A Risen Savior

The first week in a new series arise.

We're going to see this morning that the foundation for what we're doing, not only the next five weeks, but Lord willing, every week thereafter, is based on the certainty that our Savior is risen.

He arose from the dead, and he is our life, and he's our rock.

The Apostle Paul reminded the church at Corinth this the Corinthians were struggling.

They had been influenced by Hellenistic thinking.

They had been influenced by dualism, Gnosticism.

They were wondering if, in fact, they could put all their hope and trust in their own resurrection one day, their own bodily resurrection, which would be based on the actual resurrection of Jesus.

Did Jesus Christ actually arise from the dead?

For many of us who have been in church for years, I find myself sometimes taking that for granted.

Well, of course he did.

But what if he didn't?

You know, no other world leader did.

What if Jesus actually was not raised from the dead?

Listen to the Apostle Paul speak to that.

Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain.

We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if it is true that the dead are not raised.

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.

Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

This is the reading of God's holy, infallible, and inspired word.

And so we pray that the Holy Spirit would cause the seed that is spread this morning to take root in each of our hearts and to bear fruit.

So pray with me, please.

Father, we thank you that for all the if clauses in this passage that I just read, because all of the if clauses, the conditional clauses have been fulfilled, are true.

Our faith is not in vain.

My preaching is not in vain.

God because your son is alive, everything is different.

May we understand and appreciate that even more as we look into your word this morning in the presence of Christ.

In his name we pray, amen.

Arise.

The word, a simple but powerful action word.

Arise.

Get up.

It assumes that one has been in a sitting posture or laying down.

Arise.

Stand up.

Get up.

Move.

And that's what happened to Jesus in the grave.

Three days in the grave after his crucifixion, Jesus got up.

And because he got up and he arose, and we serve a risen Savior, we will not ever, ever be dead spiritually again.

Paul says to the Corinthians, and by the way, this is going to be a little bit different kind of a sermon.

We're going to start in Corinthians, but we're going to spend most of our time in the passage that Tom and Amanda read in Exodus.

Paul says, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, we will not ever rise from the dead physically.

If we're not raised spiritually, we will never be raised physically.

And if that's true, if Jesus was not raised from the dead, nobody that you've ever loved, no one who's preceded you in death has gone to heaven, and you will not see your loved ones again.

And you will not see Jesus again.

Think about that.

He says, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, our preaching is in vain, your faith is in vain, we are still in our sins.

And those who have died, we would just have to agree with all of our non-Christian friends that when you die, you die, and that's it.

You just kind of somehow morph into the universe as some particle.

If Jesus Christ is not raised, those who have died have no hope.

And we are of all men most to be pitied.

It is because Jesus did arise.

He is alive, and his divine presence is with us, and he's leading us today, but he could not lead us if he was not alive.

Because he was alive, because he was raised from the dead, he met with his disciples before he went back to heaven, ascended to heaven on the day of ascension, and he gathered his disciples together, and this is how Matthew records it in what we call the Great Commission.

He gathered his disciples together and he said, This is my mission for you, and this is my mission for my people from all time.

Go and make disciples in Alexandria, Virginia, in Washington, D.C.

Throughout the United States, in the world all over, as we have been doing as a church for many years and a few decades.

We have been partnering with the gospel in places like Japan for many years.

In Africa, in Australia, in Spain, Central Europe.

We have been partnering with other believers in Christ because Jesus said, Go and make disciples.

But do you remember what he said at the end of that Great Commission?

And lo, I am with you always.

Wherever you go, in the name of Christ, with the life of Christ, wherever you go, I am going to go with you.

If the mission, if the mission is my mission, and the people are my people, you will never go alone.

Even in the Old Testament, God was with His people, leading His people, if they would follow Him, if they would seek Him.

And so we're back to that text in Exodus chapter 33.

Exodus 33 · chapter mention

We're back to that great text.

You see, the Lord was doing that even centuries before, millennia before, God was doing that.

Even before Jesus came to earth, even before Jesus tabernacled among us.

He showed up in the Old Testament.

The preincarnate Christ showed up in ways that he was with his people and leading his people.

God told Moses, Moses, and picture where Moses was.

