What incomparable grace (Exodus 34.4-35)

Please keep your Bible open.

For several Sundays now, we've been asking ourselves where to look when we realise that our relationship with God has broken down.

Where to look when we understand that because of our sins, God would have every reason to tell us it's all over.

This morning we'll be asking ourselves: is grace enough? x 2

What a question! Of course grace is enough, you'll tell me.

Grace is our greatest source of praise! It's the air we breathe! It's the firm ground on which we walk!

Think of the songs we sing Sunday after Sunday.

Your grace is incredible!
It is by grace that we come

Infinite grace

Of course grace is enough!

***

Let me rephrase the question. I've been known to explain the word grace to my children by saying that grace is when God gives us what we don't deserve.

It is God's free choice, because of his character, to give us what we do not deserve.

So my question this morning is: is this grace enough?

God's free choice, because of his character, to give us what we don't deserve.

I'm thinking of conversations with Muslim friends, to whom I've asked: what do you think will happen to you after death?

My good deeds and my evil deeds will be weighed in a balance, and if my good deeds weigh more than my evil deeds, I will go to heaven'.

Do you think you've done enough?

'I don't know ... but ... Allah is compassionate and merciful. He may choose, just like that, to forgive me.'

He can choose to give me what I don't deserve.

Is this grace, from the living God, the God of the Bible, enough?

The trouble with understanding grace in this way is that you risk being haunted by a little fear: 'what if this time I've gone too far?

What if I've abused God's generosity too much?

Is grace enough?

We are in a section of the book of Exodus that talks about how a holy God can live in the midst of a sinful people.

God gave Moses the instructions for the tabernacle, the tent of his dwelling place, but in the meantime the Israelites became impatient and made and worshipped a golden calf.

On Sunday Jason talked about how Moses acts as an intermediary to prevent God from abandoning his people, despite their unfaithfulness.

Moses pleads, "You told me I'm your friend, but how is that going to come out, if you don't continue to accompany Israel?"

Moses, God's friend, begs God to let others benefit from their friendship too.

God replies: I will do what you ask, because you have found favour in my eyes.

For Moses it must have seemed too good to be true. They had sinned, they deserved the relationship to be over ... and now God decided to give them another chance.

So Moses asked for confirmation: "Show me your glory!

Why this request?

If you're a Christian, you might take it for granted that God forgives. We've read the rest of the story.

Not Moses.

He knew God's promises to his people. He had seen God's patience with his people. But that God could forgive, after such a great sin, must have seemed hard to believe.

So he asks to see the glory of God, in other words, who this God really is who is announcing such surprising things.

That brings us to our first point.

Is God's grace enough?

1. Abundant grace
   

To be willing to love, to forgive, to be gracious ... that is quite simply the very character of our God!

How do you usually present yourself?

My name is __, I am __.

It often depends on the context. At church, my name is X and I've been coming to Connexion for x weeks, months, years.

At work, my name is X, I'm [the name of my job].

If you have an accent, my name is __, I come from such and such a country.

If we have an exceptional wife, my name is Joe, I’m married to Anne-Sophie.

But when there's no specific context and you introduce yourself to everyone - a status on whatsapp that everyone can read, a bio on the networks. How do you introduce yourself?

What could you say that would explain who you are at the deepest level?

My name is Joe, I'm ___.

Moses had asked to see the glory of God.

He went back up to Mount Sinai, ready to see God manifest himself, new stone tablets in his hand to replace the ones he had broken.

If it had been you, and you hadn't read on, what would you have expected? What would you have expected to see as a manifestation of God's glory?

Miracles - the mountain shaking, the fire coming down?

The laws of nature suspended.

Perhaps to see something even more impressive.

In reality, Moses couldn't see much.

God comes down, but he hides Moses in the hollow of a rock, covers him with his hand and makes his glory pass before him. Moses sees almost nothing.

But he hears something .

Exodus 34v6

"The LORD passed before him and cried out, 'The LORD, the LORD is a *God of grace and compassion, slow to anger, rich in kindness and truth. He keeps his love to 1000 generations, he forgives iniquity, rebellion and sin".

Let's take a closer look at these words.

God proclaims his name, "the LORD" - YHWH - a name that expresses the freedom to define himself as he wishes: I am who I am. I will be who I will be.

He repeats this name: The Lord, the Lord.

As if to emphasise that what he is announcing at this moment will be the ultimate presentation of who he is.

Then there are the majestic words that follow, which we would do well to learn by heart.

"A God of grace and compassion - who gives us what we don't deserve and doesn't give us what we do deserve

"Slow to anger" - that should correct any misconceptions we might have about the God of the Old Testament!

This summer at the Christian teen camp where several of us have served, we had to deal with a number of nocturnal runaways. I can tell you that at 4am, when we'd been looking for them for an hour and a half, two youngsters turned up ... my anger wasn't slow to flare.

God is not like that. He's patient. He doesn't rush into things. He gives us the chance to turn around.

"Rich in goodness and truth. We could also say, rich in loyalty and fidelity.

These words express God's commitment to his people. The fact that he doesn't let them down, even when they deserve to be let down!

"He keeps his love for 1,000 generations; he forgives wrongdoing, rebellion and sin".

He insists. He is a God of forgiveness.

In English, if you want to say that a certain virtue characterises you, there's an expression that says: this virtue is my middle name.

Patience is my middle name.

Honesty is my middle name.

Now, if someone needs to tell you that honesty is their middle name, they're probably lying.

But here, it's as if God is saying that forgiveness, grace, undeserved love, is ... not just his middle name, but his first name!

A fortnight ago I talked about Catherine the Great, the Russian empress, who said: "The good Lord must forgive me, it's his job!

That could not be more presumptuous. It is not God's job to forgive. He is under no obligation to forgive anyone.

It's not his job.

But it is his name.

It's as if God were saying to Moses: do you want to know why I'm prepared not to abandon you despite your sin? You want to know why I'm prepared to give you another chance? It's because loyal love, abundant grace and free forgiveness are ... my name!

That's my name!

This is how I wanted to present myself to the world - without being under the slightest constraint.

I am a God of abundant grace!

That's my name, that's my character, that's my glory!

...

Let's think of the other ways in which he could have shown who he was.

Some people have already heard me talk about it.

The universe contains 200 trillion stars. God created them.

But that's not the ultimate revelation of his glory.

The universe is 92 billion light years across.

God governs it.

Yet this is not the ultimate revelation of his glory.

The glory of God, the ultimate expression of his character, is the fact that when his people turn their backs on him, reject his commandments and commit spiritual adultery ... he forgives.

This is our God!

***

This is not in competition with the other descriptions of God in Exodus.

The Lord, the valiant warrior. The Lord my standard. The Lord, who sanctifies you.

It's not that he's sometimes one, sometimes another.

No, this presentation - the God of grace and compassion, rich in love and faithfulness - sums up and completes the others.

We saw God's commitment to his people. How he fights for them and provides for their needs.

Now we see that this commitment holds even when his people behave like his enemies!

He is ready to renew his relationship with them.

This is what we see in the rest of this passage.

Verse 10

"Behold, I myself make a covenant. I will do wonders in the sight of all your people that have never been done in any land or among any nation."

The broken relationship is restored. God will accompany the Israelites to the land of Canaan. There is a new wedding ring - new tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments written on them.

Then Moses came down, his face beaming - the sign that the glory of God was still in their midst.

All because it is the character of our God, the glory of our God, to be gracious.

It should make us question the image we have of God.

I spent my early teens deliberately behaving like an enemy of God.

If I could do something to offend those who believed in Jesus, I would, starting with my parents.

I hated the church and had no desire to conform to my idea of what it meant to be a Christian.

The turning point came when I realised that even though I was behaving like an enemy of God, God was ready to forgive me.

I received this letter on Tuesday 6 February 2001.

It is the glory of our God to be gracious.

This means that as long as we're breathing, it's never too late to come back to him.

Maybe this morning, that's what some people here need to do.

Perhaps others still operate with the image of a harsh God who has little desire to forgive them.

God is strict, in a way.

Faced with the golden calf, he said in no uncertain terms that the people deserved to be abandoned. Our sin is abominable to him. He hates it.

The glory of it is that despite this hatred of sin, it is always in his character to forgive.

Maybe we need to rethink our image of him.

He is abundantly gracious.

...

Now for the twist.

Our question is whether grace is enough in the face of a broken relationship with God.

Grace understood as God's free choice, because of his character, to give us what we do not deserve.

Which brings us to the second point ...

2. Sufficient grace ?

The answer to the question of whether this grace is enough ... is no!

***

If grace is when God passes over our sins and simply gives us another chance, well, we need more.

• Firstly, because God's justice is always the same

You may have noticed that God says things about himself that we've skipped over.

Verse 7 continues:

"He keeps his love to 1000 generations, he forgives fault, rebellion and sin, but he does not treat the guilty as innocent and he punishes the fault of the fathers on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation!"

Let's start with what this verse doesn't mean. God does not punish innocent children for the sins of their parents. Elsewhere in Exodus, God says that he punishes those who have sinned. In the original language, this verse says that God 'visits' the sins of the fathers on the children.

In other words, when a parent sins, there is collateral damage for the family. We can perhaps think of sad situations where the consequences of a parent's alcoholism, for example, fall on the children.

One of the things that makes sin so horrible is that it reflects on those close to us.

God doesn't make the innocent look guilty ... but he doesn't make the guilty look innocent either!

God doesn't just sweep them under the carpet.

Imagine if he did!

Imagine if he let evil happen without ever being held to account. That would be atrocious!

God does not treat the guilty as innocent - at some point, the sword of His righteous judgement must fall.

Then ... the grace granted to the Israelites here is not enough because ...

• the alliance was always the same

God renews the covenant ... but it's not a new covenant!

The basis of the relationship was always the Ten Commandments, which they were obliged to respect on pain of being cursed.

God just gave them a second chance to succeed.

Which was a problem, if, thirdly...

• The people were always the same

Verses 10 to 27 contain a list of commandments.

You can read them and think: another boring list of rules.

If we take a closer look, we can see that this list focuses on two areas: how to avoid worshipping idols ... and the religious festivals to observe.

The two areas in which they had just sinned with the golden calf - idols and religious festivals.

It's as if God gave them back their copy with the teacher's comments in red. Here's where you need to improve to succeed.

That raises the question - can they improve?

There's a line from a comedian that I like.

Someone asks him: would you say that you've learnt from your mistakes?

Of course, of course. I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm sure I can repeat them!

If the people are still the same, we can give them a second chance. But why believe that things will go better this time?

