The Story of Your Salvation-Exodus 40:34-38

Exodus, Old Testament, Sermons

  • Video recording, 9/11/2022.
  • What’s your story? Remarkably, the story of Exodus is virtually, theologically, practically and precisely point by point the story of your very own salvation.

The contingency of God is the story of my salvation. Virtually everything that I’m doing today is NOT something I had planned to do, or had even thought of beforehand.

  • I never ever thought of going to medical school or becoming a doctor. But I’ve been a doctor for 44 years.
  • I never ever thought of coming to America but I’ve lived in Chicago for 42 years.
  • I vowed that I would never become a Christian. But only by the grace of God I’ve been a Christian for 42 years.
  • I thought I would never marry because I couldn’t talk to girls, or of marrying a non-Chinise if I ever married. But I married a fiery caucasian red head.
  • I never wanted to teach anything to anyone. But I’ve taught the Bible for 42 years since I became a Christian.
  • I expected to stay at the Chicago center all my days and never wanted to start a new church ministry. But we’re been at WL for 14 years since 2008.
  • I definitely did not want to preach every Sunday. But I’ve been the primary preaching pastor for almost a decade.
  • I always thought that preaching is by reading off a script. But now I preach extemporaneously without the sermon being written out.
  • I never thought I would babysit babies regularly even though I have 4 kids and 7 grandkids. But of late I’ve been babysitting my youngest grandchild 3x/week from 10 am to 4 pm.

## I learned that I am indeed not the Lord of my life, but that God “has been my shepherd all my life to this day” (Gen 48:15).

From bondage to glory.This is my 30th and final sermon on Exodus. It begins with the Israelites enslaved in bondage (ch. 1, 2) and ends with the glory of the Lord dwelling in their midst (ch. 40). It begins with a people in servitude to an earthly king and ends with a people in servitude to a Divine King. It begins with a tale of darkness, misery and oppression, and closes with the brilliant illumination of God’s glory (Exo 40:34-35). Exodus traces the development of the Israelites from a nation Pharaoh enslaved and tried to annihilate to a nation sheltered by God’s presence (Exo 40:38).

Do you see your own story in the story of Exodus? How were you a slave? Why did you need a Savior? Do you know what sacrifices were made for you? What is your covenant with God? What are you “building” with your life?

  • Slavery: Exodus 1-2 began with the Israelites in bondage “groaning in their slavery” which God heard (Exo 2:23-25; 3:7). Jn 8:34. 2 Cor 5:21.
  • Savior: God met and called Moses the mediator and deliverer in the burning bush (Exo 3:2-6). 1 Tim 2:5.
  • Sacrifice: The slaughter of a year old male lamb without defect (Exo 12:5-7). Jn 1:29. 1 Cor 5:7.
  • Salvation: God delivered them from slavery (Exo 19:4; 20:2) to bring them to the promised land (Exo 3:8). Jn 14:2-3.
  • Covenant: God made a covenant with them to be their God (Exo 6:7).
  • Law: Obedience to the Law (Exo 19:5) to maintain their relationship. Jn 14:15, 21, 23.
  • Tabernacle: God gave Moses detailed instructions to build the tabernacle for the holy God to dwell/live with them (Exo 25:8; 29:46). Jn 1:14.
  • Forgiveness: Moses and the Israelites completed the Tabernacle (Exo 40:33) after forgiving them (Exo 34:6-7) for the tragic event of building the Golden Calf (Exo 32:7-8). Lk 23:34.
  • Indwelling: Finally, the holy God dwelled in the midst of his sinful people when “the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Exo 40:34-35). Jn 1:14.

“…the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Exo 40:34, 35). “The glory of God is man fully alive.” St. Irenaeus.

The tabernacle is the capstone of God‘s cultural project to remedy man‘s incompleteness and restlessness. Human beings can be complete and at home only when they acknowledge their dependence on their Creator, and even more when they come intimately to know their Creator He them. The Creation itself will be complete only when the Creator is known and intimately Present in the life of His godlike creature–created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27). A major theme of Exodus is that they may come to know Him and that He may be part of their lives forever (Exo 29:46).

The Tabernacle and People Formation. What are you building with your life?

  1. The people become active instruments, partners and co–creators. Cf. Gen 1, Exo 1-2.
  2. Obedience to the Law. Cf. Golden Calf.
  3. They had a permanent “center” to lead them.
  4. All have equal access to God without Moses as a go-between. A leadership position invites a sense of self-importance and indispensability while the people mistake Moses for a “god.” The leader must be high enough above the people that they will look up to and listen to him, but not so far above them that they mistake him for a good OR that he so mistakes himself. He should also not flatter and indulge them to maintain his popularity and his position. He must be so emptied of his own ego that he is truly a vessel for God to communicate to the people through him.

