The Place God Prepared:Josh Recene

I've really been loving lately. Pastor Josh did a message, it was two weeks ago on Ruth, right?

And he touched on this whole idea of the Bible as a redemption story, right?

And there's something so awesome in that. And I would encourage anybody to really

read through the Bible looking for that Redeemer story, refuge story,

I think. I said I meant Redeemer, okay?

It's kind of on the slide there, redemption.

You see this story unfold about the Redeemer.

And you know, there's something about our Christian churches where we get this,

we get Jesus is our redeemer, right?

Right, I grew up in this small country church. And if you went there,

it wasn't really, it was pretty plain.

There wasn't a whole lot to it, but there was a giant cross up front. Why?

Because that's where we anchored everything. Christ, our redeemer, right?

If you were gonna ask us about our theology, the most simplest form would be this.

We start off, you read in Genesis where there's a fall, Jesus redeems,

and then we go to heaven. Right?

But when you read through the Old Testament, when you read through the Bible

as a whole, what's awesome is it tells this epic tale of the Redeemer.

It talks about this story of these people that are going to be redeemed.

And each little encapsulation, each little vignette that we dig into,

we start to see this played out a different way.

I shouldn't say a different way. It reveals a little bit of information.

It starts to see it. And you start to see through these people's eyes and you

start to see through this.

And and as we start to layer these stories together you

start to notice there's certain things that are similar you start to see about

this sacrifice you start to see about it's just like it's

it's it's almost like if you're looking in a theater and maybe

it's a cheap theater and they reuse elements of the sets and you'll be in the

story and you'll be like wait i see some of these set pieces before i keep on

seeing this thing about about a sacrifice i keep on seeing about this this character

this redeemer i keep on seeing things popping in and and and what's cool in

each of these little vignettes, we get a little bit of better picture.

And so what happened is when for the Jews of his day, when suddenly the Redeemer

is on the scene, they should have an image of it.

They should have a picture. And you're seeing these little conversations.

So within that, I wanna kind of talk, I'm not gonna go through every passage

where it talks about the Redeemer.

I am gonna stop in on just a couple of sections in the Old Testament.

And then I wanna come back through this. I wanna talk about this cosmic conversation

that Jesus is having that goes across time. This conversation about the place

that God's gonna prepare for you.

The place where this should not be the first time they heard this.

And that's what I wanna touch on.

I wanna jump back to where, if you were to open up a concordance,

it's a fun thing to do actually. You go through and look up Redeemer.

And you're gonna go through, and the first time chronologically that it appears is with Jacob, right?

And Jacob is, it's a cool story. It's the end of Genesis. and Jacob is talking

to his grandkids in Egypt.

Right? I'm not going to go through the whole story, but he's got a redemption arc, right?

He's got this story and he's talking to him. And I believe it's the next verse

where he's talking with his grandchildren that were in Egypt.

Basically, he didn't know them,

but there's this whole storyline where the power, Jacob is stuck in life.

Jacob is kind of operating as this deceiver and he's kind of messed things up at home.

And then he went to go live with some other relatives and stuff kind of got messed up there.

And, and he's got to go back and like, everything's a mess. And,

and God meets him. God meets him. God changes his name. God gives him a new identity.

And, and he's excited about this. Now he's back in the picture and here he is.

And he's talking to his grandkids.

And what happened is here, there became this famine in the land and all kinds of devastation.

I know I'm jumping through a bunch, but you guys have seen Veggie Tales, you know, this story.

And what happens is he's talking to his kids and he, and he,

and he has to tell his grandkids of Joseph.

And he says, God, God opened the doors. It's been something awesome.

He's rescued his people in this time of famine, this, this, this situation that

of like extreme family turmoil, God's used for the good to rescue the world here.

And it's this awesome time. And he tells, and I'll read this next verse.

He says, again, it's Jacob talking to his grandkids.

He goes, the God before him, whom my father Abraham and Isaac walked,

the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day,

the angel who has redeemed me from all evil. Bless the boys.

And in them, let my name be carried on in the name of the fathers of Abraham

and Isaac, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.

What he's saying is he's saying, you know what? You guys have a part in this.

You've been raised outside of this. You've been raised up as Egyptian,

but you have a part in this redemption story.

There's a part. And here Here they are in this distant land.

Here they are outside of whatever the place it looks like God had prepared.

You know what? It's an awesome story in the fact that they were going to die

due to this seven-year famine, right? We know the story.

