2022 09 18 Daily Devotions Exodus 29 Vs 38 30 Vs 10 2

Daily Devotions in Exodus 29:38–30:10

Welcome to Faith Bible Church. We're glad that you are here. And we will be picking up from our series in Exodus, Exodus 29, verse 38. And I'll be reading until Exodus 30, verse 10. Exodus 29, verse 38, until Exodus 30, verse 10.

Now this is what you shall offer on the altar, two lambs of first year, day by day, continually. One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight. With the one lamb shall be one-tenth of an ephah, of flour mixed with one-fourth of a hen of pressed oil, and one-fourth of a hen of wine as a drink offering.

And the other lamb you shall offer at twilight, and you shall offer with it the grain offering and the drink offering as in the morning, for a sweet aroma, an offering made by fire to the Lord. This shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your generations, at the door of the tabernacle of meeting before the Lord, where I will meet you to speak with you.

And there I will meet with the children of Israel, and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by my glory. So I will consecrate the tabernacle of meeting and the altar. I will also consecrate both Aaron and his sons to minister to me as priests.

I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and I may dwell among them. I am the Lord their God.

You shall make an altar to burn incense on. You shall make it of acacia wood. A cubit shall be its length, a cubit its width. It shall be a square, two cubits shall be its height. Its horns shall be of one piece with it.

And you shall overlay its top and its sides all around, and its horns with pure gold. And you shall make for it a molding of gold all around. Two gold rings you shall make for it under the molding on both its sides.

You shall place them on its two sides, and they will be holders for the poles with which to bear it. You shall make the poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. And you shall put it before the veil that is before the ark of the testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the testimony where I will meet you.

Aaron shall burn on its sweet incense every morning. When he tends the lamps, he shall burn incense on it. And when Aaron lights the lamps at twilight, he shall burn incense on it, a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.

You shall not offer strange incense on it, or a burnt offering, or a grain offering, nor shall you pour a drink offering on it. And Aaron shall make atonement upon its horns once a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonement.

Once a year he shall make atonement upon it throughout your generations. It is most holy to the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Father, we are so thankful for your grace that you would graciously provide a way to approach you despite our sin.

As the old saints of Israel approached you through the sacrificial system, we approach you because of the greatest sacrifice, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our sin. And we pray that we would all depend only on him.

We pray that this text would be nourishing to our souls and would correct any wrong mindset. In Jesus' name, amen. We pick up on this special series of Exodus specifically from the chapters where we started with the tabernacle and the artifacts and to now where we go over how these artifacts will be used in order for God's people to interact with God who dwells among them.

And it is only fitting that we deal with the bronze altar after the installation, the ordination of the priests, because it would be the priests who will be directly ministering using the bronze altar.

I put the two altars together because these two altars have similar function. First, there's a difference. One altar will be on the outside. That's the bronze altar. And the other altar will be inside the tabernacle.

That's the golden altar. And there will be difference in what they're offered. One will allow for grain offering, drink offering, and also the animal offering. The inside altar will only be used for the incense.

However, the timing of the offerings of both altars coincide. In fact, Israel were commanded to offer daily, morning and evening, an offering that has been pre-approved by the Lord. And they're both described as the most holy to the Lord, despite the fact that they're not found inside the most holy place.

And that's because they have been cleansed by the blood offering of an innocent life. Now, it's important to see these altars as the means by which Israel would daily continue in their relationship with the Lord.

Both of them required daily offerings to the Lord, morning and evening. And both of them were the means by which Israel would remain in their covenantal relationship with the Lord, their special position as God's people.

And although we don't make offerings, we are not to make offerings under the new covenant because Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice. His blood was greater than any animal blood. And we don't light incense when we pray because we actually follow what the incense points to.

Right?

The physical phenomena taught Israel spiritual reality. We live in that spiritual reality, so we don't have to light incense to offer up prayers to the Lord. However, the text here teaches us something really important about how we ought to interact with the Lord.

