40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 91 (Exodus 24:9-25:9)

Episode Date: August 9, 2017

A whole lot about the tabernacle. What does this tell us about the incarnation and even the Lord's Supper? How does the Apostle John condense all of this down to one verse? What is holiness and how does a person, thing, time or space become holy? Chad Bird and Daniel Emery Price talk about all this and more in this episode. Check it out!

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. I'm Daniel Henry Price, joined by Chad Bird. Chad? Here I am. Here you are. There you are. You can't escape you, Chad. Waiting in the wings.

Yes, sir. Primed in and ready to go. You are ready to go because I overslept. So you've been ready to go for a while. Yeah, I've got all sorts of time behind me here. Chad has been awake for eight hours. I spent like two hours this morning just uh swimming in the deep sea of all this tabernacle stuff so uh ready to tell you what

i found out we got a lot of good stuff coming up i spent i spent two hours this morning sleeping so yeah swimming in the sea of fighting my uh dog for blankets but uh yeah i feel i feel like maybe last night i went to bed as you woke up but it's all good it's highly possible that's why we have caffeine that's right so what what did you learn chad where were you at in this thing well um we're actually not quite at the tabernacle yet we are like uh you know a foot outside the door our hand is about ready to knock on the tabernacle door with that close but we have to finish up chapter 24 first so that's where we're going to jump back into we talked about the first eight verses of chapter 24 last episode so we're going to finish that up and then we will get into

the tabernacle stuff so kind of uh bring it up to speed uh if uh if it's been a while since you've listened to the last one uh just real quickly what happened is what's called the book of the covenant which was 2021 through 23 and then the beginning of 24 you have the covenant ceremony and what happens there is that moses builds an altar sets up 12 pillars of stones around the altar and they have this blood ceremony sacrifice the blood ceremony where half the blood is placed on the altar and half the blood is placed upon the people and this blood is the blood of the covenant and we talked about how that was related to the blood of the new covenant speaks when he institutes the the lord's supper and how in hebrews this is pictured for us the whole tabernacle

covenant blood kind of ceremony is pictured for us as what happens for us and with us in christ because he is the new tabernacle he's the new veil he's the new sacrifice he's the new blood he's the new covenant he's the new everything we enter not just into the outer court not even into the holy place but into the holy of holies who has opened up this new way for us through his veil that is his flesh and who then takes us right to the father right into the holy of holies new and better holy of holies by means of his new and better sacrifice so all that is the background of all that is exodus 24 so if you really want to understand the whole truth about what the lord's supper is and and everything related to the gift of that meal then you first need to go to exodus

24 because that's the background that's the pedigree of the sacrament right there so that takes us through about verse 8 of the chapter and then we'll pick up with 9 and take us through the end of the chapter so what happens after that is that uh you have moses along with aaron of course who is his brother, Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, we'll hear more about them later, and then 70 of the elders of Israel. So you got this group, you got these individuals, the two brothers, Moses and Aaron, the two sons, Nadab and Abihu, and the elders, that is the 70 representatives of the people of Israel, they all go up a little ways on Mount Sinai, and we have this, this amazing statement. It says they saw, or actually the Hebrew there, a better Hebrew word

would, a better English translation of the Hebrew would be something like beheld. This is kind of a intensified scene. So they saw, they beheld God himself. And what they see, well, they saw under his feet, there was like this pavement of sapphire that was clear, as clear as the sky itself. Now we're told elsewhere, and I believe the first or second chapter of Ezekiel, that when Ezekiel saw this vision of God and of this man-like creature on the throne, that the throne was of sapphire. So this sapphire that we see here in Exodus 24, and that we see again in Ezekiel, this kind of is the picture of the divine throne. This is where God is at. Then we have this statement added, After this appearance, it says,

Yet he, that is God, yet God did not stretch out his hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel, and they ate and drank. So this whole scene is remarkable. First of all, it's remarkable because they see God. You got this strange kind of tension that goes on throughout the Old Testament because you have to say that no one can see God and live. and yet on the flip side of that you have several people not a ton but several people who are said to see god and one of the cases is here it's same with isaiah isaiah says that he's seen the lord the god of israel the god of host so what's going on here well i think the way that we can resolve this is that people do see God, but they don't see God in his full naked glory, if you will.

