Exodus: The Power of Glorious Beauty

So we've been in the story of Exodus for a while now, and actually, up until this point, maybe last week, it's been a pretty dramatic, epic story.

I'm not gonna rephrase everything, but you had these people, the people of Israel in slavery, and they've been there for a while and they are in miserable suffering, and finally God comes and through circumstances and beyond their control, uh, delivers them.

To the point within the story that you go, okay, these people did nothing in the rescue.

Even the fact that even the guy who helped rescue them, Moses, um, had his own set of issues, and the fact that God used him to be the rescuer, even that shows how much that God was the deliverer in this situation.

And so we get this huge story of their deliverance.

And then they're out in the desert, and then God begins to communicate to them how to live, right?

We get the Ten Commandments, and we spent a lot of weeks on those Ten Commandments about how we should live.

But what we talked about and what we saw in the text was this over and over and over again, uh, God reminds them that grace precedes law.

So uh before you get what you should live like, you always have the security of who you already are.

The deliverance came before the law.

So grace precedes law.

So that God's grace to you and his love toward you comes before.

You've got to start there before you can move into what you should live like.

If you start with what you should live like, you will be exhausted and be crushed by that because you won't live up to it.

Hate to break the news, but it's true.

Uh so this is the story, and so we're moving along, and the story's going good.

It's pretty epic and huge and big things and interesting things going on.

And then all of a sudden we hit these chapters, and I'm not just talking like one or two chapters.

If you're familiar with Exodus, it's a long way through the rest of the book, and you're going, oh my gosh, are we gonna do this every single week?

No, we won't.

We're gonna maybe sparse out the sermons a little bit, space them out a little bit more through the rest of the way.

Because what we have is we have something like 18 chapters, 18 chapters about something to do with the tabernacle.

Like the curtains and the tent pegs and the color and the and all of it means something.

I mean, all of it means something.

And I'll give you some commentaries and you can dig as much as you want to dig.

Um we're gonna do some macro level discussion about it.

But all of it is saying something.

It's saying something about his goodness and his holiness and his glory and and his sweet loving regard to you.

It's saying something.

And when I say loving regard toward you, I mean I mean I mean you, like the you that you actually hide from everybody else.

Or the you that you hide underneath a lot of other things that maybe you're not even sure if you can face that, those parts of you.

Um He actually knows that part of you, and He actually loves even that.

He He loves even you, that part.

And not only that, but He actually would say that He is really pleased, very pleased with you.

So we get this in Exodus 25, 7, which we looked at last week.

We get this phrase, make me a sanctuary.

So he says to Moses, hey, Moses, make me a sanctuary.

And this is a heavy word, this idea of sanctuary.

This is about a place where holiness is.

And this idea of holiness is it's it's even hard to get a word for it.

It's so otherly than us.

It's just gloriously, powerfully heavy beauty.

I mean, we get glimpses of it perhaps in our lives.

It's the kind of beauty that just stops you in your tracks, and in some way you come under the power of it.

And we all know this on some level, and for each of us it's different.

You know, for some of us, it's like you're out in nature and you see a mountain or you see a river.

You know, this is unbelievable.

And others of us, you're in a museum and you see a Monet and you can't stand there long enough.

Others of us, I have a friend, literally, it's a Ferrari.

If he sees a Ferrari, if he hears that beautiful, perfect hum of that engine, it is so beautiful to him.

And so you know what I'm talking about.

You're not gonna raise your hands as you think we're gonna label you as materialistic.

Well, we might, but it's true.

It's true, right?

Like we run into beauty, right?

You're reading a book, a well, like unbelievably well-crafted sentence, and you're like, this is so beautiful, and so it just stops everything.

This week I was thinking about this and how we run into this kind of over and over in different areas of life.

And uh my grandmother has an old lake cabin on Altoona, like 30 minutes from here, and she we were having some leaking through the chimney, and so I had to meet a roofer up there, and so I get up there, and then the roofer pulls up, and from behind the little cabin, you can't see the lake.

Um, so we climb up on the roof, and we're up on the roof.

He's inspecting, and he's inspecting, and he's telling me what he's seeing, and we're both standing up there, and the whole time I'm sort of looking out over the water from up on the roof, and it's just it was middle, it was middle of the week, so nobody's up there, and it was like it was like glass.

It was just beautiful.

I'm and and I'm standing up there looking at this, and he's telling me all about you know, rolled roofing and flashing and all sorts of stuff, and I'm just going like, just give me a quote, that's all I need.

But I'm looking at the lake, and it's when I see, when I see something beautiful, it's just like it's all gonna be okay.

It's just it's all gonna be okay.

Like, like there's some power it that it can have over you.

And this is just a little glimpse of what I'm talking about when we when we come into the idea of perfect beauty.

So this roofer eventually, I mean he had been like he was down, and he was moving around and checking out the flashing and the caulking and talking about all this.

And then finally he stands up and he turns around and he he sees the water and he just stops and he goes, Oh, that's beautiful.

