How God Made A Way: A Journey Towards The Cross - Part 2: God moves In

Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our

lead pastor, Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message

would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you

to the life changing love of Jesus.

May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.

I want to begin with our confession.

We do this every week and this is this is a declaration of

truth and. Sometimes we feel.

This. And sometimes we don't, but we

believe that truth is truth. And so our confession as his

church, as his people is that we are badly broken.

Yes, you are. Grace and peace to you.

That idea, that declaration of badly broken and deeply loved.

We kind of, that's a summary of what we began touching on last

week on our series that's going to go all the way through

Easter. Badly Broken and deeply loved is

a picture of life outside the gate.

You remember we saw last week in Eden, We looked at Genesis 1 and

we saw that God created a world and it was formless and void.

It didn't have shape. It didn't have substance.

It was unfit for life. God was there, but there was no

space for. Us there and so we.

Saw God. What we saw God doing was

creating a home, fashioning, fashioning a space where He and

we could dwell together. And we saw His intention and

calling it he created space, he said let there be time, day and.

Night. And there was.

Time and then there was water above and water below, so there

was atmosphere and then there was water and dry land.

And so with his words, with his voice, by his intention, he

created space. And then for the next three

days, he filled that space, and he filled the sky with.

Sun and moon and stars, he. Filled the sky above the the

waters above with birds. And fish in the sea and then

the. Last day he.

Filled the land. With animals and mankind.

And what we saw was the 7th day after He had formed and filled a

world and he called it over and over again.

He saw that it was good. We saw God stop.

And rest and. Sit down.

He didn't rest because he was exhausted.

He wasn't sucking wind or out of shape.

He was done and what we saw was that place where God sat and

throned over His creation was a. Temple.

It was a home. But it wasn't like other temples

in the ancient Near East where God sat far removed and high

above from his people. God created in this home, this

place that He ordered. There was a partnership.

It was purposeful. He had authority and He shared

His authority with us, and he created mankind and He set him

in a place called. Eden and Eden.

Was in bloom. Eden was already fruitful.

There is God's authority and our authority partnered, and the

plan and the goal was to fill creation.

With this order and this goodness, through the

partnership, God created a home for us to dwell with Him.

When God could have done anything he wanted, when he

could have structured and built anything that he wanted, He

built. He built a place for him and.

Us to be together now we weren't the.

Same In that space there were distinct roles.

God's role was always and inescapably to have absolute,

ultimate, final authority. Only God can call something from

nothing. Only God can separate the waters

above and the orders below. But that doesn't mean that we

didn't have any authority. The authority that he gave us

was real and it was authentic. He had a role and he gave us a

role. And in that, in that combination

and that communion, the plan was for.

Goodness forever. But those roles actually end up

becoming part of the problem. His role and our role, those

distinction. There's actually a word.

And it may be a surprising word to you.

It's probably a word that you've heard before, but maybe.

Not in this context. The idea this word that

describes and illustrates the distinction between who God is

and what God does and who we are and what we do is the word.

Holiness and the word holiness is a description of.

What God is that we are not. And you may have heard holiness

uses this impossible challenge to be good, to be better than

you are. And maybe that generally means

like to get your lust under control or to stop cussing so

much or or to vote a certain way or to do something like this

with your money. And so holiness has almost well

has often been used to describe some kind of a behavior set, but

it goes much deeper and different than that.

Holiness is all the things that God is in his ultimate, ultimate

Ness, in his ultimate authority and his ultimate power.

And it's not what we experience now, but it's that holiness,

right? And so you may have heard

holiness, it may have been like a sledgehammer for you, right,

to remind you what you're not. And it may carry all kinds of

like weight and guilt and shame. But the important thing to see

is in that order, in that system.

God's holiness is what made the partnership possible.

The separation of holiness is what describes life outside the

gate. See, God's holiness is what

allows him to create the garden in the 1st place.

It was God's holiness that fashioned a space already in

bloom when we walked. In it is that holiness that the

serpent refrained as restriction in the garden.

We knew that God was different from us.

We knew that God had ultimate authority.

But the question is. The subtle implication was, why

wouldn't God want you to be like him?

Why wouldn't God want you to have ultimate authority in this

place? And as humanity in the garden,

with all the goodness around us said, you know what?

That's a good question. I wonder why he wouldn't want me

to do that, and the response was to grasp.

At control. Sure, it's fine that I could

name the animals. Whatever I want, but.