I can try to run 10 kilometres in under half an hour. I can ask professional athletes to watch me and give me advice on how to improve, but the fact is I'm never going to run 10 kilometres in under half an hour!

Unless I take myself back ten years, change my whole diet, my whole lifestyle and probably my DNA too, I can't do it, no matter how many chances I'm given!

The people are always the same

And finally..,

• Access to God is always the same - limited.

Verse 30

"Aaron and all the Israelites looked at Moses and saw that the skin of his face was glowing; so they were afraid to come near him."

Then verse 33:

"When Moses had finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face."

The glory of God is always present with the Israelites, but it frightens them. It has to be hidden behind a veil, as in the tabernacle, where it had to be hidden behind a curtain.

These sinful people still have only limited access to their holy God.

What all this shows...

is that if grace means giving a rebellious people another chance ...

... turn the page and sweep our sins under the carpet - as God seems to be doing in this passage ...

... this grace is not enough. X 2

***

There comes a time when there's no more room under the carpet.

It's coming out on all sides. A real clean-up is needed.

Grace has to clean under the carpet.

***

Joe, aren't you contradicting everything you've said about forgiveness?

No !

But God wants to teach us what kind of grace we will need if we are to be guaranteed forgiveness.

***

History has shown that it's not enough to give people a "get out of jail free" card like in monopoly, and a second chance to succeed.

These thousands of people forgiven by God after the golden calf did not enter the promised land because of their sin, with two exceptions.

Moses did not enter the promised land because of his sin.

A few centuries later, all the descendants were exiled because of their sin.

God was slow to anger, but after a while his judgement fell.

To truly repair a broken relationship with God, his grace must go further than simply sweeping our sins under the carpet.

He has to clean under the carpet.

At home, we try to encourage each other to say sorry when we need to.

It's not easy to prevent the word "forgiveness" from becoming a kind of magic formula that has to be said in the right way to be valid.

I'm so sorry!

Say it nicely!

I'm so sorry!

Looking you in the eye.

Sorry, sir.

But forgiveness is not a magic word.

In fact, what difference does it make to say sorry?

In a sense, nothing.

The wrong has been done, the damage has been done. There's nothing to say it won't be done again.

Why should saying sorry be enough to repair a relationship?

Don't get me wrong, forgiveness is essential in any relationship.

But if God's forgiveness is to be guaranteed ...

... it can’t just be about passing over sin.

Sin must be paid for.

It's not just about giving us a new chance. We need to change.

Exodus 34 confronts us with a tension

There is God's love, compassion and grace on the one hand, and his justice on the other.

If we affirm only some of these qualities and not the others, we are worshipping an idol.

So if God's grace is really going to repair our relationship with him, it has to come down from the mountain, deal with sin at its root and defeat the inner Pharaoh in our hearts once and for all.

She must descend from Mount Sinai, become incarnate, and ascend to the Mount of Calvary.

John 1:14

"And the Word became man, and dwelt - literally 'Tabernacled -among us...

full of grace and truth- two words that recall those of God on Mount Sinai... and we beheld - saw - his glory, which Moses had not been able to do

a glory like that of the only Son from the Father".

On Mount Sinai God had announced that his glory is his grace.

In the person of Jesus, this glory became flesh.

When do we see this glory shining brightest?

John 17.1 - the day before Jesus died

"Jesus looked up to heaven and said, 'Father, the time has come! Reveal the glory of your Son so that your Son [also] may reveal your glory."

I was discussing Exodus with a pastor friend of mine, who said that if you compress Exodus 34 to the max ... you get to the cross.

It is here, when Jesus bleeds to pay for our sins, that we see how God forgives sin while punishing sin.

It's not just an audible but a visible manifestation, this time, of the glory of God.

😊 And the Bible also insists that by contemplating the glory of the cross, we are not only forgiven but also transformed from glory to glory.

The inner pharaoh is defeated.

Where do we look when we realise that our relationship with God is broken?

In a word, to Christ.

So easy to say without measuring what's behind those words.

It is said that grace is free. And it is. But that doesn't mean there wasn't a price to pay.

But it is only this costly, transforming grace, which reconciles God's love and justice, that is sufficient.

What do you count on when you realise that you have sinned?

It's easy to think that what counts is the quality of our request for forgiveness.

A small sin - all you have to do is ask forgiveness once and then you can move on.

A big sin - you have to ask for forgiveness three times and feel bad all day.

A very big sin - you have to ask for forgiveness every day for a week and go without food.

We have to ask for forgiveness. But it's not the quality of our request that fixes anything. It is his grace.

Maybe we’re counting on God's compassion when we have sinned?

Of course you should! But as I said at the beginning, if we stop there, hoping that God will be indulgent, we risk being haunted by this fear - what if this time I've gone too far?

What really counts is this : since the Lord is rich in goodness, he sent a saviour capable of satisfying both his compassion and his justice.

That's what you can count on.

***

Three implications ...

First, there is a call to be heard. It's never too late to return to God. In Jesus, he has done everything necessary to welcome us with open arms.

Maybe that's what you need to do.

But there's also a warning.

If I go through life saying to myself: I'm going to do things my own way, without bothering with Jesus because the good Lord has to forgive me anyway - watch out!

God wants to forgive, but only if we bow before the Saviour he has sent.

Woe betide me if I take his forgiveness for granted and turn my back on Jesus.

But above all, we can see how much assurance we have.

That's been the theme for the last three weeks - assurance ... and where to find it when we understand that our relationship with God is broken.

We've said that we can't find it by putting our sin into perspective - it's not that serious!

Nor do we find it by imagining that God's forgiveness is easily granted - that's his job!

No! We find it by measuring, on the one hand, the size of the obstacle, which is insurmountable for us, and on the other hand, the size of his grace, because of which he himself pays the high price for the obstacle to fall.

If you're like me, you're often torn between presumption and anxiety about God's forgiveness.

Presumption: I'm familiar with the message of forgiveness. It allows me to live the way I want, knowing that it will normally pass.

Anxiety: I've done everything wrong. God is bound to make me pay for it.

God offers us assurance.

Yes, our sin is serious. No, God is not indifferent. No, we can't do it alone.

But God be praised for the glory of his grace ... who goes further, who pays the highest price ...

... which, in Jesus, finally ... is enough.

John Newton, the slave trader turned preacher and author of the hymn Amazing Grace, summed up what this assurance looks like just before he died.

"My memory is failing me, but I remember two things: I am a great sinner and ... Christ is a great Savior."

The Name of God: His Right to Choose

Exodus 33

In 1981, a film entitled simply Roar! was released. This film followed a man named Hank and his family living on a nature preserve in Africa, where they raised hundreds of big cats: mostly lions and tigers. What made this nature preserve unique was that the animals were totally free to go wherever they pleased—including inside Hank’s house. They’d camp out in the living room, wander the halls, get in the beds.

The movie itself isn’t very good; but the making of the movie is legendary. The director and lead actor, Noel Marshall, and his wife, actress Tippi Hedren, were passionate conservationists. They filmed this movie with real, untrained lions and tigers, in their real home, with their real kids. They loved these animals so much they wanted to make a film showing that humans and big cats could live together in harmony.

The problem is that lions and tigers are wild animals. Put them together in a house with human beings, and it’s not going to go well. Of the 140 people working on the film, 70 of them—including the lead couple’s own daughter, Melanie Griffith—were seriously injured, many of them multiple times. I’ll spare you the details, but Google it if you want—it’s gruesome.

Although this couple felt they couldn’t live without these animals, it became clear very quickly that they couldn’t live with them either.

Oddly enough, this is very close to the situation in which the people of Israel find themselves in Exodus 33.

If you were here last week, you’ll remember that while Moses was on the mountain receiving instructions for the tabernacle from God, the people of Israel grew impatient, and demanded that Aaron make an idol for them that they could worship, that would stand in for the God who seemed to be absent. Aaron, despite having received the commandment that they must not make any graven images or worship any other gods, built this idol for them.

God tells Moses what’s going on, says he’s going to go down and destroy them. Moses prays that God wouldn’t do this, and God answers his prayer. Instead, Moses comes down off the mountain and shatters the tablets of stone on which God had written his commandments. He sends the Levites out to kill the perpetrators, and 3,000 people die that day.

Essentially when we pick up the thread in chapter 33, Moses is talking to God and they are discussing what will happen next. But in order to get a feel for the situation in this chapter, I’d like us to skip down a bit.

What They’ve Lost (33.1-3)

In v. 7, we learn that Moses took a tent and pitched it outside the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. It was sort of a precursor to the tabernacle, and apparently anyone could go out there to pray and seek God.

But when Moses went out to the tent, things were different. V. 8:

8 Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up, and each would stand at his tent door, and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. 9 When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. 10 And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, each at his tent door. 11 Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.

Think about this picture. When Moses went out to the tent, people would stand outside their tents in the camp and watch him go. When Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud that guided them would come down and stand at the entrance. And when the people saw this, they would stand up and worship.

This was probably a joyous sight before Moses went up to the mountain, before the golden calf. But can you imagine what that “worship” must have been like after? The people of Israel stood there, watching Moses go into the tent and benefit from everything they think they’ve just lost. V. 11 says that God would speak to Moses “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” And this intimate relationship was accompanied by a sign of great power: the pillar of cloud.

That’s what the people stand to lose, now that their covenant with God—their relationship with God—has been fractured.

So the question is, what will God do with this sinful people who have broken covenant with him?

We Can’t Live With God (33.1-3)

Chapter 33, verse 1:

The Lord said to Moses, “Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give it.’ 2 I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 3 Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

Already this is a grace. God says he will make good on the promise he made to the people, to bring them into Canaan—not for their sake, but because it is what he promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He does, however, establish a significant consequence. He will send an angel before them to drive out the people of the land, but God himself will not go with them.

Why?

Because, he says, “you are a stiff-necked people.” You are obstinate. You are unruly. And if I were to go with you, I would destroy you.

A lot of people might read this and think God is setting up guardrails for himself—like those people who decide not to have kids because they’re afraid they’ll be too impatient with them. Our reflex to this passage is to find God kind of childish; sure, the people are difficult, but he’s God—can he not hold his temper?

That’s not how we should be reading this.

God isn’t afraid of losing control of his own anger if he goes with the people. He’s a just God, and none of this is a surprise to him. He’s not worried. He’s saying that in the normal state of things, no matter how bad the people feel about their sin right now, eventually they will turn against him again. Which means that in his justice, God would have to consume them, because that would be the just punishment for their rejection of him.

