March 14

Exodus 25

            In late May of 1976 in Stillwater, Oklahoma, I met a girl. She was really pretty. I found out that she had spent the previous summer, 1975, living in Ocean City, New Jersey. I had lived in Ocean City in the summer of 1974.  She had dwelt in the same house in which I had dwelt, what a coincidence!  We sometimes joke that before we married, we dwelt in the same house together, separately.  Our friendship progressed.  Seven months after having met her, I determined that I would like to dwell with her all the rest of my days.  I talked her into marrying me. In June, slightly over a year from the day we met, we were married, and we began dwelling together.  This June we will celebrate 36 years of dwelling together. What a joy it has been to share our lives dwelling together!

            The Lord told Moses, “Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” At other places in Scripture the Lord refers to Israel as His ‘bride’ or ‘wife’. Approaching our wedding date, my bride and I began preparing a place to live.  We rented a house on the corner of 5^th and Hester, and we furnished it. We set it up so that as soon as we returned from our honeymoon, we could begin dwelling together.  How about that! The Holy Almighty God wants to dwell among His people as with a spouse! But what does it take for God to dwell with His bride? He describes the furniture of His dwelling place.

            His first and foremost piece of furniture, which He commands to be made, is an ark. The Hebrew word ‘arown’ translates variously as “ark, chest, or coffin.” It is a picture of our Lord Jesus.  The wood represents His humanity, the gold represents His deity.  Together they speak of what the theologians call the “hypostatic union.” That is the two natures or substances constitute one personal subsistence.[1]  It is interesting to me that the word can be translated as a coffin.  When finished, the tablets of the Ten Commandments were placed inside the ark or coffin, the picture of Jesus.  When He went to the cross, He took the charges of the law, The Ten Commandments, which were written against us and wiped them out in His death.  Jesus carried them to His tomb and then rose victoriously, having fulfilled the law’s requirement.

            On top of the ark was placed the Mercy Seat and Cherubim, made of pure gold.  The cherubim are the defenders and protectors of the holiness of God.  The gold represents the deity of Jesus.  Once a year on the Day of Atonement, the high priest would sprinkle the blood of the Lamb upon the mercy seat to cover the sins of the people for the next year. It is through the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus that we receive mercy from God.  It is through Jesus that we enter into His mercy

            In the Holy Place was the table of showbread. It is also made of wood and covered with gold symbolizing the humanity and deity of Jesus.  The bread is a symbol of fellowship with God who gives us life.  Jesus said that he was the bread of life.  He came so that we might have fellowship with the living, holy, almighty God.  Because of Jesus, we can dwell with God!  Across the room from the table of showbread was the golden lampstand providing light to the room.  Jesus is the light of the world revealing the only true reality.  Showing us how our sin is removed and exchanged for His holiness, giving us access to the presence of God.  Hebrews 8:5 tells us that the earthly serves as a, “Copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, ‘See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’”

            So the Lord has provided for his bride to dwell with Him.  He has furnished His dwelling place with that which makes for an enjoyable relationship with Him. It is a loving relationshhip which He wants with us. Indeed we serve a glorious King.  Speak His glory to someone today!

--Pastor john

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[1] Lectures in Systematic Theology, Henry C. Thiessen  1981, p. 224.