They see God in the way that God allows them to see himself, but in such a way that it won't destroy them. So they do see God, but they don't see the unveiled full glory of God, because if they did, that would destroy them. So God, as it were, veils himself in a way in order to make himself visible i guess what you might call safe so that's the first remarkable thing about this if they see god but uh the the other remarkable thing about this is that they eat and they drink in his presence she got this amazing kind of meal going on where they're halfway up the mountain you got these 70 elders moses aaron nadab and avihu so you got a you know a group of 74 people at least they're eating and they're drinking and they're seeing god while they're on this world

while they're on this mountain so you have a meal that's eaten in the very presence of god himself and that's a that's another great to what we were talking about in latin the last episode in which i went back over a few minutes ago and that is what that's what happens the lord's supper except uh in a more subdued way up a room there you have the god of israel he's not on a throne of sapphire he's in a body of flesh and blood just like ours so the people the disciples see the god of israel and they eat and they drink in in his midst eating what happened at sinai but really in an even greater way because this time they don't just eat bread and drink wine they actually consume the body and blood of the god who sits right there in in front of them yeah

god still um veils himself as they eat in his presence but in that case he veils himself in flesh and blood and then gives them that flesh and blood to eat and drink uh that is uh still happening still occurring still happening every sunday a lot of other days too that's right yeah but that's why you know that's why the lord's supper isn't just kind of a you know a footnote in the life of the church something yeah we should do that on occasion i guess the very heart this is the very center of the church's life because this is how god puts himself inside us in a physical tangible eatable drinkable sort of sort of way that's that's how if you've been listening to the episode the podcast for a while we've talked about this

many times that's how god works he he likes gifts by means of the stuff of creation the things that he made and pronounced good and very good that's what he puts his gifts inside bread and wine in this case so he puts himself his own body and blood into that bread and wine and then he puts it inside us so that we might have tangible expression of his grace for us and in christ Yeah. God is always veiling himself to us in order to save us. And this is seen no more explicitly than in the incarnation. And so we're given the veil of God to eat and drink that is God himself. it's pretty uh it's pretty incredible i mean he had to clothe himself in a way and to clothe himself in humanity in order to save humanity and then gives humanity that that clothing that he's wearing they gives it gives humanity that that his own his own humanness to eat and drink

uh it's all and it's all done for the same reason the same reason he gives it to eat and drink is the same reason he took it out in the first place so that's for your salvation pretty rad stuff man it is that is i mean that's part of the mystery of the incarnation that it is that it is the the ultimate veiling of god time it's the ultimate unveiling of him as well because you know it's uh we have no god apart from christ uh but we we we see the fullness of fullness of divinity in the physical body of christ and there's that one scene where the disciples are saying you know show us the father that will be enough for us and jesus is if i have not been with you all this time you know you don't know who i am right uh he who has seen me who has

seen the father i don't know anything about god then the only way to go there is is christ because he is the full revelation of of who god is what god wants us to know about himself is is in christ period but that's the mystery of the incarnation is that it's availing and unveiling all at once uh availing of of the fullness of the glory of god and an unveiling of the full grace of god and in christ yeah yeah i mean the the bible sometimes you look at it and you're trying to figure out god you read it and you're like what is this God like and there's lots

of things said about God in the Old Testament there's lots of things said about God in the epistles and some of them are tough to understand, I mean even Peter says that some of the things that Paul says are difficult to understand

you can start to try to figure out the eternal decrees of God and election and how sovereignty and human responsibility work and all of this stuff. Why does God do this? Why is God like that? Why does he say this and then say that?

