Slide 1 This past week I took a step back from the Bible as I prepared for this communion meditation and as I did so, I believe that the Holy Spirit began to show me some patterns in scripture regarding how the Lord related to humankind throughout the course of Biblical history. Slide 2
Slide 2b One theme that was revealed to me is that the Bible begins and ends with perfection. Just beyond the creation account we see a perfect world and just before the curtain closes on John’s deep and marvelous revelation, we see the new heaven and new earth that is perfect and peaceful.
Slide 2c I also noticed that in God’s working with humanity there is a balanced emphasis between the individual and the group. Early on God speaks to individuals such as Adam and Eve, then Cain, followed by Noah, then onto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Then as we move into the story of Moses, God hears the cries of the Israelites, a group, and eventually frees them and leads them out of bondage and slavery in Egypt which brings us our Exodus 25 text.
Please notice what the Lord said to Moses in verse 8, ‘I want the people of Israel to build me a sacred residence where I can live among them.’ Slide 3
Around 430 years after Abraham was given the promise of becoming the father of a great nation, God seeks to live among that great nation, His people.
So, He tells Moses to tell the people to build Him a Tabernacle, a portable place of worship that would be moved as the people moved back to the Promise Land. The slide shows one artistic representation what the Most Holy Place may have looked like as the High Priest, the only one who could rightfully enter the Most Holy Place, made a sacrifice for the sins of the nation.
Then, following the idea of the emphasis between group and individual, the story of Moses transitions to the story of Joshua. Key to this story is the Ark of the Covenant leading the way across the Jordan as they returned to the Promise Land because it served as a reminder of God’s presence in their midst leading them across the Jordan.
As Joshua and the Judges of Israel pass on and off the stage of both Biblical and world history, we come to a new chapter in the life of Israel as it develops into a monarchy. First there is Saul and then David to whom plans for a new place of worship, a Temple, are first made but because of the bloodshed that David had created his son, Solomon, would be the king that would build the temple and this brings us to the 1 Kings 5 passage in which we read, (Slide 4) ‘So I [Solomon] am planning to build a Temple to honor the name of the Lord my God, just as he instructed my father that I should do.’ (Here we see a cross section of what the Temple may have looked like.)
Israel has now been established as a nation, is at peace with her enemies, and a more permanent place of worship, where God still meets the people through the High Priest, is established. God still seeks to live among his people and the Temple is visible evidence of that. But as we continue to read the Biblical story, Solomon’s story includes a long, slow decline in the relationship between God and the Israelites.
It affects the leadership first as we read of the Kings and Queens who decide to make the Temple a place of worship for something else that the Lord. The result of the decline is first the split of Israel into the Northern and Southern Kingdoms and then the eventual conquering of both Kingdoms and exile of key leaders and persons to foreign lands.
During this decline and exile, God calls forth prophets named Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel as well as others, to tell the people to “come home, come back to me!” God seeks for the re-establishment of a relationship with His people.
Listen to Isaiah 51:4 and 5: “Listen to me, my people. Hear me, Israel, for my law will be proclaimed, and my justice will become a light to the nations. My mercy and justice are coming soon. Your salvation is on the way.”
Then a few chapters later we read in chapter 53, “Who has believed our message? To whom will the Lord reveal his saving power? My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot, sprouting from a root in dry and sterile ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by. He was despised, and we did not care.
Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins! But he was wounded and crushed for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace. He was whipped, and we were healed! All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.”
Who does this refer to? Jesus Christ, the Son of God who lived a sinless life, died on the cross for our sins, rose from the dead three days later, then after giving His disciples the command to ‘go make disciples [that is born again and maturing followers of Jesus], He returned to heaven and will come again some day.
But during a critical moment, away from the Temple that had been rebuilt but to Jesus had become a ‘den of thieves’ instead of a ‘house of prayer,’ Jesus sat at a table, (Slide 5) during a remembrance and a celebration of liberation, The Passover, and said, as we have already heard in our Luke 22 passage, “I have looked forward to this hour with deep longing, anxious to eat this Passover meal with you before my suffering begins. For I tell you now that I won’t eat it again until it comes to fulfillment in the Kingdom of God.”
