on pages. And from this point on, God’s people have always been a people of the written word, of the Scriptures, of the book. Now, of course, from this point on, God would continue to speak directly to Israel, but the permanent means, the enduring way in which God has chosen to speak to his people beginning from here is through the scriptures, the written words of God.

And so for this reason, in any worship that is biblical, that is faithful to God’s will, that worship will be centered upon the Word of God, the written Word of God, the scriptures, our Bible. And so this is why here, we try to make the Bible front and center in our worship. We hear the reading of God’s word. We hear the preaching of God’s word from the scriptures. We hear God’s law declared to us from the Bible. We hear the assurance of his forgiveness to us from the scriptures. Often as we did this morning, we will read responsibly from a psalm, from the word of God.

And so biblical worship will be saturated with the word of God. And that’s because this is how we know the will of God, the mind of God. This is how God reveals himself to us. It is through the scriptures. This is how we know what his will for us is, what his truth is, what his promises are for us, his Grace to us, this is where we learn of his love and mercy to us in Jesus Christ. It is through the scriptures, through what God has spoken and continues to speak through the written word.

One of the glaring weaknesses, I believe, of the contemporary evangelical church is how little Christians read their Bibles, how little Christians know their Bibles. And there can be no question that part of the reason for that is because in the worship of so many churches, there is so little scripture. The Bible is not front and center. When I visited evangelical churches in the past, I’m often struck by how little the Bible is used in the worship service.

But as Christians, we should be devoted to the scriptures. We should not only hear much of God’s word on Sundays when we worship, but throughout the week, we should be reading the Bible. We should be storing the word of God up in our hearts because this is how God speaks to us. Again, this is how we come to know Christ better and better.

But one major challenge for us to be a scripture-centered people, one major challenge for us to be word-oriented, to be filled with the scripture is this, that we are living in an age in which images have replaced the written word as the primary means of communication. One symptom of this major cultural shift is the fact that people don’t read books anymore. People just don’t do much reading, let alone reading books, let alone reading the scriptures. And if we are conformed to this world, the more that we are conformed to the spirit of this age and this aspect, the more and more difficult it will be for us to be true Bible people, to be people who are truly filled with the word of God, who are devoted to reading and learning and understanding the scriptures. We will find it harder and harder to give serious attention to the written word of God, the more that we are carried away with this cultural shift to a very image-based culture.

And this is why worship is so crucial. This is why how we worship is so extremely crucial. Because how the church worships God together in our weekly services will have a tremendous influence in the formation of the character of the day-to-day life of the believer. And so if Christians do not hear scripture in worship, why should we expect them to read scripture throughout the week? If Christians are not reminded on Sundays in worship, as we worship the Lord, that God speaks to us through his written word, if Christians are not reinforced in that conviction week after week, why should we expect them to seek to hear God’s voice in the scriptures in their day-to-day lives? And so how we worship God is so important. It’s not only that we might glorify Him in our worship, but it also has a tremendous influence in the way that we will live out our Christian lives from week to week. And so we need a Bible-centered worship service so that we will be Bible-centered Christians in our lives.

The third part of this worship service is the people’s response. And so the people respond to the words of the Lord. In verse three, this is what Moses says: And all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And then later in verse seven, it says this, then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient.

You can say one thing for the Israelites at this time, they were an optimistic bunch. They were quite confident that they would keep all the words of the Lord. Matthew Henry, the Puritan commentator, he says it quite quaintly, bravely resolved. Bravo for the people of Israel. We know that, of course, the people of Israel would do the very opposite. They definitely did not do all that the Lord commanded. They were disobedient to his commands as becomes abundantly clear as you read on in the Old Testament. But what else could they say? This was, of course, the right response. The people knew that they were bound to keep the word of God and any other declaration on their part would of course been not what the Lord desired. And so they declared that they would keep God’s word.

But notice the obedience that God commanded. Notice the obedience that the people promised. It was complete, entire, perfect obedience. Look at verse three, Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules and all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do. The bad news for you and me, from one perspective, the bad news is that God still requires the same standard for us as Christians today. What he requires of us regarding his law is nothing less than perfect conformity to all that he has commanded us. To obey his law perfectly, to be conformed perfectly to his righteousness.

It’s safe to say that that’s not the same standard that we set for ourselves. We hear the law of God and we, no matter what we might say, we aim to keep it more or less. We aim for above average obedience. And when we meet that goal, we are pretty satisfied that we have pleased God. But not according to the law of God. We are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves, but I haven’t really truly obeyed that commandment if all I have done is to avoid doing harm to my neighbor. I’ve not kept that commandment unless I have devoted myself to seeking his good in every way that I possibly can. I have not really kept the first great commandment to love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind if I have only gone through the motions of the Christian life and Christian worship without my heart engaged in that.

A big part of our growth as Christians, a big part of our maturity as we grow in our faith and understanding of the word of God and God’s will for us, a big part of that is seeing more and more clearly just how far short we fall of truly obeying what God requires of us, keeping his commandments. We fail. We fail to keep the first and the second great commandments. We fail to keep all of God’s law. And yet this is his standard for us. He has not compromised his standard.

