The Appointed Altar

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Exodus 20:22-26

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Well, this morning we close out our time in Exodus, at least for a season, as we round out through the last verses of chapter 20.
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Next week we'll begin in Matthew 5 with the Sermon on the Mount, and there consider how the law of God and the
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Ten Commandments are refracted through the teaching of our Lord Jesus in those wonderful chapters, such a rich body of teaching, and incredible how the
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Lord puts together so many of the themes and issues that we've seen in our time in Genesis and Exodus.
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So in Exodus 20, we're beginning in verse 22, and with verse 22, the so -called
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Book of the Covenant begins. Essentially, what we've read for the past two weeks has been a prologue, an introduction to this
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Book of the Covenant, beginning with verse 22, running to chapter 23, verse 19, and containing an application of the
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Ten Commandments, the ten words of God. And those are applied in practical ways with cases from which principles can be derived, and so it gives a certain runway for the way this law is to operate in the corporate life of the people of God.
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But all of it flows from the first commandment, and we see, even in verses 22 through 26 this morning, we see the first commandment really taking center stage, for indeed, the second table flows from the first, both the second and the first table flow from the first commandment, that there is no
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God but God, and there are to be no other gods before the one true and holy God.
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So let me begin reading in verse 22. Then the Lord said to Moses, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, you have seen that I have talked with you from heaven.
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You shall not make anything to be with Me. Gods of silver or gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves.
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An altar of earth you shall make for Me. And you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings, and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen, and every place where I record
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My name, I will come to you, and I will bless you.
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And if you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it.
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Nor shall you go up by steps to My altar, that your nakedness may not be exposed on it.
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So this is the beginning of the book of the covenant, and as I've said, everything flows from the first commandment, really the first and the second commandment, echoing here in verse 25.
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Now, as we've acknowledged, the first commandment is all about the exclusivity of God.
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This is held out in our passage in more than one way. We see in verse 23 the echo of God's law related to His exclusivity.
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It recalls that God is to be worshipped exclusively, not like other gods are worshipped, not as among other gods, but as the sole
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God, the sole sovereign King of all creation. And we see in these verses and all that flow from it that God is jealous for His holiness to be protected in worship.
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Now, there's ways that He's setting, we have to remember the context here, He's establishing this as a foundation for the way
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Israel is to approach Him in worship. It's not all that He will have to say about His worship.
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It's not all that He will appoint. It's not all that He will advise or command, but it is creating the foundation for how
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Israel is to regard God when it pertains to His worship. And we'll see that it's very important we begin here before we even come to the tabernacle or all of the instructions that will belong to the tabernacle or God's dwelling place in the temple.
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This is the foundation. These are the things that Israelites must believe and understand in order to worship
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God rightly. It's a very important passage. We'll look at it in two parts.
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The second part will have three points. First, we consider the exclusive Lord, and second, we consider the appointed altar.
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So, begin with the exclusive Lord. The Lord said to Moses, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, you've seen that I've talked with you from heaven.
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You shall not make anything to be with me. Gods of silver, gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves.
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Well, Israel is standing around the base of Mount Sinai. If you remember where we left off, they've sent
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Moses into the darkness. We're not going to listen to God lest we die. You go speak with God, we'll listen to you.
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And so off the mighty prophet goes into the dark veil, and they're all waiting around the base of the mountain for him to return, waiting for a word from God, waiting to receive from the
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Lord's own mouth that which they need to live and to obey. You speak with God, they say, we will listen.
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And so God speaks to Moses, and this is the word that the Israelites are to hear. You shall say this to the children of Israel.
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You have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. You have seen that I have spoken with you.
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Interesting that we have these two verbs paired together. Of course, they have seen all sorts of things standing at the base of Mount Sinai, things that have made them tremble like dried out leaves, things that have made their hearts fall down to the heels of their sandals.
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They've seen the presence of the Lord veiled in the spectacle of theophany, veiled by dark cloud, by tempest and fire.
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They've seen that, but God says, you have seen that I have spoken. Very important.
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He goes from what is visually apparent to the Israelites to what is auditory, to what is orally understood.
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You have seen that I have spoken to you. So God does not first and foremost remind them of the nerve -wracking visual display of that awe -inducing might of the spectacle.
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He reminds them that He has spoken to them. This is very important. He has not come to them as the
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God who is to be seen, but rather as the God who is to be heard. You shall say this to the children of Israel.
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I have spoken with you. He is the God who is known, not by sight, but rather by His word.
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He is the God, as we'll see, who is to be worshipped, not by sight, but rather by His word.
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The God who spoke the whole cosmos into being has now spoken to the children of Israel.
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And even though He's manifest His presence with all the visual array, the Israelites are commanded to hear
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His voice. So all the dynamics we've seen in chapters 19 and 20 relate to God speaking.
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What has He spoken? The Ten Commandments. He's spoken the covenant to them. How is He to be worshipped?
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According to the word that He is speaking to them. And so He says here in verse 22, you shall say this to the children of Israel, I have talked with you from heaven.
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The fact that God speaks is the primary focus for how Israel is to approach His worship.
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We see that embedded even in the next phrase.
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You've seen that I have talked with you from heaven. It's not just from the mountain that the voice is emerging, but rather from heaven where God dwells.
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You've seen that I've spoken from above the cosmos, as it were. From my own dwelling place I've come down, condescended to speak with you.
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So notice the emphasis. The Lord's not merely speaking from a place, as though He's bound or confined to that place.
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As though Israel can only hear Him or be known to Him if they arrive at His holy mountain.
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No. He's the King of all His creation. He speaks not from a mountaintop, but from heaven itself.
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He speaks and it reverberates to the very stretching ends of the infinite edges of space.
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And yet He's pleased to manifest His presence in a unique way among them. And this all accords with His desire for worship.
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Why is God speaking to the Israelites? Well, to answer that question, we have to think back to the beginning of Exodus.
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Why did God deliver the Israelites? Why did He hear their cry and respond with an arm of salvation?
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Well, Moses said it to Pharaoh from the Lord's own mouth, Let my people go that they might worship me.
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Remember that same word, ebed, serve, worship me. They've been serving you, Pharaoh, in a way, worshiping you.
