1449 - "Instruction on how God reveals himself to man and man approaches God" Exodus 25

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1449. Today we're going to look at the way God reveals Himself to mankind. Now we see this in the pattern of the tabernacle. And then we're going to look at how God wants us to approach who He is and the work that He has accomplished for us. And so let's get right to it. When you look at Exodus twenty five, you're going to see a pattern that is all throughout Scripture in how God reveals Himself to us. He always starts with Himself because He is the starting point of everything. He is the starting point of creation. Notice in Genesis chapter one it says in the beginning God and then it talks about what he's done. In the beginning God created Bara is the word. That means ex nahilo, out of nothing. To start with is God. He is the starting point of everything. You see, man is not the center of all of life. God is, because God is the one who created us and he created the entire universe. He is the starting point. And everything revolves around him. He holds everything together. This is what Paul was trying to tell us in the book of Colossians and did it very clearly. It is in Jesus that everything is held together by Him. And nothing that is made in heaven and earth is without God as the starting point. And so when God reveals Himself to Moses and the children of Israel, He starts with Himself and the objects that represent Him. So it's interesting that in chapter twenty five, when the tabernacle is explained, God starts with describing the pieces of furniture, everyone with great significance, every piece with great significance and importance. But he starts with a chest. And that chest is going to be inside of the most holy place, what we refer to as the holy of holies, the sacred of sacred places. And he says, Moses, I want you to build a chest. And here are the dimensions of it. That's the first thing. So that's number one. God starts with the chest with the ark. And then he says, number two, I want you to build a lid to go over it. Not just any lid, but I want it to be out of one piece of gold. And I want it to be unity and all unified. I want it to be ornate. I want angelic beings to be on top of it. Not just any angelic order, but the highest order, the most sacred order, the cherubim. A cherub is a singular angel, a rank of angel, cherubim, that I am on the end is plural in Hebrew. And so he says, I want you to put two. And I want you to have them facing each other, looking down on this lid that is covering this chest, because God was going to instruct Moses to put certain things in that chest, and those things needed to be covered. And so these cherubim were looking down on that with their wings outstretched, covering their heads and their vision, so that they would just see the place where God said, Here is where I'm going to meet with you. So God starts with the chest and the lid of the chest, and that is the place where God says I will meet with my people. And then we're going to learn that God is going to instruct Moses to have a tapestry, a veil, a curtain, and it is to be very thick, and it is to be made in a certain way. And on the other side of that curtain is going to be an altar where on top of it incense will be burned, and that incense will be burned of a certain type, a certain way for a certain amount of time. And then there's going to be a beautiful menorah, a seven branched lampstand. Now I'm not going into what these things stand for. We'll do that later because each one of them are significant and have significance as far as telling us something about who God is, what he has done, and what he wants emphasized in worship of who he is and what he's done. So you have the ark, the chest, and then the mercy seat, the lid over the chest. Then you have a tapestry, a veil, a curtain, and then in front of that curtain you have this golden altar, which is the place where incense is burned. Then you have the golden menorah, this lampstand that has seven different branches on it. And then you have a table where bread is, and that bread has a certain meaning, and each loaf has a certain meaning, and there were twelve loaves. And then those three things were called not the holy of holies, but the holy place. It was the sacred place. And it had the menorah, it had the table of showbread, and right in front of the great tapestry veil curtain was the altar of incense. And then you went outside of the tabernacle proper, and there was what was called an outer court. Now that outer court, before you could go into the holy place, or certainly the holy of holies, you had a wash basin. Now in the King James Version it's called a laver. That's a wash basin. That's where we get the word lavatory. That is the word that we use in English, a fancy word for a place where you wash your hands, a place where you wash your feet. And so that labor was made out of a certain kind of material. It was different than the material for the construction of the other pieces that I've just named that have to do with the holy place and the most holy place. Those were made out of gold. And it was fine gold, hammered and beaten out gold. And the outer court, the labor was to be made out of the mirrors, the looking glasses, the shiny polished bronze, where you could put water into this basin and you could look into that steel water, and beneath it were these shiny looking glasses that had been made into one and that formed a mirror where you could see yourself, you could see the dirt on your face, you could see the soil on your hands, you could even look at your feet if they were in the reflection window. And so that was made out of bronze, polished bronze. And then the first thing that you saw when you walked in the gate of the outer court of the tabernacle was a brazen altar. It was a bronze altar, and it was the place of sacrifice. The purpose of that was for the person who brought an offering and wanted to approach God, he had to do it through blood and sacrifice. Now let's go back and examine this. When God told Moses to build this great worship center, he started with the Ark of the Covenant and the mercy seat. He started with the Holy of Holies. In other words, he started with himself and he worked his way out to where the people would approach him. Now that's interesting because when you teach the tabernacle and Moses is instructing the people on how to approach God, he doesn't start with the Ark of the Covenant. He doesn't start with the lid, the mercy seat. He starts with sacrifice with a brazen altar. When God wants to reveal himself to man, he starts with himself and works his way to man. When man approaches God, he starts with sacrifice and very meticulously works his way as God has designed toward the Holy of Holies and the very presence of God. And no one, not even the high priest, could go into that most holy place, the Holy of Holies, except with the blood of sacrifice, and that blood of sacrifice could only be brought one time a year at the great day of covering Yom, the day of Kippur of covering. And so these pieces of furniture and the materials that they're made from, and the way God reveals Himself to Moses and the children of Israel by way of transfer to us. And the way that Moses was instructed to tell the people to approach God. One is starting with God Himself. But when we approach God, we cannot start with God. We have to come through sacrifice. And as we go through the various burnt offerings and sacrifices and offerings that are to be brought and how man is to approach God, we're going to see that this is the pattern that God gives all the way through Scripture. When God wants to reveal Himself to man, He doesn't start with man because man's not the starting place, it is with God. And when we approach God, we have to come to Him through sacrifice, and we will learn that that sacrifice is the starting place where God meets us, and He ushers us into the Holy of Holies into His very presence. And this is the way that it is from the book of Exodus to the book of Revelation. And so when we want to come to God, we have to come to Him through blood. For without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. And without forgiveness and covering, we could never see the face of God. For On the Way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

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