There is a very famous place I had never heard of before this last month. It’s St. Peter's Church Hall in Liverpool, England. On the inside, it looks like a typical church gym except for the ornate wood cathedral ceiling and missing basketball hoops.
Several years ago, St. Peter's was having a church social with a local music group performing. During a break in the music, Paul, a 15-year-old guest, played songs on the guitar and piano, impressing the teen band leader, John. A few weeks later, John Lennon invited Paul McCartney to join the Quarrymen, later known as The Beatles. That first meeting took place on July 6, 1957. And as they say, “The rest is history.”
The Liverpool Museum noted, “That meeting didn't just change the lives of John and Paul, it was the spark that lit the creative (fuse) on a cultural revolution that would reverberate around the world” (Christopher Muther, "A New Hampshire Beatles Fan Bought George Harrison's Childhood Home,” The Boston Sunday Globe, 9-4-22) pp. N1, N6; www.PreachingToday.com).
My dear friends, God invites you to a meeting that will literally change your world. Do you want to meet Him? Do you want to encounter the Almighty God, the Sovereign Lord over all? Then I invite you to turn with me to Exodus 25, Exodus 25, where God tells His people how to get ready to meet Him.
Exodus 25:1-9 The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the people of Israel, that they take for me a contribution. From every man whose heart moves him you shall receive the contribution for me. And this is the contribution that you shall receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, goats’ hair, tanned rams’ skins, goatskins, acacia wood, oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, onyx stones, and stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece. And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it (ESV).
According to Hebrews 8:5, the “pattern of the tabernacle” reflected “heavenly things” in the place where God dwells. Here, God makes it clear that He wants to dwell in the midst of His people, literally, to pitch His tent with them. He lives in Heaven, to be sure, but He also wants to live on earth among those who welcome Him into their lives.
That’s remarkable, especially when you understand that in Bible days, a king lived apart from his people. Even today, kings live in palaces far away from the common people.
One Bible commentator notes that in a suzerain-vassal relationship in Bible days, the suzerain would customarily live far from the vassal, collecting [taxes] from the vassal for his own enjoyment. The best a vassal nation could hope for was that their suzerain would provide security and predictable [taxes] rather than sporadic, devastating raids. The Lord, however, was talking to Moses about residing among the Israelites as his own people (Coover-Cox, CSB Study Bible: Notes).
That’s great news! God wants to dwell with you. He wants to live with you.
The Apostle John uses the same language when He talks about Jesus in John 1. There, he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and DWELT among us” (John 1:1, 14)—Literally, He pitched His tent among us just like God did among the Israelites.
In Ephesians 3, the Apostle Paul prays “that Christ may DWELL in your hearts through faith” (Ephesians 3:17).
And in Revelation, John writes, “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the DWELLING place of God is with man. He will DWELL with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God’” (Revelation 21:3).
From Exodus to Revelation, God desires to DWELL with His people. He wants to live with you!
British pastor, Matthew Hosier, writes about a missionary friend who moved to a Muslim majority nation:
When they first moved to the Middle East, they heard that on festival days everyone dresses in their best clothes and goes to visit their relatives and neighbors to celebrate. So, for their first Eid festival they carefully cleaned their apartment, dressed up in their best clothes, got some sweets and chocolates, which are traditional to hand out to visitors, and waited in their house. But no one came to visit.
Another missionary explained what they did wrong: “On festival days, the small visit the big, and the big give out presents.” For example, everyone in a family visits their eldest brother, or their parents, or grandparents. When they arrive, they would kiss the hand of the older person to show respect and honor. The host would then care for their guests by feeding them, serving them, and giving them gifts like good quality chocolate, money, or other presents. As newly arrived foreigners without social standing or relatives, naturally no-one came to visit them. They were considered “small” by the culture, so they are the ones who needed to do the visiting.
Pastor Hosier says, “This incident made me ponder the awesomeness of the incarnation. In every other religion, humans (the small) try to visit God by their own strength and good works. But as much as we try to dress up nicely, we cannot be clean enough to enter his house without polluting and disrespecting it.
“In the incarnation God decided to play the role both of the ‘small’ and of the ‘big.’ He humbled himself totally to become ‘small’ so that he could visit us in our squalid house. But also as the ‘big’ he played the role of host and gave gifts—atonement, the Holy Spirit, and clean clothes—which means that as believers we are now appropriately dressed and thus free to enter his house without disrespecting it” (Matthew Hosier, “Incarnation Through Middle-Eastern Eyes,” Think Blog, thinktheoloigy.co.uk, 12-22-16; www.PreachingToday.com).