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Let them go that they can worship me. That's why I'm bringing salvation to them. That's why I'm delivering them from bondage, that they might know me, know that I am
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Lord, and give me the glory that is due to me alone. And so we see, even here, this all confirmed in the covenant.
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Why has God spoken? So that He will be worshipped. Something that Paul did an excellent job speaking to yesterday at the picnic, where he brought in Westminster Shorter Catechism, question one.
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What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and to enjoy
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Him forever. So that's man's chief end. Well, what is God's chief end? For all that He has done in creating the world and embarking on this drama of redemption through His Son by His Spirit.
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What is the chief end of God in all of that? It's the same thing. That He will be glorified.
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That He will be worshipped. That His attributes, His character will be manifest in all of His works.
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Not only in creation, but in redemption. That the fullness of God will be known in the person and work of Christ by His Spirit.
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And that the triune God will receive all glory to His holy name. For all time.
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And so we see that God manifests His presence and speaks in order to be heard and worshipped.
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To glorify the Lord in this way becomes man's highest good. Don't think of it as just the chief end, like it's somehow some heavy yoke that you wish you could cast off, but who are you, oh man, to speak against God?
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No, listen, this is your highest good. To worship your Creator. It's why the
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Catechism holds together the fact that to glorify God is to enjoy Him. This is the deepest satisfaction that a human being can find.
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This will be the very heights of our joy in glory. Glorifying the
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Lord. Sharing in that glory. Participating in that glory.
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Absorbing, reflecting, delighting in who God is and what He's done. At every turn, finding new wonders, new vistas, new moments of awe.
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To melt our hearts and strike us down in awe before the
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Holy One. Who is like you, oh Lord, will be the resounding cry of our hearts.
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And that's why God has spoken, that's why God has come, that's why He's acted. And that's why the
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Lord is exclusive. He won't share this glory with another. He won't share it with the mightiest of men, not with Pharaoh.
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What's Pharaoh to God? A flea? What are the empire builders of history, of our modern day before the
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Holy One? He doesn't share His glory with another. Something that's all over this passage, if we have eyes to see it.
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The Lord is exclusive. You shall not make anything to be with me, verse 23.
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Gods of silver, gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves. And so the point is clear.
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He is to be worshipped alone according to what He has spoken. This is how I am to be worshipped, this is how
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I am not to be worshipped. He's not glorious because man makes
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Him glorious. Not because of what goldsmiths or artisans can craft. He is glorious because of who
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He is. Apart from man, apart from creation itself. And so the alone holy
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God designates how He is to be worshipped. He appoints what brings Him glory.
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Israelites cannot choose willy -nilly where and how and when and in what ways to worship
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God. No, God speaks from heaven. This is how I am to be worshipped. This is how I am to be followed.
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This is the blessings that I will give to you. This is how it will be. There's no room for bargaining or negotiating.
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Or look, Lord, look what we've devised, look what we've made. Look how we've approached you. All that amounts to the strange fire that consumes the folly of man.
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And of course, gods of silver, gods of gold, this is all the ancient Near East had ever known. We know of no other culture, no other form of civilization where there was anything but brazen images of gods.
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Gods of gold, gods of silver, gods made by the ingenuity of man. It was the sort of shock of the ancient world that Jews had no image to worship.
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Going into the temple, as it were, where's the God? There's no God here. Where's the image that we devote ourselves to?
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Of course, man -made religion always has an image to worship. There's always the imprint, the ingenuity of man impressed upon his worship, the vanity of his imagination, the way that his own glory is extolled by what he devises.
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All of that is true in every form of man striving after worship of some unknown god, which ends up being worship of self, worship of man.
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But when God speaks from heaven, we find exactly the opposite. There's no image. Here in these verses, there's no place for the imprint or the ingenuity of man, not at this foundational level.
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The Lord is exclusive. God's desire for worship here in Exodus 20 teaches us that the foundation of worship is purity and simplicity.
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The foundation of worship is purity and simplicity.
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In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul is very concerned that those who are prone to be led astray by the
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Judaizers would be robbed of the simplicity that is in Jesus Christ. Paul has come to recognize for all the barnacles of man -made traditions that can attach to the pure worship of God, those who would seek to worship the
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Father in spirit and truth, worship Him in purity and in simplicity. God would come in this place this morning, as it were, passing through the aisles, and say like He said to Nathanael, Behold, here's one without any guile.
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Here's someone who's sincere. Here's someone who's here to seek
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My face. Here's someone who's fully present before Me.
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The weird blue and white walls and 19th century portraits fading away.
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Though we're here in this place, in this town hall on this morning, you've not come to this place, to this room, to this horizontal arrangement of bodies and space and time.
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No, you've come to the Holy One who's King enthroned above it all. You worship
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Him in purity, in simplicity. He's exclusive. And the exclusive God who appoints
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His own exclusive worship appoints an altar. That takes us now, secondly, to verses 24 and following.
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An altar of earth, He says, you shall make for Me, and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen, and every place where I record
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My name, I will come to you, and I will bless you. And if you make
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Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for if you use your tool on it, you've profaned it.
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Nor shall you go up by steps to My altar, that your nakedness may not be exposed upon it.
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Now, if you've been keeping count, we've said the word altar three times. Remember, in Hebraic thought, you bring emphasis by repetition.
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So what's the big point in verses 24 through 26? The altar, the meeting place appointed by God for His worship, the altar.
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The Lord commands here at this foundational level of worship that an altar is to be made of either earth or stone.
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Now, that's heaps of earth or heaps of stone. Not cut stone, not chiseled stone, not the product of a stone mason, but rather what you could find and pull up from the soil and put in a pile.
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That is to be an altar. Earth, as it were, heaped up, or the equivalent of one of these
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New England frost heaves. Maybe that's where you would set your altar up. The point is, when you begin to arrange it, put the imprint of your own human imagination upon it,
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God says here, at this time, at this foundational level, you have profaned My worship.
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An altar of earth, an altar of stone. What do we make of these things? John Calvin, in his commentary, he points out, well, if they had chiseled the altar stones and made it a site of beauty, of renown, then because of the depravity of the human heart, the
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Israelites would have returned to that. It would have become sort of a cultic center. The place would have taken a significance that would have been idolatrous.
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Somehow we have to go back to this place, back to this chiseled stone altar that our forefathers had built.