These two things don't seem to match up. But ultimately, and that's all fine, but God is best and most revealed in the Gospels. If you want to know what God is like, then you look at the life of Christ. You look at the life, death, resurrection of Christ. That's where God is most clearly revealed to us. And if you're going to look at any of these other things, look at them through the lens of what Christ has done, the things that Christ did, the things that Christ said,

then you know that you're not misinterpreting them. because because christ is pretty clear uh jesus is not not hard to understand he's a man like you are and like i am and he's also god so um you can you can get if you start there you start with christ i think that you uh you are less likely to try to peer behind the curtain and make some mistakes about god yeah i suspect that every every misconception about god every misinterpretation who he is begins by thinking of him apart from jesus to take jesus and set him aside and look at god uh in some other way apart from that's that's that's the beginning of every every misconception every false teaching every confusion about god is trying to see him

know his will for us apart from the work of work of christ amen amen all right so uh we have this meal moving on now it says that there's a there's a transition after the meal god tells moses out of the rest of the plan so everything's going to change a little bit here at least for the next 40 days uh god says to moses he says come up to me on the mountain and remain there and i'll give you the stone tablets with the law and the commandment which i have written for their instruction i'm going to go up to the mountain but he's not going to go by himself he's going to take along joshua who is his uh his servant joshua is already being prepared groomed for leadership way in the future but already here joshua is is the sidekick of

moses and will become the leader after the death of moses so joshua goes up with moses onto the mountain. And then to the elders, those 70 guys, he says, now you wait here at the bottom of the mountain until we return. He says, you've got Aaron and you've got her. Aaron and her are with you. So if anything comes up, if there's a legal dispute, then talk to those guys. They're the ones in charge. Met her at one of the story earlier in Exodus after they crossed the Red Sea and before They got to Mount Sinai when they were attacked by the Amalekites. Aaron and Hur were the guys on either side of Moses kind of holding up his hands when his arms got exhausted from being raised up. So we don't know who Hur is other than the fact that there's a tradition that he was the husband of Miriam,

so the brother-in-law of Moses and Aaron. But anyway, Hur and Aaron, they're in charge while Moses and Joshua are up on the mountain. So Moses goes up the mountain. A cloud covers the mountain. Glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai. And the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day, God called Moses from the midst. And you got all the sons of Israel watching this.

And it says the appearance of this glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the mountaintop. So you just kind of got to picture this. You know, you got kind of a mixture of cloud and fire, all enveloping the top of the mountain. And Moses walks into that, into the cloud, goes up the mountain, and it says he was on the mountain and 40 nights. So that kind of sets the scene for what's about to happen next. One thing I do want to point out before we jump into chapter 25 is a significant Hebrew verb that I kind of skimmed over. In verse 16, the Lord rested on Mount Sinai. That's my translation, the translation I'm reading.

The Hebrew there is shakan, which is the verb I think better translated as dwelt, or even if you want to translate it more literally, tabernacle. that is the verbal form of uh the word that is often translated as as tabernacled so the glory of the lord is resting tenting on mount sinai the reason that's important the reason i point that out is because at at this point anyway it's going to change in a minute but at this point mount sinai really is kind of the the pre-tabernacle if you will i think we have talked about this before if you if you kind of picture the foot of the mountain as the the court of the tabernacle and then kind of the first half of the mountain is like the holy place where only so many people can go like the elders and the and nateb and abihu and aaron and aaron and uh and moses they

went up that far but then the top of the mountain is like the holy of holies there so he's sort of like the high priest and you notice that the cloud the glory of the lord is on top of the mountain well that's the same glory that's going to enter into the holy of holies at the end of exodus the lord is at the top of the mountain the top of the mountain is like the the most holy place the holy of holies the rest of the mountain is like the holy place and the foot of the mountain at this point is like the court where the people can be so it's kind of giving us an image already of what's going to what's going to happen with the tabernacle once it's built but at this point sinai that's where god is that's where god speaks that's where god is going to is going to rest for