And that is how God's people ought to daily commit themselves to the Lord. How do God's people daily commit themselves to the Lord? And this is important because all too often our relationship with the Lord often takes the back seat.

We wake up, we check our phones, we check our e-mails, any text messages, any social media notifications. But oftentimes we don't directly go to the Lord. It's all too easy to read the news first before the Bible.

It's all too easy to rush out in the morning rather than to wait patiently to hear what God has to say in His Word. And sometimes God's relationship with us may look like that of your relationship with the 911 dispatcher.

Calling out to Him only when there's emergency. But this text tells us God's people must daily devote themselves to the Lord. God's people's commitment to the Lord is continual. And God's people's relationship with the Lord is not a chore.

We do not do the bare minimum begrudgingly so that we can put a check mark next to our list in our head. Well, I read the Bible. I read a certain amount of verses. And I prayed to Him for a certain number of prayers.

Now I'm good. And all to avoid that I want to be on the bad side of God. But for Israel and for us, we are required not out of begrudging heart, but out of the desire of our heart to devote to Him, seek Him daily.

So the main point of our text is how do God's people daily commit themselves to the Lord? How do God's people daily commit themselves to the Lord? After their redemption, God's people must daily devote themselves to the Lord in order to encounter His sanctifying presence.

After their redemption, God's people must daily devote themselves to the Lord in order to encounter His sanctifying presence. Now after the installation or the ordination of the priests, God describes the main sacrificial system for Israel.

Now this is what you shall offer on the altar, two lambs of the first year day by day continually. When we think of the sacrificial system, we think of just another requirement, just another thing we need to do.

And sometimes we might think of legalism.

You have to do that.

But what we forget is for Israel, for the first time in history, they are offered a means by which they can approach the holy God regularly. The sacrificial system was a way in which Israel would encounter the same God who rescued them and appeared to them in the holy fire on the top of Mount Sinai.

And they were able to experience His presence daily. It was grace. Now when we take a look at what had to be offered in verse 38, there were two lambs of the first year, and they were to be offered daily, continually.

And unlike the Passover offering, the offerings on the bronze altar sitting outside the tent of meeting, the tabernacle, had to be offered twice daily, not just once a year. And it had to be done outside the tabernacle.

And not only that, the lambs had to be one year old. And for the ancient people, one-year-old lamb, they were precious. A one-year-old lamb was a fully grown lamb. It did not depend on its mother.

It was able to walk on its own. It was able to feed on its own. And it had a lot of potential to provide for the owner. It was fully grown, and it was youthful. It could produce more lambs in the future.

But God's people were to freely offer such valuable animals to God. They were not to keep them for their own use, but give back to God who saved them and dwelt among them. It was an outward expression of their inward commitment and devotion to the Lord.

Their relationship with the Lord was more important than any of their earthly goods. Even the best of the flock was not worth keeping if I could give back to the Lord. That's what the bronze altar sacrifice, daily sacrifice, taught Israel.

And verse 39 describes the timing of the sacrifice. One lamb in the morning and one lamb at twilight, in the evening. These two offerings that enveloped the whole day would remind Israel of God's continual presence among them.

God did not just rescue them out of Egypt just to abandon them. You're on your own. Good luck. God rescued them out of enslavement so that He could dwell among them, so that He could have a relationship with them, so He could be committed to them.

He could be present in their lives. Morning and evening, the offerings would remind God's people, surely God is with us. Every day would start with a devotion to God and every day would end with a devotion to God.

That is the picture of what kind of rich relationship God had in mind when He commanded these sacrifices to Israel. Verses 40 to 41 specify how the offerings must be done in the morning and also at twilight.

With the one lamb shall be one -tenth of an ephah of flour mixed with one-fourth of a hen of pressed oil and one-fourth of a hen of wine as a drink offering. Now, for all of us who do not use the ancient measurement for liquid, a tenth of an ephah, first of all for volume, of flour was two quarts of flour, a quite large amount of flour to bake a cake.

