Tim Bergling, whose stage name was Avicii, was a Swedish remixer and producer.
He quickly rose to fame in the Electronic Dance Movement culture, his main instrument was basically a laptop.
His rise and fall were meteoric.
“Wake me up” topped the charts around the world in 2013.
He rose to prominence at the age of 22…became enormously popular and wealthy and then died of suicide alone, already burned out at the age of 28.
He had a happy childhood, two loving parents but from his own admission…success ruined his life.
Here is a quote from Tim, “I was a lot happier before I was famous than after I was famous.
I started feeling very empty and unhappy.”
He began to search for meaning, looking to TM, traveling, trying new kinds of music, building a house.
It all worked until it didn’t.
Why choose this tragic story to talk about?
Because, stories, like his touch our hearts…but they should also touch our heads…they should wake us up.
His song, Wake me up, has these lyrics:
“Feeling my way through the darkness, guided by a beating heart (what is guiding him through the dark? His heart, his feelings)”
“Wake me when it’s all over, when I’m wiser and I’m older…all this time I was finding myself and I didn’t’ know I was lost.”
We want to live awake long before it’s all over.
He didn’t live to be older and becoming wiser is not merely putting in time…wake me up when I get there.
it is the result of active choices…mostly the choice to trust God, to believe and live his word.
There are things to learn from experience and there are many things we don’t want to learn by experience…we want to trust God’s word and escape those experiences.
Tim’s tragic life was a search for what his heart was made for…not music, not art, not fame…God.
The talent God gave him, and it was a lot, the desire to create, to achieve…all this was from God.
But he let his beating heart guide him…rather than the God that his beating heart was made for.
Today we are in Exodus for a second week.
If you asked people what Exodus is about, if they knew anything at all, it would be informed by mostly unbiblical the animated film “The Prince of Egypt”
…or the utterly ridiculous film “Exodus: God’s and Kings”, with Christian Bale, AKA, Batman, playing superhero Moses.
For biblically literate Christians, our first thoughts would go to plagues, bloody Rescue, Redemption, God making a nation, sin and wilderness wandering, 10 commandments.
All this right.
But if you were to ask me, what is Exodus about…bottom line…I would say…It is about God’s passionate desire for relationship with people…bottom bottom line…it is about Jesus.
Tim Berling, Avicci, reminded me…as stories like his always do…of our own desperate need and desperate search for relationship with God…and often, like he sang, “I didn’t know I was lost”
On our own, we don’t know what is driving us, what our real need is…we only know that it is there.
We certainly don’t know how to meet that need on our own.
We can mask our true need for a time with activity, and ambition, with the pursuit of pleasure and dreams, building careers…but eventually the mask will fall, and we will face the reality of how we have built our lives…for better or for worse.
We must believe and obey what God himself has told us what our hearts need most.
Genesis begins with a man and a woman in intimate relationship with God in a garden.
Because of sin they are driven out of the garden and mighty beings, called Cherubim guard the entrance.
Genesis 3:24.
“He drove the man out and stationed the cherubim and the flaming, whirling sword east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Every detail of this verse excludes sinners from God’s holy presence.
The way back is not hard, it is impossible now…all that follows this in Scripture is about God making the impossible, possible.
We will encounter these mighty cherubim again.
Ezekiel saw them in his awesome visions of God’s throne.
These beings are described in ways that challenge the imagination as they guard the very presence of God.
We see them again in Exodus, they are embroidered on the veil that barred access to sinful humans to the holy of holies in the Tabernacle.
They were also modeled in pure gold on what was called the “mercy seat” or the lid of the Ark of the Covenant that was at the center of the most holy place in the Tabernacle.
The place where annual blood was shed for the sins of the people.
Later when the temple became the permanent place of God’s presence to replace the moving Tabernacle, a veil or large curtain cut off sinners from God’s holy presence…it too had Cherubim embroidered on it.
They are guardians of God’s holy presence…real beings, but they are portrayed in symbols.
At the death of Christ this veil was torn in two, top to bottom.
Access to God presence was made permanently possible by the blood of Christ.
