16 This Moses did; according to all that the LORD commanded him, so he did. 17 In the first month in the second year, on the first day of the month, the tabernacle was erected. 18 Moses erected the tabernacle. He laid its bases, and set up its frames, and put in its poles, and raised up its pillars. 19 And he spread the tent over the tabernacle and put the covering of the tent over it, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 20 He took the testimony and put it into the ark, and put the poles on the ark and set the mercy seat above on the ark. 21 And he brought the ark into the tabernacle and set up the veil of the screen, and screened the ark of the testimony, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 22 He put the table in the tent of meeting, on the north side of the tabernacle, outside the veil, 23 and arranged the bread on it before the LORD, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 24 He put the lampstand in the tent of meeting, opposite the table on the south side of the tabernacle, 25 and set up the lamps before the LORD, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 26 He put the golden altar in the tent of meeting before the veil, 27 and burned fragrant incense on it, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 28 He put in place the screen for the door of the tabernacle. 29 And he set the altar of burnt offering at the entrance of the tabernacle of the tent of meeting, and offered on it the burnt offering and the grain offering, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 30 He set the basin between the tent of meeting and the altar, and put water in it for washing, 31 with which Moses and Aaron and his sons washed their hands and their feet. 32 When they went into the tent of meeting, and when they approached the altar, they washed, as the LORD commanded Moses. 33 And he erected the court around the tabernacle and the altar, and set up the screen of the gate of the court. So Moses finished the work.
The Glory of the Lord
34 Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. 35 And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. 36 Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. 37 But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. 38 For the cloud of the LORD was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.
16 This Moses did; according to all that the LORD commanded him, so he did. 17 In the first month in the second year, on the first day of the month, the tabernacle was erected. 18 Moses erected the tabernacle. He laid its bases, and set up its frames, and put in its poles, and raised up its pillars. 19 And he spread the tent over the tabernacle and put the covering of the tent over it, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 20 He took the testimony and put it into the ark, and put the poles on the ark and set the mercy seat above on the ark. 21 And he brought the ark into the tabernacle and set up the veil of the screen, and screened the ark of the testimony, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 22 He put the table in the tent of meeting, on the north side of the tabernacle, outside the veil, 23 and arranged the bread on it before the LORD, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 24 He put the lampstand in the tent of meeting, opposite the table on the south side of the tabernacle, 25 and set up the lamps before the LORD, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 26 He put the golden altar in the tent of meeting before the veil, 27 and burned fragrant incense on it, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 28 He put in place the screen for the door of the tabernacle. 29 And he set the altar of burnt offering at the entrance of the tabernacle of the tent of meeting, and offered on it the burnt offering and the grain offering, as the LORD had commanded Moses. 30 He set the basin between the tent of meeting and the altar, and put water in it for washing, 31 with which Moses and Aaron and his sons washed their hands and their feet. 32 When they went into the tent of meeting, and when they approached the altar, they washed, as the LORD commanded Moses. 33 And he erected the court around the tabernacle and the altar, and set up the screen of the gate of the court. So Moses finished the work.
The Glory of the Lord
34 Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. 35 And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. 36 Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. 37 But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. 38 For the cloud of the LORD was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:
Scripture for the message this evening will be from Exodus chapter 40, starting in verse 16. You guys can follow in your worship guides on the very back page. Please listen closely, for this is
Jeffrey Heine:
the word of the Lord.
Speaker 1:
This Moses did according to all that the lord commanded him, so he did. In the 1st month, in the 2nd year, on the 1st day of the month, the tabernacle was erected. Moses erected the tabernacle. He laid its bases and set up its frames and put in its poles and raised up its pillars, and he spread the tent over the tabernacle and put the covering of the tent over it as the lord had commanded Moses. He took the testimony and put it into the ark and put the poles on the ark and set the mercy seat above on the ark.
Speaker 1:
And he brought the ark into the tabernacle and set up the veil of the screen and screen the ark of the testimony as the lord had commanded Moses. He put the table in the tent of meeting on the north side of the tabernacle, outside the veil, and arranged the bread on it for the lord, as the lord had commanded Moses. He put the lampstand in the tent of meeting opposite the table on the south side of the tabernacle and set up the lamps before the lord as lord had commanded Moses. He put the golden altar in the tent of meeting before the veil and burn frequent fragrant incense on it as the lord had commanded Moses. He put in place the screen for the door of the tabernacle, and he set the altar of burnt offering at the entrance of the tabernacle of the tent of meeting, and offered on it the burnt offering and the grain offering as the lord had commanded Moses.