One-fourth of a hen of oil amounted to a quart of oil. And so with two quarts of flour, a quart of oil were mixed together for grain offering and a quart of wine was poured out as a drink offering to the Lord.

And verse 41 states that the twilight offering would just look just like the morning offering. The lamb of one year, the grain offering, and the drink offering. And it resulted in a sweet aroma, an offering made by fire to the Lord.

The sweet aroma reflected God's acceptance of these offerings from His people. When Israel offered these large amounts of goods, the finest goods, to the Lord to show their devotion to the Lord, the Lord pleasantly accepted them.

The Lord enjoyed being around His people. The Lord loved His people. It's not that the sacrifices were so called tasty for the Lord. Of course, the Lord doesn't need the sacrifices. And we went over that in Psalm 40 this morning.

God does not desire sacrifices, but it's what the sacrifices represent. His people's loving, loyal devotion to the Lord. Verses 42 to 46 show the purposes for the daily offerings. The first purpose directly affects the priesthood.

Verses 42 to 44 tell us that these offerings must be done continually, of course, by the priest, so that God's people may encounter God's consecrating presence, God's sanctifying presence. When God meets with His people, the tabernacle, the tent, the altar, and the priest were to be consecrated.

They were consecrated by God's very presence. And this is important because even the priests, even the tabernacle, they were tainted by sin. They were made by sinful people, and they were sinners. And in order to have a relationship with a holy God, your sin must be atoned for by sacrifice.

And God would graciously cover their sin through the sacrifices outside the tabernacle so that they may continue to offer up their devotion to the Lord. And they will be made holy as God is holy. The second purpose broadens to all of God's people.

I will dwell among the children of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord, their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell among them. I am the Lord, their God.

Twice a day, Israel will be reminded of the Lord, their Lord, their God. This is not to say that Israel had daily amnesia and forgot, oh, who is this deity we're worshiping again? But they will know at a deep, personal level what kind of deity saved them but was pleased to dwell with them.

As they see the burnt offerings on the altar, they will remember the holy, astonishing presence of God that they encountered on Mount Sinai, in which they were even too scared to approach and ask Moses, you go alone.

And these offerings would remind Israel of the powerful and merciful deity who took them out of Egypt by sheer grace so that they would not be enslaved anymore. And that's how important these offerings were.

In fact, these offerings continued. During the 2nd century, however, there was a tragic moment in Israel's history. In the 2nd century BC, Antiochus IV Epiphanes forcibly stopped these daily offerings.

Antiochus IV was a Greek king who conquered the land of Judea. And this is what Josephus, a Jewish historian of the 1st century, records. And by this means, cast the Jews into a great lamentation, for he forbade them to offer those daily sacrifices which they used to offer to God according to the law.

Not only that, Antiochus IV offered pigs' blood, unclean blood, inside the temple. The fact that this foreign king stopped the daily devotion to God led the Jews into a national tragedy. It was nationally tragic because Israel could no longer daily devote themselves to their God.

Their daily method of their holy meeting with the Lord has been desecrated and polluted. And that was a huge problem. Without the Lord, Israel is nothing. Now the question is, do Christians ever have to worry about their daily devotion stopping by force?

And the answer is, not at all. Christians are devoted to God not by 2 daily devotions of sacrifices, but one ultimate sacrifice to God, not made by our own hands, but His own Son, Jesus Christ, who was sent to die for our sin once and for all on the cross, when the wrath was poured on Him who was on the cross.

We were not only forgiven, but we were made acceptable to God. It wasn't that we were just made neutral to be left on our own to live a perfect life a second time. Jesus Christ serves as a continual sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sin, but not only that, as a burnt offering because He fulfills them all.

In Christ, only in Christ, your devotion to God is accepted. In Christ, only in Christ, your relationship with God is secure. And in Christ, and only in Christ, you approach the holy presence of the Lord.