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It would have become something that was a temptation and a snare to the pure and true worship of God.
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And, of course, Calvin rightly acknowledging our hearts are idol factories. One of the reasons Calvin was buried in an unmarked grave.
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I think wise. I've been in Geneva a few times. It's like, ah, if only I could find his tombstone. We do want to venerate those things of old, those things that have impacted us.
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You could understand the Israelites having a drive to return to these places and think there's something uniquely special about worshiping here.
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It's not just that this is an altar to God, it's that my father's built it. Look at the chisel marks.
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Look at how they cut and arrange it. This has been here for 500 years. Now the worship has been elevated.
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Now this is especially a place God will be pleased to meet us. And God is, in one fell swoop, denying them that kind of idolatry.
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But, of course, in due time God will appoint a special place of worship. And He will appoint and, in fact, gift artists to decorate in an ornate fashion, make that place of worship beautiful.
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And that mobile place of worship in the form of the tabernacle will become situated in the Holy Land, in the city of God's own choosing, built by the man that God appoints,
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King Solomon. And there that will become one of the wonders of the ancient world, renowned for its beauty, the way it would glisten in the sun with all of the gold that was conveyed throughout that incredible place of worship.
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So we can't, on the one hand, say God has only ever desired heaps of stone, heaps of earth, untouched by man.
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By the time we get to chapter 25, He's commanding that all sorts of designs and crafts are part of His worship.
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But as I've said, here we are at a foundational place. God is establishing the most important aspects of His approach.
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How will you understand what it is to worship the Holy One in your midst? We have it here at the end of chapter 20.
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That does not alter, though, the place and the form of the place changes by God's own command.
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Again, He's free to do as He wills. He appoints how He is to be worshipped. But here we see the very heart, the very central concern of what pure and simple worship requires.
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And if you miss what chapter 20 is getting across when it comes to God's worship, though you have all else, you've missed the very heart of worship.
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And that's why even in a place renowned for beauty, even in Solomon's temple, God can say, these people worship me with their lips, their hearts are far from me.
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They don't know what it is to approach me in a pure and simple way. Their hearts are stirred and moved, and they're changed for a few hours because of the spectacle.
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But they haven't come to worship me, the living God. In fact, they might as well have stayed home.
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They could have worshipped on a heap of stones or soil and come to me in a better way. And I would have met them and blessed them if they had done so.
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That's what God is saying here. So even here in chapter 20, if we know where the storyline is going, heaps of stone and heaps of earth will not do.
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What were the promises that have been leading us out of Genesis into Exodus? What are the promises given to the patriarchs?
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I will bring you into a land where I will dwell with you, and I will be your
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God, and you will be my people. A land flowing with milk and honey, this foretaste of a new heavens and a new earth, this remedy to the fall, to the curse of the fall upon the earth.
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This is what is promised to Abraham. This is how the people are led into this promised place. Of course, we're along the way, and so there's some anticipation as we consider this command.
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Not only is it a foundation for worship, it's a step forward on the fulfillment of God's promise. Right now,
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Israel is still like the patriarchs. They have not yet arrived at the promised land and the fixed place where God will dwell with His people, in the very temple.
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And so, like the patriarchs, they're to build altars. The patriarchs weren't great altar builders, but they were great worshipers of God.
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Bethel, Penuel, all the places where they heaped stones because God came from heaven and spoke.
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And so the altar of earth, the altar of stone, becomes this powerful reminder that God is to be worshiped as He desires.
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And even in the storyline of redemption, moving them from the patriarchal presence to the presence in the promised land and the temple within the promised land, we're taking major steps forward to the worship of God becoming more and more centered around the person and work of Christ, who is the true temple of God.
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The Israelites are tempted to worship otherwise. We forget this, it's been a while, but what do they have stuffed in their back pockets?
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Plunder, gold, silver from Egypt. They have what they need to make altars of gold and silver, images of gold and silver.
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We'll see that confirmed when we get to the golden calf. They have everything they need to make the worship of God beautiful, glorious.
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They have all of these riches in their very midst and God says that might be impressive to you, it's not impressive to Me.
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That might stir your emotions, it doesn't stir Mine. If you make
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Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone. If you use any tool on it, you profane it.
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What a shot against the imagination of fallen man.
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Fallen man likes to build things, glorious things. Fallen man likes to boast.
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Look what I can do, look what I have made, look how I've made a name for myself. Wasn't that the spirit of Babel? Was there a humility that fell upon the human race after the flood wiped the earth clean?
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No, we turn the next page, we're in chapter 11 and what is mankind doing? They're building a tower to the heavens.
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We want to make our name great in the earth. We're going to rival God as it were. We're going to climb our way up to where He is.
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That's the kind of pride of fallen man. We want to build bigger, better. How do you show your glory as a culture?
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You build things bigger, higher, greater. Works of great engineering feat, of architectural wonder.
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This is a way you show your own prowess. You make a name for yourself. There's a reason that people still pour year by year to see the
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Parthenon or some of the great buildings of ancient civilization. The ancient civilization has rotted and long since decayed and yet their boast remains.
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Look at what we could build. God will not allow man to participate or rob him of his glory in worship.
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And so even a chisel mark, even one obnoxious corner on a stone you've made an altar from is not to be knocked off.
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You might think that makes it better. God says you've defiled it at this foundational stage of worship.
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He's making a strong point to Israel, a strong point about how holy and exclusive He is and therefore how holy and exclusive His worship must be.
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He gives no room at this place for an Israelite's skill, ability, inventiveness, wisdom, labor, power.
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And of course the tendency of man is to use all of these various gifts and things to somehow give them a standing before God.
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All of the ancient Near Eastern ruins that we know of had steps, a lot of steps going to their altar place.
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They had some instinct in their bones that God was transcendent, at least the gods in their own depraved imagination were transcendent gods and therefore you could not approach them just in front of you.
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You had to ascend to be where they are. Sacrifices had to ascend to where the gods are.
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And God says to His people, you don't approach Me. You don't build steps to Me.
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I come from heaven to speak to you. You don't climb toward Me. You don't climb your way to Me.
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You don't have some ability to enter into My presence. I must make My presence manifest to you.
