Transcription downloaded from https://yetanothersermon.host/_/visionbaptist/sermons/53955/exodus-35/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfred, Georgia. It is our prayer that you will be blessed by the preaching of God's Word. Exodus 35. Exodus 35.

[0:10] You know, you really can't go wrong anywhere here, but I don't know anything about the portion of Scripture I was looking at. All right. Exodus chapter 35. It may not be about this one either. We'll know in 30 minutes.

[0:21] Exodus 35, we're looking at it tonight, and the bell kind of rang early on the last sermon and leaving a little bit to be said. Out of 34, and I'd like to talk about that.

[0:32] Talk about God being a jealous God, and we're ending there. When I left, David Dubois sent me a text message, a long portion of Scripture from Hosea chapter number 2.

[0:44] Let me read it to you. Hosea chapter number 2, verse number 14. We'll start at... Yeah, 14. Therefore, behold, I will lure Herm and bring her into the wilderness and speak comfortably unto Herm, and I will give her her vineyards from vents in the valley of Acre for a door of hope, and she'll sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the days when she came up out of the land of Egypt.

[1:06] And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishim, and thou shalt be no more Bali. For I will take away the names of Balaam out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name.

[1:18] And that day I will make a covenant with thee, with the beasts of the field and the fowls of heaven and with the creeping things of the ground, and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth.

[1:30] I'll break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely. And I will betroth thee unto me forever. Yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness and in judgment and in loving kindness and in mercy.

[1:44] I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord. Talk about Israel, the adulterous wife, the need to be restored, and the faithful God that wanted to do it.

[1:55] And that's what we were looking at in Exodus when we left, that Israel had not just made a few mistakes and that they just needed to be forgiven of something small, that they had been that adulterous wife that did not deserve the forgiveness that God was going to give, and He was going to give it.

[2:09] He was going to restore them. And He says, I'm going to call you my inheritance. You will be my people. You will be the people that I speak about, I'm proud of. You will be the people that I have your picture in my wallet when people are showing off what they're proud of.

[2:22] I will take you back unto myself. And He said that He was a jealous God. Asked you these questions. Are you being faithful to God? Do you look to Him only to fulfill your spiritual, emotional, and physical needs?

[2:34] Because if you do worship Him as the fulfiller, if you don't worship Him, then you will try to serve Him as an employer. So if He isn't all satisfying in everything to you, meeting your needs as the husband there in the story, then you're going to have the wrong type of relationship with Him, and you're going to see Him as He's supposed to be.

[2:52] Because we learned that He didn't make a covenant based upon merit, but on mercy. And when did God make a covenant with us based upon merit and not mercy? We said He did that. Never. And He's never made any covenants like that.

[3:04] So we shouldn't be worried that the type of covenant we're in with Him now, He might lapse into His old ways and begin to deal with us in the way that He had before. And then from that time, Moses had been in the presence of God.

[3:17] He comes down off the mountain, and when they see Him, they're in fear, and they run from Him because there's a radiance coming off of His face. The same as the last time they came.

[3:27] They were frightened by the presence of the Lord. And there's three purposes from the radiance. It says that it was one to exalt the mediator in their eyes. They've been disrespecting Moses.

[3:39] They had said that man that brought us out of Egypt, they didn't see it. Well, in this moment, the mediator had been exalted, and they said, We need Moses. And they needed to know they needed Moses because when you read the story, you know that you need Jesus.

[3:51] You need the mediator. Moses was a very meek man, the Bible says in number 12. He was the most meek man there. And then people ran from fear. And they remember, this is what they did the first time on Mount Sinai.

[4:05] And not only did it exalt the mediator, but also magnified the importance of the Word of God. We said that he didn't tell his story about what he saw, but he said he told them what he had heard.

[4:16] Because that's what's most important, that his Word is greater than our experiences. And then to assure the people of God's continuing presence. They shouldn't have been running, but they should have been relieved.

[4:26] And so apparently God's still meeting with us because we see the radiance. And then the Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians that this radiance that we would have from Jesus, that the old covenant would fade away, but it would be surpassed by the new one.

[4:41] Let me read you a little bit of Scripture from 2 Corinthians chapter number 3. Start, say, here with verse number 11. For they which are done away, which away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.

[4:55] We're speaking of the story from Exodus 34. Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech, and not as Moses would put a veil over his face that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look at the end of that which is abolished.

[5:11] So our New Testaments, our commentary on the Old Testament, we're getting some behind-the-scenes information here on why it was that Moses would cover his face. Come down from the mountain, his face was radiant.