But the good news is that God is gracious and merciful. He is gracious and merciful towards sinners such as us. He is gracious and merciful towards you and me, people who are flawed, who are imperfect, who keep God’s law so imperfectly, who often transgress God’s commandments. And this is embedded here in this worship service because as we will see, not only was God’s law read, but sacrifices were commanded. And those sacrifices were given to the people of Israel in order to teach them that because of the blood of those sacrifices, that there is forgiveness, there is mercy from God towards his people because we have failed to keep his commandments.

So God is merciful. And the same is true today. He is a gracious and merciful heavenly father. He forgives the sins of his children. First John 1:9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He not only forgives us when we come to Him in faith, when we seek that forgiveness, He not only forgives us for breaking His commandments, but also He forgives us for failing to keep His commandments as perfectly as we are called to do. And because of the work of Jesus Christ, God accepts even our imperfect obedience. He sanctifies it so that in Christ, even our imperfect obedience is pleasing to Him. And yet the standard he sets for us is never anything less than full, perfect conformity to his law.

But there is more good news for you and me in Jesus Christ, and that is this, when we compare ourselves to the Israelites here back in Exodus. Unlike the Israelites here, you and I live after the day of Pentecost. We live after the day in which the exalted Lord Jesus Christ, at the right hand of God the Father, he has poured out his Holy Spirit upon the church, upon us, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, who indwells in you as a believer in Jesus Christ, you can begin to keep the commandments of God. Not perfectly, not perfectly, but truly, truly.

And so we should have a similar kind of response as well when we hear the commandments of God. This is how we should respond. We should say, I will endeavor with all that is in me by the grace of God to do the will of God to follow my Savior Jesus, not because I can earn God’s favor and love, not because I’m trying to establish my own righteousness before God, but because I know that God has loved me. God has saved me. He has been merciful to me. He has forgiven me. The love that I have for him because of the way that he first loved me. I want to keep his word. I want to please him. I want to glorify him in my life by obedience. I want to grow to be more and more like my faithful savior, Jesus Christ. And we have the promise. This is what we can tell ourselves. We have the promise that by his spirit, we will grow to be more and more like him. So that is our response to hearing the word of God as believers in Jesus Christ.

The fourth part of this worship service are the sacrifices. After Moses wrote down the words of the Lord, we read how he built an altar and 12 pillars and the 12 pillars represents the 12 tribes of Israel. And then verse five says this, and he sent young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. We won’t get into the details of what is a burnt offering, what is a peace offering. As you read, go on and read in the Old Testament, Moses will explain the differences between those offerings. But what’s most important to notice here is that what these offerings have in common is that blood was shed. Blood was shed, animals were slaughtered, and blood was shed.

Verse six: and Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Verse eight: and Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words. So what does all this? What does all this mean with the blood that is thrown against the altar, the blood that is thrown on the people of Israel, all this blood being shed, these bloody sacrifices?

Well, first of all, notice that Moses calls the blood, the blood of the covenant, not the blood of the ox and the blood of the goats, but the blood of the covenant. A covenant was a sacred bond between God and his people. And when God made a covenant with his people, this was the heart of a covenant, he says, I will be your God and you will be my people. But God also gives the terms to his people for remaining in that covenant, for keeping the covenant. And that is this, that if God’s people obey him, if they walk according to his word, they would enjoy the blessings of the covenant. But if they disobeyed the Lord, if they became covenant breakers, the penalty for breaking the covenant was death. And that death was symbolized by the blood of the animals that was shed in this ceremony, in this worship. And so the blood would teach the Israelites that the penalty for breaking God’s commandment was death, the death that they deserve, just as the blood was sprinkled on their bodies. So they knew that their blood would be upon them if they rejected God’s covenant and broke his commandments.

However, at the same time, the blood here also represents cleansing from sin. And we know that because of what the author of Hebrews teaches us about this first worship service. We read from Hebrews chapter nine. And in that chapter, the author of Hebrews says that for a covenant or what he calls a will, for a will slash covenant to go into effect, there must be a death. And then he says in chapter nine, verse 17, for a will takes effect only at death since it is not enforced as long as the one who made it is alive. And then he says that that was also true for the first covenant. And when he talks about the first covenant, he’s talking about this worship service involving the inauguration of the covenant that we’ve read here. And so this is the covenant that the Lord made with the Israelites through Moses on Mount Sinai. And the author of Hebrews says in verse 18, therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.

And so he’s referring to the blood that was shed and sprinkled on the people. The author of Hebrews goes on to describe the worship service that takes place in this Exodus passage. Moses read the law to the people, and then he took the blood of the sacrificial animals. And according to Hebrews, Moses sprinkled both the people and the book of the covenant with the blood. The author of Hebrews says later that when the tabernacle and all the vessels that were made with the tabernacle, that they also, when they were made, they were also sprinkled with blood. And then he says this in verse 22, in chapter nine, he says, indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.

