Exodus 38:1 Bible Study | Episode 641

March 25, 2024

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Exodus 38:1  Bible Study | Episode #641

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Alive, Applying God's Word to Your Daily Life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today.

In Jesus name good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We're in Exodus chapter 38, three more chapters before we're completed the book of Exodus. I never thought I would ever really have the opportunity to teach through Genesis and Exodus like this or the book of Psalms, like we started with back during the early days of the pandemic, but we've gotten to this point.

And so it is very exciting. Probably be celebrating a lot for the next few weeks or a few a few Bible studies because it's exciting to have the opportunity to teach through certain books of the Bible that you really don't have the form to do it in. And you go you could teach them on Sunday morning.

If you taught through the book of Genesis on Sunday morning, the way I've taught through this book, it would take somebody's whole childhood. If you were, if you're a teenager, I would start at 13 and you'd be graduating high school and I wouldn't be done with the book of Genesis.

So there's not always a great forum for a pastor to teach through a book like this, especially. Especially if you're going to go verse by verse and you're going to really dig deep and dive deep into it. That being said we are dealing with the book the the offering the place where the offerings were made that were being brought to the temple as a burnt offerings.

And I want to make sure that we don't oftentimes we, I guess we, we do move past this and we get into burn offerings. And sometimes we just fail to realize because just because we don't sit back and ponder it and we have this opportunity, this Bible study to actually take the time and and ponder what the word of God has to say about about, God's ultimate plan.

And oftentimes we think of God as ourselves, that we've got to alter our plans, change our plans, make new plans. Things come up, things that were unexpected happen. And we, we have to alter course. But that's not true of God, and it's not true of God at all. God has not altered course in his dealings with his creation, or in his dealings with humanity, ever.

He is at no point in time altered course as far as what his divine plan and will was eternally. He's never done that. At no point in time in history has he done that. God knew in his creation there would be aspects of it that would have to be there. Because he created the universe to reveal himself.

And so he knew That when he created the universe that there would be things that would be beautiful and glorious when we nowadays, because we have these satellites that we can put into orbit that can see deep, deep into the, cosmos we see galaxies that are billions of light years away.

The enormity of the cosmos that we live in is fabulous and unbelievable. It is amazing and amazing is such a human term. There is no term to really encompass how fantastic. The universe that God created is there really isn't and that was created so that we one day would realize it so that one day we would know I can think of back six thousand years ago when they were looking at the stars and trying to figure out Just the stars that they could see with their naked eye what was going on and what was happening?

and And that being said It was amazing. It was fantastic. And realizing that some of those stars in the sky weren't stars, they were planets. And maybe maybe figuring out finally when we got some rudimentary telescopes, realizing that, yes, they are planets. In fact, we can see the planets. And we can see their color and we can see their differences.

And then all of a sudden we, we see Saturn's rings And we realized that. And then, before you know it we figure out that there's aspects of the sun that we could see. And if we put something over the sun and just had the edges, just the very edges show that the sun is a roiling, is a roiling mass of plasma that is burning.

And there are actual huge storms on the surface of the sun that are larger than our planet is, way larger than our planet is. And the wonders of that, and then you think about the wonders of the big things, but then there's the wonders of the small things, the wonders of the microscopic world that exists around us, that we ourselves don't even think about and we as humans didn't even realize was there until after we'd done a whole lot of study of the stars, realizing the mites and the small little, the one cell organisms that exist all over the world and realizing that they are, they're everywhere, realizing the wonder of how uniquely and precariously the universe has been made, meaning, meaning that if just a little thing, little one thing is off in how God created this planet and where he put it and how he set it in motion, realizing that was his plan to show you that he can, he can balance an elephant on the head of a pen.

He can. Precariously, perfectly. And do it over thousands and perhaps millions of years, don't know. We don't know how long it was between Genesis 1 1 and Genesis 1 2, where the earth became null and void. We don't know these things. And some people might say we're going to just go with this or that or the other.

That's the cool thing about it. There are things about and aspects about God in his creation that we can visibly see that are amazing and that are not known or may never be known just because of the nature of just because of the nature of what they are. We, there are so many things out there that we just have no idea.

About and are amazed when we find them and truly amazed when we find them. And that was not something that God threw in because he thought about it later. It was something that was divinely ordained. It was something he decided to do. Way before he said, let there be light. And so all these things are amazing and they're in there fabulous.

