So Exodus chapter 40 today, this is our last in the series on the book of Exodus. Can you believe that? Just a couple of weeks ago we were in Exodus 35 and suddenly we're at Exodus 40 and we're finishing up the whole thing. mainly because the end of it is a whole lot of repetition, and yet it still is here on purpose from God for us to have for our benefit. Today we're going to see something very, very special as there's the completion of the tabernacle. and as the representation of the presence and the glory of God rushes in and fills that tabernacle. So if you would, let's read together. I am going to read the entire chapter today even though last time we weren't able to read every word of those four chapters that we covered. Let's look together at Exodus 40 starting in verse 1. I'm going to read to the end of the chapter. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, On the first day of the month, you shall erect the tabernacle of the tent of meeting, and you shall put in it the ark of the testimony, and you shall screen the ark with the veil, and you shall bring in the table and arrange it, and you shall bring in the lampstand and set it up its lamps, and you shall put the golden altar for incense before the ark of the testimony, and set up the screen for the door of the tabernacle. You shall set the altar of burnt offering before the door of the tabernacle of the tent of meeting and place the basin between the tent of meeting and the altar and put water in it. And you shall set up the court all around and hang up the screen for the gate of the court. Then you shall take the anointing oil and anoint the tabernacle and all that is in it and consecrate it and all its furniture so that it may become holy. You shall also anoint the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils and consecrate the altar so that the altar may become most holy. You shall also anoint the basin and its stand and consecrate it. Then you shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting and shall wash them with water and put on Aaron the holy garments. You shall anoint him and consecrate him that he may serve me as a priest. You shall bring his sons also and put coats on them and anoint them as you anointed their father that they may serve me as priests and their anointing shall admit them to a perpetual priesthood throughout their generations. This Moses did according to all that the Lord commanded him, so he did. In the first month and the second year on the first day of the month, the tabernacle was erected. Moses erected the tabernacle. He laid its bases and set up its frames and he put in its poles and raised up its pillars. And he spread the tent over the tabernacle and put the covering of the tent over it as the Lord had commanded Moses. He took the testimony and put it into the ark and put the poles on the ark and set the mercy seat above on the ark. And he brought the ark into the tabernacle and set up the veil of the screen and screened the ark of the testimony as the Lord had commanded Moses. He put the table in the tent of meeting on the north side of the tabernacle outside the veil and arranged the bread on it before the Lord as the Lord had commanded Moses. He put the lampstand in the tent of meeting opposite the table on the south side of the tabernacle, and he set up the lamps before the Lord as the Lord had commanded Moses. He put the golden altar in the tent of meeting before the veil, and he burned the fragrant incense on it as the Lord had commanded Moses. He put in place the screen for the door of the tabernacle, and he set the altar of burnt offering at the entrance of the tabernacle of the tent of meeting, and offered on it the burnt offering and the grain offering. The Lord had commanded Moses. He set the basin between the Tent of Meeting and the altar and put water in it for washing, with which Moses and Aaron and his sons washed their hands and their feet. When they went into the Tent of Meeting and when they approached the altar, they washed as the Lord commanded Moses. And he erected the court around the tabernacle and the altar and set up the screen of the gate of the court, so Moses finished the work. Then the glory cloud covered the Tent of Meeting. And the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it. And the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and the fire was in it by night in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout their generations." I want to encourage you today not to wait until your life is settled to devote yourself to knowing God. The Israelites were in the wilderness We've seen all of these events unfold over the course of the book of Exodus where they had gone from kind of settled, even though unsettled in a terrible way in slavery in Egypt, to then being brought out and rescued out of that slavery. Going through the Red Sea and God accomplishing this mighty victory for them. And then they go out into the wilderness and it is immediately uncomfortable for them. They're hungry. They're thirsty. Their sin begins to show. Even though God has shown all of His mercy toward them, even though He has declared that He would be their God and they would be His people and He would dwell among them, things are difficult. And even as they've settled for a short time in this camp at the base of Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments and received the rest of the Law from Moses, they are not where they are headed yet. They are getting ready to go to the Promised Land. We know it's going to take them 40 years because they're going to disobey along the way in ways that God decides it's going to take a