Old Testament history, what could this possibly have to do with me and um with my life?
Well, I I knew right away.
I read this Monday on Monday, Sam and I read this together, and we read it, and right away I just said, Sam, it's gonna take me some work this week because I'm reading this, I'm getting nothing out of this.
Um, my immediate reaction.
Uh, but the first thing was uh obviously Raiders have lost art, right?
It was on yesterday, USA Network, in the afternoon.
Anybody catch it?
Somebody?
Yeah, Mark.
Okay, thanks.
Raiders lost 1981, Indiana Jones.
I can remember being a small kid and watching this with my dad.
And I so specifically remember the scene when the Nazis had the arc and they're in the cave.
And some of you maybe don't remember this.
So they open the arc and Indiana's tied up to like a pole with his, you know, the woman of the movie, you know, every every movie had a given woman, and she's tied up with him, and he's like, Don't look at it, close your eyes.
And the Nazis open it, and this gray cloud comes up, and then it's these awesome lasers.
You see the lasers just these awesome lasers start to strike down the Nazis, and then just the great scene where the Nazis' face melts, and they all start to melt.
I can just remember being seven or eight years old, and this one being one of the marking images of my childhood, was that those faces melting off?
I just immediately that stuck with me.
So, the ark.
Um, it has more relevance than that.
But as an uneducated kid, uh I was left with, and and it's very easy even to be left with this as an adult, if you don't kind of dig into it a little bit, is like, is was is that how God regards me?
Is this what the presence of God is like?
Is like lasers lasering through me and my face melting off, or does he regard me um in some other way?
And is he in is he in the ark?
Is he in some special holy, sacred dresser?
Or or like in a sacred building.
You know, don't run in the sanctuary.
You know.
Children.
Right?
This is this is different.
This is different than all the other rooms in our lives.
This is, you know, sacred.
This is sacred.
Other places not sacred, but but this is sacred, right?
Like that mentality and what we're what we're communicating or what we're left wondering is is like, oh, so like he's there.
But is he like with me?
Like, is he is he is he with me on Monday?
Is he with me when I'm messy?
Is he with me when I'm cutting the grass or I'm doing the dishes or I'm in the hallway at school?
Like, is he with me there?
And this is what gets me so excited about the Ark of the Covenant, is it speaks, it speaks to this.
And I think it starts to speak into the misconceptions we can come away with about how God regards us and where exactly He is.
And I think for a lot of us, why perhaps it's easy to come away from the Christian faith and go, you know what, it's just not working for me.
Maybe you wouldn't voice that, you wouldn't say it, you don't want to say it.
Maybe you don't even realize you actually think it, but you do think it underneath, and you just say, it's not, it's not working for me.
And I actually think the Ark of the Covenant speaks into this.
So uh the week between uh Christmas and New Year's, every year, Christy's whole family, we all go to Christy's folks' house in Orlando.
We're all there together for four or five days, and this past uh between Christmas and New Year's, we were down there, and Christy's dad and I, we were out on the back patio, and there's a nice pool and a little fish and lake and uh big, beautiful blue sky, and somehow, I don't know where everybody else was, somehow we were out there just by ourselves, which is remarkable because there's just like kids everywhere, a lot of people moving around.
But somehow we're out there by ourselves, and Christy's dad, he's not scared of the awkward silence.
Like, he may have invented the awkward silence, I'm not sure.
As a son-in-law, took me a while to be okay with that.
I kept trying to fill that void, and then I realized, like, oh, like he's he's really cool with this, I'm just gonna get cool with it, and now the relationship's much, much better.
And so we just embrace the silences, so there's lots of space, right?
You're one-on-one, but lots of space in the conversation, and it's fine.
So after a long break, we're sitting out there, after a long break of us just sitting, just sitting together, uh, he just looks at me and he says, This sure is a special place.
And then he just goes back at looking out over the little fishing lake.
Okay, his backstory to explain why he didn't say this is a good place, it's a nice place, it's a great place, but this is a special place.
