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Today's scripture reading is taken from several places in the Old Testament book of Exodus.
So I'll be reading from chapter 25, verses 1 to 8, chapter 35, verses 20 to 22, 25 and
29, chapter 36, verses 3 to 7, and chapter 40, verses 34 and 35.
It's all printed in the liturgy.
A reading from the book of Exodus.
The Lord said to Moses, tell the Israelites to bring me an offering.
You are to receive the offering for me from everyone whose heart prompts them to give.
These are the offerings you are to receive from them.
Gold, silver, and bronze.
Blue, purple, and scarlet yarn and fine linen.
Goat hair.
Ram skins dyed red and another type of durable leather.
Acacia wood.
Olive oil for the light.
Spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense.
And onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breastpiece.
Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.
Then the whole Israelite community withdrew from Moses' presence.
And everyone who was willing and whose heart moved to them came and brought an offering to the Lord for the work on the tent of meeting.
The tent of meeting for all its service and for the sacred garments.
All who were willing, men and women alike, came and brought gold jewelry of all kinds.
Brooches, earrings, rings, and ornaments.
They all presented their gold as a wave offering to the Lord.
Every skilled woman spun with her hands and brought what she had spun.
Blue, purple, or scarlet yarn of fine linen.
All the Israelite men and women who were willing brought to the Lord free will offerings for all the work the Lord through Moses had commanded them to do.
They received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to carry out the work of constructing the sanctuary.
And the people continued to bring free will offerings morning after morning.
So all the skilled workers who were doing all the work on the sanctuary left what they were doing and said to Moses,
The people are bringing more than enough for doing the work the Lord commanded to be done.
Then Moses gave an order and they sent this word throughout the camp.
No man or woman is to make anything else as an offering for the sanctuary.
And so the people were restrained from bringing more because what they already had was more than enough to do all the work.
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
Moses could not enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it.
And the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Good morning.
I want to just reflect this morning together on this theme, really today and next week,
this theme of building God's house together.
Building God's house together.
For what was that first great collective project, you know, that the people of God were working on together in the desert
after they were liberated from slavery in Egypt.
They were building the house of God together.
They were building this sanctuary of God, the tabernacle of God.
Now, why have I chosen this text and this theme?
Well, I want to prepare you for our congregational meeting that's following.
I want to prepare you for conversations we're going to be having over the next six months.
If you've been with us before, hopefully you've heard us say that the mission of Christ Church
is to lead people into a deeper relationship with Christ and His church through community and for the city.
But the primary inhibitor to our mission right now is the debt that we owe on this facility in which we sit.
And so it's mission critical for us to eliminate that debt over the next 12 months.
And our solution to this problem is to raise an additional $600,000.
And the urgency to do that, to take this bold step of faith,
is that we have a balloon payment due on this building at the end of 2024.
Now, I can already see some of you are looking for the exits, eyes glazing over,
the preachers talking about money, and that's kind of weirding me out.
It's hard enough to listen to NPR's pledge drive without changing the channel.
But to hear this, you know, religious professional talking about money, that's just a step too far.
But what I want to do, my goal today is just to slowly, gently, kindly put this opportunity on your radar.
I've not buried the lead, I've just put it right here on the top of the newspaper.
And I want to give you a little bit of teaching today about biblical generosity.
And in the new year, after Christmas, after Easter, we'll circle back and slowly just define and teach
what the Bible has to say about stewardship.
Now, if you don't want to wait for six months, you can go ahead and begin giving now.
I give you permission.
You can come to our meeting.
You can get the information you need and figure out what God is prompting you to give.
And we thank you for that.
But I believe that I've been here about 18 years.
And I think this is the most important budget that we've ever brought before this church.
We launched our church in 2005-06.
And so we have our 20th birthday as a church in sight.
And we really want to position ourselves over the next few years for the coming 20 years ahead of us.
As we look back to what God's done, we want to look ahead to what He wants to do.
And we sense that God is leading us into a season of ministry that's about growth, that's about growing deeper and growing wider.
So we want to provide you the information today.
And we really want to provide you the motivation that you need to join in and participate in that mission with us.
So enough about our budget.
Let's talk about God's Word.
When you look at the first book of the Bible, Genesis,
the story of God's creation of the universe is told there in a mere 34 verses with utmost brevity.
And so it's quite striking that one-third of the book of Exodus is devoted to this building project.
Why would the author of these books take 15 times as long to tell the story of the building of the tabernacle
than he did telling the story of the building of the universe?
It's to communicate to us that the house of God and the worship of God is extremely important.