And not only that, unlike Israel, you don't offer up two lambs every day because the most precious lamb, Jesus Christ, was offered up once and for all. And no amount of lambs could even come close to what Jesus, the ultimate lamb, accomplished for you on the cross.

And not only that, it is not just the altar, the tabernacle, and the priests who are consecrated upon God's dwelling presence. It is every follower of Christ who is consecrated because God dwells among us.

God's presence can be experienced by every single person who believes in Jesus. And that seal is the Holy Spirit of God who dwells in each of you. That's why Paul writes to the Corinthian church, Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are. For Christians, it is not just the priests who are made holy. It is all who are made holy because all get to personally experience the sanctifying presence of God.

You are no longer the filthy, sinful person before Christ. The very Spirit of God dwells in you as a temple. You are more glorious than the tabernacle that the Jews trembled before. For Christians, that's the privilege we get to live in.

In Christ, we get to serve as the temple of the very presence of God who sanctifies us. We are not left in our sin when Christ found us. But Christ continually cleanses us through His dwelling presence.

Second, after their redemption, God's people must continually communicate with the Lord. After their redemption, God's people must continually communicate with the Lord. From the outside altar, we move to the inside altar, the altar of incense.

The first three verses describe the materials used and the structure of the golden altar. First, it is made out of acacia wood, a durable yet light wood, easy to carry but will not break. And the dimensions are a cubit by cubit on the top and two cubits by height, which is 1 .5 feet by 1 .5 and then three feet in height.

Unlike the bronze altar, the inner altar will be covered in pure gold. Verse three, and you shall overlay its top, its sides all around and its horns with pure gold and you shall make for it a molding of gold all around.

Now, pure gold was the finest quality of gold because it went through extra steps of purification process to remove its impurities. And this was to symbolize what kind of deity Israel was dealing with, one who requires the purest of all altars.

And of course, the horns symbolize the strength and might of the deity. In the ancient times, horns represented either rulers, empires, or even power.

The great horn.

And the altar had the horns, just like the bronze altar. Verses four to five show that this holy altar, just like the bronze altar, must not be carried by hands, but through golden overlaid poles going through two altar rings.

This method of transport showed the altar's distinct holiness. Common and unholy hands dare not touch the altar. After all, it would be through the altar that God would receive the incense offering. And this is also why the altar had to be cleansed eerily through the atoning sacrifice because sin is contagious.

Sin is passed on. And for Israelites, they were taught that the physical phenomena of sin passing on from people to people and to people to object, it taught them the danger spread of sin. After all, sin does not just stay at a personal level.

It affects all levels. And in order to mitigate, prevent that affecting the altar, that affecting their sacrifice, they had to cleanse it with the cleansing blood. Verse six shares the placement of the incense altar.

And you shall put it before the veil that is before the ark of the testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the testimony where I will meet with you. This was placed in the holy place, but right outside the most holy place, right behind or right in front of the veil.

And the idea was that the incense smoke would permeate through the veil where God's presence dwelt so that God may be pleased, that God may accept their offering. And how often was this to be done? Similar to the daily offerings of the bronze altar, this was done around the same time of day.

Verse seven, Aaron shall burn on a sweet incense every morning. When he tends the lamps, he shall burn incense on it. And when Aaron lights the lamps at twilight, he shall burn incense on it. A perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.

Just like the daily offerings, the sweet incense to the Lord was to burn morning and to twilight. Their devotion to the Lord, what they offered to the Lord, was an all-day event. And it was to burn continually, not just one day of the year, but every day of the year.

And in Israel, the incense was not burned for its own sake of some magical property, but it represented prayers going up to God. We see this in Psalm 141 too. May my prayer be incense before you. When the incense was burning, it represented the people of God were praying.

As the incense continually burned and the smoke went up, it represented the fact that God's people were talking to their covenant Lord. Because the physical phenomena represented the spiritual reality, the daily burning of the incense represented the constant daily prayers of the people of God reaching the Lord.

