Sermon Notes: Exodus 25:23-30
As we enter the part of Exodus that teaches us about the tabernacle where the Lord would dwell among his people, I want to take the introduction to help us set an interpretive framework for study to guide and guard us in our study.
I want us to see what God is doing in the furnishings of the tabernacle while guarding us against reading onto the text arbitrary Jesus meanings. Chris did excellent with this last week.
The problem with assigning unclear gospel meaning to every part of every furnishing of the tabernacle is when multiple people look at the same furnishing or component in the tabernacle and assign different Jesus’ meanings. Which one is correct? Can all of them be correct? Well, that’s not how authorial intent in words and meanings work.
We don’t get to determine the meaning of the text. The Divine Author, God, and his scribes meant something in what they wrote, and we don’t bring that meaning to the text with us. We are to mine the Author’s meaning from their intent of the text. Even in metaphorical and symbolic genres, like apocalypse that we see in some of Daniel and 2/3 of Revelation, the Author has intent, and it is the reader’s job to mine that intent, and their intent is the meaning.
It’s a noble desire to want to see Jesus in every detail of the tabernacle, yet we must exercise care and not misuse the Scriptures by making the Bible say what we want it to say rather than understanding God the Holy Spirit’s intent in the text.
There is a rich history of abuses in this area that can lead to confusion and bad Bible study habits imparted to God’s people. We want to be able to apply a simple and conservative interpretive framework to help us as we read and study on our own and together as we read the text like Jesus intends.
As we study about the tabernacle and its furnishings, let’s be reminded of what Jesus said our interpretive method needs to be for reading the whole Old Testament, and for our purposes, Exodus. Here is what Jesus taught his disciples after his resurrection: Luke 24:44-47 (ESV) 44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
The scope of Jesus’ interpretive method is the whole Old Testament: Law, Prophets, Psalms.
The whole Old Testament is to be interpreted through the lens of Jesus who is the Christ, his death, his resurrection, our repentance and faith, our justification and ongoing forgiveness, and the mission to preach Jesus’ name to all nations.
This is the way. Jesus is clear and he sent us Holy Spirit to be dwell with us and inside of us to work out the mission and his word with his interpretive framework.
I’ll share a couple of good rules of thumb in applying Jesus’ interpretive framework to keep us in line and scaffold our growth in studying the Bible: 1. The New Testament is the interpretive example of applying Jesus’ framework. If the NT does not take the license we are trying to take, or we go beyond the limit of what is done in the NT, we should probably slow our roll. Basically, we should ask how the New Testament uses the Old Testament and try to follow its example. I’m keeping it simple here. You can take that as deep and complex as the NT does. Advance at your own pace with help from your leaders and recommended resources (Beale and Sailhamer). 2. Look for consistent arcs in the Old Testament text to other texts of the Old Testament and then arcs to the New Testament. Textual arcs from one text to another help us to see themes we should pay attention to, and they help us to interpret what is there more clearly. For instance, Psalm 105 will help in developing a theology of suffering as the Psalmist explains Joseph’s experience of getting sold into slavery theologically. We can more clearly interpret Genesis 37-50 through the lens of Psalm 105 and vice/versa.
So, Bible study is simple and complicated at the same time.
It’s simple because we have a Bible in our language, and we are literate. We can read and understand the storyline, the parts, and the themes. So, there is no excuse for not knowing the whole story. Christians around the world read the same text and gain incredible insight, grow in the faith, and practice the faith by just reading and obeying the basic story.
Bible study is also complicated and deserves that we ask and answer all appropriate questions the text may generate because the Bible is a divinely inspired text that has one divine Author, written over approximately 1,500 years by around 40 inspired scribes using multiple genres that reveal God’s redemptive plan for humanity and why he’s doing what he’s doing in a supernatural cosmos in a battle against supernatural foes. From Genesis to Revelation, all Scripture preaches the good news of Jesus in a multitude of glorious ways. Because of this the Bible teaches us who God is, who we are, what has happened in the world, and what he demands of us. Thus, we must work to know the divine Author’s intent which often conflicts with our own set of presuppositions and desires to make the Bible say what we want it to say. This is the challenging and complicated work of Bible study beyond the basic storyline.
NOTE: Please never say, “God didn’t want us to know or understand that” in application to hard and complicated texts of the Bible. If God didn’t want us to know it or understand it, he wouldn’t have introduced us to it or put us in creation to uncover glories hidden for us to find (Proverbs 25:2). That statement is intellectual laziness cloaked in a spiritual robe.
With that in mind, let’s read our text: Exodus 25:23-30.
What do we need to see?
