Sermon Notes: Exodus 36:8-37:29

Exodus 36:8-37:29 is a mash up of repetition from previous chapters (26:1-36, 25:10-22, 25:31-39, and 30:1-5). 

Everything in our text today has already been spoken by the Lord and recorded by Moses.   

In fact, everything from today’s text through chapter 39 will be repetition.   

Our text is lengthy and repetitious, and certainly worthy of your attention and time to read in your ongoing study. For our purposes today, I want to use Jeremiah’s exposition of the situation in Exodus applied to Judah as he preached according to the Lord’s instruction for Judah. 

Jeremiah correctly observes the Lord’s main point from Moses’ inspired writing, so let’s see what he says and where he says it from and read that together to help us see what the Lord wants us to see.   

Jeremiah quotes Exodus 15:26 when he writes: Jeremiah 7:22-23 (ESV) 22 For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them: Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’  

We will read the text Jeremiah preaches from for our text this morning because it correctly interprets our text this morning.   

So, let’s stand together and read Exodus 15:26.   

Exodus 15:25-26 (ESV) There the LORD made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, 26 saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer.”  

Why is Moses repeating what he already wrote, under the inspiration of the Spirit? That’s the question that Moses and Jeremiah answer for us.   

The Scriptures that Moses are repeating are God's commands for the tabernacle and the furnishings.  

In our section of Exodus for today Moses says 51 times either “workmen made”, “he made” or “made”. In the previous texts Moses records the Lord telling the people “you shall make”.   

Moses is driving home a point. God told him “you shall make”, and now they have done what God said, they have obeyed the Lord’s instructions.    

Moses has led Israel through Bezalel and Oholiab to obey God’s commands.   

The Hebrew grammar of “made” in our text flexes between two grammatical constructions that are not quite evident in English, and I’d like to take a short excursion on the glory of God to choose Hebrew to have this written in.   

EXCURSION: The 51 occurrences of “made” in our text today go back and forth between two Hebrew grammatical constructions (Qal Perfect and the Qal Waw Consecutive Imperfect).  

One, (the Qal Perfect), communicates stand-alone past action. It is background information, and it carries the weight of timeless truth. This grammar sets the bedrock of the details of what is true action. They were doing the Lord’s work as they carried out his instructions, and this work was rooted in the eternal truth of the good news.   

The other, (the Qal Waw Consecutive Imperfect), serves grammatically to advance the story. It is foreground information, and that communicates historicity. They really did the work, and Moses is recording it for all to know it. This really happened in time and space.   

Hebrew paints a narrative picture that sets the metanarrative of what God is doing in the good news, which is why Jesus, the apostles, and the church would preach the good news from the Old Testament. I don’t know another way to say it. We have lost the skill of reading and understanding how language carries story and history. Hebrew captures this for us and preserves this for us.   

The metanarrative of the good news in the Old Testament was and is the framework by which the people were to know what is true and historical and thus know how to make decisions and how to preach the good news.   

It is still that way.   

Hebrew is sweeping and epic, and the perfect language and grammar to carry eternal truth and history.   

New Testament Greek is more granular in explaining the details of the in-tact metanarrative preached in the Old Testament. Greek grammar is intimate and dramatic in detail.   

Therefore, God in his wisdom wove all things together in order to have the Hebrew language paint the metanarrative of the good news, this sweeping and epic metanarrative of who God is, who we are, how humanity was enticed by the Serpent Dragon, and how the Seed of the woman would come in the fullness of time to crush the head of the Serpent Dragon in order to save us.   

Likewise, God in his wisdom wove all things together to have the Seed of the woman, the Son of God, come when Greek was the language of the known world to teach us the intimate dramatic details of how the metanarrative of the gospel works and be the linguistic means by which this good new would travel on language and culture to the ends of the Roman Empire and set the stage for the Great Commission.   

In the Old Testament, pay attention to the whole story. In the New Testament pay attention to the microscopic parts the makeup that whole story.   

This little excursion on the grammar of our text provides a general and big picture way to help you read your Bible and see the glory of God in inspiring it.   

Marvel at the wisdom and power of God for our good even in the languages God chose to capture his good news in for us to read and make sense of, even in repeated texts.   

Now, back to our text.  