The story of the Exodus, as you know, starts in slavery.
But it doesn't end when the people of God leave Egypt.
In fact, the story does not end, it's not complete, until they finally get to the house of God and worship.
The point of these people being set free, the point of them being set at liberty,
is not just to be free, it's to worship God and to serve God.
And so until God becomes the most important thing in their lives,
until God becomes the most central thing that's organized in their lives,
they're actually not a liberated people, they're not a free people.
That's the point of the book of Exodus.
So, of course, here they are, they're called to build the house of God,
but they can't build that house of God together without the resources,
without the materials for that building.
So I want to take a deeper look at this scripture to, again, just slowly, gently, kindly introduce to you
a biblical definition of generosity and stewardship.
You ready to go?
Okay.
Well, I want to talk about the gift of giving.
I want to talk about the gladness of grace.
And I want to talk about the glory of God with us.
The gift of giving, the gladness of grace, and the glory of God with us.
Look at the first verse in our reading today.
It says, the Lord said to Moses,
Tell the Israelites to bring me an offering.
You are to receive the offering for me from everyone whose heart prompts them to give.
And then in verse 8 it says,
Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.
Now, this is brilliant, because how do you take 12 tribes of former slaves
who've been stripped of their identity over the course of 430 years,
and how do you unite them together as a free people?
These are people who share a past in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
They share a present in Egypt, and now it's Sinai.
But how do you help them share a common sense of responsibility for the future together?
Well, in God's wisdom, he gives them a group project.
And this is not your typical 20-80 project.
Kids, youth, I hate to tell you,
but you're going to spend the rest of your life working on 20-80 projects,
where 20% of the people do 80% of the heavy lifting,
and you can make your parents very proud by being part of that 20% and not part of the 80%.
But this group project is supposed to be different.
And in fact, it's the turning point of the book of Exodus,
because until now, God has done all the work.
God struck Egypt with plagues.
God took the people out to freedom.
He divided the sea.
He gave them dry land to walk on.
He's given them manna from heaven and water from the rock.
And even still at this point, they don't yet cohere as a nation.
They're still a group of individuals, a group of tribes.
There's a lot more me than there is we.
They're not yet taking responsibility and acting collectively.
And so what can God do to transform these people?
Well, God instructs Moses to take the people through a role reversal.
So he says, instead of me doing things for them,
I now want them to make something for me.
I want you to ask them to build something together,
to make a visible, symbolic home for my divine presence
and construct this collective house of worship.
It doesn't need to be large.
It doesn't need to be permanent.
In fact, God doesn't need the sanctuary at all.
He's at home everywhere.
But he wants to use this tabernacle to teach his people
how to live with him at the center of their lives.
And so God says to Moses to get them to give,
get them to make something, get them to become builders.
And this, in fact, transformed this disparate people
into a cohesive group and gave them a sense of shared identity
and common responsibility for the future.
And I want you to notice how they gave to this project.
Look at chapter 35, verse 21.
It says that everyone who was willing
and whose heart moved them came and brought an offering to the Lord.
And then in verse 22, it says,
all who were willing, men and women alike,
came and brought their gold and jewels.
And then it says in verse 29,
all the Israelite men and women who were willing
brought to the Lord freewill offerings.
What's repeated here?
That this is a willing offering to God.
That this is a freewill offering to God.
That the generous giving of these people
is actually the evidence that their wills
as former slaves have been set free from bondage.
They've not just been set free externally from bondage,
but their wills on the inside have been set free from bondage.
Because generosity at its core is not a financial issue,
it's a spiritual issue.
And Israel had been learning up to this point
a very important lesson on their journey so far with God
about the will of God and the willingness of God.
Right?
Here in this place of the wilderness,
this place of desert and scarcity and nothingness,
here in this place of emptiness and void and threat,
they experienced God over and over,
not as a God of scarcity,
but as a God of generous, miraculous abundance.
In this place, they experienced and they met a God
who they realized was willing for their sakes
to fill the desert with bread.
They met this God who was willing to make these dry rocks
bubble up and over with water.
And day after day, every morning they would go
and they would harvest this willing, plentiful abundance,
this daily bread that God had provided for them
in this place of scarcity.
And each evening they'd come home
and they'd find this meat on their tables.
And what they learned about this God who was willing
and this God who was so generous in his abundance
was that it began to unlock a generosity in them.
It began to unlock a generosity in their wills.
That as people made in the image of this God,
they began to imitate him
and their giving out of willing hearts
began to express, more fully express,
their humanity and who God meant them to be.
