Oh, crossing family, it is so good to be with you on and
welcome those of you joining at our different locations, those
of you watching online and inside, and also a special
welcome to those of you who are joining us for the first time or
the first time in a long time. We are in the middle of a series
called Decisions in the Desert. All of us are going to spend
some amount of time at some point in our life in the desert.
And the decisions that you make, they will define you.
They will determine your destiny.
And today we're going to do something a little bit
different. I'm going to put on my professor
hat, which Can you imagine me being a college professor?
I would be fired quickly and but I'm going to have you.
I'm going to put on my professor hat and we're going to go to
school like old school school. And but at the very end, I have
a strong belief that you will have a new appreciation for the
work of God and the love of Jesus that has been poured out
on your behalf. So turn to your neighbor and
just say hang on 'cause you're gonna have to hang on for a
little bit, but it'll all make sense in the end.
We begin in the Garden of Eden. God says let us make man in our
image. And so they created Adam and Eve
and they were in perfect harmony with God.
The Creator and His creation were in perfect harmony.
And then Adam and Eve sinned and the relationship was forever
fractured. It was changed.
Why God is holy. Exodus chapter 33 starting in
verse 18 unpacks this a bit for us.
Then Moses said, now show me your glory.
And the Lord said, I will cause all of my goodness to pass in
front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord in
your presence. I will have mercy on whom I have
mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have will
have compassion. But he said, You cannot see my
face, for no one may see my face and live.
Then the Lord said, There is a place near me where you may
stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will
put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until
I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and
you will see my back. But my face must not be seen.
If you were to be in the presence of a holy God, you
would be destroyed. God's holiness is really hard
for us to kind of comprehend. Holy means separate, different,
all together, apart. I'm going to explain this to you
in two ways. One is old school and one is if
you were to be hanging out in my house.
Here's the old school version. The Latin word for book is
Bible. So if you were to be in a place
that spoke Latin, you could say and you were say, hey, I need a
book. You would say, hey, I need a
Bible. Well, you'd have to come up with
different words for hey, I need a but book and Bible, same word
and you're going, that's kind of weird because I have a Bible.
And when we say Bible, we mean something different than just a
book. We mean the book, which is why
even on your app, or if you were to open up the real Bible that
you have either on the front or on the title page, there's a
different word. There's an adjective describing
this book, this Bible. The word is holy, the Holy
Bible, the altogether different Bible, the separate Bible, or
the altogether different book. There are lots of books, but
there's only one that is completely different than all
the others because all the other books contain the words of man,
but this book contains the words of God.
This book is holy. Here is how I describe it.
If you were hanging out in my house, in our house and and
husband's plate cool here because I want you to be able to
ride home with the woman that you came with.
But we have a bunch of towels in our house.
We have towels for you drying off our hands.
We have towels for drying off our bodies.
But then if you were to go into the kitchen, we have kitchen
towels for you to dry off your hand.
But then we have these other towels.
They're called decorative towels, and these towels are
different than all the other towels.
These towels are holy. And what we do, ladies, because
you guys are smart. You hang your decorative towel
in the most convenient place for a towel that you would use to be
hung. So that way when you get done
and you turn to use the towel that's right there hanging on
the oven door, you're not allowed to use that towel.
This towel just for us to look at.
Now, I want you to go home and look in the mirror, ladies, when
you were in high school, college, you're an absolute
smoke show. And I want you to tell old you,
when you get older, you're going to look for cute little sayings
to put on towels to decorate your house with.
Say that to your daughter. Say, sweetie, there's a day
coming when you're going to be going.
Oh, yeah, We're going to put towels with words on them all
over our house. Yeah, that your high school
daughter would go. You're weird because, ladies,
you're weird. And then you get mad at us for
using the towel that has words on it.
That's still just a normal towel.
You wonder why, Fellas, this kitchen towel is holy.
It's altogether different. It may have some qualities like
the other towels, but no, this towel has been set apart.
It is holy unto your wife. Now, after the Israelites have
been given the law, God tells Moses to build him a Tabernacle,
which is a tent, a temporary dwelling place.
And this Tabernacle was going to be a portable place of worship.
The reason is because God has been separated from his people
because of sin, but he wants to be in the presence of his
people. And so they begin to build the
tent, the Tabernacle, and they're the people will be able
to worship God and offer the sacrifices for their sins that
they had committed as a result of failing to live up to the
standard of the law. Here's how it goes down.