Speaker 1:
He set the basin between the tent of meeting and the altar and put water in it for washing with which Moses and Aaron and his sons washed their hands and their feet. When they went into the tent of meeting and when they approached the altar, they washed as the lord commanded Moses, and he erected the court around the tabernacle and the altar and set up the screen of the gate of the court so Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses will not was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the lord filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from the over over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out.
Speaker 1:
But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the lord was on the tabernacle by day and fire was in it by night in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys. The word of the lord. Thanks be to god.
Joel Brooks:
If you would, pray with me. Father, we thank you for your word. We pray that through your spirit, you would do your work in our minds and in our hearts. God, that you bring real change to us. Change that would result in your glory.
Joel Brooks:
So, God, I pray that you bring clarity to these words. But more than clarity, may you bring power to them. May my words fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:
Amen. When I was a little child, my mom used to take me on errands with her. And typically, I didn't mind if we went to the grocery store or to Walmart or something like that, but there there were a couple places I absolutely hated to go. One was Marshalls. I mean, who wants as a small boy, who wants to go to Marshalls?
Joel Brooks:
But the worst of all of them was Hancock Fabrics. No boy wants to go to Hancock Fabrics and just look at fabrics. Never ending fabrics. And so, the only way that I would try to salvage some of the time is I'd ask if they have those little cardboard tubes. And I would get those, and I'd pretend it was a light saber.
Joel Brooks:
And I would go around just hitting people until they asked me to stop. But I hated Hancock fabrics. Now, what we are entering in scripture in Exodus 25 through 40 is the Hancock fabrics of scripture, all right? It is description of the tabernacle with all of the fabrics, all of the curtains, all of the candles, all of the table decorations. It's it's excruciatingly painful to read.
Joel Brooks:
I am a pastor, and it is excruciatingly painful for me to read through these things. I read this from one commentary. He said, It was probably just as painful to read back then as it is now. Yet, yet, 1 third of the book of Exodus is devoted to all of these details. One third of the book.
Joel Brooks:
You could actually say that the building of their tabernacle is the climax of the book. It's what the book has been leading towards. If you remember back in September or October, when we began looking at the the story of the Exodus, you remember how Moses, he was sent to pharaoh and he said, let my people go. But he didn't stop there. He said, let my people go, that they may worship me.
Joel Brooks:
Worshipping God was always the end goal. And it was through the tabernacle that God's presence would come to earth and they would be able to enter into his presence and worship. So the tabernacle's the goal. Now, if we want to understand the purpose of the tabernacle, why it deserved so much attention in the book of Exodus, and why it's still vitally important to us, we need to ask and answer 3 questions. These are the questions.
Joel Brooks:
1, why does God want a tabernacle? And then, why does he want this type of tabernacle? And finally, what's the ultimate purpose of this tabernacle, or to whom or what does it point? So let's look at the first question. Why a tabernacle?
Joel Brooks:
Well, the primary purpose of the tabernacle is to provide a place for God's presence to come and dwell in the midst of a community. It's like think of it as a portable Mount Sinai, in which God's presence can come in an intensity that's not found in the rest of creation. It's a portable Mount Sinai. But but God's presence, it comes not in the way probably any of us in here would choose, because God chooses to live in a tent. Now, tabernacle is just a fancy word for tent, but God is coming to live in a tent.
Joel Brooks:
And tents are great for camping. They're a good temporary dwelling, but they're not a home. When one settles down, they don't live in a tent. 1 lives in a tent when you're going to war, or perhaps when you were traveling, but not when one is home. So why is it that God decides here to dwell in a tent instead of instead of a temple, especially when the promised land is about 100 miles away?
Joel Brooks:
Couldn't he just wait and say, well, just get to the promised land, and then we'll just go ahead, and we are going to build a temple? So it seems a little odd that God, the God of this universe, would tell these people to make him a tent instead of a grand temple, but it was always God's design. And he does it for a number of reasons. For 1, God is a God on the move, and we are to be moving with him. We saw this in Exodus 40, but you see it a little more explicitly in places like Numbers 9, in which God is constantly telling to move after one day, maybe move after 2 days, maybe pick up the tent and move another place after a month.