In other words, in the current state of things, God with them would be dangerous for them. For the people to have God dwelling in their midst would be a foretaste of what hell will actually be.

If that sounds shocking, it’s because we’ve long heard that hell is the absence of God. That’s not true. God is omnipresent: he’s everywhere, all at once. God is present in heaven and in hell, and he is the Lord of all things—of both heaven and hell.

Hell is not the absence of God. It is the absence of union with God.

If we are united to God, God’s presence is a blessing for us. It is the presence of a benevolent and loving Father.

If we aren’t united to God, his presence is eternal condemnation and punishment for us. It is the presence of a righteous Judge, who hates the sin we have allowed to be our master.

What God is saying here, essentially, is simple: because of sin, God and human beings have become incompatible. God made man in his image, but man rebelled against God and became infected with sin. Sin and God’s holiness are fundamentally incompatible—like oil and water, like lions and people.

In the normal state of things, there is simply no way for man to live with God and survive. Sooner or later we will sin against him, and God’s justice would require him to punish that sin.

But even if this is true, its opposite is also true. We can’t live with God, but we can’t live without him either.

We Can’t Live Without God (33.4-6)

V. 4:

4 When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. 5 For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.’ ” 6 Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.

This is interesting. The people of Israel have seen these incredible manifestations of God’s power, rescuing them from slavery in Egypt, and guiding them into the wilderness, and coming down on Mount Sinai… And now they’re realizing they were ready to give all of that up!

So they mourn. They strip off their party clothes, the “ornaments” of their idolatry, and they mourn.

Now that is not to say that this is actual, true repentance. For some of them it probably was, but Israel’s history will show us that plenty of them weren’t repentant at all. They’re mourning over what they stand to lose, and not necessarily mourning over their sin.

The one person who seems to have fully understood the situation is Moses himself, even though he didn’t participate in their sin. Skip down to v. 14 (this is God speaking to Moses):

14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

One thing that we can’t see in our English translations is really important. The “you” in verse 14 is singular, not plural. God is talking to Moses, and Moses alone here. He says, “Okay, I can’t go with them; but I’ll go with you.”

15 And [Moses] said to [the Lord], “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

Listen carefully to what Moses is saying. First of all, he’s saying he can’t take God without God’s people. His response in v. 15 might seem strange, because God has just said he’ll go with him, and then Moses turns around and says, “If your presence won’t go with me, don’t bring us up from here.” But v. 16 explains what he means. He says, Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people…?

He’s telling God that Moses and the Israelites are a package deal.

And he’s not saying it for his own sake, out of loyalty to his people. He’s saying it for God’s sake. It’s exactly what we saw last week, when God threatened to go down and destroy them after they made the golden calf. Moses pleads with God not to do it, because God made promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and if God doesn’t do what he promised, then he will be maligned by enemy nations. It is for God’s sake that he’s pleading with him.

Here’s the second thing, that I find even more remarkable. God has promised them a beautiful country, “flowing with milk and honey”, with unlimited resources, incredible produce, all the good things they’ve been desiring for centuries. And God has just told them that he’ll send an angel ahead of them to get them there.

Even if I’m not with you, he says, you’ll get to where you’re going. You’ll get what I promised. But I won’t be there.

And Moses says, “If you’re not going to be there, keep us in the desert. That would be better than getting everything you promised us, but without you.”

So there is a natural tension to their situation. They can’t live with God, because they’re sinners; but they can’t live without God either, because he is their Lord and their Creator, their very life.

How can this tension possibly be resolved?

The Tension Resolved (33.12-23)

There’s only one way, and we see it in the following verses. V. 12:

12 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’”

Just to clarify: when God told Moses, “You have found favor in my sight,” he’s not saying, “Moses, I’ve looked at all humanity, and you’re the best. You’re the guy I want to work with.” He’s saying, “I have decided to give you the grace to belong to me and to lead my people.”

Keeping that in mind, look at what Moses says in v. 13—it’s really interesting:

13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight.”

Do you see what he’s saying? He’s saying, “If I have received your grace, show me your ways that I may know you, and continue to benefit from that grace.”

In other words, Moses is very lucid about his own situation. He knows that the only reason he’s here speaking to God, and not down there with the people worshiping idols, is because God has given him grace. And he knows that if he doesn’t know God, if he doesn’t know what God expects of him and what God’s character is like, even if he’s here talking with God today, he’ll run the risk of drifting away from him tomorrow.

So he is asking God to keep him. He’s asking God for a deeper knowledge of who he is, so that Moses might continue to be faithful.

And then he adds the argument we saw earlier, at the end of v. 13:

“Consider too that this nation is your people.”

He tells God, your presence is what is meant to make this people distinctive. Your presence is what sets us apart from other nations. You have committed yourself to this people, and everyone knows it. Just as Moses and the people of Israel are a package deal, so are God and the people of Israel.

So then in v. 15-16, we see what we talked about earlier: God offers to go with Moses, but not the people, and Moses refuses, saying, “No, I can’t go without my people—and if you’re not with us, leave us here in the desert.”

Now listen to God’s response, in v. 17:

17 And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

It’s really important to see why God agrees to do what Moses is asking him to do. He says that he will go with the Israelites, despite the fact that they are sinful. But it’s not because Moses has convinced him or changed his mind. God is omniscient—he knows all things. He was not surprised by what Israel did, and he knew exactly how this conversation was going to go.

He is doing all this for Moses’s sake, and for the people’s sake. They need to know, in their gut, not just in their heads, that they can’t live without God. And the idea that they might get the promised land without God needed to be unthinkable to them. Moses understands it, and he will lead the people to understand it.

So God says that he will go with them, not because Moses has changed God’s mind, and not because Moses has been so super faithful. God says that he will go with the people, because he has decided to give Moses this grace, and he knows him by name.

God justifies his decision on the basis of his own gracious will—we’ll come back to this in a second.

Now put yourself in Moses’s shoes. After everything that’s just happened, he hears what God says, and it’s good news: but he’s hungry for more. V. 18:

Moses said, “Please show me your glory.”

Remember that at the root of everything Moses has just asked of God is his request that he might know God. He’s saying, I want to make sure that we stay on the rails here. So let me see you as you are. Let me know you fully. He’s essentially asking for a more intimate repetition of Mount Sinai, a covenant validation that God really is still with them.

And to this risky request, God (maybe surprisingly) agrees. Look at v. 21:

21 And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”

So he agrees, with a small condition attached. You can’t see me in all my fullness and live—you are still a sinner, and I’m too holy for you. But I will give you a glimpse of me, but I won’t show you my face.

It’s easy to get sidetracked by this (which we’ll see next week) and miss the most important part of this passage, which comes just before, in v. 19:

19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’

So Moses won’t be able to see all of God’s glory. He won’t get to see God’s face.

What he will get is God’s proclamation of his name.

This is an idea that shows up over and over again in the Bible: God’s name is a representation of who he is. He will go on to give a longer, more detailed description of what his name entails in chapter 34, but right now he gives the essential, and it hits hard. He says in the second half of v. 19:

And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.

The apostle Paul quotes this verse in Romans 9 to show that when God saves a person, it’s not because they deserve it, but because God has chosen to save them. He chooses to save us, not on the basis of who we are or what we have done, but on the basis of his own totally free will to do whatever he pleases.

He is the God who is obliged to do nothing. He is the God who receives no commands, who has no rulers, who is subservient to no one. God is the God whose prerogative it is to forgive or not.

We talked about this tension: we can’t live with God, but we can’t live without him. This is what resolves the tension: it is God’s name, God’s sovereign right to do what he will.

Now obviously we don’t see how God’s right to do what he will ultimately manifests itself. A couple of weeks ago we talked about the limits of the sacrificial system God had already given the people, that they would need more than that. But God tells Moses that he will proclaim his name to him, and his name is “The Lord”—that is, the one who has the absolute right to be gracious to whom he will, and show mercy on whom he will.

And this is exactly what we see, hundreds of years later, when God sends Jesus Christ. This should make our heads spin. Just as God is under no obligation to forgive anyone, he was under no obligation to send Christ.

Jesus lived a perfect life in a human body, a body susceptible to temptation, tortured daily by the onslaught of sin in the world around him. He resisted temptation at every turn, and constantly showed his desire to love the unlovable, to live with sinful people. And ultimately, he suffered the punishment we sinful people deserve when he died on the cross for our sins.

No one was forcing him to do that. The Son of God could have stayed in heaven, and he still would have been God, because it is his right to be gracious or not, to show mercy or not.

But he chose to be gracious to his people. He chose to show mercy to his people.

This is what God was looking forward to when he told Moses he would continue on with the people of Israel, despite their sin. And this is what God was looking forward to when he gave Moses the grace to intercede for the people of Israel, to (in a sense) argue with God in favor of the people.

That was God, showing his people patience they didn’t deserve, because he knew Jesus was coming. Jesus would cover all the sins of his repentant people—including the sins that Moses himself committed—when he died on the cross. Jesus would stand as his people’s advocate before the Father, showing him proof that our sins were covered. So God could pass over their sins for now, and make his dwelling among them, despite what they deserve—exactly as he does for us.

So here’s what we have to see here:

This story is our story.

This text is a microcosm of the story of all of God’s people, throughout all of history.

We have a sinful, rebellious people, who deserve to be separated from God, as God promises. And we have one man who rightly understands the situation, and who stands as an intercessor for this sinful people. It shouldn’t matter what he says, because the people deserve to be separated from God.

And even so, God stays with them. He chooses to show them grace.

We have a sinful, idolatrous people, who deserve to be separated from God. And we have one man who rightly understands the situation, and who stands as an intercessor for this sinful people. It shouldn’t matter what he says, because the people deserve to be separated from God.

And even so, God stays with them. He chooses to show them grace.

All of us, at some point in our lives, will have an experience that makes us realize the immensity of our sin. We’ll think we’ve made progress, we’ll think we’ve grown up, we’ll look at our Christian lives and be proud of ourselves and all we’ve accomplished. And then in a moment, over the course of a single conversation, we’ll be left thinking to ourselves, I have made no progress at all.

One day we’ll find ourselves on our knees before him with nothing in our hands, nothing to show for ourselves except our sin. We’ll see that all of our accomplishments, all the seemingly beautiful the things we did without him, are just the ornaments of our idolatry.

He’ll remove all that, and we’ll be there, naked in front of him, feeling the shame and the fear of our sin, and we’ll hear him say, “I will show grace to whom I will show grace, and I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” And that will feel like a terrifying sentence to us.