But I want you to notice not only how they gave to this project,
but notice what they gave to this project.
Look at the list of offerings that they bring before God.
Precious metals of gold, silver, and bronze,
expensive dyed yarns of blue, purple, and scarlet,
which were marks of wealth and nobility and royalty.
Brutches, earrings, rings, ornaments.
This is not the kind of stuff you put out
at your garage sale, right?
These are costly, precious things, costly offerings.
And the question is, where in the world
did this desert-dwelling group of refugees
get all this costly stuff?
Well, if you go back to Exodus 12, it says this.
The Israelites did as Moses instructed
and they asked the Egyptians for articles
of silver and gold and for clothing.
And the Lord made the Egyptians favorably disposed
toward the people and they gave them what they asked for,
so they plundered the Egyptians.
Not only did God deliver his people out of bondage,
utterly unharmed, but he also somehow
moved the wills of their captors.
He moved the wills of their oppressors
so that they gave gifts to take with them.
And what the people learned in this
is that everything that they had
was not an entitled right,
but was an undeserved gift
that had been given to them by God.
Precious metals, luxury fabrics,
fine jewelry, priceless gems and stones.
When God asked them,
in your freedom,
will you offer these things up to me?
They knew that God was only asking of them
what he had already given to them in the first place.
They knew that when God commands the tithe
over and over in the Torah,
he's not asking them to give 10% of what is theirs.
He's asking them to only keep 90% of what is his.
And they're to say to themselves,
you know, we're not owners with entitled rights.
We're stewards.
We're managers.
And everything we have is an undeserved gift.
And when they realized that,
it unlocked a radical generosity in them.
And so that's just the question today.
It's not about how much money we have
or we're gonna give.
It's do you know this God?
Do you know this God who's willing and generous
in his abundance?
Do you know this God
and have you received undeserved gifts from him?
And has his generosity been unlocked in you
so that you're now willingly imitating back to him
his generosity toward you?
That's the gift of giving.
Amen.
So I wanna talk not only about the gift of giving,
but also I wanna talk about the gladness of grace.
The gladness of grace.
Look at verse 21 of chapter 35.
It says,
everyone who was willing and whose heart moved them
came and brought an offering to the Lord.
And I love that word everyone.
All the people had an opportunity to take part.
It wasn't just the men,
it was the women too, right?
First egalitarian society in the ancient world.
It wasn't just the elites,
it was the people as a whole,
everybody, no matter what you had,
you could participate in this project.
But when it says,
everyone whose heart moved them brought an offering,
does that sound familiar to you?
Do you remember another story
where the hearts of the people moved them
to take off their gold jewelry
and lift it up as an offering?
That's what the people did
when they created the golden calf, right?
When they fashioned this idol
in the middle of this building project.
It's interesting.
We started reading in chapter 25
where God says,
I want you to make this offering
and build this sanctuary.
And then you have in chapter 32
this great betrayal,
this massive infidelity
on behalf of the people of God.
And now we come to chapter 35
where the gifts are actually given.
And what's happened in this intervening time
is that though the people have betrayed God,
God has graciously put
the infidelity of his people right.
God and his grace,
if you just go back and read
these last few chapters,
he's forgiven them.
He's restored the relationship
and he's received them back
into a renewed covenant with him.
And so when these people,
these forgiven people
are thinking back
to that golden calf moment,
what were they doing there?
What were they doing there
at the golden calf?
Were they giving to that project
out of a sense of duty
and a sense of sacrifice?
No, it says that they were giving
to that project
out of revelry and dancing.
They were giving to that project
with an effortless generosity.
They just gladly gave to this idol
everything that they had
in the hopes that this idol
would make their lives okay.
And you know,
most of us,
we can probably think about
ways in which we ourselves
have effortlessly
and gladly given our money
to get things.
But you know,
usually it's not just
to get the material thing.
We're trying to get
the thing behind the thing,
the thing beneath the thing.
So we give our money
to get security or comfort.
We give our money
to get independence or belonging.
We give of our money
to gain status or power
or approval or control.
All of us,
if we followed our money
far back enough,
beyond just the material thing
to the thing beneath the thing
and behind the thing,
it will usually lead you
to some sort of golden calf
in your life.
Some sort of false idol
that you think this thing
and not God
is going to make me okay.
But we should always
be asking ourselves
of these things
that we so gladly
and effortlessly
give our money to.
Do you love me?
Will you die for me?
Will you forgive me
when I fail?
Will you fulfill me
when I succeed?
Will you hold me
when I have nothing
to offer you?