(From Alan Cole: Commentary on Exodus.)
So, what is this Tabernacle and why does Exodus give so much time to its design and creation?
The first half of Exodus is largely God rescuing Israel from their long captivity in Egypt.
The second half of the book they end up at Mt Sinai, the place God encountered Moses in the burning bush and called him to lead his people back there to worship him.
While at Sinai, God invites the people enter into a covenant relationship with him.
God had promised to Abraham that his family line would restore his blessing to all of the nations.
Exodus 19:3
Moses went up the mountain to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain: “This is what you must say to the house of Jacob and explain to the Israelites: ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you will carefully listen to me and keep my covenant, you will be my own possession out of all the peoples, although the whole earth is mine, and you will be my kingdom of priests and my holy nation.’ These are the words that you are to say to the Israelites.”
Moses comes down, gives them the word of God, the preliminary conditions of the covenant, and they gladly accept the offer.
God gave the people a display of his power as the mountain shook and fire and smoke billowed from it.
Moses goes back up the mountain and received the basic terms of the covenant, the 10 commandments.
He then gets more commands; these fill out the first 10 in some practical detail.
All these laws are shaping the people to represent God to the world as his kingdom of Priests…priests go to others on behalf of God and to God on behalf of others.
Moses brings them down and they agree again.
Moses goes up again, this time to get detailed instructions on building the Tabernacle and the Ark.
The point is, that God wants his presence to dwell with them…he wants them to have direct access to his presence…he wants relationship restored.
In the Exodus his presence with them will center around the Tabernacle and so you will read 7 chapters detailing its design.
Why so many details, why does he care about colors of cloth and desings on a box?
Because he didn’t say, you need relationship with me…now go figure it out…see if you get it right.
The Tabernacle has a teaching function, just like the laws do.
They tell Israel things about God and what it means to have relationship with him, what it means to be his people.
But even more…the details are precise…because it is a sort earthly copy of a spiritual reality that was to be found in Christ.
These serve as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was warned when he was about to complete the tabernacle. For God said, Be careful that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the mountain. Heb 8:5
Copy and shadow of what? No, of “who”…Jesus.
These details are important because it all is leading us to Jesus.
If someone wants to be in relationship with you they have to take the trouble to figure out who you are, what it means to know you…YOU have to tell them, show them, allow them to know you.
Human religions, including those that have called themselves Christian, but they don’t take the Bible seriously…will make up their own way to God.
They don’t take seriously what God has told us he is in his word
God has told us, specifically, in his word…who he is, and how to have relationship with him.
We can’t even guess with mere mortals…how to know them, who they are…unless they let us know them.
How could we possibly know God, unless he took initiative…to make himself known.
And we don’t monkey with what he has told us is true about himself and how to have relationship with him.
So, from Exodus 25 to 31 we get great detail for how God’s presence will be in the center of Israel as they journey.
Here’s the basics…as you read the Bible this week you will see there are many very precise details in the design.
There was an enclosed courtyard that was about 150 feet by 75 feet by 7.5 feet high.
Inside that was the:
- Outer courtyard with an altar
- In the center/rear of the courtyard, there is a tent that was 45 feet long, 15 feet wide and 15 feet high.
- That tent had an outer room, inner room
Priests entered the outer room over and over during the year, offering continually the various kinds of sacrifices.
Inside the inner room, the most holy space, was a golden box, called the ark of the covenant..had some special items in it.
That inner room was only accessed once a year, on the Day of Atonement and only by the high priest and only after offering a blood sacrifice for his own sins and then the sins of the people.
The sacrifices were reminder a yearly reminder of sins, only the new Covenant in Christ could permanently atone for sins.
Hebrews tells us that’s the reason the sacrifices had to be made over and over.
They could not fully and finally work…only the blood of Christ will be the final sacrifice…offered once.
Hebrews 9 tells us in detail how this Tabernacle pointed to Jesus.
He is in fact the Tabernacle, and he entered into the Most Holy Place (the very presence of God) offering the sacrifice of his own blood for the sins of the many.
Unlike human high priests…he did not need to have his own sins atoned for…his blood was the final atonement.