That’s what God did when He became a man, a man we call Jesus. The BIG became SMALL. The BIG left the palaces of heaven to “pitch His tent” with us, i.e., to dwell with us. Now, God wants to “dwell in your heart through faith” (Ephesians 3:17).
All you have to do is make a place for Him there. Create the space for God to live with you. That’s what God asked the Israelites to do. He asked them to make a voluntary contribution (verse 1) for the building of a tabernacle, where He would dwell right in their midst.
Now, God asked that that contribution come from “every man whose heart moves him” (Exodus 25:1). You see, God never forces Himself on people. Rather, He wants to dwell with people that want Him. He wants to live with people who open their hearts to Him. He wants to settle with people that respect Him for who He is.
You see that in the materials He asked His people to give, 15 items, which include gold, silver and bronze (vs. 3), along with blue, purple, and scarlet yarns (vs. 4). Gold and blue point to Christ’s as God from the heavens (Exodus 20:23; Hebrews 7:26). Silver points to Christ as Redeemer (Numbers 18:16; Romans 3:24; 1 Corinthians 1:30). Purple, the color of royalty, points to Christ as King (Judges 8:26; Esther 8:15; Daniel 5:7, 16, 29; Mark 15:17; John 19:9). And bronze and Scarlet point to Christ as our Sacrifice for sin (Exodus 27:1-4; Isaiah 1:18; Hebrews 9:19; Revelation 1:15). Jesus is God and King, Redeemer and Sacrifice, and He wants to dwell with anyone who opens their heart to Him.
Jesus Himself said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).
Please, open the door of your heart to Him and let Him into your life. For if you want to meet God, that’s what you have to do. You have to…
WELCOME HIM.
Make a place in your heart for Him. Open the core of your being to Him.
In Christianity Today, writer Dikkon Eberhart shares how he came to faith in Jesus Christ. He says:
“I grew up in the Episcopal Church. But in my high teens and young twenties I drifted. At seminary in Berkeley, California, during the 1970s—I created my own religion. I called it Godianity. Certainly, I believed in the existence of God, hence the name of my religion. But I didn’t know much about that Son of God fellow, and the little I did know seemed impossibly weird.
“Then something happened,” Eberhart says. “I married a Jew who was an atheist. Then my wife became pregnant and nine months later, our first daughter squirmed in her mother’s arms. Here’s the sudden realization of an atheist: Such a perfect and beautiful creature must be the gift of God, not the product of some random swirl of atoms. My wife’s atheism bit the dust…
“Five years later,” Eberhart says, “Our daughter and I were swinging in a hammock under a tree on a windy day. Normally an eager chatterer, our daughter fell silent and then said, ‘Daddy, I know there’s a God.’
“How, sweetie?” Eberhart asked.
She pointed at the tree and its leaves. “You can’t see God. He’s like the wind. You can’t see the wind, but the wind makes the leaves move. You can’t see God, but you know he’s there, because he makes the people move, like the leaves.”
She continued, “Daddy, what do we believe?”
Eberhart said, “Despite my three advanced religious degrees and seminary employment, I couldn’t answer.”
“In that instant,” he says, “I shucked my Godianity and decided along with my wife to raise our children as Jews—Reformed Jews.
Then he and his wife noticed something. For all their respect for the Torah, many Reform Jews were selective in their adherence to its strictures. Eberhart and his wife objected, because they wanted a faith that wasn’t in the habit of accommodating itself to the surrounding culture.
However, across the street from their rural home, there happened to be a small Baptist church. Some of their neighbors had invited them to visit, Eberhart says, “in case we Jews should ever want to know more about Christ. We realized that—oddly—these neighbors seemed concerned for our souls.”
More than a year later, desperate for direction, Eberhart crossed the road to the church one Sunday morning. That day, the pastor was preaching from 1 Timothy, and Eberhart was astonished to hear a Baptist preacher using Old Testament references within his message—and with accurate Hebrew nuance. The pastor and he began meeting each week and his wife started attending the women’s Bible study. They began devouring book after book, faster and faster, thrilled by each new discovery of seemingly impossible truths that were actually true.
