Sermon Notes: Exodus 25:31-40 – The Lampstand
The whole Bible either predicts Jesus, prepares us for Jesus, reflects Jesus, or results from Jesus’ person and work.
The sin of distrusting God put us at war with God, destroyed our fellowship with God and distanced us from experiencing him in fellowship and brought us into a place of receiving justice from God, and it introduced death to everything.
The tabernacle is a gracious a reminder of what sin did to us, what God did to restore us, and thus it is a preparation to understand Jesus’ work in tabernacling among his people so folks can see God’s glory and receive him by faith.
In the tabernacle, God initiates his gracious coming to dwell among his people and shows all those who will look what they can expect him to do in the fullness of time.
Those who witnessed it, and Solomon’s temple, and truly believed the Lord, longed to see its fulfillment. They realized there was more. They knew it was good but not quite Eden regained. They couldn’t have God’s home be with them where they were. They had to go to him. They didn’t have Edenic fellowship. The tabernacle left them with a faithful longing for God’s Edenic restoration. Listen to Hebrews 11:13 (ESV) 13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
We who have received the full revelation of the good news get to marvel at what God did in the tabernacle and how he kept his promise in Jesus’.
Observational question about the whole of Exodus 25: Why does God the Holy Spirit have Moses write about the ark, the table, and the lampstand before writing about the tabernacle as a whole? He’s going to write about these parts again. Why highlight them on the front end?
I believe God is highlighting gospel stuff, Jesus stuff. I believe God gives us no room to miss the good news by missing the forest for the trees. To help us not miss the gospel he magnifies these three parts of the tabernacle.
Ark: The ark is where God met with and spoke with his people. The ark is where God would speak his word to his people. The ark is where atonement would be made.
Table: The table for the bread and elements of worship is where God’s people are reminded that they don’t live by bread alone, but they live by the nourishing bread of God’s good provision of himself for them. They needed the unseen restored to sight. They needed access to God.
Lampstand: The lampstand reminds God’s people of their need for life and light. We will see this today.
You’ll never convince me that John chapter 1 kicks off the rest of his gospel to present Jesus as the fulfillment of these three highlights of the tabernacle in Exodus 25.
Jesus is the Word who took on flesh and literally “tented” or “tabernacled” when he came and took on flesh. The word “dwelt” in John 1:14 is “to tent”. John explicitly says Jesus is the tabernacle and its elements in his coming in the flesh.
The Word who tabernacles for us to see invites us to feed on his flesh as the bread of life (John 6). Jesus, the Word and Bread of life is the atoning sacrifice that reconciles people back to the Father on the mercy seat in the Father’s presence.
John 1:4-5 (ESV) 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Jesus is life and light that shines out of the darkness.
God the Holy Spirit through Moses the prophet preaches the gospel to us from Exodus 25 by showing us what Jesus does for us. In seeing Jesus from the ark, the table, and the lampstand we see that mankind is in darkness, separated from God and his life and light, and the only way for that problem to be corrected is application of the atoning work of Jesus in our place for our sin before the Father.
Let’s stand up to honor the Word become flesh who is present with us now, and let’s read his word together: Exodus 25:31-40.
Observations:
The craftsmanship and Spirit gifted craftsmen for the task of construction is glorious and full of the good news.
Exodus 31 will tell us God chose some folks and gifted them with the Spirit to do this work and lead in doing the work, and it is truly amazing.
“The lampstand was beaten out of pure gold. In the craftsmanship of that day, the gold was set against a wooden mold and then hammered into shape. According to verse 39, the whole thing was made from a single talent of solid gold, which in today’s measurements would weigh roughly seventy-five pounds. The base and branches were not assembled but were made all of one piece, and when the lampstand was finished it stood perhaps five feet tall.” – Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 836.
The craftsmanship to build the tabernacle is astounding, and at the same time when we look carefully at who God chooses to gift with the Spirit to build this house, we should take note of his lineage.
Bezalel is from the tribe of Judah, and he will be gifted to build this house. We’ll say more about this in Exodus 31. It’s enough to say right now that someone from Judah would be empowered by the Spirit to build God’s dwelling place.
Gospel Moment: There is another One from Judah who will build a house. His name is Jesus, and the house he builds is the church, his body, the redeemed people of God. “I will build my church”.
The Pharisees believe the temple to be the end all. But Jesus told them when they destroyed the temple of himself, he would rebuild it in three days, and they were so blind they did not understand he was referring to himself, God’s “tabernacle” become flesh and dwelling among his people.
When Jesus rises and ascends to the Father and sends Holy Spirit to inhabit his church a massive shift happens. We as individuals united in covenant in the gospel as the church become the tabernacle, the body of Christ, who represent him in the world. And Jesus is the builder of that house, not Moses.