the next 40 days there's gonna be a lot of times i mean um where so yeah that that word um so rested or dwelled right it's it's very similar to uh what john says right where he says uh the word was made flesh and dwelt among us and uh many people will translate that and say the word was made flesh and tabernacled uh among us uh the and obviously we're talking about greek and hebrew here but the uh i wonder maybe you know this uh if you if the if you had like a hebrew copy of the letter of john would that be the word that they're using there yeah that would be the that would be the word that they would use i suspect uh actually i should because i have a hebrew new testament and it would be interesting to see how they actually

translated john 114 whether they used uh shakhan there to translate it or maybe something maybe something that was uh the equivalent of that but that is in greek that is the word for for tented for for tabernacle yeah so john 1 14 is actually we'll refer to it quite a bit vernacular because it is really the uh the linchpin that joins together a lot of what we're talking about exodus with the incarnation because everything that we're going to be talking talking about is a preparation for the incarnation that's one way to look at the tabernacle the tabernacle as a structure it's in its in its design the tabernacle in all of its particulars including the furniture and the various divisions within the tabernacle

and then also the the altar the sacrifices the priest all of this is one great picture both as a whole and in its individual parts of the person and work of christ so one of the things we'll be discussing uh with all of the various parts of these these next few chapters is how they all are messianic in character how in in many and various ways the tabernacle and everything connected with it is a uh is a foreshadowing and the in the work of christ right yeah so like all of this and next to this here and is uh just foreshadowing what john then will write uh as hey the word was made flesh and tabernacled among us yeah it's all just it's all just point for that yeah i thought it was like in one verse john sums up the whole meaning of the latter

half of exodus hey you know all that stuff you read about in exodus 25 through 40 yeah that just means the word was made flesh and tabernacle among us that's it all right so um let me kind of give you the big picture here is what we're what we're going to be looking at because this is uh from this point really through the end of the book so the the structure is basically a three-fold structure from here on out we're about to start chapter 25 25 through 31 basically tell us it is basically god telling moses this build the tabernacle and everything in it so these are the instructions on how everything is supposed to look everything down through to materials and dimensions and placement and ingredients i mean this is this is very

detailed and don't worry we're not going to get bogged down in details if you're if you're concerned about that we'll just kind of summarize as we go through but that's 25 through 31 god says build it like this and then 32 through 34 where you have the the whole debacle of the golden calf so that's when everything goes south that takes place while moses is up on the mountain this crazy juxtaposition you have all this divine detailed elaborate instructions going on on top of the mountain While at the bottom of the mountain, you have chaos erupting as the people demand that Moses build the golden calf and he acquiesces. And then you have that whole mess of results from that. So that's 32 through 34.

That'll be fun to talk about. To the end, 35 to 40 is amazingly a repetition, not exact repetition, but a basic repetition of 25 to 31. So if 25 through 31 is here's how you're supposed to build everything, then 35 through 40 says, hey, here's how we built everything. 35 through 40 is like this very, very long amen that says, yes, that's right. We were supposed to build it that way. And by God, we did. and that might seem strange to us uh why spend so much time so many details about this i mean if we were to write exodus we probably would summarize everything in maybe one or two chapters but this goes on and on and on i think that's the first good question to ask why why is there so

much detail put put into this and this is one of the this is one of the things that that where bible readers get bogged down you know you're reading along and genesis is pretty interesting and you get to you know in exodus and things are still you know pretty interesting then all of a sudden you get to chapter 25 a lot of people uh start losing interest because they just don't understand why there would be such a focus upon all this minutiae and i hope that we'll be able to answer answer some of those questions as we go through just as kind of a uh to whet your appetite to give you a little bit of an explanation, I think there's a couple of things to keep in mind as to the answer of why, why there's so much detail. And one of those, one of those is this,

that divine worship isn't simply a matter of people inventing the way things should be, but rather divine worship is always conducted in a way that God himself wants it to be conducted. In other words, we don't simply get to decide how we should worship God. Instead, God comes and says, look, this is how I want to be worshipped. This is who I am. This is how I give my gifts. This is the blessing that I give. And this is kind of the shape of everything that is going to happen.

