Reverend Jonathan Waits
Sermon: Dwelling Place (Hebrews 9)
Date: June 2, 2024
I had the opportunity to talk to someone recently who is at the beginning of their journey into engaging with the Scriptures in pursuit of a deeper, fuller, richer, more robust relationship with Jesus. This young person has also made the choice to engage with the Scriptures from the standpoint of faith, assuming that they are true and that God will make answers available to tough questions at some point in the future. These are both really good things that are to be encouraged in every single person who starts down this path. But one of the things this individual observed to me is how crazy it seems that Israel slaughtered all of those Canaanite people at God’s command when they were moving into the Promised Land. Well, this led us into a conversation about all of the different factors we have to keep in mind when engaging with a story like this if we are going to be able to make any kind of positive sense out of it. These include things like God’s character as revealed by the rest of the Scriptures, the nature of God’s commands in the first place, how Israel and other ancient peoples received and processed commands like we find here, the nature of the culture of the ancient world, how God has always worked with and revealed Himself to us, and so on and so forth. The bigger point here, though, is one we should not miss and to which you may or may not have given much in the way of critical thought before: Understanding the ways God is revealed in the Old Testament narrative through the lens of the New Testament can be tricky.
God said and did a lot of things then that don’t make much sense to us. It’s sometimes hard for us to understand what exactly he was trying to do with Israel. We’re not really sure how relevant anything in the Old Testament is for us. I mean, we have heard so many people say over the years that we have to keep the Ten Commandments that we assume we have to keep the Ten Commandments, but do we really? What about the other laws? Things like the law repeated three separate times not to boil a young goat in its mother’s milk don’t seem particularly relevant for us without doing some serious spiritual and theological gymnastics to make it say something it almost surely couldn’t have meant to its original audience. But are there parts that are relevant? How do we pick and choose? Should we pick and choose? After all, the apostle Paul and James, Jesus’ brother, both seem to argue pretty clearly that if we are going to try to live by any part of the old covenant, we have to live by the whole of the old covenant. To miss out on any of it is to miss out on the whole thing. But if it’s an all-or-nothing affair, does that mean we can disregard all of it? Sure, there are some parts we would rather disregard because they’re so hard to understand, but other parts seem really worthwhile. What exactly are we supposed to do with all of this?
Well, while that line of questioning could lead us off into some weeds that we will have to sort through in more detail another time, let me offer a couple of thoughts to get us pointed in the right direction for this morning. Rather than worrying so much about the details of the old covenant which do not actually apply to us as the old covenant has been fulfilled and replaced by the new covenant in Christ, a better use of our time and attention is to notice the patterns and themes of God’s interacting with us, what these are, and how they have always been the same. When you do this, it starts to become clear that God’s goal toward us has always been the same: to dwell among us in a relationship with us.
In the next few months, we are going to take a big step together in the direction of the realization of a vision that this church has been slowly angling toward for a very long time. We almost got up and running with it four years ago, but a global pandemic pretty well put a halt to at least that version of the vision. We are working now with a fresh version and are ready to start taking some intentional steps in the direction of seeing it brought into reality. Before we get there, though, I want us all to be really clear on what it is we are doing and why. Yes, we are planning to build a building. That’s the physical form this vision is going to take. But we are also doing much more than that. We are building God’s kingdom from our little corner of the world to take things outward from here. Well, building His kingdom has always what God has been about. What that looks like for Him, though, and how we have far too often interpreted that idea often haven’t been the same. If we are going to be about building God’s kingdom, then I want to make sure we understand what that means. Over the course of this week and next, in a new series called Building the Kingdom, we are going to see if we can’t bring some clarity to that so when we are ready to take that big step together in a few months, we’ll know just exactly what it is we are doing
If we are going to understand what God’s goal has always been with humanity and our role in that as a church, we are going to need to start by looking further back in God’s story than merely the New Testament teachings on the church. We are going to need to look back at how God was building a relationship with Israel, what the purposes of that relationship were, and what all of that looks like through the lens of the new covenant. That’s what we are going to try to tackle together this morning. Next week, we’ll talk about something specific this means for us as a church as far as what we need to do together in light of God’s goal for us. In other words, today is the beginning of a two-part conversation. You won’t want to miss either part.
God started building His relationship with Israel most intentionally in the Exodus journey. I don’t want to take you to the beginning of that journey, though, but to a scene that unfolded between the Lord and Moses in which the former gives the latter instructions for building the place where the people were going to worship Him in Exodus 25. If you have a copy of the Scriptures handy, find your way there with me. The section here begins with God’s telling Moses to direct the people to take up an offering so they had the supplies they needed for the tabernacle. Could God have just done it all for them? Of course. But He wanted them to have some skin in the game in building their place of worship. There’s probably a sermon in there we need to hear, but we’ll have to save that for another time.
