From The Inside Out
Notes
Transcript
Reading:
15 There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”
34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.
35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever.
36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Introduction:
I don’t believe that in today’s culture it would be difficult for me to convince you that people are pre-dominantly selfish.
Entitled
Society has breed the idea that everything in our lives is all about ourselves and how things affect us.
Really making the center of the universe: ourselves.
When we acknowledge the God who created everything we have an aha moment.
Illustration:
It’s like that moment when someone is asking you if you’ve seen their glasses.
You begin helping them look for them only to realize in the moments looking around that they are on their head.
It’s an Aha, moment.
The moment we understand who God is and His nature it’s that Aha moment when we stop being the center of our universe and realize it’s His world and we live in it.
We realize that we don’t have as much control as we have been lead to believe.
This is a truth we learn from the Tabernacle.
Not only has God commanded a place for Him to be built so He can be in our presence and available; but in it’s order of giving instructions it begins with God; not man.
The Tabernacle set’s the precedent that God works from the inside out.
Isn’t that a truth that He shows us even in the new testament?
He takes up residence in our lives and begins changing us from the inside out.
Our heart and mind are first to be changed.
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.
26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.
29 And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you.
He takes out the heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh.
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
He changes our minds through sobering truth and willful submission to His doctrinal teaching, as we read His word.
God is working from the inside out, similar to what we find in His instructions to the tabernacle.
He started with the “place” or tent.
Then the covenant
Then the place He will sit
Then the Holy place with a separation and a lamp to provide light
Yet in the Holy of Holies He was the only source of light.
How often do we miss what God is teaching us in His word because we fell for the lie that it all begins with us.
We are mistaken, He is always the main character.
Since He is the main character and we aren’t worthy He provides a way for us to approach Him.
In His layout we find the proper way to approach Him.
(Explain the perspective we have approaching God in the Tabernacle. First we see the 7.5’ tall “fence”, then the courtyard tools, then the holy place...etc..)
The first thing we are confronted with is the:
Bronze Altar (1-8)
Bronze Altar (1-8)
1 “You shall make the altar of acacia wood, five cubits long and five cubits broad. The altar shall be square, and its height shall be three cubits.
2 And you shall make horns for it on its four corners; its horns shall be of one piece with it, and you shall overlay it with bronze.
3 You shall make pots for it to receive its ashes, and shovels and basins and forks and fire pans. You shall make all its utensils of bronze.
4 You shall also make for it a grating, a network of bronze, and on the net you shall make four bronze rings at its four corners.
5 And you shall set it under the ledge of the altar so that the net extends halfway down the altar.
6 And you shall make poles for the altar, poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with bronze.
7 And the poles shall be put through the rings, so that the poles are on the two sides of the altar when it is carried.
8 You shall make it hollow, with boards. As it has been shown you on the mountain, so shall it be made.
We get the instructions for how to build a 7.5’ square which is 4’ tall.
The Acacia wood is to be overlaid with Bronze
It is to have 4 posts with horns on top of each post (it is to be 1 solid piece not horns attached to it)
It is to be an empty box with a hanging screen.
The box is to be set above the ground.
This would reaffirm and not violate the law found back in Exodus 20:24
24 An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you.
The bottom of the Altar was open, the ashes would fall to the ground, upholding the law for making an altar to the Lord.
Some people might want to attempt to say that God contradicted Himself in the directions for the Bronze Altar.
Yet you can see that He didn’t, He upheld it by designing an open “grate” which would allow the burnt parts to fall to the earth.
The Mesh grate held the animal and it’s parts until it was consumed enough to fall through the grate onto the earth.
There is another detail about the altar that is significant.
2 And you shall make horns for it on its four corners; its horns shall be of one piece with it, and you shall overlay it with bronze.
The horns have been a prominent detail through biblical history.
In 1 Kings we find an descriptive scene:
David is old his son Adonijah decides to exalt himself as the next king.