One of the things that we see over and over in the life of Israel and in the life of the church is that people think that basically as long as they call it worship God in any way that they see fit. Now, with the Israelites, this happens already in the golden calf episode, which we'll get to in chapter 32. The golden calf, and I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but to just kind of give you a little preview here. The calf that was constructed was not designed to be kind of flagrant idolatry. The calf was meant to be a symbol of Yahweh. The only problem was God had never said he wanted to be pictured as a calf. In fact, quite the opposite. He didn't want any image of himself or some image claiming to be him constructed.

So the Israelites, by kind of doing things however they wanted to do it, by kind of coming up with their own worship of God. So that's one of the things to keep in mind, is that who God is and how God comes to us is always something that God himself designs and gives to us. And another thing to keep in mind about why this is so detailed is because everything that Moses was to make was actually built upon a pattern. And you see this, it's repeated over and over in these chapters that are coming up. Everything that Moses is to make, he is to make according to the pattern that was shown him on the mountain. And I think anyway, there's some who disagree with this. I think that what's going on here is that Moses is not only given the words, but he's also given kind of an image of a heavenly tabernacle. So the earthly tabernacle is a reflection of the heavenly tabernacle.

So you kind of got what's going on in heaven reflected on earth. Thing on earth is intended to be a reflection of what is above. And so the details, the details matter. And then just kind of one more thing, which we've already which we've already alluded to. And that is the reason these details matter is because everything in here, the major part to this are a portrayal of the work of Christ. And so these details altogether give us a picture that's going to be filled out in color when when the incarnation happens. so that's that's some uh some thoughts as to why why there's so much detail and hopefully as we go along that uh some of this will become a little bit clearer to you yeah yeah so let's jump in

let's do it man we got a few minutes left so here's how the chapter starts out it's kind of a kind of introductory section these first uh nine verses so god got we're on the mountain moses is by himself and here's what god says he says tell the sons of israel first of all they need to raise a contribution it's from every man whose heart moves him you shall raise my contribution so one of the first things that they have to do which kind of makes sense you know if you're going to build something well you got to have building materials right so the first thing you have to do is they have to gather everything that's needed to build the tabernacle and there's a lot of stuff and he has a list here so we're going to need uh gold silver bronze so you got

these these three metals and decreasing of of preciousness of value and then you have blue purple scarlet material which will be used in fashioning the tent as well as uh the kind of the boundary around the the tabernacle courts and then you can find linen also going to be used a passion part to the tent and then we have a little bit of trouble with translation here but rams skin dyed red and porpoise skins another we really don't know what this animal is i've read commentaries to say it's uh multiple animals but some kind of animal skins my translation new american standard has porpoise skins acacia wood acacia wood will be used as kind of the framework for the for the tabernacle thing so far listed the metals the uh the cloth

the thread the skins all that's going to be used uh for the the tent as well as some of the furnishings but then you also need oil this would be olive oil oil for for the lamp for the anointing oil and the fragrant incense and you need onyx stones and setting stones for the ethot and the recipes which we'll get to later so that's kind of the the a rough sketch of the materials that they're going to need this is the uh this is where god institutes the love offering yeah that's right this is the this is the love offering we're gonna except in this case they're not going to pass around a plate be more like a wheelbarrow you know go around and collect everything that they that they need that that's the first seven verses then we have a couple of verses that we'll probably

wrap up with just for the sake of time we'll see we might get past them but two very significant verses let me read them to you first this is eight and nine construct a sanctuary for me that i may dwell among them according to all that i'm going to show you as the pattern of the tabernacle its furniture just so you shall construct it there's a couple of it's a couple hebrew words first of all that i want to point out to you here that i think are are significant they're they're translated various ways so let me go over go over the one we've already encountered so he says first of all let them construct a sanctuary for me the hebrew here is a mcdosh it's from it's the it's it's a noun from the verb meaning to make holy so a sanctuary