He was in the desert with probably two to three million people.

Israelites that have been liberated from Egypt after 400 years in slavery.

And they're in the desert.

And the people with him are acting out.

They're complaining a lot.

They're grumbling a lot.

It seemed like too many times they were more aware of what they thought they didn't have than what they did have or who they had.

And it wasn't easy.

There were days where they had no water.

There were days where they had no food.

But God showed up and said, I will give you water and I will give you food, but I want to see what's in your hearts, as Mike Powell preached last week.

He wants to see what's in our hearts.

He said, My presence will go with you and I will give you rest.

And Moses, think about it, Moses didn't have near the revelation that we have.

But here's the key: he had enough.

He had enough revelation to follow where God led, and so do you.

And so do I.

And we have we have the canon completed, the Bible completed.

All because one day Jesus would arise, Moses could follow the Lord.

We look back and say, because Jesus did arise, we can follow the Lord with even more promises to claim.

With even more.

This morning we're going to look at three points briefly.

First of all, a challenging journey.

We have a challenging journey before us at APC.

We believe that God wants to take his places that we've never gone quite in the same way.

We've had to move a few times, and it's been challenging.

And we've had days of prayer and fasting before, ever since I can remember here.

But it's a challenging journey ahead.

I don't know the last time.

I don't know the last time that a church building was built in Alexandria, Virginia.

It's been a long time, as far as I could tell.

From the ground up.

A challenging journey before us, but it's not our first journey.

And as I as a pastor, I look back and I see how God has grown this congregation through the journeys before us.

I see what God has done through and in our journey.

I'm reminded what we started off with, the first thing I can remember in this church.

We committed to God that we would be people of faith and that we would live by faith and we would attempt something so great for God that if He was not in it, it would be doomed to fail.

We have sought to live by that motto ever since.

And it's not easy.

As I have said before, we're not going to be a church that sits and hugs the trunk of the tree.

We're not going to live to play it safe.

By God's grace, we're going to be out on the limb.

But we're going to need God to hold us up.

And God has never dropped us.

God has been taking his people on journeys for a long time.

God has been taking his people on journeys since way, way, way back before you or I was ever born.

He took his Israelites out of the land of Egypt, out of a house of slavery.

And as I said earlier, it was not an easy trip for anybody.

The people were constantly, it seems, rebelling and complaining.

We can't do this.

They didn't trust God.

Why?

As we read in the Old Testament, time after time, their eyes were on the obstacles.

Their eyes were on the giants, and there were giants.

And you read your Old Testament, they were giants.

And there were walled cities.

Well fortified cities.

And it wasn't like the Israelites were the Green Beret or the Special Ops.

They weren't really warriors.

They hadn't been trained in warfare.

They didn't go to the war college.

And just too often, their eyes were on what was hard and the obstacles.

And they said, God, we can't do this.

And he said, Yes, you can.

If you live by faith and you keep your eyes on me, yes, you can.

It got to the point where God got so upset with them because of their lack of belief.

It got to the point where God said, as we pick up before the passage that was printed in your text, it's a fascinating text.

It's a fascinating part of God's word.

One of my favorite parts in the Bible, Exodus 32, 33, 34, we see so much going on, so much applicable to today.

It got to the point where God said, I'm not going to go with you.

I'm checking out.

I am not going to go with you.

I'm tired of your complaining.

I'm tired of your unbelief.

I am not going with you.

Because if I did go with you, I would probably strike you dead.

And I don't think you want that.

Seriously, this is what happened.

When the Lord said, I'm not going with you, we read in chapter 33, verse 5.

The people finally started to get the message.

And what did they do?

They stripped themselves of their ornaments.

Now remember, they came out of Egypt having plundered the Egyptians because God told them to.

God softened the hearts of the Egyptians.

And so before they left on the Exodus, God was so working in the hearts of the Egyptians, striking them with fear because of the Israelites.

And it wasn't really because of the Israelites, they'd already seen the God of the Israelites.

That's what struck the fear into their hearts.

And so God said to the Israelites, Go and plunder the Egyptians.

And do you know what happened?

When they went to their Egyptian neighbors and they said, Oh, by the way, what do you have?