Eventually, the Eberhart’s opened their hearts to Jesus, “the God-man who dwelt among us.” They came to realize “that the Old Testament begged for the climax of the New Testament.”
“It took nine months,” Eberhart says, “an appropriate duration for re-birth, before I committed myself to Jesus. My wife did the same three months later,” he said, and “our younger two children followed soon thereafter” (Dikkon Eberhart, “Crossing the Road to Christ,” Christianity Today, December, 2019, pp. 71-72; www. PreachingToday.com).
Please, wherever you are on your spiritual journey, if you want to meet God, open your heart to Jesus, and welcome Him into your life. Make a place for Him. Then…
WORSHIP HIM.
Respect and revere His Word. Go beyond making a place for God; make an ark for Him, as well.
Exodus 25:10 “They shall make an ark of acacia wood. Two cubits and a half shall be its length, a cubit and a half its breadth, and a cubit and a half its height (ESV).
A cubit is the length of a man’s arm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, anywhere from 15 to 22 inches, depending on the size of the arm. Most Bible scholars average it to 18 inches. So this wooden box is roughly 45 inches long, 27 inches wide, and 27 inches high.
Exodus 25:11-16 You shall overlay it with pure gold, inside and outside shall you overlay it, and you shall make on it a molding of gold around it. You shall cast four rings of gold for it and put them on its four feet, two rings on the one side of it, and two rings on the other side of it. You shall make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. And you shall put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark to carry the ark by them. The poles shall remain in the rings of the ark; they shall not be taken from it. And you shall put into the ark the testimony that I shall give you.
God wants Moses to put into this golden ark the two tablets of stone, containing the 10 commandments, which God will give Him on Mount Sinai. Exodus 31:18 calls them “the two tablets of the testimony,” which God will write with His own finger. So this ark will contain the very Word of God, which Moses will place in the most important piece of the Tabernacle’s furniture, which alone will go into the most holy place of that Tabernacle.
God wants His people to give the highest respect to His Word, to reverence and obey Him when He speaks. So, if you want to meet God, get into His Word and obey it. Respect what He says enough to at least read it and do it in your own life.
The Apostle Paul instructed a young pastor to devote himself “to the public reading of Scripture” in his church (1 Timothy 4:13). That’s because Paul will later tell him, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
So, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, God wants His people to give the Word of God a prominent place in their worship.
In his book, The Reason for God, Tim Keller writes:
If you don’t trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you.
For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won’t have an intimate relationship. Remember the (two) movies The Stepford Wives? The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands. A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.
Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won’t! You’ll have a Stepford God! A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction.
Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So, an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it (Tim Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Penguin reprint, 2009, pp. 113-114; www.PreachingToday.com).
If you want a real relationship with the real God, then respect His Word, even those parts that anger you; listen to what He has to say, even if it offends you; and obey Him, even if you don’t want to. If you want to meet God, welcome Him, worship Him, and then…
APPEASE HIM.
Find a way to assuage His righteous anger against your sin. Find a way to satisfy the righteous requirements of His law, which you and everyone else have violated.
God tells His people to build a place for him to dwell, to build an ark for His Word, and now to build a mercy seat to go on top of that ark.
Exodus 25:17-22 “You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold. Two cubits and a half shall be its length, and a cubit and a half its breadth. And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end. Of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony 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 (ESV).
Because all of us have violated God’s Law, the only place any of us could possibly meet Him is at the mercy seat. The Hebrew word for “mercy seat” (kapporet) literally means a cover. That seat covered the law, providing atonement (kapar), or a covering for sin.
You see, the only way sinful human beings can meet with a holy God is to cover their sin. The problem is no one can adequately cover their sin before a holy God, who knows everything about you. It’s like Adam and Eve trying to cover their nakedness with fig leaves. It just doesn’t work.
However, God Himself has provided a covering for your sin. 1 John 4:10 says, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
That is to say, Jesus, by His death on the cross, satisfied the righteous requirements of God’s Law. Jesus suffered God’s penalty against your sin and rose again, so you could have an eternal relationship with a holy God. Jesus’ shed blood on the cross appeased God’s wrath against your sin. It covered your sin once and for all.
So now, instead of facing His wrath, you find yourself “under His wings.” The psalmist cries out to God, “Let me dwell in your tent forever! Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings!” (Psalm 61:4). Then, in another psalm, he says of God, “He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge…” (Psalm 91:4). Those wings are the wings of the cherubim, which overshadowed the mercy seat (Exodus 25:20). It is there, instead of retribution, you find refuge.