And then we’ll hear him say, “But my Son says you’re mine. So I will go with you.”

The fact that God forgives the people of Israel is so astounding that we are almost left with a feeling of incompleteness, because God’s conversation with Moses doesn’t make a lot of sense. That argument shouldn’t have worked. But it did, because God is the God who has the sovereign authority to show grace to whom he will.

And he decided to save us.

So faced with this confusing, incomprehensible, undeserved grace, we have to ask ourselves a question: if we could have everything we have ever wanted without this God, would we take it?

That’s the question the text asks, because that’s what God says to Moses—I’ll send my angel with you, and they’ll drive out your enemies, and I’ll give you the land. It’s everything you’ve always wanted. But you’ll do it without me.

And Moses said no.

I wonder how many of us would be willing to say the same thing. If God promised to give you everything you prayed for, for the rest of your life, but without Christ, would you take that deal?

This is a question we have to ask ourselves, every day for the rest of our lives, because every day the world around us is going to present us with an illusion of happiness, an illusion of perfection. It will give us a million things we think we need in order to be happy, and we might even feel happy for a time. But a day will come when we’ll stand before God and realize that every good thing without God is actually another nail in our coffin, another idol we’ve worshiped, another lie we’ve believed.

But knowing that he is our ultimate good changes the way we see every good thing. Our happiness is no longer idolatrous. We delight in good things, not just because they’re good, but because they lift our eyes to the good God who gave them to us. We delight in the gift, for the sake the Giver.

The Christian life is a life of reordered affections. We want good things, yes—but most especially, we want God. So if we get those good things, we delight in God all the more. And if we don’t, then that’s okay—because we’ve still got God. This is why the apostle Paul can legitimately tell us to rejoice in every circumstance.

This is how the cancer patient can still delight in God.

This is how a funeral can still be joyful and filled with hope.

This is how a broken relationship can not destroy our lives.

This is how our children can not become idols to us.

This is how our jobs can be a good endeavor rather than the purpose of our lives.

This is how we can live sacrificially.

This is how we can be generous even when we have little.

This is how we can resist temptation.

We can do all these things, because Christ has made it possible for sinful people to finally live with God. He has made the choice to show us unthinkable grace. He has proclaimed to us his name, The Lord—he will be gracious to whom he will, and he will show mercy to whom he will. Why would we ever want anything without him?

The Break-Up (Exodus 32:1-29)

It was Tuesday evening. I was in my kitchen when I heard shouting in the car park. Angry screams.

When I looked out of the window, I saw a young couple arguing. He was sitting behind the wheel of the car, ready to drive off. She was holding the door open and shouting.

This went on for some time. Violent words were exchanged in public.

I don't know where the argument started, nor do I know how it ended, but I have to say I was worried that at some point I would hear the words, "if that's the way it is between us, that's the end of it!"

As we meditate on Exodus 32 this morning, this is our question.

Should we be worried that God might one day say to us: we're finished!

Could we push God so far that he decides it's all over?

***

Of course not, some would say. God always forgives. He is a God of grace.

No sin is too serious to be forgiven, as long as you confess it and move on.

God could never tell us it's over!

***

Wait," replies another, "are you sure?

Are you sure you can't push God too far?

Isn't it a bit presumptuous to think that he'll always forgive?

It was Catherine the Great, the Russian empress, who said: "The good Lord must forgive me ... it's ... his job!

Isn't that a bit big of an attitude?

If I analyse my conscience, I realise that I've done things that I can barely forgive myself for. And God is going to forgive me?

If I commit the same sin over and over again, over and over again, won't there come a time when God's patience reaches its limit?

Are you sure he could never tell us it's over?

***

Should we be worried that God might one day say to us: it's over?

Chapters 32 to 34 of Exodus are the climax of the book of Exodus. These chapters were written to show where to look when you fear that God will say: it's over.

In the Old Testament, the Israelites often returned to these chapters.

When they disobeyed God before entering the land of Canaan ...

When they disobeyed God in the land of Canaan ...

When they disobeyed and were exiled from the land of Canaan ...

When they returned to the land of Canaan when everything was a ruin ...

... it was to these chapters that they returned to find hope.

The structure of Exodus shows us why these chapters are important.

Over the last two weeks we have been meditating on the description of the Tabernacle, the tent where God was to dwell among his people.

From chapter 35 to the end of the book, we are told about the building of the Tabernacle. The people follow God's instructions to Moses.

Between these parts on the tabernacle, in the middle of the sandwich, there is the golden calf

By structuring the story in this way, the author shows what question he wants to address. How can a holy God dwell in the midst of a deeply rebellious people?

These chapters are essential to understand. They are full of good news. We'd do well to come back to them regularly.

But before you hear the good news, you have to hear the bad.

That's the aim this morning.

I warn you - Exodus 32 is bound to be disturbing.

May God grant us the humility to listen to what he wants to tell us, rather than what we want to hear.

Should we be worried that God might one day tell us it's all over?

This morning's message is simply this: God would have every reason to tell us, it's over.

Exodus 32 verse 1

"The people saw that Moses was slow to come down from the mountain. So they gathered round Aaron and said to him, 'Come on! Make us gods that go before us, for this Moses, the man who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what has become of him." Aaron said to them, "Take off the gold rings that hang from the ears of your wives, sons and daughters and bring them to me." Everyone removed the gold rings that hung from their ears and they brought them to Aaron. He received them from their hands, threw the gold into a mould and made a calf of molten metal. Then they said, "Israel, these are your gods that brought you out of Egypt." When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it and cried out, "Tomorrow there will be a feast in honour of the Lord!" The next day they rose early and offered burnt offerings and communion sacrifices. The people sat down to eat and drink; then they got up to enjoy themselves."

Firstly ...

1. The scandal of adultery towards God

Let's go back one verse.

Exodus 31:18 - If you were writing the rest, what would you want to write?

When the Lord had finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of testimony, stone tablets written with the finger of God.

The answer from someone in my community group: then they lived happily and had many descendants ...

Now imagine the scene.

It's a wedding day.

The couple have just left the town hall. They've just said 'I do'! The ink on the register is barely dry.

It's time to get ready for the church ceremony.

It takes a bit longer than expected. The bride has to change her dress, change her hairstyle, do her make-up and so on. She's falling behind schedule.

It's time to start.

Monsieur is waiting. He is getting impatient. A quarter of an hour, half an hour, three quarters of an hour.

At last the bride arrives at the church, but as she enters the hall, instead of being filled with joy, she is filled with dread. She finds her husband ... in the arms of another woman.

As a guest, you'd be floored. Imagine we were the bride.

It's a bit like the scenario in Exodus 32.

Rejecting the true God and replacing him with another, even if it seems justifiable, is nothing less than atrocious adultery.

Since the beginning of Exodus, we have seen how God has presented himself to Israel as a faithful God who remembers his promises. We have seen how he fought for them against their adversaries.

And we have seen that he did this in order to take them as his own, binding himself to them, as in a marriage, by the covenant at Mount Sinai.

We heard the description of the 'palace' in which God wanted to dwell among his people - the Tabernacle. A paradisiacal palace, with its nods to the Garden of Eden.

All this to say that if God presented himself as the husband of his people, he cannot be reproached for being an indifferent or incompetent husband! He is the best of husbands!

But while God was speaking to Moses at the top of the mountain, people down below were getting impatient.

There are three stages.

Rejection, replacement, revolution.

Verse 1

The people saw that Moses was delaying his descent from the mountain. So they gathered round Aaron and said to him: "Come on! Make us gods that go before us, for this Moses, the man who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what has become of him."

What is striking about this verse is that the Lord is not mentioned. It's not, the Lord, who brought us out of Egypt, we don't know what has become of him.

It's this: we don't know what happened to Moses.

The Eternal is forgotten.

But it's not an innocent oversight. It's a guilty and senseless oversight.

The impatience and nervousness of a bridegroom who waits three quarters of an hour on his wedding day - we understand a little.

But that wouldn't stop us from being scandalised if, because of that wait, he rejected the person who had kept him waiting and threw himself into the arms of someone else.

Are you so foolish? Don't you realise how much this person has done to get to this day? All the ways she's already shown her affection for you? She's just signed on the dotted line to say she wants to be with you!

'And you're going to reject it because of a few minutes' wait?'

That would be insane.

But in human beings, impatience and disbelief often get the better of rationality and trust ... and we reject what the Eternal One had so clearly shown us.

God doesn't answer my prayers when I want, how I want - pfff, is he really there?

He doesn't give me the person, the job or the pleasure I want, when I want it - pfff. I knew I couldn't count on him.

The rejection of God and his revelation is the starting point of all sin.

Israel's, and if you dig a little deeper, ours too.

Replacement

Verse 2

Aaron said to them, "Take off the gold rings that hang from the ears of your wives, sons, and daughters and bring them to me." Everyone took off the gold rings that hung from their ears, and they brought them to Aaron. He received them from their hands, threw the gold into a mould and made a calf of molten metal. Then they said, "Israel, these are your gods who brought you out of Egypt."

They say that nature abhors a vacuum.

The human heart too.

When you reject the living God, you don't become independent.

This is one of our modern lies - to reject God, not to believe in him, is to become independent.

We don't know how to be independent. We were created to love and trust others.

When you turn your back on the Eternal One, you always end up in the arms of another, even if that other only imperfectly imitates the true spouse.

Maybe you think: worshiping a metal calf ... why? I would never do that, it's absurd.

But beware. The Israelites had spent 400 years in Egypt, surrounded by statues. All other peoples worshipped statues. The calf was a very common symbol in the ancient Middle East of strength and fertility.

Making a calf out of metal, that you could see and touch, must have seemed natural to a people in search of security.

They were simply following the prevailing ideas of their time.

Just as in our time, it may seem natural to seek security in tangible things like money, career, comfort and relationships.

But just because it's commonplace doesn't mean it's not culpable.

We reject the one who already offered us love and security - God, the creator of heaven and earth, who has given us incontrovertible proof that he is faithful - to run into the arms of those who will only offer a cheap version of what we were looking for, because they are only creations.

It's foolish. It's ungrateful. It is unbelief. It is adultery.

That's what we all do.

Rejection, replacement ...

Revolution

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it and cried out, "Tomorrow there will be a feast in honour of the Lord!" The next day they rose early and offered burnt offerings and communion sacrifices. The people sat down to eat and drink; then they got up to enjoy themselves."

Rejecting and replacing the true God produces a domino effect.

You don't settle down with an inferior spouse without it changing you for the worse in just about every way.

Israel's marriage vows to the Lord were the 10 Commandments.