So here’s another reason for all of this blood in this worship service, this beginning of the covenant with God: without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. And so the blood that Moses sprinkled here on the people, it not only inaugurated the covenant, but it signified that the sins of the people were atoned for. They were covered. They were forgiven so that they could truly come into the presence of the Lord and worship Him. In all of the blood that was shed, in all of the sacrifices, in the entire sacrificial system that’s expanded upon in Leviticus, they were all for the same purpose, to show them that if the Israelites were to come before God, if they were to approach Him to worship Him, if they were to come into His presence, they could not come without blood. And they needed the blood to cover their sins, to atone for them. Leviticus 17:11: for the life of the flesh is in the blood. And I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.

And so this is another reason why there was so much blood here. It was to teach the Israelites that they needed their sins to be dealt with. They needed atonement in order to come into the presence of God. The whole book of Hebrews, the point of it is to show us how the ministry of Jesus Christ, both as priest and sacrifice, is superior to the priesthood and the sacrifices under Moses. So Hebrews teaches us that all of the animal sacrifices that we read in the Old Testament, including those that we read here in Exodus 24, that they were only copies, they were only shadows of the one true sacrifice that Christ would offer. That is the sacrifice of himself. That is the one sacrifice, the shedding of blood that would truly take away sin.

As Hebrews puts it, Hebrews 10:4, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. And so when Moses sprinkled that blood, the blood of oxen, the blood of animals, when he sprinkled that on the people of Israel, that wasn’t truly atoning for their sins. Not truly, because it was the blood of animals. What was needed to deal with our sin, what was needed in order to bring us to God, in order for us to be forgiven, what we needed was the blood of a man, the blood of a human being, one just like us, a perfect man, a divine man, a sinless man, one who could offer himself a sacrifice that we might be forgiven. And this is the blood that Jesus has offered in our behalf, his very own blood shed on the cross for us.

And so we needed a perfect representative, one without sin to bear our sins before God, that we might be made forever clean and holy and able to come into the presence of almighty God, to worship him and to enjoy his presence, his blessing, his grace. And this is what Jesus has done for us at the cross. Hebrews 10:14: for by a single offering, one offering, a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

When Jesus ate that last meal with his disciples, that Passover meal on the eve of his crucifixion, he handed them the cup and he said, this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. He also called it the new covenant in my blood. And so Jesus came to make a new covenant with us. Not like this covenant, a covenant sealed not with the blood of animals that could not take away sin, but sealed with his own blood.

And if your faith is in Jesus Christ, this is why you are forgiven. If your faith and hope are in Christ, your sins are atoned for. You are forgiven because Jesus has shed his blood for you. He died the death that you and I deserve to die. Remember, another aspect of this blood that was shed in this worship service in Exodus 24, the blood was telling the Israelites that if they broke the covenant, what they deserved was death. And they were in fact covenant breakers. They did not keep the law. And in our sin, we too were covenant breakers. We also did not keep God’s law. And so a death has taken place. Because we were covenant breakers, a death has taken place, but not our death, but it was the death of Jesus. And so his blood shed for you and me is that new covenant. It is eternal life. And because of Jesus Christ, you have overcome sin, You have overcome death because of what he has done for you.

And so the worship service involved blood. Our worship service is based on the greater blood of Jesus. You’ll notice that in this worship service, not everybody was called to come near to the Lord. The people stayed below at the foot of the mountain. Aaron and his sons and the elders, they were able to go with Moses part of the way, but they had to stay back. They couldn’t go all the way into the presence of God. Only Moses could draw near to God himself.

Thankfully, our worship service is not like that. Imagine if it was. All the congregants here, you would have to be standing out in the parking lot. Thankfully, it’s a nice day, so it wouldn’t be too bad out there. The elders, you could come into the church building, but only into the foyer, but only the minister, only the pastor could come into the sanctuary to be near God. Even though Moses sprinkled the people with the blood of those animals, there was still a distance. There was still a gap, a distance between them and the Lord.

And this distance makes perfect sense in the context of Exodus. If you remember the description that Moses gives to us when the people saw God, as he came down upon Mount Sinai, it was terrifying. There was thunder, there was lightning, a trumpet blast, the people trembled. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke. The Lord descended on it in fire. And most terrifying of all, what left them in abject fear was hearing the voice of God thundering from the mountain. He spoke to the people with a voice that was so dreadful, the people begged Moses that they would not hear the voice of God anymore.

And so the people were given a glimpse of the searing holiness, the awful majesty of Almighty God, and it left them in dread. And so here in chapter 24, the people who worship the Lord, they have to stay back. They can’t come near. The elders of Israel, they can’t come too near. Only Moses, the mediator could go near to God because of his holiness, his majesty that would consume them.