Joseph gets this dream and he goes to the king, or I'm sorry,

Pharaoh. And he says, well, actually, I'm sorry.

Screw up this story. VeggieTales did it better.

Pharaoh comes home with this crazy dream. He says, you know,

the whole thing about cows, you know, he sees cows come out of the Nile, really fat ones.

Then these skinny ones come up and eat them and they're still skinny.

And Joseph is like, well, obviously that's God telling there's going to be a

famine, duh, you know, and he gives them this position second under him,

to wisely during those fat years, preserve food and really provide a food base

or food storage for this time and for this horrible seven year period.

And we know that all this goes on.

And so the then known world is saved through this miraculous act, right?

And here they are. And you know what? This is an awesome story.

This is how Genesis ends.

We're looking at this and we're seeing like dancing and awesomeness.

You know, Joseph is reunited with his family, right? I mean, this is good stuff.

Somewhere in the midst of this time of refuge, sometime, somewhere in the midst

of all this, there's some real darkness in this story.

There's some really twisted stuff. There's a turn here that if you actually

read through this, you start to see, and I want to pick this up in,

now remember Genesis 48 is when the section I just read, that's where Jacob's

talking to his kids and he's telling them about this redeemer and oh,

this is awesome, you're a part of it.

But you know, before that, there's a couple, if you're looking for red flags, you see them.

Let's talk about Genesis 46, 33 through 34.

See, it says that when Pharaoh call, this is basically Joseph who takes his

family aside and says, hey, psst, I got some advice for you.

And he says, when Pharaoh calls you and says, what is your occupation?

You shall say, your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth even

until now, both we and our fathers, in order that we may dwell in the land of Goshen.

For every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.

That's cool, right? You're the new kid in school. Hey, guess what?

You're going to be my buddy. We're going to be friends.

Every year is going to hate you. They're going to kind of think you,

whatever, smell, you look bad, whatever. They just look down on you.

It's just a thing. But hey, we're going to be together.

Oh, that's cool. It's temporary, right? This is just a temporary place.

It's refuge. Okay, that's cool.

So I go with that. Now let's go to chapter 47.

I started with 18, okay.

So here we see this story and what happens is everybody's starving.

And so you have this seven-year famine and you know what? The first year,

maybe they got some money and they spend that.

And then you start to see that, okay, come year two, well, we spend our money on food.

So then they come to Pharaoh again and they're like, well, we got this livestock.

We got some stuff we can sell you. We can tell you our stuff. And they do that.

And then the next year, it starts getting harder and harder.

And we pick up in verse 18, it says, When that year was over,

they came to him the following year and said, We cannot hide from our Lord the

fact that since our money is gone and our livestock belongs to you,

there is nothing left for our Lord except our bodies and our land.

Why should we perish before your eyes, we and our land as well?

Buy us and our land in exchange for food. and we with our land will be in bondage

to Pharaoh. That doesn't sound good.

Give us seed so that we may live and not die and that the land may not become desolate.

So Joseph bought all the land in Egypt for Pharaoh.

The Egyptians, one and all, sold their fields because the famine was too severe for them.

The land became Pharaoh's and Joseph reduced the people to servitude from one

end of Egypt to the other.

However, he did not buy the land from the priests because they received a regular

allotment from Pharaoh and had food enough from the allotment.

Pharaoh gave them. That is why they did not sell their land.

That's a weird twist, right? When we were just celebrating, right?

I watched the happy vegetables sing this song.

God's provided this place. God's provided this refuge, but something's really screwy here.

It says all the land, I'm going to read that highlighted section again,

but as our land in exchange for food, and we will, the second part,

and with our land, we'll be in bondage to Pharaoh. Bondage. Yeah.

The whole power structure in Egypt is changing. They've normalized servitude and bondage.

This doesn't, like, if you're looking for red flags in a story,

this does not sound like a great place to be.

This doesn't, right? This isn't, this isn't. And as you start to go on,

you start to see, you know, this famine that lasted seven years.

You see, hey, but we're with Joseph, right? I mean, it's good.

And Jacob dies 17 years later, right? That's after the famine.

He's still there. And he says, guys, guess what? You know what?

When you leave this place, because we are leaving, right? We're not staying

here. Can you take my bones?

I don't want to stay here. And you know, another 54 to 55 years, Joseph dies.

Before he dies, he goes, guys, we're not staying here, right?

I mean, surely we're not going to stay here.

And you see this little, where I want to kind of go, I'm projecting here.

