Exodus: God Is In The Details

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Let's pray together.

Lord, we say to you that you are good, and the thought of having a father that is good and is never gonna let us down.

Uh, that is an intoxicating reality in this world full of people who do not keep their word, who say one thing and do another, who throw us under the bus, who don't pay child support, who don't show up when it's time their weekend for visitation.

Uh in the midst of all of this uncertainty, you're a certain God that comes to us and says, I'm never ever gonna leave you nor forsake you.

I'm good.

I'm never gonna let you down.

That doesn't mean I'm always gonna do what you want me to do, what you expect me to do, what you might even need me to do.

Because your ways are higher than our ways, and your thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

So we don't relate to you like an 11-year-old who's set on getting their way.

We relate to you as sons and daughters who've been taken care of for a long time.

You have a great track record for uh with us.

So you've got nothing left to prove to us.

And so, Lord, uh we, as the old hymn says, uh o to prove him, or and or.

In other words, give us opportunities to demonstrate how faithful we know you to be over and over and over again.

Lord, as we open your word this morning, Holy Spirit illuminate, turn the light on.

Let us see things that are sometimes hard to see.

We're gonna read a passage of your word, Lord, that can sound just overwhelmingly verbose and like, are you kidding me?

And yet, in the midst of something that feels this dense, there's truths that are so available.

And so, Lord, put the cookies on the lowest shelf so even the little kids can get to them today.

We pray in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You can have a see.

If you got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to Exodus chapter 16.

Exodus 16 · chapter mention

Exodus chapter 16.

Exodus 16 · chapter mention

If you're a guest, we're going to the book of Exodus.

And we don't uh we don't do the typical thing at Grand Parker.

We don't do the, hey, I'm gonna talk about Father's Day today.

I'm gonna talk about seven ways to be a better father.

Uh, we don't do that on Mother's Day either.

And here's why, in case I don't know if Don said it or not, uh, we'll leave it up to you to celebrate your dad.

We want to worship our father this morning.

Does that make sense?

Uh and we don't dispare churches that do that.

If you've got a sermon about seven ways to be a better dad, give it to me.

I could probably use all seven of the pointers.

Amen?

Uh, Exodus 26.

And here's what I want to do.

I just want to lay my cards on the table.

I'm gonna read this entire chapter, and I want you to follow along so well that you become lost in the minutiae.

I want you to get so lost in the minutiae that you begin to ask, why?

Why is this even in the Bible?

Couldn't God put something more simple in the Bible?

And then I want you to get past what you're thinking and feeling and ask yourself, what is God saying?

Because the tabernacle, and that's what we're gonna talk about.

We're in the book of Exodus.

God gets these people out of slavery and they get on a journey.

He says, Listen, I set my affection upon you.

I don't want you to serve Pharaoh, I want you to worship me, I want you to know me, I want you to center your life around me.

And so they're on a journey because God wants them to center their life around Him.

He comes to tabernacle to dwell in the midst of them.

When the Bible says in John chapter 1 of Jesus, and the word became flesh and dwelt or tabernacled among us, it's the same word.

John 1 · chapter mention

And so I brought a picture uh uh to show you what we're talking about.

This is the tabernacle.

When we talk about the tabernacle, it's everything.

It's that white curtain fence around the outside.

It's that it's really that that multicolored box back there, it kind of rectangular, nothing ornate.

God doesn't need God doesn't need the buildings that the church has built for him these days.

Have you noticed that?

Uh and so it's real simple, very practical, very functional.

And so it's easy to get to this part, like this entire chapter, and read this and just kind of go, what?

But I want to say to you, the tabernacle was an earthly building that's designed to teach us some heavenly realities.

And so we'll we'll we'll bring that up later on, or you can leave it up now if you want or whatever.

But that's what we're talking about when we talk about the tabernacle.

So here's what I want to do.

I'm gonna read the whole chapter of Exodus 26.

And you're gonna be thinking, come on, please, dude, you're killing me.

And then I'm gonna come back and tell you, hey, this is what I want to talk to you today about finding God in the details.

It's easy to get to a they say the devil's in the details.

I say to you that God is in the details.

There's something that God tells us about Himself on every page of the Bible, and this chapter is no exception.

So let me begin reading Exodus chapter 26, verse 1.

Exodus 26:1

He says, Moreover, you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twine linen, and blue and purple and scarlet yarns, and you shall make them with cherubim skillfully woven into them.