When Moses finished the work (Exo 40:33), the cloud covered the tent of meeting (Exo 40:34). The presence of the cloud was the result of the successful, obedient completion of the tabernacle, which was therefore ready for the presence of Yahweh to inhabit it symbolically through his glory cloud. The cloud came because the tabernacle was complete.

The cloud–a visible presence to indicate an invisible God–was the way God choose to manifest Himself. The “cloud” first appeared to guide and protect the Israelites in crossing the Red Sea and thereafter in the wilderness (Exo 13:21-22; 14:19-20, 24; 16:10). It was the same cloud the Israelites had seen atop Mt. Sinai since their arrival at the mountain (Exo 19:9, 16; 24:15-18), and the same cloud that indicated the presence of Yahweh at entrance to the little tent of meeting Moses had set up outside the camp (Exo 33:9-10; 34:5).

Why the cloud? In the hot, arid wilderness of Sinai, the sun beats down mercilessly upon people, plants and animals. The cloud during the heat of the day represented a cool, beneficent, shade-giving divine kindness. But much more than that, the cloud displayed Yahweh’s glory, which was an awesome and frightening thing the closer one got to it. When the Israelites saw the cloud it was a potentially overwhelming manifestation of the presence of their God–to be avoided carefully and not infringed upon. The cloud progressed in location from

  • before the Red Sea crossing
  • to Mt. Sinai and
  • to the little, temporary tent of meeting
  • to the tabernacle.

How would an invisible God show his people

  • that he had indeed come to dwell among them as they desired (Exo 33:4-6)?
  • that He was fully in covenant relationship with them, willing to go with them wherever he led them (Exo 34:9-14, 33:14-17)?
  • that the rift between Yahweh and his people had been fully healed by reason of God‘s gracious love for his people as a result of Moses’ faithful intervention with Yahweh (Exo 32:31-32) on their behalf?

The answer is that he visibly went into His house–the tabernacle. He left Mt. Sinai and came to dwell among the encampment of his people, just as he promised he would (Exo 33:14-17). His people had built his house for him just as he commissioned it, and he showed his approval of their efforts, and more importantly, his desire to dwell among them by symbolically entering his house through the glory cloud that covered his house (“tent of meeting” now tabernacle) and also filled its inside spaces. A similar filling with divine glory showed God’s acceptance of the Solomonic temple as his symbolic dwelling place (1 Ki 8:11; 2 Chr 5:14; 7:1-2; Ezek 10:4; 43:5) and of his heavenly temple (Rev 15:8).

“Moses could not enter the tent of meeting” precisely because it was filled with Yahweh’s glory (Exo 34:35). Why? Hadn’t Moses earlier entered right into the glory cloud at the top of Mt. Sinai (Exo 24:18)? Hadn’t he been inside the little symbolic tent of meeting with God’s glory descending upon the entrance (Exo 33:9-10)? And hadn’t he not stood right next to Yahweh’s glory on other occasions (Exo 34:5)? Yes. But now Moses was barred from the tabernacle–the one he had just inspected and set up; he was all around its component parts and inside it when the furniture was placed there. Why then could he not enter once God had entered?

The tabernacle was now Yahweh‘s house and no one else’s. It was no more appropriate for Moses to enter the tabernacle, even though he had been all through it as its building supervisor–like a house builder would no longer enter the new house once it is sold to its occupying owner; the new house is exclusively his, not the builder’s. By the present act of occupying His house through his glory and keeping others out, God showed Moses and all Israel that the house was now his and his alone and indeed his truly and entirely, the very thing they had built it to become. Later provision would be made for the high priest to enter it, even the holy of holies, periodically. This was possible because the glory cloud did not continue to stay inside the tabernacle but mainly hovered on top of it (Exo 40:36-38).

48 days from when the tabernacle was erected (Exo 40:1, 17) to when the Israelites left Sinai (Num 10:11). During those 48 days, the instructions and activities described in all of Leviticus and Num 1:1-10:11 take place. The tabernacle usually had the cloud hovering over it, but “whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out” (Exo 40:36). They had learned the basics of being led by the cloud prior to arriving at Sinai (Exo 14:1-2; 16:10). They knew that if the cloud did not move, they were not to move either but to stay encamped at the last location to which God had led them (Exo 40:37). They could see the cloud at all times, so it could at all times guide them in their travels (Exo 40:38). The once relatively distant cloud (above them in the wilderness or on Mt. Sinai or at the entrance to the tent of meeting outside the camp) was now in the center of their encampment, right above the dwelling place of their God, who “lived” inside His tabernacle.

