As I have been listening to this series on the tabernacle, I’ve experienced a strange sense of de-stabilization. I had thought my life was rather well-ordered, but I was wrong. I really am only a pilgrim. I’ve never been homeless, yet I have spent over a year of my life, collectively, living out of tents. The first instance was with my brothers sleeping in a tent in the backyard. But most tenting has been more purposeful: Sleeping in a tent beyond the reach of Inns and Hotels has enabled me to spend intense moments in some of the most beautiful places in the world. I’ve tabernacled in places many people only read about, and I love it…
(Mt Whitney) Let me share one experience that is analogous to this stage of the sermon series: I, along with three family members chose to climb California’s Mt Whitney. Mt Whitney is the highest mountain in the lower 48 states. Climbing it was no small effort. First, we had to travel 2,000 miles to get to LA. Then we drove another 225 miles along the back side of the Sierras to Whitney Portal to camp out at about 8000 feet, 11 miles from the mountain. The next morning, we loaded our tents, sleeping bags, food, and all other supplies into our backpacks and started up the trail. Three times that first day we reached a summit ridge, only to descend into another valley to bring us closer to the mountain. Finally, late in the day, we reached our place for interim tabernacle. At 12,000 feet on the eastern face of the mountain we camped with the peak looming another ½ vertical mile above us. At daybreak, we left our tents and started up a series of 99 switchbacks that took us up to 14,000 feet elevation. From that ridge we could see our goal, but the only way to get there was to drop down nearly 1,000 feet before the trail could get us to top of the mountain, at over 14,500 feet the pinnacle of our land. That was climactic! From the summit we could see up and down the ridge of the Sierra Nevada range, we could see across California’s central valley toward the pacific coastal range, we could see to the east into Death Valley, at 282 feet below sea level, the lowest point in the Americas. It was spectacular. But we could not stay. We needed to start back down before either nightfall or lightning storms rolling in from the ocean might make this beautiful place a setting of danger. Descending was faster than ascending, but more perilous. With the last sunlight cutting through the gaps in the Sierras, we prepared our encampment for rest, anticipating another ten mile hike out the next day to reach our car.
Would you like to see my wonderful tent? No, that’s not the point. The tent was just a minor convenience to enable me to be in beautiful places.
Now, Jon’s sermons and our trek through the Sinai wilderness have been completely counter-cultural—they turn everything upside down. The center of our lives is a pilgrimage that is much more than vacation destinations and adventures. Christians do not need make pilgrimages to be with God. God has made a great pilgrimage to be with us. He camps out right in our midst. (God is Tabernacling in our midst). And his tabernacle is not just a light fabric tent. And it is clearly not just a weekend excursion. He is here to be with us until the end of the age.
Seeing God’s persistence in being among us is important because the religious tide in America is often discouraging… The pollsters are always struggling to identify trends, and the nature of such research is to generalize from relatively small samples.
Some discouraging news seems to be apparent. Membership in long-established mainline churches is declining. Young adults are more frequently abandoning the beliefs of their parents. The fastest growing religious category is those who claim NO Religious belief at all. As churches encounter and sometimes confront major cultural trends, the culture wars are turned toward the church, using terms like “haters” and “science deniers” to describe anyone who does not support a political agenda. It can be discouraging.
Yet in the midst of negativity, we are getting glimpses of revival that may take years to assess. We live with a promise made by Jesus of his long-abiding presence. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I will be there with you.” While American social trends and much of western culture fights it, the church is growing in the world faster than the soaring population. The center for this growth is NOT North America and Europe. Christ’s Church is growing fastest in Africa, Latin America and even in Asia (I’ve worshiped with thriving congregations in the Peoples’ Republic of China). The gospel may be turning the world upside down once again. Amidst distortion and persecution, the gates of Hell are not prevailing against the church. Today may be discouraging, but tomorrow is not lost.
Hold on to that anticipation for just a moment while we take one more glimpse into the Tabernacle of God’s people Israel.
Jon’s sermons have led us through the courtyard and into the tabernacle. We now are in the Holy of Holies. Here we encounter furniture which no now-living person has ever seen. The original Ark of the Covenant with its sacred contents seems to have disappeared around 600 years before Christ. It may have been captured by the conquering pillagers who destroyed the temple, or it may have been hidden away by priests or prophets, never to be found since. The Ark of the Covenant is laden with mystery. The clearly NOT-biblically inspired “Raiders of the Lost Ark” contained a really scary scene where modern people found and opened the ark, much to their horror and demise.
Back in the Old Testament, there were instances when the Ark was in full sight of many people. When the Israelites where on the move, priests carried it at the front of the procession. When they entered the promised land the priests carried the Ark into the Jordan River, stopping the flow of water for the thousands of pilgrims to cross on dry ground. When Jericho was about to be conquered, the priests carried the Ark around the city for seven days, and the walls came a tumbling down. But for the most part, the Ark was hidden from the sight of all but one person, the High Priest who saw it only once a year when he went into the Holy of Holies. This was the top of the mountain!
The Ark was described simply enough: (Exodus25)
About four feet long, 2 ½ feet wide, 2 ½ feet high with gold rings at each corner through which poles could be threaded for transport. All of it was covered with sheets of pure gold. The lid was also made of gold with two cherubim, angelic creatures, spreading their wings over the ark, facing each other to form the mercy-seat of God. Mercy seat of God?