Joel Brooks:
And we read this in numbers 9. Whether it was 2 days or a month or a longer time that the cloud continued over the tabernacle abiding there. The people of Israel remained in the camp and did not set out. But when the cloud lifted up, they set out. And at the command of the Lord, they camped.
Joel Brooks:
And at the command of the Lord, they set out. You can't do this with the temple. You can't keep moving, but here, they're learning obedience. You move when I say move. You stay when I say stay.
Joel Brooks:
And you know what? Home is going to be defined by my presence, not by any condition that you were looking for. And so he's he's teaching them this, that no matter where you are, no matter if it's here for a couple days or whether it's here for a month, this is your home because I am with you. Move when I say move. Stay when I say stay.
Joel Brooks:
Now God reinforces this idea that he is a God on the move, when it comes to Him giving instructions to how to build the ark. In Exodus 25, it it goes through all the detailed instructions of the ark. And one of the things it mentions is that the ark has long, long poles that are put in it in order to carry it, these long poles. And God is very explicit in his directions. He says these poles are to never be taken out.
Joel Brooks:
The polls remain, and it's not because the polls were beautiful. It's not because you'd like to look at the polls, but it's because they represented something, that God was always on the move. You can't pin him down. And God's people are to move with him wherever he goes. Stay when I say stay.
Joel Brooks:
Move when I say move. And where I am is your home. Now, as God's people, we are to still live the same way. When God says move, we move. When he says stay, we stay, and he is our home.
Joel Brooks:
Every morning when you wake up, you need to be asking, God, fill me with your presence and guide me to where you wanna go. Wherever it is, guide me, and may you give me such rest in the midst of anxiety that I'm always at home. You know, I find it very interesting that 500 years later or so, when the Israelites decided they wanted to build God a temple, which wasn't God's idea. He was fine with the tabernacle, but they wanted to build a temple. And he said, well, if you're going to build me a temple, I'm at least gonna give you some directions of how to do it.
Joel Brooks:
And so he gives detailed instructions of how the temple's to be built. And so when you get to the holy of holies, where the ark of the covenant is to rest, the poles don't fit in it. The poles extend out of the holy of holies. Now, there's architects I know in this room, if they had made such a blunder, you'd probably be fired for such a big project as this. But this was God's design.
Joel Brooks:
He says, okay, if you're go if you're gonna build a home, fine, but I'm gonna give you the instructions, and the instructions are this. The ark isn't even gonna fit in there. And when people come to the temple, they will always be reminded that you can't pin me down, that I am a god on the move. So even reinforces this 500 years later. Now before moving on, there's some more minutiae of the temple that we need to to look through.
Joel Brooks:
Something else stands out when you read through this, and it's the way that Moses is Moses writes all of these details. When Moses writes, he places our focus, on the process, but not the finished product of the temple. He focuses on the construction, but not on the completion of this tabernacle. So as you're reading through this, Moses never once describes a completed tabernacle, only it being constantly built or broken down, and then built again. It's always through the lens of 1 weaving, or carving, or sewing, or building that he writes about this tabernacle.
Joel Brooks:
And he does it very intentionally. Even after the tabernacle is finished, and we're gonna see that it's still always in process because they're always tearing it down, and they're always putting it back together over and over and over. Can you imagine what a pain that would be to do that over and over? I mean some of us guys want to go camping, you know, this weekend, and want to set up a tent. You know, our tents are probably going to be 8 feet by 8 feet.
Joel Brooks:
Small things with your little graphite rods held together by bungees. And it's gonna take some of us an hour to put together a tent. That's just the reality of it. But this is so much more complex. And sometimes they would they would set it up, they'd be their day, and then God say, move down 1 mile.
Joel Brooks:
Break it down, move a mile, set it back up. Okay, that's great. Next day, I want you to move another mile. Tear it down. Move.
Joel Brooks:
Build it back up over and over again. It would drive so many of us crazy. But But this is what God has them doing over and over. Now, I I don't know about you, but I can relate to this. Because I often feel like I'm just tearing things down and building them back up, tearing them down, building them back up, doing the same thing over and over and over again.