It was going to be a special place inside of this Tabernacle
where God's presence would dwell in the midst of his people.
God is trying to get back in the presence of his people.
It began by creating a courtyard that was about 75 feet by 150
feet, making the square footage of this courtyard about 11,000
square feet. And as you entered the
courtyard, the very first thing that you would see would be the
altar of burnt offering. Now, the altar of burnt offering
was a square structure about 7 1/2 feet on each side and about
four and a half feet tall. And upon this altar, every
morning and every evening, a lamb was sacrificed on behalf of
the people to pay for their sins.
In addition to this sacrifice, there were many other sacrifices
that would take place on Sabbath days and during special days on
their calendar. There were burnt offerings.
There were grain offerings. There were fellowship offerings.
There were sin offerings. There were guilt offerings.
Have you ever experienced sin and guilt and shame?
You would pay for that if you ever made a mistake.
If you were an Israelite, you were constantly paying for your
sins in sacrifices. Exodus chapter 29, verse 37 and
record these words 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. Whatever touches the altar of
burnt offering, where the sacrifices of sins take place
will be holy. Past the altar of burnt offering
was a place called the Lavar or the lava.
Here this structure was placed right before they went into the
tab or the Tabernacle. It was a place for the priest to
wash themselves, to purify themselves for their duties.
And before you could walk into the next place, the Tabernacle,
it was the last thing that they would encounter before they went
into what the Bible records as the Holy Place.
You see on the afar side of the courtyard, there was the
Tabernacle. It was 45 feet by 15 feet.
It had walls that were 15 feet high and it had large pieces of
fabric draped over the top. It was a big tent.
And this Tabernacle had two rooms in it.
The first room that you entered was the Holy Place.
It was a rectangle about 30 feet by 15 feet with 15 foot high
walls. And it had three items in it.
If you look right over here, they have the table of presents.
It was a small table and on it were 12 loaves of bread that
were placed there every single week.
This signified the 12 tribes or the 12 families of the
Israelites. It signified them as a people
group, the sons of Jacob or Israel.
Then on the other side was a lampstand.
The word for lampstand is menorah for those of you who've
ever hung out with people who have Jewish descent.
It was made of pure gold. And every morning and every
evening they would pure pour, they would pour pure olive oil
into it to to light it. So that way it was continually
burning and giving light to the holy place.
And then before you could go into the next room, you'd be
confronted with the altar of incense.
Here at the altar of incense, both morning and evening, they
were to burn incense on the altar as a regular offering to
the Lord. The fire was to burn.
Incense was always taken from the altar of burnt offering.
Ladies, this is where you get your spiritual reasoning for
having a Sensi burner in your house.
This they were. The God was the original Sensi
distributor. He's like on a regular basis
we're going to have smell good stuff through the whole house.
And they would go in order to light the altar of incense.
They would go out and they would get the hot coals and the fire
from the altar of burnt offering, and they would bring
it in and they would light it and the fragrant offering would
ascend up to the Lord. Separating the holy place from
the next room, which was the most Holy Place or the Holy of
Holies, was a veil, a large curtain that was 15 feet tall,
15 feet wide, and it was 4 inches thick.
And if you were to go inside of there, what you'd find is you'd
find the arc of the covenant. It was about four and a half
feet long and 2 1/2 feet wide and 2 1/2 feet high.
It was a wooden chest but had been completely covered inside
and out in pure gold and inside the ark were the stone tablets
that God had written the 10 commandments on as well as a jar
of manna because remember God was providing food for them
every morning with manna. The ark was covered by a solid
gold lid called the Atonement cover or the Mercy Seat.
And sitting on top of this mercy seat, this cover, were gold
figures of cherubim, which were Angel like creatures facing each
other with their wings almost touching.
And it was here at this mercy seat that the presence of God
would descend and God would be in the midst of his people.
All of this was put in place so that way a holy God could be
close to his fallen people. So they did this.
They did all the things that God required.
They finished completing the Tabernacle, and this is what
happens in Exodus chapter 40. Then the cloud covered the tent
of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle.
Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had
settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle.
In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud
lifted from above the Tabernacle, they would set out,
but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out until the
day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was
over the Tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night,
and insight of the Israelites during all of their travels.
So if you were an Israelite, you would be able to peer into the
courtyard and you could see the Tabernacle, and above the Most
Holy Place, it was a pillar of cloud.