Will you save me?
You see why it's so important
for these people
who had just been
worshiping the golden calf
to come and bring their gift
and to give this gift
from the heart.
They're to be moved
from the heart.
And it's that moving
of the heart
that's so critical
because this moment
is a matter
of repentance.
They're turning
their hearts away
from this false idol
for whom they had
gladly danced
down the aisle
and effortlessly given
their most precious possessions
and they're turning
their hearts back
to this God of grace
who made them
and who redeemed them
and who protects them
and provides for them.
And they're saying
in this moment
that God
and God alone
deserves
not just our stuff,
He deserves our hearts.
He deserves
the movement
of our hearts
and our affections.
You know,
the message
of the gospel
is that God
has not withheld
from us
but He's graciously
given to us
His only Son.
He's given to this world
of idol-making,
calf-worshiping people,
His beloved Son,
Jesus.
And amazingly,
Jesus sees us
giving ourselves
and our lives
to all these things
that are not worthy
of our lives.
But Jesus gladly
and willingly
gives us His life
and His blood
and He gives us
His breath
to win us back
to the Father.
So that when we see
God,
this God of all grace,
giving Himself for us,
when we see this God
of all grace,
dying for us
as our substitute
on the cross,
when we see Jesus
making us
in that moment
His treasure,
what do we want to do?
We want to make Him
our treasure
above all else.
Right?
When we see Jesus
as the one true
willing giver
whose heart
moved Him
to be emptied
of all the riches
of heaven,
when we see Jesus' heart
moving Him
to be stripped
of everything
that He had,
when we see Jesus' heart
moving Him
to dance down the aisle
to the altar of God
for the joy
set before Him,
and when we see Jesus' heart
moving Him
to gladly lay down
His life
as an offering
in our place,
when we see Jesus
giving Himself
like this for us,
this God of grace,
displaying
the infinite grace
that He has for us
on His cross,
does it cause your heart
to move?
Does it fill your heart
with gladness
and with gratitude?
Does it make you
want to dance down the aisle
to the altar
and just gladly
and effortlessly
give to God
all that you are
and all that you have
because He's the only God
who made you,
who's given His grace
to redeem you,
who day by day
is protecting you
and providing for you?
I think that's what's going on
with these people
in chapter 35.
There are people
who've been touched
by the grace of God.
And so it says
in chapter 36,
actually,
verse 3,
it says,
the people continued
to bring freewill offerings
morning after morning
so all the skilled workers
who were doing
all the work
on the sanctuary
left what they were doing
and said to Moses,
the people are bringing
more than enough
for doing the work
the Lord commanded
to be done.
Then Moses gave an order
and they sent this word
throughout the camp,
no man or woman
is to make anything else
as an offering
for the sanctuary.
And so the people
were restrained
from bringing more
because they already had
what was more than enough
to do all the work.
And of course,
you know,
this is every pastor's dream.
You know,
that the hearts
of the people
would be so moved
by the grace of God
that their hearts
would just be so urging them,
their hearts would be
rousing them
to respond
to the grace of God,
their hearts would be
pushing them
in an inward
voluntary compulsion
to give
that they'd not be
saying to themselves,
what's the bare minimum
required?
How much is enough?
But rather,
they would be saying
to themselves,
like these people
were saying to themselves,
look at how gracious
God is.
Look at how wonderful
his works of grace
are toward us.
The Lord's unstinting,
overflowing grace,
particularly in the midst
of our betrayal
and our infidelity
and our lack
of faithfulness,
God's grace toward us
is so great
that it's getting inside
of our hearts
and it's moving
our hearts
not to dance
for all these
false gods
and these substitute
counterfeit gods,
but to just dance
down the aisle
and at extravagant
personal cost
to ourselves
just to lay
our most precious
treasures
down before him.
You know,
this outpouring
of plenty
and excess,
it caused
these skilled craftsmen
to say,
Moses,
make them stop.
We actually
can't even process
anymore.
And Moses had to say,
cease and desist.
He had to put
a restraining order
on their glad,
grace-based
generosity.
Why?
Because they all knew
there's more than
enough grace
from God.
And so there's
going to be
more than enough
for the work
that God wants
to do among us.
And that's what
the grace of God
and the gladness
and the gratitude
of responding
to his grace
does to us.
So the gift
of giving
and the gladness
of grace,
and Andrew,
do I have time?
Can I just,
a few more minutes?
I want to talk
about the glory
of God
with us.
Okay?
So,
Genesis begins
with God
creating the universe
as a home
for humankind,
but Exodus
ends with
human beings
creating a sanctuary
as a home
for God.