The length of each curtain shall be twenty-eight cubits, and the breadth of each curtain four cubits, and the curtain shall be the same size.

All the curtains shall be the same size.

Five curtains shall be coupled to one another, and the other five curtains shall be coupled to one another, and you shall make loops of blue on the edge of the outermost curtain in the first set.

Likewise you shall make loops on the edge of the outermost curtain in the second set.

Fifty loops you shall make on one curtain, and fifty loops you shall make on the edge of the curtain that is in the second set.

The loops shall be opposite one another, and you shall make fifty clasps of gold, and couple the curtains one to the other with the clasp, so that the tabernacle may be a single hole.

You shall also make curtains of goat's hair for a tent over the tabernacle.

Eleven curtains shall you make.

The length of each curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the breadth of each curtain four cubits, and the eleven curtains shall be the same size.

You shall couple five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and the sixth curtain you shall make double over the front of the tent.

You shall make fifty loops on the edge of the curtain that is the outermost in one set, and fifty loops on the edge of the curtain that is the outermost on the second set.

You shall make fifty clasps of bronze, and put the clasp in the loops, and couple the tent together that it may be a single hole.

And the part of the remains of the curtains of the tent, the half curtain that remains, shall hang over the back of the tabernacle, and the extra that remains in the length of the curtains, the cubit on the one side, and the cubit on the other side, shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle on this side and that side to cover it.

And you shall make for the tent a covering of tanned ramskins, and a covering of goatskins on top.

You shall make upright frames for the tabernacle of a caia of wood.

Ten cubits shall be the length of a frame, and a cubit and a half of breadth of each frame.

There shall be ten tenons in each frame for fitting together.

So you shall do for all the frames of the tabernacle.

You shall make the frames for for the tabernacle, twenty frames for the south side, and forty bases of silver you shall make under the twenty frames, two bases under one frame for its two tenons, and two bases under the next frame for its two tenons, and the second side of the tabernacle on the north side, twenty frames, and their forty bases of silver, two bases under one frame, and two bases under the next frame.

And for the rear of the tabernacle westward, you shall make six frames, and you shall make the two frames for corners of the tabernacle in the rear.

They shall be separate beneath, but joined at the top at the first ring.

Thus shall it be with both of them.

They shall form the two corners, and there shall be eight frames with their bases of silver, sixteen bases, two bases under one frame, and two bases under another frame.

You shall make bars of achaea wood, five for the frames of the one side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the frames of the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the frames on the side of the tabernacle at the rear westward.

The middle bar, halfway up the frames, shall run from end to end.

You shall overlay the frames with gold, and shall make their rings of gold for holders for the bars, and you shall overlay the bars with gold, and then you shall erect their tabernacle according to the plan for it that you were shown on the mountain, and you shall make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twine linen.

It shall be made with cherubim, skillfully woven into it, and you shall hang it on four pillars of Achaia, overlaid with gold, with hooks of gold, on four bases of silver, and you shall hang the veil from the clasps, and bring the ark of the testimony in there within the veil, and the veil shall separate from the holy place from the most holy.

You shall put the mercy seat on the Ark of the Testimony in the Most Holy Place, and you shall set the table outside the veil, and the lampstand on the south side of the tabernacle, opposite the tabernacle, uh opposite the table, and you shall put the table on the north side.

You shall make a screen for the entrance of the tent, of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, embroidered with needlework, and you shall make for the screen five pillars of achaea wood and overlay them with gold, their hook shall be of gold, and you shall cast five bases of bronze for them.

I think I need a cup of coffee after that.

Now, this past week I spoke at a youth camp.

A guy comes up to me a couple days in and he says, Hey, uh, what are you preaching on on Sunday?

I watched your podcast, and I said, Well, I'm preaching, uh, we're talking about the tabernacle.

And he said, Well, where are you?

I said, We're gonna meet Exodus 26, and he said to me, What are you gonna do with the tabernacle?

And I said, That's not the right question.

The question to ask is, What is the tabernacle gonna do with us?

He goes, What do you mean?

And I said, It's one of those chapters in the Bible.

I say, see, we're used to opening up the Bible and we read the Bible like our high school yearbook.

We open it up and look for our picture.

And sometimes if you're looking for your picture and what's immediately available to you, it's not gonna be what you needed it to be.

And so you're gonna close it and kind of go on about your life.

And so uh when I say finding God in the details, what I mean is that this is one of those great chapters in the Bible that if you it it it if you it's kind of one of those magic eye things that used to have in the mall.