Bathsheba is informed by Nathan what Adonijah is doing because Solomon was David’s choice for king.
Bathsheba told David what Adonijah was doing, so David had Solomon anointed as king while Adonijah was out running his campaign.
39 There Zadok the priest took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed Solomon. Then they blew the trumpet, and all the people said, “Long live King Solomon!”
40 And all the people went up after him, playing on pipes, and rejoicing with great joy, so that the earth was split by their noise.
41 Adonijah and all the guests who were with him heard it as they finished feasting. And when Joab heard the sound of the trumpet, he said, “What does this uproar in the city mean?”
42 While he was still speaking, behold, Jonathan the son of Abiathar the priest came. And Adonijah said, “Come in, for you are a worthy man and bring good news.”
43 Jonathan answered Adonijah, “No, for our lord King David has made Solomon king,
Adonijah was afraid, as were all his campaign cohorts.
What would you do in this moment, what is logical?
Adonijah ran into the temple and grabbed the horn of the altar.
50 And Adonijah feared Solomon. So he arose and went and took hold of the horns of the altar.
Solomon responded to Adonijah’s actions with let him go and lets see if he upholds his words he swears before the Lord at the altar.
51 Then it was told Solomon, “Behold, Adonijah fears King Solomon, for behold, he has laid hold of the horns of the altar, saying, ‘Let King Solomon swear to me first that he will not put his servant to death with the sword.’ ”
52 And Solomon said, “If he will show himself a worthy man, not one of his hairs shall fall to the earth, but if wickedness is found in him, he shall die.”
Adonijah went to the best place he could to secure his life.
A place of safety.
He was gripping the place of atonement, expressing the need for his atoning.
He bound himself to the altar, willing to make a sacrifice to atone for his sin against his brother and family.
The horns of the altar would serve the purpose of a secure place to tie the sacrifice so it couldn’t get away.
Horns also were a symbol of power to the ancient world.
Crowns typically were made from animal horns the symbol of power and later made into the gold rings that we think of with horns on it.
We even find the wording used of Jesus when speaking of Zechariah’s prophecy fulfilled by Jesus.
69 and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David,
The horns are the symbol of the strength and power of atonement.
Jesus’ strength, power, and His atonement which secured our Salvation.
Jesus is the fulfillment of the Bronze altar.
The altar’s purpose was sacrifice; but why a sacrifice?
The only basis for worship we have is through sacrifice!
Right when someone walked into the outer court bringing their animal the first thing they saw was the way into fellowship with God: The bronze altar.
There is only one way to God: A worthy sacrifice.
We needed a Vicarious Atonement or substitutionary sacrifice.
18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,
We gained in Jesus access and a worthy sacrifice so we can worship God.
When Satan accuses us to God in the courtroom we grab the horn of the altar and are safe because of Jesus’ sacrifice.
This symbol of proper and true worship is located in:
The Court (9-19)
The Court (9-19)
The court was moveable wall around the temple.
7’6” tall; 75’ wide; 150’ long.
There wasn’t limited access to this area, you came to worship.
9 “You shall make the court of the tabernacle. On the south side the court shall have hangings of fine twined linen a hundred cubits long for one side.
10 Its twenty pillars and their twenty bases shall be of bronze, but the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver.
11 And likewise for its length on the north side there shall be hangings a hundred cubits long, its pillars twenty and their bases twenty, of bronze, but the hooks of the pillars and their fillets shall be of silver.
12 And for the breadth of the court on the west side there shall be hangings for fifty cubits, with ten pillars and ten bases.
13 The breadth of the court on the front to the east shall be fifty cubits.
14 The hangings for the one side of the gate shall be fifteen cubits, with their three pillars and three bases.
15 On the other side the hangings shall be fifteen cubits, with their three pillars and three bases.
16 For the gate of the court there shall be a screen twenty cubits long, of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, embroidered with needlework. It shall have four pillars and with them four bases.