whole generation of letting a new generation come in before He's going to do that. But in their minds, they're headed straight there. And you would almost think, well, why don't we just get there first? God has given us the instructions. He's going to lead us into the land that He said He's going to give to us. Why don't we just wait until we get there and get where we're going to settle, and then we can set up this stuff. And we're not going to have to worry about tearing it down all the time and picking it back up again, but that's not God's design for them. God's design for them is that He wants them to begin His worship immediately. He wants them to be devoted to Him immediately. Even though they're going to be wandering in the wilderness. Even though it seems like it's not going to take more than a few months to get to where they're settled. God wants them to go ahead and devote themselves to Him. Now, I want you to think about this. There's an awful lot that we're going to think through from this chapter, but before the end of this. Guys, if you're in a place in your life where you're thinking to yourself, I'm just going to wait until things settle down, and then I'll devote myself to the Lord, that's a bad place to be in. That is a spiritually dangerous place to be in. You think to yourself, I'm just going to wait until I have kids and settle down. And then we'll do the family thing and we'll be in church and we'll start acting like Christians again. You say to yourself, well, I'm just going to wait until things get more settled at my job because it's just so busy and I come home so tired. And when this gets settled, then I'll devote myself to personally knowing the Lord in Scripture and in prayer. Then I'll devote myself to serving the church. You say to yourself, I'll wait until these things get settled, these things get settled. I will wait until And we're missing something. We're missing that God is God over all of our circumstances. If God was God over the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, then God is God over however you feel unsettled right now. And he has purposes in it, and his purpose is for his glory. And what would He command you to do? What is His will for your life? Does anybody actually think, if you say it out loud, do you actually think that His will for your life is to wait until later? To know and serve Him? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And the sad thing is that there are multitudes of people who have had that mindset, I will wait until things are settled, and then I will know and be devoted to the Lord. Who have had that mindset all the way until the Lord took their life. And they are unsettled in conscious eternal torment right now. Having had some idea in their lives that God was the One that they were supposed to turn to, and yet saying, I'm going to wait until. And you know what, that time's never gonna come. Now, I say the time's never gonna come. Of course, eventually they got to the promised land. Eventually, after several hundred years, God would have them establish a stone temple and not just the temporary tent tabernacle. And yet, what we're waiting for is not a time to get settled. We're waiting for heaven. We are sojourners. We are strangers and aliens. So guys, I'm getting this from 1 Peter especially. This is the way that the New Testament describes you and me. If you are a Christian, you are a stranger and an alien, you are on a wilderness journey. Your life, regardless of whether it feels settled or unsettled, we are in a temporary situation waiting for our true hope, which is in heaven, which is Christ. So all of these things were just pointing towards something else, and we have the real reality that we know of in Christ. But guys, don't wait until you feel settled to be devoted to the Lord. So all of this was God having instructed and set up for them and using Moses to get it set up to say, you are wandering, but you must be holy as I am holy, even though You're eating temporary food, drinking temporary water, living in temporary shelters, wandering through the desert on your way to what you hope is permanent. Right now, you need to know the Lord. You need to be devoted to God. And so he gave them this movable, transportable, mobile tent that they could set up in a couple of hours and tear down and go wherever they needed to go as they followed God. And this is the story of how they did the final setup. All right, now what happened in the previous chapters is that they had done the construction, God had given them all of the instructions for it, and they had done the actual crafting of the materials and the items, and this chapter is Moses being given the instruction, okay, it's all made, now set it up. And it talks about Moses actually doing the setup. It talks about how he put all of these things together. In my mind, when I first read this, I'm thinking, Moses by himself? Did he go around pillar to pillar just doing all these things? Now, probably not all by himself. He would have had the others from the tribe of Levi, the Levites who'd been set apart for the service of the tabernacle. He's probably training them at this point. As he's setting it up for the first time, he's showing them, here's how you do it. When we get to our new campsite, you take this pillar, you put it in this spot, you take this curtain, you hang it here, you do this, you do that. But he's setting it up. And what we see here is we see God making a way right there, right where they are in their unsettled state to go with them and to be their God and that they would be his people. Genesis 46 verse 4, God had told Jacob, also called