Really, I want to be able to decide what is good and what is

real and what is ultimate. And so in a world where all we

had experienced was the goodness of God in this perfectly ordered

relationship, we decided that we didn't just want to be with God,

we wanted to be like God. We wanted to be God.

And so. But the problem is.

If we're in a garden that God is created by his omnipotence, if

we're in a garden that God has sustained by His character and

by His nature and by His Holiness, well, if we don't want

that anymore, what happens is we are removed from that and that

is the last image that we saw of.

Eden last week, walking out of a.

Garden full of God's. Good provision for us into the

wilderness from the last image we saw of Eden last week was a

gate close behind us barring our re entry.

Not able to get back to the life.

And the goodness and the plan that God had created us for.

That gate is what keeps us from the garden.

But where we left last week was the gate that keeps us from the

garden doesn't keep God from us. The truth about.

Humanity is that since that moment, since we grasped for

control, we've lived exiled in the wilderness.

That word wilderness can often be a Christian cliche.

If you've been a Christian for a while.

If you haven't, I'm putting new lingo in your language.

This is good. Like you can use this for your

language. Like if you've been a Christian

for a while and you follow, you may talk about being in a

wilderness season, and maybe that means like a season of of

spiritual dryness where you sit down and you pray, but you don't

feel anything. Like you don't have that burn

kind of in your chest or you try to worship and you don't have an

emotional response to worship. Or or you just.

Feel like you're not connected to God, like like God is far

away and all of. Those can be aspects of it, but

this idea of wilderness? That we find in Scripture is.

So much bigger. It's so much deeper than that.

Wilderness in the scripture is tangible.

You can feel it, you can taste it.

Wilderness hangs on you, it clings to you, and it defines

every aspect of where you are and how you go.

It is the definition and the distinction from what we were

supposed to be. We saw it last week.

Wilderness in our sexuality looks like what was created to

be. A partnership in creation.

Sex was a good gift given to us by God for for a purpose, so

that we could know another intimately, so that we could be

known in the very fabric and fiber of who we are.

It was supposed to be a picture of how intimacy and union

creates life, but instead we traded that for the ability to

choose how we use it. We want to use it for our

pleasure. We want to use it to control

another, to extract something for the other.

And So what wilderness in our. Sexuality looks like loneliness

and fracture, and that unfulfilled sense.

Of giving yourself to. Someone and not having them give

back in return. Wilderness is real work.

Exile. The work in exile is different

work. Isn't a result of the curse

before the curse? Before the fall?

We worked in the garden alongside God.

Our work. Listen, the idea behind work was

work was God's gift of allowing us to partner with omnipotence.

We have a God who can do anything, who by the word of his

mouth can create something from nothing.

He didn't ask us to make oranges.

He asked us to take the orange tree and spread the orchard as

far as it could go, so that everybody who wanted.

Could have some. We don't have to fabricate.

We don't have to. We don't have to establish and

build an empire for ourselves. God created everything that we

need and we got to partner with Him, but we traded partnership

with omnipotence. For hustle for a.

Few extra hours for a few more shifts so that I can buy the

House of my dreams, the car of my dreams, the.

Vacation of my dreams and exile in our job feels like

purposelessness. Going to work day after day,

working for someone who neither cares for you or considers you

and wondering, is this what it's supposed to be about?

Is this Eden we're building? An empire in a world that we're

not really sure we care that much about.

Shows up in our community, in our connections, in our

relationships. Humanity was naked and

unashamed. Think of the implications of

that. I don't like to walk out of my

restroom, right? Because I'm like 50 years old

and things like hanging like they've been.

Places they didn't used to, right?

There was no body image issues in the.

Garden Eve never wondered where. You know, that's where that

piece of cake went, right? There was There was No Fear of

rejection. There's No Fear of being judged

or overlooked. But we removed vision of the one

who created us in his image, who saw us and said I think you're

beautiful. We were separated from that.

Voice that tells us that. We're enough we.

Separated from that voice that wakes us up in the morning and

says, I have purposeful, meaningful work for you to do

alongside other people who have purposeful, meaningful work for

do. We stepped outside of that.

And so now what? We settle for these carefully

curated perspectives and a little box on these little

square pictures on our phone, and we're projecting a power

that we don't have or a success that we don't feel, hoping

against all hope that will someone will look at us and

think we're pretty enough or smart enough or successful

enough or good enough to envy and to emulate.