Let me have it.

All right, is this crazy?

Give me your gold, give me your jewelry.

Give me your prized possessions.

And they actually did.

That's how the Israelites got their supplies.

That's how the Israelites got their wealth to make it the next 40 years.

That's where all the supplies for the tabernacle came from.

Where do you think they got that?

I mean, the manic came from heaven, but did you think that all that gold and silver came from heaven?

No.

It came through the Egyptians.

Because they knew that God was with these people, the Egyptians did.

And so when they went knocking on the door of the Egyptian neighbor, the Egyptian neighbor said, What do you need?

What do you need?

Here.

They started taking off their earrings.

Here's what I have.

Take it.

That's what God used to furnish, to supply them for the next 40 years and beyond.

They stripped themselves of their ornaments.

That's an interesting phrase.

What does that mean?

They repented.

I suspect they repented like they had never repented.

Because they knew that God was angry with them for rightful cause.

They repented.

They stopped looking at what they had.

They seemed to be more aware of their jewelry.

They seemed to be more aware of their possessions than what was really going on in their hearts.

And what God was saying, in effect, was I can't work with you.

I cannot work with you as long as you're more aware of what you're wearing.

As long as you're more aware of your jewelry, as long as you're more aware of your material possessions, as you're looking to them, I can't work with you.

And I can't go with you.

It was still up for grabs.

Moses still did not know at this point if God would go with them.

They were scared.

But they also started to get humbled like they had never been humbled.

They took off their ornaments and they got on their knees and they repented.

Moses, meanwhile, goes into a tent, not the tabernacle.

The tabernacle had not been built yet.

It's a little bit confusing, I know, because it says the tent of meeting, but it was not the tabernacle, it was his own private headquarters to meet with God.

And when he would go into that tent, the glory of the cloud of God would come down.

And the Israelites would see that when Moses, they would actually, the Bible tells us this.

When Moses would start making his way to the tent of meeting where he would meet with God, the cloud would come down and fall over that tent, and the people would stand up and watch him go because they knew he was meeting with God.

What a sight that would have been.

So God said to the Israelites, look into your own heart.

And after they looked and they saw what they were really serving and worshiping, they repented.

Not just of their materialism, which was a big thing to repent of.

I think whatever was in their hearts, they repented of.

Discontent.

Jealousy.

Unbelief.

Pride.

Listen to me.

Don't you dare take this journey with your ornaments still on.

I better not take this journey with my ornaments still on.

I better search my heart and ask God to show me what's in my heart.

Don't take the journey loaded down with your ornaments.

Journeys have a way of showing us what's in our hearts.

This is about keeping the main thing the main thing.

It really is.

It has been from the beginning and it will be.

Moses is inside the tent, meeting with God, negotiating.

He's negotiating with God.

And he said, God, please.

You must go with your people.

Second point, a promised presence.

God says to Moses, My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.

The Hebrew word for presence means literally, it means face.

In the Hebrew, it's the word panim.

My face will go with you.

Does that sound like good news?

God's relented.

Because he had said, he said, I will send an angel before you.

I'm not going to go, but I'll send an angel.

Moses said, No, that's not enough.

We need you to go with us.

Now listen carefully to this.

He said to Moses, My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.

But they were not in the clear.

Do you know why?

In the Hebrew, it was in the singular.

What God was telling Moses, I will go with you, Moses, but I'm not going to go with them.

He said to Moses, you read in the text, he says, Moses is a man I know as a friend to friend.

I know Moses.

I know what's in Moses' hearts, and because I know what's in the hearts of the people, I'll go with you, but I won't go with them.

What did Moses say in response?

No, Lord.

No.

Would you have taken that deal?

I'm serious.

With all the grief he had to put up with from the people.

I'll wipe them out, but I'll go with you.

And I'll start another nation from you.

That would have been a tempting deal.

What did Moses say?

No.

He would go with Moses, but not with the people.

So Moses pleaded with God, and his plead on his knees, no doubt, was God, if you don't go with us, I'm not going.

God, if you don't go with us, there's no good reason to go into this promised land.

What else will distinguish us from the other nations if you don't go with us?