[5:22] I keep wanting to say radiating, which I'm not sure if that's the case. I know it's a part to a car. But his face was radiant there, and he's talking to the people, but then he would cover it so that as it began to fade away, they wouldn't see that.

[5:34] So Moses put a veil over his face so that the children of Israel could steadfastly look to the end, which is to be abolished, and their minds were blinded. For until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament, which veil is done away in Christ.

[5:50] But even until this day when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless, then it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. Now the Lord is not spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

[6:03] But we all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory, and the Lord are changed unto the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord.

[6:13] And as he's preaching there, he's saying some of you are still seeing him with the veil on. You don't realize that Jesus Christ has come, and the veil has been removed, and we can see God through the person of Jesus, and they still have that veil that's keeping them from seeing it.

[6:31] And we should pray for their salvation. We should pray for the salvation of Jewish people that would not behold the glory of God found in Jesus, that are still seeing him through that veil.

[6:41] Then we get to chapter 35 here, and we talk about the Sabbath. And I've already read the portions of Scripture for you that we're going to look at.

[6:51] We're going to see that they're going to build a tabernacle. If there's a title, it would be, Whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it. That's said several times in this chapter.

[7:03] He says, If you have a willing heart, then bring these offerings unto the Lord. It was always, If you have a willing heart, we're going to see how Moses set it up so it's even voluntarily.

[7:13] He didn't demand it right there. He said, Go back to your tents, and they had a chance to do it because by being voluntarily, it was worship. It wasn't demanded, but they had an opportunity to be involved in it.

[7:25] In my last trip back to the motherland of Kentucky a couple months ago, and I was talking to a family where he was the deacon in the church, Floyd Henson, Brother Floyd Henson, and he would take me on a visitation, and they really were old when I thought they were old.

[7:42] They're in their mid-90s now, so they've always been old as long as I've been around. And as I was talking to them, I just assumed that the church that I went to towards the end of middle school and high school had just always been around.

[7:55] I had never thought about them as a church plant, but that church was started in 1975, and this deacon had taken part of his property and designated it for the church, and the church on the far side of the county had a lot of people coming to it from Fair Dealing, Kentucky, and you can imagine what the tagline is for the car dealerships there in Fair Dealing, Kentucky.

[8:16] And so they said, We got a lot of people driving from that area of town. Why don't we just help you start a church over there? And they gave, and they sacrificed, and I heard that story of who gave, and who would come mow the yard, and who gave this, who built that, and they just came together as a team of people to build that church in 1975.

[8:36] And then the majority of my family on my mom's side that have come to know Jesus have done so as a ministry of that church, myself included. As a nine-year-old boy, June the 7th, 1992, I heard the gospel so clearly that I knew I could not walk away without making a decision, and I made a decision that night as my teenage sister led me to the Lord.

[8:59] And so I'm indebted to those people for what they had done and what they have given and what they had sacrificed to build a church, which is different than a tabernacle, but they weren't giving to a building.

[9:10] They were giving to a work. They were giving not unto a pastor. They were giving unto a God because they knew that God liked them to assemble together, and He knew that they wanted them to meet in the church, so they did that.

[9:22] And so for the next five chapters, we're going to talk about building a tent, and it almost seems anticlimactic. All this is going on. God says, I'm going to kill you, and then Moses says, please don't kill us.

[9:32] He says, I'm not going to kill you, but I don't want to hang out with you, and He says, please, we need your presence, and then we have five chapters about the building of a tent here of this tabernacle, and it would seem anticlimactic except for the fact that this was God's plan to always provide for them a place in which His presence would be with them and dwell, and it really is exciting that I am like you, or maybe not like you, but I have read through this many times in reading through the Bible and not been near as excited about it as I am right now.

[10:00] This is what's been about. The great adventures from Exodus 1-25, 32-34, all these adventures lead up the people of God worshiping God and experiencing His presence.

[10:11] A lot of this duplicates itself from what we've already studied, or as it will, through these five chapters. But the first point I want to remind you of is that the building of the tabernacle was to be a project of all the people because worship and God's presence is the business of all God's people.

[10:30] The building of the tabernacle included all the children of Israel because the presence of God and the business of God was of the interest of all people. It wasn't an isolated group of people that were given to do that work because the presence of God isn't just given to a small group of people.

[10:46] It required involvement by everyone. Verse number 10, And every wise-hearted among you shall come and make all that the Lord hath commanded. So everybody that wanted to, it appears here that everybody did and it was a great amount, but everybody that wanted to, you can be involved in that.

