The book of Exodus. In the first video we explored chapters 1 through 18, which
tell the foundational story of how God rescued the enslaved Israelites by
confronting and defeating Pharaoh while offering the way of escape through the
blood of the Passover lamb. God then delivered his people by bringing them
through the waters of the sea and then into the wilderness, where surprisingly
they grumbled and complained. Now the second half of the book of Exodus opens
as Moses leads Israel to the foot of Mount Sinai, where God invites the nation
of Israel to enter into a covenant relationship. And here we reach another
key moment in the biblical storyline because this is picking up in developing
God's promise to Abraham. So remember from the book of Genesis, God promised
that through Abraham's family, somehow he would restore his blessing to all of the
nations. And here we find out more.
God says that if Israel obeys the terms of the Covenant, they will be so shaped
by God's laws and teaching and justice that they will become a kingdom of
priests, which means that they will become God's representatives and show all
of the other nations what God is truly like. Now the people of Israel eagerly
accept the offer and so God's presence appears right on the top of Mount Sinai
in the form of clouds and lightning and thunder. And Moses goes up as their
representative and God opens with the basic terms of the Covenant the famous
Ten Commandments. These are like the basic terms of the agreement--
how the Israelites and God are going to relate to each other. And then after this come
another collection of commands which fill out the first 10 in more detail.There are
laws about Israel's worship, about social justice, how they are to live together;
all shaping Israel into a nation of justice and generosity that's different
from the other nations.So Moses writes down all of these laws and he brings
them down to the people, who again
eagerly agreed to enter into this covenant with God. And once they do so,
God takes the relationship forward another step. He tells Moses that he
wants his holy, divine, good presence to come and dwell right in the midst of
Israel, which develops another aspect of God's covenant promises. Remember after
humanities rebellion
in the garden, it was access to God's presence that was lost. But now it's
through the family of Abraham that God's presence is becoming once again
accessible through this covenant relationship. And first with Israel and
then somehow one day to all nations. So what follows are seven chapters of
detailed architectural blueprints about this sacred tent called the tabernacle.
There's the outer courtyard with an alter and then in the center there's a
tent that has an outer room and then inner room and then inside the inner room,
which is called the most holy place, is a golden box called the Ark of the
Covenant. And there's angelic creatures over the top of it. It's the hot-spot of
God's presence. Now there's lots of detail in these chapters and it's important to
know that every piece has some kind of symbolic value. All of the flowers, the
angels, the gold and jewels-- it all echoes back to the Garden of Eden-- the place
where God and humans lived together in intimacy. And so the tabernacle is like a
portable Eden, so to speak.
It's the place where God and Israel can live together in peace, at least in
theory, because right here something goes really, really wrong. Israel breaks the
covenant. As Moses is up on the mountain receiving the blueprint for the
tabernacle, down below at the camp, the Israelites, they're losing patience. And so
they asked Moses's brother Aaron to make for them a golden calf idol so they can
worship it as the God who saved them out of slavery in Egypt. Now God's presence,
it's right there on top of the mountain; they can see it, but here they are below
breaking the first two commands of the Covenant they just agreed to-- no other
gods and no idols. Now what follows is really important.
God knows what's happening down below. So he first invites Moses into his own
anger and pain and he tells Moses what he wants to do--just to wipe Israel out.
But Moses intercedes by appealing to God's character. He says, first of all,
destroying Israel would be going back on your covenant promises to Abraham. And
then Moses appeals to God's reputation among the nation's. What would they think
if they see you destroy
your own people? And so God accepts Moses's intercession and he relents. And while
he does bring his judgment on those who instigated idolatry, he forgives the
nation as a whole and promises to renew his covenant. And it's right here at this
point in the story that God for the first time describes his own character
to Moses. He says, "The Lord is merciful and gracious. He's slow to anger,
abounding in covenant faithfulness. He forgives sin but he will not leave the
wicked unpunished."
We have this tension: God is full of mercy but also he must deal with evil if
he claims to be good. And above all, God is faithful to His promises even though
it means he knows he's committing himself to a people who are utterly
faithless. And so after renewing the covenant with Israel, God commissions
Moses to go ahead and build the tabernacle. And once again we get five
long chapters describing in detail the construction of the tabernacle. And it
all comes together in the final chapter where the Tabernacle is finished. God's
glorious divine presence comes and hovers over the tent and our hopes are
high. And so Moses, he goes right up to enter into the tent, and he can't. He actually
can't go in and that's how the book ends. It's really surprising, but not really if
you think about it. You can see now how much Isreal's sin has damaged the
relationship with God in more ways than we realized. So the book opened, remember,
with Pharaoh's evil threatening Israel and threatening God's covenant promise. But
now as the book ends, Israel has become its own worst enemy. It's their sin that is
threatening the future of the covenant. And so the question as the book closes
is, "How is God going to reconcile this conflict between his holiness and his
goodness in His presence with the sinful corruption of his own covenant
people?" The solution to that problem is what the next book is about, but for now,
that's the book of Exodus.