And if the cloud moved, the people knew to pack up, because
if God was on the move, the people of God were going to be
on the move because God and his people were going to be
together. But if the cloud stayed, the
people stayed. And as they went to bed at
night, they could see the pillar of fire.
And God had descended. He had rested in the most Holy
Place. He had sent his presence there
to be close to the people. Much later, the Israelites take
possession of the promised land, which is modern day Israel, and
they set up their capital city in a city called Jerusalem.
Yeah, you know that one, the one that's in the news.
And here King David is allowed to accumulate all of the
necessary materials to move away from the Tabernacle, a temporary
place to worship God and create a temple, a permanent place to
worship God. But he wasn't allowed to build
it, but his son Solomon was. And Solomon built this permanent
place of worship, the temple. And when the temple was
completed, Solomon finished dedicating it.
Fire came down from heaven, consumed all the burnt
offerings, and the glory of the Lord filled that place.
Later this temple is destroyed and King Herod came or Herod the
Great came along and rebuilt it over many, many years.
It is this temple that was rebuilt by Herod that is the
temple during the lifetime of Jesus.
So when Jesus is walking around in Jerusalem and he's talking
about the temple, he's talking about the one that Solomon built
was destroyed and Herod the Great had rebuilt.
Let's look at actually what happens when Jesus walks onto
the scene. John records these words.
John chapter 1. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through Him all things were made.
Without Him nothing was made that has been made.
In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
The light. The light shines in the
darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the
world. He was in the world, and though
the world was made through him, the world did not recognize Him.
He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive
him. Yet to all who receive Him, to
those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become
children of God. These children are not born of
natural descent, nor of a human decision or a husband's will,
but born of God. The Word became flesh and made
His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the
glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full
of grace and truth. Let me unpack a couple of the
highlighted parts. This Word is God, and this God,
this Word is coming in the flesh.
God is descending again into the midst of his people.
He has wrapped himself in skin, in humanity, in the person of
Jesus, and it says and made his dwelling, the word here,
Tabernacle. He's tenting.
God is in the midst of his people.
He's setting up a tent to be in the presence of the people that
don't deserve to be in his presence.
We are. He is tabernacling with us in
Jesus. And in the very next chapter,
Jesus goes to the temple and he starts to drive people out of
the temple who are acting in a way in which they should not
act. And people are frustrated by
this and they begin to question him.
Why are you doing what you're doing?
And this is what it says in John chapter 2, verse 18.
The Jews then responded to him, him as Jesus.
What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all
this? By what authority do you get to
kick people out of this temple? Jesus answered them.
Destroy this temple. And I will raise it again in
three days, they replied. It has taken 46 years to build
this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days.
But the temple he had spoken of was his body.
After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled
what he had said. They believe the Scripture and
the words that Jesus had spoken. The Jews are looking at Jesus
and Jesus says destroy this temple and I'll raise it again
in three days. And the Jews are like this big
building temple. It's taken us 46 years, but
Jesus is talking about him because Jesus is tabernacling,
He's tempting, He's templing with his people.
Fast forward to Jesus on the cross, Matthew chapter 27.
I want us to pick up right here. From noon until 3:00 in the
afternoon, darkness came over all the land.
About 3:00 in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice.
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabakhthanai, which means my God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? And when Jesus had cried out
again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.
That's verse 50. Why is God forsaking Jesus?
Because in that moment Jesus is covered in all of my sin and all
of your sin, and God is holy, and God cannot be in the
presence of sin. And so Jesus, for the very first
time is experiencing the absence and the separation from God,
because he is covered in what you and I have done.
Jesus, who has always been in the presence of the Father, has
now been removed from the presence of the Father.
Because God is holy and Jesus is covered in what you and I
deserve. Look at what happens in the very
next verse, Matthew 27, verse 51.
At that moment, the moment that Jesus cried out His last name,
gave up His Spirit, the curtain of the temple was torn in two
from top to bottom, you see, in the most Holy Place, and we're
going to get into this next week, the place that you and I
were not allowed to go into because the presence of God was
in there. All of a sudden, because Jesus
is dying on the cross, the curtain is torn, not from the
bottom to the top where the people grabbed a hold and ripped
it. But it is if God himself placed
his hands on the temple that separated us from His presence.
And he rips it in half with his own hands, saying that you and I
can now be in the presence of Him.
Because the that which made us unholy has now been purified by
the One who always was holy. You see, there's no longer a
barrier between US and God. We have access to the Father.
But hear me, it doesn't end there.