Israel, he said, I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again. God never left his people. He told them, I'm going there with you. When they'd been there for those 400 and some years in Egypt, it's not as though God wasn't with them. But now God is making his presence known. and He is bringing about their devotion. He is doing a work of being with them, even as He's been with them all along. God has gotten the Israelites out of Egypt. He's getting the Egypt out of the Israelites as they are to be holy, as He is holy, and He'll dwell with them. In Exodus 29 verses 44 through 46 it says, I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar. Aaron also and his sons I will consecrate to serve me as priests and I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God. So what we see in verse 1 through 33, that whole construction project, the final assembly project, is God's house being built up. Not as though God lives in temples made by human hands. He does not. Any of you kids in the catechism class memorize that verse today, Acts 17, 24? Does God live in temples made by human hands? No, He is the Maker of heaven and earth and all that is in them, isn't He? And yet God had designated this place to represent His presence, His dwelling place among them. And it was being built up for God's purposes. You see that they had already done construction. That there had already been all of these people who had done all of these things in order to put it together. And now, Moses is going to come and do the final assembly. Now what do we see about God's house throughout the Scriptures? Well, we see it representing different things. We see it represented in different things. It goes all the way from the Garden of Eden, which is this dwelling place of God with man. And then you get the tabernacle. And then you get the temple. And then you get Christ Himself, who is the dwelling place of God among men. Who said, tear down this temple and in three days I will rebuild it. And He was speaking of the temple of His body. And then you get the church. after Jesus has been crucified and risen from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit. And this is the primary way that we experience this house of God in this age right now, is that we have what God has called this dwelling place of the Holy Spirit that is being built up as living stones to offer spiritual sacrifices of worship. It is you. Plural. It is the church of the living God. And so as we see the tabernacle being built up, just reminded of some parallels of the church being built up in the New Testament. It says in 1 Corinthians 3.10, according to the grace of God given to me like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. So there was a building, and there's a building upon it. Ephesians 2, 19-22, we prayed from this just a minute ago. You are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Holy Spirit. Guys, there is a building that has already gone on, and God has used people to do the building. God had used Bezalel and Aholiab and their helpers to do the building, and now He is bringing in Moses to do the final construction. Guys, in the church, we have all kinds of people who have done all kinds of work in building up the church. I just mentioned a minute ago that we've just celebrated, or we just passed the 170th anniversary of this church in particular. Boy, there's a lot of building that has gone on before us. Not just physical construction, obviously. Physical buildings come and go. But there has been this foundation of the faith once for all delivered to the saints that's been built here. And it didn't start here. We were started by First Baptist Church, Keeport, which was started by First Baptist Church in New Jersey, in Middletown, which was started by exiles from Brooklyn who were being persecuted for their being Baptists by the Dutch Reformed. And they had come there because they were being persecuted in places like England and even New England as well. But that goes back to generation after generation of people who have been delivering the faith once for all delivered to the saints, people God has been using human beings that He has saved and gifted to build up His church in many ways over many years. But the ultimate builder of the church is not human beings. The ultimate builder of the church is not mere human beings, I should say. The ultimate builder of the church is Christ. Just as we have those who had done the initial construction, and then you get Moses, the mediator, coming in and doing the final construction. There's all kinds of stuff that we can do to serve the church, but ultimately, it comes down to our mediator, Jesus Christ, to build His church. It says in John 2, 19 through 21, Jesus answered them, destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it up. And the Jews said, it has taken 46 years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days? But he was speaking about the temple of his body. He says, I will raise it up. Matthew 16, 18, he says to Peter, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. So we have something very similar that we have God using mere man that he has called and gifted in many ways to build up the church, but ultimately, who is the author and perfecter of our faith? Who's the one who builds us up? Who is the one who raised up his body from the dead and represents that now in the church body? Who will build this church? Jesus. Jesus will build his church. So that we, according to 1 Peter 2.5, like living stones are being built up. That's a passive verb. Somebody else is doing the building to build us up. Who is it? It's Christ. I