If you look at it long enough, you begin to understand there's four things that God says in this passage I just want to point to and point out this morning.

And the first one is simply this the accommodation of God.

The accommodation of God.

You say, what do you mean?

If we could put the picture back up there, the tabernacle.

Basically, that building, that little colorful rectangle back there in the back, a cubit, by the way, because it says a cubit this, five cubits of this, is a length really from the tip of a man's finger to his elbow.

That's kind of a kind of a general measure, and they didn't have laser levels from Home Depot like we do.

So they talked about the cubit.

That's about what it was.

So basically, when you translate that, that thing is 45 feet long by 15 feet wide.

45 feet long by 15 feet wide.

Nothing grandiose and and superb.

And you say, What do you mean, the accommodation of God?

When I was in college and we were all living off ramen noodles and just dying, a friend of mine, uh, I won't tell you his name uh because I think he listens to this, but he started dating a girl that was really rich.

He was really poor and she was really rich.

He lived off campus and he lived in the hoop, we called it the hoopty house.

The hoopty house, I mean, the thing, I mean, the it would whistle at night if you spent the night there because the wind just blew through it.

And but it's a thing, a bunch of college guys all chipped in their money.

And so when he got engaged, he convinced everybody else to move out of the hoopty house.

The hoopty house had two bedrooms, and six guys lived in there, excuse me, seven guys lived in there, two bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, and a kitchen.

That was it.

And they built out of two by fours in plywood these uh uh a bunk bed system and just nailed it to the wall.

And so my friend thought he was gonna just, I mean, go the extra mile.

So he kicked everybody out.

Basically, he convinced everybody, hey, you guys find somewhere else to live.

I'm gonna ask so-and-so to marry me, and we're gonna live here while we finish our last two years of college.

And so he had this big plan and he painted it all up and everything, and he put toothpaste in the holes in the wall.

Remember when you were so poor you couldn't afford spackling?

Brother got toothpaste and dabbed it in there because somebody said, you don't need spackling, just use toothpaste.

And so everybody was helping him and everybody was all excited.

We thought, this is gonna be awesome.

And so he proposes to her, she says yes, and then he he blindfolds her and takes her over to his house, and she's like, Where are we?

Walks her in and takes the blindfolds off, and the first thing she said was, You expect me to live in this?

Yeah, yeah, somebody got it.

Oh we weren't all we were like, oh, yeah.

We were so concerned, we set him down and said, I don't think you should marry her.

Because if she thinks this is beneath her, this is not a good sign.

By the way, the marriage lasted two and a half years.

Why?

Because that was beneath her.

And so when I say the the the condescension or the accommodation of God, I'm saying that God accommodates his people.

God gives these ornate, intricate, very detailed descriptions and says, by the way, I am going, because he told them back in chapter 25, verse 8, he said, Build for me a sanctuary, a tabernacle, and I will dwell with you.

If you read the Bible, if you're here today and you're just here because uh, you know, I asked my father, what do you want for Father's Day?

And he said, Come to church.

And I was like, No, really.

So if you're that guy, I'm glad you're here.

Just relax.

Let me just say this.

One of the things that you cannot, you can watch TV and you can see the people's excesses.

You can see the prosperity preachers go and send me a$10 and God's gonna give you$10 million.

Those people are liars and they're probably not gonna make heaven, okay?

So don't stumble over them.

If you want to see the beauty of God, realize that God accommodates and comes and basically in a 45 by 15 that they have dapped the walls with toothpaste and and got their friends to paint it as best they could.

And when you took the blindfold off of God, God said, I'm home.

I'm here.

This is great.

I will dwell among you.

That's why when Jesus was born in the New Testament, he was wrapped in swaddling cloth and laid in a manger.

And he didn't say, You expect me to be born into this?

I'm the Son of God.

No, God always accommodates to his people, he doesn't mind meeting you where you are.

And so the people fresh out of slavery, they struggle with this thought about God caring for them.

And they were like, God, you know, you remember us, you know, are you gonna forget us?

Or hey, we don't have food, we don't have water.

They're always complaining.

And one of their concerns was, hey, God, do you understand our plight?

It reminds me when our oldest uh was little, she's like two years old.

She would always say, Hey, dad, hey, dad, dad, dad, watch me, watch me, watch me.

And I'd be like sitting on the couch and she'd be right there where those pajamas are.

Watch me, watch me.