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That's what He's connoting here in this command. Now of course, as a caveat
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I have to say, though God is not pandering to human work or human invention, He's reminding the
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Israelites of His exclusivity. There is a place for the gifts and the strengths and what it means for humans to have an aesthetic sensibility in worship.
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All of that shines through as we continue on in Exodus and Leviticus. And of course that desire to make a place beautiful is not something that comes out of the fall.
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It's actually something embedded in creation. Adam and Eve were to bring order, and with order, beauty into what
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God had made. This is part of man exercising dominion. Man is meant to imprint the raw work of creation with the way that his own image -bearing nature bears upon that raw, created reality.
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This is something that God has designed. It's in the very warp and woof of who we are as human beings.
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You can't help but make aesthetic decisions. This is the time of summer, wherever I go,
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I see yard sale signs. What do they say? One man's junk is another man's treasure. So someone makes the aesthetic decision, it's time to pitch that old eyesore, and then for five dollars, someone's in the driveway going, look what
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I found! This is the greatest, I can't wait to hang this on the wall. We can't help but we're stirred to ordain and arrange and create things that are compelling to us or comfortable to us or beautiful to us.
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And God knows what it means for us to be moved by these things. He doesn't deny it.
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He affirms it. He makes the aesthetic experience of worship compelling as we make our way through Exodus.
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He relays the story of redemption through every approach by concerns of color and distance and what it means to move through spaces or have boundaries between spaces.
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And He's retelling, as it were, creation and redemption in the very way He arranges His worship. Of course there's some component to that.
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But don't begin there, begin here. God is exclusive.
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You don't approach Him. You don't create something beautiful for Him. He speaks to you. Liberal churches have sometimes the most beautiful buildings.
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Some of us have salivated as we drive by some of these old clapboard chapels that used to be
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God -fearing churches and now they're Unitarian social clubs. We salivate and go, what a nice building.
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And of course the Word of God and the power of God's salvation is nowhere near those churches. It's long since departed.
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Because the altar of man, the altar of hewn stone, the altar of what I can build up, how
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I can approach, how I can find some satisfaction in my standing before God, that may soothe the worshiper's conscience, but it makes no atonement for them.
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And where God is not approached in purity, in simplicity, with exclusivity,
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God is not approached at all. God is not worshipped at all. Ichabod over every church that doesn't recognize who
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God is and the holiness that He is jealous to keep. Human wisdom,
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Spurgeon says, delights to trim and arrange the doctrines of the cross into some artificial and congenial system to the taste of depraved and fallen man.
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Instead of adorning the Gospel, they pollute it. They cloud it. They alter it until it becomes unrecognizable.
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You see, God has spoken. His revelation, His presence,
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His exclusivity lays the foundation of all right and true worship. And that brings me to three points about the altar that He appoints.
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And you see it right on the face of the text. Well, first, in verse 24, we see that the altar that God appoints is an altar of sacrifice.
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The altar that God appoints is an altar of sacrifice. We have it right in verse 24.
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An altar of earth you shall make me, you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings, your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen.
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And by the way, we may not have altars that we arrange, stones, heaps of soil, even more ornate and beautiful altars, but in some sense that the command in the heart is still ever present in God's people.
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Now we're commanded to bring, as it were, spiritual sacrifices. Romans 12. What are those spiritual sacrifices that we approach
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God with? What's pleasing to Him? An ever pleasant scent? Well, it's the sacrifice of a broken spirit, a contrite heart,
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Psalm 51. We approach Him with praise and with thanksgiving, 1 Peter 5.
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And so the sacrifice, the nature of the sacrifice has changed. We come, as it were, as thank offerings unto
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God. We lay down, not as unwilling, but as yielding sacrifices out of service and delight in God.
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But of course, we miss it all if we don't understand what God is saying about right and true, pure worship of an exclusively holy
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God. We know that the yes and amen is and always will be Christ. So though at first glance, this is all about the worshiper making an approach to God, we already see that the worshiper cannot make an approach to God without sacrifice.
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God appoints how is he to be worshipped. How is he to be worshipped? Make an altar. Sacrifice on it.
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You cannot come to worship me apart from a sacrifice, God said. Now he commands here two sacrifices.
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The burnt offering, the peace offering. The burnt offering in Leviticus 1 was the sacrifice that was wholly consumed, totally burnt up, totally devoured to become this sweet aroma to God.
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This sacrifice is a picture of absolute devotion, absolute consecration.
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You don't partake of this. This is a meal for God. You, as it were, bringing a sacrifice or placing your own self symbolically before God and He's consuming you.
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You're the meal. You don't eat of it because you are the meal. God is consuming you entirely. That's the picture of the burnt offering.
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But the peace offering is actually something you eat. This is an offering that Leviticus 3 and 7 go on to describe, and this is actually a communal offering.
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It's given to God and yet you partake of it with the priests and those with you.
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You all take a share and enjoy this meal together. And so this would be a Thanksgiving meal.
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It would be a way of renewing the peace that you have with God and therefore having that peace, the peace you have with one another.
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And yet both the burnt offering and the peace offering are perhaps the greatest pictures of what the sacrifice of Christ brings around.
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If we approach God in worship because He appoints an altar and on that altar is a sacrifice, then the yes and amen of Christ helps us to see that Christ was utterly consumed out of total devotion to God, and we, having peace with God through that burnt offering, now partake of this peace offering.
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And not as isolated individuals, but actually in community. What a glorious picture of the worship of God that we enjoy even this morning.
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Have we not gathered to the very altar of the cross, approaching
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God in pure worship because of what has been sacrificed on our behalf? Christ, burnt as it were, holy in devotion to God, a sacrifice appointed on our behalf.
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Do we not then eat this peace offering together out of thanksgiving, out of joy and delight in what
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God has brought about for us? And so we remember this emphatic question that the
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Lord put before the Pharisees in Matthew 23, 19. He says,
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Fools and blind, which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Which is greater, the gift on the altar or the altar that sanctifies the gift?
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The ESV, I think, does a better job. He says, which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?
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You see the point, right? You see the point. You could go kill a lamb, a sheep, a goat, an oxen.
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If you're an Israelite farmer, you have these animals you need to feed your family, you're going to go slaughter them. Does that somehow become a sacred offering to God?