will build my church and we are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. They did the building in terms of all of the materials, all of the furniture, all of the curtains. They did the initial kind of consecrating of the priests as these priests were set apart to be holy. But ultimately, it was not they themselves that all of this was coming from. If all of this depended on human effort, it was going to fail. They would have been destroyed. This was set up by God. Guys, even as Moses is doing this, what does it say? Did Moses do something that he thought of? No, it actually says seven different times he did all that the Lord commanded. It says that over and over and over seven times. Guys, we do the work of building up the church, and we need to do work of building up the church. We've talked about this over and over as we've seen the construction of the tabernacle, and we need to continue to think of this. We want to pour into and love the church and build it up. Not to use those cliche excuses that are out there of, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. Or, I love Jesus, but I don't like the church. I like God, but I'm not into institutions so much. Guys, the church is God's plan. And it's God's people. And if you love God, you will love the church. You will love God's people. The Bible says that plainly in 1 John 5, 1 and many other places. But part of loving is saying, how can I pour into this? How can I build it up according to the commands of God and according to the gifting that He's given me? How can I help make disciples? How can I win people to Jesus? How can I help mature disciples? How can I help my brothers and sisters in Christ grow in their faith and in their likeness to Christ? And how can I serve in whatever way God would have me to serve, that He has gifted me to serve? By the way, last time I talked about that, about how do you know how God has gifted you? How do you know what your spiritual gifts are? Do you do it by taking a personality test that has the word Holy Spirit on there somewhere? You can tell. I'm a little biased against those spiritual gifts inventories. They're not altogether unhelpful. They help you think through what are your spiritual gifts, but ultimately you can score a certain way on a quiz, and that's not actually how God has gifted you, right? Well, how do you really figure it out? Well, you just make a decision, I will serve the church. and you start looking for people that you can serve, and you start looking for ways that you can serve, and you see how God has made this come together in you in terms of your desires and your abilities, and you serve. That's how you figure out your spiritual gifts, is you just start serving. Okay? So I would really encourage you to do that. But even as we do the work of building up the church, we need to pray and trust that God will do the work of building up the church. Okay? Now that doesn't necessarily mean that every individual gospel preaching church is going to continue to survive and thrive. There are individual local churches over the years that have been extremely faithful and that have departed from the gospel. There have been individual local churches that were extremely faithful and did not depart from the gospel, but they got shrunk down to a point where they could no longer operate. And yet, Jesus still said, and it is still true, and it's in front of us right now, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. that happens through local churches. Not every individual local church has the same thing happen in the same ways, but God will do the work. Jesus will build His church. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. So as we do our work, as we seek to be faithful, we praise God that God is doing the work. Not to take credit. Not to say, who built this church? It was Jesus. Jesus did it. Jesus did it. And when you see God's work done, when you see His house being built up, thank Him. Thank God for building His church. Another thing that we want to do is we want to see God's house built up and we want to experience the Lord's presence. Now this is kind of the focus of this passage is these verses right now, verses 34 and 35. Guys, this is what the whole book of Exodus has been leading up to. If we think that the whole book of Exodus was primarily to tell us about God rescuing some slaves out of slavery, we're missing the point. It's good that He did that, but He did that for a higher purpose than itself. If we think that the point is that He was showing mercy towards certain people, yes, but to what end? What's the point of showing mercy to people? What's the point? The point is the glory of God I've got to go down this rabbit hole a little bit because it's not a rabbit hole. It's the point of everything. If you don't understand that the glory of God is the purpose of you, you need to wake up. You need to pray that the Holy Spirit will come and shake your heart and convict you of sin and righteousness and judgment, which is what the Holy Spirit does according to Jesus. You need to pray that God would open your eyes to the fact that He is the Maker of heaven and earth and all things that are in it, and that includes you. You need to open your eyes to the fact that the very reason that you exist is because of this glorious God who filled the tabernacle so that Moses couldn't go in because of the weight of glory. Guys, God doesn't save you ultimately for you. God saves you ultimately for His glory. God did not rescue the people of Israel ultimately for the people of Israel. God rescued the people of Israel for His glory. If you are approaching God to say, how