Immanuel, The Gift of His Presence: Tabernacling

My friends, let's hear the word of the Lord for us this morning

from John chapter 1. The true light, which gives

John 1 · chapter mention

light to everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet

the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own

people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him,

who believe in His name, He gave them the right to become

children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of

the flesh, nor of the will of man, but born of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen

His glory, the glory as the only Father from the the only Son

from the Father, full of grace and truth.

And this is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Dear God, we ask as always that

you would grant us the ability to understand well Your Word

before us, to be transformed by us.

Shake us Lord, we pray through Christ our Lord, we ask.

Amen. Please be seated and if you

would grab your Bibles, be helpful to have them available

open at chapter 1 of John as we can work our way through this

passage together. If you, unless you were

absolutely sleeping by now, you have noticed that it is the

first Sunday of Advent. Dan mentioned that earlier.

We've had all of the reminders of that all the way around.

Lots of indications. It is the first Sunday of

Advent. Advent is that time of

anticipation, is that time of looking forward.

It's the time where we begin to anticipate the coming of our

Lord Jesus Christ. All the good things of

Christmas. One of the things that we

anticipate or one of the things that we hear around this time of

year that we don't often hear about is the word Emmanuel.

By the way, Emmanuel with an I or Emmanuel with an E, they're

the same thing. We're just trying to keep track

of the way in which we articulated well.

So Emmanuel with an I, Emmanuel with an E, it's the same thing.

And it's right and proper for us to remind ourselves of that at

this time of year because of course it occurs both in the Old

Testament and in the New Testament.

The prophecy that we have that the virgin will give birth to a

son and he shall be called Emmanuel, God with us.

Now lots of us know that the name Emmanuel is not necessarily

attached to Jesus. When we think about Jesus being

born in the Manger, etcetera, we don't he reference him.

We don't hear in the scriptures ever him reference as Emmanuel.

He is Emmanuel, but we don't hear people calling out, hey,

Emmanuel, stuff like that because the name is different.

If you've been involved with the worship here at heaven at any

point in time or if you've been involved in Bible studies,

etcetera, you will recognize that the word, the name, a name

means something different in the scriptures and it often means

for us today, for us, the name is a label.

I am Henry, that is Brendan over here, the leads of America from

etcetera, etcetera. But the names are different in

that they often have are rooted in a title or in an expectation

or in a description. That's what the names originally

intended to mean. And in the same way, Emmanuel is

not necessarily a label or an identifier.

It is a description. It is a description that marks

God with us. Brendan, incidentally, is from

the Celtic, the old Celtic identification.

It's not a name at all. It is a title.

It means the Prince. And so whenever you reference

Brendan, you're referencing Prince.

We've had Robert back here on the drums today, and I

appreciated the fact that the light was red on him, beaming

red. And then beaming green kind of

light lit him up because Robert is from the old German, and it

means the shining and brightness.

And so, you know, hey, that guy who's shining in brightness, you

would use the term Robert. Now it eventually, of course,

merges into a name itself. Henry, by the way, is from the

old German through French, which means ruler of the household.

Something gets lost in translation, but there you have

the idea. In the same way then, Emmanuel

means God with us. It means God with us and that

you can see the appropriateness of it, say in our core verse

today in verse 14. And the Word became flesh and

dwelt among us. And for if you've been a part of

a Christian worship services for some time, if you understand the

Christian Gospel, you know that that is a reality, the core

understanding of the incarnation, the incarnation God

himself in heavens becomes in fleshed, becomes a man and

dwells here in this world as as a human being.

And so we have the dwelling with us aspect of God.

And so you have the Emmanuel, God with us, kind of as a

description of reality. But if you look carefully at the

text and if you read through the Scriptures, well, you understand

that it's not just a description of reality.

When we talk about Jesus coming and it's Emmanuel, God with us,

we don't simply mean that God is present with us.

We are actually capturing a long biblical tradition of describing

the desire of God himself. It is God's desire that he dwelt

with us. It's not just the reality that

God dwells with us in Jesus Christ, though God is present

and with us now, but rather the Emmanuel sense, God with us is

not just an expression of the reality of God's presence with

us. It's a description of God's

desire and passion for us. And this has been captured all

the way through the Scriptures from the very beginning.

It is Emmanuel, God's desire to dwell with us, that is a goal of

the Garden of Eden. Now for many of us, when we read

the Garden of Eden story in the first couple chapters of

Genesis, we are struck by the beauty of it, by the majesty, by

the perfection of of the Garden of Eden.