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Is that in some way atoned for your sin? No, why? You're just slaughtering an animal.
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There's no appointed place for you to do that. There's no appointed way. There's no appointed altar that makes that a holy offering to God, effective.
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Well, same thing in the first century. Jesus wasn't the only victim of crucifixion. Thousands, tens of thousands of people were crucified in the ancient world.
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Was it just the fact that He was crucified that somehow made that pleasing to God? No.
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It just so happened that that crucifixion apart from all other crucifixions was the appointed altar that made that offering sacred, that made it effective, that made it atoning for the people of God.
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It was the appointed altar. And so the first thing we see about the appointed altar is that it's an altar for sacrifice.
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Secondly, flowing from this, it's an altar that blesses. Verse 24, continuing.
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An altar of earth you shall make me, you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen.
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In every place where I record my name, I will come to you and I will bless you.
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So we approach God and worship His appointed way because He speaks from Heaven, His appointed place, the altar of sacrifice.
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And what's the result of doing those things? Brothers and sisters, what happens if we approach
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God through the sacrifice that He has appointed? This, blessing. He promises,
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I will come to you, I will bless you. I will come to you and I will bless you.
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There's some poem, it's just coming to my mind now, I wish I hadn't and I could read it. But it starts out, it's this little rhyming scheme and it sort of starts out with how the service was dull, the sermon was slow, so he left sort of dejected.
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And then he goes through his week. Monday started out, he recognized his sin and feeling very convicted by Tuesday.
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He was feeling warmhearted to the Lord. By Wednesday, he had embraced the gospel once again and found those embers reviving into a fire in his heart.
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By Thursday and Friday, he was all tears now, craving and thirsting for worship. And then he gets there to Sunday and is that sermon dull?
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Is that sermon slow? What does he reflect? He says, it's amazing how a preacher can change so much in one week.
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He thought that somehow he had missed the blessing. Missed the presence of God.
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Because the service, these distractions, this circumstance, this issue.
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Do you leave empty -handed some Sundays? Do you leave empty -handed?
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Cold -hearted? Lukewarm? What might be the problem?
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If God says, when you come to a place where I record
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My name, you come to the altar where I have appointed a sacrifice, you come to worship
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Me in My exclusive holiness through these things, I will be there.
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I will bless you. Don't you see, brother and sister, the only place to lay the blame ultimately is with ourselves.
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We don't approach aright. We don't contemplate the cross.
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We don't approach through the appointed sacrifice. We haven't come to the altar. You might as well not come at all.
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Right? Why would you keep coming if He's not here? And if He's not blessing you? What's in it for you, frankly?
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This is what He promises. If you worship Me, if you come to the appointed altar, I will be there, and I will bless you.
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Show me the brother or sister who says, I praise God, I've never left empty -handed. I've never left empty -handed.
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The Lord has always blessed me with something. He's always put manna in my pocket for another day.
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Sometimes I get a double portion. Sometimes I get more than other times. But I've never left empty -handed.
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Praise God. There's a promised blessing in worship.
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God says, I'm going to give My people a reason to come. He incentivizes
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His worship. Not only does He appoint the way and appoint the place and appoint the means, He gives a promise.
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You come and I'll be there. You come through My sacrifice with an open and seeking heart. I'll show up.
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You'll be blessed. In every place where I record My name. Of course, there was this restriction that has now been burst open.
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What had been restricted to a certain place with designated times, designated occasions, certain sacrifices and ritual functions.
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Now all of that has been broken open in this new covenant. God can be worshipped in any place throughout this earth.
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And so God causes His name to be recorded. The verb there is very interesting. It's a card. It's just remember.
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But it's in the hyphel stem. The cause to remember. And when it's in that stem, cause to remember, it can mean something more like to be honored.
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You think Memorial Day is a day of remembrance. What do you mean by that kind of remembrance?
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A day of showing honor to the sacrifice of so many. Remember has something to do with honor or with praise.
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And that's what it means here. In every place where My name is remembered, that is where My name is honored.
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In every place where I cause that to be so. Because I'm manifesting
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Myself. I'm speaking from Heaven. My Spirit has work. If I'm in that place, when you come,
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I will come. When you show up, I will show up. You come to be blessed, I will bless.
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That's God's promise in worship. So much for sleepy Sundays if we're thinking of this rightly.
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The whole point of the verse is that God is to be worshipped, and yet though He's exclusive and jealous for His worship,
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He incentivizes us to participate. You think about this, brothers and sisters.
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He so desires you to be blessed in worship that He says, don't waste your time chiseling.
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Just throw some dirt in a mound. I'm more eager for you to come and be blessed than I am to have a beautiful altar made out of devotion to Me.
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God is more satisfied with a mound of dirt if a true worshiper has come to be blessed.
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Isn't that profound? Isn't that stunning to you? Man is satisfied with chiseled stone and ornamentation even where true worship is absent.
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If you come to a beautiful place and your fleshly amusement has been gratified, then you leave and you feel like oh, that was really nice,
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I'd like to go back there. Even though no true worship, no true encounter of God has taken place. But God's the exact opposite.
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No spectacle. No amusement. Keep some stones together. I've got to bless you. Come to Me with purity and simplicity.
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I'm going to bless you. There's sort of this crude, primitivistic way that He shows forth
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His desire to be with His people. He won't let craftsmanship get in the way.
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He won't let the time it takes for a stonemason to do his crafts get in the way. You know, Christianity emerged with this kind of crude primitivism.
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It had to meet in houses and rented halls. It didn't have the grand temples. It didn't have all of the wondrous and sumptuous luxuriousness of pagan worship.
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It was in the corners, in the back alleys, the basements. It's a lot like the underground churches in so many parts of the persecuted church today.
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I was looking at pictures of some underground churches in Beijing a few days ago. Huddled in basements or in attics.
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Not a dour face in the place. Stuffed in basements and attics is more like it.
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Standing room only. Wet eyes, smiles, rapture.
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This is what we're talking about. Purity, simplicity.
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No frills. We know that we won't be in this building forever.
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In fact, some of us are actively praying about that. We've made certain steps to keep our options open.
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I look forward to that day. I look forward to a better space. A more fitting sanctuary.
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A more practical flow and use of rooms. I look forward to that.