And then when we get to this, the, this passage and we'll deal with it for a couple of days, he said he made the altar of burnt offering of Acacia wood. This place where the payment for separate for entertaining and being a part of that, which is not God. And that's what sin is.

Sin is that which is outside of his will and his way, outside of his character, outside of his nature. That the participation in that it's cost is the life that God has given us. And realizing that God in his divine plan, which preceded him taking that action, the divine plan that he had involved knowing that there would be those who chose to reject him, the angelic host that would reject him the angel himself.

Satan or Lucifer who would reject him and then ultimately in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve would choose to not do and not follow his, as we would say, commandments or directives or precepts and would choose to know Knowledge of good and evil, meaning to know what evil is and to experience it.

They'd already experienced good, but, or good is just a pseudonym for God. They, they had already known what God was, but they chose to know what not God was, or what evil was, or what Ra is. And knowing that from the foundation of time, knowing that Not was not just a aspect of what would happen but actually a part of God's divine plan.

Knowing that, that was a part of it we sit back and wonder because realizing that not only would God allow that to take place, not only would God be a part of doing that because it reveals an aspect of his nature that couldn't be known any other way. Knowing that God would allow that, but also knowing that God had planned.

A answer to that and that answer would be found not only through his son, but through humanity because the altar in verse one says the altar he made a burnt offering was a vacation would meaning. Remember, that's the human aspect of all the parts of the tabernacle. The acacia wood is the aspect that speaks to humanity.

He says five cubits was its length and five cubits was its width. It was a square and sliced with three cubits. It was a place to put a body to burn on. For the Israelites, it would have been burnt offerings of animals. Bulls sheep, goats and doves and all kinds of burnt offerings that were brought to the to the tabernacle to be placed on the altar for God to for God to burn and to to receive the blood because without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. There is no. Release from the penalty, the punishment of sin and realizing that is that's what's going on. That's what's happening. And not only was it what's happening, it was a part of God's divine plan, but the burnt offerings of the animals.

Was only a symbol and never sufficient. It's always been a symbol, but it's never been sufficient. It was never sufficiently a part of God's plan. And when you think about that, when you consider it, when you ponder it, when you take it in, that, that is what God's plan was. His plan was For there to be pictures of his ultimate plan, and his ultimate plan would be that humanity would pay for sin, but the humanity would be his son, King Jesus, would come in the form of a man, born of a virgin.

Sinless life and give his life as a human being, as a man, he would give his life for the penalty of experiencing not God, for the penalty of choosing not God, for the penalty of separation from him. And so the altar of burnt offering. Is really the place where we begin to move back toward God the cleansing of the Holy Spirit, the preparation, the call of the Holy Spirit, the entering into the gate is all a picture of it, but the place where it's actually possible.

To have relationship with God takes place at the altar of burnt offering. Jesus gave himself as a sacrifice for us. And Romans chapter 12 verse 1 says we ought to also give ourselves as a sacrifice to him. Offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. Understanding that is exactly, understanding that is exactly what God's planned as divine will was for us.

His ultimate desire for us was to give for us to give our bodies as that living sacrifice. Understanding that and walking in that is it's the ultimate step. It's the ultimate step toward life and toward knowing God. And sometimes when you sit back and think about all the wonders that God made.

And the greatest wonder that, that was done, the greatest wonder of all of God's creation, the greatest wonder of human history, the greatest wonder of the history of the cosmos, is that God could not only make the cosmos and that he could balance it out and that he could redeem it, but ultimately he could become a part of it.

And actively play a role in the history of his creation through his son King Jesus is the amazing part of the story. It is the ultimate, it's the penultimate part of the story of history is that God came and became a part of his creation. He joined his creation in life through his son and that his son not only became a part of it, but experienced the worst of it so that he might give us the best of God.

And that is what. The altar of burnt offerings about that's what it's about. It's about knowing God and knowing the fullness of his character in nature. Through his son. Who did not love his life so much that he was unwilling to give it so that we might know him. We're going to talk about the altar of burnt offering, how that relates to us, because we're the Acacia Wood also.

But the ultimate Acacia Wood was the body of Jesus. Broken and poured out for us. The great story of human history. The great event of human history. As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.