And I'd be like, I'm watching, I'm watching, I'm watching, watch me, watch me, watch me, I'm watching.

Finally, one day she said it so many times.

My wife came out of the kitchen and she was kind of frustrated.

She said, She wants you to watch her.

You're about to get my Jesus woman, okay?

But I didn't say that because I'm a man the cloth.

I said, I'm staring at her.

I've been staring at her the whole time.

And then it dawned on me.

Every time Madison would back up, she would look away to kind of think she'd back up, she would go, watch me, watch me, watch me.

And so every time she took her eyes off me, she assumed in her little mind I was taking my eyes off her.

That's why she walked away, going, watch me, watch me, watch me, watch me, that, that, that, that, watch me, watch me.

And I'm staring at her, going, watching, watching, watching, telling my wife, shut up, I'm watching.

And by the way, and the times you've taken your eyes off of him, he's never taken his eyes off of you.

And when he said to these people, hey, I'm gonna accommodate myself, I'm gonna come live with you, I'm gonna dwell among you.

That's the first thing we see in this long story, detailed, increment, uh, intricate construction of the tabernacle, is that God accommodates to be with his people.

Secondly, you see the otherness of God, the otherness of God.

You say, What do you mean?

The people never saw the inside of the tabernacle.

I don't know if you knew that or not.

This wasn't like 7-Eleven, they put this thing up there and they said, Hey, everybody, come take a tour.

No, no, no, no.

This thing was, they they built it and it was intricate and had all these beautiful, fine linen stitch together.

And then over that they put these goat hides over that, and then on top of that, they put the hides of these sea cows, and and and so it was kind of waterproof, kept the rain and the weather out.

But the people that lived camped all around that, that's the 12 tribes camped all around that.

So God, right in the center of Israel.

Israel at the heart of all that God's doing in the world.

This is the way God set it up.

God says, hey, this is the way it's gonna shake out over history.

Israel's always gonna be the apple of my eye.

So if you turn on the news and you wonder what the big deal with Israel is, why does the United States always line up or they ally with Israel?

It's because somebody has read the Bible and understood these are God's chosen people.

And come what may, God's always gonna work through these people.

And so when you look at this, you see the accommodation of God, but you see the otherness of God because they were not allowed into the tabernacle ever.

Ever.

This is like a portable tent that they they would tear down when they would move.

They'd take all this stuff down and they would move and set it back up again, and they were never allowed on the inside.

The priests were allowed on the inside when they make sacrifices, and they had to come in.

We'll talk about that in a minute.

They come through that door, they make a sacrifice there on that where that fire is on the altar.

They had to sacrifice an animal to make sure their sins were atoned for.

Then they had to wash themselves in this bronze labor, make sure they were clean before they went into the presence of God.

The priests were allowed in the in in the holy place, and only the high priest was allowed in the holy of holies, where the Ark of the Covenant, where God's presence uh resided.

And but the people never were allowed in there.

Now, what's the big deal about that?

Have you ever noticed that whatever's off limits is what you're most curious about?

Let me say that again.

Have you ever noticed that whatever's off limits is what you're most curious about?

When I was a little kid, I collected stepmoms.

I had four of them before I got out of high school.

And so, and here was one thing that was consistent.

My dad, or whoever my mom was that month, would always say, stay out of our bedroom.

It was just off limits.

We just never went in there.

So much so they had a lock on their bedroom door, and they would lock it, and they had a key, and we were like, they got dead bodies in there, they got like gold bars.

Me and my brothers would sit around and fantasize about what they had in there.

They got like a big chest of money.

And so one day my brother came down the hall, and and they lived across the hall, and me and my two brothers and my two stepsisters, five of us all shared one bedroom.

So my kids say to me, Oh, my dad, my dad, my room's really small.

I got nothing.

I got no sympathy for you, sweetie.

But one day my brother came to me and said, Hey, there's screws in that doorknob.

And while they're gone to Longview, which is 45 minutes away, which is an hour and a half total travel time, plus some time doing whatever they do.

We can take that doorknob apart and get in there.

Why?

Because you're always most curious about what is off limits.

And so we got a screwdriver, and we broke into our parents' bedroom.

We took the thing apart, we pulled everything out, jimmied it until we got it, and my brother had it was just kind of putting the little part that comes out, the little mechanism, the spring mechanism.

He was just pushing it back with a butter knife until boom, we were in.

Nothing in there but a bed and a dresser.

It was the most disappointing thing in my life.