And unlike the long line of high priests, who needed to be replaced because they kept dying…he lives forever as our faithful high priest.
All details of the Tabernacle’s symbols were significant and pointed to the Holiness of God…and what it would mean to have relationship with God restored.
As you move from the inner most holy place to the outside, the structure becomes less complex and the building materials less precious.
There were flowers, angels, gold, and there is to be a perpetual light, burning with the purest of oil
These details echo back to garden of Eden, where God and humans lived in intimate relationship.
Moses and Joshua are up on the mountain getting the plans for the powerful and beautiful symbol of God’s desire to have intimate relationship with his people, to dwell with them, to guide them.
Meanwhile, down below, the people are bored, or anxious…maybe Moses is dead up there or went down the other side and left us…I mean it’s been forty days.
That’s a long time; you were only slaves for 400 hundred years.
As you read chapter 32 it can be easy to roll your eyes or think…what a bunch of idiots
Keep this in mind…these are all baby believers, even Moses had only recently come to know God as he is.
God would take many years to grow up his people into a nation.
They had been trained for generations to live in fear not in faith…you don’t get over that in in few months.
They had all grown up under the influence of Egyptian idolatry.
None of this is an excuse…their actions are inexcusable…God had done enough by that point for them to trust him.
I say this as a challenge for us to see ourselves in them.
After all that God has shown us…how quickly do we turn away from him.
How quickly we put our trust in our idols, our ability, our own wisdom.
How quickly do we move from faith to fear.
When God is slow to move, when we believe it has been “long enough God, do something.”
Do we wait patiently on God or turn to our own ways?
I know my tendency…and I’ve been a believer a long time.
Exodus 32:
When the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us who will go before us because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!” 2 Aaron replied to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the gold rings that were on their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took the gold from them, fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made it into an image of a calf.
God had led the Egyptians to give Israel gold and other treasure as they left in order that they would have the raw materials in the wilderness to build the Tabernacle.
He also told Moses that he gave certain people in their community skills in crafting things from these materials.
They used what God had given them, resources and abilities…not to honor God, but to turn from him…to create idols.
Again, we must see ourselves in this story.
Then they said, “Israel, these are your gods, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!”
5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of it and made an announcement: “There will be a festival to the Lord tomorrow.” 6 Early the next morning they arose, offered burnt offerings, and presented fellowship offerings. The people sat down to eat and drink, and got up to party.
*Do people actually believe something that they made is a literal god?
*Many people have idols, or images like this in their homes, cars, businesses.
-Most don’t think the thing is a god.
Most people think of it like a router… you have this physical device that connects you to this mysterious, magical, invisible, all powerful WWW.
*So, this golden calf or bull was their portal to the gods.
Bulls were common representations of the gods in Egypt, so they resorted back to what they had known.
They broke the first two commandments:
- No God’s before me
- No idols
There is one God.
We are not to make images that pretend to represent him or provide a conduit to him…humans are the physical image bearers of God.
Israel not a golden calf idol was to be the physical connection between heaven and earth…they were to be a kingdom of priests pointing the nations to God, representing God to the nations.
But they failed
Ultimately all this pointed forward to Jesus.
The Lord spoke to Moses: “Go down at once! For your people you brought up from the land of Egypt have acted corruptly. 8 They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them; they have made for themselves an image of a calf. They have bowed down to it, sacrificed to it, and said, ‘Israel, these are your gods, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.’ ” 9 The Lord also said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone, so that my anger can burn against them and I can destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God: “Lord, why does your anger burn against your people you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and a strong hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘He brought them out with an evil intent to kill them in the mountains and eliminate them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger and relent concerning this disaster planned for your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel—you swore to them by yourself and declared, ‘I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of the sky and will give your offspring all this land that I have promised, and they will inherit it forever.’ ” 14 So the Lord relented concerning the disaster he had said he would bring on his people.
*Here we have another example of this tension of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility…tension, not contradiction.
Specifically, we see…how God uses prayer for his purposes.
Did God actually change his mind and then change his plans, “Oh I see your point Moses, I hadn’t really thought of like that.”