And so we held hands and had a moment.

But we know we don't know that moment, but we know the moment of we know the moment of being in the presence of some beauty that has an ability to have a power over you.

Here's my point.

Here's my point.

This is point number one.

I have two points.

That which you perceive as gloriously beautiful has power over you.

That which you perceive as gloriously beautiful has power over you.

So you have this tabernacle that's going to be built.

And God says gold, bronze, silver, let's do purple curtains.

Let's make it as beautiful as possible.

I'm worthy of that.

I'm worthy of the finest possible materials.

And he's trying to tell us something.

He's trying to communicate something over time to them and eventually to us.

He's saying the most beautiful things in the world that you so often give your lives to, those things bow to me.

Like those, you can make a house for me out of those things.

I'm that glorious.

And this is where the Bible and the tabernacle is on a mission.

It's on a mission to help us understand that which is truly holy and truly beautiful, and that will and can have power over you.

And it's not a negative power, it's the most freeing giving power because something has power over you.

And that's where the Bible is also on a mission for your life to help you understand that which is not truly holy and beautiful, but you're perceiving it as holy and beautiful, and therefore it has power over you, but you don't realize that it's not really giving to you and freeing you, it's actually demanding of you and exhausting you.

And some of you know exactly what I'm talking about.

And I ran into this quote this week, David Foster Wallace, an author, I think we wrote a quote last week, and I'll just keep using him over and over again.

But he he is a he was an author that in his early 20s, he came in, he wrote a couple books, and they just just he just blew up.

I mean, New York Times bestseller, and he was so young, and people couldn't believe a guy this young could possibly write this sort of book.

And he just his whole life he's sharing just unbelievable insight after insight.

Um this isn't like in the Christian world or the church world.

I mean, this is just out there, and he he's making a speech at Kenyon College, and here's what he says: I printed it out for you there in the handout.

There is no such thing as not worshiping.

Everybody worships.

The only choice we get is what to worship.

And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough.

Never feel you have enough.

It's the truth.

Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly.

And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid.

And you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear.

Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

See, a lot of these things are fine.

Like a lot of those things are fine for their own purpose, for their own role in our lives, but not to center the core of our beings on.

And so this tabernacle comes into these people's lives and it starts to become the center of their life in many ways for their understanding of how to be redeemed.

And that's where these other things that Wallace is talking about, these other things, a lot of these things are fine.

But as soon as they become the center of our lives that we orbit around, this is where things fall apart.

Because they cannot sustain us.

They can't sustain our orbiting around them.

And so this tabernacle shows up, and this becomes the center of the place where they begin to understand how to be redeemed by an outside sacrifice rather than them having to be sacrificed themselves.

And maybe that be the sacrificing of I'm going to be good enough, I'm gonna merit my way into this relationship.

And so this begins, this teaching, God's teaching through this.

He's teaching that he's worthy, he's teaching that he's holy, that he's beautiful, that he's glorious, that there is grace, there's outside sacrifices needed, and all this is being taught in this tabernacle later in the temple.

So trivia, real quick trivia, not on the tabernacle, but another another area.

How do you remember, any of you, how fast is Earth traveling around the sun?

I thought there was gonna be a couple of you.

I had money on a couple of you.

I was really yeah, right.

Is it 186 something, no?

I think that's how fast the milk, maybe the milk away travels around.

This is what I looked up, Wikipedia.

Who knows who wrote that article?

67,000 miles per hour.

We are moving right now, we are moving 67,000 miles per hour through space.

And in all of this, it works, right?

And it all works because of the reason the fact that we are held in perfect orbit by the power, the gravitational pull of the sun.

The earth doesn't shoot off all of a sudden in one direction, the sun doesn't suddenly become insufficient to give this power and to hold us in orbit.

The sun is sufficient for us.

And I was like, oh, that's a bad bumper sticker.

Like I could see the Christian bumper sticker coming on.

And then we'd be like sun, S-U-N, S-O-N.

Anyways.

But the sun holds us in perfect orbit.

I mean, even while, even while here on Earth, we we can have a million problems.

And still the sun is sufficient to hold us in perfect orbit.

This is because the sun's gravity, its power is sufficient for us.

That which you perceive is gloriously beautiful has power over you.

It's very important to begin to learn what actually has the power to hold you in a rightful orbit and to give to you.

Because God is on a mission to help you see that there is only one source to center your heart on that can keep you in that rightful orbit.

And that's point number two.

It's a little abstract, so I'll explain as we go.

Only the creator God, known in Jesus, has the capacity to hold us in rightful orbit.

And here's what I mean.

So, Moses, hey, people, tell the people, make me a sanctuary.

Because I need you to begin to see something.

And this is how I think about it.

I'm this illustration is not perfect.

Illustrations are never perfect.

But this is how I sort of think about it is when I when I look at the Old Testament, you most of y'all can't read this.

So it says tabernacle.