Genesis,
God is there,
he's creating
the heavens
and the earth
as a space
for people.
But in Exodus,
the redeemed people
of God,
with all their gifts
and their labor
and their skills
and their time
and their energy,
they're creating
a space for God
in this world.
They gave their
precious resources,
but they also gave
their physical presence.
They gave their treasures,
but they also gave
their time
and their talents.
And because
these many people
freely gave
their many different gifts,
they built
the first house
of God.
Now,
I actually have a slide.
Hopefully,
this first slide
comes up.
It's a black and white
slide that sort of
shows you
all the 12 tribes
and how they're
centered around
this one central tent.
And then I have
a colored slide
that shows you
that this is
a luxurious tent.
It's full of pure gold
and expensive fabrics
and precious stones.
It's really
the mobile palace
for a king.
And they built
this amazing building,
but that's not
the end of the story
because if all you have
built is a house of God,
who really cares
about that?
It's just a mailing address.
And if all you've
really planted
is just a community
of people living
around that building,
who really cares
about that?
That's just another
social group.
So what do you need
more than just
a house of God
and a community
of God?
You need God
himself.
You need God
himself to
come down
in all of his
presence
and his power.
You need the glory
and the goodness
of God.
You need the glory
and the goodness
of this king
to come and fill up
this luxurious palace
that the people
have made for him.
And that's what God
says in chapter 28.
He says,
have them
make a sanctuary
for me
so that I can dwell
among them,
so that I can dwell
in the center of them.
And then it says
in chapter 40,
it says,
then the cloud
covered the tent
of meeting
and the glory
of the Lord
filled the tabernacle.
God comes down
from heaven
to earth.
He comes from
the top of Mount Sinai
down to the people
in the valley.
This transcendent God
of awe-inspiring power
comes down
as this imminent
indwelling presence.
God,
the God of the universe,
becomes our neighbor.
He becomes intimate
and close
within the camp
and among
the people.
And he says to them
when this happens,
he's saying to them,
I want you
to have all
my goodness
and all of my glory
dwelling in your midst.
I want my beauty
to be the center
of your life.
I want my holiness
to be the focal point
of all that you are
and all that you do
wherever you go.
And I want to meet
with you here
day after day,
week after week
as this point
of connection
and communication
and communion
between you
and me.
And what's amazing
is, you know,
we quote this
all the time,
but in the Gospel
of John,
it says that
in the beginning
was the Word
and the Word
was God
and the Word
became flesh
and in the Greek
it says
he pitched his tent
among us.
He came
and he tabernacled
right in the center
of us.
And you know,
what's so astonishing
and so breathtaking
about Christianity
is not only
that God came down
in the human flesh
of Jesus,
it's that God
continues to come down
by the Holy Spirit
to dwell in us
individually
as little temples
of the living God.
He comes down
by the Holy Spirit
to dwell among us
corporately
as a mini-tabernacle,
a mini-sanctuary
for the living God.
You see,
God lives
not in houses
of wood and stone,
but he lives
in the souls
of his people.
He lives
in the loving relationships
of his people.
God is not to be found
in great buildings.
God is to be found
in the regenerate heart.
God is to be found
in a revived church.
And so when we
pray for revival,
what we're praying for
is this.
What we're praying for
is saying,
God,
all the activity
that we're doing,
all the time we're giving,
all the money we're spending,
all the energy
we're exerting,
none of that's really
going to amount
to very much
unless and until
the glory of the Lord
fills the tabernacle.
Unless and until
the Holy Spirit
comes down
in greater
and greater measure
and you give us
more and more
of yourself.
And isn't that
what we want
in this next season
of our life together?
An unusual
outpouring
and manifestation
of the very presence
of the one true
living God.
His goodness,
His glory,
making its home
here among us,
saturating us
with the presence
and the power
of this King
who's worthy
of all these
precious things.
Right?
And so that's my prayer.
You know,
it says that Moses,
he can't even
enter in
to the tabernacle
because the glory
of God
is filling it up
so much.
There's no room
for Moses,
there's no room
for anybody else
because God's fullness
is so thick
in that place.
And that's my prayer
for us
that in this next season
God's presence
and His power,
His goodness
and His glory
would be so thick.
It'd be so full.
It'd be so weighty
and so substantive
and so undeniably real
here when we come
to meet Him
that we feel
we can barely,
just barely
enter in.
We can barely
stand up
before this God
who's given us
the immense privilege
of building
a house
for Him
together.
And that's my prayer
in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.