For now, listen to this: “The Lord spoke to Moses: ‘Tell the Israelites to take an offering from everyone who is willing to give.’” Okay, pause there for just a second. This was an invitation, not a coercion. God never works by coercion. He always woos and invites; never forces. He doesn’t want anyone to follow Him because they’ve been somehow made to do it. Begrudging offerings are worthless to Him. This is because He doesn’t need anything from us. His commands for us to give are invitations to trust in Him, not requests for us to give Him things He doesn’t already have. God wants our hearts, not our stuff. But our stuff is a way to our hearts, so God sometimes asks us to give our stuff.
Back on track. “The Lord said to Moses: ‘Tell the Israelites to take an offering for me. You are to take my offering from everyone who is willing to give. This is the offering you are to receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze, blue, purple, and scarlet yarn; fine linen and goat hair; ram skins dyed red and fine leather; acacia wood; oil for the light; spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense; and onyx along with other gemstones for mounting on the ephod and breastpiece.’”
These were all the supplies that were going to be needed for the building of the tabernacle. The tabernacle was the temple before there was a temple. It was to be a mobile place of worship that the people could set up and tear down as they moved from place to place between Sinai and the Promised Land (and then in the various places they stopped on their 40-year trek after refusing to go into the Promised Land on their first go-round). The instructions go on from here to describe all of the various parts and pieces of the tabernacle starting from the center of the tent where they understood God’s presence to dwell, and moving outward from there. That’s the part that can get boring if you’re not prepared for it and don’t know what you’re doing. But just before God starts giving those instructions, He says something important. He tells them why He wants them to build this whole thing. Look at this in v. 8: “They are to make a sanctuary for me so that I may dwell among them.”
This was why God wanted them to build. He wanted a place to dwell among them. Now, did God need a physical place in order to dwell among them? Of course not. God isn’t restricted to space and time like we are. But the people then didn’t understand that. The only experience any of them or any of their ancestors had with religion was that the god lived in the temple. The Israelites had experienced God’s power, but they didn’t yet connect that with God’s presence. They needed something to serve as a physical reminder that God was in their midst. There were two problems, though. First, they didn’t have a permanent home such that building a temple made any sense. And second, God wasn’t like the other gods worshiped by the people around them. He wasn’t limited like they understood them to be. So, if Israel built Him a dwelling place that was like every other god’s dwelling place, they would think about Him in the same terms as they did those gods. As a result, their worship space didn’t have any kind of an idol to represent God. Instead, He told them that His presence would dwell above the lid of the sacred box He was going to have them build to hold all their most important reminders of His actions on their behalf in between two sculptures of angels. It sounds weird to us, I know, but for the Israelites, this assurance of God’s presence among them was a very big deal.
Here’s the thing, though, none of the things God was going to have them build were real. I mean, they were real in a physical sense, but in terms of the spiritual realities they were conveying to the people, they were never intended to be anything more than symbols. They were symbols of the heavenly realities they were meant to help the people understand. Writing many centuries later, the author of Hebrews understood all of this and wanted to make sure the believers in his audience learned to put more stock in the spiritual realities made even more accessible by Jesus than the physical facsimiles represented by the temple and the tabernacle before it.
If you are still with me in your Bibles, flip way to the other side to the letter of Hebrews and check this out with me in Hebrews 9. “Now the first covenant also had regulations for ministry and an earthly sanctuary. For a tabernacle was set up, and in the first room, which is called the holy place, were the lampstand, the table, and the presentation loaves. Behind the second curtain was a tent called the most holy place. It had the gold altar of incense and the ark of the covenant, covered with gold on all sides, in which was a gold jar containing the manna, Aaron’s staff that budded, and the tablets of the covenant. The cherubim of glory were above the ark overshadowing the mercy seat [which was where God’s presence was understood to dwell]. It is not possible to speak about these things in detail right now.”
He’s just describing the things Moses tells the people to build in Exodus 25 and in the following chapters. Next, he talks about the process of worship that took place using all of these things. “With these things prepared like this, the priests enter the first room repeatedly, performing their ministry. But the high priest alone enters the second room, and he does that only once a year [on what we know today as Yom Kippur], and never without blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. The Holy Spirit was making it clear that the way into the most holy place had not yet been disclosed while the first tabernacle was still standing. This is a symbol for the present time, during which gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the worshiper’s conscience. They are physical regulations and only deal with food, drink, and various washings imposed until the time of the new order.”
Okay, that’s a lot, but what’s he saying here? All of that old stuff, while necessary and important when it was in operation, was always intended to convey a spiritual truth that is still very much in play. And that spiritual truth is this: God wants to dwell among His people. He wants to dwell among us, to live among us, because He wants to have a relationship with us and it’s really hard to have a relationship with someone when you’re not ever around them. Ever try a long-distance relationship before? They’re tough. God had maintained a long-distance relationship with us for a very long time. He was ready to get closer. But getting close to God isn’t as easy as walking into the next room. He’s holy and we are not and so we don’t deserve to be able to be in His presence in the first place. All of the things He was instructing Israel to put in place were about His graciously creating some structures that would allow them to better understand who He is as well as to get as close to His presence as possible given the limitations of their sin.