We've traded community for image.

And listen, I want you to hear me say real quick like I know I

get loud and, and, and you know that there's no judgement in

that. I know.

Why we do it? Because all of us have made

honest. Mistakes and been judged.

And condemned for it. And so I understand that

instinct to go never again. I'll never again subject myself.

To that. But friends, that's the

wilderness we traded being known for being.

Fabricated we've replaced vulnerability with performance.

That's exile and in our parenting, parenting is God's

gift to us to partner what it was like I mean, just think

about the Godhead in Genesis one, right?

Let us create mankind in our image and he created male and

female and now in the context of our loving marriages and our

relationships, we get to. Experience, not entirely, but

something like that. We get to create life and we get

to watch it and tend to it, and we get to help form that life in

a way that's going to be able to respond to the God in the world

and fill it with goodness and life.

And we're so afraid that someone's going to put something

in and we should listen. I grew up in the 90s, man.

We didn't have videos and stuff like that.

Like we were pretty safe. Now there's Everything

Everywhere in We're afraid of our kids, but it wasn't supposed

to be that way. Our desire and our children is

to make. Something that's going to

outlast us. We know we're listen, the

mortality rate continues to hover around 100% for humanity.

But you know something? Ecclesiastes tells us that he

has placed eternity in the hearts of men.

We know that we're not. We know that death wasn't.

Part of the original picture. We know that it's not like that.

And So what we want to do is we want to create something that's

going to live after us, that's going to that's going to when

we're gone, that's going to be able to carry the things that

we've seen and the things that we've known and the things that

we've done, want to carry that into the next thing.

So we've got this eternity that we're striving for, that we're

reaching for, and we spend every single day in a bare knuckles

bloody war against time. Again, I hope is that you don't

hear judgement in this. I'm in the same war, in the same

battle as you are. This is not a catalog of our

moral failures. What I hope you hear me doing is

describing what it's like to live apart from what we were

created for. To live separated from the

reality that God designed us for you.

That the reason that you ache for that is because it's in you.

Listen, these ideas of having something that lives past you,

these ideas of creating something good and being a part.

There's a reason that purposeless jobs suck the

lifeout of us. Because at a cellular level, we

know it's not supposed to be that way.

This isn't some fever dream that we're imagining.

It's across times and across cultures.

It goes everywhere. It is the image of God that

exile can't fully stamp out, but neither can it.

Fully help us realize we were created to know the God that

fills and satisfies us. We tasted it.

It was on our tongues. We experienced it.

And then we chose autonomy and then we chose.

We wanted to do it our way. Sure, I'll do the work, but I

just want to decide what sex is about.

Sure, like I'll have the relationships, but I want to

decide what to do with my money. I want to decide where I go.

We were liberated from what we saw was this tyranny of.

God's holiness, but we were liberated from a world where His

goodness creates everything that we ever need.

We were liberated into a world without the goodness that He

brought with Him. And that's what we're searching

for ever since forever. The problem is we.

Hear this exile right, we read the story about being outside of

the. Garden.

We see the heading and it talks. About oh, it's the curse, right?

And so we read about this exile, we read about this wilderness,

and and because we distrust holiness, we think that exile is

like God's. Silent treatment, right?

Like. Like we think that God's just

like a little too thick to. Talk to us right now.

Right kind of arms folding. Is like shaking his fingering.

Listen, I want to tell you our holy God is not throwing a

temper tantrum because you had a lustful thought, exile.

Is the reality that we. Chose exile is the reality.

That we continue to choose when we look at holiness and we look

at. The.

Path and the plan, and we choose our own way.

Once again, we choose exile. That's not where we left last

week. Do you remember?

We left with the gate closed. We left with mankind walking

into the wilderness. But we read this Exodus chapter

Exodus 25:8

25 verse 8, God coming to his people, and He said they are to

make a sanctuary for me so that I may dwell among them.

Purpose of God's desire. For a sanctuary is so that

again, he could be restored to them.

So here's this question. We have a holy God.

With all his. Authority and all his.

Goodness and all his. Power and all his intention for

us. And we have us and we are.

Afraid, and we are distrustful, and we are separated, and we.

Have this gap. How does a holy God and a fallen

humanity reside together? How how does it happen?

How do we bridge that gap? Well, that's what we talked

today. But the first thing we have to

see is it begins with him, God said by his voice, his desire,

his intention, the same, the same voice that spoke light from

darkness, the same voice that spoke the waters above and the

waters below said, I am coming to you.