Joel Brooks:
I feel like I feel like my life is in a state of constant transition. No real permanence, but I'm always in this transition phase. I'm always packing. I'm always moving. I'm always trying to take the next step.
Joel Brooks:
I'm always trying to remove the latest obstacle. And it gets so tiring. You know, Lauren and I, we were thinking about this, and gosh, I mean, Lauren and I, we recover from a surgery only to have another body part breakdown. Happens over and over. I mean, currently I've got 2 broken knuckles, you know, a little strained muscle here.
Joel Brooks:
And this morning, I was leading worship and my shoulder got stuck. I was like, oh, gosh, I gotta get this thing down. And I keep telling myself that, okay, this is just a temporary setback that's been happening for over 10 years. But but it's I I somehow, I told myself, this isn't normal, but it is. I'm always in transition.
Joel Brooks:
I'm always breaking down, building back up. Lauren and I, we we invest so much time and energy in getting to know people, maybe visitors who come to the church, and we finally get to know them, and maybe they move away. It's like, alright. Well, let's spend so much time and energy getting to know somebody else, and we start the process over again. Even simple things like decorating the home.
Joel Brooks:
Tell me, is is decorating a home ever finished? Is there ever a point where you're like, I'm done. Like I could walk away. The home is perfect. Never.
Joel Brooks:
There's there's always cracking. There's always dripping faucets. There's always something that needs to be painted. There's always furniture that breaks. You're never you're never finished.
Joel Brooks:
It's always a process. Parents, I I know you can understand this. Feeling like your whole life is a life lived in transition. You understand this the moment you have a child. And I love the really cocky parents.
Joel Brooks:
You know, the ones who maybe they have a brand new baby, and after a couple weeks are like, you know, my child is sleeping through the night. Yep. My child is, you know, like, hey, just just wait. First sickness, you know, and then all of a sudden, alright. Your child's not sleeping through the night.
Joel Brooks:
So you get your child well. My child's sleeping through the night. Teething, you know, it's God's way of just making, you know, just smiling, throwing these little things at you, so then your child's not sleeping through the night. And then it's, you know, a little, growth spurt, need to eat every other hour, you know. Then it's double ear infections, you know.
Joel Brooks:
There's always something. Always something. You get better, you think you got it, and then it breaks down. Laundry is never done, ever. You wash, you dry, you fold, you put up, you go back to the laundry hamper, and there it is, more dirty clothes for you to wash, dry, fold, put up.
Joel Brooks:
It never ever ends. This is just life. This is what we're seeing here is life. We we long for this fixed place of rest. We want it.
Joel Brooks:
We want rest, not transition, not tearing down and having to build it back up over and over again. But you know what? God, instead, he gives us process, and he gives us construction. We want permanence, and he gives us times of transition. We want stability, but then God says, hey, you don't know which way the wind will blow, but it does blow.
Joel Brooks:
And what we are ultimately longing for when we're thinking of rest, we're ultimately longing for heaven on earth. That's what we want. We want God's kingdom to come. But for now, we're given God's spirit as a promise that that day will come. But until then, we're to be at home in the midst of this building and this tearing down.
Joel Brooks:
Now, I find it so interesting that many of my heroes of the faith, they always wanted rest. They always wanted, you know, that little ivory tower they could go to and write, or that, that study in which nobody bothers them, and they really get to put out these great Christian works. People like John Calvin, he wanted that. But when he got it, he really he really didn't write that much great. But it was during his times of transition, when he had kids running underneath or crawling underneath his table as he was trying to study, biting his leg, when he had armies outside waiting to kill him, that's when he writes his best stuff.
Joel Brooks:
Martin Luther, same thing. He wanted just a place where he could go study, but it's when he's expelled from the papacy. It's when people are constantly trying to hunt him down and kill him that he writes these tremendous, lasting works. And these times of transition is when God used them. Don't try to get past this time of transition from when your whole life is that.
Joel Brooks:
Be open to what God wants you to do now during this time. Remember, with God's spirit, your home, that's your rest, your home. Alright. Let's look at why this type of tabernacle. Why this type?