(1) Everything Moses is shown that he is to construct exists in God’s presence. God has Moses build in the seen what exists in the unseen reality. What is constructed physically by Moses for Israel to see and experience is to remind them of the nature of the cosmos and the Eden that was lost, what sin has done in expelling them from Eden and his presence, and what God is doing to restore them to full and abundant life with him in the mountain garden of Eden restored.
Listen to how the Bible says it: Exodus 25:40 And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain.
Hebrews 9:11-12 (ESV) 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.
The rebellion of distrust in the garden recorded in Genesis 3 put mankind at enmity with God.
The rebellion also resulted in our expulsion from tangible, physical, and present access to the third heaven experience of relational interaction face to face with the Triune God.
We were expelled from the mountain garden of Eden and face to face fellowship with God. Rebellion separated, blinded, and condemned us, putting us at war with God.
Our expulsion from Eden and broken fellowship with God, on the other hand, also opened easier access to harassment from the Serpent Dragon as well as principalities, powers, and rulers of wickedness in the heavenly places that are likewise at war with their Creator Jesus.
Who and what we need we lost access to, and what would kill us and abuse us and destroy us became what we were no longer protected from. The wages of sin is death.
To say it another way, a veil was raised between us and God (and that veil is real because he has one constructed in the tabernacle). Mercifully, God made access to atonement and the blessing of his presence accessible beyond that veil through the shed blood of an innocent animal. This system of the tabernacle and temple was to prepare us for what he promised he would do in Genesis 3 in the work of Jesus.
Ultimately that veil is only removed through faith in Jesus who was the once for all sacrifice for the sin of the world.
In contrast, the “veil” was removed that guarded us from evil.
God being rich in mercy, determined to rescue his people from sin and make himself accessible by dwelling among them. He gives witness to his presence, love for his people, holiness, and forgiveness in the tabernacle and its furnishings. All of this prepares us for the reality of the good news of the kingdom fully revealed in Jesus.
Also, God gives witness to Israel that their existence is affected by what is unseen. All of this in the tabernacle is a copy, a shadow, of what is going on in God’s presence they are mostly unaware of as they are yanked around by their flesh and the warfare that is raging around them they can’t see.
This point is often overlooked on our part as we have been under the evil spell of naturalism for a few hundred years and are just beginning to wake from that slumber.
When we journey through the tabernacle, don’t miss the forest for the trees. We live in and among unseen and supernatural realities that affect every part of our lives.
We will make a very specific application to this observation soon, and it will really be an application that mashes together with our second observation. Hang on.
(2) The Table was constructed to hold plates for the bread of the presence as well as utensils for incense and wine as offering to the Lord.
The table is more about what it holds than the table itself. The table was an instrument.
A comparison for understanding: The cross is special, but we don’t worship the cross. We boast in what the cross signifies in the justice, grace, and mercy of God to pay for the sinner’s justification. The literal cross was an instrument God used. The cross theologically teaches us justification. The cross is more about what God does by it than the tool itself. I think that’s a decent comparison.
The table was to have plates, pitchers, and dishes that hold incense, wine, and bread. The table and the accompanying utensils are to display something more significant in what they hold as holy and distinct from what is holding them.
Catch this: God distinguishes between instrument and essence. Holy and common.
There is a distinction between holy things and things that are to serve holy things. The table and the things on the table served different purposes. The table held what was happening in the relationship between God and his people. One was holy and one was common. The common by being in God’s presence is significant, but not like the other.
The fact that God has this system set up in his presence and instructs Moses to make one like it indicates that we too are to take note of the distinction between holy things and things that serve holy things.
We can argue that because God orders a table to keep holy things set apart, there is distinction in God’s presence between holy and common. The common things are not evil or sinful. Just gloriously common.
There are certain things that should not touch the table or the ground. Not because the table or ground is bad, but because there is distinction created by God for good and holy purposes, and he intends us to recognize the holy and common and honor such distinction. The poles for carrying the ark and the table indicate this in their creation and purpose. They should not be touched inappropriately or be touching certain things inappropriately.
Somehow, in God’s presence, there is distinction and thus protocol, and he intends Moses to construct in the physical realm something just like it is in his presence to teach Israel to honor what should be honored.
The Lord is restoring back to earth in the tabernacle and its furnishings the things of heaven. On earth as in heaven.
What is to be set on the table that is honored in God’s presence and thus honored as holy in our existence?
The bread of the presence.
Listen to Leviticus 24:5-9 (ESV) 5 “You shall take fine flour and bake twelve loaves from it; two tenths of an ephah shall be in each loaf. 6 And you shall set them in two piles, six in a pile, on the table of pure gold before the LORD. 7 And you shall put pure frankincense on each pile, that it may go with the bread as a memorial portion as a food offering to the LORD. 8 Every Sabbath day Aaron shall arrange it before the LORD regularly; it is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever. 9 And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, since it is for him a most holy portion out of the LORD’S food offerings, a perpetual due.”