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But brothers and sisters, God forbid, we get the grandest space. The most glorious space.
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And we miss the very foundation and heart of worship itself. Better for us to meet in the common over a mound of dirt than that.
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Amen? The word of the cross to those who are perishing is foolishness.
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We should not think that we can carve the stones of the altar or make the experience of worship that much more pleasing to overcome what is genuinely foolishness to those who are perishing.
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You know, there's some forms of worship, some styles of evangelistic preaching, some ways of conducting a service or being winsome that try to spray
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Febreze into what God says will be a stench to those who are passing away. The gospel of Christ is a stumbling block.
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The gospel of Jesus Christ is foolishness to the Greek. And we try to cloud it with wisdom and pithy phrases.
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But at base, if you've not come down to the foolishness of this message that all of my hope and the hope of the world entire lies in a crucified
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Jew 2 ,000 years ago. If you don't somehow own the foolishness of that message but try to spray like some thick fog over the stench of the offense, the scandal of the cross, then you're just not preaching the gospel.
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Purity. Simplicity. What would it be like for an Egyptian to see an Israelite worshiping at a pile of stones?
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What would he do? What a joke. What a laughing stock.
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That's the God you worship? How pathetic. You should come to the Nile. You should see how we worship.
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Come to the temples of Isis. See what that's like. And so in the ancient world, 2 ,000 years ago, our ancient brothers and sisters, they're saying, we worship the
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King over all. We worship the true Son of God. Does He have great pillared temples to show forth that kind of spectacle?
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No. They're singing His praises. They're singing hymns like Philippians 2 at the name of Jesus, every knee's going to bow.
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And they're huddled in basements and alleys. You see, there's a purity, a simplicity.
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God loves overthrowing the wisdom of the world with these base means.
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He loves to do that. Because He gets more glory. It shows that it wasn't the ingenuity of man.
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It wasn't the skill or the strategisms of man. It was God moving by His Spirit through the
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Gospel of His Son. And so God is essentially saying in these commands, I will meet with you when you approach
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Me in this way. Purity, simplicity, at My altar through the sacrifice that I've made on your behalf.
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In this way, I become your God and you become My people. Now lastly, third point, and perhaps the most important point, is that the altar that God appoints is an altar, first point, of sacrifice.
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An altar, secondly, of blessing. And then thirdly, it's an altar that exposes. It's an altar that exposes.
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Exodus 20, beginning in verse 25. And if you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone.
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For if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it. Nor shall you go up by steps to My altar, that your nakedness may not be exposed on it.
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You see, the altar is something that exposes. God requires a covering in order to approach
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Him in worship. If you would come before the altar, your nakedness cannot be exposed.
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But the altar would expose that nakedness. Now some scholars, they view the concern here being of a ritualistic nature.
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They say in the ancient world, priests were maybe just wearing a linen ephod or maybe they were rather scantily clad, maybe even in the nude and tire, and God requires decorum and modesty and these things are shameful and so He requires
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His priests to be covered and therefore not to go up steps and risk immodesty or maybe falling or the wind doing that classic
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Marilyn Monroe subway pose to the priest on the steps. He wants to leave no room for that. And I understand the concern there.
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You get to Exodus 28. He actually commands the priest to have linen undergarments and so that seems to correlate well to what
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God is after here, but I can't help but think we're missing the point.
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If we establish that God is concerned that nakedness not be exposed and go, and that's why He's given this command here, that's good, but we still have to answer another question.
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Why? Why? Why does it matter?
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Where does this language of nakedness and exposure and shame come in the biblical storyline?
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Well, we're right back to Genesis 3. In fact, in more ways than one. In Genesis 3, as a result of the fall of man, all that man was proud of, all that man could do capably becomes corrupting and corrupted.
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Man was meant to put, as it were, his hands to the soil, his hands to the stone and make beautiful things to the glory of God.
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As a result of the fall, man now does those things to his own glory and even against the purpose of God and now with thorns and thistles creeping out of every crevice.
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So we see man's ingenuity, man's imagination, man's skill and man's labor not directed to God's glory, but to himself and sometimes against the will of God.
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But also we see as a result of the fall that this nakedness that Adam and Eve had no shame in has now become something shameful.
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This picture, this visceral picture of this exposure before a holy God and the desire to be covered.
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And so we see there again ingenuity, skill, them weaving together leaves to try to cover their shame, cover that exposure before God.
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Clearly we have overtones of Genesis 3 whenever we're talking about approaching the place of God's presence.
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We're talking about Genesis 3, the temple presence of God. And so it's all over these verses.
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Adam and Eve as the original worshipers of God, the original approachers of the presence of God.
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And as a result of their own sin, God says you are not fit to build altars to Me.
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You are not fit to leave your fallen, corrupting imprint upon My worship, nor can you bear to appear before Me naked in all of your shame, exposed before Me for exactly as you are.
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The fig leaves won't do. We know in Genesis that God provides a covering.
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So we see that nakedness denotes the shame of original sin, the shame of fallen men.
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This is the picture. It's hard to keep this picture in the forefront. We're living in days where nudity is not culturally shameful or unacceptable in ways that it was.
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Is it not dumbfounding to you that the federal government had a vested interest in keeping video footage of Elvis Presley waist up?
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Is that not a barometer of how far we've fallen as a culture? Shame, of course, is wed to nakedness.
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Even as we've seen in Genesis the exposure of the thigh, having this denotation of something shameful, something depraved, a shame that is exposed and bears the wrath of God.
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The thing about shame is shame tends to be very subjective. Shame is something we feel, not just as a concept like guilt.
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Guilt is something we tend to know. Shame is what we feel. Shame is perhaps bound to guilt in that way, but I think we can distinguish shame and guilt.
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You can be guilty of something and feel no shame about it. But if you have real shame, it's because you're taking the guilt for what it really is.
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You've understood yourself rightly. As one put it, guilt says I did the wrong thing.
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Shame says I'm the wrong person. It's not something I did outside of me.
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In fact, you make this little tribunal about shame. I'm ashamed of myself.
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I'm outside of me looking at me, and even I'm ashamed of me. It shows that shame is very much communal.
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We don't live in an honor and shame society. We think of Middle Eastern or Asian cultures, and they tend to be honor -shame societies, and honor and shame are both things granted, established by communities.
