God in the Midst of His People

God in the Midst of His People Exodus 35-40 Justin Deeter August 23, 2015 Introduction So last year, Kaitlyn and I bought our first house. It all happened very fast. We were at the point last fall, when we seriously began thinking about it. After Jude was in bed we would sit around the dinning room table and look at listings online around the Wilson area. The more we started looking the more we were ready to buy. We decided to just talk to a realtor about it, just to get the process started. It was a great meeting and the next day we had two homes to go see. We went and saw the first house, and liked it, but there were concerns. Then we went to the second house, and we instantly fell in love. It had just gone on the market and it seemed like it would go fast, so we put in an offer that afternoon. Thus my eyes were opened to the complex and stressful process of buying a house. I had never even been apart of the home buying process before, and I had never witnessed my parents do it (we always lived in church parsonages). So it was a shock to see how complex the whole ordeal is. It was stressful, anxious, and exciting time. Yet, at closing, after you sign your life away, we were handed the keys. I ll never forget the excitement as Kaitlyn and I went to our newly purchased home and opened the door. We had bought a house. That afternoon several members of our church began to come over, and we were moved in by the end of the day. We finally had a home of our own. In this final sermon from Exodus, we are going to see God move into his home. Except God s home was a new construction. You may remember a few weeks ago we walked through the detailed blueprints of the tabernacle. The 1

tabernacle was to be the place where God would dwell in the midst of his people. Since God drew up the blueprints, there had been a major complication. It was the golden calf incident in Exodus 32. It was there that Israel broke the covenant agreement, and God was ready to stay at Mount Sinai and let the people go on into the promise land without his presence guiding them. Yet, due to the intercession of Moses, God decides that he will go with the people and that he will be merciful and reinstate the covenant with Israel. Now, the hope for the tabernacle is restored! God would come and move in and dwell with his people! So, Exodus 35-40 describes the building of the tabernacle, and the book of Exodus concludes with God moving into his new home. So today we are going to close out our series on Exodus, by looking at these last five chapters. With that in mind, we are going to recap four major truths that we have seen over and over again throughout the book of Exodus. These four truths revolve around who God is and what he does. God is the hero of the book of Exodus. It isn t Moses and it isn t Israel. I hope that throughout this series you have learned more of who God is, and that it has led you to deeper joy as you respond to him in worship. Exposition So the majority of Exodus 35-40 describes how Israel builds the tabernacle. The people donate the supplies and materials, and they build the tabernacle just as God instructed. Some master-craftsmen worked on the plans. The two leaders of the construction were Bezalel and Oholiab. They worked under the oversight of Moses to build everything just as God had commanded. By the time Exodus 40 comes, everything is built, it only need to be put together. So they erect the tabernacle, put in the furnishings, and prepare it for the Lord. When the work was completed, then something amazing happens. The presence of God, signified by a cloud lifted from the tent of meeting. Remember this was the tent placed on the outside of the camp where God 2

would speak to Moses. Then the glory of the Lord moved and filled the tabernacle which was in the center of the camp of Israel. God moves in to his home. God dwells in a covenant relationship with his people, as he dwells among them. Thus, the book of Exodus concludes with the presence of God in the center of the people, guiding and leading them. Whenever the people needed to depart, the cloud signifying God s presence would lift and lead, and when it rested over the tabernacle, the people camped. Thus the Lord led his people. Now if you have been here throughout this study in the book of Exodus, a lot has happened. You will remember at the beginning of this book the book the people were oppressed as slaves in Egypt under the tyrannical rule of Pharaoh. This leads us to one of the first main themes and truths we see throughout Exodus. 1. God Keeps His Promises God does keep his promises. God has acted in accordance to the promises he has made. What he has said, he will do. God had made a covenant with Abraham many generations ago that he will make a great nation from his decedents. Through Abraham, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. God had made that promise, and God keeps his promise. So, God prepares a deliver for the people, the little baby Moses who would be raised in the palace of Pharaoh. God would approach Moses in the burning bush and reveal himself to Moses. The name of God is Yahweh, the Great I Am. He has heard the cries of the people and God intends to use Moses to deliver them. At the beginning of the book Moses is fearful, timid, and somewhat cowardly. Over the course of Exodus, we see Moses grow into a great man of God and a confident leader. So Moses returns to Egypt, as the instrument whom God will use to bring about his promises. Again this has been a dominate theme throughout the book of Exodus, God is the covenant keeper. It is tough for us to know who to trust, isn t it? It seems like you cannot trust anyone these days. Even as we prepare for presidential 3