How many of the 10 Commandments are they breaking?

Clearly the first - you will have no other gods before me.

The second - You shall not make a sacred sculpture for yourself

Aaron tries to make up for it by saying that worshipping the statue is in fact worshipping the Lord, except that in doing so he is taking the Lord's name in vain.

Their party looks an awful lot like a parody of the Sabbath.

They dishonour God their father.

They are already committing adultery against God and probably against each other - "getting up to have fun" is probably a euphemism for a sexual orgy.

They stole the gold intended for the Tabernacle to make the statue.

They bear false witness to God.

And they covet a different god as well as the wives and husbands of their neighbours.

9 out of 10 commandments is not bad.

You can't reject God without it changing you for the worse in every way.

...

But what's frightening is that, despite this, we're still tempted to think it's harmless.

All the other peoples did it.

Nobody seems to have been hurt.

Everyone seems to have had a good time.

There's nothing to say that they didn't all consent.

It even looked quite religious! They're singing hymns to the Lord!

What's the problem?

Just because it seems harmless to us doesn't mean that in God's eyes it isn't adultery and a violation of our relationship with him.

...

This is the crux of the problem.

The Israelites may have come out of Egypt, but Egypt had not yet come out of them.

They had been freed from the outer Pharaoh, sitting on his throne. But the inner Pharaoh, hardened, idolatrous, adulterous, ... was still sitting in their hearts.

[Slowly] You know the inner pharaoh?

It's in all of us. Glued to the skin of every human being.

As jealous as ever that the Eternal One wants to take us as his own.

As eager as ever to prostitute ourselves to counterfeit gods.

It's easier to spot it in the idolatry of others than at home.

In modern society, with its idols of money, sex and comfort.

In some churches, God is reshaped by erasing disturbing aspects - certain moral requirements, for example, or his wrath against sin.

And by pointing the finger at others, if you're like me, we can convince ourselves that we're fine.

But this passage is addressed to people whom God had 'saved' - people like us, in whom the inner, adulterous Pharaoh is still rampant.

Over the last few weeks, our trainees have been reading two excellent books on the theme of our relationship with God.

Knowing God' by J I Packer. At the risk of being happy' by John Piper.

Great books that invite us to find our supreme joy in God.

But I'm speaking for myself; if these books have revealed anything, it's that more often than not I don't seek my supreme joy in God.

So easily, I convince myself that it's things I can see, touch or make that will give me joy and security.

Author Tim Keller says that "if you start looking for your joy, your identity or the meaning of your life in something other than God, then that thing is an idol".

I may take the name of the Lord upon my lips. I may look religious.

But just as my wife wouldn't be fooled if I took her name on my lips and visited her sometimes while giving my affection to another, God isn't fooled either.

He sees the scandal of adultery, and no one can plead innocent.

...

What are the consequences?

After rejection, replacement and revolution, there's another word beginning with 'R' that this passage anticipates.

2. the relationship on the verge of breaking up

If you walk into a church only to find your husband or wife in someone else's arms, what are you going to do?

Cancel the ceremony and leave without the ring on your finger.

In this passage, we see God very close to putting an end to the relationship.

We see this first in two chilling words in verse 7.

"The Lord said to Moses: "Go, come down. For ... your people, ... those whom you brought out of Egypt, have become corrupt."

What do you mean 'your people'?

Until now, God has always referred to Israel as "my people".

"I have seen the suffering of my people in Egypt".

"Let my people go."

"I will take you to be my people".

Why does he say to Moses "your people have become corrupt"?

It's because God distances himself.

You want to be someone else's people? I consider that you are no longer my people.

Verse 9 contains his threat

"I can see that this people is a resistant people. Now, leave it to me! My anger will flare up against them and I will make them disappear".

The idea of a husband wanting to kill the person who has been unfaithful to him can be disturbing.

We must remember that this union between God and Israel is not just any union.

The background to Exodus is Genesis. In the Garden of Eden, God had announced that if we rejected communion with him, the source of life, all that remained was death.

When God intervened to save Israel from Egypt, the land of death, to bring them to him, it was to offer them, by pure grace, life through a relationship with him.

By rejecting it, what else could they expect but to disappear?

Finally, there are the tables of stone broken by Moses.

Tempting to think he's losing his grip. That he's acting on a whim.

In fact, the text suggests that he is simply expressing God's attitude.

His anger flares up, just as God's anger has just flared up.

He broke the tablets containing the Ten Commandments to symbolise the fact that the Israelites had already broken these commandments.

It's as if he noticed their infidelity, took the wedding ring and threw it out of the window.

The break-up.

You want to love someone else? OK. We're facing a break-up.

...

[Slowly] What's really terrible is that in this passage, and I mean in this passage, there's not much hope.

I have not dwelt on Moses' plea to God.

There will be much more to say about Moses' intercession next week.

But even if we note that thanks to Moses, God renounces the idea of annihilating Israel, we can do better in terms of reconciliation.

There's a big difference between not wiping them off the face of the earth and marrying them.

Even if he doesn't destroy them, God will still say in the next chapter: go and settle in Canaan, but know that it will be without me.

The future remains bleak.

Their covenant with God offers no hope.

God had promised that they would be his precious people ... if ... they were faithful to him.

If you've been unfaithful, there's not much point in protesting that you made vows to each other.

It's precisely these wishes that we're accused of.

The priest offers no hope.

Last week, Jason talked about the importance of this intermediary between the people and God to make the relationship possible.

But here it's the priest, Aaron, who makes the idol ... before further undermining his credibility with his tragicomic apology:

"They gave me the gold. I threw it into the fire and out came this calf.""

And finally, the Levites offer no hope.

The role of the Levites was to assist the priests in their ministry.

But have you seen why they are ordained for this ministry?

Verse 27

"Moses announced to them: "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Let each of you put his sword to his side. Cross over and go through the camp from one entrance to the other, and let every man kill his brother, his neighbour, his neighbour." The Levites did as Moses commanded and about 3000 of the people died that day. Moses said, "Today you have been established in your duties in the service of the Lord, and at the cost even of your son and your brother, so that today he grants you a blessing.""

A few months ago, Connexion Church ordained a new elder.

Eduardo underwent an evaluation process which culminated in a vote at the General Meeting to appoint him as manager.

Imagine if this was the ordination process!

Going door to door, sword in hand, to all those who refused to renounce idolatry, to execute their brother, their neighbour.

The idea is enough to turn our stomachs.

That's what's happening here.

And as terrible as it may sound, it's God who mandates it.

...

Ah, someone will say, but that's the God of the Old Testament.

Severe, violent. I believe in the God of the New Testament - gentle, patient, non-violent.

[slowly] But when you read the New Testament, you discover that episodes like this are just vignettes anticipating God's eternal judgement against an adulterous world ... in hell.

...

Moses is described as the gentlest man in the Old Testament. But that didn't stop him from calling for the judgment of sinners.

Jesus was the gentlest man who ever lived. But that didn't stop him from talking more than any other person with tears in his eyes about the reality and necessity of eternal judgment.

...

And my friends, all this should convince us that God is not indifferent to infidelity and spiritual adultery.

He values his relationship with his people.

It's so important to him that if we violate that relationship, he won't pretend it never happened.

This passage may seem a little violent.

But we also know that if you were the victim of adultery, of course the future of your relationship with that person would be in doubt.

Of course the question of the break-up would be raised, even if it wasn't inevitable.

And if we find this conclusion a little exaggerated when it comes to God, we're only confirming the problem.

We have imagined a counterfeit God, indifferent to his relations with human beings, indifferent to the wrongs they commit, a God who is not the living and true God.

For the Lord, the reality is that faced with the scandal of adultery, the relationship is on the verge of breaking down.

***

Why show us these things?

I said at the beginning that the aim of Exodus 32-34 was to give hope. Now that sounds a lot like despair, you might say.

[slowly] To understand where to look when you fear that God will say, it's over ...

To avoid putting our trust in solutions that are not solutions ... a few good deeds, a bit of religion, a façade of piety ...

To find real insurance ... you first have to understand the seriousness of your situation.

The idea that God can tell people it's over is not a fantasy.

That's no exaggeration.

It's not an irrational phobia.

It is the justified response of a faithful God to unfaithful people.

***

Where is the grace in all this, someone might ask? Where is the forgiveness?

We're getting there.

We'll get there in the next few weeks.

But to understand how glorious grace is, we have to understand how awful our default situation is.

We have known since the Garden of Eden that the consequences of sin are serious.

What Exodus shows us is the extent to which this sin, this inner Pharaoh, sticks to us, pursues us, even those who have seen God act to save them.

The liberation we need is not just an external liberation. It's an inner liberation.

If you're like me, you might tend to think of God as an indulgent grandpa - the most indulgent of grandpas.

Did you set the house on fire? Don't do it again and I won't tell Mum.

We also tend to put our faults into perspective.

I go to church on Sundays. I try to be nice. I haven't killed anyone this week. What can God blame me for?

And we convince ourselves that between a forgiving God and minor sins, we'll be able to work something out.

The good Lord must forgive me ... it's ... his job!

But it's all lies.

God is not a spoilt grandpa, our sins are not small and God is under no obligation to forgive anyone.

They're lies, and they offer no comfort when we do something that even we realise is serious.

Exodus 32 makes an honest diagnosis.

Yes, it's serious. No, God is not indifferent. No, we can't do it alone.

The Bible tells us this not to destroy us, but to make us bend the knee to look to God with dependence and healthy fear, knowing that help will come from no one else, to listen, grasp and rejoice in the greatness of the true solution.

What is it?

We'll know more next week.

Pictures of Real things

Exodus 28-31

We’ve got a lot to see today, so we’re going to jump right into it. Keep your Bibles open to Exodus, starting in chapter 28—you’ll need them.

Last week we spoke about the tabernacle. God has taken the people of Israel, who had been in bondage in Egypt for centuries, and he has rescued them from their slavery, taken them out of Egypt, and brought them into the desert. Now, Moses is on the top of Mount Sinai with God, in the cloud of his presence, and God is giving him the particulars of the covenant that he has established with the people.

He’s commanded the people to build this tabernacle in the desert, this place of worship which would, essentially, be God’s dwelling place among his people. The point of the tabernacle, as we saw last week, was to illustrate the point that the people’s true home would not be found in a particular country or building; their home would be wherever God is.

But there’s a problem. To understand everything that we see here, we need to understand one thing: we seriously underestimate the gravity of sin. Sin is our rebellion against God, our desire to be our own Masters. We are all sinners, we all have this instinct to reject God in us. When sin came into the world, it corrupted everything, and it separated us from God.

