Exodus 40:34-38 Bible Study | Episode 652

April 9, 2024

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

Exodus 40:34-38   Bible Study | Episode #652

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 at Exodus chapter 30. The last the last very in Exodus chapter and in the book of Exodus and we're going Leviticus next week. I read a great time in the book of Exodus, a great journey studying God's word, a great journey.

Soon it'll be the rule. I guess the overarching story of the Old Testament played out in Bible studies. It took I think I look back, it took almost a year to get through the book. I think it's right around nine months. And we're in one of those situations where it takes us seven months to get through these books, these avalanche books, how early I ran into a Bible study through them, but they're so ledge if you didn't end the context, I'm only doing it once a week where it just take you for forever to just get through one of them, but we've made it through sans and then Genesis and Exodus.

And now we're going to do Leviticus and numbers. Both of those are quite a bit smaller not. Not hugely smaller but they're smaller than these. So that'll take us around six months to get through each one of those. And then we'll we'll continue on through the Bible. And and I'm enjoying it.

And we look at the book of Exodus. Where God always wanted to end and that's exactly where it's at. We end the book of Exodus with, the glory of the Lord being on the tabernacle. It says then the cloud covered the tabernacle. That is the Shekinah glory of God. We're going to see in verse 38 it says for the cloud of the Lord was above the tabernacle by day and the fire was over it by night in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all the journeys.

This is the glory of God, the presence of God by cloud by day and fire by night being Ruth, God's people. And that's Everything's where God has wanted to be. He met with Adam and the crew of the evening in Genesis. We see him meeting with Abraham and telling him to go and do that.

You're a to a place he does not know and live among the people. He does not know him, but he's going to make him a great nation, which he carries out and we see that working its way through the book of Genesis. And then as sin has its way, and as humanity is plagued by sin man is captured and taken into captivity by sin, and God has a redemptive plan.

And that's what the book of Exodus is about. It's about God's redemptive plan from the from the hell of sin, from the degradation and the pain of sin. It is about who is planned to redeem us. And to build us into his presence. And that is exactly, that's exactly what's happened. It says the cloud covered the tabernacle and meeting and the glory for the little field, the tabernacle, not only you notice, but it was such a, it was such a movement of God that.

Even the man who God had chosen and who had faithfully done what God had asked him to do, Moses could not be in the tabernacle when it first fell down on the on the tabernacle. When the word of God came down, it says in verse 35, and Moses was not able to enter the tabernacle of meeting.

Because the cloud rested above it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Notice, the glory of the Lord is not just in the Holy of Holies, not behind the curtain, but it's throughout the tabernacle. And Moses couldn't even believe it. And and So there he couldn't go in and this is not a common thing.

Moses, even when we're tired and I will say that side the outside the camp, even when they first began to to work on building the Tad and Acker, Moses could go live with God and his brother would be on him. But when God's people live with God, and when God's people decide they're going to show up.

The power in the presence of God shows up so greatly that things that would seem like they would be commonplace are not commonplace. So things that seem like they'd be normally natural are not normally natural. And I want you to understand that Our desire is for God to be and to have his full presence and power involved in our lives and our churches and our communities.

That is what we desire as God's people. And you, and oftentimes we look outwardly and say, This and that and the other is keeping God from it. But the truth is that's not the issue. I say this all the time in, in, in our church the problem with our communities, the problem with our states and our nation is not.

The fact of the last, it's not an issue of the last sure is the enemy at work all the time? Yeah. Is Satan trying to kill steal and destroy? Yeah. But God and whose presence is not only available, but God's desires to be. In our communities, he's desires to be at work and many of his people and his desires to show that in rural pyra and ruling make a difference and change what's going on.

But what was required is that God's people have to put themselves in a position where God can do that. They have to fill their hats with a desire to see God, they have to fill their hats with the desire to know his presence. They have to, we have to genuinely and sincerely and I think it's important that you see this.

We have to genuinely and sincerely seek God out each and every day. And listen, it's done personally in your own head, but it's also been clinically as churches, as bodies of believers that meet together as the body of Christ that meets together. We have to come in and as a show, seek God out.

When we do that, which is the picture of this, which is what this is all about. It's about God's people meeting with him when we do it. And when we do it. The way God has presented us for us to do it when we do it when we do it in the way he is spiritually show us that we should do it. He shows up.