[11:03] And that is the only stipulation about it, isn't it? You have to want to do it. I mean, you can do it if you want to, but you have to want to do it. The Bible says that we are wise-hearted. Because we're having our third child at the beginning of October, my wife has come to the decision that if the nursery is not painted, then our kid will grow up to be a drug dealer and be in jail early.

[11:22] Sometimes that happens when women are expecting, they really focus in on one thing and it has to get done. Well, it had, that nursery had to get painted. If not, we were going to raise a rebel rouser straight from the womb.

[11:35] And so we painted the room pink, which is what you do when you have two girls in it. And Thatcher will not even walk through it to get to the bathroom. We go the other way. And so we painted it and Tinsley was watching me the whole time and she wanted to.

[11:48] She wanted to paint. She saw me doing it. She thought it was fun. I said, this is definitely not fun. Asked Brother Micah as he went around all the way here. It wasn't fun, but she wanted to do it and she watched me. So she gradually worked up to the point.

[12:00] She had a brush with no paint on it. Then I gave her a little bit and then finally I stuck her in the closet and I said, just go to town, okay? And she painted her closet, but she wanted to do it. She had no thoughts that what I was doing was not fun.

[12:12] As a little kid, she's like, I want to do it. I want to be part of making this room pink and I will be fun. And it's so childlike, but all of you in here could probably look back to a time where you saw ministry like that, the work of the Lord inside of a church and the ministries that you run and you felt the same way that you just want to do it.

[12:31] I talk about all the time when they gave me the job of licking the stamps, the very first job I ever gave in the ministry for the missionaries. Somebody told me you could take a sponge and wet those stamps. I said, no, I'm going to lick every one of them, all right?

[12:43] I licked every envelope, every stamp because that was my job and there's never been anybody until this day that has done a better job at licking envelopes for the cause of world missions, all right?

[12:53] But I wanted to give it my all and I was all excited about it. Nobody would have told me it was a small job and you couldn't have convinced me that it was a small job and it wasn't because it wasn't for the missionary and it wasn't for the pastor that I was serving the God of heaven which took what would seem small and silly and made it humongous there.

[13:11] God equips the people so we see that everybody ought to be involved but we learn in verse number 30 here that God equips the people. Moses said, And the children of Israel seeth the Lord is called by the name Bezalel.

[13:21] So God had called them and He had filled them with the Spirit of God and in wisdom and understanding. Our pastor said this way better than I ever will in Exodus 31 that the guy that's going to do some of the work and some of the leading here he couldn't take credit for it because it was God that equipped him with that knowledge and understanding.

[13:39] He also says that in 36.1. But I love this. At 34 it says, And He had put in his heart that he might teach both he and Halib the son of his Suramach the tribe of Dan.

[13:49] So it says that He put in his heart and He hath put in his heart that he may teach. So the same God that equipped him with the ability to be kind of a lead architect he was a contractor he was overseeing this work here so it was God that gave him that ability but in that same giving of the ability God gave him a desire to teach.

[14:10] And God's put that in your heart as well. You have that God-given desire to teach it's in there because it's God that gives us desire both the will and the do of His good pleasure which means that when you read the Bible and it says that we're supposed to be teaching and multiplying discipling if that's what you're commanded to do then it means that He loves us too much not to also place that in us at our new birth.

[14:31] At that new birth He gave us that desire unto good works and part of that is to teach and help other people get involved in it. God uses people to equip other people. That's how He does it. How does God build a tabernacle?

[14:43] He gives somebody some understanding and then that person that has some understanding He shares it with somebody else. If somebody was in here in this church and you know if you know somebody is being stingy that they have plenty of something and they have a multitude of it and you're in need of it and they won't help you.

[15:00] If your lawnmower is broke and your neighbor has 18 and they never use the same one twice and after they use the lawnmower they just throw it away they don't even use it again. If you knew that about them you're like this person is so stingy you couldn't handle it.

[15:14] And we think about that about financial things. Can I say respectfully in here some of you know a whole lot about many things but you haven't shared it with other people in this room and I'm calling you out as being just a little bit stingy.

[15:29] You know how to do something and you're good at it. Andrew Wilder is going to go somewhere he's a wild man he's going to go somewhere and do something and I don't know where he's going to be at. Canyon Bloom is preaching at a church tonight and he's been invested in and there's going to be phrases and words and things that he learns.