can God help me get more out of life? You have things completely backwards. We don't come to God to say, how can He help me get more out of life? We come to life saying, how can this life help me get more of God? We need to be oriented to the glory of God. We need to say, not I have been saved so that I can go sit on a cloud in a big family reunion forever. Although, that's going to be great to see our family there, but we want to say, I have been saved so that I will know and enjoy God forever. I'm going to be saved for the glory of God. Guys, this is the climax of the whole thing. The glory of God comes and settles on this meeting place between God and man, the tabernacle. We want to experience the presence of God. Guys, the great thing, Jesus said that this is eternal life. that they know Me, that they know you and that they know Me whom you have sent." Guys, knowing God is eternal life, and it begins the moment that you come to faith in Christ. They were getting a hint of that. by experiencing the presence of God in that cloud of glory in the tabernacle. We want to know God. We want to rest in God. Guys, if your life is unsettled and you think I'm going to wait until it settles down, you are searching for rest in the wrong place. Rest does not come in terms of worldly stuff. Rest is in terms of knowing God. Why am I bringing up rest right now? Well, that's the way that the Bible's going to refer to this sort of thing a lot for the rest of the Old Testament, is that I will give you rest. I will bring you in. I will give you rest. And that rest is in knowing God. There's a little hint of that in the fact, as I told you earlier, that as Moses was setting up the tabernacle with his final construction project, it says seven different times. And he did as the Lord commanded. This is I think the third time in the book of Exodus that we've seen this with the construction of the tabernacle being done in these sort of seven-step series with the completion of the work, and then at the end it says in verse 33, so Moses finished the work. What does that remind us of? Like I said, it's the third time we've seen it, maybe you're thinking of it already, maybe I haven't taught you very well. Seven times of doing the work and then resting from the work, it's an echo of creation. as they're setting up the tabernacle that represents God's rule over all creation with pictures inside it that represent things like the light of God and the tree of life and the presence of God Himself and the sky and the heavens. As all of this is going up in the series of seven steps of getting the work done, what do they have then? They have a rest. They have a rest just with the presence of God with them. Just like when God made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them in six days and on the seventh day, He rested. He was just there. Guys, this is what we need. You need to rest in the Lord. You need to trust what Jesus said where He said, Come to Me all you who are weary and heavy laden. You might even put that as unsettled in life. waiting for things to settle down, not knowing how you're ever going to work in pleasing God. Come to Me, all you who are weak and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He's saying, I did the final assembly already. I did the work. Come to Me. Experience and know Me. Know My presence. Rest in the Lord. And here's what it looked like then. The cloud covered the tent of meeting. And the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. This is the same cloud that had gone before them already and led them partway through the wilderness. This is the same cloud that they saw on top of Mount Sinai. This is the same cloud that rumbled and that God spoke out of this cloud as it was on fire with lightning. And he gave them the Ten Commandments. And this cloud is, in a way, it's not the presence of God itself, it's like it's shielding them from the glory of God. It's a mercy to them that there is a cloud wrapped around the glory of God so that they're not blinded and burned. And this glory of God surrounded by this cloud goes into the tabernacle and Moses can't even go inside. Which is strange because Moses has gone into this cloud before, hasn't he? Why can't he go inside? Well, what this is, this is God coming to live in his house. Now, of course, it's not his final house. He doesn't live in houses built by human hands. It's a representation of his heavenly home where Christ is seated at his right hand right now, but it's a representation of that. If you hire a builder to build you a house, which I've never done, but maybe some of you have done before, once the builder is done, does he keep a key and just go and come whenever he pleases? Absolutely not. When the builder is done, he hands the key over to the owner, and it's the owner's house, and the owner gets to decide who comes and goes now. That's what's happening here. God is saying, this construction is finished. This is My house. I'm coming to live here. I will let you in when I decide to let you in. And how I decide to let you in. And by His mercy and grace, He would let the priests come in. He would let the high priests come in once a year into the Holy of Holies. But even Moses himself isn't going to get in now. Wow. You know what we have? We have the very presence of God in Christ and in the Holy Spirit. The same kind of thing with this cloud covering and rushing in and settling in the tabernacle. It's repeated in 1 Kings 8-10 when they've built not just this temporary tabernacle, but a temple of stone. It says, "...when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister, because the cloud, for the