Here is no sin, here is perfection, Here is everything

you could possibly want. And God has created humanity to

be in the Garden of Eden and to experience all that joy and all

that wonder. And all of that is true.

But the essence of that wonder, the reality of why the Garden is

so perfected and so marvelous, is the presence of God.

The Garden is where God himself intends to dwell with his

people. He created the garden.

He created humanity so that he would dwell with us.

And so you have Emmanuel, God with us, The very goal of the

Garden of Eden. It is Emmanuel, God with us.

It is God who desires to dwell with us that reveals the

consequences of our sin when Adam and Eve fell, when Adam and

Eve took from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Of course there are huge consequences that are described

in the Scriptures. And so you have the discussion

of death. Of course, a major 1.

You have childbirth. You have a rupture of our

relationship with God. You have our rupture with our

relationship with creation itself that now work is going to

be late laborious. You have a rupture in our

relationship with one another. Husband is going to turn against

wife, wife against husband. You're going to have a rupture

in our relationship with our own selves, the way in which we feel

about ourselves. But the greatest rupture is

pictured in Genesis 324 where God drove out man from the east

of the garden and place a cherubim with a flaming sword,

turning this way and that way to guard the way of the tree of

life. You have the anti Emmanuel, the

upside down Emmanuel. What is sin?

Sin is that which has separated us from God.

And God actually cast out Adam and Eve from that spot which was

created so that God could dwell with man.

Instead, man is cast out into exile away from Emmanuel, God

with us. It is Emmanuel, God's desire to

dwell with us, which prompts the call of Abraham and the call of

Israel. Now, if you know your

scriptures, you know that at one point, in the midst of this

exile from God's presence, God calls out to Abraham and says to

Abraham, hey, leave where you're at right now and come to this

new place where you will be, and I will bless you.

And through you the whole world will be blessed.

And of course, we get excited thinking about what it means

that we are blessed in God and that Abraham was blessed in God.

And then the Abraham, through Abraham that blessing pours out

to all of us. And all of that is very true.

But what marks the great blessing is not that God is

pouring out good things upon Abraham, not that through

Abraham good things pour out to us.

All of that is true. But what is essential, what is

what is central to the blessing is captured well in Genesis 26

where God says dwell in the land in which I shall tell you

sojourning this land and I will be with you and I will bless

you. The call, the essence of the

call of Abraham and Isaac, through which of course we get

the coming of Jesus Christ and the Israelite people and the

whole Old Testament, all of which evolves from the call of

Abraham. The motivation for this is

Emmanuel, God's desire to dwell with his people.

It is Emmanuel, God's desire to dwell with his people, that is

at the core imagery of the Tabernacle.

So after 400 years of slavery, bondage in Egypt, the Israelites

are released from Egypt and they wander through the wilderness.

And the central feature of wandering through the wilderness

is the Tabernacle. Now we don't, we're not familiar

with that term. So you got to flesh it out a

little bit. A Tabernacle is a massive tent.

It's a massive mobile worship center which you can break down

and and put back together fairly quickly.

It was this beauty. It was this most marvelous and

central feature of the Israelites as they wandered

through through the wilderness for 40 years.

They carried this glorified tent with you and it really was this

spectacular marvel and it was filled with gold and tapestries.

It was everything that you would be attracted to in life, but the

wonder. And wherever you set up the

tent, wherever they set up the Tabernacle, the Israelite people

would build their camps around it.

So at the very core was this Tabernacle.

But the beauty of the Tabernacle is not how wonderful it is or

how central it was to the Israelites.

It's the fact that once the Tabernacle was built in Exodus

Exodus 40 · chapter mention

chapter 40, then the cloud covered the temple, the tent of

meeting the Tabernacle, and the glory of the Lord filled the

Tabernacle. Here you have the glory of God

himself settled down over top of this Tabernacle.

So you have this beautiful, wonderful tent where the

Israelites were to worship God. And in the midst of that, here

comes God's Shekinah glory, the physical manifestation of God's

very presence settles down over the Tabernacle.

And for 40 years, that physical manifestation, the pillar of

fire, the pillar of cloud, never left the Israelites.

At the very center of the Israelite community was the

Tabernacle. And at the core filling the

Tabernacle was the God's very presence, the Emmanuel dwelling

with his people, God with us. And it is Emmanuel, God's desire

to dwell with us, That is the promise of Canaan land.

So after wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, the

Israelite people then crossover into Canaan land.