We tend to think of sin as something annoying we have to deal with, but as we’ll see in these chapters, sin is a much bigger deal than we think. If God is showing his people that they now have a home in him, they need someone to bring them into that home, into God’s presence.

This person would be the priest.

The Priest’s Garments (28.1-43)

The first thing we see described in chapter 28 is a kind of uniform for the high priest: it’s what he wears when he goes about his work, a sign that he is acting with God’s authority.

Image credit: ESV Study Bible

But unlike a suit or my “work uniform”, the high priest’s uniform was full of symbolism.

The first thing we see described is an ephod (v. 6-14). It’s a little like an apron, but made with multicolored linen; it has two shoulder pieces, each holding an onyx stone. The names of the twelve sons of Israel are engraved on each of these stones.

Next we see a breastplate, called the breastplate of judgment (v. 15-30). The breastplate has twelve different stones, set in four rows of three, each with the name of one of the twelve tribes. The ephod and the breastplate, taken together, show the value God places on his people as a nation, and as individual tribes of that nation.

Under the ephod, the high priest wore a blue robe (v. 22-26). He wore coats of fine linen, undergarments to go underneath the whole outfit, and a turban on their heads. On this turban there was a plate of gold, and inscribed on this plate was this engraving: “Holy to the LORD” (v. 27-31).

So think about this for a minute. In 28.29, God says,

So Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel in the breastpiece of judgment on his heart, when he goes into the Holy Place, to bring them to regular remembrance before the Lord.

The names of the tribes of Israel are both on the shoulders of the high priest, and over his heart. So every time the high priest comes into the tabernacle, he’s coming in representing the people; he’s carrying them (figuratively) into God’s presence.

And he has to do so, because as we saw in chapter 19, it is a dangerous thing for sinful people to come into the presence of a holy God. This is why the high priest has bells on the hem of their robe. 28.35:

And it [the robe with the bells on the hem] shall be on Aaron when he ministers, and its sound shall be heard when he goes into the Holy Place before the Lord, and when he comes out, so that he does not die.

Now of course God doesn’t need bells; he doesn’t need a warning that the high priest is coming into his presence. The bells are for the people—even outside the tabernacle, they will hear the sound of the bells as the priest does his work, and be reminded that sinners cannot come into the presence of God alone.

They need a mediator.

The Priests’ Consecration (29.1-46)

But this is where we run into an obvious problem. When someone goes in for surgery, their body is disinfected and made sterile before the surgery can begin, to avoid infection. But before that happens, the doctors and nurses working on them have to disinfect themselves: the wash their hands and put on sterile gowns, to avoid transmitting infection to the patient.

It’s a similar problem here. Because the people of Israel are sinful human beings, they need a mediator to come into God’s presence. But any mediator they could have is also a sinful human being. The priests are just as guilty before God as the people are.

So how will the priests be made holy, in order to bring the people of Israel before God? That’s what we see in chapter 29.

In this chapter, God tells Moses how to “consecrate” the priests. It happens through a process of ceremonial washing, anointing and sacrifice. The word “consecrate” means “to make holy” or “to set apart.”

Everything they do here is symbolic. When the priests wash, they are symbolically making themselves clean to come into God’s presence. When they are anointed with oil, and when they put on their priestly garments, they are symbolically showing that they are acting on God’s behalf. And when they offer the sacrifice, they are symbolically covering their sins to come into God’s presence.

During these sacrifices, something interesting happens. God commands the priests to make a sacrifice. But before they kill the animal, they do something else first. Look at v. 10—God says:

10 “Then you shall bring the bull before the tent of meeting. Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the bull.

Only then do they kill the animal and proceed with the ritual sacrifice. They lay their hands on the animal, as a way of symbolically transferring their sin from themselves to the animal. So when they kill the animal, they are symbolically killing their own sin. In v. 20-21, we see that blood from one of the offerings is placed on their ears, their thumbs and their big toes, as a sign that their sin has been paid for.

And at the end of the process, the priests eat some of the sacrifice.

This isn’t new. This is the sign God has already set in place, that they have been accepted into his presence: they eat a meal in his presence.

The point is that before the priests can themselves come near to God, they have to be consecrated. Their sin has to be paid for.

And it’s not only the priests who have to be consecrated, but the altar as well and the tabernacle as well. Some of the blood from the sacrificed animals is thrown on them, and then they are anointed with oil, in order to be set apart and made holy for God.

Let me read this quote from Tim Chester’s commentary (which is really helpful for understanding these passages):

“Notice the flow, or movement, in these chapters. The people’s guilt is transferred to the priests (Exodus 28:38). The priest’s guilt is transferred to the animals. The animals die. The sin, as it were, reaches a dead end, and the end is death. But then 29:37 says, ‘For seven days make atonement for the altar and consecrate it. Then the altar will be most holy, and whatever touches it will be holy.’ Sin is dealt with and now holiness flows back in the other direction.

“The Holy Place, inner tabernacle and altar for burnt offerings are anointed with holy oil and therefore communicate holiness to anything that touches them. We could call this ‘contagious holiness’.”

This was potentially dangerous—if anyone who is not consecrated touches these holy objects, the consequences were always serious. But the task of the priest was so heavy, so dramatic in its implications, that he could touch these objects without dying; since he was consecrated, he is made holy too through this process.

Then, in chapter 30, v. 11-16, we see that the people are called to enroll in a census, in which they each have to pay a sum of money for the upkeep of the tabernacle. Bernard Ramm writes that this is “the way in which the covenant was made personal … each Israelite … willing to be counted.” The people of God are, collectively, brought into God’s presence; but through their participation in the census, they are also individually and personally engaged in this relationship.

The process of consecration and sacrifices and vestments for the priest can seem complicated, so if we need to retain anything it’s this: the people of God meet God in the tabernacle, and they have to meet God through the high priest, who is set apart and made clean for this task.

And what happens when they do meet God through the high priest? What happens in this exchange?

Rest in the Presence of God (30.1-31.18)

We get a clearer picture of where this is heading as we keep reading.

The altar of incense, which stood in the antechamber of the tabernacle along with the table for the bread and the lampstand, was an altar of wood that was covered in gold. This altar for incense is to be placed in a very specific location in the tabernacle.

Image credit: ESV Study Bible

We read in Exodus 30.6-8:

And you shall put it in front of the veil that is above the ark of the testimony, in front of the mercy seat that is above the testimony, where I will meet with you. 7 And Aaron shall burn fragrant incense on it. Every morning when he dresses the lamps he shall burn it, 8 and when Aaron sets up the lamps at twilight, he shall burn it, a regular incense offering before the Lord throughout your generations.

Now we’re not told explicitly in the text what this altar of incense symbolizes; there are several theories about it. But one in particular stands out as the most likely, I think.

What happens when you burn incense? First of all, the whole room is filled with the smell of it; it’s a very thick smell. Your opinion will vary on that smell; I think incense of almost any kind smells wonderful, but it’s very strong. The point is, if someone is burning incense, you can’t get away from the smell as long as you stay in that place.

And the reason the smell is so thick is because incense makes smoke. You can see it rising from the incense as it burns, and it fills the whole room.

The incense burnt on this altar wasn’t a single stick or a cone; it created a significant amount of smoke, enveloping the veil of the Most Holy Place like a cloud.

One thing you see multiple times in this book is the glory of God being made visible to the people of Israel in the form of a cloud. We saw it in the pillar of cloud that guided the Israelites by day in chapter 14; we saw it when the glory of God descended on Mount Sinai in chapter 19; and we’ll see it again later, in chapter 40, when the tabernacle is finally erected: the glory of God will descend on the tabernacle in the form of a cloud.

The burning of the incense before the Most Holy Place is, I think, God’s way of getting our senses involved in the realization that God is in this place. Every time the priests entered the tabernacle and saw that smoke and smelled that incense, they would be reminded of God’s glory—that this is no ordinary place.

The reality that this is no ordinary place can be seen all over the tabernacle—even down to the way in which the different elements are built.

At the beginning of chapter 31, we see God tell Moses to call on two specific people: Bezalel, from the tribe of Judah, and Oholiab, from the tribe of Dan. They were craftsmen, and God says in v. 3 that he has filled them with his Spirit, and given them the ability to design and build all of the things God has been describing to Moses. So it wasn’t just Moses and the priests who needed to be wise and knowledgeable to do what God wanted done here; even the craftsmen needed God’s help to build the tabernacle.

And then finally, we come to the end of God’s instructions for his tabernacle. So it is very telling that it ends like this. Exodus 31.12-17:

12 And the Lord said to Moses, 13 “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. 14 You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. 15 Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. 16 Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. 17 It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’ ”

Why is this question of rest so serious that it is the one commandment God gave before that is reiterated here? And why is it so serious that to not rest properly on the Sabbath was punishable by death?

First of all, just to clear up one common misconception: the law of Moses likely didn’t apply this commandment as strongly as the Pharisees did in the gospels. You probably wouldn’t be put to death for picking up a mat. The kind of work it has in mind would be someone consciously rejecting the Sabbath day and choosing to go out and do his ordinary work (tilling his field, or building something in his workshop).

The first reason this question of the Sabbath is so serious is because working on the Sabbath was a conscious rejection of God himself; it would be like, if on your wedding anniversary, not only did you not celebrate with your wife in any way, but you took another woman out on a date.

The second reason is because the Sabbath is not only a picture of the rest God took after creating the world (as we see here); it is also a picture of the eternal rest promised to God’s people (as we see in the book of Hebrews). The Sabbath is a reminder of what we have when we belong to God—it was a collective and personal affirmation of the goodness of God. The Sabbath is what all the worship in the tabernacle is pointing toward.

And so with all these instructions, God’s time with Moses on the mountain ends in Exodus 31.18:

18 And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.

It’s a powerful image, and a rather ominous foreshadowing of what’s going to come right afterwards, which we’ll see next week.

Pictures of Real Things

Now I’m sure you’ve noticed that these chapters are full of pictures. The incense creating the cloud that’s a picture of God’s glory. The sacrifices that are a picture of God’s wrath against sin. The anointing that is a picture of God’s purification. The clothing of the high priest, a picture of his holy office. And the names graven on these clothes, a picture of the entire people, brought before God.

This can all be a little frustrating if you don’t know where it’s going, because after seeing all these pictures (and sometimes pictures of pictures), what we want to know is, What are these pictures, taken together, supposed to show us?

It’s not immediately evident if you only read the book of Exodus, because this book (and all the books of the Bible) was never meant to be taken on its own. The Bible is one story, told over the course of many books.