Our God is not confined to a single location, but there may be certain ways and places where we meet him. We don’t imagine him sitting on a throne in the back of a tent or a temple. This is where it gets complicated: The Mercy seat of God was where the High priest encountered God on the Day of Atonement. You can read about this in Leviticus 16:6-10. On that day a complex ritual symbolically empowered the sacrifice of a bull and one of two goats to make atonement, payment, for all of the sins of the people. The High priest entered the Holy of Holies to sprinkle the blood on the Mercy Seat as God granted forgiveness to the people! Then a second goat, (scapegoat) is to have all of the peoples’ guilt, WHATEVER, put on the head of that goat and it was then taken out into the wilderness and set free Can you imagine? Once a year. “We have repented of our sins. We are clean, forgiven!” God’s desire to redeem his people is so great that he provided a place for his people to come together and meet with him. GOD is the one who chose to “tabernacle”. His Mercy Seat is available to us.
How do we experience this mercy seat? The physical tabernacle is not with us, but because God IS in our midst, and we are by Peter’s description a royal priesthood, we are able to enter into the holiest place and present pleas to God for his forgiveness.
That is a rather consistent mode of our God. He chooses to meet us where we are in order to bring us closer to him. Mercy, Amazing Grace is the result of God’s meeting us. This same pattern plays out through history.
JESUS is God's Tabernacling with Us
The coming of Christ to this world is a dramatic centerpiece for God’s “tabernacling.” Remember the occasion of Jesus encountering Moses and Elijah on the mountain? Peter blurted out: Let’s build a tabernacle for each of these three: The voice of God rang out: THIS IS MY BELOVED SON! LISTEN TO HIM! (MK 9:2-7) When John declared that the WORD (full representation of God) became flesh and tabernacled among us it was really an effort by God to become more accessible to his whole creation. He DWELLS with us and within us. (JN 1:14)
Pentecost was a Major Tabernacle Moment
Today we are observing Pentecost. Pentecost is a 3500-year-old celebration that has changed significance over the years. It started out in the days when the Israelites were in the Wilderness with Moses, worshiping in the Tabernacle. In Leviticus it is called the “Feast of Weeks”. Briefly here is how it went:
When the spring grain harvest began a “first-fruits” offering was brought to the Tabernacle. Then for 7 weeks (about 50 days—that’s what Pentecost means) there were weekly celebration feasts. As the nation settled in the promised land, agriculture became just one of the activities of the people, so a harvest celebration did not mean the same, but as a time for the people of God to gather it remained important. As the Jewish people began to be distributed around the Mediterranean world, Pentecost was one of three festivals for which Able-bodied Jewish men were expected to return to Jerusalem. By the New Testament era, it was a bit like a major religious convention, with a bit of Mardi Gras flavor thrown in. Jerusalem was a happening place with its most international feeling of the whole year. The primary gathering place was the Temple Court which surrounded the Temple—which was basically permanently built tabernacle, where all of the activities of the tabernacle still took place.
Now in Acts 2, all that normally happens regarding this festival of Pentecost had fully come to pass. But the atmosphere must have been different. There was the Roman occupation—A despised foreign government controlled the Jewish homeland. Further, just about 50 days earlier there was the Passion Week of Christ—His trial, death, burial, and then according to some reliable reports, HIS RESURRECTION. Literally, hundreds of people had SEEN the resurrected Christ. The priests tried to silence the Christ-followers, but people could not be quiet about something this big.
About 120 who risked believing that Jesus was indeed the Messiah had gathered near the temple and God’s Spirit stepped in. There was a sound like big a windstorm. What looked like flames settled on peoples’ heads and the Holy Spirit began to speak through these people. This attracted attention. (ACTS 2:5,6)
This remarkable event drew a crowd to whom Peter preached a sermon showing how God had been faithful to Israel while Israel had been unfaithful, then he zeroed in on this crowd which may have included some of the same people who less than 2 months earlier had cried out “Crucify him”. (ACTS 2:36-38) The gathered crowd feared the wrath of God, but they experienced the GRACE of God. And with this message of Hope and Grace the CHURCH WAS BORN ON PENTECOST.
And that same message is for THIS Crowd. When your sense of futility leaves you in hopeless despair, your best choice is to cry out “Brothers and Sisters, what shall we do?” You don’t need to make a pilgrimage to the Tabernacle. God has come to you. And there are people ready to listen to your plea and help you find the next step to take.
Pentecost Continues. How are we celebrating it?
You’ve heard the announcement about a special Pentecost offering for Directions Christian Church in Des Moines. This is an example of a carefully planned new church reaching people who had not heard the message of God’s personal and specific love for them. People who had not seen or heard the Glory and Grace of God are being led to Christ Through a newly planted church. Pentecost continues!
Another example: Some of you are aware of something Sunny and I are doing next month, on our own, but largely on YOUR behalf. Jeff Wilhoit grew up right here in this church. His dad met an early death and the church nurtured Jeff to adulthood. He is a WORLD CHANGER. He and his wife, Laura, have invested 27 years to enable an unreached tribe of people in Guinea West Africa to have the Pentecost experience of hearing and reading the Word of God in their own language. Lakeside has supported their venture and this June it comes to a climax. The printed TOMA BIBLE and the orally recorded TOMA bible will be presented in a major celebration. Government officials will be there. People who have become Christian in the process of merely helping Jeff and Laura to develop a culturally appropriate translation will be there. Lakeside Christian Church, who has supported the Wilhoits from the beginning, will be there! We are standing on the mountaintop with you. And God, who always seeks to tabernacle with his people will be there. To God be the Glory. May his mercy continue forever.
Your Pentecost may be TODAY!