Joel Brooks:
When the instructions ark and then He moves outward. He starts from the He starts with the ark and then he moves outward. He starts from the inside out in how he is going to build the tabernacle. So he begins with the inside, and then he keeps adding layer after layer after layer. And really, these layers are barriers.
Joel Brooks:
And so you have, you know, your holy of holies, and then you have a curtain around it, and then you have some furniture, and then you have the most holy place curtain that goes around that, and then you have some more furniture, and then you have this other thick curtain that goes around that in the outer courtyard. And it's all of these boundaries or these layers that we see being spread out from the Ark of the Covenant. So why does God design his tabernacle like that? Well, we've we've seen as we've gone through Exodus that God's presence for us is a problem. It's a problem.
Joel Brooks:
We long for God's presence, but it's a huge problem for us, because if we're in his presence, we die, and we need protection. We need barriers. And it didn't used to always be that way. Back in the Garden of Eden, there were no barriers. Adam is simply described as walking with God in the cool of the evening.
Joel Brooks:
I love that imagery. It's what Lauren and I do after work. We get together and we just kinda go on a walk. So we could catch up with each other's day, and we can just simply enjoy one another's company. That's what Genesis is saying.
Joel Brooks:
Adam and God enjoyed one another's company in the cool of the evening. So it wasn't always that way. But something happened to our sin, and our sin became a huge problem for us. And the moment Adam and Eve sinned, they began putting up barriers. Now the first barrier was, you know, fig leaves.
Joel Brooks:
They start putting fig leaves all over them as a barrier. And then they're like, that's not enough. So they go and hide behind some things as another barrier. And then finally, God throws them out of the Garden of Eden, and he puts a cherub, an angel with a flaming sword guarding the entrance to act as another barrier, saying you can't get back in. You might want to be in my presence again.
Joel Brooks:
You might want to be in even again, but you can't get back. And we desperately want to get back in there. Now now CS Lewis, he he of course explains this better than me or anybody can. He explains it in a in a article called The Inner Ring, which I've alluded to over the years. And in this article, C.
Joel Brooks:
S. Lucy talks about how all of life, all of life is shaped by the desire to be on the inside. We we wanna be in the inner circle. We wanna be in the inner ring. We wanna be included.
Joel Brooks:
We we wanna be part of this exclusive group in which we get to use this delicious word we. We, and we also get to use that word them. We want to be a part of that. You know, you felt it even in high school back then, when you so longed to be part of a group. And maybe there was that one moment when, you know, somebody popular said, and we, and you're like, oh, I was included in this.
Joel Brooks:
And he got to look down at the them. God revealed and just he brought to mind this morning a way that this shaped my life. Years ago, I had to, I was doing something with Doctor. John Piper, and so I had his cell phone number, and I had it, you know, programmed in my phone. And, and then Piper changed his number, and, I just kinda left it in my phone.
Joel Brooks:
Just wanted to leave it in there, just in case anybody was looking at my phone and wanted to scroll through and be like, Hey, well, you know, Joel has got John Piper's number in his phone. I wanted this we. I wanted the illusion of the we. We all want that. We're fighting to get in this inner ring.
Joel Brooks:
Now, Lewis doesn't talk about this, but but really what is happening here is what we're ultimately longing for is to be in the inner ring, to be back in the garden. We wanna be back in the circle with God himself. We wanna go back to Eden, and yet we feel so excluded, and that drives us to try to always get in whatever inner ring we can. Now, with the tabernacle, getting in this inner ring with God, getting back to Eden is once again possible. Eden has come back to earth and is accessible to us through the tabernacle.
Joel Brooks:
You see, the tabernacle, and we don't have time to go through all of this, but it's actually designed to be the Garden of Eden. And when you look at all the designs in the tabernacle, one of the things that really stands out is almost everything is some kind of fruits or flower or tree. Whether it's whether it's woven into tapestries or whether it's carved into wood or into gold, but it's to represent this lush garden. So you have the lampstand that's right outside of God's presence there, and it looks like a tree and these almond blossoms, representing the tree of life with God's presence. And we also have the cherubim again.
Joel Brooks:
Those barriers around God's presence in the tree of life, there is this veil, this curtain that goes around it. And woven or embroidered in this curtain are cherubim, angels guarding the presence of God. So once again, we have this barrier. And so even though we see Eden is returning, that God through their tabernacle is providing a way in, we see that there are still barriers there. And so, God sets up a system where only 1 person can enter, the high priest, only once a year.