Is this idea that God provides something very special. It was a place of refuge, right?

But somewhere in there, that became a place of survival. And somewhere in there,

things got a little screwy.

Somewhere in there, it wasn't where God had them. It wasn't the place that God

prepared for them, right? It was a substitute.

And that's okay for a season. In fact, if you look throughout the Bible,

you'll find stories where Egypt is used in this way.

In fact, even going all the way to the New Testament with Jesus,

Joseph in the New Testament, when he's afraid of Herod, what's he do?

He takes his kids, he takes Jesus and Mary and they go to Egypt for a while.

And what happens every time you have this story? God says to him, you can't stay here.

You can't stay here. You know, you found a way to survive and this is where

I'm gonna try to link it into something here that projects where I'm going here with this.

There's a place that we find to survive. There's a place where,

okay, God, I'm grateful.

I'm making some money. I've got something that's working here. But you know what?

The gods of this land, the things that are being built up are not what you're

building. They're Pharaohs.

It says there, it's very interesting to me that Pharaoh is giving an allotment

or he's paying out, they have a steady job, the priests of the gods of Egypt.

They have a steady gig. So you know what, they keep on buying food.

They stay there. You know what happens in this land that we're living just for

survival is the gods of that land are propped up.

What are the gods of that land? What are the things that they value? What are the things?

And when we're in a survival mode, the things that we start to look to are those gods.

Are those things that, God, you know what? I can't do this because of this.

I can't, I'm in a rough spot, God.

This is, this is, you know, I hear you, maybe you're calling.

I hear maybe there's something else for me. Maybe there's something you've put

in my heart, but you know what, God, do you look at where we're at?

Do you see where things are? Do you see the state of the economy?

Do you see the place of the world, of the country?

Whatever it is, we start to live by those rules and they get stuck.

We know the story. They don't leave. They don't.

When you flip the, if you're reading this in the Bible and you flip to the next

book of Exodus, it starts off with 400 years later.

I know there's some argument whether it was 200 and some or 400 years,

whatever. It was a long time. When you got hundreds of years,

it's a long time. They're still there. They're still stuck.

And you know what? They had an identity as shepherds before.

But under Pharaoh, it says something about the Pharaoh that's there on this day and this time.

It says that the Pharaoh did not know anything about Joseph.

It's like, what's this guy?

But see, Joseph, or I'm sorry, Pharaoh has his own purpose. He has his own plan

as far as when it comes to the Israelites.

He says, you know what? You guys are cheap labor.

And he gives them their own identity and they're brick makers and they're stuck in this situation.

And as we go through this Exodus story, which I'm not gonna go through the whole

thing, you see this constant push, this constant place of stuck,

of like, God, this place that you provide, this place that gave me at least a survival.

I'm stuck here and I'm not able to go past this. And you see this played out over and over.

You see some things here as far as, but we know the story also sung by Wonderful

Vegetables, where God calls Moses, right?

This character who he's born an Israelite, he's raised Egyptian,

he sees things need to be changed, but he sees a lot of failure.

And here he's off and God appears to him again.

God speaks to him in a physical way. It says that the angel of the Lord appeared

to him in as a burning bush, right?

And he calls to him. And we pick this up in Exodus 6, 6. He starts to give him

knowledge and wisdom as far as what he needs to do.

And this is the next, if we're going through a concordance and we're talking

about the story of redemption, we pick back up with it.

And it says in Exodus 6, it says, Exodus 6, 6, it says, say there to the people

of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of

the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them.

And I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, with great acts of judgment.

I'm going to, God goes back to his redemption plan. He goes,

you know what, once again, we see, you know what, there's a place.

See, something that happens here is there's a promise.

You know, the story that we're constantly, that we've been following up to this

point is that God has his promised people for our promised land, right?

He's created a place for them. He's created a spot where they exist,

where they're going to operate from. And he says, I'm calling you there. And you know what?

Pharaoh has his own purpose and his own identity for what these people are.

But God's like, I'm calling you from that. And there's something different here.

There's a really, on purpose, there's a really wild storyline that happens here

in this story between Pharaoh and God, right?

We see this, they're butting heads and it comes out over purpose.

See, God gives through Moses, he gives him this awesome word that I think a

lot of us in church would love to hear.

It says in Exodus 9, verse 16, this is again, Moses talking to Pharaoh,

Exodus 9:16

but he goes, but I have raised you up. This is God talking to him. So, you know, the tense.