You make me a space. Create a place for.

Me. And this voice spoken to God's

people in the wilderness. They had just spent 400 years in

slavery. They had spent 400 years under

the authority of a king of a pharaoh who did not care for

them, who was not out for their flourishing, who did not provide

for them what they needed. They worked under slavery to a

king who said he will extract everything from them.

And that was the only system that they knew.

And So what God said is I want to show you what I'm like.

So now turn a couple over pages to.

Exodus chapter 29. He said I'm coming, make me a

Exodus 29 · chapter mention

sanctuary. And in verse 45 he said, listen

to the voice of your Creator, the voice of your holy God, hear

his heart. He said, I will dwell among the

Israelites, and I will be their God, and they will know that I

am the Lord their God, who brought them out of Egypt so

that I might. Dwell with them.

I am the Lord their God, he said.

I called you out to be with you. This is an invitation to Eden in

the wilderness and God said make a place for me, make a space a

defined. Space with an area that place

where God would meet with His. People was called the

Tabernacle. It was a literal, actual,

physical place among the company of Israel.

So now let's talk. Just a little bit about.

You know how the Bible is set up?

God. Called his people.

Out he makes his kind of He says, hey, you're going to be my

people. I'm going to be your God.

And for the next 16 chapters, from Exodus 25 to Exodus 40, God

tells them how to make a Tabernacle.

And let me just tell you, it is. Bro bro.

You've like got a little bit of the OCD on this one.

God, right? Like like, I mean, it is, it is

a so let me show you these are OK, 16 chapters.

What I've done is I've gone through this and I've taken out

simply the subject. Headings right?

Like like. Like the like this is what is

this And so this is what the subject headings in 16 chapters.

This is what it takes. To build a Tabernacle.

Dang dude. I mean it's furniture, right?

There's a table, there's an arc, there is an.

Ephod, there is clothes. There, there is all there's.

All these kind of things, right? This is a heady list.

There are basins, there are altars, there are skins, There

are. Listen, at one point in this God

says, hey, there's two guys that I need you to call them out like

I want you to tell them because they're Craftsman and I'm going

to give them my spirit and they're going to make.

These curtains and they're. Going to make the God took he to

every every single detail he attended to every detail and

listen as your pastor just to show you that I am not.

Out of touch with reality my. Guess is Exodus 25 through 40

are not your favorite. Devotional reading topics.

Right, like this is like the book of Numbers, right?

Like where? You're just a little bit going,

OK, I don't need this. But listen also as your pastor,

I want to tell you what we have here is one of the most

shockingly beautiful expressions of God's heart in all of

Scripture. You cannot get away from this

right? Because what God said is it is

so important that I be able to dwell with you, that I'm not

leaving. Anything to chance?

I'm not leaving anything to chance that you and your

distrust miss it or that you who don't get it.

We see in Genesis chapter one this beautiful poem about how

God separated and formed in fashion.

Exodus 25 through 40 is not nearly as poetic as Genesis 1.

It's the same. It's the.

Same heart of the father that just wants to be with his.

People, sometimes I have to help my children clean their room,

not so much anymore because they're grown, but there are

times where it's just like, I cannot be in there with you

because yuck. And So what do you say?

Like the dishes, you got to put your clothes up.

You got to do this, right? Is that me being obnoxious?

Yes, because I'm sinful and because I'm not like God, right?

But the illustration is the same father who wants to be a Listen,

let's get specific the. Father, who wants to be with?

You. Helping.

Us form a space and fill it together.

This is Eden. He did it in Eden.

He created a. Space and he started and he said

just go be fruitful and multiply now just go do what?

You do. Now go do exercise your

authority. This is the same thing.

This is the thing here. And he did it for us.

This is not some obsessive compulsive God.

This is not some micromanaging God who is just trying to have

His way because he does. This is a God who realizes that

holiness is an architecture for intimacy.

Holiness is the structure that allows us to experience God as

He is every cubit, every thread count, every pomegranate sewn

into every Him, on every rope, every kind of wood that you can

imagine inlaid with gold and the robes and all of this, every

single thing. Because he could not wait to.

Move in and be back where his people were.

My son Jackson is at college. He's far away, and every once in

a while he comes home. There's a whole different energy

when Jackson's coming home. My kids are like my girls at

home. They're just like, be nice if

you fill the fridge like that for us, you know?

