Last Week of Exodus

Introduction:

Good morning! Our passage this morning will come from Exodus 40:34.

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I noticed the sun this morning, and it is another beautiful Lord's day. Amen?

Beauty is something that I think we so easily brush aside in today's society. Everywhere we look in creation, there is breathtaking beauty from the Grand Canyon to Niagra Falls, the noble and breathtaking eagle to the tiny butterfly, beauty. God took the time to make it beautiful so that we could see a bit of His glory. Maybe that is why we are so quick to forget about Him sometimes once our day gets going.

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When we consider beauty, we should consider the reality that beauty isn't something that merely happens.

The Beauty of a Butterfly is not something they are born with, nor does it just happen. It comes with much labor, which means it comes amidst painstaking change. Despite all of the struggle and discomfort, all of it was meant to be. The struggle of change is just as much a part of the butterfly's design as its subsequent beautiful wings.

The change is not glorious; even the struggle of the change is known by few other than the butterfly itself. Born little more than an ugly worm and pursued its entire early life as prey. No, the beginning of a butterfly is anything but easy. But all of these changes are necessary.

Through their struggle, God not only gave the butterfly beautiful wings, but he also gave it protection from all of its previous predators, adorning the butterfly with some of the world's most beautiful camouflage. The butterfly is transformed, by design, and with a purpose.

Butterflies are not the only ones who struggle with change; we humans do a great deal of struggling as we make our way through life. Whereas life changes are something that everyone can understand, God, bit by bit, molds those of us who are His into the instruments of His grace that He has designed and called us to be.

Like all of us do, you will change, especially if you are truly an obedient child of God because change is a constant part of the equation.

I am blessed to be here with you all, and I am grateful to have such a faithful church family to worship beside.

My prayer is that we remember why we are here when we come together as we have now. We are not here to merely recharge our batteries or go through some religious requirement; I pray that we remember the God we serve when we gather together. God the Father has called us to Himself by His grace, drawing us and giving us the faith we are saved. The Son of God whose obedient submission has made our redemption possible by paying the debt of the curse in our place. God, the Holy Spirit, indwells every born-again believer and empowers us to rest in knowing that all things are possible with God. Knowing Romans 8:11 to be true, saying,

"ROMANS 8:11

Romans 8:11 ESV

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

That every time we're together, we recognize the saving act of Christ's Body being broken for us, and his Blood poured out, satisfying the requirement for the payment of sin.

I pray that we recognize that division is not the way of the Spirit that indwells within us and that any brother or sister that we have fought against, we come together again to repentance seeking the will of God in all things. And learning to accept that God's will is seldom the same thing as our personal preference.

Why is this my prayer?

I pray that way because these things are all things that every member of the Body of Christ should strive to cherish. Almost everything in life changes. If we allow these fundamental elements of our faith to be what we allow to change, or even lesson, it will be because we have ignored them to keep our eye on other things. When a group of believers becomes more concerned with an argument over trivial things that mean nothing in the Kingdom and do nothing in the way of Loving the Lord our God, Loving our Neighbor, or the Great Commission, we have neglected the Will and Commandment of God. We have done so perhaps in an attempt to be comfortable or even nostalgic to something that at one time was alive but has long since been dead.

Sin such as this starts seemingly innocent enough, thoughts of the wonderful moments we had together, and the next thing you know, we are focused on what has been and miss out on the mission happening right now. Over time these become icons, idols, that distract away from the cross and genuine Kingdom work.

In other words, the distraction of the none essential amenities of the past has rendered the future non-existent because we never moved forward.

Unfortunately, this has been one of the most successful tactics that our enemy, the Devil, has used over the years.

Look

Thesis: Change is inevitable. I have a saying about people and change. People who don't like change are often the people who change the most. Why? Because, with all that worry and stress over things that don't matter, they age a lot faster than everyone else does.

As far as changes go; The last several chapters of Exodus cover the Law and the rules of purity for the priest, the High Priest, Tabernacle, and all the trimmings that go with the Tabernacle of Meeting.