But I have raised you up for this very purpose. Oh, this sounds good.

That I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and

that my name may be proclaimed on all the earth.

That sounds like a really good purpose, but let's take note and realize Pharaoh

dies by death by swirly in the Red Sea. It's not a good thing.

See, it's not hard to find purpose in this world. Somebody's always got one for you, right?

And when we're in these places, somebody will tell you what you are.

Somebody will tell you where you fit, right?

We have this really cool statement here that I love.

I always mess it up. I was meant to write this down.

What's it say about living word, our mission statement here?

At Living Word, we exist to lead people to purpose and belonging through a genuine

relationship with Jesus Christ. Purpose and belonging.

There's always a counterfeit. There's always a place where we can find ourselves

in survival mode when we're living in survival land.

It's a purpose, right? Pharaoh had his purpose. God's like, that's not the purpose.

That's not the purpose. He comes at him with two different things, right?

God says first to Moses, and then I'm gonna move on from the story,

but he says, he tells Moses, he goes, tell him that I am who I am, right?

Your purpose isn't the real thing, right? I'm gonna show you with what God is,

what God is establishing the reality here.

And he says one other thing. He says, when God's talking to Moses there in this

burning bush, he tells him, he goes, you know what, this is gonna be a sign to you.

We're gonna have a worship service on this mountain, right?

And he goes to Pharaoh and I find this strange, he'll go to him and he'll say,

hey, you know what, what I wanna do?

We need to take this people out for three days in the wilderness and worship the Lord.

And you look at that and you're like, God, really? That's what we need to do

here? Have a worship service? That's what we need to do is worship.

But you see, when those gods are raised up, worship is what you really need, right?

Because the gods that have been elevated, the gods and the standards that have

been put there that says you're here, this is where you're stuck,

they can't be getting the focus.

You need to raise your eyes past that, right? And that's what he's saying.

He goes, come out and worship me.

I'm telling you, it's not for my own ego. oh, it's not for just a religious ceremony.

Worship having a place in our hearts says, God, you're bigger than all this.

God, you're bigger than this. And I gotta wonder, what would have happened with Pharaoh?

What would have happened with Egypt if they had said, God, all right,

all right, I guess you really are the real deal here.

I guess, you know, whatever, I'll let you worship.

What would have God unlocked in that world?

What would have God, instead, they had a fight.

You know what? God came against, and he says specifically, Simply,

I came against those gods. I came against them with the plagues.

And his people are released.

There's something that's really awesome is just touching on this before we hit

into the next stop here on looking at redemption.

When the people leave, God has them set up this thing. It's a tent.

It's a tabernacle, right? And it means dwelling.

And what it means is God's presence is gonna dwell with his people.

And there's always throughout these stories, if you're just gonna sit there

and look, and remember I said there's like furniture that matches throughout

the redemption stories, you're gonna see an element that they can see.

You're gonna see an element of God in a couple of ways.

You're gonna see, you see this sense of God as our God who's leading us and guide us, right?

And then you see this physical person or visibility that pops in in each of these stories, right?

When the promise is first given to Abraham that you're gonna have a kid, what happens?

He's visited by people, right? And he starts to realize, wait,

okay, hey, these people aren't people, they're angels. No, no,

that's God that's speaking to me.

It's the pre-incarnate Christ. God is showing up in these stories.

When you see Jacob wrestling with God, right?

So physically, God's showing up, this redemption story. And here you have the,

when Moses is seeing the burning bush, he says, that's the angel of the Lord. That's God showing up.

And what happens is you see this sense of where, when the people of Israel are

leaving to go to this promised land, this place that God prepared,

they bring a tabernacle, right?

Because they have to look at it and they have to say, you know what,

that is the physical sign that God is with us.

And it makes this, and if you read through it, there's this,

it's really written as an epic of the whole thing of God's spirit coming in

and dwelling in that tent that's among them.

So they say, where are we going? Where are we going in this process?

We can visually see it. God is here among us. God's presence.

And in this journey, in this place, through this wilderness,

what do they learn? They learn how to walk with God. They learn how to carry His presence.

And that's something that God wants us to do. That's something that God has

made us as an identity, right?

As his people, is that we carry his presence, is that we go with him.

One more stop, and then I want to jump back into the scripture that I opened up with.

So when you're, again, if you're going through a concordance and you're looking

for redemption, you're gonna come across Ruth.

Pastor Josh spoke on that the other week. I'm not gonna dig into that,

but it's awesome, right?