He was he was communicating this is something more than just good.
It means something more to him.
And it's actually got me started to be a little bit curious about this because I think we all have these places, and it doesn't have to be a second home, it can be a camping spot.
It can literally be a chair.
It could be your nana's house, it could be like the corner in the library that you discovered, and for whatever reason, when you finally can get yourself there, it's so quiet that you're at peace and you feel at home.
And so I'm just curious, let's have a little conversation here.
Uh, who would just say, like, they would just throw out, like, what is that place for you that when you show up, everything is okay.
The chair that shows the nurse is that's your spot.
Where's the chair at?
I have no prize here of who's better because I felt like that would be very belittling to everybody else.
Usually I like to give out a prize, I'm gonna do a prize this morning.
Somebody else?
Okay, lake, patio at the lake.
I know your spot.
That's my mama.
Okay.
And what, why, what is it?
Okay.
Your garden?
I've been I've been to your garden.
Flowers.
Right, so it's these places, and we know these places, because we all have them.
And they're places of rest and joy.
And we call we we'll use the word special.
We'll even use the word sacred.
Now, here's what's so amazing.
Because we're gonna look at this Ark of the Covenant, and we're gonna look at where it takes us, and here's what's so amazing is that to God, you are that place.
That you are the most important place in the world.
In fact, the scriptures say that you're sacred.
Now, I know you don't feel that way.
I mean, I don't think anybody in here is gonna raise their hands.
I'm just walking around feeling really sacred.
I'm feeling sacred a lot.
I don't think any of us are feeling that because a lot of us, most of us, are walking around sort of ho-humming through life or trying to manage our way through, and at times you're feeling great, and maybe you're feeling sacred, and then the next moment all of a sudden you're like feel like a failure, and you're in fear and anxiety, and you feel like you're never enough, and then all of a sudden you feel like you're enough.
So, right, I mean, we're all over the place when it comes to this.
But you are God's most sacred place.
And I want to show you this.
So in chapter 24, Moses goes up on Mount Sinai, and this cloud, strange cloud covers the mountain, and he's up there 40 days, and he receives the Ten Commandments.
So then he comes back down and he's told all these directions, instructions, how they're gonna build this Ark of the Covenant, and then these Ten Commandments are gonna go inside the Ark.
And you know, this man, like this is so bizarre to us today.
But what we have to understand, there's no safety deposit boxes, right?
There's no like insured bank accounts.
And back then, when you made a covenant with somebody, a legal document relationship, when you did that, each person took their copy of the terms and they put them in the most sacred place they had.
And so that's what's going on here.
So to these people, this makes complete sense.
And so we get Exodus 25, 21, and 22, and you shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony.
That's the Ten Commandments that I shall give you.
There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.
See, the ark's telling these people something in their culture, even though it's bizarre to us, he's telling something to these people in their culture.
If we figure out what it's telling them, then we can begin to see what it might have for us.
So God's saying, okay, I've given you the Ten Commandments, and I've actually spoken to you a lot about like rest and six and one, right?
We've been talking about the last few weeks, six and one, six and one, six and one years, six and one days of the week, and find your rest.
You need that.
And then he's saying, hey, we got an Ark of the Covenant, and it's gonna go into a tabernacle, and then eventually that temporary structure is gonna be a temple later on.
He gets all these stats on the ark and how to build it.
And so we get two points.
These points are not complicated, right?
They're not complicated, but they're incredibly profound if we let our hearts rest in them.
And the first one is this, and I've already alluded to it.
Point number one, God makes his home in you.
That's where he makes his home.
It's not in a building, it's not in some special place, not in some special building, not in some special sanctuary or some special piece of furniture.
It's in you.
Now, this ark was the place in the Old Testament before Jesus as final sacrifice in the presence of God, actually living in us.
This was where God resided amongst them.
And the ark was in what was called was the holy of holies, and then on the day of atonement each year, the high priest for the people would come in and make the sacrifice for the sins of the people.
So this was a person coming into the presence of God to make a sacrifice.