If so, what does this mean for our ability to trust God with our future?
This is using human language, analogy, to describe a complex reality.
What this means was that Moses’ prayers, were part of God’s plan.
Moses didn’t say, “God do what you are going to do, I can’t stop you.” He prayed.
And God didn’t say, “I hadn’t thought of that before.” But he did answer.
Moses cried out to God and God heard his prayer and it impacted how things happened…it was all God’s plan.
It is important to take note, though, of how Moses prayed.
He prayed to God in line with what God himself had already said…”God you said this…”
This is not Moses trying to manipulate God to get what he wants….it is Moses honoring God…taking him at his word.
This was about God training Moses to believe, not about Moses changing God’s mind.
When you pray, and you should…seek to pray in line with what God has said in his word.
Moses comes down the mountain…sees what is happening and is enraged.
Flings down the tablets, grinds the idol to dust, pours it over water and makes them drink it.
Then Moses asked Aaron, “What did these people do to you that you have led them into such a grave sin?” 22 “Don’t be enraged, my lord,” Aaron replied. “You yourself know that the people are intent on evil. 23 They said to me, ‘Make gods for us who will go before us because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!’ 24 So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off,’ and they gave it to me. When I threw it into the fire, out came this calf!”
That is a remarkable display of cowardly leadership:
“What did they do that YOU lead them into such a grave sin.”
“They are intent on evil”: he was fearful and self-protective.
“You were gone a long time”: blame shifting
I threw into the fire…out came this calf?: Just plain silly.
“Not really my fault”
That’s not how Moses saw it…next verse.
Moses saw that the people were out of control, for Aaron had let them get out of control, making them a laughingstock to their enemies.
What follows is terrifying…Moses says, “Whoever is for the Lord come to me.”
The tribe of Levites, Moses and Aarons tribe, and the tribe from whom the Priests come…they rallied…and went through the camp and killed three thousand of their own brothers.
How are we to think about this?
A lot was at stake…a lot was at stake.
This whole thing should sober us about our sin.
Our first thought should not be…how could they kill one another like that…barbarians.
It ought to be…this is the cost of sin?
Sin is no joke, no game…it is made light of in movies, songs, online…but in real life…it is horrific, deadly, terrible.
Here’s what you should think when you read this…”My sin is horrible and costly.”
The following day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a grave sin. Now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I will be able to atone for your sin.” 31 So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Oh, these people have committed a grave sin; they have made a god of gold for themselves. 32 Now if you would only forgive their sin. But if not, please erase me from the book you have written.”
Can you see Moses pointing to Jesus here?
“Forgive them and erase my name if you have to.”
Jesus cried, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”…as he made atonement for our sins on the cross.
In chapters 35 to 40 the Tabernacle is built, exactly to God’s specification.
When the work was finished, God’s glory filled the tabernacle.
The book ends with not even Moses able to enter the holy of holies.
More was needed for sinful people, even those as great as Moses to enter God’s presence.
CONCLUSION:
God called a people to learn to know him, to become like him, to become a nation of Priests…to make him known to the world.
He gave them his laws, he put the Tabernacle right smack in the middle of them as a constant reminder of what they most need and the impossibility of sinful people having relationship with a holy God apart from having their sins covered.
The Tabernacle would be captured, regained and ultimately replaced by a Temple that would be destroyed, then rebuilt, then destroyed again.
Now a Muslim Mosque stands where the temple once was.
The Temple was a placeholder for the Jesus the Messiah…the true Temple, where heaven meets earth.
Just as the Tabernacle was a copy of the reality that was to be found in Christ.
The Word became flesh and dwelt (word is “pitched his tent”, tabernacled) among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14
In John 2 Jesus cleansed the temple because in his words, “You have turned my Father’s house into a marketplace.”
He knew the sacred importance of the place, but he knew even more still.
So the Jews replied to him, “What sign will you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple,, and I will raise it up in three days.” 20 Therefore the Jews said, “This temple took forty-six years to build, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
Jesus is what all of the Exodus pointed forward to.