For all of those structures, though, they only ever allowed the people to get but so close. Building a relationship was more possible, but it was still hard. God’s desire, though, to dwell among us to be in a relationship with us remained unchanged. And so, when the time was right, He took things another step forward in Christ. Look at the text again now at Hebrews 9:11. Using the language of the old covenant to help his audience who was well-versed in old covenant thinking understand what he was saying, the author of Hebrews took things the next step forward. “But Christ has appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come. In the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands (that is, not of this creation), he entered the most holy place once for all time, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow, sprinkling those who are defiled, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works so that we can serve the living God?”
Are you with Him? Because of what Jesus did, we can gain access to God’s presence in a way the people living under the old covenant never could. That’s why the author of Hebrews at the tail end of chapter 8 pronounces the entire old covenant to be obsolete and passing away. It was good when it was in place, but its time has passed and God has given us something new; a new covenant in Christ. Now, through Christ, we can get into God’s presence. He can dwell among us through His Spirit and have the relationship with us we were all designed for in the first place. Used to be you had to go to the tabernacle to experience God’s presence. The apostle Paul told us that each of us as followers of Jesus is the dwelling place of God’s Spirit. Your body is the temple. You are the temple. Everywhere you go as a follower of Jesus you are serving a similar function and purpose as the tabernacle did.
Here, then is where things start to get really interesting for us. The purpose of Israel and later the purpose of the church was always to serve as an invitation point to the rest of the world to enter into a relationship with God. Under the old covenant, the tabernacle and later the temple were where God’s presence was understood to dwell such that anyone in the world could come there and experience Him. But that was one place. God wanted more. So He sent Jesus and Jesus launched a movement of His Spirit built on the faithfulness of His followers called the church. Now, every place the church dwells is a place where God’s presence dwells. In other words—and don’t miss this—God’s purpose has never changed since the beginning. His approach has changed over time because we have changed over time, but the goal has always been the same: to dwell among us in order to be able to have a relationship with us.
So then, what does any of this mean for us as a church? Do a little bit of thinking here with me and let’s figure this out together. God wants a relationship with us. Relationships require presence to become fully what they are designed to be. So, God gave us (and by “us,” I mean humanity through Israel) a way to be engaged with His presence in the tabernacle. That was always intended to be a temporary solution to the problem of a lack of relationship. When the time was right, Jesus arrived and made God’s presence something that we can have in us all the time through the Holy Spirit’s dwelling in us. But God still wants a relationship with the rest of the world that isn’t already engaged in a relationship with Him through the Son and the power of the Holy Spirit. To put that another way, God still wants to dwell among us for the world. Well, how is the world supposed to encounter His presence such that they can experience who He is and be drawn by that into a relationship with Him? In the ancient past, they could go to Jerusalem and encounter Him there, or at least get as close as was humanly possible to Him. What are they supposed to do now? The same thing. They have to go to the place where His presence dwells. And where does His presence dwell? In and through the lives of His gathered people. That is, in and through the church. God still wants to live among us. He simply does that now through the church. God lives among us through the church.
Do you see what this means? We are the place God’s presence dwells in this world so that those who have not yet entered into a relationship with Him can experience Him and do so. We are along with every church that is faithful to its Gospel identity in Christ. You and you and you and you and you are the place—the people through whom—where God’s presence dwells in this world; in this community. If someone is going to experience God’s presence in Oakboro, it is going to be because you allowed that to happen by your faithfulness to demonstrating it for them. Your willingness to accept and live in light of the fact that you are the bearer of the presence of God by virtue of your relationship with Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit is how someone who is not in a relationship with Jesus is going to experience Him and fix that. You. Us. Together. As the church. God lives among us through the church.
We’ve talked a lot about the church lately. This is because I want us to understand what it is and what it is for. Well, this idea today is perhaps the most important thing to understand about the church we’ve talked about yet. Our job may be to advance the message and mission of Jesus. We may be a gathering of Jesus followers called out for the purpose of advancing His kingdom on earth. But even more fundamentally than that, we are the dwelling place of God’s Spirit in this world. God lives among us through the church. He is building His kingdom through the church. He is inviting people into a relationship with Him through the church. He is calling us from out of our darkness and into His glorious light through the church. God lives among us through the church. And we are the church. We’re not the only church, but we are this church. And God’s plans are to grow His kingdom through this church so that all the world may know Him and be in a relationship with Him. God lives among us through the church. So, if that’s really the case, then let’s live like it together. Come back next week, and we’ll talk about some practical ways we can do it.