Because there's nothing you could do to stop the smoke from going up. There was nothing that could stop God's people from reaching the ears of the Lord. There was nothing that could stop from God's people's voices going up to the very throne room of God.

However, verse 9 warns of not treating the altar like any other altar. You shall not offer strange incense on it or a burnt offering or a green offering, nor shall you pour a drink offering on it. For God's people, how they worship the Lord had to be done according to God's way.

Verse 9 is the direct command against you must not follow your own heart when worshiping me. You don't get to do whatever you want when worshiping me. Because the moment we decide as God's people that we get to do what we want on the worship Sunday, we become gods.

Well, I want to do only what I enjoy doing. Well, I want to sing the songs that lift my spirit up. Well, I want to have the lights that make me go in the mood for worship. And God have mercy on us if we try to substitute anything in place of what God commands us to worship.

On a given Sunday morning, it may not be the most entertaining part of your Sunday. On any given Sunday, you may not be singing that worship song that moves your heart. But we worship according to God's Word with God at the center.

And we're nowhere near the center. We do not get to choose how we worship God. God chooses how He is worshipped. Verse 10 reminds us how important this altar is. And Aaron shall make atonement upon its horns once a year with the blood of the sin offering for atonement.

Once a year he shall make atonement upon it throughout your generations. It is most holy to the Lord. Even in Israel, the existence of sin was a continual problem. It wasn't enough that there was one sacrifice of animal that would cleanse the altar and keep it holy forever.

No, the altar got polluted. The altar got tainted because they were handled by sinners who continually sin. And in order to cleanse the altar, the very means by which God's people would connect with God, that's very important, the atonement sacrifice had to be made.

That's how God and God's people would communicate with each other. When the altar is kept holy, in fact, it says the most holy to the Lord. That's because it was one of few means by which God interacted with His people.

That better be holy. You better not just touch that. And for Christians, it is important to know that the physical phenomena points to the spiritual reality. I keep saying this a lot because there is a tendency in the human heart to make a physical ritual and to go back to the old covenant, to go back to being under the law, to desire that.

And you need to not look any further. Take a look at any cults that claim to be Christians. They tend to apply themselves in much more physical rituals that resemble the old covenant than the true faith.

They want to go backwards. They want to go back to before Christ time. And what's wrong with that?

Everything.

To live in a reality before Christ's atoning death on the cross is to go back into the enslavement of sin. To choose a lifestyle that was only for those who lived before Christ is to long for the sinful lifestyle that once was.

After all, under the law, no sin was completely cleansed. It had to be done continually. Not so for Christians. There's one ultimate sacrifice, one altar, and that's Christ alone. Other cults might burn incenses on Sunday morning, but not so here.

Our incense will be the prayers that we pray interceding for the world, for each other. In the name of Jesus Christ. And when we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, God hears. We do not need sweet incense.

We do not need a golden altar. We only need Jesus. Because it is only through Jesus that we can communicate to God himself. There's no other way. You don't go through Mary. You don't go through saints.

You don't go through another prophet. You go through Jesus Christ himself, who provided a way for you to continue your relationship with the Lord, who continues to sanctify you. And that is how we interact with the Lord daily.

We pray to him. Pray to him continually. Pray to him when driving. Pray to him in the morning. Pray to him at night. And for Faith Bible Church, we pray together on Sunday nights together at 6 p .m. And we have seen many answers to prayer that many of us probably didn't think would be answered that soon in that way.

And we praise God for that. The smoke of our incense is not literal smoke. It's a prayer of the saints. And it's a privilege to be part of that. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that there's nothing that stops us from praying to you, and there's nothing that stops our voices from reaching your throne room.

Every cry or whimper, you are aware. Every cry of help, every groaning is not too silent for you. And we're thankful that in Christ, we can always approach you, we can always communicate with you as children of God.

And we pray that we would live in that reality, resist the temptation to go back to the old ways, but to live as holy people. In Jesus' name, amen.