The tabernacle: the symbol of Yahweh’s presence among his people. The glory cloud atop the tabernacle is a further symbol of his presence and also of his guidance. Exodus ends here and Moses’ very next words continue the tabernacle story: “The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting” (Lev 1:1). The tabernacle was the place from which God would communicate with him and through him to Israel. The invisible, only true God no longer spoke from a distance on Sinai. But now from within their very midst, God spoke to Moses, their honored and accepted representative (Exo 33:8-11).

Only a shadow of the closeness to God available now to his corporate people–the church. Now God’s direct indwelling is available to everyone who repents of sin and trusts in God’s gift of salvation through Christ (Eph 2:22; Col 1:27)–God’s new covenant’s new Moses, God’s ultimate representative (Jn 1:14), rescuer (Mt 1:21; 2 Tim 1:9), lawgiver (Gal 6:2) and heavenly Temple (Rev 21:22).

“What is this brightness—with which God fills the soul of the just—but that clear knowledge of all that is necessary for salvation? He shows them the beauty of virtue and the deformity of vice. He reveals to them the vanity of the world, the treasures of grace, the greatness of eternal glory, and the sweetness of the consolations of the Holy Spirit. He teaches them to apprehend the goodness of God, the malice of the evil one, the shortness of life, and the fatal error of those whose hopes are centered in this world alone. Hence the equanimity of the just. They are neither puffed up by prosperity nor cast down by adversity.” Venerable Louis of Grenada. Dominican friar. 1504-1588.

The Theology of Exodus

  1. Salvation, freedom from bondage (Exo 20:2; 19:4; 6:6).
  2. Real knowledge of God (Exo 29:46; 6:7b-8).
  3. A covenant people (Exo 19:5; 6:7a).
  4. A promised land (Exo 3:8; 6:8).
  5. The limited presence of God in Israel’s midst (Exo 3:5).
  6. Representing an invisible God by visible symbols (Exo 25:21-22).
  7. The necessity of law (Exo 19:5; 20:1, 20).
  8. The necessity of following God (Exo 40:36-38).
  9. Only One God has any real power (Exo 12:12).

Does Exodus have for us any universal or contemporary significance? Jean Jacques Rousseau marvels at the durability of Moses’ laws, “capable of surviving the customs, laws, empire of all the nations … to last as long as the world.”  And the causes of this permanence “deserve the study and admiration of the sages, in preference to all that Greece and Rome offer.”

Moses sets up the tabernacle (40:1-33).

  1. God’s command to set up the tabernacle (40:1-16).
  2. Moses sets up the tabernacle (40:17-33).
  3. The cloud of Yahweh’s glory covers the tabernacle (Exo 40:34-38).
  1. Phase 1 of this construction project was the tabernacle, which began in Exodus 36.
  2. Phase 2 was when God sent his Son to live with us as God’s true tabernacle (Jn 1:14).
  3. Phase 3 is the church that God is now building by his spirit. We ourselves become the tabernacle of God–his dwelling place on earth.

Reference:

  1. Douglas K. Stuart. Exodus. The New American Commentary: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture. 2006.
  2. Philip Graham Ryken. Exodus. Saved for God’s Glory. Preaching the Word. 2015.
  3. Leon R. Kass. Founding God’s Nation. Reading Exodus. 2021.
  4. James K. Bruckner. Exodus. New International Bible Commentary. 2008.
  5. John Goldingay. Exodus & Leviticus for Everyone. 2010.
  6. Robert Alter. The Hebrew Bible. A translation with commentary. The Five Books of Moses. 2019.
  7. Dennis Prager. Exodus. God, Slavery, and Freedom. The Rational Bible. 2018.

What does it mean for God the Son to tabernacle with us, or for us to be the temple of the Holy Spirit?

  1. Pay Attention to the Burning Bush (Exo 3:1-10).
  2. Keep God’s Covenant (Exo 19:4-6).
  3. Live Well: Keep the Sabbath plus Nine (Exo 20:1-17).
  4. Make a Place in Your Heart for God (Exo 25:1-9).
  5. Don’t Have a Cow (Exo 32:1-34).
  6. See and Know God (Exo 33:1-22).
  7. Truly Know Who God Is (Exo 34:1-7).
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