We looked everywhere, we were just kind of like, and my brother looked at me, and then we had to figure out how to put the doorknob back together.

And I could just hear my dad's voice.

What'd you boys do?

And I was like, Because my dad showed up, we had parts of a doorknob in our hand.

See, uh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, see, uh, uh, and my dad, my dad didn't always get it right, but on this one time, he knocked it out of the park.

He said, You boys come with me.

And usually what that meant was we went in the back room, my dad did this, and we heard the rattlesnake.

That's the belt coming out, hitting them belt loops on the way out.

But instead, my dad set us down on the bed and he goes, What do you boys want to know about what's in here?

And my brother Mitch just started crying.

I was like, Why are you crying?

I don't think we're gonna get whipped.

Stop crying.

And my dad said, Well, what do you want to know?

And I just I was I was little, I maybe eight years old, but I thought I'd knocked it out of the park myself.

We want to know what makes you lock the door.

Bam! If I was a rapper, I'd have just dropped the mic and walked out.

And my dad said, We locked the door because this is where we had your Christmas presents.

We Christmas shop all year round.

I was peaceful after that.

I was just like, I feel really bad now.

Take your presents back.

Don't take mine back.

He said, We lock the door because we like this is where we had your Christmas presents, and we know that you boys are nosy.

We like the three little monkeys.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

And my dad said, No, hey, this is your free this is free.

Don't ever do this again.

And I almost passed out because I thought, we are not getting whipped after all.

Why?

Because you see, what's off limits is what we're most curious about.

But God says, hey, not only is it the tabernacle is not what's off limits, don't miss this.

God says, I'm off limits to you.

I'm so holy, you can't come into my presence.

You you you cannot approach me like you will you will one day be able to.

I mean, it was such off-limits that one day there's a man in the Bible named David, King David, and he asked God the question, Who may abide in your holy tent?

Or who may sojourn in the tent?

It's the 15th Psalm where he asks this question.

It sounds like this David said, Oh Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent?

Who shall dwell on your holy hill?

He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart, who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend, and whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord, he swears to his own hurt and does not change, and who does not put out money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent.

He who does these things shall never be moved.

Basically, David says, Hey God, who can get in there?

Who can get in there?

Who can sojourn in your tent?

Who can come and hang with you?

And God says, Well, I'll spell it out.

Here it is.

And all of a sudden, if you want to understand the holiness of God, you want to get a glimpse of how holy God is, then just face the truth about yourself.

Because the Bible causes us to face the truth about ourselves, but it also causes us to face the truth about God.

See, you the two things first two things you see in the tabernacle, you see that God is accommodating, but also you see the otherness of God.

God is holy, and we are not.

It's not, hey, I I I want to go in there.

Well, who can go in there?

The 15th Psalm spells it out.

If you meet all those requirements, just trek on in.

But know this the Bible says that anybody that Enter the presence of God with any sin in their life was struck dead.

Never mind.

Third thing we see in the story of the tabernacle is that it's not always going to be this way.

It's not always going to be this way.

You say, What do you mean?

As beautiful as it is and as ornate as it is, this is not how God is going to relate to his people forever.

This is not how God is going to relate to his people forever.

You say, What do you mean?

To be present but off limits is not what God intends.

Let me say that again.

To be present but off limits is not what God intends.

And men, when we come home from work and we're tired and our kids want to play, and you're present but off limits, that's not what God intends for you either.

I have a friend of mine, his his his driving memory from childhood was coming home and his dad being asleep in the recliner.

And he said, I would just sit on the couch and watch my dad sleep, just hoping he'd wake up so we'd go outside and play.

He said, My dad never woke up until my mom said, Hey, it's time for supper.

And my dad would go eat supper, go back in the recliner, watch TV and fall asleep.

My mom would wake him up and say, It's time to go to bed.

He said, Every day I watched my dad, just longing that my dad would wake up and say, Let's go outside and play.

And I was like, tell me how this has affected you now.

And he said, When I pray, I think God's asleep in the recliner and I don't want to wake him up.

God's not that way.

God's not available.

He's not here but off limits.

He's not present but off limits.

He said, It's not always going to be this way.

It's not always going to be this way.

That's why when Jesus died on the cross, the Bible says that the veil between the holy, uh, the holy place and the holy of holies, that veil, it was four inches thick, best we can tell, from Jewish theologians.

Thick, heavy, chocolatey bread.

And it was torn from the top to the bottom.