election, politicians are already campaigning for your vote. And, to get your vote, they will make all sorts of grand promises. If you vote for me, I ll do this or I ll do that. More often than not, we are left with earnest but unrealistic promises. So we tend to become kind of skeptical when someone makes a promise to us. We have been hurt and burned to many times, so we are guarded from trusting other people. That mistrust often gets applied to God in our lives. We think of God as some sort of sleek used-car salesman who is trying to swindle us and con us. Because the promises of God do seem too good to be true don t they! Through Jesus all the promises of God find their fulfillment in him. God promises forgiveness, love, a heavenly inheritance, adoption into his family, salvation from our sins, and eternal life. If you are like me, if you here a deal that sounds to good to be true, it s because it probably is. But, God is not some sleazy salesman, he is the reliable Father. His promises are true and he follows through with action. There are two reasons why God is so reliable. First, it is because God is of perfect character. He is truth. He is love. He never speaks falsehood and he never exaggerates his promises. God is no liar, and if he was he would cease to be God. It is his deity that makes him perfectly good and perfectly honest. Second though, God has the power to bring his promises to fruition. I can certainly promise you that I m going to give you million dollars, but I don t have the ability to carry it out, because I don t have the money. However, God has not only perfect character but perfect power to bring about his promises into existence. However God doesn t promise us money, he promises a gift far more costly; he promises the blood bought forgiveness of sin through the priceless blood of Christ. So, you can trust God. You can give him your life and give him your heart. He is all good and he is all powerful. Yet, there is a third reason why you should trust God; it is the evidence of his trustworthiness as revealed in the Scripture. You can look the book of Exodus and witness how God keeps his promises to Abraham long after his death, as he brings the people out from the land of Egypt. You can see God s promises and fulfillment throughout the entire Bible. This too gives us confidence. God has proved himself in the past 4

that he is a sure foundation. Therefore, we have all the more confidence to trust that God is the promise keeper. 2. God is the Sovereign Redeemer A second big theme and truth throughout Exodus is that God is the sovereign redeemer. He is the great I am. You will remember that as the plagues of judgement are being brought down on the Egyptians, Pharaoh responds in an arrogant question, Who is the LORD? Throughout Exodus God is declaring himself to be the one true God in the universe, greater than every man made idol. God alone is worth of our worship. He is the all powerful God who brings his people by the might of his hand out from Egypt. He is the God who crushes Pharaoh and his army in order that the nations might here of the glory of the God of Israel. We too, must see that God is the sovereign redeemer. God saves us by his powerful right hand. We all are in the bondage and slavery of sin. By the sovereign hand of God, he sends Jesus Christ into the world in order to die in the place of sinners. God s own son hangs on the cross, accepting your judgement, so that you can be redeemed. Salvation from start to finish is accomplished by the power of God. One of the great mistakes we make when it comes to our salvation is that we think we can cause it or bring it about. We think that I must earn it, or I must choose it, or I must cause it to happen. That just isn t the case. As we look at the Israel, they did nothing. God brought them ought of the land single handedly. They were passive participants as God fought their battle for them. The same goes for us. We have Jesus Christ who goes to the cross and fights your fight for you. He lays down his life for the forgiveness of your sins, and defeats the powers of darkness that enslaved you. God is the one who saves. Since he acts single-handedly, he gets all the glory for the wonderful work of salvation! Oh, well I had to make a decision, no God choose you before the foundations of the earth. Oh, well I have been a good person, no you are a sinner and Jesus fulfills the requirements of the law in your place. Oh, well my parents raised me in church, do you choose where you are born, and 5