God's people in this new land, in this promised land where he puts them,

you start to see their behaviors start to change.

You start to act like the redeemed as a community who has a redeemer,

this Kingsman redeemer.

You start to see elements of this played out. You see a king that is actually

redeemed against this Moabite curse.

There's this curse for any Moabite that they're not allowed to be.

My wife, Bonnie, preached on this last fall. So I'm not, again,

I'm not going to go into it, but, but there's this whole redemption story for

even David's line and this kingship that God sets up.

And we pick back up with this redemption story in 2 Samuel 7 and,

and with Sam and with David, he's doing good.

The kingdom's doing good. He's in a good place, right?

This isn't the same thing as, as survival mode that we see with the children of Israel in Egypt.

They're in something different now. They're just sitting pretty good.

And it's almost comical because I love this story where David calls in the prophet,

prophet Nathan at the time.

And he says, starting in verse seven, he calls to him and he says,

see, I now dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent.

What he's basically telling him here is he says, you know what?

I'm looking at that tent that we came up in this tent that we're following and

I don't know if you know this.

Kind of living past that now. Have you seen my house?

I got cedar paneling. I got cedar. It's really awesome.

And he's frustrated because he's looking at this tent that they came up with.

It's really a tent. Like we got to do something better than that, right?

We got to do something better. And Nathan leaves him and Nathan says,

okay, you know, that's cool. But God doesn't let Nathan alone.

God visits him. This is where it gets kind of comical because God tells Nathan,

you need to go back and you need to, to tell him some things.

And, and, and I guess I'm gonna start with verse seven.

I love this, this verse here. And it says, this is God talking to David through, through Nathan.

He says, in all the places where I moved with all the people of Israel,

did I speak a word with any of the judges of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd

my people, Israel saying, why have you not built me a house of cedar?

He's like, that cedar is really important to you, but it's not to me, right?

Your standards and the things that you're looking at, it's not moving the needle

for me. It's like really a big deal for David, right?

It's he's looking at this and he's like, hey, I got cedar paneling.

Do you see? And there's this stuff that we have that is our goals,

that is our things, are the things that we start to lift up.

And very similarly to the place of survival, we start to lift up things too

and say, God, what about this?

God, what about this? God, I'm looking in this day and I see really good TED

Talks and we need really good speaking.

God, we really need the music to be at this level. God, we really need this.

And I start to look at my life and I start to say, God, I could do this if this,

but the standards aren't quite there.

I've kind of grown accustomed to this place. And what do we end up doing? We're stuck again.

We're stuck again. Once again, we're elevating standards that God's not interested in.

I'm not saying that he's not interested in those things. In fact,

even in In this story, you see him, he gives it behind you. He goes,

all right, build a really nice temple.

Putting the standard here. He's saying, you know what? I'm not impressed by

the same things you're impressed by.

And he starts to speak to him. And starting in the next, we're going to pop

back into this, I believe in verse 10, I think is the next slide.

Yes. No, 13. Okay.

All right. No, it is verse 10. Okay. And this is God talking to David and he

says, I will appoint, this is where we get back into that place that God's preparing.

He says, I will appoint a place for my people, Israel, and plant them,

so that they may dwell in their own place, and to be disturbed no more.

And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly from the time that I

appointed judges over my people Israel.

And I will give you rest from all your enemies.

Moreover, the Lord declares that you, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house.

When your days are fulfilled, and you lie down with your fathers,

I will raise up your offspring after you and you shall come from your body,

who shall come from your body and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

There's this kind of interesting back and forth in this story where God is talking

to, once again to David and he says, you wanna build a place for me?

I don't think you understand how this works.

I'm the one who makes a place for you.

You can make this up and you can envision something with your standards and

what you think is great, what you think is awesome, where you think this needs to go.

But I'm telling you, it's a lot better if I show you where this goes.

It's a lot better if we stick with that tent, if we tabernacle with him,

if we're following God, if he's leading us in these places, because all you're

going to do is find yourself under another form of bondage. You know what?

David is so thrilled with these cedar walls, with the cedar paneling.

And what you see happen is within the next couple chapters, some of the greatest

downfall in his entire kingship happens with Bathsheba.

You know, there's something else that's working in there. There's other things

that he says, you know, this is appropriate for kings.

And he finds himself just another bondage, just another fall.

God's like, that tent you're looking at.

And David starts to get a glimpse of this and he starts to understand it.

And David in the next paragraph, he, you see him, he's excited by this.