But praise God, this does not describe the way things are today when we worship the Lord through faith in Jesus Christ. No, God is still the same. He is still holy. He is as majestic as he ever was. But because you are covered with the blood of a better sacrifice, because the blood that has been sprinkled on you is not the blood of oxen and goats, but the blood of Jesus, you can draw near because you have a better mediator than Moses. You have Jesus. You can draw near. You can come as near to the Lord as Moses himself approached God on top of Mount Sinai.

Again, Hebrews tells us of this wonderful access that has been opened up for us to come to God by faith in Christ. Hebrews 10:21 and 22 says, since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us draw near. Let us draw near. Hebrews also says in 4:16, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

These are wonderful promises that you and I, we can come near to God without fear. It doesn’t matter what your past is. It doesn’t matter how sinful a life you have lived. It doesn’t matter how evil and wicked the sins that you have committed. By faith in Jesus Christ, you are covered with the blood that takes away all of your sins so you can come near to God. And it doesn’t matter, Christian, how you have stumbled recently and your struggle with sin. It doesn’t matter how you have failed because you are covered with the blood of Jesus Christ. And so you can draw near to Him, to your Father. You can come to Him with your desires, your fears, your prayers, and know that He will hear you. For the sake of Christ, God, your Father, He will give you mercy and grace to help in time of need. Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 23, verses 20 to 32. And this is God’s inerrant, his infallible, his inspired word. Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice. Do not rebel against him for he will not pardon your transgression for my name is in him. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.

When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces. You shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days. I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites and the Hittites from before you.

I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little, I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and possess the land. And I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates. For I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out from before you. You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.

And our New Testament reading is John chapter 14, verses one through seven. Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself and where I am, you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

You have all heard the saying, it’s not the destination that matters, but the journey. And sometimes that is true. But that was probably not what the Israelites wanted to hear as they set out on their wilderness journey to the promised land. For the Israelites, it was all about the destination and not about the journey. It was about the destination that God had promised to bring them to. That is, the promised land. He would bring them through the wilderness into a land flowing with milk and honey.

This was the promise that God made to Abraham, that his descendants would inherit this land. This was the promise that God made to Moses when the Lord appeared to him from the burning bush and told him that he would be the one who would lead his people out of Egypt and into the land of promise. And in this passage, the Lord makes this promise again as he speaks to Moses, who will relay these words to the people of Israel. And so for the Israelites, what made their journey meaningful, what made it a journey worth making was the destination. It was the promised land. That was their hope. That was the promise, the gift that the Lord had given to them.

And as a Christian, your hope as well is in the destination that God has prepared for you at the end of your earthly journey. And that is the true promised land, the heavenly promised land, the new heavens, the new earth, that eternal glory that God has in store for you as one whom he has redeemed through his son, Jesus. In our passage in verse 20, the Lord speaks of the place that I have prepared. And we heard from our New Testament reading that when Jesus spoke to his disciples, he also spoke to them of a place that he would prepare.

Jesus says in John 14, in my father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am, you may be also. So Jesus also promised his disciples that there was a place he was preparing for them. Just as the Lord here prepared the promised land for the Israelites, so Jesus, in his resurrection from the dead, he was, after his resurrection, he was taken up into glory to the right hand of the Father in heaven. And there he is preparing an eternal home for his followers.

Since God’s promise to the Israelites that we read in this passage from Exodus is a type of that greater promise that Christ has made to us of our heavenly home, we can read this passage in Exodus and take some lessons from it about the promise that Christ has made to us of heaven.

And the first lesson is this, that God gives his promise of heaven to a people that he has already saved. So let’s remember, remind ourselves of when and where the Lord spoke these words to Moses. So the Lord is speaking to Moses. Moses is on Mount Sinai. They’re in the wilderness. This is after God has brought his people out from their bondage to Pharaoh, out of the miserable existence that they were living in Egypt.

But even before the Lord had brought them out of Egypt, the Lord had made the Israelites his people, his special people. He entered into a covenant with them. He promised the people of Israel and no other people on earth, but he promised the people of Israel that he would be their God, they would be his people. And so at this point, God has already chosen his people. He’s already made them his own. He’s already saved them from their plight in Egypt. And so now God is making these promises to a redeemed people, to a people that he has already saved and to whom, or whom he has already called to himself.

Of all the nations in the world, only Israel was bound for the promised land. And that was entirely because of the grace of God, that God loved them. And God loved them not because of how great and mighty a nation they were. God did not love his people Israel because of how righteous and godly they were, but God loved them simply because it was his good pleasure to set his love upon them. It sounds redundant, but God loved his people simply because he loved them.

And the point for us here is this, that God gives the hope and the promise of heaven, the promise of resurrection life and a new creation only to those whom he has delivered from their bondage to sin and death. When we read the book of Exodus, we must always keep in mind that the salvation that the Lord accomplished for the Israelites from Egypt is a picture or a type of the greater salvation that God has accomplished for us in his son, Jesus Christ.

And how did God accomplish that salvation for us in his son, Jesus? It was through the incarnation, the eternal son of God, who was very God, who is very God. He himself took on a human nature. He became man in his incarnation. He lived a life as man, a life of perfect obedience to the will of his father. He died the cursed death of the cross as man, as a substitute for you and me as sinners. He was raised to new life from the grave so that all who come to Jesus Christ by faith are delivered from their bondage, not bondage to the physical slavery like the Israelites were under in Egypt, but bondage to the slavery of sin.