glory of the Lord, filled the house of the Lord." And then you know when it happens again? It happens again when Jesus comes. When Jesus is baptized. It says, when Jesus was baptized, immediately He went up from the water and He beheld the heavens open to Him. And He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and resting on Him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, This is My beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. It's the Spirit of God coming upon the dwelling place of God again. And the dwelling place of God is the second Person of God, Jesus. And you know when it happens again? It's when God sends the Holy Spirit. Jesus said this would happen. He told His disciples right before He ascended into heaven, He said, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And then it happened in Acts 2, verses 1-4. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance." Alright, guys, the same filling of the tabernacle, the same filling of the temple, the same Holy Spirit who came down on Jesus Himself at His baptism, is the one who comes to indwell believers. And He did it in a visible way that was attested with the miracle of speaking human languages that they had never learned that we often call tongues when we read the Bible. He did that on the day of Pentecost with every believer in that church. And he was demonstrating, I will do this. I will take this people and fill them with the same Holy Spirit, the same presence and glory of God that came on the tabernacle and the temple, and even on Jesus Himself. I'll put in my people. And immediately after that happened, Peter stood up and he preached a Gospel sermon to all of the people who were there witnessing this in the temple grounds. And he said to them, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. You. You will be indwelt with the Holy Spirit just like that. He says, for this promise is for you, and for your children, and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord calls to Himself. He is predicting here, this will not just be for you. It will be if your children will be called and will repent and come to Christ as He said. If those who are far off, not just Jews but Gentiles, people of all nations will come. We will be His children. We will be indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And because of that, what do we have? We have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus. By the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain that is through His flesh. And we have a great high priest over the house of God. And so it says this, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Guys, let us draw near. Come to Christ. Come to Christ. If you see here this mighty presence of God, and God is opening your heart to say, I want the mighty presence of God. I want to know this God. The instruction is repent, believe, turn to faith in Jesus. You need to recognize the holiness of this God. You need to recognize you have absolutely no right to come to Him. You may think of God as somebody who's just sitting over in the corner just begging you. Oh, please, I don't know what I'm going to do if you don't come over here. You know what God did? He went in His house and He said, I will not let anybody in until I choose to. Don't get this backwards. You are not the one who gets to decide. will help this poor little God feel better. When I figure out that it's time for me to come to Him, He'll have something He never had before. He'll have me. Guys, God is holy. You are a sinner against that God. You don't deserve to come into His presence. And if you tried, apart from faith in Christ, you would be struck dead. But He has made a way for you in Jesus to come into the Holy of Holies where not even Moses could go. And that way is the new and living way which is Christ Himself. Repent. Believe in Christ. He will take you. Not because He just needs you. because He's merciful and gracious and abounding in steadfast love, and He's shown it in Jesus. Guys, those of us who are in Christ, we're going to look forward to this. Revelation 21 1-3, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and He Himself will be with them as their God. I'm looking forward to that. The final thing that they did here is that they followed the Lord's leadership. They built up His house, they experienced His presence, and they followed His leadership. Look at v. 36. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys." Guys, they had leadership from God. We have discussed this a little bit when that same process was described earlier in Exodus, so I'm not going to dwell on this very long. But I will say that many people long for that same kind of visible leadership from God today that they had back then. where God would, in this visible cloud, would ascend from up over the tabernacle house and go, and that's when they would know, okay, time to tear down the tabernacle, get everything wrapped up, tear down our tents, the party's moving, we're gonna go, we're gonna follow wherever this cloud goes. And we long in our day to say, can't I just have a cloud to follow? Can't I just do that? Guys, I have good news for you. That same glory of God that literally, literally the same glory who was in the cloud by day and the fire by night, if your faith is in Christ, He is in you. He is in you. And what Jesus has said about this third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is that He calls to remembrance the teachings of Christ, that He convicts us of sin, that He leads us in righteousness, that we open up the Bible and we see the words that He wrote that tell us where to go. You want to know, well, can't there just be this flame that I can follow and know the path? Well, the Bible says that He's given us His Word. Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. And who wrote the Word? The same Holy Spirit who was literally there in that pillar of fire. So there was an actual miracle here. and they got to actually follow the visible miracle. But how does God lead us now? Well, by the same Holy Spirit and primarily through His Word. Just remember, it's the same God who settled in the same cloud on top of Mount Sinai, gave Moses the law, the commands. This same one is in us and is leading us and wrote the Bible that He put in your hands. Psalm 23, verses 1-4, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness. Guys, God is never going to lead you in paths of unrighteousness. You think to yourself, God is leading me to be unrighteous? You're wrong. He's the Holy Spirit. He's not going to lead you into unholiness. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His namesake, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, which literally means the darkest valley. I will fear no evil, for You are with me. Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me." Guys, God is still our shepherd. Just trust that. Go to His Word. He leads and we follow. I'm not going to dwell on that, but I will say so many times when we want direction for big things, we need to first start with what we know He has commanded us to do in the small things. If you're wondering, will God guide my decision making for this big, huge decision I have in front of me? Well, He knows where He's taking you. You're going to be okay. You trust that. Continue on principles of righteousness in God's Word and make a decision and you're going to be okay. But I don't think you're very likely to make a good decision if you are disobeying God in small things on a daily basis. If you are not seeking God in His Word and in prayer on a daily basis. If you're not walking in fellowship with His people, the church. If you are not repenting of sin and seeking to walk in a way that's righteous and not sinful. It's really pretty clear most of the ways that God would lead us to go. But let me bring you around to this. The biggest question in the whole Bible is this. How can sinful people be reconciled to a holy God? And that's what the book of Exodus is about. And we see here that even though they were oppressed, oppression didn't make them sinless. Being a victim didn't mean that they didn't need to be forgiven of their sins. You can be a victim and a guilty party at the same time and that's what the people of Israel were. Every single one of us, regardless of our situation, regardless of how we want ourselves to be seen, regardless of how much we would want to play a victim or anything else, regardless of how much we actually are a victim, you are also a rebel against God who needs to be reconciled to a holy God and you don't deserve to be. And yet, God has shown in the book of Exodus and throughout the Scriptures that He is a God who is willing to show grace and mercy and is eager to show grace and mercy. And how has He done it? Well, He demonstrated it in a type and a shadow in Exodus. And He's brought it about in the substance of Christ. It says in John 1.14, the Word, Jesus, became flesh and dwelt among us. And that dwelling among us, some people call it tabernacling. It's the same kind of a sense of a thing. He came and He made His house here, dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory. Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. How can we be in the presence of God and be okay? How can sinful people be reconciled to God? Through the substance. Through Christ. Through Christ. That's why it says He loved us and He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Guys, don't just wander. Don't just say to yourself, I'll come to God when I get settled. Don't say all that's just for some other people who are more spiritual than I feel. Guys, none of us feel spiritual. It makes me want to go off on another tangent. When you see somebody who seems really, really spiritual to you, do you know why they seem that spiritual? It's because they have become deeply aware of how unspiritual they are. They've become deeply aware of their sin and they are continually beating it back by pursuing the Lord. Guys, if you think to yourself, I'm just not spiritual enough, you need to recognize this is how we come to God is by laying ourselves bare as unspiritual people before God, and yet, He cleanses us in Christ. So, guys, you need to come to faith in Jesus. You need to know Jesus now. We need to be about the work of building up His house, but we need to be about the work of knowing Him through His Son Jesus. Let's pray. God, we thank You for Christ who is our righteousness, who is the Word, who has become flesh and dwelt among us, who we have seen His glory. Glory as of the Father, full of grace and truth. We thank You that You, Father, have sent Your Son Jesus to be the propitiation for our sins. I pray that all who are listening to this would come to a place of recognizing Your holiness and their sin God, I pray that if there are any who would presume upon the riches of the grace of God that You'd put that away and that we could see that You are... Lord, You are the One who does not dwell in temples made by human hands, but You are the Maker of heaven and earth and everything that is in them. I pray that You would reconcile us to Yourself in Jesus. God, bring about repentance and faith so that we can come to You in Christ. And it's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.