even then, it is only by God opening your eyes to see the beauty of the Gospel that caused you to believe it. There are tragically many people who grow up in church, who are not Christians. You see, your redemption is completely dependent on God who has mercy. Redemption is his sovereign work, and so he gets all the glory for it! If you are a Christian this day, do not steal glory from God by thinking your salvation had anything to do with you. We see in Exodus so clearly that redemption is a unilateral act, achieved by the mighty hand of God. 3. God Rescues His People for Worship A third main truth we see in the book of Exodus, is that God s people are rescued in order to worship him. God redeems them for his own glory. So as the Egyptian army is swallowed into the red sea, the people begin to burst in exuberant praise to God for his redemption. The people then begin to approach Mount Sinai, where God establishes his covenant with them and gives them a command to worship him alone. To be among the people of God, is to be set apart as holy in order to worship God. Worship is the purpose of the Christian life. In everything we do, we do it unto the glory of God. As we live a life of obedience to God and love to God, we live our life in worship to God. This is the reason for our redemption and the purpose of our salvation, to bring to God glory and worship through our lives. That is the purpose of our creation! So God, brings Israel to Sinai to worship him, but you will remember the great failure of the people. They construct a golden calf and worship an idol rather than their redeemer God. Tragically, so many of us today do the exact same thing. We worship idols of money, pleasure, comfort, tradition, family, friendship, sex, sports, and more. If you are a Christian, truly born again, you must live your life unto worship to God. Repent of any idols in your life, and may your passion and worship to him increase in proportion to your love and obedience to him. The Christian life is not lived in an attempt to earn our redemption, but it is lived in thankful response to the underserved 6

redemption God has already given us. When we encounter the divine grace of God, it changes us and it does not leave us the same. This does not mean that Christians are perfect, but it does mean that over the course of their life they are growing in spiritual maturity. If you are a Christian, are you living your life as one who has been rescued or are you living your life as one who continues to live in sin? Imagine for a second a rudy and poverty stricken orphan who lives in the slums. He is dressed in filthy rags and living in a dump. His only ability to get food, is to rummage through the garbage. All of the sudden a rich and wealthy family adopts that young boy and brings him into their mansion home. They provide him the finest clothes, and the best of food. What a wonderful story of adoption! This is exactly what God does for everyone of us, but unlike the adopted boy, we sneak out of the mansion, abandon the Father who loves us, and go back to rummaging through the trash for food. Now, that doesn t make any sense does it? But, like Israel we a proved to long for the idols of Egypt. We too a proved to go back rummaging through the garbage for lesser things that will not satisfy. God has offered us infinitely more through his son Jesus Christ! Let us live our lives in worship to him alone, and let us not turn to worship lesser things. We have been saved from who we used to be, and we have been rescued to worship. 4. God Intends to Dwell Among His People A fourth major theme through Exodus is God s intention to dwell among his people. God wants to be in a relationship with his people. So he gives them detailed commands and instructions of how the tabernacle is to be built. God wants to be in relationship with his people. He wants to fix what man broke in the Garden of Eden. Here at the end of Exodus, we see that the plans for the tabernacle become a reality. At the end we see the presence of God come and fill the tabernacle. It represents God s presence among his people. God wants to be among his redeemed people. 7

As we think about who we are in Christ, we have this great promise that God will be with us. God has come and dwelt among us, but no longer in a tent, but in human flesh. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. God has walked among us, spoken to us, and acted for us in the person of Jesus Christ. It was God who went to the cross and laid down his life, to bring redemption and forgiveness for our sins. Now, as we await for the resurrected Jesus to return, we have been given a comfort, the Holy Spirit, who dwells in the hearts of believers. If you are a Christian this day, God has taken up residency within you. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. God is not only dwelling among you, but within you. Through Jesus you have are united to Christ by faith. What a comfort it is, to know that God is with us, and that his Spirit is guiding us! Final Thoughts Kaitlyn and I are so thankful for our home. We love it and thank God for providing it for us continually. There really is no place like home. Yet, as much as we love our home (and as much as you may love yours!), we have a better home that is to come. A place of permanent rest in the presence of God. Our earthly homes are but temporary. The tabernacle may have been God s home, but it was intended to be a temporary home too. The great work of God s redemption from Genesis to Revelation ends with the people of God living in the New Jerusalem in the very presence of God. Eden will be restored. Jesus will be King. God in his glory will be in the midst of his people. Then and only then will we be home. 2015 Forest Hills Baptist Church 8