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So guilt is something personal. It can be something concrete, something objective, where shame is very subjective, but it's not individualistic.
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It tends to be communal. Shame is more about how others view us or how we will be viewed before others, and therefore honor is also something that is bestowed on us by others, some way that others view us.
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So shame is to be humiliated, to be embarrassed, and you need other eyes to feel shame, humiliation, embarrassment.
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So if the opposite of guilt is to be innocent, then the opposite of shame is to be honored.
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If we put this language of nudity and clothing onto these dynamics, we see that God does not allow us to approach
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Him with some sort of self -made honor. You don't approach
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Him with fig leaves of honor that you've scrapped together. Here are the things that cover me. Here are the things that allow me to come.
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Here are the things that make me worthwhile, the things that earn your favor. It's not a lot, but it's something.
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At least I have a few leaves here or there. No, the nakedness is utterly exposed.
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The nakedness is utterly exposed. There's no place for man -made honor to approach the
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Holy One. In approaching the Holy One, He alone is to be honored. He doesn't share that glory with another.
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All eyes are upon Him, not upon man. And in this very way, we see that a priest was to be entirely covered.
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It wasn't just the linen undergarments. It was this long robe. They were to be covered, as it were, from head to toe, from turban to toes.
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There was a complete covering, because they're the ones who are approaching the presence of God. They cannot expose their shame, their humiliation before His eyes, nor can they share in His glory.
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There's a reason that in Galatians 3, Paul uses language of we've put on Christ, like a garment. Put on Christ.
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Put Him on like a robe. We talk about His righteousness being our covering, our robes. This fear of exposure that Adam and Eve felt at the very core of their being is something that we ought to feel whenever we're approaching
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God in worship. Now, as I said last week, some people won't come to church because they're running away from God.
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They want to keep Him distant. Sometimes people come to church because they want to keep Him distant. You can be running away from God by showing up every
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Sunday. I know that. You soothe your conscience week by week. Well, I've come, right?
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I'm doing my fair share, piecing together my leaves, trying to stay distant from the
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Holy One. There's a sense that the altar exposes everything. The altar, as it were, strips us bare in the sight of God.
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There's nothing hidden from His sight. Who dares approach Him in worship? So often, before I come up to preach, as I stand in the back corner there and pray, a verse that recycles through my mind, who are you?
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Who are you to put my words in your mouth? I feel that.
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How dare you go and speak my precepts on my behalf?
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Who are you? Who do you think you are? And I have to remember that I have no leaves to string together that can cover me before the
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Holy One. I have to be utterly exposed before Him, because I am utterly exposed before Him.
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I don't pretend to have a covering that I can put together. I have no covering. And so we recognize that we can't approach the altar that God has appointed, the sacrifice that God has made, if we're not viewing it in this way.
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We come, as it were, naked to the altar in order to receive a covering, a clothing, so that our nakedness is not exposed as we approach the
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Lord, as we stand before His face. It's that fear of exposure that repels us from His worship.
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It's why Adam and Eve hid in the garden. And yet it must be that God is drawing us, speaking from Heaven to us, lulling us with His promises, with His character of mercy and grace renewing, restoring all that sin would mar.
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And He invites us to come not half covered up, but He knocks those leaves, as it were, off the sinners that have come to His presence.
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And then He takes the sacrifice and clothes them. That's what He did to Adam and Eve. That's what
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He will do to you. He won't stand for you to hide.
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He won't stand for you to cover yourself up and make an approach, to chisel stones and say, isn't this beautiful enough?
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You come to the altar that He's appointed and you come as you are, naked in your shame.
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At the very place that you've come, the very sacrifice on that altar is what covers you. You know, men want an altar to look nice.
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They must have pained the... I would be one of those Israelites that's just like, ah, come on, make the mound a little higher, get more stones, we've got to make it glorious somehow.
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We want it to look nice, but you know what? There's nothing nice looking about a bloody cross.
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There's nothing nice looking about a bloody cross. If ever something was scrapped together, the stains of blood from previous victims, the old nail marks, that old rugged cross is very beautiful to us now when it's part of ornate decoration made out of bronze gild or stained glass.
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But let me tell you, in the first century world, it would have had a stench. The dried blood coating it like latex paint.
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Bits of bone and flesh embedded in through the nail holes. There's nothing delightful or pleasing to the eye about that scene.
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And don't be deceived by the Renaissance paintings where Jesus looks sort of somber and serene upon the cross and there's this sort of windswept loin cloth that covers him.
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That's not how they crucified people in the ancient world. It's a very important point for this very reason.
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We come to the altar, to the worship of God, to the gospel of Jesus Christ, we come covered in His righteousness.
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Why? Because on the cross He was stripped bare. And all the jeers and the mockery and the spit of their insult was
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Him bearing the shame, exposed not just before the eyes of the city, but exposed, standing in our sin before the all -seeing eye of the
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Holy God pouring hell upon that tree. What does
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Hebrews 12 say? He endured the shame. He endured the shame.
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He endured His back being torn open, His arms being spread apart, His clothes not just being stripped bare, but in the sort of corner among these grisly soldiers being lauded off in some lottery.
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He endured that shame naked on the cross so that when you approach
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God, God will take that as a covering so that you'll never be exposed, never be ashamed, never be humiliated in His presence again.
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You want your life to look nice. You want your altar to look nice. You think you can just get a few more leaves and then take a step forward.
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You're not hearing. You come as you are.
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You don't come at all. You come to the altar that He appoints, not the one that you try to piece together. You come with all of your shame, all of your stain, all of your offense.
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He clothes you. He says, you've come to Me. You've come to Me.
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I will come to you. And now I bless you. Clothed in a righteousness that is not your own.
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Clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Now you can stand before Me. Now you can endure
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My presence. Not as a slave shaking, hoping you don't make that misstep in a few years, but as a son, as a daughter, adopted by God, by His Spirit, with all of His love, as it were, poured upon you.
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There's a reason that Thomas Kelley in that wonderful hymn says, you who think of sin but lightly, nor suppose the evil great, here may see its nature rightly.
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Here its guilt may estimate. It's at the cross that we see the full revelation, the full exposure of our sin.
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There's not some aggregate way that Jesus Christ, you know, that you are one 350 ,000th of His atonement.