Moses spent his childhood in the house of the world's most powerful family at the time. He presumably was excluded from being Pharoah because of his lineage as a Hebrew. But, he would have been taught by some of the best how to lead people.

Later he ends up in the desert; after killing the Egyptian, caught abusing a fellow Hebrew.

Despite his compassion for the Israelite people, Moses knew nothing of their way of life. He knew nothing of the Semitic attachment to the life of a Shepherd, passed down from Abraham through his sons until, at last, this was a marker of their entire race.

Moses has an encounter with God at the Burning Bush that continues throughout his life.

After 40 years of transforming a political man into a proper shepherd, Moses was commanded to lead Israel out of the Promise Land; and that is what he did.

Moses went before Pharoah, and we know the story; Pharoah refuses to release them, so, one by one, God knocked down the gods of Egypt before the Egyptian people making it clear that God was in control.

Pharoah not only let them go, he demanded they get out. They enjoyed the spoils of victory, as they left carrying whatever they wanted to take with them—a victory where the Israelites never had to pick up a sword.

Again, we see them celebrate a victory they had nothing to do with as Pharoah's persuing army is crushed beneath the waves of the Red Sea.

Israel has struggled and suffered through many heartaches, but mostly hiccups and speedbumps created by their own sinful and selfish hearts.

Despite getting what they cried out for, they remained in sin. You see, they were acquainted with God, but they did not know Him. They saw God perform some pretty outstanding miracles, and while they had escaped the chains of Egypt, they couldn't escape the chains of sin rooted in the fiber of their humanity.

The changes were constant as God, bit by bit, shaped them into the People He called them out of the nations to be. The changes were constant, but so was their resistance when they didn't like those changes.

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Would you please stand with me for the reading of God's word?

Exodus 40:34–38 ESV

Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.

"Let Us Pray!"

God defined Israel to Israel by defining who He was calling them to be. A nation set apart, a people that behaved lived, and worshiped differently than everyone else.

The last 7 Chapters of Exodus cover God's demands for the Sanctuary or the Tent of Meeting and end the Glory of God Passage we just read.

All of this, and Israel is still just like all of us, //Pause// a hot mess!

One thing is clear, during Israel's 40 years in the desert, changes continued to happen.

One, in particular, that I want to point out, has a very New Testament connection. Aaron's sons got complacent and disobeyed God's Law concerning strange fire. They died as a result, and God set down newer and stricter rules concerning the Tent of Meeting or Sanctuary.

Lev 21:10 says

Leviticus 21:10 ESV

“The priest who is chief among his brothers, on whose head the anointing oil is poured and who has been consecrated to wear the garments, shall not let the hair of his head hang loose nor tear his clothes.

Now fast forward to Caiaphus, the High Priest that tore his robe when questioning Jesus.

Caiaphus was no longer eligible to be the High Priest, but the blood lust of Sandhedrin ignored it entirely as they pushed for Jesus' crucifixion. The mass sacrifice meant to cover all the sins of Israel was to be given on the Day of Atonement.

In other words, there was no eligible High Priest anointed for the sacrifices on the Day of Atonement. A few modern Jewish rabbis try to renounce this notion by creating semantics to develop an excuse. If Caiaphas was not eligible to be the high priest, then Jesus was the only one offering up an acceptable sacrifice on that particular Day of Atonement, as He gave Himself upon the cross.

If the semantic creating rabbis are correct, then the only sacrifice made by Caiaphas was offering Jesus upon the cross. Either way, you slice it, Jesus was proving who He was, either as the spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world or as our Great High Priest interceding on our behalf before the FatherFather.

The situation here can be both of those things, or one or the other, but cannot logically be neither of them based upon the parameters these guys set for themselves.

Jesus was and is both of those things. Our Great High Priest and the Precious Lamb of God!

Thank God for using the changes from our mistakes to fulfill His purpose and will.

So, the rules were established for the sanctuary, and God takes His rules seriously as Aaron's sons were not the only people ever killed for breaking those rules of conduct.

Now, at the end of the 40 years in the desert, Moses has died; God commissions Joshua as the new Leader of Israel. All of the changes lead to a new chapter full of, you guessed it, changes.

