Castles Made of Sand

Daniel, Pilate, and the Cost of Faithfulness

Let's pray we'll get into it. Blessed Lord, you have caused all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning. Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of your holy word that we may embrace and ever hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen. Okay, quick questions. Any questions percolate up as a result of the sermon? Have any of you noticed how much there is a parallel between Daniel in the lion's den and the death and resurrection of Christ and his trial?

I mean when you put the two together you you can't miss it but a lot of people don't think of scripture in those terms and unfortunately they look for themselves in the Bible text and by looking for themselves they miss Jesus.

You know, talk about missing the forest because of a tree.

I just thought he was a good lion tamer.

So he went in there and cracked the whip, listen up you lunch... Yeah, it doesn't tell us the demeanor of Daniel but I'm pretty sure if it were me I would be standing like this the whole time. Don't put a hand out, don't...

Try to make myself as small as humanly... Yeah, that's right. That's right. You gotta remember this, that God doesn't promise that we aren't going to be eaten by lions because with the launch of Christianity and then with the real launch of the Roman persecution of Christianity in its early days Christians became lion food.

I mean, you know, if you became a Christian they gave you a t-shirt that said lion chow, you know, and that was... And so a lot of Christians lost their lives as a result of being torn by wild beasts for entertainment and spectacle.

That was all part of what happened in the Roman Empire.

Yeah. I'm just thinking of what Daniel's example had to have been for Darius to come all through the night he was wandering and then to come in the morning and to ask, are you still alive? He must... Who would have thought of that?

Yeah, and it's so clear that Darius is... He's penitent and he also... By this time in Daniel's career, the stories of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and what happened with Nebuchadnezzar, these things are already in the bloodstream of Babylon, if you would.

And so Darius is clearly keyed into that but hadn't really considered his own need for repentance. And then when he is culpable, notice he is absolutely a player. He is not an innocent party when it comes to this plot because by him bucking against the commandments of God, he himself now unwillingly and unwittingly participates in this plot to murder Daniel.

Yeah, exactly. That was kind of the point. The parallels between Darius and Pilate are unmistakable. There's Pilate trying to let Jesus go. He's done nothing wrong. And the Jews say, no, no, you're no friend of Caesar if you let Jesus go.

And ultimately him having to acquiesce to these murderous thugs, Darius as well. So just as Darius was culpable, Pilate's also culpable by the way.

I think it's also interesting how in our minds we have a vision of how things might work out but the Lord's plan is so much greater than that.

Yes.

And how he uses the kingdom of the left hand to accomplish his will in ways that we can't see.

Exactly.

And so here you have not just a leader of the government but a pagan at that.

Yes.

And he is at work accomplishing the will of the Lord.

Yes. And then becomes a minor author of scripture.

Unbelievable.

Isn't that amazing when you think about it? And so God working through these means, that particular story led to the repentance and salvation. We'll see Darius with Christ when Christ returns. We'll see Nebuchadnezzar with Christ as well.

It's about having faith in Christ.

Exactly.

You know, we put our faith here, we put our faith in this guy to be there. We always, no matter what the circumstance, need to be grounded in faith in Christ.

Yes.

One of the things I love about the complete acrimony that is right now American politics, putting your faith in anybody right now seems like not a good bet, you know.

That is one of the fun things to point out to people on the internet, to people who worship government, is to say, where is your God now?

Yes.

With the election of Donald Trump.

U .S. government as idol has turned into a really awful idol.

What I see is with Pilate, he wanted to do well, but that's where the born corruption into government was. I don't know if it probably happened before that, because of human nature, but he saw, well, okay, I need to do this, otherwise I'm not going to get elected again, or selected again by the people in power.

Yes.

So, when you make decisions to save your own skin, you become, you're the blood of the person who you're not helping is on your hands. It's the opposite of blood for neighbor.

What you spoke on today was, is you showed, or Daniel was showing others that there is a higher form of, I mean, there is a, okay, the lions may eat me, okay, but it won't be done in vain, because he's not worried about himself.

Yeah, and that's the thing. I mean, you don't know if we're, if we are going to be given the privilege, and scripture talks about it in this way, if we're going to be given the privilege to give the ultimate witness to Christ by having to be martyred and lay down our lives, rather than do something evil.

That could happen in our day here.

And I also think that having that eternal perspective is what keeps us as Christians, because in this story, you were talking about vengeance of the Lord, and when we think of that term, we think about it in an authoritarian way against us.

