Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we are talking today and yesterday, and probably tomorrow, about this hugely important fourth movement of the prologue in John chapter one, where it talks about God taking on flesh and making his dwelling among us. Specifically, it goes like this: John 1:14. The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We've seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. As we were discussing yesterday, this is this fourth movement is made all the more remarkable by how big the pump-up is in the first three movements. The word, the Lagos, Jesus, he is God. That's movement number one. Movement number two, the word, the Lagos, Jesus, he is responsible for all of creation. Nothing that has been made was made apart from him. Movement number three, the word, the Lagos, Jesus, is the light of the world. He is the revelation of truth to all humankind. And after all of that gigantic pump up to show us just how far above us and different and better that God is, then you get shocking movement number four, which is, yeah, you got all that stuff. Well, guess what? That God became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Among us? But we live in ancient times and we always, always, always have mud on our robes, and everything smells like poop, and we don't have modern sewage, and a bunch of us don't read so good. And among us, like with our goats and our sheep and stuff, yes. Among us, right into the middle of our human mess, whatever age of the human mess we happen to be a part of, yep, that God is present with us. Specifically, Jesus, God in the flesh, was physically present at this moment in time that John writes about, and God's presence remains with us now during the age of the Holy Spirit. I was telling you yesterday, this whole concept of God dwelling among us, I mean, it would be huge if the Bible started at John 1, just because of the setup I just gave you. I mean, that's plenty. But when you consider all this stuff here, this, all those, I'm not doing a good job of turning the pages. All that stuff, then God's presence being among us is, I mean, it's even hugger. Now, clear back in a season I did a while ago on the book of Esther, I think I ran us through a lot of the same stuff we're gonna look at here. So if some of you are like, What you just did this like four years ago, that's still fresh in my mind, then I tip my hat to you. But for the rest of us, let's refresh our memories. The book of John opens with the phrase in the beginning, and the book of Genesis at the very beginning of the Bible opens with the phrase in the beginning. And then what we get is a recording of God's presence in creation. He's right there, he's making stuff, and then finally, he makes people in his image, and he dwells with them in the Garden of Eden. He's just right there, hanging out. That is to say, humanity has unbroken physical fellowship with God. That sounds like a lot of fancy schmancy theology, but really actually think about that. What is the end game of everything we're doing here? All of our life, all of our busyness, all of our living, all of our art, all of our storytelling, all of our relationships, all of our hand-wringing about dying and time, all of our everythinging. It is all an expression of human yearning to have unbroken relationship with our Maker, our good, loving, and nurturing Maker. Well, they had that at the beginning of Genesis, and then things fall apart, and sin enters into the world. And you get would kind of think, as you're reading through it, like, oh, well, dang it. That'll be to the end of the this business of God being in relationship with people. It's over, but it's not over. It's just different. Fellowship is severely damaged between God and people once sin is introduced. But we keep getting these little glimpses of God's presence as God decides, no, I'm not going to wash my hands of creation and just quit. I'm going to redeem it. I'm going to fix it. And so he keeps being around in ways that are actually tangible. Throughout the rest of the book of Genesis, we see God's presence manifest primarily to Abraham, but also to Abraham's descendants, very notably Isaac and Jacob. Staggered really every couple of chapters through the entire book of Genesis. God shows up in a physical, tangible way. Then we turn the page to Exodus. And things like, you know, they seem like they're in a really bad place, like we talked about a couple of days ago. But God shows up and he's physically present in a burning bush. And that piques Moses' attention. He says, I'll go over and see this strange sight. Why the bush does not burn up? And then when the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush. Moses, Moses. Now I don't know how much that fire was given off smoke because it wasn't burning up, but this idea of fire and smoke being representative of the presence of God, that imagery, that motif is something that's going to be on repeat throughout the entire Old Testament. We see it again 10 chapters later, during the dramatic events of the Exodus. There's this pillar of cloud and fire that represents the power of God and the presence of God, leading right up to the dramatic Red Sea crossing. Then in Exodus 16, the glory of God appears again in a cloud as we get into the second big act of the book of Exodus, which is God revealing himself to the people and setting them on their journey for what happens next. In Exodus 19, more fire, smoke, and earthquake. In Exodus 24, the elders of the people look up and they see the presence of God on the mountain, in this cloud that covers Mount Sinai as God is speaking face to face with Moses. And then finally in the book of Exodus, and this is very, very important, there's this concept introduced that I alluded to a couple of days ago about this tent. It's a special tent. They call it a tabernacle. It's a tent where God and the people, or God and Moses, would go and meet. In Exodus 33, second, uh starting in verse 7, it says, Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp, some distance away, calling it the tent of meeting. Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrance to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent. Get this next part. This is verse 9. As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance while the Lord spoke with Moses. Whenever the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance to the tent, they all stood and worshipped, each at the entrance to their tent. The Lord would speak to Moses face to face as one speaks to a friend. Oh, you met somebody famous? You met God? What was he like? Was he pretty uppity or was he down to earth? No, I mean he was he was really down to earth. I mean, he was obviously God and very powerful, but we could speak as one speaks to a friend. That part was a paraphrase right there. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua, son of Nun, did not leave the tent. And it seems like for a while, this sort of informal, sort of leftover presence of God after the miraculous crossing of the sea and God's presence at Mount Sinai, it seems like it just sort of happened because this whole the second half of Exodus and into Leviticus is all the account of how the relationship between God and his people got firmed up and clarified. So before it's all firmed up and clarified, Moses enjoys quite a bit of access to God, who's physically demonstrating his presence in this tent, but then God uh formalizes, consecrates, officializes, whatever you want to call it, this idea of this tent of meeting that is called a tabernacle. And this tabernacle gets described in great detail in the final chapter of Exodus, which is chapter 40. It talks about how things are arranged in the tabernacle. Everything is in there for a reason. This tent of meeting that we're now calling the tabernacle has got certain furniture. There's all kinds of symbolism to it. Moses and the people who are helping him do all the things exactly the way it's supposed to be for the purposes of exalting God, acknowledging his holiness, and obeying God so that he will dwell with them in this place. And then at the end of Exodus, it all comes to fruition. The presence of God actually shows up. Exodus 40, verse 34. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. The glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. God is there, he's with them. But get this: now that God is there and this is all formalized and his presence is truly in the tent, like you know, realized all of a sudden we got a new problem. Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because of the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out. But if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night in the sight of all the Israelites during all their travels. That's pretty stinking dramatic, right? I mean, this is not being presented as like, oh, and they just imagined God was there. It's being presented as no, physically, demonstrably, you can see the light, you can feel the heat, you can detect the cloud, you can't physically get close to it. There's some difficult to describe force that makes it so even the great Moses can't go into this tent because of the power and presence of the glory of the Lord. So now let's go all the way back to where we started. In John 1, we've got this prologue with four movements. The first three movements are so big, so dramatic. They show the incredible otherness and power of God. But then in movement number four, you're stunned to realize this God is going to, he made his dwelling among us so that we could encounter his glory. Remember that language? Again, I say to you, that is really compelling if the Bible even just happens to start in John 1 and there's nothing before it. But it is even more dramatic and compelling when you think about that fourth movement of the prologue in John 1, in light of what we just looked at in Genesis and Exodus and this motif, this theme of the presence of God. And I would submit to you this it's about to get even more compelling tomorrow as we continue to trace the centuries-old history of the presence of God with his people and what that means, and why it would have been the biggest deal ever that the glory and the physical presence of God manifest in Christ Jesus was once again visible to human eyes, tangible to the five senses of human beings. So we'll keep working this through. I think what we got so far is already a really good payoff, but what we're gonna get tomorrow is gonna flesh it out even more, and the payoff's gonna be even better. All right, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.