is a sanctified place that is a holy place a holy space and this is for god now a couple of times uh situations where we talked about holy space i mean in the bible you've got lots of things that are called holy you got holy people that's what we call saints saint just means holy people you got holy uh holy things but you also have a holy holy time and holy space so the first holy time mentioned is the saint is the sabbath the holy day but here you have also holy holy space now i gotta say i gotta say up front that um it is so important i can't stress this enough It's so important to understand that holy has absolutely nothing to do with morality. And this just drives home that point.

Holy time has nothing to do with morality. Holy space has nothing to do with morality. Holy people have nothing to do with morality. All of these holy things are holy, not because they have, They possess some sort of great ethic, some sort of superior morality or anything like that. Any if a thing, if a time, if the space is holy, it's holy because God has claimed it as his own and he has shared potential intrinsic holiness with it. So that's the difference between God and everything else. It's holy. Only God is essentially, eternally, intrinsically holy.

He alone is is holy. That means that anything else that's called holy doesn't matter if it's a person, a day, a space, a thing is holy only because God has placed some of his holiness or put some of his holiness into it. So holiness is never an achievement. Holiness is always a gift. It's a gift that God bestows upon things and space and time. So that's what this sanctuary is going to be. That's what this tabernacle is going to be. It's a holy place, not because the materials are holy, not because the people that build it are holy. It's a holy place because God— Well, when God makes something holy, too, he always sort of sets it apart, right? So he takes a day and then sets it apart from the rest and makes it holy, calls it holy.

He takes a space, sets it apart, and says it's holy. I mean, for the church, he calls out a people and sets them apart and makes them holy. That's what it is. So it ends up, even if he's using, in this case, to build it, you know, people to do it, holiness is the work of God. Being sanctified is the work of God. Things are sanctified, things are holy Things are set apart because he says they are It's that simple

Yeah, that's right It's that simple The problem that we have Is at least in American Christianity And I suspect This is just confined to American Christianity That we tend to think of

Holiness as something that is up to us Right We are to be the ones who who generate this holiness by conforming to a certain pattern of pattern of behavior to be holy he's simply telling us to be who he's already made us to be so this is just this is just nothing more than both in word and deed of what he has already made to be true so there is no self-sanctification there is no self-generated holiness gift from god yeah the trap we fall into is that we think that uh yesterday i was 49 holy and today if i try real hard i can be 50

holy right and then we're and we're just uh we're just gonna make ourselves like you you're either holy or you're not like there is no there is no like well i'm gonna be a little bit like i'm gonna have i'm gonna have i'm gonna move to a greater degree of holiness i'm gonna be more holy than the day before percentage wise and I do that by you know doing these good things and abstaining from these bad things and

my holiness meter goes up a little bit when I do that no that's not how that's not how it works it's either holy or it's not that's the gold gems version of sanctification it is and when God says be holy as I

am holy or be holy as your father in heaven is holy or be perfect as i am perfect which is what that is uh it lets you know that it's an all or nothing kind of proposition there's like there's no either either you're completely holy or you're not holy at all i mean so be holy as i am holy is be perfect as i am perfect and you're either made perfect or you're not because uh there is no like i'm pretty perfect that's not how i got 50 perfect yeah that's not the way it works and in christ that's and in christ that's what we are uh the holy one of god and so if you are when you're in christ then you are as he is so you

are perfect you are holy you are uh just the way the father wants you to be because you are you're inside the tabernacle incarnate you're in the the one who is the holy of holies himself and uh that's uh i think that's gonna have to wrap up our time i'm about to say it but i think we've got to end it in the middle of a thought, but it's a good thought to end on. Yeah, that's good. We're out of 40 minutes.

Yeah, we will, we will, we will pick it back up and talk more about the tabernacle next week. Chad, thanks for hanging out, man. You bet,

man. See you next week. Thank you.