Joel Brooks:
And what that high priest has to do to get ready to enter is just crazy. I mean, he is making sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice. He's covering everything with blood. He is constantly having to change his clothes, take a bath, make another sacrifice, change his clothes, take a bath, make another sacrifice. This happens over and over.
Joel Brooks:
And then maybe, just maybe, he can enter back into Eden, into the Holy of Holies and not die. So, Eden has come again, but there are still all of these barriers. To really get back in the presence of God, you have to go through the cherubim. You have to fall under the sword. And this leads us to the ultimate purpose of the tabernacle.
Joel Brooks:
The tabernacle, it is a tool here. But more than that, it is a symbol. It's a symbol. It's a sign of something much greater. And we usually, we read about this every Christmas.
Joel Brooks:
But in John 114, he's describing Jesus called the word, and he says this. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Now literally, this says this. And the word became flesh and tabernacled among us. The word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.
Joel Brooks:
Jesus is the fulfillment of this tabernacle. It's through Jesus that God enters our messy world and comes to be in our midst. And when we look at Jesus, we see the glory of God. And everything, everything in this tabernacle pointed to Jesus. The lampstand pointed to Jesus, who was the light of the world.
Joel Brooks:
The showbread on the table pointed to Jesus who says he was the bread of life. The altars and the sacrifices, they pointed to Jesus who is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Over and over as you go through all the description of the tabernacle, it points you to Jesus. And like the tabernacle itself, Jesus is is a way to God, but he's more than that. He is also the very presence of God.
Joel Brooks:
He is both the way to God, and he is the glory of God in that holy of holies. And when Jesus was on the cross, right before he died, he shouted the words, it is finished. It is finished. And Jesus, he was referring to a number of things here, but one of the things he most certainly was referring to was the function of the tabernacle and the temple, that they are finished. Matthew 27 says that after Jesus cried this out, it says the curtain temple was ripped in 2.
Joel Brooks:
This is that curtain temple with the cherubim that separates the holy of holies from from us. Says it was torn in 2 from the top to the bottom. And and the great image is this. Jesus yells, it is finished, and God his father says, yes. It is.
Joel Brooks:
There is no longer a need for this temple. We now have access because the sin problem has been dealt with in Jesus. Hebrews 10/19 says this, Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened up for us through the curtain that is through his flesh. And the author of Hebrews, he sees that curtain being torn. It was torn when Jesus's flesh was torn.
Joel Brooks:
Because Jesus went under the sword, we now get to go back in. You don't have to spend your whole life trying to get in the next inner circle only to find that there's another circle, and you get in that to find there's another inner circle. You have been let back in the circle. Are you taking advantage of that? We get back in that ultimate inner ring, the holy of holies.
Joel Brooks:
We get to go back to Eden. And even more than that, let me let me I'll just end on this. Even more than that, the implications of this as a believer are astonishing, because Paul's gonna go on later in 1 Corinthians. He's gonna say, You are a temple of the Holy Spirit, meaning that the presence of God now dwells in you. You're a tabernacle, if you will, for the presence of God.
Joel Brooks:
Let that just sit in. That means think of the functions of the tabernacle. That means wherever you go, you get to be like a little portable Eden to people. That wherever you go, that truly, if God's presence is in you, when you walk alongside an unbeliever, they are kinda like Adam getting to walk with God in the cool of the evening. Because your presence, God's presence in you gets to minister to them.
Joel Brooks:
The the implications of this are profound. When people look at you when there's turmoil all around, transition all around, and they see you're at rest, that you're at home, is an invitation for them to come back to Eden. So I pray that we would trust Jesus to make that a reality in our life. He has torn open the curtain through his flesh. Take full advantage.
Joel Brooks:
Pray with me. Our father, I pray for each person here that when you say stay, they would stay. When you say go, they would go. For those who are believers and who are little temples for your spirit, may they take advantage. May they press into you, and may they they function the way that a tabernacle's supposed to function.
Joel Brooks:
Lord, make that a reality in our life. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, for opening the way to God. We pray this in your name. Amen.