So this relationship should be clear, even though sinful humanity, who wants to be selfish and we're not good to each other, and we walk away from God, and God who is just and holy, that these two beings can have relationship without God sacrificing his own justice.
So what he does is he sacrifices himself, and the justice is met in his own sacrifice.
That's the cross.
But they had to wonder, these folks back then, right?
I mean, this high priest gets to go in.
They had to wonder, like, okay, so he's in there.
So is he is he with me?
Or is he just in there?
So like is he with me, like when I tend my field, or when my wife and I get in a fight, or when kids are difficult, or when my friend is difficult with me?
Like, is he in that or is he just in there?
Is he present in my anxiousness today?
Or is he is he waiting for me to get my act together?
And then I can come to him?
Or maybe he'll come to me.
I don't know.
Right, right?
Like, I mean, these are the questions they had to be asking, and then it starts to come together for us after Jesus' death, because we start to get words like this, Stephen in Acts 7, 48.
So this is after Jesus' death, as the high priest and the final sacrifice he was himself.
And Stephen says this in Acts, yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands.
Well, we read that, we go, oh, you know, of course.
Of course.
To them, this was radical, this was huge.
That God is not that is not dwelling within systems and within buildings, but actually within people.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3, 16, do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?
Now I had always heard that just as guilt motivator.
Like, really hammer that one home, right?
And then I'll behave.
And it is used as a motivator.
Like, do you not realize that you have the great, incredible, sacred identity that you've always wanted?
Already you have this.
Already.
So to be clear, I I like to I like to draw things.
Um, helps me at least.
It might not help you.
So just real simple drawing.
I I drew on a sheet of paper on my desk this week.
So uh I am no artist by any means.
I can do the cube, right?
So let's say that's the ark.
Uh and really what we see throughout the Old Testament and the covenant of law is we see that this is God's presence.
It's his most sacred place.
This is how we understand his presence.
And then uh here, this is where they're going in on the Day of Atonement, you know, and maybe I'll draw these cherubim, and then there's like a mercy seat or something, and please don't hold me to any of that.
Uh but they're coming in to make the sacrifice so that there can be relationship.
But then Christ comes and sacrifices himself as God himself, and here is where this shift, this huge shift occurs, and let's just call this you and me.
And so what happens is this shift occurs from the most sacred place being a temple, tabernacle, an ark, to it being you.
And to being me.
And we talk about sacred places, right?
There's a cave under a church in Bethlehem, and I got to go there probably about uh maybe seven years ago at this point, and people are lined up, and you go under, you go in this cave, and people are kissing the tile floor where they think Jesus was born.
Because a lot of people will think the place is sacred.
But see, really, they're they're sacred.
The Aztecs believe a volcano in Mexico is sacred.
Uh, the Temple Mount, lots of people believe the Temple Mount is sacred.
A lot of people believe Wall Street is sacred or the mall or Capitol Hill, right?
We we all think different places are sacred, but here this ark and then the truth that you are the temple now, that he resides in you, not in a religious system and not within a building.
But you.
And you think how radical this would be to these people that for so long just believed he resided in a building.
And it's God saying to you and me, you're the most important place in the world.
You are sacred.
And it's not by your holy perfection and by your behavior and your work, it is by my work that this shift occurs and that my presence is in you.
And that is forever.
And that is never ending, whether we feel it or not, he makes his home in you.
More good news.
Point number two.
And this is a point I made a lot going through the Ten Commandments because it's just the structure of how law and gospel, the covenant of law and the covenant of grace interact.
And it's this point number two: God crushes us with what we should be, and we should be it.
Alright?
I mean, anytime God tells us what we should be, we should be it.
This is what we should be, but it crushes us eventually because we never live up to it completely, and specifically when it comes from an inward out living with pure motivations we don't, but then he relieves us in his grace.
Alright, that was a long point.
Let me rephrase it.
God crushes us with what we should be, then relieves us in his grace.
In the theological world, this is called a law-gospel framework.