So one of the best analyses of this section of Exodus is actually found much, much later, in the book of Hebrews. In Hebrews 9, the author talks about the tabernacle—he talks about its architecture and the different elements in it, and he talks about the sacrificial system, how sacrifices had to be made over and over. So in v. 1-10, the author is highlighting the limitations of the tabernacle.

But then we come to v. 11, and this is where, when I saw it for the first time, God blew my mind.

Hebrews 9.11:

11 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) 12 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.

And he says later in v. 24:

For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

The tabernacle is a “copy of the true things.” it’s not the true thing, but a copy of the true thing. The high priest offered sacrifices for the people’s sins and brought them into God’s presence, yes—but he couldn’t stay there. He could only come into the Most Holy Place once a year. His work is a copy.

The true thing is Jesus. We read in Hebrew 9.15:

15 Therefore [Christ] is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance…

Jesus Christ gave himself up as a perfect sacrifice. He paid the price once and for all for our sin. And then he took on the role of High Priest; he carried us into God’s presence—and he’s still there. Which means, so are we, because he brought us in.

That’s what Jesus has done with us, and that is what he is still doing. How often do we sing the song?

My name is graven on his hand.

My name is written on his heart.

I know that while in heav’n he stands,

No tongue can bid me thence depart.

These are not just words. It’s not just a song we sing. It is the reality into which God has brought us. God’s Son is our tabernacle, he is our high priest and mediator, and he is our sacrifice. He carries us into God’s presence, and as long as he is there, nothing can tear us out of it.

These descriptions of the tasks of the priests, their clothing, their consecration, the sacrifices, and the tabernacle—all of it—are pictures of this much greater reality of what Christ has done for us, what he is still doing for us.

But a long time has passed since the tabernacle. A long time has passed even since the time of Christ. So it’s really easy for us to read about these pictures and feel distanced from them. It’s easy for us to read them without benefiting from them.

So let’s just think about that for a minute. Why do we take pictures? Why do we look at them? We do it for three main reasons. We look at pictures to remember; we look at pictures to recognize; and we look at pictures to rejoice.

Loanne and I were married in the U.S. and moved to France not long after. But when we came to France, our marriage still hadn’t been validated by the French government (the process took a lot longer than expected), so I had to enter the country as a tourist. That meant that I could only legally stay in France for three months, after which I had to go back to America and stay there for another three months before entering the country again.

So I had to go to the U.S. and not see my wife for three months, which is a very long time for newlyweds.

This is going to age us both, but this was before Zoom, before Skype, before Facebook. Neither of us even had a cell phone. I could call Loanne on the landline, but it was expensive. So we spoke once a week, and we could send emails, but I didn’t actually see her for three months.

All I had of her were pictures.

For three months, those pictures were my lifeline. I kept them in my wallet and I pulled them out every five minutes. I looked at those pictures constantly.

And when I came back to France after three months, I got off the plane and saw her waiting for me at the airport. It was very strange, because for a second I didn’t quite recognize her. I’d been looking at her face in those pictures for three months, but her real face, the real person she is, was so much fuller and more beautiful than the pictures.

I’d spent those three months remembering Loanne’s face, but when I finally recognized her, she was so much more than those pictures. So my response was joy: I came to her and I hugged her and I kissed her, and I was home.

It’s the same thing with the pictures we see in the tabernacle, the pictures we see with the priests.

God gives us these pictures so that we might remember. When we read about the instructions for tabernacle and the priests, which were so incredibly detailed, we remember that from the very beginning, God had a plan for the world he created. We see hints of it in Genesis and earlier in Exodus, but we see detail after detail, compounding, when we get to these pictures in the tabernacle. When we read these passages, we remember that this was no accident. God had a very specific plan, and because he loved his people he made a way for us to be reconciled to him, even though we had rejected him.

God gives us these pictures so that we might recognize. The work that Christ did on the cross is a spiritual work, so it’s necessarily a little abstract for us. Our minds have a hard time grasping what he did. So God gave us pictures. He knows that it’s helpful for us to have visual hooks, to help us understand things we’d have difficulty understanding on our own. He gave us these pictures so that, after reading Exodus, when we arrive at the gospels, and the book of Hebrews, we might understand what it is that Christ did. So that we might understand that Christ is our sacrifice, and our high priest, and our tabernacle, that he is the means by which we are made holy, and the mediator who brings us into God’s presence, and that we might grasp what that means.

And finally—perhaps most importantly—God gives us these pictures so that we might rejoice. We look at the pictures, a shadow of what was to come. Then we look at Christ, at what he has done, what he is still doing for us. And we rest in the joy of our assurance, that we’re not the ones who bring ourselves into God’s presence. He is the one who carries us before God—and he is still there. So our salvation is absolutely secure.

Some of you need to hear this. If you have placed your faith in Christ and trusted in his work and repented of your sin, then no matter how imperfect you still are, he’s still at the right hand of God, and he brought you with him. He’s not just carrying you before God; your name is graven on his hand. He lives in you now, by his Spirit, and you are a part of his body.

So you can be happy. You can let go of your doubt, because it’s unfounded. If it was up to you, then you’d have ample reason for doubt; but he is your Mediator. He won’t fail you.

And because he won’t fail you, or any of us, we can rejoice. We can rejoice in what he has done, what he is doing for us still, and what he is still going to do. He has already come to deal with sin; but one day he will come again to bring us home.

The end of Hebrews 9 says this:

27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

These chapters, though they may feel dry and distanced from us, are anything but. When we read them, we are reminded of the incredible work God put forward to save us; we recognize the perfect work of our High Priest and Mediator; and we rejoice in the knowledge that if he has saved us, he will not let us go.

He will bring us home.

Our True Home

Exodus 25.1-27.19

I often talk to people who have a real attachment to the place they grew up. I love that idea, but I don’t totally understand it, because I never had a real home. We moved to a new state in the U.S. ever four or five years when I was a kid. I was born in North Dakota, then we moved to Michigan, then Oklahoma, then Washington, then Tennessee, and then Florida.

I say I’m from Florida because it’s easier, my family is still there and I like it there, but I have no real attachment to any particular place.

For me, home is where my people are. Growing up, home was wherever Mom, Dad, Jeremy and Jared were. And now, it’s wherever Loanne, Jack and Zadie are.

When we meet God’s people in the book of Exodus, it was the same thing. They’ve never really had a home. Abraham started off one place, then went to another, and within a couple generations they ended up in Egypt. They were in Egypt for several centuries, but it wasn’t their place—they were guests at first, and then slaves.

So in the first half of this book, in Exodus 1-24 (which we saw over the spring), God came and rescued them from slavery, took them out of Egypt, made a covenant with them, and promised them a land which would truly be theirs. It was a promise that would have meant so much for them: a place where they could finally put down roots.

But before that, God wants them to understand that even this Promised Land is not the home they’re looking for. Just like my home is wherever my family is, the home of God’s people is wherever he is.

That is what we see in the tabernacle.

Just to give us a bit of context: at the very end of chapter 24, we read:

Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

That’s where we are now. God’s given Moses a number of laws already, but now Moses is on the mountain, in the cloud of the presence of God. From here on out, all these questions of the Covenant and how the Israelites are meant to keep it are front and center. It is, so to speak, the “fine print” of the Covenant.

And that is why it’s significant that, when God gets into the “fine print”, he starts with the tabernacle.And the question we want to ask while looking at these instructions for how to build this tabernacle: What is the main idea? What is the story these instructions are telling?

I’ll go ahead and spoil it for you—here’s the story the tabernacle is telling: God dwells with his people. God makes a home for himself amongst his people. And consequently, his people find their home in him.

He tells Moses, in 25.8:

“And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.”

If you write in your Bible (which is totally fine), you should underline the second half of that verse: that I may dwell in their midst. Exodus 25.8 is the entire story of the Bible, in miniature.

The Tabernacle: Layout

So as quickly as we can, let’s just look at the layout of this “sanctuary”, this tabernacle that God is commanding the people to build.

First of all, we see in 25.1-9 that Moses is to take up a collection—of gold, silver, bronze, blue and purple and scarlet yarns, goats’ hair, rams’ skins, acacia wood, oil and spices, onyx stones and stones for setting. As Joe said last week, this is the most expensive tent in history.

Now, how did the people of Israel—who were, after all, slaves in Egypt—have all of these things to contribute to the building of the tabernacle? Remember, we saw this in chapter 12. Before the people left Egypt, they did as God asked and went around asking the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and fine clothing. And we read in 12.36:

And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.

God made it so that the people would have all these riches when they left Egypt. But the riches weren’t for the Israelites personally. They were for the building of the tabernacle.

Now, after this, he starts to describe the tabernacle itself. He starts in the center, and works his way outward.

Image taken from the ESV Study Bible, Crossway.

First, we see the Ark of the Covenant. It was basically a box made of wood that they would cover in gold and ornate carvings. (If you want to know what it looks like, watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first Indiana Jones movie; their rendering of the Ark of the Covenant is actually extremely faithful to what we see in the Bible. Plus, the movie’s fantastic.)

The Ark of the Covenant will act as a kind of throne for God; this is where his presence would sit and from which he would speak. It would be kept in a kind of room called the Most Holy Place, separated from the rest of the tabernacle by a very thick curtain. It’s the only object in this room.

In the next room out, we find a number of items, everything either made of gold or overlaid with gold. (We see them described in the rest of chapter 25.) We have a table for bread, a golden lampstand and an altar for incense.

Then, in chapter 26 we see a description of the tent itself—the wooden frame overlaid in gold, and the various coverings that will cover it (and there are several).

Image taken from the ESV Study Bible, Crossway

Then, chapter 27 describes the outer court—a fenced-in courtyard outside the tabernacle. In the courtyard you no longer have things made of gold, but rather made of bronze, a much more ordinary material. You have a basin for washing, and a bronze altar for offering sacrifices to God.

Now it’s easy to think that all this is a bit much. The Israelites are a desert people now, and yet they have this incredibly lavish center of worship. It seems like a lot of senseless spending.

But it’s not. The lavishness of the sanctuary is not for reasons of vanity, but for reasons of storytelling.

This has always been one of my favorite things about God as he’s described in the Bible: God is always telling stories. In his public ministry, Jesus is constantly telling stories. God tells stories by giving us the Bible itself, by inspiring these men to keep a record of Israel’s history; but God also tells stories by the way he chooses to do things.

These very detailed instructions for this very ornate tent are not for nothing. The tabernacle is telling a story.