Now, some of you will have remembrance of Canaan land.

What is Canaan land? Canaan land is that wonderful

area. It is flowing with milk and

honey. Now, I don't know how you feel

about milk and honey, but you're supposed to have this picture

that the milk and honey is representative of the wonderful

abundance that Canaan land has. And not just abundance, but

extravagance. It's this extravagant beauty of

the of Canaan land and you're supposed to be marvelled by it.

And every time the Israelites were exploring it Canaan land,

they came back with these massive grapes and this

wonderful food and this marvelous description of how

glorious Canaan land was. And Canaan Land was wonderful as

soon as the Israelites people for 40 years being led by the

pillar of fire and pillar of clouds, the Shekinah glory of

God. As soon as they cross going to

Canaan land, guess what happens? The pillar disappears.

After 40 years of having the the physical manifestation of God

present in the center of their community, now suddenly that

pillar of fire in the pillar of cloud disappears.

Why? Because Canaan Land is marked by

abundance. Canaan Land is marked by its

extravagance, not in what Canaan Land is, but in who is there.

It is there at that spot where God promised to meet with his

people, to dwell with his people.

Come to Canaan Land. It's the promised land, not

because of how wonderful it is, but because of who makes it

wonderful. It is God himself, Emmanuel,

God, dwelling with us. It is Emmanuel, God's desire to

dwell with us. It is behind the beauty and the

majesty of the temple. After 400 years or so of living

in Canaan land, the Israelite people conquered Jerusalem and

David. King David desires to build a

temple for God. He is ultimately prevented to do

so, but his son ultimately builds his temple.

Now it's impossible to describe the majesty and the beauty of

the temple. It was massive.

It was huge, it was gold covered all over the place.

It was everything that you could imagine is beautiful.

It was not one of the seven wonders of the world, but it is

often listed with the seven wonders of the world when

they're articulated. It was this beautiful,

magnificent artifice. I mean that you again, it's hard

to describe how beautiful and wonderful it is, but its beauty

doesn't come from its majestic character or how big it is or

how glorious it is or anything like that.

The beauty of it comes when the priest came out of that holy

place, the cloud filled the House of the Lord so that the

priest could not enter into it and minister there because of

the cloud. For the glory of the Lord filled

the House of the Lord. Once again, the picture that you

have of the Temple of the Temple is that it is a dwelling place

of God. And so in the middle of

Jerusalem, in the middle of their nation, this land, Canaan

land itself, which represents the presence of God.

Once again you have this physical manifestation of God,

the cloud, the pillar of fire, the pillar of cloud that fills

the temple. And every time you want to see

and experience Emmanuel, God with us, you look at the temple

and you see the pillar of fire, the pillar of cloud that is

indwelling the temple and is that is present there Emmanuel,

God with us. It is Emmanuel, God's desire to

dwell with us, that is vividly portrayed in the reenacting of

the exile after 400 some years, after the creation of the temple

and once again God's physical manifestation and presence there

with the people. The people have sinned

consistently against the Lord, and after 400 years you have the

loss in battle, the capture of the Israelites, and they are

dragged away to Assyria first, and then they are the remainder

are captured and taken to Babylon.

And you have the Babylonian in exile.

And this is a disaster for the Israelite people.

But the disaster is not simply being separated from the land.

The disaster is not simply the loss of militarily what takes

place. The disaster comes when the

glory of the Lord, this is Ezekiel has this vision and what

he sees is the glory of the Lord that it inhabited the temple,

rises up and leaves the temple and instead settles in judgment

over the Israelite people. Instead of God dwelling with the

people now, because of their sin and brokenness, the dwelling,

the very physical manifestation of God, gets up and leaves the

temple and leaves the Israelite people bereft.

Emmanuel, God's with us. It is Emmanuel, God's desire to

dwell with us, that finds its yearning in the second temple.

This is the text that Dan read for us early, earlier.

So about 50 years later or so, the Israelite people are

released. 70 years later, the Israelite people are released

from their Babylonian captivity and they come back to Canaan

land. They come back to Jerusalem.

They rebuild Jerusalem. And of course their intent is to

rebuild the temple. So they build up the temple once

again. They build the temple and you

have people gathered around it. When they dedicate the temple,

you have all the Israelites gathered there to celebrate the

forming of the temple. And all the young people are

excited and they're all cheering and all the old people are sad

and mourning because they remember the old temple, the

former temple. And this new temple is a small

shell. It's, it's a small bit of the

former glory of the glorious temple.