Like, we're here. We're here every every day,

right? Listen, I want you to sense

like, like I'm a sinful, selfish person and my heart resonates

with fatherhood like that. That's the image of God.

That is how God feels about you coming home, about you getting

to experience him, about you getting me there.

He couldn't wait to move in. Here's the problem.

Wherever we go, there we are. All of our fears and doubts and

insecurities and distrust and grasping for control.

And autonomy, it's all there in the wilderness with us.

It's all there defining our relationships with God and each

other. And So what Lent is about, the

season of Lent that we're in leading up to Easter, is

honestly sitting with that pattern.

Eden wasn't an isolated incident, it was a reflection of

the character of God. The Tabernacle wasn't an

isolated incident, it was a reflection of the character of

God. There's this pattern of God

calling out separating. Forming and filling and

inhabiting. That's what Genesis 1 is.

That's what Exodus 25 through 40 is.

He rescued his people from slavery.

He gave them a form of a place where he could dwell and

inhabit, and then he filled that place with his presence.

It's the same father impulse. He always does the same thing,

always the same thing, and so do we.

He always takes the initiative. To respond to us.

And we always perceive His Holiness as a threat.

God's just trying to keep me from having fun.

God's just trying to get in my pocket.

God just wants my. And so with our fear and

distrust over the holiness of God, we cling to our stuff.

And we once again back into exile, wondering why things are

the same, wondering why we once again find ourselves rejecting

the home that we were built for, rejecting the Father who has

crossed time and eternity to be with us.

And since we've been in the wilderness for so long, we just

decided that we'd furnish it. We'll furnish the wilderness.

We'll dull that ache. We'll make it so that it's not

existential, it's just kind of ambient.

Yeah, we're just a little bit. Lonely, but we got our.

Addictions. We're a little bit bored, but

we've got our credit cards. We're a little bit afraid, but

we've got enough people and stuff to distract us, right?

Lent is removing all of those. Things and allowing ourselves to

get hungry again for the home that he just keeps offering.

That's the garden and the wilderness confirms it.

God wants to be with his people, but something.

Has to be done. About what we bring into holy

places right like that. Like that's the thing if the

wilderness. Could cure us it would.

Have cured us. We would have entered the Israel

would have entered the Holy Land and they wouldn't have had any

problems. If the wilderness could cure us,

then our loneliness would fix us.

But we just keep doubling down. We just keep betting on the same

horse that continues to finish dead last every time, over and

over again. There's a problem that we bring

with us. And the problem is that's the

problem that has to be dealt with.

That's the problem that God has to address.

And there is a word for the way that God makes that dwelling

possible. There is a word for the way that

God takes a tent, build, fight by sinful human hands and is

then able to indwell it and fill it with his holy presence so

that we can not just understand it, but experience it.

That word. Is atonement.

Atonement is how God inhabits space with sinful people.

And I know you just like, well, why doesn't he just like wink at

it? Like why like God, why can't you

just like say it right? Well, there's a picture in

Leviticus. So Leviticus 16 is the chapter

that talks that. So the, the Hebrew word for

atonement is kafir, right? And it is where we get the word

the Jewish high holy day, right? Yom Kippur is this day and it is

a day once you heard, I would encourage you this week or today

or whatever, go home and read Leviticus 16.

And yeah, it's an interesting chapter for sure because it

talks about what it takes for the for the high priest, in this

case, it's Aaron. For the high priest to enter

into this place. I just want to read one verse or

a couple of verses. Leviticus chapter 16 verse 29

Leviticus 16:29

God says through Moses, this is to be a permanent statute for

you in the seventh month on the 10th day of the month.

You are to practice. Self denial.

Now listen. He doesn't say hey whenever you

want, hey whenever you feel like it, hey, if your guilt ever gets

really bad and really heavy, then on that day you can go.

That's not God's holiness. We don't get to just recklessly

crash into the place. He is holy.

It would consume us if we did. If we just barged carelessly

into the presence of God, it would consume us.

So he says, here's how you do it.

There is a date and there is a place.

Practice self denial. Self denial is Eve going Nah,

I'm not going to take that I'm going to go over here and start

planting orange trees I'm going to leave that alone like God

said so he says practice now that self denial that's what

fasting is that's why we say no to social media or to food or to

whatever it is that that you choose to fast so we can just go

I didn't get it right but I'm going to practice I'm going to

get it right now we. Practice self denial and no.