The question is, what story is the tabernacle telling?

What Story is the Tabernacle Telling?

To put it very simply, the tabernacle is telling the story of home.

First, it tells the story of the home humanity has lost. There are echoes of Eden all over this place. I’ll mention just a couple.

If you look back at the list of materials gathered for the tabernacle, the list begins with gold and ends with onyx. Now if we look at Genesis 2.12, part of a description of the garden of Eden:

And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there.

It’s also no accident that the lampstand, with its buds and flowers, looks like a tree that gives light, reminiscent of the tree of life in the garden of Eden.

Before sin entered the world, God gave Adam the task of “working and keeping” the creation (Genesis 2.15). Adam in the garden is described in similar ways to the priests in the tabernacle.

The most important thing, of course, is that God is present. The garden was a place where God walked with man, where he dwelt with man. In the tabernacle, God’s presence would return amongst his people.

The elements we see in the tabernacle are a kind of visual callback to the garden of Eden, the home that humanity had lost. (We’ll come back to this in a minute.)

But the tabernacle isn’t only a look back at the home the people had lost. It is also pointing forward to the home they will gain. It is telling the story, not only of where the people have been, but where they are going.

Look again at the furnishings in the tabernacle.

First, the Ark. The Ark of the Covenant is the place where God will reign over his people. Exodus 25.22:

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.

Tim Chester writes: “In Eden humanity rejected the authority of our heavenly Father. The result has been chaos, conflict and condemnation. But in God’s new home he will restore his life-giving rule of love.”

It’s wonderful, but it’s only the beginning—it’s an anticipation of what is to come.

In Revelation 22.3, in John’s glorious vision of the new heavens and the new earth, he says that in that place, in that perfect garden,

3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.

After the Ark, we have the Table for bread.

Nothing symbolizes home like a dinner table. This table for bread shouldn’t be surprising if you’ve been following Exodus, because the first big challenge the people faced after leaving Egypt was their need for food. And what did God provide for them? Bread, meat and water.

It was a commandment of God that every time the tabernacle is set up, bread must always be on the table. It is a reminder to the people that their God is a God who provides: as he has in the past, giving them manna in the desert, he will in the future, when he brings them into the blessings of the Promised Land of Canaan.

And it is also a promise of his eternal provision, far beyond the Promised Land. Again, Revelation 22, this time in v. 1:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

In the new heavens and the new earth, there will be perfect provision, for all of God’s people, for all eternity—food not only for nourishment, but for eternal health.

Likewise, the lampstand. The tent was covered with so many layers of such thick material that it would have been pitch black inside. The lamp gives light in the darkness. The God of Israel is the God who gives light where there is no light—he exposes to his people who they are, who he is, what is right, what is wrong.

This, too, looks forward to what is to come. Revelation 21.23-25:

23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, 25 and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.

You see, the tabernacle is telling the story of home—the home that humanity has lost, and the home that God promises for his people for all eternity.

However, there is something we haven’t talked about yet, that is absolutely part of the story. The architecture of the tabernacle itself adds a layer of complexity.

When you look at the design of the tabernacle, you can see several barriers between the people and God. The Most Holy Place, where we have the Ark of the Covenant, is separated from the rest of the tabernacle by a thick curtain. Only the High Priest could go in there, and he could only enter once a year.

Inside the Most Holy Place, above the Ark, were two golden cherubim—a reminder of the cherubim guarding the way back into the Garden of Eden, once God had banished the man and the woman. The cherubim were there to keep man out of the garden.

Then there is the outer room of the tabernacle, cut off from the outside world by its thick coverings. And then there’s the outer court, outside the tabernacle, which was again cut off from access by the hangings all around.

I said before that the tabernacle told the story of the home humanity had lost. Why did we lose it? We lost it because we rebelled against our Creator, and wanted to be our own masters. Our good and gracious King made humanity and placed us in paradise, and we wanted to build a kingdom of our own.

That desire is what we mean when we talk about sin, and sin is a cancer that has corrupted all of humanity. It has made it impossible for us to be united with God, because God is a holy God, and cannot be united to sin.

The point here is that although God desires to dwell with his people, his people cannot dwell with him, because they are sinful people, and God is a holy God.

So in order for this to work, their sin had to be removed.

That’s what the bronze altar was for. Sacrifices had to be offered in the court of the tabernacle, on the altar. And even before we see all the details of how and when these sacrifices are made, we see one important detail. There was a grating on the altar, so the ashes could fall underneath and be removed. The altar was built to be cleaned and reused. These sacrifices would have to be repeated, over and over. It was not a perfect or a permanent solution to the problem of sin.

And that’s kind of the point. The tabernacle was never meant to be God’s ultimate solution for sin, or his ultimate dwelling place, or the ultimate home for God’s people. The tabernacle was telling a story, of the home we lost, the home we’ve gained, and the home we will have one day, for all eternity.

We see this most clearly in the fact that the tabernacle itself is not a building made of bricks or wood. It is a tent—designed to be taken down, carried to another place, and put back up again.

And if you know the story of the people of Israel over the rest of the Bible, you know that this is what the people kept forgetting. Their “home”—the place where they found their identity, to which they were profoundly attached—became their rituals, their rites, their history, their habits. It became their temple, in Jerusalem. These things were good things…but they were never meant to be the main thing. They were pointers, signposts, storytelling devices, to get the people ready for their real home.

Home for God’s people was never meant to be a static place, or a fixed set of rituals. Home for God’s people is wherever God is.

Our True Home

That is the message of the tabernacle. That is the point.

And several thousand years later, the true home that the tabernacle pointed toward began to take shape. We read in John 1.14:

14 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.

John says that this “Word” was Jesus Christ, God himself, made flesh. And when he says that Jesus “dwelt among us”, the word he uses there has the same root as the word for tabernacle. Literally, he’s saying that Jesus “pitched his tent” among us. Right from the beginning, when we think of Jesus, John wants us to remember the tabernacle.

And every element of the tabernacle is reflected in Jesus. The sacrifice on the altar; the priest who serves as intermediary between God and the people; the lampstand, giving light in the tabernacle; the bread of the presence; the Ark of the Covenant—all of these point to Jesus.

Jesus is the true High Priest. God himself stands as intermediary now, the Son of God bringing us into the presence of the Father, presenting us as God’s perfect, spotless children.

And not only is he the true High Priest, Jesus is the true sacrifice. The Son of God, given up for us, a perfect sacrifice for our sin—past, present and future. All of the sin of God’s people is removed by the sacrifice of Christ.

Hebrews 9.11-12 says:

11 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) 12 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.

Jesus is the true High Priest, and the true sacrifice for our sins.

In addition, Jesus is the true Ark—he is where we live under God’s reign, because he is not only our Savior and our Brother, he is our King.

Hebrews 1.3:

3 [Jesus Christ] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high…

Jesus is the true Holy of Holies—through him, we have ultimate access to God, the Holy of Holies now accessible to all of God’s people.

Ephesians 2.17-18:

17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

Jesus is the true bread. He said in John 6.35:

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

He is our ultimate provision, our ultimate satisfaction.

And Jesus is the true light. 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.”

You see, the tabernacle, for all of its ornate beauty—the gold and the precious stones and the carefully woven linen—is just a shadow. If the tabernacle is designed so ornately, how much greater are the blessings we find in Christ? If the tabernacle is in itself so beautiful, how much more beautiful is Christ himself?

This is one reason why Christ’s coming to earth was so incredible. Thousands of years after the tabernacle, Jesus came and, in totally ordinary places far from the temple in Jerusalem, declared that the kingdom of God is here. He said, “I am your temple”. I am your home.

And when he promised heaven, the defining characteristic of heaven was that he would be there. He said in John 14.2-3:

2 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? 3 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.

What is it that characterizes and defines heaven, the “place” that Christ is preparing for us? It is that where he is, there we will be also.

Even in heaven, heaven itself isn’t our home. He is our home.

Application

Now I know that’s a lot of information to take in, so let me bring us back down to earth, so to speak.

All of us are looking for home. This is why people want to get married and have kids. This is why we look for careers and leisure activities we love. We’re all looking for a place where we can truly belong and find out why we’re here.

The problem: it never quite works the way we think it will.

Finding a community, one where we really feel at home, is difficult. Marriage is difficult. Raising children is really hard. Relating to your parents is often a challenge. Our careers may be wonderful, but they never quite produce the results we were hoping. (And sometimes we can’t even find a career!) Even our leisure activities aren’t perfect—we often come back from vacation more exhausted than we were before.

We’re all looking for home, and we can never quite find it on our own. Which is why this quote from C. S. Lewis has become so well-known: “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

If you feel like you’ve been looking for home all your life but you’ve never found it, it’s because you were never meant to find it here. You were created to find your home in Christ. If you thought you had found a home for yourself, but it’s not everything you hoped it would be, that’s normal: what you thought was your home is only a pale reflection of the home you were made for.

And if you’ve found your home in Christ, but you’re still struggling with doubt because living for him is difficult, that’s normal too. Our home isn’t perfect—not yet. We are still here in this fallen world, with weak bodies that are still accustomed to sinning.

But home is coming, and we already have a foretaste of what it will be like, because even today, we have him.

So let me leave you with this simple challenge.

Even in heaven, home is not a place. It’s where he is. All of the glorious promises of heaven would be worthless if he wasn’t there. And the beautiful reality is that if we are in Christ, and if home is wherever he is, we are home. Now. It’s not all it will be, but it is real, and glorious, even now.

As tempting as it may be to see our friends or our families as our home—for me to see Loanne, Jack and Zadie as my true home—they’re not, at least not because they’re my wife and kids. They are my home because if they belong to Christ, they’ll be there celebrating him with me for all eternity. And that’s true of every person in this room who has placed their faith in Christ. If you want to have a foretaste of heaven, look at the faces of those around you. They are the faces you’ll be seeing for all eternity.

So dig in to your home. Learn to love Christ together. Worship Christ together. Glorify Christ together. The tabernacle was adorned with gold and precious stones and fine linen. Our home—the church—is adorned with love of God, love for one another, and the good works that flow out of it. Live with God in the home he has given you.

And if you don’t know Christ today, let me just say this. I know that you are looking for a home, and no matter how satisfied you feel, it’s never going to be quite right, because you were created to find your home in him.

The good news for you is that Christ has taken away all of the barriers between God and ourselves. All we have to do in order to be forgiven of our sin and united to God is to repent of our sin and place our faith in him. We’ll give you an opportunity to do that in a minute, and when that time comes, I plead with you to do it.

Find your home in him.