Yet, that isn't the context here. It's against the powers of the devil. And so, at the end of the story, what looked like the demise of Daniel was actually the beginning of his salvation.

Yeah.

And yet, what looked like the accomplishment of the evil task by the two other judges turned out to be their final damnation.

Yes.

Because of their wrath of the Lord. So, even if we look at, I'm going to be eaten by lions, having that eternal perspective means that that is not the end of me.

No.

In Christ, I have life.

Yeah.

And this is one of the things we have to keep in mind, that God, in his sovereign wisdom, has chosen to come to us now in weakness. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. Tiny little thing, if you think about it.

And that we, as Christians, are persecuted. We suffer. And the ultimate example, then, is Christ. You know, King of kings, Lord of lords. In this earth, under the dominion of darkness, satanically occupied earth, the kingdom looks like it's small, it's paltry, it's powerless, it's weak, it's miserable.

It has none of the accolades. And it comes to us in miserable things like the preached word, water, bread and wine, and an absolution. I mean, what kind of kingdom is this, right? So, in this life, prior to the return of Christ, God has chosen that everything is done in weakness.

And even the gospel is preached in the mouths of sinners who are also forgiven. And that eternal perspective says this, that what God has chosen in his mercy and grace to do in weakness now, when the day of salvation is done, which is today, when it is done, then God comes in glory.

And the ultimate turnaround happens. The vindication occurs. And so it's like, fine, you want to take my life? No problemo. I don't know if you've noticed, I'm getting old and ugly anyway, so you're doing me a favor.

I have an eternal perspective. And the eternal perspective is that Christ is going to call me and all of those who are in him from the grave. And then we're going to see God face to face. And we're going to see him in his power and his glory.

And there will be no more weakness in that sense. That weakness gives way to true glorified strength of God. And so we know that God, this is what is promised. So we hang on to that, knowing that every single person here.

I mean, I don't understand this at all, but the human mind twisted by the devil wants to somehow create kingdoms for itself. And yet we heard in our psalm today, how the plans of the wicked, the wicked in power, they all come to naught on the day that they die.

I mean, I remember when I was a kid, I remember going to the beach as a kid. I loved to make sandcastles. I love to make sandcastles when the surf was out, when it was at low tide, you'd make it in a spot where you know when the tide comes in, it was going to wipe it out.

And then you do your best to keep the thing up. But it didn't take too long before the tide would take over and smash your sandcastle. Every human being who despotically tries to build little monuments and kingdoms to themselves, where are they?

How few people who've ever lived, of the billions and billions and billions, even have their names written in history books? And even if they're written in history books, who today is reading them, right?

I think one of the root causes, or at least a good motivator for people to be fascinated with the idea of immortality, specifically, this is more, affects more men than it does women in regards to, yes, you want to be remembered, have your name in the history books, and something that be remembered forever is because I think intuitively we as humanity understand that death isn't natural since we were not created to die.

So the want and the desire to be remembered forever or to live into eternity is something that it's already innately within us, at least this is my personal opinion. And these people that don't have a right understanding of what eternity is or who God is, wish to build it for themselves upon Earth.

That's why.

Yeah, but they want to be remembered by humans.

Right, no, no, but that's basically the closest thing they have to immortality aside from, you know.

Out of all of the god kings who ever lived in the Fertile Crescent, how many of them do you know the names of? Ramesses, Nebuchadnezzar, and Darius, who I may not have remembered until the sermon this morning, right?

You don't remember their names at all. And see, that's kind of the fascinating thing. I don't care if people here remember my name. I care if God has my name written in his book because if my name is in his book, God doesn't remember me, I go into eternity without a name, that's a bad fate.

And God only writes the names of those who have been humbled and given the gift of faith and repentance in his book. The proud, they don't get in there, right?

Luke 16 with the rich man and Lazarus.

Oh, yeah.

And the rich man is in Hades and Lazarus is at the bosom of Abraham.

What's the rich man's name again?

He is nameless.

That's right.

Nameless.

Yeah, nameless.

Apart from me.

Yeah, I never knew you.

Yeah.

Josh, men just have more of an ego.

That's why they can't get on.

How do you kick?

It's essentially, you know, that they build giant monuments, statues, building civilizations, you know.

The Tabernacle, Freewill Giving, and the Problem of Tithing

All right, let's come back now to Exodus 24. God has called Moses up to the mountain and where we left off last week, we were noting that God is about to give very specific instructions to Moses for the building of the tabernacle.

And God himself is establishing how old covenant worship is to take place. Man doesn't get to just invent their own worship practices. God says, here's how it's going to go. Here's where it's going to take place.