And for those who repent of their sin by God’s grace, for those who put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, God promises to bring them into his glorious and gracious presence forever and ever in the life that is to come. This is the promise of heaven. But this promise of heaven belongs to Christians, to those who have been redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ, by the grace of God. It’s been said that not everybody who’s talking about heaven is going to go to heaven. And we could also say that not everybody who would like to go to heaven is necessarily going to end up in heaven. But only those who have come to Jesus Christ by faith, only those who have submitted to him as their Lord, who have repented of their sin, have this promise and hope of heaven.

Well, how about you? Have you trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ? Have you repented of your sin? Have you come to Jesus as the only one who can save you? If so, then know that by God’s grace, this promise is for you. This promise of eternal life, life in a new heavens, a new earth, life with Christ forever and ever, that this is yours. This promise is for you. You have a promised land. It’s not the land of Canaan, but one that is infinitely greater. You have the promise of a resurrection body, a resurrection body that will be raised from the grave, immortal, imperishable, free from sickness and the ravages of disease, free from death, decay forever. But this promise of everlasting glory, this promise of eternal life, it is only for those whom God has redeemed through his son, Jesus Christ, whom he has brought to himself.

And so God makes his promise of heaven then to a people that he has already saved. And this brings us to the second lesson, which I’ve already given it away. But the second lesson is this, that God will fulfill his promise through his son. God will fulfill his promise through his son. So in verse 20, the Lord says to Moses, behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and bring you to the place that I have prepared. And so this is a true guardian angel, the angel who would watch over the Israelites, who would protect them, guard them on their way to the promised land, who would drive out the inhabitants before the people of Israel.

This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen the book of Exodus, the angel of the Lord. He also appeared to Moses at the burning bush back in Exodus chapter three, we read this, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him, that is Moses, in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And so we’ve already seen this angel of the Lord. And just like when the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses at the burning bush, so here too, this angel is identified with the Lord himself.

The Lord says in verse 21 in this passage, our passage in chapter 23, the Lord says, my name is in him. My name is in him. The name of God represents the character of God, the person of God, his power and so on. And so for the Lord to say that my name is in the angel means that he has fully invested the angel with his own divine power and glory. And so what the angel says, the Lord says. What the angel does, the Lord does.

And whereas in verse 20, God speaks of the angel bringing the Israelites into the promised land and fighting for his people, later in the passage in verses 27 and 28, the Lord speaks of himself as driving out the inhabitants of Canaan, leading his people into the promised land. Look at verses 27 and 28. No longer does he speak of the angel, but he says, I, I will send my terror before you, and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. Verse 28, and I will send hornets before you, which will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you.

Now hold that thought for a minute. You might be thinking, what are these hornets that are spoken of in verse 28? I’m wondering the same thing myself, to be honest. Nobody knows exactly what these hornets are. It could be a literal thing. The Lord perhaps sent actual hornets into the desert armies of the Canaanites to cause them to panic and to flee. They could represent perhaps some kind of even a human army, maybe even an angelic army. We just don’t know. It was some kind of assault against the inhabitants of Canaan.

But whatever the hornets were, the larger point is this, that the angel of the Lord is at the same time equated with the Lord himself, and he is somehow distinct from the Lord. And so the Lord speaks of the angel as if he is a different person, but he also so closely identifies himself with the angel that he speaks of what he is doing in the first person. And when we read this in the light of all that the New Testament has revealed to us about God, we are on very safe grounds to say that the angel of the Lord is none other than the Lord himself. It is the second person of the Trinity, the son of God. We have here a revelation of the pre-incarnate Christ and the angel of the Lord.

Jesus, he is God in the flesh. God’s name is in Jesus just as it was in the angel, and just as it was the son of God who led the Israelites into the promised land, so it is Jesus, it is Christ who leads us into the greater promised land. And one thing that this means for you as a believer in Christ is that your eternal destiny, this promise that God has given to you of glory in the life to come, this depends upon or is in the hands of a sovereign and faithful savior. Just as no human enemy or any kind of enemy could have overcome the Lord in driving out the inhabitants of Canaan, no enemy could have stopped the Lord from bringing his people into the promised land because the angel of the Lord fought for his people.