Hebrews 3:1-6 reminds us that Moses was faithful as a servant over the house of God (there’s a lot going on in Hebrews 3:1-6), but Jesus is faithful over his house, the people and the church they make up, as a Son.
Hebrews 3:6b “And we are his house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.”
The craftsmanship of the tabernacle should make us honor the craftsmanship of the church who is the temple of God by the Spirit and is being built and perfected by Jesus the Son.
We’ll make application to this soon.
The lampstand, shaped like an almond tree, is constructed as in continual bloom producing fruit, thus producing life as God’s word of decree intended in creation.
A tree producing continual fruit is a tree that produces continual life. God reminds Israel with this lampstand that he will be continually faithful to give them life and produce life through them to keep his word from creation applied Abraham through his descendants.
The fact that the only lampstand God has them construct depicts an almond tree being in continual bloom is significant. There is no second lampstand depicting an almond tree out of season. God is faithful to supply his people with life as they make life available to the nations, and in this they experience God keeping is word.
SIDE NOTE: Part of the Sabbath’s intent is to show them God’s decree to supply is his faithfulness not their work. So, to remind them of his faithfulness to keep his word and supply ongoing sustaining life is glorious.
Trees producing continual fruit and sustaining life is also God reminding Israel of Eden. Thinking of Eden would make them long for its restoration. The fact that God has taken up dwelling among his people reminds them of the hope that God would restore Eden and keep his word to crush the Serpent and restore his people to continual and ongoing fellowship in his presence.
This reminder of Eden produces three additional reminders I can see linked by a key theme: 1) Israel would be reminded that just like God provided food for life in Eden as he promised, he would provide life and sustenance for his people as they follow him faithfully like he has promised. The are reminded God keeps his word. 2) Isreal would be reminded God called them and gave them his word that they were chosen and would get the honor of being a source of life as the people of God who are testifying to the nations of the life offered by the Lord Jesus. He gave them that mission at creation then through Abraham, and here they are seeing God fulfill his word. 3). Israel would be reminded to take hope that as they have to make war in Canaan as agents of his kingdom, there would be a day in which the struggle would become victory. God made a promise he would bless the nations through them. Eden would be regained as he multiplies them and produces life through them continually if they obey him to the whole earth like he promised Abraham. God will watch over his word to perform it.
Listen to the Lord’s conversation with Jeremiah as he calls this reluctant prophet to work: Jeremiah 1:11-12 (ESV) 11 And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” And I said, “I see an almond branch.” (Why would God show him an almond branch?)[1] 12 Then the LORD said to me, “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it.”
God is reminding Israel that he produces life, he keeps life flowing, and that life is for them and for the nations of the earth through them. They only have to be faithful. If they are faithful, they will get the joy of watching God keep his word.
The Lampstand was for producing light.
With the trunk and the six branches, there were seven places on the almond tree lampstand for seven light sources.
The holy place where the lampstand was located was dark as it had many layers of material that protected the items in the holy place from the weather, and more.
The lampstand was very practical, yet it was more than practical. Light is significant in every way in God’s cosmos.
At no point in the creation story does God call darkness good. Only light. We already have hints in Genesis 1-2 that the rebellion has taken place, and creation has an evil lurking ready to do damage in the darkness.
Darkness is literal and more than literal. Darkness is real. No light means its dark and we can’t see where we are going.
Darkness is also the inability to know what is true. Darkness is associated with evil.
Proverbs 4:19 (ESV) 19 The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.
John 3:19-21 (ESV) 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
In these two samples from the Bible, darkness represents sin and spiritual blindness.
Among other realities with the lampstand, God is distinguishing himself from the dark practices of the “gods” of Canaan where Israel will be tempted to sync up their law with the dark practices of the nations, and he wants them to be continually reminded he has no part in evil and they are to have no part in evil.
God himself is the light. There is no darkness in Jesus. He deals in light and good.
Entering the holy place reminded the Levites as they approached God they were in the light, and they were to go back and teach and preach the light truth, all of God’s truth, to the people.
Bright light is a robust worldview powered by God’s word with all the implications and applications in play. Light is dimmed when we integrate the tactics of darkness with the tactics of light in order to fit in.
Psalm 27:1 (ESV) 1 The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
Psalm 43:3 (ESV) 3 Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling!
“There is to be no darkness in the presence of the Creator who has redeemed his people. Just as he gave light to the original creation to bring order into the realm he had made, so now he provides for light in the miniature representation of the realm of his restored fellowship with his people.” – John L. Mackay, Exodus (Fearn, Ross-Shire, England: Mentor, 2001), p. 456.
1 John 1:5-7 (ESV) 5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
Application:
The church is the house Jesus is building.