He goes, God, you're going to do something through my line.

God, you're going to do something big. You're going to, you're going to build me a house.

Now you have to understand this concept of a house, this concept of something

that he's establishing.

Again, this goes back to this concept of tabernacle where he's building a place

for him. And he says, you're going to keep my family line.

You're going to, you're going to do a place for this people. That's awesome.

And so in verse 23, he says, and who is like your people, Israel,

the one nation on earth whom God went to redeem to be his people,

making himself a name and doing for them. This is awesome.

Great and awesome things by driving out before your people whom you redeemed,

who you redeemed for yourself from Egypt, a nation and its gods,

and you established for yourself a people of Israel to be your people forever.

And you, Lord, became their God.

Great and awesome things. That

tent you're looking at, that tent you're seeing and you're like, God...

It could be better. That tent did great and awesome things.

You know, whatever you think that we're going to do, whatever we're going to

establish by, if we can just speak well enough, if we can just have enough money

in the bank, if we can just have whatever it is that we think is holding us

back, God's like, you could have that, but that's just cedar paneling.

You can chase after cedar paneling.

Place that carries my presence, that's where I want you to be.

The place that has my direction and my leadership, that's where I want you to

be. Because you see, that's where God's fall.

That's where deliverance is made. That's where freedom's found.

That's where we go to the place that I prepared for you.

This place where you're going to excel, this place, you know,

the Bible talks about over and over, you got to look at it and you're like, what is it?

This place flowing with milk and honey, this place of blessing,

this place that I'm leading to,

this place where you're going to be able to operate from don't be

distracted by cedar all right i'm gonna

jump back into the new testament now we have this background we're

going into and and and john when it first opens up in john 1 it kind of sets

the stage for some things here in the in this and it re it re it reframes the

story of jesus as the tabernacle right it says in john 1 starting with verse 14.

It says, and the word became flesh and dwelt or tabernacled among us.

And we have seen his glory, glory as the only son from the father, full of grace and truth.

The word became flesh and dwelt or tabernacled among us.

See, you're seeing something that this visible sign of God's presence,

this visible sign that went with them that was so innate or so part of the Jewish

background or the stories that they cherished.

He's like, that's Jesus today. He's like, that's Jesus who's dwelling with us.

That's Jesus we can look to. And you know, we got to experience that.

We got to experience that tabernacle.

Reframing it in that light. All right. I want to revisit John 14. Then we're going to end.

So again, we have Jesus is celebrating the Passover, right?

Now that Passover, what? That's a playback again with this Exodus story,

this story of redemption, the story where the lamb is slain,

where God takes him out of Egypt, where he brings him to the place that he's prepared.

And it's really interesting is he's talking about this and he says,

guys, you don't realize it.

One of you is going to betray me and the rest of you are just going to run scared.

It's all about to change. And, you know, they're kind of bummed out by this. They're confused by it.

And then he goes into this statement here and I'm going to read through it again. We're going to...

Sense of this. He says, let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.

In my father's house, there are many rooms. If there were not so,

would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

What's he talking about? Where's the last time that from a Jewish person that

they would have heard about God building a house?

It's for his people. It's for the line of David. He's saying, I built a place for you.

I built a place. And where is that house, in my father's house,

in this tabernacle, there's many rooms.

It's just not the line of David. I'm about to open this up big and you're going to be part of it.

This whole idea of them traveling with the tabernacle, he's like, you're going with me.

And let's kind of look at this. He says, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back.

I'm sorry, I will come again and will take you to myself. And where I am,

you may also be. You may be also.

And you know the where I'm going. And Thomas says to him, Lord,

we do not know where you're going. How can we know the way?

Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to

the Father except through me.

If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on,

you do know him and you do and you have seen him.

I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the father except for me

again in this tent in this tabernacle I'm calling you into this that you're part of it.

Is where God's presence says, and you have a place here.

There's a place that I know where you can operate, where you were built to operate.

There's a place where God's presence rests upon you.

And picking this back up in verse 12, you know, he says some awesome boasts,

just like he says to David, just like he tells David, I'm going to make your line great.

I'm going to do some awesome things here. Here he speaks to them great things.

And he says, you know what, starting in verse 12, He says, truly,

truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do

and greater works than these will he do because I'm going to the father.

Whatever you ask in my name, this will I do that the father may be glorified in the son.

This is crazy. I don't even know what to do with this last statement.

If you ask me anything in my name, I'll do it.