After the first couples’ sin and just before their expulsion from the garden, God spoke the curse that would follow their sin but he also, gave the first declaration of the gospel to Satan himself.
Genesis 3:15
“I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”
“He” is singular.
He will strike your head, Jesus…will give Satan a mortal wound
You will strike his heel…Jesus will receive a recoverable wound from the enemy.
Okay this is all cosmic, epic stuff…what do we do with it?
I had a dinner conversation with my four grandsons at a Friday night sleepover…we talked about how do we practically live out the reality we find in the Bible?
It’s hard at Goddard schools, 2, 4, 6th grade…and everywhere else.
I walked out of Dillions last week carrying a couple of sacks of food
I was thinking about Exodus…on a Monday morning, in a Dillions parking lot.
I looked at my boxes of crackers(I like crackers) and thought…some farmer planted wheat, someone drove a combine, then some people worked in a factory making crackers (accountants in the back office) and someone drove a truck and brought it dillions, and someone put it on shelf.
There are all these people going to work, office drama, hot sunny days in a field…humans making stuff, selling it, living their lives…then going home to crying babies, sick family members, difficult marriages, going to church, watching Chiefs games.
So much in that box of crackers.
Our lives are like Israel in the wilderness…it is mostly just years, days, hours of normal life.
Even the Tabernacle and God’s presence would have soon become invisible to them…it’s that tent thing those priests put up and take down, it’s that noisy bloody place where lots of animals are killed and the blood is supposed to do something for us.
But I have sick kids, my feet hurt…I’m tired of this journey.
The three levels:
God’s plan for the world
God’s plan for a people (Israel, now the church)
God’s plan for people (Moses, you and me, and the guy who puts crackers on a shelf)
No level is “more to God”…God doesn’t love “mankind” generic…he loves men and women, who make up mankind.
What do YOU want most?
On January 2, two years ago I preached on foundational, and furniture hopes.
The foundation for your house needs to be permanent, immovable.
The furniture in your house doesn’t…it can be changed and moved around.
Furniture is important…beds, chairs, tables…you could survive without them, but they are really good and helpful…you probably won’t thrive without some kind of furniture.
But we can’t live for long in a building without a foundation…in time it will fail.
The foundational hope for your life is the gospel:
Hebrews 6:19 We have this hope (gospel) as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.
Furniture hopes are important…they are the stuff of our lives.
The day I got crackers I also got some medicine in hopes of ending an illness.
My hopes were fulfilled, in couple of days…I was better.
But if my foundational hope is physical health…I am doomed to ultimate disappointment.
It’s good to hope for health…but it is necessary to put my foundational hope in the gospel.
I try Read Exodus with Dillions in mind.
I try go to Dillions with Exodus in mind.
It is all one story…the story of God’s desire for us to have relationship with him.
Becoming successful, like Avicci did…was not the problem…it never really is.
The problem was that he had only furniture hopes…they failed him because he did not have the gospel as his foundational hope.
You can know what you want most…you don’t have to wonder like he did…you don’t have to search for an answer to your hearts greatest cry.
God has given us truth, we know.
Okay but how do we act on that knowledge.
Jesus said…
Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.
John 14:21
Know his word, obey his word…this is love for Jesus.
Love for Jesus, revealed in obedience to his word, is how we will experience relationship with God.
Then what?
But you are a chosen race,,, a royal priesthood,, a holy nation,, a people for his possession,, so that you may proclaim the praises,, of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
1 Peter 2:9
Peter quotes directly from Exodus 19, God’s words to Moses for Israel, are now God’s words to us, the church.
We obey him, we experience him, and we represent him in the world.
Anything else? Yeah, one more thing. Show up and keep showing up for one another.
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. 25 Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Heb 10
That passage is Exodus in a nutshell and what is the cosmic application?
Show up, keep showing up…don’t get discouraged and stop meeting together…keep encouraging one another to hang in there.
Let me pray for us…this prayer comes from the end of Hebrews.
Now may the God of peace, who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus—the great Shepherd of the sheep—through the blood of the everlasting covenant, equip you with everything good to do his will, working in us what is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever., Amen.