The following sentence will be a roadmap for the remainder of our study in Exodus: This repetition through the end of chapter 39 will serve to highlight Israel’s obedience (thus Exodus 15:26 and Jeremiah 7:22-23), it will show what repentance looks like after the sin of the golden calf, it will result in the Lord’s blessing Israel with his manifest presence, and it will create a tension about the future and the possibility of failure and/or success based on the Israel’s application of living by faith.  

So, what we want to take away from our text today is our first and only observation.  

1. Israel obeys the Lord’s Instructions.  

This is what God told them in Exodus 15 and Jeremiah preached to them again in Jeremiah 7:22-23.   

The text makes it obvious that Moses faithfully communicates God’s design, that the people supplied the resources and labor, and that Bezalel and Oholiab lead in gathering and overseeing the construction in obedience to the Lord.   It would be very easy to ignore this obvious fact and miss the opportunity to ask a very important question.   

Here is the question: What is obedience? Not, how did they obey? But what exactly is obedience?  

Romans 1:1-6 (ESV) 1 "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3 concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4 and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, 5 through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, 6 including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,..."  

According to Paul, obedience belongs to faith, or we could say that faith produces obedience. 

This doesn’t mean that even pagans can’t obey the Lord even in their unbelief. But Paul’s point is that for those who believe the good news obedience is especially robust and intentional and rooted in faith in and love for God.   

Obedience is a gift that we are given by God designed to produce maximum human flourishing in God’s time and in God’s economy of the universe.  

Obedience is not negative. Obedience is rooted in our relationship to God: God as Creator and us as his image-bearing creatures.   

Why do most humans view obedience as negative, and why do humans spend so much energy disobeying God’s good boundaries?  

The Serpent Dragon frames obedience as a hindrance to achieving a desired outcome. Adam and Eve’s acceptance of the Serpent Dragon’s framing of obedience set the world on fire.   

From the Serpent Dragon’s rebellion in the heavenlies to his Genesis 3 enticement of our parents to join his team by disobeying God, the failure to obey God has been the source of the deepest suffering imaginable in the world and caused the enslavement of image-bearers to the Serpent Dragon. As a result, we are spiritually and genetically predisposed to violate God’s instructions and see them as restrictive to our happiness.   

Israel’s failure to obey the Lord’s commandments resulted in the golden calf that resulted in the death of 3,000 men and a plague.   

But here, Moses’ intercession and Israel’s repentance have resulted in this moment of obedience, and it’s a moment, thus the upcoming tension on whether they will continue in obedience. We’ll deal with that later.   

So, what exactly is obedience?  

Obedience is alignment with God and alignment with God’s created order that results in deeper relationship with God and human flourishing. You could say that obedience is continually living fully within all the boundaries God has for our relationship with him and our flourishing.   

The New Testament word for obey is “hupako”, and it’s a compound word. “Hupo” - under or with. The other word is “akouo” - to hear (where we get our word acoustic from).   

To obey is to literally “under or with hearing”. That sounds strange. What does that mean? 

The translation of that compound word is hearing undergirded with understanding and appropriate action that accords with proper understanding. To do what we are instructed to do. It’s hearing right, and hearing that is right is acted on appropriately; thus, we translate this word as “obey”.   

Jesus will say to us: Matthew 7:24-27 (ESV) 24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”  

It makes sense, because Jesus already gave us Exodus 15, and 25-39 where we see instruction, hearing, and obedience.   

So, obedience is aligning with God and his created order in appropriate action because one has understood God’s boundaries and they undergird that understanding with appropriate action.   

Or they understood God’s boundaries and chose poor action which does not undergird the hearing. In that case something interfered with the hearing or twisting the hearing.   

What interferes with our hearing and appropriate action in obedience?  Paul will make the argument in the rest of Romans 1 that all mankind is capable of obedience, even in his fallen state, because God has made what humans need to hear and know evident to all. God has done this in such a way that humans will be held responsible for what they innately have heard in understanding and failed to act on. 

We have enough in creation to hold us to account on hearing and obeying but not enough to save us. This is why we are instructed by God to go and preach the good news to all nations. We are to hear and obey, and when we preach they are to hear and obey. 

The problem is that humans choose to ignore what is evident and disobey God to their hurt and shame.   

There is no excuse mankind can give for not aligning with God and not obeying God’s good news.   