17 All the pillars around the court shall be filleted with silver. Their hooks shall be of silver, and their bases of bronze.
18 The length of the court shall be a hundred cubits, the breadth fifty, and the height five cubits, with hangings of fine twined linen and bases of bronze.
19 All the utensils of the tabernacle for every use, and all its pegs and all the pegs of the court, shall be of bronze.
God was detailed in the construction; but there is something that you might recognize now that is described 2x outside the tabernacle.
Things aren’t made of gold, they are made from bronze.
Bronze is considered the metal of judgement, and isn’t worthy to be in the presence of God.
probably because the altar was made of bronze and that is where our sin was judged.
The courtyard is a symbol of a congregational place where people will have access to God, yet there is a reverence and separation between God and man.
The courtyard was the location of sacrifice and washing in order to reach the Lord.
There is still a courtyard in place today.
The local church building provides an location where God’s people congregate together and there is a reverence and separation from God.
We have the opportunity to gather here and thankfully we don’t need the sacrifices for worship; because Jesus’ sacrifice fulfilled the requirement.
We don’t need to come and wash in the basin after the sacrifice to have access to God as they did here in Exodus.
The permanent sacrifice was made and that sacrifice has made us clean before the Lord, forever!
We gain a better understanding of the New Testament when we see the way God points to a better and permanent thing in Jesus from the old testament.
God gives us a foreshadow to the Holy Spirit with the:
Lamp Oil (20-21)
Lamp Oil (20-21)
20 “You shall command the people of Israel that they bring to you pure beaten olive oil for the light, that a lamp may regularly be set up to burn.
21 In the tent of meeting, outside the veil that is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall tend it from evening to morning before the Lord. It shall be a statute forever to be observed throughout their generations by the people of Israel.
Every one of us understand that some processes produce better results.
Illustration:
Different ways to finish drywall.
The process to get the oil from the olives could’ve been done a few different ways.
One was to apply heat and get squeeze them in a mill
Another was to beat or bruise them and let the cracked or bruised olives drip naturally.
Another was to crush them in a mortise and pestle.
Supposedly the beaten olives dripping oil was the best oil and that was to be collected and used for the lamp.
Which the main point of verse :20 is that it would burn perpetually.
The oil is the continual flame that stays lit.
It is supposed that of the 7 lamps, in the evening they would snuff 4 of them and let 3 burn until the morning when they would light all 7again.
The oil is to keep the light supplied, similarly to the the Light (Holy Spirit) inside of us that keeps us going and is with us always.
The Oil being the best of oil that it can be reminds us of the purity which comes from the Holy Spirit.
Only the best from the Lord.
Conclusion:
The structure and arrangement of everything points to Jesus and His impact He planned to have on us.
The Lord dwells in His place and from the mercy seat He works from inside there towards the outside.
He does nothing different now.
Jesus made the worthy, substitutionary atonement for our debt.
He washed us in the laver clean with the moment the Holy Spirit filled us.
We can have access to God at any point in our lives because of what He did.
A lot of passages teach us that God is working on us from the inside out.
One prominent one:
6 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.
God is constantly working on us.
If you find yourself not perfect, don’t worry. He’s not done yet and we have a helper:
The Holy Spirit is to teach us His word
Convict us of sin
And give wisdom for how to live our lives in this new cleanliness.
The tabernacle and all it’s furniture was for the Israelites to have access to God.
But for us it pointed to the permanent access the world could have by faith in Jesus.
Just like the Tabernacle God is the center of everything; Out of Him comes all.
Understanding this point allows us less stress and no fear.
Less stress and no fear because everything that is happening, He is in control of.
But it does require that we trust Him and have faith.
Which sometimes asks that we do things that are out of our comfort zone and sometimes doesn’t make sense in this world.
Allow God His rightful place in your world, the center and understand that the only way to worship Him is through a sacrifice and cleansing.
Jesus provided it for us.
-Pray!