[15:43] So whatever it is you can do in here don't be stingy with it. Don't think it doesn't matter because if it's worth God equipping you to know how to do it then people like me need to learn it and there's other people around you as well.

[15:54] And they multiply their abilities and influence by showing other people. It also advanced the work of the Lord. God not only gave Bezalel the ability to be an architect but he also gave him the ability to teach.

[16:08] If you want to make a difference today do a job. If you want to make a difference over a long period of time teach somebody how to do something. Invite them.

[16:19] Show them how to do it. Invite them to come there and watch you do it. Then watch them do it and then say now you're on your own you go do it you go that way I'll go this way we'll check in on each other and you will multiply. And we have to do it like that.

[16:31] Reminder that God's desire for the communion with us is greater than his desire for us is to build him something. First three verses are about the Sabbath and it sounds really hateful doesn't it?

[16:41] If you work on the Sabbath I'm going to kill you. And that's what's being said there and it seems very extreme but isn't it extremely loving the God? He wants a tabernacle they want a tabernacle but he's going to say I care about you I care about my children over the work because you're not employees getting a job done.

[17:00] A guy that's just concerned about running a business he doesn't mind if you work 80 weeks if you work overtime for free. He doesn't care about that if he just cared about the product. But a loving father finds out that you're running yourself to death and he says hey that's enough you need to slow down.

[17:16] That's what God's saying here. He says I want to remind you I care about you more than I care about getting this tabernacle. I care about your obedience and submission and your communion with me. If you're not going to spend time with me we don't need a building.

[17:27] If this isn't going to be about a relationship we don't need it. That's where he picks up on chapter 31 they're talking about the Sabbath all the fiasco goes on about the calf and all that and then God picks it back up and he says let me pick up where I left off talking about the Sabbath.

[17:42] This is more than just make sure to drink plenty of water as you work. It's about obedience it's about trust. God's saying even my tabernacle the place which visibly represents my presence on earth even it is second it takes a second place to the importance of you observing the Sabbath.

[18:00] That explains why it's such a serious penalty. And then verses 4 through 9 the people gave voluntarily expectantly as commanded and beyond the need.

[18:11] Look at with me in verse number 20 and all the congregation of the children of Israel departed from the presence of Moses. What Moses told them he laid out to them what they needed what God gave them and I said last time remember God didn't ask them anything they didn't have.

[18:30] What they had is what they had. They didn't have a chance to go get something else so it would have been really cruel of God to say and all of this I need you to put a satellite dish on it. They would say we have no idea what you're talking about God we don't know how to get one then that would be cruel of him but he knew what they had and he built the tabernacle out of those things.

[18:49] And so he tells them first of all I said I want you to go back to your tent and then that allows them a chance to do so voluntarily in verse number 20 and they came everyone whose heart stirred him up and everyone whom the spirit made willing and they brought the Lord's offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation and for all his service and for his holy garments.

[19:08] So here's your voluntarily chance to go and do this and then God moved in their heart that God gave them that desire to give and they go and collect the things. Long list of things that we're going to need to build a tabernacle one group says hey we have some brass and silver we have those kind of things in our house and then some other people are like we have some goat skin you know and everybody had a wide variety of things they might have but they gave of what they have voluntarily a wide range of people were giving verse 22 and they came both men and women and many as were willing hearted and brought bracelets and earrings and rings and tablets of all jewels of gold and every man that offered offering of gold unto the Lord and every man with whom he found purple and verse 25 and the women that were wise hearted to spin with their hands and brought that which had spun both the blue and purple verse 27 and all the rulers brought onyx stone and stones to be set for the ephod and for the breastplate men and women and the rulers everybody got involved in what was going on I'm sure some children were carrying things around it was just an exciting time to be part of it everybody working together for the same cause and it was an exciting time in the church the skilled women the rulers and expectantly they were saying come Lord quickly why were they so urgent about it because unlike the building that we will build down the road here they were building a tabernacle where he said in that building