The word face, panim, occurs seven times in the text.

The face of God.

Why?

What's behind that word, that concept?

The face of God.

Relational presence, relational intimacy.

When you're with your loved ones, whether it's your spouse or your children or a good friend, when you're with your loved ones, it's their you want their face, right?

You don't want their back.

You don't want a relationship with them that's distant.

You know, I can barely see you guys in the back.

But boy, I can see you people up front.

You just see the eyes.

It's the relational intimacy that God said he offers his people.

But you've got to deal with the stuff in your heart first.

You've got to look in your heart and you've got to deal with the stuff in your heart first.

And they took off their ornaments.

A journal on renewal that I first started reading almost 30 years ago, I still go back to and refer to.

Some of the articles are just so powerful to remind me of what I should want in my heart.

One of the articles talked one day about this imagery, a potter's house.

The man said, I looked at a large box full of soft pieces of broken clay, mere scraps from the potter's wheel.

I asked him what he did with those scraps and whether he threw them away.

And this is what he said.

Indeed, I do not throw away the scraps.

They're too valuable.

As long as they can be softened, no broken pieces will ever be thrown away.

As long as they can be softened, I don't throw them away.

I can use them.

God's promised presence.

But it requires us searching our hearts.

It requires your senior pastor searching his heart.

It requires the whole pastoral staff.

It requires the elders and the deacons.

It requires every member of this church to search our hearts and see if there are ornaments that we need to strip off where we're not really being honest with God about what's in our hearts.

That sets us up for this promised presence.

If we take this arise journey and don't draw closer to God's face, we might as well stay home.

And I mean that.

Why would we go?

If God's presence doesn't go with us.

Friends, when we get God's presence, we get rest.

My presence will go with you, and I will give you what?

Rest.

Don't you want more rest in your heart, in your life?

Shalom.

Don't you want to be able to say more and more, no matter what lies ahead of me, if I know he's with me, if I know that I can see his face and have his relational presence in my life, it's going to be okay.

Whatever comes our way.

One of my favorite stories I've shared before, some of you know it.

The conversion of Blaise Pascal.

He wasn't following the Lord.

He was trying to find his peace through scholarship and other things.

God had to break him.

He lost both of his parents, which was very painful to him.

He thought he was going to inherit a lot of money.

He didn't.

He found himself alone, feeling abandoned, without a lot of material wealth.

And on November 23rd, in 1654, when Pascal was home alone, the sun was set and all was dark.

As he was preparing to go to bed, suddenly about 10.30 p.m.

that night, something supernatural happened.

He took out a pen and he wrote it down.

He called it fire.

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, none of the philosophers.

Certitude, feeling, joy, peace, God of Jesus Christ, my God and your God, your God, be my God.

Forgetfulness of the world and of everything except God.

He is only found by the ways taught in the gospel.

Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.

Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy that night on Blaise Pascal.

I have departed from him.

They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.

My God, will you leave me?

Let me not be separated from him forever.

This is eternal life that they may know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent.

And he said it three times.

Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

I left him.

I fled him, renounced, crucified.

Let him never be separated.

Let me never be separated from him.

He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the gospel.

Renunciation total and sweet.

Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.

Eternally enjoy for a day's exercise on the earth.

May I not forget your words.

Amen.

And his life was changed dramatically from that day on.

And the Holy Spirit brought fire into his heart and the gospel into his mind like never before.

That's what it looks like to have a promised presence.

Alexandria, Virginia, Washington, D.C.

doesn't need to see us.

When we move to West Braddock Road, they don't need to see us.

They need to see the Almighty God in us.

What else would distinguish us from the nations of the world but God's presence with us?

They need to see us.

They need to see God working in our midst, bringing people to Himself, revealing His glory and His grace.

And so I ask once again, is the gospel going deeper in your life?

Are you finding a growing joy because of the work of the Holy Spirit, taking the things of Christ and applying them to your heart in the midst of maybe challenge and trial?

Are you taking off your ornaments in new ways?

Which brings me to my last point.

What we need is a perfect mediator.

Moses was a good mediator, but he was not the perfect mediator.

God said to Moses, I'm pleased with you, and I know you by name.