March 9

Exodus 20 Here we are at one of the best known passages of the Bible and the most disobeyed. What does it mean to have no other gods before Him? Many years ago my bride and I stood before a minister of the Gospel and gave vows to each other to love each other uniquely and supremely as husband and wife till death parted us. Suppose I came home and found that she had added other husbands to her list. In this bedroom Jerry resided. In that bedroom Wilbur took up residence. In another bedroom was George. And me? Well, I am rich; I could go find a motel to stay in somewhere. After all she could maybe have a chat with me for about 30-60 minutes once a week—if she felt like not reading a book. I could not accept that. I would divorce her. I want a relationship with her. I don’t want to be held at a distance. But wait! That analogy is not strong enough. Jerry, Wilbur or George might actually be better for her than me. So for the analogy’s sake, what if she replaced them with rooms filled with the following. In one room she dedicated a large screen TV that continuously played movies featuring me in my best moments (it would be a short movie) in one continuous loop. Suppose she dedicated another room to numerous statues and busts of me in various walks of life revealing my greatness (yuck. . . ). In another room she had all the recordings of my best sermons playing one right after another so that she could never forget what a great orator I am (ha. . .). But even that does not reflect the passage. Suppose, in order to catch my greatness she used animals or planets to reflect what I was like. So in the TV room she had wonderful nature videos playing as a representation of what I was like. In another room she reproduced wonderful sounds of nature to represent who I am. Another room might be filled with the scents of nature to reflect my wonderfulness (I hope she wouldn’t choose a skunk). Other rooms might be filled with animals that remind her of me. Suppose I came home, and she ignored me. She was two busy watching my videos or caressing my statues or enjoying my scents or stroking the animals that remind her of me. In her mind it was enough that I would watch her in these activities. I’d send her to a mental institution. I want a relationship with her. I don’t want to be held at a distance. It would be insulting to me that she would desire those things over me. But wait! What if she daily went for a walk downtown. What if, she told all the merchants, “My husband wants this merchandise. My husband wants that merchandise. Here is my husband’s credit card. He’ll take care of it all.” What if in every conversation she threw out my name as if it were some common slur. What if her use of my name became associated with emptiness and meaninglessness?, What right would she have to daily drag my name into the ground by making promises that I had no intention of keeping or in frivolous use that degraded me in the community? It would be insulting to me and an indication that she had no intention to live up to the honor of my name. But wait! What if I had communicated with her that at least once a week that as much as possible, I would like for her to cease her normal activities to spend that day resting and focusing upon me? But instead of spending it with me, she sought other persons to be with or other things to do. After all, it was the only day of the week that she had for herself. What if I told her that that day would be a special sign to all other people that we were husband and wife? Yet she spent that day pursuing other relationships. Well after all, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise to me. I mean she had already spent her week filling her life with things that were less than me. It would be an insult to me that she preferred them over me. This analogy falls far short for the very reason that I could never be compared to the greatness of the glory of our God. The gap that exists between me and any videos, statues, sound recordings, animals or planets to represent me etc. is much closer than the gap that exists between the glory of God and anything with which we may want to represent Him or replace Him. After all, He is the infinite Creator and everything else is His creation. The right with which I have to request my wife’s affections are far less than the right with which He possesses to command my affections toward Him. After all, He is the infinite Creator, and I am His creation. Yet in breaking these first four of the ten commandments, this is how we how we treat God. This is how we view His glory. That is why we must seek to see His glory every day and share it with others. Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john

March 4

Exodus 15

            “The monkey is going to jump on his back right about. . . now.”  It was track practice.  The coach had given some instruction about setting the proper pace in running a 440. Then, he was trying to illustrate it as he sent several of us to run around the track while he gave instruction to others.  A 440 (a quarter of a mile) is a little longer than a sprint, but it is still a sprint.  One has to understand when and where one is going to hit the wall, and how to handle it.  Normally at a certain spot in the 440 it feels as if a giant monkey has jumped upon your back, and it is trying to pull you back.  It is unavoidable.

            The Israelites had endured ten plagues at the beginning of this race.  God had displayed His power in showing setting them free to sprint.  He seemed to fill their sails with a mighty powerful wind when He parted the Red Sea and drowned Pharaoh’s army behind them. But as they obtained their head start, and seemed to be pulling into the homestretch, the 800 pound gorilla jumped on their backs.  Three days into the desert, and they were out of water. By the end of the first day, I am sure that they were parched.  How many had left Egypt carrying sufficient water for the journey?  On the first day of the journey, I am sure that the realities of the lack of planning on their part were settling in. Three days without water and it was now critical.  Three days in the desert with no water and people would soon be dying.  They came to springs of water, but they were bitter and undrinkable even when dying of thirst.  The gorilla was relentless.

            God in His mercy showed up.  “Moses, take a particular tree and cast it into the water and it will be made sweet.”  Moses did it, and the waters were healed.  What a picture of the cross!  Our lives, which are wrecked and ruined by the bitterness of sin, are made sweet and satisfying by His cross when we consider ourselves dead with Him!  When life is bitter, when it feels like the 800 pound gorilla has jumped on my back, it is to time consider myself impaled with Him on the cross.  When I do, He raises me up to newness of life.  He brings me soon to the springs of Elim where refreshing waters flow, and that is His glory!  Indeed we serve a glorious King.  Speak His glory to someone today!

--Pastor john

March 1

Exodus 12:21-51

            They had to pick out a lamb. Four days before they killed it, they had to pick out a lamb to observe it.  They needed to observe it for any flaws.  The lamb had to be perfect. The lamb might have lived with them.  They must have had a close relationship with it.  Ever watched any You Tubes of lambs?  They are really cute — fluffy wool, dark eyes, ears sticking straight out from their heads, playfully spastic as they jump around.  Four days is long enough to become emotionally attached to the cute little thing.  Then they had to slay it at twilight before the night and day began.  Even in a culture where the slaying of an animal was somewhat routine, it must have hurt.

            Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on the 10^th of Nissan, the day everyone was to pick out a lamb.  He presented Himself as king by riding in royal procession upon donkey according to the prophetic utterance of Zechariah 9:9.  Multitudes loved Him.  Multitudes hated Him.  The leadership had determined that He must die to save the nation. Rejected as King, they chose Him as the sacrificial Lamb.  Jesus died at three in the afternoon on the Day of Preparation, just at the time when the priests were beginning to slay the Paschal lambs.  By sunset His body had been placed in a tomb.

            The Galileans reckoned their days differently than did Judeans.  So, Jesus could genuinely enjoy the Galilean Passover on the evening before He died. By this time in history, the Jews had been celebrating Passover for about 1,470 years.  As He broke the unleavened bread (unleavened spoke of sinlessness), He said, “This is My body broken for you.” Every Seder (Passover meal) has four ceremonial times when everyone sips from a cup of wine.  The third time is called the cup of redemption.  As Jesus led them in the Seder, He lifted up the cup of redemption and said, “This cup is the New Covenant in My blood.  Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of Me.” The next day at the very time that the Judeans were slaying the Passover Lambs, His blood was flowing down the cross to the ground. He gave up the ghost and died. 

            For 3½ millennia Jewish people have celebrated Passover.  I know of no other ritual that has endured for so long.  Why has it endured?  It has endured because it speaks of the glory of God in how He has and He will deliver His people from their sin. The Passover shouts at us that the seed of the woman has crushed the head of the serpent, that the seed of Abraham blesses all the families of the earth, that the servant of the Lord was smitten by God, afflicted for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, that the Lion of the Tribe of Judah has become a lamb to take away the sin of the world, that the Son of David has taken up his scepter to reign, that the Old Covenant which was written on stone tablets is being replaced by a New Covenant which is being written in our hearts.

            We must pick out a lamb.  Will it be the perfect, sinless Lamb of God who was slain on our behalf?  Or will it be another one of our own making or choosing?  The ones of our own choosing are inherently flawed. He is the only perfect One.  To choose another is to invite the wrath of the Lamb.  To choose Him is to invite His unmerited love. Now that is Glory!  Indeed we serve a glorious King.  Speak His glory to someone today!

--Pastor john

February 28, 2013

Exodus 11:1-12:20

            On the one hand, it seems so vicious.  Yet on the other hand, God Himself describes it as “displaying His wonders.”  I mean, really, the killing of probably thousands, or tens of thousands or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of Egyptian-first-born males sounds vicious.  Could not the Almighty do it some other way?  Why did he choose this act?  Maybe He chose this act for several reasons such as the Egyptian god being judged, the meaning and value of physical death versus spiritual death, and God’s own sacrifice to meet our need.

            On previous days we saw that God killed the Egyptian gods with the judgment of each plague. There was one last god to slay.  It was the god of self-worship. In the Egyptian pantheon of gods, Pharaoh was considered to be a god.  As the head of the country, he was deified as the hope of all the people to obtain eternal life.  Thus we have the elaborate burials to assist the dead Pharaoh in his journey in the afterlife.  Normally the succeeding Pharaoh was the firstborn male. The first born male was the one of preeminence. In a sense the elevation of Pharaoh to the status of god was by extension a form of self-worship. It is a message that rings through all eternity that there is one thing God will not tolerate.  It is the worship of ourselves over Him.  It shouts at us through the judgment of the death of the firstborn!  Everytime that I elevate myself above God, I should remember this plague and beware!

            Another reason that he chose this act is that from His perspective our physical death is not as nearly critical as spiritual/eternal death.  Many of those Egyptian first born were probably not at an age where they could understand the choice that God was asking of them, much less make a good moral choice.  They were under the age of what we might call the age of accountability.  If they were to continue to grow up in that culture, they would probably be confirmed in the pagan worship of the Egyptian Pantheon.  They would never trust in Yahweh.  They would eventually die in their spiritual death.  Their spiritual death would then become permanent.  For those children, their physical death before reaching the age of accountability would be a literal blessing.  Sure, their physical life would be cut short, but they would spend eternity with the living God.

            Finally, the Almighty chose this symbol because it represents His own sacrifice on our behalf that we might be rescued from eternal death.  He planned the symbol before He created the world, Paul says in 1 Cor. 2:7, “But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory,” and, in 2 Tim 1:9, “Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began.”  Before time began He determined that God the Son, the firstborn, would become flesh and die in our place. His holiness demands the death of sin.  His mercy demands that He die in our place. Now, that is a wonder!