I just see it as how the scriptures are laid out.
What it means is it means we can admit that we're not perfect.
We can finally be honest.
That we can really want to be the thing that God calls us to be, and we can also be honest that we're not that perfectly, which means that we don't have to pretend, which means that we can freely confess, which means we can receive the grace of God more, and we can not live in despair.
And see, what we see is we see it in the ark because the law is inside the ark, but there's a mercy seat on top of the ark.
And we really need the mercy seat on top of the ark.
That the story didn't end with the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments sent us somewhere.
And so the Old Testament and the system in the Old Testament is a visual for us that we don't have to be perfect as to be accepted and beloved by God.
That would be law.
We're relieved of trying to make ourselves and our lives perfect.
That's law.
Of trying to be approved by everybody, that's law.
The exhaustion of standards and merit as we validate it as a person.
So that's law to use Christian practices or disciplines as means of trying to feel like you're more forgiven by God, that's law.
But there's a mercy seat.
That grace and forgiveness and belovedness are given by Jesus' sufficient work for you.
That's gospel.
That's good news.
That relieves our needy hearts and it heals us, and it begins a process of transformation that we want to do the things God calls us to.
And because we're not under law, we can be broken by the law and return back into confession and then set our hearts back toward Him without being in despair and in shame.
Listen to Hebrews 9, 11 through 15, as the writer connects all of this for us.
But when Christ appeared as the high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, so this is you, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.
For if the blood of goats and bulls, so that's what they were doing, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant, new way of life for us.
So that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.
So there's a covenant of law at work, right?
In the Old Testament, we see it.
It's still at work.
It's at work in religion, it's at work in the secular world, it's at work in relationships, in families, and it is the way of life of standards and living up to something as to be accepted.
And those standards may guide your behavior, certainly guide the behavior of society, but they cannot be the place where you rest your heart.
Or you will be exhausted.
You felt it.
You feel it.
You know when you go into the covenant of law because you're exhausted or you're anxious or you're afraid.
Law just exhausts me.
And I do it all the time.
I mean, pretty much wherever I find my anxieties, that's the places where I'm still living under law.
Right?
I can do it with the church, I can do it with my sermons, I can do it with people's opinion of me.
I can do it with a million things.
I can do it with trying to get everything under control.
If I can just get it all under control, if life can get a little bit cleaner and neater, if I can control all of that.
And it's all law, but there's a mercy seat.
See, this mercy seat shows us another way because it foretells of God's once and for all gift to us that we already have what we're looking for.
There's this deep longing in us.
There's a deep longing in you to have this validation and secure relationship with God, to really believe that you are the most sacred place in the world.
That's a deep longing inside of us, but for us to get to the point to shift from thinking that it's got to be our work to get to that, to the fact that He has given it already to us in the work of Jesus, that's the shift we have to make.
That's the freedom, that's the life of under the covenant of grace.
So it's here that this Christian life that can so often feel like it's not working, it always works.
It always works.
The problem's not that the Christian life doesn't work, the problem's us.
We're the problem.
Our Christian lives don't work because we mix them with law.
But as we see this and we recognize it, we confess it, and we invite God into those places of law and we receive his grace toward us, transformation begins because we're secure and we're relieved, and the healing begins.
So, my brothers and sisters, God is with you always and forever.
He makes his home in you.
You are the most sacred place in the world because of Jesus' work for you.
Let's pray together.
God, I thank you.
That we do not have to depend on our work to be approved by you or even to feel sacred, but that we can know and trust we are sacred even when our emotions tell us otherwise.
Would you help us in greater ways to trust you?
Would we see this Ark of the Covenant and see what it tells us?
That there is a way of law for our behavior that we should look at and recognize, but also see that it crushes us.
And would we be relieved by this mercy seat?
That you have given to us all the work we need done.
And we have been validated and forgiven and secure with you.
Would you help us to receive this great gift of an eternal inheritance that begins now?
That begins with our identities now.
God, would we find great rest and that you find your home in us?
We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.