He says, do you want to be part of this? This tent, this tent,

it might not have your cedar walls, or you're senior paneling,

but there's awesomeness here. There's the presence of God.

I'm gonna take you somewhere. This is where you were meant to operate.

He then goes into the very next paragraph and just kind of moving along here.

Maybe I won't read it, but...

Then promises the Holy Spirit to them. And you know what? It's the next natural

thing when you're looking at this from a tabernacle perspective, right?

Because the big thing is, is that the children of God who are following the

tabernacle, because it's filled with his presence.

And he starts to do this model to them. And he starts to explain this the way they're going to live.

He says, you're going to follow just like you followed that tent. You're going to be here.

You're going to be following me and I'm going to direct your paths,

right? And he says, I'm going to prepare a place for you and I'm going to fill

you with that very presence.

My spirit is going to be inside you. And what's interesting is I'm not going

to go through it all, but if you start to read through the rest,

you know, the next chapter when they leave and he keeps on speaking to them

and he starts to give them this example of the vine and the branches, right?

And he's saying, my presence is going to flow through you.

You're going to be part of this, but it's in the place that

i prepared it's the place and god

preaches over and over and he gives them this this concept of where and if you

read back through it and you start to see where he's placing them on this earth

to do his work you know these these big boasts of greater things you're going

to do than i did that that's part of your inheritance that's part of who you

are that's part of the promise.

Promise that connects the purpose of God and the place you need to be.

That promise, that's yours. And you know what?

By the time you get to chapter 18, right through this message,

Jesus is arrested. And what happens?

His disciples go running. They're back in fear mode. They're back in survival mode.

They're like, and it's interesting because you see even Peter, right?

And you see, I was meditating on this as I was driving in here today.

And it's so interesting that you see Peter in this survival mode.

And it says that he's sitting there warming himself by the fire,

trying to figure out what's going on here, what's going on with Jesus.

And I ran and I probably shouldn't run.

And this is really scary, but I kind of want to be here because there's probably

a way to fix this. There's probably a way to get back in.

And one of the servants, one of the servant girls goes, hey,

weren't you one with him?

Boom, switches gears once again, right? He's like, I never knew him.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Because his own life, because these things, these things that are really important

things were bigger and they directed his actions and there's a place he's not able to operate in.

And you see this, and what's awesome is, yes, we have this epic that happens

of Jesus on the cross, this epic of redemption, right?

Story. And just like Jesus promised, he says, I'm going to come back to you, right?

I'm going to prepare this place. Like if I go back to that verse,

somewhere here, somewhere here in my notes.

And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself.

And he does. And for 40 days, we see this ministry of Christ with his disciples, right?

And he's walking with them. He's popping in. He's not the way he was before,

but like all of a sudden he's there with them. He's there with them on a beach.

He's there with them at their jobs.

He's there with them. and he says, guys, we're doing this. God,

that place have prepared for you? And he tells them something.

You see the end of this 40 days, you see it's picked up in Acts.

And starting in Acts chapter one, verse four, and it says, Acts one,

four through five, it says, and while staying with them, he ordered them not

to depart from Jerusalem,

but to wait for the promise of the father, which he

said you heard from me for john baptized with

water but you will be baptized with the holy spirit not

many days from now once again he draws them to that place the place that he

prepared and in this situation there's a physical place there's a physical place

he goes hey don't leave because there's something there's something you really

need here in this place there's a way that i know that you can operate there's

a place you knew how to operate when you were being all kinds of crazy and running around,

you know, hey, Peter, when you were hacking somebody's ear off,

that, that, that was you.

I got a better way that you know how to, I know how you can operate,

how you can be effective in this world.

And, and we know the story. I don't know if this was sung by vegetables.

In the second chapter of Acts, you see in the upper room where God comes down,

where his presence fills, not this time, one tabernacle, but each one of their

tabernacles, each one of their tents is filled with his presence.

Just like with the angel of the Lord appearing as the burning bush for Moses,

it says that they could visually see tongues of fire.

God fills them with his presence. And what do you start to see is next thing

you know, you start to see, you know, just like with the promised land,

or I should say, not like the promised land. It wasn't them leaving Egypt.

In fact, they were in the same upper room they were in.

They were in the same country that when they were running scared,

but something's changed in here.

God's taken them from survival mode. And he's like, this is where you operate.

And you see a different kind of operation. One of the first things you start

to see is they can communicate on another level. Because they're going to be

able to communicate with people.