“Then he took a cup of wine, and when he had given thanks for it, he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. For I will not drink wine again until the Kingdom of God has come.”
“Then he took a loaf of bread; and when he had thanked God for it, he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “This is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” After supper he took another cup of wine and said, “This wine is the token of God’s new covenant to save you—an agreement sealed with the blood I will pour out for you.”
God the Son, Jesus, Our Savior, gets personal with His disciples. He says very important things to them about love, obedience, His Father’s will, and what lies ahead. But in all that Jesus says, and then does through His death and resurrection, He makes it clear that God wants to dwell in us and be at the center of our lives and very being.
Slide 6 As I reflect on this progression from the tabernacle, to the temple, and finally to the table, the common thread, the common theme is that God was always seeking to live in us and with us and among us and, as He pursued that dwelling, He got very personal and very human. Why? Because He loves us and He created us for His pleasure and seeks to be in relationship with us!
Slide 6a But also common to this progression was the other side, our side, the dark side, the side of disobedience, of self-will, of sin which enabled humanity then, and enables humanity still, to try and get away from God and not just live without Him but try to exist without Him.
Slide 6c And between the two was the need for something, anything– a sacrifice, a confession - to make reconciliation possible between God and humankind. As we read the Old Testament the solution was animal sacrifice. But in the New Testament, the human sacrifice, sat at a table with 12 men, handpicked to carry on the story and the message of forgiveness and reconciliation with God. Why? Because, as I have said before and will say until I cannot say it any longer through illness or death, ‘God wants us back!’
As we prepare to take communion this morning I want to read portions of Hebrews 9 which provide us with the importance of the tabernacle, temple, and table because it served the purpose of God in re-establishing a relationship with His greatest creation, us!
“Now in that first covenant between God and Israel, there were regulations for worship and a sacred tent here on earth. There were two rooms in this tent. In the first room were a lampstand, a table, and loaves of holy bread on the table. This was called the Holy Place. Then there was a curtain, and behind the curtain was the second room called the Most Holy Place.
In that room were a gold incense altar and a wooden chest called the Ark of the Covenant, which was covered with gold on all sides. Inside the Ark were a gold jar containing some manna, Aaron’s staff that sprouted leaves, and the stone tablets of the covenant with the Ten Commandments written on them. The glorious cherubim were above the Ark. Their wings were stretched out over the Ark’s cover, the place of atonement. But we cannot explain all of these things now.
When these things were all in place, the priests went in and out of the first room regularly as they performed their religious duties. But only the high priest goes into the Most Holy Place, and only once a year, and always with blood, which he offers to God to cover his own sins and the sins the people have committed in ignorance. By these regulations the Holy Spirit revealed that the Most Holy Place was not open to the people as long as the first room and the entire system it represents were still in use.
On to verse 11 we read, “So Christ has now become the High Priest over all the good things that have come. He has entered that great, perfect sanctuary in heaven, not made by human hands and not part of this created world. Once for all time he took blood into that Most Holy Place, but not the blood of goats and calves. He took his own blood, and with it he secured our salvation forever.”
Then at verse 24 we read, “For Christ has entered into heaven itself to appear now before God as our Advocate. He did not go into the earthly place of worship, for that was merely a copy of the real Temple in heaven. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, like the earthly high priest who enters the Most Holy Place year after year to offer the blood of an animal. If that had been necessary, he would have had to die again and again, ever since the world began. But no! He came once for all time, at the end of the age, to remove the power of sin forever by his sacrificial death for us.”
Slide 7 I pray that the Holy Spirit would really help us grasp the greatness and personal-ness of Christ sacrificial death for us and that we respond to God during these moments as we need to. Amen
Power Points for this sermon are available by e-mailing me at pastorjim46755@yahoo.com and asking for ‘100707slides’ Please note that all slides for a particular presentation may not be available.
