What’s the Point? (Exodus 37)

The symphony of Exodus has four movements: Egypt, Exodus, Sinai, and Tabernacle. Of the last sixteen chapters of this book thirteen deal with the tabernacle. The remaining three are are so intertwined with the tent that they cannot be understood apart from it. The tabernacle is the climactic focus and conclusion to this epic book.

The major theme of the tabernacle is God dwelling with His people in covenant love by mediation and sacrifice. This theme is carried over from chapters 25–34 into chapters 35–40, but in chapters 35–40, an additional minor motif is added, that of the Spirit-wrought and Spirit-gifted obedience of Israel.

Some homiletics professors (homiletics is the study of the art of preaching) will tell you that your sermon must have only one laser-focused point. Good homiletics instructors will tell you that the point of your sermon must be the point of the text. Indeed, this is excellent advice for clear and effective communication, but I have a fear in this. What if God intended a text to have multiple points? Or a main point with various side points. In other words, I fear trying to wrap up God’s words in too pretty of a bow with our little words. Let the text be lord, for the Lord is Lord of the text, not us. If a text appears to have multiple points, declare them. Certainly, the minister should be able to state these clearly and succinctly, and show how they relate. No doubt there will be unifying factors, but again, these unifying factors may be multiple and varied.

And so here, in Exodus 37 one could pick up on either the major or the minor themes and faithfully preach the text. Or, they could preach them both and show the harmony between them. It is such preaching, preaching “in harmony” rather than “in unison,” that I believe is most glorious.

So how do these two themes harmonize? Here are just two thoughts. First, by emphasizing that this tabernacle was built according to God’s commands by the power of the Spirit it reminds us that the tabernacle isn’t something man is doing for God, rather, it is something God is doing for man. All of this—the plan, the materials, the construction, the function, the sacrifices, the feasts, the priesthood, the ceremonies—all of this is a gift from God. The second thing is that none of this was sufficient. The tabernacle wasn’t enough. The Spirit-wrought and Spirit-gifted obedience of Israel wasn’t enough. All of this is a shadow of the One, who by His perfect Spirit-powered ministry and obedience would make all things new in the ultimate hope of a new creation where all is temple. How do these two motifs harmonize? In the single symphony of the Scriptures titled Jesus Christ. So perhaps the professors were right, every sermon should have a single point. Not only so, but every sermon should have the same ultimate point—Jesus Christ.

The Apologist: Church Discipline is Amoebatization Prevention

The New Testament stresses such purity, for the church is not to be like an amoeba so that no one can tell the difference between the church and the world . There is to be a sharp edge. There is to be a distinction between one side and the other—between the world and the church, and between those who are in that church and those who are not. —Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century

Craftsmen, Contributions, Construction, and the Conductor (Exodus 35:30–36:38)

In Exodus 35 and 36 we see two kinds of Spirit-gifting. Some are given gifts, others give gifts. The contributions given are Spirit-wrought, the skills necessary for construction are Spirit–gifted.

The result of this Spirit-wrought and Spirit-gifted obedience is that God’s commands are stunningly obeyed. The people give such that they have to be asked to stop. Israel so obeys the command to give that the craftsmen have everything they need to obey the command to build. As you read through the details of the construction of the tent, you’re struck with how they sound exactly like God’s instructions, and that’s the point. They’re building the tent exactly as God told them to.

The construction of the tabernacle is glorious like an orchestra filled with gifted and passionate instrumentalists dedicated to a brilliant composer/conductor. Or, it as awesome as a mighty army of zealous patriots marching as one to the orders of a revered and tactically brilliant general. Or combine the two, the construction of the tabernacle is like seeing the perfect marching band where every note is precise and never a step is missed, all ordered by a director without peer.

All this beauty and glory is Spirit-wrought and Spirit-gifted. Marvel at the obedience in such a way that you marvel at God. God is the composer, God is the conductor, God is the inspirer, God is the gifter of skills, and God is the giver of the instruments with which Israel plays. This is a glorious heavenly symphony, and as Bach ended his works, so this one has SDG written all over it, soli Deo gloria, glory to God alone.