Work because in this world we work to provide for ourselves.

On the Day of Atonement, we recognize that He calls us to a

or where He provides, we manage, we.

Partner atonement will be made. For you on this day to cleanse

you. And you will be clean from all

your sins before the Lord. The Day of Atonement was one day

a year where one man would take the blood of the sacrifice, and

he would go behind the veil into the very presence of God.

And you remember what we said in Eden, right?

The image of God is about representation, right?

Like we in our forming and filling and managing of

creation, we represent the wisdom of God.

Well, now this high priest enters into the presence of God,

and he represents the people just because it's one.

Guy doesn't mean it's private. It doesn't mean listen, I know

we. Live in a very individualistic

world, right? In a very individualistic

culture where we want to say my sin is my issue, it's my

problem. There's nothing of that in

Scripture. What the high priest is doing is

bringing the sins of the people. We as a humanity are separated

and fallen away from you. And we represent that

brokenness, that fallenness, that contamination.

We bring it into the presence of God.

And what happens is then when we walk out and we return, he

returns with a space cleanse prepared for his dwelling.

Again, this isn't some control free.

God. This is a God.

Who is so concerned that we have access to his?

Presence that he leaves nothing to chance.

No hope that maybe this. Time we'll get it right.

The priest brought contamination and he returned with atonement.

And the good news now is that the people of Israel could say

our God is dwelling with us. We do have access.

He is as one among us. Atonement is a crucial, vital

part of our story because atonement restores what sin

contaminates. And listen as you get into that

Leviticus 16 and as you read all about that.

It's gruesome, there's a lot of blood and there's a lot of death

and we can just go. How could God do all?

The blood and the death on that. Read the news, you think?

We don't have. Blood and death.

Here's the idea behind this God didn't choose this.

This wasn't the original plan. It wasn't supposed to be like

this. When you remove the giver of

life, all that's left is death and it plays out every day,

right? In front of us.

And we baptize it. Oh, you got to have it.

You got to do that. It wasn't supposed to be that

way. That's not God's desire.

Desire. I did a funeral for a 16 year

old young man this year. This week, one of the most

impactful demonstrations of love in a community that I've ever

seen. But over and over and over

again, 200 times, I watched 141516 year old young men walk

through the doors of this funeral Chapel, strong and brash

and brazen and brave. And they walked.

In because that's what we've. Trained them to do and.

That's what we've told them that they need to be.

And I walked them walk in together, arm in arm, brave

striding out the front. But a crazy.

Thing happens, man, the closer you get to that casket.

They weren't brave anymore. You can blame them.

I just grieved. So many kids had to have that

experience. So many kids had to look at

something that they shouldn't have to process.

To ignore the contamination of sin is to say would be for God

to say I'm OK with that. I'm OK with loneliness.

I'm OK with young people trying to define themselves by their

sexuality or by their income or by their their Instagram feed.

We can all agree that wouldn't be a very loving, father

fatherly thing to do. And So what God does is remove

every doubt. About how committed he.

Is to us entering into His presence, thought of everything,

thought of everything. But the problem is because

there's gravity in this mercy, right?

Like he has provided a way in for us, but it's heavy it.

Forces us to face. The reality that we have fallen

short, he has. Forces us to.

Face the reality that we don't measure up.

It forces us to face the reality that we that we chose.

This that we, that we. Did this.

And because of that, we still perceive that holiness as a

threat. We still understand the list is

too long, the details are too much.

We can't possibly go over that. And so we still don't trust him.

Anybody who wants to give me that many orders in that

directions, he must not be trustworthy.

And then once again, the serpent is reframing God's holiness as

manipulation or as control. And so we interpret wilderness

now as punishment. God must be mad at me.

So I got to stop being so bad. Friend, I want to tell you that

is a hopeless endeavor. That control thing.

It is baked in by the wilderness.

It is baked in by our entire lives in exile.

Holiness is not God's invitation to get your act together.

Holiness is a gift. Holiness is what happens.

It's the gift of being with God again.

Remember in our Proverbs series, this thing that we kept coming

back to over and over and over again is that we're shaped by

proximity. Things that we stand closest to

become what we look like, right? I remember talked about how my

music tastes have changed as I just get worn down and over and

over again by, you know, by the things that I listen to.

It's the same idea, Father. Wants to be.