If there had been no fall into sin, obedience would be our completely free living within God’s boundaries resulting in human flourishing in all things and in relationship with God.   

But that sinless state was lost, and mankind has been breaking the boundaries of human flourishing by getting out of alignment with God and creation to his destruction for a long time.    

One of the many truths of the good news is that God is taking us back to that state where we will freely live within his good boundaries that will result in eternal flourishing in all things and in relationship with God.   

So, what about Israel’s example of obedience? What are we supposed to do with their obedience and the necessary question about what obedience is?  

Application  

1. TRC, see obedience to God as good for us not a hindrance to us.

Among the many things the curse of sin has done to humans is that it has bound humans to the Serpent Dragon and as a result humans tend to take on the Serpent Dragon’s character.   

Jesus told the Pharisees they lied like their father the Devil. 

Why? 

Because they were following the Serpent Dragon who was a liar, so they spoke like their father.   

By Adam hitching our wagon to the enemy, we took on the characteristics of the enemy, and those characteristics produced death in our entire being, and produced disobedience.   

When God overcame our unbelief with the good news, we got a new heart and were introduced to the struggle against a physical existence impeded by the curse of sin. With God, we get the lifelong honor of rooting out all the ways sin infected our physical life.  

Part of that struggle in our physical existence is overcoming the disobedience that originated in the first rebellion that has been passed on to us.   

We default to disobedience in just about every way we can imagine. In fact, if we would all be honest, we fantasize about how we can break God’s good boundaries that are designed for our flourishing far too often. 

That’s the nature of temptation.   

This is why we see it in our children from the very beginning of their lives. This is why we have to deal with it in society. This is why we have to deal with it in the church.   

Christians are particularly nefarious with disobedience because we claim to have been regenerated by the good news and then look for ways to circumvent what God says is good. We are the world’s best at taking God’s word, twisting it to our likes and dislikes, and using it to violate God’s boundaries while claiming we are doing his will.   

We can justify just about anything as good when we are blatantly disobeying God’s good boundaries. We will jack our lives up and then look for ways to circumvent God’s means of good.   

The most basic definition of discipleship that we subscribe to is learning to hear and obey.   

Everything in our growth in Christ hinges on hearing and obeying the Lord.   

2. TRC, see obedience as an ongoing long-term investment not a one-time means of short-term ease.   

Obedience is not a sure-fire way to avoid suffering and conflict. In fact, obedience is an open invitation for an onslaught of the fiery arrows of the Serpent Dragon and his hosts.   

Obedience creates the tension that Israel will face in the future. 

Will they continue to obey or will they turn back? Israel can walk in the way of the Lord, or they can choose to follow the Serpent Dragon.   

Obedience that leads to life introduces us to good, and with that good there is also conflict and temptation and opportunity to turn back when the conflict comes.   

If this temptation were not so, the Scriptures would not warn us about looking back after we have put our hands to the plow or warn us about producing thorns after we’ve tasted the rain of the Spirit.   

This temptation comes when one obedience is met with resistance and suffering and bitterness for things that don’t work out, and we fantasize about what could have been if it had not been for that dadgum Jesus and the hardship of following him.   What the Serpent Dragon wants you to see is the cross with no resurrection.   

What Jesus holds out for us is the cross with a glorious resurrection and life like you can only imagine if you just don’t turn back. The cross is ongoing obedience in daily dying not a one-time thing that just makes all hardship go away.   

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (ESV) 16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.  

Don’t stop obeying the good news. 

We have everything to lose and nothing to gain if we turn back.   

3. What is the Holy Spirit speaking to you about obedience?   

Let’s spend some time in prayer as we prepare to respond to the Lord in song.  

If the Spirit has already spoken to you about repentance to obedience in something specific, acknowledge it with him and either obey now if appropriate or commit to share with someone trusted what the Lord is calling you to obey so you can test what you hear and be accountable to do it. 

Let’s take a moment in quiet and see if the Lord might speak to us about this.  

Ask the Lord to be clear about what obedience to him looks like right now.  

Ask the Lord to show you what repentance looks like for a disobedience he may be brining to mind.  

Ask the Lord to increase the depth of our walk with him.  

Ask the Lord to help us to be holy.  

Ask the Lord to send us.  

Psalm 100 (ESV) 1 Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth! 2 Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! 3 Know that the LORD, he is God!  It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. 4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! 5 For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.