This is how it's done. And these are the things that need to be made for it. And we also noted that God was going to require that people give out of their own heart freely and not under compulsion when it came to supplying the needs of this tabernacle.

Nobody, this wasn't a tide. There was no exaction. There wasn't somebody coming along and say, pony up your portion of this tabernacle construction project is going to be 10. No, make that 15%. You look pretty wealthy to me.

It wasn't that at all. Everybody gave freely, which I, in a very interesting way, then parallels the giving practices of the new covenant. In the new covenant, there is no tithe. There is no established amount of giving.

People give as they want, as they are able. And so one of the things that I really, really despise and loathe is that over and again, I witnessed this, you know, across many of the mega churches, people saying that Christians are still under the tithe in these big mega churches.

And the benefits of attending that church are only offered then to those who tithe. One of the common practice in a certain wing of the mega churches is that they keep track of your tithing record, even more so than your attendance.

And so when it comes, if you fall ill and you end up in the hospital and you need a pastor visit, first thing they pull up is your tithing record. If you haven't been tithing, you don't get a visit from a pastor.

It's absolutely disgusting. And so, you know, over and again, you know, I think of Perry Noble and the quote that he gave years ago. And this was not in church. It was actually at a pastor's conference that he was holding at his church, New Spring in Anderson, South Carolina.

And I was in the audience that day and it was actually really fascinating to watch him behave and say the things that he said. And he was actually kind of, he knew I was there and he was speaking to me, but he didn't know where I was sitting.

And so he ended up speaking into the camera. But one of the things he said, he says, you know, people complain and he used a very horrible term. I'll give a variant of it and you kind of figure out what the word was.

Well, he said the jack ball, that's not the word he used. The jack ball in the church is the guy who's always complaining you need to go deeper in the word. He literally said that at this pastor's conference.

And then he goes on, he says, he says, deep, deep. Let's take a look at your tithing record and see how deep you are. Literally what he said. Let's see how, let's take a look at your tithing record and see how deep you are.

And he said, and then he said this. He said, I think that people are educated way beyond their obedience. And so he basically said, until you're more obedient, I'm going to throttle the word of God and not give it to you in any deep, meaningful way until your obedience gets up.

Of course, surprisingly, he flamed out in ministry and was removed on moral grounds from being a pastor. It doesn't surprise me. That's a very tyrannical and despotic thing. But scripture does not require Christians to tithe.

The tithe itself was an old covenant, Mosaic covenant tax. Because remember in the Mosaic covenant, there is no distinction between church and state. They are together. King and temple, king and priest and prophet all work together.

It's a theocracy. And so as part of that theocracy, there was an obligation for a tithe. And then as we read, as I read out in the sermon last week, as part of the tithe, the people who brought the tithe to the tabernacle, they were expected to eat it.

They were expected to enjoy it. And so funny enough, when you read about the Mosaic covenant command regarding tithing, a portion of it went to supplying the needs of the temple and stuff like that. That is most certainly true.

But a large portion of the tithe, it was literally celebrated. It became a meal with God, which a lot of people kind of leave that part out because that messes with their theology. So you have a lot of people who are literally putting their thumbscrews down on Christians claiming that they need to tithe.

And then I also remember there was a fellow not too long ago, and this happens, this happened a couple of times now, where a pastor literally kept tithing records on all the members of the church. And if somebody fell short in their tithing, he sent them a bill.

And took and tried to take some of them to court for not for saying you're behind in your payments. Yeah, not making that up either. No, we give freely. So if you want to give God five bucks,.

You give him five bucks.

If you want to give him more, that's between you and God. I would just remind you that God requires that pastors earn their living from the gospel. So whatever your contribution is to that, I don't care.

As long as you understand that the ultimate goal is being met.

And it is.

So, I mean, we don't have a problem like that. So there's a reason why I don't do these stewardship services. Right.

You know, in these TV evangelists and megachurches and things like that, people often ask for, and you can explain this, seed money.

Yes.

Are they starting the church?

No, they're not. No.

The church is already built. OK, I always thought seed money was for like a situation where you've got something going, like a project. OK, we need to put shingles on the roof.

Yeah.

Somebody wants to set an example quietly. He can place a bill in the plate.

Yeah.

That's a substantial amount without his name on it. I call that seed money that other people will owe.

Yeah.

And pretty soon they got the roof.

So let's talk about that. That's OK. The seed money doctrine is a part of what's called the Word of Faith movement.