When I look at the tabernacle, I see a lot of like holiness, justice, uh, like Yahweh God, and the name Yahweh in the Old Testament.

I mean, they had this such respect, I mean, almost fear.

I mean, it was a it was a relationship, but but it was not this idea in the New Testament.

So even in the Old Testament, you get the idea of Father God about 15 times.

In the New Testament, you get it about 245 times.

There's a huge shift going on.

But this tabernacle, the Old Testament, a lot of times you read the Old Testament, it just feels so different before the cross of Jesus.

And for me, I can think about it this way that he's trying to teach us something.

He's teaching us about his holiness and his justice.

And he's still gracious.

He's still gracious, but but we're having a harder time to perceive that.

And yet we're all wondering what source, what what what place or thing or person has the capacity to hold us, to redeem us, to keep us, to forgive us, to absolve us.

Listen to this in Hebrews 4, 14 through 16.

And this is so important.

Because this high priest would go into the tabernacle and he'd make a sacrifice for all the people.

And they would have to keep doing this over and over, periodically.

They needed to do this, and that this is the way that the relationship between God and them was made right.

And then we get this in Hebrews 4.

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus.

So he's the high priest now.

So God Himself says, Oh, by the way, you know that picture I've been building for you of the high priest?

I'm gonna be that also.

Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.

That's good news.

But one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

So that means he was able to be the high priest and able to be the sacrifice.

He was he was the righteousness we were not.

He lived a life that we don't live.

Let us then with confidence, so we can come with confidence because of who he was, draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

So what we start to see, at least for me, no illustration is perfect.

I when I read the Old Testament, a lot of times I feel like I feel like this.

I get glimpses of glimpses of God's grace.

I feel a lot of holiness, a lot of justice.

And then I read the New Testament and excuse, this is a hello kitty ball I found in my backyard this morning, but it'll work.

Um you can't read this as well, but it says, tabernacle, holy, just.

This doesn't go away.

Old Testament God doesn't go away.

He's still holy, and he's still just.

It's just all that justice was met in Jesus.

He's still just, he's fully just.

The justice was met in Jesus.

You don't have to pay for your sins, and somebody who sins against you doesn't have to pay for their sins because the sin has been handled.

God is fully just.

But what we see in the New Testament, we're reading it and we start to see, like, oh, that so there's there's more to God.

We begin to understand that we are the temple.

We begin to understand that God lives in us, not just around us or in the tabernacle, but actually that we ourselves are the temple, which we talked about last week.

And then we begin to get this idea of Father God, not just Yahweh God, but also a father God, an Abba Father.

And we begin to see grace and mercy.

And so we begin to see God in a fuller way.

And it's not, it's not a changing God.

But God's growing our perception of Him.

Because remember, that which you perceive as gloriously beautiful will have power over you.

I know I'm a broken record when it comes to what I say kind of week in and week out.

Um, and if you want some application, the application is the center, the core of your inner self on this great story, on who God is.

He is holy and he is just and he is gloriously beautiful, and he is worthy.

All this gold, all this bronze, all this silver, you get to feel contextually so far from your life.

And it's just saying, you know what?

He is worthy of anything and everything.

And yet, this tabernacle also teaches us when we look into the book of Hebrews, like we did last week, that we are, that God actually doesn't just live amongst us, but he lives in us.

And he absolves us and he loves us and he frees us.

And so the application is to live in the story.

So we make sanctuaries.

We make sanctuaries in your car, you're cutting the lawn, you're doing the dishes, you're going for a jog.

And that sanctuary is about remembering the story.

That it is not based on your word.

That this whole story is about God's redemption of you through his work for you.

That this story has unbelievable power to hold you in orbit, to hold you, to secure you, to heal you, to redeem you, to absolve you of your sins, to begin to get you to live out of what Jesus has done for you and God's love for you and not out of shame.

Because our sins were cast upon Him that His righteousness might be given to us.

I know life's not perfect.

My life's not perfect, your life's not perfect.

We can go around, we can share very incredibly, incredibly sad stories.

But he really loves you.

He really loves you.

Not only that, and Jesus, he is fully pleased with you.

So, my brothers and sisters, I know you are needier than you would like to be, needier than you want to admit.

Me too.

Me too, but take great comfort.

He is holy, and he is just and he is gloriously beautiful, and he is also gracious and merciful.

And so we know him as Yahweh God, but we also know him as an Abba Father.

May you have a free conscience and a quiet heart and all things.

Let's pray together.

God, would you help?

Well, God, thank you that in your scriptures you teach us.

You teach us of your holiness and your beauty and your glory, that you are big and you are worthy, and you are just, and that you give us such great pictures for us to understand who you are and how you regard us.

Thank you that last week that we could we could learn and remember that you make your home in us, that we are your most important place.

And thank you this week that we get to remember that you are enough.

And that you are on a mission to help us understand and perceive what is truly gloriously beautiful and what is enough to redeem us.

Would you help us to trust greater in the perfect work that you provided for us in Jesus?

Amen.