And so Haggai and the other prophets say you're sad.

You're sad because this temple isn't as majestic as the other

one, but its majesty is not in its size, its majesty is not in

its beauty. Its majesty is in the the first

temple. God's presence came and dwelt

it. And here we have dedicated the

second temple and there is no presence of God.

And so there's a yearning, a desire that the Israelite people

are saying, no matter how big the building, no matter what,

how wonderful the building, what we're really looking for is the

presence of God, Emmanuel, God with us.

And the fact that God didn't indwell the Second Temple

creates that yearning, that moving forward for Emmanuel, God

with us. And it is Emmanuel, God's desire

to dwell with us that finds its culmination in the coming of

Jesus Christ. Look again at our text here.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen

his glory, the glory as of the Son of the of the Father, full

of grace and truth. And we have seen his flesh.

The word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.

That word dwelt there. It's actually a noun that the

author uses as a verb. And we do this sometimes, you

know, when you say I'm going to Google you or, or let me, let me

friend you on Facebook. And, and for us who are old, you

sit there and say, that's a noun.

Quit using it as a verb kind of a thing.

And so here what we have is, is the Word became flesh and

tabernacled amongst us. Tabernacled.

He he built. He built his Tabernacle there.

His expression of the desire, not just the reality of God's

presence, but the desire of God to be present with his people.

He tabernacled with us, He tented with us.

And here you have the the culmination of all of the

passion and all the desires of the Old Testament, all of from

gardening, even the Eden, all the way through where God's

passion is to dwell with his people.

And finally here the culmination, the fullness of it,

the completeness of it comes in Jesus Christ as Christ comes to

dwell with his people. But as many of you know, Christ

ascended to the Father and so you have Emmanuel, God with us.

And it is a manual, God's desire to dwell with us that is

continually expressed in the corporate filling of the body of

Christ with the Holy Spirit. Here, of course, we are

referencing the Pentecost moment where the body of Christ, the

disciples all gathered together and the Holy Spirit fell upon

them when the Holy Spirit came down upon the body of believers.

And in the same exact way, the Holy Spirit is present here with

us today. And we have a manual with us

right now, God with us, because of the presence of the Holy

Spirit filling this place just as He filled that place in Acts

Acts 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2, the tongues of divided fire appeared before.

For them and rested on each one of them, and they were all

filled with the Holy Spirit. It is a manual God with us that

we sense in God's presence here among us.

And it is a manual God's desire to dwell with us that is

expressed personally too individually.

It's not just His corporate presence with us here, it is his

individual presence with us. It is a marvel of the New

Testament that tells us that when the Jesus want to be with

the Father that he promises disciples that he would not

leave us as orphans, but rather that he would come with us, that

He would come to us as the Holy Spirit.

And so the Holy Spirit comes and indwells every believer.

Paul captures this when he says, do you not know that your body

is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from

God? You are not your own, for you've

been brought with a price. So glorify God with your body.

It is our very bodies individually that are the temple

of the Holy Spirit. Individually we have that

expression of the Emmanuel God with us.

But of course, the culmination of this, the ultimate expression

of this is in the new heavens and the new earth, John writes.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the

dwelling place of God is with men.

He will dwell with them. They will be his people and God

himself will be there with them, as is God, heaven, the new

heavens, the new earth, that which we are all shaping for the

fulfillment of God's desire in the Garden of Eden throughout

Israel's history, finding its culmination, its pinnacle in the

in Jesus Christ, the the incarnation of Jesus Christ and

then expressed in each one of us individually comes to its

fullness in heaven where we dwell in the presence of God.

There will need to be no more sun.

There will be need to be no more moon.

But I didn't say that very clearly.

There is no sun. There is no moon in heaven

because God himself gives us his light.

God is present continually and forever in that moment.

When we talk about Emmanuel, when we talk about Christmas, we

are often talking about the great things that God gives us,

the presence of God and the presence of God is fulfilled

completely to us through Emmanuel, God with us.

And it's not just the reality of God presence that's wonderful.

Think about how glorious it is that God is present here with

us. That's a marvel and it's a

beauty. But realize this, that from the

beginning of scriptures to its at the very end, it captures not

the reality of God's presence with us, but the desire of God

to be present with us In your brokenness, in your joy, in your

sorrow, in your love, in your care, in your sin, God desires

to be with you. Emmanuel, God with us.

Dear Father in Heaven, we do pray again that You would

strengthen us and bless us with the fulfillment of Your

presence. Now and forevermore.

We pray. Amen.