There is no enemy that will hinder Christ from bringing you into that eternal glory that the Father has prepared for you. And so you can be assured that just as Jesus has led you out of bondage to sin, out of darkness and death, and just as he has already brought you in Christ into the kingdom, so he will most certainly bring you into that final and consummate glory that awaits you. You have that assurance that there is no enemy who can separate you from God’s will for you, from the love of Christ that he has for you, or for God’s love for you in Christ. Philippians 1:6 says, and I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

And so as a believer, your eternal destiny is assured, it is secure because of the one who fights for you, because of the one who is for you, that is Jesus Christ. And we need to remember this when we go through trials and struggles in this life. We get so easily discouraged, downcast, anxious over the trials and afflictions and the frustrations of this life. And this is not to diminish at all the very real suffering and pain that we experience in this world. But what are the things that afflict us in this life? What are they from the perspective of eternity? Well, they are nothing. They are nothing because they cannot keep us from that inheritance that is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Just as for the Israelites, whatever trials and struggles that they would experience in the wilderness, they were nothing compared to the blessedness that God had promised them that awaits them in the promised land. In the same way, the apostle Paul says of us as believers, for this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Because we have a savior who has promised to bring us into our heavenly home, we can bear up under whatever afflictions, whatever suffering that we have in this life, knowing that this is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory. That what we experience now is not to be compared with that glory that will be ours in heaven one day. And God will fulfill all of this through his son, Jesus Christ.

The third lesson is this, with his promise, God gives us a command for obedience. So right after the Lord in this passage, after he promises that he will bring them into the promised land, He gives them this command. He says in verses 21 and 22, he says, pay careful attention to him and obey his voice. Do not rebel against him for he will not pardon your transgressions for my name is in him. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.

And so the Lord commands His people that they must obey. And as they obey, He will fulfill His promises to them to bring them into the promised land. Later, He is more specific about what that obedience entails. In verse 24, He tells them that they are not to commit idolatry. Specifically, they are not to bow down or worship the gods of the Canaanites. In fact, they were to destroy all the objects of the Canaanite worship. In verse 32, likewise, he says that the Israelites were not to make a covenant with the people or with their gods. Why is that? Because friendship with the people of Canaan would inevitably lead to friendship with their gods and worship with their gods. Instead, they were to destroy both the people and their gods.

And the reason, and this is one of the difficult teachings of scripture, that the Lord commanded his people to destroy the Canaanites. Here he speaks of driving them out, but we know from other scripture that what that meant was destroying the people of Canaan. But the reason why God commanded his people to destroy the Canaanites was not because God is somehow some kind of intolerant, murderous dictator. Rather, the people of Canaan were to be destroyed because of the fact that God is holy. He is just. He is righteous. And the people of Canaan were under the righteous condemnation, the righteous judgment of God for their own sin, their own iniquity.

Back in Genesis chapter 15, when God told Abraham that he and his offspring would possess the land of Canaan, he said that they would not inherit the land until the iniquity of the Amorites was complete. In other words, it was the sin of the Canaanites. It was the sin of the Perizzites, the sin of the Hittites, the sin of all the other “ites” who lived in Canaan that brought upon them the destruction at the hands of the Israelites. And so the conquest of the promised land, this was not some instance of genocide or mass murder, but it was God carrying out his just and righteous judgment against a people that brought that upon themselves because of their own sin and iniquity.

So the Israelites were to obey the Lord in all these ways. They were to drive out the people. They were to destroy all their gods. And as they did, as they obeyed the Lord, as they kept his commandments, they would come to possess the entirety of the land of promise. And so we could put it this way. The land was a gift of God’s grace. Yes, the land was a gift purely of grace. However, the way for the Israelites to come into full possession of the land was the way of obedience, of faithfulness, of keeping his word. Now, we can also say that insofar as the Israelites were obedient and faithful to keep the word of God, that too was the result of God’s grace at work in them. But this is the way that the Lord led his people into their inheritance, only as they were faithful to keep his commandments.

And the same is true for you as a Christian as well. Salvation for you and me as believers in Christ is all of grace. From beginning to end, salvation belongs to the Lord. When we come into heaven, the only thing that we’re going to be able to say then is, I don’t belong here, this is all by the grace of God. This is all by the grace of God. There is nothing I contributed, no work that I did, nothing that I merited, that I deserve to be in this glorious place forever and ever. It is all by God’s grace and we’ll have all eternity to thank and praise God for that grace.

But the way in which God graciously leads us to that promised heaven is the way of obedience, the way of righteousness, the way of keeping God’s commandments. Hebrews 12:14 says, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Ephesians 5:5, for you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

This truth of the nature of the Christian life is that salvation is a gift of God and yet we inherit that salvation as God graciously brings us along the path of obedience. This is so wonderfully illustrated for us in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. You remember that Christian is saved. Christian is the hero of Pilgrim’s Progress. He is saved from the city of destruction. He is on a journey throughout the book to his destination, the celestial city. But there is a long and arduous journey between those two places. A journey in which Christian must persevere through all kinds of challenges and difficulties. He must remain faithful to the one who was called in the book, the Lord of the place, that is the God of the celestial city.

And so Christian, you’ll remember, he goes through all of these trials and tribulations. He goes through the Slough of Despond, the Hill Difficulty, the Valley of Humiliation, his hand-to-hand combat with Apollyon. He goes through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He goes through Vanity Fair, Doubting Castle, and so on. And along the way, Christian’s faith, his obedience was tested. And sometimes by faith he was successful, but other times he stumbled and he failed and he temporarily lost his way. But he never completely fell away from the path as others did in the book. God in his grace kept him in the way, but that way was the way of obedience, of keeping God’s commandments.