We read the story about them speaking in tongues of other languages,

where the other people in this land, these other people, they start to hear

it, and they're able to communicate, and they're able to break through and communicate

to people they could have never communicated to before.

They're able to go out in boldness, whereas before they ran scared.

Now they're operating at a whole nother level because they've come to the place

where God had them, the place where God established.

And I'll just do this one verse here, and then we can wrap up.

But in second chapter of Acts, in 37, verse 37, it says, now when they heard

this, this is talking about the people, these people who are hearing this in

their own language, he's communicating

with people that they couldn't have communicated with before.

And he says to Peter, the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do?

And Peter said to them, repent and baptize every one of you in the name of Jesus

Christ for forgiveness of your sins. and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off.

Everyone whom the Lord, our God, calls to himself.

And with many words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them saying,

save yourselves from this crooked generation.

So those who receive the word were baptized and they were added that day about 3000 souls.

There's obviously a difference here,

that God prepared. I'm going to wrap this up now so we can even stand,

have musicians, whoever we want to do it.

That promise, that promise that connects the purpose of God.

You see, when God, when you read in Genesis, what happens is.

God makes man in his image. He says, you know what? You're going to do my business.

You're going to do business as me. This is going to be what people see here

on earth. you're going to be acting like that.

That's the purpose. Not what Pharaoh's purpose was. Not with the purpose of

the situation, not the purpose of survival, not the purpose of the estimate

of these goals that we think we need to obtain to. He goes, my purpose.

And what purpose does is it connects them to the purpose of God, that promise.

And it also connects them to what? The place. Because I know where you need

to operate. And I'm going to lead you there.

And there's a way to look at this message. And, um, well, there's two things about this.

We can keep it very theoretical, right? We can look at this as like some, oh yeah, overall.

But God wants to lead us individually and it's gotta be practical.

You know, God wants to direct us in the ways that we think, in the things that

we hold up high, in the things that we, the standards that we hold.

He wants to direct those paths.

He wants us to have that freedom to worship him, to elevate him,

to let us guide, to have him guide us.

And even more so to fill us with his presence that we can go and operate the

way he plans, operate beyond whatever standards we're holding up,

beyond whatever we think, the greatest expectation of our cedar paneling.

You know, some messages you can look at and some things in the Bible,

you can almost make them self-help, right?

This one doesn't work that way. This only works with that genuine encounter

with the Holy Spirit, the genuine encounter with Jesus that only happens with

genuine communication with him, with direction from him.

In my life currently, the reason I've been, I don't know if I want to get into this.

This is something God's been really making real to me.

As I've been praying and as I've been going through this, God's been revealing

to me, there's some areas that I kind of just allowed myself to get stuck.

There's some places where I'm in a place and this works.

And you know what? I'm coming up on 50 now.

And what happens is I start to, in my mind, get this idea of,

okay, how do I want to coast?

Where are my goals and where did I just kind of peak?

But I feel this calling of the Holy Spirit and I feel God working my life and saying, you know what?

I got a place for you and you can hang out here where he can follow me.

I can move through your life and that's what I want.

That's what as a church, the formation of this church to be the visual sign

of Christ in our land, in our lives and have his presence go through it. It's a lofty goal.

But it's one that God calls us to. So if God really made that place of operation,

God really knows where we fit best, where we work.

If we really have that huge statement that we talk about as a church, right?

To bring people to purpose and belonging. His purpose and finding a place where

they fit in God's purpose and God's plan.

We're not saying it has to be here at Living Word, but what we're saying to

be plugged into him, into his presence.

Let him fill you and direct you and lead you.

Praise you god lord jesus lord i just thank you

for this opportunity lord to meet in your name once again lord jesus lord i

praise you lord for this calling lord that you've given us lord i praise you

lord that you're greater than all the things that are going on in this world

today all the things that are going

on in our lives individually lord that you've prepared a place for us.

I submit my will. Lord, whatever things that I'm looking at and I say,

God, it's got to look like this.

It's got to look like this. I'm willing to accept that's just cedar paneling.

Say, God, lead me by your spirit. Lord, may you fill me with your presence,

Lord, for the calling that you called me to do.

Lord, as a church, for the calling that you called us to do.

Lord, move in this place. Lord, move in our lives. Direct our paths, Lord Jesus.

Lord, it's your word says, Lord, unless the Lord builds the house, labors labor in vain.

Lord, teach us to build.

And even more so, to live in the house, Lord, that you built.

The place that you called us to. Jesus' name.