And it's God's way of saying, see, I told you it wasn't gonna always be this way.

God is saying here in the tabernacle, I'm present, but I'm not available because your sins separate you from me.

You still gotta come and somebody's gotta make a sacrifice to you.

It's not going to be this way.

I'm present but not available.

If you came to my house today, if you followed me home from church and you walked into my living room, there's about 47 pillows on our couch in love seat.

They're present, but they're not available.

You can't lay on them, you can't touch them, you sure can't put your greasy head on those.

That's a quote, by the way.

I got some and put them down and laid down to watch the golf term.

Uh-uh.

Uh, what are you doing?

What are you doing?

I'm laying down to watch the golf term.

No, no, no.

Don't put your greasy head on those.

I bathe every day, sometimes twice a day.

I take a shower.

My head is not greasy.

No, no, no, no, no.

Those aren't for that.

I'm just a man.

Pardon my ignorance.

So why do we have 17 pillows?

Those are for decor.

And what I'm thinking in my mind is, you're the craziest thing I've ever met in my life.

I'm not gonna buy anything and just set it on my couch and kind of go, let's all look at this.

Matter of fact, we have a pillow and we have a leather recliner, and in that leather recliner is a pillow in there, it's got stitched on it home.

That's the holy grail.

You can't touch that pillow.

Don't touch that pillow.

My wife watched a show and they poof it a certain way to get it to look a certain way and put it right there.

All you women are going, yeah, no, no.

And every time I come in, I'm just like, I gotta go in my bedroom and get a bed pillow, stack all those pillows over here so I can just lay on the bed pillow.

This is and so as I study the tabernacle, I have a new thing to say to my wife, this is not like God.

This is present, but not available.

This is Old Testament law, we're New Testament grace.

This should be available to me.

And she just says, Don't put your greasy head on those pillows.

Okay, by the way, my wife shops for you have a pillow form, and then you have a pillow cover.

Yeah, we have fall and spring pillow covers at my house.

And I can't touch any of them.

See, God says it's not always gonna be this way.

You say, What do you mean it's not always gonna be this way?

There's been times in your marriage, I know this, I don't know this, but I know this.

There's been times in your marriage where it's been so hard, so difficult, so just got sideways, somebody messed up, somebody sinned, somebody just didn't do what they were supposed to do or did something they weren't supposed to do, and all you could say to your spouse was, it's not always gonna be this way.

And your your partner's like, Really?

Really?

You just keep saying that.

Can you give me some insurance?

Nah, I just I can just tell you it's not always gonna be this way.

And so God comes in tabernacles with his people.

There's been points in your life you've had to look at yourself when you were just dead broke and didn't have anything, and you were just like, ah, the only thing you knew to save yourself that got you through was, it ain't always gonna be this way.

I'm not always gonna be this broke.

I remember everybody's over there dabbing up holes in the wall in my friend's house with toothpaste, and we're like, what are we doing?

And I remember going to my hey, he's not always gonna live in a house like this, and by the way, he doesn't.

He after his wife left him, he met another woman, they're happily married, they have a beautiful home, he makes lots of good money.

Every once in a while, I want to call him on the phone and go, hey man, you putting your toothpaste in the holes in the wall?

Why?

Because it's not always gonna be this way.

The tabernacle is a reminder that God says, hey, it's not always gonna be this way.

Fourthly, it reminds us of this.

This is an indication of things to come.

This is an indication of things to come.

I'm gonna preach chapter 27, 28, 29, and 30 and 31 right here to you.

Look at this.

Here's four chapters right here.

Now you say, what do you mean?

There's things that God's telling us about, yeah, hey, hey, it's not always gonna be this way, and because of that, this is an indication of things to come.

Start way out here at the bottom right where you see these purple little openings right here.

This is the only way into the tabernacle.

There wasn't a back door to it.

You say, Well, what's the big deal about that?

There's only one door.

In the Gospel of John in the New Testament, there's seven what's called I am statements in the book of John.

You don't realize this, but a couple weeks ago, three weeks ago, Rick Callahan, our teaching pastor, our connection pastor, he talked about one of them.

Uh we talked about the table of show bread.

Jesus says in John, I am the bread of life.

Last week, Clyde talked about the seven golden lampstands.

Jesus said in John, the seven statement, I am the light of the world.

One of his other I am statements in the book of John, he says, I am the door.

No one comes through the Father.

Everybody that comes through comes through me.

