God's Presence - Exodus 35-40

[00:00:00] Thank you for listening to the Calvary Monterey Podcast.

[00:00:08] Please visit calvary.com to learn more about our church.

[00:00:12] And visit nateholdridge.com for additional Bible teaching from our lead pastor, Nate

[00:00:16] Holdridge.

[00:00:20] Teaching today is our lead pastor, Nate Holdridge.

[00:00:23] All right, good morning everyone.

[00:00:27] Great to see you guys today.

[00:00:28] Let's take out our Bibles. It's pretty good without the book of Micah, but you can know Jesus so much better with the book of Micah because he anticipates so much of what Jesus is all about. So if you wanna grow in your understanding, your knowledge of him, deeper intimacy with him, and build a hope for the future,

[00:01:40] then the book of Micah is a book for you.

[00:01:43] How many of you guys could use

[00:01:44] a little bit of hope right now?

[00:01:46] So the book of Micah, great book for that. Moses saw all the work and behold they had done it. As the Lord had commanded them so had they done it then Moses blessed them." So they built the tabernacle, they've built everything as God had described and Moses blesses the their journeys. The end to the book of Exodus. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you so much for this incredible story that is the story.

[00:04:20] The story of a God who sees his people

[00:04:23] in despair, slavery, captivity, and brokenness, It had been less than a year since Moses heard Yahweh speak to him at the burning bush. But considering all that occurred from that episode to this episode, it felt like a hundred years. So much had happened among God's people.

[00:05:41] Pharaoh and the Egyptian gods had lost the blood of the Passover land, had protected in Israel's midst. I think Moses was likely beside himself to learn that God was going to make a home for himself among his people. A portable Sinai, Mount Sinai, among God's people, a miniature Eden where God would walk among his nation.

[00:07:05] So they could experience the living God.

[00:08:04] merciful and gracious, slow to anger, an abounding and steadfast love and faithfulness,

[00:08:07] keeping steadfast love for thousands,

[00:08:09] forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,

[00:08:12] but who will by no means clear the guilty,

[00:08:15] visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children

[00:08:17] and the children's children to the third

[00:08:19] and fourth generation.

[00:08:21] Then after saying this, after revealing himself,

[00:08:25] God reiterated his covenant among his people. And when that structure came together, Moses saw that it was done just as Yahweh had said. So Moses, as we read, blessed them,

[00:09:42] set up the tabernacle, approached its altar

[00:09:45] with his brother Aaron and Aaron's sons, If you could combine the most beautiful sunset over the Grand Canyon with the most moving orchestra crescendo and the most powerful rocket launch, you would only get a glimpse of the glory of this moment. I mean, they're just feeling it as this glory cloud of God

[00:11:01] comes upon this tabernacle.

[00:11:03] Pharaoh had said that he left God's presence. And when Moses asked God, can I see your glory,

[00:12:23] God revealed his glorious name to Moses

[00:12:26] when he was hidden there in presence on behalf of the nation, but Moses after the golden calf episode had heard God's name on the mountain and seen his afterglow after the golden calf debacle. God had stated words of restoration and grace over Israel. He was moving forward with his plan.

[00:13:42] The problem is intense.

[00:13:44] If Moses could not go in, Who shall sojourn in your tent, O Lord? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? Who can go into God's house on his holy hill? Who can go into God's presence? Now that Exodus ends on this cliffhanger note, should not discourage us. We got all the way to this point.

[00:15:00] Moses tries to go in, he can't go in,

[00:15:02] but it should instead drive us forward

[00:15:05] in the biblical story.

[00:15:07] You know, the first our study of the book of Exodus, because I know some people have feelings about the book of Leviticus, but it appears that the book of Exodus is merely the prologue to the book of Leviticus.

[00:16:23] It's kind of like you've gotten all the way to this point,

[00:16:26] who can go in? what was lost in Eden? Leviticus gives us the answer and it's an answer that we need today. The answer is this, those who have the right sacrifice, those who have the right priesthood, and those who have the right meeting place can experience and know the living God.