The bread is not for God. He does not need human food. There are to be twelve loaves of bread, one for each tribe, and it is to be offered to the Lord as a reminder of God’s covenant he made with his people.
The bread of the covenant is also for human consumption, particularly Aaron and his sons who serve in the tabernacle and were not afforded land and an inheritance, so they were to be amply provided for from the covenant offerings of the people to the Lord.
The bread’s offering is also Israel’s recognition that God invites all those who will follow him to come into his presence where we find that our sacrifice to him and for him is food for our soul, and that we live on so much more than physical food. Listen to Deuteronomy 8:3 (ESV) 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.
Bread plays a teaching role in God’s work of redemption to show us all manner of good things about God and who we are in relation to him.
Also, the bread is to take us to God’s work of redemption in Jesus. Jesus will be born in Bethlehem, which means “house of bread”.
Thus, Jesus will say: John 6:35 (ESV) 35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
Thus when the Lord Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper with the bread of redemption from the Passover, he makes the connection for us.
Jesus is the bread of the covenant before the Father that feeds us and nourishes us and brings us into the presence of Father and Spirit. So, when you get Jesus, you get the food that nourishes the unseen realities of human existence.
When you and I eat food, we are to remember the covenant and what really feeds us. This is why meals are holy, and why God invited Moses, Aaron, and the elders up on the mountain to eat with him.
Incense.
Leviticus 24:7 (ESV) 7 And you shall put pure frankincense on (by or beside) each pile, that it may go with the bread as a memorial portion as a food offering to the LORD.
Exodus 30:34-38 describes the incense God designed for Israel to keep before him on the table alongside the bread.
Exodus 30:38 tells us that this incense is so holy that anyone who makes it for their own personal perfume is to be cut off from the people.
What was God doing in this?
Psalm 141:1-2 (ESV) 1 O LORD, I call upon you; hasten to me! Give ear to my voice when I call to you! 2 Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!
Revelation 5:8 (ESV) 8 And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
The incense by the Bread of the covenant shows us that our prayers rise before the Lord, and he hears us because we are in the covenant and covered by his covenant.
Because we are covered in Christ by his blood, we have access in prayer to God.
Prayer is access to God, and prayer is dwelling in the presence of God through the access of the Bread of life.
Wine.
Exodus 29:40 and Numbers 15:5-10 mention wine as a drink offering to the Lord.
Psalm 104:14-15 (ESV) 14 You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth 15 and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart.
Wine is given by God to gladden the hearts of those who responsibly consume it, so it’s a good thing. Why is it offered before the Lord, and can we discern the “why” from anything Paul says in the New Testament?
Philippians 2:17-18 (ESV) 17 Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. 18 Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me.
2 Timothy 4:6 (ESV) 6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.
The wine offered would be offered back to God who gave it for joy and poured out fully to not be recovered. What an act of sacrifice and worship. A gift from God for our joy, offered fully back to God in joy.
The wine is poured out in a joyful emptying of something that was a gift in the first place. A gift given fully back to the Giver in great joy.
That sounds like the very heart of what worship is. We offer everything back as it was a gift in the first place knowing we can’t out give God.
With the Bread of the covenant, the incense of prayerful access to God, and now the wine joyfully and fully offered back to God, we get a beautiful physical picture of the kind of worship that honors God. Worship in Spirit and truth, as the Bread of Life told us.
By the way, all of this this is going on in the unseen third heaven in God’s presence somehow, and what is seen is only a shadow of what is going on to the honor and glory of God in the unseen.
(3) Offerings were to be regular.
Israel’s access and worship was not to be a one-off thing.
It was a regular rhythm of coming together and by God’s gracious gospel access to his presence, joyfully and fully offering themselves with no reservation to the one who would make sure they had more to give next time.
Application
Since the Lord was making the unseen known and experienced, Israel was to live in light of unseen realities. Those unseen realities reveal that there are holy things and common things, and we are to live like there are holy things and common things, and this is one of the ways we honor and glorify God.
Isreal’s life together hinged on their living according to God’s revelation of reality in what is holy and common and sin. Doing this affected their relationship to him and to each other.
When they violated the standards of unseen reality, it never went well for them. Living in light of the realities of God’s presence although unseen by us has massive effect on us.
This is not legalism or rigid “religion”. This is living now on earth as it is in heaven. Living in light of unseen holy reality is living by faith.