I'll go with you.

And then Moses, what does he do?

He gets into a supernatural divine wrestling match with God.

He's interceding.

He's going to the mat.

It's like Pastor Josh preached a few weeks ago.

Who was it?

Thomas Goodwin, the Puritan, I think, that said, when it comes to God in your prayer life, claim the promises of God.

And this is bold language he used, sue him.

Does that sound blasphemous?

Not properly understood.

Sue God for what he promises to give.

If you go to him, he will give it.

If he does not give you what you need when you go to him, and sometimes going means taking off your ornaments.

If he does not give you what you need, when you need it, and you go to him, sue him.

Take him to court.

Wow.

Moses was a mediator.

God agreed to go with Moses in Israel because of Moses' intercession.

He said, God, you must go with us, not just me.

God relented and said, I will go with you all.

Moses said, You must show me your ways.

God said, I will show you my ways.

Moses is still not done negotiating.

At the end of that text, he says, God, I need to see more of your glory.

If you're not going to show me more of your glory, I can't go.

How would I know?

And God said, I will show you my glory.

Only the hind quarters, only the very back, I'm going to have to cover you in a rock.

I'm going to have to protect you from my glory, because if you saw all my glory, you would die on the spot.

Augustine said, No one living in this life can see him fully as he is.

Moses was protected by God from God.

But Moses is interceding.

Seven times in this text we see this verb used.

See.

Moses, it's obscured a little bit in the English.

See?

Moses is coming to God and saying, see, you told me this.

See, these are the promises.

See, you said you would meet me.

See?

See, God?

He's taking, he's taking God at his word.

Do you do that when you pray?

How do you pray?

When you pray, are you appealing to your goodness?

Are you appealing to the way you're living?

Are you saying, look at what I've done, God?

Or do you find that you just can't pray because you get in despair and you just know that you're not, you think you're not doing well.

I can't pray.

Look at my life.

I can't pray.

If you say you can't pray because you're looking at your life, you're looking at yourself and you're not looking at Jesus.

Nowhere are we ever commanded to look at ourselves why God is going to answer our prayers.

Moses said, look to the mediator.

Lord, you tell me to lead these people, but you haven't told me whom you will send with me.

God, you said, if you know me by name.

You say, I have found favor with you.

Show me your ways.

Moses is not going to settle.

And Moses was learning how to pray in a different way.

Are you learning how to pray in a different way?

He wouldn't settle.

First, he prayed God would not destroy his people when God said okay.

Then he prayed that God would go with him.

God said okay.

Then he prayed that he could see God's glory, and God said, okay.

Moses was a very good mediator, but Moses was not the perfect mediator.

But Moses was a good mediator because he knew one day God would send the perfect mediator, his son Jesus Christ.

Romans chapter 1, verse 4, we're going full circle this morning.

Romans 1:4

Romans chapter 1, verse 4.

Romans 1:4

Jesus was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.

That is bold language.

He was declared by the Father to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.

If he did not arise, there's no bargaining, there's no negotiating, there's no praying, there's no going out with his presence.

Let the resurrection of Christ bring new meaning to your heart and mind this morning.

The resurrection proved that God accepted his son's sacrifice.

Because God listened to his son, he listens to us.

Not just Moses, better than Moses.

Because Jesus is alive and present with us as we seek him, he will lead us, he will go with us, and he will reveal his glory, and we will be distinct from the nations because Jesus arose.

Because this is true.

My prayer is that this morning, perhaps, we will leave the sanctuary weighing a little bit less.

Because the Holy Spirit is showing us in our hearts what's getting in the way, and we're going to take off our ornaments.

You don't take off your ornaments when you get home Wednesday night.

You take your ornaments off when you worship.

If the Holy Spirit is speaking into your heart this morning, you the Holy Spirit is showing you right now, you need to take that off.

You need to strip that off.

I don't know what the Holy Spirit is showing you.

I I have to be focused on what the Holy Spirit is showing me.

But you listen to the Holy Spirit.

And may we weigh less because of the things that we will remove from our hearts.

As we live in the presence of God and we see his face.

As you lead us, as you go with us, we pray in the name of your son.

Amen.