Joshua started a new chapter: In life, we often realize that for one reason or another, our lives didn't turn out quite like we thought we wanted them to. Sometimes this is because of lack of financial opportunity; maybe we were just lazy at the point in our life, thus never reaching those stars we were initially shooting after.

Israel had the better part of a generation that needed, //PAUSE// had to, die off! So, they wandered in the desert for 40 years until God saw that the vine was sufficiently pruned. Then and only then could Joshua lead the children of Israel to conquer the land of Cannan.

Moses led the People towards proper fellowship with God and the Promised Land, and now Joshua was being commissioned to lead them into that Promised Land.

Joshua 1:1–9 ESV

After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, “Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Let me ask you this question, how many times have you caught yourself being like Joshua, ready and charged to do God's bidding?

Now, ask yourself how many times you have found yourself complaining about unnecessary things, the comforts of tradition, or just generally being a grouch? So invested are some of us in the nonessentials you are ready and willing to watch the world burn if and when you don't get your way?

If that seems more like a statement than a question, it's because the question itself holds with it the weight of Godly conviction.

This building could burn down tonight and force us to start all over again, but here's the thing, it would all still be okay. This building is not the Church; we are! We are the Temple of the Holy Spirit, the Tabernacle of worship, the sanctuary being prepared by the work of the Holy Spirit on our lives. This auditorium we meet in is not a true sanctuary because the Sanctuary of God is meant to be set up in your heart, in the innermost fiber of your being; that is where you can find Sanctuary with God.

The time of cathedrals has died as it was always destined to do. The time of great domes painted by the world's greatest artisans is gone. Why? Because people just like us decided to forget the reverent reason the wealthy churches had them built in the first place. It was not so that they could worship the building and give it reverence in place of God Almighty. The idea behind cathedrals was to show the world around them and one another a tiny portion of the grandeur of God. In other words, to capture awe, and it worked for about a generation. Just like Gideon, their architecture became a stumbling block as a thing to revere and therefore worship.

Now where this all comes together!

So, the first point: The Heart of the Believer is the Tent of Meeting

Jesus did become both the Great High Priest and the Spotless Lamb of God, and when He did, there were several changes. The one I want to examine today is what happened on the first Pentecost after the resurrection and ascension of Christ. The Holy Spirit was sent to indwell in every believer.

When this happened, the heart and life of every believer became the Sanctuary, Tent of Meeting, Tabernacle, or Temple of the Spirit of God. The place where God's presence is meant to dwell, where we are meant to connect with God, is not in a tent or temple behind a curtain.

Christians make the mistake of coming to this building trying to re-find God. The problem with that idea is, well, everything. If you truly are born again, your heart and life are meant to be the place you find Him, not here in this building. We come together is to edify (another word for illuminate or educate) the Body of Christ by coming together with a heart of worship and praising God together.

So, stop coming to Church claiming you are not feeling the presence of God because My response will be to point to Jesus' words and remind you that the auditorium is not the sanctuary; you are supposed to be the Temple of the Holy Spirit.

So, we are the temple now, and in our hearts, we are meant to be a vessel prepared to be the Sanctuary, pure and Holy. So, if you are the temple, then my second point is crucial for us to understand.

When we consider that God says He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and when we consider the strict rules God placed upon His Tent of Meeting: what does God see and think when He looks at how you treat His temple?

We are the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and that is why it is a sin to be a glutton, an alcoholic, or to live under the oppression of addiction.

And so, you are the temple, and God expects you to be reverent in the light of that realization.

Finally, my third point is this. Life at its most basic core is an ongoing series of Changes. If you are so afraid or troubled by change, this is something you must get over as a Christian.

Don't fall into the trap of rendering the gospel message in you useless by being easily distracted by nonessentials like whether you like the color of the new shades in the office or not.

Such things are not nearly as important as the message God has commissioned you to give.

Let us pray!

Gracious heavenly Father, holy is your name, mighty are your works, and great is your faithfulness to us. Remind us O' Lord, that we are the temple, the sanctuary, the Tent of Meeting, and that it is our hearts your presence desires to dwell...