[20:30] I will meet with you and they said God we want a place where we can meet with you and so they're saying surely Lord come quickly could you imagine if they weren't urgent about it if they didn't really care about that building because that building meant something to them but we build a church in a different way today don't we in the New Testament that every one of you are living stones and the day that Alex Montero accepted Jesus Christ became part of this church our church built it kept growing and advancing and that's the work that we go after not in competition in the buildings but in something way more glorious there you know the chairs you sit in were paid for by people eight years ago that prayed that they would be filled you're the benefactor of a gift that people worked not for a building that they worked for people to come to this church and they knew if people came to this church it would look better if you sat in chairs and not bean bags of something Mark Coffey kind of suggested for a while but we said we really need some chairs so he ordered 800 black ones that we can't get rid of until the day but people knew that it wasn't about chairs it was about people coming and we benefit from that and so expectantly they were doing it quickly because they knew that's where the presence of the Lord would be then commanded giving they said they were commanded giving us both a responsibility and a privilege verse number four it said it was commanded of the Lord and then the people gave as it was needed so is it a command from God yes is there a need for it does somebody have to need it yes but that doesn't negate the fact that it's still a privilege to do it it is all those things people gave more than the project required you've heard this story before nobody's ever had this trouble since but they said more things were coming than the project required why do you think that happened it says people gave more than the project required because they were not giving unto a project they were giving based upon the size of the

[22:24] God that had given to them how do you overshoot a project so much is when you're not even thinking about the project and you're thinking about the God of heaven that you're worshipping based upon a desire to worship not a desire to fill a quota application is not just about brick and mortars but today really letting God use our lives to build a church living stones you know it's a wonderful thing to have a brick with your name on it that you can see but it's even more wonderful to see people walk into this church that you know you help connect that living stone to this church it's exciting to see that then lastly here the tabernacle construction is to proceed strictly by the Lord's command unlike the worship of the golden calf this ought to help you kind of think back Aaron came down and Aaron told remember he told Moses he said hey these people wanted to build something they just started giving me stuff and I threw it in the fire and bada bing bada bang we got a calf I had no idea that was going to happen and he kind of says it like that but people gave them to do something they were giving their lives and they were giving their goal they were giving something that they couldn't replace to build it and so now in contrast to that they were going to follow

[23:35] God's command they're going to do it God's way the term just as the Lord has commanded is used to contrast what they did with the golden calf every few verses God would add that in the people did it just as a resource required to build it to God's specifications just like he wanted the work is worship and the process was praise the work was worship and the process was praise it wasn't just get this done but in doing something God was glorified hope you think about that in the ministries around the church here there's a certain way we want it done that between the time that we meet in this building to the time we meet in another building there's ways that we can do it that would glorify God and there's ways that would glorify ourselves you could have a ministry you have a class and it could grow and it could grow to glorify you it could glorify the God of heaven that he has a certain way today in which he wants us to do the ministry that it isn't about just building a product and just get it any way that you want that's why a church like this would stand in contrast the churches of different models around here and around the country because we say it's just not a product that he wants from us but there's a way in which we go about that he gets glory in that in the process wouldn't it have been exciting to see that

[24:52] Moses goes out there and he says this is what God wants and this is what it's going to need and then all together they begin working and they say hey I can grab this hey I can grab this I think I have one of those things and everybody is running together with that sense of urgency it's a beautiful picture and it's one that I get to see often here at this church when we get together and we say there's a project that we think we can work together on and through that our God will be glorified and somebody says I think I can do this I think I can do that but can I kind of as a way of review before I pray would you invite somebody into your life there it says that God put in their heart to do it so don't take credit of yourself if you know how to do something but also know that God has put it in your heart to teach people and invite them to do that I could name a million things but you say I might not be able to show somebody what Ezekiel says but I can show them right now how to change the oil on their car so they can save $29.99 well show somebody how to change the oil on their car if you know how to do that I may not be able to teach that but I know how to balance my checkbook well a training center student a young person in this church would probably benefit from somebody showing them how to do that because it's something that you learn at that stage of the game you've been married for a while reach out to somebody who's not been married as long and make sure they have an opportunity to know that if they need to talk to you that you'll listen

[26:14] I could go on and on but if there's something that God has given you that you're able to do don't be selfish with it we don't like it when people are stingy and we shouldn't be stingy with what God has given us and then no one here because the work of the Lord is about the presence of the Lord that every one of us are supposed to be involved in it not just a small group of people and that God has asked us to give voluntarily expectantly and as a commanded and there is a great need and he not only is there a need but he has told us how we should go about doing that let's pray together Heavenly Father thank you for your word thank you for an opportunity to serve and as we are a church building something not as a tabernacle that can be seen but a church that is living made up of people I pray that we will always work together we will be a tight knit group of people that are sharing one another we're sharing what you have taught us we're sharing our resources we're doing something that will glorify your name and we do it in a way in which we'll glorify you in Jesus name

[27:15]  I pray Amen this message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfred Georgia for more information log on to www.visionbaptist.com where you can find our service times location contact information and more audio and video recordings