All right.

So this is part of a bigger heresy that's within the church. And the concept goes something like this. If you sow sparingly, you reap sparingly. So God wants you to give so that you can get back. And by you giving, it proves to God that you have faith.

That's proof to God that you have faith. And then God will multiply your gift a hundredfold. And it always turns out this way, that God wants you to demonstrate that you have faith by sending the televangelist the money.

You know, rather than rather than saying you show God that you have faith, you go down to your local soup kitchen and you give them money so that they know you have to send it to the televangelist. OK, who's jetting around the world and a sixty four million dollar Gulf Stream stream.

Yeah.

Yeah, they are. And the gas on those thing is pretty outrageous.

You know.

Yeah. Yeah.

Insurance.

And then don't forget maintenance on the Gulf Stream is pretty expensive. And so that's a scam. OK, and so you're not you're you're giving to prove to God that you have faith. Do you think if God gave you the gift of faith, he knows whether or not you have faith or not?

Yeah.

OK, why would I need to prove to God that I have faith by sending that Yahoo a hundred bucks or a thousand bucks? Yeah, see that these are people who are teaching for shameful gain things they ought not to teach.

Yeah.

May your money perish with you if you think that God's miracles can be bought. This is not a doctrine taught in Scripture.

All right.

Coming then back to Exodus 24, we'll start at verse 12. Lord said to Moses, come up to me on the mountain. Wait there that I may give you the tablets of stone with which the law and the command and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.

Moses rose with his assistant Joshua. Moses went up into the mountain of God and he said to the elders, wait here for us until we return to you. Behold, Aaron and her are with you. Whoever has a dispute, let him go to them.

So he delegates authority for judging between people. Moses went up on the mountain. The cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord dwelled on Mount Sinai and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day, he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.

Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain and the side of the people of Israel. Moses entered the cloud, went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain 40 days, 40 nights.

Chapter 25. Then 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, bronze, blue, purple, scarlet yarns, fine twine, linen, goat's hair, tanned ram skins, goat skin, acacia wood, oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil, for the fragrant incense, onyx stones and stones for setting for the ephod and for the breastplate.

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 of its furniture so that you shall make it. Now, quick question.

What was the occupation of the Israelites prior to the Exodus?

Slaves.

Where on earth did these slaves come up with this stuff?

The plundering of Egypt.

Plundering of Egypt.

Okay.

This is kind of an important thing. God said that he would positively dispose the hearts of the Egyptians so that they would give them these things and thereby plunder the Egyptians. So the Egyptians basically said, you guys are in the right.

Your God is in the right. Pharaoh's in the wrong. Please, here. Here's my bank account. Okay. That's kind of how that worked out. And that happened prior to the Exodus. So now you've got all these really wealthy slaves in the middle of the wilderness.

It's the best way I could put it. All right.

Yep.

So that's where that's all coming from. They shall make an ark of acacia wood. And now we get the making of the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant along with the tabernacle itself is this wonderful type in shadow of Christ.

So it's made out of wood covered with gold.

Right?

Keep that in mind. The Ark of the Covenant covered with gold. And this is a good picture of Christ who is God and man. You know, it's kind of a picture.

Of the incarnate.

And on the top of this thing we'll see is what a thing called the mercy seat. And oddly enough, the Raiders of the Lost Ark people kind of got this right. Let me see if I can pull this up. Because I think they did a pretty good job.

I like the artistic depiction.

Yep.

So they made this thing so that Harrison Ford can find it later.

All right.

So this is what we're looking at here. Let's see if I can find it. That's a little bit bigger. Okay. So this is what's being described here. It's made out of acacia wood overlaid with gold. And then this lid right here with the two angels facing each other.

That's the thing called the mercy seat. And the mercy seat is going to become the place where on the Day of Atonement so the Ark of the Covenant is kept in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle. And only once a year the high priest goes and he takes the blood of the atoning sacrifice on the Day of Yom Kippur.

And that is what gets poured on top of what's called the mercy seat. So we'll talk about a little bit more about the types and shadows of this. But let me read some more of this out.

Okay.

So two cubits and a half shall be its length. A cubit and a half its breadth. A cubit and a half its height. 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. Put them on its four feet. Two rings on one side of it. Two rings on the other side of it. You shall make poles of acacia wood. 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 and they shall not be taken from it. And you shall put into the Ark the testimony that I shall give you. 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. 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 one end. One cherub on the other end of one piece with the mercy seat.

Shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. And 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.