Close to us. He doesn't say get holy and I'll

come close. He says if you come close, I'll

transform you. I'll make you able to experience

all of Eden. When we resist that, everything

in US tells. Us.

We're resisting. We resist.

Holiness because it's constrictive it right because it

just, oh, he just doesn't want us to have fun.

When we resist holiness, what we're resisting is nearness.

We're resisting an experience of the God who loves us enough to

make a way. Everything in the Proverbs, that

whole idea of proximity, it's been pointing to this.

You cannot remain unchanged when the Holy One moves into the

neighborhood. He just can't do it, but he

comes. 1st. He moves in first and he invites

us just to linger. That's not a threat.

We read that as a threat. I just.

Want to say like it's my, it's my pastoral responsibility and

do that. That is not a threat.

This is not an angry God clicking his tongue.

This is not a God with his arms folding, waiting for you to be

something that you're not. The whole point of this is God

comes near to make us holy. He comes away to burn up the

exile. He comes away.

Yeah, sure. Like we're not back in the

garden yet. But listen, side note, I've read

the end of the book. Revelation 2122 sounds a lot

like Eden, fully abandoned and filling the earth.

We're not there yet, but he's here now and all he wants is

just for us to. Linger just a little bit.

To let him refine our fires. What if he just says, hey, what

if you give that up for a minute and you start to see that you

don't have to keep filling your face to feel something?

That you don't have to keep giving yourself away to feel

something. Command of God about purity and

righteousness and generosity and love.

That is not the pathway to blessing.

I'm going to say that again. Are you listening?

The command of God is not the pathway to blessing.

The command of God is the blessing.

It is his presence in our lives so that we don't need to

sacrifice our the image of Him in us, our fruitfulness, our

nakedness and unashamed. We don't have to sacrifice that

to make somebody else thumbs up. It is to be existent in the.

Place where we are. Eternally loved and approved of

the Tabernacle is not some neurotic God and his impossible

demands. Tabernacle is the exact same

invitation as Eden. Will you trust me enough to

partner with me in ordering this space, God?

Didn't drop the. Tabernacle on their.

Heads, he said. Here's what the.

Form of holiness looks like you want to be a part of it.

He looks at your relationship with your children and says,

Holiness looks like let them go and teach them to love me.

Do you want to be a part of it? There's nothing that I want you

to do because we so easily at this place, get into this place.

We just go, OK, well now. All right, I'm going to go and

not be holy. Well, that's backwards.

I don't want to do that right. I'm not asking you to go out and

behave in a certain way. Here's what I'm asking.

Will you intentionally and deliberately this week begin to

question your doubts and your fears about holiness?

Will you begin to question why you think that this path that

you're on to make and create a way through your job or through

your relationships with your? Will you begin to?

Question whether that is ever going to ever really be able to

deliver what it promises. If it was, it probably would

have by now. We begin to entertain the idea

that God's holiness is a gift. It is the experience of the life

that we have been yearning for and longing for.

And will you then stay? There, stay there.

Long enough to be shaped. Your part is the same as it was

in Eden. The same thing that you were

supposed to do in the shadow and the cool of Eden and all that.

Not performance, not curation. Just don't walk away.

Just don't leave his presence. Holy Spirit, you are that

expression for us next week when we look at the temple and how

you filled that place. Lord, now This Is Us.

And so, Holy Spirit, I pray that you would convict us this week

when we're tempted to outsource our identity.

I pray that there'll just be like a little buzzer, a little

ache in our head that would be like, that's not it.

You don't have to give yourself away for that.

When you bring conviction to our hearts about thought or behavior

or or a thing that we've put our hope in or our trust in or we

are afraid by something, when that happens, I pray that we

would label it as exile and we would instead look at you in

that place. Father God, we trust that Your

desire is to make a space in US and with us and dwell there.

And so that is our desires to once again partner with you.

And Lord, we don't have ultimate authority.

We cannot do this apart from You.

We cannot. You take the initiative, You set

it up, You make it happen. Give us the faith to be partners

in your redemption. Jesus, we ask these things in

your name and for your glory. Thank you for joining us today.

River City Church is all about experiencing and expressing

God's love in our lives and community, and we hope that

you've been able to experience that today.

As grateful as I am that you've spent this time listening in

this morning, this podcast is no substitute for full

participation in a local church. I love it when River City people

listen to other pastors, but it is those who show up week after

week faithfully giving their support and time and resources

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May the Lord bless and keep you in all grace and peace.