And notice that the obedience that God demands here, that he demands of the people of Israel, that this is not 75% obedience, it’s not 95% obedience, but God demands 100% obedience. Look at verse 24. He says, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces. And then he says, look at verses 32 and 33, you shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.

And so the Lord does not give the Israelites some wiggle room where they can mainly obey the Lord, but also have a little space for dallying with the worship of these Canaanite gods. No, they were to utterly destroy their gods. There was no place for compromise. They had to be destroyed completely. And what this means for you as a believer in Christ is this, that you must put sin to death. You must destroy it. You must not let it live. You must not make room for it in your life.

If the Israelites, think about it, if the Israelites had merely taken all these Canaanite gods and put them into a storage unit for safekeeping, at some point, you know that they inevitably would have taken those gods out and they would have started worshiping them. They would have been a snare to them. That’s why they had to destroy them, to put them to death. And in the same way, if you make room in your heart to secretly cherish any hidden sin, rather than putting that sin to death where it begins, in your heart—if you do not put it to death, that sin will grow and grow. It will eventually break out from your heart. It will emerge in your life. If it is unchecked, if it is not put to death, it will eventually overcome you and destroy you.

When it comes to sin, it is the law of the jungle. Kill or be killed. The Puritan John Owen put it this way, be killing sin or sin will be killing you. For the Israelites, the only hope that they had to remain faithful to the Lord was to completely demolish the idols of the land. And the only way for you to remain faithful to Jesus Christ is to destroy sin, to put sin to death, to not let it live. As soon as you identify and see it in your life, put it to death by the Holy Spirit, by the grace of God. Otherwise it continues to grow until it kills you. Romans 8:13 says, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

And according to what the Lord says here, the Israelites would be blessed or cursed according to their obedience. If the Israelites went on to be as faithful to the Lord as they should have been to keep his commandments in the promised land, the life in Israel would have been the closest thing that the world has ever seen to heaven on earth. Because God promises here that he would bless them beyond measure in that place if they were faithful. They would not have known hunger or thirst. God would have kept them from sickness. Their women would not have miscarried or been barren. Everyone would have enjoyed a long and healthy life.

Now, when we hear these promises as Christians today, we cannot directly apply them to us, to the church. God does not give us the promise that if we are faithful to Christ, that he will bless us with good health, a long and prosperous life, with freedom from disease or barrenness and all of that. These were promises specifically for the Israelites at this time, but they do point to a greater truth, and that is this, that there is blessing in obedience. When we genuinely seek the Lord from the heart, we will find blessing in this.

Of course, to seek the Lord is the work of God’s grace, but when by grace we seek Him, there is blessing in this, but the blessings are spiritual. They are blessings enjoyed in the hearts. They are the blessings that include, among other things, the assurance of the love of God, the peace that surpasses understanding, a true joy, true contentment in the Holy Spirit. These are the kind of blessings that God gives us as we seek Him by faith; He blesses that obedience. In Psalm 19, in speaking of God’s commandments, David says, in keeping them, there is great reward.

The other side of the coin is that the Lord also warned the Israelites here that if they failed to keep God’s commandments, if they were disobedient to his word, that they would experience not blessing, but cursing. And in other places of the Old Testament, the Lord spells out in much, much more detail exactly what those curses would look like if the Israelites were not faithful in the promised land. But here he alludes to them. He says in verse 21, do not rebel against him for he will not pardon your transgression. Verse 33, for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.

But notice here that the greatest threat facing the Israelites at this time, when it came to the Canaanites, the people that inhabited the land, the greatest threat was not their military might, was not their power. God would take care of that. But the greatest threat that the Israelites faced was the spiritual influence that the Canaanites would have upon them if they did not destroy them and their idols. And in the same way, the greatest dangers that we face, they’re not usually the things that we fear the most.

What do we fear the most in this life? We fear a personal tragedy or a tragedy in the family. We fear a disease. We fear sudden financial hardship, poverty. We fear being the victim of a crime. We fear all these things, but these are not the greatest threats to our well-being. These are not the greatest threats to our soul. But the greatest threats that face us are sin, temptation, hardness of heart, unbelief. These are the things that we should fear and be on guard against and protect ourselves from. Just like the Israelites, their greatest threat was the spiritual influence that the Canaanites might have against them.

Now, as we hear what God said to the people of Israel on the cusp—well, actually, we haven’t read it yet, but it’s going to be 40 years of wilderness wanderings before they can go into the promised land. But here, they seem to be on the cusp of entering the promised land. But as Paul Harvey would say—if you don’t know who Paul Harvey is, ask somebody in their 50s and they’ll fill you in—but Paul Harvey would say, and now for the rest of the story.