He says, anybody that tries to get in a different way, that climbs over the wall, Jesus said they're a thief.

They're trying to break in and get in.

You don't break into God's presence.

You come one way and one way only.

And so the tabernacle is God's way of saying, hey, it's not always gonna be this way, but also this is an indication of things to come because he's getting us ready.

He's getting his people ready to realize that Jesus is the only way to God.

That's why Jesus says in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

The second thing that this points out to is not only is there only one door, but the first thing you've got to do is do something about your sin.

That's why that big altar is there with that fire on it.

That's where people sacrificed an animal.

They had to come in, the first thing they were confronted with was, hey, I don't fit in.

There's something between me and God.

I remember as a little kid growing up poor.

I didn't go to church because I didn't have church clothes.

Aren't you so glad you don't have to have church clothes these days?

I love that pastor at church where you can wear shorts and a t-shirt and flip-flops and God doesn't care and I don't care, or you can wear a suit and God doesn't care and I don't care.

But that feeling as a little kid kept me separated from church people because I knew I didn't fit in.

The universal reality for all of us, when you enter in, the first thing you see in the tabernacle is, hey, there's one door into this thing, and then the first thing you see is I've got to make payment for my sin.

One of the questions you've got to ask yourself on this Father's Day is, what are you going to do?

How are you going to pay the price for your sin?

The Bible says the wages of sin is death.

The wages, the paycheck for sin, the paycheck, what we deserve is for the fact that we have sinned, all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, is we deserve to die.

And so someone has to die in our place.

And so, by the Old Testament sacrificial system, God is getting his people used to the idea of something dying in place for your sins.

So when Jesus shows up on the scene and John the Baptist says, Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, God was eradicating the sacrificial system.

And no longer do we have to make sacrifices, which is why Jesus says on the cross, it's finished.

It's finished, everything's been paid for.

So if you're here today and you think, man, I've done so much, you have no idea.

No, I say back to you, you have no idea of what's been done for you.

The Bible says it like this in Romans chapter 5, verse 8.

Romans 5:8

God demonstrated his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Jesus Christ was the atoning sacrifice for all of your sins, not just the big ones that you cannot forget about, but the little ones that you forgot about right after you did them.

All of that was paid for.

And the priest, Aaron and his descendants, before they went into the presence, they had to wash and make sure they were ceremonially clean.

You say, Well, I don't know what you mean.

This happened with both of our children, okay?

Uh and we didn't tell them to do it, they just did it.

When our kids were little, we had little chubby babies, okay?

Little fat-legged little kids.

And they were fat-legged little toddlers and like little grubworms with feet.

And so we would give our kids a bath.

And you should ask yourself on this Father's Day, what does God smell like?

Because I'll tell you what God smells like.

God smells like that Johnson and Johnson lavender baby wash.

We would wash our kids in that, and then we had the little hooded towel, we'd dry them all off and everything, and you would turn over to get something, and they would be gone like they were shot out of a gun.

And they would just run through our house with nothing on.

Just, and they would squeal, woo, woo! And every once in a while, people be over.

And Marcy would say, Hey, y'all excuse me, y'all keep talking, having dessert and coffee.

I'm gonna go bathe and get and get our kid down.

And inevitably, Marcy get lotion on them or something, and then all of a sudden the little grease pig would get away, and I would hear it coming down the house, oh, and come to the living room, oh and one day one of my kids who I will not name came to the living room with nothing on but her skin.

We had a couple over for dinner, and she just and Marcy's like, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.

And the man said something profound.

He said, There's nothing like being naked and clean in the presence of your father.

And I looked at him kind of like, is that jacked up or is that profound?

That was about 17, 16, almost 17 years ago that happened.

It came back to my mind as I was studying for this.

Because here's what happens they're clean and they're free in the presence of their father.

Once they go through all these rituals, once they come to the door, once atonement is made for their sins, once they ceremonially washed and clean, then they can come into his presence.

We read all of this, this Father's Day.

Just to ask you this simple question.

What if that's the way God intended you and I to live?

Just clean and free.

No more rules, no more regulations, no more sacrifices, no more cubits of this and span of that, and curtains and braces and rods and blah blah blah.

But just clean and free and wild.

Just running free and enjoying life.

Just wah.

My kids would get so excited, they wouldn't say words, they would just make noises.

I said one, I said, my kids speak in tongues.

We'll we'll translate later.

There's something exuberant about being clean and free in the presence of your Father.

And I'm here to tell you on this Father's Day, that's the way God created you to be.