Let's recap. In the Garden of Eden, people
are separated from God because of sin.
God makes a Tabernacle in the desert so the people could be in
the presence of God. Then they make a temple, which
is a permanent place for people to be in the presence of God and
have their sins atoned for. Then God comes as a temple in
Jesus and becomes the place for us to be in the presence of God.
And then Jesus goes on the cross and removes the need for the
temple so that way we could be in the presence of God.
But it just keeps getting getting better.
You see, in Acts chapter 2 we find these words on the day of
Pentecost. This is 50 days after Jesus was
on the cross. They were all together in one
place. Suddenly a sound like the
blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole
house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be
tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of
them. All of them were filled with the
Holy Spirit. There's lots of spirits, but
there's only one that's all together different.
There's only one that has God like qualities.
There's only one God, and here he comes.
And he began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled
them. Hold on a second, when God was
on the mountain giving Moses the 10 commandments, it was filled
with fire and smoke and lightning and Thunder.
And when God descended into the Tabernacle, His presence filled
the place. And then when God entered the
temple, His presence filled and His glory filled the place.
And there was fire that consecrated absolutely
everything. And then all of a sudden, hold
on a second. What?
The Spirit is descending not on a place, but on a people.
God is taking up residence in His people.
He is making His people a temple.
He is consecrating it and removing the barrier.
You see, we don't just have access to God.
We are becoming, through Jesus, the residence of God.
You and I get to become the temple.
That is why the very first sermon ended with these life
changing, soul altering words. Watch how Peter describes it.
Acts chapter 2. Peter replied.
Repent and be baptized everyone of you, in the name of Jesus
Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive
the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is for you and all
of your children, and who all who are far off, for all whom
the Lord our God will call. When you and I come to faith in
Jesus, our sins are forgiven because of the work that He is
done, and then He places His presence in US.
And when this happens, look at how Paul describes it in
Ephesians chapter 2. Consequently you are no longer
foreigners or strangers, but fellow citizens with God's
people, and also members of His household built on the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, which with Jesus
Christ Himself as the chief cornerstone in Him the whole
building is joined together and it rises to become a holy temple
in the Lord. And in Him you 2 are being built
together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit.
Now let me take the professor hat off and let me preach for a
second. Look back at the temple.
Your sins and my sins are atoned for through the blood of Christ
that was shed on the cross, the altar of burnt offering.
And whatever touches the blood, whatever touches the altar,
becomes holy unto the Lord. You move past this, and we go to
the law of our which are sins are washed away in the waters of
baptism. We go into the the holy place
and Jesus is the bread of life and we are continually before
him in his presence. But this is not just the 12
tribes. This is for all who call on the
name of the Lord. And we look over to the other
side and we see the lampstand and we remember that Jesus is
the light of the world. But it's not just Jesus that is
the light of the world. Because of what he has done in
us, we too become the light of the world.
A city on a hill, a lamp on a stand that should not be hidden.
And then we go past that into the altar of incense, and the
Bible tells us that when we lift our prayers, it is an incense
unto God, a fragrant offering to Him when we walk in love towards
one another. This is why you and I are to
live a life worthy of the calling we have received because
we have been made holy. Because He is holy.
God has been making you and I into a temple, a place for us to
be able to worship and experience the closeness and the
proximity of God. And not only that, we are a
place when other people come into contact with us, that they
have an opportunity to come into contact with the life changing
power of the Holy Spirit. We are the temple of the living
God. God is Emmanuel, He is with us.
And when the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our lives, God
is in us. God is going through all of this
work, all the way back to from Eden to get back to you, to make
you a place where He can be in an intimate, personal
relationship with you. And guess what happens when you
get to heaven? We are forever in the physical
presence of God because there's no longer any sin, there's no
longer any shame, there's no longer any guilt because we have
been made right by the work of Jesus.
We've been cleansed in the waters of baptism and the Holy
Spirit, the presence of God, has taken up residence in our lives.
And you might be asking yourself, who is this promise
for? This is for everyone.
It is for you and for your children and all who are far
off. And I just want those of you who
might find yourself far off. God is a whole lot closer than
you think. We're moving to a time of
decision. If you're here today and you've
never started an intimate personal relationship with Jesus
Christ, you might be going Clayton, I love this.
I'd love to be, you know, part of this little temple thing
you're talking about. But I got to be honest with you,
I'm not the best building material.
I'm kind of, I'm a little jacked up.
You know, some of my edges have been kind of worn off.