God did bring his people into the land of Israel or the land of Canaan, as he promised. However, the people of Israel were not faithful. They were not obedient. They did exactly what they were not supposed to do. They did not destroy all the gods of the Canaanites. Instead, they started to worship the gods of the Canaanites. And that worship was wicked, it was evil, not only because in itself it was idolatrous, but also because it involved other evils, such as child sacrifice.

In Psalm 106, the psalmist describes the rest of the story. What happened when Israel came into the promised land. It is not a pretty picture. Let me read Psalm 106. They did not destroy the peoples as the Lord commanded them, but they mixed with the nations and learned to do as they did. They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons. They poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan. And the land was polluted with blood. Thus they became unclean by their acts and played the whore in their deeds.

And so the Lord ultimately would cast his people out of the land of Canaan because of their disobedience, their faithlessness. But the good news for you and me as Christians is this, that when God brings you and me into that heavenly glory that he has promised us, when he brings us into the promised land that he is preparing for us, that is heaven, he will at the same time so transform and change you and me that there will no longer be any possibility for us to sin against God.

In the case of the Israelites, they sinned their way out of the promised land, but you and I will never sin our way out of heaven. And the reason for that is because in our resurrection, God will so transform us. He will so constitute us that every thought of our hearts, every inclination of our minds, every word, every action, all that we do will only be righteousness and holiness and obedience and worship. Just as before you came to know Christ, just as then in your sin, you could not do anything righteous and good and holy because you were in a state of sin, so in the state of glory, the opposite will be the case. You will not be able to do anything that is unrighteous or unholy or sinful against God. You will not be capable of it.

But until then, God calls you and me to pursue with all our hearts a life of righteousness, obedience, and Christ-likeness. And as you do so by his grace, he is preparing you for the heaven that he has in store for you.

And that brings us to our fourth lesson, our final lesson. God fulfills his promise little by little. One thing that stands out in this passage, one thing that strikes us when we read it, is that the Lord promises the people of Israel that the conquest would not be all of a sudden, but it would be gradual, little by little. And so in verses 29 and 30, we read, I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little, I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and possessed the land.

Now here, comparison—when we use the Israelites as a type of our entering into the promised land of heaven—here the comparison breaks down a little bit because when God brings us into the fullness of that glory of the life to come that he has promised us, it will not be gradual at all. We will be brought into glory and the fullness of that glory forever and ever. However, in this life now, insofar as God is at work in you, insofar as He is making you fit for that glory, the process of sanctification, that is little by little. It is gradual. It is not all at once.

And sometimes that’s hard for us to accept. We want to be made perfect now. We want to be brought into glory now. Have you ever wanted to be just like Enoch or Elijah and just have God come down and swoop you up and take you directly to heaven? Kind of like in Star Trek, how Scotty would beam up his friends back to the starship. Salvation is not a “beam me up Scotty” affair. Rather, it is the gradual work of God’s spirit as He makes you more and more fit, more and more ready for that place that God is preparing for you, a place of righteousness, holiness, purity, a place where Christ is enthroned and worshiped continually, that place where there are saints—the saints are made perfect in love and holiness.

God is preparing you for that in this life, and He prepares you for that little by little. Before he brings you into heaven, God, by his spirit and grace, little by little, gradually, he’s putting a little bit more of heaven into you. And this is where the journey does matter. This is where our lives are meaningful and significant because God is at work in us, preparing us for that greater life that is to come. But even still, it’s only important because the destination is so grand and glorious.

When you read in the Pilgrim’s Progress, that’s wonderful, the last few pages, when Christian is crossing with his friend the river that symbolizes his own death, and on the other side of the river is the celestial city, and he comes to the shores on the other side, and he’s welcomed by angels, and he sees the glories of that celestial city, and you read that, and you think, he made it, and it was all worth it. You think back to all that he endured, and you say, it’s all worth it. He’s made it to his destination.

And in the same way, when you and I are brought into the eternal rest and glory that Christ is preparing for us, we will think it was all worth it. It was more than worth it. All that we endured was worth it because of this glorious place where God has brought us. The struggle against sin, the suffering, the sorrow, the sacrifice and tears, all that you have endured, your toil for the sake of Christ, it will all be worth it and more.

Now, as we read ahead in the Old Testament, we’ll see that—or you see as you read on past Exodus—that God brought to fulfillment what he promised the Israelites. Of course, this promise of no disease and no barrenness and all of that, the Israelites, they weren’t faithful. They didn’t receive that promise, but God brought them into the promised land. It was 400 years later that the boundaries of the promised land looked something like they’re described here under the reigns of David and Solomon, that God was faithful to his people.

So many times his people sinned against him. So many times they failed him. So many times they committed idolatry and were disobedient. Nevertheless, God was faithful. He fulfilled his promises. And he will fulfill the promise that he has made to you and his son, Jesus Christ. He will fulfill that promise ultimately on the basis of the obedience of Jesus himself, which is counted as your own. And on that day, on that day of salvation, you and I will know in fullness what we only experience in part here in this life. You and I will know that unspeakable blessedness of joy and peace of being with Jesus Christ and his new creation forever. That is the hope that God has given us in his word. Let’s pray.

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