What is unseen because of our expulsion from Eden will become our physical existence again if we follow Jesus by faith. Revelation 21 reminds us that the mountain garden of Eden will be restored because it is reality. The restoration, new creation, is faith becoming sight.
MAKE NO MISTAKE: We are individually and corporately now in Christ the temple of God indwelled by the Holy Spirit if we have repented, believed, and aligned with the local church.
And as such, we are the body of Christ and the physical witness in the world that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but that we are indeed in a winning conflict with the rebellious forces of evil in the heavenly places. As such, we are to live in the seen according to unseen realities.
There are so many applications I hope we can unpack over the coming weeks. Today, I’m going to focus for this one application of “honor” because I’ve mentioned it today regarding the table and what the table held as well as introduced you to honor as something we are going to pray for God to teach us a couple of weeks ago.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and wisdom is learning how to honor all things that should be honored. One way I like to think about the wisdom of honor is “holy boundaries”. God is holy, and therefore, there are boundaries with him. Boundaries teach us how to act. Holy boundaries teach us to act like God created us to act. Living like that is one way we honor, glorify God.
NOTE: To honor is to attribute glory to. When we honor God, we glorify God.
The Proverbs teach us how to act when in the presence of a king. Jesus teaches us how to act when invited to a banquet. These are examples of honor and glory given appropriately. These acts of honoring each other are to teach us how to act toward God. Acting according to unseen realities, holy boundaries, set up by God, is exercising wisdom, and wisdom applied honors God. Make sense?
The fact that God demanded furnishings that exist in his presence, and they were to be constructed to see as set apart, means there are some things that are set apart in God’s presence. There is holy and common in God’s very presence. Thus, there are holy and common things among us.
Only fools pretend all things are the same all the time.
Gathering for corporate worship is not the same as gathering for RL group, and each gathering should be entered and experienced differently. Setting. Number of people. Different relationships. All dictate distinction.
Israel’s instructions for entering the feasts were different from their daily instructions on setting camp and living life together as the people of God.
People who learn holiness don’t just avoid sin. That’s a no-brainer.
Holy people learn how to honor what God honors in distinction and holy protocol toward God and toward each other. Holy people glorify God. Holy people honor each other.
We honor father and mother. We honor each other by deferring to each other rather than our own comfort. We determine to not give offense for the sake of another’s conscience. We become aware of how to act in public versus how I might act in private. We become aware of how to act in corporate worship versus how to act in RL group. Such understanding of distinction and thus protocol is not hypocrisy but learning how to live in light of what exists now in God’s presence and how we will live in the new creation.
The somewhat foolish and colloquial things we say like: Christianity is a relationship not a religion is profoundly unhelpful in light of what the Bible actually says. Protocol and holiness are not merely relational, they are systemic ways of practicing in physical creation what is unseen in God’s presence. Order. Distinction. Holy. Common.
We must learn to honor God by knowing what is holy and what is common, living like it, and recognizing in doing so we are living in God’s presence. When we honor God like that, we will honor each other like that (When the body of Christ is honored God is glorified because the body is the physical presence of Jesus in the world). When we do this, we glorify God.
If this were not so, God would not have given us a tabernacle that was the exactly like what is present and unseen to us so that we could live in the first heaven like the third heaven.
Jesus taught us to pray in light of this reality: Your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven?
God will not pour his Spirit out on a people who won’t honor him on earth like he is currently being honored by the unseen myriads of faithful creatures who are casting their crowns at his feet and bowing in orderly and holy protocol before the King of the Universe.
If we live in casual sameness toward everything, we should not be surprised if we don’t see great moves of the Holy Spirit.
We are to offer ourselves completely as living sacrifices joyfully poured out to God and continue that joyful worship as a praying people.
Worship and prayer give testimony to the reality of what is happening now in God’s presence.
Failure to worship as a gathered fellowship in covenant together on mission and prayerlessness is a declaration we believe there is no God and Jesus is not who he said he is.
The tabernacle is corporate not individual not family. It was Israel together on mission.
In Christ, because Jesus is the faithful and obedient Israel, we as his body are part of the global Israel of God by faith. We are not a confederation of families or individuals. We are the local church together on mission.
Together our work and joyful sacrifice in being poured out like a drink offering, and our life of prayer in dependence on God, testify that Jesus is indeed God, and he is indeed the way, the truth and the life.
Therefore, we attempt to do what we do the way we do it. Not ignorantly or in arrogance, but because there are unseen realities dictating who we are and what we do.
Prayer
Honor (glorify God) / Increase us for God’s glory
Contrition / Holy, seeking God’s kingdom and righteousness first
Prayer / Sent and fill the waste cities with flocks of TRC folks so they know Jesus is Lord