And of all the rocks in the rock garden, I'm not the most, I'm
not the best rock. And I, I just want you to know,
welcome to the club. That's kind of where we all are.
And the good news is, is that it's not about the quality of
the rock. It's about the quality of the
architect and the builder. And God can build beautiful
things out of bust up pieces. For instance, if you were to go
to like an old school church, you know what the the people
there get super frustrated if you take out of there.
They get super frustrated if you take out the stained glass
windows. And stained glass windows are
just broken pieces of glass arranged in such a way that they
reflect all kinds of beauty. Let that be a testimony to you
that even though you may be broken and you may not have the
same shade as everybody else, and your sin looks a little bit
different than everybody else's, when you are placed in the hands
of Jesus, He can make something beautiful out of it.
The question is not whether or not you're busted up and broken.
The question is, is whether or not you are busted up and broken
and you are willing to place your hands or your life in the
hands of the builder, the chief architect.
And I would just tell you from my personal experience, the best
decision I ever made was making Jesus Christ, the Lord and
Savior of my life, and beginning an intimate, personal
relationship with him. My biggest regret is that I
didn't do it sooner. And you might be going, Clayton,
I get it. That's just what you know you're
supposed to say. But I want you to know that I'm
not the only person who believes that.
In fact, this room is filled and this region is filled with
people who that is their testimony.
And if you're going, you know what, I think this is great.
And in about a month and a half, I really think I'm going to have
things figured out and I'm really going to turn my life
over to Jesus. What I would tell you is that if
you could figure things out, God wouldn't have sent Jesus if you
could get it together in the right kind of way.
This is not, hear me, this is not about you getting it right.
God has already got it right in Jesus.
This is about you receiving what Jesus has done on your behalf.
Our job is believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of living
God. Our job is believing in His work
on our behalf. Our job is repenting for doing
it our own way. Our job is being obedient in the
waters of baptism and our job is to receive the Holy Spirit that
He is aching to pour out into your life.
And if you're here today and you've never started that
relationship, I'll just encourage you.
While the people around you stand and worship and some of
them come to the steps and pray. I want to encourage you to take
a faith filled walk right over there underneath that screen
next to the baptistry and talk to somebody about what it means
to start that relationship, to put your life in His hands.
To the rest of you, to those of you who already have a
relationship with Jesus Christ, you are supposed to be a temple
residents of God. His Spirit is supposed to
produce fruit in your life. And when people come in contact
with you, they're supposed to be coming into contact with the
presence of God as His Spirit controls you, directs you,
empowers you. And that's why the cry of the
New Testament is for you and I to live in a manner worthy of
the calling we have received. So the Bible says that you and I
are ambassadors as if God himself were making his appeal
through us. And if we were to just kind of
leave the sermon where we're a temple of God, we'd all high 5
each other and we'd leave here. But I, you just, you know me
well enough to know that that's not where we're going to end.
My question is, do the people in your family, do the people that
you work with at work, get the impression that a temple clocked
in, that the presence of God is in the cubicle, that there's
something altogether different, separate, set apart?
Like Clayton? Leave my workplace out of it.
Leave my marriage out of it. You don't understand.
This good news is not just for your children, it's for all who
are far off. And God is wanting to use you as
a temple, as a place for other people to begin their connection
with Him. And so I know some of you are
going to come to the steps and pray because you've got health
stuff going on in your life. I know some of you are going to
come up to the steps and pray because you've got marriage
stuff going on in your life and you've got parenting stuff going
on in your life and you've got work stuff going on in your
life. And I, I get all of that.
But maybe some of us would, whether we come up to the steps
or we want to bend a knee in our seat, just spend a little bit
time going. God help me to be holy like
you've created me to be. Would you stand with me,
Heavenly Father? It is crazy to me, all that you
have gone through to be in relationship with us because
God, we know us and we know we don't deserve it.
And I can't imagine how much it frustrates you when you hear us
say things like, you know the God of the Old Testament.
We try to explain it away because here you are at the very
beginning, revealing the redemptive arc that you are
doing on our behalf. And God, I'm thankful you have
big shoulders because we say all kinds of things in our
frustration at you, accuse you of doing all kinds of wrong that
you've never done. But here you are, still pursuing
us, still purifying us, still making us new, still doing
everything in your power to be in proximity to us.
God, thank you for making us holy, something we could have
never done ourselves. But God, we're going to need
your strength to be your holy people to a lost world.
And you're in my praying. Amen.