[00:17:43] I've been saying the word Leviticus,

[00:17:45] I've been talking about sacrifices this morning,

[00:17:48] and I know that for some of you, First thing, coming into God's presence requires a sacrifice. This is made plain in the opening chapters of Leviticus, but is made most certain at the center point of Leviticus, which is the day of Atonement. It's the center point of the whole Pentateuch. It's all building up to the day of Atonement and then comes down from the day of Atonement.

[00:19:00] It's the mountain peak that these first five books

[00:19:03] of the Bible are centered upon.

[00:19:05] Of the myriad of animal and grain and oil offerings that when Jesus died on the cross, sin was so transferred to him that he became sin on our behalf, judged on the cross for all sins atrocities. Paul said it this way in 2 Corinthians 5, 21, for our sake, he, being God, made him to be sin who knew no sin, Jesus,

[00:20:23] so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

[00:21:23] You know, to me, I think so many of the great stories of sacrifice, they seem like shadows of the story

[00:21:27] of Jesus laying down his life in our place,

[00:21:31] taking on death for our sins so that we might rise

[00:21:34] in his righteousness.

[00:21:36] Jean Valjean's quiet sacrifices for Cosette.

[00:21:41] William Wallace's sacrifices for Scotland's freedom. What happens in Leviticus is that God has Moses ordain his brother Aaron and his sons as the priests of Israel. With the congregation gathered at the tent of meeting, Aaron and his sons don the priestly garb that they built because of God's design in the book of Exodus.

[00:23:01] Then Moses takes the holy anointing oil

[00:23:04] and puts it on all the elements of the tabernacle,

[00:23:07] including Aaron and his sons. Moses charged them to offer sacrifices and remain at the tabernacle for seven days. You guys need to go in, hang out with God for seven days. On the eighth day, Moses called them and told them to offer sacrifices for themselves and then for the people.

[00:24:20] And after they did, look at what Leviticus says.

[00:24:23] It says, in Levs four, verse 14, that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God. He is our great mediator, for there is one God and there's one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, Paul said in first Timothy 2.5.

[00:25:42] Because of him and the way that he relates to us,

[00:25:46] we can with confidence draw near What I mean by that is no one else can grant that access. It belittles what Jesus has done to suppose so. It is permanently secured in that it is based on his position, works, and purity, not our own. It is totally secured in that because he can go

[00:27:02] all the way in, we can go all the way in.

[00:27:07] And it is finally secured. to go there. It was the meeting space that God himself had sanctioned. Just as God had made Eden to meet with man, and just as God descended upon Mount Sinai as an appointment place with Moses,

[00:28:20] God created the tabernacle as a holy space

[00:28:25] that heaven would touch earth.

[00:29:21] Only a couple of ways to do it, but one way is you gotta wear a bunch of scuba gear, right?

[00:29:23] You've gotta put the tank on,

[00:29:26] you gotta have the mask and the flippers

[00:29:28] and the whole deal.

[00:29:31] That's what the tabernacle was.

[00:29:33] It was a way to allow humans to breathe

[00:29:39] in a different environment

[00:29:41] and for God to breathe in our environment.

[00:29:45] Tabernacle precinct with all its prescribed sacrifices what he meant is that the creator God became one of us. He took up residence and he tabernacled among us. His hypostatic union, the full convergence of his deity and humanity makes Jesus the new meeting space. How can we come into God's presence

[00:31:01] through the meeting ground that is Jesus?

[00:31:05] When Jesus died behind the scenes, God preserved and defended the people of Israel as they struggled under the mighty hand of Pharaoh.

[00:32:21] He was there, but in subtle and indirect ways.

[00:32:24] He blessed the midwives, remember them? and invisible felt more than seen, only to come to his people's aid before finally breaking the white witch's grip. Yahweh had worked behind the scenes before now taking center stage. And now with the Lord at their center, Israel could start their great journey into the promised land

[00:33:40] just as when God gives us Exodus,

[00:33:42] now we can start our great journey into the deeper things

[00:33:46] that God has in store for us. the blood of his cross. Like Moses, he went up the mountain and was transfigured before his people. And like Moses, he delivered a new Torah in his sermon on the Mount. Like Moses, he brought a covenant, a better covenant. But unlike Moses, he could go into the Father's holy presence

[00:35:03] because that's his home.

[00:35:06] That's where he had come from.