Now, see if you guys remember this then. So this is the Ark of the Covenant. Inside of it will be placed the two stone tablets. A jar of manna and the staff of Aaron, which budded. That happened later on.

Those will all be placed in there. But the very top is the mercy seat. See if you all remember. Mercy seat is type and shadow.

Of what?

It has its fulfillment in the New Testament, in the Gospels.

Huh?

Jesus in the tomb. That's correct. So one of the accounts that we have of the day of the resurrection that when they poked their heads in to look in the empty tomb, there was two angels, one at the head, one at the foot.

The mercy seat. And so I am absolutely convinced that the mercy seat itself prefigures Jesus in the tomb. Because I mean, that would be a perfect example what the mercy seat should be, should it not? So Jesus in the tomb and you get the idea here that while after they rolled the stone over the tomb, there were the two angels guarding the body of Christ wing to wing while the corpse of Christ stayed there in the tomb.

It's this beautiful picture. And it's just it's stunning when you kind of consider what's going on here. All of this coming back to Christ in one way or another. Let me see if I can find that,.

By the way.

Angels. Better spell it right. Angels. And I'm going to limit this to the Gospels and see if I can find the text itself. I thought it was John. So I'll go there. Is it John 20?

Yes.

Yes, it's John 20, verse 12. John 20.

Whoops.

John 20 and I want to do. Versus there we go. It's beautiful, beautiful text here. Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. John 20, verse 11. As she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain.

One at the head, one at the feet. And they said to her, woman, why are you weeping? And she said to them, well, they've taken away my Lord. I don't know where they have laid him. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus.

And Jesus said to her, woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? Supposing him to be the gardener. What a great mistake, right? The second Adam now mistaken for a gardener in a garden tomb, right?

She said to him, sir, if you've carried him away, tell me where you've laid him and I will take him away. And Jesus said to her, Mary. She said to him in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. And he said, don't cling to me.

I've yet ascended, not yet ascended to the father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I'm ascending to my father, your father, my God, your God. So there you got it's such it's a little bit of an obscure text, but you can see it.

One of the head,.

One at the foot. Mercy seat is to be made this way with two angels facing each other,.

One at the head,.

One at the foot. It's unmistakable.

You know, scripture says the dwelling place of God is with men.

Yes.

And here is the incarnate who takes our place in the tomb in our death and brings us to life.

Yeah.

We were talking about your name in the book of life. What does he say to Mary?

He calls her by her name. Yeah, he knows her name. It's wonderful. Yeah, it's absolutely wonderful. And you're going to note this, then kind of an interesting feature of the gospels. Have you ever thought?

How is it that certain people in their events in the gospels? We're not talking about the 12 disciples of the who become the apostles, but like certain events. You think of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a wee little man.

A wee little man was he right? He's the guy who climbed up the sycamore tree. Why do we know his name?

Huh?

Because we because we sang it. The reason we know his name is because his name is written in scripture.

Yeah.

OK, which means he's a believer, which means he's a believer because the church knew him. All right, and then you think what was the name? What were the names of the Roman soldiers again?

Don't know.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think Simon the Cyrene. Why do we know his name?

Everyone, everyone remember.

His contribution to the passion of Christ. This is the guy who carries the cross for Jesus. How can we know his name? Because he becomes a believer. It's fascinating. The early church kept track of themselves.

They know who they were.

Yeah, there is one Roman soldier. You know, surely this man was a son of God. I guess he's we don't know his name.

We don't know his name.

That certainly is there as a confession of faith. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

First Roman, first Gentile, true Gentile convert to Christianity. We know his name Cornelius. We know his occupation, Roman soldier. He's a centurion. So one of the reasons why we know the names of certain people in the Gospels and we don't know the name of others has a lot to do with the fact that they were Christians and they were part of then the church, the worship community of Christ.

And they, you know, they were, they if they were, especially if they were eyewitnesses to the resurrection. Church kept track of these people.

All right.

Coming back then to Exodus. So making a mercy seat, one cherub on one end, one cherub on the other of one piece with the mercy seat, shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. They shall spread their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings and their faces one to another.

This is exactly, I mean, this, this has got to be what was going on, on Saturday morning. Yeah, all Saturday, these angels guarding the body of Christ, which means it wasn't the Roman soldiers who were really guarding Christ.

Really? Yeah.

You shall make a table of acacia wood. Two cubits shall be its length, a cubit its breadth, a cubit a half its height, and you shall overlay it with pure gold, make a molding of gold around it. Now, a little bit of a note here.