            The firstborn male of every household would die.  There was only one remedy.  Only if a perfect and innocent lamb was slain, and his blood applied to the door of the house, only then would the firstborn be saved.  When the blood was applied, the death angel would see it and pass over the household.  The Lord had more than this one incident in mind.  He was broadcasting for every generation for the next 1,450 years what He was planning to do for the human race.  He would supply the Lamb whose death would be accepted for all who would come “under” the blood of the Lamb.  We, who had made our own lives gods instead of submitting to the true God, would have opportunity to receive pardon and life!  What a picture!  What grace!  What wonder!  What Glory! Indeed we serve a glorious King.  Speak His glory to someone today!

--Pastor john

February 27

Exodus 10

            Up to this point Pharaoh has hardened his own heart at times.  But now the Lord is going to harden it for him in order to produce acts that will reveal to people for all times that He is Lord.  The Lord has three more gods to slay.  Three more judgment events were coming in order to display that He is truly the only God.  The Egyptians trusted in the goddess Isis to protect them from Locusts.  Every 17 years there is a locust plague in the area anyway.  It was to Isis that they cried out for protection.  The locusts came anyway.  In this instance it was more severe than they had ever known.  They ate all green vegetation.  And when Pharaoh asked for relief, God sent a strong wind that blew them all into the Red Sea.

            Once again after the relief came the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh.  This time the Lord slew the Egyptian sun gods.  They had a number of sun gods which they worshipped.  Among them were Re, Khepri, Harakhte, Attum, etc. This definitely displayed the greatness of the Lord over their gods.  The darkness was so strong that they could feel it.  But again the Lord made a distinction.  In the houses of the children of Israel, there was light.

            Have we experienced the Lord yet?  Is His glory increasing?  What gods is He slaying in my life?  What gods is He slaying in the lives of those around me?  Is my heart soft enough so that I will recognize His glory?  Is yours?  Indeed we serve a glorious King.  Speak His glory to someone today!

--Pastor john

February 7

Genesis 40 In 2007 shortly before I left for Senegal, I had a very brief vision. It was rather cartoonish in nature, but it was clearly the Lord speaking to me on the approach to a significant time of ministry. In the vision, the Lord simply asked me with a smile, “So, you wanna be a door keeper? I have often pondered the meaning of it and whether it was just for that trip or for my life as a whole. To this day I am not completely sure what it meant. It is the pleasure of God to speak to the one who will listen and obey. Two things are clear from Scripture: 1) God speaks to people in dreams and visions. Examples? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Pharaoh, Moses, Balaam, almost every one of the OT prophets Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Cyrus. In the New Testament there were Zacharias, Mary, Joseph, Simeon, Anna, Peter, John, Phillip the evangelist, the leaders at Antioch, Paul. 2) Those to whom He spoke in dreams and visions seem to be people whom He could trust to be obedient, or who were at a crossroads in history in which He would use them as significant players, whether or not they were obedient to Him. 3) The number of people with who it is recorded that He spoke that way are a significantly small number of people in relation the general population. Joseph’s dad, Grandpa, and Great Grandpa had all been communicated with by the Lord through dreams. When Joseph had his dreams as a teenager and shared them with his family, his father’s argument was not that God does not do such things, but whether Joseph had really interpreted it correctly. Maybe that was why Joseph said, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell them to me, please.” Maybe He was thinking of his father’s response to his early dreams. Maybe he himself was beginning to wonder if those dreams would ever come true. After all at this point, Joseph has been in slavery and/or prison for 11 years. Yet he obviously still believed; otherwise, he would not have insisted that they tell him their dreams. God was with Joseph, and I think Joseph knew and believed it. Do you suppose that Joseph thought that somehow the dream of his fellow prisoners might somehow be related to the interpretation of his own dream which had been rejected by his father and his own experience to this point? Yet he still had the audacity to say, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell them to me, please.” God cannot lie, and Joseph knew it. God gave him the interpretations. Those interpretations led to the fulfillment of his own dreams. Do you suppose that God really wants me to be a doorkeeper? Is there really any sense in which He will use me to unlock or lock doors of spiritual regions for the Gospel of our Lord Jesus? If He does, then it will only be glory for Him. After 57 years of life, I am convinced of one thing: If I accomplish any thing of significance, then it will not be because of me, but solely because of His mighty power. It will be only for His glory and none of mine. Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today! --Pastor john