Our ecclesiology is not too strong. It’s too weak, and I would argue we as TRC have a very robust doctrine of the local church. Yet, it is far too easy kick against the goads God has designed in the local church to keep our thinking in line and keep us on mission.
Most Romans who claim Jesus want a church that affirms their humanistic purely American theology rooted in consumer church framework not a church rooted in the kingdom of God with our identity as the actual body of Christ having boundaries and systems of accountability rooted in God’s word. So, two challenges: 1) We tend to see the church as a service provider we can shop and find what we crave. 2) We tend to be critical of the fact that we have many churches in a town that is 70% plus unreached thinking if we just erased our distinctives we’d reach more people, ignoring the fact that reaching more people is not a function of erasing distinctives but of preaching the gospel to those we really don’t want in our churches because that would mess up the product I was spiritually shopping for.
The tabernacle was God dwelling in the middle of his people (Exodus 25:8). Jesus comes and tabernacles among his people (John 1:14) to display God the Father’s glory.
In coming to display the Father’s glory, Jesus provides salvation to make all those who believe in him walking tabernacles as individuals who make up the local church (not individuals apart from the local church) where God dwells by his Spirit. Therefore, the local church is the body of Christ. The local church then puts Jesus on display as the church for the world to see and believe in.
Let me start with that second challenge:
Individual churches who preach the good news, honor God’s word, and make disciples of the nations meeting separately in multiple places is not bad. It’s good. Those churches each doing what God put them there to do and being distinct is not a lack of unity, it’s mission. It’s multiplication. It’s potential to fill the domains of a city and affect that city being taken for the kingdom of God. But this means each local church must be on mission, and each local church needs to understand its mission, and each local church must lead its parts to be a whole while being distinct. Eldership God’s way in the Bible is a challenge.
Uniformity disguised as unity is not honoring to Jesus and not effective.
It’s ok that Rome has lots of churches. We need those churches to get in the game and up their ecclesiology.
Back to the first challenge:
Get this deeply ingrained into your soul: The local church is corporate before it is individual. Individuals and families are only kingdom to the extent they are enmeshed with the corporate identity of the people of God, and that affects what we do and how we do it. The local church cannot be a confederation of independent singles and family units who can do as they please apart from the whole.
Here are a couple of examples of the corporate nature of the church.
Ephesians 2:19-22 “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”
1 Corinthians 3:16-17 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
The “you” is plural. The Spirit dwells in the tabernacle of Jesus’ presence the local church as a whole. Now, it’s true that individuals get the indwelling Spirit, and the precious gift of Spirit is rooted in us being part of the whole not an individual isolated from the whole.
He witnesses to this reality in his gifts. Gifts are not given to the individual. They are given to the whole church through the individual. No connection no gift.
If you are checking out TRC, or if you decide to leave TRC and go somewhere else, please understand this: The church is not a product you check out to see what fits you as a single or a confederate family. It is the body of the King of the universe, Jesus. The church is his house. The church is how God himself dwells tangibly on earth and advances the mission of seeing all nations have the opportunity to hear the good news and believe.
Be careful with that.
Be agents of life.
When Israel followed God’s law, God moved powerfully through them in life as they thrived and eliminated darkness. When Israel integrated darkness into their practice death held sway.
When Jesus entered time and space and tabernacled among us to die in our place for our sin and rise from the dead and ascend back to the Father to atone for sin once for all time, the curse was broken, the kingdom had invaded, and abundant life was now available in us and through the local church in such a way that even we in our foolishness can’t stop the flow of life.
Jesus will reign fully over his creation, and the only question is whether we will join in that glorious restoration of all things in all domains of society or play church framework games accumulating spiritual goods to ourselves thinking we are at the apex of our game.
We would do well to hear Jesus’ words to Laodicea and make sure we are not in the spiritual state they were in…self-deceived: Revelation 3:14-22 “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.
“‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”
Being an agent of life now is practice for what will be normative for all of creation when the Lord sets all things back to Eden. When it’s always Christmas and never winter again.
Listen to how it will be: Revelation 22:1-2 (ESV) 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.
Be agents of light.
Know the metanarrative of the Bible.
Know the parts of the metanarrative and how they arc to each other.
Practice comparing God’s truth to what you live in every day.
See what is broken and heal it in and through your vocation. To do this, become system aware. Learn how systems work and become a disruptor, like Moses. Like Jesus. Like people in your church who are in their vocations neck deep and disrupting the dysfunction.
Tell the truth, live in the truth, and don’t become a partisan hack. Maintain your place as a prophet who speaks truth to all power.
Matthew 5:14-16 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
Pray.
Ezekiel 36:37-38: Increase us. Make us holy/seeking your kingdom and righteousness first. Send us. Mobilize us.
Teach us to honor God and each other. Teach us to be contrite. Teach us to be a people of prayer.
[1] Parenthesis mine.