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No. Nothing would have changed on Calvary even if you alone were atoned for from all of the world.
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Nothing would have changed. God's requirement would have been no less. There wasn't more time, more suffering, more or less judgment because of a few more people.
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There wasn't some lump sum arrangement. If you alone, if you alone were the only person atoned for, nothing would have changed on Calvary.
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And so you go to the cross and you see there, this is what my sin cost. This is what it would look like if I tried to approach
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God myself in my sin. Do you want to know what it's like for you to approach
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God without Christ as your sacrifice? Your mediator? Look at the cross. That's what it looks like. What does it look like to draw near to the
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Holy One? The Judge who does all things well? The One who has perfect justice? What does it look like to come near to that God without a mediator?
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It looks like a horrid crucifixion. A shameful exposure. An absolute abject death where even the most cruel and malicious evil mongers in that crowd eventually stopped laughing and just had to turn away in disgust.
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That's what it looks like. And He endured that shame to be a covering for you so that you could approach the cross, coming to the altar as it were, seeing that you're not the burnt offering,
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He is, and this peace offering is something now you can eat in the assembly of all of the righteous clothed with that sacrifice.
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That's the heart of worship. That's simple and pure worship. Amen? Let me close with some thoughts from Bonhoeffer.
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I was reading Life Together and he was talking about this. And again, so easy to say.
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Easy to say amen to and yet it doesn't actually penetrate your mind. It doesn't actually bear down on your emotions.
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And so it doesn't stir your will at all. So I say that as a caveat. Don't just passively hear these words.
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Really receive them. He says, sin must be brought into the light.
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What's unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. One stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God and the cross of Jesus Christ.
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And that one can be a sinner and still enjoy the grace of God. He can confess his sins and in this very way find fellowship for the first time.
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Sin concealed was separating him from that fellowship, separating him from God. It made that fellowship a sham.
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But when sin was owned, when shame was acknowledged, he had true fellowship with and through Jesus Christ.
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But, he uses this phrase pious fellowship. What we would kind of say the holy huddle.
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Pious fellowship doesn't allow anyone to be a sinner. Think about what he's getting at.
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We have genuine fellowship because of the sacrifice. Do we really understand what's taken place? Do we really understand why we're here?
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Have we really approached God and been covered by Him? Or do we have a pious fellowship, a holy huddle?
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Pious fellowship doesn't allow anyone to be a sinner. Everyone has to conceal their sin.
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From themselves, if not from fellowship, we dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous.
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What? A sinner? In a church of all places? A sinner? Could it be?
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So we remain alone in our sin and conduct our life in lies and hypocrisy.
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That's cheap grace, Bonhoeffer says, not true grace. Cheap grace. Pious fellowship.
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Cheap grace. True grace. God's grace is found when we join the fellowship of sinners.
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The fellowship of sinners. The fellowship of sinners is marked not only by a striving toward the true worship of God.
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You'll never want to approach Him more than when you recognize He's promised to meet you and bless you and He will clothe you and give you all that He requires.
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You'll never more want to worship, nor will you want to leave His worship having done so. But it's also marked by a radical honesty about your own sin, your own struggle.
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And in the community that translates to a deep confession and consistently frequent repentance.
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And then a high celebration of God's forgiveness and grace. Are we a holy huddle?
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Do we have cheap grace? Is it a scandal when one among us turns out to be a sinner?
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Or are we saints because we recognize first and foremost we are an unworthy fellowship of sinners?
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This is sick bay. We worship a physician who's come not for the well, but for the sick.
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Not for the righteous, but for the sinner. And so though we are a fellowship of saints striving in holiness, that holiness doesn't come about by a pious huddle.
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It comes about by confession and acknowledgement and owning of the depth of my sin and the separation from God and the separation from my brethren.
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It's not a false fellowship that causes me to be solitary and alone and feel like I'm treading water.
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I can actually boldly go and acknowledge my sin. And maybe that helps others to realize,
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I guess I too am a sinner and this is what it's actually all about to be a church that celebrates the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Don't allow the doctrine of sanctification to make you a hypocrite that never approaches the altar and is clothed by the righteousness of Christ.
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This is why we always preach the full doctrine of justification by faith alone before we ever dare handle the doctrine of sanctification.
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For this reason, it makes a difference between cheap grace and hypocrites and a holy huddle versus God's grace, true grace, redemptive grace that drives pure worship because it celebrates the forgiveness that only comes when we've been exposed at the altar.
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Have you been exposed at the altar? The hour is coming and now is when true worshipers worship the
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Father in spirit and truth. Jesus says, the Father is seeking worshipers like that. Are you a worshiper like that?
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If we say we have fellowship with Him, if we say we're at the altar having a peace offering with Him and we're walking in darkness, we're lying.
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We're not practicing the truth. But, if we're walking in the light as He's in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood, the burnt offering as it were of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
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What does it look like to walk in the light as He is in the light? It looks like my sin, my nakedness being covered, my sin being cleansed.
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That's what fellowship in the light looks like. Amen? Let's pray.
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Father, thank You for Your Word. Lord, thank You for these deep truths, Lord. Simple truths and yet so evasive.
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Simple as a mound of dirt or a heap of stones and yet, Lord, we're so unsatisfied with their depth for we see them as too simple.
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Help us, Lord, never to depart from them, to be robbed of the simplicity that is in Christ. Help us as a church not to devolve or degrade ourselves into some holy huddle that repels sinners when
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Jesus Christ came into the world to seek such as us, such as sinners. Help us,
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Lord, not to shun people into solitary confinement in their own struggles against sin, but to have a community that's marked by repentance and humility and therefore is driven to worship because worship is a celebration of Your grace, undeserved grace.
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It covers us because of the sacrifice of Your Son. Let us truly be grace, reformation,
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Bible church. That that would be emphatic in our lives, emphatic in our thoughts, emphatic in the way we approach
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You. That though the shame we feel would repel us,
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Lord, we would ever be drawn by Your own promise to meet us, clothe us, and bless us.
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And if there's a stranger to that grace, one who's treading water, feeling all alone, patching together leaves to cover their shame, may they see the foolishness, the wide path of destruction that they're walking upon.
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May they turn and receive the gospel of Jesus Christ.