Moses couldn't even get her in the tabernacle. He couldn't even, he couldn't even let her in. And he had clearly been in the presence of God. He'd been in the presence of God on top of the mountain. Numerous times you've been in the presence of God at the tabernacle numerous times. Sometimes God falls down so much that there's no way that there's no way to stay in his presence.

And when the glory of the Lord feels the temper of a tabernacle, a man understands his sinfulness and he has the ability to be completely cleansed, to be completely made new. to be focused as far as his life and his and the things that are going on in his life.

And so it says, whenever the cloud was taken up from above the tabernacle, the children would go inward and all their journeys. Notice God's going with them in their journeys and he's telling them when to move and when not to move. When he's there and he's in the presence. They need to be listening to him.

That reminds me of that million method story. When God is there, your focus needs to be on him. When God lifts up and directs you and says, Tom, it's time to move. Then it's time to move. And so when we're searching after God, when we're trying to figure out where we've been in our life, we seek his presence.

When his presence fares down. We focus on him and we focus on what he's saying and what he's doing in our lives. And then when that presence is lifted up, we move forward as a kingdom. We move forward doing the work and the work of God. And That's how it's done. That's how life's done.

We, we often, we sometimes don't do that. We don't recognize that God is moving and sit and hear God and rate and allow him to do his work in us. Too busy. Got too many things going on in our lives. Too much to distract us from the presence of God. And then when God says go and do, so many times, because we haven't been sitting there.

We haven't been allowing him to fill us up and refresh us and renew us. We don't have the power to go back and do those things. And the process is Stagnated in the process and our lives become stagnated, the church becomes stagnated. Our communities and the people that we care about become stagnated.

We've got to, we've got to go through this process each and every day. It's a discipline of faith worship is a discipline of our faith. It's something that we've got to learn how to do and do well. And so when we decide we're willing to do it and do it well, when we decide we're willing to work in it and work in it when we do those things.

There's nothing that can stop us. There's nothing that slows us down. We have his presence and we have his guidance. We have his leadership. We have him telling us where we need to go and what we need to do. And he does it in his time and his array. And our job is to be obedient to what we know we should be doing.

It says, but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not journey to the day that it was taken up. Notice, they waited on God. They waited on God's timing. They waited on God's instruction. They waited on God's direction. There's no way to get around that. Oftentimes I spent a whole lot of my life trying to Conjure God, I guess is the way I'd say it, trying to make him do something that I haven't done according to my own will.

It can't be done that way. You can't conjure up the will of God. You can't make God do his will the way you want it done. You cannot do that. You will not do that. It's not possible. When God is working, we have to sit and listen. We have to be obedient to hear him and allow him to do his work.

When God is instructing and sending, we've got to go and do what God has prepared us for in that sitting and hearing him.

God wants to do great things in his church. God wants to do great things in His people. God wants to work his will and his way out with us, but we have to join him in it. Now, don't you hear me with this. We don't have to join him in redemption. We can't redeem ourselves. We don't have to join him in calling us to him who's gotta do that?

But when God has called us and redeemed us. And we now know him, the great gift that God has given us is the ability to begin to function as he is, to have his life, to work in that. And the way that's done is done by faith. And so there is a time in the church and believers lives when they start working as Jesus did, when they start being the light as he is the light.

When we do that, when we do that with our lives. We are doing the work of faith. We're not doing the work of the law. We're doing the work of faith. And when we do the work of faith, and we do the work of faith well, the presence and the power of God is all over us. It's all over the things we touch, the things we do, the people we interact with, the power and the presence of God is all over.

And that's really what we want, isn't it? I think so. I know it is. You wouldn't learn through what's held by obituary maybe through the book of Genesis and Psalms also, if that wasn't the desire of your heart. And whether you're listening to me today in the middle of September of 2023 or months from now, when this comes out on the podcast, or maybe even years from now Nothing changes about God.

He's the same yesterday, today, and forevermore. What he's trying to change is you. And the only way for that to happen is for you to allow his presence and his power to take hold in your life, and then you work it out by faith. To be the light to the world you live in. As we finish the book of Exodus, as we finish this wonderful journey, I pray that you will know his redemption and deliverance, that you will know his presence and that you will walk in that presence and power.

And that you will change the lives and the people around you and the world you live in because Jesus and his glory.

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.