Commanded Love (Exodus 35:1–29)

God commands a voluntary giving in Exodus 35. If you can’t make sense of that, you can’t make sense of any of God’s commands because they all deal with the heart. God always demands more than outward obedience. All of God’s commands demand all of us.

Fallen man cannot understand the beauty of God commanding, “You shall love me.” Imagine a princess being blinded to the beauty of the prince who was once her greatest love and deepest joy. Instead, she hates him, irrationally, as intensely as she once adored him. Imagine a command came from him, to love him, with a power that awakened what was commanded. So it is with God’s commands. They do not constrain, they free.

Fallen man’s darkened, authority-hating, idol-loving hearts cannot conceive of love being commanded. Which proves we understand neither love nor authority. Jesus said, “If you love me you will keep my commandments (John 14:15).” So often, we believe those who love us say things like, “Do whatever makes you happy.” God sovereignly, with all wisdom says, “Only I can make you happy, all else is an illusion.” Then, for those He has redeemed, He speaks with liberating power, “You shall love the LORD your God with all.”

And so it is, when God commands, we receive. Obeying God’s commands is like a hammer finally hitting a nail after years of having tried to unscrew a screw. God’s commands are telling the adventurous beached whale, “Go back to the sea,” or the foolish bird, “You were not made to slither. Soar!” In all true God-enabled and faith-driven obedience to God’s commands, we ever remain the beneficiaries. Obeying God’s commands isn’t like being choked, but finally breathing.

The Apologist: Start Here

Let us understand that the beginning of Christianity is not salvation: it is the existence of the Trinity. —Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century

“All Christian and No Church” or “When Helium Tries to Strut Like Lead” (Exodus 34:29–35)

I’m concerned that many Christians are trying to be too Christian. When a person is all Christian and no church they’re like a single hydrogen atom strutting as though it’s lead. How often is Moses’ experience on Sinai and his subsequent radiance individualized? Visit a “Christian” bookstore if you don’t believe me. Read the titles, they’re heavy on the Christian, light on the church. Which is to say, they’re not that heavy.

The Hebrew word for “glory” carries the connotation of weight. Glory is weighty. If you believe you were meant to fly solo, you won’t have much substance, much weight, much glory. Strive to be Moses, and your complexion will be dull. Own up to being Israel, then you’ll shine.

You’re not shining Moses. You’re sinning Israel. The good news is that you have one better than Moses and in having Him, you have more than Moses. Try to be Moses, and you will see less of God. Be Israel, pleading for the better Moses, and you will see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You are not meant to be a mediator, you need one. You’re not meant to see like Moses, but like Israel, and because of Jesus, this means seeing more than Moses in the mediator Jesus Christ.

This isn’t a sight you are to strive for individualistically, aiming to outshine all the other hydrogen atoms. Such a congregating of hydrogen atoms is explosively bad. Beholding the glory of God is the collective experience of the body of Christ. We behold and we become together (2 Corinthians 3:18). The church is weapons grade plutonium, radiating with the glory of Christ as she sits under His word.

The Apologist: The Battleground

The real battle for men is in the world of ideas, rather than in that which is outward. All heresy, for example, begins in the world of ideas. That is why, when new workers come to L’Abri, we always stress to them that we are interested in ideas rather than personalities or organizations. Ideas are to be discussed, not personalities or organizations. Ideas are the stock of the thought world, and from the ideas burst forth all the external things: painting, music, buildings, the love and the hating of men in practice, and equally the results of loving God or rebellion against God, in the external world. Where a man will spend eternity depends on his reading or hearing the ideas, the propositional truth, the facts of the gospel in the external world, and these being carried thought he medium of his body into the inner old of his thought, and there, inside himself, in his thought-world, either his believing God on the basis of the content of the gospel or his calling God a liar. …

It is for this reason that the preaching of the gospel can never be primarily a matter of organization. The preaching of the gospel is ideas, flaming ideas brought to men, as God has revealed them to us in Scripture. It is not a contentless experience internally received, but it is contentful ideas internally acted upon that makes the difference. So when we state our doctrines, they must be ideas, and not just phrases. We cannot use doctrines as though they were pieces to a puzzle. True doctrine is an idea revealed by God in the Bible and an idea that fits properly into the external world as it is, and as God made it, and to man as he is, as God made him, and can be fed back through man’s body into his thought-world and there acted upon. The battle for people is centrally in the world of thought.