My dear friends, if you haven’t done it already, please, come to the mercy seat. Come to Christ, who covered your sin with His blood. And there, find a refuge for your own soul; find forgiveness for all your sins.
In Wendell Berry's short story “Thicker Than Liquor,” a young man named Wheeler tries to come to terms with his uncle's alcoholism. As a child Wheeler loved his Uncle Peach, but as Wheeler became an adolescent, he began to see that Uncle Peach was drunk more often than not. Rather than being happy to be in relationship, Wheeler wanted nothing to do with him. At one point, Wheeler turns to his mother (Uncle Peach's sister) and protests, “To hell with him! Why don't you let him get on by himself the best way he can? What's he done for you?”
His mom answers, “Because blood is thicker than water … [and] thicker than liquor too…”
Wheeler goes off to the university, then to law school, and returns home with a new wife to begin his life as an attorney. One day a hotel clerk calls Wheeler, asking if someone can come and get Uncle Peach, who has gotten drunk, horribly messing up his hotel room. Instinctively, Wheeler says he will come and help his uncle. And he goes off to love his mother's brother, more because she does than because he does.
He finds Uncle Peach disheveled, and the room torn apart. Cleaning him up, he gives him coffee and brings him home. But before the train ride is over, Uncle Peach vomits again. Wheeler does his best to clean them both up and bring them back to Uncle Peach's home, enduring more vomit along the way. Berry writes:
Finally, after this had happened perhaps a dozen times, Wheeler, who had remained angry, said, “I hope you puke your damned guts out.”
And Uncle Peach, who lay, quaking and white, against the seatback, said, “Oh, Lord, honey, you can't mean that.”
As if his anger had finally stripped all else away, suddenly Wheeler saw Uncle Peach as perhaps Dorie had always seen him—a poor, hurt, weak mortal, twice hurt because he knew himself to be hurt and weak and mortal. And then Wheeler knew what he needed from Uncle Peach. He needed him to be comforted. That was all. He put his arm around Uncle Peach, then, and patted him as if he were a child. “No,” he said. “I don't mean it.”
The story finishes with surprising grace. When they arrive home, Wheeler decides to stay with Uncle Peach, rather than go home to his new bride. And so, after putting the older man to bed, Wheeler climbs in too. As the hours pass, he feels the terrors of Uncle Peach's mostly sleepless night, but eventually, “Wheeler went to sleep, his hand remaining on Uncle Peach's shoulder where it had come to rest” (Adapted from Steven Garber, Visions of Vocation, IVP Books, 2014, pp.137-138; www.PreachingToday.com).
Wheeler gives us a glimpse of Christ, whose blood is “thicker than liquor” or any other sin that separates us from God. Jesus entered into our putrid, filthy world to deliver us from it. All you have to do is acknowledge your own hurt and weakness to experience His hand resting on your shoulder through the dark night into His glorious morning.
Please, if you haven’t yet done it, confess your sins to Jesus and trust Him to clean up the mess in your life.
If you want to meet with God today, welcome Him, worship Him, and appease Him by depending on the blood of Christ to cover all your sin.
On a summer day around 1880, Louisa Stead (sted) and her husband, George, took their young daughter Lily to Long Island Sound for a picnic outing. While enjoying their day together by the seashore, they were suddenly alerted by cries for help from a young boy struggling against the tide offshore. Without hesitation, Louisa’s husband dove into the water in an attempt to save him.
Tragically, both drowned as Louisa and Lily watched helplessly from the shore—their world shattered before their eyes; despair threatened to engulf them both after experiencing the terrible loss of their husband and father. Yet in those darkest moments, God gave Louisa a song (Don Chapman, “The Story Behind Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus,” Hymn Charts, www. hymncharts.com/2023/05/29/the-story-behind-tis-so-sweet-to-trust-in-jesus/):
Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to take Him at His word;
Just to rest upon His promise,
And to know, ‘Thus saith the Lord.’
The next verse goes on to say:
O how sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to trust His cleansing blood;
Just in simple faith to plunge me
'Neath the healing, cleansing flood.
Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him,
How I've proved Him o'er and o'er.
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus,
O for grace to trust Him more.
My dear friends, in your darkness, pray for the grace to trust Jesus more.