Let's pray together.

Take just a minute.

Think about what the Bible has said to you today.

Every time you read in the Bible, it is, God has something to say.

He's a good, good father.

And so we can trust him.

Sometimes we got to look at it a little bit longer than we think.

And it becomes obvious.

When we look at the tabernacle, we see God accommodating.

We see God coming down and saying, This is great.

I just want to be with you.

I don't care if it's a tent on the side of the highway.

I just want to be with you.

My eyes on you.

You ain't got.

I'm watching.

I know.

I know.

I understand everything you're going through and how you feel about it.

That's why he says in the Old Testament, Were I to forget you, I'd have to cut off my right hand.

We also see the otherness of God, that God's holy and we're not.

Who who may who can hang out in your tent with you, God?

Nobody.

Nobody meets the requirements in another own.

That makes Jesus necessary.

It's not always going to be this way.

But this is a this is a little foreshadowing.

That's what God's saying.

God's saying, I'm telling a big story.

And this big story is going to start now and it's going to be fulfilled then when Jesus comes.

But of all the things that were said today, what what had your name on it?

Let's take a minute and just think about that.

Father, we're thankful today that the Bible is like that heart-shaped medallion.

When we look through that, we see ourselves from your point of view.

And what you say to us this morning from the Old Testament is hey, this is just an indication of things to come.

It's not always going to be this way.

I'm not a God that just comes to be with you, to be present but off limits, okay?

You can cast your burdens on me.

You can lay yourself down on me.

I'm not ashamed of anything about you.

So, Lord, thank you that there's beautiful pictures in the Bible that are robust and full.

If we'll just train our eye to see what's being said.

And today, Lord, we've heard it.

Thank you that you're our Father and you're for us.

So every time we open up the Bible, it is like looking to that burgundy heart-shaped medallion.

When the mirror's mad at us, God, when it points out all our flaws, when we stand in one of those mirrors in the store that has like four or five sides to it, and we go, I wish I wouldn't have done that.

I pray that we'd be reminded that you see us the way only God can see us.

And we want to see ourselves from your point of view.

That's why we read and preach the Bible here.

Thanks for your view.

May it be louder and more clear in our head and in our ears and in our eyes than our view of ourselves.

That's the gospel's power to redeem.

And for that we're grateful.

So we say thank you in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

If you're a guest today, let me say thanks for being part of our service.

When you came in, you're given a little worship sheet, a little worship folder.

Uh ask for some, it has a little part, tear-off part in there.

Ask for some information.

If you had a chance to fill that out, just crease it and tear it off and drop it in one of these wooden boxes by the doors.

Those are also our offering boxes where we receive our offering.

So if today's the day uh you practice obedience or generosity through giving, that's where you do that as well.

Let me remind you, we have a team going to Romania.

Uh uh this Thursday they leave.

They have prayer cards down here on the stage.

And so I'd ask you when you're dismissed here in a minute to come get a card, stick it in your Bible, and pray for this person.

You don't have to know them.

It's got information about them, why they're going on the trip.

We'd love you just to know, we want them to know they're being prayed for, and we'd love you to have the experience of connecting yourself with what goes on in this church.

They're good.

Some people go and some people sew.

These stacks of stuff, if you came late, these are 280 pairs of pajamas that were made by women in our church.

Uh, some of them sold the pajamas, some of them put drawstrings in the pajamas, some of them surge the pajamas, some of them cut out the pajamas.

I mean, I heard all about it in my house because my wife was over that and a part of that.

Why didn't I tell you that?

Here's why I tell you that.

Look at me.

It's like the tabernacle.

There's some people that were good at Christmen, some people were good at overlaying things with gold.

And they thought, you know what, I'm just a common laborer.

God can never use me.

That's what they were doing back in Egypt.

And when God called them out and began to deliver them, he used their skills in ways that bless God and bless God's people.

Here's what I'm saying to you.

You're part of a church that has opportunities for you to get involved and use your skills.

And so don't ever, none of you ever think you can't contribute, okay?

Because you can't.

And there's visible evidence here in front of you.

All right?

Stand to your feet.

Let me speak a blessing over you.

Hold your hands out.

Because you have a mind and a heart.

He wants you to feel, but he also wants you to think.

And in your thinking, and in your feeling, and in your looking, and in your listening, you'll see a God that loves you, a father that's good and can be trusted.

Depart now and trust your Father.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Unless you do you're dismissed.