The third conclusion is that the Christian life, true spirituality, always begins inside, in our thought-world. All that has been said in our earlier study of being free in this present life from the bonds of sin, and also of being free in the present life from the results of the bonds of sin, is meaningless jargon, no more than a psychological pill, if is divorced from the reality that God thinks and we think, and that at each step the internal is central and first. The spiritual battle, the loss or the victory, is always in the though-world. —Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality

Don’t and Do (Exodus 34:10–28)

Exodus 34:10–28 is a representative restatement of the covenant, but it isn’t a random representative restatement. In light of their recent adultery with the golden calf, God lays down a do and a don’t. They are basically the two sides of the great commandment that sums up all others—love God with all.

Don’t: Worship Idols

Do: Worship Yahweh.

You’re not really obeying one of these commands if you’re not obeying the other. The only way to ensure that the land is empty of idols, is for it to be full of worship. Idols are like weeds. It won’t do to only spray weeds. If one has some fresh-tilled, vegetation-free soil, and they want it to keep it that way, the better attack is to cultivate a thick healthy lawn. Spray the weeds, yes, but plant, fertilize, and water the lawn. The only way to flee from idols it to pursue God, otherwise you’re only running from one idol to another.

Many Christian’s religion consists mostly of don’t with little genuine desire for do. But without the proper motivation for the don’t, you can’t do the do. You might obey the don’t because you want mom and dad to like you, or because obeying makes you look good, or because you think something bad will happen if you sin—but all these motivations are an idolization of self, not a worshipping of God.

Some think their diets are good simply because obesity is bad, but there are all kinds of unrighteous reasons to diet. It won’t do to simply not eat the world’s delicacies. There must be a hunger for God. If there is no hunger for God, you might go to the same table as the saints, but it is the cup of demons that you truly relish1 Corinthians 10:14–22).

The Apologist: Penal Substitutionary Atonement

If we forget the absolute uniqueness of Christ’s death, we are in heresy. As soon as we set aside or minimize, as soon as we cut down in any way (as the liberals of all kinds do in their theology) the uniqueness and substitutionary character of Christ’s death, our teaching is no longer Christian. —Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality

Do You Really Like Grace? (Exodus 34:1–9)

“The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation (Exodus 34:6–7 ESV).’”

What Moses sees on Sinai is a revelation of God’s name (Exodus 33:19, 34:5, 6), His goodness (Exodus 33:19), and God’s ways (Exodus 33:13; cf. Psalm 103:7–8). Moses gets a glimpse into the very heart of God and what he see is this, Yahweh is a God of mercy and justice. As you read through Exodus, is this not the epic glory you are overwhelmed with? In Exodus, the immeasurable mercy and fierce wrath of Yahweh sweep over one like a colossal tidal wave.

Some would think this a contradiction. How could a just God be merciful? At best this is only a paradox, though I don’t think it even rises to that level of perplexity. For there to be grace there must be justice or grace doesn’t mean grace. Grace presumes justice. Justice must be a necessary given for grace to have opportunity to exist. Only in an atmosphere of justice does any species of grace thrive.

By grace some take God to be an indifferent, impersonal fountain of rainbow bubbles. Indifference isn’t love and only a loving God can be gracious. Also, if God loves, this means he hates, for love hates that which is opposed to the object of its love.

What really bothers people about this passage is nothing they take it to mean of grace, but what they understand it to say about justice. Which is to say, they don’t like true grace, for grace presumes not only judgment, but guilt. But for those who have really seen God, what stuns them is His mercy. His wrath, though awesome as a river of blood to behold, is expected in its coming. It is grace that surprises and amazes. If you see God, your posture isn’t one of protest, but of petition. In the light of God’s glory Moses cried out for mercy and grace. It is not astounding that at the revelation of the Holy One so many bow. What is astounding, is that so often, for those He sets His love on, there is something in the beholding that leads them to believe that mercy is something they may cry out for.

As one ponders the cross of Christ, it is clear that there can be no contradiction between grace and justice, for there we see the fullest revelation of both. The glorious harmony of grace and justice that rang out from the cross ever reverberates through all creation and will forever resound to the glory of the crucified Christ.